Yep, but since you now ostensibly have the ability to design materials at the atomic level, if not merely molecular level, then you can design and fabricate a coffee table that looks like particle board [if that's what you're after], but is:
- self-cleaning, or easier to clean
- far stronger
- far lighter
- more durable [or, if you're in the business of selling them... less durable... or... with an expiration date].
Imagine that you can have your own, hoity-toity designer Erno Ekkininnnenn coffee table... but all you really get is a license to own the table for a year, after which, it gently melts away [unless you renew your license].
Stephenson envisions a desktop fabricator, called a "matter compiler", in his novel Diamond Age. Actually, it's about the size of a desk, or a filing cabinet, and it's connected to a "Feed": a pipeline system of some kind that feeds raw materials [carbon, hydrogen...] from which atoms can be easily stripped and then rearranged into the materials needed to fabricate, for example, a book made of paper with a leather binding and gold leaf titles. The fun part is how Stephenson's imaginary matter-compiling technology is analagous to computer programming: a designer codes up the program, feeds it into the compiler, and, if there are no bugs, gets a chair, or a gun, or a book, or whatever fabulous object was coded.
The post that informs rubes and maroons that Africa is a continent should not be modded down to flamebait. It is informative -- sad, but true, in this context.
That would be Macus Nostalgius, I think. LOL. Love it.
Note that this creature, however you spell its name, would be responsible for that infamous propaganda film, "Dr. Crashlove, or How I Learned To Save Often and Love The Bomb Icon."
Precisely correct; the Slashdot article is misleading because it suggests he uses Firefox [the word "reveals" connotes that something has been disclosed which would otherwise have remained hidden]. He has nothing to hide; of course a security person working with browser design *should* run other browsers.
It may be that the author did not intend to deceive; nevertheless, the choice of words leads to a faulty conclusion. It is a deceptive statement.
Mod this parent down -1. This type of yellow journalism does no honor to Slashdot.
I live in a state in the USA that suffers from Kudzu infestation. Kudzu is an ivy brought from Japan for some similarly ill-advised scheme. It's now covering the local vegetation, climbing buildings, choking trees, and changing the landscape. It's tenacious and almost impossible to eradicate.
A recent movie about the American Civil War had to be filmed in another country, because the actual southern locations are hidden under a blanket of kudzu.
Re:Pronounced with a short "I"
on
Primer
·
· Score: 1
For most Americans, to spell it "primmer" would cleary indicate the British pronunciation you mention, even if they had no idea what a "short vowel" is.
When I was in college [in America], English literature professors usually chose to pronounce "primer" as "primmer".
I was thinking about that last time I voted here. I'd prefer to see two full voting days, one of them a weekend day, one a weekday, and a national law declaring, with no exceptions, that every employer MUST give each worker a minimum of one-half of one of those days off, PAID, from work, penalty free, so that the employee can vote.
I haven't thought this through any further than this yet. I thought of it as I listened to a reporter point out that the poorest in our society, the very people who often have "the biggest stake" in an election outcome, have the lowest voter turnout, historically. The poorer you are, the less you can afford to vote, because you not only need to keep your job, and make those hours you need to survive, but also you have an even harder time travelling to the polling place.
The current system of voting in America is biased towards salaried workers with cars, and those who are even more affluent, it seems to me, and that's fundamentally undemocratic.
I'm glad you brought up the bell curve, because I was going to ask, why assume the curve is so shaped? I realize that many measured statistics can be found to be distributed in a bell curve, but surely not all -- surely you can't assume this, and must look at the data. Right? I'm asking, but I don't claim to know.
Looking at the data, you found there wasn't enough data to support the assumption that a bell curve describes the distribution, but I'm wondering why/how the heck did anyone get the idea that one may assume a bell curve without looking at the data? It's a sincere question; I really don't know if this is reasonable or not.
Soviets sent various animals into orbit [I do not know how their efforts compare to American ones, but I somehow got the impression Soviets did more experiments with more different types of animal]. Maybe there's a film out there somewhere of a feline cosmonaut.
I grew up with a grandmother who was totally deaf since some time in her adolescence. She lived most of her adult life in a foreign country, raised 4 children and 2 grandchildren.
To me, the main disadvantage I could say her deafness brought her was that she never learned to speak English. She could speak Greek so well, and lip-read Greek so well, that people very often refused to believe she was deaf. [I tested whether she could hear an electric guitar amplified beyond my pain threshold -- no dice]. We'd have to remind some folks not to yell at her, not to raise their voices -- it was pointless and only annoyed those around her who could hear the yelling.
She knew us all by our "sounds", felt through the floor. She could "hear" her daugther's car in the driveway, through the ground, so to speak. When we needed to catch her attention, one or two stomps on the floor would do, and as long as we spoke Greek, all we needed to do was face her when we spoke. The floor-stomp got to be a sort of family vocabulary; you could stomp differently if it was urgent, or if you just wanted to catch her attention for something trivial, etc.
If I had to choose between losing my sight or hearing, I'd rather lose my hearing, because I learned from my grandmother's example how to adapt. I wonder if I'd feel differently if she'd been blind, instead. Probably so.
Also, the researchers say their findings indicate the age of two as the cutoff age, so to speak, but hey, it's only research. It's still quite possible that Ray Charles, or any other single human, could have developed similarly to the children studied by these researchers, even at a later age. Just because some researchers didn't find such a result in this study doesn't prove, or even suggest, that it's an impossible result.
I can confirm that I, too, have always been able to hear this, and [so far] still can.... despite my determined efforts as a teen to find the upper limit of volume at which an electric guitar could be played. I used to stick my head right up against the speaker and blast music; I feel so lucky that I can still hear that high-pitched sound TVs make. I do think that I must have damaged my hearing, but so far, I haven't suffered.
I do sometimes hear that tone [very rarely] in a very silent setting, and I wonder if I'm hearing a symptom of ear damage or if something nearby is actually making that high-pitched sound. Possible even something within my body is making such a sound -- who knows? I'm happy that such tones never seem to last long enough to cause me any problems.
Slashdot Mirror
- - self-cleaning, or easier to clean
... less durable ... or ... with an expiration date].
Imagine that you can have your own, hoity-toity designer Erno Ekkininnnenn coffee table- far stronger
- far lighter
- more durable [or, if you're in the business of selling them
Stephenson envisions a desktop fabricator, called a "matter compiler", in his novel Diamond Age. Actually, it's about the size of a desk, or a filing cabinet, and it's connected to a "Feed": a pipeline system of some kind that feeds raw materials [carbon, hydrogen ...] from which atoms can be easily stripped and then rearranged into the materials needed to fabricate, for example, a book made of paper with a leather binding and gold leaf titles. The fun part is how Stephenson's imaginary matter-compiling technology is analagous to computer programming: a designer codes up the program, feeds it into the compiler, and, if there are no bugs, gets a chair, or a gun, or a book, or whatever fabulous object was coded.
The post that informs rubes and maroons that Africa is a continent should not be modded down to flamebait. It is informative -- sad, but true, in this context.
... and I might just sign up and spend some money on it in a few weeks. Glad to see it mentioned here.
Your logic is faulty, as I'm sure you realize. I read it, but I didn't think it called for comment.
Here's a comment for you, though:
Wow.
Zzz. Boring story, boring idea in the first place.
That would be Macus Nostalgius, I think. LOL. Love it.
Note that this creature, however you spell its name, would be responsible for that infamous propaganda film, "Dr. Crashlove, or How I Learned To Save Often and Love The Bomb Icon."
Precisely correct; the Slashdot article is misleading because it suggests he uses Firefox [the word "reveals" connotes that something has been disclosed which would otherwise have remained hidden]. He has nothing to hide; of course a security person working with browser design *should* run other browsers.
It may be that the author did not intend to deceive; nevertheless, the choice of words leads to a faulty conclusion. It is a deceptive statement.
Mod this parent down -1. This type of yellow journalism does no honor to Slashdot.
I live in a state in the USA that suffers from Kudzu infestation. Kudzu is an ivy brought from Japan for some similarly ill-advised scheme. It's now covering the local vegetation, climbing buildings, choking trees, and changing the landscape. It's tenacious and almost impossible to eradicate.
A recent movie about the American Civil War had to be filmed in another country, because the actual southern locations are hidden under a blanket of kudzu.
For most Americans, to spell it "primmer" would cleary indicate the British pronunciation you mention, even if they had no idea what a "short vowel" is. When I was in college [in America], English literature professors usually chose to pronounce "primer" as "primmer".
I was thinking about that last time I voted here. I'd prefer to see two full voting days, one of them a weekend day, one a weekday, and a national law declaring, with no exceptions, that every employer MUST give each worker a minimum of one-half of one of those days off, PAID, from work, penalty free, so that the employee can vote.
I haven't thought this through any further than this yet. I thought of it as I listened to a reporter point out that the poorest in our society, the very people who often have "the biggest stake" in an election outcome, have the lowest voter turnout, historically. The poorer you are, the less you can afford to vote, because you not only need to keep your job, and make those hours you need to survive, but also you have an even harder time travelling to the polling place.
The current system of voting in America is biased towards salaried workers with cars, and those who are even more affluent, it seems to me, and that's fundamentally undemocratic.
Looking at the data, you found there wasn't enough data to support the assumption that a bell curve describes the distribution, but I'm wondering why/how the heck did anyone get the idea that one may assume a bell curve without looking at the data? It's a sincere question; I really don't know if this is reasonable or not.
Soviets sent various animals into orbit [I do not know how their efforts compare to American ones, but I somehow got the impression Soviets did more experiments with more different types of animal]. Maybe there's a film out there somewhere of a feline cosmonaut.
To me, the main disadvantage I could say her deafness brought her was that she never learned to speak English. She could speak Greek so well, and lip-read Greek so well, that people very often refused to believe she was deaf. [I tested whether she could hear an electric guitar amplified beyond my pain threshold -- no dice]. We'd have to remind some folks not to yell at her, not to raise their voices -- it was pointless and only annoyed those around her who could hear the yelling.
She knew us all by our "sounds", felt through the floor. She could "hear" her daugther's car in the driveway, through the ground, so to speak. When we needed to catch her attention, one or two stomps on the floor would do, and as long as we spoke Greek, all we needed to do was face her when we spoke. The floor-stomp got to be a sort of family vocabulary; you could stomp differently if it was urgent, or if you just wanted to catch her attention for something trivial, etc.
If I had to choose between losing my sight or hearing, I'd rather lose my hearing, because I learned from my grandmother's example how to adapt. I wonder if I'd feel differently if she'd been blind, instead. Probably so.
Also, the researchers say their findings indicate the age of two as the cutoff age, so to speak, but hey, it's only research. It's still quite possible that Ray Charles, or any other single human, could have developed similarly to the children studied by these researchers, even at a later age. Just because some researchers didn't find such a result in this study doesn't prove, or even suggest, that it's an impossible result.
I can confirm that I, too, have always been able to hear this, and [so far] still can.... despite my determined efforts as a teen to find the upper limit of volume at which an electric guitar could be played. I used to stick my head right up against the speaker and blast music; I feel so lucky that I can still hear that high-pitched sound TVs make. I do think that I must have damaged my hearing, but so far, I haven't suffered. I do sometimes hear that tone [very rarely] in a very silent setting, and I wonder if I'm hearing a symptom of ear damage or if something nearby is actually making that high-pitched sound. Possible even something within my body is making such a sound -- who knows? I'm happy that such tones never seem to last long enough to cause me any problems.