And the nice thing is, you can mix Duplo and normal blocks:-). Very cool when you want to build something *big*, Duplo's were great filler / base material.
I'd hope the toy companies would realize this more, and provide at least a bit of compatibility. Especially now that Lego's basic patent has expired (right?), that'd provide a great common "interface", considering how popular it is over the World. Just have a few different Lego-other connection pieces if you're making a competing product, and the kids will do the rest.
Just think, "Compatible with Legos(tm)" would probably find a soft spot with quite a few parents who played with Legos as a kid and even might still have their old Legos stored somewhere. The kids would love it (at least I hated it when there was no nice and tidy way to connect different construction sets). And I bet it'd increase the total size of the construction toy business too. Win-win for everybody.
Which is why I am confident we will someday find a way to predict ( with 100% accuracy ) weather patterns.
Take a dice. Arrange a way for you to drop that dice exactly same way many times. Notice how the result is still totally random as long as the dice bounces at least a few times when it hits a surface. Weather is like that dice, we can't possibly know everything that affects the result, since if you get fancy enough to measure individual air molecules and atom-size bumps on surfaces, your measurement ends up altering the environment, and the result of measurement is no longer true.
Only way we can reach 100% accuracy with weather predictions is if we have technology to control the weather globally, so we can *force* it to develop the way we predicted/designed. Too bad current science doesn't really offer any way to do that, but perhaps some day... We've learned to forge iron, we've learned to manipulate individual atoms, perhaps one day we'll learn to manipulate an Earth-size system at a level needed for weather control.
I could even bet it won't be in my lifetime, but that'd be a lose-lose bet for me so better not;-)
I think earthquakes are kinda easy to predict though, relatively speaking. I mean, if there's tension, you know it's going to get released sooner or later, so you have a good starting point for the prediction.
If you compare this to weather forecasting, the time scales are quite long, which gives more time for calculations. I think there must be less variables too, and they interact much more slowly. So forecasting earthquakes months before might have about as much inherent uncertainity as predicting weather a few days ahead (ie not too much).
Not to mention, actually having that "black box radio" would not really help anything in this situation. We'd be more sure if it crashed, and might have some data about why it crashed, or maybe not depending on what really happened. But the mission would still be lost.
Re:No one is ever left aboard without a lifeboat
on
ISS May Have A Leak
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· Score: 1
I guess the emergeny overrules the rule abou tno lifeboat. Reasoning would be that if it's a choice between leaving one of the crew behind alone, waiting for next launch without a lifeboat, or bringing all 3 down but one of them dying on landing, then there's not much choice, is there...
I say it's all the fault of those damned dinosaurs...
Indeed. Damn them for dying out! If they hadn't, we *humans* probably wouldn't have any of these environmental problems right now...
Hey, I know! I suggest we do not cause a global extinction of all land life, so we won't get blamed by some intelligent decendant of a toad for their environmental problems in ~100 million years.
Replace "capitalism" with "free market" and I agree with you. Because capitalism seems to be leading to a situation where big are so big that they can control the market, and it's no longer free...
Seriously...I'd like to hear an actual, valid justification for being allowed to do this.
I think you lost the point, this wasn't about if this should be allowed or not, it was about the harsh punisment possible for this crime even for first time offenders... Now that's something that would need a justification.
Your "Finland" link would seem to actually be to Hungary... Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, but after all it is.hu doman, and there's a Hungarian version of the page;-)
Well, you want a high location (little atmosphere) with clear skies all around the year and hardly any rain. Maybe there really aren't as good such spots in the Northern America as there are in some other places.
But if it makes you feel better, Europe is even worse off in this respect;-)
This sentence doesn't make any sense but what I think you are trying to say is that all scientists want better technology. Pure mathematicians and theoretical physicists are two groups of scientists that don't rely on technology to aid them in their tasks. Please don't generalize. Some of us don't rely on gadgets to do our work for us.
I doubt very much there is such a "pure mathematician" who can't benefit from visualization and number crunching capabilities of computers. Or then they're just too short sighted or too stubborn to notice the possible benefits... Unless of course they have just decided that if a computer can be of help in something, then that isn't true theoretical mathematics any more...
And what is a theoretical physicist anyway? Doesn't all physics by definition involve this so-called real world, and isn't anything theoretical physicists come up with required to match with reality? And as it is, with advanced (meaning beyond our actual knowledge) physics at this point, either the experiments are so complex that you can't have too fast computer to analyze the results, or experiments are not even possible, and computer simulation is the only way to begin testing the theory at least in some way.
The primary difference between the way we change it and animals change it, is animals find their niche for adding balance, and stop there. Humans continue to change their environments more and more, but as a price must learn to complete the cycle.
No, animals don't do that, they don't stop. The *environment* forces the balance, generally by having a lot of animals to die... There's no inherent balance in the nature, other, there's only survival. If balance leads to better immediate survival, then it'll be balance, but more often in nature it's cycles of massive population growth, literally breeding like rabbits, followed by mass death...
So I for one hope we learn how to *not* complete this cycle;)
They would sue MS based on anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws, for abusing their dominant market position.
Or they make support for motherboards with 2 ways for startup, EFI or BIOS.
Or they come up with pure open source OS hardware that is able to emulate EFI in software (obiviously with a closed-source commercial software package, but anyway), so you could have a system that boots minimal *BSD lincence OS, which then boots the EFI-"emulation".
Though considering the speed of legal action in US (or anywhere for that matter), they should start the litigation now, so they don't go bankrupt before even the first hearing...
Last time I checked, most of Humanity considered slaughtering protesting citizens with mechanized infantry somewhat more heinous than allowing companies to sue them in a courtroom.
As gruesome that is, slaughtering protesting citizens is still improvement from a situation where they would have been shot well before they even could have started protesting.
Allowing corporations to sue small kids based on vague suspicions to make an example and scare consumers definitely is not an improvement over past situation in US...
If China keeps on improving, while US keeps on limiting freedoms, things could even get reversed in a few decades... After all it was only 20 years from Germany getting a democratic government after WW1 to the start of WW2 under Hitler. Do not fall into complacency, or it could be your country where that happens next...
Not sure if there are many RPG games where you *can't* choose between good and evil, actually. There's really nothing original in KOTOR as a game. In console games it's something new, that's true, but it's basically made of same stuff as relatively ancient Baldur's Gate 1 (KOTOR gameplay is basically a 3D version of BG), even down to the plot... From the very beginning, a child of Bhaal vs amnesiac Revan, to the very end, the Throne of Bhaal vs Starforge. Except of course BG plot was quite a bit more complex overall, but that's a given considering it was two full games, both with two large expansion packs...
Back to hard-line communism, as in the government basically tells you what you do. Check out places like Shanghai, and then tell me if that's communism in action...
Losing freedoms is a slippery slope, but so is giving freedoms... I mean, even the Tianamen Square thing was a sign of changing times, 20 years ago the demonstrators would probably have been shot well before they ever got near the Square. It's pretty clear to me that China is headed towards more freedoms, slowly maybe and not very steadily, but going that way none the less.
On contrast, I doubt there are many who think US is headed towards more freedom at the moment, that laws that are being made now ensure the freedoms of US citizens, instead of limiting them...
Now if this trend in each country contineus for a few more decades... If you're an American citizen, try to make sure than in US it doesn't. Please.
It's perhaps ironic that China might become the beacon of freedom in computer software, when corporate America tries to tighten it's stranglehold around American (and even European) courtrooms...
I just hope they are far enough in the road to general freedom, that even if the "regime" of China decides they want to go back to hard line Communism, they can't any more...
There are no original games any more, any originality of powerful 3D engines has been used up a few years back already...
The next opportunity at originality might come in the real time online world department, but I think all attempts at that in the year 2003 fell flat...?
PC online games just have too much cheating, and consoles just aren't powerful enough yet (even XBox has way too little memory), and there aren't enough people with fast enough access who want to play them to bring out their true potential anyway...
Well, if you soon see new laws, or lawsuits using existing laws, to make competing with them very hard in the operating system and multimedia and office software markets, then they are a monopoly...
Hmm, a reference to the SCO sillines would be appropriate here, I think;)
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They'll sell for a high price in eBay after a few years if Lego really stops making 'em...
And the nice thing is, you can mix Duplo and normal blocks :-). Very cool when you want to build something *big*, Duplo's were great filler / base material.
I'd hope the toy companies would realize this more, and provide at least a bit of compatibility. Especially now that Lego's basic patent has expired (right?), that'd provide a great common "interface", considering how popular it is over the World. Just have a few different Lego-other connection pieces if you're making a competing product, and the kids will do the rest.
Just think, "Compatible with Legos(tm)" would probably find a soft spot with quite a few parents who played with Legos as a kid and even might still have their old Legos stored somewhere. The kids would love it (at least I hated it when there was no nice and tidy way to connect different construction sets). And I bet it'd increase the total size of the construction toy business too. Win-win for everybody.
Take a dice. Arrange a way for you to drop that dice exactly same way many times. Notice how the result is still totally random as long as the dice bounces at least a few times when it hits a surface. Weather is like that dice, we can't possibly know everything that affects the result, since if you get fancy enough to measure individual air molecules and atom-size bumps on surfaces, your measurement ends up altering the environment, and the result of measurement is no longer true.
Only way we can reach 100% accuracy with weather predictions is if we have technology to control the weather globally, so we can *force* it to develop the way we predicted/designed. Too bad current science doesn't really offer any way to do that, but perhaps some day... We've learned to forge iron, we've learned to manipulate individual atoms, perhaps one day we'll learn to manipulate an Earth-size system at a level needed for weather control.
I could even bet it won't be in my lifetime, but that'd be a lose-lose bet for me so better not
I think earthquakes are kinda easy to predict though, relatively speaking. I mean, if there's tension, you know it's going to get released sooner or later, so you have a good starting point for the prediction.
If you compare this to weather forecasting, the time scales are quite long, which gives more time for calculations. I think there must be less variables too, and they interact much more slowly. So forecasting earthquakes months before might have about as much inherent uncertainity as predicting weather a few days ahead (ie not too much).
Not to mention, actually having that "black box radio" would not really help anything in this situation. We'd be more sure if it crashed, and might have some data about why it crashed, or maybe not depending on what really happened. But the mission would still be lost.
I guess the emergeny overrules the rule abou tno lifeboat. Reasoning would be that if it's a choice between leaving one of the crew behind alone, waiting for next launch without a lifeboat, or bringing all 3 down but one of them dying on landing, then there's not much choice, is there...
Indeed. Damn them for dying out! If they hadn't, we *humans* probably wouldn't have any of these environmental problems right now...
Hey, I know! I suggest we do not cause a global extinction of all land life, so we won't get blamed by some intelligent decendant of a toad for their environmental problems in ~100 million years.
Replace "capitalism" with "free market" and I agree with you. Because capitalism seems to be leading to a situation where big are so big that they can control the market, and it's no longer free...
I think you lost the point, this wasn't about if this should be allowed or not, it was about the harsh punisment possible for this crime even for first time offenders... Now that's something that would need a justification.
...or then it's just .hu name pointing to a server in Finland, in which case you can just ignore my above post :-p
Your "Finland" link would seem to actually be to Hungary... Maybe I'm jumping to conclusions here, but after all it is .hu doman, and there's a Hungarian version of the page ;-)
Well, you want a high location (little atmosphere) with clear skies all around the year and hardly any rain. Maybe there really aren't as good such spots in the Northern America as there are in some other places.
;-)
But if it makes you feel better, Europe is even worse off in this respect
I doubt very much there is such a "pure mathematician" who can't benefit from visualization and number crunching capabilities of computers. Or then they're just too short sighted or too stubborn to notice the possible benefits... Unless of course they have just decided that if a computer can be of help in something, then that isn't true theoretical mathematics any more...
And what is a theoretical physicist anyway? Doesn't all physics by definition involve this so-called real world, and isn't anything theoretical physicists come up with required to match with reality? And as it is, with advanced (meaning beyond our actual knowledge) physics at this point, either the experiments are so complex that you can't have too fast computer to analyze the results, or experiments are not even possible, and computer simulation is the only way to begin testing the theory at least in some way.
If someone tells you to help yourself, and you do, have you? Or have you not?
No, animals don't do that, they don't stop. The *environment* forces the balance, generally by having a lot of animals to die... There's no inherent balance in the nature, other, there's only survival. If balance leads to better immediate survival, then it'll be balance, but more often in nature it's cycles of massive population growth, literally breeding like rabbits, followed by mass death...
So I for one hope we learn how to *not* complete this cycle
They would sue MS based on anti-trust/anti-monopoly laws, for abusing their dominant market position.
Or they make support for motherboards with 2 ways for startup, EFI or BIOS.
Or they come up with pure open source OS hardware that is able to emulate EFI in software (obiviously with a closed-source commercial software package, but anyway), so you could have a system that boots minimal *BSD lincence OS, which then boots the EFI-"emulation".
Though considering the speed of legal action in US (or anywhere for that matter), they should start the litigation now, so they don't go bankrupt before even the first hearing...
I could remember wrong here, but it was not Saruman's Uruk-Hai, it was Minas Morgul's, the Nazgul King's orcs against Mordor orcs, wasn't it?
As gruesome that is, slaughtering protesting citizens is still improvement from a situation where they would have been shot well before they even could have started protesting.
Allowing corporations to sue small kids based on vague suspicions to make an example and scare consumers definitely is not an improvement over past situation in US...
If China keeps on improving, while US keeps on limiting freedoms, things could even get reversed in a few decades... After all it was only 20 years from Germany getting a democratic government after WW1 to the start of WW2 under Hitler. Do not fall into complacency, or it could be your country where that happens next...
Not sure if there are many RPG games where you *can't* choose between good and evil, actually. There's really nothing original in KOTOR as a game. In console games it's something new, that's true, but it's basically made of same stuff as relatively ancient Baldur's Gate 1 (KOTOR gameplay is basically a 3D version of BG), even down to the plot... From the very beginning, a child of Bhaal vs amnesiac Revan, to the very end, the Throne of Bhaal vs Starforge. Except of course BG plot was quite a bit more complex overall, but that's a given considering it was two full games, both with two large expansion packs...
Back to hard-line communism, as in the government basically tells you what you do. Check out places like Shanghai, and then tell me if that's communism in action...
Losing freedoms is a slippery slope, but so is giving freedoms... I mean, even the Tianamen Square thing was a sign of changing times, 20 years ago the demonstrators would probably have been shot well before they ever got near the Square. It's pretty clear to me that China is headed towards more freedoms, slowly maybe and not very steadily, but going that way none the less.
On contrast, I doubt there are many who think US is headed towards more freedom at the moment, that laws that are being made now ensure the freedoms of US citizens, instead of limiting them...
Now if this trend in each country contineus for a few more decades... If you're an American citizen, try to make sure than in US it doesn't. Please.
I believe you mispelled that, you should leave out the last 'e'. Though I'm not native English speaker, so I could be wrong...
It's perhaps ironic that China might become the beacon of freedom in computer software, when corporate America tries to tighten it's stranglehold around American (and even European) courtrooms...
I just hope they are far enough in the road to general freedom, that even if the "regime" of China decides they want to go back to hard line Communism, they can't any more...
There are no original games any more, any originality of powerful 3D engines has been used up a few years back already...
The next opportunity at originality might come in the real time online world department, but I think all attempts at that in the year 2003 fell flat...?
PC online games just have too much cheating, and consoles just aren't powerful enough yet (even XBox has way too little memory), and there aren't enough people with fast enough access who want to play them to bring out their true potential anyway...
Well, if you soon see new laws, or lawsuits using existing laws, to make competing with them very hard in the operating system and multimedia and office software markets, then they are a monopoly...
;)
Hmm, a reference to the SCO sillines would be appropriate here, I think