I realize this is a cute 'correction' to establish your superiority, but it's wrong.
Sorry but you are very wrong - the avoirdupois pound came into use circa 1300. A quantitative understanding of mass came about several centuries later with Newton so I'd like to know how you come up with a unit for a concept which was not even thought of, let alone quantified, until 50-100 years later!
What you have just highlighted though is one of the (many) reasons why imperial units are stupid and inconsistent. The pound is a measure of weight which is a force otherwise you cannot explain the use of pounds per square inch as units for pressure. Imperial units use the slug as the unit of mass. Of course because everyone was using the SI system and people (incorrectly) regarded pounds and kilograms as equivalent units in the two systems were fixed by law in the 1960's effectively defining a weight using a mass which only works if you also assume a fixed value of gravitational field.
Moral of the story - imperial units are non-scientific, inconsistent and often have no agreed standard (e.g. pint) so use SI units!
You can never be 100% certain in science only so certain that no reasonable person would doubt it.
i want to lose a few pounds...you can have the higgs in those particles back....
Firstly pounds measure weight, not mass, so it is the Earth's gravitational field that causes your weight. Go visit inter-galactic space any you'll have no appreciable weight (low Earth orbit will have very little effect on your weight though - it's apparent, not true, weightlessness).
Secondly the Higgs causes the fundamental particles to have mass e..g electron, quarks, W/Z bosons etc. The vast majority of your mass comes from the protons and neutrons in the atomic nuclei which make up your body. This mass is almost entirely to do with the binding energy between the quarks and almost nothing to do with the Higgs. In fact, while the quark masses are hard to measure, the best estimate is that less than 0.1% of a proton or neutron mass comes from the quark masses i.e. from the Higgs.
You could always print a mold, and use that to cast the desired shape in any material of your own liking.
Not really - only a material with a lower melting point and which does not bond to the plastic can be used. So you are probably limited to wax but that could lead to some interesting, asymmetric candle designs.
Given the UK's extradition treaty with the US basically hands over our sovereign rights to the US with ridiculously low standards for extradition why would it make any sense to extradite him to Sweden first? Not only that but, under the terms of the European arrest warrant the UK would have to agree to let Sweden extradite him to the US.
At the same time if Sweden wants to just interview him why not send a couple of officers over to the UK, talk to him and if he is not convincing then extradite him to face charges? However this I can put down to incompetence/bureaucratic stupidity. The US concerns I think are just Assange's over active imagination. I'm sure the US wants to get him but they could do that far more easily in the UK than Sweden.
TV should already have closed captions, and it should be a minor technical hurdle for Netflix to provide it.
If they show US television shows and films shown in US cinemas then shouldn't ALL their content already have subtitles for the deaf? If not then why does Netflix have to provide this when cinemas and TV companies do not?
due to the borderless nature of the internet, what this guy does in the UK most certainly has an impact on the media business in the USA
True but only because the US lets people in the UK connect to its network. If you don't like what people in the UK can do legally in our own country then you are free to refuse all network traffic from the UK. If you choose to accept it then you have to accept the consequences too. It's entirely your decision which you are free to make as you wish as a sovereign nation. The only time extradition should be allowed is when the crime was committed while the culprit was on US soil and then fled to try and avoid US justice - it doesn't matter what the crime is copyright, murder, speeding etc.
but to say that killing, shooting in public or where not authorized, carrying a loaded weapon etc in your car does not lead to some form of punishment is 100% completely wrong.
So every time you do this a police officer will catch you and punish you? I doubt that very much - you might get caught if you are speeding and the officer checks your car but otherwise how will anyone know that you are doing this until an accident happens?
A car in the hands of someone not using it responsibly is a much bigger problem than a gun.
I am not sure that is true. More people may die on the roads each day than from gun violence and accidents but cars are in far more frequent use than guns so even with a far lower fatality rate per hour of use you would expect that. Also, rightly or wrongly, cars are essential for our modern way of life because they provide personal transport - guns are not. This is why we tolerate cars far more than guns because they provide something which everyone needs. Further, unlike a car, my understanding is that in the US there is no general requirement for gun user training before being allowed to use and own one.
Guns provide recreation through hunting, target practice etc. and so the question is - are you willing to risk death or serious injury for someone else's recreational enjoyment? If gun accidents were limited to affecting gun owners then I'd have no issue nor would I have an issue if we could trust people to treat their guns responsibly (as was the case in the past). Their may be laws requiring responsible gun ownership but given the number of gun deaths in the US - accidental or otherwise - these clearly do not work.
Perhaps a different way of looking at it is would you be happy to allow amateur nuclear reactor construction by curious members of the public? You could pass laws requiring all people doing this to do it in a safe and responsible manner. Of course if someone broke those laws and caused significant nuclear contamination to a housing estate they would get punished but that would still not cure your cancer or let you return to your house for the next century or two. So if I am not allowed to play with nuclear reactors at home because of the dangers of some idiot doing something stupid which affects others perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect others to forgo the use of guns for the same reason?
I don't think China have learned all that much in the interim.
I disagree - they have certainly learnt how to be brave. How many people do you know who would be willing to go into space in a craft with a "Made in China" sticker on the side?
No, that's "collective punishment"; not "common sense."
Why are the two mutually exclusive? As an outsider the problem I see with the US at the moment is that you have a society where nobody takes any responsibility for their actions (something which has also infected a lot of other countries) and you have guns freely available. This is not a good combination. Common sense tells you that either you need to alter your society so that people take responsibility for their actions i.e. learn gun safety before purchase, keep them locked away from kids, don't do target shooting in a dry forest etc. or that you need to take away the guns so people don't hurt themselves and others.
I'd much prefer a "responsible society" solution to the problem because it fixes a lot of other issues too and we know it works because that is how everyone's gun control used to work. However until we figure out a way to achieve that again people are dying due to the irresponsible use of guns and it is not just the people behaving irresponsibly who get killed. So until the we can figure out a way to gain a measure of self control as a society I would argue that gun control is common sense...but it is also a collective punishment.
By far and away the largest expense with maintenance of electric vehicles is the replacement cost of the battery pack
Correct - I actually did the calculation in a previous Slashdot post a while ago (that I can not longer find!) but the upshot was that the cost of fuelling a Tesla was the same cost as fuelling a petrol vehicle which achieved ~10 mpg e.g. a Hummer. This accounted for the cost of petrol (in the US), the price of electricity and the replacement cost of the battery using the Tesla rated mileage lifetime. Of course this is just to break even in fuel cost - to make the high initial price worthwhile you have to do better than break even. Given that most cars today achieve 30-40 mpg you'd need to see a increase of 3-4x in the price of petrol before break even and even more before the larger initial cost is financially justified.
Obviously there is the environmental question too but to be able to answer that you would have to now the environmental impact of manufacturing the battery pack as well as the electricity to charge it. My guess would be that the Tesla would come out on top overall but probably not by a lot (but that is a pure guess).
How much funding does the city have set aside to fight off 'illegal restraint of trade' lawsuits?
Well if the law states anywhere that the city should be "nuclear free" an alternative tack might be to insist on enforcement. Given that all atoms contain a nucleus the only course of action would be to demolish the city and relocate the inhabitants. The only nuclear free city is one which does not exist...unless someone can figure out how to build a city using dark matter.
Do you also suggest I remove all the "child safe" lids on the various poisonous things in the house?
Yes, well before kids are 7 they should know not to drink or eat random things found around the house. If not then a high shelf and child proof lids will not stop them because by that age they can easily get a stool or climb over counters to reach them and defeat a child proof lid. Hence you are living with a false sense of security leaving the child proof lids on....much like the false sense of security given by using child protection software on the web.
Does anyone think that the Canadians or French or Germans are falling over left and right due to contaminated drugs?
No, we are not. However in all fairness, in reverse I would not want to take drugs that the FDA had approved but which Health Canada had not (unless the risk was medically worth it) because of things like bovine growth hormone which the FDA (or at least some US government agency) has approved for use on cattle which enter the human food chain but which very few (any?) other countries have. While Americans may not be keeling over from this it is known to affect the development of children and potentially may affect your health.
Where I would be far more willing to trust the FDA is if a drug is approved for use in Canada but I could buy it cheaper in the US I see no problem in purchasing the FDA approved version of the drug on the basis that I expect US quality control standards on drugs to be as high as Canada's. However given the prevalence of for-profit healthcare in the US I cannot imagine that I will ever find a drug which is cheaper in the US than in Canada - those corporations have got to make their money somehow!
Well I am a Yorkshireman and after school dinners we sometimes had "secs" (meaning second helpings). However it you think about the pronunciation of that word you may understand what caused considerable confusion for me as a 7 year old when I came out of school and announced to my dad that "after dinner we had secs" and got into a lot of trouble...at least until he understood what I meant. Fortunately he did not "thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle" though so by Four Yorkshiremen standards I was very, very lucky!
Hmm...personally I think the stupidity lies with the person who can interpret a comment about the lack of a +5 funny mod (which is as aggregate opinion vs. a single persons and so by construction more reliable) as a claim that it is the ultimate indicator of humour. If such simple statements result in such misinterpretation and exaggeration then, no, clearly we can't trust you to interpret english text especially in regard to the more complex concept of humour.
...and if it doesn't then I clearly need more training, right? Ah well time to start studying again then I suppose. Jokes that have to be explained are always the funniest.
No Tesla did not invent AC generation, nor the AC motor nor did he conceive of AC power transmission. What he did do is package everything together and make a working system. Sound like a certain, recently deceased CEO?
Edison didn't even do that. Swan perfected the carbon filament and Edison copied him, got sued but had so much wealth there was no way for Swan to win so he settled out of court for Edison's UK operations. Tungsten came a quite a while later.
Not sure it is pride so much as incorrect training. I immediately leapt to the wrong answer to the bat and ball but then I subtracted the two, got 90 cents, realised I had messed up and corrected myself. What I was always taught as an undergrad in physics - and what I now try to teach to undergrads myself - is that no matter how smart you are you will always make mistakes. The trick is to cross check your answer to see whether it makes sense. You won't catch everything (at least I don't!) but every error caught is one less mistake.
Thing is : you have no clue what philanthropic work has been done by Jobs.
True, but it's irrelevant: I think that the premise of the original article is flawed - people are not remembered for the philanthropy. Look at Edison and Tesla. I've no clue whether either of them were philanthropists but they get remembered because we still use the gadgets they invented. If 100 years from now we are still using desktops and tablets in some form we'll remember the pioneers who originally "invented" them (yes I know Gates/Jobs did not invent the original gadgets but Edison did not invent, or even improve, the light bulb - he just marketed it well).
In this regard Jobs has a far better shot at history because he "invented" far more gadgets than Gates. Gates gave us a desktop OS but Jobs has given us tablets, smart phones, digital music players etc. plus a desktop OS. Ultimately though it will depend on what we are using 100 years from now.
Try looking up on a clear night. Those points on light you see are stars - there are several billion in our galaxy alone but most are too faint for the naked eye to see. Some of the fuzzy blobs that you'll see if you know where to look are distant galaxies, so far away that when the light you are seeing from them set out human beings had not yet evolved. There are billions of galaxies out there almost all of which are invisible to the naked eye.
All of that just makes up the luminous matter of the universe which is just over 1% of the whole universe. There is about 3 times more matter which is not glowing and which forms dust and gas clouds to make a total of just under 5% of the universe made up of the same basic stuff as you or I. However there is about 23% of the universe made up of something called Dark Matter which does not contain atoms or even the constituents of atoms and the remaining 72% is made up of dark energy which is the energy in a vacuum when you have removed everything from it.
...and all this is just the stuff that we know about.
As much as I dislike the word "cyber" and the overuse of it as a prefix, it's not really "wrong" anymore.
I agree, particularly in the context of US Homeland security we should refer to the new workforce as cybermen: emotionless, de-humanized creatures who have no compassion. Not only will this likely be accurate but it might also stop them using the term 'cyber' for everything.
Slashdot Mirror
I realize this is a cute 'correction' to establish your superiority, but it's wrong.
Sorry but you are very wrong - the avoirdupois pound came into use circa 1300. A quantitative understanding of mass came about several centuries later with Newton so I'd like to know how you come up with a unit for a concept which was not even thought of, let alone quantified, until 50-100 years later!
What you have just highlighted though is one of the (many) reasons why imperial units are stupid and inconsistent. The pound is a measure of weight which is a force otherwise you cannot explain the use of pounds per square inch as units for pressure. Imperial units use the slug as the unit of mass. Of course because everyone was using the SI system and people (incorrectly) regarded pounds and kilograms as equivalent units in the two systems were fixed by law in the 1960's effectively defining a weight using a mass which only works if you also assume a fixed value of gravitational field.
Moral of the story - imperial units are non-scientific, inconsistent and often have no agreed standard (e.g. pint) so use SI units!
when they can say with 100% call me
You can never be 100% certain in science only so certain that no reasonable person would doubt it.
i want to lose a few pounds...you can have the higgs in those particles back....
Firstly pounds measure weight, not mass, so it is the Earth's gravitational field that causes your weight. Go visit inter-galactic space any you'll have no appreciable weight (low Earth orbit will have very little effect on your weight though - it's apparent, not true, weightlessness).
Secondly the Higgs causes the fundamental particles to have mass e..g electron, quarks, W/Z bosons etc. The vast majority of your mass comes from the protons and neutrons in the atomic nuclei which make up your body. This mass is almost entirely to do with the binding energy between the quarks and almost nothing to do with the Higgs. In fact, while the quark masses are hard to measure, the best estimate is that less than 0.1% of a proton or neutron mass comes from the quark masses i.e. from the Higgs.
You could always print a mold, and use that to cast the desired shape in any material of your own liking.
Not really - only a material with a lower melting point and which does not bond to the plastic can be used. So you are probably limited to wax but that could lead to some interesting, asymmetric candle designs.
Given the UK's extradition treaty with the US basically hands over our sovereign rights to the US with ridiculously low standards for extradition why would it make any sense to extradite him to Sweden first? Not only that but, under the terms of the European arrest warrant the UK would have to agree to let Sweden extradite him to the US.
At the same time if Sweden wants to just interview him why not send a couple of officers over to the UK, talk to him and if he is not convincing then extradite him to face charges? However this I can put down to incompetence/bureaucratic stupidity. The US concerns I think are just Assange's over active imagination. I'm sure the US wants to get him but they could do that far more easily in the UK than Sweden.
TV should already have closed captions, and it should be a minor technical hurdle for Netflix to provide it.
If they show US television shows and films shown in US cinemas then shouldn't ALL their content already have subtitles for the deaf? If not then why does Netflix have to provide this when cinemas and TV companies do not?
Sorry but legislating against the sea rising was already tried 1,000 years ago. It didn't work then either.
due to the borderless nature of the internet, what this guy does in the UK most certainly has an impact on the media business in the USA
True but only because the US lets people in the UK connect to its network. If you don't like what people in the UK can do legally in our own country then you are free to refuse all network traffic from the UK. If you choose to accept it then you have to accept the consequences too. It's entirely your decision which you are free to make as you wish as a sovereign nation. The only time extradition should be allowed is when the crime was committed while the culprit was on US soil and then fled to try and avoid US justice - it doesn't matter what the crime is copyright, murder, speeding etc.
"That's impossible, trolls aren't real."
A better argument would be "Then how do you explain Slashdot".
but to say that killing, shooting in public or where not authorized, carrying a loaded weapon etc in your car does not lead to some form of punishment is 100% completely wrong.
So every time you do this a police officer will catch you and punish you? I doubt that very much - you might get caught if you are speeding and the officer checks your car but otherwise how will anyone know that you are doing this until an accident happens?
A car in the hands of someone not using it responsibly is a much bigger problem than a gun.
I am not sure that is true. More people may die on the roads each day than from gun violence and accidents but cars are in far more frequent use than guns so even with a far lower fatality rate per hour of use you would expect that. Also, rightly or wrongly, cars are essential for our modern way of life because they provide personal transport - guns are not. This is why we tolerate cars far more than guns because they provide something which everyone needs. Further, unlike a car, my understanding is that in the US there is no general requirement for gun user training before being allowed to use and own one.
Guns provide recreation through hunting, target practice etc. and so the question is - are you willing to risk death or serious injury for someone else's recreational enjoyment? If gun accidents were limited to affecting gun owners then I'd have no issue nor would I have an issue if we could trust people to treat their guns responsibly (as was the case in the past). Their may be laws requiring responsible gun ownership but given the number of gun deaths in the US - accidental or otherwise - these clearly do not work.
Perhaps a different way of looking at it is would you be happy to allow amateur nuclear reactor construction by curious members of the public? You could pass laws requiring all people doing this to do it in a safe and responsible manner. Of course if someone broke those laws and caused significant nuclear contamination to a housing estate they would get punished but that would still not cure your cancer or let you return to your house for the next century or two. So if I am not allowed to play with nuclear reactors at home because of the dangers of some idiot doing something stupid which affects others perhaps it is not unreasonable to expect others to forgo the use of guns for the same reason?
I don't think China have learned all that much in the interim.
I disagree - they have certainly learnt how to be brave. How many people do you know who would be willing to go into space in a craft with a "Made in China" sticker on the side?
No, that's "collective punishment"; not "common sense."
Why are the two mutually exclusive? As an outsider the problem I see with the US at the moment is that you have a society where nobody takes any responsibility for their actions (something which has also infected a lot of other countries) and you have guns freely available. This is not a good combination. Common sense tells you that either you need to alter your society so that people take responsibility for their actions i.e. learn gun safety before purchase, keep them locked away from kids, don't do target shooting in a dry forest etc. or that you need to take away the guns so people don't hurt themselves and others.
I'd much prefer a "responsible society" solution to the problem because it fixes a lot of other issues too and we know it works because that is how everyone's gun control used to work. However until we figure out a way to achieve that again people are dying due to the irresponsible use of guns and it is not just the people behaving irresponsibly who get killed. So until the we can figure out a way to gain a measure of self control as a society I would argue that gun control is common sense...but it is also a collective punishment.
By far and away the largest expense with maintenance of electric vehicles is the replacement cost of the battery pack
Correct - I actually did the calculation in a previous Slashdot post a while ago (that I can not longer find!) but the upshot was that the cost of fuelling a Tesla was the same cost as fuelling a petrol vehicle which achieved ~10 mpg e.g. a Hummer. This accounted for the cost of petrol (in the US), the price of electricity and the replacement cost of the battery using the Tesla rated mileage lifetime. Of course this is just to break even in fuel cost - to make the high initial price worthwhile you have to do better than break even. Given that most cars today achieve 30-40 mpg you'd need to see a increase of 3-4x in the price of petrol before break even and even more before the larger initial cost is financially justified.
Obviously there is the environmental question too but to be able to answer that you would have to now the environmental impact of manufacturing the battery pack as well as the electricity to charge it. My guess would be that the Tesla would come out on top overall but probably not by a lot (but that is a pure guess).
How much funding does the city have set aside to fight off 'illegal restraint of trade' lawsuits?
Well if the law states anywhere that the city should be "nuclear free" an alternative tack might be to insist on enforcement. Given that all atoms contain a nucleus the only course of action would be to demolish the city and relocate the inhabitants. The only nuclear free city is one which does not exist...unless someone can figure out how to build a city using dark matter.
Do you also suggest I remove all the "child safe" lids on the various poisonous things in the house?
Yes, well before kids are 7 they should know not to drink or eat random things found around the house. If not then a high shelf and child proof lids will not stop them because by that age they can easily get a stool or climb over counters to reach them and defeat a child proof lid. Hence you are living with a false sense of security leaving the child proof lids on....much like the false sense of security given by using child protection software on the web.
Does anyone think that the Canadians or French or Germans are falling over left and right due to contaminated drugs?
No, we are not. However in all fairness, in reverse I would not want to take drugs that the FDA had approved but which Health Canada had not (unless the risk was medically worth it) because of things like bovine growth hormone which the FDA (or at least some US government agency) has approved for use on cattle which enter the human food chain but which very few (any?) other countries have. While Americans may not be keeling over from this it is known to affect the development of children and potentially may affect your health.
Where I would be far more willing to trust the FDA is if a drug is approved for use in Canada but I could buy it cheaper in the US I see no problem in purchasing the FDA approved version of the drug on the basis that I expect US quality control standards on drugs to be as high as Canada's. However given the prevalence of for-profit healthcare in the US I cannot imagine that I will ever find a drug which is cheaper in the US than in Canada - those corporations have got to make their money somehow!
Well I am a Yorkshireman and after school dinners we sometimes had "secs" (meaning second helpings). However it you think about the pronunciation of that word you may understand what caused considerable confusion for me as a 7 year old when I came out of school and announced to my dad that "after dinner we had secs" and got into a lot of trouble...at least until he understood what I meant. Fortunately he did not "thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle" though so by Four Yorkshiremen standards I was very, very lucky!
Hmm...personally I think the stupidity lies with the person who can interpret a comment about the lack of a +5 funny mod (which is as aggregate opinion vs. a single persons and so by construction more reliable) as a claim that it is the ultimate indicator of humour. If such simple statements result in such misinterpretation and exaggeration then, no, clearly we can't trust you to interpret english text especially in regard to the more complex concept of humour.
I agrre that there is some stupidity here. However, given the lack of a +5 funny mod I don't think it lies with the reader.
...and if it doesn't then I clearly need more training, right? Ah well time to start studying again then I suppose. Jokes that have to be explained are always the funniest.
No Tesla did not invent AC generation, nor the AC motor nor did he conceive of AC power transmission. What he did do is package everything together and make a working system. Sound like a certain, recently deceased CEO?
Edison didn't even do that. Swan perfected the carbon filament and Edison copied him, got sued but had so much wealth there was no way for Swan to win so he settled out of court for Edison's UK operations. Tungsten came a quite a while later.
Not sure it is pride so much as incorrect training. I immediately leapt to the wrong answer to the bat and ball but then I subtracted the two, got 90 cents, realised I had messed up and corrected myself. What I was always taught as an undergrad in physics - and what I now try to teach to undergrads myself - is that no matter how smart you are you will always make mistakes. The trick is to cross check your answer to see whether it makes sense. You won't catch everything (at least I don't!) but every error caught is one less mistake.
Thing is : you have no clue what philanthropic work has been done by Jobs.
True, but it's irrelevant: I think that the premise of the original article is flawed - people are not remembered for the philanthropy. Look at Edison and Tesla. I've no clue whether either of them were philanthropists but they get remembered because we still use the gadgets they invented. If 100 years from now we are still using desktops and tablets in some form we'll remember the pioneers who originally "invented" them (yes I know Gates/Jobs did not invent the original gadgets but Edison did not invent, or even improve, the light bulb - he just marketed it well).
In this regard Jobs has a far better shot at history because he "invented" far more gadgets than Gates. Gates gave us a desktop OS but Jobs has given us tablets, smart phones, digital music players etc. plus a desktop OS. Ultimately though it will depend on what we are using 100 years from now.
I realized that we are the f*cking universe.
Try looking up on a clear night. Those points on light you see are stars - there are several billion in our galaxy alone but most are too faint for the naked eye to see. Some of the fuzzy blobs that you'll see if you know where to look are distant galaxies, so far away that when the light you are seeing from them set out human beings had not yet evolved. There are billions of galaxies out there almost all of which are invisible to the naked eye.
...and all this is just the stuff that we know about.
All of that just makes up the luminous matter of the universe which is just over 1% of the whole universe. There is about 3 times more matter which is not glowing and which forms dust and gas clouds to make a total of just under 5% of the universe made up of the same basic stuff as you or I. However there is about 23% of the universe made up of something called Dark Matter which does not contain atoms or even the constituents of atoms and the remaining 72% is made up of dark energy which is the energy in a vacuum when you have removed everything from it.
So no, we are not the universe, sorry.
As much as I dislike the word "cyber" and the overuse of it as a prefix, it's not really "wrong" anymore.
I agree, particularly in the context of US Homeland security we should refer to the new workforce as cybermen: emotionless, de-humanized creatures who have no compassion. Not only will this likely be accurate but it might also stop them using the term 'cyber' for everything.