Slashdot Mirror

Don't worry, the AC that was taunting you is an idiot who doesn't understand the Nyquist limit.

You can see a picture of the Trojan asteroids here. Jupiter is on the left of the page and revolves counter-clockwise. The trailing Trojans at L5 are 60 degrees behind Jupiter, near the top of the picture and the leading Trojans are, of course, 60 degrees ahead, near the bottom of the page. There are also a smattering of bodies around the L3 point. The Solar-Jovian L3 is closer to Jupiter's orbit than the diagram in the parent post would indicate.

Sometimes, the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of a system are called Trojan points.

This site mentions how the prominent asteroids at the Trojan points are named after characters from the Iliad. One group is named after Greeks, the other after Trojans. Each group also has a "spy" in its midst.

The word LEGO® is a brand name and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you! Susan Williams, Consumer Services.

The word LEGO® is a brand name and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you! Susan Williams, Consumer Services.

or better still go with the microfortnight. VMS waits on bootup for a period defined in microfortnights. http://computing-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/ microfortnight

OK, well 97% of other economists disagree with you, so you must be one successful dude. Ah but I digress.

Even Bush Sr. called Reagan's economic policies (famously even) "voodoo economics". Supply-side economics is proven to be ineffective for nearly all points on the Laffer curve. Simply put, most people pay around 17% of their income to taxes (which strangely enough is always the number that flat-tax proponents want to start with). I'm pretty damn sure that 17% of my total income is a bargain to pay for roads, food/environmental regulations, and the protection provided by the "best" military in the world. Additionally, there is the fact that most people who want their taxes cut also want to invade every country on the planet (apparently for free) and you get a nice strong base of support for tax cuts from the smartest people in the country.

More about supply-side economics for the ill-informed. Maybe you should read it too Captain Economics.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Supply%2 0side%20economics

Uhm- Ferrite Core memory vibrated along the plane that they were magnetized in. Most of them were installed in vibration isolation enclosures. Of course, computers weighed a freakin' ton then, and did not tend to walk. They worked by hard magnetizing beads or toruses of ferrite (think iron) All that said, I think the focus needs to be on the head structures. Now I was reading the discussion, and wondered about the application of the piezo sheet concept as the head to a drive instead of the drive itself. The other key to consider has less to do with the size and structure of the hardware and more the routing and connectivity of eeny little wires. A large-track head on silicon that can decode and communicate over fewer than a gazillion wires would be better for the industry.

Now, your comments about journalism and reporters I find truly perplexing. While your perspective on bias carries some element of truth, I seriously doubt a self-respecting journalism professional would condone or support such a perspective. Because beyond a certain threshold, the media consuming public wouldn't stand for it. No one enjoy being swindled, lied to, or otherwise tricked with half truths and exagerations. The fact it is sometimes tolerated does not mean it should be emulated or promoted. I'm fairly confident most in this profession aspire to a grander ideal and only bends to the extent necessary to apease advertisers and sponsors.

Well, in fact, in the 1800s in the U.S., most newspapers explicitly stated their bias on the front page. We still have remnants of that era; one of my town's local papers is the "Republican", for example (in an area which has usually voted strongly Republican).

I don't believe I ever promoted a media which lies or deceives its audience (I don't normally advocate such deception; actually, one of my biggest pet-peeves is a chronic lack of honesty in America. Call me old-fashioned, but I truly despise being lied-to).

But all sources of media are biased; it does not matter which source you cite, for they have a bias (the NYTimes and SFGate are liberal, the WSJ and Chicago Tribune are conservative, Reason and The Economist magazine tend to be libertarian, and so forth).

The only question is *how* are they biased... Looking again at TV media, I would argue that FOX is a fairly-staunchly conservative channel, CNN is moderate to slightly-left, MSNBC is all over the place depending on what polls show people think of their shows, and CNBC is business/financial news with an economically-conservative (but socially-moderate to slightly-conservative; i.e., this is basically TV for the WSJ crowd) slant.

There is no such thing as unbiased media. Many people dream that there is such thing, but throw a source at me -- *any* source -- and I will detect a bias for you, no matter how subtle (as long as it's in English or uses very-basic Spanish, i.e. I can read it)...

I'd also like to address the source you cite for forced prison labor. While the article resides under the prestigious banner of CNN, it should be emphasized the piece is presented as an OPINION. Harry Wu, the author, is a social activist of significant notoriety and as such, can not make much claims to journalistic integrity. In the body of the article, he fails to mention that he has been incarcerated via the LaoGai system and has a bone to pick with the Chinese regime. To take him seriously as a proper reporter presenting reliable information would be like asking SCO to arbitrate a dispute between Microsoft and Linux. For what it's worth, the article itself links to a counterpoint that disects Wu's assertions point by point.

Just because he has a bone to pick w/ the Chinese govn't does not mean he is wrong.

Still, if (for some reason) you cannot believe CNN's quoting of a Chinese guy with an anti-China bias, you can try the BSR.

Or Freechina.net.

Or Thefreedictionary.com.

Surely you don't believe China to be a beacon of human rights...

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Except for Israel, Spain, and Russia, the rest of the world have not suffered terrorist attacks.

Right.

The British, Irish, Italian, French, Tunisian
Kenyan, Saudi, Morrocan, Pakistani, and Indonesian people, and so many others, have never had to deal with terrorist attacks.

You are far too ignorant for words.

Bush: 1206
Kerry: 1190

reference

"For whatever reason, there were a ton of people just staring at that one placard. Noone demonstrating, saying anything, but just staring and thinking."

And the even more amazing thing is... most people don't even realize that its the second time that the WTC has been attacked by the same foreign terrorists , under a Bush president. Both presidents also went directly for Saddam during their presidency.

You don't hear THAT on the news though.

* why yes, I have nothing better to do today having already voted for the doosh bag ;-)

Let me offer you a reasonable way of thinking about this.

The election system is flawed. Even Afghanistan has a better election system. A simple plurality vote allows the presence of "spoiler" candidates.

Thought problem: 60% of people want a candidate with position A and 40% of people want a candidate with position B.

Unfortunately, there are 2 candidates with position A. With the votes split between them, the single candidate with position B will win. This is a serious and dramatic flaw of the electoral system. People who say otherwise are deceiving themselves.

In a runoff election, successive pairs of candidates are voted for until a solid majority is obtained. That makes spoilers impossible.

But unfortunately, with the current system, spoilers are possible.

In order to not break the system, you have to pretend that this is the last phase of a run-off election. You have to choose between the pair of candidates most likely to win. In reality, nothing has been lost. You need to recognize that even in a real run-off election, Kerry and Bush would probably have been the two run-off finalists.

And so, under this point of view, you are morally obligated to vote for the one of the two run-off candidates that you would most like in office.

Pick your battles! Call for election reform this coming year. Gain recognition by voting third party candidates into lesser offices; Libertarians, for instance, hold a number of offices nation wide.

There are a lot of subtleties in voting. Here are a couple of helpful links.

And over twice its cargo capacity.

From this page:

Lift Capability: Can carry up to 47,800 pounds (21,682 kg) into a low-earth orbit up to 12,700 pounds (5,761 kg) into a geosynchronous orbit when launched from Cape Canaveral AFS, Fla.; and up to 38,800 pounds (17,599 kg) into a low-earth polar orbit when launched from Vandenberg AFB. Using an inertial upper stage, the Titan IVB can transport up to 5,250 pounds (2,381 kg) into geosynchronous orbit.

Over twice the cargo capacity, huh? Check your sources.

Any questions?

Yes, what are these metric tons of which you speak, are they related to these?

Also 500 Million a flight is worth it to get treasured moments like the inaguration of the Columbia where Ronald Regan almost brought a tear to my eye telling me about the all current evil terrorist Afghanis were wonderful brave freedom fighters battling for good against the nasty evil empire Russian terrorists who are now our friends.

Ooops 1

Or how about the patriot missile battery that mistook an RAF Tornado for an enemy missile during the Gulf War last year?

Ooops 2

I think your confidence in putting artificial intelligence in killing machines is a little misplaced.

You're thinking of the first one. Full story here

The alternative to "12,345,678.89" is not "12.345.678.89" as you suggest. It could be written "12.345.678,89" in one country and "12 345 678.89" in another country. Check out this site for more info!

The theorem is: let {a_n} be a series of independent and identically distributed random variables with variance sigma^2, S_n be its partial sum (in other words, S_n=a_1+a_2+...+a_n), then

lim sup_{n->infinity} abs(S_n)/(sigma*sqrt(2*n*log(log(n))))=1, almost surely.

To put it more plainly, suppose you do a random walk, starting from origin, and every second you goes one step right or left with equal probability and independent from your earlier steps. Intuitively, as time goes by, you will reach places farther and farther from the origin. Indeed, after n seconds and for very large n, according to the central limit algorithm (which is taught in most elementary probability classes) your position will almost follow the Gaussian distribution with a standard deviation of sqrt(n) steps. In other words, after n seconds, you will have about 5% chance to be more than 1.96*sqrt(n) steps from the origin, a 0.1% chance to be more than 3.29*sqrt(n) steps from the origin, etc. However, it is always possible that you be as far as 10*sqrt(n) or 100*sqrt(n) from the origin (of course no farther than n steps), though the probability is very small. This theorem in a sense puts a limit on this variation of your distance from the origin. It basically means that almost every time you do such a random walk ("almost surely" means "with probability one", so it can fail to happen in principle but not in real life), you are going to get farther than sqrt(n), or 10*sqrt(n), 100*sqrt(n), etc., at some (possible very large) time n; indeed you will get as far as sqrt(1.999*log(log(n)))*sqrt(n) for infinitely many times; however, if you happen to get as far as sqrt(2.001*log(log(n)))*sqrt(n), take care to record that splendid event, for it will happen only for a finite number of times, after which you will never get this far (relative to n) during this random walk! Sounds a little complex, but simpler propositions such as "you will never get farther than 5*sqrt(n) before time n" are obviously wrong.

It is fascinating because stuff like log(log(x)) does not occur very often in fundamental mathematics (except maybe in the complexity analysis of algorithms), but it occurs here as a very strong and important result concerning a problem often met in everyday life.

Your reply was probably to be taken as funny (which it also is), but for the people demanding information, he probaly ment "endlösung", "final solution".

I am not sure where the official "rules" of English can be found - how about English for Dummies?

Using Apostrophies to Show Possession

Do you think that "his", "her", "my", and "your" need apostrophes to show posession, too?

These are possesive pronouns, which obey different rules. I don't like it, but that I can live with.

Possessive Pronoun

Sorry, papercrane, but your memory is a bit flawed. CGI (computer generated imagery) has been a film industry standard for over 30 years now and has always been known as CGI.

"CGI was first used in movies in 1973." This was in the movie Westworld. Long before Silicon Graphics Inc. was founded in 1982. CGI has always been called CGI in the film industry.

Sorry, papercrane, but your memory is a bit flawed. CGI (computer generated imagery) has been a film industry standard for over 30 years now and has always been known as CGI.

"CGI was first used in movies in 1973." This was in the movie Westworld. Long before Silicon Graphics Inc. was founded in 1982. CGI has always been called CGI in the film industry.

My contention is that Aladdin tells a better story of the current administration.

Cheney = Jafar, the Grand Vizier, the real power behind the throne
Bush = the Sultan, dressed up head of state action figure for public display.

Maybe he has a secret project to use all the words in the thesaurus at least once .. and thanks to this essay he's much closer to that goal.

> Nabbing a CD off an assembly line is no better than downloading the game off the
> internet, it's stealing plain and simple.

While nabbing the CD from an assembly line is indeed stealing, downloading it from the net has nothing at all to do with stealing.

Additionally, stealing the CD is actually worse than downloading it, as only the former causes them to lose something.

Stealing
Copyright

> Nabbing a CD off an assembly line is no better than downloading the game off the
> internet, it's stealing plain and simple.

While nabbing the CD from an assembly line is indeed stealing, downloading it from the net has nothing at all to do with stealing.

Additionally, stealing the CD is actually worse than downloading it, as only the former causes them to lose something.

Stealing
Copyright

Its in here.

As long as it doesnt leach out and contaminate the area (not likley, and even if it does it's not serious)

Not likely? I seem to recal that being said about several other things that went catastrophically wrong.

Not serious? Only if you aren't near it when it happens. CO2 can kill you in a large enough concentration even if you have plenty of O2. So if you are near it when there is a major leak, you could die. Ask any diver about CO2 poisoning.

Because the North Korean government does things like kidnap citizens from other countries, conducts experiments on human subjects, and starves their population.

All in all, since the North Korean really can't build nukes without China's tacit acquiescence, I'd say we should go to the Chinese and say "If North Korea doesn't give up its nukes now, we'll support the nuclear arming of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan."

That'd go over well with the Commies in Peking.

Oh, and you should see from both game theory and the results of Jimmy Carter's previous negotiations during the Clinton administration with North Korea why negotiating directly with North Korea only is a bad idea. Not that being a bad idea ever stopped John Kerry from opening his yap.

Did you also know that a few days after Kerry went off about North Korea in the first debate, the North Koreans pulled out of negotiations and want to wait until after the US elections? I guess they think they can get a better deal from Kerry.

Excuse my rant.

You know what? If certain groups of christians hadn't cried wolf about 666 with regular intervals all my life (and they surely didn't start when I was born) I might be inclined to say "sure, that seems similar enough". But since you (as usual) happily quote your favourite snippets from a book that almost didn't get included in the bible in the first place, effectively dooming yourself (if you believe in the validity of said book) to damnation by breaking what is explicitly stated in said book (if you dont get what I'm talking about try reading it all and pay special attention at the end) I'll just say "no way", ignore it and put my faith in God directly and not books, organisations, people, or false idols (for example the notion of Jesus as god).

And while I'm on a rant what kind of faith has a god pittyful enough to have the followers try to scare people into belief? No thank you, that's not my God.

Condescending, despising rant over, now I'll be able to continue to respect your right to believe whatever you like.

As for RFID it can go fuck itself as well. No way it will become the only possibility for purchases (just like credit cards didn't become the only way).

Oh and if anybody made me out to be a atheist/agnostic liberal democrat from reading this they couldn't be more wrong, I'm a very religious, pro Bush individualist with a libertarian sheen. People who think for themselves become complex people and not part of the "plastic dummies mob".

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Stea ling

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Copy right

Please stop spreading incorrect information. kTnx

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Stea ling

http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Copy right

Please stop spreading incorrect information. kTnx

I think it has to do with this.

Yea, this got me thinking if this was the second reason they choose "Google", as "go ogle" is a damn good one too! Maybe there's a future Windows -vs- Lindows-esque lawsuit in that one?!

And as for large strategic launch weapons, why bother? 1kg is a LOT of anti-matter to manufacture, and regardless of improvements in technology to create or confine the stuff, you are basically going to have to get all the energy to make them out of something like a dedicated nuclear reactor facility anyway. More sensible and safer to just make a 40 megaton nuke if that's really what you want, yeah it'll be quite a bit bigger and heavier in terms of nuclear reaction mass, but that the reaction mass is not really relevant with respect to an ICBM or nuclear bomb, since it's far less than the mass of the housing, electronics, etc. That's why I mentioned the artillery concept (and because making 1/10th of a gram of antimatter stably confined seems more likely than doing so with 1kg, though still very difficult).

In any case, all these weapons applications don't really seem to make any sense - even if the production technologies were improved greatly, anti-matter's reaction mass efficiency compared to nuclear seems far more beneficial as a propulsion technology than as a weapons technology, especially given the aversion to using nuclear propulsion as an orbital lift technology due to the risks of explosion in midair (I guess an antimatter drive would blow up quite colossally if it failed, so you'd probably have to do it out over the ocean somewhere, but at least it wouldn't spread nuclear waste over a large part of the planet).

Shrub probably ain't gay, but given that he graudated in 1964 from an all boy's school (Andover wasn't coed until the '70s), you gotta wonder just who's crotch he was holding.

Once again, science fiction becomes science fact.

Hmmm... As I look around for some links to back this up, I find some interesting things (even after ignoring the conspiracy theorist websites). The 707 was indeed the largest airliner in flight when the towers were designed. However, the 767 is VERY similar to the 707 in fuel capacity, weight, wingspan, and top speed. Specifically, the 767's fuel capacity is only 4% more than that of the 707. So, either the designers were lying when they said it was designed for a 707 impact, or ...?

Further, as you alluded to, although the 747 was not in flight when construction of the WTC began, it was in final design phase during the design of the WTC, and therefore the designers could (should?) have considered it, since its specifications were known at the time.

Data from here.

I was skeptical of Rutan's true goal (ooo, black sky), but after hearing rumors, I think he and others are going to do what NASA couldn't; bring cheap space access to the masses.

There's a reason some people continue to run these old systems. Some of it has to do with just fearing change for critical systems. If it works, why break it? Also, often times custom third-party applications that may have cost millions to write initially, but are no longer supported, may cost many millions more to migrate to a newer supported solution.

NT 4 was released in August 1996. A month prior to that Linux 2.0 was released.

The 2.0 series kernel is still being maintained, and I would argue is still an acceptable server platform (albeit ancient). Just keep patching your daemons and your firewall rules up to date, and you should have no problems. And if I were the admin of a multi-million dollar system with custom third-party applications that were written in 1996, and the original admin team has left and the programmers are all gone, you'd have a lot of work convincing me to attempt a migration to 2.6. What would it gain me or my organization?

Terrorists could contract the disease and intentionally spread it among the populus.