"So who's really at fault here? The students? The hospital for not securing their computers and network? Or the adware companies for providing the incentive?"
How about "all of them"? Our society likes to attribute guilt to a single party (or even a single person, aka scapegoat) whenever possible and convenient. Makes the task of appearing to make progress and fixing things much easier, I guess.
But this is really just a matter of nomenclature - I could, for example, define the "Meter number" of an object as the ratio between its length and the Meter prototype in Paris. Measuring speed relative to the speed of sound doesn't change the fact that speed has the dimensions "length/time".
Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed that does not violate any laws of physics, and what do you know--it's a dimensionless number.
While I agree that the author's arguments are mostly utter nonsense, it seems that yours are not that much better. Mach 1.25 has the dimension of 'Mach' which equals 340.294 meters per second. Hence the dimensions of Mach 1.25 are meters per second, as usual for spatial velocities.
A better argument would be that it is perfectly acceptable to work in units where the speed of light c = 1. In other words, you define a unit of space as the distance light travels in a unit of time. Then spatial velocities are truly dimensionless numbers.
Tiered or pay-per-use service is not bad per se. The motivation would be simple: if a service plan with a, say, 1G limit costs less than the current unlimited plans, and I'm using my broadband connection only occasionally, I'll switch very happily. If the math works out so that pay-per-download is cheaper for me than my current monthly flat fee, I would be stupid not to accept the new model.
Face it: we Slashdot users are complaining because we are power users, so we are likely to get hit badly. A new model, either with limited accounts, or pay-per-gig, would amount to a transfer of costs away from occasional users to power users. You surf more, you pay more. What's unfair about this?
This scheme allows the providers to offer lower fees to occasional users, for which it currently does not make sense economically to get broadband.
Trying to make more money is just what companies do. Trying to grab some of their market share by offering lower prices, better service, or flexible plans, is what their competitors do. So if you don't like your current provider's offers, just switch to another one!
...and lead humanity in the next era of scientific discovery and space exploration, while the west drowns itself in religious fundamentalist simplemindedness.
Ahem, I object to this statement: the West does not equal the U.S.A.! While Europe certainly has its own bag of issues, religious fundamentalism of the American sort is not one of them. In fact, science is highly regarded in most European countries, and such pseudoscientific notions as ID are generally laughed at.
(this comment was brought to you by an European who spent the past ten years of his life in North America)
In Germany, electricity had been decentralized in the same way for quite a few years back. Unfortunately, what some companies end up doing is using the cheap night rate to buy power from nuclear generators in order to pump water up into a reservoir. During the day, they sell the energy as water power.
I'm all for voting with your wallet, and particularly, giving the consumer a chance to do so. But companies are prone to cut corners, so beware.
If a discovery of genuine scientific value appears on the show, I would think that some assistant professor who watched the show with his kids would sit down, write a paper about it, and get it published in a journal. At this point, it would certainly be taken seriously.
The debate should really be: "What constitutes violation of the separation of church and state clause?"
Just to play the Devil's Advocate here: doesn't virtually every religion have the notion of an intelligent being that created the world? Or at least some higher order that governs life, and hence its evolution?
So ID wouldn't necessarily have to be considered as connected with the Church, but as fundamental to religion per se. It would certainly pertain to Islam and Judaism; whether or not it is compatible with Buddhism could be debated.
Nice example; unfortunately you're off by a factor of 4. The specific heat of water is 4.186 Joule/gram Kelvin. Hence to heat 1 cup of coffee by 90 degrees you need about 75 kJ = 75 kilowatt-seconds. Your cooling unit would need only about 3.3 cups/second.
The earth's rotation has many direct effects, such as the coriolis force generating turbulence in the earth's atmosphere. You can also take a pole that's thousands of miles long and stick it up into the sky. If the pole is long enough, the centrifugal (pseudo-)force on the upper end will be strong enough to break the pole in half and the upper end will drift away into space.
None of these two effects depends in any way on the surrounding matter, so I have a hard time imagining they'd go away if you remove all matter except for the earth from the universe. Would the centrifugal (pseudo-)force gradually diminish, or would it be switched off spontaneously as you remove the last particle of matter? If we shoot a sattelite into the vacuum surrounding the earth, would it serve as a reference point and restore the effects of earth's rotation?
To me, these thought experiments seem to indicate that rotation is absolute, and doesn't require an external reference frame.
1. Become the technological leader in your field
2. Profit!
3. Get fat and lazy
4. Microsoft discovers that your field is profitable
5. ?????
6. Profit (Microsoft, that is)!
Maybe Google is trying to avoid this scenario by branching out.
Yeah, except that Yahoo's estimates are bogus. See for yourself: search for 'arabesque hard disk screws' or some other rather obscure term. Yahoo reports about 602 results for this example. Now click through the result pages, clicks "repeat with the omitted results included", again click through the results pages.
Where do we end up? A lousy 120 results! 602 results my @$$! And this is just one random example, I tried many!
Slashdot Mirror
How about "all of them"? Our society likes to attribute guilt to a single party (or even a single person, aka scapegoat) whenever possible and convenient. Makes the task of appearing to make progress and fixing things much easier, I guess.
Shit happens when idiots collide.
But this is really just a matter of nomenclature - I could, for example, define the "Meter number" of an object as the ratio between its length and the Meter prototype in Paris. Measuring speed relative to the speed of sound doesn't change the fact that speed has the dimensions "length/time".
While I agree that the author's arguments are mostly utter nonsense, it seems that yours are not that much better. Mach 1.25 has the dimension of 'Mach' which equals 340.294 meters per second. Hence the dimensions of Mach 1.25 are meters per second, as usual for spatial velocities.
A better argument would be that it is perfectly acceptable to work in units where the speed of light c = 1. In other words, you define a unit of space as the distance light travels in a unit of time. Then spatial velocities are truly dimensionless numbers.
Face it: we Slashdot users are complaining because we are power users, so we are likely to get hit badly. A new model, either with limited accounts, or pay-per-gig, would amount to a transfer of costs away from occasional users to power users. You surf more, you pay more. What's unfair about this?
This scheme allows the providers to offer lower fees to occasional users, for which it currently does not make sense economically to get broadband.
Trying to make more money is just what companies do. Trying to grab some of their market share by offering lower prices, better service, or flexible plans, is what their competitors do. So if you don't like your current provider's offers, just switch to another one!
Don't worry. There will always be Starbucks.
Ahem, I object to this statement: the West does not equal the U.S.A.! While Europe certainly has its own bag of issues, religious fundamentalism of the American sort is not one of them. In fact, science is highly regarded in most European countries, and such pseudoscientific notions as ID are generally laughed at.
(this comment was brought to you by an European who spent the past ten years of his life in North America)
I'm all for voting with your wallet, and particularly, giving the consumer a chance to do so. But companies are prone to cut corners, so beware.
So should Google cease operations in the US if they are actually forced to hand over those search data to the US Dept of Justice?
If a discovery of genuine scientific value appears on the show, I would think that some assistant professor who watched the show with his kids would sit down, write a paper about it, and get it published in a journal. At this point, it would certainly be taken seriously.
Hmmm.... I thought it was Google who wrote AOL a check!?
Just to play the Devil's Advocate here: doesn't virtually every religion have the notion of an intelligent being that created the world? Or at least some higher order that governs life, and hence its evolution?
So ID wouldn't necessarily have to be considered as connected with the Church, but as fundamental to religion per se. It would certainly pertain to Islam and Judaism; whether or not it is compatible with Buddhism could be debated.
Law in the US is really simple: the guy with the deepest pockets can hire the best lawyers, and hence will win the case.
Somebody who wants to stick it to the movie industry.
Congratulations to the TTC. They have replaced a gang of harmless good-for-nothing teenagers with a bit of the old ultra-violence.
Boy drowns while trying to walk on water; parents sue God.
Nice example; unfortunately you're off by a factor of 4. The specific heat of water is 4.186 Joule/gram Kelvin. Hence to heat 1 cup of coffee by 90 degrees you need about 75 kJ = 75 kilowatt-seconds. Your cooling unit would need only about 3.3 cups/second.
None of these two effects depends in any way on the surrounding matter, so I have a hard time imagining they'd go away if you remove all matter except for the earth from the universe. Would the centrifugal (pseudo-)force gradually diminish, or would it be switched off spontaneously as you remove the last particle of matter? If we shoot a sattelite into the vacuum surrounding the earth, would it serve as a reference point and restore the effects of earth's rotation?
To me, these thought experiments seem to indicate that rotation is absolute, and doesn't require an external reference frame.
How do you know it's the same people?
That's easy:
Where does it come from? Apple.
Who owns it? Microsoft.
2. Profit!
3. Get fat and lazy
4. Microsoft discovers that your field is profitable
5. ?????
6. Profit (Microsoft, that is)!
Maybe Google is trying to avoid this scenario by branching out.
If your math professor really was so discreet, he would never have shown you his model...
Yeah, except that Yahoo's estimates are bogus. See for yourself: search for 'arabesque hard disk screws' or some other rather obscure term. Yahoo reports about 602 results for this example. Now click through the result pages, clicks "repeat with the omitted results included", again click through the results pages. Where do we end up? A lousy 120 results! 602 results my @$$! And this is just one random example, I tried many!
There's also code.google.com, which features some open-source software that originates from Google.
Here you go
I think the order in which you presented these question serves as an answer to question number three.