So they spent a lot of effort to "hide" his kidnapping, but a cursory browse through the wikipedia page history shows all these changes. I understand that most people don't ever look at the history, but for anyone that was actually interested in David the information wasn't hidden at all.
It's been a while since I've done any physics, but I'm fairly confident that your orbital height is determined by your orbital speed. If we think of an orbit as a circle parameterized by (R*cos t, R*sin t), then the velocity is (-R*sin t, R*cos t) which has length (i.e. speed) sqrt(2)*R. So if the height R gets smaller, then so does the speed; or vice versa.
There's no extra fuel used to change speeds after you've changed orbital heights: you change height by changing your speed. This is why geosychronous orbits are so valuable: not only is there only one plane in which it is possible (above the equator), but only one orbit in that plane actually works (the one that matches the speed of earth's rotation).
I believe someone from Sweden posted in a previous story that their jails were already full up, even without people turning themselves in. Apparently, there's a waiting line for when you do your time, with the exception that violent criminals skip to the front.
If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.
There's no need to give up on secret voting to get this. Thanks to advances in cryptography we can have secret *and* verifiable ballots. An example implementation can be found at Helios voting. Also, check out a description of a paper based system: Scratch and Vote [PDF]
Is Palladium still going strong? I recall a few years back that they were basically asking people for donations in order to remain solvent.
Since I played a lot of TMNT as a kid that was a sad day for me. It's good to see they're still around, and I hope that they are going strong, as you say.
(not american, can't recall whether 1st amendment rules at state or federal level)
It's nominally at the federal level, but the 14th amendment is generally construed to make the other amendments about rights and so forth applicable at the state level.
But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
You may as well just say what you mean: without a soul to experience pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
It's an extremely popular idea, but many people fill a little silly worrying so much about souls (especially those trying to distance themselves from christian philosophy). Which is why dualism so often runs around under the guise of "consciousness". But be honest with yourself: if it sounds silly when you talk about souls, it's no less silly when you replace "soul" by "consciousness".
Doesn't the tendency of an event recurring increase with the passage of time?
This is a common belief, but it is utterly wrong. Consider flipping a fair coin. The probability of getting heads is 1/2 always. If I got heads the last 100 flips, what's the chances of getting heads again? 1/2.
On the other hand, the probability of getting heads 100 times in a row is 1/2^100. Confusing these two probabilities is the basis of the Gambler's Fallacy.
However, there are some natural processes that fall subject to this reasoning. Take the earthquake example. Let's say that the chances of an earthquake happening increase as subterranean pressure increases. Let's say that everyday the subterranean pressure increases by some (small) random amount. In this situation the chance of an earthquake does get bigger everyday, but that's because there is something actively increasing the probability.
Compare with the earth being struck by a cataclysmic asteroid. In this case, there's no analogous process building up over time so it is fallacious to conclude that the chances are getting bigger every day that we don't get struck.
Whether or not editors get paid varies based on the discipline as well as the journal. In my area (mathematics) a few journals may pay editors, but most do not. Editors, just like referees, work voluntarily; except that editors get the prestige of having their name associated with a well-known journal.
Also, I think you vastly overestimate the cost of running a journal. In math there have been a few cases of mass resignations of editorial boards (essentially killing the journal), and a brand-new journal springing up to take its place. Remarkably, these new journals that are basically equivalent to the old ones manage to charge 5 or 10 (!) times less to get the same job done.
Journal prices have been rising out of proportion with actual publishing costs for a long time now.
Gowers mentioned this in one of his early posts about the project. Publishing will probably be under some sort of pseudonym (think Bourbaki), with a link given to the blog entries. If you're curious about how much someone contributed, you can go check it out exactly.
The option to thread comments on Wordpress was only introduced after the project had begun. You can find a post by Gowers that talks about this very issue on his blog.
I said I was _able_ to go ahead and use it; I didn't say I _did_ go ahead and use it.
That's irrelevant. Based on the fact that you knew it was a Christmas card with a gift certificate in it the GP inferred that you opened the mail which was not addressed to you. Which is a no no (last paragraph).
Hardware encryption may be the easiest to use, but on more than one occasion a hard drive labeling itself as "secure", or even specifically saying that it uses AES, has been found to merely be XOR'ing with a fixed key.
It's better to leave real encryption to a source that can be trusted: one that lets you audit the code, which manufacturers are loath to do.
Because the Magnetic North Pole and the actual North Pole are quite a ways apart, and the conditions only get worse once you pass the latitude of the magnetic pole. The Top Gear folks had a fair bit of trouble getting as far as they did: basically scouting ahead on foot and clearing areas to drive. If you have to scout on foot, you might as well just keep walking.
That's not to say that there's no promise in there. I'm not really in favor of the idea of quantum consciousness, but it is interesting to think about.
Not that long ago John H. Conway and Simon Kochen proved a theorem they call the "Strong Free Will Theorem" (which improves on past results; hence the "strong") that shows that if the quantum world satisfies a few axioms then the measured response of a particle is not a function of the past state of the universe. I.e. if we have free will then so do elementary particles, in a certain technical sense.
Of course, with the right axioms you can prove anything. But these particular axioms are testable, and so far the evidence seems to support them; in addition to the fact that they are already commonly believed by quantum physicists.
Just to be clear, when the OP said "If you break the GPL, then you can't use it," they meant that if you break the GPL then the GPL is no longer applies to you. And since it gives you extra rights, by breaking it you revert to standard copyright - which does not allow you to distribute. You're still free to use the software all you want, just not make any copies.
I'm a mathematician and have frequent need to reference books and papers for particular results. When I'm away at a conference and I'm bringing some journal papers along for the trip I either need to (1)print out every reference the paper cites in case I need it, (2)rely on the host institution's library which, while usually very extensive, it not generally set-up for guests to have full access, or (3)hope I already know the results they're going to reference.
Being able to download a journal article and all of its citations, and all of their citations, etc. to a specified level would be a killer app for academics. Being able to have all the papers we need on hand is incredibly useful. Having reference books as well would be irresistible.
I imagine anyone that refers to technical documents would feel similarly.
I don't think the courts would be very sympathetic. I'm not sure that there is anything outright wrong with modifying the EULA before agreement, but I think you'd have a hard battle to get a judge convinced.
I'd be more curious to see what would happen if the EULA was changed somewhere between the master being sent to the presses, and the pressed CD being delivered to a retail store. What if some rogue individual modified the EULA to, say, remove the `no liability' clause before the CDs were pressed, and hence all customers got a modified EULA? Could a customer hold the software company liable for failures of their product that would have been covered in the original EULA?
There's nothing obviously wrong with a EULA not having a `no liability' clause, so I don't think a court could invalidate it off-hand for being ridiculous. And the customer accepted the EULA in good faith - they made no modifications of their own. But I somehow doubt that a court would rule against such a software company if the customer were to sue.
If clicking `agree' is my indication of accepting the terms, what indication does the software company give? It seems like either a company could be held liable in the above scenario (as the fact that the software is presenting the terms should count as the company's acceptance of the terms), or an EULA isn't really a contract since the company hasn't really indicated any acceptance and can always say "But we never agreed to that!" any time a EULA goes sour.
To my knowledge, he is the only person in history who ever provided such a great example.
Cincinnatus. George Washington (among other prominent leaders of the American Revolution) were intentionally imitating Cincinnatus. Look up the Society of the Cincinnati.
Oh come on now. Unless you've just arrived at/. you know how this discussion is going to go. A few apologists will offer one reason or another why this isn't so bad, a few other people will express how disappointed they are in Obama, but the vast majority of comments will be about how/. groupthink is going to spin this news probably by making a comparison to Bush (bonus points for "I'm going to get modded down for this but...").
This happens every time somebody like Apple, Google or a Linux-related company does something bad/stupid. Only in these cases the standard bad-guy to compare against is Microsoft/Windows.
99% of the population would have no idea where to set up a Subversion or Mercurial.
Then you can use a distributed versioning system. Git has the capability to manage patches through e-mail; I expect other systems can do the same (this includes Mercurial BTW). It still requires a fair bit of computer know-how to get it all going, but something like Bazaar or Mercurial ought to be fairly simple to use once it is all setup.
Where is not the problem. Computer knowledge is the bottleneck.
As I understand it there were several geocentric models of the universe that were mathematically validated.
As well they should be. In physics you can pick your coordinate system to be anything you like. If you pick your coordinates to have the earth at the center then you get a geocentric model: it looks like everything is spinning around us. It's perfectly sound, and even describes reality in that coordinate system. Yeah, it's a real pain to do any calculations with these coordinates because the model gets horrendously complex, but that doesn't make it false.
Heliocentrism is nothing more than choosing a coordinate system that is better suited to computations.
Slashdot Mirror
So they spent a lot of effort to "hide" his kidnapping, but a cursory browse through the wikipedia page history shows all these changes. I understand that most people don't ever look at the history, but for anyone that was actually interested in David the information wasn't hidden at all.
Right now, he's making a pittance compared to Jobs, and under his watch, Apple's stock has gone up 60% since January
Despite the fact that Jobs, rather famously, only makes an annual salary of $1?
He doesn't want to have to kill and dress a buffalo with his bear hands just to eat a hotdog.
Well, if he's got bear hands then I don't see the problem. I think they'd be a lot more useful for killing a buffalo than typing in code.
It's been a while since I've done any physics, but I'm fairly confident that your orbital height is determined by your orbital speed. If we think of an orbit as a circle parameterized by (R*cos t, R*sin t), then the velocity is (-R*sin t, R*cos t) which has length (i.e. speed) sqrt(2)*R. So if the height R gets smaller, then so does the speed; or vice versa.
There's no extra fuel used to change speeds after you've changed orbital heights: you change height by changing your speed. This is why geosychronous orbits are so valuable: not only is there only one plane in which it is possible (above the equator), but only one orbit in that plane actually works (the one that matches the speed of earth's rotation).
I believe someone from Sweden posted in a previous story that their jails were already full up, even without people turning themselves in. Apparently, there's a waiting line for when you do your time, with the exception that violent criminals skip to the front.
...if it must remain a priory because its assumptions...
a priori
If you gave up secret voting, you could likely make a 'secure enough' voting system, since anyone could check their own vote in the system.
There's no need to give up on secret voting to get this. Thanks to advances in cryptography we can have secret *and* verifiable ballots. An example implementation can be found at Helios voting. Also, check out a description of a paper based system: Scratch and Vote [PDF]
Is Palladium still going strong? I recall a few years back that they were basically asking people for donations in order to remain solvent.
Since I played a lot of TMNT as a kid that was a sad day for me. It's good to see they're still around, and I hope that they are going strong, as you say.
(not american, can't recall whether 1st amendment rules at state or federal level)
It's nominally at the federal level, but the 14th amendment is generally construed to make the other amendments about rights and so forth applicable at the state level.
But, without a consciousness to experience that pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
You may as well just say what you mean: without a soul to experience pain or change in temperature, it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
It's an extremely popular idea, but many people fill a little silly worrying so much about souls (especially those trying to distance themselves from christian philosophy). Which is why dualism so often runs around under the guise of "consciousness". But be honest with yourself: if it sounds silly when you talk about souls, it's no less silly when you replace "soul" by "consciousness".
Doesn't the tendency of an event recurring increase with the passage of time?
This is a common belief, but it is utterly wrong. Consider flipping a fair coin. The probability of getting heads is 1/2 always. If I got heads the last 100 flips, what's the chances of getting heads again? 1/2.
On the other hand, the probability of getting heads 100 times in a row is 1/2^100. Confusing these two probabilities is the basis of the Gambler's Fallacy.
However, there are some natural processes that fall subject to this reasoning. Take the earthquake example. Let's say that the chances of an earthquake happening increase as subterranean pressure increases. Let's say that everyday the subterranean pressure increases by some (small) random amount. In this situation the chance of an earthquake does get bigger everyday, but that's because there is something actively increasing the probability.
Compare with the earth being struck by a cataclysmic asteroid. In this case, there's no analogous process building up over time so it is fallacious to conclude that the chances are getting bigger every day that we don't get struck.
Whether or not editors get paid varies based on the discipline as well as the journal. In my area (mathematics) a few journals may pay editors, but most do not. Editors, just like referees, work voluntarily; except that editors get the prestige of having their name associated with a well-known journal.
Also, I think you vastly overestimate the cost of running a journal. In math there have been a few cases of mass resignations of editorial boards (essentially killing the journal), and a brand-new journal springing up to take its place. Remarkably, these new journals that are basically equivalent to the old ones manage to charge 5 or 10 (!) times less to get the same job done.
Journal prices have been rising out of proportion with actual publishing costs for a long time now.
Gowers mentioned this in one of his early posts about the project. Publishing will probably be under some sort of pseudonym (think Bourbaki), with a link given to the blog entries. If you're curious about how much someone contributed, you can go check it out exactly.
The option to thread comments on Wordpress was only introduced after the project had begun. You can find a post by Gowers that talks about this very issue on his blog.
I said I was _able_ to go ahead and use it; I didn't say I _did_ go ahead and use it.
That's irrelevant. Based on the fact that you knew it was a Christmas card with a gift certificate in it the GP inferred that you opened the mail which was not addressed to you. Which is a no no (last paragraph).
Hardware encryption may be the easiest to use, but on more than one occasion a hard drive labeling itself as "secure", or even specifically saying that it uses AES, has been found to merely be XOR'ing with a fixed key.
It's better to leave real encryption to a source that can be trusted: one that lets you audit the code, which manufacturers are loath to do.
Because the Magnetic North Pole and the actual North Pole are quite a ways apart, and the conditions only get worse once you pass the latitude of the magnetic pole. The Top Gear folks had a fair bit of trouble getting as far as they did: basically scouting ahead on foot and clearing areas to drive. If you have to scout on foot, you might as well just keep walking.
That's not to say that there's no promise in there. I'm not really in favor of the idea of quantum consciousness, but it is interesting to think about.
Not that long ago John H. Conway and Simon Kochen proved a theorem they call the "Strong Free Will Theorem" (which improves on past results; hence the "strong") that shows that if the quantum world satisfies a few axioms then the measured response of a particle is not a function of the past state of the universe. I.e. if we have free will then so do elementary particles, in a certain technical sense.
Of course, with the right axioms you can prove anything. But these particular axioms are testable, and so far the evidence seems to support them; in addition to the fact that they are already commonly believed by quantum physicists.
Here's a link to one exposition.
Just to be clear, when the OP said "If you break the GPL, then you can't use it," they meant that if you break the GPL then the GPL is no longer applies to you. And since it gives you extra rights, by breaking it you revert to standard copyright - which does not allow you to distribute. You're still free to use the software all you want, just not make any copies.
I'm a mathematician and have frequent need to reference books and papers for particular results. When I'm away at a conference and I'm bringing some journal papers along for the trip I either need to (1)print out every reference the paper cites in case I need it, (2)rely on the host institution's library which, while usually very extensive, it not generally set-up for guests to have full access, or (3)hope I already know the results they're going to reference.
Being able to download a journal article and all of its citations, and all of their citations, etc. to a specified level would be a killer app for academics. Being able to have all the papers we need on hand is incredibly useful. Having reference books as well would be irresistible.
I imagine anyone that refers to technical documents would feel similarly.
I don't think the courts would be very sympathetic. I'm not sure that there is anything outright wrong with modifying the EULA before agreement, but I think you'd have a hard battle to get a judge convinced.
I'd be more curious to see what would happen if the EULA was changed somewhere between the master being sent to the presses, and the pressed CD being delivered to a retail store. What if some rogue individual modified the EULA to, say, remove the `no liability' clause before the CDs were pressed, and hence all customers got a modified EULA? Could a customer hold the software company liable for failures of their product that would have been covered in the original EULA?
There's nothing obviously wrong with a EULA not having a `no liability' clause, so I don't think a court could invalidate it off-hand for being ridiculous. And the customer accepted the EULA in good faith - they made no modifications of their own. But I somehow doubt that a court would rule against such a software company if the customer were to sue.
If clicking `agree' is my indication of accepting the terms, what indication does the software company give? It seems like either a company could be held liable in the above scenario (as the fact that the software is presenting the terms should count as the company's acceptance of the terms), or an EULA isn't really a contract since the company hasn't really indicated any acceptance and can always say "But we never agreed to that!" any time a EULA goes sour.
To my knowledge, he is the only person in history who ever provided such a great example.
Cincinnatus. George Washington (among other prominent leaders of the American Revolution) were intentionally imitating Cincinnatus. Look up the Society of the Cincinnati.
Oh come on now. Unless you've just arrived at /. you know how this discussion is going to go. A few apologists will offer one reason or another why this isn't so bad, a few other people will express how disappointed they are in Obama, but the vast majority of comments will be about how /. groupthink is going to spin this news probably by making a comparison to Bush (bonus points for "I'm going to get modded down for this but...").
This happens every time somebody like Apple, Google or a Linux-related company does something bad/stupid. Only in these cases the standard bad-guy to compare against is Microsoft/Windows.
99% of the population would have no idea where to set up a Subversion or Mercurial.
Then you can use a distributed versioning system. Git has the capability to manage patches through e-mail; I expect other systems can do the same (this includes Mercurial BTW). It still requires a fair bit of computer know-how to get it all going, but something like Bazaar or Mercurial ought to be fairly simple to use once it is all setup.
Where is not the problem. Computer knowledge is the bottleneck.
As I understand it there were several geocentric models of the universe that were mathematically validated.
As well they should be. In physics you can pick your coordinate system to be anything you like. If you pick your coordinates to have the earth at the center then you get a geocentric model: it looks like everything is spinning around us. It's perfectly sound, and even describes reality in that coordinate system. Yeah, it's a real pain to do any calculations with these coordinates because the model gets horrendously complex, but that doesn't make it false.
Heliocentrism is nothing more than choosing a coordinate system that is better suited to computations.