It's true that often when the size of a black hole is mentioned, it is the Swartzchild radius or "Event Horizon" that is being mentioned, being it's apparent size to our instruments.
It is not however true that black holes are points. A black hole that became a point gravity source is what is referred to as a singularity. It was a singularity that became the big bang and if the "big crunch" theory is correct, it will probably be a singularity that the universe ends as, but under any other circumstances the creation of a singulairty would require a set of events so astronomically unlikely that it is not believed that any do have or will come into existence during the lifetime of the universe. So in fact black holes DO have a radius, but considering the tremendous size quoted here, I imagine they are in fact referring to the Swartzchild radius.
-- The key here is if you run a venture that -- is designed as a place of *public -- accomadation*, then it must be accessable -- to all the *public*. That's the key word.
-And what about those people who can't read? -Should someone care about them too or they -are less important than blinds?
I understand that you are making a joke here, but you hit upon an important point and the fact that your extreme example is a real concern should be a hint that maybe you can't just dismiss accessibility issues with a reductio ad absurdum.
Many people who cannot read or experience difficulty reading do so because of a learning disability such as dyslexia. The ADA also deals with people with learning disabilities and designing a site to conform to section 508 or the W3Cs Web Accessibility Initiative will ensure that your site is accessible to those people who cannot read as well. How? Through a screen-reader, the exact same device that someone who is blind would use.
Also, making your site accessible will make it available to people who do not speak the language in which it was written because a site that is accessible is a site that can be fed to the Fish.
The point is that many more people than you might think use assistive technology and the minimal effort required to make a website accessibile is rewarded many times over in terms of ease of use.
If this "Internet" of yours catches on, do you think there is any chance that it will affect the way people interact with existing media, such as text, music and movies?
Re:Recycle Bins - don't you just hate them?
on
Undelete In Linux
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· Score: 1
Re:Recycle Bins - don't you just hate them?
on
Undelete In Linux
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· Score: 5, Insightful
It is nice to be able to have the cheap sense of superiority that comes with not needing something that someone else needs. Of your reasons, only one is valid that I see:
>Because you have a poor machine with less than 4Gb of disk and you need all the space you can get
But still, no matter how long you've been a linux user it's still possible to accidently type "rm core *" rather than "rm core*" and not catch it until half a second after you hit enter and realize that you have irrecoverably destroyed your project(you didn't really want to punish it for segfaulting).
and your number is only 0.999998983 (approximately) of the EXACT speed of light. 186,000 miles per second(or 300,000,000 metres per second for those of us who use sensible weights and measures) is the usual approximation, more than good enough in this case.
On re-reading the article and a couple of links posted by a thoughtful reader, I now understand why there is no problem with infinite mass. It's worth noting that NO MATTER OR INFORMATION actually exceeds the speed of light in these experiments. Therefore it is thoroughly impossible to use these methods for faster than light communication.
Can anyone explain to a non-physicist the implications of this sort of thing to Lorentz-Transformations, etc. I mean photons have energy and therefore mass and once accelerated past the speed of light wouldn't the mass and energy of said photon be several different shades of infinite?
Re:prepares to be flamed for pointing out...
on
LoTR:LEGO Originals
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· Score: 1
And some Star Wars.
Did the guy who made this really buy SIX Darth Maul sets just so that he could make his little troop of Uruk-Hai?
I mean having that kind of time to spare is one thing, but it's obvious that he didn't just construct this out of bricks he had lying around. Those Star Wars sets are expensive.
It's a quote from Moby Dick. Unfortunately, the character limit to Slashdot sigs left me with the choice of attributing the source or cutting the quote short.
Estimated number of Atoms in the Universe: 1.00E+81
Soo.... If you show me:
1. A way to make a single atom store 10 to the power of 62 terabytes of information
2. A government-stamped letter of permission to turn the known universe into a chess computer
then I'll admit that chess is dead.
Note 1: Deep Blue is no longer the most powerful chess computer, that honour has passed to Deep Fritz which is capable of running on an i86 architecture(unlike th proprietary machine that ran deep blue). Also, Deep Fritz was not designed to beat anyone in particular, yet it has succeeded at defeating both Deep Blue and Kramnik(the current world chess champion).
Note 2: I know that my 10E-81 figure does not include free subatomic particles(photons, free electrons, mesons, etc.), but you get the idea.
So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).
What are the TV manufacturers complaining about, suddenly they can force everyone who has been holding out to buy a new tv. BIG PROFITS.
Re:Changes the dynamic of the business
on
Borrowing ROMs
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· Score: 2
To be fair:
For the most part, it's the publishing houses complaining, not the authors themselves.
Sure some authors have been vocal on the subject, but they are in the minority.
Funny how Molson is suing for control of the canadian.biz domain(as if a beer company could have intellectual property rights to the name of our country and yet:
Two foundations, one called "The.Org Foundation" and the other "The DotOrg Foundation" can both be bidding for the same contract at the same time without litigation.
Nice to see a sign of maturity in this overly-litigous world.
I noticed that your AliceBot won the 2000 Loebner Prize for most human responses. My question is: "As an Artificial Intelligence researcher, do you feel that the Loebner Prize represents a legitimate variety of testing, or did you just want the $2000?"
I was pretty sure that almost all AI researchers came to the agreement about thirty years ago that the original imitation game as proposed by Turing in 1951 was useful only as a mental exercise, not in practice. Do you feel that the types of developments that the Loebner prize supports(intentional, hard-coded spelling mistakes, etc.) are actually productive in terms of the AI research project?
Ok... that kind of looks like two questions, but just pretend that I worded it better and made it one question.
one- as far as i know, cowboy neal isn't in a band.
two- you can't possibly reasonably poll a large crowd in this sort of thing with less than a hundred options. Maybe twenty to twenty five percent of the slashdot crowd might choose their favorite band from those listed, but you've got a pretty diverse crowd here. I'm sure other choices might include: Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Johnny Cash, Green Day, Moby, Frank Sinatra, Rage Against the Machine...
Slashdot Mirror
It's true that often when the size of a black hole is mentioned, it is the Swartzchild radius or "Event Horizon" that is being mentioned, being it's apparent size to our instruments.
It is not however true that black holes are points. A black hole that became a point gravity source is what is referred to as a singularity. It was a singularity that became the big bang and if the "big crunch" theory is correct, it will probably be a singularity that the universe ends as, but under any other circumstances the creation of a singulairty would require a set of events so astronomically unlikely that it is not believed that any do have or will come into existence during the lifetime of the universe. So in fact black holes DO have a radius, but considering the tremendous size quoted here, I imagine they are in fact referring to the Swartzchild radius.
-- The key here is if you run a venture that
-- is designed as a place of *public
-- accomadation*, then it must be accessable
-- to all the *public*. That's the key word.
-And what about those people who can't read?
-Should someone care about them too or they
-are less important than blinds?
I understand that you are making a joke here, but you hit upon an important point and the fact that your extreme example is a real concern should be a hint that maybe you can't just dismiss accessibility issues with a reductio ad absurdum.
Many people who cannot read or experience difficulty reading do so because of a learning disability such as dyslexia. The ADA also deals with people with learning disabilities and designing a site to conform to section 508 or the W3Cs Web Accessibility Initiative will ensure that your site is accessible to those people who cannot read as well. How? Through a screen-reader, the exact same device that someone who is blind would use.
Also, making your site accessible will make it available to people who do not speak the language in which it was written because a site that is accessible is a site that can be fed to the Fish.
The point is that many more people than you might think use assistive technology and the minimal effort required to make a website accessibile is rewarded many times over in terms of ease of use.
If this "Internet" of yours catches on, do you think there is any chance that it will affect the way people interact with existing media, such as text, music and movies?
root@typee [~/foo] # ls
;-)
core core2 core3 core4 important_file.c
root@typee [~/foo] # rm core *
root@typee [~/foo] # ls
root@typee [~/foo] #
> Maybe you're using the wrong shell
maybe... but then, there a lot of other people who use bash && debian.
17+2i
It is nice to be able to have the cheap sense of superiority that comes with not needing something that someone else needs. Of your reasons, only one is valid that I see:
>Because you have a poor machine with less than 4Gb of disk and you need all the space you can get
But still, no matter how long you've been a linux user it's still possible to accidently type "rm core *" rather than "rm core*" and not catch it until half a second after you hit enter and realize that you have irrecoverably destroyed your project(you didn't really want to punish it for segfaulting).
and your number is only 0.999998983 (approximately) of the EXACT speed of light. 186,000 miles per second(or 300,000,000 metres per second for those of us who use sensible weights and measures) is the usual approximation, more than good enough in this case.
stop being a nitpicker.
Where 2 billion=arbitrarily large
On re-reading the article and a couple of links posted by a thoughtful reader, I now understand why there is no problem with infinite mass. It's worth noting that NO MATTER OR INFORMATION actually exceeds the speed of light in these experiments. Therefore it is thoroughly impossible to use these methods for faster than light communication.
I still recommend checking out the comic.
THANKS.
those links were exactly what i needed in order to parse the article.
Can anyone explain to a non-physicist the implications of this sort of thing to Lorentz-Transformations, etc. I mean photons have energy and therefore mass and once accelerated past the speed of light wouldn't the mass and energy of said photon be several different shades of infinite?
Also, I can't help but mention a partially relevant comic: Prof Jack's Fun with Relativity
And some Star Wars.
Did the guy who made this really buy SIX Darth Maul sets just so that he could make his little troop of Uruk-Hai?
I mean having that kind of time to spare is one thing, but it's obvious that he didn't just construct this out of bricks he had lying around. Those Star Wars sets are expensive.
easy.
a reflection of yourself(assuming you are looking at the cloaked mona lisa).
anyone know if knight of the dinner table is available on-line?
or in a cheap print-publication?
my mistake, i had somehow gotten confused, you are right.
Fritz has however beaten both Viswanathan Anand
and Kasparov(albeit in blitz, not slow chess).
an earlier version of Fitz did meet with Kramnik incidentally. Kramnik won 1.5-0.5
It's a quote from Moby Dick. Unfortunately, the character limit to Slashdot sigs left me with the choice of attributing the source or cutting the quote short.
this is off-topic, but i need to say it.
thomas edison did not invent the telphone.
he had nothing to do with it,
It was Alexander Graham Bell, a Scotsman living in Canada, who invented the telephone.
There WAS a race for the patent, because at least four different researchers were indpendently working on the same project at the same time.
Estimated number of Atoms in the Universe: 1.00E+81
Soo.... If you show me:
1. A way to make a single atom store 10 to the power of 62 terabytes of information
2. A government-stamped letter of permission to turn the known universe into a chess computer
then I'll admit that chess is dead.
Note 1: Deep Blue is no longer the most powerful chess computer, that honour has passed to Deep Fritz which is capable of running on an i86 architecture(unlike th proprietary machine that ran deep blue). Also, Deep Fritz was not designed to beat anyone in particular, yet it has succeeded at defeating both Deep Blue and Kramnik(the current world chess champion).
Note 2: I know that my 10E-81 figure does not include free subatomic particles(photons, free electrons, mesons, etc.), but you get the idea.
So if I don't buy into the "everything is disposable" routine and am still using a ten-year old tv in 2006, suddenly I will be treated only to static and a few pirate tv channels being broadcast from teenagers' backyards(until the FCC shuts them down of course).
What are the TV manufacturers complaining about, suddenly they can force everyone who has been holding out to buy a new tv. BIG PROFITS.
To be fair:
For the most part, it's the publishing houses complaining, not the authors themselves.
Sure some authors have been vocal on the subject, but they are in the minority.
Funny how Molson is suing for control of the canadian.biz domain(as if a beer company could have intellectual property rights to the name of our country and yet:
.Org Foundation" and the other "The DotOrg Foundation" can both be bidding for the same contract at the same time without litigation.
Two foundations, one called "The
Nice to see a sign of maturity in this overly-litigous world.
I noticed that your AliceBot won the 2000 Loebner Prize for most human responses. My question is: "As an Artificial Intelligence researcher, do you feel that the Loebner Prize represents a legitimate variety of testing, or did you just want the $2000?"
I was pretty sure that almost all AI researchers came to the agreement about thirty years ago that the original imitation game as proposed by Turing in 1951 was useful only as a mental exercise, not in practice. Do you feel that the types of developments that the Loebner prize supports(intentional, hard-coded spelling mistakes, etc.) are actually productive in terms of the AI research project?
Ok... that kind of looks like two questions, but just pretend that I worded it better and made it one question.
when you try to base a real world business plan on sim-dollars(simoleans). The sims may be a pretty impressive environment, but it's not reality yet.
On the other hand, $200 would be a nice change for a cheap sim-puter. I always thought $999 was a bit steep for an entry-level model.
I thought Bill Gates was the Feature Creep of this article...
score one for ambiguous reporting.
Two Problems:
one- as far as i know, cowboy neal isn't in a band.
two- you can't possibly reasonably poll a large crowd in this sort of thing with less than a hundred options. Maybe twenty to twenty five percent of the slashdot crowd might choose their favorite band from those listed, but you've got a pretty diverse crowd here. I'm sure other choices might include: Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk, Johnny Cash, Green Day, Moby, Frank Sinatra, Rage Against the Machine...
just to name a few.
but i already solved this conundrum in a previous contracting gig and i'm pretty sure it would be an IP violation to re-post it here.