How do you know that matter prevailed over antimatter over the *entire* universe?
Because if there was an antimatter region next to a matter region, the two should interpenetrate some, and the pair annihilation region (from the overlapping interstellar gasses) would put out gamma rays at predictable energies. As there are no such regions visible, any antimatter regions must be quite small (i.e., too small to matter -- the exact minimum size of course depends on your detectors, but is certainly well below the size of a galaxy).
He was a naturalized American citizen, even though he kept a vacation home in Canada that became his primary residence more and more as he became rich from the Bell Telephone companies. That makes him as American as Nikola Tesla, at least, or Gene Simmons.
If Mars has high-speed broadband internet access and the science chicks look/act more like Bernadette and less like Amy Farrah Fowler then sign me up.
I wouldn't mind if they looked like Amy Farrah Fowler, as long as they didn't *act* like her. I rather expect that "science chicks" would say the same about men like Sheldon Cooper, too. Even if the Sheldons looked like Josh Duhamel, for that matter.
And the latency on the connection would suck, but one would probably have better things to do than play WoW or even EveOnline.
Everything has value only because other people believe it does (that is probably the dictionary definition of value). Therefore, the statement that "x has value only because other people believe it does" is a trite tautology. What was the intrinsic value of a proven breeder Negro slave in New Orleans in 1856 vs. in 1866, frex?
BTW, gold's closest approach to "intrinsic value" is based on its usefulness in electronics, and its resistance to corrosion, not its utility as tooth fillings (negligible except to Bond villains) or its density.
> So here's a question for everyone: could you make it work in a boat?
Yes, but that is so old-hat that it is beneath comment. Iceboats have done it since the 1890s, at least, and sailboats for decades. Google "moth sailboat" for an example with YouTube videos.
"American Cheese" is, like Velveeta for that matter, designed to be eaten only after being melted and spread equally on all surfaces, not eaten as a separate item. You should as well complain about the quality of wines used in making sherry, brandy, or champagne.
If YOU are dumb enough to buy the individual slices (for anything but grilling cheeseburgers), you deserve to eat them.
Prohibition, and strict licensing after it, killed off many of the local brewers, especially the small ones, and economies of scale doomed most of the rest, over time.
OTOH, American beers were all German-style lagers, not English beers, so "decent ale" to English beer is an unimportant comparison.
Also, any beer is best served at a temperature dictated by its brewing method, so THAT dictates why American beers are served cold, like German beers, not at English room temperatures like English beers.
> That's why I never watch movies set in the > Roman Empire. I totally know how it's going > to end.
You mean when the American archeologist from the 1930s shows up in the time of Justinian and Belisaurius, and starts an Industrial Revolution a millennium early?
(putting in my vote for a movie version of "Lest Darkness Fall")
NBC also scheduled wrestling one week per month in Saturday Night Live's time slot, back in its early seasons. Wrestling is a cheap filler, better than Ron Popeil Presents, in demographics terms, at least.
Learn to live with it, or shoot yourself and/or the McMahon family today, because it won't change (dammit) any time in the near future (especially if the daughter loses in the Connecticut governor's race next Tuesday).
Unless it explodes it is neither fun nor scientific.
Mythbusters taught me that.
Unless it explodes, it is not fun for the numbers of viewers necessary to charge for enough for their commercials to pay for the show. There is a reason that the Discovery Channels have Shark Week, and do not have Physics PhD Dissertations Defense Week.
the technical domains (bioengineering, mechanical engineering, materials science) are only superficially relevant to Silicon Valley's prime skill set (microlithography, electrical engineering)
Materials Science only superficially relevant to microlithography?
I would point out that none of your S.V. Skill Sets were native to the Valley, but were imported, and were importable because of the presence of Stanford, which is rather more than just a school of microlithography and another of microelectronics engineering.
> but that's considered Greek since Syracuse, capital of Sicily was a Greek nation state, part of the Hellenistic civilization.
City-state, not nation-state. At that time, Egypt was probably the only nation-state that side of China, with the possible exception of Armenia. Most of the remainig states were empires, provinces of empires, other independent poli, or independent tribal states (like in Gaul).
Gates has gained a few redeeming qualities in his later years. Zuckerberg
is still little more than a skillful, lucky douche bag.
Of course, at Zuckerberg's age, Gates was likewise yet to reveal those "redeeming qualities", so perhaps a little patience might be in order. In fact, with that recent $100 million charity donation, Zuckerberg is probably ahead of Gates's schedule.
The address shortages were caused by ISPs charging for each IP address, not by the fear of the world (but not US/Canada, mind -- inventing the Internet has its perks) running out of address space. Prove that this will vanish with IPv6 and I *might* listen about how NAT is "evil" or needed to serve the Chinese or Africa.
Clearly the person with the most experience and knowledge of aliens is: Sigourney Weaver
Yeah, she was in "Avatar", after all......Though, she died, didn't she?
Well, until they start writing the sequel, and need her back, like a friendly Freddy Kruger (or like David Bowman in Odyssey 3001, more accurately -- she is recorded in the Mother Tree, but too interested in its contents to let herself be transcribed back into her avatar, yet).
I think his point was that we, and by extension, the aliens, could not tell who the Big Man in a tribe of primitives was without spending time with them, and would certainly not be able to tell who was the real leadership just by remote sensors. The could well land on earth and contact Tiger Woods, thinking that the coverage last year meant that he was leader.
> ever had to put all of/usr onto its own partition and lock the whole thing read-only?
No, because SunOS5 had this on installation, back about 1990. With symbolic links and such, it was really quite simple. You remounted/usr as RW only when you had to remake the kernel, and then rebooted after (once a month or less often). In fact, our/usr was on a separate disk that had a hardware RO/RW switch on it.
This stuff was worked out long ago. Then, it was ignored because someone decided to build from scratch with no more (prior) thoughts of security than a HAL-9000 had.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you know that matter prevailed over antimatter over the *entire* universe?
Because if there was an antimatter region next to a matter region, the two should interpenetrate some, and the pair annihilation region (from the overlapping interstellar gasses) would put out gamma rays at predictable energies. As there are no such regions visible, any antimatter regions must be quite small (i.e., too small to matter -- the exact minimum size of course depends on your detectors, but is certainly well below the size of a galaxy).
> I'm going to miss looking up the number for the elec. company in the dark,
What? You don't own a kerosene lantern, or even a decorative candle?
A bit of irony for you: Bell wasn't American.
He was a naturalized American citizen, even though he kept a vacation home in Canada that became his primary residence more and more as he became rich from the Bell Telephone companies. That makes him as American as Nikola Tesla, at least, or Gene Simmons.
If Mars has high-speed broadband internet access and the science chicks look/act more like Bernadette and less like Amy Farrah Fowler then sign me up.
I wouldn't mind if they looked like Amy Farrah Fowler, as long as they didn't *act* like her. I rather expect that "science chicks" would say the same about men like Sheldon Cooper, too. Even if the Sheldons looked like Josh Duhamel, for that matter.
And the latency on the connection would suck, but one would probably have better things to do than play WoW or even EveOnline.
BTW, Bernadette Who?
Everything has value only because other people believe it does (that is probably the dictionary definition of value). Therefore, the statement that "x has value only because other people believe it does" is a trite tautology. What was the intrinsic value of a proven breeder Negro slave in New Orleans in 1856 vs. in 1866, frex?
BTW, gold's closest approach to "intrinsic value" is based on its usefulness in electronics, and its resistance to corrosion, not its utility as tooth fillings (negligible except to Bond villains) or its density.
You can still LOOK at meat, you know.
> So here's a question for everyone: could you make it work in a boat?
Yes, but that is so old-hat that it is beneath comment. Iceboats have done it since the 1890s, at least, and sailboats for decades. Google "moth sailboat" for an example with YouTube videos.
"American Cheese" is, like Velveeta for that matter, designed to be eaten only after being melted and spread equally on all surfaces, not eaten as a separate item. You should as well complain about the quality of wines used in making sherry, brandy, or champagne.
If YOU are dumb enough to buy the individual slices (for anything but grilling cheeseburgers), you deserve to eat them.
Prohibition, and strict licensing after it, killed off many of the local brewers, especially the small ones, and economies of scale doomed most of the rest, over time.
OTOH, American beers were all German-style lagers, not English beers, so "decent ale" to English beer is an unimportant comparison.
Also, any beer is best served at a temperature dictated by its brewing method, so THAT dictates why American beers are served cold, like German beers, not at English room temperatures like English beers.
> That's why I never watch movies set in the
> Roman Empire. I totally know how it's going
> to end.
You mean when the American archeologist from the 1930s shows up in the time of Justinian and Belisaurius, and starts an Industrial Revolution a millennium early?
(putting in my vote for a movie version of "Lest Darkness Fall")
NBC also scheduled wrestling one week per month in Saturday Night Live's time slot, back in its early seasons. Wrestling is a cheap filler, better than Ron Popeil Presents, in demographics terms, at least.
Learn to live with it, or shoot yourself and/or the McMahon family today, because it won't change (dammit) any time in the near future (especially if the daughter loses in the Connecticut governor's race next Tuesday).
> Take the last sentence and grep/Farscape/Firefly.
sed, not grep. You also seem to have forgotten the last slash, but that may be Slashdot eating it.
Agree with you about prequels, though.
Wouldn't that be the Saturday Morning cartoon series that was on for a year or two?
Unless it explodes it is neither fun nor scientific.
Mythbusters taught me that.
Unless it explodes, it is not fun for the numbers of viewers necessary to charge for enough for their commercials to pay for the show. There is a reason that the Discovery Channels have Shark Week, and do not have Physics PhD Dissertations Defense Week.
the technical domains (bioengineering, mechanical engineering, materials science) are only superficially relevant to Silicon Valley's prime skill set (microlithography, electrical engineering)
Materials Science only superficially relevant to microlithography?
I would point out that none of your S.V. Skill Sets were native to the Valley, but were imported, and were importable because of the presence of Stanford, which is rather more than just a school of microlithography and another of microelectronics engineering.
OTOH, your other points look good, alas.
> but that's considered Greek since Syracuse, capital of Sicily was a Greek nation state, part of the Hellenistic civilization.
City-state, not nation-state. At that time, Egypt was probably the only nation-state that side of China, with the possible exception of Armenia. Most of the remainig states were empires, provinces of empires, other independent poli, or independent tribal states (like in Gaul).
Of course, at Zuckerberg's age, Gates was likewise yet to reveal those "redeeming qualities", so perhaps a little patience might be in order. In fact, with that recent $100 million charity donation, Zuckerberg is probably ahead of Gates's schedule.
> A few years back, everyone round here was putting "wallah" in their posts, not knowing the correct spelling.
I guess I must be new around here.
> Do the same on the other machine and "wallah"
That is spelled "voila" (possibly with an accent, as it is French).
Not being a Spelling Nazi, just thought that you would prefer to know, rather than get it wrong someplace important.
The address shortages were caused by ISPs charging for each IP address, not by the fear of the world (but not US/Canada, mind -- inventing the Internet has its perks) running out of address space. Prove that this will vanish with IPv6 and I *might* listen about how NAT is "evil" or needed to serve the Chinese or Africa.
Alternately, they could have contacted Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton. Do you really want THEM as our ambassadors?
> It was probably Crichton, and it was probably based on a factual experience.
Why? Crighton was an MD.
OTOH, Jerry Pournelle actually worked in the space program, and probably had enough contacts to get back in for a cook's tour.
Well, until they start writing the sequel, and need her back, like a friendly Freddy Kruger (or like David Bowman in Odyssey 3001, more accurately -- she is recorded in the Mother Tree, but too interested in its contents to let herself be transcribed back into her avatar, yet).
I think his point was that we, and by extension, the aliens, could not tell who the Big Man in a tribe of primitives was without spending time with them, and would certainly not be able to tell who was the real leadership just by remote sensors. The could well land on earth and contact Tiger Woods, thinking that the coverage last year meant that he was leader.
> ever had to put all of /usr onto its own partition and lock the whole thing read-only?
No, because SunOS5 had this on installation, back about 1990. With symbolic links and such, it was really quite simple. You remounted /usr as RW only when you had to remake the kernel, and then rebooted after (once a month or less often). In fact, our /usr was on a separate disk that had a hardware RO/RW switch on it.
This stuff was worked out long ago. Then, it was ignored because someone decided to build from scratch with no more (prior) thoughts of security than a HAL-9000 had.