Stores still sell record players, as do garage sales. Cheap! Easy to obtain!
> 8-track tapes
Check out a nearby weekendly flea market. Tapes and players up the wazoo. Load up on Atari 2600 and Intellivision games and players while you're at it, too.
I didn't run the numbers. The 1-cm (or inch or whatever) was the point where the black hole would be large enough to swallow the entire earth rapidly. Presumably, its mass would be sufficient to generate enough gravity to cause normal matter to shear and crush in on itself, and the earth would just fall rapidly inward.
The size didn't refer to the size afterwards. Strange, though, now that I think about it, a black hole with enough mass to do that to the earth would have to be many, many times the mass of the earth (to say the least) and that just doesn't make sense. Even an earth-massed black hole at the center of the earth would only double the gravity, and that wouldn't do much to the liquid that is the mantle, or the iron core for that matter. We might not survive due to the earthquakes and tieds, but the earth should.
The Oort cloud is an unbelievably enormous thing. "Locally" for it means millions of miles. Each local section could kick out a comet on average per x time, but other areas, of which there are many, could also kick out some.
Yes, I agree that overall it would be mildly statstically diminished, but I think that effect would be magnitudes less than other reasons for comets, etc. Similarly, I did not mention that the comet might disturb any similar-sized things also heading to earth and cause them to miss it, because I judged that too low statistically to mention.
It's a temporary problem. In 10 or 20 years, you'll have many gig storage cards, maybe a lot sooner.
And what's being lost? A few of the lesser importance photos, as judged by the photographer? Nahh, the worst of her fears would only affect 10-20 years of "history", and then only marginally. Any of the WTC stuff put on the internet now resides on tens of millions of hard drives. You couldn't ask for a more secure guarantee of history surviving into the future.
> In your case, the force is alchol and gravity.
> In the case of a star it must be gravity, unless
> there's some really bizarre other force as yet
> undiscovered.
OMFG, I grokk now. We haven't been "role" playing, we've been "roll" playing. You aren't supposed to love D&D because of role-playing. You're supposed to love it because of the statistics (which is true, really!)
All other things being equal, he did describe the "Gambler's Fallacy."
Even if you flip heads 10 times in a row, you still have a 50-50 chance on the 11th flip (which you would see, statistically, if you looked at a thousand situations where there were 10 flips of all heads, about 50% of the 11th would be heads, 50% tails.)
However, after one impact, there might be a slightly greater chance for more due to the objects possibly being broken fragments of another object. This increased liklihood might go on for weeks or months. Indeed, given orbits, it might repeat for years -- the Earth goes through the leftover tails of certain comets year after year after year (various meteor showers.)
I am positive I also read in a book (possibly Moving Mars, also by Greg Bear) that a black hole larger than 1 cm or so would be enough "critical mass" to suck in a planet. It would grow when smaller, but slowly, then when getting to that size it would cascade out of control, destroying the planet quickly.
Nah, you're all wrong. Greg Bear's Forge of God did that. No, wait! That was a hundred million tons of neutron star and (plot withheld.)
The sequal, Anvil of Stars has the most advanced high tech science ever portrayed in a novel that I have seen. Stuff on the order of the aliens in Contact, if you've read that book...except they're pissed off.
If his new, Mexican-made GM car is cheaper to him, now, at his new, lower-wage job, then it was when he worked at the factory, then yes. He does benefit.
> Meanwhile, the people continue to starve, and the
> country goes further and further into an unpayable
> debt. That is the spread of global capitalism.
That has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with foolish government intervention in the economy.
A poor country would do well to simply open its doors to foreign corporations. Unfortunately, there is typically far too much domestic hoo-ha and hand waving about socialism, blah blah, to make this work. Oh, and don't forget to implement rediculous environmental measures that we never did for 150 years after our own industrial revolution. If you do, we'll applaud you from our ivory towers as you natives jump thru our hoops. If not, boo, hiss!
We could, of course, open corporations there that pay $5/day, an enormous improvement to the lives of almost everyone there, allowing them to climb out of third world status much the way US and Britain themselved did before the coming of...
Oh, wait. We should pay them $20/hour so we don't "take advantage" of them, thus ensuring no one wants to build a factory there.
Nevermind. I forgot how my socialist mind shoots itself in the foot from time to time.
Oh, wait! Socialism to the rescue! We'll FORCE companies to open factories over there.
Where'd that little doggie go? I wanna kick it and hear it whimper and die.
> That's right, [Saudi Arabia] the biggest and
> richier producer of
> oil in the world is begining to owe money to the
> US. When did this started? Casually, after the US
> started "promoting" capitalism there
This has got to be one of the silliest things I've ever read. OMFG, Saudi Arabia is having problems because people are buying up VCR's and TV's and DVD's left and right.
My friend, my friend. That is called "success", and means your country is so wealthy that it can afford to waste money on trivial luxuries.
It is not a bad thing, except in a world view where things like that cannot happen because we all know Socialism or Communism is the True Path To Secular Success And Security.
Pardon me while I go drive a nail thru my foot to stop all the laughter.
And we've been letting the terrorists bite our heels for 30 years, too. Pan Am, other plane flights, many bombings in Europe, people with machine guns opening up in civilian areas of airports.
Had the IRA blown up a soccer statium and killed 6000 people, I think things might have started going differently.
They, and Osama, and the Taliban, rely on the inherent decency of Britain and the US. That we won't wholesale slaughter innocents. That we will spare religious buildings and civilian areas. Witness the asinine sophomoric debate about whether we should blow up a mosque that's hiding a Taliban who shoots anti-aircraft missles at planes, then ducks back inside.
> Have someone hit you, then they run off. You
> don't know where the person is, so you go round
> headbutting people at random.
>
> That is much more of an analogy to America's
> actions in Afghanista
No, that is a bad analogy, too.
An accurate one is they hit you, then run hiding behind other people, saying "I'm gonna hit you again!" and planning to do so, if not actually doing so.
Then you come in and suggest to let them continue hitting them because, occasionally, one of the people he's hiding behind gets hit too.
> Many of them see this action as an attack on their spiritual bretheren.
Because their thuglike leaders tell them to believe this. It is the age-old path to power. The leaders see it as an opportunity to solidify power by directing the people's rage against others. They use the Palistinians similarly, which they also do not actually care about, and frequently persecute.
Also, I highly doubt most are seeing it that way. "Massive protests" seem to have a few dozen or hundred individuals. They interview some of these people and they look and sound like a drugged up Gomer and Goober Pyle.
"They're killing your Islam brothers because they hate Islam!" doesn't go very far when the facts are laid out.
> So you would support African missile strikes on
> Washington in retaliation for KKK "terrorism"
> against "their people", then? Or doesn't it go
> both ways?
Your analogy is completely bogus. Any Africans upset the KKK is attacking "their people" would see that the US government, and many states, have fierce laws against those attacks, both in general (laws against murder, threats, etc.) and specific (witness the proliferation of hate laws that increase the penalties for crimes based on racial hatred.)
The Taliban do nothing to stop the "KKK" in their own country, Osama et al.
> And, space ship around Mars? Who cares, when
> they're just developing space technology as the
> ultimate weapons system anyway.
I care. We would still be doing this without military development as a side benefit. As for ultimate weapons systems, be glad you live in a country where fundamentalists with 30 year old weapons just can't waltz into power.
> And half the diseases in the world were MADE by
> the Americans. Like the Anthrax that's so scary
> right now... Has the same fingerprint as
> American Military-made Anthrax from a lab in
> Utah in the 1950's. Thanks, US Government!
Can't comment on the validity of your fact, but "making half the diseases" is sophistry. As for anthrax, well, another American invention, the passenger jet, killed a lot more than Anthrax has. Shall we get rid of them, too? Oh, wait, that's just military development in disguise, too.
Slashdot Mirror
> Unless you are getting the really cheap CDRs, the
> archival lifespan of a CDR is over 100 years.
While I'm inclined to believe simulated testing shows this, I find it a humorous claim to make anyway.
< brand new technology > will last over a hundred years! We know this to be true!
> Records
Stores still sell record players, as do garage sales. Cheap! Easy to obtain!
> 8-track tapes
Check out a nearby weekendly flea market. Tapes and players up the wazoo. Load up on Atari 2600 and Intellivision games and players while you're at it, too.
> 5.25 floppies
$5 bucks, dude. Took me all of 27 1/2 seconds to find.
Let's try some of the harder stuff:
8" floppy driven
Plenty found in old systems. If you know the model of computer that used it, search for that and you can probably buy one cheap!
Coleco ADAM tape drive
Got one in my basement.
Punched card/tape readers
Still exist at universities
OMG, I think I saw an episode of Dragnet that copied that. The cops even sat down and ate part of the roast. (Maybe Twilight Zone, who knows?)
I didn't run the numbers. The 1-cm (or inch or whatever) was the point where the black hole would be large enough to swallow the entire earth rapidly. Presumably, its mass would be sufficient to generate enough gravity to cause normal matter to shear and crush in on itself, and the earth would just fall rapidly inward.
The size didn't refer to the size afterwards. Strange, though, now that I think about it, a black hole with enough mass to do that to the earth would have to be many, many times the mass of the earth (to say the least) and that just doesn't make sense. Even an earth-massed black hole at the center of the earth would only double the gravity, and that wouldn't do much to the liquid that is the mantle, or the iron core for that matter. We might not survive due to the earthquakes and tieds, but the earth should.
The Oort cloud is an unbelievably enormous thing. "Locally" for it means millions of miles. Each local section could kick out a comet on average per x time, but other areas, of which there are many, could also kick out some.
Yes, I agree that overall it would be mildly statstically diminished, but I think that effect would be magnitudes less than other reasons for comets, etc. Similarly, I did not mention that the comet might disturb any similar-sized things also heading to earth and cause them to miss it, because I judged that too low statistically to mention.
It's a temporary problem. In 10 or 20 years, you'll have many gig storage cards, maybe a lot sooner.
And what's being lost? A few of the lesser importance photos, as judged by the photographer? Nahh, the worst of her fears would only affect 10-20 years of "history", and then only marginally. Any of the WTC stuff put on the internet now resides on tens of millions of hard drives. You couldn't ask for a more secure guarantee of history surviving into the future.
> In your case, the force is alchol and gravity.
> In the case of a star it must be gravity, unless
> there's some really bizarre other force as yet
> undiscovered.
Pangalactic Gargle Blaster.
Where are all the bodies?
If you can send people thru time to arbitrary places, just dump 'em into the sun. No one will find them.
No doubt it did take out a trapper or two, who knows, maybe one of 'em was a Hitler or Stalin.
If it was all frozen ice of varying chemicals, they'd be long gone.
Wasn't there some murder mystery where Mr. Body was offed by an ice knife or icicle?
> Don't you just love slash dot.
Should end in a '?', not a '.' (even if its rhetorical.)
> Or spell "roll" as "role"
OMFG, I grokk now. We haven't been "role" playing, we've been "roll" playing. You aren't supposed to love D&D because of role-playing. You're supposed to love it because of the statistics (which is true, really!)
I understand!
All other things being equal, he did describe the "Gambler's Fallacy."
Even if you flip heads 10 times in a row, you still have a 50-50 chance on the 11th flip (which you would see, statistically, if you looked at a thousand situations where there were 10 flips of all heads, about 50% of the 11th would be heads, 50% tails.)
However, after one impact, there might be a slightly greater chance for more due to the objects possibly being broken fragments of another object. This increased liklihood might go on for weeks or months. Indeed, given orbits, it might repeat for years -- the Earth goes through the leftover tails of certain comets year after year after year (various meteor showers.)
I am positive I also read in a book (possibly Moving Mars, also by Greg Bear) that a black hole larger than 1 cm or so would be enough "critical mass" to suck in a planet. It would grow when smaller, but slowly, then when getting to that size it would cascade out of control, destroying the planet quickly.
Nah, you're all wrong. Greg Bear's Forge of God did that. No, wait! That was a hundred million tons of neutron star and (plot withheld.)
The sequal, Anvil of Stars has the most advanced high tech science ever portrayed in a novel that I have seen. Stuff on the order of the aliens in Contact, if you've read that book...except they're pissed off.
> for Joe Schmoe, I'm not so sure.
If his new, Mexican-made GM car is cheaper to him, now, at his new, lower-wage job, then it was when he worked at the factory, then yes. He does benefit.
I fail to see how going into a poor country, setting up a factory, and saying, "Hey, come work for us. We'll pay you $5/day."
They live wealthier lives, and live longer, even counting the unregulated dangers of the factory, and so do their children.
But this is Newsspeak, where freedom is tyrrany, and capitalist greed providing demonstrable benefits over socialism or living in the dirt is bad.
> Meanwhile, the people continue to starve, and the
> country goes further and further into an unpayable
> debt. That is the spread of global capitalism.
That has absolutely nothing to do with capitalism, and everything to do with foolish government intervention in the economy.
A poor country would do well to simply open its doors to foreign corporations. Unfortunately, there is typically far too much domestic hoo-ha and hand waving about socialism, blah blah, to make this work. Oh, and don't forget to implement rediculous environmental measures that we never did for 150 years after our own industrial revolution. If you do, we'll applaud you from our ivory towers as you natives jump thru our hoops. If not, boo, hiss!
We could, of course, open corporations there that pay $5/day, an enormous improvement to the lives of almost everyone there, allowing them to climb out of third world status much the way US and Britain themselved did before the coming of...
Oh, wait. We should pay them $20/hour so we don't "take advantage" of them, thus ensuring no one wants to build a factory there.
Nevermind. I forgot how my socialist mind shoots itself in the foot from time to time.
Oh, wait! Socialism to the rescue! We'll FORCE companies to open factories over there.
Where'd that little doggie go? I wanna kick it and hear it whimper and die.
> That's right, [Saudi Arabia] the biggest and
> richier producer of
> oil in the world is begining to owe money to the
> US. When did this started? Casually, after the US
> started "promoting" capitalism there
This has got to be one of the silliest things I've ever read. OMFG, Saudi Arabia is having problems because people are buying up VCR's and TV's and DVD's left and right.
My friend, my friend. That is called "success", and means your country is so wealthy that it can afford to waste money on trivial luxuries.
It is not a bad thing, except in a world view where things like that cannot happen because we all know Socialism or Communism is the True Path To Secular Success And Security.
Pardon me while I go drive a nail thru my foot to stop all the laughter.
And we've been letting the terrorists bite our heels for 30 years, too. Pan Am, other plane flights, many bombings in Europe, people with machine guns opening up in civilian areas of airports.
Had the IRA blown up a soccer statium and killed 6000 people, I think things might have started going differently.
They, and Osama, and the Taliban, rely on the inherent decency of Britain and the US. That we won't wholesale slaughter innocents. That we will spare religious buildings and civilian areas. Witness the asinine sophomoric debate about whether we should blow up a mosque that's hiding a Taliban who shoots anti-aircraft missles at planes, then ducks back inside.
Do you think the Taliban debates these things?
> Have someone hit you, then they run off. You
> don't know where the person is, so you go round
> headbutting people at random.
>
> That is much more of an analogy to America's
> actions in Afghanista
No, that is a bad analogy, too.
An accurate one is they hit you, then run hiding behind other people, saying "I'm gonna hit you again!" and planning to do so, if not actually doing so.
Then you come in and suggest to let them continue hitting them because, occasionally, one of the people he's hiding behind gets hit too.
> Many of them see this action as an attack on their spiritual bretheren.
Because their thuglike leaders tell them to believe this. It is the age-old path to power. The leaders see it as an opportunity to solidify power by directing the people's rage against others. They use the Palistinians similarly, which they also do not actually care about, and frequently persecute.
Also, I highly doubt most are seeing it that way. "Massive protests" seem to have a few dozen or hundred individuals. They interview some of these people and they look and sound like a drugged up Gomer and Goober Pyle.
"They're killing your Islam brothers because they hate Islam!" doesn't go very far when the facts are laid out.
> So you would support African missile strikes on
> Washington in retaliation for KKK "terrorism"
> against "their people", then? Or doesn't it go
> both ways?
Your analogy is completely bogus. Any Africans upset the KKK is attacking "their people" would see that the US government, and many states, have fierce laws against those attacks, both in general (laws against murder, threats, etc.) and specific (witness the proliferation of hate laws that increase the penalties for crimes based on racial hatred.)
The Taliban do nothing to stop the "KKK" in their own country, Osama et al.
> And, space ship around Mars? Who cares, when
> they're just developing space technology as the
> ultimate weapons system anyway.
I care. We would still be doing this without military development as a side benefit. As for ultimate weapons systems, be glad you live in a country where fundamentalists with 30 year old weapons just can't waltz into power.
> And half the diseases in the world were MADE by
> the Americans. Like the Anthrax that's so scary
> right now... Has the same fingerprint as
> American Military-made Anthrax from a lab in
> Utah in the 1950's. Thanks, US Government!
Can't comment on the validity of your fact, but "making half the diseases" is sophistry. As for anthrax, well, another American invention, the passenger jet, killed a lot more than Anthrax has. Shall we get rid of them, too? Oh, wait, that's just military development in disguise, too.
> cynical athiests
I am a cynical athiest. What's your point?
If you seek to know the problems of believing in gods that don't exist, look around you.
CYNIC, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be. - Ambrose Bierce