"I only wish we still had command line interpreters around. It was so nice when beginners could execute their instructions directly OR add them to a program. It made playing around and learning so much quicker."
I have found in this modern era of windowed workstations, using a language like python I can simulate this behavior pretty nicely, with one window editing my program, another with the Python interpreter loaded up, and a third to run my program, I get that similar "explorer" mentality back I had as a high school kid in the early 80s hacking on my Trash-80 CoCo. It is so great to be working on a project and say "I wonder if...", bang it out on the command line to test and refine it, then take it and put it in my program.
The beauty of python is that it scales pretty nicely to do real work, supports OOP beautifully but isn't a Nazi* about it, and if you need more speed than the interpreter gives you, that segues nicely into C programming, which you can write and then link back into your python programs.
I've not used Ruby yet, but I'm given to understand that you can get a similar experience with it.
I'm beginning to see the problem with all the old jokes still getting posted.
There's multiple namespaces for them and it's really confusing. I really think we would be better served with a single GroupThink module, and we should make a Slashdot.GroupThink module. But we shouldn't make Slashdot.GroupThink a subclass of GroupThink. If we apply the strategy pattern we...
Exception: OverdesignedJokeError in line 5, near "apply the strategy pattern".
I bid you a warm welcome to Slashdot. This is the place where when you mention credentials or experiences you are arguing from authority or showing off, but if you don't mention them people ask "And what the fuck do you know?
"
There do seem to be a lot of this particular stripe of asshat here, doesn't there?
And the funny thing is, as an American, my employers generally don't care if I take similar lunch breaks, or even if I in fact work 8 hours a day, as long as I get what I promise to get done gets done. Sometimes, unfortuantely, my estimation skills are poor, and I have to work 10-12 hours a day. On the other hand, sometimes my estimates are poor in the other direction and I get some free time to tend to other things.
Not everyone is as fortunate as me, and I get that. But, this didn't happen by accident, either. I deliberately arranged my career to work this way at the occasional cost of not taking a higher paying job that perhaps had higher time commitments. That's okay, though. I make enough money to keep the roof over our heads, food in the pantry, clothes on our backs, a few toys here and there, and still save money.
The versions as they stand now are GPLv2. If that ever became a hairy enough issue for somebody I suppose a non-FSF fork could develop for the software in question, all based on the GPLv2 version. RMS and Co. can't go retroactively changing the license on you.
It is useful, but it is a ballpark calculation. This time let's do the math for Venus:
Venus is 108 million kilmeters away is a nice shiny planet with.65 albedo (from the clouds). Plug and chug yields us a chilly world at 256 degrees Kelvin.
Totally neglected in the calcuation is the choking cloud of CO2 and nitrogen at 100 atmospheres pressure measured on the surface, which traps the energy quite nicely. So, the surface of Venus is a nice demo model of Hell. It is interesting to note that our calculation of 256 degrees K is fairly close to the observed temperatures in Venus' cloud tops (-45 deg C, or 238 deg K).
How's the view from the cheap seats, cavetroll? Why don't you get off your ass and apply if you think it's really easy to do space science, "dude"? Maybe you can fix all the problems by Thursday.
As others have said on this thread, stars don't change their average temperature that quickly. a 100K change in a star's mean temperature over even a thousand years would be nothing short of amazing. Even a 10K increase is a lot of energy for an object as large as the sun, when you stop to consider that it accounts for 99.9% of the mass of the entire solar system.
Sure, there are hotspots and prominences that contain incredible amounts of energy, but they don't really affect the long-term average by much at all.
As I said before, I'm not a solar scientist, and maybe one can say I'm wrong, but I don't think the mean temperature of the sun changes much at all from year to year. I don't have an answer for climate change, and I think all political sides of this issue have used both good and bad science to make their points. I'm pretty sure I have one of the puzzle pieces, though, and that one is recent changes in the sun are not responsible for any warming trend.
You just can't win. I mention I used to work for NASA, I get accused of appealing to authority. If I don't mention it, I get people saying "and who the hell are you?"
For the Anonymous Coward GP, did you know that everybody makes mistakes? Did you know that water is wet, too?
I've made mistakes aplenty, including simple math mistakes right here on slashdot, but when I post math/science stuff like that, I show my work, because I do make mistakes. But, oftentimes, I'm right, too. Apparently the AC, however, is the first perfect person to walk the planet since Jesus (if you believe that sort of thing).
People like to claim this, and there's some truth in that the solar energy output does fluctuate, but when I worked for NASA, when we calibrated our images, we treated solar energy output as a constant, because those variations were too small to affect the calibration. The eccentricity of orbit played a much larger role in varying the solar energy received on planetary surfaces.
The approximate average temperature of a body Tb illuminated by a blackbody radiator (which stars are close enough to to make little difference) of temp T, with radius R, where the body has an albedo A and is distance D away is given as:
Tb = T * ( 1 - A)**.25 * ((R/2.0*D)**.5)
If we assume Earth's albedo is.36, the temp of the sun is 5860 K, the solar radius is 696,000 km, and the Earth is 1.5e8 km away, we get 251 degrees K, which is very chilly, but this doesn't include greenhouse and convection effects (try this calculation on Venus to see what I mean!)
If we make the Sun 100 K hotter, the new temperature on earth goes to 255 degrees kelvin. Now, I'm not a solar scientist (and there's several on/. whom I've had the pleasure of meeting over the years who can correct me if I'm wrong), but I don't think the sun's mean temperature varies by anything close to that amount. With that, you get a 4 degree kelvin increase in solar heating. That's it.
Unless one wants to reject all of physics from Maxwell onwards, I think another explanation than increased solar activity would have to be found for warming effects. This doesn't mean that I buy the gloom and doom scenarios put out by those who warn of global warning (nor do I reject them), but I do believe that good science is required, and I've seen more than enough bad science brought up by both sides of this debate.
Sure the gameplay sucks but you've got to dig the polygon count and the smooth animation! The textures and bump maps are simply amazing, and you've got to admit that the force feedback system works well.
Up the highway in Vermont I remember a dairy farmer with a cow whose markings closely resembled the silhouette of the aforementioned mouse. Disney did not sue the cow, but they did buy her off the poor rube for $10,000 (IIRC) then move her to Florida and display her. Fair enough; he's a moron.
Given that you can typically get a dairy cow for about $1,000, I'd say selling one for 10k is a pretty shrewd deal, actually.
However, if it were me and Disney wanted to buy something like that, I think I'd ask for more.
Given that Northridge quake interrupted your education, I'm going to assume you still live in Southern California. I'd make a guess that if chose to live somewhere else, you'd find that one of you with the education you both have would be able to live a bit more than hand-to-mouth on one income.
Speaking as a guy who has never lived in the hugely expensive areas of the country, I'm pretty damn comfortable right now, and although not capable of retiring yet, could probably afford to be out of work for a year or two without worrying unduly about where the next meal is coming from. That's mostly on one income that has never crested 75k per year, and we didn't start out with squat. I remember beating down the sofa looking for change a couple times to scrape up the money to buy the kid diapers in the early 90s. We've never had more than one car, and the nicest one we've ever had is the 2001 Ford Windstar we have right now which we still bought used in June.
You're paying a huge premium to live where you live would be my guess. You could always move to a more affordable region of the country, but if you don't because of [my family|my friends|cool thing to see and do here|whatever other reason] recognize that it's because you're choosing those things over more disposable income. In case I'm ticking you off please understand this is not a criticism, because those are frankly excellent reasons to NOT move. I'm just trying to point out that all choices have costs associated with them, including the choice not to take action.
I want the projection ro be able to be moved from the center field of view to an off-center position, through an open software interface. Bonus points for being able to split it left and right and/or up and down.
In that software interface, I want to have full control of alpha for both the video display, and for the outside view. That way, I can use it for totally immersive stuff, or unobtrusive heads-up interfaces, or any mixture I find worthwhile.
Is this unobtainium for mere mortals today, or is there something out there?
Slashdot Mirror
"I only wish we still had command line interpreters around. It was so nice when beginners could execute their instructions directly OR add them to a program. It made playing around and learning so much quicker."
I have found in this modern era of windowed workstations, using a language like python I can simulate this behavior pretty nicely, with one window editing my program, another with the Python interpreter loaded up, and a third to run my program, I get that similar "explorer" mentality back I had as a high school kid in the early 80s hacking on my Trash-80 CoCo. It is so great to be working on a project and say "I wonder if...", bang it out on the command line to test and refine it, then take it and put it in my program.
The beauty of python is that it scales pretty nicely to do real work, supports OOP beautifully but isn't a Nazi* about it, and if you need more speed than the interpreter gives you, that segues nicely into C programming, which you can write and then link back into your python programs.
I've not used Ruby yet, but I'm given to understand that you can get a similar experience with it.
*- did I just Godwinize this discussion? :-)
I'm beginning to see the problem with all the old jokes still getting posted.
There's multiple namespaces for them and it's really confusing. I really think we would be better served with a single GroupThink module, and we should make a Slashdot.GroupThink module. But we shouldn't make Slashdot.GroupThink a subclass of GroupThink. If we apply the strategy pattern we...
Exception: OverdesignedJokeError in line 5, near "apply the strategy pattern".
Naw, you just go to your colony management screen, and drag "Farmers" to "Scientists" and watch the research points start flooding in.
Or maybe that was in Master of Orion II.
Yeah, it's not like this did any damage to our generation's thumbs.
"ahh, but your playground was never overrun with demons, so your example is invalid."
It's apparent you never attended my grade school.
"He (Houston Mayor Bill White) called the chief's proposal a 'brainstorm' rather than a decision."
I'd call it a brainfart, myself. This is something so creepifying I almost want to say it's a bogus article.
As long as you're not the guy with the arsenic poisoning.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, but it's easy to lose sight of individuals when looking at the calculus.
"(I admit it's not very catchy.)"
I dunno... I think it's got a great beat and you can dance to it. I give it an 84!
Shut up, kid. ;-)
I bid you a warm welcome to Slashdot. This is the place where when you mention credentials or experiences you are arguing from authority or showing off, but if you don't mention them people ask "And what the fuck do you know?
"There do seem to be a lot of this particular stripe of asshat here, doesn't there?
And the funny thing is, as an American, my employers generally don't care if I take similar lunch breaks, or even if I in fact work 8 hours a day, as long as I get what I promise to get done gets done. Sometimes, unfortuantely, my estimation skills are poor, and I have to work 10-12 hours a day. On the other hand, sometimes my estimates are poor in the other direction and I get some free time to tend to other things.
Not everyone is as fortunate as me, and I get that. But, this didn't happen by accident, either. I deliberately arranged my career to work this way at the occasional cost of not taking a higher paying job that perhaps had higher time commitments. That's okay, though. I make enough money to keep the roof over our heads, food in the pantry, clothes on our backs, a few toys here and there, and still save money.
Progenitors: mind greatly: use of poison gas.
Only option: your destruction: vigorously pursued.
The versions as they stand now are GPLv2. If that ever became a hairy enough issue for somebody I suppose a non-FSF fork could develop for the software in question, all based on the GPLv2 version. RMS and Co. can't go retroactively changing the license on you.
Hell, I'll take that... as long as I don't have to take the UAW and the insane health-care costs for pensioners, too. :-)
It is useful, but it is a ballpark calculation. This time let's do the math for Venus:
Venus is 108 million kilmeters away is a nice shiny planet with .65 albedo (from the clouds). Plug and chug yields us a chilly world at 256 degrees Kelvin.
Totally neglected in the calcuation is the choking cloud of CO2 and nitrogen at 100 atmospheres pressure measured on the surface, which traps the energy quite nicely. So, the surface of Venus is a nice demo model of Hell. It is interesting to note that our calculation of 256 degrees K is fairly close to the observed temperatures in Venus' cloud tops (-45 deg C, or 238 deg K).
How's the view from the cheap seats, cavetroll? Why don't you get off your ass and apply if you think it's really easy to do space science, "dude"? Maybe you can fix all the problems by Thursday.
As others have said on this thread, stars don't change their average temperature that quickly. a 100K change in a star's mean temperature over even a thousand years would be nothing short of amazing. Even a 10K increase is a lot of energy for an object as large as the sun, when you stop to consider that it accounts for 99.9% of the mass of the entire solar system.
Sure, there are hotspots and prominences that contain incredible amounts of energy, but they don't really affect the long-term average by much at all.
As I said before, I'm not a solar scientist, and maybe one can say I'm wrong, but I don't think the mean temperature of the sun changes much at all from year to year. I don't have an answer for climate change, and I think all political sides of this issue have used both good and bad science to make their points. I'm pretty sure I have one of the puzzle pieces, though, and that one is recent changes in the sun are not responsible for any warming trend.
You just can't win. I mention I used to work for NASA, I get accused of appealing to authority. If I don't mention it, I get people saying "and who the hell are you?"
For the Anonymous Coward GP, did you know that everybody makes mistakes? Did you know that water is wet, too?
I've made mistakes aplenty, including simple math mistakes right here on slashdot, but when I post math/science stuff like that, I show my work, because I do make mistakes. But, oftentimes, I'm right, too. Apparently the AC, however, is the first perfect person to walk the planet since Jesus (if you believe that sort of thing).
Thanks for the support, MightyMartian.
People like to claim this, and there's some truth in that the solar energy output does fluctuate, but when I worked for NASA, when we calibrated our images, we treated solar energy output as a constant, because those variations were too small to affect the calibration. The eccentricity of orbit played a much larger role in varying the solar energy received on planetary surfaces.
The approximate average temperature of a body Tb illuminated by a blackbody radiator (which stars are close enough to to make little difference) of temp T, with radius R, where the body has an albedo A and is distance D away is given as:
Tb = T * ( 1 - A)**.25 * ((R/2.0*D)**.5)
If we assume Earth's albedo is .36, the temp of the sun is 5860 K, the solar radius is 696,000 km, and the Earth is 1.5e8 km away, we get 251 degrees K, which is very chilly, but this doesn't include greenhouse and convection effects (try this calculation on Venus to see what I mean!)
If we make the Sun 100 K hotter, the new temperature on earth goes to 255 degrees kelvin. Now, I'm not a solar scientist (and there's several on /. whom I've had the pleasure of meeting over the years who can correct me if I'm wrong), but I don't think the sun's mean temperature varies by anything close to that amount. With that, you get a 4 degree kelvin increase in solar heating. That's it.
Unless one wants to reject all of physics from Maxwell onwards, I think another explanation than increased solar activity would have to be found for warming effects. This doesn't mean that I buy the gloom and doom scenarios put out by those who warn of global warning (nor do I reject them), but I do believe that good science is required, and I've seen more than enough bad science brought up by both sides of this debate.
Sure the gameplay sucks but you've got to dig the polygon count and the smooth animation! The textures and bump maps are simply amazing, and you've got to admit that the force feedback system works well.
Sweet Jesus, games are becoming like real life.
Up the highway in Vermont I remember a dairy farmer with a cow whose markings closely resembled the silhouette of the aforementioned mouse. Disney did not sue the cow, but they did buy her off the poor rube for $10,000 (IIRC) then move her to Florida and display her. Fair enough; he's a moron.
Given that you can typically get a dairy cow for about $1,000, I'd say selling one for 10k is a pretty shrewd deal, actually.
However, if it were me and Disney wanted to buy something like that, I think I'd ask for more.
Mmmm! Calamari for dinner tonight! And tomorrow night, and the night after that, then calamari sandwiches for lunch Sunday.
Given that Northridge quake interrupted your education, I'm going to assume you still live in Southern California. I'd make a guess that if chose to live somewhere else, you'd find that one of you with the education you both have would be able to live a bit more than hand-to-mouth on one income.
Speaking as a guy who has never lived in the hugely expensive areas of the country, I'm pretty damn comfortable right now, and although not capable of retiring yet, could probably afford to be out of work for a year or two without worrying unduly about where the next meal is coming from. That's mostly on one income that has never crested 75k per year, and we didn't start out with squat. I remember beating down the sofa looking for change a couple times to scrape up the money to buy the kid diapers in the early 90s. We've never had more than one car, and the nicest one we've ever had is the 2001 Ford Windstar we have right now which we still bought used in June.
You're paying a huge premium to live where you live would be my guess. You could always move to a more affordable region of the country, but if you don't because of [my family|my friends|cool thing to see and do here|whatever other reason] recognize that it's because you're choosing those things over more disposable income. In case I'm ticking you off please understand this is not a criticism, because those are frankly excellent reasons to NOT move. I'm just trying to point out that all choices have costs associated with them, including the choice not to take action.
Is this unobtainium for mere mortals today, or is there something out there?
burned with a laser removed from on old burner and an electron microscope built from spare system components from a cardboard box in the garage. :-)