Ok, was modding, but decided it was more important to respond to this common misconception.
Obviously the righthand lane has far more traffic then since it feeds two roads. While it's understandable it would be slower, it is far worse than it ought to be and the reason: the selfish pricks who assume they have more reason for haste than anybody else - who drive in the left hand lane until the very last possible moment and then try to push into the right to jump the qeue, thus slowing everybody down far more than they otherwise would.
The more it slows down, the more pricks push past the qeue the worse it gets.
Such patterns are common all over the world - selfish drivers generally make traffic problems much worse, not to mention the worst daily problems are usually caused by accidents - which you could (at least almost) entirely avoid with a system of driver-less cars
1) Please get off your high horse. If you're merging early, you're making the problem worse.
2) Studies have shown that the ideal merge pattern is for everyone to merge as late as possible, in a "zipper" fashion where the lane is ending. When you merge early, you are actually creating multiple merge spots. Multiple merge spots = more slow down. More congestion.
If you merge early, you are a part of the problem.
I agree.. I do think we're becoming less physically fit/resilient as a result of modern medicine. The strong and the weak both survive. However, now that we are no longer being selected based on physical fitness, people like Stephen Hawking get to survive, who would not have lasted 1 second in the jungle or 1 year in the dark ages in his current state. I'm hoping our gradual loss of fitness and natural survivability is outweighed by the occasional Stephen Hawkings of world, who should not have survived, but are making great contributions to mankind because they're alive. And then one day, when we can code out the weaknesses out of our genes, it will all be a moot point.
That is, if don't get over-run by the Idiocracy first.. I would say the best evolved "class" of humans for the current environment on Earth (with welfare, etc), is one that can reproduce rapidly and live off of the productivity of others. Maybe somebody needs to set up a "Foundation" somewhere in Antarctica, to protect our advances/knowledge throughout a possible idoicracy/dark-ages (also useful as a refuge against Tripod attacks..)
One other issue with this announcement; why did they bother with 3TB? Should the next step be 4TB? We are counting in binary are we not?
No, we are not. We may count in binary for memory, but it's different for physical hard drives with spinning disks. For these, we count in platters (the actual physical disk(s) spinning in the drive).
Hard drives typically have somewhere between 1 to 4 platters. Drives with more platters exist, but they're less common.
Common platter sizes: 500GB, 375GB, 333G, 250GB
I didn't RTFA (this is slashdot, come on), but I'm guessing what Seagate really did was come out with a 750GB platter, that can be used to produce a 3GB drive with 4 of those platters. You'll probably see the 4TB drive you want when they come out with a 1TB platter.
1. Find complex math problem
2. Build evolutionary chip to solve the problem
3. Invent SkyNet
4. ???
5. ENDURE A MILLENIA OF HUMAN ENSLAVEMENT AND FIGHT NEVERENDING ROBOT ARMY IN POST-APOCALYPTIC FUTURE
One day North Korea will fall apart and it will reunite with South Korea and then we're going to have a lot of seriously pissed off North Koreans who simply cannot believe that they fell for all that crap about the Kims for so long.
I think it's more likely we'll have a bunch of confused North Koreans who don't understand why the rest of the world does not believe all the great things their "dear leader" has done - and probably alot of cults that try to spread their Kim-jong-il beliefs to "save" everyone.
When the astronauts get out and begin their work, they can flip a switch to turn the vehicle into an autonomous robot that goes off to undertake projects on the planet.
This is how the sequel to "Dude, where's my car?" begins.
I find Slashdot far more tolerable with Funny set to -5 as well.
Mod parent +5 funny. I have mod points, but I can only use one on this post. It's going to take about 10 to under-rate and +funny this post the way it's begging to be.
Please! For the love of irony, please, mod parent +5 funny! Think of the children!
The truth is the 3½-inch, 1.44 megabyte floppy - the disk that made it big - has always defied logic. It's not floppy for a start. The term was a hangover from its precursor, the 5¼-inch floppy, which had a definite lack of rigidness about it. However, its smaller successor held 15 times as much data.
1) so, what is the proper term for this then? "hard disk"? ARGHHH
2) 15 times as much data in a 3.5"? ARGHHHHH
ok, fine, i didn't stop reading. i only continued reading, but irritatedly.
And if it compares favorably, what would be the costs of constructing a virtual reality universe to occupy the cattle's minds - a universe modelled after the late 20th century, arguably known to be the peak of cattle civilization?
'"We will tell you that in the world of the exciter, the holy grail is to get a universal design that can generate all the waveforms that you could possibly imagine," says Falco.'
Its pretty clear what they mainly want: Inject any analog waveform in any band to confuse radar with arbitrary objects. If the enemy radar gets a software upgrade which detects you last attempt, you just change your software.
Sweet. Sounds like we're only one step away from: "remodulate the waveform of the main deflector dish! Off phase of the Romulan..err, Russian signal by 29.5 degrees to create a simulated beta-tachyon pulse!"
Those same five paragraphs in Century Gothic 12-pt take up 12.75" vertically. That 15% increase in space could easily lead to savings in ink being offset by additional paper waste.
Ok, sure, we can save the trees, but then we're back to the first problem of using too much ink. Ink doesn't grow on trees you know. Won't somebody think of the squids? ANYBODY?
I hear that square-wave signals look WAY better when they travel through way-overpriced copper rather than inexpensive copper. You can totally tell the difference!
Why stop there? I only use copper mined from a small mine in the amazon that has been blessed by a local shaman. You think your picture looks better on expensive copper? Mine comes from the freaking amazon. Like acai berries. Ever heard of them? Yeah.
I have a similar problem.. but it only applies to dark socks. No matter how frequently I buy new black socks and how INfrequently I buy new white socks, I always end up with "not enough dark socks."
For example, right now I am down to exactly 4 pairs of black socks and about 15-20 pairs of white socks - right after I do my laundry. And I don't even remember the last time I bought white socks.
Maybe black socks mature into white socks? (and XKCD suggested that socks may be the larval stage of wire coat hangers...)
That's a pretty intriguing idea too, but also in theory it is impossible to get energy out of that because the ratchet will actually slip due to its own thermal energy an average things out.. assuming a long period of time and all parts of ratchet being at thermal equilibrium. If the ratchet is at a lower thermal state then you really just have a miniature heat engine that extracts energy from the thermal difference, which becomes equalized. Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet?wasRedirected=true.. my apologies for the rambly runon post.. typing from my phone
Yes, I was really intrigued and confused, after reading the line:
"The new process causes the polymer to conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction,"
I was thinking, wow, is this even possible? If this is true, I think they've just created a material that could behave like a passive air-conditioner, heater, refridgerator, etc., while using NO power, ever. That alone must be breaking some serious laws of thermodynamics..
"One dimension" or "one axis," would have been more appropriate than "one direction."
Not to crap on your idea, but I don't think that would work. Tires are like pencil erasers. They lose material as you use them. Anything you put on the outside of a tire, that makes contact with the ground, will be rubbed off in less than a few hundred miles. For example, if you look at a new tire, it will typically have little nubs or rubber hairs all over it (these are a result of the molding process). After you drive on them for a few hundred miles, you'll see they get rubbed away/off.
I'm sick of wall-hackers, aim-botters, and speed-hackers. I'm glad Stanford is finally looking into this, because cheating in CS has made the game thoroughly unenjoyable.
The correct question is, how many beer kegs fit in a 0.5 micrometer fridge?
0.00000000000000000852167911 beer kegs
If the fridge interior happens to be shaped optimally so that no space is wasted and the entire 0.5 micrometer fridge is filled with keg, then.. exactly 8.52167911 * 10^-18 beer kegs (if each keg is 15.5 gallons). [Incase someone wants to out-pedant me: Yeah, I understand you can't optimally shape a 0.5 micrometer fridge for a keg, when the size of 1 unit of keg > 0.5 micrometer fridge.]
Perhaps a game not so dominated by rushing tactics would be a better choice of base game? It definitely seems an interesting idea, but there must be games better suited to an AI contest like this...
Perhaps the concept of shock tactics, such as "rushing" have been evolving for centuries and may just be one of the more effective battle strategies in games and real conflicts. The US has their Shock and Awe, the Germans have their Blitzkrieg, and etc.
Wikipedia's "common interpretation of blitzkrieg":
The word, meaning "lightning war", was associated with a deliberate strategy of quick and decisive short battles to deliver a knock out blow to an enemy state before it could fully mobilize.
Sounds like rushing to me. Maybe the fact that rushing is so effective in so many games is because it really is a valid strategy?
1) Repartition the drive so they have a 20-40GB C: drive and partition the remainder for their data on D:.
2) After installing a fresh copy of windows on a freshly formatted drive, I install all their applications (make a list of them before reformatting, so you don't forget details like Adobe Flash Player, Acrobat, etc.). Also do all the windows updates and update all the applications.
3) Move the "My Documents" folder to the D: drive - also go through all the applications and verify that the default saving directories are all on the D: drive.
4) IMMEDIATELY Create a image of the C: partition. I use BartPE/WinPE to boot up outside of windows and "Symantec Ghost" to create an image. You can use any boot disk and any image program you want. Save the image to the D: partition. This image will be a large file or series of files that contains all the data of C:.
5) Now allow them to use their computers for about a week. This will allow them to move things around, customize things to their liking, etc.
6) Come in a week later, check for viruses, malware, etc. If it's clean, then create a SECOND image. This is your "broken in" image.
[6.1) If it's not clean, try to find out what caused the problem - go back to the original image you just made, and copy it back on. Show them what caused it, and tell them not to download whatever program caused it - and come back in another week (go back to step 5).]
7) Now burn your image files to DVDs - or stick them on your personal removable hard drive. Next time they have a computer issue, you can reformat/clean install/AND get back to their original settings/preferences/etc in about 15 minutes, by reimaging their computer. Unless they manage to royally screw things up, you don't even need to bring anything but a boot disk/cd, because their backup images should be on their D: drive. You have backups personally just in case too. ONE LAST THING: Before reimaging, temporarily backup their desktop folder and their Favorites folder in the D: drive. If you want to be really safe, backup the entire user directory in C:\Documents and Settings\. ALSO - do a quick search for documents that may have been saved on the C: drive. Then restore their desktop/favorites after reimaging.
8) After re-imaging, do windows updates.
I do this with my parents and friends the moment anyone needs a clean install. It adds about 30 min onto the process but then allows you to repeat it
You know what they say about men and their sportscars, right?
No, nobody has the slightest clue what you're talking about.
They say men who buy flashy impressive cars do it to make up for a lack of self esteem caused by having a small penis.
It's a shame they say that. Many men buy flashy impressive cars for the flashy impressive technology under the hood. Maybe "they" - who say that - are explaining away their jealousy or ignorance of the hobby by trying to bring car lovers down a notch. (Disclaimer: I do not own a flashy impressive car - I own a common Mustang in the unflashy color of dark grey - but can see a million other reasons than low self esteem to spend money on one)
Do you realise just how much energy is being circulated in the upper atmosphere....? Yep the kites will steal some of that energy, but to make any real impact you would have to have so many kites that you would encounter other bigger problems a long time before you managed to reduce the jet stream by any significant ammount.... Hell what happens when you fly planes in the jetstream?
That's what we said about automobiles and smog.
1900's: Automobiles produce smog, but it would never have an impact on the environment... why, you would need MILLIONS of automobiles in one city to produce smog that is noticeable. We're just talking about a few thousand cars..
2000's: Examine LA auto-related smog levels. Also, it's no longer ridiculous to consider having millions of automobiles in one city.
2000's: Do you realize how many billions of kites you will need to even cause a dent in the gulf stream? We're just talking about a few kites over one city.
2100's: Damn, who knew flying billions of kites in the air would have catastrophic unpredictable effects on our climate?
Slashdot Mirror
1) Please get off your high horse. If you're merging early, you're making the problem worse.
2) Studies have shown that the ideal merge pattern is for everyone to merge as late as possible, in a "zipper" fashion where the lane is ending. When you merge early, you are actually creating multiple merge spots. Multiple merge spots = more slow down. More congestion.
If you merge early, you are a part of the problem.
Here is one source: http://www.escholarship.org/uc/item/744926sv#page-2
I agree.. I do think we're becoming less physically fit/resilient as a result of modern medicine. The strong and the weak both survive. However, now that we are no longer being selected based on physical fitness, people like Stephen Hawking get to survive, who would not have lasted 1 second in the jungle or 1 year in the dark ages in his current state. I'm hoping our gradual loss of fitness and natural survivability is outweighed by the occasional Stephen Hawkings of world, who should not have survived, but are making great contributions to mankind because they're alive. And then one day, when we can code out the weaknesses out of our genes, it will all be a moot point.
That is, if don't get over-run by the Idiocracy first.. I would say the best evolved "class" of humans for the current environment on Earth (with welfare, etc), is one that can reproduce rapidly and live off of the productivity of others. Maybe somebody needs to set up a "Foundation" somewhere in Antarctica, to protect our advances/knowledge throughout a possible idoicracy/dark-ages (also useful as a refuge against Tripod attacks..)
No, we are not. We may count in binary for memory, but it's different for physical hard drives with spinning disks. For these, we count in platters (the actual physical disk(s) spinning in the drive).
Hard drives typically have somewhere between 1 to 4 platters. Drives with more platters exist, but they're less common.
Common platter sizes: 500GB, 375GB, 333G, 250GB
I didn't RTFA (this is slashdot, come on), but I'm guessing what Seagate really did was come out with a 750GB platter, that can be used to produce a 3GB drive with 4 of those platters. You'll probably see the 4TB drive you want when they come out with a 1TB platter.
fixed that for you
I think it's more likely we'll have a bunch of confused North Koreans who don't understand why the rest of the world does not believe all the great things their "dear leader" has done - and probably alot of cults that try to spread their Kim-jong-il beliefs to "save" everyone.
This is how the sequel to "Dude, where's my car?" begins.
Mod parent +5 funny. I have mod points, but I can only use one on this post. It's going to take about 10 to under-rate and +funny this post the way it's begging to be.
Please! For the love of irony, please, mod parent +5 funny! Think of the children!
The truth is the 3½-inch, 1.44 megabyte floppy - the disk that made it big - has always defied logic. It's not floppy for a start. The term was a hangover from its precursor, the 5¼-inch floppy, which had a definite lack of rigidness about it. However, its smaller successor held 15 times as much data.
1) so, what is the proper term for this then? "hard disk"? ARGHHH
2) 15 times as much data in a 3.5"? ARGHHHHH
ok, fine, i didn't stop reading. i only continued reading, but irritatedly.
no mroe brian traning;;l its back to klling it qiuckyl wirth irish car bmbs fr me
No, the real question is... how does 2kw of electricity compare in units of bio-electricity? Say, to a 120 volt battery that is capable of producing 25,000 BTUs of thermal energy?
And if it compares favorably, what would be the costs of constructing a virtual reality universe to occupy the cattle's minds - a universe modelled after the late 20th century, arguably known to be the peak of cattle civilization?
Sweet. Sounds like we're only one step away from: "remodulate the waveform of the main deflector dish! Off phase of the Romulan..err, Russian signal by 29.5 degrees to create a simulated beta-tachyon pulse!"
Ok, sure, we can save the trees, but then we're back to the first problem of using too much ink. Ink doesn't grow on trees you know. Won't somebody think of the squids? ANYBODY?
That's a good idea, but I think there's more money to be saved where people are using entire colons when semi-colons would suffice.
http://www.dilbert.com/strips/?F=1&CharIDs=&ViewType=Full&NoDateRange=1&SingleDate=08%2F20%2F1996&Order=s.DateStrip&PerPage=5&After=04%2F16%2F1989&Before=03%2F26%2F2010&CharFilter=Any
Why stop there? I only use copper mined from a small mine in the amazon that has been blessed by a local shaman. You think your picture looks better on expensive copper? Mine comes from the freaking amazon. Like acai berries. Ever heard of them? Yeah.
My TV signal is freaking sweet.
I have a similar problem.. but it only applies to dark socks. No matter how frequently I buy new black socks and how INfrequently I buy new white socks, I always end up with "not enough dark socks."
For example, right now I am down to exactly 4 pairs of black socks and about 15-20 pairs of white socks - right after I do my laundry. And I don't even remember the last time I bought white socks.
Maybe black socks mature into white socks? (and XKCD suggested that socks may be the larval stage of wire coat hangers...)
That's a pretty intriguing idea too, but also in theory it is impossible to get energy out of that because the ratchet will actually slip due to its own thermal energy an average things out.. assuming a long period of time and all parts of ratchet being at thermal equilibrium. If the ratchet is at a lower thermal state then you really just have a miniature heat engine that extracts energy from the thermal difference, which becomes equalized. Source: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownian_ratchet?wasRedirected=true .. my apologies for the rambly runon post.. typing from my phone
"The new process causes the polymer to conduct heat very efficiently in just one direction,"
I was thinking, wow, is this even possible? If this is true, I think they've just created a material that could behave like a passive air-conditioner, heater, refridgerator, etc., while using NO power, ever. That alone must be breaking some serious laws of thermodynamics..
"One dimension" or "one axis," would have been more appropriate than "one direction."
Not to crap on your idea, but I don't think that would work. Tires are like pencil erasers. They lose material as you use them. Anything you put on the outside of a tire, that makes contact with the ground, will be rubbed off in less than a few hundred miles. For example, if you look at a new tire, it will typically have little nubs or rubber hairs all over it (these are a result of the molding process). After you drive on them for a few hundred miles, you'll see they get rubbed away/off.
I'm sick of wall-hackers, aim-botters, and speed-hackers. I'm glad Stanford is finally looking into this, because cheating in CS has made the game thoroughly unenjoyable.
0.00000000000000000852167911 beer kegs
If the fridge interior happens to be shaped optimally so that no space is wasted and the entire 0.5 micrometer fridge is filled with keg, then.. exactly 8.52167911 * 10^-18 beer kegs (if each keg is 15.5 gallons). [Incase someone wants to out-pedant me: Yeah, I understand you can't optimally shape a 0.5 micrometer fridge for a keg, when the size of 1 unit of keg > 0.5 micrometer fridge.]
Citation: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=(0.5+micrometers%5E3)%2F(1+keg)&aq=f&aql=&aqi=&oq=
Perhaps the concept of shock tactics, such as "rushing" have been evolving for centuries and may just be one of the more effective battle strategies in games and real conflicts. The US has their Shock and Awe, the Germans have their Blitzkrieg, and etc.
Wikipedia's "common interpretation of blitzkrieg": The word, meaning "lightning war", was associated with a deliberate strategy of quick and decisive short battles to deliver a knock out blow to an enemy state before it could fully mobilize.
Sounds like rushing to me. Maybe the fact that rushing is so effective in so many games is because it really is a valid strategy?
1) Repartition the drive so they have a 20-40GB C: drive and partition the remainder for their data on D:.
2) After installing a fresh copy of windows on a freshly formatted drive, I install all their applications (make a list of them before reformatting, so you don't forget details like Adobe Flash Player, Acrobat, etc.). Also do all the windows updates and update all the applications.
3) Move the "My Documents" folder to the D: drive - also go through all the applications and verify that the default saving directories are all on the D: drive.
4) IMMEDIATELY Create a image of the C: partition. I use BartPE/WinPE to boot up outside of windows and "Symantec Ghost" to create an image. You can use any boot disk and any image program you want. Save the image to the D: partition. This image will be a large file or series of files that contains all the data of C:.
5) Now allow them to use their computers for about a week. This will allow them to move things around, customize things to their liking, etc.
6) Come in a week later, check for viruses, malware, etc. If it's clean, then create a SECOND image. This is your "broken in" image.
[6.1) If it's not clean, try to find out what caused the problem - go back to the original image you just made, and copy it back on. Show them what caused it, and tell them not to download whatever program caused it - and come back in another week (go back to step 5).]
7) Now burn your image files to DVDs - or stick them on your personal removable hard drive. Next time they have a computer issue, you can reformat/clean install/AND get back to their original settings/preferences/etc in about 15 minutes, by reimaging their computer. Unless they manage to royally screw things up, you don't even need to bring anything but a boot disk/cd, because their backup images should be on their D: drive. You have backups personally just in case too. ONE LAST THING: Before reimaging, temporarily backup their desktop folder and their Favorites folder in the D: drive. If you want to be really safe, backup the entire user directory in C:\Documents and Settings\. ALSO - do a quick search for documents that may have been saved on the C: drive. Then restore their desktop/favorites after reimaging.
8) After re-imaging, do windows updates.
I do this with my parents and friends the moment anyone needs a clean install. It adds about 30 min onto the process but then allows you to repeat it
You know what they say about men and their sportscars, right?
No, nobody has the slightest clue what you're talking about.
They say men who buy flashy impressive cars do it to make up for a lack of self esteem caused by having a small penis.
It's a shame they say that. Many men buy flashy impressive cars for the flashy impressive technology under the hood. Maybe "they" - who say that - are explaining away their jealousy or ignorance of the hobby by trying to bring car lovers down a notch. (Disclaimer: I do not own a flashy impressive car - I own a common Mustang in the unflashy color of dark grey - but can see a million other reasons than low self esteem to spend money on one)
Redundant? THIS.. IS.. +5 INSIGHTFUL!!!!!!!!
That's what we said about automobiles and smog.
1900's: Automobiles produce smog, but it would never have an impact on the environment... why, you would need MILLIONS of automobiles in one city to produce smog that is noticeable. We're just talking about a few thousand cars..
2000's: Examine LA auto-related smog levels. Also, it's no longer ridiculous to consider having millions of automobiles in one city.
2000's: Do you realize how many billions of kites you will need to even cause a dent in the gulf stream? We're just talking about a few kites over one city.
2100's: Damn, who knew flying billions of kites in the air would have catastrophic unpredictable effects on our climate?