For many of my easier college classes, I never actually read my notes, but I still took them. The physical act of processing the information and writing it down greatly helped me retain and understand it, even if I didn't go back and read them afterwards.
That is the point. To write notes your brain has to process information in certain ways that evolution has adapted us to be very good at and even before our first day of school we have been using. While on the surface, typing notes would seem to be very similar, it is not. Here is a simple test that most people can try. Take a piece of text, say a 500 word newspaper article, that you are unfamiliar with and copy it by hand. 30minutes later write down what you remember. The next day take another similar article but this time type it out. Again, 30 minutes later write down what you remember. If you are like most people, you will remember more details from the first story than the second. Now to be fair, in a true experiment, this wouldn't work, because there needs to be some certainty that the stories are similar and contain similar types of detail and all of that. However, the first time you read the story to see if it is similar, you mess up the study (you would need another person to do the selection to keep it clean). But the point is, by writing things out, we tend to retain more information because of the way our brain processes the information. If you take it to the extreme and write it out multiple times, after three times, on valid stories (where they are similar details, length, etc.) after copying three times, most people will remember 87.5% of the details of the story. With typing it is something like 73%. So repetition definitely helps, but still does not make up for the different neural pathways involved.
But is our brain that existed before writing actually triggered by writing specifically? Or is that essentially learned behavior from years of schooling that uses writing in learning? The brain predates writing after all.
If people typed notes from day 1 in school would the act of typing "trigger the learning centre of the brain"?
Not that that sounds like a good thing, pen and paper is nice and quiet. And having to copy notes by rewriting them rather than ctrl-C, ctrl-V seems a good thing in itself.
Probably not for the same reason that the learning centers in the brain are triggered very early in infancy, long before there would be the ability to type anything. Human beings learn how to speak and construct sentences long before formal education. They do so by actually practicing the skill. Human beings learn about spatial relationships long before they have geometry and math. They do so by throwing things, etc. In otherwords, our brains are wired to learn from the five senses and long before we get to formal education or would have the ability to type or write, we have created billions of connections of neuron pathways that reinforce that.
Your last sentence is important, too. To copy your notes, you have to rewrite them. Everytime you do, you are reinforcing what ever it is, because your brain has to process it. Copy and paste doesn't do that. That is why the baby boomers used to have to write spelling words over and over to learn how to spell them or for punishment you had to write some sentence out 100 times. The repetition of writing over and over reinforced whatever the "lesson" was just like practicing free throws does for a basketball player.
Because of the way we type, even for good typists that doesn't happen. We see the letters and words and just repeat them, we don't actually read them. As such, the level of recall, for most people, is very low when compared to having to physically copy something by hand. Again, evolution (or ID for those that subscribe to it) has our brains wired to use as many of the senses as possible to process the world around us.Writing is an extension of our speech and language centers, typing is not, at least when done for notetaking.
Back when I was in an undergrad psychology course, the general consensus was that the method used triggered different parts of the brain. There is something fundamentally different from moving your finger to a particular location and pressing a key than actually moving your hand around to create a string of letters and then focusing on what you have just created.
There has since been additional research using functional MRI (FMRI) that shows different parts of the brain are accessed when something as basic as reading is measured when using a book versus a computer/tablet screen. With the computer/tablet screen it lights up the same areas as watching TV which is different from reading from paper sources (both also light up the speech centers, etc, to actually process what is being read).
The researchers pointed out that it was too early to tell whether this was good or bad from an educational perspective as the wide spread use of electronic devices is still relatively new. At this point, they simply point out that the brain is processing the information differently. Interestingly, they also compared the FMRI scans of actual pilots while flying pc-based flight simulators versus non-pilots. The non-pilots lit up the same areas as in the reading, watching videos, etc. The actual pilots lit up the different areas. The hypothesis was that the brains, already having a trained response and pattern used that to process the information from the simulator.
Why they found that interesting was that it did not appear the case with something as basic as reading. And even the pilots, when reading, lit up different areas of the brain depending if they were reading words off a page or off a screen, like everybody else. Again I emphasize that the researchers emphasized that the data only showed that different parts of the brain were used to process the information and not that one was better than the other. But it is interesting, none the less.
Ubiquitous grid-free digital networking, like grid-free power, are really the holy grail.
A lot of the worst problems we face on this planet could be solved with these two technologies if they are allowed to come to fruition.
Institutional poverty, corporate/government tyranny, state-sponsored terrorism and other seemingly intractable problems might really be dealt with if we could have these two things.
Long before there were corporations and governments, there was the strong preying on the weak. Sure these two technologies may stop the tyranny that you are concernned about, but tyranny existed before the modern forms of government and will continue after them. After all, corporations and governments are only as good or evil as the people behind them and these technologies don't do anything to change that.
KDE does have the reputation of being busy. But, it also has the ability to be reconfigured to however you want it to be. Think of the KDE desktop as a canvas with a suggested interface. You can alter it to look an act like Gnome 2 or 3, or XFCE or Unity, or Mac OS X or Windows or some combination of them or just about anything you want. You can also turn off things you don't want. Don't like activities, don't use them (remove the widget). Likewise for all sorts of features. It really is a very flexible and powerful system.
But like any tool, particularly a powerful tool, to use it well requires a learning curve. KDE is usable as it is right out of the box, but that "experience" isn't ideal for most people. Rarely is a one size fits all solution the right solution for most people. The problem is because of this, many people drop KDE before they have a chance to discover what it can really do for them.
To be fair, I've seen some really hideous desktops created with KDE, but they weren't for my use. The users who created them did so to fit the way they wanted to work. That is probably the number one advantage to KDE, it gives the user the power to create the desktop exactly how they want it to fit the way they work instead of having to change they work to fit the desktop. Of course that power comes at a price. KDE is more complex than other desktops, or at least it seems that way at first.
The most problematic is K3B, but to be honest I don't know if it's a problem with the underlying widgets or not.
I browse to a folder, burn off a pile of files, then delete the files that were successfully burned. The file tree on the left goes insanely out of sync with duplicate nodes, blank nodes, and sorting problems. As far as I know KDE uses messaging to synchronize file changes amongst it's widgets, so this should not happen.
As to the speed issue. C'mon, man, it takes like FIVE SECONDS to open moderately large folders. No other OS or desktop I've used on this hardware takes more than 1-2 seconds to do the same thing.
/. isn't a support forum and there isn't enough info to diagnose your problem anyway, but there is definitely something wrong with your setup if that is what you are experiencing. Probably the best thing to do would be to hit the forum of your distro and ask what is going on. I can open folders with 2,000-3,000 folders and files in it in less than a second and unlike others, I don't have an SSD. Opening and scanning remote shares does take a lot longer, though.
Dolphin's response is about the same as any other gui file manager I use on this system, with the exception of remote shares.
That is your problem right there. Kubuntu is a terrible KDE distribution, possibly the worst out there. You'd get better performance, memory usage, features and stability from any other KDE distro.
Various reviews of Kubuntu 13.04 would seem to indicate that is not the case anymore.
Actually, KDE 4, including the Kubuntu distribution, can be made to run quite well on older hardware. Much of it depends on the settings. Since XP was designed for such hardware, it doesn't stress it. Kubuntu, on the otherhand isn't really designed for XP hardware (2004 - 2007), so it's default settings are expecting something a little beefier. You can, however, turn off the blur effect and the file indexing and a few other tweaks and you run quite comfortable on XP class hardware. A fair comparison would be running Windows 7 or 8 on the XP hardware and see how it performs out of the box compared to XP.
Speaking from personal experience, you can make Kubuntu/KDE4 run quite well with an atom processor and 1GB of ram and an intel onboard video. Would I want to do video editing on such a system, no, I would not. But then I wouldn't want to do them on an XP class machine either. BTW, none of this really has anything to do with Kubuntu. Any KDE4 distro can be made to work on such minimal (by today's standards) hardware. Out of the box KDE is set to work with more modern hardware, but it only takes adjusting a few settings to make it functional on older hardware.
People talk about cold fusion, but to date, nobody has solved it, either.
You're conflating two massively different things.
The hyperloop is a bit of a nutty plan but the technology is all well established. Linear induction motors work. Long, high pressure pipelines work. Earthquake proof structures on poles work. Air locks work. Partial evacuation of tubes works.
Basically it's a bunch of well understood science with some engineering challenges. They don't seem insurmountable, but the scale is large and making it cost effective will be one of the challenges.
Whereas fusion, cold or otherwise is a completely unsolved scientific problem.
You are correct, I was in a hurry, looking for a sarcastic remark. I should have used something like hydrogen powered cars or something similar. One of those things where the technology is available, the concept has been demoed, but solving the real world problems has been, well, problematic.
> With the planned design, only one vehicle at a time can be in the tube
This is not true. The system states that it is designed to have multiple simultaneous pods, separated by several miles for safety.
I know it says that, but the design relies on a vacuum on the front and increased pressure behind. How does that work for the cars behind the first, magic?
Does not rely on a vacuum. You haven't bothered to take even one peek at the document. Quickly skimming page 4 of the document is sufficient to dispel this notion.
Honestly - is actually looking at the proposal too hard for you?
Why don't you read the whole thing. Basically, the design requires the movement of air from in front to behind the vehicle using an onboard air compressor. This provides propulsion after the initial kick start from the magnets. Now, unless you know something I don't, in a sealed tube, if you move air from one end to the other, you create a low pressure differential. The air pressure will then try to equalize, and the system relies on that equalization as it is what is actually propelling the vehicle. Continually creating a low pressure zone followed by a high pressure zone with the vehicle in the middle. Moving air is relatively cheap cost wise and the vehicle goes along for the ride.
However, the following vehicles will have a higher pressure barrier in front of them, so it will not work as efficiently. This barrier is created by the vehicle in front. It also explains the need for the magnetic kick start. If everything is synchronized just right, it would be possible to time the air transfers to minimize the effect and increase efficiencies, but that will create a pulsing effect for the riders and at 800mph might not be too comfortable (vomit bags, anyone?).
As for multiple vehicles in the tube, even overcoming the propulsion physics involved, the math does not work out. The tube is at maximum 1000 miles long and the vehicles are traveling 800 mph. Leaving time to accelerate along with time to board each vehicle, get situated and then start, exactly how many vehicles can there be traveling at one time before having to slow down to stop? Unless you are going to load up 10 cars all at once and make the people in the back car wait an hour before starting (and make the first care wait an hour before disembarking at the other end), you can't get the volume of people moving in the tube that they are projecting. And if you did do the load at once with a delayed start and unload, well, then the 30 minute trip is hardly 30 minutes by the time you actually get to your destination (kind of like airlines using the departing the gate as leaving on time but sitting on the tarmac for 30 minutes as still an on time departure).
Remember, they are talking about speeds in excess of 800mph. You could out run a bullet fired from a 9mm hand gun (avg speed 634 mph) on one of these. The delays in loading and securing passengers, leaving safety margins, accelerating and decelerating and then unloading at the other end are all going to limit how many vehicles can actually be traversing the tube at any given moment. In theory, you might be able to send a vehicle every minute down the tube, but can't load and unload that quickly. Look how long it takes to load a small commuter jet. Why would this be any different?
So there you have it. From the document itself there are issued raised about the physics involved with multiple vehicles and also with the queuing of multiple vehicles. While I am confident with enough resources the first will be overcome, the second will most likely have to result with people waiting to embark or disembark, a significant amount of time. At least until those transporters are developed and by then, we won't need the tube.
Math isn't common sense. Common sense is looking up, seeing the sun come up over the eastern horizon, move through the sky, and sink to the west. I mean if you spin a gigantic ball that's wet, water flies off it; what madman would come up with stupid shit like "the earth is spinning and the equator moves at roughly 1000mph"?
Math is common sense, at least basic math. Even caveman paintings show rudimentary math. The druids, who would seem pretty primitive by our standards seemed to have a good grasp on many things celestial that required math to account for the passage of time. From the moment that early man threw a spear at a running animal math (geometry, actually) was being used. Just because it wasn't defined yet, didn't keep it from being used. Early man knew through common sense that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He didn't know what geometry or trig or calculus was, but he knew how to use basic principles. The first time he divided the spoils of a hunt up equally, he again used math.
Math is all common sense. The formal definition and descriptive language of mathematics is not, but math itself is. We use it all the time without thinking about it.
As for common sense saying the earth was the center of the universe because of the rising and setting of the suns, stars and planets, that is was not common sense. That first had to cause the realization that there was something more that the world around us. Common sense attributed the rising and setting of the sun and other celestial bodies to the work of the gods. That was what common sense told them. Common sense also told them that if you displeased those gods, bad things happened to you.
As if neither SpaceX nor Tesla engineers have ever needed to worry about thermal expansion nor high acceleration or shock issues in their engineering designs. Just look at what they've built then say that again with a straight face. This particular issue you are complaining about is a solved engineering problem as having large diameter tubes dealing with these issues over distances of hundreds of miles is currently being done in many places, including earthquake prone areas of the world.
Don't get me started on "cold fusion", as you obviously don't have a clue about that technology either... or are you talking about a practical "Mr. Fusion" device using banana peels and left over soda as an energy source?
Yeah, cold fusion was a bad choice, intentionally sarcastic. But the expansion problem is not solved. It is a real problem that every pipeline deals with, every bridge and highway and railroad must deal with with. It is an understood problem, but that doesn't mean it is solved. In particular, what is at issue here is a 1000 mile tube that must be able to maintain a partial vacuum and allow for very close tolerances for the air cushion that is to be generated through the skies to function properly. In addition, it needs to be able to shift that vacuum and hold it from in front of the moving vehicle to behind it. Even today's pipelines leak all over the place and they are transporting a viscous liquid. If a pipe filled with air for a transport that is dependent on pressure differentials to operate, even if the leaks are solved the expansion and contraction will alter the pressures.
I am quite confident that he has engineers working on it. If successful, they might even get a Noble Peace Prize for it one day, but it is not a trivial problem and it is every bit as complex the issues that SpaceX and Tesla have had to deal with, if not more so. Everybody is treating the pipe as some sort of pneumatic tube like banks have in drive up tellers. It isn't. It is an integral part of the system and it is critical to the whole thing working.
One could argue that what makes the whole thing revolutionary is the vacuum/air flow proposal which is dependent on the tube being exactly right everywhere along the path. If the goal was just getting from point A to B really fast then mag lev would accomplish that and building a mag lev in the median of the highway, but elevated like the tube would have kept the cost down (as others have pointed out, the most expensive part of high speed rail is not the train and the track, but the land acquisition).
So, please, don't dismiss the thermal properties of the tube or the engineering obstacles involved with accounting for them. Of all of the "parts" of the system, it is the one thing that is going to create difficulty. Just about everything else is off the shelf technology. It's when you put it all together you have to make it work.
That is the cane sugar tariff. The beet sugar tariff is something like 29.4 cents per kg. We restrict the amount of cane sugar that can be imported and then tax the shit out of beet sugar which competes directly with most US sugar production.
I think you're missing a zero. There's no good fountain pen to be had for $30.
There are numerous good fountain pens in that price range if your concern is writing ability. After all, it is the nib that does the writing, most expensive pens use the same nibs as much lower quality pens. The extra cost is for the brand name and the materials the barrel is made from. Some of the best writers come from SE Asia, where fountain pens are still very common. While not prestigious as their European brethren, if one is after write-ability, Japan and China have a plethora of pens to choose from. There are even some pretty decent US pens if you are willing to go up to $40. Do they write as well as an expensive Montblanc maybe not, but then again, would you really take an expensive Montblanc with you while examining sick patients patients?
This sounds like a natural fit for mind mapping software. While normally touted for brainstorming activities or connecting free form thought. It can be used to associate the related but varied sources of information the questioner is asking about. And there are various offerings available on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Somebody should check whether or not he short sold Apple stock prior to the interview. Not a bad strategy, sell stock at today's price, bad mouth Apple, predict the end is near, when the price falls, purchase the shares to settle the sales. Works great, unless you get caught, that is.
Seriously, though, of course Apple is doomed. Every company that is at the top is dislodged eventually. In the tech world, at one time it was IBM, then they were doomed, then it was Microsoft, then they were dislodged. Then Apple seized the crown and eventually they will be dislodged, too. Whether that is today or down the road, only time will tell, but it is inevitable.
What is important is what you do after you are dislodged. People forget that back in the late 70s and early 80s Apple was at the top of the heap and was knocked off of it. They had the education market locked up. It wasn't IBM and the PC that dislodged them, it was Microsoft and Windows. Now whether it was because Jobs had left or because of Microsoft making a number of key alliances with business partners, people can argue all day long.
The important thing is that Apple, like many before them, was knocked off the top of the heap, and reinvented themself with a new product line and a new OS and a bunch of new consumer goods that just worked. When Apple switched to OS X, the pundits all cried out what a terrible mistake it was. They were wrong. Just like Larry Ellison is wrong. Apple isn't doomed. They are destined to be replaced as the number one tech company, nobody can hold that position indefinitely. But, as their shareholders laugh all the way to the bank, not being number one is a far cry from being doomed.
Then again, maybe we should listen to Mr. Ellison, he seems to have first hand experience on how to run a company that was top in its field straight into the ground.
Yeah, but those pale against the "don't drink any more, stupid" program. This has a 100% success rate among those who stick to it. The fact that maybe 95% of alcoholics don't stick to it doesn't matter for that evaluation methodology.
When doing something for real problems, you need to consider drop-outs. Why did they drop out? If it's because they had good reason to believe the program wasn't working for them, or because they couldn't tolerate the treatment, then, for practical purposes, they should be counted as failures of the program.
This is a lot messier than measuring results in the usual way, but more applicable. Given those stats, it's possible that AA is counterproductive. Suppose 90% of alcoholics are fundamentally untreatable with any technique we've got now. Hypothetically, these are the ones who drop out of AA. Then, since about 50% of that population quits, and 40% of AA members, AA is bad for people. I don't think that's the case, but it can't be disproven with the stats you cited.
You are correct to a point. However, the dropout rate for AA is statistically the same as all other treatment programs, no better and no worse. So all programs have that issue. With regards to going cold turkey, the dropout rate for that method is quite high. So yes, that is the most effective, but not very efficient (kind of like abstinence programs for teenagers and birth control - 100% effective for those who follow it, just not very efficient at controlling teen pregnancy because of the dropout rate).
Everything you say is true, but Space X isn't done either. I think you'd have to admit they've done better than many people predicted. What is strange is how with each milestone they pass, people move the goalposts and withhold respect. Same with Tesla, though that's starting to change a little now. Not saying that's what you're doing, but it does make me wonder what the motivation is when people do that.
I'm not trying to take anything away from his accomplishments, but he, like most other visionaries build on the work of others, which is often forgotten or conveniently ignored.
> With the planned design, only one vehicle at a time can be in the tube
This is not true. The system states that it is designed to have multiple simultaneous pods, separated by several miles for safety.
I know it says that, but the design relies on a vacuum on the front and increased pressure behind. How does that work for the cars behind the first, magic?
Like almost every other question or criticism in this thread - if you read the proposal he talks about that exact issue and proposes a solution. You may not be convinced his proposed solution will work, but this is something the hyperloop plan covers.
Talking about it and solving the problem are two different things. People talk about cold fusion, but to date, nobody has solved it, either.
Here is a link to the ones I have:http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Eagle+F1+Asymmetric+All-Season&partnum=74WR7F1AAS&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=
Under $400 for a set of 4 isn't "expensive" and rated to up to 168MPH. Which is exactly what I need since the top end of my car is 167.
Those are only rated to 168mph. The proposal was autonomous cars running 200mph. Those tires won't work.
Because it was the gov'ment that is doing the high speed rail, while the hyperloop would likely be done by a private company, and only after the cities involved had agreed to get the hell out of way.
And you are thinking that magically all government regulations will just disappear? While it is the government doing high speed rail, it is a different part of the government causing all the red tape and delays. That part would still be causing red tape even for the hyperloop.
Common sense would tell you that the earth is the center of the universe and the sun rotates around it.
Actually, common sense would not tell you that. It was the best scientific minds of their time that came up with that and even the math to explain the motion of the planets in such a system. It was a mu.ch more complicated system than what we now believe to be correct.
I'm just curious how he is going to deal with the expansion issues of an metal tube that is 1000 miles long in various different temperatures and weather. The pipeline industry has been struggling with it for decades. It would seem that his designs are going to need some fairly close tolerances to work and with the various thermal coefficients involved it will be interesting to see how he plans to deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that we believe that we can multi-task?
Because we are quite delusional, that's why.
For many of my easier college classes, I never actually read my notes, but I still took them. The physical act of processing the information and writing it down greatly helped me retain and understand it, even if I didn't go back and read them afterwards.
That is the point. To write notes your brain has to process information in certain ways that evolution has adapted us to be very good at and even before our first day of school we have been using. While on the surface, typing notes would seem to be very similar, it is not. Here is a simple test that most people can try. Take a piece of text, say a 500 word newspaper article, that you are unfamiliar with and copy it by hand. 30minutes later write down what you remember. The next day take another similar article but this time type it out. Again, 30 minutes later write down what you remember. If you are like most people, you will remember more details from the first story than the second. Now to be fair, in a true experiment, this wouldn't work, because there needs to be some certainty that the stories are similar and contain similar types of detail and all of that. However, the first time you read the story to see if it is similar, you mess up the study (you would need another person to do the selection to keep it clean). But the point is, by writing things out, we tend to retain more information because of the way our brain processes the information. If you take it to the extreme and write it out multiple times, after three times, on valid stories (where they are similar details, length, etc.) after copying three times, most people will remember 87.5% of the details of the story. With typing it is something like 73%. So repetition definitely helps, but still does not make up for the different neural pathways involved.
But is our brain that existed before writing actually triggered by writing specifically? Or is that essentially learned behavior from years of schooling that uses writing in learning? The brain predates writing after all.
If people typed notes from day 1 in school would the act of typing "trigger the learning centre of the brain"?
Not that that sounds like a good thing, pen and paper is nice and quiet. And having to copy notes by rewriting them rather than ctrl-C, ctrl-V seems a good thing in itself.
Probably not for the same reason that the learning centers in the brain are triggered very early in infancy, long before there would be the ability to type anything. Human beings learn how to speak and construct sentences long before formal education. They do so by actually practicing the skill. Human beings learn about spatial relationships long before they have geometry and math. They do so by throwing things, etc. In otherwords, our brains are wired to learn from the five senses and long before we get to formal education or would have the ability to type or write, we have created billions of connections of neuron pathways that reinforce that.
Your last sentence is important, too. To copy your notes, you have to rewrite them. Everytime you do, you are reinforcing what ever it is, because your brain has to process it. Copy and paste doesn't do that. That is why the baby boomers used to have to write spelling words over and over to learn how to spell them or for punishment you had to write some sentence out 100 times. The repetition of writing over and over reinforced whatever the "lesson" was just like practicing free throws does for a basketball player.
Because of the way we type, even for good typists that doesn't happen. We see the letters and words and just repeat them, we don't actually read them. As such, the level of recall, for most people, is very low when compared to having to physically copy something by hand. Again, evolution (or ID for those that subscribe to it) has our brains wired to use as many of the senses as possible to process the world around us.Writing is an extension of our speech and language centers, typing is not, at least when done for notetaking.
Back when I was in an undergrad psychology course, the general consensus was that the method used triggered different parts of the brain. There is something fundamentally different from moving your finger to a particular location and pressing a key than actually moving your hand around to create a string of letters and then focusing on what you have just created.
There has since been additional research using functional MRI (FMRI) that shows different parts of the brain are accessed when something as basic as reading is measured when using a book versus a computer/tablet screen. With the computer/tablet screen it lights up the same areas as watching TV which is different from reading from paper sources (both also light up the speech centers, etc, to actually process what is being read).
The researchers pointed out that it was too early to tell whether this was good or bad from an educational perspective as the wide spread use of electronic devices is still relatively new. At this point, they simply point out that the brain is processing the information differently. Interestingly, they also compared the FMRI scans of actual pilots while flying pc-based flight simulators versus non-pilots. The non-pilots lit up the same areas as in the reading, watching videos, etc. The actual pilots lit up the different areas. The hypothesis was that the brains, already having a trained response and pattern used that to process the information from the simulator.
Why they found that interesting was that it did not appear the case with something as basic as reading. And even the pilots, when reading, lit up different areas of the brain depending if they were reading words off a page or off a screen, like everybody else. Again I emphasize that the researchers emphasized that the data only showed that different parts of the brain were used to process the information and not that one was better than the other. But it is interesting, none the less.
Ubiquitous grid-free digital networking, like grid-free power, are really the holy grail.
A lot of the worst problems we face on this planet could be solved with these two technologies if they are allowed to come to fruition.
Institutional poverty, corporate/government tyranny, state-sponsored terrorism and other seemingly intractable problems might really be dealt with if we could have these two things.
Long before there were corporations and governments, there was the strong preying on the weak. Sure these two technologies may stop the tyranny that you are concernned about, but tyranny existed before the modern forms of government and will continue after them. After all, corporations and governments are only as good or evil as the people behind them and these technologies don't do anything to change that.
KDE does have the reputation of being busy. But, it also has the ability to be reconfigured to however you want it to be. Think of the KDE desktop as a canvas with a suggested interface. You can alter it to look an act like Gnome 2 or 3, or XFCE or Unity, or Mac OS X or Windows or some combination of them or just about anything you want. You can also turn off things you don't want. Don't like activities, don't use them (remove the widget). Likewise for all sorts of features. It really is a very flexible and powerful system.
But like any tool, particularly a powerful tool, to use it well requires a learning curve. KDE is usable as it is right out of the box, but that "experience" isn't ideal for most people. Rarely is a one size fits all solution the right solution for most people. The problem is because of this, many people drop KDE before they have a chance to discover what it can really do for them.
To be fair, I've seen some really hideous desktops created with KDE, but they weren't for my use. The users who created them did so to fit the way they wanted to work. That is probably the number one advantage to KDE, it gives the user the power to create the desktop exactly how they want it to fit the way they work instead of having to change they work to fit the desktop. Of course that power comes at a price. KDE is more complex than other desktops, or at least it seems that way at first.
The most problematic is K3B, but to be honest I don't know if it's a problem with the underlying widgets or not.
I browse to a folder, burn off a pile of files, then delete the files that were successfully burned. The file tree on the left goes insanely out of sync with duplicate nodes, blank nodes, and sorting problems. As far as I know KDE uses messaging to synchronize file changes amongst it's widgets, so this should not happen.
As to the speed issue. C'mon, man, it takes like FIVE SECONDS to open moderately large folders. No other OS or desktop I've used on this hardware takes more than 1-2 seconds to do the same thing.
/. isn't a support forum and there isn't enough info to diagnose your problem anyway, but there is definitely something wrong with your setup if that is what you are experiencing. Probably the best thing to do would be to hit the forum of your distro and ask what is going on. I can open folders with 2,000-3,000 folders and files in it in less than a second and unlike others, I don't have an SSD. Opening and scanning remote shares does take a lot longer, though.
Dolphin's response is about the same as any other gui file manager I use on this system, with the exception of remote shares.
I installed Kubuntu
That is your problem right there. Kubuntu is a terrible KDE distribution, possibly the worst out there. You'd get better performance, memory usage, features and stability from any other KDE distro.
Various reviews of Kubuntu 13.04 would seem to indicate that is not the case anymore.
Actually, KDE 4, including the Kubuntu distribution, can be made to run quite well on older hardware. Much of it depends on the settings. Since XP was designed for such hardware, it doesn't stress it. Kubuntu, on the otherhand isn't really designed for XP hardware (2004 - 2007), so it's default settings are expecting something a little beefier. You can, however, turn off the blur effect and the file indexing and a few other tweaks and you run quite comfortable on XP class hardware. A fair comparison would be running Windows 7 or 8 on the XP hardware and see how it performs out of the box compared to XP.
Speaking from personal experience, you can make Kubuntu/KDE4 run quite well with an atom processor and 1GB of ram and an intel onboard video. Would I want to do video editing on such a system, no, I would not. But then I wouldn't want to do them on an XP class machine either. BTW, none of this really has anything to do with Kubuntu. Any KDE4 distro can be made to work on such minimal (by today's standards) hardware. Out of the box KDE is set to work with more modern hardware, but it only takes adjusting a few settings to make it functional on older hardware.
People talk about cold fusion, but to date, nobody has solved it, either.
You're conflating two massively different things.
The hyperloop is a bit of a nutty plan but the technology is all well established. Linear induction motors work. Long, high pressure pipelines work. Earthquake proof structures on poles work. Air locks work. Partial evacuation of tubes works.
Basically it's a bunch of well understood science with some engineering challenges. They don't seem insurmountable, but the scale is large and making it cost effective will be one of the challenges.
Whereas fusion, cold or otherwise is a completely unsolved scientific problem.
You are correct, I was in a hurry, looking for a sarcastic remark. I should have used something like hydrogen powered cars or something similar. One of those things where the technology is available, the concept has been demoed, but solving the real world problems has been, well, problematic.
> With the planned design, only one vehicle at a time can be in the tube
This is not true. The system states that it is designed to have multiple simultaneous pods, separated by several miles for safety.
I know it says that, but the design relies on a vacuum on the front and increased pressure behind. How does that work for the cars behind the first, magic?
Does not rely on a vacuum. You haven't bothered to take even one peek at the document. Quickly skimming page 4 of the document is sufficient to dispel this notion.
Honestly - is actually looking at the proposal too hard for you?
Why don't you read the whole thing. Basically, the design requires the movement of air from in front to behind the vehicle using an onboard air compressor. This provides propulsion after the initial kick start from the magnets. Now, unless you know something I don't, in a sealed tube, if you move air from one end to the other, you create a low pressure differential. The air pressure will then try to equalize, and the system relies on that equalization as it is what is actually propelling the vehicle. Continually creating a low pressure zone followed by a high pressure zone with the vehicle in the middle. Moving air is relatively cheap cost wise and the vehicle goes along for the ride.
However, the following vehicles will have a higher pressure barrier in front of them, so it will not work as efficiently. This barrier is created by the vehicle in front. It also explains the need for the magnetic kick start. If everything is synchronized just right, it would be possible to time the air transfers to minimize the effect and increase efficiencies, but that will create a pulsing effect for the riders and at 800mph might not be too comfortable (vomit bags, anyone?).
As for multiple vehicles in the tube, even overcoming the propulsion physics involved, the math does not work out. The tube is at maximum 1000 miles long and the vehicles are traveling 800 mph. Leaving time to accelerate along with time to board each vehicle, get situated and then start, exactly how many vehicles can there be traveling at one time before having to slow down to stop? Unless you are going to load up 10 cars all at once and make the people in the back car wait an hour before starting (and make the first care wait an hour before disembarking at the other end), you can't get the volume of people moving in the tube that they are projecting. And if you did do the load at once with a delayed start and unload, well, then the 30 minute trip is hardly 30 minutes by the time you actually get to your destination (kind of like airlines using the departing the gate as leaving on time but sitting on the tarmac for 30 minutes as still an on time departure).
Remember, they are talking about speeds in excess of 800mph. You could out run a bullet fired from a 9mm hand gun (avg speed 634 mph) on one of these. The delays in loading and securing passengers, leaving safety margins, accelerating and decelerating and then unloading at the other end are all going to limit how many vehicles can actually be traversing the tube at any given moment. In theory, you might be able to send a vehicle every minute down the tube, but can't load and unload that quickly. Look how long it takes to load a small commuter jet. Why would this be any different?
So there you have it. From the document itself there are issued raised about the physics involved with multiple vehicles and also with the queuing of multiple vehicles. While I am confident with enough resources the first will be overcome, the second will most likely have to result with people waiting to embark or disembark, a significant amount of time. At least until those transporters are developed and by then, we won't need the tube.
Math isn't common sense. Common sense is looking up, seeing the sun come up over the eastern horizon, move through the sky, and sink to the west. I mean if you spin a gigantic ball that's wet, water flies off it; what madman would come up with stupid shit like "the earth is spinning and the equator moves at roughly 1000mph"?
Math is common sense, at least basic math. Even caveman paintings show rudimentary math. The druids, who would seem pretty primitive by our standards seemed to have a good grasp on many things celestial that required math to account for the passage of time. From the moment that early man threw a spear at a running animal math (geometry, actually) was being used. Just because it wasn't defined yet, didn't keep it from being used. Early man knew through common sense that the shortest distance between two points was a straight line. He didn't know what geometry or trig or calculus was, but he knew how to use basic principles. The first time he divided the spoils of a hunt up equally, he again used math.
Math is all common sense. The formal definition and descriptive language of mathematics is not, but math itself is. We use it all the time without thinking about it.
As for common sense saying the earth was the center of the universe because of the rising and setting of the suns, stars and planets, that is was not common sense. That first had to cause the realization that there was something more that the world around us. Common sense attributed the rising and setting of the sun and other celestial bodies to the work of the gods. That was what common sense told them. Common sense also told them that if you displeased those gods, bad things happened to you.
As if neither SpaceX nor Tesla engineers have ever needed to worry about thermal expansion nor high acceleration or shock issues in their engineering designs. Just look at what they've built then say that again with a straight face. This particular issue you are complaining about is a solved engineering problem as having large diameter tubes dealing with these issues over distances of hundreds of miles is currently being done in many places, including earthquake prone areas of the world.
Don't get me started on "cold fusion", as you obviously don't have a clue about that technology either... or are you talking about a practical "Mr. Fusion" device using banana peels and left over soda as an energy source?
Yeah, cold fusion was a bad choice, intentionally sarcastic. But the expansion problem is not solved. It is a real problem that every pipeline deals with, every bridge and highway and railroad must deal with with. It is an understood problem, but that doesn't mean it is solved. In particular, what is at issue here is a 1000 mile tube that must be able to maintain a partial vacuum and allow for very close tolerances for the air cushion that is to be generated through the skies to function properly. In addition, it needs to be able to shift that vacuum and hold it from in front of the moving vehicle to behind it. Even today's pipelines leak all over the place and they are transporting a viscous liquid. If a pipe filled with air for a transport that is dependent on pressure differentials to operate, even if the leaks are solved the expansion and contraction will alter the pressures.
I am quite confident that he has engineers working on it. If successful, they might even get a Noble Peace Prize for it one day, but it is not a trivial problem and it is every bit as complex the issues that SpaceX and Tesla have had to deal with, if not more so. Everybody is treating the pipe as some sort of pneumatic tube like banks have in drive up tellers. It isn't. It is an integral part of the system and it is critical to the whole thing working.
One could argue that what makes the whole thing revolutionary is the vacuum/air flow proposal which is dependent on the tube being exactly right everywhere along the path. If the goal was just getting from point A to B really fast then mag lev would accomplish that and building a mag lev in the median of the highway, but elevated like the tube would have kept the cost down (as others have pointed out, the most expensive part of high speed rail is not the train and the track, but the land acquisition).
So, please, don't dismiss the thermal properties of the tube or the engineering obstacles involved with accounting for them. Of all of the "parts" of the system, it is the one thing that is going to create difficulty. Just about everything else is off the shelf technology. It's when you put it all together you have to make it work.
That is the cane sugar tariff. The beet sugar tariff is something like 29.4 cents per kg. We restrict the amount of cane sugar that can be imported and then tax the shit out of beet sugar which competes directly with most US sugar production.
I think you're missing a zero. There's no good fountain pen to be had for $30.
There are numerous good fountain pens in that price range if your concern is writing ability. After all, it is the nib that does the writing, most expensive pens use the same nibs as much lower quality pens. The extra cost is for the brand name and the materials the barrel is made from. Some of the best writers come from SE Asia, where fountain pens are still very common. While not prestigious as their European brethren, if one is after write-ability, Japan and China have a plethora of pens to choose from. There are even some pretty decent US pens if you are willing to go up to $40. Do they write as well as an expensive Montblanc maybe not, but then again, would you really take an expensive Montblanc with you while examining sick patients patients?
This sounds like a natural fit for mind mapping software. While normally touted for brainstorming activities or connecting free form thought. It can be used to associate the related but varied sources of information the questioner is asking about. And there are various offerings available on Windows, Mac and Linux.
Somebody should check whether or not he short sold Apple stock prior to the interview. Not a bad strategy, sell stock at today's price, bad mouth Apple, predict the end is near, when the price falls, purchase the shares to settle the sales. Works great, unless you get caught, that is.
Seriously, though, of course Apple is doomed. Every company that is at the top is dislodged eventually. In the tech world, at one time it was IBM, then they were doomed, then it was Microsoft, then they were dislodged. Then Apple seized the crown and eventually they will be dislodged, too. Whether that is today or down the road, only time will tell, but it is inevitable.
What is important is what you do after you are dislodged. People forget that back in the late 70s and early 80s Apple was at the top of the heap and was knocked off of it. They had the education market locked up. It wasn't IBM and the PC that dislodged them, it was Microsoft and Windows. Now whether it was because Jobs had left or because of Microsoft making a number of key alliances with business partners, people can argue all day long.
The important thing is that Apple, like many before them, was knocked off the top of the heap, and reinvented themself with a new product line and a new OS and a bunch of new consumer goods that just worked. When Apple switched to OS X, the pundits all cried out what a terrible mistake it was. They were wrong. Just like Larry Ellison is wrong. Apple isn't doomed. They are destined to be replaced as the number one tech company, nobody can hold that position indefinitely. But, as their shareholders laugh all the way to the bank, not being number one is a far cry from being doomed.
Then again, maybe we should listen to Mr. Ellison, he seems to have first hand experience on how to run a company that was top in its field straight into the ground.
Yeah, but those pale against the "don't drink any more, stupid" program. This has a 100% success rate among those who stick to it. The fact that maybe 95% of alcoholics don't stick to it doesn't matter for that evaluation methodology.
When doing something for real problems, you need to consider drop-outs. Why did they drop out? If it's because they had good reason to believe the program wasn't working for them, or because they couldn't tolerate the treatment, then, for practical purposes, they should be counted as failures of the program.
This is a lot messier than measuring results in the usual way, but more applicable. Given those stats, it's possible that AA is counterproductive. Suppose 90% of alcoholics are fundamentally untreatable with any technique we've got now. Hypothetically, these are the ones who drop out of AA. Then, since about 50% of that population quits, and 40% of AA members, AA is bad for people. I don't think that's the case, but it can't be disproven with the stats you cited.
You are correct to a point. However, the dropout rate for AA is statistically the same as all other treatment programs, no better and no worse. So all programs have that issue. With regards to going cold turkey, the dropout rate for that method is quite high. So yes, that is the most effective, but not very efficient (kind of like abstinence programs for teenagers and birth control - 100% effective for those who follow it, just not very efficient at controlling teen pregnancy because of the dropout rate).
Everything you say is true, but Space X isn't done either. I think you'd have to admit they've done better than many people predicted. What is strange is how with each milestone they pass, people move the goalposts and withhold respect. Same with Tesla, though that's starting to change a little now. Not saying that's what you're doing, but it does make me wonder what the motivation is when people do that.
I'm not trying to take anything away from his accomplishments, but he, like most other visionaries build on the work of others, which is often forgotten or conveniently ignored.
> With the planned design, only one vehicle at a time can be in the tube
This is not true. The system states that it is designed to have multiple simultaneous pods, separated by several miles for safety.
I know it says that, but the design relies on a vacuum on the front and increased pressure behind. How does that work for the cars behind the first, magic?
Like almost every other question or criticism in this thread - if you read the proposal he talks about that exact issue and proposes a solution. You may not be convinced his proposed solution will work, but this is something the hyperloop plan covers.
Talking about it and solving the problem are two different things. People talk about cold fusion, but to date, nobody has solved it, either.
Here is a link to some cheap ones: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Sumitomo&tireModel=HTR+Z+II&partnum=74WR7HTRZ2V2&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=
Here is a link to the ones I have:http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tires.jsp?tireMake=Goodyear&tireModel=Eagle+F1+Asymmetric+All-Season&partnum=74WR7F1AAS&vehicleSearch=true&fromCompare1=yes&autoMake=Pontiac&autoYear=2002&autoModel=Trans%20Am%20WS6&autoModClar=
Under $400 for a set of 4 isn't "expensive" and rated to up to 168MPH. Which is exactly what I need since the top end of my car is 167.
Those are only rated to 168mph. The proposal was autonomous cars running 200mph. Those tires won't work.
Because it was the gov'ment that is doing the high speed rail, while the hyperloop would likely be done by a private company, and only after the cities involved had agreed to get the hell out of way.
And you are thinking that magically all government regulations will just disappear? While it is the government doing high speed rail, it is a different part of the government causing all the red tape and delays. That part would still be causing red tape even for the hyperloop.
Common sense would tell you that the earth is the center of the universe and the sun rotates around it.
Actually, common sense would not tell you that. It was the best scientific minds of their time that came up with that and even the math to explain the motion of the planets in such a system. It was a mu.ch more complicated system than what we now believe to be correct.
I'm just curious how he is going to deal with the expansion issues of an metal tube that is 1000 miles long in various different temperatures and weather. The pipeline industry has been struggling with it for decades. It would seem that his designs are going to need some fairly close tolerances to work and with the various thermal coefficients involved it will be interesting to see how he plans to deal with it.