True, but in this modern age let's face it the first day is really Monday. When we all get the horrible shock of returning to work etc. Then the countdown starts, with the 'clock' reset next Monday.
Warning: vague half-baked memory retrieval detected. So I'm not certain about what follows.
I seem to recall that in some circumstances, eg very large black holes, some fusion in the accretion disk is possible. Though probably not much. Sorry haven't got a reference for that.
I didn't say 'recently'. I remember it was stated that C++ WAS a superset. Though it was probably moer accurate to say a superset of ANSI C. In fact there were early C++ compilers that actually preprocessed the C++ code into C first. Of course I am talking 15-20 years ago.
So I stick to my remarks.
Bloody young whippersnappers.
A comment that follows has a link to Stroustrop's page about this. Yes it is not a mathematical superset. But it is practically one:
Thus, C++ is as much a superset of ANSI C as ANSI C is a superset of K&R C and much as ISO C++ is a superset of C++ as it existed in 1985.
Well written C tends to be legal C++ also. For example, every example in Kernighan & Ritchie: "The C Programming Language (2nd Edition)" is also a C++ program.
C++ was originally a superset of C. But later changes to C / C++ have drifted considerably from that. However, that means that generally C shouldn't be a problem for C++ programmers. There are large differences in the philosophy though that will affect the quality of your C code.
OK. I rarely manipulate images, but when I do I get really confused by both apps. And the worst experience I had was when I had an image and I wanted to add a line to it with some arrows to show a path etc. I could not for the life of me work out how to do it in the Gimp or Photoshop. You ask for help and people say "it's an image manipulation tool not a drawing tool", well what the hell am I drawing on then. The point of this random rant is that this issue has become a litmus test for me about the friendliness of the UI: does it allow me to do simple things simply? From your comments I am already getting warm fuzzies over GIMP.
Once you get used to them you really can't stand it when they aren't there. I've used Windows since 3.0, and Linux from well before KDE/Gnome. But even when I though the UI was better in Windows (which it isn't anymore) I thought multiple desktops were a brilliant idea. I eventually decided that MS stayed away from them because they thought Joe-sixpack would just get confused by it.
These days it really pisses me off at work not to have virtual desktops (XP), and I work with dual monitors. I know there are add-ons to do this on windows but... last time I tried them it was pretty pathetic. Rather have the real thing.
Everybody seems to ask whether free will exists or not. But I myself do not know what "free will" is. What is it? Do you mean that decision making is random? Doesn't sound like something I want to have. Or that after much thought you come to a logical decision... doesn't sound like it. Or that the decision can be a mix of logic, emotion and hormone levels at the moment... ahhh still doesn't sound like it. Well you know I don't really think the question makes sense because it's so vague it is meaningless. I haven't come to an epiphany about this, I have felt this for many years and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Are we biological machines... yes. Are our decisions pre-determined? No, how can they be it depends on a vastly complex set of factors in our heads. If you are obsessed by something, then yes your decisions may be lacking in free will in the sense that you have no control over the process. But the fact that you can introspect about the topic at hand means that your mind will be influencing the decision. Is this free will? Beats me.
Yeah that one was on my mind too, but I just couldn't get the raptors out of my head... cos you never know when they might come through a plate glass window next to you. 65 million years of separation isn't enough!
Over the years MS has used just this tactic against other companies. Have they started looking down the wrong end of the gun lately?
Well that and the whole expiry of XP thing just cements my opinion that Windows is just a gaming platform for me. I prefer to do my serious stuff on Linux. Maybe I just buy a console or something and avoid all this craptacular pain.
God this annoys me. You know even the most sophisticated simulation comes nowhere near matching the physical world. If people are not familiar with the physical world cos they spend to much fucking time online and not seeing what actually happens then they will be easily fooled. But if you take the time to actually look at the seemingly mundane then you will see things that are never simulated. Because they are subtle but surprising.
I was going to mention some examples but that would be playing into the hands of the simulators. And yeah I've spent plenty of time online, even a sucker for WoW, but it aint the real world.
Don't be fooled fellow/.ers see the real world first.
Ball lightning (note spelling) is still not understood. Every now and then someone trots out a new theory which explain some features but not all. Theories range from propagating vortices of chemical reactions to cool plasma to plasma generated by rf from storms in standing waves etc etc.
This is about other lightning. I was most interested in the 'blue lightning', that is the "bolt from the blue" -- lightning bolts in blue sky way ahead of the storm front. I have seen it and it is pretty creepy, you suddenly realise that nowhere is safe. Should be an interesting paper to read.
Ahhh. World of Ptavvs. Earth was a food world of the Slavers. Creatures which could telepathically dominate any species. The Tnuctip, clever little buggers, fomented a revolution with the Bandersnatchi (who were immune to the Slavers telepathy, by design) against the Slavers. Who promptly, with great spite, wiped out all life in the galaxy. The Bandersnatchi on Earth presumably died out. Leaving the algae to evolve.
Protectors don't even come into it. Though Slavers are mentioned in Protector, Roy Truesdale sees the mirrored form of the Slaver in its stasis suit in a museum and there is the brief comment something like: it is very dangerous, once it got loose. That comment is World of Ptavvs.
AM radio comes into its own for news and reporting. You don't need 20khz fidelity for a news report. And has been said before ridiculously easy to build, remember those simple crystal sets, long range. Hell the crystal set style receiver -- just detector and earplug, attach to any metal as an aerial doesn't even need its own power -- ideal for natural disasters. Hmm, I wonder if national govts have ever considered distributing them to school kids just in case?
I stopped listening regularly to JJJ when Adam & Will left. So you may be right.
I think the major reason Australia's interest in science is so different is due to basically one man. Robyn Williams. I'm old enough to remember the growing influence of the Science Show which had unheard of popularity for an ABC radio program. Williams has written books, but I don't really like them. His skill is constructing an interesting, surprising and challenging 50 minute weekly show, and asking questions in such a manner that scientists don't usually dumb down the answers. Though it is interesting that some guests, usually American, who are new to the Science Show do dumb down their answers and it just sounds strange. Without him I don't think the ABC would have created the Science Unit, which has done some amazing stuff on TV. Pity they didn't come up with Mythbusters, though Beyond Productions in Sydney who are ex-ABC did do it. While science was in decline in popularity in the US and Britain it was actually increasing in popularity in Australia.
If it could be done here it could be done elsewhere. Though probably people of his calibre are a bit thin on the ground.
The boomers were concerned about government at one stage. And got pretty riled up about it. But after raising families, paying mortgages, going to work year after year... you know what... you just get a bit tired, and lazy. And you let the hard things like this slide. You can make up stories about how you no longer believe those things anymore. But I suspect it's the old laziness really. Personal experience here.
Yeah the short stories. He really had a way of twisting fate to give sometimes a bright and sometimes a very dark conclusion but often strongly ironic. The Star, Nine Billion Names of God, Superiority, and better ones which I just don't remember the name of... grrr.
Also the non-fiction. If you are a geek you must read "Profiles of the Future" sometime, especially the chapter about 'failure of nerve' and 'failure of imagination'. Brilliant. Also his essays describing the early days of the space age and before, the start of the British Interplanetary Society... trying to convince government about rockets in wartime London, and the realisation that the future had arrived with the distinctive sound one day of the 'arrival' of a V2.
Ahh. Yeah. Dammit well worth re-reading.
And sometimes he would hint cryptically that there may be things that we can't imagine. I wasn't sure what he was getting at until I discovered Olaf Stapledon who was a big influence on Clarke.
A life well spent. And thank you Arthur C. Clarke, and I think I will be revisiting these books that were so formative in my teens and twenties.
I know that TV fosters a dumbing down of society and trashing of the image of those in the sciences. But here in Australia we actually had a period of time when science and science reporting was highly regarded. It has slipped a bit lately but the ABC still has a Science Week where almost every TV and radio program tries to inject Science into the format. And TripleJ still has Dr Karl answering science questions every week (unless he's too busy doing Sleek Geeks). Maybe it is the non-existence of a strong equivalent of the ABC or BBC. Because science reporting is popular, just not as popular as other things. What I guess I am trying to say is the current situation wherever you are is not inevitable. Just as the current slide here is not inevitable -- science has given way to the unbelievably boring discussions on 'renovations'. Crap.
I have always been mystified by the concept of dragons. Such a cool idea. But how come the notion is practically universal? I can imagine how someone might mythologise a crocodile etc, but why make it breathe fire? And the supernatural abilities, such as able to mesmerise men. The legend is as interesting as the idea.
I always wish he had shifted focus after LOTR and turned the Tale of Luthien and Beren into a full novel. But he probably wouldn't have anyway, too personal I guess... since he regarded his wife as Luthien. Luthien and Beren could have been even better the LoTR: after all how does a couple of small humans throwing a ring into a volcano compare against two lovers, one immortal single handedly recovering a Silmaril from incredibly powerful Morgoth (Sauron was just one of his stooges) and defying death itself. Ahh, yeah, always wish Christopher Tolkien could let the Silmarillion go to be made into a series by a decent director. But very unlikely.
Slashdot Mirror
True, but in this modern age let's face it the first day is really Monday. When we all get the horrible shock of returning to work etc. Then the countdown starts, with the 'clock' reset next Monday.
You know when you say UID for some reason today I think of IUD.
Warning: vague half-baked memory retrieval detected. So I'm not certain about what follows.
I seem to recall that in some circumstances, eg very large black holes, some fusion in the accretion disk is possible. Though probably not much. Sorry haven't got a reference for that.
Black holes don't give off much radiation but the accretion disk around it usually gives off plenty.
I didn't say 'recently'. I remember it was stated that C++ WAS a superset. Though it was probably moer accurate to say a superset of ANSI C. In fact there were early C++ compilers that actually preprocessed the C++ code into C first. Of course I am talking 15-20 years ago.
So I stick to my remarks.
Bloody young whippersnappers.
A comment that follows has a link to Stroustrop's page about this. Yes it is not a mathematical superset. But it is practically one:
C++ was originally a superset of C. But later changes to C / C++ have drifted considerably from that. However, that means that generally C shouldn't be a problem for C++ programmers. There are large differences in the philosophy though that will affect the quality of your C code.
OK. I rarely manipulate images, but when I do I get really confused by both apps. And the worst experience I had was when I had an image and I wanted to add a line to it with some arrows to show a path etc. I could not for the life of me work out how to do it in the Gimp or Photoshop. You ask for help and people say "it's an image manipulation tool not a drawing tool", well what the hell am I drawing on then. The point of this random rant is that this issue has become a litmus test for me about the friendliness of the UI: does it allow me to do simple things simply? From your comments I am already getting warm fuzzies over GIMP.
Why would I want multiple desktops?
Once you get used to them you really can't stand it when they aren't there. I've used Windows since 3.0, and Linux from well before KDE/Gnome. But even when I though the UI was better in Windows (which it isn't anymore) I thought multiple desktops were a brilliant idea. I eventually decided that MS stayed away from them because they thought Joe-sixpack would just get confused by it.
These days it really pisses me off at work not to have virtual desktops (XP), and I work with dual monitors. I know there are add-ons to do this on windows but ... last time I tried them it was pretty pathetic. Rather have the real thing.
OK. End of rant.
Everybody seems to ask whether free will exists or not. But I myself do not know what "free will" is. What is it? Do you mean that decision making is random? Doesn't sound like something I want to have. Or that after much thought you come to a logical decision ... doesn't sound like it. Or that the decision can be a mix of logic, emotion and hormone levels at the moment ... ahhh still doesn't sound like it. Well you know I don't really think the question makes sense because it's so vague it is meaningless. I haven't come to an epiphany about this, I have felt this for many years and I really don't see what all the fuss is about. Are we biological machines ... yes. Are our decisions pre-determined? No, how can they be it depends on a vastly complex set of factors in our heads. If you are obsessed by something, then yes your decisions may be lacking in free will in the sense that you have no control over the process. But the fact that you can introspect about the topic at hand means that your mind will be influencing the decision. Is this free will? Beats me.
Yeah that one was on my mind too, but I just couldn't get the raptors out of my head ... cos you never know when they might come through a plate glass window next to you. 65 million years of separation isn't enough!
But in a an actual ride on the tube, you would be thinking about something else
Perhaps velociraptors? In that case at least there are some solutions.
Over the years MS has used just this tactic against other companies. Have they started looking down the wrong end of the gun lately?
Well that and the whole expiry of XP thing just cements my opinion that Windows is just a gaming platform for me. I prefer to do my serious stuff on Linux. Maybe I just buy a console or something and avoid all this craptacular pain.
God this annoys me. You know even the most sophisticated simulation comes nowhere near matching the physical world. If people are not familiar with the physical world cos they spend to much fucking time online and not seeing what actually happens then they will be easily fooled. But if you take the time to actually look at the seemingly mundane then you will see things that are never simulated. Because they are subtle but surprising.
I was going to mention some examples but that would be playing into the hands of the simulators. And yeah I've spent plenty of time online, even a sucker for WoW, but it aint the real world.
Don't be fooled fellow /.ers see the real world first.
Shame on Daniel for making Fista work
"Fista"? Don't you mean "Fester", as in "Windows Fester". Sounds right to me.
Ball lightning (note spelling) is still not understood. Every now and then someone trots out a new theory which explain some features but not all. Theories range from propagating vortices of chemical reactions to cool plasma to plasma generated by rf from storms in standing waves etc etc.
This is about other lightning. I was most interested in the 'blue lightning', that is the "bolt from the blue" -- lightning bolts in blue sky way ahead of the storm front. I have seen it and it is pretty creepy, you suddenly realise that nowhere is safe. Should be an interesting paper to read.
Ahhh. World of Ptavvs. Earth was a food world of the Slavers. Creatures which could telepathically dominate any species. The Tnuctip, clever little buggers, fomented a revolution with the Bandersnatchi (who were immune to the Slavers telepathy, by design) against the Slavers. Who promptly, with great spite, wiped out all life in the galaxy. The Bandersnatchi on Earth presumably died out. Leaving the algae to evolve.
Protectors don't even come into it. Though Slavers are mentioned in Protector, Roy Truesdale sees the mirrored form of the Slaver in its stasis suit in a museum and there is the brief comment something like: it is very dangerous, once it got loose. That comment is World of Ptavvs.
AM radio comes into its own for news and reporting. You don't need 20khz fidelity for a news report. And has been said before ridiculously easy to build, remember those simple crystal sets, long range. Hell the crystal set style receiver -- just detector and earplug, attach to any metal as an aerial doesn't even need its own power -- ideal for natural disasters. Hmm, I wonder if national govts have ever considered distributing them to school kids just in case?
I stopped listening regularly to JJJ when Adam & Will left. So you may be right.
I think the major reason Australia's interest in science is so different is due to basically one man. Robyn Williams. I'm old enough to remember the growing influence of the Science Show which had unheard of popularity for an ABC radio program. Williams has written books, but I don't really like them. His skill is constructing an interesting, surprising and challenging 50 minute weekly show, and asking questions in such a manner that scientists don't usually dumb down the answers. Though it is interesting that some guests, usually American, who are new to the Science Show do dumb down their answers and it just sounds strange. Without him I don't think the ABC would have created the Science Unit, which has done some amazing stuff on TV. Pity they didn't come up with Mythbusters, though Beyond Productions in Sydney who are ex-ABC did do it. While science was in decline in popularity in the US and Britain it was actually increasing in popularity in Australia.
If it could be done here it could be done elsewhere. Though probably people of his calibre are a bit thin on the ground.
The boomers were concerned about government at one stage. And got pretty riled up about it. But after raising families, paying mortgages, going to work year after year ... you know what ... you just get a bit tired, and lazy. And you let the hard things like this slide. You can make up stories about how you no longer believe those things anymore. But I suspect it's the old laziness really. Personal experience here.
Now get off my lawn.
My favourites:
Yeah the short stories. He really had a way of twisting fate to give sometimes a bright and sometimes a very dark conclusion but often strongly ironic. The Star, Nine Billion Names of God, Superiority, and better ones which I just don't remember the name of ... grrr.
Also the non-fiction. If you are a geek you must read "Profiles of the Future" sometime, especially the chapter about 'failure of nerve' and 'failure of imagination'. Brilliant. Also his essays describing the early days of the space age and before, the start of the British Interplanetary Society ... trying to convince government about rockets in wartime London, and the realisation that the future had arrived with the distinctive sound one day of the 'arrival' of a V2.
Ahh. Yeah. Dammit well worth re-reading.
And sometimes he would hint cryptically that there may be things that we can't imagine. I wasn't sure what he was getting at until I discovered Olaf Stapledon who was a big influence on Clarke.
A life well spent. And thank you Arthur C. Clarke, and I think I will be revisiting these books that were so formative in my teens and twenties.
I know that TV fosters a dumbing down of society and trashing of the image of those in the sciences. But here in Australia we actually had a period of time when science and science reporting was highly regarded. It has slipped a bit lately but the ABC still has a Science Week where almost every TV and radio program tries to inject Science into the format. And TripleJ still has Dr Karl answering science questions every week (unless he's too busy doing Sleek Geeks). Maybe it is the non-existence of a strong equivalent of the ABC or BBC. Because science reporting is popular, just not as popular as other things. What I guess I am trying to say is the current situation wherever you are is not inevitable. Just as the current slide here is not inevitable -- science has given way to the unbelievably boring discussions on 'renovations'. Crap.
I have always been mystified by the concept of dragons. Such a cool idea. But how come the notion is practically universal? I can imagine how someone might mythologise a crocodile etc, but why make it breathe fire? And the supernatural abilities, such as able to mesmerise men. The legend is as interesting as the idea.
I always wish he had shifted focus after LOTR and turned the Tale of Luthien and Beren into a full novel. But he probably wouldn't have anyway, too personal I guess ... since he regarded his wife as Luthien. Luthien and Beren could have been even better the LoTR: after all how does a couple of small humans throwing a ring into a volcano compare against two lovers, one immortal single handedly recovering a Silmaril from incredibly powerful Morgoth (Sauron was just one of his stooges) and defying death itself. Ahh, yeah, always wish Christopher Tolkien could let the Silmarillion go to be made into a series by a decent director. But very unlikely.
"... with Keanu Reeves as Gort"
There fixed that for you.