The worst part about this is that you are probably going to convince some other poor slob to try this
He'll have a hard time if they read the ruling first! He could have claimed far more money: all the profits the defendants received from the publications. Plus, on top of that, he would have had a lawyer to do all the work for free since the fees would very likely have been assessed against the defendants as well.
My reading of the judge's ruling was that, while she was clearly very sympathetic to him and had a very low opinion of the defendants, she was also pointing out all the mistakes he made - effectively driving home the point you make.
It does not explain why the inertial and gravitational mass are the same. It does explain why energy and mass are the same though. Essentially, if the Higgs mechanism is correct, even the mass of fundamental particles comes from a binding energy. To understand why inertial and gravitational masses are equal you need to understand the gravitational force which we might be able to do at the LHC if something called 'Large Extra Dimensions' is a correct model of the universe (but while extremely enticing from an experimental point of view - experimental quantum gravity! - my personal belief is that such theories are extremely unlikely to be correct since they introduce some additional problems which are ugly to fix).
I've never understood something about the Higgs boson. It is supposed to give the massive bosons their mass, right? And yet, at the same time, it is itself supposed to be a massive boson, right?
Yes that is correct, the Higgs boson gives itself mass. If you use John Ellis' example of the Higgs field being like mud and the more the mud sticks to an object the heavier, and harder, to move it becomes. Well imagine you try to move a lump of mud. Mud sticks to mud so even just moving a lump of mud will be hard. This is what the Higgs boson is, metaphorically speaking.
Unless you are going to invoke "relativistic mass" (fewer and fewer physicists use this term--mainly because a relativistic mass is the same damned thing as relativistic energy, given the correspondence between mass and energy)
Actually the reason physicists don't use the term is that, at best, it is misleading and at a fundamental level is simply wrong. Mass is a Lorentz invariant: it does not change no matter HOW fast you are going. Einstein himself knew this and advised against referring to it as such. Despite this many undergrad text books irritatingly refer to it and then tell you not to use it. Which is like giving a sweet to a kid and then telling them not to eat it!
In particle physics gravity couples to the particle's 4-momentum. You can actually construct a working field theory for gravity using a spin-2 mediator, the graviton. Unfortunately you have to put an energy cut-off into the theory i.e. it is good up to energy E and not above. Since there is no justification for this (and without it you cannot perform any loop calculations) this is the reason for discarding it and looking for something better.
No, the Higgs is basically a binding energy. Effectively most particles stick to the Higgs field and some are more sticky (higher mass) than others. Obviously the more you stick the harder it is to move yourself to somewhere else and this is what we perceive as mass for fundamental particles. (Note: most of the mass of normal matter has nothing at all to do with the Higgs!).
The particle physics view of gravity is a force which couples to the energy (technically the 4-momentum) of a particle, so any particle with energy will feel it. Since 'mass' is simply the energy of a particle at rest and is typically far greater than the kinetic energy (for most particles) this is why Newton came to the conclusion that only objects will mass feel gravity. However, in reality, any particle with energy will feel gravity.
Things falling to the ground is a fact; one explanation for it is Newton's theory of gravitation, also called gravity.
Actually not true. That things have fallen to the ground is a fact. That they will continue to do so is a prediction based on previous observation. All you have observed is that every object in the past has fallen when you let it go. However that is not a guarantee that tomorrow you won't find an object, let it go, and find it 'falling' upwards.
The example you give is a good point in kind. Newtonian gravity, while fine for apples falling on your head, cannot explain the orbital precession of Mercury or gravitational lensing. This is why we have General Relativity. The only scientific facts are past observations. Theories are predictions of what will happen in various circumstances based on those past observations.
Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator...are currently amassing the first scientific evidence that there is more matter than antimatter in the universe
That is just plain wrong. They are studying CP violation which is the difference between matter and anti-matter this might help to explain the huge excess of matter over antimatter that astronomers already observe in the Universe but it is known the the effects we understand today with B and K mesons (which is what they are studying) cannot explain it by itself.
Secondly they are NOT the first to observe CP violation by a long shot. It was first discovered in Kaons by Christenson, Cronin, Fitch and Turlay at Brookhaven in 1964 a discovery for which they won the Nobel prize.
Unless we are able to predict every possible action and place it on the correct side of the legal/illegal line, we have to make allowances that sometimes people will find themselves in a set of circumstances that we hadn't anticipated where we find otherwise bad behavior to be completely acceptable or even desirable.
I always thought that was what the power to pardon someone was for.
So far the US is the only place I have been where I have had to have my fingerprints taken as well as my picture....and then they charge me a $6 entrance fee (plane passengers don't see this because it is included in the fare). While the guards are generally polite and friendly the whole procedure makes me feel like I'm being treated like a criminal. It certainly does not make me feel like a welcome visitor more like they are grudgingly letting me in.
Again, the Constitution expressely forbids this.. for now.
So why are they passing this law then? I thought the US constitution forbade retroactively applying laws...but I'm not American. So surely this vote doesn't matter one jot: the constitution overrules it? Or is is just uni-directional. You cannot make something retroactively illegal but you can make it retroactively legal.
What about necrophilia? There is probably some latin name for bestiality as well but that is just something I am not willing to search for on Google! Finally there is also haemophilia which has nothing to do with loving blood at all.
And the articles don't give enough details to judge much.
True, but they do give a hint. He mentions using a permanent magnet. One good way to fool yourself is to power the device from the slowly decaying field of a permanent magnet.
It's not some magical, physics breaking, mysterious subject. It's matter with no light shining on it.
Apart from the fact that dark matter in galaxies is distributed as a spherical halo whereas the normal matter is distrubuted as a disk the after glow of the Big Bang shows that dark matter is not normal, atomic matter.
The WMAP probe measured the temperature variations of the huge cloud of plasma that was the entire universe for the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The problem is that for temperature variations the plasma must have had different densities this means that something must have been causing the plasma to clump (plasma is like water: if you try to compress it at a point and then remove the compression force the particles bounce off each other and form waves so no more clumping).
Ok so far? Well to make the clumps we need gravity so the problem now is what compressed the plasma? If cannot have had an electric charge because then it would get bound up with the charges in the plasma and act as part of the plasma (EM forces are a lot stronger than gravity). Hence it much be neutral. If we look at all the stable particles we know of only one type of particle fits the bill: the neutrino.
Unfortunately the neutrinos are very light and rarely interact with anything (you would need light years thickness of material to stop them!). The result of this is that they are produced early on in the Big Bang when the density was very high but when the energies were also very high. This means that they are very fast moving particles. So if we had a "clump" of neutrinos they would quickly move apart and spread the clump out. The problem is that the size of the clumps in the WMAP picture are far too small to be explained by neutrinos.
So, the result of this is that we need a massive, neutral particle that is slow moving....and we don't have any. Hence the need for something new. The question is whether this new particle will interact just through gravity or through both gravity and the weak force. The latter will mean we can produce and detect it in particle accelerators if we have enough energy but the former will mean that it will likely remain out of reach for the foreseeable future.
Yes you do. It is a generic term in English referring to "a political assembly in which elected representatives talk about and vote upon proposed laws". While it is also used as the name of the British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand etc. national (and in some cases provincial) legislative assemblies it does have a generic meaning as well. Hence you can refer to the "German parliament" meaning the Bundestag and the Bundesrat combined. Likewise the term "US parliament" can be used to refer to the US upper and lower houses. The reason I used the term was because I was not sure whether 'congress' referred to just the lower house or both houses but I knew the 'parliament', in its generic sense, did.
I mean, all they had to do was install some free (free!) encryption software like PGP, and there'd have been no problem.
Perhaps not a problem for the lawyers but you would likely have your billion dollar clients demanding to know why the email you sent contained apparently random characters. You could explain about encryption and how to do it but you would then have to persuade their IT department to install the required code, educate the users etc etc. Mind you a link to this story might be a very persuasive in convincing them that it is worthwhile.
Question Three: How does one define typosquatting? dellstuff.com? delltrucking.com? dall.com?
I imagine it depends on you showing a 'valid' reason for the name. For example if your surname is 'Dall' and you register 'Dall.com' presumably it would be a lot harder to claim typo-squatting than registering 'hallmart.com' and using it to sell greetings cards and cheap stuff....although in the latter case you might get away with it since they would probably end up fighting over who should get the domain name!
It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).
The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.
That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.
Why is that? Can't women be just as inventive as men? It always amuses me when I hear women say things like that as a way to put down men. Really it is just saying that they don't believe that women can invent useful things which is clearly a ridiculous statement.
You can try claiming many things about the Pope, but to say he's talking out of ignorance is probably not something that will hold up under scrutiny.
I did not say he was ignorant: I said he did not understand science. The fact that he has suggested that Galileo's trial was fair says a lot about how much he understands science. In addition, for the case in question, he has zero experience of human reproduction and no science qualifications of which I am aware so I fail to see how the pope is really qualified to judge the scientific matters in question. I'm sure he has vast experience regarding theology but that is only half of the puzzle.
What about a guy who has Ph.Ds in both astro-physics and theology? Is he qualified to speak about this? Or the guy who thought of the Big Bang? An atomic physicist that inspired Faraday? Or the people who published some of these papers?
...and are any of these guys the pope? Plus, to be honest, no I don't think that astro-physicists are qualified to speak with authority on biological matters, any more than I am as a particle physicist. This is especially true for those who are Catholic priests given their complete lack of experience regarding having a family.
Some of the greatest minds have been part of the Church and have striven to find the truth--both morally and scientifically.
Indeed they have to the great benefit of all. I'm a christian myself although an anglican (but then nobody's perfect:-). In fact I'd love to visit the Vatican Observatory at some point and meet the astronomer-priests there. I have a great deal of admiration for them for showing that, in an increasingly hostile religion vs. science environment that not only are the two compatible but the science is important to religion for keeping it 'on track'.
The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'
Since this is MS shouldn't his favourite saying be "Cancel or Allow?"
Slashdot Mirror
The worst part about this is that you are probably going to convince some other poor slob to try this
He'll have a hard time if they read the ruling first! He could have claimed far more money: all the profits the defendants received from the publications. Plus, on top of that, he would have had a lawyer to do all the work for free since the fees would very likely have been assessed against the defendants as well.
My reading of the judge's ruling was that, while she was clearly very sympathetic to him and had a very low opinion of the defendants, she was also pointing out all the mistakes he made - effectively driving home the point you make.
It does not explain why the inertial and gravitational mass are the same. It does explain why energy and mass are the same though. Essentially, if the Higgs mechanism is correct, even the mass of fundamental particles comes from a binding energy. To understand why inertial and gravitational masses are equal you need to understand the gravitational force which we might be able to do at the LHC if something called 'Large Extra Dimensions' is a correct model of the universe (but while extremely enticing from an experimental point of view - experimental quantum gravity! - my personal belief is that such theories are extremely unlikely to be correct since they introduce some additional problems which are ugly to fix).
I've never understood something about the Higgs boson. It is supposed to give the massive bosons their mass, right? And yet, at the same time, it is itself supposed to be a massive boson, right?
Yes that is correct, the Higgs boson gives itself mass. If you use John Ellis' example of the Higgs field being like mud and the more the mud sticks to an object the heavier, and harder, to move it becomes. Well imagine you try to move a lump of mud. Mud sticks to mud so even just moving a lump of mud will be hard. This is what the Higgs boson is, metaphorically speaking.
How strong are they in the Higgs Boson?
:-)
Well, according to this one's wife, far too strong...at least she's always telling me I need to lose some mass!
...but shouldn't they be focusing on something much more worthwhile? Like a working model of a lightsabre. Now that'd be really cool...
Hey - we are still working on your flying car. These things take time!!
Unless you are going to invoke "relativistic mass" (fewer and fewer physicists use this term--mainly because a relativistic mass is the same damned thing as relativistic energy, given the correspondence between mass and energy)
Actually the reason physicists don't use the term is that, at best, it is misleading and at a fundamental level is simply wrong. Mass is a Lorentz invariant: it does not change no matter HOW fast you are going. Einstein himself knew this and advised against referring to it as such. Despite this many undergrad text books irritatingly refer to it and then tell you not to use it. Which is like giving a sweet to a kid and then telling them not to eat it!
In particle physics gravity couples to the particle's 4-momentum. You can actually construct a working field theory for gravity using a spin-2 mediator, the graviton. Unfortunately you have to put an energy cut-off into the theory i.e. it is good up to energy E and not above. Since there is no justification for this (and without it you cannot perform any loop calculations) this is the reason for discarding it and looking for something better.
So basically, gravity?
No, the Higgs is basically a binding energy. Effectively most particles stick to the Higgs field and some are more sticky (higher mass) than others. Obviously the more you stick the harder it is to move yourself to somewhere else and this is what we perceive as mass for fundamental particles. (Note: most of the mass of normal matter has nothing at all to do with the Higgs!).
The particle physics view of gravity is a force which couples to the energy (technically the 4-momentum) of a particle, so any particle with energy will feel it. Since 'mass' is simply the energy of a particle at rest and is typically far greater than the kinetic energy (for most particles) this is why Newton came to the conclusion that only objects will mass feel gravity. However, in reality, any particle with energy will feel gravity.
Things falling to the ground is a fact; one explanation for it is Newton's theory of gravitation, also called gravity.
Actually not true. That things have fallen to the ground is a fact. That they will continue to do so is a prediction based on previous observation. All you have observed is that every object in the past has fallen when you let it go. However that is not a guarantee that tomorrow you won't find an object, let it go, and find it 'falling' upwards.
The example you give is a good point in kind. Newtonian gravity, while fine for apples falling on your head, cannot explain the orbital precession of Mercury or gravitational lensing. This is why we have General Relativity. The only scientific facts are past observations. Theories are predictions of what will happen in various circumstances based on those past observations.
You don't get the chance to review the contract before you sign it.
Sign it? I've never signed a EULA. I might have clicked 'I agree' but that carries no legal weight, at least in the UK. They need my signature.
Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator...are currently amassing the first scientific evidence that there is more matter than antimatter in the universe
That is just plain wrong. They are studying CP violation which is the difference between matter and anti-matter this might help to explain the huge excess of matter over antimatter that astronomers already observe in the Universe but it is known the the effects we understand today with B and K mesons (which is what they are studying) cannot explain it by itself.
Secondly they are NOT the first to observe CP violation by a long shot. It was first discovered in Kaons by Christenson, Cronin, Fitch and Turlay at Brookhaven in 1964 a discovery for which they won the Nobel prize.
Unless we are able to predict every possible action and place it on the correct side of the legal/illegal line, we have to make allowances that sometimes people will find themselves in a set of circumstances that we hadn't anticipated where we find otherwise bad behavior to be completely acceptable or even desirable.
I always thought that was what the power to pardon someone was for.
So far the US is the only place I have been where I have had to have my fingerprints taken as well as my picture....and then they charge me a $6 entrance fee (plane passengers don't see this because it is included in the fare). While the guards are generally polite and friendly the whole procedure makes me feel like I'm being treated like a criminal. It certainly does not make me feel like a welcome visitor more like they are grudgingly letting me in.
Again, the Constitution expressely forbids this.. for now.
So why are they passing this law then? I thought the US constitution forbade retroactively applying laws...but I'm not American. So surely this vote doesn't matter one jot: the constitution overrules it? Or is is just uni-directional. You cannot make something retroactively illegal but you can make it retroactively legal.
What about necrophilia? There is probably some latin name for bestiality as well but that is just something I am not willing to search for on Google! Finally there is also haemophilia which has nothing to do with loving blood at all.
And the articles don't give enough details to judge much.
True, but they do give a hint. He mentions using a permanent magnet. One good way to fool yourself is to power the device from the slowly decaying field of a permanent magnet.
It's not some magical, physics breaking, mysterious subject. It's matter with no light shining on it.
Apart from the fact that dark matter in galaxies is distributed as a spherical halo whereas the normal matter is distrubuted as a disk the after glow of the Big Bang shows that dark matter is not normal, atomic matter.
The WMAP probe measured the temperature variations of the huge cloud of plasma that was the entire universe for the first 380,000 years after the Big Bang. The problem is that for temperature variations the plasma must have had different densities this means that something must have been causing the plasma to clump (plasma is like water: if you try to compress it at a point and then remove the compression force the particles bounce off each other and form waves so no more clumping).
Ok so far? Well to make the clumps we need gravity so the problem now is what compressed the plasma? If cannot have had an electric charge because then it would get bound up with the charges in the plasma and act as part of the plasma (EM forces are a lot stronger than gravity). Hence it much be neutral. If we look at all the stable particles we know of only one type of particle fits the bill: the neutrino.
Unfortunately the neutrinos are very light and rarely interact with anything (you would need light years thickness of material to stop them!). The result of this is that they are produced early on in the Big Bang when the density was very high but when the energies were also very high. This means that they are very fast moving particles. So if we had a "clump" of neutrinos they would quickly move apart and spread the clump out. The problem is that the size of the clumps in the WMAP picture are far too small to be explained by neutrinos.
So, the result of this is that we need a massive, neutral particle that is slow moving....and we don't have any. Hence the need for something new. The question is whether this new particle will interact just through gravity or through both gravity and the weak force. The latter will mean we can produce and detect it in particle accelerators if we have enough energy but the former will mean that it will likely remain out of reach for the foreseeable future.
Yes you do. It is a generic term in English referring to "a political assembly in which elected representatives talk about and vote upon proposed laws". While it is also used as the name of the British, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand etc. national (and in some cases provincial) legislative assemblies it does have a generic meaning as well. Hence you can refer to the "German parliament" meaning the Bundestag and the Bundesrat combined. Likewise the term "US parliament" can be used to refer to the US upper and lower houses. The reason I used the term was because I was not sure whether 'congress' referred to just the lower house or both houses but I knew the 'parliament', in its generic sense, did.
I mean, all they had to do was install some free (free!) encryption software like PGP, and there'd have been no problem.
Perhaps not a problem for the lawyers but you would likely have your billion dollar clients demanding to know why the email you sent contained apparently random characters. You could explain about encryption and how to do it but you would then have to persuade their IT department to install the required code, educate the users etc etc. Mind you a link to this story might be a very persuasive in convincing them that it is worthwhile.
Question Three: How does one define typosquatting? dellstuff.com? delltrucking.com? dall.com?
I imagine it depends on you showing a 'valid' reason for the name. For example if your surname is 'Dall' and you register 'Dall.com' presumably it would be a lot harder to claim typo-squatting than registering 'hallmart.com' and using it to sell greetings cards and cheap stuff....although in the latter case you might get away with it since they would probably end up fighting over who should get the domain name!
It is very good for the physical sciences (with double-digit percentage increases to many agencies).
The news is not all that good. What you have to remember is that this 17% is coming on top of a cut in 2008 so the net increase is far smaller. Not only that but the effects of the cut this year were greatly magnified because they were retroactively made 3 months into the financial year! Hence some of the money which was cut had already been spent and, since it could not be retroactively reclaimed, resulted in far greater damage to the programs.
That being said I'm sure my american colleagues will be happy with this but, since it was the US parliament which butchered the budget this year I don't think they'll be celebrating until it actually gets enacted.
I don't have $100k but I do have $40, a web browser and a basic knowledge of electronics. If you do too you might want to try this link.
Why is that? Can't women be just as inventive as men? It always amuses me when I hear women say things like that as a way to put down men. Really it is just saying that they don't believe that women can invent useful things which is clearly a ridiculous statement.
You can try claiming many things about the Pope, but to say he's talking out of ignorance is probably not something that will hold up under scrutiny.
...and are any of these guys the pope? Plus, to be honest, no I don't think that astro-physicists are qualified to speak with authority on biological matters, any more than I am as a particle physicist. This is especially true for those who are Catholic priests given their complete lack of experience regarding having a family.
:-). In fact I'd love to visit the Vatican Observatory at some point and meet the astronomer-priests there. I have a great deal of admiration for them for showing that, in an increasingly hostile religion vs. science environment that not only are the two compatible but the science is important to religion for keeping it 'on track'.
I did not say he was ignorant: I said he did not understand science. The fact that he has suggested that Galileo's trial was fair says a lot about how much he understands science. In addition, for the case in question, he has zero experience of human reproduction and no science qualifications of which I am aware so I fail to see how the pope is really qualified to judge the scientific matters in question. I'm sure he has vast experience regarding theology but that is only half of the puzzle.
What about a guy who has Ph.Ds in both astro-physics and theology? Is he qualified to speak about this? Or the guy who thought of the Big Bang? An atomic physicist that inspired Faraday? Or the people who published some of these papers?
Some of the greatest minds have been part of the Church and have striven to find the truth--both morally and scientifically.
Indeed they have to the great benefit of all. I'm a christian myself although an anglican (but then nobody's perfect
The daily Web comic, called Heroes Happen Here, features tech savvy crime fighters like Lord Firewall, who "stands between chaos and order" and says things like "begone vermin!"'
Since this is MS shouldn't his favourite saying be "Cancel or Allow?"