you can't have an element equal to or above 117. Or is it 147? Anybody remember or have a reference handy?
Not sure where you got that, but wikipedia seems to think that anything up to (and possibly beyond) 218 is theoretically possible. You may have been thinking of the fact that 118 is the last element that will fit on the periodic table without extending it. However, the periodic table is kind of irrelevant as far as what elements are theoretically possible since it describes only electron configurations and the limiting factor in the formation of new elements is nuclear configuration.
you are clearly misunderstanding what FUD is, you say:
he different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality
as the previous responses have indicated with their links to the definition, which I will repeat, FUD is a technical term for disinformation that is intended to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If it's grounded in reality, it is by definition not FUD. I hate these MOD PARENT X posts, but you just cannot get away with saying something that blatantly misinformed.
(there are various Open Source projects that fit this bill, but AFAIK, none of them are official or have any sort of critical mass).
I'll take this opportunity to promote my favorite open source 3d project: OGRE. It's really a very complete rendering system with a great set of plugins for Maya and 3dStudioMax to work with it's mesh format. The tutorials and documentation are also very well written. It, of course, does not do everything, but it does a lot of what I need it to do. It was written around D3D and D3DX functionality, but it also has an OpenGL backend which implements the same functionality. I don't know what 'critical mass' is, but regardless, I definitely think OGRE can probably do what you want it to.
Umm, that doesn't mean that that's the only difference between a virus and a worm. A worm typically does not need to be activated by the user. A standalone program that causes damage to the system (and may send copies of itself to other systems) but requires activation by a user is typically called a trojan
Not at all. Disney heavily lobbied for this extension to get it passed shortly before a bunch of Disney's IP passed into the public domain. These facts are well documented, for example here, and here, and a lot more places like those. Just because the laws in Europe had protection terms of that length doesn't mean that those terms make sense. And just because someone at the USPTO says that the extension "ensures that American creators will enjoy the same term of protection in Europe as is provided to their European counterparts." doesn't mean that that's the real reason the extension was passed.
The greatest risk of the Mono project is Microsoft stepping in and filing suit against the project for using its API w/o a license. Doesn't anyone else see this? Why was Mono ever started to begin with? All you Mono developers are doing is putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket!!!
Actually, the majority of the API is covered by the public EMCA specifications. Microsoft specifically made it impossible (very very difficult) to sue someone for that when they made the standards public. See the mono and microsoft faq for details. The fact that mono is perfectly legal doesn't change the fact that they may be putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket though.
[We ended up passing the exam, with a minor downcheck for not being more delicate about the severed limb with the patient - the hand was in the very back of the room. Apparently none of the other groups even thought to find the limb, and took the patient to the hospital immediately].
How many of the other groups passed? Should I move out of Pennsylvania?
Also, since there is so much matter in the universe, and it was all in a very tiny place just after the big bang, we know for sure that we were inside a black hole. But nothing can escape a black hole, not even light. So we live inside a black hole. A gigantic black hole. Why don't we see the universe collapsing? Simply because time is a continuous and in the black hole event horizon, time doesn't flow. If you stay at the horizon, your clock doesn't go forward nor backward. Therefore as time is continuous, time must go backwards in the black hole, because it goes forward outside the black hole.
To my knowledge, there are several mistakes in this description. However, I have never heard that reasoning before and after correcting these technical mistakes the reasoning as a whole may still be sound if it were phrased more accurately. First of all, matter can escape from a black hole, it gets radiated away in a thermal spectrum as described here.
Secondly, if you're sitting on the event horizon, you would observe your clock to tick normally, time does flow. An observer far removed from the black hole would indeed observe your clock as stopped however. Thirdly, I don't think that you can simply say that time "flows backward" inside a black hole. Although I have never taken a GR course, I am familiar with special reletivity and I imagine the frame of reference inside the event horizon to be somewhat analagous to a frame of reference travelling faster than light (at least when comparing them to a traditional inertial frame). There's nothing theoretically wrong with such a coordinate system, but there is simply no way you can transform values measured there into a traditional frame of reference without getting nonsense for an answer. In other words, if you were sitting inside the event horizon, there is simply no way to translate the ticks you observe on your clock to what a far removed observer would observe.
Actually, I'm a bit surprised that the big names haven't started looking at raytracing. Sure, it has a reputation for being slow, but graphics technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Combined with about 5 billion caching and approximation tricks, and the fact that ray tracing is a highly parallel operation, I'm thinking that we should already have games that are raytraced.
I'm not sure that's gonna happen. The fact of the matter is that current graphics hardware is fast approaching the point where raytracing will be irrelevant. The lighting algorithms that can be coded on GPUs will one day match the complexity of raytracers and you won't know the difference. The fact of the matter is that scan conversion is not actually mathematically inferior to raytracing as a rendering technique, it's just a way to quickly generate the first recursive step of the raytracer. That advantage isn't going to go away. In actuality, the end result will probably be something of a hybrid between raytracing and traditional scan conversion techniques and you won't really be able to identify it as one or the other.
initially posting the "source code" free to the community... rather than seeking gene patent protection... Unfortunately, they did not protect the code with an open source license, and now find themselves in a costly, distracting patent race
could someone explain this to me, how can any one patent something that I place in the public domain? Isn't my original release automatically prior art to their patent? Are they just hoping that it will be too costly for me to fight them? I guess I really know the answers to those questions, but I'm just in denial about how broken our patent system is.
Hence to a large approximation, "Slashdot should ban these moderators" should read "use your Meta-Mod powers to punish (eventually disallow) these moderators".
The meta-mod system is no less broken. Posts which are obviously trolls when you click the links, are are rightly moderated as trolls, but then get meta-modded as unfair. Obvoiusly this doesn't happen all the time, but the problem is that there is no way to force people to put a quality effort into moderating or meta-moderating. The majority of mods and meta-mods are just cruising through doing their thing without really thinking critically about what they're doing. Overall, the people who do take personal responsibility will be averaged out with the people who don't.
True, it's not the RIAA that's ripping the CDs, it's the pirates.
but that's not the point, the RIAA wants to distribute digital audio securely over the internet. The originals will be in this Super-MP3 format instead of on CDs.
When will slashdot start providing an automatic mirror for personal pages that it links to. The poor guys servers probably don't know what's hit them!!
never, didn't you know? slashdot is perfect the way it is.
My solution to this particular problem: Do not allow companies to hold patents. All patents must be held by an individual, and cannot be transferred. If an individual wants to license exclusive usage to a company that's fine (the company can sponsor the holders ligigation if needed) but the company cannot hold it.
That would be nice, except most research is not done by individuals. If a company sinks loads of money into R&D and ends up inventing a 100X better moustrap, who should get to hold the patent? They've certainly developed a novel and useful invention, yet no individual could claim to have invented the device. Under your system the new moustrap could not be patented. I think this is a bad thing because companies would have a greatly reduced incentive to do R&D, and as a result much less R&D would get done.
Slashdot Mirror
I think they're claiming they own the images, which are pretty clearly ripped right from cnn.com
you can't have an element equal to or above 117. Or is it 147? Anybody remember or have a reference handy?
Not sure where you got that, but wikipedia seems to think that anything up to (and possibly beyond) 218 is theoretically possible. You may have been thinking of the fact that 118 is the last element that will fit on the periodic table without extending it. However, the periodic table is kind of irrelevant as far as what elements are theoretically possible since it describes only electron configurations and the limiting factor in the formation of new elements is nuclear configuration.
this is the closest I could find, I guess you could embed this in a web page...
WebWindowJava
aren't you glad you brought it up?
you are clearly misunderstanding what FUD is, you say:
he different is that FUD - fear, uncertainty, doubt - can in fact be grounded in reality
as the previous responses have indicated with their links to the definition, which I will repeat, FUD is a technical term for disinformation that is intended to inspire fear, uncertainty, and doubt. If it's grounded in reality, it is by definition not FUD. I hate these MOD PARENT X posts, but you just cannot get away with saying something that blatantly misinformed.
Read the Cryptography Research Q&A for some examples.
That's the most polite RTFA I've ever seen
a) UMD has a heritage in MD. b) How likely is it that someone would want to/continue to game if the environment is rough enough to induce skipping?>
What, so now we're not even reading the post we're responding to? Man, how am I supposed to make fun of people?
(there are various Open Source projects that fit this bill, but AFAIK, none of them are official or have any sort of critical mass).
I'll take this opportunity to promote my favorite open source 3d project: OGRE. It's really a very complete rendering system with a great set of plugins for Maya and 3dStudioMax to work with it's mesh format. The tutorials and documentation are also very well written. It, of course, does not do everything, but it does a lot of what I need it to do. It was written around D3D and D3DX functionality, but it also has an OpenGL backend which implements the same functionality. I don't know what 'critical mass' is, but regardless, I definitely think OGRE can probably do what you want it to.
Umm, that doesn't mean that that's the only difference between a virus and a worm. A worm typically does not need to be activated by the user. A standalone program that causes damage to the system (and may send copies of itself to other systems) but requires activation by a user is typically called a trojan
Even better than that, xtraceroute implements RFC 1876 dating back to 1996.
from the article:
The North American box office took $1.03bn (562m) during June...
Spider-Man 2, which opened in the US on 1 July, also boosted monthly takings.
Does this mean that they counted the Spiderman2 opening in the $1 billion? That seems like a pretty easy way to break a record to me.
I think the mod was just looking for more moderation options, say perhaps: -1, Boring
Any relationship with Mickey was coincidence
Not at all. Disney heavily lobbied for this extension to get it passed shortly before a bunch of Disney's IP passed into the public domain. These facts are well documented, for example here, and here, and a lot more places like those. Just because the laws in Europe had protection terms of that length doesn't mean that those terms make sense. And just because someone at the USPTO says that the extension "ensures that American creators will enjoy the same term of protection in Europe as is provided to their European counterparts." doesn't mean that that's the real reason the extension was passed.
The greatest risk of the Mono project is Microsoft stepping in and filing suit against the project for using its API w/o a license. Doesn't anyone else see this? Why was Mono ever started to begin with? All you Mono developers are doing is putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket!!!
Actually, the majority of the API is covered by the public EMCA specifications. Microsoft specifically made it impossible (very very difficult) to sue someone for that when they made the standards public. See the mono and microsoft faq for details. The fact that mono is perfectly legal doesn't change the fact that they may be putting $$$ into microsoft's pocket though.
[We ended up passing the exam, with a minor downcheck for not being more delicate about the severed limb with the patient - the hand was in the very back of the room. Apparently none of the other groups even thought to find the limb, and took the patient to the hospital immediately].
How many of the other groups passed? Should I move out of Pennsylvania?
I'd like to see ".ogv" start popping up to signify Ogg video
That would still be really confusing, ".ogv" could just as easily stand for ogg vorbis as ogg video.
you must be new here, PJ did it, so of course it's important!!!
Also, since there is so much matter in the universe, and it was all in a very tiny place just after the big bang, we know for sure that we were inside a black hole. But nothing can escape a black hole, not even light. So we live inside a black hole. A gigantic black hole. Why don't we see the universe collapsing? Simply because time is a continuous and in the black hole event horizon, time doesn't flow. If you stay at the horizon, your clock doesn't go forward nor backward. Therefore as time is continuous, time must go backwards in the black hole, because it goes forward outside the black hole.
To my knowledge, there are several mistakes in this description. However, I have never heard that reasoning before and after correcting these technical mistakes the reasoning as a whole may still be sound if it were phrased more accurately. First of all, matter can escape from a black hole, it gets radiated away in a thermal spectrum as described here. Secondly, if you're sitting on the event horizon, you would observe your clock to tick normally, time does flow. An observer far removed from the black hole would indeed observe your clock as stopped however. Thirdly, I don't think that you can simply say that time "flows backward" inside a black hole. Although I have never taken a GR course, I am familiar with special reletivity and I imagine the frame of reference inside the event horizon to be somewhat analagous to a frame of reference travelling faster than light (at least when comparing them to a traditional inertial frame). There's nothing theoretically wrong with such a coordinate system, but there is simply no way you can transform values measured there into a traditional frame of reference without getting nonsense for an answer. In other words, if you were sitting inside the event horizon, there is simply no way to translate the ticks you observe on your clock to what a far removed observer would observe.
Actually, I'm a bit surprised that the big names haven't started looking at raytracing. Sure, it has a reputation for being slow, but graphics technology has grown by leaps and bounds. Combined with about 5 billion caching and approximation tricks, and the fact that ray tracing is a highly parallel operation, I'm thinking that we should already have games that are raytraced.
I'm not sure that's gonna happen. The fact of the matter is that current graphics hardware is fast approaching the point where raytracing will be irrelevant. The lighting algorithms that can be coded on GPUs will one day match the complexity of raytracers and you won't know the difference. The fact of the matter is that scan conversion is not actually mathematically inferior to raytracing as a rendering technique, it's just a way to quickly generate the first recursive step of the raytracer. That advantage isn't going to go away. In actuality, the end result will probably be something of a hybrid between raytracing and traditional scan conversion techniques and you won't really be able to identify it as one or the other.
initially posting the "source code" free to the community ... rather than seeking gene patent protection ... Unfortunately, they did not protect the code with an open source license, and now find themselves in a costly, distracting patent race
could someone explain this to me, how can any one patent something that I place in the public domain? Isn't my original release automatically prior art to their patent? Are they just hoping that it will be too costly for me to fight them? I guess I really know the answers to those questions, but I'm just in denial about how broken our patent system is.
ask and ye shall receive:
AVG antivirus
Hence to a large approximation, "Slashdot should ban these moderators" should read "use your Meta-Mod powers to punish (eventually disallow) these moderators".
The meta-mod system is no less broken. Posts which are obviously trolls when you click the links, are are rightly moderated as trolls, but then get meta-modded as unfair. Obvoiusly this doesn't happen all the time, but the problem is that there is no way to force people to put a quality effort into moderating or meta-moderating. The majority of mods and meta-mods are just cruising through doing their thing without really thinking critically about what they're doing. Overall, the people who do take personal responsibility will be averaged out with the people who don't.
You're new here, aren't you? The correct phrasing of that joke is: You must be new here...
True, it's not the RIAA that's ripping the CDs, it's the pirates.
but that's not the point, the RIAA wants to distribute digital audio securely over the internet. The originals will be in this Super-MP3 format instead of on CDs.
When will slashdot start providing an automatic mirror for personal pages that it links to. The poor guys servers probably don't know what's hit them!!
never, didn't you know? slashdot is perfect the way it is.
My solution to this particular problem: Do not allow companies to hold patents. All patents must be held by an individual, and cannot be transferred. If an individual wants to license exclusive usage to a company that's fine (the company can sponsor the holders ligigation if needed) but the company cannot hold it.
That would be nice, except most research is not done by individuals. If a company sinks loads of money into R&D and ends up inventing a 100X better moustrap, who should get to hold the patent? They've certainly developed a novel and useful invention, yet no individual could claim to have invented the device. Under your system the new moustrap could not be patented. I think this is a bad thing because companies would have a greatly reduced incentive to do R&D, and as a result much less R&D would get done.