I've always wondered why they dont do this. You probably wouldn't need full Earth gravity and you probably wouldn't even need it for most of the day... just a guess. So that would reduce the demands on such a system. Just store the angular momentum in a flywheel and when required set a section(?) of the ship spinning enough to mimick say Mars gravity (0.38 g from memory).
Surprised no-one has mentioned suspended animation, not just an organ but the whole body. After all we've all seen those pics of kids revived after being almost frozen... well now with a modest amount of oxygen and a really really slow metabolism new possibilities emerge.
Ice formation was always the main problem... perhaps now the "sleep ships" for interstellar travel are one small step closer. Or even Mars.
No I'm not trying to be funny. But fidonet ran in just that style (but a lot faster:) : heres a my longish comment on something... followed by heres my long winded discussion/reply. Worked quite well. In fact it was a lot more constructive than IRC which seems to lead to more shallow conversations. If you're exchanging vast bodies of knowledge then it would be fine... and of course just because you send one message doesn't mean you can't send yearly updates even before you get the first reply.
STL is a bitch to learn without tutorials (which was how it was with me) , the Java equivalent is simple.. even novices can use it straight up. That for me was the seachange event that explained how it was so much easier for Java developers to actually get stuff out the door.
All the C++ programmers I know who went to Java never went back... except me.. and I did so only because they paid me... now I do only Java. I still think in C++ but these days I work at a company that does its work in C and Java... no C++. C for the hardware level and Java to make the apps portable from Win32 to Solaris to SCO. Even raw gui programming is simple in Java. And the APIs make even socket issues a non-event.
Thats the way it is. I don't know how factual the article is , but I would not be at all surprised if Java overtakes C++.
Alexander and the origins of Design Patterns
on
Mob Software
·
· Score: 1
If you look at the sites which discuss Design Patterns from fundamentals (which is how we got Analysis Patterns, Design Patterns etc) then you see that those guys regard Patterns as a deep deep philosophical exercise. This is Meta Design. Alexanders works are like Euclids elements here... they are the ultimate abstraction... thats why they resemble poetry and thats why effective design patterns have little to do with code but about 'vague' descriptions of problems , costs, benefits and solutions. Which is why they work.
I always remember the method of quenching the steel was to "thrust the red hot blade into the belly of a nubian slave" or something like that (apocryphal of course). Gees, lucky for me I'm an infidel I'd probably ruin the blade... just a normal beheading for me thanks.
Ok. I think trying to get a mission to Mars going is just too hard (politically). How about another tack though. Try arguing for a mission to the moon. After all if the US could do it 30 years ago it should be a cinch now.. right. Of course once a shuttle is given extra fuel to go round the moon.. people are gonna say... if that guy could go up as a tourist then then next tourist could whiz by the moon and maybe even we could rig something up to land... after all we're so much further along now than then... or are we ?
So if you get missions to the moon then a mission to Mars suddenly looks more desirable because people can once more get into space exploration with the vanishingly faint but non-zero probability of tourists going there.
Hey I remember a time when there were actually liberals in the Liberal Party. Now they think more of ideology than people. I think the litmus test for me was when I realised that over the decades the Liberal's cure for unemployment was always the same, cut the payments, even though the reasons always changed... doesn't take much knowledge about logic to realise how stuffed that is.
Anyway, come the next election is pay back to time to this bunch of losers. Roll on election day yippeee... must get a special bottle of red out to celebrate!
I don't get it. It is no longer Capitalism with Microsoft. There is no competition. The only purpose for Microsoft is to gain POWER. Power means money to MS now, the logical thing now would be to go after as much power over individuals and governments as possible to maximise profits. What say MS now gets cosy with the NSA and the FBI, so they can get organised crime by monitoring.NET traffic (and monitor others for blackmail), or requires penalties for false information on Passport databases (after all the govt may be using your data) etc... need to protect MS or plausible reasons could erode lots freedoms... creepy.
If Microsoft, who I don't think are evil, gets to finally achieve what they want then the US will essentially be a socialist state... well actually worse.. a police state. The control of information means the control of peoples beliefs and the power to manipulate the government. MS may not be evil, but an evil man at the head of Microsoft could do terrible things. There is still time. But it is so worrying that so many do not see this risk in the worlds greatest democracy.
And no I am not American. I like Americans. But I think in some things they display surprising stupidity. This is one.
Pete
And wasn't it Niven who asserted that humans didn't discover FTL because they did all their experiments in a gravity well and so didn't realise that the laws of physics were slightly different outside the solar system.... so they had to buy the technology from the Outsiders. He he he.
Everyone here is so willing to say its all "a lot of crap"... it disturbs me.
Is it evidence of aliens... I don't think so... looks pretty natural to me.. is it really cool ? You betcha.. check out the Nefertiti face. And the images look really nice. But its all 2D and 2 dimensional images are much easier to generate by accideent than 3d sculptures... that was why the Face was so intriguing at first. Also well.. its another world, you have to expect unusual things, most of the stuff NASA has been feeding us makes it look too Earth like for comfort... you are bound to get unusual forms in a different world which only has 1/3 g.
At least someone with an eccentric bent is looking at these images in detail... its a low probability approach to discovery but sometimes it hits paydirt... usually in unexpected ways.
As for Tom Van Flanden. He's an interesting character to argue against... he really knows his stuff. Just prefers to take an iconoclastic view. As I said a low probability path.. but its the stuff of scientific revolutions. The physics people especially should appreciate the approach, its what made 20th century physics.
.. considering such prophecies are usually hopelessly inaccurate. Sure he gets a lot wrong, but he picks many things reasonably well... and almost realises the impact of electronics communications... but I guess that was too fantastic a leap. We have to also realise that technologies can sometimes follow chaotic dynamics (think there is a Scientific American article on this somewhere... no link sorry) so even if history was rerun we may end up with some surprises. Hosable furniture though... errk... thats just plain bad taste:)
If we tried a similar preview today we'd be lucky to get as much right I think.
My whole family loved "The Dish" to the point my kids incessantly pester me to buy the video almost a year after we saw the movie. Its not "Apollo 13", but then again its a comedy. Its not meant to be a serious treatment.
Sitch and his team have been big in Australian comedy for years producing some bitterly funny satire such as D-Generation, Frontline (their best I think), "The Castle" and their live show "The Panel". "The Dish" is in the same mold. It is an attempt to bring these events into down into a human perspective event if they distort them. It is funny, though I don't know how American audiences will take it. The movie was very big here even without much publicity, just like their previous movie "The Castle".
I personally liked it because it showed the scientists in a very relaxed way. It wasn't dewy eyed about "science" it was a more human view. It reminded me of some of the stories I had heard previously of Parkes and of Honeysuckle Creek but really as I said you shouldn't treat its depiction of events too seriously.
but you can still take a look at the code generated and work it out
If this is the research I think it is even this "obvious" idea may not be true. As I recall when this work was done some of the evolved "solutions" were not physically understandable. Some solutions used unexpected effects like capacitance effects from neighboring circuits. But some could not be explained. On a large enough scale you may therefore get devices that cannot be reverse engineered because some of the side effects that you wont engineer in (because you aren't even aware of them) are crucial.
This has very little to do with benzene at all. The whole point is that the materials when exposed to various conditions (common in space) and then exposed the result to water (common on the Earth) it spontaneously formed cell like bodies which trap the chemicals. Many of the chemicals were new and complex.
Don't be so hasty and naive. Think for a moment. If the Earth is warming what then should happen ? Increased heating should produce more active air mass transport to the poles. At the poles this will increase snowfall since it will be bringing in humid air. It should also produce stronger colder winds from the poles as the global heat engine starts to more effectively move heat from source to sinks.
Eventually, however the transported heat will lower the overall temperature far enough that the ice will start to melt. By then of course it is too late. I think its too late now. There is nothing we can do, there is probably nothing we could have done. It was inevitable.
There is abundant evidence for global warming. If you go looking for it you'll be amazed.
As for the opposite view, what are the options:
* GCMs arent accurate... yeah so, thats no news, but the actual measurements are accurate.
* the old satellite argument. Now didn't I read that the recalculation of the satellite orbits showed that the orbital decay masked the increasing temperature ?
Can't think of any more. Apart from the personal slander I've heard.
On the opposing side what evidence is there for warming:
* the thermal pulse propagating down through the perma frost.
* increased wind and wave action over the last 40 years.
* ice thickness reduction in the Arctic and Antarctic.
* coral bleaching
* oxygen isotope measurements of the last 10,000 years.
etc...
But since this seems to be a religious / ideological view with many of the proponents I have absolutely no expectation that they will change their minds. If they are genuinely interested in the truth I would only suggest they look at the evidence and distrust anything that feels 'comfortable'.
Seemed pretty obvious to me. After a list of the lowest primes it suddenly goes to a new line with a new format show the symbol for 2 then a number in a new relationship to the 2 (they know our number system from the previous stuff) followed by a symbol then 1. Seems obvious it is a Mersenne Prime.
Some of the original broadcasts sent from Arecibo were far more confusing than this this almost kindegarten level in comparison. Which was my complaint with the previous messages. Although superscripting is not explained it surely wouldn't take long for a team of mathematicians / scientists to figure it out.
errrrrhhh Civ2.
I deleted this off my PC at least a dozen times in a vain attempt to get it out of my system. Regularly playing to 5 AM then going to work.... that sux...
Starcraft is a GREAT game, and UT is nice, Quake etc great too. But if your talking about addictive.... Civ2 actually calls to me from the CD case.... creepy!!!
Must not think about it anymore... or else... hmm yeah.... mmm deity mode... must install... must install civ.. !!
Peter
I remember my physics professor telling me (like 25 years ago) that diamagnetic fields could lift a mouse without trouble. (have a sneaking suspicion he said it had been done)
Makes me wonder if the experiment has actually been done many times before unofficially... especially after a few drinks. But you'd never want to report it, would you ?
Slashdot Mirror
I've always wondered why they dont do this. You probably wouldn't need full Earth gravity and you probably wouldn't even need it for most of the day ... just a guess. So that would reduce the demands on such a system. Just store the angular momentum in a flywheel and when required set a section(?) of the ship spinning enough to mimick say Mars gravity (0.38 g from memory).
Surprised no-one has mentioned suspended animation, not just an organ but the whole body. After all we've all seen those pics of kids revived after being almost frozen ... well now with a modest amount of oxygen and a really really slow metabolism new possibilities emerge.
... perhaps now the "sleep ships" for interstellar travel are one small step closer. Or even Mars.
Ice formation was always the main problem
No I'm not trying to be funny. But fidonet ran in just that style (but a lot faster :) : heres a my longish comment on something ... followed by heres my long winded discussion/reply. Worked quite well. In fact it was a lot more constructive than IRC which seems to lead to more shallow conversations. If you're exchanging vast bodies of knowledge then it would be fine ... and of course just because you send one message doesn't mean you can't send yearly updates even before you get the first reply.
STL is a bitch to learn without tutorials (which was how it was with me) , the Java equivalent is simple .. even novices can use it straight up. That for me was the seachange event that explained how it was so much easier for Java developers to actually get stuff out the door.
... except me .. and I did so only because they paid me ... now I do only Java. I still think in C++ but these days I work at a company that does its work in C and Java ... no C++. C for the hardware level and Java to make the apps portable from Win32 to Solaris to SCO. Even raw gui programming is simple in Java. And the APIs make even socket issues a non-event.
All the C++ programmers I know who went to Java never went back
Thats the way it is. I don't know how factual the article is , but I would not be at all surprised if Java overtakes C++.
If you look at the sites which discuss Design Patterns from fundamentals (which is how we got Analysis Patterns, Design Patterns etc) then you see that those guys regard Patterns as a deep deep philosophical exercise. This is Meta Design. Alexanders works are like Euclids elements here ... they are the ultimate abstraction ... thats why they resemble poetry and thats why effective design patterns have little to do with code but about 'vague' descriptions of problems , costs, benefits and solutions. Which is why they work.
For a really interesting discussion of how swords were really used and how they evolved check out this link.
Yep they did too I vividly recall it.
... just a normal beheading for me thanks.
I always remember the method of quenching the steel was to "thrust the red hot blade into the belly of a nubian slave" or something like that (apocryphal of course). Gees, lucky for me I'm an infidel I'd probably ruin the blade
Yeah me.
... guess they failed.
I just can't believe anyone would be stupid enought to use a title like that.
Then again maybe it was an intelligence test by Lucas of the movie execs
Pete
Its a spoof. Right. Gotta be. Cmdr Taco thinks its April 1.
What if its true ? Crap. Glad I didn't name it.
Ok. I think trying to get a mission to Mars going is just too hard (politically). How about another tack though. Try arguing for a mission to the moon. After all if the US could do it 30 years ago it should be a cinch now .. right. Of course once a shuttle is given extra fuel to go round the moon .. people are gonna say ... if that guy could go up as a tourist then then next tourist could whiz by the moon and maybe even we could rig something up to land ... after all we're so much further along now than then ... or are we ?
So if you get missions to the moon then a mission to Mars suddenly looks more desirable because people can once more get into space exploration with the vanishingly faint but non-zero probability of tourists going there.
Pete
Come on
Hey I remember a time when there were actually liberals in the Liberal Party. Now they think more of ideology than people. I think the litmus test for me was when I realised that over the decades the Liberal's cure for unemployment was always the same, cut the payments, even though the reasons always changed ... doesn't take much knowledge about logic to realise how stuffed that is.
... must get a special bottle of red out to celebrate!
Anyway, come the next election is pay back to time to this bunch of losers. Roll on election day yippeee
Peter
And to complete the cycle. Microsoft will BE the government. Sleep well :)
I don't get it. It is no longer Capitalism with Microsoft. There is no competition. The only purpose for Microsoft is to gain POWER. Power means money to MS now, the logical thing now would be to go after as much power over individuals and governments as possible to maximise profits. What say MS now gets cosy with the NSA and the FBI, so they can get organised crime by monitoring .NET traffic (and monitor others for blackmail), or requires penalties for false information on Passport databases (after all the govt may be using your data) etc ... need to protect MS or plausible reasons could erode lots freedoms ... creepy.
If Microsoft, who I don't think are evil, gets to finally achieve what they want then the US will essentially be a socialist state ... well actually worse .. a police state. The control of information means the control of peoples beliefs and the power to manipulate the government. MS may not be evil, but an evil man at the head of Microsoft could do terrible things. There is still time. But it is so worrying that so many do not see this risk in the worlds greatest democracy.
And no I am not American. I like Americans. But I think in some things they display surprising stupidity. This is one.
Pete
So if someone invents a matter copier then suddenly the Mona Lisa will no longer be fine art ? Gimme a break.
And wasn't it Niven who asserted that humans didn't discover FTL because they did all their experiments in a gravity well and so didn't realise that the laws of physics were slightly different outside the solar system .... so they had to buy the technology from the Outsiders. He he he.
Peter
Everyone here is so willing to say its all "a lot of crap" ... it disturbs me.
... I don't think so ... looks pretty natural to me .. is it really cool ? You betcha .. check out the Nefertiti face. And the images look really nice. But its all 2D and 2 dimensional images are much easier to generate by accideent than 3d sculptures ... that was why the Face was so intriguing at first. Also well .. its another world, you have to expect unusual things, most of the stuff NASA has been feeding us makes it look too Earth like for comfort ... you are bound to get unusual forms in a different world which only has 1/3 g.
... its a low probability approach to discovery but sometimes it hits paydirt ... usually in unexpected ways.
... he really knows his stuff. Just prefers to take an iconoclastic view. As I said a low probability path .. but its the stuff of scientific revolutions. The physics people especially should appreciate the approach, its what made 20th century physics.
Is it evidence of aliens
At least someone with an eccentric bent is looking at these images in detail
As for Tom Van Flanden. He's an interesting character to argue against
Peter
.. considering such prophecies are usually hopelessly inaccurate. Sure he gets a lot wrong, but he picks many things reasonably well ... and almost realises the impact of electronics communications ... but I guess that was too fantastic a leap. We have to also realise that technologies can sometimes follow chaotic dynamics (think there is a Scientific American article on this somewhere ... no link sorry) so even if history was rerun we may end up with some surprises. Hosable furniture though ... errk ... thats just plain bad taste :)
If we tried a similar preview today we'd be lucky to get as much right I think.
Peter
My whole family loved "The Dish" to the point my kids incessantly pester me to buy the video almost a year after we saw the movie. Its not "Apollo 13", but then again its a comedy. Its not meant to be a serious treatment.
Sitch and his team have been big in Australian comedy for years producing some bitterly funny satire such as D-Generation, Frontline (their best I think), "The Castle" and their live show "The Panel". "The Dish" is in the same mold. It is an attempt to bring these events into down into a human perspective event if they distort them. It is funny, though I don't know how American audiences will take it. The movie was very big here even without much publicity, just like their previous movie "The Castle".
I personally liked it because it showed the scientists in a very relaxed way. It wasn't dewy eyed about "science" it was a more human view. It reminded me of some of the stories I had heard previously of Parkes and of Honeysuckle Creek but really as I said you shouldn't treat its depiction of events too seriously.
Pete
but you can still take a look at the code generated and work it out
If this is the research I think it is even this "obvious" idea may not be true. As I recall when this work was done some of the evolved "solutions" were not physically understandable. Some solutions used unexpected effects like capacitance effects from neighboring circuits. But some could not be explained. On a large enough scale you may therefore get devices that cannot be reverse engineered because some of the side effects that you wont engineer in (because you aren't even aware of them) are crucial.
Peter
This has very little to do with benzene at all. The whole point is that the materials when exposed to various conditions (common in space) and then exposed the result to water (common on the Earth) it spontaneously formed cell like bodies which trap the chemicals. Many of the chemicals were new and complex.
Don't be so hasty and naive. Think for a moment. If the Earth is warming what then should happen ? Increased heating should produce more active air mass transport to the poles. At the poles this will increase snowfall since it will be bringing in humid air. It should also produce stronger colder winds from the poles as the global heat engine starts to more effectively move heat from source to sinks.
... yeah so, thats no news, but the actual measurements are accurate.
Eventually, however the transported heat will lower the overall temperature far enough that the ice will start to melt. By then of course it is too late. I think its too late now. There is nothing we can do, there is probably nothing we could have done. It was inevitable.
There is abundant evidence for global warming. If you go looking for it you'll be amazed.
As for the opposite view, what are the options:
* GCMs arent accurate
* the old satellite argument. Now didn't I read that the recalculation of the satellite orbits showed that the orbital decay masked the increasing temperature ?
Can't think of any more. Apart from the personal slander I've heard.
On the opposing side what evidence is there for warming:
* the thermal pulse propagating down through the perma frost.
* increased wind and wave action over the last 40 years.
* ice thickness reduction in the Arctic and Antarctic.
* coral bleaching
* oxygen isotope measurements of the last 10,000 years.
etc...
But since this seems to be a religious / ideological view with many of the proponents I have absolutely no expectation that they will change their minds. If they are genuinely interested in the truth I would only suggest they look at the evidence and distrust anything that feels 'comfortable'.
Peter
Seemed pretty obvious to me. After a list of the lowest primes it suddenly goes to a new line with a new format show the symbol for 2 then a number in a new relationship to the 2 (they know our number system from the previous stuff) followed by a symbol then 1. Seems obvious it is a Mersenne Prime.
Some of the original broadcasts sent from Arecibo were far more confusing than this this almost kindegarten level in comparison. Which was my complaint with the previous messages. Although superscripting is not explained it surely wouldn't take long for a team of mathematicians / scientists to figure it out.
Peter
errrrrhhh Civ2. I deleted this off my PC at least a dozen times in a vain attempt to get it out of my system. Regularly playing to 5 AM then going to work.... that sux ...
Starcraft is a GREAT game, and UT is nice, Quake etc great too. But if your talking about addictive .... Civ2 actually calls to me from the CD case.... creepy!!!
Must not think about it anymore ... or else ... hmm yeah .... mmm deity mode ... must install ... must install civ .. !!
Peter
I remember my physics professor telling me (like 25 years ago) that diamagnetic fields could lift a mouse without trouble. (have a sneaking suspicion he said it had been done)
... especially after a few drinks. But you'd never want to report it, would you ?
Makes me wonder if the experiment has actually been done many times before unofficially
Peter