You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.
Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.
It was not improved to dubnium, for fsck's sake, just like seven is not an improved five, after you add two to it, it's a different number. Addition of protons means getting a different element, that's the essence of the definition of chemical element. The original statement concerned "all elements". And it was wrong -- dubnium is an example of an element that was never created in a star, even though the constituent protons may have a history of having been in a star. Were we just adding neutrons, it would have been a different story (and the same element).
The americium-243 was almost certainly formed inside of a star, so... yes
I do not care much about the americum-243 in here, it's an isotope of a different element. I'm using the example of dubnium as an element whose atoms were never created in a star, but rather on Earth, by fusion from americum-243 and neon-22 -- a counterexample to the proposition "all of the elements on Earth heavier than iron were once inside a star" which I disagreed with. The origin of the element americum is not relevant here.
trapped inside a reflective optical cavity. These atoms communicate with each other by emitting a single photon over an optical fiber. Each atom is a quantum bit — a qubit — and the polarization of the photon
This 'nightmare' assumes [...] we will still have a level of technology that needs computers.
[...] I have serious doubts if that assumption is correct.
I suggest you try placing a wager on it then. I'm sure there'll be plenty of people willing to bet, say, $100 on "we will still need computers in two years". If your doubts are THAT serious, why not capitalize on them?
I was thinking about making a comment that just because you live in your parents' basement doesn't mean other people can't have a normal life, but that would just be playing to the same stupid meme...
one thing - win7's drag-explorer-to-the-edge-and-it-fills-exactly-half-the-screen really saves the time i spend in a fit of OCD dragging edges around so i can move shit from two folders fast.
Here at Slashdot, we take our comments seriously. At the very least, you are expected to keep a couple of dozen brain cells functioning if you intend to post. Proper spelling and grammar are optional, but highly recommended.
Typically these numbers include an extremely high infant mortality rate, without which the difference is significantly smaller.
Of course. But that doesn't mean that 0 year olds dying back then magically stopped being a problem. It merely points to a deficiency of describing a distribution with just its first moment, the mean.
Slashdot Mirror
You can also not answer the question "Did you stop beating your wife?" with Yes/No.
Nonsense, Yes and No are the only valid answers to that question. It may not be an appropriate question but that is orthogonal to what answers are valid.
I disagree. "Mu" ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mu_(negative) ) is a well-known valid answer to this loaded question.
It was not improved to dubnium, for fsck's sake, just like seven is not an improved five, after you add two to it, it's a different number. Addition of protons means getting a different element, that's the essence of the definition of chemical element. The original statement concerned "all elements". And it was wrong -- dubnium is an example of an element that was never created in a star, even though the constituent protons may have a history of having been in a star. Were we just adding neutrons, it would have been a different story (and the same element).
The americium-243 was almost certainly formed inside of a star, so... yes
I do not care much about the americum-243 in here, it's an isotope of a different element. I'm using the example of dubnium as an element whose atoms were never created in a star, but rather on Earth, by fusion from americum-243 and neon-22 -- a counterexample to the proposition "all of the elements on Earth heavier than iron were once inside a star" which I disagreed with. The origin of the element americum is not relevant here.
trapped inside a reflective optical cavity. These atoms communicate with each other by emitting a single photon over an optical fiber. Each atom is a quantum bit — a qubit — and the polarization of the photon
Sounds to me like they're reinventing Flash.
Sorry, but I'm not following your reasoning.
When the boffins created several atoms of dubnium in a lab in Dubna fifty years ago, were these atoms ever inside star?
where are these life-seeding bolides coming from?
Did you know that all of the elements on Earth heavier than iron were once inside a star? It's true - and not our star, either.
Except for the ones we created by nuclear fusion.
When you throw a dice, your first throw may be a six. Why are you trying to do statistics with a single event?
Bert
Not statistics. Educated guesses. With just one throw available to reason from, the educated guess for the next throw is another six.
This 'nightmare' assumes [...] we will still have a level of technology that needs computers. [...] I have serious doubts if that assumption is correct.
I suggest you try placing a wager on it then. I'm sure there'll be plenty of people willing to bet, say, $100 on "we will still need computers in two years". If your doubts are THAT serious, why not capitalize on them?
I think the auxetics people are ahead on the whole thing.
What's with the fast drives and the SSD? Even maximum bitrate Blu-Ray is only 54Mbps. Any hard drive you can buy will be able to keep up with that.
Provided it's the only thing the HDD is doing, and not seeking to death scanning all .exe and .dll files in the background or building an index.
Maybe someone from Poland or more familiar with the topic could expand a little
I'm Polish and can give you this expansion -- the road from "announce" to "happen" in this country is a long road which very often leads nowhere.
Yes, and the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact never existed, right?
Even if your storage passes the test, it could fail the next day.
Similarly with medical checkups. Why bother, when you can get cancer the next day.
Sarcasm aside, screening is not meant to guarantee lack of failure, but rather allow you to sort out clearly defective hardware.
I was thinking about making a comment that just because you live in your parents' basement doesn't mean other people can't have a normal life, but that would just be playing to the same stupid meme...
Good you didn't make that comment.
one thing - win7's drag-explorer-to-the-edge-and-it-fills-exactly-half-the-screen really saves the time i spend in a fit of OCD dragging edges around so i can move shit from two folders fast.
I recommend FAR manager.
I have 2 kids, both of which goto:
Isn't that considered harmful?
This is the scientific method, if contradictory results are observed no conclusion can be made and neither is correct.
Why exactly can't one of them be correct?
Time has an age, it is approx 13 billion years old.
Time and space were created at the moment of the Big Bang. Time didnt exist before that, so therefore it has an age.
Is your assertion still valid in the cyclical universe case, when there was a big crunch preceding the big bang?
not anymore, all they are seeing is the light that was emitted by them billions of years ago
375 years ago, more like.
Here at Slashdot, we take our comments seriously. At the very least, you are expected to keep a couple of dozen brain cells functioning if you intend to post. Proper spelling and grammar are optional, but highly recommended.
You act like you're new here.
not going to make a starship out of water
Why not? I'd welcome them ice-spaceship-travelling overlords. Extra points if it's ice-9.
Didn't get one thing: the article says the star is 13 billions yo, but it's 375 ly from our solar system.
I always have thought that distance meant age. Which other technique there is to tell a star's age?
Distance does mean age. However, the Earth has not been the reference point since the 16th century or so.
Nothing is "ageless".
How old is time itself?
"should offer Xanax to passengers" != "should force passengers to take Xanax".
Typically these numbers include an extremely high infant mortality rate, without which the difference is significantly smaller.
Of course. But that doesn't mean that 0 year olds dying back then magically stopped being a problem. It merely points to a deficiency of describing a distribution with just its first moment, the mean.