I sincerely doubt the problem is that the boss actually thinks the programmers are being distracted. I suspect someone else that has a job where they can't wear headphones and listen to music got jealous because "it's not FAIR. They get to wear headphones and I don't."
Or, maybe, someone was listening to music on their headphones loudly enough that they didn't hear the BOSS walking up to them, and the boss saw that as a sign of a distraction, when the headsets were doing their job perfectly - trying to prevent a distraction. Bosses, however, rarely see themselves as a distraction.
It's also possible they had one or two people who really couldn't handle the distraction of music, and decided that if one or two people couldn't handle it, obviously no one else on the planet could either.
It's hard to say what REALLY went into the decision. I worked for a company once that put their programmers on display - we had to wear suits and ties and leather shoes and were in a glass-sided area where the execs could look down through the one-way glassed executive balcony and see their happy programmers hard at work. Never mind it was a production shop and we had to change from suits and leather shoes to jeans and steel-toed boots to go out on the production floor (which happened several times a day). Wearing headphones in that environment, according to the Mahogany crowd, "looked unprofessional" and was therefore forbidden. But then so was not being at your desk while you were on the floor solving a production problem.
If people weren't so stupid (the world would be better off...) they would realize that most 99 year contracts you have to enter into are a way worse deal than the $500 up front for a phone- I guess it goes to many American's credit isn't real money mentality
My wife's account with Verizon recently reached the 2-year contract limit, and she decided to jump ship to AT&T. Economically, it made more sense to accept the subsidy on the handset than purchase an unlocked handset.
She wanted a Blackberry Pearl. We priced out an unlocked one at about $250, AT&T offered it at $50 with all the subsidies. I asked about a discount for buying an unlocked phone, and was told that there was no price difference per-month for having an unlocked "bring your own" phone.
So, in return for a 2-year commitment to AT&T, we got $200 off the purchase price of the phone. If my wife decides to cancel with AT&T, we'll end up paying the $200 back and have a phone that is locked to AT&T, which is unfortunate, but that's the risk you take for saving money buying the handset. At the end of two years, if she sticks with AT&T, we'll have saved $200 on her phone and she can keep using it on AT&T as long as she wants, or we can get it unlocked and move it to another carrier, or she can renew her contract and get a new subsidized phone.
I understand and respect the advantages of the unlocked-phone model, but the locked-phone model isn't a sign of stupidity or a lack of understanding of finances. It's a calculated risk.
In the US, by and large, phones are seen by many as a way to access their account with a wireless communications company. Few Americans have the need or desire to switch among various phone companies, and most just want to go in to a store, pick out a phone that they think is "free" or very inexpensive, have it set up for them, and walk out of the store with the phone already working.
The American wireless marketplace is largely set up this way. Carriers generally welcome unlocked/bring-your-own phones and will reward you by not having to sign up for a multi-year commitment, but on the other hand they will generally not offer a discount on your monthly fee. Americans also generally have come to expect switching phones every time we renew our contracts anyway, so if I'm paying a monthly fee it might as well include a subsidy for a phone.
So, basically, it boils down to costs and risks.
If you are relatively happy with your carrier, you take a significant discount off the purchase price of the phone and in return you commit to a 2-year contract. At the end of the two years, you've saved the money because you would have paid the same monthly fee whether you bought your own phone or not. So if all goes relatively well it saves you some bucks.
However, If you cancel your account early, you basically end up refunding the subsidy they gave you. This really sucks because the phone is locked to the carrier (hence useless unless you sell it to another customer of that same carrier, or manage to unlock it). So by getting the phone subsidized by your carrier you lose big-time if you change your mind and want to switch carriers.
You can choose on price (carrier-subsidized phone with lock-in) or flexibility (buy your own phone and SIM cards from whatever carriers you want). In other words, for the price of the subsidy the wireless company is allowing you to sell them your flexibility on that handset.
Most people I know choose on price, and most of the time it works out fine. You do your two years with the phone, and if you're happy with the phone and the carrier you go month-to-month until the phone dies or you decide you want a new ShinyThing, then you go to a carrier and ask them to reopen the subsidy purse and you lock-in for another two years.
Magazine runs article about the dangers of Google, offers instructions on how to prevent Google from gathering data on you.
Same magazine uses Google Analytics to track you when you visit, so by reading the article you give information to Google.
Irony: When your actions that are intended to have a specific effect instead have the opposite effect. In this case, reading an article on how to "protect" yourself from Google exposes you to Google.
The details of who wrote the article or the exact magazine it appears in has nothing to do with whose position it is, or what magazine it runs in.
I've re-read it several times, but apparently I'm misunderstanding it.
Because I was reading it that the ship built momentum by getting it from an internally-contained quantum vacuum, and that would seem to violate the Newtonian law of "equal and opposite reaction" because nothing is being ejected from the drive, yet there doesn't have to be anything external to the ship to "pull" or "push" against.
I was thinking that it ONLY introduced momentum within the propulsion system (and any attached payload or craft), without "pushing" or "pulling" against anything within the environment the system is in, and without introducing anything in to it. That was the cool part to me, that you could get a "push" that moved the object forward without a corresponding "push" back to the environment surrounding the object.
Sorry, the "coolness" of this theory is hard to explain, which is also the reason the theory is so unlikely (but would be SO COOL if it's true!)
Currently, if I want to move an object, I need to receive and/or cause some sort of external reaction in the opposite direction to do it. Either I push against something or something pushes against me, or I eject mass in one direction at speed to move in another. Something in my surrounding environment is required for me to act against, or I need to change the environment by ejecting mass into it.
So an airplane can move because it's pulling air in from in front of it and shoving it out behind it very fast, and that force allows it to move forward. As the aircraft moves forward, a bunch of air is pushed backward to make it happen.
A rocket leaves a lot of mass behind, and even a car has an unmeasurably small effect on the rotation of the Earth (or shifts stuff around, which you can observe by spinning tires on gravel when the friction gets too low).
A ship built using this theory would use nothing in its surrounding environment, and would introduce nothing to that environment, at least as it relates to propulsion.
It could travel through a vacuum without leaving a trail of reaction mass behind it, so with a limitless supply of energy it could continue on for a limitless amount of time.
Currently, even the best mass-ejection drives are limited by energy AND mass storage capacity. True, in many cases, the fuel and mass are the same thing (explode the fuel into energy and the exhaust is the mass), but this allows you to take mass out of the equation, so you don't have to carry any reaction mass, you only need lots of energy.
I'm not saying this will create a particularly practical engine, though maybe it could. But the theory totally busts Newtonian physics (by busting the "Equal and Opposite" law) or expands our understanding of the Universe significantly (by introducing a new level of matter we are pushing against).
The irony is that you'd visit the site in order to get instructions on preventing information on you from being given up to Google. But by visiting the site, you are giving up information to Google (and statcounter).
The irony has nothing to do with any affiliation between Mozilla and MozillaZine. The irony is that they published a piece speaking of the evils of giving information to Google... that most people end up giving information to Google to read.
It would be like going to Symantec's website to research preventing a virus infection and getting a virus from an embedded third-party ad.
Now that I've had to explain the irony, it's a lot less fun, especially when the lack of comprehension is delivered with an insult. Ah, well.
Right, that's what makes this theory so mind-blowing. It's obviously a friction drive, but without anything to push against. Call it the "Bootstrap Drive," as in "pulling oneself up by ones own bootstraps."
Mankind has just:
1. busted Newtonian physics wide open, or 2. found a previously unknown plane of existence that we can't observe today that we can push against for a friction drive, or 3. wasted a bunch of time discussing a complete crackpot theory that is utter bullshit or the result of some poor observations or testing methodology.
Time will tell. I'm leaning toward #3 myself, but thinking about #1 or #2 is giving me a science woody.
An EM field can carry momentum, but this allows the momentum to go in only one direction.
If I emit an EM field, it is pushing back against me as it emits (albeit VERY gently). When the EM field hits something, it imparts some or all of that momentum to the object it hits. The conservation of momentum has been maintained, because there are equal and opposite forces.
Normally, drives do one of two things to move the object they are trying to move. They either eject mass at speed in the opposite direction (rockets) which involves the loss of mass or push against something like ground or air (wheels in a car, propellers on a plane) to pull themselves forward.
In a frictionless vacuum, the only known propulsion system that works is a mass-ejection system like a rocket. You have nothing to push against that a friction drive needs, so you have to bring your own mass and throw it out to gain momentum. As you use your propellant mass, you lose it, so you have to carry some sort of mass and some sort of way of throwing it out really fast so you make the most of every gram of mass you eject.
What this new theory is suggesting is that I can get the momentum for the cost of pure energy at one end, then use that momentum on the other end of the transaction for motion. Normally, I'd either have to have something to push against that would move back in the opposite direction as a result (or would be so huge that the opposing force would be negligible), or I'd have to eject mass.
This drive would do neither - it's like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps (quite literally) then using the energy of your pulling to allow you to move through the air. The conservation of momentum, equal and opposite reactions, etc - poof - all gone. This is truly a non-Newtonian drive in that it appears to break fundamental laws of Newtonian physics.
Unless, of course, there is something that is "absorbing" the other side of the "equal and opposite" reaction, something outside our ability to perceive at this point, in which case this is a friction drive, we just haven't figured out what we are pushing against yet.
Or, alternatively, the theory may be complete crap. That's possible too.:)
The terminology of the summary could certainly be improved a bit. The author defines a "quantum vacuum" early on as a vacuum that has electromagnetic waves present, then refers to the "quantum vacuum" as "the vacuum" through the rest of the article. The author should really have repeated the term "quantum vacuum" throughout, or chosen a better term (purified EM field?) to make it clear exactly what he/she was referring to.
The EM fields within the quantum vacuum are technically what would be providing the force, not the entirety of the quantum vacuum itself. The interesting part is that the EM fields can push in a specific direction, while seemingly having nothing to push against.
The issue with the theory is that it violates the Newtonian rule of conservation of momentum. This is, in effect, saying that you can have a force in one direction without an equal and opposite reaction. But quantum physicists claim to be able to bust Newtonian laws all the time, so we'll see how this one pans out.:)
Cars move by pushing round bits called "wheels" against a friction surface called "the ground". So the propulsion system itself is a friction system and does not involve the loss of mass.
The article is talking about this new propulsion system as an alternative to systems that involve losses of mass, like rockets for example.
Which leads to an interesting question. If someone nails something to my door, am I responsible for the carbon offsets for the paper and nails used, or is that the responsibility of the person who put it there?
I'm saying they should investigate how the leak happened, and fix the problem at the source instead of running around like a schoolkid trying to catch the pages of his term paper blowing in the wind....
Agreed, but I also took your post to mean that the headline of the article did not reflect the contents, not that you disagreed with the contents of the article.
Once you are done, I urge you to use the "view your profile as a guest" feature (or use another browser to view your profile). I had turned off a few things from public view, but when I left the "wizard" they got turned back on.
Not City, Friends, etc, I expected those. Things like my photo albums, birthdate, and email address. None of which are vital (photo albums are mostly of my daughter playing, birthdate is set but with the wrong year, and the email address is a spamcatcher dedicated to Facebook use), but I did set specific privacy levels for each type of data, and I know I set those three to "friends only".
I only noticed it because I decided to run my account through the "view as guest" and saw a lot more information there than I expected.
I don't know what happened, but several specific decisions I was asked by the new "wizard" to make did not get respected. The defaults for the new "wizard" are very permissive (basically defaults to "everyone sees everything" regardless of your current privacy settings), and I was disappointed but not too upset about that, but then most of the settings changed themselves to "everyone" after I used the "wizard" to lock them down.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that something went wrong with the wizard, but I figured it was worth mentioning just in case someone else trusted "Mr. Wizard" to do as they asked, because it apparently ain't always so.
There is a privacy setting to keep Facebook from knowing much (if any) personal information about you, but you won't find it on the Facebook home page. In fact, once you've signed up for an account you've toggled the setting off.:)
Of the 14 virtual worlds in the FTC’s study that were, by design, open to children under age 13, seven contained no explicit content, six contained a low amount of such content, and one contained a moderate amount. Almost all of the explicit content found in the child-oriented virtual worlds appeared in the form of text posted in chat rooms, on message boards, or in discussion forums.
So the FTC studied 27 "online worlds" and of those 14 were listed as open to kids under 13. Of the 14 worlds, 13 of them seem to be doing a good to excellent job of policing their discussion boards and/or chat rooms for inappropriate content. All but one of the sites with inappropriate content were sites that were not registered as open to kids under 13. In other words, not the "Build a Bear" site you mention. The sites actually designed for your daughter (and trust me, I understand your concerns, my daughter is seven) seem to be doing a good job, by and large.
If you want your daughter to use a particular board, visit it and read for a while. If the moderators seem to be doing a good job of removing anything you don't like, then you make a decision as to whether you can trust their moderation style (which probably includes many of the things mentioned in the FCC report). Then YOU, as a parent, can decide which sites are making appropriate efforts.
"Being a parent" isn't necessarily a narrow corridor of "watch everything your kid does to protect them." You can occasionally trust others. But it's up to you to figure out who to trust and who not to.
The ideas mentioned are good ones, but they won't offer adequate protection except the last one ("employ a staff of specially trained moderators"), and that one is impractical for a lot of sites. You're talking about a 24/7 staff of people who can read ALL of the messages coming in and filter them. Plus, there's always a time lag between the time something is posted and the time that even the most trained and talented moderator can catch it and delete it. So even if a moderator is on the job, your daughter might see something occasionally. Plus, you might consider pictures of violent cartoon shows to be inappropriate for your child, while we have an entire TV industry built around this being appropriate entertainment. "What constitutes inappropriate content" is VERY subjective.
I run a handful of discussion boards, and kids would be welcome at all of them as far as I'm concerned, and I moderate them and keep them clean, but I couldn't afford the lawsuit if one of our members said or did something inappropriate and I failed to "protect the children" because I can't read every post before it's put on the website, and I can't monitor it 24/7.
This is the conundrum that the attempts to protect our children have put us in. Those of us who are parents want our children protected against pedophiles. Fair enough.
Those of us who are moderators of discussion boards cannot provide that service with any absolute level of guarantee and still allow strangers to post messages to the discussion boards. Any level of security I offered you would be a false sense, and I'd rather you visit my boards as an interested parent, check them out, and decide whether the community I've built is appropriate for your child. That, in my mind, is proper parenting. You don't have to live along with them on my site, but if you want to trust me, I should EARN that trust, which means YOU, as the parent, need to look at my site and see if you trust me. Just like hiring a babysitter - we don't depend on the government to find us a babysitter who is safe, we depend on knowing the person we're leaving our kids with.
Personally, I "COPA Filter" everything I put up online that allows user input of any kind. If you signed up for an account on one of my boards, you have to check a little tickybox that says "I am over the age of consent in my state or country, and/or I have legal parental consent to access this bo
I found that true in Quebec some years ago, but when I went back more recently I ran into a LOT of people who were happy to speak English, even though I speak French (albeit VERY poorly) and tried.
Me: "Bonjour" Waitress: "Hello. Can we speak English?" Me: "You got how bad my French was from 'Bonjour'?" Waitress: (giggles) "Yes"
I don't know who was laughing harder at that, me, the waitress, or my wife. But the point is that Quebec seems to have gone through a sea change in the last decade or so, and the residents seem much more accepting of Americans speaking English.
Nothing runs on poutine. Try this: Eat a bunch of it and try running. Guarantee YOU aren't going to run on it, and you're DESIGNED to convert food into fuel.
Unless, by "run", you mean "collapse and expire due to massive arterial blockage", in which Quebecois is a somewhat more condensed language than I gave it credit for.
Slashdot Mirror
I sincerely doubt the problem is that the boss actually thinks the programmers are being distracted. I suspect someone else that has a job where they can't wear headphones and listen to music got jealous because "it's not FAIR. They get to wear headphones and I don't."
Or, maybe, someone was listening to music on their headphones loudly enough that they didn't hear the BOSS walking up to them, and the boss saw that as a sign of a distraction, when the headsets were doing their job perfectly - trying to prevent a distraction. Bosses, however, rarely see themselves as a distraction.
It's also possible they had one or two people who really couldn't handle the distraction of music, and decided that if one or two people couldn't handle it, obviously no one else on the planet could either.
It's hard to say what REALLY went into the decision. I worked for a company once that put their programmers on display - we had to wear suits and ties and leather shoes and were in a glass-sided area where the execs could look down through the one-way glassed executive balcony and see their happy programmers hard at work. Never mind it was a production shop and we had to change from suits and leather shoes to jeans and steel-toed boots to go out on the production floor (which happened several times a day). Wearing headphones in that environment, according to the Mahogany crowd, "looked unprofessional" and was therefore forbidden. But then so was not being at your desk while you were on the floor solving a production problem.
If people weren't so stupid (the world would be better off...) they would realize that most 99 year contracts you have to enter into are a way worse deal than the $500 up front for a phone- I guess it goes to many American's credit isn't real money mentality
My wife's account with Verizon recently reached the 2-year contract limit, and she decided to jump ship to AT&T. Economically, it made more sense to accept the subsidy on the handset than purchase an unlocked handset.
She wanted a Blackberry Pearl. We priced out an unlocked one at about $250, AT&T offered it at $50 with all the subsidies. I asked about a discount for buying an unlocked phone, and was told that there was no price difference per-month for having an unlocked "bring your own" phone.
So, in return for a 2-year commitment to AT&T, we got $200 off the purchase price of the phone. If my wife decides to cancel with AT&T, we'll end up paying the $200 back and have a phone that is locked to AT&T, which is unfortunate, but that's the risk you take for saving money buying the handset. At the end of two years, if she sticks with AT&T, we'll have saved $200 on her phone and she can keep using it on AT&T as long as she wants, or we can get it unlocked and move it to another carrier, or she can renew her contract and get a new subsidized phone.
I understand and respect the advantages of the unlocked-phone model, but the locked-phone model isn't a sign of stupidity or a lack of understanding of finances. It's a calculated risk.
In the US, by and large, phones are seen by many as a way to access their account with a wireless communications company. Few Americans have the need or desire to switch among various phone companies, and most just want to go in to a store, pick out a phone that they think is "free" or very inexpensive, have it set up for them, and walk out of the store with the phone already working.
The American wireless marketplace is largely set up this way. Carriers generally welcome unlocked/bring-your-own phones and will reward you by not having to sign up for a multi-year commitment, but on the other hand they will generally not offer a discount on your monthly fee. Americans also generally have come to expect switching phones every time we renew our contracts anyway, so if I'm paying a monthly fee it might as well include a subsidy for a phone.
So, basically, it boils down to costs and risks.
If you are relatively happy with your carrier, you take a significant discount off the purchase price of the phone and in return you commit to a 2-year contract. At the end of the two years, you've saved the money because you would have paid the same monthly fee whether you bought your own phone or not. So if all goes relatively well it saves you some bucks.
However, If you cancel your account early, you basically end up refunding the subsidy they gave you. This really sucks because the phone is locked to the carrier (hence useless unless you sell it to another customer of that same carrier, or manage to unlock it). So by getting the phone subsidized by your carrier you lose big-time if you change your mind and want to switch carriers.
You can choose on price (carrier-subsidized phone with lock-in) or flexibility (buy your own phone and SIM cards from whatever carriers you want). In other words, for the price of the subsidy the wireless company is allowing you to sell them your flexibility on that handset.
Most people I know choose on price, and most of the time it works out fine. You do your two years with the phone, and if you're happy with the phone and the carrier you go month-to-month until the phone dies or you decide you want a new ShinyThing, then you go to a carrier and ask them to reopen the subsidy purse and you lock-in for another two years.
Magazine runs article about the dangers of Google, offers instructions on how to prevent Google from gathering data on you.
Same magazine uses Google Analytics to track you when you visit, so by reading the article you give information to Google.
Irony: When your actions that are intended to have a specific effect instead have the opposite effect. In this case, reading an article on how to "protect" yourself from Google exposes you to Google.
The details of who wrote the article or the exact magazine it appears in has nothing to do with whose position it is, or what magazine it runs in.
Sufficiently explained?
I've re-read it several times, but apparently I'm misunderstanding it.
Because I was reading it that the ship built momentum by getting it from an internally-contained quantum vacuum, and that would seem to violate the Newtonian law of "equal and opposite reaction" because nothing is being ejected from the drive, yet there doesn't have to be anything external to the ship to "pull" or "push" against.
I was thinking that it ONLY introduced momentum within the propulsion system (and any attached payload or craft), without "pushing" or "pulling" against anything within the environment the system is in, and without introducing anything in to it. That was the cool part to me, that you could get a "push" that moved the object forward without a corresponding "push" back to the environment surrounding the object.
OK, never mind. I guess I don't get it.
Sorry, the "coolness" of this theory is hard to explain, which is also the reason the theory is so unlikely (but would be SO COOL if it's true!)
Currently, if I want to move an object, I need to receive and/or cause some sort of external reaction in the opposite direction to do it. Either I push against something or something pushes against me, or I eject mass in one direction at speed to move in another. Something in my surrounding environment is required for me to act against, or I need to change the environment by ejecting mass into it.
So an airplane can move because it's pulling air in from in front of it and shoving it out behind it very fast, and that force allows it to move forward. As the aircraft moves forward, a bunch of air is pushed backward to make it happen.
A rocket leaves a lot of mass behind, and even a car has an unmeasurably small effect on the rotation of the Earth (or shifts stuff around, which you can observe by spinning tires on gravel when the friction gets too low).
A ship built using this theory would use nothing in its surrounding environment, and would introduce nothing to that environment, at least as it relates to propulsion.
It could travel through a vacuum without leaving a trail of reaction mass behind it, so with a limitless supply of energy it could continue on for a limitless amount of time.
Currently, even the best mass-ejection drives are limited by energy AND mass storage capacity. True, in many cases, the fuel and mass are the same thing (explode the fuel into energy and the exhaust is the mass), but this allows you to take mass out of the equation, so you don't have to carry any reaction mass, you only need lots of energy.
I'm not saying this will create a particularly practical engine, though maybe it could. But the theory totally busts Newtonian physics (by busting the "Equal and Opposite" law) or expands our understanding of the Universe significantly (by introducing a new level of matter we are pushing against).
The EM field never leaves the ship in this drive.
The irony is that you'd visit the site in order to get instructions on preventing information on you from being given up to Google. But by visiting the site, you are giving up information to Google (and statcounter).
The irony has nothing to do with any affiliation between Mozilla and MozillaZine. The irony is that they published a piece speaking of the evils of giving information to Google... that most people end up giving information to Google to read.
It would be like going to Symantec's website to research preventing a virus infection and getting a virus from an embedded third-party ad.
Now that I've had to explain the irony, it's a lot less fun, especially when the lack of comprehension is delivered with an insult. Ah, well.
Right, that's what makes this theory so mind-blowing. It's obviously a friction drive, but without anything to push against. Call it the "Bootstrap Drive," as in "pulling oneself up by ones own bootstraps."
Mankind has just:
1. busted Newtonian physics wide open, or
2. found a previously unknown plane of existence that we can't observe today that we can push against for a friction drive, or
3. wasted a bunch of time discussing a complete crackpot theory that is utter bullshit or the result of some poor observations or testing methodology.
Time will tell. I'm leaning toward #3 myself, but thinking about #1 or #2 is giving me a science woody.
An EM field can carry momentum, but this allows the momentum to go in only one direction.
If I emit an EM field, it is pushing back against me as it emits (albeit VERY gently). When the EM field hits something, it imparts some or all of that momentum to the object it hits. The conservation of momentum has been maintained, because there are equal and opposite forces.
Normally, drives do one of two things to move the object they are trying to move. They either eject mass at speed in the opposite direction (rockets) which involves the loss of mass or push against something like ground or air (wheels in a car, propellers on a plane) to pull themselves forward.
In a frictionless vacuum, the only known propulsion system that works is a mass-ejection system like a rocket. You have nothing to push against that a friction drive needs, so you have to bring your own mass and throw it out to gain momentum. As you use your propellant mass, you lose it, so you have to carry some sort of mass and some sort of way of throwing it out really fast so you make the most of every gram of mass you eject.
What this new theory is suggesting is that I can get the momentum for the cost of pure energy at one end, then use that momentum on the other end of the transaction for motion. Normally, I'd either have to have something to push against that would move back in the opposite direction as a result (or would be so huge that the opposing force would be negligible), or I'd have to eject mass.
This drive would do neither - it's like pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps (quite literally) then using the energy of your pulling to allow you to move through the air. The conservation of momentum, equal and opposite reactions, etc - poof - all gone. This is truly a non-Newtonian drive in that it appears to break fundamental laws of Newtonian physics.
Unless, of course, there is something that is "absorbing" the other side of the "equal and opposite" reaction, something outside our ability to perceive at this point, in which case this is a friction drive, we just haven't figured out what we are pushing against yet.
Or, alternatively, the theory may be complete crap. That's possible too. :)
No worries, thanks for taking my snarkiness with the humor I intended. Yeah, that was it. :)
Yes, the big deal about this is that it neither uses reaction nor friction, it's apparently a totally new kind of propulsion system if it works out.
Either that or the "friction" is against a medium we don't understand yet.
The terminology of the summary could certainly be improved a bit. The author defines a "quantum vacuum" early on as a vacuum that has electromagnetic waves present, then refers to the "quantum vacuum" as "the vacuum" through the rest of the article. The author should really have repeated the term "quantum vacuum" throughout, or chosen a better term (purified EM field?) to make it clear exactly what he/she was referring to.
The EM fields within the quantum vacuum are technically what would be providing the force, not the entirety of the quantum vacuum itself. The interesting part is that the EM fields can push in a specific direction, while seemingly having nothing to push against.
The issue with the theory is that it violates the Newtonian rule of conservation of momentum. This is, in effect, saying that you can have a force in one direction without an equal and opposite reaction. But quantum physicists claim to be able to bust Newtonian laws all the time, so we'll see how this one pans out. :)
Cars move by pushing round bits called "wheels" against a friction surface called "the ground". So the propulsion system itself is a friction system and does not involve the loss of mass.
The article is talking about this new propulsion system as an alternative to systems that involve losses of mass, like rockets for example.
Which leads to an interesting question. If someone nails something to my door, am I responsible for the carbon offsets for the paper and nails used, or is that the responsibility of the person who put it there?
Who said anything about removing it?
The article did.
I'm saying they should investigate how the leak happened, and fix the problem at the source instead of running around like a schoolkid trying to catch the pages of his term paper blowing in the wind. ...
Agreed, but I also took your post to mean that the headline of the article did not reflect the contents, not that you disagreed with the contents of the article.
"has" in that sentence should be "have".
How has Jon and Bob been acting?
How have John and Bob been acting?
[sic] Heil!
Signed, :)
- Goermer, proud member, local Grammar Nazi Union #242
If you run NoScript and AdBlock in Firefox, check it out when you visit MozillaZine.
NoScript: Blocked scripts from: google-analytics.com, statcounter.com.
AdBlock: Blockable items list included a one-pixel image from c.statcounter
A "privacy sky is falling" article published on a web site that uses a far more insidious tracking service from the SAME COMPANY THEY ARE CRITICIZING.
Once you are done, I urge you to use the "view your profile as a guest" feature (or use another browser to view your profile). I had turned off a few things from public view, but when I left the "wizard" they got turned back on.
Not City, Friends, etc, I expected those. Things like my photo albums, birthdate, and email address. None of which are vital (photo albums are mostly of my daughter playing, birthdate is set but with the wrong year, and the email address is a spamcatcher dedicated to Facebook use), but I did set specific privacy levels for each type of data, and I know I set those three to "friends only".
I only noticed it because I decided to run my account through the "view as guest" and saw a lot more information there than I expected.
I don't know what happened, but several specific decisions I was asked by the new "wizard" to make did not get respected. The defaults for the new "wizard" are very permissive (basically defaults to "everyone sees everything" regardless of your current privacy settings), and I was disappointed but not too upset about that, but then most of the settings changed themselves to "everyone" after I used the "wizard" to lock them down.
I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that something went wrong with the wizard, but I figured it was worth mentioning just in case someone else trusted "Mr. Wizard" to do as they asked, because it apparently ain't always so.
There is a privacy setting to keep Facebook from knowing much (if any) personal information about you, but you won't find it on the Facebook home page. In fact, once you've signed up for an account you've toggled the setting off. :)
IEEE, "I" = International.
CISRO = Australian.
US Constitution = United States.
Tell me again how Congress failed us when the standard was held up in an international standards body by an agency of the Australian government?
That's just a filter. Name it \/ag1na Cat and it'll probably be fine.
From the FTC site:
Of the 14 virtual worlds in the FTC’s study that were, by design, open to children under age 13, seven contained no explicit content, six contained a low amount of such content, and one contained a moderate amount. Almost all of the explicit content found in the child-oriented virtual worlds appeared in the form of text posted in chat rooms, on message boards, or in discussion forums.
So the FTC studied 27 "online worlds" and of those 14 were listed as open to kids under 13. Of the 14 worlds, 13 of them seem to be doing a good to excellent job of policing their discussion boards and/or chat rooms for inappropriate content. All but one of the sites with inappropriate content were sites that were not registered as open to kids under 13. In other words, not the "Build a Bear" site you mention. The sites actually designed for your daughter (and trust me, I understand your concerns, my daughter is seven) seem to be doing a good job, by and large.
If you want your daughter to use a particular board, visit it and read for a while. If the moderators seem to be doing a good job of removing anything you don't like, then you make a decision as to whether you can trust their moderation style (which probably includes many of the things mentioned in the FCC report). Then YOU, as a parent, can decide which sites are making appropriate efforts.
"Being a parent" isn't necessarily a narrow corridor of "watch everything your kid does to protect them." You can occasionally trust others. But it's up to you to figure out who to trust and who not to.
The ideas mentioned are good ones, but they won't offer adequate protection except the last one ("employ a staff of specially trained moderators"), and that one is impractical for a lot of sites. You're talking about a 24/7 staff of people who can read ALL of the messages coming in and filter them. Plus, there's always a time lag between the time something is posted and the time that even the most trained and talented moderator can catch it and delete it. So even if a moderator is on the job, your daughter might see something occasionally. Plus, you might consider pictures of violent cartoon shows to be inappropriate for your child, while we have an entire TV industry built around this being appropriate entertainment. "What constitutes inappropriate content" is VERY subjective.
I run a handful of discussion boards, and kids would be welcome at all of them as far as I'm concerned, and I moderate them and keep them clean, but I couldn't afford the lawsuit if one of our members said or did something inappropriate and I failed to "protect the children" because I can't read every post before it's put on the website, and I can't monitor it 24/7.
This is the conundrum that the attempts to protect our children have put us in. Those of us who are parents want our children protected against pedophiles. Fair enough.
Those of us who are moderators of discussion boards cannot provide that service with any absolute level of guarantee and still allow strangers to post messages to the discussion boards. Any level of security I offered you would be a false sense, and I'd rather you visit my boards as an interested parent, check them out, and decide whether the community I've built is appropriate for your child. That, in my mind, is proper parenting. You don't have to live along with them on my site, but if you want to trust me, I should EARN that trust, which means YOU, as the parent, need to look at my site and see if you trust me. Just like hiring a babysitter - we don't depend on the government to find us a babysitter who is safe, we depend on knowing the person we're leaving our kids with.
Personally, I "COPA Filter" everything I put up online that allows user input of any kind. If you signed up for an account on one of my boards, you have to check a little tickybox that says "I am over the age of consent in my state or country, and/or I have legal parental consent to access this bo
I found that true in Quebec some years ago, but when I went back more recently I ran into a LOT of people who were happy to speak English, even though I speak French (albeit VERY poorly) and tried.
Me: "Bonjour"
Waitress: "Hello. Can we speak English?"
Me: "You got how bad my French was from 'Bonjour'?"
Waitress: (giggles) "Yes"
I don't know who was laughing harder at that, me, the waitress, or my wife. But the point is that Quebec seems to have gone through a sea change in the last decade or so, and the residents seem much more accepting of Americans speaking English.
Not sure, but it is tasty stuff, I love i.. (ugg, arrgh, ook) *collapses*
Nothing runs on poutine. Try this: Eat a bunch of it and try running. Guarantee YOU aren't going to run on it, and you're DESIGNED to convert food into fuel.
Unless, by "run", you mean "collapse and expire due to massive arterial blockage", in which Quebecois is a somewhat more condensed language than I gave it credit for.