The Mac variant of that that I always used to see supported but I believe has been supported less and less lately - let me test it now, yep, Safari doesn't do it in this text box, nor does TextEdit- is that the triple-click would select that LINE, and quadruple-click would select a paragraph.
I just checked and BBEdit seems to flaw in the other direction - triple-click selects lines now, but no matter of clicks will select the paragraph. I used to think of this as a Mac vs Win difference but apparently it's not standard on the Mac anymore.
While I'm at it, I'd like to bitch about MS's stupid behavior that hitting "down" on the bottom line of a text (produced a beep, rather than going to the end of the line. I just verified that THAT at least still works in OSX standard text-handling apps (this box in Safari, TextEdit, BBEdit), but not in Word, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't work anywhere in Window. Pisses me off to no end when forced to use Wintel boxen.
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "what direction are they rotating/orbiting". I understand that both bodies are orbiting each other - I believe I even used some language in my previous post that indicated such. The question, with respect to some sense of an absolute frame of reference, can you tell what direction - as in clockwise or counterclockwise, relative to whatever point "above" or "below" their orbital plane you choose - are these two bodies orbiting each other?
Rewinding a bit - we can tell by the fact that they are not falling straight into eachother that they are orbiting eachother. We can tell by their masses and orbital paths their speed. But, alone in the universe, as they appear stationary to each other, is there any way to say what DIRECTION they are orbiting in?
The Earth and a geostationary satellite, as a closed system ignoring the rest of the universe, appear stationary to each other. If the Earth spun the other direction (so the sun rose in the west, if we weren't ignoring it), and the satellite orbited the other direction too, they would STILL appear stationary. So if there were no outside univese to compare too, how would you know what direction they are rotating and orbiting?
Let me perhaps phrase this another way... You (a disembodied observer, for simplicity) see in otherwise empty space a small, inert, solid body hovering near a larger, inert, solid body. You can infer from this situation, assuming normal substances with no strange gravitic properties, that is must be hovering in geostationary orbit, since there is no other way that scenario could exist. I suppose you could also determine from the masses of the bodies and height of the orbit how fast they must be spinning/orbiting, though relative to you and each other they appear stationary.
Alright, so an orbiting body is stationary relative to itself, and feels no acceleration, you say.
If it is also geostationary, and nothing exists but the satellite and what it orbits... then the original question still stands.
Both things are, as far as you can measure, standing perfectly still, and the only reason to think they are in orbit is because the satellite isn't falling straight down into the planet. So relative to what is the satellite moving, if not the planet, that makes it "orbiting" and not "magically hovering in defiance of gravity"? Space?
Ok, I get that the acceleration, not your velocity, is what's causing time dialation effects and such; but acceleration is a change in velocity, and velocity can only be measured relative to something and if there is nothing else in the universe, what is your velocity relative TO?
With the spaceship you might say it's own fuel exhaust, but take the geostationary satellite again. Simplify the model a lot to avoid any unforseen complications: two perfect marble spheres, one really big one, one smaller one. The smaller one is hovering in geostationary orbit above a particular vein in the larger one. A satellite is accelerating, because it is constantly changing it's velocity (maybe not speed, but direction, due to gravity). But in this model universe, EVERYTHING in the universe is perfectly stationary relative to themselves; so how can the sphere be changing it's velocity if it's not moving at all relative to anything? Why doesn't it just fall?
If we go there and look and see that it's not falling, we can deduce that it must be orbiting, but since it's not moving relative to any THING else in the universe, doesn't that mean it most be moving relative to some... non-thing, some universal frame of reference? Or is it simply (as someone below suggested) that the presence of everything else in the universe somehow makes these satellites stay in orbit? If some God made the rest of the universe suddenly spin geostationary to the Earth, would all of our satellites fall down? That doesn't make any sense to me. A universal frame of reference does.
A workable solution might be some sort of relay device... you have a thing on the surface that knows where it is via GPS, and broadcasts a stronger signal in a limited arc (downward only) to the speilunkers below, who can use that to figure out where THEY are.
"Einstein says you can see it either way, and both perspective are valid but they don't necessarily reconcile in a traditional sense."
Except that they HAVE to reconcile somehow - not that they have to match, but that you have to be able to get some repeatable results, otherwise it's not science. If I took two synchronized clocks and send one on a high-speed rocket spinning around the Earth a few times, the clock from the rocket would be running slightly slower than the clock left on Earth. People have done such experiments with those results. Why don't the people on the rocket come back and see the Earth's clocks all running slow?
Maybe someone can explain this to me, cause none of my physics teachers ever could.
In modern physics, there is no "absolute" frame of reference, correct? There's no notion of something that is TRUELY stationary against which all other motion is measured, it's all relative to each other.
So say you had a hypothetical universe containing only two bodies - lets say a large moon with no atmosphere, and a spaceship. The moon is spinning, and the spaceship is in geostationary orbit around it.
What's to say that the spaceship is actually in geostationary orbit and not just STATIONARY if there is nothing else to measure their motion against? These two things are all that exist in this hypothetical universe and they are stationary relative to each other, so why aren't they 'absolutely' stationary, causing the spaceship just to fall? How do you know the moon is really even spinning?
The way I usually phrased this to physics professors was that if the spaceship, floating in space for all it knows, comes flying past the moon at near light speed, why do we assume the spaceship is moving at near lightspeed and therefore clocks on it run slower, rather than the moon is hurtling through space at near lightspeed past a stationary ship?
I can't seem to reconcile this in my mind without some notion of an absolute frame of reference, even if we can't measure what it is. I suppose we could tell what is closer to that frame of reference by seeing if, for example, the spaceship falls from it's "geostationary" orbit because the moon wasn't actually spinning, etc; or seeing which clocks dialate which way when two objects move relative to each other at high velocities...
If I ever have a son I plan to name him John Septavius (and my last name is Cameranesi, so it's already Roman).
I take the James T. Kirk approach. Kirk - eh, it's a last name. James - boring first name. But what's this "T" thing for? "Tiberius" of all things!
Give your kid a normal first name, but an awesome middle name. That way if/when he wants to be joe schmoe on the playground he can just be, say, "John", but when he wants to sound impressive in a credit or title somewhere, he can be "John Septavius"!
Not that I'm ungrateful to the cheese-givers, cause it was five big hunks of assorted good cheeses, but everybody else sucks. Then again I didn't get anybody else anything; well, besides letting my mom off for $250 in debt she owes me and "loaning" my dad $200 for misc expenses (and modifying my taxes so that he gets more money back at my $350 expense, which he promises to pay me back out of his return... yeah right).
Now watch, I get home from work and all my cheese is eaten...
I've got the entire thing saved, HTML, graphics and all... not a regular/. reader though, so if Apple does kill it and I am somehow the only one who saved it all, just ask Kira and he can get in touch with me through Subnova.
Slashdot Mirror
The Mac variant of that that I always used to see supported but I believe has been supported less and less lately - let me test it now, yep, Safari doesn't do it in this text box, nor does TextEdit- is that the triple-click would select that LINE, and quadruple-click would select a paragraph.
I just checked and BBEdit seems to flaw in the other direction - triple-click selects lines now, but no matter of clicks will select the paragraph. I used to think of this as a Mac vs Win difference but apparently it's not standard on the Mac anymore.
While I'm at it, I'd like to bitch about MS's stupid behavior that hitting "down" on the bottom line of a text (produced a beep, rather than going to the end of the line. I just verified that THAT at least still works in OSX standard text-handling apps (this box in Safari, TextEdit, BBEdit), but not in Word, and I'm fairly sure it doesn't work anywhere in Window. Pisses me off to no end when forced to use Wintel boxen.
"-1 Offtopic" does not mean "I don't get it".
(for the clue-impaired: cellular rights... amoebas are single-celled organisms... penecillin is produced from bacteria...)
I think you misunderstood what I meant by "what direction are they rotating/orbiting". I understand that both bodies are orbiting each other - I believe I even used some language in my previous post that indicated such. The question, with respect to some sense of an absolute frame of reference, can you tell what direction - as in clockwise or counterclockwise, relative to whatever point "above" or "below" their orbital plane you choose - are these two bodies orbiting each other?
Rewinding a bit - we can tell by the fact that they are not falling straight into eachother that they are orbiting eachother. We can tell by their masses and orbital paths their speed. But, alone in the universe, as they appear stationary to each other, is there any way to say what DIRECTION they are orbiting in?
The Earth and a geostationary satellite, as a closed system ignoring the rest of the universe, appear stationary to each other. If the Earth spun the other direction (so the sun rose in the west, if we weren't ignoring it), and the satellite orbited the other direction too, they would STILL appear stationary. So if there were no outside univese to compare too, how would you know what direction they are rotating and orbiting?
Let me perhaps phrase this another way... You (a disembodied observer, for simplicity) see in otherwise empty space a small, inert, solid body hovering near a larger, inert, solid body. You can infer from this situation, assuming normal substances with no strange gravitic properties, that is must be hovering in geostationary orbit, since there is no other way that scenario could exist. I suppose you could also determine from the masses of the bodies and height of the orbit how fast they must be spinning/orbiting, though relative to you and each other they appear stationary.
What direction are they spinning/orbiting?
Alright, so an orbiting body is stationary relative to itself, and feels no acceleration, you say.
If it is also geostationary, and nothing exists but the satellite and what it orbits... then the original question still stands.
Both things are, as far as you can measure, standing perfectly still, and the only reason to think they are in orbit is because the satellite isn't falling straight down into the planet. So relative to what is the satellite moving, if not the planet, that makes it "orbiting" and not "magically hovering in defiance of gravity"? Space?
Ok, I get that the acceleration, not your velocity, is what's causing time dialation effects and such; but acceleration is a change in velocity, and velocity can only be measured relative to something and if there is nothing else in the universe, what is your velocity relative TO?
With the spaceship you might say it's own fuel exhaust, but take the geostationary satellite again. Simplify the model a lot to avoid any unforseen complications: two perfect marble spheres, one really big one, one smaller one. The smaller one is hovering in geostationary orbit above a particular vein in the larger one. A satellite is accelerating, because it is constantly changing it's velocity (maybe not speed, but direction, due to gravity). But in this model universe, EVERYTHING in the universe is perfectly stationary relative to themselves; so how can the sphere be changing it's velocity if it's not moving at all relative to anything? Why doesn't it just fall?
If we go there and look and see that it's not falling, we can deduce that it must be orbiting, but since it's not moving relative to any THING else in the universe, doesn't that mean it most be moving relative to some... non-thing, some universal frame of reference? Or is it simply (as someone below suggested) that the presence of everything else in the universe somehow makes these satellites stay in orbit? If some God made the rest of the universe suddenly spin geostationary to the Earth, would all of our satellites fall down? That doesn't make any sense to me. A universal frame of reference does.
A workable solution might be some sort of relay device... you have a thing on the surface that knows where it is via GPS, and broadcasts a stronger signal in a limited arc (downward only) to the speilunkers below, who can use that to figure out where THEY are.
"Einstein says you can see it either way, and both perspective are valid but they don't necessarily reconcile in a traditional sense."
Except that they HAVE to reconcile somehow - not that they have to match, but that you have to be able to get some repeatable results, otherwise it's not science. If I took two synchronized clocks and send one on a high-speed rocket spinning around the Earth a few times, the clock from the rocket would be running slightly slower than the clock left on Earth. People have done such experiments with those results. Why don't the people on the rocket come back and see the Earth's clocks all running slow?
...I just remembered that said Vikings were also my ancestors, so maybe that's why I think it's so funny :-)
My ancestors were said Italians and I find this funny :-)
Maybe someone can explain this to me, cause none of my physics teachers ever could.
In modern physics, there is no "absolute" frame of reference, correct? There's no notion of something that is TRUELY stationary against which all other motion is measured, it's all relative to each other.
So say you had a hypothetical universe containing only two bodies - lets say a large moon with no atmosphere, and a spaceship. The moon is spinning, and the spaceship is in geostationary orbit around it.
What's to say that the spaceship is actually in geostationary orbit and not just STATIONARY if there is nothing else to measure their motion against? These two things are all that exist in this hypothetical universe and they are stationary relative to each other, so why aren't they 'absolutely' stationary, causing the spaceship just to fall? How do you know the moon is really even spinning?
The way I usually phrased this to physics professors was that if the spaceship, floating in space for all it knows, comes flying past the moon at near light speed, why do we assume the spaceship is moving at near lightspeed and therefore clocks on it run slower, rather than the moon is hurtling through space at near lightspeed past a stationary ship?
I can't seem to reconcile this in my mind without some notion of an absolute frame of reference, even if we can't measure what it is. I suppose we could tell what is closer to that frame of reference by seeing if, for example, the spaceship falls from it's "geostationary" orbit because the moon wasn't actually spinning, etc; or seeing which clocks dialate which way when two objects move relative to each other at high velocities...
Can someone clear this up for me?
We're digging all this nuclear fuel up from somewhere in the ground already. It's already radioactive there, right?
Why don't we take the still-radioactive waste products of using that fuel, throw them back where the fuel came from and bury them again?
If I had a mod point I'd make some body... uh, laugh? Dunno.
If I ever have a son I plan to name him John Septavius (and my last name is Cameranesi, so it's already Roman).
I take the James T. Kirk approach. Kirk - eh, it's a last name. James - boring first name. But what's this "T" thing for? "Tiberius" of all things!
Give your kid a normal first name, but an awesome middle name. That way if/when he wants to be joe schmoe on the playground he can just be, say, "John", but when he wants to sound impressive in a credit or title somewhere, he can be "John Septavius"!
Not that I'm ungrateful to the cheese-givers, cause it was five big hunks of assorted good cheeses, but everybody else sucks. Then again I didn't get anybody else anything; well, besides letting my mom off for $250 in debt she owes me and "loaning" my dad $200 for misc expenses (and modifying my taxes so that he gets more money back at my $350 expense, which he promises to pay me back out of his return... yeah right). Now watch, I get home from work and all my cheese is eaten...
I've got the entire thing saved, HTML, graphics and all... not a regular /. reader though, so if Apple does kill it and I am somehow the only one who saved it all, just ask Kira and he can get in touch with me through Subnova.