If your algorithm treats it as a valid number, your algorithm is wrong.
I'm curious if your detractor here has written code.
I don't think a mathematician has "SHEER" stupidity, it's the problem with people who are smart, who think everything within the subset of their domain is figured out.
I imagine security experts have this problem with hackers; "But I read the entire manual and what you did is not possible."
Hacker; "Well, that's like, our opinion man."
Cyber Security; "You are an idiot. You have no command of the lexical jargon."
Hacker; "Hey, wasn't Lexical the name of your first pet?"
I think this is a RULE we want to follow, but in the real world, like all those "corporate guidelines" that come from Human Resources -- nobody can actually follow all of them and get their job done.
I can think of a lot of situations where I HAVE TO GIVE an answer when a value becomes Zero and I'm dividing with it.
Animation, bank accounts and artificial intelligence to name a few. Dude; "Like if I have no money, so I give all of that to you but you have zero dinero change, and you've got zero patience with that, well, like that's your problem man." AI; "Does not compute, divide by zero, shutting down." Dude; "I can always get free nachos at the robo drive-thru this way."
I think your math skills and clear understanding of the rules is awesome.
However,... if I were programming an animation and it's following a path y= 2/x, I'm going to have a smooth motion along screen at position 2 until I get to Zero.
So do we handle it as an error? Undefined of course means undefined but do I have my animated plane just blink "undefined" at a random location and then suddenly re-appear on the screen?
In this case, I'd imagine that having the prior two locations and next (estimate) would be handy to determine what y is when x = 0.
Or perhaps we have a built-in exception handler if x = 0 BEFORE we calculate when we have x in a division statement. For instance, if we have a point on the screen and try and follow the mouse, there are 4 points where one of our numbers reaches 0.
Consider this script; this.rotation = Math.atan2((object.y - mouse.y), (object.x - mouse.x)) * 180 / Math.PI; These days -- that code will work. Likely because someone at Adobe built in a handler just for these cartesian dilemmas to figure out at which quadrant X and Y were pointing to.
Does it make practical sense that if X = 0, then X =.0000001 will get you a reasonable facsimile of what should occur with X?
That solves the need to test for "undefined" -- even though more programming environments might be robust with regard to divide by zero errors.
I think the POINT here is to add a; "Don't let the Citizen be able to do what we do, and don't let the citizen EVER have an opportunity to do something back."
We are ruled by mutual consent. NOT asymmetrically ability of CorpGov to crush us.
I'm not a fan of private citizens having arsenals and what chaos might ensue when an idiot adds a rocket launcher on a repurposed drone. But that idiot can also just use the stupid rocket launcher.
But I'm going to say; "I want that fool with a rocket launcher on my team if and when you guys in charge get out of hand."
Banning what people do with drones while having NO LIMITS to what those in power get to do with data, drones, genetic modification of monster carrots (for example) is not something I'm in favor of.
Feinstein is a crass, self-serving politician and it's embarrassing she's happens to be a Democrat -- or that I once defended her election (but hey, there was another crass, self-serving politico on the other team).
I'm sure her thought process was; "I'm not sure what a drone is, nor if these people are lying to me, but there are some really nice Zeros on this check they sent me."
But the Cargo hold is full as well... why? Because your airline is using the storage that USED to be used for Checked baggage to ship packages!
They started adding fees for these things and now their SOLUTION is to reduce the size of the bag because "surprise! People take stuff when they travel!"
Next thing you know, there will be an "air fee." "Oh, you wanted to BREATHE on your trip? Well that's going to cost you."
You know how they say; "We've got to support the worst to get the best"?
Well that's how I feel right now; mixed. You have to defend the KKK guy using his freedom of speech so you can have someone speak up about Wall Street (and get tear gassed *sigh*).
And I'm all for "research for research sake" because, hey, a penny spent on science is one less penny for Wall Street to leverage into $2, and then shift as a $2.50 tax burden when a depreciation in pennies pushes the leverage the other way.
Now researching Cat Videos? Seems like a demotion from the study; "found that watching internet porn not that harmful, also; stronger wrists."
Thank you for saying what should be said. People don't JUST go to Harvard for an education and saying criticizing them is "intellectual bashing" is a backhanded compliment.
The big reason to go to Harvard is because it's a fraternity of CEOs and you are connected. While a lot of people are convinced that's where the great minds come from -- well, the successful have heard that that's where the great minds come from because that's where they came from and obviously luck and the fact that their friends are billionaires had nothing to do with it, so they recruit from Harvard. And who can knock the positive attitude from people who just can't fail?
It's a vicious circle of self-reinforcing success.
It's the best way to know what the WRONG choice is if you aren't sure.
Either an API is copyrightable or then copyright is not copyrightable, because it's an organized and unique sequence of instructions and thoughts.
I'm not saying I like what Oracle does, or that they are the good guys -- but the problem is Copyright itself, and even bad guys get to beat good guys to death with it.
Humans do not need to eat placenta, because there is a supply of Jello at the Hospitals, I recommend the Lime-green to avoid whatever is in that Red die these days.
The Double-Slit experiment is easy to explain if we consider that EM fields ride on a substrate or carrier wave, or dark matter or let's just call it "The Aether". It's a concept that Space was a thing, and along with bad ideas, Einstein threw this baby out with the bath water.
Now we've got physicists who want everything to be a particle and they can't say "Aether", so they'll invent dark matter or something else to fill the void, rather than saying the void is already filled.
EM fields don't have gravity, do they? So the extra interfering slit is a resonance set up by space itself. Gravity is the phenomena of particles (I think they are 8 dimensional resonating fields -- but whatever to avoid argument with current ideas) pushing out on Space. When their motions are organized (such as in a magnetic field or resonating with kinetic energy/heat) we can get EM fields. Gravity is many times more powerful than the standard model -- it's just not aimed at matter and we drift around and clump together based on the pressure of Gravity pushing on Space (like corks on the ocean).
Well anyway, that's just the way I see things. It sounds a bit like m-theory or the Quantum Gravity, but it's just easier to use a clean slate and figure out how we get what we observe with the fewest forces possible. So to me, it's resolvable with the Push of Gravity, the Pull of EM fields, folded space (particles) that have positive or negative charges in various degrees (created by Time potential), and we have space which allow these things to interact and interfere with each other. Gravity is created by Space/Time coming out of the folded space/time (particles). All you need is a medium and a Universe can be created merely by the interference.
Of course string theory simulations are going to be correct because the theories were reversed engineered to fit the "solution," which is why there are so many string theories.....
That's the point I'd like to make. I think we are hamstrung by the people who came up with the math but lack the vision to find a simple way to explain it. I think string theory and a lot of Quantum is very flawed as a coherent model, and a lot of weird metaphysics could be explained if we visualized these processes better.
Instead of 2d or 1d structures in our Universe -- let's act like we are seeing everything in 4D (because of course, that's the ONLY way we can experience them -- 3D + Time). So if we see one particle that bounces around between two points in a predictable way -- but it's never in both points or in-between; maybe that's our clue that it is one object with an additional dimension we can't experience. How many should be deduce-able by it's pattern and positions -- a kaleidoscope on a plane would mean six, and perhaps 7 would mean it could appear at two points at the same time, and alternate with other points seemingly at random.
Personally, I'd go with 3 groups of 4 dimensions, because it makes it all so much easier. Our 4 Dimensional objects have a higher and lower grouping only one aspect of which we interact with at any time. Space is yet another group of 4 Dimensions that we only interact with via Gravity -- but we experience gravity as a side effect of space being pushed around us. EM fields are a feedback on gravity.
I had a headache thinking about how you get something from nothing, and then again trying to resolve relativity in more than a few vectors, and then finally dealing with why we have electrical charges in the first place. I currently think that Charge has something to do with Time and the electron is slightly in the future, the proton in the past (making the electron a smaller mass that SEEMS to be moving more, but is less fixed in space/time -- again, all particles are folded fields and they exist as an exchange between to separate sets of dimensions).
It's actually easiest to explain why charges attract if you imagine there is only one particle that comprises the entire Universe. Every tick of time, it has to take up every position. And the flow of time would have to be the order of transposition of overlapping fields. Thus, time can be created by wave-forms in space -- even if they all happen instantaneously. Think of an ocean where all potential ripples are represented and form it's distorted shape. If you trace a current ripple, it's origin would face the convex side of the waveform (vice versa for it's future). Thus a continuous line reaching forward and back in time could be drawn. Of course, there's no reason that this instantaneous waveform can't evolve over "time" that it virtually created out of nothing -- because there is nothing to keep track of the waveform and potential except the interaction of the waveforms.
OK, maybe that's confusing to some people, but all of creation can happen without time, in an instant, with one particle -- and the math can work out. -- And there is probably a way to fit that to current physical theories but I'm proposing it as thought experiment. But I also find it hard to DISPROVE, as well.
We would know we "hacked" the Universe when we can get something for nothing.
So far, energy is conserved and their is no instance of getting "two for one" or getting more work out of a process than put into it.
I do believe we CAN harness energy -- but it would likely be the high frequency energy left over from the big bang, which can be called Quantum Foam or Vacuum Energy. I'd call it a carrier frequency which is related to what we call the "Hubble Constant" in a Geometric way. Space is growing and that attenuates a signal.
Just one person's opinion; The math in Physics today might be good, but the imagination of the mechanisms seems horribly bad and lacking in "common sense."
1) The Uncertainty Principle. One day we might use backscatter, or some sample of a radiation field that does not directly effect a particle and the "uncertainty" of mass, position and vector will go away. For instance; If people measured cows with cannon fire -- they would also be "uncertain."
2) Speed of Light. I'll theorize that the Universe is 12 dimensional. In another set of 4 dimensions, perhaps light goes at a speed according to it's frequency, and what we see as frequency is "slope" -- for instance; if you have a ruler tilted to the line you are measuring, there are more points of measurement then when it is parallel to that line.
I also imagine that we can rationalize the Quantum Probability with the many Universe theory and at the same time explain why we have physical laws; all probabilities exist, and those that are equal and opposite and balance continue to exist while all others cancel out (but they can have influence). Movement then isn't so much a phenomenon of equal and opposite as it is a particle or field not existing in one position, but existing in another -- such that it behaved according to physics.
If we use m-Brane or Super Gravity, this might also mean there is a "carrier frequency" to Space/Time -- so Plank Length and Speed of Light merely are propagation limits were anything above the frequency of "Space/Time" is ignored -- or more accurately -- changes it's vector in a higher dimension and what we see as an increase in frequency is the increase in speed/energy (again, this brings us full circle to #1).
3 Plank Length; This is the smallest we can measure right now. It used to be the human hair not to long ago and the Universe is not made up of human hairs. I suspect however, that everything is a field (just comprised of 12 dimensions), and due to the frequency of space/time (created by the Big Bang), there is again a "coarseness or resolution" to the Universe. Any smaller than that and you are looking at vertices below the threshold (which may in turn contain infinite pocket Universes -- this is a possibility if we are talking about folded space rather than particles -- infinite and fractal).
And the double-slit test can be proven with fields alone but not particles alone -- but that's another conversation. The point is; there are a lot of "impossible to explain" quantum phenomena that are actually easy to explain if you abandon some of the weird conventions. Like "why are there 'quantum packets' in the first place"? Because fields would only exchange energy on their peaks. The orbital electron shells around the atomic nuclei may be the frequencies or distances that particles interact with our space/time -- like a 3 dimensional screw being seen in a 2 dimensional world -- you might only see where the ridges hit -- and think it's many "string-like" objects. This would also explain quantum tunneling and other phenomena; the limits of our 4D point of view.
So while there might be phenomena that "look" like estimates, it's likely more about our resolving power. I do believe we can relocate objects using this "loose accounting" in the Universe, and we can solidify empty space -- because if it's all fields and space is a carrier wave -- that might mean that "solidity" is more about interference patterns than nuclear forces.
I mean damn,... experiment with not trying to wring ever escalating profit margins. Netflix is awesome -- and will get better with more original programming and the flood of Indie films that will go direct to web soon.
Adding commercials will just mean the same old suck of network television. The News Media already works for the people paying for the commercials -- not to inform the public. Netflix, your early adopters are the people who fled the lowering bar of network and cable TV.
Change costs money? Yes it does; businesses buy the new Microsoft product because they changed the file types integration with Outlook.
Microsoft has to change things enough so that they can justify the "new thing" to sell -- and often that's a cosmetic change because 98% of their users aren't going to be using that new, deviation feature on a pivot table.
I could show a whole slew of changes Microsoft made that MUST HAVE had a lot of rationale associated with the change but makes no sense to me. Also a major complaint is why they changed the names of standard words in desktop publishing to useless and vague terms so you could never get a Help to find it for you. "Leading" is a term, "Paragraph Space" is a vague rearrangement of common speech. OK, rant over - the point is they started using terms for functions in their programs while ignoring real conventions. Then they made interface conventions based on some religion of UI while ignoring users.
I've spent many, many years annoyed at bad choices in UI by Microsoft. My fingers have had to travel MANY many miles because they couldn't have one alignment command with shortcuts and had to have an icon for every alignment -- they were ten years after everyone else to finally add a context menu so you didn't have to travel to center an object.
And Word still has major issues for anyone trying to do real page layout with it, or try and overlay high resolution graphics. It's a bloated text editor, no longer efficient and speedy at the first thing, and still hobbled by legacy to be good at graphics and page layout. But it's good at some email macros, and automation, as long as you don't have too many. Lot's of features, as long as you don't depend on them.
I just get really annoyed at bad designs -- it's not like I didn't KNOW how to use these product, or try and find better methods. It was the repetitive nature of using a damn baby hammer when I could see 50 ways they could have done it better. Why did someone get paid to make this lackluster app?
So now you are saying it's all driven by the touch screen. Well that's great, but I'm not using Windows on a touch screen and Surface is a tiny, tiny part of their market. Why not make a Surface interface for the Surface, and then a different one for the Desktop and marry the two when they've finally figured out the touchscreen and the desktop?
I'm not interested in researching Microsoft UI, because I've been too annoyed by their past efforts. Making icons big enough for a finger to touch them is NOT something I'd call a huge innovation, nor is it something that should have made Windows 8 such a bad hybrid.
I would really love to get into UI design -- actually "back into it" would be more accurate. But I did this stuff before they had degrees and certifications and NOW the UI is some sort of formal "it's done this way because WE KNOW these things." It's like the old "psychology for management" they used to teach in business school I suppose.
There are some things you can codify for "concepts" of a good interface, but it's really about a designer and a tool user crafting something that makes sense. There has to be a logic AND an aesthetic, it needs to let you know where you are and where you are going. It needs to be simple and elegant at the same time, and powerful should be one or two clicks away. It needs to be forgiving and let you know before you mess up.
It seems to me that UI designers are trying to create more and more UI, when really they should be like special effects in a movie; "There, but part of the story, and if possible, not even noticed." Strip away everything you can but no more from a UI and now you've got a tool.
Microsoft doesn't seem to have the mindset to to this; they look at the customer as something to market to and a touch screen as something to do LOTS of touching with. So I think whatever their UI is going to be, it's going to reflect the corporate culture, and then someone will "rationalize" in the new babble of UAX why it made kinesthetic logic to annoy everyone once again.
I never "scanned" through those menus -- I just put frequently used action buttons in a palette. The Ribbon pretends to be "friendly" but takes up space and hides what I need to access with little hard to press triangle in the bottom right corner of each pane.
It takes me more time than the same function used to. I'm teaching myself to use High end 3D animation apps these days, so I am not afraid of change or complexity. I just get annoyed at bad designs when they've had 30 years to make Office products right.
Apple's products may have fewer features, but they are much faster to use for both novice and advanced users. Adobe Indesign is even better for page layout, but inexplicably, I find Illustrator to be annoying and it overcomplicates layers and complex vector illustrations -- but nobody remembers any other vector illustration programs so they think it's the best.
Microsoft's fans seem to suffer from the "don't know any better designs so they think this is awesome" syndrome.
I'm a veteran user of MicroSoft Office products -- so much so that I still spell it "PowerPoint." I've noticed that for MOST of the functions I've used, the advances are usually not huge (2008 brought a color sampler tool so I could mage colors -- hooray!), and for the most part, the icons get re-arranged. I could deal with that by creating my own menu for most common features.
The Ribbon sucks -- it truly absolutely sucks. It takes up a lot of space, disorganizes where I need to click and ruins context, and manages to make simple, common tasks more confusing. I've used more than a few hundred Apps, and I can tell you where the interfaces are good and bad. Adobe still screws up on their bezier pen tool and have yet to catch up to FreeHand's "one tool does it all" for lines and their easy "paste inside" for masking.
And then Metro really, really sucks, because simple OS tasks are now a series of actions. Sliding to hot corners is context sensitive with no indication of what the context is. Icons are either icons for buttons, or a picture of the family dog -- or an advertisement. The Xbox is NOT a design for getting things done -- it's a video game interface, that usually gets inbetween you and a game, or you and Netflix, and tries to sell you aftermarket crap that they kept out of the game in order to sell to you later.
So, yeah, I'm going to whine about that damn Ribbon, because I can use Office 2008 faster than any of the later Ribbon additions. and I could use Keynote with more proficiency in 2 weeks than 10 years with PowerPoint. The little floating panel with a few tabs (LOGICALLY organized) allowed me to make changes quickly. Because of the superior interface, I'd import presentations into Keynote, get the work done, export it to PowerPoint and then clean it up again -- because THAT was quicker than using the Ribbon interface.
Awesome. I also like how you angry because this should drive people angry. This "anti terror" error is stupid, and we had more REAL threats when we were facing armies.
If anyone CARED about American lives they'd improve mass transit, do something about crappy and addictive prescription medicines, and make sure every American had health care and a decent job.
I had to explain to my kids a few years back about yet another news story about kids abducted on the way to school; "There are 330 million people in this country, and you will hear mostly about anything horrible happening but not a status update that 99.9% are doing OK today." (Yeah, and they really didn't get the risk percentages so I had to calm them a bit more).
The News has to keep people watching, so it hypes whatever the fear du jour is. The net result is we get more secure and and the same time more worried -- resulting in early onset "wimpy-ness." So I keep the News shows off so my kids can maintain some perspective; "Eat your broccoli and look both ways when crossing the road -- you've just solved most of the threats to your life."
The car's owner was located and arrested for driving on a revoked license.
So they blow up his stuff, maybe ruin his car and to CYA they smelled gas. And in order to justify whatever, they arrest the guy for being poor. The car isn't being driven folks -- it's there because the man ran out of money. He COULD HAVE had it towed or any number of responsible things -- but, he didn't have money.
Being poor has been a criminal act -- let's face it, you can slip on all kinds of licenses, and run around without insurance because you trade feeding a family or medicine for taking a few legal risks 9 times out of 10. But now it's terrorism?
They should just admit they were a bit overzealous and compensate the guy for the pot -- maybe give him a tow or sell his car for him. The public interests are not served on this hyperbole.
While the Boston bombing did use a pressure cooker -- the average killing spree with a gun is far more dangerous -- and we've accidentally killed more people with prescription drugs and nobody is blowing up jars of Oxycontin (but who knows what bored people might do?)
The really annoying thing here is that the Police put out statements and the Press repeat them, that have anyone with functional BS detector saying; "Oh come on." This is more crying wolf and pretty soon, a real or fake terrorist attack is going to be huge, just so people don't treat the issue as a joke or a jobs program.
I'd say that Greenpeace is arguably the good guys, in the same way as these "let Galapagos species die because it's natural" is a bad idea. Extinctions DO seem to serve a purpose in the grand scheme -- but only to wipe the slate clean for new designs. The earth has come close to becoming lifeless and either too hot or too cold, and that's been largely due to imbalances that cause species die off. So YES, more diversity = GOOD. And that's a provable statement in many subjective and objective ways.
I just admire Greenpeace activists because they aren't fighting for some invisible God, or ego - they risk real adversity. Maybe in the future people will treat them as larger than life heroes -- but you and I discussing this on a blog, not so much -- we stay comfortable.
And I'll defend Hippies because they believe in peace and love and equality -- and what could be wrong with that?
We, as a self-satisfied SUV driving culture want to preserve our status quo AND pat ourselves on the back. Are we another myopic death cult? It seems; nobody sees themselves for what they are in the culture that created the problem. Archie Bunker becomes a sex symbol because instead of progress, we believe the marketing that being a stupid cow eating stupid cows is some kind of achievement.
How do you think history will judge the American culture by and large in 50 years?
I have to roll my eyes at this concept. The logic seems to be based on a sock puppet concept of what will most annoy Environmentalists, or Hippies, or whatever is trying to "force humans to behave". Humans have an impact, merely by being a successful organism. If mosquitos killed off the dinosaurs, do we "blame" them? No.
However, humans are in the position of mitigating their effect -- not only that, but we can PICK WINNERS! Human interference, or perhaps symbiosis, has elevated dogs to family pets and helped cows to become more plentiful (jury is out on whether they enjoy the honor). The simple truth is we are in the middle of a massive extinction rate that is as fast and as massive as many of the great ones in history -- so why not preserve whatever we can to maintain diversity? Everything we choose to do or do not do will decide winners and losers, so helping out the Galapagos species even though a Volcano might doom them is not necessarily "bad". Sure, it's unnatural -- but what does that mean anymore when human's are, by their nature, effectors of change on a planetary scale?
It's time to recognize that we may be in what could be called the "post evolutionary stage." Or perhaps the "directed evolutionary stage." We are busy tweaking ourselves, bioweapons, antibiotics, and glow in the dark cats. Terraforming or building resort islands will be part and parcel with choosing to keep building more roads or build more trains and paint rooftops white to reduce heat absorption.
Environmentalists might have to come to terms with what is "natural" -- but since economics is most of the decision making process -- being environmentally conscious is either useful or useless but rarely damaging, the next GMO food has more impact than a thousand activists and it's time we looked at things in the larger context.
Grabbing some animals and flora off an island to survive an eruption is tampering in a positive way, whereas using pesticides on food crops is tampering on a much larger scale. I don't see the problem or contradiction with mitigating the effects of natural disasters when we do far more to wipe out species -- it's a small attempt to restore balance.
Why do we always have to discuss the manner in the way data is presented when it's pretty well known that Global Warming is changing the poles? Much better to spend our time on "what's next" and "how fast?"
The stretch marks are obviously and indication of movement that is "faster" than what we usually see; and how fast is that? A meter per day?
I'm thinking something the size of New Jersey is going to slip into the ocean in the next few years and "what happens" after that? Do we get a tsunami?
Slashdot Mirror
If your algorithm treats it as a valid number, your algorithm is wrong.
I'm curious if your detractor here has written code.
I don't think a mathematician has "SHEER" stupidity, it's the problem with people who are smart, who think everything within the subset of their domain is figured out.
I imagine security experts have this problem with hackers; "But I read the entire manual and what you did is not possible."
Hacker; "Well, that's like, our opinion man."
Cyber Security; "You are an idiot. You have no command of the lexical jargon."
Hacker; "Hey, wasn't Lexical the name of your first pet?"
I think this is a RULE we want to follow, but in the real world, like all those "corporate guidelines" that come from Human Resources -- nobody can actually follow all of them and get their job done.
I can think of a lot of situations where I HAVE TO GIVE an answer when a value becomes Zero and I'm dividing with it.
Animation, bank accounts and artificial intelligence to name a few.
Dude; "Like if I have no money, so I give all of that to you but you have zero dinero change, and you've got zero patience with that, well, like that's your problem man."
AI; "Does not compute, divide by zero, shutting down."
Dude; "I can always get free nachos at the robo drive-thru this way."
I think your math skills and clear understanding of the rules is awesome.
However,... if I were programming an animation and it's following a path y= 2/x, I'm going to have a smooth motion along screen at position 2 until I get to Zero.
So do we handle it as an error? Undefined of course means undefined but do I have my animated plane just blink "undefined" at a random location and then suddenly re-appear on the screen?
In this case, I'd imagine that having the prior two locations and next (estimate) would be handy to determine what y is when x = 0.
Or perhaps we have a built-in exception handler if x = 0 BEFORE we calculate when we have x in a division statement. For instance, if we have a point on the screen and try and follow the mouse, there are 4 points where one of our numbers reaches 0.
Consider this script;
this.rotation = Math.atan2((object.y - mouse.y), (object.x - mouse.x)) * 180 / Math.PI;
These days -- that code will work. Likely because someone at Adobe built in a handler just for these cartesian dilemmas to figure out at which quadrant X and Y were pointing to.
Does it make practical sense that if X = 0, then X = .0000001 will get you a reasonable facsimile of what should occur with X?
That solves the need to test for "undefined" -- even though more programming environments might be robust with regard to divide by zero errors.
I think the POINT here is to add a; "Don't let the Citizen be able to do what we do, and don't let the citizen EVER have an opportunity to do something back."
We are ruled by mutual consent. NOT asymmetrically ability of CorpGov to crush us.
I'm not a fan of private citizens having arsenals and what chaos might ensue when an idiot adds a rocket launcher on a repurposed drone. But that idiot can also just use the stupid rocket launcher.
But I'm going to say; "I want that fool with a rocket launcher on my team if and when you guys in charge get out of hand."
Banning what people do with drones while having NO LIMITS to what those in power get to do with data, drones, genetic modification of monster carrots (for example) is not something I'm in favor of.
Feinstein is a crass, self-serving politician and it's embarrassing she's happens to be a Democrat -- or that I once defended her election (but hey, there was another crass, self-serving politico on the other team).
I'm sure her thought process was; "I'm not sure what a drone is, nor if these people are lying to me, but there are some really nice Zeros on this check they sent me."
more mandatory checked bag fees.
LOL Did someone pass the idea that the airlines are FORCED to charge you for checking baggages?
"Forced! Forced I say! Why, I don't know what we'll do if the Big Government makes us take more money in fees from our passengers!"
But the Cargo hold is full as well... why? Because your airline is using the storage that USED to be used for Checked baggage to ship packages!
They started adding fees for these things and now their SOLUTION is to reduce the size of the bag because "surprise! People take stuff when they travel!"
Next thing you know, there will be an "air fee." "Oh, you wanted to BREATHE on your trip? Well that's going to cost you."
You know how they say; "We've got to support the worst to get the best"?
Well that's how I feel right now; mixed. You have to defend the KKK guy using his freedom of speech so you can have someone speak up about Wall Street (and get tear gassed *sigh*).
And I'm all for "research for research sake" because, hey, a penny spent on science is one less penny for Wall Street to leverage into $2, and then shift as a $2.50 tax burden when a depreciation in pennies pushes the leverage the other way.
Now researching Cat Videos? Seems like a demotion from the study; "found that watching internet porn not that harmful, also; stronger wrists."
Thank you for saying what should be said. People don't JUST go to Harvard for an education and saying criticizing them is "intellectual bashing" is a backhanded compliment.
The big reason to go to Harvard is because it's a fraternity of CEOs and you are connected. While a lot of people are convinced that's where the great minds come from -- well, the successful have heard that that's where the great minds come from because that's where they came from and obviously luck and the fact that their friends are billionaires had nothing to do with it, so they recruit from Harvard. And who can knock the positive attitude from people who just can't fail?
It's a vicious circle of self-reinforcing success.
Scalia, Thomas and Alito agree a lot of the time.
It's the best way to know what the WRONG choice is if you aren't sure.
Either an API is copyrightable or then copyright is not copyrightable, because it's an organized and unique sequence of instructions and thoughts.
I'm not saying I like what Oracle does, or that they are the good guys -- but the problem is Copyright itself, and even bad guys get to beat good guys to death with it.
Humans do not need to eat placenta, because there is a supply of Jello at the Hospitals, I recommend the Lime-green to avoid whatever is in that Red die these days.
The Double-Slit experiment is easy to explain if we consider that EM fields ride on a substrate or carrier wave, or dark matter or let's just call it "The Aether". It's a concept that Space was a thing, and along with bad ideas, Einstein threw this baby out with the bath water.
Now we've got physicists who want everything to be a particle and they can't say "Aether", so they'll invent dark matter or something else to fill the void, rather than saying the void is already filled.
EM fields don't have gravity, do they? So the extra interfering slit is a resonance set up by space itself. Gravity is the phenomena of particles (I think they are 8 dimensional resonating fields -- but whatever to avoid argument with current ideas) pushing out on Space. When their motions are organized (such as in a magnetic field or resonating with kinetic energy/heat) we can get EM fields. Gravity is many times more powerful than the standard model -- it's just not aimed at matter and we drift around and clump together based on the pressure of Gravity pushing on Space (like corks on the ocean).
Well anyway, that's just the way I see things. It sounds a bit like m-theory or the Quantum Gravity, but it's just easier to use a clean slate and figure out how we get what we observe with the fewest forces possible. So to me, it's resolvable with the Push of Gravity, the Pull of EM fields, folded space (particles) that have positive or negative charges in various degrees (created by Time potential), and we have space which allow these things to interact and interfere with each other. Gravity is created by Space/Time coming out of the folded space/time (particles). All you need is a medium and a Universe can be created merely by the interference.
Of course string theory simulations are going to be correct because the theories were reversed engineered to fit the "solution," which is why there are so many string theories. ....
That's the point I'd like to make. I think we are hamstrung by the people who came up with the math but lack the vision to find a simple way to explain it. I think string theory and a lot of Quantum is very flawed as a coherent model, and a lot of weird metaphysics could be explained if we visualized these processes better.
Instead of 2d or 1d structures in our Universe -- let's act like we are seeing everything in 4D (because of course, that's the ONLY way we can experience them -- 3D + Time). So if we see one particle that bounces around between two points in a predictable way -- but it's never in both points or in-between; maybe that's our clue that it is one object with an additional dimension we can't experience. How many should be deduce-able by it's pattern and positions -- a kaleidoscope on a plane would mean six, and perhaps 7 would mean it could appear at two points at the same time, and alternate with other points seemingly at random.
Personally, I'd go with 3 groups of 4 dimensions, because it makes it all so much easier. Our 4 Dimensional objects have a higher and lower grouping only one aspect of which we interact with at any time. Space is yet another group of 4 Dimensions that we only interact with via Gravity -- but we experience gravity as a side effect of space being pushed around us. EM fields are a feedback on gravity.
I had a headache thinking about how you get something from nothing, and then again trying to resolve relativity in more than a few vectors, and then finally dealing with why we have electrical charges in the first place. I currently think that Charge has something to do with Time and the electron is slightly in the future, the proton in the past (making the electron a smaller mass that SEEMS to be moving more, but is less fixed in space/time -- again, all particles are folded fields and they exist as an exchange between to separate sets of dimensions).
It's actually easiest to explain why charges attract if you imagine there is only one particle that comprises the entire Universe. Every tick of time, it has to take up every position. And the flow of time would have to be the order of transposition of overlapping fields. Thus, time can be created by wave-forms in space -- even if they all happen instantaneously. Think of an ocean where all potential ripples are represented and form it's distorted shape. If you trace a current ripple, it's origin would face the convex side of the waveform (vice versa for it's future). Thus a continuous line reaching forward and back in time could be drawn. Of course, there's no reason that this instantaneous waveform can't evolve over "time" that it virtually created out of nothing -- because there is nothing to keep track of the waveform and potential except the interaction of the waveforms.
OK, maybe that's confusing to some people, but all of creation can happen without time, in an instant, with one particle -- and the math can work out. -- And there is probably a way to fit that to current physical theories but I'm proposing it as thought experiment. But I also find it hard to DISPROVE, as well.
In other words; "If all you know is a simulation, and a simulated Bus can end your simulated life --- get out of the way of the simulated bus."
We would know we "hacked" the Universe when we can get something for nothing.
So far, energy is conserved and their is no instance of getting "two for one" or getting more work out of a process than put into it.
I do believe we CAN harness energy -- but it would likely be the high frequency energy left over from the big bang, which can be called Quantum Foam or Vacuum Energy. I'd call it a carrier frequency which is related to what we call the "Hubble Constant" in a Geometric way. Space is growing and that attenuates a signal.
Just one person's opinion; The math in Physics today might be good, but the imagination of the mechanisms seems horribly bad and lacking in "common sense."
1) The Uncertainty Principle.
One day we might use backscatter, or some sample of a radiation field that does not directly effect a particle and the "uncertainty" of mass, position and vector will go away. For instance; If people measured cows with cannon fire -- they would also be "uncertain."
2) Speed of Light.
I'll theorize that the Universe is 12 dimensional. In another set of 4 dimensions, perhaps light goes at a speed according to it's frequency, and what we see as frequency is "slope" -- for instance; if you have a ruler tilted to the line you are measuring, there are more points of measurement then when it is parallel to that line.
I also imagine that we can rationalize the Quantum Probability with the many Universe theory and at the same time explain why we have physical laws; all probabilities exist, and those that are equal and opposite and balance continue to exist while all others cancel out (but they can have influence). Movement then isn't so much a phenomenon of equal and opposite as it is a particle or field not existing in one position, but existing in another -- such that it behaved according to physics.
If we use m-Brane or Super Gravity, this might also mean there is a "carrier frequency" to Space/Time -- so Plank Length and Speed of Light merely are propagation limits were anything above the frequency of "Space/Time" is ignored -- or more accurately -- changes it's vector in a higher dimension and what we see as an increase in frequency is the increase in speed/energy (again, this brings us full circle to #1).
3 Plank Length;
This is the smallest we can measure right now. It used to be the human hair not to long ago and the Universe is not made up of human hairs. I suspect however, that everything is a field (just comprised of 12 dimensions), and due to the frequency of space/time (created by the Big Bang), there is again a "coarseness or resolution" to the Universe. Any smaller than that and you are looking at vertices below the threshold (which may in turn contain infinite pocket Universes -- this is a possibility if we are talking about folded space rather than particles -- infinite and fractal).
And the double-slit test can be proven with fields alone but not particles alone -- but that's another conversation. The point is; there are a lot of "impossible to explain" quantum phenomena that are actually easy to explain if you abandon some of the weird conventions. Like "why are there 'quantum packets' in the first place"? Because fields would only exchange energy on their peaks. The orbital electron shells around the atomic nuclei may be the frequencies or distances that particles interact with our space/time -- like a 3 dimensional screw being seen in a 2 dimensional world -- you might only see where the ridges hit -- and think it's many "string-like" objects. This would also explain quantum tunneling and other phenomena; the limits of our 4D point of view.
So while there might be phenomena that "look" like estimates, it's likely more about our resolving power. I do believe we can relocate objects using this "loose accounting" in the Universe, and we can solidify empty space -- because if it's all fields and space is a carrier wave -- that might mean that "solidity" is more about interference patterns than nuclear forces.
Don't the malware junkies make more money selling the patterns to the anti-malware firms on the side?
I mean, who buys Kaspersky if nobody gets paid to create the malware and Windows and Mac have "good enough" security?
Creating a market for malware is what keeps malware coming.
They'll suck like Hulu.
I mean damn,... experiment with not trying to wring ever escalating profit margins. Netflix is awesome -- and will get better with more original programming and the flood of Indie films that will go direct to web soon.
Adding commercials will just mean the same old suck of network television. The News Media already works for the people paying for the commercials -- not to inform the public. Netflix, your early adopters are the people who fled the lowering bar of network and cable TV.
Change costs money? Yes it does; businesses buy the new Microsoft product because they changed the file types integration with Outlook.
Microsoft has to change things enough so that they can justify the "new thing" to sell -- and often that's a cosmetic change because 98% of their users aren't going to be using that new, deviation feature on a pivot table.
I could show a whole slew of changes Microsoft made that MUST HAVE had a lot of rationale associated with the change but makes no sense to me. Also a major complaint is why they changed the names of standard words in desktop publishing to useless and vague terms so you could never get a Help to find it for you. "Leading" is a term, "Paragraph Space" is a vague rearrangement of common speech. OK, rant over - the point is they started using terms for functions in their programs while ignoring real conventions. Then they made interface conventions based on some religion of UI while ignoring users.
I've spent many, many years annoyed at bad choices in UI by Microsoft. My fingers have had to travel MANY many miles because they couldn't have one alignment command with shortcuts and had to have an icon for every alignment -- they were ten years after everyone else to finally add a context menu so you didn't have to travel to center an object.
And Word still has major issues for anyone trying to do real page layout with it, or try and overlay high resolution graphics. It's a bloated text editor, no longer efficient and speedy at the first thing, and still hobbled by legacy to be good at graphics and page layout. But it's good at some email macros, and automation, as long as you don't have too many. Lot's of features, as long as you don't depend on them.
I just get really annoyed at bad designs -- it's not like I didn't KNOW how to use these product, or try and find better methods. It was the repetitive nature of using a damn baby hammer when I could see 50 ways they could have done it better. Why did someone get paid to make this lackluster app?
So now you are saying it's all driven by the touch screen. Well that's great, but I'm not using Windows on a touch screen and Surface is a tiny, tiny part of their market. Why not make a Surface interface for the Surface, and then a different one for the Desktop and marry the two when they've finally figured out the touchscreen and the desktop?
I'm not interested in researching Microsoft UI, because I've been too annoyed by their past efforts. Making icons big enough for a finger to touch them is NOT something I'd call a huge innovation, nor is it something that should have made Windows 8 such a bad hybrid.
I would really love to get into UI design -- actually "back into it" would be more accurate. But I did this stuff before they had degrees and certifications and NOW the UI is some sort of formal "it's done this way because WE KNOW these things." It's like the old "psychology for management" they used to teach in business school I suppose.
There are some things you can codify for "concepts" of a good interface, but it's really about a designer and a tool user crafting something that makes sense. There has to be a logic AND an aesthetic, it needs to let you know where you are and where you are going. It needs to be simple and elegant at the same time, and powerful should be one or two clicks away. It needs to be forgiving and let you know before you mess up.
It seems to me that UI designers are trying to create more and more UI, when really they should be like special effects in a movie; "There, but part of the story, and if possible, not even noticed." Strip away everything you can but no more from a UI and now you've got a tool.
Microsoft doesn't seem to have the mindset to to this; they look at the customer as something to market to and a touch screen as something to do LOTS of touching with. So I think whatever their UI is going to be, it's going to reflect the corporate culture, and then someone will "rationalize" in the new babble of UAX why it made kinesthetic logic to annoy everyone once again.
The Ribbon is awful UI.
I never "scanned" through those menus -- I just put frequently used action buttons in a palette. The Ribbon pretends to be "friendly" but takes up space and hides what I need to access with little hard to press triangle in the bottom right corner of each pane.
It takes me more time than the same function used to. I'm teaching myself to use High end 3D animation apps these days, so I am not afraid of change or complexity. I just get annoyed at bad designs when they've had 30 years to make Office products right.
Apple's products may have fewer features, but they are much faster to use for both novice and advanced users. Adobe Indesign is even better for page layout, but inexplicably, I find Illustrator to be annoying and it overcomplicates layers and complex vector illustrations -- but nobody remembers any other vector illustration programs so they think it's the best.
Microsoft's fans seem to suffer from the "don't know any better designs so they think this is awesome" syndrome.
I'm a veteran user of MicroSoft Office products -- so much so that I still spell it "PowerPoint." I've noticed that for MOST of the functions I've used, the advances are usually not huge (2008 brought a color sampler tool so I could mage colors -- hooray!), and for the most part, the icons get re-arranged. I could deal with that by creating my own menu for most common features.
The Ribbon sucks -- it truly absolutely sucks. It takes up a lot of space, disorganizes where I need to click and ruins context, and manages to make simple, common tasks more confusing. I've used more than a few hundred Apps, and I can tell you where the interfaces are good and bad. Adobe still screws up on their bezier pen tool and have yet to catch up to FreeHand's "one tool does it all" for lines and their easy "paste inside" for masking.
And then Metro really, really sucks, because simple OS tasks are now a series of actions. Sliding to hot corners is context sensitive with no indication of what the context is. Icons are either icons for buttons, or a picture of the family dog -- or an advertisement. The Xbox is NOT a design for getting things done -- it's a video game interface, that usually gets inbetween you and a game, or you and Netflix, and tries to sell you aftermarket crap that they kept out of the game in order to sell to you later.
So, yeah, I'm going to whine about that damn Ribbon, because I can use Office 2008 faster than any of the later Ribbon additions. and I could use Keynote with more proficiency in 2 weeks than 10 years with PowerPoint. The little floating panel with a few tabs (LOGICALLY organized) allowed me to make changes quickly. Because of the superior interface, I'd import presentations into Keynote, get the work done, export it to PowerPoint and then clean it up again -- because THAT was quicker than using the Ribbon interface.
Slow clap.
Awesome. I also like how you angry because this should drive people angry. This "anti terror" error is stupid, and we had more REAL threats when we were facing armies.
If anyone CARED about American lives they'd improve mass transit, do something about crappy and addictive prescription medicines, and make sure every American had health care and a decent job.
I had to explain to my kids a few years back about yet another news story about kids abducted on the way to school; "There are 330 million people in this country, and you will hear mostly about anything horrible happening but not a status update that 99.9% are doing OK today." (Yeah, and they really didn't get the risk percentages so I had to calm them a bit more).
The News has to keep people watching, so it hypes whatever the fear du jour is. The net result is we get more secure and and the same time more worried -- resulting in early onset "wimpy-ness." So I keep the News shows off so my kids can maintain some perspective; "Eat your broccoli and look both ways when crossing the road -- you've just solved most of the threats to your life."
The car's owner was located and arrested for driving on a revoked license.
So they blow up his stuff, maybe ruin his car and to CYA they smelled gas. And in order to justify whatever, they arrest the guy for being poor. The car isn't being driven folks -- it's there because the man ran out of money. He COULD HAVE had it towed or any number of responsible things -- but, he didn't have money.
Being poor has been a criminal act -- let's face it, you can slip on all kinds of licenses, and run around without insurance because you trade feeding a family or medicine for taking a few legal risks 9 times out of 10. But now it's terrorism?
They should just admit they were a bit overzealous and compensate the guy for the pot -- maybe give him a tow or sell his car for him. The public interests are not served on this hyperbole.
While the Boston bombing did use a pressure cooker -- the average killing spree with a gun is far more dangerous -- and we've accidentally killed more people with prescription drugs and nobody is blowing up jars of Oxycontin (but who knows what bored people might do?)
The really annoying thing here is that the Police put out statements and the Press repeat them, that have anyone with functional BS detector saying; "Oh come on." This is more crying wolf and pretty soon, a real or fake terrorist attack is going to be huge, just so people don't treat the issue as a joke or a jobs program.
I'd say that Greenpeace is arguably the good guys, in the same way as these "let Galapagos species die because it's natural" is a bad idea. Extinctions DO seem to serve a purpose in the grand scheme -- but only to wipe the slate clean for new designs. The earth has come close to becoming lifeless and either too hot or too cold, and that's been largely due to imbalances that cause species die off. So YES, more diversity = GOOD. And that's a provable statement in many subjective and objective ways.
I just admire Greenpeace activists because they aren't fighting for some invisible God, or ego - they risk real adversity. Maybe in the future people will treat them as larger than life heroes -- but you and I discussing this on a blog, not so much -- we stay comfortable.
And I'll defend Hippies because they believe in peace and love and equality -- and what could be wrong with that?
We, as a self-satisfied SUV driving culture want to preserve our status quo AND pat ourselves on the back. Are we another myopic death cult? It seems; nobody sees themselves for what they are in the culture that created the problem. Archie Bunker becomes a sex symbol because instead of progress, we believe the marketing that being a stupid cow eating stupid cows is some kind of achievement.
How do you think history will judge the American culture by and large in 50 years?
I have to roll my eyes at this concept. The logic seems to be based on a sock puppet concept of what will most annoy Environmentalists, or Hippies, or whatever is trying to "force humans to behave". Humans have an impact, merely by being a successful organism. If mosquitos killed off the dinosaurs, do we "blame" them? No.
However, humans are in the position of mitigating their effect -- not only that, but we can PICK WINNERS! Human interference, or perhaps symbiosis, has elevated dogs to family pets and helped cows to become more plentiful (jury is out on whether they enjoy the honor). The simple truth is we are in the middle of a massive extinction rate that is as fast and as massive as many of the great ones in history -- so why not preserve whatever we can to maintain diversity? Everything we choose to do or do not do will decide winners and losers, so helping out the Galapagos species even though a Volcano might doom them is not necessarily "bad". Sure, it's unnatural -- but what does that mean anymore when human's are, by their nature, effectors of change on a planetary scale?
It's time to recognize that we may be in what could be called the "post evolutionary stage." Or perhaps the "directed evolutionary stage." We are busy tweaking ourselves, bioweapons, antibiotics, and glow in the dark cats. Terraforming or building resort islands will be part and parcel with choosing to keep building more roads or build more trains and paint rooftops white to reduce heat absorption.
Environmentalists might have to come to terms with what is "natural" -- but since economics is most of the decision making process -- being environmentally conscious is either useful or useless but rarely damaging, the next GMO food has more impact than a thousand activists and it's time we looked at things in the larger context.
Grabbing some animals and flora off an island to survive an eruption is tampering in a positive way, whereas using pesticides on food crops is tampering on a much larger scale. I don't see the problem or contradiction with mitigating the effects of natural disasters when we do far more to wipe out species -- it's a small attempt to restore balance.
I came for the stretch marks.
Why do we always have to discuss the manner in the way data is presented when it's pretty well known that Global Warming is changing the poles? Much better to spend our time on "what's next" and "how fast?"
The stretch marks are obviously and indication of movement that is "faster" than what we usually see; and how fast is that? A meter per day?
I'm thinking something the size of New Jersey is going to slip into the ocean in the next few years and "what happens" after that? Do we get a tsunami?