No, you've mixed it up. The bistro was in the bistromatics drive. The infinite improbability generator is built by entering its (finite) improbability into a finite improbability generator, which again you get by hooking the logic circuits of a Bamborweenie 57 sub-meson brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian motion generator (say a nice hot cup of tea).
Well, with this propulsion machine, the tube moves, so "no moving parts" is clearly wrong. The new thing about his machine is that nothing moves, not even the drive itself!
Actually his real goal is to make a drive going faster than light. Ok, you ask, there isn't any obvious relation of this "invention" to going FTL, is there?
Well, there is: As everyone knows, nothing can be faster than light, with the exception of bad news. So if you want to go faster than light, you'll need a lot of bad news. So how do you get that bad news?
Now, his strategy is as follows: He "invents" some device which contradics the laws of physics. Now what will happen? Lots of people will tell him: "I have bad news for you: Your invention will not work." Now all he has to do is to collect all that bad news until he has enough of it for his FTL drive.
Momentum is only conservered in perfectly elastic collisions
Wrong. Momentum is conserved even in inelastic collisions. It's kinetic energy which isn't conserved in inelastic colissions (total energy is conserved, of course; the "lost" energy goes into internal degrees of freedom, usually in the form of heat).
Yes, that's why there are so many exploits. They mainly use buffer overflows in the incoming money interface. That is, put enough money to the correct politicians, and you'll control the government.
Well, I've tried to encrypt/decrypt data as follows:
Encryption: Store each bit in a float, and divide by three. Decryption: Multiply the received float by three, of course.
I've found that my ones came out slightly different from one, so there's obviously some loss even in this very simple (and admittedly not very secure) encryption algorithm. So what may be the losses in more advanced algorithms?:-)
The information on Scholarpedia is not free in the GNU sense. Since this sort of free content was from the beginning the main goal of Wikipedia (and of Nupedia before), and I guess is also a goal of the new Citizendium, Scholarpedia, as interesting as it is, cannot be a replacement. Note that freedom in the GNU sense is orthogonal to the "Wiki freedom" of anyone being able to edit in-place. Free Software projects are usually handled in a very "unwiki" way. OTOH, "true" Wikis can have a very restrictive license.
This is pure nonsense, because our brain doesn't work in pixels.
Where in my whole post did I speak about the brain? Your brain usually doesn't say "pixel" even when you look at a screen with pixels large enough to see the difference. Just like your brain doesn't say "low frame rate", but "flicker".
And your quote from Wikipedia doesn't change anything from what I said: Your retina determines the resolution you get. The fact that this resolution is not constant throughout the visual field doesn't change that basic fact. Nor does the fact that you unknowingly move your eyes around in order to get a larger area in high resolution.
You simply don't get more information through your eyes than your retina gives you. The fact that your brain manipulates this information by filtering, adding from memory, and even modifying due to expectations, does in no way alter that fact any more than it does alter the fact that your TV has a limited resolution (despite the fact that your brain tells you there are people or things which move on the screen of your TV, instead of a rectangular array of colored dots).
In other words, you have no idea what you're talking about.
No, you are the one who has no idea what I'm talking about.
once TV is based on more internet-like digital technologies this will hopefully happen.
And then we will have movies starting with the message "This movie will be enjoyed most on an 1024x768 TV." And if your TV has a higher resolution, the movie will be shown in a small rectangle in the middle.
At least that would be the analog to many of today's web pages.
I'm sure the MPAA is already working up something to restrict this. After all, how would you think you'd have a right to get all those experiences for free?:-)
BTW, it's not true that you get it with unlimited resolution. There are several limits to the resolution you get. First is the wavelength of light. Red light has a wavelength of about 800 nm, so you can't see any more than that in red. Violet light has about 400 nm, so you have twice the resolution there, but it's still limited.
The second limit is in your eyes. You simply don't get more "pixels" than your retina provides. So even the light wavelength limit is actually purely theoretical. Note that you cannot offset this by going arbitrary close, because below some minimal distance your eyes won't focus any more.
Well, then the EU politicians should be told how many jobs will be created by completely switching to Linux. After all, this will be much more work (all Windows specific stuff will have to be rewritten for Linux), therefore it will create many more jobs. So it's obvious which way to go, isn't it?:-)
Well, there may be a middle ground between full disclosure and no disclosure. In certain situations you might be able to just disclose the danger and how to avoid it, without actually disclosing enough details for black hats to exploit it (although it of course gives them a hint where to search).
For example, "If you don't absolutely need it, switch off functionality X in product Y. I've found a serious vulnerabily in Y which is only effective if the option for X is set. An attacker might take control over your computer."
This would explain what the users need to know (activating X in Y currently is dangerous), without providing information which wouldn't help them (because they can't fix X anyway), but would help the black hats.
A few tens of KBs of memory? The ZX81 came with one KB of memory by default! But of course the BASIC implementation was in ROM (which IIRC was 8KB), and therefore did not eat any RAM at all (the BASIC programs you typed in did, of course).
And yes, of course the above is not what Programs looked like when you listed them. It is what you actually typed. Ok, not exactly, because you probably would not have typed the whole line 16 again, but just edited it. (And of course you'd not type English sentences, but BASIC commands:-))
Slashdot Mirror
No, you've mixed it up. The bistro was in the bistromatics drive. The infinite improbability generator is built by entering its (finite) improbability into a finite improbability generator, which again you get by hooking the logic circuits of a Bamborweenie 57 sub-meson brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian motion generator (say a nice hot cup of tea).
Well, with this propulsion machine, the tube moves, so "no moving parts" is clearly wrong. The new thing about his machine is that nothing moves, not even the drive itself!
Actually his real goal is to make a drive going faster than light. Ok, you ask, there isn't any obvious relation of this "invention" to going FTL, is there?
Well, there is: As everyone knows, nothing can be faster than light, with the exception of bad news. So if you want to go faster than light, you'll need a lot of bad news. So how do you get that bad news?
Now, his strategy is as follows: He "invents" some device which contradics the laws of physics. Now what will happen? Lots of people will tell him: "I have bad news for you: Your invention will not work." Now all he has to do is to collect all that bad news until he has enough of it for his FTL drive.
Wrong. Momentum is conserved even in inelastic collisions. It's kinetic energy which isn't conserved in inelastic colissions (total energy is conserved, of course; the "lost" energy goes into internal degrees of freedom, usually in the form of heat).
Only if the soup was warm at some time in the past.
Yes, that's why there are so many exploits. They mainly use buffer overflows in the incoming money interface. That is, put enough money to the correct politicians, and you'll control the government.
Just imagine the business opportunities if there's no natural breathable air!
G=7, T=20. Therefore SAGAN is 13 letters away from SATAN.
Apparently you know absolutely nothing about humour.
Fortunately the people who have created real-world humour schemes are far far smarter than you and have worked out the 'miracle' of lossless humour.
Or, to make it short: Woooosh!
Woooosh!
Well, I've tried to encrypt/decrypt data as follows:
:-)
Encryption: Store each bit in a float, and divide by three.
Decryption: Multiply the received float by three, of course.
I've found that my ones came out slightly different from one, so there's obviously some loss even in this very simple (and admittedly not very secure) encryption algorithm. So what may be the losses in more advanced algorithms?
I'm quite sure you'll find both values in the original scientific publication.
Newer research shows Einstein was right: God doesn't play dice. He plays Roulette.
There are already plans to make "approved versions" in Wikipedia, to be tested first on German Wikipedia. If you can read German, you can get more information at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Stabile_Ve
Well, it's the same old scheme as it has been all time everywhere: "It's good when people have free choice, as long as they choose the way I want."
BTW, Wikipedia is not GPL, but GFDL.
The information on Scholarpedia is not free in the GNU sense. Since this sort of free content was from the beginning the main goal of Wikipedia (and of Nupedia before), and I guess is also a goal of the new Citizendium, Scholarpedia, as interesting as it is, cannot be a replacement.
Note that freedom in the GNU sense is orthogonal to the "Wiki freedom" of anyone being able to edit in-place. Free Software projects are usually handled in a very "unwiki" way. OTOH, "true" Wikis can have a very restrictive license.
Where in my whole post did I speak about the brain?
Your brain usually doesn't say "pixel" even when you look at a screen with pixels large enough to see the difference. Just like your brain doesn't say "low frame rate", but "flicker".
And your quote from Wikipedia doesn't change anything from what I said: Your retina determines the resolution you get. The fact that this resolution is not constant throughout the visual field doesn't change that basic fact. Nor does the fact that you unknowingly move your eyes around in order to get a larger area in high resolution.
You simply don't get more information through your eyes than your retina gives you. The fact that your brain manipulates this information by filtering, adding from memory, and even modifying due to expectations, does in no way alter that fact any more than it does alter the fact that your TV has a limited resolution (despite the fact that your brain tells you there are people or things which move on the screen of your TV, instead of a rectangular array of colored dots).
No, you are the one who has no idea what I'm talking about.
And then we will have movies starting with the message "This movie will be enjoyed most on an 1024x768 TV." And if your TV has a higher resolution, the movie will be shown in a small rectangle in the middle.
At least that would be the analog to many of today's web pages.
I'm sure the MPAA is already working up something to restrict this. After all, how would you think you'd have a right to get all those experiences for free? :-)
BTW, it's not true that you get it with unlimited resolution. There are several limits to the resolution you get. First is the wavelength of light. Red light has a wavelength of about 800 nm, so you can't see any more than that in red. Violet light has about 400 nm, so you have twice the resolution there, but it's still limited.
The second limit is in your eyes. You simply don't get more "pixels" than your retina provides. So even the light wavelength limit is actually purely theoretical. Note that you cannot offset this by going arbitrary close, because below some minimal distance your eyes won't focus any more.
Well, then the EU politicians should be told how many jobs will be created by completely switching to Linux. :-)
After all, this will be much more work (all Windows specific stuff will have to be rewritten for Linux), therefore it will create many more jobs. So it's obvious which way to go, isn't it?
Time for the parable of the broken hyperlink, I guess :-)
Well, there may be a middle ground between full disclosure and no disclosure. In certain situations you might be able to just disclose the danger and how to avoid it, without actually disclosing enough details for black hats to exploit it (although it of course gives them a hint where to search).
For example, "If you don't absolutely need it, switch off functionality X in product Y. I've found a serious vulnerabily in Y which is only effective if the option for X is set. An attacker might take control over your computer."
This would explain what the users need to know (activating X in Y currently is dangerous), without providing information which wouldn't help them (because they can't fix X anyway), but would help the black hats.
Maybe it was just Xenophobia why they chose another name.
A few tens of KBs of memory?
:-))
The ZX81 came with one KB of memory by default! But of course the BASIC implementation was in ROM (which IIRC was 8KB), and therefore did not eat any RAM at all (the BASIC programs you typed in did, of course).
And yes, of course the above is not what Programs looked like when you listed them. It is what you actually typed. Ok, not exactly, because you probably would not have typed the whole line 16 again, but just edited it. (And of course you'd not type English sentences, but BASIC commands