You do realise that GOTO command translated to a JMP isntruction, which any compiler produces in abundance anyway, right?
There is no performance issue at all. The ONLY reason 'goto' could be considered bad is that it becomes easy to write code that is difficult for humans to follow.
No, but since you enter "your" phone number so Google can call "you" and hand off the connection to an advertiser.. well, "you" doesn't really have to be "you", does it?
I wonder how, if possible, they prevent such abuse?
Of course, you probably need to enter your area code (didn't try it). Figure they can now link your phone number to your IP and both of those to a generic physical location. A simple tracking cookie and they can to improve the relevance of thier searches based on that knowledge. =Smidge=
Google's "Product" is targeted ads (Though they do offer a handful of other services). If Google gets AIM, with millions of users, that is millions of eyeballs looking at their ads for extended periods of time. I wouldn't be surprized (but maybe a bit spooked) if they would run your messages through AdSense every so often.
Microsoft, on the other hand, well... apart from bolstering their MSN messenger network and traffic through their web services (not a source of revenue for them, really), I can't think of any direct benefit for them.
And remember that whoever gets AIM also gets ICQ. =Smidge=
Are the IRC servers the bot connects to public? If so, has the staff of those networks been informed so that can prevent the zombies from connecting? (Presumably by blocking port 8080 and/or gline anyone joining #sony)
If the IRC servers are private, will the owners be investigated?
Can we be just a little proactive in containing this? =Smidge=
Or better yet, validate all entered URLs by attempting to establish a connection to the server. If the URL is invalid then kick it back.
You wouldn't even need to do this with every URL added to the system. Spot-checking every 1 in 10 URLs or so will go a long way to preventing any sort of abuse. =Smidge=
Most users tend to have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard... as opposed to one on the mouse and one on their joystick.:)
right-click+click is four separate actions: Right click, Visually locate menu item (May be to right or left of cursor depending on how close to the edge of the screen it is, and the list may have additional items depending on context so it may not even be in the same location), Move mouse to menu item, left click it. This all involves one hand so they MUST be done sequentially.
alt+click is two: Press and hold ATL, click. This involves two hands and can be done in parallel, at least as much as ALT is registered before the click.
Imagine an object (say, you computer monitor) at some distance from an observer (you).
From the observer, draw two lines to either edge of the object to make a triangle. The angle between the two lines that meet at the observer would be the resolution angle. How imagine if that angle was fixed. If you move farther away from the object, it appears to get smaller and does not "fill" the view angle anymore. The object becomes blurred with the scenery around it.
The smaller that angle is, the farther away an object or feature can be and still be dicernable from the stuff around it. There are 1,296,000 arc-seconds in a full circle, or 3600 arc-seconds per degree! (1 degree = 60 arc-minutes = 60*60 arc-seconds)
The highest resolution Hubble is capable of is 0.0072 arc-seconds.
An arc-second is defined such that a 1 meter object will appear as 1 arc-second at a distance of 206,256 meters.
The distance from Hubble (~600km orbit) to the moon (~384,400km) is... well, about 383,800 km
So if Hubble produced an image with 1 pixel-per-arcsecond resolution, a pixel would be 1.86 kilometers. But the highest resolution is 0.0072 arc-seconds, or about 140 times better than that.
So the smallest object Hubble can see on the moon is 13 meters wide.
Neither the lander module or the rover are that big. Not even close. Good luck finding something that's less than a pixel wide! =Smidge=
can have very high efficiencies is very different from are much more efficient. I agree that they are not bound by Carnot, and in theory can have excellent efficiencies, but do they?
A little searching tells me that the popular type of cell used in automotive applications is the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) type. These seem to peak out at just over 50% efficient. Not bad, but a well build IC engine can get into the upper 40's, so "much more efficient" becomes a point of contention.
Then consider that the PEMFC's output is electricity, which must be put through a motor to drive the vehicle. If we're generous and assume the motor is 90% efficient, you are now on par with a well built ICE powered vehicle...
This says nothing about the cost of the fuel. Even if you could "generate" the fuel yourself, the primary source of power is still fossil fuels. The only difference is the problem isn't in your back yard anymore. To add insult to injury, the best method to produce hydrogen (energy-in versus yield) is reforming of natural gas (methane) - as the home-refueling station in the article does. Guess what? You'd get more energy if you just burned the NG straight and you're still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere from the reforming process. At least they recover some energy for domestic hot water with their system, so it's not a total waste.
So again, what data is there to back the claim that this is "much more efficient" than an ICE and that you get "more bang for your buck"? =Smidge=
That's a 'form'. And as a 'yank' I can assure you there are people who will not be able to mark it correctly. God only knows how they get to the polling places...
Considering the average voter in America is equally like to:
1) Fill out the form correctly 2) Fill in ALL the checkboxes 3) Leave it half filled out or completely blank (arguably overlaps with #1 in some cases) 4) Stab themselves with the pencil 4a)...and sue everyone in the room for not stopping them...making the vote process easier (and free of sharp edges/pointy ends) is almost a necessity. Of course, this brings up the question if they should be allowed to vote at all, because the system only works with an INFORMED and EDUCATED public, but I suppose it's all or nothing with this sort of thing.
Making the process electronic has advantages, but I agree it's too early to abandon the paper trail entirely. Building a trustworthy voting system is needed either way, and if the powers that be are determined to go electronic then let's make sure it's carefully scrutinized. =Smidge=
I will kill one passenger every minute until you open this door. Slowly, so you can hear their screams of agony through the locked door as I do it.
Dear Mr. Hijacker;
I can only assume that your intention is to use this plane as a weapon and crash it into something. Therefore, if I let you into the cockpit everyone on board will die anyway. Furthermore, you will likely do even more damage and kill many more people once you are in control of the plane. Therefore it is with a clear conscience that I accept the loss of life of my passengers and possibly my own, but save the lives of countless others. Go fuck yourself.
Regretfully yours; The Flight Crew
P.S. I'm calling ahead and the authorities will be waiting at the airport when we land. If you are still alive when they board the plane, you will probably wish you weren't. Thank you for flying with us.
The essance of the joke was (as you put it) contrasting two very different and very much opposing societies.
In the 'modern' incarnation, the essance is still there. Instead of directly comparing America with the USSR, it is now implied that the contrast is "Soviet Russia" and the rest of the world.
Of course, it's still not really funny unless ot makes sense in terms of how things were in Soviet Russia, but your rant was completely off base anyway. =Smidge=
More importantly, since the patent is a matter of public record, there isn't much secret about it. And why would a lawsuit expose the secret government project? It's about Lucent not paying royalties. Unless the 'secret' project is the ONLY means Lucent is profiting from it, there should still be evidence to take the case to court.
I have a better, more proven technology that will foil hijack attempts.
A lock.
This simple mechanical mechanism will permanently seal the door between the cockpit and the passenger compartments, thus preventing all access to the pilots while the plane is in transit. Best of all, it has thousands of years of successful field application behind it!
Alternatively, build a seperate, external door to access the cockpit and replace the internal door with a solid wall. You can push the wall back a bit and create a little suite in there so they have food and facilities during long flights. Problem solved! =Smidge=
Except that on rare occasions, Mules are fertile. Now what?
Also, although I am not aware of any attempts (much less successful ones) at breeding, say, a Great Dane with a Chihuahua, they are considered the same 'species'.
Then there are cases where two groups of critters do not mate, even though they are genetically compatable and share the same environment. I believe there was a recent article on a species of butterly or moth that was exhibiting such behavior... would these be the same species even though they want nothing to do with eachother?
The definition of 'species' is really damn arbitrary... =Smidge=
What it is more likely to imply is that many (maybe all?) proteins seem to share the same basic "rules" in their construction, therefore nature only had to come up with a few workable combinations, and everything else was developed from that.
Note that these "rules" are defined by the scientists based on observation and not necessarily actual, natural restrictions. A lot of creationists seem to fall into that trap when defining species - the concept of "species" is a completely man-made concept and actually rather arbitrary. Nature does not make any such distinction. So just be careful... they say there are "rules" but don't go thinking nature is somehow obliged to play be them:) =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
You do realise that GOTO command translated to a JMP isntruction, which any compiler produces in abundance anyway, right?
There is no performance issue at all. The ONLY reason 'goto' could be considered bad is that it becomes easy to write code that is difficult for humans to follow.
=Smidge=
No, but since you enter "your" phone number so Google can call "you" and hand off the connection to an advertiser.. well, "you" doesn't really have to be "you", does it?
I wonder how, if possible, they prevent such abuse?
Of course, you probably need to enter your area code (didn't try it). Figure they can now link your phone number to your IP and both of those to a generic physical location. A simple tracking cookie and they can to improve the relevance of thier searches based on that knowledge.
=Smidge=
What about the Pope? Wasn't he accused of defecating in forested areas?
=Smidge=
Google's "Product" is targeted ads (Though they do offer a handful of other services). If Google gets AIM, with millions of users, that is millions of eyeballs looking at their ads for extended periods of time. I wouldn't be surprized (but maybe a bit spooked) if they would run your messages through AdSense every so often.
Microsoft, on the other hand, well... apart from bolstering their MSN messenger network and traffic through their web services (not a source of revenue for them, really), I can't think of any direct benefit for them.
And remember that whoever gets AIM also gets ICQ.
=Smidge=
Are the IRC servers the bot connects to public? If so, has the staff of those networks been informed so that can prevent the zombies from connecting? (Presumably by blocking port 8080 and/or gline anyone joining #sony)
If the IRC servers are private, will the owners be investigated?
Can we be just a little proactive in containing this?
=Smidge=
Or better yet, validate all entered URLs by attempting to establish a connection to the server. If the URL is invalid then kick it back.
You wouldn't even need to do this with every URL added to the system. Spot-checking every 1 in 10 URLs or so will go a long way to preventing any sort of abuse.
=Smidge=
Most users tend to have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard... as opposed to one on the mouse and one on their joystick. :)
right-click+click is four separate actions: Right click, Visually locate menu item (May be to right or left of cursor depending on how close to the edge of the screen it is, and the list may have additional items depending on context so it may not even be in the same location), Move mouse to menu item, left click it. This all involves one hand so they MUST be done sequentially.
alt+click is two: Press and hold ATL, click. This involves two hands and can be done in parallel, at least as much as ALT is registered before the click.
=Smidge=
Smaller is better.
Imagine an object (say, you computer monitor) at some distance from an observer (you).
From the observer, draw two lines to either edge of the object to make a triangle. The angle between the two lines that meet at the observer would be the resolution angle. How imagine if that angle was fixed. If you move farther away from the object, it appears to get smaller and does not "fill" the view angle anymore. The object becomes blurred with the scenery around it.
The smaller that angle is, the farther away an object or feature can be and still be dicernable from the stuff around it. There are 1,296,000 arc-seconds in a full circle, or 3600 arc-seconds per degree! (1 degree = 60 arc-minutes = 60*60 arc-seconds)
=Smidge=
The highest resolution Hubble is capable of is 0.0072 arc-seconds.
... well, about 383,800 km
An arc-second is defined such that a 1 meter object will appear as 1 arc-second at a distance of 206,256 meters.
The distance from Hubble (~600km orbit) to the moon (~384,400km) is
So if Hubble produced an image with 1 pixel-per-arcsecond resolution, a pixel would be 1.86 kilometers. But the highest resolution is 0.0072 arc-seconds, or about 140 times better than that.
So the smallest object Hubble can see on the moon is 13 meters wide.
Neither the lander module or the rover are that big. Not even close. Good luck finding something that's less than a pixel wide!
=Smidge=
can have very high efficiencies is very different from are much more efficient. I agree that they are not bound by Carnot, and in theory can have excellent efficiencies, but do they?
A little searching tells me that the popular type of cell used in automotive applications is the PEM (Proton Exchange Membrane) type. These seem to peak out at just over 50% efficient. Not bad, but a well build IC engine can get into the upper 40's, so "much more efficient" becomes a point of contention.
Then consider that the PEMFC's output is electricity, which must be put through a motor to drive the vehicle. If we're generous and assume the motor is 90% efficient, you are now on par with a well built ICE powered vehicle...
This says nothing about the cost of the fuel. Even if you could "generate" the fuel yourself, the primary source of power is still fossil fuels. The only difference is the problem isn't in your back yard anymore. To add insult to injury, the best method to produce hydrogen (energy-in versus yield) is reforming of natural gas (methane) - as the home-refueling station in the article does. Guess what? You'd get more energy if you just burned the NG straight and you're still releasing CO2 into the atmosphere from the reforming process. At least they recover some energy for domestic hot water with their system, so it's not a total waste.
So again, what data is there to back the claim that this is "much more efficient" than an ICE and that you get "more bang for your buck"?
=Smidge=
Yeah but fuel cells are much more efficient than combustion, so you'll get more bang for your buck.
Got any data to back that up?
=Smidge=
Forget the tinfoil hats! Everything I print from now on will be on foil-backed paper!
=Smidge=
What a Novell idea!
=Smidge=
Simple: 0.1 Megabots.
=Smidge=
Maybe he means "what's that smell?" funny, not "haha" funny.
=Smidge=
I propose to conduct a study to find a link between headaches and Slashdot posts with way, way too many puns in them.
:)
Oy...
=Smidge=
The way I read it, the radiator is large enough to safely handle the load without any forced convection.
However, they mounted the heat pipe and radiator on a hinge so that, if you have a CPU fan, you can get an added benefit without adding another fan.
Failing that, you can rotate it to avoid other things in the case and get optimal orientation for natural convection/other drafts.
=Smidge=
That's a 'form'. And as a 'yank' I can assure you there are people who will not be able to mark it correctly. God only knows how they get to the polling places...
=Smidge=
Considering the average voter in America is equally like to:
...and sue everyone in the room for not stopping them ...making the vote process easier (and free of sharp edges/pointy ends) is almost a necessity. Of course, this brings up the question if they should be allowed to vote at all, because the system only works with an INFORMED and EDUCATED public, but I suppose it's all or nothing with this sort of thing.
1) Fill out the form correctly
2) Fill in ALL the checkboxes
3) Leave it half filled out or completely blank (arguably overlaps with #1 in some cases)
4) Stab themselves with the pencil
4a)
Making the process electronic has advantages, but I agree it's too early to abandon the paper trail entirely. Building a trustworthy voting system is needed either way, and if the powers that be are determined to go electronic then let's make sure it's carefully scrutinized.
=Smidge=
I will kill one passenger every minute until you open this door. Slowly, so you can hear their screams of agony through the locked door as I do it.
Dear Mr. Hijacker;
I can only assume that your intention is to use this plane as a weapon and crash it into something. Therefore, if I let you into the cockpit everyone on board will die anyway. Furthermore, you will likely do even more damage and kill many more people once you are in control of the plane. Therefore it is with a clear conscience that I accept the loss of life of my passengers and possibly my own, but save the lives of countless others. Go fuck yourself.
Regretfully yours;
The Flight Crew
P.S. I'm calling ahead and the authorities will be waiting at the airport when we land. If you are still alive when they board the plane, you will probably wish you weren't. Thank you for flying with us.
=Smidge=
Yakov, is that you?
The essance of the joke was (as you put it) contrasting two very different and very much opposing societies.
In the 'modern' incarnation, the essance is still there. Instead of directly comparing America with the USSR, it is now implied that the contrast is "Soviet Russia" and the rest of the world.
Of course, it's still not really funny unless ot makes sense in terms of how things were in Soviet Russia, but your rant was completely off base anyway.
=Smidge=
More importantly, since the patent is a matter of public record, there isn't much secret about it. And why would a lawsuit expose the secret government project? It's about Lucent not paying royalties. Unless the 'secret' project is the ONLY means Lucent is profiting from it, there should still be evidence to take the case to court.
=Smidge=
I have a better, more proven technology that will foil hijack attempts.
A lock.
This simple mechanical mechanism will permanently seal the door between the cockpit and the passenger compartments, thus preventing all access to the pilots while the plane is in transit. Best of all, it has thousands of years of successful field application behind it!
Alternatively, build a seperate, external door to access the cockpit and replace the internal door with a solid wall. You can push the wall back a bit and create a little suite in there so they have food and facilities during long flights. Problem solved!
=Smidge=
Except that on rare occasions, Mules are fertile. Now what?
Also, although I am not aware of any attempts (much less successful ones) at breeding, say, a Great Dane with a Chihuahua, they are considered the same 'species'.
Then there are cases where two groups of critters do not mate, even though they are genetically compatable and share the same environment. I believe there was a recent article on a species of butterly or moth that was exhibiting such behavior... would these be the same species even though they want nothing to do with eachother?
The definition of 'species' is really damn arbitrary...
=Smidge=
What it is more likely to imply is that many (maybe all?) proteins seem to share the same basic "rules" in their construction, therefore nature only had to come up with a few workable combinations, and everything else was developed from that.
:)
Note that these "rules" are defined by the scientists based on observation and not necessarily actual, natural restrictions. A lot of creationists seem to fall into that trap when defining species - the concept of "species" is a completely man-made concept and actually rather arbitrary. Nature does not make any such distinction. So just be careful... they say there are "rules" but don't go thinking nature is somehow obliged to play be them
=Smidge=