You touch on what I've come to see as an important point, albeit a little indirectly.
Look at a few other highly successfull, and well liked movies and what they all have in common. Such as The Matrix and all three of the LOTR series.
It's painstaking attention to detail, every detail.
If you've seen the behind the scenes portions of the dvd's you can't help but notice this.
Take for example the armor worn by the king of Rohan in the The Two Towers. It actually had detail in places the camera simply could never see, but the actor did (very sorry, I have an absolutely crappy memory for names). He said it made him feel like a king seeing that. Wanna bet on whether that helped him in his performance.
Another example, look at how detailed and large the models for Elronds home (again names, even of places) was. This paid off later when they wound up using in in some of the blend shots with matt paintings and actual sets, that hadn't originaly planned to do that way.
Or the all effort the small actors spent learning to walk, stand, etc. like the normal size actors.
In the matrix we had the carefull coloring of scenes for feel. getting the reflections in sunglasses right. the subtle uses of consistant themeing for character (notice how cipher and the agents have square-ish sunglasses, yet the good guys have rounded lenses). and so on.
This complete attention to detail just compounds so many ways in movies that the end result is much more believable, even when the movie is pure fantasy.
I've read a fair amount of the laymans explanations of the various theories. And brane theory (a 'fork' of string as I understand it) is certainly interesting. I think I've read that artical, but I'll check it later thanks.
The problem is I don't really have the background a REAL theoretical physicist has to know whether the feature of a picard space that curls some dimensions down tight has any significance wrt string theories shrunken dimensions or if I'm totaly of base or out at 90 to the whole thing.
p.s. and o.t. anyone else think it wasn't to swift an idea to post several new stories while doing database maintenance and thus preventing any posting.
Sheesh look at the number of 'first posts' it caused.
Well from reading the article (please don't kick me off, I won't let happen again honest:) )
I would say two things
1) an open source code.
2) as part of thier developement process thier creating usefull tools and info to help developers of windows software port to linux, or even write code that easily ports from one to the other.
The reason Dr. Dos and other failed was in part do to the fact that it depended on income to succed and thus could go belly up financially. Much harder for an open source project do that.
Also Microsoft wrote code in thier apps that generated false error messages in some dos replacements, giving the false illusion that the dos replacement was buggy or incompatable. FUD wasn't used because microsoft was feeling sadistic, it was used because it worked.
Of course one of my favorite reasons for writing any open source/freeware code is 'why not?'
What I was thinking was that if a Picard geometry would cause some dimensions to be shrunk to tight circles near it's narrow end, could us being near the narrow end explain why the dimensions predicted by string theory(s) are so tiny.
I am aware the extra dimension must be very tiny to exist. I'm more looking for the connection, if any, to the potential picard shape for the universe.
That is do the two descriptions support each other, or possibly one be the consequence of the other, or are they not related in such a direct way? Or for that matter are they related at all and if so how?
I can think of a language that would do what you want in this one instance. It's pretty good at handling all sorts of things with it's data structures.
It only has two native structures, the 'atom' and the 'sequence'. An atom is a single value, a sequence is an array of atoms and or sequences.
If you need more data types you just define them.
It's called Euphoria (http://www.rapideuphoria.com) and is a pretty cool language. You can download eigther the free (beer) or paid (very cheap) version. it runs under windows,dos, and linux. there are translators to generate c code otherwise it's interpreted (but it's very fast for an interpreted language). And there is a lot of free/open source code in it on the home page.
It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but with it's very flexible and usable handling of data types/structures (the data handling rules are pretty intuitive to me as well, ymmv)as well as being very easy to learn and use it's pretty good.
Euphoria does that sort of thing, though a bit simpler
c=a+b. if they are both arrays (called sequences, sort of a flexible array) it uses the + element by element. same for any other math operation(s) performed on arrays.
I have a relative who works at a reasonably high level at lockheed marting on the mil contracts sideas an engineer.
Though he's been there (Area51) only a few times,that he's admited to, (guy makes clinton era gore look like a wild drug crazed party animal, more wooden than pinochio) his boss has been there several times. Though he's never talked about anything secret, he has said they do have secret research going on there, but most of it is the kind of secret that they wouldn't be to terribly suprise to find out a forign intell agenency has good clues to what kind of things are there, just not the details. almost at the level of 'oficially secret even if everyone knows about it'.
Several of LM's 50's-70's uber secret planes that we now know about where developed/tested there.
What he basicaly said (this was a few years ago, feb-march of 2000) was along the lines of 'we're doing somthing there, couldn't say exactly what' when someone (one of my uncles I believe) said somthing about jail in a hidden prison he said it was he didn't actually know, but even if he did worst that would likely happen is he'd get fired, maybee fined a couple grand. He went on to say security for persons entering the base was pretty strong, lots of checks and escorts to keep you in your areas only. but that he hadn't been there in a few years as he worked on new subcomponents for some systems (avoided saying wich subsystems) and not experimental craft so rarely had reason to be at Area51.
He also pretty much said the concept of aliens at 51 was ridiculous. To many people on base to hold the secret, and to many aerospace experts who KNOW the sota engaged in mundane work and research NOT to notice and recognize signs of UFO experiments. To many to guarantee secrecy.
Basicaly, yeah they still do low to med grade secret stuff there, and no your not gonna sneak/con your way in.
Frankly I think they do also practice keeping secrets at a known 'secret' base so they can better hide the trully secret stuff like what the parent poster was suggesting.
Just my two cents.
USPS usually does a pretty good job, though when I live next door (as in my apartment building shared a parkinglot with) to one I would occasionaly get someone elses mail.
Well o.k. it was my dad's mail. And yeah he did live just across town two miles away. And I suppose being named after him could have somthing to do with it.
Seriously the only major problem I've ever had with them is when I lived in that apartment, thier trucks (tractor-traillers, 1 or 2) with the days mail would arrive at 4:45-4:50am every morning to unload. RIGHT outside my bedroom window, at most 100' (approx 30 meters) outside.
Mycroft
One interesting thing in your link about the universe potentially having a Picard geometry was the coment about how near the narrow end two of the three dimensions would be seriously shrunk (you'd be able to see the back of your own head if you went far enough towards the narrow end).
I read this and remembered that string theory predics several extra dimensions we can't percieve because they're to small.
Any possible relation here?
I'm guessing it has somthing to do with gravity, but I'd like someone who knows what current theory says to answer.
So anyone cluefull enough who chooses to post has at least two people who would appretiate the effort.
Are you replying to the post above mine (that's currently sitting at 0-troll) or did you mistake the parts of his post I blockquoted in mine for my words?
Not sure, but if the latter please re-read mine and maybee the parent to it.
If neighther I have no clue what your trying to say.
The studies conducted clearly shows that Microsoft has a lower TCO than Linux in many areas.
I've lost track, was that the study Microsoft did, or the one they paid for or both?
In addition, in most of the cases open source products are imitators of corporations. Linux stole ideas from Unix, Mozilla from Netscape, OpenOffice from StarOffice and so on.
Uhm, actually no. Mozilla IS netscape, just a few genereations and a name change later, with much more added to it. And the relationship between Open Office and Star Office is mostly the same.
The exception being the one about Unix. Wich is not to good a point as Linux is a POSIX compliant os same as Unix.
Of course you are almost certainly a 3rd rate troll, or just possibly a employee of a comercial company threatened by OSS who failed to do his/her research and is now sitting there with egg on his face.
Hmm, I wonder how many people behind the 'no-second generation copies' idea saw this potential bussiness plan as well.
Doesn't Sony and a few other companies sit on both sides? 'Content Producer' and recording device producer?
Exactly. Sci-Fi does liscense it out to other channels in the USA, I see it on a broadcast channel here (St.Louis, Missouri market). I have no cable/satalite at all.
The downside is new shows do air later than when sci-fi subscribers get it. We get the season end episode about the time the NEXT season starts on cable.
I also saw somthing along these lines in the 90's in eigther pop-sci or sci-am. Can't remember wich, but I'm pretty shure it was pop-science, the image that comes to mind is much like how they do thier covers.
Of course it was just speculation and concept back then, that someone is actually making progress on this is great.
It's actually not that explosive.
The common perception of hydrogen as highly dangerous comes largely from the Hindenberg incident.
The ironic part of the whole thing is that the main culprit in In the Hindenberg fire was the reflective outer coating, whitch with is actually quite simular to the fule in the SRB's used by the shuttle today.
I am not saying that hydrogen dosen't come with it's own risks, but there are advantages to a smaller lifting vehicle. Simply having less cross-section to the winds in the lower atmosphere would reduce some potential problems. As well as being able to build a sturdier lift vehicle in a smaller platform with the same lift potential. With modern design capabilities I'm shure the risk/reward ratio could easily favor hydrogen over helium.
I thought so, but the way he italicised descending I was wondering a bit if my mind had pulled a wierd trick and scrambled meaning of words in my mind. Wouldn't be the first time. I loose proper nouns, esp. names, like pocket change in a couch.
In other words, my second paragraph. It's actually splitting the boot process across two devices.
To it seemed to imply it was doing the whole thing magically from some device the bios didn't know about. Course I'm probably just picking nits.
You should clarify that you are talking about DOS/Windows. WinNT (including XP) can boot from anywhere, even drives your BIOS can't detect.
How on earth can it do that? If the bios can't detect the drive to load the windows bootloader in the first place.
Unless it's booting from a detected drive and then switching to the undetected drive once the apropriate drivers are loaded? In that it is at best splitting the boot operation across two drives.
Hey at least he got mandrake 7.x to install. On two different machines with two different versions of mandrake(a 6.x and a 7.x ver) I got a divide by zero error in the installer.
At the time I just wend back to RH and decided mandrake's installer wasn't checked very well. ANY divide by zero error in an aplication, especially where there is no obvious math to do (it wasn't calculating drive space, or computing partition sizes, it was asking about packages to install!) is very bad and makes the programmers look like idiots.
I've since tried a later 8.x and early 9.x it worked great. even bought the 7cd version of one of them like it just fine.
Uhm, because stupidity isn't illeagle?
If your thinking of libel or slander, those mostly cover deliberate, driect lies. e.g. "Joe steals from stores." would be bad if you have no proof Joe is a thief. "I don't trust Joe" wouldn't normaly be a problem.
Also the standards are much higher when dealing with Public figures, as thier kinda 'fair game' up to a point.
Simply producing a very slanted and misleading movie doesn't much open you to those kinds of charges, unless you state a falsehood as fact.
IANAL and all that. But simple common sense should tell you most of this.(unless of course you live under a fairly different leagle system)
Yes, that's my point. Descending means going down, since his list one item per line descending likely doesn't refer to the physical ordering therefore I assume what's 'descending' here is his opinion of the series' in question. Thus the first one is 'best' and the last one is least liked.
Slashdot Mirror
You touch on what I've come to see as an important point, albeit a little indirectly.
Look at a few other highly successfull, and well liked movies and what they all have in common. Such as The Matrix and all three of the LOTR series.
It's painstaking attention to detail, every detail.
If you've seen the behind the scenes portions of the dvd's you can't help but notice this.
Take for example the armor worn by the king of Rohan in the The Two Towers. It actually had detail in places the camera simply could never see, but the actor did (very sorry, I have an absolutely crappy memory for names). He said it made him feel like a king seeing that. Wanna bet on whether that helped him in his performance.
Another example, look at how detailed and large the models for Elronds home (again names, even of places) was. This paid off later when they wound up using in in some of the blend shots with matt paintings and actual sets, that hadn't originaly planned to do that way.
Or the all effort the small actors spent learning to walk, stand, etc. like the normal size actors.
In the matrix we had the carefull coloring of scenes for feel. getting the reflections in sunglasses right. the subtle uses of consistant themeing for character (notice how cipher and the agents have square-ish sunglasses, yet the good guys have rounded lenses). and so on.
This complete attention to detail just compounds so many ways in movies that the end result is much more believable, even when the movie is pure fantasy.
I've read a fair amount of the laymans explanations of the various theories. And brane theory (a 'fork' of string as I understand it) is certainly interesting. I think I've read that artical, but I'll check it later thanks.
The problem is I don't really have the background a REAL theoretical physicist has to know whether the feature of a picard space that curls some dimensions down tight has any significance wrt string theories shrunken dimensions or if I'm totaly of base or out at 90 to the whole thing.
Mycroft
p.s. and o.t. anyone else think it wasn't to swift an idea to post several new stories while doing database maintenance and thus preventing any posting.
Sheesh look at the number of 'first posts' it caused.
Mycroft
Well from reading the article (please don't kick me off, I won't let happen again honest:) )
I would say two things
1) an open source code.
2) as part of thier developement process thier creating usefull tools and info to help developers of windows software port to linux, or even write code that easily ports from one to the other.
The reason Dr. Dos and other failed was in part do to the fact that it depended on income to succed and thus could go belly up financially. Much harder for an open source project do that.
Also Microsoft wrote code in thier apps that generated false error messages in some dos replacements, giving the false illusion that the dos replacement was buggy or incompatable. FUD wasn't used because microsoft was feeling sadistic, it was used because it worked.
Of course one of my favorite reasons for writing any open source/freeware code is 'why not?'
Mycroft
What I was thinking was that if a Picard geometry would cause some dimensions to be shrunk to tight circles near it's narrow end, could us being near the narrow end explain why the dimensions predicted by string theory(s) are so tiny.
I am aware the extra dimension must be very tiny to exist. I'm more looking for the connection, if any, to the potential picard shape for the universe.
That is do the two descriptions support each other, or possibly one be the consequence of the other, or are they not related in such a direct way? Or for that matter are they related at all and if so how?
Mycroft
I can think of a language that would do what you want in this one instance. It's pretty good at handling all sorts of things with it's data structures.
It only has two native structures, the 'atom' and the 'sequence'. An atom is a single value, a sequence is an array of atoms and or sequences.
If you need more data types you just define them.
It's called Euphoria (http://www.rapideuphoria.com) and is a pretty cool language. You can download eigther the free (beer) or paid (very cheap) version. it runs under windows,dos, and linux. there are translators to generate c code otherwise it's interpreted (but it's very fast for an interpreted language). And there is a lot of free/open source code in it on the home page.
It's not the greatest thing since sliced bread, but with it's very flexible and usable handling of data types/structures (the data handling rules are pretty intuitive to me as well, ymmv)as well as being very easy to learn and use it's pretty good.
Mycroft
Euphoria does that sort of thing, though a bit simpler
c=a+b. if they are both arrays (called sequences, sort of a flexible array) it uses the + element by element. same for any other math operation(s) performed on arrays.
Mycroft
I have a relative who works at a reasonably high level at lockheed marting on the mil contracts sideas an engineer.
Though he's been there (Area51) only a few times,that he's admited to, (guy makes clinton era gore look like a wild drug crazed party animal, more wooden than pinochio) his boss has been there several times. Though he's never talked about anything secret, he has said they do have secret research going on there, but most of it is the kind of secret that they wouldn't be to terribly suprise to find out a forign intell agenency has good clues to what kind of things are there, just not the details. almost at the level of 'oficially secret even if everyone knows about it'.
Several of LM's 50's-70's uber secret planes that we now know about where developed/tested there.
What he basicaly said (this was a few years ago, feb-march of 2000) was along the lines of 'we're doing somthing there, couldn't say exactly what' when someone (one of my uncles I believe) said somthing about jail in a hidden prison he said it was he didn't actually know, but even if he did worst that would likely happen is he'd get fired, maybee fined a couple grand. He went on to say security for persons entering the base was pretty strong, lots of checks and escorts to keep you in your areas only. but that he hadn't been there in a few years as he worked on new subcomponents for some systems (avoided saying wich subsystems) and not experimental craft so rarely had reason to be at Area51.
He also pretty much said the concept of aliens at 51 was ridiculous. To many people on base to hold the secret, and to many aerospace experts who KNOW the sota engaged in mundane work and research NOT to notice and recognize signs of UFO experiments. To many to guarantee secrecy.
Basicaly, yeah they still do low to med grade secret stuff there, and no your not gonna sneak/con your way in.
Frankly I think they do also practice keeping secrets at a known 'secret' base so they can better hide the trully secret stuff like what the parent poster was suggesting.
Just my two cents.
Mycroft
USPS usually does a pretty good job, though when I live next door (as in my apartment building shared a parkinglot with) to one I would occasionaly get someone elses mail.
Well o.k. it was my dad's mail. And yeah he did live just across town two miles away. And I suppose being named after him could have somthing to do with it.
Seriously the only major problem I've ever had with them is when I lived in that apartment, thier trucks (tractor-traillers, 1 or 2) with the days mail would arrive at 4:45-4:50am every morning to unload. RIGHT outside my bedroom window, at most 100' (approx 30 meters) outside.
Mycroft
One interesting thing in your link about the universe potentially having a Picard geometry was the coment about how near the narrow end two of the three dimensions would be seriously shrunk (you'd be able to see the back of your own head if you went far enough towards the narrow end).
I read this and remembered that string theory predics several extra dimensions we can't percieve because they're to small.
Any possible relation here?
Mycroft
I'm guessing it has somthing to do with gravity, but I'd like someone who knows what current theory says to answer.
So anyone cluefull enough who chooses to post has at least two people who would appretiate the effort.
Mycroft
Are you replying to the post above mine (that's currently sitting at 0-troll) or did you mistake the parts of his post I blockquoted in mine for my words?
Not sure, but if the latter please re-read mine and maybee the parent to it.
If neighther I have no clue what your trying to say.
Mycroft
I've lost track, was that the study Microsoft did, or the one they paid for or both?
Uhm, actually no. Mozilla IS netscape, just a few genereations and a name change later, with much more added to it. And the relationship between Open Office and Star Office is mostly the same.
The exception being the one about Unix. Wich is not to good a point as Linux is a POSIX compliant os same as Unix.
Of course you are almost certainly a 3rd rate troll, or just possibly a employee of a comercial company threatened by OSS who failed to do his/her research and is now sitting there with egg on his face.
Mycroft
Hmm, I wonder how many people behind the 'no-second generation copies' idea saw this potential bussiness plan as well.
Doesn't Sony and a few other companies sit on both sides? 'Content Producer' and recording device producer?
Mycroft
Exactly. Sci-Fi does liscense it out to other channels in the USA, I see it on a broadcast channel here (St.Louis, Missouri market). I have no cable/satalite at all.
The downside is new shows do air later than when sci-fi subscribers get it. We get the season end episode about the time the NEXT season starts on cable.
Mycroft
I also saw somthing along these lines in the 90's in eigther pop-sci or sci-am. Can't remember wich, but I'm pretty shure it was pop-science, the image that comes to mind is much like how they do thier covers.
Of course it was just speculation and concept back then, that someone is actually making progress on this is great.
Mycroft
It's actually not that explosive.
The common perception of hydrogen as highly dangerous comes largely from the Hindenberg incident.
The ironic part of the whole thing is that the main culprit in In the Hindenberg fire was the reflective outer coating, whitch with is actually quite simular to the fule in the SRB's used by the shuttle today.
I am not saying that hydrogen dosen't come with it's own risks, but there are advantages to a smaller lifting vehicle. Simply having less cross-section to the winds in the lower atmosphere would reduce some potential problems. As well as being able to build a sturdier lift vehicle in a smaller platform with the same lift potential. With modern design capabilities I'm shure the risk/reward ratio could easily favor hydrogen over helium.
Mycroft
ok thanks.
Mycroft
I thought so, but the way he italicised descending I was wondering a bit if my mind had pulled a wierd trick and scrambled meaning of words in my mind. Wouldn't be the first time. I loose proper nouns, esp. names, like pocket change in a couch.
Mycroft
In other words, my second paragraph. It's actually splitting the boot process across two devices.
To it seemed to imply it was doing the whole thing magically from some device the bios didn't know about. Course I'm probably just picking nits.
Mycroft
How on earth can it do that? If the bios can't detect the drive to load the windows bootloader in the first place.
Unless it's booting from a detected drive and then switching to the undetected drive once the apropriate drivers are loaded? In that it is at best splitting the boot operation across two drives.
Mycroft
Hey at least he got mandrake 7.x to install.
On two different machines with two different versions of mandrake(a 6.x and a 7.x ver) I got a divide by zero error in the installer.
At the time I just wend back to RH and decided mandrake's installer wasn't checked very well. ANY divide by zero error in an aplication, especially where there is no obvious math to do (it wasn't calculating drive space, or computing partition sizes, it was asking about packages to install!) is very bad and makes the programmers look like idiots.
I've since tried a later 8.x and early 9.x it worked great. even bought the 7cd version of one of them like it just fine.
Mycroft
"Truly you have a dizzing intellect."
Mycroft
Uhm, because stupidity isn't illeagle?
If your thinking of libel or slander, those mostly cover deliberate, driect lies.
e.g. "Joe steals from stores." would be bad if you have no proof Joe is a thief. "I don't trust Joe" wouldn't normaly be a problem.
Also the standards are much higher when dealing with Public figures, as thier kinda 'fair game' up to a point.
Simply producing a very slanted and misleading movie doesn't much open you to those kinds of charges, unless you state a falsehood as fact.
IANAL and all that. But simple common sense should tell you most of this.(unless of course you live under a fairly different leagle system)
Mycroft
Yes, that's my point. Descending means going down, since his list one item per line descending likely doesn't refer to the physical ordering therefore I assume what's 'descending' here is his opinion of the series' in question. Thus the first one is 'best' and the last one is least liked.
Mycroft