As far as the MySpace situation.. well, not all companies are alike, and not all companies see value in the same way. The crew currently running things is more concerned about the Slashdot user experience than some others have been in the past, and that's been a plus. Obviously, I can't see the future, so I don't know how it's all going to play out. But my initial impression is positive. I'm thrilled at the possibility of getting a bigger investment into Slashdot, both from an engineering perspective and an editorial perspective.
So you're saying we're just going to have to roll the...
Well, I hate to say it, but a good deal of that is probably your fault as well. I paid the bills in college as a projector/AV tech, and only rarely felt excluded or extraneous in the room. Rather than giving me nobody to chat with, it gave me everyone to chat with. I'd compare it to being a barber or a bartender, hearing everyone's gossip and stories.
There's a reason that we use volume as a dimension......volume doesn't depend on shape.
There's a reason that we don't use volume as a measure of scale - volume doesn't depend on shape. That's my entire point. When you're dealing with scale, it doesn't matter if it's a sphere or a cube, because we're dealing with statistical averages, not defined physical limits. The difference between a sphere and a cube of D=S is dwarfed by the difference between a sphere and a hugely-eccentric ellipsoid of equal volumes. The point is homeogeneity. We want to be clear that the average pointing one direction is the same as the average pointing another direction. You can't do that with volume.
What, you couldn't reply directly to my post? That dreadnought was made irrelevant by carrier warfare, yeah, 30 years later - long after its expected lifetime. In the meantime, the Royal Navy was able to keep the vast majority of Germany's navy bottled up in the North Sea for the duration of WW1. As a result, British merchants could still travel and trade almost at will (yes, they still had to worry about U-boats, but those weren't nearly as big a threat as surface raiders, especially in the First War). Spending your money to help the poor is all well and good until a blockade prevents you from using that money.
(and, shouldnt that be a unit of volume, not length?)
When talking in terms of scale, it's generally better to use fundamental units, not derived ones. Volume is derived from length (length^3), so a volume scale is inherently a length scale, but less precise. If you were to use a volume scale, say 250Mly^3, then that could mean different averages looking in different directions (i.e. the universe is homogenous every 250kly looking up, every 10ly looking left, and every 100ly looking forward). Just using a length scale ensures all 3 dimensions are covered equally.
"Gee, Britain, why are you spending all your money on a navy? You have the people of your empire to consider, and you spend this much on a new battleship? You could build ten merchant vessels for that price, but who cares about feeding your poor subjects, right? A 2-million-pound dreadnought is a much better buy, even if it will never be used for anything serious. Because the UK, France, Russia and Germany will in all probability never go to war with each other."
As the article stated, the AU hasn't depended directly on the perihelion/aphelion since 1976. The measurements we were working with before today's announcement were 149,597,870,703m and 149,597,870,697m. 150Gm isn't in that range of 6 meters.
But without these precise calculations, you could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova! That'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?
If you are constantly somewhere between 2.328 and 2.347 feet from me, I'm not going to define the distance between us as 2.000 feet simply because "it's a nice round number."
Relax, would you? The equant lets it all fit back together nicely. Ptolemy's Standard Model still fits the data; there's no need to bring pseudoscience like heliocentricity into this.
Deafness/blindness that occurred later in life (injury, disease, etc.), sure. But for people who were born that way, or who lost their hearing too early to remember, probably not so much. Opening a facet of the world to someone who has spent their entire life with no concept of it can be exceedingly shocking, even traumatic. A little on this is discussed in the wiki article on recovery from blindness, but a much more interesting account is written by Oliver Sacks about Virgil, a man whose vision was partially restored at age 50 after a lifetime of blindness (short on time, so I can't a link, but Google should have it somewhere). In a nutshell, Virgil's experience with sight was like trying to get your grandfather to play a video game. He understands what it is, but sees it as a novelty, something that's extraneous and totally unneeded. Worse, he's bad at it, and knowing that he's bad at it makes him frustrated when you try to get him to play.
Virgil was not a happy man after his surgery. He lapsed into depression and pretty much lost the will to live. So be careful when you start proclaiming that people simply don't know what they're missing - they might be better off that way at thsi point.
They need to design hunter-killer pest control robots next. Why bother fogging your apartment with deadly pesticides when you can let a few (roach/bedbug/beetle/spider)-hunting bots loose for targeted annihilation?
Well, the Accademia del Cimento's records have mostly been lost. Most of what we know about them is pieced together from various letters. But most of their big players were either students of Galileo, or students of students of Galileo. As a poster above noted, it was basically like a bunch of grad students today, performing detailed tests of many of the phenomena that Galileo (the professor) had postulated.
That's actually a pretty big assumption. I haven't driven on this specific road, but on other, similar roads in the area (71 between La Grange and Austin, for example), a large number of people drive below the limit. In rural Texas, there are more vehicles on the roads than just passenger vehicles and semi-trailers. People tow things. People have actually-loaded pickup trucks. Some people just have shitty cars. It's not uncommon at all to see someone going 60 in a 75.
Everything you said is true. But don't get the idea that smaller, high-velocity bullets are useless - otherwise, we'd still be using 20mm musket balls. Bullets since the Minie ball in the American Civil War have been designed to offset their lack of stopping power with fragmentation and wounding effects - your hit through the shoulder isn't just going to zip in and out. It's going to zip in, shatter, then tear out, taking many times its volume in flesh with it. And the smaller, lighter ammo and easier recoil are also demonstrable benefits.
Some designs have non-ferromagnetic projectiles, of such as aluminum or copper, with the armature of the projectile acting as an electromagnet with internal current induced by pulses of the acceleration coils.
No. A coilgun and a railgun are different. The fact that a lot of sci-fi describes the physics of coilguns but calls them railguns causes a lot of misconceptions. But it's pretty simple, seeing as one uses coils and the other uses rails (who'da thunkit?).
Remember, the FAA is serious about no meaning no when it comes to RF emissions on planes.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the recent/. story about the FAA re-examining the usage of portable electronic devices in flight...? Nah, couldn't be.
Seeing as they specifically excluded cellphones from that re-examination, no.
Slashdot Mirror
As far as the MySpace situation.. well, not all companies are alike, and not all companies see value in the same way. The crew currently running things is more concerned about the Slashdot user experience than some others have been in the past, and that's been a plus. Obviously, I can't see the future, so I don't know how it's all going to play out. But my initial impression is positive. I'm thrilled at the possibility of getting a bigger investment into Slashdot, both from an engineering perspective and an editorial perspective.
So you're saying we're just going to have to roll the...
Well, I hate to say it, but a good deal of that is probably your fault as well. I paid the bills in college as a projector/AV tech, and only rarely felt excluded or extraneous in the room. Rather than giving me nobody to chat with, it gave me everyone to chat with. I'd compare it to being a barber or a bartender, hearing everyone's gossip and stories.
There's a reason that we use volume as a dimension......volume doesn't depend on shape.
There's a reason that we don't use volume as a measure of scale - volume doesn't depend on shape. That's my entire point. When you're dealing with scale, it doesn't matter if it's a sphere or a cube, because we're dealing with statistical averages, not defined physical limits. The difference between a sphere and a cube of D=S is dwarfed by the difference between a sphere and a hugely-eccentric ellipsoid of equal volumes. The point is homeogeneity. We want to be clear that the average pointing one direction is the same as the average pointing another direction. You can't do that with volume.
What, you couldn't reply directly to my post? That dreadnought was made irrelevant by carrier warfare, yeah, 30 years later - long after its expected lifetime. In the meantime, the Royal Navy was able to keep the vast majority of Germany's navy bottled up in the North Sea for the duration of WW1. As a result, British merchants could still travel and trade almost at will (yes, they still had to worry about U-boats, but those weren't nearly as big a threat as surface raiders, especially in the First War). Spending your money to help the poor is all well and good until a blockade prevents you from using that money.
(and, shouldnt that be a unit of volume, not length?)
When talking in terms of scale, it's generally better to use fundamental units, not derived ones. Volume is derived from length (length^3), so a volume scale is inherently a length scale, but less precise. If you were to use a volume scale, say 250Mly^3, then that could mean different averages looking in different directions (i.e. the universe is homogenous every 250kly looking up, every 10ly looking left, and every 100ly looking forward). Just using a length scale ensures all 3 dimensions are covered equally.
"Gee, Britain, why are you spending all your money on a navy? You have the people of your empire to consider, and you spend this much on a new battleship? You could build ten merchant vessels for that price, but who cares about feeding your poor subjects, right? A 2-million-pound dreadnought is a much better buy, even if it will never be used for anything serious. Because the UK, France, Russia and Germany will in all probability never go to war with each other."
As the article stated, the AU hasn't depended directly on the perihelion/aphelion since 1976. The measurements we were working with before today's announcement were 149,597,870,703m and 149,597,870,697m. 150Gm isn't in that range of 6 meters.
"Representative" in that context is a title, like "Sir" or "Lord". It's part of the proper name; the grammar was fine (in that sentence, anyway).
You might want to read my post again. I was playing along with a joke that you yourself had started, so, basically, you just whooshed yourself.
1 AU = 42
Has anyone here noticed that? Why, when someone picks a random number, 12 and 42 come out so often? Has there been some research done on that?
I wouldn't panic about it.
You're missing my point. 150GM wasn't "between" the old measurements. It was just kinda-somewhere-near them.
But without these precise calculations, you could fly right through a star, or bounce too close to a supernova! That'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?
If you are constantly somewhere between 2.328 and 2.347 feet from me, I'm not going to define the distance between us as 2.000 feet simply because "it's a nice round number."
Relax, would you? The equant lets it all fit back together nicely. Ptolemy's Standard Model still fits the data; there's no need to bring pseudoscience like heliocentricity into this.
Not giving special treatment =/= restraint of trade.
Virgil was not a happy man after his surgery. He lapsed into depression and pretty much lost the will to live. So be careful when you start proclaiming that people simply don't know what they're missing - they might be better off that way at thsi point.
They need to design hunter-killer pest control robots next. Why bother fogging your apartment with deadly pesticides when you can let a few (roach/bedbug/beetle/spider)-hunting bots loose for targeted annihilation?
Yes, I know, "What could possibly go wrong?"
Well, the Accademia del Cimento's records have mostly been lost. Most of what we know about them is pieced together from various letters. But most of their big players were either students of Galileo, or students of students of Galileo. As a poster above noted, it was basically like a bunch of grad students today, performing detailed tests of many of the phenomena that Galileo (the professor) had postulated.
Other "corrective articles" by Peter Loyson include:
"You didn't write that!" - Who really writes the State of the Union?
Abe Lincoln Didn't Win the Civil War, a Bunch of Soldiers Did
Did You Know That Comedians Actually Use Scripts?
People very seldom drive below the speed limits.
That's actually a pretty big assumption. I haven't driven on this specific road, but on other, similar roads in the area (71 between La Grange and Austin, for example), a large number of people drive below the limit. In rural Texas, there are more vehicles on the roads than just passenger vehicles and semi-trailers. People tow things. People have actually-loaded pickup trucks. Some people just have shitty cars. It's not uncommon at all to see someone going 60 in a 75.
That's one way to interpret it. Another is "If you got pregnant, you gave consent."
Everything you said is true. But don't get the idea that smaller, high-velocity bullets are useless - otherwise, we'd still be using 20mm musket balls. Bullets since the Minie ball in the American Civil War have been designed to offset their lack of stopping power with fragmentation and wounding effects - your hit through the shoulder isn't just going to zip in and out. It's going to zip in, shatter, then tear out, taking many times its volume in flesh with it. And the smaller, lighter ammo and easier recoil are also demonstrable benefits.
Some designs have non-ferromagnetic projectiles, of such as aluminum or copper, with the armature of the projectile acting as an electromagnet with internal current induced by pulses of the acceleration coils.
From TFWiki.
No. A coilgun and a railgun are different. The fact that a lot of sci-fi describes the physics of coilguns but calls them railguns causes a lot of misconceptions. But it's pretty simple, seeing as one uses coils and the other uses rails (who'da thunkit?).
Remember, the FAA is serious about no meaning no when it comes to RF emissions on planes.
I wonder if that has anything to do with the recent /. story about the FAA re-examining the usage of portable electronic devices in flight...? Nah, couldn't be.
Seeing as they specifically excluded cellphones from that re-examination, no.