Entangled quantum things aren't connected in any way except mathematically. It's nothing more than saying that if you have two electrons entangled with opposite spin, then measuring one of them tells you the spin of the other, without you having to measure it. When you measure the spin of the first one, you've disturbed it as a result, and it no longer has any relationship to the other electron at all. However, the cool and useful thing is that you have gained information about another electron without measuring it.
'2' is one of these 'numbers', and was used correctly, if informally. Generally, when using small numbers in text communication, one should write out the English word, but it's not mandatory.
More irony. Of course using the digit instead of spelling it out is valid. It just looks stupid. Admittedly, it's not as stupid as setting yourself on fire in a very clever way. But, both of them diminish you in the eyes of others.
Second, there's a difference between antibiotic-resistant bacteria and 2 fucktards swinging Stupidtov cocktails at each other.
And here you missed my point entirely. As idiotic as it was, they were being human when they did that. There is certainly a lot of humor in what they did, and in the tragic result. But you shouldn't diminish them for it. Three humans once sealed themselves inside a tin can sitting on top of tons of combustibles, then ignited them. They were launched to the moon, on which they then landed, then planted a flag and some useful science experiments. They then gathered up some rocks, got back in their tin can, and came back home to be lauded as heroes. They took a calculated risk for enormous reward -- that is something that people are built to do. These amateur cinematographers took a far greater risk for a far smaller reward, and things didn't work out that well for them.
I agree they were foolish, and I don't deny that the whole thing makes me laugh. But I refuse to allow myself to feel contempt for them.
If these 2 live, and produce offspring, I will lose all faith in evolution.
First off, it's spelled "two".
Secondly, there is a bit of irony to be found in your statement about evolution. Irony, aside from the bit about having faith in a scientific theory.
The theory of evolution is that what doesn't kill the species only makes it stronger. Human beings are evolved to be risk-takers. As amazingly stupid as it was to set glass tubes filled with gasoline on fire and then swing them around, mankind never would have gotten anywhere at all if nobody ever did anything stupid and risky. It's also possible here that something in the genetic makeup of these petrol-sabre duelists makes them resistant to immolation, and so having them breed would both reinforce humankind's propensity for risk taking and also help make future generations more resistant to fire.
I know that what I've said here is a tad on the absurd side. I just wanted to point out that evolution doesn't breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria without bacteria being exposed to antibiotics.
Crapflood. One hell of a way to avoid the lameness filter, eh? Just copy and paste something that's already passed. It could be someone busily copying and pasting from one thread to another, but the task seems well suited for automation.
Awesome! It even has a built-in flashlight. Now, that strikes me as a useful feature that wouldn't have to be crippled by virtue of it having to fit on a cellphone. It would even replace a device on my keychain.
I actually own a three-year-old Nokia phone that is basically the same deal as that one, except without the flashlight.
Ahh, but that's the problem. It's becoming increasingly difficult to buy a cellphone these days that doesn't have all the unwanted whizbang features on it. Using a cell phone to actually talk to someone is becoming an increasingly marginalized use of the device.
Unfortunately, every secondary feature added to a cell phone is second-rate. The cameras inside them are crap. Text entry on a number pad is crap. And, the screens are way too small to properly appreciate television on. Crap.
This isn't a Luddite perspective. This is a "use the right goddamn tool for the goddamn job" perspective. Cell phones suck for anything but talking to someone with. Manufacturers and service providers are trying to turn them into electronic versions of the Swiss Army Knife. Screw that. Let them become commodity devices, instead of trying to continuously "improve" them into something they just weren't meant to be.
The thing is, video RAM ends up being irrelevant in the face of future games using new kinds of effects handled in the GPU. If the card can't do the effect, then having twice as much texture memory as you actually need won't help.
Data integrity is the database ensuring that when you want to have an entry in another table for each row in a table, that you do.
That's referential integrity. For example, if your database enforces referential integrity between an accounts payable and a payable entities table, if you delete a payable entity then all associated payables records would be cascade-deleted along with it.
And, as an aside, generally if you're going to maintain a record-for-record relationship between two tables, you might as well combine them into a single table.
Data integrity is making sure your data is complete and accurate. The database can assist with this by the enforcement of rules when entering, deleting, and updating information. Extending the above example, you might preserve data integrity by disallowing deletion of a record from the payable entities table when there is a non-zero balance on that account or there has been activity on that account in the past three years.
People who own diamonds are happy to have them and expect them to maintain their value. De Beers doesn't want to screw themselves and their marketplace over by devaluing diamonds the world over. Nobody is being hurt here, and everyone involved is interested in maintaining the status quo.
Economics demonstrates that there isn't really a difference between "real" value and "artificial" or "virtual" value. All value is created by human beings; a gold nugget is just a bunch of atoms until a person comes along and says, "ooh, pretty!". People can similarly find a lot of value in groups of bits that can be replicated with trivial effort. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The whole idea that we can collectively agree to a hoax like soft currency, and keep the system stable, shows that quite well.
If someone wants to be "fooled" into paying a ridiculous amount for a rock, who are we to protect him? Why do we want to? In order for it to work, the buyer assists in pulling the wool over his own eyes. Let him. Live and let live. Look out for number one.
It's also known that De Beers artificially inflates the price of diamonds by hoarding them and carefully controlling their release into the marketplace, combined with marketing campaigns that have made us believe that diamons are more precious than they really are. There are artificial gems that have more brilliance than diamonds. There are artificial diamonds that can only be distinguished from "real" ones by virtue of the fact that they are too perfect.
Hell, once upon a time pearls were lumpy things, valued for their prettiness and rarity. A truly spherical pearl was practically never seen, and especially valued. Nowadays they are farmed like corn (ok, not like corn, but you get my drift, right?), and their spherical perfection and luster is carefully controlled through the seeding process. Due to clever marketing, the discovery of pearl culturing created a bigger, better market for pearls. Back then, people were petrified that cultured pearls would destroy the value of "real" pearls. To a degree, it did -- saying "pearls" to most people evokes images of necklaces, made of strings of same-size cultured pearls. Even though modern pearls are produced on organic assembly lines, people still pay a lot for them. Real pearls found in the wild are lumpy, often discolored -- and are still valued for different reasons.
So, either you buy into the diamonds and pearls thing and overpay for pretty rocks, or you spend your money on more important things. What's the difference if the "rocks" are instead just pixels, with their rarity controlled by a loot table rather than via access to stockpiles of goods secured in vaults?
So, out of curiosity, I looked up wieners on Wikipedia, and ran into a linked article on something called "Toad in the Hole". It's always interesting to run into odd names for food. Piqued, I decided to search Wikipedia for an odd food name I'd heard (and used) before.
Ahh, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Excellent game, and CEO Morgan's quotes are chock full of wisdom. My favorite is the one that starts "Human behavior is economic behavior...".
I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.
This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.
The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).
Enterprise should not have needed a chance to grow.
After TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, Enterprise should have come sprinting out of the gate. It didn't. Blame those who did the writing and producing for the first two seasons for giving the show a gimp leg and dooming it right from the start. Its potential audience tuned out. And, once that happens, there's no saving it. Those people no longer care, and you're not going to recapture their attention.
There are two valid definitions of "cruel" here. One of them is "causing suffering; painful". The other is "finding satisfaction in the suffering of others".
I stand by my statements; punishment should be cruel both ways. Forget sanctimony as well.
Do the victims of a crime not deserve the catharsis of justice served, vengefully? People need closure for traumatic events. I'd bet good money that if an assault victim could stand there and watch his attacker be flayed open by a whip as punishment for the crime, the victim would begin to heal emotionally much faster.
When I say I'd tune in to watch people being flogged, it's only intriguing to me so long as the people being beaten actually deserve it. I'm not cruel in the sense that I want to hurt the innocent.
And if I ever lose control and take my anger out on someone else's (or public) property, or get drunk and go for a drive, or commit any other kind of offense where there is a real victim (either particular individuals or society at large), I'd stand up and take my whipping and not whine about it.
Slashdot Mirror
Entangled quantum things aren't connected in any way except mathematically. It's nothing more than saying that if you have two electrons entangled with opposite spin, then measuring one of them tells you the spin of the other, without you having to measure it. When you measure the spin of the first one, you've disturbed it as a result, and it no longer has any relationship to the other electron at all. However, the cool and useful thing is that you have gained information about another electron without measuring it.
Yes, and eventually we'll figure out subspace and warp fields, too.
Full. Metal. Jacket.
I agree they were foolish, and I don't deny that the whole thing makes me laugh. But I refuse to allow myself to feel contempt for them.
Secondly, there is a bit of irony to be found in your statement about evolution. Irony, aside from the bit about having faith in a scientific theory.
The theory of evolution is that what doesn't kill the species only makes it stronger. Human beings are evolved to be risk-takers. As amazingly stupid as it was to set glass tubes filled with gasoline on fire and then swing them around, mankind never would have gotten anywhere at all if nobody ever did anything stupid and risky. It's also possible here that something in the genetic makeup of these petrol-sabre duelists makes them resistant to immolation, and so having them breed would both reinforce humankind's propensity for risk taking and also help make future generations more resistant to fire.
I know that what I've said here is a tad on the absurd side. I just wanted to point out that evolution doesn't breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria without bacteria being exposed to antibiotics.
Crapflood. One hell of a way to avoid the lameness filter, eh? Just copy and paste something that's already passed. It could be someone busily copying and pasting from one thread to another, but the task seems well suited for automation.
Here's the Google cache link.
Awesome! It even has a built-in flashlight. Now, that strikes me as a useful feature that wouldn't have to be crippled by virtue of it having to fit on a cellphone. It would even replace a device on my keychain.
I actually own a three-year-old Nokia phone that is basically the same deal as that one, except without the flashlight.
Ahh, but that's the problem. It's becoming increasingly difficult to buy a cellphone these days that doesn't have all the unwanted whizbang features on it. Using a cell phone to actually talk to someone is becoming an increasingly marginalized use of the device.
Unfortunately, every secondary feature added to a cell phone is second-rate. The cameras inside them are crap. Text entry on a number pad is crap. And, the screens are way too small to properly appreciate television on. Crap.
This isn't a Luddite perspective. This is a "use the right goddamn tool for the goddamn job" perspective. Cell phones suck for anything but talking to someone with. Manufacturers and service providers are trying to turn them into electronic versions of the Swiss Army Knife. Screw that. Let them become commodity devices, instead of trying to continuously "improve" them into something they just weren't meant to be.
The thing is, video RAM ends up being irrelevant in the face of future games using new kinds of effects handled in the GPU. If the card can't do the effect, then having twice as much texture memory as you actually need won't help.
What is the value in tabbed browsing? Seriously? I tried it in FireFox for a few days and all it did was annoy the hell out of me. What am I missing?
Yes, but what would Brian Boitano do?
Willen haven been. You're forgetting your conjugations.
And, as an aside, generally if you're going to maintain a record-for-record relationship between two tables, you might as well combine them into a single table.
Data integrity is making sure your data is complete and accurate. The database can assist with this by the enforcement of rules when entering, deleting, and updating information. Extending the above example, you might preserve data integrity by disallowing deletion of a record from the payable entities table when there is a non-zero balance on that account or there has been activity on that account in the past three years.
I for one don't see how it's bad.
People who own diamonds are happy to have them and expect them to maintain their value. De Beers doesn't want to screw themselves and their marketplace over by devaluing diamonds the world over. Nobody is being hurt here, and everyone involved is interested in maintaining the status quo.
Economics demonstrates that there isn't really a difference between "real" value and "artificial" or "virtual" value. All value is created by human beings; a gold nugget is just a bunch of atoms until a person comes along and says, "ooh, pretty!". People can similarly find a lot of value in groups of bits that can be replicated with trivial effort. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. The whole idea that we can collectively agree to a hoax like soft currency, and keep the system stable, shows that quite well.
If someone wants to be "fooled" into paying a ridiculous amount for a rock, who are we to protect him? Why do we want to? In order for it to work, the buyer assists in pulling the wool over his own eyes. Let him. Live and let live. Look out for number one.
It's also known that De Beers artificially inflates the price of diamonds by hoarding them and carefully controlling their release into the marketplace, combined with marketing campaigns that have made us believe that diamons are more precious than they really are. There are artificial gems that have more brilliance than diamonds. There are artificial diamonds that can only be distinguished from "real" ones by virtue of the fact that they are too perfect.
Hell, once upon a time pearls were lumpy things, valued for their prettiness and rarity. A truly spherical pearl was practically never seen, and especially valued. Nowadays they are farmed like corn (ok, not like corn, but you get my drift, right?), and their spherical perfection and luster is carefully controlled through the seeding process. Due to clever marketing, the discovery of pearl culturing created a bigger, better market for pearls. Back then, people were petrified that cultured pearls would destroy the value of "real" pearls. To a degree, it did -- saying "pearls" to most people evokes images of necklaces, made of strings of same-size cultured pearls. Even though modern pearls are produced on organic assembly lines, people still pay a lot for them. Real pearls found in the wild are lumpy, often discolored -- and are still valued for different reasons.
So, either you buy into the diamonds and pearls thing and overpay for pretty rocks, or you spend your money on more important things. What's the difference if the "rocks" are instead just pixels, with their rarity controlled by a loot table rather than via access to stockpiles of goods secured in vaults?
You forgot the wieners.
So, out of curiosity, I looked up wieners on Wikipedia, and ran into a linked article on something called "Toad in the Hole". It's always interesting to run into odd names for food. Piqued, I decided to search Wikipedia for an odd food name I'd heard (and used) before.
Lo and behold, Wikipedia already knew all about Shit on a Shingle.
Ahh, Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri. Excellent game, and CEO Morgan's quotes are chock full of wisdom. My favorite is the one that starts "Human behavior is economic behavior...".
:)
Do I get a prize for recognizing the reference?
Of course, if the Left Coast crazies get their way, eventually anything and everything will be the responsibility of the legislature and law enforcement to handle. Right now, this is funny: Dispatcher: Ma'am, we're not gonna go down there and enforce your Western Bacon Cheeseburger. (Also hit the audio link.) Twenty years from now it might not be.
I have the Hauppauge WinTV-PVR-250 running on an Athlon 2200+ w/ 512 MB RAM, 16G OS/software hard drive, 250 GB video hard drive (both IDE). The machine also supports a DVD burner, and a USB-UIRT for remote controlling my cable box. The PVR portion of it comes from Sage TV. Oh, and the wireless. Mustn't forget the wireless.
This setup gives me a PVR package that has superior capabilities to my old DirecTiVo, but slightly (SLIGHTLY!) inferior quality. It records MPEG video that I can easily work with in many video players, video editors, and DVD authoring/burning packages. I can watch videos either streamed over wireless from the SageTV box's hard drive, or I can use the SageTV Client software.
The only weakness is slow channel change times (2 seconds or so). The computer has to control the cable box through IR, and in order to guarantee precision it "punches the remote control buttons" slowly. However, channel surfing is something I don't miss -- now the machine just records what I want, I watch it when I'm damn good and ready, and skipping commercials requires only a few taps on a key on the wireless keyboard I use to control the computer. (I could use a regular remote through the USB-UIRT but the keyboard is faster (though bulkier)).
Enterprise should not have needed a chance to grow.
After TOS, TNG, DS9, and Voyager, Enterprise should have come sprinting out of the gate. It didn't. Blame those who did the writing and producing for the first two seasons for giving the show a gimp leg and dooming it right from the start. Its potential audience tuned out. And, once that happens, there's no saving it. Those people no longer care, and you're not going to recapture their attention.
I'm sure half of Slashdot chatterers had the same thought. I admit I did.
There are two valid definitions of "cruel" here. One of them is "causing suffering; painful". The other is "finding satisfaction in the suffering of others".
I stand by my statements; punishment should be cruel both ways. Forget sanctimony as well.
Do the victims of a crime not deserve the catharsis of justice served, vengefully? People need closure for traumatic events. I'd bet good money that if an assault victim could stand there and watch his attacker be flayed open by a whip as punishment for the crime, the victim would begin to heal emotionally much faster.
When I say I'd tune in to watch people being flogged, it's only intriguing to me so long as the people being beaten actually deserve it. I'm not cruel in the sense that I want to hurt the innocent.
And if I ever lose control and take my anger out on someone else's (or public) property, or get drunk and go for a drive, or commit any other kind of offense where there is a real victim (either particular individuals or society at large), I'd stand up and take my whipping and not whine about it.
Cruelty is not the same as injustice.