And there we go into the realm of qualia, and possibly the supernatural. I can't prove it, and I hate to use the word "faith" (I'm not religious), but if there was ever use for such a word, that would fit the bill very well.
I'm pretty sure we can say that morals aren't purely subjective. For example, practically everyone would agree that extreme torture to another human for 'just a laff' would be at least morally dubious.
FINALLY, it would appear the free market is starting to work its magic. It's almost inevitable that phone calls and mobile internet access will be free or almost next to free some day. That day appears a little sooner thanks to this news.
However, I still think it should be a government service, since like roads, it's basic infrastructure. Maybe the government and Google (for the expertise) can get together at some point to make that work.
That's not entirely the point. Lossless subsumes both of them. In other words, a lossless signal can emulate the other 'worse' one (as well as itself obviously). However, the lossy one can't emulate the better quality lossless version.
Reminds me of the argument with vinyl records - yes the sound might be subjectively 'warmer', but that's through distortion or frequency bias. Perfect replication of a signal can simply emulate that if need be (perhaps just by a simple turn of the bass/midrange knob).
I think there has been a level of fearmongering above and beyond what the actual risk would dictate. There's a rather humorous argument over at PhotonLexicon, where tsteele93 (and I think one other) debate/argue with most of the others there. Here's a couple of quotes at the start of the thread where he joins in:
Here's a couple of choice quotes:
Well, the OP was over two years ago and 1W blues had just hit the scene with certain impending doom guaranteed by those who were inclined to believe that it was imminent. Some of the early posts in this thread are downright amusing, with the general premise that the members of this forum held the key to stopping the certain influx of horrific eye injuries that were certain to start flooding in, by making sure sales were only made to "responsible buyers."
And yet, two plus years later we just haven't seen the injuries.
It is always easy to predict doom and gloom but it is always interesting to see when those predictions don't come true...
It just seems that people don't go buy 1W+ lasers and start pointing them in people's eyes.
...And from another post:
“Right now I haven’t seen an epidemic of injuries,” Dr. Bryan said, but he added that the potential was there. “In the hands of children it’s a very scary proposition.”
Injuries from momentary (accidental/unwanted) exposures: According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as of April 2012 the FDA has never received a report of eye injury from momentary exposures to laser pointers of Class 2 and 3R power (e.g., below 5 milliwatts).
Injuries from Class 4 consumer lasers: There have been no reported injuries from commercially manufactured Class 4 consumer lasers (over 500 milliwatts of visible light), as of April 7 2012. This includes the Wicked Lasers Spyder III Arctic “1 watt” laser which first came out in August 2010, as well as similar high-power Class 4 lasers sold by other companies such as DinoDirect.com. There have been two reports of injuries from homemade or hobbyist kit Class 4 lasers, the results are minor injury and more severe.
Despite my curiosity, I would share your trepidation on that one. I recently bought a £3 1mW red laser for my pet dog to chase, but due to the 'horror' stories of 50-100mW lasers masquerading as 1-5mW I wrote to laserpointerforums.com to ask if there was any way I could test to see it was really 1mW (or thereabouts). AFter all, I don't want to blind my dog.
If you look at the latest reviews at Amazon (when the servers should have calmed down a bit), you'll see that most are still giving it 1 star. And it's not just DRM/server problems, but also because the game is flawed in various ways according to many:
It would prevent the need to some extra math for extra high numbers (not just those that end on a high numbers, but where the intermediate calculation may be high (e.g.: factorial math to find out the probability of something if I recall). Plus, 96 bits is more than enough for the fraction if you ask me - very greedy in fact to take that to 112 at the cost of 16 bits the exponent could well do with.
With the mention of the word 'nano', I was hoping for an advance in molecular/atomic printing. I'd love the ability to mass produce objects (even just cubes) of various materials.
Risk comes into it sure. But for every Fisker, A123 or Solendra, you'll get the occasional success - say, Tesla. I for one can't wait until they begin to make electric cars below 20 grand.
Strange how I still don't know the actual definition of 'troll' despite being on here for ages. It seems to have multiple definitions to suit whoever throws the comment out.
Oh I agree, which is why I pointed out that competition and choice is good at first. Just that it shouldn't be the end goal. We'll evolve towards the best (well at least a very good one) by learning from the past standards.
There seems to a common denominator in "unfun" stuff as regards coding. It's the bits which rely on libraries, protocols, formats or hardware which haven't been standardized yet. If we all had two image/sound/video formats (lossy and non-lossy), one time format, one type of graphics card and CPU, one file format or data transmission format, one (spoken) language (which we'll all move to eventually given enough centuries), or (horror) one OS or programming language, software would be much more exciting to write, knowing it will stand the test of time.
The tedium is found in writing code multiple times for uncommon formats, CPUs and OSs, increasing code complexity (bugs), and knowing that it will probably be dead one day. Yes, competition and multiple standards is probably a good thing initially, and hardware is certainly changing and improving for a while, but when things finally settle down in a century or two (?), the real productive work will have just started.
Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better. When it comes to the major disease vectors, "it's difficult to see what the downside would be to removal, except for collateral damage", says insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University in Normal. A world without mosquitoes would be "more secure for us", says medical entomologist Carlos Brisola Marcondes from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. "The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."
Even if you're right (and remember we have a lot more control over what species go extinct or not), it's still very arguable that we can make 'good' and 'bad' choices, even if it's tricky to decide which. 'Good' would be ridding the world of the mosquito. 'Neutral' would be some other insect, and worse would be a type of animal which has many close and similar cousin species. "Bad" would be, well, I guess cats/dogs, or rare and beautiful species, or ecologically useful species which have no comparison elsewhere.
And yes, we are more special, at least in the sense that we dominate the planet, but also because we have profound intellect, creativity, and musical/art appreciation (and no, I don't believe in creationism or anything).
Even though I agree with you for the times back then, if we suddenly decided to exterminate say all.... badgers, or pandas today on a whim (if we could), wouldn't that be a bit more contrived than otherwise? Back then, we were more worried about food and survival so that's what makes things different.
Everyone knew what it meant, including you, but putting that aside, mathematically and logically it is sound because:
Increase 10 fold = Times by 10
Decrease 10 fold = Divide by 10
Even if it isn't commonly used (which I think it is anyway), I'd WANT to put that into common parlance just because it is so logical, concise and reasonable. Don't forget English is still an evolving language.
Think of it as the multiplicative inverse. The key word is 'reduce'. If he said: "increased the price tenfold" (to mean costing 10x as much), you wouldn't complain then. So I don't see what's wrong with it.
You'd think some rich Dr Who fans would have wanted to compensate him a lot of money, and probably get themselves a bit famous at the same time (as the kindness would make the papers)
It wasn't just 'short-sightedness' of the public that made ads win. Micropayments are apparently hard to implement, for reasons I have yet to still discover.
Slashdot Mirror
And there we go into the realm of qualia, and possibly the supernatural. I can't prove it, and I hate to use the word "faith" (I'm not religious), but if there was ever use for such a word, that would fit the bill very well.
I'm pretty sure we can say that morals aren't purely subjective. For example, practically everyone would agree that extreme torture to another human for 'just a laff' would be at least morally dubious.
FINALLY, it would appear the free market is starting to work its magic. It's almost inevitable that phone calls and mobile internet access will be free or almost next to free some day. That day appears a little sooner thanks to this news.
However, I still think it should be a government service, since like roads, it's basic infrastructure. Maybe the government and Google (for the expertise) can get together at some point to make that work.
That's not entirely the point. Lossless subsumes both of them. In other words, a lossless signal can emulate the other 'worse' one (as well as itself obviously). However, the lossy one can't emulate the better quality lossless version.
Reminds me of the argument with vinyl records - yes the sound might be subjectively 'warmer', but that's through distortion or frequency bias. Perfect replication of a signal can simply emulate that if need be (perhaps just by a simple turn of the bass/midrange knob).
Here's a couple of choice quotes:
Well, the OP was over two years ago and 1W blues had just hit the scene with certain impending doom guaranteed by those who were inclined to believe that it was imminent. Some of the early posts in this thread are downright amusing, with the general premise that the members of this forum held the key to stopping the certain influx of horrific eye injuries that were certain to start flooding in, by making sure sales were only made to "responsible buyers."
And yet, two plus years later we just haven't seen the injuries.
It is always easy to predict doom and gloom but it is always interesting to see when those predictions don't come true...
It just seems that people don't go buy 1W+ lasers and start pointing them in people's eyes.
...And from another post:
“Right now I haven’t seen an epidemic of injuries,” Dr. Bryan said, but he added that the potential was there. “In the hands of children it’s a very scary proposition.”
Injuries from momentary (accidental/unwanted) exposures: According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as of April 2012 the FDA has never received a report of eye injury from momentary exposures to laser pointers of Class 2 and 3R power (e.g., below 5 milliwatts).
Injuries from Class 4 consumer lasers: There have been no reported injuries from commercially manufactured Class 4 consumer lasers (over 500 milliwatts of visible light), as of April 7 2012. This includes the Wicked Lasers Spyder III Arctic “1 watt” laser which first came out in August 2010, as well as similar high-power Class 4 lasers sold by other companies such as DinoDirect.com. There have been two reports of injuries from homemade or hobbyist kit Class 4 lasers, the results are minor injury and more severe.
Despite my curiosity, I would share your trepidation on that one. I recently bought a £3 1mW red laser for my pet dog to chase, but due to the 'horror' stories of 50-100mW lasers masquerading as 1-5mW I wrote to laserpointerforums.com to ask if there was any way I could test to see it was really 1mW (or thereabouts). AFter all, I don't want to blind my dog.
:) Here for your amusement is the thread:
Anyway, I can smile now, but the response by many there was quite rude
http://laserpointerforums.com/f44/very-rough-way-determine-output-supposed-1mw-red-laser-pointer-80339.html
I'd be more interested in the latency, responsiveness and touchscreen delay than raw CPU speed.
If you look at the latest reviews at Amazon (when the servers should have calmed down a bit), you'll see that most are still giving it 1 star. And it's not just DRM/server problems, but also because the game is flawed in various ways according to many:
http://www.amazon.com/Electronic-Arts-41018ted-Edition2-SimCity/product-reviews/B007VTVRFA/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
It would prevent the need to some extra math for extra high numbers (not just those that end on a high numbers, but where the intermediate calculation may be high (e.g.: factorial math to find out the probability of something if I recall). Plus, 96 bits is more than enough for the fraction if you ask me - very greedy in fact to take that to 112 at the cost of 16 bits the exponent could well do with.
I would have hoped more bits were given to the exponent in quad precision. It's given 15 bits compared to double precision's 11.
So many bits, and it almost all goes to the fraction - a real shame.
With the mention of the word 'nano', I was hoping for an advance in molecular/atomic printing. I'd love the ability to mass produce objects (even just cubes) of various materials.
Risk comes into it sure. But for every Fisker, A123 or Solendra, you'll get the occasional success - say, Tesla. I for one can't wait until they begin to make electric cars below 20 grand.
Strange how I still don't know the actual definition of 'troll' despite being on here for ages. It seems to have multiple definitions to suit whoever throws the comment out.
Oh I agree, which is why I pointed out that competition and choice is good at first. Just that it shouldn't be the end goal. We'll evolve towards the best (well at least a very good one) by learning from the past standards.
There seems to a common denominator in "unfun" stuff as regards coding. It's the bits which rely on libraries, protocols, formats or hardware which haven't been standardized yet. If we all had two image/sound/video formats (lossy and non-lossy), one time format, one type of graphics card and CPU, one file format or data transmission format, one (spoken) language (which we'll all move to eventually given enough centuries), or (horror) one OS or programming language, software would be much more exciting to write, knowing it will stand the test of time.
The tedium is found in writing code multiple times for uncommon formats, CPUs and OSs, increasing code complexity (bugs), and knowing that it will probably be dead one day. Yes, competition and multiple standards is probably a good thing initially, and hardware is certainly changing and improving for a while, but when things finally settle down in a century or two (?), the real productive work will have just started.
I'm sure for some rarer drug combinations, 81% is a lot better than most real doctors could hope for. They're not infallible.
Context for those who haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wM1P7GMnd38
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100721/full/466432a.html
I'll quote some of the page for you:
Yet in many cases, scientists acknowledge that the ecological scar left by a missing mosquito would heal quickly as the niche was filled by other organisms. Life would continue as before — or even better. When it comes to the major disease vectors, "it's difficult to see what the downside would be to removal, except for collateral damage", says insect ecologist Steven Juliano, of Illinois State University in Normal. A world without mosquitoes would be "more secure for us", says medical entomologist Carlos Brisola Marcondes from the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil. "The elimination of Anopheles would be very significant for mankind."
Even if you're right (and remember we have a lot more control over what species go extinct or not), it's still very arguable that we can make 'good' and 'bad' choices, even if it's tricky to decide which. 'Good' would be ridding the world of the mosquito. 'Neutral' would be some other insect, and worse would be a type of animal which has many close and similar cousin species. "Bad" would be, well, I guess cats/dogs, or rare and beautiful species, or ecologically useful species which have no comparison elsewhere.
And yes, we are more special, at least in the sense that we dominate the planet, but also because we have profound intellect, creativity, and musical/art appreciation (and no, I don't believe in creationism or anything).
Even though I agree with you for the times back then, if we suddenly decided to exterminate say all.... badgers, or pandas today on a whim (if we could), wouldn't that be a bit more contrived than otherwise? Back then, we were more worried about food and survival so that's what makes things different.
From that logic, 'increase' would mean 'add', and yet we know it doesn't in this context of 'tenfold'.
Everyone knew what it meant, including you, but putting that aside, mathematically and logically it is sound because:
Increase 10 fold = Times by 10
Decrease 10 fold = Divide by 10
Even if it isn't commonly used (which I think it is anyway), I'd WANT to put that into common parlance just because it is so logical, concise and reasonable. Don't forget English is still an evolving language.
Think of it as the multiplicative inverse. The key word is 'reduce'. If he said: "increased the price tenfold" (to mean costing 10x as much), you wouldn't complain then. So I don't see what's wrong with it.
You'd think some rich Dr Who fans would have wanted to compensate him a lot of money, and probably get themselves a bit famous at the same time (as the kindness would make the papers)
It wasn't just 'short-sightedness' of the public that made ads win. Micropayments are apparently hard to implement, for reasons I have yet to still discover.