The real scientific mission for the space station was to see whether people could survive in space for extended periods of time. And it has succeeded in the mission, despite the logistics problems.
I doubt my parents even know what a "portable electronic device" is. I don't know anyone in my family that would have 1000 electronic tunes on a "portable device" despite the fact that half of them are music teachers or musicians... nor do I have any friends who have such a lot of music on a portable device (i.e. not their desktop).
I think that the fundamental reason that construction industry generally succeeds in producing bridges that don't fall down is the existence of building and planning regulations that require product to be of a good standard before they are sold. For example, in the UK if a bridge falls down and someone's killed it's corporate manslaughter and the MD is going to jail.
Perhaps what we need is more regulation for the software industry;-) For example instead of customers paying for software support maybe it should be a legal requirement that VENDORS pay software support and insure via a third party to guarantee support even if they go bust.
Isn't it a felony to own the source code of malware?
I doubt it(IANAL). It's only a felony if you own the source code of malware with the intention of using it to damage or access an unauthorized computer. Otherwise people who write antivirus products would spend their entire life in jail.
Despite what the parent post says rebates are not unknown in the UK, although not anywhere as common in the retail sector as in the USA (the only examples I've seen for rebates are in advertising cars). They are generally used in customer services industries (i.e. finance). For example they are used in advertising mortgages, where the idea of "cash back" is becoming more common. For example you pay your $400 a month, but at the end of five years they give you 1 % of the value of the mortgage back or some fixed amount. It's generally a rip-off, because the APR (Annual Payment Rate) is the same or more than other mortgages.
The article doesn't go into enough details, but I would think that even in the worst Martian winter the solar panels would generate *some* power, with battery backup for the worst storms.
You're right to say that if you were to keep in continuous radio contact it would use too much power, but waiting for the spring and then getting into radio contact shouldn't use that much power. After all, the rovers will have been in hibernation for many months on the journey to mars.
"Fortunately most mainline religions acknowledge this, it's just the loudmouth conservative wackos who perpetuate the stereotype that a Christian believes the world is four thousand years old."
Let's look at your axioms. If God exists, and if he/she created the universe, then he or she is entirely capable of (for example) placing evidence of the big bang and dinosaurs on the earth as a test of faith. If God exists, the physical evidence is utterly irrelevant since god created the evidence.
"Religion is about suppressing your own ego and having compassion for those around you"
Nope. Religion is not in itself about compassion or any other emotion. There are more religions than Christianity or Buddhism. A Religion is a system of belief that requires members to behave within certain constraints and moral principles. What these beliefs and constraints are depend on religion. Indeed, the belief in God is not a requirement for all religions.
Actually, since none of the governments that currently possess nuclear ICBM's make 50% of their income from them it's really a question of when the first professional nuclear power comes on line. And the answer is probably quite soon:
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/media/nukes_details.p hp?site_id=11&news_id=1173
Actually, I would suggest a major problem with most reviews is that they review from the bases of a technology focused user. The truth is that this expert user is unlikely to use a distribution review since they will already have very fixed ideas of which distribution to use.
Instead, reviewers should compare distributions with a particular market segment in mind. For example, which linux distro provides the best support for doctors? For teachers? For estate agents? For gamers?
By dsicovering what is important for particular market segments we may get reviews that have some use for the 95% of people who don't work as a software programmer or network administrator / helpdesk drone. And of course, exactly what is important depends on the need of the segment you are reviewing for.
As someone from the UK I'd say that if someone in NZ or anywhere else wants to build a stonehenge replica (or, in this case, a modern interpretation) then good luck to them.
Why don't you go the ebay way and provide an API into your web site, then change the format slightly every month so breaking the web crawlers? After all, you may as well make money out of the data miners.
As a question, how did they prove that the individual who used Laford's ID number was Laford? It wouldn't be the first time that someones computer was hijacked using a trojan, and infor such as passwords obtained. The IP and phone calls wouldn't be proof in that case.
Except that someone in the world knows the skills you described, and they are recorded in books and on the internet. If it ever becomes necessary to regain the skills you described, it will be possible to do so. The knowlege is still available to the species, even if it is not known by a large percentage of the population. So the knowledge that humanity has may increase exponentially even if the average knowledge that a human has remains nearly static.
In a sense what the axiom is saying is that if there is no possible way to tell two things apart, they are the same thing. Are you going to disagree with this?
Not within the normal axiom set, no. But that doesn't necessarily stop someone creating a strange by (reasonably) consistent axiom set where A!=B. After all, for many years we worked on the basses that the theory of the excluded middle was "natural" and unarguable until fuzzy logic came along.
"The problem comes when the resulting proof is too involved to be verified by a human, and so the computer's work has to be trusted."
Actually, this is a corollary of an already existing problem. Given the number of mathematical journals each churning out dozens or hundreds of "proofs" every year that are often verified by relatively few experts it is impossible for any mathematician to verify even one percent of existing proofs. This is the reason we rely on peer review (despite the fact that people, including experts, make mistakes and overlook error). The solution may be to find multiple proofs using different software and methods, with spot reviews for random computer generated proofs. The real question is how useful a proof that can't be understood by humans is anyway, since proof (despite what some mathematicians might say) is largely a communications technique to show people (a) the reasoning behind a statement and (b) that the statement seems valid within the current set of axioms and known theorems.
Hm. I always thought that Godels theory actually goes further than "There is no proof for this statement.".
We know that given any collection of nontrivial axioms there will always be a statement that is consistent with all axioms and valid proofs that cannot be prooved or disprooved within that set of axioms. In other words, no matter how many axioms we select no nontrivial mathematical system with a finite number of axioms is complete. Secondly, as you said there are mathematical constructs that can not be proved or disproved, and so it is impossible to show that all existing proofs are consistent with the chosen axioms.
"Now everyone can a comfortable home, and it's absolutely wonderful if they thought my design was worth copying."
Except you. You can't afford a comfortable home because you are busy starving since the huge amount of money and time you spent designing better homes is now worth $0. You'll end up working flipping burgers because you still need to feed your kids.
Slashdot Mirror
Far more people have died in air crashes in the last 10 years than have died in worldwide extinction events in the last 1000?
The real scientific mission for the space station was to see whether people could survive in space for extended periods of time. And it has succeeded in the mission, despite the logistics problems.
I doubt my parents even know what a "portable electronic device" is. I don't know anyone in my family that would have 1000 electronic tunes on a "portable device" despite the fact that half of them are music teachers or musicians... nor do I have any friends who have such a lot of music on a portable device (i.e. not their desktop).
"Since this accounting change doesn't seem like it should alter the overall income of the company in a span of more than a year..."
Yeah, except the bloodsucking lawyers are suing Red Hat, so it'll have a huge legal bill to pay (i.e. the shareholders will pay).
You would have thought that someone would have printed it out;)
I think that the fundamental reason that construction industry generally succeeds in producing bridges that don't fall down is the existence of building and planning regulations that require product to be of a good standard before they are sold. For example, in the UK if a bridge falls down and someone's killed it's corporate manslaughter and the MD is going to jail. Perhaps what we need is more regulation for the software industry ;-) For example instead of customers paying for software support maybe it should be a legal requirement that VENDORS pay software support and insure via a third party to guarantee support even if they go bust.
Why not send him the offer by email, rather than write it on /. ? He might actually see it that way.
Isn't it a felony to own the source code of malware?
I doubt it(IANAL). It's only a felony if you own the source code of malware with the intention of using it to damage or access an unauthorized computer. Otherwise people who write antivirus products would spend their entire life in jail.
Despite what the parent post says rebates are not unknown in the UK, although not anywhere as common in the retail sector as in the USA (the only examples I've seen for rebates are in advertising cars). They are generally used in customer services industries (i.e. finance). For example they are used in advertising mortgages, where the idea of "cash back" is becoming more common. For example you pay your $400 a month, but at the end of five years they give you 1 % of the value of the mortgage back or some fixed amount. It's generally a rip-off, because the APR (Annual Payment Rate) is the same or more than other mortgages.
The article doesn't go into enough details, but I would think that even in the worst Martian winter the solar panels would generate *some* power, with battery backup for the worst storms.
You're right to say that if you were to keep in continuous radio contact it would use too much power, but waiting for the spring and then getting into radio contact shouldn't use that much power. After all, the rovers will have been in hibernation for many months on the journey to mars.
The official Tory line this week is that Europe Stinks And We Don't Want No Stinkin' European Constitution.
"Fortunately most mainline religions acknowledge this, it's just the loudmouth conservative wackos who perpetuate the stereotype that a Christian believes the world is four thousand years old."
Let's look at your axioms. If God exists, and if he/she created the universe, then he or she is entirely capable of (for example) placing evidence of the big bang and dinosaurs on the earth as a test of faith. If God exists, the physical evidence is utterly irrelevant since god created the evidence.
"Religion is about suppressing your own ego and having compassion for those around you"
Nope. Religion is not in itself about compassion or any other emotion. There are more religions than Christianity or Buddhism. A Religion is a system of belief that requires members to behave within certain constraints and moral principles. What these beliefs and constraints are depend on religion. Indeed, the belief in God is not a requirement for all religions.
Actually, since none of the governments that currently possess nuclear ICBM's make 50% of their income from them it's really a question of when the first professional nuclear power comes on line. And the answer is probably quite soon: http://www.greenpeace.org.au/media/nukes_details.p hp?site_id=11&news_id=1173
Actually, I would suggest a major problem with most reviews is that they review from the bases of a technology focused user. The truth is that this expert user is unlikely to use a distribution review since they will already have very fixed ideas of which distribution to use.
Instead, reviewers should compare distributions with a particular market segment in mind. For example, which linux distro provides the best support for doctors? For teachers? For estate agents? For gamers?
By dsicovering what is important for particular market segments we may get reviews that have some use for the 95% of people who don't work as a software programmer or network administrator / helpdesk drone. And of course, exactly what is important depends on the need of the segment you are reviewing for.
As someone from the UK I'd say that if someone in NZ or anywhere else wants to build a stonehenge replica (or, in this case, a modern interpretation) then good luck to them.
Why don't you go the ebay way and provide an API into your web site, then change the format slightly every month so breaking the web crawlers? After all, you may as well make money out of the data miners.
As a question, how did they prove that the individual who used Laford's ID number was Laford? It wouldn't be the first time that someones computer was hijacked using a trojan, and infor such as passwords obtained. The IP and phone calls wouldn't be proof in that case.
Except that someone in the world knows the skills you described, and they are recorded in books and on the internet. If it ever becomes necessary to regain the skills you described, it will be possible to do so. The knowlege is still available to the species, even if it is not known by a large percentage of the population. So the knowledge that humanity has may increase exponentially even if the average knowledge that a human has remains nearly static.
In a sense what the axiom is saying is that if there is no possible way to tell two things apart, they are the same thing. Are you going to disagree with this?
Not within the normal axiom set, no. But that doesn't necessarily stop someone creating a strange by (reasonably) consistent axiom set where A!=B. After all, for many years we worked on the basses that the theory of the excluded middle was "natural" and unarguable until fuzzy logic came along.
"The problem comes when the resulting proof is too involved to be verified by a human, and so the computer's work has to be trusted."
Actually, this is a corollary of an already existing problem. Given the number of mathematical journals each churning out dozens or hundreds of "proofs" every year that are often verified by relatively few experts it is impossible for any mathematician to verify even one percent of existing proofs. This is the reason we rely on peer review (despite the fact that people, including experts, make mistakes and overlook error). The solution may be to find multiple proofs using different software and methods, with spot reviews for random computer generated proofs. The real question is how useful a proof that can't be understood by humans is anyway, since proof (despite what some mathematicians might say) is largely a communications technique to show people (a) the reasoning behind a statement and (b) that the statement seems valid within the current set of axioms and known theorems.
Hm. I always thought that Godels theory actually goes further than "There is no proof for this statement.".
We know that given any collection of nontrivial axioms there will always be a statement that is consistent with all axioms and valid proofs that cannot be prooved or disprooved within that set of axioms. In other words, no matter how many axioms we select no nontrivial mathematical system with a finite number of axioms is complete. Secondly, as you said there are mathematical constructs that can not be proved or disproved, and so it is impossible to show that all existing proofs are consistent with the chosen axioms.
"Now everyone can a comfortable home, and it's absolutely wonderful if they thought my design was worth copying."
Except you. You can't afford a comfortable home because you are busy starving since the huge amount of money and time you spent designing better homes is now worth $0. You'll end up working flipping burgers because you still need to feed your kids.
... I created DesTozzer last year. I'll have to blow up the "Good Guys" for infringing my ViralWarz.
Because they want you to think it's an april fools joke.
Maybe the solution should have been not to launch radioactive stuff into orbit in the first place? Practical AND cost-effective;)