I first learned to program in BASIC in 1980 on a Sinclair ZX80 computer. I learned very fast because on any given line it would not let you enter an unexpected character nor would it let you do a newline-carriage return on a malformed statement. Granted, in 1980 I had been programming in Fortran for almost 20 years, but the immediate feedback offered by the ZX80 made learning BASIC a breeze. I still have my ZX 80 although it no longer boots up. I think its approach to teaching BASIC was clever and sound.
The US government should sell the air traffic control system to the highest bidder. That would probably be a consortium of the major airports and airlines. Any system run by bureaucratic management will necessarily be way behind the times technologically. The air traffic control system needs to be operated as a business, not a bureaucracy.
The FCC should be abolished and its policing powers transferred to the Justice Department. The airwaves should be privately owned. The government should stick to its role of enforcing contracts and has no moral authority to regulate communications media.
I'm with spy handler. Anyone with the technology and the ability to mine the moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. satisfies the basic requirements of ownership. But it is also important for the US or other government to guarantee property rights in an orderly, lawful fashion. The alternative is anarchy, where no ones rights are recognized or protected. And the gods forbid that the band of outlaws called the United Nations ever get involved.
Think of all the families of farriers and buggy whip makers who were ruined by the automobile. Did they all sit on their butts and starve or did they find more productive lines of work? I think the latter.
If tobacco companies sponsored research showing that tobacco was good for ones health, one would be skeptical. But what if 97% of all research by dozens of tobacco companies showed that tobacco was good for ones health. Would it be fair to call the skeptics 'anti-science?'
The public is skeptical of climate science for the same reason. Since most of the research is funded ultimately by governments and since governments tend to prefer results which justify an increase in government power, people are skeptical of government funded climate research. People who favor greater government control of economic matters will tend not to be skeptical and those who oppose increases in government power will tend to be more skeptical.
There is no mystery here and there is nothing 'anti-science' about climate science skepticism.
Although 99.9% of us have the common sense to get a professional opinion if some test bought on the internet delivers bad news, the FDA denies us access to such tests on the off chance that some idiot will take rash action without consulting a physician. Were that to happen, which I seriously doubt, the worst result would be a slight improvement in the gene pool.
Several years ago I wrote an octonion calculator using javascript. To compute exp(X) for a general octonion (a type of eight dimensional number) I had to use a power series expansion and test for convergence. This is calculus. To see the code, just view the page source:
It will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before mankind will travel to other stars unless some kind of faster than light travel becomes possible.
One or a few ships would never make it. It would have to be a journey of an entire civilization, one large enough and with the resources and technology to endure a journey lasting thousands of years. And it would only make sense to take such a journey when the resources of this solar system have been exhausted. When the Oort Cloud has been exhausted, its civilization might have the ability and the motive to make such a journey. And such a civilization will have little use for habitable planets, they will be looking for systems with lots of asteroids and other low-gravity resources.
unless limited by the concept of individual rights. The concept of individual rights was the crowning political achievement of the enlightenment and led to the creation of the Unites States of America and its semi-capitalist society. I see no evidence that the Owsers have any conception of or respect for the rights of individuals. Any democracy based upon their non-thinking would lead to tyranny.
In the era of post WWII prosperity progressives and socialists in Europe and the US thought that they could suck enough blood out of the economy to support unfunded retirements and myriad other social 'benefits' and that, thus harnessed, the semi-capitalism that was allowed to exist would fund their paradise forever. Now that the European and US economies have reached the limits such blood-letting, the looters and moocher are 'protesting' that their victims are 'greedy.' The demonstrators claim that capitalism has failed because it cannot continue to finance their social welfare schemes. Like vampires, the 'protesters' will not be satisfied until they have sucked every last drop out of their victims--the 'greedy' productive men and women of Europe and the US.
The fact that anyone would even ask whether or not it would be moral to cure color blindness is a symptom of the fact that morality is still considered to be outside the realm of reason, that there is no way to get from an 'is' to an 'ought'.
Ayn Rand pretty much blew that notion out of the water when she identified the purpose and nature of morality in her essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in her book "The Virtue of Selfishness."
Instead of banning power hungry appliances, what if the commissars passed a regulation that citizens of California not buy anything that they cannot afford to operate. Oh, but wait. Most people do that anyway.
OK, since no one really needs commissars to tell them how to run their lives, why don't they just go away and leave us alone. Then if California needs more power generation capacity, someone will provide it, unless some meddlesome commissar gets in the way.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't there a large partly constructed tunnel near Waxahachie, TX which could serve as a location for a muon collider?
So they came up with that awkward description just so they could call it a Mass Wave Arc?
Must be a slow news day for this to make the headlines. There were probably no "Dog bites man" stories.
I first learned to program in BASIC in 1980 on a Sinclair ZX80 computer. I learned very fast because on any given line it would not let you enter an unexpected character nor would it let you do a newline-carriage return on a malformed statement. Granted, in 1980 I had been programming in Fortran for almost 20 years, but the immediate feedback offered by the ZX80 made learning BASIC a breeze. I still have my ZX 80 although it no longer boots up. I think its approach to teaching BASIC was clever and sound.
So how are they going to build this thing for four cents a square foot?
I was being serious.
It's great to see private companies taking steps to boost productivity by offering career women this excellent opportunity.
The US government should sell the air traffic control system to the highest bidder. That would probably be a consortium of the major airports and airlines. Any system run by bureaucratic management will necessarily be way behind the times technologically. The air traffic control system needs to be operated as a business, not a bureaucracy.
The FCC should be abolished and its policing powers transferred to the Justice Department. The airwaves should be privately owned. The government should stick to its role of enforcing contracts and has no moral authority to regulate communications media.
I'm with spy handler. Anyone with the technology and the ability to mine the moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. satisfies the basic requirements of ownership. But it is also important for the US or other government to guarantee property rights in an orderly, lawful fashion. The alternative is anarchy, where no ones rights are recognized or protected. And the gods forbid that the band of outlaws called the United Nations ever get involved.
That's almost $30B available for productive investment that will not be poured down the US tax rat hole.
Think of all the families of farriers and buggy whip makers who were ruined by the automobile. Did they all sit on their butts and starve or did they find more productive lines of work? I think the latter.
If tobacco companies sponsored research showing that tobacco was good for ones health, one would be skeptical. But what if 97% of all research by dozens of tobacco companies showed that tobacco was good for ones health. Would it be fair to call the skeptics 'anti-science?'
The public is skeptical of climate science for the same reason. Since most of the research is funded ultimately by governments and since governments tend to prefer results which justify an increase in government power, people are skeptical of government funded climate research. People who favor greater government control of economic matters will tend not to be skeptical and those who oppose increases in government power will tend to be more skeptical.
There is no mystery here and there is nothing 'anti-science' about climate science skepticism.
Give someone a title like that and they must, almost by definition, have absurd opinions.
Although 99.9% of us have the common sense to get a professional opinion if some test bought on the internet delivers bad news, the FDA denies us access to such tests on the off chance that some idiot will take rash action without consulting a physician. Were that to happen, which I seriously doubt, the worst result would be a slight improvement in the gene pool.
Several years ago I wrote an octonion calculator using javascript. To compute exp(X) for a general octonion (a type of eight dimensional number) I had to use a power series expansion and test for convergence. This is calculus. To see the code, just view the page source:
http://jwbales.us/rpnOctonion.html
It will be hundreds, perhaps thousands of years before mankind will travel to other stars unless some kind of faster than light travel becomes possible.
One or a few ships would never make it. It would have to be a journey of an entire civilization, one large enough and with the resources and technology to endure a journey lasting thousands of years. And it would only make sense to take such a journey when the resources of this solar system have been exhausted. When the Oort Cloud has been exhausted, its civilization might have the ability and the motive to make such a journey. And such a civilization will have little use for habitable planets, they will be looking for systems with lots of asteroids and other low-gravity resources.
unless limited by the concept of individual rights. The concept of individual rights was the crowning political achievement of the enlightenment and led to the creation of the Unites States of America and its semi-capitalist society. I see no evidence that the Owsers have any conception of or respect for the rights of individuals. Any democracy based upon their non-thinking would lead to tyranny.
In the era of post WWII prosperity progressives and socialists in Europe and the US thought that they could suck enough blood out of the economy to support unfunded retirements and myriad other social 'benefits' and that, thus harnessed, the semi-capitalism that was allowed to exist would fund their paradise forever. Now that the European and US economies have reached the limits such blood-letting, the looters and moocher are 'protesting' that their victims are 'greedy.' The demonstrators claim that capitalism has failed because it cannot continue to finance their social welfare schemes. Like vampires, the 'protesters' will not be satisfied until they have sucked every last drop out of their victims--the 'greedy' productive men and women of Europe and the US.
Well I guess I'm really showing my age. When I was young it was neither radio antennae nor radio antennas, it was radio aerials.
The fact that anyone would even ask whether or not it would be moral to cure color blindness is a symptom of the fact that morality is still considered to be outside the realm of reason, that there is no way to get from an 'is' to an 'ought'.
Ayn Rand pretty much blew that notion out of the water when she identified the purpose and nature of morality in her essay "The Objectivist Ethics" in her book "The Virtue of Selfishness."
Instead of banning power hungry appliances, what if the commissars passed a regulation that citizens of California not buy anything that they cannot afford to operate. Oh, but wait. Most people do that anyway.
OK, since no one really needs commissars to tell them how to run their lives, why don't they just go away and leave us alone. Then if California needs more power generation capacity, someone will provide it, unless some meddlesome commissar gets in the way.