Clarke not a scientist? Since when? He might not have had a PhD title (which is only that - a title) but other than that trivial detail he's practically a text-book model of a fine scientist. He is one of *the* role models for the job.
It's like saying Carl Sagan wasn't a scientist! In fact, Clarke and Sagan had very similar fields of interest and work.
Of course it doesn't cost *nothing* but it costs very little - the water isn't free (people will splash out some water) and the chemicals to keep the water clean-ish isn't free (people will dirty the water). In fact, it costs exactly the same, per swimmer, as it does during the day and that is where the problem really is. In addition to that, if the word spreads you allow semi-illegal free night swimming, it is very reasonable that some of the people who would swim (and pay) during the day will choose to swim for free at night, bringing no income to you and only cost. And then on top of it all, if the number of night swimmers really increases, people might conclude that they are entitled to pool guards, working drink bars, etc., which would, even if possible, require hiring night staff which would probably cost more than day staff.
Personally, I don't think this can be "solved" or, really, that there is anything there to "solve". It is human nature to want things for free. It is probably a property of every living thing. The only practical option is to have some kinds of artificial rules that would guard a balance between total anarchy and total capitalism. Thus, most people choose some brand of doublethink - "stealing is bad, but I'm still a good person if I don't steal too much."
What is more expensive - all this bickering and lobbying or just simply having a 2/3rds referendum which will settle things for the next 10 years? A clean binary resolution will help both parties: if the "pro" people win - hooray, a golden age for stem cell research, if the "contra" people win - scientists and patients wanting to make use of the technology will simply find another country that wants them - they will have a clean and easy situation.
BTW the same goes for marijuana legalization - just hold the damn referendum already and get on with other things.
Or, since this is in USA, remove the federal choke on the topic and leave it to the individual states - there are worse things already at the state level (IIRC: minimum marrying age? drinking age?)
As this is as good a place for armchair philosophy as any, here's my take on it: I think both will probably be proven possible but not arbitrary - like wormholes of which the ends have to be positioned and opened "manually". For example, you can go FTL via a wormhole but first you need to carry the "other end" of the wormhole in a conventional way to wherever, and the same would work for time-based wormholes - you can time-travel but the "future" end of the wormhole will need to be "carried" to the future. The time-based wormhole would only be a single thing - not two things as would space-based wormholes be. This single opening would be "carried" to the future by simply existing for some duration. The analogy with space-based wormholes dictates that, as you can only travel between the portals to the wormhole and not, e.g. pop up into existence somewhere in between them, that you could only time-travel between "now" and whenever the time-based wormhole was first opened - which probably has something to do with causality. In any case, if at the very moment the wormhole gets opened you don't get a steady stream of grandfather-killing maniacs, you are probably safe forever:)
Any organization which is as openly against open access to scientific articles (journals, conference proceedings) yet continues to wave its clout as IEEE does deserves to die out in infamy.
If it weren't marketed as a "bright new idea" with an appropriate product, company and undoubtedly, patents, behind it, it could actually be useful if it was integrated into "normal" IM applications in approximately the same way the smileys are today. It would serve a purpose similar to "message macros" in IRC and others - a shorthand writing in situations where the messages are simple, with the default still being the "normal" way of typing messages. Using just the pictures is extremely constrained without elaborate support for creating new pictures and composing new pictures out of the old ones, but if one's workday is mainly centered over answering messages with "yes", "no", "coffee?" and "lunch?", it could be very convenient.:)
The practical difference between a Caesar cipher and DES is that the Caesar cipher is faster so more transactions can be performed. You could do more leaving things in plain-text, but regulations usually require encryption of some sort for this kind of data. However, those same regulations don't usually stipulate any particular strength of encryption, so Caesar becomes ideal.
Actually, RC4 is not that much slower than Casear, mainly because is implemented sort of like Caesar with extra steps to modify the substitution table at runtime. OpenSSL can do RC4 on modern hardware faster than 300 MB/s. Even though it is as a "combiner" stream cipher and as such tricky to actually use securely, it would be much better than the probably ad-hoc implemented Caesar.
If there was a recognized, official (or even semi-official) standard API and ABI for cryptography libraries, ITAR would be less of an issue.
You mean like their official ones? They could have used their own crypto API, but they didn't.
If standards better-mandated what level of security was required, weak algorithms would never be used. No corporation would dare risk the penalties and so no vendor would dare supply soft crypto.
You are right - this is 50% of the problem here. The other 50% is MS just being lazy.
... is that you have all those other places to put stuff if they don't fit in just one place. Personally, stuff I like either goes into Wikipedia or tvtropes:)
The question here is - how long will the eruption and the ash cloud last? Judging from historical records, it's not uncommon for eruptions to last decades. If - then what? New routes? Limit cross-atlantic flights endpoints to southern Spain or something?
That's a wrong way to do this conversation - you really need to pull something like: "I'm concerned the radiation levels of your wireless router are causing you all to have brain cancer" followed by "innocent" inquiries into if anyone on the office has headaches or problems sleeping, suggesting the AP might be the cause. It's bullshit of course but the only way to get people interested is to make it about *their* asses. If you're good enough (i.e. go through it in a really circumspect way) you may even get them to pay you to investigate and reconfigure the said AP:)
People will buy anything if the price is right. Offhand I'd say iPad needs to be a tiny bit cheaper to succeed widely but the crowd who thinks iPhones are affordable will buy them up regardless and the rest of us will wait for less extravagant alternatives (the Android looks like a no-brainer possible future competitor, in cheaper hardware).
Tablets are not niche, they were just unaffordable and without a good UI - at least the second problem will be solved by porting apps made for mobile phone touch interfaces. Time will solve the first one.
tin_hat_mode_on
Hmmm this is too convenient... maybe MS wanted the document to "leak", giving false assurances to the masses? In actuality, they are logging every single bit that passes through! tin_hat_mode_off
nah... couldn't happen... or could it?
How could a document like this "leak" out? By whom? A law enforcement agency employee? A Microsoft employee? The document is actually pretty benign - it basically states that the data logged is that which is also logged by every web server in existence, nothing more serious than that. Pretty good-natured from MS.
Anyways... stay crunchy!
There's some fundamental flaw in the system if giving people free stuff is bad for them...
Yes, it's called "human nature" and by overwhelming agreement it's one of the worst things in the universe. Unfortunately, no two people agree on how to fix it...
This is really cool to read about - looks like an extremely interesting project from engineering POV. How they deal with latency alone must be damn impressive. I guess the drones must have some sort of autonomy and the pilot basically says "go west, kill spider" or something to the tone. Probably an AI-like engine similar to those in RTS games - point and click but the low-level details (like actual flying!) are handled locally. So cool...
More impressively - the sonic boom "waves" effect is actually a three-D object - imagine if we could see it from multiple POVs, a spherical wave instead of 2D one:)
I don't know for sure but I thought some of the "real" scenes were also CGIed - specifically, the scenes where the jarhead records his log at the various stations - to me they looked completely artificial - and the uncanny valley effect was there.
For me, programming was never ever the goal in itself. Sure, it was fun experiencing building something out of more-or-less abstract logic, but it was always about what I could *do* with the program. E.g. solve practical (i.e. of immediate concern to me) problems. Of course there are other personalities - those more mathematically oriented who end up in pure CS.
My suggestion would be - show the kid what he can do *with* programming, then see what he likes best and then choose an appropriate language / environment for him. If he's graphically inclined, you might want to start with e.g. Flash. If he's fascinated more by how quicksort works then maybe Haskell or LISP.
Python can do all those but it's for people who already know what they want.
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success.
Because "true Apple lovers" are mostly either multimedia designers, artists, writers or just ordinary users with more money than sense, and not down-in-the-trenches C/C++ developers? It will really be interesting to see how this story with VLC develops. I bet VLC would be even more successful on Mac if they charged $39.99 for it.
Actually, I think this would be a good point to make with the developers: create a "VLC Gold" edition for Mac, which will be basically the same with some fancy Apple-like UI tweak or just a logo change, and charge for it. This way development gets funded and people get the warm fuzzy feeling of actually buying something good.
There is another side of the story, though I'll agree it's effects may not be as important: in ages past, you, being Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, would be intrigued by that idea and would think about it, learn some math, tinker with it and eventually maybe produce something of monumental importance. I imagine someone like Einstein asking himself "what happens if you travel the speed of light?" then looks it up in Wikipedia and reads "Nothing much." then shrugs and continues with his merry life...
Though it doesn't have to end this way - he might say "Oh yeah? Says who?" and do the math anyway...
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm, how heavy? Like in "heavy metal" heavy? Like Uranium-heavy? No, couldn't be.... right?
Nothing to see here, move along:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea_soup_fog
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Smog_of_1952
It's probably an inevitable phase in development.
It's like saying Carl Sagan wasn't a scientist! In fact, Clarke and Sagan had very similar fields of interest and work.
Which costs you nothing.
Of course it doesn't cost *nothing* but it costs very little - the water isn't free (people will splash out some water) and the chemicals to keep the water clean-ish isn't free (people will dirty the water). In fact, it costs exactly the same, per swimmer, as it does during the day and that is where the problem really is. In addition to that, if the word spreads you allow semi-illegal free night swimming, it is very reasonable that some of the people who would swim (and pay) during the day will choose to swim for free at night, bringing no income to you and only cost. And then on top of it all, if the number of night swimmers really increases, people might conclude that they are entitled to pool guards, working drink bars, etc., which would, even if possible, require hiring night staff which would probably cost more than day staff.
Personally, I don't think this can be "solved" or, really, that there is anything there to "solve". It is human nature to want things for free. It is probably a property of every living thing. The only practical option is to have some kinds of artificial rules that would guard a balance between total anarchy and total capitalism. Thus, most people choose some brand of doublethink - "stealing is bad, but I'm still a good person if I don't steal too much."
BTW the same goes for marijuana legalization - just hold the damn referendum already and get on with other things.
Or, since this is in USA, remove the federal choke on the topic and leave it to the individual states - there are worse things already at the state level (IIRC: minimum marrying age? drinking age?)
As this is as good a place for armchair philosophy as any, here's my take on it: I think both will probably be proven possible but not arbitrary - like wormholes of which the ends have to be positioned and opened "manually". For example, you can go FTL via a wormhole but first you need to carry the "other end" of the wormhole in a conventional way to wherever, and the same would work for time-based wormholes - you can time-travel but the "future" end of the wormhole will need to be "carried" to the future. The time-based wormhole would only be a single thing - not two things as would space-based wormholes be. This single opening would be "carried" to the future by simply existing for some duration. The analogy with space-based wormholes dictates that, as you can only travel between the portals to the wormhole and not, e.g. pop up into existence somewhere in between them, that you could only time-travel between "now" and whenever the time-based wormhole was first opened - which probably has something to do with causality. In any case, if at the very moment the wormhole gets opened you don't get a steady stream of grandfather-killing maniacs, you are probably safe forever :)
Any organization which is as openly against open access to scientific articles (journals, conference proceedings) yet continues to wave its clout as IEEE does deserves to die out in infamy.
If it weren't marketed as a "bright new idea" with an appropriate product, company and undoubtedly, patents, behind it, it could actually be useful if it was integrated into "normal" IM applications in approximately the same way the smileys are today. It would serve a purpose similar to "message macros" in IRC and others - a shorthand writing in situations where the messages are simple, with the default still being the "normal" way of typing messages. Using just the pictures is extremely constrained without elaborate support for creating new pictures and composing new pictures out of the old ones, but if one's workday is mainly centered over answering messages with "yes", "no", "coffee?" and "lunch?", it could be very convenient. :)
The practical difference between a Caesar cipher and DES is that the Caesar cipher is faster so more transactions can be performed. You could do more leaving things in plain-text, but regulations usually require encryption of some sort for this kind of data. However, those same regulations don't usually stipulate any particular strength of encryption, so Caesar becomes ideal.
Actually, RC4 is not that much slower than Casear, mainly because is implemented sort of like Caesar with extra steps to modify the substitution table at runtime. OpenSSL can do RC4 on modern hardware faster than 300 MB/s. Even though it is as a "combiner" stream cipher and as such tricky to actually use securely, it would be much better than the probably ad-hoc implemented Caesar.
If there was a recognized, official (or even semi-official) standard API and ABI for cryptography libraries, ITAR would be less of an issue.
You mean like their official ones? They could have used their own crypto API, but they didn't.
If standards better-mandated what level of security was required, weak algorithms would never be used. No corporation would dare risk the penalties and so no vendor would dare supply soft crypto.
You are right - this is 50% of the problem here. The other 50% is MS just being lazy.
Well? Can it predict the rest? :)
... is that you have all those other places to put stuff if they don't fit in just one place. Personally, stuff I like either goes into Wikipedia or tvtropes :)
"Computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes"
The question here is - how long will the eruption and the ash cloud last? Judging from historical records, it's not uncommon for eruptions to last decades. If - then what? New routes? Limit cross-atlantic flights endpoints to southern Spain or something?
That's a wrong way to do this conversation - you really need to pull something like: "I'm concerned the radiation levels of your wireless router are causing you all to have brain cancer" followed by "innocent" inquiries into if anyone on the office has headaches or problems sleeping, suggesting the AP might be the cause. It's bullshit of course but the only way to get people interested is to make it about *their* asses. If you're good enough (i.e. go through it in a really circumspect way) you may even get them to pay you to investigate and reconfigure the said AP :)
People will buy anything if the price is right. Offhand I'd say iPad needs to be a tiny bit cheaper to succeed widely but the crowd who thinks iPhones are affordable will buy them up regardless and the rest of us will wait for less extravagant alternatives (the Android looks like a no-brainer possible future competitor, in cheaper hardware).
Tablets are not niche, they were just unaffordable and without a good UI - at least the second problem will be solved by porting apps made for mobile phone touch interfaces. Time will solve the first one.
tin_hat_mode_on
Hmmm this is too convenient... maybe MS wanted the document to "leak", giving false assurances to the masses? In actuality, they are logging every single bit that passes through!
tin_hat_mode_off
nah... couldn't happen... or could it?
How could a document like this "leak" out? By whom? A law enforcement agency employee? A Microsoft employee? The document is actually pretty benign - it basically states that the data logged is that which is also logged by every web server in existence, nothing more serious than that. Pretty good-natured from MS.
Anyways... stay crunchy!
There's some fundamental flaw in the system if giving people free stuff is bad for them...
Yes, it's called "human nature" and by overwhelming agreement it's one of the worst things in the universe. Unfortunately, no two people agree on how to fix it...
This is really cool to read about - looks like an extremely interesting project from engineering POV. How they deal with latency alone must be damn impressive. I guess the drones must have some sort of autonomy and the pilot basically says "go west, kill spider" or something to the tone. Probably an AI-like engine similar to those in RTS games - point and click but the low-level details (like actual flying!) are handled locally. So cool...
More impressively - the sonic boom "waves" effect is actually a three-D object - imagine if we could see it from multiple POVs, a spherical wave instead of 2D one :)
An it is only fair - I wish other countries will do the same. There should be no reason not to reciprocate any such nonsense requirement.
Would be great if the equipment came in blue color :)
I don't know for sure but I thought some of the "real" scenes were also CGIed - specifically, the scenes where the jarhead records his log at the various stations - to me they looked completely artificial - and the uncanny valley effect was there.
My suggestion would be - show the kid what he can do *with* programming, then see what he likes best and then choose an appropriate language / environment for him. If he's graphically inclined, you might want to start with e.g. Flash. If he's fascinated more by how quicksort works then maybe Haskell or LISP.
Python can do all those but it's for people who already know what they want.
Are you really joking? VLC is the most successful open source project on Mac, forever. It even beats Firefox.
Here is a top sw downloads listing from absolutely general user focused download site: http://www.macupdate.com/popular/
VLC has also become de-facto remote controlled Apple OS X software for iPhone/iPod users. Those are the true "walled garden" lovers/ignorers.
VLC should look at their community, IRC channel, developer public comments for why on earth their developer level dropped to zero with such amazing success.
Because "true Apple lovers" are mostly either multimedia designers, artists, writers or just ordinary users with more money than sense, and not down-in-the-trenches C/C++ developers? It will really be interesting to see how this story with VLC develops. I bet VLC would be even more successful on Mac if they charged $39.99 for it.
Actually, I think this would be a good point to make with the developers: create a "VLC Gold" edition for Mac, which will be basically the same with some fancy Apple-like UI tweak or just a logo change, and charge for it. This way development gets funded and people get the warm fuzzy feeling of actually buying something good.
There is another side of the story, though I'll agree it's effects may not be as important: in ages past, you, being Sir Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein, would be intrigued by that idea and would think about it, learn some math, tinker with it and eventually maybe produce something of monumental importance. I imagine someone like Einstein asking himself "what happens if you travel the speed of light?" then looks it up in Wikipedia and reads "Nothing much." then shrugs and continues with his merry life...
Though it doesn't have to end this way - he might say "Oh yeah? Says who?" and do the math anyway...