There is this, what should we call it, a mythology of a Golden Age of Programming?
I don't use mythology in a perjorative sense that this is all pretend or wishful nonsense. I use it in the best Joseph Campbell-Hero-With-Many-Faces sense, of a dim recollection of The Way Stuff Used to Be. This is a way of communicating an Underlying Truth about the Human Condition.
Apparently there was this era of things such as this Smalltalk that you allude to. Another version of this I hear from tales is Common Lisp. And Lisp Machines, specialized hardware and expensive workstations on which these "live images" would reside. So maybe these tales of direct, personal communication with the gods taking place with the Bronze Age Greek heros was not made up?
I guess there was this Barbarian Invasion of Bearded Men from the land called "New Jersey", especially a high place among the rolling plains they called "Murray Hill"? There is this piece of non-canonical scripture that our elders have been trying to supress known as the Unix Hater's Handbook explaining how we came to our present age and how this Golden Age entered into myth. Our elders warn against reading this heretical tract as dangerous to our souls.
As Jerry Pournelle describes the intervening Dark Age between now and that heroic or Golden Age, it isn't so much that people forgot how to develop and maintain a live image programming system such as Smalltalk or Common Lisp, it was that people forgot that such a thing could exist, and we attribute such things to gods or space aliens.
But then again, just as there is talk of ancient creatures in deep lakes in Scotland or in the remote sections of Zaire or Southeast Asia, there are accounts that Smalltalk or Common Lisp are still in use . . .
You can understand the Greenhouse Effect in terms of compression heating.
Owing to its composition of greenhouse gases, the atmosphere at sea level pressure is mostly opaque to infrared, and heat is transmitted through the air largely through circulation and convection, accounting for weather. The "radiative thermosphere", that altitude where the air temperature is determined by radiative equilibrium with space, occurs when the air gets thin enough. That altitude is a little bit below the "flight levels" where aircraft with pressurized cabins operate.
The warmer temps "down here" are the result of compression heating of air as it circulates in relation to the thinner air at the radiative equilibrium boundary. What CO2 does is it raises the altitude of thermal equilibrium, increasing surface temps through increase compression heating.
The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is very high, but the air pressure diminishes with altitude just like on Earth, and that even with the high CO2 content of its atmosphere, the pressure altitude where Venus is in radiative equilibrium with space isn't that much difference as that for Earth. What makes Venus not simply hot but hellishly hot is not just the CO2 atmosphere or being closer to the sun, but the very thick atmosphere, raising the temps to these high levels at the surface.
That doesn't mean you cannot construct a narrative for a runaway greenhouse on Venus. CO2 plus proximity to the sun could have raised temps to liberate more CO2 from rocks in a positive feedback until the atmosphere became incredibly thick, but it is the thick atmosphere operating through compression heating that accounts of the melts-lead surface temps.
Is this a geek thing, a Web thing, or our modern age that information is passed on in a scolding?
A post offers reprocessing as a solution to the reactor waste problem, and a proper counter to that argument is that reprocessing has a waste problem all its own. The total amount of long-lived waste may be reduced, but the "hot" shorter lived waste get spread around into corrosive liquid effluents?
Could a a person remind Slashdot readers of this tradeoff without suggesting that the original post was made by an untutored fool? Or is it important to label someone suggesting reprocessing as a foolish person, to offer a (mild) public scolding of their idea because reprocessing is a bad enough policy that shaming is merited?
I heard the Wisconsin Governor wants to procure pontoons from Oshkosh Truck in case the Michigan governor drops the Menominee river spans, but crossing Lake Superior northward poses a bigger challenge . . .
So I go to WalMart to purchase a box of shotgun shells for my single-shot break-down 20-gauge, and of course it is a Big Deal to get a clerk to the Sporting Goods counter to unlock the case. I guess it is a public safety measure that some maniac doesn't walk out with boxes of that ammo, but there are boxes and boxes of really powerful 30-cal rifle ammo just piled in the aisle free for the loading up your shopping basket.
The clerk finally shows up after numerous pages on the store loudspeaker, opens the case, and then there is a lot of pointing and pantomine as I try to explain, no, not the 16 gauge, I need 20 gauge, and no, not the 8-shot, I need the 6-shot, until we zero in on the right ammo. Out in the country, you can't let Mr. Romney's "varmints and critters" dig holes in your shingles and bust into the attic. Mr. Romney got a lot of flack from Real Men about not being a Real Gun Owner, but those of us who own property in the sticks know what he was talking about.
The clerk asks, "Um, how many boxes do you want?"
I say "just one", saying to myself, "How bad a shot do you think I am?"
You propose this method of calculating PI with a shotgun . . . and your brother-in-law thinks it is a great idea!
My original version was . . . Your brother-in-law suggests using a shotgun to remove tree branches beyond your ladder . . . and you think it is a great idea!
You missed your opening to get your wife to agree to a purchase of a Zero Turn riding mower (you know, the kind where you sit on top and you have those two "tank track" handles to make it go).
They tell me with one of those babies, you can cut the lawn in one quarter the time at get more of the Pre-Game Show.
Can someone weigh in on the vaccine schedule? I had heard that it is not just a parent "refusing vaccination" for their child but that "getting vaccinated" means being bombarded with shots like in an Army induction physical?
Couldn't there be some kind of Common Core -- for Public Health reasons, we want your kid to have the vaccines for Polio, Diptheria-Pertusis, Measles, Rubella, and Chicken Pox, or is the list much, much longer?
Maybe Land Rover could second-source this see-through-opaque-surfaces sensor system to Lockheed to solve the problems with the virtual reality helmet on the Lightning II aircraft (the F35 JSF)?
The thing about fire is that I don't see how a fire that incapacitated the crew could put itself out that it doesn't cause structural damage to the plane . . . within minutes.
Planes with depressurization have flown for hours until exhausting their fuel, but fire?
Dyson commenting on the SSC as well as early generations of "white elephant-big science" remarked that there are more dimensions to an accelerator than peak energy. An important one is luminosity -- the ability to see rare events by having many events.
The excuse that "they are not going to destroy the Universe" is based on cosmic rays having energies way beyond what a ring circling the planet could achieve, although I guess the luminosity is low and that is why we are not swallowed up by a black hole?
But Dyson's point is that these mega projects are throwing bucks/Euros after diminishing returns as the interesting stuff is probably still outside your reach. He thought that people should be considering novel concepts rather than just making what we have bigger . . . and more expensive.
Slashdot Mirror
. . . welcome our new butt-plug overlords!
Screen on.
Hello, gentleman.
All your site belong to us.
You have no chance.
Make your deal . . .
No, if it is CNN, they will somehow link it to the Malaysian airliner.
I don't use mythology in a perjorative sense that this is all pretend or wishful nonsense. I use it in the best Joseph Campbell-Hero-With-Many-Faces sense, of a dim recollection of The Way Stuff Used to Be. This is a way of communicating an Underlying Truth about the Human Condition.
Apparently there was this era of things such as this Smalltalk that you allude to. Another version of this I hear from tales is Common Lisp. And Lisp Machines, specialized hardware and expensive workstations on which these "live images" would reside. So maybe these tales of direct, personal communication with the gods taking place with the Bronze Age Greek heros was not made up?
I guess there was this Barbarian Invasion of Bearded Men from the land called "New Jersey", especially a high place among the rolling plains they called "Murray Hill"? There is this piece of non-canonical scripture that our elders have been trying to supress known as the Unix Hater's Handbook explaining how we came to our present age and how this Golden Age entered into myth. Our elders warn against reading this heretical tract as dangerous to our souls.
As Jerry Pournelle describes the intervening Dark Age between now and that heroic or Golden Age, it isn't so much that people forgot how to develop and maintain a live image programming system such as Smalltalk or Common Lisp, it was that people forgot that such a thing could exist, and we attribute such things to gods or space aliens.
But then again, just as there is talk of ancient creatures in deep lakes in Scotland or in the remote sections of Zaire or Southeast Asia, there are accounts that Smalltalk or Common Lisp are still in use . . .
Owing to its composition of greenhouse gases, the atmosphere at sea level pressure is mostly opaque to infrared, and heat is transmitted through the air largely through circulation and convection, accounting for weather. The "radiative thermosphere", that altitude where the air temperature is determined by radiative equilibrium with space, occurs when the air gets thin enough. That altitude is a little bit below the "flight levels" where aircraft with pressurized cabins operate.
The warmer temps "down here" are the result of compression heating of air as it circulates in relation to the thinner air at the radiative equilibrium boundary. What CO2 does is it raises the altitude of thermal equilibrium, increasing surface temps through increase compression heating.
The atmospheric pressure at the surface of Venus is very high, but the air pressure diminishes with altitude just like on Earth, and that even with the high CO2 content of its atmosphere, the pressure altitude where Venus is in radiative equilibrium with space isn't that much difference as that for Earth. What makes Venus not simply hot but hellishly hot is not just the CO2 atmosphere or being closer to the sun, but the very thick atmosphere, raising the temps to these high levels at the surface.
That doesn't mean you cannot construct a narrative for a runaway greenhouse on Venus. CO2 plus proximity to the sun could have raised temps to liberate more CO2 from rocks in a positive feedback until the atmosphere became incredibly thick, but it is the thick atmosphere operating through compression heating that accounts of the melts-lead surface temps.
A post offers reprocessing as a solution to the reactor waste problem, and a proper counter to that argument is that reprocessing has a waste problem all its own. The total amount of long-lived waste may be reduced, but the "hot" shorter lived waste get spread around into corrosive liquid effluents?
Could a a person remind Slashdot readers of this tradeoff without suggesting that the original post was made by an untutored fool? Or is it important to label someone suggesting reprocessing as a foolish person, to offer a (mild) public scolding of their idea because reprocessing is a bad enough policy that shaming is merited?
in the Tenth century . . . (ba-doom boom!)
. . . orders you to "don't go there."
Never happened -- the guy with the textual analysis has it right.
I heard the Wisconsin Governor wants to procure pontoons from Oshkosh Truck in case the Michigan governor drops the Menominee river spans, but crossing Lake Superior northward poses a bigger challenge . . .
The clerk finally shows up after numerous pages on the store loudspeaker, opens the case, and then there is a lot of pointing and pantomine as I try to explain, no, not the 16 gauge, I need 20 gauge, and no, not the 8-shot, I need the 6-shot, until we zero in on the right ammo. Out in the country, you can't let Mr. Romney's "varmints and critters" dig holes in your shingles and bust into the attic. Mr. Romney got a lot of flack from Real Men about not being a Real Gun Owner, but those of us who own property in the sticks know what he was talking about.
The clerk asks, "Um, how many boxes do you want?"
I say "just one", saying to myself, "How bad a shot do you think I am?"
My original version was . . . Your brother-in-law suggests using a shotgun to remove tree branches beyond your ladder . . . and you think it is a great idea!
They tell me with one of those babies, you can cut the lawn in one quarter the time at get more of the Pre-Game Show.
Couldn't there be some kind of Common Core -- for Public Health reasons, we want your kid to have the vaccines for Polio, Diptheria-Pertusis, Measles, Rubella, and Chicken Pox, or is the list much, much longer?
. . . and get back to work.
Maybe Land Rover could second-source this see-through-opaque-surfaces sensor system to Lockheed to solve the problems with the virtual reality helmet on the Lightning II aircraft (the F35 JSF)?
Should Ford be waived from issuing a recall on a 19-year-old car purchased in 1995 if a safety defect is revealed?
Planes with depressurization have flown for hours until exhausting their fuel, but fire?
What could go wrong?
If I hit the garbage cans and not know why this is a problem, it is time for one of these tests.
"I think its time for some 'traffic problems' in the Asteroid Belt."
The excuse that "they are not going to destroy the Universe" is based on cosmic rays having energies way beyond what a ring circling the planet could achieve, although I guess the luminosity is low and that is why we are not swallowed up by a black hole?
But Dyson's point is that these mega projects are throwing bucks/Euros after diminishing returns as the interesting stuff is probably still outside your reach. He thought that people should be considering novel concepts rather than just making what we have bigger . . . and more expensive.
. . . it is all Web page redesign and Marketing.
If you can't transport it, it won't get used.
We are doomed, I say, doomed as doomed can be! (y' know)