AKA realistic. The problem is that no space related project can succeed if it requires funding beyond the term of the current political trolls.
How about changing that to "requires funding beyond the life of current political trolls", and an asteroid that would be hitting earth sooner than that? There's no "safe harbor" for no kind of personal pension fund that's safe against an asteroid impact, and even a stupider-than-average politician (or the lobbyists manipulating him) understand that...
Nope according to quantum theory they didn't exist before because we couldn't measure them. Or was that intelligent design? I always get the two confused. Both require the belief that in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded.
Ah, but in quantum mechanics, once we observe something ("cause the the wave function to collapse into a determined state", to be technical), we retroactively determine it's existence at least as far back from the observation as uncertainty principle allows us to theoretically calculate.
So even if an asteroid doesn't exist now, if we observe it as a fiery ball hurtling across the sky and getting rapidly bigger, it's existence will get retroactively established back through the history of the universe.
The only protection is to observe that an asteroid is not in a certain location, and thus snuff out the possibility of one popping up there magically just to annoy (and kill) us. Once we have observed all possible locations where a rogue asteroid could be, we can be sure none will pop out of nothingness.
Or alternatively, if you think magically appearing asteroids are not a plausible idea, you can think the asteroid was there all the time, but that's boring...;-)
It is a Graphics Processing Unit, not a Gaming Processing Unit. Sure, they are great for gaming, but also very useful for other types of 3D and 2D rendering of graphics.
But the top bang-for-the-buck chips are designed for games. They have architecture (number of pipelines etc) designed to maximize performance in typical game use, at a framerate needed for games. In other words, they're gaming chips, just like eg. PS3 is a game console, no matter if it can be used to build a cluster for number crunching.
Is all the GPL code in Android under such a version of GPL, that this is legal? I mean, it prevents the user from changing certain parts of the GPL software, something which at least some versions of GPL require, as far as I understand.
The big thing is atmosphere. If it changes too fast (poisonous level of CO2 or too low level of O2), human species is done for, especially considering that whatever triggers the atmospheric change would likely first decimate human population and obliterate technological civilization.
This will probably confuse the paleontologists in the future, since they'll see a mass extinction during a crossing of the galactic plane, but won't see any evidence at all of the impact that presumably caused it. They'll also see the evidence of a species with high intelligence, but of course that couldn't be the cause, because you wouldn't expect a highly-intelligent species to destroy its own ecosystem, right? So the extinction event will remain a mystery.
Nah, you're thinking too positively. They'll see the mass (and subsequent self-) extinction caused by technological civilization, they'll rally the support of their society to fight it (sort of like current global warming thing), yet they'll end up destroying themselves anyway, despite their best efforts.
Exponential population growth is a bitch, when the things that can keep it in check (disease, predators, starvation...) can be temporarily staved off by technology.
But you are right on a point. If we were extinct two hundred years ago, nearly no evidence would remain. Future geologist would be very luck to gather a piece of glass, nothing else would remain. We'd probably disapear by then.
Hardly. Just think of the buried stuff archaeologists are digging up today. If there were no archaeologist now, most of that stuff would still be very recognisable after millions, even billions of years, assuming it didn't get eroded, destroyed by a volcano or subducted into the mantle.
And already a few hundred years ago we had littered the planet with stone buildings, increasingly more precisely shaped stone blocks (and bricks and concrete counts as stone here), unnatural pieces of not only glass (which you mention) but also gold and other jewellery. And it's not just in small spots here and there, just think about the sprawling fortifications and sewer and canal systems for instance, dating back much more than a few hundred years. Not to mention all kinds of large blocks of iron, such as cannons and ship anchors, which I'm pretty sure will get fossilized much in the same way as biological remnants can get fossilized (except they rust to nothingness much more slowly than even bone, so there's much more time for them to get buried). Then there are mines and other tunnels, which often are in pretty stable places geologically, and very clearly created with tools, and would be preserved pretty much until eroded all away or subducted.
Every SCUBA diver who is not enclosed in armour (some are) breathe gas at ambient pressure.
Nitpick: SCUBA stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, and by definition gives the breathing gas at ambient pressure. So if you have a normal pressure diving suit (more like a miniature submarine), you're not scuba diving.
"... the idea that copyrights and patents are a benefit to society is based on no evidence at all"
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." -- U.S. Constitution
Copyright of today does not promote progress of useful arts, so I don't know how that piece of constituion is related to the issue.
Forget variable names. It's the identical capitalization of them that makes me think twice about this.
Capitalization of variable names is usually defined by the coding style (be it formal style guide or personal style of an experienced coder). So if the coding style happens to be same (and there aren't very many, especally if you only count the sane ones), then the capitalization magically ends up being the same. It's almost as spooky as "spooky action at distance" in quantum mechanics!;-)
Anyway, I always assumed (i)cnremental and j/k neatly followed in the alphabet.
That's probably far more common reason than some archaic Fortran convention. Also it could just mean "integer loop variable" without any relation to Fortran, or whatever an individual programmer was thinking when using it. It's just a co-incidence that "integer", "incrementing" and "iteration" start with same letter, and it's not very unlikely co-incidence that many people used it and applied same alphabetical logic to related variables.
I use i for iteration, and the letters after that in alphabet are one logical way to do nested iteration loops.
Except I hardly ever use single letters (sometimes x and y but that's about it), because it's a pain to grep for, and to search-replace. For non-nested loop I usually use ii, and for nested loops it's usually i1, i2, i3...
In the US, life is considered so "precious" that we mandate everyone live in agony for as long as possible no matter the condition.
I thought that the public health care in US is in such a state, that this doesn't happen? Who is mandated to pay for this kind of extended care?
Hmm, or was it so that there's this class of people who are considered too rich to have free health care, but too poor to insure themselves or pay for it themselves? So is it like, if you're poor enough, government will keep you alive as long as you live, and if you're rich enough, your insurance or your family will keep you alive. But if you're in the between, then you're free to rot to death at home?
Despite the tone of text above, I'm actually really curious. How is for example cancer or type 1 diabetes diagnosis and treatment in the US, for the poor, the middle class and the rich?
I'm surprised that China doesn't go with a more aggressive stance towards the problem of HIV/AIDS. (Keep in mind this was suggested to me by my great-uncle as he was dying of AIDS in the early 90's:) After having a positive test and confirming with a second more controlled test for HIV/AIDS, have the person immediately euthanized. And before any of you try the cop out of "My relation/friend had AIDS I don't want them killed," keep in mind had we done that 25 or 30 years ago it would have saved MILLIONS of lives since. The deaths from AIDS in it's entire history would have been in the hundred thousands. My uncle would gladly have been euthanized after being diagnosed had the law allowed it.
Eh, you're suggesting compulsory HIV tests, and anybody with positive results would be immediately arrested, and if followup test showed positive result (or perhaps, in especially in a country like China, somebody in power decided that this person clearly has HIV because of his political activities...), then *BANG*?
And you're from China...? If a lot of people think that it's ok for government to wield that kind of power, no wonder things are as they are over there... Well, I guess it's a cultural thing. I think in future (a few hundred years) history books (in whatever form they will be then), Mao will be considered an emperor...:-)
"And yet I believe there aren't too many of those... "
Plenty of them occurring yearly, we just usually don't hear about it on the news. Any mass bloom is followed by mass death of the nearby ocean life, due to the sudden drop in oxygen levels.
Yeah, I know, but I'm under impression there aren't abnormally many of those. But I could be wrong, and there are big signs that we're headed towards the next global anoxic event... Which would be bad I guess, to put it mildly.
...and avoid the lead getting enriched in the food chain so much it'll start causing problems at the top. And that is a matter of how much of it is released into the environment, as paints erode, are sandpapered, unused paint cans are thrown out with regular waste, etc, etc.
Asbestos is a great insulator and fine to use as such if it is properly sealed.
I don't think there are ways to properly seal asbestos. Bear in mind that sealing must be such, that no asbestos fibres are released even when material is worked on with any regular tools like saw, drill, sandpaper... Or you'll have to guarantee that no joe sixpack will do renovation work (including drilling holes for wall ornaments) on the building.
Not to mention, you'll have to find a way to guarantee, that the building will eventually (perhaps after several generations) be demolished properly.
Algae blooms eat oxygen, which causes the dead euphotic zones in the ocean.
And yet I believe there aren't too many of those... Is it just a delay, and we'll see large parts of the oceans dying in a few decades, or is there something else at play? Stay tuned, we may find out within our lifetimes! This is perhaps the first time in human history where we have both the population and the technology to cause rapid global changes, and enough accumulated knowledge to understand at least some of it while it's happening. Interesting times!
Most of the western quality hotels provide access to unfiltered Internet and you are most likely staying in one of those.
Is that 'unfiltered' access also 'unmonitored'?
I don't think there's such a thing as "unmonitored" Internet anywhere in the World, in the sense that you can be close to 100% sure it isn't monitored... The best you can hope for, is that they only get to monitor your strongly encrypted and authenticated packets, and you can probably make tracing those packets to their final destinations very difficult, especially if speed is not of critical importance. But that's it.
Wow. Who knew, you need to own a Mac to use development tools made for the Mac.
I think the complaint was, you need to own a Mac to use development tools for iPhone & co, which have nothing to do with Mac, really. And actually I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong!) Apple has gone out of their way to make it so that you can't have development tools for eg. Linux. "Out of their way" including things like making it explicitly a breach of whatever license agreements if you do that.
It's a tendency that gets bred out of the population, by and large.
Which incidentally is the reason why trying to control human population is rather hopeless in the long term... Our only hope is to develop technology faster than human population grows, because if we don't, we'll hit the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Even with interstellar travel, expansion probably is ultimately limited by lightspeed in 3 dimensions, which leads to polynomial growth of living volume, while population growth is exponential.
IOW, we're screwed. Wether we deal with the problem intentionally, or let nature take it's course, it won't be pretty. All I can hope is, we don't hit the limit in my lifetime, perhaps not even in the lifetime of anyone I know directly.
What are the microwaves going to do to the nitrogen fixing microbes in the soil? What about the worms that keep the soil tilled and fertile?
I'm wondering if the vinyard owner is going to wake up next year and find his land unfarmable.
Not to mention the question about what happens to other wildlife, or people.
First of all, I think they'll find out very fast (in about a year or so:-) if there are measurable harmful effects.
Secondly, I think the harmful effects would be limited to the microbes at the surface, not covered by any dirt, ie. those microbes that are already dead due to UV radiation...;-)
Also if it affects the worms, they'll go underground very fast (as worms go, which is in fact pretty fast considering the scale). Flying insects might suffer, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad for most (non-insect-pollinated) farming.
This is the spy community saying "If ICQ moves to Russia, we might not be able to tap it anymore!"
No it's not. Not a real spy community at least. If they're late in the whole affair, they're no proper spies. If they were proper spies, the process of stopping the deal would have started as soon as there were first informal discussions between AOL and the Russian company about the possibility of maybe doing business.
So basically I create entangled pairs with probability X and hope they are entangled when I do stuff with them?
Question is: what are the [envisioned] uses?
I don't know if there's anything else practical, except quantum encryption and quantum communication (100% secure, as an eavesdropper would destroy the signal) and quantum computing, and more dense information storage. I think there's some research into quantum compression or "superdense coding", but I don't know if it can produce just 50% compression, or if it's possible to for example use 64 qubits to store 64^2 bits of information, or whatever.
In a less cheery note, quantum technology could probably be used for creating one hell of a DRM system as well... Hopefully we're past those by the time it becomes practical...
Slashdot Mirror
"Your world view is rather depressive."
AKA realistic. The problem is that no space related project can succeed if it requires funding beyond the term of the current political trolls.
How about changing that to "requires funding beyond the life of current political trolls", and an asteroid that would be hitting earth sooner than that? There's no "safe harbor" for no kind of personal pension fund that's safe against an asteroid impact, and even a stupider-than-average politician (or the lobbyists manipulating him) understand that...
Nope according to quantum theory they didn't exist before because we couldn't measure them. Or was that intelligent design? I always get the two confused. Both require the belief that in the beginning there was nothing and then it exploded.
Ah, but in quantum mechanics, once we observe something ("cause the the wave function to collapse into a determined state", to be technical), we retroactively determine it's existence at least as far back from the observation as uncertainty principle allows us to theoretically calculate.
So even if an asteroid doesn't exist now, if we observe it as a fiery ball hurtling across the sky and getting rapidly bigger, it's existence will get retroactively established back through the history of the universe.
The only protection is to observe that an asteroid is not in a certain location, and thus snuff out the possibility of one popping up there magically just to annoy (and kill) us. Once we have observed all possible locations where a rogue asteroid could be, we can be sure none will pop out of nothingness.
Or alternatively, if you think magically appearing asteroids are not a plausible idea, you can think the asteroid was there all the time, but that's boring... ;-)
It is a Graphics Processing Unit, not a Gaming Processing Unit. Sure, they are great for gaming, but also very useful for other types of 3D and 2D rendering of graphics.
But the top bang-for-the-buck chips are designed for games. They have architecture (number of pipelines etc) designed to maximize performance in typical game use, at a framerate needed for games. In other words, they're gaming chips, just like eg. PS3 is a game console, no matter if it can be used to build a cluster for number crunching.
Is all the GPL code in Android under such a version of GPL, that this is legal? I mean, it prevents the user from changing certain parts of the GPL software, something which at least some versions of GPL require, as far as I understand.
The big thing is atmosphere. If it changes too fast (poisonous level of CO2 or too low level of O2), human species is done for, especially considering that whatever triggers the atmospheric change would likely first decimate human population and obliterate technological civilization.
This will probably confuse the paleontologists in the future, since they'll see a mass extinction during a crossing of the galactic plane, but won't see any evidence at all of the impact that presumably caused it. They'll also see the evidence of a species with high intelligence, but of course that couldn't be the cause, because you wouldn't expect a highly-intelligent species to destroy its own ecosystem, right? So the extinction event will remain a mystery.
Nah, you're thinking too positively. They'll see the mass (and subsequent self-) extinction caused by technological civilization, they'll rally the support of their society to fight it (sort of like current global warming thing), yet they'll end up destroying themselves anyway, despite their best efforts.
Exponential population growth is a bitch, when the things that can keep it in check (disease, predators, starvation...) can be temporarily staved off by technology.
But you are right on a point. If we were extinct two hundred years ago, nearly no evidence would remain. Future geologist would be very luck to gather a piece of glass, nothing else would remain. We'd probably disapear by then.
Hardly. Just think of the buried stuff archaeologists are digging up today. If there were no archaeologist now, most of that stuff would still be very recognisable after millions, even billions of years, assuming it didn't get eroded, destroyed by a volcano or subducted into the mantle.
And already a few hundred years ago we had littered the planet with stone buildings, increasingly more precisely shaped stone blocks (and bricks and concrete counts as stone here), unnatural pieces of not only glass (which you mention) but also gold and other jewellery. And it's not just in small spots here and there, just think about the sprawling fortifications and sewer and canal systems for instance, dating back much more than a few hundred years. Not to mention all kinds of large blocks of iron, such as cannons and ship anchors, which I'm pretty sure will get fossilized much in the same way as biological remnants can get fossilized (except they rust to nothingness much more slowly than even bone, so there's much more time for them to get buried). Then there are mines and other tunnels, which often are in pretty stable places geologically, and very clearly created with tools, and would be preserved pretty much until eroded all away or subducted.
Every SCUBA diver who is not enclosed in armour (some are) breathe gas at ambient pressure.
Nitpick: SCUBA stands for Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus, and by definition gives the breathing gas at ambient pressure. So if you have a normal pressure diving suit (more like a miniature submarine), you're not scuba diving.
"... the idea that copyrights and patents are a benefit to society is based on no evidence at all"
"To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries." -- U.S. Constitution
Copyright of today does not promote progress of useful arts, so I don't know how that piece of constituion is related to the issue.
Forget variable names. It's the identical capitalization of them that makes me think twice about this.
Capitalization of variable names is usually defined by the coding style (be it formal style guide or personal style of an experienced coder). So if the coding style happens to be same (and there aren't very many, especally if you only count the sane ones), then the capitalization magically ends up being the same. It's almost as spooky as "spooky action at distance" in quantum mechanics! ;-)
Anyway, I always assumed (i)cnremental and j/k neatly followed in the alphabet.
That's probably far more common reason than some archaic Fortran convention. Also it could just mean "integer loop variable" without any relation to Fortran, or whatever an individual programmer was thinking when using it. It's just a co-incidence that "integer", "incrementing" and "iteration" start with same letter, and it's not very unlikely co-incidence that many people used it and applied same alphabetical logic to related variables.
Now tell me why we use i,j,k... so often.
I use i for iteration, and the letters after that in alphabet are one logical way to do nested iteration loops.
Except I hardly ever use single letters (sometimes x and y but that's about it), because it's a pain to grep for, and to search-replace. For non-nested loop I usually use ii, and for nested loops it's usually i1, i2, i3...
In the US, life is considered so "precious" that we mandate everyone live in agony for as long as possible no matter the condition.
I thought that the public health care in US is in such a state, that this doesn't happen? Who is mandated to pay for this kind of extended care?
Hmm, or was it so that there's this class of people who are considered too rich to have free health care, but too poor to insure themselves or pay for it themselves? So is it like, if you're poor enough, government will keep you alive as long as you live, and if you're rich enough, your insurance or your family will keep you alive. But if you're in the between, then you're free to rot to death at home?
Despite the tone of text above, I'm actually really curious. How is for example cancer or type 1 diabetes diagnosis and treatment in the US, for the poor, the middle class and the rich?
I'm surprised that China doesn't go with a more aggressive stance towards the problem of HIV/AIDS. (Keep in mind this was suggested to me by my great-uncle as he was dying of AIDS in the early 90's:) After having a positive test and confirming with a second more controlled test for HIV/AIDS, have the person immediately euthanized. And before any of you try the cop out of "My relation/friend had AIDS I don't want them killed," keep in mind had we done that 25 or 30 years ago it would have saved MILLIONS of lives since. The deaths from AIDS in it's entire history would have been in the hundred thousands. My uncle would gladly have been euthanized after being diagnosed had the law allowed it.
Eh, you're suggesting compulsory HIV tests, and anybody with positive results would be immediately arrested, and if followup test showed positive result (or perhaps, in especially in a country like China, somebody in power decided that this person clearly has HIV because of his political activities...), then *BANG*?
And you're from China...? If a lot of people think that it's ok for government to wield that kind of power, no wonder things are as they are over there... Well, I guess it's a cultural thing. I think in future (a few hundred years) history books (in whatever form they will be then), Mao will be considered an emperor... :-)
That said, most information you can put into a phone app can be done in a standard web site.
Which one exactly cannot be ?
Why, the awesomeness of iPhone, of course! /sarcasm
"And yet I believe there aren't too many of those... "
Plenty of them occurring yearly, we just usually don't hear about it on the news. Any mass bloom is followed by mass death of the nearby ocean life, due to the sudden drop in oxygen levels.
Yeah, I know, but I'm under impression there aren't abnormally many of those. But I could be wrong, and there are big signs that we're headed towards the next global anoxic event... Which would be bad I guess, to put it mildly.
Lead paint is not an issue if you do not eat it.
...and avoid the lead getting enriched in the food chain so much it'll start causing problems at the top. And that is a matter of how much of it is released into the environment, as paints erode, are sandpapered, unused paint cans are thrown out with regular waste, etc, etc.
Asbestos is a great insulator and fine to use as such if it is properly sealed.
I don't think there are ways to properly seal asbestos. Bear in mind that sealing must be such, that no asbestos fibres are released even when material is worked on with any regular tools like saw, drill, sandpaper... Or you'll have to guarantee that no joe sixpack will do renovation work (including drilling holes for wall ornaments) on the building.
Not to mention, you'll have to find a way to guarantee, that the building will eventually (perhaps after several generations) be demolished properly.
Algae blooms eat oxygen, which causes the dead euphotic zones in the ocean.
And yet I believe there aren't too many of those... Is it just a delay, and we'll see large parts of the oceans dying in a few decades, or is there something else at play? Stay tuned, we may find out within our lifetimes! This is perhaps the first time in human history where we have both the population and the technology to cause rapid global changes, and enough accumulated knowledge to understand at least some of it while it's happening. Interesting times!
But the real catch is why did he choose that adjective? Why not "of height" or "of great mass"? What exactly did his ambigous adjective add?
Well duh, it added some color to the story!
Is that 'unfiltered' access also 'unmonitored'?
I don't think there's such a thing as "unmonitored" Internet anywhere in the World, in the sense that you can be close to 100% sure it isn't monitored... The best you can hope for, is that they only get to monitor your strongly encrypted and authenticated packets, and you can probably make tracing those packets to their final destinations very difficult, especially if speed is not of critical importance. But that's it.
Wow. Who knew, you need to own a Mac to use development tools made for the Mac.
I think the complaint was, you need to own a Mac to use development tools for iPhone & co, which have nothing to do with Mac, really. And actually I believe (please correct me if I'm wrong!) Apple has gone out of their way to make it so that you can't have development tools for eg. Linux. "Out of their way" including things like making it explicitly a breach of whatever license agreements if you do that.
It's a tendency that gets bred out of the population, by and large.
Which incidentally is the reason why trying to control human population is rather hopeless in the long term... Our only hope is to develop technology faster than human population grows, because if we don't, we'll hit the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Even with interstellar travel, expansion probably is ultimately limited by lightspeed in 3 dimensions, which leads to polynomial growth of living volume, while population growth is exponential.
IOW, we're screwed. Wether we deal with the problem intentionally, or let nature take it's course, it won't be pretty. All I can hope is, we don't hit the limit in my lifetime, perhaps not even in the lifetime of anyone I know directly.
What are the microwaves going to do to the nitrogen fixing microbes in the soil? What about the worms that keep the soil tilled and fertile?
I'm wondering if the vinyard owner is going to wake up next year and find his land unfarmable.
Not to mention the question about what happens to other wildlife, or people.
First of all, I think they'll find out very fast (in about a year or so :-) if there are measurable harmful effects.
Secondly, I think the harmful effects would be limited to the microbes at the surface, not covered by any dirt, ie. those microbes that are already dead due to UV radiation... ;-)
Also if it affects the worms, they'll go underground very fast (as worms go, which is in fact pretty fast considering the scale). Flying insects might suffer, but I'm not sure if that's good or bad for most (non-insect-pollinated) farming.
This is the spy community saying "If ICQ moves to Russia, we might not be able to tap it anymore!"
No it's not. Not a real spy community at least. If they're late in the whole affair, they're no proper spies. If they were proper spies, the process of stopping the deal would have started as soon as there were first informal discussions between AOL and the Russian company about the possibility of maybe doing business.
So basically I create entangled pairs with probability X and hope they are entangled when I do stuff with them?
Question is: what are the [envisioned] uses?
I don't know if there's anything else practical, except quantum encryption and quantum communication (100% secure, as an eavesdropper would destroy the signal) and quantum computing, and more dense information storage. I think there's some research into quantum compression or "superdense coding", but I don't know if it can produce just 50% compression, or if it's possible to for example use 64 qubits to store 64^2 bits of information, or whatever.
In a less cheery note, quantum technology could probably be used for creating one hell of a DRM system as well... Hopefully we're past those by the time it becomes practical...