We've all seen what happens when people are exposed to second-hand smoke--what about second hand EM radiation? There are significant reasons to believe that "personal communication devices" (why not just say "cellphones"?) cause cancer, increasing the density in a crowd can only lead to further disaster.
This is exactly why I take my daily dose of extract of hyperia seed. Traditional, invasive medicine rejects it but the Chinese have been using it for centuries to ward off cancer.
On the one hand I applaud these geeks for making the world a much better place by weeding out hackers. On the other hand, I can't help but feel nervous that the geek community is headed down a slippery slope when it uses entrapment like this. What's next? Banning free speech (from Microsoft) or the right to bear cryptography (for pedophiles)?
New research indicates that the assumption that a signal sufficient strength can travel arbitrarily far. Einstein himself showed nearly a century ago that spacetime is bent
back on itself in the presence of gravitational force. For an object
the size of a planet the effect is minor (except for the inhabitants,
ha ha) but even something as relatively puny as our sun can deflect a
beam of light measurably.
The point of this is that a signal may only propagate outwards until
the total mass behind it exceeds a critical value (the location of
this is called the "event horizon" in an analogy to black holes). At
that point its deflection will equal more than 90 degrees...i.e. it
will not go any farther from its point of origin.
This new research is controversial but nobody's found any rebuttal to it so it will probably become the convential wisdom in the next few years. Sorry, alien-finding dudes.
Lenin once said that "perception == reality". That's why I think the fall of the house of Ziff can only be good news for Linux. For one thing, people will perceive a crack in the Microsoft Publishing Empire. For another, with less syncophantic zealotry spewing from that rag, the unbiased Linux advocacy journals will have more mental space to create positive perceptions of Linux.
Hey, that gives me an idea: What pro-Windows lickspittle publications should we go after next?
A faster moving electron gains mass (due to general relativity). Greater mass == greater gravitational force. With a lot of electrons moving, the mass increase is pretty substantial.
This is pretty sweet because that means there is an electrical way to modulate mass. So you set up a wheel--on one side there's no EM field and so the magnets on the wheel have low mass. On the other side is a strong EM field so the magnets have high mass. The forces on the opposite sides of the wheel are out of balance, so it turns. Ta-da, high-efficiency power generation with practically no cost!
Correct. For instance, it would be totally immoral for a person to committ suicide (an act expressly forbidden in the Bible and illegal in most states) to prevent a terrorist act from killing thousands. We'll just have to live with the worse outcome. It would also be wrong to go back and in time to 1937 and shoot Hitler, before he gassed millions of innocent people because savings uncountable lives of children just isn't justified by taking away fewer than 10 lives of a raving lunatic.
And how does the programmer find out that the net knows these things, if he doesn't know them himself? In reality, the programmer DOES know, he just "theoretically" doesn't know by not telling the net he knows.
But he doesn't have to. He built in the weights, the activation levels, even the neural structure. He optimized all of this for his problem beforehand.
It's like precisely laying down 4 lines in a tic-tac-toe configuration and methodically programming the rules of the game into a computer, in the form of "if the player does A, you do B" and then saying "but that specific game wasn't programmed in, this must be AI!". BS.
Every window is assigned a programmatic handle that is made up of several things, including information that uniquely identifies the running machine. Redirecting this window to another location requires that handle to be valid for another display after window creation, which is impossible (or at least unlikely, given out CPUids are calculated).
If you are going to suggest improvements to tech products, please have a clue about them before opening your mouth.
As a teenager I was fascinated by anything robotic. This led me to a
study of the fundamentals of AI (Hofstadter, Lisp--the whole
schmeiel). But after two semesters I realized the whole field is
fooling itself. AI just won't work.
Biological neurons have been shown in the laboratory to grow new
connections based on information learned. In a robot, what possible
mechanism could guide such growth? Programming is the only answer,
but keep in mind that "programming" is just shorthand for "the
intelligence of the programmer". In other words, the AI itself isn't
self-contained, as it were. It requires a smart person to set the whole thing up beforehand.
There is no other way for such "mental" activity to be guided, thus AI will
always be as unattainable as the Philosopher's Stone.
"Getting away from city lights may be the hardest part, though.
Timothy, what do you think observatories are for? Remember that old story about how you can stand at the bottom of a well and see the stars during the day because the light from the sun is blocked out? Well, observatories do the same thing. City lights will not be an issue at the level an amateur operates at.
If you have no knowledge of a subject, please be kind enough to shut your mouth.
Nobody is using Linux as a desktop system--it just doesn't have the intuitive point-n-click of a Mac or the games offerings of Windows. People are using Linux for the server-side. That's where the real power is. The one who controls the server controls the desktop, Microsoft has been saying that for years.
I've been saying for years that E was eye-candy and that development efforts were better focused on the shortcomings Linux has on high-end server machines such as quality NFS support, a standardized email package and high uptimes. Too bad it took Rasterman, boy genius, 5 years to figure it out as well.
What are you, some kind of fascist? Paying for stuff you use is an inherently unfair and biased methodology. Haven't you ever heard of Fair Use or the First Amendment?
I think the solution to this guy's problems is to use the GPL. If he'd open up his hosting company we could all mirror the content on a P2P, which would reduce his bandwidth needs.
Python, are you kidding? Perl is the only acceptable language for writing any software in, especially maintainable software for an enterprise nature.
We use Perl down at the lab to check our email, write our reports and control our particle accelerator. If you are using a legacy language like C or C++ to perform any of these tasks, you have no business being in the software field. These languages are hard to maintain and produce buggy code. Perl is the only way to go for your needs, no matter what they are.
This is great news, with all the new features and bugfixes I can fix some long-outstanding problems in my code. "It's so usable, no wonder Perl is #1!"
Or is it? This release actually came out a few days ago (typical slashdot slowness on the announcment) and we haven't seen many downloads happen yet. In fact, the mailing list has gotten a lot of traffic saying that they shouldn't have released 5.8 because nobody uses Perl anymore because it's error-prone and poorly-documented. I hope this doesn't spell the end for Perl...
This is truly terrible news for Linux and the tech community in general. As the employer of Linux Torvalds, the world's greatest living programmer, Transmeta was the heart and soul of Silicon Valley. Now it's reputation is tarnished and it is but a (60%) shell of its former self.
However, this isn't completely unexpected, at least by me. We bought up a lot of TM's products on Day One because of the low power consumption and high value-add. But around Day Four we noticed a lot of problems. Specifically we found problems with code path regneration, bit concordance, executing lagging on the backend busses and even voltage differentiation. That kind of low quality product eventually brings a company down.
It's too bad that Linux will get caught in the crossfire and most likely go into a tailspin, but that's the trouble when Open Source programmers go into the commercial tech sphere.
The scientific establishment is going to be hard hit by this development. All our charts and graphs from 1950 onward will have to be converted to some non-patented format of course, but that's hardly the biggest problem. Every data capture device (synchrotrons, telescopes, freaking Hubble even) has JPEG tech hardcoded right into it. The American public is going to get reamed by the cost of converting all the existing images and hardware.
They aren't trying to steal music. However, they are still trying to use company property for personal use which, like using your work computer to read Slashdot and taking office supplies home, is illegal and immoral.
I'd also like to note that the article mentions a CD that they "made themselves". Most likely from music stolen online, so my original point still stands.
Sure, it seems like great news at first--I mean, "competition" == Linux, right? And of course anything that reduces Microsoft's income is an automatic win for Open Source.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Norway will end up choosing Windows anyway and then we'll be locked out for another decade before they decide again. Why do I think that? From poor language support to lack of DVD options, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. Add to that the known problems it has on the server end and you have a recipe for disaster.
Our only hope is that Norway has the same kind of blind zealotry that Slashdot exhibits and we get picked anyway.
Unfortunately, local music is around the same quality as local news--slim to none. All the songs sound the same--mumbled and recorded in a tin can. Which is just as well, since all the lyrics are about how the singer hates him/herself and therefore wears black tshirts all the time.
I mean, unless you actually live in NY, Chicago, LA, etc do you really read your local newspaper or watch your local news program? If no, why do you expect local music hosted by these entities to be worth a crap?
it isn't a positive feature. Think about it: when do you use a PDA? Pretty much everywhere right? You could be holding it outside in the sun or next to a flash camera or whatever. Either of these locations could accidentally overwrite the ROM, losing all your data. In the case of the Handspring they've shielded against it pretty well (otherwise we'd have heard about it!) but they obviously don't want to publicize this fact for fear the less technically-inclined feel it is dangerous.
This kind of database is the kind of positive effect that technology can have on daily life. Now more than ever in today's busy world we need our doctors to have the latest information about what really works and what really doesn't.
Which is presumably why these naysayers are against the system. It correctly lists herbal and other alternative remedies as being both cheap and effective, kind of the Linux of the medical world. The AMA, with its vested interest in expensive, proprietary medicine, is totally opposed to any body of facts, electronic or otherwise, that would expose them for the money-grubbing reductionists that they are.
The only way to fight back to make this information widely known and of course take herbal remedies and perform chiropractic regularly to maintain a balanced chi.
First they came for the gadget lovers, but I garden so I didn't care Then they came for the Japanese, but I didn't watch anime, so I didn't care...
Statements like "The Japanese are a close-minded, insular people without any of the warm, loving characteristics of Europeans." is not only false, it is dangerously close to Nazism.
Look, I'm as jealous as the next techno-geek that Japan has all the cool toys. But that doesn't excuse statements like this:
Japan, as an isolated Asian island, is a culture of selfishness.
Or, especially this:
The Japanese keep an unlevel playing field because they rightfully fear the dominance the intellectually superior Caucasian world would have if they didn't.
Isn't it enough that the main electronics companies live there without invoking hate speech like the above?
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly why I take my daily dose of extract of hyperia seed. Traditional, invasive medicine rejects it but the Chinese have been using it for centuries to ward off cancer.
On the one hand I applaud these geeks for making the world a much better place by weeding out hackers. On the other hand, I can't help but feel nervous that the geek community is headed down a slippery slope when it uses entrapment like this. What's next? Banning free speech (from Microsoft) or the right to bear cryptography (for pedophiles)?
The point of this is that a signal may only propagate outwards until the total mass behind it exceeds a critical value (the location of this is called the "event horizon" in an analogy to black holes). At that point its deflection will equal more than 90 degrees...i.e. it will not go any farther from its point of origin.
This new research is controversial but nobody's found any rebuttal to it so it will probably become the convential wisdom in the next few years. Sorry, alien-finding dudes.
Hey, that gives me an idea: What pro-Windows lickspittle publications should we go after next?
This is pretty sweet because that means there is an electrical way to modulate mass. So you set up a wheel--on one side there's no EM field and so the magnets on the wheel have low mass. On the other side is a strong EM field so the magnets have high mass. The forces on the opposite sides of the wheel are out of balance, so it turns. Ta-da, high-efficiency power generation with practically no cost!
Correct. For instance, it would be totally immoral for a person to committ suicide (an act expressly forbidden in the Bible and illegal in most states) to prevent a terrorist act from killing thousands. We'll just have to live with the worse outcome. It would also be wrong to go back and in time to 1937 and shoot Hitler, before he gassed millions of innocent people because savings uncountable lives of children just isn't justified by taking away fewer than 10 lives of a raving lunatic.
But he doesn't have to. He built in the weights, the activation levels, even the neural structure. He optimized all of this for his problem beforehand.
It's like precisely laying down 4 lines in a tic-tac-toe configuration and methodically programming the rules of the game into a computer, in the form of "if the player does A, you do B" and then saying "but that specific game wasn't programmed in, this must be AI!". BS.
Every window is assigned a programmatic handle that is made up of several things, including information that uniquely identifies the running machine. Redirecting this window to another location requires that handle to be valid for another display after window creation, which is impossible (or at least unlikely, given out CPUids are calculated).
If you are going to suggest improvements to tech products, please have a clue about them before opening your mouth.
Biological neurons have been shown in the laboratory to grow new connections based on information learned. In a robot, what possible mechanism could guide such growth? Programming is the only answer, but keep in mind that "programming" is just shorthand for "the intelligence of the programmer". In other words, the AI itself isn't self-contained, as it were. It requires a smart person to set the whole thing up beforehand.
There is no other way for such "mental" activity to be guided, thus AI will always be as unattainable as the Philosopher's Stone.
Timothy, what do you think observatories are for? Remember that old story about how you can stand at the bottom of a well and see the stars during the day because the light from the sun is blocked out? Well, observatories do the same thing. City lights will not be an issue at the level an amateur operates at.
If you have no knowledge of a subject, please be kind enough to shut your mouth.
Nobody is using Linux as a desktop system--it just doesn't have the intuitive point-n-click of a Mac or the games offerings of Windows. People are using Linux for the server-side. That's where the real power is. The one who controls the server controls the desktop, Microsoft has been saying that for years.
I've been saying for years that E was eye-candy and that development efforts were better focused on the shortcomings Linux has on high-end server machines such as quality NFS support, a standardized email package and high uptimes. Too bad it took Rasterman, boy genius, 5 years to figure it out as well.
I think the solution to this guy's problems is to use the GPL. If he'd open up his hosting company we could all mirror the content on a P2P, which would reduce his bandwidth needs.
We use Perl down at the lab to check our email, write our reports and control our particle accelerator. If you are using a legacy language like C or C++ to perform any of these tasks, you have no business being in the software field. These languages are hard to maintain and produce buggy code. Perl is the only way to go for your needs, no matter what they are.
Or is it? This release actually came out a few days ago (typical slashdot slowness on the announcment) and we haven't seen many downloads happen yet. In fact, the mailing list has gotten a lot of traffic saying that they shouldn't have released 5.8 because nobody uses Perl anymore because it's error-prone and poorly-documented. I hope this doesn't spell the end for Perl...
However, this isn't completely unexpected, at least by me. We bought up a lot of TM's products on Day One because of the low power consumption and high value-add. But around Day Four we noticed a lot of problems. Specifically we found problems with code path regneration, bit concordance, executing lagging on the backend busses and even voltage differentiation. That kind of low quality product eventually brings a company down.
It's too bad that Linux will get caught in the crossfire and most likely go into a tailspin, but that's the trouble when Open Source programmers go into the commercial tech sphere.
This will be known as the Day that Science Died.
I'd also like to note that the article mentions a CD that they "made themselves". Most likely from music stolen online, so my original point still stands.
Now that hacking carries a life sentence there's no way I'm going to help you steal music like this.
Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Norway will end up choosing Windows anyway and then we'll be locked out for another decade before they decide again. Why do I think that? From poor language support to lack of DVD options, Linux just isn't ready for the desktop. Add to that the known problems it has on the server end and you have a recipe for disaster.
Our only hope is that Norway has the same kind of blind zealotry that Slashdot exhibits and we get picked anyway.
I mean, unless you actually live in NY, Chicago, LA, etc do you really read your local newspaper or watch your local news program? If no, why do you expect local music hosted by these entities to be worth a crap?
it isn't a positive feature. Think about it: when do you use a PDA? Pretty much everywhere right? You could be holding it outside in the sun or next to a flash camera or whatever. Either of these locations could accidentally overwrite the ROM, losing all your data. In the case of the Handspring they've shielded against it pretty well (otherwise we'd have heard about it!) but they obviously don't want to publicize this fact for fear the less technically-inclined feel it is dangerous.
Which is presumably why these naysayers are against the system. It correctly lists herbal and other alternative remedies as being both cheap and effective, kind of the Linux of the medical world. The AMA, with its vested interest in expensive, proprietary medicine, is totally opposed to any body of facts, electronic or otherwise, that would expose them for the money-grubbing reductionists that they are.
The only way to fight back to make this information widely known and of course take herbal remedies and perform chiropractic regularly to maintain a balanced chi.
Great one!
Then they came for the Japanese, but I didn't watch anime, so I didn't care...
Statements like "The Japanese are a close-minded, insular people without any of the warm, loving characteristics of Europeans." is not only false, it is dangerously close to Nazism.
Japan, as an isolated Asian island, is a culture of selfishness.
Or, especially this:
The Japanese keep an unlevel playing field because they rightfully fear the dominance the intellectually superior Caucasian world would have if they didn't.
Isn't it enough that the main electronics companies live there without invoking hate speech like the above?