Lots of people have proposed using them as the basis of really large space stations.
In his trilogy beginning with Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson proposes using them as the basis of a vehicle that could deliver a substantial amount of colonist to Mars and give them enough space to be happy over the long journey.
As someone who majored in Classics as an undergraduate (before moving on to linguistics), I've gotten a lot of flack in technology nerd circles like Slashdot for spending time in such a field. Nowadays the value of study of the ancient world is seen as offering limited benefits, and the popular image of a classicist is of a bookish loser all alone in his musty, unvisited department. I think that's a pity especially because Classics is a field very ready to use new technology to help us better understand the past. The Oxyrynchus papyri, for example, a bunch of old papers found in an Egyptian garbage dump, have been scanned with state of the art cameras which have revealed whole new texts, including lost works by some of the great classic authors.
So spending time with old inscriptions can still seem a worthy task to the Slashdot crowd. Beyond just using whizbang new technology, the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone for example (see e.g. Parkinson's Cracking Codes) ought to fascinate the more mathematically oriented of us.
(*) A good sign that they do not is this old Redbook CD-DA Logo. Manufacturers are only allowed to put it on if they adhere to the spec. DRM is a spec violation, so no logo!
A number of major labels have decided to no longer put the logo on their packaging even when the disc conforms to Redbook specifications.
theory about 20 years ago. However that one suggested the reason for the mass extinctions was because the stars in the galactic plane are much closer together so the likely hood of being in close proximity to a supernova and all the incumbent radiation that entails is much higher.
Nerds are likely to recognize a similar scenario from Larry Niven's 1966 short story "At the Core" (now in his collection Crashlander), where the stars packed together near the galactic core set off a chain reaction of supernovas that would send a deadly wave of radiation towards the outskirts of the galaxy, killing off all life. Depressing reading.
Is the video tag supported in Gecko in a way that would make the video automatically start? I would assume that the user must click a Play button first.
Science fiction is speculative fiction. Comparing classic works of times passed to how things turned out is a popular pastime, and the possibility that all that dreaming about new gadgetry and godlike powers might come true inspires all nerds.
While shipping companies are important, there's no real need for them to expand into space. Who is willing to pay the enormous costs of getting a package delivered anywhere on Earth in a few hours by going into orbit, when they could just wait a bit longer and get it for remarkably cheap?
Back in the 1990s, one of the most realistic-seeming depictions of the rise of private spacefaring was Michael Fynn's future history beginning with Firestar. Flynn made it seem as if the biggest obstacle towards getting into space was not gravity and fuel costs as much as government hassles. If Spaceport America has successfully dealt with the FAA, then I would like to think that things are looking up from here (though Flynn suggested companies like FedEx would massively support the endeavour, which seems unlikely now in the age of the internet).
Huh? Getting into college isn't an extremely pressing/taxing/competitive ordeal?
No. There's always some college that will take you, even if you got average grades (and below average, people probably aren't interested in college anyway). Sure, you might not get a scholarship and have to take out burdensome student loans, but when American culture now emphasizes that a college degree is for everyone, and universities are businesses after your money, it's a buyer's market.
Performance is unrelated to the overly jargonistic complexity, just because asia and india are harsh and drill their kids to perform does not mean they have any clue how to derive creatively go beyond what they are learning. They may make good workers but that doesn't mean anything.
Dude, now you're approaching xenophobia. Have you looked at the state of mathematics in American universities? A conspicuous amount of highly original researchers are the product of foreign educational systems. They aren't doomed to being tech support monkeys like you insinuate.
The United States is being outclassed in math and science education by a host of other nations. Those nations, for the most part, teach the subject in an exceedingly traditional format. Asia, for example, is still really keen on rote learning. The failure of American pupils is probably not due to the way the subject is taught, but rather because they don't feel the pressure to excel like students in other cultures.
Having not read the actual PDF, I wonder if having a bunch of mathematically disinclined women teaching math to young students would have something to do with it?
My high school algebra teacher was female, but had come to high school teaching after spending much of her time in university research rounds. Her qualifications were impeccable. That didn't make my classmates anymore successful with their studies than the average. I'm inclined to think it's a problem of unmotivated students in all fields of education in general.
As dorky as Doctor Who might be to a lot of us, it wouldn't be such a staple of television if it were a ratings distaster. Somewhere out there enough people are watching it.
Certainly analyzing memories would be a necessary part of downloading your personality into a computer, a mainstay of science fiction (take Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars as an example where it is used to great effect) and the loony but inspiring outlook of Ray "the singularity is near!" Kurzweil. I wonder if consciousness can be separated from a body of memories. If a copy of me does not have certain memories, is it still me?
Blogging professionally would involve a tremendous amount of stress as if every post isn't just perfect, readership, and hence profit, will suffer.
I'm not sure this is the case. Certainly with a lot of popular political blogs (I'm thinking especially of Little Green Footballs here, but there are many others), the proprietors spent a lot of time expressing their bold individual viewpoint six or seven years ago, but now that they've made it big, they seem to just be phoning it in. In fact, I notice that a lot of their posts nowadays start with "Reader X alerted me to this article" followed by a simple copy and paste of something published in the traditional media. It doesn't look like readership has suffered, because the amount of comments on each story has only been going up.
I suppose the major problem with this is that it cannot tell the difference between truth and lies or urban legends, it just repeats what other people have said, even if they are conspiracy theorists. The query "Who killed JFK?" suggests the CIA did it.
Why move to Canada whenever Sweden is going to have some pirates in office soon and has a public generally anti-copyright.
Because it's more expensive, it's facing rising crime because it doesn't do enough to help immigrants assimilate and gain employment, and the people seem offensively taciturn and appallingly alcoholic to visitors from outside the Nordic countries. FWIW, I am an immigrant to next door Finland, and while I myself enjoy many aspects of living here and I hope its welfare state continues to be a model of how to massively raise quality of life, I wouldn't recommend a move to Scandinavia to just anyone. For some reason, Canada seems a bit more universal in appeal.
Are there any cheap but quality tutorial for Fortran? O'Reilly has no contemporary introduction to the language and their last book on Fortran, Migrating to Fortran 90, came out nearly two decades ago.
Unless you are using binaries groups for music or pr0n, is Usenet even worth accessing anymore? I remained dedicated to the network long after most nerds departed because there was still a fairly decent amount of educated discourse on sci.lang and rec.music.classical, but even those groups are no innundated by spambots and most of the most worthwhile conversation partners have moved while only the crotchety remain.
The first time I went on vacation to Africa (south-western Sahara) was a revelation!
But even in the Sahara you've got to get well away from human habitations to see anything. Even in places like Daklha or Laayoune, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of nothingness, there are some many powerful street lights you can't make out anything in the sky. This whole trend of identifying blinding light with modernity in urban development has to stop.
Why Stanislaw Lem doesn't get more attention on this News for Nerds site I just don't understand. Maybe it's just a general adversion to works in translation. But look beyond works like Solaris which is a clever book, though not so great, and of the film adaptations one was dull and the other cheesy. But for everyone here I'd recommend strongly the Cyberiad, about capable engineers roaming the galaxy when technology allows them to realize whatever crazy schemes they want. The chapter where they design a computer capable of generating poetry, and its first production is a splendid love poem in the language of tensor algebra will have the mathematically minded folks here falling off their chairs laughing.
Slashdot Mirror
In his trilogy beginning with Red Mars Kim Stanley Robinson proposes using them as the basis of a vehicle that could deliver a substantial amount of colonist to Mars and give them enough space to be happy over the long journey.
The joke has already been made for years on Slashdot. It's unnecessary to continue posting it. In fact, you might even say that it is redundant.
As someone who majored in Classics as an undergraduate (before moving on to linguistics), I've gotten a lot of flack in technology nerd circles like Slashdot for spending time in such a field. Nowadays the value of study of the ancient world is seen as offering limited benefits, and the popular image of a classicist is of a bookish loser all alone in his musty, unvisited department. I think that's a pity especially because Classics is a field very ready to use new technology to help us better understand the past. The Oxyrynchus papyri, for example, a bunch of old papers found in an Egyptian garbage dump, have been scanned with state of the art cameras which have revealed whole new texts, including lost works by some of the great classic authors.
So spending time with old inscriptions can still seem a worthy task to the Slashdot crowd. Beyond just using whizbang new technology, the decipherment of the Rosetta Stone for example (see e.g. Parkinson's Cracking Codes ) ought to fascinate the more mathematically oriented of us.
A number of major labels have decided to no longer put the logo on their packaging even when the disc conforms to Redbook specifications.
Nerds are likely to recognize a similar scenario from Larry Niven's 1966 short story "At the Core" (now in his collection Crashlander ), where the stars packed together near the galactic core set off a chain reaction of supernovas that would send a deadly wave of radiation towards the outskirts of the galaxy, killing off all life. Depressing reading.
Is the video tag supported in Gecko in a way that would make the video automatically start? I would assume that the user must click a Play button first.
Science fiction is speculative fiction. Comparing classic works of times passed to how things turned out is a popular pastime, and the possibility that all that dreaming about new gadgetry and godlike powers might come true inspires all nerds.
While shipping companies are important, there's no real need for them to expand into space. Who is willing to pay the enormous costs of getting a package delivered anywhere on Earth in a few hours by going into orbit, when they could just wait a bit longer and get it for remarkably cheap?
Back in the 1990s, one of the most realistic-seeming depictions of the rise of private spacefaring was Michael Fynn's future history beginning with Firestar . Flynn made it seem as if the biggest obstacle towards getting into space was not gravity and fuel costs as much as government hassles. If Spaceport America has successfully dealt with the FAA, then I would like to think that things are looking up from here (though Flynn suggested companies like FedEx would massively support the endeavour, which seems unlikely now in the age of the internet).
No. There's always some college that will take you, even if you got average grades (and below average, people probably aren't interested in college anyway). Sure, you might not get a scholarship and have to take out burdensome student loans, but when American culture now emphasizes that a college degree is for everyone, and universities are businesses after your money, it's a buyer's market.
Dude, now you're approaching xenophobia. Have you looked at the state of mathematics in American universities? A conspicuous amount of highly original researchers are the product of foreign educational systems. They aren't doomed to being tech support monkeys like you insinuate.
The United States is being outclassed in math and science education by a host of other nations. Those nations, for the most part, teach the subject in an exceedingly traditional format. Asia, for example, is still really keen on rote learning. The failure of American pupils is probably not due to the way the subject is taught, but rather because they don't feel the pressure to excel like students in other cultures.
My high school algebra teacher was female, but had come to high school teaching after spending much of her time in university research rounds. Her qualifications were impeccable. That didn't make my classmates anymore successful with their studies than the average. I'm inclined to think it's a problem of unmotivated students in all fields of education in general.
As dorky as Doctor Who might be to a lot of us, it wouldn't be such a staple of television if it were a ratings distaster. Somewhere out there enough people are watching it.
Certainly analyzing memories would be a necessary part of downloading your personality into a computer, a mainstay of science fiction (take Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars as an example where it is used to great effect) and the loony but inspiring outlook of Ray "the singularity is near!" Kurzweil. I wonder if consciousness can be separated from a body of memories. If a copy of me does not have certain memories, is it still me?
Could using proxies like Tor assist getting around blocks based on your ISP?
I suppose the major problem with this is that it cannot tell the difference between truth and lies or urban legends, it just repeats what other people have said, even if they are conspiracy theorists. The query "Who killed JFK?" suggests the CIA did it.
Because it's more expensive, it's facing rising crime because it doesn't do enough to help immigrants assimilate and gain employment, and the people seem offensively taciturn and appallingly alcoholic to visitors from outside the Nordic countries. FWIW, I am an immigrant to next door Finland, and while I myself enjoy many aspects of living here and I hope its welfare state continues to be a model of how to massively raise quality of life, I wouldn't recommend a move to Scandinavia to just anyone. For some reason, Canada seems a bit more universal in appeal.
Are there any cheap but quality tutorial for Fortran? O'Reilly has no contemporary introduction to the language and their last book on Fortran, Migrating to Fortran 90 , came out nearly two decades ago.
Unless you are using binaries groups for music or pr0n, is Usenet even worth accessing anymore? I remained dedicated to the network long after most nerds departed because there was still a fairly decent amount of educated discourse on sci.lang and rec.music.classical, but even those groups are no innundated by spambots and most of the most worthwhile conversation partners have moved while only the crotchety remain.
But even in the Sahara you've got to get well away from human habitations to see anything. Even in places like Daklha or Laayoune, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of nothingness, there are some many powerful street lights you can't make out anything in the sky. This whole trend of identifying blinding light with modernity in urban development has to stop.
FWIW, I am a fan of Tarkovsky. I count Andrei Rublev and Offret among my favourite films. But I don't think Solaris was one of his better efforts.
Why Stanislaw Lem doesn't get more attention on this News for Nerds site I just don't understand. Maybe it's just a general adversion to works in translation. But look beyond works like Solaris which is a clever book, though not so great, and of the film adaptations one was dull and the other cheesy. But for everyone here I'd recommend strongly the Cyberiad , about capable engineers roaming the galaxy when technology allows them to realize whatever crazy schemes they want. The chapter where they design a computer capable of generating poetry, and its first production is a splendid love poem in the language of tensor algebra will have the mathematically minded folks here falling off their chairs laughing.
I have the latest version of NoScript and fsdn.com is expressly allowed, but the site still looks garbled.