I was going to rant about how PDAs have had this problem for years but then I realised how having Bluetooth on Apple mobile devices is lip service at best.
Inside what? Not inside any sort of zero-size singularity I assume but that still leaves the question of how a photon - don't they mediate the EM force? - can influence anything when it can't pass the event horizon, and if this is the case how could we ever measure the charge a black hole has?
A black hole can have spin and charge, because these are both universally conversed quantities.
If a black hole is an empty region of space with a honking great curvature then where is the charge? If it's the result of charged matter taking forever to actually reach the singularity how can the mediator cross the event horizon? If it's matter outside the horizon, is it properly considered part of the black hole; I assume that virtual particles are released equally as far as charge is concerned? What, exactly, in a black hole carries the charge. Come to think about it, how can we know they're charged at all? We can and have theorised it but is it even possible to verify experimentally?
They increase in mass, yes but does their size increase? Where does the matter go if it's all compressed to a singularity? Are all the atoms just spaghettified, stacked one on top of the other in some infinitely tall, infinitely narrow well?
I have only a most basic grasp of cosmology but it's an interest of mine and I recall watching something on documentary heaven to the effect that black holes may well be a universe of their own. To be honest the very idea of a singularity still baffles me: it seems as though you start with an assemblage of simple, dull matter and in the blink of an eye any semblence to matter as we know it disappears and you're left with something that - to me at least - sounds like a feature of space itself.
Exactly what happens between the instant when you have a very, very dense lump of matter and an infinitely dense one? It seems an infantile question but where did all the matter go? Or was it transformed into something else that has mass but no size? Thinking about it gives me a headache and usually leaves me pondering whether any particles really have a physical size or if it's just another consequence of our limited view of the Universe.
I disagree. Science embraces what it cannot explain above all else. If a scientist (a true scottish one;) conducts an experiment and sees something unexpected than that's more exciting than a confirmation of your hypothethis; instead of seeing that one may possibly be right one finds oneself almost certainly wrong. I'm not going to debate philosophy at this late hour but I wonder what testable predictions the other branches have produced lately...
I'm reminded of something I once read about prayer (in an Iain Banks book I think). Prayer essentially boils down to this: "Please God let there be order in the Universe, just make an exception for me. Pretty please?"
there is no such thing as a government ever producing anything better than private industry
In terms of profits, obviously not, but when it comes to longevity hell yes! I never heard of a first-world government folding... for example, the NHS may not be as good as a PLC but you can be damn sure it isn't going anywhere.
This may finally be changing thanks to Ford, whose new Focus and Mustang are both noteworthy accomplishments in terms of features, performance, and safety, but I don't buy the argument that 'the government should've been in the car business all along and a Reagan/Republican/Auto company conspiracy is the only reason they weren't.'
They still using leaf springs and live rear axles in Mustangs? I know it's a tiny part of your post but I still facepalm when I think back to that episode of Top Gear.
They're only deathboxes because of the idiots who drive cars much larger than they need. Hell if you changed that Merc to an S-class the VW would probably still be pretty damn safe in comparison to some tit in a Hummer.
...choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs...
In other words, people are prejudiced, whether one's bias is a matter of religion or a firm belief in the aether doesn't really matter. Certainly there are those that oppose anything a person in a lab coat (or a tweed jacket) might say but this is well known behaviour. If the purpose of the paper was just to give a name to this phenomena then personally I'd rather they came up with something more descriptive rather than pandering to the need for a snappy headline.
I don't see what this has to do with science specifically: I'd have just as much luck convincing a creationist that Buddha put the bones there as I would getting them to accept evolution through natural selection. If someone is set in their ways you'll be hard pressed to convince them no matter how you came to whatever it is you're arguing.
I'd take it a step further and say the whole thing is just bollocks. Person-hours my eye! I doubt even their lowliest code monkey would take 4.8 million hours to code a Pacman clone in Brainfuck, much less a language that's there to do just this sort of thing. Not that I follow these things but isn't this what canvas is for? No disrespect to Google but I played DHTML Lemmings years ago and Pacman seems easy in comparison.
...if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all...
Say what? Even if the patent clerk was so facepalmingly stupid as to approve such an application, noone would ever be able to find a lawyer just as stupid as to argue a precedent that goes back before the written word; when Man first put dust to cave wall.
Yes, for a while these kind of performances served a purpose as it was very hard for early robotics to produce gentle movements. But we have solved the problem of the robot arm not crushing a human being, the AI element is what is lacking. We have the capacity to have a robot pick up an egg, but no robot so far can do it on its own so far.
Unfortunately, producing synthetic equivalents to bone, muscle and nerve are trivial compared to reproducing in silico the arrangements of the latter that have given rise to vision, spatial acuity and object recognition etc. Humans are the only animals that can play the violin (well) so you're left with the choice of making something dumb that can only play the violin or something roughly as smart as we are that can do many other useful things (perhaps even think?). We're talking about recreating a few hundred millions years of wetware in hardware. Arms and fingers aren't hard when you have a knowledge of mechanics - we've been building them for a few centuries I'd bet, even if they were only toys. We've only been doing anything with AI for a few decades.
At the end of the day, a brain is a lot more complicated than a few big bundles of anonymous muscle cells. Give it time, they'll have your robot butler soon. Real soon.
You'll note the word iTunes never passed my fingertips. I'm arguing that for the majority of people the iPhone is inseperable from the App Store, hence the word on vertical integration earlier. Music is different: Apple don't pick and choose their iTunes catalogue with the same exactitude as app submissions.
Apple can and are putting restrictions on what apps in their store can do. While the store enjoys a significant portion of the market Apple will in effect be exerting a measure of control on the functionality of apps that people have access to. I'm not going to debate the merits of freeing one's phone - frankly the reason I haven't done so is because the thing has broken so many times already I'm keeping the warranty and ditching it for something droidy - because for the forseeable future Apple still decides what additional functionality is available the majority of iPhones in the field.
Slashdot Mirror
I was going to rant about how PDAs have had this problem for years but then I realised how having Bluetooth on Apple mobile devices is lip service at best.
A good lens is important of course, but I'd still rather have more pixels than less: you've got more to work with if you need to downsize it.
True, but you only have to get as far as the front door for that.
Actually, what more can I say? I think I'm love... always did have a thing for physicists.
Inside what? Not inside any sort of zero-size singularity I assume but that still leaves the question of how a photon - don't they mediate the EM force? - can influence anything when it can't pass the event horizon, and if this is the case how could we ever measure the charge a black hole has?
A black hole can have spin and charge, because these are both universally conversed quantities.
If a black hole is an empty region of space with a honking great curvature then where is the charge? If it's the result of charged matter taking forever to actually reach the singularity how can the mediator cross the event horizon? If it's matter outside the horizon, is it properly considered part of the black hole; I assume that virtual particles are released equally as far as charge is concerned? What, exactly, in a black hole carries the charge. Come to think about it, how can we know they're charged at all? We can and have theorised it but is it even possible to verify experimentally?
Excuse me, I seem to broken my question mark key.
They increase in mass, yes but does their size increase? Where does the matter go if it's all compressed to a singularity? Are all the atoms just spaghettified, stacked one on top of the other in some infinitely tall, infinitely narrow well?
I have only a most basic grasp of cosmology but it's an interest of mine and I recall watching something on documentary heaven to the effect that black holes may well be a universe of their own. To be honest the very idea of a singularity still baffles me: it seems as though you start with an assemblage of simple, dull matter and in the blink of an eye any semblence to matter as we know it disappears and you're left with something that - to me at least - sounds like a feature of space itself.
Exactly what happens between the instant when you have a very, very dense lump of matter and an infinitely dense one? It seems an infantile question but where did all the matter go? Or was it transformed into something else that has mass but no size? Thinking about it gives me a headache and usually leaves me pondering whether any particles really have a physical size or if it's just another consequence of our limited view of the Universe.
Damn scientists! Always leaving the hard stuff to the engineers! :P
Still, more money in it though...
The difference between "vast" and "trace" amount is really all about how valuable the stuff is, now isn't it? And He3 is about $1500 per gram, which is over 120 times that of gold.
Why is it so expensive now? Hint: it's not because everyone is clamouring to burn the stuff in their Mr. Fusions...
I disagree. Science embraces what it cannot explain above all else. If a scientist (a true scottish one ;) conducts an experiment and sees something unexpected than that's more exciting than a confirmation of your hypothethis; instead of seeing that one may possibly be right one finds oneself almost certainly wrong. I'm not going to debate philosophy at this late hour but I wonder what testable predictions the other branches have produced lately...
The beginning of wisdom truly is "I do not know.
I'm reminded of something I once read about prayer (in an Iain Banks book I think). Prayer essentially boils down to this: "Please God let there be order in the Universe, just make an exception for me. Pretty please?"
there is no such thing as a government ever producing anything better than private industry
In terms of profits, obviously not, but when it comes to longevity hell yes! I never heard of a first-world government folding... for example, the NHS may not be as good as a PLC but you can be damn sure it isn't going anywhere.
This may finally be changing thanks to Ford, whose new Focus and Mustang are both noteworthy accomplishments in terms of features, performance, and safety, but I don't buy the argument that 'the government should've been in the car business all along and a Reagan/Republican/Auto company conspiracy is the only reason they weren't.'
They still using leaf springs and live rear axles in Mustangs? I know it's a tiny part of your post but I still facepalm when I think back to that episode of Top Gear.
VW Lupo
vs.
Mercedes A-Class
They're only deathboxes because of the idiots who drive cars much larger than they need. Hell if you changed that Merc to an S-class the VW would probably still be pretty damn safe in comparison to some tit in a Hummer.
...choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs...
In other words, people are prejudiced, whether one's bias is a matter of religion or a firm belief in the aether doesn't really matter. Certainly there are those that oppose anything a person in a lab coat (or a tweed jacket) might say but this is well known behaviour. If the purpose of the paper was just to give a name to this phenomena then personally I'd rather they came up with something more descriptive rather than pandering to the need for a snappy headline.
I don't see what this has to do with science specifically: I'd have just as much luck convincing a creationist that Buddha put the bones there as I would getting them to accept evolution through natural selection. If someone is set in their ways you'll be hard pressed to convince them no matter how you came to whatever it is you're arguing.
I have to prove my identity several times a day.
To whom?
Rocketry. 'Nuff said.
I know you're being facetious, but the low-pressure inert gas is a real boon when things are white hot...
I thought they were supposed to be first against the wall?!
Hear , hear. Finding a few worked examples for a given topic is nigh-on impossible online!
I'd take it a step further and say the whole thing is just bollocks. Person-hours my eye! I doubt even their lowliest code monkey would take 4.8 million hours to code a Pacman clone in Brainfuck, much less a language that's there to do just this sort of thing. Not that I follow these things but isn't this what canvas is for? No disrespect to Google but I played DHTML Lemmings years ago and Pacman seems easy in comparison.
...if I want to make a CRT, I still have to pay them money because it is "technology to display an image" despite me not even using their technology at all...
Say what? Even if the patent clerk was so facepalmingly stupid as to approve such an application, noone would ever be able to find a lawyer just as stupid as to argue a precedent that goes back before the written word; when Man first put dust to cave wall.
No. You aren't distributing the work to anyone else, are you?
Yes, for a while these kind of performances served a purpose as it was very hard for early robotics to produce gentle movements. But we have solved the problem of the robot arm not crushing a human being, the AI element is what is lacking. We have the capacity to have a robot pick up an egg, but no robot so far can do it on its own so far.
Unfortunately, producing synthetic equivalents to bone, muscle and nerve are trivial compared to reproducing in silico the arrangements of the latter that have given rise to vision, spatial acuity and object recognition etc. Humans are the only animals that can play the violin (well) so you're left with the choice of making something dumb that can only play the violin or something roughly as smart as we are that can do many other useful things (perhaps even think?). We're talking about recreating a few hundred millions years of wetware in hardware. Arms and fingers aren't hard when you have a knowledge of mechanics - we've been building them for a few centuries I'd bet, even if they were only toys. We've only been doing anything with AI for a few decades.
At the end of the day, a brain is a lot more complicated than a few big bundles of anonymous muscle cells. Give it time, they'll have your robot butler soon. Real soon.
You'll note the word iTunes never passed my fingertips. I'm arguing that for the majority of people the iPhone is inseperable from the App Store, hence the word on vertical integration earlier. Music is different: Apple don't pick and choose their iTunes catalogue with the same exactitude as app submissions.
Apple can and are putting restrictions on what apps in their store can do. While the store enjoys a significant portion of the market Apple will in effect be exerting a measure of control on the functionality of apps that people have access to. I'm not going to debate the merits of freeing one's phone - frankly the reason I haven't done so is because the thing has broken so many times already I'm keeping the warranty and ditching it for something droidy - because for the forseeable future Apple still decides what additional functionality is available the majority of iPhones in the field.