Every time this issue comes up, I make the same suggestion: the Wikipedia should branch into something like "stable" and "unstable" versions.
Sounds like Nupedia. Wikipedia was originally the "unstable" branch for Nupedia, but the project folded. It didn't work then, and I'm not sure it'd work now.
No, no. It's Libraries of Congress per fortnight.
Actually I would have preferred the cap to be in much more understandable units like Volkswagon Beetles Full of Backup Tapes.
I mean everyone's seen a VW Beetle, but the Library of Congress? Does anyone even go there?
Good old Hollywood... a film does well and they start looking for the next easy cashin.
Uh... yeah. Hollywood is a business, not a charity or arts endowment. Movies are risky enough as-is, and, at least as far as big effects films are concerned, the best price/performance ratio is on low-risk sequels, spinoffs, and plot-alikes. If a business finds that a certain product was successful, why not release another one like it?
If you really want originality or the like, there's tens of thousands of indie films, short films, foreign films, amateur films, and college projects out there, just waiting for you to discover them. I just don't see the point of criticizing a set of businesses for following good business sense...
There is a stark difference between canceling gravity out on an object via a boundary force (such as the electromagnetic forces that your chair exerts on you) - which causes stress on the object - and canceling gravity internal to the object, which does not.
From a purely practical perspective, the main thing that determines the evolution of quantum waveforms (if you'll take that view of things) is the local energy levels - the particular forces that are superimposed to create the potential field are pretty much irrelevant in and of themselves.
So to sum up, no, this doesn't "cancel out gravity" in the most literal sense, but it cancels out the *effects* of that gravity (which is, for the scientists involved, the important part) just fine. And no, no your chair does not do that.
there is no technological fix for a social problem. anything designed by a man can also be broken by a man.
I don't know about you, but I for one like having locks on my doors. Are they 100% perfect at keeping determined individuals out? Of course not. But that's not their purpose. These kinds of measures merely need to make an activity "not worth it" to those who have some motivation (the aforementioned societal problem). Economic deterrants do work well, at least on a statistical basis.
As for cheating devices, if one were to construct an anti-cheating system that would require a hundred million dollars worth of high tech, rare equipment to break - do you think some gamer is just going to have that kind of money lying around? I'm not saying Intel's solution is of this nature, but this absurd notion on slashdot that technology cannot help/solve societal problems is total bullshit. A lot of social problems are highly context/environment dependent (mostly as a result of human psychological quirks, and evolutionary behavior), and technology can do a lot to alter the environments where people interact to the point where many harmful behaviors are discouraged or stopped altogether.
Psychology is a constantly changing field, but there have been some very good studies that suggest that being rewarded for an action can reduce intrinsic motivation to perform it.
The GNU project has a short but good page on this, as it relates to open source. There's also an old (but good) article introducing this effect here.
This, of course, could be found out to be wrong, but it seems like a very dangerous thing if it is right, and it might partially explain why people who are paid to program often no longer want to do it as a hobby - even if what they are paid to do is boring and radically different from what their hobby programming might be.
This is one of the few *good* things about Trusted Computing - the ability to "prove" that one is running a binary remotely, unmodified, and without interference. Not only can this stop cheaters (and possibly some viruses), but it could help distributed computation projects succeed without major risks of "result poisoning."
Maybe TC wouldn't be so bad if it worked in a separate logical "partition" of system resources - RAM, HD, etc. With proper encryption, it could be made *very* difficult to crack and could allow home users to run programs that *must* not be interfered with.
Re:public opinion is more important
on
Brave New Ballot
·
· Score: 0
It should also be our concern to educate the populace to reflect our own views...
Since the dawn of a corporately-sponsored two-party system, every voter has been sheltered from the responsibility of having to make a meaningful choice.
NASA's single most important goal is that of inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers. I believe that TPF will certainly achieve this goal, should it find other planets like earth (life or not!)
When I saw this image a few years ago on APOD, I was awestruck... I'd seen star maps before, but not one that included Sol. It was amazing, because suddenly the sky was no longer an infinitely far away billboard of beautiful sites... it was a place just like any other (albeit a bit difficult to get to). On the map you can see the closest stars are really so close compared to everything else... makes me think we might send interstellar probes in my lifetime.
I believe that if TPF succedes, the next generation will think of other stars the same way they think of the Sun... as places where worlds are.
For that reason alone, I hope TPF is the tremendous success it seems it could be!
Slashdot Mirror
Why do i get the impression that the new Police Act will consist mainly of LOLcats?
I can has habeas corpus plzkthx?
Every time this issue comes up, I make the same suggestion: the Wikipedia should branch into something like "stable" and "unstable" versions.
Sounds like Nupedia. Wikipedia was originally the "unstable" branch for Nupedia, but the project folded. It didn't work then, and I'm not sure it'd work now.
Everyone might have seen a Beetle, but how many (non-IT) people knows how much data a square-unit of backup tapes is in "real" numbers...?
The real question is, how many (non-IT) people would know that I was not being serious with my suggestion!
Well there's an easy solution:
BitTorrent via SMTP!
Gotta use all that GMail space somehow...
No, no. It's Libraries of Congress per fortnight. Actually I would have preferred the cap to be in much more understandable units like Volkswagon Beetles Full of Backup Tapes.
I mean everyone's seen a VW Beetle, but the Library of Congress? Does anyone even go there?
If you really want originality or the like, there's tens of thousands of indie films, short films, foreign films, amateur films, and college projects out there, just waiting for you to discover them. I just don't see the point of criticizing a set of businesses for following good business sense...
There is a stark difference between canceling gravity out on an object via a boundary force (such as the electromagnetic forces that your chair exerts on you) - which causes stress on the object - and canceling gravity internal to the object, which does not.
From a purely practical perspective, the main thing that determines the evolution of quantum waveforms (if you'll take that view of things) is the local energy levels - the particular forces that are superimposed to create the potential field are pretty much irrelevant in and of themselves.
So to sum up, no, this doesn't "cancel out gravity" in the most literal sense, but it cancels out the *effects* of that gravity (which is, for the scientists involved, the important part) just fine. And no, no your chair does not do that.
As for cheating devices, if one were to construct an anti-cheating system that would require a hundred million dollars worth of high tech, rare equipment to break - do you think some gamer is just going to have that kind of money lying around? I'm not saying Intel's solution is of this nature, but this absurd notion on slashdot that technology cannot help/solve societal problems is total bullshit. A lot of social problems are highly context/environment dependent (mostly as a result of human psychological quirks, and evolutionary behavior), and technology can do a lot to alter the environments where people interact to the point where many harmful behaviors are discouraged or stopped altogether.
Psychology is a constantly changing field, but there have been some very good studies that suggest that being rewarded for an action can reduce intrinsic motivation to perform it. The GNU project has a short but good page on this, as it relates to open source. There's also an old (but good) article introducing this effect here.
This, of course, could be found out to be wrong, but it seems like a very dangerous thing if it is right, and it might partially explain why people who are paid to program often no longer want to do it as a hobby - even if what they are paid to do is boring and radically different from what their hobby programming might be.
This is one of the few *good* things about Trusted Computing - the ability to "prove" that one is running a binary remotely, unmodified, and without interference. Not only can this stop cheaters (and possibly some viruses), but it could help distributed computation projects succeed without major risks of "result poisoning."
Maybe TC wouldn't be so bad if it worked in a separate logical "partition" of system resources - RAM, HD, etc. With proper encryption, it could be made *very* difficult to crack and could allow home users to run programs that *must* not be interfered with.
It should also be our concern to educate the populace to reflect our own views...
Since the dawn of a corporately-sponsored two-party system, every voter has been sheltered from the responsibility of having to make a meaningful choice.
Now my dual-core processor can sport Twin Ion Engines! *screeeeeeech!*
NASA's single most important goal is that of inspiring the next generation of scientists, engineers, and explorers. I believe that TPF will certainly achieve this goal, should it find other planets like earth (life or not!)
When I saw this image a few years ago on APOD, I was awestruck... I'd seen star maps before, but not one that included Sol. It was amazing, because suddenly the sky was no longer an infinitely far away billboard of beautiful sites... it was a place just like any other (albeit a bit difficult to get to). On the map you can see the closest stars are really so close compared to everything else... makes me think we might send interstellar probes in my lifetime.
I believe that if TPF succedes, the next generation will think of other stars the same way they think of the Sun... as places where worlds are.
For that reason alone, I hope TPF is the tremendous success it seems it could be!
Anonymous Divinity
If you want to know more about this guy, just google him :)