I can't say I really know. I didn't hear about anyone breaking it, certainly.
304 karma · joined July 7, 2010
Like, suppose you deposit your money in a bank account at, say, a couple percent interest, then head off for about ten years at something near the speed of light. You only age five years, and return looking forward to ten years' worth of interest on your priciple, only to learn that the bank "adjusted" the compounding rate, so you only got the five years' worth reflecting the time you yourself experienced.
Who's right? What if it were a loan you took out, instead?
It's kind of interesting, if a little contrived. Relativistic effects between stock exchanges might be a little more relevant at the rates computers are starting to trade, these days.
That said, it does present a pretty little puzzle for the FOSS community. Given governments' recent roles in expanding the reach of FOSS software, I don't think we can ignore the question of what happens when and where the interests of the state conflict with those of the FOSS community. Here, specifically, we have a case where a government may desire a "feature" anathema to the community, but likely can't force the community to accept such a requirement. What they might be able to do is outlaw any version of the package which does not incorporate the restriction. How effectively can could they enforce it? Not much, perhaps, right now, but we'd be fooling ourselves to think they never could. It's all but certain they're going to keep trying, even if it proves utterly impossible.
Thank you for responding, A1kmm. This is what I was really hoping to see: some actual discussion of the point. In any case, I apologize for offending whoever downmodded me. I'll try not to be quite so snarky in future.
Seriously, the page was completely empty until I unblocked that scripts on that and his main site.
And Krita.
And... ?
That was... fun.
I didn't notice this until after the contraption was turned and he started fiddling with the balls again, but if you watch closely, you can see that they roll "up" different ramps at different rates: almost a second along the lower right ramp, yet barely a half second along the upper left. This wouldn't happen if the ramps were all the same length and incline, as they're meant to appear.
Sometimes, you just need to know what to look for...
SO, just to be a smart-aleck...
Jun8: Most cells have a variety of distinctive proteins embedded in their membranes peculiar to cells of that type. Other cells and other elements (think antibodies) may detect and respond to some of these proteins. I wouldn't be surprised to find that plasmodium has some such mechanism.
As for moving towards the cell, it probably doesn't take much in the bloodstream. Almost half of your blood's volume (45%) is cells, and about ninety-nine out of a hundred are red blood cells. With a cell for every cell-sized volume of fluid, that doesn't leave a lot of space between cells, so they're bumping up against each other all the time! It would probably be harder for a plasmodium to avoid hitting RBCs than to find one!
Very interesting bit at the end, too. It almost looks like the cell's becoming crenellated as water is forced or drawn out. That would usually happen in a hypertonic solution, where the concentration of solutes is higher outside the cell than inside, but I'm sure that's not changing, here. I wonder if the solutes inside the cell are being taken up by the plasmodium's offspring as they develop? I could see that "purifying" the water inside, thus driving it out, maybe?
Osmosis is a weird and wonderful thing...
More seriously, I could see this turning into a major development in the pharmaceutical industry. If amoebas could be bred to farm beneficial types of bacteria, I can imagine all sorts of products could be produced much faster. This could lead to a seismic shift in that industry!
Answer to the Answer: I wouldn't say I tried to "game" the test while taking it, but twenty years of coding in one form or another says you called me wrong. Then again, maybe I didn't bother trying to game it because I figured it was BS from the start?
We gotta get another probe out there! Unless maybe we've got something that could pick up the signs back here...?
Free software is sometimes low quality. It is sometimes unreliable. It is sometimes inflexible.
Swap "free" for "proprietary" in that quote, and the statement is no less true. (Voice of experience, here) Continuing:
If people take the arguments in favor of open source seriously, they must explain why open source has not lived up to its "promise" and conclude that proprietary tools would be a better choice.
No, they need not. If even a handful of free or open source software meets the standards of quality one sets for proprietary software -- and I would argue not only that such a handful exists, but the so-called "standards" must be rather low to pass some of the proprietary software I've dealt with -- then open source has indeed kept its promise. Nor does the existence of some "bad" open source software imply that proprietary is better. If that were the case, we must also accept the reverse, that the existence of some "bad" proprietary software implies open source is better. Examples exist in both categories, so clearly each is better than the other.
Here's the deal: An open source package, once "in the wild", can become very hard to kill if it gains any traction to speak of. As long as someone keeps the source available, anyone else can not only acquire and use it, but build on and improve it. Not so, proprietary. With the source kept to the strict confines of a few personal or company machines, its growth and development are limited to what its owners see fit to pursue or permit, and they can choke it off at any time. As a consequence, we tend to see more "bad" open software roaming the net as abandoned projects are left to anyone who cares to pick them up, while proprietary packages that either don't make the grade or lose their luster meet a quiet demise behind closed doors. That's what makes proprietary software look better: the "bad" stuff just gets killed off more effectively.
Or just about anything by Martin Gardner, along with a note to write him sometime before 2010.
Pronounce the "CH" like "SH".
For a spreadsheet, Excel's a not-too-bad IDE!
EDIT: Change "How" to "Learn"
There is one issue that's NOT clearly answered just looking at the building or its design (not to me, anyway): an arch/dome pushes outward on its supports, not just downward, and requires some inward force/resistance to counter it. This is what the flying buttresses on many medieval cathedrals are for. I don't really see such a structure on the Pantheon, but I notice the walls are a bit thicker at the base. Whether that's enough to counter the expansive force, I can't say.
Clearly, something has kept it up there for two millennia.
That said, I noticed your loading bar reports xx of yy as it progresses, with BOTH values increasing. The 'of' value (yy) is traditionally fixed at the final value xx should reach, in order to give the user some sense of actual progress. I would recommend following that practice, if at all possible.
Seriously, if you haven't done it already, find or make yourself a module that lets the user customize the keyboard controls to his/her preference. Then you can just drop it into any game you write, and presto! You're good to go!
For even more gooey goodness, make up some one-click "profiles" for different keyboards that users can pick at a click. You don't need to make it top priority, and you may not even need to do all the work yourself. If you just ask for people's preferences in a forum, or a feedback form with the game itself, you can probably get a ton of helpful input.
Best of luck!
Right now, a one-way trip to Mars really is a one-way trip. That is, until we can put enough provisions up there to get a ship back out of that gravity well.
And keep the occupants alive long enough to get back here.
That said, there is such a thing as going too far, and to sabotage the work of others, literally tamper with, damage, and/or destroy it, definitely crosses that line.
It's almost a pity no one else has mentioned the classic Tao of Programming by Geoffrey James:
http://www.canonical.org/~kragen/tao-of-programming.html
A bit dated now, and it looks like ESR has improved on the concept considerably, but this little classic will always be my favorite:
"Each language has its place within the Tao.
But do not program in Cobol if you can avoid it."
I was surprised that I actually got into the game a bit. The problems are challenging enough to make it a real race with the timer. I didn't quite expect it to be as interesting as it turned out.
This might work well as one of those IQ quiz/survey things that seem to crop up a lot in banner ads. You could push it with a slogan along the lines of "How fast is your math?" although you might want to get a bit more creative. Checking just now, I see the domain fastmath.com is already taken. In fact, it looks like there are already some games out there along similar lines. Don't expect to find a lot of low hanging fruit.
That said, I think you might still find some opportunity. I would probably look at hooking the game into Facebook to get it in front of more people, and promotion deals for self-help books targeting math skills.
You'll probably need to liven up the design, though, and you absolutely MUST make it work with Firefox, without telling or expecting the user to do or install anything. I don't know if it's a problem for anyone else, but I JUST freshly installed FF on my Windows laptop, just in case the problem was Linux, and it failed the same way there. Google Chrome handles it on Windows (as I assume does IE), and Konqueror on Linux even knows what to do with it. What Firefox is missing, I don't know, but I suspect that slice of the market is a little bit big to just ignore. You would probably do well to look into it.
Good luck!
UPDATE: Had another look with Windows Firefox, and it's identifying the file as MIME type "application/octet-stream", which is probably what my Linux version considers a BIN file. I'm also noticing that sometimes the browser does seem to dectect the file/MIME type and run the file correctly on both Linux and Windows. Less often than not, though.
At a guess, you're going to need either to set the Content-TYpe (text/html?) explicitly, or give the file an extension. Otherwise, Firefox is unlikely to handle it consistently, let alone correctly, and that's liable to KILL your chances of monetizing anything.
Again, good luck...