This is getting to be a good number of institutions. Anybody know of a list of the good and the bad universities, as a cheat sheet of where to send our business/employment applications?
If it's possible to drill to aquifers on Mars, or intake any of its atmosphere (like CO2), and have the advantage of some atmosphere to take out minute meteorites, we would certainly have advantages going to Mars verses our moon. I don't know whether it has magnetic poles that could mitigate solar flars, but I would imagine it has more than the moon's. Also, our Earth plants would probably grow more effectively on Mars' gravity than the moon's.
This is not to say that these factors necessarily negate the moon's advantages of being rather closer and being easier to land on/take off from. But a Mars base would be a lot cooler.
The NYT had a very interesting article about Grandcentral.com, which I believe would whitelist and much more, if you sign up for them, which at the time, I believe was free. Here's the article.
I would personally rather see lots of bat crime rather than a little gun crime. Unless you're extraordinarily big, or rather unlucky, you have to really mean it to kill someone with a bat. Or even a knife for that matter. With a gun you just have to be distracted.
And as far as swords go, how much cooler would it be if we had sword toting bad guys instead of gun toting ones? If our nightly cop dramas (or mob dramas) had lots of guys pulling katanas or rapiers at each other?
But on a more practical level, let's just get the automatics & semi-automatics out of circulation, and shit like at VA Tech won't happen.
To oversimplify: Most solid matter has some stiffness. You know, like springs' K. Even the most brittle objects bend a bit. (Glass, say, has an extremely large stiffness.) Now model your rod like a system of two balls connected by a spring. [ O--VVV--O ] If you push one end (then stop), the other end will move, and eventually return to the same equilibrium (given no other forces applied). the time it takes to propagate the force, as you can probably now see, is determined by the spring's stiffness (& damping, etc., but mostly stiffness for your rod in question). Relativity might do some funky stuff to its rate, if you pushed it really fast, but it can still be well modeled by a suficiently long chain of above diagram.
Ahh, the sadness of upper level Mechanical Engineering: rigid bodies are a fable.
TFA mentioned that many sites now have audio captchas--forcing the user to make out words amongst static and background noise. You really only want those for the blind community, however, since most of us would rather have a mute internet experience. I'm not the only one on here at work.
The best health care possible? See, right there's the problem. Say I have a rare disease whose symptoms can mostly be mollified by available drugs, most of the time. Sure, it's reasonable for society to let everyone of about this level get said drugs--healthier people being more productive, or just straight out being humane, whatever. But wouldn't you get better treatment if you had a doctor working full time on examining your illness--or your genome--looking for a cure? Or a team of doctors? Or an entire clinic, just working on your specific illness related to your specific genes?
There is no good line to draw between very good health care and best health care. Money can always make better care (given enough time for a bureaucracy of scale needed to deal with said income distribution. The NYT had an article earlier this week about how the Dem candidates all had a piece of their health care packages that investigated the relative effectiveness of all subsidized drugs and procedures. Given limited resources, lines have to be drawn.
Any idea how many PS2 consoles were available in stores in Europe in the first 10 weeks of distribution? I'm too lazy to check, but I bet it's less than the million they have available now.
Without mod points, I must resort to replying to a highly ranked troll. Sigh.
First, if you would RTFS, much less article, much less paper, you would know that one of the fascinating things about this procedure is that it uses skin cells, not embryonic cells as a base. Very few people who believe in any invasive medicine have a problem with this. This is a breakthrough in part because it fixes problems like embryonic harvesting or even The Island-esqe people harvesting because a given sick person could use it on him or herself.
Secondly, a work force that lives productively into their 80's would be a lovely thing for any society's economies. A government should certainly be concerned about its nation's economy, yes?
Thirdly, medical research=good for people. Democratic government=group that uses pooled funds for betterness of group. Are there spending issues? Duh. But still better than most systems. I want to put my money in a pool that can fund science. Hooray that there is an automatic way that this happens for me. I don't even need said science to produce economic results for me to be happy about it. But if it's going to, I won't turn that down.
And for the record, a considerable majority of Americans do want stem cell research, even from embryos. Google news reports around last Nov's Missouri senate elections, & there were several stories about how while most Americans support it, it's a non-issue in the polls.
The true absurdity of the analysts' positions is the very idea of percentage of market share. News Flash: some gamers will have more than one console. In the Super Nintendo, PS1, and even PS2 era, it made a certain amount of sense to only have one console. Gamers were younger, less affluent, and while there were certainly differences between the options available, said difference wasn't that much.
In this age, however, things are different. Want to play with your friends in one spot? You want a Wii. Want to play with friends across the country? Get an XBox360. Want, um, well, uh, a huge selection of very good titles? Get a PS2. Want to [hmm, I'm trying here!] almost successfully buy your estranged step children's love? Get them a PS3.
My point being that there is certainly room for more than one console--yes, maybe even three as sad as that would be for those of us who aren't quite as affluent. This is a different ballgame from the 90's. Stop the bickering & just enjoy the games.
The smart move (and what I imagine they're doing, considering the PSP's largess) would be to add a bluetooth interface module to it, and let people use their own bluetooth headsets.
Personally, I like Gran Turismo better than Burnout or Need for Speed. But I understand that most gamers don't, and I understand why. They're not playing these games to drive, they're playing them to have fun. And as such an emphasis on damage and jumping is far more important than the effects of a limited slip differential. (I find that nitpickery fascinating, and in that way fun, but it is nitpickery).
Playing a guitar is hard work. It kills your fingers (yes much more than Guitar Hero makes them cramp up). It takes minimally months of practice to get anything that sounds decent, much less something cool. Byinlarge gamers want shortcuts--this is why they're playing games instead of starting a band.
Would a more realistic guitar be totally sweet? Yes. Would a market for such games be a small fraction of that for Guitar Hero? Yes. It will come, sooner or later, but not be something you can enjoy like GH, because your friends won't be able to pick it up with you, unless you have extremely similar tastes with most of them.
In summary, GH is a game. Games are for fun. Fun is good.
Woah--technology actually using its inherent capabilities? This is revolutionary! What next, the Zune playing songs from your computer's hard drive? cell phones transferring songs from one to another? A next generation operating system running faster than a previous generation? A moderation system that keeps obvious, redundant posts like this one out of the way?
First, there's always a lot of luck in a game with this many variables. Do you explore the right direction first? Do you concentrate on units that slaughter or get slaughtered by what your opponents are building, etc. Likely this will play a large factor in individual games, and randomize what on a statisical scale is a bigger difference.
Secondly, it's not hard for Battle.net to figure out what level of player you are and pare you against other players on a very similar level--perhaps even more so than WC3 if SC2 gains the amount of popularity that I think is likely.
Third, Map editors are easy and popular. They'll be there.
While I completely agree with your sentiment, it does grate on me a bit that 'close to an election year' is 6 months since the last election, and just 4 since the new congress came in. It feels like when they have Christmas displays up in September, except probably closer in analogy if they had them in April.
I think you forget how many PS2's Sony is still selling. 200k a month, easy. PS2 games are still selling like mad too (for evidence: they still hold the plurality of space on game shelves). And they're making a lot of profit on the PS2's since R&D has long been paid off. Their games division hasn't had a bad quarter yet. Now this may yet happen, but they can afford to wait--even without help from the larger company--for a couple more holiday seasons befoer the PS3 itself turns a profit. They're betting that with the decade long tenure of the PS2 that these early years don't matter.
My silly pointless prediction is that in 3 years we'll still have 3 strong game systems, with perhaps some systems (Wii) winning more than others, but all three being quite profitable. Between there just being more gamers (think China and India's developing middle class) and Wii expanding the market to previously non-gamers (Wiis in retirement homes), I think there's enough market for all three. And I think we, as gamers, are better for it.
First, if something gets modded funny by more people than mod it overrated, than it is funny./.'s mod system is as good as anything else at defining humor, and better than a lot of TV network panels, if you ask me. They're certainly not perfect, but funny is not something individuals can pick so well. Can something be funny and insulting? Sure, but if you're going to get offended by something in that vein, I'm not sure/. (or many public message boards) are for you.
Second, the Indian customer service phenomenon, which is the majority of cultural humor on this topic, is a big deal in India; has made a huge impact on life there--and they have their own sitcom about it!* Do the jokes get cliched and watered down after a while? Certainly. And some are much better than others. But I for one am glad that they are there.
You're saying this as a joke, I think. But I wonder if that line of reasoning. Here in 2007, very very few Windows computers run anything under XP. Perhaps Microsoft figures, hey, if we have more XP customers now, that's still extra money in our pocket, and they'll probably upgrade to Vista eventually anyhow.
It's certainly risky thinking, because they may lose developer interest, but no one accuses MS of not being arrogant enough.
As a side note, I think this was Sony's idea as well with the PS3/PS2. They're still making money on the PS2, and yet many of the people buying them now may well upgrade later. Sony's in a much weaker position, of course, because they don't have the monopoly power to leverage over vendors. I'm rather certain though that after PS2 sales drop off significantly they'll majorly drop PS3 prices--they just fill 2 market segments now.
I think the idea is that on a news for nerds site, one might want a preview of things that may be available in the future. I, for one, am fascinated by this technology and its ramifications for the future of manufacturing. TFA mentions several current applications, posters have mentioned more--so it's not just vaporware. As material processing improves (and we will see more material scientists looking into printable materials-my guess is some exponential growth in this field), more economical applications will open up.
But even if it were complete vaporware, if work is progressing on it--and/.ers can point out how much longer it's likely to be vapor, then it is of vast service to me, as a reader, to know about it before it's in production.
If this is just something you're not interested in, then don't bother reading the article or comments.
If I had to leave important FAA information on a server, I'd feel safer with Google than from either the lowest bidding or highest bribing IT company for the FAA.
The part that disturbs me here is the implicit understanding that our non math/science teachers are 'good enough' as they are, and we needn't get more proficient teachers in all subjects via said financial incentives. Aren't there articles written every month about things like how a majority of high school seniors have such poor reading skills that they can't read a train schedule effectively?
This is not, of course, to say that the majority of teachers aren't apt. They probably are. But give them 16-18 students instead of 30-34 students in a room, and some results might show up. And I don't just mean test results. I mean having a far more intelligent, competitive, nicer-to-live-with country.
Most teachers would also find having substantially smaller classes a huge quality of life improvement, which will also lead to better teachers entering and staying in the field. Would this be expensive? Yes. Will it be an investment that will pay for itself in a stronger economy, less crime & prisons, --just counting the economics of it? I would not be surprised. If our lawmakers can find a trillion dollars for a questionably needed war, I think we can find a fraction of that for this.
Well I got more worked up there than I planned on.
Slashdot Mirror
This is getting to be a good number of institutions. Anybody know of a list of the good and the bad universities, as a cheat sheet of where to send our business/employment applications?
This is not to say that these factors necessarily negate the moon's advantages of being rather closer and being easier to land on/take off from. But a Mars base would be a lot cooler.
*shiver*
The future of space travel just lost so many geek points.
The NYT had a very interesting article about Grandcentral.com, which I believe would whitelist and much more, if you sign up for them, which at the time, I believe was free. Here's the article.
And as far as swords go, how much cooler would it be if we had sword toting bad guys instead of gun toting ones? If our nightly cop dramas (or mob dramas) had lots of guys pulling katanas or rapiers at each other?
But on a more practical level, let's just get the automatics & semi-automatics out of circulation, and shit like at VA Tech won't happen.
Yeah, Gravity moves at the speed of light. That's all part of general relativity.
Ahh, the sadness of upper level Mechanical Engineering: rigid bodies are a fable.
TFA mentioned that many sites now have audio captchas--forcing the user to make out words amongst static and background noise. You really only want those for the blind community, however, since most of us would rather have a mute internet experience. I'm not the only one on here at work.
There is no good line to draw between very good health care and best health care. Money can always make better care (given enough time for a bureaucracy of scale needed to deal with said income distribution. The NYT had an article earlier this week about how the Dem candidates all had a piece of their health care packages that investigated the relative effectiveness of all subsidized drugs and procedures. Given limited resources, lines have to be drawn.
Any idea how many PS2 consoles were available in stores in Europe in the first 10 weeks of distribution? I'm too lazy to check, but I bet it's less than the million they have available now.
First, if you would RTFS, much less article, much less paper, you would know that one of the fascinating things about this procedure is that it uses skin cells, not embryonic cells as a base. Very few people who believe in any invasive medicine have a problem with this. This is a breakthrough in part because it fixes problems like embryonic harvesting or even The Island-esqe people harvesting because a given sick person could use it on him or herself.
Secondly, a work force that lives productively into their 80's would be a lovely thing for any society's economies. A government should certainly be concerned about its nation's economy, yes?
Thirdly, medical research=good for people. Democratic government=group that uses pooled funds for betterness of group. Are there spending issues? Duh. But still better than most systems. I want to put my money in a pool that can fund science. Hooray that there is an automatic way that this happens for me. I don't even need said science to produce economic results for me to be happy about it. But if it's going to, I won't turn that down.
And for the record, a considerable majority of Americans do want stem cell research, even from embryos. Google news reports around last Nov's Missouri senate elections, & there were several stories about how while most Americans support it, it's a non-issue in the polls.
Morality of it aside, is there any question that copyright infringement is illegal (in US, UK, etc)? The GP didn't say allow stealing.
In this age, however, things are different. Want to play with your friends in one spot? You want a Wii. Want to play with friends across the country? Get an XBox360. Want, um, well, uh, a huge selection of very good titles? Get a PS2. Want to [hmm, I'm trying here!] almost successfully buy your estranged step children's love? Get them a PS3.
My point being that there is certainly room for more than one console--yes, maybe even three as sad as that would be for those of us who aren't quite as affluent. This is a different ballgame from the 90's. Stop the bickering & just enjoy the games.
The smart move (and what I imagine they're doing, considering the PSP's largess) would be to add a bluetooth interface module to it, and let people use their own bluetooth headsets.
Playing a guitar is hard work. It kills your fingers (yes much more than Guitar Hero makes them cramp up). It takes minimally months of practice to get anything that sounds decent, much less something cool. Byinlarge gamers want shortcuts--this is why they're playing games instead of starting a band.
Would a more realistic guitar be totally sweet? Yes. Would a market for such games be a small fraction of that for Guitar Hero? Yes. It will come, sooner or later, but not be something you can enjoy like GH, because your friends won't be able to pick it up with you, unless you have extremely similar tastes with most of them.
In summary, GH is a game. Games are for fun. Fun is good.
Naw, some things are too crazy.
First, there's always a lot of luck in a game with this many variables. Do you explore the right direction first? Do you concentrate on units that slaughter or get slaughtered by what your opponents are building, etc. Likely this will play a large factor in individual games, and randomize what on a statisical scale is a bigger difference. Secondly, it's not hard for Battle.net to figure out what level of player you are and pare you against other players on a very similar level--perhaps even more so than WC3 if SC2 gains the amount of popularity that I think is likely. Third, Map editors are easy and popular. They'll be there.
While I completely agree with your sentiment, it does grate on me a bit that 'close to an election year' is 6 months since the last election, and just 4 since the new congress came in. It feels like when they have Christmas displays up in September, except probably closer in analogy if they had them in April.
My silly pointless prediction is that in 3 years we'll still have 3 strong game systems, with perhaps some systems (Wii) winning more than others, but all three being quite profitable. Between there just being more gamers (think China and India's developing middle class) and Wii expanding the market to previously non-gamers (Wiis in retirement homes), I think there's enough market for all three. And I think we, as gamers, are better for it.
Second, the Indian customer service phenomenon, which is the majority of cultural humor on this topic, is a big deal in India; has made a huge impact on life there--and they have their own sitcom about it!* Do the jokes get cliched and watered down after a while? Certainly. And some are much better than others. But I for one am glad that they are there.
It's certainly risky thinking, because they may lose developer interest, but no one accuses MS of not being arrogant enough.
As a side note, I think this was Sony's idea as well with the PS3/PS2. They're still making money on the PS2, and yet many of the people buying them now may well upgrade later. Sony's in a much weaker position, of course, because they don't have the monopoly power to leverage over vendors. I'm rather certain though that after PS2 sales drop off significantly they'll majorly drop PS3 prices--they just fill 2 market segments now.
But even if it were complete vaporware, if work is progressing on it--and /.ers can point out how much longer it's likely to be vapor, then it is of vast service to me, as a reader, to know about it before it's in production.
If this is just something you're not interested in, then don't bother reading the article or comments.
If I had to leave important FAA information on a server, I'd feel safer with Google than from either the lowest bidding or highest bribing IT company for the FAA.
The amount of people whom it will kill.
The capacity we have to do something about it.
This is not, of course, to say that the majority of teachers aren't apt. They probably are. But give them 16-18 students instead of 30-34 students in a room, and some results might show up. And I don't just mean test results. I mean having a far more intelligent, competitive, nicer-to-live-with country.
Most teachers would also find having substantially smaller classes a huge quality of life improvement, which will also lead to better teachers entering and staying in the field. Would this be expensive? Yes. Will it be an investment that will pay for itself in a stronger economy, less crime & prisons, --just counting the economics of it? I would not be surprised. If our lawmakers can find a trillion dollars for a questionably needed war, I think we can find a fraction of that for this.
Well I got more worked up there than I planned on.