We in this case is the general public. Certainly in the media and in the circuit of bar jokes Mir was made a figure of fun. If you think the ISS's troubles are getting excessive coverage, Mir's problems became a running joke.
Scientists and space geeks certainly thought otherwise, but the public had a fine old laugh at the expense of the Russians and Mir.
On a sidenote, anyone know if it has enough mass to impact earth's surface if it should come down?
Skylab made it down. So did Mir, though I'm not certain what the Soviets did with all the old Salyuts. ISS is bigger than any of them, so I'd be amazed if it all burned up.
Any spacewalk to fix the gyroscope circuit breaker would be only the second time both station crew members would be outside the space station, leaving no one inside.
I hope they remember the key.
Personally, I just hope the computer is prepared to let them back in. Did we learn nothing from the Discovery disaster?
Its almost like there is a sense of schadenfreude in seeing such ambitious projects having setbacks.
Remember how we all pointed and laughed when Mir got into trouble? Accident after accident befell the Russians and we made fun of their rickety old obsolete hardware.
Having not read any Harry Potter, I may well be missing something obvious, but what is so 'Harry-Potter--esque' about 'moving images and colour'?
He may be referring to the magical books, newspapers and magazines to be found in Hogwarts; these feature moving images in addition to conventional print. If it's just a reference to SFX-heavy movie versions, though, then I agree that the Potter reference is gratuitous...
But isn't that a sign that the shorters think this is the lowest price SCOX will be at for a while -- so pretty much the same thing as for any other buying?
For some of 'em, yes: but I gather this sort of deal comes with a time limit. Sooner or later you have to pay back the stock you borrowed - could be that a lot of people are in that position. Many others might have standing orders - 'buy back if this stock drops below 80% of what I paid for it', for instance.
I'd agree with what the other (probably better informed) posters are saying - SCO will drift up and down, but their overall trend is heading rapidly towards a Schwarzschild radius of their own making;-)
Baystar may finally be the one's to shut old SCO's mouth for us so that IBM can finish the execution cleanly
Cleanly? Baystar are offering a clean execution: SCO run out of money and implode. IBM want SCO hanged, drawn and quartered in public, the dismembered remains sent to the four corners of the land and Darl's head on a spike outside the Tower of London.
A large proportion of the SCO stock is shorted. What this means is that people borrow shares in SCO and sell them. Later, when SCO's stock value has dropped, they buy back those shares to return them to whoever they borrowed from in the first place.
It could well be that SCO has dropped far enough that a lot of these people are buying - taking the profit on their short sells. That would produce an upward trend.
But then IANAStockmarketGuy. All I know about this sort of stuff I learned from SCO:-)
The Rocketbelt was devised by the United States military in 1961 but has since been used for performances and displays around the world, including the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles.
Sounds like another good use of military technology to me!
Compared to the uses to which military technology is more normally put, I'd say this is a really, really great use. Only one person is likely to get killed by this.
If something happens at event B, and something happens at event A, and the separation between A and B is spacelike, then there is an inertial reference frame moving slower than light in which B is earlier in time than A, and another inertial reference frame moving slower than light in which A is earlier in time than B. That's simple special relativity.
Now, if someone at event A can know about something happening at event B by a faster-than-light communication, causality is buggered because from somebody's point of view information just went backward in time.
Now, if we've truly got a system for transmitting information from A to B in less time than light would take to deliver it, then we truly have a time machine. Just put A and B on spacecraft moving at near lightspeed such that Earth is the reference frame in which information was seen to go back in time. Then proceed to get prior art on every software patent filed between now and 2150.
Quantum teleportation does not transmit information faster than light in any meaningful sense because it is impossible to know what has been sent - or even that anything has been sent - until the classical component of the communication arrives. That can only ever travel slower than light.
Oops: here's why we should always RTFA, people! It's two sets of chromosomes from two different female mice. The 'two sets of chromosomes belonging to a female mouse' bit in the text seemed to imply that it was the same female mouse providing both...
Not having dared look yet, I have to ask: when you fire the sludge gun, where does it... uh, that is to say what exactly... No, it's just too horrible!
The message can be cracked without the key of course. Just takes a while.
Not if the key is as long as, or longer than, the message. In that case there's no way to crack it by cryptanalysis - your only hope is in more cloak-and-dagger methods like having a spy at one end of the channel.
As a practising geek I can suppose that you're familiar with ROT13. This is, of course, trivially cracked. An attacker knows in advance - because it is a USENET standard and has been for many years - that your key is 13 and can easily read your message.
You might step up your security by switching to another key at random, but that's still easily cracked. Just try all 26 possibilities.
Now perhaps you get a little clever. Suppose you pick a key of 14-22-8, or something like that. Then the first letter of your message is encoded with ROT14, the second with ROT22, the third with ROT8, the fourth with ROT14 again, and so on. That'll fox 'em!
Unfortunately it won't. This cipher was considered secure for a long time, but with sufficient statistical analysis it can be broken, especially for short keys. A three-character key is particularly bad because it's very likely to encode 'the' to the same string several times over - and if the attacker sees a repeating string of three characters he'll surely try 'the' first.
However, repeating patterns like this are less frequent as the key length approaches the message length. If the key is as long as the message then there's no way to crack it by analysis - sure, if their brute-force attack guesses the right key they'll read your message, but they'll also find the key that decrypts your message to a shopping list, or to a pornographic short story, or in fact to every possible message of that length. Assuming your key was truly random (which is a separate problem, but also solvable by quantum mechanics, which gives us randomness par excellence!), then they have no possible way of knowing which of this vast array of possible communications is the real one.
The trouble with this is the old problem of key distribution. One solution is to meet in person, or use a trusted courier - then hand over a DVD full of keys and use those, one at a time, and never, ever reuse one. Here's the chance for your attacker: get hold of that disc and copy it! And that's what quantum crypto solves. You create the key, make it as long as you want, communicate it using the quantum connection. If it was compromised, you'll know about it and you won't use it - generate another one and try again (and send some security goons to check the line and try to catch the foolish spy who tried to listen in!) If it wasn't, you can be sure of its security and use it to transmit your _real_ message over classical channels.
Right now, it measures the "center" as being in the middle of the left, instead of being between left and right. As a result, most of the left-wing parties are erroneously called "right wing".
It's a British site, calibrated with respect to British politics. If you're an American, then that would explain your right-shift. Europe - even Britain - is a bit to the left of America in general.
Slashdot Mirror
I find that 'If you want Australia, help out some rogue Kryptonians and ask nicely' usually works just as well.
Scientists and space geeks certainly thought otherwise, but the public had a fine old laugh at the expense of the Russians and Mir.
Simple intro
On a sidenote, anyone know if it has enough mass to impact earth's surface if it should come down?
Skylab made it down. So did Mir, though I'm not certain what the Soviets did with all the old Salyuts. ISS is bigger than any of them, so I'd be amazed if it all burned up.
Galaxy Quest. I really ought to get around to watching that some time...
I hope they remember the key.
Personally, I just hope the computer is prepared to let them back in. Did we learn nothing from the Discovery disaster?
Remember how we all pointed and laughed when Mir got into trouble? Accident after accident befell the Russians and we made fun of their rickety old obsolete hardware.
This isn't schadenfreude. It's karma.
Why, for dramatic tension when somebody has to go EVA to replace the AE-35 unit, of course.
He may be referring to the magical books, newspapers and magazines to be found in Hogwarts; these feature moving images in addition to conventional print. If it's just a reference to SFX-heavy movie versions, though, then I agree that the Potter reference is gratuitous...
Surely the whole point here is that they show up at somebody else's doorstep? Just like you did one day with your laptop?
For some of 'em, yes: but I gather this sort of deal comes with a time limit. Sooner or later you have to pay back the stock you borrowed - could be that a lot of people are in that position. Many others might have standing orders - 'buy back if this stock drops below 80% of what I paid for it', for instance.
I'd agree with what the other (probably better informed) posters are saying - SCO will drift up and down, but their overall trend is heading rapidly towards a Schwarzschild radius of their own making ;-)
You got your information for free? Mine cost $699!
Cleanly? Baystar are offering a clean execution: SCO run out of money and implode. IBM want SCO hanged, drawn and quartered in public, the dismembered remains sent to the four corners of the land and Darl's head on a spike outside the Tower of London.
IBM are soft.
It could well be that SCO has dropped far enough that a lot of these people are buying - taking the profit on their short sells. That would produce an upward trend.
But then IANAStockmarketGuy. All I know about this sort of stuff I learned from SCO :-)
Sounds like another good use of military technology to me!
Compared to the uses to which military technology is more normally put, I'd say this is a really, really great use. Only one person is likely to get killed by this.
Propaganda. Record company propaganda regurgitated by journalist who doesn't actually know how mp3s get pirated.
If something happens at event B, and something happens at event A, and the separation between A and B is spacelike, then there is an inertial reference frame moving slower than light in which B is earlier in time than A, and another inertial reference frame moving slower than light in which A is earlier in time than B. That's simple special relativity.
Now, if someone at event A can know about something happening at event B by a faster-than-light communication, causality is buggered because from somebody's point of view information just went backward in time.
Now, if we've truly got a system for transmitting information from A to B in less time than light would take to deliver it, then we truly have a time machine. Just put A and B on spacecraft moving at near lightspeed such that Earth is the reference frame in which information was seen to go back in time. Then proceed to get prior art on every software patent filed between now and 2150.
Quantum teleportation does not transmit information faster than light in any meaningful sense because it is impossible to know what has been sent - or even that anything has been sent - until the classical component of the communication arrives. That can only ever travel slower than light.
If you're working in relativity, you often do just that. Choosing units such that c = 1 simplifies things enormously.
"In a thousand years, there will be no men and women - just wankers, and that's fine by me..."
-- Mark Renton, Trainspotting
Oops: here's why we should always RTFA, people! It's two sets of chromosomes from two different female mice. The 'two sets of chromosomes belonging to a female mouse' bit in the text seemed to imply that it was the same female mouse providing both...
Do you really have two mothers when they're both the same mouse?
Not having dared look yet, I have to ask: when you fire the sludge gun, where does it... uh, that is to say what exactly... No, it's just too horrible!
Not if the key is as long as, or longer than, the message. In that case there's no way to crack it by cryptanalysis - your only hope is in more cloak-and-dagger methods like having a spy at one end of the channel.
As a practising geek I can suppose that you're familiar with ROT13. This is, of course, trivially cracked. An attacker knows in advance - because it is a USENET standard and has been for many years - that your key is 13 and can easily read your message.
You might step up your security by switching to another key at random, but that's still easily cracked. Just try all 26 possibilities.
Now perhaps you get a little clever. Suppose you pick a key of 14-22-8, or something like that. Then the first letter of your message is encoded with ROT14, the second with ROT22, the third with ROT8, the fourth with ROT14 again, and so on. That'll fox 'em!
Unfortunately it won't. This cipher was considered secure for a long time, but with sufficient statistical analysis it can be broken, especially for short keys. A three-character key is particularly bad because it's very likely to encode 'the' to the same string several times over - and if the attacker sees a repeating string of three characters he'll surely try 'the' first.
However, repeating patterns like this are less frequent as the key length approaches the message length. If the key is as long as the message then there's no way to crack it by analysis - sure, if their brute-force attack guesses the right key they'll read your message, but they'll also find the key that decrypts your message to a shopping list, or to a pornographic short story, or in fact to every possible message of that length. Assuming your key was truly random (which is a separate problem, but also solvable by quantum mechanics, which gives us randomness par excellence!), then they have no possible way of knowing which of this vast array of possible communications is the real one.
The trouble with this is the old problem of key distribution. One solution is to meet in person, or use a trusted courier - then hand over a DVD full of keys and use those, one at a time, and never, ever reuse one. Here's the chance for your attacker: get hold of that disc and copy it! And that's what quantum crypto solves. You create the key, make it as long as you want, communicate it using the quantum connection. If it was compromised, you'll know about it and you won't use it - generate another one and try again (and send some security goons to check the line and try to catch the foolish spy who tried to listen in!) If it wasn't, you can be sure of its security and use it to transmit your _real_ message over classical channels.
I think you're mistaking me for Lord Hutton.
It's a British site, calibrated with respect to British politics. If you're an American, then that would explain your right-shift. Europe - even Britain - is a bit to the left of America in general.