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 Author Thread: Astrology
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 40 (view)
 
Astrology
Posted: 11/16/2012 9:48:00 PM
Horoscopes are so random that if you base your life around them your in for a fall. Just pick up a few different sources of horoscopes and you'll see just how random they are.

The in-depth readings are usually done in much the same manner as cold-reading. The star stuff is just to provide a distraction from what's really happening to you when you go in for a reading. If you don't understand what cold-reading is, please do some research on it as there are a lot of con artist out there using it to take advantage of people. Not saying all cold-reading is bad, it really depends on how that information is being used.

Astrology and Astronomy were once the same field, a field trying to make sense out of the specs of lights we see in the sky. However Astrology arose in a time when people still believe that the stars in the sky were gods and their family. When some Astrologist began to investigate the possibilities that the stars in the sky were not gods but bodies of matter, Astronomy was born due to how hip it had became to have an Astrologist.

Throughout history rulers would punish their Astrologist, typically with death, if their predictions weren't accurate. Very few rulers had the same Astrologist throughout their entire reign, most went through them at alarming rates.

Originally Astrology was done based off which gods (stars) were of importance according to the sky. Despite the short lists you often hear about, there were a crap ton of gods for just about everything that could possibly happen to you. Eventually the evidence that stars were not gods but indeed bodies of matter got too large to support the many gods paradigm and Astronomy changed as a result, this is where it gets really funky.

There is no universal constellations for the entire world. Just about every country has their own set with very few overlaps between them despite the same sky being visible depending upon your latitude. You only really hear about a couple sets of those, typically the US/European and Chinese sets, but there are hundreds if not thousands of sets.

Gravity is incredibly weak over long distances. It's been proven over and over again that it's the product of two masses over the distance between them. Distances between the Earth and Moon is ridiculously big, the difference of mass between you and the moon is also ridiculously big, there just isn't any way for it to affect. The only reason the moon's gravitational pull affects the ocean is because the ocean is huge.

If you really want to see how weak gravity is:
1) Fill a container with roughly 40 liters of water (average content of water for a human male).
2) Wait until local low-tide.
3) Drop some dye into the water gently, try to minimize the ripples you produce.
4) Wait until the next low-tide.
5) Look at the walls of the container to see how much the water has risen during high-tide.

But gravity description of Astrology is a moot point. Gravity wasn't even understood until well after Astrology was invented. Back when if you suggested the Earth was round you would be the laughing stock of town.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 1 (view)
 
Hackerspaces/Makerspaces in or near Flint
Posted: 11/3/2012 2:51:20 AM
Having searched around various places online trying to locate them, I finally decided to try here.

For those that don't understand what a hackerspace is or what a hacker really is. Look no further than Mythbusters. That shop they do all their work in is their hackerspace, and the people you see on the show are real hackers. Don't let the media fool you into thinking hackers are just people causing problems on computer systems, more often than not those people are about as far from hackers as it gets. Sometimes the real hackers out there are also called makers due to the inventive spirit that comes with the hacker mindset.

Anyway my research turned up a few hackerspaces in Michigan, but not one of them close enough to be relevant for those of us living in Flint. However I still hold out hope that there are some that just lack an internet presence in or near Flint. If there are not then I'd love to talk with other hackers/makers out there that are interested in getting together and seeing what we can put together.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
A career in Science.. Will I ever ?
Posted: 10/8/2012 11:35:40 AM
Comparing some class score against real aptitude is not at all a good way to judge yourself. I myself scored poorly in math classes throughout mandatory education and college, however once I got to practicing it on my own as part of my own personal projects I became very good with complex math that would baffle any teacher I ever had. Not only did I learn many disciplines of math, but I even came up with my own mathematical constructs to handle problems which had very little if any documented solutions.

Simply put, you will be a horrible scientist if you do not have the drive to tackle problems on your own in your free time. You don't have to take on huge problems on your own, just things that peak your interests, things you feel that you need or want a solution/explanation for. Just start out by writing down your question, then come up with more questions about that question and it's subject, once you have a solid idea of what you want to figure out get comfy with the massive library that is the internet so that you can find relevant information to help you work through it. Don't focus on finding the answer to your question(s), instead pull together resources that help understand the question better. When you think you've found an answer, put it to the test, try to rule out as much extraneous data as possible to avoid contaminating your test results.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 11 (view)
 
time how far back do i go
Posted: 9/28/2012 4:55:06 AM
It's hard to say "we stand X years from where it happened" when dealing with astronomical distances. Not only do you have to account for distance in space, but also distance in time. In graphics coding to create a radial blur effect I copy the framebuffer into enlarged textures, each copy goes into an even larger one, and then line them up with each other based on what part of the radial blur I want to be the focal point. That is just what happens when you do the enlargement and alignment exercise on a 2-dimenensional image for a single slice of time, when you add slices from different times it gains motion blur on top of radial blur, at this point it's already confusing enough but in the real world there are even more effects at play (transmittance, doppler shift, etc).
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 27 (view)
 
What to do with the Warrior Class
Posted: 9/23/2012 3:22:49 AM
Your making one very dangerous assumption. That those in the warrior class do not have more peaceful interests. Some enter the warrior class because they are terrified that the peaceful activities they enjoy will be taken from them if a conflict turns out bad. In the ranks of the soldiers there are mathematicians, artist, and musicians that without the war would likely have went onto produce inspirational works of creativity, but due to their passion and fear found it necessary to demote such activities to hobby status so that they can protect the ability of others to pursue such things with their own hands.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 26 (view)
 
can't fix stupid?
Posted: 8/30/2012 9:04:45 PM

It's the smart people we have always had to watch out for.


Your confusing smart with intelligent. Very different things despite both under normal circumstances having similar appearance.

An intelligent person is not necessarily a smart person. It simply means that they are able to understand complex concepts well enough to exploit them. Whether or not that exploitation is good or bad depends on other factors of their personality.

A smart person implies that person is intelligence but is also clever and wise. Wise enough to recognize the value in keeping good relations with others so that they may have access to their skills, experience and knowledge when needed.

The crazy people that are leveraging corruption for their own personal gain are likely very intelligent, but not smart enough to realize that what their doing is only providing short term gain and will likely backfire at some point.

I argue that one can fix stupid, that's what education is for. However our system is so screwed up that it's not even trying to fix stupid, instead it's taking advantage of it. People don't like the fat content of a meal, choose a smaller serving size so the label shows less fat until multiplied with the serving size. Students falling short on their test scores, lower the ideal score. These sorts of things are not helping at all, they are only hiding the problem from statistics.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
The 'physics' or horror movies
Posted: 8/30/2012 8:31:21 PM
Well to understand about modern zombie fiction, you have to look back on past zombie fiction, even though the genre has been seriously **stardized.

In the past it was never really said to be a virus, that didn't come around until recently. The behavior of zombification has been portrayed as virulent for a long time, which is likely why modern fiction describes it as a virus. For a long time zombies were caused by curses or hexes placed upon an area, the dead rose from their graves and attacked the living. Those that died became zombies due to the curse or hex. The more tragic inclined had people turn to zombie after being bitten in non-vital areas, but only after they died. Those stories tended to have a love interest bitten early on, being treated for the bite, and then dieing near the end to be turned into a zombie forcing an emotional conflict.

As far as how zombies are describe, natural regeneration and decay process is suspended until the virus, curse, or hex is neutralized. Some movies have the decay continue to make it more gory, but alike the virus concept that's relatively new to the genre.

I really don't see much of a problem with a zombie moving fast. If zombies no longer have to put up with pain, or no longer care about pain, that's a huge advantage. What keeps most people from pushing their bodies to the extremes is the level of pain involved. If a zombie's bodily functions are suspended, that's a lot of extra energy that can be put into muscle motion. Consider for a moment the process of running or walking, you lean forward and let gravity take over while you move your other foot forward to catch yourself. That's an incredibly efficient process, but if you didn't have to conserve so much energy for bodily functions you could leap forward with each step covering more ground in a shorter period of time.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 76 (view)
 
The one thing I hate about porn..
Posted: 8/13/2012 2:32:36 AM
Honestly I don't mind faked moans and orgasms when it done well and over the top. But porn isn't exactly known for good acting outside of some exceptional cases. But I too am irked by the name calling and other forms of violence. Sometimes it's easy to tell by reading the name, description, or preview shots. More often than not you have no way of knowing until your far enough in that an encounter has begun to set the mood for something less insane.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 20 (view)
 
Curiosity: the search for life on a dead planet?
Posted: 8/13/2012 2:06:21 AM
Well said Jiperly.

Sure we have some seriously messed up people both in and out of power. But as history has taught us, it's only a matter of time before the corruption becomes so blatant that the people revolt and replace those in power to start the vicious cycle all over again. It's at the apex of those times in-between where our most astounding progress becomes manifest.

I'd be very surprised if we don't find life on Mars. There are some really strange lifeforms here on Earth that survive in much harsher conditions. Whether or not finding that life is a good thing depends on what we can learn from it. Some of the most subtle technology that we have taken for granted has come from trying to mimic things we see in the natural world, another planet presents us with an even wider pool of stuff to integrate into our technology.

Outside of life. We still have a lot to learn about our neighboring planets if we ever expect to colonize them. Flying blindly to another planet and setting up shop may sound romantic, but it's a fools journey when we have all this wonderful technology we can use to plan for potential problems. The Apollo missions proved this with the problem that lunar dust created in the lander and modules, simple problems that would have been painfully obvious if we landed something like a modern exploration robot first. Not only were the problem related to lunar dust obvious enough upon seeing them in action, they were preventable to a large degree with something as simple as using the remaining oxygen in their backpacks to spray the dust into a container.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 8 (view)
 
Project Apollo today
Posted: 7/11/2012 10:21:35 AM
My vision of an Apollo mission done today:

Computerization: the capsule used for the transit between high Earth orbit and lunar orbit runs on a single computer that would fit inside a standard ATX case. With the very cold liquid fuels it could have a very efficient cooling system by routing a bit of that fuel through cooling blocks, which would allow for packing in more processing power.

Sensors: the craft would contain a lot of sensors, more than we could have dreamed of using during the original Apollo missions. This would likely be the technological bottleneck of the craft, packing in enough persistent storage devices to buffer the information while it's streamed back to Earth, and keeping the stream contents balanced enough to allow for HD video feed as well.

Cabin: there would likely be less things you could bump into and cause disastrous repercussions, more monitoring equipment than actual flight equipment. Instead of pencils and paper, each astronaut would carry a tablet pc and maybe an optional stylus. Instead of drinking out of pouches with a straw, they'd probably have cups designed to employ "capillary force" for a more natural drinking experience.

Suits: still as clunky as ever. They're made from much lighter materials now, easier to move joints, but mobility has barely improved. I could see the addition of a visor display attached to a small suit computer, these days you can get a computer the size of a USB flash stick for $25 that is powerful enough to run Android and similar mobile OSes. Sprinkle some accelerometer ICs into the suit, and you have a nice monitoring system and navigation system to link to the visor display.

This is just a few things thinking of technology that I can personally get my hands on, I imagine someone looking to do this for real would have access to stuff I've yet to hear about that is even better yet.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 19 (view)
 
The definition of Science
Posted: 7/8/2012 6:08:15 AM
I think this video, Open Letter to the Universe, by minutephysics sums it up pretty good: http://youtu.be/wN39H1Eb-6I

Exert from the opening of the video:
"Dear Universe, I'm a big fan of yours. Your so fresh and real, and I love how you manage to be fascinating day in and day out. I'm particularly impressed by your laws of nature and how you stick to them regardless of opinion polls of scientist or the public. Of course our goal in science is to find out how you work by careful observation, but it doesn't matter at all if I believe in a theory or not, what matters is whether you work that way."
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 26 (view)
 
Did they really find the Higgs Boson particle?
Posted: 7/5/2012 11:10:34 PM
It's nicknamed the "god" particle because of it's behavior, which is the reason it's taken such tremendous advances in technology to be able to detect. The Higgs boson can decay into any of the other 5 elementary particles due to it's far higher mass (roughly 125GeVs, compared to the double-digits of the others). If the decay is symmetrical as the standard model predicts, then the chance of it not decaying into less massive siblings is astronomically small during each of it's half-lives. One elementary particle that can become any of the other elementary particles, if someone didn't understand that there are other ways to create the other elementary particles it would be very easy to come to the conclusion that it's THE source of all of the elementary particles, hence the ridiculous term "god particle".

They still haven't confirmed whether or not what was detected is in fact the Higgs boson, but it fits the profile very closely. So closely that if it is not a Higgs boson then it would certainly be a coincidence worthy of a paragraph or two in our history books. Given that Higgs himself was at the presentation, in tears no less, I would not at all be surprised if it really is the Higgs boson they detected.


The computer you're using now could have probably been capable of handling all the NASA Apollo missions


Most definitely it could. Just look at any modern video game, really dig into the math involved. I have an entire page of college ruled line paper with just the equation I use for calculating the color of the sky, atmospheric haze, and air glow; all of it takes a few hundred microseconds to calculate for ~900,000 pixels (most coverage anyone would see playing the game). A whole page for the lighting equation which is ran at most 10s of millions of times in around 4ms. Not to mention cloud simulation, water simulation, weather simulation, game logic, AI, processing button presses, playing sounds, and many other things. All of this happening while I'm still able to have a 1080 resolution video playing on another screen, while also having 20 or so tabs open in Firefox, and all of my debugging tools collecting data. The amount of calculations a modern computer can handle per-second is so large that the only way to write it down is to use powers of ten notation, unless you fancy writing so many zeros that your arm goes numb.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 16 (view)
 
Reality show on Mars?
Posted: 6/12/2012 7:22:17 PM
In reply to deamito52

And who says there has to be a capitalist society set up, or any sort of governance? This is why I'm not keen on the idea, I just don't think humans can do it - not with the best of intentions or the best rationale. As a species we're greedy, violent, destructive, exploiting, philandering, and a whole other dictionary of slurs. It's a horrible race to befall any planet. We're on our way to ruining the Earth and all anyone gives a crap about is money - how they can earn more, at the expense of the planet, the people and the environment. There's already a treaty signed (UN?), decreeing the prohibition of propagating any form of life outwith Earth or a contained vessel constructed thereof.

Can any of you really say this a good idea in all honesty? Especially in the guise of a reality TV show ?


Not all of us are out for monetary gain, I would gladly work for no money as long as my needs and a reasonable amount of my wants are provided in return. All too often the things we want could easily be paid for by work we are capable of doing for the people whom produce or own those things. But such a system is hard to maintain unless everyone feels the same way, because as we've seen some people have no qualm with charging ridiculous costs for things which require very little work or effort to produce. Removing that greed for money and the equivalence to it would be a hard road indeed but starting fresh on another planet with similarly minded people would go a long way towards that end.

It's of my opinion that should such a society arise, which allows people to do what to really want to as work and provides the kind of training they need to get into those roles as early as possible. They would rapidly advance at a rate in which the money craving world we have here on Earth has never seen before.

--

On topic. I really don't like the idea of a reality show fueling such a mission. As we've seen with the ISS, that stuff only makes it to the public eye when it involves disaster, honorable mention, or some glorified micro-celebrity. Most of the other stuff had to be hunted down online (which thanks to youtube become easier). Did you know the ISS has regular broadcast on their youtube channel, I sure didn't until I stumbled upon it entirely at random?
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 16 (view)
 
Nightmares and Dreams: What do you dream about?
Posted: 5/20/2012 8:05:33 PM
Honestly I think most people that try to find purpose in their dreams are over analyzing them. They do provide nice hints as to sources of problems your having, transferring things your subconsciously aware of but unable or unwilling to grasp consciously. Then there are also the random garbage that's stuck with you but you haven't let go of yet.

As someone that writes a lot of code, I tend to dream about it. One of the more vivid series of nightmares I have are where I'm stuck in a loop of trying a solution, having it fail, and failing to determine why it failed. Typically those nightmares come when I'm over thinking a problem, when the solution is far simpler than the attempts I've made. Never once glanced a solution in a dream, it's never really logical enough to apply in the real world, but I've grown to like those nightmares as they let me know when I'm trying too hard and need to come at the problem with a fresh perspective.

Some of my favorite dreams I've had became the basis for chapters of a story. Those are the dreams I mourn awaking from, the kind where my imagination has unleashed itself and created amazing people and worlds. I've seen imagery in those types of dreams that was horrifying yet beautiful at the same time. A couple of those scenes I've tried to recreate using real-time rendering techniques, to allow others to explore their brilliance, but I've yet to invoke the same sense of humbling awe they invoke in the vivid imagery my dreams provide. What I would give for a computer capable of extracting the imagery in my dreams like that episode of TNG where they plug Data into the holodock to explore one of his dreams.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 22 (view)
 
Perceptions of colors
Posted: 5/10/2012 11:54:57 PM
What your looking for is the dynamic range of a human eye. A result of the iris opening and closing. You can actually see it happen very easily. Go into the bathroom and stand in front of the mirror, stare directly into the reflection of your eyes, turn the light off for 5 to 10 seconds then flip it back on. It's kind of unnerving to watch the first few times. There are a few pitfalls to how the iris in our eyes work, we can adapt to higher luminosity significantly faster than lower luminosity (relative to current average luminosity).

As far as inducing shock with light, that's part of sensory overload. A process where so much new information is flooded into one sense that it ties up most of the brain's processing power. Not at all dissimilar from what happens when you have a process on a computer chewing up 100% of it's processing power, everything becomes so unresponsive that the whole system teeters on the edge of crashing if not comes to a screeching halt.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 15 (view)
 
Perceptions of colors
Posted: 4/16/2012 7:06:01 AM
There are a lot of ways one can measure the properties of color, and a lot of ways to write it out mathematically. I've spent a lot of time researching various color systems, looking for a method as easy to composite as sRGB but allows for more of the sorts of color shifts we witness every day of our lives.

One of the hardest systems to work with happened to come the closest (visually) to how I perceive the world, and how various measuring devices perceive it. It was a system of using multiple color vectors (5 3-component vectors) which compress into a quaternion which could be translated into visible spectrum with a series of 3x3 transform matrix. It was an interesting system to work with which really made me question the textbook definitions on how color functions. Defining the topology of the spectrum became just as arbitrary as applying transform matrices to define the topology of a 3D object. A color blind programmer that took an interest in the project I used to research that system managed to come up with a transform matrix which adjusted parts of the spectrum he had trouble viewing, to the point where colors he perceived as similar gained their own unique identities. The surprising part of viewing the transformed colors that came out of his matrix: it looked strange but still well defined.

It's not so important that we all perceive a given color as a carbon copy in our minds, as long as we can perceive the hues well defined definitions will hold up and we can communicate about color. Having worked with a few color blind people in graphical programming, each with their own unique definition of the spectrum, I learned just how important the relativity of hues can be when trying to communicate things we all take for granted about color.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
My computer is slowing down!
Posted: 4/2/2012 9:12:41 AM

THIS time it says that NOW I only have TEN PERCENT DISK SPACE AVAILABLE!(1.83 space left of 13 GB)


Just to be sure. Hold the windows key (picture of a flag on it) and press E. Right-click on C: and click on properties. What does it say there for free space?

I ask you to do this because 13GB just doesn't sound right for a computer that is only 1 year old, haven't seen hard drives that small in 10 or so years. Windows would fill that up in no time flat with temporary files alone. If that really is the amount of hard drive space you have, you'll have to keep running the Disc Cleanup Wizard every couple of days to clear out temporary files.

I'm suspecting the 1.83 out of 13GB you were seeing was memory usage, which is totally different from hard drive space. Memory space is not as clear cut to measure (via task manager) as it once was, there are 2 (out of 4) measurements displayed to keep in mind. When checking how much memory is free, you need to add in the Available pool as well. Available memory is space that has stuff loaded into it, but isn't being used so it can be freed if another program requires more memory than is available in the Free pool. The only real difference between available and free is that available requires windows to do one extra step (deallocation) before it can be allocated elsewhere.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 12 (view)
 
Has Western Culture passed its zenith?
Posted: 3/30/2012 10:21:17 PM
If you want to understand the fall of civilization, and thus the fall of a culture, you need look no farther than a history book. All civilizations that have fallen share one thing in common, they let their infrastructure rot around them. As long as we keep up our infrastructure we will continue to develop and advance, but the moment we stop maintaining it, it's game over for us, even more so now than ever with our reliance on infrastructure to sustain every aspect of our lives.

We are however facing a change in culture brought on by the new ease of communication. Things that were cultural taboo are becoming much more acceptable, and other things that were acceptable are becoming taboo. But that's normal according to history as well, the Roman culture evolved with the widespread construction of roads that allowed easier travel.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 19 (view)
 
bed size
Posted: 3/10/2012 5:41:12 PM
If laying in a larger bed than you really need is causing loneliness than your simply trying to remove a symptom instead of solving the problem. The thing about problems is that they are not resolved by clearing up the symptoms, all that does is buy time to come up with a solution. Problems have a way of getting worse the longer you leave them unresolved.

There is only one cure for loneliness, and that is companionship. Says the lonely man in a single bed.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 41 (view)
 
The beauty of math known as fractals
Posted: 3/7/2012 5:27:05 PM
I've recently learned to work with a type of fractal known as Hilbert Curves, which have some pretty amazing spatial properties. Coordinates on a Hilbert Curve are represented as two integer values: a distance along the curve, and the order of the curve. From these two values one can construct size of the space that contains the curve, full length of the curve, and cartessian (xyz) coordinates. Furthermore when examined in binary form a distinct pattern arises, where removing two bits from the left or right (depending on encoding) yields the distance to the point along a Hilbert Curve of 1 less order, so not only does the coordinates describe it's own location in it's own space, but also it's own location in all lesser order spaces.

When applied to the concept of a Quad Tree, which is a structure where a square space is divided into 4 equally sized sectors, then those divided, until the desired amount of division is reached. Storing the lower tiers of the tree become unnecessary, because the deepest level of the tree describes all levels shallower than it. Revolutionary for spatial indexing and partitioning in computer simulations that must be light in memory usage and efficient on CPU utilization, like in a game where this kind of stuff can be the difference between a slide show and real time play speed.

Additionally when applied to the concept of an antenna, the space filling nature of a Hilbert Curve allows for more surface area in a smaller space, and thus a much more efficient antenna that can sense much more of the EM-spectrum. It's likely that your cell phone (if you own one) has a flat antenna patch inside of it somewhere which is structured from a high order Hilbert Curve or one of it's variants.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 34 (view)
 
Object Out of Place/Time
Posted: 2/27/2012 1:06:05 AM
Not only what Gwendolyn said. Also a lack of knowledge about what's been developed can easily create the illusion that something is magical or beyond our understanding. A lot of very clever people are trying a lot of, sometimes strange, ideas just to see if and how well it works. When you break a lot of this strange stuff down into it's base components, the magic is gone and will never return.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 10 (view)
 
Trapping Light
Posted: 2/25/2012 12:55:45 AM
Really can't see light taking the place of electricity in computers. In fact electricity based computers could be a whole lot faster than they currently are.

- All too often networks are set up for the least common denominator, which currently is 10mbits. More common than 10mbits is 100mbits (almost all networking tech in the past 20 years is 10/100, meaning it can do either or). Networking tech made in the past 5 to 10 years is 10/100/1000. There is a massive problem with router technology in the 1000mbit range. Currently there is only one home router that supports 10/100 AND 1000 at the same time, all the rest instantly downgrade to 10/100 if any devices plugged into the network are not capable of 1000.

- ISPs rarely ever use jumbo frames, even though there is not a single computer in use that can't handle them. Switching from the standard frame size to jumbo frames nets a massive improvement not just in speed of the network, but also reliability, error control, and more efficient bandwidth usage. It's tradeoff is slightly more processing time, but you'd have to be using a computer from the 80s or early 90s to notice it.

- RJ-45 cable is usually ran with the cheapest available, which generally comes from home depot at $45/500ft for riser cable. Riser cable is brittle and easy to crack/break if it's not handled with care, all too often a network tech will bend the stuff at 90 degree angles so that it fits snugly against a wall or rail. For about $15 more you can get 500ft of high grade RJ-45 which has grounded shielding, much more effective especially on a 100 or 1000mbits network, and especially around devices which emit larges amounts of em noise (fluorescent lights, CRT monitors/televisions, microwaves, refrigerators, electric heaters, etc).

- Majority of networks out there are using switches which don't support very many concurrent connections. This means you get a couple high bandwidth services running and the entire network bogs down instead of just the segment those services are running on. A typical cable modem can support upwards to a thousand (sometimes more) concurrent connections, yet the rest of the gear can barely support 20 before packet loss becomes an issue.

- All too often networking equipment which requires somewhat heavy processing uses a processor in the 200 to 400mhz range, which was designed at the around time the SNES was released. Despite 1ghz and higher processors being relatively cheap these days. Even my expensive home router only uses an 800mhz processor, and it currently yields the highest benchmarks out of any plastic box router you can find. This further compounds the problem of switches with low amount of concurrent connections, because it causes more frames to be en-queued than transmitted.

- The ultimate limiter is the infrastructure. We're still using landlines which lost 50% or more of the electricity they carry to heat, let alone em interference. It's been over a decade since the last alternative was offered in this regard, which is closer to 10% loss of electricity and it allows the electrons to travel through the wire instead of on the surface of the wire. It doesn't take a genius to figure out there is more volume in a cylinder shape than there is circumference, in fact it takes middle school level math. Even more that same alternative can not only conduct data signals but also electricity for power at the same time due to how neat and ordered the electron flow becomes inside of it.

That last bit is ultimately why most thing fiber optic is better than electrical cabling. With fiber optic your transmitting through the cable instead of on the surface of the cable. But fiber optic has one big flaw in this regard that a larger cable doesn't increase throughput, something that alternative cabling for data/power does not suffer from.

These are just a few reasons why electrical based networks are perceptibly slow. It's not because of the technology, it's because we're so damn stubborn about upgrading antiquated technology, even in cases where the new technology would yield more profit in the long run.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 30 (view)
 
Object Out of Place/Time
Posted: 2/25/2012 12:20:05 AM
The current batch of politicians in office. Seriously their antiquated beliefs are just holding back progress at this point.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 43 (view)
 
Why do we still shake hands ?
Posted: 2/25/2012 12:17:19 AM
The scariest part about shaking hands isn't as much they could have touched their crotch and not washed, urine is a very effective sterilizer. It's the less worried about areas that concern me, parts of the body where sweat tends to be released most. Sweat is mostly water and salt, not too dissimilar from saline solution. Saline solution makes a very effective suspension medium to preserve living tissue inside of, add on top of that the parts of the body sweat comes out of are usually the warm spots and you have a breeding ground for all sorts of bacteria/viruses. Think of all those people that run their hands across their head/face to wipe off sweat, or during frustration (when sweat tends to pour out more). Think of how much influenza, rhino, and diarrhea virus/disease is being suspended in that sweat they just wiped off their face.

But one of the scarier parts of shaking hands I'll present in the form of a question. What's the "polite" thing to do when you cough?
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 112 (view)
 
Are Caucasians decendents of Arabs ?
Posted: 2/22/2012 7:39:03 AM
I think there is a problem with basing race research entirely in one area. While genetics and genealogy obviously play a big role, our environment can sometimes trump the genetic link.

Various metals we ingest (silver, copper, iron, etc) are responsible for the major tone of our skin, each contribute a bit of their respective wavelengths, and given generations ingesting more of a particular one than your ancestors did will change your descendants skin tone as they slowly adapt to use those particular metals more efficiently. Other minerals play a role here, but metals are the most pronounced and can change skin tone within a single generation if the intake changes enough.

There is also exposure to high intensity heat/light, which cooks different minerals within your body to produce different colors. A long time ago painters of gothic cathedrals learned how to cook the same mineral 8 different way and get 8 unique colors out of it (numbers are more or less depending on mineral and available tech/fuel, but using 8 for example sake). Since sun light exposure accounts for much of our heat exposure, your also taking in radiation that has a tendency to mutate the things it comes in contact with.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 15 (view)
 
My video streaming staggers and splutters....
Posted: 2/5/2012 6:21:29 AM
Well your connection is fine for streaming video if your getting 12.83Mb/s. 2GB of memory should be plenty for streaming as long as your not trying to do any heavy task while streaming (3d modeling, large digital artwork, sound editing, etc). The CPU speed is kinda light, but should be sufficient for 480 (or lower) and maybe 720 resolution video.

If your computer is sluggish after upgrading to SP3 that may be a problem of having too much running in the background, which definitely would have an impact on video playback.

Something to try is open up the task manager (ctrl + alt + del). Go to the Processes tab. Sort the columns by CPU Usage by clicking on the CPU column heading. You can try right click on the process with highest CPU usage, click End Process, and repeat for any processing using more than 10% until the videos play. Take note of what you do this too as well, so that you know what to disable in the next step. If you manage to kill enough to make the videos play well, try using a few of the programs you usually use, make sure nothing was broken by killing those processes. If anything did break, reset your PC and start again except disable all but one of the ones you took note of, and repeat this until you find which of those aren't important for your computer.

Once you have sorted out what processes are not required but eat a lot of CPU usage, as long as you did the testing step, it should be safe to disable their startup routine so that they don't start up with the PC. You can do this by pressing windows key and R, type 'msconfig' (without quote marks), got o the startup tab, and look for those processes you found to be safe to kill in the above paragraph. Simply uncheck the processes you don't want, be careful not to just uncheck things your unsure of, in fact it may be a good idea to google each entry to find what exactly it is before unchecking it. This will warn you when your done and hit apply, just yes/ok/apply through the warning, reset your PC, and you can safely ignore the warning that appears there as well (it's just letting you know that your startup config was altered manually).
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 5 (view)
 
Days of commodore 64 etc
Posted: 1/23/2012 3:01:40 AM
C64 is what I first learned how to program on. I was very young at the time, my father sat down for at least an hour of every day to try out things in magazines, and I watched every moment of it. It really didn't take me long to understand it, caught my parents a little off guard that an (at the time) hyperactive kid could sit down at the computer and make it do things that software we owned couldn't do. My father spent a lot of time teaching me after that, found I had a good affinity for the sort of math and logic required to write code on a computer.

The games? they were lame and boring, we just didn't know any better given the state of technology back then. We were so amazed at the concept of a video that you could control more than pause/play and fastforward/rewind, that it really didn't matter the game play was clunky and slow.

I for one will never miss that computer. I love the progress computer technology has made, such a powerful machine in many homes. It's just a shame that the bulk of them are reduced to fancy web interfaces and rarely exploited to their full potential.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 16 (view)
 
First Strike in SOPA wars..
Posted: 1/18/2012 11:49:20 PM
I really hope these events do kill off any major support for SOPA/PIPA and get ACTA re-examined (yeah they slipped that one by us already).

For a long time now we've had take down notices, which are very similar to cease and desist notices, a small variation being often the domain is seized and auctioned off to recover paperwork/court cost. They allow the owners of the website to rectify the problem or contest it before action is taken against them. This is required for websites like PoF, where anyone is free to create an account, and post what they want. In most cases it works because there are moderator teams or user controls in place to take care of offensive/illegal content in a timely manner.

SOPA is not at all aimed to aid in that effort, despite it's "premise". SOPA is a tool, for corporations to destroy their competitions major outlet in a heartbeat. Let's say CompanyA doesn't like that CompanyB has overtaken their MMORPG subscriptions. A CompanA employee goes home, creates an account on CompanyB's forums, post illegal copies of data, then reports them. Let's say this CompanyA employee was remotely clever and watched CompanyB's forums to find what hours the moderators were offline (say night time, their all sleeping). CompanyA has just injected content which under SOPA's doctrine qualifies CompanyB's entire domain being blacklisted, not just their forums, but also their main site and most importantly their online store where they sell subscriptions.

If that at all sounds like it's too shady for any corporation (or even small business) to actually do. Take a few minutes and browse the various news websites for Copyright/Patent violation lawsuits. What do the contents of these copyrights/patents look like they are suing each other over.
Source: U.S. Patent #8,082,523
Exert: "A portable electronic device displays, on a touch screen display, a user interface for a phone application during a phone call."
Problems:
1) This is typical multitasking behavior of task based processing.
2) It's too vague, phone application is never defined in the patent. One could easily apply this description to Caller ID and Clocks that are displayed on your cell phone while a call is in progress.
3) A lawsuit by the company that filed this patent has already been won based on the contents of this patent. The defending company had produced their "offending mobile device" long before this patent was filed, let alone issued.

Granted that comes from a company that is particularly shady, it really goes to show they will stoop to any level to sink their competition.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
human hair pattern evolution
Posted: 1/9/2012 6:55:48 AM
The one explanation I seen that made the most sense was that we relieve excess body heat through sweat, and that hair only serves to impede that purpose. If your able to sweat and that sweat can evaporate relatively fast it carries away a lot of heat. But if you have a lot of body hair holding onto that sweat, it's not going to do much to bring your temperature down, it can actually make it worse.

The reason that makes the most sense to me out of all theories I've heard on the subject is easy to view in summer. First thing a guy does when playing sports or working outdoors, take their shirt off. Nothing more miserable than being covered in a sweaty chunk of fabric when your trying to have fun or do work.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
Memory Functioning
Posted: 12/30/2011 10:43:44 AM
Our capacity for memory functionality is truly remarkable.

Have a look at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2W-v9BXDzxw - sometime. It's a memory training talk given at HOPE2010 from a record holder in memory performance. The interesting part is where he describes how he organized that information he's remembering.

As for pros of bad memory performance, I seriously doubt there are any. We're a people that learn by failing, there is no learning, no advancement, if you can't even remember how you failed. The moment you stop remembering things that occurred before, you stagnate and in some fields atrophy.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 6 (view)
 
windows media player won't work
Posted: 12/24/2011 4:42:52 AM
Microsoft has been doing strange things to WMP lately. For awhile it would randomly crash when using external decoders (like those found in CCCP and K-lite). That stopped recently, but now certain MP3 formats are duplicating their entries in the library, and any playlist they are contained inside of it.

Personally I suspect it's some intermediate change before they release a new version of WMP, likely the version that's in the Windows 8 preview. Some part that was pushed ahead of time on accident.

You can however, at least on Windows 7, go into add-remove programs, click the side option for windows features and uncheck WMP and Windows Media Center, reset so it removes them, then go back in and recheck them, reset so it reinstalls them. Sometimes that's all that's needed to fix patch bloat.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 88 (view)
 
Mathematics and Free Will.
Posted: 12/17/2011 11:02:49 PM
Well Maverick. Just because a particular particle acts the same no matter it's container, doesn't mean a collection of them can act in a dynamic nature. Take for example that computer your using. The processor is just moving electrons through various transistors, each of those transistors perform the same function. Combining them however allows for instructions which vary greatly in nature, like addition/subtraction, multiplication/division, branching, and repetition. At a higher level those instructions are combined to form functions a programmer will interact with. Even higher level the functions are being combined in different ways to handle various situations, like watching incoming data and making a decision on how to respond. There is also what's called self-modifying code, which can modify it's own contents when some trigger is met to do so.

I don't think free will is much more complex than that. Various levels of abstraction coming together to form a dynamic system which throughout our lifetime will modify itself to accommodate new inputs, all the while leading to better branch decision. The only real difference here is a computer really can't take that extra step to defy logic, whereas we can easily override logic.

Now the thing making use of that free will, consciousness, that's in a whole other ballpark.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 6 (view)
 
unknown elements
Posted: 12/14/2011 12:17:06 AM
Well there is one aspect of space your ignoring. With radio telescopes linked up around the globe we have a virtual aperture the size of the Earth, yet we're still having trouble detecting planets. Space is freaking huge, not likely to find anything from down here unless it's very large or has a very large effect on stars near it.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 35 (view)
 
distance between points
Posted: 12/12/2011 12:40:15 PM
@ bestspfx

I made an assumption, that the direction to the unknown point is known (as if looking at a star in the sky).

A line is formed by: Position + Direction * Distance.
Intersection of two lines is: Line1 Start + Direction1 * Distance1 = Line2 Start + Direction2 * Distance2.

Re-arranging that for a coordinate system will give you a set of numbers, one numerator and two denominators.
Distance1 = Denominator1 / Numerator
Distance2 = Denominator2 / Numerator
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 12 (view)
 
Aging?
Posted: 12/9/2011 10:00:07 PM
It's actually not too hard to extend the aging process by large amounts. Eat only the bare minimum your body needs, make liberal use of sleep, and you'll be a lethargic young man for a long time.

Seriously if you want to learn about aging. YouTube is actually the best source available (for any research). Can find lectures on the subject dating all the way back to the 60s if you don't mind sifting through a lot of video to find the gems in the rough.

Search tips:
'-' = exclude the word it's attached to (ex: -crackpot)
'~' = include the word it's attached to (ex: ~expert)
insite:somewebsite.com = search only in "somewebsite.com" and those that link against it

There's more, dig through the google search manual, lots of neat things that make weeding out the crackpots easier.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 82 (view)
 
Mathematics and Free Will.
Posted: 12/9/2011 9:44:17 PM
@ David

The guy was rejecting any argument against his faulty thinking. Do you really think he'll even try to understand class number theory.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 31 (view)
 
distance between points
Posted: 12/9/2011 9:34:25 PM
Aside from the relativistic solution for space-time, which requires knowing coordinates at both points. There is also triangulation, which requires knowing the position of one of the points and then picking another point near the one you know but not at the same spot. This is how depth perception and gps systems work. It's not even terribly complicated, I first learned the method in geometry class during mandatory education, and use it regularly in post processing and collision techniques in 3D rendering.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 500 (view)
 
how do u handle being a virgin past 25
Posted: 11/24/2011 6:30:27 AM
Well I'm still a virgin at 26, and it's not at all easy to handle. Finding a productive hobby can help take your mind off things. For example I took up writing code that handles rendering. The reason this particular hobby was good for me is that when I start digging into the math behind it, everything else just goes out of mind, it's the one thing in the world I can narrow in on single minded.

It's painful though, both physically and mentally. Much of that pain is caused by others whom are failing to understand just how insensitive or insulting they are being. Have you ever laid in bed unable to get to sleep over the physical and mental anguish of not being able to get laid? If so imagine experiencing that almost every single night for years on end, it's not at all fun. Then imagine that every gal you've approached is uninterested, only wants to be friends, or the worst of all says it's something you can't change (but your never told what it is).
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 6 (view)
 
Raindrops and quantum tunneling?
Posted: 11/5/2011 10:40:00 AM
I believe you have experienced a wonderful freak of perception which is rare to encounter without intentionally initiating it. Sort of like how people afraid of insects feel them crawling on their skin just by looking at one. Our brains have a sort of touch memory, a short term response where the memory is so intense that it can be recalled in exact detail rather easily. You know what rain feels like hitting your skin, you know what it sounds like hitting your skin, you know what it smells like, and even what it looks like. All it takes is for just one of those conditions to be satisfied to fool your brain into triggering touch memory. I had the honor of participating in a few public experiments by a scientist involved with studying that phenomenon, and it was jaw dropping that every last one of the tricks he was using worked, even when the person he was using it on had a full explanation before hand.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 8 (view)
 
AMD starts with Guinness Record
Posted: 10/13/2011 11:49:38 PM
Never really take those AMD overclocks seriously.

I have been running my current system stable at 4.2ghz for a long time now. Surprisingly it barely runs any hotter than it does at factory specs. It's stable enough to work through some intense computational work and jump right into a game after that's done.

When I tried to push it up to 4.6ghz (upper limit due to memory), the system had all sorts of problems. It would boot into windows, but the moment it began to chew into the clock cycles things got ugly. Services would restart at random, the video driver crashed often, and several programs failed to even get past their loading screens.

The really wtf moment in those demonstrations AMD likes to flaunt comes in when you realize how far you can push a processor on just air cooling and still get it into the BIOS screen to reach the temps and speed, yet it can't even do basic things like run a word processor without crashing.

I do believe if anyone is going to break the processing speed limit we've ran into over the past few years it will be AMD. They've always been the ones to push the technology that extra mile when we've thought we hit the limits in the past, and I'm sure they'll do it again once or twice before silicon chips are abandoned for something better.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 68 (view)
 
What Human Achievement is Worth All the Misery We Create?
Posted: 10/13/2011 6:29:56 AM
Asking if human achievements are "worth all the misery" is assuming the misery is created because of those achievements. Sorry but I don't buy into that faulty logic. Misery is generally created by people abusing the power, rarely is it the result of a human achievement outside of half baked arguments that fail to account for all the factors involved.

So when you shun human achievements, consider the following: up until around a hundred years ago only the wealthy lived beyond 40 years, a couple hundred years prior to that even the wealthy were lucky to live 40 years, thousand or so years ago you were a decrepit old man at just 25 years old.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 34 (view)
 
Do you wanna be a fossil!?
Posted: 10/6/2011 11:50:43 PM
I would feel honored to be a fossil that some archeologist in the distant future digs up, especially if they could learn something about our current society by studying my fossilized remains. It's not like history is recorded forever, eventually some catastrophe happens to destroy most traces of history. For example the library of alexandria contained a lot of scrolls/books, of course not all were of the factual nature, but non-the-less despite best efforts to preserve all those scrolls/books disaster struck and it was mostly lost.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 22 (view)
 
idiots follow me
Posted: 9/28/2011 2:39:33 PM
Ok, I had a long post typed up that was crazy informative but just reiterating the stuff you seem to be ignoring, so I'm lead to believe it's a misunderstanding.

What exactly are you referring to as energy? I know it sounds like a basic question, but well energy is a pretty broad term that has both low and high level definitions.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 12 (view)
 
SKYLON Mission Profile
Posted: 9/15/2011 12:14:28 PM
Nuclear is the way to go to dispense with the clumsy combustion we use currently. There was an episode of Nova documenting several nuclear reactors that were used for spacecraft (probes and satellites, nothing manned). Safe enough not to cause a disaster if anything went wrong during launch, long enough life span to keep equipment running for decades, but not powerful enough to generate acceleration. That's the problem with nuclear tech for spacecraft and aircraft, it's got to be safe enough to handle the absolute worst case scenario. Unfortunately the "greenies" are the least of your worries here, imagine the response from other countries.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 3 (view)
 
SKYLON Mission Profile
Posted: 9/12/2011 1:06:14 AM
If atmospheric oxygen was enough to fuel a high energy reaction strong enough to propel a rocket into escape velocity, the liquid oxygen tanks on modern rockets would have been replaced with forced air intake systems long ago.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 4 (view)
 
Big Bang matter/antimatter
Posted: 9/8/2011 11:30:04 PM
E=MC^2. This is an equation stating the conversion ratio for matter-energy, and this is not unidirectional. A supernova for example creates a lot of matter that doesn't form under any other conditions known, that matter wasn't present in the star itself, it came into being from all the energy being expelled under extremely chaotic conditions.

There are other considerations however. The early universe would have been much too hot and active for energy to condense into matter, maybe certain plasmas could form under those conditions. The conditions would have been too intense for matter as we know it for a long time.

Think about how we generate energy from most fuels. We apply heat and lots of it. Causes the fuel to go into more and more free states until the only thing remaining is energy and carbon, but if you apply even more heat even the carbon will break down into energy. It's a lot more complicated to go the other way (energy to matter), all of the useful forms of matter are actually very complex structures of smaller forms of matter.

It's not like the stuff just came out at the start of the universe, more like it came in phases to get to the point where it is today.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 13 (view)
 
Mathematical Black Hole?
Posted: 9/4/2011 9:45:15 PM
Didn't really get me at all. But then I'm the type of person to look at solution to a problem, see the flow, and write my own solution.

The real mathematical black hole is if they paid with credit card !
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 18 (view)
 
basic engineering
Posted: 8/10/2011 12:33:27 AM
Well a drought stricken area would post a few challenges for terra forming.

Water is the most obvious concern.
Nutrition, plants that evolved to survive drought areas don't far so well if you put a whole lot of them together. Seeding the soil with fresh nutrients will prove even more challenging than seeding it with sufficient water.
Tourism, not just from humans, but also from other species exploring areas their instincts formerly told them to avoid. Imagine having fresh vegetation grow just to have a species that thrives on it come in and eat it all up before it could fully mature.

It would take a long time to transform the deserts into sustainable ecosystems. Not just in engineering but also in natural process of life. Not exactly something you can throw money at to make it happen. Each generation contributing would have to send in their best engineers and wildlife experts to help things along.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 5 (view)
 
How opinions are slowly shaped, for the greater good????
Posted: 8/1/2011 8:10:37 AM
The speech thing is actually easy to understand when you look at how large public speeches are prepared. The person giving the speech is only really involved in the rough draft writing. After the rough draft comes lots of editing, much of it is focused on being "politically correct" and reworking the contents so that it makes sense to the target audience. It wouldn't surprise me at all if the majority of political speeches pass through the same editors.

I think the bright metallic object you seen on the camera feed was a comm device. I imagine it doubles as a channel for the edited speech to be played through so the president doesn't have to stand behind a podium throughout the speech. Neat thing about those comm devices politicians use is that they have a friendly identification beacon built in, so that authorities can identify them even in a dense crowd and avoid dangerous measures during some worst case scenarios.
 chrono1985
Joined: 11/20/2004
Msg: 15 (view)
 
The Phone Hacking Scandal ...
Posted: 7/30/2011 12:59:28 PM

Can someone explain how a third party without a sim card can access a voice mail?


Just about every voice mail system I've ever seen allows you to check it from anything that can dial into the voice mail server. In most cases checking your cell phone's voice mail from your home phone involves calling the voice mail server, entering the cell phone's number and then a 4 to 8 digit key. Most people use a handful of things for their key, street number, postal area code, sequence of contiguous number (ex: 1234), a modulating number (ex: 1212), or just the same number repeated (ex: 0000).


If so then would it alos be possible to intercept actual two way transmission of voice calls and also text messages?


Don't need any fancy equipment to intercept cell phone calls. I've seen it demonstrated with $5 worth of circuitry and a home made antenna bundled neatly inside of a Starbucks coffee cup. Some of the newer phones do require decoding the signal, but I've yet to see one that uses a proprietary codec to encode the signal, just about every one out there uses one out of a handful of popular audio encoding formats (all of which have on-chip decoders readily available).
 
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