In what sense would you claim that relativity is "wrong"? Just to clarify (and for other readers:), is it that you believe there is a bigger picture theory that encompasses GR AND quantum mechanics, etc? (In the same way that GR encompasses Newtonian mechanics) This is sort of theory (quantum gravity!) is needed to explain the inner workings of a black hole, for example, and the beginning of the universe, earlier that 10^{-43} seconds.
But the purpose of this project is to determine whether all the predictions of general relativity are correct - something which we don't know yet. If the experiment gives a positive result, general rel is completely confirmed as a correct theory, within its limits of applicability. A null result probably doesn't prove anything, as other posters have pointed out; it may simply be too hard an experiment to perform. So I think this IS a useful experiment, even if only from a dot your i's and cross your t's perspective.
Yes, the laws were there to build better stories, but Asimov also put a lot of thought into his stories, and his vision for the future. (Incidentally, Asimov invented the word "robotics" - my trivia for the day!)
His laws actually ARE workable - the laws work on a potential system. Analyse what's happening in the environment, compare it to your current state and programming, then if the potential is high enough, take action. For instance, if you're sold a robot, you would tell it "You're MY robot, follow me home." (although that sounds a bit mercenary...) If someone ELSE comes along and says "No, follow me!", the robot has two conflicting instructions. But because the first order was firmer and carried more weight/authority, he will obey that one.
The first law (or zeroth - go Giskard!) will always win, although there have been examples where the 2nd and 3rd have real competition (a robot was ordered very firmly to collect some materials which turned out to be in a highly dangerous area for the robot. The robot ended up circling around the materials at the "balance" point between following the instructions and protecting his existence. He was basically brain-fried, and this sort of thing tended to happen most in simple robots. A very complicated robot (like the humanoid R. Daneel or his buddy Giskard) has some ability to reason with the laws and take more "approriate" action.
Read "The Complete Robot" (I think it's called) with all his stories, and you'll see they really do make good sense.
C.S. Friedman wrote a book, "This Alien Shore", which describes a future where (among other things:) everyone has "brainware" implanted in them at birth. It's a computer system that augments daily functioning, such as calendar, "wellseeker" (a health monitoring unit, with store of hormones, medicines, etc, that can be dispensed on command) and by use of a headset, allows wireless connection to the outernet (basically, everyone else in the Universe!)
It's a very neat view on what it would be like if we all had these implants, what various people would load onto their limited space, "modders" who illegally upgrade their system (risking brain damage), and of course, viruses which can directly screw your brain if you're not careful! And, of course, this plays a big part in the story. It's a good read!
Q: What do you call a man with pants made out of leafs?
A: Russel!
Here's my letter to him:
Dear Russel,
I quote,
"An old adage that governments would be well-served to heed is: You get what you pay for. When you rely on free or low-cost products, you often get the shaft"
Therefore, it comes as no surprise that your article is freely available on the internet. I trust that anyone reading your article understands that since they did not pay for it, your opinion is barely worth the electrons it was beamed with. By your argument, it's probably worth just about as much as mine is.
Take note here: I mostly use Windows. I'm not a Linux fanatic, though I definitely like it. But I'm sorry to say that yours is one of the least well-researched and well thought out articles I have every come across. The only possible exception would be any of the recent letters from SCO. If you have an opinion, that's fine, but you're presenting a biased, one-sided view, which doesn't point out any of the positive advantages of open source. For example: what's to stop a malicious programmer inserting evil code into Windows? Checks by fellow programmers, right? How many? Two? Three? In OSS, you might have have checks by the ENTIRE OSS community! That's got to be safer.
Sure, maybe someone could slip some code in there, and maybe it survives for a day or even a week. But it's going to be picked up, and assuming governments aren't upgrading their software every day, by the time they get the next update, it'll be clean.
Opinions should best be taken with a grain of salt. Opinions that claim there is no other side to their arguments should be taken with several kilograms of it. And probably a couple of bottles of Tequila too. (No lemon is needed - the article's already left a sour taste in my mouth.)
Cheers,
Joel
I think it's an excellent thing that someone's doing this, but I'm interested in the future of ebooks.
Presumably, the author's income at the moment relies on people wanting paper copies or buying out of loyalty, gratitude, etc. But, Assuming that eventually all books are in an electronic format (e.g., someone makes a really good screen that opens up much like a book, and displays text in high quality on two pages, and is visually very similar to a paper copy (e.g., new polymer screens viewable from all angles)) what is the marketing position then for ebooks?
If you make books available for free, and people can put them on their book-readers and there is literally no advantage (other than a warm, fuzzy feeling) to buying the "paid-for" e-file, do you think people will still buy? I can't honestly say what I'd do - I'd like to think I would contribute to a book that I like, but if it's a choice between money or not, for no gain, well...It's a wonderful scheme for the readers, but the authors are going to be on the poor side.
Perhaps some sort of micropayment scheme? For large audiences, this could be effective - but you'd need an awful lot of readers to make a living! Or some other advantage to buying? If so, what?
Hmmm. If he had chosen to give his code away for free, then that would be fine. But he didn't - he released it under the GPL, which has at least a partial aim of encouraging open sharing and development of code.
They're earning money off his hard work - why does being "generous" mean you have to make them money? You can release code as public domain, and let people do what they will, but that's fairly obviously not his aim - (and pardon me if I've got this wrong) - he wants to share with those willing to reciprocate the sharing.
Maybe do some reading on the aims and goals of the GPL, and try and see what they're getting at. (And I also hope I'm not stirring up a hornet's nest here - just two (for now) nice, diplomatic posts:)
Bifurcati
As many people have (rightly!) pointed out, I could easily send two emails a minute - if I get back from a few days away, I might have twenty emails to reply to, and I have Pegasus Mail set to send everything in one hit. Especially if they're counting the number of recipients, and not just the number of emails (which would make sense re spam!)
What I want to know is, how do they decide if you're sending spam or not? Do they read your email? If so, that's pretty serious - I'd be interested to know what the user policy is with regards to that sort of thing. And if they just disconnect you while they check, that's bloody dramatic! I guess they can monitor you for continued heavy use, and then make a decision, but I can't see any middle ground between those two alternatives.
That's an interesting connection. Terribly depressing series, in so many ways, and yet strangely uplifting as well (at least at the end of the second trilogy).
Surrendering to win is also something that's echoed a bit in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, where to control something you must sometimes submit to it (particularly for women controlling the female power saidar, and for women controlling men (specifically Moiraine on Rand))
Skittle colour effects
on
Skittlebrau
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
It would be interesting to try the beers out with just single colours (or controlled combinations) of skittles, and see how that varies the taste. I half suspect, though, that it would be difficult to determine the difference with your eyes closed (it's actually somtimes tricky to tell the difference between, say, lemon squash and orange soda. Even stranger is that if if you use food colouring to make lemonade green and lemon squash orange, then (with your eyes open!) many people think they taste like lime and orange respectively.)
I wonder if this could be adapted to other drinks, and other lollies? You'd probably need a fizzy drink, but what about barley sugar or boiled lollies in beer? What about an orange Chuppa-chup, vodka and lemonade cocktail? Yum yum!
Later!
Bifurcati
Slashdot Mirror
But the purpose of this project is to determine whether all the predictions of general relativity are correct - something which we don't know yet. If the experiment gives a positive result, general rel is completely confirmed as a correct theory, within its limits of applicability. A null result probably doesn't prove anything, as other posters have pointed out; it may simply be too hard an experiment to perform. So I think this IS a useful experiment, even if only from a dot your i's and cross your t's perspective.
His laws actually ARE workable - the laws work on a potential system. Analyse what's happening in the environment, compare it to your current state and programming, then if the potential is high enough, take action. For instance, if you're sold a robot, you would tell it "You're MY robot, follow me home." (although that sounds a bit mercenary...) If someone ELSE comes along and says "No, follow me!", the robot has two conflicting instructions. But because the first order was firmer and carried more weight/authority, he will obey that one.
The first law (or zeroth - go Giskard!) will always win, although there have been examples where the 2nd and 3rd have real competition (a robot was ordered very firmly to collect some materials which turned out to be in a highly dangerous area for the robot. The robot ended up circling around the materials at the "balance" point between following the instructions and protecting his existence. He was basically brain-fried, and this sort of thing tended to happen most in simple robots. A very complicated robot (like the humanoid R. Daneel or his buddy Giskard) has some ability to reason with the laws and take more "approriate" action.
Read "The Complete Robot" (I think it's called) with all his stories, and you'll see they really do make good sense.
Have fun!
Joel.
Have you read Black Sun Rising, the first of her Coldfire trilogy? Really good read - I'm just starting the second one now :)
Cheers,
Joel
It's a very neat view on what it would be like if we all had these implants, what various people would load onto their limited space, "modders" who illegally upgrade their system (risking brain damage), and of course, viruses which can directly screw your brain if you're not careful! And, of course, this plays a big part in the story. It's a good read!
Cheers,
Joel
Q: What do you call a man with pants made out of leafs? A: Russel! Here's my letter to him: Dear Russel, I quote, "An old adage that governments would be well-served to heed is: You get what you pay for. When you rely on free or low-cost products, you often get the shaft" Therefore, it comes as no surprise that your article is freely available on the internet. I trust that anyone reading your article understands that since they did not pay for it, your opinion is barely worth the electrons it was beamed with. By your argument, it's probably worth just about as much as mine is. Take note here: I mostly use Windows. I'm not a Linux fanatic, though I definitely like it. But I'm sorry to say that yours is one of the least well-researched and well thought out articles I have every come across. The only possible exception would be any of the recent letters from SCO. If you have an opinion, that's fine, but you're presenting a biased, one-sided view, which doesn't point out any of the positive advantages of open source. For example: what's to stop a malicious programmer inserting evil code into Windows? Checks by fellow programmers, right? How many? Two? Three? In OSS, you might have have checks by the ENTIRE OSS community! That's got to be safer. Sure, maybe someone could slip some code in there, and maybe it survives for a day or even a week. But it's going to be picked up, and assuming governments aren't upgrading their software every day, by the time they get the next update, it'll be clean. Opinions should best be taken with a grain of salt. Opinions that claim there is no other side to their arguments should be taken with several kilograms of it. And probably a couple of bottles of Tequila too. (No lemon is needed - the article's already left a sour taste in my mouth.) Cheers, Joel
Presumably, the author's income at the moment relies on people wanting paper copies or buying out of loyalty, gratitude, etc. But, Assuming that eventually all books are in an electronic format (e.g., someone makes a really good screen that opens up much like a book, and displays text in high quality on two pages, and is visually very similar to a paper copy (e.g., new polymer screens viewable from all angles)) what is the marketing position then for ebooks?
If you make books available for free, and people can put them on their book-readers and there is literally no advantage (other than a warm, fuzzy feeling) to buying the "paid-for" e-file, do you think people will still buy? I can't honestly say what I'd do - I'd like to think I would contribute to a book that I like, but if it's a choice between money or not, for no gain, well...It's a wonderful scheme for the readers, but the authors are going to be on the poor side.
Perhaps some sort of micropayment scheme? For large audiences, this could be effective - but you'd need an awful lot of readers to make a living! Or some other advantage to buying? If so, what?
Any thoughts on this?
They're earning money off his hard work - why does being "generous" mean you have to make them money? You can release code as public domain, and let people do what they will, but that's fairly obviously not his aim - (and pardon me if I've got this wrong) - he wants to share with those willing to reciprocate the sharing.
Maybe do some reading on the aims and goals of the GPL, and try and see what they're getting at. (And I also hope I'm not stirring up a hornet's nest here - just two (for now) nice, diplomatic posts :)
Bifurcati
What I want to know is, how do they decide if you're sending spam or not? Do they read your email? If so, that's pretty serious - I'd be interested to know what the user policy is with regards to that sort of thing. And if they just disconnect you while they check, that's bloody dramatic! I guess they can monitor you for continued heavy use, and then make a decision, but I can't see any middle ground between those two alternatives.
Either way, yet again glad I'm not with Telstra!
J.
Surrendering to win is also something that's echoed a bit in Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series, where to control something you must sometimes submit to it (particularly for women controlling the female power saidar, and for women controlling men (specifically Moiraine on Rand))
It would be interesting to try the beers out with just single colours (or controlled combinations) of skittles, and see how that varies the taste. I half suspect, though, that it would be difficult to determine the difference with your eyes closed (it's actually somtimes tricky to tell the difference between, say, lemon squash and orange soda. Even stranger is that if if you use food colouring to make lemonade green and lemon squash orange, then (with your eyes open!) many people think they taste like lime and orange respectively.) I wonder if this could be adapted to other drinks, and other lollies? You'd probably need a fizzy drink, but what about barley sugar or boiled lollies in beer? What about an orange Chuppa-chup, vodka and lemonade cocktail? Yum yum! Later! Bifurcati