Hmm, I don't typically refer to non-zero decimal places as zeros I guess. When I think of zeros I think of either actual zeros or roots of a polynomial. I was just being overly picky anyway. I'm sure I've heard of decimal places being referred to as zeros, but so infrequently that the two terms are not to be equivalent for me.
Actually, it's only 11 zeros. (2.2 trillion is $2.2,200,000,000,000)
But it really doesn't make that big a difference -- what's one order of magnitude, more or less, when it comes to numbers like that? There's not 2.2 trillion dollars in their coffers, that's for sure. Not even 220 billion, which is a tenth of what the suit is asking.
The group that is going to get richest off this is the group of lawyers that handle fax.com's bankruptcy filing.;)
Actually the cable is more like 60,000 miles long. The idea is to use a substance that will NOT break easily. And if it did break, it wouldn't crash down like steel, it would float down like paper. They're taking this into consideration. Look at their faq on their website.
"This tells us that this kind of evolution is capable of coming up with flying motion," said Peter Bentley, an evolutionary computer expert at University College, London.
The posters who are saying "You stupid creationist idiots are proven wrong once again" are comletely missing the point of this article. Biological evolution is not even in question here -- this article is about evolutionary computing.
Any trait can be evolved, if it is defined specifically enough, the iterations that approach it are promoted effectively and the ones that detract from it are discouraged. The interesting thing about this story is that the programmers created a learning scenario for the computer/robot that was able to provide the right kind of stimulus and "culling" of the motions so that the desired result was achieved by simply defining the desired result and letting the program go off on its own.
Well, a kilowatt-hour is 1 kilowatt for one hour. Not one kilowatt per hour. So the number of kilowatts per year makes no sense. Now if it meant 500,000 kilowatt-years, that would be a LOT of energy -- 4.3 billion kilowatt-hours! (no more need for nuclear reactors, eh?)
If it's just 500,000 kwhs per year, that's 57 kilowatt-hours constantly for a whole year. That's 8 orders of magnitude off.;-)
First, IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient -- it's found by dividing the score on some test by the average score for a person the same age as the examinee, then multiplying by 100. So by definition, the average IQ in any group of test-takers is 100. Exactly. So if a lot of dumb guys die early, everybody's measured IQ would actually go down. IQ is not an absolute measurement -- it's by definition comparative.
My other comment is that we are talking about 6 1/2 billion people here. IQ aside, let's talk about their absolute intelligence. (Unmeasurable, currently, but work with me here.) The mean and the average are going to be the same. (Or at least close enough that any difference is negligible.) Many people are going to be of exactly average intelligence. So it would be more accurate to say "At least half of all people are of average intelligence or lower.
Sorry, just my anality kicking in. I'm a perfectianist at heart.;)
My dad is a major stereography buff, and he and I often go out to the perseids or leonids, get about a 2-mile baseline, and take stereo pictures. It takes some precision timing to get both cameras taking pictures at the same time, but it's worth it. You can see the trajectory of the meteoroids coming straight at you and all around you. It's cool.
Here's a list of lots of places without measurable light pollution.;-)
I'm a stargazer myself. I'm heading this weekend for a small mountain near my home (Utah), where at least the light pollution is a LITTLE less pervasive.
To a director, the point of making movies isn't necessarily to reach the largest audience possible and make the most money, it's to make the movie to the vision you intended.
People see (and buy) movies to be entertained. They should be able to buy what they want to buy and then change it to the vision that THEY want to see.
Would you have a problem with somebody buying a big poster of Bill Gates, taking a marker to it, and drawing a mustache on him? Scribbling "idiot" or "Gates for President" all over it? Or what about cutting up magazine and newspaper articles or photos to make a collage? Is that wrong too?
If the director's purpose is to "make the movie to the vision [he] intended," that's fine. He did it. If his purpose is to make everybody else see the movie just the way he intended, I'm afraid that's asking a little too much. While they may do so (by purchasing the normally distributed version) if they wish, they should also be able to purchase the video and view it however they want -- including not hearing or seeing certain parts they don't want to see (or have their kids see).
The editing not done well enough that you can't tell it's been edited, I'm sure. So they know they're not getting the "original version." If they don't like the movie, why should they have to see it? And to extend that, if they don't like part of the movie, why should they have to see that part?
Again, I'm not trying to discuss the legality, just the ethics involved.
(Not saying it isn't but...)
I live in Salt Lake City and I know a lot of people who really want the edited versions. The Mormon church here frowns on R-rated movies, and lots of people I know refuse to see any. I don't want to start a mormon-bashing discussion here -- I just say this to show that there really is a market for movies that are edited down to PG or PG-13 level.
Personally, I have no desire to be deluged by profanity, for example, when I see a movie. I think that having "cleaned-up" versions of movies is a great idea.
That said, at least as the law stands now, it probably IS illegal (though IANAL) to edit the movies and resell them. But that point is moot, I think, because since there's a market, the movie makers shouldn't put up a fuss about it! More of their movies are being sold! And letting some other company do the editing just lowers the producer's costs.
Think about it -- suppose a particular video sells 100,000 copies normally. There are 5,000 more people who would buy the video if it were edited down to PG level. Here are the possibilities:
The producer spends another $5,000 to produce a PG version of the movie and sells it to the 5000 people at $10 profit / video. Net profit $45,000.
The producer lets another company spend $5,000 producing a PG version of the movie. This other company then buys 5,000 copies from the producer and sells them at $3 profit. Net profits: Producer, $50,000. Other company, $15,000.
The producer doesn't want anybody editing his movie. The 5,000 people never end up buying the video. Net profit: $0.
I don't understand why the producers would raise a stink about this! It's understandable if they are going to produce their OWN edited version, but if there's not such a version on the market, why not let somebody else buy YOUR product, do a modification that you can't be bothered to do, and then sell it themselves?
I worry about going paperless. I mean, it's great and all, but will the information really last? I keep reading posts on/. about entering a "digital dark age," where centuries from now, nobody will be able to access the information we keep now. Information just a few years old is unreadable. (10" floppies, anyone?) How is our information supposed to last for millenia?
I think that for some applications it's just fine -- nobody really needs to see all my archived emails a hundred years from now (though I'm sure it would be interesting to my progeny to learn about me), but what about the research and scientific understanding in our colleges and universities? We ought to do SOMETHING to preserve our knowledge. Maybe inscribe it in stone or metal and send it off to the moon or somewhere, I dunno.
I think going paperless is good. But I think the paper trail to our history should be replaced instead of just chucked out the window. Something for long-term storage of our archived electronic information would be fine -- but it should be in a format that we are sure will be readable in the future.
From the article: "We are heading toward a world where, instead of reading a bunch of Bill Gates' quotes, you want to have a video clip of him actually speaking that quote," he said.
It sounds like a Microsoft training camp -- Gates's Youth? (Jungvolk?)
For one, I think that the direction of comets is probably random enough that the total will add up to no difference (There might be a general "drag", but it would affect *all* items roughly equally perhaps.
If you added up millions of large collisions, yes, the ratio of the overall net force to the sum of the forces which were applied would be extremely small. But the net force itself would be many times larger than any one given collision. Elementary statistics.
That said, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was estimated at 10^14 kg, and traveled at Jupiter's escape velocity: 60 km/s. Even if we get our future 1000 kg (1 ton) space capsules going at that speed and slingshot them so that they're going that same speed in the opposite direction, even if the direction of the kinetic energy transfer is perfectly opposite to Jupiter's current momentum, it would take 90 billion (!!!) slingshot manouvers to equal the force from just that one comet.
So comparatively, no matter how many space capsules we send flying at Jupiter (1.9 x 10^27 kg at 157 km/s), we won't ever come CLOSE to disrupting its orbit noticeably.
The first step is "Rocket Skydiving" -- simple, catapult launched giant water rockets that can take a load of skydivers to 15,000 feet in under a minute. This would be safer than airplanes.
I thought airplanes were, statistically, the safest way to travel! It's a pretty broad statement, saying this would be safer than airplanes.
To my understanding, the recipients of past Darwin Awards have been stupid people doing stupid things. My project is not a candidate for such.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, I don't typically refer to non-zero decimal places as zeros I guess. When I think of zeros I think of either actual zeros or roots of a polynomial. I was just being overly picky anyway. I'm sure I've heard of decimal places being referred to as zeros, but so infrequently that the two terms are not to be equivalent for me.
But it really doesn't make that big a difference -- what's one order of magnitude, more or less, when it comes to numbers like that? There's not 2.2 trillion dollars in their coffers, that's for sure. Not even 220 billion, which is a tenth of what the suit is asking.
The group that is going to get richest off this is the group of lawyers that handle fax.com's bankruptcy filing. ;)
Bring on the Karma, baby!
Actually the cable is more like 60,000 miles long. The idea is to use a substance that will NOT break easily. And if it did break, it wouldn't crash down like steel, it would float down like paper. They're taking this into consideration. Look at their faq on their website.
You went way over my skill level in the first part of the first step. ;-)
The posters who are saying "You stupid creationist idiots are proven wrong once again" are comletely missing the point of this article. Biological evolution is not even in question here -- this article is about evolutionary computing.
Any trait can be evolved, if it is defined specifically enough, the iterations that approach it are promoted effectively and the ones that detract from it are discouraged. The interesting thing about this story is that the programmers created a learning scenario for the computer/robot that was able to provide the right kind of stimulus and "culling" of the motions so that the desired result was achieved by simply defining the desired result and letting the program go off on its own.
I am the very model of a modern major general.
If it's just 500,000 kwhs per year, that's 57 kilowatt-hours constantly for a whole year. That's 8 orders of magnitude off. ;-)
The funny part is that when I loaded the page, I got a casino pop-under.
First, IQ stands for Intelligence Quotient -- it's found by dividing the score on some test by the average score for a person the same age as the examinee, then multiplying by 100. So by definition, the average IQ in any group of test-takers is 100. Exactly. So if a lot of dumb guys die early, everybody's measured IQ would actually go down. IQ is not an absolute measurement -- it's by definition comparative.
My other comment is that we are talking about 6 1/2 billion people here. IQ aside, let's talk about their absolute intelligence. (Unmeasurable, currently, but work with me here.) The mean and the average are going to be the same. (Or at least close enough that any difference is negligible.) Many people are going to be of exactly average intelligence. So it would be more accurate to say "At least half of all people are of average intelligence or lower.
Sorry, just my anality kicking in. I'm a perfectianist at heart. ;)
(Spelling error intended.)
No. 3D video is a whole different animal from 3D still photography. It's not something I'm much interested in.
My dad is a major stereography buff, and he and I often go out to the perseids or leonids, get about a 2-mile baseline, and take stereo pictures. It takes some precision timing to get both cameras taking pictures at the same time, but it's worth it. You can see the trajectory of the meteoroids coming straight at you and all around you. It's cool.
I'm a stargazer myself. I'm heading this weekend for a small mountain near my home (Utah), where at least the light pollution is a LITTLE less pervasive.
So stop reading /. and go study. ;)
People see (and buy) movies to be entertained. They should be able to buy what they want to buy and then change it to the vision that THEY want to see.
Would you have a problem with somebody buying a big poster of Bill Gates, taking a marker to it, and drawing a mustache on him? Scribbling "idiot" or "Gates for President" all over it? Or what about cutting up magazine and newspaper articles or photos to make a collage? Is that wrong too?
If the director's purpose is to "make the movie to the vision [he] intended," that's fine. He did it. If his purpose is to make everybody else see the movie just the way he intended, I'm afraid that's asking a little too much. While they may do so (by purchasing the normally distributed version) if they wish, they should also be able to purchase the video and view it however they want -- including not hearing or seeing certain parts they don't want to see (or have their kids see).
The editing not done well enough that you can't tell it's been edited, I'm sure. So they know they're not getting the "original version." If they don't like the movie, why should they have to see it? And to extend that, if they don't like part of the movie, why should they have to see that part?
Again, I'm not trying to discuss the legality, just the ethics involved.
Personally, I have no desire to be deluged by profanity, for example, when I see a movie. I think that having "cleaned-up" versions of movies is a great idea.
That said, at least as the law stands now, it probably IS illegal (though IANAL) to edit the movies and resell them. But that point is moot, I think, because since there's a market, the movie makers shouldn't put up a fuss about it! More of their movies are being sold! And letting some other company do the editing just lowers the producer's costs.
Think about it -- suppose a particular video sells 100,000 copies normally. There are 5,000 more people who would buy the video if it were edited down to PG level. Here are the possibilities:
I don't understand why the producers would raise a stink about this! It's understandable if they are going to produce their OWN edited version, but if there's not such a version on the market, why not let somebody else buy YOUR product, do a modification that you can't be bothered to do, and then sell it themselves?
Warning -- the page has a pop-up.
I think that for some applications it's just fine -- nobody really needs to see all my archived emails a hundred years from now (though I'm sure it would be interesting to my progeny to learn about me), but what about the research and scientific understanding in our colleges and universities? We ought to do SOMETHING to preserve our knowledge. Maybe inscribe it in stone or metal and send it off to the moon or somewhere, I dunno.
I think going paperless is good. But I think the paper trail to our history should be replaced instead of just chucked out the window. Something for long-term storage of our archived electronic information would be fine -- but it should be in a format that we are sure will be readable in the future.
It sounds like a Microsoft training camp -- Gates's Youth? (Jungvolk?)
My first thought was "Cool, but why use 3 CPUs instead of 2 or 4?"
Great! Just set a Gigawatt transmitter to broadcast the stuff into space, and see which systems start accelerating away from us! Voila! Life!
Oh, wait, he said "known" lifeforms ...
Try 1984, by George Orwell.
If you added up millions of large collisions, yes, the ratio of the overall net force to the sum of the forces which were applied would be extremely small. But the net force itself would be many times larger than any one given collision. Elementary statistics.
That said, Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 was estimated at 10^14 kg, and traveled at Jupiter's escape velocity: 60 km/s. Even if we get our future 1000 kg (1 ton) space capsules going at that speed and slingshot them so that they're going that same speed in the opposite direction, even if the direction of the kinetic energy transfer is perfectly opposite to Jupiter's current momentum, it would take 90 billion (!!!) slingshot manouvers to equal the force from just that one comet.
So comparatively, no matter how many space capsules we send flying at Jupiter (1.9 x 10^27 kg at 157 km/s), we won't ever come CLOSE to disrupting its orbit noticeably.
I thought airplanes were, statistically, the safest way to travel! It's a pretty broad statement, saying this would be safer than airplanes.
To my understanding, the recipients of past Darwin Awards have been stupid people doing stupid things. My project is not a candidate for such.
Can I quote you on that?
Earth == bread
Moon == cheese
Collision == very large grilled cheese sandwich.