``It could always be replaced,'' said Benji reasonably, ``if you think it's important.''
``Yes, an electronic brain,'' said Frankie, ``a simple one would suffice.''
``A simple one!'' wailed Arthur.
``Yeah,'' said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, ``you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? --- who'd know the difference?''
``What?'' cried Arthur, backing away still further.
``See what I mean?'' said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.
``I'd notice the difference,'' said Arthur.
``No you wouldn't,'' said Frankie mouse, ``you'd be programmed not to.''
It has been my personal observation that everything in this universe tends to become a sphere (like an exploded dog in space will eventually coelesce into an exploded doggie sphere).
It has been peoples observations in the past the the earth was flat, but further observation proved otherwise.
It has also been my observation that people seem to regard the 4th dimension of time as another 1 dimension.
For example, you hear of time going forward and backward, but never up down left or right.
how could a superset dimension of our familiar three have less attributes then our second dimension?
I'll tell you what (here comes some opinion), I get a little tired of theoretical physics at times. I mean, yes, nothing would happen without theories in place first, but there is something to be said for the practical application of these theories. Cosmologist, while great to listen to can really piss me off when they go throwing out all these exotic concepts without hard, hard, hard evidence to back it up. I mean, einstein had his three letters equal sign and exponent and they were just letters with some math to back them up until....boom! Then we could really test his numbers and see a practical (and deadly-radioactive) example of his theory. This donut thing and this cylinder thing. It takes more faith to belive these cosmologist at times then it takes faith to believe in the almighty! in fact, in light of some of these whacked out sounding theories some of god's stuff sounds downright logical.
I guess what I am trying to say is that while there were those who thought the earth was flat and there were those who observed the earth as round and spherical there additionally were those who thought the earth was the shape of a donut.
you know, there is just something fundamentally wrong with the concept of opportunity cost. I mean, I have downloaded some music, not by any means gigabytes as some do, but an album or two.
My point is this, I have never really bought music in the past. I have bought maybe 10, and thats maybe, albums in my lifetime (actually I did buy a bunch of records from goodwill [for sampling], but they were like $.25 each and I doubt any royalty came of it).
Now this was when I was much younger, years before my first mp3, and I eventually stopped buying any music...then I discovered napster. I was like, great!..but I still only used it to download junk like "the dukes of hazard theme" and "charles in charge". You know, things that I would never, ever had wasted the effort to actually order physically, but because I had access to them right there, I figured there was no reason NOT to get them.
now the record companies say that the downloaded music on my computer is valuble? It's just crap! Crap I thought was funny; crap I thought was gay; crap I thought was other crap and was pretty suprised with what crap I had actually gotten and failed to delete; and lastly, crap.
case and point: I would never have payed for any of this crap in the first place or taken the opportunity to get it so any appraisal of it's value and cost is void and null. This $60 million the industry speaks of is so bogus. They are talking like $60 billion dollars or merchandise has been stolen. But nothing is missing! the cd's are still in the stores, the bands still have thier PA's.
Nothing has been stolen. It's just been listened to, or looked at.
Man, I was working on this old computer and trying to put the processor back in when my screwdriver slipped off of the processor latch and scraped a line about 5 inches long across several lanes of bus.
The worst part was the owners secretary was watching and gasped when it happened.
I was like, "hehe, I hate it when that happens." But inside I was like, "shit, that's never happened before."
I turned er on and was met pretty quickly with a friendly blue screen. But one more magic reboot and the system was up and running.
I called the owner later and told him that he should replace his system because it's old and that everything his secretary said was a lie.
Funny that there is so much less-that-positve response on this article.
Look at that natural symetry, always 6 sided.
You know, you are mostly composed of the same stuff as these snowflake: water.
even carbon forms 6 sided bonds, in carbon nanotubes and with it's good friends oxygen and hydrogen.
You are peering at the fundamental laws of organization here. It's beautiful and it seems to hint at something, at least to me.
you know, your brain has dendrites too.
Now the question is; if we are made of all this stuff that forms 6 sided bonds why do we have 5's of seemingly everything else?
By the way, I know this is just wanton meandering so don't take me too seriously.
in all actuality these are, after all, just snowflakes.
This section of the present article aims to give you a general understanding of the various trends and factors that Moore wove together to predict the rise of the personal computer, the mobile phone, the digital wristwatch, and other innovations that we now take for granted.
Actually I think the digital wristwatch is a pretty neat idea!
Wow! this article appeared on Google news. I was at first curious about gid-goo. with a name like that I wondered what nationality he could be? but after linking and finding slashdot I was like, oh, he's just a geek.
Really, why don't they have a centerfuge in space yet? 2001 came and went, but no centrifical rooms on our space missions to jupiter... come to think of it no mission to jupiter...or for that matter no gigantic black rectangle either (though we shouldn't need to build that, it should just be there).
I mean, I could see how the constant 1g stress could result in some serious questions of durability for a spinning spacecraft, but aren't our structural engineers pretty good at building structures in 1g by now? I mean the've had like, what, 100,000 years of building structures in 1g to practice.
Would we even need propellent to keep it spinning? could we not have large, one sided, reflective solar panels arranged around a cylinder like some kind of windmill or propeller?
What I say is, Can it with the anti-nuke sentiment and lets get ourselves a damn nuclear powered engine!! we've had this enourmously powerful technology for so long now and we have barely even tapped into nuclear powers true potential!
After all, most of the rest of the matter in the universe seems to think that nuclear reactions out in space are fine and dandy, in fact just downright expected.
Also, build a shipyard on the moon. The moon is perfect! Low grav means that moving large pieces of anything would be a snap. Also, though very little, the gravity of the moon gives us that great convenience of leverage. Also it's the damn moon and it's been asking for a moon base for some time now, also it's just rad.
But I digress, how I digress. as arthur c clarke said.
"If men cease to dream, if they turn their backs upon the wonder of the universe, the story of our race will be coming to an end."
If our race is going to end I want it to end in some galactic war.
Not while watching "the bachelor", or "american idol".
Now I agree that digital distortion is ugly as hell. I use, Sonic Foundrys suite of crap, and I am well aquainted with Pro Tools. I have been making digital music for a very long time.
and yes, the 32 bit thing was wrong. But there is an extra 8 bits in the 24 bit used for something. so in 24 bit recordings there are still 32 bits, though 8 of them aren't directly used for the audio representation.
Now do you really think that an expert could tell the difference between an analog recording and the digital copy of that analog recording?
analog is superior to digital the same way walking is superior to driving: If you run into something it's much more forgiving.
so the answer to digital superiority is to avoid distortion.
Recall how Microsoft inflated thier operating systems source code from 12 million lines to something like 30 million lines. This to me seems a good analogy for the current state of the US' legal system.
follow me on this. Many of the lines in Windows 2000 and XP's code are likely fixes. These additional lines are put in the source in order to fix some of the more common problems. But the crap is still in there! it just has some staples and tape sealing it up.
We have these copyright laws that were written around the turn of the century at the inception of the phonograph. Now, rather than replace, or better yet, remove these laws the lawyers are happy to just tack on another 150 pages of legal jargon and loopholes that would cause a cyclic redundancy error on any system.
Does anyone still actually argue that analog is superior to digital?
I mean, the only thing analog has going for it is "warmth". Of course this "warmth" is a result of the limited frequency and dynamic range of analog and can be easily duplicated.
Tell you what. Have an expert put on headphones and listen to an analog recording, then have them listen to a 32 bit 96khz digital copy of the analog recording. Do you think they are going to be able to tell which is the original? No, of course they won't because the digital copy is IDENTICAL in frequency and dynamic range to the analog signal. The only difference is that the analog recording is using the full dynamic and frequency range of the medium to reproduce the recording and the digital recording of the analog recording is using a mere fraction of it's potential dynamic and frequency range.
So if one is a superset of the other why even use the other!?
Personally I think that X-box specific games are a great thing! Nothing sucks more than seeing some game developed that suffers from the crutch of having to accomodate all these damn down level systems. i mean, when I see that the game is compatible with the ps2 I automatically assume that, yes, the xbox version will have fresher paint; but the framing is going to be weak.
Did anyone see on space.com the pic of the guy with the sign which reads, "no nukes in space,"?
WHAT!!!!???? No nukes in space! It must be a joke right? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but alot of anything that matters in space is nuclear right? I mean, actually, everything you can see in the night sky is nuclear right? I mean, like all life is here, and some dark glasses, because of a rather important and bright nuclear reaction.
Memory is a strange thing. For instance, people may say "I can't remember anything from before the age of 5." However, before the age of five a child has learned his or her name, he or she has learned that a hot stove burns. Indeed, the memory is functioning at a very early age. The question is, then, what is different about the type of memory which deals with direct recognition. The simple answer would seem to be that a schema (so to speak) must be formally stated in the human mind. I am not a doctor (IANAD) but neurology is a side-hobby of mine (at least reading about it). Neurons in the human brain store information not only through the network of dendrites and synapses, but also through the difference in potential between dendrites as well as differing frequencies. Neural networks are something indeed. Recognition is a type of memory that only humans seem to possess. Language seems like it is necessary for this type of memory to exist. However I think that Language is actually made possible through recognition. it is well know that around the age of 3-5 Children begin to make a astronomical jump in their language skills, they begin to form abstract concepts and so on. Around the ages of 7-10 children learn around 20 words a day (meaning and usage!). this amazing spurt in brain development is indicated by this jump in language skills, but I don't think language is the key player in recognition, I think the radical brain development is the key. also, traumatic events tend to stick around in memory. This makes sense in a survival sense. Since being able to recognize threats and remember they would be important to survival. However, this type of memory cause by traumatic events is important, but I don't think it fits into the classic type of memories the poster is referring to when I was 8 months old my mother gave me swimming lessons (yes a child can swim at this age). For clarification, 8 month old babies learn to swim by having the "instructor" blow in their face (to cause the baby to instinctually hold their breath) and then tossing them in the water! It's pretty brutal, but the baby can swim pretty good for a while. Of course the baby can never get out of the pool and will continue swimming until the batteries run out so to speak, but that's another story. I seem to remember this - but I can recall over the years how I have embellished on this memory. Slowly adding onto it. I think the initial memory was more esthetic, emotional. And as my abstract memory abilities came to life in the proceeding years I think I slowly added this and that here and there. I think this happens with all memories, but especially the patchy early memory.
Dude, read the book....Sometimes knowing whats going to happen is even better. You see I am watching the movies before reading the books to give myself a unique perspective on the story. I think I will be less disapointed with the movies If I see them before I read them. Like you said, it sucks to see a vision that, more or less fully fails to satisfy what your imagination saw from the book.
To the contrary, I love my movies loud, to the point a contract-signing-worthy hearing damage. That THX sound is something cosmic, it's HUGE!!! sometimes I stand up and scream, "THAT SOUND IS SO FUCKING HUGE! HOLY SHIT!" Thats how loud I like my movies:) But I digress, Would it hurt the theatres to have showings at different volume preferences. Because I want the voice of Saron to pierce my living - likely high and scared - soul:D also I am going to download this new one.
Aww!? A Zero! I can understand though. Should have posted anonymous. But when someone puts up something purposefully erroneous thinking it's funny to annoy people, I like to find something actually funny about said anoyment so, hopefully, they feel like they failed...Yes, I hate them that much. In case this post's frame of reference is gone, the original anonymous post sent me to www.agdc.com (A non-english church site) and not to www.agdc.com.au (the real deal) So look at this pic and tell me it doesn't look like the big-J is like a 40th level diety and is ruling over his server...or cooking the earth - maybe he's giving everyone on the planet zeros for redundancy.
I like how well you can see the shadow of the shuttle's rockets on the ocean. It kind of gives a nice perspective on the scope of the launch. But it sure sucked that we missed full angle of the acent, I would like to have seen the few minutes of earth getting smaller footage. it also sucks we missed the nose jet footage and the final zero g seperation. I tell you, those booster rockets are trouble trouble trouble...NASA needs a camera wash like in Steel Battalion.
Slashdot Mirror
``It could always be replaced,'' said Benji reasonably, ``if you think it's important.''
``Yes, an electronic brain,'' said Frankie, ``a simple one would suffice.''
``A simple one!'' wailed Arthur.
``Yeah,'' said Zaphod with a sudden evil grin, ``you'd just have to program it to say What? and I don't understand and Where's the tea? --- who'd know the difference?''
``What?'' cried Arthur, backing away still further.
``See what I mean?'' said Zaphod and howled with pain because of something that Trillian did at that moment.
``I'd notice the difference,'' said Arthur.
``No you wouldn't,'' said Frankie mouse, ``you'd be programmed not to.''
It has been my personal observation that everything in this universe tends to become a sphere (like an exploded dog in space will eventually coelesce into an exploded doggie sphere).
It has been peoples observations in the past the the earth was flat, but further observation proved otherwise.
It has also been my observation that people seem to regard the 4th dimension of time as another 1 dimension.
For example, you hear of time going forward and backward, but never up down left or right.
how could a superset dimension of our familiar three have less attributes then our second dimension?
I'll tell you what (here comes some opinion), I get a little tired of theoretical physics at times. I mean, yes, nothing would happen without theories in place first, but there is something to be said for the practical application of these theories. Cosmologist, while great to listen to can really piss me off when they go throwing out all these exotic concepts without hard, hard, hard evidence to back it up.
I mean, einstein had his three letters equal sign and exponent and they were just letters with some math to back them up until....boom! Then we could really test his numbers and see a practical (and deadly-radioactive) example of his theory. This donut thing and this cylinder thing. It takes more faith to belive these cosmologist at times then it takes faith to believe in the almighty! in fact, in light of some of these whacked out sounding theories some of god's stuff sounds downright logical.
I guess what I am trying to say is that while there were those who thought the earth was flat and there were those who observed the earth as round and spherical there additionally were those who thought the earth was the shape of a donut.
when does the bus leave? I've got my broom.
you know, there is just something fundamentally wrong with the concept of opportunity cost.
I mean, I have downloaded some music, not by any means gigabytes as some do, but an album or two.
My point is this, I have never really bought music in the past. I have bought maybe 10, and thats maybe, albums in my lifetime (actually I did buy a bunch of records from goodwill [for sampling], but they were like $.25 each and I doubt any royalty came of it).
Now this was when I was much younger, years before my first mp3, and I eventually stopped buying any music...then I discovered napster. I was like, great!..but I still only used it to download junk like "the dukes of hazard theme" and "charles in charge". You know, things that I would never, ever had wasted the effort to actually order physically, but because I had access to them right there, I figured there was no reason NOT to get them.
now the record companies say that the downloaded music on my computer is valuble? It's just crap! Crap I thought was funny; crap I thought was gay; crap I thought was other crap and was pretty suprised with what crap I had actually gotten and failed to delete; and lastly, crap.
case and point: I would never have payed for any of this crap in the first place or taken the opportunity to get it so any appraisal of it's value and cost is void and null. This $60 million the industry speaks of is so bogus. They are talking like $60 billion dollars or merchandise has been stolen. But nothing is missing! the cd's are still in the stores, the bands still have thier PA's.
Nothing has been stolen. It's just been listened to, or looked at.
The U.S. is planning to sit around and watch
why is everyone like, "well, we already did it."
sure we already did it. And I already backed the server up last week, so why do it again?
we sure didn't learn everything we could from a mere 7 landings!
Man, I was working on this old computer and trying to put the processor back in when my screwdriver slipped off of the processor latch and scraped a line about 5 inches long across several lanes of bus. The worst part was the owners secretary was watching and gasped when it happened. I was like, "hehe, I hate it when that happens." But inside I was like, "shit, that's never happened before." I turned er on and was met pretty quickly with a friendly blue screen. But one more magic reboot and the system was up and running. I called the owner later and told him that he should replace his system because it's old and that everything his secretary said was a lie.
Funny that there is so much less-that-positve response on this article. Look at that natural symetry, always 6 sided.
You know, you are mostly composed of the same stuff as these snowflake: water. even carbon forms 6 sided bonds, in carbon nanotubes and with it's good friends oxygen and hydrogen.
You are peering at the fundamental laws of organization here. It's beautiful and it seems to hint at something, at least to me.
you know, your brain has dendrites too.
Now the question is; if we are made of all this stuff that forms 6 sided bonds why do we have 5's of seemingly everything else? By the way, I know this is just wanton meandering so don't take me too seriously.
in all actuality these are, after all, just snowflakes.
This section of the present article aims to give you a general understanding of the various trends and factors that Moore wove together to predict the rise of the personal computer, the mobile phone, the digital wristwatch, and other innovations that we now take for granted.
Actually I think the digital wristwatch is a pretty neat idea!
Wow! this article appeared on Google news. I was at first curious about gid-goo. with a name like that I wondered what nationality he could be? but after linking and finding slashdot I was like, oh, he's just a geek.
Really, why don't they have a centerfuge in space yet? 2001 came and went, but no centrifical rooms on our space missions to jupiter... come to think of it no mission to jupiter...or for that matter no gigantic black rectangle either (though we shouldn't need to build that, it should just be there).
I mean, I could see how the constant 1g stress could result in some serious questions of durability for a spinning spacecraft, but aren't our structural engineers pretty good at building structures in 1g by now? I mean the've had like, what, 100,000 years of building structures in 1g to practice.
Would we even need propellent to keep it spinning? could we not have large, one sided, reflective solar panels arranged around a cylinder like some kind of windmill or propeller?
What I say is, Can it with the anti-nuke sentiment and lets get ourselves a damn nuclear powered engine!! we've had this enourmously powerful technology for so long now and we have barely even tapped into nuclear powers true potential!
After all, most of the rest of the matter in the universe seems to think that nuclear reactions out in space are fine and dandy, in fact just downright expected.
Also, build a shipyard on the moon. The moon is perfect! Low grav means that moving large pieces of anything would be a snap. Also, though very little, the gravity of the moon gives us that great convenience of leverage. Also it's the damn moon and it's been asking for a moon base for some time now, also it's just rad.
But I digress, how I digress. as arthur c clarke said.
"If men cease to dream, if they turn their backs upon the wonder of the universe, the story of our race will be coming to an end."
If our race is going to end I want it to end in some galactic war.
Not while watching "the bachelor", or "american idol".
Hell, I'll even settle for Vogons.
wow, psuedo-flamadge eh?!
Now I agree that digital distortion is ugly as hell. I use, Sonic Foundrys suite of crap, and I am well aquainted with Pro Tools. I have been making digital music for a very long time.
and yes, the 32 bit thing was wrong. But there is an extra 8 bits in the 24 bit used for something. so in 24 bit recordings there are still 32 bits, though 8 of them aren't directly used for the audio representation.
Now do you really think that an expert could tell the difference between an analog recording and the digital copy of that analog recording?
analog is superior to digital the same way walking is superior to driving: If you run into something it's much more forgiving.
so the answer to digital superiority is to avoid distortion.
Recall how Microsoft inflated thier operating systems source code from 12 million lines to something like 30 million lines. This to me seems a good analogy for the current state of the US' legal system.
follow me on this. Many of the lines in Windows 2000 and XP's code are likely fixes. These additional lines are put in the source in order to fix some of the more common problems. But the crap is still in there! it just has some staples and tape sealing it up.
We have these copyright laws that were written around the turn of the century at the inception of the phonograph. Now, rather than replace, or better yet, remove these laws the lawyers are happy to just tack on another 150 pages of legal jargon and loopholes that would cause a cyclic redundancy error on any system.
so stupid. So lame. just venting.
Oddly enough the simpsons sound effects engineer uses a guitar with a midi pickup for insertions!
isn't that weird?
Does anyone still actually argue that analog is superior to digital?
I mean, the only thing analog has going for it is "warmth". Of course this "warmth" is a result of the limited frequency and dynamic range of analog and can be easily duplicated.
Tell you what. Have an expert put on headphones and listen to an analog recording, then have them listen to a 32 bit 96khz digital copy of the analog recording. Do you think they are going to be able to tell which is the original? No, of course they won't because the digital copy is IDENTICAL in frequency and dynamic range to the analog signal.
The only difference is that the analog recording is using the full dynamic and frequency range of the medium to reproduce the recording and the digital recording of the analog recording is using a mere fraction of it's potential dynamic and frequency range.
So if one is a superset of the other why even use the other!?
Personally I think that X-box specific games are a great thing!
Nothing sucks more than seeing some game developed that suffers from the crutch of having to accomodate all these damn down level systems.
i mean, when I see that the game is compatible with the ps2 I automatically assume that, yes, the xbox version will have fresher paint; but the framing is going to be weak.
Did anyone see on space.com the pic of the guy with the sign which reads, "no nukes in space,"?
WHAT!!!!???? No nukes in space! It must be a joke right? Correct me if I'm wrong here, but alot of anything that matters in space is nuclear right? I mean, actually, everything you can see in the night sky is nuclear right? I mean, like all life is here, and some dark glasses, because of a rather important and bright nuclear reaction.
Memory is a strange thing. For instance, people may say "I can't remember anything from before the age of 5." However, before the age of five a child has learned his or her name, he or she has learned that a hot stove burns. Indeed, the memory is functioning at a very early age. The question is, then, what is different about the type of memory which deals with direct recognition.
The simple answer would seem to be that a schema (so to speak) must be formally stated in the human mind. I am not a doctor (IANAD) but neurology is a side-hobby of mine (at least reading about it). Neurons in the human brain store information not only through the network of dendrites and synapses, but also through the difference in potential between dendrites as well as differing frequencies. Neural networks are something indeed.
Recognition is a type of memory that only humans seem to possess. Language seems like it is necessary for this type of memory to exist. However I think that Language is actually made possible through recognition.
it is well know that around the age of 3-5 Children begin to make a astronomical jump in their language skills, they begin to form abstract concepts and so on. Around the ages of 7-10 children learn around 20 words a day (meaning and usage!). this amazing spurt in brain development is indicated by this jump in language skills, but I don't think language is the key player in recognition, I think the radical brain development is the key. also, traumatic events tend to stick around in memory. This makes sense in a survival sense. Since being able to recognize threats and remember they would be important to survival. However, this type of memory cause by traumatic events is important, but I don't think it fits into the classic type of memories the poster is referring to
when I was 8 months old my mother gave me swimming lessons (yes a child can swim at this age). For clarification, 8 month old babies learn to swim by having the "instructor" blow in their face (to cause the baby to instinctually hold their breath) and then tossing them in the water! It's pretty brutal, but the baby can swim pretty good for a while. Of course the baby can never get out of the pool and will continue swimming until the batteries run out so to speak, but that's another story. I seem to remember this - but I can recall over the years how I have embellished on this memory. Slowly adding onto it. I think the initial memory was more esthetic, emotional. And as my abstract memory abilities came to life in the proceeding years I think I slowly added this and that here and there. I think this happens with all memories, but especially the patchy early memory.
Seven of Nine like you have never seen her before!
Dude, read the book.... Sometimes knowing whats going to happen is even better.
You see I am watching the movies before reading the books to give myself a unique perspective on the story. I think I will be less disapointed with the movies If I see them before I read them. Like you said, it sucks to see a vision that, more or less fully fails to satisfy what your imagination saw from the book.
I love the guy who does those - YOU FAIL IT - posts, he always types a perfect rebuttal to anything he disagrees with.
these work good if you imagine rick moranis as Dark helmet reading them.
To the contrary, I love my movies loud, to the point a contract-signing-worthy hearing damage. That THX sound is something cosmic, it's HUGE!!! sometimes I stand up and scream, "THAT SOUND IS SO FUCKING HUGE! HOLY SHIT!" Thats how loud I like my movies :) :D
But I digress, Would it hurt the theatres to have showings at different volume preferences. Because I want the voice of Saron to pierce my living - likely high and scared - soul
also I am going to download this new one.
serious? cause I would roll joints *dumb look my friends always give me when I don't get a joke* - that was a joke, but not the joint part:)
Aww!? A Zero! I can understand though. Should have posted anonymous. But when someone puts up something purposefully erroneous thinking it's funny to annoy people, I like to find something actually funny about said anoyment so, hopefully, they feel like they failed...Yes, I hate them that much.
In case this post's frame of reference is gone, the original anonymous post sent me to www.agdc.com (A non-english church site) and not to www.agdc.com.au (the real deal)
So look at this pic and tell me it doesn't look like the big-J is like a 40th level diety and is ruling over his server...or cooking the earth - maybe he's giving everyone on the planet zeros for redundancy.
Man! that jesus MMORG look sweet!!
I like how well you can see the shadow of the shuttle's rockets on the ocean. It kind of gives a nice perspective on the scope of the launch. But it sure sucked that we missed full angle of the acent, I would like to have seen the few minutes of earth getting smaller footage. it also sucks we missed the nose jet footage and the final zero g seperation. I tell you, those booster rockets are trouble trouble trouble...NASA needs a camera wash like in Steel Battalion.