It looks like Goldstein's comments have been edited. He doesn't make a very convincing argument in his answers, and they feel incomplete to me. Isn't he a lot more verbose? Could CNN have edited him for content?
What if in designing the ship, they stumble across an ingenious hack that cuts spacecraft power consumption by 50%, or in studying Pluto, we discover a new element that provides the key to FTL (faster than light) travel (highly unlikely, I realize). Or the Kuiper belts reveal a fundamental insight into stars (or discover a sample of dark matter), allowing us to complete our models of the universe, paving the way for faster exploration?
I realize all of this may be unlikely, but... we don't know until we try, do we? Going to Mars is cool. I would love to be alive when the first human walks on that planet. But what practical purpose does even that serve us? So we have a select few people living inside a landing craft on a totally inhospitable planet. Great. We could terraform Mars to be more suitable for human life, but that would take (last I heard) at least a few thousand years. So practical, sustained human exploration and habitation of that planet is far off. Why not diversify our research into more difficult, riskier avenues of research. Not putting all our eggs in one basket and all that.
Not all solar system science is based human travel and colonization (nor for that matter, is it practical, always).
Why can't we study Pluto and Charon (and the Kuiper belt) for what they are - insights into what the sun's accretion disk was like (bits of the proto-solar system)?
I'm not sure you read my comment carefully enough. I'm not opposed to the core principles of communism (helping one another, the principles of having respect and concern for your fellow man, that what is yours is mine and what is mine is yours...)
The GPL is communism at its
best
Comparing the GPL to North Korea is a mistake, but I was replying for another poster (and it's hard to compare the GPL to a theoretical "perfect" communist country (as one does not exist)). Don't get me wrong. The GPL has its place (and is a good thing IMO). But please don't try to tell me that it is the solution to the IT industry's ills. The first communists made that mistake (substitute "IT industry" for "World").
The GPL gives Absolute Freedom to the original author to choose what every successive author of that software is to do with their code. The BSD licence is capitalism at it's best. It says that I will release a piece of software, and make it open for all too see. But you are free to do whatever you want with it.
Don't get me wrong, both have their place. The original poster is saying that the beneficiaries of a government project should be free to use the code as they see fit - to profit or to contribute to the greater good (in the true spirit of Western Capitalism).
Now. Here's the sticky part. You asked how communism and Korea come in to relevance. Well North Korea, because it's communist. And communism? The GPL is communism at its best (don't be insulted here. Communism can have it's place too. Community efforts towards common goals is a Good Thing - as long as the goal is a good one). The GPL isn't a bad thing. But neither is it the only good thing. A lot of people here need to realize that.
It is completely... in opposition with the rest of your post. The "slashdot collective" couldn't made a more concise summation of all it's problems than your post. Interesting how that works.
Expert Agents! I remember those... from like 1997! They were supposed to be the wave of the future, and there were tons in development; but since then, I have heard nothing at all (except an article in SciAm a couple months ago, in an article from MIT).
Say that the theories of Napster increasing CD sales are true.
What if RIAA knows this? And what if they're using the lawsuit to get Napster into the public conciousness? I know plenty of people (my parents, professors...) that knew nothing of Napster a year ago. But now that the lawsuits are in full swing, everyone at least has an idea of the concept of Napster.
RIAA couldn't very well directly endorse Napster, as they would then lose all rights to future copyright claims (and I could envision some situations in which the copyright would be useful), so they use the court system and a massive anti-Napster FUD campaign (which is, by the way, really weak) as a marketing tool.
I mean, wouldn't the most effective way of getting rid of Napster to have been to buy out the company (see post script at the end.... I have another thought on this) and quietly slowly turn it into a pay-per use service (or something)? Instead, we have this lawsuit. I dunno.
PS. Why is Napster a company? How do they plan to make money? They just got $15 million in venture capital, but for what? To sponsor more free tours? Develop the app some more? They give away free software so that you can download free music, yet they have VC money coming out their ears! It confuses me. Perhaps RIAA is also quietly funding Napster?
Not really. The electron will get accellerated to 99.999% the speed of light, it just takes a lot of energy to get it there. Sort of on an exponential scale - the faster it goes, the more energy it takes to accelerate it even a small amount - that's why the lights dim in the areas around CERN whenever they're conducting experiments (so I hear).
Its pretty delicate... from our standpoint (and a chaotician's). Want to annihilate all life on earth? Easy. Send an asteroid a few miles wide, and make it hit some land. Blowing up Jupiter and Mars might just make it a little easier for that to happen.
First off, we were talking about theoretically blowing up a planet... but:
The net kinetic energy change would be the same.... but the smaller the bits are, the more chance our atmosphere has of vapourizing them before they strike the surface (and that is A Good Thing).
You're definitely right to doubt the efficacy of nukes outside of the atmosphere, especially if we want to destroy some asteroids. I think the best bet (if we find the things early enough) is to slam stuff into them really hard, and a lot of times. Just nudge its orbit a few degrees so that it completely misses the Earth (and keeps missing... thats important too). If it's small enough, strapping a Saturn V to it might work:)
I saw a talk given by a chaotician at the University of Toronto about just that. He modeled the Solar System, taking into account the effects of chaos, and it turns out that Jupiter actually protects us from stray asteroids. No matter how large the asteroid belt started, it would always have itself cleaned out (made much smaller, including the bands of relative emptiness that exist in the belt) within a very short time(a few million years - a hiccup in astrological history). And most of these asteroids would be simply ejected straight out of the solar system, not even hit Jupiter! A very interesting talk.
As a side note, he made a big deal about the simulation hardware used: Dual UltraSparcII 300's, running SunOS. Each sim took about a week and a half to complete.
But, they would be bits. Prime for hitting Earth. Same centre of gravity, but far more spread out. And influenced a little more by the gravity wells surrounding them (and to stop those bits from coalescing back into planets (over a looong time), you'd have to blow them right up).
Actually, I read an article a few months back in Scientific American (don't recall which issue, sorry) that a Gravity Inteferometer has been developed by a team of scientists. Basically they have 2 tubes (one in Washington, and another in Georgia - I think) that they shoot LASERs through and they observe the effects of gravity on the light (light gets pulled slightly by gravity). They are so sensitive, they can detect the gravity of a person walking beside them, so they built two, to cancel out those distortions. Apparently, they are observing black holes with these. I'm sure that they could tune them to look for asteriods (coupled with a good telescope).
I realize that this is a joke, but removing Jupiter would make Saturn and Earth the closest gravity wells to the asteroid belt (Earth being closer). This could create some problems for us.
The delicate balance of the Solar System took billions of years to establish, and I wouldn't want to mess with that.
Freedom of Speech is all well and good... if done honestly. But if you start lying for the purpose of destroying someone (or something), then there are moral issues to be considered (not to mention the fact that is slander).
One more thing... it's obvious you don't like MSFT. Do you really want to "stoop down to their level" by lying they way you (and the judge) say they do? If you want to win this battle, stick to the higher moral ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Trust me. You'll have a tear in your eye by the time the segment is over.
They actually tried this in Canada. But they couldn't prove that every CD blank sold would be used to pirate music. The tax was overturned.
I certainly hope not.
I realize all of this may be unlikely, but ... we don't know until we try, do we? Going to Mars is cool. I would love to be alive when the first human walks on that planet. But what practical purpose does even that serve us? So we have a select few people living inside a landing craft on a totally inhospitable planet. Great. We could terraform Mars to be more suitable for human life, but that would take (last I heard) at least a few thousand years. So practical, sustained human exploration and habitation of that planet is far off. Why not diversify our research into more difficult, riskier avenues of research. Not putting all our eggs in one basket and all that.
Why can't we study Pluto and Charon (and the Kuiper belt) for what they are - insights into what the sun's accretion disk was like (bits of the proto-solar system)?
Really? Please just post a link, or more info.
The GPL gives Absolute Freedom to the original author to choose what every successive author of that software is to do with their code. The BSD licence is capitalism at it's best. It says that I will release a piece of software, and make it open for all too see. But you are free to do whatever you want with it.
Don't get me wrong, both have their place. The original poster is saying that the beneficiaries of a government project should be free to use the code as they see fit - to profit or to contribute to the greater good (in the true spirit of Western Capitalism).
Now. Here's the sticky part. You asked how communism and Korea come in to relevance. Well North Korea, because it's communist. And communism? The GPL is communism at its best (don't be insulted here. Communism can have it's place too. Community efforts towards common goals is a Good Thing - as long as the goal is a good one). The GPL isn't a bad thing. But neither is it the only good thing. A lot of people here need to realize that.
It is completely ... in opposition with the rest of your post. The "slashdot collective" couldn't made a more concise summation of all it's problems than your post. Interesting how that works.
Assuming, of course, there is a demontstratable flaw.
Anyone have info?
But would you like MS pushing links onto your IE weekly as a feature? Probably not. You'd be complaining about it on slashdot.
What if RIAA knows this? And what if they're using the lawsuit to get Napster into the public conciousness? I know plenty of people (my parents, professors...) that knew nothing of Napster a year ago. But now that the lawsuits are in full swing, everyone at least has an idea of the concept of Napster.
RIAA couldn't very well directly endorse Napster, as they would then lose all rights to future copyright claims (and I could envision some situations in which the copyright would be useful), so they use the court system and a massive anti-Napster FUD campaign (which is, by the way, really weak) as a marketing tool.
I mean, wouldn't the most effective way of getting rid of Napster to have been to buy out the company (see post script at the end.... I have another thought on this) and quietly slowly turn it into a pay-per use service (or something)? Instead, we have this lawsuit. I dunno.
PS. Why is Napster a company? How do they plan to make money? They just got $15 million in venture capital, but for what? To sponsor more free tours? Develop the app some more? They give away free software so that you can download free music, yet they have VC money coming out their ears! It confuses me. Perhaps RIAA is also quietly funding Napster?
Comments are welcome
I'd guess that the "clock" mode of the watch is where it's running X.
But AFAIK, Africa isn't subject to the USA's patent laws.... (mostly because Africa isn't part of the US).
Not really. The electron will get accellerated to 99.999% the speed of light, it just takes a lot of energy to get it there. Sort of on an exponential scale - the faster it goes, the more energy it takes to accelerate it even a small amount - that's why the lights dim in the areas around CERN whenever they're conducting experiments (so I hear).
Better turn off your computer, bud, 'cause Einstein's theories provided the basis of the research into electronics :)
Its pretty delicate... from our standpoint (and a chaotician's). Want to annihilate all life on earth? Easy. Send an asteroid a few miles wide, and make it hit some land. Blowing up Jupiter and Mars might just make it a little easier for that to happen.
The net kinetic energy change would be the same.... but the smaller the bits are, the more chance our atmosphere has of vapourizing them before they strike the surface (and that is A Good Thing).
You're definitely right to doubt the efficacy of nukes outside of the atmosphere, especially if we want to destroy some asteroids. I think the best bet (if we find the things early enough) is to slam stuff into them really hard, and a lot of times. Just nudge its orbit a few degrees so that it completely misses the Earth (and keeps missing... thats important too). :)
If it's small enough, strapping a Saturn V to it might work
As a side note, he made a big deal about the simulation hardware used: Dual UltraSparcII 300's, running SunOS. Each sim took about a week and a half to complete.
But, they would be bits. Prime for hitting Earth. Same centre of gravity, but far more spread out. And influenced a little more by the gravity wells surrounding them (and to stop those bits from coalescing back into planets (over a looong time), you'd have to blow them right up).
Actually, I read an article a few months back in Scientific American (don't recall which issue, sorry) that a Gravity Inteferometer has been developed by a team of scientists.
Basically they have 2 tubes (one in Washington, and another in Georgia - I think) that they shoot LASERs through and they observe the effects of gravity on the light (light gets pulled slightly by gravity).
They are so sensitive, they can detect the gravity of a person walking beside them, so they built two, to cancel out those distortions.
Apparently, they are observing black holes with these. I'm sure that they could tune them to look for asteriods (coupled with a good telescope).
The delicate balance of the Solar System took billions of years to establish, and I wouldn't want to mess with that.
One more thing... it's obvious you don't like MSFT. Do you really want to "stoop down to their level" by lying they way you (and the judge) say they do? If you want to win this battle, stick to the higher moral ground.