Perhaps I'm being a little cynical, but I'm not entirely sure that many humans are capable of everything you describe, either. Moral duty, for example, is one measure on a scale of obedience. The low end is avoiding punishment, and it goes through authority, respect, etc. Your idea of moral duty is viewable as little more than a highly developed sense of altruism. While it might be a good trait in societies, from some pragmatic viewpoints, it's also just stubborn habit and isn't optimal behavior.
Personally, I think the most important piece of human intelligence is symbolism. Being able to express feelings in a painting of a scene that couldn't exist is made up of little pieces that begin with being able to contemplate object that aren't in immediate sight. I haven't tried to break things down myself, but I have a suspicion that our great reasoning is made up of hundreds of layers of abstraction, both learned through life and developed over generations.
Animals are probably capable of this kind of abstraction but it is only useful to them in a limited sense. It took thousands of years of unique circumstances until a person could eat by making emotional artwork.
And I do have to apologize, I can get a little snarky on religion, not always with good reason. I'm just not convinced that Religion is, again, anything more than a highly developed superstition.
Birds make nests and sing songs that are judged by the tastes of other birds. Whales sing complicated songs that change year to year. Many animals, especially dogs (that people see, since people associate with them often), have exhibited various self-sacrificing tendancies such as saving people or other animals, or caring for young that aren't theirs, giving up food for disadvantaged peers, etc.
Chickens, when fed at random intervals, will start to develop weird behavior based on their guesses at what the cause of being fed was. That sounds a lot like most religions I'm aware of.
Most people in the world see things as they already believe them to be.
Reminds me of a diabetic friend that participated in a dessert eating competition. He eventually gave up when he realized that if he threw up, he was (probably) going to die (he had already taken the appropriate amount of insulin).
I'm dubious. Nowhere in that article do they actually state that they tested whether mice like cheese. They state that research shows a mouse's normal diet is fruit and grain, and go on to theorize that they wouldn't like cheese because it's not natural for them.
I would figure if the study showed that mice would not eat cheese if given a preferable food, the article would have been more clear. As it is it sounds like some guy looked up 'mouse' in an encyclopedia and called that research, then went on to extrapolate that if a mouse can't find it in a field, it must not want it at all.
I have no trouble believing that cheese isn't their first choice of food, but the article and/or the study sounds terrible.
Does your local music store not have 1000 CDs? You're really going to have to be more specific what you're taking issue with. While I'm not sure what Zune's software does, as far as I'm aware the statements about the iPod match what I've heard elsewhere.
My GF has an iPod, but I don't play around with it. But we have in fact ripped CDs and put the DRM'less music* on her iPod, exactly as the GP stated.
What's the lie?
(*) - We ripped them to MP3s originally, but eventually converted everything to whatever Apple's format is so she could use some more features of the software. From what I could tell we were fully able to convert it back to MP3 if we really wanted to re-encode it for the third time.
My brief searching turned up nothing to support your claim of 'no official definition'.
I don't mean to be insulting, but is this entire argument based on vague rounding errors? The IBM 25.6 thing is just an artifact of rounding point sizes to the closest mm or fraction of an inch, and then using the 'point' measure as an intermediate (or so says the only references I found). The TV size you picked seems to be made up on the spot, and it's surprisingly difficult to find any tv stats that list both inches and metric screen diagonals. In all likelihood they probably do round up or down at their convenience. I'm guessing screen diagonal is just convention and not some regulated matter anyway.
Did you really just see some rounding errors that didn't equate and come up with this whole 'inch' is undefined thing, or are you just trolling? Otherwise, I'd like to see a reference, because I found none, and several that refer to international standards.
*nod* The about.com article didn't go into it but from what I've heard, most LCDs with a memory problem are either being forced into extremely fast color change times, or are extremely large (>24"). The former means the pixels are *very* sensitive, the latter meaning the traces per pixel are larger. In both cases, the persistance problem is simply that the capacitance voltage of the wires is approaching the lower threshold of the sensitivity of the pixels. To properly ground the traces to eliminate the problem would mean orders of magnitude more time and/or energy to turn the pixel on, which is unacceptable (ghosting, etc.)
In the end though, it's not a burn in problem, because simply powering off the system for a little bit will discharge all the capacitance. It won't be any worse 5 or 10 years down the road.
Large always-on displays can simply be much less sensitive if the content doesn't move around much.
If it happens to 5 of 30, it's a manufacturing defect, although one possibly deemed acceptable (or went unnoticed). So a poorly made LCD can have issues with pixel response - it can probably even be fixed by massaging the screen while having it flicker through the color spectrum. YMMV. It works for dead pixels, at any rate. "L" stands for liquid, so gooshing it around may very well have restorative properties. I've never seen a burned in LCD, so I can't say from experience.
The point was phosphors have a lifespan directly related to their average intensity, and for plasmas it's measurable in a matter of years if not months (for the difference between neighboring pixels).
This is a fairly well understood concept. If you graph specialization with sales, you get a U-shaped graph, where companies can be profitable selling inexpensive generic to the masses, or pricey luxury to a few. The middle-ground is generally a wasteland of failure.
This should bother people even more, then, because the generic mass-market end is in most cases immensely more profitable. The luxury end is not likely to be able to support Sony, who had the 100 million selling generic last generation.
In case you're wondering (yeah, like anyone's interesting in my opinion:) ), I think it's too early to tell if the 360 is on either end, the middle, or on another scale entirely. Their 1 year head start may well be worth something.
I'd point out that while the leatherman of systems, the PSP, is doing well enough in sales on its own, it's being thoroughly overwhelmed by the pure gaming DS in every market.
I'd posit that movies are not easily digestible as a portable experience, and the disk-based system throttles itself on some of the most critical portability factors - battery life and durability.
On the other hand, the PS3 is better suited to take advantage of its movie-playing capabilities because it sits in the same spot a normal movie playing device would. Its price range will find it most likely in the homes of those most able to use its abilities fully, and as the price of HDTVs drop, so will the PS3. Not that this guarantees success in any way, but at this point, snubbing the PS3's blu-ray is just unreasonably snotty.
BTW, I'm getting a Wii, and next year I'll probably decide between a PS3 and a PC upgrade.
I'm willing to bet that time & money invested invested in wikipedia << time wasted searching fruitlessly for some guy's webpage by 60 million people. But I'm sure the wikipedia article will link to those guy's research if I need to fact check.
No, the structure of carbon nanotubes (there are many variations) determine its electrical properties, as well materials that the tubes can be doped with. You can make them insulators or conductors.
In addition, the current idea is that the cable will be made of short filaments of carbon nanotubes glued together in some as-yet-to-be-developed fashion. The glue alone would probably make the cable non-conductive.
As a material, nanotubes have very flexible properties. By the time we're able to produce the quality and quantity necessary to make a feasible cable, we'll probably have the technology to pick and chose its attributes.
Uhm, you can put the rockets on the earth side, actually, and by rockets I mean a large mass sitting on the earth's surface. The other end of the tether can have a constant outward pull that is more than capable of counteracting any and all mass sent up the line.
As for the ionosphere, they've actually done a lot of research entirely unrelated to the space elevator including physical tests. From what I've read on it, they're not ignoring the problem, it's just not significant. The proposed carbon nanotube cable isn't really conductive and would only be affected by the very local area anyway. That doesn't ammount to much. They've even bothered to calculate whether having a conductive cable could generate any useful power. The answer was no, there's just not enough energy there to do anything useful with. Even if the cable could act as a lighting rod, lighting is the result of built up potential. Having a lightning rod to the clouds would prevent any potential from building!
A concern you didn't raise, that's nonetheless of interest (to me anyway) is the scale of the project. IIRC, the individual wires that make up the cables of the golden gate bridge if placed end to end would actually be as long as the space elevator. Probably heavier as well. Since the cable has so much surface area, and most likely would be cut very very close to the ground (ie still in atmosphere), the cable would flutter harmlessly to earth. So disaster situations are unlikely.
Well, to be honest, as the primary interface mechanism the controller is really a lot more important than the system design, the slot loading drive, or the interface that you only deal with before the game.
In college I worked at a software company where one developer arbitrarily decided that the product needed to restart when first installed. So he activated the standard windows restart routine that gives you a dialog that says "Windows will restart in 30 seconds", a graph that's counting down, and a 'restart now' button.
From the way the article states it, I understood that the problem was popup boxes requiring user authorization every time the 3rd party security software does, well, anything. This could easily be changed to be a one-time only authorization. Which could very well be hackable on its own, but on the whole generally not a gaping hole you could drive a truck through.
I'd welcome any clarification on the specifics if you have them.
I think the gist here is that they hire people who are active in their own personal projects, as this translates pretty easily to working hard on business projects that one is interested in or comitted to.
They're not making employees play hard, they're just hiring ones that do.
But I don't think you're wrong. It probably is indicative of work they're planning on extracting directly from your soul.
Slashdot Mirror
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sickle_cell#Genetics
Good reply.
Perhaps I'm being a little cynical, but I'm not entirely sure that many humans are capable of everything you describe, either. Moral duty, for example, is one measure on a scale of obedience. The low end is avoiding punishment, and it goes through authority, respect, etc. Your idea of moral duty is viewable as little more than a highly developed sense of altruism. While it might be a good trait in societies, from some pragmatic viewpoints, it's also just stubborn habit and isn't optimal behavior.
Personally, I think the most important piece of human intelligence is symbolism. Being able to express feelings in a painting of a scene that couldn't exist is made up of little pieces that begin with being able to contemplate object that aren't in immediate sight. I haven't tried to break things down myself, but I have a suspicion that our great reasoning is made up of hundreds of layers of abstraction, both learned through life and developed over generations.
Animals are probably capable of this kind of abstraction but it is only useful to them in a limited sense. It took thousands of years of unique circumstances until a person could eat by making emotional artwork.
And I do have to apologize, I can get a little snarky on religion, not always with good reason. I'm just not convinced that Religion is, again, anything more than a highly developed superstition.
Birds make nests and sing songs that are judged by the tastes of other birds. Whales sing complicated songs that change year to year. Many animals, especially dogs (that people see, since people associate with them often), have exhibited various self-sacrificing tendancies such as saving people or other animals, or caring for young that aren't theirs, giving up food for disadvantaged peers, etc.
Chickens, when fed at random intervals, will start to develop weird behavior based on their guesses at what the cause of being fed was. That sounds a lot like most religions I'm aware of.
Most people in the world see things as they already believe them to be.
Reminds me of a diabetic friend that participated in a dessert eating competition. He eventually gave up when he realized that if he threw up, he was (probably) going to die (he had already taken the appropriate amount of insulin).
He's very skinny, btw.
I'm dubious. Nowhere in that article do they actually state that they tested whether mice like cheese. They state that research shows a mouse's normal diet is fruit and grain, and go on to theorize that they wouldn't like cheese because it's not natural for them.
I would figure if the study showed that mice would not eat cheese if given a preferable food, the article would have been more clear. As it is it sounds like some guy looked up 'mouse' in an encyclopedia and called that research, then went on to extrapolate that if a mouse can't find it in a field, it must not want it at all.
I have no trouble believing that cheese isn't their first choice of food, but the article and/or the study sounds terrible.
"You must be new here."
Fixed
You're just lucky there isn't a -1 Heretic mod!
Does your local music store not have 1000 CDs? You're really going to have to be more specific what you're taking issue with. While I'm not sure what Zune's software does, as far as I'm aware the statements about the iPod match what I've heard elsewhere.
My GF has an iPod, but I don't play around with it. But we have in fact ripped CDs and put the DRM'less music* on her iPod, exactly as the GP stated.
What's the lie?
(*) - We ripped them to MP3s originally, but eventually converted everything to whatever Apple's format is so she could use some more features of the software. From what I could tell we were fully able to convert it back to MP3 if we really wanted to re-encode it for the third time.
My brief searching turned up nothing to support your claim of 'no official definition'.
I don't mean to be insulting, but is this entire argument based on vague rounding errors? The IBM 25.6 thing is just an artifact of rounding point sizes to the closest mm or fraction of an inch, and then using the 'point' measure as an intermediate (or so says the only references I found). The TV size you picked seems to be made up on the spot, and it's surprisingly difficult to find any tv stats that list both inches and metric screen diagonals. In all likelihood they probably do round up or down at their convenience. I'm guessing screen diagonal is just convention and not some regulated matter anyway.
Did you really just see some rounding errors that didn't equate and come up with this whole 'inch' is undefined thing, or are you just trolling? Otherwise, I'd like to see a reference, because I found none, and several that refer to international standards.
*nod*
The about.com article didn't go into it but from what I've heard, most LCDs with a memory problem are either being forced into extremely fast color change times, or are extremely large (>24"). The former means the pixels are *very* sensitive, the latter meaning the traces per pixel are larger. In both cases, the persistance problem is simply that the capacitance voltage of the wires is approaching the lower threshold of the sensitivity of the pixels. To properly ground the traces to eliminate the problem would mean orders of magnitude more time and/or energy to turn the pixel on, which is unacceptable (ghosting, etc.)
In the end though, it's not a burn in problem, because simply powering off the system for a little bit will discharge all the capacitance. It won't be any worse 5 or 10 years down the road.
Large always-on displays can simply be much less sensitive if the content doesn't move around much.
If it happens to 5 of 30, it's a manufacturing defect, although one possibly deemed acceptable (or went unnoticed). So a poorly made LCD can have issues with pixel response - it can probably even be fixed by massaging the screen while having it flicker through the color spectrum. YMMV. It works for dead pixels, at any rate. "L" stands for liquid, so gooshing it around may very well have restorative properties. I've never seen a burned in LCD, so I can't say from experience.
The point was phosphors have a lifespan directly related to their average intensity, and for plasmas it's measurable in a matter of years if not months (for the difference between neighboring pixels).
This is a fairly well understood concept. If you graph specialization with sales, you get a U-shaped graph, where companies can be profitable selling inexpensive generic to the masses, or pricey luxury to a few. The middle-ground is generally a wasteland of failure.
:) ), I think it's too early to tell if the 360 is on either end, the middle, or on another scale entirely. Their 1 year head start may well be worth something.
This should bother people even more, then, because the generic mass-market end is in most cases immensely more profitable. The luxury end is not likely to be able to support Sony, who had the 100 million selling generic last generation.
In case you're wondering (yeah, like anyone's interesting in my opinion
I'd point out that while the leatherman of systems, the PSP, is doing well enough in sales on its own, it's being thoroughly overwhelmed by the pure gaming DS in every market.
I'd posit that movies are not easily digestible as a portable experience, and the disk-based system throttles itself on some of the most critical portability factors - battery life and durability.
On the other hand, the PS3 is better suited to take advantage of its movie-playing capabilities because it sits in the same spot a normal movie playing device would. Its price range will find it most likely in the homes of those most able to use its abilities fully, and as the price of HDTVs drop, so will the PS3. Not that this guarantees success in any way, but at this point, snubbing the PS3's blu-ray is just unreasonably snotty.
BTW, I'm getting a Wii, and next year I'll probably decide between a PS3 and a PC upgrade.
Well, the major difference being that it's a heck of a lot easier to hide a fish in the ocean than to hide an elephant, well, anywhere.
One person with a gun could kill every elephant if they really tried hard enough.
Educate them! Affluent populations breed less. Support OLPC and outsourced tech workers today!
(I'm not even sure how facetious I'm being.)
I wonder how long it took him to find another word that was also blocked and ended up with 'adorable'.
"Surely these pr0n sites couldn't really be phising! Let's try some other words!"
Heh.
I'm willing to bet that time & money invested invested in wikipedia << time wasted searching fruitlessly for some guy's webpage by 60 million people. But I'm sure the wikipedia article will link to those guy's research if I need to fact check.
No, the structure of carbon nanotubes (there are many variations) determine its electrical properties, as well materials that the tubes can be doped with. You can make them insulators or conductors.
In addition, the current idea is that the cable will be made of short filaments of carbon nanotubes glued together in some as-yet-to-be-developed fashion. The glue alone would probably make the cable non-conductive.
As a material, nanotubes have very flexible properties. By the time we're able to produce the quality and quantity necessary to make a feasible cable, we'll probably have the technology to pick and chose its attributes.
Uhm, you can put the rockets on the earth side, actually, and by rockets I mean a large mass sitting on the earth's surface. The other end of the tether can have a constant outward pull that is more than capable of counteracting any and all mass sent up the line.
As for the ionosphere, they've actually done a lot of research entirely unrelated to the space elevator including physical tests. From what I've read on it, they're not ignoring the problem, it's just not significant. The proposed carbon nanotube cable isn't really conductive and would only be affected by the very local area anyway. That doesn't ammount to much. They've even bothered to calculate whether having a conductive cable could generate any useful power. The answer was no, there's just not enough energy there to do anything useful with. Even if the cable could act as a lighting rod, lighting is the result of built up potential. Having a lightning rod to the clouds would prevent any potential from building!
A concern you didn't raise, that's nonetheless of interest (to me anyway) is the scale of the project. IIRC, the individual wires that make up the cables of the golden gate bridge if placed end to end would actually be as long as the space elevator. Probably heavier as well. Since the cable has so much surface area, and most likely would be cut very very close to the ground (ie still in atmosphere), the cable would flutter harmlessly to earth. So disaster situations are unlikely.
Well, to be honest, as the primary interface mechanism the controller is really a lot more important than the system design, the slot loading drive, or the interface that you only deal with before the game.
In college I worked at a software company where one developer arbitrarily decided that the product needed to restart when first installed. So he activated the standard windows restart routine that gives you a dialog that says "Windows will restart in 30 seconds", a graph that's counting down, and a 'restart now' button.
QA didn't have a cow, they had an entire herd.
From the way the article states it, I understood that the problem was popup boxes requiring user authorization every time the 3rd party security software does, well, anything. This could easily be changed to be a one-time only authorization. Which could very well be hackable on its own, but on the whole generally not a gaping hole you could drive a truck through.
I'd welcome any clarification on the specifics if you have them.
Swapping the OS in and out of memory?
I think the gist here is that they hire people who are active in their own personal projects, as this translates pretty easily to working hard on business projects that one is interested in or comitted to.
They're not making employees play hard, they're just hiring ones that do.
But I don't think you're wrong. It probably is indicative of work they're planning on extracting directly from your soul.
http://www.abcgallery.com/M/magritte/magritte26.JP G