Well it can be done, a whole load of NVRAM of some sort, indeed new nanotech RAM may be the solution. The problem with ideal solutions is always cost. We could make a computer like that today using flash RAM instead of SDRAM, but the price would be hideous and perfomance would be poor too. Design is always a balance between the ideal and the practical, and some things are simply impossible at this time. For example, I should be able to teleport from work to home without the commute, but it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
Wrong, a computer will be truly user friendly when it is able to guess what you are going to ask it and tell you before you're able to frame the question based upon where you are, who you are talking to, and what you are talking about, what you are looking at etc. A truly context sensitive computer.
The problem with clients is that they usually don't know what they want. They know what they DON'T want, and have one or two fuzzy ideas about some small irrelevent aspect of the end solution. Part of my job is creating GUI's for a large scientific application, and the biggest argument we get into with the client (ie marketing) is over the colour of the damn icons, rather than how you actually access feature x. They key to good design has got to be functional simplicity with useful words like paradigm, metaphor and ergonomics.
What I want out of a mobile device is something which gives me directions to the nearest pub when it hears me say "Damn, I could murder a pint"
And another thing, why are mobile phones generally still things you hold up to your head to use, rather than always coming with usable wireless headsets?
Going strong huh? First up you don't actually HAVE a democracy, you have a Republic. Secondly, how can any two party political system really be representative and answerable to the electorate. Thirdly, RIAA, MPAA, NRA, BSA, etc. All massive lobbying groups who's sole job is to try to influence and coopt the very people you elect to protect your way of life into passing laws to restrict your freedoms. Fourth, PATRIOT I and II, DMCA, TIA, HR-2517.
Face facts, your "American Experiment" has been totally defeated and taken over by your large corporations. They have turned you from citizens into consumers. They own your politicians, they write your laws, they tell you what to think, how to live, what to wear. They tell you that their brand is a lifestyle choice that will project a positive image to your friends, and you lap it up. You are their bitch, and best of all, you like it.
And what's with your love of your flag? It like your version of Mao's little red book. A TV program last year took some groups of tourists and did stuff to them to see how different nationalities would react, so they decided to accidentely burn that nations flag. Most of the groups were a little annoyed, felt it to be rude, except for 2. We brits didn't notice, and the American tourist were furious and had to take the flag home for a proper burial. That kind of fanatisism is just bizare, and shows that you have a blind spot for your countries faults. You say "God bless the USA, it's the greatest nation in the world, well at least it's better than most, well there's more right than wrong". Don't you see, while you are prepared to live with its faults they will continue to worsten. While you're busy waving your flags and looking the other ways your nation is rotting to the core.
Also they didn't have the benefit of the decimal point
The Persian astronomer Al-Kashi (died c. 1436 or c. 1424) in his al-Risali al-mohitije (Treatise on the circumference) wrote the value of pi using Arabic characters as follows:
sah-hah
3 1415926535898732
The word sah-hah meant complete, correct, integral. (The modern Turkish form is sahih.) Thus the part at the right is the decimal, although there is no decimal point. According to Smith (vol. 2, page 240), "Manifestly it is, therefore, a clear case of a decimal fraction, and it seems to be earlier than any similar one to be found in Europe."
well that assumes that anyone actually pays enough attention to said bloggers site that it should appear on the Iranian clerics radars, which is highly unlikely.
Here is a link to broaden you mind a little bit. A balanced discussion between two American political thinkers, both of whome agree that the European model is actually pretty good on the whole.
Freedom IS overrated. Freedom is NOT the single most important thing to strive for. Happiness is. What is more important is being able to have a roof over your head, food on the table, a safe environment in which to bring up your kids and having a happy fulfilled life. It is possible to have all these things and not be free in your sense of the word, but I accept that a sense of freedom is important. However if you think you are really free I suggest you think again. You may have some constitutionally protected rights, but what use are they if you are unable to excerise them? At some level you are limited in what you can do either by law or by situation around you, but it is only when these limitations start to infringe on your life that the problem arises. Did you know that I have the right as an EU citizen enshrined in the EU convention on human rights, not to be executed? A right that no american has. How can you when some states still have the death penalty?
Most professional workers in the United States are in a relationship known informally as "salaried", or more formally as "exempt". In an exempt relationship, you are presumed to have the freedom to negotiate the individual work relationship (rather than being forced into the mold that works for others.)
I am on a salary, but I also have a contract like almost all UK workers. Mine says my normal working week is 37.5 hours but I may be required what extra time as to get the work done. But it also says that overtime can be negotiated. The assumption you make above that you have freedom to negotiate you work relationship is a false one because one party to the relationship holds all the cards as shown by the situation that started this story (12/7 and no overtime). IMHO anyone who would choose to work more than 48 hours a week needs to get a life. Get out and smell the roses once in a while. There are problems with the one-size-fits all approach, but in general one size DOES fit all. certainly enough that I think only a small proportion of EU workers would rather work in the US.
His documentry wasn't squashed. Stupid White Men almost was. It was supposed to have been on sale a few days after 9/11 but instead the publisher wouldn't ship the books until Moore made changes so as to look less Anti-Bush. Three months later his publisher was threatening to pulp the 50,000 copies already printed until a librarian started a grass roots campaign to get it published. Which goes to show, its not the right to free speach which is important, it is the right to have your free speach heard. If your press is so free, why did Michael more have to come to a British TV company (Channel 4) to get his TV series made? Why in his list of websites for "Real News" is it that the only two old news media sources he mentions are both British? (The Guardian and the BBC) One of which is a state run TV station! It seems that despite our lack of de jour freedom we might have more de facto freedom that Americans do. No really! Tell me one thing (other than own a machine gun) that an american can do that I cannot and I will tell you one thing I can do which an american cannot. can you say DeCSS? can you say DMCA, PATRIOT act, TIA? Freedom is the ability to choose, but choice is an illusion by those with power against those without, and no one in europe are as all powerful as your rulers^H^H^H^H^H^H leaders.
I never said it was freedom, what I said was freedom is overrated, and I will NOT defend your so called right to spread lies and misinformation and generally ignorant shit. Blogs are the greatest curse of the last few years. What makes you think that anyone is interested in your self promoting opinionated WRONG shit? I'd like to see you try and ignore EU law, just to see you're ass in court. What is wrong with blogs at the moment is that there is no accountability, no context, no comeback. You could say Hitler was a misunderstood genius, and some poor gulible fool would believe you. How is it smothering independent voices when all that happens is that an opposing view speaks up with the right to be heard? Afraid someone will prove you wrong? What if the BBC or News international started an online media campaign to get blogs made illegal, wouldn't you like the right to have you voice heard? I don't think that freedom of speach does equal freedom. I think that the right to be heard equals freedom, and you in your terror of being made to look stupid don't want to hear that. Do you know why American TV news is so bad? It's because they can only tell people what they want to hear, rather that what they need to hear, or they'll lose audience and ad revenue. THAT is what you precious freedom of the press has got you! I just hope you choke on it!!
freedom my arse. You americans always talk about freedom like you invented it, but you just seem to get it wrong. You have the freedom to get pissed on by the person with the most money, and because you have the biggest guns, you have the freedom to piss on the rest of the world. Well listen up. Freedom is anarchy. The survival of the fittest and there is no room for compassion. Well thank you very much, but you can take your so called freedom and stick it where the sun don't shine.
This law is a good law because if a website publishes an article which says you like to abuse children, they HAVE to publish your response. Now call me old fashioned but any news source has a responsiblity born of it privilaged status and perceived authority to publish only accurate or impartial stuff. Anything which is a lie or a partial truth should be struck down. The difference in emphasis between EU and US laws is probably that the website is not free speach in and of itself, but merely a forum for free speach, in which case not publishing a response is denying the respondent their right to free speach.
BTW how is PAYING for an ad FREE speach. It just cost you the price of the ad.
I know I'm going to get modded as flamebait or troll, but hey, fuck you! Here my right to free speach and yours is to reply and call me a pinko commie EU surrender monkey, but slashdot won't refuse to post such a response, whereas many US papers would.
Do you know how difficult it is to get published in the US if big media doesn't like what you have to say? Look at Michael Moore's Stupid White Men for a great example. How is it free speech when his right to publish his book was squashed by the publishing company that had paid him to write it. Remove the plank from your own eyes America, before you start to complain about the corrupt EU press. At least our media hasn't managed to buy their own regulatory body yet.
you're just jealous that despite your self proclaimed "freedom", we Europeans have more practical freedom because we have a state in our corner against worker expoitation. If my contract says I have to work 37.5 hours per week, then that is what I'll work plus however much I need to do to finish at a convenient point. If my employer wants me to work longer they could pay me more and change my contract of employment. If it becomes clear that my employer has promised more than is possible with the time period then that is his fault. Why should I work my arse off beyond what I have been paid for just so my boss can bank another million? Give me share options and I'll think about it.
Well let me offer at least one more possible clue then. The spoon that is given to neo just before he goes in for the final battle. The suggestion is that it is the same spoon that Neo was told doesn't exist, but yet, here it is. How can that be, unless Zion is also part of a more subtle Matrix. The questoin who created the matrix and for what purpose. If Zion exist inside the Matrix also then the world in which Zion exists also does not exist and so the entire existance of the machine AI's is called into question. And humans for that matter.
I realize it's fashionable to compare Bush and the Religious Right to the Nazis or the Catholic Inquisition, but the influence of religious leaders on US government is many orders of magnitude less than in, say, Saudi Arabia.
Some would disagree with you. They might say that the influence of religion groups in America is much more powerful because it is more covert. They blame such inflences for the US governments stance on Israel, and Islamic "terrorist" states. They believe that elements of the religious right believe that there will be no second coming until ancient Israel is restored, and that they utilise their influence to control US foreign policy. I think that largely bullshit, but if the matrix teaches us one thing, it is that control is more dangerous and complete when you don't know you're being controlled.
I hate to do this but did anyone else think of programming parallels during this film? Imaging Neo as a bug or an access violation propagating through the system. The result perhaps of a hideous hack to make it work. The whole scene with the Architect is then just exception handling. A giant try..catch statement if you will. Like you say, perhaps Zion then exists as part of the rest of the program, but what is the program? Is there really this war between humans and the machines, or is it part of a larger scheme of control operated by other humans? In this context it's impossible to know who really is pulling the strings, and how many layers of indirection there really are. It raises the question that it's not impossible that we ourselves are in some kind of simulation, or are indeed simulated. There would be no way to tell, which perhaps is the problem that the Egyptian censors have with the film. If nothing really is real, then nothing really matters and you're left with the philosophy of the marquis-de-sade. Not something any civilised society really wants.
I've seen similar interference problems at Alton Towers theme park in Derbyshire. When I was there last year they were having terrible problems with Oblivion reporting non-existent errors which stopped the ride. Apparently none of these errors would occur when the park was empty so there were signs everywhere telling people to turn their phones off. Unfortunately now everyone uses mobile phones in theme parks to keep track of the kids, and then panic when they find the kids aren't answering their phones.
"This is certainly a brave approach that throws everything we thought we knew about building a rocket" said NASA Ames' deputy director for research, G. Allen Flynt. "It shows that we've being doing it all wrong for years, trying to build ever more powerful, more efficient rocket motors, when the real solution was staring us in the face; Replace the expensive rocket motor with a cheap commodity PC running GNU/Linux. Brilliant. My hat goes off to these guys"
Slashdot Mirror
Well it can be done, a whole load of NVRAM of some sort, indeed new nanotech RAM may be the solution. The problem with ideal solutions is always cost. We could make a computer like that today using flash RAM instead of SDRAM, but the price would be hideous and perfomance would be poor too. Design is always a balance between the ideal and the practical, and some things are simply impossible at this time. For example, I should be able to teleport from work to home without the commute, but it ain't gonna happen any time soon.
Wrong, a computer will be truly user friendly when it is able to guess what you are going to ask it and tell you before you're able to frame the question based upon where you are, who you are talking to, and what you are talking about, what you are looking at etc. A truly context sensitive computer.
The problem with clients is that they usually don't know what they want. They know what they DON'T want, and have one or two fuzzy ideas about some small irrelevent aspect of the end solution. Part of my job is creating GUI's for a large scientific application, and the biggest argument we get into with the client (ie marketing) is over the colour of the damn icons, rather than how you actually access feature x. They key to good design has got to be functional simplicity with useful words like paradigm, metaphor and ergonomics.
What I want out of a mobile device is something which gives me directions to the nearest pub when it hears me say "Damn, I could murder a pint"
And another thing, why are mobile phones generally still things you hold up to your head to use, rather than always coming with usable wireless headsets?
Going strong huh? First up you don't actually HAVE a democracy, you have a Republic. Secondly, how can any two party political system really be representative and answerable to the electorate. Thirdly, RIAA, MPAA, NRA, BSA, etc. All massive lobbying groups who's sole job is to try to influence and coopt the very people you elect to protect your way of life into passing laws to restrict your freedoms. Fourth, PATRIOT I and II, DMCA, TIA, HR-2517.
Face facts, your "American Experiment" has been totally defeated and taken over by your large corporations. They have turned you from citizens into consumers. They own your politicians, they write your laws, they tell you what to think, how to live, what to wear. They tell you that their brand is a lifestyle choice that will project a positive image to your friends, and you lap it up. You are their bitch, and best of all, you like it.
And what's with your love of your flag? It like your version of Mao's little red book. A TV program last year took some groups of tourists and did stuff to them to see how different nationalities would react, so they decided to accidentely burn that nations flag. Most of the groups were a little annoyed, felt it to be rude, except for 2. We brits didn't notice, and the American tourist were furious and had to take the flag home for a proper burial. That kind of fanatisism is just bizare, and shows that you have a blind spot for your countries faults. You say "God bless the USA, it's the greatest nation in the world, well at least it's better than most, well there's more right than wrong". Don't you see, while you are prepared to live with its faults they will continue to worsten. While you're busy waving your flags and looking the other ways your nation is rotting to the core.
Also they didn't have the benefit of the decimal point
The Persian astronomer Al-Kashi (died c. 1436 or c. 1424) in his al-Risali al-mohitije (Treatise on the circumference) wrote the value of pi using Arabic characters as follows:
sah-hah
3 1415926535898732
The word sah-hah meant complete, correct, integral. (The modern Turkish form is sahih.) Thus the part at the right is the decimal, although there is no decimal point. According to Smith (vol. 2, page 240), "Manifestly it is, therefore, a clear case of a decimal fraction, and it seems to be earlier than any similar one to be found in Europe."
Source
well that assumes that anyone actually pays enough attention to said bloggers site that it should appear on the Iranian clerics radars, which is highly unlikely.
Here is a link to broaden you mind a little bit. A balanced discussion between two American political thinkers, both of whome agree that the European model is actually pretty good on the whole.
I'd rather be a drone than a corporate whore.
Freedom IS overrated. Freedom is NOT the single most important thing to strive for. Happiness is. What is more important is being able to have a roof over your head, food on the table, a safe environment in which to bring up your kids and having a happy fulfilled life. It is possible to have all these things and not be free in your sense of the word, but I accept that a sense of freedom is important. However if you think you are really free I suggest you think again. You may have some constitutionally protected rights, but what use are they if you are unable to excerise them? At some level you are limited in what you can do either by law or by situation around you, but it is only when these limitations start to infringe on your life that the problem arises. Did you know that I have the right as an EU citizen enshrined in the EU convention on human rights, not to be executed? A right that no american has. How can you when some states still have the death penalty?
Most professional workers in the United States are in a relationship known informally as "salaried", or more formally as "exempt". In an exempt relationship, you are presumed to have the freedom to negotiate the individual work relationship (rather than being forced into the mold that works for others.)
I am on a salary, but I also have a contract like almost all UK workers. Mine says my normal working week is 37.5 hours but I may be required what extra time as to get the work done. But it also says that overtime can be negotiated. The assumption you make above that you have freedom to negotiate you work relationship is a false one because one party to the relationship holds all the cards as shown by the situation that started this story (12/7 and no overtime). IMHO anyone who would choose to work more than 48 hours a week needs to get a life. Get out and smell the roses once in a while. There are problems with the one-size-fits all approach, but in general one size DOES fit all. certainly enough that I think only a small proportion of EU workers would rather work in the US.
His documentry wasn't squashed. Stupid White Men almost was. It was supposed to have been on sale a few days after 9/11 but instead the publisher wouldn't ship the books until Moore made changes so as to look less Anti-Bush. Three months later his publisher was threatening to pulp the 50,000 copies already printed until a librarian started a grass roots campaign to get it published. Which goes to show, its not the right to free speach which is important, it is the right to have your free speach heard. If your press is so free, why did Michael more have to come to a British TV company (Channel 4) to get his TV series made? Why in his list of websites for "Real News" is it that the only two old news media sources he mentions are both British? (The Guardian and the BBC) One of which is a state run TV station! It seems that despite our lack of de jour freedom we might have more de facto freedom that Americans do. No really! Tell me one thing (other than own a machine gun) that an american can do that I cannot and I will tell you one thing I can do which an american cannot. can you say DeCSS? can you say DMCA, PATRIOT act, TIA? Freedom is the ability to choose, but choice is an illusion by those with power against those without, and no one in europe are as all powerful as your rulers^H^H^H^H^H^H leaders.
I never said it was freedom, what I said was freedom is overrated, and I will NOT defend your so called right to spread lies and misinformation and generally ignorant shit. Blogs are the greatest curse of the last few years. What makes you think that anyone is interested in your self promoting opinionated WRONG shit? I'd like to see you try and ignore EU law, just to see you're ass in court. What is wrong with blogs at the moment is that there is no accountability, no context, no comeback. You could say Hitler was a misunderstood genius, and some poor gulible fool would believe you. How is it smothering independent voices when all that happens is that an opposing view speaks up with the right to be heard? Afraid someone will prove you wrong? What if the BBC or News international started an online media campaign to get blogs made illegal, wouldn't you like the right to have you voice heard? I don't think that freedom of speach does equal freedom. I think that the right to be heard equals freedom, and you in your terror of being made to look stupid don't want to hear that. Do you know why American TV news is so bad? It's because they can only tell people what they want to hear, rather that what they need to hear, or they'll lose audience and ad revenue. THAT is what you precious freedom of the press has got you! I just hope you choke on it!!
Right on brother!! Amen!!
the key word there is TRUTH. if you speak the truth you have nothing to fear. If you report propaganda as truth you deserve everything you get.
freedom my arse. You americans always talk about freedom like you invented it, but you just seem to get it wrong. You have the freedom to get pissed on by the person with the most money, and because you have the biggest guns, you have the freedom to piss on the rest of the world. Well listen up. Freedom is anarchy. The survival of the fittest and there is no room for compassion. Well thank you very much, but you can take your so called freedom and stick it where the sun don't shine.
This law is a good law because if a website publishes an article which says you like to abuse children, they HAVE to publish your response. Now call me old fashioned but any news source has a responsiblity born of it privilaged status and perceived authority to publish only accurate or impartial stuff. Anything which is a lie or a partial truth should be struck down. The difference in emphasis between EU and US laws is probably that the website is not free speach in and of itself, but merely a forum for free speach, in which case not publishing a response is denying the respondent their right to free speach.
BTW how is PAYING for an ad FREE speach. It just cost you the price of the ad.
I know I'm going to get modded as flamebait or troll, but hey, fuck you! Here my right to free speach and yours is to reply and call me a pinko commie EU surrender monkey, but slashdot won't refuse to post such a response, whereas many US papers would.
Do you know how difficult it is to get published in the US if big media doesn't like what you have to say? Look at Michael Moore's Stupid White Men for a great example. How is it free speech when his right to publish his book was squashed by the publishing company that had paid him to write it. Remove the plank from your own eyes America, before you start to complain about the corrupt EU press. At least our media hasn't managed to buy their own regulatory body yet.
you're just jealous that despite your self proclaimed "freedom", we Europeans have more practical freedom because we have a state in our corner against worker expoitation. If my contract says I have to work 37.5 hours per week, then that is what I'll work plus however much I need to do to finish at a convenient point. If my employer wants me to work longer they could pay me more and change my contract of employment. If it becomes clear that my employer has promised more than is possible with the time period then that is his fault. Why should I work my arse off beyond what I have been paid for just so my boss can bank another million? Give me share options and I'll think about it.
Well let me offer at least one more possible clue then. The spoon that is given to neo just before he goes in for the final battle. The suggestion is that it is the same spoon that Neo was told doesn't exist, but yet, here it is. How can that be, unless Zion is also part of a more subtle Matrix. The questoin who created the matrix and for what purpose. If Zion exist inside the Matrix also then the world in which Zion exists also does not exist and so the entire existance of the machine AI's is called into question. And humans for that matter.
I realize it's fashionable to compare Bush and the Religious Right to the Nazis or the Catholic Inquisition, but the influence of religious leaders on US government is many orders of magnitude less than in, say, Saudi Arabia.
Some would disagree with you. They might say that the influence of religion groups in America is much more powerful because it is more covert. They blame such inflences for the US governments stance on Israel, and Islamic "terrorist" states. They believe that elements of the religious right believe that there will be no second coming until ancient Israel is restored, and that they utilise their influence to control US foreign policy. I think that largely bullshit, but if the matrix teaches us one thing, it is that control is more dangerous and complete when you don't know you're being controlled.
I hate to do this but did anyone else think of programming parallels during this film? Imaging Neo as a bug or an access violation propagating through the system. The result perhaps of a hideous hack to make it work. The whole scene with the Architect is then just exception handling. A giant try..catch statement if you will. Like you say, perhaps Zion then exists as part of the rest of the program, but what is the program? Is there really this war between humans and the machines, or is it part of a larger scheme of control operated by other humans? In this context it's impossible to know who really is pulling the strings, and how many layers of indirection there really are. It raises the question that it's not impossible that we ourselves are in some kind of simulation, or are indeed simulated. There would be no way to tell, which perhaps is the problem that the Egyptian censors have with the film. If nothing really is real, then nothing really matters and you're left with the philosophy of the marquis-de-sade. Not something any civilised society really wants.
other way around in the UK. If you resign you get no unemployment benefit for 6 months, but if you are fired you can get benfit in 2 weeks.
I've seen similar interference problems at Alton Towers theme park in Derbyshire. When I was there last year they were having terrible problems with Oblivion reporting non-existent errors which stopped the ride. Apparently none of these errors would occur when the park was empty so there were signs everywhere telling people to turn their phones off. Unfortunately now everyone uses mobile phones in theme parks to keep track of the kids, and then panic when they find the kids aren't answering their phones.
but we're also talking computing and PC processors so perhaps that should be 1.675*10^10 Âm
but 9 women won't be able to produce a baby in 1 month...
At least not for the first 8 months, then it's all go.
"This is certainly a brave approach that throws everything we thought we knew about building a rocket" said NASA Ames' deputy director for research, G. Allen Flynt. "It shows that we've being doing it all wrong for years, trying to build ever more powerful, more efficient rocket motors, when the real solution was staring us in the face; Replace the expensive rocket motor with a cheap commodity PC running GNU/Linux. Brilliant. My hat goes off to these guys"
except that 10 newtons is the weight of 1.02 kg because the force of gravity is 9.8 newtons