But I really haven't heard about many apes/monkeys/etc. emerging from the jungle and joining the rest of civilization.
We work for 50 years of our life so we can eventually retire and spend our declining years in a nursing home, looking forward to mushy bananas, crapping our pants and living without responsibilities. Monkeys get there without the 50 years of work.
Who's smarter?
(Real answer to the original question: what makes you think such a large and significant evolutionary step is going to sponteneously occur in your lifetime, out of the hundreds of millions of years of evolution? Besides, that particular ecological niche is taken; and how do you know they haven't tried to join human society and been rejected? It's not as though humans treat each other particularly well...)
I really can't wait for the end of the world, mankind doesn't deserve to live
Hey, I'm working on the doomsday machine, but it's really hard to get good henchmen when the job description is "causing the demise of every living thing on Earth". I can only get people who aren't smart enough to ask about the pension plan...
Precisely. This is known as "irony", and I'm glad the object lesson that bullshit can be thrown both ways and isn't remotely helpful isn't lost on you.
FWIW, I'm not 100% convinced about man's effect on climate change, but I do think (a) burning oil is probably the most wasteful thing we can do with it, (b) energy self-sufficiency and improved efficiency are good long term goals for any economy, and (c) it's better to replace a finite energy source before it becomes impractically expensive. And if nothing else, China's future suphur dioxide emissions from burning coal are going to cause environmental problems well beyond their borders.
I'm certainly not prepared to claim either side of the debate is being entirely honest or level-headed.
Obviously global warming has caused the earth itself to expand, resulting in this fissure.
But eventually this expansion will cause a similar fissure to open under an ocean and allow the world's seas to drain, thus eliminating the fabricated risk of rising sea levels from the proven myth of glacial melt. So even if all those ignorant, biased climatologists living the caviar lifestyle on fat research grants somehow turn out to be right despite the overwheming evidence to the contrary from expert SUV drivers and totally impartial oil magnates, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
I call this "The Moronic Knee-Jerk Theory of Environmental Equilibrium", and expect it to be accepted widely by people who like to set up obvious straw-men.
I think an embarrassing double backflip involves either ripping leotards or landing awkwardly on something pointy. I'm hoping Microsoft has done the latter (mainly because Steve Ballmer in leotards would look something like a mouldy grapefruit in a sock, and that's as far as I want to take the imagery for fear of going to moderation hell).
Apple's updater "conveniently" offered to install iTunes when I went to install a security patch. If Apple does this with Safari as well, they've got a good chance of getting the next best thing to pre-installed.
This would seem to me to be complaining that Apple could use another successful product to promote Safari, while Firefox has to rely on word-of-mouth in isolation. Is that Apple's failing or Mozilla's? What's stopping GIMP or OpenOffice linking to Firefox installers, and vice versa? Cross-promotion works, it's neither immoral nor illegal (though it can be irritating), and it certainly isn't "the next best thing to pre-installed", except for people who click "yes" to everything (and they should be kept as far away as possible from IE anyway).
Safari has always been aimed at the "just make it work" crowd, while Firefox tries to get that crowd and the "trick out my browser" crowd.
That's probably the most astute observation I've read in this discussion so far: wrong demographic.
Firefox is great for what it is: an all singing, all dancing, highly configurable and extensible web browser. But not everybody needs or wants that level of complexity, and indeed, the common experience is that the more options you give a newbie* the more ways they find to screw things up. IMO Safari suits that niche better than any other browser, and Firefox is still there when/if Safari proves too restrictive (I use iCab because I like the degree of control; my father prefers Safari, because he doesn't like having to hunt through 80 settings tabs to find one option. Horses for courses).
The reality is the OSS crowd are just as fanatical as the Apple crowd, so there's little if any benefit to be had marketing to them. Those who don't care what software they use and will never notice the difference (apart from the lack of malware) are a better target, and they'd probably never actively decide to switch to Firefox anyway precisely because they don't care. If it takes bundling or cross-promotion to overcome that inertia, and the final result is fewer zombies and more standards compliance, is there any real harm? I'd say the positives outweigh the negatives, but then I'm not trying to promote my product...
*Haven't learned, don't want to learn, aren't able to learn; we need a better word for this group.
And the whole colony would die a horrible death half a light year out, because some contractor substituted inferior materials to save a few dollars.
Easily solved: just make sure all the contractors and their extended families are part of the colony. Either they do the job right and live, or we lose some dodgy contractors; it's win-win really.
Of course I meant mass and inertia. Lack of caffiene.
And to reiterate my point, consider an earthquake. One side of the planet may oscillate by several meters, yet this movement is barely detectable on the opposite side (despite rock being harder than wood), proving that the internal friction of a massive object is a factor that must be considered in a physically accurate model. Picking and choosing which parts of physics you apply is intellectually dishonest, calling me a smartass is disingenuous, and neither are "standard practice".
If you care do do a bit of research you'd find that Australian gun laws changed after the Port Arthur Massacre, and semi-automatic weapons were banned. The results? No mass shootings since 1995.
Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.
That's overlooking friction between the molecules in the pencil, and the fact that wood can compress more than 0.000,000,167%. The far end probably wouldn't move at all.
Even if you came back in some all silver future suit, people would still just think you were nuts.
My tin foil overalls aren't only stylish, but they protect not just my mind but every organ in my body from the government control satellites (you think the rise in diabetes is just a coincidence? They control your pancreas!)
I'm thinking the local pub will receive about $35,000 in funding over the next year or so...
Of course it will: pubs are well know for temporal anomalies. I've lost count of the number of times Friday night has disappeared mysteriously and turned into Saturday afternoon.
You're too kind (and fast!). Of course it's true they do cast a shadow, but compared to smoke it's nowhere near as intense, and again it's a function of density so the light has to be at exactly the right angle; the inverse of what we see in these images, really. I probably oversimplified that point, so thanks for mentioning it.
It isn't smoke; there's no atmosphere to suspend the smaller particles, and no turbulence to disrupt the parabolic trajectory. That means the plume isn't randomly shaped and opaque like a billowing smoke plume on Earth, it's more like a fountain (as it says in the article, and as the GIF shows: smoke on Earth doesn't billow down, you're seeing particles purely under the influence of gravity).
Now, because there's no suspended material (smoke), the amout of light the plume reflects is determined purely by the cross-sectional density; that is, the more particles there are in a given horizontal slice, the brighter that area appears. That region of greatest density is where the particles are moving slowest in the vertical plane, which happens to be the top of the parabolic arc (exactly like a fountain; you can test this with a garden hose, if you like, the water will appear to be most dense where gravity kicks in and the flow turns back on itself. Same principle).
The lack of smoke has one other implication: without a dense, opaque cloud of randomly moving fine particles to block light as it moves through the plume, light is reflected almost evenly from all sides; hence no prominent shadow (flying rocks don't cast much of a shadow).
So in theory, on an airless moon a volcanic plume seen side-on should have a moderately thick "base" where the material is ejected, an almost opaque looking umbrella-shaped cap where the particles are slowing and beggining to fall back, and a much thinner outer region, with almost negligable shading because there's no smoke. By a curious coincidence, that's what the photos show.
If it looked like a volcano on Earth it would be a fake.
How about Rob Schneider doing an impersonation of Pierce Brosnan imitating Val Kilmer? It could be called "The Bat"...which, coincidentally, is what the resulting angry mob would probably be armed with.
The reality TV in space idea isn't bad, but send all the producers instead. That alone would make the whole space program worthwhile.
Fine print: Earthly parachute. Note that most Mars probes decellerate by parachute in the upper atmosphere, then use either rocket braking or air bags for touchdown, including the rovers (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_lands _040103.html). There is a sound reason for this: a parachute of a given size on Mars has only 7/1000ths the drag of the same sized canopy on Earth, so they have little to no effect below a few hundred miles per hour.
Slashdot Mirror
But I really haven't heard about many apes/monkeys/etc. emerging from the jungle and joining the rest of civilization.
We work for 50 years of our life so we can eventually retire and spend our declining years in a nursing home, looking forward to mushy bananas, crapping our pants and living without responsibilities. Monkeys get there without the 50 years of work.
Who's smarter?
(Real answer to the original question: what makes you think such a large and significant evolutionary step is going to sponteneously occur in your lifetime, out of the hundreds of millions of years of evolution? Besides, that particular ecological niche is taken; and how do you know they haven't tried to join human society and been rejected? It's not as though humans treat each other particularly well...)
I really can't wait for the end of the world, mankind doesn't deserve to live
Hey, I'm working on the doomsday machine, but it's really hard to get good henchmen when the job description is "causing the demise of every living thing on Earth". I can only get people who aren't smart enough to ask about the pension plan...
Precisely. This is known as "irony", and I'm glad the object lesson that bullshit can be thrown both ways and isn't remotely helpful isn't lost on you.
FWIW, I'm not 100% convinced about man's effect on climate change, but I do think (a) burning oil is probably the most wasteful thing we can do with it, (b) energy self-sufficiency and improved efficiency are good long term goals for any economy, and (c) it's better to replace a finite energy source before it becomes impractically expensive. And if nothing else, China's future suphur dioxide emissions from burning coal are going to cause environmental problems well beyond their borders.
I'm certainly not prepared to claim either side of the debate is being entirely honest or level-headed.
Obviously global warming has caused the earth itself to expand, resulting in this fissure.
But eventually this expansion will cause a similar fissure to open under an ocean and allow the world's seas to drain, thus eliminating the fabricated risk of rising sea levels from the proven myth of glacial melt. So even if all those ignorant, biased climatologists living the caviar lifestyle on fat research grants somehow turn out to be right despite the overwheming evidence to the contrary from expert SUV drivers and totally impartial oil magnates, there's absolutely nothing to worry about.
I call this "The Moronic Knee-Jerk Theory of Environmental Equilibrium", and expect it to be accepted widely by people who like to set up obvious straw-men.
If they ask me who the prime minister is, I say "Michael Jackson".
Finally, a prime minister I can respect!
Also, why is this in Games instead of Entertainment?
Because shows based on games are rarely entertaining?
they are charged with protecting the computing infrastructure of the country.
What's Chinese for "pwned"?
I think an embarrassing double backflip involves either ripping leotards or landing awkwardly on something pointy. I'm hoping Microsoft has done the latter (mainly because Steve Ballmer in leotards would look something like a mouldy grapefruit in a sock, and that's as far as I want to take the imagery for fear of going to moderation hell).
That varies, but we're always underneath.
Apple's updater "conveniently" offered to install iTunes when I went to install a security patch. If Apple does this with Safari as well, they've got a good chance of getting the next best thing to pre-installed.
This would seem to me to be complaining that Apple could use another successful product to promote Safari, while Firefox has to rely on word-of-mouth in isolation. Is that Apple's failing or Mozilla's? What's stopping GIMP or OpenOffice linking to Firefox installers, and vice versa? Cross-promotion works, it's neither immoral nor illegal (though it can be irritating), and it certainly isn't "the next best thing to pre-installed", except for people who click "yes" to everything (and they should be kept as far away as possible from IE anyway).
Safari has always been aimed at the "just make it work" crowd, while Firefox tries to get that crowd and the "trick out my browser" crowd.
That's probably the most astute observation I've read in this discussion so far: wrong demographic.
Firefox is great for what it is: an all singing, all dancing, highly configurable and extensible web browser. But not everybody needs or wants that level of complexity, and indeed, the common experience is that the more options you give a newbie* the more ways they find to screw things up. IMO Safari suits that niche better than any other browser, and Firefox is still there when/if Safari proves too restrictive (I use iCab because I like the degree of control; my father prefers Safari, because he doesn't like having to hunt through 80 settings tabs to find one option. Horses for courses).
The reality is the OSS crowd are just as fanatical as the Apple crowd, so there's little if any benefit to be had marketing to them. Those who don't care what software they use and will never notice the difference (apart from the lack of malware) are a better target, and they'd probably never actively decide to switch to Firefox anyway precisely because they don't care. If it takes bundling or cross-promotion to overcome that inertia, and the final result is fewer zombies and more standards compliance, is there any real harm? I'd say the positives outweigh the negatives, but then I'm not trying to promote my product...
*Haven't learned, don't want to learn, aren't able to learn; we need a better word for this group.
...they are just two horns on the same Bull.
Looking at what comes out of D.C., I think "two buttocks on the same bull" would be more apt.
Since when is flatulence "Flamebait"? ...oh...
"Go West" doesn't work anymore.
No, it just needs to be realigned 90 degrees.
And the whole colony would die a horrible death half a light year out, because some contractor substituted inferior materials to save a few dollars.
Easily solved: just make sure all the contractors and their extended families are part of the colony. Either they do the job right and live, or we lose some dodgy contractors; it's win-win really.
Or is the summary just misleading?
"Ten times the speed of silence" would be silly.
weight and inertia
Of course I meant mass and inertia. Lack of caffiene.
And to reiterate my point, consider an earthquake. One side of the planet may oscillate by several meters, yet this movement is barely detectable on the opposite side (despite rock being harder than wood), proving that the internal friction of a massive object is a factor that must be considered in a physically accurate model. Picking and choosing which parts of physics you apply is intellectually dishonest, calling me a smartass is disingenuous, and neither are "standard practice".
there's nothing holding it in place at the other end
Except it's own weight and inertia.
Overlooking friction is a standard practice
Not in a physically correct model.
smartass
Insults don't prove your point or make you look clever.
What country has sane gun laws? Japan? Australia?
- rapid-decline-since-buyback/2006/12/13/11656857524 21.html
a -gun.html
/ 12/6/365
If you care do do a bit of research you'd find that Australian gun laws changed after the Port Arthur Massacre, and semi-automatic weapons were banned. The results? No mass shootings since 1995.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/gun-deaths-in
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2006/12/14/australi
http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/cgi/content/short
http://www.physorg.com/news85298565.html
Now while it is true there's been an increase in armed robberies in Australia in the last 11 years, it must be remembered that it has always been illegal to carry handguns here, so there has never been the deterrent of an armed citizenry; the change in laws had absolutely no effect in that regard.
That's overlooking friction between the molecules in the pencil, and the fact that wood can compress more than 0.000,000,167%. The far end probably wouldn't move at all.
Even if you came back in some all silver future suit, people would still just think you were nuts.
My tin foil overalls aren't only stylish, but they protect not just my mind but every organ in my body from the government control satellites (you think the rise in diabetes is just a coincidence? They control your pancreas!)
What's nuts about that?
I'm thinking the local pub will receive about $35,000 in funding over the next year or so...
Of course it will: pubs are well know for temporal anomalies. I've lost count of the number of times Friday night has disappeared mysteriously and turned into Saturday afternoon.
Time travel causes killer hangovers, apparently.
You're too kind (and fast!). Of course it's true they do cast a shadow, but compared to smoke it's nowhere near as intense, and again it's a function of density so the light has to be at exactly the right angle; the inverse of what we see in these images, really. I probably oversimplified that point, so thanks for mentioning it.
It isn't smoke; there's no atmosphere to suspend the smaller particles, and no turbulence to disrupt the parabolic trajectory. That means the plume isn't randomly shaped and opaque like a billowing smoke plume on Earth, it's more like a fountain (as it says in the article, and as the GIF shows: smoke on Earth doesn't billow down, you're seeing particles purely under the influence of gravity).
Now, because there's no suspended material (smoke), the amout of light the plume reflects is determined purely by the cross-sectional density; that is, the more particles there are in a given horizontal slice, the brighter that area appears. That region of greatest density is where the particles are moving slowest in the vertical plane, which happens to be the top of the parabolic arc (exactly like a fountain; you can test this with a garden hose, if you like, the water will appear to be most dense where gravity kicks in and the flow turns back on itself. Same principle).
The lack of smoke has one other implication: without a dense, opaque cloud of randomly moving fine particles to block light as it moves through the plume, light is reflected almost evenly from all sides; hence no prominent shadow (flying rocks don't cast much of a shadow).
So in theory, on an airless moon a volcanic plume seen side-on should have a moderately thick "base" where the material is ejected, an almost opaque looking umbrella-shaped cap where the particles are slowing and beggining to fall back, and a much thinner outer region, with almost negligable shading because there's no smoke. By a curious coincidence, that's what the photos show.
If it looked like a volcano on Earth it would be a fake.
How about Rob Schneider doing an impersonation of Pierce Brosnan imitating Val Kilmer? It could be called "The Bat"...which, coincidentally, is what the resulting angry mob would probably be armed with.
The reality TV in space idea isn't bad, but send all the producers instead. That alone would make the whole space program worthwhile.
Fine print: Earthly parachute. Note that most Mars probes decellerate by parachute in the upper atmosphere, then use either rocket braking or air bags for touchdown, including the rovers (http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/spirit_lands _040103.html). There is a sound reason for this: a parachute of a given size on Mars has only 7/1000ths the drag of the same sized canopy on Earth, so they have little to no effect below a few hundred miles per hour.