Nobody ever told me auras don't exist. Doesn't mean I can't reasonably come to that conclusion on my own.
Actually, you couldn't possibly reasonably come to that conclusion on your own. What possible evidence could you have for the nonexistence of something? That you've never seen it? I take it then you've also come to the conclusion that atoms don't exist either, or cheetahs. (Seeing them on TV doesn't count -- unless you also believe Klingons exist...)
If you believe in atoms and don't believe in auras, most likely it's for the same reason most people agree with you -- that's the standard world paradigm of our age, and you've been taught it by others, just like the rest of us.
Quick check: do you believe rocks have minds? Do you believes rocks do not have minds? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you have an opinion that cannot possibly be based on personal observation or evidence. Thus, unless this view was taught to you by someone else, one wonders how you could have come by it. (In either case, it's a groundless superstition. The funny thing is watching idiots defend a yes answer to either of these questions as more rational than a yes to the other...)
No. Einstein had already won the Nobel Prize for science by the time he published the Special Theory. People hung on every word he said.
Err, no, this is false. Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. He and Lorentz were jointly proposed for a Nobel Prize based on their relativity work in 1912, but they did not receive the award. Einstein did not receive a Nobel Prize until 1921, and then it was for "contributions to theoretical physics, including the photoelectric effect". 16 years after publication, and it was still too controversial for the Nobel Prize committee to mention it...
Poppycock. That is not an excellent point, just an observation that doesn't mean much. The beam doesn't have to "know" to affect or not affect anything. The paper says the amount of effect observed varies depending on the mass of the object. Thus, one assumes it does affect the air between the source and the target, but air not having much mass is not going to be affected much. Also, since the force observed is only sufficient to move a pendulam, not rip it off it's string, one would hardly expect it to bend steel walls or anything. Any effect on the intervening matter that is (a) gaseous, or (b) not suspended from a string, is likely to be extremely tiny. And if it wasn't, this would only provide further evidence for the effect. I fail to see how this is a "major flaw" in the design of the experiment.
That, or the observations are false or embellished.
Either way, the experiment is easy to duplicate (they were very good about describing their apparatus and methods)
The fact that they so carefully explained their apparatus and methods leads me to believe this is not a fraud. That doesn't mean it's not flawed, but I believe the authors are sincere in their claims. What we need to do now is determine if the observed effect was due to real phenomenon or flawed experiments...
If, like certain other frauds from years back, they refused to publish details on how they achieved their results citing IP/patent nonsense [*cough* cold fusion *cough*], I'd be more skeptical. But this guy, right or wrong, at least appears to be sincere...
This experiment won't really work. Even under General Relativity and assuming the speed of gravity is the speed of light (and not instantaneous), the equations show that the Earth will orbit a point fairly close to where the Sun actually is, not where it appears to be. The relative velocity between the Sun and the Earth distorts the point of attraction such that the Earth appears to orbit the Sun's actual position (or pretty damn close -- if it was perfectly accurate, binary pulsar orbits wouldn't decay). The only way to check this would be to stop the relative motion between the Sun and the Earth. If gravity were instantaneous, you'd see the difference right away, whereas under GR, for eight minites the Earth will orbit where the sun would have been if it hadn't stopped dead in its tracks. Unfortunately, this is not an easy experiment to set up...
Is there a proof that gravitity does NOT travel instantly? If yuo can proof this you've a proof for gravity waves, right? Another mystery yet
That gravitiy does travel instantly is not a proof on violation of the relitiy theory.
Actually, it is. General Relativity includes a term for the speed of gravity (c subscript g), and the success of the theory in explaining the orbital decay of binary pulsars and the accuracy of our observations place a limit on the difference between c-sub-g and c (the speed of light) of 1% or less. So, it is undeniable that either (a) the speed of gravity is within 1% of the speed of light, and not instantaneous, or (b) General Relativity is false.
I believe both of them are demonstrably false. Each does extrememly well within its own problem domain but breaks down when applied to the other, i.e. relativity doesn't fare well in the subatomic, and quantum theory doesn't fare well on the large scale stuff. A general theory that unified them would not be either of them, thus both are false if a true unified theory exists. Of course, they're false in the same way Newton's theories were false, i.e. not entirely wrong, true to a point, etc. -- essential true except for that little thing they overlooked that makes no difference except in exceptional circumstances. I don't really consider them wrong, just incomplete (which is technically "wrong" but sounds nicer)...
I wouldn't say the story was "hushed up" for further research. Until the further research is done, there just isn't much to tell beyond what you learned before starting the further research. After a couple of months, you get tired repeating the same old stuff over and over again...
I won't bother trying to share any of my own theories as thet aren't tested and are probably a load of bull;-)
I don't think you've quite got the hang of this Slashdot thing yet...:)
For example, while I don't personally believe in time-travel, there is no way I can prove it is impossible.
In philosophy and mathematics, when we do a proof and derive a contradiction, we call this proof that the conjunction of the initial assumptions is incorrect, and rightly so. In bad sci-fi, they call it a paradox but refuse to infer the necessary conclusion from it. One assumes this is because most sci-fi authors are logically challenged...
The fact that you get paradoxes is proof, and by that I don't mean "sufficient evidence to convince most people", I mean proof in the full-blown sense as used by logicians. What more do you want?
Ahh, but why is it that physics reduces to a bunch of staggeringly nonlinear mathematical relationships (mostly dealing with the topology of the spacetime metric at string-theory scales)?
It's the job of science to explain how things are. As for why the universe happens to work that way, this isn't really a scientific question...
Just to further expound upon this -- the effect of inbreeding is to enhance existing characteristics. All of our best crops and animals have been produced by taking animals that had the traits we wanted to exemplify and inbreeding them.
The idea that inbreeding is bad is mostly a myth. As the above poster mentioned, if bad recessive genes are possessed it's a problem, but it's otherwise perfectly fine. The dislike for inbreeding is a social taboo, not a biological imperative.
This is only true of you don't allow use of a notation saying "repeat this sequence infinitely". Under these conditions, 1/3rd can't be exactly expressed in decimal notation. Actually, it can, write ".3" and draw a bar over the 3. 1/10th can be expressed exactly in binary using the same trick.
Incidently, 1/3rd does not repeat infinitely if expressed in base-12, a far more logical base for numbers than 10. Just ask 13th century Polish from an alternate universe...:)
Theoretically, if you had all the information in the universe (i.e. exact position and velocity of every fundamental particle) at your disposal and unlimited computing power, you COULD determine everything that is to happen (or has happened). Then nothing would be random.
This view is known as determinism. It is, incidently, an essentially religious view. The poster nor anyone else could possible know the truth or falsity of the above statement. Anyone who believes it (or believes it to be false) is committing himself or herself to a view with not a single shred of evidence for or against it...
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Re:4. Is Alan Cox still not going to US convention
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I think the ACLU has far more funds to work with, thus it's not surprising they get more done. I think it's unfair to consider giving your money to the ACLU instead of the EFF because of it -- that just exacerbates the problem.
OTOH, don't let me discourage you from contributing to the ACLU as well. I think they're the best defenders our constitution has. Definately worth the price of a yearly magazine subscription...
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Re:Yes, it is different where I live.
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America, the country of free trade,...
Wow! People in other parts of the world are actually buying it! Amazing...
Take a good hard look at our laws, people. Protectionism is far from dead. We talk the talk (in order to try to convince other nations to open up to our businesses) but we most certainly don't walk the walk. I always find it funny watching American politicians complain about trade barriers in other countries, none of which have half the protectionist legislation we have.
I never realized you guys out there were buying it, though. I thought it was just rhetoric intended for us US voters...
I have a SPARCstation IPC: both Solaris and Linux are tortoises compared to NetBSD (Linux sucks due to improper handling of the MMU on sun4c machines -- I imagine it works fine on newer hardware).
What I dont understand is: If you make an exact bit-by-bit copy of a CD, then wouldn't it stand to reason that the CD Copy would play exactly like to original?
It would. You do realize that your CD-ROM can't do this, right? If you've read the article in question, you should know that the CD-ROM discards the ECC information, and when you burn a CD, new ECC information is written out to match the data being written. Thus, a bit-for-bit copy would work fine, and is utterly impossible to make using a standard PC CD-ROM reader and a correctly functioning CD-Burner.
Copy protection isn't evil, it's just stupid. Normal users suffer while pirates continue to make copies with ease.
What's evil is criminalizing legitimate activities. I have a court-tested and legally proven right to make personal copies of any media I own. However, the RIAA wants to make it illegal for me to do so, and send anyone who aids me in doing so to prison, even if all the aid they're giving me is providing me with some information.
You're right, neither making money nor trying to make money is evil. And you're so profounding missing the point that one wonders if you're actually read anything on the topic.
No. CD-Audio can be played two ways -- the CD-ROM can feed the analog data signal directly to your soundcard, in which case your fake "sound" device won't see anything, so it doesn't work at all in the first case. The other way to play the CD is to digitally read the data from the CD and deliver that data to the sound card, in which case your fake sound device will record the signal it received just fine. But Macrovision will have already hosed up the signal. In fact, forget copying -- with Macrovision, you can't even listen to your CD's using the second method...
Are you going to pay their publicity costs, so they can make radio appearances, get magazine space, host a fan site?
Hmmm. I've never heard any of my favorite musicians make radio appearances, nor have I ever seen them in a magazine, and never found any of their websites to be useful. So, no I'm not going to pay for any of that crap. If other people want that stuff, they can pay for it with radio ads, magazine subscriptions, or whatever other method allows the people who actual want that crap to pay for it and those of us who don't want it don't have to pay for it.
Are you going to pay tour costs, so they can come to your city?
Why on Earth would I want them to come to my city? Live performances suck -- there's a reason why they make recording studios with expensive processing equipment etc.
Are you going to chip in some extra tax money for all those who support the recording industry who end up on welfare? (Not the execs, who won't be starving any time soon. I mean the secretaries, the food vendors, the gofers.)
If they can't get jobs at other companies, sure. Are the secretaries at record companies so incompentent that they can't get hired by any other industry? Companies in many fields go out of business all the time. This is never a good argument for bolstering them up if they can't make it otherwise. Under capitalism, this is supposed to happen -- guarenteeing people a job went out of style when the Soviet Union collapsed...
Even forgetting all that, your argument makes no sense. Let me rephrase it to make it more obvious why: you're saying we should spend money on these people (by supporting them through the record companies) so we don't have to spend money on these people (through government taxes). "We should do A to avoid doing A." is not a valid argument, regardless of what A is...
You want to tear down the whole industry, eliminate everybody in the music supply chain but you and the artist? Just pay her/him/them? Is that what you want, bunky?
Yes.
And your reason was what, again?
The exact same reason I always make an effort to cut out middlemen -- it's more efficient that way. This is why "warehouse" grocery stores have largely replaced corner grocery stores, huge department stores have replaced mom-and-pop stores, etc: it's more efficient that way. Maybe you like to waste money, but both in my business and personal life, I try to cut out unnecessary costs when I can.
One of the points of capitalism is that it's supposed to favor efficiency. It breaks down in the presence of monopolies, however. It also can be circumvented with laws. The RIAA and MPAA are currently working hard to ensure laws are enacted to prevent capitalism from running its natural course, because they know their way of doing things is inefficient.
I, for one, don't care. If family farmers can't make money when corporate farmers do it more efficiently, it's time for them to find a new job. When mechanical/spring watchmakers can't continue to do their jobs because quartz watchs are all people buy now, it's time to find a new job. I'm sorry, but under capitalism, when the old way to doing things doesn't work any more, or a new way comes along that is better, things are supposed to change! What's a wonder about modern society is not how much it has changed over the last decade but rather how little it has, compared to how much it ought to consider all the things that are different and how much no longer makes sense considering the new technologies and methods we have at our fingertips.
There will always be luddites to fight change, particularly those in control of those who benefit from the old ways. So what? Screw 'um and move on...
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Actually, you couldn't possibly reasonably come to that conclusion on your own. What possible evidence could you have for the nonexistence of something? That you've never seen it? I take it then you've also come to the conclusion that atoms don't exist either, or cheetahs. (Seeing them on TV doesn't count -- unless you also believe Klingons exist...)
If you believe in atoms and don't believe in auras, most likely it's for the same reason most people agree with you -- that's the standard world paradigm of our age, and you've been taught it by others, just like the rest of us.
Quick check: do you believe rocks have minds? Do you believes rocks do not have minds? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you have an opinion that cannot possibly be based on personal observation or evidence. Thus, unless this view was taught to you by someone else, one wonders how you could have come by it. (In either case, it's a groundless superstition. The funny thing is watching idiots defend a yes answer to either of these questions as more rational than a yes to the other...)
Err, no, this is false. Einstein published his Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. He and Lorentz were jointly proposed for a Nobel Prize based on their relativity work in 1912, but they did not receive the award. Einstein did not receive a Nobel Prize until 1921, and then it was for "contributions to theoretical physics, including the photoelectric effect". 16 years after publication, and it was still too controversial for the Nobel Prize committee to mention it...
Actually, 10 GW is overkill -- you really only need 1.21 GW to achieve the result if your flux capacitor is designed efficiently...
Poppycock. That is not an excellent point, just an observation that doesn't mean much. The beam doesn't have to "know" to affect or not affect anything. The paper says the amount of effect observed varies depending on the mass of the object. Thus, one assumes it does affect the air between the source and the target, but air not having much mass is not going to be affected much. Also, since the force observed is only sufficient to move a pendulam, not rip it off it's string, one would hardly expect it to bend steel walls or anything. Any effect on the intervening matter that is (a) gaseous, or (b) not suspended from a string, is likely to be extremely tiny. And if it wasn't, this would only provide further evidence for the effect. I fail to see how this is a "major flaw" in the design of the experiment.
Either way, the experiment is easy to duplicate (they were very good about describing their apparatus and methods)
The fact that they so carefully explained their apparatus and methods leads me to believe this is not a fraud. That doesn't mean it's not flawed, but I believe the authors are sincere in their claims. What we need to do now is determine if the observed effect was due to real phenomenon or flawed experiments...
If, like certain other frauds from years back, they refused to publish details on how they achieved their results citing IP/patent nonsense [*cough* cold fusion *cough*], I'd be more skeptical. But this guy, right or wrong, at least appears to be sincere...
No. You'd need to contradict the Special Theory of Relativity (the older of the two) for that.
This experiment won't really work. Even under General Relativity and assuming the speed of gravity is the speed of light (and not instantaneous), the equations show that the Earth will orbit a point fairly close to where the Sun actually is, not where it appears to be. The relative velocity between the Sun and the Earth distorts the point of attraction such that the Earth appears to orbit the Sun's actual position (or pretty damn close -- if it was perfectly accurate, binary pulsar orbits wouldn't decay). The only way to check this would be to stop the relative motion between the Sun and the Earth. If gravity were instantaneous, you'd see the difference right away, whereas under GR, for eight minites the Earth will orbit where the sun would have been if it hadn't stopped dead in its tracks. Unfortunately, this is not an easy experiment to set up...
That gravitiy does travel instantly is not a proof on violation of the relitiy theory.
Actually, it is. General Relativity includes a term for the speed of gravity (c subscript g), and the success of the theory in explaining the orbital decay of binary pulsars and the accuracy of our observations place a limit on the difference between c-sub-g and c (the speed of light) of 1% or less. So, it is undeniable that either (a) the speed of gravity is within 1% of the speed of light, and not instantaneous, or (b) General Relativity is false.
I believe both of them are demonstrably false. Each does extrememly well within its own problem domain but breaks down when applied to the other, i.e. relativity doesn't fare well in the subatomic, and quantum theory doesn't fare well on the large scale stuff. A general theory that unified them would not be either of them, thus both are false if a true unified theory exists. Of course, they're false in the same way Newton's theories were false, i.e. not entirely wrong, true to a point, etc. -- essential true except for that little thing they overlooked that makes no difference except in exceptional circumstances. I don't really consider them wrong, just incomplete (which is technically "wrong" but sounds nicer)...
I wouldn't say the story was "hushed up" for further research. Until the further research is done, there just isn't much to tell beyond what you learned before starting the further research. After a couple of months, you get tired repeating the same old stuff over and over again...
I don't think you've quite got the hang of this Slashdot thing yet... :)
For example, while I don't personally believe in time-travel, there is no way I can prove it is impossible.
In philosophy and mathematics, when we do a proof and derive a contradiction, we call this proof that the conjunction of the initial assumptions is incorrect, and rightly so. In bad sci-fi, they call it a paradox but refuse to infer the necessary conclusion from it. One assumes this is because most sci-fi authors are logically challenged...
The fact that you get paradoxes is proof, and by that I don't mean "sufficient evidence to convince most people", I mean proof in the full-blown sense as used by logicians. What more do you want?
It's the job of science to explain how things are. As for why the universe happens to work that way, this isn't really a scientific question...
Err, gravity does not and cannot hold two protons together. That's what strong nuclear force is for...
The idea that inbreeding is bad is mostly a myth. As the above poster mentioned, if bad recessive genes are possessed it's a problem, but it's otherwise perfectly fine. The dislike for inbreeding is a social taboo, not a biological imperative.
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Incidently, 1/3rd does not repeat infinitely if expressed in base-12, a far more logical base for numbers than 10. Just ask 13th century Polish from an alternate universe... :)
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This view is known as determinism. It is, incidently, an essentially religious view. The poster nor anyone else could possible know the truth or falsity of the above statement. Anyone who believes it (or believes it to be false) is committing himself or herself to a view with not a single shred of evidence for or against it...
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OTOH, don't let me discourage you from contributing to the ACLU as well. I think they're the best defenders our constitution has. Definately worth the price of a yearly magazine subscription...
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Wow! People in other parts of the world are actually buying it! Amazing...
Take a good hard look at our laws, people. Protectionism is far from dead. We talk the talk (in order to try to convince other nations to open up to our businesses) but we most certainly don't walk the walk. I always find it funny watching American politicians complain about trade barriers in other countries, none of which have half the protectionist legislation we have.
I never realized you guys out there were buying it, though. I thought it was just rhetoric intended for us US voters...
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It would. You do realize that your CD-ROM can't do this, right? If you've read the article in question, you should know that the CD-ROM discards the ECC information, and when you burn a CD, new ECC information is written out to match the data being written. Thus, a bit-for-bit copy would work fine, and is utterly impossible to make using a standard PC CD-ROM reader and a correctly functioning CD-Burner.
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What's evil is criminalizing legitimate activities. I have a court-tested and legally proven right to make personal copies of any media I own. However, the RIAA wants to make it illegal for me to do so, and send anyone who aids me in doing so to prison, even if all the aid they're giving me is providing me with some information.
You're right, neither making money nor trying to make money is evil. And you're so profounding missing the point that one wonders if you're actually read anything on the topic.
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Hmmm. I've never heard any of my favorite musicians make radio appearances, nor have I ever seen them in a magazine, and never found any of their websites to be useful. So, no I'm not going to pay for any of that crap. If other people want that stuff, they can pay for it with radio ads, magazine subscriptions, or whatever other method allows the people who actual want that crap to pay for it and those of us who don't want it don't have to pay for it.
Are you going to pay tour costs, so they can come to your city?
Why on Earth would I want them to come to my city? Live performances suck -- there's a reason why they make recording studios with expensive processing equipment etc.
Are you going to chip in some extra tax money for all those who support the recording industry who end up on welfare? (Not the execs, who won't be starving any time soon. I mean the secretaries, the food vendors, the gofers.)
If they can't get jobs at other companies, sure. Are the secretaries at record companies so incompentent that they can't get hired by any other industry? Companies in many fields go out of business all the time. This is never a good argument for bolstering them up if they can't make it otherwise. Under capitalism, this is supposed to happen -- guarenteeing people a job went out of style when the Soviet Union collapsed...
Even forgetting all that, your argument makes no sense. Let me rephrase it to make it more obvious why: you're saying we should spend money on these people (by supporting them through the record companies) so we don't have to spend money on these people (through government taxes). "We should do A to avoid doing A." is not a valid argument, regardless of what A is...
You want to tear down the whole industry, eliminate everybody in the music supply chain but you and the artist? Just pay her/him/them? Is that what you want, bunky?
Yes.
And your reason was what, again?
The exact same reason I always make an effort to cut out middlemen -- it's more efficient that way. This is why "warehouse" grocery stores have largely replaced corner grocery stores, huge department stores have replaced mom-and-pop stores, etc: it's more efficient that way. Maybe you like to waste money, but both in my business and personal life, I try to cut out unnecessary costs when I can.
One of the points of capitalism is that it's supposed to favor efficiency. It breaks down in the presence of monopolies, however. It also can be circumvented with laws. The RIAA and MPAA are currently working hard to ensure laws are enacted to prevent capitalism from running its natural course, because they know their way of doing things is inefficient.
I, for one, don't care. If family farmers can't make money when corporate farmers do it more efficiently, it's time for them to find a new job. When mechanical/spring watchmakers can't continue to do their jobs because quartz watchs are all people buy now, it's time to find a new job. I'm sorry, but under capitalism, when the old way to doing things doesn't work any more, or a new way comes along that is better, things are supposed to change! What's a wonder about modern society is not how much it has changed over the last decade but rather how little it has, compared to how much it ought to consider all the things that are different and how much no longer makes sense considering the new technologies and methods we have at our fingertips.
There will always be luddites to fight change, particularly those in control of those who benefit from the old ways. So what? Screw 'um and move on...
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