I hear a lot (mostly from C programmers) that FORTRAN is a lousy language, but I never hear much beyond that statement to back it up. I'm not even sure why people say it is an ugly language. The function calls are natural (if you're not sure the exact name of a function, you can pretty easily guess it), and simply not having semi-colons all over the place even makes the code asthetically more pleasing then other languages.
I've approached C from the perspective of being well-versed in FORTRAN, and frankly nothing about C jumps out at me and makes me say, "Gee, this is much better than FORTRAN." I see the differences, but none of them strike me as one being far superior to the other; it is all in what you're trying to do. Anything I need to do with pointers in C I easily do with common blocks in FORTRAN. I actually prefer how FORTRAN handles variables by address instead of value, but that is probably just a matter of taste.
I haven't used g77 because now I use Linux at home and Unix at work and there isn't much code on *nix systems that isn't written in C/C++ or one of the scripting languages. But to say that FORTRAN is outdated or bad because not many public applications are written in it is like saying that Unix/Linux/etc. are bad operating systems because most people use Windows.
I have spent the better part of the '90s programming FORTRAN on a DEC Alpha, and I can say that the compiler is very nice and fast, and the help files are excellent. I just hope Compaq maintains these standards.
If we assume a "side" of the moon is a hemi-sphere (which is what we usually do), there is a "light" side and a "dark" side. The light side is that side which faces the Sun (and thus the dark side faces away). A full moon is when the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon, and a new moon is when the moon is between the Earth and the Sun. Most of the time the Earth and Moon don't obscure each other because most of the time the Sun-Earth-Moon bodies do not all fall on a line. The instances they do fall on a line is when eclipses occur. The kind of eclipses that occur depend on how well one body covers the other and where the shadow falls.
For a nice explanation of lunar phases, see here .
I am also highly dubious about this technology, at least as a bio-implant transmitter. For any useful level of detection you would need a milliamp or so of power, but that would have to be generated from a device with an antenna with millimeter-level dimensions. I should work the numbers, but my gut feeling is that the local tissue would be burned with something like that. Then there would be the attenuation problem of transmitting---you woud be, in essense, trying to transmit under water, and with the high frequencies that would be needed with such a small antenna, the RF skin depth would probably be too prohibitive.
An alternative for this to work would be for the person to wear a tranciever/amplifier on their belt, but then that defeats the purpose of implanting something to begin with.
The overall spirit of Slashdot is for just about everybody to express their opinion (though I'm all in favor of squashing the speech rights of the First Posters;) ). If CmdrTaco feels strongly one way or the other about Amazon, I'd prefer that he didn't force his ideas upon us by removing the link willy-nilly. Linking to Amazon is done in the interest of generating $$. If the majority of Slashdot users don't want to deal with Amazon, then they can choose so by not following the link-throughs. Vote with your feet.
One may argue that there should be more bookseller links on the page (fatbrain, bookpool, etc.), and I'd be all in favor of this, but I don't think CmdrTaco needs to specifically address or apologize for having Amazon links.
I think that the computer industry is already at the point of having commodity status. Look at the new internet-only boxes that are/will be coming out. Even the latest Macs are advertised to be up and on the net in 10 minutes out of the box. Perhaps there will be two very distinct markets: the "real" computer market and the internet market, and people will treat them differently. Upgrading "real" computers will happen when MS comes out with a new, bloated, OS or office suite that consumes all the resources on existing machines. The internet market will probably be simple boxes to which upgraded peripherials can be added to maintain a high level of multimedia performance.
Though there is always the group of people that need to buy the latest and greatest gadgets, I'd be surprised if they drive the computer market. Then again, I can never figure out the rationale behind Madison Avenue and to whom and why they market some items.
There is a lot of speculation on this issue. One thought is that of course any matter and anti-matter that came together would annihilate into gamma rays. The rest of the stuff we see is either matter or anti-matter that coalesced with each other, so there would be matter galaxies and anti-matter galaxies. The problem is that we wouldn't be able to tell remotely whether a galaxy is matter or anti-matter because, for instance, an anti-molecule (made up of an anti-protons, neutrons, and positrons) has the same electron shell structure as a regular molecule, so from afar they would look the same. Also gravity acts the same on matter and anti-matter.
I've always been rather partial to this explanation because it is simple and satisfies my preference towards Occam's Razor.
We can observe the bending of light around astrophysical objects, and in particular you can find some beautiful images of the "Einstein Cross" that demonstrate this. However, the ultimate test of GR is whether gravitational waves exist. This would not only nail the coffin door shut on the few black hole skeptics around, but it would make some pretty profound statements about the fate of the universe.
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I've approached C from the perspective of being well-versed in FORTRAN, and frankly nothing about C jumps out at me and makes me say, "Gee, this is much better than FORTRAN." I see the differences, but none of them strike me as one being far superior to the other; it is all in what you're trying to do. Anything I need to do with pointers in C I easily do with common blocks in FORTRAN. I actually prefer how FORTRAN handles variables by address instead of value, but that is probably just a matter of taste.
I haven't used g77 because now I use Linux at home and Unix at work and there isn't much code on *nix systems that isn't written in C/C++ or one of the scripting languages. But to say that FORTRAN is outdated or bad because not many public applications are written in it is like saying that Unix/Linux/etc. are bad operating systems because most people use Windows.
I have spent the better part of the '90s programming FORTRAN on a DEC Alpha, and I can say that the compiler is very nice and fast, and the help files are excellent. I just hope Compaq maintains these standards.
For a nice explanation of lunar phases, see here .
An alternative for this to work would be for the person to wear a tranciever/amplifier on their belt, but then that defeats the purpose of implanting something to begin with.
One may argue that there should be more bookseller links on the page (fatbrain, bookpool, etc.), and I'd be all in favor of this, but I don't think CmdrTaco needs to specifically address or apologize for having Amazon links.
Though there is always the group of people that need to buy the latest and greatest gadgets, I'd be surprised if they drive the computer market. Then again, I can never figure out the rationale behind Madison Avenue and to whom and why they market some items.
I've always been rather partial to this explanation because it is simple and satisfies my preference towards Occam's Razor.
A rather nice, inexpensive book is 'Tensor Calculus' by Synge and Schild. It is a Dover book.
We can observe the bending of light around astrophysical objects, and in particular you can find some beautiful images of the "Einstein Cross" that demonstrate this. However, the ultimate test of GR is whether gravitational waves exist. This would not only nail the coffin door shut on the few black hole skeptics around, but it would make some pretty profound statements about the fate of the universe.
For a nice page on relativity see this site .