I generally agree with this, but people choosing to profit is not evil at this point in our evolution, and may never be.
seven of the largest companies on the planet, whose sole business plans are to exploit the free exchange of information by putting up artificial barriers and charging for access to things
This is true as far as their own IP goes, but this isn't generally true even for Apple and Microsoft. Google in particular is doing quite the opposite. They are providing access to all the information they can, for the cheapest possible price. I don't really see how any other large companies are doing this either.
They're creating the next Dark Age
You can't even accuse Microsoft of that. You might have argued they've slowed things down a bit, but "Dark Age" is pretty fucking far from reality.
the power imbalance between the information-rich and the information-poor is growing, exponentially.
There's some truthiness here, if you squint a bit...however the "information-poor" is rapidly heading towards zero. So what's really happening is that everyone is becoming enriched.
They don't actually move the books around, but they rename the aisles, recategorize things, and generally make a massive mess of it all.
Astronomical knowledge is evolving quite a bit faster than the rest of the library. I'm not necessarily saying that any IAU decisions are correct but I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with recategorizing. Isn't it that a hallmark of the intelligent?
Um, have you any experience with dealing with Microsoft or even read any articles about how it's managed?
Perhaps you're not familiar with spinoffs. The whole idea is to get promising technology and develop it outside of the companies normal structure.
Don't be fooled by the UID, I never commented much in the eraly days and I lost my first (unused) account. Over the thirteen years I've perused these pages I've come to know Microsoft well.
With regard to Apple, Microsoft will ALWAYS fail at this contest
Microsoft will eventually split, or at least begin creating spinoffs with separate governance. Small agile units backed by all that research and cash could be very very disruptive.
The most important thing is to get a machine targeted at enterprise use, they are much more durable than consumer laptops. Don't worry too much about the CPU etc.
All of the things this machine can do relate to the surface tension in the bubbles. Without that, you'd just be shining lights into a bottle. That's why the bubble is a remote controlled robot.
Nooope. From TFA: "This level of control allows for very fine manipulation of small objects, and the picture below shows how a bubble robot has pushed glass beads around to form the letters "UH"
the bubble doesn't execute software or follow a program.
I think it's safe to assume those lasers are computer controlled, given they are using the term "robot" and some other obvious issues. Having the computing and control infrastructure external to the manipulator doesn't stop it from being a robot, it just becomes a remote controlled robot!
If I throw a ball, and that ball hits something, say a "physical object", and it "manipulates" that object, is the ball now a robot?
I'm starting to get the impression that the changes associated with this singularity, while certainly amazing, are not necessarily going to be psychologically comfortable for us flesh bags. I mean, this stuff is only the beginning. Are future software beings going to look pitifully on us because we're traumatized from our world changing underneath us so many times?
Years ago I got curious about tool use by other species. I found this little gem, which is notable not just because of forward planning but includes the concept of bait. Bait besides being a tool, IMO implies theory of mind of another species.
When I was working with the White Marline Porpoise Circus in Port Aransas, Texas, I watched a dolphin there, named Pete (a bottlenose from Florida) do a similar thing. There was a pelican that would steal his fish if we threw them in the wrong direction, so it seemed Pete was tired of this.
One day between shows, we noticed about 8 fish, about 2-6 inches under the surface, in a circular ring, fairly evenly spaced. As they would sink, Pete went around to each one, pushing each one in turn, to the surface. The pelican appeared interested and wary. After about 10 minutes of this, the pelican flew and dove for one of the fish -- Pete grabbed him, and took him to the bottom and drowned him.
First time I had thought of this as "tool use". This shows that the behavioroccurs in tursiops as well.
It's a particlar kind of copy/write error that leads to another process. From TFA:
One type of error is duplication, when the DNA-copying machinery accidentally copies a section of the genome twice. The second copy can be changed in future copies — gaining mutations or losing parts.
The researchers scanned the human genome for these duplications, and found that many of them seem to play a role in the developing brain.
[...]
An extra copy of a gene gives evolution something to work with: Like modeling clay, this gene isn't essential like the original copy, so changes can be made to it without damaging the resulting organism.
I don't think you read what I wrote very carefully.
Point taken re: your topic, partly. That post only referred to Fahrenheit, however this thread and indeed the sentence Shompol responded to are about the metric system.
Why do you object to my use of the term centigrade?
Celsius is not centigrade because it references Kelvin, not phase changes of water at approximately 1 bar. It's no longer in widespread use for this reason, however upon further thought "centigrade" is correct in the context of your post, and I will use it further below.
I did not say "metric sucks".
Fair enough, "Sucks" is over-stating it, however it's overall a fair summary of what you said. I don't think the European man is a valid argument because I suspect he may be more familiar with the freezing point of Vodka. Although my general point here is that measuring systems should be easy to use by ordinary people, I can't agree with choosing a measuring system on the basis of people that don't understand the difference between scales. I am certain this example is uncommon
I was describing the advantages of the centigrade (Celcius) temperature scale over the Fahrenheiht
I agree that degrees C & F have perhaps the smallest differences of any comparable scales. Fahrenheit is confusing and annoying for metric users because it lacks the salient consistency that is throughout the metric system. To put this in other words, you can easily use the "centigrade" system (in the context of human senses, not measuring instruments) because of said salient consistency, but we can not easily use the Fahrenheit system unless we learn a bunch of seemingly arbitrary numbers, which we don't.
the argument about ease of conversion is powerful. However this argument is meaningless in daily life [quoting across posts here]
Daily life is where it's most powerful. When the measuring system is consistent and intuitive you can do much more complicated things without a calculator. Perhaps the biggest difference of all is that there's a compound effect in usability that is missing from the imperial system.
In fact, if I had to figure out how much five gallons of water weighed in pounds, I would first convert it to liters and then convert to pounds.
'nuff said.
I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking
It's increasingly common for recipes to specify mass for a variety of reasons related to accuracy. Measuring mass also means you don't make a whole bunch of measuring cups dirty because you just put one pot on the weighing scales and zero it after each addition.
In the real world you get both volumes and masses, often in the one recipe. When it's easy to convert you don't have to rewrite every recipe that uses volume. I frequently compare recipes from three or more books with their inevitable varied units. Easy conversion means not busting out a spreadsheet to understand the differences.
Over time you come to know the specific gravity of things that aren't water and for which accuracy is not paramount. You know that 83 grams of olive oil is very close to 100 ml.
This is useful in lots of place you might not think of. My high school job was in a vineyard, we often knew the volume of the liquid we had (fuel, wine, chemicals) but the tractors lifting power in kilograms. Life is convenient when you can be confident in your conversion while still sitting on the tractor
Slashdot Mirror
Knowledge should be free.
I generally agree with this, but people choosing to profit is not evil at this point in our evolution, and may never be.
seven of the largest companies on the planet, whose sole business plans are to exploit the free exchange of information by putting up artificial barriers and charging for access to things
This is true as far as their own IP goes, but this isn't generally true even for Apple and Microsoft. Google in particular is doing quite the opposite. They are providing access to all the information they can, for the cheapest possible price. I don't really see how any other large companies are doing this either.
They're creating the next Dark Age
You can't even accuse Microsoft of that. You might have argued they've slowed things down a bit, but "Dark Age" is pretty fucking far from reality.
the power imbalance between the information-rich and the information-poor is growing, exponentially.
There's some truthiness here, if you squint a bit...however the "information-poor" is rapidly heading towards zero. So what's really happening is that everyone is becoming enriched.
Well, you could always blink, or just close your eyes.
Screen Savers!
other than about 387 billion thermocouples
You can't realistically generate electricity with a thermocouple. With this thing you can.
Curiosity in fact uses a radioisotope thermal generator...
3000 WiFi radios emiting together on how many channels and using what bandwidth ?
Yeah, all 3000 devices will have high gain antennas and be on the same stretch of road.
Most of the improvement is likely due to increased distance between the amplification circuits and the noisy AC/DC power supply.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but the two most important things are the converters and the clock.
a lot of people live in slums next to the rich people's fenced mansions
Sounds a little bit like South Africa, or to some extent the USA.
This article says:
There is no agreed upon definition about what all these nations have in common apart from having a significant population of European descent.
They don't actually move the books around, but they rename the aisles, recategorize things, and generally make a massive mess of it all.
Astronomical knowledge is evolving quite a bit faster than the rest of the library. I'm not necessarily saying that any IAU decisions are correct but I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with recategorizing. Isn't it that a hallmark of the intelligent?
Um, have you any experience with dealing with Microsoft or even read any articles about how it's managed?
Perhaps you're not familiar with spinoffs. The whole idea is to get promising technology and develop it outside of the companies normal structure.
Don't be fooled by the UID, I never commented much in the eraly days and I lost my first (unused) account. Over the thirteen years I've perused these pages I've come to know Microsoft well.
With regard to Apple, Microsoft will ALWAYS fail at this contest
Microsoft will eventually split, or at least begin creating spinoffs with separate governance. Small agile units backed by all that research and cash could be very very disruptive.
So build in some redundancy when you make valves.
LOL...another valve in a spacecraft is really going to help when one is stuck open!
The most important thing is to get a machine targeted at enterprise use, they are much more durable than consumer laptops. Don't worry too much about the CPU etc.
All of the things this machine can do relate to the surface tension in the bubbles. Without that, you'd just be shining lights into a bottle. That's why the bubble is a remote controlled robot.
The bubble doesn't manipulate anything
Nooope. From TFA: "This level of control allows for very fine manipulation of small objects, and the picture below shows how a bubble robot has pushed glass beads around to form the letters "UH"
the bubble doesn't execute software or follow a program.
I think it's safe to assume those lasers are computer controlled, given they are using the term "robot" and some other obvious issues. Having the computing and control infrastructure external to the manipulator doesn't stop it from being a robot, it just becomes a remote controlled robot!
If I throw a ball, and that ball hits something, say a "physical object", and it "manipulates" that object, is the ball now a robot?
Think outside the bubble!
I'm wondering where the point is when a bubble all of a sudden becomes a robot.
If their bubbles can manipulate physical objects according to a program then its a robot.
Multitasking strikes me as being a bad idea too.
FASTER, PLEASE!!
I'm starting to get the impression that the changes associated with this singularity, while certainly amazing, are not necessarily going to be psychologically comfortable for us flesh bags. I mean, this stuff is only the beginning. Are future software beings going to look pitifully on us because we're traumatized from our world changing underneath us so many times?
measuring one collapses the wave-function of the other and allows both parties to know what the state is simultaneously
seems like a great argument against eavesdropping, but I'm not seeing how it's an argument against FTL communication.
I suspect that in the even of a catastrophic file system error, the car will simply stop.
When I was working with the White Marline Porpoise Circus in Port Aransas, Texas, I watched a dolphin there, named Pete (a bottlenose from Florida) do a similar thing. There was a pelican that would steal his fish if we threw them in the wrong direction, so it seemed Pete was tired of this.
One day between shows, we noticed about 8 fish, about 2-6 inches under the surface, in a circular ring, fairly evenly spaced. As they would sink, Pete went around to each one, pushing each one in turn, to the surface. The pelican appeared interested and wary. After about 10 minutes of this, the pelican flew and dove for one of the fish -- Pete grabbed him, and took him to the bottom and drowned him. First time I had thought of this as "tool use". This shows that the behavioroccurs in tursiops as well.
Facebook's failure carries no costs for its users.
Some would argue that you confused facebooks users with its product.Others would remind you of the existence of Facebook credits.
I did not read that crap either.
"hashtag symbols" is rather circular
Curiously, "Hash Inspired Skyscraper" is also circular, and yet "The Hash Inspired Skyscraper" is anything but circular.
One type of error is duplication, when the DNA-copying machinery accidentally copies a section of the genome twice. The second copy can be changed in future copies — gaining mutations or losing parts. The researchers scanned the human genome for these duplications, and found that many of them seem to play a role in the developing brain.
[...]
An extra copy of a gene gives evolution something to work with: Like modeling clay, this gene isn't essential like the original copy, so changes can be made to it without damaging the resulting organism.
I don't think you read what I wrote very carefully.
Point taken re: your topic, partly. That post only referred to Fahrenheit, however this thread and indeed the sentence Shompol responded to are about the metric system.
Why do you object to my use of the term centigrade?
Celsius is not centigrade because it references Kelvin, not phase changes of water at approximately 1 bar. It's no longer in widespread use for this reason, however upon further thought "centigrade" is correct in the context of your post, and I will use it further below.
I did not say "metric sucks".
Fair enough, "Sucks" is over-stating it, however it's overall a fair summary of what you said. I don't think the European man is a valid argument because I suspect he may be more familiar with the freezing point of Vodka. Although my general point here is that measuring systems should be easy to use by ordinary people, I can't agree with choosing a measuring system on the basis of people that don't understand the difference between scales. I am certain this example is uncommon
I was describing the advantages of the centigrade (Celcius) temperature scale over the Fahrenheiht
I agree that degrees C & F have perhaps the smallest differences of any comparable scales. Fahrenheit is confusing and annoying for metric users because it lacks the salient consistency that is throughout the metric system. To put this in other words, you can easily use the "centigrade" system (in the context of human senses, not measuring instruments) because of said salient consistency, but we can not easily use the Fahrenheit system unless we learn a bunch of seemingly arbitrary numbers, which we don't.
the argument about ease of conversion is powerful. However this argument is meaningless in daily life [quoting across posts here]
Daily life is where it's most powerful. When the measuring system is consistent and intuitive you can do much more complicated things without a calculator. Perhaps the biggest difference of all is that there's a compound effect in usability that is missing from the imperial system.
In fact, if I had to figure out how much five gallons of water weighed in pounds, I would first convert it to liters and then convert to pounds.
'nuff said.
I cannot for the life of me think how this might be useful in cooking
It's increasingly common for recipes to specify mass for a variety of reasons related to accuracy. Measuring mass also means you don't make a whole bunch of measuring cups dirty because you just put one pot on the weighing scales and zero it after each addition.
In the real world you get both volumes and masses, often in the one recipe. When it's easy to convert you don't have to rewrite every recipe that uses volume. I frequently compare recipes from three or more books with their inevitable varied units. Easy conversion means not busting out a spreadsheet to understand the differences.
Over time you come to know the specific gravity of things that aren't water and for which accuracy is not paramount. You know that 83 grams of olive oil is very close to 100 ml.
This is useful in lots of place you might not think of. My high school job was in a vineyard, we often knew the volume of the liquid we had (fuel, wine, chemicals) but the tractors lifting power in kilograms. Life is convenient when you can be confident in your conversion while still sitting on the tractor
I think you overestimate the convenience....I met a man from Europe...
So metric sucks because you met a stupid person?
I have given considerable thought to the question of the relative merits of the two systems. The chief advantage of the centigrade [sic] system...
It's "chief advantage" is that is it's consistent across orders of magnitude.
1 cm = 10 mm
1 m = 100 cm
1 Km = 1000 m
1 foot = 12 in
1 yard = 3 ft
1 mile 1760 yd
There is further consistency. 1 litre of water is 1 Kg making many daily tasks such as cooking easier.
Perhaps you should give it considerably more thought.