I'm not an astro-physicist, but I do watch a lot of space-science documentaries. My understanding is that black holes spin, and sometimes two spin while also rotating around each other. Of course this happens very fast. The result [insert PhD-level explanation here] is a vortex which ejects stuff out of the one or two black holes at the "poles" of the action. Sort of like if the Earth spat out junk from the North and South poles. (Actually, we sort of do spit out magnetism at the poles, so it's sort of like that.)
So, I would imagine there are two jets spewing out of this black hole, but maybe there is only one. The direction of the cone would be perpendicular to the angular motion of the black hole.
Again, take what I said with the understanding that my knowledge comes from TV programs. Pass the salt.
Damn, science is cool. The stories science tells are better than the stories religions tell. Not only are the science stories bigger, grander, more interesting, more awe-inspiring, but they also have the significant added benefit of being true, to the extent that truth can be known. When science doesn't know the answer to something, science doesn't resort to meaningless cop-outs like "God did it". Instead, science gives the more reasonable answer "Yeah, uh, we don't know what that is, but we're looking into it." And then, at some point, science usually comes back and says, hey, we figured it out, and the answer is awesome. The problem with religious stories is that the mythologies are too paltry, too thin, to small for a modern person. God sits on a throne on the clouds, but in the actual universe the heavens go way, way, way, way beyond the clouds.
It seems to me that 120 days before needing approval from Congress is about 113 days too long. Maybe 118 days too long. Assuming the President had a valid reason to use this power, it's reasonable to think that Congress would approve similarly. The internet is pretty fricking important, and it's hard to imagine it going away for four months.
Also, of course, shutting down the major pipes won't make the internet disappear, it will just send it back to the Dark Ages of the early 1990s, when people manually connected their computers together and the routing software took care of the rest. Maybe IRC would see a comeback.
When I hear people spout claptrap like this, I weep for our public education system. Did you go to public school? Your civics teacher let you down very badly.
I encourage you to read the Constitution. It's not a complete picture of American jurisprudence, but it's a great start. It's also not terribly long, or terribly difficult, and you can easily find read-along guides that will tell you a little bit about what it means.
Yes. Thank goodness, we got rid of all those things in the 1990s. The only one of those technologies I've encountered since graduating college in 2002 is VGA, and then only when working with low-end PCs. (Well, I guess almost all PCs are low-end.) I waited for a decade for PCs to get on the DVI bandwagon, but they never really did; they waited and now are skipping straight to HDMI, which is a high quality technology but has the unfortunate DRM with it. So, I'm in complete agreement -- all that tech needs to die, or has already.
Don't worry, you can always use a browser which isn't compatible with HTML5. Stick with an old version of Firefox, or IE, or lynx or whatever you like, and stick to the parts of the web which work with those old browsers. You'll be fine.
But as the web (web browsers, specifically) evolve/s to take the place of traditional operating systems, obviously they will have to provide filesystem services to their applications. There will, of course, be problems; but they'll be worth it.
I figured Microsoft would just sit on their thumbs and wait for Google and other third parties to release hacks/updates to IE, the way they've done for years. So don't worry! IE will be fully HTML5 compatible, despite Microsoft's worst efforts.
No, they don't realize that. That's the problem. The solution is AdBlock Plus.
Another solution would be to get everyone in the world on the same page regarding how annoying an ad is permitted to be. I don't like to wait around for things that will never happen, so I just go ahead and use AdBlock.
Smart. It's always better to chase technology than to be on the forefront of the obvious coming wave. First movers are always losing in the marketplace.
Word. Slashdot is full of extremeist ideological black-and-white comments. I don't actually think most commenters think in such bifurcated ways, but that's the nature of internet dialogue. It can actually be really hard to make a moderate statement, because as you point out it's so easy to read someone's mild disagreement as stark raving disagreement. By the time you layer your point with enough qualifying statements, the point gets lost.
I see your point. Still, there is no such thing as "full" context, only more or less context. (No person can see or know everything.) For instance, the current Wikileaks hoopla is about some footage not yet released. Some people claim that is essential context, some say it's not, but even if it were released that certainly wouldn't be "full" context. It's easy to imagine the whole video still not providing the full story.
Anyway, I disagree that the example is stupid, but I definitely see where you are coming from. I bet we would agree that, generally, more openness is better.
Hmmm. I'd say a list of our international spy network members. Subterfuge prevents outright war, so if the enemy could eliminate our spying by eliminating our spies, we'd have to resort to nuking them. That would be sad.
Or, perhaps the methods of protecting our military infrastructure. For instance, if Al Qaeda knew that the password for our nuclear bombs was 12345, that would be bad for everyone involved.
Or, perhaps just as bad would be information released which, without sufficient context or completeness, caused people to make incorrect conclusions and support the wrong side. You know, classic disinformation. It's easy to imagine many such scenarios.
That was a good straw man argument on your part, though. If you were debating with young children who couldn't pick apart transparent logical fallacies, then you might have scored a point.
Sadly, I disagree. Some things can't be solved without resorting to violence. But, gladly, most things can -- almost everything. We should work toward that goal.
In a legal sense in the USA, okay I concede. In a general sense under common use, treason applies. My dictionary calls it "the crime of betraying one's country", and I think that fits the given description.
Not only Slashdot! I take the opportunity whenever I can, because I think it's important. Most people use the words "free market" to mean "market", and I think it's dangerous to confuse the two. "Free market" ideologues are dangerous and push an agenda which harms people. When people to casually toss around support for "free markets" when they don't really mean it, they unwittingly give credence to some very dangerous policy pushers.
And I guess my point is that people don't "get it". If they did, they wouldn't bother with the extra syllable and four letters; they'd just say "market".
I understand that your criticism is that I am being overly pedantic. I accept the criticism, but in the end have to disagree. I think it's important, which is why I bother to make the point. And I also usually begin by stipulating that it is a relatively minor point; a point only of diction which, while important, does not usually detract from the argument made.
Just a minor point: "free markets" are like perfect circles: an interesting thing to think about, but they can't exist in the actual universe. Three cheers for markets, but thoughtful people should stop talking about "free" markets.
Other than that you make a very good point and state it well.
The California state legislature throws stupid stuff like this around all the time. It never goes anywhere. They don't do it because they want to pass the law. They do it because there is some wealthy business behind it.
That is a motherfucking stupid reason to vote for or pass a bill. It borders on treason.
Within reason, I'm fine with people going as slowly as they want, so long as they stay in the lane appropriate for their speed. It's really easy to find the correct lane: look at the lane to your right, are you driving faster than the cars in that lane? If not, move to the right. Repeat as necessary. Your speed relative to the posted speed limit is completely irrelevant to your choice of lane; only your speed relative to other cars is relevant.
If you are a speed-limit bigot ("Anyone who goes faster than the speed limit is a bad person, because that's illegal!") then you should also be a lane bigot ("Anyone who drives too slow for a lane is a bad person, because that's holding up traffic, which is illegal!"). The difference between those two types of lawbreakers is that the people who speed are just trying to live their life and get to their destination, whereas people who hold up traffic are insufferable douchebags.
Also within the bounds of safety, I'm fine with people going as fast as they want. Almost all fast drivers know that they belong in the fast lane, so it's rarely a problem. Fast drivers need to make sure their vehicle is safe for high speeds, and apply additional care and consideration.
This is a total non-sequitur from your comment, which I find wry and funny. I always take the opportunity to tell people that speed isn't the problem, but rather lane choice.
I know you jest but I wanted to drop in with the trivia knowledge that, contrary to what some might imagine, ice cream sales correlate with cold climates. That is to say, ice cream sells better in places with colder weather. I grew up in Alaska and was told (hearsay) that Alaska had the highest ice cream consumption, per capita, in the USA. So, although I don't know for certain, I would imagine that ice cream sales do not struggle in Canada.
And now for my Cliff Clavin moment: Alaska ALSO has very high SPAM sales per capita, coming in second in the USA behind Hawaii. For this, I have no explanation, because I find SPAM repulsive.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not an astro-physicist, but I do watch a lot of space-science documentaries. My understanding is that black holes spin, and sometimes two spin while also rotating around each other. Of course this happens very fast. The result [insert PhD-level explanation here] is a vortex which ejects stuff out of the one or two black holes at the "poles" of the action. Sort of like if the Earth spat out junk from the North and South poles. (Actually, we sort of do spit out magnetism at the poles, so it's sort of like that.)
So, I would imagine there are two jets spewing out of this black hole, but maybe there is only one. The direction of the cone would be perpendicular to the angular motion of the black hole.
Again, take what I said with the understanding that my knowledge comes from TV programs. Pass the salt.
Damn, science is cool. The stories science tells are better than the stories religions tell. Not only are the science stories bigger, grander, more interesting, more awe-inspiring, but they also have the significant added benefit of being true, to the extent that truth can be known. When science doesn't know the answer to something, science doesn't resort to meaningless cop-outs like "God did it". Instead, science gives the more reasonable answer "Yeah, uh, we don't know what that is, but we're looking into it." And then, at some point, science usually comes back and says, hey, we figured it out, and the answer is awesome. The problem with religious stories is that the mythologies are too paltry, too thin, to small for a modern person. God sits on a throne on the clouds, but in the actual universe the heavens go way, way, way, way beyond the clouds.
Science is cool. Up with science.
It seems to me that 120 days before needing approval from Congress is about 113 days too long. Maybe 118 days too long. Assuming the President had a valid reason to use this power, it's reasonable to think that Congress would approve similarly. The internet is pretty fricking important, and it's hard to imagine it going away for four months.
Also, of course, shutting down the major pipes won't make the internet disappear, it will just send it back to the Dark Ages of the early 1990s, when people manually connected their computers together and the routing software took care of the rest. Maybe IRC would see a comeback.
When I hear people spout claptrap like this, I weep for our public education system. Did you go to public school? Your civics teacher let you down very badly.
I encourage you to read the Constitution. It's not a complete picture of American jurisprudence, but it's a great start. It's also not terribly long, or terribly difficult, and you can easily find read-along guides that will tell you a little bit about what it means.
Good luck.
Yes. Thank goodness, we got rid of all those things in the 1990s. The only one of those technologies I've encountered since graduating college in 2002 is VGA, and then only when working with low-end PCs. (Well, I guess almost all PCs are low-end.) I waited for a decade for PCs to get on the DVI bandwagon, but they never really did; they waited and now are skipping straight to HDMI, which is a high quality technology but has the unfortunate DRM with it. So, I'm in complete agreement -- all that tech needs to die, or has already.
"Your". Ha!
Don't worry, you can always use a browser which isn't compatible with HTML5. Stick with an old version of Firefox, or IE, or lynx or whatever you like, and stick to the parts of the web which work with those old browsers. You'll be fine.
But as the web (web browsers, specifically) evolve/s to take the place of traditional operating systems, obviously they will have to provide filesystem services to their applications. There will, of course, be problems; but they'll be worth it.
I figured Microsoft would just sit on their thumbs and wait for Google and other third parties to release hacks/updates to IE, the way they've done for years. So don't worry! IE will be fully HTML5 compatible, despite Microsoft's worst efforts.
No, they don't realize that. That's the problem. The solution is AdBlock Plus.
Another solution would be to get everyone in the world on the same page regarding how annoying an ad is permitted to be. I don't like to wait around for things that will never happen, so I just go ahead and use AdBlock.
Smart. It's always better to chase technology than to be on the forefront of the obvious coming wave. First movers are always losing in the marketplace.
Word. Slashdot is full of extremeist ideological black-and-white comments. I don't actually think most commenters think in such bifurcated ways, but that's the nature of internet dialogue. It can actually be really hard to make a moderate statement, because as you point out it's so easy to read someone's mild disagreement as stark raving disagreement. By the time you layer your point with enough qualifying statements, the point gets lost.
I see your point. Still, there is no such thing as "full" context, only more or less context. (No person can see or know everything.) For instance, the current Wikileaks hoopla is about some footage not yet released. Some people claim that is essential context, some say it's not, but even if it were released that certainly wouldn't be "full" context. It's easy to imagine the whole video still not providing the full story.
Anyway, I disagree that the example is stupid, but I definitely see where you are coming from. I bet we would agree that, generally, more openness is better.
Maybe. It's impossible to say now, and would probably be impossible to say at the time.
Hmmm. I'd say a list of our international spy network members. Subterfuge prevents outright war, so if the enemy could eliminate our spying by eliminating our spies, we'd have to resort to nuking them. That would be sad.
Or, perhaps the methods of protecting our military infrastructure. For instance, if Al Qaeda knew that the password for our nuclear bombs was 12345, that would be bad for everyone involved.
Or, perhaps just as bad would be information released which, without sufficient context or completeness, caused people to make incorrect conclusions and support the wrong side. You know, classic disinformation. It's easy to imagine many such scenarios.
That was a good straw man argument on your part, though. If you were debating with young children who couldn't pick apart transparent logical fallacies, then you might have scored a point.
Sadly, I disagree. Some things can't be solved without resorting to violence. But, gladly, most things can -- almost everything. We should work toward that goal.
In a legal sense in the USA, okay I concede. In a general sense under common use, treason applies. My dictionary calls it "the crime of betraying one's country", and I think that fits the given description.
What does it mean for people to literally flood the zone?
Not only Slashdot! I take the opportunity whenever I can, because I think it's important. Most people use the words "free market" to mean "market", and I think it's dangerous to confuse the two. "Free market" ideologues are dangerous and push an agenda which harms people. When people to casually toss around support for "free markets" when they don't really mean it, they unwittingly give credence to some very dangerous policy pushers.
And I guess my point is that people don't "get it". If they did, they wouldn't bother with the extra syllable and four letters; they'd just say "market".
I understand that your criticism is that I am being overly pedantic. I accept the criticism, but in the end have to disagree. I think it's important, which is why I bother to make the point. And I also usually begin by stipulating that it is a relatively minor point; a point only of diction which, while important, does not usually detract from the argument made.
Just a minor point: "free markets" are like perfect circles: an interesting thing to think about, but they can't exist in the actual universe. Three cheers for markets, but thoughtful people should stop talking about "free" markets.
Other than that you make a very good point and state it well.
The California state legislature throws stupid stuff like this around all the time. It never goes anywhere. They don't do it because they want to pass the law. They do it because there is some wealthy business behind it.
That is a motherfucking stupid reason to vote for or pass a bill. It borders on treason.
My apologies for the profanity.
Before you declare that so emphatically, familiarize yourself with poetry and push-pin.
"Did you read the TFA"
That's classic!
Within reason, I'm fine with people going as slowly as they want, so long as they stay in the lane appropriate for their speed. It's really easy to find the correct lane: look at the lane to your right, are you driving faster than the cars in that lane? If not, move to the right. Repeat as necessary. Your speed relative to the posted speed limit is completely irrelevant to your choice of lane; only your speed relative to other cars is relevant.
If you are a speed-limit bigot ("Anyone who goes faster than the speed limit is a bad person, because that's illegal!") then you should also be a lane bigot ("Anyone who drives too slow for a lane is a bad person, because that's holding up traffic, which is illegal!"). The difference between those two types of lawbreakers is that the people who speed are just trying to live their life and get to their destination, whereas people who hold up traffic are insufferable douchebags.
Also within the bounds of safety, I'm fine with people going as fast as they want. Almost all fast drivers know that they belong in the fast lane, so it's rarely a problem. Fast drivers need to make sure their vehicle is safe for high speeds, and apply additional care and consideration.
This is a total non-sequitur from your comment, which I find wry and funny. I always take the opportunity to tell people that speed isn't the problem, but rather lane choice.
You may be "a science loving type" but you sure seem to hate apostrophes and contractions, as well as hyphens, periods and other punctuation.
I know you jest but I wanted to drop in with the trivia knowledge that, contrary to what some might imagine, ice cream sales correlate with cold climates. That is to say, ice cream sells better in places with colder weather. I grew up in Alaska and was told (hearsay) that Alaska had the highest ice cream consumption, per capita, in the USA. So, although I don't know for certain, I would imagine that ice cream sales do not struggle in Canada.
And now for my Cliff Clavin moment: Alaska ALSO has very high SPAM sales per capita, coming in second in the USA behind Hawaii. For this, I have no explanation, because I find SPAM repulsive.