...except, the promoters normally don't want you walking out with a high quality digital recording of the event. If you did, you would be less inclined to buy music from them.
FWIW, the Balkans had as much to do with WWII as with past conflicts. Of course, alignments in WWII reflected alignments in past conflicts, and so on continuing back
WWII isn't as important to the Balkan situation as you seem to suggest. The conflict is much older than that. You may not be aware, but WWI started as an indirect result of the conflict in the Balkans. The root cause of ethnic troubles in the Balkans is that Serbian culture is anathema to both the major religions who have historically dominated the region, christianity and islam. As a result, the major powers of the region have often tried unsuccessfully to wipe out the Serbs, and the Serbs have traditionally been discriminated against.
Re:If there is water on mars
on
Brine on Mars?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
..why did it not evaporate?
The same reason they are speculating that it can exist in liquid form at such low temperatures: the phase diagram of a solution can be radically different from the pure substance. In hand-waving terms, the attracion between the salt molecules and the water molecules increases the energy required to evaporate the liquid. This is why they are theorising that it is highly concentrated brine - because if it were not highly concentrated, it could not exist under the temperatures and pressures on Mars. I'm probably not being unrealistic in suggesting that the scientists have thought this all through before publishing the press release.
The idea that we could grow neurons on silicon is one of those big steps that looks to lead us into the Johnny Mnemonic world
No it's not. This involves interfacing with the neurons that are already there.
As these true neural webs become more complicated, it would be interesting to see if any kind of emergent behavior was evident
Given that large collections of neurons are well known to exhibit emergent behaviour, I think it would be more interesting if they didn't.
this could be the first step to replicating a nervous system without having to rely on fetuses for stem cells. It requires no human cloning and holds immense promise
Nerve cells harvested from an animal brain can be grown in the lab. There is no need for embryonic stem cells or cloning at all. Growing them on silicon does not make this easier - in fact they will probably grown better in a petri dish.
It would definitely be cool to have a couple of these chips implanted to enhance the base memory that we are kitted with at birth
Memory in the brain is not simple storage of information. It is unlikely that pluggin a DRAM into your brain would be able to enhance your memory.
No. You're right, growing neurons on silicon is nothing new, but the breakthrough here is that they have been able to stimulate the neurons into forming new connections, rather than just measuring the response of existing networks.
Is it me or are companies jumping way too far ahead and losing sight of some really cool things. So we hear every other week about how XCompany just broke the terrahertz chip barrier for what? They're still only offering gigahertz chips. YCompany is making a terrabyte disk the size of a peanut... So why aren't they selling it.
It takes time to bring the latest advances to market. Developing a new technology is only the start of the process. Once you have worked out how to build something, you then have to work out how to mass produce it, which is another problem completely. Then you have to work out how to make a profit out of selling it. Companies announce their latest technologies, because apart from the prestige, it encourages people to invest, which gives them more capital to spend on bringing the technology to maturity.
And before you make a comment about it, learn a little more about the topic.
If I hadn't made that comment, I would not have heard of temperament, alternative tuning systems, or a host of other interesting musical facts. If you want to read nothing but comments from experts, you're in the wrong forum.
That page is about rice, and only briefly mentions seagulls and alka-seltzer. Where I come from, the starlings and baking soda effect was widely touted. Several of my friends claimed to have seen it happen. I haven't personnally, so I accept that they could have been shitting me. But if it were true, I doubt that it would work with all birds.
It would be a science if it wasn't for the pesky fact that strings are analog, and thus slightly flawed
You tune the string by measuring the frequency, not the tension. This accounts for the flaws. A guitar is normally tuned manually by adjusting the strings until the beat frequency dissappears. This requires playing different notes, so an automatic system would be a little more complicated, but it's still just a signal processing problem.
But wasn't the whole purpose of Debian Unstable to be really up to date?
I think the solution is to have one, or maybe two more debian distros: Debian Volatile - kept roughly up to date with the other main distros, and Debian Explosive - a cutting edge distro which might crash sometimes.
This highlights one of the great advantages of debian - by the time they're ready to upgrade to version 4.4, all this licensing fiasco will be gone and forgotten.
to them it is such and art and about what they hear
Tuning is a science, not an art. Either the guitar is in tune, or it's not. If it's not, it sounds wrong. An out of tune guitar sounds bad, period. The only issue I can see, is if the tuning mechanism affects the tone, but this is unlikely, if they've designed it properly.
Can a computer really tune to the level that they can hear it needs to be tuned to for them?
I'll wager a computer can tune a lot better than most guitarists.
Say that the period of unemployment was actually you being a freelance IT consultant
Even better, without actually claiming anything directly, hint that you were employed as a freelance CIA operative doing top secret undercover work which didn't officially exist, and even if it did, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. They'll never be able to prove otherwise. Or even just answer every question with "I'm not at liberty do discuss that part of my life".
the government should take a stand and finance basic science for its own sake
You're forgetting that the US has a dwindling shuttle fleet. Apart from the cost and safety arguments, they're probably considering whether the scientific grounds outweigh the risks of losing manned access to space for strategic reasons.
If the problem is with programs which link with the XFree86 code, doesn't this mean that the libraries are the problem, not the server? IANAE, but presumably a client compiled with any implementation of the client libs will work with any implementation of the server. So why not just ditch the XFree86 libs in favour of the freedesktop xlibs, and use the XFree86 server. This way you still get the hardware support of XFree86, but no license compatability problems. The freedesktop xlibs are supposed to be mature enough, appart from still requiring XFree86 to build them, but this can't be a big problem to solve, surely.
According to the gentoo list linked in the article, there is an effort to write a compatability layer for XFree86 drivers underway, so this should at least make it useable, if a little clunky. In any case, all the necessary information for writing drivers should be in the XFree drivers, so porting them should be a lot easier than writing drivers from scratch for someone who understands the code. I think it's more a matter of mindshare than anything else.
This could be a good thing. If this continues to be a problem, it could drive a lot of people to the freedesktop.org XServer implementation. This looks like it will come to be a much better implementation anyway, and will almost certainly develop faster in the future, given the same resources as XFree86. If a considerable number of developers/distributions worked on getting the XServer up to speed, with proper driver support, it would probably be better for everyone.
Remember that melting the north polar ice cap will not raise sea level
True, but rising sea level is only one of the problems associated with the green house effect. Too much fresh water flowing from the north pole could stop the gulf stream which will have catastrophic effects on the climate throughout the world, and start a new ice age in Europe and north America. Similarly, the raising of atmospheric temperature will have an unpredictable effect on weather everywhere, and could cause severe economic disruption worldwide.
So if you want to make one, DON'T, help fix the bugs on the major ones
You seem to think it is your place to tell me how I should spend my free time. Does this mean you are prepared to pay me to work on Knoppix or MandrakeMove?
Slashdot Mirror
Great idea! If everyone were to turn up with a model rocket, we could strap them all to a chair, and blast someone into orbit. It's bound to work.
...except, the promoters normally don't want you walking out with a high quality digital recording of the event. If you did, you would be less inclined to buy music from them.
WWII isn't as important to the Balkan situation as you seem to suggest. The conflict is much older than that. You may not be aware, but WWI started as an indirect result of the conflict in the Balkans. The root cause of ethnic troubles in the Balkans is that Serbian culture is anathema to both the major religions who have historically dominated the region, christianity and islam. As a result, the major powers of the region have often tried unsuccessfully to wipe out the Serbs, and the Serbs have traditionally been discriminated against.
The same reason they are speculating that it can exist in liquid form at such low temperatures: the phase diagram of a solution can be radically different from the pure substance. In hand-waving terms, the attracion between the salt molecules and the water molecules increases the energy required to evaporate the liquid. This is why they are theorising that it is highly concentrated brine - because if it were not highly concentrated, it could not exist under the temperatures and pressures on Mars. I'm probably not being unrealistic in suggesting that the scientists have thought this all through before publishing the press release.
Sadly, not enough to make the conceptual leap from hamster-controlled-MIDI to MIDI-controlled-hamsters.
No it's not
No it's not. This involves interfacing with the neurons that are already there.
As these true neural webs become more complicated, it would be interesting to see if any kind of emergent behavior was evident
Given that large collections of neurons are well known to exhibit emergent behaviour, I think it would be more interesting if they didn't.
this could be the first step to replicating a nervous system without having to rely on fetuses for stem cells. It requires no human cloning and holds immense promise
Nerve cells harvested from an animal brain can be grown in the lab. There is no need for embryonic stem cells or cloning at all. Growing them on silicon does not make this easier - in fact they will probably grown better in a petri dish.
It would definitely be cool to have a couple of these chips implanted to enhance the base memory that we are kitted with at birth
Memory in the brain is not simple storage of information. It is unlikely that pluggin a DRAM into your brain would be able to enhance your memory.
No. You're right, growing neurons on silicon is nothing new, but the breakthrough here is that they have been able to stimulate the neurons into forming new connections, rather than just measuring the response of existing networks.
It takes time to bring the latest advances to market. Developing a new technology is only the start of the process. Once you have worked out how to build something, you then have to work out how to mass produce it, which is another problem completely. Then you have to work out how to make a profit out of selling it. Companies announce their latest technologies, because apart from the prestige, it encourages people to invest, which gives them more capital to spend on bringing the technology to maturity.
If I hadn't made that comment, I would not have heard of temperament, alternative tuning systems, or a host of other interesting musical facts. If you want to read nothing but comments from experts, you're in the wrong forum.
That page is about rice, and only briefly mentions seagulls and alka-seltzer. Where I come from, the starlings and baking soda effect was widely touted. Several of my friends claimed to have seen it happen. I haven't personnally, so I accept that they could have been shitting me. But if it were true, I doubt that it would work with all birds.
You tune the string by measuring the frequency, not the tension. This accounts for the flaws. A guitar is normally tuned manually by adjusting the strings until the beat frequency dissappears. This requires playing different notes, so an automatic system would be a little more complicated, but it's still just a signal processing problem.
I think the solution is to have one, or maybe two more debian distros: Debian Volatile - kept roughly up to date with the other main distros, and Debian Explosive - a cutting edge distro which might crash sometimes.
This highlights one of the great advantages of debian - by the time they're ready to upgrade to version 4.4, all this licensing fiasco will be gone and forgotten.
That would bring new meaning to the term "Chorded Keyboard".
Tuning is a science, not an art. Either the guitar is in tune, or it's not. If it's not, it sounds wrong. An out of tune guitar sounds bad, period. The only issue I can see, is if the tuning mechanism affects the tone, but this is unlikely, if they've designed it properly.
Can a computer really tune to the level that they can hear it needs to be tuned to for them?
I'll wager a computer can tune a lot better than most guitarists.
Does it run linux? It would be cool to be able to check your email in the middle of a gig by running mutt on the LCD display.
Even better, without actually claiming anything directly, hint that you were employed as a freelance CIA operative doing top secret undercover work which didn't officially exist, and even if it did, you wouldn't be able to talk about it. They'll never be able to prove otherwise. Or even just answer every question with "I'm not at liberty do discuss that part of my life".
You're forgetting that the US has a dwindling shuttle fleet. Apart from the cost and safety arguments, they're probably considering whether the scientific grounds outweigh the risks of losing manned access to space for strategic reasons.
Why don't they just sell it on e-bay?
If the problem is with programs which link with the XFree86 code, doesn't this mean that the libraries are the problem, not the server? IANAE, but presumably a client compiled with any implementation of the client libs will work with any implementation of the server. So why not just ditch the XFree86 libs in favour of the freedesktop xlibs, and use the XFree86 server. This way you still get the hardware support of XFree86, but no license compatability problems. The freedesktop xlibs are supposed to be mature enough, appart from still requiring XFree86 to build them, but this can't be a big problem to solve, surely.
According to the gentoo list linked in the article, there is an effort to write a compatability layer for XFree86 drivers underway, so this should at least make it useable, if a little clunky. In any case, all the necessary information for writing drivers should be in the XFree drivers, so porting them should be a lot easier than writing drivers from scratch for someone who understands the code. I think it's more a matter of mindshare than anything else.
This could be a good thing. If this continues to be a problem, it could drive a lot of people to the freedesktop.org XServer implementation. This looks like it will come to be a much better implementation anyway, and will almost certainly develop faster in the future, given the same resources as XFree86. If a considerable number of developers/distributions worked on getting the XServer up to speed, with proper driver support, it would probably be better for everyone.
True, but rising sea level is only one of the problems associated with the green house effect. Too much fresh water flowing from the north pole could stop the gulf stream which will have catastrophic effects on the climate throughout the world, and start a new ice age in Europe and north America. Similarly, the raising of atmospheric temperature will have an unpredictable effect on weather everywhere, and could cause severe economic disruption worldwide.
You seem to think it is your place to tell me how I should spend my free time. Does this mean you are prepared to pay me to work on Knoppix or MandrakeMove?