The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.
Ok, so far so good...
"They work like racing cars," Altshuler said. "Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient."
So bees are the same as race cars. That makes sense. Except you just said they don't increase their RPMs. He probably meant to compare it to a transmission, which allows you to go faster with a given RPM, but he failed miserably. Also transmissions aren't inefficient, at least for IC engines.
As an aside, my favorite story involving bees:
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Give me five bees for a quarter, you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah - the important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Right, but redoing work is certainly a loss, as is preventing work from being done. That's an actual damage, not a "potential loss" like piracy. Arguably, IT workers are already paid to maintain systems, so you could factor them out entirely.
Yeah, I started to make a similar post, but then I decided it wasn't so absurd. Probably on the high side, but it's not as much as it sounds like. 10M IT workers, even if they only averaged a salary of $100/day would be $1B. And that doesn't even factor in possible data loss which would result in users redoing their work.
given that China is not a democracy it really isn't up to the people to decide. That decision has been made for them. I find it hard to believe that a regime would repress free speech and media for the good of the people.
That's false as well, not to mention contradictory. If China was a democracy then the people could vote for an authoritarian government? Think about it.
What makes a government a government? I could declare myself Emporer of the United States tomorrow, but that wouldn't make it happen, and it has nothing to do with laws. It's because nobody would respect my claim. Government cannot exist without the consent of the governed. If a government is doing a bad enough job, eventually people will stop consenting. The fact that China's government exists is evidence that it is performing sufficiently. Beyond that, it's all shades of grey.
Let's not forget that democracy is not without its shortcomings. We generally get to choose between egg shell and off-white. Six of one, or a half dozen of the other. The difference between candidates often comes down to petty issues, and there are generally only two choices. And no matter who you vote for, odds are you don't agree with all of that candidate's policies; you just had to choose the lesser of two evils.
There are advantages of authoritarian governments. Less arguing about the correct course of action means more time spent actually pursuing that course, and often the difference is life or death. That's why militaries aren't democracies, as anyone who's served can certainly tell you.
And the greatest irony of all? We mope and complain about China's lack of civil liberty, meanwhile we voluntarily surrender our own because we think it's more important to stay alive than to be free (as if those are the choices). In reality, Chinese citizens are making the exact same choice; they've decided that it's better to be alive and secure than to take steps toward a democracy. Who are we to question their decision?
You have no idea what it is like to know that if the police come knocking, you need to hand over a thousand yuan or a loved one disappears.
Nor do you I imagine.
China is hardly a bastion of chaos and unrest. Its citizens, for the most part, are NOT unhappy. They believe in their government, and they believe that if information is censored, it's in their best interest. Does that make it true? Well, not necessarily, but its up to a country's own citizens to decide for themselves (unlike Bush would have us believe). You could make a strong argument that they're being duped (that's fooled, not copied) on a massive scale, but here in Asia, the overwhelming majority of Chinese that I've met are fully supportive of their government's policies, and it's not just an act that they drop in private.
Are there instances of abuse of power in China? Absolutely. And they're different abuses than we're used to seeing in the US, but for the most part they're just trading one set of problems for another.
if you replace "democracy" with "theocracy", "Falun Gong" with "Radical Islam", and "capitalism" with "socialism", can Americans really claim themselves as so much more enlightened?
Q. How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?
A. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
Technically you can always see part of it, it's just which part you see, and the quality of your viewing location. The farther north you are, the closer toward the horizon it will be. Unfortunately, when objects are near the horizon, the light has to pass through more of the atmosphere to reach your eyes. When you factor in light pollution, it could make the galaxy essentially unviewable. Hong Kong would naturally put the galaxy "higher" in the sky, making for better (or more dramatic anyway) viewing.
YOUR READERS ARE NOT DUMB. IF THEY READ SLASHDOT REGULARLY, THEY'RE NOT STUPID.
The only thing that prevents me from inserting a relevant joke at this point is that the sheer number of possibilities prevents my brain from choosing one. I finally know what it's like to be a lion trying to pick out a zebra in a herd, except in this case there are no slow or weak ones that stand out.
Pretty much.. all you're missing is distance calculations.
The Milky Way actually looks like a blurry band across the sky. The stars are too dense to make out with the naked eye, so we just see a bright "stripe." It's clearly visible anywhere near the equator or farther south, depending on the time of the year. I happen to live on an island 13 degrees north of the equator, and the view on a cloudless night is truely jaw dropping. Alternatively, you can also go to a local planetarium. If you live near Washington, D.C., I'd recommend the Air & Space museum, but I'm sure a little Googling would turn up some others. Believe it or not, it's a pretty cool place to take a date too. There's just something indescribable about (almost) pure darkness with an infinite number of tiny points of light.
"Robot agents digest all the information and make proposals to the parties. Once the arbitrator is agreed upon, the robot agent finds a suitable meeting date for everybody," said Jacques Gouimenou. The idea behind having an online arbitration system is that as well as being relatively inexpensive it allows organisations involved in international disputes to find a neutral venue in which to air their problems.
I suppose it could be considered a neutral venue, except that it's run by freakin' robots! Hel-lo!
I can attest to the validity of this study. I don't have kids, but when I was one, I had a plastic learning device called a "Speak & Spell." Some of you may have heard of it. The only thing I can remember about this device is that if you pushed the L button, it sounded a LOT like "hell." We would use this exceedingly amusing, at the time, coincidence(?) to get around actually using bad words through such techniques as saying "What the" and then pushing L. Surprisingly, this technique proved to be completely ineffective at avoiding a spanking.
Use your imagination, and remember that this law is part of "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act".
The title of a Bill has absolutely nothing to do with the limitation or enforcement of the laws therein. The Federal government tramples on States' rights with the Commerce Clause. Riders are attached to all sorts of unrelated legislation. Unless there is language in the bill itself (and there may well be; I haven't read it) to limit such enforcement to cases involving violence against women, the title means nothing.
As an aside, the title is rather discriminating, don't you think? What about violence against men? There are plenty of women who abuse, stalk, and threaten their S.O.'s. While purely anecdotal, I can think of almost as many women I know personally who have engaged in such activity as I can men. But my experience turns out to reveal even less of a problem than actually exists. According to The US National Family Violence Survey, in repeated surveys over more than 30 years, women are more than twice as likely as men to initiate domestic assault, and more than twice as likely to use weapons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence
Slashdot Mirror
Earth keeps revolving around the Sun, which is good for us.
Good for you maybe.. Some of us are getting very dizzy.
Pfft, that's nothing. I've been retrofitting my iPod into my backpack for years. Sometimes several times a day!
The bees made up for the extra work by stretching out their wing stroke amplitude but did not adjust wingbeat frequency.
Ok, so far so good...
"They work like racing cars," Altshuler said. "Racing cars can reach higher revolutions per minute but enable the driver to go faster in higher gear. But like honeybees, they are inefficient."
So bees are the same as race cars. That makes sense. Except you just said they don't increase their RPMs. He probably meant to compare it to a transmission, which allows you to go faster with a given RPM, but he failed miserably. Also transmissions aren't inefficient, at least for IC engines.
As an aside, my favorite story involving bees:
I thought the earth just kept moving out of the way to avoid being stung.
Right, but redoing work is certainly a loss, as is preventing work from being done. That's an actual damage, not a "potential loss" like piracy. Arguably, IT workers are already paid to maintain systems, so you could factor them out entirely.
Dell will not ship an AMD CPU.
Really?
Wow.. they must be fortune tellers.. or something.
Yeah, I started to make a similar post, but then I decided it wasn't so absurd. Probably on the high side, but it's not as much as it sounds like. 10M IT workers, even if they only averaged a salary of $100/day would be $1B. And that doesn't even factor in possible data loss which would result in users redoing their work.
Don't worry, we stopped saying that years ago. Now it just makes you sound old.
-Kids
given that China is not a democracy it really isn't up to the people to decide. That decision has been made for them. I find it hard to believe that a regime would repress free speech and media for the good of the people.
That's false as well, not to mention contradictory. If China was a democracy then the people could vote for an authoritarian government? Think about it.
What makes a government a government? I could declare myself Emporer of the United States tomorrow, but that wouldn't make it happen, and it has nothing to do with laws. It's because nobody would respect my claim. Government cannot exist without the consent of the governed. If a government is doing a bad enough job, eventually people will stop consenting. The fact that China's government exists is evidence that it is performing sufficiently. Beyond that, it's all shades of grey.
Let's not forget that democracy is not without its shortcomings. We generally get to choose between egg shell and off-white. Six of one, or a half dozen of the other. The difference between candidates often comes down to petty issues, and there are generally only two choices. And no matter who you vote for, odds are you don't agree with all of that candidate's policies; you just had to choose the lesser of two evils.
There are advantages of authoritarian governments. Less arguing about the correct course of action means more time spent actually pursuing that course, and often the difference is life or death. That's why militaries aren't democracies, as anyone who's served can certainly tell you.
And the greatest irony of all? We mope and complain about China's lack of civil liberty, meanwhile we voluntarily surrender our own because we think it's more important to stay alive than to be free (as if those are the choices). In reality, Chinese citizens are making the exact same choice; they've decided that it's better to be alive and secure than to take steps toward a democracy. Who are we to question their decision?
This was actually published a couple months ago: http://www.physorg.com/news8616.html
Maybe we should start calling it "Slashdot: Olds for Nerds"
Exactly. And his sig is particularly ironic.
You have no idea what it is like to know that if the police come knocking, you need to hand over a thousand yuan or a loved one disappears.
Nor do you I imagine.
China is hardly a bastion of chaos and unrest. Its citizens, for the most part, are NOT unhappy. They believe in their government, and they believe that if information is censored, it's in their best interest. Does that make it true? Well, not necessarily, but its up to a country's own citizens to decide for themselves (unlike Bush would have us believe). You could make a strong argument that they're being duped (that's fooled, not copied) on a massive scale, but here in Asia, the overwhelming majority of Chinese that I've met are fully supportive of their government's policies, and it's not just an act that they drop in private.
Are there instances of abuse of power in China? Absolutely. And they're different abuses than we're used to seeing in the US, but for the most part they're just trading one set of problems for another.
It's a square engineered by great Chinese scientist Dr. Tiananmen to be 33% squarer than imperialist pig squares.
-China
if you replace "democracy" with "theocracy", "Falun Gong" with "Radical Islam", and "capitalism" with "socialism", can Americans really claim themselves as so much more enlightened?
Q. How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?
A. Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg.
We was referring to Moran. We can't all be Morans, he meant.
Technically you can always see part of it, it's just which part you see, and the quality of your viewing location. The farther north you are, the closer toward the horizon it will be. Unfortunately, when objects are near the horizon, the light has to pass through more of the atmosphere to reach your eyes. When you factor in light pollution, it could make the galaxy essentially unviewable. Hong Kong would naturally put the galaxy "higher" in the sky, making for better (or more dramatic anyway) viewing.
YOUR READERS ARE NOT DUMB. IF THEY READ SLASHDOT REGULARLY, THEY'RE NOT STUPID.
The only thing that prevents me from inserting a relevant joke at this point is that the sheer number of possibilities prevents my brain from choosing one. I finally know what it's like to be a lion trying to pick out a zebra in a herd, except in this case there are no slow or weak ones that stand out.
Pretty much.. all you're missing is distance calculations.
The Milky Way actually looks like a blurry band across the sky. The stars are too dense to make out with the naked eye, so we just see a bright "stripe." It's clearly visible anywhere near the equator or farther south, depending on the time of the year. I happen to live on an island 13 degrees north of the equator, and the view on a cloudless night is truely jaw dropping. Alternatively, you can also go to a local planetarium. If you live near Washington, D.C., I'd recommend the Air & Space museum, but I'm sure a little Googling would turn up some others. Believe it or not, it's a pretty cool place to take a date too. There's just something indescribable about (almost) pure darkness with an infinite number of tiny points of light.
"Robot agents digest all the information and make proposals to the parties. Once the arbitrator is agreed upon, the robot agent finds a suitable meeting date for everybody," said Jacques Gouimenou. The idea behind having an online arbitration system is that as well as being relatively inexpensive it allows organisations involved in international disputes to find a neutral venue in which to air their problems.
I suppose it could be considered a neutral venue, except that it's run by freakin' robots! Hel-lo!
I can attest to the validity of this study. I don't have kids, but when I was one, I had a plastic learning device called a "Speak & Spell." Some of you may have heard of it. The only thing I can remember about this device is that if you pushed the L button, it sounded a LOT like "hell." We would use this exceedingly amusing, at the time, coincidence(?) to get around actually using bad words through such techniques as saying "What the" and then pushing L. Surprisingly, this technique proved to be completely ineffective at avoiding a spanking.
Comma, comma, comma, comma chamelion.
/veto
Use your imagination, and remember that this law is part of "Violence Against Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act".
The title of a Bill has absolutely nothing to do with the limitation or enforcement of the laws therein. The Federal government tramples on States' rights with the Commerce Clause. Riders are attached to all sorts of unrelated legislation. Unless there is language in the bill itself (and there may well be; I haven't read it) to limit such enforcement to cases involving violence against women, the title means nothing.
As an aside, the title is rather discriminating, don't you think? What about violence against men? There are plenty of women who abuse, stalk, and threaten their S.O.'s. While purely anecdotal, I can think of almost as many women I know personally who have engaged in such activity as I can men. But my experience turns out to reveal even less of a problem than actually exists. According to The US National Family Violence Survey, in repeated surveys over more than 30 years, women are more than twice as likely as men to initiate domestic assault, and more than twice as likely to use weapons. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence
Exactly. It's a Catch-22.