Most homes in Canada and the US (and, so I have heard, many other parts of the world) have running water. People who live in homes with this amenity usually wash (and peel, if appropriate) their fruit and vegetables before eating them.
I get a factor for four (actually 3.981) times more energy, but it has been a long time since I took a geology class. This assumes that the energy scales as the amplitude to the 3/2 power. From what I remember the scaling can depend a lot on various geological conditions.
I did not say this very well. A better way of putting it is that molecular bonds (in fact, any of the four fundamental forces) are stronger than the expansion of the Universe over short distances. This is why you and I and my pint of beer do not expand along with spacetime. We are sitting in spacetime and are held together by the four fundamental forces. It is a bit like the way that a marble sitting on a rubber sheet does not expand when one stretches the rubber sheet.
>> the subsidized handset business models of the US carriers are viable, just not universally popular. There's a difference.
> I disagree. They are very popular to the typical US consumer, who doesn't want to pay more than a couple bucks for a new shiny phone in their hands.
The subsidized handset business model is popular with typical US customers because customers do not realize that they are actually paying full price for their handset through what is essentially an installment plan. Pay one cent up front and several hundred dollars spread over the next two years. If US mobile phone users are not going to have the ability to do as they will with their mobiles after the contract has expired then the carriers should be honest about the situation and rent the handsets instead of using stealth leases.
It does not work that way. Things like metre sticks are held together by the electromagnetic force, which is decoupled from the expansion of the Universe. This means that objects in the Universe do not expand, they just move along with the expansion. If everything in the Universe expanded with the Hubble flow then we would never be able to detect the Hubble flow. Only spacetime expands, not what is sitting around in spacetime.
The explanation for the unexpected small size of the proton is probably something to do with the way that muons interact with protons. We assume that electrons and muons interact with protons in exactly the same way, but this is a hypothesis. There is very little observational evidence supporting the idea that electrons and muons behave in exactly the same way when they are bound to an atomic nucleus. The problem with this idea is that it requires that particle physics be extended beyond the standard model. It is also possible that the problem is something much more mundane, like a faulty connection somewhere in the experimental setup. We need an independent verification of this result before we start rewriting the textbooks.
The original quote was "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.", which itself is a summation of a longer quote. Just quoting the first part changes the meaning dramatically.
My experience has been that people under the age of about 45 tend to use arXiv and digital copies of research papers. People older than that tend to use paper copies. The standard deviation in this, however, is very large. I usually only print a paper if I want to quickly add some data to a figure, or do a chi-by-eye fit, or something similar. It is still easier to do this with a piece of paper than it is on a computer screen
I can easily see this sort of thing happening in the US. Imagine a group of olive-skinned young men sitting in a cafeteria talking, in a purely hypothetical manor, about potential local terrorist targets and how they would go about hypothetically attacking them.
Point (6) needs to be expanded to include the physical costs of printing and distributing the paper version of each issue. There are also costs associated with the servers needed to distribute the electronic version of the journal. These costs, particularly for the paper version, can be quite high. The high printing and distributing costs are a major reason why academia is (oh so slowly) moving towards publishing on-line instead of in traditional paper journals.
I doubt it. If a school bus crashes and kills 39 children then it will be very big news for a week or two, then it will be forgotten. Do you remember what happened in Yuba City?
Calibration data make up a significant amount of astronomical observations, and it can take months, or even years to properly calibrate astronomical instruments. For example, it took about three months to do the initial calibrations of the instruments on Swift, but there is still on-going calibration, eight years after launch. Calibrating these sorts of instruments so that they produce data that is consistent with data from other instruments is extremely difficult and time consuming. It is not a simple matter twiddling a wheel like tuning an ohmmeter.
Bletchley Park could have probably gotten by without any one or two of the code breakers, but as a group they had a significant effect on the course of WWII, and thus deserve these honours. If the people at Bletchley Park had not been as successful as they were it is possible that WWII in Europe would have lasted a lot longer than it did. It is also quite plausible that the European portion of the war would have ended with the Soviet Union extending to the Atlantic.
It is nice to have the option of checking the results of a hockey game during a long flight, but in general I agree; having to live without an internet connection for several hours is not a hardship. It is not hard to download a movie or two the day before flying, and anyone who is is critical to their company that the company cannot function if they are out of contact for a few hours needs to be replaced. Critical failure points like that are too dangerous to keep around.
Yes, I suppose that you are right. I always thought that rational discourse meant respect for the other point of view, and a civil tongue. How wrong I was.
We have been cutting taxes for the past ten years. It has not worked. There is no non-ideological reason to think that cutting them again will help. Remember, the last time that the US had a booming economy was in the late 1990s, and taxes were higher then than they are now. Letting taxes rise to what they were before the Bush tax cuts came into effect will not tip the US economy into a recession. At worst it will slow down economic growth a bit. The real danger is that the automatic cuts in government spending that will start kicking in on Jan 1 will remove money from areas of the economy that are already in trouble.
Once again, no amount of swearing, name-calling, or temper tantrums is going to change reality. The US is about to take a dive over a cliff because a groups of extremists are refusing stand down from a childish ideological platform and start cooperating to reach a deal.
Again, no amount of name calling is going to change reality. The Senate has sent many economic bills to the House over the past four years, and almost every one has been blocked by the Republicans. There has been, and appears to still be, a deliberate policy to obstruct any legislation that originates from the Democratic side of Congress.
Both sides have been talking for weeks, the problem has been that one side, the Republicans, have refused to go beyond token compromises. The House could have passed Boehner's Plan B, but they refused because it contained a small tax increase. The nut-jobs won. This is not a case of it taking two to tango. This is a case of one group of people threatening to crash the car if the driver doesn't go where they want to go. No amount of cursing is going to change that.
I did not say budget, I said economic legislation. The reality is that the blame for the US's current economic mess lies squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans. They had a chance to work with the President and with the Senate, and they refused. No amount of swearing or calling people names is going to change that.
Slashdot Mirror
Most homes in Canada and the US (and, so I have heard, many other parts of the world) have running water. People who live in homes with this amenity usually wash (and peel, if appropriate) their fruit and vegetables before eating them.
> 12.6 times more energy.
I get a factor for four (actually 3.981) times more energy, but it has been a long time since I took a geology class. This assumes that the energy scales as the amplitude to the 3/2 power. From what I remember the scaling can depend a lot on various geological conditions.
Perhaps things would have been much worse without Hitler. Stephen Fry wrote an amusing book based on this idea.
The expansion of the Universe does not create new spacetime, it just stretches the existing spacetime.
I did not say this very well. A better way of putting it is that molecular bonds (in fact, any of the four fundamental forces) are stronger than the expansion of the Universe over short distances. This is why you and I and my pint of beer do not expand along with spacetime. We are sitting in spacetime and are held together by the four fundamental forces. It is a bit like the way that a marble sitting on a rubber sheet does not expand when one stretches the rubber sheet.
>> the subsidized handset business models of the US carriers are viable, just not universally popular. There's a difference.
> I disagree. They are very popular to the typical US consumer, who doesn't want to pay more than a couple bucks for a new shiny phone in their hands.
The subsidized handset business model is popular with typical US customers because customers do not realize that they are actually paying full price for their handset through what is essentially an installment plan. Pay one cent up front and several hundred dollars spread over the next two years. If US mobile phone users are not going to have the ability to do as they will with their mobiles after the contract has expired then the carriers should be honest about the situation and rent the handsets instead of using stealth leases.
It does not work that way. Things like metre sticks are held together by the electromagnetic force, which is decoupled from the expansion of the Universe. This means that objects in the Universe do not expand, they just move along with the expansion. If everything in the Universe expanded with the Hubble flow then we would never be able to detect the Hubble flow. Only spacetime expands, not what is sitting around in spacetime.
The explanation for the unexpected small size of the proton is probably something to do with the way that muons interact with protons. We assume that electrons and muons interact with protons in exactly the same way, but this is a hypothesis. There is very little observational evidence supporting the idea that electrons and muons behave in exactly the same way when they are bound to an atomic nucleus. The problem with this idea is that it requires that particle physics be extended beyond the standard model. It is also possible that the problem is something much more mundane, like a faulty connection somewhere in the experimental setup. We need an independent verification of this result before we start rewriting the textbooks.
The original quote was "Information wants to be free. Information also wants to be expensive.", which itself is a summation of a longer quote. Just quoting the first part changes the meaning dramatically.
My experience has been that people under the age of about 45 tend to use arXiv and digital copies of research papers. People older than that tend to use paper copies. The standard deviation in this, however, is very large. I usually only print a paper if I want to quickly add some data to a figure, or do a chi-by-eye fit, or something similar. It is still easier to do this with a piece of paper than it is on a computer screen
It would not surprise me if Echelon has already flagged this thread.
Hmm... I typoed. Manor should be manner. A hypothetical manor is where I live.
I can easily see this sort of thing happening in the US. Imagine a group of olive-skinned young men sitting in a cafeteria talking, in a purely hypothetical manor, about potential local terrorist targets and how they would go about hypothetically attacking them.
Point (6) needs to be expanded to include the physical costs of printing and distributing the paper version of each issue. There are also costs associated with the servers needed to distribute the electronic version of the journal. These costs, particularly for the paper version, can be quite high. The high printing and distributing costs are a major reason why academia is (oh so slowly) moving towards publishing on-line instead of in traditional paper journals.
I doubt it. If a school bus crashes and kills 39 children then it will be very big news for a week or two, then it will be forgotten. Do you remember what happened in Yuba City?
Calibration data make up a significant amount of astronomical observations, and it can take months, or even years to properly calibrate astronomical instruments. For example, it took about three months to do the initial calibrations of the instruments on Swift, but there is still on-going calibration, eight years after launch. Calibrating these sorts of instruments so that they produce data that is consistent with data from other instruments is extremely difficult and time consuming. It is not a simple matter twiddling a wheel like tuning an ohmmeter.
Bletchley Park could have probably gotten by without any one or two of the code breakers, but as a group they had a significant effect on the course of WWII, and thus deserve these honours. If the people at Bletchley Park had not been as successful as they were it is possible that WWII in Europe would have lasted a lot longer than it did. It is also quite plausible that the European portion of the war would have ended with the Soviet Union extending to the Atlantic.
Virgin is arguably the best airline that currently operates in the US. If they had flights to Vancouver they would be my default airline.
It is nice to have the option of checking the results of a hockey game during a long flight, but in general I agree; having to live without an internet connection for several hours is not a hardship. It is not hard to download a movie or two the day before flying, and anyone who is is critical to their company that the company cannot function if they are out of contact for a few hours needs to be replaced. Critical failure points like that are too dangerous to keep around.
Yes, I suppose that you are right. I always thought that rational discourse meant respect for the other point of view, and a civil tongue. How wrong I was.
I am worthless? and a perpetual drain on the country? Why? Because I disagree with you? So much for rational discourse.
We have been cutting taxes for the past ten years. It has not worked. There is no non-ideological reason to think that cutting them again will help. Remember, the last time that the US had a booming economy was in the late 1990s, and taxes were higher then than they are now. Letting taxes rise to what they were before the Bush tax cuts came into effect will not tip the US economy into a recession. At worst it will slow down economic growth a bit. The real danger is that the automatic cuts in government spending that will start kicking in on Jan 1 will remove money from areas of the economy that are already in trouble.
Once again, no amount of swearing, name-calling, or temper tantrums is going to change reality. The US is about to take a dive over a cliff because a groups of extremists are refusing stand down from a childish ideological platform and start cooperating to reach a deal.
Again, no amount of name calling is going to change reality. The Senate has sent many economic bills to the House over the past four years, and almost every one has been blocked by the Republicans. There has been, and appears to still be, a deliberate policy to obstruct any legislation that originates from the Democratic side of Congress.
Both sides have been talking for weeks, the problem has been that one side, the Republicans, have refused to go beyond token compromises. The House could have passed Boehner's Plan B, but they refused because it contained a small tax increase. The nut-jobs won. This is not a case of it taking two to tango. This is a case of one group of people threatening to crash the car if the driver doesn't go where they want to go. No amount of cursing is going to change that.
I did not say budget, I said economic legislation. The reality is that the blame for the US's current economic mess lies squarely on the shoulders of the Republicans. They had a chance to work with the President and with the Senate, and they refused. No amount of swearing or calling people names is going to change that.