That's because the Sun rotates around the Earth, and it takes a full year to complete the orbit. Wouldn't it be easier to anchor the top of the elevator to the celestial dome and not have to worry about how fast it turns?
I wondered for a moment if 'sig' is masculine or feminine in French. If one says 'le sig', then it should be 'un sig', as Ominous Coward posits, however I have been working on the premise that 'la sig' is correct, that is, that 'sig' and 'pipe' are of the same gender for analogy's sake.
A quick dictionary search reveals that 'signature' in French is feminine, hence its abbreviation 'sig' should also be feminine, leaving 'une sig' as the correct ending for this particular sig. Now that its grammatical correctness has been established, we may go back to wondering about its twisted logic...
This reminds me of the fable in "The Cyberiad" by Stanislaw Lem, called "The Sixth Sally, or How Trurl and Klapaucius Created a Demon of the Second Kind to Defeat the Pirate Pugg." Can't find a full text because it's still under copyright, but here is an excerpt.
The story goes that the pirate Pugg (who has a PhD) wants to collect all the information in the universe, and happens to have trapped the constructors. So, the constructors build him a machine containing a thermodynamic demon of the second kind, which filters true statements out of all the data created by some brownian motion (a demon of the first kind is simply Maxwell's demon). The pirate, who obviously suffers from information addiction, just starts reading the output and never stops, so the constructors are free to go!
If you haven't read the Cyberiad, you should give it a try. It's intelligent, beautifully written, and quite nerdy too.
Is it possible to buy/download the original game (Sam and Max Hit the Road) and play it under some current version of Windows? Older games tend not to work so well... perhaps you know of a site that gives information on getting old games to work properly on current hardware/software?
Re:Hope they have the mini-games in there!
on
Sam & Max in 3D
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· Score: 1
Go to the website and check out concept art shot number 5. There's a theme park with lots of small stalls. My guess is, it'll probably include minigames.
Mac OS X uses XDarwin and OroborOSX, and it's incredibly buggy
I had similar problems with Matlab and OroborOSX. The worst was that OroborOSX wouldn't start up reliably, so that starting up Matlab would often be a half-hour ordeal. In addition it tended to crash semi-randomly, which meant I had to go through the ordeal almost every day.
In the end, I found a way to use Matlab with Apple's X11 beta here at this site. This solved all my problems. Matlab starts reliably and faster, doesn't crash, opening and closing windows works fine, and it's still well-integrated with OSX. All it takes is installing Apple's X11 and making a few small changes to.xinitrc.
Not that most people know the names and faces of movie producers, editors or effects people. It's really just the actors and directors that get the limelight.
But when it comes to game designers, who can tell? Maybe thanks to this, next thing you know, John Carmack or Romero will be as well-known as Steven Spielberg. This might also make voice acting for games a more interesting area for professional actors to explore.
The downside might be a return to FMV as "celebrities" try to get their faces in the game (shudder).
Without the great impact of seti@home, we probably would have never had companies like United Devices which have done research into ways of curing cancer using distributed computing.
Call me a troll, but that doesn't discredit the OP's point that SETI is a waste of his computing cycles. You could make a point that SETI has served its purpose in bringing distributed computing to the attention of the masses and bringing other distributed projects into being. The OP said that he'd rather use his cycles to cure cancer or any other good cause than search for hypothetical aliens. Seems like a reasonable stance to take.
I did SETI for a while, and now I'm working on the Mersenne Prime search project, simply because I think it's a better cause. Maybe I'll try the folding thing someday...
I've been toying with getting LASIK done as well, but I'm worried because my myopia is -9.75 and -9.25 on R/L eyes respectively. Has anyone had experience with this kind of thing, or heard of someone who has?
"let's make a virus that will expose ourselves to billions of dollars of liability, but will only shut down some minor piracy for a day or two, until anti-virus software makers have protection for it"
Seems like a pretty good idea to me, actually, especially when you consider how many idiots are on Kazaa. Since the program has no built-in calls to antivirus software, they'll become infected and lose confidence. A smaller percentage of geeks with huge bandwidth, hard drives and the brains to use antivirus software will stay on, but Kazaa will leave a sour taste in Joe Sixpack's mouth and lead him back to the golden path of CD-buying.
Now suppose the advertising "paper trail" that everyone is talking about leads to some random hacker they picked as a scapegoat, and it's unlikely that anyone will suspect they're behind it all. Liability, schmiability.
Hmm, E=mc^2 isn't really a line of code... there's no variable assignment involved. It's just a formula that holds true all the time. I assume he actually has a cellular automaton matrix X representing the universe, with (say), three dimensions, and a line of code looking something like:
where f is some Mathematica function. Take some inital condition for the big matrix, four lines of code like that one and run them over, and over, and you get the development of the universe.
So it sort of is printf("hello world"), but long and iterative. Except instead of printing "hello world", he actually wants to print out the world itself.
So say he's right, and we can describe the entire universe in four lines of code. Lovely, we can generate little simulated universes inside our computers, with little simulated particles, planets, mice, people, vogons, whatever. The behaviour of these systems will look remarkably like that of our own universe, and everyone will be most impressed. And then?
Perhaps I'm being too rash (haven't read the book, but I certainly will), but it seems we cannot apply this theory to predict anything about our own universe, simply because applying cellular automaton methods would require incredibly detailed measurements of initial conditions. We can't measure the positions and momenta of all particles (thank you dear Heisenberg) in order to predict weather or cosmology, and the innumerable factors affecting theories of finance, politics, biology and others are likely to be beyond the reach of measurement as well. Pity.
Perhaps if combined with some sort of Monte Carlo simulation, it might have some applications: specify a million scenarios and compute probabilities for visible effects. Still, the same thing can be achieved with current computational models at lower computing cost than the tiny scale of a CA model would require.
Lastly, if found, the rule will be beyond proof. It will just be a rule that generates systems within computer simulations that are similar to observed phenomena. Good enough for some perhaps, but anything that's beyond proof tends to take on a theological flavor. Not my kind of thing.
My big complaint about the movie is that it assumes too much knowledge about the Star Wars universe. I feel that I know a fair bit about it, but still much of the 'politics' eluded me, an effect that would probably be much worse for utter Star Wars newbies. Who ordered the clones ten years ago and how did he know they would be needed? Who erased the planet from the archives? Is Palpatine on the republic or the separatist side? It's all very odd, though perhaps they'll clear things up in the next movie. Lightsaber battles are more fun than long explanations anyway.
Perhaps I should have said I didn't want to sue S.T. Dupont, the cartridge manufacturer -- that would be more appropriate. Thanks for pointing that out.
In the actual case, it is the CD company's fault that the iMac gets fubared, no?
Slashdot Mirror
Dotted: i j
Open: c f h k l m n r s t v w x y z
One closed region: a b d e g o p q
And when we discover life on mars, we'll know the egg came before the chicken.
That's because the Sun rotates around the Earth, and it takes a full year to complete the orbit. Wouldn't it be easier to anchor the top of the elevator to the celestial dome and not have to worry about how fast it turns?
We can ask GW Bush how a nukular plant works, he knows all about nukular power, and nukular weapons, but he usually just talks about oil.
I don't give away my money!!! What is women?
MS is a Monopolith.
A quick dictionary search reveals that 'signature' in French is feminine, hence its abbreviation 'sig' should also be feminine, leaving 'une sig' as the correct ending for this particular sig. Now that its grammatical correctness has been established, we may go back to wondering about its twisted logic...
Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Or rather, from the keine-scheisse department...
The story goes that the pirate Pugg (who has a PhD) wants to collect all the information in the universe, and happens to have trapped the constructors. So, the constructors build him a machine containing a thermodynamic demon of the second kind, which filters true statements out of all the data created by some brownian motion (a demon of the first kind is simply Maxwell's demon). The pirate, who obviously suffers from information addiction, just starts reading the output and never stops, so the constructors are free to go!
If you haven't read the Cyberiad, you should give it a try. It's intelligent, beautifully written, and quite nerdy too.
Hey, where does your sig "my hovercraft is full of eels" come from? I remember hearing it sometime, but I don't remember what it was...
Is it possible to buy/download the original game (Sam and Max Hit the Road) and play it under some current version of Windows? Older games tend not to work so well ... perhaps you know of a site that gives information on getting old games to work properly on current hardware/software?
Go to the website and check out concept art shot number 5. There's a theme park with lots of small stalls. My guess is, it'll probably include minigames.
I had similar problems with Matlab and OroborOSX. The worst was that OroborOSX wouldn't start up reliably, so that starting up Matlab would often be a half-hour ordeal. In addition it tended to crash semi-randomly, which meant I had to go through the ordeal almost every day.
In the end, I found a way to use Matlab with Apple's X11 beta here at this site. This solved all my problems. Matlab starts reliably and faster, doesn't crash, opening and closing windows works fine, and it's still well-integrated with OSX. All it takes is installing Apple's X11 and making a few small changes to .xinitrc.
You should try it out. Hope this helps.
Not that most people know the names and faces of movie producers, editors or effects people. It's really just the actors and directors that get the limelight.
But when it comes to game designers, who can tell? Maybe thanks to this, next thing you know, John Carmack or Romero will be as well-known as Steven Spielberg. This might also make voice acting for games a more interesting area for professional actors to explore.
The downside might be a return to FMV as "celebrities" try to get their faces in the game (shudder).
Call me a troll, but that doesn't discredit the OP's point that SETI is a waste of his computing cycles. You could make a point that SETI has served its purpose in bringing distributed computing to the attention of the masses and bringing other distributed projects into being. The OP said that he'd rather use his cycles to cure cancer or any other good cause than search for hypothetical aliens. Seems like a reasonable stance to take.
I did SETI for a while, and now I'm working on the Mersenne Prime search project, simply because I think it's a better cause. Maybe I'll try the folding thing someday...
I've been toying with getting LASIK done as well, but I'm worried because my myopia is -9.75 and -9.25 on R/L eyes respectively. Has anyone had experience with this kind of thing, or heard of someone who has?
By Zarquon's eternal patootie! Where was this again? Tell me now!
Because students are cheap and wireless equipment costs money. The reason to use P2P is to avoid paying, wireless would negate that.
Mirror mirror on the wall, who is feeling luckiest of all?
Seems like a pretty good idea to me, actually, especially when you consider how many idiots are on Kazaa. Since the program has no built-in calls to antivirus software, they'll become infected and lose confidence. A smaller percentage of geeks with huge bandwidth, hard drives and the brains to use antivirus software will stay on, but Kazaa will leave a sour taste in Joe Sixpack's mouth and lead him back to the golden path of CD-buying.
Now suppose the advertising "paper trail" that everyone is talking about leads to some random hacker they picked as a scapegoat, and it's unlikely that anyone will suspect they're behind it all. Liability, schmiability.
Okay, time to take the tinfoil hat back off :-)
X[i,k,j] = f(X[i-1,j-1,k-1],X[i-1,j-,k],...,X[i+1,j+1,k+1])
where f is some Mathematica function. Take some inital condition for the big matrix, four lines of code like that one and run them over, and over, and you get the development of the universe.
So it sort of is printf("hello world"), but long and iterative. Except instead of printing "hello world", he actually wants to print out the world itself.
Perhaps I'm being too rash (haven't read the book, but I certainly will), but it seems we cannot apply this theory to predict anything about our own universe, simply because applying cellular automaton methods would require incredibly detailed measurements of initial conditions. We can't measure the positions and momenta of all particles (thank you dear Heisenberg) in order to predict weather or cosmology, and the innumerable factors affecting theories of finance, politics, biology and others are likely to be beyond the reach of measurement as well. Pity.
Perhaps if combined with some sort of Monte Carlo simulation, it might have some applications: specify a million scenarios and compute probabilities for visible effects. Still, the same thing can be achieved with current computational models at lower computing cost than the tiny scale of a CA model would require.
Lastly, if found, the rule will be beyond proof. It will just be a rule that generates systems within computer simulations that are similar to observed phenomena. Good enough for some perhaps, but anything that's beyond proof tends to take on a theological flavor. Not my kind of thing.
My big complaint about the movie is that it assumes too much knowledge about the Star Wars universe. I feel that I know a fair bit about it, but still much of the 'politics' eluded me, an effect that would probably be much worse for utter Star Wars newbies. Who ordered the clones ten years ago and how did he know they would be needed? Who erased the planet from the archives? Is Palpatine on the republic or the separatist side? It's all very odd, though perhaps they'll clear things up in the next movie. Lightsaber battles are more fun than long explanations anyway.
In the actual case, it is the CD company's fault that the iMac gets fubared, no?