OK...explain the slit experiment (you know, with photons) and the banding of photons. That, and depper quantum mechanics, has at one part in the explanation something to the effect that the banding of photons could only happen if we pretend that the photons are interacting with other photons in a different universe (gross, humongous oversimplification). Quite a bit of theory is based on that assumption, that the photon behaves as if (not because, but we just pretend as if) it interacts with another photon (or itself) in another universe.
Any multiverse theory just says that we not only treat the photon as if that is what happens and base calculations off that, but that we actually accept that that is actually what happens.
Just goes to show that Sciam/does/ know better than you do.
Hmmm....thing is, induction isn't about proving the future...it has more to do with an argument being put through the scientific process, put up against rivalling theories. Kind of darwinian, with the theory which explains the most in the simplest fashion winning...temporarily, but only to be replaced with a theory which explains more and/or better the already observed facts, hopefully in a simpler fashion.
So we don't really deal with true or false; we deal with what, at the moment, most accurately tells us the most in the simplest way.
So in the example with the ravens, saying that you must always take into account the fact that the next raven might not be black needs a more complex theory: one which includes a rationally for expecting that, and one which explains why it could be possible. That theory is essentially the same as my theory, but with a little proviso attached [it proposes a more complex theory, but with no explanation, thus making it an invalid theory]. But that proviso is not explained in the theory, and neither is it a simpler version of my theory...so it does not pass the scientific method, and the theory that ravens are black (albinism, environmental effect etc excepted) is accepted as the better theory.
Wow...you must have never heard the phrase "never judge a book by its cover". It basically means that you should judge on content, not on packaging. And the reason for that is because they don't correlate at all; the packaging, although it might sometimes be indicative, says nothing about the content.
Someone might be slightly hung over, feeling sick, be dislexic, or just plain not care about his spelling on a 'dumbass' message board, but could (and often does) have something important, relevant or insightfull to say about the subject at hand.
You just limit yourself by using a wheat-from-chaff selection process which has no basis on logic or even empirical data.
And just to prove a point (while commiting a logical phalacy); most goatse.xc trolls don't make spelling mistakes;).
True about the mechanical friction and the thermal loss (not to mention air friction;) ), but the combustion isn't perfect...it's also got something like a 60% efficiency. (god, I calcuclated that once for different cracked fuels...am I glad I forgot all that:) ).
Then again, you should realise that when you use an electric generator, you create electromagnetic fields. And those fields will remove all data from your HD at that distance...so using working HD's to power an electrical generator would probably only be good for one thing: nuking your data...and that's somewhat less impressive:)
Anyway, as long as you remember that not all nerdy-geeky things have to involve programming, you should like this hack...
So whats the difference? Sports or computer games...one is physical, the other mental...and you can only see the use for the physical break, above the mental one?
Anyway, working 9-5 is highly unnatural; it's about time we put all that psychological research to good use by implementing it's findings and changing the workplace to a place where people would actually be more productive while feeling good.
Burnout rates would drop, saving money right there. Stress would be reduced, making people happier, upping morale. The only reason this doesn't happen at more places is because people tend to stick to traditions, no matter how dumb they are.
Relativity hasno practical application? Well, appart from changing and introducing a whole new scientific world view, what about GPS? Without the timeshift relativity expresses, GPS couldn't work.
Not only that, but general and special relativity also are fundamental to quite a few other theories.
As for what work Einstein got his Nobel, I'm not entirely sure, but iirc, the reason why he got it for his work on photons was because relativity wasn't proven at the time. But I'm not entirely sure about that...and I'm too lazy to check up on it:)
Re:Did it every occur to anybody..
on
Hacking the XBox
·
· Score: 1
You haven't been reading your copy well enough; Remember that if you ask for something insane, people won't give it to you. But if you then afterwards ask for something merely crazy, you'll most likely get it, even though it is something people wouldn't have accepted before you asked for the insane thing.
Rince, repeat, and MS gets DRM...it just takes a bit longer.
I have an even better idea...why not make 'em downloadable to start with! Zero polution, and I'd say Apple has just now proven it'll work for mp3's (which is a big 'duh'...we aqll knew it would work, but the **AA's just had to protect their business model).
Actually, there is quite some debate over what would happen to a human exposed to vacuum. The simple answer is "we don't know", 'cause it's never happened before.
As for the whole pressure thing...it's not pressure per se which matters, it's the pressure differential which would make things go 'pop'. OTOH, due to the workings of the ideal gas law, our internal fluids could boil, or we could expand enough to make that not happen...but because there's no empirical evidence, we don't know which of the variable terms (pressure, volume and temperature [n and R remain constant]) would change first, worst and to what degree if a body where exposed to vacuum.
hehe...but what gets me is that if you really want to excell at this kind of thing, americans should learn from the masters; the japanese.
I'm actually quite surprised that no-one has mentioned this before in this thread, but the japanese work insanely long hours. Thing is, most of those hours are spent trying to look productive. Which leads to the odd fact that while japanese work longer, they 'produce' less than any other country:)
Where the fuck has that clause 'non-obvious' gone? Did the patent office forget that one? Or maybe they should perform a fucking 'patentibility clause lookup'...
Man, this just pisses me off; I've refrained from patenting a couple of things because I know they're kinda obvious...now I think that I'd've been granted them (wrong as it is).
Seeing as a non-functional patenting system does more harm than good, I'd say it's really time the patenting system got dissolved.
Heh...for a mechanical engineer, that's like having g-codes patented! G-codes are the basic codes used in computer controled milling and lathing...essential in any production environment.
But what this guy is doing is a step further beyond the pale; he's patenting something which he himself doesn't know how exactly it will work...which is like rewarding some dumb kid down the block for Einsteins work.
Thing is, he doesn't know how to make it work! He hasn't even got a blueprint...he's got an idea, and a vague idea of how to make it work, but that's it.
It's exactly like me patenting an engine based manipulating gravitational effects; I know it's something which could/will work, sometime in the future, but I haven't a clue how to make it now...but I'll patent it in the meantime, even though I can't make a prototype, no matter how much money I have.
Isn't that just it? A 'provisonal patent'!?! I mean, wtf?
See, the thing here is that I can make a pretty good stab at things which will be cool in the future, and I can even make a decent guess as to how to implement them. BUT! if I where to try and do what this guy has done, I could get a patent on those grounds alon! He's patented something where he doesn't exactly know how to do it himself yet! And that, in every definition the patent office wants, is just plain wrong.
MS equation stinks. Not only that, but getting simple equations in is ok, but for anything with limits, recursive matrises and/or anything above a linear 4th degree polynomial, it gets nasty pretty fast...and it looks like shit too.
But that's kinda the whole point. You can present data in many, many forms. Sometimes, no, actually all the time, the format in which you present your data is critical to what data the attendees (or readers, whatever) take away from the briefing.
This is a good example of a case where the tools and the author have limited the way in which the data was represented, leading to an incomplete understanding/obfusciation of the problem.
As for the O-ring thing...that's a whole other barrel of fish, and not at all related to this (for those who didn't see the discovery channel documentery on it, apparently the guys at the o-ring manufacturin g plant first advised against flying in low temperatures, but got stared down into giving a go-ahead for launch by the NASA bigwigs who where caught up in the whole coldwar/PR hype. The docu gave two different sides of the story, but somehow what the guy at the o-ring plant said struck a chord of truth...I've seen similar things happen in engineering firms).
And nowadays, most psychologists look at Freud and think "wel,, some of his idea's whgere good, but most are crap. And even the ideas which are good don't have any empirical basis to them..." In other words, Freud was a bit of a fraud.
Not only that, but you get to use...*gasp*...a/mouse!/ on the pc too.
Couple that with user created content, higher resolutions and the overal better features when you upgrade your video card, and who nee^H^H^H wants an xbox?
Slashdot Mirror
I usually don't do this (check my sig), but looking at the grouping of the letters on the keyboard compell me: it's hoi poloi :)
(and if I could do accents on this thing, it'd be oi poloi)
Oops :) That'll teach me to post when I'm sleepy :)
Surf for pron and you're a minor in your state? Busted!
OK...explain the slit experiment (you know, with photons) and the banding of photons. That, and depper quantum mechanics, has at one part in the explanation something to the effect that the banding of photons could only happen if we pretend that the photons are interacting with other photons in a different universe (gross, humongous oversimplification). Quite a bit of theory is based on that assumption, that the photon behaves as if (not because, but we just pretend as if) it interacts with another photon (or itself) in another universe.
/does/ know better than you do.
Any multiverse theory just says that we not only treat the photon as if that is what happens and base calculations off that, but that we actually accept that that is actually what happens.
Just goes to show that Sciam
Hmmm....thing is, induction isn't about proving the future...it has more to do with an argument being put through the scientific process, put up against rivalling theories. Kind of darwinian, with the theory which explains the most in the simplest fashion winning...temporarily, but only to be replaced with a theory which explains more and/or better the already observed facts, hopefully in a simpler fashion.
So we don't really deal with true or false; we deal with what, at the moment, most accurately tells us the most in the simplest way.
So in the example with the ravens, saying that you must always take into account the fact that the next raven might not be black needs a more complex theory: one which includes a rationally for expecting that, and one which explains why it could be possible. That theory is essentially the same as my theory, but with a little proviso attached [it proposes a more complex theory, but with no explanation, thus making it an invalid theory].
But that proviso is not explained in the theory, and neither is it a simpler version of my theory...so it does not pass the scientific method, and the theory that ravens are black (albinism, environmental effect etc excepted) is accepted as the better theory.
Wow...you must have never heard the phrase "never judge a book by its cover". It basically means that you should judge on content, not on packaging. And the reason for that is because they don't correlate at all; the packaging, although it might sometimes be indicative, says nothing about the content.
;).
Someone might be slightly hung over, feeling sick, be dislexic, or just plain not care about his spelling on a 'dumbass' message board, but could (and often does) have something important, relevant or insightfull to say about the subject at hand.
You just limit yourself by using a wheat-from-chaff selection process which has no basis on logic or even empirical data.
And just to prove a point (while commiting a logical phalacy); most goatse.xc trolls don't make spelling mistakes
True about the mechanical friction and the thermal loss (not to mention air friction ;) ), but the combustion isn't perfect...it's also got something like a 60% efficiency. (god, I calcuclated that once for different cracked fuels...am I glad I forgot all that :) ).
Then again, you should realise that when you use an electric generator, you create electromagnetic fields. And those fields will remove all data from your HD at that distance...so using working HD's to power an electrical generator would probably only be good for one thing: nuking your data...and that's somewhat less impressive :)
Anyway, as long as you remember that not all nerdy-geeky things have to involve programming, you should like this hack...
"two personal items"?
I know what mine would be...a great big, huge, blowup F and an equally great big, blowup U.
So whats the difference? Sports or computer games...one is physical, the other mental...and you can only see the use for the physical break, above the mental one?
Anyway, working 9-5 is highly unnatural; it's about time we put all that psychological research to good use by implementing it's findings and changing the workplace to a place where people would actually be more productive while feeling good.
Burnout rates would drop, saving money right there. Stress would be reduced, making people happier, upping morale. The only reason this doesn't happen at more places is because people tend to stick to traditions, no matter how dumb they are.
Depends on your version...if you're up to date on your MS-tax, you'll have to make due with a 3d version of spy-hunter :)
Relativity hasno practical application? Well, appart from changing and introducing a whole new scientific world view, what about GPS? Without the timeshift relativity expresses, GPS couldn't work.
:)
Not only that, but general and special relativity also are fundamental to quite a few other theories.
As for what work Einstein got his Nobel, I'm not entirely sure, but iirc, the reason why he got it for his work on photons was because relativity wasn't proven at the time. But I'm not entirely sure about that...and I'm too lazy to check up on it
You haven't been reading your copy well enough; Remember that if you ask for something insane, people won't give it to you. But if you then afterwards ask for something merely crazy, you'll most likely get it, even though it is something people wouldn't have accepted before you asked for the insane thing.
Rince, repeat, and MS gets DRM...it just takes a bit longer.
I have an even better idea...why not make 'em downloadable to start with! Zero polution, and I'd say Apple has just now proven it'll work for mp3's (which is a big 'duh'...we aqll knew it would work, but the **AA's just had to protect their business model).
Actually, there is quite some debate over what would happen to a human exposed to vacuum. The simple answer is "we don't know", 'cause it's never happened before.
As for the whole pressure thing...it's not pressure per se which matters, it's the pressure differential which would make things go 'pop'. OTOH, due to the workings of the ideal gas law, our internal fluids could boil, or we could expand enough to make that not happen...but because there's no empirical evidence, we don't know which of the variable terms (pressure, volume and temperature [n and R remain constant]) would change first, worst and to what degree if a body where exposed to vacuum.
hehe...but what gets me is that if you really want to excell at this kind of thing, americans should learn from the masters; the japanese.
:)
I'm actually quite surprised that no-one has mentioned this before in this thread, but the japanese work insanely long hours. Thing is, most of those hours are spent trying to look productive. Which leads to the odd fact that while japanese work longer, they 'produce' less than any other country
Where the fuck has that clause 'non-obvious' gone? Did the patent office forget that one? Or maybe they should perform a fucking 'patentibility clause lookup'...
Man, this just pisses me off; I've refrained from patenting a couple of things because I know they're kinda obvious...now I think that I'd've been granted them (wrong as it is).
Seeing as a non-functional patenting system does more harm than good, I'd say it's really time the patenting system got dissolved.
Heh...for a mechanical engineer, that's like having g-codes patented! G-codes are the basic codes used in computer controled milling and lathing...essential in any production environment.
But what this guy is doing is a step further beyond the pale; he's patenting something which he himself doesn't know how exactly it will work...which is like rewarding some dumb kid down the block for Einsteins work.
Thing is, he doesn't know how to make it work! He hasn't even got a blueprint...he's got an idea, and a vague idea of how to make it work, but that's it.
It's exactly like me patenting an engine based manipulating gravitational effects; I know it's something which could/will work, sometime in the future, but I haven't a clue how to make it now...but I'll patent it in the meantime, even though I can't make a prototype, no matter how much money I have.
Isn't that just it? A 'provisonal patent'!?! I mean, wtf?
See, the thing here is that I can make a pretty good stab at things which will be cool in the future, and I can even make a decent guess as to how to implement them. BUT! if I where to try and do what this guy has done, I could get a patent on those grounds alon! He's patented something where he doesn't exactly know how to do it himself yet! And that, in every definition the patent office wants, is just plain wrong.
MS equation stinks. Not only that, but getting simple equations in is ok, but for anything with limits, recursive matrises and/or anything above a linear 4th degree polynomial, it gets nasty pretty fast...and it looks like shit too.
But that's kinda the whole point. You can present data in many, many forms. Sometimes, no, actually all the time, the format in which you present your data is critical to what data the attendees (or readers, whatever) take away from the briefing.
This is a good example of a case where the tools and the author have limited the way in which the data was represented, leading to an incomplete understanding/obfusciation of the problem.
As for the O-ring thing...that's a whole other barrel of fish, and not at all related to this (for those who didn't see the discovery channel documentery on it, apparently the guys at the o-ring manufacturin g plant first advised against flying in low temperatures, but got stared down into giving a go-ahead for launch by the NASA bigwigs who where caught up in the whole coldwar/PR hype. The docu gave two different sides of the story, but somehow what the guy at the o-ring plant said struck a chord of truth...I've seen similar things happen in engineering firms).
And nowadays, most psychologists look at Freud and think "wel,, some of his idea's whgere good, but most are crap. And even the ideas which are good don't have any empirical basis to them..." In other words, Freud was a bit of a fraud.
Not only that, but you get to use...*gasp*...a /mouse!/ on the pc too.
Couple that with user created content, higher resolutions and the overal better features when you upgrade your video card, and who nee^H^H^H wants an xbox?
I mean, we all know 7-of-9 was a Trekkie :)