HA!!! I was going to post the same thing about Diet Dr Pepper(r). Can we make the battery fluid drinkable, tasty and caffienated? My doctor says I need more electrolytes.
A) No. Only the population centers of Wyoming are, because the outlying population density doesn't warrant a cell tower.
B) I don't live in Wyoming. I live in MI, and I live amid many dead zones.
C) 100% of Finland? Or 100% of the INHABITED areas. http://finland.fi//finfo/images/people/popumap_b.gif Unlike Finland, most of the US is NOT tundra. Places in the US which are sparsely populated still have a thousand people in the radius of a cell tower http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/catalog/national/images/maps/Population.dir/USpop1990.gif. I once made a call from a place where I could see 50km for 270 degrees and nothing behind me. I could count the mercury vapor lights in that area. 100. Someone paid to have that area covered. It probably wasn't the people who lived there. It was probably the other 250 zillion cellphone users in America.
D) I'm not complaining. I would have paid $100 for that one call, so my bills subsidizing Wyoming farmers pays me back eventually.
Take the average cited, multiply by the number of users, DIVIDE BY THE NUMBER OF TOWERS.
You don't realize how low the population density can drop until you ride a 3.3 gallon tank motorcycle through Wyoming. Number of phones per cell tower varies from 10 million to 1, sometimes.
I have long wondered how it is that physicists can create ONE monstrous detector, and be completely certain that it works within spec... and within the design precisoin and accuracy.
BUT chip makers, SSD hard drive makers, space telescope mirror makers and rocket engine companies can have test runs in the zillions... and they still fail. Either catastrophically, or just bad math answers;-) Their bugs go undetected until production. I've done spacecraft component testing where a valve passes 1,000,000 times but fails on the next (or on orbit!)
Can anyone explain how the physicists get the good manufacturing karma?
That is an excellent question. I don't. At least not in that mode.
The reason that WordPerfect 5.1 is great for writing is that it is only words. No WYSIWYG. No mouse. One huge doc with only a hint of pagination. It allows a direct connection from the brain to the screen, with the fingers as adapters. Otherwise, I get constant barrages of spelling and grammar cues (which I CAN turn off, but then what's the point?)
You spew what you are thinking onto the screen, save it, spell check it (in batch, not real time), save it.
By the time yer ready to print it, you know what it says, but not what it looks like. Writers should only care about words. Formatting is for someone else, even if it's you with another hat. How many times have I had my wordflow broken trying to get the bullets to behave?
The God's truth is, that I don't do this. But after I use Word for a while trying to write a book (I do) or a proposal (I do), I WISH that I were using the old way.
Using Art Clarke's StarGlider concept, going from star to star in a fairly radial (outward from home star) track, would take time exponentially related to the number of stars. For example, if it arrived at Alpha Centauri, it would then have 3 nearby stars, (Sirius, Procyon and Sol) And more if it also checked Barnard's star and some really puny red stars. From EACH of these, they have about 3 more stars to check. And every star becomes a recursion fork. It becomes the Godmother of all Traveling Salesman problems.
This leaves two possibilities:
A thorough survey of EACH star
In that case, the 'wave of probing' would take a long time. MUCH longer than 50 Million years. That doesn't even mention colonization. Just probes.
A cursory, quick-scan of LIKELY habitable planets, based on their idea of habitable (The dudes from SIGNS wouldn't even look twice at waterworld here)
If they couldn't determine is measly old Sol could be habitable, they would fly by it.
Maybe they went by without stopping. Stopping is expensive. "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along" or "Mostly Harmless".
Have any of these people ever tried to 'fly from star to star?" I'm referring to simulations such as Celestia where you can set any speed you like and go. Try 50LY/sec. Once you do that, you realize that colonization would not be a "wave", but more like a liquid soaking into a ShamWow(R), where colonizers are the liquid.
I don't understand computers... I just know how to make them work. If I understood them, I'd be the richest man in the world. Oh, wait, he doesn't understand them, either.
The only reason that the aluminum needed to be 'transparent' was so that the camera could show that 'there be whales here.' I'm sure the whales didn't care. All they got was a view of the inside of a Klingon Bird of Prey. Yay.:-|
From the Greek word for "Crown". It must go to their head.
Coincidentally, Stephen was the first recorded Christian martyr... thus setting the precedent for that name as being equated with "the Ultimate Fanboi."
Sending probes or even people to explore Mars, Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359 is a waste if we are wiped out by an asteroid. We have some good theories on how to do it. We need to test them.
Let's practice while we still have the luxury of time... and failure.
Just wait until we have the "human vs. droid" Olympics. Chess is just too passive. Soon, it won't be US vs Russia or China. It will be humans vs. robots. To be fair, there will be rules. For example, weight classes and size classes. This will encourage the robotics companies to build them better, stronger, faster and still fit within a lane of a track. Eventually, they will be the size of a human and increase in speed and strength.
This might be a good time to start implementing a "4 year life span", for when they become "more human than human." And the robots will want to do a Voight-Kampff test to make sure the humans aren't cheating by using cyborgs.
"That's not very SPORTING!"
MOD PARENT UP
on
Hello World!
·
· Score: 1, Informative
This isn't a Troll, it's Truth! Teaching a beginner to program in a sloppy language is like teaching them to drive a car with GPS, traction control, anti lock brakes, collision detection and rear-view camera. That's all fine until they have to know what they are doing. (Picture driving an MGB)
Start them on a tricycle? Or a GSXR?
on
Hello World!
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Here's a question: If we teach our kids to program, do we start them on: 10 N=N+1 20 PRINT N GOTO 10
or OnClick="doHelloWorld"
After learning to program on a TRS-80 and later GWBASIC but now doing ASP.NET, I find myself looking at code (ExecuteSacalar()) as if every step takes 1/100th of a second, thus slowing performance. When in actuality, it takes a microsecond. Are we better off teaching them how to write an algorithm (How much is 1 + 2 + 3 +... + N?) or to start with finding what they need in a library? I've seen advantages and disadvantages to both my career.
Much of what I do now is finding the best canned operation (GridView) and toying with styles, rather than rolling my own Repeater. Seldom, but not never, does knowing how to step through a string get used. Although rolling my own DDL's is faster than letting.NET do it.
Should we teach our kids how to ride a motorcycle where pedaling isn't needed? Or do they need to learn to pedal before they ride a motorcycle?
Yes, I am aware of the vast amount of Delta V required to do what I'm saying:
Push the thing into an equatorial orbit, and then use it as a counterweight for the space elevator.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a avowed Space Elevator skeptic (despite my coincidental name from a book about a space elevator), but...
This gives us MANY advantages over starting from scratch:
303,663 kg that we don't have to lift again!
Opportunity to test pie-in-the-sky technology like solar sails, Ion engines. We can lift it to geostationary for "free". Ish.
Opportunity to test pie in the sky hopes like asteroid intervention. This thing weighs a mouse fart fraction of an incoming asteroid, has known mass properties, and even a convenient docking point. If you can't move that, what hope do you have of mitigating an asteroid threat? Let this be our "sandbox" for moving stuff.
Worst case, load the thing with lasers and start vaporizing space junk.
Worst WORST case, assume that mankind eventually goes extinct. If we push this high enough, it won't decay. It can serve as our headstone, complete with a record of what went wrong. The cephalopods will thank us.
Without getting into the monetary expenses, we've spent too much Delta V to drop this thing.
I have a list of cookies that disagrees with you. I am the WORST at responding to ads. I'm surprised Google hasn't banned me for non-performance.
Civility - no one cares, and not that much of an issue when you know and can see the person.
True, I've never flipped off a driver I could see~
I'm not sure why you think lawyers need to be involved
Nor I, but they always seem to get in there somehow. Like, when I want to drop my Sprint and get an iPhone. OOPS, contract!
Real friends/Meatspace
I have that handled. However, most of the meat is in different time zones. Different work schedules. Voice to voice is tricky. Meat to meat is rare.
When I'm waiting for something,while waiting for a meeting to start, or waiting for a coffee
You sound like you wait a lot. Why didn't your smartphone tell the barista when you'd be arriving? It also sounds like you don't drive on a commute. Lucky you. Texting + car = bad.
Money/ROI - considering we live in a world were a lot of data and apps to work with that data are free, I'm not wure where the penny comes in.
Content. I considered using a wireless broadband and ditching the cable. The plan allowed for 5GB a month. I stream music all night. That adds up fast. Overages kill.
I also left off COVERAGE! When my meatspace SigOther gets to my place, her signal vanishes. yay.
I can think of A BUNCH dampers to The Swarm (smartphone micronetwork):
Privacy
Until we learn to balance paranoiac fears of privacy invasion with "the good of the collective", these things will not reach a fraction of the potential. For example, I drive an hour to a choke point. I don't want the world to know where I am at any instant, but would like to know that if I slow down 3 mph, I'll get through the choke point sooner. Civility
I would like to use my smart phone to talk to people in the commuter swarm around me. "Dude, your left rear tire is low." But, being a Slashdotter, we know where that would go. "Dude, you have an Apple sticker, yer a fking fanboi! die die die!"
Lawyers
From inter-network contracts to micro-restraining orders (from the apple fanboi above), the potential for litigiousness will throw sand and syrup into this machine. And don't get me started on "intercept trajectories" with that hot chick who walks down the bike path every other day. "Hey, I just happened to..." "Right, get lost..." She presses the 'repel' button and is steered away from me henceforth. Money/ROI
Throughput caps, and the exceeding thereof, will get expensive. Texts cost nothing, should be free, but they are not. If everything I do costs a penny, that adds up. The ROI won't hold up. Not everything I do is worth a penny. I make money 8 hours a day, but can spend it 60/60/24/7/365. How long can I sustain that? Life (as in getting one)
I was a chat maven. Made some good, REAL relationships. No one is on chat anymore. People not on Facebook are virtually vanished. For now. I drive, I work, I cook, I eat, I sleep. Where does micronetworking ADD to that? "Say, I detect that you are adding Worcestershire sauce to that burger. Here are some Swarm Coupons for Baconnaise instead. Say, I detect that your cholesterol level is too high to warrant eating a burger. Say, I noted that you haven't moved outside the house in 4 days despite my detecting good weather in your area. Perhaps you should skip the burger and walk to the store for some lo-fat yogurt with bactieria cultures that I detect you are low in. Your neighbor 2 houses down has smelled your burger and wishes he could have it. Give it to him instead. I detect from his Swarmer that he has a 23% chance of dying of obesity in a month anyway." Time
Nothing I do with a smartphone will get me time back. Sleep, chill, read, kiss. None of these require a Swarmer. It takes away. I watched 16 innings of baseball and went to sleep. Just as I drifted off, my phone texted me regarding the results. Thanks for that.
Whenever some whacko grabs a gun and kills a bunch of people, the hew and cry is for "gun control". When someone takes a computer and attacks government sites, and other important infrastructural servers, where is the cry for "Computer control?"
Why are people who harbor botnets not as guilty as those who harbor criminal and terrorists? If you let someone use your garage to store gasoline/petrol for Molotov Cocktails, you'd be arrested.
What was the OS and browser of the botnetted collaborators? Wouldn't it be fun if the FBI knocked on the doors of those whose machines were "hijacked*" and brought their computers in for questioning?
*I use the phrase 'hijacked' loosely. If a person leaves the car running, the keys in the ignition and the windows down (pun intended), can they say that their car was 'stolen'?
Slashdot Mirror
HA!!! I was going to post the same thing about Diet Dr Pepper(r). Can we make the battery fluid drinkable, tasty and caffienated? My doctor says I need more electrolytes.
A) No. Only the population centers of Wyoming are, because the outlying population density doesn't warrant a cell tower.
B) I don't live in Wyoming. I live in MI, and I live amid many dead zones.
C) 100% of Finland? Or 100% of the INHABITED areas. http://finland.fi//finfo/images/people/popumap_b.gif Unlike Finland, most of the US is NOT tundra. Places in the US which are sparsely populated still have a thousand people in the radius of a cell tower http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/catalog/national/images/maps/Population.dir/USpop1990.gif. I once made a call from a place where I could see 50km for 270 degrees and nothing behind me. I could count the mercury vapor lights in that area. 100. Someone paid to have that area covered. It probably wasn't the people who lived there. It was probably the other 250 zillion cellphone users in America.
D) I'm not complaining. I would have paid $100 for that one call, so my bills subsidizing Wyoming farmers pays me back eventually.
Take the average cited, multiply by the number of users, DIVIDE BY THE NUMBER OF TOWERS.
You don't realize how low the population density can drop until you ride a 3.3 gallon tank motorcycle through Wyoming. Number of phones per cell tower varies from 10 million to 1, sometimes.
I have long wondered how it is that physicists can create ONE monstrous detector, and be completely certain that it works within spec... and within the design precisoin and accuracy.
;-) Their bugs go undetected until production. I've done spacecraft component testing where a valve passes 1,000,000 times but fails on the next (or on orbit!)
BUT chip makers, SSD hard drive makers, space telescope mirror makers and rocket engine companies can have test runs in the zillions... and they still fail. Either catastrophically, or just bad math answers
Can anyone explain how the physicists get the good manufacturing karma?
That is an excellent question. I don't. At least not in that mode.
The reason that WordPerfect 5.1 is great for writing is that it is only words. No WYSIWYG. No mouse. One huge doc with only a hint of pagination. It allows a direct connection from the brain to the screen, with the fingers as adapters. Otherwise, I get constant barrages of spelling and grammar cues (which I CAN turn off, but then what's the point?)
You spew what you are thinking onto the screen, save it, spell check it (in batch, not real time), save it.
By the time yer ready to print it, you know what it says, but not what it looks like. Writers should only care about words. Formatting is for someone else, even if it's you with another hat. How many times have I had my wordflow broken trying to get the bullets to behave?
The God's truth is, that I don't do this. But after I use Word for a while trying to write a book (I do) or a proposal (I do), I WISH that I were using the old way.
Nuff said.
(Except the unspoken part about finding a Mac that can run DosBox that can still read the WP install floppies.)
the first paying passenger's going up in 2011.
That is correct grammar~ In this case, "going up" is a noun, and it refers to the one person who was first. Much like "a send-up".
You will probably quibble at the "first shooting down of the orbitting Pepsi ad" when it is reported.
Unless, of course, the Pepsi ads DO shoot down. Sure, why not. Take the Cola Wars to the Final Frontier. First targets, Atlanta and Plano, TX.
This leaves two possibilities:
In that case, the 'wave of probing' would take a long time. MUCH longer than 50 Million years. That doesn't even mention colonization. Just probes.
If they couldn't determine is measly old Sol could be habitable, they would fly by it.
Maybe they went by without stopping. Stopping is expensive. "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along" or "Mostly Harmless".
Have any of these people ever tried to 'fly from star to star?" I'm referring to simulations such as Celestia where you can set any speed you like and go. Try 50LY/sec. Once you do that, you realize that colonization would not be a "wave", but more like a liquid soaking into a ShamWow(R), where colonizers are the liquid.
Obviously, yer a Mac User! (Command-UpArrow to you)
Who will they recruit for THAT duty?
I often say to my lUsers:
I don't understand computers... I just know how to make them work. If I understood them, I'd be the richest man in the world. Oh, wait, he doesn't understand them, either.
The only reason that the aluminum needed to be 'transparent' was so that the camera could show that 'there be whales here.' I'm sure the whales didn't care. All they got was a view of the inside of a Klingon Bird of Prey. Yay. :-|
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Wars
The iPhone app is fun. Keep it simple, controlling with the WiiMote... my daughter could end up being the next Carmen Ibanez.
Also, any game that is first-person flying through an asteroid field, so long as the display doesn't "tell me the odds."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen
From the Greek word for "Crown". It must go to their head.
Coincidentally, Stephen was the first recorded Christian martyr... thus setting the precedent for that name as being equated with "the Ultimate Fanboi."
Isn't it amazingly COOL how the best pictures of the eclipse are those which include people and their living?
Science isn't everything. Coincidence of congruent angles isn't as cool as people living under an eclipse.
We are ALL lucky to live on this planet. How many other planets have eclipses like these?
Anything else we do is grave decoration.
Sending probes or even people to explore Mars, Alpha Centauri or Wolf 359 is a waste if we are wiped out by an asteroid. We have some good theories on how to do it. We need to test them.
Let's practice while we still have the luxury of time... and failure.
Yes, but he only wields this power for good.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=3374411
Should I stop development of Bagpipe Hero? I JUST got the rights from AC/DC for "It's a Long Way to the Top (If you wanna rock and roll)"
Just wait until we have the "human vs. droid" Olympics. Chess is just too passive. Soon, it won't be US vs Russia or China. It will be humans vs. robots. To be fair, there will be rules. For example, weight classes and size classes. This will encourage the robotics companies to build them better, stronger, faster and still fit within a lane of a track. Eventually, they will be the size of a human and increase in speed and strength.
This might be a good time to start implementing a "4 year life span", for when they become "more human than human." And the robots will want to do a Voight-Kampff test to make sure the humans aren't cheating by using cyborgs.
"That's not very SPORTING!"
This isn't a Troll, it's Truth! Teaching a beginner to program in a sloppy language is like teaching them to drive a car with GPS, traction control, anti lock brakes, collision detection and rear-view camera. That's all fine until they have to know what they are doing. (Picture driving an MGB)
Here's a question: If we teach our kids to program, do we start them on:
10 N=N+1
20 PRINT N
GOTO 10
or OnClick="doHelloWorld"
After learning to program on a TRS-80 and later GWBASIC but now doing ASP.NET, I find myself looking at code (ExecuteSacalar()) as if every step takes 1/100th of a second, thus slowing performance. When in actuality, it takes a microsecond. Are we better off teaching them how to write an algorithm (How much is 1 + 2 + 3 + ... + N?) or to start with finding what they need in a library? I've seen advantages and disadvantages to both my career.
Much of what I do now is finding the best canned operation (GridView) and toying with styles, rather than rolling my own Repeater. Seldom, but not never, does knowing how to step through a string get used. Although rolling my own DDL's is faster than letting .NET do it.
Should we teach our kids how to ride a motorcycle where pedaling isn't needed? Or do they need to learn to pedal before they ride a motorcycle?
Push the thing into an equatorial orbit, and then use it as a counterweight for the space elevator.
Don't get me wrong. I'm a avowed Space Elevator skeptic (despite my coincidental name from a book about a space elevator), but...
This gives us MANY advantages over starting from scratch:
Without getting into the monetary expenses, we've spent too much Delta V to drop this thing.
Privacy - You're not that interesting.
I have a list of cookies that disagrees with you. I am the WORST at responding to ads. I'm surprised Google hasn't banned me for non-performance.
Civility - no one cares, and not that much of an issue when you know and can see the person.
True, I've never flipped off a driver I could see~
I'm not sure why you think lawyers need to be involved
Nor I, but they always seem to get in there somehow. Like, when I want to drop my Sprint and get an iPhone. OOPS, contract!
Real friends/Meatspace
I have that handled. However, most of the meat is in different time zones. Different work schedules. Voice to voice is tricky. Meat to meat is rare.
When I'm waiting for something,while waiting for a meeting to start, or waiting for a coffee
You sound like you wait a lot. Why didn't your smartphone tell the barista when you'd be arriving? It also sounds like you don't drive on a commute. Lucky you. Texting + car = bad.
Money/ROI - considering we live in a world were a lot of data and apps to work with that data are free, I'm not wure where the penny comes in.
Content. I considered using a wireless broadband and ditching the cable. The plan allowed for 5GB a month. I stream music all night. That adds up fast. Overages kill.
I also left off COVERAGE! When my meatspace SigOther gets to my place, her signal vanishes. yay.
Worcestershire
contains anchovies. Not vegetarian.
I can think of A BUNCH dampers to The Swarm (smartphone micronetwork):
Privacy
Until we learn to balance paranoiac fears of privacy invasion with "the good of the collective", these things will not reach a fraction of the potential. For example, I drive an hour to a choke point. I don't want the world to know where I am at any instant, but would like to know that if I slow down 3 mph, I'll get through the choke point sooner.
Civility
I would like to use my smart phone to talk to people in the commuter swarm around me. "Dude, your left rear tire is low." But, being a Slashdotter, we know where that would go. "Dude, you have an Apple sticker, yer a fking fanboi! die die die!" Lawyers
From inter-network contracts to micro-restraining orders (from the apple fanboi above), the potential for litigiousness will throw sand and syrup into this machine. And don't get me started on "intercept trajectories" with that hot chick who walks down the bike path every other day. "Hey, I just happened to..." "Right, get lost..." She presses the 'repel' button and is steered away from me henceforth.
Money/ROI
Throughput caps, and the exceeding thereof, will get expensive. Texts cost nothing, should be free, but they are not. If everything I do costs a penny, that adds up. The ROI won't hold up. Not everything I do is worth a penny. I make money 8 hours a day, but can spend it 60/60/24/7/365. How long can I sustain that?
Life (as in getting one)
I was a chat maven. Made some good, REAL relationships. No one is on chat anymore. People not on Facebook are virtually vanished. For now. I drive, I work, I cook, I eat, I sleep. Where does micronetworking ADD to that? "Say, I detect that you are adding Worcestershire sauce to that burger. Here are some Swarm Coupons for Baconnaise instead. Say, I detect that your cholesterol level is too high to warrant eating a burger. Say, I noted that you haven't moved outside the house in 4 days despite my detecting good weather in your area. Perhaps you should skip the burger and walk to the store for some lo-fat yogurt with bactieria cultures that I detect you are low in. Your neighbor 2 houses down has smelled your burger and wishes he could have it. Give it to him instead. I detect from his Swarmer that he has a 23% chance of dying of obesity in a month anyway."
Time
Nothing I do with a smartphone will get me time back. Sleep, chill, read, kiss. None of these require a Swarmer. It takes away. I watched 16 innings of baseball and went to sleep. Just as I drifted off, my phone texted me regarding the results. Thanks for that.
Whenever some whacko grabs a gun and kills a bunch of people, the hew and cry is for "gun control". When someone takes a computer and attacks government sites, and other important infrastructural servers, where is the cry for "Computer control?"
Why are people who harbor botnets not as guilty as those who harbor criminal and terrorists? If you let someone use your garage to store gasoline/petrol for Molotov Cocktails, you'd be arrested.
What was the OS and browser of the botnetted collaborators? Wouldn't it be fun if the FBI knocked on the doors of those whose machines were "hijacked*" and brought their computers in for questioning?
*I use the phrase 'hijacked' loosely. If a person leaves the car running, the keys in the ignition and the windows down (pun intended), can they say that their car was 'stolen'?