Yeah, Mechs are a stupid idea - until you need to drive your tank over a 10' deep crevasse or up a steep river bank or you have to duck. Then the design idea doesn't look so bad. It's also good if you have to pick up anything.
This asteroid would do 1d4 wombats of damage to each of the 130 million items in the Library of Congress. However, because of their binding (creating a rigid spine area), each of the 29 million books would take an additional 1d4 wombats of damage. So we can call the total damage as 159x10^6d4 wombats of damage to the Library of Congress.
I don't disagree with you. However, there are a lot of situations where there is only one source for what you are trying to do or, if multiple sites, it is content stolen from the original source. So how do you confirm it? If it concerns some setting deep in the kernel, the only option would be to read the source yourself. 99% of people are not going to trace through the kernel code to see if something is correct. Also, information I've gotten off the Fedora website have been wrong. The only way I know it failed was I couldn't access the desired Xen image. If it was a kernel tweak, how would I have know if the behavior had changed, or if the performance change didn't affect what I was trying to do? The short answer is I couldn't - at least not without hours or days checking, and understanding, the source code.
So, do you trust it automatically? No. However, you can't just rule it out because it is found on the Internet. Also, if you confirm what the source is saying yourself, you still need to reference the site you got the information from.
As any first-year college student can tell you, an encyclopedia is not meant to be an authoritative source, nor can it be used a primary source in a properly-written research paper.
Why not? OK - I know what you are getting at, but there can be a lot more to a properly-written research paper than the actual research. If I need a few sentences on the history of someone or something, (background or related work), I'm not going to find it in a proper journal article, and there are a lot of people that don't have published biographies to look at. Also, I have seen peer-reviewed articles that are just wrong. One claimed that using the SUM of blocks was a good cryptographic checksum - they would be wrong. How that made it past the peer-review I'll never know.
I think the rule "no encyclopedias" is used as a fail-safe mechanism to prevent students from using an encyclopedia as their only reference, or over-using it as a reference. The real rule should be: Use your judgement on whether or not it is a good reference. However, there are a lot of students that don't have good judgement in this area and need the rule.
I could see the same rule being applied to posts in an Internet forum - "An Internet forum is not an authoritative source." OK - Then explain the KoreK attack on WEP. The attack was posted on the NetStumbler Forum. Would the URL for that post be acceptable as a reference? In context of WEP attacks, it should be. Why? Because anyone other reference will eventually trace-back, through other references, to that post.
I agree that Wikipedia has a lot of articles with mistakes in them. There are also a lot of peer-reviewed papers with mistakes in them. We're human. It happens. I think there will be a lot of headaches from trying to define what a good reference is in the near future as more and more information is served-up through the web. Think about how you get your information on configuring Linux. Was it a journal paper or was it some guy who worked through the problem and posted results on their blog? If you are conducting experiments on performance, how do you know what settings to change, or what those settings do? You probably found it on some blog, website or forum and not in a traditional paper.
One day soon the stockholders will ask why Microsoft is sinking so much money into XBox 360 or any of those other loss-making projects that Microsoft enjoys so much.
I saw an article a couple weeks ago that indicated the Entertainment Division, (includes the XBox), was finally in the black. Sure, you have to include all the profits from the games and XBox Live to eliminate all the red ink, but they are out of the hole. Of course, 6 years to make that first $1 is a long time, but they aren't hemorrhaging cash like they used to. At least, not until they have to develop the XBox 1080 - designed for Hi-Def!
You might not be able to use a rifle to do it, but it is quite easy. Columbia has over 200 terrorist attacks per year on it's transmission lines. A couple of minutes with a cutting torch, a pickup with a winch to provide a shearing force, and down comes the transmission tower.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. You want an odd number of values so you can allow for a "neutral". For example: "The person is not attractive or repulsive". Then you can have 3 "levels" of attractiveness and repulsiveness: slightly, somewhat, very.
Notice I said: get a lot of good advisors. Not political cronies. Not his drinking buddies. GOOD advisors. We could argue about what good actually means, but I think most people would agree that "good" would include someone with expertise in the area.
Admitting he doesn't understand the economy is honesty. How many people really understand the economy and not what they get from CNN or even the WSJ? He's not an economist - so what? What a good president should do is get a lot of good advisors, who understand their areas, and listen to their advice. Sure, the president has to understand it enough to ask some tough questions and try to determine what else it will affect - but they can't be experts in everything.
I would rather have someone who admitted they don't know something than a poser, who pretends they do. Who do you think will mess things up more?
How could they leave out zombies? After all, they are considered monsters and, if we accept the claims* of a powerful "zombie drug" in Haitian Voodoo, they actually exist.
*I say "claims" since I believe there is evidence, but no one has a conclusive, repeatable formula that has been demonstrated in the lab.
If the avatar is limited to talking about themselves, their mental state and the mental state of others, it doesn't seem like a true Turing Test. I mean, would a question about flipping a tortoise on its back be allowed?
On a different note, don't they know that giving it "memories" doesn't mean it will pass the Voight-Kampff test?
Give me my red and blue rule books and I'll be off to the Keep on the Borderlands or the Isle of Dread. If I have some time, on the way I'll stop by the Palace of the Silver Princess.
Sure, the later books filled in a lot of missing material, but the basic and expert sets covered what you needed to start playing and having fun. (I also liked the first edition of AD&D.) If I'm playing a game I don't want to be bogged down in so many details and minutia that I stop having fun. Do I really need to worry about having a sewing kit? I battle orc hordes and packs of bugbears - why should I worry about having spare tabards in my backpack so I look nice for the victory feast?
Now, a lot of that can be fixed by a good DM, but many start considering the details once they see them in the book. It never would have entered their mind that you need to keep a sewing kit - except that it's in the equipment list, so you should have bought one if you wanted one. Keep things simple. Keep them fun. If I wanted to handle all of the historical details, I'd join a civil war reenactment group. If I wanted to handle all of the details - I'd worry about doing laundry in real life. If I want to role play - I'll start living a second life. With all the new rulebooks, and their inflated prices, it's cheaper to live a double life.
It seems like the best defense would be applying epoxy to the memory so it couldn't be removed from the slot. If you make sure all the connections are covered as well, they wouldn't be able to place a tap, either. (At least without a lot of time being spent slowly drilling through the epoxy.)
It would make it impossible to replace your memory, but you could always move the HD to another system. If you care that much, then you should be willing to pay for a new system if someone tries to compromise your data.
There are plenty of volcanoes under the water here on Earth. Could those serve as a source of fire?
Perhaps primitive marine creatures would realize that some sort of algae-like food source grows better in the warmer waters around these "glowing liquid not-water" sources and start building walls around them to hold in that temperature. Sort of like farming - but with algae instead of regular "crops". This would give them a stable food source and they could get to thinking about other things.
Actually, there is time - it's just that most students decide to skip some of the technical classes for an "easy A" class and there are limits to the number of courses that a program can require students to take.
Since students are supposed to expand their horizons, most schools have a limit on how many credits can be required by a specific program. This means programs require their "core" classes and then require students to take 3 out of 5, (or however many, in some sort of pattern), of the other courses they offer. When I went to Iowa State for my undergrad in CS, (late 90s), the program was only 2 credits under the university limit of credits you could require in a program, so they did the "groups" thing which gave students some choice, but also made sure they hit specific areas. The current catalog, showing the required courses and the current groups, can be found here. [Warning: PDF]
So, all the classes you would need to learn "both sides" are generally offered but, by Junior year, most students just want to graduate and get a job, so they take easy courses as their electives instead of more technical, (and usually harder), classes.
While I agree the cost would be higher - someone will siphon off the money - you can't really compare the two projects.
The biggest difference would be that the train is above ground - so no need to reinforce the ceiling during construction, and no need to construct a ceiling at all. You also eliminate the need for ventilation, drainage and a lot of other issues you get when working underground. This would greatly increase the speed of the work and eliminate a lot of the cost. Also, you don't need to dig an entire tunnel, you would only need to excavate a few feet for the rail bed, and you don't have to haul the debris from a tunnel - you can just push it to the side. If we decided that the train was a priority, we could simply appropriate one of the Interstates and build on one side of that. Traffic would be heavier on the other 2 lanes, but it would still be usable and we now have our right-of-way and a solid, level foundation for the tracks. The work can also be done a lot faster since it can be done in parallel - you can have each team take a 20-mile section. No need to finish excavating the first part of a tunnel before you can start work on the next part.
Sure, if everything is virtual and has no purpose, then there is no test. However, if we assume that there is a purpose - such as the universe actually being a giant video game then there are ways to test it.
I wrote up a paper on a "Unified Theory of Existence" to demonstrate how to misapply the scientific method that has "proof" that the world is a giant video game. The interesting part is that there is a test that can disprove this hypothesis, so it's science, right? I don't want to give the ending away, so you'll have to read the paper to find out what the test is.
I'm in Iowa and they make sure they mention the margin of error. That way they get a more sensationalist headline by declaring the leading candidates in a statistical tie.
On a side-note: I really hate getting 10+ calls a day asking me to consider voting for $CANDIDATE. I am so glad that the caucuses are tomorrow - my phone will get a few months of rest before it starts going crazy for the actual election.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, Mechs are a stupid idea - until you need to drive your tank over a 10' deep crevasse or up a steep river bank or you have to duck. Then the design idea doesn't look so bad. It's also good if you have to pick up anything.
This asteroid would do 1d4 wombats of damage to each of the 130 million items in the Library of Congress. However, because of their binding (creating a rigid spine area), each of the 29 million books would take an additional 1d4 wombats of damage. So we can call the total damage as 159x10^6d4 wombats of damage to the Library of Congress.
Isn't it hard to sleep at night when you are hungry and your kids are crying because they are hungry?
I don't disagree with you. However, there are a lot of situations where there is only one source for what you are trying to do or, if multiple sites, it is content stolen from the original source. So how do you confirm it? If it concerns some setting deep in the kernel, the only option would be to read the source yourself. 99% of people are not going to trace through the kernel code to see if something is correct. Also, information I've gotten off the Fedora website have been wrong. The only way I know it failed was I couldn't access the desired Xen image. If it was a kernel tweak, how would I have know if the behavior had changed, or if the performance change didn't affect what I was trying to do? The short answer is I couldn't - at least not without hours or days checking, and understanding, the source code.
So, do you trust it automatically? No. However, you can't just rule it out because it is found on the Internet. Also, if you confirm what the source is saying yourself, you still need to reference the site you got the information from.
As any first-year college student can tell you, an encyclopedia is not meant to be an authoritative source, nor can it be used a primary source in a properly-written research paper.
Why not? OK - I know what you are getting at, but there can be a lot more to a properly-written research paper than the actual research. If I need a few sentences on the history of someone or something, (background or related work), I'm not going to find it in a proper journal article, and there are a lot of people that don't have published biographies to look at. Also, I have seen peer-reviewed articles that are just wrong. One claimed that using the SUM of blocks was a good cryptographic checksum - they would be wrong. How that made it past the peer-review I'll never know.
I think the rule "no encyclopedias" is used as a fail-safe mechanism to prevent students from using an encyclopedia as their only reference, or over-using it as a reference. The real rule should be: Use your judgement on whether or not it is a good reference. However, there are a lot of students that don't have good judgement in this area and need the rule.
I could see the same rule being applied to posts in an Internet forum - "An Internet forum is not an authoritative source." OK - Then explain the KoreK attack on WEP. The attack was posted on the NetStumbler Forum. Would the URL for that post be acceptable as a reference? In context of WEP attacks, it should be. Why? Because anyone other reference will eventually trace-back, through other references, to that post.
I agree that Wikipedia has a lot of articles with mistakes in them. There are also a lot of peer-reviewed papers with mistakes in them. We're human. It happens. I think there will be a lot of headaches from trying to define what a good reference is in the near future as more and more information is served-up through the web. Think about how you get your information on configuring Linux. Was it a journal paper or was it some guy who worked through the problem and posted results on their blog? If you are conducting experiments on performance, how do you know what settings to change, or what those settings do? You probably found it on some blog, website or forum and not in a traditional paper.
One day soon the stockholders will ask why Microsoft is sinking so much money into XBox 360 or any of those other loss-making projects that Microsoft enjoys so much.
I saw an article a couple weeks ago that indicated the Entertainment Division, (includes the XBox), was finally in the black. Sure, you have to include all the profits from the games and XBox Live to eliminate all the red ink, but they are out of the hole. Of course, 6 years to make that first $1 is a long time, but they aren't hemorrhaging cash like they used to. At least, not until they have to develop the XBox 1080 - designed for Hi-Def!
You might not be able to use a rifle to do it, but it is quite easy. Columbia has over 200 terrorist attacks per year on it's transmission lines. A couple of minutes with a cutting torch, a pickup with a winch to provide a shearing force, and down comes the transmission tower.
Actually, it makes a lot of sense. You want an odd number of values so you can allow for a "neutral". For example: "The person is not attractive or repulsive". Then you can have 3 "levels" of attractiveness and repulsiveness: slightly, somewhat, very.
Notice I said: get a lot of good advisors. Not political cronies. Not his drinking buddies. GOOD advisors. We could argue about what good actually means, but I think most people would agree that "good" would include someone with expertise in the area.
If only we could use some sort of automata to run computer programs...
Admitting he doesn't understand the economy is honesty. How many people really understand the economy and not what they get from CNN or even the WSJ? He's not an economist - so what? What a good president should do is get a lot of good advisors, who understand their areas, and listen to their advice. Sure, the president has to understand it enough to ask some tough questions and try to determine what else it will affect - but they can't be experts in everything.
I would rather have someone who admitted they don't know something than a poser, who pretends they do. Who do you think will mess things up more?
How could they leave out zombies? After all, they are considered monsters and, if we accept the claims* of a powerful "zombie drug" in Haitian Voodoo, they actually exist.
*I say "claims" since I believe there is evidence, but no one has a conclusive, repeatable formula that has been demonstrated in the lab.
Do you know what a turtle is? Same thing.
If the avatar is limited to talking about themselves, their mental state and the mental state of others, it doesn't seem like a true Turing Test. I mean, would a question about flipping a tortoise on its back be allowed?
On a different note, don't they know that giving it "memories" doesn't mean it will pass the Voight-Kampff test?
Give me my red and blue rule books and I'll be off to the Keep on the Borderlands or the Isle of Dread. If I have some time, on the way I'll stop by the Palace of the Silver Princess.
Sure, the later books filled in a lot of missing material, but the basic and expert sets covered what you needed to start playing and having fun. (I also liked the first edition of AD&D.) If I'm playing a game I don't want to be bogged down in so many details and minutia that I stop having fun. Do I really need to worry about having a sewing kit? I battle orc hordes and packs of bugbears - why should I worry about having spare tabards in my backpack so I look nice for the victory feast?
Now, a lot of that can be fixed by a good DM, but many start considering the details once they see them in the book. It never would have entered their mind that you need to keep a sewing kit - except that it's in the equipment list, so you should have bought one if you wanted one. Keep things simple. Keep them fun. If I wanted to handle all of the historical details, I'd join a civil war reenactment group. If I wanted to handle all of the details - I'd worry about doing laundry in real life. If I want to role play - I'll start living a second life. With all the new rulebooks, and their inflated prices, it's cheaper to live a double life.
It seems like the best defense would be applying epoxy to the memory so it couldn't be removed from the slot. If you make sure all the connections are covered as well, they wouldn't be able to place a tap, either. (At least without a lot of time being spent slowly drilling through the epoxy.)
It would make it impossible to replace your memory, but you could always move the HD to another system. If you care that much, then you should be willing to pay for a new system if someone tries to compromise your data.
I would recommend reading Ken Thompson's lecture: "Reflections on Trusting Trust" - A PDF can be found here.
Spoiler: If you didn't build it/write it/create it yourself you can't trust it. Oh, and you could have made a mistake so you can't trust that either.
There are plenty of volcanoes under the water here on Earth. Could those serve as a source of fire?
Perhaps primitive marine creatures would realize that some sort of algae-like food source grows better in the warmer waters around these "glowing liquid not-water" sources and start building walls around them to hold in that temperature. Sort of like farming - but with algae instead of regular "crops". This would give them a stable food source and they could get to thinking about other things.
For the love of $DEITY - do not use a glass bottle. If you get hit with glass shrapnel it won't show up on x-rays when you go to the hospital.
Actually, there is time - it's just that most students decide to skip some of the technical classes for an "easy A" class and there are limits to the number of courses that a program can require students to take.
Since students are supposed to expand their horizons, most schools have a limit on how many credits can be required by a specific program. This means programs require their "core" classes and then require students to take 3 out of 5, (or however many, in some sort of pattern), of the other courses they offer. When I went to Iowa State for my undergrad in CS, (late 90s), the program was only 2 credits under the university limit of credits you could require in a program, so they did the "groups" thing which gave students some choice, but also made sure they hit specific areas. The current catalog, showing the required courses and the current groups, can be found here. [Warning: PDF]
So, all the classes you would need to learn "both sides" are generally offered but, by Junior year, most students just want to graduate and get a job, so they take easy courses as their electives instead of more technical, (and usually harder), classes.
While I agree the cost would be higher - someone will siphon off the money - you can't really compare the two projects.
The biggest difference would be that the train is above ground - so no need to reinforce the ceiling during construction, and no need to construct a ceiling at all. You also eliminate the need for ventilation, drainage and a lot of other issues you get when working underground. This would greatly increase the speed of the work and eliminate a lot of the cost. Also, you don't need to dig an entire tunnel, you would only need to excavate a few feet for the rail bed, and you don't have to haul the debris from a tunnel - you can just push it to the side. If we decided that the train was a priority, we could simply appropriate one of the Interstates and build on one side of that. Traffic would be heavier on the other 2 lanes, but it would still be usable and we now have our right-of-way and a solid, level foundation for the tracks. The work can also be done a lot faster since it can be done in parallel - you can have each team take a 20-mile section. No need to finish excavating the first part of a tunnel before you can start work on the next part.
Sorry, but I have to go with the Captcha.
If the user is forced to change the password, customer service is forced to deal with everyone that forgot their password.
It isn't a simulation - it's a video game.
Sure, if everything is virtual and has no purpose, then there is no test. However, if we assume that there is a purpose - such as the universe actually being a giant video game then there are ways to test it.
I wrote up a paper on a "Unified Theory of Existence" to demonstrate how to misapply the scientific method that has "proof" that the world is a giant video game. The interesting part is that there is a test that can disprove this hypothesis, so it's science, right? I don't want to give the ending away, so you'll have to read the paper to find out what the test is.
I'm in Iowa and they make sure they mention the margin of error. That way they get a more sensationalist headline by declaring the leading candidates in a statistical tie.
On a side-note: I really hate getting 10+ calls a day asking me to consider voting for $CANDIDATE. I am so glad that the caucuses are tomorrow - my phone will get a few months of rest before it starts going crazy for the actual election.