Am I really? Or is the definition of free will just a bit old-fashioned? It wasn't until the 79s that people really figured out that determinism is not the same as predictability.
However, one can always just control a miniature system with all independent variables held constant.
Not in this universe, one can't. Everything within the past lightcone of your miniature system can and will affect every part of it. Isolating a system is entirely impossible. You can minimize outside interference, but you can never, ever eliminate it.
Not only that, you can't predict the state of your miniature system either, because you cannot perfectly adjust it.
No matter how hard you try, you'll always be stuck in the mud with the rest of us.
The funny thing is, though - and I didn't see it mentioned explicitly - that not even a deterministic universe is actually predictable.
As you say, with "enough information" you could calculate any outcome, but that information is actually infinite, and physically impossible to obtain for several different reasons, and even if you had it, it would be impossible to process.
but with the number of devices they pile onto these rovers and landers
That number is very small.
And there's your entire answer for you, really. When we start hauling a space truck out there every week, you'll get your pictures. Until then, those are number #100 on a ten-point list.
You should not be so quick to call for others to return their geek card, when you yourself is not even aware of one of the biggest legends in computing.
That must be why most of the 3D CGI in films sticks out so much.
It most certainly is not.
Raytracing is not some magical algorithm that creates photorealistic pictures. It's merely a different way to make a rough approximation of solving the rendering equation, and it is not a particularly good one. It handles shiny spheres on infinite checkerboards quite well, but it is really not very useful for most real-world scenes. And that is why it is not used much.
Most people who don't know much about computer graphics have a romanticized image of it, but this is basically just superstition.
That's quite an optimistic estimate for rendering speed with global illumination! That'd have to be one extremely optimized algorithm to achieve.3 fps. Frames per minute or per hour sounds more realistic.
You know, there's hardly anything in that picture that couldn't be done just as well with a rasterizer and a bit of trickery, and would run an order of magnitude faster.
Lighting technology has improved significantly in the last decade, but still not sufficiently to compete with raytracing.
Completely and utterly wrong. Raytraced lighting looks extremely unnatural, due to the lack of handling indirect light. To get lighting that actually looks realistic, you need to use global illumination methods, and those are so incredibly expensive, the only real way to do them is to pre-calculate them, for rasterizers and raytracers both.
A raytracer with global illumination will look far better than a raytracer without.
Yes, yes, yes, we must get rid of that moronish idiotic and imbecile chunk of perverse piece of refuse THE MOON - once and for all!
THE MOON must go, must be eliminated!! Enough of billions of years of the evil presence of that piece of refuse with its morbid presence hanging above our heads - enough of that terrorizing spy in the ski! that Evil watchful eye that disgusting boring depressing piece of abomination.
We must radically change the surrounding cosmic scenario of our planet Earth, Enough of the same billion and billion of years of continuous misery of rotten decadent pestiferous and idiotical celestial setup surrounding our planet Earth. RADICAL CHANGE IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. THE MOST PRACTICAL THE MOST EFFECTIVE THE MOST URGENT RADICAL CHANGE IS TO BLOW UP THE MOON TO SMITHEREENS AND GET RID OF ITS EVIL PRESENCE ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Moon with its dull, stupid depressing condescending and disgusting boring presence had and has the most damaging influence on human life, behavior and actions. With its tides creating in the flow of blood especially in the brain of mankind, it has created a monstrous beast of human species. we must BLOW UP THE MOON.
Do not worry, there is life and existence without MOON a much better a much healthier and interesting life. In fact the BLOWING UP OF THE MOON will jolt our planet earth and will get rid of the layers and layers of accumulated (during billion and billion of years) of filth, feculence, dregs and putridity on our planet Earth.
Politician, especially the UN representatives and the self appointed guardians of setting political systems "for better life" on the planet Earth, are only good for organizing banquets, cocktail parties and lavish hotel arrangements for the conduct of their useless efforts, meetings, conferences, and committees, committees, committees to "change dictatorships to democracies" First of all UN is the most undemocratical establishment which has the temerity, nerve and obnoxiousness of "Claiming to establish democracy in the world" The UN has a self appointed (and NOT ELECTED) FOR PERPETUITY A SECURITY COUNCIL WITH A VETO POWER! Do you understand that ? Self-appointed for perpetuity with VETO power !! and that UN professes to establish "Democracy"- it is like Hitler appointing himself to be the president of the ISRAEL!!! UN's claiming of being the guardian of democracy is an insult to the intelligence of any reasoning human being. It is a disgustingly phony, ludicrous and obnoxious claim!!! A total unabashed insidious lie!! VETO POWER BELONGS TO A SELF APPOINTED SUPERPOWERS FOR PERPETUITY!! What a masquerade of democracy is that UN what a disgusting mockery of humanity! UN cannot change life on Earth, No philosopher, no politician can change the life an Earth. To jolt the Earth into a truly radical change , the surrounding celestial scenario of the planet Earth must be radically changed and for that WE MUST BLOW UP THE MOON
How to do it - very easily. There is an overabundance of nuclear fuel on the planet Earth (especially at the disposal of all those superpowers which ban the others of not creating new nuclear arsenal but which they themselves constantly augment their own nuclear arsenal. Would they let me inspect the nuclear production centers in France, Germany, U.S. Russia, England, China?? Would they let me inspect?!!)
So, I propose to locate all the nuclear explosive material on the MOON and BLOW UP THE MOON !!!! Just to change the 5 billion years of rotten celestial scenario surrounding the planet Earth - believe me no change can be worse that the present scenario!!! BLOW UP THE MOON !
that is the slogan and the way to the most profound radical change!
However, in congressional briefings and in a paper published in the August 2006 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI officials described the powder as a simple spore preparation without additives.
I am not. I am trying to point out that the western popular conception of Tibet is quite skewed by lamaist propaganda.
Before you can criticize something, you need to actually understand it. And if you actually want to affect someone by your criticism, you first have to understand and respect their view on the subject.
Slashdot Mirror
even automagically - just add some random minor alteration to pixels in statistically homogeneous sections of your foto
Easy, except for, you know, how it doesn't rely on exact matches, but finds images with minor alterations too.
Welcome to missing the point completely.
Am I really? Or is the definition of free will just a bit old-fashioned? It wasn't until the 79s that people really figured out that determinism is not the same as predictability.
This discussion isn't about nondeterminism, it's about unpredictable determinism. I'm not sure I see the relevance of what you just said?
However, one can always just control a miniature system with all independent variables held constant.
Not in this universe, one can't. Everything within the past lightcone of your miniature system can and will affect every part of it. Isolating a system is entirely impossible. You can minimize outside interference, but you can never, ever eliminate it.
Not only that, you can't predict the state of your miniature system either, because you cannot perfectly adjust it.
No matter how hard you try, you'll always be stuck in the mud with the rest of us.
you control all the variables.
Physically impossible in several different ways. Try again!
That's kind of why I said "not even a deterministic universe is actually predictable", isn't it?
So here's the question, then: How do you differentiate between actual free will, and unpredictable determinism?
The funny thing is, though - and I didn't see it mentioned explicitly - that not even a deterministic universe is actually predictable.
As you say, with "enough information" you could calculate any outcome, but that information is actually infinite, and physically impossible to obtain for several different reasons, and even if you had it, it would be impossible to process.
No, that is merely a common way to misunderstand it.
However, with the topic being the non-intuitive mess it is, don't ask me to explain properly how it really works.
but with the number of devices they pile onto these rovers and landers
That number is very small.
And there's your entire answer for you, really. When we start hauling a space truck out there every week, you'll get your pictures. Until then, those are number #100 on a ten-point list.
You should not be so quick to call for others to return their geek card, when you yourself is not even aware of one of the biggest legends in computing.
No, just a lack of supersampling.
That must be why most of the 3D CGI in films sticks out so much.
It most certainly is not.
Raytracing is not some magical algorithm that creates photorealistic pictures. It's merely a different way to make a rough approximation of solving the rendering equation, and it is not a particularly good one. It handles shiny spheres on infinite checkerboards quite well, but it is really not very useful for most real-world scenes. And that is why it is not used much.
Most people who don't know much about computer graphics have a romanticized image of it, but this is basically just superstition.
That's quite an optimistic estimate for rendering speed with global illumination! That'd have to be one extremely optimized algorithm to achieve .3 fps. Frames per minute or per hour sounds more realistic.
You know, there's hardly anything in that picture that couldn't be done just as well with a rasterizer and a bit of trickery, and would run an order of magnitude faster.
With ray tracing, the shadows are correct.
Once again, wrong. Raytraced shadows will not take into account reflected light, and will therefore be far too uniform and flat.
Lighting technology has improved significantly in the last decade, but still not sufficiently to compete with raytracing.
Completely and utterly wrong. Raytraced lighting looks extremely unnatural, due to the lack of handling indirect light. To get lighting that actually looks realistic, you need to use global illumination methods, and those are so incredibly expensive, the only real way to do them is to pre-calculate them, for rasterizers and raytracers both.
A raytracer with global illumination will look far better than a raytracer without.
Yes, yes, yes, we must get rid of that moronish idiotic and imbecile chunk of perverse piece of refuse THE MOON - once and for all!
THE MOON must go, must be eliminated!! Enough of billions of years of the evil presence of that piece of refuse with its morbid presence hanging above our heads - enough of that terrorizing spy in the ski! that Evil watchful eye that disgusting boring depressing piece of abomination.
We must radically change the surrounding cosmic scenario of our planet Earth, Enough of the same billion and billion of years of continuous misery of rotten decadent pestiferous and idiotical celestial setup surrounding our planet Earth.
RADICAL CHANGE IS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. THE MOST PRACTICAL THE MOST EFFECTIVE THE MOST URGENT RADICAL CHANGE IS TO BLOW UP THE MOON TO SMITHEREENS AND GET RID OF ITS EVIL PRESENCE ONCE AND FOR ALL!
Moon with its dull, stupid depressing condescending and disgusting boring presence had and has the most damaging influence on human life, behavior and actions. With its tides creating in the flow of blood especially in the brain of mankind, it has created a monstrous beast of human species. we must
BLOW UP THE MOON.
Do not worry, there is life and existence without MOON a much better a much healthier and interesting life. In fact the BLOWING UP OF THE MOON will jolt our planet earth and will get rid of the layers and layers of accumulated (during billion and billion of years) of filth, feculence, dregs and putridity on our planet Earth.
Politician, especially the UN representatives and the self appointed guardians of setting political systems "for better life" on the planet Earth, are only good for organizing banquets, cocktail parties and lavish hotel arrangements for the conduct of their useless efforts, meetings, conferences, and committees, committees, committees to "change dictatorships to democracies" First of all UN is the most undemocratical establishment which has the temerity, nerve and obnoxiousness of "Claiming to establish democracy in the world" The UN has a self appointed (and NOT ELECTED) FOR PERPETUITY A SECURITY COUNCIL WITH A VETO POWER! Do you understand that ? Self-appointed for perpetuity with VETO power !! and that UN professes to establish "Democracy"- it is like Hitler appointing himself to be the president of the ISRAEL!!! UN's claiming of being the guardian of democracy is an insult to the intelligence of any reasoning human being. It is a disgustingly phony, ludicrous and obnoxious claim!!! A total unabashed insidious lie!! VETO POWER BELONGS TO A SELF APPOINTED SUPERPOWERS FOR PERPETUITY!! What a masquerade of democracy is that UN what a disgusting mockery of humanity! UN cannot change life on Earth, No philosopher, no politician can change the life an Earth. To jolt the Earth into a truly radical change , the surrounding celestial scenario of the planet Earth must be radically changed and for that WE MUST
BLOW UP THE MOON
How to do it - very easily. There is an overabundance of nuclear fuel on the planet Earth (especially at the disposal of all those superpowers which ban the others of not creating new nuclear arsenal but which they themselves constantly augment their own nuclear arsenal. Would they let me inspect the nuclear production centers in France, Germany, U.S. Russia, England, China?? Would they let me inspect?!!)
So, I propose to locate all the nuclear explosive material on the MOON and BLOW UP THE MOON !!!! Just to change the 5 billion years of rotten celestial scenario surrounding the planet Earth - believe me no change can be worse that the present scenario!!!
BLOW UP THE MOON !
that is the slogan and the way to the most profound radical change!
And your evidence for this is...
I'm sorry, but I can't help mulling over the preposterousness of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins.
Oh, so you have the actual, as-yet unreleased evidence to judge?
However, in congressional briefings and in a paper published in the August 2006 issue of Applied and Environmental Microbiology, FBI officials described the powder as a simple spore preparation without additives.
You can't defend China
I am not. I am trying to point out that the western popular conception of Tibet is quite skewed by lamaist propaganda.
Before you can criticize something, you need to actually understand it. And if you actually want to affect someone by your criticism, you first have to understand and respect their view on the subject.
Well, yes, that is pretty much exactly how the Chinese feel about Tibet, you know.
Well, I pretty much agree with all that, except:
It would have been better if China had left Tibet alone
I do think they were better off under Chinese rule than under lama rule. It may not be a good situation, but it is a better situation.
Well, it would be nice if we could ferry countries across the globe into favourable locations, but as it is, China was the only option available.