According to the article, the blogger criticized the congressman for his "childish approach" towards governing.
Of course that's the rub. The article and the Slashdot summary misrepresent the complaint that is in the letter. It is actually about the Political Committee the woman organized to raise funds to support election campaigns. And while she is referred to here as a blogger, she was a former employee of the Republican National Committee. One of the things Congressman Grayson points out in his letter is that it seems a bit disingenuous of her to claim to just be a "private citizen" unconnected with any other political organization when she formerly worked for the RNC.
Further, the fraud he accuses her of is related to raising money for supporting a candidate in an election. Her claim to be his constituent is criminal, not because she is criticizing him, but because she is using it to raise money for an election campaign. At least that is what the congressman is asserting. Further, despite what the summary indicates, it is not his only or even his chief complaint. Rather the chief complaint is that she claims that her organization is a PAC (and raises money for multiple candidates in several campaigns) but in fact appears to only be concerned about one campaign. This would effect who could donate to her committee and how much. It is certainly not a trivial accusation, and there are really laws that govern how much money you can contribute to politicians and political committees.
Whether Congressman Grayson's accusations have merit or it is all a ruse to silence a vociferous critic, I can't say. But I'm very leery of anyone who starts down the path of criticizing someones actions by first misrepresenting what they were. (Why didn't the submitter include a link to the letter [primary source] as opposed to, or at least in addition to, a rather opinionated report on it?)
there are a number of studies that do seem to show that cell phones are capable of causing, at the very least, changes in levels of certain proteins in cells, but potentially damaging neurons and causing cancer.
I don't want to be dismissive of this claim, but given the number of studies you mentioned, it would have been useful to reference some.
I'd particularly be interested in how a study measures cell phone effects on protein levels in the cells of the brain. Also, you mention that they damage neurons. However, over 85% of malignant brain tumors arise from glial cells or cancers of other non-neural cells in the brain.
I myself am aware of studies that show non-ionizing, non-thermal radiation can affect DNA replication. (Sorry can't find a reference.) But from what I've read, it had not been linked to any pathology and the studies were strictly limited to examining cell cultures, not entire organisms.
But the sheer number of studies that are coming out showing an apparent cause and effect between cell phones and a number of cellular mechanisms, is leading me to believe that there is something very real there.
The National Cancer institute links to several studies that at best are inconclusive on any link and for the most part seem to conclude that there is no link. Where are the sheer numbers of studies that you are refering to?
I'm not sure what the numerous cellular mechanism you are referring to is either. We are talking strictly cancer, right? So in general we are only concerned with replication and transcription of DNA, correct?
Chemically, that "equation" just doesn't balance without an input of energy.
The energy was input by the sun before the different solutions were brought together.
it will require some energy to offset the entropy increase
delta S > 0 for a closed system as a consequence of the second law of the thermodynamics. No need for additional energy. The entropy of a the concentrated solution is less than the entropy of the dilute solution, hence dilution happens spontaneously, much like osmosis.
The ions are not a substitute for electrons, they're the source. There is no electricity without electrons.:)
Electricity is the flow of charge, not electrons.
If your statement was accurate, your computer would not work as it depends upon semiconductors which function in part based on the flow of positively charged holes in the electron structure of the material. (see p-n junctions, etc.) The Hall effect can be used to verify the charge of the moving carrier within a current. It can be either positive or negative.
Note that this desalinization mechanism works very similarly to a fuel-cell which also involves ion flow as part of an electric circuit.
First, AT&T's network supports MMS and tethering just fine. I use connection share on my Windows Mobile smart phone via Bluetooth all the time. No problems. I send MMS on the AT&T network all the time as well. So I'm not sure why there are so many stories that suggest the AT&T network is incapable of doing this. I'm not sure about the HSDPA, but for GPRS... there really isn't any effective way for AT&T to prevent you from using connection sharing. And you can put any GSM phone on their network.
Second, how many iPhones are on AT&T's network? Three and a half million, maybe? With over 75 million subscribers the idea that 4% are going to overload the MMS or GPRS infrastructure is crazy. That stuff is so over-built at AT&T that they hardly sweat. Now, RF capacity might be a different story... but I rarely see any articles even mention that. And its hardly an iPhone specific problem.
AT&T definitely benefits from its deal with Apple. AT&T definitely wants to maintain an exclusive deal. So how could they be dictating to Apple? To me it looks like Apple is the ones who either want rules changed for their benefit or some other concession. You build a phone to the GSMA spec, AT&T can't stop you from allowing people to share the GPRS connection. You can definitely turn MMS service on and off per MSISDN... but it has nothing to do with the device. Why do it?
None of it makes economic sense. Generally, mobile providers are selling phones at a loss or at cost if you don't sign up for a contract. I don't see how AT&T has an interest in crippling Apple phones. All they want is the subscribers. The more people who think an iPhone is good to by... the better.
Modern optics was pioneered by the discoveries of Ibn Sahl (who discovered Snell's law 800 years before Snellius renamed it).
Snel did not name the law after himself and there is every reason to believe that he discovered it independently of Ibn Sahl. Your statement makes him look like a plagiarist, which he certainly was not. (Especially since he never published his paper in which Snell's Law appears!)
More than one person can independently think up the same idea. I think you weaken the point of your entire post (which for the most part is perfectly valid) by making a baseless accusation against Snel.
Further I'd say you are overstating the accomplishment of Ibn Sahl. Snel's Law is not the beginning and end of Classical Optics. And it doesn't begin to encompass Modern Optics, which is the study of light taking into account its electromagnetic or quantum nature.
"The count" doesn't exist if it is infinite. It's uncountable. It doesn't equal infinity; it's infinite. There's a subtle difference.
I'm afraid you are digging yourself deeper here. I actually made a mistake in my previous post asking for a count of Real Numbers since the Reals are not countable... However, infinite sets in general are not uncountable. The other example, for counts that I gave, the integers are certainly a countable set. Rationals are another infinite and countable set. Wikipedia is your friend on what qualifies as countable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set
A count is only one quality of a number, denoting quantity is another... you seem to have totally disregarded that portion of my post. The countability argument actually touches on one of the more rigorous ways of defining a particular number in mathematics. For example what is 3? One way of looking at it is that it is the collection of sets that contain 3 elements. So in saying 3 (meant to denote "blackboard" bold) we are denoting the set of all sets that have 3 elements. So the number is itself a set. And sets contain 3 elements if they exist in the set 3.
This provides a bit of clarity in why infinity is a number. Infinity in this view is the set of sets that contain an infinite count of elements. You can see that this way of defining numbers shows the equivalence of 3 and Infinity in terms of both having the quality of being a number.
While this thread is diverting to an extent I think we've played it out. I leave you with a question, since you assert that infinity is not a number, what is the largest number?
Look, I'm not really contradicting you. Infinity is sometimes treated as if it were a number - it's sometimes convenient and useful to do so. However, that doesn't make it a number. So you're one of the people who's used to treating it as if it were a number - naturally you'll take exception when someone says it isn't.
Infinity is a number, full stop. What makes something a number? What is a number? A count of something? A quantity of something? That concept that expresses the count or quantity of something?
Perhaps you could give me the count of real numbers? Or the count of integers?
Alternately what is the quantity of elements in the set of reals? or the set of integers? Or natural numbers? Or computable numbers?
Are you saying the count or quantity that answers the previous questions is not a number? Why not? What quality does it have that differentiates it from a number? What attribute can you ascribe to it that cannot be ascribed to a number?
I certainly don't take exception with you assertion. To me, it just seems to be a limited understanding of the concept in question. My perception is that you have not indulged in a lot of introspection regarding how you arrived at your concept of a number and of infinity.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity
In mathematics, "infinity" is often used in contexts where it is treated as if it were a number (i.e., it counts or measures things: "an infinite number of terms") but it is a different type of "number" from the real numbers.
I never said it was a real number. Although whether it is or not kind of depends on what kind of mathematics you are doing.
Note in this context the phrase "real numbers" is referring to the set of Reals, as opposed to say the set of Imaginaries. Wikipedia is not saying that infinity is not really a number.
In any case the quote you provide refers to infinity as a number. Just as a different type of number. Since the original assertion was that infinity was not a number, the quote refutes that assertion.
Washing machines are pretty harsh places. You get tidal forces that will apply various physical stresses to the components. Rapid heating and cooling can cause expansion
I'm sorry, tidal forces in a washing machine? Tidal forces are caused by gravity. It's an effect of the inverse square distance portion of the gravity force equation. They certainly exist in a washing machine as they do anywhere else subject to the effects of gravity, but no more so than anywhere else.
Within the rotating frame of a washing machine drum, there are dynamic forces, centrifugal and Coriolis. I imagine that only the former is really significant, but I would think contact with an agitator or sides of the drum would subject the flash memory to far higher forces.
Except that isn't accurate. 1/0 != infinity. Does infinity * 0 = 1? No...
...and that's why they say "infinity is not a number". A value can be infinite, but it doesn't actually equal infinity, because no such number exists.
Well, I'm not sure who you are identifying as saying that infinity is not a number, but unfortunately they are not correct. You're statement that two infinite values may not be equal certainly has validity to it. Transfinite mathematics and hyperreals deal with rigorous analysis of such things... and in that analysis treat infinities as both ordinal and cardinal numbers.
I suggest that it is worth further investigation on your part if you are interested in making definitive statements about such things.
Just explain it like this... 1/1 = 1, 1/0.5 = 2, 1/0.1 = 10, 1/0.01 = 100, 1/0.001 = 1000, 1/0 = infinity. You CAN divide by zero, but the answer isn't useful for finite math.
Except that isn't accurate. 1/0 != infinity. Does infinity * 0 = 1? No... of course not. Since multiplication is the inverse function of division... your statement is incorrect. Now if you'd written lim(x->0) of [1/x] is infinity, you'd have been right.
x/0 for any non-zero number is simply undefined. Its not useful for transfinite math either.
p.s. exceptions in linear algebra, abstract algebra, etc. generally involve different division operators from arithmetic.
I simply cannot understand how you were marked insightful.
The longer space between cities and suburbs means that while traveling your pretty safe inside your own vehicle and so are all the other drivers. IF you forced everyone to take subway or buses there would be more assaults both from thugs and regular people having a bad day.
Do you have any data at all to support these assertions? From the second statement I assume that the safety you refer to in your first statement is related to violent crime. Of course you seem to totally ignore the question of safety from accidents related to transportation, which is far more likely to cause death or injury to any given individual than violent crime.
Regarding the likelihood of an increase in ridership leading to a rise in violent crime on mass transit, I'd like to seem some data to support that assumption. Further, even if we assume that violent crime rates did rise with say a 400% increase in mass transit utilization, something I'm not willing to concede is likely but certainly not totally outside the realm of possibility, what is going to matter most to the riders is the per mass-transit user crime rate (which would determine the likelihood of any individual person being the victim of a crime).
I don't think American society could adapt to the slower pace of a mass-transit system. The average work week is 10 hours longer than in most of Europe, without cars there's simply not enough time per day to go where you gotta be.
Of course it is highly dependent upon where you are, where you are going, and how well designed and operated the mass transit system you are riding is, but I don't see any reason to believe that a blanket statement that mass transit takes longer than commuting in a car. From my own personal experience, having spent three years commuting ever day on a subway to an from work with an occasional trip by car, I can say unequivocally it was much faster by train. What's more it wasn't wasted time. I could read on the train, which I could not safely do in the car. Add to that it was much less stressful.
I think American society could adapt just fine to mass transit. I'm definitely speculating but from the tone of your post, I think it is you yourself who feels you could not adapt to a car-less existence.
However, the point remains: $30 Million of what? Gross Revenue? Profit? It makes no sense to not specify what it refers to. You can have revenue of $30 Million and still be losing money hand over fist. You can have small sales, but still be pulling in a $30 Million profit margin. The summary makes no sense without this info.
I'll concede the summary is a bit cryptic, but from the perspective of talking about a business it wasn't unclear to me what was being discussed.
It is revenue annually they are referring to in the summary as evidenced by the statement following the one containing the reference to $30M. It says the number is what they need to be self-sustaining. Self-sustaining = free cash flow positive. (simplified) Free cash flow = revenues - operational expenses - debt maintenance. So the only thing they could be talking about was revenue. They can't be making a profit because a pre-requisite for profitability is being cash flow positive which the statement about approaching sustainability makes clear that they are not.
In any case the linked article makes it all perfectly clear in the first three paragraphs.
$...dollar? Is that from the Department of Redundancy Department?
and you can put any unit you want after ZERO
From the summary:
the company is very close to the $30M mark
The dollar sign is the unit. The units are dollars. It is common usage to have dollar signs precede the number. What are you complaining about? And why on earth did someone think it was insightful?
I(sic) takes a *tremendous* amount of design work to get an internal combustion engine to "burn clean" using a single fuel; making it a "universal fuel capable" and still "burn clean" will be impossible.
You realize that a Stirling engine is an external combustion engine, right?
Re:Any chance we can draw circles and boxes now
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GIMP 2.6 Released
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· Score: 1
Photoshop needs to have everything and the kitchen sink, because Adobe can't expect normal people to pay more than $700 for their image editing needs. F/OSS has no such obligation, and is therefore free to follow UNIX's philosophy of "do one thing, and one thing well", and *drawing* is the domain of Inkscape and Xara.
Hmmm... there is also a Unix philosophy of all input and output being a text stream and programs being designed as 'filters'. Why doesn't GIMP stick to that? Maybe because blind adherence to some dogmatic philosophy isn't always the wisest choice?
IMO nanotechnology is today's "basic science research".
Technology is knowledge about the means and methods for producing goods and services.
Science is systematically acquired knowledge about the natural world and more broadly the system of acquiring that knowledge.
Technology is not science, full stop.
The surface physics and materials physics research that will no longer be done is the science that gave rise to nanotechnology. In as much as we have nanotechnology, it is because of surface physics. In as much as we don't do basic science research, we will no longer have new technologies like nanotechnology.
If you do something in public in your own time, it can and will affect your employment and is of concern to your employer. No bank wants an employee that's a convicted fraudster. No school wants teachers who are porn stars. No police force wants an ex-con as an officer. The issue isn't whether you conduct these activities in your own time or not, or if the Internet was used. The issue is that you're in a trusted position, and that your employer may have the right to terminate your employment if they perceive a conflict of interest, or if something you've done or are doing in your spare time means you can't effectively do your job.
Two of the three examples you cite are about people who have been convicted of a crime. Convict status is something you don't need the Internet to find out and is something where there is a legal reduction in rights. The third example of a teacher moonlighting as an actor or model for pornography is rather an extreme and (I believe intentionally) inflammatory example. It is by necessity a public profession and one in which participation could be revealed even if no Internet existed.
Where I live, the state of Georgia here in the USA, your employer has the right to terminate you for any reason whatsoever (excepting of course discriminatory reasons based on minority, religious, veteran or disabled status) or without cause. So its not about the right of your employer to terminate. Its about the wisdom of terminating someone based on something you found out about them online. Any competent manager should be able to tell whether you are doing your job well or not, without the aid of facebook photos showing your drinking, getting high, or snorting coke off a strippers tits. If you can do your job, why should it matter what you put on the net?
Are we really suppose to have sympathy for morons who don't know what they put on the net is public?
You seem really fond of the word moron and its variants which you use thrice in your post. It of course refers to someone with diminished intelligence. So in response to your question, should I have sympathy for someone who has limited intellectual faculties, my response is yes. Of course, I do. What kind of monster are you that you don't?! But perhaps your repeated use of moron and variants is an indication of your own limitations, in this case of vocabulary. Maybe you meant to describe the individuals as foolhardy, naive, ignorant... In all of these cases, I still have sympathy for them. Everyone makes mistakes, but the Internet can trap those mistakes indefinitely like a fly in amber. Preserved for who knows how long... It is a major shift from a time when even the most celebrated of mistakes a person might make would fade in the collective memory and only diligent searching of newspaper archives, public records, and other references would uncover it.
I think your callous dismissal of the serious issue raised here is unwarranted. If anything it contributes to the ignorance that your deride (inaccurately with the word 'moron'). You suggest that people should already be aware of an issue at the same time you mock the fact that the issue is even being discussed. Obviously, given that people are ignorant of it, it needs to be discussed more, not less!
A right is something granted to you by some entity
That is not the definition of a right at all. It is simply a concept or abstract idea for something that a person is due by virtue of nature, tradition, law, or some other reason. A right as defined in jurisprudence is an entitlement.
In the U.S., the presumption upon which the legal system is based is that each person (NOT citizen) is endowed with inalienable rights just by virtue of being. People in the United States are not granted rights by the government or anyone else. (And certainly not privileges.) People defer to the government the exercise of full freedom for the greater good. But the government's "rights" arise from the people and not the other way around.
Your interpretation of the law seems to be that people are inherently devoid of rights and must be explicitly granted them. Perhaps you are familiar with the tenth amendment to the constitution? If the constitution does not specifically reserve a power to the government it is a reserved as a right for the states or people. So in the absence of any law on the subjection, the presumption is the right rest with the people. So in general, the statement that a person has such and such right is correct, unless the power is explicitly vested in the government.
The article linked to from the summary seems to speculate a little beyond the official press release from T-Mobile.
Specifically T-Mobile says this will be available from your home Wi-Fi and from T-Mobile hotspots. It makes no mention of general availability from any WiFi location. The story author seems to speculate that this will be due to registration web pages and what-not. Based on my experience with UMA or DMS (Dual-Mode Service) technology and product offerings, I'm imagining the actual reason is E911. The company has to know an approximate location for your phone to supply to 911 dispatchers... Normal location base services (LBS) use antenna face and signal attenuation, or cell tower triangulation, or similar strategies. With WiFi, these don't work... so you need to know the location of the WAP. If it is a HotSpot... T-Mobile already knows and if it is your home WAP... You tell T-Mobile when you sign up for the service.
Also, these types of services do not use SIP (or MGCP or H.323 for that matter), they use GSM tunneled over IP. That is how the meshing is accomplished. The registration event for the GSM-o-IP service is where the MAC address for the WAP being connected to is supplied to the service provider for use with LBS (such as E911).
Probably because AT&T is shitty - which means they need the money
I have trouble understanding why you were moderated insightful, since publicly available information disproves the second part of your hypothesis.
Total revenue for AT&T first quarter of this year was $28 million compared to $22 million for Verizon and much smaller numbers for others... Leader in market share for wireless at 27.1%
I think the more likely explanation is AT&T is much, much larger than any other GSM provider in the U.S. (As in more than twice as large... subscriber-wise). By far has the most GSM network infrastructure and bandwidth. I think the desperate hurting for money thesis is totally ludicrous.
I'm really interested in more info on what the nature of the activation issue is, so I'm disappointed that all the articles I read on it seem to be Apple fanboys saying "it definitely can't be Apple's fault, must be AT&T." But they don't provide any details... Most GSM phones don't need to be "activated" at all... put a(n appropriate) SIM card in and it works. What happens during activation? And before launch I heard that you'd be able to activate via iTunes at home... What happened to that?
For example, those little thingies with the black and white paddles in them that look like light bulbs from middle school science class work on the idea that photons transfer and take momentum from stuff they interact with. Momentum is a quality very closely tied with mass.
Crookes radiometer (the aforementioned little thingy with the black and white paddles) does not rotate due to light imparted momentum (the force is too small). This theory of the rotation is disproved by the fact that after a certain point making the vacuum in the bulb stronger reduces the effect, which is the opposite of the expected result if the rotation was due to radiation force.
The actual forces responsible for rotation are a combination of forces due to molecule movement between the hot and cold sides of the vanes near the edges. Wikipedia has a good write up about it here.
There is an invariant mass for an object, i.e. a quantity that remains the same in all reference frames. This can be calculated based on energy and momentum. True of photons as well. Photons don't have a rest mass because rest mass is defined as the mass of an isolated and at rest relative to the observer object. Photons can't be at rest relative to an observer (and if they are isolated they are travelling at c).
I thought the numbers I saw were higher, but that might be the difference between US and world scientists. Anyways, assuming your number is right, 20-25% is still a significant percentage. That's all I'm saying. You can be a "real" scientist and religious.
I would say that believing in god and being religious are not the same thing. So to conflate 25% of physicists believing in god with 25% being religious does not seem to be warranted.
From my own personal experience from when I was an undergraduate in Physics, I would say 0% of Physicists believed in god or were religious. Though obviously that figure was not arrived at with a rigorous polling methodology.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course that's the rub. The article and the Slashdot summary misrepresent the complaint that is in the letter. It is actually about the Political Committee the woman organized to raise funds to support election campaigns. And while she is referred to here as a blogger, she was a former employee of the Republican National Committee. One of the things Congressman Grayson points out in his letter is that it seems a bit disingenuous of her to claim to just be a "private citizen" unconnected with any other political organization when she formerly worked for the RNC.
Further, the fraud he accuses her of is related to raising money for supporting a candidate in an election. Her claim to be his constituent is criminal, not because she is criticizing him, but because she is using it to raise money for an election campaign. At least that is what the congressman is asserting. Further, despite what the summary indicates, it is not his only or even his chief complaint. Rather the chief complaint is that she claims that her organization is a PAC (and raises money for multiple candidates in several campaigns) but in fact appears to only be concerned about one campaign. This would effect who could donate to her committee and how much. It is certainly not a trivial accusation, and there are really laws that govern how much money you can contribute to politicians and political committees.
Whether Congressman Grayson's accusations have merit or it is all a ruse to silence a vociferous critic, I can't say. But I'm very leery of anyone who starts down the path of criticizing someones actions by first misrepresenting what they were. (Why didn't the submitter include a link to the letter [primary source] as opposed to, or at least in addition to, a rather opinionated report on it?)
I don't want to be dismissive of this claim, but given the number of studies you mentioned, it would have been useful to reference some.
I'd particularly be interested in how a study measures cell phone effects on protein levels in the cells of the brain. Also, you mention that they damage neurons. However, over 85% of malignant brain tumors arise from glial cells or cancers of other non-neural cells in the brain.
I myself am aware of studies that show non-ionizing, non-thermal radiation can affect DNA replication. (Sorry can't find a reference.) But from what I've read, it had not been linked to any pathology and the studies were strictly limited to examining cell cultures, not entire organisms.
The National Cancer institute links to several studies that at best are inconclusive on any link and for the most part seem to conclude that there is no link. Where are the sheer numbers of studies that you are refering to?
I'm not sure what the numerous cellular mechanism you are referring to is either. We are talking strictly cancer, right? So in general we are only concerned with replication and transcription of DNA, correct?
The energy was input by the sun before the different solutions were brought together.
delta S > 0 for a closed system as a consequence of the second law of the thermodynamics. No need for additional energy. The entropy of a the concentrated solution is less than the entropy of the dilute solution, hence dilution happens spontaneously, much like osmosis.
Electricity is the flow of charge, not electrons.
If your statement was accurate, your computer would not work as it depends upon semiconductors which function in part based on the flow of positively charged holes in the electron structure of the material. (see p-n junctions, etc.) The Hall effect can be used to verify the charge of the moving carrier within a current. It can be either positive or negative.
Note that this desalinization mechanism works very similarly to a fuel-cell which also involves ion flow as part of an electric circuit.
So just to take a dispassionate look at this.
First, AT&T's network supports MMS and tethering just fine. I use connection share on my Windows Mobile smart phone via Bluetooth all the time. No problems. I send MMS on the AT&T network all the time as well. So I'm not sure why there are so many stories that suggest the AT&T network is incapable of doing this. I'm not sure about the HSDPA, but for GPRS... there really isn't any effective way for AT&T to prevent you from using connection sharing. And you can put any GSM phone on their network.
Second, how many iPhones are on AT&T's network? Three and a half million, maybe? With over 75 million subscribers the idea that 4% are going to overload the MMS or GPRS infrastructure is crazy. That stuff is so over-built at AT&T that they hardly sweat. Now, RF capacity might be a different story... but I rarely see any articles even mention that. And its hardly an iPhone specific problem.
AT&T definitely benefits from its deal with Apple. AT&T definitely wants to maintain an exclusive deal. So how could they be dictating to Apple? To me it looks like Apple is the ones who either want rules changed for their benefit or some other concession. You build a phone to the GSMA spec, AT&T can't stop you from allowing people to share the GPRS connection. You can definitely turn MMS service on and off per MSISDN... but it has nothing to do with the device. Why do it?
None of it makes economic sense. Generally, mobile providers are selling phones at a loss or at cost if you don't sign up for a contract. I don't see how AT&T has an interest in crippling Apple phones. All they want is the subscribers. The more people who think an iPhone is good to by... the better.
Snel did not name the law after himself and there is every reason to believe that he discovered it independently of Ibn Sahl. Your statement makes him look like a plagiarist, which he certainly was not. (Especially since he never published his paper in which Snell's Law appears!)
More than one person can independently think up the same idea. I think you weaken the point of your entire post (which for the most part is perfectly valid) by making a baseless accusation against Snel.
Further I'd say you are overstating the accomplishment of Ibn Sahl. Snel's Law is not the beginning and end of Classical Optics. And it doesn't begin to encompass Modern Optics, which is the study of light taking into account its electromagnetic or quantum nature.
I'm afraid you are digging yourself deeper here. I actually made a mistake in my previous post asking for a count of Real Numbers since the Reals are not countable... However, infinite sets in general are not uncountable. The other example, for counts that I gave, the integers are certainly a countable set. Rationals are another infinite and countable set. Wikipedia is your friend on what qualifies as countable. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countable_set
A count is only one quality of a number, denoting quantity is another... you seem to have totally disregarded that portion of my post. The countability argument actually touches on one of the more rigorous ways of defining a particular number in mathematics. For example what is 3? One way of looking at it is that it is the collection of sets that contain 3 elements. So in saying 3 (meant to denote "blackboard" bold) we are denoting the set of all sets that have 3 elements. So the number is itself a set. And sets contain 3 elements if they exist in the set 3.
This provides a bit of clarity in why infinity is a number. Infinity in this view is the set of sets that contain an infinite count of elements. You can see that this way of defining numbers shows the equivalence of 3 and Infinity in terms of both having the quality of being a number.
While this thread is diverting to an extent I think we've played it out. I leave you with a question, since you assert that infinity is not a number, what is the largest number?
Infinity is a number, full stop. What makes something a number? What is a number? A count of something? A quantity of something? That concept that expresses the count or quantity of something?
Perhaps you could give me the count of real numbers? Or the count of integers? Alternately what is the quantity of elements in the set of reals? or the set of integers? Or natural numbers? Or computable numbers?
Are you saying the count or quantity that answers the previous questions is not a number? Why not? What quality does it have that differentiates it from a number? What attribute can you ascribe to it that cannot be ascribed to a number?
I certainly don't take exception with you assertion. To me, it just seems to be a limited understanding of the concept in question. My perception is that you have not indulged in a lot of introspection regarding how you arrived at your concept of a number and of infinity.
I never said it was a real number. Although whether it is or not kind of depends on what kind of mathematics you are doing.
Note in this context the phrase "real numbers" is referring to the set of Reals, as opposed to say the set of Imaginaries. Wikipedia is not saying that infinity is not really a number.
In any case the quote you provide refers to infinity as a number. Just as a different type of number. Since the original assertion was that infinity was not a number, the quote refutes that assertion.
I'm sorry, tidal forces in a washing machine? Tidal forces are caused by gravity. It's an effect of the inverse square distance portion of the gravity force equation. They certainly exist in a washing machine as they do anywhere else subject to the effects of gravity, but no more so than anywhere else.
Within the rotating frame of a washing machine drum, there are dynamic forces, centrifugal and Coriolis. I imagine that only the former is really significant, but I would think contact with an agitator or sides of the drum would subject the flash memory to far higher forces.
Well, I'm not sure who you are identifying as saying that infinity is not a number, but unfortunately they are not correct. You're statement that two infinite values may not be equal certainly has validity to it. Transfinite mathematics and hyperreals deal with rigorous analysis of such things... and in that analysis treat infinities as both ordinal and cardinal numbers.
I suggest that it is worth further investigation on your part if you are interested in making definitive statements about such things.
Except that isn't accurate. 1/0 != infinity. Does infinity * 0 = 1? No... of course not. Since multiplication is the inverse function of division... your statement is incorrect. Now if you'd written lim(x->0) of [1/x] is infinity, you'd have been right.
x/0 for any non-zero number is simply undefined. Its not useful for transfinite math either.
p.s. exceptions in linear algebra, abstract algebra, etc. generally involve different division operators from arithmetic.
Do you have any data at all to support these assertions? From the second statement I assume that the safety you refer to in your first statement is related to violent crime. Of course you seem to totally ignore the question of safety from accidents related to transportation, which is far more likely to cause death or injury to any given individual than violent crime.
Regarding the likelihood of an increase in ridership leading to a rise in violent crime on mass transit, I'd like to seem some data to support that assumption. Further, even if we assume that violent crime rates did rise with say a 400% increase in mass transit utilization, something I'm not willing to concede is likely but certainly not totally outside the realm of possibility, what is going to matter most to the riders is the per mass-transit user crime rate (which would determine the likelihood of any individual person being the victim of a crime).
Of course it is highly dependent upon where you are, where you are going, and how well designed and operated the mass transit system you are riding is, but I don't see any reason to believe that a blanket statement that mass transit takes longer than commuting in a car. From my own personal experience, having spent three years commuting ever day on a subway to an from work with an occasional trip by car, I can say unequivocally it was much faster by train. What's more it wasn't wasted time. I could read on the train, which I could not safely do in the car. Add to that it was much less stressful.
I think American society could adapt just fine to mass transit. I'm definitely speculating but from the tone of your post, I think it is you yourself who feels you could not adapt to a car-less existence.
Well the important thing is you are keeping and open mind! No, wait...
I'll concede the summary is a bit cryptic, but from the perspective of talking about a business it wasn't unclear to me what was being discussed. It is revenue annually they are referring to in the summary as evidenced by the statement following the one containing the reference to $30M. It says the number is what they need to be self-sustaining. Self-sustaining = free cash flow positive. (simplified) Free cash flow = revenues - operational expenses - debt maintenance. So the only thing they could be talking about was revenue. They can't be making a profit because a pre-requisite for profitability is being cash flow positive which the statement about approaching sustainability makes clear that they are not. In any case the linked article makes it all perfectly clear in the first three paragraphs.
$...dollar? Is that from the Department of Redundancy Department?
From the summary:
The dollar sign is the unit. The units are dollars. It is common usage to have dollar signs precede the number. What are you complaining about? And why on earth did someone think it was insightful?
You realize that a Stirling engine is an external combustion engine, right?
Hmmm... there is also a Unix philosophy of all input and output being a text stream and programs being designed as 'filters'. Why doesn't GIMP stick to that? Maybe because blind adherence to some dogmatic philosophy isn't always the wisest choice?
Just a thought...
Technology is knowledge about the means and methods for producing goods and services.
Science is systematically acquired knowledge about the natural world and more broadly the system of acquiring that knowledge.
Technology is not science, full stop.
The surface physics and materials physics research that will no longer be done is the science that gave rise to nanotechnology. In as much as we have nanotechnology, it is because of surface physics. In as much as we don't do basic science research, we will no longer have new technologies like nanotechnology.
Two of the three examples you cite are about people who have been convicted of a crime. Convict status is something you don't need the Internet to find out and is something where there is a legal reduction in rights. The third example of a teacher moonlighting as an actor or model for pornography is rather an extreme and (I believe intentionally) inflammatory example. It is by necessity a public profession and one in which participation could be revealed even if no Internet existed.
Where I live, the state of Georgia here in the USA, your employer has the right to terminate you for any reason whatsoever (excepting of course discriminatory reasons based on minority, religious, veteran or disabled status) or without cause. So its not about the right of your employer to terminate. Its about the wisdom of terminating someone based on something you found out about them online. Any competent manager should be able to tell whether you are doing your job well or not, without the aid of facebook photos showing your drinking, getting high, or snorting coke off a strippers tits. If you can do your job, why should it matter what you put on the net?
You seem really fond of the word moron and its variants which you use thrice in your post. It of course refers to someone with diminished intelligence. So in response to your question, should I have sympathy for someone who has limited intellectual faculties, my response is yes. Of course, I do. What kind of monster are you that you don't?! But perhaps your repeated use of moron and variants is an indication of your own limitations, in this case of vocabulary. Maybe you meant to describe the individuals as foolhardy, naive, ignorant... In all of these cases, I still have sympathy for them. Everyone makes mistakes, but the Internet can trap those mistakes indefinitely like a fly in amber. Preserved for who knows how long... It is a major shift from a time when even the most celebrated of mistakes a person might make would fade in the collective memory and only diligent searching of newspaper archives, public records, and other references would uncover it.
I think your callous dismissal of the serious issue raised here is unwarranted. If anything it contributes to the ignorance that your deride (inaccurately with the word 'moron'). You suggest that people should already be aware of an issue at the same time you mock the fact that the issue is even being discussed. Obviously, given that people are ignorant of it, it needs to be discussed more, not less!
That is not the definition of a right at all. It is simply a concept or abstract idea for something that a person is due by virtue of nature, tradition, law, or some other reason. A right as defined in jurisprudence is an entitlement.
In the U.S., the presumption upon which the legal system is based is that each person (NOT citizen) is endowed with inalienable rights just by virtue of being. People in the United States are not granted rights by the government or anyone else. (And certainly not privileges.) People defer to the government the exercise of full freedom for the greater good. But the government's "rights" arise from the people and not the other way around.
Your interpretation of the law seems to be that people are inherently devoid of rights and must be explicitly granted them. Perhaps you are familiar with the tenth amendment to the constitution? If the constitution does not specifically reserve a power to the government it is a reserved as a right for the states or people. So in the absence of any law on the subjection, the presumption is the right rest with the people. So in general, the statement that a person has such and such right is correct, unless the power is explicitly vested in the government.
The article linked to from the summary seems to speculate a little beyond the official press release from T-Mobile.
Specifically T-Mobile says this will be available from your home Wi-Fi and from T-Mobile hotspots. It makes no mention of general availability from any WiFi location. The story author seems to speculate that this will be due to registration web pages and what-not. Based on my experience with UMA or DMS (Dual-Mode Service) technology and product offerings, I'm imagining the actual reason is E911. The company has to know an approximate location for your phone to supply to 911 dispatchers... Normal location base services (LBS) use antenna face and signal attenuation, or cell tower triangulation, or similar strategies. With WiFi, these don't work... so you need to know the location of the WAP. If it is a HotSpot... T-Mobile already knows and if it is your home WAP... You tell T-Mobile when you sign up for the service.
Also, these types of services do not use SIP (or MGCP or H.323 for that matter), they use GSM tunneled over IP. That is how the meshing is accomplished. The registration event for the GSM-o-IP service is where the MAC address for the WAP being connected to is supplied to the service provider for use with LBS (such as E911).
I have trouble understanding why you were moderated insightful, since publicly available information disproves the second part of your hypothesis.
Total revenue for AT&T first quarter of this year was $28 million compared to $22 million for Verizon and much smaller numbers for others... Leader in market share for wireless at 27.1%
I think the more likely explanation is AT&T is much, much larger than any other GSM provider in the U.S. (As in more than twice as large... subscriber-wise). By far has the most GSM network infrastructure and bandwidth. I think the desperate hurting for money thesis is totally ludicrous.
I'm really interested in more info on what the nature of the activation issue is, so I'm disappointed that all the articles I read on it seem to be Apple fanboys saying "it definitely can't be Apple's fault, must be AT&T." But they don't provide any details... Most GSM phones don't need to be "activated" at all... put a(n appropriate) SIM card in and it works. What happens during activation? And before launch I heard that you'd be able to activate via iTunes at home... What happened to that?
Crookes radiometer (the aforementioned little thingy with the black and white paddles) does not rotate due to light imparted momentum (the force is too small). This theory of the rotation is disproved by the fact that after a certain point making the vacuum in the bulb stronger reduces the effect, which is the opposite of the expected result if the rotation was due to radiation force.
The actual forces responsible for rotation are a combination of forces due to molecule movement between the hot and cold sides of the vanes near the edges. Wikipedia has a good write up about it here.
There is an invariant mass for an object, i.e. a quantity that remains the same in all reference frames. This can be calculated based on energy and momentum. True of photons as well. Photons don't have a rest mass because rest mass is defined as the mass of an isolated and at rest relative to the observer object. Photons can't be at rest relative to an observer (and if they are isolated they are travelling at c).
I would say that believing in god and being religious are not the same thing. So to conflate 25% of physicists believing in god with 25% being religious does not seem to be warranted.
From my own personal experience from when I was an undergraduate in Physics, I would say 0% of Physicists believed in god or were religious. Though obviously that figure was not arrived at with a rigorous polling methodology.