I'm not sure you've got the point. Images of Linux distros are big, contiguous files that you want to access rarely and read linearly - probably just the thing to go on tape. To a certain degree, video is the same - one big file that you want to read linearly.
Of course, the practicalities might not be so great. If you want to share the torrent back with the community, then that's a problem. So is wanting to skip around in a video.
But I don't think the question is quite as insane as you make out.
so the chance of you seeing this one is minimal. But, for what it's worth, I use math.
I'm an engineer. Qualified as a computer systems engineer, but work in control systems software for large machines. Actually it's not that often that I need to sit down with a pencil and paper and figure something out. It happens - occasionally someone wants to express a control function as continuous-time parameters and I have to implement it in discrete time, and then I have to sit down and do the bilinear transform myself and code it up. But it's pretty rare.
The vast majority of the time the work I do is based on some math, often involving linear differential equations, time to frequency domain transforms and back, s- or z-domain frequency response assessment and so on, but I don't need to have all the details in my head. What is much more important is an intuitive grasp of what the math means. If someone says to me, "That frame has a natural frequency of 1.25Hz," I don't need to be able to sit down with a pencil (or some other tool) and show that they are right or even be able to figure out how to write down what they've just said in a precise mathematical form. But I do need to know how that feeds in to the control design and then into the structural design.
I think that this intuitive grasp can only be gained by having sat down for a few years and studied the math underlying it in detail. I can't just write down all the math now, but when I was studying I could, and given a couple of hours I could do it again.
One of the key differences here is the electrical propulsion. It means the thing's heat signature is quite hard to differentiate from the background. A V1 or a modern missile has a big, hot jet (or rocket) exhaust at the back, which is easy to detect. If someone launches a stinger (or similar) at you, the usual way of detecting it is from its heat signature. These things, on the other hand...
It's hard to imagine a current missile counter-measure that would be effective against one of these things. Since it's pumping out RF at a fairly high rate for its data comms, it's not that hard to imagine how to develop one, but for now they're pretty hard to counter.
They rely on a very developed infrastructure. This is true of all drones, of course, but I think it's a problem being widely overlooked. It's okay so long as you're fighting insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan; once you're fighting someone with the ability to disrupt your communications infrastructure then half your weapons become useless. And once you're fighting someone with a weapon that can target radio emissions they become downright dangerous...
It seems to me that the main development that has enabled these is battery technology. The idea of drones is not new. The idea of Kamikaze aircraft is not new. What is new is a small, quiet kamikaze drone that doesn't have a significant heat signature because suddenly batteries are good enough to keep one flying long enough to be useful.
It might be quite a lot trickier with Apple. Apple encourages positive press by refusing to talk to any journalist who annoys them - witness the long-running spat between Apple and The Register. El Reg said something unkind about an apple product and Apple have refused to give them any press contact at all for years after.
So Apple might not need a financial relationship with journalists to encourage Apple-friendly press; they get it anyway, because journos Know What Will Happen otherwise.
Someone needs to take a long, hard look at the moderation of climate threads on/. Quoting from the moderation guidelines:
Try to be impartial about this. Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to mark it down.
I'm not taking sides either way in the climate debate; I'm saying that sceptics are moderated down because the moderators disagree with their point of view. At least one comment here already has the score '0 Flamebait' when I'm pretty sure the author of that comment posted what he posted because he honestly believes it, not because he's trying to stir up a flame war. Another comment is titled, 'Before the trolls start...', immediately branding anyone who disagrees with the author as a troll. They're not, they just disagree with you. Build a bridge and get over it.
sycodon largely beat me to it, I think. There is no reason given *not* to restart the thing *except* the opposition of activists (and, of course, local residents). I think I engaged with that point pretty well.
There was a failure. It caused no damage, no dangerous situation, no injury, no death, no environmental damage. It has been safely generating power for many years. It was shut down as a precaution. They've since found there is no reason not to restart it. Since there is no rational argument against starting it at all, any point in its favour wins the debate. Here's one:
We need the power therefore we need to restart the plant.
True, so long as you don't assume that DETAIL == GRAPHICAL DETAIL. The level of graphical detail needs to match the level of gameplay detail in some way that is not immediately obvious. Gameplay detail need to mean fidelity to the real world. So long as the game world is consistent in its detail, it need not bear any resemblance at all to how the real world works.
Tetris is a great example of this. You can keep adding resolution and shiny graphics to tetris until it looks absolutely beautiful. The gameplay is simple but absolutely consistent with no detail out of place. And it's one of the more successful games in a long, long time.
Hmmm, I dunno. Assassins Creed manages to do this relatively well. There are thousands of people you can interact with - guards, civilians etc. Interactions between them are trivial unless they're interacting with you or it's part of scripted play, but you can walk up and smack them and they do about the right thing. You get to choose how important they are. If you want to ignore them, they'll ignore you. If you feel like picking a fight, you can pick a fight. And, when it comes to guards, the notoriety system does a fairly good job of giving varied but overall-consistent interactions.
These things are always well-spun, from either side. For "strong opposition from local residents and activists" read "strong opposition from activists and the local residents they've frightened out of their wits."
Activists *exist* to provide strong opposition to things. You never see something happening "despite luke-warm opposition from activists." The volume of their opposition does not make them right.
Often the problem is not just detail, but obsessive detail in one area combined with wildly unrealistic limits in others. I find jungle combat games extremely frustrating for this reason - even CoD World at War - because there's all this highly detailed jungle around and you have to guess which bit of it doesn't function as an invisible barrier. The people writing the game spent much too long figuring out how to present realistic-looking jungle and not nearly long enough on how to construct a game that lets you roam over the whole reachable area.
IMO the Assassins Creed games get this absolutely right. They are also obsessed with graphical detail, and some of the cities look wonderful, but they've also put a lot of effort into letting you roam endlessly through it.
It's the classic problem of game design - studios spend all their money on visuals and none on gameplay, producing a beautiful-looking game that is boring to play.
Erm, haven't you heard? Android has a Linux (-derived) kernel. Samsung signed a patent cross-license with Microsoft to avoid getting sued for using Linux. It came with the usual Microsoft patent license condition, that Samsung not tell anyone the details, because if the details became public then Linux could be re-engineered to avoid Microsoft's patents. So if we get to see the agreement, we (may) get to see the list of patents Microsoft thinks Linux violates.
Since the link seems to go straight to the Microsoft Research front page, it's hard to say. I'd guess that it's something to do with using turbines to help maintain grid stability.
It's a good idea. While older turbines typically make a grid worse, using a doubly-fed induction generator and so presenting a big inductive load, modern ones with fully-rated power converters can produce reactive power on demand, making them a good tool for maintaining grid stability. What's really needed to make this happen is sort of standard interface between turbine control systems, which control the active power output of a turbine, and the grid operator's systems, which know how much active power is required.
I seem to be the lone voice here, and I don't understand. I *love* Unity. it is far and away the best, most usable UI I have worked with. Ever.
I say that as a dedicated Emacs user. Unity follows the Emacs philosophy into the graphical desktop - the fewer times I need to reach for that damned mouse, the better. Any app I want to launch is four key strokes away. Any menu item is three or four keystrokes away, and I don't have to remember the arcane sequence of accelerators, I just start typing what I want to do.
Why do people hate it so much? Performance gets trotted out a lot, but even the 2D version running in a VMWare box is usable.
You don't sue cars, you sue people. That old woman crossing the street can sue the driver of the car, not you. It is him who has been negligent by running her over, not you. Otherwise it'd be sort of like lending your brother your gun and then being liable for any damage he did with it.
And you can also sue the driver of the car for negligence in damaging your car.
How much you'll get out of him is another question, of course. You might like to check that he is insured before you rent your car to him.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure you've got the point. Images of Linux distros are big, contiguous files that you want to access rarely and read linearly - probably just the thing to go on tape. To a certain degree, video is the same - one big file that you want to read linearly.
Of course, the practicalities might not be so great. If you want to share the torrent back with the community, then that's a problem. So is wanting to skip around in a video.
But I don't think the question is quite as insane as you make out.
so the chance of you seeing this one is minimal. But, for what it's worth, I use math.
I'm an engineer. Qualified as a computer systems engineer, but work in control systems software for large machines. Actually it's not that often that I need to sit down with a pencil and paper and figure something out. It happens - occasionally someone wants to express a control function as continuous-time parameters and I have to implement it in discrete time, and then I have to sit down and do the bilinear transform myself and code it up. But it's pretty rare.
The vast majority of the time the work I do is based on some math, often involving linear differential equations, time to frequency domain transforms and back, s- or z-domain frequency response assessment and so on, but I don't need to have all the details in my head. What is much more important is an intuitive grasp of what the math means. If someone says to me, "That frame has a natural frequency of 1.25Hz," I don't need to be able to sit down with a pencil (or some other tool) and show that they are right or even be able to figure out how to write down what they've just said in a precise mathematical form. But I do need to know how that feeds in to the control design and then into the structural design.
I think that this intuitive grasp can only be gained by having sat down for a few years and studied the math underlying it in detail. I can't just write down all the math now, but when I was studying I could, and given a couple of hours I could do it again.
One of the key differences here is the electrical propulsion. It means the thing's heat signature is quite hard to differentiate from the background. A V1 or a modern missile has a big, hot jet (or rocket) exhaust at the back, which is easy to detect. If someone launches a stinger (or similar) at you, the usual way of detecting it is from its heat signature. These things, on the other hand...
It's hard to imagine a current missile counter-measure that would be effective against one of these things. Since it's pumping out RF at a fairly high rate for its data comms, it's not that hard to imagine how to develop one, but for now they're pretty hard to counter.
They rely on a very developed infrastructure. This is true of all drones, of course, but I think it's a problem being widely overlooked. It's okay so long as you're fighting insurgents in Pakistan and Afghanistan; once you're fighting someone with the ability to disrupt your communications infrastructure then half your weapons become useless. And once you're fighting someone with a weapon that can target radio emissions they become downright dangerous...
It seems to me that the main development that has enabled these is battery technology. The idea of drones is not new. The idea of Kamikaze aircraft is not new. What is new is a small, quiet kamikaze drone that doesn't have a significant heat signature because suddenly batteries are good enough to keep one flying long enough to be useful.
It might be quite a lot trickier with Apple. Apple encourages positive press by refusing to talk to any journalist who annoys them - witness the long-running spat between Apple and The Register. El Reg said something unkind about an apple product and Apple have refused to give them any press contact at all for years after.
So Apple might not need a financial relationship with journalists to encourage Apple-friendly press; they get it anyway, because journos Know What Will Happen otherwise.
Someone needs to take a long, hard look at the moderation of climate threads on /. Quoting from the moderation guidelines:
I'm not taking sides either way in the climate debate; I'm saying that sceptics are moderated down because the moderators disagree with their point of view. At least one comment here already has the score '0 Flamebait' when I'm pretty sure the author of that comment posted what he posted because he honestly believes it, not because he's trying to stir up a flame war. Another comment is titled, 'Before the trolls start...', immediately branding anyone who disagrees with the author as a troll. They're not, they just disagree with you. Build a bridge and get over it.
Calm down and stop throwing toys, both of you.
All clam and rational, eh? Well, well.
sycodon largely beat me to it, I think. There is no reason given *not* to restart the thing *except* the opposition of activists (and, of course, local residents). I think I engaged with that point pretty well.
There was a failure. It caused no damage, no dangerous situation, no injury, no death, no environmental damage. It has been safely generating power for many years. It was shut down as a precaution. They've since found there is no reason not to restart it. Since there is no rational argument against starting it at all, any point in its favour wins the debate. Here's one:
We need the power therefore we need to restart the plant.
"The writing was on the wall." Really. Can't decide if this was unconscious or deadpan at its best.
MORE DETAIL == MORE IMMERSION
True, so long as you don't assume that DETAIL == GRAPHICAL DETAIL. The level of graphical detail needs to match the level of gameplay detail in some way that is not immediately obvious. Gameplay detail need to mean fidelity to the real world. So long as the game world is consistent in its detail, it need not bear any resemblance at all to how the real world works.
Tetris is a great example of this. You can keep adding resolution and shiny graphics to tetris until it looks absolutely beautiful. The gameplay is simple but absolutely consistent with no detail out of place. And it's one of the more successful games in a long, long time.
Hmmm, I dunno. Assassins Creed manages to do this relatively well. There are thousands of people you can interact with - guards, civilians etc. Interactions between them are trivial unless they're interacting with you or it's part of scripted play, but you can walk up and smack them and they do about the right thing. You get to choose how important they are. If you want to ignore them, they'll ignore you. If you feel like picking a fight, you can pick a fight. And, when it comes to guards, the notoriety system does a fairly good job of giving varied but overall-consistent interactions.
These things are always well-spun, from either side. For "strong opposition from local residents and activists" read "strong opposition from activists and the local residents they've frightened out of their wits."
Activists *exist* to provide strong opposition to things. You never see something happening "despite luke-warm opposition from activists." The volume of their opposition does not make them right.
Ducking was the wrong response if the arrows are coming at knee-height.
Often the problem is not just detail, but obsessive detail in one area combined with wildly unrealistic limits in others. I find jungle combat games extremely frustrating for this reason - even CoD World at War - because there's all this highly detailed jungle around and you have to guess which bit of it doesn't function as an invisible barrier. The people writing the game spent much too long figuring out how to present realistic-looking jungle and not nearly long enough on how to construct a game that lets you roam over the whole reachable area.
IMO the Assassins Creed games get this absolutely right. They are also obsessed with graphical detail, and some of the cities look wonderful, but they've also put a lot of effort into letting you roam endlessly through it.
It's the classic problem of game design - studios spend all their money on visuals and none on gameplay, producing a beautiful-looking game that is boring to play.
Now if only we could store enough of it to provide continuously variable supply, at a competitive price...
Abundance is only one aspect - cost of extraction might make abundance irrelevant.
Erm, haven't you heard? Android has a Linux (-derived) kernel. Samsung signed a patent cross-license with Microsoft to avoid getting sued for using Linux. It came with the usual Microsoft patent license condition, that Samsung not tell anyone the details, because if the details became public then Linux could be re-engineered to avoid Microsoft's patents. So if we get to see the agreement, we (may) get to see the list of patents Microsoft thinks Linux violates.
Unless you're Dominique Strauss-Kahn, of course.
Oi, get your beard cut!
Since the link seems to go straight to the Microsoft Research front page, it's hard to say. I'd guess that it's something to do with using turbines to help maintain grid stability.
It's a good idea. While older turbines typically make a grid worse, using a doubly-fed induction generator and so presenting a big inductive load, modern ones with fully-rated power converters can produce reactive power on demand, making them a good tool for maintaining grid stability. What's really needed to make this happen is sort of standard interface between turbine control systems, which control the active power output of a turbine, and the grid operator's systems, which know how much active power is required.
Anyway, the IBM motion has already been denied. If IBM can't get it, there's a fair chance Microsoft won't, either.
One of the big reasons this is interesting is that we might finally find out exactly what patents Microsoft thinks that Linux violates.
That depends on your jurisdiction - my insurance policy covers me if I'm driving someone else's car with their permission.
I seem to be the lone voice here, and I don't understand. I *love* Unity. it is far and away the best, most usable UI I have worked with. Ever.
I say that as a dedicated Emacs user. Unity follows the Emacs philosophy into the graphical desktop - the fewer times I need to reach for that damned mouse, the better. Any app I want to launch is four key strokes away. Any menu item is three or four keystrokes away, and I don't have to remember the arcane sequence of accelerators, I just start typing what I want to do.
Why do people hate it so much? Performance gets trotted out a lot, but even the 2D version running in a VMWare box is usable.
You don't sue cars, you sue people. That old woman crossing the street can sue the driver of the car, not you. It is him who has been negligent by running her over, not you. Otherwise it'd be sort of like lending your brother your gun and then being liable for any damage he did with it.
And you can also sue the driver of the car for negligence in damaging your car.
How much you'll get out of him is another question, of course. You might like to check that he is insured before you rent your car to him.
So we'll never try anything new ever again because no-one supports it yet?