which will be able to flush billions upon billions of stars into their new "Sloan Black Hole."
Interestingly, you don't need a black hole to get rid of unwanted material. Due to the expansion of spacetime, simply rocket something away from you faster than the escape velocity of your local group of galaxies (perhaps 1000km/sec), and eventually it will vanish from your observable universe, or at least become redshifted to invisibility. (The flip side, is that alien civilizations near the edge of our observable universe may be rocketing their trash in our direction as we speak. And if it hits us, not only would it be a highly icky experience for us, we would be fundamentally unable to get back at them for it.)
Brings to mind this passage from Lewis Carroll, 1897:
"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"
"About six inches to the mile."
""Only six inches!"exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"
"Have you used it much?" I enquired.
"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.
In a nutshell, let's keep the second, minute and hour the same as Earth's, but vary the length of the DAY: four 25-hour days followed by two-day "weekends" with 24-hour days. An occasional three-day weekend will balance out the timing exactly.
Also, note the Mars Rock Garden at the top of the page. (Anyone have a source for appropriately Mars-like sand for this?)
1. Beagle Scratched
2. Dog Whistle Inaudible
3. No Word from Deep Space K-Nine
4. After Two Dog Days and Three Dog Nights: Dog Gone?
5. Crater possibility: Did Dog Land in Reservoir?
6. Mars, 15; Puppy, Love.
when did it happen before this that we had so many probes heading on the same planet?
It's getting to the point where we start sending more probes, just to find out what happened to the first ones... Perhaps if we attach Pringles cans, we can hear them better?
Poland has just announced their country's worst air disaster. Apparently a single-engine plane crashed into a graveyard; investigators have found over 600 bodies and are still digging...
Tests by the military showed that figher pilots can perceive framerates up to at least 200fps
I would guess that it's not the framerate that's being perceived directly, but rather the sampling artifacts caused by fast-moving objects. Consider what happens when you move your cursor quickly across the screen; you will see a transient cursor image every 100 pixels or so, and keep in mind this is at 75fps. Temporal anti-aliasing might help, but even then if you move your eyes to follow the cursor it will look blurrier the faster it's moved, whereas in real life this doesn't happen with fast-moving objects.
In extreme cases, I'd guess that framerates up to 500-1000fps might be required to eliminate these artifacts completely. Still, 60fps would be a definite improvement...
stuck with my dual-cracked hinge ti powerbook. (because of the hinges, i have to constantly prop the display up against something. right now, a pillow...sigh...)
Suggestion-- Go pick up one of those $39 aftermarket carrying handles that screw onto the back of the TiBook. The handle mounts will physically limit the screen to tilt back only about 10 degrees from vertical, which should solve your problem.
Had to be said, though admittedly, easier said than done... I still wish the encoding were higher quality, my music library is all at 192k. And does anyone know if the AAC songs can be played on older-model iPods? Guess I'll find out pretty soon...
Having been involved in the development of Kai's Power Tools, I'd have to say that Kai's user-interface designs had a strong influence on what's out there today.
Our philosophy while writing those programs was based on the observation that existing UI paradigms were created for processors hundreds of times slower than current machines; why not leverage that power to create interfaces beyond the standard buttons, menus, and 16x16 pixelated cursors?
Say what you will, the OSX Dock (for example) is indisputably Kai-like. I think that's a good thing.
A tapering ribbon makes it more difficult yes, but not impossible. I'm sure there'll be plenty of potential engineering solutions proposed given incentive.
Why don't they just taper the thickness of the ribbon, instead of its width? Then it could have constant width from top to bottom, varying in thickness from (say) 10 microns to 20 microns, and the climber designs could be made simpler. Or does my sig happen to apply to this in an unforeseen way?
As the author of a great deal of high-performance graphics software in the last decade, I've done my own substantial amount of research into squeezing performance out of math routines and algorithms. In general, beside slowness, my biggest complaint with standard math libraries is that they rarely include a sincos() function, or reciprocal square root.
I have a page on my website detailing a few of my numerical tricks in C++, and will be interested to compare my approaches with those of Mr. Crenshaw when I receive his book. Any comments are welcome...
My vote goes to the Levitron, a magnetic top that actually levitates. Awesome for parties. Just don't get it too near your CRT... (for the 3% of you who still have CRT's, that is...)
It's difficult to imagine anybody flying in this thing. For one thing, the passengers are intended to be kept in compartments close to the center of the aircraft, so no window seats.
Well, you've heard of glass-bottom boats... How about a glass-bottom plane?
Transparent floors would give quite an interesting view, no doubt. Particularly so in the case of a so-called "water landing..."
Re:I know, it's a feature.
on
Pet Bugs?
·
· Score: 1
My favorite bug in slashcode is that clicking "Parent" in my default story view always returns the default story view, not the parent of the post I'm clicking on. So I have to click on the post ID number, then click parent on the resulting page.
This reminds me of my own favorite slashcode bug, or perhaps missing feature. Each Slashdot story has a popup menu listing the number of comments of each score, and my threshold is typically 3, so it will say e.g. "3 - 27 comments." However, there doesn't seem to be a way to view exactly those 27 comments, and no others. (For instance, if a score 3 comment is posted as a reply to a score -1 comment, you'll have to set your threshold to -1 in order to view the +3 comment.) I'd like to be able to see the +3 response, even if the original -1 post is not shown. With the usual practice of quoting the relevant chunk of the original post (as I am doing in this post), not much context will be lost. Am I missing something obvious here?
Slashdot Mirror
I heard that next time they are going to release the last decimal of pi.
But will they tell us whether there's an even or odd number of stars up there?
which will be able to flush billions upon billions of stars into their new "Sloan Black Hole."
Interestingly, you don't need a black hole to get rid of unwanted material. Due to the expansion of spacetime, simply rocket something away from you faster than the escape velocity of your local group of galaxies (perhaps 1000km/sec), and eventually it will vanish from your observable universe, or at least become redshifted to invisibility. (The flip side, is that alien civilizations near the edge of our observable universe may be rocketing their trash in our direction as we speak. And if it hits us, not only would it be a highly icky experience for us, we would be fundamentally unable to get back at them for it.)
Brings to mind this passage from Lewis Carroll, 1897:
Here's my personal take on the subject...
A Calendar For Mars
In a nutshell, let's keep the second, minute and hour the same as Earth's, but vary the length of the DAY: four 25-hour days followed by two-day "weekends" with 24-hour days. An occasional three-day weekend will balance out the timing exactly.
Also, note the Mars Rock Garden at the top of the page. (Anyone have a source for appropriately Mars-like sand for this?)
The only "acceptable" choice right now seems to be to be an agnostic...
I'm Meta-Agnostic.
(I'm waiting for more evidence before deciding whether I'm agnostic or not.)
1. Beagle Scratched
2. Dog Whistle Inaudible
3. No Word from Deep Space K-Nine
4. After Two Dog Days and Three Dog Nights: Dog Gone?
5. Crater possibility: Did Dog Land in Reservoir?
6. Mars, 15; Puppy, Love.
when did it happen before this that we had so many probes heading on the same planet?
It's getting to the point where we start sending more probes, just to find out what happened to the first ones... Perhaps if we attach Pringles cans, we can hear them better?
With its companion web viewer: iBrowse.
And in other news...
Poland has just announced their country's worst air disaster. Apparently a single-engine plane crashed into a graveyard; investigators have found over 600 bodies and are still digging...
Approximately:
One chihuahua per nanosecond.
Tests by the military showed that figher pilots can perceive framerates up to at least 200fps
I would guess that it's not the framerate that's being perceived directly, but rather the sampling artifacts caused by fast-moving objects. Consider what happens when you move your cursor quickly across the screen; you will see a transient cursor image every 100 pixels or so, and keep in mind this is at 75fps. Temporal anti-aliasing might help, but even then if you move your eyes to follow the cursor it will look blurrier the faster it's moved, whereas in real life this doesn't happen with fast-moving objects.
In extreme cases, I'd guess that framerates up to 500-1000fps might be required to eliminate these artifacts completely. Still, 60fps would be a definite improvement...
Cartoons are so insightful:
. gif
http://images.ucomics.com/comics/ga/2003/ga030916
You mean sorta like this?...
. gif
http://lexi.hillabolt.com/images/posted/laptopdog
Finally, an excuse to hang around the water cooler all day...
stuck with my dual-cracked hinge ti powerbook. (because of the hinges, i have to constantly prop the display up against something. right now, a pillow...sigh...)
Suggestion-- Go pick up one of those $39 aftermarket carrying handles that screw onto the back of the TiBook. The handle mounts will physically limit the screen to tilt back only about 10 degrees from vertical, which should solve your problem.
..capability of launching humans into anal orbit and returning...
...and wiping out Klingons?
These scientist want to study structure which anything can enter, but nothing can leave?
Black Hole-tel California?
7. Profit!
Had to be said, though admittedly, easier said than done... I still wish the encoding were higher quality, my music library is all at 192k. And does anyone know if the AAC songs can be played on older-model iPods? Guess I'll find out pretty soon...
Having been involved in the development of Kai's Power Tools, I'd have to say that Kai's user-interface designs had a strong influence on what's out there today.
Our philosophy while writing those programs was based on the observation that existing UI paradigms were created for processors hundreds of times slower than current machines; why not leverage that power to create interfaces beyond the standard buttons, menus, and 16x16 pixelated cursors?
Say what you will, the OSX Dock (for example) is indisputably Kai-like. I think that's a good thing.
Can integer division ever overflow?
Signed 16-bit integers: -32768 / -1. (Or anything divided by zero, I suppose.)
A tapering ribbon makes it more difficult yes, but not impossible. I'm sure there'll be plenty of potential engineering solutions proposed given incentive.
Why don't they just taper the thickness of the ribbon, instead of its width? Then it could have constant width from top to bottom, varying in thickness from (say) 10 microns to 20 microns, and the climber designs could be made simpler. Or does my sig happen to apply to this in an unforeseen way?
As the author of a great deal of high-performance graphics software in the last decade, I've done my own substantial amount of research into squeezing performance out of math routines and algorithms. In general, beside slowness, my biggest complaint with standard math libraries is that they rarely include a sincos() function, or reciprocal square root.
I have a page on my website detailing a few of my numerical tricks in C++, and will be interested to compare my approaches with those of Mr. Crenshaw when I receive his book. Any comments are welcome...
My vote goes to the Levitron, a magnetic top that actually levitates. Awesome for parties. Just don't get it too near your CRT... (for the 3% of you who still have CRT's, that is...)
It's difficult to imagine anybody flying in this thing. For one thing, the passengers are intended to be kept in compartments close to the center of the aircraft, so no window seats.
Well, you've heard of glass-bottom boats... How about a glass-bottom plane?
Transparent floors would give quite an interesting view, no doubt. Particularly so in the case of a so-called "water landing..."
My favorite bug in slashcode is that clicking "Parent" in my default story view always returns the default story view, not the parent of the post I'm clicking on. So I have to click on the post ID number, then click parent on the resulting page.
This reminds me of my own favorite slashcode bug, or perhaps missing feature. Each Slashdot story has a popup menu listing the number of comments of each score, and my threshold is typically 3, so it will say e.g. "3 - 27 comments." However, there doesn't seem to be a way to view exactly those 27 comments, and no others. (For instance, if a score 3 comment is posted as a reply to a score -1 comment, you'll have to set your threshold to -1 in order to view the +3 comment.) I'd like to be able to see the +3 response, even if the original -1 post is not shown. With the usual practice of quoting the relevant chunk of the original post (as I am doing in this post), not much context will be lost. Am I missing something obvious here?