2500 years ago, the Greeks finally decided Earth was a sphere. Plato argued that, since the sphere is a perfect shape, Earth must be spherical. Aristotle used observation. He pointed to the circular shadow Earth casts on the moon during an eclipse.
The Greeks had no way of knowing how large the globe might be. The most daring travelers saw Earth reaching farther still beyond the fringe of their journeys. Then, in 200 BC, travelers told the head of the Alexandria Library, Eratosthenes, about a well near present-day Aswan. The bottom of the well was lit by the sun at noon during the summer solstice. At that moment the sun was straight overhead. Eratosthenes realized he could measure the shadow cast by a tower in Alexandria while no shadow was being cast in Aswan. Then, knowing the distance to Aswan, it'd be simple to calculate Earth's radius.
There was no accurate timekeeping back then. For Eratosthenes to make his observation, it had to be precisely noon in both cities. And he needed an accurate north-south distance from Alexandria to Aswan. Actually, Aswan lay south by southeast instead of due south, but the error wasn't great. His calculated size of Earth was high by only fifteen percent.
A round globe, well before the "middle ages." Then there was just the question of "are there other land masses..."
Three centuries later, the astronomer Ptolemy created many methods of modern geography. It was he who abandoned the idea that we're girdled by a great unsailable ocean. Ptolemy believed that other lands lay out in the terra incognita. He built upon Eratosthenes; but he also criticized him. When Ptolemy made his own estimate of size, he came out twenty-eight percent low.
Ptolemy's thinking suited Columbus, for it shrank Earth to fit his ships. He was plain dumb lucky that the West Indies intervened. And we need to remember what a mental leap the ancients had to make. The imagined four corners of the earth thwarted our understanding until a scant 2500 years ago. Only then did we finally fold our minds around the idea of a round earth. And it was only four hundred years ago that we actually managed the mind-numbing trick of traveling to the east by sailing west.
It was created in response to complaints received by utility
program managers about the performance of certain Energy Star lighting
products being promoted within their service territories and the lack of a self-
policing mechanism within the lighting industry that would ensure the reliability of
these products and their compliance with ENERGY STAR specifications.
In other words, anyone can slap an Energy Star cert on a CFL - it's "self-policing". We all know how well that worked with the banks.
The ENERGY STAR labeling program for residential lighting products merely
requires data submission and certification by the product manufacturers.
Product samples tested are "self-picked" by the manufacturer. No follow-up
testing on actual products purchased from retail is required by ENERGY STAR. In
addition, no centralized data review or challenge process exists within the
lighting industry relative to the performance of residential ENERGY STAR lighting
products
In other words, cherry-pick the best bulbs from a cherry-picked batch (the creme de la creme) and slap a sticker on it. The Energy Star lighting program is full of shit.
For the 340 CFL samples (34 models, 10 samples for each model) used for
photometric testing, two failed before reaching 100 hours, and two more failed
before 1000 hours. The remaining CFL samples were aged to 1000 hours of life,
and 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance test was performed at that time. 29% of the
34 CFL models failed to meet the 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance requirement.
In other words, almost 1 in 3 Energy Star CFLs couldn't even keep their rated output make it to 1,000 hours, as required.
After 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance test, the CFL samples were aged to 40% of
their rated lives. 13 more lamp samples failed before reaching their 40% rated
lives and the Lumen Maintenance at 40% Rated Life was based on the remaining
samples of each model. 21% of the 34 CFL models failed to meet the Lumen
Maintenance at 40% Rated Life requirement.
In other words, of those that hadn't just croaked by the 40% of expected lifetime, 21% would probably be tossed by the consumer because they weren't bright enough any more.
In other words, you're making an overly-complex "explanation" that the people at the time never bought into. MOdern ignorance that the sea-farers of old have known for thousands of years that the world is round is no excuse for contriving complicated "explanations" that they believed, that are excluded by the principle of parsimony, and that don't fit the facts.
You're ignoring the rest of the criticism of #3 - where are the currents from the flow of water over the edge of the world? Over-fill your glass. Same diff. It's only the ignorant who believed that people thought the world was flat until "modern times".
Only the last two (#3 and #4) would take into account the fact that the mast is the last thing to disappear, and in nature, there are LOTS of sperical objects to serve as models (apples, oranges, grapes, etc), whereas I don't think they had contact lenses... (your #3) It's by calculating the curve that they were able to deduce the radius of the earth. If the earth weren't round, the water would flow over the curved edge and disappear, and the seas would have dried up. Also, there would have been a current taking all ships with it over the edge. No such current, so the earth was round, not just "curved like a contact lense."
The "slight bulges" (your #4) fails for a similar reason - ships have to climb UP a bulge, which takes energy, so either they're going from higher to lower when they start (so no need for wind or rowers) or they're going from lower to higher (so the return doesn't need wind or rowers), so it fails based on simple obsedrvation - you aren't going "downhill" in either direction.
Great ideas like these great discoveries are only notable if someone does something with it. The Middle East did very little, if anything, with these discoveries, hence... Sorry about bursting the bubble.
Bull crap. It's because an idea is ahead of its' time that it's non-obvious, not easy to implement immediately, and takes a combination of insight, genius, and sometimes serendipity.
Not like todays "take an idea, add the words 'on the internet', and file for a patent" crap.
It's like the first person to eat lobster - they were either drunk, lost a bet, or really, really hungry. Non-obvious when looking at one - "Why would anyone even THINK of eating THAT? Yuck!" Or marketing snails as delicacies. Or using botox for removing frown lines.
In 200 years people will boggle that we believed that most people in the late middle ages thought the Earth was flat.
Here, let me fix that for you:
If we don't get rid of the fundie influence on education, in 200 years people will believe that most people living in the twentieth century were living in the middle ages. With the dinosaurs. And some dude named Flintstone.
It was obvious to any sea-farers that the earth was round - boats disappeared over the horizon, which could only be explained by either a curved surface, or them falling over the edge. Since most of them came back, the "curved earth theory" was never seriously questioned.
So, how long have people been using boats? A loooong time.
Q:Name Christopher Columbus' 4 ships.
A:The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the one we don't speak about because it fell over the edge.
After a few weeks, that "60 watt equivalent" 14 watt CFL is more like a 25-watt equivalent... or less. Couple that with the poor quality of the light itself, and the only real advantage is to be able to use many point sources of light for more even lighting for the same wattage. In other words, instead of a 100-watt light bulb, use 7 14-watt CFL bulbs (which is what I have on top of my 7 bookshelves - overall, it doesn't give more light than a 100-watt bulb, but it oes result in fewer shadows).
Did you read the note? It's offering to sell the personal data
ATTENTION VIRGINIA
I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh:(
For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password. You have 7 days to decide. If by the end of 7 days, you decide not to pony up, I'll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid. Now I don't know what all this shit is worth or who would pay for it, but I'm bettin' someone will. Hell, if I can't move the prescription data at the very least I can find a buyer for the personal data (name,age,address,social security #, driver's license #).
Now I hear tell the Fucking Bunch of Idiots ain't fond of payin out, but I suggest that policy be turned right the fuck around. When you boys get your act together, drop me a line at hackingforprofit@yahoo.com and we can discuss the details such as account number, etc.
News Flash: Oxygen makes you FAT! Get the new K-Tel de-oxygenator and loose that Belly Buddha today! The kit consists of an eco-green-colored plastic bag marked "This bag IS a toy", shipped inside a clear plastic bag for your convenience. Simply place it over your head, use the included geek-friendly duct tape to seal it around your neck, and never have to worry about waist oxygen making you look fat again. Also cuts down on oxygen waste as well, so you know it's eco-friendly.
And if you order now, as a special bonus to slashdot readers, we'll ship you, not one, not two, but 2 DOZEN eco-friendly K-Tel de-oxygenators now. This is our "Solar Temple" package, with enough K-Tel de-oxygenators for your whole family and any friends who want to await the comet that will bring you to Sirius.
And as an extra bonus, the K-Tel de-oxygenator also protects you from dihydrogen monoxide poisoning. So order yours today, and stop worrying about waste oxygen for the rest of your life!
Better solution - turn off the printer, and force people to actually get off their butts and turn it on if they really, really, REALLY need to print something.
Benefits:
Savings in toner, paper, energy, filing space, shredder and printer wear-and-tear, people get *some* exercise, reduced consumption of post-its as people no longer tack stickies to print-outs, photocopy the result, then hand THAT around, no more "where is that piece of paper"...
What could be more carbon neutral than the CARBON toner already in the cartridge? Why would SOY based toner be any greener?
Have I missed something here?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: There's a difference between hydro-carbons and carbo-hydrates. The "manna from heaven" certainly wasn't the Old Testament version of Black Gold / Texas Tea (cf. Beverly Hillbillies), and when you're hungry, you don't get a slurpee made from octane and heptane at the pumps.
Don't forget to multiply any result by at least 2 because of the poor load factor of current CFLs. Your bill might go down, but the power plant wastes almost as much energy as with an incandescent. Couple that with the mostly-poor light quality (so you end up using twice as many to get the "equivalent light"), and the current crop of cheap CFLs are not green by any stretch of the imagination.
That hardly improves the case. It isn't Google's job to subsidize universal broadband.
Truckers could say the same thing abut use and fuel taxes on highways - "The end user is already paying tax when they buy the shite I haul - why should *I* pay for the roads?" User pay. In this case, it's truckers. In the google case, it's google who is using the Internet to generate profits. Why should only the end user have to bear ALL the burden? Isn't it fair that everyone who dips their bucket into the pond to drink should also help pay for making sure nobody pisses in it, and that everyone has fair access?
Does "slow news day" ring a bell? How about "slashvertisement"?
CNet copies some press release, maybe adding a few lines
Slashdot picks it up
PROFIT!
I doubt that either IBM or Microsoft are going to be shaking in their booties about suddenly not being able to develop using spring (Apache 2 license) or java (gpl license). The hype sounds like a rerun the Borland-Inprise-Borland-WeDontKnowWhoTheFuckAreWeToday.butWeWillManageYourApplicationLifecycle hype. It doesn't mean anyone has to change anything any time this decade - and probably the next.
Considering that Spring is under the Apache 2.0 license, and Java is now GPL'd, it's not like they hold the exclusive "keys to the kingdom." There's more to life and computers than Java.
Read the summary - or better yet, read the article. The tax is to help pay for the roll-out of universal broadband. The summary says it might also be used to subsidize the BBC - pure speculation.
So, why shouldn't google help pay for the pipes that they'll benefit from - or do you believe google is so benevolent that you'd rather they OWNED the pipes, like they've proposed in some areas?
I know this is slashdot, but people should at least read the summary:
Ministers are considering taxing search engines, download websites and broadband providers to fund public service TV and the roll-out of broadband.
Internet advertisers would see a direct benefit from "the roll-out of broadband" - it's no different than taxing fuel to help pay for roads. You get a benefit, you should help support it in some way.
For newspapers to survive they need to quit catering to senior citizens. According to a study from the Pew Research Center the only group of people that had a majority of respondents say they would personally care if their local newspaper disappeared were people over the age of 65
Talk about a dying demographic... and this group also happens to be the ones that need an eReader the most, so they can blow up the font size.
Print still works for books (for hw much longer... who knows), but not for news.
my dogs watch more TV in a day than I do in a month.
Isn't this also true for any couch potato who watches TV with 5 or more lap dogs? (Hint: Count in dog-time multiplied by number of dogs.;))
Wouldn't they have to have something like 30 dogs?
That's either a lot of dogs, or a lot of lap:-)
I just use the TV as background noise for the dogs while I'm out, so they pay less attention to what's going on in the street. What I should really do is dig the old radio out of the garage and let them listen to that for a change - less energy consumed. It *was* buried with an old 21" crt monitor that I'm dumping on someone else today, so maybe this afternoon...
That's because he couldn't finish the article: the author just got the other two, coolwebsearch and xrenoder, and between the pop-ups and the pr0n links, he's fux0red. His home page now says "In Soviet Russia, computer surfs YOU!"
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, you're making an overly-complex "explanation" that the people at the time never bought into.
We know people at the time thought it was rounded. That doesn't mean we know they thought it was a sphere.
Gee, you mean that old greek guy who calculated its' diameter and had a crater on the moon named after him never existed? Even b efore him, they had argued it was a sphere, like the moon.
More here
2500 years ago, the Greeks finally decided Earth was a sphere. Plato argued that, since the sphere is a perfect shape, Earth must be spherical. Aristotle used observation. He pointed to the circular shadow Earth casts on the moon during an eclipse.
The Greeks had no way of knowing how large the globe might be. The most daring travelers saw Earth reaching farther still beyond the fringe of their journeys. Then, in 200 BC, travelers told the head of the Alexandria Library, Eratosthenes, about a well near present-day Aswan. The bottom of the well was lit by the sun at noon during the summer solstice. At that moment the sun was straight overhead. Eratosthenes realized he could measure the shadow cast by a tower in Alexandria while no shadow was being cast in Aswan. Then, knowing the distance to Aswan, it'd be simple to calculate Earth's radius.
There was no accurate timekeeping back then. For Eratosthenes to make his observation, it had to be precisely noon in both cities. And he needed an accurate north-south distance from Alexandria to Aswan. Actually, Aswan lay south by southeast instead of due south, but the error wasn't great. His calculated size of Earth was high by only fifteen percent.
A round globe, well before the "middle ages." Then there was just the question of "are there other land masses ..."
Three centuries later, the astronomer Ptolemy created many methods of modern geography. It was he who abandoned the idea that we're girdled by a great unsailable ocean. Ptolemy believed that other lands lay out in the terra incognita. He built upon Eratosthenes; but he also criticized him. When Ptolemy made his own estimate of size, he came out twenty-eight percent low.
Ptolemy's thinking suited Columbus, for it shrank Earth to fit his ships. He was plain dumb lucky that the West Indies intervened. And we need to remember what a mental leap the ancients had to make. The imagined four corners of the earth thwarted our understanding until a scant 2500 years ago. Only then did we finally fold our minds around the idea of a round earth. And it was only four hundred years ago that we actually managed the mind-numbing trick of traveling to the east by sailing west.
It was created in response to complaints received by utility program managers about the performance of certain Energy Star lighting products being promoted within their service territories and the lack of a self- policing mechanism within the lighting industry that would ensure the reliability of these products and their compliance with ENERGY STAR specifications.
In other words, anyone can slap an Energy Star cert on a CFL - it's "self-policing". We all know how well that worked with the banks.
The ENERGY STAR labeling program for residential lighting products merely requires data submission and certification by the product manufacturers. Product samples tested are "self-picked" by the manufacturer. No follow-up testing on actual products purchased from retail is required by ENERGY STAR. In addition, no centralized data review or challenge process exists within the lighting industry relative to the performance of residential ENERGY STAR lighting products
In other words, cherry-pick the best bulbs from a cherry-picked batch (the creme de la creme) and slap a sticker on it. The Energy Star lighting program is full of shit.
For the 340 CFL samples (34 models, 10 samples for each model) used for photometric testing, two failed before reaching 100 hours, and two more failed before 1000 hours. The remaining CFL samples were aged to 1000 hours of life, and 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance test was performed at that time. 29% of the 34 CFL models failed to meet the 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance requirement.
In other words, almost 1 in 3 Energy Star CFLs couldn't even keep their rated output make it to 1,000 hours, as required.
After 1000-hour Lumen Maintenance test, the CFL samples were aged to 40% of their rated lives. 13 more lamp samples failed before reaching their 40% rated lives and the Lumen Maintenance at 40% Rated Life was based on the remaining samples of each model. 21% of the 34 CFL models failed to meet the Lumen Maintenance at 40% Rated Life requirement.
In other words, of those that hadn't just croaked by the 40% of expected lifetime, 21% would probably be tossed by the consumer because they weren't bright enough any more.
Ain't self-regulation grand!
In other words, you're making an overly-complex "explanation" that the people at the time never bought into. MOdern ignorance that the sea-farers of old have known for thousands of years that the world is round is no excuse for contriving complicated "explanations" that they believed, that are excluded by the principle of parsimony, and that don't fit the facts.
You're ignoring the rest of the criticism of #3 - where are the currents from the flow of water over the edge of the world? Over-fill your glass. Same diff. It's only the ignorant who believed that people thought the world was flat until "modern times".
The "slight bulges" (your #4) fails for a similar reason - ships have to climb UP a bulge, which takes energy, so either they're going from higher to lower when they start (so no need for wind or rowers) or they're going from lower to higher (so the return doesn't need wind or rowers), so it fails based on simple obsedrvation - you aren't going "downhill" in either direction.
Great ideas like these great discoveries are only notable if someone does something with it. The Middle East did very little, if anything, with these discoveries, hence... Sorry about bursting the bubble.
Bull crap. It's because an idea is ahead of its' time that it's non-obvious, not easy to implement immediately, and takes a combination of insight, genius, and sometimes serendipity.
Not like todays "take an idea, add the words 'on the internet', and file for a patent" crap.
It's like the first person to eat lobster - they were either drunk, lost a bet, or really, really hungry. Non-obvious when looking at one - "Why would anyone even THINK of eating THAT? Yuck!" Or marketing snails as delicacies. Or using botox for removing frown lines.
In 200 years people will boggle that we believed that most people in the late middle ages thought the Earth was flat.
Here, let me fix that for you:
If we don't get rid of the fundie influence on education, in 200 years people will believe that most people living in the twentieth century were living in the middle ages. With the dinosaurs. And some dude named Flintstone.
Beat me to it, dammit!
It was obvious to any sea-farers that the earth was round - boats disappeared over the horizon, which could only be explained by either a curved surface, or them falling over the edge. Since most of them came back, the "curved earth theory" was never seriously questioned.
So, how long have people been using boats? A loooong time.
Q:Name Christopher Columbus' 4 ships.
A:The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria, and the one we don't speak about because it fell over the edge.
After a few weeks, that "60 watt equivalent" 14 watt CFL is more like a 25-watt equivalent ... or less. Couple that with the poor quality of the light itself, and the only real advantage is to be able to use many point sources of light for more even lighting for the same wattage. In other words, instead of a 100-watt light bulb, use 7 14-watt CFL bulbs (which is what I have on top of my 7 bookshelves - overall, it doesn't give more light than a 100-watt bulb, but it oes result in fewer shadows).
Did you read the note? It's offering to sell the personal data
ATTENTION VIRGINIA
I have your shit! In *my* possession, right now, are 8,257,378 patient records and a total of 35,548,087 prescriptions. Also, I made an encrypted backup and deleted the original. Unfortunately for Virginia, their backups seem to have gone missing, too. Uhoh :(
For $10 million, I will gladly send along the password. You have 7 days to decide. If by the end of 7 days, you decide not to pony up, I'll go ahead and put this baby out on the market and accept the highest bid. Now I don't know what all this shit is worth or who would pay for it, but I'm bettin' someone will. Hell, if I can't move the prescription data at the very least I can find a buyer for the personal data (name,age,address,social security #, driver's license #).
Now I hear tell the Fucking Bunch of Idiots ain't fond of payin out, but I suggest that policy be turned right the fuck around. When you boys get your act together, drop me a line at hackingforprofit@yahoo.com and we can discuss the details such as account number, etc.
Until then, have a wonderful day, I know I will ;)
Sorry, Virginia, there's no Santa Claus.
Maybe it's someone doing it for the lulz. After all, a REAL ransom note would have used either the evil MS-Comic font, font of ill will, or a genuine Ransom font.
I sidestep the problem of incandescent vs cfl vs led by turning off the lights and opening the blinds :-)
Get up earlier, go to be earlier, and your energy consumption goes down.
like someone else said, a waist of good oxygen.
News Flash: Oxygen makes you FAT! Get the new K-Tel de-oxygenator and loose that Belly Buddha today! The kit consists of an eco-green-colored plastic bag marked "This bag IS a toy", shipped inside a clear plastic bag for your convenience. Simply place it over your head, use the included geek-friendly duct tape to seal it around your neck, and never have to worry about waist oxygen making you look fat again. Also cuts down on oxygen waste as well, so you know it's eco-friendly.
And if you order now, as a special bonus to slashdot readers, we'll ship you, not one, not two, but 2 DOZEN eco-friendly K-Tel de-oxygenators now. This is our "Solar Temple" package, with enough K-Tel de-oxygenators for your whole family and any friends who want to await the comet that will bring you to Sirius.
And as an extra bonus, the K-Tel de-oxygenator also protects you from dihydrogen monoxide poisoning. So order yours today, and stop worrying about waste oxygen for the rest of your life!
Benefits: ...
Savings in toner, paper, energy, filing space, shredder and printer wear-and-tear, people get *some* exercise, reduced consumption of post-its as people no longer tack stickies to print-outs, photocopy the result, then hand THAT around, no more "where is that piece of paper"
What could be more carbon neutral than the CARBON toner already in the cartridge? Why would SOY based toner be any greener?
Have I missed something here?
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: There's a difference between hydro-carbons and carbo-hydrates. The "manna from heaven" certainly wasn't the Old Testament version of Black Gold / Texas Tea (cf. Beverly Hillbillies), and when you're hungry, you don't get a slurpee made from octane and heptane at the pumps.
Don't forget to multiply any result by at least 2 because of the poor load factor of current CFLs. Your bill might go down, but the power plant wastes almost as much energy as with an incandescent. Couple that with the mostly-poor light quality (so you end up using twice as many to get the "equivalent light"), and the current crop of cheap CFLs are not green by any stretch of the imagination.
There's more to the cost of the Internet than bandwidth ... the last mile is a major cost. Not every place has dark fiber.
That hardly improves the case. It isn't Google's job to subsidize universal broadband.
Truckers could say the same thing abut use and fuel taxes on highways - "The end user is already paying tax when they buy the shite I haul - why should *I* pay for the roads?" User pay. In this case, it's truckers. In the google case, it's google who is using the Internet to generate profits. Why should only the end user have to bear ALL the burden? Isn't it fair that everyone who dips their bucket into the pond to drink should also help pay for making sure nobody pisses in it, and that everyone has fair access?
Does "slow news day" ring a bell? How about "slashvertisement"?
I doubt that either IBM or Microsoft are going to be shaking in their booties about suddenly not being able to develop using spring (Apache 2 license) or java (gpl license). The hype sounds like a rerun the Borland-Inprise-Borland-WeDontKnowWhoTheFuckAreWeToday.butWeWillManageYourApplicationLifecycle hype. It doesn't mean anyone has to change anything any time this decade - and probably the next.
Considering that Spring is under the Apache 2.0 license, and Java is now GPL'd, it's not like they hold the exclusive "keys to the kingdom." There's more to life and computers than Java.
So, why shouldn't google help pay for the pipes that they'll benefit from - or do you believe google is so benevolent that you'd rather they OWNED the pipes, like they've proposed in some areas?
Hint: They're not *that* benevolent.
Ministers are considering taxing search engines, download websites and broadband providers to fund public service TV and the roll-out of broadband.
Internet advertisers would see a direct benefit from "the roll-out of broadband" - it's no different than taxing fuel to help pay for roads. You get a benefit, you should help support it in some way.
For newspapers to survive they need to quit catering to senior citizens. According to a study from the Pew Research Center the only group of people that had a majority of respondents say they would personally care if their local newspaper disappeared were people over the age of 65 Talk about a dying demographic ... and this group also happens to be the ones that need an eReader the most, so they can blow up the font size.
Print still works for books (for hw much longer ... who knows), but not for news.
some are already attacking the idea of taxing a growth industry in the middle of a recession.
What, so adding more taxes to dying industries is such a hot idea?
"Hey, we're making lots of profits - don't tax us!"
my dogs watch more TV in a day than I do in a month.
Isn't this also true for any couch potato who watches TV with 5 or more lap dogs? (Hint: Count in dog-time multiplied by number of dogs. ;))
Wouldn't they have to have something like 30 dogs?
That's either a lot of dogs, or a lot of lap :-)
I just use the TV as background noise for the dogs while I'm out, so they pay less attention to what's going on in the street. What I should really do is dig the old radio out of the garage and let them listen to that for a change - less energy consumed. It *was* buried with an old 21" crt monitor that I'm dumping on someone else today, so maybe this afternoon ...
That's because he couldn't finish the article: the author just got the other two, coolwebsearch and xrenoder, and between the pop-ups and the pr0n links, he's fux0red. His home page now says "In Soviet Russia, computer surfs YOU!"