It's nice to imagine that the universe is so well-balanced, but unfortunately it isn't. Half the time that guy who's kicking your ass in a video game also has a better life than you do.
But they have a problem with conditional logic: Someone presents them with "If A then B" and they think "OMG! A is true, then B must be true too!". Of course it ignores both logic and meaning, but it feels right.
Uh... Modus ponens? That logic sure feels right to me.
Right, and then it becomes absolutely pointless to produce petroleum for any purpose whatsoever. Everything you can do with petroleum you can do just as well with other stuff that's plentiful on the surface. We only dig up petroleum because it's by far the most cost-effective energy source right now, and we only use it for chemical feedstock because there's so much gunk left over after the fuel is refined out. Once the EROEI of petroleum is negative -- or even just lower than the alternatives -- then petroleum production will quickly go to zero. A long asymptotic decline is very very unlikely.
I expect pumping to go on for quite a long time after oil's use as a major energy source ends. It's too valuable as a precursor to numerous chemicals.
Really? My impression is that petroleum is only used as an organic chemical feedstock because it's so cheap and plentiful as a waste byproduct of fuel production. Biomatter feedstocks will probably be cheaper than petroleum once the later becomes EROEI negative. 100 years ago, before the oil boom, a variety of plants were used as the basis of organic chemistry and industrial materials.
Even digging waste plastic out of garbage dumps may well be cost-effective than bringing up heavy crude from five miles down.
Re:I think the big questions are "big"
on
The Big Questions
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· Score: 1
Then how do you explain that hot girl from high school messaging me after not talking to me for over three years, and me having a dream with her in it the prior night?
Market bubbles behave exactly like distributed Ponzi schemes. A conspiracy theorist would posit some shadowy organization behind it all, but the end result is the same either way.
What settings do you use for commercial detect? I tried it a few times, but it was so laughably bad I turned it off and went back to skipping manually. Most of the time it would miss the break completely, or detect the wrong break (between commercials, not between commercial and show), or get the sense inverted and show commercials while skipping the show, etc. In principle I don't even see how it's possible to decide automatically which "black" frames are actual breaks and not part of the show, and which side of a break is the commercial. I've seen "breaks" that don't even have a single black frame between show and commercial, and show segments that are shorter than a typical commercial set (e.g. abbreviated Simpsons intro).
While there's no denying that the financial wizards of Wall Street are either monumentally incompetent or outright criminal, I don't think it's realistic to say that they destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth in the last year. Much of the "wealth" that they destroyed in this "economic meltdown" was illusory -- the US economy has been running on empty for a long time, and we've covered that by spending borrowed money and running a variety of ponzi schemes to make it look like we had some reserves. The house of cards finally started to fall apart last year and we all realized those terabucks in the bank/portfolio were just bookkeeping errors.
The absolute worst thing done in the last couple years was the complete destruction of moral hazard which is the most crucial foundation of Capitalism. If you know that if you fail the government will bail you out you don't have free market capitalism any more,...
That's actually the creation (or promotion) of a moral hazard. Your meaning is clear, but you've inverted the sense of the term.
I'm not using any ad-blocker or script-blocker at the moment but I get the warning anyway. It looks like that page isn't an actual ad-blocker detector, just a demo of what an ad-blocker user would see if they did run into the detector. Or something like that.
Anyway, thanks to GP for posting the link. The impotent frustration of the anti-blockers always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The tighter you grip, the more will slip, etc.
This is a real issue. For instance, I wrote a physics textbook, which is open-source, and I wrote a bunch of ruby and latex code that helps to produce the pdf from the latex sources, automatically handling some things relating to placement of figures on the page that are awkward to do with plain latex. My book, including the ruby and latex code, is under CC-BY-SA. I got an email from a guy at MSU who was writing a textbook, and had already started using my code to handle the illustrations. He wanted to check whether it was okay under the license, since he didn't intend to release his own book under a CC license. Well, my answer ended up being that I really didn't know whether it was okay or not.
How could you not know whether it was OK? It's your code, so you make that decision! If you think it's OK, grant him a (possibly redundant) license; if you don't then don't, explain why you don't approve, and he can take his chances with the license he already has (CC-BY-SA) or refrain from publishing.
Since these topics don't directly relate to the subject I've been asked to address, I've ended up with a section titled 'While I have you...' I'm going to have the mandatory attention of every employee and I thought it would be a great opportunity to give advice on [whatever]. As it's an opportunity that one seldom gets, I certainly want to utilize it fullly.
Resist the temptation. It's always a bad idea. That's why you seldom get the opportunity.
It's far, far, far easier to reinvent an algorithm than to decode a patent. Software patents fail completely in all their putative goals. If they were published in commented, compilable code (or even textbook-style pseudo-code) rather than incomprehensible, unimplementable legalese then they might have some value to society.
The U.S. Constitution always applies to the U.S. government and its agents, wherever they may happen to be. The Constitution is the government's charter and specification; without it the government has no legal authority whatsoever.
Slashdot Mirror
It's nice to imagine that the universe is so well-balanced, but unfortunately it isn't. Half the time that guy who's kicking your ass in a video game also has a better life than you do.
Here's a hint: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SVGA_port.jpg
In the 21st century you'll be able to use a single computer as both a full-fledged desktop system and an ultra-portable. Amazing!
Uh ... Modus ponens? That logic sure feels right to me.
36000km/s is about c/8.
Right, and then it becomes absolutely pointless to produce petroleum for any purpose whatsoever. Everything you can do with petroleum you can do just as well with other stuff that's plentiful on the surface. We only dig up petroleum because it's by far the most cost-effective energy source right now, and we only use it for chemical feedstock because there's so much gunk left over after the fuel is refined out. Once the EROEI of petroleum is negative -- or even just lower than the alternatives -- then petroleum production will quickly go to zero. A long asymptotic decline is very very unlikely.
Really? My impression is that petroleum is only used as an organic chemical feedstock because it's so cheap and plentiful as a waste byproduct of fuel production. Biomatter feedstocks will probably be cheaper than petroleum once the later becomes EROEI negative. 100 years ago, before the oil boom, a variety of plants were used as the basis of organic chemistry and industrial materials.
Even digging waste plastic out of garbage dumps may well be cost-effective than bringing up heavy crude from five miles down.
You're still dreaming.
You've replaced the company health plan with a clown plan?
No. Kelvin is a unit. Celsius is a scale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelvin
Don't worry, you only need to read the first sentence.
Vernor Vinge is still writing hard science fiction.
Market bubbles behave exactly like distributed Ponzi schemes. A conspiracy theorist would posit some shadowy organization behind it all, but the end result is the same either way.
What settings do you use for commercial detect? I tried it a few times, but it was so laughably bad I turned it off and went back to skipping manually. Most of the time it would miss the break completely, or detect the wrong break (between commercials, not between commercial and show), or get the sense inverted and show commercials while skipping the show, etc. In principle I don't even see how it's possible to decide automatically which "black" frames are actual breaks and not part of the show, and which side of a break is the commercial. I've seen "breaks" that don't even have a single black frame between show and commercial, and show segments that are shorter than a typical commercial set (e.g. abbreviated Simpsons intro).
While there's no denying that the financial wizards of Wall Street are either monumentally incompetent or outright criminal, I don't think it's realistic to say that they destroyed trillions of dollars of wealth in the last year. Much of the "wealth" that they destroyed in this "economic meltdown" was illusory -- the US economy has been running on empty for a long time, and we've covered that by spending borrowed money and running a variety of ponzi schemes to make it look like we had some reserves. The house of cards finally started to fall apart last year and we all realized those terabucks in the bank/portfolio were just bookkeeping errors.
That's actually the creation (or promotion) of a moral hazard. Your meaning is clear, but you've inverted the sense of the term.
I'm not using any ad-blocker or script-blocker at the moment but I get the warning anyway. It looks like that page isn't an actual ad-blocker detector, just a demo of what an ad-blocker user would see if they did run into the detector. Or something like that.
Anyway, thanks to GP for posting the link. The impotent frustration of the anti-blockers always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The tighter you grip, the more will slip, etc.
[citation needed]
How could you not know whether it was OK? It's your code, so you make that decision! If you think it's OK, grant him a (possibly redundant) license; if you don't then don't, explain why you don't approve, and he can take his chances with the license he already has (CC-BY-SA) or refrain from publishing.
Perhaps you're thinking of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori?
Submitter was not "trying to expose" unethical behavior, he was asking a question about it.
The story was posted on ask.slashdot.org, not tell.slashdot.org.
Or an exabit 100-meter LAN. Sweet!
Resist the temptation. It's always a bad idea. That's why you seldom get the opportunity.
Given that GP also posted this, my guess would be ... #1.
Oops, trolled by AC.
He wouldn't know, he doesn't even own a TV.
It's far, far, far easier to reinvent an algorithm than to decode a patent. Software patents fail completely in all their putative goals. If they were published in commented, compilable code (or even textbook-style pseudo-code) rather than incomprehensible, unimplementable legalese then they might have some value to society.
The U.S. Constitution always applies to the U.S. government and its agents, wherever they may happen to be. The Constitution is the government's charter and specification; without it the government has no legal authority whatsoever.