Well, the curvature of space-time is caused by gravity, according to general relativity. Every mass in the universe causes a dimple. The net effect of those dimples is believed to bend the universe back in on itself to form a closed hypersurface.
In the past, the shape was believed to be topologically spherical. Apparently, someone's now suggesting that the shape is toroidal. In fact, though, a cube, your average rock, a tube closed at both ends, etc. are all topologically a sphere. To determine if something is topologically a sphere, pretend the surface is infinitely stretchable. If you can deform the object into a sphere, then the object is topologically a sphere. Now, there is no way to deform the surface of a doughnut into a sphere. So, a sphere is topologically distinct from a torus.
I don't think any reputable physicists believe that the universe is a perfect sphere or doughnut. This article is arguing that the universe is a lumpy, dimply shape that is the topological equivalent of a torus, as opposed to a lumpy, dimply shape that is the topological equivalent of a sphere.
Yes, except from one direction the object is much, much farther (the circumference of the universe) from you. In fact, I believe the current assumption is that the circumference of the universe is larger than the amount of time it would take light to go around the circumference in the age of the universe, so you can't see the light from the object moving toward you since the universe hasn't been around long enough for it to get to you.
The question is assumed to not make sense. The surface of a torus has topological properties similar to that of the universe (according to the article). It's just a statement about what happens when you move a long way in one direction and how points in the universe can be reached from one another, not an assertion that the universe is sitting in some hyperdimensional 'space' outside the universe.
Well, firstly, it has long been thought that the universe was closed. This is just suggesting that the universe might be topologically equivalent to the equivalent of the hypersurface of a hypertoroid, rather than the hypersurface of a hypersphere, as previously assumed.
Secondly, the opposite of a red-shift is a blue-shift. The complementary nature of red and green is a property of human eyes, not of the light itself. Red light is lower in energy; blue light is higher. Things rushing away from us as space expands would leave light from distant objects moving more slowly relative to us if not for special relativistic effects. With the effects, the energy of the light is reduced. However, you're right... when an object is approaching you, light from it is blue-shifted, and that would be what we should expect when the universe starts collapsing.
One thing that helped me for quite a while was to map slashdot to localhost in my/etc/hosts file. Obviously, I could get past it simply be editing the file back, but at least it took an effort. Of course, I've had it turned off for the past several months, but for a long time it really reduced my usage.
The Player's Handbook had a picture of a huge statue of a squat demon with rubies for eyes, and a thief climbing on it prying one of the eyes out. For the record. I have about four of them upstairs:)
In my opinion, first edition, the Basic Rules Cyclopedia, and third edition are the best rulesets for D&D, in that order. I probably feel that way mostly due to nostalgia for first edition, but it was really very playable up through about 18th level. After that the DM has to get creative to keep up with the power levels of the players without overloading them with magic items.
Rules Cyclopedia was awesome: different weapons had totally different characteristics, like blocking blows, AC bonuses, etc. as you became more of a master of the weapon. I'm surprised you don't hear more about it.
I'm not sure if it's still an exploit, but IE used to have an exploit in which a javascript could monitor your cut&paste buffer and, for example, transmit it to a third party. Of course, if you're really paranoid about security, you're probably not using IE;)
If your mom wants encrypted email but doesn't know jack about computers, set her up with a free account on Hushmail (https://www.hushmail.com). Your browser must have good java support (on Linux, it seems to require Sun jvm 1.3+ and a recent version of Mozilla or Netscape). You have to wiggle your mouse around some when setting up the account to generate randomness. Then you pick a passphrase, and from there on out it's just like any other web based email, except your data is encrypted from before it leaves your computer until after it gets to the target computer.
It interoperates with GPG/PGP compatible mail clients. Of course, your email to people who have no encryption support is not encrypted, but that's pretty much unavoidable;)
It has Bruce Schneier's stamp of approval, and for a crypto product, that's really saying something.
You might check out Magicosm. Unfortunately, we're still more than a year away from a final release right now. We'll be having an alpha test soon; it should start in August.
Part of what makes us different is that we allow a sort of casual play. Crafting takes significant time, hours or days, so you can queue up activities for offline work. You can monitor your character's progress by receiving email updates or by viewing a web page, and queue new actions in the same way. This means that while you may play almost every day, most days it can be by viewing a web page and queueing a few new actions, sending emails to people to bring you raw materials or tell you what they want crafted.
Your character is controlled by a scripting language, so you can set him up to do whatever you think he's smart enough to do without getting himself killed, or use our preconstructed scripts to do the basics.
Our goal is to create a complete working fantasy world... iron ore comes from the ground, not a guy on the street corner. Real crafting is done in a smithy, which player characters can own, rent out, whatever. Monsters are not your main source of experience, questing, dynamically generated or part of the storyline, is. It is often much better to avoid a monster if you can rather than fight it. Although, with our lore system, finding out how to do new things is often more important than gaining experience. You will have to learn to do new, more difficult tasks to continue advancing, and you will have to journey to someone to be trained in these new tasks.
We have player run governments, manage your lands to increase resource production. All items (except a few relics) can be crafted. You can become the best at one or a few activities (say, making horseshoes of speed or dwarven axes, or opening enchanted locks) and thus well-known in your area. Skills atrophy slightly when not in use, and many skills have a maximum, so not even the most powerful characters can match you at something that you do every day. Hang out in taverns to get new quests, publish a newspaper... we're building a complete fantasy world, not the latest Everquest clone.
Come see us. Check out the forums. Leave us a note to get back to you when we hit release time:) We've been at this for 2.5 years, so it's not some fly-by-night project.
He registered the domain name without knowledge of our product, AFAIK. He registered it in hopes that he would either:
a) sell it as a part of a 'branding solution' to someone for a new product
b) sell it to the hypothetical future me who would produce something with that name
It's not entirely a clearcut case of squatting. However, as I said before, if we let people sit around inventing product/company names and registering the domain names with no intention of putting them to use, but only so they can resell them to prospective real businesses, we end up in a situation in which you are at the mercy of some random guy when you create a new business or product.
If his domain name went to a 404 or some other business, it wouldn't bother me. But the resulting pop-up hell is not something I want people to associate with me, my company, or our product.
Hmm, I have a similar problem, so I have some sympathy with the guy.
Our game, Magicosm, currently resides at http://www.magicosm.net. http://www.magicosm.com (don't click it!) currently takes you to a domain holding page with a bajillion pop-ups. The guy who has magicosm.com is apparently a professional squatter. He wanted me to pay him $3k for the name, for 'coming up with the name'.
If someone were running a legitimate business at this address, I would be looking for another name. However, it seems ridiculous that my potential customers should have to endure the pop-up hell they are subjected to when they type in the habitual.com rather than the correct.net.
If we stick with a strict rule of 'he who owns the domain can charge whatever he likes for it' we end up in a situation where you are at the mercy of some random guy if you want to give your business a meaningful name. I defy you to find a name for some specific business purpose that isn't already snapped up, either by another legitimate business or a squatter.
I own one of these. While it does seem to reduce RSI (it doesn't eliminate it, at least for me) doing fine motions is a real bitch. For large motions, you move your arm around. For fine motions, you have to swivel your hand at the wrist, which means all your fine motions are done in arcs rather than straight lines.
It did get much easier over the course of a few weeks of using it, but it never got as easy as using a regular mouse. I never use my Renaissance mouse any more.
Heisenberg uncertainty applies just as much to any other object, albeit it's obvious to lesser or greater degrees depending on the mass of the object in question.
I can take a photograph of a cat just fine, but you still can't know the velocity and position of the cat with complete accuracy.
To be specific, Heisenberg Uncertainty says that the more accurately you know the momentum, the less accurately you know the position. For any object. You can know both the position and velocity, just not to arbitrary accuracy.
What's your experience with your Replay tv? I have a Tivo, and the Replay is tempting to me because of the extra features. But... I've heard that Replay is not very good about always recording season passes.
Does your Replay record what you want it to record? Is it convenient to find new programs to record and set them up?
Nope, in my experience (3 years of Tivo ownership) Tivo never deletes something that you have explicitly requested for something that it guesses you want.
If you only indicate that you like something with thumbs up, Tivo may remove it later to replace it with something it thinks you will like. But if you request a season pass to a program, those episodes will only be deleted if you delete it or if other things you've season pass-ed or explicitly requested fill up the drive.
You also always have the option to extend something Tivo recorded to whatever period you want, although of course the Tivo may tell you that it will result in some future recording not being made.
Personally, I virtually never watch anything on my Tivo but explicit requests and season passes.
I just wanted to apologize for a reply that I made to you on an old message. You had made a comment about someone verbing a noun, and I replied correcting you. In that reply, I was an ass. You replied most graciously to my asinine comment.
Use the site to vote on bands, sell CDs, and sell oggs cheap to people with money on account (so you can deal with the micropayment issue). For free downloads, you provide a file name to use on the P2P networks and maybe a browser plugin to let people access the P2P networks trivially to get what they want.
The hard part is not finding good music once you know what it is. The hard part is identifying what is good music by either having someone highlight featured artists (the role of the DJ) or by letting people vote and matching profiles of those who vote similarly (initializing your preferences by listing the RIAA artists that you like). A central site is the way to go for finding out what you want; p2p is the way to go for getting it.
That's what I thought about crit.org in all of its incarnations. crit.org is a decorating proxy, like the entangler. But instead of tracking linking, it let you mark up web pages to make corrections, suggest links, request clarifications, etc. I used it for a while, then I used the ThirdVoice toolbar which did the same thing but was proprietary. AFAIK, virtually no one else used it. Even on the sites associated with the creators, it was rare to find anyone posting or get a response to your issues.
Until there's a plugin you can put in your browser so that every page you visit is automatically viewed through these decorating proxies, they won't revolutionize anything. : (
You can buy them on EBay (search for famico, super joy, power player, 76000 in 1) for about $30. They may be purported to have 76000, hundreds, 146, etc. games. As far as I can tell, they regular super joy has 76 games, the super joy III has 128 games (well, it has 146 but several don't work/are duplicates).
I bought two Super Joys at the Festival Bazaar flea market in Fort Worth, Texas. The vendors there have dozens if not hundreds of the things. See http://9thtee.net/funstuff.htm for a list of what is included in the joystick.
Verbs have conjugations and tenses. Every verb that is usable in one conjugation and tense is still a verb when you use it in another conjugation and tense. You should stop being a pedant (at least with regard to grammar); you're not very good at it.
Damn straight!! It's time people start reading the constitution and not taking for granted that the federal government can just do what it pleases. The constitution carefully sets bounds on federal power for very good reason. We have become so inured that we just let them do whatever they want, without asking if it's constitutional. It amazes me that we don't see judges throwing fits over the liberties the feds have taken with our liberties.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, the curvature of space-time is caused by gravity, according to general relativity. Every mass in the universe causes a dimple. The net effect of those dimples is believed to bend the universe back in on itself to form a closed hypersurface.
In the past, the shape was believed to be topologically spherical. Apparently, someone's now suggesting that the shape is toroidal. In fact, though, a cube, your average rock, a tube closed at both ends, etc. are all topologically a sphere. To determine if something is topologically a sphere, pretend the surface is infinitely stretchable. If you can deform the object into a sphere, then the object is topologically a sphere. Now, there is no way to deform the surface of a doughnut into a sphere. So, a sphere is topologically distinct from a torus.
I don't think any reputable physicists believe that the universe is a perfect sphere or doughnut. This article is arguing that the universe is a lumpy, dimply shape that is the topological equivalent of a torus, as opposed to a lumpy, dimply shape that is the topological equivalent of a sphere.
Yes, except from one direction the object is much, much farther (the circumference of the universe) from you. In fact, I believe the current assumption is that the circumference of the universe is larger than the amount of time it would take light to go around the circumference in the age of the universe, so you can't see the light from the object moving toward you since the universe hasn't been around long enough for it to get to you.
The question is assumed to not make sense. The surface of a torus has topological properties similar to that of the universe (according to the article). It's just a statement about what happens when you move a long way in one direction and how points in the universe can be reached from one another, not an assertion that the universe is sitting in some hyperdimensional 'space' outside the universe.
Well, firstly, it has long been thought that the universe was closed. This is just suggesting that the universe might be topologically equivalent to the equivalent of the hypersurface of a hypertoroid, rather than the hypersurface of a hypersphere, as previously assumed.
Secondly, the opposite of a red-shift is a blue-shift. The complementary nature of red and green is a property of human eyes, not of the light itself. Red light is lower in energy; blue light is higher. Things rushing away from us as space expands would leave light from distant objects moving more slowly relative to us if not for special relativistic effects. With the effects, the energy of the light is reduced. However, you're right... when an object is approaching you, light from it is blue-shifted, and that would be what we should expect when the universe starts collapsing.
One thing that helped me for quite a while was to map slashdot to localhost in my /etc/hosts file. Obviously, I could get past it simply be editing the file back, but at least it took an effort. Of course, I've had it turned off for the past several months, but for a long time it really reduced my usage.
The Player's Handbook had a picture of a huge statue of a squat demon with rubies for eyes, and a thief climbing on it prying one of the eyes out. For the record. I have about four of them upstairs :)
:)
In my opinion, first edition, the Basic Rules Cyclopedia, and third edition are the best rulesets for D&D, in that order. I probably feel that way mostly due to nostalgia for first edition, but it was really very playable up through about 18th level. After that the DM has to get creative to keep up with the power levels of the players without overloading them with magic items.
Rules Cyclopedia was awesome: different weapons had totally different characteristics, like blocking blows, AC bonuses, etc. as you became more of a master of the weapon. I'm surprised you don't hear more about it.
I have two of those upstairs
In case you're really paranoid about security...
;)
I'm not sure if it's still an exploit, but IE used to have an exploit in which a javascript could monitor your cut&paste buffer and, for example, transmit it to a third party. Of course, if you're really paranoid about security, you're probably not using IE
If your mom wants encrypted email but doesn't know jack about computers, set her up with a free account on Hushmail (https://www.hushmail.com). Your browser must have good java support (on Linux, it seems to require Sun jvm 1.3+ and a recent version of Mozilla or Netscape). You have to wiggle your mouse around some when setting up the account to generate randomness. Then you pick a passphrase, and from there on out it's just like any other web based email, except your data is encrypted from before it leaves your computer until after it gets to the target computer.
;)
It interoperates with GPG/PGP compatible mail clients. Of course, your email to people who have no encryption support is not encrypted, but that's pretty much unavoidable
It has Bruce Schneier's stamp of approval, and for a crypto product, that's really saying something.
Check it out.
Check out Diamond Age. In my opinion, it's easily the best of Stephenson's stuff.
And, just to point out, they have already done this 20 year extension over, and over, and over...
You might check out Magicosm. Unfortunately, we're still more than a year away from a final release right now. We'll be having an alpha test soon; it should start in August.
:) We've been at this for 2.5 years, so it's not some fly-by-night project.
Part of what makes us different is that we allow a sort of casual play. Crafting takes significant time, hours or days, so you can queue up activities for offline work. You can monitor your character's progress by receiving email updates or by viewing a web page, and queue new actions in the same way. This means that while you may play almost every day, most days it can be by viewing a web page and queueing a few new actions, sending emails to people to bring you raw materials or tell you what they want crafted.
Your character is controlled by a scripting language, so you can set him up to do whatever you think he's smart enough to do without getting himself killed, or use our preconstructed scripts to do the basics.
Our goal is to create a complete working fantasy world... iron ore comes from the ground, not a guy on the street corner. Real crafting is done in a smithy, which player characters can own, rent out, whatever. Monsters are not your main source of experience, questing, dynamically generated or part of the storyline, is. It is often much better to avoid a monster if you can rather than fight it. Although, with our lore system, finding out how to do new things is often more important than gaining experience. You will have to learn to do new, more difficult tasks to continue advancing, and you will have to journey to someone to be trained in these new tasks.
We have player run governments, manage your lands to increase resource production. All items (except a few relics) can be crafted. You can become the best at one or a few activities (say, making horseshoes of speed or dwarven axes, or opening enchanted locks) and thus well-known in your area. Skills atrophy slightly when not in use, and many skills have a maximum, so not even the most powerful characters can match you at something that you do every day. Hang out in taverns to get new quests, publish a newspaper... we're building a complete fantasy world, not the latest Everquest clone.
Come see us. Check out the forums. Leave us a note to get back to you when we hit release time
He registered the domain name without knowledge of our product, AFAIK. He registered it in hopes that he would either:
;)
a) sell it as a part of a 'branding solution' to someone for a new product
b) sell it to the hypothetical future me who would produce something with that name
It's not entirely a clearcut case of squatting. However, as I said before, if we let people sit around inventing product/company names and registering the domain names with no intention of putting them to use, but only so they can resell them to prospective real businesses, we end up in a situation in which you are at the mercy of some random guy when you create a new business or product.
If his domain name went to a 404 or some other business, it wouldn't bother me. But the resulting pop-up hell is not something I want people to associate with me, my company, or our product.
Of course, we don't always get what we want
Hmm, I have a similar problem, so I have some sympathy with the guy.
.com rather than the correct .net.
Our game, Magicosm, currently resides at http://www.magicosm.net. http://www.magicosm.com (don't click it!) currently takes you to a domain holding page with a bajillion pop-ups. The guy who has magicosm.com is apparently a professional squatter. He wanted me to pay him $3k for the name, for 'coming up with the name'.
If someone were running a legitimate business at this address, I would be looking for another name. However, it seems ridiculous that my potential customers should have to endure the pop-up hell they are subjected to when they type in the habitual
If we stick with a strict rule of 'he who owns the domain can charge whatever he likes for it' we end up in a situation where you are at the mercy of some random guy if you want to give your business a meaningful name. I defy you to find a name for some specific business purpose that isn't already snapped up, either by another legitimate business or a squatter.
Yes, which means you have almost no chance of ever improving, while Evil Adrian might be redeemable.
I own one of these. While it does seem to reduce RSI (it doesn't eliminate it, at least for me) doing fine motions is a real bitch. For large motions, you move your arm around. For fine motions, you have to swivel your hand at the wrist, which means all your fine motions are done in arcs rather than straight lines.
It did get much easier over the course of a few weeks of using it, but it never got as easy as using a regular mouse. I never use my Renaissance mouse any more.
Heisenberg uncertainty applies just as much to any other object, albeit it's obvious to lesser or greater degrees depending on the mass of the object in question.
I can take a photograph of a cat just fine, but you still can't know the velocity and position of the cat with complete accuracy.
To be specific, Heisenberg Uncertainty says that the more accurately you know the momentum, the less accurately you know the position. For any object. You can know both the position and velocity, just not to arbitrary accuracy.
What's your experience with your Replay tv? I have a Tivo, and the Replay is tempting to me because of the extra features. But... I've heard that Replay is not very good about always recording season passes.
Does your Replay record what you want it to record? Is it convenient to find new programs to record and set them up?
Nope, in my experience (3 years of Tivo ownership) Tivo never deletes something that you have explicitly requested for something that it guesses you want.
If you only indicate that you like something with thumbs up, Tivo may remove it later to replace it with something it thinks you will like. But if you request a season pass to a program, those episodes will only be deleted if you delete it or if other things you've season pass-ed or explicitly requested fill up the drive.
You also always have the option to extend something Tivo recorded to whatever period you want, although of course the Tivo may tell you that it will result in some future recording not being made.
Personally, I virtually never watch anything on my Tivo but explicit requests and season passes.
Anyway, FWIW, I'm sorry that I was an ass.
Use the site to vote on bands, sell CDs, and sell oggs cheap to people with money on account (so you can deal with the micropayment issue). For free downloads, you provide a file name to use on the P2P networks and maybe a browser plugin to let people access the P2P networks trivially to get what they want.
The hard part is not finding good music once you know what it is. The hard part is identifying what is good music by either having someone highlight featured artists (the role of the DJ) or by letting people vote and matching profiles of those who vote similarly (initializing your preferences by listing the RIAA artists that you like). A central site is the way to go for finding out what you want; p2p is the way to go for getting it.
That's what I thought about crit.org in all of its incarnations. crit.org is a decorating proxy, like the entangler. But instead of tracking linking, it let you mark up web pages to make corrections, suggest links, request clarifications, etc. I used it for a while, then I used the ThirdVoice toolbar which did the same thing but was proprietary. AFAIK, virtually no one else used it. Even on the sites associated with the creators, it was rare to find anyone posting or get a response to your issues.
Until there's a plugin you can put in your browser so that every page you visit is automatically viewed through these decorating proxies, they won't revolutionize anything. : (
You can buy them on EBay (search for famico, super joy, power player, 76000 in 1) for about $30. They may be purported to have 76000, hundreds, 146, etc. games. As far as I can tell, they regular super joy has 76 games, the super joy III has 128 games (well, it has 146 but several don't work/are duplicates).
I bought two Super Joys at the Festival Bazaar flea market in Fort Worth, Texas. The vendors there have dozens if not hundreds of the things. See http://9thtee.net/funstuff.htm for a list of what is included in the joystick.
Wow, good fucking post, AC. Thanks!!
Verbs have conjugations and tenses. Every verb that is usable in one conjugation and tense is still a verb when you use it in another conjugation and tense. You should stop being a pedant (at least with regard to grammar); you're not very good at it.
Damn straight!! It's time people start reading the constitution and not taking for granted that the federal government can just do what it pleases. The constitution carefully sets bounds on federal power for very good reason. We have become so inured that we just let them do whatever they want, without asking if it's constitutional. It amazes me that we don't see judges throwing fits over the liberties the feds have taken with our liberties.