Our natural surroundings have become boring, evidently. Kids don't play outside anymore, they play with 2.9 billion forms of electronic media. People in general are getting less social and more introverted, and a good way to get there is to minimize actual direct communication with other people by communicating through 2.9 billion forms of electronic media. They want to shield themselves from the world (read: other people) all day long -- hence the quest for the ultimate portable media fix.
I grew up in the 90's and am an electrical engineer, but I'd take friends around a campfire over an ICQ contact list on a backlit LCD screen any day.
We do have a group somewhat similar to the RIAA, called AVLA (Audio Video Licensing Agency). You can find out more about them at their web site. They claim to be a non-exclusive licensing agent, but they license all of Canada's recording companies and about 95% of other companies and people that copy music to play in public. Examples of this would include DJ services (I pay $250 CDN per year to license my hard drive full of MP3s that I of course ripped from CDs that I own), bars, radio stations, theatres and television studios. An interesting point in their DJ license for hard drives is that they DO NOT license the use of downloaded MP3s, or any modified version of original recordings not authorized by the recording company.
Won't this thing make an astonishingly large target for terrorists, or even for enimies in a wartime situation?
Enemies (not enimies) of who, exactly? I assume you mean enemies of the United States. Did I miss something? Is this an American space elevator? As for the terrorists, I think all the Bush rhetoric CNN et al spout is getting to you.
imagine the propagana and demoralising effects a hit on such a target could produce.
I can't imagine what propaganda (not propagana) any terrorist/enemy could use this in, for which they couldn't have used any number of much easier and more effective targets. It's a space elevator... it doesn't represent much of a threat to anyone's cultural or religious ideology, so far as I know. If you think an attack on it could be used to mobilize some extremist group to action, please feel free to enlighten me.
Ok, so the shuttle seems less practicle, but this isn't the answer.
A premature and ill-informed jump to a baseless conclusion. If it seems upon initial analysis to be more practical (not practicle) than the shuttle, it does not deserve to be dismissed out of hand based on your manufactured fear of terrorism. It may not be the answer for any number of reasons, but what you've said here hardly makes the whole idea infeasible.
2015 seems rather soon. They haven't solved the problem of radiation bursts from solar flares. Someone with more knowledge on this topic might care to elaborate, but here's what I gather: while the likelihood of a burst strong enough to harm or kill astronauts during the short (about two days?) period between Earth and its moon in which they are not protected by Earth's magnetic field is low, that period is extended to several months when the destination is Mars. The result is a dramatically increased safety risk, with no solution that I know of.
This is not a clear cut issue. Where do you draw the line between where an MP3 file 'belongs' to the RIAA and where it is different enough to be public domain or 'owned' by someone else?
What if I had a band that made a recording indistinguishable from, say, track 10 on the new Pearl Jam CD and distributed it? What if I create an MP3 file of a Notorious BIG track with a bitrate so low that it were no longer recognizable?
As for downloading music: what if I claimed to have a band that could play all of Pearl Jam's songs, distributed real Pearl Jam songs labelled as such and someone downloaded them thinking they were just really good covers? Is there really any way to prove that the recipient of an audio file knew that the file was copyrighted, having in most cases only an ID3 tag to go by (and it is not their responsibility to go to all lengths to find out)?
Finally, this may be an exclusive Canadian thing (IANAL), but I was under the impression that if it was evident that the person committing a crime (assuming there is a crime here at all) did not know that what they were doing was illegal, they could not be punished for it in the normal sense. The official record here seems to blatantly state that the girl thought what she was doing was legal.
civiliannoun:
a person not on active duty in a military, police or fire-fighting force
You seem to imply that there is some correlation between an understanding of science (scince?) and serving in one of the aforementioned forces, or at least that soldiers, policemen and firefighters are outside of your scope of criticism. I think I understand science, and I am a civilian. Does that qualify me for whatever fate you and whoever has any ideas come up with? I think I also qualify as a sci-fi fan and possibly a "technophile" as well, but I do not believe I undestand science due to having seen Babylon 5. In fact, I have never seen Babylon 5. I do not show up at public lectures to argue with "the expert", whoever he or she may be, over special relativity. I'd be interested in listening to you speak about it, though, if you are the humble "expert" who gets all this argument from civilian technophiles and the like.
I must admit, though, I do not understand the word convinent (or convienient, for that matter). Perhaps it is similar to convenient:
convenientadj.:
1. suited to personal comfort or ease
2. placed near at hand
Maybe my personal comfort standards lend themselves to a solution which accompleshes the requirements with some ammount of effort more than the least possible.
I don't think that this would be the case, however, if the requirement was to measure mass accuratly with a spring scale. I don't know the gravitational pull here, and I imagine calculating it would not be particularly convenient, convinent or convienient.
Iron, nickel and cobalt, actually. Couldn't tell you why. And for the record Canadian nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies (and even some of the later silver dollars, which were nickel) are all magnetic. Basically everything but pennies.
Keep in mind that to avoid interference with other frequencies on the FM band (and to make it sound decent), you'll need some kind of dynamics processor to keep the volume steady (for those tracks that get really loud and really quiet) and keeps the really big spikes down.
A DP consists of an automatic gain compensator, which keeps the volume steady, a compressor and a limiter, which keep spikes and other sources of intereference in check, and usually an equalizer if you haven't got one otherwise. The studio's levels are usually very poor for radio broadcasting, so you need to find out what works for playing rock/alternative on FM radio.
I know this is Slashdot, and that there are lots of Linux zealots here, but if you want to save the thousands of dollars that a dynamics processor for broadcasting usually costs, build a Windoze box with a SB Live/Audigy and go buy OtsJuke. Wonderful little program; auto-mixing, auto-processing, and you can throw in plugs and stuff on the fly. I only wish there was something as good in OSS.
Yes, yes it is. But isn't it also that same sort of nonsense that leads to almost every discovery or innovation? I suppose it's a morale thing; to hope is human, to make hypotheses beyond the assumption of non-existence or impossibility is in our nature. It's what drives us to succeed in the pursuit. Inefficient as such a system may be, we're bound by our own shortcomings, not least of which is a relatively short lifespan during which I'd rather at least hope that what I'm working toward will come to fruition. But then, I suppose I can only speak for myself.
Stewart said that if Silverpit was created 60 million years ago, there wouldn't be any cause to link the two impacts. "On the other hand, if it came out at 65 million years ago, we would have the possibility that Silverpit was in fact a fragment of Chicxulub [...]"
IANAG(eologist). It seems to me, though, that if Silverpit was a fragment of Chicxulub, it would have to have hit the surface of the earth within a matter of hours as the part that hit near the Yucatan. They speak in the article of pinning the time frame down to 65 million years ago, and I'm assuming give or take half a million. With the information I have at hand, Chicxulub and Silverpit could have been up to a million years apart. Do you know what a million years is, in hours? About 8.76 billion. That's a pretty big margin of error! I don't think we should get our hopes up about the multi-dinosaur-killing-meteorites thing despite all its appeal, unless there is some other more substantial reason to believe these two meteorites had anything to do with one another. After all, a lot of meteorites hit the earth every million years.
Perhaps the quote should read "absence of evidence is not proof of absence," but then it would not be as witty. Anyway, the idea is that without evidence, and barring any rational counterarguments, there is no logical reason to believe something does not exist. Basically, absence of evidence does not affect the conclusion one way or another unless it is the result of a sufficiently large representative empirical observation of the situation. If, however, there is a rational (as opposed to empirical, which loosely corresponds to 'evidence' in this context) reason to believe that something exists, such as intelligent extraterrestrial life (to which this quote obviously alludes) then the absence of any evidence as yet does not make the pursuit of such evidence any less worthwhile. FWIW.
Re:Did anyone else not find it particulary funny?
on
Economy of Errors
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· Score: 1
I agree wholeheartedly that the Tom Bombadil part is very important to the story, but still think it is better left to the books as IMHO a novel's narrative is the only way to get the meaning across. Picture someone who has never read LotR watching this as a scene in a movie. I can't see it working; it would be difficult to get the feel of Tom Bombadil across without dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to it (for the same reason they didn't quite pull off the feel of Rivendell or Lothlorien). However, if this same person were to read the books because the movies piqued his/her interest, as the recent LotR book sales increase show many have, they will find this and other fascinating parts of Tolkien's writing that haven't been spoiled by Hollywood.
What you need to consider is that novels and films are two very different forms of narration of a story. They fill different niches; the intent is not to have one replace the other.
To depict every event from, say, the Lord of the Rings in nine hours of film, you would have to watch the entire thing in fast forward. Take Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs for example. That makes up much of the first book (of six). However, I think most people agree that while interesting, it was nonessential in telling the story and not worth sacrificing quality of other scenes to cram it in.
Also, there are certain other elements of LotR that are better changed for the purpose of a movie. Rather than Glorfindel the Badass-Elf-Prince-Who-Never-Shows-Up-Again fighting the Black Riders, they had Arwen do it. You'll often see several minor characters combined into or annexed by one major character in book to film transitions.
Now, as far as Narnia goes, I would definitely not want to see a movie that follows the book exactly. The beauty of Lewis' novels is that they allow your imagination to run wild; they are very fantastic (in contrast, the Lord of the Rings is more descriptive of the actual look and feel of situations). Having someone else paint the picture for me scene by scene, in the case of Narnia, would ruin all the fun. However, a movie would be cool as long as it tells the same story, albeit modified to fit the media. It's a bit like the Neverending Story. The movies weren't all that great, but not because they didn't follow Michael Ende's book exactly. They told the same story in a somewhat different way.
The point is, after watching a movie, you should be able to go read the book and enjoy all the richness it adds to the story. Conversely, after reading the book, you should be able to watch the movie and have it take you through the story without repeating everything from the book you just read.
considering that, at furthest, there's something like a twenty to thirty light-minute gap between Earth and Mars [...] you couldn't surf the Web (real well).
The distance from Earth to the Sun is 150 million kilometers. That from Mars to the Sun is 225 million kilometers. Consider that it takes light 8 minutes to get here from the Sun and Mars is almost exactly 1.5 times as far from the Sun. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we can neglect the eccentricity of Earth's and Mars' slightly elliptical orbits.
From this we can conclude that at minimum you'd get a 4 minute delay, and at maximum you'd get a 20 minute delay. So if we choose candidates that have experience with 2400 baud modems, the surfing the web thing would probably not be much of a problem.
Jim wants to be elected into the government. Where does Jim get the money for his campaign? Chances are, from a large corporation. One that will have his ear a year from now when his job is to pass laws.
All laws will continue to heavily favor corporations as long as we keep voting for the guy with pretty lawn signs. They or the party they are affiliated with may have laudable goals, but like you said, money talks.
Slashdot Mirror
Astrology is bullshit. Astrology is bullshit. Astrology is bullshit.
Heh.
Something just puts me off about buying anything other than toys, cards, and videos, with the word 'Dragonball' in its name.
Then you have nothing to worry about, unless there is some doubt in your mind that this is anything more than a toy...
Our natural surroundings have become boring, evidently. Kids don't play outside anymore, they play with 2.9 billion forms of electronic media. People in general are getting less social and more introverted, and a good way to get there is to minimize actual direct communication with other people by communicating through 2.9 billion forms of electronic media. They want to shield themselves from the world (read: other people) all day long -- hence the quest for the ultimate portable media fix.
I grew up in the 90's and am an electrical engineer, but I'd take friends around a campfire over an ICQ contact list on a backlit LCD screen any day.
Slurp that 15 minutes of fame up.
My take on these lamers.
We do have a group somewhat similar to the RIAA, called AVLA (Audio Video Licensing Agency). You can find out more about them at their web site. They claim to be a non-exclusive licensing agent, but they license all of Canada's recording companies and about 95% of other companies and people that copy music to play in public. Examples of this would include DJ services (I pay $250 CDN per year to license my hard drive full of MP3s that I of course ripped from CDs that I own), bars, radio stations, theatres and television studios. An interesting point in their DJ license for hard drives is that they DO NOT license the use of downloaded MP3s, or any modified version of original recordings not authorized by the recording company.
Won't this thing make an astonishingly large target for terrorists, or even for enimies in a wartime situation?
Enemies (not enimies) of who, exactly? I assume you mean enemies of the United States. Did I miss something? Is this an American space elevator? As for the terrorists, I think all the Bush rhetoric CNN et al spout is getting to you.
imagine the propagana and demoralising effects a hit on such a target could produce.
I can't imagine what propaganda (not propagana) any terrorist/enemy could use this in, for which they couldn't have used any number of much easier and more effective targets. It's a space elevator... it doesn't represent much of a threat to anyone's cultural or religious ideology, so far as I know. If you think an attack on it could be used to mobilize some extremist group to action, please feel free to enlighten me.
Ok, so the shuttle seems less practicle, but this isn't the answer.
A premature and ill-informed jump to a baseless conclusion. If it seems upon initial analysis to be more practical (not practicle) than the shuttle, it does not deserve to be dismissed out of hand based on your manufactured fear of terrorism. It may not be the answer for any number of reasons, but what you've said here hardly makes the whole idea infeasible.
You sure are quick.
2015 seems rather soon. They haven't solved the problem of radiation bursts from solar flares. Someone with more knowledge on this topic might care to elaborate, but here's what I gather: while the likelihood of a burst strong enough to harm or kill astronauts during the short (about two days?) period between Earth and its moon in which they are not protected by Earth's magnetic field is low, that period is extended to several months when the destination is Mars. The result is a dramatically increased safety risk, with no solution that I know of.
My favorite mouse is my Sun Type 5 optical 3-button mouse.
This is not a clear cut issue. Where do you draw the line between where an MP3 file 'belongs' to the RIAA and where it is different enough to be public domain or 'owned' by someone else?
What if I had a band that made a recording indistinguishable from, say, track 10 on the new Pearl Jam CD and distributed it? What if I create an MP3 file of a Notorious BIG track with a bitrate so low that it were no longer recognizable?
As for downloading music: what if I claimed to have a band that could play all of Pearl Jam's songs, distributed real Pearl Jam songs labelled as such and someone downloaded them thinking they were just really good covers? Is there really any way to prove that the recipient of an audio file knew that the file was copyrighted, having in most cases only an ID3 tag to go by (and it is not their responsibility to go to all lengths to find out)?
Finally, this may be an exclusive Canadian thing (IANAL), but I was under the impression that if it was evident that the person committing a crime (assuming there is a crime here at all) did not know that what they were doing was illegal, they could not be punished for it in the normal sense. The official record here seems to blatantly state that the girl thought what she was doing was legal.
civilian noun:
a person not on active duty in a military, police or fire-fighting force
You seem to imply that there is some correlation between an understanding of science (scince?) and serving in one of the aforementioned forces, or at least that soldiers, policemen and firefighters are outside of your scope of criticism. I think I understand science, and I am a civilian. Does that qualify me for whatever fate you and whoever has any ideas come up with? I think I also qualify as a sci-fi fan and possibly a "technophile" as well, but I do not believe I undestand science due to having seen Babylon 5. In fact, I have never seen Babylon 5. I do not show up at public lectures to argue with "the expert", whoever he or she may be, over special relativity. I'd be interested in listening to you speak about it, though, if you are the humble "expert" who gets all this argument from civilian technophiles and the like.
I must admit, though, I do not understand the word convinent (or convienient, for that matter). Perhaps it is similar to convenient:
convenient adj.:
1. suited to personal comfort or ease
2. placed near at hand
Maybe my personal comfort standards lend themselves to a solution which accompleshes the requirements with some ammount of effort more than the least possible.
I don't think that this would be the case, however, if the requirement was to measure mass accuratly with a spring scale. I don't know the gravitational pull here, and I imagine calculating it would not be particularly convenient, convinent or convienient.
The giant sloth is cool, as with pretty much any animal with the word 'giant' in its name, but personally I've always wanted a pet glyptodon...
Where are THEY now? Find out...
E! True Hollywood Story: Thundercats
Iron, nickel and cobalt, actually. Couldn't tell you why. And for the record Canadian nickels, dimes, quarters, loonies and toonies (and even some of the later silver dollars, which were nickel) are all magnetic. Basically everything but pennies.
Keep in mind that to avoid interference with other frequencies on the FM band (and to make it sound decent), you'll need some kind of dynamics processor to keep the volume steady (for those tracks that get really loud and really quiet) and keeps the really big spikes down.
A DP consists of an automatic gain compensator, which keeps the volume steady, a compressor and a limiter, which keep spikes and other sources of intereference in check, and usually an equalizer if you haven't got one otherwise. The studio's levels are usually very poor for radio broadcasting, so you need to find out what works for playing rock/alternative on FM radio.
I know this is Slashdot, and that there are lots of Linux zealots here, but if you want to save the thousands of dollars that a dynamics processor for broadcasting usually costs, build a Windoze box with a SB Live/Audigy and go buy OtsJuke. Wonderful little program; auto-mixing, auto-processing, and you can throw in plugs and stuff on the fly. I only wish there was something as good in OSS.
Yes, yes it is. But isn't it also that same sort of nonsense that leads to almost every discovery or innovation? I suppose it's a morale thing; to hope is human, to make hypotheses beyond the assumption of non-existence or impossibility is in our nature. It's what drives us to succeed in the pursuit. Inefficient as such a system may be, we're bound by our own shortcomings, not least of which is a relatively short lifespan during which I'd rather at least hope that what I'm working toward will come to fruition. But then, I suppose I can only speak for myself.
Stewart said that if Silverpit was created 60 million years ago, there wouldn't be any cause to link the two impacts. "On the other hand, if it came out at 65 million years ago, we would have the possibility that Silverpit was in fact a fragment of Chicxulub [...]"
IANAG(eologist). It seems to me, though, that if Silverpit was a fragment of Chicxulub, it would have to have hit the surface of the earth within a matter of hours as the part that hit near the Yucatan. They speak in the article of pinning the time frame down to 65 million years ago, and I'm assuming give or take half a million. With the information I have at hand, Chicxulub and Silverpit could have been up to a million years apart. Do you know what a million years is, in hours? About 8.76 billion. That's a pretty big margin of error! I don't think we should get our hopes up about the multi-dinosaur-killing-meteorites thing despite all its appeal, unless there is some other more substantial reason to believe these two meteorites had anything to do with one another. After all, a lot of meteorites hit the earth every million years.
Perhaps the quote should read "absence of evidence is not proof of absence," but then it would not be as witty. Anyway, the idea is that without evidence, and barring any rational counterarguments, there is no logical reason to believe something does not exist. Basically, absence of evidence does not affect the conclusion one way or another unless it is the result of a sufficiently large representative empirical observation of the situation. If, however, there is a rational (as opposed to empirical, which loosely corresponds to 'evidence' in this context) reason to believe that something exists, such as intelligent extraterrestrial life (to which this quote obviously alludes) then the absence of any evidence as yet does not make the pursuit of such evidence any less worthwhile. FWIW.
The Brunching Shuttlecocks have made the some of the worst humor-quadriplegics laugh.
I agree wholeheartedly that the Tom Bombadil part is very important to the story, but still think it is better left to the books as IMHO a novel's narrative is the only way to get the meaning across. Picture someone who has never read LotR watching this as a scene in a movie. I can't see it working; it would be difficult to get the feel of Tom Bombadil across without dedicating a ridiculous amount of time to it (for the same reason they didn't quite pull off the feel of Rivendell or Lothlorien). However, if this same person were to read the books because the movies piqued his/her interest, as the recent LotR book sales increase show many have, they will find this and other fascinating parts of Tolkien's writing that haven't been spoiled by Hollywood.
What you need to consider is that novels and films are two very different forms of narration of a story. They fill different niches; the intent is not to have one replace the other.
To depict every event from, say, the Lord of the Rings in nine hours of film, you would have to watch the entire thing in fast forward. Take Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs for example. That makes up much of the first book (of six). However, I think most people agree that while interesting, it was nonessential in telling the story and not worth sacrificing quality of other scenes to cram it in.
Also, there are certain other elements of LotR that are better changed for the purpose of a movie. Rather than Glorfindel the Badass-Elf-Prince-Who-Never-Shows-Up-Again fighting the Black Riders, they had Arwen do it. You'll often see several minor characters combined into or annexed by one major character in book to film transitions.
Now, as far as Narnia goes, I would definitely not want to see a movie that follows the book exactly. The beauty of Lewis' novels is that they allow your imagination to run wild; they are very fantastic (in contrast, the Lord of the Rings is more descriptive of the actual look and feel of situations). Having someone else paint the picture for me scene by scene, in the case of Narnia, would ruin all the fun. However, a movie would be cool as long as it tells the same story, albeit modified to fit the media. It's a bit like the Neverending Story. The movies weren't all that great, but not because they didn't follow Michael Ende's book exactly. They told the same story in a somewhat different way.
The point is, after watching a movie, you should be able to go read the book and enjoy all the richness it adds to the story. Conversely, after reading the book, you should be able to watch the movie and have it take you through the story without repeating everything from the book you just read.
The distance from Earth to the Sun is 150 million kilometers. That from Mars to the Sun is 225 million kilometers. Consider that it takes light 8 minutes to get here from the Sun and Mars is almost exactly 1.5 times as far from the Sun. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we can neglect the eccentricity of Earth's and Mars' slightly elliptical orbits.
From this we can conclude that at minimum you'd get a 4 minute delay, and at maximum you'd get a 20 minute delay. So if we choose candidates that have experience with 2400 baud modems, the surfing the web thing would probably not be much of a problem.
Uplets? Downlets? Toplets? Bottomlets? Charmedlets?
Jim wants to be elected into the government. Where does Jim get the money for his campaign? Chances are, from a large corporation. One that will have his ear a year from now when his job is to pass laws.
All laws will continue to heavily favor corporations as long as we keep voting for the guy with pretty lawn signs. They or the party they are affiliated with may have laudable goals, but like you said, money talks.
On the other hand, approximately 0 % of Linux' intended uses does need 60 TB at this time.
Probably because 100% of users who need 60 TB at this time see that Linux can't do it, and decide to use something else.