"So-called Outer Planet programs were given failing marks as well. Citing swelling budgets and launch delays, the Bush budget would scrap all future funds for proposed Outer Planet missions to Europa, a large Jupiter moon that some speculate harbors life, and to Pluto, the only planet that remains unvisited by a probe. "
Considering the fact that NASA has cancelled any and all europa missions in the forseeable future, I doubt these things will see any otherworldly oceans anytime soon. NASA has much more important things to do like putting nukes in space.
I don't think you read very well. The Alamo Drafthouse is a dinner / theater where there are waiters serving food during the movie. Some people like these places, others don't. I don't like to go there for every movie I see, but sometimes it's great when you don't have enough time for dinner followed by a movie or vice-versa. It kills two birds with one stone. The buckhead backlot in Atlanta has much the same setup. Another bonus is that since it is a restaurant, alcohol can be served, whereas in other theaters in the US that's a no no.
Adding a couple laptops to the environment wouldn't really change it significantly. There isn't that much difference between typical keyboard noise and crunching chips or popcorn if you ask me. As long as the movie volume is at a sufficient level it shouldn't matter. Of course those who are easily distracted wouldn't like it, but that's why there are a variety of theaters to choose from. I agree that cell phones should be blocked in movies though.
I live in Austin and I know that the film was _not_ screened at South by Southwest. The world premiere of Blade 2, however did take place at the festival.
I don't really buy into the idea that linked pages will necessarily be related to the same subject. Look at sites like slashdot or cnn, which link to a variety of pages in totally disparate subjects.
If you applied transitivity, then you'd end up with every connected page on the web being on the same subject. Page A links to B, so B is probably on the same subject as A. Page B, links to page C, and therefore is probably on the same subject as B, and therefore A as well...Oops.
The task of categorizing pages, unfortuately may always have to be done by humans to be done well. This type of software might help categorizing websites, but it won't replace wetware anytime soon.
The most recent number I could find was 25 million for the number of AOL users. This would make them 5% of all users. AOL is the largest ISP in the world, but at 5% of the total it (thankfully) doesn't seem all that significant.
I don't know why AOLers get such a bad name. Sure, there are lots of stupid kids on there, but I think the only reason they are singled out is because the population size is so large. Get 25 million people together anywhere and there will be a ton of "lusers" in the group. AOL doesn't seem like such a bad choice for dial-up service. I'd definitely go with them before MSN. Maybe Earthlink would get my $$$, but it's a moot point, since I've moved beyond my dial-up days.
Are games included in these figures? If so, could the growing number of online / pay-for-play games be skewing the results? How significant are MMORPG sales as a % of total software. You can pirate a copy of EQ, but it does you no good if you can't log in and play.
if you looked at the article you would know that they claimed the information was subtlely encoded into the light. The light may be on, anytime there is a transmission, but the intensity varies slightly whether there is a 1 or a 0. That's what the article claims anyway, and I'm pretty sure it would depend on the specific hardware.
Rambus was just starting to become affordable (on par with DDR), there are a ton of new benchmarks showing that in several applications, the P4 at high clock speeds actually benefits tremendously from Rambus. Just when it actually starts to look good, they decide to drop it?
"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform. In the mass market, the 845 chipset dominates by nearly 100% - and this will remain the case for the next six months. But only 533 MHz RDRAM enables the processor to attain high performance. Eventually, the dual-channel DDR solution will receive some sort of technological boost, however there's still no sign of development in this area."
I guess there's only one thing left to say: GO AMD!!!
They picked Jimmy Neutron over Final Fantasy??? Okay, so I didn't see Jimmy Neutron, but I definitely think Final Fantasy was an incredible achivement that should be recognized. RIP Square Pictures.
I think you have your cause and effect backwards. The reality is that producers push for releases of oscar-capable movies closer to the time for nominations. Moulin Rouge and AI are the two exceptions, because they had broad enough appeal for a summer blockbuster.
Notice that the nominations don't include any best actor or best actress nominations. I doubt it will win best picture. It may actually come away with the most awards, but not likely the big one.
I was very pleased to see that Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge each had 8 nominations. My faith is partially restored after the Titanic fiasco.
then all of the surviving robots get paired off randomly
...which makes this pretty stupid. The whole idea of evolution is built upon "selection" i.e. the robot that does best has most offspring. Just looking at survival rate is a measure for measuring fitness, but it's too crude a method for improving ones genes. Besides that now every surviving bot has the same amount of fitness (offspring). That seems to be some binary kind of selection which I at least have never come across in real life. Randomly mixing genes is therefore 'not' a good method to mimick nature.
---------------
While it's true that mating is non-random in nature, I think the difference in this experiment will be minimal as long as the survival period is sufficiently long so that not all the robots are surviving.
To model non-random mating, I suppose they could have robots choose a mate with the most similar genes. That's generally the way it works in human populations, at least. Of course there is some random variation (case in point - interracial marriages, etc). In a much larger scenario, it would make sense for locality to play a role in choice of mate. There should probably be a possibility for spinsterhood or bachelorhood as well, so that individuals that are undesirable as mates are removed from the breeding pool. But what makes robots attracted to each other. This is reason they probably chose to do random mating in the first place. The results would be skewed to favor whatever traits are attractive in a potential mate.
I think a pokemon online game would really take off with a kid friendly interface. I dunno if that would change the world, but it would make $$$. I know a ton of 8-12 kids who play really lame java MMOGs just because they are based on pokemon or dragonballZ or whatever.
> I am all in favor of living simply but...I
> worry that many people, including myself, don't > have enough retirement savings to avoid living
> on dogfood in old age. Social security is going
> to do next to nothing to support retirement.
Retirement savings are vitally important. Not a response to you personally, but retirement savings of one sort or another should be a significant part of any worker's budget. Saving for retirement should be seen as a mandatory bill just like any other. You never hear people say, "Yeah, I just can't seem to find the money to pay my electric bill, so I'll just pay more next month/year/decade or something." Replace 'pay my electric bill' with 'save for retirement' and you get a phrase which comes up all the time. There shouldn't be a distinction, unless you plan on dying young or retiring in a homeless shelter. This is something that should be stressed in education, but rarely is.
I'll leave it to others for a more complete criticism of education in general.
Seems to me that's one of the only projects in the budget worth funding. Sure, scooping comet dust is pretty cool, but not compared with the possibility of discovering non-Terrestrial life in our solar system.
Right now, the programs I would want my tax dollars spent on would be (1) Probe to Europa (2) ISS upkeep/expansion/habitation (3) Mars missions with the eventual goal of manned missions
I don't think NASA should be _primarily_ concerned with military issues.
Slashdot Mirror
from a recent article on CNN:
g et/index.html
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/02/04/nasa.bud
"So-called Outer Planet programs were given failing marks as well. Citing swelling budgets and launch delays, the Bush budget would scrap all future funds for proposed Outer Planet missions to Europa, a large Jupiter moon that some speculate harbors life, and to Pluto, the only planet that remains unvisited by a probe. "
Considering the fact that NASA has cancelled any and all europa missions in the forseeable future, I doubt these things will see any otherworldly oceans anytime soon. NASA has much more important things to do like putting nukes in space.
That hardly qualifies. The model rockets I built in middle school are better 'UFO's than these things.
Would be great for movie theaters and the like...
I don't think you read very well. The Alamo Drafthouse is a dinner / theater where there are waiters serving food during the movie. Some people like these places, others don't. I don't like to go there for every movie I see, but sometimes it's great when you don't have enough time for dinner followed by a movie or vice-versa. It kills two birds with one stone. The buckhead backlot in Atlanta has much the same setup. Another bonus is that since it is a restaurant, alcohol can be served, whereas in other theaters in the US that's a no no.
Adding a couple laptops to the environment wouldn't really change it significantly. There isn't that much difference between typical keyboard noise and crunching chips or popcorn if you ask me. As long as the movie volume is at a sufficient level it shouldn't matter. Of course those who are easily distracted wouldn't like it, but that's why there are a variety of theaters to choose from. I agree that cell phones should be blocked in movies though.
I live in Austin and I know that the film was _not_ screened at South by Southwest. The world premiere of Blade 2, however did take place at the festival.
I don't really buy into the idea that linked pages will necessarily be related to the same subject. Look at sites like slashdot or cnn, which link to a variety of pages in totally disparate subjects. If you applied transitivity, then you'd end up with every connected page on the web being on the same subject. Page A links to B, so B is probably on the same subject as A. Page B, links to page C, and therefore is probably on the same subject as B, and therefore A as well...Oops. The task of categorizing pages, unfortuately may always have to be done by humans to be done well. This type of software might help categorizing websites, but it won't replace wetware anytime soon.
The most recent number I could find was 25 million for the number of AOL users. This would make them 5% of all users. AOL is the largest ISP in the world, but at 5% of the total it (thankfully) doesn't seem all that significant. I don't know why AOLers get such a bad name. Sure, there are lots of stupid kids on there, but I think the only reason they are singled out is because the population size is so large. Get 25 million people together anywhere and there will be a ton of "lusers" in the group. AOL doesn't seem like such a bad choice for dial-up service. I'd definitely go with them before MSN. Maybe Earthlink would get my $$$, but it's a moot point, since I've moved beyond my dial-up days.
Are games included in these figures? If so, could the growing number of online / pay-for-play games be skewing the results? How significant are MMORPG sales as a % of total software. You can pirate a copy of EQ, but it does you no good if you can't log in and play.
if you looked at the article you would know that they claimed the information was subtlely encoded into the light. The light may be on, anytime there is a transmission, but the intensity varies slightly whether there is a 1 or a 0. That's what the article claims anyway, and I'm pretty sure it would depend on the specific hardware.
you lose, sorry!!!
Why didn't they do anything else interesting. If you are going to screen for something, why not go all out?
Rambus was just starting to become affordable (on par with DDR), there are a ton of new benchmarks showing that in several applications, the P4 at high clock speeds actually benefits tremendously from Rambus. Just when it actually starts to look good, they decide to drop it?
Check out:
Tom's Hardware
"This is because the Pentium 4 has a problem: the increase in clock speed (e.g. P4/2533 or P4/2666) will be rendered useless by the slow DDR SDRAM memory bus of the 845 platform. In the mass market, the 845 chipset dominates by nearly 100% - and this will remain the case for the next six months. But only 533 MHz RDRAM enables the processor to attain high performance. Eventually, the dual-channel DDR solution will receive some sort of technological boost, however there's still no sign of development in this area."
I guess there's only one thing left to say: GO AMD!!!
Shhh...I don't want to have to send Nintendo my CDRW.
They picked Jimmy Neutron over Final Fantasy??? Okay, so I didn't see Jimmy Neutron, but I definitely think Final Fantasy was an incredible achivement that should be recognized. RIP Square Pictures.
I think you have your cause and effect backwards. The reality is that producers push for releases of oscar-capable movies closer to the time for nominations. Moulin Rouge and AI are the two exceptions, because they had broad enough appeal for a summer blockbuster.
Notice that the nominations don't include any best actor or best actress nominations. I doubt it will win best picture. It may actually come away with the most awards, but not likely the big one. I was very pleased to see that Beautiful Mind and Moulin Rouge each had 8 nominations. My faith is partially restored after the Titanic fiasco.
> Penicillin - 1920's technology
When was the last time you had _penicillin_ prescribed?
> Transistor - 1930's
Try wiring 200 million of those together.
> Bulk transport system, car/truck - 1920's
I dare you to drive a 1920's model car exclusively for a year.
> Yup, makin progress fast
Open your eyes! Your metric for measuring progress is somewhat unrealistic.
then all of the surviving robots get paired off randomly
...which makes this pretty stupid. The whole idea of evolution is built upon "selection" i.e. the robot that does best has most offspring. Just looking at survival rate is a measure for measuring fitness, but it's too crude a method for improving ones genes. Besides that now every surviving bot has the same amount of fitness (offspring). That seems to be some binary kind of selection which I at least have never come across in real life. Randomly mixing genes is therefore 'not' a good method to mimick nature.
---------------
While it's true that mating is non-random in nature, I think the difference in this experiment will be minimal as long as the survival period is sufficiently long so that not all the robots are surviving.
To model non-random mating, I suppose they could have robots choose a mate with the most similar genes. That's generally the way it works in human populations, at least. Of course there is some random variation (case in point - interracial marriages, etc). In a much larger scenario, it would make sense for locality to play a role in choice of mate. There should probably be a possibility for spinsterhood or bachelorhood as well, so that individuals that are undesirable as mates are removed from the breeding pool. But what makes robots attracted to each other. This is reason they probably chose to do random mating in the first place. The results would be skewed to favor whatever traits are attractive in a potential mate.
I think a pokemon online game would really take off with a kid friendly interface. I dunno if that would change the world, but it would make $$$. I know a ton of 8-12 kids who play really lame java MMOGs just because they are based on pokemon or dragonballZ or whatever.
> Oh, and the ability to find one non-fake Britney porn pic
why only one?
> I am all in favor of living simply but...I
> worry that many people, including myself, don't
> have enough retirement savings to avoid living
> on dogfood in old age. Social security is going
> to do next to nothing to support retirement.
Retirement savings are vitally important. Not a response to you personally, but retirement savings of one sort or another should be a significant part of any worker's budget. Saving for retirement should be seen as a mandatory bill just like any other. You never hear people say, "Yeah, I just can't seem to find the money to pay my electric bill, so I'll just pay more next month/year/decade or something." Replace 'pay my electric bill' with 'save for retirement' and you get a phrase which comes up all the time. There shouldn't be a distinction, unless you plan on dying young or retiring in a homeless shelter. This is something that should be stressed in education, but rarely is.
I'll leave it to others for a more complete criticism of education in general.
Seems to me that's one of the only projects in the budget worth funding. Sure, scooping comet dust is pretty cool, but not compared with the possibility of discovering non-Terrestrial life in our solar system.
Right now, the programs I would want my tax dollars spent on would be (1) Probe to Europa (2) ISS upkeep/expansion/habitation (3) Mars missions with the eventual goal of manned missions
I don't think NASA should be _primarily_ concerned with military issues.