Did you not read gp's comment? His point was that prison should be used not for vengeance but to reduce crime, precisely what you want. He doesn't want to be nice to prisoners, but not mean either. he simply wants to fix them.
Check out the article "The velvet glove" in the economist a few weeks ago - turns out it's not the severity of a punishment that matters but rather the swiftness, and that coupled with a soft approach significantly reduced crime in a town in North Carolina.
Unfortunately, GPS receivers don't work very well indoors... Or in a valley... Or under tree cover... Or in many other places where you'd still need it to work for this scheme. No signal has to equal bad signal, because otherwise it's trivial to subvert.
I think the idea of a self destructing key is a good one, though. Maybe two sticks, both containing keys, both of which self destruct if separated by more than 10 m. Or maybe a usb key and something distinctly not-computer-related (fountain pen?), so that you can give both to the cops with assurances that they'll end up in separate locations.
I've always wanted to make a bike lock like that - a receiver and lock tuned to a transmitter in my wallet that automatically locks if there is no signal or the distance to transmitter is too great. I'm afraid to build it, however, because I'll likely end up superman-ing over my handlebars the first time the battery fails (locked has to be the default state or it's useless).
Same problem with this USB stick - the first time you forget and stick it into your friend's computer to show him "cool stuff", whoops there goes your key. You have to weigh the cost of your data being compromised by law enforcement vs it being lost by mistake.
Nope. For every hole moving through the semiconductor from positive to negative terminal, there's an electron that leaves the positive terminal and a corresponding one that arrives at the negative. You have electron-hole pair creation at the positive terminal and annihilation (through recombination) at the negative, but the holes pass through the semiconductor and the electrons through the rest of the circuit.
They don't. They call them Universities, and "Professor" means "Researcher" just as much as it means "Teacher". Students fund the teaching and grants fund the research, so a professor should be engaged in both.
You're fairly close, but the cause is not the supply impedance. Semiconductors will indeed run linearly rail to rail (in a linearized circuit, as most amps are) but tubes are used with much less linearization than silicon and thus a tube amp will start to distort at a significant distance from rail voltage. This means that tube clipping is more rounded compared to the abrupt clipping of transistors - running out of steam, as you say. Rounding off the clipping leads to even order harmonics instead of odd order, and these sound more pleasant because the human voice contains predominantly even harmonics.
Check out a plot of tube current versus grid voltage (for constant plate/supply voltage) if you want more details. You'll see that on the low end (negative grid voltage) the current rolls off as it approaches zero: soft rather than abrupt clipping. There is no roll-off on the high end (zero grid voltage) but as soon as the grid goes positive it begins to conduct, a change in input impedance dependent on input voltage which also leads to distortion and rounding off (if your source has a nonzero output impedance and/or there is a nonzero grid resistor, of course).
Sure - this is how most people get 220V in the US and 380V in Europe. Hook up two power supplies in series and you get a greater voltage, hook it up in parallel and you get more current. There are some implementation details having to do with phase and mismatch, but it is both possible and common.
If you step out on to the crosswalk distractedly, it's my responsibility as a driver to stop. I've never had a problem doing this. And if I'm so close that I can't stop for the crosswalk, that means I'll be through it before the pedestrian has walked out past the parked cars. It's my duty as a driver to slow down near crosswalks and intersections, in case I need to yield.
Where I as a driver shouldn't have to be on high alert is in the middle of the road with no crosswalk in sight (excluding school zones, residential streets filled with kids, etc...). Pedestrians have no business jaywalking right in front of cars, even absentmindedly. I can't stop if I'm driving the speed limit and you step out right in front of me where I couldn't have expected you. I assume this was the physics problem gp was referring to.
So, if you're in the crosswalk, cross with every assurance that I'll make sure I stop in time. If you jaywalk, however, make sure you do it behind me or I'll unavoidably run you over. It's a matter of respecting existing agreements.
Used to be whomever felt like it with enough clout to get you to trust their notes, until the government intervened again and gave themselves the exclusive right to print notes. So a market based on money is possible without that kind of government intervention.
SMS uses space in the signal that was mostly unused. It is a free bonus that the carriers charge for because they can. Not text messaging is the same as text messaging.
Fixed that for you. SMS uses empty slots on one of the GSM control channels. The channel is reserved anyway, so like you say there is no cost to the network to support messages. Bad things happen, however, when so many messages start flying that they start to interfere with the sparse control messages, which is definitely what we would see happen if SMS was unrestricted (ie, free).
Prison about rehabilitation? Hahahahahaa!!!! Not hardly. Prison (not to be confused with Jail, which is different) is about keeping the baddies away from the rest of society so we can be safe.
If it's not about rehabilitation, why let them out at all? If they're that bad that they need to be removed from society, and if the prison does not rehabilitate them in any way, then aren't they just as dangerous when they leave as when they arrived?
Locking people in order to protect society without trying to fix those locked up is pointless.
"So you put looking cool and convenience above taking care of your surrounding environment? "
Yes.
I consider that a declaration of war.
The environment is a common resource, and you damaging it for a net quality of life gain means a net loss for me. So either we can have the government step in and force us to play nice, or we can tell the government to get out of our lives and then I'll take it into my own hands by slashing your tires.
Your life is yours to do with as you please only in as far as what you do doesn't affect others. Therefore, this does not apply to common resources, i.e. the air we breathe. Screw with my air and I'll ask the government to stop you, seeing as the government won't let me stop you myself.
As the government has taken away an individual's right to use force against those who may harm him, preventing mutual harm has become the government's job. Seen in this way, environmental controls are perfectly reasonable.
I believe that's already adjusted for inflation - the stock market as a whole grows around 7% a year without correcting for inflation. And I'm lucky enough to live in a country with no capital gains tax.
If you die at 29, having a good investment is the least of your worries. Is going to college and starting on a career then still a good investment? Would you rather, for instance, have gone trekking around the world, supporting yourself by doing odd jobs and having experienced more than most by the time you die?
I was under the conception that grounding was for security and security only, and as such has no effect on the hum your stereo is experiencing.
Nope. Depends a bit on the appliance, but in a stereo the ground is usually connected directly to the chassis and through a resistor or cap to the signal ground. Stereos with a two prong plug often had a screw on the rear of the case to attach an extra grounding wire, usually running to the radiator or other well-grounded point.
Isn't the basic problem with 5.1 headphones that when you turn your head, the headphones also turn?
Considering that we have only two ears, if we hold our head steady we can only determine direction in one plane (left/right, up/down) and with some ambiguity at that. If you turn and tilt your head, however, you get a different set of measurements and should be able to resolve any ambiguity. I'd assume that this is how you get greater-than-stereo resolution, and to pull it off with headphones you'd need a pair that senses their own position and dynamically adjusts the phase of the sound coming from each virtual sound source *separately* in order to create the illusion of multiple speakers.
Nuclear is stored solar: the splitting of heavy elements originally formed by solar fusion. Tidal energy is gravitational potential energy, I'll give you that, and assuming pressure is the only thing that keeps earth's core warm then that's also gravitational potential. Fusion of light elements (everything below Fe) would also be non-solar energy.
But fossil fuels and fission are both sun-based, and they are the dominant forms of energy by a large margin. 'Only' is an exaggeration, however.
What do you precisely mean by saying that it is impossible to chainload? That you cannot have it load other boot loaders?
boot.ini was definitely usable for loading Linux. It allows you to run an arbitrary binary, so for instance you could point it at an image of what LILO or GRUB would normally write to the MBR. I had it pointed to an assembly program that searched for the first linux partition and then loaded and executed the first sector (where LILO was installed).
...for the simple job of keeping everyone else working efficiently...
Simple job? It might not be rocket science, but if the network goes down half the company will be sitting there twiddling their thumbs. I'd say that maintaining the IT infrastructure is a rather vital and critical job, and being well paid reflects the difficulty of keeping such an important and complex system running well.
That counts for any complex infrastructure position - we had planned maintenance on our building's electricity panel yesterday morning, which for us effectively meant half a day off. Our file server died a few months ago one afternoon, and when didn't look like it was going to be repaired quickly most people just went home early.
That would be the second time he's done that test in two weeks (I'm getting contact lenses fitted) so it's not my eyes alone he's measuring.
Your personal experience might not carry over to general population without color blindness.
True, of course. But I can't help thinking that not all color schemes are equal just like not all settings for contrast are equal. In the linked study they *did* find significant differences in the readability of text with different colors and fonts, but the relationship between color, contrast and font was not obvious.
One of the tests my eye doctor did last weekend was to ask me whether the black text was sharper with a green or a red background, and whether various lenses helped make them identical. After experiencing that, I find it fishy that studies say color matters little. I'd expect color contrast to be important in the same way that intensity contrast is.
I thought it was only the mangas that were censored (the original, and man-machine interface), but I don't remember any scene like that. Which scene are you referring to?
And obviously you didn't read Neuromancer. The attack he refers to is a set of flashing and subliminal images in a video feed designed to induce panic and mania in a significant portion of Sense/Net. That's much closer to this event, compared to a digital nam shub from a sumerian god infecting the minds of hackers like a computer virus.
Can't give you a source right away, but I've always been taught that a half hour conversation will raise the temperature in your brain by one degree celsius. At the moment this isn't considered harmful.
I recently flew from Chicago to NY and, having come from Europe, I was completely oblivious of the TSA rule limiting the size of toiletries and requiring them to be in a separate plastic bag. So I ended up in line for security with shampoo, toothpaste and an aluminum canister of deodorant 50% larger than allowed scattered around in my suitcase, and absolutely no desire to dig them out for inspection. TSA didn't give me a second look.
Flew out of NY the same way, although without the deodorant.
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Did you not read gp's comment? His point was that prison should be used not for vengeance but to reduce crime, precisely what you want. He doesn't want to be nice to prisoners, but not mean either. he simply wants to fix them.
Check out the article "The velvet glove" in the economist a few weeks ago - turns out it's not the severity of a punishment that matters but rather the swiftness, and that coupled with a soft approach significantly reduced crime in a town in North Carolina.
Unfortunately, GPS receivers don't work very well indoors...
Or in a valley...
Or under tree cover...
Or in many other places where you'd still need it to work for this scheme. No signal has to equal bad signal, because otherwise it's trivial to subvert.
I think the idea of a self destructing key is a good one, though. Maybe two sticks, both containing keys, both of which self destruct if separated by more than 10 m. Or maybe a usb key and something distinctly not-computer-related (fountain pen?), so that you can give both to the cops with assurances that they'll end up in separate locations.
I've always wanted to make a bike lock like that - a receiver and lock tuned to a transmitter in my wallet that automatically locks if there is no signal or the distance to transmitter is too great. I'm afraid to build it, however, because I'll likely end up superman-ing over my handlebars the first time the battery fails (locked has to be the default state or it's useless).
Same problem with this USB stick - the first time you forget and stick it into your friend's computer to show him "cool stuff", whoops there goes your key. You have to weigh the cost of your data being compromised by law enforcement vs it being lost by mistake.
Nope. For every hole moving through the semiconductor from positive to negative terminal, there's an electron that leaves the positive terminal and a corresponding one that arrives at the negative. You have electron-hole pair creation at the positive terminal and annihilation (through recombination) at the negative, but the holes pass through the semiconductor and the electrons through the rest of the circuit.
They don't. They call them Universities, and "Professor" means "Researcher" just as much as it means "Teacher". Students fund the teaching and grants fund the research, so a professor should be engaged in both.
You're fairly close, but the cause is not the supply impedance. Semiconductors will indeed run linearly rail to rail (in a linearized circuit, as most amps are) but tubes are used with much less linearization than silicon and thus a tube amp will start to distort at a significant distance from rail voltage. This means that tube clipping is more rounded compared to the abrupt clipping of transistors - running out of steam, as you say. Rounding off the clipping leads to even order harmonics instead of odd order, and these sound more pleasant because the human voice contains predominantly even harmonics.
Check out a plot of tube current versus grid voltage (for constant plate/supply voltage) if you want more details. You'll see that on the low end (negative grid voltage) the current rolls off as it approaches zero: soft rather than abrupt clipping. There is no roll-off on the high end (zero grid voltage) but as soon as the grid goes positive it begins to conduct, a change in input impedance dependent on input voltage which also leads to distortion and rounding off (if your source has a nonzero output impedance and/or there is a nonzero grid resistor, of course).
Sure - this is how most people get 220V in the US and 380V in Europe. Hook up two power supplies in series and you get a greater voltage, hook it up in parallel and you get more current. There are some implementation details having to do with phase and mismatch, but it is both possible and common.
If you step out on to the crosswalk distractedly, it's my responsibility as a driver to stop. I've never had a problem doing this. And if I'm so close that I can't stop for the crosswalk, that means I'll be through it before the pedestrian has walked out past the parked cars. It's my duty as a driver to slow down near crosswalks and intersections, in case I need to yield.
Where I as a driver shouldn't have to be on high alert is in the middle of the road with no crosswalk in sight (excluding school zones, residential streets filled with kids, etc...). Pedestrians have no business jaywalking right in front of cars, even absentmindedly. I can't stop if I'm driving the speed limit and you step out right in front of me where I couldn't have expected you. I assume this was the physics problem gp was referring to.
So, if you're in the crosswalk, cross with every assurance that I'll make sure I stop in time. If you jaywalk, however, make sure you do it behind me or I'll unavoidably run you over. It's a matter of respecting existing agreements.
Used to be whomever felt like it with enough clout to get you to trust their notes, until the government intervened again and gave themselves the exclusive right to print notes. So a market based on money is possible without that kind of government intervention.
SMS uses space in the signal that was mostly unused. It is a free bonus that the carriers charge for because they can. Not text messaging is the same as text messaging.
Fixed that for you. SMS uses empty slots on one of the GSM control channels. The channel is reserved anyway, so like you say there is no cost to the network to support messages. Bad things happen, however, when so many messages start flying that they start to interfere with the sparse control messages, which is definitely what we would see happen if SMS was unrestricted (ie, free).
Prison about rehabilitation? Hahahahahaa!!!! Not hardly. Prison (not to be confused with Jail, which is different) is about keeping the baddies away from the rest of society so we can be safe.
If it's not about rehabilitation, why let them out at all? If they're that bad that they need to be removed from society, and if the prison does not rehabilitate them in any way, then aren't they just as dangerous when they leave as when they arrived?
Locking people in order to protect society without trying to fix those locked up is pointless.
I think it would be hilarious to show up to work with bright blue skin.
Any word on when they're moving to human testing?
I get your drift, but it's fairly short term thinking so I can't agree with it.
Guess it'll come down to who has the better lobbyist.
"So you put looking cool and convenience above taking care of your surrounding environment? "
Yes.
I consider that a declaration of war.
The environment is a common resource, and you damaging it for a net quality of life gain means a net loss for me. So either we can have the government step in and force us to play nice, or we can tell the government to get out of our lives and then I'll take it into my own hands by slashing your tires.
Your life is yours to do with as you please only in as far as what you do doesn't affect others. Therefore, this does not apply to common resources, i.e. the air we breathe. Screw with my air and I'll ask the government to stop you, seeing as the government won't let me stop you myself.
As the government has taken away an individual's right to use force against those who may harm him, preventing mutual harm has become the government's job. Seen in this way, environmental controls are perfectly reasonable.
I believe that's already adjusted for inflation - the stock market as a whole grows around 7% a year without correcting for inflation. And I'm lucky enough to live in a country with no capital gains tax.
If you die at 29, having a good investment is the least of your worries. Is going to college and starting on a career then still a good investment? Would you rather, for instance, have gone trekking around the world, supporting yourself by doing odd jobs and having experienced more than most by the time you die?
I was under the conception that grounding was for security and security only, and as such has no effect on the hum your stereo is experiencing.
Nope. Depends a bit on the appliance, but in a stereo the ground is usually connected directly to the chassis and through a resistor or cap to the signal ground. Stereos with a two prong plug often had a screw on the rear of the case to attach an extra grounding wire, usually running to the radiator or other well-grounded point.
Isn't the basic problem with 5.1 headphones that when you turn your head, the headphones also turn?
Considering that we have only two ears, if we hold our head steady we can only determine direction in one plane (left/right, up/down) and with some ambiguity at that. If you turn and tilt your head, however, you get a different set of measurements and should be able to resolve any ambiguity. I'd assume that this is how you get greater-than-stereo resolution, and to pull it off with headphones you'd need a pair that senses their own position and dynamically adjusts the phase of the sound coming from each virtual sound source *separately* in order to create the illusion of multiple speakers.
Don't see that happening anytime soon.
Nuclear is stored solar: the splitting of heavy elements originally formed by solar fusion. Tidal energy is gravitational potential energy, I'll give you that, and assuming pressure is the only thing that keeps earth's core warm then that's also gravitational potential. Fusion of light elements (everything below Fe) would also be non-solar energy.
But fossil fuels and fission are both sun-based, and they are the dominant forms of energy by a large margin. 'Only' is an exaggeration, however.
What do you precisely mean by saying that it is impossible to chainload? That you cannot have it load other boot loaders?
boot.ini was definitely usable for loading Linux. It allows you to run an arbitrary binary, so for instance you could point it at an image of what LILO or GRUB would normally write to the MBR. I had it pointed to an assembly program that searched for the first linux partition and then loaded and executed the first sector (where LILO was installed).
Jw
...for the simple job of keeping everyone else working efficiently...
Simple job? It might not be rocket science, but if the network goes down half the company will be sitting there twiddling their thumbs. I'd say that maintaining the IT infrastructure is a rather vital and critical job, and being well paid reflects the difficulty of keeping such an important and complex system running well.
That counts for any complex infrastructure position - we had planned maintenance on our building's electricity panel yesterday morning, which for us effectively meant half a day off. Our file server died a few months ago one afternoon, and when didn't look like it was going to be repaired quickly most people just went home early.
Jw
He was checking you for partial color blindness.
That would be the second time he's done that test in two weeks (I'm getting contact lenses fitted) so it's not my eyes alone he's measuring.
Your personal experience might not carry over to general population without color blindness.
True, of course. But I can't help thinking that not all color schemes are equal just like not all settings for contrast are equal. In the linked study they *did* find significant differences in the readability of text with different colors and fonts, but the relationship between color, contrast and font was not obvious.
One of the tests my eye doctor did last weekend was to ask me whether the black text was sharper with a green or a red background, and whether various lenses helped make them identical. After experiencing that, I find it fishy that studies say color matters little. I'd expect color contrast to be important in the same way that intensity contrast is.
Jw
I thought it was only the mangas that were censored (the original, and man-machine interface), but I don't remember any scene like that. Which scene are you referring to?
Jw
And obviously you didn't read Neuromancer. The attack he refers to is a set of flashing and subliminal images in a video feed designed to induce panic and mania in a significant portion of Sense/Net. That's much closer to this event, compared to a digital nam shub from a sumerian god infecting the minds of hackers like a computer virus.
Jw
Can't give you a source right away, but I've always been taught that a half hour conversation will raise the temperature in your brain by one degree celsius. At the moment this isn't considered harmful.
Jw
I recently flew from Chicago to NY and, having come from Europe, I was completely oblivious of the TSA rule limiting the size of toiletries and requiring them to be in a separate plastic bag. So I ended up in line for security with shampoo, toothpaste and an aluminum canister of deodorant 50% larger than allowed scattered around in my suitcase, and absolutely no desire to dig them out for inspection. TSA didn't give me a second look.
Flew out of NY the same way, although without the deodorant.