> breeder reactors wring the last of the energy out of the original source but > ultimately the source dries up/cools down whatever you get the picture. A > renewable source is one not dependant on a finite resource.
That's a decent argument, but you need to understand just what a breeder reactor can do.
U-235 is the only natural fissile material, which sucks because it's only about 0.75% of elemental uranium. U-238, which isn't fissile, makes up the remaining 99+% and is basically just dead weight. The basic idea of a breeder reactor, is to pack U-238 around a running reactor. As the (very many!) stray neutrons leave the core, they collide with the U-238 and create Pu-239. This Pu-239 is a fissile material and can then be used in a reactor in place of U-235. There is also a variant that produces U-233 from Th-232.
The point is, that even if we do only have 30 years of U-235, if we breed the U-238 we could extend that to well over 3000 years at our current usage. Throw in the Thorium versions, and energy problems are solved for quite some time. Let's be pessimistic about production results and rising demand and call it about 1000 years. I'd say that in that amount of time we should be able to come up with something better, like fusion or drawing directly from the sun. Or hell, maybe we'll just mine more Uranium from Mars. It's not really a problem that can just be solved straight away. After all, these "renewable" sources require the sun, which ain't exactly renewable itself.
I doubt it. CDs were a different product, and therefore a chance to extract mondo bucks from consumers. The "new and improved" argument had a little to do with it, but copyright and forced obsolescence of tapes was what actually allowed for the higher price. (i.e. Consumers had to buy the expensive new option because they had no choice otherwise, not because they were willing to pay the artificial premium for the newness.)
For this, however, there is no similar mechanism. To most consumers it will just look like a normal flash drive and work like a normal flash drive. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about the technology, and probably doesn't even know flash dives have limited write cycles (not that he'll ever approach them). Unless the new drives offer more memory or a better price, there will be no reason to buy one.
Of course, in the embedded market, this would be huge due to reduced power consumption and write cycles (which eliminates the need for wear leveling). Also, for more extreme environments (I'm looking at you, space) the fact that this memory changes physically and doesn't simply hold charge (which is rather easily changed) is also a major plus. Even with these advantages, I doubt that there will be any sort of price inflation in these markets either since these buyers know what they're doing.
Do you honestly think that's going to be a problem? Don't you think that the developers are going to care about transfers as well? How about RAM usage? You seem to be thinking that the only reason someone would optimize for size is to reduce its storage footprint. However, it's been true for a fairly long time now that storage far surpasses RAM and bandwidth capacities. Maybe if this technology can provide high performance swap space you might have some slight reason to be concerned, but these developers will have to transfer the data to you, which either means optical discs or paying for bandwidth.
> I've criticized them without using their trademark, just their name
Except in this case, their name _was_ the trademark in question. MoveOn.org has both "MoveOn.org" and "MoveOn" trademarked, if I did my quick search at the trademark's page correctly. This rules out almost any ability to criticize them. Even this story here on./ (or, for that matter, the one on Google's page) would violate their trademark under Google's interpretation. In fact, it'd be difficult to argue that a link to moveon.org wouldn't be a violation, as it contains the trademarked text.
I don't really think Google did this for political reasons, but this is clearly not a good thing.
> Only not with pop-culture. I am interest in things like what Linus is currently > working on, the direction that Jobs is taking his business, whether Steve Ballmer > will be finally taken to an asylum to get the anger management that he needs.
With the exception of the Ballmer comment, there's nothing wrong with being interested in those things.
Think of it this way, is it wrong to listen to what Bush says? Or your representative? Of course not, because the decisions these people make affect your life. Being concerned with "the direction that _Bush_ is taking this _country_" is important.
Now certainly Apple isn't as important as the country. However, if you run an apple, the decisions Jobs makes will matter to you. Even more so with Linus and Linux. And with Microsoft's strangle hold on businesses across the world, the "war on Microsoft" is actually in some ways more important than the "war on Terror".
Last I checked, that's the whole point of rendering engines, like Quake 3 and so many others. While they may end up needing modifications for maximum performance, I would be amazed if this didn't as well. Oh sure, maybe in 10 years when we have full hardware ray tracing and hypertransport based physics processors that will alleviate the need to spend so much time performance tuning. Until then though, this is not going to be any better than any other engine. From a developer's perspective at least. It may make for some prettier graphics though.
> If something, whether it be blueprints, books, records or whatnot is not available via the > marketplace from any supplier, there seems to be little financial damage done to anyone > when someone duplicates 'em.
But that's a bit short sighted. The same argument was (is?) used with regards to things like NES/SNES roms, but now Nintendo is reselling the games (virtual console). Sure the new versions may not be quite the same since they play one the Wii, but either way, there's still a potential for damage. So the trick is that you have to determine that something is not only unavailible, but that it will also never be availible.
And while the method the FAA says they'll be using would work for other things, there is more value for things like planes. The trouble is that even if you have a plane, there is very little knowledge obtainable (without massive effort). With a book, all the stuff of value is right there in black and white. The FAA is essentially doing the equivilant of releasing the author's notes along with the book. While the latter is convienent (to say the least), the former actually adds to public wealth.
As has been pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. It's also not very interesting. So in the interest of perhaps actually providing some interesting tips:
In scripts, prefix dangersous commands with an 'echo' for a test run (So you can catch all those rm -rf/).
Single quotes are the best quotes for plain strings. The only reasion to use double quotes is if you need to quote a variable or a single quote.
Completion is fun, but using wildcards is more flexible (though you'll only want to use benign commans like cd, less, etc):
nano/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6
nano/etc/m*a*d/*6
Note that the use of subpaths reduces the amount of flexibility.
cd/etc/m* ->/etc/mail
cd/etc/m*d ->/etc/modules.d
nano/*/m*/*6 ->/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6, and/etc/modules.d/i386 (not quite!)
Finally, as a comment for the article, using:
test -e $DIR || mkdir -p $DIR is much better than their suggestion and probaly faster anyway. Though I'd just do "mkdir -p $DIR" and maybe "&>/dev/null" under most circumstances anyway.
That's all I can think of at this point. Anyone else have tips?
Well geezzz... You try and write an argument for the group you're targeting...
I am familiar with what science is, I was simply directing my point to those who don't. For those that do, what I said should be evident: Science is not The Truth and doesn't try to be, so stop acting like it is.
Too many people sell science like it is The Truth. Like it's either science's way or the highway, so to speak. Just look at nearly any discussion about evolution. ID catches a lot of flack for being non-scientific, but I don't (usually) see anyone claiming it is. But evolution, OTOH, is frequently claimed as The Truth. Look at when those stickers that creationists were trying to put on books: "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
Killed with fire naturally. Or more accurately, killed with: "Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life."
Now am I missing something, or is the fact that evolution, like any scientific theory, is disprovable IS EXACLTY WHAT OUR CHILDREN SHOULD BE LEARNING!?!
There are all these people going around saying falsifiable this, and not looking for truth that, but in the end, how many are really practicing what they preach? That was my point. Anyone who understands and actually cares about science would have demanded the sticker be changed to say: "This textbook contains material on science. Everything in science is theory, not fact. We look forward to you trying to disprove it and discovering new things while you do."
> I don't see science interfering with religion. I can't think of a time > in this country when science attempted intrude upon a house of worship...
Pardon my dust. I accidentally anthropomorphisized "science", when what I really meant to refer to was the scientific equivalent of religious fanatics. And yes, they don't enter intrude houses of worship and tell people what to do, but nor do religious fanatics enter places of science and tell people what to do. It's a battle of ideas, and mostly lots of calling people 'stupid'.
> The religous right actively tries to interfere with the practice of > science; protesting and passing laws against scientific practices > and teachings they are not approving of - stem cell research, evolution, > abortion (medicine is applied science after all) and so forth.
Two of those things (stem cells + abortion) are barely religious, and are actually more like qusi-scientific questions made religious because that served as an effective polarizer (so more support could be gained and such).
"Abortion is murder life begins at conception! No it's not, life begins at birth!" There's no religion there, unless you think murder is some stupid religious thing. The only question is when life begins, hardly a religious point.
Stem cells follow the same idea. Just like everyone thought Dr. Mengele's experiments on humans were wrong, using humans for their stem cells is wrong if pre-born babies are considered human.
Finally evolution. Let's face it, there is very little value in this. Period. What purpose does evolution serve? How does it help the world? The time scales are too large to matter. If humanity was going to create a new species, it'd be through ID (with our I), rather than evolution. In short: It's just a flame war. Nothing to see here.
Finally, No, I don't think religion is great. Science is certainly more useful. It's just that it's important to see things as they are, rather than getting all whipped up into a finger pointing frenzy. (Not that you were, it's just the general case, unfortunately.)
> I don't see science interfering with religion. I can't think of a time
> in this country when science attempted intrude upon a house of worship...
Pardon my dust. I accidentally anthropomorphism "science", when what I really meant to refer to was the scientific equivalent of religious fanatics. And yes, they don't enter intrude houses of worship and tell people what to do, but nor do religious fanatics enter places of science and tell people what to do. It's a battle of ideas, and mostly lots of calling people 'stupid'.
> The religous right actively tries to interfere with the practice of
> science; protesting and passing laws against scientific practices
> and teachings they are not approving of - stem cell research, evolution,
> abortion (medicine is applied science after all) and so forth.
Two of those things (stem cells + abortion) are barely religious, and are actually more like qusi-scientific questions made religious because that served as an effective polarizer (so more support could be gained and such).
"Abortion is murder life begins at conception! No it's not, life begins at birth!" There's no religion there, unless you think murder is some stupid religious thing. The only question is when life begins, hardly a religious point.
Stem cells follow the same idea. Just like everyone thought Dr. Mengele's experiments on humans were wrong, using humans for their stem cells is wrong if pre-born babies are considered human.
Finally evolution. Let's face it, there is very little value in this. Period. What purpose does evolution serve? How does it help the world? The time scales are too large to matter. If humanity was going to create a new species, it'd be through ID (with our I), rather than evolution. In short: It's just a flame war. Nothing to see here.
Finally,
No, I don't think religion is great. Science is certainly more useful. It's just that it's important to see things as they are, rather than getting all whipped up into a finger pointing frenzy. (Not that you were, it's just the general case, unfortunately.)
Can you please prove (using science, of course) science? I mean, for something that uncovers The Truth, surely it can demonstrate that it, itself, is The Truth.
Now, I imagine that just about everyone reading this is thinking: "This is just a perfect example of all the anti-science BS that's going around." You keep telling yourself that. And while you're at it, say that God is invalid because he can't be proven. And that proving science is BS.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that America is becoming anti-science, it's that science is becoming anti-anything-else. Science is a handy tool that we can use to better understand what we observe, and then (optionally) use that understanding to some end. It does not provide The Truth and never will, though it _can_ give The Scientific Truth, and that's usually good enough. Too many people are losing sight of that and are proclaiming science is God/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy.
It would seem my original post was eaten a little around the important part. I though I checked the preview well enough... But no less than symbols. They'll now be "{" because I can't seem to get them to work. Anyway:
d*(n-2)+k { c { d*(n-1)-k
And the real solution (probably): d>2*k+1 and c is still given by the inequality.
For the minimum: d*(n-2)+k+1 = c = d*(n-1)-k-1 d=2*(k+1) and c=(k+1)(2*n-3)
It looks like the real problem here is the factor of k. This is how you modify the counting strategy to account for it:
k is really an error term. The king can modify the count by +k (acting as a non-counter) or -k (by acting as the counter). So therefore our solution must be able to take an error of +/-k.
So lets make the variable d the number of times each non-counter flips it before stopping, and c the number of counts the counter counts before saying yes. The highest count before all prisoners had been to the room whould be d*(n-2). There can be a maximum of d*(n-1) counts, and the king can artifically increase/decrease the count by k. So solve the problem:
d*(n-2)+k 2*k and c2*k*n-k. (Or something like that. You can chack it...)
So each non-counter would flip the cup up (or down) d times, and then stop. The counter would flip the cup down if it were up and increase the count by one. Once the count reaches c, he would answer "yes".
So here's the question: How exactly is evolution disprovible? If we can say "well these guys were wrong about how it works, but it's still viable," what could we learn that that would toss all of evolution out?
Without that, how is evolution any more falsifiable than ID?
"I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all." -Professor
"Oh. What's it called now?" -Fry
"Urectum." -Professor
"Software should be free..everything should be free, including the BIOS". Nice concept, but reality is we live in what's called a zero-sum game. We as humanity have a finite amount of resources, which means that if I'm going to expend resources by writing software I need to get something in return, in order to provide for my family.
But there's one major difference when it comes to software: every copy after the first is free.
People don't advocate free cars because it cost some to design them, and then a significant cost to produce each individual unit. There is no free car. Even if you get it for free, it will still have cost someone a significant amount to produce your individual unit. With software, after the program is written, copies of it are free, except for some minor bandwidth costs.
This has a significant implication. If you write, say, a utility program to convert between two formats, why wouldn't you release it? You wrote it to satisfy some need of your own, not the community. Thus, the only thing releasing it costs is the 5 min it takes to put on a website.
So if you're ATI, you are producing hardware that you need a utility program (aka driver) to use. Developing that driver is basically included in the cost of the development of the card. The driver isn't the product, the card is. So why keep the driver source closed? Well, in this particular case, they actually seem to have good reason. Since there's only a one resistor difference between their $300 card and their >$1000 card, they need to close the source so people can't easily hack it for a cheap 'upgrade'.
Now I know similar things are done by other hardware vendors. MY DVD-+RW drive, for instance, is running the (barely hacked) BIOS of another, letting it write dual layer DVDs. Whether or not motherboard vendors play similar games, I don't know. If they do, they have good reason for not releasing source, but if they don't, why not? What does it really cost them?
"I also bet that there are spent fuel rods for that reactor, and as I can see here, there is almost no security for this reactor"
Actually, as someone who is familar with university research reactors, I can say that this is most likely not the csae. The research reactor around here has gotten about no more than 100, if any, new rods in the past 50 years. Research reactors are opperated only intermitantly, and usually not above 1MW. They just don't consume much fuel.
The current system basically entails putting an expert on the stand and asking his/her opinion. I fail to see why this same system doesn't apply to the software. Of course it's not going to be perfect, but neither is an expert's testimony. So why can't this be considered something of an "expert" on crash simulation?
But consider the consequences of no waves on the environment. Sure it probably wouldn't be as bad as massive CO2 production, but it's important to note that it's not entirely green either.
I still fail to see why we should spend so much on inefficient "green" technologies, when nuclear power is available and quite green itself. Just mine some radioactive stuff use it and put it back in the ground. Oh wait, I said nuclear...
I would point out that she couldn't possibly have x-ray vision simply because there are not enough x-rays floating around to be seen. If there were, we wouldn't be having many children, or even living very that long for that matter. Now, I guess it's possible she could be using a more ubiquidous part of the spectrum like terahertz, but that's another issue really.
Also, I think Gosling (who has produced a language that 10 if not 100's of millions use) knows a *little* tiny bit more than you about languages, and your highschool hacker C coding isn't something to brag about.
And I bet you believe Microsoft every time they come out and say stuff like "Linux is less secure than Windows"? After all, Microsoft has a product that 100s if not 1000s of millions use, so I think they'd know a little tiny bit more than some kernel hackers.
Face it, the guy is attacking a competing product. He will never applaud it and say ".NET is better than Java". At best he won't say anything. It this particular case, he decided to bash.NET.
And regardless of you cynicism, this _is_ something C/C++ programmers deal with all the time. Whether or not they do so effectively is arguable, but the one-liner is true.
Slashdot Mirror
Less than the cost of a plane, it's cargo and it's crew, I'd wager.
> breeder reactors wring the last of the energy out of the original source but
> ultimately the source dries up/cools down whatever you get the picture. A
> renewable source is one not dependant on a finite resource.
That's a decent argument, but you need to understand just what a breeder reactor can do.
U-235 is the only natural fissile material, which sucks because it's only about 0.75% of elemental uranium. U-238, which isn't fissile, makes up the remaining 99+% and is basically just dead weight. The basic idea of a breeder reactor, is to pack U-238 around a running reactor. As the (very many!) stray neutrons leave the core, they collide with the U-238 and create Pu-239. This Pu-239 is a fissile material and can then be used in a reactor in place of U-235. There is also a variant that produces U-233 from Th-232.
The point is, that even if we do only have 30 years of U-235, if we breed the U-238 we could extend that to well over 3000 years at our current usage. Throw in the Thorium versions, and energy problems are solved for quite some time. Let's be pessimistic about production results and rising demand and call it about 1000 years. I'd say that in that amount of time we should be able to come up with something better, like fusion or drawing directly from the sun. Or hell, maybe we'll just mine more Uranium from Mars. It's not really a problem that can just be solved straight away. After all, these "renewable" sources require the sun, which ain't exactly renewable itself.
I doubt it. CDs were a different product, and therefore a chance to extract mondo bucks from consumers. The "new and improved" argument had a little to do with it, but copyright and forced obsolescence of tapes was what actually allowed for the higher price. (i.e. Consumers had to buy the expensive new option because they had no choice otherwise, not because they were willing to pay the artificial premium for the newness.)
For this, however, there is no similar mechanism. To most consumers it will just look like a normal flash drive and work like a normal flash drive. Joe Sixpack doesn't care about the technology, and probably doesn't even know flash dives have limited write cycles (not that he'll ever approach them). Unless the new drives offer more memory or a better price, there will be no reason to buy one.
Of course, in the embedded market, this would be huge due to reduced power consumption and write cycles (which eliminates the need for wear leveling). Also, for more extreme environments (I'm looking at you, space) the fact that this memory changes physically and doesn't simply hold charge (which is rather easily changed) is also a major plus. Even with these advantages, I doubt that there will be any sort of price inflation in these markets either since these buyers know what they're doing.
Do you honestly think that's going to be a problem? Don't you think that the developers are going to care about transfers as well? How about RAM usage? You seem to be thinking that the only reason someone would optimize for size is to reduce its storage footprint. However, it's been true for a fairly long time now that storage far surpasses RAM and bandwidth capacities. Maybe if this technology can provide high performance swap space you might have some slight reason to be concerned, but these developers will have to transfer the data to you, which either means optical discs or paying for bandwidth.
> I've criticized them without using their trademark, just their name
./ (or, for that matter, the one on Google's page) would violate their trademark under Google's interpretation. In fact, it'd be difficult to argue that a link to moveon.org wouldn't be a violation, as it contains the trademarked text.
Except in this case, their name _was_ the trademark in question. MoveOn.org has both "MoveOn.org" and "MoveOn" trademarked, if I did my quick search at the trademark's page correctly. This rules out almost any ability to criticize them. Even this story here on
I don't really think Google did this for political reasons, but this is clearly not a good thing.
> Only not with pop-culture. I am interest in things like what Linus is currently
> working on, the direction that Jobs is taking his business, whether Steve Ballmer
> will be finally taken to an asylum to get the anger management that he needs.
With the exception of the Ballmer comment, there's nothing wrong with being interested in those things.
Think of it this way, is it wrong to listen to what Bush says? Or your representative? Of course not, because the decisions these people make affect your life. Being concerned with "the direction that _Bush_ is taking this _country_" is important.
Now certainly Apple isn't as important as the country. However, if you run an apple, the decisions Jobs makes will matter to you. Even more so with Linus and Linux. And with Microsoft's strangle hold on businesses across the world, the "war on Microsoft" is actually in some ways more important than the "war on Terror".
Last I checked, that's the whole point of rendering engines, like Quake 3 and so many others. While they may end up needing modifications for maximum performance, I would be amazed if this didn't as well. Oh sure, maybe in 10 years when we have full hardware ray tracing and hypertransport based physics processors that will alleviate the need to spend so much time performance tuning. Until then though, this is not going to be any better than any other engine. From a developer's perspective at least. It may make for some prettier graphics though.
> If something, whether it be blueprints, books, records or whatnot is not available via the
> marketplace from any supplier, there seems to be little financial damage done to anyone
> when someone duplicates 'em.
But that's a bit short sighted. The same argument was (is?) used with regards to things like NES/SNES roms, but now Nintendo is reselling the games (virtual console). Sure the new versions may not be quite the same since they play one the Wii, but either way, there's still a potential for damage. So the trick is that you have to determine that something is not only unavailible, but that it will also never be availible.
And while the method the FAA says they'll be using would work for other things, there is more value for things like planes. The trouble is that even if you have a plane, there is very little knowledge obtainable (without massive effort). With a book, all the stuff of value is right there in black and white. The FAA is essentially doing the equivilant of releasing the author's notes along with the book. While the latter is convienent (to say the least), the former actually adds to public wealth.
As has been pointed out, this article is riddled with errors. It's also not very interesting. So in the interest of perhaps actually providing some interesting tips:
/).
/etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6 /etc/m*a*d/*6
/etc/m* -> /etc/mail /etc/m*d -> /etc/modules.d /*/m*/*6 -> /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6, and /etc/modules.d/i386 (not quite!)
In scripts, prefix dangersous commands with an 'echo' for a test run (So you can catch all those rm -rf
Single quotes are the best quotes for plain strings. The only reasion to use double quotes is if you need to quote a variable or a single quote.
Completion is fun, but using wildcards is more flexible (though you'll only want to use benign commans like cd, less, etc):
nano
nano
Note that the use of subpaths reduces the amount of flexibility.
cd
cd
nano
Finally, as a comment for the article, using:
test -e $DIR || mkdir -p $DIR
is much better than their suggestion and probaly faster anyway. Though I'd just do "mkdir -p $DIR" and maybe "&>/dev/null" under most circumstances anyway.
That's all I can think of at this point. Anyone else have tips?
Well geezzz... You try and write an argument for the group you're targeting...
I am familiar with what science is, I was simply directing my point to those who don't. For those that do, what I said should be evident: Science is not The Truth and doesn't try to be, so stop acting like it is.
Too many people sell science like it is The Truth. Like it's either science's way or the highway, so to speak. Just look at nearly any discussion about evolution. ID catches a lot of flack for being non-scientific, but I don't (usually) see anyone claiming it is. But evolution, OTOH, is frequently claimed as The Truth. Look at when those stickers that creationists were trying to put on books:
"This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered."
Killed with fire naturally. Or more accurately, killed with:
"Due to the manner in which the sticker refers to evolution as a theory, the sticker also has the effect of undermining evolution education to the benefit of those Cobb County citizens who would prefer that students maintain their religious beliefs regarding the origin of life."
Now am I missing something, or is the fact that evolution, like any scientific theory, is disprovable IS EXACLTY WHAT OUR CHILDREN SHOULD BE LEARNING!?!
There are all these people going around saying falsifiable this, and not looking for truth that, but in the end, how many are really practicing what they preach? That was my point. Anyone who understands and actually cares about science would have demanded the sticker be changed to say:
"This textbook contains material on science. Everything in science is theory, not fact. We look forward to you trying to disprove it and discovering new things while you do."
_That_ is science.
(Quotes from CNN)
(Darn, clicked submit and no preview...)
> I don't see science interfering with religion. I can't think of a time
> in this country when science attempted intrude upon a house of worship...
Pardon my dust. I accidentally anthropomorphisized "science", when what I really meant to refer to was the scientific equivalent of religious fanatics. And yes, they don't enter intrude houses of worship and tell people what to do, but nor do religious fanatics enter places of science and tell people what to do. It's a battle of ideas, and mostly lots of calling people 'stupid'.
> The religous right actively tries to interfere with the practice of
> science; protesting and passing laws against scientific practices
> and teachings they are not approving of - stem cell research, evolution,
> abortion (medicine is applied science after all) and so forth.
Two of those things (stem cells + abortion) are barely religious, and are actually more like qusi-scientific questions made religious because that served as an effective polarizer (so more support could be gained and such).
"Abortion is murder life begins at conception! No it's not, life begins at birth!" There's no religion there, unless you think murder is some stupid religious thing. The only question is when life begins, hardly a religious point.
Stem cells follow the same idea. Just like everyone thought Dr. Mengele's experiments on humans were wrong, using humans for their stem cells is wrong if pre-born babies are considered human.
Finally evolution. Let's face it, there is very little value in this. Period. What purpose does evolution serve? How does it help the world? The time scales are too large to matter. If humanity was going to create a new species, it'd be through ID (with our I), rather than evolution. In short: It's just a flame war. Nothing to see here.
Finally,
No, I don't think religion is great. Science is certainly more useful. It's just that it's important to see things as they are, rather than getting all whipped up into a finger pointing frenzy. (Not that you were, it's just the general case, unfortunately.)
> I don't see science interfering with religion. I can't think of a time > in this country when science attempted intrude upon a house of worship... Pardon my dust. I accidentally anthropomorphism "science", when what I really meant to refer to was the scientific equivalent of religious fanatics. And yes, they don't enter intrude houses of worship and tell people what to do, but nor do religious fanatics enter places of science and tell people what to do. It's a battle of ideas, and mostly lots of calling people 'stupid'. > The religous right actively tries to interfere with the practice of > science; protesting and passing laws against scientific practices > and teachings they are not approving of - stem cell research, evolution, > abortion (medicine is applied science after all) and so forth. Two of those things (stem cells + abortion) are barely religious, and are actually more like qusi-scientific questions made religious because that served as an effective polarizer (so more support could be gained and such). "Abortion is murder life begins at conception! No it's not, life begins at birth!" There's no religion there, unless you think murder is some stupid religious thing. The only question is when life begins, hardly a religious point. Stem cells follow the same idea. Just like everyone thought Dr. Mengele's experiments on humans were wrong, using humans for their stem cells is wrong if pre-born babies are considered human. Finally evolution. Let's face it, there is very little value in this. Period. What purpose does evolution serve? How does it help the world? The time scales are too large to matter. If humanity was going to create a new species, it'd be through ID (with our I), rather than evolution. In short: It's just a flame war. Nothing to see here. Finally, No, I don't think religion is great. Science is certainly more useful. It's just that it's important to see things as they are, rather than getting all whipped up into a finger pointing frenzy. (Not that you were, it's just the general case, unfortunately.)
You bet.
Can you please prove (using science, of course) science? I mean, for something that uncovers The Truth, surely it can demonstrate that it, itself, is The Truth.
Now, I imagine that just about everyone reading this is thinking: "This is just a perfect example of all the anti-science BS that's going around." You keep telling yourself that. And while you're at it, say that God is invalid because he can't be proven. And that proving science is BS.
The real problem, as I see it, is not that America is becoming anti-science, it's that science is becoming anti-anything-else. Science is a handy tool that we can use to better understand what we observe, and then (optionally) use that understanding to some end. It does not provide The Truth and never will, though it _can_ give The Scientific Truth, and that's usually good enough. Too many people are losing sight of that and are proclaiming science is God/The Truth, and anything else is blasphemy.
It would seem my original post was eaten a little around the important part. I though I checked the preview well enough... But no less than symbols. They'll now be "{" because I can't seem to get them to work. Anyway:
d*(n-2)+k { c { d*(n-1)-k
And the real solution (probably):
d>2*k+1 and c is still given by the inequality.
For the minimum:
d*(n-2)+k+1 = c = d*(n-1)-k-1
d=2*(k+1) and c=(k+1)(2*n-3)
It looks like the real problem here is the factor of k. This is how you modify the counting strategy to account for it:
k is really an error term. The king can modify the count by +k (acting as a non-counter) or -k (by acting as the counter). So therefore our solution must be able to take an error of +/-k.
So lets make the variable d the number of times each non-counter flips it before stopping, and c the number of counts the counter counts before saying yes. The highest count before all prisoners had been to the room whould be d*(n-2). There can be a maximum of d*(n-1) counts, and the king can artifically increase/decrease the count by k. So solve the problem:
d*(n-2)+k 2*k and c2*k*n-k. (Or something like that. You can chack it...)
So each non-counter would flip the cup up (or down) d times, and then stop. The counter would flip the cup down if it were up and increase the count by one. Once the count reaches c, he would answer "yes".
> Wow! Science can be wrong.
Obviusly, but evolution seems to still be around.
So here's the question: How exactly is evolution disprovible? If we can say "well these guys were wrong about how it works, but it's still viable," what could we learn that that would toss all of evolution out?
Without that, how is evolution any more falsifiable than ID?
The moon is causing the Earth's rotation to slow. Wikipedia cites this to be 15ns/yr. Sure this is slow, but so is the difference.
Perhaps it's causing this?
"I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all." -Professor "Oh. What's it called now?" -Fry "Urectum." -Professor
Don't fly into restricted arispace with remaining eye.
"Software should be free..everything should be free, including the BIOS". Nice concept, but reality is we live in what's called a zero-sum game. We as humanity have a finite amount of resources, which means that if I'm going to expend resources by writing software I need to get something in return, in order to provide for my family.
But there's one major difference when it comes to software: every copy after the first is free.
People don't advocate free cars because it cost some to design them, and then a significant cost to produce each individual unit. There is no free car. Even if you get it for free, it will still have cost someone a significant amount to produce your individual unit. With software, after the program is written, copies of it are free, except for some minor bandwidth costs.
This has a significant implication. If you write, say, a utility program to convert between two formats, why wouldn't you release it? You wrote it to satisfy some need of your own, not the community. Thus, the only thing releasing it costs is the 5 min it takes to put on a website.
So if you're ATI, you are producing hardware that you need a utility program (aka driver) to use. Developing that driver is basically included in the cost of the development of the card. The driver isn't the product, the card is. So why keep the driver source closed? Well, in this particular case, they actually seem to have good reason. Since there's only a one resistor difference between their $300 card and their >$1000 card, they need to close the source so people can't easily hack it for a cheap 'upgrade'.
Now I know similar things are done by other hardware vendors. MY DVD-+RW drive, for instance, is running the (barely hacked) BIOS of another, letting it write dual layer DVDs. Whether or not motherboard vendors play similar games, I don't know. If they do, they have good reason for not releasing source, but if they don't, why not? What does it really cost them?
"I also bet that there are spent fuel rods for that reactor, and as I can see here, there is almost no security for this reactor"
Actually, as someone who is familar with university research reactors, I can say that this is most likely not the csae. The research reactor around here has gotten about no more than 100, if any, new rods in the past 50 years. Research reactors are opperated only intermitantly, and usually not above 1MW. They just don't consume much fuel.
The current system basically entails putting an expert on the stand and asking his/her opinion. I fail to see why this same system doesn't apply to the software. Of course it's not going to be perfect, but neither is an expert's testimony. So why can't this be considered something of an "expert" on crash simulation?
But consider the consequences of no waves on the environment. Sure it probably wouldn't be as bad as massive CO2 production, but it's important to note that it's not entirely green either.
I still fail to see why we should spend so much on inefficient "green" technologies, when nuclear power is available and quite green itself. Just mine some radioactive stuff use it and put it back in the ground. Oh wait, I said nuclear...
I would point out that she couldn't possibly have x-ray vision simply because there are not enough x-rays floating around to be seen. If there were, we wouldn't be having many children, or even living very that long for that matter. Now, I guess it's possible she could be using a more ubiquidous part of the spectrum like terahertz, but that's another issue really.
Also, I think Gosling (who has produced a language that 10 if not 100's of millions use) knows a *little* tiny bit more than you about languages, and your highschool hacker C coding isn't something to brag about.
.NET.
And I bet you believe Microsoft every time they come out and say stuff like "Linux is less secure than Windows"? After all, Microsoft has a product that 100s if not 1000s of millions use, so I think they'd know a little tiny bit more than some kernel hackers.
Face it, the guy is attacking a competing product. He will never applaud it and say ".NET is better than Java". At best he won't say anything. It this particular case, he decided to bash
And regardless of you cynicism, this _is_ something C/C++ programmers deal with all the time. Whether or not they do so effectively is arguable, but the one-liner is true.