If we all die off, nobody is going to be around to lament the fact that we're gone.
Not true, as I have programmed Lamentobot for exactly this purpose, and his nuclear heart will ensure that he will be around to cry over the passing of human kind should we be wiped out any time in the next twenty thousand years.
Your fallacy is essentially in assuming that blame is a percentage which must be portioned out among the actors involved in the event. It is true that if I leave a stack of money out in plain view it is 100% the fault of the criminal for taking it. It is also 100% my fault for being a complete idiot.
Yes exactly. Blame is not a zero-sum game. Thinking otherwise is idiotic, or, in most cases, an attempt to deny blame using the false logic of "That person over there is to blame, therefore I cannot be blamed". If you don't think about it too hard it makes sense, but we shouldn't fall for such blatant illogic.
that. is. awesome. I can just imagine guys trying to pick up your mom - Guy: Hey can I buy you a drink. Your mom: *points at baby on bar* That's my kid. Guy:...?
Ha ha! I never thought of that, and yeah, that probably worked better than the other option.
Guy: Hey can I buy you a drink. My mom: I'm married. Guy: Yeah? Where's your husband? My mom: He's on stage. Guy: Oh. *starts to back off, but then thinks* Wait, which one? My mom: The drummer. Guy: Ah. So... can I buy you a drink?
I feel for you man, that sucks. I was exactly the opposite. When I was a babe, my dad was in a rock band that played live in bars, and my mom would often go to the shows, taking me with her since they couldn't afford a sitter. I would literally sleep on the bar while the band played several times a week for years.
Well then you're not optimizing money spent vs longevity, or anything really. And you're still not really buying yourself much, if any, time. You'd really want to be buying the bleeding-edge in that case, at the maximum price premium, to have any significant impact.
Of course not. It was engineered to be a fantastic operating system that increased user enjoyment and productivity, ushering in a utopia of computing. Which is why it ended up as a doomsday device. When Microsoft decides to try to build a doomsday device, that's when they'll end up making the best OS ever.
It's kinda like when Microsoft said "we aren't a hardware company", and ended up not only making hardware, they made great hardware.
Besides, I never said I am buying bleeding edge. I merely suggested buying nearer it than the original poster's sweet spot.
Well the whole point of the 'sweet spot' is that it is the highest performing part before the price for incremental performance drastically increases. It's the bend of the hockey-stick curve of price/performance. So no, it never makes sense to buy anything past the sweet spot if your goal is to optimize your computer purchases for amount spent vs longevity, because the extra amount spent will not buy you a proportionate amount of longevity.
There's basically two general cases where it makes any sense to buy past the 'sweet spot': 1) You have lots of disposable income so price efficiency isn't a big concern, and you can afford to upgrade as often as you want. In this case, you'd always be buying the bleeding edge. Vendors love these folks.
2) You have a one-time chunk of disposable cash to spend on bragging rights, but you don't care that in a year it won't be worth bragging about any more. In this case the only reason not to buy the bleeding edge is if your chunk of change isn't big enough to do that.
I've been in the second boat before, where I bought as much bleeding edge stuff as I could just for the fun of it, just because I could. Sure getting all that extra horsepower meant that the computer felt fast for longer than it would have otherwise, but not at anywhere close to the ratio of the extra cost I paid versus a more modest system. When I finally did upgrade to a new "sweet spot" system, it still utterly blew away the old one and I wondered how I was able to survive so long.
Despite any advances AMD makes in CPU's, they still have such a sub par selection of chipset vendors.
What's wrong with their PCI-E bridge chip? It converts PCI-E to HT and back pretty well afaik. Or maybe you meant the southbridge? Yeah, that USB and SATA logic is really cramping my gaming rig.
The performance-interesting parts of the northbridge are on the CPU in AMD architectures (and now intel ones too), and they're great. I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
This doesn't go against evolution at all. It simply means that a system has evolved that checks for errors in a very conserved process (the electron transport chain) because if it wasn't conserved then the species would be less fit (less offspring) and die out. It's important to note that evolution is a change in allele frequencies of a population. So this electron transport problem control system is not actively changing allele frequencies. It is simply accounting for problems that arise and letting the organism be fit when it might otherwise not because of some sort of deleterious mutation.
Yeah, in this way it sounds very similar to a story some time (year or two?) on slashdot about plants which could correct certain DNA transcription errors to prevent mutations. The question was "does this up-end evolution", and the answer is no, because a plant (or human) being able to prevent some mutations does not at all contradict the theory that mutations create variations selected for by the gauntlet of life. And a mutation that results in a mechanism for preventing mutations fits in perfectly. Notice that in both cases, only certain processes are affected, not the entire genome. This is certainly because protecting certain vital components from mutation provided much more benefit than others, and I'd wager partly because not having overly much protection from mutation is advantageous for a species because it allows it to evolve.
After all, it only makes sense that evolution would not just select for traits that optimized the organism for survival, but also for traits that optimized the evolutionary mechanism itself.
Of course you can try to compensate, but ultimately, if the rover can't produce enough power it's going to freeze and break. There isn't enough "everything else" that isn't susceptible to cold to make a working rover.
I would assume that they chose to turn off the heater for the spectrometer for a reason. Maybe because they believed it could best handle the cold, or because of the options it was considered the most expendable, or some amount of both. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised should Spirit survives the storm that the spectrometer doesn't.
Jordan thinks any character ever seen in a book needs a name. They can save about 5 hours just by not naming all their extras. The last four or so books in the series will probably fit on a single page of the script. And finally, Jordan didn't finish. There's a good 30 minutes out of the film right there.
Haha. I can see it now. They get all the right people with all the right motivations working on it. They create a movie that is tight, well-paced, dramatic, exciting, all while being faithful to the source material. Both fans of the books and newcomers are loving it, getting more and more into it with every minute. Then, right after a wipe ending a minor scene, BAM! the credits start rolling. Howls of rage rise from the theater as torches (where did those come from?) are lit and pitchforks raised, and there's rioting in the streets.
Well, imagine that everything you said I already knew, in particular the part about how the even-numbered ones are considered better than the odd-numbered, and I was assuming the reader knew this as well.
NASA's next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is going to use an RTG capable of generating 2.5 kilowatt-hours a day, which is around four times what the current rovers can produce on a good day.
Of course the MSL is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, and more than twice as heavy as Phoenix. So it's much more expensive not just to build but to get to Mars, and more complicated to land since air-bags won't work. Weight is the main reason the Spirit is stuck with solar cells.
The MSL is a much more ambitious project. Which is great, because you're absolutely right nuclear power is way better than solar, no problems with dust or night time or winter. The wikipedia article says the new RTG should last at least 14 years. If the rest of the rover is built as well as the current ones, we could have the MSL running around Mars for a long, long time. Oh, and since it's going to need a snappier name, I suggest "Optimus" (and if they decide to send two, of course "Prime").
4. Spend the remaining energy teaching the rover to do the Hammer Dance with it's eight independently swiveling wheels. If you got to go down, go down doing the Hammer Dance that's what I always say which is maybe why nobody sits with me in the cafeteria.
I once knew a street walker who said that, and well, let's just say she didn't have a large clientèle.
I guess there's still the issue of whether the batteries will fail to operate if they get too cold....
Yes, that's exactly the problem, and not just for the batteries. The rovers and landers need power just to heat themselves so that their components don't get damaged by the cold. In TFA they even say they've already started sacrificing parts of Spirit to conserve power:
"Mission controllers are commanding Spirit to turn off some heaters, including one that protects a science instrument, the miniature thermal emission spectrometer, and take other measures to reduce energy consumption."
Besides, with a two month life expectancy, I think it was determined that they wouldn't need to remove any dust from the solar panels since the rovers would have long since died...
Well, if I remember correctly, it was dust accumulation itself that was supposed to limit the life span to 90 days, not failure of any component. They didn't know that the Martian wind would do a decent job of cleaning the panels by itself, so they determined that was how long until the rover couldn't power itself any more.
This is interesting because it means that even when dust accumulation was considered the major survivability issue for the rovers, they still didn't find a wiper to be a practical solution. Then it turned out that they didn't need wipers at all to extend the mission well past the original 90 days.
TR doesn't seem to have much of his penchant for dramatic story telling (unlike Ultima, Wing Commander, and UO)
Huh, I must have quit playing UO before the added in the story.
If TR ends after this, it will be a shame.
I'm sure it will keep going as long as the revenue exceeds the costs to keep it running, as they attempt to recoup as much of their initial investment as possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously I meant a dog that'll build the robot for you ;)
Ah, so MacLassie, the mulletted collie! That's a good idea for a bunch of other reasons too.
A dog with a nuclear heart?
Sounds great, as long as we never adapt it to cats.
If we all die off, nobody is going to be around to lament the fact that we're gone.
Not true, as I have programmed Lamentobot for exactly this purpose, and his nuclear heart will ensure that he will be around to cry over the passing of human kind should we be wiped out any time in the next twenty thousand years.
Your fallacy is essentially in assuming that blame is a percentage which must be portioned out among the actors involved in the event. It is true that if I leave a stack of money out in plain view it is 100% the fault of the criminal for taking it. It is also 100% my fault for being a complete idiot.
Yes exactly. Blame is not a zero-sum game. Thinking otherwise is idiotic, or, in most cases, an attempt to deny blame using the false logic of "That person over there is to blame, therefore I cannot be blamed". If you don't think about it too hard it makes sense, but we shouldn't fall for such blatant illogic.
Oh you're talking about ancient-in-computer-terms history. Fun, but not really relevant.
that. is. awesome. I can just imagine guys trying to pick up your mom - ...?
Guy: Hey can I buy you a drink.
Your mom: *points at baby on bar* That's my kid.
Guy:
Ha ha! I never thought of that, and yeah, that probably worked better than the other option.
Guy: Hey can I buy you a drink.
My mom: I'm married.
Guy: Yeah? Where's your husband?
My mom: He's on stage.
Guy: Oh. *starts to back off, but then thinks* Wait, which one?
My mom: The drummer.
Guy: Ah. So... can I buy you a drink?
I feel for you man, that sucks. I was exactly the opposite. When I was a babe, my dad was in a rock band that played live in bars, and my mom would often go to the shows, taking me with her since they couldn't afford a sitter. I would literally sleep on the bar while the band played several times a week for years.
To this day, I can sleep fucking anywhere.
Well then you're not optimizing money spent vs longevity, or anything really. And you're still not really buying yourself much, if any, time. You'd really want to be buying the bleeding-edge in that case, at the maximum price premium, to have any significant impact.
You can't link to tripod images offsite, if your referral header is missing or not from the site, you get their logo instead.
Holy shit, what year is it?! I think I accidentally stepped through a time portal or something...
Wasn't Vista engineered to be a doomsday device ?
Of course not. It was engineered to be a fantastic operating system that increased user enjoyment and productivity, ushering in a utopia of computing. Which is why it ended up as a doomsday device. When Microsoft decides to try to build a doomsday device, that's when they'll end up making the best OS ever.
It's kinda like when Microsoft said "we aren't a hardware company", and ended up not only making hardware, they made great hardware.
Besides, I never said I am buying bleeding edge. I merely suggested buying nearer it than the original poster's sweet spot.
Well the whole point of the 'sweet spot' is that it is the highest performing part before the price for incremental performance drastically increases. It's the bend of the hockey-stick curve of price/performance. So no, it never makes sense to buy anything past the sweet spot if your goal is to optimize your computer purchases for amount spent vs longevity, because the extra amount spent will not buy you a proportionate amount of longevity.
There's basically two general cases where it makes any sense to buy past the 'sweet spot':
1) You have lots of disposable income so price efficiency isn't a big concern, and you can afford to upgrade as often as you want. In this case, you'd always be buying the bleeding edge. Vendors love these folks.
2) You have a one-time chunk of disposable cash to spend on bragging rights, but you don't care that in a year it won't be worth bragging about any more. In this case the only reason not to buy the bleeding edge is if your chunk of change isn't big enough to do that.
I've been in the second boat before, where I bought as much bleeding edge stuff as I could just for the fun of it, just because I could. Sure getting all that extra horsepower meant that the computer felt fast for longer than it would have otherwise, but not at anywhere close to the ratio of the extra cost I paid versus a more modest system. When I finally did upgrade to a new "sweet spot" system, it still utterly blew away the old one and I wondered how I was able to survive so long.
Despite any advances AMD makes in CPU's, they still have such a sub par selection of chipset vendors.
What's wrong with their PCI-E bridge chip? It converts PCI-E to HT and back pretty well afaik. Or maybe you meant the southbridge? Yeah, that USB and SATA logic is really cramping my gaming rig.
The performance-interesting parts of the northbridge are on the CPU in AMD architectures (and now intel ones too), and they're great. I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
This doesn't go against evolution at all. It simply means that a system has evolved that checks for errors in a very conserved process (the electron transport chain) because if it wasn't conserved then the species would be less fit (less offspring) and die out. It's important to note that evolution is a change in allele frequencies of a population. So this electron transport problem control system is not actively changing allele frequencies. It is simply accounting for problems that arise and letting the organism be fit when it might otherwise not because of some sort of deleterious mutation.
Yeah, in this way it sounds very similar to a story some time (year or two?) on slashdot about plants which could correct certain DNA transcription errors to prevent mutations. The question was "does this up-end evolution", and the answer is no, because a plant (or human) being able to prevent some mutations does not at all contradict the theory that mutations create variations selected for by the gauntlet of life. And a mutation that results in a mechanism for preventing mutations fits in perfectly. Notice that in both cases, only certain processes are affected, not the entire genome. This is certainly because protecting certain vital components from mutation provided much more benefit than others, and I'd wager partly because not having overly much protection from mutation is advantageous for a species because it allows it to evolve.
After all, it only makes sense that evolution would not just select for traits that optimized the organism for survival, but also for traits that optimized the evolutionary mechanism itself.
Of course you can try to compensate, but ultimately, if the rover can't produce enough power it's going to freeze and break. There isn't enough "everything else" that isn't susceptible to cold to make a working rover.
I would assume that they chose to turn off the heater for the spectrometer for a reason. Maybe because they believed it could best handle the cold, or because of the options it was considered the most expendable, or some amount of both. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised should Spirit survives the storm that the spectrometer doesn't.
Jordan thinks any character ever seen in a book needs a name. They can save about 5 hours just by not naming all their extras.
The last four or so books in the series will probably fit on a single page of the script.
And finally, Jordan didn't finish. There's a good 30 minutes out of the film right there.
Haha. I can see it now. They get all the right people with all the right motivations working on it. They create a movie that is tight, well-paced, dramatic, exciting, all while being faithful to the source material. Both fans of the books and newcomers are loving it, getting more and more into it with every minute. Then, right after a wipe ending a minor scene, BAM! the credits start rolling. Howls of rage rise from the theater as torches (where did those come from?) are lit and pitchforks raised, and there's rioting in the streets.
Well, imagine that everything you said I already knew, in particular the part about how the even-numbered ones are considered better than the odd-numbered, and I was assuming the reader knew this as well.
NASA's next rover, the Mars Science Laboratory, is going to use an RTG capable of generating 2.5 kilowatt-hours a day, which is around four times what the current rovers can produce on a good day.
Of course the MSL is about twice as long and more than five times as heavy as Spirit and Opportunity, and more than twice as heavy as Phoenix. So it's much more expensive not just to build but to get to Mars, and more complicated to land since air-bags won't work. Weight is the main reason the Spirit is stuck with solar cells.
The MSL is a much more ambitious project. Which is great, because you're absolutely right nuclear power is way better than solar, no problems with dust or night time or winter. The wikipedia article says the new RTG should last at least 14 years. If the rest of the rover is built as well as the current ones, we could have the MSL running around Mars for a long, long time. Oh, and since it's going to need a snappier name, I suggest "Optimus" (and if they decide to send two, of course "Prime").
Where's the "-1 fail"
In your heart, my friend. In your heart.
4. Spend the remaining energy teaching the rover to do the Hammer Dance with it's eight independently swiveling wheels. If you got to go down, go down doing the Hammer Dance that's what I always say which is maybe why nobody sits with me in the cafeteria.
I once knew a street walker who said that, and well, let's just say she didn't have a large clientèle.
I guess there's still the issue of whether the batteries will fail to operate if they get too cold....
Yes, that's exactly the problem, and not just for the batteries. The rovers and landers need power just to heat themselves so that their components don't get damaged by the cold. In TFA they even say they've already started sacrificing parts of Spirit to conserve power:
"Mission controllers are commanding Spirit to turn off some heaters, including one that protects a science instrument, the miniature thermal emission spectrometer, and take other measures to reduce energy consumption."
Besides, with a two month life expectancy, I think it was determined that they wouldn't need to remove any dust from the solar panels since the rovers would have long since died...
Well, if I remember correctly, it was dust accumulation itself that was supposed to limit the life span to 90 days, not failure of any component. They didn't know that the Martian wind would do a decent job of cleaning the panels by itself, so they determined that was how long until the rover couldn't power itself any more.
This is interesting because it means that even when dust accumulation was considered the major survivability issue for the rovers, they still didn't find a wiper to be a practical solution. Then it turned out that they didn't need wipers at all to extend the mission well past the original 90 days.
I don't think you got my meaning there. :)
Flan, not ham. :)
Anyway, I wonder just how awful this movie will end up being. Is it considered an even or odd-numbered film?
First Contact was the last even-numbered film.
well, ultima underworld kinda sucked
Shut yo mouth!
TR doesn't seem to have much of his penchant for dramatic story telling (unlike Ultima, Wing Commander, and UO)
Huh, I must have quit playing UO before the added in the story.
If TR ends after this, it will be a shame.
I'm sure it will keep going as long as the revenue exceeds the costs to keep it running, as they attempt to recoup as much of their initial investment as possible.