"The new theory, however, handles situations where the sampling is non-uniform and the signal is not band-limited."
So it isn't applicable to digital music (as this is band-limited by our hearing, and we can pick the sampling interval) but other signals that cannot be sampled well by regular sampling (either in time or in space). Examples given are seismic surveys and MRI scans. But you knew this as you'd have taken the time to read the linked article first, wouldn't you?
Re:Editor: I'll take a 3-point karma hit too
on
KaZaa Suspends Downloads
·
· Score: 0, Interesting
Ah - more karma to burn. Do I care? Not really.
Anyway, much to my surprise, the moderation is not robomoderation. Some human being is, almost unbelievably, doing these by hand. What a sad person - hi there Mr Sad! (waves).
The question that we should be asking is "Who is Mr Sad?".
For the first time in my life I understand the trolls.
Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation
on
KaZaa Suspends Downloads
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Its like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, Oracle as the 800lb gorilla in the database world, but this does not mean that their products are bad. They are propriatory, sure, but almost all databases have got their own tweaks to the standard that allows them to operate more effectively. There is nothing more irritating than trying to port from one product to another and finding a feature on one that makes you rlife easy entirely missing on the other one, which compells you to try and reinvent the wheel yet again, except that your wheel is buggy and slow and takes lots of your valuable time to try and get this cackhanded implementation working. Anyway, eds abusing the mod system is true. But another thing to look at about Oracle is that their influence is actually quite small for their size - probably because Ellison is seen a quite an abusive person and not to be trusted. This lack of trustworthyness should also be applied to the people marking down so violently this thread. But that is another matter - Oracle is happy in its market and is showing no stomach for cancerous expansion like Larry's old friend BillG. A little reverse engineering on my part here to see how the abuse is being done. Oracle biggest weakness is that it is a one trick pony - best hope that people want the trick for a long time to come.
Larry Ellison is a braggart and a blowhard. However, his words do contain a kernal of truth, and must be interpreted with moderation to get the true message. When he says "unbreakable" he means "less breakable". When he says "100 times faster" he means slightly faster.
Unfortuately, when he says National-ID card, he means it.
Re:The first Slashdot troll post investigation
on
KaZaa Suspends Downloads
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
Let's try again - my reply was eaten.
I have a post above that was marked down offtopic twice, both moderations about 20 minutes apart. At the same time as the first moderation the reply to my post was marked down, also as offtopic.
So they have got a little more devious - instead of straight to -1 they're taking off a point at a time to make it look less obvious.
Now I'm having trouble posting this again - I've posted dozens (if not hundreds) of posts from this machine and have never had this difficulty before. Posted just now to another article - absolutely no problem. Something fishy is going on (and no, it is not the delay between articles - the problem was there before I posted to the other thread).
Pathetic editorial moderation continues - an entire thread does not get modded down to -1 in a minute by normal means. The parent loses 6 points in between refreshes. Power corrupts.
Oddly, I'm getting never-before-seen effects when trying to post this.
Well, yes and no. I know the equation suggests it is (W = m.g, where bold represents vectors. But weight is not used as a vector, and it leads to silly conclusions if it is.
For example, I weigh myself here to be 100kg (or 980N) - what is the direction of this weight vector: towards the centre of the earth. Thought experiment time. Two 100kg men weight themselves, on at the north pole, one at the south pole. What is the sum of their weights?
Well, if weight is a vector then the sum is zero. If, however, you take weight as a scalar then it is 200kg. What people mean when adding weights only works if weight is a scalar. Basically, defining weight as a vector fails the common sense, similar to defining glass as a liquid as opposed to a solid.
All that is happening is that specialists are taking a word that is in common usage (weight in this case) and defining a new (and different) techincal meaning for the word, which is similar to but distinct from the everyday meaning. Then they complain when people use it in the everyday sense.
The law is full of weird gimmicks that nobody takes seriously. For example, some contracts aren't valid unless something of value changes hands. So the lawyers add the assertion that one party paid the other a small amount of money. It's often a lie, and everybody involved knows it, but it's an accepted practice.
In a company I used to work for I had an idea which was patented. The time came for the company to get the rights assigned to them and I got a whole load of paperwork saying things like "For the consideration of one dollar is irrevocably assign the rights in blah to 'The Company'". So I said "Where's my dollar?" (a la Feynman for those who have read his books). They hummed and hawed a bit and cam back with most of the altered to say "For valuable consideration..". Except one - Pakistan I think - where money must change hands.
E-mail went to and fro for a bit - they would not give me the money, I wouldn't sign a document saying I'd received the money when I hadn't. Things got tense, and one of the coporate lawyer types played what he thought was his trump card - I'd signed the "Ideas and Inventions agreement" where I'd agreed to hand over any patent rights, and if I didn't sign I'd be in breach of contract, and they'd have to take further action.
Well, when I first joined the company I'd signed an agreement. But the company had restructured, and I was now employed by a different company, and separate legal entity from the point of view of these contracts. When my employment changed I was given a new version to sign, which I sent back to them saying "You must be joking" as it was far wider than the previous one - anything I wrote, for example (like this post!) would have the copyright transfered to them.
So it was with not inconsiderable glee I told them this, which caused remarkable panic as it dawned on them that not only had I not signed it (and they didn't have a legal leg to stand on) but a considerable number of my associates at the research lab where I worked also had not signed it.
Ah, the wonderful sight of a lawyer panicking!
They did eventually gave me some money and got the document signed. I never did sign the Ideas and Inventions contract before I left the company a few years later (voluntarily and on very good terms I should add).
Okay, sure, if all of Microsoft's programmers worked for free, developing Microsoft's software for a total outlay of $0 up front (including everything from not paying salaries, to not spending money on research, to forcing "employees" to purchase their own equipment), then sure, Microsoft's cost in this case would only be the price of pressing a CD.
The marginal cost to Microsoft is the cost of the CD - those other costs are already covered. But, let us continue...
Now, let's also assume that of those 1 million people, half of them would've purchased a new PC with Windows included (say, $50 for the OEM license). That's 500,000 * $50 = $25 million that Microsoft "lost".
Why? Did they, perchance, get a refund from the OEM licence? Seems unlikely. So if the did purchase a PC they would have paid _again_ for windows.
So that's Zero MS have lost. Let us continue some more (this is fun!)
Now, let's assume another 25% of those people would've purchased a Windows Upgrade version ($90). That's another 250,000 * $90 = $22.5 million lost.
What, exactly, are these people going to upgrade? MS have just given them the computer with windows on it. Sheesh. But I'll be generous - let's say 1% of people without computers will buy windows upgrades (strange impulse purchases).
And lastly, say 10% of those people would've bought a full version of Windows ($200).
More deranged impulse buyers? Surely not.
That's yet another 100,000 * $200 = $20 million lost. In total, that's $25 mil + $22.5 mil + $20 mil = $67.5 million.
Okay, so now let's knock the profit out of that and see what Microsoft actually lost. Assume Microsoft makes 50% profit on everything they sell (that's damn high, but they're a Monopoly, and I have to pander to the Slashdot crowd).
Oh dear - lets work out the incremental cost of producing a CD when you have already produced 100,000,000 of them. Pennies.
That means of that $67.5 million they "lost", they only truly lost $33.75 million.
So, allowing 10cents per disk, that's $10,000 it costs them to donate the software. Or, in other words, a miniscule sum compared to the cost of the lawyer who drafted it.
Don't believe me? Two good reasons why you should. MS charges employees a pittance for software - that should give you some idea of it's intrinsic value. And when doing tax calculations on such things the value received for the purposes of tax in the incremental cost of making one extra, not the average cost.
That concludes the economics lesson for today.
That was economics?! Wow.
I hope you learned something.
Oh, yes. Just not what you were (supposedly) teaching.
Being based in the UK myself I must say I haven't heard of this, or anything like it.
The only mutterings I've heard that could be related is to do with region encoding, but that was the EU commission debating the legality of region encoding. In this case they decided not to act. This does not mean that they have decided if they are legal or illegal - just that regional encoding is not anticompetitive and therefore permissible at the moment. But, on the other hand, unlocked players are also permissible.
I'm bored, so I'll bite. I'll stop at your first error.
When you purchase a DVD, you are paying for the ability to play it...
When you purchase a DVD then you can do anything you want with it - except distribute copies of it. Manufacturers may try to contrain your use to uses that they approve of, but none of these are enforcable.
Your argument falls to bits after this cornerstone is removed.
We should just use solar panels to generate hydrogen from sea water....
I predict that within 30 minutes, there will be at least two confused posts saying that we should just use solar panels to generate electricity to "crack" the hydrogen from sea water.
...except that, instead of using electrical conversion followed by electrolysis they will use photocatalysis, as described in this Physics World Article, which talks about the implications of a paper published in Nature.
The jist of it, for the link weary, is that by the use of a cunning contrived semiconductor it is possible to arrange the band-gap to be higher that the reduction potential of H2, which allows the production of H2 from the H+ ions that are always present in water.
Early days yet (efficiency is 0.66%, compared with an break-even of 4%), and lifetimes are unknown at the moment. But using solar panels to generate hydrogen should not be rejected out of hand just because the energetics are unfavourable with one particular type of solar cell.
You're the moron, moron. When you get the one byte compressed file, you run the decompressor once to get the number of additional times to run the decompressor.
What are they teaching the kids today? Shannon-shmannon nonsense, no doubt. They should be doing useful things, like Marketing and Management Science. There's no point in being able to count if you don't have any money.
Warmer seas melt polar ice, polar ice firmly entrenched on land doe not melt, and only is pushed off by new ice formation. Also, warmer seas give off more water vapor, and lead to higher rates of evaporation, more than compensating for the expantion rate, since this leads to higher precipitation it then leads to greater ice formation near the polar caps, causing giant ice sheets to cover the land, and to some extent even the ocean.
What on earth are you talking about? Evaporation from the oceans more than compensates for the expansion? Where exactly did you get this from?
Some numbers
Water in Ice = 1.7% = 24,000,000 km^3
All Fresh Water = 1.7% = 23,000,000 km^3
Water in atmosphere = 0.001% = 12900 km^3
Oceans = 96.5% = 1,300,000,000 km^3
(From Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather)
For a 1 deg C rise in average ocean temperature the change in density = 0.02%
Change in volume of the ocean = 260000km^3
or about 20 times as much as is currently in the atmosphere.
SO you are talking bollox here.
Giant Icesheets covering the land
Again - where did you get this from? Sea ice is melting; glaciers are retreating; premafrost is melting; the land icecaps are receeding. Somehow all this gets thrown into reverse as if the temperature increases more.
Your arguments remind me of the people who said the last tree would be cut down in 2001. Well it's 2002 now and I can see thousands of trees just from where I live alone.
My argument was that warm sea water takes up more space than cold seawater. If this reminds you of trees then I suggest you get your memory checked.
But it wasn't a reasonable assumption. If you speak in public, you should expect that it's not 'private' communications.
As to that.. a prospective employer who is going to come down on you for something you said when you were 14.. well, you probably don't want to work for.
I agree, but the quote at the bottom of the page I'm looking at is
Water expands by about 1/11 when it freezes - are you sugesting that water, with out under going such a phase change, will expand as much simply by heating it?
No. The experiment that the post was eluding to is fill a glass with ice and water so the water is at the brim and the ice is floating. The ice will be above the level of the brim. Now let the ice melt. The glass is still full to the brim of water. This is Archimedes' principle.
This still applies - water is denser than ice. But the water in the seas is, on average, warmer than before. Therefore, if the polar ice cap melts it is because the sea is warmer. And if the sea is warmer then it occupies more volume, which means that sea levels have risen.
Oh, that's right you did mention something about "ignoring the fact that some polar ice is on land". Yeah, that little bit 'o ice, those mere GIGANTICE POLAR ICE CAPS resting on land masses couldn't possibly change sea level when they melt.
Sigh - even if there were no ice caps on land the sea level would rise if they melted: that was the point being made.
Many models of global warming predict that the land ice caps actually get bigger (due to increased precipitation) instead of melting- snow in is greater than meltwater out. Even with some extra water locked in the bigger icecaps the sea level still goes up due to the thermal expansion of sea water.
When the polar ice caps melt, the ocean level does not rise. Why? because as ice they displace the same amount of space as they would if they were water. It is achimedes' principle.
Oft stated, but actually wrong (even ignoring the fact that some polar ice is on land). When the ice melts it melts for a reason - the sea has warmed up. And when the sea warms it will expand. See this Nature Abstract or even from USA Today
The reason for a lot of these patents "hundreds of patents" is defense (there are other reasons of course). By defense I mean that if they happen to infringe, or even be accused of infringing, a competitors patent then they have some ammo to strike back or muddy the water.
Faced with a protracted and expensive legal battle the companies will more than likely do a deal, as opposed to go to court.
With Cornell, on the other hand, they are not a competitor. Neither are they poor. So countersuing and bleeding them dry - the standard two tactics in such cases - can't work.
It'll be interesting, but I reckon that HP will pay up before court. All Cornell have to lose is some money, but HP could, at worst, lose their product line (if they are violating the patent then they have to stop making the product). Cornell could license the patent to HP, but they don't have to. And I would hate to be a negotiator for HP during any licencing talks if and when they loose their case - talk about a weak position: you can't bluff when the other party knows your cards.
The beautiful irony of this is that its apparently ok for kids to pick up whores on the roadside of the red light district and bang em, but killing a pimp for money's not okay....
Well, yes - that is sort of the way it works in the real world too. Prostitution is not as bad as killing. So I'm not too sure why you think it is a beautiful irony. Perhaps you've played too many video games....
It's quite possible to get a Windows machine to output video which the monitor won't accept at all. Even with supposedly "plug and play" monitors. Getting out of this is a lot trickier than a few mouse clicks
It certainly possible to output video that the monitor won't accept. Tricky, but possible. One way, for example, it to uncheck the option box that says "Hide Modes that this monitor cannot display", which may give a bit of a hint as to what might happen.
To get out of it you Do Nothing. All you do is wait 15 seconds and it will go back to your previous settings.
Is there any good reason why a system administrator should not be able to choose which screen resolutions should be available on a Windows desktop...
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Screen resolutions are a function of the hardware, so the SA's choice is not really a choice. If you mean that the SA's should be able to set the screen resolution for the user, who can't change it, that can be done to. You can also let the user change the screen resolution if you wish.
Re:Ireland *has* changed to the Euro
on
The Euro
·
· Score: 5, Informative
To think Ireland would use a different currency than the rest of the U.K.
Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom. It's straightforward:
Ireland is a nation. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a nation. This was formed for seperate nations, principalities, and provinces - England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Most of Ireland left, leaving Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Great Britain is an island, which contains most of, but not all, of Scotland, England and Wales. Ireland is also an island, but doesn't only contain Ireland. The British Isles is an archipeligo, which contains Great Britain and all the smaller islands that go to make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but is a dependancy. The Isle of Man is in the Irish Sea. The Channel Islands are not part of the British Isles, but are dependancies like the Isle of Man.
Slashdot Mirror
No.
As the abstract says
"The new theory, however, handles situations where the sampling is non-uniform and the signal is not band-limited."
So it isn't applicable to digital music (as this is band-limited by our hearing, and we can pick the sampling interval) but other signals that cannot be sampled well by regular sampling (either in time or in space). Examples given are seismic surveys and MRI scans. But you knew this as you'd have taken the time to read the linked article first, wouldn't you?
Ah - more karma to burn. Do I care? Not really.
Anyway, much to my surprise, the moderation is not robomoderation. Some human being is, almost unbelievably, doing these by hand. What a sad person - hi there Mr Sad! (waves).
The question that we should be asking is "Who is Mr Sad?".
For the first time in my life I understand the trolls.
Its like finding a needle in a haystack. Yes, Oracle as the 800lb gorilla in the database world, but this does not mean that their products are bad. They are propriatory, sure, but almost all databases have got their own tweaks to the standard that allows them to operate more effectively. There is nothing more irritating than trying to port from one product to another and finding a feature on one that makes you rlife easy entirely missing on the other one, which compells you to try and reinvent the wheel yet again, except that your wheel is buggy and slow and takes lots of your valuable time to try and get this cackhanded implementation working. Anyway, eds abusing the mod system is true. But another thing to look at about Oracle is that their influence is actually quite small for their size - probably because Ellison is seen a quite an abusive person and not to be trusted. This lack of trustworthyness should also be applied to the people marking down so violently this thread. But that is another matter - Oracle is happy in its market and is showing no stomach for cancerous expansion like Larry's old friend BillG. A little reverse engineering on my part here to see how the abuse is being done. Oracle biggest weakness is that it is a one trick pony - best hope that people want the trick for a long time to come.
Larry Ellison is a braggart and a blowhard. However, his words do contain a kernal of truth, and must be interpreted with moderation to get the true message. When he says "unbreakable" he means "less breakable". When he says "100 times faster" he means slightly faster.
Unfortuately, when he says National-ID card, he means it.
Let's try again - my reply was eaten.
I have a post above that was marked down offtopic twice, both moderations about 20 minutes apart. At the same time as the first moderation the reply to my post was marked down, also as offtopic.
So they have got a little more devious - instead of straight to -1 they're taking off a point at a time to make it look less obvious.
Now I'm having trouble posting this again - I've posted dozens (if not hundreds) of posts from this machine and have never had this difficulty before. Posted just now to another article - absolutely no problem. Something fishy is going on (and no, it is not the delay between articles - the problem was there before I posted to the other thread).
I'd agree with this except that probably season two it was at its peak and just begining a long and slow decline.
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=42, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=29, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=100
Pathetic editorial moderation continues - an entire thread does not get modded down to -1 in a minute by normal means. The parent loses 6 points in between refreshes. Power corrupts.
Oddly, I'm getting never-before-seen effects when trying to post this.
Weight _is_ a vector
Well, yes and no. I know the equation suggests it is (W = m.g, where bold represents vectors. But weight is not used as a vector, and it leads to silly conclusions if it is.
For example, I weigh myself here to be 100kg (or 980N) - what is the direction of this weight vector: towards the centre of the earth. Thought experiment time. Two 100kg men weight themselves, on at the north pole, one at the south pole. What is the sum of their weights?
Well, if weight is a vector then the sum is zero. If, however, you take weight as a scalar then it is 200kg. What people mean when adding weights only works if weight is a scalar. Basically, defining weight as a vector fails the common sense, similar to defining glass as a liquid as opposed to a solid.
All that is happening is that specialists are taking a word that is in common usage (weight in this case) and defining a new (and different) techincal meaning for the word, which is similar to but distinct from the everyday meaning. Then they complain when people use it in the everyday sense.
Do you have an above average IQ? You seem to have confused "average" with "median"...
Since by definition IQ follows a normal distribution (with m=100 and s=15 usually - s can vary), then mode=median=mean.
So the original post was correct.
The law is full of weird gimmicks that nobody takes seriously. For example, some contracts aren't valid unless something of value changes hands. So the lawyers add the assertion that one party paid the other a small amount of money. It's often a lie, and everybody involved knows it, but it's an accepted practice.
In a company I used to work for I had an idea which was patented. The time came for the company to get the rights assigned to them and I got a whole load of paperwork saying things like "For the consideration of one dollar is irrevocably assign the rights in blah to 'The Company'". So I said "Where's my dollar?" (a la Feynman for those who have read his books). They hummed and hawed a bit and cam back with most of the altered to say "For valuable consideration..". Except one - Pakistan I think - where money must change hands.
E-mail went to and fro for a bit - they would not give me the money, I wouldn't sign a document saying I'd received the money when I hadn't. Things got tense, and one of the coporate lawyer types played what he thought was his trump card - I'd signed the "Ideas and Inventions agreement" where I'd agreed to hand over any patent rights, and if I didn't sign I'd be in breach of contract, and they'd have to take further action.
Well, when I first joined the company I'd signed an agreement. But the company had restructured, and I was now employed by a different company, and separate legal entity from the point of view of these contracts. When my employment changed I was given a new version to sign, which I sent back to them saying "You must be joking" as it was far wider than the previous one - anything I wrote, for example (like this post!) would have the copyright transfered to them.
So it was with not inconsiderable glee I told them this, which caused remarkable panic as it dawned on them that not only had I not signed it (and they didn't have a legal leg to stand on) but a considerable number of my associates at the research lab where I worked also had not signed it.
Ah, the wonderful sight of a lawyer panicking!
They did eventually gave me some money and got the document signed. I never did sign the Ideas and Inventions contract before I left the company a few years later (voluntarily and on very good terms I should add).
Okay, sure, if all of Microsoft's programmers worked for free, developing Microsoft's software for a total outlay of $0 up front (including everything from not paying salaries, to not spending money on research, to forcing "employees" to purchase their own equipment), then sure, Microsoft's cost in this case would only be the price of pressing a CD.
The marginal cost to Microsoft is the cost of the CD - those other costs are already covered. But, let us continue...
Now, let's also assume that of those 1 million people, half of them would've purchased a new PC with Windows included (say, $50 for the OEM license). That's 500,000 * $50 = $25 million that Microsoft "lost".
Why? Did they, perchance, get a refund from the OEM licence? Seems unlikely. So if the did purchase a PC they would have paid _again_ for windows.
So that's Zero MS have lost. Let us continue some more (this is fun!)
Now, let's assume another 25% of those people would've purchased a Windows Upgrade version ($90). That's another 250,000 * $90 = $22.5 million lost.
What, exactly, are these people going to upgrade? MS have just given them the computer with windows on it. Sheesh. But I'll be generous - let's say 1% of people without computers will buy windows upgrades (strange impulse purchases).
And lastly, say 10% of those people would've bought a full version of Windows ($200).
More deranged impulse buyers? Surely not.
That's yet another 100,000 * $200 = $20 million lost. In total, that's $25 mil + $22.5 mil + $20 mil = $67.5 million.
Okay, so now let's knock the profit out of that and see what Microsoft actually lost. Assume Microsoft makes 50% profit on everything they sell (that's damn high, but they're a Monopoly, and I have to pander to the Slashdot crowd).
Oh dear - lets work out the incremental cost of producing a CD when you have already produced 100,000,000 of them. Pennies.
That means of that $67.5 million they "lost", they only truly lost $33.75 million.
So, allowing 10cents per disk, that's $10,000 it costs them to donate the software. Or, in other words, a miniscule sum compared to the cost of the lawyer who drafted it.
Don't believe me? Two good reasons why you should. MS charges employees a pittance for software - that should give you some idea of it's intrinsic value. And when doing tax calculations on such things the value received for the purposes of tax in the incremental cost of making one extra, not the average cost.
That concludes the economics lesson for today.
That was economics?! Wow.
I hope you learned something.
Oh, yes. Just not what you were (supposedly) teaching.
Being based in the UK myself I must say I haven't heard of this, or anything like it.
The only mutterings I've heard that could be related is to do with region encoding, but that was the EU commission debating the legality of region encoding. In this case they decided not to act. This does not mean that they have decided if they are legal or illegal - just that regional encoding is not anticompetitive and therefore permissible at the moment. But, on the other hand, unlocked players are also permissible.
I'm bored, so I'll bite. I'll stop at your first error.
When you purchase a DVD, you are paying for the ability to play it...
When you purchase a DVD then you can do anything you want with it - except distribute copies of it. Manufacturers may try to contrain your use to uses that they approve of, but none of these are enforcable.
Your argument falls to bits after this cornerstone is removed.
3/10 - Must Try Harder.
We should just use solar panels to generate hydrogen from sea water....
I predict that within 30 minutes, there will be at least two confused posts saying that we should just use solar panels to generate electricity to "crack" the hydrogen from sea water.
...except that, instead of using electrical conversion followed by electrolysis they will use photocatalysis, as described in this Physics World Article, which talks about the implications of a paper published in Nature.
The jist of it, for the link weary, is that by the use of a cunning contrived semiconductor it is possible to arrange the band-gap to be higher that the reduction potential of H2, which allows the production of H2 from the H+ ions that are always present in water.
Early days yet (efficiency is 0.66%, compared with an break-even of 4%), and lifetimes are unknown at the moment. But using solar panels to generate hydrogen should not be rejected out of hand just because the energetics are unfavourable with one particular type of solar cell.
Duh, are you like an idiot or something?
You're the moron, moron. When you get the one byte compressed file, you run the decompressor once to get the number of additional times to run the decompressor.
What are they teaching the kids today? Shannon-shmannon nonsense, no doubt. They should be doing useful things, like Marketing and Management Science. There's no point in being able to count if you don't have any money.
Warmer seas melt polar ice, polar ice firmly entrenched on land doe not melt, and only is pushed off by new ice formation. Also, warmer seas give off more water vapor, and lead to higher rates of evaporation, more than compensating for the expantion rate, since this leads to higher precipitation it then leads to greater ice formation near the polar caps, causing giant ice sheets to cover the land, and to some extent even the ocean.
What on earth are you talking about? Evaporation from the oceans more than compensates for the expansion? Where exactly did you get this from?
Some numbers
Water in Ice = 1.7% = 24,000,000 km^3
All Fresh Water = 1.7% = 23,000,000 km^3
Water in atmosphere = 0.001% = 12900 km^3
Oceans = 96.5% = 1,300,000,000 km^3
(From Encyclopedia of Climate and Weather)
For a 1 deg C rise in average ocean temperature the change in density = 0.02%
Change in volume of the ocean = 260000km^3
or about 20 times as much as is currently in the atmosphere.
SO you are talking bollox here.
Giant Icesheets covering the land
Again - where did you get this from? Sea ice is melting; glaciers are retreating; premafrost is melting; the land icecaps are receeding. Somehow all this gets thrown into reverse as if the temperature increases more.
Your arguments remind me of the people who said the last tree would be cut down in 2001. Well it's 2002 now and I can see thousands of trees just from where I live alone.
My argument was that warm sea water takes up more space than cold seawater. If this reminds you of trees then I suggest you get your memory checked.
But it wasn't a reasonable assumption. If you speak in public, you should expect that it's not 'private' communications.
As to that.. a prospective employer who is going to come down on you for something you said when you were 14.. well, you probably don't want to work for.
I agree, but the quote at the bottom of the page I'm looking at is
There is no statute of limitations on stupidity
Water expands by about 1/11 when it freezes - are you sugesting that water, with out under going such a phase change, will expand as much simply by heating it?
No. The experiment that the post was eluding to is fill a glass with ice and water so the water is at the brim and the ice is floating. The ice will be above the level of the brim. Now let the ice melt. The glass is still full to the brim of water. This is Archimedes' principle.
This still applies - water is denser than ice. But the water in the seas is, on average, warmer than before. Therefore, if the polar ice cap melts it is because the sea is warmer. And if the sea is warmer then it occupies more volume, which means that sea levels have risen.
Oh, that's right you did mention something about "ignoring the fact that some polar ice is on land". Yeah, that little bit 'o ice, those mere GIGANTICE POLAR ICE CAPS resting on land masses couldn't possibly change sea level when they melt.
Sigh - even if there were no ice caps on land the sea level would rise if they melted: that was the point being made.
Many models of global warming predict that the land ice caps actually get bigger (due to increased precipitation) instead of melting- snow in is greater than meltwater out. Even with some extra water locked in the bigger icecaps the sea level still goes up due to the thermal expansion of sea water.
When the polar ice caps melt, the ocean level does not rise. Why? because as ice they displace the same amount of space as they would if they were water. It is achimedes' principle.
Oft stated, but actually wrong (even ignoring the fact that some polar ice is on land). When the ice melts it melts for a reason - the sea has warmed up. And when the sea warms it will expand. See this Nature Abstract or even from USA Today
The reason for a lot of these patents "hundreds of patents" is defense (there are other reasons of course). By defense I mean that if they happen to infringe, or even be accused of infringing, a competitors patent then they have some ammo to strike back or muddy the water.
Faced with a protracted and expensive legal battle the companies will more than likely do a deal, as opposed to go to court.
With Cornell, on the other hand, they are not a competitor. Neither are they poor. So countersuing and bleeding them dry - the standard two tactics in such cases - can't work.
It'll be interesting, but I reckon that HP will pay up before court. All Cornell have to lose is some money, but HP could, at worst, lose their product line (if they are violating the patent then they have to stop making the product). Cornell could license the patent to HP, but they don't have to. And I would hate to be a negotiator for HP during any licencing talks if and when they loose their case - talk about a weak position: you can't bluff when the other party knows your cards.
Did you know there are more speakers of English in India than there are in the UK?
There are more speakers of English in Europe than the UK. For most of them it is a second language.
Wow - the moderation on this post is
Offtopic=10,
Troll=3,
Insightful=6,
Interesting=4,
Overrated=1,
Underrated=5,
Total=29
Is this a record? All it needs is a "Funny" for the whole set.
The beautiful irony of this is that its apparently ok for kids to pick up whores on the roadside of the red light district and bang em, but killing a pimp for money's not okay....
Well, yes - that is sort of the way it works in the real world too. Prostitution is not as bad as killing. So I'm not too sure why you think it is a beautiful irony. Perhaps you've played too many video games....
It's quite possible to get a Windows machine to output video which the monitor won't accept at all. Even with supposedly "plug and play" monitors. Getting out of this is a lot trickier than a few mouse clicks
It certainly possible to output video that the monitor won't accept. Tricky, but possible. One way, for example, it to uncheck the option box that says "Hide Modes that this monitor cannot display", which may give a bit of a hint as to what might happen.
To get out of it you Do Nothing. All you do is wait 15 seconds and it will go back to your previous settings.
Is there any good reason why a system administrator should not be able to choose which screen resolutions should be available on a Windows desktop...
I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Screen resolutions are a function of the hardware, so the SA's choice is not really a choice. If you mean that the SA's should be able to set the screen resolution for the user, who can't change it, that can be done to. You can also let the user change the screen resolution if you wish.
To think Ireland would use a different currency than the rest of the U.K.
Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom. It's straightforward:
Ireland is a nation. The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a nation. This was formed for seperate nations, principalities, and provinces - England, Scotland, Wales, and Ireland. Most of Ireland left, leaving Northern Ireland. Meanwhile Great Britain is an island, which contains most of, but not all, of Scotland, England and Wales. Ireland is also an island, but doesn't only contain Ireland. The British Isles is an archipeligo, which contains Great Britain and all the smaller islands that go to make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and Ireland, and the Isle of Man. The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, but is a dependancy. The Isle of Man is in the Irish Sea. The Channel Islands are not part of the British Isles, but are dependancies like the Isle of Man.