McMaster is not exactly cheap in this area - although they do have everything. Surplus houses might serve you better if you're interested in putting a junk box together.
It should also be noted that all of those fancy gears and shafts and things don't work like LEGOs do. You need at least some kind of machine shop just to put two bearings on a shaft, in many cases (real ball bearings and hardened shafts don't have the kind of slop that legos have, so you'll have to line up the two bearings very precisely, on the order of thousandths of an inch). But don't be discouraged! You'd be surprised how much you can do with even a little lathe and a drill press.
This is particularly true of the Cistercian order, to which the lasermonks belong. In the middle ages, they were a sort of poor newcomer compared to the Benedictines or Dominicans, and therefore were given only marginal, hilly lands for their monasteries. Thereby short on income, they developed their monasteries into high-tech medieval factories, doing things like textile production or metalwork with waterpowered machines (water power being one asset they did have in the mountains). Cistercian cloth was among the finest in Europe, and overall the order was one of the leading technological or commercial organizations of the time.
Re:Snow Crash & Corporatism
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 1
Where did they work? That wasn't made explicit, really, but the burbclaves weren't arcologies where people live AND work so much as an extension of real life suburban housing developments. They may have had their own laws, but the residents got in their cars and drove outside to work like they do in our world.
"the liberty of not worring about gun owning idiot shoting me"? You can invent any kind of "rights" you like with sophomoric arguments of that kind. For instance, you have claimed a right to alter other people's behaviour (gun ownership) because it might make you nervous! That doesn't strike you as just a bit arrogant?
You will undoubtably come back with "I misspoke when I said I had a right to not worry; what I meant to say is I have a right to not get shot" (true as far as it goes). But instituting gun control on that basis means that you are infringing upon another person's rights because of what he MIGHT do in the future - and we accept risks of that kind constantly. More practically, your argument also requires a conclusive statistical link to exist between gun control and reduced gun violence, something which has never been obtained (in different areas such studies have been found to go either way - clearly there is much more at work than simply the gun control).
You are also obliged to ignore other risks. For one, I can turn your tactic against you with this statement: "I would love the liberty of not worrying about a tyrannical government oppressing an unarmed populace". What about those who manufacture guns? They would claim that their jobs are theirs by right as well. This is obviously a crock, but the argument is exactly analogous to yours, and an example of the kind of political "debate" that prevails when such inflation of rights becomes fashionable. Therefore, to clarify your thinking, I will give you a simple rule to employ when considering whether you really do have a natural right to something: your rights end where mine begin. And that's all you really need to know about it.
Actually, I apologize. I read your post as "men are not needed to staff the GLOBAL ECONOMY", not "men are not needed to staff the SPACE PROGRAM". That does make it rather different. Still, suggesting that I should go into politics is below the belt, sir!
Is that so? Are the machines designing themselves? Or do you believe that more jobs in the mines is what the global economy needs? Even on Earth, those jobs have become more and more automated. Humans have shown no sign of redundancy yet.
Very reasonable, actually. But also fair, by this logic, is the old British tradition of keeping those on the dole from voting, as they have a conflict of interest in the public sphere.
Don't even try, jimbo. People that can unironically parrot that line "massive tax cuts for the wealthy" cannot be educated. "The economy sucks" is the same kind of article of faith for them.
Anyway, is the rent-a-cop future necessarily SO bad? Does Stephenson even think that? Snow Crash didn't come off as the typical corporate dystopia cyberpunk novel, it was more of a mild parody of the genre - and the future in it had a surprisingly positive, light-hearted feel. Sure, the whites-only "burbclaves" existed, but so did pockets of freedom like Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong. And you are free to choose, after all, an argument that makes a hell of a lot more sense when the next "country" is a block away than it does when some statist says something like "if you don't like paying half of your income to 'society', maybe you should find yourself another country!".
I'm not saying I agree with the RIIA and I don't believe a law enforcement composed strictly of pinkertons would be an ideal state of affairs (I'm a libertarian, not a anarchist), but I DO think such a world would not be as obviously dreadful as you make it out to be. Actually, I rather imagine it would be no worse than our society is now. Which brings me to your unexpectedly comical conclusion: "That is why I pay taxes - so I can have a FAIR and UNBIASED bunch of law enforcement". Where the hell do YOU live?! Can I move there too? And how much in taxes do you have to pay, to keep your cops honest?
Actually, this IS that country. Perhaps YOU ought to leave, if you don't like liberty and self-responsibility. And a country where you're free to leave if the laws are arbitrary and idiotic is not what I call a "free country" - that's what I call a lame tactic for shutting down the debate.
"Even the police can not shot someone for stealing"
Interesting assumption buried there. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the police should be MORE limited than private individuals, not less - but I've always tried to resist the authoritarian impulse. I'd rather have deadly force distributed widely among the citizens than monopolized by professionals.
Re:I loved the audiobook (O&C).
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 1
No, it WAS Snow Crash. If you were disappointed, it's because Stephenson doesn't think like you do. /meDucks as his smartass comment is sure to draw retribution!
Re:I loved the audiobook (O&C).
on
Oryx and Crake
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't know about your reading of Snow Crash. Stephenson didn't seem too interested in warning us of "dangerous corporatism" - Gibson had done that already, and Snow Crash is more like a parody of the corporate feudalism theme. Nor was Stephenson pining for a "tranditional government social balance" - the remains of the government are treated more harshly than any other organization in Snow Crash.
Finally, the book was not apocalyptic. It was placed in a setting most would associate with apocalyptic fiction, true, but this environment was played for laughs and came across as genuinely optimistic in the end. That unexpected reversal is exactly how Snow Crash brought cyberpunk to an end - the corporate dystopia idea seemed kind of ridiculous afterward.
No, the real question is not how the Hulk manages to be heavy and light at the same time, but how he gains that mass in the first place - if Banner just 'inflates', the Hulk would weigh no more than he does! So where does the extra mass come from? And what about energy to move all of that mass around?
Because the presence or absence of encrypted data is also a kind of information which you might not want to reveal to the enemy. Still vulnerable to analysis, maybe, but only if they think to do it.
"I'm curious what HE is defining his in terms of, because he seems to be waffling regarding whom he is pandering to lately."
What exactly do you mean by this?
"Dude, you've just lost all credibility! How about some public records?"
That statement was issued as a diplomatic posture to browbeat recalcitrant nations - something I for one have no problem with (and there are few indeed among heads of state that haven't said something similar). But in your original post, you were clearly talking about something different: some kind of censorship or quashing of domestic dissent, which hasn't happened at all as you describe it.
"the founding fathers were practically bleeding-heart socialists of the era."
Absurd. Your greatest error is that you believe in a dichotomy between "equal rights and personal dignity" on one hand, and "dog-eat-dog anarchy" (presumably what you call capitalism) on the other. This is a result of the wrong-headed belief that personal dignity, etc, is possible without the protection of property rights and economic freedom. The founders of America could not have been more different from what you imagine. Here are just a few quotes, out of many delicious possibilities:
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring
one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their
own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the
mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good
government, and all that is necessary to close the circle of our
felicities." -- Thomas Jefferson
Doesn't leave much room for modern-day socialist welfare institutions, does it? Try this one:
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth
part." -- Benjamin Franklin
Ha! A 10% tax burden practically consitutes a libertarian paradise these days! Or:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the
Constitution which grant[s] a right to Congress of expending, on
objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James Madison
Does that sound like the thinking of a "bleeding-heart"?
I would at least respect, a little bit, a Left that recognized the fact that their philosophy is completely opposed to that of Jefferson, Franklin, et al., and argued against the American tradition from a honest platform. I would think you wrong, but at least I wouldn't think that you were hiding anything. But such lame misreading of documents and willful ignorance of history as claiming that the 2nd Amendment doesn't protect gun rights simply won't do if I am to take your side seriously.
Interesting. I can maybe imagine that it is possible to "overload" the space. It seems like you should be able to put as many frequencies as you want into the air, but when you leave the pure world of the idealized frequency domain and consider real air molecules vibrating back and forth... well, I can at least guess that something interesting might happen there (maybe something that can only be heard in certain exceptional cases), that I at least don't have the complete picture. But that's a lot of vague 2 AM speculation, isn't it?:)
Indeed, many live music buffs do exactly that, recording performances with two microphones clipped onto their glasses, or something like. They say that listening to a recording you made in this way can do a lot to improve your "critical listening" skills - you start to hear all of the deficiencies in your hardware, etc. Me, I'd rather remain content, I guess, than chase those diminishing audiophile returns.
Ahh - spatial placement, now THAT makes sense. Of course, that would also imply that each speaker is placed at a different height - maybe at the center of the "pipe" it represents. I wonder if golden ears could detect the fact that the sound comes more from a "point" than a "line".
I agree with you about the bass, but that doesn't neccessarily require so many channels, just a couple of really powerful subwoofers, as mentioned in the article. By the way, is it true that the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor hits 16 Hz? Neal Stephenson used this fact (if fact it be) as a nice little gimmick in his very first novel _The Big U_ - it was enough to destroy buildings.:)
True enough, I guess.... But I'd be much more inclined to credit the "anti-authoritarianism" of the Left if a Democrat was in office. Defining your politics as the opposite of everything that Bush believes sounds more like an act of whining brats than of defiant revolutionaries. Or were YOU marching against Clinton when he bombed a Sudanese aspirin factory at an extremely convenient (for his political career) time?
As for "if you're not with us you're against us", I've never heard an actual member of the Right issue such a challenge - it seems to be more of a convenient stick for the Left to wield.
Now if you're REALLY ready to be an anti-conformist, anti-authoritarian, maybe you should think about:
1) Supporting gun freedom
2) Working to end the toxic idea that only the official law enforcement is capable of protecting us.
3) Encouraging self-reliance (as opposed to state hand-holding) among the people, in the areas of finance and health care, among others.
4) Letting the people keep more of their money, and assuming, for once, that the people are virtually all decent, and won't spend it on cigarettes and porn while their children go shoeless.
5) Think about NOT just giving that criminal "what he wants". Think about giving him what he NEEDS - like a good whuppin'.
6) Stop focusing on the argument that bringing the war to the middle east "will just make them mad" - I, for one, wouldn't expect someone capable of saying THAT to get out of his seat and wrestle a razor-wielding terrorist to the ground.
Now THESE are the really revolutionary ideas - the ideas of the American Revolution, which has seen much greater success and longevity than any number of Leftist ones. These ideas are what you should consider if you want to see a badass population ready to storm the cockpits. But if you were to adopt this thinking... you'd be more of a Libertarian than a Leftist, wouldn't you?
The article raised more questions than it answered, for me. The part I don't understand is why so many channels are necessary - any loudspeaker will produce polyphony (when cell phones claim to have polyphonic ring tones, it has more to do with the tone generation circuit or software than with the speaker). Maybe someone who knows more about acoustics than I do can answer this one: what is meant by a "massive amount of polyphony"? More frequency content in the spectrum? And are the 74 Epiphany channels matched to 74 original pipes? Does each speaker play only one tone?
Finally, does this also mean that recordings of organ music are poor substitutes for the real thing, since they will be played only on stereo speakers, which are presumably capable of "less" polyphony? I am sure that many organ zeolots have been saying all along that there is no substitute for live performance... but c'mon, my Helmut Walcha CD's don't sound THAT bad, do they?
Get over it people - it doesn't work! This kind of idle design sketch is printed in the likes of Popular Science every month. Bombardier hasn't built anything like this yet. They pulled that 35 MPH number out of their collective ass! Hydrogen fuel cells? Give me a break!
Slashdot Mirror
Like P.J. O'Rourke said, "If you think healthcare's expensive now, wait until it's free".
Like this one, eh?
McMaster is not exactly cheap in this area - although they do have everything. Surplus houses might serve you better if you're interested in putting a junk box together.
It should also be noted that all of those fancy gears and shafts and things don't work like LEGOs do. You need at least some kind of machine shop just to put two bearings on a shaft, in many cases (real ball bearings and hardened shafts don't have the kind of slop that legos have, so you'll have to line up the two bearings very precisely, on the order of thousandths of an inch). But don't be discouraged! You'd be surprised how much you can do with even a little lathe and a drill press.
This is particularly true of the Cistercian order, to which the lasermonks belong. In the middle ages, they were a sort of poor newcomer compared to the Benedictines or Dominicans, and therefore were given only marginal, hilly lands for their monasteries. Thereby short on income, they developed their monasteries into high-tech medieval factories, doing things like textile production or metalwork with waterpowered machines (water power being one asset they did have in the mountains). Cistercian cloth was among the finest in Europe, and overall the order was one of the leading technological or commercial organizations of the time.
Where did they work? That wasn't made explicit, really, but the burbclaves weren't arcologies where people live AND work so much as an extension of real life suburban housing developments. They may have had their own laws, but the residents got in their cars and drove outside to work like they do in our world.
"the liberty of not worring about gun owning idiot shoting me"? You can invent any kind of "rights" you like with sophomoric arguments of that kind. For instance, you have claimed a right to alter other people's behaviour (gun ownership) because it might make you nervous! That doesn't strike you as just a bit arrogant?
You will undoubtably come back with "I misspoke when I said I had a right to not worry; what I meant to say is I have a right to not get shot" (true as far as it goes). But instituting gun control on that basis means that you are infringing upon another person's rights because of what he MIGHT do in the future - and we accept risks of that kind constantly. More practically, your argument also requires a conclusive statistical link to exist between gun control and reduced gun violence, something which has never been obtained (in different areas such studies have been found to go either way - clearly there is much more at work than simply the gun control).
You are also obliged to ignore other risks. For one, I can turn your tactic against you with this statement: "I would love the liberty of not worrying about a tyrannical government oppressing an unarmed populace". What about those who manufacture guns? They would claim that their jobs are theirs by right as well. This is obviously a crock, but the argument is exactly analogous to yours, and an example of the kind of political "debate" that prevails when such inflation of rights becomes fashionable. Therefore, to clarify your thinking, I will give you a simple rule to employ when considering whether you really do have a natural right to something: your rights end where mine begin. And that's all you really need to know about it.
Actually, I apologize. I read your post as "men are not needed to staff the GLOBAL ECONOMY", not "men are not needed to staff the SPACE PROGRAM". That does make it rather different. Still, suggesting that I should go into politics is below the belt, sir!
Is that so? Are the machines designing themselves? Or do you believe that more jobs in the mines is what the global economy needs? Even on Earth, those jobs have become more and more automated. Humans have shown no sign of redundancy yet.
Very reasonable, actually. But also fair, by this logic, is the old British tradition of keeping those on the dole from voting, as they have a conflict of interest in the public sphere.
Don't even try, jimbo. People that can unironically parrot that line "massive tax cuts for the wealthy" cannot be educated. "The economy sucks" is the same kind of article of faith for them.
Anyway, is the rent-a-cop future necessarily SO bad? Does Stephenson even think that? Snow Crash didn't come off as the typical corporate dystopia cyberpunk novel, it was more of a mild parody of the genre - and the future in it had a surprisingly positive, light-hearted feel. Sure, the whites-only "burbclaves" existed, but so did pockets of freedom like Mr Lee's Greater Hong Kong. And you are free to choose, after all, an argument that makes a hell of a lot more sense when the next "country" is a block away than it does when some statist says something like "if you don't like paying half of your income to 'society', maybe you should find yourself another country!".
I'm not saying I agree with the RIIA and I don't believe a law enforcement composed strictly of pinkertons would be an ideal state of affairs (I'm a libertarian, not a anarchist), but I DO think such a world would not be as obviously dreadful as you make it out to be. Actually, I rather imagine it would be no worse than our society is now. Which brings me to your unexpectedly comical conclusion: "That is why I pay taxes - so I can have a FAIR and UNBIASED bunch of law enforcement". Where the hell do YOU live?! Can I move there too? And how much in taxes do you have to pay, to keep your cops honest?
"Even the police can not shot someone for stealing"
Interesting assumption buried there. It seems entirely reasonable to me that the police should be MORE limited than private individuals, not less - but I've always tried to resist the authoritarian impulse. I'd rather have deadly force distributed widely among the citizens than monopolized by professionals.No, it WAS Snow Crash. If you were disappointed, it's because Stephenson doesn't think like you do.
/meDucks as his smartass comment is sure to draw retribution!
I don't know about your reading of Snow Crash. Stephenson didn't seem too interested in warning us of "dangerous corporatism" - Gibson had done that already, and Snow Crash is more like a parody of the corporate feudalism theme. Nor was Stephenson pining for a "tranditional government social balance" - the remains of the government are treated more harshly than any other organization in Snow Crash.
Finally, the book was not apocalyptic. It was placed in a setting most would associate with apocalyptic fiction, true, but this environment was played for laughs and came across as genuinely optimistic in the end. That unexpected reversal is exactly how Snow Crash brought cyberpunk to an end - the corporate dystopia idea seemed kind of ridiculous afterward.
No, the real question is not how the Hulk manages to be heavy and light at the same time, but how he gains that mass in the first place - if Banner just 'inflates', the Hulk would weigh no more than he does! So where does the extra mass come from? And what about energy to move all of that mass around?
Because the presence or absence of encrypted data is also a kind of information which you might not want to reveal to the enemy. Still vulnerable to analysis, maybe, but only if they think to do it.
Thanks for the knowledge. Pity that I live in Florida, which must surely be thin on such instruments.
What exactly do you mean by this?
"Dude, you've just lost all credibility! How about some public records?"That statement was issued as a diplomatic posture to browbeat recalcitrant nations - something I for one have no problem with (and there are few indeed among heads of state that haven't said something similar). But in your original post, you were clearly talking about something different: some kind of censorship or quashing of domestic dissent, which hasn't happened at all as you describe it.
"the founding fathers were practically bleeding-heart socialists of the era."Absurd. Your greatest error is that you believe in a dichotomy between "equal rights and personal dignity" on one hand, and "dog-eat-dog anarchy" (presumably what you call capitalism) on the other. This is a result of the wrong-headed belief that personal dignity, etc, is possible without the protection of property rights and economic freedom. The founders of America could not have been more different from what you imagine. Here are just a few quotes, out of many delicious possibilities:
"A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and all that is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." -- Thomas JeffersonDoesn't leave much room for modern-day socialist welfare institutions, does it? Try this one:
"It would be thought a hard government that should tax its people one tenth part." -- Benjamin FranklinHa! A 10% tax burden practically consitutes a libertarian paradise these days! Or:
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which grant[s] a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." -- James MadisonDoes that sound like the thinking of a "bleeding-heart"?
I would at least respect, a little bit, a Left that recognized the fact that their philosophy is completely opposed to that of Jefferson, Franklin, et al., and argued against the American tradition from a honest platform. I would think you wrong, but at least I wouldn't think that you were hiding anything. But such lame misreading of documents and willful ignorance of history as claiming that the 2nd Amendment doesn't protect gun rights simply won't do if I am to take your side seriously.
Interesting. I can maybe imagine that it is possible to "overload" the space. It seems like you should be able to put as many frequencies as you want into the air, but when you leave the pure world of the idealized frequency domain and consider real air molecules vibrating back and forth ... well, I can at least guess that something interesting might happen there (maybe something that can only be heard in certain exceptional cases), that I at least don't have the complete picture. But that's a lot of vague 2 AM speculation, isn't it? :)
Indeed, many live music buffs do exactly that, recording performances with two microphones clipped onto their glasses, or something like. They say that listening to a recording you made in this way can do a lot to improve your "critical listening" skills - you start to hear all of the deficiencies in your hardware, etc. Me, I'd rather remain content, I guess, than chase those diminishing audiophile returns.
Ahh - spatial placement, now THAT makes sense. Of course, that would also imply that each speaker is placed at a different height - maybe at the center of the "pipe" it represents. I wonder if golden ears could detect the fact that the sound comes more from a "point" than a "line".
:)
I agree with you about the bass, but that doesn't neccessarily require so many channels, just a couple of really powerful subwoofers, as mentioned in the article. By the way, is it true that the Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor hits 16 Hz? Neal Stephenson used this fact (if fact it be) as a nice little gimmick in his very first novel _The Big U_ - it was enough to destroy buildings.
True enough, I guess.... But I'd be much more inclined to credit the "anti-authoritarianism" of the Left if a Democrat was in office. Defining your politics as the opposite of everything that Bush believes sounds more like an act of whining brats than of defiant revolutionaries. Or were YOU marching against Clinton when he bombed a Sudanese aspirin factory at an extremely convenient (for his political career) time? ... you'd be more of a Libertarian than a Leftist, wouldn't you?
As for "if you're not with us you're against us", I've never heard an actual member of the Right issue such a challenge - it seems to be more of a convenient stick for the Left to wield.
Now if you're REALLY ready to be an anti-conformist, anti-authoritarian, maybe you should think about:
1) Supporting gun freedom
2) Working to end the toxic idea that only the official law enforcement is capable of protecting us.
3) Encouraging self-reliance (as opposed to state hand-holding) among the people, in the areas of finance and health care, among others.
4) Letting the people keep more of their money, and assuming, for once, that the people are virtually all decent, and won't spend it on cigarettes and porn while their children go shoeless.
5) Think about NOT just giving that criminal "what he wants". Think about giving him what he NEEDS - like a good whuppin'.
6) Stop focusing on the argument that bringing the war to the middle east "will just make them mad" - I, for one, wouldn't expect someone capable of saying THAT to get out of his seat and wrestle a razor-wielding terrorist to the ground.
Now THESE are the really revolutionary ideas - the ideas of the American Revolution, which has seen much greater success and longevity than any number of Leftist ones. These ideas are what you should consider if you want to see a badass population ready to storm the cockpits. But if you were to adopt this thinking
A true scholar of /., that one is!
The article raised more questions than it answered, for me. The part I don't understand is why so many channels are necessary - any loudspeaker will produce polyphony (when cell phones claim to have polyphonic ring tones, it has more to do with the tone generation circuit or software than with the speaker). Maybe someone who knows more about acoustics than I do can answer this one: what is meant by a "massive amount of polyphony"? More frequency content in the spectrum? And are the 74 Epiphany channels matched to 74 original pipes? Does each speaker play only one tone?
... but c'mon, my Helmut Walcha CD's don't sound THAT bad, do they?
Finally, does this also mean that recordings of organ music are poor substitutes for the real thing, since they will be played only on stereo speakers, which are presumably capable of "less" polyphony? I am sure that many organ zeolots have been saying all along that there is no substitute for live performance
Get over it people - it doesn't work! This kind of idle design sketch is printed in the likes of Popular Science every month. Bombardier hasn't built anything like this yet. They pulled that 35 MPH number out of their collective ass! Hydrogen fuel cells? Give me a break!