I was somehow led to believe that a molecule was produced by the combination of two atoms -- which each have at least one proton (in the case of Hydrogen). How does combining an electron with a positron (both very very low mass particles; think "mosquitoes" compared to the "elephant" protons and neutrons in the nucleus) equal an atom -- let alone two or more atoms to equal a molecule?
It may be cool, but perhaps we need a new name for it. Molecule just doesn't fit; sorry.
As an electronics enthusiast with the exquisite l33t soldering skills of a drunk baboon (and that's on a good day), I for one welcome our new heat-resistant overlords. Er, chips.
...won't this be a problem if there's a genetic defect in the patient's heart valves? In other words, won't the replacement be following the same DNA blueprint, and have the same problems?
IANanMD, but I would think this would pose problems with usability, wouldn't it?
Do a lot of people actually listen to streaming audio from Web radio stations? I would think I'm more likely to hear what I want by listening to my own mp3 collection, than by relying on someone else's idea of the perfect mix.
I'm sure the DJs do a good job of coming up with a mix of songs that work out for most people -- but for any given individual, I would think the best mix would always be one they chose themselves.
I mean, what Web radio station is going to play Weird Al, Jimmy Buffett, Francis Cabrel, Jim Croce, John Denver, Deuter, Enya, ELO, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Buddy Holly, Brannan Lane, Willie Nelson, Peter Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, Trevor Pinnock, Pachelbel, Pandora, Queen, Starship, Tchaikovsky, etc -- all without playing any of the many (very popular) artists whose works just don't happen to work for me?
Yeah, I have very weird musical taste -- I admit it....But don't we all?
...the one in the textbook, which says a Libertarian is socially liberal (allow same-sex marriage, keep the government out of our lives etc) and financially conservative (the free market is a good thing).
By that measure, I'm probably two parts Libertarian and one part Liberal (I.E. I think that the free-market system, with a few checks and oversights, is probably best).
What amazes me is that so many "Libertarians" seem to be pro-choice or for requiring the Pledge of Allegiance or for including "In God We Trust" on the currency. These positions appear populist to me -- that is, the opposite of what a true Libertarian (who would be for minimal government) would want.
I don't think that the current Libertarian party is truly Libertarian in all respects. Either that, or the textbook definition of Libertarian needs to be updated, even though the four basic types (Liberal -- Conservative on one axis, Libertarian -- Populist on the other) complement each other nicely in terms of making up a political spectrum where everyone more or less fits in somewhere.
More to the point, would it be illegal to reverse-engineer the spyware and send the guvmint all sorts of interesting information (that it would presume to be the spyware reporting back in?)
After all, Big Brother deserves the very best, right?
Like another poster said, it's still more relevant (geeky, cool, and IMHO important than most of the "new" stuff on here.
I believe that we will eventually create true self-replicating machines. It may even be one of the next important steps in the progression of computer technology (Boolean Logic, Relay, Tube, Transistor, IC, Microprocessor, Self-modifying code...)
Where it gets controversial is that I think that we could see it in the next 50 years or so. (That is, a self-replicating organism that can make a living on its own and become a viable "species" in the wild.)
At any rate, this just has the sense of being a step in a very important direction. I'm finishing up an EE Tech degree and working with microcontrollers and other digital circuits -- and this is just the sort of thing that I hope to get the chance to work on, at least in my spare time. Working on projects like this seems important in a "big picture" historical sense.
"There is no royal road to geometry." (Or science.)
Dumb science down, and you get dumb scientists. What we need is a way to make it more interesting -- and show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun. Once they're interested -- and the mathematics involved have a clear purpose rather than being just rote memorization of arcane formulae -- Science suddenly becomes something they *want* to do.
There may be no "royal road" to science -- but there's nothing saying that we can't make the trip more enjoyable, and encourage more travelers at the same time.
As a side benefit, science is a great way to teach critical thinking (which IMHO is the whole point of education).
We did the "online software" thing -- back before PCs. It was called "time-sharing" on mainframes. It was OK since back then it was the only way for Joe Sixpack (OK, Joe Grad Student anyway) to have a chance at using an actual computer without resorting to submitting a stack of punch cards to the digirati priests in the computer room.
...but now, we have these wonderful things called PCs. They let you actually do the work locally, without relying on sending data across a network.
Someone please tell me again why they're advocating a return to 1960s-style computing? I don't get it.
Searching shouldn't take too long. Basically you're submitting a small string and asking for a fairly simple HTML page as a response. You can live with even moderate to bad inefficiency if the request is small enough.
I wouldn't want to try to download the latest Ubuntu DVD via TOR, though; that might be more of a problem. But that's what BitTorrent is for, anyway.
He made a lot of noise about a pulsejet powered microcontroller-brained cruise missile a few years back...
I was thinking more along the lines of electric.
Pulsejets are cheap, but they're slightly less subtle than a stick of Dynamite.
Yes, making a UAV is not trivial, but neither is it incredibly difficult. There are plenty of cheap parts out there that, with a little programming, could tie together a small GPS module and aircraft control servos. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult for any country to make a UAV; I would say with a parts budget of $1K US, I could probably get a simple one (that could fly to a given waypoint) working within a few weeks/months. With $10K, you could make a very capable one -- probably with a range of several hundred km -- which could carry a small payload (a few grams of radioactives go a long way, ya know.)
Bottom line -- trying to restrict such technology is laughable these days. Microchip literally gives away microcontrollers capable of handling a small aircraft, given the right software and interface electronics. These "evil terr-a-rists" will always be able to get their hands on technology. What we need is to find a way to make it politically difficult for them to continue as terrorists. (I.E. find a diplomatic solution.)
I don't seem much mention of "texting." Perhaps that's because "old people" like us use email more than texting one another's phones.
I'll never forget the two "old" guys on the Tonight Show sending a message via CW outpacing the two kids im'ing with "abbreviated" spelling of words. Not that I expect a comeback of CW, but I do expect "texting" to overtake email in the workplace as the workforce gets younger. I use IM at home, among family and friends; I would use it at work if it were accepted. Email is the norm, though, so I go with that (and use the phone as little as possible.) I do find email preferable, since it's easier to search archives, keep important emails in the inbox as a to-do list etc.
Email is asynchronous. Also, for (legitimate) emails, it's a lot more time-consuming for the sender to type it (~40wpm?) than for the recipient to read it (~a few hundred wpm). It doesn't take as much time -- and can be saved for handy reference, too.
For one, it's expensive; you could buy many times the storage by buying the hardware yourself; it would be cheaper to go with RAID-1 and replace the drives every year whether they needed it or not.
Also, even assuming that Google's new service is:
trustworthy (I.E. they don't peek at your data),
reliable,
secure (hackerproof and disasterproof; aren't they based in CA?), and
speedy (and it ain't ever gonna be as fast as a locally-attached HD)
...there's still the question of your own Internet connection; I for one don't want to lose access to my files every time my cable connection decides it needs a day off. It's been pretty reliable lately, but still.
On the "trustworthy" issue, I trust Google as much as just about any company -- but I don't trust anyone 100%, so why risk it?
Bottom line -- call me a dinosaur (OK, it fits; I enjoy BASIC and Assembler), but I'd rather do it myself.
Yeah, yeah, you say -- but what about portable storage? OK, I admit, this would be convenient -- but I still think the drawbacks (even money being no object) far outweigh bringing the data you need with you. Heck, for that money, you could seriously think about one of those new solid-state drives! How's that for reliability?
I'm no fan of Micro$oft, but I do commend them for stating the obvious -- and very eloquently, at that. This is basically the modern business world take on Benjamin Franklin's quote about how those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither. Specifically, security (from an economic standpoint) is all about cost reduction. Every risk and threat can be expressed as a potential cost. When the costs associated with preventing a risk are higher than the costs of the risks themselves, the cure is worse than the disease.
With all this Security Theater, we've managed to go from having nearly the entire world on our side (9/11/01) to being the neighborhood bully. It's time we started acting more like the great democratic (and free-market) society that we're supposed to be.
Yeah, yeah, I know. -1:Flamebait. But M$ has a good point for once, and they deserve to be praised for it.
I'm pretty sure that this is not only impractical, but in fact impossible. Even if you could cover the entire surface of the expanding sphere, canceling out the transmitted signal from Earth at each point, these new canceling signals would themselves be received differently at different points.
It would be like trying to cancel out the ripples in a pond made by a chaotically thrashing fish, by sending out zillions of miniature boats to make new canceling waves at every location at a certain distance from the center. It may be only extremely difficult in 2D with water, but with the nature of radio waves, it can't work. It would need some new technology so advanced that it would require physics that we don't even know could exist. (I.E. magic.)
Steven Hawking's comment (about how the history of advanced civilizations on Earth meeting less-developed civilizations has generally not gone well for the less-developed ones) would seem to apply here. Hopefully, any civilization advanced enough to not blow itself to pieces before developing interstellar transport capability would be reasonably benign -- but can we afford the risk? If a civilization has the wherewithal to visit other star systems, they are at the very least many years beyond where we are, both technologically and economically.
Maybe we should be glad if we're too insignificant to be noticed just yet. (We certainly don't have our act together, at any rate.)
Slashdot Mirror
I was somehow led to believe that a molecule was produced by the combination of two atoms -- which each have at least one proton (in the case of Hydrogen). How does combining an electron with a positron (both very very low mass particles; think "mosquitoes" compared to the "elephant" protons and neutrons in the nucleus) equal an atom -- let alone two or more atoms to equal a molecule?
It may be cool, but perhaps we need a new name for it. Molecule just doesn't fit; sorry.
As an electronics enthusiast with the exquisite l33t soldering skills of a drunk baboon (and that's on a good day), I for one welcome our new heat-resistant overlords. Er, chips.
Could be DOS 4. (The Windows ME of the DOS series.)
Pretty much everyone I know went from 3.x right to 5.
...they're trying to outdo Google by embracing a "Don't be Good" motto?
Naah -- he'd at least have to be hip enough to tie in a current meme. EG:
I can haz oatmeals?
...won't this be a problem if there's a genetic defect in the patient's heart valves? In other words, won't the replacement be following the same DNA blueprint, and have the same problems?
IANanMD, but I would think this would pose problems with usability, wouldn't it?
Most Webmasters seem to think so, for some strange reason. 8-)
Do a lot of people actually listen to streaming audio from Web radio stations? I would think I'm more likely to hear what I want by listening to my own mp3 collection, than by relying on someone else's idea of the perfect mix.
...But don't we all?
I'm sure the DJs do a good job of coming up with a mix of songs that work out for most people -- but for any given individual, I would think the best mix would always be one they chose themselves.
I mean, what Web radio station is going to play Weird Al, Jimmy Buffett, Francis Cabrel, Jim Croce, John Denver, Deuter, Enya, ELO, Jean-Jacques Goldman, Buddy Holly, Brannan Lane, Willie Nelson, Peter Paul and Mary, Tom Paxton, Trevor Pinnock, Pachelbel, Pandora, Queen, Starship, Tchaikovsky, etc -- all without playing any of the many (very popular) artists whose works just don't happen to work for me?
Yeah, I have very weird musical taste -- I admit it.
...the one in the textbook, which says a Libertarian is socially liberal (allow same-sex marriage, keep the government out of our lives etc) and financially conservative (the free market is a good thing).
By that measure, I'm probably two parts Libertarian and one part Liberal (I.E. I think that the free-market system, with a few checks and oversights, is probably best).
What amazes me is that so many "Libertarians" seem to be pro-choice or for requiring the Pledge of Allegiance or for including "In God We Trust" on the currency. These positions appear populist to me -- that is, the opposite of what a true Libertarian (who would be for minimal government) would want.
I don't think that the current Libertarian party is truly Libertarian in all respects. Either that, or the textbook definition of Libertarian needs to be updated, even though the four basic types (Liberal -- Conservative on one axis, Libertarian -- Populist on the other) complement each other nicely in terms of making up a political spectrum where everyone more or less fits in somewhere.
More to the point, would it be illegal to reverse-engineer the spyware and send the guvmint all sorts of interesting information (that it would presume to be the spyware reporting back in?)
After all, Big Brother deserves the very best, right?
Like another poster said, it's still more relevant (geeky, cool, and IMHO important than most of the "new" stuff on here.
I believe that we will eventually create true self-replicating machines. It may even be one of the next important steps in the progression of computer technology (Boolean Logic, Relay, Tube, Transistor, IC, Microprocessor, Self-modifying code...)
Where it gets controversial is that I think that we could see it in the next 50 years or so. (That is, a self-replicating organism that can make a living on its own and become a viable "species" in the wild.)
At any rate, this just has the sense of being a step in a very important direction. I'm finishing up an EE Tech degree and working with microcontrollers and other digital circuits -- and this is just the sort of thing that I hope to get the chance to work on, at least in my spare time. Working on projects like this seems important in a "big picture" historical sense.
"There is no royal road to geometry." (Or science.)
Dumb science down, and you get dumb scientists. What we need is a way to make it more interesting -- and show students how, for example, conducting an experiment or programming a simulation on a computer can be fun. Once they're interested -- and the mathematics involved have a clear purpose rather than being just rote memorization of arcane formulae -- Science suddenly becomes something they *want* to do.
There may be no "royal road" to science -- but there's nothing saying that we can't make the trip more enjoyable, and encourage more travelers at the same time.
As a side benefit, science is a great way to teach critical thinking (which IMHO is the whole point of education).
We did the "online software" thing -- back before PCs. It was called "time-sharing" on mainframes. It was OK since back then it was the only way for Joe Sixpack (OK, Joe Grad Student anyway) to have a chance at using an actual computer without resorting to submitting a stack of punch cards to the digirati priests in the computer room.
...but now, we have these wonderful things called PCs. They let you actually do the work locally, without relying on sending data across a network.
Someone please tell me again why they're advocating a return to 1960s-style computing? I don't get it.
Searching shouldn't take too long. Basically you're submitting a small string and asking for a fairly simple HTML page as a response. You can live with even moderate to bad inefficiency if the request is small enough.
I wouldn't want to try to download the latest Ubuntu DVD via TOR, though; that might be more of a problem. But that's what BitTorrent is for, anyway.
I was thinking more along the lines of electric.
Pulsejets are cheap, but they're slightly less subtle than a stick of Dynamite.
Not half bad!
Of course, with a sensible platform like that, you'd never get elected... 8-(
Yes, making a UAV is not trivial, but neither is it incredibly difficult. There are plenty of cheap parts out there that, with a little programming, could tie together a small GPS module and aircraft control servos. It wouldn't be too terribly difficult for any country to make a UAV; I would say with a parts budget of $1K US, I could probably get a simple one (that could fly to a given waypoint) working within a few weeks/months. With $10K, you could make a very capable one -- probably with a range of several hundred km -- which could carry a small payload (a few grams of radioactives go a long way, ya know.)
Bottom line -- trying to restrict such technology is laughable these days. Microchip literally gives away microcontrollers capable of handling a small aircraft, given the right software and interface electronics. These "evil terr-a-rists" will always be able to get their hands on technology. What we need is to find a way to make it politically difficult for them to continue as terrorists. (I.E. find a diplomatic solution.)
I'll never forget the two "old" guys on the Tonight Show sending a message via CW outpacing the two kids im'ing with "abbreviated" spelling of words. Not that I expect a comeback of CW, but I do expect "texting" to overtake email in the workplace as the workforce gets younger. I use IM at home, among family and friends; I would use it at work if it were accepted. Email is the norm, though, so I go with that (and use the phone as little as possible.) I do find email preferable, since it's easier to search archives, keep important emails in the inbox as a to-do list etc.
Email is asynchronous. Also, for (legitimate) emails, it's a lot more time-consuming for the sender to type it (~40wpm?) than for the recipient to read it (~a few hundred wpm). It doesn't take as much time -- and can be saved for handy reference, too.
I for one welcome our new SMTP overlords.
Also, even assuming that Google's new service is:
On the "trustworthy" issue, I trust Google as much as just about any company -- but I don't trust anyone 100%, so why risk it?
Bottom line -- call me a dinosaur (OK, it fits; I enjoy BASIC and Assembler), but I'd rather do it myself.
Yeah, yeah, you say -- but what about portable storage? OK, I admit, this would be convenient -- but I still think the drawbacks (even money being no object) far outweigh bringing the data you need with you. Heck, for that money, you could seriously think about one of those new solid-state drives! How's that for reliability?
I'm no fan of Micro$oft, but I do commend them for stating the obvious -- and very eloquently, at that. This is basically the modern business world take on Benjamin Franklin's quote about how those who would give up liberty for security deserve neither. Specifically, security (from an economic standpoint) is all about cost reduction. Every risk and threat can be expressed as a potential cost. When the costs associated with preventing a risk are higher than the costs of the risks themselves, the cure is worse than the disease.
With all this Security Theater, we've managed to go from having nearly the entire world on our side (9/11/01) to being the neighborhood bully. It's time we started acting more like the great democratic (and free-market) society that we're supposed to be.
Yeah, yeah, I know. -1:Flamebait. But M$ has a good point for once, and they deserve to be praised for it.
*CHOMP*
Sorry, couldn't resist.
I'm pretty sure that this is not only impractical, but in fact impossible. Even if you could cover the entire surface of the expanding sphere, canceling out the transmitted signal from Earth at each point, these new canceling signals would themselves be received differently at different points.
It would be like trying to cancel out the ripples in a pond made by a chaotically thrashing fish, by sending out zillions of miniature boats to make new canceling waves at every location at a certain distance from the center. It may be only extremely difficult in 2D with water, but with the nature of radio waves, it can't work. It would need some new technology so advanced that it would require physics that we don't even know could exist. (I.E. magic.)
Steven Hawking's comment (about how the history of advanced civilizations on Earth meeting less-developed civilizations has generally not gone well for the less-developed ones) would seem to apply here. Hopefully, any civilization advanced enough to not blow itself to pieces before developing interstellar transport capability would be reasonably benign -- but can we afford the risk? If a civilization has the wherewithal to visit other star systems, they are at the very least many years beyond where we are, both technologically and economically.
Maybe we should be glad if we're too insignificant to be noticed just yet. (We certainly don't have our act together, at any rate.)