So I can't patent my method of not falling off the Earth through application of gravity?
Alas, you can. This just means it won't hold up in court, not that you can't patent it, threaten other people, incur huge legal costs and tie things up for years making a nuisance of yourself until the money from your investors runs out, at which point you just declare bankruptcy, dissolve the corp that takes all the blame and walk away from the mess with the income you earned during the time.
As I recall, I played D2 for months before learning there was PvP... it eventually became a quite interesting and fun part of the game. It becomes the endgame, but it takes a while to get there...
So let me get this straight: I can pay gameservers.com $14.95 for a 16-player server, or my group can pay a total of $80 to Minefold for the same thing. This is what passes for innovative these days?
If you and your friends have several different servers (more likely when they expand this to include more titles), it doesn't take long for this to actually be cheaper.
I would bet that if you compared the carbon foot print of "Laser the sh*t out of it" with "Stuff it in a vat and let the microbes have a party", the current technology would win... it doesn't need much (if any) electricity.
If you care about which particular microbes party, and that they party the way you want, I'm curious how you accomplish this without the electricity usually required to create and maintain the required controlled environment. I suspect you're vastly underestimating the effort required to do this, as well as vastly overestimating the power requirements of your typical laser.
I doubt that this is always the case. It's not like digital distribution methods have no carbon footprint -- they often have much greater power requirements.
But it should be noted the more of an idiot someone is, the more likely they are to see everyone else as idiots. Thus, the "most people are idiots" attitude is a warning sign that the person saying it is an idiot. Not conclusive, but strongly indicative...
I thought that kind of slingshot required the body to be in orbit, and the energy comes from degrading the object's orbit. I wouldn't think it would work using a free-floating object. I suppose, though, it's technically orbiting the galaxy... so maybe it would.
PASS. Amazon's Tablet only costs 1/3rd as much as the Apple iPad (and I can get Fantasy & Science Magazine for just $10 a year). Per usual the "generic" brand is less-costly than the luxury brand. Same reason I buy Dodge/VW/Toyota not Chrysler/Audi/Lexus.
Indeed. At the same time, if I can easily afford it, I buy the Lexus. Is it better? Yes. Is it three times better? No, absolutely not, not even close. But if I have the cash, within reason, I buy the best.
Important corollary: never believe what the police tell you. They love to lie to you if they think it'll help implicate you in something. Worse, they love to lie to your friends about you to try to solicit as "ah, so they already know, might as well cooperate" response. Trashing your relationships? Bah, just part of the job...
More like it's now been investigated, verified, checked, reviewed, and accepted by half a dozen different departments, and this is the resolution. If anyone in this web things the decision was in error, they have five other departments to fight with, who will push back very strongly at the suggestion that they might have made a bad call.
FTS: A report...published in the Astrophysical Journal, raises more questions than answers about a cosmic pile-up that's occurring 2.4 billion light-years away.
Should that be "occured 2.4 billion years ago"?
To be perfectly pedantic, it should be "that occurred 2.4 billion years away". Your "correction" is making an entirely different statement, which although true, is not what the original was saying.
BTW, what you're suggesting here is the equivalent of saying, "oh look, the Earth's magnetic pole isn't moving exactly the way our theory predicts -- we should toss out this crackpot theory that the Earth is round."
There are theories that other people have come up with that don't require dark matter...
These theories are even more at odds with the observed effects here than our current theories. What we're seeing in this case is dark matter behaving in an unexpected manner. A theory that posits dark matter doesn't even exist would have a much, much harder time explaining its observed behavior...
Yup, typical response from physicists for oh I dunno almost the past 100 years. Can't explain something? Must be a new particle...
Yup. Can't explain something, but it would be explained if a certain particle with such and such properties exist, let's go look for it... and lo, there it is! It's amazing what you can discover if you're willing do more than just throw up your hands and say, "hmm, can't explain that."
By the way, it occurs to me on rereading that my post phrases one point in an incredibly optimistic way. To be more explicit, the first interstellar civilization (if such a thing is possible) is not simply going to colonize the entire galaxy before another figures out how to build a fire, it's likely to colonize the entire galaxy before the second figures out the trick of collecting its cells together to form multicellular lifeforms. Given the timescales evolution operates on, the first interstellar civilization should be more than capable for spreading out across the entire galaxy before the second gets to that point, and will find lots of bacteria but no one to talk to...
There are any number of reasons why they might not want to come here or why we might not notice them. For sure the Fermi Paradox has some interesting arguments, but I don't believe that just because we haven't seen them coming here (or recognized them, maybe they're already here and we just don't see it!) doesn't mean they aren't out there.
They aren't out there. People seem to conveniently forget the kinds of timescales evolution works on. The first interstellar civilization to evolve, even if it colonized other systems at sublight speeds in rarely launched generation ships, would, due to the exponential nature of such things, colonize the entire galaxy before the next species discovered fire. The reason we haven't met them is either (a) we're the first, (b) the first came and went before we figured out to bang the rocks together, or (c) physics just makes interstellar civilization impossibly difficult. In any case, they aren't out there (assuming by "they" we mean interstellar civilizations -- option c affords the possibility that there are other civilizations out there, they're just chillin' on their homeworld and we'll never actually meet them).
Slashdot Mirror
"The debris was predicted to pass about 23 kilometers (14.2 miles) from the space station, NASA said."
Sooo, 14 miles and CDR Riker yells "red alert!"
The key word is "predicted". When something will pass within 14 miles of your location, give or take 20 miles...
Before 1080p LCD's were commonplace, 1920x1200 screens were common. Now they're hard to find...
orly? Took me all of ten seconds searching...
Hobbits AND an IP infringement lawsuit AND beer! How can you even question this story? It's one of the most typical of /. stories up at the moment...
Okay, mods, that's a new one... you can't call the First Post "Redundant".
Obviously, you can. Are you doubting the evidence of your own eyes?
So I can't patent my method of not falling off the Earth through application of gravity?
Alas, you can. This just means it won't hold up in court, not that you can't patent it, threaten other people, incur huge legal costs and tie things up for years making a nuisance of yourself until the money from your investors runs out, at which point you just declare bankruptcy, dissolve the corp that takes all the blame and walk away from the mess with the income you earned during the time.
Business cards always seem to end up being used as bookmarks by me. To mark where I was at... in a book... printed on paper... oh dear...
PvP not ready at launch? Fine, whatever.
As I recall, I played D2 for months before learning there was PvP... it eventually became a quite interesting and fun part of the game. It becomes the endgame, but it takes a while to get there...
So let me get this straight: I can pay gameservers.com $14.95 for a 16-player server, or my group can pay a total of $80 to Minefold for the same thing. This is what passes for innovative these days?
If you and your friends have several different servers (more likely when they expand this to include more titles), it doesn't take long for this to actually be cheaper.
I would bet that if you compared the carbon foot print of "Laser the sh*t out of it" with "Stuff it in a vat and let the microbes have a party", the current technology would win... it doesn't need much (if any) electricity.
If you care about which particular microbes party, and that they party the way you want, I'm curious how you accomplish this without the electricity usually required to create and maintain the required controlled environment. I suspect you're vastly underestimating the effort required to do this, as well as vastly overestimating the power requirements of your typical laser.
I doubt that this is always the case. It's not like digital distribution methods have no carbon footprint -- they often have much greater power requirements.
Average Joe is an idiot. Film at 11.
But it should be noted the more of an idiot someone is, the more likely they are to see everyone else as idiots. Thus, the "most people are idiots" attitude is a warning sign that the person saying it is an idiot. Not conclusive, but strongly indicative...
I thought that kind of slingshot required the body to be in orbit, and the energy comes from degrading the object's orbit. I wouldn't think it would work using a free-floating object. I suppose, though, it's technically orbiting the galaxy... so maybe it would.
Richard Gariott decided that he was living in the future.
"The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed." -- William Gibson
Steve Jobs wouldn't be down with this shit. Silicon Valley for life, bitches!
TFS: "[Apple] already employs thousands in Austin..."
Line-up?
PASS. Amazon's Tablet only costs 1/3rd as much as the Apple iPad (and I can get Fantasy & Science Magazine for just $10 a year). Per usual the "generic" brand is less-costly than the luxury brand. Same reason I buy Dodge/VW/Toyota not Chrysler/Audi/Lexus.
Indeed. At the same time, if I can easily afford it, I buy the Lexus. Is it better? Yes. Is it three times better? No, absolutely not, not even close. But if I have the cash, within reason, I buy the best.
Important corollary: never believe what the police tell you. They love to lie to you if they think it'll help implicate you in something. Worse, they love to lie to your friends about you to try to solicit as "ah, so they already know, might as well cooperate" response. Trashing your relationships? Bah, just part of the job...
More like it's now been investigated, verified, checked, reviewed, and accepted by half a dozen different departments, and this is the resolution. If anyone in this web things the decision was in error, they have five other departments to fight with, who will push back very strongly at the suggestion that they might have made a bad call.
Stay alert, TRUST NO ONE, keep your laser handy...
FTS: A report...published in the Astrophysical Journal, raises more questions than answers about a cosmic pile-up that's occurring 2.4 billion light-years away.
Should that be "occured 2.4 billion years ago"?
To be perfectly pedantic, it should be "that occurred 2.4 billion years away". Your "correction" is making an entirely different statement, which although true, is not what the original was saying.
BTW, what you're suggesting here is the equivalent of saying, "oh look, the Earth's magnetic pole isn't moving exactly the way our theory predicts -- we should toss out this crackpot theory that the Earth is round."
There are theories that other people have come up with that don't require dark matter...
These theories are even more at odds with the observed effects here than our current theories. What we're seeing in this case is dark matter behaving in an unexpected manner. A theory that posits dark matter doesn't even exist would have a much, much harder time explaining its observed behavior...
Yes... and in a few million years, we can compare it to the images we took today and see if that's the case...
Yup, typical response from physicists for oh I dunno almost the past 100 years. Can't explain something? Must be a new particle...
Yup. Can't explain something, but it would be explained if a certain particle with such and such properties exist, let's go look for it... and lo, there it is! It's amazing what you can discover if you're willing do more than just throw up your hands and say, "hmm, can't explain that."
By the way, it occurs to me on rereading that my post phrases one point in an incredibly optimistic way. To be more explicit, the first interstellar civilization (if such a thing is possible) is not simply going to colonize the entire galaxy before another figures out how to build a fire, it's likely to colonize the entire galaxy before the second figures out the trick of collecting its cells together to form multicellular lifeforms. Given the timescales evolution operates on, the first interstellar civilization should be more than capable for spreading out across the entire galaxy before the second gets to that point, and will find lots of bacteria but no one to talk to...
There are any number of reasons why they might not want to come here or why we might not notice them. For sure the Fermi Paradox has some interesting arguments, but I don't believe that just because we haven't seen them coming here (or recognized them, maybe they're already here and we just don't see it!) doesn't mean they aren't out there.
They aren't out there. People seem to conveniently forget the kinds of timescales evolution works on. The first interstellar civilization to evolve, even if it colonized other systems at sublight speeds in rarely launched generation ships, would, due to the exponential nature of such things, colonize the entire galaxy before the next species discovered fire. The reason we haven't met them is either (a) we're the first, (b) the first came and went before we figured out to bang the rocks together, or (c) physics just makes interstellar civilization impossibly difficult. In any case, they aren't out there (assuming by "they" we mean interstellar civilizations -- option c affords the possibility that there are other civilizations out there, they're just chillin' on their homeworld and we'll never actually meet them).