So 95%, 98.6%, or 99.8% - all are correct answers in the correct context.
...and all irrelevant anyways, as to the issue of how different the phenotypes of chimps and humans are. Heck, the human brain is 70% water, does that mean the head is "pretty much" like a 1/3 empty coffee pot? With changes to far less than 0.2% of his DNA, Einstein could have gone from genius to a miscarriage that his mother never even noticed. It's great for medical experimentation that chimps are so similar to people, but gene sequencing doesn't suddenly make us any more or less similar than we were before.
Why don't you just read the article? There's an insulator between two layers of metal, one must be hot and the other cold (i.e. less hot). So, yes, there is a temp gradient involved.
I'm cheap too and just got a PS2 this past spring, but you wouldn't see me buying an XBox at this point. My impression is the PS2 has a lot more momentum than the XBox, and that the PS2 will continue to have new games released whereas the XBox will have few, if any. I suppose you could just buy both, but for me it's not worth the clutter.
That is a specious argument. The question is, would the same money have yielded even better results spent elsewhere? Perhaps on projects like the Darpa desert race grand challenge, or even on more socialstic things like college scholarships or pre-K programs?
Don't get me wrong, I think spending money on space, for space, is justifiable. But not because, hey, there's a 0.01% chance that it will result in an improved vaccum cleaner or a tasty breakfast beverage.
Agreed. The fact is evolution can explain and predict anything and everything, whether or not it is true (e.g. humans have wings so they can escape predators). The fact that a just-so story comes from (insert famous astrophysicist) means nothing in itself.
In particular, is there some reason to think that the *legal* definition of "electronic mail" perfectly coincides with the common usage of "email"? I would not assume so. The fact that SMS and IM are not called "email" is simply a marketing decision. Let's say google optimized gmail so that one gmail user sending an email to another gmail user never uses SMTP. Is it still email? I would say, "sure." If the law made reference to SMTP, POP, etc, then there would clearly be a distinction... and it would have been silly to write the law that way.
Software will always expand to fill all available CPU Cycles.
Demand for faster PCs has been falling since the late 90s. It was at that time that the average price of a new computer started falling from its historical (approx 15 year) average of $2500-$3000 down to around $1000 today, and still falling. You can still buy a $3000 PC today if you want to, but very few people do. Why did the average consumer start buying lower-end gear? Because it's good enough. Yet look at the latest gaming consoles, the latest generation is not much cheaper (even adjusted for inflation) than the last two or three generations, because a PS2 does not "solve" the problem of gaming in the way that a 2.4 GHz PC "solves" web surfing and Word.
The problem of various hardware formats is shrinking, not growing. New technologies start with a flourish of innovation and then settle down. Most of those media you mention were never created in numbers of more than a few million. Compare that to the CD, which is 25 years old and going strong, with millions of new CD drives (now also capable of DVD storage) sold every year. And the total number of media (discs) in the billions.
For purposes of this discussion, I would also count the United States as part of England (i.e. part of the English tradition). There has never been such a break in tradition that we abandoned or willfully destroyed our memory of the past, which is really the issue here. It is one thing to preserve information assuming the complicity of future generations, and quite another to preserve it irrespective (or in spite) of them.
in either case I seldom want to upgrade both at the same time.
What if the new architecture's "graphics" pipelines aren't dedicated exclusively to graphics and can be used to speed up other tasks? Or if the total power consumption of the integrated component is 50% of separate components? Or if a non-upgradeable "PC on a chip" with no expansion bus offers great performance at 50% the cost of a traditional PC?
So far I've heard dozens of discussion about selling PS3's on ebay, and none about actually playing games on them. That can't be a good thing, not even for the "long-term" (= 2-4 weeks:) sales prospects for PS3's on ebay.
In a sense I think you've hit the nail on the head. Forget all this nonsense about steering kids into different fields by offering high school courses or whatever. People aren't stupid, they go into the careers that will give them the most payoff for the least investment. Currently in the US that's business, law, real estate, etc. Maybe these valuations are correct, and soft skills are really all that matters, and we should all be PHB's managing overseas contracts. But at least let the market decide instead of using trade and immigration policy to force salaries to fit preconceived notions about who should make the most money.
Why should anyone be able to ruin your finances by just knowing some numbers?
Why should someone be able to borrow in your name by just quoting some number?
Probably because money is just some numbers? Seriously. Money is just information, you can't have financial security without information security.
you need the electricity and the networking infrestructure to get on the internet - something quite difficult in places these laptops are intended to go.
You don't need networking infrastructure for them to be useful. 100 megabytes of text is a library!
It reminds me of my old "3rd world" school lessons.
So maybe the 3rd world isn't the right place for $100 laptops? It's simply not fair to entirely dismiss an idea just because you can think of some area where it doesn't apply, like places where you can feed a village for a year for $100. Rather, think of places with some schooling, but a lack of books. I would imagine tens of millions of people around the world live in that economic band.
I was about to say what you just said in my above post, but I backed off. In two semesters of physics, I got a good dose of Newtonian physics, but not enough depth in solid body dynamics, no fluid dynamics, and not enough optics. I realize most games currently don't have a lot of physics behind them anyways, but I hope that will change so the games can be more dynamic.
I'm a little surprised the guy three messages above doesn't place more value on master's degrees instead of bachelors. I just didn't find there was enough time during a bachelors for all the topics you'd want - systems, software engineering, theory of computation, linear algebra, graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, networking... the more I think about it, games really incorporate a lot of different aspects.
Is this story really about google pursuing anything, or is google's name on it just because the guy gave a talk there? I would suspect the latter (though I haven't watched it yet as Linux fails to initialize my sound card on about 1 of 5 bootups... arghhh!)
I certainly wouldn't buy it either, but $6K isn't outrageous compared to what people spend on some other hobbies. For instance $6K won't get you very far in the world of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that sounds precisely like the patent.
How about the b-tree? Note the doubly-linked leaf nodes in addition to tree structure.
600 celcius is awfully hot. I wonder what it could accomplish on the exhaust of my car/motorcycle? All that heat, for the most part wasted.
Why don't you just read the article? There's an insulator between two layers of metal, one must be hot and the other cold (i.e. less hot). So, yes, there is a temp gradient involved.
I'm cheap too and just got a PS2 this past spring, but you wouldn't see me buying an XBox at this point. My impression is the PS2 has a lot more momentum than the XBox, and that the PS2 will continue to have new games released whereas the XBox will have few, if any. I suppose you could just buy both, but for me it's not worth the clutter.
Don't get me wrong, I think spending money on space, for space, is justifiable. But not because, hey, there's a 0.01% chance that it will result in an improved vaccum cleaner or a tasty breakfast beverage.
Agreed. The fact is evolution can explain and predict anything and everything, whether or not it is true (e.g. humans have wings so they can escape predators). The fact that a just-so story comes from (insert famous astrophysicist) means nothing in itself.
In particular, is there some reason to think that the *legal* definition of "electronic mail" perfectly coincides with the common usage of "email"? I would not assume so. The fact that SMS and IM are not called "email" is simply a marketing decision. Let's say google optimized gmail so that one gmail user sending an email to another gmail user never uses SMTP. Is it still email? I would say, "sure." If the law made reference to SMTP, POP, etc, then there would clearly be a distinction... and it would have been silly to write the law that way.
So the Earth is not a planet?
The problem of various hardware formats is shrinking, not growing. New technologies start with a flourish of innovation and then settle down. Most of those media you mention were never created in numbers of more than a few million. Compare that to the CD, which is 25 years old and going strong, with millions of new CD drives (now also capable of DVD storage) sold every year. And the total number of media (discs) in the billions.
For purposes of this discussion, I would also count the United States as part of England (i.e. part of the English tradition). There has never been such a break in tradition that we abandoned or willfully destroyed our memory of the past, which is really the issue here. It is one thing to preserve information assuming the complicity of future generations, and quite another to preserve it irrespective (or in spite) of them.
So far I've heard dozens of discussion about selling PS3's on ebay, and none about actually playing games on them. That can't be a good thing, not even for the "long-term" (= 2-4 weeks :) sales prospects for PS3's on ebay.
In a sense I think you've hit the nail on the head. Forget all this nonsense about steering kids into different fields by offering high school courses or whatever. People aren't stupid, they go into the careers that will give them the most payoff for the least investment. Currently in the US that's business, law, real estate, etc. Maybe these valuations are correct, and soft skills are really all that matters, and we should all be PHB's managing overseas contracts. But at least let the market decide instead of using trade and immigration policy to force salaries to fit preconceived notions about who should make the most money.
See page 28 for a 1996 review.
I'm a little surprised the guy three messages above doesn't place more value on master's degrees instead of bachelors. I just didn't find there was enough time during a bachelors for all the topics you'd want - systems, software engineering, theory of computation, linear algebra, graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, networking... the more I think about it, games really incorporate a lot of different aspects.
So 1) what's the fuel, 2) what's the waste, 3) what's the risk of a meltdown, and 4) is any plutonium (or other weapons-grade material) produced?
Is this story really about google pursuing anything, or is google's name on it just because the guy gave a talk there? I would suspect the latter (though I haven't watched it yet as Linux fails to initialize my sound card on about 1 of 5 bootups... arghhh!)
I certainly wouldn't buy it either, but $6K isn't outrageous compared to what people spend on some other hobbies. For instance $6K won't get you very far in the world of Harley-Davidson motorcycles.
What parts would you use that beat the QX6800 processor and two Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX's?