It's not free if it costs you electricity to run the CPU at full power 24/7. All modern processors have idle states in which they reduce energy consumption. These are not just "wasted cycles" that could be put to some use anyway. A large amount of people also have metered bandwidth connections which might get impacted by this.
But what if the brain works by exploiting all of the effects of molecules, proteins, ions, electrical charges, even quantum effects at a molecular level?
There has been a very interesting eperiment involving running a genetic algorithms on and FPGA instead of purely in software. After several generations the program on the FPGA evolved to do the required function, however, the experimenter could not figure out how the program worked. And when transplanted in another FPGA, or when using different cells in the same FPGA the program would not work anymore. Turns out the program relied on subtle differences between cells, propagation delays and interference between neighboring cells. All of which was not documented and variable. This might very well be the same with the human brain, which might depend on some "undocumented" (read : unknown) law of physics.
Obviously 6 month is a far too short time to make any conclusions regarding the climate of the Earth. Anything under one year does not make sense at all, and you must average measurements over a few years to smooth the yearly variations and see the trend. The solar cycle must be also taken into account. Currently we're at a particularly long and low point of the sun activity, with emissions as low as -6% from the average in some wavelengths (UV). So I'd say a 11 to 13 year period (length of the solar cycle) would be needed to draw conclusions.
So you're saying that if there was a way to perfectly clone a human you could kill the original without second thought since you'll always have a "copy" ? It's more complicated than that. The copy is not one of your other lives, it's another entity, but not *you*. *You*'d be dead.
Am I the only one to be shocked that a private company (Visa and MC) can shut down another one simply on the basis of denunciations in the press, and be congratulated about it ?
Traffic Converter should be tried before the judicial system. They probably aren't saints, but justice works only if it is applied the same way to everybody. Otherwise it's called arbitrary. This should be obvious but apparently it seems necessary to repeat it often.
You probably know that the formula of the gravity pull of an object is proportional to m/r^2, r being the distance between the center of the object and the point where you measure the force, and m the mass of the object. This formula is valid only outside the body. Once inside, gravity start to decrease.
Now imagine that you could reduce the size of the object as much as you want. At some point, the gravity pull at the surface of the object will be so high that the escape velocity will reach the speed of light. This is true whatever the mass of the object is, because the limit of 1/r^2 as r approaches 0 if infinity. This radius is called the Schwarzschild radius.
In the LHC, it might be possible that by smashing particles together with huge energies, they would be compacted below the Schwarzschild radius, creating an extremely small black hole.
There is another theory, called the Hawking radiation, which says that black holes are not really black, but slightly evaporate, getting smaller over time.
The debate is to know which is the fastest, the speed at which the black holes evaporate, or the speed at which they "eat" matter and energy around them.
As you said these very small black holes would have very little gravity pull, and would encounter other particles only by chance. also, the Hawkings theory states that very small black holes dissipate very fast.
However everything about black holes is purely theoretical, and some people aren't quite content to test this against the fate of our planet:-)
However in your case the price was probably not apparent at the time of sale (or else you would'nt complain now I assume), and thus the sale is illegal under European law. So don't pay.
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It's not free if it costs you electricity to run the CPU at full power 24/7. All modern processors have idle states in which they reduce energy consumption. These are not just "wasted cycles" that could be put to some use anyway.
A large amount of people also have metered bandwidth connections which might get impacted by this.
But what if the brain works by exploiting all of the effects of molecules, proteins, ions, electrical charges, even quantum effects at a molecular level?
There has been a very interesting eperiment involving running a genetic algorithms on and FPGA instead of purely in software. After several generations the program on the FPGA evolved to do the required function, however, the experimenter could not figure out how the program worked. And when transplanted in another FPGA, or when using different cells in the same FPGA the program would not work anymore. Turns out the program relied on subtle differences between cells, propagation delays and interference between neighboring cells. All of which was not documented and variable. This might very well be the same with the human brain, which might depend on some "undocumented" (read : unknown) law of physics.
Obviously 6 month is a far too short time to make any conclusions regarding the climate of the Earth. Anything under one year does not make sense at all, and you must average measurements over a few years to smooth the yearly variations and see the trend. The solar cycle must be also taken into account. Currently we're at a particularly long and low point of the sun activity, with emissions as low as -6% from the average in some wavelengths (UV). So I'd say a 11 to 13 year period (length of the solar cycle) would be needed to draw conclusions.
So you're saying that if there was a way to perfectly clone a human you could kill the original without second thought since you'll always have a "copy" ? It's more complicated than that. The copy is not one of your other lives, it's another entity, but not *you*. *You*'d be dead.
Soyuz. The rocket exploded twice, in 1975 and 1983, and each time the crew survived. See http://www.janes.com/aerospace/civil/news/jsd/jsd030203_3_n.shtml
Am I the only one to be shocked that a private company (Visa and MC) can shut down another one simply on the basis of denunciations in the press, and be congratulated about it ?
Traffic Converter should be tried before the judicial system. They probably aren't saints, but justice works only if it is applied the same way to everybody. Otherwise it's called arbitrary. This should be obvious but apparently it seems necessary to repeat it often.
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those !
Wait ...
Except it looks carefully crafted to be unpronounceable by a human pharynx ... This was planned all along !
How do we know that ? How would we detect a black hole the mass of a planet orbiting its star ?
No, actually black holes can have any mass.
You probably know that the formula of the gravity pull of an object is proportional to m/r^2, r being the distance between the center of the object and the point where you measure the force, and m the mass of the object. This formula is valid only outside the body. Once inside, gravity start to decrease.
Now imagine that you could reduce the size of the object as much as you want. At some point, the gravity pull at the surface of the object will be so high that the escape velocity will reach the speed of light. This is true whatever the mass of the object is, because the limit of 1/r^2 as r approaches 0 if infinity. This radius is called the Schwarzschild radius.
In the LHC, it might be possible that by smashing particles together with huge energies, they would be compacted below the Schwarzschild radius, creating an extremely small black hole.
There is another theory, called the Hawking radiation, which says that black holes are not really black, but slightly evaporate, getting smaller over time.
The debate is to know which is the fastest, the speed at which the black holes evaporate, or the speed at which they "eat" matter and energy around them.
As you said these very small black holes would have very little gravity pull, and would encounter other particles only by chance. also, the Hawkings theory states that very small black holes dissipate very fast.
However everything about black holes is purely theoretical, and some people aren't quite content to test this against the fate of our planet :-)
I highly doubt gaining revenue from illegally obtained/generated content is legal. I assume it's assimilable to possession if stolen goods.
Selling (L)GPLed software is authorized by the license (and even encouraged apparently). See http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html
However in your case the price was probably not apparent at the time of sale (or else you would'nt complain now I assume), and thus the sale is illegal under European law. So don't pay.
Macs have a huge one-month (0.8%) and two-month (1.4%) rise while Linux is flatline.
Linux went from 0.65% in February to 0.85% in December, or a 31% increase in one year. That is hardly 'flatline'.
In the same time, Macs went from 7.46% to 9.63%, an about 29% increase.