Seriously, if you want to limit leaches, you have to charge something. And wouldn't it be neat to set up a huge array of cheap disks and sell the storage for ecash like peer points that could be traded for real stuff like hamburgers. Even if the ecash isn't real cash, if it can be transferred, then it will have a real monetary value. Wouldn't anyone who stores it need banking licenses etc? How would the issuers of this electronic currency be trusted?
A Federal Reserve Note is a loan that the US gubmint takes out from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's value is totally based on the trust that the public has that the government will be able to repay it. If the purveyors of a P2P network could mint e-coins at will without any legal obligation, then the temptation for them would be great to tax the network by minting more and more coins. They could sell these coins for real money until the value of everyone's coins would fall. The faster the value fell, the less desireable it would be to leave one's computer running for extended periods to accumulate the rapidly devaluing wealth for one's own use. I wonder how similar economies keep hold of inflation. For instance the site experts-exchange.com sells points but the prices of answers seem to have remained fairly constant. ( I can't remember does expertsexchange lead to a site about expert sex change? )
Although it makes no sence, there are treaties between Germany and the US about this sort of thing.
In the US, Nazi propaganda is not illegal, but I believe that making such stuff available to Germans is against German law. There was a US Nazi propagandist that was I think extradited to Germany/fined for hosting Nazi stuff or sending emails making it available to Germans in Germany. So I think that because US people are able to get your ( legal in Germany but illegal in the US ) stuff you could be extradited to the US even if you never set foot in the US.
And I've upgraded KDE to 3.1.2, which means since I don't understand CUPS enough to upgrade it, I can't print. I'd get this book if I cared. The fact is, I don't know squat about Unix printing.
Wouldn't wildly inaccurate measurements tend to *decrease* the probability that an object would hit in general? I mean, if I say that based on my innacurate measurements that assteroid X will be 'somewhere in the solar system' on day Y, then what are the odds that the earth will occupy the same spot in the solar system on day Y as the asteroid?
But with more accurate measurements, you constrain the assteroid to be in a smaller area. If you know the earth will be in that area on that day, then the odds of an impact is the size of the area you know the assteroid will be in divided by the size of the earth.
However, if I know that the earth will be in an area E and the assteroid will be in an area A and the intersection of E and A is only a little slice of A then the odds are volumeof(A)/volumeof(AnE). Increasing the accuracy of measurements will shrink A, so if AnE is shrunk relative to A-E the odds of impact will decrease but if A-E is shrunk relative to AnE then the odds of impact increase.
This is an idea for a short film/movie I want to see, not a game:
You know how in a rpg battle ( I am thinking Final Fantasy X here where you have the guys waiting to get thier turn to fight just kinda waddling/dancing from side to side looking kinda stupid ) well wouldn't it be kewl if the whole party came to real life! They could talk to some gang bangers, opening thier mouths silently while a floating blue 'window' with some text appeared, the bewildered crack dealers would say something about how they were going to bust a cap in their arses and then out of nowhere the battle theme music would start playing 'dunt dun dun dunna na dunna na dunna..' and the characters would all start dancing from side to side. The bewildered gang-bangers would be like 'what the f*ck?' and start shooting. The bullets would bounce off someone's armor and maybe hit the little ORCO looking dude in the shoulder the white digits '399' to come up. Then maybe one of the girl chars would magic some green sparkles to give Orco back 567 life ( green digits ) Then the fighters - the main char, and that armored up guy would take out six or seven of those bad guys each on their turns and then Orco could summin Ifirt to crispy fry the rest.
Soon all this ruckus would get the cops attention and another battle would ensue. The chick would summon a 'shield' spell and the moogle would send a pack of hundreds of chocobos to peck the heads of the cops trying to shoot the dancing characters. The main character would use 'mug' to dispatch the police chief ( a boss ) and get the gun mana to add to his sword. Now each slice hit also shoots a bullet!
As the characters continued to search for the way home, breaking into random people's houses to steal anything in a foot-locker, vase, bookshelf or cabinet they would eventually draw the Army's ire who would position themselves blocking a bridge that would of course be the only way to get across the calm and easily swimmable stream. The intrepid characters needing to get home through the interdimensional portal hidden in a ps2 which was on the other side of the bridge would challenge the host of 'ArmyGuys' and 'MechaTanks' and 'FighterJets' ahead.
The battle music would begin and they would switch the moogle for the Ninja guy, then a bullet would bounce off the main character's 'KevlarArmr' causing his limit to break. He - being the fastest aside from the ninja who has lost his turn by being switched in would go first and kill most of the weaker 'ArmyGuys' at once moving so fast that it looked like there were hundereds of him. The 'MechaTanks' would be mostlu uneffected. One of the 'MechaTanks' would shoot a shell blowing Orco's head clean off, but the chick would through some stuff out of a pillow on him and he would magically come back to life. Then the 'TroopCarriers' would do their 'more troops' move and replenish the entire supply of 'ArmyGuys' the Knight/Armor dude would step forward and hit a 'MechaTank' with all his might for a measily 1 damage. Then the Ninja, knowing the battle was shaping up to be fierce would eschew throwing the stars built for throwing that they picked up at the last town and start throwing obsolete weapons at military. A fire claw - for the cat dude that never gets played and has no experience goes flying and hits one of the 'TroopCarriers' setting it ablase.
Hmm that fireclaw had magic in it thinks the party. The troop carrier was taken ou easily. So Orco summons Ramuh the lightning god to zap some of these machines. Bzzzzz every ArmyGuy and Major standing is wiped and three of the four MechaTanks are disabled. The ArmyGuys inside them pour out and run for their lives. But the last MechaTank does a 'radio for backup' and four TroopCarriers full of ArmyGuys come to replace the fallen.
In the distance the roar of 'BomberJets' is heard and a floating digit clock showing 3 minutes starts ticking backwards. The FighterJets have now taken off and are circling back to fire missiles at the party but just in
I was talking about mandating that the *government* use the metric system, and that commercial products change their labeling. I was not talking about making your 1/2 inch socket illegal. People don't WANT to switch to the metric system because it is not even COMPATIBLE with government published info. Mandating that the government run it's internal house a certain way does not infinge on anybody's rights. And I don't think that making Sony put X centimeters in larger type than Y inches on it's TV set boxes is going to ruin anyone's day. Of course, you might think a gallon of milk fits perfectly in the fridge and won't want to change to 4 litres, and you might want your guinness in pints, but those are the exceptions. It may not even be neccesary to mandate commercial labeling if government set an example. The metric system might catch on all by itself.
Why not define the day as 1/360 of a year so that the math( base 60 ) is easier: 1 day = 1 degree rotation around the sun. Then have everyone run/drive/bicycle east until the earth's rotation is slowed enough to lengthen the day to 1/360 of a year. The day would only need to be about 35 minutes longer - I could live with that.
Or we could wait till the moon ( which is getting farther and farther away ) slows the earth's rotation to 1/360 of a year and then run/drive/pogo-stick eastwards to keep the day from lengthenting any longer to we don't end up with month long days where we get frozen and fried.
Since 24.35 hours a day makes hour math a lil hairy the hour and the second would have to be redefined too - preferably using base 10. Then you could have the morning hour the brunch hour, the lunch/siesta hour, the dinner hour and the tv hour, the sex hour and the night hours.
People don't want to change because most everything around here still uses ye olde english system.
For instance: I won't get a car that has big kilometer numbers and little mile numbers until the speed limit signs have the speed in kph listed in large type with the speed in mph small type at the bottom. I won't get a tape measure that measures in meters/cm until lumber is sold in convienient metric lengths. The building codes should all be in metric too if they are not already. When the gas and milk are sold in litres, I'll have a better intuition as to how much one liter is ( soda is sold in 1 and 2 litre increments so I kinda do already )
I must have both metric and inch type wrenches because it is completely random as to which type will fit, even on the same item. Who knows if the 50yd line will ever become the 50m line in football or if the game might subtly change by using the slightly longer meter. If they stopped selling TVs with 27 inch screens and used centimeters, people would learn to like centimeters.
The only way we're ever going to switch is if the government mandates that all the measurements of products are given in metric in larger type than their equivalent in ye olde inches/feet/furlong system, and that the government must use that system exclusively on all signs / documents etc.
http://www.lindsaybks.com has tons of books on wierd stuff like altering your car to run on wood, or smelting metal, or making cement from limestone, or metalsmithing or whatever else you can think of. They even have a book of recipies to make you fart!
If you believe that copyright holders have the right to get paid for what they produce, then those that choose to release code under the gpl have chosen to get paid by having access to and generously assuring everyone else has access to any improvements/extentions to it. It's simply the price they demand for the use of the software.
If you aim this thing through the supposedly radioactive-decay powered core, would you detonate the earth, or at least cause a chain reaction that would cause sh*tloads of volcanic activity that would wipe out all life on earth by encasing it in LAVA?
If firing a nootreeno beam thru the earth will create a powerful neutron beam that can destroy nukes, then simply irradiating a country with neutrons would not only destroy all the nukes, but also kill every living thing in that country yes?
The goal of Mathematics is to prove or disprove propositions. The goal of elementary school mathematics teaching is to enable students to emulate the functions of a $3.99 calculator from K-Mart. High school mathematics upgrades the student with some of the functionality of a TI-81 graphing calculator with a nifty equation solver function tacked on. Yet useful mathematics is a game that can not be played well by computers, why only equip students with algorithms? ( That is being too nice - algorithms for factoring polynomials and for solving equations exist, yet I've never met a schoolteacher that could articulate them )
The establishment will say that knowing how to find 34 * 87.33 is 'practical' whereas knowing how to prove something mathematically does not have real world use. I disagree. A mathematical proof is the canonical example of an airtight argument. All the words are precisely defined and rigorous logic can be examined and practiced. In everyday speech nothing is precise and logic fails because the words ( like 'happiness' or 'fast' ) have shifting meanings depending on usage. Words like that can not be used to make a truly airtight argument because they are inherently leaky. Exposure to mathematics helps people analize what they hear/read and see flawed logic covered up by imprecise terms or tight logic that depends on a precise meaning of a word which is then applied to make a false statement using the word in a broader sence. This kind of insight is also known as reasoning skills.
Of course everyone should know their times tables and be exposed to the long division algorithm, but they should be able to come up with it themselves. Instead of being taught a sequence of steps students should be guided toward coming up with it themselves and then should be required to prove that it always gives the right answer.
Word problems should not be where students try to apply the algorithms they are supposed to memorize for a test ( which they will forget immediately afterwards ) after applying that algorithm to umpteen thousand similar ( non-word ) problems at the beginning of the worksheet they were assigned for homework, word problems should motivate the search for an algorithm and motivate lessons where those algorithms are rediscovered and reproven to work - by the students.
Teachers should ask themselves this: If I were a cave-man on an island and wanted to come up with how could I come up with it? They should take the class on that same journey of discovery. I ended up majoring in math once I saw, in college, it presented that way.
But I always flunked/did poorly in math from about 4th grade until I went to college. I hated it with a passion. Just thinking about it gave me crossed eyes and my mind wretched at the drudgery of doing 'problems' where my silly error prone pen and paper and my sometimes imperfect memory/understanding of the algorithms used to do the problems combined to make the work impossible for me to do. 'Practice' the teachers would say when I would ask 'how did you know to try that?' while they solved algebra problems on the board. And I don't think they had a better answer than that. Yet there is a precise answer since computers can do any HS algebra.
I took a class early in college that used the textbook 'Transition to Higher Mathematics'. Most of the contents of that book should be covered - sprinkled in - in K-12 math classes. Just think, if you asked high school seniors what 1/0 equalled probably half would give the right answer: undefined and half would say 'infinity'. Why not teach gradeschoolers that infinity is not a number, and show them the proofs that there are as many natural numbers as integers and as rationals, but that there is no injective(1-1) and surjective(onto) mapping from the naturals to the reals by diagonalization. These are proofs kids can understand, and would make math interesting - like a NOVA episode, instead of boring like the phonebook.
Teachers should see what's out there for computer aided math.
Then you could use non-teflon-coated brass bullets and not tear up your barrel. Or maybe just load a buck fifty worth of silver dimes into your shotgun and go warewolf hunting..
What if M$ bought SCO and then AGRESSIVELY litigated everyone that got in the way of their evil quest to dominate everything with a screen and a CPU? I mean M$ could even afford Johnny Cochran, and who could afford to be lambasted by the Chewbacca argument for very long? They could charge outrageous prices too, for the alleged IP boughtn from SCO just to wipe out the competition.
Slashdot Mirror
Seriously, if you want to limit leaches, you have to charge something. And wouldn't it be neat to set up a huge array of cheap disks and sell the storage for ecash like peer points that could be traded for real stuff like hamburgers. Even if the ecash isn't real cash, if it can be transferred, then it will have a real monetary value. Wouldn't anyone who stores it need banking licenses etc? How would the issuers of this electronic currency be trusted? A Federal Reserve Note is a loan that the US gubmint takes out from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's value is totally based on the trust that the public has that the government will be able to repay it. If the purveyors of a P2P network could mint e-coins at will without any legal obligation, then the temptation for them would be great to tax the network by minting more and more coins. They could sell these coins for real money until the value of everyone's coins would fall. The faster the value fell, the less desireable it would be to leave one's computer running for extended periods to accumulate the rapidly devaluing wealth for one's own use. I wonder how similar economies keep hold of inflation. For instance the site experts-exchange.com sells points but the prices of answers seem to have remained fairly constant. ( I can't remember does expertsexchange lead to a site about expert sex change? )
In the US, Nazi propaganda is not illegal, but I believe that making such stuff available to Germans is against German law. There was a US Nazi propagandist that was I think extradited to Germany/fined for hosting Nazi stuff or sending emails making it available to Germans in Germany. So I think that because US people are able to get your ( legal in Germany but illegal in the US ) stuff you could be extradited to the US even if you never set foot in the US.
And I've upgraded KDE to 3.1.2, which means since I don't understand CUPS enough to upgrade it, I can't print. I'd get this book if I cared. The fact is, I don't know squat about Unix printing.
When you're high up enough in the North Korean Pecking Order ( NKPO ) you can just have ye wenches brought to your room.
But they aren't sure it'll even hit earth at all? For some reason I don't think they know for sure where it'll hit if it does..
But with more accurate measurements, you constrain the assteroid to be in a smaller area. If you know the earth will be in that area on that day, then the odds of an impact is the size of the area you know the assteroid will be in divided by the size of the earth.
However, if I know that the earth will be in an area E and the assteroid will be in an area A and the intersection of E and A is only a little slice of A then the odds are volumeof(A)/volumeof(AnE). Increasing the accuracy of measurements will shrink A, so if AnE is shrunk relative to A-E the odds of impact will decrease but if A-E is shrunk relative to AnE then the odds of impact increase.
I hear that!
You know how in a rpg battle ( I am thinking Final Fantasy X here where you have the guys waiting to get thier turn to fight just kinda waddling/dancing from side to side looking kinda stupid ) well wouldn't it be kewl if the whole party came to real life! They could talk to some gang bangers, opening thier mouths silently while a floating blue 'window' with some text appeared, the bewildered crack dealers would say something about how they were going to bust a cap in their arses and then out of nowhere the battle theme music would start playing 'dunt dun dun dunna na dunna na dunna..' and the characters would all start dancing from side to side. The bewildered gang-bangers would be like 'what the f*ck?' and start shooting. The bullets would bounce off someone's armor and maybe hit the little ORCO looking dude in the shoulder the white digits '399' to come up. Then maybe one of the girl chars would magic some green sparkles to give Orco back 567 life ( green digits ) Then the fighters - the main char,
and that armored up guy would take out six or seven of those bad guys each on their turns and then Orco could summin Ifirt to crispy fry the rest.
Soon all this ruckus would get the cops attention and another battle would ensue. The chick would summon a 'shield' spell and the moogle would send a pack of hundreds of chocobos to peck the heads of the cops trying to shoot the dancing characters. The main character would use 'mug' to dispatch the police chief ( a boss ) and get the gun mana to add to his sword. Now each slice hit also shoots a bullet!
As the characters continued to search for the way home, breaking into random people's houses to steal anything in a foot-locker, vase, bookshelf or cabinet they would eventually draw the Army's ire who would position themselves blocking a bridge that would of course be the only way to get across the calm and easily swimmable stream. The intrepid characters needing to get home through the interdimensional portal hidden in a ps2 which was on the other side of the bridge would challenge the host of 'ArmyGuys' and 'MechaTanks' and 'FighterJets' ahead.
The battle music would begin and they would switch the moogle for the Ninja guy, then a bullet would bounce off the main character's 'KevlarArmr' causing his limit to break. He - being the fastest aside from the ninja who has lost his turn by being switched in would go first and kill most of the weaker 'ArmyGuys' at once moving so fast that it looked like there were hundereds of him. The 'MechaTanks' would be mostlu uneffected. One of the 'MechaTanks' would shoot a shell blowing Orco's head clean off, but the chick would through some stuff out of a pillow on him and he would magically come back to life. Then the 'TroopCarriers' would do their 'more troops' move and replenish the entire supply of 'ArmyGuys' the Knight/Armor dude would step forward and hit a 'MechaTank' with all his might for a measily 1 damage. Then the Ninja, knowing the battle was shaping up to be fierce would eschew throwing the stars built for throwing that they picked up at the last town and start throwing obsolete weapons at
military. A fire claw - for the cat dude that never gets played and has no experience goes flying and hits one of the 'TroopCarriers' setting it ablase.
Hmm that fireclaw had magic in it thinks the party. The troop carrier was taken ou easily. So Orco summons Ramuh the lightning god to zap some of these machines. Bzzzzz every ArmyGuy and Major standing is wiped and three of the four MechaTanks are disabled. The ArmyGuys inside them pour out and run for their lives. But the last MechaTank does a 'radio for backup' and four TroopCarriers full of ArmyGuys come to replace the fallen.
In the distance the roar of 'BomberJets' is heard and a floating digit clock showing 3 minutes starts ticking backwards. The FighterJets have now taken off and are circling back to fire missiles at the party but just in
I was talking about mandating that the *government* use the metric system, and that commercial products change their labeling. I was not talking about making your 1/2 inch socket illegal. People don't WANT to switch to the metric system because it is not even COMPATIBLE with government published info. Mandating that the government run it's internal house a certain way does not infinge on anybody's rights. And I don't think that making Sony put X centimeters in larger type than Y inches on it's TV set boxes is going to ruin anyone's day. Of course, you might think a gallon of milk fits perfectly in the fridge and won't want to change to 4 litres, and you might want your guinness in pints, but those are the exceptions. It may not even be neccesary to mandate commercial labeling if government set an example. The metric system might catch on all by itself.
Or we could wait till the moon ( which is getting farther and farther away ) slows the earth's rotation to 1/360 of a year and then run/drive/pogo-stick eastwards to keep the day from lengthenting any longer to we don't end up with month long days where we get frozen and fried.
Since 24.35 hours a day makes hour math a lil hairy the hour and the second would have to be redefined too - preferably using base 10. Then you could have the morning hour the brunch hour, the lunch/siesta hour, the dinner hour and the tv hour, the sex hour and the night hours.
Man that's gonna suck when we move to base 16.....
For instance: I won't get a car that has big kilometer numbers and little mile numbers until the speed limit signs have the speed in kph listed in large type with the speed in mph small type at the bottom. I won't get a tape measure that measures in meters/cm until lumber is sold in convienient metric lengths. The building codes should all be in metric too if they are not already. When the gas and milk are sold in litres, I'll have a better intuition as to how much one liter is ( soda is sold in 1 and 2 litre increments so I kinda do already )
I must have both metric and inch type wrenches because it is completely random as to which type will fit, even on the same item. Who knows if the 50yd line will ever become the 50m line in football or if the game might subtly change by using the slightly longer meter. If they stopped selling TVs with 27 inch screens and used centimeters, people would learn to like centimeters.
The only way we're ever going to switch is if the government mandates that all the measurements of products are given in metric in larger type than their equivalent in ye olde inches/feet/furlong system, and that the government must use that system exclusively on all signs / documents etc.
http://www.lindsaybks.com has tons of books on wierd stuff like altering your car to run on wood, or smelting metal, or making cement from limestone, or metalsmithing or whatever else you can think of. They even have a book of recipies to make you fart!
Yup sounds like crap alright.
If you believe that copyright holders have the right to get paid for what they produce, then those that choose to release code under the gpl have chosen to get paid by having access to and generously assuring everyone else has access to any improvements/extentions to it. It's simply the price they demand for the use of the software.
If you aim this thing through the supposedly radioactive-decay powered core, would you detonate the earth, or at least cause a chain reaction that would cause sh*tloads of volcanic activity that would wipe out all life on earth by encasing it in LAVA?
Im sure the people in the 'wide beam' would appreciate being irradiated too..
If firing a nootreeno beam thru the earth will create a powerful neutron beam that can destroy nukes, then simply irradiating a country with neutrons would not only destroy all the nukes, but also kill every living thing in that country yes?
There's prolly a better way waiting to be discovered of producing high energy nootreenowz
The timing of the entering of input into a program may affect how it runs too.
Well space shuttle crashes seem to happen for at least 50% of all Space shuttles ever flown... That seems like the norm to me..
The establishment will say that knowing how to find 34 * 87.33 is 'practical' whereas knowing how to prove something mathematically does not have real world use. I disagree. A mathematical proof is the canonical example of an airtight argument. All the words are precisely defined and rigorous logic can be examined and practiced. In everyday speech nothing is precise and logic fails because the words ( like 'happiness' or 'fast' ) have shifting meanings depending on usage. Words like that can not be used to make a truly airtight argument because they are inherently leaky. Exposure to mathematics helps people analize what they hear/read and see flawed logic covered up by imprecise terms or tight logic that depends on a precise meaning of a word which is then applied to make a false statement using the word in a broader sence. This kind of insight is also known as reasoning skills.
Of course everyone should know their times tables and be exposed to the long division algorithm, but they should be able to come up with it themselves. Instead of being taught a sequence of steps students should be guided toward coming up with it themselves and then should be required to prove that it always gives the right answer.
Word problems should not be where students try to apply the algorithms they are supposed to memorize for a test ( which they will forget immediately afterwards ) after applying that algorithm to umpteen thousand similar ( non-word ) problems at the beginning of the worksheet they were assigned for homework, word problems should motivate the search for an algorithm and motivate lessons where those algorithms are rediscovered and reproven to work - by the students.
Teachers should ask themselves this: If I were a cave-man on an island and wanted to come up with how could I come up with it? They should take the class on that same journey of discovery. I ended up majoring in math once I saw, in college, it presented that way.
But I always flunked/did poorly in math from about 4th grade until I went to college. I hated it with a passion. Just thinking about it gave me crossed eyes and my mind wretched at the drudgery of doing 'problems' where my silly error prone pen and paper and my sometimes imperfect memory/understanding of the algorithms used to do the problems combined to make the work impossible for me to do. 'Practice' the teachers would say when I would ask 'how did you know to try that?' while they solved algebra problems on the board. And I don't think they had a better answer than that. Yet there is a precise answer since computers can do any HS algebra.
I took a class early in college that used the textbook 'Transition to Higher Mathematics'. Most of the contents of that book should be covered - sprinkled in - in K-12 math classes. Just think, if you asked high school seniors what 1/0 equalled probably half would give the right answer: undefined and half would say 'infinity'. Why not teach gradeschoolers that infinity is not a number, and show them the proofs that there are as many natural numbers as integers and as rationals, but that there is no injective(1-1) and surjective(onto) mapping from the naturals to the reals by diagonalization. These are proofs kids can understand, and would make math interesting - like a NOVA episode, instead of boring like the phonebook.
Teachers should see what's out there for computer aided math.
Then you could use non-teflon-coated brass bullets and not tear up your barrel. Or maybe just load a buck fifty worth of silver dimes into your shotgun and go warewolf hunting..
What if M$ bought SCO and then AGRESSIVELY litigated everyone that got in the way of their evil quest to dominate everything with a screen and a CPU? I mean M$ could even afford Johnny Cochran, and who could afford to be lambasted by the Chewbacca argument for very long? They could charge outrageous prices too, for the alleged IP boughtn from SCO just to wipe out the competition.
It would seem that by paying SCO money, they strengthen SCO's case against IBM by setting precedent.