I think the CO2 flows were proposed not as liqued flows of CO2, but more an an agent that could cause mass wasting event such as a pyroclastic flow of a volcano. Not by being a river of CO2 liquid. Another analogous event might be the continental shelf slides that may or may not be caused by methelhydrates escaping.
Sure windows isn't going to suddenly become ultra secure. But that in no way precludes programers from writing smart code. You can do all sorts of interesting things to check for cheating. You can have a special thread that sniffs out states that trainers might be likely to find useful, and test them. Maybe do something like use all the data encrypted in memory. Only functions which modify data like health, or whatever is interesting can call a function to decrypt the data. Then modify, test, encrypt, and return. The aimbots might be pretty formitable to guard against, but one might conievably be able to craft a program which runs in the background and looks at what is sending messages to the "mouse", and kill it if its not approved.
But now my rant....
afx_msg void OnRantInit();
The problem here aren't two seperate problems. Ie. it's not really about the programers being lazy, the companies being cheap, and consumers unwilling to pay for better service, or unwilling to seek better service out. It's about people, over all, being lazy and cheap. Almost irrespective of the undertaking. (In this case stoping cheating.) I'm lazy, and cheap. I'm not particularly proud of this, but I've...made my peace with it. I might try another server or two. But really...there are too many forms of entertainment willing to satisfy my appitite, and most don't ask me to put forth any effort. If I shell out $50 bucks for a game, I sure as hell won't pay $10 bucks a month to play it. That $10 bucks would be better spent on a netflicks account. Or that greatest Van Damm movies DVD boxset (the one he personally brings over to your house, for an extra $5 he'll mow your lawn too). Like wise when someone cheats in an online game, why not just remember to not buy games made by those shiftless loosers? Why that's very easy, and costs almost nothing. After all, it'll free up some time to pursue other modes of fun.
With respect to it being a social problem, I happen to agree whole heartedly. Why who wouldn't? But to say there is no room for technology? Why, I'm tempted to call you a Luddite and kick over your barn. Technology solves all manner of social problems. Why TV helped inform people about their world as was never before possible. There was a time when people didn't really know what lay beyond the horizon. And thanks to technology, children today have the history of, not just the world, the universe delivered to their home, the best of it for free. As for technology's place in games. Well I imagine crossing someone who's other hobbies include writing worms and viruses might provide a particular direction for another decidedly technological approach. But even with the faults I, if not others, find in your rant, I can't disagree with the truth, that some people are assholes, and we need to live with. To that end, I'm with the NRA, we need more guns in schools (teachers, kids, as many as possible). Then we give it a few years, things will work themselves out.
Muds have had cheating forever. Think of trusting, area building kits, and hell even old fashion access to player files. Why I remember a non-player killing mud that had a spell which would nearly assure your ability to pkill someone from any room on the mud. All you had to do was cast a spell to cancel their protective, or any positve spell they had, during a nasty fight. Oops. Turns out when they added the new spell they forgot to check the room the target was in. That said, MUD's had far fewer flaws to exploit, but they were really much simpler programs.
In the case of Quake, cheating can be high praise. I got kicked of a server for being an old skool reaper-bot. High praise indeed.
And lately PSO is been a bit of a bitch. Can I blame the pkillers, sure, a little. But they couldn't be pkillers if the programmers for PSO weren't so shockingly lazy. I'll never know why they use signed integers for values that shouldn't ever be negative. Screw Sega. It's just that kind of commitment to quality that insures I, and a great many others, won't be bothering with PSOv2, and other Sega crap. $50 bucks isn't a lot of money, but when a game isn't even worth the gas to fetch it...it sure seems like a lot.
If were talking mostly about smaller devices, T9 would seem hard to beat. For doing straight text, it surprisingly passable. If the key rate on my phone was adjustable, it would be better. The only failing it seems to really have is when you need to mix words and numbers. I might even go so far to say it's comparable to those keyboards mapped onto screens of pda's.
But truthfully I wouldn't think the smaller consumer electronics will be terribly convienet for data entry until speech to text software is pretty usuable at those levels. And even then I would suspect foldable keyboards or other systems will still have their place. Sometimes silence is golden.
Minture black holes have odd properties. Thanks to virtual particles and the immutable laws of thermodynamics, black holes radiate energy. A breeze of virtually virtual (but not quite) particles. This is of course at the expense of their own mass. That's certainly not news, not even in the discussion of this article. However, the odd part is a small black hole is more likely to capture only one of the particles than is a larger black hole (which will likely capture both). So much so, in fact, that a black hole with the mass of a mountain and the size of a proton would make a very impressive explosive. (E=mc^2 where m is the mass of a mountain, tends to be a fairly substantial number) For comparison, a larger black hole, say of about 3 solar masses, might take 10^60 years to waste away. (I would check my guesstimations, but it turns out I'm fantastically lazy.) But aside from thowing off a pretty decent storm of random particles, a black hole, even with the measily mass of a mountain, would affect the matter around it. Sure on the small scale electrons wouldn't really care about the gravity, but on the larger scale that gravity could be pretty significant. Then black holes can have charge, so when it eats an electron, it then attracts a positively charge particle due to the charge etc. (I would also guess that a black hole would never acquire color charge as the other of the color charge pair would certainly be swallowed as well) But this doesn't really matter, because all the micro black holes have long since gasped their last. I for one don't see us making any black holes with any sort of real life span within the next few millenia. (I'm usually hesitent to prognosticate more than three millenia in advance.) Anyhoo I feel quite comfortable packing this in the same box with Schroedinger's Cat, Parallel Worlds, and other thought experiments. But who knows, with a quantum theory of gravity, they might suddenly become very interesting to think about, and worthy of dusting off.
On a side note I think I first read about it in scientific american. As some of the dates will tell you this isn't a new development, so I don't know the issue. Maybe this was it. A neutrino, or at least 1 flavor, tips the scales at a svelt.1 eV. I should figure out how many eV's I wiegh in at....or maybe I should have some more ice cream.
I don't think culture is ambigious, certainly not more so than "fuck" or "dude". Why look at catcher in the rye, the irony of using "fuck" as a pro-establishment plot device, knowing it would be contriversial in the establishment. Proof that those who can read books, do, and those who can't burn them.
Elementaly, social constraints on unacceptable speach are really pathetic Orwellian attempts to control ideas. As if there were no bad words there would be no bad thoughts, and without bad thoughts there are no bad deeds. The original poster of this thread must be commended on his choice of words. "Bleating", that perfects describes that actions of panicked sheep. He simplified the problem to one word. Telling too. But there are all manner of forbiden words, some of these conventions I even abide by. But when you look at a word and its origins the truth is almost too mundane to bother. But its the impact a word has in the moment we live we judge it by. A quick examination of racial slurs would show the truth in this. Does anyone take offence to the Spanish word for black? Or a corrupted for the latin word for black? Don't say those words around the wrong people. To some extent, theres good reason for that. Those words have an odd emotional componant which will color them for quite a while. One certainly cannot make the case that the emotional componant isn't at least somewhat justified, regaurdless of what real connection it has with the word. Is fukk more acceptable than fuck? What about the Vietnamise guy I know named Phuc? Does he have to change his name? For a long time I called him "Ummm...dude." (Turns out it's pronounced foo'k). It's all good, we're all big boys and girls. Of course our parents let us grow up to be something other than super-sized children....
One of the problems with many studies of Black Holes is that nobody really knows what to look for. Despite many attempts, nobody has actually detected the only definitive proof of a Black Hole, Hawking Radiation.
Hawking Radiation is a very soft lowlevel buzz. If you had a black hole the size of a proton or so, it would make a tremendous explosion, but a black hold of any real size would make Hawking radiation all but undetectable. How ever if you have a totally dark object which occupies a small volume and has a mass of greater than 3 suns, you have a black hole.
Many things in space emit X-Rays and Gamma Rays. Some are even "brighter" than Black Holes.
Pardon me for stating the obvious, but almost everything in space is brighter than black holes, that's why they're called black holes. However, little is brighter than the accreation disks of super massive black holes, save the jets of plasma that they fling off. Many think that Quasars are ancient black holes in a period of youthful exhuberance tilted at a happy angle for our viewing enjoyment.
You need to -start- with a star of greater mass than Chandrasaker Limit, which is about 3 solar masses.
Umm the Chandrasekhar limit governs the formation of neutron stars and is 1.4 solar masses. And that is b the starting mass of the star, that is the required mass of the core left exposed by the supernova. Most stars will leave a white dwarf of glowing white and a beautiful nebula as testimate to their lives. But those who's core are greater than 1.4 solar masses degenerate into neutron stars instead. The mass of the core is so great that the electrons and protons are forced into a cohabitation, and can never break the lease. Thus a star only made of neutrons with a 1 km thick shell of iron for good measure.
Until this radiation is detected, most suspected Black Holes are just that - suspected, not determined.
You might be surprised to learn a great many cosmologists disagree with you. As does the esteemed Dr. Hawking. He bet a colleague a black hole (Cygnus X-1) was not really a black hole; the prize was a subscription to Penthouse. Hawking paid off, and that was in the 80's IIRC.
But they seem to be finding Black Holes everywhere. If you count all the "missing mass", Black Holes, and other alleged particles, you'll probably end up with 900% of the mass of the Universe. Ummm.... sorry to break it to you astronomer guys, but 100% is the limit.:)
The Universe is very very heavy. Finding many many more black holes, and kinds of black holes will not alter, in any meaningful way, the mass of the universe. We found something like 30% of the mass of the universe by discovering neutrinos have mass. They ain't much to look at, but you get enough of them together and they'll surprise you. Most current accountings of the universe have us as flat, which oddly enough it pretty well in agreement with what we observe.
I would recomend a book called Black Holes by Pierre Luminte IIRC, or Stellar Interiors: physical principles, structure and evolution.. The later has little on black holes, but you'll learn about all sorts of neat stuff. But its a little technical too, in case thats not your cup of tea.
Black holes are pretty well accepted to exist, in a multitude of flavors I might add. There is a wealth of evidence from many sources that pretty well prove it. If the author means proof in the sence of walking up to the edge and tossing a star in, well grow up. Abstraction isn't a four letter word. I can't see an atom with the naked eye either, but their existance is quite certain from infered information. Sure, this information is pretty direct. But Rutherford's inferance of nuclei at the center of atoms in a sheet of gold is about the level of proof we've got for black holes. What are they like at the singularity? Well that's the realm of science yet to be invented. I think there's a place for scepticism, but this isn't it. Couldn't time be better spent disproving moon landings? For love of god, Hawking already paid off that bet. Black Holes are real, because you can't return a subscription to Penthouse.
I don't think we can truly claim to have entered the burning Rome phase of American culture until we can see the forced copulation of a woman and a bull on network TV. In the intrests of preserving our Christian morals by futhuring our demagoguery (real word), I ask does anyone out there, who loves Jesus, have a bull?
Oh crap. I was surfing the interenet, purely for research, and it looks like Mexico got there first. Appearently there's a bar in Tijauana....
Yes, I know Bad_CRC wan't the family values flamebaiter. But honestly, there is more than enough hyperbole to go around. When you see a woman forced to copulate with a bull (which probably killed her) as a public event, then, and only then, may one finally sound the alarm that the Canadians will soon be sacking our cities.
Is it worth $7.75 to see Halle Berry's breasts? I say its worth about $3.50 for as much as you see them, my gay friends were less charitable. And ya gotta admit the opening "bullet time" sequence is something you're not likely to see on a Japanese gameshow.
Swordfish also has the rather redeming quality of not being Evolution.
The point of mine I'm so ineptly trying to blunt is that its about effort. If you can work 15 min to pay for software X, as oppose to crack it in 3 hours, you'll probably buy it. Those people in CompUSA are probably in the same boat, maybe they don't know it. In which case its not even worth it for them to find out. Around here it's crazy. Everyone has a "friend" at Microsoft. I don't think anyone buys their stuff retail in the Seattle area. But should those people find themselves in a situation that they must subvert some sort of convienence reduction, they should be able to stumble their way through it relatively easly, if not swiftly. Its just not worth their time. Quite frankly its not worth my time. But back to CompUSA, are those people packed in there looking for software? CompUSA actually has some pretty decent screwless cases near me, way better than the mom and pop shops. For what its worth, everytime I goto CompUSA I mostly see people walking out with burners, or an arm load of media. (Its also pretty desolate near me. I thought I heard crickets chirping once, but it was just the echo of my corderoys.) But back to the media. How much music would one have that they need 2 100pks of cds? *wink wink*
Are you sure? I think nearly everyone would pay a fair price for music. Isn't it possible that the market wants to escape being gouged by middle men who add zero value to the music, and, as often as not, acctually inhibit distribution? Give me a break. You think these kids really like *NSYNC? I'll take that bet. In ten years they will all be reluctant to admit they listened to this crap, if they admit it at all. Try, just try to find someone in their mid twenties who will cop to liking the new kids on the block, debbie gibbson, or milli vanilli.
As for the law. Don't be silly. The law is transitory. It is all but impossible to move the market. You can ride the market, or use the market, but to force it..to force a whole culture to move away from the path it wants to choose is futile. People want to share information. This desire has served our species quite well over the millenia. And I can't imagine ill concieved, poorly understood, anachronistic ideas that richer people paid rich people to write down will influnce this. How did could one possibly resist the might of the nobles to force serfs to work their land for so little. The might of kings is absolute, how could one possibly stand against them? Emperors, Presidents, Despots, Laws, Pontifs, they all are granted their power by the people who believe in them. These proclomations of a new age of serfdom and the rise of Corporate Republics are ammusing. These laws, like the DCMA, they are paper. Don't support them. Oppose them. Ignore them. They're only laws so long as the "market" at large doesn't oppose them. For every lock there is a key, and a lock pick. As so it will always be.
Trust in them. I remember being something like 12 and busting the copy protection on a game for the apple ][ gs (woo) with a $10 dollar copy utility. No idea what I was doing. Just lots of time and patience. And that was before the internet was at everyones finger tips. The very idea of copy protection is patently absurd. Try convienence reduction. I have no doubt that I could, right now, download and burn a pirated version of PSOv2 for the dreamcast. Thanks to some 16 year old kid in Hong Kong. It's not about knowledge. It is about having the will power to spend several hours to crack something that you could pay for by working 15 minutes. Why waste the time? (If the act itself doesn't provide you with entertainment that is).
Free stuff from microsoft is usually free (as in speach). There was a group that did some work with interesting graphic toys via haskell(IIRC) which outputs to C++. Mostly for Jasc, I think. And there are other examples of things like this. They're not terribly public, or common, but they're just sort of out there. And of course, MS does throw a lot of free (as in beer) towards students. It pays to advertise.
Sometimes a little perspective is good. Microsoft is big enough to buy themselves out of trouble. JP Morgan probably wielded more power, proportionally speaking, than any other American in history. It all worked out nice with him not being evil and all. But if push came to shove with Microsoft and the government, the government would win and win big. J.P. Morgan was so powerful that even though he used his power to save the US from a crisis, it disturbed people. We, in large part, owe our prosperity to his actions. I would bet no man will wield more power and wealth than J.P. Morgan did. (It's worth mentioning his personal wealth was rather modest in comparison to those he associated with). In short, the power Microsoft has is not even on par with the U.S., much less greater than it.
First of all, it depends. The stores near me are more often than not out of anything of Stewart's line. Which is what pisses me off. It's popular, yet they don't obtain more for their customers because larger soda companies essentially pay them not to. Sure maybe their distribution system hasn't picked it up, but this problem has persisted for years now. Afri Cola, well when I want that I just have to take a little trip. If this happens to be unlike your experience, Sir, I congratulate your good fortune to live near people lacking in taste and breeding:).
As for TMBG, I like what I like. Depends on my mood. But I would make the observation the two Johns follow their own compass when making their music. Sometimes it goes pretty far of field, and sometimes its just damn sweet. (Only Cd's of theirs I don't have is Long Tall Weekend, and Statesongs.) While TMBG is pretty available, certainly more available that Stewart's, it's not part of the machine that produces pop. I'm not saying Britney Spears wouldn't be famous without the aid of talanted audio engineers. She just wouldn't be famous for singing. (But she sure knows semiconductor physics.) As for 20 million college kids? I think you not only vastly overstate the popularity of TMBG but also college. (I some how doubt that something like 8% of the population is in college.) And of all the people I knew in college I only met one person besides myself that liked TMBG. (Not just Flood and Apollo 18).
Funnily enough Tim's Cascade chips are totally available where I live in any flavor you want, damn near, but they're damn tasty.
My elitist remark was more directed at the fact, that many people never question what is available, and don't look beyond their front stoop. I have. I found better stuff. Now I resent still having to venture beyond my stoop. (I never said I wasn't lazy.) If I my intent was to highlight how good but obscure things suffer at the hands of the numerous and plain, I would have used other examples. Go Speed Go by Alpha Team, and excluded Stewart's in favor of Afri Cola. I would have left out chips, as I haven't found any I like better than Tim's. But as some would argue happiness isn't having what you want, but wanting what you have. I have a little trouble doing that, I admit. And maybe I shouldn't begrudge others their happiness no matter how base I consider it to be. There's some merit in that. But I am what I am.:)
I'm a slave to the free market. Hell everyone is. Escaping the inequities it occasionally presented was what "communism" (or at least what its commonly thought to be) was all about. Can't be done. By why can't inequities be mitigated? If your product can't survive on its own merits tough. Or at least it should be. It not new that inferior products should be foist on consumers by those with deep pockets and friends with market share. But just because it isn't new, doesn't be it is right. Or am I still talking out of my ass?
You kinda remind me of a TA I had for economics. Decent guy; he was fond of saying that the market place would sort the wheat from the chaff, implying that all good ideas would be and are elevated by the invisible hand. I always recongnized that as equal parts truth, hyperbole, and happy thoughts. I never really knew if he saw it that way. (Of course he also thought the ultimate extension of capitalism was those companies and individuals that made a mistake were "killed". That was all hyperbole, but it has a certain charm.) None the less, if the invisible hand only does good works, how does one possibly explain the movies of Kevin Costner, and Roland Emmerich, to name two?
Paying to steal choice from consumers isn't evil? Maybe Oil and railroad monopolies were perfectly decent companies that NEVER hurt people. Dude. Keep an eye out, an intervention seems imminent. Maybe it's ok if multimedia companies get together and form a cartel that passes laws that make all copying, not specifically authorized by the copyright holders, illegal, punishible by a $500,000 fine and 5 years in Pelican Bay. After all that's legal. It's not often on slashdot that you see someone who thinks being a litteral wage slave is a good thing. I, however, treasure my choice. I will pay for choice, and I get pissed off when I loose it without compensation. That's just me. Some people take what they're given and they like it. While I enjoy my Stewart's Key Lime soda, bag of Tim's Cascade Chips (original flavor), and listen to They Might Be Giants, I will somewhere in the back of my mind, sincerly hope you're enjoying your Pepsi, Cheetos, and *NSYNC.
Some stores are paid to place fixtures with specific products on certain locations. But the product that a grocery store provides isn't the location, or quantity of new and improved Crap-in-a-can. The stores provide the availability of all the stuff you want, or might want, to buy. A better anology would be the collusion of some soft drink companies to "buy" more linear feet to prevent other soft drink companies from selling their wares. And it pisses me off when I go into buy some of those sweet sweet Stewert'ssodas only to find that they're out again, and all the wolves left were little scraps of cardboard. Or Afri Cola. Try finding that at Safeway.
And if I'm not mistaken, smaller companies have sued larger soda manufactures, and I think pepsi sued coke once too. Perhaps there's a use for the RIAA's lawyers afterall. The smaller lables could sue the larger lables, and huge legal bills would be had by all. It seems a shame to have to defeat ones enemy, when ones enemy might be perfectly satisfied to take care of themselves.
Ahh. But IBM actually does try to listen to their customers now. The last thing they would want to do is give people a reason to not buy their sweet hard drive. When you've got pixie dust the last thing you want to do give people is reason to think there is no NeverPayForMusicLand. The last thing anyone would want is to fork over some cash for a little bit of magic powder only get bent over by Captain Hook, VP End User Affairs for the RIAA.
Which is why this might be a blessing. IBM has an intrest in people clogging their hard drives with large and available media. And IBM is huge. It has customers that border on fans. That + Money = Clout. Maybe IBM can change the evil empire. There are millions of reasons for them to try. Besides, "the more the RIAA tightens [their grip], the more mp3 will fall through [their] fingers." -- Carrie Fisher
The FOIA would be to determine the validity of the incident, ie EPA showing up and what not. The information is all but common knowledge. This is, in my view, an Urban Ledgend. To think that there are people who are not even sceptical of such a story is, to my sensabilities, obscene. I wouldn't bother with fisson weapons. Just between you and me, when I "flip out", I'm going to use devices of my own design, break in to the National Accelerator Lab, and trigger a spontanious phase transition of the vacuum (which would destroy the universe). How's that for a diabolical plan?
I want to be a space cowboy too!!
on
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David secured a sample of barium sulfate from the X-ray ward at a local hospital (staff there handed over the substance because they remembered him from his merit-badge project) and heated it until it liquefied.
If only the Algerians could have recruited a 15 year old boy scout, they wouldn't have needed to bring the explosives with them. What I would give to see the look on Osama Bin Ladin's face.
Slashdot Mirror
CLATHRATES AND CARBON DIOXIDE ON A DRY COLD MARS
I can't believe it's not water (spaceviews.com)
1. rocket 2. camel 3. bring water
There is a damn spoon. And no freakin macaroon is gonna change that.
But now my rant....
afx_msg void OnRantInit();
The problem here aren't two seperate problems. Ie. it's not really about the programers being lazy, the companies being cheap, and consumers unwilling to pay for better service, or unwilling to seek better service out. It's about people, over all, being lazy and cheap. Almost irrespective of the undertaking. (In this case stoping cheating.) I'm lazy, and cheap. I'm not particularly proud of this, but I've...made my peace with it. I might try another server or two. But really...there are too many forms of entertainment willing to satisfy my appitite, and most don't ask me to put forth any effort. If I shell out $50 bucks for a game, I sure as hell won't pay $10 bucks a month to play it. That $10 bucks would be better spent on a netflicks account. Or that greatest Van Damm movies DVD boxset (the one he personally brings over to your house, for an extra $5 he'll mow your lawn too). Like wise when someone cheats in an online game, why not just remember to not buy games made by those shiftless loosers? Why that's very easy, and costs almost nothing. After all, it'll free up some time to pursue other modes of fun.
With respect to it being a social problem, I happen to agree whole heartedly. Why who wouldn't? But to say there is no room for technology? Why, I'm tempted to call you a Luddite and kick over your barn. Technology solves all manner of social problems. Why TV helped inform people about their world as was never before possible. There was a time when people didn't really know what lay beyond the horizon. And thanks to technology, children today have the history of, not just the world, the universe delivered to their home, the best of it for free. As for technology's place in games. Well I imagine crossing someone who's other hobbies include writing worms and viruses might provide a particular direction for another decidedly technological approach. But even with the faults I, if not others, find in your rant, I can't disagree with the truth, that some people are assholes, and we need to live with. To that end, I'm with the NRA, we need more guns in schools (teachers, kids, as many as possible). Then we give it a few years, things will work themselves out.
In the case of Quake, cheating can be high praise. I got kicked of a server for being an old skool reaper-bot. High praise indeed.
And lately PSO is been a bit of a bitch. Can I blame the pkillers, sure, a little. But they couldn't be pkillers if the programmers for PSO weren't so shockingly lazy. I'll never know why they use signed integers for values that shouldn't ever be negative. Screw Sega. It's just that kind of commitment to quality that insures I, and a great many others, won't be bothering with PSOv2, and other Sega crap. $50 bucks isn't a lot of money, but when a game isn't even worth the gas to fetch it...it sure seems like a lot.
But truthfully I wouldn't think the smaller consumer electronics will be terribly convienet for data entry until speech to text software is pretty usuable at those levels. And even then I would suspect foldable keyboards or other systems will still have their place. Sometimes silence is golden.
Minture black holes have odd properties. Thanks to virtual particles and the immutable laws of thermodynamics, black holes radiate energy. A breeze of virtually virtual (but not quite) particles. This is of course at the expense of their own mass. That's certainly not news, not even in the discussion of this article. However, the odd part is a small black hole is more likely to capture only one of the particles than is a larger black hole (which will likely capture both). So much so, in fact, that a black hole with the mass of a mountain and the size of a proton would make a very impressive explosive. (E=mc^2 where m is the mass of a mountain, tends to be a fairly substantial number) For comparison, a larger black hole, say of about 3 solar masses, might take 10^60 years to waste away. (I would check my guesstimations, but it turns out I'm fantastically lazy.) But aside from thowing off a pretty decent storm of random particles, a black hole, even with the measily mass of a mountain, would affect the matter around it. Sure on the small scale electrons wouldn't really care about the gravity, but on the larger scale that gravity could be pretty significant. Then black holes can have charge, so when it eats an electron, it then attracts a positively charge particle due to the charge etc. (I would also guess that a black hole would never acquire color charge as the other of the color charge pair would certainly be swallowed as well) But this doesn't really matter, because all the micro black holes have long since gasped their last. I for one don't see us making any black holes with any sort of real life span within the next few millenia. (I'm usually hesitent to prognosticate more than three millenia in advance.) Anyhoo I feel quite comfortable packing this in the same box with Schroedinger's Cat, Parallel Worlds, and other thought experiments. But who knows, with a quantum theory of gravity, they might suddenly become very interesting to think about, and worthy of dusting off.
Neutrino mass at google.
On a side note I think I first read about it in scientific american. As some of the dates will tell you this isn't a new development, so I don't know the issue. Maybe this was it. A neutrino, or at least 1 flavor, tips the scales at a svelt .1 eV. I should figure out how many eV's I wiegh in at....or maybe I should have some more ice cream.
Elementaly, social constraints on unacceptable speach are really pathetic Orwellian attempts to control ideas. As if there were no bad words there would be no bad thoughts, and without bad thoughts there are no bad deeds. The original poster of this thread must be commended on his choice of words. "Bleating", that perfects describes that actions of panicked sheep. He simplified the problem to one word. Telling too. But there are all manner of forbiden words, some of these conventions I even abide by. But when you look at a word and its origins the truth is almost too mundane to bother. But its the impact a word has in the moment we live we judge it by. A quick examination of racial slurs would show the truth in this. Does anyone take offence to the Spanish word for black? Or a corrupted for the latin word for black? Don't say those words around the wrong people. To some extent, theres good reason for that. Those words have an odd emotional componant which will color them for quite a while. One certainly cannot make the case that the emotional componant isn't at least somewhat justified, regaurdless of what real connection it has with the word. Is fukk more acceptable than fuck? What about the Vietnamise guy I know named Phuc? Does he have to change his name? For a long time I called him "Ummm...dude." (Turns out it's pronounced foo'k). It's all good, we're all big boys and girls. Of course our parents let us grow up to be something other than super-sized children....
Hawking Radiation is a very soft lowlevel buzz. If you had a black hole the size of a proton or so, it would make a tremendous explosion, but a black hold of any real size would make Hawking radiation all but undetectable. How ever if you have a totally dark object which occupies a small volume and has a mass of greater than 3 suns, you have a black hole.
Many things in space emit X-Rays and Gamma Rays. Some are even "brighter" than Black Holes.
Pardon me for stating the obvious, but almost everything in space is brighter than black holes, that's why they're called black holes. However, little is brighter than the accreation disks of super massive black holes, save the jets of plasma that they fling off. Many think that Quasars are ancient black holes in a period of youthful exhuberance tilted at a happy angle for our viewing enjoyment.
You need to -start- with a star of greater mass than Chandrasaker Limit, which is about 3 solar masses.
Umm the Chandrasekhar limit governs the formation of neutron stars and is 1.4 solar masses. And that is b the starting mass of the star, that is the required mass of the core left exposed by the supernova. Most stars will leave a white dwarf of glowing white and a beautiful nebula as testimate to their lives. But those who's core are greater than 1.4 solar masses degenerate into neutron stars instead. The mass of the core is so great that the electrons and protons are forced into a cohabitation, and can never break the lease. Thus a star only made of neutrons with a 1 km thick shell of iron for good measure.
Until this radiation is detected, most suspected Black Holes are just that - suspected, not determined.
You might be surprised to learn a great many cosmologists disagree with you. As does the esteemed Dr. Hawking. He bet a colleague a black hole (Cygnus X-1) was not really a black hole; the prize was a subscription to Penthouse. Hawking paid off, and that was in the 80's IIRC.
But they seem to be finding Black Holes everywhere. If you count all the "missing mass", Black Holes, and other alleged particles, you'll probably end up with 900% of the mass of the Universe. Ummm.... sorry to break it to you astronomer guys, but 100% is the limit. :)
The Universe is very very heavy. Finding many many more black holes, and kinds of black holes will not alter, in any meaningful way, the mass of the universe. We found something like 30% of the mass of the universe by discovering neutrinos have mass. They ain't much to look at, but you get enough of them together and they'll surprise you. Most current accountings of the universe have us as flat, which oddly enough it pretty well in agreement with what we observe.
I would recomend a book called Black Holes by Pierre Luminte IIRC, or Stellar Interiors: physical principles, structure and evolution.. The later has little on black holes, but you'll learn about all sorts of neat stuff. But its a little technical too, in case thats not your cup of tea.
Black holes are pretty well accepted to exist, in a multitude of flavors I might add. There is a wealth of evidence from many sources that pretty well prove it. If the author means proof in the sence of walking up to the edge and tossing a star in, well grow up. Abstraction isn't a four letter word. I can't see an atom with the naked eye either, but their existance is quite certain from infered information. Sure, this information is pretty direct. But Rutherford's inferance of nuclei at the center of atoms in a sheet of gold is about the level of proof we've got for black holes. What are they like at the singularity? Well that's the realm of science yet to be invented. I think there's a place for scepticism, but this isn't it. Couldn't time be better spent disproving moon landings? For love of god, Hawking already paid off that bet. Black Holes are real, because you can't return a subscription to Penthouse.
Oh crap. I was surfing the interenet, purely for research, and it looks like Mexico got there first. Appearently there's a bar in Tijauana....
Yes, I know Bad_CRC wan't the family values flamebaiter. But honestly, there is more than enough hyperbole to go around. When you see a woman forced to copulate with a bull (which probably killed her) as a public event, then, and only then, may one finally sound the alarm that the Canadians will soon be sacking our cities.
Is it worth $7.75 to see Halle Berry's breasts? I say its worth about $3.50 for as much as you see them, my gay friends were less charitable. And ya gotta admit the opening "bullet time" sequence is something you're not likely to see on a Japanese gameshow.
Swordfish also has the rather redeming quality of not being Evolution.
The point of mine I'm so ineptly trying to blunt is that its about effort. If you can work 15 min to pay for software X, as oppose to crack it in 3 hours, you'll probably buy it. Those people in CompUSA are probably in the same boat, maybe they don't know it. In which case its not even worth it for them to find out. Around here it's crazy. Everyone has a "friend" at Microsoft. I don't think anyone buys their stuff retail in the Seattle area. But should those people find themselves in a situation that they must subvert some sort of convienence reduction, they should be able to stumble their way through it relatively easly, if not swiftly. Its just not worth their time. Quite frankly its not worth my time. But back to CompUSA, are those people packed in there looking for software? CompUSA actually has some pretty decent screwless cases near me, way better than the mom and pop shops. For what its worth, everytime I goto CompUSA I mostly see people walking out with burners, or an arm load of media. (Its also pretty desolate near me. I thought I heard crickets chirping once, but it was just the echo of my corderoys.) But back to the media. How much music would one have that they need 2 100pks of cds? *wink wink*
As for the law. Don't be silly. The law is transitory. It is all but impossible to move the market. You can ride the market, or use the market, but to force it..to force a whole culture to move away from the path it wants to choose is futile. People want to share information. This desire has served our species quite well over the millenia. And I can't imagine ill concieved, poorly understood, anachronistic ideas that richer people paid rich people to write down will influnce this. How did could one possibly resist the might of the nobles to force serfs to work their land for so little. The might of kings is absolute, how could one possibly stand against them? Emperors, Presidents, Despots, Laws, Pontifs, they all are granted their power by the people who believe in them. These proclomations of a new age of serfdom and the rise of Corporate Republics are ammusing. These laws, like the DCMA, they are paper. Don't support them. Oppose them. Ignore them. They're only laws so long as the "market" at large doesn't oppose them. For every lock there is a key, and a lock pick. As so it will always be.
Trust in them. I remember being something like 12 and busting the copy protection on a game for the apple ][ gs (woo) with a $10 dollar copy utility. No idea what I was doing. Just lots of time and patience. And that was before the internet was at everyones finger tips. The very idea of copy protection is patently absurd. Try convienence reduction. I have no doubt that I could, right now, download and burn a pirated version of PSOv2 for the dreamcast. Thanks to some 16 year old kid in Hong Kong. It's not about knowledge. It is about having the will power to spend several hours to crack something that you could pay for by working 15 minutes. Why waste the time? (If the act itself doesn't provide you with entertainment that is).
NetZero is agressivly pushing a no-ads $10/mo service. Which compeats well with AT&T's $7/mo buggy, with ads service.
Free stuff from microsoft is usually free (as in speach). There was a group that did some work with interesting graphic toys via haskell(IIRC) which outputs to C++. Mostly for Jasc, I think. And there are other examples of things like this. They're not terribly public, or common, but they're just sort of out there. And of course, MS does throw a lot of free (as in beer) towards students. It pays to advertise.
Sometimes a little perspective is good. Microsoft is big enough to buy themselves out of trouble. JP Morgan probably wielded more power, proportionally speaking, than any other American in history. It all worked out nice with him not being evil and all. But if push came to shove with Microsoft and the government, the government would win and win big. J.P. Morgan was so powerful that even though he used his power to save the US from a crisis, it disturbed people. We, in large part, owe our prosperity to his actions. I would bet no man will wield more power and wealth than J.P. Morgan did. (It's worth mentioning his personal wealth was rather modest in comparison to those he associated with). In short, the power Microsoft has is not even on par with the U.S., much less greater than it.
As for TMBG, I like what I like. Depends on my mood. But I would make the observation the two Johns follow their own compass when making their music. Sometimes it goes pretty far of field, and sometimes its just damn sweet. (Only Cd's of theirs I don't have is Long Tall Weekend, and Statesongs.) While TMBG is pretty available, certainly more available that Stewart's, it's not part of the machine that produces pop. I'm not saying Britney Spears wouldn't be famous without the aid of talanted audio engineers. She just wouldn't be famous for singing. (But she sure knows semiconductor physics.) As for 20 million college kids? I think you not only vastly overstate the popularity of TMBG but also college. (I some how doubt that something like 8% of the population is in college.) And of all the people I knew in college I only met one person besides myself that liked TMBG. (Not just Flood and Apollo 18).
Funnily enough Tim's Cascade chips are totally available where I live in any flavor you want, damn near, but they're damn tasty.
My elitist remark was more directed at the fact, that many people never question what is available, and don't look beyond their front stoop. I have. I found better stuff. Now I resent still having to venture beyond my stoop. (I never said I wasn't lazy.) If I my intent was to highlight how good but obscure things suffer at the hands of the numerous and plain, I would have used other examples. Go Speed Go by Alpha Team, and excluded Stewart's in favor of Afri Cola. I would have left out chips, as I haven't found any I like better than Tim's. But as some would argue happiness isn't having what you want, but wanting what you have. I have a little trouble doing that, I admit. And maybe I shouldn't begrudge others their happiness no matter how base I consider it to be. There's some merit in that. But I am what I am. :)
I'm a slave to the free market. Hell everyone is. Escaping the inequities it occasionally presented was what "communism" (or at least what its commonly thought to be) was all about. Can't be done. By why can't inequities be mitigated? If your product can't survive on its own merits tough. Or at least it should be. It not new that inferior products should be foist on consumers by those with deep pockets and friends with market share. But just because it isn't new, doesn't be it is right. Or am I still talking out of my ass?
You kinda remind me of a TA I had for economics. Decent guy; he was fond of saying that the market place would sort the wheat from the chaff, implying that all good ideas would be and are elevated by the invisible hand. I always recongnized that as equal parts truth, hyperbole, and happy thoughts. I never really knew if he saw it that way. (Of course he also thought the ultimate extension of capitalism was those companies and individuals that made a mistake were "killed". That was all hyperbole, but it has a certain charm.) None the less, if the invisible hand only does good works, how does one possibly explain the movies of Kevin Costner, and Roland Emmerich, to name two?
A little Preperation-H will clear that right up.
Paying to steal choice from consumers isn't evil? Maybe Oil and railroad monopolies were perfectly decent companies that NEVER hurt people. Dude. Keep an eye out, an intervention seems imminent. Maybe it's ok if multimedia companies get together and form a cartel that passes laws that make all copying, not specifically authorized by the copyright holders, illegal, punishible by a $500,000 fine and 5 years in Pelican Bay. After all that's legal. It's not often on slashdot that you see someone who thinks being a litteral wage slave is a good thing. I, however, treasure my choice. I will pay for choice, and I get pissed off when I loose it without compensation. That's just me. Some people take what they're given and they like it. While I enjoy my Stewart's Key Lime soda, bag of Tim's Cascade Chips (original flavor), and listen to They Might Be Giants, I will somewhere in the back of my mind, sincerly hope you're enjoying your Pepsi, Cheetos, and *NSYNC.
And if I'm not mistaken, smaller companies have sued larger soda manufactures, and I think pepsi sued coke once too. Perhaps there's a use for the RIAA's lawyers afterall. The smaller lables could sue the larger lables, and huge legal bills would be had by all. It seems a shame to have to defeat ones enemy, when ones enemy might be perfectly satisfied to take care of themselves.
Which is why this might be a blessing. IBM has an intrest in people clogging their hard drives with large and available media. And IBM is huge. It has customers that border on fans. That + Money = Clout. Maybe IBM can change the evil empire. There are millions of reasons for them to try. Besides, "the more the RIAA tightens [their grip], the more mp3 will fall through [their] fingers." -- Carrie Fisher
The FOIA would be to determine the validity of the incident, ie EPA showing up and what not. The information is all but common knowledge. This is, in my view, an Urban Ledgend. To think that there are people who are not even sceptical of such a story is, to my sensabilities, obscene. I wouldn't bother with fisson weapons. Just between you and me, when I "flip out", I'm going to use devices of my own design, break in to the National Accelerator Lab, and trigger a spontanious phase transition of the vacuum (which would destroy the universe). How's that for a diabolical plan?
If only the Algerians could have recruited a 15 year old boy scout, they wouldn't have needed to bring the explosives with them. What I would give to see the look on Osama Bin Ladin's face.