In fact there is an accelerator built specifically to produce antimatter: the Antiproton Decelerator which supplied the anti-protons to the ALPHA experiment. Also, its a bit funny that you seem to forget that the ALPHA project built their equipment specifically to produce and store anti-atoms.
Regardless of the percentage of slashdotters based in the US, I think it is pretty safe to say that the discussions are almost always framed in terms of a US perspective. Looking no further than your own post, you'll notice how you use the term "American" as a synonym to US citizen, ignoring 77% of the continent. In other threads, you'll see global issues discussed in light of "The Constitution" and statements are routinely classified as Democratic, Republican or Libertarian. Even if the US-based slashdotters are not in a majority, they have the hegemony.
I may be wrong, but I would expect other uncertainties to play a more dominant role in radiometric dating. The initial concentration of the measured isotope, for instance, or the possibility of contamination.
They found (weak) evidence of change. In order to confirm constancy, they would have to find significant evidence of no change.
This is not accurate. In the paper, the authors state that they are not able to conclude, so they suggest that more precise measurements are needed. Moreover, it is not possible to prove that there is no change by experiment. One can only demonstrate the effect, or determine an upper limit for it.
The constancy of nuclear decay rates is a fundamental assumption for our understanding of stellar processes, big bang theory and the like. If someone can prove a deviation, it will break just about every cosmological model. If they had found a deviation, the implications could be comparable to what Copernicus did, so I believe this does mean something for the "normal human"...
I doubt that these number would be considered "evidence of a difference" in any field, since the uncertainty is too large to confirm any difference. The headline is misleading as you say, but that claim is not made in the paper.
When Microsoft suddenly saw the need for a nynorsk version of Office after ignoring it for 20 years or so, it was because OpenOffice had already been translated. For a very short while, OpenOffice was the only legal option for schools. Its a great example of the leverage FLOSS can provide when wrestling with a monopolist.
I sincerely detest your conclusion. It is also based on a fallacy, as there is no "absence of an external interfering force".
Your belief that Eastern Europe developed democracy without external influence shows your total ignorance about recent European history. Eastern Europe has received massive funding from the EU to build infrastructure and ensure economic development. Equally important is the political and economic integration across Europe, and the military strength of the USA that brings stability and a sense of security.
The democratization of Eastern Europe is the result of determination and massive investments, and this is by the way the norm. Think about how the US treated Germany and Japan after WW2.
Those examples are in stark contrast to the how Iran has been influenced from the outside. Both the USA and USSR opted to support both sides of the Iran-Iraq war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_combatants_in_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
Meaning simply that a conflict in the middle east was in the interest of both super powers, playing divide and conquer. Or was that also because of some cultural phenomenom?
To state that culture is the ultimate force in political developments is simply naive. Not only naive, it is dangerous. People like you scare me.
Good point about the batteries. If I was in charge of this research project, we would develop a fuel cell to generate electricity directly from ATP. Just route some blood through it. Now THAT would be awesome.
It appears that he controls it without watching... So my guess is that he is in fact imagining left hand movements. After all that is what his neural system is trained to do. In order to get it right later they just need to wire him up correctly.
Amen.
The Linux distros seem to be constantly growing new subsystems, while consistently adding complexity and abandoning the time tested unix principles. Configuration of the GNOME startup is the most outrageous example. It is so horribly opaque that the recommended way to switch window manager is
"...by running the new WM with the --replace or -replace option, and subsequently saving the session."
(From the man page of metacity on Ubuntu hardy)
How is this better than a single line in.xinit or.xsession?
... Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption...
This is so douglas-adamsish... Reads very much like an excerpt from The Guide!
Don't you think more transparency would lead to more people actually caring? If you want people to devote time and energy on "caring" about corruption in government, you need to provide information that is clear and accessible.
What if the linux kernel developers would all hide the details about who did what and just every once in a while release thousands of new lines of code which they would share all responsibility for? Would that spark interest for someone curious about kernel development?
If every change to a congress document could be linked to the representative that committed the change, it would provide you with a clear view on relevant information.
Today the level of detail we know about a legislation stops at who worked on it and who voted for it. That means: every bill has a majority of the congress behind it, and everybody (read: nobody) takes the blame for the corrupted details.
With revision tracking of congress documents (like on wikipedia), it would be impossible slip in blatantly corrupt legislation in totally unrelated bills as they do today.
Every law should be written from start to finish on wiki.congress.gov so that anyone could see exactly what changes each representative commit to the document.
The transparent revision history is a FLOSS-principle that could easily be ported to government.
Indeed, it doesn't make any sense at all to talk about environmental _spending_ of energy. It only makes sense to discuss environmental _production_ of energy.
For every kWh electricity consumed in this town, the environmental footprint must be calculated from the average over the full energy production. The numbers for the US is 50% coal, 20% nuclear and 20% natural gas.
To call it a 100% wind powered town is just meaningless.
Slashdot Mirror
Evidently, our UNIX founding fathers had similar challenges...
This idea would violate Newtons third law about mutual forces acting in the opposite direction! The joke was funny, but clearly unphysical.
In fact there is an accelerator built specifically to produce antimatter: the Antiproton Decelerator which supplied the anti-protons to the ALPHA experiment. Also, its a bit funny that you seem to forget that the ALPHA project built their equipment specifically to produce and store anti-atoms.
Regardless of the percentage of slashdotters based in the US, I think it is pretty safe to say that the discussions are almost always framed in terms of a US perspective. Looking no further than your own post, you'll notice how you use the term "American" as a synonym to US citizen, ignoring 77% of the continent. In other threads, you'll see global issues discussed in light of "The Constitution" and statements are routinely classified as Democratic, Republican or Libertarian. Even if the US-based slashdotters are not in a majority, they have the hegemony.
I may be wrong, but I would expect other uncertainties to play a more dominant role in radiometric dating. The initial concentration of the measured isotope, for instance, or the possibility of contamination.
They found (weak) evidence of change. In order to confirm constancy, they would have to find significant evidence of no change.
This is not accurate. In the paper, the authors state that they are not able to conclude, so they suggest that more precise measurements are needed. Moreover, it is not possible to prove that there is no change by experiment. One can only demonstrate the effect, or determine an upper limit for it.
The constancy of nuclear decay rates is a fundamental assumption for our understanding of stellar processes, big bang theory and the like. If someone can prove a deviation, it will break just about every cosmological model. If they had found a deviation, the implications could be comparable to what Copernicus did, so I believe this does mean something for the "normal human"...
I doubt that these number would be considered "evidence of a difference" in any field, since the uncertainty is too large to confirm any difference. The headline is misleading as you say, but that claim is not made in the paper.
When Microsoft suddenly saw the need for a nynorsk version of Office after ignoring it for 20 years or so, it was because OpenOffice had already been translated. For a very short while, OpenOffice was the only legal option for schools. Its a great example of the leverage FLOSS can provide when wrestling with a monopolist.
Its a universal constant of stupidity!
I sincerely detest your conclusion. It is also based on a fallacy, as there is no "absence of an external interfering force".
Your belief that Eastern Europe developed democracy without external influence shows your total ignorance about recent European history. Eastern Europe has received massive funding from the EU to build infrastructure and ensure economic development. Equally important is the political and economic integration across Europe, and the military strength of the USA that brings stability and a sense of security. The democratization of Eastern Europe is the result of determination and massive investments, and this is by the way the norm. Think about how the US treated Germany and Japan after WW2.
Those examples are in stark contrast to the how Iran has been influenced from the outside. Both the USA and USSR opted to support both sides of the Iran-Iraq war
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_aid_to_combatants_in_the_Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War
Meaning simply that a conflict in the middle east was in the interest of both super powers, playing divide and conquer. Or was that also because of some cultural phenomenom?
To state that culture is the ultimate force in political developments is simply naive. Not only naive, it is dangerous. People like you scare me.
Since when was massive blodshed a common path to democracy? You will have a hard time finding empirical support for that claim.
Good point about the batteries. If I was in charge of this research project, we would develop a fuel cell to generate electricity directly from ATP. Just route some blood through it. Now THAT would be awesome.
It appears that he controls it without watching... So my guess is that he is in fact imagining left hand movements. After all that is what his neural system is trained to do. In order to get it right later they just need to wire him up correctly.
No, you misunderstand. They ATTACHED it!
"...by running the new WM with the --replace or -replace option, and subsequently saving the session."
(From the man page of metacity on Ubuntu hardy) How is this better than a single line in .xinit or .xsession?
... Both stanzas are true at the same time. Literally that would be no problem for Catholic church, after all its God is one and three at the same time; logically it's still not a big problem: the path to redemption (or the lack of) would be tied to the local History of those aliens; they either don't need redeption ...
This is so douglas-adamsish... Reads very much like an excerpt from The Guide!
Don't you think more transparency would lead to more people actually caring? If you want people to devote time and energy on "caring" about corruption in government, you need to provide information that is clear and accessible.
What if the linux kernel developers would all hide the details about who did what and just every once in a while release thousands of new lines of code which they would share all responsibility for? Would that spark interest for someone curious about kernel development?
If every change to a congress document could be linked to the representative that committed the change, it would provide you with a clear view on relevant information.
Today the level of detail we know about a legislation stops at who worked on it and who voted for it. That means: every bill has a majority of the congress behind it, and everybody (read: nobody) takes the blame for the corrupted details.
With revision tracking of congress documents (like on wikipedia), it would be impossible slip in blatantly corrupt legislation in totally unrelated bills as they do today. Every law should be written from start to finish on wiki.congress.gov so that anyone could see exactly what changes each representative commit to the document.
The transparent revision history is a FLOSS-principle that could easily be ported to government.
Indeed, it doesn't make any sense at all to talk about environmental _spending_ of energy. It only makes sense to discuss environmental _production_ of energy. For every kWh electricity consumed in this town, the environmental footprint must be calculated from the average over the full energy production. The numbers for the US is 50% coal, 20% nuclear and 20% natural gas. To call it a 100% wind powered town is just meaningless.