Ok, now that's more like a typical American driver. I was getting kind of worried. Let's do the math shall we? Start with the 3 second rule for safe stopping distance. You count the seconds from when the car in front of you passes something until you do. It should be at least 3 seconds. I think that holds true up to 35 miles an hour. So technically, you should add another second for each 10mph over 35. But, because a large number of the people on the road are morons let's say 3 seconds at 60 miles an hour. And a large majority of people who drive where I live don't even leave that much.
60 mph * 1.46666 (conversion factor to feet per second) * 3 seconds = 264 ft just about. So that's up to within spitting distance of 300 ft. And that's half of what the recommended distance is.
I don't even think that this device is going to be largely successful in preventing collisions. It's probably going to be a lot more successful at mitigating damage. Considering that the amount of kinetic energy is one of them squared functions every MPH slower you are going when you run into Granny going 15mph in the fast lane counts.
I would say that this is one of the most insightful statements that I 've seen regarding the whole Microsoft situation. Yes, It is popular to bash Microsoft, but I think that they have done so much to deserve it. I think that the parent post is a very plausible explanation of Microsoft's goals and strategies. My only reservation is that I think banking and brokering is small potatoes. Once Microsoft has these sewn up, ALL online commerce would have to pass through a Microsoft product. That's where the money is. The bank can connect securely (in a proprietary format) to both your computer and the merchants computer.
It's a good idea, but I don't think that anyone should trust the words Microsoft and security to go together.
I would like to see more spectrum go to non-profits and see new licenses for small community broadcasters. I guess I better start writing letters, because I don't think The Shrub is going to do it without being agitated a bit.
My advice to anyone who is this afraid of terrorism is to seek counseling. I'm not trying to make any kind of joke or anything. It seems you are afraid of being maliciously killed or wounded way out of proportion with the likelihood of it happening. If it is cutting into your enjoyment of life this much perhaps you should talk to someone about it.
The government never should have let the Baby Bells keep ahold of both the physical lines and the services that use them. Of course, this is in hindsight. Maybe competition would have worked out better if there had been a split into a line owning company and a service providing company. Expecting the Baby Bells to allow competitors access to the lines they control was fairly naive.
If the competition had been a little more even from the beginning, maybe the service would be better now. I have Verizon myself and the customer service is pretty awful. I think customer service is kind of a lost art in any field though. Good customer service is not compatible with the short term cost cutting that people who buy and sell stocks like to see. The longer people in customer service positions work with a given company the more helpful they will be, as they learn the systems, and who to get a hold of. Unfortunately, the longer they work at the company the more they get paid, which makes them an attractive target for cost cutting. I would be pretty surprised if the average length of employment of a CSR (customer service representative) who actually answers the phones at a major company is more then 2 or 3 years. At that length of employment they are probably just about trained.
It's easier to make a electromagnetic mass driver work on the moon then it is on the earth. Due to the lack of atmosphere you can have an exit trajectory that is almost flat. On the earth part of the reason that such a system has to be pointed upward as much as possible is to avoid losing speed to atmospheric friction.
The actual science and engineering behind such a system is really quite simple. The reason one hasn't been built it partly cost, and partly the fact that earth doesn't really have that many great locations. Look for equatorial mountains, mostly.
On second thought, maybe that's why they want Tibet. It's kind of off the Equator (at 27 plus a bit latitude), but as far as mountains go, it's got some real doozies.
I think what JMV was saying was that either Linux is free or there is no Linux. I don't know the GPL, but I gather that in his opinion it doesn't allow for the addition of other conditions based on other companies IP claims. So, if Linux is found to contain "tainted" code, it would cease to exist in any form. The GPL does not allow for restrictions on the distribution, or use of source code. Hence, SCO would not be able to collect anything from companies that use Linux.
If this is true than the interesting question is, what would happen? SCO can't own Linux, in whole or part, and Linux can't legally exist. Unless there could be some kind of rollback of Linux to the time before the so-called tainted code was introduced.
Just out of curiosity, what's the alternative explanation as far as the relationship between mass and velocity? Do things not increase in mass as velocity increases? Or is it just the whole momentum thing kind of goes away? So you get momentum without extra mass? I'm kind of confused.
Because I am getting less. If I wanted to, I could download all I wanted. In the months where my usage has spiked I probably downloaded a hundred times as much as I do in a normal time. I don't want to be liable for a huge bill should I forget to close Kazaa and it runs minimized for a week while I am on vacation or something.
I think that one reason ISPs are reluctant to do this is it means they are going to have a hard time charging customers who don't use much bandwidth outrageous fees. I currently pay about $50 US dollars a month for DSL. I don't download much, I just like to have it for fast loading web pages, and internet gaming. But I wouldn't pay $50 a month for a bandwidth limited service. How much I would pay would depend, but any of the solutions that limit my ability to use my connection to do what I want decreases the value of the service to me. I would, perhaps, pay $20 a month for a DSL service that caps my usage at close to what I am using now. The reason is that during some months my usage has spike.
"Corporations may deduct all contributions to 501(c)(3) organizations (regardless of foundation status) up to an amount normally equal to 10% of their taxable income."
"Donated property may generally be deducted at the fair market value of the property at the time of the contribution."
This means that Microsoft can deduct from their taxes the full retail price of any software donated, up to 10% of their total taxable income. Which was 3.2 billion dollars in 1999. But the whole tax point is kind of moot because if this guy is right they didn't pay any taxes before the current software donations began.
Effective range refers to the distance a bullet will travel with a given accuracy, not the actual distance the bullet will travel. You could probably hit a balloon at much greater than the effective range given that a balloon is a huge target and you would probably have multiple shots at the target.
This is one of the more hilarious posts I've read lately but I must take exception with it's statement of his comments.
Math is fucking hard. Sometimes I can sit and stare at an algebra problem for like 15 minutes groaning to myself "man, this is sooo hard." That is how I know that people who sit down and do algebra real quick don't get it.
Perhaps the meaning is not in the thing or event, but in the mind of the person who participates in or perceives the event. If it's put into language then it has a meaning. If not then you can't even really discuss it, so to type about it would be a waste of....
I have dozens of pseudonyms that I have used to sign up for things. Shoppers Club cards, anything web related, etc. I fully support the idea of creating a mountain of spurious data. Sometimes I'll use my real name with a fake address, sometimes I'll use a fake name with my real address. If everybody did this the noise to signal would be extremely high. Getting people to go to check out all this infomation is expensive. I'm willing to bet that a lot of the information checkers are temps, or make pretty close to minimum wage.
You know what I would do if I was working for these jokers checking facts? I'd get in my car and go to my favorite coffee shop and hang out. Then I would make some random notes on my little sheet and head back to the office. If I get fired, who cares? It's minimum wage for chrissakes, no one can be expected to do a good job for minimum wage. It's too easy to get another crappy job that pays the same. And it's pretty sweet to get paid for lounging around drinking coffee.
If he can get a 50% vote in Congress then he has every right to do it. It probably wouldn't even take that much if he can get the FCC to agree with him. Or the Attorney General of the United States. Or maybe the SEC, or perhaps even the Board of Directors. There isn't anything sacrosanct about a corporation. It's just a piece of paper that says that such and such a name, represented by such and such individuals, has a right to do business. This piece of paper is given to them by a state government, and that government has a perfect legal right to take it away.
It might even create jobs, if the station was bought by local interests, as Clear channel beams in a lot of thier programming by satellite, and the local group would have to replace them with real people.
I'm not saying that I think that just dissolving Clear Channel is the right thing to do, I was just kind of amused at your attitude that a corporation was sacred. If Clear Channel was dissolved and it's assets were sold off, it would be very similar to what sometimes happens in bankruptcy.
Would a computer think that you are intelligent?
on
AI Going Nowhere?
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It seems to me that the focus on robotics, and insisting computers become good at human thinking tasks is a limited view of what artificial intelligence could be.
If you were put inside a little white box where you had to flip millions of switches on and off according to certain simple rules, you would look like an idiot next to a computer. A computer can't walk around and recognize things, and doesn't know what an apple is, so what? In my opinion, machine intelligence should be focused on making computers able to make themselves better at what they do best. I'm not sure what a super intelligent computer system would be used for, and I don't think that I would even be able to imagine what would be possible. I would be interested to know what other people think about this idea. Most of the things that I can think of tie back into the "real" world somehow. What would a self-organizing non 3-dimension oriented intelligence be able to do?
Saying that AI is impossible because computers can't come into "our world" of three dimensions, or understand our literature is kind of intelligence chauvinism.
Heheh, I wouldn't go that far. But I wouldn't exactly hold it up as a bastion of the left either. It's not terribly progressive in it's coverage of labor disputes, and it cheerleads for business a little too much for my tastes. But it's free over the web.
I listen to Rush Limbaugh. In fact, I would even consider time-shifting Rush to listen to him (to tie back in to the topic at hand, at least loosely) I find him extremely entertaining, even though I disagree with him on a great number of points. But I don't think I would make the mistake of thinking that Rush Limbaugh backs up his opinions with facts.
I have spent perhaps upward of a hundred hours listening to Rush Limbaugh (most of that time I was being paid to do other things while I listened) and he is not particularly interested in facts, per se. The reason that this is the case is that he is paid to be entertaining, and if he spouted a lot of fact that would be just about the opposite. He has a great radio voice, and he expresses his opinions in a sometimes amusing fashion.
Have you ever heard him lose an argument to someone who calls in? Is this because he is always right, as he claims? Of course not, no one is always right. He is, though, very good at changing the subject when he is in danger of seeming wrong, and attacking someone who he disagrees with personally. And if things really go awry, he will very occasionally say that he has to go to commercial. These are all things that a gifted talk show host does, not because they are always right, but because they have learned what works on the air.
That being said, some radio can already be timeshifted via internet broadcast. NPR has a great website, and if I knew HTML I would link to it (I have to learn one of these days) where you can access an almost unlimited wealth of past content. Rush Limbaugh also has webradio available, but in the finest Republican tradition you will have to pay to access it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, now that's more like a typical American driver. I was getting kind of worried. Let's do the math shall we? Start with the 3 second rule for safe stopping distance. You count the seconds from when the car in front of you passes something until you do. It should be at least 3 seconds. I think that holds true up to 35 miles an hour. So technically, you should add another second for each 10mph over 35. But, because a large number of the people on the road are morons let's say 3 seconds at 60 miles an hour. And a large majority of people who drive where I live don't even leave that much.
60 mph * 1.46666 (conversion factor to feet per second) * 3 seconds = 264 ft just about. So that's up to within spitting distance of 300 ft. And that's half of what the recommended distance is.
I don't even think that this device is going to be largely successful in preventing collisions. It's probably going to be a lot more successful at mitigating damage. Considering that the amount of kinetic energy is one of them squared functions every MPH slower you are going when you run into Granny going 15mph in the fast lane counts.
Well for one thing, it's gotta be pretty expensive to truck all that water out to the construction site.
I would say that this is one of the most insightful statements that I 've seen regarding the whole Microsoft situation. Yes, It is popular to bash Microsoft, but I think that they have done so much to deserve it. I think that the parent post is a very plausible explanation of Microsoft's goals and strategies. My only reservation is that I think banking and brokering is small potatoes. Once Microsoft has these sewn up, ALL online commerce would have to pass through a Microsoft product. That's where the money is. The bank can connect securely (in a proprietary format) to both your computer and the merchants computer.
It's a good idea, but I don't think that anyone should trust the words Microsoft and security to go together.
I would like to see more spectrum go to non-profits and see new licenses for small community broadcasters. I guess I better start writing letters, because I don't think The Shrub is going to do it without being agitated a bit.
Then it's a race! Black Hats vs White Hats! Makes things a bit more exciting. Coders start your engines. Will the exploit be first or the fix?
My advice to anyone who is this afraid of terrorism is to seek counseling. I'm not trying to make any kind of joke or anything. It seems you are afraid of being maliciously killed or wounded way out of proportion with the likelihood of it happening. If it is cutting into your enjoyment of life this much perhaps you should talk to someone about it.
If the competition had been a little more even from the beginning, maybe the service would be better now. I have Verizon myself and the customer service is pretty awful. I think customer service is kind of a lost art in any field though. Good customer service is not compatible with the short term cost cutting that people who buy and sell stocks like to see. The longer people in customer service positions work with a given company the more helpful they will be, as they learn the systems, and who to get a hold of. Unfortunately, the longer they work at the company the more they get paid, which makes them an attractive target for cost cutting. I would be pretty surprised if the average length of employment of a CSR (customer service representative) who actually answers the phones at a major company is more then 2 or 3 years. At that length of employment they are probably just about trained.
Lighten up.
Slashdot is whatever the editors want it to be.
And they don't have to tell us what that is, if they don't want.
Feel free to start your own site, to spread your objective opinion.
At least here you have a forum to disagree with their point of view, that's more than you usually get from a newspaper.
The actual science and engineering behind such a system is really quite simple. The reason one hasn't been built it partly cost, and partly the fact that earth doesn't really have that many great locations. Look for equatorial mountains, mostly.
On second thought, maybe that's why they want Tibet. It's kind of off the Equator (at 27 plus a bit latitude), but as far as mountains go, it's got some real doozies.
If this is true than the interesting question is, what would happen? SCO can't own Linux, in whole or part, and Linux can't legally exist. Unless there could be some kind of rollback of Linux to the time before the so-called tainted code was introduced.
You're quite welcome.
70% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
"Donated property may generally be deducted at the fair market value of the property at the time of the contribution."
This generally means how much the donated property can be sold for. The source of the info
This means that Microsoft can deduct from their taxes the full retail price of any software donated, up to 10% of their total taxable income. Which was 3.2 billion dollars in 1999. But the whole tax point is kind of moot because if this guy is right they didn't pay any taxes before the current software donations began.
Effective range refers to the distance a bullet will travel with a given accuracy, not the actual distance the bullet will travel. You could probably hit a balloon at much greater than the effective range given that a balloon is a huge target and you would probably have multiple shots at the target.
This is one of the more hilarious posts I've read lately but I must take exception with it's statement of his comments. Math is fucking hard. Sometimes I can sit and stare at an algebra problem for like 15 minutes groaning to myself "man, this is sooo hard." That is how I know that people who sit down and do algebra real quick don't get it.
Nevermind.
You know what I would do if I was working for these jokers checking facts? I'd get in my car and go to my favorite coffee shop and hang out. Then I would make some random notes on my little sheet and head back to the office. If I get fired, who cares? It's minimum wage for chrissakes, no one can be expected to do a good job for minimum wage. It's too easy to get another crappy job that pays the same. And it's pretty sweet to get paid for lounging around drinking coffee.
It might even create jobs, if the station was bought by local interests, as Clear channel beams in a lot of thier programming by satellite, and the local group would have to replace them with real people.
I'm not saying that I think that just dissolving Clear Channel is the right thing to do, I was just kind of amused at your attitude that a corporation was sacred. If Clear Channel was dissolved and it's assets were sold off, it would be very similar to what sometimes happens in bankruptcy.
If you were put inside a little white box where you had to flip millions of switches on and off according to certain simple rules, you would look like an idiot next to a computer. A computer can't walk around and recognize things, and doesn't know what an apple is, so what? In my opinion, machine intelligence should be focused on making computers able to make themselves better at what they do best. I'm not sure what a super intelligent computer system would be used for, and I don't think that I would even be able to imagine what would be possible. I would be interested to know what other people think about this idea. Most of the things that I can think of tie back into the "real" world somehow. What would a self-organizing non 3-dimension oriented intelligence be able to do?
Saying that AI is impossible because computers can't come into "our world" of three dimensions, or understand our literature is kind of intelligence chauvinism.
Heheh, I wouldn't go that far. But I wouldn't exactly hold it up as a bastion of the left either. It's not terribly progressive in it's coverage of labor disputes, and it cheerleads for business a little too much for my tastes. But it's free over the web.
I have spent perhaps upward of a hundred hours listening to Rush Limbaugh (most of that time I was being paid to do other things while I listened) and he is not particularly interested in facts, per se. The reason that this is the case is that he is paid to be entertaining, and if he spouted a lot of fact that would be just about the opposite. He has a great radio voice, and he expresses his opinions in a sometimes amusing fashion.
Have you ever heard him lose an argument to someone who calls in? Is this because he is always right, as he claims? Of course not, no one is always right. He is, though, very good at changing the subject when he is in danger of seeming wrong, and attacking someone who he disagrees with personally. And if things really go awry, he will very occasionally say that he has to go to commercial. These are all things that a gifted talk show host does, not because they are always right, but because they have learned what works on the air.
That being said, some radio can already be timeshifted via internet broadcast. NPR has a great website, and if I knew HTML I would link to it (I have to learn one of these days) where you can access an almost unlimited wealth of past content. Rush Limbaugh also has webradio available, but in the finest Republican tradition you will have to pay to access it.