Gravity -- certainly the weakest force -- is completely irrelevant as far as the physics of elementary particles is concerned. Unless you're talking about the big bang, which is what this computation is all about trying to understand.
Futurama is the most predictable show ever. An evil santa clause, a jewish lobster that everyone hates, constant 21st century references via heads in jars. I have never so much as chuckled while watching Futurama.
If you're offering me a 10/6,000,000,000 chance of me and my family being amongst the people who croak painfully and horribly after a protracted radiation-induced illness, then you bet it's a done deal. (But the difference is 0.03c, and about 8 million tons of payload that could save humanity.)
Some people have sacrificed their lives for the space program directly, would I sacrifice my life 10/6,000,000,000% of the time? If 10/6,000,000,000 sounds unreasonable to you then you need to learn the odds that you'll get run over by a drunk driver, or the odds of getting cancer from smoking. If you're a smoker then your second hand smoke is statically far more dangerous, and your second hand smoke doesn't have any chance of potentially saving humanity.
These black and white "if something will die then we cannot do it" is the reason millions of lives aren't saved through things like stem cell research or animal testing. Black and white ethics like those presented in your post are the cause of a lot of evil.
Oh give me a break, if you use an undocumented API for something that does not mean you "cripple" other pieces of software. It's not like OS-X says "oooo Firefox, quick make it run twice as slow". Grow up. Developing your platform in a way that gives you an advantage over the competition? Yeah, that seems perfectly fair. It's not like the EU just sued another company 1.4 billion dollars for doing exactly that.
I stand corrected (although I read otherwise elsewhere so I'm not making this up, someone else is).
Anyway the point is it's a bad policy, whether it was conceived post or pre election doesn't make a difference to whether it will be effective, which it won't, whether it'll cost a huge amount, which it will, and whether it has privacy and freedom of speech concerns, which it does.
Google the Orion project; immense thrust from nuclear bombs. Using existing technology we could get up to 0.3c, and get millions of tonnes of payload up into space (something that is simply impossible with conventional rockets).
The problem is nuclear fallout of course, estimates are that ~10 more people would die from cancer per launch, but if cleaner nukes could be devised it would blow all other methods of space travel out of the water.
I was thinking about somehow exploiting the explosive chemical energy in our gasoline reserves, but I'm totally stumped on how to convert an explosive expansion of gas into torque..
That's the election policy document, it pretty clearly outlines mandatory filtering, you can even scrounge around and find the announcement of the original policy by Kim Beazley as leader if you can be bothered. It outlines that it will be mandatory that ISPs offer an option to have filtering. It doesn't outline that it is mandatory that filtering will be there by default, until you explicitly say that you want it off.
The old behavior is always better, until you start to use the new behavior.
When FF2 came out I didn't like the close buttons on the tabs, or the way that they were curved and didn't fit in with Windows' tabs, I didn't like the bland new icons, and it all seemed like a bunch of hype.
Of course now I like FF2, I like how the icons are less colorful and draw less attention, and FF3 seems like the scary new release threatening to ruin something that was perfectly good before.
Same goes for new releases of any software, from OSes to games.
MS also has existing software available for making Windows UNIX compatible, "UNIX Services for Windows", if memory serves. It's not a long distance from that to GNU compatibility.
With Cygwin already around, and UNIX being open and readily able to be integrated into Windows, it would be a smart way to envelop potential UNIX users. Personally I'd like a Microsoft supported Cygwin, which isn't as buggy and doesn't feel as detached from Windows.
This is going to be modded to oblivion, but isn't 1.4bn rather excessive? Don't the success of OS X and Firefox, and RealPlayer and Quicktime, indicate that MS's platform is still open enough to have competition? If there's not enough competition for people to replace MS's media player why should the EU take special measures to make it easier for the competition?
Why not get MS to debundle notepad because it competes with UltraEdit-32? Because UltraEdit-32 is such an improvement that some people will pay for it, and if they don't then notepad is enough for their needs.
They're opening up new anti-trust commissions as well, and they seem to be trying to force MS to debundle their media player and internet browser, as if any desktop OS on earth ships without a media browser or internet browser.
It just seems like the EU is abusing its regulatory power to cash in. Why don't the EU bully Wal-Mart around too? As long as they put the fines lower than the profits Wal-mart rake in from Europe they have to comply.
The huge change that was never announced by Labor pre-election is that the internet filter is mandatory for all ISPs, and is opt-out. If it was non-mandatory and opt-in like the Liberal's filter then it doesn't matter, except for some wasted tax dollars. Opt-out makes a huge difference, and Labor never announced this policy pre-election.
They went to the election with this policy, it has been policy for > 12 months, if you're too lazy to look up policy that's your problem. Show me where it said the internet filters would be mandatory. The liberal government had non-mandatory opt-in internet filtering software available, but no-one wanted it. Now Labor is forcing it down our throats, and they did not say it would be mandatory for ISPs or opt-out pre-election.
Those liberal ads were idiotic and laughed at by most. As opposed to trying to make the internet child-safe by default? Trying to stop cyber-bullying at a nationwide level with a filter? You're right I can't laugh about that, when I think about how much money they're going to waste.
The election was about many more and much more important issues than internet filters.
If that's the only thing I have to put up with to get rid of the racist, fear playing, warmongering, economy trashing, worker exploiting, power hungry, anti-federalist howard government then I will be an extraordinarily happy man. No comment. You probably wear a "Kevin '07" shirt, are Kevin's MySpace friend, and actually bought into his talk of change while he copied Liberal policy. Better to just wait a few years until the hype dies down than try to argue.
Just noting that the article posted after this one, which is on the Australian internet filters going through, wasn't on the front page when I posted this comment.
Everyone is referring to the "Australian Government", I feel I have to point out that this is the Australian Labor Government, which was recently elected.
The Australian Liberal Government had a different idea on how to stop kids running into unsavory characters; tell them about the risks and what to look out for. There was a widely run and very successful ad campaign, which just gives kids the message "weird old guys will lie to you online, so don't believe everything you're told". Problem: Guys tricking kids online. Solution: Let all the kids and parents know that guys will do that, so watch out for it. Makes sense right?
The Australian Labor Government, shortly after being elected, decided that the impossible task of making the internet pre-school safe was a better solution.
Unfortunately we have to wait a few years while Australia realizes Labor is a big step backwards, Rudd said whatever he needed to get in (a pro-coal government who pledge to ratify Kyoto, there's sincerity for you), and we can go back to Liberal.
This is an even bigger issue in Australia, where under the new Labor government the new telecommunications minister is pushing for mandatory internet filters to prevent, among a long list of other things, "cyber bullying". I have no idea how they are going to prevent that with a nationwide internet filter. The whole thing is being sold with figures like the one being demolished in this article.
Online civil libertarians have warned the freedom of the internet is at stake, but Senator Conroy says that is nonsense.
He says the scheme will better protect children from pornography and violent websites.
"Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road," he said.
"If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree."
Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.
(Rudd-Labor in bold to emphasise that this wasn't a problem under the Liberals, who had a realistic approach based on educating children, which was very successful, rather than trying to make the internet pre-school safe.. To any Aussies reading let's bring the Liberals back next election.)
You don't have to navigate MSDN. You put your cursor on the desired function, and press F1. Alternately you can search for the function/class name, and it usually shows the correct item in the first 3 or 4 results. Replace F1 with F2 and Eclipse with PDT does the same thing. phpDoc is used very similarly to Microsoft's way of being able to comment code.
Also the GP who promoted Java; it's now very easy to use Java functions from within PHP, so if you require Java it's no problem to use it from directly within a PHP app. Also PHP6 will bring namespaces, so I think all of the gripes about PHP I've seen so far in this topic are outdated.
I agree that creating an AI probably won't involve programming the intelligence itself, but programming some sort of framework that will allow the intelligence to come into being by some other process. But even that is a long way off, and I think understanding what sort of framework the brain uses will be vital.
I've read "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker, who is a neuroscientist, and he makes the case that consciousness works using replicating patterns in endlessly repeated parallel trunks of neurons, and the patterns use natural selection to filter out the right pattern.
It sounds lame summarized into a single sentence but read in full it's a very interesting and compelling argument, founded on real observations of neuron structures in the brain, and does give an idea of how an intelligence could form from simple brute force processing power.
It's not a huge book either, and it's for laymen and has a small chapter on AI towards the end, so maybe you'd get something out of it.
Anyway my point is we should try and mimic the brain's workings if we want to achieve the brain's results, and I think trying to leap ahead to AI development is probably going to be premature if we don't first understand how the brain does it.
This means that for each pixel in the image, they can determine what kind of atom is being measured. So they can generate false-color maps of atomic identity. That's interesting. I guess this microscope will have lots of applications. At first thought - in semiconductors production, carbon allotropes and God knows where else. Just look at the images in the article; you can clearly distinguish lanthanum from titanium, manganese, and manganese-lanthanum. From that list alone the mind boggles with potential applications.
Many people have worked on the area which they think AI is lacking in, but until we understand the brain (or even come up with a good definition of "intelligence") I don't think we'll get very far. But who knows, keep on looking!
There are a lot of uses for extra computing power though, it's not like we've reached a point where we have too much. Protein folding and climate models are the first that come to mind, but I'm sure there are many others. Companies aren't building these things for fun.
In summary: You are saying that this is the cheapest, most reliable lamp, which is perfectly suited to third world countries and is dead simple, but it has never been thought of before this "greener gadgets" competition (which mentions nothing about price or the third world), even though other more complicated designs have been thought of and are in use.
Well I hope you're right and this fancy floor-lamp changes the world for the better.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
Futurama is the most predictable show ever. An evil santa clause, a jewish lobster that everyone hates, constant 21st century references via heads in jars. I have never so much as chuckled while watching Futurama.
Lets postulate an entirely new field/form of matter/universe to explain this phenomenon!
If you're offering me a 10/6,000,000,000 chance of me and my family being amongst the people who croak painfully and horribly after a protracted radiation-induced illness, then you bet it's a done deal. (But the difference is 0.03c, and about 8 million tons of payload that could save humanity.)
Some people have sacrificed their lives for the space program directly, would I sacrifice my life 10/6,000,000,000% of the time? If 10/6,000,000,000 sounds unreasonable to you then you need to learn the odds that you'll get run over by a drunk driver, or the odds of getting cancer from smoking. If you're a smoker then your second hand smoke is statically far more dangerous, and your second hand smoke doesn't have any chance of potentially saving humanity.
These black and white "if something will die then we cannot do it" is the reason millions of lives aren't saved through things like stem cell research or animal testing. Black and white ethics like those presented in your post are the cause of a lot of evil.
Honestly I don't know if you're being sarcastic.. This could allow humanity to realistically colonize other planets.
I stand corrected (although I read otherwise elsewhere so I'm not making this up, someone else is).
Anyway the point is it's a bad policy, whether it was conceived post or pre election doesn't make a difference to whether it will be effective, which it won't, whether it'll cost a huge amount, which it will, and whether it has privacy and freedom of speech concerns, which it does.
Google the Orion project; immense thrust from nuclear bombs. Using existing technology we could get up to 0.3c, and get millions of tonnes of payload up into space (something that is simply impossible with conventional rockets).
The problem is nuclear fallout of course, estimates are that ~10 more people would die from cancer per launch, but if cleaner nukes could be devised it would blow all other methods of space travel out of the water.
I was thinking about somehow exploiting the explosive chemical energy in our gasoline reserves, but I'm totally stumped on how to convert an explosive expansion of gas into torque..
The old behavior is always better, until you start to use the new behavior.
When FF2 came out I didn't like the close buttons on the tabs, or the way that they were curved and didn't fit in with Windows' tabs, I didn't like the bland new icons, and it all seemed like a bunch of hype.
Of course now I like FF2, I like how the icons are less colorful and draw less attention, and FF3 seems like the scary new release threatening to ruin something that was perfectly good before.
Same goes for new releases of any software, from OSes to games.
I didn't know they posted pure non-tech humor on /.
MS also has existing software available for making Windows UNIX compatible, "UNIX Services for Windows", if memory serves. It's not a long distance from that to GNU compatibility.
With Cygwin already around, and UNIX being open and readily able to be integrated into Windows, it would be a smart way to envelop potential UNIX users. Personally I'd like a Microsoft supported Cygwin, which isn't as buggy and doesn't feel as detached from Windows.
This is going to be modded to oblivion, but isn't 1.4bn rather excessive? Don't the success of OS X and Firefox, and RealPlayer and Quicktime, indicate that MS's platform is still open enough to have competition? If there's not enough competition for people to replace MS's media player why should the EU take special measures to make it easier for the competition?
Why not get MS to debundle notepad because it competes with UltraEdit-32? Because UltraEdit-32 is such an improvement that some people will pay for it, and if they don't then notepad is enough for their needs.
They're opening up new anti-trust commissions as well, and they seem to be trying to force MS to debundle their media player and internet browser, as if any desktop OS on earth ships without a media browser or internet browser.
It just seems like the EU is abusing its regulatory power to cash in. Why don't the EU bully Wal-Mart around too? As long as they put the fines lower than the profits Wal-mart rake in from Europe they have to comply.
If we do decide to revive the sun by sending a payload of quantum sparkles, I suggest not sending a religious nut-job who is obsessed with sunlight.
My 2c.
The huge change that was never announced by Labor pre-election is that the internet filter is mandatory for all ISPs, and is opt-out. If it was non-mandatory and opt-in like the Liberal's filter then it doesn't matter, except for some wasted tax dollars. Opt-out makes a huge difference, and Labor never announced this policy pre-election.
Those liberal ads were idiotic and laughed at by most. As opposed to trying to make the internet child-safe by default? Trying to stop cyber-bullying at a nationwide level with a filter? You're right I can't laugh about that, when I think about how much money they're going to waste. The election was about many more and much more important issues than internet filters.
If that's the only thing I have to put up with to get rid of the racist, fear playing, warmongering, economy trashing, worker exploiting, power hungry, anti-federalist howard government then I will be an extraordinarily happy man. No comment. You probably wear a "Kevin '07" shirt, are Kevin's MySpace friend, and actually bought into his talk of change while he copied Liberal policy. Better to just wait a few years until the hype dies down than try to argue.
Just noting that the article posted after this one, which is on the Australian internet filters going through, wasn't on the front page when I posted this comment.
Everyone is referring to the "Australian Government", I feel I have to point out that this is the Australian Labor Government, which was recently elected.
The Australian Liberal Government had a different idea on how to stop kids running into unsavory characters; tell them about the risks and what to look out for. There was a widely run and very successful ad campaign, which just gives kids the message "weird old guys will lie to you online, so don't believe everything you're told". Problem: Guys tricking kids online. Solution: Let all the kids and parents know that guys will do that, so watch out for it. Makes sense right?
The Australian Labor Government, shortly after being elected, decided that the impossible task of making the internet pre-school safe was a better solution.
Unfortunately we have to wait a few years while Australia realizes Labor is a big step backwards, Rudd said whatever he needed to get in (a pro-coal government who pledge to ratify Kyoto, there's sincerity for you), and we can go back to Liberal.
(Rudd-Labor in bold to emphasise that this wasn't a problem under the Liberals, who had a realistic approach based on educating children, which was very successful, rather than trying to make the internet pre-school safe.. To any Aussies reading let's bring the Liberals back next election.)
Thanks for the well written informative article.
Also the GP who promoted Java; it's now very easy to use Java functions from within PHP, so if you require Java it's no problem to use it from directly within a PHP app. Also PHP6 will bring namespaces, so I think all of the gripes about PHP I've seen so far in this topic are outdated.
I agree that creating an AI probably won't involve programming the intelligence itself, but programming some sort of framework that will allow the intelligence to come into being by some other process. But even that is a long way off, and I think understanding what sort of framework the brain uses will be vital.
I've read "How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker, who is a neuroscientist, and he makes the case that consciousness works using replicating patterns in endlessly repeated parallel trunks of neurons, and the patterns use natural selection to filter out the right pattern.
It sounds lame summarized into a single sentence but read in full it's a very interesting and compelling argument, founded on real observations of neuron structures in the brain, and does give an idea of how an intelligence could form from simple brute force processing power.
It's not a huge book either, and it's for laymen and has a small chapter on AI towards the end, so maybe you'd get something out of it.
Anyway my point is we should try and mimic the brain's workings if we want to achieve the brain's results, and I think trying to leap ahead to AI development is probably going to be premature if we don't first understand how the brain does it.
Many people have worked on the area which they think AI is lacking in, but until we understand the brain (or even come up with a good definition of "intelligence") I don't think we'll get very far. But who knows, keep on looking!
There are a lot of uses for extra computing power though, it's not like we've reached a point where we have too much. Protein folding and climate models are the first that come to mind, but I'm sure there are many others. Companies aren't building these things for fun.
In summary: You are saying that this is the cheapest, most reliable lamp, which is perfectly suited to third world countries and is dead simple, but it has never been thought of before this "greener gadgets" competition (which mentions nothing about price or the third world), even though other more complicated designs have been thought of and are in use.
:-)
Well I hope you're right and this fancy floor-lamp changes the world for the better.