I never believed in UFO's before, but now I do. I was particularly convinced by the comment "Digital photo's can't be faked". Anyone who can say that and mean it *must* be from another planet.
-aiabx
American involvement in the Second World War started long before December 7th. Through the Lend-Lease ACt, the US was supplying Britian with large quantities of munitions, in spite of the Neutrality Act. Even more telling, the British convoys in the western half of the Atlantic were escorted by US Navy ships, many of which engaged in armed combat with German U-boats. In spite of an isolationist Congress, and because of Roosevelt, the US got to be the good guys.
And to return to the original point of the thread, the US should look for asteroids because they can. To quote Spider-man, "With great power comes great responsibility".
-aiabx
There's another way in to IBM. Get some real work experience and then join as a professional hire. No one even hinted at caring what my GPA was, because I had 11 years of useful experience. Lucky thing too, my GPA is adequate for getting a job flipping burgers.
-aiabx
I was at a physics conference some years ago where a paper was presented on the Physics of Warner Brothers Cartoons. The example I remember best from the talk was that of the Coyote running off a cliff and through the open air for some yards before looking down, realizing he was floating in mid air, and then falling to a painful whatever-it-is-that-happens-to-the-coyote. This was held up as a fine example of how observation is required to collapse the wave function in quantum mechanics.
-aiabx
Sadly enough, the universe is not infinite. Since it is expanding, and since we know the approximate age of the universe, we can put pretty good bounds on its size. There is also no reason to believe that given an infinite universe, we would find an earth without Barney. No matter how many times I roll two dice, I will never roll a 13, and it may be that no matter how many planets there are, you never get one that has intelligent life but no Barney. Barney may be an inevitable product of intelligent life. With a sample size of 1, you just can't tell.
-aiabx
I specifically did not tell my new-employers-to-be about my counter offer. I didn't want to start a new job with a reputation for weaseling for a few bucks, and the raises at my new job have been lucrative enough that any potential counter-counter offer has long since been made up.
-aiabx
I don't know how relevant this is in the age of cheap missiles, but in past wars, speed was the critical factor in dogfighting. You would pop in, shoot and zoom off before the enemy could return fire. This is why no one flies slow, manouverable biplanes anymore. Fighter plane evolution has always emphasized speed first. The Harrier/Mirage situation is an exception, I will admit. I suspect this worked for the British because superior missiles can make up for a lack of speed.
-aiabx
As a general rule, warships are composed of hundreds of watertight compartments. Puncturing a small number of them probably wouldn't even be noticed. It's not like these are unstable platforms that will tip over when pushed. That having been said, frigates and destroyers are smaller, poorly armoured and have fewer compartments, so they might make a good target for an A-10. If one Exocet can wreck a frigate, no doubt a planeful of 30mm shells can do as good a job.
-aiabx
Who told them theirs was the most important activity on the planet, and everything else has to get out of the way when they say "jump!"? Can't we tell them to fuck off back to the studio and leave our cities alone, or start paying us for the privilege of blocking our streets and hogging the good restaurants?
-aiabx
I do have a small mind and a tiny intellect. As evidence, I thought of poking my nose into a nest of geeks arguing about stupid things, forgetting entirely that all I would get out of it is abuse from strangers and a headache. I never said the UN was a republic. You were talking about "a governing body the size of the Republic". We don't have one on earth, but the UN is the largest governing body we have. Given that we do not have a republic of thousands of star systems to examine, I don't think we can say what a governing body of that size would necessitate.
-aiabx
You speak as if it was our _duty_ to watch some crappy TV show, and if we don't, then we're failing to do what is expected of us. Well, if the producers can't come up with a TV show that appelas to me, I'm not going to watch it, and to hell with the advertisers, producers and anyone who think's it's my fault that they can't watch their favourite TV show.
-aiabx
My guess is that the shippers opened your package, took off the bubble wrap and popped all the bubbles. While they were doing this, they set your drive on a desk, from where they accidently knocked it out a third story window. Then they wrapped it back up in an effort to cover their collective asses. The moral? Use packing peanuts, they aren't much fun.
-aiabx
I have seen articles as well (I can't remember where) explaining why bubbles travel downwards in Guinness. It seems you get convection patterns right after pouring where the liquid is moving down faster that the bubbles can rise, so the bubbles appear to sink slowly. The opacity of Guinness probably helps, since you can only see bubbles near the surface of the glass and not the ones in the centre rising much faster than expected. That having been said, I'd have to vote for the Pendulum, or the double slit. With a Guinness chaser.
-aiabx
given that they are using 2.5" disks, the drawing in the article loks like it will be 5, maybe 6" on a side. You might get 1 beer ina fridge that small.
-aiabx
In fact, alloys are frequntly stronger than the component metals. A mix of different types of metal atoms is a lumpier structure, and the atoms can't slide past each other as easily as they can in a pure metal. Thus, bronze is stronger than copper or tin, steel is stronger than iron or coal, and so on.
-aiabx
Hmmm... Friday nights. Play with daughter, put her to bed, read her stories until 9:30, wash dishes, watch Iron Chef with wife until 11, play quake with my nerd friends until 2. Nothing in that schedule worth moving so I can watch another goddamned TV show. Not even the dishes.
-aiabx
I was impressed by the idea of caffeinated beer as well. I was disappointed that I couldn't add it to my thinkgeek wishlist. Maybe I can take a barrel of caffeinated water to my local brew-your-own shop.
-aiabx
The electricity argument is a good one, if you turn on your monitor when you want to read a document. My monitor is on throughout my workday, so there's no extra cost to reading documents on it. Since I've started working with a laptop I can carry back and forth from work to home, I rarely print anything out - paper documents have become far more hassle than they're worth.
-aiabx
The problem with invented languages is the same problem you get with real languages. When Navajo was used for communications in WWII, one of its limitations was that the Navajo language was missing a lot of military terminology and distinctive words for pacific geography (Guadalcanal is the same in Navajo and English). The solution for this was to "spell" the words using codewords for letters, but this makes the code more vulnerable to cracking. Trying to describe the latest chip-fabrication technique in Elvish will lead to the same difficulty.
-aiabx
Slashdot Mirror
Come on. Gandalf's are modems.
-aiabx
I never believed in UFO's before, but now I do.
I was particularly convinced by the comment "Digital photo's can't be faked". Anyone who can say that and mean it *must* be from another planet.
-aiabx
American involvement in the Second World War started long before December 7th. Through the Lend-Lease ACt, the US was supplying Britian with large quantities of munitions, in spite of the Neutrality Act. Even more telling, the British convoys in the western half of the Atlantic were escorted by US Navy ships, many of which engaged in armed combat with German U-boats. In spite of an isolationist Congress, and because of Roosevelt, the US got to be the good guys.
And to return to the original point of the thread, the US should look for asteroids because they can. To quote Spider-man, "With great power comes great responsibility".
-aiabx
Are you ever tempted to drop repellant web sites from your indexes? If so, why? If not, why not?
-aiabx
There's another way in to IBM. Get some real work experience and then join as a professional hire. No one even hinted at caring what my GPA was, because I had 11 years of useful experience. Lucky thing too, my GPA is adequate for getting a job flipping burgers.
-aiabx
I was at a physics conference some years ago where a paper was presented on the Physics of Warner Brothers Cartoons. The example I remember best from the talk was that of the Coyote running off a cliff and through the open air for some yards before looking down, realizing he was floating in mid air, and then falling to a painful whatever-it-is-that-happens-to-the-coyote. This was held up as a fine example of how observation is required to collapse the wave function in quantum mechanics.
-aiabx
Sadly enough, the universe is not infinite. Since it is expanding, and since we know the approximate age of the universe, we can put pretty good bounds on its size.
There is also no reason to believe that given an infinite universe, we would find an earth without Barney. No matter how many times I roll two dice, I will never roll a 13, and it may be that no matter how many planets there are, you never get one that has intelligent life but no Barney. Barney may be an inevitable product of intelligent life. With a sample size of 1, you just can't tell.
-aiabx
I specifically did not tell my new-employers-to-be about my counter offer. I didn't want to start a new job with a reputation for weaseling for a few bucks, and the raises at my new job have been lucrative enough that any potential counter-counter offer has long since been made up.
-aiabx
I don't know how relevant this is in the age of cheap missiles, but in past wars, speed was the critical factor in dogfighting. You would pop in, shoot and zoom off before the enemy could return fire. This is why no one flies slow, manouverable biplanes anymore. Fighter plane evolution has always emphasized speed first. The Harrier/Mirage situation is an exception, I will admit. I suspect this worked for the British because superior missiles can make up for a lack of speed.
-aiabx
As a general rule, warships are composed of hundreds of watertight compartments. Puncturing a small number of them probably wouldn't even be noticed. It's not like these are unstable platforms that will tip over when pushed. That having been said, frigates and destroyers are smaller, poorly armoured and have fewer compartments, so they might make a good target for an A-10. If one Exocet can wreck a frigate, no doubt a planeful of 30mm shells can do as good a job.
-aiabx
Who told them theirs was the most important activity on the planet, and everything else has to get out of the way when they say "jump!"? Can't we tell them to fuck off back to the studio and leave our cities alone, or start paying us for the privilege of blocking our streets and hogging the good restaurants?
-aiabx
I do have a small mind and a tiny intellect. As evidence, I thought of poking my nose into a nest of geeks arguing about stupid things, forgetting entirely that all I would get out of it is abuse from strangers and a headache.
I never said the UN was a republic. You were talking about "a governing body the size of the Republic". We don't have one on earth, but the UN is the largest governing body we have.
Given that we do not have a republic of thousands of star systems to examine, I don't think we can say what a governing body of that size would necessitate.
-aiabx
Exactly. That's why the United Nations maintains 12 aircraft carriers and 16 fully mechanized divisions of ground troops. Right?
-aiabx
You speak as if it was our _duty_ to watch some crappy TV show, and if we don't, then we're failing to do what is expected of us. Well, if the producers can't come up with a TV show that appelas to me, I'm not going to watch it, and to hell with the advertisers, producers and anyone who think's it's my fault that they can't watch their favourite TV show.
-aiabx
Interesting point. Whem we're discussing the Nazis, do we invoke Godwin's Law when someone mentions motorcycle helmets, or maybe gun control?
-aiabx
My guess is that the shippers opened your package, took off the bubble wrap and popped all the bubbles. While they were doing this, they set your drive on a desk, from where they accidently knocked it out a third story window. Then they wrapped it back up in an effort to cover their collective asses. The moral? Use packing peanuts, they aren't much fun.
-aiabx
This is an urban legend. There have been no verified instances of razor blades in atoms.
-aiabx
I have seen articles as well (I can't remember where) explaining why bubbles travel downwards in Guinness. It seems you get convection patterns right after pouring where the liquid is moving down faster that the bubbles can rise, so the bubbles appear to sink slowly. The opacity of Guinness probably helps, since you can only see bubbles near the surface of the glass and not the ones in the centre rising much faster than expected.
That having been said, I'd have to vote for the Pendulum, or the double slit. With a Guinness chaser.
-aiabx
given that they are using 2.5" disks, the drawing in the article loks like it will be 5, maybe 6" on a side. You might get 1 beer ina fridge that small.
-aiabx
oops, I typed ":w".
-aiabx
In fact, alloys are frequntly stronger than the component metals. A mix of different types of metal atoms is a lumpier structure, and the atoms can't slide past each other as easily as they can in a pure metal. Thus, bronze is stronger than copper or tin, steel is stronger than iron or coal, and so on.
-aiabx
Hmmm... Friday nights.
Play with daughter, put her to bed, read her stories until 9:30, wash dishes, watch Iron Chef with wife until 11, play quake with my nerd friends until 2. Nothing in that schedule worth moving so I can watch another goddamned TV show.
Not even the dishes.
-aiabx
I was impressed by the idea of caffeinated beer as well. I was disappointed that I couldn't add it to my thinkgeek wishlist. Maybe I can take a barrel of caffeinated water to my local brew-your-own shop.
-aiabx
The electricity argument is a good one, if you turn on your monitor when you want to read a document. My monitor is on throughout my workday, so there's no extra cost to reading documents on it.
Since I've started working with a laptop I can carry back and forth from work to home, I rarely print anything out - paper documents have become far more hassle than they're worth.
-aiabx
The problem with invented languages is the same problem you get with real languages. When Navajo was used for communications in WWII, one of its limitations was that the Navajo language was missing a lot of military terminology and distinctive words for pacific geography (Guadalcanal is the same in Navajo and English). The solution for this was to "spell" the words using codewords for letters, but this makes the code more vulnerable to cracking. Trying to describe the latest chip-fabrication technique in Elvish will lead to the same difficulty.
-aiabx