>Of course either 450,000 m/s or 740,000 m/s would give us measurable time/space/mass dilation problems. So you gain a little weight you get a little smaller and you age a littler slower -- basicly you would be young, short, heavy and hauling ass!!!
Even assuming that was a joke (as it probably was), not quite. Light moves at 299792458 m/s, and relativistic effects only become measurable at about 10% of lightspeed, i.e. about 30 Mm/s.
If you have a graphing calculator or a program that can draw graphs (or write your own?), try plotting 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) with v going from 0 to c (excluding c). This is the term that appears in time dilation etc. basic relativity formulas that you're referring to.
Feel free to ignore me, just picking nits with nothing better to do on a Saturday evening. =)
>Assume getting off earth is expensive, but a break through tommorow turns up with cheap travel between solar systems. That means that the space station can send probes to do fly-bys of distant planets, and 20 years latter have the satilight return for repairs before going to a diffent solar system. (Of course that would be fairly close).
Even the closest star, that is, as you probably know, Alpha Centauri, is four light years away. You would need a probe that moved at near-lightspeed, and even then the round trip would take over 8 years. As far as I can tell, we're not near the required technological level to accomplish something like that.
> Stop buying these devices. It's that simple. These companies want to make money; they're only going to make products that people will buy.
Yes, but they will also do everything they can to take away your freedom of choice on the matter, so that there IS nowhere else to take your money to. They will try (and probably succeed) to make theirs the only standard after which you only really have two options: 1) buy a device and hack it (probably illegal), or 2) give up TV entirely. (not that #2 would be that bad, the only thing even remotely worth watching here in Finland is X-Files)
The reason why they'll succeed is, as others have already pointed out, that the average consumer is not aware of this type of things and will buy the devices anyway. As also has been pointed out, people won't notice if their freedom is taken away in small steps. (Feel free to ignore me, I'm just iterating the obvious here. =)
>Anyone who thinks that a good website should depend on a plugin/javascript/animated graphics/java/images with no tags/frames/ or overdesigned pages that take forever to load on a 14.4 connection deserves the complaints from users they will get at the email address listed under 'feedback' on their page.
...assuming that they can see the "feedback" link without the required plugin =)
I agree that it is cool if a site works on Lynx, but you can't really use it to read User Friendly or Dilbert where graphics equals content.
...and it was also in The Incredible Machine (can't remember whether it was 1 or 2) in a level where you had to build a machine to fire a rocket. Of course there it was done as MIDI in the age of FM synthesis [shiver!].
You're probably right (from what I know as a 2nd year theoretical physics student), but just thought that I needed to point this out:
---
A Severe Strain on the Credulity
As a method of sending a missile to the higher, and even to the highest
parts of the earth's atmospheric envelope, Professor Goddard's rocket
is a practicable and therefore promising device. It is when one
considers the multiple-charge rocket as a traveler to the moon that one
begins to doubt... for after the rocket quits our air and really
starts on its journey, its flight would be neither accelerated nor
maintained by the explosion of the charges it then might have left.
Professor Goddard, with his "chair" in Clark College and countenancing
of the Smithsonian Institution, does not know the relation of action to
re-action, and of the need to have something better than a vacuum
against which to react... Of course he only seems to lack the
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools.
-- New York Times Editorial, 1920
---
(from my fortune cookie file, most of you have probably seen this one several times already =)
Slashdot Mirror
>Of course either 450,000 m/s or 740,000 m/s would give us measurable time/space/mass dilation problems. So you gain a little weight you get a little smaller and you age a littler slower -- basicly you would be young, short, heavy and hauling ass!!!
Even assuming that was a joke (as it probably was), not quite. Light moves at 299792458 m/s, and relativistic effects only become measurable at about 10% of lightspeed, i.e. about 30 Mm/s.
If you have a graphing calculator or a program that can draw graphs (or write your own?), try plotting 1/sqrt(1-v^2/c^2) with v going from 0 to c (excluding c). This is the term that appears in time dilation etc. basic relativity formulas that you're referring to.
Feel free to ignore me, just picking nits with nothing better to do on a Saturday evening. =)
http://mp3.com/jje
>Assume getting off earth is expensive, but a break through tommorow turns up with cheap travel between solar systems. That means that the space station can send probes to do fly-bys of distant planets, and 20 years latter have the satilight return for repairs before going to a diffent solar system. (Of course that would be fairly close).
Even the closest star, that is, as you probably know, Alpha Centauri, is four light years away. You would need a probe that moved at near-lightspeed, and even then the round trip would take over 8 years. As far as I can tell, we're not near the required technological level to accomplish something like that.
http://mp3.com/jje
It won't be, you're forgetting the Mickey Mouse conspiracy =)
http://mp3.com/jje
> Stop buying these devices. It's that simple. These companies want to make money; they're only going to make products that people will buy.
Yes, but they will also do everything they can to take away your freedom of choice on the matter, so that there IS nowhere else to take your money to. They will try (and probably succeed) to make theirs the only standard after which you only really have two options: 1) buy a device and hack it (probably illegal), or 2) give up TV entirely. (not that #2 would be that bad, the only thing even remotely worth watching here in Finland is X-Files)
The reason why they'll succeed is, as others have already pointed out, that the average consumer is not aware of this type of things and will buy the devices anyway. As also has been pointed out, people won't notice if their freedom is taken away in small steps. (Feel free to ignore me, I'm just iterating the obvious here. =)
http://mp3.com/jje
>Anyone who thinks that a good website should depend on a plugin/javascript/animated graphics/java/images with no tags/frames/ or overdesigned pages that take forever to load on a 14.4 connection deserves the complaints from users they will get at the email address listed under 'feedback' on their page.
...assuming that they can see the "feedback" link without the required plugin =)
I agree that it is cool if a site works on Lynx, but you can't really use it to read User Friendly or Dilbert where graphics equals content.
http://mp3.com/jje
...and it was also in The Incredible Machine (can't remember whether it was 1 or 2) in a level where you had to build a machine to fire a rocket. Of course there it was done as MIDI in the age of FM synthesis [shiver!].
http://mp3.com/jje
Why not just log in and ignore them in your preferences? There are probably others here who still read them.
http://mp3.com/jje
You're probably right (from what I know as a 2nd year theoretical physics student), but just thought that I needed to point this out:
---
---
(from my fortune cookie file, most of you have probably seen this one several times already =)
http://mp3.com/jje - Ambient music etc.