Re:If you want to see the real Cuba, go now...
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Fidel Castro Resigns
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...no one has implemented true communism, so it's impossible to say whether it's a failure or not. The fact that no one has implemented a true communism (in any scale above a village) is a good indicator that communism is a failure. If you do a little thought experiment, you'll determine that true communism relies on the altruism of the vast majority of its participants. That's an unlikely event given my observations of humanity. True capitalism penalizes laziness and rewards greed. Hell, that's the definition of a regular lottery ticket buyer - someone who's rather lazy and rather greedy. And while true, unfettered, capitalism has its flaws (and they're about as big as communism's), it does have the advantage of working better with the psyche of the typical person.
Why don't you just compare President Bush to Hitler while you're at it? In spite of you having invoked Godwin's Law, it has to be said. As Stephen Colbert reported about a year ago, Bush had reached or surpassed Hitler's lowest approval rating, about 30%. I imagine it's gone down a bit since then. Then there's the fact that Hitler actually did a few things useful for his country, such as mandate a vehicle that the average citizen could buy (the Volkswagen). Oh, and Hitler actually had control of one or two invaded countries for some period of time. I can't think of anything good that Bush has done, besides turn the US political stage from a 3 ring circus to a complete, very sad, joke. So, what does that sum up to? Hitler was somewhat more competent, and selected people for positions of importance based on their skills instead of cronyism. And Hitler was more evil. I'm sure Bush is proud.
What next, a headline reading Sun's hydrogen surpasses hydrogen reserves on Earth? Nah, they'll have a press release linking the helium in the sun to the helium lost from our atmosphere. Then they'll call for the defeat of the Solarian terrorists. But that's okay - you can't trust those squeaky-voiced bastards.
Most anglicized words from French drop the accents, even if they follow French pronunciation (as opposed to French words we use in everyday English, typically names). Foyer is a good example of this. This is probably what leads to anglicized words becoming more divorced from the original pronunciation over time. But I stand corrected. As other responders pointed out, most dictionaries list carafe as 2 syllables. I can't seem to find an online version of a Canadian dictionary to determine if this is local to Canada (I only heard the 3-syllable version until a trip to the US). Of course, this could be due to our extensive French heritage since UK English also uses the 2-syllable version.
It's French. I've never heard this word used in English before, but he's correct that in French it's pronounced like canal with a B. There are a lot of French words in the English language, and they usually sound better when they're pronounced correctly. For instance, carafe. Hint: It's a three-syllable word. The first time I heard the Americanized pronunciation, it took me a few seconds to figure out what the waitress was talking about.
...the ornithopter concept does not scale up well. Likewise, the fixed-wing concept doesn't scale down well, for the reasons listed in the summary. It's like the importance of various forces changes when you change the scale. It's truly amazing, and I have to wonder if the scientists/physicists are aware of this. [/sarcasm] Another almost-useful article from Roland.
I still have my pet rock, 30+ years later... If you like, I'd be more than willing to turn your pet rock into the major comonents of a zen garden. Shouldn't take more than a couple hours.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, which is why I'm against programming being held to the same standard, with the exceptions you mentioned. We are still at the infancy of programming, and a lot of mistakes still have to be made before we're going to be able to say what is the best way to do something in a given situation, and why. We have those rules in a few limited areas (sorts, trees, etc.), but the vast majority of software happens outside those realms. I think the best professional body that describes programming is the guild. We have our craft, and it's a mystey to most of those outside of it. And how each person does things is slightly different, but the results are strikingly similar for the average user. But 'programming' and 'rigorous standards' in the same sentence is best described as a joke. I'm curious about whether this will change in my lifetime.
Designing a serious bridge is a LOT more difficult than 90% of software projects out there. You have a base you can build on of tried and true designs, but from scratch, it's not very easy. This was also my thought. People expect a lot from an industry that has only been around for about 70 years. If we had the history of bridges, with all it's successes, failures, and practical designs that came from them, maybe programming would be in a better state. But I think we're at the point, right now, where we're just starting to build the equivalent of bridges that are vital to major traffic, but still haven't formalized the rules for how best to do that. This is also why I somewhat fear regulation of programming. There's still a lot of learning going on about what counts as good solutions, and a lot of the typical errors could be caught with better compilers/IDEs/code-checkers. After all, engineers don't have to test each batch of rebar that goes into a bridge, why should it matter to your typical programmer? But that programmer needs to know more of the details, too.
I think I'll stick to my ThinkPad, thank you much... I'm on my second ThinkPad, and I routinely get shocks from touching the keyboard or any of the connectors that have metal at all near the surface. I don't have a problem with a regular keyboard, but I think the distance is too far (or more shielded) to the metal parts to shock there. I've even gotten shocks from the fingerprint scanner. Surprisingly, they still seem to last me until the lease is up.
Can someone explain what happened? Try it with a 12V car battery and some booster cables, and you'll get a better picture of what's happening. Just do it quickly. With a slightly different system you can do arc welding. If you'd held your battery there for a little longer, things could have gotten very exciting.
I would lean towards the attitude that X0's human brain is much better at estimating the effort required to run using a prosthetic limb than we can be by making some very simple assumptions about how much energy is stored where. First, the indications are that testing was done to determine the efficiency of his prosthetics (which were specifically designed for running, not general use). Second, the casual observation of superficial data by inadequately educated observers led many to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat.
So, how much energy does a cyber farm hand embody in its mining, construction, operation and maintenance, as opposed to a human and how many calories of food can it generate? Well, this can't be too hard. Rather than calories, let's use something that we already do universal conversions between (time, calories, effort, etc.). We'll call it money. Apparently, $2000 is enough to cover the cost of extracting, refining, and forming the exoskeleton, setting up the framework for powering it, building the sensors that help control it, and designing the software to help control it. This assumes that number isn't subsidised one way or another. (In other words, no one really needs to know what the energy investment is, outside of the long-term viability of using it, in the order of decades or centuries. The dollar costs tell us that in a fairly simple way.)
Now for the unknowns. What is the cost of the infrastructure to be able to use this (sounds like a lot of cabling to run into a field). What is the maintenance cost? How much does it improve productivity (in tasks where speed or finesse are required)? How much does it reduce time off from work due to repetitive strain injuries? How much does the reduction in injuries reduce the cost of medical care? Analyse all those costs and benefits, amortise it over 2 to 5 years, and if the numbers point to a positive, widespread adoption could occur (businesses are in it for the money, after all). What this means right now is some limited testing in order to answer those questions.
But there is the key consideration that, while there may be multiple correct ways to spell a word, there are innumerable incorrect ways to spell a word. I can happily accept favor or favour, but faver or fayver isn't going to cut it. Equally bad is the inappropriate use of words: there/they're/their, accept/except, to/too/two, etc.
Now we need a script and cron job to check for the alternate names of multiple high-profile names every 5 days and one hour. Then someone can accuse NSI of cybersquatting and/or get the other registrars pissed off at them. And if you're worried about them blocking/retaliating against certain IPs, route it through a TOR or something. It's important to penalize the stupid actions of corporations when we can.
...ad money will only end up encouraging less passionate people to post whatever pops into their heads... The anti-capitalism sentiment gets really old here sometimes. I don't know about you, but I find money goes a long way toward me being able to eat. After looking around on the Internet, I've noticed that the fanatics already have plenty of ad-driven sites promoting their beliefs, rational or otherwise. What's the big deal about having Google present a way of doing this with clear authorship, no need to make your own site, and ad revenue? And that's not even considering that there might be people who can't be bothered writing credible information into Wikipedia about a sensitive topic and watching the edit wars begin over all the effort they put into it, or the fact that giving money for quality work might get those who find the financial reward more valuable than the warm fuzzy feeling of donating their skills with no real control of the outcome of their effort.
The bird apparently can't stay on the tarmac too long before takeoff, as it leaks fuel when the plane is "cold". I've heard that before, a number of times. It's also mentioned in the wikipedia article. I'd also heard they tended to refuel immediately after takeoff, which I assumed was due to the leaks, which I suspected might reduce shortly after takeoff (the plane experiences noticeable heat expansion on a typical mission). The wikipedia article on air-to-air refueling suggests this was more due to a lighter takeoff load allowing a shorter takeoff distance. Overall an impressive plane.
Um, why do we have to colonize in order to transmit? Unless we're colonizing with stupid people, why not just put a high-powered repeater station into orbit around, say, Venus? It's a shit-hole anyway, and we can control the messages from here. Now, if the aliens were smart, they'd pick the star system based on the direction of the signals, and course-correct for likely locations for life (high oxygen spectrum) after they can get in range to test for that. They may have to send more than one projectile, but that's not overly difficult (after the first one, anyway). So yeah, if a hostile, technologically advanced civilization was contacted, we're fucked.
Don't worry about the religious right. It's the nut-jobs you'll have to worry about. Imagine a world with lots of people tagged with similar retroviruses that are demographically selected. I read a book once about an advance in genetics where the Koran could be imprinted in people's DNA through a retrovirus. This gave those who wanted to kill all Muslims a targeted vector for doing it. So they released a virus that gave everyone a flu (or whatever, it was just an infection vector) and if you had that sequence of DNA, you got cancer. Say you decide to make your skin (or your kids' skin) glow through a relatively simple genetic tweak. Now they're easily targeted, too. The only way you'd be overly safe is if the genetic tweaks were selecting existing human DNA ("I want my kid to have blue eyes"), custom DNA tweaks from scratch (or from generic human DNA fragments), or data appended which is encrypted with a one-time key (include an encrypted pic of your family in your DNA, retrovirus-style). Anything else opens the door for genetic profiling in the worst way.
1. KDE was good, but not free (Free? phree?) enough. 2. Gnome was established because we couldn't accept that un-free KDE? 3. KDE fixed its problems and Gnome became Microsoft's bitch 4. ??? 5. Profit!!! Note that the number of steps between 3 and 5 is somewhere between 1 and infinity. I suspect that the number is closer to infinity. While I'm aware that this is a mathematical impossibility, I stand behind my statement.
There will come a day when people will laugh at the absurdity of this, just like there has come a day when people laugh at the absurdity of horse and buggy vs. cars, the absurdity of vinyl vs. digital music, the absurdity of computers vs. the slide rule. All of these still have their place, and books will too, but they will be exceptions and not the rule. The big holdup right now is an ebook reader that is 'good enough'. Not perfect, not even great, but good enough.
Here's what I'm looking for:
Decent page turning.
A way to tell how far I am into the book, and be able to jump to another section, rather than just flipping one page at a time.
Readable screen.
Search functions.
Comfortable design, easily held in a number of positions without accidentally hitting buttons.
Long battery life.
Slim! There's no reason for it to be more than 1cm thick unless it takes standard batteries. Even then, that may not be an issue.
Pocketbook size. It doesn't have to fit into a pocket, although it would be a plus, but it has to be something you can carry around easily.
Open format. I should be able to read any of the standard document formats - pdf, html, txt, rtf. Also, standard image formats should be accepted - png, bmp, gif, tif, jpg. For images, at least line art should be supported. I don't care if it also has a proprietary format, but I'll be avoiding those ebooks.
Cheap! I'm talking about half what they cost right now. $150 to $200 would get me to buy one, even if it didn't meet all my criteria above. It may sound like a lot, but if the cost of an ebook reader and 20 to 30 books broke even with buying traditional books, you'd see a lot of people buying one.
I can't wait until the day I can get one that meets those needs. I already read about half my books on my computer, and I expect that to only go up over time. Having a tool that supports that in an optimal manner would make it a lot more enjoyable.
I'm actually quite happy with our current government. With all the political parties trying desperately to turn opinion against the others, they have less time to screw over the regular citizen. The less power politicians have, and none of them have much right now, the less they can abuse.
Why don't these companies try and make something that just injects intilligence into the idiots creating these situations where it's required. Are you sure they didn't? I can see the story now... PharmCo Exec 1: Why aren't our new smart pills getting rid of all the idiots? PharmCo Exec 2: Maybe we shouldn't have put them in idiot-proof packaging...
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...no one has implemented true communism, so it's impossible to say whether it's a failure or not. The fact that no one has implemented a true communism (in any scale above a village) is a good indicator that communism is a failure. If you do a little thought experiment, you'll determine that true communism relies on the altruism of the vast majority of its participants. That's an unlikely event given my observations of humanity. True capitalism penalizes laziness and rewards greed. Hell, that's the definition of a regular lottery ticket buyer - someone who's rather lazy and rather greedy. And while true, unfettered, capitalism has its flaws (and they're about as big as communism's), it does have the advantage of working better with the psyche of the typical person.So, what does that sum up to? Hitler was somewhat more competent, and selected people for positions of importance based on their skills instead of cronyism. And Hitler was more evil. I'm sure Bush is proud.
Most anglicized words from French drop the accents, even if they follow French pronunciation (as opposed to French words we use in everyday English, typically names). Foyer is a good example of this. This is probably what leads to anglicized words becoming more divorced from the original pronunciation over time. But I stand corrected. As other responders pointed out, most dictionaries list carafe as 2 syllables. I can't seem to find an online version of a Canadian dictionary to determine if this is local to Canada (I only heard the 3-syllable version until a trip to the US). Of course, this could be due to our extensive French heritage since UK English also uses the 2-syllable version.
I've never heard this word used in English before, but he's correct that in French it's pronounced like canal with a B. There are a lot of French words in the English language, and they usually sound better when they're pronounced correctly. For instance, carafe. Hint: It's a three-syllable word. The first time I heard the Americanized pronunciation, it took me a few seconds to figure out what the waitress was talking about.
...the ornithopter concept does not scale up well. Likewise, the fixed-wing concept doesn't scale down well, for the reasons listed in the summary. It's like the importance of various forces changes when you change the scale. It's truly amazing, and I have to wonder if the scientists/physicists are aware of this.[/sarcasm]
Another almost-useful article from Roland.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, which is why I'm against programming being held to the same standard, with the exceptions you mentioned. We are still at the infancy of programming, and a lot of mistakes still have to be made before we're going to be able to say what is the best way to do something in a given situation, and why. We have those rules in a few limited areas (sorts, trees, etc.), but the vast majority of software happens outside those realms.
I think the best professional body that describes programming is the guild. We have our craft, and it's a mystey to most of those outside of it. And how each person does things is slightly different, but the results are strikingly similar for the average user. But 'programming' and 'rigorous standards' in the same sentence is best described as a joke. I'm curious about whether this will change in my lifetime.
Second, the casual observation of superficial data by inadequately educated observers led many to believe that the sun revolved around the earth, and that the earth was flat.
Now for the unknowns. What is the cost of the infrastructure to be able to use this (sounds like a lot of cabling to run into a field). What is the maintenance cost? How much does it improve productivity (in tasks where speed or finesse are required)? How much does it reduce time off from work due to repetitive strain injuries? How much does the reduction in injuries reduce the cost of medical care? Analyse all those costs and benefits, amortise it over 2 to 5 years, and if the numbers point to a positive, widespread adoption could occur (businesses are in it for the money, after all). What this means right now is some limited testing in order to answer those questions.
But there is the key consideration that, while there may be multiple correct ways to spell a word, there are innumerable incorrect ways to spell a word. I can happily accept favor or favour, but faver or fayver isn't going to cut it. Equally bad is the inappropriate use of words: there/they're/their, accept/except, to/too/two, etc.
From the link in the article. It runs Linux, and has an OSS SDK. You just might want to look at the first page before asking the obvious questions.
Now we need a script and cron job to check for the alternate names of multiple high-profile names every 5 days and one hour. Then someone can accuse NSI of cybersquatting and/or get the other registrars pissed off at them. And if you're worried about them blocking/retaliating against certain IPs, route it through a TOR or something. It's important to penalize the stupid actions of corporations when we can.
How sad it is that when I read that I thought, "My God, do you have any idea how hard it would be to keep the bugs separate?"
...ad money will only end up encouraging less passionate people to post whatever pops into their heads... The anti-capitalism sentiment gets really old here sometimes. I don't know about you, but I find money goes a long way toward me being able to eat. After looking around on the Internet, I've noticed that the fanatics already have plenty of ad-driven sites promoting their beliefs, rational or otherwise. What's the big deal about having Google present a way of doing this with clear authorship, no need to make your own site, and ad revenue? And that's not even considering that there might be people who can't be bothered writing credible information into Wikipedia about a sensitive topic and watching the edit wars begin over all the effort they put into it, or the fact that giving money for quality work might get those who find the financial reward more valuable than the warm fuzzy feeling of donating their skills with no real control of the outcome of their effort.Overall an impressive plane.
Um, why do we have to colonize in order to transmit? Unless we're colonizing with stupid people, why not just put a high-powered repeater station into orbit around, say, Venus? It's a shit-hole anyway, and we can control the messages from here.
Now, if the aliens were smart, they'd pick the star system based on the direction of the signals, and course-correct for likely locations for life (high oxygen spectrum) after they can get in range to test for that. They may have to send more than one projectile, but that's not overly difficult (after the first one, anyway).
So yeah, if a hostile, technologically advanced civilization was contacted, we're fucked.
Don't worry about the religious right. It's the nut-jobs you'll have to worry about. Imagine a world with lots of people tagged with similar retroviruses that are demographically selected. I read a book once about an advance in genetics where the Koran could be imprinted in people's DNA through a retrovirus. This gave those who wanted to kill all Muslims a targeted vector for doing it. So they released a virus that gave everyone a flu (or whatever, it was just an infection vector) and if you had that sequence of DNA, you got cancer.
Say you decide to make your skin (or your kids' skin) glow through a relatively simple genetic tweak. Now they're easily targeted, too. The only way you'd be overly safe is if the genetic tweaks were selecting existing human DNA ("I want my kid to have blue eyes"), custom DNA tweaks from scratch (or from generic human DNA fragments), or data appended which is encrypted with a one-time key (include an encrypted pic of your family in your DNA, retrovirus-style). Anything else opens the door for genetic profiling in the worst way.
2. Gnome was established because we couldn't accept that un-free KDE?
3. KDE fixed its problems and Gnome became Microsoft's bitch
4. ???
5. Profit!!! Note that the number of steps between 3 and 5 is somewhere between 1 and infinity. I suspect that the number is closer to infinity. While I'm aware that this is a mathematical impossibility, I stand behind my statement.
Here's what I'm looking for:
I can't wait until the day I can get one that meets those needs. I already read about half my books on my computer, and I expect that to only go up over time. Having a tool that supports that in an optimal manner would make it a lot more enjoyable.
I'm actually quite happy with our current government. With all the political parties trying desperately to turn opinion against the others, they have less time to screw over the regular citizen. The less power politicians have, and none of them have much right now, the less they can abuse.
PharmCo Exec 1: Why aren't our new smart pills getting rid of all the idiots?
PharmCo Exec 2: Maybe we shouldn't have put them in idiot-proof packaging...