I've been thinking about that for a while. Here are some other ideas:
Universe is expanding---the more we learn about our immediate area, leaves less and less processing power for the rest---so it `appears' to be speeding away (ie: you can say that stuff that's moving away is getting farther and farther, or that you're just getting less and less information from it).
Big bang is obviously the big reboot.
Beyond a certain level of detail, we can only talk about probabilities (ie: the simulator only cares about a certain level of detail---and fills in things with randomness beyond that).
Speed of light provides time for calculations; you look at the sky, see a star (completely randomly generated on the spot when you saw it). The simulator now has time go to back into the `past' and figure out what other data to provide about it.
I'm also guessing that at some point within the simulation, chaos and randomness mesh together, so that the simulator doesn't -have- to have an infinite memory; it doesn't have to be self-consistent. via chaos, a butterfly flapping its wings 10 years ago changes todays weather... but does it really?, or is today's weather determined by a bunch of random coin flips from the last few weeks?...just ideas.
light from the supernova would be interacting with the earth regardless of whether scientists were there....wouldn't that hypothesis need...an observation?
...It simply gets seen as a hassle imposed by IT because they're control freaks trying to make themselves look important to the rest of the organisation...
But, many times they -are- a bunch of control freaks trying to make themselves look important. Face it, IT and security aren't an end in themselves. They're a means. They're the support function. If that support function interferes with the mission (ie: to make money, etc.) then it's the support function that must be re-thought, not the mission.
Once there is any sort of `punishment' (ie: a fine, maybe) involved, folks just won't report things as lost or stolen. After all, why pay a fine when you can claim there was no data on the laptop when it accidentally got crushed by a trash compactor? If and when the data surfaces, there are always other vectors the data could've leaked through.
Also, how is losing a laptop with data different from having stupid security (or a stupid security bug) on a website or server?
Indeed. I think people really forget how -old- XP is (and what kind of computers were the norm when it came out).
They also forget that unless you play games (or do video editing, etc), even the crappiest computer can do -everything- they want to do (such as, check email, browse web, play DVDs, type up documents, etc.)
People forget how to make money in stock. Buy low and sell high. They tend to hold when it's high thinking they are going to be richer.. I keep sell orders in and smile when they hit my prices. I sold a bunch 3 weeks ago and sold some more last week when it peaked. If the price dips enough, I'll buy back some at lower prices. Often I can increase my holding by 20% in a month this way, or pocket 20% of my holdings and wind up rebuying the same amount of my original shares. I love it when the market moves up and down. That is how to make money.
If you're in it short term, you'd do better to gamble with options. Do volatility spreads.
I mean seriously, how the heck can you tell if a company is "low" or "high" within a 3 week period? (unless they release earnings that really uncover things---like they did with Citi).
Is $600 `high' for google? Is $800? How about $700? Or $400?
Tip: Everyone can make money in a bull market, and all the short term buy-low/sell-high strategies tend to stop working in the worst possible moment.
...Also, while one may `take' that taxable 4% a year and maintain the lump sum, that lump sum has just lost about 4% (if not more) to inflation. It's not a ``nest egg'' in a sense that after 20 or so years of that, it won't be worth much.
Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway....or just stop showing up completely. Maybe even take a vacation. Or an unpaid leave---to climb everest or something. Then phone them saying you're enjoying your life so much you're not coming back.
Re:I suppose the real question is....
on
Is SETI Worth It?
·
· Score: 1
I think the real problem is:
HALT(``Will we find aliens via SETI?'')
If we could somehow compute that one, we'd know if it's all worth it.
Oh, I can think of many (or too many) uses. Just watch iRobot (well, you can read the book too) for some ideas.
How about a robot servant (ie: iRobot style). A robot that does your laundry. You drop clothing where you take it off. The robot picks it up, takes it to the washer, dryer, irons it, folds it, puts it in closet, etc., with no interaction from you. Useful? Yes! Possible with current technology? Likely not. Same goes for making you dinner, buying groceries for said dinner, walking your dog, driving you to work (and picking you up afterwards)---never park a car again!
There are plenty of things people do every day that they'd rather not be doing. Something that many pay others to do, etc. Maybe I'd rather spend my day coding (which I enjoy) instead of doing all those other `chores' of life.
The problem now is that people are cheap---which makes progress in some industries sort of pointless. For example, it would cost countless millions (if not billions) to develop a robot that can reliably (no running over school children) drive a car in a city environment (think buses, cabs, etc.). Currently, it's much cheaper to employ a human to do that job (and with growing population, that's unlikely to change anytime soon).
I think the bulk of robotics progress hasn't even started---we're still at the `inventing the wheel' stage of an automotive industry.
What will happen to the economy and value of work once robotics really takes off would be interesting. Folks tried automating subway trains in NYC, which actually worked!, but the transit union killed that project. I'd imagine we'll see similar responses in other industries.
Proper email and file servers need quality hardware. No matrox IDE here. They also need backup's. That costs money. Lots of money. Money that is almost always impossible to get.
This comes up again and again, and I'm always amazed at this myth. RAID exists precisely because disks are unreliable. ie: redundant array of INEXPENSIVE disks?
And guess what, in a RAID setup, $300/TB disks from newegg will be just as reliable as the $2k/TB disks you buy from major corp-friendly vendors. I'd much rather have 3-4 copies of the data on these cheap disks than 1 copy on a ``very reliable/expensive'' disk. Same goes for backups.
Storage has gotten incredibly cheap in recent years. Google seems to be doing just fine with regular commodity hardware that they put together themselves! If it's good enough for google, how come most of corporate culture still buys super expensive solutions that costs millions of dollars?
just some cool suggestions, we recently got one LSI 8480E, and hooked up 32 1T drives to it. from what I understand, we can chain as many as we want (upto 255 drives?). our previous solution (which is actually still hooked upto the same server) involved two 3ware 12 port controllers, and 24 750gig drives.
price wise, it's not expensive [1T drives are cheap] (not something for home, but for corp, prices are certainly cheaper than what they were a few years ago).
...That said, many of these remote airports don't have electricity, let alone high speed internet access required to submit the passenger and cargo manifests in order to get the FAA and TSA clearance...
And that's why they have this 3 days thing... so you can drive to the nearest post office, and do such things via snail mail:-)
I wonder what they'll do concerning air mail... or air-force-one... or those army airplanes... 'cause what -if- someone [disgruntled US president? a postal employee going postal?] crashes -those- into a building???
I wonder if there's a way to tell which one is which (the expanding or contracting---as you describe) universe? I guess maybe depending on the direction of your motion, things may not be perfectly symmetric (ie: move to/from singularity, vs other directions), while in expanding universe (no singularity) it's all symmetric? Also, about half the galaxies would appear to be moving closer to us (since a singularity, if it's a point, would tend to stretch space way one; length vs width).
...they are allowed to break the lock. They can't do that with thoughts in your head.
I'd imagine that depends on the punishment (and whether they can get away with it or not)---they can certainly break your head, just as easily as they break locks.
And will work only Internet Explorer, let me guess. This is will be competition, how?
Indeed. One of the major points of google apps is that I can edit files from a Windows box at wr0k, and from a Linux box at home [or from anywhere, in fact] (not to mention have a reliable `backup' provided by google).
As much as I don't like MS, I think MS Word is a pretty good product (besides for the locked file format)---editing the files is pretty enjoyable; a bit better tuned than OpenOffice), and if it weren't for such arbitrary restrictions, I might've tried the web version. Oh, well...
Slashdot Mirror
I've been thinking about that for a while. Here are some other ideas:
...just ideas.
Universe is expanding---the more we learn about our immediate area, leaves less and less processing power for the rest---so it `appears' to be speeding away (ie: you can say that stuff that's moving away is getting farther and farther, or that you're just getting less and less information from it).
Big bang is obviously the big reboot.
Beyond a certain level of detail, we can only talk about probabilities (ie: the simulator only cares about a certain level of detail---and fills in things with randomness beyond that).
Speed of light provides time for calculations; you look at the sky, see a star (completely randomly generated on the spot when you saw it). The simulator now has time go to back into the `past' and figure out what other data to provide about it.
I'm also guessing that at some point within the simulation, chaos and randomness mesh together, so that the simulator doesn't -have- to have an infinite memory; it doesn't have to be self-consistent. via chaos, a butterfly flapping its wings 10 years ago changes todays weather... but does it really?, or is today's weather determined by a bunch of random coin flips from the last few weeks?
light from the supernova would be interacting with the earth regardless of whether scientists were there. ...wouldn't that hypothesis need...an observation?
I wonder how many units were made available.
Only 1. It was bought 5.5 hours after launch by Jeff to ensure amazon.com was still up.
They should all quit! AT&T is the worst company out there.
I think that's what the company is trying to accomplish.
...It simply gets seen as a hassle imposed by IT because they're control freaks trying to make themselves look important to the rest of the organisation...
But, many times they -are- a bunch of control freaks trying to make themselves look important. Face it, IT and security aren't an end in themselves. They're a means. They're the support function. If that support function interferes with the mission (ie: to make money, etc.) then it's the support function that must be re-thought, not the mission.
Once there is any sort of `punishment' (ie: a fine, maybe) involved, folks just won't report things as lost or stolen. After all, why pay a fine when you can claim there was no data on the laptop when it accidentally got crushed by a trash compactor? If and when the data surfaces, there are always other vectors the data could've leaked through.
Also, how is losing a laptop with data different from having stupid security (or a stupid security bug) on a website or server?
Ironically, the folks who pay the -most- for education are usually not the type to vote for free education.
A bit off topic... $160,000! woa! I knew prices were ridiculous! It's amazing how badly things have got!
Indeed. I think people really forget how -old- XP is (and what kind of computers were the norm when it came out).
They also forget that unless you play games (or do video editing, etc), even the crappiest computer can do -everything- they want to do (such as, check email, browse web, play DVDs, type up documents, etc.)
You can fit more of them on a die, making it cheaper. A die defect kills fewer CPUs.
Or to make chips more complicated (by using more gates in the same space)---do more with 1 clock cycle.
Or some combination of both.
Also, smaller usually means more energy efficient.
People forget how to make money in stock. Buy low and sell high. They tend to hold when it's high thinking they are going to be richer.. I keep sell orders in and smile when they hit my prices. I sold a bunch 3 weeks ago and sold some more last week when it peaked. If the price dips enough, I'll buy back some at lower prices. Often I can increase my holding by 20% in a month this way, or pocket 20% of my holdings and wind up rebuying the same amount of my original shares. I love it when the market moves up and down. That is how to make money.
If you're in it short term, you'd do better to gamble with options. Do volatility spreads.
I mean seriously, how the heck can you tell if a company is "low" or "high" within a 3 week period? (unless they release earnings that really uncover things---like they did with Citi).
Is $600 `high' for google? Is $800? How about $700? Or $400?
Tip: Everyone can make money in a bull market, and all the short term buy-low/sell-high strategies tend to stop working in the worst possible moment.
...Also, while one may `take' that taxable 4% a year and maintain the lump sum, that lump sum has just lost about 4% (if not more) to inflation. It's not a ``nest egg'' in a sense that after 20 or so years of that, it won't be worth much.
Or just send them an email over the weekend. It might sound harsh but if they truly respond this poorly to resignations, you have nothing to lose anyway. ...or just stop showing up completely. Maybe even take a vacation. Or an unpaid leave---to climb everest or something. Then phone them saying you're enjoying your life so much you're not coming back.
I think the real problem is:
HALT(``Will we find aliens via SETI?'')
If we could somehow compute that one, we'd know if it's all worth it.
Oh, I can think of many (or too many) uses. Just watch iRobot (well, you can read the book too) for some ideas.
How about a robot servant (ie: iRobot style). A robot that does your laundry. You drop clothing where you take it off. The robot picks it up, takes it to the washer, dryer, irons it, folds it, puts it in closet, etc., with no interaction from you. Useful? Yes! Possible with current technology? Likely not. Same goes for making you dinner, buying groceries for said dinner, walking your dog, driving you to work (and picking you up afterwards)---never park a car again!
There are plenty of things people do every day that they'd rather not be doing. Something that many pay others to do, etc. Maybe I'd rather spend my day coding (which I enjoy) instead of doing all those other `chores' of life.
The problem now is that people are cheap---which makes progress in some industries sort of pointless. For example, it would cost countless millions (if not billions) to develop a robot that can reliably (no running over school children) drive a car in a city environment (think buses, cabs, etc.). Currently, it's much cheaper to employ a human to do that job (and with growing population, that's unlikely to change anytime soon).
I think the bulk of robotics progress hasn't even started---we're still at the `inventing the wheel' stage of an automotive industry.
What will happen to the economy and value of work once robotics really takes off would be interesting. Folks tried automating subway trains in NYC, which actually worked!, but the transit union killed that project. I'd imagine we'll see similar responses in other industries.
Indeed. Wait till they go after Gigabit Ethernet... uh, oh, it's only 1000000000 bits, not 2^30 bits!
Proper email and file servers need quality hardware. No matrox IDE here. They also need backup's. That costs money. Lots of money. Money that is almost always impossible to get.
This comes up again and again, and I'm always amazed at this myth. RAID exists precisely because disks are unreliable. ie: redundant array of INEXPENSIVE disks?
And guess what, in a RAID setup, $300/TB disks from newegg will be just as reliable as the $2k/TB disks you buy from major corp-friendly vendors. I'd much rather have 3-4 copies of the data on these cheap disks than 1 copy on a ``very reliable/expensive'' disk. Same goes for backups.
Storage has gotten incredibly cheap in recent years. Google seems to be doing just fine with regular commodity hardware that they put together themselves! If it's good enough for google, how come most of corporate culture still buys super expensive solutions that costs millions of dollars?
``redundant RAID array''
Brought to you by the redundancy department of redundancy.
...Hmm... No sane person would publish anti-Kremlin articles, so they're obviously psychotic, and therefore, need to be treated :-/
Indeed. One can view playing the lottery as `predicting'. As with any other `predicting', there's a probability of being wrong...
just some cool suggestions, we recently got one LSI 8480E, and hooked up 32 1T drives to it. from what I understand, we can chain as many as we want (upto 255 drives?). our previous solution (which is actually still hooked upto the same server) involved two 3ware 12 port controllers, and 24 750gig drives.
price wise, it's not expensive [1T drives are cheap] (not something for home, but for corp, prices are certainly cheaper than what they were a few years ago).
...That said, many of these remote airports don't have electricity, let alone high speed internet access required to submit the passenger and cargo manifests in order to get the FAA and TSA clearance...
:-)
And that's why they have this 3 days thing... so you can drive to the nearest post office, and do such things via snail mail
I wonder what they'll do concerning air mail... or air-force-one... or those army airplanes... 'cause what -if- someone [disgruntled US president? a postal employee going postal?] crashes -those- into a building???
I wonder if there's a way to tell which one is which (the expanding or contracting---as you describe) universe? I guess maybe depending on the direction of your motion, things may not be perfectly symmetric (ie: move to/from singularity, vs other directions), while in expanding universe (no singularity) it's all symmetric? Also, about half the galaxies would appear to be moving closer to us (since a singularity, if it's a point, would tend to stretch space way one; length vs width).
Still an interesting concept.
...they are allowed to break the lock. They can't do that with thoughts in your head.
I'd imagine that depends on the punishment (and whether they can get away with it or not)---they can certainly break your head, just as easily as they break locks.
And will work only Internet Explorer, let me guess. This is will be competition, how?
Indeed. One of the major points of google apps is that I can edit files from a Windows box at wr0k, and from a Linux box at home [or from anywhere, in fact] (not to mention have a reliable `backup' provided by google).
As much as I don't like MS, I think MS Word is a pretty good product (besides for the locked file format)---editing the files is pretty enjoyable; a bit better tuned than OpenOffice), and if it weren't for such arbitrary restrictions, I might've tried the web version. Oh, well...