You'll never be a good manager without a solid understanding of what you are managing... that's why everyone is forced to do insane amounts of boring grunt work before becoming eligible for a promotion.
Re:To Dictionary Head : Income vs Potential income
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RIAA Sues a Child
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· Score: 1
Hi there. Identity is by definition unique. When you copy someone's data, it ceases to be unique, and therefore it ceases to be an "identity". Therefore, you have indeed deprived the original person of its identity, which does constitute a form of "theft".
You're off by a few orders of magnitude, styxlord;) The placement of the edge of space varies wildy according to who you ask. However, all proposed boundaries are within an altitude band ranging from 100 to 1,000 kilometers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space
Hi. Your post is too long, but it looks like you're proposing some geeky sci-fi railgun thingy. In the real world, rail gun technology has some interesting problems. Namely, projectiles cause massive rail erosion, tend to get welded to the rails, and then there's the recoil. Every action has a reaction etc. Now try and scale this up to something capable of launching tons of crap into space. You can't. Large scale railguns are simply not feasible with current know-how and technology. Railgun research is still in its early stages!
Choice quotes: "Although conceptually simple, the operation of a railgun involves several factors that have to this day made a practical design (one that can be employed in the field in order to replace conventional weapons) impossible."
"The complexity in railgun design comes from:
1. The need for strong conductive materials with which to build the rails and projectiles; the rails need to survive the violence of an accelerating projectile, and heating due to the large currents and friction involved. The force exerted on the rails consists of a recoil force - equal and opposite to the force propelling the projectile, but along the length of the rails (which is their strongest axis) - and a sideways force caused by the rails being pushed by the magnetic field, just as the projectile is. The rails need to survive this without bending, and must be very securely mounted.
2. Power supply design. The power supply must be able to deliver large currents, with both capacitors and compulsators being common.
3. Electromechanical design. The rails need to withstand enormous repulsive forces during firing, and these forces will tend to push them apart and away from the projectile. As rail/projectile clearances increase arcing develops which causes rapid vaporization and extensive damage to the rail surfaces and the insulator surfaces. This limits most research railguns to one shot per service interval.
There are fundamental limits to the exit velocity due to the inductance of the system and in particular the rails. These limits are larger than currently attainable but do reduce the usefulness of the concept for space travel and military uses."
So is the web, and you're on it! Of course it has no gameplay, it's not a game. The whole point is that you have fun creating stuff. You know, vaguely like Lego blocks? Except you have a heap of different shapes, that are infinitely customizable, and a scripting language with which you can do anything, from simple doors and cars, to complex physics simulations, and massive distributed systems. Or, of course, if you're not the creative type, you can socialize and buy stuff, play house, attend events, have cybersex with hot nubile avatars who may or may not be 50 year old men, the works. There's also a heap of games to play inside it, all created by users.
I did not say nor meant to imply that Katrina was caused by global warming. I merely alluded to rising sea levels causing coastal flooding, on a rather more permanent and destructive basis than Katrina.
Please dont flame me, I am not a chemist or a physicist or any sort of scientist. But if the alternative is to have most of the world's coastal cities suffer the same fate as New Orleans, why can't we put some thought and money into actively extracting CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere instead of merely cutting down emissions? I know that it would take a lot of energy and currently most energy sources add to the pollution problem, but still, is it even possible to somehow filter the crap from the atmosphere? What would it entail?
People write volumes about the possibility of a meteor impact, and what could be done to prevent it, while ignoring the larger threat that lies beneath us. If we knew a giant volcano was likely to form somewhere, what could possibly be done about it? Aside from moving people out of harm's way, would it be possible to, say, drill a bunch of holes in it and relieve pressure? (This is a very interesting read, if you haven't stumbled across it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano)
I believe one of the key strengths of something like wikipedia is that, being digital, you dont need to carry it with you, its easily searchable and so it can grow to mind-bogglingly large sizes until it encompasses the totality of human knowledge, allowing you to get both a quick overview or an in-depth treatise. See, for instance, an article on any well-known country. It will have a brief overview of everything with pointers to in-depth articles that focus solely on its history, or solely on its geography, etc.
Man. Calm down. Where did all that angst come from? If you re-read my post, the word "free" is not listed anywhere. I said the SWF spec was "openly available" - It is. I also said there were "plenty of open source apps" who could write SWF - There are.
The vast majority of computer users live in poor countries where software is either downloaded or acquired from friends. People buy PCs specifically because it is easier to get games for it than with a console - piracy is the norm rather than the exception. Piracy is the killer app that made the PC king, and brought broadband to the masses. So, if piracy is ever made impossible under windows, millions of people will flock to Linux in order to continue to enjoy software free of charge, with the additional advantage that it will also give them freedom. Watch, then, as some of those millions take an interest in the people who kindly provide them with free, legal software, and become active open source contributors. It's happening already. The other day some rich bastard was accusing me of being an evil pirate when I told him I never pay for software. I started looking at my software and lo - its practically all open source, even under windows. Gaim, OO.o, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Ur-Quan Masters, heck, even my mp3s are mostly legal, indie stuff. I wish I could have seen the look on his face:)
If by that you mean that getting broadband internet over powerlines is terribly difficult or expensive, I am happy to inform you that my own ISP here in Portugal has been offering powerline internet for ages at very attractive rates. http://www.oni220.pt/oni220.htm
I'm told other european countries are also deploying it. The upstream is massive compared to similar ADSL offerings, instead of 8:1 it's a 2:1 ratio! Great for eMule:)
Powerline internet is a very attractive option in countries where the telephone lines are owned by a giant monopolist telecom.
If I read this wikipedia article, it's more like 23 to 1:
Global warming potential (GWP) is a measure of how much a given mass of greenhouse gas is estimated to contribute to global warming. It is a relative scale which compares the gas in question to that of the same mass of carbon dioxide whose GWP is one. (...) Examples:
* carbon dioxide has a GWP of exactly 1 (since it is the baseline unit to which all other greenhouse gases are compared.)
* methane has a GWP of 23.
Pure methane is odorless, but when used commercially is usually mixed with small quantities of strongly-smelling sulfur compounds such as ethyl mercaptan to enable the detection of leaks. (from wikipedia)
It's so you can have Suppafly without it being taken by someone else... so instead of having Suppafly32543 and Suppafly898981 like people do with email usernames... you have Suppafly Lippmann, or Suppafly Digeridoo...
Second Life is constantly adding new features and scripting commands, and the tools are way more powerful than regular MMORPG crafting. You can literally create anything. Dude, you can implement your own freaking TCP/IP stack, LISP interpreter or e-commerce solution... or whatever else trips your trigger. You can hook up SL to outside servers with XML-RPC and email for even more complex work... tie SL scripts into a MySQL database with a 5-minute PHP script... literally anything. The economy is in no more danger of dying than the "real" software industry.
SL can not feasibly run over a P2P system. It's geared towars realtime interaction so it's very time-critical, P2P overhead would totally kill it, plus end users do not have anywhere near the upstream bandwidth. The default settings are 300kbps, multiply that by the number of users you want to support... you have to realize that SL is streamed, no content resides on the user's machine other than a cache, it's all downloaded on-the-fly... just like a web page.
This is not a scam. Second Life is just like the web, but wrapped in a pretty 3D virtual world - it is primarily a place where you can create and host content for others to enjoy (and purchase). Land is a metaphor for server space. The money you pay is for the server resources. There is a finite amount of them per server (65536 sq.m.)and if you want, you can even buy your own server. Some people own more than one! Even major RL corporations are starting to hit SL - if you're a student, or unemployed, you could get yourself a real job! Artist? Programmer? Just plain bored? Join Second Life - I've been there for over two years and will never look back. You can build just about anything out of simple geometric shapes and make it come alive with a powerful, yet simple scripting language that uses C/Java style syntax and an event-driven paradigm. Check out the language reference and see for yourself! Second Life even includes a full fledged physics engine called Havok, which is rapidly becoming the industry standard. It is truly a geek's dream come true, and no one on SLASHDOT of all places should dare criticize it - we have a whole section devoted to LEGO and SL is at the very least LEGO on steroids:) Heaps of screenshots
Slashdot Mirror
You'll never be a good manager without a solid understanding of what you are managing... that's why everyone is forced to do insane amounts of boring grunt work before becoming eligible for a promotion.
Hi there.
Identity is by definition unique.
When you copy someone's data, it ceases to be unique, and therefore it ceases to be an "identity".
Therefore, you have indeed deprived the original person of its identity, which does constitute a form of "theft".
Whoops, my bad! I am not an astronomer etc ;)
You're off by a few orders of magnitude, styxlord ;)
The placement of the edge of space varies wildy according to who you ask.
However, all proposed boundaries are within an altitude band ranging from 100 to 1,000 kilometers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space
"Everyone knows there is no such thing as a Linux virus" ;)
Hi. Your post is too long, but it looks like you're proposing some geeky sci-fi railgun thingy.
In the real world, rail gun technology has some interesting problems.
Namely, projectiles cause massive rail erosion, tend to get welded to the rails, and then there's the recoil. Every action has a reaction etc.
Now try and scale this up to something capable of launching tons of crap into space. You can't.
Large scale railguns are simply not feasible with current know-how and technology.
Railgun research is still in its early stages!
Please read up on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railgun
Choice quotes:
"Although conceptually simple, the operation of a railgun involves several factors that have to this day made a practical design (one that can be employed in the field in order to replace conventional weapons) impossible."
"The complexity in railgun design comes from:
1. The need for strong conductive materials with which to build the rails and projectiles; the rails need to survive the violence of an accelerating projectile, and heating due to the large currents and friction involved. The force exerted on the rails consists of a recoil force - equal and opposite to the force propelling the projectile, but along the length of the rails (which is their strongest axis) - and a sideways force caused by the rails being pushed by the magnetic field, just as the projectile is. The rails need to survive this without bending, and must be very securely mounted.
2. Power supply design. The power supply must be able to deliver large currents, with both capacitors and compulsators being common.
3. Electromechanical design. The rails need to withstand enormous repulsive forces during firing, and these forces will tend to push them apart and away from the projectile. As rail/projectile clearances increase arcing develops which causes rapid vaporization and extensive damage to the rail surfaces and the insulator surfaces. This limits most research railguns to one shot per service interval.
There are fundamental limits to the exit velocity due to the inductance of the system and in particular the rails. These limits are larger than currently attainable but do reduce the usefulness of the concept for space travel and military uses."
I wouldn't be so sure if I were you.o rigin
There is also a theory which states that most petroleum could have come from non-biological sources.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abiogenic_petroleum_
So is the web, and you're on it!
Of course it has no gameplay, it's not a game.
The whole point is that you have fun creating stuff.
You know, vaguely like Lego blocks? Except you have a heap of different shapes, that are infinitely customizable, and a scripting language with which you can do anything, from simple doors and cars, to complex physics simulations, and massive distributed systems.
Or, of course, if you're not the creative type, you can socialize and buy stuff, play house, attend events, have cybersex with hot nubile avatars who may or may not be 50 year old men, the works.
There's also a heap of games to play inside it, all created by users.
I did not say nor meant to imply that Katrina was caused by global warming. I merely alluded to rising sea levels causing coastal flooding, on a rather more permanent and destructive basis than Katrina.
Please dont flame me, I am not a chemist or a physicist or any sort of scientist.
But if the alternative is to have most of the world's coastal cities suffer the same fate as New Orleans, why can't we put some thought and money into actively extracting CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere instead of merely cutting down emissions?
I know that it would take a lot of energy and currently most energy sources add to the pollution problem, but still, is it even possible to somehow filter the crap from the atmosphere? What would it entail?
People write volumes about the possibility of a meteor impact, and what could be done to prevent it, while ignoring the larger threat that lies beneath us.
If we knew a giant volcano was likely to form somewhere, what could possibly be done about it?
Aside from moving people out of harm's way, would it be possible to, say, drill a bunch of holes in it and relieve pressure?
(This is a very interesting read, if you haven't stumbled across it - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano)
I believe one of the key strengths of something like wikipedia is that, being digital, you dont need to carry it with you, its easily searchable and so it can grow to mind-bogglingly large sizes until it encompasses the totality of human knowledge, allowing you to get both a quick overview or an in-depth treatise. See, for instance, an article on any well-known country. It will have a brief overview of everything with pointers to in-depth articles that focus solely on its history, or solely on its geography, etc.
Galaxies aren't circular, they are elliptical, and accurately calculating the circumference of an ellipse is very different from 2*pi*r.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumference
Wikipedia confirms the poster's numbers BTW.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milky_Way
Man. Calm down. Where did all that angst come from?
If you re-read my post, the word "free" is not listed anywhere. I said the SWF spec was "openly available" - It is.
I also said there were "plenty of open source apps" who could write SWF - There are.
open != free :)
The SWF file format specification is openly available. There's plenty of open source apps that can read and write it.
The vast majority of computer users live in poor countries where software is either downloaded or acquired from friends. People buy PCs specifically because it is easier to get games for it than with a console - piracy is the norm rather than the exception. :)
Piracy is the killer app that made the PC king, and brought broadband to the masses.
So, if piracy is ever made impossible under windows, millions of people will flock to Linux in order to continue to enjoy software free of charge, with the additional advantage that it will also give them freedom. Watch, then, as some of those millions take an interest in the people who kindly provide them with free, legal software, and become active open source contributors.
It's happening already. The other day some rich bastard was accusing me of being an evil pirate when I told him I never pay for software. I started looking at my software and lo - its practically all open source, even under windows. Gaim, OO.o, Gimp, Firefox, Thunderbird, The Ur-Quan Masters, heck, even my mp3s are mostly legal, indie stuff. I wish I could have seen the look on his face
If by that you mean that getting broadband internet over powerlines is terribly difficult or expensive, I am happy to inform you that my own ISP here in Portugal has been offering powerline internet for ages at very attractive rates.
:)
http://www.oni220.pt/oni220.htm
I'm told other european countries are also deploying it. The upstream is massive compared to similar ADSL offerings, instead of 8:1 it's a 2:1 ratio! Great for eMule
Powerline internet is a very attractive option in countries where the telephone lines are owned by a giant monopolist telecom.
If I read this wikipedia article, it's more like 23 to 1:
t ial)
Global warming potential (GWP) is a measure of how much a given mass of greenhouse gas is estimated to contribute to global warming. It is a relative scale which compares the gas in question to that of the same mass of carbon dioxide whose GWP is one.
(...)
Examples:
* carbon dioxide has a GWP of exactly 1 (since it is the baseline unit to which all other greenhouse gases are compared.)
* methane has a GWP of 23.
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_poten
Pure methane is odorless, but when used commercially is usually mixed with small quantities of strongly-smelling sulfur compounds such as ethyl mercaptan to enable the detection of leaks.
(from wikipedia)
Mist, in french, is Brume. Might explain the etymology of BR.
It's so you can have Suppafly without it being taken by someone else... so instead of having Suppafly32543 and Suppafly898981 like people do with email usernames... you have Suppafly Lippmann, or Suppafly Digeridoo...
Second Life is constantly adding new features and scripting commands, and the tools are way more powerful than regular MMORPG crafting. You can literally create anything. Dude, you can implement your own freaking TCP/IP stack, LISP interpreter or e-commerce solution... or whatever else trips your trigger. You can hook up SL to outside servers with XML-RPC and email for even more complex work... tie SL scripts into a MySQL database with a 5-minute PHP script... literally anything.
The economy is in no more danger of dying than the "real" software industry.
SL can not feasibly run over a P2P system. It's geared towars realtime interaction so it's very time-critical, P2P overhead would totally kill it, plus end users do not have anywhere near the upstream bandwidth. The default settings are 300kbps, multiply that by the number of users you want to support... you have to realize that SL is streamed, no content resides on the user's machine other than a cache, it's all downloaded on-the-fly... just like a web page.
This is not a scam. :)
Second Life is just like the web, but wrapped in a pretty 3D virtual world - it is primarily a place where you can create and host content for others to enjoy (and purchase).
Land is a metaphor for server space. The money you pay is for the server resources. There is a finite amount of them per server (65536 sq.m.)and if you want, you can even buy your own server. Some people own more than one! Even major RL corporations are starting to hit SL - if you're a student, or unemployed, you could get yourself a real job!
Artist? Programmer? Just plain bored? Join Second Life - I've been there for over two years and will never look back.
You can build just about anything out of simple geometric shapes and make it come alive with a powerful, yet simple scripting language that uses C/Java style syntax and an event-driven paradigm.
Check out the language reference and see for yourself!
Second Life even includes a full fledged physics engine called Havok, which is rapidly becoming the industry standard.
It is truly a geek's dream come true, and no one on SLASHDOT of all places should dare criticize it - we have a whole section devoted to LEGO and SL is at the very least LEGO on steroids
Heaps of screenshots