I've seen people lauding Python for years but I have just considered it yet another scripting language (Perl is one of my favorites). Now I find out it is a functional language using lambdas (and maps), and Lisp having been one of my favorites years ago, this is going to be my next language to learn!
In OSX? It's really good. In Windows? Crash-prone, looks nothing like any other app. Apple has a lot to do with it before they have a chance.
It's still a beta, and as far as I have been able to make out, still in pretty rapid development, so I will give it a chance to mature and hope that it doesn't fall into the bloat trap doing so...
That it looks like no other app, well, it's a Mac app on Windows, but it's still quite well-behaved regarding the Windows world GUI-wise. The character display fuzziness is a matter of taste in my opinion.
The salient point here is that the temperatures of the incoming and outgoing radiation are not the same, which makes the arguments invalid, regardless of if the mirror is perfect or not. From the point of view of thermodynamics, the device really is a heat engine, as is everything that involves energy conversion and radiation.
The rebuttal's reference to quantum effects are irrelevant, since the laws of thermodynamics are not violated by quantum physics (they seem to contain their own protection against that, which is why it is impossible to build a device implementing a "Maxwell's Daemon").
An interesting angle on this is to try to devise a perpetual motion engine using this effect. One could imagine using a second, fixed (or attached to something much more massive than the sail), mirror that would reflect the light back towards the sail, thereby reusing the same photons over and over. Of course, the energy of the photons would decrease over each iteration and the pressure of the reused light would decrease pretty quickly. There might be geometric reasons why this couldn't work, as well.
All this will accomplish is to tie up resources on YOUR mail server.
It will tie up the resources on the open relay, and it is the open relay that will get hurt most. The spammer himself may not even notice anything amiss (unless he spams directly), as the relay should queue the mails for later delivery.
Whether this is good or bad is another matter, but it may just create an evolutionary pressure that will clean away open relays...
This reminds me of a court case about some disputed transaction in Sweden a few years back, where the court used as evidence that the transaction had been made - a screenshot of the mail message in question!
Unfortumately I don't have the reference anymore. It really took my imagination for a ride when I thought about the possible applications for anyone with access to a bitmap editor...
There's definitely something sick with this guy, if he really does exist. Reading the page was funny at first, but his persistence suggests to me that he really needs a psychiatrist rather than a laywer. In the end, I kind of feel sorry for him. Still, I would love to read his resume...
Slashdot Mirror
Nuff said. End of story.
I've seen people lauding Python for years but I have just considered it yet another scripting language (Perl is one of my favorites). Now I find out it is a functional language using lambdas (and maps), and Lisp having been one of my favorites years ago, this is going to be my next language to learn!
It's still a beta, and as far as I have been able to make out, still in pretty rapid development, so I will give it a chance to mature and hope that it doesn't fall into the bloat trap doing so...
That it looks like no other app, well, it's a Mac app on Windows, but it's still quite well-behaved regarding the Windows world GUI-wise. The character display fuzziness is a matter of taste in my opinion.
A new player recently appeared: Safari for Windows. It is small, fairly bare-bones, and really fast.
Truly cool, but the "retro" feel of the design is marred by the joysticks. i would prefer something like a double-contact knife switch or some such...
The rebuttal's reference to quantum effects are irrelevant, since the laws of thermodynamics are not violated by quantum physics (they seem to contain their own protection against that, which is why it is impossible to build a device implementing a "Maxwell's Daemon").
An interesting angle on this is to try to devise a perpetual motion engine using this effect. One could imagine using a second, fixed (or attached to something much more massive than the sail), mirror that would reflect the light back towards the sail, thereby reusing the same photons over and over. Of course, the energy of the photons would decrease over each iteration and the pressure of the reused light would decrease pretty quickly. There might be geometric reasons why this couldn't work, as well.
It will tie up the resources on the open relay, and it is the open relay that will get hurt most. The spammer himself may not even notice anything amiss (unless he spams directly), as the relay should queue the mails for later delivery.
Whether this is good or bad is another matter, but it may just create an evolutionary pressure that will clean away open relays...
Unfortumately I don't have the reference anymore. It really took my imagination for a ride when I thought about the possible applications for anyone with access to a bitmap editor...
There's definitely something sick with this guy, if he really does exist. Reading the page was funny at first, but his persistence suggests to me that he really needs a psychiatrist rather than a laywer. In the end, I kind of feel sorry for him. Still, I would love to read his resume...