If it is nearly tangent to the object (but doesn't strike it), and it is already moving at a high enough velocity, then it will use the black hole as a slingshot and will gain velocity.
That's not right. If the only things in the universe were the black hole and the star, the star could never "slingshot" away from the black hole no matter how it approached it (unless it was already traveling faster than the hole's escape velocity, but let's assume it isn't).
The slingshot effect requires three objects. It isn't accurate to say that the black hole ejected the star from the galaxy. What is accurate is to say that there was an interaction between three bodies (probably two stars and the black hole) which resulted in one of those stars being ejected from the galaxy.
Motion is relative but acceleration is not. Although it is valid to choose the star as the frame of reference, it is a non-inertial frame and thus would require the introduction of fictitious forces to explain the behavior of the rest of the universe.
If I were working the equations, I would prefer a reference frame which did not introduce fictitious forces on a universal scale.
I remember playing with "gravity simulator" software on various computers. When you sent two obects into a near-miss, the close proximity would sling-shot them at tremendous speed.
That doesn't happen in reality. In reality, if two objects have a net negative energy (i.e., potential energy is larger than kinetic energy) then they are in a "bound" state and will stay bound until some external force adds the necessary energy.
The reason you can pull this off in gravitational "simulations" is because they use inaccurate techniques to integrate the equations of gravity and motion. In the real universe, you need at least three bodies to get a slingshot effect. (I put simulation in quotes because it's not a very realistic simulation of gravity, as this physically impossible artifact demonstrates.)
The first edition carries a dedication by Mr. Johnson, which reads "To the memory of my grandmother, Eleanor Johnson, who taught faith in God by example. .." Proselytization is repugnant wherever it is encountered; between the covers of a science text it is inexcusable.
But proselytization about the evils of proselytization is not? Here you are, in an article about a technical topic, ranting about religion? I'd say that's inappropriate proselytizing, no?
Further:
1. This is not a "science text." Not by any reasonable definition of science.
2. The dedication is a personal statement. It is directed at the dedicatee, not you.
Then fuck 'em. People don't have a right not to be offended, why should people go out of their way not to offend people?
The fact that the logo is offensive to certain people is only incidentally related to the main point. The main point here is that the logo is causing a significant number of users to turn away from (or refuse to consider) FreeBSD. The question is, what's more important: keeping those users, or keeping the logo?
Apparently the FreeBSD team has decided that the users are more important than the logo. When you put it that way does it really seem so crazy?
I was told by a BSD insider at the last IETF that this was being done becuase of complaints from religious conservatives that the old mascot was satanic.
It wouldn't surprise me.
Consider the Swastika. This symbol of Nazism has been used by various cultures for thousands of years, for mostly benign purposes. Suppose I produced my own Linux distribution with a symbol that looks exactly like a Swastika, and say "It's not really a Swastika, it's a Navajo decorative sign" or something like that.
The fact that I do not intend to offend isn't going to help me much. People will see a Swastika and think of Nazis. And, predictably, they will probably steer clear of my product.
In this case, the offending symbol is a depiction of a demon. No matter how hard it might be for us non-religious types to understand, this can be deeply offensive and/or disturbing to people.
They've been doing it for millenia......breeding dogs and crops.
That is NOT AT ALL the same thing. Breeding is just mixing up pre-existing genes into new combinations. By breeding, we can achieve some gene combinations that might have been extremely unlikely in nature, but we haven't created anything really new in a genetic sense.
It may surprise you to learn that the genetics of domesticated dogs are nearly indistinguishable from that of wolves -- the genes for "dog-like" appearance and traits are present in the wolf genome but do not naturally occur in the right combinations to produce "dog-like" animals.
No matter how much breeding you do, you will never create a new gene -- only natural mutation (and recently, human genetic engineering) can do that.
So no, we do NOT have historical data to guide us as we enter the realm of genetic engineering. The human race has NOT manipulated genes in this way before. Extreme caution is prudent.
If I put a bucket on a downtown street corner with a sign that says, "deposit $5 now," and people do so without question, it is their fault. It's not an issue with the sidewalk not being safe.
I don't care who's fault it is. Sure, stupid users bring these things upon themselves, but compromised zombie machines affect us all. Do I care if Joe Idiot gets all his files erased by some trojan? No. Do I care if his machine is zombified and participates in a DDoS attack against my website? You bet the fuck I do.
To extend your analogy with the money in buckets... What if the money in the buckets was being used to fund (dun dun dunnn...) terrorism? If some idiot wants to chuck away $5 that's fine, but not when it hurts everyone else as well.
The production cost of the show is hardly the deciding factor for the TV producers. Even if the production was entirely paid for by fans, the fact remains that the viewership is small and ad revenues will be low. They would rather schedule a show in that timeslot which would produce usable ad revenue.
In other words, in order to get them to go for this, you'd have to cover the lost advertisement revenue AS WELL AS the production costs. That's probably going to be over $150 million at least.
Why buy something that's obsolete the day you open the box?
You have a very weird definition of "obsolete." Since when does slower (if it even is slower) mean obsolete?
Is a 2005 Toyota Camry "obsolete" because it doesn't have the horsepower of a dump truck?
The hardware inside the Mac Mini is about as modern as you can get in a consumer system. The fact that it isn't the fastest thing out there hardly makes it obsolete. You may have some psychological issue surrounding your computer's MHz rating but some of us buy computers for other reasons.
You're assuming the LSB of each pixel of image data is perfectly random to begin with. In practice there are usually correlations between the subbands in image data (at least, any data which isn't pure noise). Inserting random data changes the degree of correlation between subbands, revealing the hidden message.
In California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington, IT IS ILLEGAL to record conversations without the consent of ALL parties involved.
And if you are engaging in a telephone conversation across state lines, you are subject to federal regulations as well.
You know what else is typical? Some dumbfuck wonders into Slashdot, thinks they have the entire readership pegged, and posts something cosmically stupid.
Public companies are required by law to maximise their profit. Profit is not usually maximised by giving large bonuses to employees.
No, public corporations are required to be responsible to the shareholders. In practice, nearly everybody cares about profit above all else, so that's what gets pushed the hardest.
But don't be confused here. There is no law on the books which states, literally, that corporations must make as much money as possible.
I think it's a roundabout way of advocating code refactoring. A good heuristic for when to stop refactoring is when the indentation level hits a certain threshold.
But you're right. Refactored code is typically slower than before, due to data copying and function call overhead. There are some places where you just can't afford it, and you end up with some pretty high indent levels in those cases. This goes hand-in-hand with duplicated code.
The trick is knowing where it's justified to have such extreme nesting.
And very often they are. Corporations being comprised of individuals, how could they not be?
The motives of corporations are not like those of other groups. Corporations exist solely to make as much money as quickly as possible. Obviously, yes, the people who comprise that corporation want to further this goal. But unless you're trying to say that all groups of people are equivalent to money-seeking groups of people, I'm not sure how you can say that it's all the same thing.
Lookit, I'm not debating the happy utopian value of a world without lobbyists, only that, at this moment in 2005, the Free Software Movement with a friendly corporate lobbying presence in DC is in vastly better shape than it was a month ago with the EFF spending member dollars to fly staff cross-country when it amused them to do so.
The deficiencies of the EFF don't seem to bear on this discussion. You describe RedHat as a "friendly corporate lobbying presence" but I wonder if you're using the term "friendly" simply because the company has something to do with Linux. The argument that "Linux is cool, RedHat supports Linux, so RedHat must be cool" is specious at best.
Surprise, surprise, this just in: young people sometimes have silly ideas.
I'm not going to flip out about this until I see a study showing that the attitudes of teenagers have been trending in this direction. Do MORE teens believe these things than they did, say, 5 years ago?
If there's no trend, just chalk it up to run-of-the-mill teenage stupidity and forget about it.
So why don't you update me, smart guy? I educated you today, now it's your turn. My mind's open.
For one, you assume that because I dislike corporate lobbying that I must be a tree-hugger railing against The Man. The degree to which you have stereotyped me based on a single statement is pretty amazing.
I simply believe that corporate lobbying can only serve corporate interests. These interests are not often aligned with the interests of individuals. Thus, organized lobbying in the public interest should be conducted by organized NON-CORPORATE voting groups.
You must think I'm pretty stupid not to realize that corporations and governments are made up of people. Is this your default opinion of everybody before you've obtained any real evidence about what sort of person they are? That everybody is a fucking idiot?
Slashdot Mirror
In case people don't get this joke... The rate of change of acceleration is technically called "jerk."
That's not right. If the only things in the universe were the black hole and the star, the star could never "slingshot" away from the black hole no matter how it approached it (unless it was already traveling faster than the hole's escape velocity, but let's assume it isn't).
The slingshot effect requires three objects. It isn't accurate to say that the black hole ejected the star from the galaxy. What is accurate is to say that there was an interaction between three bodies (probably two stars and the black hole) which resulted in one of those stars being ejected from the galaxy.
If I were working the equations, I would prefer a reference frame which did not introduce fictitious forces on a universal scale.
That doesn't happen in reality. In reality, if two objects have a net negative energy (i.e., potential energy is larger than kinetic energy) then they are in a "bound" state and will stay bound until some external force adds the necessary energy.
The reason you can pull this off in gravitational "simulations" is because they use inaccurate techniques to integrate the equations of gravity and motion. In the real universe, you need at least three bodies to get a slingshot effect. (I put simulation in quotes because it's not a very realistic simulation of gravity, as this physically impossible artifact demonstrates.)
But proselytization about the evils of proselytization is not? Here you are, in an article about a technical topic, ranting about religion? I'd say that's inappropriate proselytizing, no?
Further:
1. This is not a "science text." Not by any reasonable definition of science.
2. The dedication is a personal statement. It is directed at the dedicatee, not you.
Here you go.
The fact that the logo is offensive to certain people is only incidentally related to the main point. The main point here is that the logo is causing a significant number of users to turn away from (or refuse to consider) FreeBSD. The question is, what's more important: keeping those users, or keeping the logo?
Apparently the FreeBSD team has decided that the users are more important than the logo. When you put it that way does it really seem so crazy?
It wouldn't surprise me.
Consider the Swastika. This symbol of Nazism has been used by various cultures for thousands of years, for mostly benign purposes. Suppose I produced my own Linux distribution with a symbol that looks exactly like a Swastika, and say "It's not really a Swastika, it's a Navajo decorative sign" or something like that.
The fact that I do not intend to offend isn't going to help me much. People will see a Swastika and think of Nazis. And, predictably, they will probably steer clear of my product.
In this case, the offending symbol is a depiction of a demon. No matter how hard it might be for us non-religious types to understand, this can be deeply offensive and/or disturbing to people.
No, we can actually rewrite the DNA so that it encodes new proteins which have never existed before. This has nothing to do with mixing genes.
We HAVE been manipulating genes from before we could write.
It is the combinations of genes we have been manipulating, not the genes themselves.
That is NOT AT ALL the same thing. Breeding is just mixing up pre-existing genes into new combinations. By breeding, we can achieve some gene combinations that might have been extremely unlikely in nature, but we haven't created anything really new in a genetic sense.
It may surprise you to learn that the genetics of domesticated dogs are nearly indistinguishable from that of wolves -- the genes for "dog-like" appearance and traits are present in the wolf genome but do not naturally occur in the right combinations to produce "dog-like" animals.
No matter how much breeding you do, you will never create a new gene -- only natural mutation (and recently, human genetic engineering) can do that.
So no, we do NOT have historical data to guide us as we enter the realm of genetic engineering. The human race has NOT manipulated genes in this way before. Extreme caution is prudent.
I don't care who's fault it is. Sure, stupid users bring these things upon themselves, but compromised zombie machines affect us all. Do I care if Joe Idiot gets all his files erased by some trojan? No. Do I care if his machine is zombified and participates in a DDoS attack against my website? You bet the fuck I do.
To extend your analogy with the money in buckets... What if the money in the buckets was being used to fund (dun dun dunnn...) terrorism? If some idiot wants to chuck away $5 that's fine, but not when it hurts everyone else as well.
In other words, in order to get them to go for this, you'd have to cover the lost advertisement revenue AS WELL AS the production costs. That's probably going to be over $150 million at least.
You have a very weird definition of "obsolete." Since when does slower (if it even is slower) mean obsolete?
Is a 2005 Toyota Camry "obsolete" because it doesn't have the horsepower of a dump truck?
The hardware inside the Mac Mini is about as modern as you can get in a consumer system. The fact that it isn't the fastest thing out there hardly makes it obsolete. You may have some psychological issue surrounding your computer's MHz rating but some of us buy computers for other reasons.
You're assuming the LSB of each pixel of image data is perfectly random to begin with. In practice there are usually correlations between the subbands in image data (at least, any data which isn't pure noise). Inserting random data changes the degree of correlation between subbands, revealing the hidden message.
I don't think the analogy is even close. Smoking is a vice. Pregnancy is not a vice -- it is a critical part of the perpetuation of the human species.
Just because both happen to involve health care costs doesn't mean that they are at all equivalent.
In the US at least, those numbers are given in "BAC" units, which are hundredths of a percent. So 0.08 BAC means 0.0008%.
Tape-recording laws at a glance
In California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington, IT IS ILLEGAL to record conversations without the consent of ALL parties involved.
And if you are engaging in a telephone conversation across state lines, you are subject to federal regulations as well.
You know what else is typical? Some dumbfuck wonders into Slashdot, thinks they have the entire readership pegged, and posts something cosmically stupid.
No, public corporations are required to be responsible to the shareholders. In practice, nearly everybody cares about profit above all else, so that's what gets pushed the hardest.
But don't be confused here. There is no law on the books which states, literally, that corporations must make as much money as possible.
Exactly. Look at the graph. What exactly do they think that graph shows? To me it looks like a perfect trendline.
But you're right. Refactored code is typically slower than before, due to data copying and function call overhead. There are some places where you just can't afford it, and you end up with some pretty high indent levels in those cases. This goes hand-in-hand with duplicated code.
The trick is knowing where it's justified to have such extreme nesting.
Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you know how to spell basic English words?
The motives of corporations are not like those of other groups. Corporations exist solely to make as much money as quickly as possible. Obviously, yes, the people who comprise that corporation want to further this goal. But unless you're trying to say that all groups of people are equivalent to money-seeking groups of people, I'm not sure how you can say that it's all the same thing.
Lookit, I'm not debating the happy utopian value of a world without lobbyists, only that, at this moment in 2005, the Free Software Movement with a friendly corporate lobbying presence in DC is in vastly better shape than it was a month ago with the EFF spending member dollars to fly staff cross-country when it amused them to do so.
The deficiencies of the EFF don't seem to bear on this discussion. You describe RedHat as a "friendly corporate lobbying presence" but I wonder if you're using the term "friendly" simply because the company has something to do with Linux. The argument that "Linux is cool, RedHat supports Linux, so RedHat must be cool" is specious at best.
I'm not going to flip out about this until I see a study showing that the attitudes of teenagers have been trending in this direction. Do MORE teens believe these things than they did, say, 5 years ago?
If there's no trend, just chalk it up to run-of-the-mill teenage stupidity and forget about it.
For one, you assume that because I dislike corporate lobbying that I must be a tree-hugger railing against The Man. The degree to which you have stereotyped me based on a single statement is pretty amazing.
I simply believe that corporate lobbying can only serve corporate interests. These interests are not often aligned with the interests of individuals. Thus, organized lobbying in the public interest should be conducted by organized NON-CORPORATE voting groups.
You must think I'm pretty stupid not to realize that corporations and governments are made up of people. Is this your default opinion of everybody before you've obtained any real evidence about what sort of person they are? That everybody is a fucking idiot?