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User: earendil

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  1. Re:whaa? on Astronomers Again Baffled by Solar Observations · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Off-topic, but the first is a myth. Noone with any education believed the Earth was flat after oh, about 100 AD - the Greek experiments that showed it otherwise were well-known. The reason why it's commonly believed that middle-age man believed the Earth to be flat can be blamed on Washington Irving, who needed a nice symbol of the barbarism of Europe as compared with the enlightened new world, and came up with this idea.

    The second was actually for good reasons, since the early Copernican models provided no better accuracy than the the Ptolemaic system - Copernicus simply preferred it for aesthetic reasons. It wasn't until Brahe provided the measurements, and Kepler the mathematical model that there was a good reason to switch to the new way of looking at things.

  2. Re:whaa? on Astronomers Again Baffled by Solar Observations · · Score: 2, Informative

    The so-called "missing neutrinos" were found five years ago. Look it up:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_oscillation
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_neutrino_proble m

    As for the rest... dude, you're not only barking up the wrong tree, you're barking mad as well. Mass shield? Solid surface? Electrical comets? Give me a break.

  3. Re:Scientists Are Allowed To Say They Were Wrong on Sun Research Yields Unexpected Results · · Score: 1

    Well, it's not enough to be controversial. You also have to be right.

  4. Re:It is a sad thing... on Whedon Calls Death Knell For Firefly · · Score: 1

    Jane's a girl's name. >.>

  5. Re:Good Investment on Marvel Gets Cash to do 10 Films · · Score: 1

    Those are _different_ movies? I figured they had two titles for that one...

  6. Re:They had bugs... on Apollo 12 at 35 · · Score: 5, Informative

    The problem that is usually quoted occurred somewhat earlier than that, during the beginning of the descent. Specifically, it was what is known as a "1202 alarm", which was a warning from the real-time part of the computer that it had more tasks to do than it had time for. The reason for this was that the astronauts had forgotten to turn off the rendezvous radar that was going to be used when docking with Columbia, so that the radar interrupts were overloading the task queue. Fortunately, the software was robust enough that the more high-prioritised tasks were still running, so they could land despite this problem.

    The landing procedure wasn't quite that critical; sure, the estimate was only 20 seconds of fuel remaining (later revised to 45), but he had after all done 100-odd test landings before. However, he was focused enough on the landing that he didn't turn notice the contact probes touching the ground, and only turned off the landing engine when they were down. The idea was to turn it off as soon as the contact light lit to avoid engine backblast damaging the lander. No harm done though.

    The missions were actually of three types. Apollo 11 was a "G" type mission, with a more limited lander, and may be considered the last of the test flights. Apollo 12-14 were "H" missions, which was basically the same as "G", but included the full instrument package which had been removed due to concerns about fuel margines, while 15-17 were "J" type missions which had an improved lander with twice the payload capacity, an LLRV (rover), better moon suits, a bay of science equipment for the command module and so forth.

    An intriguing incident with Apollo 12 was that they launched despite fairly threatening clouds in the vicinity, and the rocket was hit twice by lightning during the ascent. Needless to say, this spooked the astronauts a fair bit.

    http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/frame.html

  7. Re:Brainphone on Lamprey Cells Drive Robot · · Score: 1
    "More realistic, he says, is connecting electronic devices such as mobile phones directly into our brains."

    I sure hope they get down the radiation from cellulars before then, and put up a heavy firewall so some script kiddie won't hack into my brain!

    And on that note, read/watch "Ghost in the Shell". It talks quite eloquently about the philosophy of moving your brain into cyborg bodies.
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  8. Re:Freedom of Contract on Copyrant · · Score: 1
    See, this is one of the things that make living in Sweden great sometimes. Here, we have a consumer agency, Konsumentverket, which is solely dedicated to consumers' rights enforcement. Among those rights are a couple which cannot be changed by contract, no matter what, such as a minimum warranty period of 2 years after sale, or 3 months after the latest service, whichever is the latest (this is for high-capital goods btw). The Swedish KoV also does market surveys and similar things, plus gives you a central point to appeal to if you get screwed over by a company.

    I'd say what the USofA needs is a non-profit organisation dedicated to these pursuits, unless there's one already. Basically, it'd be dedicated to whatever class-action suits were deemed interesting or important enough. Such an organisation could be incorporated into the government later on if it grows big enough.

    Whatever direction you take, I'll still be home free... M$ simply could not bind me to such a deal in this country; regardless of whether I signed, donated blood or whatever. The law takes precedence.

    Cheerio.
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  9. Re:Communistic Hoards. on Windows Source Code Proposal Confirmed · · Score: 1
    Ok, maybe I shouldn't get into this because you sound like a troll, but here goes. First of all, did you actually read the government proposal? I'll go point-for-point and give references, so you'll be able to look it up for yourself.

    ...the OS company would be allowed to keep internet explorer in the OS. Wasn't that the whole point of contention in the lawsuit?

    This is in 1(c)(ii): In the case of such Intellectual Property that is related to the Internet browser, the license shall not grant the Operating System Business any right to develop, license, or distribute modified or derivative versions of the Internet browser. Basically, the proposal says that _only_ the raw OS gets split off, meaning that we have MS as today, except without owning Windows. The only blooper I've seen is that MS might sacrifice the OS business and develop an identical department... didn't see anything in the proposal against that.

    Sure MS has monopolistic practices, but no more than the baby bells or the cable companies.

    And by this you're justifying them how? Two wrongs do not make a right. IMHO, cable companies should be next to be legislated, if not actually prosecuted for their business practices.

    ...the practices that make MS a monopoly. Such as an OEM not being able to install another OS along with Windows, or MS charging different prices to different OEMs.

    All addressed in section 3(a). Section 3 contains the interim restrictions, which contain a lot of the meat of the proposal, and will continue to apply to the OS business.

    However, the main reason Office is so succesful is MS basically gives it away to the OEMs.

    Is it just me or does this ring of RedHat's business model? If they can keep it up, sure, why not. But I doubt it'll be that easy.

    People use IE because Netscape sucks.

    People use IE because it comes preinstalled, and can't be removed easily. And, most people have other things to do than finding the netscape download link (really, did Netscape deliberately obfuscate the route to the download page?)

    MS only made Java better.

    MS broke the standard, as specified in the license they signed. This not only breaks Java's standard, but is an actual contract breach. If they wished to 'enhance' it, as you say, they were free to develop an independent toolkit for Windows use, as long as the core API was standards-compliant.

    Go read the Findings of Fact, and the Government proposal. Some of the stuff in the Findings is just mind-boggling, and definitely not what I'd consider fair or sound business practices.
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  10. You lucky bahstids on Employers Logging Keystrokes-What Can You Do? · · Score: 1
    At least you work for the US government. In Sweden, one of the funny things about our legal code is that all printed information in (most) government agencies has to be made available for public access, as can be seen in the recent Scientology case.

    Lately, the courts have ruled that this also includes emails sent from government computers. Imagine not only having your employer able to snoop your email, but having it possible for any reporter with an axe to grind scan it for anything suspicious.

    Let me tell you, in Sweden, you want to be working for the military. At least, they'll keep whatever info they gain to themselves.
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  11. Re:"Go Away!" signs on the web on How The Web Was Almost Won · · Score: 1

    Quite.

    One thing the sites using similar policies have forgotten is that interesting concept "firewalls". I work behind a firewall which is more than just a little paranoid. For starters, there is no such thing as direct ftp connections; everything goes through a gateway that I doubt is very RFC-compliant. But, I digress.

    When looking at HTML, this firewall filters the content, so that Java applets, JavaScript, ActiveX and whatnot simply disappears. Where the code ought to have been in the source is just blank space. Very interesting results ensue on sites who rely on scripts to run :) A web site preparing to rely on such techniques should be aware that they are automatically excluding any users residing behind firewalls, and these include more and more corporate users as companies become more security-aware. I personally have very little understanding for web publishers who lock their customers into these kinds of solutions.

    There are perfectly feasible ways to run a complex web application without relying on scripts a single time. www.amazon.com is a good example of this, and there are plenty more around.

    // Eärendil

  12. Nobody expects the DNA inquisition! on DNA as Construction Equipment · · Score: 2

    This is actually pretty cool.

    I don't know about you guys (and girls, no sexism here), but I start thinking about other events where a discovery has led to an unexpected area of application; liquid crystals, teflon, microwaves... can anyone think of more examples? Let's hear it for abstract knowledge!

    Hopefully, this will give nanotech a leg up. Using DNA for the actual enzymes and whatnot seems a little bulky to me, but you could probably use the technique to build the nanotech "factories" that are going to assemble the actual nanobots. I imagine von Neumann machines could be built with this as well... DNA is good at self-replication too =)

    // Eärendil
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