Barometers are very accurate for determining atmospheric pressure.
And if you know the local sea level pressure (e.g. from a weather station) and temperature, you can infer the altitude with better precision than a standard GPS.
Electricity being wasted ?
I suggest mining bitcoins in winter only.
The Joule effect will convert all the "wasted" electricity into heat which you need anyway.
So what do they want to do?
A massively parallel simulation of a human brain?
Assuming it succeeds, what is the point? We already have 7billion of them around, and much cheaper and we still will not understand how and why it works.
At this point what we need is a few more bright theoreticians and it will not cost nearly as much.
Grammar darwinesquely evolved to become a near optimal disambiguation mechanism.
As a byproduct, it also serves as a mutual recognition system among the intellectual "elite".
The result is that proper grammar and spelling are perceived as snobbish artefacts and there is a strong popular pressure to degrade linguistic purity at the expense of understandibility.
This tendency is rather obvious if you compare today's barely readable fora with those of only ten years ago, at least in french.
No encryption. I prefer steganography.
Whenever my partners receive a picture of my cat, they promptly retrieve the nasty contents hidden inside.
And the police spies won't even suspect I am an outlaw.
So called quantum computing does not break the computational complexity barriers, it just shifts them a bit.
What is exponential (like the RSA) remains exponential; we may have to increase the key size a little and that's it.
"Also engineering achievements, at least solely with respect to being an engineering achievement, never win a prize."
The 1979 Nobel prize in medicine was awarded for the development of "Computer Assisted Tomography".
This was an engineering achievement based on generous financing and on a previous major scientific achievement, the Fast Fourier Transformation, probably too mathematical to deserve a Nobel prize.
Additionally, the 2003 prize was [mis-]attributed for the [re-]discovery of MRI, another engineering achievement.
There has been a long debate about the anisotropy of the speed of light.
The current orthodox belief is that it is isotropic, but I have yet to see a convincing proof.
What would the CERN neutrino experiment tell with another detector elsewhere?
I still do not understand why cell phone usage is allowed in trains.
This perpetual ringing, chatter and small talk is an absolute nuisance;
imposing one's private life upon the neighbors is utterly discourteous.
And I cannot concentrate on my crosswords or sudokus, even with earplugs, amid these coalitions of shouting blabbering fucking morons.
Suppose I am the greatest programmer in the world applying the fastest algorithm from my home.
I would still lag about 1 sec behind the competition with my "fast" internet connection.
Since we are speaking microseconds here, is not the main advantage being the closest or even within the final exchange computer?
The competition is obviously biased in favor, not of the best programmers, but of those privileged enough to be located nearest to the apex of the whole system.
These particular banks or trading offices can very safely and easily skim the cream and slowly leech the rest of the world, they do not even need the best programmers.
And presumably this whole looting scheme would collapse if some minimal Tobin tax (say 0.001%) was applied to all ttransactions.
In a perfectly still atmosphere (zero wind), the energy requirement grows like dV^2 to travel a distance d at speed V.
Batteries' specific energy (J/kg) being much less than current hydrocarbons', this approach is conceivable only for travel at very slow speeds.
And as a reminder, zero energy flying has been practiced for quite a while: it uses gliders or balloons.
Sometimes less money triggers better research.
A single decently fed exceptional brain plus paper and pencil is likely to produce more significant results than huge Ponzi-like technological projects.
The gigantic billion dollar ITER (nuclear fusion) project is the perfect example of misdirected public funding of "fundamental" research.
What Science needs most is not money, it is more freedom to investigate for the brightest minds.
Slashdot Mirror
It mostly shows that language helps propagate fallacies.
I do not agree.
Extrapolating the current situation, my best guess for 2030 is that cars will very much look like horse carriages.
Barometers are very accurate for determining atmospheric pressure. And if you know the local sea level pressure (e.g. from a weather station) and temperature, you can infer the altitude with better precision than a standard GPS.
Electricity being wasted ?
I suggest mining bitcoins in winter only.
The Joule effect will convert all the "wasted" electricity into heat which you need anyway.
So what do they want to do?
A massively parallel simulation of a human brain?
Assuming it succeeds, what is the point? We already have 7billion of them around, and much cheaper and we still will not understand how and why it works.
At this point what we need is a few more bright theoreticians and it will not cost nearly as much.
a vast supply of gold
Where is the gold?
Not in Fort Knox apparently.
Tungsten maybe?
"And I'm sure if the guy could communicate more than yes/no he would be saying "Kill me""
Well, he could answer "yes" to the question "do you want us to kill you?",
and "no" to the question "do you want to live a little longer?".
Locked-in syndrome is to me the most terrifying end I can conceive.
Story title: "Study Finds Unvaccinated Students Putting Other Students At Risk"
I suppose this means vaccination is not effective.
You're fogetting the part where I don't waste time proofreading my worthless comments.
You made a nice point: you don't mind shitting on everyone else's lawn.
Grammar darwinesquely evolved to become a near optimal disambiguation mechanism.
As a byproduct, it also serves as a mutual recognition system among the intellectual "elite".
The result is that proper grammar and spelling are perceived as snobbish artefacts and there is a strong popular pressure to degrade linguistic purity at the expense of understandibility.
This tendency is rather obvious if you compare today's barely readable fora with those of only ten years ago, at least in french.
You might get diabetes from american fattened sweetened "chocolate", not from swiss chocolate.
Or, to put it in more naive terms, people are idiots and democracy is doomed to failure.
Solar justice is being served.
I would rather fire those academics publishing more that five papers per year.
They are just wasting valuable readers' time.
No encryption. I prefer steganography.
Whenever my partners receive a picture of my cat, they promptly retrieve the nasty contents hidden inside.
And the police spies won't even suspect I am an outlaw.
So called quantum computing does not break the computational complexity barriers, it just shifts them a bit.
What is exponential (like the RSA) remains exponential; we may have to increase the key size a little and that's it.
"Also engineering achievements, at least solely with respect to being an engineering achievement, never win a prize."
The 1979 Nobel prize in medicine was awarded for the development of "Computer Assisted Tomography".
This was an engineering achievement based on generous financing and on a previous major scientific achievement, the Fast Fourier Transformation, probably too mathematical to deserve a Nobel prize.
Additionally, the 2003 prize was [mis-]attributed for the [re-]discovery of MRI, another engineering achievement.
There has been a long debate about the anisotropy of the speed of light. The current orthodox belief is that it is isotropic, but I have yet to see a convincing proof. What would the CERN neutrino experiment tell with another detector elsewhere?
"When Does Signing Up Becoming 'Opting In?"
Please translate the title in english.
Thank you.
When the boss starts looking for scapegoats (the "rich"), it shows he gave up hope of solving the problem (runaway debt).
A patent on a finger gesture Eh?
I still do not understand why cell phone usage is allowed in trains.
This perpetual ringing, chatter and small talk is an absolute nuisance;
imposing one's private life upon the neighbors is utterly discourteous.
And I cannot concentrate on my crosswords or sudokus, even with earplugs, amid these coalitions of shouting blabbering fucking morons.
Suppose I am the greatest programmer in the world applying the fastest algorithm from my home.
I would still lag about 1 sec behind the competition with my "fast" internet connection.
Since we are speaking microseconds here, is not the main advantage being the closest or even within the final exchange computer?
The competition is obviously biased in favor, not of the best programmers, but of those privileged enough to be located nearest to the apex of the whole system.
These particular banks or trading offices can very safely and easily skim the cream and slowly leech the rest of the world, they do not even need the best programmers.
And presumably this whole looting scheme would collapse if some minimal Tobin tax (say 0.001%) was applied to all ttransactions.
In a perfectly still atmosphere (zero wind), the energy requirement grows like dV^2 to travel a distance d at speed V.
Batteries' specific energy (J/kg) being much less than current hydrocarbons', this approach is conceivable only for travel at very slow speeds.
And as a reminder, zero energy flying has been practiced for quite a while: it uses gliders or balloons.
Sometimes less money triggers better research.
A single decently fed exceptional brain plus paper and pencil is likely to produce more significant results than huge Ponzi-like technological projects.
The gigantic billion dollar ITER (nuclear fusion) project is the perfect example of misdirected public funding of "fundamental" research.
What Science needs most is not money, it is more freedom to investigate for the brightest minds.