They'd have to make a black hole with a mass of at least ~ 10^-8 kg before it could interact with matter
10^-8 kg = 900 million Joules of energy (9*10^8 J)
1 eV = 1.6*10^-19 J
Thus, we would require a center of mass collision of 5.6*10^27 eV, or 10^15 TeV
The LHC can, at BEST with the most optimistic figures, have 14 TeV collisions. 14 vs 10^15. In other words, we'd need collisions one quadrillion times more powerful.
Trust me, if you know how to make the LHC even 10x more powerful, we'd love to hear about it!
Are you suggesting that black holes in the atmosphere would decay quickly because there is no matter in the atmosphere? Not only is that outrageously stupid, but even with a lifetime of hours, the black holes created by cosmic rays would still pass through the Earth and would have plenty of matter to "feed" on
If anything, having a longer lifetime leads more credibility to the idea that black holes at the LHC will be harmless.
Much more likely is that advanced alien civilizations develop technology sufficient to destroy themselves through war, not through happenstance particle collisions that occur all the time naturally.
To make a big one of appreciable size, like the kind you can see with a telescope, you need astronomical amounts of matter.
However, mass and energy are the same fundamental quantity (ie E = mc^2). Let's take a look at collisions in the LHC and see how much mass we can get, shall we?
The *maximum* center of mass energy of each collision is 14 TeV. That's a lot for particle physics, but we'll soon see why that's actually really very little in macroscopic terms. Also, remember that the average collision in the LHC will be much less than this; the interactions will take place between quarks, not the protons themselves, so you can have 2 quarks interacting with much less than 14 TeV despite the two protons colliding at 14 TeV.
14 TeV = 1.6*10^-7 J Oh, it turns out that's actually an insignificant amount of energy per collision. It takes 4 MILLION J to raise the temperature of a kg of water by 1 degree Celsius.
So how much mass could we theoretically have if we converted it all into a black hole? It would be about 10^-24 kg, giving it a Schwarzschild radius of approx 10^-51 meters. That is the LARGEST possible black hole that can be created. Let's even be extra generous and give it a 10^-45 m radius
The Planck Length is 10^-35 m. Below this length gravity effectively stops working. In other words, if two particles are closer than this distance then quantum physics takes over and gravity is so ineffective that it can be ignored. At this scale the other forces dominate, and normal gravitational effects do not apply.
Bottom line: We don't really know if we can even create black holes of that size, much less how they would work. If they work just like large scale black holes, then they're unable to "gobble up" more matter due to their insignificant size and eventually will evaporate.
Even if the rate of evaporation is completely wrong and they exist forever, they're too small to interact with matter through gravity! In other words, even if you directed protons AT THE BLACK HOLE, they would not interact with it, nor would new black holes interact with it! If something even came close to magically reaching its radius, which we've established is impossible due to the shortness of the planck length, it would be repelled by the black hole's doubly positive charge (as we all know, electromagnetism is frighteningly more powerful than gravity).
In summary, even if we made a black hole that lived forever, it would still mean nothing.
And back to the discussion of cosmic rays, let's say a black hole is created in the atmosphere with a considerable mass. Some have pointed out that it would still have a large momentum and fling out to space, but it would have to pass through the Earth first. If its interaction potential was truly high enough to matter, high enough to absorb more energy than it leaks, the Earth probably would have been destroyed. Even worse than that, we'd see a much higher rate of black hole development. Since collisions like this are downright common over billions of years, it is likely that all of the matter in the universe would be in black holes right now.
Furthermore, you're likely to tell everyone your opinion on the game: the demo was good, but the game sucks and you feel cheated. This will cost them even more sales on future titles AND it will cost them sales on the game that you purchased.
This. This article reveals a poorly thought out idea. All it does is allow the gaming industry to lie to itself; it's not our fault that sales are lower than expected, it's because we released a demo!
It takes 2 seconds to dispel such a stupid concept. Worst of all, someone got paid to come up with that idea!
And part of that lies with the review sites and the gaming community. If everyone tells you that the rest of the game sucks beyond the beginning bit, how likely are you to purchase that game? Most people will avoid the full version unless they greatly enjoyed that demo.
Thus, we see the real pattern here: bad game = poor sales, good game = good sales. As a corollary, I think a good demo could only give you a sales boost (by impressing skeptics) whereas a bad demo will cost you sales.
Word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, and it can easily destroy your profits even if your demo is great.
"LittleBigPlanet, Age of Conan or Mirror's Edge, we notice they have two things in common: very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales."
LittleBigPlanet = great demo! Similarly, great first hour or two of game! The rest of the game is boring and monotonous. In other words, the demo is actually more fun than the real game.
Age of Conan = WOW clone but not as good, people always praise WOW clones but prefer to play the original
Mirror's Edge = Great concept, except the rest of the game is the same thing over and over. Again, this means the demo is great, but the rest of the game is basically the demo over and over again.
What do all three of these games have in common? THEY SUCK!
Warhammer 40k had a well-received demo and it sold very well, enough to warrant 3 expansions and a soon to be released sequel that some claim will be Starcraft 2's main competition.
Speaking of Starcraft, it's one of the best selling games of all time and it had a well-received demo.
WOW has a demo and it has the highest subscription rate out of any MMO in the country.
Sorry, idea was initially interesting but fails on a many levels.
The average user uses the internet for a few things
1) E-mail (so far so good)
2) Casual web browsing (news sites, wikipedia, facebook, etc., maybe the occasional link from an e-mail)
3) Flash video such as what you'd find on youtube or any major network TV home page
This is a huge problem if we want average users to adopt linux.
Also, your concerns regarding OO vs Word are completely valid. I work at a university and greater than 25% of the time OpenOffice fails to load word documents correctly. This prompted me to start dual-booting with Windows on my laptop, since apparently Ubuntu is insufficient:(
Geniuses can join groups and take credit for brilliant discoveries that they make. That's how group research works; everyone learns from each other, but credit is given where credit is due. This article is nonsensical.
If they had bother to read, say, a single scientific journal from the past 50 years, there would be a realization; not only do great scientific minds still appear, but they appear more regularly now than ever before.
Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Curie, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Heisenburg, Hawking, Planck, and many more who made outstanding individual contributions were ALL 20th century scientists! And there are dozens more like them, making BRILLIANT contributions to science. These are geniuses.
The article is ignoring how history is written; you don't write it as it is being experienced. Often someone isn't recognized for genius for 20 years after they've made some incredible discovery, theory, etc. 20 years from now we'll have a new list of geniuses for the 21st century.
The filtering isn't what most people are fighting against, it's the very idea of an option of government-run internet access. I think that's what the post you replied to was addressing...
I think it's a great idea except for the filtering, which is so impossible to implement that it'd have to be dropped anyway. It doesn't take an IQ over 60 to realize that.
If you know it sucks, then why are you fighting it? That was the state purpose of the FCC's vote; to provide access to rural communities that would never otherwise receive it.
Dialup is no longer a practical option now that every website has adopted a Web 2.0 model; when nearly every website uses a ton of flash and javascripting, dialup no longer cuts it.
And $15 for DSL is pretty rare. Furthermore, it's inaccessible to families living in rural areas because DSL providers are unwilling to pay out tens of thousands of dollars to service a few families.
This would have been a relatively cheap plan that would eliminate that problem.
That's ridiculous; many people will want faster, unfiltered internet and will turn to the private providers.
This was a great plan that would liberate the lower classes and rural families from a lack of broadband internet. Elitists like you don't care about them, you just hate the idea of the government doing ANYTHING that will help people.
But hey, starting wars is fine because that doesn't help anyone.
This is the worst reactionary reply that I have ever seen, and it provides NO facts to back up the ridiculous claims.
We give more corn subsidies than anything else, and you're going to bother attacking solar subsidies? WTF is wrong with you?
Solar power is not 5-10x more expensive than nuclear. You're wrong and have nothing to back up your absurd claims. The average cost per kWh for solar is very similar to nuclear, perhaps slightly more expensive meaning you'll pay MAYBE 5% more on your electricity bill at first, but since solar production is an economy of scale you'll actually end up saving money down the line as manufacturing processes improve and costs go down.
1) Wrong, new power lines only need to be built to new power production facilities. When you build a new coal power plant, you don't need "thousands and thousands of miles of new power lines." A new nuclear plant will require no more new lines than a new solar plant.
2) In many parts of the country, the sun shines for most of the day. It's relatively cheap to store this energy for use on cloudy days and at night.
3) Solar and wind are very inexpensive; they are more expensive to build in large enough quantities to match production, but the fuel is free. That's why solar power costs about the same per kWh as nuclear power in most parts of the country.
And why does it need to be so black and white with you? We can't diversify our energy needs? No one is talking about pure solar, nuclear is a great way to supplement that!
1) Radiation dissipates more depending on the material it's traveling through. The same gamma rays that penetrate a 1ft brick of paper might not penetrate a 1ft brick of lead. Air is another medium just like any other
2) 2s of exposure will do much less damage than 2 hours, 2 days, etc.
3) It's pretty much all random chance. Being exposed to dose x for y minutes doesn't guarantee z effects. This is no longer physics, it's biology, and Biology isn't quite as precise as that (ie 100mg of drug x doesn't necessarily have the same effect in every case).
I know a lot of physics textbooks do have some tables that give you an idea of radiation exposure and its approximate effects, but there are no guarantees.
If the other technologies involved nuclear fission, they'd have the same regulatory hurdles.
Some of the nuclear regulatory practices are unnecessary, sure, but most of it is there for a reason. When dealing with a potentially very dangerous nuclear reaction, it pays off to be extra careful.
Nuclear power is safe because of good regulations and good reactor design, but let's also remember that nuclear power is not made by fairies and a bag of pixie dust.
Slashdot Mirror
They'd have to make a black hole with a mass of at least ~ 10^-8 kg before it could interact with matter
10^-8 kg = 900 million Joules of energy (9*10^8 J)
1 eV = 1.6*10^-19 J
Thus, we would require a center of mass collision of 5.6*10^27 eV, or 10^15 TeV
The LHC can, at BEST with the most optimistic figures, have 14 TeV collisions. 14 vs 10^15. In other words, we'd need collisions one quadrillion times more powerful.
Trust me, if you know how to make the LHC even 10x more powerful, we'd love to hear about it!
Are you suggesting that black holes in the atmosphere would decay quickly because there is no matter in the atmosphere? Not only is that outrageously stupid, but even with a lifetime of hours, the black holes created by cosmic rays would still pass through the Earth and would have plenty of matter to "feed" on
If anything, having a longer lifetime leads more credibility to the idea that black holes at the LHC will be harmless.
FREE EUROPEAN VACATION!
Much more likely is that advanced alien civilizations develop technology sufficient to destroy themselves through war, not through happenstance particle collisions that occur all the time naturally.
To make a big one of appreciable size, like the kind you can see with a telescope, you need astronomical amounts of matter.
However, mass and energy are the same fundamental quantity (ie E = mc^2). Let's take a look at collisions in the LHC and see how much mass we can get, shall we?
The *maximum* center of mass energy of each collision is 14 TeV. That's a lot for particle physics, but we'll soon see why that's actually really very little in macroscopic terms. Also, remember that the average collision in the LHC will be much less than this; the interactions will take place between quarks, not the protons themselves, so you can have 2 quarks interacting with much less than 14 TeV despite the two protons colliding at 14 TeV.
14 TeV = 1.6*10^-7 J
Oh, it turns out that's actually an insignificant amount of energy per collision. It takes 4 MILLION J to raise the temperature of a kg of water by 1 degree Celsius.
So how much mass could we theoretically have if we converted it all into a black hole? It would be about 10^-24 kg, giving it a Schwarzschild radius of approx 10^-51 meters. That is the LARGEST possible black hole that can be created. Let's even be extra generous and give it a 10^-45 m radius
The Planck Length is 10^-35 m. Below this length gravity effectively stops working. In other words, if two particles are closer than this distance then quantum physics takes over and gravity is so ineffective that it can be ignored. At this scale the other forces dominate, and normal gravitational effects do not apply.
Bottom line: We don't really know if we can even create black holes of that size, much less how they would work. If they work just like large scale black holes, then they're unable to "gobble up" more matter due to their insignificant size and eventually will evaporate.
Even if the rate of evaporation is completely wrong and they exist forever, they're too small to interact with matter through gravity! In other words, even if you directed protons AT THE BLACK HOLE, they would not interact with it, nor would new black holes interact with it! If something even came close to magically reaching its radius, which we've established is impossible due to the shortness of the planck length, it would be repelled by the black hole's doubly positive charge (as we all know, electromagnetism is frighteningly more powerful than gravity).
In summary, even if we made a black hole that lived forever, it would still mean nothing.
And back to the discussion of cosmic rays, let's say a black hole is created in the atmosphere with a considerable mass. Some have pointed out that it would still have a large momentum and fling out to space, but it would have to pass through the Earth first. If its interaction potential was truly high enough to matter, high enough to absorb more energy than it leaks, the Earth probably would have been destroyed. Even worse than that, we'd see a much higher rate of black hole development. Since collisions like this are downright common over billions of years, it is likely that all of the matter in the universe would be in black holes right now.
Furthermore, you're likely to tell everyone your opinion on the game: the demo was good, but the game sucks and you feel cheated. This will cost them even more sales on future titles AND it will cost them sales on the game that you purchased.
This. This article reveals a poorly thought out idea. All it does is allow the gaming industry to lie to itself; it's not our fault that sales are lower than expected, it's because we released a demo!
It takes 2 seconds to dispel such a stupid concept. Worst of all, someone got paid to come up with that idea!
And part of that lies with the review sites and the gaming community. If everyone tells you that the rest of the game sucks beyond the beginning bit, how likely are you to purchase that game? Most people will avoid the full version unless they greatly enjoyed that demo.
Thus, we see the real pattern here: bad game = poor sales, good game = good sales. As a corollary, I think a good demo could only give you a sales boost (by impressing skeptics) whereas a bad demo will cost you sales.
Word of mouth is the most effective form of advertising, and it can easily destroy your profits even if your demo is great.
"LittleBigPlanet, Age of Conan or Mirror's Edge, we notice they have two things in common: very successful and well received demo versions (or beta stages) and very poor, lower than anticipated game sales."
LittleBigPlanet = great demo! Similarly, great first hour or two of game! The rest of the game is boring and monotonous. In other words, the demo is actually more fun than the real game.
Age of Conan = WOW clone but not as good, people always praise WOW clones but prefer to play the original
Mirror's Edge = Great concept, except the rest of the game is the same thing over and over. Again, this means the demo is great, but the rest of the game is basically the demo over and over again.
What do all three of these games have in common? THEY SUCK!
Warhammer 40k had a well-received demo and it sold very well, enough to warrant 3 expansions and a soon to be released sequel that some claim will be Starcraft 2's main competition.
Speaking of Starcraft, it's one of the best selling games of all time and it had a well-received demo.
WOW has a demo and it has the highest subscription rate out of any MMO in the country.
Sorry, idea was initially interesting but fails on a many levels.
The average user uses the internet for a few things
1) E-mail (so far so good)
2) Casual web browsing (news sites, wikipedia, facebook, etc., maybe the occasional link from an e-mail)
3) Flash video such as what you'd find on youtube or any major network TV home page
This is a huge problem if we want average users to adopt linux.
Also, your concerns regarding OO vs Word are completely valid. I work at a university and greater than 25% of the time OpenOffice fails to load word documents correctly. This prompted me to start dual-booting with Windows on my laptop, since apparently Ubuntu is insufficient :(
Oh I completely forgot about this, yes! This is perfect for this kind of project
TripleA is free. The older kids may appreciate having a more complicated board game like A&A on there. It even goes beyond the classic maps
And bookmark a few good flash gaming sites while you're at it. Some of the best games are online
Geniuses can join groups and take credit for brilliant discoveries that they make. That's how group research works; everyone learns from each other, but credit is given where credit is due. This article is nonsensical.
If they had bother to read, say, a single scientific journal from the past 50 years, there would be a realization; not only do great scientific minds still appear, but they appear more regularly now than ever before.
Einstein, Feynman, Bohr, Curie, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Heisenburg, Hawking, Planck, and many more who made outstanding individual contributions were ALL 20th century scientists! And there are dozens more like them, making BRILLIANT contributions to science. These are geniuses.
The article is ignoring how history is written; you don't write it as it is being experienced. Often someone isn't recognized for genius for 20 years after they've made some incredible discovery, theory, etc. 20 years from now we'll have a new list of geniuses for the 21st century.
The filtering isn't what most people are fighting against, it's the very idea of an option of government-run internet access. I think that's what the post you replied to was addressing...
I think it's a great idea except for the filtering, which is so impossible to implement that it'd have to be dropped anyway. It doesn't take an IQ over 60 to realize that.
If you know it sucks, then why are you fighting it? That was the state purpose of the FCC's vote; to provide access to rural communities that would never otherwise receive it.
Who said anything about a government monopoly?
He doesn't want to REPLACE them, he wants to ADD CHOICES. That's the point.
Why can't a free internet provider provide ads as well? This is trivial to implement.
Dialup is no longer a practical option now that every website has adopted a Web 2.0 model; when nearly every website uses a ton of flash and javascripting, dialup no longer cuts it.
And $15 for DSL is pretty rare. Furthermore, it's inaccessible to families living in rural areas because DSL providers are unwilling to pay out tens of thousands of dollars to service a few families.
This would have been a relatively cheap plan that would eliminate that problem.
That's ridiculous; many people will want faster, unfiltered internet and will turn to the private providers.
This was a great plan that would liberate the lower classes and rural families from a lack of broadband internet. Elitists like you don't care about them, you just hate the idea of the government doing ANYTHING that will help people.
But hey, starting wars is fine because that doesn't help anyone.
This is the worst reactionary reply that I have ever seen, and it provides NO facts to back up the ridiculous claims.
We give more corn subsidies than anything else, and you're going to bother attacking solar subsidies? WTF is wrong with you?
Solar power is not 5-10x more expensive than nuclear. You're wrong and have nothing to back up your absurd claims. The average cost per kWh for solar is very similar to nuclear, perhaps slightly more expensive meaning you'll pay MAYBE 5% more on your electricity bill at first, but since solar production is an economy of scale you'll actually end up saving money down the line as manufacturing processes improve and costs go down.
1) Wrong, new power lines only need to be built to new power production facilities. When you build a new coal power plant, you don't need "thousands and thousands of miles of new power lines." A new nuclear plant will require no more new lines than a new solar plant.
2) In many parts of the country, the sun shines for most of the day. It's relatively cheap to store this energy for use on cloudy days and at night.
3) Solar and wind are very inexpensive; they are more expensive to build in large enough quantities to match production, but the fuel is free. That's why solar power costs about the same per kWh as nuclear power in most parts of the country.
And why does it need to be so black and white with you? We can't diversify our energy needs? No one is talking about pure solar, nuclear is a great way to supplement that!
I've always wanted this. Yellowstone is an enormous untapped reservoir of energy; why is it being unused?
It's a lot more complicated than just distance.
1) Radiation dissipates more depending on the material it's traveling through. The same gamma rays that penetrate a 1ft brick of paper might not penetrate a 1ft brick of lead. Air is another medium just like any other
2) 2s of exposure will do much less damage than 2 hours, 2 days, etc.
3) It's pretty much all random chance. Being exposed to dose x for y minutes doesn't guarantee z effects. This is no longer physics, it's biology, and Biology isn't quite as precise as that (ie 100mg of drug x doesn't necessarily have the same effect in every case).
I know a lot of physics textbooks do have some tables that give you an idea of radiation exposure and its approximate effects, but there are no guarantees.
If the other technologies involved nuclear fission, they'd have the same regulatory hurdles.
Some of the nuclear regulatory practices are unnecessary, sure, but most of it is there for a reason. When dealing with a potentially very dangerous nuclear reaction, it pays off to be extra careful.
Nuclear power is safe because of good regulations and good reactor design, but let's also remember that nuclear power is not made by fairies and a bag of pixie dust.