At a fundamental level the physical world can be described with chemistry (atoms, physics etc) - and since you can't patent atoms (as far as I know) anything made from them can't be patented - which is everything patented including software because its just bits of atoms recorded in magnetic medium which can be described using chemistry.
There's a huge difference between "can be described by" and "is". There's a difference between "composed from" and "is".
You can't patent an atom, but a wheel isn't an atom, it is made from atoms. Atoms are the elements of the periodic table, and that's it. A thing built with atoms isn't called an atom. This isn't like math. Math is not just the axioms and basic operators. Math is everything you can construct using those axioms and operators no matter how complex. Two atoms together is a molecule, no longer just an atom. Two pieces of math together is still math.
And while the motion of a thrown ball can be described through Newton's Laws by a parabola, a thrown ball isn't Newton's Laws and physics equations. Software is, literally, a symbolic representation of math. It's not described by math, it describes math. In a machine-readable format, but that makes no difference it just means that today our computers, the thing that execute the algorithms described, are machines and not people.
There's no reductionism going on whatsoever. The most complex piece of software in existence does not need to be reduced in any way to call it math. Because that's literally what it is. In the exact same way that "a^2 + b^2 = c^2" is literally math, as in abstract symbols representing mathematical concepts, in the same way that the iterative algorithm of Newton's Method is math, every piece of software is by itself math and nothing more.
Knuth is 100% right here, no surprise since this isn't a tough one. Software is math. A falling weight isn't math; software that describes how to calculate its position at a particular point in time is. Get it?
I have yet to see anyone using an LCD that didn't keep it the same distance from their face as a CRT and just have a whole lot of wasted space behind it.
Meaning everyone you know either puts their monitor way too close to their face, uses tiny CRTs, or has a desk more than 4 feet deep. It would be physically impossible to place a 21" CRT so that its screen is more than a foot away from the edge of the desk in most office or home environments I've worked/lived in. Physically. Impossible. If that's cool with you and you wouldn't like to move the screen back, that's great for you. Enjoy your strained vision.
Since I don't know anyone who hasn't recovered a ton of desk space by switching to LCDs -- it is in fact one of the most often praised features -- I can't believe you can't even conceive of how its possible. I've personally experienced it, I know its true that you can, your lack of this experience is simply that. That the submitter was so concerned with conserving desk space from being used to CRTs just shows that their experience is more like mine than yours.
And how the hell does the crt's "bulk" take up FIFTY PERCENT of your usable desk space?
You're putting "bulk" in quotes? You're kidding me.
For a home office, a desk that is 4' wide by 2' deep is fairly typical. A 21" CRT, equal in viewing area to a 20" LCD, is roughly 20x20x20", and none of the space it occupies is usable desk space. Okay 400 in^2 is less than half of 1152 in^2, but it's close and a ton of desk space to give up. Replace it with a 20x20x3" LCD, and you've regained 340 square inches. If you have an LCD with a decent stand, then the space under it is still usable and you're really only losing maybe 4x2" of desk space. It's no comparison! I've had smaller work desks, and even now I have a much bigger desk, but not any deeper and it's against a wall, so, yeah, CRTs would be really really cramped. I used to have them! I know!
I can't think of anything smaller than my KEYBOARD ALONE that would be as cramped as you describe with a CRT but somehow magically fine with an LCD that has the same vertical and horizontal footprint.
Gee I think I see the problem -- you only notice two dimensions when monitors are 3D objects! If it isn't obvious how your desk could be less cramped with a device 3" deep vs one that is 20" deep then there's really no way I can help you, Mr. Flatlander. But if you can't get your mind around this magical 3rd dimension, you could just take my word for it that when I replaced my work CRT with LCDs I gained a ton of space and comfort.
Seriously, I'm glad you are happy with CRTs and don't find any personal benefit to the reduced size of LCDs. I think you're a crack baby, but hey live and let live I say. In the meantime, I and the rest of the market are going to be buying LCDs exactly because their smaller dimensions are very, very appealing.
The solution to the problem you bring up is to deal with the problem, not the technology that brings the problem to a head. If we have a problem with health care in this country, then deal with the issue. Don't go "ABC is a bad technology and should not be pursued". That is foolish.
That seems wise. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and all. Technology by itself is neutral, people make it good or bad through how they use it.
Now, if you could just clear something up for me. Are you saying we should implement this technology before or after we've fixed the problem of human nature, greed, and power-lust?
In the one case, 'technology is neutral' is a moot point because we'll be subject to the abuses caused by the people using it as a matter of course, and in either case it's going to be a long wait until the problem gets solved.
This would be a great thing for the society of Star Trek. For the institutions of the societies of today, the potential downsides are enormous, and the upside of potentially helping a few people who suffer spontaneous heart attack out of reach of anyone who could make a phone call on their behalf and aren't already aware that they are in a risk group is comparatively feeble.
Yes technology isn't "bad" outside of the context of people using it. Yet you can never escape and thus can never ignore that context. This technology is bad as long as the societal context it would be deployed in results in it being bad, and if you have any idea how to change that in my lifetime, I'd like to hear it much more than a defense of technology as neutral.
Yes, he has clearly been educated stupid. I however can see the obvious reality of the simultaneous four-fold Info-Cube. GOOG can only hide, not undo, that which is already the only Truth. And it is reality, friend! Software need not be empowered, it need only be undefeatured. All information and thus all web pages are already Cubic!
1) Extremely high attach-rate. Xbox 360 players play their consoles a *lot* and buy a *lot* of games. Impressively and surprisingly so, in fact. 2) Its ability to go head-to-head against the Playstation 3 and make an extremely good showing. (I'm not going to fall into the trap of saying one company "wins" the market, but even the most rabid fan has to admit the Xbox 360 is doing much better against the Sony behemoth than anybody expected.)
The last data I saw (which is from months ago, but I'm not concerned about tracking trends on a constant basis) showed the Wii about 1 game/console behind Xbox on attach rate and that's not counting Wii Sports in the markets where it is bundled. Which isn't to say the Xbox attach rate isn't good, obviously it is very good and MS is very happy.
The 360vsPS3 battle I think was decided as much by Sony's screw ups as anything. Plus a year head start to market never hurts which the Sony fanboys seemed to forget about when they were assuming the PS3 would have the same success as the last two consoles. MS did not forget that, and getting the 360 out early was a successful strategy, so it's not like their success was a fortunate accident due solely to Sony tripping up. Just, Goliath turned out to be hyped.
I do agree that it's hard to use the Xbox360 in support of the GP's thesis. They made a good console with a good strategy behind it. Heh, I've always thought MS' hardware were their best products, even as they denied being a hardware company.:)
So far, cooperation has done for space exploration what icebergs did for the Titanic.
Made it famous? The Titanic would just be a footnote, a big ocean liner, had it not been for that iceberg. Here's hoping the ISS doesn't become a household name many decades from now for similar reasons!
But you know, I can't wait for the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a stowaway on a Soyuz capsule. I might even sit through the thing for the dramatic scene at the end where his lifeless body slips into the blackness of space, just so I can cheer.
Do you keep your LCD further away from you than you would a crt?
I've never had a CRT and a desk to put it on where the distance from me to the screen wasn't defined by how deep the CRT was, rather than optimal viewing distance. So yes I put my LCD further away from me than I would a ctr, because I can.
Do you put things behind your LCD?
No, I put things under and in front of my LCD in the space that would otherwise be occupied by a CRT's massive bulk. For example in my cube right now, I've got two 20" LCD monitors at a comfortable view distance with ample room in front and under for my keyboard and post its and reference books and my mp3 player and so on when a single equivalent CRT would leave room for nothing but the keyboard, much less a second monitor. In my study at home a CRT would reduce my usable desk space by 50% and push the screen much closer to my face than is comfortable. And I know this because in both cases that used to be the situation. Buying LCDs was a breath of fresh air!
If the answer to those is "no" then you could use a 100lb trinitron and you wouldn't be "killing any space" more than you would with a 5lb LCD.
I'm trying to imagine situations where the answer would be "no", since it has never been for me or anyone around me, and all I can come up with is either a big desk in the middle of your big office so the CRT's ass can hang off the end, or a desk so big that giving up the footprint for a big ass CRT is inconsequential. Bully for you if that's the case, but it isn't for most of us, either at home or at work.
The very fact that they were at all concerned with desk space enough to even bring it up means the answers aren't "no". If desk space is a concern worth even mentioning, then the bulk of a CRT is a big downside. That is a very valid argument.
If you want a decent resolution you're not really going to find it without getting a CRT or a VERY expensive LCD. The widescreen virus has infected everyone and shutdown their brains and now people think that they're better off with lower resolutions that old giant CRTs had in 1998.
I think 1600x1200 is decent, and those LCDs are quite affordable. Widescreen LCDs with commensurate resolution aren't really that expensive. CRTs do still have technological advantages, but many people are better off with an LCD because you can get something whose CRT equivalent would be ludicrously large.
A: The mod system is designed to improve the Slashdot experience by fighting abuse and promoting behavior that makes the Slashdot experience better.
Which is why, long ago, when Taco insisted that a particular off-topic post deserved to be moderated as such despite being the most informative and interesting post in the thread (though decidedly off-topic), I suggested that if he felt that way he should add a (+1, Off-Topic) mod.
Of course that's not really necessary if you view the moderation system as you do.
Cool! Okay, so is it valid of me to equate an irreversible manipulation with a write/read of storage, and then equating that with the minimum energy of the storage mechanism itself? In a classical system of course.
And are there theoretical limits on the amount of information in a photon? Does it depend on the photon's energy?
Oh thats an easy one... it's 0 - the mass of the least massive particle(s)
Except those massless particles would have an energy that is equivalent to a certain amount of rest energy aka mass. So, assuming massive particles (and not necessarily restricted to those known), what would be the minimum mass? It's the same answer as minimum energy, just different units.
The least energy is just as easy if you understand anything of quantum mechanics, not information theory: the least energy you can have a a quanta, so the least energy is Plank's Constant
That's not the same as the least amount of energy needed to manipulate a bit, which is the Landauer Limit. This is in fact an Information Theory question (though it and QM are closely related).
For example, it seems to me like a "full" drive seems to physically weigh more than a blank one, sort of like a full battery is noticeably heavier than an empty one.
There's no way this minimum mass would be qualitatively noticeable even in a petabyte drive... and I don't think whether the drive is "full" makes a difference... the zeroes and ones on it are still information even if they don't represent 'used' portions of the disk.
The fact that you can zerg Van or Drek proves it's not DotA.
You couldn't zerg the bosses in the original Alterac Valley which is what they were talking about... at least, I'd never seen it done, and if it was possible to do then it would have been done rather than have the games drag out for 8+ hours like they did, with no additional reward.
Restrictive terrain, swarms of aggressive and advancing NPCs, static defenses... that's DotA. WoW hasn't done it yet.
That was AV too... not that this means it was good. I mean, it was cool to fight through lines of NPCs and enemy PCs, building up and coordinating assaults by your own NPCs, summoning the Uber NPCs, and all that jazz. But it was a novelty. The first time you'd summoned all the npcs and run the gauntlet and spent 6 hours pushing a couple graveyards towards the enemy base, only to have a counter offensive or defensive slip-up push you back to a stalemate in the center of the map, and you were ready to quit and never play again.
It's a shame... they should learn from DotA and others and put a battleground like that back in.
Thinking about the decrease in mass of a petabyte got me thinking about Information Theory and the minimum energy required to store a bit. Or rather, to irreversibly manipulate one bit of information, which I think describes the act of writing to any kind of RAM (disk or otherwise). If I extrapolate that to also mean a mass whose rest energy is sufficient to manipulate a bit, that could give the theoretical minimum mass for a bit of storage. I don't actually know enough information theory to know that value, or even if the comparison from energy of information manipulation to mass of storage is valid, but it struck me as interesting and maybe somebody knows? What's the minimum mass of a petabyte?
If you actually want to make an impact on bird deaths, spay and neuter your cats, keep them indoors, and stop supporting the construction of glass-curtained buildings. Both kill far more birds than wind farms ever will.
Hell, even Altamont Pass killed less birds than a typical 3-story administration building that would be built to manage any power generation station.
However, while as a bird watcher I'm not concerned about wind farms effects on birds, I've heard that things are much worse with respect to bats.
I still find using this as an argument against wind farms to be grasping at straws, and rarely does it ring of sincerity as opposed to just finding any excuse for maintaining the status quo.
WTF does MPG have to do with road wear?! It doesn't change your destination, so it doesn't change how far you drive, it just means you burn less fuel getting there.
Basically because overcoming the political obstacles to promoting nuclear power would be an effort many times more difficult than the passage of this bill, so including nuclear power in the bill would mean it wouldn't get passed at all.
It's stupid from our pragmatist "just do the right thing" perspective, since nuclear fission is our best chance to get off fossil fuels in the near-ish term, but nevertheless completely understandable. Between "ZOMG proliferation!" conservatives and "ZOMG nuclear waste(breeder huh?)!" liberals and "ZOMG NIMBY!" everyone it's going to be hard to find anyone who wants to fight that fight.:(
Yeah well, what if you make it a habit to buy your gas across state lines? No system is foolproof.
Not to mention that it's perfectly possible to cross entire states (especially in the eastern half of the country) without having to stop for gas. Oh noes!
the Prius drivers have more of an impact on the roads because they can drive much further (and cause much more wear on the roads) than the Hummer drivers.
Nooooo, the Hummer drivers can drive just as far, they just need to stop for gas more frequently. How far either drives depends on where the destination is, not per-tank range. Who says things like "I was going to drive from Cincinnati to Chicago, but I would have to stop for gas so instead I'm only going to Gary, Indiana"?
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At a fundamental level the physical world can be described with chemistry (atoms, physics etc) - and since you can't patent atoms (as far as I know) anything made from them can't be patented - which is everything patented including software because its just bits of atoms recorded in magnetic medium which can be described using chemistry.
There's a huge difference between "can be described by" and "is". There's a difference between "composed from" and "is".
You can't patent an atom, but a wheel isn't an atom, it is made from atoms. Atoms are the elements of the periodic table, and that's it. A thing built with atoms isn't called an atom. This isn't like math. Math is not just the axioms and basic operators. Math is everything you can construct using those axioms and operators no matter how complex. Two atoms together is a molecule, no longer just an atom. Two pieces of math together is still math.
And while the motion of a thrown ball can be described through Newton's Laws by a parabola, a thrown ball isn't Newton's Laws and physics equations. Software is, literally, a symbolic representation of math. It's not described by math, it describes math. In a machine-readable format, but that makes no difference it just means that today our computers, the thing that execute the algorithms described, are machines and not people.
There's no reductionism going on whatsoever. The most complex piece of software in existence does not need to be reduced in any way to call it math. Because that's literally what it is. In the exact same way that "a^2 + b^2 = c^2" is literally math, as in abstract symbols representing mathematical concepts, in the same way that the iterative algorithm of Newton's Method is math, every piece of software is by itself math and nothing more.
Knuth is 100% right here, no surprise since this isn't a tough one. Software is math. A falling weight isn't math; software that describes how to calculate its position at a particular point in time is. Get it?
I have yet to see anyone using an LCD that didn't keep it the same distance from their face as a CRT and just have a whole lot of wasted space behind it.
Meaning everyone you know either puts their monitor way too close to their face, uses tiny CRTs, or has a desk more than 4 feet deep. It would be physically impossible to place a 21" CRT so that its screen is more than a foot away from the edge of the desk in most office or home environments I've worked/lived in. Physically. Impossible. If that's cool with you and you wouldn't like to move the screen back, that's great for you. Enjoy your strained vision.
Since I don't know anyone who hasn't recovered a ton of desk space by switching to LCDs -- it is in fact one of the most often praised features -- I can't believe you can't even conceive of how its possible. I've personally experienced it, I know its true that you can, your lack of this experience is simply that. That the submitter was so concerned with conserving desk space from being used to CRTs just shows that their experience is more like mine than yours.
And how the hell does the crt's "bulk" take up FIFTY PERCENT of your usable desk space?
You're putting "bulk" in quotes? You're kidding me.
For a home office, a desk that is 4' wide by 2' deep is fairly typical. A 21" CRT, equal in viewing area to a 20" LCD, is roughly 20x20x20", and none of the space it occupies is usable desk space. Okay 400 in^2 is less than half of 1152 in^2, but it's close and a ton of desk space to give up. Replace it with a 20x20x3" LCD, and you've regained 340 square inches. If you have an LCD with a decent stand, then the space under it is still usable and you're really only losing maybe 4x2" of desk space. It's no comparison! I've had smaller work desks, and even now I have a much bigger desk, but not any deeper and it's against a wall, so, yeah, CRTs would be really really cramped. I used to have them! I know!
I can't think of anything smaller than my KEYBOARD ALONE that would be as cramped as you describe with a CRT but somehow magically fine with an LCD that has the same vertical and horizontal footprint.
Gee I think I see the problem -- you only notice two dimensions when monitors are 3D objects! If it isn't obvious how your desk could be less cramped with a device 3" deep vs one that is 20" deep then there's really no way I can help you, Mr. Flatlander. But if you can't get your mind around this magical 3rd dimension, you could just take my word for it that when I replaced my work CRT with LCDs I gained a ton of space and comfort.
Seriously, I'm glad you are happy with CRTs and don't find any personal benefit to the reduced size of LCDs. I think you're a crack baby, but hey live and let live I say. In the meantime, I and the rest of the market are going to be buying LCDs exactly because their smaller dimensions are very, very appealing.
The solution to the problem you bring up is to deal with the problem, not the technology that brings the problem to a head. If we have a problem with health care in this country, then deal with the issue. Don't go "ABC is a bad technology and should not be pursued". That is foolish.
That seems wise. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater and all. Technology by itself is neutral, people make it good or bad through how they use it.
Now, if you could just clear something up for me. Are you saying we should implement this technology before or after we've fixed the problem of human nature, greed, and power-lust?
In the one case, 'technology is neutral' is a moot point because we'll be subject to the abuses caused by the people using it as a matter of course, and in either case it's going to be a long wait until the problem gets solved.
This would be a great thing for the society of Star Trek. For the institutions of the societies of today, the potential downsides are enormous, and the upside of potentially helping a few people who suffer spontaneous heart attack out of reach of anyone who could make a phone call on their behalf and aren't already aware that they are in a risk group is comparatively feeble.
Yes technology isn't "bad" outside of the context of people using it. Yet you can never escape and thus can never ignore that context. This technology is bad as long as the societal context it would be deployed in results in it being bad, and if you have any idea how to change that in my lifetime, I'd like to hear it much more than a defense of technology as neutral.
"Trying sir, but we need to get to orbit first."
That whole thing was awesome, but that bit really made me LOL. Glad you remembered to take out Burke, btw. :)
Yes, he has clearly been educated stupid. I however can see the obvious reality of the simultaneous four-fold Info-Cube. GOOG can only hide, not undo, that which is already the only Truth. And it is reality, friend! Software need not be empowered, it need only be undefeatured. All information and thus all web pages are already Cubic!
1) Extremely high attach-rate. Xbox 360 players play their consoles a *lot* and buy a *lot* of games. Impressively and surprisingly so, in fact.
2) Its ability to go head-to-head against the Playstation 3 and make an extremely good showing. (I'm not going to fall into the trap of saying one company "wins" the market, but even the most rabid fan has to admit the Xbox 360 is doing much better against the Sony behemoth than anybody expected.)
The last data I saw (which is from months ago, but I'm not concerned about tracking trends on a constant basis) showed the Wii about 1 game/console behind Xbox on attach rate and that's not counting Wii Sports in the markets where it is bundled. Which isn't to say the Xbox attach rate isn't good, obviously it is very good and MS is very happy.
The 360vsPS3 battle I think was decided as much by Sony's screw ups as anything. Plus a year head start to market never hurts which the Sony fanboys seemed to forget about when they were assuming the PS3 would have the same success as the last two consoles. MS did not forget that, and getting the 360 out early was a successful strategy, so it's not like their success was a fortunate accident due solely to Sony tripping up. Just, Goliath turned out to be hyped.
I do agree that it's hard to use the Xbox360 in support of the GP's thesis. They made a good console with a good strategy behind it. Heh, I've always thought MS' hardware were their best products, even as they denied being a hardware company. :)
So far, cooperation has done for space exploration what icebergs did for the Titanic.
Made it famous? The Titanic would just be a footnote, a big ocean liner, had it not been for that iceberg. Here's hoping the ISS doesn't become a household name many decades from now for similar reasons!
But you know, I can't wait for the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a stowaway on a Soyuz capsule. I might even sit through the thing for the dramatic scene at the end where his lifeless body slips into the blackness of space, just so I can cheer.
Maybe because he's worried the answer involves kneepads?
Do you keep your LCD further away from you than you would a crt?
I've never had a CRT and a desk to put it on where the distance from me to the screen wasn't defined by how deep the CRT was, rather than optimal viewing distance. So yes I put my LCD further away from me than I would a ctr, because I can.
Do you put things behind your LCD?
No, I put things under and in front of my LCD in the space that would otherwise be occupied by a CRT's massive bulk. For example in my cube right now, I've got two 20" LCD monitors at a comfortable view distance with ample room in front and under for my keyboard and post its and reference books and my mp3 player and so on when a single equivalent CRT would leave room for nothing but the keyboard, much less a second monitor. In my study at home a CRT would reduce my usable desk space by 50% and push the screen much closer to my face than is comfortable. And I know this because in both cases that used to be the situation. Buying LCDs was a breath of fresh air!
If the answer to those is "no" then you could use a 100lb trinitron and you wouldn't be "killing any space" more than you would with a 5lb LCD.
I'm trying to imagine situations where the answer would be "no", since it has never been for me or anyone around me, and all I can come up with is either a big desk in the middle of your big office so the CRT's ass can hang off the end, or a desk so big that giving up the footprint for a big ass CRT is inconsequential. Bully for you if that's the case, but it isn't for most of us, either at home or at work.
The very fact that they were at all concerned with desk space enough to even bring it up means the answers aren't "no". If desk space is a concern worth even mentioning, then the bulk of a CRT is a big downside. That is a very valid argument.
If you want a decent resolution you're not really going to find it without getting a CRT or a VERY expensive LCD. The widescreen virus has infected everyone and shutdown their brains and now people think that they're better off with lower resolutions that old giant CRTs had in 1998.
I think 1600x1200 is decent, and those LCDs are quite affordable. Widescreen LCDs with commensurate resolution aren't really that expensive. CRTs do still have technological advantages, but many people are better off with an LCD because you can get something whose CRT equivalent would be ludicrously large.
A: The mod system is designed to improve the Slashdot experience by fighting abuse and promoting behavior that makes the Slashdot experience better.
Which is why, long ago, when Taco insisted that a particular off-topic post deserved to be moderated as such despite being the most informative and interesting post in the thread (though decidedly off-topic), I suggested that if he felt that way he should add a (+1, Off-Topic) mod.
Of course that's not really necessary if you view the moderation system as you do.
ditto thx
Cool! Okay, so is it valid of me to equate an irreversible manipulation with a write/read of storage, and then equating that with the minimum energy of the storage mechanism itself? In a classical system of course.
And are there theoretical limits on the amount of information in a photon? Does it depend on the photon's energy?
Oh thats an easy one... it's 0 - the mass of the least massive particle(s)
Except those massless particles would have an energy that is equivalent to a certain amount of rest energy aka mass. So, assuming massive particles (and not necessarily restricted to those known), what would be the minimum mass? It's the same answer as minimum energy, just different units.
The least energy is just as easy if you understand anything of quantum mechanics, not information theory: the least energy you can have a a quanta, so the least energy is Plank's Constant
That's not the same as the least amount of energy needed to manipulate a bit, which is the Landauer Limit. This is in fact an Information Theory question (though it and QM are closely related).
For example, it seems to me like a "full" drive seems to physically weigh more than a blank one, sort of like a full battery is noticeably heavier than an empty one.
There's no way this minimum mass would be qualitatively noticeable even in a petabyte drive... and I don't think whether the drive is "full" makes a difference... the zeroes and ones on it are still information even if they don't represent 'used' portions of the disk.
The fact that you can zerg Van or Drek proves it's not DotA.
You couldn't zerg the bosses in the original Alterac Valley which is what they were talking about... at least, I'd never seen it done, and if it was possible to do then it would have been done rather than have the games drag out for 8+ hours like they did, with no additional reward.
Restrictive terrain, swarms of aggressive and advancing NPCs, static defenses... that's DotA. WoW hasn't done it yet.
That was AV too... not that this means it was good. I mean, it was cool to fight through lines of NPCs and enemy PCs, building up and coordinating assaults by your own NPCs, summoning the Uber NPCs, and all that jazz. But it was a novelty. The first time you'd summoned all the npcs and run the gauntlet and spent 6 hours pushing a couple graveyards towards the enemy base, only to have a counter offensive or defensive slip-up push you back to a stalemate in the center of the map, and you were ready to quit and never play again.
It's a shame... they should learn from DotA and others and put a battleground like that back in.
Thinking about the decrease in mass of a petabyte got me thinking about Information Theory and the minimum energy required to store a bit. Or rather, to irreversibly manipulate one bit of information, which I think describes the act of writing to any kind of RAM (disk or otherwise). If I extrapolate that to also mean a mass whose rest energy is sufficient to manipulate a bit, that could give the theoretical minimum mass for a bit of storage. I don't actually know enough information theory to know that value, or even if the comparison from energy of information manipulation to mass of storage is valid, but it struck me as interesting and maybe somebody knows? What's the minimum mass of a petabyte?
If you actually want to make an impact on bird deaths, spay and neuter your cats, keep them indoors, and stop supporting the construction of glass-curtained buildings. Both kill far more birds than wind farms ever will.
Hell, even Altamont Pass killed less birds than a typical 3-story administration building that would be built to manage any power generation station.
However, while as a bird watcher I'm not concerned about wind farms effects on birds, I've heard that things are much worse with respect to bats.
I still find using this as an argument against wind farms to be grasping at straws, and rarely does it ring of sincerity as opposed to just finding any excuse for maintaining the status quo.
Half the weight and 3-6X the mileage
WTF does MPG have to do with road wear?! It doesn't change your destination, so it doesn't change how far you drive, it just means you burn less fuel getting there.
Basically because overcoming the political obstacles to promoting nuclear power would be an effort many times more difficult than the passage of this bill, so including nuclear power in the bill would mean it wouldn't get passed at all.
It's stupid from our pragmatist "just do the right thing" perspective, since nuclear fission is our best chance to get off fossil fuels in the near-ish term, but nevertheless completely understandable. Between "ZOMG proliferation!" conservatives and "ZOMG nuclear waste(breeder huh?)!" liberals and "ZOMG NIMBY!" everyone it's going to be hard to find anyone who wants to fight that fight. :(
Specifically, the BRIC block (Brazil, Russia, India, and China).
Not to mention Latvia, Estonia, Georgia, and Oman. The LEGOBRICs will be the building blocks of our destruction.
That's about 22 miles per hour, or a little slower than a hummingbird. Which is indeed pretty impressive.
What happened to all the wankers who hooted and hollered about boycotting them after that?
Well, we tried, then this happened.
Yeah well, what if you make it a habit to buy your gas across state lines? No system is foolproof.
Not to mention that it's perfectly possible to cross entire states (especially in the eastern half of the country) without having to stop for gas. Oh noes!
the Prius drivers have more of an impact on the roads because they can drive much further (and cause much more wear on the roads) than the Hummer drivers.
Nooooo, the Hummer drivers can drive just as far, they just need to stop for gas more frequently. How far either drives depends on where the destination is, not per-tank range. Who says things like "I was going to drive from Cincinnati to Chicago, but I would have to stop for gas so instead I'm only going to Gary, Indiana"?
Yes, and that will almost certainly be the case regardless of how they implement this new tax.