Right now I see the equivalent of getting the movie, book, software, and record industries together to write copyright law. Which in fact, is what has been happening all through the 20th century, and it's consistently fucked over the public.
Difference is, the only way to trip over somebody's copyright is to actually copy what they've done. It's possible (and apparently easy) to trip over somebody's patent without even knowing that it exists... which flaw these companies *ought* to want to fix, to make it harder for others to trip them up.
What is so inherently stupid about fission is that you need lots of fuel at one place in order to sustain the criticality of the reactor. A fission reactor is critical (the normal state of operation) when the number of produced neutrons is equal to the number of lost neutrons. Since neutrons are lost through the surface and produced inside the core you want the ratio of volume to surface to be large. That means a huge reactor core.
I saw one (@ University of Missouri, guided tour at or before year 2000) that was maybe 9 ft. long by 6 ft. diameter (1/3 scale model out on a display table... I think about 3 ft. long), that's not exactly huge. This included not only the fuel, but also a rather thick metal sheath (lithium, I think; something to do with making it work better). The only real "large" part was the 40 ft. water tank it was in.
In contrast to the fission reactor which stores the energy for millions of households for a couple of years there is only a few grams of Hydrogen-isotopes in a fusion reactor. Even in a run-away scenario the fuel is used up very quickly and nothing spectacular happens.
Very funny. Have you any idea what releasing "the energy for millions of households for a couple of years" very quickly would do? It'd certainly not be "nothing spectacular"... think H-bomb. Fission reactors would be safe only because the governing physical laws are such that it'd be *impossible* to get a "run-away scenario" (rate depends on temperature/pressure, the container would break and the fuel would cool down more-or-less instantly when it contacted anything massive). Also note that fusion depends on low surface/volume ratio too (IIRC, the reason nobody's got it working yet...), more volume == more heat generated; more surface == more heat lost.
First of all, relax.
Second of all, you're full of shit, it's not your computer, it's their content, in some cases artwork, and they can decide how they want it viewed/experianced.
You can choose to not view it or view it as the artist intended.
And whyfor should they be allowed to prevent people from viewing it in other ways? Especially if "other ways" is the *only* way they're able to view it (like using, say, ancient hardware that "CANNOT HANDLE anything higher than "Low Quality"!")?
Besides which, what if some people like it better when viewed in other ways? Artist does not always know best...
Imagine that..... wanting to buy something, going to the store, and picking the damned thing out YOURSELF, instead of people pushing stuff at you 24/7..... now there's a concept..
...which kinda makes it harder to hear about new cool stuff. Particularly in tech areas, there's new "better" stuff showing up all the time. If you never get any ads, how're you going to find out about it? And if you never find out about it, how're you going to know if it'd be nice to have or not?
ahhhh Helium... Why oh why must we always use Helium... Hydrogen is 1/4 the weight & therefor would have close to 4 times the buoyancy. Hydrogen is good...
??? Buoyancy depends on the *difference* in the densities. N2 (the majority of the atmosphere) has a molecular mass of 28, hydrogen is 2 (since it's also diatomic), and helium is 4....so, hydrogen should provide 26/24 of the amount of lift that helium provides, or about 4% more. Not 4x.
What you talkin' bout foo? GOTO has been long supported by Java, it just hasn't been used
by its developers.
From the page *you* linked: "The keywords const and goto are reserved, even though they are not currently used. This may allow a Java compiler to produce better error messages if these C++ keywords incorrectly appear in programs."
So, the Java language does not support goto. Trying to use a goto will result in a compiler error.
There is a reason gays, who comprise 10% of the population, are denied rights - it is because a certain vocal majority does not consider them to be actual people.
No, it is because "a certain vocal majority" considers their choice of lifestyle to be immoral and intolerable.
... Hmm... does this Valenti guy consider DIY tinkering "immoral and intolerable", or just "unprofitable and intolerable"?
I think nuclear plants can operate safely (with intense government oversight and regulation--no, this is not something that you want "the market to decide"), but I don't think it's a smart idea to put more into operation until we figure out something to do with the waste that's more clueful than sticking it in a hole in the ground.
Recycle, like the eco-nuts tell us to do with all our other waste; with long-term storage costs for radioactive stuff this might even be economical. Split out the dangerous (radioactive) parts and put them through the reactor again. What idiot decided it was too dangerous to do this, anyway?
The "learning edition" of MSVC++ prohibited you from commercially distributing binaries made with it (or perhaps even just distributing the binaries, I can't remember just now). It also displayed a pop-up window whenever you executed your code, reminding you of this.
Ah yes, I remember that... got one of those "teach yourself C++" books as a holiday present, and it came with that compiler.
I also remember using the included debugger to find out where the programs stopped when that pop-up appeared... the byte sequence around the relevant call was always the same, and I coded something that would search-and-replace it with a string of nop's. Partly because the pop-ups were annoying, and partly just because I could.
How can comething be infinitely long in one of its dimensions without having an infinite volume?
Well, if it also has an infinitely small cross section, then the volume would be infinity times one over infinity, which is... some indeterminate finite number.
The key here, to not get bent all out of shape, is to understand that copyright holders have the right to dictate how their IP is used.
No, they have the 'right' (temporary permission from the government, actually) to dictate who is [not] allowed to make copies of it. They have no say in how it is used, unless you sign a contract (or EULA, apparently) stating otherwise.
If someone intercepts the particle, they must first know which property to measure.
"the system uses spin as the property measured"
Once it is measured, though, they are exposed and the information is, essentially destroyed.
Right... how does it 'know' it's been measured? Why is bouncing around in the fiber different from bouncing around in the detector? What if nobody's looking at the detector output?
The single photons are polarised, so to detect them you need the appropriately polarised detector. As there's only one photon, you can only have one detector, as the "wrong" detector will block the photon (and not detect it). You can only detect half of the photons, so you can only retransmit half.
IIRC, lasers work by having photons 'copy' themselves by running into excited atoms... so it would seem that a laser medium could be used to replace the single photon transmitted with several identical ones that could be measured conventionally. But this is bloody obvious, and I don't see how it could have been missed. So, what am I missing that makes it not work?
This has been reported on since
February at which time, Father Gabriel Amorth, the Vatican's chief expert on exorcism said demonic forces cannot be ruled out.
So... the way to make these fires stop is to douse all the appliances with holy water?
1) Public IP addresses must be globally unique. If they weren't, routing traffic would be effectively impossible
Incorrect. Addresses need not be unique at all,
Indeed one can make very good use of non-unique addresses. Quite a few of the IP addresses for the root DNS servers (eg those operated by ISC) are assigned to multiple different computers, diversely located geographically. Go google for "anycast". The 6to4 relay service also uses a public, non-unique address (ie anycast) for the 6to4 gateway.
Any stateless network service can be deployed using anycast addresses.
But everything at that specific address is seen as effectively one server. Addresses don't need to be distinct per physical machine, they need to be distinct per logical server. Two different servers (probably owned by different people) having the same address wouldn't work too well, how would you say which one you wanted to talk to?
Have you any idea what sort of bandwidth requirements whole countries in Africa have, compared to the average US neighbourhood of a few thousand?
Have you any idea what kind of money can be saved and used for the developing economy if in 20 or 30 years time the entire Internet structure of a country doesn't need a complete replacement because they did things backwards like build backbones with WiFi?
If they're planning on developing, someday their bandwidth requirements will increase. They're either prepared, or they pay to do it again and stifle their efforts.
If wireless is enough cheaper than wired, that shouldn't be a problem -- put in a cheapo temporary wireless infrastructure and only cable sections as needed, rather than cabling everywhere right away... even if they do end up installing as much cable as they would've had this could end up effectively cheaper (in %gdp terms, not absolute price) since the local economy has more time to grow before they have to buy the cable and pay for having it strung up.
Assuming you mean beer-type 'free', since it makes more sense in this context than the speech-type 'free' some people talk about here...
Linux's 'free' software is fundamentally anti-american because its underlining principles rest on a socialt political philosophy.
That does not make it "anti-american" -- the kind of socialism that we don't like is forced socialism, where people are denied the choice to not participate. With 'free' software, there is no restriction of that choice: proprietary and homebrew software are still available.
Microsoft has become the industry leader because of their usable products, and ability to use capitalism to its advantage. If linux is adopted widely in America it undercuts the ideals of what our strong country represents. America is a democracy and the most powerful country in the world because of capitalism.
Capitalism and sharing are not mutually exclusive. In fact, this sharing is an example of a 'positive externality', which are generally considered good for capitalist economic systems. The "ideals of what our strong country represents" are essentially that people can do what they want with a minimum of restrictions... if Linux were to be adopted widely, it would be an instance of people exercising these ideals.
Linux cannot survive here,...
It seems to be surviving just fine.
... free will destroy capitalism and become a cancer on our society and therefore will be prevented by the rest of industry from taking hold, otherwise we take the first step into communism, where noone wins.
Uh, no. First of all, it'd be highly impractical for people to provide physical things for free on that scale, so it ain't likely to happen. Secondly, the trouble with communism is that in practice people are forced to participate, even if they don't want to. For communism to come about the way you describe would actually be a Very Good Thing (TM), since it would be voluntary, and would actually match the theory of how communism is supposed to work, with the benefits that it is supposed to provide. Real Life large-scale communism is a broken system, since people have this annoying tendency to be greedy by default... which would prevent there from being enough people making free physical goods to cause the 'cancer' effect you mention.
Y'see, software is such that an altruistic few can supply basically the whole world. Physical goods ain't like that, so 'free' can't spread to them in any significant amount.
How hard would it be to send a greenhouse with them, to provide food and oxygen? And possibly we could send them extra supplies, depending on how accurately they could be placed (kinda hard to collect a supply drop halfway 'round the planet...).
In other words, since we can't have them come back yet, have them set up a permanent base they can live in. (Not that I'd consider this a terribly bright idea, what with our track record of sending probes up...)
Space Elevator. Everything else is too dangerous and expensive.
What, you're saying that a tower that size wouldn't be expensive? And I don't see what's so dangerous about free-flying rocketships, if designed well (it can't be that hard to do, given our level of experience... and we seem to be almost there) and used properly (no liftoff at out-of-spec launch temperature, etc.).
Grandparent post:
But if we can compress carbon to create diamonds, why can't we grow plants and compress them to create oil?
It's called biodiesel and is in the proccess of becoming cheaper to use. It is made from vegitable oils at a rate of about 86% output from the oil used.
Hmm...
Why does the guy mentioned in the article think that compressing plants by putting them deep underground would be so much less efficient?
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Besides which, what if some people like it better when viewed in other ways? Artist does not always know best...
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After all, where do shadows come from?
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So, the Java language does not support goto. Trying to use a goto will result in a compiler error.
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I also remember using the included debugger to find out where the programs stopped when that pop-up appeared... the byte sequence around the relevant call was always the same, and I coded something that would search-and-replace it with a string of nop's. Partly because the pop-ups were annoying, and partly just because I could.
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Y'see, software is such that an altruistic few can supply basically the whole world. Physical goods ain't like that, so 'free' can't spread to them in any significant amount.
Tim
In other words, since we can't have them come back yet, have them set up a permanent base they can live in. (Not that I'd consider this a terribly bright idea, what with our track record of sending probes up...)
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Why does the guy mentioned in the article think that compressing plants by putting them deep underground would be so much less efficient?
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