According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II_of_the_U nited_Kingdom...
As well as being Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth is head of state of fifteen other countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, known as the Commonwealth Realms. These countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
I can assure you that you have no idea what mathematicians use. QED.
Re: Case-sensitive search takes more effort?
on
Google Index Doubles
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· Score: 1
I think you are the confused one.
Great-Great Grandparent said Google uses an index.
Great Grandparent said that the index could be used to prefilter results.
Grandparent posted a problem with this - admittedly not as clearly as he could have.
You posted some crap which displays that you don't know what you are talking about at all, and insulting someone who is raising a valid objection.
The magic of Google is that using a very clever index, it can find relevant results amazingly quickly - as do all search engines. The whole point is that they don't search everything.
While prefiltering could in theory help, searching for exact matches is still far more expensive than is realistic. The reason for this is not the very specific searches proposed above, but rather people wanting to search for '#Windows' (with a capital W).
I'm sure you understand that searching for such a term in all documents which match the (case-insensitive, indexed) term 'windows' would be prohibitively expensive even if only a million such queries were put to Google each day.
The only sensible way in which such a thing could be achieved is if Google 'randomly' selected some searches to 'improve'. No keyword or special symbol, just IF there is CPU time and for a suitable (case sensitive) search term, do the post-processing. Having said that, it would be better to recognize 'common' case sensitive keywords, such as pH, PhD, EFNET, or whatever, and simply use those as separate keywords in the index.
It is the Ruhr in Germany. This area used to make messerschmidts in WWII; now it makes Athlons. And much more. Holland is fairly low on heavy industry but Rotterdam probably has more oil refineries in a single place than anywhere else.
1. I promise not to blood sacrifice any babies tonight 2. I promise not to invade France tomorrow 3. No new taxes, read my lips.
Heck, they can keep 100% of those promises if the sacrifice the baby tomorrow night and invade France the day after. And if you read the lips, note the way they mouth "NOT" after every promise they intend to break.
You are suggesting that the CPU and GPU - which are very different beasts, as other posts mention - try to work as effectively a multi-processor system.
The only problem with that is that when there is a lot of work, they are often both working full-out already. I agree it would be nice if GPUs could also do less specialized (i.e. completely different) parallel processes, but I am sure someone will be able to hack even the current generation to do say weather modelling if they really want to.
Anyway, to digress as promised: I think that for the near future, asymmetric multi-processing might have some promise. By this I mean a slow processor, a fast processor, and a parallel (graphics) processor - perhaps multiple of the latter two.
The point of this would be to allow the entire system to run... without the 'CPU' or GPU even being powered up - and nor, for that matter, all the memory either, necessarily.
So you would have the efficiency of mobile chips combined with the available power (kWh and MHz) of the newest and greatest as and when required.
Now the 'slow' CPU is actually the master. As such, it runs the core OS, I/O - including screen refreshes if and when necessary, and also simpler programs.
The 'fast CPU' kicks in when needed or asked to, to run heavier tasks, such as a compile cycle. When it has no threads left, it returns to dormancy, and low power.
Similarly, the GPU only runs when needed. Typically this would be for games or other graphically intensive applications. As I mentioned, if they could be made able to cope with other parallel chores too, then they might be used just for that too.
Once the infrastructure exists on the motherboard to have three disimilar processors working together, there is no reason not to extend this concept to multiple 'fast' processors.
For example, two fast CPUs and two fast GPUs. This might be a standard home system for a couple or family: no more expensive than two seperate systems, yet much more flexible. Can run as a server at low power, or have two hungry games at the same time, or one DoomIV, using the two GPUs for half the work each.
Also overclocking and other such risks on such a system would be far less of a problem. At worst, the expensive process crashes - but the slow CPU takes over straight away.
Of course the slow CPU does have to run a genuine real-time OS, and be stable.
The only problems I can see are overcomeable. For example, utterly different processors might mean that some kind of byte-code is preferable - or you have to use the lowest common denominator. Similarly switching a program to the fast processor from the slow when needed would require state to be saved and then reloaded etc. - less of a problem for games than office work.
To return to graphics: this kind of architecture would allow lots/dozens/bazillions of GPUs to work in parallel. Just allow each a certain amount of screen/wall. Merging results at edges would take care of some alias-type problems, I think - that is to say, if each 'tile' were responsible for 120x120 pixels, it could actually render 128x128 - leaving 8 on each side of the border to be balanced according to a quick weighting scheme.
Except we never see a full moon during the day, since by definition the earth is between the sun and the moon.
Except that since we have a full moon at least once a month (ok, except February, maybe), we must accept a margin of error of 12 hours.
Except that if we have a margin of error of 12 hours, (sufficiently) full moons occur two nights running every other month.
Except that if full moons can occur two nights running and then another 29.5 days after the day between those two nights, three full months per month become not uncommon.
You do understand what the check digit is for? It is to (tada!) CHECK that the correct code has been entered. So why on earth would it be a 'common mistake' for an operator to enter the entire code?
Now, I realize that the parent DOES realize these problems, but he makes it clear that the equipment manufacturers themselves DONT.
The digit isn't there just to protect against machine error (or smudging of the bar codes), it is there to protect against human error too - mis-typed or transposed digits. So use it.
Not always entering the check digit is equivalent to having a RAID 1 disk with a single disk.
Since RAID 0 introduces a double point of failure, as opposed to other forms of RAID removing a single point of failure, I'd venture a guess it is only used for non-mission critical systems (i.e. on gaming machines).
Now assuming that someone buying two large hard disks doesn't want to buy yet a third disk to boot from and store vital files (e-mails, save games, documents, whatever), I can imagine them wanting to 'format' the disks in 3 partitions (per disk). Then they would back up A1 to B3 and B1 to A3 using whatever system they find convenient (by hand, cron, whatever). A2+B2 is the nice big and fast - but risked - data area.
My question: is there any hardware or software which does this?
Your guesses don't make much sense. To prove this, lets say your Chinese friend knows all the common words in both languages, technical/scientific words only in English, and cultural/arts words only in Chinese. For you to know as many words would require a whole new category of words to catch up with all those doubled common words.
A friend of mine who learned Japanese was complemented - even before he was good - on the size of his vocabulary. The reason for this is that, not knowing which symbols to learn, he learned them all - including the rare ones. I don't know enough about Chinese or Japanese to tell you more about that though.
Back to size of vocabulary within a language - there is a major difference between active and passive vocabulary. Add homonyms and proper names and the issue becomes even more confusing. Take the words 'homonym', 'bar', 'Reagan' and 'London'. Homonym is in my English active vocabulary, but I wouldn't know it in any other language I speak (despite being fluent in another and able to communicate in a couple more). I can think a lot of meanings for bar, ranging from chocolate to law - can the dog deal with that? These can be hard for new students of a language to deal with too - especially when they use the wrong one! Reagan - or any name - is a word too. And London becomes Londres in French, so there is no guarantee that you know all proper names you know in all languages you speak.
Learning a word doesn't take a lot of memory. It is learning the meaning which takes the real memory, and then associating it with the word, and keeping the association - which means using the word at least occasionally.
So for sake of argument I may have a very slight reduction in my 'uncommon' english vocabulary, because I don't live in an english-speaking country. As it happens, I have a much larger rare vocabulary (though much of it is passive), but we shall ignore that and say I have 95% of normal vocabulary in English. By your logic, because me memory is limited - I could only know 5% of my second language's average vocabulary. I would estimate it as closer to 80%.
My numbers and odds are picked out of the air in the following:
The first 100 words are essential and anybody claiming to speak the language at all will know them all (100%).
The next 1000 words are common and anybody claiming to be fluent will know almost all of these (99%)
The next 10,000 words are uncommon and fluent speakers will know quite a lot of them (90%). Bilinguals may know a little less than expected here.
The next 100,000 words are rare and fluent native speakers will - on average - know 50% of them. Relatively fluent learners will know less - perhaps as little as 10%.
All other words are very rare or jargon.
So the main area of opportunity for increasing the total size of your vocabulary is in the rare area. But this is where the words you rarely need are (unsurprisingly!) Whereas learning the common and uncommon words in a second language is easy if you are using that language quite a lot too.
Now I grew up in the country of my second language, but never suffered at the hands of their educational establishment. Nevertheless, I am fluent with the exception of some idioms - I know all the words, but not the expression. However, I do admit to not knowing as many rare terms. After all, all my technical reading and study has been in English. However, there are some rare terms which I actually don't know in English - cooking ingredients, for example.
So lets say I know the first 10,000 in each language, but 'only' 45,000 and 15,000 rare words. The 5000 I lose from English I instead know in the other language, and there is an overlap of 10,000 which I know in both. So I know the same number of concepts as the average monolingual person, at the 'cost' of 20,000 vocabulary spaces. But if I hadn't learned that other language, it wouldn't make my English vocabulary 20,000 words richer.
the artist who knew the exact terms and conditions the instant they signed up with the label.
So all 17-year-olds (such as Avril Lavigne) are wise enough to ignore the bullshit, read the small print, etc?
Goodbye Troll
Of course you need electronic voting systems, but admittedly not for two horse elections every four or five years. No, you need them for regular referenda, and by regular I mean weekly. I don't have a problem with having elected representatives, but calling it democracy is not accurate. For sake of argument, if both major parties vote the same way on 70% of all issues, and I agree with the other decisions in a 16-14 ratio, that doesn't really give me much of a vote every four years now, does it? Never mind that what they will do in the future isn't really related to what they did in the past.
Now of course government 'by the people' isn't trivial to set up. In modern countries with millions of inhabitants, automation will be necessary. That includes having 'voting' computers accessible to all, including those without computers, however remote, and a ton of other security measures. As another poster mentioned, online banks have such measures, so it should be doable with current technology. Of course, those in power don't have any reason to want to do this; they have a vested interest in the current system.
The system I am suggesting would still rely strongly on representation: if you don't want to vote every week, you can give your proxy to someone else with similar views. This person will have made themselves available, will have had training, and be responsible to their 'constituency'.
Such a system could be extended to allow people to vote for issues more important to them; for example people with children could have more say on education, or those living in a certain area have say on local issues.
Not that it will happen in my lifetime, but I can imagine.
1.5 tons is 1.5 cubic meters of water, which is only about a bath tub full (or two, depending on the size).
Where do you buy your bathtubs?
Humans are mostly made of water, and have pretty much the same density - you float in fresh water, but empty your lungs and you will sink (this is easier in salt water, but we are in the tub, which is fresh).
Get in to a half-full bath tub, and it will suddenly be pretty full, because you are displacing water upwards - Eureka! I have not been in a bath where I do not touch the tub, despite the fact that I should float - the mass of me above the water pushes the rest of me down.
Back to the figures: if a human weighs on average 75kg, 1.5 tons is 20 human bodies. No way they can fit in one or two bath tubs.
Instead of a bath tub, imagine a shower cubicle, 1m square - it will be 1.5 m deep full of water (3 feet square is better by a sixth - 5 foot 11 and a bit inches). 1.5 tons would be enough to drown you (except you float) if the drain blocked and the door didn't leak.
A more valuable water statistic would be how high a percentage of the rivers Intel CPUs are named for is used (obviously those rivers do not provide the water). Would Klamath Falls by dry if Intel used that water upstream (and didn't return it)?
Of course, water 'use' is not a realistic measure anyway. Perhaps that amount is needed to restrict temperature increases per unit volume to an acceptable level. I doubt that fabs have huge comtaminated water storages. The adding of weights is a scaremongering tactic, it is the side-effects which matter. Fossil fuel being mentioned is the same - power requirements being converted to a mass of fossil fuel is to some degree acceptable, but to then add that to water mass is silly. Now, if toxic substances are emitted from the fabs, that is a different matter, but it does seem a lot of effort is spent keeping the dirty end as clean as possible, with the possible exception of the eventual disposal...
You probably mean Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Very different to the usual MM game, although it has its own version of grind despite not having levels as such. It is 2D isometric, written in Java (Linux and Mac friendly), and has a free trial (X free sessions, X is 10 or 15 or so, I believe). I'm not an employee or anything; if you do try it out then please do realize that (in general) it caters to a more mature audience. Although sword fighting tournaments are most popular, there are also fashion and poetry contests.
Although the PEN would have to be able to do the keyboard interface, that doesn't mean it can't do a pen interface too. Pick the pen up, and write, using long-hand or some kind of shorthand (i.e. gestures). The projector pen (of course this one needn't be pen-shaped) can be set to display what you have written where you are writing it - since the writing pen knows where it is, and thus where your hand is (calibrated for size of hand and angle the pen is held), you can even make sure your hand isn't illuminated.
The input device is the only one which has to be pen shaped; and there is no reason for it not to allow 'traditional' keyboards etc. to be slaved to it. If projection is not feasible (or desired), a cigar box model could be chosen, containing the CPU and display - if this has a touch-screen LCD, the writing could still be done easily. Alternatively, a HUD goggle could be used for video and audio feedback, perhaps with a wire to somewhere else if bluetooth next to the skull is a problem. Or a watch, though this would be less easy to write on! No reason that the pen shouldn't be able to shed ink (or heck, pencil lead) of course, either.
Where I would disagree with them is having 5 pens. Too much to lose. Of course further miniaturization requires more tech we don't quite have yet, but looking a bit further ahead with all the necessary assumptions (miniaturization in particular) how about this instead...
A normal pen, with ink for normal paper, a small CPU, rechargeable cell, some storage, bluetooth (or whatever), and a widened top - rather like an old-fashioned goose quill - which has a (LCD?) display - perhaps 7cm wide (along the length of the pen) and 3cm high, at relatively high resolution (254 dpi would be 700x300).
Remember that such a pen would use roll, pitch and yaw - put it in front of you at the right roll angle and it will scroll text in front of you at almost paperback width - although of course you can hold it and pitch, yaw, or move in any dimension for other functions. Let alone gestures.
As for everything else - including processing power beyond that required for basic browsing, those would be peripherals.
Lets assume that we can do the miniaturization, but power requirements remain a problem. We can't expect a pen-sized item to support Terabyte storage, multi-Gigahertz processing, or continuous long range signal without recharge. But we can hope that a (few) gigabyte(s) of storage, an efficient asynchronous 100MHz processor, and short-range low-power communication at video levels and above are possible on a days charge. That means the pen can hold all the personal data (including some hours of video and many of audio) and display and take input on its own.
But the peripherals are assumed. Everything is a peripheral. Your TV will become your monitor. Rest the pen on a keyboard, and you can use that. Your home, office, and most public places will be able to link you to the internet - or take a cell-phone equivalent to get longer range. The pen will not be expected to do real-time video compression, and of course this is a bad example because you will have the choice of compressed (lossy or not) or raw data for broadcasts (hoping no DRM, but perhaps they will use the compression to help that). That is an example, if you need that kind of power, you again get it as a peripheral.
I don't use X myself, but what I have in effect described is a miniaturized X terminal on steroids. It should probably have a little mike and speaker too, although in practice the user would only use these for old-fashioned phone calls - they might normally use a peripheral (headset, or even old-fashioned phone, but dialing using their pen).
In summary, 5 pens is a bit silly. But a pen is a much better device than say a credit card for being the ultimate personal computer. I agree that the pen shape is not ideal for all 5 functions, but the input device is the one it is best at, for obvious reasons. So I disagree with some of the article referenced, but also with the parents complaint to it.
Although trimesterly comes up only a few hundred times, it is used - and I would be willing to bet that people that know the word trimester would use this form in speech be analogy with hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Having said that, they would use quarterly instead, if they cared about meaning, as I do. Trimesterly cannot mean anything else, semantically, but it is obviously confusing.
Trimestr(i)al is no less confusing. My thanks for pointing out the correct form(s) by the way - I posted to inform and I was rewarded by being informed back. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. But using google on the form without the 'i' gives Spanish results, and although the more usual spelling with 'i' gives English results, the first question it asks is if you are looking for 'trimestriel' which in turn gives French pages.
This goes back to the origins of the English language in both Latin and Germanic roots. Quarter comes from German, where perhaps the four seasons were more important when the language was being formed than the division of time by the Romans, be it for years or childbirth (three trimesters).
In conclusion I would argue that Trimesterly DOES mean something. I'm interested in the semantics, the meaning, and not the syntax or the grammar so much as communicating. The semantically very similar 'word' quaternionlike can be found just once on Google! Of course, since it should be hyphenated (and there are only a few results there too) this isn't a perfect example, but we know what it 'means'.
Your confusion probably arises from the fact that there are only three school terms, the word 'term' being an anglification of 'tri-mester'. To compound that, the prefix 'se-' before 'mester' in those schools which work with two longer terms (sems?) could easily be confused with 'semi'.
Roundabouts (or circles as the other replier calls them) only make sense in certain cases. With moderate traffic at all times of the day, they make sense. With light traffic there is no need for them. With heavy traffic, lights are needed. In the UK, they exist in part because some of the roads are not lit, and there is no electricity near. It may simply be cheaper to put a roundabout and some signs up than to put the electricity and traffic lights in, or more specifically, may have been so at the time they were built.
One place roundabouts are... interesting is Paris. Five lanes wide, eight to ten roads - including the on and off ramps for the Boulevard Peripherique - and with seven cars abreast.
Now if I were a traffic planner, I would use the U.S. grid pattern (e.g. Palm Desert), but add a bridge/underpass at every major intersection. Instead of left turns, have a loop back after the free right lane.
The north east corner might look like this: | _// | |/ \ OR |\// |\ / |\\ +---- +---- The first example is recognizable as the cloverleaf, with an artery added. The reason for the doubled// is that the system is drive on the right, but the exit from the 'round'about is before (i.e. left of) the entry. The second example is just the same, except not round - the triple right turn to make a left has been made much sharper. The bottom left \ in each case is the turn from the - to the |, and the + is the bridge.
Not a traffic light in sight. No right of way. Just sorting in to the correct lane.
Of course, this would only be possible in SimCity. And it would be 'nice' if there were also regular public transportation using this system. But that is another story.
>Does everyone in the entire EU vote for a new president/prime minister/leader at the exact same time?
To the second? or to the femtosecond?
Seriously: many countries in the EU are significantly bigger than Florida - where I doubt the voting times were the same as say New Hampshire, or California. And the system in the US is based on this last item, as everyone is well aware.
Sorry I missed a point - 'you' should ideally know the answer before asking in such a situation. That is to say, ask from a position of knowledge. If you ask from ignorance, you should have prepared better!
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think these folks look at the keypad either.
, 12 49512,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/mobile/article/0,2763
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_II_of_the_U nited_Kingdom ...
As well as being Queen of the United Kingdom, Elizabeth is head of state of fifteen other countries of the Commonwealth of Nations, known as the Commonwealth Realms. These countries are Antigua and Barbuda, Australia, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Canada, Grenada, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu.
These disagree:
i on ary&va=order+of+magnitudeo m/concise_oed/orderofmagnit ude?view=ukc h?q=order%20o f%20magnitude_ of_magnitudep oraryURL/what_ is_oom.html
http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/dictionary?book=Dict
http://www.askoxford.c
http://dictionary.reference.com/sear
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order
http://www.vendian.org/envelope/Tem
I can assure you that you have no idea what mathematicians use. QED.
I think you are the confused one.
Great-Great Grandparent said Google uses an index.
Great Grandparent said that the index could be used to prefilter results.
Grandparent posted a problem with this - admittedly not as clearly as he could have.
You posted some crap which displays that you don't know what you are talking about at all, and insulting someone who is raising a valid objection.
The magic of Google is that using a very clever index, it can find relevant results amazingly quickly - as do all search engines. The whole point is that they don't search everything.
While prefiltering could in theory help, searching for exact matches is still far more expensive than is realistic. The reason for this is not the very specific searches proposed above, but rather people wanting to search for '#Windows' (with a capital W).
I'm sure you understand that searching for such a term in all documents which match the (case-insensitive, indexed) term 'windows' would be prohibitively expensive even if only a million such queries were put to Google each day.
The only sensible way in which such a thing could be achieved is if Google 'randomly' selected some searches to 'improve'. No keyword or special symbol, just IF there is CPU time and for a suitable (case sensitive) search term, do the post-processing. Having said that, it would be better to recognize 'common' case sensitive keywords, such as pH, PhD, EFNET, or whatever, and simply use those as separate keywords in the index.
As to China, nobody mentioned the underground continuous coal fires (I got that from here a month or two back).
Sure, sure.
1. I promise not to blood sacrifice any babies tonight
2. I promise not to invade France tomorrow
3. No new taxes, read my lips.
Heck, they can keep 100% of those promises if the sacrifice the baby tomorrow night and invade France the day after. And if you read the lips, note the way they mouth "NOT" after every promise they intend to break.
You are suggesting that the CPU and GPU - which are very different beasts, as other posts mention - try to work as effectively a multi-processor system.
The only problem with that is that when there is a lot of work, they are often both working full-out already. I agree it would be nice if GPUs could also do less specialized (i.e. completely different) parallel processes, but I am sure someone will be able to hack even the current generation to do say weather modelling if they really want to.
Anyway, to digress as promised: I think that for the near future, asymmetric multi-processing might have some promise. By this I mean a slow processor, a fast processor, and a parallel (graphics) processor - perhaps multiple of the latter two.
The point of this would be to allow the entire system to run... without the 'CPU' or GPU even being powered up - and nor, for that matter, all the memory either, necessarily.
So you would have the efficiency of mobile chips combined with the available power (kWh and MHz) of the newest and greatest as and when required.
Now the 'slow' CPU is actually the master. As such, it runs the core OS, I/O - including screen refreshes if and when necessary, and also simpler programs.
The 'fast CPU' kicks in when needed or asked to, to run heavier tasks, such as a compile cycle. When it has no threads left, it returns to dormancy, and low power.
Similarly, the GPU only runs when needed. Typically this would be for games or other graphically intensive applications. As I mentioned, if they could be made able to cope with other parallel chores too, then they might be used just for that too.
Once the infrastructure exists on the motherboard to have three disimilar processors working together, there is no reason not to extend this concept to multiple 'fast' processors.
For example, two fast CPUs and two fast GPUs. This might be a standard home system for a couple or family: no more expensive than two seperate systems, yet much more flexible. Can run as a server at low power, or have two hungry games at the same time, or one DoomIV, using the two GPUs for half the work each.
Also overclocking and other such risks on such a system would be far less of a problem. At worst, the expensive process crashes - but the slow CPU takes over straight away.
Of course the slow CPU does have to run a genuine real-time OS, and be stable.
The only problems I can see are overcomeable. For example, utterly different processors might mean that some kind of byte-code is preferable - or you have to use the lowest common denominator. Similarly switching a program to the fast processor from the slow when needed would require state to be saved and then reloaded etc. - less of a problem for games than office work.
To return to graphics: this kind of architecture would allow lots/dozens/bazillions of GPUs to work in parallel. Just allow each a certain amount of screen/wall. Merging results at edges would take care of some alias-type problems, I think - that is to say, if each 'tile' were responsible for 120x120 pixels, it could actually render 128x128 - leaving 8 on each side of the border to be balanced according to a quick weighting scheme.
As I said - a digression.
Except we never see a full moon during the day, since by definition the earth is between the sun and the moon.
Except that since we have a full moon at least once a month (ok, except February, maybe), we must accept a margin of error of 12 hours.
Except that if we have a margin of error of 12 hours, (sufficiently) full moons occur two nights running every other month.
Except that if full moons can occur two nights running and then another 29.5 days after the day between those two nights, three full months per month become not uncommon.
Except...
You do understand what the check digit is for? It is to (tada!) CHECK that the correct code has been entered. So why on earth would it be a 'common mistake' for an operator to enter the entire code?
Now, I realize that the parent DOES realize these problems, but he makes it clear that the equipment manufacturers themselves DONT.
The digit isn't there just to protect against machine error (or smudging of the bar codes), it is there to protect against human error too - mis-typed or transposed digits. So use it.
Not always entering the check digit is equivalent to having a RAID 1 disk with a single disk.
Thank you for just the answer I hoped was there.
Since RAID 0 introduces a double point of failure, as opposed to other forms of RAID removing a single point of failure, I'd venture a guess it is only used for non-mission critical systems (i.e. on gaming machines).
Now assuming that someone buying two large hard disks doesn't want to buy yet a third disk to boot from and store vital files (e-mails, save games, documents, whatever), I can imagine them wanting to 'format' the disks in 3 partitions (per disk). Then they would back up A1 to B3 and B1 to A3 using whatever system they find convenient (by hand, cron, whatever). A2+B2 is the nice big and fast - but risked - data area.
My question: is there any hardware or software which does this?
Your guesses don't make much sense. To prove this, lets say your Chinese friend knows all the common words in both languages, technical/scientific words only in English, and cultural/arts words only in Chinese. For you to know as many words would require a whole new category of words to catch up with all those doubled common words.
A friend of mine who learned Japanese was complemented - even before he was good - on the size of his vocabulary. The reason for this is that, not knowing which symbols to learn, he learned them all - including the rare ones. I don't know enough about Chinese or Japanese to tell you more about that though.
Back to size of vocabulary within a language - there is a major difference between active and passive vocabulary. Add homonyms and proper names and the issue becomes even more confusing. Take the words 'homonym', 'bar', 'Reagan' and 'London'. Homonym is in my English active vocabulary, but I wouldn't know it in any other language I speak (despite being fluent in another and able to communicate in a couple more). I can think a lot of meanings for bar, ranging from chocolate to law - can the dog deal with that? These can be hard for new students of a language to deal with too - especially when they use the wrong one! Reagan - or any name - is a word too. And London becomes Londres in French, so there is no guarantee that you know all proper names you know in all languages you speak.
Learning a word doesn't take a lot of memory. It is learning the meaning which takes the real memory, and then associating it with the word, and keeping the association - which means using the word at least occasionally.
So for sake of argument I may have a very slight reduction in my 'uncommon' english vocabulary, because I don't live in an english-speaking country. As it happens, I have a much larger rare vocabulary (though much of it is passive), but we shall ignore that and say I have 95% of normal vocabulary in English. By your logic, because me memory is limited - I could only know 5% of my second language's average vocabulary. I would estimate it as closer to 80%.
My numbers and odds are picked out of the air in the following:
The first 100 words are essential and anybody claiming to speak the language at all will know them all (100%).
The next 1000 words are common and anybody claiming to be fluent will know almost all of these (99%)
The next 10,000 words are uncommon and fluent speakers will know quite a lot of them (90%). Bilinguals may know a little less than expected here.
The next 100,000 words are rare and fluent native speakers will - on average - know 50% of them. Relatively fluent learners will know less - perhaps as little as 10%.
All other words are very rare or jargon.
So the main area of opportunity for increasing the total size of your vocabulary is in the rare area. But this is where the words you rarely need are (unsurprisingly!) Whereas learning the common and uncommon words in a second language is easy if you are using that language quite a lot too.
Now I grew up in the country of my second language, but never suffered at the hands of their educational establishment. Nevertheless, I am fluent with the exception of some idioms - I know all the words, but not the expression. However, I do admit to not knowing as many rare terms. After all, all my technical reading and study has been in English. However, there are some rare terms which I actually don't know in English - cooking ingredients, for example.
So lets say I know the first 10,000 in each language, but 'only' 45,000 and 15,000 rare words. The 5000 I lose from English I instead know in the other language, and there is an overlap of 10,000 which I know in both. So I know the same number of concepts as the average monolingual person, at the 'cost' of 20,000 vocabulary spaces. But if I hadn't learned that other language, it wouldn't make my English vocabulary 20,000 words richer.
Ah well, that was a lot of stating the obvious.
the artist who knew the exact terms and conditions the instant they signed up with the label. So all 17-year-olds (such as Avril Lavigne) are wise enough to ignore the bullshit, read the small print, etc? Goodbye Troll
Of course you need electronic voting systems, but admittedly not for two horse elections every four or five years. No, you need them for regular referenda, and by regular I mean weekly. I don't have a problem with having elected representatives, but calling it democracy is not accurate. For sake of argument, if both major parties vote the same way on 70% of all issues, and I agree with the other decisions in a 16-14 ratio, that doesn't really give me much of a vote every four years now, does it? Never mind that what they will do in the future isn't really related to what they did in the past.
Now of course government 'by the people' isn't trivial to set up. In modern countries with millions of inhabitants, automation will be necessary. That includes having 'voting' computers accessible to all, including those without computers, however remote, and a ton of other security measures. As another poster mentioned, online banks have such measures, so it should be doable with current technology. Of course, those in power don't have any reason to want to do this; they have a vested interest in the current system.
The system I am suggesting would still rely strongly on representation: if you don't want to vote every week, you can give your proxy to someone else with similar views. This person will have made themselves available, will have had training, and be responsible to their 'constituency'.
Such a system could be extended to allow people to vote for issues more important to them; for example people with children could have more say on education, or those living in a certain area have say on local issues.
Not that it will happen in my lifetime, but I can imagine.
Where do you buy your bathtubs?
Humans are mostly made of water, and have pretty much the same density - you float in fresh water, but empty your lungs and you will sink (this is easier in salt water, but we are in the tub, which is fresh).
Get in to a half-full bath tub, and it will suddenly be pretty full, because you are displacing water upwards - Eureka! I have not been in a bath where I do not touch the tub, despite the fact that I should float - the mass of me above the water pushes the rest of me down.
Back to the figures: if a human weighs on average 75kg, 1.5 tons is 20 human bodies. No way they can fit in one or two bath tubs.
Instead of a bath tub, imagine a shower cubicle, 1m square - it will be 1.5 m deep full of water (3 feet square is better by a sixth - 5 foot 11 and a bit inches). 1.5 tons would be enough to drown you (except you float) if the drain blocked and the door didn't leak.
A more valuable water statistic would be how high a percentage of the rivers Intel CPUs are named for is used (obviously those rivers do not provide the water). Would Klamath Falls by dry if Intel used that water upstream (and didn't return it)?
Of course, water 'use' is not a realistic measure anyway. Perhaps that amount is needed to restrict temperature increases per unit volume to an acceptable level. I doubt that fabs have huge comtaminated water storages. The adding of weights is a scaremongering tactic, it is the side-effects which matter. Fossil fuel being mentioned is the same - power requirements being converted to a mass of fossil fuel is to some degree acceptable, but to then add that to water mass is silly. Now, if toxic substances are emitted from the fabs, that is a different matter, but it does seem a lot of effort is spent keeping the dirty end as clean as possible, with the possible exception of the eventual disposal...
So the Frogs play Frogger?
You probably mean Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Very different to the usual MM game, although it has its own version of grind despite not having levels as such. It is 2D isometric, written in Java (Linux and Mac friendly), and has a free trial (X free sessions, X is 10 or 15 or so, I believe). I'm not an employee or anything; if you do try it out then please do realize that (in general) it caters to a more mature audience. Although sword fighting tournaments are most popular, there are also fashion and poetry contests.
You are a luddite.
Although the PEN would have to be able to do the keyboard interface, that doesn't mean it can't do a pen interface too. Pick the pen up, and write, using long-hand or some kind of shorthand (i.e. gestures). The projector pen (of course this one needn't be pen-shaped) can be set to display what you have written where you are writing it - since the writing pen knows where it is, and thus where your hand is (calibrated for size of hand and angle the pen is held), you can even make sure your hand isn't illuminated.
The input device is the only one which has to be pen shaped; and there is no reason for it not to allow 'traditional' keyboards etc. to be slaved to it. If projection is not feasible (or desired), a cigar box model could be chosen, containing the CPU and display - if this has a touch-screen LCD, the writing could still be done easily. Alternatively, a HUD goggle could be used for video and audio feedback, perhaps with a wire to somewhere else if bluetooth next to the skull is a problem. Or a watch, though this would be less easy to write on! No reason that the pen shouldn't be able to shed ink (or heck, pencil lead) of course, either.
Where I would disagree with them is having 5 pens. Too much to lose. Of course further miniaturization requires more tech we don't quite have yet, but looking a bit further ahead with all the necessary assumptions (miniaturization in particular) how about this instead...
A normal pen, with ink for normal paper, a small CPU, rechargeable cell, some storage, bluetooth (or whatever), and a widened top - rather like an old-fashioned goose quill - which has a (LCD?) display - perhaps 7cm wide (along the length of the pen) and 3cm high, at relatively high resolution (254 dpi would be 700x300).
Remember that such a pen would use roll, pitch and yaw - put it in front of you at the right roll angle and it will scroll text in front of you at almost paperback width - although of course you can hold it and pitch, yaw, or move in any dimension for other functions. Let alone gestures.
As for everything else - including processing power beyond that required for basic browsing, those would be peripherals.
Lets assume that we can do the miniaturization, but power requirements remain a problem. We can't expect a pen-sized item to support Terabyte storage, multi-Gigahertz processing, or continuous long range signal without recharge. But we can hope that a (few) gigabyte(s) of storage, an efficient asynchronous 100MHz processor, and short-range low-power communication at video levels and above are possible on a days charge. That means the pen can hold all the personal data (including some hours of video and many of audio) and display and take input on its own.
But the peripherals are assumed. Everything is a peripheral. Your TV will become your monitor. Rest the pen on a keyboard, and you can use that. Your home, office, and most public places will be able to link you to the internet - or take a cell-phone equivalent to get longer range. The pen will not be expected to do real-time video compression, and of course this is a bad example because you will have the choice of compressed (lossy or not) or raw data for broadcasts (hoping no DRM, but perhaps they will use the compression to help that). That is an example, if you need that kind of power, you again get it as a peripheral.
I don't use X myself, but what I have in effect described is a miniaturized X terminal on steroids. It should probably have a little mike and speaker too, although in practice the user would only use these for old-fashioned phone calls - they might normally use a peripheral (headset, or even old-fashioned phone, but dialing using their pen).
In summary, 5 pens is a bit silly. But a pen is a much better device than say a credit card for being the ultimate personal computer. I agree that the pen shape is not ideal for all 5 functions, but the input device is the one it is best at, for obvious reasons. So I disagree with some of the article referenced, but also with the parents complaint to it.
Google makes this interesting!
Although trimesterly comes up only a few hundred times, it is used - and I would be willing to bet that people that know the word trimester would use this form in speech be analogy with hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly. Having said that, they would use quarterly instead, if they cared about meaning, as I do. Trimesterly cannot mean anything else, semantically, but it is obviously confusing.
Trimestr(i)al is no less confusing. My thanks for pointing out the correct form(s) by the way - I posted to inform and I was rewarded by being informed back. As ye sow, so shall ye reap. But using google on the form without the 'i' gives Spanish results, and although the more usual spelling with 'i' gives English results, the first question it asks is if you are looking for 'trimestriel' which in turn gives French pages.
This goes back to the origins of the English language in both Latin and Germanic roots. Quarter comes from German, where perhaps the four seasons were more important when the language was being formed than the division of time by the Romans, be it for years or childbirth (three trimesters).
In conclusion I would argue that Trimesterly DOES mean something. I'm interested in the semantics, the meaning, and not the syntax or the grammar so much as communicating. The semantically very similar 'word' quaternionlike can be found just once on Google! Of course, since it should be hyphenated (and there are only a few results there too) this isn't a perfect example, but we know what it 'means'.
Trimesterly means every three months.
Quarterly means four times a year.
Your confusion probably arises from the fact that there are only three school terms, the word 'term' being an anglification of 'tri-mester'. To compound that, the prefix 'se-' before 'mester' in those schools which work with two longer terms (sems?) could easily be confused with 'semi'.
Roundabouts (or circles as the other replier calls them) only make sense in certain cases. With moderate traffic at all times of the day, they make sense. With light traffic there is no need for them. With heavy traffic, lights are needed. In the UK, they exist in part because some of the roads are not lit, and there is no electricity near. It may simply be cheaper to put a roundabout and some signs up than to put the electricity and traffic lights in, or more specifically, may have been so at the time they were built.
// is that the system is drive on the right, but the exit from the 'round'about is before (i.e. left of) the entry. The second example is just the same, except not round - the triple right turn to make a left has been made much sharper. The bottom left \ in each case is the turn from the - to the |, and the + is the bridge.
One place roundabouts are... interesting is Paris. Five lanes wide, eight to ten roads - including the on and off ramps for the Boulevard Peripherique - and with seven cars abreast.
Now if I were a traffic planner, I would use the U.S. grid pattern (e.g. Palm Desert), but add a bridge/underpass at every major intersection. Instead of left turns, have a loop back after the free right lane.
The north east corner might look like this:
| _// |
|/ \ OR |\//
|\ / |\\
+---- +----
The first example is recognizable as the cloverleaf, with an artery added. The reason for the doubled
Not a traffic light in sight. No right of way. Just sorting in to the correct lane.
Of course, this would only be possible in SimCity. And it would be 'nice' if there were also regular public transportation using this system. But that is another story.
The original article says:
special liquid crystal display panel that is placed on top of a conventional screen.
A laptop conventionally has an LCD, not a CRT. I don't think they are talking about the Osborne 1.
Similarly NASA spent a lot of money developing a ballpoint pen which could work in zero gravity. The Russians used pencils instead.
>Does everyone in the entire EU vote for a new president/prime minister/leader at the exact same time? To the second? or to the femtosecond? Seriously: many countries in the EU are significantly bigger than Florida - where I doubt the voting times were the same as say New Hampshire, or California. And the system in the US is based on this last item, as everyone is well aware.
Sorry I missed a point - 'you' should ideally know the answer before asking in such a situation. That is to say, ask from a position of knowledge. If you ask from ignorance, you should have prepared better!