I've read a couple of articles on the semi-exception that the top predator on the planet (Homo sap) seems to be a partial exception. This is generally explained as an artifact of our recent conversion to predation. We do have some predator adaptations, but we haven't had time to evolve them fully.
There's a much more simple explanation.
Our immune systems are poor because they don't get enough stimuli when we are in childhood. Modern medicine takes care of most of our illnesses so our own immune system doesn't have to, and therefore modern medicine needs to take care of those illnesses through our lives. Of course the plus-side of modern medicine is that we don't have a 50% child death rate...;-)
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if also human immune system could learn to deal with almost any bacteria, if they just would get the chance in childhood. So I wonder if we'll ever have sort of "general vaccines" given to children yearly or something, to teach their immune system to deal with all common bacteria and virus types that are now practically missing in our "over-hygienic" urban lifestyles.
Are you sure? You sure are confident of yourself! I always imagined the metaphysical gibberish was there to hide the fact that the robe wearing old wierdo doesn't know shit.
And if I'll ever be in that situation, I know I'll be talking a lot of gibberish;-) Hmm, better stock up on those magazine horoscopes, they'll make fine source material!
Even in that case, if you take out the battery of the laptop and run it directly from the PSU, you should avoid any extra losses due to the battery charging. Of course that loses you the advantage of built in UPS, and in uncertain power conditions I don't see much sense in it unless you have a separate UPS anyway (in which case it could make a lot of sense).
Another major advantage of laptops is that they're *designed* to graciously run out of power and automatically go to standby / hibernate. I doubt any desktop PCs have that functionality built in, though probably computer UPS drivers can do it... And of course it'd be best to check how a particular laptop really behaves when unplugged and running out of battery power, before buying it...
Though if you keep accelerating in space for a while (in a context of "perpetual storage"), quite soon you should be more worried about background radiation being blue-shifted to the gamma ray frequencies... Also, in the event of disaster, some difficulties in retrieving that data might arise...;-)
But seriously, how much rock do you need before any radiation from a nuclear blast goes below our ability to even measure it (in any frequency)? I imagine that's not a lot, a few hundred meters perhaps, but can't be arsed to dig up the numbers and calculate...
- can take it with you - can pre-charge the batter elsewhere when possible - has built-in "UPS" - is specifically designed to use as little power as possible - if you later get a generator for the rainy day, the battery gives you time to start the generator without hibernate/shutdown - if you want the comfort of separate keyboard, bigger LCD, real mouse etc, you can still get them for laptop too (and getting that 2nd LCD may give you dual screen as a bonus) and still use less power
If you claim that current TeX code is bugfree, I'd say that's a pretty bold claim, especially considering that I don't think anybody has intentionally tried to find ways to break it with malicous input files. I mean, what would be the the point? Therefore I'd say the burden of proof (proving there are no bugs in TeX code) is on you, if you really claim it's totally bug-free...
(Btw, commenting on another post as AC is a good way of discouraging replies, since the AC is unlikely to read them anyway, so I'd suggest creating an account...)
And is code that contains no bugs at all infinitely much better than code that contains a single bug which hardly ever occurs?
Fortunately for the "model", there is no substantial piece of code that contains just one rarely occuring bug, let alone code that contains no bugs at all. Therefore such infinities never need to be considered in real life cases.
But if you think of it theoretically, if that one rarely occuring bug potentailly causes your company go bankrupt (like being sued for huge damages), then I'd say the bugless version is infinitely better.
Except if the carrot is a bonus for company employees, and they never get the carrot, they learn soon that actually there is no carrot. Of course if the ones who realize this just change jobs, this won't be a problem...
With early Macs, one nasty reason that they weren't 32-bit clean was that the 68000 only supplies 24 bits addressing to the outside world, but has those 32 bit address registers.. so they used the upper 8 bits for storing other stuff like memory handles or something.
Wow. That sounds at the same time both rather clever and incredibly stupid:-). I wonder if they just didn't think about it when they decided to use those upper 8 bits fot that, or if they figured nobody will ever need more than 16 megs of memory...
My post was in response to saying that a lot of variation in product quality (some are good / last long, and some don't) is poor engineering. I just wanted to say that usually that is not so (it can be, but usually it isn't).
Not having an easily replaceable battery is a bad engineering decision, I agree...
Having a wide variation in performance (i.e. You vs. me vs. others) is another sign of poor engineering. Actually, it speaks directly to quality.
It's not a sign of poor engineering of the device. Poor production quality yes (either poor parts or poor manufacturing), but poor product engineering no.
What you mean "almost as fun"? It doesn't get any more fun than ADOM or Nethack or your favourite MUD in an xterm, especially if you pick your nose while playing.
I'm a programmer, so I prefer black and white. Enough of this _intent_ of the action, or what common sense tells you, etc. The fact of the matter is that a person has ordered a service from a company that happens to have a flawed delivery mechanism which can be easily exploited to provide consumers with the extra content they deliver along with the paid content.
The world in general doesn't care in the slightest what you prefer. The unscrupulous criminal out there cares even less. World is not black and white, and preferring it otherwise does not change the world.
In this case the delivery mechanism was not easily exploited, you had to get special hardware first, to *pay* someone else to provide you the means. That's not really "flawed" in my book.
Ball games, movie tickets, concert tickets. those examples are kinda outta this relm. In those instances, you're purchasing access to enter another person or corporation's facilities for a limited time.
I would very much argue that people pay for a ball game ticket to see the game live. Having access to stadium is just coincidental, a mechanism to control who can see the game, it's not what people actually pay for.
As I said, we are entering an era where a lot of things are immaterial. However, our society and economy still rotates around money, and there must be a link between physical stuff (such as food) and immaterial stuff (such as cable TV content). Either we need to reform our entire society very radically so this link will no longer be needed (communism vs capitalism is nothing compared to this). Or then immaterial stuff needs to have material value, and then bypassing physical access control (stadium fence) or bypassing a digital access control (encryption) are much the same thing conceptually.
How about if cell phones or even home land lines could easily be modified or just used in such a way that they provided unmetered usage? Perhaps someone discovers that if you enter *420 before making an overseas call, that the call will not be metered. Is it wrong to make a call like this?
Wrong example. The case here is more like people buying blue boxes specifically for the express purpose of making free calls, and then also actually use it for that purpose. Your example IMHO really falls into the category of "trivial", while buying a blue box does not.
I don't think it matters how trivial it is to get around the problem is. Perhaps, you only need to order a special device for you playstation that allows it to bypass the boot up sequence and allows you to play "backup" games for your playstation. Is this wrong, is this illegal? You're accessing the system in a way it was untintented to be accessed...
Well, modifying hardware you own should be completely legal. Playing illegally obtained copies of games, by default, should be illegal. They are separate issues and I don't see a contradiction here.
The thing in this case is, getting a device that can only be used for watching cable illegally is pretty strong sign that it is also used for this purpose. That alone should not be reason enough for getting convicted of a crime, but it should give right to ask why did someone get such a device if it really was not for a sole purpose of commititng a crime.
Again I also repeat, current DMCA is rather ridiculous overall, but still, this exact case just the one where DMCA should apply.
I disagree. To have a real competition, you need to compete against someone (someone else than yourself, that is) or compete for your own or your offspring's survival. I mean, that's the basic nature of humans, grafted into our brains through millions of years of evolution. Some individuals can raise above this and achieve great things "alone", but space exploration is not an individual effort, mostly not even national effort. So such high-fly abstract goals as "let's do it for mankind" will not cut it when "the mob" asks why don't you spend that money on schools/wellfare/lower taxes instead.
Trying to deny this basic nature of humans just leads to disasters like communism (OTOH embracing it fully can be even worse, reducing us to the level of animals, so a balance is needed, but that's beside the point here).
Well, the edge might be in *current capability*, ie who has the most advanced probe out there. I mean, that's what having an edge is all about, being the best at the moment.
Now I don't know if Beagle 2 really is the best current probe out there or not, but if it is, then clealry ESA has the edge at the moment.
If it isn't 'a race' or a 'competition', taxpayers (or party leaders in Communist countries) start asking why should they keep paying for it.
Also, the scientist and engineers working on the actual stuff are much more likely to "go the extra mile" (or 1.609344 kilometers if working for ESA) if there's a feeling of competition.
I'm talking about the principle here. We're entering an era where a lot of things are digital, immaterial. There are a lot of issues that are still seeking form, such as copyright issues with material that is trivial to copy.
Also, this is not a case where the users who bought the device in article figured out a way to get protected content. They paid somebody else to get their hands on that content wihtout paying the content provider. My common sense says that's on a general level same as stealing (like sneaking into a ball game or a movie without a ticket, or buying a forged ticket from street and using it, you know what I mean). Wether it is a big or small crime and how it should be punished is a good question, but IMHO there's no question that making it punishable is somehow wrong.
In my opinion, digital protection schemes should be such that you can not "unintentionally" or trivially go around them, but they don't need to be unbreakable, because that puts too much cost in the distribution, and guess who pays that cost... Ordering a descrambling device is not unintentional, and it's not trivial either (if it were, you wouldn't need to order a plug-and-play device from somebody else, you could just do it yourself). Therefore I think that this is *just* the kind of thing a sensible version of DMCA would be about.
There's a lot of gray area here obiviously, but I don't see this as a big problem. There's a lot of gray area in other legal things too, such as traffic. Like you can get fined for jaywalking on an empty street if you meet a nasty police officer, but it's not very sensible to suggest that jaywalking should always be legal.
Actually I see this as one of the few places where the principle of DMCA is somewhat justified. Ie the principle that it's illegal to go around digital protection techniques in order to use non-free digital content for free.
Anything beyond that (such as saying you can't make mp3 rips of your own CDs for your own convenience, like for car *and* portable player *and* summer cottage), as well as the punishments in DMCA are still ridiculous though, as well as a lot of other implied stuff in it.
They may know theyd'd eventually get caught, but probably not just yet... They can always get a bit more, *then* retire very soon, just after the next $million or so. But well before getting caught by those stupid law enforcement dolts...
Or something like that:-)
Re:What happens when it crashes.
on
A.I. Helicopter?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
First you would have to solve the problem of the rotor blades. Just blowing the blades off before deploying the paracute doesn't sound like it's much of an improvement over no parachute. Also, a chopper that has lost control and is rotating wildly doesn't sound like something you can put a parachute on, even if you manage to avoid the 'chute getting tangled into the rotor blades.
Maybe it'd be possible, but it sounds quite a hard engineering problem.
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There's a much more simple explanation.
Our immune systems are poor because they don't get enough stimuli when we are in childhood. Modern medicine takes care of most of our illnesses so our own immune system doesn't have to, and therefore modern medicine needs to take care of those illnesses through our lives. Of course the plus-side of modern medicine is that we don't have a 50% child death rate...
I wouldn't be surprised in the slightest if also human immune system could learn to deal with almost any bacteria, if they just would get the chance in childhood. So I wonder if we'll ever have sort of "general vaccines" given to children yearly or something, to teach their immune system to deal with all common bacteria and virus types that are now practically missing in our "over-hygienic" urban lifestyles.
Are you sure? You sure are confident of yourself! I always imagined the metaphysical gibberish was there to hide the fact that the robe wearing old wierdo doesn't know shit.
;-) Hmm, better stock up on those magazine horoscopes, they'll make fine source material!
And if I'll ever be in that situation, I know I'll be talking a lot of gibberish
Even in that case, if you take out the battery of the laptop and run it directly from the PSU, you should avoid any extra losses due to the battery charging. Of course that loses you the advantage of built in UPS, and in uncertain power conditions I don't see much sense in it unless you have a separate UPS anyway (in which case it could make a lot of sense).
Another major advantage of laptops is that they're *designed* to graciously run out of power and automatically go to standby / hibernate. I doubt any desktop PCs have that functionality built in, though probably computer UPS drivers can do it... And of course it'd be best to check how a particular laptop really behaves when unplugged and running out of battery power, before buying it...
Though if you keep accelerating in space for a while (in a context of "perpetual storage"), quite soon you should be more worried about background radiation being blue-shifted to the gamma ray frequencies... Also, in the event of disaster, some difficulties in retrieving that data might arise... ;-)
But seriously, how much rock do you need before any radiation from a nuclear blast goes below our ability to even measure it (in any frequency)? I imagine that's not a lot, a few hundred meters perhaps, but can't be arsed to dig up the numbers and calculate...
- can take it with you
- can pre-charge the batter elsewhere when possible
- has built-in "UPS"
- is specifically designed to use as little power as possible
- if you later get a generator for the rainy day, the battery gives you time to start the generator without hibernate/shutdown
- if you want the comfort of separate keyboard, bigger LCD, real mouse etc, you can still get them for laptop too (and getting that 2nd LCD may give you dual screen as a bonus) and still use less power
If you claim that current TeX code is bugfree, I'd say that's a pretty bold claim, especially considering that I don't think anybody has intentionally tried to find ways to break it with malicous input files. I mean, what would be the the point? Therefore I'd say the burden of proof (proving there are no bugs in TeX code) is on you, if you really claim it's totally bug-free...
(Btw, commenting on another post as AC is a good way of discouraging replies, since the AC is unlikely to read them anyway, so I'd suggest creating an account...)
Well, considering where the primary(?) competitor MS-DOS had set the limit, 16megs does sound a lot.
Fortunately for the "model", there is no substantial piece of code that contains just one rarely occuring bug, let alone code that contains no bugs at all. Therefore such infinities never need to be considered in real life cases.
But if you think of it theoretically, if that one rarely occuring bug potentailly causes your company go bankrupt (like being sued for huge damages), then I'd say the bugless version is infinitely better.
Except if the carrot is a bonus for company employees, and they never get the carrot, they learn soon that actually there is no carrot. Of course if the ones who realize this just change jobs, this won't be a problem...
Mod parent up! I was just about to post a request for somebody to RTFA and tell the rest of us what the hell "six times better" was supposed to mean.
Wow. That sounds at the same time both rather clever and incredibly stupid
My post was in response to saying that a lot of variation in product quality (some are good / last long, and some don't) is poor engineering. I just wanted to say that usually that is not so (it can be, but usually it isn't).
Not having an easily replaceable battery is a bad engineering decision, I agree...
It's not a sign of poor engineering of the device. Poor production quality yes (either poor parts or poor manufacturing), but poor product engineering no.
Engineer? Who? Me? Well...
That's maybe true for a desktop PC, especially if they are on most of the time (ie few starts and stops).
I've had several laptop drives die on me. I could imagine an iPod drive will have to suffer even more punishment than an average laptop drive.
What you mean "almost as fun"? It doesn't get any more fun than ADOM or Nethack or your favourite MUD in an xterm, especially if you pick your nose while playing.
The fact of the matter is that a person has ordered a service from a company that happens to have a flawed delivery mechanism which can be easily exploited to provide consumers with the extra content they deliver along with the paid content.
The world in general doesn't care in the slightest what you prefer. The unscrupulous criminal out there cares even less. World is not black and white, and preferring it otherwise does not change the world.
In this case the delivery mechanism was not easily exploited, you had to get special hardware first, to *pay* someone else to provide you the means. That's not really "flawed" in my book.
I would very much argue that people pay for a ball game ticket to see the game live. Having access to stadium is just coincidental, a mechanism to control who can see the game, it's not what people actually pay for.
As I said, we are entering an era where a lot of things are immaterial. However, our society and economy still rotates around money, and there must be a link between physical stuff (such as food) and immaterial stuff (such as cable TV content). Either we need to reform our entire society very radically so this link will no longer be needed (communism vs capitalism is nothing compared to this). Or then immaterial stuff needs to have material value, and then bypassing physical access control (stadium fence) or bypassing a digital access control (encryption) are much the same thing conceptually.
Wrong example. The case here is more like people buying blue boxes specifically for the express purpose of making free calls, and then also actually use it for that purpose. Your example IMHO really falls into the category of "trivial", while buying a blue box does not.
Well, modifying hardware you own should be completely legal. Playing illegally obtained copies of games, by default, should be illegal. They are separate issues and I don't see a contradiction here.
The thing in this case is, getting a device that can only be used for watching cable illegally is pretty strong sign that it is also used for this purpose. That alone should not be reason enough for getting convicted of a crime, but it should give right to ask why did someone get such a device if it really was not for a sole purpose of commititng a crime.
Again I also repeat, current DMCA is rather ridiculous overall, but still, this exact case just the one where DMCA should apply.
I disagree. To have a real competition, you need to compete against someone (someone else than yourself, that is) or compete for your own or your offspring's survival. I mean, that's the basic nature of humans, grafted into our brains through millions of years of evolution. Some individuals can raise above this and achieve great things "alone", but space exploration is not an individual effort, mostly not even national effort. So such high-fly abstract goals as "let's do it for mankind" will not cut it when "the mob" asks why don't you spend that money on schools/wellfare/lower taxes instead.
Trying to deny this basic nature of humans just leads to disasters like communism (OTOH embracing it fully can be even worse, reducing us to the level of animals, so a balance is needed, but that's beside the point here).
Well, the edge might be in *current capability*, ie who has the most advanced probe out there. I mean, that's what having an edge is all about, being the best at the moment.
Now I don't know if Beagle 2 really is the best current probe out there or not, but if it is, then clealry ESA has the edge at the moment.
If it isn't 'a race' or a 'competition', taxpayers (or party leaders in Communist countries) start asking why should they keep paying for it.
Also, the scientist and engineers working on the actual stuff are much more likely to "go the extra mile" (or 1.609344 kilometers if working for ESA) if there's a feeling of competition.
Old topic, but stuff like this really makes me wonder, if I should start feeling sorry for gullible American taxpayers...
I'm talking about the principle here. We're entering an era where a lot of things are digital, immaterial. There are a lot of issues that are still seeking form, such as copyright issues with material that is trivial to copy.
Also, this is not a case where the users who bought the device in article figured out a way to get protected content. They paid somebody else to get their hands on that content wihtout paying the content provider. My common sense says that's on a general level same as stealing (like sneaking into a ball game or a movie without a ticket, or buying a forged ticket from street and using it, you know what I mean). Wether it is a big or small crime and how it should be punished is a good question, but IMHO there's no question that making it punishable is somehow wrong.
In my opinion, digital protection schemes should be such that you can not "unintentionally" or trivially go around them, but they don't need to be unbreakable, because that puts too much cost in the distribution, and guess who pays that cost... Ordering a descrambling device is not unintentional, and it's not trivial either (if it were, you wouldn't need to order a plug-and-play device from somebody else, you could just do it yourself). Therefore I think that this is *just* the kind of thing a sensible version of DMCA would be about.
There's a lot of gray area here obiviously, but I don't see this as a big problem. There's a lot of gray area in other legal things too, such as traffic. Like you can get fined for jaywalking on an empty street if you meet a nasty police officer, but it's not very sensible to suggest that jaywalking should always be legal.
Actually I see this as one of the few places where the principle of DMCA is somewhat justified. Ie the principle that it's illegal to go around digital protection techniques in order to use non-free digital content for free.
Anything beyond that (such as saying you can't make mp3 rips of your own CDs for your own convenience, like for car *and* portable player *and* summer cottage), as well as the punishments in DMCA are still ridiculous though, as well as a lot of other implied stuff in it.
Such as?
They may know theyd'd eventually get caught, but probably not just yet... They can always get a bit more, *then* retire very soon, just after the next $million or so. But well before getting caught by those stupid law enforcement dolts...
:-)
Or something like that
First you would have to solve the problem of the rotor blades. Just blowing the blades off before deploying the paracute doesn't sound like it's much of an improvement over no parachute. Also, a chopper that has lost control and is rotating wildly doesn't sound like something you can put a parachute on, even if you manage to avoid the 'chute getting tangled into the rotor blades.
Maybe it'd be possible, but it sounds quite a hard engineering problem.