200 MB hard drive space is much better than the ~350 MB that Civilization: Call to Power requires.
And yeah, I remember those days. I payed just under $50 (US) for Civilization when it was already a couple years old. It came on three 3.5" floppy disks. I picked up Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon a couple years later, for somewhere between $10 and $20, and it was about the same size (perhaps a bit smaller).
I passed on Myth 2, but I may buy Railroad Tycoon II. The original was pretty good -- not as good as Civilization, but a fun game in its own right.
Um, yeah, or you could just get a proper pop/imap box from somewhere other than your school and learn how to access it from another computer. It's not hard.
Until you find yourself behind a firewall that only lets HTTP through. And you will, sooner or later.
(I haven't "signed up" for a Yahoo mailbox yet, but it's getting to the point where I might have to do that. Those of you who are still in school, or who work for an ISP, etc., might not be aware of how completely fucked-up broken many corporate computing environments are. At this one, for example, I can send mail from Microsoft Outlook to any domain outside the firewall, but I can't send mail to a Unix machine inside the firewall. And I can't run a POP-3 or IMAP client inside the firewall to connect to a server outside the firewall, because the firewall only lets HTTP (and FTP, sometimes) through. And the HTTP is censored -- some domains are blocked....)
OK, first off, I know that you're really referring to the programs which were running on the host to which those terminals were attached, not to the terminals themselves.
With that out of the way, I'd like to say that in my opinion, a good ASCII terminal program can be simpler and more efficient than an equivalent GUI program.
Have you ever tried to tell a clueless end user how to do something in Windows? It's tremendously complex, and pretty much impossible if you're on the other end of a voice-only phone connection. There are just so many variables in the GUI world, and so many points of failure or confusion, that it's insanity.
Now click on File. It's in the upper-left hand corner. No, not the corner of the screen -- the corner of the window. No, not the inner window -- the outer window. Now click on Printer Setup. OK, now select your printer from the list. No, it's at the top of the window. No, click on the little arrow....
On the other hand, with an ASCII terminal, assuming the software is any good, things become extremely easy. You can give clear, concise directions to the user; and users can actually write down procedure documents to tell each other how to do things.
Press P. Now press the down arrow until your printer appears in the window. Now press the Enter key.
And then there's that hideous Windows 95 Start button interface....
The spirit of Free software says that if you want to build a better mousetrap, shut the fuck up and build it.
Sure. Then when the patent holder comes beating upon your door and oh-so-politely informs you that your mousetrap has violated such-and-such patents, you can just hand over your firstborn son.
You've missed the point with patents. The reason everyone is so upset with Unisys and other software patent holders is that we can't build our mousetraps any more.
What a patent does is not very well understood by the average person, even the average technical person. Unlike a copyright (which covers the expression of an idea) a patent gives the holder total and unlimited control over an idea. If you use that idea to write a program, you're violating the patent. Even if you come up with the idea independently you're violating the patent.
Any program that creates an LZW-compressed GIF file is in violation of the Unisys patent. Unless it's licensed. That means that there's no way you can create GIF files with free software without violating the patent, at least if Roblimo's interpretation of this Unisys PR guy is correct. (1: Free software must be free for commercial use. 2: Unisys will not give free licenses for LZW "technology" for commercial use. Ergo 3: Free software cannot use LZW "technology", and 4: Free software cannot produce LZW-compressed GIF images. QED.)
So, while I'm not one of the ones who blasted Unisys in e-mail, I do understand and support the position (albeit not the tactics) of those who did the blasting. There is a reason for it, which you'd do well to research. I suggest The League for Programming Freedom as a starting point.
The cops where I live are fairly nice anyway. It is rare to see someone get pulled over going 10 mph over the posted limit.
Unjust laws cannot be tolerated. Just because they're not enforced doesn't mean that they should be left intact! Years later, someone may actually be prosecuted (or persecuted, depending on your point of view) under an unjust law that's been on the books for a very long time.
The most egregious offenders in this category are laws governing sexual conduct between consenting adults. In many states, oral sex is illegal. In many other, anal sex is illegal. The list goes on and on and on....
I also feel that many of the speed limit laws are unjust. The speed limits are set too low and don't take into account important factors such as time of day, density of traffic, etc. While 25 MPH may be a reasonable upper bound on speed on a given street at 11:00 AM, when all of the businesses are open, it may be completely unrealistic at, say, 7:00 AM when there are no local businesses open and one is simply driving along this numbered state route in order to get to the highway to get to work in another city. (I don't drive along that road any more. Now I go a different way, even though it's longer.)
The police use these low speed limits in order to maintain their power over individuals. Everyone who drives speeds -- the speed limits are so low that you can't not speed! That makes everyone who drives a criminal. Now that everyone is a criminal, the police can selectively choose which "criminals" (read: helpless citizens) they will terrorize today. And you've heard about "driving while black", I hope. What will we have next -- "driving while atheist"? "driving while carrying a gun"? "driving while being a nerd"? "driving while smoking"? You can see how our rights are eroded, slowly but viciously, over time.
Cryptography has the same power. The US government is trying is damnedest to make crypto illegal. That way, you will have to be a criminal in order to have any privacy in your communications. In the near future, the majority of communications channels will be encrypted (I can't see cleartext transmissions continuing as the standard for more than 10-20 years from now -- there's just too much that can go wrong, especially when considering e-commerce), and so once again (if the USA succeeds in outlawing encryption) everyone will be a criminal and thus subject to the terrorism of the government.
If anyone can think of any way to stop this nightmare, please let me know. I write letters to Congress, etc., but I don't think it will be enough.
These aren't some crazy hacker computer criminals that are getting free access to your computer, it's the government.
I fear the government more than I fear "crazy hacker computer criminals".
Just imagine how it would feel to bust some drug dealers and get their computer hardware and browse through their files and see that all the files are encrypted.
Well, since the drug dealer has not done anything wrong I don't see the problem. In this hypothetical situation, I'd feel like the good guys won a battle -- the evil nasty feds have been stopped by the underdog hero.
(And no, I'm not a drug dealer or even an "illegal" drug user. Hell, I don't even smoke nicotine or drink alcohol. But the war on drugs and the war on privacy are just two of the abuses of power that the US government has taken upon itself. These things have to stop.)
light speed is actualy..... 300,000 feet per second per second.... i dont' know where ya'll are getting these other #'s....
Speed is measured in units of distance/time. "Distance over time" -- not "distance over time over time". Your figure of 3x10^5 ft/s^2 would be an acceleration, not a speed.
The speed of light, to 3 significant figures, is 3.00x10^8 m/s. You can convert that to whatever units you like.
About the whole acceleration thing, it's a vague memory here, but apparently the object that undergoes acceleration experiences the time dialation.
You're thinking of the twin paradox, most likely. Here it is, in one phrasing:
Two identical twins are born on earth. One of them is placed on a spaceship and sent to a faraway planet, and then returns. During the journey, the spaceship experiences relativistic speeds.
Now, from the reference frame of earth, the twin on the spaceship is traveling at relativistic speeds. Therefore, according to Lorentz's time dilation equation, time passes more slowly for the twin on the spaceship, and therefore when the twins are reunited, the one who traveled will be younger.
But from the reference frame of the twin on the spaceship, the one on the earth is traveling at relativistic speed. (The earth is traveling away from the spaceship at near-light speed, from the point of view of an observer on the spaceship.) So, according to Lorentz, the twin on earth should be experiencing time dilation, and when the twins are reunited, the twin who stayed home should be younger.
The solution to the paradox is, as you observed, based on the fact that one of the twins underwent acceleration, whereas the other did not. But I'm dredging this up out of my memory from my undergraduate physics courses, which took place a few years ago -- so I can't cite the full details.
Nothing can ever suck without some stange act or quantum physics because "sucking" can only occur in a complete vaccume.
What in the world does this mean??
A change in the velocity of a particle occurs when that particle is acted upon by an outside force. (See Newton's laws of motion.) There is no such force as "sucking" -- there are only gravity, electro-magnetism, the "weak" nuclear force, and the "strong" nuclear force.
Of course, when you've got a whole lot of particles clumped together, then they can also bump each other around.
Now, consider a vacumm. A vacuum is the absence of particles, right? So far so good... now consider a bunch of particles sitting next to a vacuum (e.g., the atmosphere in a laboratory when an evacuated container is cracked).
If the laboratory were at a temperature of absolute zero, nothing would happen. Vacuum doesn't exert any force upon objects -- it's nothing!
But in the real world, the lab won't be at 0 Kelvin -- it will be considerably warmer. This means that the particles composing the atmosphere and other bits of the laboratory will all have non-zero kinetic energy -- the gaseous molecules will be bouncing around randomly.
Under normal (equilibrium) conditions, the bouncing particles will cancel each other out. There are so many of them, spread over such a huge volume of space, that for all practical purposes, every "solid" object in the lab will feel an equal pressure (number of collisions per second per unit area, times force of collisions).
But when a region of vacuum is "added" to the volume of the laboratory, suddenly we've introduced a new factor. Consider a single gas molecule right next to the vacuum. It will be moving in some random direction, at some mostly-random speed. There's a nonzero probability that its velocity vector will take it into the vacuum. When that happens, it will keep on trucking, right on into the vacuum, since there's nothing there to stop it (until it hits the edge of the container or whatever). Meanwhile, a lot of other molecules near the vacuum won't be traveling in the right directions -- they'll continue to bounce off each other as they were before.
But now, quickly, more and more particles will find themselves entering the former vacuum. This is not due to some mysterious "sucking" -- it's simply because the particles are bouncing around randomly, and there are billions and billions of them, so a whole lot of them are statistically bound to enter the former vacuum.
Now consider a "solid" object in the lab near the former vacuum -- a speck of dust, for instance. Before the vacuum was cracked, the dust was just sort of floating in the air -- it was following a course dictated by the chaos of Brownian motion, as air molecules bumped into it. But what happens when the vacuum is cracked? Suddenly, a significant number of the air molecules on one side of the dust -- i.e., those which were between the dust and the vacuum -- are no longer bumping into the dust. Instead, they're going into the vacuum. But the molecules on the other side of the dust are still bumping into the dust just like before. This means that, compared to the pre-vacuum-cracked equilibrium, the dust will now feel a "force" acting to push it toward the vacuum.
To a human observer in the laboratory, it may appear that the dust is being "sucked in" by the vacuum. But in reality what's happening is that it's being "pushed" into the vacuum by the air molecules on one side of it, by virtue of the fact that the air molecules on the other side of it (which used to keep it relatively still) have gone away.
Now, consider the same scenario with only a partially evacuated jar. The air pressure (number of collisions etc.) inside the jar is less than the air pressure outside the jar. Yet when the jar is cracked open, the same situation occurs -- air molecules go into the jar, and nearby objects are pushed toward the jar, etc. It's just less of a push than when the jar was totally evacuated. So you statement that ""sucking" can only occur in a complete vacuume [sic]" is clearly false.
And this really has nothing at all to do with quantum mechanics. We're considering such large numbers of molecules that the strange world of quantum mechanics doesn't enter into the equations.
I suggest that you do some more reading in physics. Your high school teachers may not be feeding you a complete and accurate picture. (I had some very good high school teachers, and some very bad ones. Your mileage may vary.)
If you refuse to buy such software, then you have just protected yourself from UCITA
But only at home. I'll still have to face crummy licenses here at idiot central (err, work). Those of us who aren't self-employed are still at the mercy of fools.
I wrote a 20 line JAVA console app that makes continuous connections to port 80 of a vitim machine
What you've constructed is the simplest type of denial of service (DoS) attack. While it may "hurt" them, it won't help you in any way. Specifically, it won't bring you any closer to achieving one of the contest goals (to change content on their site, or retrieve information you "shouldn't have").
he should lose all rights associated with maturity and intelligence such as voting, drinking, etc.
Hey, cool! So, like, those of us with above-average IQs get extra votes? All right! How do I go about registering to get my extra votes?
Old people get more votes, too? Excellent! I'm 29 now, and I get 1 vote. So, when I'm 58, I should get two votes! This rocks!
You're absolutely wrong. The right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens 18 years of age or older. It's in the Constitution (the age limit having been lowered to 18 in a recent amendment). The right to drink alcohol is also guaranteed (the US government tried prohibition for a while, discovered that it led to an incredible increase in crime, and then changed back). The drinking age is 21 in most states because they've been blackmailed by federal money -- before that, many states (including Ohio, where I live) had lower drinking ages (18 in Ohio's case).
There are no rights which are granted based on maturity, although you do gain some rights with age. Additionally, there are absolutely no rights awarded based on intelligence.
(I'm obviously discussing only the USA. Other countries may or may not have such rights -- I wouldn't know.)
You drink the beer the commercial told you to drink, what? you're not suddenly surrounded by bikini models?
Nothing in the commercial ever makes the claim that women will appear for you. The commercial simply shows women appearing. It's a story, not a promise.
You buy that new SUV and try to drive it to the summit of your nearest snow capped mountain, you don't make it?
This one's admittedly a little tricker. There are several commercials of this type. One that I recall in particular has the guys on the mountain top asking each other "How are we gonna get back down?" I thought that was clever. Others have disclaimers. Still others simply show a vehicle on a mountain top, without showing it having been driven at all. I'd have to watch the whole commercial in question and then get back to you with my opinion. For the record, I don't recall ever seeing any that promised you that you could drive your SUV in that fashion. They may make you think you can do it, but unless they actually say so, they haven't crossed the line into false advertising.
You use that shampoo, but don't achieve orgasm in the shower.
You're way off base with this one. The commercial promises you an "organic" experience. That's "organic", not "orgasmic". Yes, there's a pun here -- the words are similar, and this is certainly not accidental. Also note that there's nothing in the commercial which states that the woman in question is having an orgasm. She's merely expressing pleasure. Finally, note that there's nothing which promises that the shampoo will cause you to have an orgasm. Maybe the woman in the commercial was having an orgasm, and maybe she wasn't -- but again, it's just a story, not a claim.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, it's about honesty. You can deceive with illusion; you can imply; you can tempt; you can entice; you can be as creative, clever and funny as you want. But you cannot lie with impunity.
And to all of you idiots crying for Pepsi's head for "false advertising," buy a clue already.It amazes me how many people think they should get things for nothing...
You've missed the point. Nobody's saying that you should be able to get something for nothing.
What we're saying is that advertisers must stop lying. It's really that simple. I'd rather wade through three layers of disclaimers than have to guess which of the outrageous claims about a product are in fact lies.
"Act now and we'll throw in a free phone!"
"Act now and we'll throw in a free car!"
"Act now and we'll throw in a free house!"
We have laws for a good reason, you know. People and corporations have to take responsibility for their actions. We've let them get away with way too much shit already. This isn't about getting "things for nothing". It's about taking a stand for what's right.
Howcome americans insist on putting disclaimers on everything?
Not on everything. Only on the things that need them. You see, we have this naughty personal habit called honesty. It seems a senseless anachronism in today's fast-paced world, but we kinda like it.
Do you people really think it's reasonable that companies should people who hurt themselves because the act stupid? McDonalds and the coffee woman comes to mind!
That's a totally different case from the one this article discusses. One of them involves labeling laws for dangerous substances. The other involves truth in advertising. They have nothing in common!
Sure! Just like Microsoft can advertise that their software belongs in the data center!
Of course Microsoft software belongs in the data center. Put it on the machine that has all of the false copies of your data, as a tempting target. Would-be crackers may take all the false data they want from the Microsoft-possessed machine, while the real data is safely stored on an actual server.
you couldn't have sued over the "Joe Isuzu" ads [...] They're allowed to exaggerate, stretch things, and so forth
Nonsense. The Joe Isuzu ads had disclaimers on them. Whenever Joe said something false, words appeared at the bottom of the screen saying "He's lying." and similar statements.
As for the bikini-clad babe ads -- there's no explicit claim of a correlation between use of the product and the attention from said babes. Just showing a guy picking up a beer and having women materialize around him is not the same as saying that picking up the beer caused the women to appear. If the beer company were to say in their ad that drinking our beer will make you more attractive to members of the opposite sex -- then you'd have a case.
I don't remember the details of the Pepsi commercial, but if there truly was no disclaimer, then I fully agree with the plaintiff in this case. The man has caught Pepsi with its collective pants down and deserves his reward.
This Cyber Yugoslovia may sound intriguing on paper (or on the CRT). It may even have some value as a social experiment. But what about the real war that's being waged right now between the <insert country here> government and the people? What of freedom?
Compare this Cyber Yuga to A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. When the latter was written, it seemed whimsical. But as time goes on, and the US and other governments wander farther and farther from the ideals of freedom and law, that Declaration starts looking a whole lot more important, doesn't it?
I see this Cyber Yuga as a simple perpetuation of an outmoded concept. As physical constraints evaporate before technology, these people would continue their exclusivist practices in a new world. They'd make a "country" where they can be "citizens". They'd surrender their power to a government. And in exchange for what?
I'm much more concerned with the struggle right here in the USA (for those of you not in the USA, you may already have faced this struggle, or may be facing it now; if not, then you most assuredly will face it soon). The Internet gives the people real power for the first time. We have the ability to communicate with each other openly, or not to. We have the ability to conduct transactions, or not to. We can say what we wish, or remain silent. And most important, we have access to information which has formerly been out of our reach.
But our governments are trying to deny us this power. When we gain power, they lose power -- and they don't like that at all. They try to filter us, censor us, and legislate us. They try to categorize information -- to divide it into "bad" information and "worse" information. (The only "good" information is their propaganda.) They try to tell us what we can say, and hear. They try to tell us what we can learn. They try to keep us ignorant and fearful.
So, while this Cyber Yuga may be good for a few laughs, the real battle will be fought over a much bigger and more important battleground: we the people.
spellchecks built into the/. server will be used so heavily the server probably wouldnt run at all.
I doubt it. Methinks said hypothetical spell checker would be run extremely infrequently (judging from the quality of some posts, here and on Usenet).
To hell with that -- I'm still wondering why in the name of all that's binary I can't run an external editor to fill in a textarea! Just fopen() a temporary file, fwrite() the textarea's current contents, fork() a process which edits the file, then fread() the data and overwrite whatever was in the textarea. Add appropriate rewinding and flushing, and you're set. The only trick is making sure you fork() the right process, and that's a simple matter of defining, say, a MOZILLA_EDITOR environment variable and letting us put what we want there (say, "rxvt -e vim" or xemacs).
If Mozilla ever reaches maturity and doesn't have this, I may even try to hack it in myself. But I lack the GUI development skills to hack a pre-alpha web browser of this complexity.
Slashdot Mirror
200 MB hard drive space is much better than the ~350 MB that Civilization: Call to Power requires.
And yeah, I remember those days. I payed just under $50 (US) for Civilization when it was already a couple years old. It came on three 3.5" floppy disks. I picked up Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon a couple years later, for somewhere between $10 and $20, and it was about the same size (perhaps a bit smaller).
I passed on Myth 2, but I may buy Railroad Tycoon II. The original was pretty good -- not as good as Civilization, but a fun game in its own right.
Um, yeah, or you could just get a proper pop/imap box from somewhere other than your school and learn how to access it from another computer. It's not hard.
Until you find yourself behind a firewall that only lets HTTP through. And you will, sooner or later.
(I haven't "signed up" for a Yahoo mailbox yet, but it's getting to the point where I might have to do that. Those of you who are still in school, or who work for an ISP, etc., might not be aware of how completely fucked-up broken many corporate computing environments are. At this one, for example, I can send mail from Microsoft Outlook to any domain outside the firewall, but I can't send mail to a Unix machine inside the firewall. And I can't run a POP-3 or IMAP client inside the firewall to connect to a server outside the firewall, because the firewall only lets HTTP (and FTP, sometimes) through. And the HTTP is censored -- some domains are blocked....)
Good points, but I have one criticism:
20-year old dumb terminals that were hard to use.
OK, first off, I know that you're really referring to the programs which were running on the host to which those terminals were attached, not to the terminals themselves.
With that out of the way, I'd like to say that in my opinion, a good ASCII terminal program can be simpler and more efficient than an equivalent GUI program.
Have you ever tried to tell a clueless end user how to do something in Windows? It's tremendously complex, and pretty much impossible if you're on the other end of a voice-only phone connection. There are just so many variables in the GUI world, and so many points of failure or confusion, that it's insanity.
On the other hand, with an ASCII terminal, assuming the software is any good, things become extremely easy. You can give clear, concise directions to the user; and users can actually write down procedure documents to tell each other how to do things.
And then there's that hideous Windows 95 Start button interface....
it took the combined resources of the Internet something like 9 months to crack one simple text blurb with 32-bit encryption.
I believe you're referring to a 56-bit RC5 key. You can check the distributed.net archives to find the details.
The spirit of Free software says that if you want to build a better mousetrap, shut the fuck up and build it.
Sure. Then when the patent holder comes beating upon your door and oh-so-politely informs you that your mousetrap has violated such-and-such patents, you can just hand over your firstborn son.
You've missed the point with patents. The reason everyone is so upset with Unisys and other software patent holders is that we can't build our mousetraps any more.
What a patent does is not very well understood by the average person, even the average technical person. Unlike a copyright (which covers the expression of an idea) a patent gives the holder total and unlimited control over an idea. If you use that idea to write a program, you're violating the patent. Even if you come up with the idea independently you're violating the patent.
Any program that creates an LZW-compressed GIF file is in violation of the Unisys patent. Unless it's licensed. That means that there's no way you can create GIF files with free software without violating the patent, at least if Roblimo's interpretation of this Unisys PR guy is correct. (1: Free software must be free for commercial use. 2: Unisys will not give free licenses for LZW "technology" for commercial use. Ergo 3: Free software cannot use LZW "technology", and 4: Free software cannot produce LZW-compressed GIF images. QED.)
So, while I'm not one of the ones who blasted Unisys in e-mail, I do understand and support the position (albeit not the tactics) of those who did the blasting. There is a reason for it, which you'd do well to research. I suggest The League for Programming Freedom as a starting point.
The cops where I live are fairly nice anyway. It is rare to see someone get pulled over going 10 mph over the posted limit.
Unjust laws cannot be tolerated. Just because they're not enforced doesn't mean that they should be left intact! Years later, someone may actually be prosecuted (or persecuted, depending on your point of view) under an unjust law that's been on the books for a very long time.
The most egregious offenders in this category are laws governing sexual conduct between consenting adults. In many states, oral sex is illegal. In many other, anal sex is illegal. The list goes on and on and on....
I also feel that many of the speed limit laws are unjust. The speed limits are set too low and don't take into account important factors such as time of day, density of traffic, etc. While 25 MPH may be a reasonable upper bound on speed on a given street at 11:00 AM, when all of the businesses are open, it may be completely unrealistic at, say, 7:00 AM when there are no local businesses open and one is simply driving along this numbered state route in order to get to the highway to get to work in another city. (I don't drive along that road any more. Now I go a different way, even though it's longer.)
The police use these low speed limits in order to maintain their power over individuals. Everyone who drives speeds -- the speed limits are so low that you can't not speed! That makes everyone who drives a criminal. Now that everyone is a criminal, the police can selectively choose which "criminals" (read: helpless citizens) they will terrorize today. And you've heard about "driving while black", I hope. What will we have next -- "driving while atheist"? "driving while carrying a gun"? "driving while being a nerd"? "driving while smoking"? You can see how our rights are eroded, slowly but viciously, over time.
Cryptography has the same power. The US government is trying is damnedest to make crypto illegal. That way, you will have to be a criminal in order to have any privacy in your communications. In the near future, the majority of communications channels will be encrypted (I can't see cleartext transmissions continuing as the standard for more than 10-20 years from now -- there's just too much that can go wrong, especially when considering e-commerce), and so once again (if the USA succeeds in outlawing encryption) everyone will be a criminal and thus subject to the terrorism of the government.
If anyone can think of any way to stop this nightmare, please let me know. I write letters to Congress, etc., but I don't think it will be enough.
These aren't some crazy hacker computer criminals that are getting free access to your computer, it's the government.
I fear the government more than I fear "crazy hacker computer criminals".
Just imagine how it would feel to bust some drug dealers and get their computer hardware and browse through their files and see that all the files are encrypted.
Well, since the drug dealer has not done anything wrong I don't see the problem. In this hypothetical situation, I'd feel like the good guys won a battle -- the evil nasty feds have been stopped by the underdog hero.
Stop the drug war!
(And no, I'm not a drug dealer or even an "illegal" drug user. Hell, I don't even smoke nicotine or drink alcohol. But the war on drugs and the war on privacy are just two of the abuses of power that the US government has taken upon itself. These things have to stop.)
light speed is actualy..... 300,000 feet per second per second.... i dont' know where ya'll are getting these other #'s....
Speed is measured in units of distance/time. "Distance over time" -- not "distance over time over time". Your figure of 3x10^5 ft/s^2 would be an acceleration, not a speed.
The speed of light, to 3 significant figures, is 3.00x10^8 m/s. You can convert that to whatever units you like.
About the whole acceleration thing, it's a vague memory here, but apparently the object that undergoes acceleration experiences the time dialation.
You're thinking of the twin paradox, most likely. Here it is, in one phrasing:
The solution to the paradox is, as you observed, based on the fact that one of the twins underwent acceleration, whereas the other did not. But I'm dredging this up out of my memory from my undergraduate physics courses, which took place a few years ago -- so I can't cite the full details.
Nothing can ever suck without some stange act or quantum physics because "sucking" can only occur in a complete vaccume.
What in the world does this mean??
A change in the velocity of a particle occurs when that particle is acted upon by an outside force. (See Newton's laws of motion.) There is no such force as "sucking" -- there are only gravity, electro-magnetism, the "weak" nuclear force, and the "strong" nuclear force.
Of course, when you've got a whole lot of particles clumped together, then they can also bump each other around.
Now, consider a vacumm. A vacuum is the absence of particles, right? So far so good... now consider a bunch of particles sitting next to a vacuum (e.g., the atmosphere in a laboratory when an evacuated container is cracked).
If the laboratory were at a temperature of absolute zero, nothing would happen. Vacuum doesn't exert any force upon objects -- it's nothing!
But in the real world, the lab won't be at 0 Kelvin -- it will be considerably warmer. This means that the particles composing the atmosphere and other bits of the laboratory will all have non-zero kinetic energy -- the gaseous molecules will be bouncing around randomly.
Under normal (equilibrium) conditions, the bouncing particles will cancel each other out. There are so many of them, spread over such a huge volume of space, that for all practical purposes, every "solid" object in the lab will feel an equal pressure (number of collisions per second per unit area, times force of collisions).
But when a region of vacuum is "added" to the volume of the laboratory, suddenly we've introduced a new factor. Consider a single gas molecule right next to the vacuum. It will be moving in some random direction, at some mostly-random speed. There's a nonzero probability that its velocity vector will take it into the vacuum. When that happens, it will keep on trucking, right on into the vacuum, since there's nothing there to stop it (until it hits the edge of the container or whatever). Meanwhile, a lot of other molecules near the vacuum won't be traveling in the right directions -- they'll continue to bounce off each other as they were before.
But now, quickly, more and more particles will find themselves entering the former vacuum. This is not due to some mysterious "sucking" -- it's simply because the particles are bouncing around randomly, and there are billions and billions of them, so a whole lot of them are statistically bound to enter the former vacuum.
Now consider a "solid" object in the lab near the former vacuum -- a speck of dust, for instance. Before the vacuum was cracked, the dust was just sort of floating in the air -- it was following a course dictated by the chaos of Brownian motion, as air molecules bumped into it. But what happens when the vacuum is cracked? Suddenly, a significant number of the air molecules on one side of the dust -- i.e., those which were between the dust and the vacuum -- are no longer bumping into the dust. Instead, they're going into the vacuum. But the molecules on the other side of the dust are still bumping into the dust just like before. This means that, compared to the pre-vacuum-cracked equilibrium, the dust will now feel a "force" acting to push it toward the vacuum.
To a human observer in the laboratory, it may appear that the dust is being "sucked in" by the vacuum. But in reality what's happening is that it's being "pushed" into the vacuum by the air molecules on one side of it, by virtue of the fact that the air molecules on the other side of it (which used to keep it relatively still) have gone away.
Now, consider the same scenario with only a partially evacuated jar. The air pressure (number of collisions etc.) inside the jar is less than the air pressure outside the jar. Yet when the jar is cracked open, the same situation occurs -- air molecules go into the jar, and nearby objects are pushed toward the jar, etc. It's just less of a push than when the jar was totally evacuated. So you statement that ""sucking" can only occur in a complete vacuume [sic]" is clearly false.
And this really has nothing at all to do with quantum mechanics. We're considering such large numbers of molecules that the strange world of quantum mechanics doesn't enter into the equations.
I suggest that you do some more reading in physics. Your high school teachers may not be feeding you a complete and accurate picture. (I had some very good high school teachers, and some very bad ones. Your mileage may vary.)
Cracking the 56bit DES challenge took a few days last time
Less than 24 hours, actually. See the distributed.net press release.
If you refuse to buy such software, then you have just protected yourself from UCITA
But only at home. I'll still have to face crummy licenses here at idiot central (err, work). Those of us who aren't self-employed are still at the mercy of fools.
Nice parody. But you forgot to include a link to "bob" in the column on the far left.
:-) )
(The nanites bit was the best.
This will never work. The USA couldn't even successfully adopt the metric system! (Carter tried in the 70s. It failed miserably.)
I wrote a 20 line JAVA console app that makes continuous connections to port 80 of a vitim machine
What you've constructed is the simplest type of denial of service (DoS) attack. While it may "hurt" them, it won't help you in any way. Specifically, it won't bring you any closer to achieving one of the contest goals (to change content on their site, or retrieve information you "shouldn't have").
I'm not a cracker.
Indeed. (But then, I'm not either....)
To force reload even of cached pages and cached inline images in Netscape Navigator/Communicator, use Shift-Reload, or View|Reload.
Netscape's Reload button is crippled by design. Also see this page for more details.
he should lose all rights associated with maturity and intelligence such as voting, drinking, etc.
Hey, cool! So, like, those of us with above-average IQs get extra votes? All right! How do I go about registering to get my extra votes?
Old people get more votes, too? Excellent! I'm 29 now, and I get 1 vote. So, when I'm 58, I should get two votes! This rocks!
You're absolutely wrong. The right to vote is guaranteed to all citizens 18 years of age or older. It's in the Constitution (the age limit having been lowered to 18 in a recent amendment). The right to drink alcohol is also guaranteed (the US government tried prohibition for a while, discovered that it led to an incredible increase in crime, and then changed back). The drinking age is 21 in most states because they've been blackmailed by federal money -- before that, many states (including Ohio, where I live) had lower drinking ages (18 in Ohio's case).
There are no rights which are granted based on maturity, although you do gain some rights with age. Additionally, there are absolutely no rights awarded based on intelligence.
(I'm obviously discussing only the USA. Other countries may or may not have such rights -- I wouldn't know.)
he's obviously just looking for a quick buck
I fail to see the problem.
You drink the beer the commercial told you to drink, what? you're not suddenly surrounded by bikini models?
Nothing in the commercial ever makes the claim that women will appear for you. The commercial simply shows women appearing. It's a story, not a promise.
You buy that new SUV and try to drive it to the summit of your nearest snow capped mountain, you don't make it?
This one's admittedly a little tricker. There are several commercials of this type. One that I recall in particular has the guys on the mountain top asking each other "How are we gonna get back down?" I thought that was clever. Others have disclaimers. Still others simply show a vehicle on a mountain top, without showing it having been driven at all. I'd have to watch the whole commercial in question and then get back to you with my opinion. For the record, I don't recall ever seeing any that promised you that you could drive your SUV in that fashion. They may make you think you can do it, but unless they actually say so, they haven't crossed the line into false advertising.
You use that shampoo, but don't achieve orgasm in the shower.
You're way off base with this one. The commercial promises you an "organic" experience. That's "organic", not "orgasmic". Yes, there's a pun here -- the words are similar, and this is certainly not accidental. Also note that there's nothing in the commercial which states that the woman in question is having an orgasm. She's merely expressing pleasure. Finally, note that there's nothing which promises that the shampoo will cause you to have an orgasm. Maybe the woman in the commercial was having an orgasm, and maybe she wasn't -- but again, it's just a story, not a claim.
At the risk of sounding repetitive, it's about honesty. You can deceive with illusion; you can imply; you can tempt; you can entice; you can be as creative, clever and funny as you want. But you cannot lie with impunity.
And to all of you idiots crying for Pepsi's head for "false advertising," buy a clue already.It amazes me how many people think they should get things for nothing...
You've missed the point. Nobody's saying that you should be able to get something for nothing.
What we're saying is that advertisers must stop lying. It's really that simple. I'd rather wade through three layers of disclaimers than have to guess which of the outrageous claims about a product are in fact lies.
"Act now and we'll throw in a free phone!"
"Act now and we'll throw in a free car!"
"Act now and we'll throw in a free house!"
We have laws for a good reason, you know. People and corporations have to take responsibility for their actions. We've let them get away with way too much shit already. This isn't about getting "things for nothing". It's about taking a stand for what's right.
Howcome americans insist on putting disclaimers on everything?
Not on everything. Only on the things that need them. You see, we have this naughty personal habit called honesty. It seems a senseless anachronism in today's fast-paced world, but we kinda like it.
Do you people really think it's reasonable that companies should people who hurt themselves because the act stupid? McDonalds and the coffee woman comes to mind!
That's a totally different case from the one this article discusses. One of them involves labeling laws for dangerous substances. The other involves truth in advertising. They have nothing in common!
HTH. HAND.
Sure! Just like Microsoft can advertise that their software belongs in the data center!
Of course Microsoft software belongs in the data center. Put it on the machine that has all of the false copies of your data, as a tempting target. Would-be crackers may take all the false data they want from the Microsoft-possessed machine, while the real data is safely stored on an actual server.
you couldn't have sued over the "Joe Isuzu" ads [...] They're allowed to exaggerate, stretch things, and so forth
Nonsense. The Joe Isuzu ads had disclaimers on them. Whenever Joe said something false, words appeared at the bottom of the screen saying "He's lying." and similar statements.
As for the bikini-clad babe ads -- there's no explicit claim of a correlation between use of the product and the attention from said babes. Just showing a guy picking up a beer and having women materialize around him is not the same as saying that picking up the beer caused the women to appear. If the beer company were to say in their ad that drinking our beer will make you more attractive to members of the opposite sex -- then you'd have a case.
I don't remember the details of the Pepsi commercial, but if there truly was no disclaimer, then I fully agree with the plaintiff in this case. The man has caught Pepsi with its collective pants down and deserves his reward.
This Cyber Yugoslovia may sound intriguing on paper (or on the CRT). It may even have some value as a social experiment. But what about the real war that's being waged right now between the <insert country here> government and the people? What of freedom?
Compare this Cyber Yuga to A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. When the latter was written, it seemed whimsical. But as time goes on, and the US and other governments wander farther and farther from the ideals of freedom and law, that Declaration starts looking a whole lot more important, doesn't it?
I see this Cyber Yuga as a simple perpetuation of an outmoded concept. As physical constraints evaporate before technology, these people would continue their exclusivist practices in a new world. They'd make a "country" where they can be "citizens". They'd surrender their power to a government. And in exchange for what?
I'm much more concerned with the struggle right here in the USA (for those of you not in the USA, you may already have faced this struggle, or may be facing it now; if not, then you most assuredly will face it soon). The Internet gives the people real power for the first time. We have the ability to communicate with each other openly, or not to. We have the ability to conduct transactions, or not to. We can say what we wish, or remain silent. And most important, we have access to information which has formerly been out of our reach.
But our governments are trying to deny us this power. When we gain power, they lose power -- and they don't like that at all. They try to filter us, censor us, and legislate us. They try to categorize information -- to divide it into "bad" information and "worse" information. (The only "good" information is their propaganda.) They try to tell us what we can say, and hear. They try to tell us what we can learn. They try to keep us ignorant and fearful.
So, while this Cyber Yuga may be good for a few laughs, the real battle will be fought over a much bigger and more important battleground: we the people.
Hmm, interesting. I thought "Running with Scissors" was his best album yet.
spellchecks built into the /. server will be used so heavily the server probably wouldnt run at all.
I doubt it. Methinks said hypothetical spell checker would be run extremely infrequently (judging from the quality of some posts, here and on Usenet).
To hell with that -- I'm still wondering why in the name of all that's binary I can't run an external editor to fill in a textarea! Just fopen() a temporary file, fwrite() the textarea's current contents, fork() a process which edits the file, then fread() the data and overwrite whatever was in the textarea. Add appropriate rewinding and flushing, and you're set. The only trick is making sure you fork() the right process, and that's a simple matter of defining, say, a MOZILLA_EDITOR environment variable and letting us put what we want there (say, "rxvt -e vim" or xemacs).
If Mozilla ever reaches maturity and doesn't have this, I may even try to hack it in myself. But I lack the GUI development skills to hack a pre-alpha web browser of this complexity.