After reading both the "before" and "after" versions of Obama's web site concerning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I'd say they both look a lot more sane than McCain's "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" war mongering. So was this really a covert campaign to get votes for Obama? Obama's domestic policies are what I can't stand, not his foreign policy.
When people age the probability of dying in any given year increases dramatically. Technically "not aging" means that the probability of dying in any given year does not increase with age. Thus if aging was "cured" human lifespan would have an exponential distribution. We would have a finite average lifespan (say, 300 years) but once you reached 300 years of age your expected additional lifespan would still be 300 years.
My own expected remaining lifespan is certainly much lower than the time it will take to achieve these science fiction fantasies.
Don't forget the Asian longhorned beetle. It infests hardwood trees and inevitably kills them. The only "treatment" is to cut down the tree, chip it, and burn it. It has been accidently imported in wooden packing crates.
The Apollo program cost about $150 billion in today's dollarettes. Mars is much, much farther away
and it will take much, much longer to get there and get back. I'd be very surprised if a manned mission to Mars could be pulled off for less than a 500 billion of today's dollars, and it could easily cost twice that. The only reason it hasn't blown a huge hole in the budget yet is because it's still in the hypothetical "We're thinking about how we might do it" stage. Better to kill it now before this monster gets legs. Already the budgetary pressures of the space station have squeezed out a lot of space science.
If you really think we can get to Mars cheap, create a voluntary organization to do it and help fund it yourself.
When we're running budget deficits of half a trillion dollars a year it is outrageous to be planning a manned mission to Mars. As for the moon, we've been there and done that (conspiracy theories notwithstanding). Zero out the whole manned space program, keep the satellite and unmanned probe programs going at a modest level, and give the taxpayer a break. If a manned space program had to be funded soley by manned space program enthusiasts there would be a whole lot fewer of those enthusiasts.
This isn't a matter of detecting defects and fixing them. It is a matter of applying a finishing step that improves the whole chip at once. You can be sure than chip manufacturers try very, very hard to get things right the first time. But if you read the article you would know that there are basic physical processes that make a certain amount of randomness and jagginess inevitable, which the laser process fixes.
Who are the idiots who marked that comment insightful? Literate programming has nothing to do with making the code verbose. It does have a lot to do with having the discipline to explain what you're doing, which is loathsome to most programmers, and no doubt explains the unpopularity of literate programming.
Oh fiddle. Why is it not cheating to win a bicycle race because you were born with genes that give you a high blood cell count, but cheating to achieve a high blood cell count by taking EPO? You will point out that it is risky to take EPO, which it is, but that's not the point. The question is, why is it morally worse than being born with the right genes? Why is the former a legitimate achievement of the self while the latter, involving a choice by the self to improve itself, is not? Some time ago Slashdot had an article about a young child who was born without the ability to produce myosin, an enzyme that breaks down muscle. The result is that he's developing an Incredible Hulk body without having to do much exercise. Will it be fair for him to enter a power lifting contest? If a drug is developed to inhibit myosin, will it be fair for normal contestents to use it?
If there's something special about having an innate ability because of having the right genes (as opposed to tacking in on with drugs) then will it be okay to use eugenic techniques to give people better genes? I ask because people who object to any sort of drugs are likely to be queasy about eugenics too. So I wonder just what conditions ensure that a person doesn't have an "unfair" set of genes. If it was the result of a smart, strong, healthy man marrying a smart, healthy woman is that cheating?
Well, it is a fact that in his later years mathematician Paul Erdos used amphetamines.
He said that without them all he saw was a blank sheet of paper, with them he saw theorems.
My only drug is caffeine, maybe that's why I'm not cranking out theorems.
I think people should be aware of the risks and make their own choices. But then, I'm one of those tin foil hat wearing nut cases that voted for Ron Paul in the primaries (and won't vote for any of the current losers in the general election).
The oil industry is infinitely deeper than Exxon, Chevron, and BP. There are hundreds, if not thousands of independent oil and gas companies in the US alone.
Also it is important to understand that most oil production today is controlled by nationalized oil companies, like Petrobras (55% owned by the Brazilian government), Gazprom (publicly traded but the controlling interest is held by the Russian government) and Aramco (Saudi Arabia). The market
is very competitive, and most of the profits nowadays are going to governments of countries with oil.
I've only seen one Uwe Boll movie -- Bloodrayne, on TV. What made the movie really, really bad was that it was a totally literal rehash of the video game. Every other person was a vampire. That's typical of videogames, where you need lots of opportunities to level up, but it's a totally unrealistic predator - prey ratio. Every stereotype of the genre you could want was there, including a potion room. The dialog must have been lifted straight from the canned text in the video game. You won't be surprised that the finale is where Bloodrayne kills the boss monster.
The only redeeming feature is that the heroine wears a skanky outfit throughout the entire movie.
Utter nonsense. The national debt was over $5 trillion when Clinton left office.
That can't be blamed on W. There was a year or two during the Clinton administration when there
were budget surpluses, thanks largely to capital gains taxes on the Nasdaq bubble, but they
only reduced the debt, they didn't come close to eliminating it. Also, the unfunded
liabilities of social security, medicare, government pensions, etc. are at least $40
trillion, and if the annual increases in these liabilities were included in the budget
calculations there would never have been a surplus.
It is true that the national debt now is about $9 trillion, a big increase during the
disastrous administration of W. But keep in mind that less than a quarter of the $4
trillion increase is due to the war that liberals (and paleocons) hate, the rest is due
to domestic spending and the sort of world policing (NATO, bases in Japan and Korea, etc.)
that the liberals tend to support. W backed the prescription drug medicare benefit, right along with
Kennedy and Clinton. That added hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities all by itself. As
the baby boomers retire more and more of those unfunded liabilities will come due and be
transformed into actual debt. For this reason you will see the national debt continue to
balloon regardless of who becomes President next.
Isn't the Republican party traditionally the one that raises the biggest fuss about the Bill of Rights?
Nope, just the Ron Paul remnant, about 9% of the Republican party. The remaining 91% is about war,
deficits, and pretending to be some sort of alternative to the Democrats.
Um folks, when you're talking about black body radiation the "color temperature" is the temperature.
And the glowing object doesn't have to be iron. Glowing argon emits the same way. The video makes
it clear that that bitty argon light is 6000 K at the core. I'm sure it's much cooler at the surface of
the bulb. With a core temperature of 6000 K most of the energy will be emitted as visible light, not infrared, which
of course is the point.
Fluorescent lights do not produce light via black body radiation so their "color temperature" has nothing to do with
their real temperature. Likewise with LEDs.
Well, if you read the fine article you will see that the applications they talk about are things like medical implants, where you'd like to avoid surgery every few years to replace the batteries. The article makes no claims that these chips will appear any time soon in your desktop computer. Since they save power in the usual way (by reducing voltage) they're probably slower than stock chips. This doesn't matter in a lot of imbedded applications but it won't attract the gamer crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
After reading both the "before" and "after" versions of Obama's web site concerning the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq I'd say they both look a lot more sane than McCain's "bomb, bomb, bomb; bomb, bomb Iran" war mongering. So was this really a covert campaign to get votes for Obama? Obama's domestic policies are what I can't stand, not his foreign policy.
You mean I didn't really banish Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal to the outer darkness forever?
Dang.
When people age the probability of dying in any given year increases dramatically. Technically "not aging" means that the probability of dying in any given year does not increase with age. Thus if aging was "cured" human lifespan would have an exponential distribution. We would have a finite average lifespan (say, 300 years) but once you reached 300 years of age your expected additional lifespan would still be 300 years.
My own expected remaining lifespan is certainly much lower than the time it will take to achieve these science fiction fantasies.
I still see no reason whatsoever why the government thinks it needs to know how much I spend each year on Amazon.
At least people don't mark their territory by peeing on their cars.
It's more like the re-birth of the ILLIAC III.
Don't forget the Asian longhorned beetle. It infests hardwood trees and inevitably kills them. The only "treatment" is to cut down the tree, chip it, and burn it. It has been accidently imported in wooden packing crates.
Looks like a member of Campus Watch just showed up. Criticize a war mongering neocon, and suddenly you're in bed with Goebbels.
The Apollo program cost about $150 billion in today's dollarettes. Mars is much, much farther away and it will take much, much longer to get there and get back. I'd be very surprised if a manned mission to Mars could be pulled off for less than a 500 billion of today's dollars, and it could easily cost twice that. The only reason it hasn't blown a huge hole in the budget yet is because it's still in the hypothetical "We're thinking about how we might do it" stage. Better to kill it now before this monster gets legs. Already the budgetary pressures of the space station have squeezed out a lot of space science. If you really think we can get to Mars cheap, create a voluntary organization to do it and help fund it yourself.
When we're running budget deficits of half a trillion dollars a year it is outrageous to be planning a manned mission to Mars. As for the moon, we've been there and done that (conspiracy theories notwithstanding). Zero out the whole manned space program, keep the satellite and unmanned probe programs going at a modest level, and give the taxpayer a break. If a manned space program had to be funded soley by manned space program enthusiasts there would be a whole lot fewer of those enthusiasts.
This isn't a matter of detecting defects and fixing them. It is a matter of applying a finishing step that improves the whole chip at once. You can be sure than chip manufacturers try very, very hard to get things right the first time. But if you read the article you would know that there are basic physical processes that make a certain amount of randomness and jagginess inevitable, which the laser process fixes.
I did in fact make a serious study of women. It was very depressing. I know what women want. I'm not it.
Who are the idiots who marked that comment insightful? Literate programming has nothing to do with making the code verbose. It does have a lot to do with having the discipline to explain what you're doing, which is loathsome to most programmers, and no doubt explains the unpopularity of literate programming.
The development of the automobile is costing the traditional blacksmith industry an estimated $3 billion a year.
Oh fiddle. Why is it not cheating to win a bicycle race because you were born with genes that give you a high blood cell count, but cheating to achieve a high blood cell count by taking EPO? You will point out that it is risky to take EPO, which it is, but that's not the point. The question is, why is it morally worse than being born with the right genes? Why is the former a legitimate achievement of the self while the latter, involving a choice by the self to improve itself, is not? Some time ago Slashdot had an article about a young child who was born without the ability to produce myosin, an enzyme that breaks down muscle. The result is that he's developing an Incredible Hulk body without having to do much exercise. Will it be fair for him to enter a power lifting contest? If a drug is developed to inhibit myosin, will it be fair for normal contestents to use it?
If there's something special about having an innate ability because of having the right genes (as opposed to tacking in on with drugs) then will it be okay to use eugenic techniques to give people better genes? I ask because people who object to any sort of drugs are likely to be queasy about eugenics too. So I wonder just what conditions ensure that a person doesn't have an "unfair" set of genes. If it was the result of a smart, strong, healthy man marrying a smart, healthy woman is that cheating?
Well, it is a fact that in his later years mathematician Paul Erdos used amphetamines. He said that without them all he saw was a blank sheet of paper, with them he saw theorems. My only drug is caffeine, maybe that's why I'm not cranking out theorems.
I think people should be aware of the risks and make their own choices. But then, I'm one of those tin foil hat wearing nut cases that voted for Ron Paul in the primaries (and won't vote for any of the current losers in the general election).
The oil industry is infinitely deeper than Exxon, Chevron, and BP. There are hundreds, if not thousands of independent oil and gas companies in the US alone.
Also it is important to understand that most oil production today is controlled by nationalized oil companies, like Petrobras (55% owned by the Brazilian government), Gazprom (publicly traded but the controlling interest is held by the Russian government) and Aramco (Saudi Arabia). The market is very competitive, and most of the profits nowadays are going to governments of countries with oil.
I've only seen one Uwe Boll movie -- Bloodrayne, on TV. What made the movie really, really bad was that it was a totally literal rehash of the video game. Every other person was a vampire. That's typical of videogames, where you need lots of opportunities to level up, but it's a totally unrealistic predator - prey ratio. Every stereotype of the genre you could want was there, including a potion room. The dialog must have been lifted straight from the canned text in the video game. You won't be surprised that the finale is where Bloodrayne kills the boss monster.
The only redeeming feature is that the heroine wears a skanky outfit throughout the entire movie.
Actually, 100% of the current debt is W's.
Utter nonsense. The national debt was over $5 trillion when Clinton left office. That can't be blamed on W. There was a year or two during the Clinton administration when there were budget surpluses, thanks largely to capital gains taxes on the Nasdaq bubble, but they only reduced the debt, they didn't come close to eliminating it. Also, the unfunded liabilities of social security, medicare, government pensions, etc. are at least $40 trillion, and if the annual increases in these liabilities were included in the budget calculations there would never have been a surplus.
It is true that the national debt now is about $9 trillion, a big increase during the disastrous administration of W. But keep in mind that less than a quarter of the $4 trillion increase is due to the war that liberals (and paleocons) hate, the rest is due to domestic spending and the sort of world policing (NATO, bases in Japan and Korea, etc.) that the liberals tend to support. W backed the prescription drug medicare benefit, right along with Kennedy and Clinton. That added hundreds of billions of unfunded liabilities all by itself. As the baby boomers retire more and more of those unfunded liabilities will come due and be transformed into actual debt. For this reason you will see the national debt continue to balloon regardless of who becomes President next.
Isn't the Republican party traditionally the one that raises the biggest fuss about the Bill of Rights?
Nope, just the Ron Paul remnant, about 9% of the Republican party. The remaining 91% is about war, deficits, and pretending to be some sort of alternative to the Democrats.
Um folks, when you're talking about black body radiation the "color temperature" is the temperature. And the glowing object doesn't have to be iron. Glowing argon emits the same way. The video makes it clear that that bitty argon light is 6000 K at the core. I'm sure it's much cooler at the surface of the bulb. With a core temperature of 6000 K most of the energy will be emitted as visible light, not infrared, which of course is the point.
Fluorescent lights do not produce light via black body radiation so their "color temperature" has nothing to do with their real temperature. Likewise with LEDs.
Well, if you read the fine article you will see that the applications they talk about are things like medical implants, where you'd like to avoid surgery every few years to replace the batteries. The article makes no claims that these chips will appear any time soon in your desktop computer. Since they save power in the usual way (by reducing voltage) they're probably slower than stock chips. This doesn't matter in a lot of imbedded applications but it won't attract the gamer crowd.
Hasn't quantum physics already proven the ability to do faster-than-light communication using Quantum Entanglement?
No.
Neener, neener, neener!
I'm typing this with one of the ultimate weird keyboards.