Then why are you reading Vinge? He's well known, among a few others, for writing about the Technological Singularity, which is our "near term" future given exponential tech evolution.
You bring up an interesting irony.
If you haven't read one of his books yet, I suggest you do. I think he uses the singularity to escape any sense of limitation on human progress, to escape having to date everything. In fact, I think he made up his own time convention (like the star-trek star-date convention). All his novels are based far in the technological future and he goes into great detail with the technological innovations. I especially liked his thinking on faster than light starship combat (wasps). Maybe I should have used the phrase "far in the technological future", as one authors idea of the year 2050 could differ drastically from anothers. Anybody who's read his books knows what I mean, he blends good old fashion action/thriller/romance with some waaaaay waaaaaay cool ideas. Niven does the same with ringworld. I get bored with books devoted to stuff as commonplace as AI and mind uploading, which seems to be popular lately.
nobody watches or reads science fiction to learn about the future.
I don't read science fiction to "learn" about the future. I just run out of stuff to read about in the news, I'm always waiting for the next big discovery, and reading science fiction is like playing make believe. Most science ficiton authors come up with ideas that could be possible some day, and they all blend together to form some ideal future in my head. So in that sense, it is implanting ideas about the future in my head, and then you ask yourself, what is knowledge?... Someone elses ideas.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be as smart as I am today without Vernor Vinge and Larry Niven to spark my curiosity. I think Vinge and Niven are the only ones producing quality sci-fi. Most authors/writers are mass market. I never had a thing for the "near term" future. The closer it is to reality, the less I care for it.
Well, I think its pretty likely that Bush was "assisted" getting into the National Guard. Seems like a pretty likely scenario to me, with all his political connections. I think Bush realizes the likeliness of the favors even if he wasn't clearly aware of any favors.
But I don't really care to be honest. I think he's done a great job these last 4 years and I would definately vote for him (if I bothered to vote at all). To see someone get excited/upset about this is so pitiful.
Yeah I don't understand how half the nation could vote democrat, let alone a majority of slashdot moderators.
My thinking on the voters is when someone gets converted to a Republican, they never go back, it feels good to be right all the time. The problem is it's really hard to convert people. Swing voters are a different breed though. This forged letter is going to cause permanant damage to the democratic party.
They probably mod it down like they mod down all of my posts.
What is with the democrats? They're earning a reputation as the party for liars and perverts. They gotta get their act together sooner or later, but not this election. It's funny that they have got so many minions in these forums. Damn perverted geeks.
When my girlfriend starts argueing her pro gay marriage pro animal rights viewpoints, I get the impression she is a tool for some billionaire running for president. I can't convince her that killing fetuses is evil, our dogs are happy dogs and fish tastes good to eat. She doesn't like fish. I tried to get her to take a bite of my tuna sandwich one time and I almost made her cry. She cries a lot though. Maybe a conservative girl wouldn't cry so much, and she would make me tuna fish sandwiches everyday. I wonder how well she could handle a trip around the world in a sail boat (one of my life goals) if all we ate every day was fish. This is serious food for thought.
You didn't say why NOT to stick with gentoo. It has a pretty big following, maybe not the BIGGEST but it's sufficient. How is the debian upgrade path any simpler than gentoo? It seems the only reason someone wouldn't use gentoo is because of the lack of installer.
I use gentoo for everything, and portage is the most incredibly useful tool ever to come out of the linux community IMO. I haven't even bothered with Debian since about 1998, so enlighten me if you please.
Seriously, this is crap. I don't think Bush is very proud of his National Guard service, who is trying to make less of it than it already is? It is not gonna jive with anybody. I don't think anybody is going to vote for George Bush because he served admirably in the National Guard. Come on now.
I don't understand you people who are against the war, like you think you're doing these army brats a favor. 1000 deaths? I almost joined the army simply because I wanted to drive around in a tank and blow stuff up, maybe get in a few heated shootouts, and if the odds were 1/150 that I would die, well I think I would have taken those bets. Girly men need not apply, so quit worrying.
In case you are wondering, I got a good tech job right after high school that was a better career choice than blowing stuff up for a living.
I say go ahead and use your 802.11b/g acccess point, are the wireless police going to come after you ? I think not. Just disable the broadcast announncement feature or whatever, use secure access methods. I think the spread spectrum nature of the devices makes it pretty hard to triangulate the device.
God, have you anything else to say all seeing eye? There is no conspiracy here. Kerry is a flip flopper, the proof is in the pudding. You really reeeeally hate Bush don't you?
In response to your claims, I don't know what you mean by "driving the US back to the 30's" because the republicans have been moving forward with economic and social issues. Nobody thinks that higher taxes and less censorship is "moving forward". Some people would lower the age of sexual consent if they had the power to do so, but we think it's just fine. That is not moving backward is it?
It's ironic that you mention moving forward economically. Pure libertarians would be thrilled if we could go back to the pre WW2 era when there was no income tax to pay for a massive army, although thats where I draw the line, I would rather not see the world implode on itself when the US is rendered useless by the pinkos.
What is "Republican" today? It gets redefined everytime Bush opens his mouth.
What?! Bush doesn't define the party like the Clinton's define the Democratic party. What is this? Are you taking all of our talking points and turning them agains us? Bush is not conservative enough! None of us really thought Bush would get re-elected, but apparently miracles do happen.
Lastly, the genx/y generation is skeptial, doessnt share dad's bigotry, doesn't share dad's religious views, etc thus you're going to get a lot of "crazy leftists" with "crazy" views like those held by the founders of the US, which the Republican seem to despise. Just read their 2004 convention platform: fuck gays, fuck the economy, fuck your complaints about the war, more PATRIOT ACT legislation, and blame Democrats for everything.
The funny thing is you relate the democratic party to the forefathers, because of the gap the democratic party filled in history, but the truth is the forefathers would probably abandon this country if a new land mass were discovered say, tomorrow. They'd be tired of paying half of their income to pay for the flaming homosexual on HBO who inured his butthole on the late night orgy espectacular.
Its the loud mouth liberals who drown out everybody else. Someone could post about biped robot wars in Japan and someone will speak out about how the bushies are going to use them to defeat their mortal enemies, the enviro-gays.
Nuclear camper trailer
on
Port-A-Nuke
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· Score: 0
I'm not too familiar with quantum entanglement, what energy is requird, and how does it increase over distances? Can't you just entangle the atoms and they are like wormholes, take them anywhere... ?
I think mazda was doing a lot of funding for a commercial application of this phenomenon. But its only storage, not generation. I think there is some law that says a chemical reaction doesn't have nearly the potential of a nuclear reaction, but still I think you have a good point, most chemical reactions are nowhere near maximum efficiency. We aught to be able to store 5 years worth of cell phone talk time in a single cell phone battery, once you get down to the raw electrons.
I think there is plenty of energy coming out of our own planet. Geothermal energy will probably become the most plentiful source of energy. Same thing as fusion or fission reactors except its just buried a few miles under the surface.
Check this link out: LINK It talks about quantum teleportation as a means to power spacecraft and other devices. Forget batteries altogether, just use wireless power.
I was thinking the same thing. It's like trying to get your kids to clean their room by locking them in there (and turning up the heat, hah, jk), as opposed to giving an incentive to do it. I was thinking that it aught to be easy to draw the atoms together using electro-magnetic force (attraction), but then I thought it probably doesn't work beyond the electron cloud, right? Maybe I'm wrong. Anyways, it could also be possible to fuse atoms using the infamous carbon nano-tube, like a batter with a million tubes acting like a million linear accellerators.
Actually, the inertial confinement method is just a mini hydrogen bomb, A single sphere of fuel is exploded by lasers from all directions (in a hydrogen bomb, its exploded from plutonium in all directions). 2 spheres would be more akin to the little boy bomb, maybe you're confused. That's never been attempted in fusion research to my knowledge.
B is correct, but the problem with both is wrong, the by products of fusion are always radioactive, hell the ingredients are radioactive (tritium in particular is dangerous to humans). The tokamak would have issues with radioactive components too. The problem with the first one is that sustaining the reaction is more difficult, it is more of a pulsed approach, which may actually prove to be the better way, since you don't have to keep things rolling in order to get a good result. The problem with the tokamak is not the confinement. They've shown that the solution to instabilities in the magnetic field are solved if you rotate the plasma, like a bullet is rotated to provide stability. The tokamak actually doesn't have many problems, the main problem is just sustaining the reaction to provide a viable commercial product.
Actually I think the laser initiation and the tokamak are two seperate approaches. In the tokamak, they run a large current through the torus, or they use microwaves to heat it. In the inertial confinement method, they zap a ball of fuel from every angle, which is like a mini hydrogen bomb. They say the lasers are a better approach, but I have no references to site. I think I read it on the ITER website.
Slashdot Mirror
Only thing I don't really get in his novels is the intergalactic newsgroup stuff, I think its a tongue-in-cheek joke of his really.
Then why are you reading Vinge? He's well known, among a few others, for writing about the Technological Singularity, which is our "near term" future given exponential tech evolution.
You bring up an interesting irony.
If you haven't read one of his books yet, I suggest you do. I think he uses the singularity to escape any sense of limitation on human progress, to escape having to date everything. In fact, I think he made up his own time convention (like the star-trek star-date convention). All his novels are based far in the technological future and he goes into great detail with the technological innovations. I especially liked his thinking on faster than light starship combat (wasps). Maybe I should have used the phrase "far in the technological future", as one authors idea of the year 2050 could differ drastically from anothers. Anybody who's read his books knows what I mean, he blends good old fashion action/thriller/romance with some waaaaay waaaaaay cool ideas. Niven does the same with ringworld. I get bored with books devoted to stuff as commonplace as AI and mind uploading, which seems to be popular lately.
I'd call Moore's documentaries "political science fiction". Facts intermingled with fiction does not make a documentary.
If you want to consult a dictionary definition for all matters of fact vs fiction, then you are a nutcase.
nobody watches or reads science fiction to learn about the future.
I don't read science fiction to "learn" about the future. I just run out of stuff to read about in the news, I'm always waiting for the next big discovery, and reading science fiction is like playing make believe. Most science ficiton authors come up with ideas that could be possible some day, and they all blend together to form some ideal future in my head. So in that sense, it is implanting ideas about the future in my head, and then you ask yourself, what is knowledge? ... Someone elses ideas.
Furthermore, I wouldn't be as smart as I am today without Vernor Vinge and Larry Niven to spark my curiosity. I think Vinge and Niven are the only ones producing quality sci-fi. Most authors/writers are mass market. I never had a thing for the "near term" future. The closer it is to reality, the less I care for it.
well in that case a "good" lay would be on the left.
Well, I think its pretty likely that Bush was "assisted" getting into the National Guard. Seems like a pretty likely scenario to me, with all his political connections. I think Bush realizes the likeliness of the favors even if he wasn't clearly aware of any favors.
But I don't really care to be honest. I think he's done a great job these last 4 years and I would definately vote for him (if I bothered to vote at all). To see someone get excited/upset about this is so pitiful.
Yeah I don't understand how half the nation could vote democrat, let alone a majority of slashdot moderators.
My thinking on the voters is when someone gets converted to a Republican, they never go back, it feels good to be right all the time. The problem is it's really hard to convert people. Swing voters are a different breed though. This forged letter is going to cause permanant damage to the democratic party.
They probably mod it down like they mod down all of my posts. What is with the democrats? They're earning a reputation as the party for liars and perverts. They gotta get their act together sooner or later, but not this election. It's funny that they have got so many minions in these forums. Damn perverted geeks.
depends on your definition of a good lay.
If your definition is a hometown girl with white cotton undies...
... Or a pink haired girl wearing a cape, with a dildo collection.
When my girlfriend starts argueing her pro gay marriage pro animal rights viewpoints, I get the impression she is a tool for some billionaire running for president. I can't convince her that killing fetuses is evil, our dogs are happy dogs and fish tastes good to eat. She doesn't like fish. I tried to get her to take a bite of my tuna sandwich one time and I almost made her cry. She cries a lot though. Maybe a conservative girl wouldn't cry so much, and she would make me tuna fish sandwiches everyday. I wonder how well she could handle a trip around the world in a sail boat (one of my life goals) if all we ate every day was fish. This is serious food for thought.
You didn't say why NOT to stick with gentoo. It has a pretty big following, maybe not the BIGGEST but it's sufficient. How is the debian upgrade path any simpler than gentoo? It seems the only reason someone wouldn't use gentoo is because of the lack of installer.
I use gentoo for everything, and portage is the most incredibly useful tool ever to come out of the linux community IMO. I haven't even bothered with Debian since about 1998, so enlighten me if you please.
They use Zogby polls, which are among the most biased.
http://anonymous.coward.free.fr/polls/pollbias.htOhio aint blue, thats Illinois.
Well if it were determined by popular vote, according to that chart, Bush would open up a can of whoop ass.
Seriously, this is crap. I don't think Bush is very proud of his National Guard service, who is trying to make less of it than it already is? It is not gonna jive with anybody. I don't think anybody is going to vote for George Bush because he served admirably in the National Guard. Come on now.
I don't understand you people who are against the war, like you think you're doing these army brats a favor. 1000 deaths? I almost joined the army simply because I wanted to drive around in a tank and blow stuff up, maybe get in a few heated shootouts, and if the odds were 1/150 that I would die, well I think I would have taken those bets. Girly men need not apply, so quit worrying.
In case you are wondering, I got a good tech job right after high school that was a better career choice than blowing stuff up for a living.
Right, and did that stop any of us?
I say go ahead and use your 802.11b/g acccess point, are the wireless police going to come after you ? I think not. Just disable the broadcast announncement feature or whatever, use secure access methods. I think the spread spectrum nature of the devices makes it pretty hard to triangulate the device.
God, have you anything else to say all seeing eye? There is no conspiracy here. Kerry is a flip flopper, the proof is in the pudding. You really reeeeally hate Bush don't you?
"4, Insightful" ?????? How the....
In response to your claims, I don't know what you mean by "driving the US back to the 30's" because the republicans have been moving forward with economic and social issues. Nobody thinks that higher taxes and less censorship is "moving forward". Some people would lower the age of sexual consent if they had the power to do so, but we think it's just fine. That is not moving backward is it?
It's ironic that you mention moving forward economically. Pure libertarians would be thrilled if we could go back to the pre WW2 era when there was no income tax to pay for a massive army, although thats where I draw the line, I would rather not see the world implode on itself when the US is rendered useless by the pinkos.
What is "Republican" today? It gets redefined everytime Bush opens his mouth.
What?! Bush doesn't define the party like the Clinton's define the Democratic party. What is this? Are you taking all of our talking points and turning them agains us? Bush is not conservative enough! None of us really thought Bush would get re-elected, but apparently miracles do happen.
Lastly, the genx/y generation is skeptial, doessnt share dad's bigotry, doesn't share dad's religious views, etc thus you're going to get a lot of "crazy leftists" with "crazy" views like those held by the founders of the US, which the Republican seem to despise. Just read their 2004 convention platform: fuck gays, fuck the economy, fuck your complaints about the war, more PATRIOT ACT legislation, and blame Democrats for everything.
The funny thing is you relate the democratic party to the forefathers, because of the gap the democratic party filled in history, but the truth is the forefathers would probably abandon this country if a new land mass were discovered say, tomorrow. They'd be tired of paying half of their income to pay for the flaming homosexual on HBO who inured his butthole on the late night orgy espectacular.
Its the loud mouth liberals who drown out everybody else. Someone could post about biped robot wars in Japan and someone will speak out about how the bushies are going to use them to defeat their mortal enemies, the enviro-gays.
I need one for my camper.
I'm not too familiar with quantum entanglement, what energy is requird, and how does it increase over distances? Can't you just entangle the atoms and they are like wormholes, take them anywhere... ?
I think mazda was doing a lot of funding for a commercial application of this phenomenon. But its only storage, not generation. I think there is some law that says a chemical reaction doesn't have nearly the potential of a nuclear reaction, but still I think you have a good point, most chemical reactions are nowhere near maximum efficiency. We aught to be able to store 5 years worth of cell phone talk time in a single cell phone battery, once you get down to the raw electrons.
I think there is plenty of energy coming out of our own planet. Geothermal energy will probably become the most plentiful source of energy. Same thing as fusion or fission reactors except its just buried a few miles under the surface.
Check this link out: LINK It talks about quantum teleportation as a means to power spacecraft and other devices. Forget batteries altogether, just use wireless power.
I was thinking the same thing. It's like trying to get your kids to clean their room by locking them in there (and turning up the heat, hah, jk), as opposed to giving an incentive to do it. I was thinking that it aught to be easy to draw the atoms together using electro-magnetic force (attraction), but then I thought it probably doesn't work beyond the electron cloud, right? Maybe I'm wrong. Anyways, it could also be possible to fuse atoms using the infamous carbon nano-tube, like a batter with a million tubes acting like a million linear accellerators.
Actually, the inertial confinement method is just a mini hydrogen bomb, A single sphere of fuel is exploded by lasers from all directions (in a hydrogen bomb, its exploded from plutonium in all directions). 2 spheres would be more akin to the little boy bomb, maybe you're confused. That's never been attempted in fusion research to my knowledge.
B is correct, but the problem with both is wrong, the by products of fusion are always radioactive, hell the ingredients are radioactive (tritium in particular is dangerous to humans). The tokamak would have issues with radioactive components too. The problem with the first one is that sustaining the reaction is more difficult, it is more of a pulsed approach, which may actually prove to be the better way, since you don't have to keep things rolling in order to get a good result. The problem with the tokamak is not the confinement. They've shown that the solution to instabilities in the magnetic field are solved if you rotate the plasma, like a bullet is rotated to provide stability. The tokamak actually doesn't have many problems, the main problem is just sustaining the reaction to provide a viable commercial product.
Actually I think the laser initiation and the tokamak are two seperate approaches. In the tokamak, they run a large current through the torus, or they use microwaves to heat it. In the inertial confinement method, they zap a ball of fuel from every angle, which is like a mini hydrogen bomb. They say the lasers are a better approach, but I have no references to site. I think I read it on the ITER website.