Yes, of course alt.devilbunnies is for real. I'm surprised you ever doubted it. After the bunnies' assassination attempt on Jimmy Carter and their much-publicized terrorist takeover of Miami Airport, I thought everyone's doubts had been answered. Devilbunnies are out there. My advice to you is to run, run for the hills.:)
There have been some recent experiments, mostly spearheaded by Roger Nelson of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project, that show a correlation between human consciousness and quantum events. Some have speculated that consciousness may lay outside of what we know about physics.
Do you think there will be any fruitful (i.e., predictive) experimentation in this matter? Could we someday develop a theory that will unite physics and consciousness?
Well, it's slightly different. Deep Space 1 creates thrust by spitting metal ions out with a voltage. This requires a fuel source -- a metal anode that slowly disappears. The good news is that it works in a vacuum.
The lifter technology ionizes the air around the anode and draws it toward the cathode, creating an ionic wind. This isn't destructive and will run forever as long as current is applied. But it will only run in an atmosphere.
> If the photons are reflected, how would they be coming out the other side?
Everything at a temperature above absolute zero (that means everything) emits photons. The sail will be emitting thermal radiation from both sides simply because it's warm. And as the solar photons hit it, it will get warmer.
The argument seems to be that when the sail reaches the same temperature as the incoming solar radiation, it will stop accelerating because it is emitting photons from the front side as fast as they are coming in from the back side. That logic doesn't hold up, IMHO. For one, the incoming solar photons are going to be reflected, thereby imparting *more* energy than radiated photons. When you reflect something, you're changing its momentum by twice it's original momentum. For +X to become -X, you have to siphon off 2X. That's the momentum the sail will be picking up from the sun, and it will be greater than any momentum lost by its thermal emissions.
But even simpler than that is to have a sail that's reflective on the side facing the sun and a blackbody on the side away from the sun. Then it's thermally radiating to deep space, and its temperature will stay low. Viola, thermal momentum effects disappear.
> I have heard of photons as particles & waves. Is this some mysterious phenomenon, or is it just that particles happen to move/travel in a wave-like path?
Think of it as a mysterious phenomenon.:) It's the way subatomic particles work -- they coexist in all positions in a wave-like pattern simultaneously.
Reminds me of something that happened to me in high school.
Mother: Remus, whatever happened to Lisa? Remus: Lisa? Crazy Lisa? Oh, uh, I lost her number. Mother: You lost it? Remus: Yep. I tore it up, threw it away, and haven't seen it since.
I have no problems with such a system as long as I'm allowed to delete things from it.
Let's try something else - can we prove that code can be poetry?
if (! $poetry) &try; &try $again; reverse @perceptions; open(YOUR, $brain); push(@soulfulness, $into, $your, $duty); $everything = $art if ($done_with_beauty);
Re:Why does this all boil down to terrorism?
on
Clothes That Kill
·
· Score: 1
Most pure research in this country is connected, either directly or indirectly, to funding from the federal government. And right now, all sources of funds from the government are required to allot money to 'Homeland Security'.
The government is funding anti-terrorism programs, so scientists have to do research with anti-terrorist applications. At the moment, any non-terrorist research is having a hard time finding funds.
This kind of oppression by proxy has been going on for decades, if not since America's conception. Workers have always lost many of their rights (including free speech and privacy) when they sign an employment contract. The only new aspect of this is that information technology allows the government to collate disparate information flows smoothly, so they can assemble a complete picture of what you're doing from your employer, utility services, and credit card bills.
The only way out of this is to monitor what information goes out. Don't do business with unethical companies, pay with cash when possible, etc. This kind of monitoring won't stop smart criminals -- it just keeps the population on a leash.
Starbuck just isn't a name that should ever be applied to a female. I don't care if the character's a womanizer or not -- the name is distinctly masculine. It's like casting a woman as Superman or a man as Wonder Woman.
And on a related note, are there no original ideas on the Sci-Fi channel anymore?
Fortunately, the Opera browser can spoof a fake user-agent string. Ever since I've set Opera to always tell servers that it's IE, I've seen no problems.
Is anyone denying that Mitnick stole 20,000 credit card numbers from Netcom in 1995? I didn't think that fact was in dispute.
At that time, I recieved a message from Netcom stating that my number had been one of the cards compromised. Sorry, I do not have a copy of this eight-year old email. Based on what I had been told, I took steps to protect myself (had the card canceled, asked for a new number, and put my Netcom account on a different card). Yes, it was Netcom's fault for having crappy security and I was pissed at them also.
No, Mitnick did not do anything with my credit card, and I'm willing to believe that he was trying to be a 'white hat'. But the way he did it wrong, it was illegal, and he could have done a lot of damage to many people, including myself.
Sorry, I don't have hard proof for you. I didn't think it would something anyone would demand, as Kevin's guilt is certainly not in dispute. If anyone doubts me...well, that's your problem, and I really don't care if you believe me or not. This only has to do with my opinions on Kevin Mitnick -- it's between Kevin and me -- and in my earlier post I said that I was ready to begin to forgive him.
As one of the people whose credit card numbers Kevin Mitnick stole from Netcom in the mid-1990's, I'm sick of hearing about this guy. He's a felon, he was punished, now put him to work in a Taco Bell and let's forget about him. He doesn't deserve this hero worship that techies are heaping onto him -- he was a bad guy, and people should realize that what he did was wrong.
However, it's gratifying that he wrote this:
First of all, I've learned my lesson, so taking the path I did before, is personally out of the question for me. My illegal hacking days are far behind me.
I'll take that as an apology. I think I'm ready to stop hating Kevin Mitnick the person. I'll just focus on hating the hero worship surrounding him, which I don't think he has any control over.
SimEarth didn't quite simulate this, but...
on
The Sky Is Rising
·
· Score: 1
It's interesting. Back in the days when I was obsessed with Sim Earth, I remember watching carefully how mass extinctions started. They weren't caused by any immediate disaster like a comet impact or volcano. Most extinctions started when the oxygen level of the planet started diving just a little bit. That set in motion a feedback loop of some kind that drove the oxygen in the atmosphere to zero fairly quickly, leaving nothing alive but trees and some sea animals. It was a difficult process to recognize, and even harder to stop.
I'm surprised to hear slashdotters rallying behind the MOO series. There's an independent developer that has created the ultimate 4X (Expand, Extend, Explore, and Exploit) galactic empire game. Space Empires IV seems to be everything that MOO3 is, plus it is user-extensible -- every aspect of the game is editable and customizable.
I've never played any of the MOO games. Can anyone tell me what it can do that Star Empires cannot? As far as I can see, the only advantage MOO3 has is internet multiplayer. SEIV has all the gameplay. Or am I wrong, and missing something magical about MOO?
We have a Pinewood Derby for adults here at work, with proceeds going to the local Boy Scout chapter. It's fun.
In our rules (which I believe are standard PWD rules), you must use the wheels and axle that come in the derby kit. And tests have been done proving that aerodynamics do not matter at all -- by far, the biggest contributors are center of mass and wheel friction. With these things in mind, you can see that most of the advice on/. isn't very useful.:)
Use powdered graphite on your wheels. Raise one wheel slightly above the track, so that your car is racing on only three...but make certain that the racer rolls straight without wobbling. Make the center of gravity one inch in front of the rear wheels. Get as close as you can to the maximum weight. And build your car with a 'nose up' design -- have the front of your car touch the starting pole as high as possible, with nothing below. When the starting pole drops, a nose-up racer starts downhill a fraction of a second before a racer with a low nose.
The above is what you'll want to do if you want to win. My advice, especially if you're doing this with your child, is to build a neat design and go to have fun.
Betamax is the wave of the future! The entire industry is moving to Betamax!
Uh...but sir, the consumers don't like Betamax. VHS is cheaper, longer playing, and more readily available.
Push content is the wave of the future! The entire industry will someday be based upon Pushing content!
Uh, sir, the consumers don't like Push content. They'd rather have some control over their own bandwidth and processor time. And flashing porn ads to little Timmy didn't win you any friends.
Video On Demand is the wave of the future! The entire industry must gear ourselves for Video On Demand!
Uh, sir, the consumers don't care about Video on Demand. They'd prefer 'video whenever', and just record the programs they want with PVRs, which also allow them to fast forward and replay, which you can't do with VOD.
Fucking consumers, always ruining marketer's plans with their intelligence and common sense.
Someone should let these farmers know that if they offset their irrigation circles just a little they'd be able to increase their land coverage
You're proposing a hexagonal, rather than square, arrangment of circular fields, right? Funny thing is, that's the way they do it in water-poor areas like Arabia. The midwest USA, however, was subdivided into 1 mile square sections by Truman's road infrastructure projects. From the rocky mountains to Ohio, the midwest is all cut up into 1 mile squares. So the fantastic infrastructure that makes America so productive has the side effect of forcing us to grow crops in square rather than hexagonal patterns.
It's a trade-off. I still think Truman did the right thing.
We tried to get pictures from every continent. The problem is that in general, natural places were more aesthetically pleasing than regions with a lot of man-made structures. Europe, sad to say, is wall-to-wall with man-made structures. But if we have another art show (which seems likely) I have candidate images from Skaggerak, Iberia, and the Carpathian mountains we may use.
Re:Colours?
on
Earth as Art
·
· Score: 3, Informative
The colors are not 'artificial'. Landsat 7 takes data in 7 wavebands of light, only 3 of which are the red, blue, green we can see with human vision. In the Parana River scene, we used band 4 for green. That's our 'vegetation' band, and anything with chlorophyll shows up very bright in that band, thus looking very green in that image.
So the colors are not artificial, they're just using frequencies of light that you normally can't see.
Re:Download a printable poster TIFF file...
on
Earth as Art
·
· Score: 2
http://astroboy.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthasart/images/ak patok_hires.jpg (I wonder what the red stuff in this one is?)
I was involved in making these images. The red stuff in the Akpatok Island scene is clouds. I used an infrared band combination to bring out the highlights on the island, but as a side effect the clouds are not as bright in the bands used for green and blue.
Oh, boy, we're getting slashdotted today. Gotta warn the sysadmins (assuming they don't already know).
The wizard Gandalf is warned in a prophecy that he will die if he goes to an underground city called "Khazad-dûm"; in B5, commander John Sheridan is warned that he will die if he goes to a planet called "Z'Ha'Dum." Both men sacrifice themselves, fall into an abyss, and return in an altered form to unite the forces of good against the forces of evil.
This is the heroic monomyth. The hero dies or willingly enters the underworld, and is reborn with the power to change the world of man. Reference the story of Orpheus, the Odyssey, Beowulf, Tammuz, Alice in Wonderland...the list goes on and on.
The small number of shared events exist because both JMS and J. R. R. Tolkien consciously drew on classical mythological sources and storytelling methods. Few people accuse J. R. R. Tolkien's LotR of being a "rip-off" of classical mythology, yet it also has many scenes that draw on classical mythological stories. JMS hopes to communicate to viewers that the archetypes explored in both works are far older and far more universal than most people realize, and that it is common for authors to explore some of these themes in new contexts, in new stories, with new consequences.
This sums up the 'B5 is L0TR' argument pretty concisely. But I wanted to add that anyone interested in seeing more of the mythological underpinnings of western storytelling should read 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell. There you'll see that B5, LoTR, Star Wars, and indeed almost every epic story ever told are all facets of the one monomyth.
Human beings have common triggers that appeal to our subconscious. It's part of the psychology we all share. A good story (sci-fi or otherwise) hits those triggers while at the same time being believable and exciting.
Okay. I swear, if I was interviewing this guy when he said that, he would have gotten punched in the face. I am one step away from pulling out my 357 and blowing the computer screen to pieces after reading that.
Strange, I thought freedom of speech included the freedom to say annoying things and not get punched or shot for it.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say annoying things. If someone interferes with your right to say annoying things, they're breaking the law.
I get the feeling that the gentleman with the 357 magnum knows that he would be breaking the law, and doesn't care. This spammer is THAT annoying.
Don't confuse someone trying to take away your rights with someone pushed so far they're willing to die to stop you. The first is an exploiter, the second is a victim who's had enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, of course alt.devilbunnies is for real. I'm surprised you ever doubted it. After the bunnies' assassination attempt on Jimmy Carter and their much-publicized terrorist takeover of Miami Airport, I thought everyone's doubts had been answered. Devilbunnies are out there. My advice to you is to run, run for the hills. :)
There have been some recent experiments, mostly spearheaded by Roger Nelson of the Princeton Global Consciousness Project, that show a correlation between human consciousness and quantum events. Some have speculated that consciousness may lay outside of what we know about physics.
Do you think there will be any fruitful (i.e., predictive) experimentation in this matter? Could we someday develop a theory that will unite physics and consciousness?
Well, it's slightly different. Deep Space 1 creates thrust by spitting metal ions out with a voltage. This requires a fuel source -- a metal anode that slowly disappears. The good news is that it works in a vacuum.
The lifter technology ionizes the air around the anode and draws it toward the cathode, creating an ionic wind. This isn't destructive and will run forever as long as current is applied. But it will only run in an atmosphere.
I am a physicist. A rocket scientist, in fact.
:) It's the way subatomic particles work -- they coexist in all positions in a wave-like pattern simultaneously.
> If the photons are reflected, how would they be coming out the other side?
Everything at a temperature above absolute zero (that means everything) emits photons. The sail will be emitting thermal radiation from both sides simply because it's warm. And as the solar photons hit it, it will get warmer.
The argument seems to be that when the sail reaches the same temperature as the incoming solar radiation, it will stop accelerating because it is emitting photons from the front side as fast as they are coming in from the back side. That logic doesn't hold up, IMHO. For one, the incoming solar photons are going to be reflected, thereby imparting *more* energy than radiated photons. When you reflect something, you're changing its momentum by twice it's original momentum. For +X to become -X, you have to siphon off 2X. That's the momentum the sail will be picking up from the sun, and it will be greater than any momentum lost by its thermal emissions.
But even simpler than that is to have a sail that's reflective on the side facing the sun and a blackbody on the side away from the sun. Then it's thermally radiating to deep space, and its temperature will stay low. Viola, thermal momentum effects disappear.
> I have heard of photons as particles & waves. Is this some mysterious phenomenon, or is it just that particles happen to move/travel in a wave-like path?
Think of it as a mysterious phenomenon.
Reminds me of something that happened to me in high school.
Mother: Remus, whatever happened to Lisa?
Remus: Lisa? Crazy Lisa? Oh, uh, I lost her number.
Mother: You lost it?
Remus: Yep. I tore it up, threw it away, and haven't seen it since.
I have no problems with such a system as long as I'm allowed to delete things from it.
Most pure research in this country is connected, either directly or indirectly, to funding from the federal government. And right now, all sources of funds from the government are required to allot money to 'Homeland Security'.
The government is funding anti-terrorism programs, so scientists have to do research with anti-terrorist applications. At the moment, any non-terrorist research is having a hard time finding funds.
This kind of oppression by proxy has been going on for decades, if not since America's conception. Workers have always lost many of their rights (including free speech and privacy) when they sign an employment contract. The only new aspect of this is that information technology allows the government to collate disparate information flows smoothly, so they can assemble a complete picture of what you're doing from your employer, utility services, and credit card bills.
The only way out of this is to monitor what information goes out. Don't do business with unethical companies, pay with cash when possible, etc. This kind of monitoring won't stop smart criminals -- it just keeps the population on a leash.
Put me down as another person who loved Hudson Hawk and who owns the DVD.
"Bunny! Ball ball!"
Wouldn't a female Starbuck be a Stardoe?
Starbuck just isn't a name that should ever be applied to a female. I don't care if the character's a womanizer or not -- the name is distinctly masculine. It's like casting a woman as Superman or a man as Wonder Woman.
And on a related note, are there no original ideas on the Sci-Fi channel anymore?
Fortunately, the Opera browser can spoof a fake user-agent string. Ever since I've set Opera to always tell servers that it's IE, I've seen no problems.
Is anyone denying that Mitnick stole 20,000 credit card numbers from Netcom in 1995? I didn't think that fact was in dispute.
At that time, I recieved a message from Netcom stating that my number had been one of the cards compromised. Sorry, I do not have a copy of this eight-year old email. Based on what I had been told, I took steps to protect myself (had the card canceled, asked for a new number, and put my Netcom account on a different card). Yes, it was Netcom's fault for having crappy security and I was pissed at them also.
No, Mitnick did not do anything with my credit card, and I'm willing to believe that he was trying to be a 'white hat'. But the way he did it wrong, it was illegal, and he could have done a lot of damage to many people, including myself.
Sorry, I don't have hard proof for you. I didn't think it would something anyone would demand, as Kevin's guilt is certainly not in dispute. If anyone doubts me...well, that's your problem, and I really don't care if you believe me or not. This only has to do with my opinions on Kevin Mitnick -- it's between Kevin and me -- and in my earlier post I said that I was ready to begin to forgive him.
As one of the people whose credit card numbers Kevin Mitnick stole from Netcom in the mid-1990's, I'm sick of hearing about this guy. He's a felon, he was punished, now put him to work in a Taco Bell and let's forget about him. He doesn't deserve this hero worship that techies are heaping onto him -- he was a bad guy, and people should realize that what he did was wrong.
However, it's gratifying that he wrote this:
First of all, I've learned my lesson, so taking the path I did before, is personally out of the question for me. My illegal hacking days are far behind me.
I'll take that as an apology. I think I'm ready to stop hating Kevin Mitnick the person. I'll just focus on hating the hero worship surrounding him, which I don't think he has any control over.
It's interesting. Back in the days when I was obsessed with Sim Earth, I remember watching carefully how mass extinctions started. They weren't caused by any immediate disaster like a comet impact or volcano. Most extinctions started when the oxygen level of the planet started diving just a little bit. That set in motion a feedback loop of some kind that drove the oxygen in the atmosphere to zero fairly quickly, leaving nothing alive but trees and some sea animals. It was a difficult process to recognize, and even harder to stop.
I'm surprised to hear slashdotters rallying behind the MOO series. There's an independent developer that has created the ultimate 4X (Expand, Extend, Explore, and Exploit) galactic empire game. Space Empires IV seems to be everything that MOO3 is, plus it is user-extensible -- every aspect of the game is editable and customizable.
I've never played any of the MOO games. Can anyone tell me what it can do that Star Empires cannot? As far as I can see, the only advantage MOO3 has is internet multiplayer. SEIV has all the gameplay. Or am I wrong, and missing something magical about MOO?
We have a Pinewood Derby for adults here at work, with proceeds going to the local Boy Scout chapter. It's fun.
/. isn't very useful. :)
In our rules (which I believe are standard PWD rules), you must use the wheels and axle that come in the derby kit. And tests have been done proving that aerodynamics do not matter at all -- by far, the biggest contributors are center of mass and wheel friction. With these things in mind, you can see that most of the advice on
Use powdered graphite on your wheels. Raise one wheel slightly above the track, so that your car is racing on only three...but make certain that the racer rolls straight without wobbling. Make the center of gravity one inch in front of the rear wheels. Get as close as you can to the maximum weight. And build your car with a 'nose up' design -- have the front of your car touch the starting pole as high as possible, with nothing below. When the starting pole drops, a nose-up racer starts downhill a fraction of a second before a racer with a low nose.
The above is what you'll want to do if you want to win. My advice, especially if you're doing this with your child, is to build a neat design and go to have fun.
Betamax is the wave of the future! The entire industry is moving to Betamax!
Uh...but sir, the consumers don't like Betamax. VHS is cheaper, longer playing, and more readily available.
Push content is the wave of the future! The entire industry will someday be based upon Pushing content!
Uh, sir, the consumers don't like Push content. They'd rather have some control over their own bandwidth and processor time. And flashing porn ads to little Timmy didn't win you any friends.
Video On Demand is the wave of the future! The entire industry must gear ourselves for Video On Demand!
Uh, sir, the consumers don't care about Video on Demand. They'd prefer 'video whenever', and just record the programs they want with PVRs, which also allow them to fast forward and replay, which you can't do with VOD.
Fucking consumers, always ruining marketer's plans with their intelligence and common sense.
Someone should let these farmers know that if they offset their irrigation circles just a little they'd be able to increase their land coverage
You're proposing a hexagonal, rather than square, arrangment of circular fields, right? Funny thing is, that's the way they do it in water-poor areas like Arabia. The midwest USA, however, was subdivided into 1 mile square sections by Truman's road infrastructure projects. From the rocky mountains to Ohio, the midwest is all cut up into 1 mile squares. So the fantastic infrastructure that makes America so productive has the side effect of forcing us to grow crops in square rather than hexagonal patterns.
It's a trade-off. I still think Truman did the right thing.
We tried to get pictures from every continent. The problem is that in general, natural places were more aesthetically pleasing than regions with a lot of man-made structures. Europe, sad to say, is wall-to-wall with man-made structures. But if we have another art show (which seems likely) I have candidate images from Skaggerak, Iberia, and the Carpathian mountains we may use.
::spits out milk:: *pfff!!* 980 feet??
:-)
Yep. Hope your dune buggy has a roll bar.
The colors are not 'artificial'. Landsat 7 takes data in 7 wavebands of light, only 3 of which are the red, blue, green we can see with human vision. In the Parana River scene, we used band 4 for green. That's our 'vegetation' band, and anything with chlorophyll shows up very bright in that band, thus looking very green in that image.
So the colors are not artificial, they're just using frequencies of light that you normally can't see.
http://astroboy.gsfc.nasa.gov/earthasart/images/ak patok_hires.jpg (I wonder what the red stuff in this one is?)
I was involved in making these images. The red stuff in the Akpatok Island scene is clouds. I used an infrared band combination to bring out the highlights on the island, but as a side effect the clouds are not as bright in the bands used for green and blue.
Oh, boy, we're getting slashdotted today. Gotta warn the sysadmins (assuming they don't already know).
The wizard Gandalf is warned in a prophecy that he will die if he goes to an underground city called "Khazad-dûm"; in B5, commander John Sheridan is warned that he will die if he goes to a planet called "Z'Ha'Dum." Both men sacrifice themselves, fall into an abyss, and return in an altered form to unite the forces of good against the forces of evil.
This is the heroic monomyth. The hero dies or willingly enters the underworld, and is reborn with the power to change the world of man. Reference the story of Orpheus, the Odyssey, Beowulf, Tammuz, Alice in Wonderland...the list goes on and on.
The small number of shared events exist because both JMS and J. R. R. Tolkien consciously drew on classical mythological sources and storytelling methods. Few people accuse J. R. R. Tolkien's LotR of being a "rip-off" of classical mythology, yet it also has many scenes that draw on classical mythological stories. JMS hopes to communicate to viewers that the archetypes explored in both works are far older and far more universal than most people realize, and that it is common for authors to explore some of these themes in new contexts, in new stories, with new consequences.
This sums up the 'B5 is L0TR' argument pretty concisely. But I wanted to add that anyone interested in seeing more of the mythological underpinnings of western storytelling should read 'The Hero with a Thousand Faces' by Joseph Campbell. There you'll see that B5, LoTR, Star Wars, and indeed almost every epic story ever told are all facets of the one monomyth.
Human beings have common triggers that appeal to our subconscious. It's part of the psychology we all share. A good story (sci-fi or otherwise) hits those triggers while at the same time being believable and exciting.
Tolkein invented fantasy?!?
Um, what about Jonathan Swift? John Myers Myers? Lewis Carrol? The Brothers Grim? Chaucer?
Someone mod the parent down, please. He's both very mistaken and very under-read.
Okay. I swear, if I was interviewing this guy when he said that, he would have gotten punched in the face. I am one step away from pulling out my 357 and blowing the computer screen to pieces after reading that.
Strange, I thought freedom of speech included the freedom to say annoying things and not get punched or shot for it.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom to say annoying things. If someone interferes with your right to say annoying things, they're breaking the law.
I get the feeling that the gentleman with the 357 magnum knows that he would be breaking the law, and doesn't care. This spammer is THAT annoying.
Don't confuse someone trying to take away your rights with someone pushed so far they're willing to die to stop you. The first is an exploiter, the second is a victim who's had enough.