> > Maybe we see right side up because it simplifies the calculations that we need to make in order to perform everyday tasks. Seeing upside down is actually the default, in a certain sense, because the lenses in our eyes turn the received light into an upside down image on our retina.
While I totally agree with the basic notion of the overall quote, the above statement is rather amusingly naieve.
When you think about it, how could the low-level mechanisms in the brain have *any* built-in sense of what in fact is "upside right" and "upside down"? In the context of our visual systems, all that's really happening is that there are patterns of light shining on the retinas, which change over time. There are some built-in abstractions, such as edge detection, sensing of movement in different directions across the visual field, etc., but notions such as "upside down" are actually higher-level concepts that are handled further in. They only exist because they an be consistenly recognized and associated with other inputs from our other senses. There's nothing in the way our eyes work that could care about gravity, or that this thing called the "ground" is always in a certain direction from the way we usually orient our bodies.
I mean, if you could put special glasses on someone that shows them some bizzare 5-dimensional universe (translated into 2-d images), and also somehow fool their other senses in a way that's also consistent with a 5-dimensional universe (however you decide to define that), then over time the person would learn to make sense of it, as if it were what they were really experiencing. In fact, it *would* what they're really experiencing. All that's needed is for the rules to be consistent, and we can pick up the patterns.
> Possibly calibration of the ears works in a similar way.
Of course; all our senses do. There's no way our genes could encode enough information to solve all these little interface problems by fiat. They merely set up the basic neural mechanisms; the details are then "sculpted" out of them as they interact with the real world. That's the beauty ov it. Of course there can be certain optimizations that the genes can encode for (at least approximately), e.g. the recognition of phonemes in our auditory systems, but only if the evolutionary value is high enough.
This is the general area that we will need to push our computers towards, to make them *truly* useful. Don't just try to program evertyhing from the get-go. Let the system configure itself as it needs to, as it interacts with the real world. Very simple robotic hardware could do amazing things when the control systems can behave this way.
I wouldn't say it's completely worthless either. If you can get it into a *completely* interpretation-free format (e.g. take out "physical object", replace with the aspects that lead you to that conclusion), it could be regarded as real data for any of these phenomena:
- UFO's
- Atmospheric events
- The way our visual perception mechanisms work.
The last one being the most likely, I'd tend to think. But of course that's just as wild a guess as saying it's a UFO.
But anyways, I don't think anyone can call you a kook (who's not a jerk or even a kook themselves) when you present your observations without insisting upon any particular interpretation. As you have done quite well here.
Something *did* happen in these places...
on
Starcraft
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· Score: 1
> Something had to have happened in these places and many others throughout the globe to engender such speculation and argument."
Yeah, the fact that human brains interpreted the events. Excellent pattern-matchers, those.
And remember, when you apply a pattern-matcher to random data, the device *will* trigger occasionaly. Here's an at-home experiment for the kids: turn your TV to an empty channel (or whatever it takes to make it show static/snow). Stare at it for a while, and look for a face. You will see one eventually.
> What about teaching them to read? Are you against that too?
It's not about the addition of new elements. It's about losing the old.
> What really saddens me is that you, presumably a Westerner, seem to believe that all cultures are equally valid, and that the only reason you have the ideals and lifestyle you have is that you were born here (for some value of here).
All time-tested cultures *do* have equal value. If a culture has allowed a people to survive for thousands of years, it shouldn't just be cast aside because of a couple of new ideas.
Certainly new ideas shouldn't be excluded, but I don't think the priests who were "helping" these people into the Christianity fold paid much attention to what they were erasing. If they had at least written down what was there before they started making changes, then individuals from the tribe would now have the option to go back and learn their history. Possibly even revive some of the old customs that were stamped out. They'd at least have a much better sense of who they are; they'd have an anchor in the world.
> This scenario has been played out many times, especially in Africa. Native cultures do adapt and survive, and they do end up taking what they want of modernity/westernity.
Where is the highest rate of AIDS infection in the world?
Africa.
Why? Lots of unprotected sex, lots of prostitution. Modern trucks carry cargo across the continent; the truckers visit the local bordellos. Not the only reason of course, but it's one of them.
Other problems too -- Think Somalia. Rawanda.
This is what happens when a lot of people lose most their culture all at once, to have it replaced with bits and pieces borrowed from another. Western culture works well because it *evolved* into what it is -- all the little tweaks and balances are in place. When random elements of the one culture are introduced elsewhere at too high a rate, you get large imbalances.
It'll settle down eventually, of course, but it's sure painful in the meantime.
> You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that "all cultures are equal" and should be cherished equally. Forget it. These people's precious culture didn't invent writing for them, or medicine, or clothing, or Christianity...
Cultures can be considered to have different levels of *technology*, but one can't use that to make a judgement as to whether one culture is more worthy of existence than another. Different cultures must be assumed to have equal *value*.
We don't know for certain, but I think it's a safe assumption that their conversion to Christianity involved a significant erasure of much of their beliefs from before. With that loss of knowledge comes a loss of their identity.
I guess that's the question: were the priests seeking to *augment* their culture by making new information/technology available to them, or were they trying to *replace* it? Most likely the latter.
What these missionaries did could be forgivable if they had at least also worked to record these people's original way of life. That way, an interested member of the tribe (who has learned to read) could come to understand his/her history, and therefore get a sense of having a place in the world. Perhaps even to revive some customs that had been frowned upon by the powerful outsiders.
Damn you! You beat my almost-indentical post by 2 minutes.:) Though I think I went in a different direction with it -- so please have mercy, o mighty modders!
But on the subject of tivo-as-vcr, I'm thinking about buying my parents a tivo as a gift. But there's an issue: do I get it w/o the service, and in essence just be giving them a better-than-vcr device, or do I shell out the extra $250 or so for a lifetime service (don't want to make them pay $15/mo), because it's the service that I'd *really* like to give them. But $450 is too much.
Has anyone else out there given TiVo as a gift? Any interesting stories/info?
> Are there any good PVRs out there that you don't need to pay a monthly service fee to use?
Yes. Tivo.
People talk about "needing" to pay for the directory service just because it's so freakin' useful that lobotomizing the machine down to vcr-grade seems like a waste.
>... the one thing I remembered from my old criminal law classes (before I ditched law) - the likelyhood of getting caught for a crime is a far greater deterance than the punishment of a crime.
Hum, if this is true, that would put a serious dent in the death-penalty-as-deterrant argument, wouldn't it?
Hum, I wonder if ebay could have a new option: secure transfer. They'd act like an escrow agency:
- ebay rents/buys some big warehouse in the middle of the country.
- seller ships item to that location.
- seller pays ebay the cost of shipping from that location to the buyer
- seller also pays additional handling fee to ebay for this service
- buyer sends check to ebay.
- when check has cleared, ebay ships the item and gives the $$ to the seller.
- if check bounces, well, perhaps ebay ships the item back to seller from seller's deposit, or
seller has option to keep it there for up to some # of days, to look for a new buyer.
Seems reasonable to me. The traffic wouldn't be *that* high, because of the extra costs involved for the seller (e.g. nobody's going to pay a $5 handling fee and an extra fedex fee to do a secure xation for a $3 troll doll). Seems like something a successful company like ebay could handle, and make some extra money off of.
> So why does the Post talk about scientists being baffled? Well, as a 2c worth, perhaps it's because they have to talk up the story...
It's probably more like they called some random scientist who knows about fluid dynamics, told him about the invention, and he said "Oh, God, I don't even want to *think* about the equations for that thing!".
In other words, a lot of times scientists will say they "don't know" something, when really they mean "it's not 100% proven" or "we don't have the precise analytical equations to describe that". The reporters then take the "don't know" and relay it as "the scientists are baffled".
I actually meant "have" as in "that's how many times you have to press the skip-back button". If you choose to use that button. Which is the tendency, I think.
But there's something else about the 30-sec-skip feature: I think what's more bothersome is that it left me with a kind of "displaced" sense -- it had skipped so far that I had sort of lost my mental foothold in the program, and that was vaugely unsettling. At least, this was true when someone *else* was operating the remote. If I had been doing it, perhaps there wouldn't have been that problem.
Tue Dec 10 9:43:25/home/joeuser >/usr/local/bin/msword
You must be root to run this program
Tue Dec 10 9:43:31/home/joeuser > su root
Enter Password:
Tue Dec 10 9:43:45 %/usr/local/bin/msword
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:44:16 %/usr/local/bin/msword
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:46:52 %/usr/local/bin/msword
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:47:15 %/usr/local/bin/msword
Starting MS Word...
System is going down for reboot NOW...^C^C^C
^C^C^C^Z^C
> P.S. I love my TiVo, I am watching a lot more TV than I ever did before, and a lot fewer ads.
Now that I have TiVo, I am actually paying a lot more attention to ads than I used to.
Before, when commercials would come up, my finger would go reflexively to the "mute" button, and I'd start chatting w/ my fellow viewers, or similarly divert my attention to some other activity. My brain was practiced enough for me to almost always know, almost subconsciously, when the program was coming back on, simply from the timing.
Now, with TiVo, that timing is out the window, because the commercials scan by so quickly. At the same time, I am also paying a lot more attention to what I see, because I'm watching for the program to start again. Sometimes I see a rather interesting or bizzare image, and I wonder "what was *that*??" -- so I stop the ffwd, and acutally *watch the commercial*.
If I've seen that commercial before, I don't bother stopping to look at it, but of course that means that *it's already in my head*, and the ad's mission has been a success!
I actually prefer TiVo's standard ffwd style to the 30-second-skip, because I do enjoy watching some commercials -- they can be quite entertaining . Also, I've seen a friend using the 30-sec-skip style, and it's annoying because they always have to hit the 8-sec-back button something like 5 times after overshooting the beginning of the proram.
So, in summary, now that I have a PVR, I actually *see* a lot more commercials than I used to (as opposed to them merely displaying on my tv), and yet I'm not wasting my time on them!
One thing that'd be different about Mozilla or some other open-source browser dominating would be that such security holes would be broadcast *loudly* across the community, and quickly patched. Yes, I'm sure MS patches IE with regularity, but I doubt it's as fast a process.
Of course, then users would have to continually download/install patched browsers, which Mozilla, etc. folks are accustomed to, but to which average users aren't. So then there'd have to be an easy "update me" button on the brower, which would in turn open up all sorts of new security problems. e.g. what if someone slips in a virus to make it download an entire corrupted browser?!
Well, still, if all the programming is done by an open-source community, rather than behind closed doors, it'll eventually stabililze, because
1) user feedback will be listened to and acted upon much more quickly, by many more programmers, and
2) There won't be the same incentive to add more features just for the sake of having them, to try to look better than the competition.
And relative to MS, of course:
3) There isn't the incentive to hook the damn thing into the fundamentals of the OS, for the sake of featur-izing the OS, thereby opening doors for whole additional classes of security problems
> "...said that making semiconductors smaller, cheaper and faster was no longer the key for an effective strategy..."
The important word here is "key". Saying something is not they key doesn't mean that you're going to abandon it; it just means that it's not the only thing you have to worry about.
So Ruiz's statement doesn't mean that AMD won't continue to pursue smaller/cheaper/faster cpu's; it's just a recognition that the industry isn't demanding *just* that anymore; there are other concerns that have more weight than they used to -- e.g. low-power cpu's for laptops/pda's.
The statement *certainly* doesn't indicate a shift away from x86 instruction set. Remember, the new 64-bit Hammer processors will use a backwards-compatible instruction set, unlike Intel's 64-bit cpu's (Itanium, etc.) So actually, AMD is remaining more faithful to x86 than Intel!
On another angle, AMD has worked very had to build top-notch processor design teams, and they're currently dedicated to k7 thru k10. These teams were hit relatively lightly by the recent layoffs -- an indication of their value for the forseeable future.
But it would still be foolish for any company to bet the farm on beating Intel at the cpu game; that's why AMD expanded into Flash memory (which has worked out very well), and will likely further expand into other areas. I believe this is what Ruiz is talking about.
I guess it would depend on how strong the shockwave is. If it was very strong, there might be some rippling on the surface after it exited.
But I think it would have to be *really* strong to be visible after the vibrations died down -- there are major earthquakes all the time, much stronger than what this looks like, which don't leave that kind of mark. Yes, landslides happen and faults shift sometimes, but otherwise, the rippling waves on the surface settle down, and you really can't see them.
> In interstellar space, they would be the strongest local gravity source,
A cell-sized chunk of this is only 1 ton, so it would have no greater gravity field than a 1-ton rock hurtling through interstellar space.
The thing that's unique about an SQN is that when any material *does* get close enough to it to be captured by its gravity, if it ever gets near to touching the surface, it'll collapse all the way down into quark material itself, and be indistinguisable from the original material.
Even if it did at some point have a little ball of gas around it, collisions between particles would virtually guarantee that, within a short time, nearly all the atoms would venture near the core, and be sucked in. So at most, one of these things would have a very tenous wisp of gas around it.
>... could have had a multiple megaton blast associated with them, but there would be nothing at the surface to retain evidence...
There are satellites that are on the lookout for bright flashes of ligh like that; they would have seen it, if nothing else.
Well, if a cell-sized lump is 1 ton, why not just lob a 1-ton chunk of metal/rock/etc. at it? Same energy to launch, and more effective too -- the SQN would tend to pass through the asteroid, imparting only a small amount of its energy.
> Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy?
Wow, great idea!
Now, these things will need an energy source of some kind... hmm... maybe sunlight? Yeah, that'd be very eco-friendly -- we could even make up a special name for the process. "Photo"... something. Hmmm. Can't think of anything right now, but we gotta use "photo", it sounds cool.
So anyways, you'd need the organism able to spread itself out into a wide area, so it could have more light-collecting surface area. Maybe some kind of branching structure?
Though of course, to have any significant impact on the atmosphere, you'd have to have virtual *forests* of these things...
> I wonder if nukes could be used to alter the big rock's trajectory instead.
I guess that would depend on how solid the asteroid really is. If it was really strong, perhaps repeated detonations of nukes buried not too far below the surface could blow off enough matter to provide the needed push. Though we'd have to be sure the ejecta wouldn't pose a problem for earth somewhere down the line. Though if it blasted off the asteroid w/ enough velocity to be useful for propulsion, it'd probably escape the solar system anyways.
Though I have a feeling that the "rubble pile" model of asteroid structure is closer to the mark. Perhaps a finely-spread web of mini-nukes could accomplish the above without braking the main body up, but it'd be risky.
There's one alternative that I've heard of that sounds interesting -- that is to hit it with a bunch of dust. I'd imagine it'd go like this: we'd mine some other (or even *that*) asteroid, gathering huge amounts of dust from it. Then we'd load it into an appropriate vehicle(s) (which would need some *serious* propulsion -- nuclear energy may be useful there) and send it off in the proper direction. It'd whip around the sun or planets to get even more momentum. Then, just before it hits the offending object, the vehicle shoots its cargo out in front of it, such that the asteroid is impacted with a long column of dust carrying a lot of momentum. This would provide a substantial, but evenly-applied force. Do this enough times, and we may have it.
Slashdot Mirror
> > Maybe we see right side up because it simplifies the calculations that we need to make in order to perform everyday tasks. Seeing upside down is actually the default, in a certain sense, because the lenses in our eyes turn the received light into an upside down image on our retina.
While I totally agree with the basic notion of the overall quote, the above statement is rather amusingly naieve.
When you think about it, how could the low-level mechanisms in the brain have *any* built-in sense of what in fact is "upside right" and "upside down"? In the context of our visual systems, all that's really happening is that there are patterns of light shining on the retinas, which change over time. There are some built-in abstractions, such as edge detection, sensing of movement in different directions across the visual field, etc., but notions such as "upside down" are actually higher-level concepts that are handled further in. They only exist because they an be consistenly recognized and associated with other inputs from our other senses. There's nothing in the way our eyes work that could care about gravity, or that this thing called the "ground" is always in a certain direction from the way we usually orient our bodies.
I mean, if you could put special glasses on someone that shows them some bizzare 5-dimensional universe (translated into 2-d images), and also somehow fool their other senses in a way that's also consistent with a 5-dimensional universe (however you decide to define that), then over time the person would learn to make sense of it, as if it were what they were really experiencing. In fact, it *would* what they're really experiencing. All that's needed is for the rules to be consistent, and we can pick up the patterns.
> Possibly calibration of the ears works in a similar way.
Of course; all our senses do. There's no way our genes could encode enough information to solve all these little interface problems by fiat. They merely set up the basic neural mechanisms; the details are then "sculpted" out of them as they interact with the real world. That's the beauty ov it. Of course there can be certain optimizations that the genes can encode for (at least approximately), e.g. the recognition of phonemes in our auditory systems, but only if the evolutionary value is high enough.
This is the general area that we will need to push our computers towards, to make them *truly* useful. Don't just try to program evertyhing from the get-go. Let the system configure itself as it needs to, as it interacts with the real world. Very simple robotic hardware could do amazing things when the control systems can behave this way.
I wouldn't say it's completely worthless either. If you can get it into a *completely* interpretation-free format (e.g. take out "physical object", replace with the aspects that lead you to that conclusion), it could be regarded as real data for any of these phenomena:
- UFO's
- Atmospheric events
- The way our visual perception mechanisms work.
The last one being the most likely, I'd tend to think. But of course that's just as wild a guess as saying it's a UFO.
But anyways, I don't think anyone can call you a kook (who's not a jerk or even a kook themselves) when you present your observations without insisting upon any particular interpretation. As you have done quite well here.
Pssst.... I got one of those in my garage.
> Something had to have happened in these places and many others throughout the globe to engender such speculation and argument."
Yeah, the fact that human brains interpreted the events. Excellent pattern-matchers, those.
And remember, when you apply a pattern-matcher to random data, the device *will* trigger occasionaly. Here's an at-home experiment for the kids: turn your TV to an empty channel (or whatever it takes to make it show static/snow). Stare at it for a while, and look for a face. You will see one eventually.
> Kind of pulls you back to English Lit. or creative writing classes.
AAAAARRRRGGHHH!!!
1987, right?
> What about teaching them to read? Are you against that too?
It's not about the addition of new elements. It's about losing the old.
> What really saddens me is that you, presumably a Westerner, seem to believe that all cultures are equally valid, and that the only reason you have the ideals and lifestyle you have is that you were born here (for some value of here).
All time-tested cultures *do* have equal value. If a culture has allowed a people to survive for thousands of years, it shouldn't just be cast aside because of a couple of new ideas.
Certainly new ideas shouldn't be excluded, but I don't think the priests who were "helping" these people into the Christianity fold paid much attention to what they were erasing. If they had at least written down what was there before they started making changes, then individuals from the tribe would now have the option to go back and learn their history. Possibly even revive some of the old customs that were stamped out. They'd at least have a much better sense of who they are; they'd have an anchor in the world.
> This scenario has been played out many times, especially in Africa. Native cultures do adapt and survive, and they do end up taking what they want of modernity/westernity.
Where is the highest rate of AIDS infection in the world?
Africa.
Why? Lots of unprotected sex, lots of prostitution. Modern trucks carry cargo across the continent; the truckers visit the local bordellos. Not the only reason of course, but it's one of them.
Other problems too -- Think Somalia. Rawanda.
This is what happens when a lot of people lose most their culture all at once, to have it replaced with bits and pieces borrowed from another. Western culture works well because it *evolved* into what it is -- all the little tweaks and balances are in place. When random elements of the one culture are introduced elsewhere at too high a rate, you get large imbalances.
It'll settle down eventually, of course, but it's sure painful in the meantime.
> You seem to be laboring under the misapprehension that "all cultures are equal" and should be cherished equally. Forget it. These people's precious culture didn't invent writing for them, or medicine, or clothing, or Christianity...
Cultures can be considered to have different levels of *technology*, but one can't use that to make a judgement as to whether one culture is more worthy of existence than another. Different cultures must be assumed to have equal *value*.
We don't know for certain, but I think it's a safe assumption that their conversion to Christianity involved a significant erasure of much of their beliefs from before. With that loss of knowledge comes a loss of their identity.
I guess that's the question: were the priests seeking to *augment* their culture by making new information/technology available to them, or were they trying to *replace* it? Most likely the latter.
What these missionaries did could be forgivable if they had at least also worked to record these people's original way of life. That way, an interested member of the tribe (who has learned to read) could come to understand his/her history, and therefore get a sense of having a place in the world. Perhaps even to revive some customs that had been frowned upon by the powerful outsiders.
Let's hope they did, to some extent at least.
Damn you! You beat my almost-indentical post by 2 minutes. :) Though I think I went in a different direction with it -- so please have mercy, o mighty modders!
But on the subject of tivo-as-vcr, I'm thinking about buying my parents a tivo as a gift. But there's an issue: do I get it w/o the service, and in essence just be giving them a better-than-vcr device, or do I shell out the extra $250 or so for a lifetime service (don't want to make them pay $15/mo), because it's the service that I'd *really* like to give them. But $450 is too much.
Has anyone else out there given TiVo as a gift? Any interesting stories/info?
> Are there any good PVRs out there that you don't need to pay a monthly service fee to use?
Yes. Tivo.
People talk about "needing" to pay for the directory service just because it's so freakin' useful that lobotomizing the machine down to vcr-grade seems like a waste.
> ... the one thing I remembered from my old criminal law classes (before I ditched law) - the likelyhood of getting caught for a crime is a far greater deterance than the punishment of a crime.
Hum, if this is true, that would put a serious dent in the death-penalty-as-deterrant argument, wouldn't it?
Hum, I wonder if ebay could have a new option: secure transfer. They'd act like an escrow agency:
- ebay rents/buys some big warehouse in the middle of the country.
- seller ships item to that location.
- seller pays ebay the cost of shipping from that location to the buyer
- seller also pays additional handling fee to ebay for this service
- buyer sends check to ebay.
- when check has cleared, ebay ships the item and gives the $$ to the seller.
- if check bounces, well, perhaps ebay ships the item back to seller from seller's deposit, or
seller has option to keep it there for up to some # of days, to look for a new buyer.
Seems reasonable to me. The traffic wouldn't be *that* high, because of the extra costs involved for the seller (e.g. nobody's going to pay a $5 handling fee and an extra fedex fee to do a secure xation for a $3 troll doll). Seems like something a successful company like ebay could handle, and make some extra money off of.
> So why does the Post talk about scientists being baffled? Well, as a 2c worth, perhaps it's because they have to talk up the story ...
It's probably more like they called some random scientist who knows about fluid dynamics, told him about the invention, and he said "Oh, God, I don't even want to *think* about the equations for that thing!".
In other words, a lot of times scientists will say they "don't know" something, when really they mean "it's not 100% proven" or "we don't have the precise analytical equations to describe that". The reporters then take the "don't know" and relay it as "the scientists are baffled".
I actually meant "have" as in "that's how many times you have to press the skip-back button". If you choose to use that button. Which is the tendency, I think.
But there's something else about the 30-sec-skip feature: I think what's more bothersome is that it left me with a kind of "displaced" sense -- it had skipped so far that I had sort of lost my mental foothold in the program, and that was vaugely unsettling. At least, this was true when someone *else* was operating the remote. If I had been doing it, perhaps there wouldn't have been that problem.
Tue Dec 10 9:43:25
You must be root to run this program
Tue Dec 10 9:43:31
Enter Password:
Tue Dec 10 9:43:45 %
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:44:16 %
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:46:52 %
Starting MS Word...
Seg Fault
Tue Dec 10 9:47:15 %
Starting MS Word...
System is going down for reboot NOW...^C^C^C
^C^C^C^Z^C
> P.S. I love my TiVo, I am watching a lot more TV than I ever did before, and a lot fewer ads.
Now that I have TiVo, I am actually paying a lot more attention to ads than I used to.
Before, when commercials would come up, my finger would go reflexively to the "mute" button, and I'd start chatting w/ my fellow viewers, or similarly divert my attention to some other activity. My brain was practiced enough for me to almost always know, almost subconsciously, when the program was coming back on, simply from the timing.
Now, with TiVo, that timing is out the window, because the commercials scan by so quickly. At the same time, I am also paying a lot more attention to what I see, because I'm watching for the program to start again. Sometimes I see a rather interesting or bizzare image, and I wonder "what was *that*??" -- so I stop the ffwd, and acutally *watch the commercial*.
If I've seen that commercial before, I don't bother stopping to look at it, but of course that means that *it's already in my head*, and the ad's mission has been a success!
I actually prefer TiVo's standard ffwd style to the 30-second-skip, because I do enjoy watching some commercials -- they can be quite entertaining . Also, I've seen a friend using the 30-sec-skip style, and it's annoying because they always have to hit the 8-sec-back button something like 5 times after overshooting the beginning of the proram.
So, in summary, now that I have a PVR, I actually *see* a lot more commercials than I used to (as opposed to them merely displaying on my tv), and yet I'm not wasting my time on them!
Analyze *that*, all you marketing dum*#@!&&s!
One thing that'd be different about Mozilla or some other open-source browser dominating would be that such security holes would be broadcast *loudly* across the community, and quickly patched. Yes, I'm sure MS patches IE with regularity, but I doubt it's as fast a process.
Of course, then users would have to continually download/install patched browsers, which Mozilla, etc. folks are accustomed to, but to which average users aren't. So then there'd have to be an easy "update me" button on the brower, which would in turn open up all sorts of new security problems. e.g. what if someone slips in a virus to make it download an entire corrupted browser?!
Well, still, if all the programming is done by an open-source community, rather than behind closed doors, it'll eventually stabililze, because
1) user feedback will be listened to and acted upon much more quickly, by many more programmers, and
2) There won't be the same incentive to add more features just for the sake of having them, to try to look better than the competition.
And relative to MS, of course:
3) There isn't the incentive to hook the damn thing into the fundamentals of the OS, for the sake of featur-izing the OS, thereby opening doors for whole additional classes of security problems
Sorry, I meant that it's not backwards-compatible in 64-bit-mode.
> "...said that making semiconductors smaller, cheaper and faster was no longer the key for an effective strategy..."
The important word here is "key". Saying something is not they key doesn't mean that you're going to abandon it; it just means that it's not the only thing you have to worry about.
So Ruiz's statement doesn't mean that AMD won't continue to pursue smaller/cheaper/faster cpu's; it's just a recognition that the industry isn't demanding *just* that anymore; there are other concerns that have more weight than they used to -- e.g. low-power cpu's for laptops/pda's.
The statement *certainly* doesn't indicate a shift away from x86 instruction set. Remember, the new 64-bit Hammer processors will use a backwards-compatible instruction set, unlike Intel's 64-bit cpu's (Itanium, etc.) So actually, AMD is remaining more faithful to x86 than Intel!
On another angle, AMD has worked very had to build top-notch processor design teams, and they're currently dedicated to k7 thru k10. These teams were hit relatively lightly by the recent layoffs -- an indication of their value for the forseeable future.
But it would still be foolish for any company to bet the farm on beating Intel at the cpu game; that's why AMD expanded into Flash memory (which has worked out very well), and will likely further expand into other areas. I believe this is what Ruiz is talking about.
I guess it would depend on how strong the shockwave is. If it was very strong, there might be some rippling on the surface after it exited.
But I think it would have to be *really* strong to be visible after the vibrations died down -- there are major earthquakes all the time, much stronger than what this looks like, which don't leave that kind of mark. Yes, landslides happen and faults shift sometimes, but otherwise, the rippling waves on the surface settle down, and you really can't see them.
> In interstellar space, they would be the strongest local gravity source,
... could have had a multiple megaton blast associated with them, but there would be nothing at the surface to retain evidence ...
A cell-sized chunk of this is only 1 ton, so it would have no greater gravity field than a 1-ton rock hurtling through interstellar space.
The thing that's unique about an SQN is that when any material *does* get close enough to it to be captured by its gravity, if it ever gets near to touching the surface, it'll collapse all the way down into quark material itself, and be indistinguisable from the original material.
Even if it did at some point have a little ball of gas around it, collisions between particles would virtually guarantee that, within a short time, nearly all the atoms would venture near the core, and be sucked in. So at most, one of these things would have a very tenous wisp of gas around it.
>
There are satellites that are on the lookout for bright flashes of ligh like that; they would have seen it, if nothing else.
Well, if a cell-sized lump is 1 ton, why not just lob a 1-ton chunk of metal/rock/etc. at it? Same energy to launch, and more effective too -- the SQN would tend to pass through the asteroid, imparting only a small amount of its energy.
> Why not produce lifeforms that can (for example) consume greenhouse gasses and produce energy?
Wow, great idea!
Now, these things will need an energy source of some kind... hmm... maybe sunlight? Yeah, that'd be very eco-friendly -- we could even make up a special name for the process. "Photo"... something. Hmmm. Can't think of anything right now, but we gotta use "photo", it sounds cool.
So anyways, you'd need the organism able to spread itself out into a wide area, so it could have more light-collecting surface area. Maybe some kind of branching structure?
Though of course, to have any significant impact on the atmosphere, you'd have to have virtual *forests* of these things...
Well, interesting idea, anyways.
> I wonder if nukes could be used to alter the big rock's trajectory instead.
I guess that would depend on how solid the asteroid really is. If it was really strong, perhaps repeated detonations of nukes buried not too far below the surface could blow off enough matter to provide the needed push. Though we'd have to be sure the ejecta wouldn't pose a problem for earth somewhere down the line. Though if it blasted off the asteroid w/ enough velocity to be useful for propulsion, it'd probably escape the solar system anyways.
Though I have a feeling that the "rubble pile" model of asteroid structure is closer to the mark. Perhaps a finely-spread web of mini-nukes could accomplish the above without braking the main body up, but it'd be risky.
There's one alternative that I've heard of that sounds interesting -- that is to hit it with a bunch of dust. I'd imagine it'd go like this: we'd mine some other (or even *that*) asteroid, gathering huge amounts of dust from it. Then we'd load it into an appropriate vehicle(s) (which would need some *serious* propulsion -- nuclear energy may be useful there) and send it off in the proper direction. It'd whip around the sun or planets to get even more momentum. Then, just before it hits the offending object, the vehicle shoots its cargo out in front of it, such that the asteroid is impacted with a long column of dust carrying a lot of momentum. This would provide a substantial, but evenly-applied force. Do this enough times, and we may have it.