Furthermore, it is this transformation that proves that they have mass.
Not only that, but the different neutrino flavours must have different masses in order to oscillate. The fact that they have mass at all is the most exciting bit, of course, but the fact that they're all different is pretty cool, too.
Other lab-based supernova experiments
on
Star In A Jar
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· Score: 2
The ISAC lab at TRIUMF is researching supernova conditions using beams of radioactive isotopes. That is, rather than a proton beam or electron beam, we're talking about a Cadmium beam, or a Potassium beam, for example.
The idea is that you take these radioactive atoms and fling them at other radioactive atoms, to simulate collisions with the sort of energy you'd see in a supernova. This lets them study reaction chains and rates and stuff. Very cool.
Just today I was hoping they had something like this. I burned the (seven) CD's of the 7.2 distro from a friend who bought the box. I like this distro a great deal. I don't have any real desire for the books or whatever else comes in the box, but I like the software itself. So I'm quite happy they're making it so easy to pay them for it without having to go through Office Depot or my local computer store or whatever. (And I can control the cost.:)
I'm getting the product. What's wrong with wanting to pay for it?
(I've done this with music, too; I burned a CD from a friend of mine, and gave her the cash to give to the artist. Again, I was getting the same thing I'd buy in stores (if she released her stuff in stores), and it's something I'm quite happy to pay for.)
Besides, everything Mandrake developes is Free (or at least free), so it's all benifitting the community anyway. And they make good stuff!
A lot of people here are claiming that the track listings etc were entered by the users, and are therefore the IP of the users (if anybody). Well, what about where the users got those track listings? They read them off the CD!
The CDDB server just passes along info entered by users. But the users are just passing the same info along from their album covers. If this CD data belongs to anybody, it's the copyright holders of the track listings.
(Personally, I think all the track listings are really public domain, or should be. The database is a different story. Suing a company for using a competing product (if that's what's going on) is a completely separate issue, of course.)
Ok, I'll bite. The idea that spacetime is smooth (rubber sheets) really does come out of the General Theory of Relativity. In hand-wavy terms, GR says that spacetime is curved as the result of the presence of mass (and that's all that curves it). So if you have no mass, you have no curvature. If you're between masses, the curvature where you are depends entirely (and predictably) on the masses you're between.
And as a matter of fact, the equation that describes the curvature is exactly the same equation that governs a stretched rubber sheet (well, different variables, of course, but the same form). So the rubber sheet analogy is actually a very very good one. (The equation that governs electric fields has the same form, too.)
Even if this wasn't true (which it is; lots of experimentation backs this up), what would cause these variations you're talking about?
The gamecube sounds cool,
so I hope it arrives, but it's obviously coming into a hotly contested market.
It won't be hotly contested if all the competitors keep dropping out. Right now I count one contestant: the PS2. Xbox and Gamecube are both vapour. Dreamcast is toast. Indrema's vapour-toast. Am I missing a half-dozen next-generation consoles, here, or what? (It's entirely possible I'm missing something, so please point it out -- but there really aren't that many new consoles on the way or here, are there?)
I agree with this -- nothing wrong with choosing to sell some stuff and give other stuff away. I just have a feeling that few people will actually buy the proprietary stuff, especially given that they can get (apparently) equivalent Free software elsewhere.
How many software houses out there are offering for-fee customization of the code? It seems to me the people who wrote the stuff would be particularly good at tuning it to your needs, whether by installation or reprogramming. The reprogrammed versions would also be released for Free, but not necessarily integrated into the main code tree (since they're customizations, ie. not everyone needs those features) except by popular demand.
This seems to me to be a good combination. I think RMS or ESR or somebody discussed this in one of their utopian-future-of-software treatises, didn't they?
but you'll never hear a complaint by anyone about how macrovision has degraded their signal -- it hasn't.
I recently bought a stereo VCR (I was using a cheaper Mono one before), specifically so that I could watch it through my TV-Tuner card (19" monitor, computer output through my stereo, as opposed to a little 15" TV). But Macrovision screws up the signal. Perfectly legal use, screwed by Macrovision. (Also the same reason I can't plug a DVD player into anything I own without Macrovision kicking in.)
I don't understand why they're upset about over-clocking (and trying to make it more difficult).
AFAIK, they don't want underhanded retailers selling overclocked PIII-500's as PIII-700's or whatever. Basically people aren't getting what they're paying for. (Whether there's a real difference or not, I don't claim to know.) And if they don't do it right and they make the chip unstable, it makes the chip manufacturers look bad.
Ummm.... you do realize it's the Open Source nature of this project that makes it so OPEN to this type of exploit, right?
I'm not sure that's the case. Once you figure out how the search requests work (which can't be that hard, whether or not you have the source) it should be easy to for a program to send back "results" and serve up whatever file it wants in their place.
I agree that Open Source is no magic bullet. However, my hope/expectation is that, with enough people working on it (which is key to the success of Open Source), people will fix the problem, or at least plug the loophole long enough that people can get some use out of the system before the next trojan comes along.
It's true that most of us are pretty sure there's other life out there, but we haven't seen it. It's always nice to gather more evidence for the theory, even if the theory seems "obvious".
Besides, this is also interesting news because these "life ingredients" were found in the gas and dust around stars. Nobody is exactly sure where our life ingredients came from -- whether they formed spontaneously on Earth or came down from space -- so this is more evidence for the "space" theory.
Nobody actually knows how much viri cost, because nobody records any data about the viri or their activities. (See this article at VMyths.com for a good discussion.) All these numbers are estimated from anecdotal evidence; a lot of the damage comes from "preventative measures" (like shutting down your entire email server for two days so some virus doesn't come along and shut down your email server); and a good chunk of these numbers come from other press reports, which get them from other press reports, which get them from people who were "estimating" (read: making them up) on the spot.
It sounds like this Pat person is raising a cuffuffle primarily over the way libraries distribute journals and such, more than books, and saying how the authors need to make a living.
Although, technically I don't think she ever mentions authors. She says "These people", referring to "those in the room", ie. publishers.
Truth to tell, the publishers may make money off of the journals, but the authors (if I understand correctly) generally have to pay a fee to get their articles published. So what's the big problem?! The authors are getting paid by their research grants. The publishers get paid by libraries at least once (and I don't know of a library that makes their own copies of these huge journal archives from other libraries rather than buying their own), not to mention getting paid by the universities and other research institutions where the authors work (and where you're most likely to find people who are actually interested in the journals).
In Particle Physics, at least, almost all papers are also available on line in a huge database called Spires -- and as near as I can tell, it's supported by the publishers. It's certainly supported by the scientists. I'm surprised Pat isn't going after Spires, too...
Now, most of our games didn't end up like this, but every once in a while, something would balance just right, and we would end up at this kind of stalemate of ever-increasing armies..
I believe the term for that is "cold war".:) It's not a zero-sum situation, but only because everybody loses.
-Erf C.
Web-based services == "industry vision"?!
on
Linux Is Going Down
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· Score: 1
From the article:
Miller asserted that the "industry vision" centers around Web-based services...
Do people actually believe that? Am I just naive to think MS is the only one pushing this stuff? I'm under the impression that, where Miller says "industry vision" he really means "Microsoft vision" -- MS wants everybody to believe that everyone else believes what MS is saying about.NET and such, so that MS gets even tighter control over what software you use...
There are big problems -- network speed is the most obvious, but there are issues about user control over the software and the data (if you're accessing Word over the internet, and they upgrade it on the other end and suddenly your file doesn't load properly -- or worse, their computer crashes, or their network goes down, and you can't get at the program -- you've got a problem) not to mention the very concept of pay-per-use.
So I'm wondering if these web-based "services" really are the "industry vision". Do people really think this is a good idea?
I think it's possible for a company to earn the loyalty of some/all of its employees. If it treats you very well (in an absolute sense, not necessarily compared to other companies)... If it helps you out at expense to itself, where the company's only benefit is a happier employee...
Being hired by a company doesn't imply you owe them fealty. But they can earn it, by being loyal to you.
What's the difference between a CD-R and a CD-R Audio? How does the disk (or the retailer) know what format you're going to give it until you burn it? (I've already burned CD-R's that play in my stereo, and identical ones that work in my computer...)
Slashdot Mirror
I hadn't seen yesterday's article. I got the links from a friend of mine, who's a grad student on the project.
-Erf C.
Not only that, but the different neutrino flavours must have different masses in order to oscillate. The fact that they have mass at all is the most exciting bit, of course, but the fact that they're all different is pretty cool, too.
-Erf C.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory homepage has their own article about the results. The full paper that they submitted to Physical Review Letters is also avilable online.
-Erf C.
The idea is that you take these radioactive atoms and fling them at other radioactive atoms, to simulate collisions with the sort of energy you'd see in a supernova. This lets them study reaction chains and rates and stuff. Very cool.
-Erf C.
A political system in which economic and social policy is made through agreements between business associations, trade unions, and government.
That sounds a lot like how Katz is using it...
-Erf C.
I'm getting the product. What's wrong with wanting to pay for it?
(I've done this with music, too; I burned a CD from a friend of mine, and gave her the cash to give to the artist. Again, I was getting the same thing I'd buy in stores (if she released her stuff in stores), and it's something I'm quite happy to pay for.)
Besides, everything Mandrake developes is Free (or at least free), so it's all benifitting the community anyway. And they make good stuff!
-Erf C.
Right. Energy is mass. And it's that mass which is curving spacetime.
-Erf C.
The CDDB server just passes along info entered by users. But the users are just passing the same info along from their album covers. If this CD data belongs to anybody, it's the copyright holders of the track listings.
(Personally, I think all the track listings are really public domain, or should be. The database is a different story. Suing a company for using a competing product (if that's what's going on) is a completely separate issue, of course.)
-Erf C.
And as a matter of fact, the equation that describes the curvature is exactly the same equation that governs a stretched rubber sheet (well, different variables, of course, but the same form). So the rubber sheet analogy is actually a very very good one. (The equation that governs electric fields has the same form, too.)
Even if this wasn't true (which it is; lots of experimentation backs this up), what would cause these variations you're talking about?
-Erf C.
It won't be hotly contested if all the competitors keep dropping out. Right now I count one contestant: the PS2. Xbox and Gamecube are both vapour. Dreamcast is toast. Indrema's vapour-toast. Am I missing a half-dozen next-generation consoles, here, or what? (It's entirely possible I'm missing something, so please point it out -- but there really aren't that many new consoles on the way or here, are there?)
-Erf C.
How many software houses out there are offering for-fee customization of the code? It seems to me the people who wrote the stuff would be particularly good at tuning it to your needs, whether by installation or reprogramming. The reprogrammed versions would also be released for Free, but not necessarily integrated into the main code tree (since they're customizations, ie. not everyone needs those features) except by popular demand.
This seems to me to be a good combination. I think RMS or ESR or somebody discussed this in one of their utopian-future-of-software treatises, didn't they?
-Erf C.
(I can't help it! I'm a physicist!)
-Erf C.
I recently bought a stereo VCR (I was using a cheaper Mono one before), specifically so that I could watch it through my TV-Tuner card (19" monitor, computer output through my stereo, as opposed to a little 15" TV). But Macrovision screws up the signal. Perfectly legal use, screwed by Macrovision. (Also the same reason I can't plug a DVD player into anything I own without Macrovision kicking in.)
-Erf C.
AFAIK, they don't want underhanded retailers selling overclocked PIII-500's as PIII-700's or whatever. Basically people aren't getting what they're paying for. (Whether there's a real difference or not, I don't claim to know.) And if they don't do it right and they make the chip unstable, it makes the chip manufacturers look bad.
-Erf C.
I'm not sure that's the case. Once you figure out how the search requests work (which can't be that hard, whether or not you have the source) it should be easy to for a program to send back "results" and serve up whatever file it wants in their place.
I agree that Open Source is no magic bullet. However, my hope/expectation is that, with enough people working on it (which is key to the success of Open Source), people will fix the problem, or at least plug the loophole long enough that people can get some use out of the system before the next trojan comes along.
-Erf C.
Besides, this is also interesting news because these "life ingredients" were found in the gas and dust around stars. Nobody is exactly sure where our life ingredients came from -- whether they formed spontaneously on Earth or came down from space -- so this is more evidence for the "space" theory.
-Erf C.
Nobody actually knows how much viri cost, because nobody records any data about the viri or their activities. (See this article at VMyths.com for a good discussion.) All these numbers are estimated from anecdotal evidence; a lot of the damage comes from "preventative measures" (like shutting down your entire email server for two days so some virus doesn't come along and shut down your email server); and a good chunk of these numbers come from other press reports, which get them from other press reports, which get them from people who were "estimating" (read: making them up) on the spot.
-Erf C.
Although, technically I don't think she ever mentions authors. She says "These people", referring to "those in the room", ie. publishers.
Truth to tell, the publishers may make money off of the journals, but the authors (if I understand correctly) generally have to pay a fee to get their articles published. So what's the big problem?! The authors are getting paid by their research grants. The publishers get paid by libraries at least once (and I don't know of a library that makes their own copies of these huge journal archives from other libraries rather than buying their own), not to mention getting paid by the universities and other research institutions where the authors work (and where you're most likely to find people who are actually interested in the journals).
In Particle Physics, at least, almost all papers are also available on line in a huge database called Spires -- and as near as I can tell, it's supported by the publishers. It's certainly supported by the scientists. I'm surprised Pat isn't going after Spires, too...
-Erf C.
I believe the term for that is "cold war". :) It's not a zero-sum situation, but only because everybody loses.
-Erf C.
There are big problems -- network speed is the most obvious, but there are issues about user control over the software and the data (if you're accessing Word over the internet, and they upgrade it on the other end and suddenly your file doesn't load properly -- or worse, their computer crashes, or their network goes down, and you can't get at the program -- you've got a problem) not to mention the very concept of pay-per-use.
So I'm wondering if these web-based "services" really are the "industry vision". Do people really think this is a good idea?
-Erf C.
Being hired by a company doesn't imply you owe them fealty. But they can earn it, by being loyal to you.
-Erf C.
This is not a new phase. Particle Physicists have been blowing stuff (really really small stuff) up for almost a century now.
-Erf C.
What does OVA mean?
-Erf C.
What's the difference between a CD-R and a CD-R Audio? How does the disk (or the retailer) know what format you're going to give it until you burn it? (I've already burned CD-R's that play in my stereo, and identical ones that work in my computer...)
-Erf C.
What do you mean, "efficient"? Eye-catching? Or click-throughs?
-Erf C.