Not to add to the topic drift (Einstein, anyone?) but your explanation was just too damn funny.
God: "Don't take the random killing of you and your family too personally... the Israeli's would have had 'emotional issues' otherwise, and you're in a better place now anyway." Random butchered ped: "Gee... now I feel a lot better about bleeding to death from 47 stab wounds. Now if only I could get the terrified screams of my wife being disemboweled out of my ears."
Maybe it's just the variants I know, but leetspeek doesn't seem any shorter than normal text. IIRC, the original purpose of leet was obfuscation, not length. Observe:
IMHO, the whole point was to do it with a biological interface.
Think about it... a slime mold, while naturally light-avoidant, won't naturally know how to manipulate robotic appendages. Rather than sneering dismissively, you might realize this is a significant step forward to creating hardware and software that can directly interface with your nervous system. Such technology has many awesome as well as frightening implications.
you're also forgetting that by traveling at near light speed, time comes to a virtual standstill. so 'we'll be ariving in alpha centauri in about 5 minutes' takes relativistically a few million earth years.
Utter garbage. If it took you 'a few million years' earth-time to go from here to alpha-centauri, you would be travelling at nowhere near relativistic speeds. If you travel at 0.9c, then to an earth observer you will arrive at your destination in 4.3 ly / 0.9 ly/y = 4.8 years.
Now, due to time dialion, our intrepid astronaught travelling at 0.9c will observe only 4.8 y * sqrt(1 - (0.9c)^2/c^2) = 2.1 years elapsing during his journey. This is where the relativistic effects come into play.
If we wanted the journey to only take five minutes (from the astronaught's point of view), the time dilation factor would have to be something enormous (4.5 x 10^5). I'll leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to work out what speed the astronaught would have to travel by using Einstein's equation for obtaining the distortion factor:
f = 1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)
Sony's PSP will be completely undermined as anything but a games machine. To this day, I still can't understand why Sony didn't put in a large HDD instead of that stupid UMD drive.
BB: Songbird's logo is a cute, rotund, whistling birdie -- but what's up with that puff of gas coming out of his posterior? Is your mascot farting?
RL: Sorry, bad reception (SSSHHCSRRGRRR CRACKLE)
I'm afriad we can draw no other conclusion than "songbird does suffer from 'bloat'."
Indeed. Even if a particular sensation does not pass the threshold into conscious observation, the subconscious gathers a tremendous amount of data from minute clues, such as faint sounds or odors. People can often tell when they are being stalked, even without being able to consciously single out the source of their increased aprehension.
I remember one time I was standing in a dark alleyway a few hours after sunset, when I suddenly had the distinct impression of a large, hulking, furry monster, about my height, poised right behind my neck. Since it was behind me, I hadn't seen anything up to that point, nor do I recall any smell or sound, and I certainly didn't taste it. I must have scared that poor raccoon senseless when I turned and yelled... it lost its footing and nearly fell off the fence as it scampered away.:)
Of course, by the same standard that smell and taste are the same, we could claim that sound and touch are the same, since they involve physical contact with a medium.
Likewise, I could argue that some aspects of touch should be considered separate senses, since they require different mechanisms for detection (ie feeling whether something is against your skin, versus detecting heat or cold.)
To me, it's all a question of semantics. I would say it makes more sense to consider how an observer perceives a sensation rather than the mechanism by which that sensation was produced.
The concept you describe is good, but your suggested implementation (open wide to zoom in, squint to zoom out) is the reverse of what one does naturally. When I squint, it is usually an attempt to see something better.
On a related tangent, there's a guy at the University of Toronto (Steve Mann) who's been working on wearable computers for decades. If what he claims is true*, he controls the computer in part through a sensor which picks up his eye movements, allowing him to manipulate menues projected onto (or perhaps through?) his glasses.
* I had the opportunity to try on his computer-enhanced glasses once. I didn't see any menues... just some fuzzy green numbers off to one side, with no really evident UI. He claimed before lending the glasses to me that he was watching a movie. Who knows... the guy does have a reputation for being a little nutty.
a) you have to enable logging (it is off by default) b) you can always request an "off the record" mode, which turns off logging on both sides of communication.
Of course, "off the record" is easily defeated by "copy, paste", but whatever.
First off, the patents NTP acquired were rather low-originality concepts (basically using an interrupt scheme instead of polling to save battery life, IIRC). Second, they were trying to patent something which already existed as prior art (RIM's failed court demonstration aside). Shame on the Patent Office for handing out weapons to parasitic companies like NTP by not examining patent requests more carefully.
I think the most ideal solution for cases like this would be for the court to throw out the patents by both parties and let them compete on the free market... let customers decide who deserves their money. I could just imagine how the litigants would react to such a ruling...
Courts: Ok, you are both free to market your devices RIM: Sweet! So, NTP, I suppose we'll be seeing your wares on the store shelves next to ours? NTP: Shut up.
Either that, or they should reinstate the requirement for a working prototype. That could filter out a lot of the garbage patents, without seriously undermining useful inventions.
Actually, he said 'binary "digital" device', so it's unclear if he knew the difference between the terms. In common parlance binary and digital are used almost interchangeably.
Let's review:
Digital: Having only a finite set of symbols to choose from (as opposed to analog, which can have an infinite set of permissible values/signal levels/pulse shapes). By this definition, Morse code is clearly digital, even though the opportunities for doing fancy signal processing are limited.
Binary: A subset of digital, in which only two symbols are permitted. These symbols can be almost anything, really: a dot versus a dash, a 1 versus a 0, a higher frequency versus a lower one, etc.
You are technically correct... most telegraphs were ternary devices. However, I should point out that this was only a function of the character mapping done in Morse code. It is possible to use a telegraph in binary mode (only dots and dashes, with no extra symbol denoting the end of a character) through Huffman coding.
Not to mention the fact that terrorists, if they ever acquired a nuke, would probably think twice about using a missile as their delivery mechanism. The long-range high-precision ones are difficult to obtain, while using a cheap homebrew carries too large a risk of malfunction, potentially destroying their expensive nuke.
I'm no terrorist mastermind, but if I wanted to nuke the US, I would target a large coastal city (of which America has plenty) and put the weapon on a boat. No need to even enter the jurisdiction of the coast guard... I could detonate in international waters, and still cause massive destruction.
Seems to me that the 'terrorists' angle to justifying the missile shield is just a cover for their real reasons. Much like with the varied justifications for the Iraq invasion, this administration has a habit of throwing half-baked rationalizations at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Which would look more suspicious to you: a notebook filled with labelled sketches of critical infrastructure, together with dimensions and load parameters, of a bunch of photographs of your pretty companion standing in various locales, some of which have a bridge or tunnel with some signage in the background?
Prior to WWII, back when Russia and Germany had relatively friendly relations, a lot of German 'tourists' visited the USSR and had their photographs taken by various strategic landmarks, such as bridges and tunnels. The photographs intentionally included the nearby signs, which provided important parameters such as clearance and maximum allowable load. Once this information was systematically compiled, the Germans had an unprecedented knowledge of their future enemy's infrastructure, enabling them to plan troop and weapon deployments with an incredible level of detail.
Slashdot Mirror
HAHAHAHAHA
Not to add to the topic drift (Einstein, anyone?) but your explanation was just too damn funny.
God: "Don't take the random killing of you and your family too personally... the Israeli's would have had 'emotional issues' otherwise, and you're in a better place now anyway."
Random butchered ped: "Gee... now I feel a lot better about bleeding to death from 47 stab wounds. Now if only I could get the terrified screams of my wife being disemboweled out of my ears."
Ergo:
killing without religious sanction - bad
mass murder whenever God changes his mind about the whole 'sanctity of all life' thing - good
I win! --> 1 p0wnz0rz j00!1!
Think about it... a slime mold, while naturally light-avoidant, won't naturally know how to manipulate robotic appendages. Rather than sneering dismissively, you might realize this is a significant step forward to creating hardware and software that can directly interface with your nervous system. Such technology has many awesome as well as frightening implications.
The fact that you are unlikely to take your landline with you to the movies.
REPENT! :)
Just shut up and get me my chocolate milk.
64 processors should be enough for anyone
Utter garbage. If it took you 'a few million years' earth-time to go from here to alpha-centauri, you would be travelling at nowhere near relativistic speeds. If you travel at 0.9c, then to an earth observer you will arrive at your destination in 4.3 ly / 0.9 ly/y = 4.8 years.
Now, due to time dialion, our intrepid astronaught travelling at 0.9c will observe only 4.8 y * sqrt(1 - (0.9c)^2/c^2) = 2.1 years elapsing during his journey. This is where the relativistic effects come into play.
If we wanted the journey to only take five minutes (from the astronaught's point of view), the time dilation factor would have to be something enormous (4.5 x 10^5). I'll leave it as an exercise for the interested reader to work out what speed the astronaught would have to travel by using Einstein's equation for obtaining the distortion factor: f = 1 / sqrt(1 - v^2/c^2)
sans-culottes?
Sony's PSP will be completely undermined as anything but a games machine. To this day, I still can't understand why Sony didn't put in a large HDD instead of that stupid UMD drive.
I'm afriad we can draw no other conclusion than "songbird does suffer from 'bloat'."
Indeed. Even if a particular sensation does not pass the threshold into conscious observation, the subconscious gathers a tremendous amount of data from minute clues, such as faint sounds or odors. People can often tell when they are being stalked, even without being able to consciously single out the source of their increased aprehension.
:)
I remember one time I was standing in a dark alleyway a few hours after sunset, when I suddenly had the distinct impression of a large, hulking, furry monster, about my height, poised right behind my neck. Since it was behind me, I hadn't seen anything up to that point, nor do I recall any smell or sound, and I certainly didn't taste it. I must have scared that poor raccoon senseless when I turned and yelled... it lost its footing and nearly fell off the fence as it scampered away.
Of course, by the same standard that smell and taste are the same, we could claim that sound and touch are the same, since they involve physical contact with a medium.
Likewise, I could argue that some aspects of touch should be considered separate senses, since they require different mechanisms for detection (ie feeling whether something is against your skin, versus detecting heat or cold.)
To me, it's all a question of semantics. I would say it makes more sense to consider how an observer perceives a sensation rather than the mechanism by which that sensation was produced.
The concept you describe is good, but your suggested implementation (open wide to zoom in, squint to zoom out) is the reverse of what one does naturally. When I squint, it is usually an attempt to see something better.
On a related tangent, there's a guy at the University of Toronto (Steve Mann) who's been working on wearable computers for decades. If what he claims is true*, he controls the computer in part through a sensor which picks up his eye movements, allowing him to manipulate menues projected onto (or perhaps through?) his glasses.
* I had the opportunity to try on his computer-enhanced glasses once. I didn't see any menues... just some fuzzy green numbers off to one side, with no really evident UI. He claimed before lending the glasses to me that he was watching a movie. Who knows... the guy does have a reputation for being a little nutty.
In TFA, they say:
a) you have to enable logging (it is off by default)
b) you can always request an "off the record" mode, which turns off logging on both sides of communication.
Of course, "off the record" is easily defeated by "copy, paste", but whatever.
I think the most ideal solution for cases like this would be for the court to throw out the patents by both parties and let them compete on the free market... let customers decide who deserves their money. I could just imagine how the litigants would react to such a ruling...
Courts: Ok, you are both free to market your devices
RIM: Sweet! So, NTP, I suppose we'll be seeing your wares on the store shelves next to ours?
NTP: Shut up.
Either that, or they should reinstate the requirement for a working prototype. That could filter out a lot of the garbage patents, without seriously undermining useful inventions.
Apologize? What for? There's nothing wrong per se with being... um, wrong.
Actually, he said 'binary "digital" device', so it's unclear if he knew the difference between the terms. In common parlance binary and digital are used almost interchangeably.
Let's review:
Digital: Having only a finite set of symbols to choose from (as opposed to analog, which can have an infinite set of permissible values/signal levels/pulse shapes). By this definition, Morse code is clearly digital, even though the opportunities for doing fancy signal processing are limited.
Binary: A subset of digital, in which only two symbols are permitted. These symbols can be almost anything, really: a dot versus a dash, a 1 versus a 0, a higher frequency versus a lower one, etc.
You are technically correct... most telegraphs were ternary devices. However, I should point out that this was only a function of the character mapping done in Morse code. It is possible to use a telegraph in binary mode (only dots and dashes, with no extra symbol denoting the end of a character) through Huffman coding.
Spare the dog; blame the bug
Not to mention the fact that terrorists, if they ever acquired a nuke, would probably think twice about using a missile as their delivery mechanism. The long-range high-precision ones are difficult to obtain, while using a cheap homebrew carries too large a risk of malfunction, potentially destroying their expensive nuke.
I'm no terrorist mastermind, but if I wanted to nuke the US, I would target a large coastal city (of which America has plenty) and put the weapon on a boat. No need to even enter the jurisdiction of the coast guard... I could detonate in international waters, and still cause massive destruction.
Seems to me that the 'terrorists' angle to justifying the missile shield is just a cover for their real reasons. Much like with the varied justifications for the Iraq invasion, this administration has a habit of throwing half-baked rationalizations at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Which would look more suspicious to you: a notebook filled with labelled sketches of critical infrastructure, together with dimensions and load parameters, of a bunch of photographs of your pretty companion standing in various locales, some of which have a bridge or tunnel with some signage in the background?
Prior to WWII, back when Russia and Germany had relatively friendly relations, a lot of German 'tourists' visited the USSR and had their photographs taken by various strategic landmarks, such as bridges and tunnels. The photographs intentionally included the nearby signs, which provided important parameters such as clearance and maximum allowable load. Once this information was systematically compiled, the Germans had an unprecedented knowledge of their future enemy's infrastructure, enabling them to plan troop and weapon deployments with an incredible level of detail.