Agree at least around here it seems like getting a Masters is the equivalent to a rather inane sort of brain washing where they can't help but spit out the same solution to all problems. I find 90% of my job trivial, 9% sufficiently complex to be interesting and that last 1% is just HARD. But, unlike many, I don't just skip over that last few percent of my job that gets a little complex and say "well this works most of the time Ill get to the rest when the bug reports start showing up".
Ex: When I first showed up I was handed a project that had 6MB of Object Pascal source code and no documentation. My boss said I want this documented but at the same time learn it. Well great it's 3,000 + objects that create a GUI for a real time system, it's back in database, and report system all of which form a single executable with a lot of dead code just for fun. Great; so is there a user manual so I can trace things from the GUI through the code and get some idea what's going on? Nope but you can talk with bill over there a few hours a week he's been supporting the software for several years and should point you in the right direction...
Now if this was really all they wanted fine I could have spent 6-12 months and diagramed most of the system but they wanted me to start modifying the source code ASAP. So what I did was write something that tracked which instances of which objects where associated to what variables so I could track which functions of which object called what function of what object and trace though the code. Now finding out how to track which object was being called at runtime from a dynamic system may have been the "HARD" part but when 2 days of real work saves you 4 months it's worth it. IMO.
Programming is a balancing act between cost, speed, stability, usability, and adaptability. It's not a question of can I get something to work its a question of what you trade off when you pick each of the billions of solutions to any given problem.
Sorry, I was not trying to say it was futile I was trying to represent changing that as a cost not worth paying.
While it's a little hard to respond to someone who point's to a book and say's "this is what I think" I am going to try and come up with one. While "young" I have been exposed to a wide variety of eastern and western belief systems. I have yet to form a consistent set of beliefs nor have I adapted any belief system. Yet like most people who think about such things I have tried to move beyond "I don't know" and have more or less taken up the perspective while "harm" or "pain" is bad / negative while pleasure and or growth is positive. Therefore I should promote the latter in my self and others while trying to avoid the former. But, this basic guild line is incapable of dealing with many situations.
AKA Does a mother have the right to kill a fetus growing within her?
Now when presented with a far more complex system like say the US government such a simple rule is going to be hard to apply. Governments don't just deal with 2 people they can have 2,500 groups of 100,000 people which each want different things. Once you start talking about something that complex you need to start thinking about the interactions more than the events. And so when you see someone get a check for 2000$ you need to see not just the fact that came out of several people's pockets but also the group that got that cash gave up something as well.
Ok so now to have money you need to do one of 3 things.
Produce something of value.
Take it from someone else.
Invest / risk money.
Now these are interrelated but over the long term I say people who have a lot of money tend to be people who invest so handing money to have money and that invest it is not a bad thing. I don't think all money should be invested but (EX:) to have fusion power we need people to invest in those technologies. And at least some of that money that goes to the power companies that build nuke power plants will go that way. QED. It's not evil.
Now, we could spend 2,000,000,000,000 $ and have the technologies to start building fusion power stations in 10 years. But that would cost a lot of money from a lot of other uses. As far as I know it would lead to a net positive outcome but at what cost?
I am not saying that a tax break for the rich is a "good" thing but other than being less than optimal I just look at it as one of the results of a system that over time tends to work better than most others. And so I don't look at such graft as anything other than inefficiency in a system that was made by humans.
There are many things that you could do that would help humanity out but most of them are being done so it's more a question of how which of the many things that help humanity out should we do and how much of what resource should we expend doing them. I look at the people who say give me that money as a counter balance to the people who wish to spread it out evenly and those like me who want to invest as much of it as we can.
PS: I did read the reviews but they where leading me to believe that there was far more pseudo science than new ideas in that book so I would normally skip it. However, if you can point out what idea(s) you agree with / gained from that book / feel is best represented there I may just go order it anyway.
Umm, first off are you talking about an article other than Squeezing Coal To Reduce Emissions? cuz unless i missed something it's not talking about nukes at all.
And 2nd I am sorry but I know money changes hands all the time honestly everybody's hand is in the government pot. It's realy the basic inificency of representive government. But, for those who wish to trade there "vote" for money fine with me I have other isues I want addressed. So I will vote for your powerplant if you will vote for my school... Graft is a basic function of the system we have. Now I know the rich keep geting richer but there are many things that keep them in balance aka fixed pot of gold and many many hands. But, anyway Nukes provide the US with about as much power as they can "you can't tourn them on and off very quickly" which limits how much we can rely on them right now. So like most utility's there a good investment if you care more about not losing your money than makeing a killing but that's about it. (limited grouth potential)
I don't know some things like insider trading bother me. But, as long as your open about the fact you want a hand out (farmers) fine with me. It's a dog eat dog world and when you notice the game everyone else is playing you can start to deal with the world and not bemone how you wish it would operate. Shure I would pay less in taxes and have more money then again I could also tip less and have more money. I look at social security as money stolen from me but it's all part of the same system so I can deal with that. Yes the government takes about 1/2 the money I make fine it sucks but I still have more moeny than I know what to do with so I realy don't give a damm.
Well fine if you think the fact that around 0.1% of your tax money is being given to nuke power people fine feel free to do somthing about it. I don't realy stress over it that much. Afterall the government is going to take 1/2 of it back anyway so we are realy talking about.05% of your tax money which... o NM. Just have fun chances are good that anger you feel is going to do little more than get you killed. So if you want to deal with the problem fine hell if you just want some of that money fine but go live your life and don't wast your time being pissed off over the 250,000,000+ eople that are fighting over how to spend 1/2 your money.
PS: Feel free to coment if you have gotten this far I do wander what you thingk about this.
"f you think that having the ability to go BACKWARDS(to areas where nothing has changed, so you don't really have any need to go there) or wielding different weapons is CHOICE then you really haven't played any game that really gives you choice on how to advance.
"
Umm I deside which wepon to kill most mobs with. In HL I do need to follow the script but I can deside to do somethings difrent with out diening which is a level of choice Which is a hell of a lot better than up or die; left or die; a or die;...; Afterall most of the time I just need to get past the mobs killing them is optional. Try playing HL on easy and see how few mobs you can kill then tell me about choice.
So your saying Nuclear power has cost this contry over 10 billion $ a year and provides 20+% of our electricity... Sounds reasonable to me.
Most of the early cost's where R&D much of which went to making bomb's. Now as to the gov giving 2billion a year to the nuclear power that's not realy that out of bounds either look what we have given the airlines. But, in anycase as money was spend on R&D USING that money would make more sence than saying well this is working teck but it cost alot of money to develope so we are going to drop it.
Nuclear power is dangerous but, so is the polution caused by most other energy sorces. I think it would be best stored in the middle of the ocean 4 miles under the ocean + a few 100 feet of rock. But, while it's the most reasonable place to put such things nobody is going to sugest doing that to the UN anytime soon. Honestly, no power sorce is realy safe afterall the "best" power sorce we have (solar) causes canser:) I think we need to design systems that handle such waste for 100,000 years at which point it's going to be fairly safe hell people may want to mine it at that point to get the usfull materials back. Afterall when the holy grail of power generation shows up fusion it's still going to generate some nuclear waste, not all that much granted but some.
Most lifeforms on earth would servive a gobal nuclear war. Then again most lifeforms on earth are single celled life forms that don't mind radiation the same way us multi celled life forms do.
Interesting but I think they're going to need to work out how to prevent bone loss if you're going to hibernate for a significant portion of the time in space. Anyway I hope there going for a basic science approach to the subject because if dobutamine maintains muscle mass during hibernation and it help's with coma/bed-ridden patients then it might also be useful as a safe way to boost muscle mass in the elderly or even just the lazy.
Interesting but I think they're going to need to work out how to prevent bone loss if you're going to hibernate for a significant portion of the time in space. Anyway I hope there going for a basic science approach to the subject because if dobutamine maintains muscle mass during hibernation then it might also help with coma/bed-ridden patients.
I don't like going to "a 'traditional' book shop." because there selection sucks. There are 2 advantages to going to a book store the fact that you get the book as soon as you walk out the door and you can read the back cover / first few pages before buying the book.
If I can have a basicly unlimited selection and can preview the book before buying it AND get it within a few min of looking at it via an E-Book / online shoping WHY would I go to a book store?
I don't think there is any point to leaving sol behind till we have less than 1/2 the human population living on earth. That's the point where we know how to live in space / build ship's and mine / produce everythign we need once we get there.
It's unless people start living a few 100 years it's going to be a one way trip. I dont' think we are going to send one ship and i don't think we are going to get there anyfaster than 1-5% the speed of light. If all your going to do is have your great grand kids end up there why not spend 1/4 as much and have your great great great grand kids finsh the trip. Then once there there they build up to 10 or so billion population and start working on a few more star's. Planit's are nice but once we move into space there going to become pointless. Hell we may get to the point where just break them up to creat more useable living space at some point. And who knows in a few million years we may start breaking apart star's for there hydrogen.
I am not thinking of space ship's as boat's that pick things up and come back I am thinking of space ship but as fleet's as self sustaning systems that can last for 1000+ year's and can feed off of hydrogen and ore's to grow and move on.
Ok we are probably going to send people to the next star before that point but It's a waste IMO.
Hmm, I am not saying we send somthing to marse that can build a house from a pile of part's spread over 100 miles of open space but how about this as a plain. We send a post holl diger robot with a few hundred post's to pound them in about 20 feet and then cut them so there off of the serface by about 4 feet. Then we prefab some deacking that will fit over these post's and set up a nice grid that has atachment point's every 12 inches in any direction. Then we send a robot crain to pace the prefab floor and walls and heating unit on the thing. Then we break out the algie tanks (prefab) which conect to a storage tank that's made from a few prefab apart's. Which has a built in guage to tell when there is a 6-12 month's worth of 02 stored. And finaly add a roof to the thing. Then we need to make it air tight by using some sort of robot that adds rezen of some sort at the joint's or have them self seal. If any of this stuff fails (part or robot) send a new robot / part to do it's job. Now once a house is on there we may deside to send some people to live there or we could have those robot's build 10 or 20 more of the things but the whole idea is if you send a person you need to send them everything they need for 6 month's because if it fails your in DEEP shit. But, with robot's if they fail your ok cuz you can build in 15% more money in the budget to send it's replacement, where with people you need to send a full set of everthing and it's replacment and everthing has to work the first time. Which includes people, which makes the whole thing even worse.
OK ok you could just send O2 Tanks but 6-8 months 02 is going to be fucking heavy and it's a once off I want to KNOW I can have people living there for 5 - 10 years before I send anyone down there. Cuz I don't want torest's I want colenitst's.
IF I had somthing that was watter tight, had a screen that looked like your reading off of paper, and whose battery lasted for a week, had a great interface, and had 10,000 books in memory would you still want to use a book?
I know I would. Yea, most ebooks suck but in 25 years when my vistion stats to fade I may find that generation of e-books better because I can set them to an obserd fount size. But, yea I still buy and read books but here is to hoping for somthing better.
I said "probably use" shure there might be a methiod to crack it in non exponential time that works on any key lenght but it's basided on the idea that A key that just because you can factar X in reasonable time does not mean you can factor x^2 in reasonable time. Hell if something is only 1,000,000 times harder to crack than to generate it's almost worthless but if you spend 1 day generating it would still take 3 years on 1000 cpu's of your speed to crack which would make finantial transations safe.
Anyway Nobody has cracked a true one time pad because you CAN"T and at some point we are going to find that there are key lenght's that we can't crack ex: Chances are we will never be able to crack a 9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^9)))))) bit key at the same time we will never be able to generate a key of that size hell I don't think we could ever store somthing that large.
Hint: I am talkinga about 9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^387420489)))))
9^387420489 has more than 3874204 decimal diget's
9^(9^387420489) has more than 10^3680493 diget's which would take about a 1mb of storage to hold and could be generated but
9^(9^(9^387420489)) is way to large to comprehend it's number of diget's let alone deal with.
9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^387420489))))) is way to large to comprehend it's number of diget's let alone deal with.
Even if computing power starts doubling every day there comes a point where that's not fast enough to deal with some problems before 10^1000 years have past.
Shure we might crack RSA in a fastion that makes it useless hell I think most people deside to use key lenghts that are way to short knowing that it's ok to have your encription broken in 20 years by anyone that want's to devote a few grand on it as long as 10 years from now it's not breakable by anyone. But, I don't think it's reasonable to say we will always beable to crack every system of sending data securly at some point.
Not realy you can probably use an RSA encription methiod with a non fixed key lenght by testing the speed of your CPU and find a key you can generate in 1min and your set from now till QM comes around. Heh I still think QM is just going back to analog computing where acuracy is limited by your ability to detect the output in which case you can just use a Vary Good QM to create somthing that can't be broken in reasonable time.
What needs to happen is the device needs to cost 49.99 and come with two or three books I'd actually read.
Agree but I am fine with 100$ and 1/2 off your first 4 books and 25% off the rest. I just don't think it's a good idea for ebooks to cost as much as a normal book.
If you went into a book store with your ebook, you could turn it on and download the first couple chapters of a book. Then if you liked what you read, you could hit a button and it would download the rest of book and charge your credit card.
Why would you need to be in a book store to do this?
subsurface samples: Ever hear of a drill how about a earh crain?
tire goes flat: There not using air filled tire's.
circuitboard if it breaks: If your sending a 2nd circuitboard just use some redundancy and you can leave the old one in.
And how would a human clear smudge off a camera lense umm if you wipe a cloth over any optics in that enviernment it's going to scratch them up. So you could shake or a robot could blow on them "human could only do that inside or with compressed air canister like a robot" OR Just send 10 of them and switch them out when somthing goes wrong.
As to building things um robots build things all the time.
pretty pictures: We have already sent robots that use a drill to gather samples and vaperise the content's and tell you what there made out of.
Don't forget it going to cost somewhere around 10 - 100+ times the cost to send 1 human to marse as it would to send one robot. And a maned misstion would cost somewhere around 1000X as much 8 man team * 2 years food + air + beds + sink + char+...
vs 50 * 500LB robot's or 5000 * the 5lb things we have been sending.
Lets just say you can get a ship going at 10% light speed great you now got to the next star but your far to old to do anythign all that usefull so you need a ship that can hold a self sustaning poplulation for the trip there and long enough to mine astroids till you can build a new ship. A ship like that takes one hell of a lot more fuel than you might think. Basicly fustion is the only way to get there.
And with that teck there is no way to get back. I say we hit the stars in 1000 years when doing so would do some good but there is little point now. Hell every 1$ you spend on a trip to mars vs fustion teck is only going to make it take longer to get to the stars.
If you use humans on mars you can't get a picture of the whole planit at 1ft resolution. You could with flying robots. Honetly, can you thing of any data scientifc data that a human trip could get that a robot could not colect cheeper. Ok mabe not as fast but I can wait a year to save a few BILLION.
As to servival why send a human to build habitats on other planets untill your sending 1000+ people in a self sustand enviernment there is little point. Hell if you were going to send people to mars I say send a robot first to BUILD the habitat and grow the plants. Then after your habitat has been around for 3 years then send people. Shure, 1000 people on mars would be cool but could they mine the iorn ore to make there habitat larger? How about building micro chip's to replace broken parts? Hell how about building new homes for people who are born on mars? Once your there you can't breath the air. The soil is still rock dust not soil so you need to break it down before you could use it to grow anything. I could see us making a foot hold on marse in 50 years. And having somthign self sustaning in 150 years but as of right now what's the point in sending somone to walk around marse for a few months then goign home.
As somone who hit max lvl 65 and then quit the game I would like to point out that the is a content cap for people who don't "raid"
They just created an expantion where people needed to have a lvl of power only reachable by those who "raided" or where willing to take insane risks to progress. They set it up so you need to pass several tryals to keep going but it does not matter how many times youu finish the last one you can do you can't progress with out finishing up POP/"the plain of time"
What people forget is limiting the game / content to people who take some action removes any posiblity for progrestion in the game for those who don't take it. If I where to spend 1000hours of game time grinding exp in one of 6 zones (LDoN) I could finaly get the gear / exp to to move up a few zones in (GoD) but as somone who spends 10 hours a week playing we are talking about 2 years of game time just to leave the old zones. Shure the game is fun but as power increased so would bordom.
The way I see it every 50-150 hours of game time / 3 months of real life time you should be able to visit a new zone or set of zones. One of the clasic EQ methods of slowing things down is needing 30+ people to get one person something. So if everyone want's the item / key then they need to do help kill the mob 30 times. Shure this slows things down but it's BORING. If you cap progrestion in EQ or limit to the point where a non power gamer can't function then what's the point.
If I could spend 50 hours a week playing EQ there is content to keep me progressing for about 2 years at which point I would have 2 years worth of new content to work though ect. But, like many people I reached the point in progrestion where most people who don't play all that much quit or start over becouse there is no conent so they don't make that content cuz who would be there to play it? The way I see it I finished EQ and it's time to move on. Like most games there is content I did not find but there is no point to doing every quest in an RPG. I hit the max lvl it's time to move on.
Humans are more adaptable than any machine that can currently be built for any price
Humans walking around on the earth are one thing but once you want to start taking data that's something else. Sure a person can pick up a rock but other than saying it's blue they can't realy tell you anything about it. With a robot you can send 10x the number of tools to get work done than you can with a human. So you end up with a hell of a lot more scientific data for any given cost. Not to mention risk what hapends if your 20billion rocket blows up on the trip you just spent 20BILLION and got nothing. With robots you spend.5billion your sending 40 trips vs 1 and have a much better chance of at least doing somthing.
As to the whole Hubble thing I read a study that pointed out we could have sent up 6 of the things using unmand space flight vs the cost of using the shuttle to get it up there and fix the thing.
Sending people into space cost losts of money and there is little ROI as of right now. OK fine when people can start living on the moon that's one thing but honestly robots handle science as well if not better than people do.
PS: "You always have to have a mechanism to bring them home." you can do this cheeper with unmand flight as there is no point in sending the robot back. And you only do it when there is some reason to.
Just a little advice from somone who pick up programming at a young age started at 8 but did not realy get into it till I was 12. Your going to find your self with a lot of time on your hands over the next few years chances are your CS classes are not going to teach you all that much.
If your looking to learn more about programmig don't just pick op languages ad hock pick a few that are difrent so you can learn those modes of thought then it's more a question of what Libuary's your going to use than the language.
ASM for 2 difrent CPU's say x86 (feel free to limit yourself to say 486) and power PC (g4 and or g5 there a big jump.) It's nice to know how your CPU thinks and there are some cool ASM tricks out there but your going to find it takes an ass tun of code to do some things and almost none to do others. It's a fun world but if you want to get somthing done there are far better places to be. PS: Never forget the true power of XOR fallowed by IF.
Pascal: So that you might learn joy. Your code will do what you think it's going to do. INT and LONGINT are difrent things. It's vary like ASM in that the code tends to express what your doing at each step along the way. None of this BigBox.add(list[4]^.little_sheep.GetName("1st")) but unlike ASM your not going to mix up a 4byte Int with a 4 byte float 1/2 way though your program. If you think of it as writing ASM that is readable your not going to miss out on a lot of the "cool" tricks ASM brings to the table.
C: after a little ASM exp your going to start reading this as condenced ASM insead of a language. It's fast but you can write things that look like there doing one thing when there doing somthing else. AKA are you adding 1 to the data value of that pointer or the data that pointer is pointing to. It's great if you want to write some inline ASM for crunching numbers but still want simple IO.
C++: yea you probably "know it" already but it's a good way to look at OOP as more than just a way to group functions. Just stat messing around with abstract classes for a little while and it will sudenly make sence. Powerfull enough to make you want to write somthing usefull borken enough to make you regret trying to use it. It's a horable language but everyone knows it. Reminds me of engish in many ways.
Java: Wrire once run anywhere well mostly. Once you know ASM / C on 2 difrent systems you start to look at java in a new light. It's not perfect but aslong as it's not a real time system chances are JAVA is the way to go. Just rember alocaating memory is SLOW and you can write some complex and fast java code.
PEARL: There is a tun of pearl code out there and it's funny what they consider a project. I mean come on if your modifing the code base whenever you want to change somthing your doing somthing wrong. But damm it's great if you want to do somthing like set up a web page index with groupings based on the directory the file is in.
After that you might want to look into ADA or cobal to see why they did what they did your visual BASIC to have some GUI fun. It's funny but after you know each of the above picking somthing new up starts becomeing more an isue of what's the sintax than anything else. You find you know just what you want to do and how you want to do it but you keep forgeting the function names and or the sintax of what your coding in.
O yea grep, diff and VI are your best friends in UNIX coding learn them well. And if your going to start a large project set up some sort of CVS / verstion controwl with not taking above and beyond more coments. It's great to trace though the changes to a buggy function over time and see just where you forgot to change something.
Programming by it's self is not going to get you rich but it's a great background for learning most systems. The simple truth is 90% of your effert only takes things from 90% compleated to 95% compleation. So your never going to "finish" project's your just going to get them close enoug
LOL, it's not a bad idea but for the most part government deficte spening has little effect unless it drasticly chages things.
Taxes deside how muney is spent. That's all.
The rate of gov spending is far less important than who has money. If a poor person has money the spend it. If a rich person has money they save it or invest it conservitivly. If a middle income perosn has it they invest it agressivly. Or spend it quicly.
When intrest rates are low people spend more money. That has a far greater inpact then the net defict. (Look at the numbers ignorning Social Security and devide that by total us cash flow and open your eyes.)
I've personally never encountered anything that had fewer than three spatial dimensions.
No? How about your shadow there on the floor? How many dimensions does it have?
Shadow are still in 3d don't forget it start's at your body and ends on the floor. And even if your only going to talk about that part of the shadow that hit's the floor it's still 3d as the floor is not flat. Nor is it of 0 depth. Not to mention shadows also have color or alleast variations in intensity as the boundary at the edge of shadows are fuzzy becouse there light sorces are not point sorces. So you can say there 4d or even 5d if you count Time.
Slashdot Mirror
Agree at least around here it seems like getting a Masters is the equivalent to a rather inane sort of brain washing where they can't help but spit out the same solution to all problems. I find 90% of my job trivial, 9% sufficiently complex to be interesting and that last 1% is just HARD. But, unlike many, I don't just skip over that last few percent of my job that gets a little complex and say "well this works most of the time Ill get to the rest when the bug reports start showing up".
Ex: When I first showed up I was handed a project that had 6MB of Object Pascal source code and no documentation. My boss said I want this documented but at the same time learn it. Well great it's 3,000 + objects that create a GUI for a real time system, it's back in database, and report system all of which form a single executable with a lot of dead code just for fun. Great; so is there a user manual so I can trace things from the GUI through the code and get some idea what's going on? Nope but you can talk with bill over there a few hours a week he's been supporting the software for several years and should point you in the right direction...
Now if this was really all they wanted fine I could have spent 6-12 months and diagramed most of the system but they wanted me to start modifying the source code ASAP. So what I did was write something that tracked which instances of which objects where associated to what variables so I could track which functions of which object called what function of what object and trace though the code. Now finding out how to track which object was being called at runtime from a dynamic system may have been the "HARD" part but when 2 days of real work saves you 4 months it's worth it. IMO.
Programming is a balancing act between cost, speed, stability, usability, and adaptability. It's not a question of can I get something to work its a question of what you trade off when you pick each of the billions of solutions to any given problem.
-Computer psychologist looking for a better job.
Re:Welcome to life
2 options you live for the next 5 seconds or you die.
But there is a better than 50/50 chance that you will live.
2 options does not mean 50/50 split.
Sorry, I was not trying to say it was futile I was trying to represent changing that as a cost not worth paying.
While it's a little hard to respond to someone who point's to a book and say's "this is what I think" I am going to try and come up with one. While "young" I have been exposed to a wide variety of eastern and western belief systems. I have yet to form a consistent set of beliefs nor have I adapted any belief system. Yet like most people who think about such things I have tried to move beyond "I don't know" and have more or less taken up the perspective while "harm" or "pain" is bad / negative while pleasure and or growth is positive. Therefore I should promote the latter in my self and others while trying to avoid the former. But, this basic guild line is incapable of dealing with many situations.
AKA Does a mother have the right to kill a fetus growing within her?
Now when presented with a far more complex system like say the US government such a simple rule is going to be hard to apply. Governments don't just deal with 2 people they can have 2,500 groups of 100,000 people which each want different things. Once you start talking about something that complex you need to start thinking about the interactions more than the events. And so when you see someone get a check for 2000$ you need to see not just the fact that came out of several people's pockets but also the group that got that cash gave up something as well.
Ok so now to have money you need to do one of 3 things.
Produce something of value.
Take it from someone else.
Invest / risk money.
Now these are interrelated but over the long term I say people who have a lot of money tend to be people who invest so handing money to have money and that invest it is not a bad thing. I don't think all money should be invested but (EX:) to have fusion power we need people to invest in those technologies. And at least some of that money that goes to the power companies that build nuke power plants will go that way. QED. It's not evil.
Now, we could spend 2,000,000,000,000 $ and have the technologies to start building fusion power stations in 10 years. But that would cost a lot of money from a lot of other uses. As far as I know it would lead to a net positive outcome but at what cost?
I am not saying that a tax break for the rich is a "good" thing but other than being less than optimal I just look at it as one of the results of a system that over time tends to work better than most others. And so I don't look at such graft as anything other than inefficiency in a system that was made by humans.
There are many things that you could do that would help humanity out but most of them are being done so it's more a question of how which of the many things that help humanity out should we do and how much of what resource should we expend doing them. I look at the people who say give me that money as a counter balance to the people who wish to spread it out evenly and those like me who want to invest as much of it as we can.
PS: I did read the reviews but they where leading me to believe that there was far more pseudo science than new ideas in that book so I would normally skip it. However, if you can point out what idea(s) you agree with / gained from that book / feel is best represented there I may just go order it anyway.
"reread the article"
.05% of your tax money which... o NM. Just have fun chances are good that anger you feel is going to do little more than get you killed. So if you want to deal with the problem fine hell if you just want some of that money fine but go live your life and don't wast your time being pissed off over the 250,000,000+ eople that are fighting over how to spend 1/2 your money.
Umm, first off are you talking about an article other than Squeezing Coal To Reduce Emissions? cuz unless i missed something it's not talking about nukes at all.
And 2nd I am sorry but I know money changes hands all the time honestly everybody's hand is in the government pot. It's realy the basic inificency of representive government. But, for those who wish to trade there "vote" for money fine with me I have other isues I want addressed. So I will vote for your powerplant if you will vote for my school... Graft is a basic function of the system we have. Now I know the rich keep geting richer but there are many things that keep them in balance aka fixed pot of gold and many many hands. But, anyway Nukes provide the US with about as much power as they can "you can't tourn them on and off very quickly" which limits how much we can rely on them right now. So like most utility's there a good investment if you care more about not losing your money than makeing a killing but that's about it. (limited grouth potential)
I don't know some things like insider trading bother me. But, as long as your open about the fact you want a hand out (farmers) fine with me. It's a dog eat dog world and when you notice the game everyone else is playing you can start to deal with the world and not bemone how you wish it would operate. Shure I would pay less in taxes and have more money then again I could also tip less and have more money. I look at social security as money stolen from me but it's all part of the same system so I can deal with that. Yes the government takes about 1/2 the money I make fine it sucks but I still have more moeny than I know what to do with so I realy don't give a damm.
Well fine if you think the fact that around 0.1% of your tax money is being given to nuke power people fine feel free to do somthing about it. I don't realy stress over it that much. Afterall the government is going to take 1/2 of it back anyway so we are realy talking about
PS: Feel free to coment if you have gotten this far I do wander what you thingk about this.
"f you think that having the ability to go BACKWARDS(to areas where nothing has changed, so you don't really have any need to go there) or wielding different weapons is CHOICE then you really haven't played any game that really gives you choice on how to advance. "
Umm I deside which wepon to kill most mobs with. In HL I do need to follow the script but I can deside to do somethings difrent with out diening which is a level of choice Which is a hell of a lot better than up or die; left or die; a or die;...; Afterall most of the time I just need to get past the mobs killing them is optional. Try playing HL on easy and see how few mobs you can kill then tell me about choice.
So your saying Nuclear power has cost this contry over 10 billion $ a year and provides 20+% of our electricity... Sounds reasonable to me.
:) I think we need to design systems that handle such waste for 100,000 years at which point it's going to be fairly safe hell people may want to mine it at that point to get the usfull materials back. Afterall when the holy grail of power generation shows up fusion it's still going to generate some nuclear waste, not all that much granted but some.
Most of the early cost's where R&D much of which went to making bomb's. Now as to the gov giving 2billion a year to the nuclear power that's not realy that out of bounds either look what we have given the airlines. But, in anycase as money was spend on R&D USING that money would make more sence than saying well this is working teck but it cost alot of money to develope so we are going to drop it.
Nuclear power is dangerous but, so is the polution caused by most other energy sorces. I think it would be best stored in the middle of the ocean 4 miles under the ocean + a few 100 feet of rock. But, while it's the most reasonable place to put such things nobody is going to sugest doing that to the UN anytime soon. Honestly, no power sorce is realy safe afterall the "best" power sorce we have (solar) causes canser
Most lifeforms on earth would servive a gobal nuclear war. Then again most lifeforms on earth are single celled life forms that don't mind radiation the same way us multi celled life forms do.
Interesting but I think they're going to need to work out how to prevent bone loss if you're going to hibernate for a significant portion of the time in space. Anyway I hope there going for a basic science approach to the subject because if dobutamine maintains muscle mass during hibernation and it help's with coma/bed-ridden patients then it might also be useful as a safe way to boost muscle mass in the elderly or even just the lazy.
Interesting but I think they're going to need to work out how to prevent bone loss if you're going to hibernate for a significant portion of the time in space. Anyway I hope there going for a basic science approach to the subject because if dobutamine maintains muscle mass during hibernation then it might also help with coma/bed-ridden patients.
I don't like going to "a 'traditional' book shop." because there selection sucks. There are 2 advantages to going to a book store the fact that you get the book as soon as you walk out the door and you can read the back cover / first few pages before buying the book.
If I can have a basicly unlimited selection and can preview the book before buying it AND get it within a few min of looking at it via an E-Book / online shoping WHY would I go to a book store?
I don't think there is any point to leaving sol behind till we have less than 1/2 the human population living on earth. That's the point where we know how to live in space / build ship's and mine / produce everythign we need once we get there.
It's unless people start living a few 100 years it's going to be a one way trip. I dont' think we are going to send one ship and i don't think we are going to get there anyfaster than 1-5% the speed of light. If all your going to do is have your great grand kids end up there why not spend 1/4 as much and have your great great great grand kids finsh the trip. Then once there there they build up to 10 or so billion population and start working on a few more star's. Planit's are nice but once we move into space there going to become pointless. Hell we may get to the point where just break them up to creat more useable living space at some point. And who knows in a few million years we may start breaking apart star's for there hydrogen.
I am not thinking of space ship's as boat's that pick things up and come back I am thinking of space ship but as fleet's as self sustaning systems that can last for 1000+ year's and can feed off of hydrogen and ore's to grow and move on.
Ok we are probably going to send people to the next star before that point but It's a waste IMO.
Hmm, I am not saying we send somthing to marse that can build a house from a pile of part's spread over 100 miles of open space but how about this as a plain. We send a post holl diger robot with a few hundred post's to pound them in about 20 feet and then cut them so there off of the serface by about 4 feet. Then we prefab some deacking that will fit over these post's and set up a nice grid that has atachment point's every 12 inches in any direction.
Then we send a robot crain to pace the prefab floor and walls and heating unit on the thing. Then we break out the algie tanks (prefab) which conect to a storage tank that's made from a few prefab apart's. Which has a built in guage to tell when there is a 6-12 month's worth of 02 stored. And finaly add a roof to the thing. Then we need to make it air tight by using some sort of robot that adds rezen of some sort at the joint's or have them self seal. If any of this stuff fails (part or robot) send a new robot / part to do it's job. Now once a house is on there we may deside to send some people to live there or we could have those robot's build 10 or 20 more of the things but the whole idea is if you send a person you need to send them everything they need for 6 month's because if it fails your in DEEP shit. But, with robot's if they fail your ok cuz you can build in 15% more money in the budget to send it's replacement, where with people you need to send a full set of everthing and it's replacment and everthing has to work the first time. Which includes people, which makes the whole thing even worse.
OK ok you could just send O2 Tanks but 6-8 months 02 is going to be fucking heavy and it's a once off I want to KNOW I can have people living there for 5 - 10 years before I send anyone down there. Cuz I don't want torest's I want colenitst's.
IF I had somthing that was watter tight, had a screen that looked like your reading off of paper, and whose battery lasted for a week, had a great interface, and had 10,000 books in memory would you still want to use a book?
I know I would. Yea, most ebooks suck but in 25 years when my vistion stats to fade I may find that generation of e-books better because I can set them to an obserd fount size. But, yea I still buy and read books but here is to hoping for somthing better.
I said "probably use" shure there might be a methiod to crack it in non exponential time that works on any key lenght but it's basided on the idea that A key that just because you can factar X in reasonable time does not mean you can factor x^2 in reasonable time. Hell if something is only 1,000,000 times harder to crack than to generate it's almost worthless but if you spend 1 day generating it would still take 3 years on 1000 cpu's of your speed to crack which would make finantial transations safe.
Anyway Nobody has cracked a true one time pad because you CAN"T and at some point we are going to find that there are key lenght's that we can't crack ex: Chances are we will never be able to crack a 9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^9)))))) bit key at the same time we will never be able to generate a key of that size hell I don't think we could ever store somthing that large.
Hint: I am talkinga about 9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^387420489)))))
9^387420489 has more than 3874204 decimal diget's
9^(9^387420489) has more than 10^3680493 diget's which would take about a 1mb of storage to hold and could be generated but 9^(9^(9^387420489)) is way to large to comprehend it's number of diget's let alone deal with.
9^(9^(9^(9^(9^(9^387420489))))) is way to large to comprehend it's number of diget's let alone deal with.
Even if computing power starts doubling every day there comes a point where that's not fast enough to deal with some problems before 10^1000 years have past.
Shure we might crack RSA in a fastion that makes it useless hell I think most people deside to use key lenghts that are way to short knowing that it's ok to have your encription broken in 20 years by anyone that want's to devote a few grand on it as long as 10 years from now it's not breakable by anyone. But, I don't think it's reasonable to say we will always beable to crack every system of sending data securly at some point.
Not realy you can probably use an RSA encription methiod with a non fixed key lenght by testing the speed of your CPU and find a key you can generate in 1min and your set from now till QM comes around. Heh I still think QM is just going back to analog computing where acuracy is limited by your ability to detect the output in which case you can just use a Vary Good QM to create somthing that can't be broken in reasonable time.
What needs to happen is the device needs to cost 49.99 and come with two or three books I'd actually read.
Agree but I am fine with 100$ and 1/2 off your first 4 books and 25% off the rest. I just don't think it's a good idea for ebooks to cost as much as a normal book.
If you went into a book store with your ebook, you could turn it on and download the first couple chapters of a book. Then if you liked what you read, you could hit a button and it would download the rest of book and charge your credit card.
Why would you need to be in a book store to do this?
subsurface samples: Ever hear of a drill how about a earh crain?
...
vs 50 * 500LB robot's or 5000 * the 5lb things we have been sending.
tire goes flat: There not using air filled tire's.
circuitboard if it breaks: If your sending a 2nd circuitboard just use some redundancy and you can leave the old one in.
And how would a human clear smudge off a camera lense umm if you wipe a cloth over any optics in that enviernment it's going to scratch them up. So you could shake or a robot could blow on them "human could only do that inside or with compressed air canister like a robot" OR Just send 10 of them and switch them out when somthing goes wrong.
As to building things um robots build things all the time.
pretty pictures: We have already sent robots that use a drill to gather samples and vaperise the content's and tell you what there made out of.
Don't forget it going to cost somewhere around 10 - 100+ times the cost to send 1 human to marse as it would to send one robot. And a maned misstion would cost somewhere around 1000X as much 8 man team * 2 years food + air + beds + sink + char+
Lets just say you can get a ship going at 10% light speed great you now got to the next star but your far to old to do anythign all that usefull so you need a ship that can hold a self sustaning poplulation for the trip there and long enough to mine astroids till you can build a new ship. A ship like that takes one hell of a lot more fuel than you might think. Basicly fustion is the only way to get there.
And with that teck there is no way to get back. I say we hit the stars in 1000 years when doing so would do some good but there is little point now. Hell every 1$ you spend on a trip to mars vs fustion teck is only going to make it take longer to get to the stars.
If you use humans on mars you can't get a picture of the whole planit at 1ft resolution. You could with flying robots. Honetly, can you thing of any data scientifc data that a human trip could get that a robot could not colect cheeper. Ok mabe not as fast but I can wait a year to save a few BILLION.
As to servival why send a human to build habitats on other planets untill your sending 1000+ people in a self sustand enviernment there is little point. Hell if you were going to send people to mars I say send a robot first to BUILD the habitat and grow the plants. Then after your habitat has been around for 3 years then send people. Shure, 1000 people on mars would be cool but could they mine the iorn ore to make there habitat larger? How about building micro chip's to replace broken parts? Hell how about building new homes for people who are born on mars? Once your there you can't breath the air. The soil is still rock dust not soil so you need to break it down before you could use it to grow anything. I could see us making a foot hold on marse in 50 years. And having somthign self sustaning in 150 years but as of right now what's the point in sending somone to walk around marse for a few months then goign home.
As somone who hit max lvl 65 and then quit the game I would like to point out that the is a content cap for people who don't "raid"
They just created an expantion where people needed to have a lvl of power only reachable by those who "raided" or where willing to take insane risks to progress. They set it up so you need to pass several tryals to keep going but it does not matter how many times youu finish the last one you can do you can't progress with out finishing up POP/"the plain of time"
What people forget is limiting the game / content to people who take some action removes any posiblity for progrestion in the game for those who don't take it. If I where to spend 1000hours of game time grinding exp in one of 6 zones (LDoN) I could finaly get the gear / exp to to move up a few zones in (GoD) but as somone who spends 10 hours a week playing we are talking about 2 years of game time just to leave the old zones. Shure the game is fun but as power increased so would bordom.
The way I see it every 50-150 hours of game time / 3 months of real life time you should be able to visit a new zone or set of zones. One of the clasic EQ methods of slowing things down is needing 30+ people to get one person something. So if everyone want's the item / key then they need to do help kill the mob 30 times. Shure this slows things down but it's BORING. If you cap progrestion in EQ or limit to the point where a non power gamer can't function then what's the point.
If I could spend 50 hours a week playing EQ there is content to keep me progressing for about 2 years at which point I would have 2 years worth of new content to work though ect. But, like many people I reached the point in progrestion where most people who don't play all that much quit or start over becouse there is no conent so they don't make that content cuz who would be there to play it? The way I see it I finished EQ and it's time to move on. Like most games there is content I did not find but there is no point to doing every quest in an RPG. I hit the max lvl it's time to move on.
Humans are more adaptable than any machine that can currently be built for any price
.5billion your sending 40 trips vs 1 and have a much better chance of at least doing somthing.
Humans walking around on the earth are one thing but once you want to start taking data that's something else. Sure a person can pick up a rock but other than saying it's blue they can't realy tell you anything about it. With a robot you can send 10x the number of tools to get work done than you can with a human. So you end up with a hell of a lot more scientific data for any given cost. Not to mention risk what hapends if your 20billion rocket blows up on the trip you just spent 20BILLION and got nothing. With robots you spend
As to the whole Hubble thing I read a study that pointed out we could have sent up 6 of the things using unmand space flight vs the cost of using the shuttle to get it up there and fix the thing.
Sending people into space cost losts of money and there is little ROI as of right now. OK fine when people can start living on the moon that's one thing but honestly robots handle science as well if not better than people do.
PS: "You always have to have a mechanism to bring them home." you can do this cheeper with unmand flight as there is no point in sending the robot back. And you only do it when there is some reason to.
Just a little advice from somone who pick up programming at a young age started at 8 but did not realy get into it till I was 12. Your going to find your self with a lot of time on your hands over the next few years chances are your CS classes are not going to teach you all that much.
If your looking to learn more about programmig don't just pick op languages ad hock pick a few that are difrent so you can learn those modes of thought then it's more a question of what Libuary's your going to use than the language.
ASM for 2 difrent CPU's say x86 (feel free to limit yourself to say 486) and power PC (g4 and or g5 there a big jump.) It's nice to know how your CPU thinks and there are some cool ASM tricks out there but your going to find it takes an ass tun of code to do some things and almost none to do others. It's a fun world but if you want to get somthing done there are far better places to be. PS: Never forget the true power of XOR fallowed by IF.
Pascal: So that you might learn joy. Your code will do what you think it's going to do. INT and LONGINT are difrent things. It's vary like ASM in that the code tends to express what your doing at each step along the way. None of this BigBox.add(list[4]^.little_sheep.GetName("1st")) but unlike ASM your not going to mix up a 4byte Int with a 4 byte float 1/2 way though your program. If you think of it as writing ASM that is readable your not going to miss out on a lot of the "cool" tricks ASM brings to the table.
C: after a little ASM exp your going to start reading this as condenced ASM insead of a language. It's fast but you can write things that look like there doing one thing when there doing somthing else. AKA are you adding 1 to the data value of that pointer or the data that pointer is pointing to. It's great if you want to write some inline ASM for crunching numbers but still want simple IO.
C++: yea you probably "know it" already but it's a good way to look at OOP as more than just a way to group functions. Just stat messing around with abstract classes for a little while and it will sudenly make sence. Powerfull enough to make you want to write somthing usefull borken enough to make you regret trying to use it. It's a horable language but everyone knows it. Reminds me of engish in many ways.
Java: Wrire once run anywhere well mostly. Once you know ASM / C on 2 difrent systems you start to look at java in a new light. It's not perfect but aslong as it's not a real time system chances are JAVA is the way to go. Just rember alocaating memory is SLOW and you can write some complex and fast java code.
PEARL: There is a tun of pearl code out there and it's funny what they consider a project. I mean come on if your modifing the code base whenever you want to change somthing your doing somthing wrong. But damm it's great if you want to do somthing like set up a web page index with groupings based on the directory the file is in.
After that you might want to look into ADA or cobal to see why they did what they did your visual BASIC to have some GUI fun. It's funny but after you know each of the above picking somthing new up starts becomeing more an isue of what's the sintax than anything else. You find you know just what you want to do and how you want to do it but you keep forgeting the function names and or the sintax of what your coding in.
O yea grep, diff and VI are your best friends in UNIX coding learn them well. And if your going to start a large project set up some sort of CVS / verstion controwl with not taking above and beyond more coments. It's great to trace though the changes to a buggy function over time and see just where you forgot to change something.
Programming by it's self is not going to get you rich but it's a great background for learning most systems. The simple truth is 90% of your effert only takes things from 90% compleated to 95% compleation. So your never going to "finish" project's your just going to get them close enoug
Not realy up to the second on this but MCI faield to deliver and is NTFS back with AT&T. Though I think they lost the contract again.
Man (National Federal Telephone service) is one huge FUBAR if there ever was one.
LOL, it's not a bad idea but for the most part government deficte spening has little effect unless it drasticly chages things.
Taxes deside how muney is spent. That's all.
The rate of gov spending is far less important than who has money. If a poor person has money the spend it. If a rich person has money they save it or invest it conservitivly. If a middle income perosn has it they invest it agressivly. Or spend it quicly.
When intrest rates are low people spend more money. That has a far greater inpact then the net defict. (Look at the numbers ignorning Social Security and devide that by total us cash flow and open your eyes.)
I've personally never encountered anything that had fewer than three spatial dimensions.
No? How about your shadow there on the floor? How many dimensions does it have?
Shadow are still in 3d don't forget it start's at your body and ends on the floor. And even if your only going to talk about that part of the shadow that hit's the floor it's still 3d as the floor is not flat. Nor is it of 0 depth. Not to mention shadows also have color or alleast variations in intensity as the boundary at the edge of shadows are fuzzy becouse there light sorces are not point sorces. So you can say there 4d or even 5d if you count Time.