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User: chichilalescu

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  1. Re:That's great on Secrets of a Memory Champion · · Score: 1

    or he could simply get on with his life.
    science works by carefully writing down the steps to a process that gets you from the question to the answer. you publish what you write, and then you go on to a different problem.
    the important aspect is to keep all the writings comprehensible, and check that they work. not to remember them. if someone is interested in previous results, they have to go to the published report, and retrace the steps.
    if some particular result is useful, it will be used so many times that the user will memorize it. but it's not worth the effort of memorizing everything on the off chance that you might need it. only astronauts need that kind of comitment.

  2. Re:"Knowing when its about to ring" on Cell Phone Use Tied To Changes In Brain Activity · · Score: 1

    it was kind of funny in my home town. I would walk at night along a street, and the lights would turn off as I got under them, then back on again. my father told me later that they sometimes turn some of the lights off intermittently, to save power. that kind of took the romance out of thinking about it...

  3. Re:EU-UK? on LOFAR, the World's Biggest Telescope, Is Up and Running · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I understand it depends on context. But for this particular story, saying "EU-UK" seems kind of stupid. Everything started in the Netherlands, and it involves a bunch of countries from Europe. In fact, they're all from the EU, so that would be enough. I can see that this title is the submitter's contribution, anyway, as the original article specifically uses "EU-wide".

    Regarding your trips to "America": if you told me that, I would assume you were talking about a trip that included latin America. I expect people to use "US/States" and "Canada", or North America if they mean both (by the way, I assume Mexicans wouldn't like that...). If you were talking about visiting specific geographic points of interest, I would expect to hear "Rockies/Andes/Amazon/...", not necessarily the name of a country.

  4. Re:EU-UK? on LOFAR, the World's Biggest Telescope, Is Up and Running · · Score: 2

    in which tradition? the Europe I know of contains the British Islands, and meets Asia at the Ural mountains.

  5. true. on German Foreign Office Going Back To Windows · · Score: 1

    at some point, I changed the background image for my mom's desktop. upon discovering this, she exclaimed "where's my windows?"

  6. Re:wow on Cancer Resembles Life 1 Billion Years Ago · · Score: 1

    it's not about imposing myself on the world. that's why I want to have kids, and why I want to tell people about my view of the world.
    I want to live forever because I want to know the future. in a way. it's complicated, but the basic idea is that I want to know things and I can't find them out if I die. to put it in another way: I want as much time as I can get, and if I can think of a way to get more, I will do my best to make it happen.
    I want to see a solar eclipse from the moon. I want to understand the working of the human mind starting from the fundamental principles of the universe (or an explanation of why something like that is impossible). I want to know if the Riemmann hypothesis is true. and other stuff.
    I doubt I can get all that within the next ~50 years, so if I can preserve my consciousness so that I can experience more, I would like to do that.
    I realize it's selfish, and you might see it as "imposing myself on the world", because I don't plan on just watching as others are making these things happen, but it's what I want. To be more correct, what I've just said is as close as I can get to what I want, because on this level of "want" I can't be sure I am capable of properly talking about it.

  7. Re:wow on Cancer Resembles Life 1 Billion Years Ago · · Score: 1

    actually, it does a lot of good to "I, the copy", who will remember wanting to live forever, and then living forever. "I, the original" might indeed resent "the copy", but that's perfectly human and completely irrelevant to the copy.
    as far as the mental sanity of "the original" is concerned, it would indeed be better to separate them altogether, or simply tell them the copying process failed and "turn on the copy" only after their death.

    what you have to understand is that before the actual copying process, "I, the original, am the copy".

  8. Re:Only 39% curse at their computers on Only 39% Curse At Their Computers? · · Score: 1

    at some point I was with my hard drive at a friend's place, to copy music (more than ten years ago, it was legal in my country at the time). from time to time when he got angry he would hit the monitor. I told him "you do know that it's not the monitor's fault, right?". he said "well yes, but if I strike the computer something important might actually break".
    the truth is, this reaction is the most natural that comes to me, and I think to most people too. we hit the keyboard and the screen (true, for a laptop the "keyboard" is the computer, but that's just coincidence).

  9. Re:Only 39% curse at their computers on Only 39% Curse At Their Computers? · · Score: 1

    *to the screen, not the actual computer, therefore motivating their answer "I don't curse the computer".

  10. Re:Line between Civil Disobedience. . . on HBGary Federal Hacked By Anonymous · · Score: 1

    In one of the Anonymous/DDOS discussions, I saw someone compare a DDOS to picketing, which is legal in some countries. I have no idea what the laws are in the various countries involved, but the question is like this: assume I don't like a store, and I go in front of it and try to stop people from going in. If that is legal (with certain conditions), than what type of action am I allowed to take against websites?
    I'm just curious if someone has an answer to that.

  11. Re:Umm... Revenge Fail. on Woman Gets Revenge Courtesy of Google Images · · Score: 1

    to tell you the truth, I think she did just fine. an upper commenter notes that a boy doing this would have been charged with harassment and so on. I think it's smart to just do something annoying rather than offensive in this context.
    also, the point is that having a professional photo like that kind of makes you look superficial (at least to me).
    and taking into account that the boy is upset by this (and his mother too), I think the girl did what she set out to do (assuming her idea was to simply upset/hurt him). additionally, the boy's online presence will now be forever tainted by this.

  12. Re:I love it! on Debian 6.0 Released In GNU/Linux, FreeBSD Flavors · · Score: 1

    which of course is for people who lack the time or ability to just go ahead and setup the universe properly...

    (I know, I'm just being a parasite, but I couldn't resist)

  13. Re:Space elevator on Tethered, Water-Powered Jetpack Provides Two Hours of Flight Time · · Score: 1

    you're right, obviously. I forgot the tower would be spinning with the Earth's surface.

  14. Re:2 hours? on Tethered, Water-Powered Jetpack Provides Two Hours of Flight Time · · Score: 1

    personally, I see it as an alternative to a water scooter. however, this thing allows you to go over the water at a relatively large height, and might be useful in a search because you see more. Although I don't know if it wouldn't in fact turn out to be cheaper to just use helicopters in the search (where you see even more).
    Anyway, it's not in any way like a car tethered to the gas station. planes work the same way, but with air (they pull and push air, this thing pulls and pushes water).

  15. Re:could it be scaled up on Tethered, Water-Powered Jetpack Provides Two Hours of Flight Time · · Score: 1

    while true in practice for a 20 km tower, your observation is not technically correct. For a long enough tower (too lazy to compute now, but much larger than the distance Earth-Moon), the velocity given by a normal human toss would be enough.
    you're in orbit if you have the right combination of velocity and potential energy (the momentum also gives the kinetic energy), not just if you have the right velocity. Also note that you need the right orientation for that velocity.

  16. Re:Telepathy? on Research Finds That Electric Fields Help Neurons Fire · · Score: 1

    yes. by the way, I find that a very scary idea.
    anyway, as an additional comment, I think this avenue of research is much better than puttin people in different rooms and asking them to send thoughts to each other.

  17. Re:i just took my headphones off on Research Finds That Electric Fields Help Neurons Fire · · Score: 1

    not really. by construction, a speaker contains a moving circuit, and a varying electromagnetic field. thus by construction, the speaker will emit electromagnetic radiation.

  18. Re:Jewish supremacists on Mark Zuckerberg Makes Surprise SNL Cameo · · Score: 1

    [...] and continuing with our list of idiots, others were saying: "Of course The Social Network received 8 Oscar nominations - it was written by a WHITE, about a WHITE, what more do you need?"

    But the fact remains that it is natural for The Social Network to have received 8 Oscar nominations - it was written by a digital* mammal, about a digital mammal, what more do we need?

    Wishing you a good day, this was Dolphin News.

    *Translator's note: digital as in "mammal with digits".

  19. Re:With a name like that.... on Facebook-Deprived Man Sues For $500K · · Score: 1

    I like that in the english language, all the rules are "you should always/never X, unless Y or maybe Z". In other words, I have just one thing to say to you: you're a ghoughphtheightteeau head.

  20. Re:A blob of platinum? No! on Kilogram Gets Controversial; Why Not Split the Difference? · · Score: 1

    your experiment would generally give different results at different altitudes. and, if you want to measure the pressure to take that into account, than you're goint to need a unit of mass before.

  21. Re:Kilo on Kilogram Gets Controversial; Why Not Split the Difference? · · Score: 1

    wow. please tell me you're kidding...

  22. Re:Silly question on Kilogram Gets Controversial; Why Not Split the Difference? · · Score: 1

    it doesn't work. when you want to measure the reactive force, you need the definition of a kilogram.

  23. Re:Voting? on What Exactly Is a Galaxy? · · Score: 1

    actually, I think voting for the definition of a term is just fine. the science resides in the accepted relationships between different terms, and that's not up for debate.

    for an analogy, think of colors: suppose for some reason I want to call "green" what everyone else calls "red". I write a book where I say that the wavelenth of the color "green" is around 400 nm, and that's fine. It would be a problem if I also said that most plants have the color "green" as well --- that would be false (for earth, at least).

    I assume you meant to say that the term "galaxy" should be applied to a reasonably complex system that has a few clear properties. However, I think the idea of voting on the term is just the idea of voting on which properties should be considered; the science doesn't change in any way.

  24. Re:Try this on Earth first, noobie. on Physicists Call For Alien Messaging Protocol · · Score: 1

    in the sense of mathematical logic, an alphabet is an arbitrary collection of symbols. Here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-order_logic .

  25. Re:Mostly irrelevant on Physicists Call For Alien Messaging Protocol · · Score: 1

    math is universal. the fact that we can see the same emission and absorbtion spectra in faraway galaxies as on Earth means that quantum phyics is a pretty good theory throughout the universe; in turn this means the math used for quantum physics has been found by all civilisations with a technology similar to our own (even if their formulation is different, the information content is implicitely the same).
    The axioms are there to define the language, not to define reality; there are plenty of people who work with variations of the basic set of axioms, and that's still mathematics.
    If you are referring to "is the axiom of choice real in our universe?", it doesn't really make sense to ask that question yet. All of the physics we have so far assumes the axiom of choice, and it describes the observed phenomena quite well. I can't imagine what level of technology we would have to reach in order to ask this question and be able to design an experiment to answer it.