Okay, I know it's lame to reply to myself, but I just read the article.
First: A difference of 0.002% is most often noise, particularly in astronomical measurements where a difference of 300% can sometimes be written off (correctly) to statistical abberations.
Second: If the observed difference is indeed correct, it doesn't mean that a fundamental constant has changed. Since the change is a reduction, my above explanation of special relativity making up the difference just might work. Electrons move faster than protons, so they get boosted to a higher velocity. Higher final velocity means more increase in mass. If the electrons get more increase in mass than the protons, then the difference between the two decreases (it takes marginally fewer electrons to mass the same as a proton).
From here I found an electron orbital velocity of about 2*10^6m/s (hope they're correct.) This page gives a quasar velocity of 0.367C (possibly a different quasar, but it should be good enough for order-of-magnitude calculations). Using these two, I get a rest mass 1.075 times normal for protons, and one of 1.078 times normal for electrons in atoms. This is a difference of 0.3%, about 150 times as much difference as that reported in the article.
Now I could really use comments from anybody who followed this. As far as I can figure it, either a difference in kinetic mass is what's being measured, in which case they measured far too small of a value, or gravitational mass is used, in which case there should be no difference (as gravitational mass is unaffected by special relativity).
Or maybe I'm off in my own little world and the string theory kooks are right.
I'm not motivated enough to actually read the article yet, but...
One explanation for the inconsistency is special relativity. As moving particles approach the speed of light, their mass increases. It's an exponential process, so the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass increase you get for an incremental velocity increase. For atoms at rest, the protons are effectively stationary, but the electrons are actually moving pretty fast (the difference between an electron's rest mass and it's mass when in an orbital of an atom is just barely significant). Since the extra velocity from a quasar is just added to the rest velocity (I think), protons and electrons should gain slightly different amounts of mass.
Does anybody disagree? Did anybody even follow what I just said?
Using the phrase "graphics processor" implies that they mean that the processor might not be on a separate graphics card. If they only meant to include dedicated graphics card, they would have said "DirectX 9 capable graphics card".
Then again, this is a Microsoft press release. Logic be damned.
This proposal makes an incredible amount of sense. The open source model is an excellent way to develop high quality software on the cheap. Large scale open source development would help the economy in a number of ways.
I wish Slashdot would publish their price list for posting stories like this. For certain product categories, it has to be some of the most effective advertising available, and I'd like to know how the price compares to other media.
Ours drive prices/up/. I consistnatly see the few same people selling all the high end items well above what auctioneer (or even searching and watching prices myself) would suggest market value is.
In fact, driving prices up is better for them. You have more incentive to buy gold as you'll never make enough to get the items you want otherwise.
Basic economics question: If you make (ie, get from killing creepy things) a lot of item A and sell it on the open market, does the price for item A go up or down? (Answer: up) Sure, they'd love to drive prices up, but the reality is that selling a bunch of something makes it easier to find that thing, and therefore there's no need to pay as much for it. (That's not to say that there isn't also some strange effect driving prices up, but people selling a bunch of stuff doesn't do it.)
Ya' know, I'm starting to think that Bush finally figured out that he no longer has to worry about getting reelected. When controversial stuff like the Dubai port deal and Indian nuclear power come out on the news, he hardly even defends his position any more. He just does whatever he feels like.
The mask is off. Now we get to meet the real Dubya.
This just goes to show you that not all Republicans are anti-fact. They're like all politicians; they behave only as badly as their constituents will allow them to.
Oh, and about the author's brilliant scheme of buying CDs and returning them the next day - if I wanted to get music while screwing the artist out of any money, I would just download the song for free.
And good luck finding a store that will accept returns of opened CDs.
What's so opaque about Cheney's politics? You give favors to the highest bidder. Think about it: supporting nuclear power plant construction, supporing the port sale, supporting medicare changes, trying to change social security... What's the pattern? It's good for certain corporations. I, for one, think that expanded nuclear power would be a good thing for ordinary Americans, but that's not why Cheney et al are behind it. What's so tough?
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed?
I don't believe the election was fixed. Or at least, if folks were trying to fix it they were low-level ones without higher organization.
Say, for the sake of argument, that you had the ability to arbitrarily add votes to voting machines (this was apparently possible for Diebold machines, and probably the other brands as well). Now say that you wanted an election to go a certain way. How would you go about making that happen? Well, the two dangers are (1) adding so many votes that the results are so far from the polls that everybody knows it's fake, or (2) not adding enough votes so that you don't even appear to have won enough electoral votes to win. I feel that the 2004 election was too close to have been fixed. If you were fixing an election, and the polls everybody looks at have a 3% margin of error, why not add 1% or 2% margin of safety to your fake votes?
That being said, it could well have been a low-level fraud event. If folks in individual voting districts took it upon themselves to fake some votes (and I think that people on both sides felt strongly enough to do this) then you might find individual counties, etc. If that's true, you would see individual districts and counties with really anomolous vote counts, but no really diverse pattern (which is, indeed, the case).
The moral of the story: If you're going to fix an election, do a better job of it next time.
The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to read and understand the licenses associated with whatever software that they are involved with (something you apparently had difficulty doing yourself)
You seem to be implying that reading and understanding such licenses is something that your average Wal-Mart employee could handle. While reading them is not difficult, understanding is nontrivial. I have tried, and I assure you that it's not so easy. I would guess that a non-lawyer reading a ten page software license is equivalent to a non-programmer reading ten pages of C++ code. Even the GPL, which is designed to be readable is difficult to read, as opposed to most commercial licenses, which are designed to read like gibberish.
I will grant, however, that somebody whose job it is to enforce copyright laws should understand the licenses involved. If they don't, then that person is simply not qualified for their own job.
This is just about the requirement that derivative works be under the same license. All the author is saying is that reciprocal licenses (GPL, etc.) have this requirement, and academic licenses (BSD etc.) don't. Considering the fact that all other license requirements (commercial use, for example) are lumped in together, I'd say the author is just making a story out of nothing.
As a side comment, that sharealike requirement (as the Creative Commons folks refer to it) seems to be the most interesting issue in Open Source/Free Software licensing. For example, do you suppose that Apple would have based OSX on BSD if the BSD license had included the sharealike requirement? It doesn't seem likely.
Isn't the minimum way to comply with the GPL's (and I assume also the LGPL's) source code distribution terms to make the source code available upon request? (IE you don't necessarily have to distribute source to those users who don't want it.) So has anybody tried requesting? It's worth a shot. I don't think we've ever had open source DRM crap before.
How can there be patents on NES hardware dated after 1985 (1984 in japan, etc.) when the hardware was released? If they release the hardware in 1985 and try to patent something in it in 1988 or 1995, haven't they violated a statute of limitations or something? If there is no law against this, then it seems like an excellent way to get around the time limit on patents. Every time your patent on something your company made a long time ago is about to expire, just file for a bunch of newly reworded patents on the same old stuff. The way the patent office (at least in the US) is these days, at least a couple of them will be granted. Voila: eternal patents.
Seriously though; isn't there some kind of limitation on this?
Ya' know, I wouldn't have thought that South Korea would be an adequate substitute for Windows. I had foolishly assumed that an operating system would be the best alternative. Who knew?
Slashdot Mirror
String theory is fully compatible with the idea that the constants in nature are actually constant.
I suppose that depends on which version of string theory you're using. There are quite a few of them.
Okay, I know it's lame to reply to myself, but I just read the article.
First: A difference of 0.002% is most often noise, particularly in astronomical measurements where a difference of 300% can sometimes be written off (correctly) to statistical abberations.
Second: If the observed difference is indeed correct, it doesn't mean that a fundamental constant has changed. Since the change is a reduction, my above explanation of special relativity making up the difference just might work. Electrons move faster than protons, so they get boosted to a higher velocity. Higher final velocity means more increase in mass. If the electrons get more increase in mass than the protons, then the difference between the two decreases (it takes marginally fewer electrons to mass the same as a proton).
From here I found an electron orbital velocity of about 2*10^6m/s (hope they're correct.) This page gives a quasar velocity of 0.367C (possibly a different quasar, but it should be good enough for order-of-magnitude calculations). Using these two, I get a rest mass 1.075 times normal for protons, and one of 1.078 times normal for electrons in atoms. This is a difference of 0.3%, about 150 times as much difference as that reported in the article.
Now I could really use comments from anybody who followed this. As far as I can figure it, either a difference in kinetic mass is what's being measured, in which case they measured far too small of a value, or gravitational mass is used, in which case there should be no difference (as gravitational mass is unaffected by special relativity).
Or maybe I'm off in my own little world and the string theory kooks are right.
I'm not motivated enough to actually read the article yet, but...
One explanation for the inconsistency is special relativity. As moving particles approach the speed of light, their mass increases. It's an exponential process, so the closer you get to the speed of light, the more mass increase you get for an incremental velocity increase. For atoms at rest, the protons are effectively stationary, but the electrons are actually moving pretty fast (the difference between an electron's rest mass and it's mass when in an orbital of an atom is just barely significant). Since the extra velocity from a quasar is just added to the rest velocity (I think), protons and electrons should gain slightly different amounts of mass.
Does anybody disagree? Did anybody even follow what I just said?
The glitch, of course, being that they got caught.
Using the phrase "graphics processor" implies that they mean that the processor might not be on a separate graphics card. If they only meant to include dedicated graphics card, they would have said "DirectX 9 capable graphics card".
Then again, this is a Microsoft press release. Logic be damned.
This proposal makes an incredible amount of sense. The open source model is an excellent way to develop high quality software on the cheap. Large scale open source development would help the economy in a number of ways.
Therefore it will never be approved.
I wish Slashdot would publish their price list for posting stories like this. For certain product categories, it has to be some of the most effective advertising available, and I'd like to know how the price compares to other media.
Thou dost be correct. Methinks I spake wrongly.
Ours drive prices /up/. I consistnatly see the few same people selling all the high end items well above what auctioneer (or even searching and watching prices myself) would suggest market value is.
In fact, driving prices up is better for them. You have more incentive to buy gold as you'll never make enough to get the items you want otherwise.
Basic economics question: If you make (ie, get from killing creepy things) a lot of item A and sell it on the open market, does the price for item A go up or down? (Answer: up) Sure, they'd love to drive prices up, but the reality is that selling a bunch of something makes it easier to find that thing, and therefore there's no need to pay as much for it. (That's not to say that there isn't also some strange effect driving prices up, but people selling a bunch of stuff doesn't do it.)
Ya' know, I'm starting to think that Bush finally figured out that he no longer has to worry about getting reelected. When controversial stuff like the Dubai port deal and Indian nuclear power come out on the news, he hardly even defends his position any more. He just does whatever he feels like.
The mask is off. Now we get to meet the real Dubya.
Since when does Slashdot post Microsoft press releases without even adding words like "supposedly" or "according to a Microsoft shill" etc.?
This just goes to show you that not all Republicans are anti-fact. They're like all politicians; they behave only as badly as their constituents will allow them to.
Oh, and about the author's brilliant scheme of buying CDs and returning them the next day - if I wanted to get music while screwing the artist out of any money, I would just download the song for free.
And good luck finding a store that will accept returns of opened CDs.
Good point.
as transparent as Dick Cheney's politics
What's so opaque about Cheney's politics? You give favors to the highest bidder. Think about it: supporting nuclear power plant construction, supporing the port sale, supporting medicare changes, trying to change social security... What's the pattern? It's good for certain corporations. I, for one, think that expanded nuclear power would be a good thing for ordinary Americans, but that's not why Cheney et al are behind it. What's so tough?
Does anybody still beleive that this election wasn't fixed?
I don't believe the election was fixed. Or at least, if folks were trying to fix it they were low-level ones without higher organization.
Say, for the sake of argument, that you had the ability to arbitrarily add votes to voting machines (this was apparently possible for Diebold machines, and probably the other brands as well). Now say that you wanted an election to go a certain way. How would you go about making that happen? Well, the two dangers are (1) adding so many votes that the results are so far from the polls that everybody knows it's fake, or (2) not adding enough votes so that you don't even appear to have won enough electoral votes to win. I feel that the 2004 election was too close to have been fixed. If you were fixing an election, and the polls everybody looks at have a 3% margin of error, why not add 1% or 2% margin of safety to your fake votes?
That being said, it could well have been a low-level fraud event. If folks in individual voting districts took it upon themselves to fake some votes (and I think that people on both sides felt strongly enough to do this) then you might find individual counties, etc. If that's true, you would see individual districts and counties with really anomolous vote counts, but no really diverse pattern (which is, indeed, the case).
The moral of the story: If you're going to fix an election, do a better job of it next time.
The 'general advice' you should give to businesses is that they need to read and understand the licenses associated with whatever software that they are involved with (something you apparently had difficulty doing yourself)
You seem to be implying that reading and understanding such licenses is something that your average Wal-Mart employee could handle. While reading them is not difficult, understanding is nontrivial. I have tried, and I assure you that it's not so easy. I would guess that a non-lawyer reading a ten page software license is equivalent to a non-programmer reading ten pages of C++ code. Even the GPL, which is designed to be readable is difficult to read, as opposed to most commercial licenses, which are designed to read like gibberish.
I will grant, however, that somebody whose job it is to enforce copyright laws should understand the licenses involved. If they don't, then that person is simply not qualified for their own job.
10 [untranscribable and indescribable vocalizations and other noises]
20 Dude looks like a lay-dayyy!
30 Goto 10
This is just about the requirement that derivative works be under the same license. All the author is saying is that reciprocal licenses (GPL, etc.) have this requirement, and academic licenses (BSD etc.) don't. Considering the fact that all other license requirements (commercial use, for example) are lumped in together, I'd say the author is just making a story out of nothing.
As a side comment, that sharealike requirement (as the Creative Commons folks refer to it) seems to be the most interesting issue in Open Source/Free Software licensing. For example, do you suppose that Apple would have based OSX on BSD if the BSD license had included the sharealike requirement? It doesn't seem likely.
Admittedly, this is version 1 of the 360.
So you're saying it's going to take them 359 more versions to get it right? That sounds about par for the course from Microsoft.
Isn't the minimum way to comply with the GPL's (and I assume also the LGPL's) source code distribution terms to make the source code available upon request? (IE you don't necessarily have to distribute source to those users who don't want it.) So has anybody tried requesting? It's worth a shot. I don't think we've ever had open source DRM crap before.
How can there be patents on NES hardware dated after 1985 (1984 in japan, etc.) when the hardware was released? If they release the hardware in 1985 and try to patent something in it in 1988 or 1995, haven't they violated a statute of limitations or something? If there is no law against this, then it seems like an excellent way to get around the time limit on patents. Every time your patent on something your company made a long time ago is about to expire, just file for a bunch of newly reworded patents on the same old stuff. The way the patent office (at least in the US) is these days, at least a couple of them will be granted. Voila: eternal patents.
Seriously though; isn't there some kind of limitation on this?
Ya' know, I wouldn't have thought that South Korea would be an adequate substitute for Windows. I had foolishly assumed that an operating system would be the best alternative. Who knew?
What do you mean just 115 hours? How long have you been in space, wise guy?
May I suggest ... You get you rnews from somewhere other than TV?
Why yes! Everybody should immediately to getting their news off the internet! Oh wait, you say this garbage story was on the internet? Oops.