"Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."
It is actually rather ironic that timothy chose sorting algorithms as an example. After a few seminars on bubble sorting, quicksorting, etc. the exact assignment of my current CS class is to create a sorting program. Personally, I find it a rather simple process. However, there are many people in my class whom it is painful to watch attempting to write this basic sort. They spend 10 minutes trying to figure out what I have just coded in as many seconds. Now, if they had just copied it, it might not make a big difference in terms of there completion of that assigmnent, but I definitely feel that figuring it out for themselves is an important problem-solving step that helps weed out some of the numbskulls in the class.
The GPL may be nice and the method would likely benifit the majority of the students, but in the end I think that the opposing benifits are worth more than some time saved by my peers.
Oxygen isn't poisonous. Otherwise we'd all be dead.
The real problem in breathing pure oxygen is that it will literally burn your lungs. Since anything that combnines with O2 in a reaction that produces heat is essentially burning, that is what is happening to your lungs. And in the presence of such high concentrations of O2 things like burning cannonballs would happen, even inside your lungs.
Actually, you need to worry more about CO (carbon monoxide) than CO2 (carbon dioxide). This is because whereas CO2 will only asphyxiate you by replacing all the O2 you breathe, CO is actually toxic. Thus, it takes much lower levels of CO to kill someone.
In fact though, your theory isn't too bad, because we wouldn't even need to carry the 70-something % N2 to make a virtual terran atmosphere. Humans han suvive in atmospheres with O2 concentrations greater than 50% before their lungs start to burn.
The interior of the spacecraft and astronauts can be actually overlooked if one takes care. As long as there is a shield between the martian environment and the astronauts/interior of spaceship, all one would have to do is to make the shield work the other way. That way, all NASA would have to do is steralize the outside of the spaceship + the astronauts spacesuits.*
I know, it will definitely be harder than it seems, but it'll probably be easier than steralizing the insides of the astronauts.:-)
*I suppose that actually the hardest part would be figuring out a way to get the astronauts into the suits without contaminating the outsides of the suits.
Have you ever seen the movies of nukes exploding underwater? Those are truly awesome demonstrations of the sheer power encompassed in that tiny amount of fissile material.
Actually, I've also been thinking of doing something similar. The trick is, I want to make a baby transmitter on a belt clip that can plug into a Discman/Walkman/Mp3 player/radio. This would transmit to earbuds powered by a watch battery with only a tiny antennae sticking out. This is the beauty: no wires, and completely concealable (think toque).
Does anyone think this is possible? Have any advice? So far the only thing keeping me from building it is the smallness required to effectively work inside an earbud.
Re:AOL cancel operators
on
Disconnecting
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Lol.
I would love to be an AOL cancellation rep. I would get all of my friends to go on AOL, and then call to cancel. I will give them free service for a couple more months if they agree to stay on, and I get a lot of pay bonuses. Man wouldn't that be great?
actually, I just had a thought.
What if we could make the space launches dirt cheap by using nuclear-powered rockets? The rockets could then just fire themselves into the sun.
mind you, in the unlikely even that one fucks up, then we're really screwed.
First, hide the site well enough that no civilization that hasn't discovered radiation should be able to find it. e.g. buried and behind obstacles that shouldn't be breakable without modern equipment.
Second, sprinkle trace amounts of radioactive material aroun the surface. Not enough to be dangerous, but enough to attract the attention of anyone with a geiger counter (or futuristic equivilent.) Thus if the site is discovered by a civilization of comparable technological level to us, it will most likely be discovered by its unique radioactive signature. You can only hope then that if site was discovered because it was radioactive that the archeologists would keep some sort of geiger counter on hand and realize it when it became too dangerouse to continue.
Hmm, member of the Boston HAM radio club?
and he lives in Newton or Watertown?
something doesn't seem quite right. Maybe your investigative procedures need a little work.
When I read item 1, I said "right on!" Parents need to talk to their kids extensively. That is how you're gonna know if something is going on. That is also how you are goin to teach them to have "common sense" which, IMHO, is the most valuable skill in the world.
When I read item 2, I thought that you might actually be on to something there. I was read to at a very little age and have always read a lot since. However, I have also used a computer since I was about 6 or 7 and I believe that kids should be familiar with technology from a very young age.
Things were going fine until I read item 3. Then it became very clear to me that you do NOT trust your kids! This is the most crucial aspect of any parent-child relationship. If you show your kids that you trust them, they will trust you more, which becomes especially important in item #1. And besides, who wants to use the computer in a family room? People can then read your email, instant messages, and see whether or not you are actually doing your homework. While this may appeal to many parents, they must realize that responsible behaviour on the computer is something that kids must learn on their own!
Item 4 didn't do much to redeem you. As far as I'm concerned, my point is this: impart your knowledge and concerns to your kids, but then TRUST them to take them into consideration! My parents almost always followed this philosophy, and while it did have some pitfalls, nothing really bad ever really came of it. I can't emphasize it more, give your kids some time on the comp by themselves if they want it. If you have done your job as a parent and your kids trust you, no serious harm will come of it.
P.S. Seeing as I'm 17, and barely finished the stage in my life that you seem to be concerned about, I would say that my perspective on this situation is fairly important. So please give some thought to what I have said, and give your kids a chance.
And put them into an inferior visual format you cannot read without the computer being working and on?
This is an oft-overlooked aspect. What will you do when your brand-new dead-tree-replacing box goes berserk and suddenly you can't access the 1000 page "how to fix anything to do with computers" book that you need to fix it?
I guess its time to dive into that dumpster full of loose pages that you just trashed...:-)
It was the first game that I really got "addicted to." (even before civ 1) As such, I know a buddy of mine who actually started a revamp of the game a couple years ago, he got the engine built I think and then the project died. I'll see if he has the source for his stuff posted anywhere online and post here if I find it.
That is because the larger the wing, the greater the WIG effect. Thus, the only objects that the large cargo boats proposed by the original poster would have to pitch up to avoid would be freighters and the like.
What I want to know is what effect does a WIG vehicle have on a small boat/craft/person underneath it when it flys over?
I can still read the text, but the site is under such a strain that the image isn't loading. Therefore, you post is the exact opposite of what I need!
does anyone have a mirror of the image?
Ya, thats one thing that really bugs me about hollywood: In some movies they actually do show people reloading occaisionally but they always miss one important problem. Apparently, in an M-16, C-7 or most other assault rifles if you fire a full clip in a row, your barrel will melt from the heat. I've never seen that in a movie...
My friend is in that Canadian infantry and they each carry an extra barrel for their C-7s in case of that exact situation.
Some big time company (eg Corel) begins publishing software for linux, potentially eventually even publishing their own distro. They incorporate this expirey date bullshit into it. Then a few years/months later one of the following happens:
1) The company goes out of buisiness and then your software expires and you are SOL. Especially if the software you used to encrypt all of those important files on your hd expires.
2) The company decides to back the RIAA and implements some form of Digital Rights Management into their next release. Don't want it? too bad, your software just expired!
I happen to also be canadian, and I rarely see damage next to our name (not as often as I see it next to America:-) but I must confess, bureaucracy and confusion seem to follow us every step of they way...
The above concerns you have mentioned are very valid and disturbing. This is why I think Asimov's laws regarding intelligent robots/software should be implemented today. After all, if we pass the laws now, before AI becomes commonplace, there'll be a lot less fuss than if we try to pass them in 20-100 years or so.
Think about it; there's almost no problem that can't be solved by hardwiring the below laws into any AI robot:
1) The robot must do what will preserve human life. 2) The robot must obey a human's command. 3) The robot must preserve itself.
The laws are listed in order of precedence. Thus, if two laws conflict, the first one takes priority. i.e. a robot has to choose whether to sacrifice itself in order to save a human - it must sacrifice itself in violation of law 3 in order to satisfy the first law.
"In the first place the prices he puts on his equipment sound rather inflated. Just because you spend $500,000 developing a prototype does not mean that the prototype is worth that amount."
It may not be worth that much on the market, but to him it has a huge value. And seeing as that is mostly what a court of law would look at that is tremendously important. The law has repeatedly upheld rulings in which a victim was awarded more than the actual monetary value of an item purely for sentimental reasons.
All of that is ignoring personal injury and the fact that they completely violated him, regardless of the fact that he had proper documentation...
Slashdot Mirror
"Maybe now some young Computer Science student can spend more time on developing a good overall program, instead of spending a bunch of time writing simple things like their own sorting routine."
It is actually rather ironic that timothy chose sorting algorithms as an example. After a few seminars on bubble sorting, quicksorting, etc. the exact assignment of my current CS class is to create a sorting program. Personally, I find it a rather simple process. However, there are many people in my class whom it is painful to watch attempting to write this basic sort. They spend 10 minutes trying to figure out what I have just coded in as many seconds. Now, if they had just copied it, it might not make a big difference in terms of there completion of that assigmnent, but I definitely feel that figuring it out for themselves is an important problem-solving step that helps weed out some of the numbskulls in the class.
The GPL may be nice and the method would likely benifit the majority of the students, but in the end I think that the opposing benifits are worth more than some time saved by my peers.
Oxygen isn't poisonous. Otherwise we'd all be dead.
The real problem in breathing pure oxygen is that it will literally burn your lungs. Since anything that combnines with O2 in a reaction that produces heat is essentially burning, that is what is happening to your lungs. And in the presence of such high concentrations of O2 things like burning cannonballs would happen, even inside your lungs.
Actually, you need to worry more about CO (carbon monoxide) than CO2 (carbon dioxide). This is because whereas CO2 will only asphyxiate you by replacing all the O2 you breathe, CO is actually toxic. Thus, it takes much lower levels of CO to kill someone.
In fact though, your theory isn't too bad, because we wouldn't even need to carry the 70-something % N2 to make a virtual terran atmosphere. Humans han suvive in atmospheres with O2 concentrations greater than 50% before their lungs start to burn.
Exactly.
:-)
Just think, with all that water over there, instead of the real stuff, the astronauts could take powdered milk now!
Now all someone needs to figure out is how to make a $200,000 kettle that will work on mars to boil the water.
The interior of the spacecraft and astronauts can be actually overlooked if one takes care. As long as there is a shield between the martian environment and the astronauts/interior of spaceship, all one would have to do is to make the shield work the other way. That way, all NASA would have to do is steralize the outside of the spaceship + the astronauts spacesuits.*
:-)
I know, it will definitely be harder than it seems, but it'll probably be easier than steralizing the insides of the astronauts.
*I suppose that actually the hardest part would be figuring out a way to get the astronauts into the suits without contaminating the outsides of the suits.
Have you ever seen the movies of nukes exploding underwater? Those are truly awesome demonstrations of the sheer power encompassed in that tiny amount of fissile material.
Actually, I've also been thinking of doing something similar. The trick is, I want to make a baby transmitter on a belt clip that can plug into a Discman/Walkman/Mp3 player/radio. This would transmit to earbuds powered by a watch battery with only a tiny antennae sticking out. This is the beauty: no wires, and completely concealable (think toque).
Does anyone think this is possible? Have any advice? So far the only thing keeping me from building it is the smallness required to effectively work inside an earbud.
Oh, and here is another, IMHO, more useful map:
_ b6.gif
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/media/Assets/Maps/usmap
The link should be this:
_ 492f2.gif
http://www1.sprintpcs.com/media/Assets/Maps/usmap
Lol.
I would love to be an AOL cancellation rep. I would get all of my friends to go on AOL, and then call to cancel. I will give them free service for a couple more months if they agree to stay on, and I get a lot of pay bonuses. Man wouldn't that be great?
actually, I just had a thought. What if we could make the space launches dirt cheap by using nuclear-powered rockets? The rockets could then just fire themselves into the sun. mind you, in the unlikely even that one fucks up, then we're really screwed.
There is a fairly obvious solution.
First, hide the site well enough that no civilization that hasn't discovered radiation should be able to find it. e.g. buried and behind obstacles that shouldn't be breakable without modern equipment.
Second, sprinkle trace amounts of radioactive material aroun the surface. Not enough to be dangerous, but enough to attract the attention of anyone with a geiger counter (or futuristic equivilent.) Thus if the site is discovered by a civilization of comparable technological level to us, it will most likely be discovered by its unique radioactive signature. You can only hope then that if site was discovered because it was radioactive that the archeologists would keep some sort of geiger counter on hand and realize it when it became too dangerouse to continue.
Hmm, member of the Boston HAM radio club? and he lives in Newton or Watertown? something doesn't seem quite right. Maybe your investigative procedures need a little work.
When I read item 1, I said "right on!" Parents need to talk to their kids extensively. That is how you're gonna know if something is going on. That is also how you are goin to teach them to have "common sense" which, IMHO, is the most valuable skill in the world.
When I read item 2, I thought that you might actually be on to something there. I was read to at a very little age and have always read a lot since. However, I have also used a computer since I was about 6 or 7 and I believe that kids should be familiar with technology from a very young age.
Things were going fine until I read item 3. Then it became very clear to me that you do NOT trust your kids! This is the most crucial aspect of any parent-child relationship. If you show your kids that you trust them, they will trust you more, which becomes especially important in item #1. And besides, who wants to use the computer in a family room? People can then read your email, instant messages, and see whether or not you are actually doing your homework. While this may appeal to many parents, they must realize that responsible behaviour on the computer is something that kids must learn on their own!
Item 4 didn't do much to redeem you. As far as I'm concerned, my point is this: impart your knowledge and concerns to your kids, but then TRUST them to take them into consideration! My parents almost always followed this philosophy, and while it did have some pitfalls, nothing really bad ever really came of it. I can't emphasize it more, give your kids some time on the comp by themselves if they want it. If you have done your job as a parent and your kids trust you, no serious harm will come of it.
P.S. Seeing as I'm 17, and barely finished the stage in my life that you seem to be concerned about, I would say that my perspective on this situation is fairly important. So please give some thought to what I have said, and give your kids a chance.
And put them into an inferior visual format you cannot read without the computer being working and on?
:-)
This is an oft-overlooked aspect. What will you do when your brand-new dead-tree-replacing box goes berserk and suddenly you can't access the 1000 page "how to fix anything to do with computers" book that you need to fix it? I guess its time to dive into that dumpster full of loose pages that you just trashed...
Empire was a fantastic game!
It was the first game that I really got "addicted to." (even before civ 1) As such, I know a buddy of mine who actually started a revamp of the game a couple years ago, he got the engine built I think and then the project died. I'll see if he has the source for his stuff posted anywhere online and post here if I find it.
That is because the larger the wing, the greater the WIG effect. Thus, the only objects that the large cargo boats proposed by the original poster would have to pitch up to avoid would be freighters and the like.
What I want to know is what effect does a WIG vehicle have on a small boat/craft/person underneath it when it flys over?
I can still read the text, but the site is under such a strain that the image isn't loading. Therefore, you post is the exact opposite of what I need! does anyone have a mirror of the image?
Ya, thats one thing that really bugs me about hollywood: In some movies they actually do show people reloading occaisionally but they always miss one important problem. Apparently, in an M-16, C-7 or most other assault rifles if you fire a full clip in a row, your barrel will melt from the heat. I've never seen that in a movie...
My friend is in that Canadian infantry and they each carry an extra barrel for their C-7s in case of that exact situation.
Ya, maybe for this one it would be bad, but I would like to see it done on some other space-object!
Some big time company (eg Corel) begins publishing software for linux, potentially eventually even publishing their own distro. They incorporate this expirey date bullshit into it. Then a few years/months later one of the following happens:
1) The company goes out of buisiness and then your software expires and you are SOL. Especially if the software you used to encrypt all of those important files on your hd expires.
2) The company decides to back the RIAA and implements some form of Digital Rights Management into their next release. Don't want it? too bad, your software just expired!
3) Something else horrible happens...
I happen to also be canadian, and I rarely see damage next to our name (not as often as I see it next to America :-) but I must confess, bureaucracy and confusion seem to follow us every step of they way...
The above concerns you have mentioned are very valid and disturbing. This is why I think Asimov's laws regarding intelligent robots/software should be implemented today. After all, if we pass the laws now, before AI becomes commonplace, there'll be a lot less fuss than if we try to pass them in 20-100 years or so.
Think about it; there's almost no problem that can't be solved by hardwiring the below laws into any AI robot:
1) The robot must do what will preserve human life.
2) The robot must obey a human's command.
3) The robot must preserve itself.
The laws are listed in order of precedence. Thus, if two laws conflict, the first one takes priority.
i.e. a robot has to choose whether to sacrifice itself in order to save a human - it must sacrifice itself in violation of law 3 in order to satisfy the first law.
hosting this site on a server that's almost instantly been slashdotted to hell...
"In the first place the prices he puts on his equipment sound rather inflated. Just because you spend $500,000 developing a prototype does not mean that the prototype is worth that amount."
It may not be worth that much on the market, but to him it has a huge value. And seeing as that is mostly what a court of law would look at that is tremendously important. The law has repeatedly upheld rulings in which a victim was awarded more than the actual monetary value of an item purely for sentimental reasons.
All of that is ignoring personal injury and the fact that they completely violated him, regardless of the fact that he had proper documentation...