Personally, I find the shape of the lake itself to be indicative of an artificial (as in non-erosion related) nature. The entry and exit points in the lake are very close together, and on the same side. The area is generally flat (check out Google Earth for that), except for the depression that forms the lake.
There is also the explanation of a sink hole, but that would be rather round, instead of elongated. The final proof would definitely be the discovery of micrometeorite material in the sediments, or other layers that are commonly associated with meteorite impacts (glass layers in case of sandy soil, etc). But until then, I'd say that it is more likely to argue for cause other than just erosion.
No - we have a demonstration of what happens when Patent Examiners are paid by how many patents they approve. As a result of this, we have a system that approves as many patents as possible. In other words, this is a demonstration of how shitty metrics to measure performance result in shitty performance.
It's amazing how often this lesson has to be re-enacted.
No. Repeat after me - No. There's something that already covers your example, and it's called copyright. There is no need to invoke patents to solve your problem.
Not to mention that it is incredibly unlikely that you actually came up with something truly novel. More likely than not, what you came up with is a combination of existing techniques that were already known, but whose combination results in the marginal improvement of another known application.
Take pagerank for example: I studied that algorithm in Information Retrieval when Google wasn't even a glint in Larry's and Sergei's eyes. The difference was that not only did they implement it and create a corporation around it, but they managed to get all the extraneous bits right that were necessary for Google to take off like it did.
The "All the Work" you refer to is actually only a tiny fraction of the work that is necessary to create a successful product. It is an important fraction, but a tiny one.
Wow, you are serious. Sounds like the few posters who identified you as actually believing what you write were right... That's amazing. I didn't think someone could be that delusional.
I doubt it. DRM is a technological lock that is illegal to circumvent due to the DMCA. You can sell someone your copy of a steam game, but they will not be able to do anything with it.
Very true. Which nation do you speak of? If the US is putting up a stink, sell to China. If they're putting up a stink, sell to Russia. Japan might be interested, too. France might jump at the occasion just to spite the US.
The point is that there are a number of countries on earth who do not share the same laws or even the same principles. If there are valuable resources on the moon, there'll always be opportunities to shop them around.
Think about it this way: nuclear reactor technology is one of the most controlled and visible technologies that exist. Yet there used to be a thriving black market for it, and no one knows if it has completely disappeared.
Yup. This was the scenario that forced a lot of landed nobility to move to the US. The family would either be forced to keep subdividing the land they owned among the multiple sons, eventually resulting in everybody owning close to nothing. Or the oldest son would get everything, thereby preserving the family estate and property, and the rest would have to fend for themselves (but with the knowledge that there is a home where they can crash in times of trouble).
And the first person to get to the moon and establish a permanent outpost there will have authority that no Earth agency can contest with much success. Bonus if that first person is backed by some government that doesn't care much what the rest of the world thinks.
Hey, look, the US is planning to establish a permanent moon colony by 2020. As is China. There will be some fireworks over this, folks.
However you solve it, keep in mind that actors typically make a crapload of money on a daily basis because they work so little of time.
Wow. You mean that these poor people work only 5% of the time, so they need to be paid more than others to make up for it? Really? Is this what you're arguing?
Look, I completely subscribe to the idea that voice acting is a key component of a game. However, so is the animation (which was outstanding in GTA4), the graphics and the overall sound. As is the game engine and the game design. But where you say that a good case could be made that the 3D artists and lead programmers are just as important, I'd say that voice acting is the very last thing that impacts a game. Not only that, but programming for a game company is very hit and miss. Yes, you get to work on a game for 2 years or so. But if that game fails, bam - you're out of a job. Or at least that's how it works at small companies where you have a chance to sniff stock options as a programmer.
I understand where you're coming from, but also understand why everyone's so up in arms about this: he worked far less than the vast majority of people contributing just as much as him, but got paid the same amount of money.
I'll go back to your summary statement: he has to get paid that much because he works so little. Do you understand that the vast majority of people would love to have that setup? He has the golden job in terms of overall $/hours actually worked, but he still thinks it isn't good enough. That's the problem here.
If he has problems making ends meet because he works so little, he ought to do what everyone else does in that situation: get a second, part-time job. I have no sympathy for his situation.
Apparently, you think you have a monopoly on clever.
The period does make a difference.
Now? Europe, US.
In the 8th century? Baghdad would have been better than anywhere in Europe. Moorish Spain was much nicer, too.
In the future? Beats me. US is on a downward spiral, and there is the question whether Dubai's approach can be a model for the rest of the Arabic peninsula.
But I doubt that is what you were getting at with your loaded question. Nor is it the only thing wrong with your question.
The discerning question is "What is the potential for dickery in a religion, and does one religion have a monopoly on it?"
If you want to see something, you will. Real cleverness is to see what is.
... or storage consultants, IT consultants, IT services.... Does anyone have an idea how much data this database would have to hold? From the data I'm guessing at (1 MB per 1 minute call, 1 million calls a day for the UK), that's 1 TB a day being generated. They'll need an ungodly amount of storage, processing power and bandwidth to house this just for phone data. Email can easily double that data. Did anybody think this through properly? Is this actually gonna fly? Or is this just gonna make IBM and HP filthy rich, while some sysadmins get to poke around real data for "testing purposes"?
Lost my two paragraphs of typing... I'll summarize instead.:)
I guess I see it differently: in sciences, there are tests that can answer questions objectively; doesn't matter whether you use QA plans or a super collider to get the data.
In humanities though, there are far too many variables for anyone to be able to accurately predict or authoritatively state anything. As a result, it really comes down more to personality and eloquence, as well as capturing the prevailing sentiment of the time (Zeitgeist, if you will).
It's not so much that it humanities is easier, it is that it is that much harder to distinguish bullshit from truth (however relative that is). It is entirely possible that you worked as hard as anybody in a science major. Unfortunately, the likelihood of a humanities major being just good at bullshitting is much higher than that of a science major just being good at bullshitting. As a result, my first reaction to hearing that someone has a humanities major is that they got an easy ride. That assumption might change later during personal interaction, but that's where I start off.
I guess what I'm saying is that humanities can be hard if you want them to be hard. Sciences are hard, even if you don't want them to be.
Now it's been a while since I dealt with Physics and all that, but... release 2 electrons for one photon? How would that work? Photons knock electrons out of their bonds by imparting enough energy into the electron so that it moves into the conduction band. However, photons are either absorbed or not - this is not billiards.
Secondly, there is a clear, anti-intellectual trend in many Western societies.
If by Western Societies, you mean America, then yes. Perhaps even including UK and AU. But the rest of the western world still regards intellectuals as society's elite.
From my travels, the US holds the worldwide #1 position in anti-intellectualism. No one comes close. No other country actually makes it a point of honor to regularly ignore, if not denigrate, the opinions of schooled experts talking about their field of expertise.
I've done both. And I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that engineering/science is much, much harder.
Why? Because if your program doesn't compile, it won't work. Because if you got your equation wrong, your results will be wrong. There is no "it is possible", "on the other hand", or even "some believe". Things either are or aren't. In humanities, anything is possible, and the metric by which you're judged is your eloquence.
Working hard isn't just reading tons and tons of books, and writing tons of words. It's what happens when you're sloppy, make a mistake or cut something short. In sciences, shit just doesn't work, and you're dead in the water. In humanities, as long as you have a relatively compelling argument, you're home safe. So yes, humanities majors ARE easier than science majors. Don't kid yourself.
And by the way, proofs of God's existence depends entirely on which axioms you're invoking.
I remember you using the comparison earlier in a reply to me. It isn't. It's like having the plans to destroy your house be two mouseclicks, a dropdown and button click away. If you're so lazy you cannot perform this task, you do not deserve its fruits. If you're so ignorant of one of the basic rules regulating this (or any) forum, you also do not deserve its fruits.
Moderation is not censorship. Go look it up in a dictionary. Not only that, but acquiring knowledge requires a certain effort on everyone's part. Sometimes, that effort involves reading one FAQ and clicking a few things in your browser.
Spacing definitely seems to play a part. The last character of each line in the last stanza lines up with all of the other last characters. The first characters of each line in the last stanza seem to obey some sort of whitespace rule, as they all line up with either whitespace or another character in a line above or below.
I'm getting more and more convinced that this is some sort of fixed width code, where a character is defined by the presence and absence of strokes within a fixed space. At this point, the problem becomes a lot more difficult, because now we have to figure out what the size of a word is, if there are boundaries and what those are. All in all, this is becoming quite interesting.
I don't think that the set of 3 consecutive 2s is correct. If you look closely, the two lines between the start and end 2s are spaced not only more widely than other 2s, but their length and termination stroke is different. The first | is started higher than the second |, stops way earlier, and instead of an upward stroke at the bottom (indicating a continuation towards a second stroke in the same character), just fizzles out towards the right. This is more consistent with two | characters, rather than a single || character. This also keeps in line with the theory that || is a delimitation character, rather than a code character.
I think that's an interesting approach. Statistically speaking, if | and || would be two different symbols, the chance that one of them would never appear consecutively would be zero. As such, I agree that the || is probably a demarcation. Furthermore, the last character at the end of each line of the last stanza is probably also a demarcation, drawn before actual code series was written out. The reason I say that is because the last characters are the only ones that are actually beneath each other - the slanting comes from a right-handed writer slanting the page as they write. This in turn means that the places were 4 | are next to each other would actually be 3 | plus one | that signals end of line.
Halo 3 already has that. Granted, it's not Youtube, but you can definitely capture WTF moments. I wish that was something that was integrated into all games.
I'm not even convinced that this is a legitimate play by Icahn to make MS/Yahoo be more competitive with Google. If I'd have a billion dollars to invest, and I'd know that a merger would pump a company's stock price by 72%, I'd try to buy enough influence to make that happen. Icahn would make out like a bandit even if MS/Yahoo go down in flames the day after the deal is signed.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I find the shape of the lake itself to be indicative of an artificial (as in non-erosion related) nature. The entry and exit points in the lake are very close together, and on the same side. The area is generally flat (check out Google Earth for that), except for the depression that forms the lake.
There is also the explanation of a sink hole, but that would be rather round, instead of elongated. The final proof would definitely be the discovery of micrometeorite material in the sediments, or other layers that are commonly associated with meteorite impacts (glass layers in case of sandy soil, etc). But until then, I'd say that it is more likely to argue for cause other than just erosion.
No - we have a demonstration of what happens when Patent Examiners are paid by how many patents they approve. As a result of this, we have a system that approves as many patents as possible. In other words, this is a demonstration of how shitty metrics to measure performance result in shitty performance.
It's amazing how often this lesson has to be re-enacted.
No. Repeat after me - No. There's something that already covers your example, and it's called copyright. There is no need to invoke patents to solve your problem.
Not to mention that it is incredibly unlikely that you actually came up with something truly novel. More likely than not, what you came up with is a combination of existing techniques that were already known, but whose combination results in the marginal improvement of another known application.
Take pagerank for example: I studied that algorithm in Information Retrieval when Google wasn't even a glint in Larry's and Sergei's eyes. The difference was that not only did they implement it and create a corporation around it, but they managed to get all the extraneous bits right that were necessary for Google to take off like it did.
The "All the Work" you refer to is actually only a tiny fraction of the work that is necessary to create a successful product. It is an important fraction, but a tiny one.
Wow, you are serious. Sounds like the few posters who identified you as actually believing what you write were right... That's amazing. I didn't think someone could be that delusional.
But it will be. Just like the DMCA has been mostly used to shut down what is arguably only free speech.
Isn't twitter and gnutoo the same user? I don't know if I would put much faith into the words of a known troll.
I doubt it. DRM is a technological lock that is illegal to circumvent due to the DMCA. You can sell someone your copy of a steam game, but they will not be able to do anything with it.
As a result, the worth of that copy will be zero.
Very true. Which nation do you speak of? If the US is putting up a stink, sell to China. If they're putting up a stink, sell to Russia. Japan might be interested, too. France might jump at the occasion just to spite the US.
The point is that there are a number of countries on earth who do not share the same laws or even the same principles. If there are valuable resources on the moon, there'll always be opportunities to shop them around.
Think about it this way: nuclear reactor technology is one of the most controlled and visible technologies that exist. Yet there used to be a thriving black market for it, and no one knows if it has completely disappeared.
Yup. This was the scenario that forced a lot of landed nobility to move to the US. The family would either be forced to keep subdividing the land they owned among the multiple sons, eventually resulting in everybody owning close to nothing. Or the oldest son would get everything, thereby preserving the family estate and property, and the rest would have to fend for themselves (but with the knowledge that there is a home where they can crash in times of trouble).
And the first person to get to the moon and establish a permanent outpost there will have authority that no Earth agency can contest with much success. Bonus if that first person is backed by some government that doesn't care much what the rest of the world thinks.
Hey, look, the US is planning to establish a permanent moon colony by 2020. As is China. There will be some fireworks over this, folks.
Wow. You mean that these poor people work only 5% of the time, so they need to be paid more than others to make up for it? Really? Is this what you're arguing?
Look, I completely subscribe to the idea that voice acting is a key component of a game. However, so is the animation (which was outstanding in GTA4), the graphics and the overall sound. As is the game engine and the game design. But where you say that a good case could be made that the 3D artists and lead programmers are just as important, I'd say that voice acting is the very last thing that impacts a game. Not only that, but programming for a game company is very hit and miss. Yes, you get to work on a game for 2 years or so. But if that game fails, bam - you're out of a job. Or at least that's how it works at small companies where you have a chance to sniff stock options as a programmer.
I understand where you're coming from, but also understand why everyone's so up in arms about this: he worked far less than the vast majority of people contributing just as much as him, but got paid the same amount of money.
I'll go back to your summary statement: he has to get paid that much because he works so little. Do you understand that the vast majority of people would love to have that setup? He has the golden job in terms of overall $/hours actually worked, but he still thinks it isn't good enough. That's the problem here.
If he has problems making ends meet because he works so little, he ought to do what everyone else does in that situation: get a second, part-time job. I have no sympathy for his situation.
Apparently, you think you have a monopoly on clever.
The period does make a difference.
Now? Europe, US.
In the 8th century? Baghdad would have been better than anywhere in Europe. Moorish Spain was much nicer, too.
In the future? Beats me. US is on a downward spiral, and there is the question whether Dubai's approach can be a model for the rest of the Arabic peninsula.
But I doubt that is what you were getting at with your loaded question. Nor is it the only thing wrong with your question.
The discerning question is "What is the potential for dickery in a religion, and does one religion have a monopoly on it?"
If you want to see something, you will. Real cleverness is to see what is.
You mean, like the Koran?
... or storage consultants, IT consultants, IT services.... Does anyone have an idea how much data this database would have to hold? From the data I'm guessing at (1 MB per 1 minute call, 1 million calls a day for the UK), that's 1 TB a day being generated. They'll need an ungodly amount of storage, processing power and bandwidth to house this just for phone data. Email can easily double that data. Did anybody think this through properly? Is this actually gonna fly? Or is this just gonna make IBM and HP filthy rich, while some sysadmins get to poke around real data for "testing purposes"?
Lost my two paragraphs of typing... I'll summarize instead. :)
I guess I see it differently: in sciences, there are tests that can answer questions objectively; doesn't matter whether you use QA plans or a super collider to get the data.
In humanities though, there are far too many variables for anyone to be able to accurately predict or authoritatively state anything. As a result, it really comes down more to personality and eloquence, as well as capturing the prevailing sentiment of the time (Zeitgeist, if you will).
It's not so much that it humanities is easier, it is that it is that much harder to distinguish bullshit from truth (however relative that is). It is entirely possible that you worked as hard as anybody in a science major. Unfortunately, the likelihood of a humanities major being just good at bullshitting is much higher than that of a science major just being good at bullshitting. As a result, my first reaction to hearing that someone has a humanities major is that they got an easy ride. That assumption might change later during personal interaction, but that's where I start off.
I guess what I'm saying is that humanities can be hard if you want them to be hard. Sciences are hard, even if you don't want them to be.
Now it's been a while since I dealt with Physics and all that, but... release 2 electrons for one photon? How would that work? Photons knock electrons out of their bonds by imparting enough energy into the electron so that it moves into the conduction band. However, photons are either absorbed or not - this is not billiards.
If by Western Societies, you mean America, then yes. Perhaps even including UK and AU. But the rest of the western world still regards intellectuals as society's elite.
From my travels, the US holds the worldwide #1 position in anti-intellectualism. No one comes close. No other country actually makes it a point of honor to regularly ignore, if not denigrate, the opinions of schooled experts talking about their field of expertise.
I've done both. And I can tell you beyond the shadow of a doubt that engineering/science is much, much harder.
Why? Because if your program doesn't compile, it won't work. Because if you got your equation wrong, your results will be wrong. There is no "it is possible", "on the other hand", or even "some believe". Things either are or aren't. In humanities, anything is possible, and the metric by which you're judged is your eloquence.
Working hard isn't just reading tons and tons of books, and writing tons of words. It's what happens when you're sloppy, make a mistake or cut something short. In sciences, shit just doesn't work, and you're dead in the water. In humanities, as long as you have a relatively compelling argument, you're home safe. So yes, humanities majors ARE easier than science majors. Don't kid yourself.
And by the way, proofs of God's existence depends entirely on which axioms you're invoking.
I remember you using the comparison earlier in a reply to me. It isn't. It's like having the plans to destroy your house be two mouseclicks, a dropdown and button click away. If you're so lazy you cannot perform this task, you do not deserve its fruits. If you're so ignorant of one of the basic rules regulating this (or any) forum, you also do not deserve its fruits.
Moderation is not censorship. Go look it up in a dictionary. Not only that, but acquiring knowledge requires a certain effort on everyone's part. Sometimes, that effort involves reading one FAQ and clicking a few things in your browser.
Spacing definitely seems to play a part. The last character of each line in the last stanza lines up with all of the other last characters. The first characters of each line in the last stanza seem to obey some sort of whitespace rule, as they all line up with either whitespace or another character in a line above or below.
I'm getting more and more convinced that this is some sort of fixed width code, where a character is defined by the presence and absence of strokes within a fixed space. At this point, the problem becomes a lot more difficult, because now we have to figure out what the size of a word is, if there are boundaries and what those are. All in all, this is becoming quite interesting.
I don't think that the set of 3 consecutive 2s is correct. If you look closely, the two lines between the start and end 2s are spaced not only more widely than other 2s, but their length and termination stroke is different. The first | is started higher than the second |, stops way earlier, and instead of an upward stroke at the bottom (indicating a continuation towards a second stroke in the same character), just fizzles out towards the right. This is more consistent with two | characters, rather than a single || character. This also keeps in line with the theory that || is a delimitation character, rather than a code character.
I think that's an interesting approach. Statistically speaking, if | and || would be two different symbols, the chance that one of them would never appear consecutively would be zero. As such, I agree that the || is probably a demarcation. Furthermore, the last character at the end of each line of the last stanza is probably also a demarcation, drawn before actual code series was written out. The reason I say that is because the last characters are the only ones that are actually beneath each other - the slanting comes from a right-handed writer slanting the page as they write. This in turn means that the places were 4 | are next to each other would actually be 3 | plus one | that signals end of line.
Halo 3 already has that. Granted, it's not Youtube, but you can definitely capture WTF moments. I wish that was something that was integrated into all games.
Let me guess - you're the one who points out at parties that every one's gonna die anyway, so nothing really matters?
Let me know when you're done with platitudes, and offer actual insight.
I'm not even convinced that this is a legitimate play by Icahn to make MS/Yahoo be more competitive with Google. If I'd have a billion dollars to invest, and I'd know that a merger would pump a company's stock price by 72%, I'd try to buy enough influence to make that happen. Icahn would make out like a bandit even if MS/Yahoo go down in flames the day after the deal is signed.