Even if you think it might be used for communication, it's a type that would still require preparation. In other words, no quantum entanglement transcievers until we fedex them one half of an entangled pair.
Could be worse, but for the advent of cable and satellite broadcasting, they might have judged us on such classics as Will and Grace or the sitcom version of "Down and Out in Beverly Hills".
DNA is limited to what, practical speeds of.5c at best?
EM is c, period. Energy-wise, I think broadcast EM is much more likely to be useful, since technology on the recieving end may be enough to boost signals quite a bit. It's hard to imagine recieving-end tech that can make finding a house sized asteroid in deep space any easier... or even if it could, as easy or more easy than boosting a our signal.
We can make alot more energy than we have conveniently sized asteroids to get rid of.
This sounds true, but upon further inspection it reeks of manager-speak. Think carefully here, this is very subtle.
Somewhere in your experience, there is a coder, friend, former coworker, whatever, a very talented and brilliant one. He also has an attitude. Sarcasm, lack of respect for managers, the more stereotyped the better. Even an asshole at times, maybe thought he was smarter than you. I know at least 3 people who would fall into this category.
Did all 3 have ego problems? One definitely did, we'll get back to him. The others fall somewhere on that spectrum away from him and each other, rather distributed. When in braggart mode, it would be apparent which one fell where. But other than the kind of bullshitting that ocurrs among friends, it didn't really affect anything that I could see.
Would any of the three ever refuse to use an idea simply because they didn't think of it?
No. If it was good, they grumbled about it, compared it to other lesser ideas, maybe even briefly compared it to them exaggerating its flaws. If it was bad, but sincere, they'd at least go into why it wouldn't work.
Did they improve their skill, as the years went by?
Yes. All were talented to begin with, and if they were gurus before then, they're ubercoders now.
Did they try to do it all themselves?
No. For certain there were squabbles about who would get to do the fun stuff, versus who did the boring mundane code... but even with the good stuff, they never bit it all off, and only rarely would they bite off more than they could chew. These instances I'd chalk up more to inexperience, than I would ego.
What problems did they have at work?
The general stuff we tend to see. Some boss was afraid that people would walk in (M$ sales reps in particular) and see a redhat bumper sticker on a cubicle wall. That they'd not have the proper decorum for all the pointless meetings, or that they were arrogant with bosses. Personality problems, if anything, and as annoying as they were at times, I still can't say it was 100% them... generally the managers were just as bad, only difference being that they could punish.
Breaking their will, spirit, losing their ego... is there any way that this might have improved their work?
Hmm. Not that I can see. Sure, the few annoyances I had to put up with, those would be gone. But they'd be empty as people, nobody you'd want to talk to. Not very interesting. I can't see it having any significant improvement on their overall productivity. Maybe even hurting it long run, if they somehow did manage to brainwash enough people into acting like that, wouldn't it be demoralizing?
So, if all this is true, why did the parent poster get modded up to 5, Insightful?
It's simple really. Human beings have only developed technology the last few thousand years, but we spent half a million years on this planet before that. Tens of million years more as monkeys, even before that. Everything in us is still very primitive beneath the surface, and one of our more caveman-like aspects is that of dominance. Abusing dominance the way most do, eventually led to a system where it is used to guarantee a place in the hierarchy. The way that our economy has been designed, there is very little work for many, many people (despite what some will claim). If your boss was to be a nice guy, and just leave you alone to do your work, even those with big egos would find little room to clash, things wouldn't get inflamed, egos wouldn't swell. And if they still had enough ego even without that conflict, and claimed "hey, I'm the guy making all this software work, the whole company depends on it!" wouldn't that be sort of true?
But then, what would your immediate boss do? No longer necessary to whip you into shape, someone would notice that he wasn't needed. Pink slip. Once several managers started disappearing like that, what would their bosses do? Suddenly they do
Nothing, ijit. Even the slashdot blurb mentions the target market, which in no way intersects with "average desktop user". I bit my tongue the first 30 of these posts that I saw, but there can only be so much tolerance for stupidity...
Oh my god. I hope those guys read slashdot... would be cool to see the upgrade after the compy386 as the Orion 12cpu machine. You know, maybe it disappears from the Strongbadia fedex depot on its way to Kerplekistan...
2.5" drives are toys anyway, SATA or otherwise. I'd have been more impressed with a fibre channel card in the thing, and leaving it driveless (for the 96cpu version, for the 12cpu, making enough room for 1TB [4 drives] of 3.5" scsi would have been ideal).
Wow, a parenthetical in a parenthetical... god I hate monday mornings.
If the information that is today's edition of the New York Times were to suddenly appear 5 million light years away in the dead of space, no time travel would be involved. The feeble relativistic mechanisms we can imagine, that are the only known ways of transmitting information may not allow for that speed without time travel... but what makes you think this is that?
Asked ancient ancestor spirits alive 9000 years ago, they said cars non-existent. Relevance? None.
Yours would be slightly more relevant.;-) But I think that other forces were at work, there was a paradigm shift sometime since. I bet that parents in NYC wouldn't be able to say the same, for instance.
They'll build more roads, Seattle is a somewhat rich city, I'd think. See if it gets any better... that's the only way to know for sure. Besides, they'd just waste money on something else anyway, so it's not like this money can be saved...
Every place that says that (and Seattle isn't the only place with shitty traffic) adds lanes. Hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe only tens of millions, I can't even guess what the cost is most places.
Guess what? Still shitty traffic. Why? Well, it could be that in the meantime, the need for traffic has increased, which can be checked statistically. Turns out that is only rarely the case, and may not account for the entire increase even then. It could also be that the need was always there, but people would choose to avoid traffic, so the need was unfulfilled. I forget the exact methodology used to check this, but assume it has some holes in it. That's the excuse you want to make, if you choose not to believe me. But at least in simpler situations, simulations suggest that even when new lanes or routes (doesn't seem to matter which) are opened for multiple destinations, autonomous agents will overstrategize things with limited information, and somehow fill up the new roads with the same number of cars. Only an absurd amount of new road can nullify this effect.
If true, then what you really want, is for your state legislature to push through a bill for a 124 lane ultra-highway that connects every driveway in the northeast.
Do I believe it true? To a degree certainly. The simulations are just too simple, and still only account for a percentage of increased traffic (even if >50%). Doesn't help that everyone drives a boxy 30ft long SUV like a maniac, either. Don't know if I just like the counter-intuitive appeal of it or what, but for me it has a ring of truth to it.
That's why it will never happen. No one will allow withholding to go away... a better way to settle it to congress and the puppetmasters, is to figure $5000 a month spending for individuals, and $9000 a month spending for families, and withhold 20% of that. Then they might go for it.
Adding lanes only adds traffic, proved mathematically. If you want less traffic, you have to design cities in such a way that people can live nearer to work and the grocery store. But then the automobile industry would suffer, and we can't have that. When this becomes unsustainable, as it must, we won't revert back to the small towns that our great-grandfathers built and loved to work in, though. It will be drab government approved dormitory style apartments.
Most of our problems today have simple answers, ones that if people cared to think about them at all, would be obvious. But there is alot of money to be made, creating those problems in the first place...
Hey dumbass. Have a sense of humor, or better yet, if you insist on telling me I'm sold lies, then at least recognize the gourmet lie that you're preaching about. Income tax itself wasn't even necessary before what was it, 1913? So what happened? Well, the rich man got involved. Only, he was alot richer than you would have thought, even back then. Worth hundreds of billions, maybe more. Today, we have a debt economy where even your "makes $200,000 a year" rich person is a debt slave.
Of course not. You can also give tax breaks to rich people, and it helps you and I because they have more money to spend on hiring us to scrub their mansion floors with toothbrushes!
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't aware that laptops had PCI slots...
Was only using that as an example, if it's more like .1-.3c... well, that only serves to make my point even better.
I've heard of some M/AM engine concepts that could manage large fractions of c like that.
Even if you think it might be used for communication, it's a type that would still require preparation. In other words, no quantum entanglement transcievers until we fedex them one half of an entangled pair.
Could be worse, but for the advent of cable and satellite broadcasting, they might have judged us on such classics as Will and Grace or the sitcom version of "Down and Out in Beverly Hills".
DNA is limited to what, practical speeds of .5c at best?
EM is c, period. Energy-wise, I think broadcast EM is much more likely to be useful, since technology on the recieving end may be enough to boost signals quite a bit. It's hard to imagine recieving-end tech that can make finding a house sized asteroid in deep space any easier... or even if it could, as easy or more easy than boosting a our signal.
We can make alot more energy than we have conveniently sized asteroids to get rid of.
Shouldn't that be *despite* entropy?
This sounds true, but upon further inspection it reeks of manager-speak. Think carefully here, this is very subtle.
Somewhere in your experience, there is a coder, friend, former coworker, whatever, a very talented and brilliant one. He also has an attitude. Sarcasm, lack of respect for managers, the more stereotyped the better. Even an asshole at times, maybe thought he was smarter than you. I know at least 3 people who would fall into this category.
Did all 3 have ego problems? One definitely did, we'll get back to him. The others fall somewhere on that spectrum away from him and each other, rather distributed. When in braggart mode, it would be apparent which one fell where. But other than the kind of bullshitting that ocurrs among friends, it didn't really affect anything that I could see.
Would any of the three ever refuse to use an idea simply because they didn't think of it?
No. If it was good, they grumbled about it, compared it to other lesser ideas, maybe even briefly compared it to them exaggerating its flaws. If it was bad, but sincere, they'd at least go into why it wouldn't work.
Did they improve their skill, as the years went by?
Yes. All were talented to begin with, and if they were gurus before then, they're ubercoders now.
Did they try to do it all themselves?
No. For certain there were squabbles about who would get to do the fun stuff, versus who did the boring mundane code... but even with the good stuff, they never bit it all off, and only rarely would they bite off more than they could chew. These instances I'd chalk up more to inexperience, than I would ego.
What problems did they have at work?
The general stuff we tend to see. Some boss was afraid that people would walk in (M$ sales reps in particular) and see a redhat bumper sticker on a cubicle wall. That they'd not have the proper decorum for all the pointless meetings, or that they were arrogant with bosses. Personality problems, if anything, and as annoying as they were at times, I still can't say it was 100% them... generally the managers were just as bad, only difference being that they could punish.
Breaking their will, spirit, losing their ego... is there any way that this might have improved their work?
Hmm. Not that I can see. Sure, the few annoyances I had to put up with, those would be gone. But they'd be empty as people, nobody you'd want to talk to. Not very interesting. I can't see it having any significant improvement on their overall productivity. Maybe even hurting it long run, if they somehow did manage to brainwash enough people into acting like that, wouldn't it be demoralizing?
So, if all this is true, why did the parent poster get modded up to 5, Insightful?
It's simple really. Human beings have only developed technology the last few thousand years, but we spent half a million years on this planet before that. Tens of million years more as monkeys, even before that. Everything in us is still very primitive beneath the surface, and one of our more caveman-like aspects is that of dominance. Abusing dominance the way most do, eventually led to a system where it is used to guarantee a place in the hierarchy. The way that our economy has been designed, there is very little work for many, many people (despite what some will claim). If your boss was to be a nice guy, and just leave you alone to do your work, even those with big egos would find little room to clash, things wouldn't get inflamed, egos wouldn't swell. And if they still had enough ego even without that conflict, and claimed "hey, I'm the guy making all this software work, the whole company depends on it!" wouldn't that be sort of true?
But then, what would your immediate boss do? No longer necessary to whip you into shape, someone would notice that he wasn't needed. Pink slip. Once several managers started disappearing like that, what would their bosses do? Suddenly they do
Nothing, ijit. Even the slashdot blurb mentions the target market, which in no way intersects with "average desktop user". I bit my tongue the first 30 of these posts that I saw, but there can only be so much tolerance for stupidity...
Yes, and $300,000 in consulting fees and labor to cluster them properly. This is out of the box and running, so to speak.
Oh my god. I hope those guys read slashdot... would be cool to see the upgrade after the compy386 as the Orion 12cpu machine. You know, maybe it disappears from the Strongbadia fedex depot on its way to Kerplekistan...
Better yet, why not something hardcore like myrinet? Ethernet is the poor man's choice of a cluster fabric...
2.5" drives are toys anyway, SATA or otherwise. I'd have been more impressed with a fibre channel card in the thing, and leaving it driveless (for the 96cpu version, for the 12cpu, making enough room for 1TB [4 drives] of 3.5" scsi would have been ideal).
Wow, a parenthetical in a parenthetical... god I hate monday mornings.
It's actually quite easy to understand. There is only one photon, so the information doesn't have to move at all.
Duh.
If the information that is today's edition of the New York Times were to suddenly appear 5 million light years away in the dead of space, no time travel would be involved. The feeble relativistic mechanisms we can imagine, that are the only known ways of transmitting information may not allow for that speed without time travel... but what makes you think this is that?
My rebuttal:
;-) But I think that other forces were at work, there was a paradigm shift sometime since. I bet that parents in NYC wouldn't be able to say the same, for instance.
Asked ancient ancestor spirits alive 9000 years ago, they said cars non-existent. Relevance? None.
Yours would be slightly more relevant.
They'll build more roads, Seattle is a somewhat rich city, I'd think. See if it gets any better... that's the only way to know for sure. Besides, they'd just waste money on something else anyway, so it's not like this money can be saved...
Every place that says that (and Seattle isn't the only place with shitty traffic) adds lanes. Hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe only tens of millions, I can't even guess what the cost is most places.
Guess what? Still shitty traffic. Why? Well, it could be that in the meantime, the need for traffic has increased, which can be checked statistically. Turns out that is only rarely the case, and may not account for the entire increase even then. It could also be that the need was always there, but people would choose to avoid traffic, so the need was unfulfilled. I forget the exact methodology used to check this, but assume it has some holes in it. That's the excuse you want to make, if you choose not to believe me. But at least in simpler situations, simulations suggest that even when new lanes or routes (doesn't seem to matter which) are opened for multiple destinations, autonomous agents will overstrategize things with limited information, and somehow fill up the new roads with the same number of cars. Only an absurd amount of new road can nullify this effect.
If true, then what you really want, is for your state legislature to push through a bill for a 124 lane ultra-highway that connects every driveway in the northeast.
Do I believe it true? To a degree certainly. The simulations are just too simple, and still only account for a percentage of increased traffic (even if >50%). Doesn't help that everyone drives a boxy 30ft long SUV like a maniac, either. Don't know if I just like the counter-intuitive appeal of it or what, but for me it has a ring of truth to it.
That's why it will never happen. No one will allow withholding to go away... a better way to settle it to congress and the puppetmasters, is to figure $5000 a month spending for individuals, and $9000 a month spending for families, and withhold 20% of that. Then they might go for it.
Duh.
Read this. It will explain alot.
Nice use of fallacy. Why is it so important to you that an income tax exist?
Adding lanes only adds traffic, proved mathematically. If you want less traffic, you have to design cities in such a way that people can live nearer to work and the grocery store. But then the automobile industry would suffer, and we can't have that. When this becomes unsustainable, as it must, we won't revert back to the small towns that our great-grandfathers built and loved to work in, though. It will be drab government approved dormitory style apartments.
Most of our problems today have simple answers, ones that if people cared to think about them at all, would be obvious. But there is alot of money to be made, creating those problems in the first place...
Hey dumbass. Have a sense of humor, or better yet, if you insist on telling me I'm sold lies, then at least recognize the gourmet lie that you're preaching about. Income tax itself wasn't even necessary before what was it, 1913? So what happened? Well, the rich man got involved. Only, he was alot richer than you would have thought, even back then. Worth hundreds of billions, maybe more. Today, we have a debt economy where even your "makes $200,000 a year" rich person is a debt slave.
Look up fractional reserve banking sometime.
Of course not. You can also give tax breaks to rich people, and it helps you and I because they have more money to spend on hiring us to scrub their mansion floors with toothbrushes!
No it wouldn't. I plan on testing it on some kidnapped innocents first. So it would make me the 4th or 5th Human Giraffe. Duh.
I've always wanted 20 or 30 more vertebrae. And finally, some quasi-femurs and quasi-patellas for my new 2-jointed legs.
Hmmm. Where to attach the second set of arms?
That would still be $800 worth of storage. I've only known a few that hardcore...