We're arguing semantics here, and it isn't going to get us anywhere. But I still believe I have got it right... in fact I've never before seen the word "thrust" used in the manner you used.
"It propels its EXHAUST towards the broad end, and generates thrust towards the tip of the rocket."
No, it doesn't. The thrust propels the exhaust gases rearward. It is Newton's "equal and opposite reaction" that causes the rocket to go in the other direction.
"Oh, and if you hardcode them, how do you expect them to be able to do XHR requests to their servers, in violation of the same origin policy? There's no point in serving JS if you prevent it from working."
I've never used any that did that, and wouldn't use any that did that. That's a violation of MY policy.
Palm did many things great. Including battery life. If you forget the actual phone part, it had an almost-iPhone long before Apple, with the Palm Tungsten series of handhelds. I had a Tungsten with a great color touchscreen with excellent graphics for the day. I used to play Bejeweled 2 and other games on it a lot.
Sadly, when Palm started making phones, they threw away almost all the good things that made them what they were. They got rid of Graffiti handwriting recognition, and put in a stupid little chiclet keyboard. They made the screen half the size of before. Etc. It just wasn't a Palm anymore. They were competing with other phone companies at their own game. Really, really dumb.
Now, I realize that there are many who do not care for the handwriting recognition and all that. Fine. Use a different brand phone. But Palm committed corporate suicide when they tossed out everything that made it unique.
"Facebook JS files are not open source; by "hardcoding them", you're actually committing copyright infringement."
So? It's still the better way to go about it. The host company (like Google or Facebook) will never know. And if you don't? Look at the poor schmucks in TFA.
Of course, if you do that it has to be updated periodically; the host company can't update it on your site, so you have to.
But I am most definitely not in favor of making my websites hostage to other web services for their basic operation. That's just asking for trouble. As we can clearly see here.
"It seems to me like another silly ego game to declare something false when it has not been falsified, (ab)using the concept of positivism by taking it to an extreme just so you can tell somebody else that they're wrong."
Yet I have seen it ridiculously often in "scientific" discussions, and it drives me up a wall. I mean it's gotten to the point that sometimes it downright pisses me off.
I am perfectly happy to say "maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, let's wait for tests and evidence". It just drives me nuts to see other people saying "No. It can't be real. It violates my worldview, so it must be false." Without, of course, any actual evidence either way.
Sure... you can say: "I doubt it's real, because it SEEMS to be violating the conservation of energy." Or whatever. But so what? Other laws have been violated. We know for example in physics that symmetry, at first considered a "law" of sorts, is violated in various ways. Relativity is a violation of Newton's laws. An edge case, to be sure, but a violation nevertheless. And so on.
Do I think it's likely somebody will invent something that violates the conservation of energy? No. Chances are overwhelming that it's a scam or a mistake. But neither am I going to flatly state that it is impossible just because it seems to be a violation at first glance.
Here's a great case in point: years ago, Scientific American published plans for a toy boat powered by a wind propeller, that travels directly into the wind. The faster the wind, the faster it goes (i.e., ground speed, not relatively). At first it seems impossible, but in fact it works great. Recently (last year I think) some college students built a full-size wind-powered car that goes "downwind" faster than the wind (again measured in ground speed), using similar principles. Which also seems impossible at first, until you understand how it works. Simple examples, but I know lots of people who would stand there and watch it go by, and tell me how impossible it is.
"Litteraly 'thrust towars the wide end' would mean the object (which is recieving the thrust) would fly towards the wide end."
You aren't taking into account my example of changed perspective. If you had an external object generating thrust toward the device, for example, and the device was oriented so the wide end was facing that object, then it would fly away from the thrust if allowed to. Yet the thrust is just as "toward" the narrow end of the device... it lies in the same direction from the thrust. So the phrase, by itself with no qualifiers, has no unambiguous meaning from the perspective of an external thrust. It is toward the device, certainly, but "toward" both ends equally.
If the thrust is being generated by the device, i.e., the perspective of the device itself, then a thrust toward the wide end would propel the device small-end-first in the opposite direction. Just as an engine of a Saturn 5, generating thrust toward the broad end of the nozzle, propels the rocket in the opposite direction. (If you really want to split hairs, the thrust from the actual reaction is in all directions; it is the nozzle itself that directs it rearward. But I think the example is clear enough.)
"Sorry, no. The whole point of skepticism is to assign a negative (false) value to anything but proven assertions. You may still be in the realm of empiricism, but you are not being skeptical."
Not at all. As a skeptic, it behooves me to judge which is more likely, based on actual evidence. (And if I do the job properly it should be good, solid evidence.) But if I waited until everything was proven I'd be waiting past the heat death of the universe.
As "causality" pointed out, what you advocate is positivism, not skepticism.
Mmm... no, it's not. It might be incorrect, but it's not ambiguous.
If your perspective is the inside of the chamber, a thrust "toward the wide end" obviously goes from the narrow end to the wide end. If your perspective is outside the chamber, it makes no sense to say the thrust is "toward the wide end" if it's coming from that direction, because then the thrust would also be "toward" the narrow end at the same time. (And vice versa.) So the only way the phrase has any meaning at all, is from a perspective inside the chamber.
I will check to see if it's incorrect. But I do not agree that it is ambiguous.
"Wouldn't Windows do its normal "OMG, my hardware changed, FML" freakout session though?"
No, it doesn't. Your hardware hasn't actually changed. What freakouts Windows would normally do, I guess VMware has figured out.
And as for the other person's question: yes, you can also dual-boot Windows and Linux in your Boot Camp partition, but in all cases you have to install Windows on the partition first.
"... can we please stop relying on third parties for things *you* should be providing to your users."
Actually, this probably didn't come from anything that is "provided" to customers.
Typically, when you link your site to Facebook (especially if you're not careful), you include a piece of JavaScript that Facebook supplies. Essentially, it's user-tracking, which is NOT a service "provided" to site visitors, unless you happen to like that sort of thing.
Sadly, many websites actually pull this JavaScript in realtime from Facebook itself, rather than hard-coding the JavaScript into their page.
So at any time, all Facebook has to do is change this JavaScript in a single location at their own web service, to affect all users of that JavaScript, everywhere. (Except for those few smart folks to hard-code it in the page.)
This is nothing terribly new. Notice that it does NOT say that the concept of Copyrights is inimical to freedom of expression, it says that under certain defined circumstances, copyright CAN interfere with freedom of expression.
The U.S. has long recognized this: it's called "fair use".
So if you're looking for some kind of revamping of U.S. copyrights a a result of this, you're probably dreaming.
Having said that, I'm playing proper Skeptic and not taking sides on whether it is at all real. As others have pointed out, there is evidence that similar effects actually exist.
"There's a video of it pushing an experimental apparatus, so it's definitely not an instrumentation thing. I'm not saying it works, I'm just saying that's definitely not it."
(Playing Devil's Advocate here): videos say next to nothing about it. I've seen videos of objects disappearing, and of Faeries. In most cases they are to be disregarded as any evidence of much of anything.
I am also a Mac user of many years, and I only use Windows for one particular program that is Windows only, and occasionally for gaming.
But there is more to the Windows on OS X story. If you create a Boot Camp partition, and install Windows in Boot Camp, you get even more for your money. Because then when you want, you can boot straight into Windows for maximum performance, if you need it for a graphics-intensive game for example. Then, in OS X, you install VMware and tell it to use your Boot Camp partition as a VM. So you can run it that way, too, if you just want to do the occasional thing in Windows and don't need maximum performance.
Now, that's what I call the best of both worlds.
As for buying a Mac vs. some other machine: when you compare the actual quality of components, Macs are really not much more expensive. That subject has been covered in too many magazine reviews to count.
I wonder whether an "advanced" civilization would even be interested in expending the resources to send out signals in every direction, as mentioned in the article.
If not, that would explain the "mystery" of lack of contact so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't tell me: John Karlin and the Touch-Tones.
We're arguing semantics here, and it isn't going to get us anywhere. But I still believe I have got it right... in fact I've never before seen the word "thrust" used in the manner you used.
"It propels its EXHAUST towards the broad end, and generates thrust towards the tip of the rocket."
No, it doesn't. The thrust propels the exhaust gases rearward. It is Newton's "equal and opposite reaction" that causes the rocket to go in the other direction.
"Oh, and if you hardcode them, how do you expect them to be able to do XHR requests to their servers, in violation of the same origin policy? There's no point in serving JS if you prevent it from working."
I've never used any that did that, and wouldn't use any that did that. That's a violation of MY policy.
I checked a short while ago. The original was back up again.
Regardless of YouTube's motives, it was real dick move of them to pull this video. It does not violate their TOS in any way.
Palm did many things great. Including battery life. If you forget the actual phone part, it had an almost-iPhone long before Apple, with the Palm Tungsten series of handhelds. I had a Tungsten with a great color touchscreen with excellent graphics for the day. I used to play Bejeweled 2 and other games on it a lot.
Sadly, when Palm started making phones, they threw away almost all the good things that made them what they were. They got rid of Graffiti handwriting recognition, and put in a stupid little chiclet keyboard. They made the screen half the size of before. Etc. It just wasn't a Palm anymore. They were competing with other phone companies at their own game. Really, really dumb.
Now, I realize that there are many who do not care for the handwriting recognition and all that. Fine. Use a different brand phone. But Palm committed corporate suicide when they tossed out everything that made it unique.
"Time for the old standard: 'The law is what the cop on the beat says it is.'"
That's a good formula for the cop himself to get beat.
"Facebook JS files are not open source; by "hardcoding them", you're actually committing copyright infringement."
So? It's still the better way to go about it. The host company (like Google or Facebook) will never know. And if you don't? Look at the poor schmucks in TFA.
Of course, if you do that it has to be updated periodically; the host company can't update it on your site, so you have to.
But I am most definitely not in favor of making my websites hostage to other web services for their basic operation. That's just asking for trouble. As we can clearly see here.
"It seems to me like another silly ego game to declare something false when it has not been falsified, (ab)using the concept of positivism by taking it to an extreme just so you can tell somebody else that they're wrong."
Yet I have seen it ridiculously often in "scientific" discussions, and it drives me up a wall. I mean it's gotten to the point that sometimes it downright pisses me off.
I am perfectly happy to say "maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, let's wait for tests and evidence". It just drives me nuts to see other people saying "No. It can't be real. It violates my worldview, so it must be false." Without, of course, any actual evidence either way.
Sure... you can say: "I doubt it's real, because it SEEMS to be violating the conservation of energy." Or whatever. But so what? Other laws have been violated. We know for example in physics that symmetry, at first considered a "law" of sorts, is violated in various ways. Relativity is a violation of Newton's laws. An edge case, to be sure, but a violation nevertheless. And so on.
Do I think it's likely somebody will invent something that violates the conservation of energy? No. Chances are overwhelming that it's a scam or a mistake. But neither am I going to flatly state that it is impossible just because it seems to be a violation at first glance.
Here's a great case in point: years ago, Scientific American published plans for a toy boat powered by a wind propeller, that travels directly into the wind. The faster the wind, the faster it goes (i.e., ground speed, not relatively). At first it seems impossible, but in fact it works great. Recently (last year I think) some college students built a full-size wind-powered car that goes "downwind" faster than the wind (again measured in ground speed), using similar principles. Which also seems impossible at first, until you understand how it works. Simple examples, but I know lots of people who would stand there and watch it go by, and tell me how impossible it is.
I should add: if, however, what you actually mean is thrust acting on the wide end, then you are back to ambiguity, because no direction is given.
"Litteraly 'thrust towars the wide end' would mean the object (which is recieving the thrust) would fly towards the wide end."
You aren't taking into account my example of changed perspective. If you had an external object generating thrust toward the device, for example, and the device was oriented so the wide end was facing that object, then it would fly away from the thrust if allowed to. Yet the thrust is just as "toward" the narrow end of the device... it lies in the same direction from the thrust. So the phrase, by itself with no qualifiers, has no unambiguous meaning from the perspective of an external thrust. It is toward the device, certainly, but "toward" both ends equally.
If the thrust is being generated by the device, i.e., the perspective of the device itself, then a thrust toward the wide end would propel the device small-end-first in the opposite direction. Just as an engine of a Saturn 5, generating thrust toward the broad end of the nozzle, propels the rocket in the opposite direction. (If you really want to split hairs, the thrust from the actual reaction is in all directions; it is the nozzle itself that directs it rearward. But I think the example is clear enough.)
"Your post made me smile and remember the soviet headless dog."
Haha. I'm splitting hairs here, but I think you mean the dogless head. :)
"Sorry, no. The whole point of skepticism is to assign a negative (false) value to anything but proven assertions. You may still be in the realm of empiricism, but you are not being skeptical."
Not at all. As a skeptic, it behooves me to judge which is more likely, based on actual evidence. (And if I do the job properly it should be good, solid evidence.) But if I waited until everything was proven I'd be waiting past the heat death of the universe.
As "causality" pointed out, what you advocate is positivism, not skepticism.
"Start with null, not negative. Also avoid language like 'proven'. Then lecture about what is skeptical and what isn't."
Exactly. And I didn't say I believe one way or another; I simply said I wasn't taking sides.
"So either it didn't work, or Phantom Works already has/came up with something better."
Or it works but they don't see anything practical in it. Or they intend to steal the idea. Or...
There are more than just one or two possibilities here.
""Thrust towards" is ambiguous."
Mmm... no, it's not. It might be incorrect, but it's not ambiguous.
If your perspective is the inside of the chamber, a thrust "toward the wide end" obviously goes from the narrow end to the wide end. If your perspective is outside the chamber, it makes no sense to say the thrust is "toward the wide end" if it's coming from that direction, because then the thrust would also be "toward" the narrow end at the same time. (And vice versa.) So the only way the phrase has any meaning at all, is from a perspective inside the chamber.
I will check to see if it's incorrect. But I do not agree that it is ambiguous.
"Wouldn't Windows do its normal "OMG, my hardware changed, FML" freakout session though?"
No, it doesn't. Your hardware hasn't actually changed. What freakouts Windows would normally do, I guess VMware has figured out.
And as for the other person's question: yes, you can also dual-boot Windows and Linux in your Boot Camp partition, but in all cases you have to install Windows on the partition first.
"... can we please stop relying on third parties for things *you* should be providing to your users."
Actually, this probably didn't come from anything that is "provided" to customers.
Typically, when you link your site to Facebook (especially if you're not careful), you include a piece of JavaScript that Facebook supplies. Essentially, it's user-tracking, which is NOT a service "provided" to site visitors, unless you happen to like that sort of thing.
Sadly, many websites actually pull this JavaScript in realtime from Facebook itself, rather than hard-coding the JavaScript into their page.
So at any time, all Facebook has to do is change this JavaScript in a single location at their own web service, to affect all users of that JavaScript, everywhere. (Except for those few smart folks to hard-code it in the page.)
"I don't think I've seen anybody who isn't a head of state moving around in public with an armed guard, much less an actual army."
Try NYC Mayor Bloomberg. He's not a "head of state". He is, however, a hypocrite.
"I, for one, welcome our new european overlords!"
This is nothing terribly new. Notice that it does NOT say that the concept of Copyrights is inimical to freedom of expression, it says that under certain defined circumstances, copyright CAN interfere with freedom of expression.
The U.S. has long recognized this: it's called "fair use".
So if you're looking for some kind of revamping of U.S. copyrights a a result of this, you're probably dreaming.
Having said that, I'm playing proper Skeptic and not taking sides on whether it is at all real. As others have pointed out, there is evidence that similar effects actually exist.
"There's a video of it pushing an experimental apparatus, so it's definitely not an instrumentation thing. I'm not saying it works, I'm just saying that's definitely not it."
(Playing Devil's Advocate here): videos say next to nothing about it. I've seen videos of objects disappearing, and of Faeries. In most cases they are to be disregarded as any evidence of much of anything.
"The thrust is reported to be from the large end towards the small end. "
No, TFA says:
"... experiences a net thrust towards the wide end."
I am also a Mac user of many years, and I only use Windows for one particular program that is Windows only, and occasionally for gaming.
But there is more to the Windows on OS X story. If you create a Boot Camp partition, and install Windows in Boot Camp, you get even more for your money. Because then when you want, you can boot straight into Windows for maximum performance, if you need it for a graphics-intensive game for example. Then, in OS X, you install VMware and tell it to use your Boot Camp partition as a VM. So you can run it that way, too, if you just want to do the occasional thing in Windows and don't need maximum performance.
Now, that's what I call the best of both worlds.
As for buying a Mac vs. some other machine: when you compare the actual quality of components, Macs are really not much more expensive. That subject has been covered in too many magazine reviews to count.
I wonder whether an "advanced" civilization would even be interested in expending the resources to send out signals in every direction, as mentioned in the article.
If not, that would explain the "mystery" of lack of contact so far.