But what is surprising is that Hollywood can't get this right. I watched King Kong for the first time the other day and many of the scenes are blatantly composite. Because, despite spending bazillions, they don't get the lighting right. How hard can it be?
Well, according to the IMDB the movie is 187 minutes long. With 24 frames per second, that's 269 280 pictures you see during the movie. So hand-adjusting them all would be 269 280 times harder than hand-adjusting a single photo. And this is not including things like keeping the adjustments consistent in subsequent images (which would pretty much neccessiate going through them in order, at least within a scene).
It should also be noted than oftentimes the "this is fake" feeling comes from motion, not lighting. Even if you motion-capture primary motion (joints), secondary motion (bouncing breasts & stomachs, ripples from impacts, etc) are very hard to get right. A computer model is ultimately just an empty skin; making it behave like a real human being would require simulating all the bones, muscles and fat underneath, the latter two being soft deforming bodies. And that is beyond the power of current computers.
And then there's voluntary motion (initiated by your own muscles), involuntary motion (relaxing your muscles and letting motion come from outside forces) and forced motion (fighting against outside forces). All of these cause different deformations on underlaying muscle tissue. Not to mention the fact that a muscle actively working is much more resistant to deformation than a muscle that's relaxed - just try pushing your finger into a relaxed and working muscle and see how much harder the later is.
And of course, even if the computer could handle all this, who is going to input it all ? Making those empty-skin models is hard and labor-intensive enough. And animating them by hand is also impossible, you need them to have AI that takes care of controlling all of those hundreds of muscles when you give it broad instructions. After all, you don't control even your own muscles directly, but let your motion cortex take care of the details.
So... Anyone up for building an open-sourced AI actor system ?-)
You forgot one important step. Here's the full progression:
Anarchy -> (chaos & disorder) -> people desperate for order -> you take power, people too grateful to care if you're an evil dictator.
That's the thing I found very ironic in "V for Vengeance": V wanted anarchy, but he didn't realize that he was already living in an anarchy - the last stage of anarchy, where one of the competing gangs had won and taken supreme power, but anarchy nonetheless.
When government holds the power, you're at their mercy. When it doesn't, you're at your neighbours mercy. The government is unlikely to devote much resources towards oppressing you specifically, while your neighbour is. I guess there's no optimal political system to be had, we humans being what we are...
Okay, Mr. Reading Comprehension, kindly quote exactly where he claimed he couldn't prove that 2+2=4. Not being able to convince someone of a fact is not the same as not being able to demonstrate a proof of the fact.
I suppose it is possible that someone refuses to be convinced by mathematical proof. I admit I made a mistake in assuming that being shown mathematical proof of mathematical claim would convince anyone.
And even if he couldn't prove it, as you assert without substantiation, that's not the same as believing it to be unprovable.
Actually, if you believe something you can't prove (and I'm including performing a Google search for the proof here, not just being unable to come up with the proof yourself), then you are believing something unprovable. Whether it is inherently unprovable or if it simply hasn't been proven yet is irrelevant; either way you're believing it on faith.
Anyway, this is becoming hair-splitting, so I'm quitting this argument now.
A photo which is manipulated can be detected by algorithms.
Any algorithm can be defeated by sufficiently skilled manipulation. And conversely, if these algorithms can detect things that human eye can't, then you can manipulate a real photo enough that the algorithms see it as manipulated but you don't see any difference to original.
Seriously, read the article. These people were actively molesting children and taking pictures of themselves while doing it. The pictures were turned over to the authorities.
I have a picture of a rock troll taking a morning jog in a desert. Does it mean that rock trolls exist ? Or does it mean that Gimp is quite good at photomanipulation ?
For that matter, I've found pictures of Bush and Osama having sex. Does it prove that Bush is giving comfort to the enemies of the US (and therefore committing treason) ?
You confuse fact with fantasy. 2+2=4 is not unprovable dogma. It is an indisputable fact regardless of whether or not one particular person can prove it.
You have a problem with reading comprehension. For one last time: the guy who first talked about it in this thread said he can't prove it. Whether it is actually unprovable or the guy was simply ignorant is completely irrelevant; as far as he knew, the thing was unprovable.
If you insist that the only things worth teaching are those that each and every student must personally verify, they'll die of old age before leaving school.
I haven't said anything like that. In fact I haven't said anything about what should be taught in schools. I have simply commented on what someone else wants and doesn't want to be taught there, and the stated reasons why.
Religious beliefs are not facts -- they can be verified by NO ONE. Get it? A fact can be verified by anyone given the time, money, and intellect. Society, for whatever reason, deems these things worthy to teach in a school.
And yet when society changes its mind, by, say, including "Intelligent Design" in science class, Slashdot cries foul. Strange, that.
Quantum computing units will probably be an addon, like the GPU or the math coprocessor. You only need them to do some semi-specialised stuff like search, I don't think they'd help in displaying graphics and the like. It's scary how they can search an entire space at once though.
So, say you have a 3D scene. Could you use quantum computers to reverse raytrace every pixel at once ? Or better yet, could you forward raytrce every ray of light sent by a light source at once (this would solve some problems with radiosity) ?
In other words, if you have a 3D renderer and a quantum computer, can the renderer render every pixel at once ? Or could you render every triangle at once, allowing you to rise the polycount to hundreds of millions per scene ?
Remember, most graphics operations are quite simple, they're just repeated a lot of times with different parameters. Sounds exactly what quantum computers are supposed to excel at to me...
Microsoft, Apple, Ubuntu, etc are all doing this because *that's what the majority of their customers want*.
Dunno about Apple, but Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it has the concept of "packages". This allows the situation where the OS as a whole has a huge amount of software, but you only install what you want/need. In other words, growth of included software in Linux distributions like Ubuntu is not comparable to the same in Windows.
Of course it's also possible that Ubuntu gets more and more software installed by default, but that doesn't make the OS itself bloated, just it's default installation. You can propably remove the unwanted packages from Ubuntu; just try to strip Windows of its bloat.
Absurd. Once again, 2+2=4 is an established fact that people from different religions, cultures, and nationalities know to be true.
I haven't disputed this equation. The guy who I originally responded to said he can't prove it but wants it taught to his children nonetheless, to the point of raising "high hell" if it won't be. All I have said is that it's hypocritical to simultaneously demand that said kids get taught one unprovable (according to him) claim and that they won't be taught another.
Now, pay close attention as I play my trump card: Any doubt as to the veracity of these facts can be removed by learning mathematics or traveling to L.A.
I've already said that I'm not disputing the equation. I am, however, beginning to wonder: since no one seems to be able to give this evidence they assert exists, do they know it or has "2+2=4" been hammered to their heads long enough that they take it on faith ?
Religious doctrine, on the other hand, is a matter of personal faith. There is NO WAY to verify that Jesus Christ existed, or that Cain and Abel existed, or that even YHWH exists.
True. Pity it hasn't got anything to do with anything I've said. Which, to repeat, is: it is hypocritical to demand that one unprovable dogma (which the op claimed 2+2=4 is) is taught in schools and simultaneously demand that another is not, just because he happens to believe in one and not the other.
There are no historical documents establishing their existence either. Ergo, there is no hypocrisy on the part of the poster you responded to. You are comparing apples with oranges.
The poster specifically stated that he cannot prove that 2+2=4. Whether or not it is in fact provable or he was simply ignorant of proof is irrelevant; he was still demanding special treatment to his unprovable (as far as he knew) dogma over other dogmas.
It has everything to do with it. In a democracy, the state is the union of the people. The state (that is, the people) run the public schools. Their will is that 2+2=4 be taught there, and that religious doctrine not be taught there. The poster you replied to is justified in holding the majority position.
Since I've said nothing about what should be taught in public schools, and only commented on the op's hypocrisy, I still fail to see what your problem here seems to be. Altought I have to say that it is a nice appeal to authority, and means that the religious fundamentalists are completely justified in seeking to alter the curriculum to their liking - after all, if they can gather the majority behind them, it's okay according to you, right ?
There is a mathematical proof that 2+2=4, but not that 2+2=5. It is not a matter of belief.
The poster whom I responded to specifically stated that he can't prove that 2+2=4. Apart from that, since you didn't actually provide the proof, but only stated that one exists, it is still a matter of belief:).
Anyway, the point here is that the grandparent wanted his children taught things that he said he can't prove, but nonetheless felt justified in judging others who behave the same way. I simply pointed out his hypocrisy and tried to make him see their reasons for acting the way they act.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
Simple, the state has no vested interest in any particular religion. In fact, according to the constitution, there can be no state sponsored religion. If people want religion, there are churches... in abundance. The state DOES have an interest in people knowing that 2+2=4, especially when it comes time to fill out the 1040 forms.
...So ? I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. Unless you are suggesting that one should be judged for putting one's own beliefes before the interests of the state.
In any case, official state religion has historically been a great way of promoting national unity and silencing dissent, so it might well be in state's best interests t pick one and promote it every chance it gets. It makes life hell to everyone who doesn't subscribe to that particular religion or ideology, but hey, state's interest's are important, right ?
First, if there is more than one company providing infrastructure then there is competition (see: competition between cable broadband and DSL.)
Assuming that the corporations don't simply decide to cooperate and divide the potential customer base between themselves. This is beneficial to them both, since competition has a tendency to drive prices down, and that lessens corporate profits. See: cartel.
Second, if you don't like a company that meddles (or how they meddle), you can refuse to pay them. If you don't like the government meddling (or how they meddle), and you refuse to pay them, you go to jail.
No, what happens is that the government confiscates your property until the required payment is met. The same as happens when a corporation decides to engage in barratry against you (see: RIAA).
Besides, without paying the company, you don't get Internet access. If that corporation happened to hold the local monopoly - though shit.
The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government.
If the government were prohibited (again with limited government) from providing protection for special companies then they would have little or no influence (because they don't have anything to influence except the limitation that government not provide them protection.)
So basically, if you just outlaw corruption it goes away. Right.
But tell me, how is the government that's too weak to protect the corporation going to stop the corporation from hiring a few musclebound goons to break down your front door and asking money for your "protection" ? Because if the government is too weak to help the corporation, then the government is too weak to hinder it either.
In the post-feodal system money is power - literally, since it indicates available resources - and corporations have wastly more money than you, so they can abuse you with or without the government's aid. A large corporation is easily as powerfull as a national government, and should be held to the same standards.
I live in Finland. I didn't read the article, so I don't know if we're on the list, but my current connection has 8128 kbps down / 928 kbps up bandwidth. 40 euros per month, no transfer limits, servers are forbidden but no one seems to be actively monitoring them. No firewall, NAT or closed ports (or at least I haven't noticed any).
This connection began as a 512/512 one a few years back, so I'd say that the development has been quite good:).
Ever heard of Occam's Razor? It's the part of the scientific method which says you must discard any untestable part of a hypothesis.
I want to pause here for a while and draw everyone's attention to the biggest problem of this debate: the people (on both sides) who have absolutely no idea what the heck they're talking about but say it nonetheless. The end result is that mutated strawmen that are recognizable as neither science nor religion pound each other to piles of hay which are good for nothing but giving allergics hay fever.
Oh, why did I quote you here ? No reason, none whatsoever:). You may wish to look up what Occam's razor actually means, thought.
What does the division of one by zero have to do with evolution or science? I may not be able to convince you that 2+2=4, but I'm going to raise hell if my kids don't learn it in school.
So. You can't prove that 2+2=4, but you insist that it is taught in schools nevertheless. And, presumably, if someone else insisted that schools teach that 2+2=5, then you will raise hell as well, since it directly conflicts with what you want your children to learn. So in short, you want your children to learn in school what you believe to be true, and not something which conflicts with it, depite you being unable to prove it to be true.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
If we're going to quit teaching the grand unified theory of biology in schools because of political pressure from religious lobbyists, we may as well surrender and have the church resume its role in totalitarian governance.
Well, from the fundamentalist's point of view, if they quit they're surrendering to Satan. So expect a battle to the death, quite possibly literally if they are left no other alternatives.
And don't come posting that you're going to rise hell if your kid is not taught something you believe, and then condemn others when they do just the same.
1) He hasn't had to reverse a linked list in 23 years.
I've never reversed a linked list, and it took me all of ten seconds to figure out how to do it. It's a test of logical problem solving capabilities, not the ability to route memorize algorithms.
2) There are framework functions to reverse a linked list. Who cares how they work.
Propably no one. How the applicants mind works, however, is quite interesting to anyone who would hire him. And the best way to find out is to observe that mind at work.
"How do you make binary drivers that don't break every time the kernel gets a new feature like 4k stacks ?"
Alternatively, "How do you dissipate 100 Watts of heat energy per second from a two square centimeter chip area without needing neither a helicopter rotor for a cooler nor water cooling and without letting the chip warm over 60 degree Celsius when the surrounding air is around 40 degree Celsius ?"
An answer to either question would be appreciated by users as well as NVIDIA.
But science, if anyone's noticed, doesn't try to intrude on religion. As far as I know, there hasn't been a single court case in the U.S. where a group of scientists have tried to dictate what can be taught in any church.
But religion doesn't reciprocate, and the whole "debate" about evolution isn't the first time various churches have tried to force their religion to substitute for science in the classroom.
If anyone hasn't noticed, there is no law, custom or anything else forcing, literally or in practice, anyone to send their children to church to be taught whatever they're taught there. There is, however, a law forcing people to send their kids to school to be taught whatever they're taught there. Therefore whatever is taught in church and whatever is taught in school are not equivalent matters, and your argument is, while technically not a lie, quite misleading.
A church is a private organization, while elementary school is a branch of the government. They cannot be considered equal in what is appropriate to be taught in them. A bunch of scientists (or anyone else) trying to make a court tell a priest (or anyone else) what he can or cannot say to a bunch of people who voluntarily came to the church (or his own home - remember, sermons don't need to be held in custom built churches, it's just practical to do so) would be an outrageous violation of the most basic right to free speech; a bunch of people trying to get the court to tell a teacher who's paid from public (tax) funds what he can or can't tell their kids who were forced by law to come to a public (built or bought with taxpayer money) school is simply business as usual.
This is not an argument for or against teaching evolution or anything else in schools; just that your argument is deeply but subtly flawed.
Well, good. It needs to be discussed until it's drilled into people's head that in the game of rock/paper/scissors between science and religion, science will/should always win.
At best, scientists waste their time dealing with this idiocy and research slows but that's all; at worst, scientists, being just humans in the end, will develop the attitude that admitting the existence of anything supernatural - and remember, "supernatural" is a word used for things that are currently unexplainable by science, movement of planets in the sky, lightning, and earthquakes fell into this category once - means admitting defeat, therefore retarding the progress of science for decades to come since any scientists working with things not conforming to current well-established theories (cold fusion, telepathy, telekinesis, etc) will be considered a loony (which he propably is, but it can't be known for sure) and his theories dismissed by the majority that doesn't want to take the risk of being associated with the religious people.
Oh, and various morons will show their ignorance of the meanings of the concepts of "natural", "supernatural", "science" and "god" by claiming that science has proven that God doesn't exist (it can't, since science deals with natural world, and God is by definition supernatural and not part of the natural world).
In short, a fight like this will at best waste everyone's time and at worst make both sides descend into dogmatism. Science will lose in either case; the only question is: how badly.
And of course the fundamentalists will also lose when they die from diseases that could possibly have been cured had the scientists been left in peace to do their work and not distracted from it. Which, in the fundamentalists minds, is a sure sign that God is punishing them from not stopping the scientists, and not the logical result of their own actions or just bad luck, therefore guaranteeing that this whole thing will go on ad nauseaum.
Nice troll. But I'm bored, so I'll answer it anyway.
WOULDN'T IT BE GREAT TO TURN ON THE TV
AND HEAR ANY U.S. PRESIDENT,
DEMOCRAT OR REPUBLICAN GIVE THE FOLLOWING SPEECH?
Yes. Unfortunately, I find it unlikely that the US is going to stop messing around with the world and causing trouble and destruction everywhere it goes.
My Fellow Americans: As you all know, the defeat of Iraq regime has been completed.
I thought that it was "mission accomplished" years ago. But I guess someone forgot to tell the insurgents that.
Since congress does not want to spend any more money on this war, our mission in Iraq is complete.
Does that mean that your mission was to waste as much money as the congress let you ? That's what you get when you don't bother defining victory conditions before going to war - it drags on without any clear resolution.
Oh, did you win or lose ? Saddam was owerthrown but you're leaving because you ran out of money, so I can't tell... The Iraqi people certainly lost quite a few of its members, not to mention its infrastructure, but I guess that was never important to the US in the first place, as long as Bush got his war.
Let me start by saying that effective immediately, foreign aid to those nations on List 2 ceases immediately and indefinitely. The money saved during the first year alone will pretty much pay for the costs of the Iraqi war.
I'm pretty sure that any nation that depends on your foreign aid is incapable of sending armed troops anywhere, so your attempt at petty vengeance falls flat on its face right at the start.
The American people are no longer going to pour money into third world Hell-holes and watch those government leaders grow fat on corruption.
Good. Without your support for said dictators, the Middle-East might finally start calming down.
Need help with a famine? Wrestling with an epidemic? Call France.
Or simply ignore US patents and mass produce cheap medicine.
I am ordering the immediate severing of diplomatic relations with France, Germany, and Russia.
Well, that's sure to spoil their day. Especially since the logical answer to that is to declare all US intellectual property - copyrights, but especially patents - null and void which, in all likelihood, will benefit their economy a lot more than you can hurt it.
But tell me, are you going to sever the underwater Internet cables as well ? Without doing that your "severing of diplomatic relations" is rather meaningless, and if you do it, you'll facing a rebellion from both nerds and the multinational corporations. And with nerds in the rebellion, who will maintain all those nice automatic systems that make your remaining industries at least somewhat productive ?
Thanks for all your help, comrades. We are retiring from NATO as well. Bon chance, mes amis.
Does NATO serve any real purpose anymore, now that the Cold War is over ?
On that note, a word to terrorist organizations. Screw with us and we will hunt you down and eliminate you and all your friends from the face of the earth.
I'm sure that people willing to blow themselves up just to kill you are shaking in their boots thinking about your revenge. Not to mention their leaders, who've watched your less than succesful attempts to capture Osama for the past five years.
I don't care about whatever treaty pertains to this.
Yes, we all know and love US's way of betraying their word - ignoring international treaties - when it becomes inconvenient.
A special note to our neighbors. Canada is on List 2. Since we ar
A good driver never gets into a situation where super reflexes are required - just normal reflexes.
Yeah. Because when you're a good driver, a car going the opposite way never suddenly loses control and slides to your line, a moose doesn't come running from the forest, and a tree couldn't possibly fall over to the road in front of you. Nor will anyone else ignore red lights or any other traffick rules; a truck doesn't suddenly come from the left and turn to the road in front of you without bothering to wait until you've passed. You have this magical aura that keeps any freak accidents or coincidencies from happening. Because you're a good driver, and the very laws of physics and propability bow down to your l33tn3ss.
Clearly, if the road suddenly collapses under your tires (happened to my mother once), that's because you weren't a good enough driver - a good driver could have reversed gravity and kept the car from falling down when there's nothing under the wheels.
I make him keep his bedroom door open when he has his girlfriend over to "do homework."
So instead of having sex in the safety of his room, he's going to be having it under the bridge, in the bushes, or some other location where there's a very real chance of some psycho finding them when they're incapable of defending themselves. A excellent plan, that.
Oh, and you're also making sure that if he needs advice on, say, how to use contraceptives, you are one he can't ask for it. Which means it's going to be his friends or porn mags. Or Internet's seedier sites. Nice going.
I understand that the thought of their children having sex is a horrifying one to the parents - altought I've never understood why, unless this is some echo of "sex is evil, and so is enjoying yourself in any way" mentality from the nastier perversions of christianity - but please use your brains. You can't stop it from happening, you will only make things harder and more dangerous to everyone involved if you try. Oh, and you'll also propably give the poor bastard the idea that sex is shamefull, which won't stop it from happening but will cause all kinds of nasty mental damage and weird perversions.
Not at all. "Doesn't matter if you're a grandma or a seven year old girl / they treat you like the evil hardbitten criminal scum you are" should make it absolutely clear to everyone that this is indeed an honest defense of RIAA.
"Don't take away money from artists just like me / how else can I afford another solid gold Humvee / and diamond-studded swimming pools, they don't grow on trees"
Should someone take this and make a "Don't Restrict Our Rights" version of this?
You are a human being, not a corporation. You have no rights, besides those your corporate overlords and their political servants are graciously granting you out of the goodness of their hearts.
And, frankly, personally I really don't care about Linus's opinion anyway; the only part Linus provides for the "Linux" operating system is the kernel. If the Linux kernel project fell apart for whatever reason, the impact on Ubuntu, RedHat, Fedora, SuSE, etc. would be small since the Linux kernel would be replaced fairly quickly.
Why replace it, when you can just fork it and continue the development yourself, just like happened with XFree86 ?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, according to the IMDB the movie is 187 minutes long. With 24 frames per second, that's 269 280 pictures you see during the movie. So hand-adjusting them all would be 269 280 times harder than hand-adjusting a single photo. And this is not including things like keeping the adjustments consistent in subsequent images (which would pretty much neccessiate going through them in order, at least within a scene).
It should also be noted than oftentimes the "this is fake" feeling comes from motion, not lighting. Even if you motion-capture primary motion (joints), secondary motion (bouncing breasts & stomachs, ripples from impacts, etc) are very hard to get right. A computer model is ultimately just an empty skin; making it behave like a real human being would require simulating all the bones, muscles and fat underneath, the latter two being soft deforming bodies. And that is beyond the power of current computers.
And then there's voluntary motion (initiated by your own muscles), involuntary motion (relaxing your muscles and letting motion come from outside forces) and forced motion (fighting against outside forces). All of these cause different deformations on underlaying muscle tissue. Not to mention the fact that a muscle actively working is much more resistant to deformation than a muscle that's relaxed - just try pushing your finger into a relaxed and working muscle and see how much harder the later is.
And of course, even if the computer could handle all this, who is going to input it all ? Making those empty-skin models is hard and labor-intensive enough. And animating them by hand is also impossible, you need them to have AI that takes care of controlling all of those hundreds of muscles when you give it broad instructions. After all, you don't control even your own muscles directly, but let your motion cortex take care of the details.
So... Anyone up for building an open-sourced AI actor system ?-)
So you're saying that the only winning move for animal right activist is to kill you by, say, firebombing your home ?
You forgot one important step. Here's the full progression:
Anarchy -> (chaos & disorder) -> people desperate for order -> you take power, people too grateful to care if you're an evil dictator.
That's the thing I found very ironic in "V for Vengeance": V wanted anarchy, but he didn't realize that he was already living in an anarchy - the last stage of anarchy, where one of the competing gangs had won and taken supreme power, but anarchy nonetheless.
When government holds the power, you're at their mercy. When it doesn't, you're at your neighbours mercy. The government is unlikely to devote much resources towards oppressing you specifically, while your neighbour is. I guess there's no optimal political system to be had, we humans being what we are...
I suppose it is possible that someone refuses to be convinced by mathematical proof. I admit I made a mistake in assuming that being shown mathematical proof of mathematical claim would convince anyone.
Actually, if you believe something you can't prove (and I'm including performing a Google search for the proof here, not just being unable to come up with the proof yourself), then you are believing something unprovable. Whether it is inherently unprovable or if it simply hasn't been proven yet is irrelevant; either way you're believing it on faith.
Anyway, this is becoming hair-splitting, so I'm quitting this argument now.
Any algorithm can be defeated by sufficiently skilled manipulation. And conversely, if these algorithms can detect things that human eye can't, then you can manipulate a real photo enough that the algorithms see it as manipulated but you don't see any difference to original.
I have a picture of a rock troll taking a morning jog in a desert. Does it mean that rock trolls exist ? Or does it mean that Gimp is quite good at photomanipulation ?
For that matter, I've found pictures of Bush and Osama having sex. Does it prove that Bush is giving comfort to the enemies of the US (and therefore committing treason) ?
A photo from a hacker proofs nothing.
You have a problem with reading comprehension. For one last time: the guy who first talked about it in this thread said he can't prove it. Whether it is actually unprovable or the guy was simply ignorant is completely irrelevant; as far as he knew, the thing was unprovable.
I haven't said anything like that. In fact I haven't said anything about what should be taught in schools. I have simply commented on what someone else wants and doesn't want to be taught there, and the stated reasons why.
And yet when society changes its mind, by, say, including "Intelligent Design" in science class, Slashdot cries foul. Strange, that.
So, say you have a 3D scene. Could you use quantum computers to reverse raytrace every pixel at once ? Or better yet, could you forward raytrce every ray of light sent by a light source at once (this would solve some problems with radiosity) ?
In other words, if you have a 3D renderer and a quantum computer, can the renderer render every pixel at once ? Or could you render every triangle at once, allowing you to rise the polycount to hundreds of millions per scene ?
Remember, most graphics operations are quite simple, they're just repeated a lot of times with different parameters. Sounds exactly what quantum computers are supposed to excel at to me...
Dunno about Apple, but Ubuntu is based on Debian, so it has the concept of "packages". This allows the situation where the OS as a whole has a huge amount of software, but you only install what you want/need. In other words, growth of included software in Linux distributions like Ubuntu is not comparable to the same in Windows.
Of course it's also possible that Ubuntu gets more and more software installed by default, but that doesn't make the OS itself bloated, just it's default installation. You can propably remove the unwanted packages from Ubuntu; just try to strip Windows of its bloat.
I haven't disputed this equation. The guy who I originally responded to said he can't prove it but wants it taught to his children nonetheless, to the point of raising "high hell" if it won't be. All I have said is that it's hypocritical to simultaneously demand that said kids get taught one unprovable (according to him) claim and that they won't be taught another.
I've already said that I'm not disputing the equation. I am, however, beginning to wonder: since no one seems to be able to give this evidence they assert exists, do they know it or has "2+2=4" been hammered to their heads long enough that they take it on faith ?
True. Pity it hasn't got anything to do with anything I've said. Which, to repeat, is: it is hypocritical to demand that one unprovable dogma (which the op claimed 2+2=4 is) is taught in schools and simultaneously demand that another is not, just because he happens to believe in one and not the other.
The poster specifically stated that he cannot prove that 2+2=4. Whether or not it is in fact provable or he was simply ignorant of proof is irrelevant; he was still demanding special treatment to his unprovable (as far as he knew) dogma over other dogmas.
Since I've said nothing about what should be taught in public schools, and only commented on the op's hypocrisy, I still fail to see what your problem here seems to be. Altought I have to say that it is a nice appeal to authority, and means that the religious fundamentalists are completely justified in seeking to alter the curriculum to their liking - after all, if they can gather the majority behind them, it's okay according to you, right ?
The poster whom I responded to specifically stated that he can't prove that 2+2=4. Apart from that, since you didn't actually provide the proof, but only stated that one exists, it is still a matter of belief :).
Anyway, the point here is that the grandparent wanted his children taught things that he said he can't prove, but nonetheless felt justified in judging others who behave the same way. I simply pointed out his hypocrisy and tried to make him see their reasons for acting the way they act.
...So ? I don't see what that has to do with anything I said. Unless you are suggesting that one should be judged for putting one's own beliefes before the interests of the state.
In any case, official state religion has historically been a great way of promoting national unity and silencing dissent, so it might well be in state's best interests t pick one and promote it every chance it gets. It makes life hell to everyone who doesn't subscribe to that particular religion or ideology, but hey, state's interest's are important, right ?
An Aibo-mounted laser cannon ?-)
Assuming that the corporations don't simply decide to cooperate and divide the potential customer base between themselves. This is beneficial to them both, since competition has a tendency to drive prices down, and that lessens corporate profits. See: cartel.
No, what happens is that the government confiscates your property until the required payment is met. The same as happens when a corporation decides to engage in barratry against you (see: RIAA).
Besides, without paying the company, you don't get Internet access. If that corporation happened to hold the local monopoly - though shit.
The lesson here is that a sufficiently large corporation is indistinguishable from government.
So basically, if you just outlaw corruption it goes away. Right.
But tell me, how is the government that's too weak to protect the corporation going to stop the corporation from hiring a few musclebound goons to break down your front door and asking money for your "protection" ? Because if the government is too weak to help the corporation, then the government is too weak to hinder it either.
In the post-feodal system money is power - literally, since it indicates available resources - and corporations have wastly more money than you, so they can abuse you with or without the government's aid. A large corporation is easily as powerfull as a national government, and should be held to the same standards.
I live in Finland. I didn't read the article, so I don't know if we're on the list, but my current connection has 8128 kbps down / 928 kbps up bandwidth. 40 euros per month, no transfer limits, servers are forbidden but no one seems to be actively monitoring them. No firewall, NAT or closed ports (or at least I haven't noticed any).
This connection began as a 512/512 one a few years back, so I'd say that the development has been quite good :).
I want to pause here for a while and draw everyone's attention to the biggest problem of this debate: the people (on both sides) who have absolutely no idea what the heck they're talking about but say it nonetheless. The end result is that mutated strawmen that are recognizable as neither science nor religion pound each other to piles of hay which are good for nothing but giving allergics hay fever.
Oh, why did I quote you here ? No reason, none whatsoever :). You may wish to look up what Occam's razor actually means, thought.
So. You can't prove that 2+2=4, but you insist that it is taught in schools nevertheless. And, presumably, if someone else insisted that schools teach that 2+2=5, then you will raise hell as well, since it directly conflicts with what you want your children to learn. So in short, you want your children to learn in school what you believe to be true, and not something which conflicts with it, depite you being unable to prove it to be true.
How can you then judge a religious parent for raising hell when his kids are taught something he thinks is a vile, contemptuous lie, instead of what he thinks is the truth ? You are no different, you simply believe in different matters.
Well, from the fundamentalist's point of view, if they quit they're surrendering to Satan. So expect a battle to the death, quite possibly literally if they are left no other alternatives.
And don't come posting that you're going to rise hell if your kid is not taught something you believe, and then condemn others when they do just the same.
I've never reversed a linked list, and it took me all of ten seconds to figure out how to do it. It's a test of logical problem solving capabilities, not the ability to route memorize algorithms.
Propably no one. How the applicants mind works, however, is quite interesting to anyone who would hire him. And the best way to find out is to observe that mind at work.
"How do you make binary drivers that don't break every time the kernel gets a new feature like 4k stacks ?"
Alternatively, "How do you dissipate 100 Watts of heat energy per second from a two square centimeter chip area without needing neither a helicopter rotor for a cooler nor water cooling and without letting the chip warm over 60 degree Celsius when the surrounding air is around 40 degree Celsius ?"
An answer to either question would be appreciated by users as well as NVIDIA.
If anyone hasn't noticed, there is no law, custom or anything else forcing, literally or in practice, anyone to send their children to church to be taught whatever they're taught there. There is, however, a law forcing people to send their kids to school to be taught whatever they're taught there. Therefore whatever is taught in church and whatever is taught in school are not equivalent matters, and your argument is, while technically not a lie, quite misleading.
A church is a private organization, while elementary school is a branch of the government. They cannot be considered equal in what is appropriate to be taught in them. A bunch of scientists (or anyone else) trying to make a court tell a priest (or anyone else) what he can or cannot say to a bunch of people who voluntarily came to the church (or his own home - remember, sermons don't need to be held in custom built churches, it's just practical to do so) would be an outrageous violation of the most basic right to free speech; a bunch of people trying to get the court to tell a teacher who's paid from public (tax) funds what he can or can't tell their kids who were forced by law to come to a public (built or bought with taxpayer money) school is simply business as usual.
This is not an argument for or against teaching evolution or anything else in schools; just that your argument is deeply but subtly flawed.
At best, scientists waste their time dealing with this idiocy and research slows but that's all; at worst, scientists, being just humans in the end, will develop the attitude that admitting the existence of anything supernatural - and remember, "supernatural" is a word used for things that are currently unexplainable by science, movement of planets in the sky, lightning, and earthquakes fell into this category once - means admitting defeat, therefore retarding the progress of science for decades to come since any scientists working with things not conforming to current well-established theories (cold fusion, telepathy, telekinesis, etc) will be considered a loony (which he propably is, but it can't be known for sure) and his theories dismissed by the majority that doesn't want to take the risk of being associated with the religious people.
Oh, and various morons will show their ignorance of the meanings of the concepts of "natural", "supernatural", "science" and "god" by claiming that science has proven that God doesn't exist (it can't, since science deals with natural world, and God is by definition supernatural and not part of the natural world).
In short, a fight like this will at best waste everyone's time and at worst make both sides descend into dogmatism. Science will lose in either case; the only question is: how badly.
And of course the fundamentalists will also lose when they die from diseases that could possibly have been cured had the scientists been left in peace to do their work and not distracted from it. Which, in the fundamentalists minds, is a sure sign that God is punishing them from not stopping the scientists, and not the logical result of their own actions or just bad luck, therefore guaranteeing that this whole thing will go on ad nauseaum.
Nice troll. But I'm bored, so I'll answer it anyway.
Yes. Unfortunately, I find it unlikely that the US is going to stop messing around with the world and causing trouble and destruction everywhere it goes.
I thought that it was "mission accomplished" years ago. But I guess someone forgot to tell the insurgents that.
Does that mean that your mission was to waste as much money as the congress let you ? That's what you get when you don't bother defining victory conditions before going to war - it drags on without any clear resolution.
Oh, did you win or lose ? Saddam was owerthrown but you're leaving because you ran out of money, so I can't tell... The Iraqi people certainly lost quite a few of its members, not to mention its infrastructure, but I guess that was never important to the US in the first place, as long as Bush got his war.
I'm pretty sure that any nation that depends on your foreign aid is incapable of sending armed troops anywhere, so your attempt at petty vengeance falls flat on its face right at the start.
Good. Without your support for said dictators, the Middle-East might finally start calming down.
Or simply ignore US patents and mass produce cheap medicine.
Well, that's sure to spoil their day. Especially since the logical answer to that is to declare all US intellectual property - copyrights, but especially patents - null and void which, in all likelihood, will benefit their economy a lot more than you can hurt it.
But tell me, are you going to sever the underwater Internet cables as well ? Without doing that your "severing of diplomatic relations" is rather meaningless, and if you do it, you'll facing a rebellion from both nerds and the multinational corporations. And with nerds in the rebellion, who will maintain all those nice automatic systems that make your remaining industries at least somewhat productive ?
Does NATO serve any real purpose anymore, now that the Cold War is over ?
I'm sure that people willing to blow themselves up just to kill you are shaking in their boots thinking about your revenge. Not to mention their leaders, who've watched your less than succesful attempts to capture Osama for the past five years.
Yes, we all know and love US's way of betraying their word - ignoring international treaties - when it becomes inconvenient.
Yeah. Because when you're a good driver, a car going the opposite way never suddenly loses control and slides to your line, a moose doesn't come running from the forest, and a tree couldn't possibly fall over to the road in front of you. Nor will anyone else ignore red lights or any other traffick rules; a truck doesn't suddenly come from the left and turn to the road in front of you without bothering to wait until you've passed. You have this magical aura that keeps any freak accidents or coincidencies from happening. Because you're a good driver, and the very laws of physics and propability bow down to your l33tn3ss.
Clearly, if the road suddenly collapses under your tires (happened to my mother once), that's because you weren't a good enough driver - a good driver could have reversed gravity and kept the car from falling down when there's nothing under the wheels.
So instead of having sex in the safety of his room, he's going to be having it under the bridge, in the bushes, or some other location where there's a very real chance of some psycho finding them when they're incapable of defending themselves. A excellent plan, that.
Oh, and you're also making sure that if he needs advice on, say, how to use contraceptives, you are one he can't ask for it. Which means it's going to be his friends or porn mags. Or Internet's seedier sites. Nice going.
I understand that the thought of their children having sex is a horrifying one to the parents - altought I've never understood why, unless this is some echo of "sex is evil, and so is enjoying yourself in any way" mentality from the nastier perversions of christianity - but please use your brains. You can't stop it from happening, you will only make things harder and more dangerous to everyone involved if you try. Oh, and you'll also propably give the poor bastard the idea that sex is shamefull, which won't stop it from happening but will cause all kinds of nasty mental damage and weird perversions.
Not at all. "Doesn't matter if you're a grandma or a seven year old girl / they treat you like the evil hardbitten criminal scum you are" should make it absolutely clear to everyone that this is indeed an honest defense of RIAA.
"Don't take away money from artists just like me / how else can I afford another solid gold Humvee / and diamond-studded swimming pools, they don't grow on trees"
You are a human being, not a corporation. You have no rights, besides those your corporate overlords and their political servants are graciously granting you out of the goodness of their hearts.
Why replace it, when you can just fork it and continue the development yourself, just like happened with XFree86 ?