Only because of your sig: Did you really mean "The phishing filter owned by IT (Information Technology, or perhaps the Stephen King demon)," or did you incorrectly form the possessive of 'it'?
What I meant by pressure gradient is: When you're standing on the ground, you have 14psi on the top of your head. At your feet, you have (14psi + your_weight/area_of_your_feet) pressure. That's a pressure gradient, and it's pretty large; I guestimate that for a 5'6 person weight 135lbs that the pressure at your feet would be close to...(crunches some numbers)...4.5 psi. Also note that the forces in you are greatest at your feet and they decrease as they go up: your feet have to hold up your legs, body, arms, head; your waist just your body, arms, head, etc. Under water, you are supported everywhere, not just under your feet; this greatly reduces the pressure gradients within your body - again, this is what we interpret as "weigtlessness".
As for orbit, you are correct; you do need some force from a rocket to counter drag; if you are far enough from large masses and you're firing a rocket, you will "feel" gravity with "up" being your direction of acceleration. Incidentally this phenomenon helped in the devleopment of general relativity. However, note that this is all about acceleration - if you're using a rocket to keep your tangential velocity constant, you won't feel any force in that direction since you're not accelerating in that direction.
Some fun questions regarding very low orbits (well "fun" if you like picking nits about definitions, anyway): An airplane is flying in a great-circle path from New York to London. Is it in orbit? Another tricky one: You are standing on the surface of the earth on the equator. Are you in orbit?
I just had an interesting thought that your comment about HTML+CSS prompted. There seems to be an interesting idea surrounding the concept of "separation of content and presentation". The interesting idea is this: What if the presentation is the content? For instance, a screenplay of a book - take Lord of the Rings. The story is more or less the same between the two, but there is no amount of "common" format that will allow you to describe the same story in the book form or the movie form simply by "changing the presentation." (Okay, perhaps not the best example, but hopefully it will get the thought process going).
Incidentally, I think the only time "content+presentation" paradigms work well is when you have lots of similar data to present in a standard manner. For instance, records in a forum. Here, the content and presentation are only loosely related. This is vastly different than, say, certain documents where the arrangement of the elements on the page actually uniquely defines the content. Consider as an example the Periodic Table of Elements - here the arrangement is content.
Indeed. I think people need some education on how to establish proper metrics. There seems to be a misconception that just having metrics is sufficient. The significance and meaning behind most new metrics seems to be missing.
A weightless environment assumes that the net gravitational force acting on a body is 0.
I cannot restrain myself from correcting this. If "weightless" meant that the net gravitational force on a body is zero, then nothing could ever be in orbit around our planet. In fact, the gravitational field in "near" orbit is almost the same as is it is on the surface of the planet: gravity on earth surface approx. 9.8 N/kg, gravitational field strength at an altitude of 200 km is - get ready for it - 9.2 N/kg (only a 6% reduction). To get to half strength, you'd have to get to an altitude of 2640 km. To get to quarter strength, an altitude of 6370 km, and so on. (NOTE: numbers rounded for simplicity).
What "weightlessness" really is: the pressure gradients within your body are too small for your nervous system to measure. In fact, only on the ground are you feeling a net force close to zero: gravity minus the force of the ground pushing back on you (which is the ground minus the amount of gravity required to keep you on the surface in a circle as the planet spins). In space, you're missing the ground pushing back: only gravity is pulling on you, and nothing is pushing back.
$75 billion is also roughly what it would cost to hire 1.5 million people for a year. So, yeah, the public is now hiring those people, but would the private sector support that many additional jobs? Nobody ever looks at the cost to bring all those people back. How many would come back to no job? Did the private sector save any money by not having to pay them? What about reduced gasoline consumption, power grid, water usage, and waste management since that many people are now overseas? A proper analysis will look at the public and private sectors, not just the public sector, because they are inextricably linked.
I can't say that having the forces deployed or not is better overall from a financial standpoint, as I've not done and not seen any analyses of that type. I would find such quite interesting though.
I have to say, I'm glad that my alma mater (Case School of Engineering, 2000) is actually still doing real science. I'm kind of disappointed at all the folks above who posted about "finding useful information in the noise of internet information" though; that type of information gathering is not quite the same as discerning between special-cause and random-cause fluctuations in a signal (mostly because the Internet consists mostly of special-cause variation: i.e., things people have written or created). Distinguishing between two different pieces of non-random data is vastly different than picking up non-random from random.
Incidentally, I don't mind the switch to Case from CWRU (you would not believe how many people asked if Case Western Reserve University was a military school - I guess they forgot to teach people about the Western Reserve Territory in elementary school). The name change is nothing compared to the Peter B. Lewis building...
I don't disagree; I was just offering alternatives to experience+level-based systems. As for the paper world: see GURPS for a good example. No levels at all, and one of the best systems I've ever seen (I have played AD&D - back in 1989 though, and Shadowrun) as far as simplicity and role-play-ability. Still based on a skill point system, but points are much closer to "practice" than "XP for a kill".
Incidentally, I don't think "practicing to get your skills up" is any less like work than, say, wandering around a field killing spiders to increase experience....
I guess it all goes back to the original discussion: some people like more realistic games, others want totally fantastic ones. But that's the purpose of something like the tools mentioned - ways to get people to be able to create things they like. The fact that things need "selling points", well, that's an entirely different discussion.
If you have a system where players can create content, experience and levels are not necessary. The driving force in the game becomes acquiring resources or whatever are necessary to construct that content, and to defend that content. "Prestige" comes from the amount of stuff that you have created and your ability to keep it. While this is still inherently a time sink, it's of a vastly different nature than experience / level systems, and it really does depend on player skill and creativity rather than the simple "I have been playing longer" effect. As an alternative to experience / level systems, turning everything into skills that increase in proficiency with use or training is better than a classed system. For instance - you pick up a sword and you suck at it, but after a while your skill is reasonable, then plateaus until you go to a trainer. Then you get bored, so you go pick up a staff...see how that could work? No experience at all, just practice - like in the real world! (which is probably why people don't go that route. *shrug*)
Homeownership isn't really useful. What you need to look at is home equity, which is tragically low (lowest in history, mostly due to dumb interest-only loans and not having to have a decent down payment. Sure you get to stay in a house, but those programs are closer to renting than homeownership).
The current savings rate should be in the list of indicators, and it's either still negative or zero. I don't care who you are, but if you spend all or more than your income (especially if you borrow to do it!), you're not in a good situation.
The culture already had to change to accept television, so I would say that television is orthogonal to the crime, not the cause. There might be crime that shows up because of TV (you can't steal TV's without TV, for instance), but that's not helpful for this discussion.
After all, was crime nonexistant before faster-than-foot communications?
I agree. Besides, I don't watch broadcast or cable TV any more; my TV is simply a monitor for my DVD player and video game console. Of course, once they switch over to BR-DVD or HD-DVD, I'm probably not even going to buy any more versions of my movies. Too bad for the entertainment and advertising industries, but that's probably about $50/month back in my pocket instead of some others'.
But, back to the original post - aside from the "more efficient use of the spectrum" what does going digital do? For that matter, what does cramming more information onto the spectrum do? Well, better phrased: I know that there is the potential for nice things with having more bandwidth; what will it take to actually realize those benefits rather than just fill it with more advertising, propaganda, and sensational* entertainment? In other words, can I maintain my current quality of life and pay less for things because of this technology, or will I be forced to increase my standard of living (even though I am quite comfortable with my current level of luxury) and pay the same or more (because the things I currently have will no longer be supported and, if I just gave them up, that would be a reduction in quality of life, which should not be a result of new technology)? I'd rather new technologies made the things I currently want cost less rather than give me more things to want.
*as opposed to stimulating or intellectual or engaging or other progressive-type adjectives
For the record, I haven't just been sitting here - I have actually started working on a CAD program to do what I need; the issue is that I'd rather spend my time designing parts than tools to design the parts.
That said, I find that software is a bit nicer than parts since massaging code is fundamentally less resource-intensive than matter bashing (time vs. time plus matter). I've often thought that I should sit and write my own CAD/simulation app (I have several started but, like most programmers, my code tends to sit idle for long periods of time) to fill the niche. My interests, however, tend to lie closer to the end result than the tools. It is, I will grant, a bit of a personal dilemma.
Ah, government sources - I had not thought to look there. I think, back in school, I looked there but was not impressed for some reason. I will take a look though.
To elaborate on parent, with whom I completely agree, patents are necessary in fields with a high barrier to research and a low barrier to production.
I actually would think the other way around is more correct; that is, patents were to protect things that had a high cost to implement. Early on, some guy in his garage coming up with a new idea but without the infrastructure to produce it could get stomped by a factory. (Indeed, think about how difficult it is to come up with an idea, then compare to how difficult it is to try and test that idea then bring it to production. Ideas are inexpensive; bringing them to market is the expensive part. Granted, different industries are different - (bio)chemistry is different than manufacturing is different than software, and so on.) Patents, traditionally, were to protect the execution of an idea, not the idea itself. At least, that's my take on how that used to be interpreted. The current problem is because the line between "idea" and "execution of an idea" has become quite blurred with the advent of computers - more blurred than is warranted, I think.
I can't say I know how to fix the system, but I know that simply crying "foul" when people abuse it is not entirely constructive - it is, in fact, quite reactionary.
I also think that, even if patents went away overnight, medical research (and development in other industries) would not stop because there is a large enough demand that enough people would pay the researchers that we'd have new developments. The situation would look very different than it does today - it would probably look like a few research firms to which the "generic" manufacturers would pay some sums of money to develop new product streams.
Can you point to links of definitions of "socialism" that indicate that clarify the common ownership versus state ownership?
I looked at the dictionary and it mentions state ownership. So does wikepedia which also indicates, I will grant, that "socialism" seems to encompass quite a few ideas on the spectrum as far as who owns the capital and who controls it (but there appears to be a common theme of central planning).
Like I said, much of the confusion probably comes from the fact that people are using words that mean different things to different people. I fault the use of such words without explanation as much as I fault people who don't take the time to try and understand what is meant. After all, a point of language is that you can assume that the person speaking to you has an idea of how you will interpret their words; otherwise language is not very effective.
I guess my stance would be, then, that I can see how aspects of open-source software are socialist, but I don't think there are enough which makes it really fit any of the definitions of which I am aware.
Aw, bugger. I replied with something very similar to this here.
I agree with you that people don't understand what socialism is (versus capitalism or communism) but I'm not quite sure what your post is saying. It seems to indicate that open source and socialism are compatible, but I'm not sure that I agree there since socialism is about state control of property and open source is about common ownership of property (assuming, of course, you consider ideas to be property in the first place, which is the more fundamental issue over which people incessantly gloss).
Slashdot Mirror
Only because of your sig: Did you really mean "The phishing filter owned by IT (Information Technology, or perhaps the Stephen King demon)," or did you incorrectly form the possessive of 'it'?
Dude, you should have put a disclaimer on your post...my dinner almost decorated my laptop.
As for orbit, you are correct; you do need some force from a rocket to counter drag; if you are far enough from large masses and you're firing a rocket, you will "feel" gravity with "up" being your direction of acceleration. Incidentally this phenomenon helped in the devleopment of general relativity. However, note that this is all about acceleration - if you're using a rocket to keep your tangential velocity constant, you won't feel any force in that direction since you're not accelerating in that direction.
Some fun questions regarding very low orbits (well "fun" if you like picking nits about definitions, anyway): An airplane is flying in a great-circle path from New York to London. Is it in orbit? Another tricky one: You are standing on the surface of the earth on the equator. Are you in orbit?
Incidentally, I think the only time "content+presentation" paradigms work well is when you have lots of similar data to present in a standard manner. For instance, records in a forum. Here, the content and presentation are only loosely related. This is vastly different than, say, certain documents where the arrangement of the elements on the page actually uniquely defines the content. Consider as an example the Periodic Table of Elements - here the arrangement is content.
Indeed. I think people need some education on how to establish proper metrics. There seems to be a misconception that just having metrics is sufficient. The significance and meaning behind most new metrics seems to be missing.
What "weightlessness" really is: the pressure gradients within your body are too small for your nervous system to measure. In fact, only on the ground are you feeling a net force close to zero: gravity minus the force of the ground pushing back on you (which is the ground minus the amount of gravity required to keep you on the surface in a circle as the planet spins). In space, you're missing the ground pushing back: only gravity is pulling on you, and nothing is pushing back.
Not an email, but:
I can't say that having the forces deployed or not is better overall from a financial standpoint, as I've not done and not seen any analyses of that type. I would find such quite interesting though.
"hay guys im in ur base killin ur doods" + coffee --> mess
Incidentally, I don't mind the switch to Case from CWRU (you would not believe how many people asked if Case Western Reserve University was a military school - I guess they forgot to teach people about the Western Reserve Territory in elementary school). The name change is nothing compared to the Peter B. Lewis building...
Incidentally, I don't think "practicing to get your skills up" is any less like work than, say, wandering around a field killing spiders to increase experience....
I guess it all goes back to the original discussion: some people like more realistic games, others want totally fantastic ones. But that's the purpose of something like the tools mentioned - ways to get people to be able to create things they like. The fact that things need "selling points", well, that's an entirely different discussion.
If you have a system where players can create content, experience and levels are not necessary. The driving force in the game becomes acquiring resources or whatever are necessary to construct that content, and to defend that content. "Prestige" comes from the amount of stuff that you have created and your ability to keep it. While this is still inherently a time sink, it's of a vastly different nature than experience / level systems, and it really does depend on player skill and creativity rather than the simple "I have been playing longer" effect. As an alternative to experience / level systems, turning everything into skills that increase in proficiency with use or training is better than a classed system. For instance - you pick up a sword and you suck at it, but after a while your skill is reasonable, then plateaus until you go to a trainer. Then you get bored, so you go pick up a staff...see how that could work? No experience at all, just practice - like in the real world! (which is probably why people don't go that route. *shrug*)
The current savings rate should be in the list of indicators, and it's either still negative or zero. I don't care who you are, but if you spend all or more than your income (especially if you borrow to do it!), you're not in a good situation.
You made me pick a new sig.
After all, was crime nonexistant before faster-than-foot communications?
But, back to the original post - aside from the "more efficient use of the spectrum" what does going digital do? For that matter, what does cramming more information onto the spectrum do? Well, better phrased: I know that there is the potential for nice things with having more bandwidth; what will it take to actually realize those benefits rather than just fill it with more advertising, propaganda, and sensational* entertainment? In other words, can I maintain my current quality of life and pay less for things because of this technology, or will I be forced to increase my standard of living (even though I am quite comfortable with my current level of luxury) and pay the same or more (because the things I currently have will no longer be supported and, if I just gave them up, that would be a reduction in quality of life, which should not be a result of new technology)? I'd rather new technologies made the things I currently want cost less rather than give me more things to want.
*as opposed to stimulating or intellectual or engaging or other progressive-type adjectives
"How about a nice game of chess?"
<lament> As for NASTRAN, it is standard, but it is definitely not free (unless there are other products with the same name, I guess). </lament>
That said, I find that software is a bit nicer than parts since massaging code is fundamentally less resource-intensive than matter bashing (time vs. time plus matter). I've often thought that I should sit and write my own CAD/simulation app (I have several started but, like most programmers, my code tends to sit idle for long periods of time) to fill the niche. My interests, however, tend to lie closer to the end result than the tools. It is, I will grant, a bit of a personal dilemma.
Ah, government sources - I had not thought to look there. I think, back in school, I looked there but was not impressed for some reason. I will take a look though.
Perhaps, but someone failed it when it came to the hazard analysis on that spacecraft...
I actually would think the other way around is more correct; that is, patents were to protect things that had a high cost to implement. Early on, some guy in his garage coming up with a new idea but without the infrastructure to produce it could get stomped by a factory. (Indeed, think about how difficult it is to come up with an idea, then compare to how difficult it is to try and test that idea then bring it to production. Ideas are inexpensive; bringing them to market is the expensive part. Granted, different industries are different - (bio)chemistry is different than manufacturing is different than software, and so on.) Patents, traditionally, were to protect the execution of an idea, not the idea itself. At least, that's my take on how that used to be interpreted. The current problem is because the line between "idea" and "execution of an idea" has become quite blurred with the advent of computers - more blurred than is warranted, I think.
I can't say I know how to fix the system, but I know that simply crying "foul" when people abuse it is not entirely constructive - it is, in fact, quite reactionary.
I also think that, even if patents went away overnight, medical research (and development in other industries) would not stop because there is a large enough demand that enough people would pay the researchers that we'd have new developments. The situation would look very different than it does today - it would probably look like a few research firms to which the "generic" manufacturers would pay some sums of money to develop new product streams.
I looked at the dictionary and it mentions state ownership. So does wikepedia which also indicates, I will grant, that "socialism" seems to encompass quite a few ideas on the spectrum as far as who owns the capital and who controls it (but there appears to be a common theme of central planning).
Like I said, much of the confusion probably comes from the fact that people are using words that mean different things to different people. I fault the use of such words without explanation as much as I fault people who don't take the time to try and understand what is meant. After all, a point of language is that you can assume that the person speaking to you has an idea of how you will interpret their words; otherwise language is not very effective.
I guess my stance would be, then, that I can see how aspects of open-source software are socialist, but I don't think there are enough which makes it really fit any of the definitions of which I am aware.
I agree with you that people don't understand what socialism is (versus capitalism or communism) but I'm not quite sure what your post is saying. It seems to indicate that open source and socialism are compatible, but I'm not sure that I agree there since socialism is about state control of property and open source is about common ownership of property (assuming, of course, you consider ideas to be property in the first place, which is the more fundamental issue over which people incessantly gloss).