Actually, that was a complete brain-fart on my part - I did mean EB. You'd think I would be able to remember the name of something that I spent so many months playing. Guess they just got conflated somewhere in the back of my mind.
And it is not weird -- these are normal operating temperatures of some really cool physics work.
I mean that "a hundred times colder than space!" is a weird way of saying "almost 3 degrees colder", seems a little sensationalist. I'm sure that further lowering temperature as you approach absolute zero becomes progressively harder, but still.
If you do manage to cool something down to 0 K, would you say that it's infinitely colder than space?
100 times colder than 0 K? So, that's what, 0 K? Why not make it 1000 times colder?
(Yes I know space is slightly warmer than absolute zero, but it's still a really weird claim to make - we are only talking about a couple of degrees here)
Also, am I the only one who, upon hearing "discovered a new state of matter", doesn't immediately think "Sweet, we can extends Moore's Law!", but rather "Holy shit, a new state of matter?" Seems like a pretty big discovering on its own, even without being tied to chip manufacturing...
That was intentional. I thought about add ing "...", but considered it unnecessary, as it doesn't affect my point.
What exactly makes electricly powered kinetic sculptures "unmechanical"?
Those were the four words that let you know that he meant purely mechanical, ie not electric/electronic. It's a perfectly common use of the term.
Pedantry is fun and all, but at a certain point you are just being disingenuous.
Ok, now we just need a new word that means "the part of code that's not comments", because it's useful to be able to refer to that. You know, what used to be called 'code'.
Comments do not affect the function of the program, and therefore are not code. Just like whitespace (in most sane languages).
Mating with yourself, dubious mechanics of it aside, is virtually certain to produce non-viable offspring. If memory serves, duplicating any chromosome (ie throwing out one half of the pair and duplicating the other) has about a 1 in 3 chance of uncovering a recessive lethal allele. And you have a 50% chance, for each of the 22 autosomes, of getting such a duplication if your parental genomes are identical.
Not good odds, that.
(I realize that I may have treated that comment more seriously than it was intended)
Well, that was certainly the case with Craig Venter - he switched the blood samples from the anonymous panel for Celera's genome project with his own; more recently had his complete diploid genome published, etc; and is certainly known for his ego - but I do believe that these guys are sincere.
I really don't think we can claim "conventional wisdom" in this area yet - it's really only starting to become something relevant to people's lives. With constantly lowering costs, the explosion in the amount of personalized genomic and genetic (and proteomic, and transcriptional) data is coming - the coveted "$1000 genome" is well within sight, and the potential benefits to medicine are huge.
It's also probably unrealistic to expect complete privacy as this becomes more prevalent, so maybe learning to deal with some amount of transparency from the beginning is a good thing?
The privative alpha ('a-') has nothing to do with 'anti', it's a negating prefix that goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. It is a cognate of 'un-' and 'in-', though.
Though apparently this isn't the point of the discussion at hand.
Though ethically I think this would be the right thing to do anyway, since apart from the Western world people still have respect for holy things in their lives. And most of them show their respect like they should (with respect to others as well).
Hey, I'm from the West, and I have plenty of respect for holy things! I just haven't seen anything "holy" yet.
Yeah, but the West left most of their worst religious-nutball-inspired-violence behind hundreds of years ago. Muslims are still doing it.
Well yeah, but Christianity did have a 600 year head start. Compared to 15th century Europe, their current fanatical shenanigans seem to be right on schedule.
This is cute, but misses the point entirely. What they are "advocating" is a further extension of government power, in what already is, by any measure, a surveillance society. It will work, because it already has.
and governments given as little power as possible over people
Well there you go, what they are implementing is the absolute minimum required to keep UK citizens from being killed by terrorists. It's both reasonable and necessary.
Slashdot Mirror
but I generally don't actually say such things, since it sounds rather strange to the ear
That was precisely my original point.
Interesting, but as far as I know, "condensed water vapour" is called "water". Same with "thawed ice".
Oh come on, aren't we supposed to be science geeks here? Clouds are water droplets, not vapor.
Actually, that was a complete brain-fart on my part - I did mean EB. You'd think I would be able to remember the name of something that I spent so many months playing. Guess they just got conflated somewhere in the back of my mind.
And it is not weird -- these are normal operating temperatures of some really cool physics work.
I mean that "a hundred times colder than space!" is a weird way of saying "almost 3 degrees colder", seems a little sensationalist. I'm sure that further lowering temperature as you approach absolute zero becomes progressively harder, but still.
If you do manage to cool something down to 0 K, would you say that it's infinitely colder than space?
100 times colder than 0 K? So, that's what, 0 K? Why not make it 1000 times colder?
(Yes I know space is slightly warmer than absolute zero, but it's still a really weird claim to make - we are only talking about a couple of degrees here)
Also, am I the only one who, upon hearing "discovered a new state of matter", doesn't immediately think "Sweet, we can extends Moore's Law!", but rather "Holy shit, a new state of matter?" Seems like a pretty big discovering on its own, even without being tied to chip manufacturing...
That was intentional. I thought about add ing "...", but considered it unnecessary, as it doesn't affect my point.
What exactly makes electricly powered kinetic sculptures "unmechanical"?
Those were the four words that let you know that he meant purely mechanical, ie not electric/electronic. It's a perfectly common use of the term.
Pedantry is fun and all, but at a certain point you are just being disingenuous.
or moving the Earth back from the Sun a little bit.
Sweet! Robot Party Week!
Ok, now we just need a new word that means "the part of code that's not comments", because it's useful to be able to refer to that. You know, what used to be called 'code'.
Comments do not affect the function of the program, and therefore are not code. Just like whitespace (in most sane languages).
That, and immortal snakes in Nibbles (or infinite lives), that takes me back to the high school computer lab.
Rome Total Realism (for Rome Total War) - still the best strategy game ever made.
"supports up to 8 nodes, (a total of 64 cores) and (64Gb of memory per node)"
This is why I like the "Oxford comma".
Mating with yourself, dubious mechanics of it aside, is virtually certain to produce non-viable offspring. If memory serves, duplicating any chromosome (ie throwing out one half of the pair and duplicating the other) has about a 1 in 3 chance of uncovering a recessive lethal allele. And you have a 50% chance, for each of the 22 autosomes, of getting such a duplication if your parental genomes are identical.
Not good odds, that.
(I realize that I may have treated that comment more seriously than it was intended)
Well, that was certainly the case with Craig Venter - he switched the blood samples from the anonymous panel for Celera's genome project with his own; more recently had his complete diploid genome published, etc; and is certainly known for his ego - but I do believe that these guys are sincere.
I really don't think we can claim "conventional wisdom" in this area yet - it's really only starting to become something relevant to people's lives. With constantly lowering costs, the explosion in the amount of personalized genomic and genetic (and proteomic, and transcriptional) data is coming - the coveted "$1000 genome" is well within sight, and the potential benefits to medicine are huge.
It's also probably unrealistic to expect complete privacy as this becomes more prevalent, so maybe learning to deal with some amount of transparency from the beginning is a good thing?
B-trees are not the same as binary trees.
Hey, so has anyone mentioned yet that 'nm' stands for nautical miles here? Cause that would totally be informative.
I thought we hated the RIAA?
If the RIAA had no influence on things we like, would there be a reason to hate them?
The privative alpha ('a-') has nothing to do with 'anti', it's a negating prefix that goes all the way back to Proto-Indo-European. It is a cognate of 'un-' and 'in-', though.
Though apparently this isn't the point of the discussion at hand.
Sort of like National Lampoon without the funny.
So, it's exactly like National Lampoon?
Anyway, you do realize that you are complaining about the artistic merits of a comic done in stick-figures?
Though ethically I think this would be the right thing to do anyway, since apart from the Western world people still have respect for holy things in their lives. And most of them show their respect like they should (with respect to others as well).
Hey, I'm from the West, and I have plenty of respect for holy things! I just haven't seen anything "holy" yet.
Yeah, but the West left most of their worst religious-nutball-inspired-violence behind hundreds of years ago. Muslims are still doing it.
Well yeah, but Christianity did have a 600 year head start. Compared to 15th century Europe, their current fanatical shenanigans seem to be right on schedule.
Just look at what happened to Theo Van Gogh and Salman Rushdie, to name just two.
The guy was married to Padma Lakshmi, as far as I'm concerned that cancels out any complaints about the world that he may have.
This is cute, but misses the point entirely. What they are "advocating" is a further extension of government power, in what already is, by any measure, a surveillance society. It will work, because it already has.
and governments given as little power as possible over people
Well there you go, what they are implementing is the absolute minimum required to keep UK citizens from being killed by terrorists. It's both reasonable and necessary.
Good luck arguing otherwise.
But what about passengers?
And people on trains/buses. And fast joggers.