"raping your childhood"? Don't you think you may be taking all this a little bit too seriously? Surely you did other things as a child than watching Star Wars? Right?
Come on people, lighten up. It was a joke, nothing more. You may not find it funny, you may even think it was in bad taste, but that still doesn't warrant all this griping.
More and more of Earth's communications use cable and satellites, with no radio-frequency leakage to space.
Why would there be no radio-frequency leakage to space using satellites? Some of the signal sent down to earth probably bounces back to space. More importantly, most of the radiation beamed up to satellites goes right into space! There's no way those beams are so narrow that they only hit the satellite's receiving antenna...
If this mechanism worked it would allow you to transport information faster than the speed of light, which as far as I know is still thought to be fundamentally impossible, so I think it's extremely unlikely that it could work. One reason probably being that you wouldn't be able to measure the state of the particle in the cavity without altering said state, so that you would never know what the state was before you tried to measure it. Good old Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Any physicists care to comment?
... is it not possible to have non-directed optical signals?
Of course. Light is just electromagnetic radiation, like radio is, so anything you can with radio you can do with light. The simplest example of an omnidirectional light beacon is a lightbulb...
You can't have an omnidirectional laser though, since the fact that the light is unidirectional is one of the things that makes it a laser...
Pulsars are a bad example of an omnidirectional beacon by the way, since pulsars send out beams of radiation, although they do spin. They're more like a lighthouse than a lightbulb.
... the shadow minister for the Arts, Sport and Information Technology...
Arts, sports and information technology? What, they didn't know what to do with it so just stuck it in any old ministry? Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that the person in charge will actually be competent in that area...
I still don't think it's a big deal. Those gadgets I was talking about that I have, they light up when I'm 10 m away, and they cost next to nothing. It can't be that difficult to make them work at 30 m and even if that increased their cost a hundredfold, they would still be cheap.
Come on! We've been getting these for free with our Coke and popcorn for years. I've a small green Heineken bottle that lights up when my cell phone is active, and also a pen with a little red light at the end which does the same.
There's even ones that don't need batteries and work solely on the energy that's broadcast by the phone (although these have to be attached to the phone so they're not much good as "cell phone detectors"). All of these have been around for quite a while (or at least they have here in Europe).
Re:I'm not convinced of VoIP yet...
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VoIP Questioned
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Almost nobody cares that anyone can eavesdrop on their cell and cordless conversations.
You can't eavesdrop on GSM cell phones or DECT cordless phones, like we use in Europe. Maybe law enforcement agencies or high-tech criminals can (although I rather doubt the latter), but certainly not "anyone".
It goes against the whole idea behind a business; that is, to get customers and meet their needs while making a tidy profit.
But that's not the idea behind most businesses. For most businesses it's: "make as much profit as possible, at the expense of everything else." Of course they need customers for that, and keep them moderately happy even, but otherwise they'll try to screw them as much as they can get away with.
That would all be true if we were talking about a business; you'd be right if Moore were making personal appearances to earn his living. But that's not the case. He makes more than enough money off of his documentaries (I suspect), he doesn't need to do personal appearances at all. It doesn't matter whether he does them for money, or because he enjoys doing it, or both, but I think we can be sure he doesn't need the money (these days at least) and he has no need to increase his price to "manage his workload"...
Of course not, just don't believe that asking for more money has any other reason than wanting to make more money.
Also, whether he makes $100,000 or $1000 per appearance has nothing to do with whether he makes a living or not, not with Fahrenheit 9/11 earning a $100,000,000...
Keep in mind that charging for your time can have two goals:
1) Income
2) Moderation
Bullshit. Nobody's holding a gun to your head to make you accept every single request for your time, are they? There's no reason why you couldn't just accept a limit number of request, as your calendar allows, and politely refuse the rest.
Shouldn't you be comparing the diesel and petrol versions of the same car to each other, instead of entirely different cars?
Anyway, I was just commenting on the fact that the submitter appeared to think that 23 MPG was pretty decent and 36.3 a very high mileage, while I (and I am in no way an exception over here) make 50 MPG on average.
No doubt the economics of driving a diesel are totally different than they are here (in the Netherlands), but concerns about sustainability and the environment are not, and yet those factors don't seem to come into your (and others') decision at all, which I think is a pity.
I drive a Renault Megane Coupe 1.9 dTi and in my book, a gallon equals about four litres, why?
I notice that concerns about sustainability and protecting the environment don't seem to factor into your car buying decisions at all. Is that also typical for Americans?
Slashdot Mirror
MIB? Something tells me that that's probably not a coincidence...
Thank you Mr Lucas for raping my childhood
"raping your childhood"? Don't you think you may be taking all this a little bit too seriously? Surely you did other things as a child than watching Star Wars? Right?
Come on people, lighten up. It was a joke, nothing more. You may not find it funny, you may even think it was in bad taste, but that still doesn't warrant all this griping.
Will it find guns if you zoom in on the shadows?
More and more of Earth's communications use cable and satellites, with no radio-frequency leakage to space.
Why would there be no radio-frequency leakage to space using satellites? Some of the signal sent down to earth probably bounces back to space. More importantly, most of the radiation beamed up to satellites goes right into space! There's no way those beams are so narrow that they only hit the satellite's receiving antenna...
If this mechanism worked it would allow you to transport information faster than the speed of light, which as far as I know is still thought to be fundamentally impossible, so I think it's extremely unlikely that it could work. One reason probably being that you wouldn't be able to measure the state of the particle in the cavity without altering said state, so that you would never know what the state was before you tried to measure it. Good old Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Any physicists care to comment?
I'm not really sure I want to be looking to make contact with aliens who are pointing FRICKEN LASERS at us.
Why not? After all, we point lasers at other planets too.
Of course. Light is just electromagnetic radiation, like radio is, so anything you can with radio you can do with light. The simplest example of an omnidirectional light beacon is a lightbulb...
You can't have an omnidirectional laser though, since the fact that the light is unidirectional is one of the things that makes it a laser...
Pulsars are a bad example of an omnidirectional beacon by the way, since pulsars send out beams of radiation, although they do spin. They're more like a lighthouse than a lightbulb.
Arts, sports and information technology? What, they didn't know what to do with it so just stuck it in any old ministry? Doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that the person in charge will actually be competent in that area...
Surprising thing was none of the screenshots were of solitaire crashing
I don't think it does crash. The games are usually the most stable part of any Microsoft OS...
I didn't know about that, so I Googled for it. It's a very good read. I had no idea that things were this bad.
I have a very good feeling about it ...
Yeah? Well, I have a bad feeling about this...
I still don't think it's a big deal. Those gadgets I was talking about that I have, they light up when I'm 10 m away, and they cost next to nothing. It can't be that difficult to make them work at 30 m and even if that increased their cost a hundredfold, they would still be cheap.
There's even ones that don't need batteries and work solely on the energy that's broadcast by the phone (although these have to be attached to the phone so they're not much good as "cell phone detectors"). All of these have been around for quite a while (or at least they have here in Europe).
Almost nobody cares that anyone can eavesdrop on their cell and cordless conversations.
You can't eavesdrop on GSM cell phones or DECT cordless phones, like we use in Europe. Maybe law enforcement agencies or high-tech criminals can (although I rather doubt the latter), but certainly not "anyone".
I am writing an app for mono that is supposed to run on linux mac and windows in the end.
Why aren't you using Java?
Revoke their license and give it to a company who restricts their commercial endeavours to what is considered *reasonable*.
Or better yet, don't give it to a commercial company at all. It should be a public utility.
It goes against the whole idea behind a business; that is, to get customers and meet their needs while making a tidy profit.
But that's not the idea behind most businesses. For most businesses it's: "make as much profit as possible, at the expense of everything else." Of course they need customers for that, and keep them moderately happy even, but otherwise they'll try to screw them as much as they can get away with.
That would all be true if we were talking about a business; you'd be right if Moore were making personal appearances to earn his living. But that's not the case. He makes more than enough money off of his documentaries (I suspect), he doesn't need to do personal appearances at all. It doesn't matter whether he does them for money, or because he enjoys doing it, or both, but I think we can be sure he doesn't need the money (these days at least) and he has no need to increase his price to "manage his workload"...
You don't resent him earning a living, do you?
Of course not, just don't believe that asking for more money has any other reason than wanting to make more money.
Also, whether he makes $100,000 or $1000 per appearance has nothing to do with whether he makes a living or not, not with Fahrenheit 9/11 earning a $100,000,000...
Keep in mind that charging for your time can have two goals :
1) Income
2) Moderation
Bullshit. Nobody's holding a gun to your head to make you accept every single request for your time, are they? There's no reason why you couldn't just accept a limit number of request, as your calendar allows, and politely refuse the rest.
Oh lighten up, will ya!
So yes, to European sensibilities, we do drive big cars, but our choices are limited.
On the other hand, the reason that your choice is limited is because there is apparently not enough demand for smaller cars...
Anyway, I was just commenting on the fact that the submitter appeared to think that 23 MPG was pretty decent and 36.3 a very high mileage, while I (and I am in no way an exception over here) make 50 MPG on average.
No doubt the economics of driving a diesel are totally different than they are here (in the Netherlands), but concerns about sustainability and the environment are not, and yet those factors don't seem to come into your (and others') decision at all, which I think is a pity.
I notice that concerns about sustainability and protecting the environment don't seem to factor into your car buying decisions at all. Is that also typical for Americans?