"In all seriousness though, how can the Earth being an axial dipole (2 magnetic poles along a single axis) hundreds of millions of years ago suggest an Earth that was covered by up to a kilometer of ice? The Earth is currently in the same magnetic configuration, and there's certainly no indication of an impending super ice age.
Using the same logic, would Geologists in 600 Million years look back on today and say the Earth was covered by ice now?"
The answers to your questions are in the link marked "Snowball Earth" in the post. It is a link to an old (1999) publication about a snowball earth.
Anyway, I took the time to skim over the publication because I, too, wondered how the earth having an axial dipole justified an ice age 600 million years ago. If you don't have the time to read it, I can summarize my findings:
The snowball earth hypothesis is not simply justified by the earth's axial dipole. What is justified by the earth's axial dipole, however, are the measurements of the latitudes found of the rocks that appear to have been present under glaciers.
The way I interpreted the document was that the researchers found samples of rocks that could be geologically determined to have been underneath glaciers at a certain point (approximately 600 million years ago), then they determined the latitude those rocks would have been at at that point in time (since the continents drift, the rock would not be where it is today) based on the rocks' magnetic signatures (assuming the magnetic poles stay near the rotational axis of the earth). Since they found rocks that were under glaciers at low latitudes 600 million years ago, they concluded that glaciers were present at low latitudes (near the equator) at this time and thus must have been present around the globe. As a further explanation of a question that may arise, I believe the rocks were preserved in a manner such that their magnetic signatures would be those from 600 million years ago. (I am not a geologist, so I don't know how it works in particular. If you take the time to read the entire document "Snowball Earth", you might be able to understand better.)
Based on this, geologists 600 million years in the future would not guess that an ice age occurred right now, but would instead correctly guess (well, if it is correct in the first place) that an ice age occurred 1.2 billion years before their time, based on the age of the rocks they would find (which would be 1.2 billion years old).
Now, seeing that this paper was over 7 years old, what makes this whole idea newsworthy? Well, the research mentioned in the article supports the idea that the magnetic field of the Earth has not changed greatly over time, which means that it is safe for scientists to assume the magnetic poles do not travel far from the rotational axis of the Earth, and thus the magnetic signatures of the rocks found should, indeed, accurately represent their former latitude.
Summary of long post: Summary of article: New research supports the idea that certain rocks found where there were glaciers 600 million years ago were, at that time, near the equator, so there must have been glaciers around the world.
"A super-high-speed internet could even allow people a world apart to collaborate inside elaborate 3-D virtual arenas, a process called tele-immersion."
I believe the technical term for this is MMORPG. It appears to work pretty well with our current internet.
All joking aside, I don't think anything will change any time in the near future. IPv6 is probably the most radical change the internet will see for possibly decades to come, and that can't even catch on. People are simply not going to pay to have the internet re-architected when it is working well enough as it is; why reinvent the wheel while its still rolling. Things along these lines have been proposed before, and I'm sure will be proposed again, and I'm sure that one day, the internet will eventually be rewired. However, this is still far ahead of its time.
Cars still ride on wheels, power still goes out with storms, and cell phones still lose service underground. What makes anyone think the internet is going to be any different.
"...arresting four people and shutting down at least eight major online distribution servers for pirated works, a Justice official said. Authorities also seized hundreds of computers in raids..."
Let's see, thats 2 major online distribution servers per person, and at least 50 (hundreds is plural) computers per person as well.
Whew! I'm safe. I only have 4 computers and don't run a single major online distribution server. This strikes fear into the hearts of the 0.000007% of the people in the world (my guess is 500 out of 7 billion) that run major online distribution servers and own 50 or more computers.
I personally will continue my "risky" pirate ways.
Does that mean I'm stuck with this awful charter service for the next couple years at least? At least if I'm going to have this inconsistent service I should get a price drop..
Gun companies don't promote their product for illegal uses. Where Grokster advertised its ability to find illegal content, gun companies tend to advertise for hunting, self defense, or military application, all of which are perfectly legal. If the gun company had said that their guns were the best for drive by shootings, for example, then they could be held liable for any illegal drive by shootings.
What exactly does standardizing this format do that wasn't already done? It appears that the PSP has been selling games perfectly fine while the disk was unstandardized. Does anyone have any insight as to what this organization can do?
If I were you I would buy a few large (2-400gb) hard drives and, once filled, put them in a safe location. A USB storage center may also be necessary for easy access. For backup of these proportions, I simply don't think that any other method can be as cost effective as what has proven again and again, a standard hard drive.
Why shouldn't technology be considered a panacea? With all the medical advances we have seen over the past couple decades, I feel that technology has affected everyone in a positive way, and to millions has been a panacea of sorts. Yes, those in need of technology may be alienated by ignorant members of society, but thats how new trends have been since, well, the very first new trend.
Some of our brightest minds are extremely dependent on technology. Look at Stephen Hawking. I wonder how he'd be doing without the panacea that is technology. It is my belief that 90% or more of slashdot readers suffer from no physical disability whatsoever, but imagine if you did. Perhaps you went blind. Personally, I have no idea how I would live without my vision. Not being able to read, game, and having to learn brail might just push me over the edge. But think of what technology can do for people like that. There are several text-to-speech applications that will read off entire documents (even slashdot). Also, imagine being able to see again thanks to special glasses that transfer signals to the optic nerve. Technology has no greater use than aiding those in need.
I have a feeling the day will come, when artificial organs are commonplace, that many people will be living several hundreds of years with only a natural brain, and even then it will probably not be long before brains can be backed up on a computer, which will lead to entirely mechanical humans, or cyborgs. Imagine what we might now know if geniuses such as Albert Einstein had been mechanically preserved, and were still living today.
I, for one, welcome our everlasting, once-disabled cyborg overlords.
It's too late for this one
on
NextFest 2005
·
· Score: 1
Where is the implant that allows you to use excess fat to support the server's bandwidth.. that would probably be just as useful as any of the devices shown.
Mirrors please?
Does the fact that so many hard drives are used in this setup detract from its usefulness in that with more drives, the chances of one failing are that much higher?
I personally would use two large drives that will work on any system, and although there is little protection in case of one of the drives failing, the chances are far less than if I had been using as many drives as were used in this setup. It seems this setup is trying to solve a problem made far worse in its design than it would be using two standard drives.
However, this wouldn't be the first idea of its kind on slashdot by a longshot.
If this is true, then what is the purpose of monkeys?
Think of where we will be once the machines take over. I don't think it will be like in the matrix where we tried to fight back, but rather like nature. Humans will begin to show their inferiority, and will run rampant swinging from trees and eating bananas. The machines will open zoos of humans, and do product testing on us.
I, for one, am planning on being a pet. I'll take the loving grasp of my artificially intelligent machinistic overlord over a banana and loincloth any day.
I have a feeling that a computer that learned to play chess from general purpose AI would become self-aware and dominate a healthy share of the world far before it was able to defeat a chess grandmaster.
I still want to know why big companies are spending money building computers to play chess when they could, in theory, be spending money building computers to take over the world. That isn't against international law as far as I know.
In 50 years will chess club be dominated by nerds who know how to build computers and write software or by the humans who take the time to learn the game? Society is becoming more and more oriented towards computers and I wouldnt be surprised if in the future people judge their skill based on who can write a better program for their computer, rather than knowing how to play the game itself.
It's just too bad these computers don't give lessons.
Slashdot Mirror
"In all seriousness though, how can the Earth being an axial dipole (2 magnetic poles along a single axis) hundreds of millions of years ago suggest an Earth that was covered by up to a kilometer of ice? The Earth is currently in the same magnetic configuration, and there's certainly no indication of an impending super ice age.
Using the same logic, would Geologists in 600 Million years look back on today and say the Earth was covered by ice now?"
The answers to your questions are in the link marked "Snowball Earth" in the post. It is a link to an old (1999) publication about a snowball earth.
Anyway, I took the time to skim over the publication because I, too, wondered how the earth having an axial dipole justified an ice age 600 million years ago. If you don't have the time to read it, I can summarize my findings:
The snowball earth hypothesis is not simply justified by the earth's axial dipole. What is justified by the earth's axial dipole, however, are the measurements of the latitudes found of the rocks that appear to have been present under glaciers.
The way I interpreted the document was that the researchers found samples of rocks that could be geologically determined to have been underneath glaciers at a certain point (approximately 600 million years ago), then they determined the latitude those rocks would have been at at that point in time (since the continents drift, the rock would not be where it is today) based on the rocks' magnetic signatures (assuming the magnetic poles stay near the rotational axis of the earth). Since they found rocks that were under glaciers at low latitudes 600 million years ago, they concluded that glaciers were present at low latitudes (near the equator) at this time and thus must have been present around the globe. As a further explanation of a question that may arise, I believe the rocks were preserved in a manner such that their magnetic signatures would be those from 600 million years ago. (I am not a geologist, so I don't know how it works in particular. If you take the time to read the entire document "Snowball Earth", you might be able to understand better.)
Based on this, geologists 600 million years in the future would not guess that an ice age occurred right now, but would instead correctly guess (well, if it is correct in the first place) that an ice age occurred 1.2 billion years before their time, based on the age of the rocks they would find (which would be 1.2 billion years old).
Now, seeing that this paper was over 7 years old, what makes this whole idea newsworthy? Well, the research mentioned in the article supports the idea that the magnetic field of the Earth has not changed greatly over time, which means that it is safe for scientists to assume the magnetic poles do not travel far from the rotational axis of the Earth, and thus the magnetic signatures of the rocks found should, indeed, accurately represent their former latitude.
Summary of long post: Summary of article: New research supports the idea that certain rocks found where there were glaciers 600 million years ago were, at that time, near the equator, so there must have been glaciers around the world.
"A super-high-speed internet could even allow people a world apart to collaborate inside elaborate 3-D virtual arenas, a process called tele-immersion."
I believe the technical term for this is MMORPG. It appears to work pretty well with our current internet.
All joking aside, I don't think anything will change any time in the near future. IPv6 is probably the most radical change the internet will see for possibly decades to come, and that can't even catch on. People are simply not going to pay to have the internet re-architected when it is working well enough as it is; why reinvent the wheel while its still rolling. Things along these lines have been proposed before, and I'm sure will be proposed again, and I'm sure that one day, the internet will eventually be rewired. However, this is still far ahead of its time.
Cars still ride on wheels, power still goes out with storms, and cell phones still lose service underground. What makes anyone think the internet is going to be any different.
"...arresting four people and shutting down at least eight major online distribution servers for pirated works, a Justice official said. Authorities also seized hundreds of computers in raids..."
Let's see, thats 2 major online distribution servers per person, and at least 50 (hundreds is plural) computers per person as well.
Whew! I'm safe. I only have 4 computers and don't run a single major online distribution server. This strikes fear into the hearts of the 0.000007% of the people in the world (my guess is 500 out of 7 billion) that run major online distribution servers and own 50 or more computers.
I personally will continue my "risky" pirate ways.
I believe the motor (fuel cell?) being powered by the hydrogen is lighter than one that gas would power. However, I could be mistaken.
Does that mean I'm stuck with this awful charter service for the next couple years at least? At least if I'm going to have this inconsistent service I should get a price drop..
Gun companies don't promote their product for illegal uses. Where Grokster advertised its ability to find illegal content, gun companies tend to advertise for hunting, self defense, or military application, all of which are perfectly legal. If the gun company had said that their guns were the best for drive by shootings, for example, then they could be held liable for any illegal drive by shootings.
What exactly does standardizing this format do that wasn't already done? It appears that the PSP has been selling games perfectly fine while the disk was unstandardized. Does anyone have any insight as to what this organization can do?
I believe this is what you are looking for.
If I were you I would buy a few large (2-400gb) hard drives and, once filled, put them in a safe location. A USB storage center may also be necessary for easy access. For backup of these proportions, I simply don't think that any other method can be as cost effective as what has proven again and again, a standard hard drive.
Why shouldn't technology be considered a panacea? With all the medical advances we have seen over the past couple decades, I feel that technology has affected everyone in a positive way, and to millions has been a panacea of sorts. Yes, those in need of technology may be alienated by ignorant members of society, but thats how new trends have been since, well, the very first new trend.
Some of our brightest minds are extremely dependent on technology. Look at Stephen Hawking. I wonder how he'd be doing without the panacea that is technology. It is my belief that 90% or more of slashdot readers suffer from no physical disability whatsoever, but imagine if you did. Perhaps you went blind. Personally, I have no idea how I would live without my vision. Not being able to read, game, and having to learn brail might just push me over the edge. But think of what technology can do for people like that. There are several text-to-speech applications that will read off entire documents (even slashdot). Also, imagine being able to see again thanks to special glasses that transfer signals to the optic nerve. Technology has no greater use than aiding those in need.
I have a feeling the day will come, when artificial organs are commonplace, that many people will be living several hundreds of years with only a natural brain, and even then it will probably not be long before brains can be backed up on a computer, which will lead to entirely mechanical humans, or cyborgs. Imagine what we might now know if geniuses such as Albert Einstein had been mechanically preserved, and were still living today.
I, for one, welcome our everlasting, once-disabled cyborg overlords.
Where is the implant that allows you to use excess fat to support the server's bandwidth.. that would probably be just as useful as any of the devices shown. Mirrors please?
Does the fact that so many hard drives are used in this setup detract from its usefulness in that with more drives, the chances of one failing are that much higher?
I personally would use two large drives that will work on any system, and although there is little protection in case of one of the drives failing, the chances are far less than if I had been using as many drives as were used in this setup. It seems this setup is trying to solve a problem made far worse in its design than it would be using two standard drives.
However, this wouldn't be the first idea of its kind on slashdot by a longshot.
If this is true, then what is the purpose of monkeys?
Think of where we will be once the machines take over. I don't think it will be like in the matrix where we tried to fight back, but rather like nature. Humans will begin to show their inferiority, and will run rampant swinging from trees and eating bananas. The machines will open zoos of humans, and do product testing on us.
I, for one, am planning on being a pet. I'll take the loving grasp of my artificially intelligent machinistic overlord over a banana and loincloth any day.
I have a feeling that a computer that learned to play chess from general purpose AI would become self-aware and dominate a healthy share of the world far before it was able to defeat a chess grandmaster.
I still want to know why big companies are spending money building computers to play chess when they could, in theory, be spending money building computers to take over the world. That isn't against international law as far as I know.
In 50 years will chess club be dominated by nerds who know how to build computers and write software or by the humans who take the time to learn the game? Society is becoming more and more oriented towards computers and I wouldnt be surprised if in the future people judge their skill based on who can write a better program for their computer, rather than knowing how to play the game itself. It's just too bad these computers don't give lessons.
Any camera that small has its uses.. I have a feeling a new wave of sextapes is going to flood the internet