The concept of this material reminded me of Bob Shaw's science fiction story "The Light of Other Days" in which "slow glass" is used to capture scenes and images which could be released later. Interesting!
Didn't he really mean analogous environment, as in 'our desert terrain and texture is analogous to the surface of the moon'. Or did he mean the moon isn't really digital after all?
Yes, that grated on my ears too. National Geographic should present a higher standard of accuracy than this article, full of stock footage (the chip being wired etc.). And the businessman saying the Osborne 1 was the first portable computer. Maybe for him, but the IBM 5100 pre-dated this by a number of years.
declare @minimumSilentCruiseDepth int
set @minimumSilentCruiseDepth = (select max(hulldraft) from USNavy.dbo.FleetStatistics)
URGENT PATCH TO ALL COMMANDERS. TO BE INSTALLED IMMEDIATELY:
set @minimumSilentCruiseDepth = (select max(hulldraft) from USNavy.dbo.FleetStatistics) + @FUDGEFACTOR
...in this video. If these are touted as tools for learning, why did we only have a fraction of the demonstration showing them being used by children?
Perhaps that illustrates the concepts are too complicated for children of the age whereby blocks are a learning toy. Parent is right, putting essentially what is a little TV (with dinky sound) on a child's block does not necessarily make it a better block, nor does it imbue the qualities of children's blocks into a bunch of tiny computers. Children learn to touch, hold, stack, align, sort, drop, throw and taste simple wooden blocks - isn't that educating-by-playing experience magical enough? We should be aiming to keep the electronics out of early childhood, so they concentrate on what's important - hand/eye/brain co-ordination. What we have here is a small piece of electronics and possibly toxic battery that I'd worry some kid would shove in their mouth the second a parent isn't looking.
This is a cultural thing. Here in Australia 'to chrome' and 'chroming' refers to the practice of inhaling common volatile substances such as aerosol paints and petrol sniffing, leading to a solvent-induced high. This sad, unfortunate and highly dangerous practice is often done by the young members of the indigenous population, because of its availability and cheap means of a 'hit'. It can cause permanent brain damage or death.
Here's an idea I had some time back, don't know it it would work but here goes. Why not fly a big lightweight coil - say 1 or 2km diameter - with a current running through it. Angle the coil at a few degrees from vertical, and make it moveable. It could be manouevered so piece of space junk moving at very high velocity goes through the middle. Minute eddy currents generated in the object would slow it down or deflect it downwards, eventually losing orbit. The ring would have ion thrusters to counteract the upwards force. After a few decades of operation it might clear up LEO.... perhaps?
'The Spaceship under the Apple Tree' by Louis Slobodkin. Every kid wishes a spaceship would land in their backyard, this is that story. There are sequels but unfortunately never found them.
'Kings of Space' by Capt WE Johns. Yes, the Biggles author. Ten easy-to-read books, great adventures. Basically, Biggles in Space! One of the protagonists is ex-RAF, he takes his hunting rifle on interplanetary trips. This comes in useful when one super-advanced (and weaponless) planet they visit is suddenly invaded, he wins the day by taking potshots at the invader's ships:)
Perry Rhodan books were great too.
You know, whilst parent makes perhaps bit of an extreme statement, I partly kind of agree. In the photo of the top half of SS2 being manhandled onto the lower half, the workers have their bare hands on the joining edges. Now as anyone who builds scale and/or flying models knows you don't handle surfaces to be glued so that fingerprints and oils don't reduce the bonding strength. In this case you would hope that they would clean them as best as they possibly can before joining.
"you're better off actually understanding your code instead of having the computer explain..."
That's just the point. Your code isn't the problem for you to understand. In the real world where people have to look at other people's code, you often need all the debugging help you can get.
Stroustrup is being very smug in his response here. He lives in an ivory tower, how much real-world code written by other people (to a deadline or management constraints) has he ever dealt with?
I know parent is modded funny, but amazingly these days sometimes the 'little guy' can make advances in lighting technology where multimillion dollar companies have not.
Here is a husband-and-wife team in Australia who have developed a more efficient electroluminescent panel in their home workshop. They dispayed their technology on the 'New Inventors' TV show a few weeks ago. Their advancement is in the layering of the phosphor for brighter output: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2225333.htm
As a C++ programmer, aircraft enthusiast and a resident of a country set to buy the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) I clicked on Stroustrup's link to his 'JSF++: Joint Strike Fighter Air Vehicle Coding Standards PDF' http://www.research.att.com/~bs/JSF-AV-rules.pdf but it was completely broken.
Given the JSF has gone through all sorts of delays and stuffups, it just seemed so poignantly ironic.
Yep you have described it exactly - Open Systems Interconnection, facetiously used as a way of padding out courses on Networking.
Although curiously in my case, many years ago I did actually meet the elusive and shy beast when I worked on an comprehensive email suite that used X.400 transport and X.500 Directory Services. We were up against competition like CC:Mail and I thought we had a good product. Sadly it died a whimpering death when the top marketroids decided not to push it out to the customers.
Never really thought that the acronym would be good enough to hijack for another unrelated mantra though..
The map in the Guardian article is quite interesting, the most amazing thing about it to me is there are three cables going to Anchorage Alaska with a fourth one planned. Why all that capacity? For a population of only 670 thousand (2006 estimate) I'm assuming they must have pretty darn good internet coverage and bandwidth there!
For want of a better term, this is what the same people running over the same set X number of times and digitally duplicated still don't do right. Take the armies of clones marching in SW:AOTC and the like. They look copied, motion-capture aside.
Now if these 40 extras had minute and random differences - such as strapping some heavy weight to one ankle, to alter their running gait _just slightly_, or put on platform soles to alter their height just slightly) then that might be enough to produce a realistic effect of a real crowd.
I wish I had mod points for your comment.
I ran his commentary through the W3C validator and found an error. Since he started at 9 years old (which in his opinion makes him obviously so good) I think he should have used his leisure time to fix it and make it perfect before he put it up rather than waste time with his family or hobbies. He's obviously just not "passionate" enough.
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I thought the exact same thing too. I thought switches on wall sockets were used everywhere, and never gave it a second thought.
The concept of this material reminded me of Bob Shaw's science fiction story "The Light of Other Days" in which "slow glass" is used to capture scenes and images which could be released later. Interesting!
...it takes away the things that make you unhappy.
Didn't he really mean analogous environment, as in 'our desert terrain and texture is analogous to the surface of the moon'. Or did he mean the moon isn't really digital after all?
Yes, that grated on my ears too. National Geographic should present a higher standard of accuracy than this article, full of stock footage (the chip being wired etc.). And the businessman saying the Osborne 1 was the first portable computer. Maybe for him, but the IBM 5100 pre-dated this by a number of years.
Yes, insects figured it out. Here it was done with Argentine ants: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/2008/04/03/2207179.htm
declare @minimumSilentCruiseDepth int
set @minimumSilentCruiseDepth = (select max(hulldraft) from USNavy.dbo.FleetStatistics)
URGENT PATCH TO ALL COMMANDERS. TO BE INSTALLED IMMEDIATELY:
set @minimumSilentCruiseDepth = (select max(hulldraft) from USNavy.dbo.FleetStatistics) + @FUDGEFACTOR
Perhaps that illustrates the concepts are too complicated for children of the age whereby blocks are a learning toy. Parent is right, putting essentially what is a little TV (with dinky sound) on a child's block does not necessarily make it a better block, nor does it imbue the qualities of children's blocks into a bunch of tiny computers. Children learn to touch, hold, stack, align, sort, drop, throw and taste simple wooden blocks - isn't that educating-by-playing experience magical enough? We should be aiming to keep the electronics out of early childhood, so they concentrate on what's important - hand/eye/brain co-ordination. What we have here is a small piece of electronics and possibly toxic battery that I'd worry some kid would shove in their mouth the second a parent isn't looking.
...I live in Australia, you insensitive clod!
;)
This is a cultural thing. Here in Australia 'to chrome' and 'chroming' refers to the practice of inhaling common volatile substances such as aerosol paints and petrol sniffing, leading to a solvent-induced high. This sad, unfortunate and highly dangerous practice is often done by the young members of the indigenous population, because of its availability and cheap means of a 'hit'. It can cause permanent brain damage or death.
Here's an idea I had some time back, don't know it it would work but here goes. Why not fly a big lightweight coil - say 1 or 2km diameter - with a current running through it. Angle the coil at a few degrees from vertical, and make it moveable. It could be manouevered so piece of space junk moving at very high velocity goes through the middle. Minute eddy currents generated in the object would slow it down or deflect it downwards, eventually losing orbit. The ring would have ion thrusters to counteract the upwards force. After a few decades of operation it might clear up LEO.... perhaps?
'The Spaceship under the Apple Tree' by Louis Slobodkin. Every kid wishes a spaceship would land in their backyard, this is that story. There are sequels but unfortunately never found them. :)
'Kings of Space' by Capt WE Johns. Yes, the Biggles author. Ten easy-to-read books, great adventures. Basically, Biggles in Space! One of the protagonists is ex-RAF, he takes his hunting rifle on interplanetary trips. This comes in useful when one super-advanced (and weaponless) planet they visit is suddenly invaded, he wins the day by taking potshots at the invader's ships
Perry Rhodan books were great too.
You know, whilst parent makes perhaps bit of an extreme statement, I partly kind of agree. In the photo of the top half of SS2 being manhandled onto the lower half, the workers have their bare hands on the joining edges. Now as anyone who builds scale and/or flying models knows you don't handle surfaces to be glued so that fingerprints and oils don't reduce the bonding strength. In this case you would hope that they would clean them as best as they possibly can before joining.
That's just the point. Your code isn't the problem for you to understand. In the real world where people have to look at other people's code, you often need all the debugging help you can get.
Stroustrup is being very smug in his response here. He lives in an ivory tower, how much real-world code written by other people (to a deadline or management constraints) has he ever dealt with?
My feeling is, very little..
I know parent is modded funny, but amazingly these days sometimes the 'little guy' can make advances in lighting technology where multimillion dollar companies have not.
Here is a husband-and-wife team in Australia who have developed a more efficient electroluminescent panel in their home workshop. They dispayed their technology on the 'New Inventors' TV show a few weeks ago. Their advancement is in the layering of the phosphor for brighter output:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/newinventors/txt/s2225333.htm
...wasn't he Frodo's faithful companion in the Indian version of LOTR?
As a C++ programmer, aircraft enthusiast and a resident of a country set to buy the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) I clicked on Stroustrup's link to his 'JSF++: Joint Strike Fighter Air Vehicle Coding Standards PDF' http://www.research.att.com/~bs/JSF-AV-rules.pdf but it was completely broken.
Given the JSF has gone through all sorts of delays and stuffups, it just seemed so poignantly ironic.
Asimov's Psychohistory was the first thing I thought if too http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)
Yep you have described it exactly - Open Systems Interconnection, facetiously used as a way of padding out courses on Networking.
Although curiously in my case, many years ago I did actually meet the elusive and shy beast when I worked on an comprehensive email suite that used X.400 transport and X.500 Directory Services. We were up against competition like CC:Mail and I thought we had a good product. Sadly it died a whimpering death when the top marketroids decided not to push it out to the customers.
Never really thought that the acronym would be good enough to hijack for another unrelated mantra though..
The map in the Guardian article is quite interesting, the most amazing thing about it to me is there are three cables going to Anchorage Alaska with a fourth one planned. Why all that capacity? For a population of only 670 thousand (2006 estimate) I'm assuming they must have pretty darn good internet coverage and bandwidth there!
Great idea for having your aliens land in the middle of nowhere, but I think you've been beaten to it.
For want of a better term, this is what the same people running over the same set X number of times and digitally duplicated still don't do right. Take the armies of clones marching in SW:AOTC and the like. They look copied, motion-capture aside.
Now if these 40 extras had minute and random differences - such as strapping some heavy weight to one ankle, to alter their running gait _just slightly_, or put on platform soles to alter their height just slightly) then that might be enough to produce a realistic effect of a real crowd.
If it were for sale there would be a 'Buy It Now' option. There is a difference. Or is it that no-one cares anymore?
I wish I had mod points for your comment.
I ran his commentary through the W3C validator and found an error. Since he started at 9 years old (which in his opinion makes him obviously so good) I think he should have used his leisure time to fix it and make it perfect before he put it up rather than waste time with his family or hobbies. He's obviously just not "passionate" enough.
You, beat me to it, that's what I, was going to say!