Ok, I am not an astrophysicist, but I did just get the highest score in my astronomy class (by a margin of 10% even):)
The general temperature of the cosmic background radiation is evidence of the big bang. I think it was something close to 2.7 degrees Kelvin. This temperature is a minimal black body temperature which exists everywhere in the universe, no matter which direction we look. Apparently the uniformity of this tells us that as the universe is expanding, that the temperature will go down. So someone looked at this and figured out that if you play the expansion in reverse, that as the universe was smaller, this background temperature would have to be higher, eventually focusing on the big bang.
When we use very sensitive equipment and draw an image from measurements of this black body radiation, we at first can see an effect caused by doppler shift becuase our planet is moving through space. Space seems hotter in the direction we are going, and cooler in the direction we are coming from.
Finally, if we adjust for this doppler effect, and look at the temperature at even much higher accuracies (something like millionths of degrees) we start to see a nonuniform image of random warmer and cooler spots across space.
One major significance of this is that if we measure the average distance between the cooler and warmer spots, we can compare this to a mathematical model which will tell us the curvature of space itself (on a very large scale) . If they match a mathematical model of flat space, then space is probably flat. If the patterns are larger or smaller than the flat model then space is probably curved, either hyberbollically or spherically.
Of course, a non-flat space has some interesting consequences. The angles of a triangle don't add up to 180 degrees, and parallel lines will not stay equidistant (they may merge or converge) as they due in euclidian geometry.
This satellite will provide a higher resolution image than COBE.
I just woke up so I probably left out something important or really said something stupid...
If the moon is at apogee during the solar eclipse, you get a rare event called an annular eclipse. During this event, the moon is apparently smaller than the sun, so even during the pinnacle of the event, you will still see the photosphere of the sun as a ring around the moon.
They keep showing a heads-up type display with text in the corners of your field of vision. The only problem with this is, have you ever tried to read text that's not directly where you're looking? I don't see this as being very useful for heads-up type of information since it will be impossible to read anything that's not directly in the centre of your view, but I'm sure someone will find some use for it...
He is smart, but I hope that people realize that the MPAA/RIAA are not going to be happy with this. With the kind of money they have, you'll be sure they're looking for every little loophole or strategy they can use to put a halt to this. These corporations think that there's a lot of money at stake (at least that's what they tell their shareholders as an excuse for any slowed profit increase), so I'm sure there's a bounty on an effective solution which will help them maintain as much control as possible to regain their record profits and bonuses.
I hope the EFF team hasn't become complacent in that they have won a very strong position. Like a game of chess, they have made a great move to trap the opponent, but they still have to stay entirely aware of the whole game to make sure that the opponent's sacrifice wasn't just part of a larger trap.
While I agree that boycotting may help the cause in a very very minor way. I think a little more active response would be in order. Giving a few dollars to the EFF will be *FAR* more effecitve than NOT giving a few dollars to the RIAA.
... I haven't missed out much on not listening to popular music. And I haven't watched anything other than some sports on TV in the last year, and I haven't missed out at ALL in that area.
Disclaimer: I'm going to spend a few karma points here to get a strong point across, though it might be just a little bit off-topic. Hopefully our kind moderators will be a little leniant here.
I've been doing the same thing (no popular music, no television). The only thing that seems to regularly put me outside the norm is when someone walks up to me and asks "Hey did you see that funny new TV commercial?". However, I can proudly say, "No". As a matter of fact, I despise television even more now that I've been away from the stench for a while. If I even try to watch a short 30-minute show, I'm immediately reminded of how inane and insulting most of television is to the public (Take a laugh track for example: we need to be told when to laugh?).
Besides that, it's my personal theory that television is the reason why so many people in our country are apathetic. It's great for me, because it empowers me with so much more freedom to do so many productive things. I feel like I've found a way out to a much greener pasture, while the rest of the herd are kept "safe" inside the fence, appeased with tasty but poor-quality fodder, and happy in their ignorance but unaware of the upcoming slaughter.
I know it's nearly impossible to drop out of television in our modern culture, but if you really care a lot for your sanity and independence, just try to give TV a break for a week. I guarantee you might feel a bit withdrawn, but when you get back to it, you'll probably find it's much worse than you previously thought; meanwhile you'll find you suddenly had a lot of free time to catch up on things which are more important. Just remember when you're life is nearly over, do you want to say you spent 20% of it wasting your time and your mind on spoon-fed crap fed to you by large corporations to sell you to the highest bidder, or do you want to have spent that 20% exploring new and different things and advancing relationships with great people.
Remember: with television, you are the product, not the consumer.
I have donating dollar for dollar to the EFF for every product I buy from the RIAA or MPAA member companies. My last donation was about US$130 and I excpect my next to top US$150.
Excellent idea! These people are modern patriots and they deserve all of the support they can get. I wish people would turn off the TV, get off their sofas and donate at least $20 (the cost of one DVD or a little more than one CD) to the EFF. I don't know why so many of us have fairly decent (high tech) jobs, but few of us take the time just to send a few dollars to support some of our strongest beliefs. I hope people don't get there and see all of the suggested amounts and decide against donating just because it's more than they can afford (or are willing to spend). Send whatever you can, but at least send something!
The way our government has become, the only way you can get any action is to form a large group and speak with one loud voice. These guys are on our side. I've heard complaints that an individual person is too small to affect change in the government, but you can do so indirectly by supporting an organization that will be heard.
I joined the EFF about a year ago. I guess I'm due for another donation. I really like Odinson's idea; I'm going to start doing the same thing. It certainly will help me to feel better about the few purchases that I do make that wind up inadvertently supporting the [MP|RI]AA.
I'm not knocking OpenGL; the point I was trying to make is using existing abstract APIs like OpenGL and DirectX saves you so much work compared to handling the graphics yourself - especially if you want to accommodate all of the idiosyncrasies of every video card chipset out there. If you think DirectX is bad, try writing all of the graphic routines yourself from scratch for all of the popular video cards, and still have the stamina left to write a game on top of them. It would be ridiculous to do so, and the PC game industry wouldn't be much further behind where it is now without these graphical APIs to make it easier to focus more on developing gameplay than display.
I am not a game developer, but I am a programmer and I know how much work it takes just to get the basic tools in place first before you can even begin to design the application you're going to use them for. I can't imagine how hard it would be to write these games without a layer of abstraction that you can rely on to handle all this for you.
Maybe PC cards would show better performance if they didn't have to share system resouces with Windows, I still wish I could leave windows and go into DOS to play games.
Ever heard of DirectX? Without it, every game designer would have to write their own routines from the video card driver all the way up to high level APIs. I doubt there would be nearly as many 3d games nand/nor would they be as detailed or consistant in quality if the developers had to start from scratch (or even their own libraries) every time. It would distract from the goal of the game design to always have to worry about developing and debugging the underlying 2d or 3d engine. At least this way they can focus on the game and not so much on how to display it.
Sure, if enough effort were put to it, a few more CPU cycles could be squeezed out of the hardware if the game would run without windows, but I think the gain you would get from this would be insignificant compared to the extra development and debugging which would be required to develop it without a standard graphical API. Besides, the CPU isn't where most of the magic is going on nowadays. Most of the work is being done in the video card, and the raw performance you get from it is not dependent on the OS (but it is on the drivers). So it's best to have a set of drivers which have maximized the potential of the video card, so you won't have to figure it out for yourself for every possible video card out there.
Many people may have a bone to pick with Microsoft for some really annoying things, but DirectX was one of their better ideas.
PS: This post is questionable, but I don't give a shit about trolls. I'm not wasting my time playing immature psychology games here. I don't reply here often and I've got better things to do with my life than to sit around and guess if I'm replying to a sincere post or some idiot who needs to go outside and get a life.
In high school I got a 3-day in-school supspension for what they called "computer vandalism". I got this because I was utilizing 20% of the (novell) network drive and had the files hidden in such a way that nobody could find or remove the files I had stored. I was never asked to remove the files, nor was I even warned that using that much disk space would result in such swift and severe action. Instead, the teacher purchased some software which he claimed was over $100 which found and removed the hidden files from the drive.
It was kind of funny. I walked into class as I always do, and the teacher told me to just wait right by the door and not to enter the class. He then proceeded to call for an administrator and had me escorted down to the office for the paperwork. My parents were called and they didn't understand it, but they were on my side;
My guess was that I was suspended because the teacher was upset that he could not resolve the problem technically, and as he was "outsmarted", he would just punish me with a suspension. Since there was no rule on the books that related to such a matter, they treated it the same as if I had spray painted the walls or some other act of "vandalism".
I've not really minded it at all. I'm actually proud of the fact that I've never gotten in trouble for anything in school except this one act. At least this act was as a result of my skill and not some other delinquent activity.
Not to mention that it's getting quite sickening how utterly insulting and manipulative commercials have become. Personally, I've been going about two months now without watching television. The frustration of idiotic, incessant, inane, advertisments is not worth the miniscule amount of decent entertainment that's left on television. Besides, I've found out there's a lot more to do that is much more personally constructive now that I have much more free time.
I'm glad someone here has a grasp on reality. These kinds of situations occur more often than not. Sometimes you use whatever works, no matter what you're reduced to using to make it work. Principles are all fine and good so long as the earth beneath you is solid and your bank account is nice and fat.
I got asked this a lot, but I always point out the fact that a person can't say random numbers as quickly as recite them from memory. Try it sometime. You tend to start out ok, but then you start to use some kind of pattern or digit over again too often. And if you don't, then you're probably not saying random numbers as fast enough (as fast as you could say a series of recalled numbers).
This would make a very interesting game/puzzle. I wonder if anyone has ever thought to make a game like this where you are given basic symbols and you must decode an entire set of knowledge about the location, history, and culture (all would be fictional) of another "alien" civilization. It could make for an interesting competition as well.
"This display is extremely well-suited for broadband applications,"
Why the hell is it always absolutely necessary to throw in some completely unreleated technology or buzzword when introducing a new technology? I'm just baffled that they didn't find a way to fit wireless or XML in there somehow...
Don't forget that people are watching less TV because of the internet. If TV continues to just shove prepackaged garbage down the pipe, the internet will just continue to beat it into the ground, because it won't be long before broadband delivers video on demand.
Our evolving society requires that we maximimze the use of our free time, and personally I prefer not to spend it watching commercials that tell me what I should be and who I should look like.
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EFF Member #11254
Re:Maybe MS will write the software...
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Laser-equipped 747
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· Score: 1
... Large amounts of popcorn was seen coming out all of the exits to the building...
Do you realize that they could probably eliminate this problem just by forcing all web browsers/sites to use a black or dark background? Think of the energy that will be saved just by cutting the power consumption of all of those monitors in half.
I don't get why people think the web needs to look like a sheet of paper. Monitors work more efficiently with dark backgrounds and light text.
You can force IE to do this for you. Set your preferred colors under Internet Options/General/Colors and then "Ignore colors specified by web page" under Internet Options/General/Accessibility. I'm not sure about how to do this for Netscape.
While I don't think this is a practical solution for the real problem, it would be good if people (especially large websites like ebay) started considering using darker backgrounds just to save energy and make it easier on their eyes.
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EFF Member #11254
How to work around EULAs
on
EULA In Games
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· Score: 2
Simple, when you get to the EULA that tells you you can't reverse engineer, disassemble, or modify the executable object code, you "Disagree" to the EULA. Then you exit the program, open a debugger, and start to reverse engineer, disassemble, and modify the executable code to remove the EULA agreement. Next time you open it, you won't get the EULA, and you never agreed to it, so have fun...
I'm not familiar with Chinese, but I am studying Japanese writing, and if Chinese has the same general system, then it may be all phonetics, in which case it will probably take the same or more room than the roman languages to write out.
I once heard that the best way to measure the suitability of a keyboard is to take a look at it's destructitve potential when thrown. If it can inflict a life-threatening injury, you've found a good keyboard. If it merely scratches or bruises, then keep looking.
I wonder if this is why they have started making them lighter and "safer" nowadays; perhaps the designers are taking workplace violence into consideration in their designs.
AAARGH!! I can't believe the pure cruelty of it all! This makes me feel the same as I do when I hear that someone just threw a bag of kittens into the river. Ok, maybe not that bad. But it's down the same path... They're going to pay for this sin some day... bastards
Please donate all of your extra IBM relay-key keyboards to me, I'll gladly send you plenty of crappy Microsoft keyboards in exchange, which you can abuse all you like.
Slashdot Mirror
The general temperature of the cosmic background radiation is evidence of the big bang. I think it was something close to 2.7 degrees Kelvin. This temperature is a minimal black body temperature which exists everywhere in the universe, no matter which direction we look. Apparently the uniformity of this tells us that as the universe is expanding, that the temperature will go down. So someone looked at this and figured out that if you play the expansion in reverse, that as the universe was smaller, this background temperature would have to be higher, eventually focusing on the big bang.
When we use very sensitive equipment and draw an image from measurements of this black body radiation, we at first can see an effect caused by doppler shift becuase our planet is moving through space. Space seems hotter in the direction we are going, and cooler in the direction we are coming from.
Finally, if we adjust for this doppler effect, and look at the temperature at even much higher accuracies (something like millionths of degrees) we start to see a nonuniform image of random warmer and cooler spots across space.
One major significance of this is that if we measure the average distance between the cooler and warmer spots, we can compare this to a mathematical model which will tell us the curvature of space itself (on a very large scale) . If they match a mathematical model of flat space, then space is probably flat. If the patterns are larger or smaller than the flat model then space is probably curved, either hyberbollically or spherically.
Of course, a non-flat space has some interesting consequences. The angles of a triangle don't add up to 180 degrees, and parallel lines will not stay equidistant (they may merge or converge) as they due in euclidian geometry.
This satellite will provide a higher resolution image than COBE.
I just woke up so I probably left out something important or really said something stupid...
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If the moon is at apogee during the solar eclipse, you get a rare event called an annular eclipse. During this event, the moon is apparently smaller than the sun, so even during the pinnacle of the event, you will still see the photosphere of the sun as a ring around the moon.
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I hope the EFF team hasn't become complacent in that they have won a very strong position. Like a game of chess, they have made a great move to trap the opponent, but they still have to stay entirely aware of the whole game to make sure that the opponent's sacrifice wasn't just part of a larger trap.
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Disclaimer: I'm going to spend a few karma points here to get a strong point across, though it might be just a little bit off-topic. Hopefully our kind moderators will be a little leniant here.
I've been doing the same thing (no popular music, no television). The only thing that seems to regularly put me outside the norm is when someone walks up to me and asks "Hey did you see that funny new TV commercial?". However, I can proudly say, "No". As a matter of fact, I despise television even more now that I've been away from the stench for a while. If I even try to watch a short 30-minute show, I'm immediately reminded of how inane and insulting most of television is to the public (Take a laugh track for example: we need to be told when to laugh?).
Besides that, it's my personal theory that television is the reason why so many people in our country are apathetic. It's great for me, because it empowers me with so much more freedom to do so many productive things. I feel like I've found a way out to a much greener pasture, while the rest of the herd are kept "safe" inside the fence, appeased with tasty but poor-quality fodder, and happy in their ignorance but unaware of the upcoming slaughter.
I know it's nearly impossible to drop out of television in our modern culture, but if you really care a lot for your sanity and independence, just try to give TV a break for a week. I guarantee you might feel a bit withdrawn, but when you get back to it, you'll probably find it's much worse than you previously thought; meanwhile you'll find you suddenly had a lot of free time to catch up on things which are more important. Just remember when you're life is nearly over, do you want to say you spent 20% of it wasting your time and your mind on spoon-fed crap fed to you by large corporations to sell you to the highest bidder, or do you want to have spent that 20% exploring new and different things and advancing relationships with great people.
Remember: with television, you are the product, not the consumer.
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Excellent idea! These people are modern patriots and they deserve all of the support they can get. I wish people would turn off the TV, get off their sofas and donate at least $20 (the cost of one DVD or a little more than one CD) to the EFF. I don't know why so many of us have fairly decent (high tech) jobs, but few of us take the time just to send a few dollars to support some of our strongest beliefs. I hope people don't get there and see all of the suggested amounts and decide against donating just because it's more than they can afford (or are willing to spend). Send whatever you can, but at least send something!
The way our government has become, the only way you can get any action is to form a large group and speak with one loud voice. These guys are on our side. I've heard complaints that an individual person is too small to affect change in the government, but you can do so indirectly by supporting an organization that will be heard.
I joined the EFF about a year ago. I guess I'm due for another donation. I really like Odinson's idea; I'm going to start doing the same thing. It certainly will help me to feel better about the few purchases that I do make that wind up inadvertently supporting the [MP|RI]AA.
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I am not a game developer, but I am a programmer and I know how much work it takes just to get the basic tools in place first before you can even begin to design the application you're going to use them for. I can't imagine how hard it would be to write these games without a layer of abstraction that you can rely on to handle all this for you.
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Ever heard of DirectX? Without it, every game designer would have to write their own routines from the video card driver all the way up to high level APIs. I doubt there would be nearly as many 3d games nand/nor would they be as detailed or consistant in quality if the developers had to start from scratch (or even their own libraries) every time. It would distract from the goal of the game design to always have to worry about developing and debugging the underlying 2d or 3d engine. At least this way they can focus on the game and not so much on how to display it.
Sure, if enough effort were put to it, a few more CPU cycles could be squeezed out of the hardware if the game would run without windows, but I think the gain you would get from this would be insignificant compared to the extra development and debugging which would be required to develop it without a standard graphical API. Besides, the CPU isn't where most of the magic is going on nowadays. Most of the work is being done in the video card, and the raw performance you get from it is not dependent on the OS (but it is on the drivers). So it's best to have a set of drivers which have maximized the potential of the video card, so you won't have to figure it out for yourself for every possible video card out there.
Many people may have a bone to pick with Microsoft for some really annoying things, but DirectX was one of their better ideas.
PS: This post is questionable, but I don't give a shit about trolls. I'm not wasting my time playing immature psychology games here. I don't reply here often and I've got better things to do with my life than to sit around and guess if I'm replying to a sincere post or some idiot who needs to go outside and get a life.
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It was kind of funny. I walked into class as I always do, and the teacher told me to just wait right by the door and not to enter the class. He then proceeded to call for an administrator and had me escorted down to the office for the paperwork. My parents were called and they didn't understand it, but they were on my side;
My guess was that I was suspended because the teacher was upset that he could not resolve the problem technically, and as he was "outsmarted", he would just punish me with a suspension. Since there was no rule on the books that related to such a matter, they treated it the same as if I had spray painted the walls or some other act of "vandalism".
I've not really minded it at all. I'm actually proud of the fact that I've never gotten in trouble for anything in school except this one act. At least this act was as a result of my skill and not some other delinquent activity.
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EFF Member #11254
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EFF Member #11254
As more of the population is pacified by television, the IQs of those who elect to leave the TV set off have nowhere to go but up.
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EFF Member #11254
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EFF Member #11254
Why the hell is it always absolutely necessary to throw in some completely unreleated technology or buzzword when introducing a new technology? I'm just baffled that they didn't find a way to fit wireless or XML in there somehow...
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EFF Member #11254
Our evolving society requires that we maximimze the use of our free time, and personally I prefer not to spend it watching commercials that tell me what I should be and who I should look like.
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EFF Member #11254
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EFF Member #11254
I don't get why people think the web needs to look like a sheet of paper. Monitors work more efficiently with dark backgrounds and light text.
You can force IE to do this for you. Set your preferred colors under Internet Options/General/Colors and then "Ignore colors specified by web page" under Internet Options/General/Accessibility. I'm not sure about how to do this for Netscape.
While I don't think this is a practical solution for the real problem, it would be good if people (especially large websites like ebay) started considering using darker backgrounds just to save energy and make it easier on their eyes.
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EFF Member #11254
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EFF Member #11254
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EFF Member #11254
I wonder if this is why they have started making them lighter and "safer" nowadays; perhaps the designers are taking workplace violence into consideration in their designs.
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EFF Member #11254
Please donate all of your extra IBM relay-key keyboards to me, I'll gladly send you plenty of crappy Microsoft keyboards in exchange, which you can abuse all you like.
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EFF Member #11254