The apple store for education lists the G5 DP 2.0 GHz with 512mb and 160gb drive at $2699.
These come with 1 gig of RAM, so compared to the educational price it's just about a wash. The difference is that these systems are being sold to the general public, who would normally have to pay $2995 for these machines. That's a savings of around $200 with a bonus of 512 megs more RAM.
I've tried a few of those mirrors and have gotten only corrupted files. I've tried downloading with OmniWeb, Safari, IE, and even tried curl. No go, I just keep getting files that have corrupt bzip2 blocks...
Dark energy apparently exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction... what direction does Gravity work in? I mean, it "pulls towards" something, correct? So this "Dark Energy" repels away from something?
In one word: yes.
Basically astronomers found that the universe was moving apart faster than would be expected from the Big Bang. Then they realized that objects were not being slowed down as much as would be expected by gravity. This is only seen on a very large scale (on the order of extremely deep field galaxies) so it is a very minor effect, but it is noticeable to astronomers. This and several other observations have led to the postulation that there might be a fifth force, one that is similar to gravity but opposite in direction - that is it repels matter rather than attracts it.
No one really understands the phenomenon fully and so it has been tagged with names like "dark energy" just to be able to talk about it easily. There are many theories about its origin, how it works, etc. but they are tenuous theories at best right now. It certainly seems that we are missing a big piece of the puzzle and that we need to investigate it further.
This is similar to the situation as when scientists found out that Mercury's orbit was not what they thought it should be. They even went so far as to propose there was a hidden planet in a orbit near Mercury which was changing Mercury's orbit slightly. They later found out the real reason for the "wobble" when Einstein came up with General Relativity and it was applied toward calculating Mercury's orbit. You can read more about this here.
I imagioned what life would be like for a process on a Linux box. In some respects, the system never changes. In other respects, as chunks of the system are refined an upgraded, previously famliar systems take on more complex, and at times, incomprehesible behavior.
An interesting concept indeed. However, what that is really doing is just moving the rules up a level. Suppose that the "rules" of the immediate universe are changing on some level, whether caused by "intelligence" or by some sort of natural process. In the end that modifying factor is either itself governed by a set of rules or is fundamentally rule-less.
If the modifying factor is rule-less then there is no hope for ever truly understanding the nature of the universe, although we may still be able to get a grasp on some fundamental concepts that don't change often. On the other hand if the modifying factor does so according to some set of meta-rules then we still have the chance to figure out both our immediate rules and the meta-rules that govern how the modifying force works.
All of that is still pretty out there for us, what we do know is that the "rules" of our observable universe change extremely slowly, if they change at all. It is slow enough for us to treat the "rules" as being constant for reasonably large time periods on the order of billions of years.
Gravity is weak in the short-range when compared to the three other known forces of nature. The four forces are gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. Gravity is an attractive force between all matter and energy, electromagnetic is an attractive and repulsive force between charged particles and magnetic fields, the strong nuclear force is what holds together protons and neutrons in an atom's nucleus and the weak nuclear force is what mediates electron and positron decay.
If you set the strength of gravity equal to 1 then the other forces have the following approximate strengths relative to gravity: Strong nuclear force: 10^40 Electromagnetic force: 10^38 Weak nuclear force: 10^15 Gravity: 10^0
So why is gravity so important if it is so weak? The thing about gravity is that it falls off slowly with distance and it can't be negated or blocked (as far as we know). Other forces are either extremely short-range or, in the case of the electromagnetic force, have both an attractive and repulsive component that tends to cancel out in the long-run.
What's the difference if dark-matter is really just another false theory? In the long run it's not going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference.
Actually it will make a huge difference. Just look at how Bohr's model of the atom changed chemistry and particle physics. Or how Plank's quantum theory caused a revolution in the physics community. And one of the most famous examples of an upset in scientific theory is Einstein's theory of Relativity verses the Newtonian theories most commonly held at the time.
Each of these theories caused an almost immediate revolution in their respective fields which spread out to similar disciplines. Fast forward 20, 30, 50 years or more and a number of innovations and inventions appear which stem from these theories. If these theories had not been introduced then we would most likely not have had such an explosion in technology.
Just because we wave our hands and say something is out there doesn't mean that we understand it or can use it. If we know the true mechanism behind dark matter and wether or not it is just "hand waving" then we can apply that knowledge to useful applications. For example, it is assumed that this dark energy exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction. If we truly understand how this works then we might be able to apply that knowledge toward "anti-gravity" spacecraft, etc. On the other hand if there is some other cause for the repulsion then we would need to know IT'S mechanism in order to utilize it.
In the end, science is the quest for truth, not convenience. Just knowing that there is a certain effect is not enough. Scientists are not looking to solve the question of "what is that" but rather "why does that exist and how does it work". That is why it is important to seek out the true reasons behind the dark matter observations.
The US which I personally view as one of the least democratic democracys
Um, that would be because the US is NOT a democracy. It is a representative republic.
In a true democracy every person has a vote on every aspect of the way the government is run. In a representative republic you get to elect representatives who make the decisions for you.
In a representative republic you are essentially handing the reigns over to your representative, choose a poor one and you are pretty much stuck until you can get him out and a get a new representative into office. On the other hand a true democracy tends to collapse under its own weight after a few hundred people are a part of it, simply because large groups have problems with coming up with definite decisions.
After all, it couldn't just be shoddy Windows programming. It HAS to be evil Microsoft
Let's put it this way: it happens so often with Microsoft's competitors that it seems likely that either Microsoft is deliberately sabotaging rivals who code for Windows or Windows itself has some serious issues and causes a lot of programs to glitch. Either way it doesn't look good for Microsoft.
Now, since Microsoft has been convicted of being a monopoly that HAS abused its monopolistic position in the market I'm inclined to believe that Microsoft is deliberately causing these sort of issues. Especially since several of the very examples that I have mentioned that were part of the reason Microsoft was convicted.
Quicktime might piss them off for the same reason as Real Media does as every time you start it Apple ends up trying to get you to shell out some dineros for Quicktime Pro.
Here's a little trick that works for Mac users and may work for Windows users.
Set your system clock ahead like 10 years, then run Quicktime player. When it asks you if you want Quicktime Pro hit the "Ask me later" type of option. Then quit Quicktime Player and reset your system clock to normal.
The next time Quicktime Player will nag you about Quicktime Pro will be 10 years from now!:-)
On my Windows XP boxes, QuickTime has been remarkably unstable through three major and countless minor releases. Crashes, weird artifacts that linger for the duration of playback, "corrupted" files that played fine under Win2K...
Yeah, imagine that. It makes you wonder why Quicktime has problems under Windows. I mean, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Quicktime competes with Windows Media Player, could it? There's no way Microsoft would stoop so low as to make Quicktime work badly on its systems! I mean it's not like anyoneelse ever had similar problems with Microsoft, right?
Sarcasm aside, maybe the answer is not to move towards a Windows Media Player solution for authoring, but rather away from it. If these guys have complaints about Real's actions with Real Player then they really should take a good hard look at the actions Microsoft has taken in the software market before they move to Windows Media Player.
I don't know what these people consider "normal use" but as an iBook owner for 3 years (died from an accident involving electricity and water) and a powerbook owner for a year and a half, and as someone who carries his laptops in a book bag to classes, to work, and on planes and such, I have never had the sort of hardware problems people describe.
I'm gonna do a "me too" on this one.
I have had a 1/2 dozen Apple laptops pass through my hands via home, work, family. The only serious problem I ever had was with a PowerBook 5300 CS. The power socket on that laptop had gotten bumped hard which caused it to break off internally, a common problem for many laptops. It was out of warranty but I brought it into the service center anyways to see how much it would cost to get repaired.
I found out that the PowerBook 5300 warranty had been extended because of this very issue. I handed the laptop off to the service center and they mailed it to Apple that day. Three days later the laptop was back. It had taken 1 day to get to Apple, 1 day to repair, and 1 day to get back. Apple not only repaired the power socket, they also replaced some scratched plastics and a plastic door which had been removed and lost. All of this at no cost to me.
I understand that things can happen to laptops but I think that the abundance of stories is due to the bad experiences getting top billing while the good experiences stay quiet. Not only that but Apple is also selling quite a few laptops these days so we are hearing a higher percentage of stories about them.
Take a drive out of a PC and put it into another PC - Check. Take a drive out of a Mac and put it into another Mac - Check.
Let's take this one step further:
Take a drive out of a PC and put it into a Mac - Check.
Sure you can't boot off of the drive without installing a Macintosh operating system but all of the data on the drive will be accessible to the Mac if the drive was formatted with FAT or NTFS. I've done this a number of times to help my PC friends recover data from their crashed PCs and it works without a hitch.
Sure Mac OS is proprietary, but it hardly locks you in to a specific operating system. In fact Mac OS does a damn good job of trying to cooperate with as many other operating systems and file types as possible.
I would guess that the HD is accumulating damage as time goes on, head crashes and the like.
Contrary to popular belief, the smaller the hard drive the more resistant it is to damage due to shock. On a smaller drive the arm that the head is mounted on is shorter. A shorter arm has less give in it (try bending a piece of paperclip 2 inches long and a piece of paperclip 0.5 inches long) and thus the arm will be less likely to bend enough to crash into the hard drive's media.
The newest of these small drives have shock ratings on the order of 200 G while they are operating and 1500 G while the heads are parked.
...people that will pay $249 for them. When those people run out they can drop the price to $199...
Not to mention that Apple typically is not able to produce enough of these sort of items to fulfill demand. They probably had a choice: make x units and sell them at $199, making little profit and not being able to meet demand or make x units and sell them at $249, still selling all they could make. They will probably sell close to all the units they can make at either price, it just makes sense to sell at the higher price and make a good profit.
Once Apple's manufacturing capacity for these devices goes up their costs will go down due to economies of scale. By that time the demand for the iPod mini will have gone down. Apple can then drop the price, increasing demand to match their production capacity and still making a profit from the lower production costs.
No, Apple doesn't make any PROFIT on the iTunes Music Store. However, they do take some money out of each sale to cover stuff like bandwidth costs, equipment costs, personnel, etc. These charges amount to approximately 30 to 35 cents of a 99 cent song.
Those charges are basically keeping Apple's costs for iTMS at near zero, really neither making them a profit or causing them a loss on the venture. Apple justifies this as a loss-leader (free advertising) for iPod sales. It's a good, solid strategy and one which seems to be working well for Apple.
The rest of the money goes to the record label who then gives some money to the artist according to how the contract was written. Some labels, such as CD Baby, give most of the money to the artist. Some labels only give a small percentage to their artists. Apple has nothing to do with how this portion of the money is handled.
Forgiven, at least as far as I am concerned. Hey we all have bad days, at least you admitted you got off on the wrong foot there and apologized.
I took a listen to your band Crooked Crow on iTMS. Pretty good stuff, not exactly my style but if I was into something like that I'm sure I'd buy it. It's cool that you got onto iTMS as an independent artist, we need more people to do so. Choice is a wonderful force!
I prefer the Better Business Bureau. I've filed a few complaints, and so far I've always gotten results.
In my experience the Better Business Bureau is a paper tiger, it doesn't have any ability to back up its supposed powers of protecting the consumer.
I've contacted them on several problem companies and the response that I've gotten back has always been, "Sorry. We can only suggest to a company, we can't enforce." If the company doesn't agree with the issue then the Better Business Bureau doesn't do anything. They never even updated their web site with any of the complaints that were made.
True, but glasses don't exhibit a 1st order phase transition, meaning they aren't exactly a "solid"
Eutectic mixtures also do not exhibit a first order phase transition, yet when they are taken to a low enough temperature they are considered a solid. Glass does undergo a phase transition from liquid to solid, the fact that it is not first order does not mean that it isn't a liquid-solid phase transition.
For what it's worth, though you're mostly correct, it's a falsehood, not a fallacy. A falsehood is a piece of incorrect information - a myth, a popular misconception, a lie. A fallacy is a conclusion reached from information (whether or not the information is correct is unimportant) where the reasoning suffers a flaw.
Cool, always worth knowing EXACTLY what you are saying!:-)
I'll have to keep this in mind in the future. But by the examples you have given isn't this still a fallacy? Someone is taking evidence (glass is thicker on the bottom) and the knowledge that glass is similar to a liquid in the fact that it is disordered and coming to the conclusion that glass is a slow-flowing liquid. That sounds like a flaw in reasoning rather than a lie.
So what you're saying is that they actually do flow. In reality they flow faster than "billions of years", but either way, it's a liquid.
Just because something flows slowly does not mean that it is a liquid. As I have stated elsewhere glass flows because it is an amorphous solid and the individual molecules of glass are weakly linked enough that they can rearrange to some extent. If there is a force acting upon these molecules then they will tend to be influenced by that force. This even happens in crystalline structures but to a much smaller extent.
To put it another way, a pile of sand is a solid and yet it can flow. A steel wire is a solid and yet if you put a weight on it it will begin to stretch and deform.
Glass does flow to some extent. I've done the experiment where you hang a weight off a glass thread and watch it flow.
All solids flow to some extent. A thin thread of steel will flow under the same circumstances. The question is whether or not that means the substance is a liquid or not. The answer to that is no, glass and steel are not liquids at room temperature - no matter if they do flow slowly or not.
As glass in neither liquid nor solid, because its molecules are motionless (like a solid) but random in configuration (like a liquid), glass exists in a solid yet transparent state. So what is it
Glass is is an amorphous solid, a solid that has some give in it due to the lack of much of a crystalline structure. Look at it this way, sand is a solid and yet it flows because each particle is weakly linked to the particles around it. Glass is similar to this but on a molecular scale.
Imagine a solid as being a bunch of blocks that represent the molecules in that solid. If you cool that solid down slowly with a gentle vibration (due to thermal effects) the blocks have time for the natural attractions between themselves to manifest and stick themselves together in layers forming a very tight and ordered solid. On the other hand cool a substance down quickly and each brick just locks in place without packing neatly to the bricks near it. The resulting solid has a jumble of molecules that stuck every which way and whose attractive surfaces are not well aligned. Thus this disordered solid has less attraction between each molecule and it can settle and "flow", but it is not a liquid.
Try this experiment. Take a bucket of those small rectangular building bricks that kids use (not Legos). Put a bunch in a bucket and gently vibrate the bucket for a while. The parts will settle and will form a packed structure that won't move much. In fact if the bucket is full and you gently overturn the bucket you might be able to get a tower of pieces that will hardly move. Next try just randomly toss those pieces into the bucket and give it one rough shake. The pieces will settle some but will still have a lot of slip between them, if you overturn this bucketful the pieces will probably end in a pile which will slump down as loose pieces slide off of it.
The AC is totally right, glass is not a liquid it is an amorphous solid. Glass is not a supercooled liquid, it is just a solid that has some give in it due to the lack of much of a crystalline structure. Look at it this way, sand is a solid and yet it flows because each particle is weakly linked to the particles around it.
Slashdot Mirror
These come with 1 gig of RAM, so compared to the educational price it's just about a wash. The difference is that these systems are being sold to the general public, who would normally have to pay $2995 for these machines. That's a savings of around $200 with a bonus of 512 megs more RAM.
I've tried a few of those mirrors and have gotten only corrupted files. I've tried downloading with OmniWeb, Safari, IE, and even tried curl. No go, I just keep getting files that have corrupt bzip2 blocks...
In one word: yes.
Basically astronomers found that the universe was moving apart faster than would be expected from the Big Bang. Then they realized that objects were not being slowed down as much as would be expected by gravity. This is only seen on a very large scale (on the order of extremely deep field galaxies) so it is a very minor effect, but it is noticeable to astronomers. This and several other observations have led to the postulation that there might be a fifth force, one that is similar to gravity but opposite in direction - that is it repels matter rather than attracts it.
No one really understands the phenomenon fully and so it has been tagged with names like "dark energy" just to be able to talk about it easily. There are many theories about its origin, how it works, etc. but they are tenuous theories at best right now. It certainly seems that we are missing a big piece of the puzzle and that we need to investigate it further.
This is similar to the situation as when scientists found out that Mercury's orbit was not what they thought it should be. They even went so far as to propose there was a hidden planet in a orbit near Mercury which was changing Mercury's orbit slightly. They later found out the real reason for the "wobble" when Einstein came up with General Relativity and it was applied toward calculating Mercury's orbit. You can read more about this here.
An interesting concept indeed. However, what that is really doing is just moving the rules up a level. Suppose that the
"rules" of the immediate universe are changing on some level, whether caused by "intelligence" or by some sort of natural process. In the end that modifying factor is either itself governed by a set of rules or is fundamentally rule-less.
If the modifying factor is rule-less then there is no hope for ever truly understanding the nature of the universe, although we may still be able to get a grasp on some fundamental concepts that don't change often. On the other hand if the modifying factor does so according to some set of meta-rules then we still have the chance to figure out both our immediate rules and the meta-rules that govern how the modifying force works.
All of that is still pretty out there for us, what we do know is that the "rules" of our observable universe change extremely slowly, if they change at all. It is slow enough for us to treat the "rules" as being constant for reasonably large time periods on the order of billions of years.
Oh, I forgot to add this. Here is a good site that describes some of that I am talking about.
Gravity is weak in the short-range when compared to the three other known forces of nature. The four forces are gravity, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear. Gravity is an attractive force between all matter and energy, electromagnetic is an attractive and repulsive force between charged particles and magnetic fields, the strong nuclear force is what holds together protons and neutrons in an atom's nucleus and the weak nuclear force is what mediates electron and positron decay.
If you set the strength of gravity equal to 1 then the other forces have the following approximate strengths relative to gravity:
Strong nuclear force: 10^40
Electromagnetic force: 10^38
Weak nuclear force: 10^15
Gravity: 10^0
So why is gravity so important if it is so weak? The thing about gravity is that it falls off slowly with distance and it can't be negated or blocked (as far as we know). Other forces are either extremely short-range or, in the case of the electromagnetic force, have both an attractive and repulsive component that tends to cancel out in the long-run.
Actually it will make a huge difference. Just look at how Bohr's model of the atom changed chemistry and particle physics. Or how Plank's quantum theory caused a revolution in the physics community. And one of the most famous examples of an upset in scientific theory is Einstein's theory of Relativity verses the Newtonian theories most commonly held at the time.
Each of these theories caused an almost immediate revolution in their respective fields which spread out to similar disciplines. Fast forward 20, 30, 50 years or more and a number of innovations and inventions appear which stem from these theories. If these theories had not been introduced then we would most likely not have had such an explosion in technology.
Just because we wave our hands and say something is out there doesn't mean that we understand it or can use it. If we know the true mechanism behind dark matter and wether or not it is just "hand waving" then we can apply that knowledge to useful applications. For example, it is assumed that this dark energy exhibits a repulsive force similar to gravity but opposite to it in direction. If we truly understand how this works then we might be able to apply that knowledge toward "anti-gravity" spacecraft, etc. On the other hand if there is some other cause for the repulsion then we would need to know IT'S mechanism in order to utilize it.
In the end, science is the quest for truth, not convenience. Just knowing that there is a certain effect is not enough. Scientists are not looking to solve the question of "what is that" but rather "why does that exist and how does it work". That is why it is important to seek out the true reasons behind the dark matter observations.
Um, that would be because the US is NOT a democracy. It is a representative republic.
In a true democracy every person has a vote on every aspect of the way the government is run. In a representative republic you get to elect representatives who make the decisions for you.
In a representative republic you are essentially handing the reigns over to your representative, choose a poor one and you are pretty much stuck until you can get him out and a get a new representative into office. On the other hand a true democracy tends to collapse under its own weight after a few hundred people are a part of it, simply because large groups have problems with coming up with definite decisions.
Let's put it this way: it happens so often with Microsoft's competitors that it seems likely that either Microsoft is deliberately sabotaging rivals who code for Windows or Windows itself has some serious issues and causes a lot of programs to glitch. Either way it doesn't look good for Microsoft.
Now, since Microsoft has been convicted of being a monopoly that HAS abused its monopolistic position in the market I'm inclined to believe that Microsoft is deliberately causing these sort of issues. Especially since several of the very examples that I have mentioned that were part of the reason Microsoft was convicted.
Here's a little trick that works for Mac users and may work for Windows users.
Set your system clock ahead like 10 years, then run Quicktime player. When it asks you if you want Quicktime Pro hit the "Ask me later" type of option. Then quit Quicktime Player and reset your system clock to normal.
The next time Quicktime Player will nag you about Quicktime Pro will be 10 years from now!
Yeah, imagine that. It makes you wonder why Quicktime has problems under Windows. I mean, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that Quicktime competes with Windows Media Player, could it? There's no way Microsoft would stoop so low as to make Quicktime work badly on its systems! I mean it's not like anyone else ever had similar problems with Microsoft, right?
Sarcasm aside, maybe the answer is not to move towards a Windows Media Player solution for authoring, but rather away from it. If these guys have complaints about Real's actions with Real Player then they really should take a good hard look at the actions Microsoft has taken in the software market before they move to Windows Media Player.
I'm gonna do a "me too" on this one.
I have had a 1/2 dozen Apple laptops pass through my hands via home, work, family. The only serious problem I ever had was with a PowerBook 5300 CS. The power socket on that laptop had gotten bumped hard which caused it to break off internally, a common problem for many laptops. It was out of warranty but I brought it into the service center anyways to see how much it would cost to get repaired.
I found out that the PowerBook 5300 warranty had been extended because of this very issue. I handed the laptop off to the service center and they mailed it to Apple that day. Three days later the laptop was back. It had taken 1 day to get to Apple, 1 day to repair, and 1 day to get back. Apple not only repaired the power socket, they also replaced some scratched plastics and a plastic door which had been removed and lost. All of this at no cost to me.
I understand that things can happen to laptops but I think that the abundance of stories is due to the bad experiences getting top billing while the good experiences stay quiet. Not only that but Apple is also selling quite a few laptops these days so we are hearing a higher percentage of stories about them.
Let's take this one step further:
Take a drive out of a PC and put it into a Mac - Check.
Sure you can't boot off of the drive without installing a Macintosh operating system but all of the data on the drive will be accessible to the Mac if the drive was formatted with FAT or NTFS. I've done this a number of times to help my PC friends recover data from their crashed PCs and it works without a hitch.
Sure Mac OS is proprietary, but it hardly locks you in to a specific operating system. In fact Mac OS does a damn good job of trying to cooperate with as many other operating systems and file types as possible.
Contrary to popular belief, the smaller the hard drive the more resistant it is to damage due to shock. On a smaller drive the arm that the head is mounted on is shorter. A shorter arm has less give in it (try bending a piece of paperclip 2 inches long and a piece of paperclip 0.5 inches long) and thus the arm will be less likely to bend enough to crash into the hard drive's media.
The newest of these small drives have shock ratings on the order of 200 G while they are operating and 1500 G while the heads are parked.
Not to mention that Apple typically is not able to produce enough of these sort of items to fulfill demand. They probably had a choice: make x units and sell them at $199, making little profit and not being able to meet demand or make x units and sell them at $249, still selling all they could make. They will probably sell close to all the units they can make at either price, it just makes sense to sell at the higher price and make a good profit.
Once Apple's manufacturing capacity for these devices goes up their costs will go down due to economies of scale. By that time the demand for the iPod mini will have gone down. Apple can then drop the price, increasing demand to match their production capacity and still making a profit from the lower production costs.
No, Apple doesn't make any PROFIT on the iTunes Music Store. However, they do take some money out of each sale to cover stuff like bandwidth costs, equipment costs, personnel, etc. These charges amount to approximately 30 to 35 cents of a 99 cent song.
Those charges are basically keeping Apple's costs for iTMS at near zero, really neither making them a profit or causing them a loss on the venture. Apple justifies this as a loss-leader (free advertising) for iPod sales. It's a good, solid strategy and one which seems to be working well for Apple.
The rest of the money goes to the record label who then gives some money to the artist according to how the contract was written. Some labels, such as CD Baby, give most of the money to the artist. Some labels only give a small percentage to their artists. Apple has nothing to do with how this portion of the money is handled.
Forgiven, at least as far as I am concerned. Hey we all have bad days, at least you admitted you got off on the wrong foot there and apologized.
I took a listen to your band Crooked Crow on iTMS. Pretty good stuff, not exactly my style but if I was into something like that I'm sure I'd buy it. It's cool that you got onto iTMS as an independent artist, we need more people to do so. Choice is a wonderful force!
In my experience the Better Business Bureau is a paper tiger, it doesn't have any ability to back up its supposed powers of protecting the consumer.
I've contacted them on several problem companies and the response that I've gotten back has always been, "Sorry. We can only suggest to a company, we can't enforce." If the company doesn't agree with the issue then the Better Business Bureau doesn't do anything. They never even updated their web site with any of the complaints that were made.
Eutectic mixtures also do not exhibit a first order phase transition, yet when they are taken to a low enough temperature they are considered a solid. Glass does undergo a phase transition from liquid to solid, the fact that it is not first order does not mean that it isn't a liquid-solid phase transition.
Cool, always worth knowing EXACTLY what you are saying!
I'll have to keep this in mind in the future. But by the examples you have given isn't this still a fallacy? Someone is taking evidence (glass is thicker on the bottom) and the knowledge that glass is similar to a liquid in the fact that it is disordered and coming to the conclusion that glass is a slow-flowing liquid. That sounds like a flaw in reasoning rather than a lie.
Just because something flows slowly does not mean that it is a liquid. As I have stated elsewhere glass flows because it is an amorphous solid and the individual molecules of glass are weakly linked enough that they can rearrange to some extent. If there is a force acting upon these molecules then they will tend to be influenced by that force. This even happens in crystalline structures but to a much smaller extent.
To put it another way, a pile of sand is a solid and yet it can flow. A steel wire is a solid and yet if you put a weight on it it will begin to stretch and deform.
All solids flow to some extent. A thin thread of steel will flow under the same circumstances. The question is whether or not that means the substance is a liquid or not. The answer to that is no, glass and steel are not liquids at room temperature - no matter if they do flow slowly or not.
Glass is is an amorphous solid, a solid that has some give in it due to the lack of much of a crystalline structure. Look at it this way, sand is a solid and yet it flows because each particle is weakly linked to the particles around it. Glass is similar to this but on a molecular scale.
Imagine a solid as being a bunch of blocks that represent the molecules in that solid. If you cool that solid down slowly with a gentle vibration (due to thermal effects) the blocks have time for the natural attractions between themselves to manifest and stick themselves together in layers forming a very tight and ordered solid. On the other hand cool a substance down quickly and each brick just locks in place without packing neatly to the bricks near it. The resulting solid has a jumble of molecules that stuck every which way and whose attractive surfaces are not well aligned. Thus this disordered solid has less attraction between each molecule and it can settle and "flow", but it is not a liquid.
Try this experiment. Take a bucket of those small rectangular building bricks that kids use (not Legos). Put a bunch in a bucket and gently vibrate the bucket for a while. The parts will settle and will form a packed structure that won't move much. In fact if the bucket is full and you gently overturn the bucket you might be able to get a tower of pieces that will hardly move. Next try just randomly toss those pieces into the bucket and give it one rough shake. The pieces will settle some but will still have a lot of slip between them, if you overturn this bucketful the pieces will probably end in a pile which will slump down as loose pieces slide off of it.
The AC is totally right, glass is not a liquid it is an amorphous solid. Glass is not a supercooled liquid, it is just a solid that has some give in it due to the lack of much of a crystalline structure. Look at it this way, sand is a solid and yet it flows because each particle is weakly linked to the particles around it.
Whups, somehow my link was lost. Here is the link to optimizing the G5. And yes, I know it should be PowerPC not PowerPc!