That's reverse engineering. The original orinetation of that cup took the developers over 5 years to research and design. By closely examining it and applying its technology to your own product, you have violated the original patent and the DMCA (I have no idea what part of the DMCA you've violated, but there's a pretty damn good chance something you did today was prohibited by it).
Your actions seriously threaten the incentive for creativity in this country and will not be tolerated. You and anyone else who thinks they can look at their coffee cup and get away with it are in serious trouble.
See you in court.
All black holes radiate energy. The rate at which they do so is inversely proportional to their mass. Black holes of the size we expect to exist naturally radiate as if they had a temperature of something like a billionth of a Kelvin. Smaller ones could theoretically radiate much more energy. As the singularity radiates more and more of its mass away, its radiative power increases exponentially until it disappears entirely.
This is all recalled (quite inaccurately, in all probability) from Hawking's Brief History of Time. If you want specifics and/or reliable facts, read the original.
Hmmmm... HP calculator designers talking about bistromathics. Could this be an upcoming feature in HP calculators? Put a second processor encased in a microscopic-scale Italian restaurant in the calculator, and you could do all kinds of cool stuff with it.
But the character who painted the offending sentence soon got a lesson in Latin grammar, and was forced to paint the correct version several hundred times.
Side note: You watch WAY too much Python. But then so do I, so what the hell am I complaining about?
"The fungi that did the damage, Novikova said, included members of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladesporium - all very common on Earth."
Why do so few people seem to realize that the fungus is only growing in the pressurized areas of the space station? It's not some new super-fungus that can survive in a vacuum, and attacking metal and plastic is nothing new. The stuff probably
got there on somebody's socks. There's nothing you can do with this mold that you can't do with the stuff growing under your kitchen sink or on your shower walls. The only remarkable thing is that nobody realized that it would be a problem until now.
I just don't get what everybody's so pissed about. These people are intelligent and honest enough to attain high-level security clearance with our government, and we don't think that they will give a fair and impartial review? The government has already made their job easier by restricting the review to what must be the most important aspects of Carnivore. With all this talk of conspiracy, I start to suspect that some proles don't think the Party has their best interest at heart. Every member of the review team chosen has previously proven themselves trustworthy to either the Ministry of Truth, the Ministry of Plenty, some even to the Ministry of Peace, and yet you do not trust them also? They are all Party members, good and true. To allow the review to be conducted by possible members of Goldstein's Brotherhood would be doubleplusungood. Besides, we really don't need to know exactly what Carnivore does or how it works. What matters is that our Big Brother has found a potential way to watch for thought-criminals and enemy spies, and has to make sure that it will work goodwise. Don't ungoodthink about it.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Big business does work well - for itself. Not too many people will deny that big business is horribly irresponsible (and those who will are making money off that irresponsibility). Large corporations hold nothing higher than the dollar. Not your right to express your ideas, not your right to make a buck on your own, not your right to live on a non-toxic planet. Nothing. The current state of affairs with the DMCA, MPAA, RIAA, DeCSS, and several other acronyms shows what happens when government stops controlling business and business begins controlling government. What difference is to be expected when government makes no attempt to control business? The only thing I can see happening is business having even less trouble violating your fundamental rights.
Humans tend toward some kind of power structure. To completely abolish government has no lasting effect but to instate a new government, probably just as corrupt and oppressive as the last. For evidence, just look at most of the revolutions that have happened in third-world countries. The general case is something like this: Peasants get pissed at rich and powerful people, peasants revolt, kill powerful people, instate provisional government, military dictatorship takes over in about 3 weeks.
Government, ideally, should have no purpose but to protect its citizens from opression and external harm. The government should have as little power as is necessary to prevent another, more opressive power structure from forming. No more. Of course, such a perfect government is impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't get close. Libertarianism is definitely a step in the right direction, but it can go too far in the case of deregulating business.
I'd write more, but I really need to get to class.
Plenty of miscellaneous chemicals, including oxygen, can be found in the polymer layers on either side of the aluminum. Over time, the aluminum (which bonds more strongly to oxygen than the carbons in the plastic) will essentially rip the oxygen off the plastic and corrode. A much longer-lived reflective surface could be made with platinum or gold instead of aluminum, or a different plastic specifically designed not to facilitate corrosion.
I was gonna post another opinion about God here, but then realized how horribly off-topic this whole flame-fest is and decided not to add to it. Instead, I decided to comment on the discussion thus far.
People have been arguing about religion since time immemorial. It will probably never stop. But here's a little advice anyway:
To the zealots: You're never going to convince the atheists that you're right, and you just piss people off by trying. Just worry about your own eternity and let everyone else worry about theirs.
To the atheists: You're never going to convince the zealots that they're wrong, so ignore them and hope they shut up.
To the moderators: Make it clear that Slashdot isn't alt.religion.flame.flame.flame in whatever way you can.
Neutrinos are interact _very_ weakly with everyday matter. The chances of a neutrino interacting with a nucleus, as opposed to just passing through it, are about 1 in 10^(something big). I don't have my physics book on me, so I can't give you any good numbers, but neutrino interactions are pretty rare (I seem to remember the "somthing big" being 26, but that's just a guess). Neutrinos can be detected, though, if you look hard enough. The occasional interaction with an already unstable nucleus can produce characteristic gamma rays, which are easily observed. This is how the existance of neutrinos was demonstrated in the 50's, using the huge numbers of the little buggers produced from a nuclear reactor. One more thing: neutrinos are not quite massless, and therefore can't travel at the speed of light. They do get pretty damn close, though. Even so, they carry very little energy and momentum. In most nuclear reactions, the gamma rays carry off much more energy and momentum than any neutrinos involved. So even if you could catch them, they would be of less use than the light for propelling a spacecraft.
>Also, the 'solar sail' phenomenon is based on the fact that the particles of solar wind have mass and thus impart their momentum to the spacecraft. Not quite. Solar sails use the fact that photons (0 rest mass) have momentum. When a photon hits the sail and is reflected, the craft attached to the sail gains twice the momentum of the photon. The solar wind, on the other hand, is the continuous blast of ionized gas particles ejected from the sun.
This is just natural selection in action. People smart enough to use anything but Windoze aren't affected by it, except for mailbox clutter. People who avoid contact with Outlook users aren't affected by it. People who use Windoze and Outlook but are smart enough not to put anything in the hackable-as-hell address book aren't propagating it. People who don't open e-mail attachments without a thought aren't propagating it. Those who have sold their souls (and systems) to Microsoft get screwed by it. Now who can tell me what the moral of this story is?
Do you think you could sue Bill Gates for stealing ideas from the description of Sirius Cybernetics' customer service and product design? The "conceal the major flaws behind tons of superficial flaws" technique seems to be the basis of the entire Microsoft empire...
Bunsen
Re:Pshaw! This one's easy!
on
Author Unknown
·
· Score: 1
I was going to post a comment to the effect of the parent, but actually bothered to check for redundancy before posting. Anyway, I also ran part of my comment through a couple languages with the fish. I think the translation illustrates the point quite well:
Original English text:
Just run it through the fish a few times. Any identifying aspects of the language will be removed, but so will most of the meaning.
Result after translations:
Straight lines race him by fish some marks. All the possible typical aspects of the language are removed, however thus will most of the time the importance.
Now let's try it on a real-world message, say a ransom note:
Original text:
Drop 10,000 dollars in small, unmarked bills in the dumpster behind McDonalds at 10:00 PM Monday night or we kill CmdrTaco.
Translated (this one's even worse than usual);
Leave to 10,000 dollar in small, unmarked loose from the calculations in dump dumpster behind McDonalds the night 10:00 p. Mr. Montag, or we destroy CmdrTaco.
I think that'll keep pretty much everybody guessing.
Slashdot Mirror
That's reverse engineering. The original orinetation of that cup took the developers over 5 years to research and design. By closely examining it and applying its technology to your own product, you have violated the original patent and the DMCA (I have no idea what part of the DMCA you've violated, but there's a pretty damn good chance something you did today was prohibited by it).
Your actions seriously threaten the incentive for creativity in this country and will not be tolerated. You and anyone else who thinks they can look at their coffee cup and get away with it are in serious trouble.
See you in court.
This is all recalled (quite inaccurately, in all probability) from Hawking's Brief History of Time. If you want specifics and/or reliable facts, read the original.
Hmmmm... HP calculator designers talking about bistromathics. Could this be an upcoming feature in HP calculators? Put a second processor encased in a microscopic-scale Italian restaurant in the calculator, and you could do all kinds of cool stuff with it.
Side note: You watch WAY too much Python. But then so do I, so what the hell am I complaining about?
"The fungi that did the damage, Novikova said, included members of the genera Aspergillus, Penicillium, and Cladesporium - all very common on Earth."
Why do so few people seem to realize that the fungus is only growing in the pressurized areas of the space station? It's not some new super-fungus that can survive in a vacuum, and attacking metal and plastic is nothing new. The stuff probably got there on somebody's socks. There's nothing you can do with this mold that you can't do with the stuff growing under your kitchen sink or on your shower walls. The only remarkable thing is that nobody realized that it would be a problem until now.
The first thing that comes into my twisted mind is the janitor saving the galaxy from some evil alien race...
Police have had helicopters for many years now, and yet people still think that pigs don't fly...
Sorry, couldn't resist.
War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Humans tend toward some kind of power structure. To completely abolish government has no lasting effect but to instate a new government, probably just as corrupt and oppressive as the last. For evidence, just look at most of the revolutions that have happened in third-world countries. The general case is something like this: Peasants get pissed at rich and powerful people, peasants revolt, kill powerful people, instate provisional government, military dictatorship takes over in about 3 weeks.
Government, ideally, should have no purpose but to protect its citizens from opression and external harm. The government should have as little power as is necessary to prevent another, more opressive power structure from forming. No more. Of course, such a perfect government is impossible. But that doesn't mean we can't get close. Libertarianism is definitely a step in the right direction, but it can go too far in the case of deregulating business.
I'd write more, but I really need to get to class.
The military is working on this exact idea. It's a looong way from functionality, though.
"Back off man, I'm a scientist."
People have been arguing about religion since time immemorial. It will probably never stop. But here's a little advice anyway:
To the zealots: You're never going to convince the atheists that you're right, and you just piss people off by trying. Just worry about your own eternity and let everyone else worry about theirs.
To the atheists: You're never going to convince the zealots that they're wrong, so ignore them and hope they shut up.
To the moderators: Make it clear that Slashdot isn't alt.religion.flame.flame.flame in whatever way you can.
One more thing: neutrinos are not quite massless, and therefore can't travel at the speed of light. They do get pretty damn close, though. Even so, they carry very little energy and momentum. In most nuclear reactions, the gamma rays carry off much more energy and momentum than any neutrinos involved. So even if you could catch them, they would be of less use than the light for propelling a spacecraft.
>Also, the 'solar sail' phenomenon is based on the fact that the particles of solar wind have mass and thus impart their momentum to the spacecraft.
Not quite. Solar sails use the fact that photons (0 rest mass) have momentum. When a photon hits the sail and is reflected, the craft attached to the sail gains twice the momentum of the photon. The solar wind, on the other hand, is the continuous blast of ionized gas particles ejected from the sun.
Bunsen
This is just natural selection in action. People smart enough to use anything but Windoze aren't affected by it, except for mailbox clutter. People who avoid contact with Outlook users aren't affected by it. People who use Windoze and Outlook but are smart enough not to put anything in the hackable-as-hell address book aren't propagating it. People who don't open e-mail attachments without a thought aren't propagating it. Those who have sold their souls (and systems) to Microsoft get screwed by it. Now who can tell me what the moral of this story is?
Bunsen
Original English text:
Result after translations: Now let's try it on a real-world message, say a ransom note:Original text:
Translated (this one's even worse than usual); I think that'll keep pretty much everybody guessing.