Well the pilots survived that crash landing... so that's something?
Actually this crash landing was pretty exceptional in that 50 people survived the 200mph crash landing. Many of those that died died after the crash from drowning[1], as they prematurely inflated their life jackets which made it impossible to get out of the plane as soon as the water level had risen above the level of the doors.
Your chances aren't great, since the year 2000, of 652 people involved in commercial jet emergency water landings, only 10 have survived[2].
I'd probably prefer to be blown up by a missile, but I couldn't say for sure until I've tried both.
In other news: Slashdot's very own 'Anonymous Coward' accused of raising the tone of the presidentual debate. More in 15 minutes after the second half of Fast Animals, Slow Children.
"to harvest CO2 which is only present at hundreds of ppm levels"
Yeah but as that number's going up, it's only going to get easier;-)
"but I expect it will be at costs significantly higher than we currently pay for energy from ancient reduced carbon sources"
At least initially yes... but you don't have to go forward in time very much to find that you're paying more than we're currently paying for "ancient reduced carbon sources" for "ancient reduced carbon sources". Prices of other energy sources are at least moving in the oposite direction, and back to the invention in question, it does also work as a hydrogen generator (and initially was for this) given water, which we do have a bit of:-)
The artical does say that at the moment they need pure CO2 intake, but as it's developed further, they look to be able to use the atmosphere as a source for the CO2.
Seems to be a couple years old though, this page (second story down) which includes the same photo is dated feb 2006, and includes a much better description of how it works, including how they use alternate direction rotation rings for heat conservation within the drum, although it looks like they've more recently been trying it with CO2 instead of H20. This page contains more info and diagram of the counter rotating drum. Very interesting stuff though.
"And the sooner we can get this labourite SCUM out the better i dont know with tony (airy fairy)blair(Y) and gordon(the gofer)brown need i say more"
No you need not say more, you've demonstrated how poorly even the most basic sentence contruction skills are being taught (at least in your area) under the labour government. So much for "education, education, education", huh. Excellent point, well made. This is assuming, of course, that you were "schooled" under the current government, otherwise the only point you've made is that a stupid person doesn't like the current and ex prime ministers, which isn't really a very strong point.
"The truth is that science and religion are compatible. The Vatican operates a telescope and funds research"
Why do people keep saying this? It's not really true is it, it's at least pretty misleading. It's like saying (to use an extreme example) that love and murder are compatible, because a person a person is capable of doing both. A man might love his family, but murder his boss, but they're completely seperate acts; he didn't murder the people he loves, and him murdering his boss wasn't exactly very loving.
In the same way, just because the vatican funds scientific research, doesn't make that research religious. If the research is based on logic and testing, it can be said to be scientific. It's not religious until you replace that with untested faith, in which case it can no longer be scientific.
Err... actually it's pretty blurry, chemical reactions are the results of electrical charge between atoms, and the human brain is actually a lot more digital than you might think, with each neuron being not too dissimilar to transitors... they have gates that get opened, which allows ions to flow into the neuron, which changes its potential (overall charge). When its charge reaches a certain level, it will fire. Equivalent would be a transistor with multiple connections attached to each section instead of just one.
"but they lacked the rounding errors that haunt digital computing"
Quantum physics would seem to indicate that rounding does in fact occur everywhere, even things that appear analog, when broken right down, do go up and down in steps and cannot be divided indefinitely.
"My brain controls my muscles but I don't calculate anything, I just point and it goes"
You might not be conscious of it, but it's certainly happening. If someone throws a ball, you ccan predict that path it's going to take and 'calculate' where your hand needs to be to catch it. Sure, you might not be thinking about it in terms of x, y, times and divide, but remember, maths is just language, used to describe things that happen, not dictate them, and so can be expressed in a wide variety of ways.
"but it is in fact pretty much how a digital computer works (alveit decimal instead of binary)."
Binary is just how things are stored at the transitor level within the computer; a level of abstraction up, and things are generally processed in higher powers of two (logic operations can for example be used to manipulate individual bits, but it makes no sense for maths operations to be the same, so these operations work on larger units).
Don't let the complexity of millions of things working together confuse quite how simple the underlying components are by themselves. If you can simulate a single neuron perfectly, simulating a whole brain becomes just a matter of providing the processing power to support the extreme number of them you'd need to. The fundamentals are much simpler and much more attainable than they appear while looking at the big picture.
"increase the desktop performance by x% and kill server performance by y%, it won't go in"
Nope, because it causes a regression, which Linus is against allowing, anywhere. The same, if something increases server performance but at the cost to desktop performance, he wouldn't like to see that go in either (if figures are available showing that this is the case). The basic principle is that people shouldn't notice a degrade in performance/stability through upgrading. If you have some code that will increase performance or add features for 90% of people out there, not affect 5%, and cause problems or lower performance for the other 5%, it won't get in, because it's causing a regression. He likes to push for "worst case scenario of adding this patch is that you won't notice any effects of it".
I see my hint as to "the difference between a generalisation and a law" was too subtle, allow me to be more verbose: yes generalisations have exceptions, that's why they're generalisations not laws! It's like arguing against the statement that "cancer kills" because not everybody who gets cancer dies from it.
Which is why I said it would take a while to send the quark carrying the information, as you can't send it faster than C. Plus entanglement doesn't really add any benefits, the information would still have to be encoded into spin/etc before the quarks are sent, so it would still take as long as it takes for the quarks to travel the distance to transmit the information.
If information is lost due to people dying in wars, then those people *didn't* survive, so the technology can't be said to have helped them survive if they didn't even survive, so that argument's kinda moot.
Some information that DOES seem to have been lost though is knowledge as the the difference between a generalisation and a law. Yes, there are going to be some technologies that were lost for some other reasons that could be useful now (like we haven't found other ways of doing things), but that doesn't change "knowledge that helps people survive survives, other knowledge dies out".
Maybe if you made an incorrect statement you could be corrected, but you actually asked a question, so there's not really the same scope for... damnit I'm correcting you!
The shape of the universe, not the contents of it, is where you would find symmetry. Just as the surface of a sphere has symmetry (an infinite number of lines in face) when talking about its shape, even if the the pattern on the sphere has none.
The center of the balloon in the analogy is the beginning of time. Space is limited to the 2 dimensions on the surface of the balloon. So, talking about the angle between lines from two points on the surface to the middle, is the same as talking about the angle between lines between two galaxies, and the big bang... ie, it doesn't really make sense to.
When did we discover how to make fire? How long have we been building for? Making clothes out of cotton?
Maybe we don't know much about ancient cultures, but maybe the information has been lost because it's not really relevant or helpful to us... only of interest to historians? But technology, *handy* knowledge, that sticks with us, because it gets used. Imagine evolution, but applied to knowledge, knowledge that helps people survive survives, other knowledge dies out.
"Currently, however, people think there is no center to the universe, and it is more than an academic distinction"
Well, technically, no center "to space". If we take the universe as being 4D, the center would be half way between the beginning and the end of the universe (however, with an increasingly-expanding-universe model, there can be no middle, not because of the balloon thing, but because there's only one edge to one of the dimensions)
Backwards on the time axis?!! Jeez, what you trying to say, that the universe is already past middle age?! That's it, no more slashdot for me, I'm gonna start living while we have time left!
Or, imagine the 2 dimensional surface of the earth (can go north/south, east/west. Forget flying/digging). Where's the center point? Whichever direction you travel in, you can keep going forever, there's no "end of the earth", and you can't have a middle without edges.
Slashdot Mirror
Well the pilots survived that crash landing... so that's something?
Actually this crash landing was pretty exceptional in that 50 people survived the 200mph crash landing. Many of those that died died after the crash from drowning[1], as they prematurely inflated their life jackets which made it impossible to get out of the plane as soon as the water level had risen above the level of the doors.
Your chances aren't great, since the year 2000, of 652 people involved in commercial jet emergency water landings, only 10 have survived[2].
I'd probably prefer to be blown up by a missile, but I couldn't say for sure until I've tried both.
In other news: Slashdot's very own 'Anonymous Coward' accused of raising the tone of the presidentual debate. More in 15 minutes after the second half of Fast Animals, Slow Children.
"this does not remove CO2 from the atmosphere"
Well technically it does, it's just that burning it puts it back into the atmosphere. Anybody who feels strongly enough could bury it instead.
"to harvest CO2 which is only present at hundreds of ppm levels"
;-)
:-)
Yeah but as that number's going up, it's only going to get easier
"but I expect it will be at costs significantly higher than we currently pay for energy from ancient reduced carbon sources"
At least initially yes... but you don't have to go forward in time very much to find that you're paying more than we're currently paying for "ancient reduced carbon sources" for "ancient reduced carbon sources". Prices of other energy sources are at least moving in the oposite direction, and back to the invention in question, it does also work as a hydrogen generator (and initially was for this) given water, which we do have a bit of
The artical does say that at the moment they need pure CO2 intake, but as it's developed further, they look to be able to use the atmosphere as a source for the CO2.
It also works with water (instead of CO2) to extract hydrogen.
Seems to be a couple years old though, this page (second story down) which includes the same photo is dated feb 2006, and includes a much better description of how it works, including how they use alternate direction rotation rings for heat conservation within the drum, although it looks like they've more recently been trying it with CO2 instead of H20. This page contains more info and diagram of the counter rotating drum. Very interesting stuff though.
"And the sooner we can get this labourite SCUM out the better i dont know with tony (airy fairy)blair(Y) and gordon(the gofer)brown need i say more"
No you need not say more, you've demonstrated how poorly even the most basic sentence contruction skills are being taught (at least in your area) under the labour government. So much for "education, education, education", huh. Excellent point, well made. This is assuming, of course, that you were "schooled" under the current government, otherwise the only point you've made is that a stupid person doesn't like the current and ex prime ministers, which isn't really a very strong point.
"The truth is that science and religion are compatible. The Vatican operates a telescope and funds research"
Why do people keep saying this? It's not really true is it, it's at least pretty misleading. It's like saying (to use an extreme example) that love and murder are compatible, because a person a person is capable of doing both. A man might love his family, but murder his boss, but they're completely seperate acts; he didn't murder the people he loves, and him murdering his boss wasn't exactly very loving.
In the same way, just because the vatican funds scientific research, doesn't make that research religious. If the research is based on logic and testing, it can be said to be scientific. It's not religious until you replace that with untested faith, in which case it can no longer be scientific.
"But chemicals aren't electricity"
Err... actually it's pretty blurry, chemical reactions are the results of electrical charge between atoms, and the human brain is actually a lot more digital than you might think, with each neuron being not too dissimilar to transitors... they have gates that get opened, which allows ions to flow into the neuron, which changes its potential (overall charge). When its charge reaches a certain level, it will fire. Equivalent would be a transistor with multiple connections attached to each section instead of just one.
"but they lacked the rounding errors that haunt digital computing"
Quantum physics would seem to indicate that rounding does in fact occur everywhere, even things that appear analog, when broken right down, do go up and down in steps and cannot be divided indefinitely.
"My brain controls my muscles but I don't calculate anything, I just point and it goes"
You might not be conscious of it, but it's certainly happening. If someone throws a ball, you ccan predict that path it's going to take and 'calculate' where your hand needs to be to catch it. Sure, you might not be thinking about it in terms of x, y, times and divide, but remember, maths is just language, used to describe things that happen, not dictate them, and so can be expressed in a wide variety of ways.
"but it is in fact pretty much how a digital computer works (alveit decimal instead of binary)."
Binary is just how things are stored at the transitor level within the computer; a level of abstraction up, and things are generally processed in higher powers of two (logic operations can for example be used to manipulate individual bits, but it makes no sense for maths operations to be the same, so these operations work on larger units).
Don't let the complexity of millions of things working together confuse quite how simple the underlying components are by themselves. If you can simulate a single neuron perfectly, simulating a whole brain becomes just a matter of providing the processing power to support the extreme number of them you'd need to. The fundamentals are much simpler and much more attainable than they appear while looking at the big picture.
"increase the desktop performance by x% and kill server performance by y%, it won't go in"
Nope, because it causes a regression, which Linus is against allowing, anywhere. The same, if something increases server performance but at the cost to desktop performance, he wouldn't like to see that go in either (if figures are available showing that this is the case). The basic principle is that people shouldn't notice a degrade in performance/stability through upgrading. If you have some code that will increase performance or add features for 90% of people out there, not affect 5%, and cause problems or lower performance for the other 5%, it won't get in, because it's causing a regression. He likes to push for "worst case scenario of adding this patch is that you won't notice any effects of it".
Pointless, and you not understanding the point, are completely different, nevertheless, I understand you did your best, and so accept your apology.
I see my hint as to "the difference between a generalisation and a law" was too subtle, allow me to be more verbose: yes generalisations have exceptions, that's why they're generalisations not laws! It's like arguing against the statement that "cancer kills" because not everybody who gets cancer dies from it.
Which is why I said it would take a while to send the quark carrying the information, as you can't send it faster than C. Plus entanglement doesn't really add any benefits, the information would still have to be encoded into spin/etc before the quarks are sent, so it would still take as long as it takes for the quarks to travel the distance to transmit the information.
If information is lost due to people dying in wars, then those people *didn't* survive, so the technology can't be said to have helped them survive if they didn't even survive, so that argument's kinda moot.
Some information that DOES seem to have been lost though is knowledge as the the difference between a generalisation and a law. Yes, there are going to be some technologies that were lost for some other reasons that could be useful now (like we haven't found other ways of doing things), but that doesn't change "knowledge that helps people survive survives, other knowledge dies out".
"Because controlling the spin of a quark over here and measuring it wayyyyy over there can't transmit data"
Well it can, if you send the quark that you've controlled the spin of... but that might take some time.
"Correct me if I'm wrong..."
Maybe if you made an incorrect statement you could be corrected, but you actually asked a question, so there's not really the same scope for... damnit I'm correcting you!
Damn troll made me laugh!
(must be the truth, the alternative is a moderater with no sense of humour, absurd!)
So why would there be an alignment of magnetic field in one direction to cause this to begin with?
The shape of the universe, not the contents of it, is where you would find symmetry. Just as the surface of a sphere has symmetry (an infinite number of lines in face) when talking about its shape, even if the the pattern on the sphere has none.
The center of the balloon in the analogy is the beginning of time. Space is limited to the 2 dimensions on the surface of the balloon. So, talking about the angle between lines from two points on the surface to the middle, is the same as talking about the angle between lines between two galaxies, and the big bang... ie, it doesn't really make sense to.
When did we discover how to make fire? How long have we been building for? Making clothes out of cotton?
Maybe we don't know much about ancient cultures, but maybe the information has been lost because it's not really relevant or helpful to us... only of interest to historians? But technology, *handy* knowledge, that sticks with us, because it gets used. Imagine evolution, but applied to knowledge, knowledge that helps people survive survives, other knowledge dies out.
"Currently, however, people think there is no center to the universe, and it is more than an academic distinction"
Well, technically, no center "to space". If we take the universe as being 4D, the center would be half way between the beginning and the end of the universe (however, with an increasingly-expanding-universe model, there can be no middle, not because of the balloon thing, but because there's only one edge to one of the dimensions)
Backwards on the time axis?!! Jeez, what you trying to say, that the universe is already past middle age?! That's it, no more slashdot for me, I'm gonna start living while we have time left!
Or, imagine the 2 dimensional surface of the earth (can go north/south, east/west. Forget flying/digging). Where's the center point? Whichever direction you travel in, you can keep going forever, there's no "end of the earth", and you can't have a middle without edges.