It's nice anytime a superpower recognises the difference between politics and science, and has leadership with an IQ above room temperature.
This is the first couple of years in a very, very long time where I haven't been afraid of you lot. Not that I shouldn't still be, perhaps, but the current situation is that I'm not.
(sigh) It seems some people just never outgrow baby talk. They prefer their fears, their cowering in the dark to opening up a book in a library. It's really tremendously sad.
The entire threat of airplane terrorism cannot justify such a step
Agree, but for a different reason.
Guys, the airplane threat is over. Way too much coverage. Way too much coverage.
The next terrorist act will be neither aircraft hijackings, anthrax in envelopes, or blowing up an ancient stone Buddha. It will be something entirely else, perpetrated while we have our attention elsewhere.
Like any good hunter, we need to focus on where they'll be, not where they've been. Look around you - what civil infrastructure is vulnerable? All of it? Do we need to fence the stuff off or just change our patrol patterns? Software behind cameras?
Think ahead, please. If it's a problem, let's work the problem.
Expressed in dollars and cents, pounds shilling and pence...
I wonder if this isn't the harbinger of some very interesting lawsuit in the future - about some corporation who licenses meals for home use, to be prepared on their home system's Sandwich Printer. You know, the one that prints your food, layer by layer, by protein assembly and deposition.
What happens if a challenge comes up as to whom the license fees belong to if the user prepared it on his own printer, using his own third-party Pasturised Processed Protein Food Spread Ink, using a cracked copy of Beetroot and Cream Cheese on Rye?
Actually thinking about that, the prospect of creative DRM makes me shudder...
Carabiners rock! Especially the ones that have already hit rock. Those are good much better at attaching belt loops to keys than attaching belts to rock faces.
Or so I've heard. That's one of the Blue Room mysteries and therefore probably mythical.
Losing sight has always been my greatest fear. I understand a lot of blind people can live perfectly fine lives, but I can't think of many worse futures
Agree wholeheartedly. I was blind for a year, and was cured. Once you lose your sight you would crawl through broken glass if it meant you could get your eyesight back.
I can see my wife's face, and my daughters are beautiful. Bring on science.
Interestingly enough, the acrylic lenses used in cataract lens replacement therapy are a bit more transmissive in the infra red than the ones you are born with.
I haven't noticed much improvement along those lines (I haven't done any empirical studies myself) although my night vision is superb compared with how it was at any time prior to the surgery.
I could see the value of patents if they were changed in one essential respect: That the patent could only be granted to the individual who was the inventor, and that the patent was non-transferable in any way, shape or form from then on. That would grant patents their original usage again, and stem the abuses.
Copyright should go the same way - when the originator of something as valid and wonderful as Mickey Mouse passes on, it should be open season on Mickey Mouse - not an exclusive cash- um, "mouse" for people who did not contribute the innovation.
I find this all very confusing. Can someone explain it in terms of Neutral Good, Lawful good, Chaotic Good? And which dice do I use to determine alignment?
The better armed forces and quasi-military organisations such as the police have a strong culture of ethical behaviour, knowing that ethics are the only difference between law enforcement and an armed and uniformed thug.
Of course in my country, the police are unarmed, mounted on unicorns, wear designer uniforms and are unfailingly polite.
If you want people to drive at 30 miles per hour, drop the speed limit to zero with a 30mph tolerance. Scale this upward - if you want them to drive at 40, set the speed limit to 10 etc. You'll get the speed control you want and a reputation for being easy on people. What's not to like?
I don't really think people care about the speeds, myself - this has everything to do with governments, police and Mrs. Grundy wanting to exercise control over others. They'll spend big to impose that control.
Stop looking for a stove+fridge combination, buy a fridge and a stove.
Seriously, you will spend less money and have a faster result by buying two machines, if you need both environments - unless you're talking about many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of machines, it's difficult to justify building a merged Windows / Ubuntu SOE in terms of delivery architecture. What would the merged SOE look like in terms of budget, after it's filtered through a bunch of consultants? Ubuntu doesn't take much in the way of hardware to drive, so you can get the lower spec gear to get decent performance. YMMV of course, but I'm willing to bet you'd get a cleaner result by keeping the two environments separate, and save a lot of money by avoiding the merge altogether.
Innovative solutions to problems that NASA solved decades ago?
It might be worth re-inventing certain wheels if we could do a better job of preserving how we did so. Are all the technological advances from the Apollo era preserved for today? Answer: No, many of the advances were rushed into production and weren't written down.
The Information Age is younger than the Space Age.
When we do it this time, I'm hoping there will be a wiki to preserve that knowledge. Preserving knowledge of strategic importance should be part of the government's response to challenges in space, so we don't find ourselves in this embarrassing predicament ever again.
Perhaps (shudder) this actually does need its own agency, perhaps a new wing of the National Archives devoted to keeping a wiki alive for this purpose.
Contrary to the spirit of the common Wikimedia implementation, however, I'd suggest something with stronger attribution - perhaps Confluence or something similar (and yes, I'd prefer an open source solution, and I know Confluence is not) - would be necessary, so people can trace the origins of the knowledge preserved.
I'd be in favor of adding such central knowledge preservation as a requirement for government bids.
It can be a circle if the cross-section chosen is tangential to the top of the donut. Think of that sticky ring on the newspaper when you dropped it, icing-side-down.
Kids, don't try this at home. The sight of a mathematician sacrificing a donut to science can be a traumatic experience to passers-by (to say nothing of it's effect on the mathematician).
Slashdot Mirror
The level of skills in computing logarithms has fallen dramatically since the introduction of the slide rule.
It's nice anytime a superpower recognises the difference between politics and science, and has leadership with an IQ above room temperature.
This is the first couple of years in a very, very long time where I haven't been afraid of you lot. Not that I shouldn't still be, perhaps, but the current situation is that I'm not.
Good on you, mate.
Now how the fuck does this deserve Score:5 Interesting?
I would think because it's an excellent application of Sturgeon's Law to anthropology.
Horrifying, the scream of the leek.
Pico and Sepulveda.
Damn. No more Doctor Demento's Pimentos? This presages The end of Western culture.
You have your verbs in the wrong place put.
(sigh) It seems some people just never outgrow baby talk. They prefer their fears, their cowering in the dark to opening up a book in a library. It's really tremendously sad.
The entire threat of airplane terrorism cannot justify such a step
Agree, but for a different reason.
Guys, the airplane threat is over. Way too much coverage. Way too much coverage.
The next terrorist act will be neither aircraft hijackings, anthrax in envelopes, or blowing up an ancient stone Buddha. It will be something entirely else, perpetrated while we have our attention elsewhere.
Like any good hunter, we need to focus on where they'll be, not where they've been. Look around you - what civil infrastructure is vulnerable? All of it? Do we need to fence the stuff off or just change our patrol patterns? Software behind cameras?
Think ahead, please. If it's a problem, let's work the problem.
Does *anyone* think xkcd is funny?
No. I think XKCD is rather witty, a more grown-up thing.
Expressed in dollars and cents, pounds shilling and pence...
I wonder if this isn't the harbinger of some very interesting lawsuit in the future - about some corporation who licenses meals for home use, to be prepared on their home system's Sandwich Printer. You know, the one that prints your food, layer by layer, by protein assembly and deposition.
What happens if a challenge comes up as to whom the license fees belong to if the user prepared it on his own printer, using his own third-party Pasturised Processed Protein Food Spread Ink, using a cracked copy of Beetroot and Cream Cheese on Rye?
Actually thinking about that, the prospect of creative DRM makes me shudder...
Or so I've heard. That's one of the Blue Room mysteries and therefore probably mythical.
Losing sight has always been my greatest fear. I understand a lot of blind people can live perfectly fine lives, but I can't think of many worse futures
Agree wholeheartedly. I was blind for a year, and was cured. Once you lose your sight you would crawl through broken glass if it meant you could get your eyesight back.
I can see my wife's face, and my daughters are beautiful. Bring on science.
I haven't noticed much improvement along those lines (I haven't done any empirical studies myself) although my night vision is superb compared with how it was at any time prior to the surgery.
I could see the value of patents if they were changed in one essential respect: That the patent could only be granted to the individual who was the inventor, and that the patent was non-transferable in any way, shape or form from then on. That would grant patents their original usage again, and stem the abuses.
Copyright should go the same way - when the originator of something as valid and wonderful as Mickey Mouse passes on, it should be open season on Mickey Mouse - not an exclusive cash- um, "mouse" for people who did not contribute the innovation.
Girl in training - or secret Heterodyne Heir? Brilliant.
I find this all very confusing. Can someone explain it in terms of Neutral Good, Lawful good, Chaotic Good? And which dice do I use to determine alignment?
You got someone to write a book in the 1880s? Jesus Crap, you're old.
I noticed that about him when I was editing it.
I wonder where Dante would have placed these priests.
I love them because they feed me.
Police officers in theory are not above the law.
The better armed forces and quasi-military organisations such as the police have a strong culture of ethical behaviour, knowing that ethics are the only difference between law enforcement and an armed and uniformed thug.
Of course in my country, the police are unarmed, mounted on unicorns, wear designer uniforms and are unfailingly polite.
I don't really think people care about the speeds, myself - this has everything to do with governments, police and Mrs. Grundy wanting to exercise control over others. They'll spend big to impose that control.
Sucks, doesn't it?
Stop looking for a stove+fridge combination, buy a fridge and a stove.
Seriously, you will spend less money and have a faster result by buying two machines, if you need both environments - unless you're talking about many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of machines, it's difficult to justify building a merged Windows / Ubuntu SOE in terms of delivery architecture. What would the merged SOE look like in terms of budget, after it's filtered through a bunch of consultants? Ubuntu doesn't take much in the way of hardware to drive, so you can get the lower spec gear to get decent performance. YMMV of course, but I'm willing to bet you'd get a cleaner result by keeping the two environments separate, and save a lot of money by avoiding the merge altogether.
Innovative solutions to problems that NASA solved decades ago?
It might be worth re-inventing certain wheels if we could do a better job of preserving how we did so. Are all the technological advances from the Apollo era preserved for today? Answer: No, many of the advances were rushed into production and weren't written down.
The Information Age is younger than the Space Age.
When we do it this time, I'm hoping there will be a wiki to preserve that knowledge. Preserving knowledge of strategic importance should be part of the government's response to challenges in space, so we don't find ourselves in this embarrassing predicament ever again.
Perhaps (shudder) this actually does need its own agency, perhaps a new wing of the National Archives devoted to keeping a wiki alive for this purpose.
Contrary to the spirit of the common Wikimedia implementation, however, I'd suggest something with stronger attribution - perhaps Confluence or something similar (and yes, I'd prefer an open source solution, and I know Confluence is not) - would be necessary, so people can trace the origins of the knowledge preserved.
I'd be in favor of adding such central knowledge preservation as a requirement for government bids.
No, a 2d representation of a torus is an annulus
It can be a circle if the cross-section chosen is tangential to the top of the donut. Think of that sticky ring on the newspaper when you dropped it, icing-side-down.
Kids, don't try this at home. The sight of a mathematician sacrificing a donut to science can be a traumatic experience to passers-by (to say nothing of it's effect on the mathematician).
Hey, I remember reading H.P.Lovelock. Awesome horror, dude!