I met RMS in real life, back in 1998 or so. He wasn't especially creepy, but the posse of idolizers who followed him around (and to a dinner that we all ended up having at some Chinese place in Manhattan) sure were.
Why limit your imagination to wormholes and other pseudoscience fantasy constructs?
I think that if we're going to design any such kind of "travel", it will be accomplished by magic spells. Scientists right now ought to be working on coming up with the right incantations, don't you agree?
Also, magic genies that come out of bottles can probably move you between two points in space faster than light would travel without actually violating any laws of physics.
I am pretty sure that Santa Claus also moves faster than light, in order to travel to all houses in the world in the span of 24 hours, so perhaps scientists can figure out a way to harness Santa Claus technology and solve this problem.
There may be a few other ways to travel faster than light that both you and I have missed. It's really hard keeping track of absurdities, don't you agree?
But you're not competing with other players are you? So what difference does it make to you if your character levels more slowly than someone else's? How does it affect your enjoyment of the game if someone else pays for levels when you level "naturally"?
I don't play Everquest or or WOW or any other MMORPG because I find their gameplay extremely boring, so I could be wrong, but I don't think that PVP plays a very big role in either of those games, so someone else's levelling ability really has no effect on your path through the game, and subsequent enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the game, does it?
You think dressings are bad in the USA? Come to New Zealand. As an American expat in NZ I am constantly disgusted by the Kiwi need to put tons of sugar in every condiment. Their "tomato sauce" is basically ketchup with about 2x the sugar. They love "sweet chili sauce" which is basically sugar syrup with a tiny bit of hot pepper in it. All salad dressings are as sweet as candy. I had a Subway sandwich with "italian vinaigrette" here and it tasted like it was dressed with maple syrup. I tried to get a sausage sandwich at a farmer's market but they didn't have mustard - all they had was "honey mustard", which was just as disgustingly sweet as you'd expect.
Kiwis can't even eat MUSTARD without tons of sugar in it! I guess I know to some degree how Japanese feel about American condiments now...
Faster than light travel is not possible in this universe, so your idea is bunk.
Furthermore, time travel is a ridiculous concept that belongs only in bad science fiction, not serious discussion.
I'm not even going to bother trying to explain to you WHY these two facts are true, just try THINKING a little bit about what you are saying, inevitably you will come up with a whole host of logical impossibilities that result from your idea.
I've been using Linux machines connected to the internet since 1994. I've used Linux as my primary operating system, from which I access every net service available to me, since that year. I have NEVER had a single problem with spyware, viruses, or other malware on my Linux system. And I have NEVER taken any significant steps to keep my system protected aside from occasionally updating software at my whim.
Hello, please explain to me how e makes any sense as a numeric base. My plain english definition of 'base' would be 'the number of unique symbols in the number system'. How can you have 'e' symbols in a number system? What does base 'e' even *mean*?
Also I read that the formula used to determine the 'optimal' base is the one which the formula:
(# digits in a given number) * (# unique symbols in base)
has a minimal sum for all numbers.
Then some calculus tricks are played to compute the minimum using derivatives since the minimal sum cannot be computed for all numbers, which would be an infinite number.
The resulting formula is solved and the result is e.
My problem is that the formula is only defined for integers. You cannot have a non-integer '# of digits in a given number' nor '# unique symbols in base'. So it would seem to me that since we're dealing with a non-continuous function, all of the calculus and equation solving that follows, and results in e, is bogus.
So it doesn't surprise me that the resulting 'optimal base' is e, a nonsensical result.
I think that's a very interesting question. I'd love to know the thought process that ended up choosing Palin. The Republicans are smart, and yet they made a very dumb choice for VP on their ticket. I can only think of these reasons that they might have chosen Palin:
- She's a woman. Perhaps they thought that they could capitalize on what they thought was simmering discontent within the Democratic party at having not chosen a woman presidential candidate? Maybe they really thought that if Palin was appealing enough to women, a significant number of female Democratic votes would switch to McCain over Obama? I think they were very wrong on this count - or maybe the concept was good but Palin was the wrong woman for the job?
- She's an unknown. So naturally there's going to be hightened interest as people try to figure out what this unknown is all about. I think they succeeded on this point - Palin definitely attracted alot of attention. Everyone knows that Palin and Obama were the two big headline generators of this event, with McCain and Biden being less focused on to some degree.
- Probably they thought she was 'cute' and 'likeable' enough to be able to hold significantly negative, attack-dog positions, and yet still remain appealing? I can see the Republicans wanting a vice president who could attack Obama with impugnity and remain squeaky-clean looking herself. If they had a regular, lifetime politician type as VP candidate, and that person acted as a vicious attack dog, this could definitely backfire in a big way as people form a negative image of the ticket based on the actions of the attack dog. But someone who has a certain buffer of cuteness, as Palin did, might be able to deliver these attacks while remaining likeable. I think that may have been the idea. I don't think it worked that well.
- Being from such a far-out place and having such a far-out governing record would add to the "maverick" quality of the ticket. That was probably a consideration.
- Being good-looking always helps.
- Being young helps to make the ticket not seem as old as it might with McCain and another older statesman/stateswoman.
- Palin's conservative social viewpoints helped to solidify the ticket's appeal among the religious and other social conservatives for whom McCain might not have seemed socially conservative enough.
It was a gamble, no doubt. I can see the validity of many of the above reasons for choosing Palin, and there are certainly more. But in the end, they ignored Palin's greatest liability - her lack of intelligence, experience, and grace under the pressure of intense media scrutiny. And those ended up having a greater negative impact for the ticket than the positives she had.
I read that article. Basically it says that some networks are biased towards the Democratic candidate because they presented significantly more positive coverage of that candidate than they did the Republican. They point out that only Fox News gave more positive coverage to the Republican. None of this probably comes as a surprise to anyone.
However, does this have to be interpreted as bias? The Republican ticket made many, many more gaffes than the Democratic one this election. The Republican ticket ran a significantly more negative campaign than the Democratic one. It just seems to me that many more positive things were said and done by the Democratic ticket than the Republican one this election. I don't see how reporting things as they happened, when positive things tended to happen to and come out of the Democratic side, and negative things tended to happen to and come out of the Republican side, is necessarily biased.
That being said, it seems impossible to me to believe that any news organization can be completely without bias. Humans are not infallable machines, they will always bring their own slant to what they say and do, if not consciously then subconsciously. However, I honestly try to be as objective as I can be when evaluating such things, and it really seems to me that the so-called "liberal media" bias is very minor. Fox News' "conservative" bias seems much stronger. However, if you consider that there are more "liberal media" organizations that "conservative" organizations, then I guess the bias maybe balances out all things said and done. It's unfortunate that Fox News has to go so far to the right in order to balance out the weight of so many slightly left-leaning organizations. And it really sucks that these things both perpetuate and are perpetuated by close minded individuals in our country ("liberal" and "conservative" alike).
The hubris of the successful is often equally as unjustified. I think it's pathetic to look down on your common man because he failed in significantly different circumstances from those in which you succeeded.
I left the USA after GWB was re-elected, mostly on principle since I'd said I'd do so if he was re-elected, but also just because I wanted to try somewhere else. I've been in New Zealand for two years now. It's a fine place, and I would stay IF I could get all my friends and family to move here too. For most people, friends and family are irreplaceable, and for that reason, it's not a very worthwhile suggestion to just say that people who don't like a system can just move elsewhere. Most people will put up with quite a bit of societal headache just to be near the people they love.
I'll be moving back to the USA early next year. When Obama is president, and the people of the USA have actually shown some collective good judgement, I'll feel much better about being there. I can only hope that this election will be the start of a long series of societal improvements, because the problem with the USA runs much, much deeper than presidents or politics. It's social, and it's getting worse.
I generally agree with your statement, and in fact in every election since 1992 (the first in which I was eligible) I voted third party.
EXCEPT this year. I voted for Obama. You may not agree with me, and that's fine, but I feel like this is a moment where the United States, in one fell swoop, can gain back a tremendous amount of respect from the rest of the world, can take a huge stride towards racial equality, can undo tremendous damage done to the economy by the Bush Republicans, and can stop the ever-burgeoning war industry of the USA in its tracks.
I know, it sounds like I've drunk some kool-aid. I fully admit that my enthusiasm might seem overzealous to some, and that's fine. I only hope that anyone who disagrees with me, draws similar inspiration from their choice of candidate.
You have? Is that why you insinuate that Obama is "now promising to bankrupt coal"? Did you somehow fail to discover in your extensive research that:
1) The comments in question were made in January, and have been publicly available for 10+ months now, only recently having been seized upon by anti-Obama misleaders?
2) The comments in question are taken out of context and the spin that has been put on them by anti-Obama misleaders, and that you are further perpetuating, fails to note that the policies in question are not intended to bankrupt coal, they are intended to reduce pollution by making coal plants use clean technology?
3) As pointed out by a parent poster that you seem to be ignoring, McCain's policies are virtually identical on these points, and furthermore, McCain has made similar statements that could also be taken out of contenxt and misconstrued to mean an intention to bankrupt the coal industry?
All of the above is VERY EASILY discovered if you do even the smallest amount of research, rather than simply believing the falsehoods spread by the FUD machine of McCain/Palin.
If this is how you do your homework, then I cannot imagine that your grades were very good.
I only ever seem to have mod points when the most frivolous of Slashdot stories are populating the front page. The parent's post is well deserving of some Insightful mod points.
The difference is I don't whine about the price of gas. And yeah, I exaggerated a bit when I said that gasoline was the 'most negative thing on earth'. I do think our reliance on it has caused lots and lots of problems but... this is Slashdot. If your post doesn't contain a large dose of hyperbole, you're not trying hard enough.
No, not an ebay buyer of my UID. Do people actually pay for low UIDs on Slashdot? The mind boggles.
I don't run Windows software on Linux - don't see the point really, since everything I want to do, Linux covers for me. So I really was unfamiliar with Codeweavers.
What kind of retard thinks that one of the responsibilities of the president of the United States is to control the price of gasoline?
And, what kind of retard actually believes that it's a good thing for the government to try to artificially alter the price of a commodity like gasoline, probably the commodity with the most negative impact on the environment and the world in general, rather than letting market forces dictate the price?
If the price of gas is such a big deal for you, I would like to humbly suggest that you cancel your cable TV service, thereby recovering all of the money that higher gas prices are costing you, and instead read some books. And if you don't already subscribe to cable TV, well then... think of some other frivolous expense that you can cut out. It is a very, very rare person who can't easily find some small sacrifice of modern excess to make to compensate for high gas prices.
Before I hit the codeweavers web site, and possibly generate some undeserved ad revenue for them, can someone explain to me what codeweavers is and what software they make/sell?
I'd go to their web site to find out but like I mentioned, I don't want to give them ad revenue if they're just lamely pulling off a marketing ploy, with Slashdot acting as a typically willing partner in the charade...
There is always someone who will whine about racism whenever a race is mentioned. The O.P. probably has legitimate points. Do you know for a fact that it is NOT predominantly people of one or another country of origin that perpetuate the crimes that the O.P. mentioned? If you do, please share. If not, then exactly what grounds to you have for saying that the O.P.'s points are racially biased? If he had said that most people who commit this crime are male (which seems like it MUST be true given the general ratio of male:female truck drivers) would you say his remarks were sexist as well?
If your left hand pushed the left bar forward, you would have turned left. Basic countersteering. So your story doesn't jive. Possibly you meant to say that you were pulling on both bars (makes sense given wind resistance at that speed) and when the right hand came off, the left hand pulled you into a right hand turn?
Slashdot Mirror
I met RMS in real life, back in 1998 or so. He wasn't especially creepy, but the posse of idolizers who followed him around (and to a dinner that we all ended up having at some Chinese place in Manhattan) sure were.
The Warehouse ... where everyone gets some cheap crap!
(You have to know the advertising jingle for this store chain to understand the above)
No, gravity is not an absurdity.
Moving a physical object faster than the speed of light via some effect of gravity would be an absurdity.
Why limit your imagination to wormholes and other pseudoscience fantasy constructs?
I think that if we're going to design any such kind of "travel", it will be accomplished by magic spells. Scientists right now ought to be working on coming up with the right incantations, don't you agree?
Good points.
Also, magic genies that come out of bottles can probably move you between two points in space faster than light would travel without actually violating any laws of physics.
I am pretty sure that Santa Claus also moves faster than light, in order to travel to all houses in the world in the span of 24 hours, so perhaps scientists can figure out a way to harness Santa Claus technology and solve this problem.
There may be a few other ways to travel faster than light that both you and I have missed. It's really hard keeping track of absurdities, don't you agree?
"gives you an advantage over other players"
But you're not competing with other players are you? So what difference does it make to you if your character levels more slowly than someone else's? How does it affect your enjoyment of the game if someone else pays for levels when you level "naturally"?
I don't play Everquest or or WOW or any other MMORPG because I find their gameplay extremely boring, so I could be wrong, but I don't think that PVP plays a very big role in either of those games, so someone else's levelling ability really has no effect on your path through the game, and subsequent enjoyment (or lack thereof) of the game, does it?
You think dressings are bad in the USA? Come to New Zealand. As an American expat in NZ I am constantly disgusted by the Kiwi need to put tons of sugar in every condiment. Their "tomato sauce" is basically ketchup with about 2x the sugar. They love "sweet chili sauce" which is basically sugar syrup with a tiny bit of hot pepper in it. All salad dressings are as sweet as candy. I had a Subway sandwich with "italian vinaigrette" here and it tasted like it was dressed with maple syrup. I tried to get a sausage sandwich at a farmer's market but they didn't have mustard - all they had was "honey mustard", which was just as disgustingly sweet as you'd expect.
Kiwis can't even eat MUSTARD without tons of sugar in it! I guess I know to some degree how Japanese feel about American condiments now ...
Faster than light travel is not possible in this universe, so your idea is bunk.
Furthermore, time travel is a ridiculous concept that belongs only in bad science fiction, not serious discussion.
I'm not even going to bother trying to explain to you WHY these two facts are true, just try THINKING a little bit about what you are saying, inevitably you will come up with a whole host of logical impossibilities that result from your idea.
I've been using Linux machines connected to the internet since 1994. I've used Linux as my primary operating system, from which I access every net service available to me, since that year. I have NEVER had a single problem with spyware, viruses, or other malware on my Linux system. And I have NEVER taken any significant steps to keep my system protected aside from occasionally updating software at my whim.
If that's not safe, then I'm not sure what is.
Do you actually believe that incoherent, illogical, unscientific, unprovable baloney?
Hello, please explain to me how e makes any sense as a numeric base. My plain english definition of 'base' would be 'the number of unique symbols in the number system'. How can you have 'e' symbols in a number system? What does base 'e' even *mean*?
Also I read that the formula used to determine the 'optimal' base is the one which the formula:
(# digits in a given number) * (# unique symbols in base)
has a minimal sum for all numbers.
Then some calculus tricks are played to compute the minimum using derivatives since the minimal sum cannot be computed for all numbers, which would be an infinite number.
The resulting formula is solved and the result is e.
My problem is that the formula is only defined for integers. You cannot have a non-integer '# of digits in a given number' nor '# unique symbols in base'. So it would seem to me that since we're dealing with a non-continuous function, all of the calculus and equation solving that follows, and results in e, is bogus.
So it doesn't surprise me that the resulting 'optimal base' is e, a nonsensical result.
I think that's a very interesting question. I'd love to know the thought process that ended up choosing Palin. The Republicans are smart, and yet they made a very dumb choice for VP on their ticket. I can only think of these reasons that they might have chosen Palin:
- She's a woman. Perhaps they thought that they could capitalize on what they thought was simmering discontent within the Democratic party at having not chosen a woman presidential candidate? Maybe they really thought that if Palin was appealing enough to women, a significant number of female Democratic votes would switch to McCain over Obama? I think they were very wrong on this count - or maybe the concept was good but Palin was the wrong woman for the job?
- She's an unknown. So naturally there's going to be hightened interest as people try to figure out what this unknown is all about. I think they succeeded on this point - Palin definitely attracted alot of attention. Everyone knows that Palin and Obama were the two big headline generators of this event, with McCain and Biden being less focused on to some degree.
- Probably they thought she was 'cute' and 'likeable' enough to be able to hold significantly negative, attack-dog positions, and yet still remain appealing? I can see the Republicans wanting a vice president who could attack Obama with impugnity and remain squeaky-clean looking herself. If they had a regular, lifetime politician type as VP candidate, and that person acted as a vicious attack dog, this could definitely backfire in a big way as people form a negative image of the ticket based on the actions of the attack dog. But someone who has a certain buffer of cuteness, as Palin did, might be able to deliver these attacks while remaining likeable. I think that may have been the idea. I don't think it worked that well.
- Being from such a far-out place and having such a far-out governing record would add to the "maverick" quality of the ticket. That was probably a consideration.
- Being good-looking always helps.
- Being young helps to make the ticket not seem as old as it might with McCain and another older statesman/stateswoman.
- Palin's conservative social viewpoints helped to solidify the ticket's appeal among the religious and other social conservatives for whom McCain might not have seemed socially conservative enough.
It was a gamble, no doubt. I can see the validity of many of the above reasons for choosing Palin, and there are certainly more. But in the end, they ignored Palin's greatest liability - her lack of intelligence, experience, and grace under the pressure of intense media scrutiny. And those ended up having a greater negative impact for the ticket than the positives she had.
I read that article. Basically it says that some networks are biased towards the Democratic candidate because they presented significantly more positive coverage of that candidate than they did the Republican. They point out that only Fox News gave more positive coverage to the Republican. None of this probably comes as a surprise to anyone.
However, does this have to be interpreted as bias? The Republican ticket made many, many more gaffes than the Democratic one this election. The Republican ticket ran a significantly more negative campaign than the Democratic one. It just seems to me that many more positive things were said and done by the Democratic ticket than the Republican one this election. I don't see how reporting things as they happened, when positive things tended to happen to and come out of the Democratic side, and negative things tended to happen to and come out of the Republican side, is necessarily biased.
That being said, it seems impossible to me to believe that any news organization can be completely without bias. Humans are not infallable machines, they will always bring their own slant to what they say and do, if not consciously then subconsciously. However, I honestly try to be as objective as I can be when evaluating such things, and it really seems to me that the so-called "liberal media" bias is very minor. Fox News' "conservative" bias seems much stronger. However, if you consider that there are more "liberal media" organizations that "conservative" organizations, then I guess the bias maybe balances out all things said and done. It's unfortunate that Fox News has to go so far to the right in order to balance out the weight of so many slightly left-leaning organizations. And it really sucks that these things both perpetuate and are perpetuated by close minded individuals in our country ("liberal" and "conservative" alike).
Whoops, s/common/fellow/ ... it's hard to type Slashdot comments and feed breakfast to your 8 month old son at the same time!
The hubris of the successful is often equally as unjustified. I think it's pathetic to look down on your common man because he failed in significantly different circumstances from those in which you succeeded.
I left the USA after GWB was re-elected, mostly on principle since I'd said I'd do so if he was re-elected, but also just because I wanted to try somewhere else. I've been in New Zealand for two years now. It's a fine place, and I would stay IF I could get all my friends and family to move here too. For most people, friends and family are irreplaceable, and for that reason, it's not a very worthwhile suggestion to just say that people who don't like a system can just move elsewhere. Most people will put up with quite a bit of societal headache just to be near the people they love.
I'll be moving back to the USA early next year. When Obama is president, and the people of the USA have actually shown some collective good judgement, I'll feel much better about being there. I can only hope that this election will be the start of a long series of societal improvements, because the problem with the USA runs much, much deeper than presidents or politics. It's social, and it's getting worse.
I generally agree with your statement, and in fact in every election since 1992 (the first in which I was eligible) I voted third party.
EXCEPT this year. I voted for Obama. You may not agree with me, and that's fine, but I feel like this is a moment where the United States, in one fell swoop, can gain back a tremendous amount of respect from the rest of the world, can take a huge stride towards racial equality, can undo tremendous damage done to the economy by the Bush Republicans, and can stop the ever-burgeoning war industry of the USA in its tracks.
I know, it sounds like I've drunk some kool-aid. I fully admit that my enthusiasm might seem overzealous to some, and that's fine. I only hope that anyone who disagrees with me, draws similar inspiration from their choice of candidate.
You have? Is that why you insinuate that Obama is "now promising to bankrupt coal"? Did you somehow fail to discover in your extensive research that:
1) The comments in question were made in January, and have been publicly available for 10+ months now, only recently having been seized upon by anti-Obama misleaders?
2) The comments in question are taken out of context and the spin that has been put on them by anti-Obama misleaders, and that you are further perpetuating, fails to note that the policies in question are not intended to bankrupt coal, they are intended to reduce pollution by making coal plants use clean technology?
3) As pointed out by a parent poster that you seem to be ignoring, McCain's policies are virtually identical on these points, and furthermore, McCain has made similar statements that could also be taken out of contenxt and misconstrued to mean an intention to bankrupt the coal industry?
All of the above is VERY EASILY discovered if you do even the smallest amount of research, rather than simply believing the falsehoods spread by the FUD machine of McCain/Palin.
If this is how you do your homework, then I cannot imagine that your grades were very good.
I only ever seem to have mod points when the most frivolous of Slashdot stories are populating the front page. The parent's post is well deserving of some Insightful mod points.
The difference is I don't whine about the price of gas. And yeah, I exaggerated a bit when I said that gasoline was the 'most negative thing on earth'. I do think our reliance on it has caused lots and lots of problems but ... this is Slashdot. If your post doesn't contain a large dose of hyperbole, you're not trying hard enough.
No, not an ebay buyer of my UID. Do people actually pay for low UIDs on Slashdot? The mind boggles.
I don't run Windows software on Linux - don't see the point really, since everything I want to do, Linux covers for me. So I really was unfamiliar with Codeweavers.
What kind of retard thinks that one of the responsibilities of the president of the United States is to control the price of gasoline?
And, what kind of retard actually believes that it's a good thing for the government to try to artificially alter the price of a commodity like gasoline, probably the commodity with the most negative impact on the environment and the world in general, rather than letting market forces dictate the price?
If the price of gas is such a big deal for you, I would like to humbly suggest that you cancel your cable TV service, thereby recovering all of the money that higher gas prices are costing you, and instead read some books. And if you don't already subscribe to cable TV, well then ... think of some other frivolous expense that you can cut out. It is a very, very rare person who can't easily find some small sacrifice of modern excess to make to compensate for high gas prices.
Before I hit the codeweavers web site, and possibly generate some undeserved ad revenue for them, can someone explain to me what codeweavers is and what software they make/sell?
I'd go to their web site to find out but like I mentioned, I don't want to give them ad revenue if they're just lamely pulling off a marketing ploy, with Slashdot acting as a typically willing partner in the charade ...
There is always someone who will whine about racism whenever a race is mentioned. The O.P. probably has legitimate points. Do you know for a fact that it is NOT predominantly people of one or another country of origin that perpetuate the crimes that the O.P. mentioned? If you do, please share. If not, then exactly what grounds to you have for saying that the O.P.'s points are racially biased? If he had said that most people who commit this crime are male (which seems like it MUST be true given the general ratio of male:female truck drivers) would you say his remarks were sexist as well?
If your left hand pushed the left bar forward, you would have turned left. Basic countersteering. So your story doesn't jive. Possibly you meant to say that you were pulling on both bars (makes sense given wind resistance at that speed) and when the right hand came off, the left hand pulled you into a right hand turn?