Under your misunderstood point of view, you should be very surprised that this worked at all. 50 Random polygons would of course eventually approximate any picture, but the number of tries would be enormous. This is the usual creationist fallacy against evolution theory.
Your algorithm's "description" is missing the selection: after a number **small** mutations, the best one is selected, and only then repeat. The resulting effectiveness is still somewhat surprinsing, but entirely understandable in mathematical terms.
An analogous experiment is described in Richard Dawkins' book "The blind Watchmaker" with the phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel". Still, this "demonstration" of evolution theory must be criticized because it is teleological: there is a final, "perfect" model to be reached. Nonetheless, it explains why selection is a key aspect of evolution.
You cannot ensure these with voting machines without the use of paper
Can you absolutely provide this WITH paper? If not, we must choose the better solution instead of the perfect solution.
Now it seems to me that if binaries are signed and votes are recorded in encrypted files, all the points you mention are much better provided by the voting machine.
Germans are great, but sometimes brazilians can do smart things too.
Anti-protons and positrons are anti-matter and are produced very easily in particle accelerators. Why not test gravity on them before testing it on an anti-hidrogen, which is simply a bound state of an anti-electron and an anti-proton? This isn't experimental physics, this is demagogy.
(the Lorentz force is actually the sum of the electric and magnetic forces) The post referred to the magnetic force as Lorentz force, so I was just following an implicit convention.
Merely rotating a satellite back into alignment wouldn't involve crossing gravitational potential lines, but would require propellant to create a torque unless one uses gyroscopes or the planet's magnetic
field. Note that the Lorentz force allow to cross gravitational potential surfaces, at the cost of making the orbit non-circular. But I agree that the magnetic part of the Lorentz force can be used to align the satellite through a convenient setup of electric charges around it, although it is difficult to explain how without diagrams.
The advantage of the idea is that it requires no propellant which is a big deal since most satellites' lifespans are limited by the amount of fuel they can carry. Lorentz force doesn't help here because, being perpendicular to the velocity, produces no work. Therefore, to prevent orbit decay, the satellite must use true propulsion.
Apart from that, how exactly is this hypothetical neutrino comm generating its signal? Neutrinos are the byproduct of nuclear reactions, and you'd need to generate an awful lot for the signal to be heard over interstellar distances. Are they rapidly switching a fusion source on and off? Perhaps using matter and anti-matter instead? Either way, it'd be somewhat akin to blasting off hydrogen bombs in Morse code Even worse that that, neutrinos cannot be collimated like electromagnetic radiation by parabolic anthennas, since they almost don't interact with matter (I am talking about real science, not Star Trek). Therefore, those hydrogen bombs would spread neutrinos in all directions, so the signal would loose energy in proportion to the inverse square of distance.
Besides, how do you tune neutrino radiation so you can cut off the huge noise of neutrino star emissions? All of this is crackpottery, let's go back to the space elevator discussion.
The discovery of faster than light "something" would be more important to science than the discovery of extra terrestrial intelligent life.
We know that extra terrestrial life must exist somewhere. Current knowledge of nature (i.e. Einstein's theory of relativity) imply that faster than light communications is impossible.
> reads like a whos who of third world countries and banana republics, > what good company USA keeps
Man, you must read the list again. This has nothing to do with third world or "banana republics". These are conflict zones that had wars all over the 20th century, almost all under the influence or direct participation of USA. It is not USA keeping company of bad guys with sombreros and moustaches, it is the really the other way round.
Usually this happens because the questions where useless.
>I am talking about good or bad for HUMANS. Since we're talking > about a long time from now, I don't care where the humans are. > If one area is bad, and one is good, people will move to the good area. > So, on the whole, is it good or bad for humans?
If the bad area will be USA and the good area will be Africa, people will leave USA and occupy Africa with supporting military superiority. If the good area will be USA and the bad area will be Africa, then Africans will have suffer even not being responsible for the carbon emissions.
So, on the whole, it will be bad for the weaker side.
> If we don't have an answer within some margin of error for that simple question
Simple??
> why are we trying to spend billions of dollars to prevent the climate from warming?
Because it is not simple?
> As far as the natural cycles, which is it? Warmer or cooler?
Natural climate change is slow. Human climate change is fast. Species adapt to slow changes. Fast changing is dangerous.
> And we don't have the option to not err. We will err, but it's a good idea > to know the risks.
We can err less implementing policies. That's what Kyoto is for.
> For instance, if you know how much ammunition you need within a margin of +/- 1 bullet > the risk of carrying one extra bullet is much less than the risk of carrying one bullet too few.
> As you can see, I really don't care whether it is human caused or not. The only > thing that matters is that we have a comfortable climate to live in for a while. > And the last thing I want is for us to be thinking in 300-400 years "Wow. This > Ice Age is cold. Too bad we can't think of a way to warm up.".
You see, "comfortable climate" is not the only matter. There are othe species in this planet that deserve to live and can be affected and even get extinct by a sudden warming or cooling (by sudden I mean hundreds of years). If "comfort" is the only thing you can think about, think that we may need some of those species for surviving.
> To me it seems more likely that humans would be hurt by global cooling than > global warming. I understand that global warming can cause some areas to be > colder (like Europe), but on the whole it seems like it would promote more life.
Are you thinking also on the population of the rest of the world, like Africa? Did you also consider othe effects that can come along warming or cooling, like desertification?
It is funny how those who deny global warming (which can be done in various ways, as saying that if it would occour, it could not be bad) dismiss the global warming hipothesis by ridiculing sensationalist defenders, and after that can come up with arguments as fallatious as those they where criticizing.
> Even between threads you've got overhead, either true context-switch overhead (on systems with a 1:1 thread-to-KSE mapping) or a similar amount of thread-scheduler overhead (on systems with an N:1 thread-to-KSE mapping).
Then in those systems threads are less useful, though as efficient as processes in terms of overheads. Threads in this case are more efficient than pipes between processes as there is less copy of data. Also, threads can be used for asyncronous IO implementation in a much simpler and portable way than with pipe-fork.
> Note that multiple processes will also use all available CPUs in a multi-processor system,
Only in smp capable systems. On the other ones (e.g linux 1.x), processes for paralel computation are less useful. You see, kernels can support smp or not, systems can have true lightweight smp threads or not.
> and on some systems threads can only> execute on the single CPU their KSE is currently running on,
Again, in those systems threads are less useful but not useless.
> so depending on your threads implementation a multi-threaded app may or may not use all CPUs.
This seems academic, as we have good operating systems that address all those questions properly, at least one of them free and multi-plataform.
> about the only thing Unix threads get you that processes > don't is fully-shared address space, and I'd argue that's > often more a problem than an advantage
What about context switch overhead? I think that fully-shared address space (in threads) is very useful because with it I can easily write a program for a multiprocessed system engaging all processors, a case where fully-shared address space is not a problem but just the right thing. This is just me, though.
Seriously, that's the importance of governments enforcing open standards. Microsoft will then need to catch up with the excuse of being "asked" or by the real reason that it will loose market.
By the way, Mestral was the name of the other vulcan that stayed on Earth to study mankind as the woman and the the other vulcan with Moe's hair were rescued.
> That's only coincidence though. If netbsd had > been released earlier, most of us would be > using gnu/netbsd, and probably in the same > kind of situation.
Life is funny, isn't it? Full of coincidences...
> Besides, the early releases of Linux were > pretty horrible. It wasn't linux itself that > made the difference.
You are welcome.
> It was the hundreds of contributors willing to > work on a free kernel as soon as one became > openly available who transformed linux into > something usable.
Yeah... Hundreds of contributors, not just one person. Everybody knows that.
> And they were probably only there because they > had all the other tools they needed for a free > system - thanks solely to the GNU.
Agreed, if you give credit also for IBM for the PC open standards, Kernighan & Richie for C, UNIX folks for the API... But Linux is what made the difference, not GNU. Too bad for Netbsd it didn't came first.
> Gnome already had GNU in it (that's what the > first letter stands for), that's a stupid > cheap shot.
Oh, I must be careful while talking to GNU folks... they are so touchy when it comes to names... I am deeply sorry, sir.
> I'd say kde was a leap of the same magnitude > as linux, for a "typical user" fvwm95 is > simply unusable compared to 1.0.
It is the software that defines the typical user, not the contrary. People used DOS for ages and everybody was happy until Windows came around. I was very happy with fvwm(1).
> I'm not saying we should call our system KDE, > I'm saying your rule is silly.
That is not what it seems... Let's see, "My rule" is that people choose the name based on what they recognize as "the most important part", that's why they name the system "Linux", after the kernel. You came around at first with RMS' argument saying that we must recognize other people's work, so please put GNU/ before everything. But then all your argumentation was that GNU is the most important part of the system. Can I conclude that that's why we should put GNU/ before everything? But that is "my rule", and whilst you call it silly you are using it to justify your whole point.
> Maybe you should have read my post.
Calling Linux "Linux" is not giving all credits to Linus. This is a "stupid cheap" fallacy.
> It isn't. Compare it with gnu/netbsd, the > kernel doesn't make that much difference.
Of course it is, but in this case what makes the difference is the Netbsd kernel, not Linux? You must see in perspective, back when Linux was created. There was no "gnu/netbsd" then. There is a reason to call Linux as "Linux", and it is that it made the difference when it appeared. Before Linux, GNU was useless to most people.
> I'd say KDE and Gnome are what have made the > system usable, and one of those is a GNU > project.
Then, if you agree with my rule, then you must call "KDE" a KDE system and "GNU/Gnome" a gnome system. OK. (Of course, people will never say "GNU/Gnome", no matter how much you insist). Nevertheless, KDE and Gnome where not qualitative advances. Linux was very useable before them.
> Yeah, but the name "Linux" by itself refers > only to Linus, wheras the name GNU refers to > the GNU organisation with its thousands of > members.
If Linux refers only to Linus, then GNU refers only to herbivores in Africa and Gnome refers only to little men that live inside the Earth. This can be true only for idiots, but with them I am not concerned.
The problem here is that RMS thinks in terms of recognition of the author's importance, but people think in terms of software importance. And software importance does not mean software size.
And the most important software in a Linux system for ordinary people is the kernel and the device drivers. This is what makes Linux useable in contrast to, say, Minix. It was the Linux kernel that made it possible for free software to compete with Windows.
Another absurd point that RMS usualy brings on is that calling the system Linux is to give credit to just one person. Check the file CREDITS on the root directory of any linux kernel.
Your question sounds like troll because such a discovery is in itself remarkable. This is science.
Anyway, if you are interested in analogies, a high fraction of the primitive Earth atmosphere was methane. Therefore, Titan seem to be a model for what was our past, the original conditions where life begun.
No, he is right. Although his time (the so called proper time) pass normally for him, space will face a contraction, so that in the limit of the speed of light, the space would have been contracted to zero. Therefore, he would spend no time to travel all the path.
We can describe better the simulation not as a bike in the actual speed of light wich is approximately 300,000,000 m/s. What is really being simulated is a universe where the speed of light is small, and therefore it is easy to see relativistic effects (in this case, relativistic light aberration) at small, bicicle-like speeds.
Slashdot Mirror
Under your misunderstood point of view, you should be very surprised that this worked at all. 50 Random polygons would of course eventually approximate any picture, but the number of tries would be enormous. This is the usual creationist fallacy against evolution theory.
Your algorithm's "description" is missing the selection: after a number **small** mutations, the best one is selected, and only then repeat. The resulting effectiveness is still somewhat surprinsing, but entirely understandable in mathematical terms.
An analogous experiment is described in Richard Dawkins' book "The blind Watchmaker" with the phrase "Methinks it is like a weasel". Still, this "demonstration" of evolution theory must be criticized because it is teleological: there is a final, "perfect" model to be reached. Nonetheless, it explains why selection is a key aspect of evolution.
You cannot ensure these with voting machines without the use of paper
Can you absolutely provide this WITH paper? If not, we must choose the better solution instead of the perfect solution. Now it seems to me that if binaries are signed and votes are recorded in encrypted files, all the points you mention are much better provided by the voting machine. Germans are great, but sometimes brazilians can do smart things too.
Anti-protons and positrons are anti-matter and are produced very easily in particle accelerators. Why not test gravity on them before testing it on an anti-hidrogen, which is simply a bound state of an anti-electron and an anti-proton? This isn't experimental physics, this is demagogy.
Besides, how do you tune neutrino radiation so you can cut off the huge noise of neutrino star emissions? All of this is crackpottery, let's go back to the space elevator discussion.
The discovery of faster than light "something" would be more important to science than the discovery of extra terrestrial intelligent life.
We know that extra terrestrial life must exist somewhere. Current knowledge of nature (i.e. Einstein's theory of relativity) imply that faster than light communications is impossible.
Will it run linux?
> reads like a whos who of third world countries and banana republics,
> what good company USA keeps
Man, you must read the list again. This has nothing to do with third world or "banana republics". These are conflict zones that had wars all over the 20th century, almost all under the influence or direct participation of USA. It is not USA keeping company of bad guys with sombreros and moustaches, it is the really the other way round.
> That is a completely useless response.
Usually this happens because the questions where useless.
>I am talking about good or bad for HUMANS. Since we're talking
> about a long time from now, I don't care where the humans are.
> If one area is bad, and one is good, people will move to the good area.
> So, on the whole, is it good or bad for humans?
If the bad area will be USA and the good area will be Africa, people will leave USA and occupy Africa with supporting military superiority. If the good area will be USA and the bad area will be Africa, then Africans will have suffer even not being responsible for the carbon emissions.
So, on the whole, it will be bad for the weaker side.
> If we don't have an answer within some margin of error for that simple question
Simple??
> why are we trying to spend billions of dollars to prevent the climate from warming?
Because it is not simple?
> As far as the natural cycles, which is it? Warmer or cooler?
Natural climate change is slow. Human climate change is fast. Species adapt to slow changes. Fast changing is dangerous.
> And we don't have the option to not err. We will err, but it's a good idea
> to know the risks.
We can err less implementing policies. That's what Kyoto is for.
> For instance, if you know how much ammunition you need within a margin of +/- 1 bullet
> the risk of carrying one extra bullet is much less than the risk of carrying one bullet too few.
Strange comparison...
> As you can see, I really don't care whether it is human caused or not. The only
> thing that matters is that we have a comfortable climate to live in for a while.
> And the last thing I want is for us to be thinking in 300-400 years "Wow. This
> Ice Age is cold. Too bad we can't think of a way to warm up.".
You see, "comfortable climate" is not the only matter. There are othe species in this planet that deserve to live and can be affected and even get extinct by a sudden warming or cooling (by sudden I mean hundreds of years). If "comfort" is the only thing you can think about, think that we may need some of those species for surviving.
> To me it seems more likely that humans would be hurt by global cooling than
> global warming. I understand that global warming can cause some areas to be
> colder (like Europe), but on the whole it seems like it would promote more life.
Are you thinking also on the population of the rest of the world, like Africa? Did you also consider othe effects that can come along warming or cooling, like desertification?
It is funny how those who deny global warming (which can be done in various ways, as saying that if it would occour, it could not be bad) dismiss the global warming hipothesis by ridiculing sensationalist defenders, and after that can come up with arguments as fallatious as those they where criticizing.
an "expert" says "Probably the worst thing that could happen with small cyclotrons is that the operator might electrocute themselves"
X-ray tubes are much simpler to build, produce lower energy radiation and yet dentists have to protect themselves from daily use.
Cancer is the worst thing.
> Even between threads you've got overhead, either true context-switch overhead (on systems with a 1:1 thread-to-KSE mapping) or a similar amount of thread-scheduler overhead (on systems with an N:1 thread-to-KSE mapping).
Then in those systems threads are less useful, though as efficient as processes in terms of overheads. Threads in this case are more efficient than pipes between processes as there is less copy of data. Also, threads can be used for asyncronous IO implementation in a much simpler and portable way than with pipe-fork.
> Note that multiple processes will also use all available CPUs in a multi-processor system,
Only in smp capable systems. On the other ones (e.g linux 1.x), processes for paralel computation are less useful. You see, kernels can support smp or not, systems can have true lightweight smp threads or not.
> and on some systems threads can only> execute on the single CPU their KSE is currently running on,
Again, in those systems threads are less useful but not useless.
> so depending on your threads implementation a multi-threaded app may or may not use all CPUs.
This seems academic, as we have good operating systems that address all those questions properly, at least one of them free and multi-plataform.
> about the only thing Unix threads get you that processes
> don't is fully-shared address space, and I'd argue that's
> often more a problem than an advantage
What about context switch overhead? I think that fully-shared address space (in threads) is very useful because with it I can easily write a program for a multiprocessed system engaging all processors, a case where fully-shared address space is not a problem but just the right thing. This is just me, though.
Seriously, that's the importance of governments enforcing open standards. Microsoft will then need to catch up with the excuse of being "asked" or by the real reason that it will loose market.
By the way, Mestral was the name of the other vulcan that stayed on Earth to study mankind as the woman and the the other vulcan with Moe's hair were rescued.
> That's only coincidence though. If netbsd had
> been released earlier, most of us would be
> using gnu/netbsd, and probably in the same
> kind of situation.
Life is funny, isn't it? Full of coincidences...
> Besides, the early releases of Linux were
> pretty horrible. It wasn't linux itself that
> made the difference.
You are welcome.
> It was the hundreds of contributors willing to
> work on a free kernel as soon as one became
> openly available who transformed linux into
> something usable.
Yeah... Hundreds of contributors, not just one person. Everybody knows that.
> And they were probably only there because they
> had all the other tools they needed for a free
> system - thanks solely to the GNU.
Agreed, if you give credit also for IBM for the PC open standards, Kernighan & Richie for C, UNIX folks for the API... But Linux is what made the difference, not GNU. Too bad for Netbsd it didn't came first.
> Gnome already had GNU in it (that's what the
> first letter stands for), that's a stupid
> cheap shot.
Oh, I must be careful while talking to GNU folks... they are so touchy when it comes to names... I am deeply sorry, sir.
> I'd say kde was a leap of the same magnitude
> as linux, for a "typical user" fvwm95 is
> simply unusable compared to 1.0.
It is the software that defines the typical user, not the contrary. People used DOS for ages and everybody was happy until Windows came around. I was very happy with fvwm(1).
> I'm not saying we should call our system KDE,
> I'm saying your rule is silly.
That is not what it seems... Let's see, "My rule" is that people choose the name based on what they recognize as "the most important part", that's why they name the system "Linux", after the kernel. You came around at first with RMS' argument saying that we must recognize other people's work, so please put GNU/ before everything. But then all your argumentation was that GNU is the most important part of the system. Can I conclude that that's why we should put GNU/ before everything? But that is "my rule", and whilst you call it silly you are using it to justify your whole point.
> Maybe you should have read my post.
Calling Linux "Linux" is not giving all credits to Linus. This is a "stupid cheap" fallacy.
> It isn't. Compare it with gnu/netbsd, the
> kernel doesn't make that much difference.
Of course it is, but in this case what makes the difference is the Netbsd kernel, not Linux? You must see in perspective, back when Linux was created. There was no "gnu/netbsd" then. There is a reason to call Linux as "Linux", and it is that it made the difference when it appeared. Before Linux, GNU was useless to most people.
> I'd say KDE and Gnome are what have made the
> system usable, and one of those is a GNU
> project.
Then, if you agree with my rule, then you must call "KDE" a KDE system and "GNU/Gnome" a gnome system. OK. (Of course, people will never say "GNU/Gnome", no matter how much you insist). Nevertheless, KDE and Gnome where not qualitative advances. Linux was very useable before them.
> Yeah, but the name "Linux" by itself refers
> only to Linus, wheras the name GNU refers to
> the GNU organisation with its thousands of
> members.
If Linux refers only to Linus, then GNU refers only to herbivores in Africa and Gnome refers only to little men that live inside the Earth. This can be true only for idiots, but with them I am not concerned.
The problem here is that RMS thinks in terms of recognition of the author's importance, but people think in terms of software importance. And software importance does not mean software size.
And the most important software in a Linux system for ordinary people is the kernel and the device drivers. This is what makes Linux useable in contrast to, say, Minix. It was the Linux kernel that made it possible for free software to compete with Windows.
Another absurd point that RMS usualy brings on is that calling the system Linux is to give credit to just one person. Check the file CREDITS on the root directory of any linux kernel.
Your question sounds like troll because such a discovery is in itself remarkable. This is science. Anyway, if you are interested in analogies, a high fraction of the primitive Earth atmosphere was methane. Therefore, Titan seem to be a model for what was our past, the original conditions where life begun.
No, he is right. Although his time (the so called proper time) pass normally for him, space will face a contraction, so that in the limit of the speed of light, the space would have been contracted to zero. Therefore, he would spend no time to travel all the path.
We can describe better the simulation not as a bike in the actual speed of light wich is approximately 300,000,000 m/s. What is really being simulated is a universe where the speed of light is small, and therefore it is easy to see relativistic effects (in this case, relativistic light aberration) at small, bicicle-like speeds.