...so a lightweight rover will have a difficult job resisting drilling forces and remaining stable
I assume here they are referring to either: 1) The problem of the drill staying still and the rover rotating around it. 2) Downward force on the drill lifting the rover up.
With conventional earth-bound drilling these problem are solved in the case of 1: by using multiple counter-rotating bits and in the case of 2: Auger bits, which both remove material and bite into the material at the bottom of the hole with a screw, pulling themselves downward without requiring downward pressure on the drill.
I would certainly think that counter-rotating heads would work on the moon, though use of an auger might depend on the material properties of moon rock.
every sector has an industry-specific software that only runs on Windows. Examples from my customers include:
-Collision Repair Estimating Software
-Accountant Software
-Manufacturer's Representative Software
-Dental Practice Software
-Church Administrative Software
Low development cost with Mac RAD tools + slick turnkey solutions for niche markets promoted at trade shows = high profit margins.
As a professional developer specializing in Mac desktop applications I can tell you that those Windows application niche markets are enticing for invasion. Nobody could build a billion dollar industry on any one of them, but they can be quite lucrative for small teams of developers with low overhead costs. The Mac Cocoa appkit and RAD tools such as core data, bindings and interface builder make it possible for one or a few programmers with feasible effort to create products vastly superior to ancient entrenched windows applications. There is a cost/benefit tipping point where re-implementing entrenched Windows applications on OS X becomes profitable. Advances in OS X dev tools and mac market share have put us there.
What such developers need is a liaison:You. They need a conduit to customers to learn what are the functional requirements and to get feedback during development. They need a place to deploy in the course of development, an agreement and an intermediary to support and manage that. Really, if you and your clients are dissatisfied with existing entrenched windows applications in those markets try to hook up with some qualified Mac programmers and try something small on a trial basis with extremely low startup costs. See if you can get on the path to rapid incremental sales growth and make a few hundred extra K for yourself.
"Further is the problem with using 2000 as the reference point. In fact, it is perfectly valid to use 2000 as a reference point; it's just as valid as using 1997 or any other time. There is no magical time in terms of statistical length or any point in time that is any more valid than any other. You can argue that the submitter is "cherry picking" his own data. It's laughable to say there is a "right" base year."
The choice of reference points is not arbitrary. Changes within the interval between a recent pair of recent reference points indicate a recent trend, whereas changes within an interval between an older pair of reference points indicate an older trend.
Generally, if your purpose is to predict changes in the future, is it best to choose a recent pair of reference points? Well sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. If the historical trend has changed recently, then positioning the first reference point at the start of the new trend and the second reference point at time present is best for identifying the current trend. But if the historical trend has never changed, then positioning the first reference point at the earliest time in history and the second reference point at time present is best for identifying the current trend because it provides the most data points and therefore the most accurate estimate of average rate of change.
So why might the 2000 reference point be non-arbitrary? Because, on the graph of greenhouse gas emmisions (y axis) at year (x axis), the year 2000 is an inflection point at which the rates of increase in emmissions changed; U.S. emmisions stopped increasing and begain decreasing, European emmisions stopped decreasing and begain increasing. In predicting the future we choose to extrapolate from the current trend, not that past trend. Therefore we set the oldest of our two reference points defining the current trend interval at the year 2000.
A legitimate criticism of the 2000 inflection point might be that it is not a statistically signficant departure from the previous trend. And if extrapolation always predicts the future then my now one-year-old son will be eighteen feet tall in the year 2055. So there are some things to think about here and question.
In conclusion, there is a reasonable and debatable, basis for choosing the year 2000 reference point and therefore the accusation that the choice of that reference point amounts to propaganda and "Cherry picking" is incorrect.
This behavior is consistent with monopolistic thinking: we own the market, so let's raise the barrier to entry and/or companion-software diversity by making our product harder to use. The thing is, you'd best be sure your monopoly is rock solid before attempting such a move, lest it bite you in the ass when your users find their workflow has a new kink in it.
In terms for familiar to the readership: "The more you tighten your grip, Autodesk, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses
Well my experience in college was that many, though not all, liberal arts majors purposefully avoided technical subjects; they were incapable of functioning in that domain. It was like trying to teach a cat to play chess. The university policy though was that they should be educated on those subjects. The resulting compromise between the impossible and the ideal was that the university offered special dumbed-down courses on technical subjects. They taught physics without math. A waste of time for all involved.
It is the educators who need to get a clue here: stop trying to teach a subjects to the selection of students who can not learn it. Poets don't need to know computer programming, most of them are incapable of learning it, so stop wasting everyones time and the taxpayers money by insisting that they learn. A society where everyone is technical expert is an impossible fantasy. Identifying the group of people least willing and able to learn a subject and choosing to teach them that is the least-efficient plan. Naturally, that would be government funded.
In some locations in the U.S., waste vegetable oil (WVO), like the kind left-over from frying the fries, is no longer freely available. Now, Instead of restaurants paying for disposal of WVO, some are paid for it.
Which raises the question of what will happen if the diesel-from-sewage thing catches on. Will we be paid for generating sewage? Could this be a profession?
Well Rich is sure to make the most of the free publicity; the stupidty demonstrated by Apple lawyers is the kind of material on which he thrives. Apple is dealing with someone who has built his career on the art of savage ridicule. If you want to be mercilessly mocked on the World Wide Web then have a laywer send a letter to Lowtax.
So Apple's clownboat lawyers have just spawned a wave of Anti-Apple publicity. What might have been confined to SomethingAwful has now propagated to Gizmodo and Slashdot and will spread from there. And the lawyers have not only spread bad publicity about Apple, they are generating more of it themselves: Not only has Apple screwed up with heat sink grease, Apple has screwed up AND their lawyers are trying to cover it up. Apple would benefit from keeping a tighter reign on its lawyers; because they see only the legal aspects of any issue, they are prone to do great harm to Apple's public image in pursuit of insignificant legal points.
The problem is that Something Awful aren't hosting the picture, it is hosted by someone else elsewhere. Something Awful only have a link to the picture in a thread not the actual picture itself.
It's not legal? It's not ethical? It's not honest? It doesn't matter. Their business model REQUIRES them act in this way.
Yes, in the same way that my desire for pizza REQUIRES that I kill you and take your pizza.
In additions to the anti-virus business, here are other professions which REQUIRE unethical and illegal behaviour:
- Medical doctors are REQUIRED to spread cancer, AIDS and hepatities.
- Firefighters are REQUIRED to be arsonists.
- Auto mechanics are REQUIRED to cause broken fuel pumps, flat tires, dead car batteries and leaking radiators.
If it's properly demilitarized, he shouldn't have any problem...the process involves removing any fuel/propellant and then doing something to the outside that permanently fucks it's flight characteristics.
For real examples of how to permanently fuck flight characteristics look here.
Could the natural resistance of soil bacteria to antibiotics result from the natural presence of antibiotics in soil?
Penicillin, the quintessential antibiotic, is derived from mold. Suppose that the molds and bacteria are battling it out in the soil, and the molds attack the bacteria with antibiotics, so then the bacteria evolve resistance to those antibiotics.
It is intereresting that two oligopolized industies, the local telecoms and the recording industry, are currently deploying the indentical propagandist tactict; Both are conflacting the issues of tiered prices with higher prices.
In their dispute with Apple over the price of an iTune, recording companies justify a proposal to BOTH tier prices AND to raise prices for some tunes above $0.99 by ONLY arguing the mertis of tiered pricing. The merits of tiered pricing aside, iff instead they correctly identified their proposal as a plan to BOTH tier AND raise prices, then they would not be arguing deceptively. If record company executives proposed keeping the weighted average cost per tune at $0.99, charging less than that amount for some tracks and more for others, then they could legitimatley advocate for that scheme on the merits of tiered pricing because that proposal would be only about tiered pricing. But the issue is in not really tiering at all, either among advocates in the record industry or opponents on./; As strong is the opposition here on./ to tiered pricing, that would instantly switch to approval of an equal magnitude if recording companies advocated for a tiered pricing scheme in which $0.99 was the maximum cost, with some tunes available at lower prices.
So now with the telecoms, we see copycat propaganda; proposing BOTH tiering prices AND raising prices, and defending that conjunction of acts on the merits of tiered pricing alone. What appears to be a merititious argument about tiered pricing is deviously conflated with a scheme to raise prices. Neither Google, nor all the slashdotters who have argued here against tiered pricing really oppose tiered pricing per se. Instead, they oppose the higher prices which telecoms seek to introduce in conjunction with tiered pricing. If Bellsouth had proposed paying Google money instead of chargeing them a fee, this would also have been tiering. Google, rationally, would be in favor of receiving payment from Bellsouth.
The convergent rhetorical tactics of separate industries owes to their shared oligoplostic nature. Normally the penalty to a seller for raising prices is reduced sales. This is, like, why I have been so unsuccessful at selling my AA battery for a $1,000,000.0. The quantity of AA batteries demanded at that price seems to be 0. If I want to make any money, I had better lower the price. But for oligopolies, this pattern of an inverse relation between the price and the quantity demanded does not apply; They can raise prices without reducing sales, or at least to a greater degree than they could in a more competitive market. But there is a downside for ologipolsits when they raise prices: That downside is not reduced profits, but public backlash and political and legal action against them. With propaganda, oligopolists compete against consumers in the political realm to raise prices. The shared propagandist tactic of conflating price tiering with price raising is no coincidence; all oligopolists have to hoodwink the public somehow and what works for one works for another. In fact, it does seem to be working: some of the public goes along because they approve of tiered pricing while most opponents have fallen for the trick and argue against tiered pricing instead of correctly identifying their opposition to price raising.
Of course, In competitive markets, it rarely is worthwile to propagandizie on behalf of higher pricing, because even if you successfully supress political opposition with propaganda, you ultimatly loose sales and profits with higher pricing. This is why, when you go to the grocery store and notice that the price of filet mignon has gone up $0.20, the increased price is not accompanied by a representative of the beef industry explaining the market efficiencies of tiered pricing.
As a consumer, both of internet service and music, more competition among suppliers would benefit me, so I advocate for that. With internet service, acheiving more competition i
The real test of whether cold fusion is for real is not scientific. It is economic. When someone opens a cold fusion power plant which sells more power than it consumes, you'll know it's the real deal.
The lack of demand is unsurprising. 1. Before you can use the plugin you have to buy MS Visual Studio, which costs $arm+leg. 2. In competition is an abundance good Python IDEs for Windows, both free and the pay-for-it kind.
Now, this is somewhat OT, but if they offered a Python plugin for Xcode on OS X, I would pay lots of real money for that. And Xcode is free, so the only cost to the user would be the cost of plugin. There is still no Python IDE on OS X which combines the following features. 1. Integration with Interface Builder. 2. A debugger. 3. Aqua interface.
Those seem like basic requirements for a professional Python development IDE on OS X but no such thing exists. The best available gives you two out of the three; Wing is nice, but runs in and Xterm on OS X with non-native widgets; dog-slow and but-ugly user interface. There is a nice optional package to support Python in Xcode, really cool, except it has no debugger.
I use Objective C on OS X, it's ok, but would switch to Python in an instant if I had a Python IDE on OS X as good as is Xcode for Objective C.
Slashdot Mirror
In followup to my own post because I did not think of it earlier:
with respect to 2) Downward force on the drill lifting the rover up:
Control of the drill feed rate and pressure would also take care of that; If the rover is lifting, reduce force and feedrate of the drill.
I assume here they are referring to either: 1) The problem of the drill staying still and the rover rotating around it. 2) Downward force on the drill lifting the rover up.
With conventional earth-bound drilling these problem are solved in the case of 1: by using multiple counter-rotating bits and in the case of 2: Auger bits, which both remove material and bite into the material at the bottom of the hole with a screw, pulling themselves downward without requiring downward pressure on the drill.
I would certainly think that counter-rotating heads would work on the moon, though use of an auger might depend on the material properties of moon rock.
Low development cost with Mac RAD tools + slick turnkey solutions for niche markets promoted at trade shows = high profit margins.
As a professional developer specializing in Mac desktop applications I can tell you that those Windows application niche markets are enticing for invasion. Nobody could build a billion dollar industry on any one of them, but they can be quite lucrative for small teams of developers with low overhead costs. The Mac Cocoa appkit and RAD tools such as core data, bindings and interface builder make it possible for one or a few programmers with feasible effort to create products vastly superior to ancient entrenched windows applications. There is a cost/benefit tipping point where re-implementing entrenched Windows applications on OS X becomes profitable. Advances in OS X dev tools and mac market share have put us there.
What such developers need is a liaison:You. They need a conduit to customers to learn what are the functional requirements and to get feedback during development. They need a place to deploy in the course of development, an agreement and an intermediary to support and manage that. Really, if you and your clients are dissatisfied with existing entrenched windows applications in those markets try to hook up with some qualified Mac programmers and try something small on a trial basis with extremely low startup costs. See if you can get on the path to rapid incremental sales growth and make a few hundred extra K for yourself.
The choice of reference points is not arbitrary. Changes within the interval between a recent pair of recent reference points indicate a recent trend, whereas changes within an interval between an older pair of reference points indicate an older trend.
Generally, if your purpose is to predict changes in the future, is it best to choose a recent pair of reference points? Well sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. If the historical trend has changed recently, then positioning the first reference point at the start of the new trend and the second reference point at time present is best for identifying the current trend. But if the historical trend has never changed, then positioning the first reference point at the earliest time in history and the second reference point at time present is best for identifying the current trend because it provides the most data points and therefore the most accurate estimate of average rate of change.
So why might the 2000 reference point be non-arbitrary? Because, on the graph of greenhouse gas emmisions (y axis) at year (x axis), the year 2000 is an inflection point at which the rates of increase in emmissions changed; U.S. emmisions stopped increasing and begain decreasing, European emmisions stopped decreasing and begain increasing. In predicting the future we choose to extrapolate from the current trend, not that past trend. Therefore we set the oldest of our two reference points defining the current trend interval at the year 2000.
A legitimate criticism of the 2000 inflection point might be that it is not a statistically signficant departure from the previous trend. And if extrapolation always predicts the future then my now one-year-old son will be eighteen feet tall in the year 2055. So there are some things to think about here and question.
In conclusion, there is a reasonable and debatable, basis for choosing the year 2000 reference point and therefore the accusation that the choice of that reference point amounts to propaganda and "Cherry picking" is incorrect.
Not according to this list of his publictions.
This behavior is consistent with monopolistic thinking: we own the market, so let's raise the barrier to entry and/or companion-software diversity by making our product harder to use. The thing is, you'd best be sure your monopoly is rock solid before attempting such a move, lest it bite you in the ass when your users find their workflow has a new kink in it.
In terms for familiar to the readership: "The more you tighten your grip, Autodesk, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."
Yes, but so unfortunate that someone spoiled a good moment by mentioning all those things in the discussion.
Occasional exposure to second-hand smoke is harmless. Link.
Well that's an improvement, at least they are not still shooting students.
For those who want to bypass the dysfunctional reporting of the MSM, you can get the full report in PDF directly from NAS.
Also available from that link: The press release, audio of the press briefing, an abbreviated report and opening statement.
Stephen McIntyre offers interesting commentary on the report here.
Researchers at City University of NY are working on an NSF-funded project to infuse technology into Liberal Arts courses
Well my experience in college was that many, though not all, liberal arts majors purposefully avoided technical subjects; they were incapable of functioning in that domain. It was like trying to teach a cat to play chess. The university policy though was that they should be educated on those subjects. The resulting compromise between the impossible and the ideal was that the university offered special dumbed-down courses on technical subjects. They taught physics without math. A waste of time for all involved.
It is the educators who need to get a clue here: stop trying to teach a subjects to the selection of students who can not learn it. Poets don't need to know computer programming, most of them are incapable of learning it, so stop wasting everyones time and the taxpayers money by insisting that they learn. A society where everyone is technical expert is an impossible fantasy. Identifying the group of people least willing and able to learn a subject and choosing to teach them that is the least-efficient plan. Naturally, that would be government funded.
In some locations in the U.S., waste vegetable oil (WVO), like the kind left-over from frying the fries, is no longer freely available. Now, Instead of restaurants paying for disposal of WVO, some are paid for it.
Which raises the question of what will happen if the diesel-from-sewage thing catches on. Will we be paid for generating sewage? Could this be a profession?
Well Rich is sure to make the most of the free publicity; the stupidty demonstrated by Apple lawyers is the kind of material on which he thrives. Apple is dealing with someone who has built his career on the art of savage ridicule. If you want to be mercilessly mocked on the World Wide Web then have a laywer send a letter to Lowtax.
So Apple's clownboat lawyers have just spawned a wave of Anti-Apple publicity. What might have been confined to SomethingAwful has now propagated to Gizmodo and Slashdot and will spread from there. And the lawyers have not only spread bad publicity about Apple, they are generating more of it themselves: Not only has Apple screwed up with heat sink grease, Apple has screwed up AND their lawyers are trying to cover it up. Apple would benefit from keeping a tighter reign on its lawyers; because they see only the legal aspects of any issue, they are prone to do great harm to Apple's public image in pursuit of insignificant legal points.
So does Slashdot.
Yes, in the same way that my desire for pizza REQUIRES that I kill you and take your pizza.
In additions to the anti-virus business, here are other professions which REQUIRE unethical and illegal behaviour:
- Medical doctors are REQUIRED to spread cancer, AIDS and hepatities.
- Firefighters are REQUIRED to be arsonists.
- Auto mechanics are REQUIRED to cause broken fuel pumps, flat tires, dead car batteries and leaking radiators.
For real examples of how to permanently fuck flight characteristics look here.
I am 90% sure that you are being sarcastic.
Could the natural resistance of soil bacteria to antibiotics result from the natural presence of antibiotics in soil?
Penicillin, the quintessential antibiotic, is derived from mold. Suppose that the molds and bacteria are battling it out in the soil, and the molds attack the bacteria with antibiotics, so then the bacteria evolve resistance to those antibiotics.
It is intereresting that two oligopolized industies, the local telecoms and the recording industry, are currently deploying the indentical propagandist tactict; Both are conflacting the issues of tiered prices with higher prices.
./; As strong is the opposition here on ./ to tiered pricing, that would instantly switch to approval of an equal magnitude if recording companies advocated for a tiered pricing scheme in which $0.99 was the maximum cost, with some tunes available at lower prices.
In their dispute with Apple over the price of an iTune, recording companies justify a proposal to BOTH tier prices AND to raise prices for some tunes above $0.99 by ONLY arguing the mertis of tiered pricing. The merits of tiered pricing aside, iff instead they correctly identified their proposal as a plan to BOTH tier AND raise prices, then they would not be arguing deceptively. If record company executives proposed keeping the weighted average cost per tune at $0.99, charging less than that amount for some tracks and more for others, then they could legitimatley advocate for that scheme on the merits of tiered pricing because that proposal would be only about tiered pricing. But the issue is in not really tiering at all, either among advocates in the record industry or opponents on
So now with the telecoms, we see copycat propaganda; proposing BOTH tiering prices AND raising prices, and defending that conjunction of acts on the merits of tiered pricing alone. What appears to be a merititious argument about tiered pricing is deviously conflated with a scheme to raise prices. Neither Google, nor all the slashdotters who have argued here against tiered pricing really oppose tiered pricing per se. Instead, they oppose the higher prices which telecoms seek to introduce in conjunction with tiered pricing. If Bellsouth had proposed paying Google money instead of chargeing them a fee, this would also have been tiering. Google, rationally, would be in favor of receiving payment from Bellsouth.
The convergent rhetorical tactics of separate industries owes to their shared oligoplostic nature. Normally the penalty to a seller for raising prices is reduced sales. This is, like, why I have been so unsuccessful at selling my AA battery for a $1,000,000.0. The quantity of AA batteries demanded at that price seems to be 0. If I want to make any money, I had better lower the price. But for oligopolies, this pattern of an inverse relation between the price and the quantity demanded does not apply; They can raise prices without reducing sales, or at least to a greater degree than they could in a more competitive market. But there is a downside for ologipolsits when they raise prices: That downside is not reduced profits, but public backlash and political and legal action against them. With propaganda, oligopolists compete against consumers in the political realm to raise prices. The shared propagandist tactic of conflating price tiering with price raising is no coincidence; all oligopolists have to hoodwink the public somehow and what works for one works for another. In fact, it does seem to be working: some of the public goes along because they approve of tiered pricing while most opponents have fallen for the trick and argue against tiered pricing instead of correctly identifying their opposition to price raising.
Of course, In competitive markets, it rarely is worthwile to propagandizie on behalf of higher pricing, because even if you successfully supress political opposition with propaganda, you ultimatly loose sales and profits with higher pricing. This is why, when you go to the grocery store and notice that the price of filet mignon has gone up $0.20, the increased price is not accompanied by a representative of the beef industry explaining the market efficiencies of tiered pricing.
As a consumer, both of internet service and music, more competition among suppliers would benefit me, so I advocate for that. With internet service, acheiving more competition i
The real test of whether cold fusion is for real is not scientific. It is economic. When someone opens a cold fusion power plant which sells more power than it consumes, you'll know it's the real deal.
" I've seen some *really* whacky ideas based on science fiction rather than science fact move through the DOD"
Sounds like a plausible claim. After all, the CIA spent $20,000,000.00 on psychic spying.
> Have you ever tried PyObjC?
Yes. That's WHY I want a good Python IDE for OS X.
> XCode already has language files for python
I know, I've tried it, it's excellenct, but has no python debugger!
> PyObjC exposes the entire Cocoa/Carbon libs via an Objective C bridge.
Yup, that's what it does. And if I had a good OS X Python IDE, that's how I'd being calling Cocoa and Carbon libs, from Python.
The lack of demand is unsurprising.
1. Before you can use the plugin you have to buy MS Visual Studio, which costs $arm+leg.
2. In competition is an abundance good Python IDEs for Windows, both free and the pay-for-it kind.
Now, this is somewhat OT, but if they offered a Python plugin for Xcode on OS X, I would pay lots of real money for that. And Xcode is free, so the only cost to the user would be the cost of plugin. There is still no Python IDE on OS X which combines the following features.
1. Integration with Interface Builder.
2. A debugger.
3. Aqua interface.
Those seem like basic requirements for a professional Python development IDE on OS X but no such thing exists. The best available gives you two out of the three; Wing is nice, but runs in and Xterm on OS X with non-native widgets; dog-slow and but-ugly user interface. There is a nice optional package to support Python in Xcode, really cool, except it has no debugger.
I use Objective C on OS X, it's ok, but would switch to Python in an instant if I had a Python IDE on OS X as good as is Xcode for Objective C.
January 5 was chosen becuase it is National Bird Day. What better day to engage in fowl play?
ha ha... ha... (ducks)...