Man, I wish people would get this right. Sonic laser doesn't make any sense. Can you really call longitudinal waves coherent? There's more to a laser than just high fluence and the ability to be focused. Sonic waves don't even have a particle nature, really, unless you wanted to count the vibrating atoms. Since you can't amplify atoms, you really can't get a sonic laser. Here, let's look at this:
"... like the sonic equivalent of a laser, or spotlight."
That's from the article. A spotlight and a laser really don't have much in common besides producing lots of light. A spotlight isn't coherent, or even monochromatic. It's just really, really "bright." Photons of laser light all have a fixed phase relationship--coherency, basically. This leads to lots of interesting properties like, oh, the entire science of interferometry. More importantly for the purposes of this discussion, lasers are _really really really_ "bright." I'm using "brightness" as a misnomer for fluence, or power through an area: you can get a much higher fluence from a decent laser by reducing area than from a spotlight by increasing power. I wish people wouldn't abuse the term laser so very much.
At the _very_ least, don't say "laser," because the "L" means light, and we're not talking about light here. Say "saser" or something, even though that's meaningless--stimulated emission of sound waves makes no sense under the traditional definition of stimulated emission, which really only applies to photons.
I realize that perhaps the functionality of the equipment makes the "beam" have laser-like properties, but I'm just irritated that "laser" is one of those fancy new buzzwords that the military and businesses like to toss around so much. They seriously degrade the good name of the device and, by doing so, cheapen science and help contribute to the scientific ignorance of the American population.
In Soviet Russia, there's only one browser, but any guy with a big stick is a policeman; that's how it used to be, at least. Recently some folks developed alternative sticks ("pointy" sticks, and "boom" sticks) and since those things work differently nobody knows who's supposed to be looking after whom.
Clearly they mean gravity waves, which is nothing special because it's been doing that since long before it was even put together. The people of millions of years ago--people all over the world and possibly some comets--would be walking around thinking to themselves in perfect English, "That tugging? It's that pre-Cassini chunk of ore, all right! It'll really make waves someday when it arrives in the Saturn system."
This is the Mr. Thunderbolt we're talking about here, guy. Clearly this is a case of Impulse command abuse.
(For security reasons I'm not allowed to print out which impulse it is; let's just say it comes before number ten. No, wait, that's too easy. Let's just say it comes after number eight.)
I think it's a conspiracy to get you to buy a drink, and use the drink to wash down the engine oil + salt cache you're consuming.
Why else would theaters sell little more than _salty_ nachos, _salty_ pretzels, _salty_ popcorn? Candy and soda aside, what's the last thing at a standard theater (or stadium, come to think of it) you've had that isn't salty, besides maybe a hot dog or beer? Salty peanuts? No, wait, there's salt in those, too.
Well, the headline's an obvious typo, but it still got me thinking. Specifically, it got me thinking about how buildings could be used to secure computers.
Unfortunately, all I could come up with was old Simpsons gags. Worse, they're all sight gags, so I can't even post "Oblig. Simpsons."
"The real humans won't... won't burn quite as fast." No, it's just not the same.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to cancel an account that you don't have. Maybe if you're really, really persistent they'll keep escalating and escalating in the desperate hope of finding your nonexistent account so they can not delete it. By the time you get to the CTO, maybe the whole system will just implode and stop churing out free building materials. That, or you can give the C?O you end up talking with the finger.
The really fun part would be six months later, when you start getting blank bills for the account you don't have.
You can minimize diffraction over distance with a Bessel beam. Maybe someday we'll have Bessel beams with a Rayleigh (equivalent) range of 150 km--I don't follow the research closely enough to know for sure. Slashdot needs more OEs.
Rock paper scissors snorkel
on
Defeating Captcha
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Uh, that game doesn't work unless, say, bots stop Slashdot. Otherwise everyone just picks Slashdot and it's fifth grade all over again.
Those keyed plugs aren't foolproof, especially the flimsy plastic ones on floppy drives.
This happened probably four or five years ago, so I don't remember the details well. On my main PC I was replacing a hard drive or a CD drive, something other than the floppy drive. I needed to unplug the power to the floppy just to get some cables out of the way; I did so then plugged it back in without problem--I mean, what problem could I have plugging something in that's keyed, right? Well, turns out I had just smoked a floppy drive and a power supply: I somehow managed to shift the plug over by one entire pin and not realize the problem for long enough to burn the insulation from almost the whole length of the +12V wire. From what I remember, everything else in the box ran fine once the soot was cleared out.
I really never have had this training experience. Maybe I can thank my small monitor. Maybe I don't make the connection between pressing keys on a keyboard and actual driving. I have to wonder if driving with a wheel would induce this kind of training behavior in me.
Then again, I'm a pretty conscientious driver (Disclaimer: so says me and my insurance company). In GTA, though, I routinely drive on the wrong side, run stoplights, speed, and knock people off bicycles just because I can. I'm a weekend cyclist, and I don't like the thought of some crazy guy in a Lexus coming after me. Still, I do it in the game--if for no other reason than to see how many times I can get the cyclist to glitch and end up riding off my roof.
I wonder if we'll see this become a bigger problem as video games become steadily more realistic?
There's a little "indecency" moral trigger that most people have in them. Most people trigger on violence, vomit, porn, that sort of thing. The trigger for nudity is pretty clear, while in a hockey match the trigger for violence is muddled.
Imagine kids playing, let's say, Magic: The Gathering in the streets, and a big, bloody brawl breaks out. Most people would probably call the cops in that case. What about on a basketball court? Probably the cops would be called. Hockey match? I guess not.
Now imagine in any of those situations some kid running around naked in the middle of it all. Independent of the violence, some people will see the naked kid and a their little trigger will slam home right away--genitals + butt - clothing = indecency. That's the kind of math that anyone can do.
For the three of you who don't know, the Army game is particularly bad on that last point, because you're _always_ playing as the Army.
There are several reasons I can think of to explain why this was done. What would the public/Congress/Army higher-ups think of a game made by the U.S. Army wherein where you can be rewarded for killing U.S. Army soldiers? On the game level, there're also balance issues and some realism concerns (do the Bad Guys organize their forces exactly the same as the US? do they need to model that behavior?), but it's predominantly the first effect, I think.
The side effect, of course, is that no matter what you're doing, you're doing it for the Army, and you're always in the right.
You'll never find out if it's the holodeck or not unless you say, "Computer: Is this the holodeck?" or "Computer: Arch!" Then, assuming alien spirits haven't possessed the computer core or whatever the crisis is this week, you'll find out.
Slashdot Mirror
Warning: dopey science rant follows!
Man, I wish people would get this right. Sonic laser doesn't make any sense. Can you really call longitudinal waves coherent? There's more to a laser than just high fluence and the ability to be focused. Sonic waves don't even have a particle nature, really, unless you wanted to count the vibrating atoms. Since you can't amplify atoms, you really can't get a sonic laser. Here, let's look at this:
"... like the sonic equivalent of a laser, or spotlight."
That's from the article. A spotlight and a laser really don't have much in common besides producing lots of light. A spotlight isn't coherent, or even monochromatic. It's just really, really "bright." Photons of laser light all have a fixed phase relationship--coherency, basically. This leads to lots of interesting properties like, oh, the entire science of interferometry. More importantly for the purposes of this discussion, lasers are _really really really_ "bright." I'm using "brightness" as a misnomer for fluence, or power through an area: you can get a much higher fluence from a decent laser by reducing area than from a spotlight by increasing power. I wish people wouldn't abuse the term laser so very much.
At the _very_ least, don't say "laser," because the "L" means light, and we're not talking about light here. Say "saser" or something, even though that's meaningless--stimulated emission of sound waves makes no sense under the traditional definition of stimulated emission, which really only applies to photons.
I realize that perhaps the functionality of the equipment makes the "beam" have laser-like properties, but I'm just irritated that "laser" is one of those fancy new buzzwords that the military and businesses like to toss around so much. They seriously degrade the good name of the device and, by doing so, cheapen science and help contribute to the scientific ignorance of the American population.
Oh, OK. Does this help? I thought we'd all heard of it.
Man, I just realized that there are _way_ too many colons in that post. It's a veritable colorama, a procto-party if you will.
Imagine it: four guys sitting in a room, playing deathmatch on their cameras. Screw PSP: cameras are the new gaming rigs!
In Soviet Russia, there's only one browser, but any guy with a big stick is a policeman; that's how it used to be, at least. Recently some folks developed alternative sticks ("pointy" sticks, and "boom" sticks) and since those things work differently nobody knows who's supposed to be looking after whom.
Perhaps the parent was referring to the temperature being less.
Probably, but only after he waffled a bit first.
Clearly they mean gravity waves, which is nothing special because it's been doing that since long before it was even put together. The people of millions of years ago--people all over the world and possibly some comets--would be walking around thinking to themselves in perfect English, "That tugging? It's that pre-Cassini chunk of ore, all right! It'll really make waves someday when it arrives in the Saturn system."
This is the Mr. Thunderbolt we're talking about here, guy. Clearly this is a case of Impulse command abuse.
(For security reasons I'm not allowed to print out which impulse it is; let's just say it comes before number ten. No, wait, that's too easy. Let's just say it comes after number eight.)
Wait, wait, I thought that was the _first_ Halo that had those problems.
Why is this marked "Funny"? This is prophetic. I'm stockpiling tunes against the day this happens. Old or new, crap or decent, someday it'll all play.
I think it's a conspiracy to get you to buy a drink, and use the drink to wash down the engine oil + salt cache you're consuming.
Why else would theaters sell little more than _salty_ nachos, _salty_ pretzels, _salty_ popcorn? Candy and soda aside, what's the last thing at a standard theater (or stadium, come to think of it) you've had that isn't salty, besides maybe a hot dog or beer? Salty peanuts? No, wait, there's salt in those, too.
Well, the headline's an obvious typo, but it still got me thinking. Specifically, it got me thinking about how buildings could be used to secure computers.
Unfortunately, all I could come up with was old Simpsons gags. Worse, they're all sight gags, so I can't even post "Oblig. Simpsons."
"The real humans won't... won't burn quite as fast." No, it's just not the same.
I wonder what would happen if you tried to cancel an account that you don't have. Maybe if you're really, really persistent they'll keep escalating and escalating in the desperate hope of finding your nonexistent account so they can not delete it. By the time you get to the CTO, maybe the whole system will just implode and stop churing out free building materials. That, or you can give the C?O you end up talking with the finger.
The really fun part would be six months later, when you start getting blank bills for the account you don't have.
You can minimize diffraction over distance with a Bessel beam. Maybe someday we'll have Bessel beams with a Rayleigh (equivalent) range of 150 km--I don't follow the research closely enough to know for sure. Slashdot needs more OEs.
Uh, that game doesn't work unless, say, bots stop Slashdot. Otherwise everyone just picks Slashdot and it's fifth grade all over again.
Those keyed plugs aren't foolproof, especially the flimsy plastic ones on floppy drives.
This happened probably four or five years ago, so I don't remember the details well. On my main PC I was replacing a hard drive or a CD drive, something other than the floppy drive. I needed to unplug the power to the floppy just to get some cables out of the way; I did so then plugged it back in without problem--I mean, what problem could I have plugging something in that's keyed, right? Well, turns out I had just smoked a floppy drive and a power supply: I somehow managed to shift the plug over by one entire pin and not realize the problem for long enough to burn the insulation from almost the whole length of the +12V wire. From what I remember, everything else in the box ran fine once the soot was cleared out.
Ah, yesterday. I remember it like it was two days ago.
I really never have had this training experience. Maybe I can thank my small monitor. Maybe I don't make the connection between pressing keys on a keyboard and actual driving. I have to wonder if driving with a wheel would induce this kind of training behavior in me.
Then again, I'm a pretty conscientious driver (Disclaimer: so says me and my insurance company). In GTA, though, I routinely drive on the wrong side, run stoplights, speed, and knock people off bicycles just because I can. I'm a weekend cyclist, and I don't like the thought of some crazy guy in a Lexus coming after me. Still, I do it in the game--if for no other reason than to see how many times I can get the cyclist to glitch and end up riding off my roof.
I wonder if we'll see this become a bigger problem as video games become steadily more realistic?
After a few hours of SA, I want to move back to Cali so I have some decent scenery around which to ride my bicycle (like the computing museum).
There's a little "indecency" moral trigger that most people have in them. Most people trigger on violence, vomit, porn, that sort of thing. The trigger for nudity is pretty clear, while in a hockey match the trigger for violence is muddled.
Imagine kids playing, let's say, Magic: The Gathering in the streets, and a big, bloody brawl breaks out. Most people would probably call the cops in that case. What about on a basketball court? Probably the cops would be called. Hockey match? I guess not.
Now imagine in any of those situations some kid running around naked in the middle of it all. Independent of the violence, some people will see the naked kid and a their little trigger will slam home right away--genitals + butt - clothing = indecency. That's the kind of math that anyone can do.
For the three of you who don't know, the Army game is particularly bad on that last point, because you're _always_ playing as the Army.
There are several reasons I can think of to explain why this was done. What would the public/Congress/Army higher-ups think of a game made by the U.S. Army wherein where you can be rewarded for killing U.S. Army soldiers? On the game level, there're also balance issues and some realism concerns (do the Bad Guys organize their forces exactly the same as the US? do they need to model that behavior?), but it's predominantly the first effect, I think.
The side effect, of course, is that no matter what you're doing, you're doing it for the Army, and you're always in the right.
You'll never find out if it's the holodeck or not unless you say, "Computer: Is this the holodeck?" or "Computer: Arch!" Then, assuming alien spirits haven't possessed the computer core or whatever the crisis is this week, you'll find out.
The Small intestine! Favorite part, by the way.
Maybe Slashdot is actually all just a simuation!
After thorough observation, I must concur. Beam me up, Scotty--there's no sign of intelligent life here.