I'm not sure because I've slept since I saw it last night, but I think when Tim Robbins hit the REMO and gyrated, he slammed against it thereby cancelling the rotation and changing the direction of momentum. Not sure, though.
This would also be a reason why it didn't look like was moving away from the REMO; if he slammed against it, that would have imparted some of its momentum in a different direction. This would cause him to be in almost a similar orbit, but more elliptical.
All this is theoretical because I don't know any of the conditions of the orbits or trajectories.
well, actually, that point of no return crap did have a little validity. Sure it was stupid; but, no, they did take into account physics when they did this.
Orbital mechanics is just the balance of kinetic and potential energy. Yes, if you apply a little bit of thrust you will "move forever," but because there is another force pulling you down to Mars or wherever you won't go in that straight line because you only have a finite amount of energy to exchange.
I could do the math, but if they were at an eccentric orbit (more than likely with their trajectory) and 100m away (which is likely because of their velocity away from it) it would take a large amount of delta-v to get back to the REMO AND get into a circular orbit to rendezvous with it.
So a small amount of force wouldn't get them back to the REMO just because of momentum. But you are right that everything else would cause this rendezvous to be impossible (with their assumptions).
These are the kinds of things users need to have when replying to the comments to the Librarian. More/. readers need to state which comments they think are good for referencing (like the post this is in reply-to) and also point out which comments are theirs.
I'm henceforth-heretoforonout OpenSourcing my comments to the Librarian, #16. Everyone needs to read the comments also by the big companies so that we can punch holes in their arguments and also try to find the comments by companies that ARE hurt by this (as opposed to us normal users).
Anandtech has a really good review of the Intel (and AMD) chips. The difference in performance between the two is pretty interesting. While the 1/3 speed cache on the AMD hurts it in some benchmarks, it still whoops up on Intel in others. Very good piece on the technical and business aspects of the speed race.
Like I said, I don't know exactly what these tanks are so they are probably not just propane tanks.
That said, there ARE other reasons for these to be so expensive. When something is in space, it is subject to a harsh environment completely different than what a gas grill tank is. There is radiation, pressure (or lack thereof), temperature extremes, and major reliability needs.
There are other costs that are coupled into the $750,000. R&D is a major section of this. This involves the 20 engineers designing it and the 400 managers who sat in meetings for a year to come up with the acronym;)
Another cost is in the manufacturing: tooling, machining, building, etc. After a few are built (prototypes, test subjects, etc) they have to be certified for space and this costs A LOT. "Space Certification" for a CPU is on the order of $1 million. This is a reason why almost all of the CPUs on the Space Station are 386's instead of PIII 800's.
I'm sorry, but $750,000 of our money, I think they can look a little bit harder.
I don't know the exact size of those puppies, but the ones that I have seen and worked with on other sections of the station (I work for Boeing) were big enough not to be easily "mis- placed." (roughly the size of a standard propane tank on a gas grill)
A good rule of thumb: If you have a $750,000 piece of equipment in a nondescript crate sitting outside a building; a) make it descript and label it profusely as NOT trash. b) have someone watch it so it doesn't get stolen or sent to the trash.
But I guess (or hope) they won't make that mistake again.
Although I didn't watch it personally, some of my friends did and they, too, said it wasn't very good.
I was actually a little excited to see it, though, because it looked like it might be a fun episode. It was also an interesting idea: VR games that become too much like reality and thereupon becoming dangerous. I know this is an old idea dating back much before we had computers powerful enough to even come close to doing the visual part, but I still think it is a cool topic.
As for me, I have been watching every show for the past 3 or 4 years, but lately I have just gotten bored with the same old 3 minute long soliloquies about how our beliefs are being questioned and blah, blah, blah. I have only been watching the Off-plotline shows now, the silly ones. They are funny and fun to watch as opposed to dragging a theme too far without ever actually coming to any conclusions.
Oh, and as soon as Scully leaves, I'm not watching... Gillian Anderson is just plain hot.
Although I don't know the exact details on how this tech is accomplished or how it might be used (the article was a little vague), it seems to me that this technology can be used everywhere!
Researchers at Penn St. are using magnetic fields to try and make viable antimatter propulsion. It can also be used for more efficient nuclear propulsion (think easily thrustable and safer). Electric car engines with tunable properties; I would think it would make for a much more efficient engine. I would also like a lightweight, flexible, magnetic body suit so I can play around in a strong magnetic field to simulate low gravity.
It can also revolutionize the Fridge door magnet industry.
I actually did do a/b to turn off the bold on the quote but it didn't get registered. I also put a (p) with the correct syntax, of course, and it didn't register, either. I guess I should have previewed more than once. I probably forgot the closing > and it messed up everything. Oh, well.
Extra activation != increased brainpower I have seen reports of the study and they explain the phenomenon a little better to non-health pros. The increased brain activity is in a special area that is rarely used. It is, in fact, making up for the parts of the brain that start to SHUT DOWN during sleep deprivation. This means there is an increase in one section, but not necessarily an overall increase. When a person sleeps, the brain is resting and "repairing" (brain cells don't reproduce, but they don't necessarily have to die so quickly). If you deprive the brain of the repair period, it starts to degrade. After a few days of deprevation, one gets hallucinations because the brain is losing full functionality. After more than that, a person's whole personality can be changed for good and permanent brain damage can occur. The guy who went 200 hours without sleep came out a completely different person. His wife divorced him and he doesn't remember his kid's name, he was fired from his job and other "bad things."
The point is: The extra activity is your brain trying to keep up functionality while other parts are turning themselves off (or not being productive). Secondly, every other study shows that productivity of the person degrades over time during depravation. The graph looks like a damped out sinusoid where ability goes way down during normal sleep hours, comes back up during normal waking hours (but not up to full power), back down again during the normal sleep hours, and back up again (even lower this time).
Any doctor will tell you that sleep deprevation is bad and that if you have to for work or school, don't do it for more than a day or two and to at least take small naps in there. Any marginal gain by the time increase will be offset by loss of abilities.
There is something I think you are neglecting:
Chaos and Non-linear effects
Humans may be simple chemical reactions, but they are modelled as non-linear systems. These systems don't always have one single solution for a single initial condition. You can't predict their behavior. Non-linear systems can also diverge and/or become unstable for small perturbations adding more unpredictability. There are plenty of chemical reactions that are non-linear and chaotic. Snowflakes and those cool hand-warmer things are chaotic and will crystallize differently every time.
Besides, even if we were predictable systems, one would have to know nearly EVERY single state inside a person's brain to be able to predict their behavior. Due to the fact that everyone is different we can be modelled as having "free will." What "free will" is is a question for the philosophers out there.
As for your statement that consciousness denotes an ability to behave in a random fashion, why can't our brains have a random number generator? (I know there is no such thing as a TRUE random number generator, but I'm trying to make a point)
Nobody REALLY knows exactly how the brain works and why only certain percentages of them appear active (I think the other 90% or whatever IS being used, we just don't know how).
That is just why I think humans are conscious and not predictable.
I wrote a few of the guys about buying one and how much to lease one. When I hear back I'll let you guys know...
Anyway, you can't buy one. I can think of about 15 million Slashdot readers who would shell out big bucks for these little toys.
I can think of two reasons why they don't sell them: The production cost is too much or they don't have sufficient production available to mass market. The liability has to be enormous with these things. I would be the first to jump into one, but I can think of many things that can go wrong.
Oh well, I want one and I hope the lease rate is low. If anything, all the frats on campus will want to rent it from me.
Actually, our design project WAS a competitor for the air launched Pegasus XL. That was the major constraint. Seeing as we pretty much matched a large corporations best bid, that sounds pretty good for a small group of sophomores. We received a B seeing as we also had to design a new jet to drop the rocket, too. I didn't work on that part and it was our plane design that lowered the grade.
Next, how many of those launched vehicles you listed are certified for human launches? Soyuz, I think, is the only one and it can only hold a few people. $10,000/lb is for the shuttle which is the only human ready launch vehicle that would support more than, say, 3 people. Even the shuttle is only ready to hold 7, maybe 9 if modified a little. If modified a lot it could hold a lot, but that would take money, too, raising the cost of a launch. Remember, humans need pressurized areas and oxygen that cargo doesn't need. That raises the cost of a launch vehicle significantly. The Delta II can also only launch a max of 4000lbs to geosynchronous orbit and the future Delta IV can launch between 9000 and 29000 lbs depending on the config. If you're launching moon bases that need constructing, that will cost a lot plus you'll need a construction crew (highly trained will cost a lot more).
I'm too lazy to do more research on what exactly the lowest human capable launch is, but I just wanted to make the point in my reply to the original post that those cheap technologies are a LONG way off. Especially considering how slowly the aerospace industry as a whole moves. I have worked in the industry and with NASA, so I have some idea how slowly. I am all for human missions as quickly as possible, but this one just seems a little off. Travel and leisure into space would be the coolest and I would pay A LOT for it, but I don't foresee many people wanting to pay $10,000 (at that theoretical $100/lb for a 100lb person) just to orbit the earth for a few hours.
First, a launch right now is around $10,000 per pound at the cheapest, not $1,000. I did a design project last year to launch a satellite into low earth orbit and couldn't get lower than $15,000. Their "reference mission" uses the Shuttle to send people and gear up. That's almost the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Second, forgetting the impossible $100/lb you suggested, the rail launchers in existence or being researched are only for cargo. They create such high g-forces it is impractical to put humans in them.
This project is a joke at best. If it isn't, then it is a high flung dream. I'm all for privatization of the space industry, but you need to have some better plan than what these guys have. I've seen better organization in a model rocketry club when I was 12. Not to mention their "corporate partners" being Illuminati online.
First off, GREAT BOOK. I ordered it 2 months in advance from Amazon.com and finished a couple days ago. Loved it. Everyone who loved Ender's Game should love this. Personally, I also really enjoyed the books following Ender's Game even though a lot of people didn't. Card himself has even admitted that they are almost a seperate series from Ender's Game because they are so completely different.
Second: There have been more than a few posts here about how they thought the book was too powerful and overshadowed Ender's Game. SO? That's all the better. How can something be "too good?" I think both books can stand alone and be great; and together they make a more powerful insight into how child prodegies work, think, and act.
Others have said Bean was too powerful and he overshadowed Ender. Well, that's fine, too, because it didn't affect the outcome of either book (much). I think that having an "uber child" still not come out of Ender's shadow even though in a lot of ways he was superior just adds to the drama of Ender's power struggle with the teachers and himself.
Of course, for awhile everything will be fine. We will be marching along, making great advances with these neat little machines.
I'm just a bit afraid of what will happen when idiots or zealots start trying to do Bad Things with them. It is definitely a possibility. Maybe by the time this stuff starts really coming out, people will be smarter.
I think I am a believer, but I don't think anything TOO revolutionary will happen for awhile, but when it does.... Bam!
I have a few friends that graduated from my University in EE who can't get a job because they aren't a US citizen. They would have to get a company to apply for their visa or citizenship or whatever (I don't know the laws), and then they can work. No company wants to take that kind of risk. I think he is still looking for someone to hire him. As a graduate he is looking for internships just so he can get his foot in the door.
But, as US citizens, all of his friends and peers received job offers 6-8 months ago.
Personally, I work in the Space industry and I know that if you aren't a US citizen it is really hard to even get on site of, say, Johnson Space Center let alone trying to get a job there. I know it took us months just to get an intern a pass to get on site for meetings. Whereas, as a citizen, I can go just about anywhere I please and can just walk in and get a pass in about 5 minutes.
I was also part of a program NASA runs where they give University students a chance to fly experiments on the Vomit Comet (the best experience of my life, you can't imagine how cool it is to be weightless for 23 seconds at a time). They were informing some international students at US Univs of the hassles of getting them on site. The ones that did get in had to go through a lot of trouble just to get on site to watch a movie.
...maybe things will get done. They have a feedback page for you to send them email about whatever you want (except creative movie ideas). If we go there and tell them that they can create a script or something to block or redirect unwanted links, then maybe we can avoid this legal battle. Instead of talking about it over here on/. why don't we tell them what we think?
Hey, dumbass. The newspaper is written at a 2nd grade reading level. If you checked the dictionary (as did another person who responded to your post) you would see that he is correct. I'm sure the newspaper doesn't really care about one or two misspellings.
Before you go calling people dumbasses for misspelling something, why don't consult a dictionary instead of something written for an 8 year old?
If work is all you are, it seems like a rather narrow scope of life. After work I'll go play beach volleyball or soccer, skydive, go to a bookstore, and do anything but work. If you focus all of your life on one thing, sure, you'll get better at that one thing and it will be fun; but what about all the other things out there that you are missing?
Professional basketball players play golf when they are in the off season; they own dance clubs and other businesses. They do anything but dedicate that free time to their sport (they still work out and practice a litte, but not near like during the season).
I'm a college student at a summer internship as an engineer. I like the freedom of school and all, but the best thing about working full time during the summer is that after 5pm I don't have to worry about work. I can go live a completely different life and not have any pressure on me that I don't put upon myself voluntarily.
maybe it would be better if...
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This sounds like a totally useless piece of software. Lets take random words and put them on a page. Yeah, I could really use that.
What might make it cooler would have it take random headlines from News websites and replace their articles with random paragraphs from other articles.
For example: Breast Enlargements at All Time High Ethnic Albanians are leaving Kosovo at alarming rates as the boarder cities are becoming crowded with refugees.
--Sure, mostly it would be useless, too, and most of the stories wouldn't be funny; but there is potential.
Firstly, I'm not defending that JP guy; he sounds like an a** In his letter, he said "I was forwarded this URL." So he didn't just happen to run across it, it ran across him. Also, if he hadn't been forwarded it, he could have just found it on a search engine. Just because it has an odd URL doesn't mean it is hard to find. You can find on AltaVista URLs much more obscure than that.
Slashdot Mirror
This would also be a reason why it didn't look like was moving away from the REMO; if he slammed against it, that would have imparted some of its momentum in a different direction. This would cause him to be in almost a similar orbit, but more elliptical.
All this is theoretical because I don't know any of the conditions of the orbits or trajectories.
Orbital mechanics is just the balance of kinetic and potential energy. Yes, if you apply a little bit of thrust you will "move forever," but because there is another force pulling you down to Mars or wherever you won't go in that straight line because you only have a finite amount of energy to exchange.
I could do the math, but if they were at an eccentric orbit (more than likely with their trajectory) and 100m away (which is likely because of their velocity away from it) it would take a large amount of delta-v to get back to the REMO AND get into a circular orbit to rendezvous with it.
So a small amount of force wouldn't get them back to the REMO just because of momentum.
But you are right that everything else would cause this rendezvous to be impossible (with their assumptions).
I'm henceforth-heretoforonout OpenSourcing my comments to the Librarian, #16.
Everyone needs to read the comments also by the big companies so that we can punch holes in their arguments and also try to find the comments by companies that ARE hurt by this (as opposed to us normal users).
Anandtech has a really good review of the Intel (and AMD) chips. The difference in performance between the two is pretty interesting. While the 1/3 speed cache on the AMD hurts it in some benchmarks, it still whoops up on Intel in others. Very good piece on the technical and business aspects of the speed race.
That said, there ARE other reasons for these to be so expensive. When something is in space, it is subject to a harsh environment completely different than what a gas grill tank is. There is radiation, pressure (or lack thereof), temperature extremes, and major reliability needs.
There are other costs that are coupled into the $750,000. R&D is a major section of this. This involves the 20 engineers designing it and the 400 managers who sat in meetings for a year to come up with the acronym ;)
Another cost is in the manufacturing: tooling, machining, building, etc. After a few are built (prototypes, test subjects, etc) they have to be certified for space and this costs A LOT.
"Space Certification" for a CPU is on the order of $1 million. This is a reason why almost all of the CPUs on the Space Station are 386's instead of PIII 800's.
I don't know the exact size of those puppies, but the ones that I have seen and worked with on other sections of the station (I work for Boeing) were big enough not to be easily "mis- placed." (roughly the size of a standard propane tank on a gas grill)
A good rule of thumb:
If you have a $750,000 piece of equipment in a nondescript crate sitting outside a building;
a) make it descript and label it profusely as NOT trash.
b) have someone watch it so it doesn't get stolen or sent to the trash.
But I guess (or hope) they won't make that mistake again.
I was actually a little excited to see it, though, because it looked like it might be a fun episode. It was also an interesting idea: VR games that become too much like reality and thereupon becoming dangerous. I know this is an old idea dating back much before we had computers powerful enough to even come close to doing the visual part, but I still think it is a cool topic.
As for me, I have been watching every show for the past 3 or 4 years, but lately I have just gotten bored with the same old 3 minute long soliloquies about how our beliefs are being questioned and blah, blah, blah. I have only been watching the Off-plotline shows now, the silly ones. They are funny and fun to watch as opposed to dragging a theme too far without ever actually coming to any conclusions.
Oh, and as soon as Scully leaves, I'm not watching...
Gillian Anderson is just plain hot.
Researchers at Penn St. are using magnetic fields to try and make viable antimatter propulsion. It can also be used for more efficient nuclear propulsion (think easily thrustable and safer).
Electric car engines with tunable properties; I would think it would make for a much more efficient engine.
I would also like a lightweight, flexible, magnetic body suit so I can play around in a strong magnetic field to simulate low gravity.
It can also revolutionize the Fridge door magnet industry.
I actually did do a /b to turn off the bold on the quote but it didn't get registered. I also put a (p) with the correct syntax, of course, and it didn't register, either. I guess I should have previewed more than once. I probably forgot the closing > and it messed up everything. Oh, well.
Extra activation != increased brainpower I have seen reports of the study and they explain the phenomenon a little better to non-health pros.
The increased brain activity is in a special area that is rarely used. It is, in fact, making up for the parts of the brain that start to SHUT DOWN during sleep deprivation.
This means there is an increase in one section, but not necessarily an overall increase.
When a person sleeps, the brain is resting and "repairing" (brain cells don't reproduce, but they don't necessarily have to die so quickly). If you deprive the brain of the repair period, it starts to degrade. After a few days of deprevation, one gets hallucinations because the brain is losing full functionality. After more than that, a person's whole personality can be changed for good and permanent brain damage can occur. The guy who went 200 hours without sleep came out a completely different person. His wife divorced him and he doesn't remember his kid's name, he was fired from his job and other "bad things."
The point is: The extra activity is your brain trying to keep up functionality while other parts are turning themselves off (or not being productive).
Secondly, every other study shows that productivity of the person degrades over time during depravation. The graph looks like a damped out sinusoid where ability goes way down during normal sleep hours, comes back up during normal waking hours (but not up to full power), back down again during the normal sleep hours, and back up again (even lower this time).
Any doctor will tell you that sleep deprevation is bad and that if you have to for work or school, don't do it for more than a day or two and to at least take small naps in there. Any marginal gain by the time increase will be offset by loss of abilities.
Chaos and Non-linear effects
Humans may be simple chemical reactions, but they are modelled as non-linear systems. These systems don't always have one single solution for a single initial condition. You can't predict their behavior. Non-linear systems can also diverge and/or become unstable for small perturbations adding more unpredictability. There are plenty of chemical reactions that are non-linear and chaotic. Snowflakes and those cool hand-warmer things are chaotic and will crystallize differently every time.
Besides, even if we were predictable systems, one would have to know nearly EVERY single state inside a person's brain to be able to predict their behavior. Due to the fact that everyone is different we can be modelled as having "free will." What "free will" is is a question for the philosophers out there.
As for your statement that consciousness denotes an ability to behave in a random fashion, why can't our brains have a random number generator? (I know there is no such thing as a TRUE random number generator, but I'm trying to make a point) Nobody REALLY knows exactly how the brain works and why only certain percentages of them appear active (I think the other 90% or whatever IS being used, we just don't know how).
That is just why I think humans are conscious and not predictable.
Anyway, you can't buy one. I can think of about 15 million Slashdot readers who would shell out big bucks for these little toys.
I can think of two reasons why they don't sell them:
The production cost is too much or they don't have sufficient production available to mass market.
The liability has to be enormous with these things. I would be the first to jump into one, but I can think of many things that can go wrong.
Oh well, I want one and I hope the lease rate is low. If anything, all the frats on campus will want to rent it from me.
Next, how many of those launched vehicles you listed are certified for human launches? Soyuz, I think, is the only one and it can only hold a few people. $10,000/lb is for the shuttle which is the only human ready launch vehicle that would support more than, say, 3 people. Even the shuttle is only ready to hold 7, maybe 9 if modified a little. If modified a lot it could hold a lot, but that would take money, too, raising the cost of a launch. Remember, humans need pressurized areas and oxygen that cargo doesn't need. That raises the cost of a launch vehicle significantly. The Delta II can also only launch a max of 4000lbs to geosynchronous orbit and the future Delta IV can launch between 9000 and 29000 lbs depending on the config. If you're launching moon bases that need constructing, that will cost a lot plus you'll need a construction crew (highly trained will cost a lot more).
I'm too lazy to do more research on what exactly the lowest human capable launch is, but I just wanted to make the point in my reply to the original post that those cheap technologies are a LONG way off. Especially considering how slowly the aerospace industry as a whole moves. I have worked in the industry and with NASA, so I have some idea how slowly. I am all for human missions as quickly as possible, but this one just seems a little off. Travel and leisure into space would be the coolest and I would pay A LOT for it, but I don't foresee many people wanting to pay $10,000 (at that theoretical $100/lb for a 100lb person) just to orbit the earth for a few hours.
Second, forgetting the impossible $100/lb you suggested, the rail launchers in existence or being researched are only for cargo. They create such high g-forces it is impractical to put humans in them.
This project is a joke at best. If it isn't, then it is a high flung dream. I'm all for privatization of the space industry, but you need to have some better plan than what these guys have. I've seen better organization in a model rocketry club when I was 12. Not to mention their "corporate partners" being Illuminati online.
Second:
There have been more than a few posts here about how they thought the book was too powerful and overshadowed Ender's Game.
SO? That's all the better. How can something be "too good?" I think both books can stand alone and be great; and together they make a more powerful insight into how child prodegies work, think, and act.
Others have said Bean was too powerful and he overshadowed Ender.
Well, that's fine, too, because it didn't affect the outcome of either book (much). I think that having an "uber child" still not come out of Ender's shadow even though in a lot of ways he was superior just adds to the drama of Ender's power struggle with the teachers and himself.
Of course, for awhile everything will be fine. We will be marching along, making great advances with these neat little machines.
I'm just a bit afraid of what will happen when idiots or zealots start trying to do Bad Things with them. It is definitely a possibility. Maybe by the time this stuff starts really coming out, people will be smarter.
I think I am a believer, but I don't think anything TOO revolutionary will happen for awhile, but when it does.... Bam!
That's OK, I only posted that pointless post so I could get first post.
It worked.
Now I can go back to work...
I have little experience with domino, but have heard great things about the last version. I hope it can start making a larger name in the market.
at least you got first post ;)
But, as US citizens, all of his friends and peers received job offers 6-8 months ago.
Personally, I work in the Space industry and I know that if you aren't a US citizen it is really hard to even get on site of, say, Johnson Space Center let alone trying to get a job there. I know it took us months just to get an intern a pass to get on site for meetings. Whereas, as a citizen, I can go just about anywhere I please and can just walk in and get a pass in about 5 minutes.
I was also part of a program NASA runs where they give University students a chance to fly experiments on the Vomit Comet (the best experience of my life, you can't imagine how cool it is to be weightless for 23 seconds at a time). They were informing some international students at US Univs of the hassles of getting them on site. The ones that did get in had to go through a lot of trouble just to get on site to watch a movie.
...maybe things will get done. /. why don't we tell them what we think?
They have a feedback page for you to send them email about whatever you want (except creative movie ideas). If we go there and tell them that they can create a script or something to block or redirect unwanted links, then maybe we can avoid this legal battle. Instead of talking about it over here on
2nd grade reading level. If you checked the
dictionary (as did another person who responded
to your post) you would see that he is correct.
I'm sure the newspaper doesn't really care
about one or two misspellings.
Before you go calling people dumbasses for misspelling something, why don't consult a dictionary instead of something written for an 8 year old?
Professional basketball players play golf when they are in the off season; they own dance clubs and other businesses. They do anything but dedicate that free time to their sport (they still work out and practice a litte, but not near like during the season).
I'm a college student at a summer internship as an engineer. I like the freedom of school and all, but the best thing about working full time during the summer is that after 5pm I don't have to worry about work. I can go live a completely different life and not have any pressure on me that I don't put upon myself voluntarily.
What might make it cooler would have it take random headlines from News websites and replace their articles with random paragraphs from other articles.
For example:
Breast Enlargements at All Time High
Ethnic Albanians are leaving Kosovo at alarming rates as the boarder cities are becoming crowded with refugees.
--Sure, mostly it would be useless, too, and most of the stories wouldn't be funny; but there is potential.
Firstly, I'm not defending that JP guy; he sounds like an a** In his letter, he said "I was forwarded this URL." So he didn't just happen to run across it, it ran across him. Also, if he hadn't been forwarded it, he could have just found it on a search engine. Just because it has an odd URL doesn't mean it is hard to find. You can find on AltaVista URLs much more obscure than that.