* Black holes emit x-ray radiation and get smaller and smaller until they disappear, or "evaporate".
The time taken to do this for any appreciably large black hole is on the order of trillions of years. Theoretically speaking, of course. Black hole evaporation only really makes sense in high energy particle collisions.
* Most black holes are formed from the death of large stars (larger than the sun) that run out of fuel and cannot sustain its nuclear reaction. The star loses the force pushing itself outward and is overcome by the force of its own gravity pulling inward. Eventually, the star has so much gravity and is so compacted that it "eats itself" until there is nothing left but a hole in the "fabric" of space-time, created by the gravity left over from the star.
The "hole" is a mathematical construct. There is no actual hole, just a point beyond which information cannot escape, including information contained in light.
I'll have to write a book myself: "Anorexic Programming" by Smart Ass. "The Ultimate in Lean and eXtreme Programming"!
I'll wait for the follow-up, "Bulemic Programming: Avoiding Binge and Purge Coding." That's a title that would grab my attention. We've been doing that here long enough that the code base needs a major purge (refactor). I just hope I don't end up with it on my shoes....
You said you're not a Bush fan. Ok, but let's clear up one point.
Hours after 9/11, you could have put a shaved weasel with a lisp and a nervous tic in charge and asked him what to do next and he would have snarled and declared (in weasel-speak, of course): Let's kick some ass!
Bush did nothing special. He did not run the war. He told the generals to take out the Bin Laden and his group, and they did a spectacular job. Gore would have done the same. Hell, Jimmy Carter would have probably done it too, but he'd have said "butt", and then probably apologized later for using harsher language in his heart.
But let's talk about lives lost and the reason for it. Let's talk about the lies. Let's talk about high crimes and misdemeanors. Hell, let's talk about a President committing treason by knowingly lying to Congress to gain authorization for an unjustifiable war. No, I'm sorry, you can't put Afghanistan into Bush's column without putting Iraq there too, right below jobs, trade agreements, the environment, intolerance, and damage to your Constitutionally protected rights.
I would bet that the information you desire is now considered to be highly classified and thus not available. You could produce trajectory information for ballistic missiles and who knows how it might be mis-construed as useful to those "terrorists" of whom the US is so fearful these days.
I beg to differ. Such software comes with every version of Windows and is freely available and copied. It's called GORILLA.BAS.
Not *nearly* enough when you consider that these agencies will likely *not* get a check, but rather computers and software valued at millions. Anytime Microsoft pays out, it usually manages to swing a way to make that payment in the form of copies of its software. In this case, it's taking the millions from the settlement and using it subsidize Windows purchases for schools and law enforcement agencies.
We're getting our butts handed to us by Estonia?? A nation that sounds like it belongs in a Dilbert strip shouldn't be beating us for common tech savvy. Oh the SHAME!!!!
Good thing browser tech isn't an Olympic event....
Note that this article was written by the person famous for creating the myth of Kevin Mitnick being a super hacker. Markoff is largely responsible for the fear and paranoia surrounding Mitnick and consequently his unfair prison experience.
Kevin, we have a deadline, and you don't have time to be playing on/. Get back to work.
I completely agree. Without stooping to calling her names, let's just say her story is unethical, her actions resemble those of a stalker, and I find myself angry on behalf of a woman I've never met and only read once (that I recall). That MOG would bother to put in print such poorly composed sniping is worrisome. She should be fired and given the name of a good therapist. Sometimes, a change in employment can be a wakeup call, and she surely needs one.
After reading that article, I turned to my daughter and solemnly informed her that before she can date, I will not only make sure her car as OnStar, but I will have one of these handy dandy GPS units surgically implanted in her hip. Then I can track her on Google maps. She asked, why both? Because the car might be where she says she's going to go, but her butt might be at the beach party I told her she couldn't attend. Better safe than sorry.
Sorry, meant to add that piezoelectric refers to materials that generate electricity when they change shape. Pyroelectric substances generate a charge when heated.
Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?
I don't. My wife uses AOL. I told her why I don't use it. And every time it screws up, loses something, hangs, breaks, won't display some media, prevents her from doing something that the web site writer expected a visiting browser to be capable of, I just say, "That's why I don't use AOL." When someone tells me their machine was broken by an email virus, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Outlook." When someone tells me a web site won't display or a hacked site hijacked their computer, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Internet Explorer."
I don't push my views. I let them speak for themselves. That's not arrogance, it's experience.
First of all RIAA are pimps going around bullying people and collecting money. That being said the intellectual property is not that of RIAA but actual artists most of whom don't even hold rights to their own creation
Ok, so if someone helped themselves to your car because he felt they had a God-given right to transportation, and you applied a baseball bat to his kneecaps and took your car back, you'd be a pimp and a bully?
I would love to see companies be held legally responsible for such security breeches.
So you'd like to penalize companies for someone else's criminal activity? I'll bet you also support fix-it tickets with large fines for people whose license plates were stolen, right? Cause heaven knows, they could have used locking bolts to secure the darn thing, so it's their fault!
I agree that if you're going to be in the business of collecting sensitive information, but there are no laws outlining what constitutes sensitive information, an entity's responsibility for securing that information, defining what constitutes a minimum of acceptable security, and the penalties for not implementing that level of security. THAT'S what we need.
And we also need to follow some European countries' example and pass legislation that gives ownership of an individual's personal information to that individual. Companies seeking to transfer that information to any party would have to obtain the individual's permission first.
"In 2001, there were 29,573 gun-related deaths in the United States--or about 80 deaths per day. Firearm deaths represent 1 of every 5 injury deaths in the U.S."
-- John Hopkins University, http://www.jhsph.edu/gunpolicy/US_factsheet_2004.p df
"Key Statistics: On average per year, only one percent of actual or attempted victims of violent crime (62,200) use a firearm in an attempt to defend themselves. Another 20,300 use a firearm in an attempt to defend their property during a theft, household burglary, or motor vehicle theft. Conversely, victims report an annual average of about 341,000 incidents of firearm theft. In 1992 offenders armed with handguns committed a record 931,000 violent crimes."
-- "Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self-Defense, and Firearm Theft" by Michael R. Rand, Crime Data Brief, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 1994
I would kill, or die, to defend my right to be armed, and that outweighs any worthless piece of paper.
Ok, I pick "die."
You don't have a right to be armed. You have a right to protect yourself. Weapons are, in this context, a tool to that end. But the "right to bear arms" Amendment had to do with militias, not individuals. And while you are busy preparing to resist your government violently, ask yourself this: how many times have we had to overthrow our government since the United States' inception?
Once.
The Civil War was such a war, and it wasn't waged by individuals. It was waged by states, as any serious attempt would be to throw off the shackles of oppression, real or imagined.
In the mean time, how many times a DAY do those same weapons get turned against the general population in the commission of crimes? Dozens? Hundreds? Yeah, something like that. So tell me again what right was secured, because I'm just not seeing it.
You assume that because you have a gun you are safer. But you would have to carry that gun around day to day, in your hand, at the ready to shoot whatever threat came your way, and -- news flash -- this isn't the Old West. Even the west isn't the Old West anymore.
I've got some good friends that believe fervently that they have a right to purchase weaponry ad nauseum, and a couple of them do, but not one has convinced me they are safer for having made that investment. What they have convinced me of is that they don't like the government telling them what they can and can't do. I have some other friends that feel just as deeply about legalizing drugs. The arguments are similar and boil down to self-determination.
But don't wave the Second Amendment around as your battle flag. It does not give you, as an individual, a right to arm yourself to the teeth.
1. First it's used on handicapped people. Once prosthetics advance beyond a given point and the bugs are worked out, the technology catches on.
2. Next we use them to give us hands free operation of computers. The first customer is the military. Soon jet pilots, drone operators, and remote robosoldier operators are outfitted with these. The interface will be no different from what's available the public, but the software interface will be a military secret.
3. Then we'll use them to enhance our senses. Inputs into sensory areas of the brain will allow us to hook up new devices to dramatically alter what we can see, hear, smell, and taste.
4. Bidirectional hookups to the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex will allow us to store memories in external "expansion" devices or supply swappable memories of various information.
5. Direct communication between minds will be a natural outgrowth of #3.
6. Sharing memories will be a natural outgrowth of #4.
7. Memory theft will be a natural outgrowth of #6.
8. Mapping and storage of one's memories will allow that information to survive the body.
9. Mapping and storage of linkages within the brain will allow the mind to survive the body.
10. Robots will be able to utilize the external memories, thus shortening the time to train robots how to perform tasks and deal with situations.
11. Externally stored minds can be given control of robot bodies.
12. Rather than traveling to new planets, we'll send robotic bodies. Once there, "body time" will be sold. A mind can be uploaded to the robotic body, allowed to enjoy the experience of being on Titan or Mars or wherever, and then transmitted back. Space travel with no perceived travel time, no need for human habitable environment, and no risk to the human.
13. Hive mind.
I could go on all day. At some point the virtual people / hive mind do away with the meatware, we construct a Dysan sphere, and we spend our time as gods of the virtual worlds we create for ourselves.
Which, of course, has all been done before. Where do you think your current reality came from?
Graphics Workshop Professional will convert just about anything to an ICO. It's not 100% though -- sometimes you end up with an icon that's off-center for some odd reason. But I love this application -- I've been using it for years now and it's just too handy not to have. It's not terribly expensive, either.
I also have the GIF Construction Set, which is great and all, but I'm just as likely to use some of my other graphics tools to create GIFs, or just use Flash. Xara3D is good for animated text.
Using the same identifier in different places and capitalizing it differently is inviting trouble in general.
I absolutely do not agree with this statement. If the compiler accepts any capitalization as valid and goes off the spelling only, there is trouble to get into. As for refactoring, non-case-sensitive refactoring tools exist and work very nicely, thank you very much. Check out Delphi 2005. "Suh-weet" only begins to describe it.
Which would you rather risk hearing 25 years from now: "Dad, you were right: I should've gotten an MBA," (from a kid who didn't do what you advised) or "Dad, you were wrong: business school was a waste of what could have been my most productive years as a ______," (from a kid who did what you insisted)?
I wouldn't be surprised if I heard, "Dad, I'm doing what I wanted in life, and the MBA didn't figure in at all, but I certainly have a good understanding of how businesses operate." And that would be ok, too. I never expect to hear your second option, ever. I'm not going to force my kids to do anything but get a well-rounded education, and by force I mean with my checkbook. What they do with the education is their choice.
They have them in some digital cameras as well. If you tilt the camera to take a picture, on playback the picture is reoriented to be upright. Pretty slick, really.
Consider tilting your laptop all over the place on an airplane. I''m sure it would annoy your neighbors to no end.
Actually, tilting the laptop didn't annoy my neighbors nearly as much as the airplane sounds I made, or when I'd headbutt the guy sitting next to me when I'd tilt my head along with the laptop.
The stewardess took my laptop away half way through the trip. Something about homeland security...
For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards!...Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"
I tried it with John Madden's NFL Football. I threw a Hail Mary pass; a perfect, aim-for-the-end-zone spiral. My Powerbook sailed out the window of my 10th floor San Francisco apartment and I haven't seen it since.
Slashdot Mirror
To clarify:
* Black holes emit x-ray radiation and get smaller and smaller until they disappear, or "evaporate".
The time taken to do this for any appreciably large black hole is on the order of trillions of years. Theoretically speaking, of course. Black hole evaporation only really makes sense in high energy particle collisions.
* Most black holes are formed from the death of large stars (larger than the sun) that run out of fuel and cannot sustain its nuclear reaction. The star loses the force pushing itself outward and is overcome by the force of its own gravity pulling inward. Eventually, the star has so much gravity and is so compacted that it "eats itself" until there is nothing left but a hole in the "fabric" of space-time, created by the gravity left over from the star.
The "hole" is a mathematical construct. There is no actual hole, just a point beyond which information cannot escape, including information contained in light.
It's like the modern-day version of man coming to understand there is no such thing as 'ether'.
Sure there is. Only now we call it a Higgs Field.
John Wayne Bobbitt called, and he'd like the contact information for the scientists in this article.
I'll have to write a book myself: "Anorexic Programming" by Smart Ass. "The Ultimate in Lean and eXtreme Programming"!
I'll wait for the follow-up, "Bulemic Programming: Avoiding Binge and Purge Coding." That's a title that would grab my attention. We've been doing that here long enough that the code base needs a major purge (refactor). I just hope I don't end up with it on my shoes....
"Remember Afghanistan?"
You said you're not a Bush fan. Ok, but let's clear up one point.
Hours after 9/11, you could have put a shaved weasel with a lisp and a nervous tic in charge and asked him what to do next and he would have snarled and declared (in weasel-speak, of course): Let's kick some ass!
Bush did nothing special. He did not run the war. He told the generals to take out the Bin Laden and his group, and they did a spectacular job. Gore would have done the same. Hell, Jimmy Carter would have probably done it too, but he'd have said "butt", and then probably apologized later for using harsher language in his heart.
But let's talk about lives lost and the reason for it. Let's talk about the lies. Let's talk about high crimes and misdemeanors. Hell, let's talk about a President committing treason by knowingly lying to Congress to gain authorization for an unjustifiable war. No, I'm sorry, you can't put Afghanistan into Bush's column without putting Iraq there too, right below jobs, trade agreements, the environment, intolerance, and damage to your Constitutionally protected rights.
I would bet that the information you desire is now considered to be highly classified and thus not available. You could produce trajectory information for ballistic missiles and who knows how it might be mis-construed as useful to those "terrorists" of whom the US is so fearful these days.
I beg to differ. Such software comes with every version of Windows and is freely available and copied. It's called GORILLA.BAS.
Not *nearly* enough when you consider that these agencies will likely *not* get a check, but rather computers and software valued at millions. Anytime Microsoft pays out, it usually manages to swing a way to make that payment in the form of copies of its software. In this case, it's taking the millions from the settlement and using it subsidize Windows purchases for schools and law enforcement agencies.
We're getting our butts handed to us by Estonia?? A nation that sounds like it belongs in a Dilbert strip shouldn't be beating us for common tech savvy. Oh the SHAME!!!!
Good thing browser tech isn't an Olympic event....
Note that this article was written by the person famous for creating the myth of Kevin Mitnick being a super hacker. Markoff is largely responsible for the fear and paranoia surrounding Mitnick and consequently his unfair prison experience.
/. Get back to work.
Kevin, we have a deadline, and you don't have time to be playing on
-- your boss
I completely agree. Without stooping to calling her names, let's just say her story is unethical, her actions resemble those of a stalker, and I find myself angry on behalf of a woman I've never met and only read once (that I recall). That MOG would bother to put in print such poorly composed sniping is worrisome. She should be fired and given the name of a good therapist. Sometimes, a change in employment can be a wakeup call, and she surely needs one.
After reading that article, I turned to my daughter and solemnly informed her that before she can date, I will not only make sure her car as OnStar, but I will have one of these handy dandy GPS units surgically implanted in her hip. Then I can track her on Google maps. She asked, why both? Because the car might be where she says she's going to go, but her butt might be at the beach party I told her she couldn't attend. Better safe than sorry.
Sorry, meant to add that piezoelectric refers to materials that generate electricity when they change shape. Pyroelectric substances generate a charge when heated.
RTFA, then Google if necessary. Here are some articles to help:
There's a Wiki article, a
product announcement, and
this one even details how pyroelectric crystals have been used to generate X-rays.
Why do you care what web browser/email client/etc people use?
I don't. My wife uses AOL. I told her why I don't use it. And every time it screws up, loses something, hangs, breaks, won't display some media, prevents her from doing something that the web site writer expected a visiting browser to be capable of, I just say, "That's why I don't use AOL." When someone tells me their machine was broken by an email virus, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Outlook." When someone tells me a web site won't display or a hacked site hijacked their computer, I tell them, "That's why I don't use Internet Explorer."
I don't push my views. I let them speak for themselves. That's not arrogance, it's experience.
First of all RIAA are pimps going around bullying people and collecting money. That being said the intellectual property is not that of RIAA but actual artists most of whom don't even hold rights to their own creation
Ok, so if someone helped themselves to your car because he felt they had a God-given right to transportation, and you applied a baseball bat to his kneecaps and took your car back, you'd be a pimp and a bully?
Ok.
I would love to see companies be held legally responsible for such security breeches.
So you'd like to penalize companies for someone else's criminal activity? I'll bet you also support fix-it tickets with large fines for people whose license plates were stolen, right? Cause heaven knows, they could have used locking bolts to secure the darn thing, so it's their fault!
I agree that if you're going to be in the business of collecting sensitive information, but there are no laws outlining what constitutes sensitive information, an entity's responsibility for securing that information, defining what constitutes a minimum of acceptable security, and the penalties for not implementing that level of security. THAT'S what we need.
And we also need to follow some European countries' example and pass legislation that gives ownership of an individual's personal information to that individual. Companies seeking to transfer that information to any party would have to obtain the individual's permission first.
"In 2001, there were 29,573 gun-related deaths in the United States--or about 80 deaths per day. Firearm deaths represent 1 of every 5 injury deaths in the U.S."p df
-- John Hopkins University, http://www.jhsph.edu/gunpolicy/US_factsheet_2004.
"Key Statistics: On average per year, only one percent of actual or attempted victims of violent crime (62,200) use a firearm in an attempt to defend themselves. Another 20,300 use a firearm in an attempt to defend their property during a theft, household burglary, or motor vehicle theft. Conversely, victims report an annual average of about 341,000 incidents of firearm theft. In 1992 offenders armed with handguns committed a record 931,000 violent crimes."
-- "Handgun Victimization, Firearm Self-Defense, and Firearm Theft" by Michael R. Rand, Crime Data Brief, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, April 1994
I would kill, or die, to defend my right to be armed, and that outweighs any worthless piece of paper.
Ok, I pick "die."
You don't have a right to be armed. You have a right to protect yourself. Weapons are, in this context, a tool to that end. But the "right to bear arms" Amendment had to do with militias, not individuals. And while you are busy preparing to resist your government violently, ask yourself this: how many times have we had to overthrow our government since the United States' inception?
Once.
The Civil War was such a war, and it wasn't waged by individuals. It was waged by states, as any serious attempt would be to throw off the shackles of oppression, real or imagined.
In the mean time, how many times a DAY do those same weapons get turned against the general population in the commission of crimes? Dozens? Hundreds? Yeah, something like that. So tell me again what right was secured, because I'm just not seeing it.
You assume that because you have a gun you are safer. But you would have to carry that gun around day to day, in your hand, at the ready to shoot whatever threat came your way, and -- news flash -- this isn't the Old West. Even the west isn't the Old West anymore.
I've got some good friends that believe fervently that they have a right to purchase weaponry ad nauseum, and a couple of them do, but not one has convinced me they are safer for having made that investment. What they have convinced me of is that they don't like the government telling them what they can and can't do. I have some other friends that feel just as deeply about legalizing drugs. The arguments are similar and boil down to self-determination.
But don't wave the Second Amendment around as your battle flag. It does not give you, as an individual, a right to arm yourself to the teeth.
Let me paint a different future:
1. First it's used on handicapped people. Once prosthetics advance beyond a given point and the bugs are worked out, the technology catches on.
2. Next we use them to give us hands free operation of computers. The first customer is the military. Soon jet pilots, drone operators, and remote robosoldier operators are outfitted with these. The interface will be no different from what's available the public, but the software interface will be a military secret.
3. Then we'll use them to enhance our senses. Inputs into sensory areas of the brain will allow us to hook up new devices to dramatically alter what we can see, hear, smell, and taste.
4. Bidirectional hookups to the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex will allow us to store memories in external "expansion" devices or supply swappable memories of various information.
5. Direct communication between minds will be a natural outgrowth of #3.
6. Sharing memories will be a natural outgrowth of #4.
7. Memory theft will be a natural outgrowth of #6.
8. Mapping and storage of one's memories will allow that information to survive the body.
9. Mapping and storage of linkages within the brain will allow the mind to survive the body.
10. Robots will be able to utilize the external memories, thus shortening the time to train robots how to perform tasks and deal with situations.
11. Externally stored minds can be given control of robot bodies.
12. Rather than traveling to new planets, we'll send robotic bodies. Once there, "body time" will be sold. A mind can be uploaded to the robotic body, allowed to enjoy the experience of being on Titan or Mars or wherever, and then transmitted back. Space travel with no perceived travel time, no need for human habitable environment, and no risk to the human.
13. Hive mind.
I could go on all day. At some point the virtual people / hive mind do away with the meatware, we construct a Dysan sphere, and we spend our time as gods of the virtual worlds we create for ourselves.
Which, of course, has all been done before. Where do you think your current reality came from?
Graphics Workshop Professional will convert just about anything to an ICO. It's not 100% though -- sometimes you end up with an icon that's off-center for some odd reason. But I love this application -- I've been using it for years now and it's just too handy not to have. It's not terribly expensive, either.
Website: http://www.mindworkshop.com/
Price: $44.95
I also have the GIF Construction Set, which is great and all, but I'm just as likely to use some of my other graphics tools to create GIFs, or just use Flash. Xara3D is good for animated text.
rambling...
Using the same identifier in different places and capitalizing it differently is inviting trouble in general.
I absolutely do not agree with this statement. If the compiler accepts any capitalization as valid and goes off the spelling only, there is trouble to get into. As for refactoring, non-case-sensitive refactoring tools exist and work very nicely, thank you very much. Check out Delphi 2005. "Suh-weet" only begins to describe it.
Which would you rather risk hearing 25 years from now: "Dad, you were right: I should've gotten an MBA," (from a kid who didn't do what you advised) or "Dad, you were wrong: business school was a waste of what could have been my most productive years as a ______," (from a kid who did what you insisted)?
I wouldn't be surprised if I heard, "Dad, I'm doing what I wanted in life, and the MBA didn't figure in at all, but I certainly have a good understanding of how businesses operate." And that would be ok, too. I never expect to hear your second option, ever. I'm not going to force my kids to do anything but get a well-rounded education, and by force I mean with my checkbook. What they do with the education is their choice.
They have them in some digital cameras as well. If you tilt the camera to take a picture, on playback the picture is reoriented to be upright. Pretty slick, really.
Consider tilting your laptop all over the place on an airplane. I''m sure it would annoy your neighbors to no end.
Actually, tilting the laptop didn't annoy my neighbors nearly as much as the airplane sounds I made, or when I'd headbutt the guy sitting next to me when I'd tilt my head along with the laptop.
The stewardess took my laptop away half way through the trip. Something about homeland security...
For instance, in a car racing game, you steer by tilting the PowerBook left and right, go faster by tilting it forward, brake by tilting it backwards! ...Wouldn't it be nice to have a gaming motion sensor be standard issue in all future laptops?"
I tried it with John Madden's NFL Football. I threw a Hail Mary pass; a perfect, aim-for-the-end-zone spiral. My Powerbook sailed out the window of my 10th floor San Francisco apartment and I haven't seen it since.
I wonder if the pass was complete?