Re:Not impressed, but here's my take
on
Lost Ends
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· Score: 1
No, the wreckage had a tent next to it, implying that people survived the wreck. They just showed that scene to say goodbye with a view of how it all started. What happened on the island actually happened. It was nostalgia, not negation.
Now the 'sideways alternate universe' stuff -- *that* was all a shared after-death experience.
How have we actually measured that this particle swaps between matter/antimatter states or is that just a theory?
If it's the meson I think they're referring to, it is its own antiparticle -- it is one up quark and one anti-up quark, the antiparticle version of which is one anti-up quark and one up quark. Theory says that because both versions are identical, the meson is in a quantum superposition between both versions, each half of the time. Like Schrodinger's cat, it's both a particle and an antiparticle until it's measured.
Has it been measured directly? For this article I assume it has.
Also, as I understand that all particles are actually just probabilities for something existing somewhere at some time. Would this not infer that the probability of this particular particle being matter or antimatter is just extremely close to 50%, or, actually 49% antimatter, 51% matter?
Again, I have probably misunderstood something, but I don't pretend to be a physicist anyway, just curious..
I think actually you've got a grasp of it here. The meson should be in its matter state 50% of the time, and its antimatter state 50% of the time. But it isn't, it is slightly biased toward matter.
You should a child rapist be put in prison for any longer than any other sort of rapist? How is it any more acceptable to rape a 21 year old woman than it is a child?
Because raping a woman shows a lack of self control and a sociopathic nature -- both of which can be treated and cured in time. Raping a child shows all those things *plus* a paraphilia which cannot be treated. We can train a man to control himself, and we can give him drugs to settle a psychopathic inclination. But we've never been able to change someone's sexual desires. Once a pedophile, always a pedophile; true paraphilias stick with a person for life.
That's not to say I advocate what the court has done. I think it's outrageous. But yes, I can see treating child rapists differently than regular rapists.
Now, it is also known that new matter-antimatter element pairs are being created and annihilated all the time everywhere, this is where Hawking radiation comes from.
Does this new discovery mean, that it would be possible, that instead of an antimatter-matter pair a matter-matter pair is created sometimes instead and therefore the amount of matter in the universe is increasing (even if by a tiny amount)?
No, that's not accurate, and you are misunderstanding something.
Virtual matter-antimatter pairs are created from the low energy background, and absorbed back again, in an invariant process that conserves charge and mass (and a few other properties). That's why only pairs are created -- only antimatter can balance the mass of the matter. The pairs are always balanced, so they're always am-m pairs.
This new discovery is about another type of physics, the physics of high energy collisions. In particular it's about the physics of the neutral beta meson, which is an odd pair of particles that can change from matter to antimatter faster than a tranny with a velcro business suit. The equations say that the meson should spend equal time in both its forms, but it is actually biased toward matter. That points to a break in symmetry, which may point to a new particle or force that mediates the matter-antimatter transformation.
The meson is a pair, and itself is a mediator of the strong force, and furthermore is its own antiparticle; it is not related to am-m pairs or Hawking radiation in any way.
Visitors will have the chance, for a little extra money, to have their photo taken in the unit's cockpit, where the series' protagonist-of-sorts Shinji Ikari normally sits.
How much will visitors have to pay to jack off to their mother's clone, like Shinji did? I mean, if you're paying money you want the full experience.
I understand the urge to revere important works of fiction, but in my opinion this one might be a bit of a stretch.
It's called The Curse of Tecumseh, or the Tippecanoe Curse. Well known myth. How Reagan broke it is a mystery, but some think that there's an astrological reason why the curse faded away. (It was made during an earth cycle, and Reagan's term started the fire cycle, or something like that.)
5) Kill off 4 out of every 5 human beings on the planet.
That's not a solution we should be aiming for. But it's the simple, natural solution to our problems of overconsumption, which comes down to overpopulation. If we don't fix our problems by some other means, this is the solution that nature will eventually enforce on us, one way or another.
All you're describing is a middle man who doesn't have the ability to set his own price. There's still skimming going on, it's just that the amount is not under the trader's direct control.
But a trader that takes a stock that is only going to go down will soon be out of business. The situation you illustrate doesn't exist. In reality, traders only buy stocks they expect will go up, or they negotiate the seller to lower their price to a point which will be profitable to the trader. Either way, traders only stay in business when they make money that someone else could have made.
Traders do skim profits. All middlemen do -- it's the definition of the term. You can argue that their role in creating liquidity is worth the drain they take on the system, but don't deny the essential nature of their role.
You have a point, PhilHibbs. Everyone in the neighborhood is using the same shit pipe. But one guy blew it up. I still think that guy should be held responsible for all the damage done.
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs.
When did 'energy intensive society' come to mean 'poor people pay when the rich screw up'?
A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit.
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
On a slightly more practical level, the planet is mortal and we really can't afford to kill it off.
It is very, very sensible to fear every little thing that is capable of wiping out an entire species or ecosystem, or that is capable of making irreversible changes to our habitat. A single individual can risk a threat to themselves, but we cannot risk existential threats to our species. This oil spill might raise to that level if it kills too much of the gulf.
On a related note - why do HUMANS think they need to defend GOD? What is he the most nit picky SOB ever?
Because God exists only in peoples' minds. God is a virulent, long lived meme. And like all memes, it forces the minds that hold it to react strongly to anything that might threaten its existence.
True enough...except now, *every* post referring to Ice-9 has been modded redundant. Even the original.
It's as if the mention of Ice-9 has frozen the moderators, and every post on Ice-9 they touch is commutative so that it freezes other moderators. Soon all the Ice-9 posts on/. will be dry, redundant landscapes hostile to moderator life.
I think we need to expand the word 'privacy'. It means many things.
When I'm at home with the blinds drawn, I expect that nobody will know what I am doing there. That kind of privacy is important to me -- and guess what, I still have it. The government has made very few inroads on that kind of privacy.
But as for my personal information? Take it. As long as nothing illegal is done with it (identity theft is a different concern), then I don't care. The labels that the government put on my race, sexual orientation, and political affiliation don't mean anything to me, and my address is already a public record. If I allow *anyone* to know those things, then I don't mind the government knowing them also.
I guess I feel as if I still have the ability to determine which information about myself I want to release. And that's all I ask. Now, if it gets to the point that they demand to know information I do not want to give -- such as a DNA sample -- then we have a problem. But it hasn't reached that point yet. The census questions were so generic, and it was clear that I could choose not to answer many of them (such as race), that I just didn't feel threatened by it at all.
Numerous republicans offered ideas, some of which are in the bill currently.
Note that those Republicans whose ideas were included did everything they could to kill the bill.
The opposition to this was 100% political. The bill as passed is almost exactly the same as the 1993 Republican alternative to Clinton's health care plan. Just ten years ago this would have been hailed as a conservative victory. The only reason Republicans fought against it is because they wanted to prevent the Democrats from having any victories at all, so that the mid-term elections would be more favorable to the Republicans. Their opposition was cynical and wrong.
I don't think you're a tool; I think you're badly informed. Read up on it some more, try to stay away from Fox News and similar partisan sites, and you might get a clue.
Theoretically, the insurance companies won't have to raise premiums because they'll be getting millions of additional mandated customers.
Whether that works out or not depends on how greedy the insurance industry is. So...yeah.
The economic principles of the reform bill are sound. If they go bad, it'll be due to human nature. At which point more legislation will be needed -- hopefully IMHO, a public option, since that will force real competition and cheaper rates.
I'm still trying to understand IF this bill will lower existing rates. If not... then every American is going to be forced by law to pay $1,150 a month for healthcare.
Thats bizzare. I'm not sure how thats reform.
Consider it a test of capitalism.
The insurance companies' are going to gain millions of new, mandated customers. By the economic laws of capitalism, that *should* make everyone's rates drop.
If the rates do *not* drop, then the health insurance industry is not running by the laws of capitalism -- they are skimming as much money as they can, regardless of the proper price/demand point, and just scamming the system to steal as much as possible.
What we should do if scenario two comes to pass...well, I'll leave that to your imagination.
Not entirely true. The legislative actions (ending recissions, forcing insurance companies to cover everyone, etc) take effect immediately. Only the benefits that cost money have been delayed. There will be a big, positive effect right away.
This is no joke. I work at one of the biggest government data centers, and we consider Google to be alternately either our best friend or the people who will put us out of business. Google is our biggest domestic consumer -- I think they've already sucked down all the data we have here on site. I could easily see them positioning themselves to take over the ingesting and archiving responsibilities.
Google likely already has a copy of all the nonclassified data that the government is holding. The only people with more appetite for data are the Chinese. If the government decides to outsource data centers, that's where they'll be going.
In addition, if you are worried consider that future buyers may also be worried. Unless you plan to either die in the apartment or leave it to your children, resale ability and ease of resale may be things you wish to consider.
Look on the bright side: if he really does die from the microwave radiation, he won't have to worry about resale value.
Even better: If he buys the apartment, he may never have to worry about having children.
...and of course, only the threat to industrial production is important. The millions of poor people who will be drowned or left homeless never enters into the equation. The trillions of dollars of real estate lost...well, that's what insurance is for. And if the insurers go belly up, they can always get a bailout from the taxpayers.
I'm glad that you're sanguine about massive social liability. It shows real dedication to the free market when one is able to focus on economical costs and neglect damage done to society and human lives.
Slashdot Mirror
No, the wreckage had a tent next to it, implying that people survived the wreck. They just showed that scene to say goodbye with a view of how it all started. What happened on the island actually happened. It was nostalgia, not negation.
Now the 'sideways alternate universe' stuff -- *that* was all a shared after-death experience.
How have we actually measured that this particle swaps between matter/antimatter states or is that just a theory?
If it's the meson I think they're referring to, it is its own antiparticle -- it is one up quark and one anti-up quark, the antiparticle version of which is one anti-up quark and one up quark. Theory says that because both versions are identical, the meson is in a quantum superposition between both versions, each half of the time. Like Schrodinger's cat, it's both a particle and an antiparticle until it's measured.
Has it been measured directly? For this article I assume it has.
Also, as I understand that all particles are actually just probabilities for something existing somewhere at some time. Would this not infer that the probability of this particular particle being matter or antimatter is just extremely close to 50%, or, actually 49% antimatter, 51% matter?
Again, I have probably misunderstood something, but I don't pretend to be a physicist anyway, just curious..
I think actually you've got a grasp of it here. The meson should be in its matter state 50% of the time, and its antimatter state 50% of the time. But it isn't, it is slightly biased toward matter.
You should a child rapist be put in prison for any longer than any other sort of rapist? How is it any more acceptable to rape a 21 year old woman than it is a child?
Because raping a woman shows a lack of self control and a sociopathic nature -- both of which can be treated and cured in time. Raping a child shows all those things *plus* a paraphilia which cannot be treated. We can train a man to control himself, and we can give him drugs to settle a psychopathic inclination. But we've never been able to change someone's sexual desires. Once a pedophile, always a pedophile; true paraphilias stick with a person for life.
That's not to say I advocate what the court has done. I think it's outrageous. But yes, I can see treating child rapists differently than regular rapists.
Now, it is also known that new matter-antimatter element pairs are being created and annihilated all the time everywhere, this is where Hawking radiation comes from.
Does this new discovery mean, that it would be possible, that instead of an antimatter-matter pair a matter-matter pair is created sometimes instead and therefore the amount of matter in the universe is increasing (even if by a tiny amount)?
No, that's not accurate, and you are misunderstanding something.
Virtual matter-antimatter pairs are created from the low energy background, and absorbed back again, in an invariant process that conserves charge and mass (and a few other properties). That's why only pairs are created -- only antimatter can balance the mass of the matter. The pairs are always balanced, so they're always am-m pairs.
This new discovery is about another type of physics, the physics of high energy collisions. In particular it's about the physics of the neutral beta meson, which is an odd pair of particles that can change from matter to antimatter faster than a tranny with a velcro business suit. The equations say that the meson should spend equal time in both its forms, but it is actually biased toward matter. That points to a break in symmetry, which may point to a new particle or force that mediates the matter-antimatter transformation.
The meson is a pair, and itself is a mediator of the strong force, and furthermore is its own antiparticle; it is not related to am-m pairs or Hawking radiation in any way.
Visitors will have the chance, for a little extra money, to have their photo taken in the unit's cockpit, where the series' protagonist-of-sorts Shinji Ikari normally sits.
How much will visitors have to pay to jack off to their mother's clone, like Shinji did? I mean, if you're paying money you want the full experience.
I understand the urge to revere important works of fiction, but in my opinion this one might be a bit of a stretch.
It's called The Curse of Tecumseh, or the Tippecanoe Curse. Well known myth. How Reagan broke it is a mystery, but some think that there's an astrological reason why the curse faded away. (It was made during an earth cycle, and Reagan's term started the fire cycle, or something like that.)
Read my post again -- I'm not advocating any of that. I'm saying that's what will happen if we don't solve the problem in some more sensible way.
Plagues, wars, environmental collapse...however it happens, nature will find a way to kill us off unless we learn to live in equilibrium with it.
5) Kill off 4 out of every 5 human beings on the planet.
That's not a solution we should be aiming for. But it's the simple, natural solution to our problems of overconsumption, which comes down to overpopulation. If we don't fix our problems by some other means, this is the solution that nature will eventually enforce on us, one way or another.
All you're describing is a middle man who doesn't have the ability to set his own price. There's still skimming going on, it's just that the amount is not under the trader's direct control.
But a trader that takes a stock that is only going to go down will soon be out of business. The situation you illustrate doesn't exist. In reality, traders only buy stocks they expect will go up, or they negotiate the seller to lower their price to a point which will be profitable to the trader. Either way, traders only stay in business when they make money that someone else could have made.
Traders do skim profits. All middlemen do -- it's the definition of the term. You can argue that their role in creating liquidity is worth the drain they take on the system, but don't deny the essential nature of their role.
You have a point, PhilHibbs. Everyone in the neighborhood is using the same shit pipe. But one guy blew it up. I still think that guy should be held responsible for all the damage done.
Who pays for the mistakes? Who pays for the environmental impact?
You are welcome to try the alternative of not living in an energy intensive society if that would better suit your needs.
When did 'energy intensive society' come to mean 'poor people pay when the rich screw up'?
A better analogy would be that your sewer pipe fails for whatever reason and floods my yard with shit.
No, a better analogy is that his sewer pipe fails and covers the entire neighborhood with shit...and because cleaning that up would bankrupt him, everyone affected is told to pitch in and give him money for cleaning up his own mess. Screw that.
On a slightly more practical level, the planet is mortal and we really can't afford to kill it off.
It is very, very sensible to fear every little thing that is capable of wiping out an entire species or ecosystem, or that is capable of making irreversible changes to our habitat. A single individual can risk a threat to themselves, but we cannot risk existential threats to our species. This oil spill might raise to that level if it kills too much of the gulf.
On a related note - why do HUMANS think they need to defend GOD? What is he the most nit picky SOB ever?
Because God exists only in peoples' minds. God is a virulent, long lived meme. And like all memes, it forces the minds that hold it to react strongly to anything that might threaten its existence.
My first thought was that we are one step closer to Animaniacs Online.
True enough...except now, *every* post referring to Ice-9 has been modded redundant. Even the original.
It's as if the mention of Ice-9 has frozen the moderators, and every post on Ice-9 they touch is commutative so that it freezes other moderators. Soon all the Ice-9 posts on /. will be dry, redundant landscapes hostile to moderator life.
Oh, well, Vonnegut said we had it coming.
I think we need to expand the word 'privacy'. It means many things.
When I'm at home with the blinds drawn, I expect that nobody will know what I am doing there. That kind of privacy is important to me -- and guess what, I still have it. The government has made very few inroads on that kind of privacy.
But as for my personal information? Take it. As long as nothing illegal is done with it (identity theft is a different concern), then I don't care. The labels that the government put on my race, sexual orientation, and political affiliation don't mean anything to me, and my address is already a public record. If I allow *anyone* to know those things, then I don't mind the government knowing them also.
I guess I feel as if I still have the ability to determine which information about myself I want to release. And that's all I ask. Now, if it gets to the point that they demand to know information I do not want to give -- such as a DNA sample -- then we have a problem. But it hasn't reached that point yet. The census questions were so generic, and it was clear that I could choose not to answer many of them (such as race), that I just didn't feel threatened by it at all.
Numerous republicans offered ideas, some of which are in the bill currently.
Note that those Republicans whose ideas were included did everything they could to kill the bill.
The opposition to this was 100% political. The bill as passed is almost exactly the same as the 1993 Republican alternative to Clinton's health care plan. Just ten years ago this would have been hailed as a conservative victory. The only reason Republicans fought against it is because they wanted to prevent the Democrats from having any victories at all, so that the mid-term elections would be more favorable to the Republicans. Their opposition was cynical and wrong.
I don't think you're a tool; I think you're badly informed. Read up on it some more, try to stay away from Fox News and similar partisan sites, and you might get a clue.
Theoretically, the insurance companies won't have to raise premiums because they'll be getting millions of additional mandated customers.
Whether that works out or not depends on how greedy the insurance industry is. So...yeah.
The economic principles of the reform bill are sound. If they go bad, it'll be due to human nature. At which point more legislation will be needed -- hopefully IMHO, a public option, since that will force real competition and cheaper rates.
I'm still trying to understand IF this bill will lower existing rates. If not... then every American is going to be forced by law to pay $1,150 a month for healthcare.
Thats bizzare. I'm not sure how thats reform.
Consider it a test of capitalism.
The insurance companies' are going to gain millions of new, mandated customers. By the economic laws of capitalism, that *should* make everyone's rates drop.
If the rates do *not* drop, then the health insurance industry is not running by the laws of capitalism -- they are skimming as much money as they can, regardless of the proper price/demand point, and just scamming the system to steal as much as possible.
What we should do if scenario two comes to pass...well, I'll leave that to your imagination.
Not entirely true. The legislative actions (ending recissions, forcing insurance companies to cover everyone, etc) take effect immediately. Only the benefits that cost money have been delayed. There will be a big, positive effect right away.
It would probably be non-isotropic then, with a seasonal variation as the Earth orbits. I'm sure that would have been noticed.
This is no joke. I work at one of the biggest government data centers, and we consider Google to be alternately either our best friend or the people who will put us out of business. Google is our biggest domestic consumer -- I think they've already sucked down all the data we have here on site. I could easily see them positioning themselves to take over the ingesting and archiving responsibilities.
Google likely already has a copy of all the nonclassified data that the government is holding. The only people with more appetite for data are the Chinese. If the government decides to outsource data centers, that's where they'll be going.
Look on the bright side: if he really does die from the microwave radiation, he won't have to worry about resale value.
Even better: If he buys the apartment, he may never have to worry about having children.
...and of course, only the threat to industrial production is important. The millions of poor people who will be drowned or left homeless never enters into the equation. The trillions of dollars of real estate lost...well, that's what insurance is for. And if the insurers go belly up, they can always get a bailout from the taxpayers.
I'm glad that you're sanguine about massive social liability. It shows real dedication to the free market when one is able to focus on economical costs and neglect damage done to society and human lives.