How do you play Civ 4 for twelve hours straight? Even a Marathon game on the largest map should be over in less than that. Are you firing up a new empire the moment you finish the last one? Chain-civving? That sounds like you have a problem:-)
I heard there was actually a dedicated association for black Slashdotters. But I gather that you also have to be American, and gay, which seems to me to be a bit exclusive all things considered.
The very first thing that astronomers reached for to explain these phenomena was as yet unseen, or "dark" matter.
It has worked in the past, though. Remember how the observed motion of Uranus differed from the predicted motion? A hypothesis was put forward that the difference was due to the gravitational effects of a large body of dark matter. After some mathematical work, the likely location of the dark matter was deduced, someone went to a telescope and had a look - and there it was. Time to crack open the champagne and think of a name for it, how about 'Neptune'?
It has failed in the past too: the motion of Mercury also differed from what was predicted, and the hypothetical planet Vulcan was suggested as the cause. Yet after many searches, there was no sign of Vulcan. It wasn't until the general theory of relativity replaced Newtonian gravity that this was cleared up.
Whether we're about to discover another Neptune, or another general relativity, remains to be seen; the point is that the Universe is pulling something weird on us, and that's interesting.
I've seen that statistic before, and never seen any backing for it. How many CCTV cameras are there in the UK, and how did you arrive at that figure? I doubt it's anywhere near four million.
The Scientology mob are buying the police and anyone caught with an anti-scientology sign or placard is arrested.
[citation needed], especially since I see a largish crowd of kids with placards and Guy Fawkes masks in town outside the local mothership all day once a month. I think they're protesting about Scientology, although quite a lot of the placards seem to have to do with Rick Astley, water-type Pokémon, and the length of cats instead.
Well in that case it's America that Russia wants to nuke. Either way they're looking to nuke someone.
Out of interest, where do you think all those American nukes are aimed?
It's called deterrence. America is capable of entirely destroying Russia, and Russia is capable of entirely destroying America. Therefore neither of them is going to do anything that upsets the other too much. In particular, neither of them can get away with nuking the other, because of the promise of total annihilation coming the other way if they try it. Mutually assured destruction.
This is why deployment of missile defences is such a worry. If America builds a missile defence and proves its effectiveness, then the strategic balance shifts. With a working defence, America can destroy Russia, but Russia cannot destroy America. A Russian strategist might therefore reason that their best plan is therefore to nuke the crap out of America right now, while they still can...
Those missile shields are necessary since Russia, by its own accord, has plans to nuke those countries. Why else would they be complaining about missile shields?
Missiles in Poland don't protect Poland. They protect America. The idea as I understand it is to shoot the rocket in flight. Once the warheads have separated and are on course to the target, they're much more difficult to hit. Of course by its very nature, a missile base of this kind is the very first thing you nuke. So Poland might not have been on the Russian target list before, but it sure as hell is now.
The FBI thinks there are 200,000 terrorists here!!?? Arent we in Iraq to keep from having them here.
No, we're in Iraq to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that could otherwise have been launched within 45 minutes. At least that's what they told me.
I'd expect the impact to be heavily reliant on what the actual cause is. I find it hard to believe that the cause isn't a direct electromagnetic connection.
If this were an electromagnetic effect, we should be able to duplicate it in the lab. It's not hard to produce immense electromagnetic fields in the laboratory, and to subject radioactive samples to the most extreme of conditions. Yet as far as laboratory experiment has been able to determine, electric and magnetic fields, however strong they may be, do not affect radioactive decay rates at all.
Hence the suggestion that neutrino interactions may be responsible. Neutrinos interact through nuclear forces and therefore it is at least conceivable that they might affect radioactive decay.
First application that comes to mind that I'd love to see is, if we can shorten something's half-life, can that be used to help dispose of radioactive nuclear waste, thereby removing the main objection to nuclear power?
If you have a fantastically intense neutrino source handy, go to it. But that probably means a nuclear reactor. In which case reprocessing the stuff and putting it back in the reactor for fuel will probably be more effective.
We've already sent radioactive samples to other planets. Every deep-space probe carries a radioactive power source, which I believe means a lump of plutonium and a thermocouple to produce a current from its heat. Has the power supply to Voyager been dropping off faster than expected? If so, keep an eye out for the same effect as New Horizons heads out into interstellar space over the next couple of decades.
I'd expect not. The variation would be over the course of a year, and carbon dating works on a timescale of centuries to millennia; it would even out. Besides that, we have other clocks to calibrate carbon dating against; you can carbon-date a historic artefact of known age, you can count tree rings or ice layers, stuff like that.
On a timescale of billions of years, however, the luminosity of the Sun has increased substantially, and if that accelerates radioactive decays by some neutrino interaction then the uranium-lead clock would be off and the Earth might be considerably older than we thought.
Well, that's obviously way off base because I'm sure the extradition treaty goes both ways
You would think so, wouldn't you? Apparently American citizens have something called 'rights', which means they cannot be extradited without the evidence against them being put before an American court. So Congress have not ratified the treaty. It only goes one way: we bend over, and get no reach-around.
Maybe nobody's complaining because unlike Roland, he's linking directly to the articles themselves rather than to his own site. People didn't so much complain about Roland posting so many articles as they did about the way he was using Slashdot to up the hit count on his own site.
I never minded Roland doing that. The articles he submitted were relevant and interesting. So he linked to his own blog; well, what of it? If he's trying to launch himself as some kind of tech pundit, then surely submitting interesting articles direct to your target audience is exactly the way to go about it. Nothing wrong with that. He gets page views, we get good info. Everybody wins.
The one that got my goat was that other guy whose name I forget, who linked in a site that was basically just a link farm for search engine spam. Trying to use/.'s colossal PageRank to push himself up Google. That's just plain dishonourable behaviour.
I do think that our higher education system is still the best in the world.
America's top universities are absolutely first-class. No doubt about it. The system? I'm less sure. You either have to be rich, or brilliant enough to get a scholarship, or steroid-addled enough to get onto the football team, or you go in expecting to graduate with colossal debts which means you're likely to study law or creative accountancy or something like that instead of theoretical physics.
it is my understanding that although you've got pretty good schools, they are very difficult to get into
Is that not the whole point of the best schools? Surely that at least is the same everywhere.
Oh please..it's highly unlikely that India or China will pass the US. The US is still the magnet for global talent.
And while the US is still leading the way in science research that will surely remain true. How's the Superconducting Supercollider coming along, by the way? How about those breeder reactors that are going to solve the whole nuclear fuel issue? And are we still on schedule to finish the space station?
If we're likening America to Rome, I wouldn't say we're necessarily looking at the Decline and Fall of the Empire. We could, however, be seeing the last days of the Republic. An American Empire could surely be founded. The principles of the Republic have been substantially eroded in recent years; all it would take would be a successful, popular, but unscrupulous and ambitious leader, and the Republic would die to the sound of thunderous applause.
Now the Roman Empire was enormously successful. Despite its grotesque taste in sports, its often appalling system of government, and its slave economy, it lasted for many centuries, and the lands of the empire enjoyed stability and prosperity year after year after year. They weren't plunderers, like so many barbarian kings who seized a land only to loot its wealth; they invested in what they conquered. Aqueducts. Sanitation. Roads. Irrigation. Medicine. Education. Wine. Baths. They knew how to keep order, and on the whole they brought peace.
Were America successfully to mimic Rome, it might do good for much of the world. But from a practical perspective, there are few places left an imperialist can go without running up against the interests of a nuclear-armed rival. Imperialism today would be a dangerous business. So a tyrant America would not occupy lands like the Romans; they'd build a merchant empire like the British. Already the basics are in place: airbases dotted around the world, battlegroups at sea each with more firepower than most nations. The Empire would not require a vast bureaucracy, nor legions occupying each and every city; all that would be needed would be a tremendous mobility, and the threat to all nations that if they disobey, they'll be destroyed. Fear would keep them in line. America cannot do this at present, for all the world knows they have enough on their hands just in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a tyrant could simply bring in conscription, build more carriers, more planes, more bombs...
Alas, however, this empire would not be one of investment. When your rule is based not on legions on the ground, nor on merchants in port, but on the threat of annihilation, why would you share the wealth? So this would be no Roman empire at all; just another barbarian plunderer.
While I think illicit drugs should definitely be banned
There's no 'should' about it. Illicit drugs are banned by definition - that's what 'illicit' means. Legalise all drugs and suddenly there's no such thing as an illicit drug.
Then mabye someone else will buy it and break stories?
There are plenty of disreputable news sources around, but would their readership be interested in Hugo Chavez's email? I can't see the average Sun reader caring too much. Unless some of the emails were sexually explicit and addressed to a former Big Brother contestant.
Then the first company who gets its shareholders to understand that money doesn't provide immunity from extinction if the planet becomes hostile to our species through climate change will generate wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. Why? Because any such company would be so far ahead of the competition as to be unreachable. At least for long enough to make everyone involved very rich indeed.
No they won't. The first company to do this will go out of business because they'll be undercut in the marketplace by all the other companies burning carbon with mad abandon. Then when the ecological shit hits the fan the people running those other companies die rich, and the people running that one company die poor.
Slashdot Mirror
Only in the mainstream mediums, although sometimes they get it wrong and have to post a correction in the erratums column.
How do you play Civ 4 for twelve hours straight? Even a Marathon game on the largest map should be over in less than that. Are you firing up a new empire the moment you finish the last one? Chain-civving? That sounds like you have a problem :-)
So, tell me about Loom...
How do you know there aren't?
I heard there was actually a dedicated association for black Slashdotters. But I gather that you also have to be American, and gay, which seems to me to be a bit exclusive all things considered.
It has worked in the past, though. Remember how the observed motion of Uranus differed from the predicted motion? A hypothesis was put forward that the difference was due to the gravitational effects of a large body of dark matter. After some mathematical work, the likely location of the dark matter was deduced, someone went to a telescope and had a look - and there it was. Time to crack open the champagne and think of a name for it, how about 'Neptune'?
It has failed in the past too: the motion of Mercury also differed from what was predicted, and the hypothetical planet Vulcan was suggested as the cause. Yet after many searches, there was no sign of Vulcan. It wasn't until the general theory of relativity replaced Newtonian gravity that this was cleared up.
Whether we're about to discover another Neptune, or another general relativity, remains to be seen; the point is that the Universe is pulling something weird on us, and that's interesting.
[citation needed]
I've seen that statistic before, and never seen any backing for it. How many CCTV cameras are there in the UK, and how did you arrive at that figure? I doubt it's anywhere near four million.
The Scientology mob are buying the police and anyone caught with an anti-scientology sign or placard is arrested.
[citation needed], especially since I see a largish crowd of kids with placards and Guy Fawkes masks in town outside the local mothership all day once a month. I think they're protesting about Scientology, although quite a lot of the placards seem to have to do with Rick Astley, water-type Pokémon, and the length of cats instead.
Out of interest, where do you think all those American nukes are aimed?
It's called deterrence. America is capable of entirely destroying Russia, and Russia is capable of entirely destroying America. Therefore neither of them is going to do anything that upsets the other too much. In particular, neither of them can get away with nuking the other, because of the promise of total annihilation coming the other way if they try it. Mutually assured destruction.
This is why deployment of missile defences is such a worry. If America builds a missile defence and proves its effectiveness, then the strategic balance shifts. With a working defence, America can destroy Russia, but Russia cannot destroy America. A Russian strategist might therefore reason that their best plan is therefore to nuke the crap out of America right now, while they still can...
Missiles in Poland don't protect Poland. They protect America. The idea as I understand it is to shoot the rocket in flight. Once the warheads have separated and are on course to the target, they're much more difficult to hit. Of course by its very nature, a missile base of this kind is the very first thing you nuke. So Poland might not have been on the Russian target list before, but it sure as hell is now.
Io is a volcanic hellhole. You're probably thinking of Europa.
Skylab massed 77,088kg; the ISS at present masses 277,598kg, and if ever completed it will mass 419,600kg.
No, we're in Iraq to remove the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction that could otherwise have been launched within 45 minutes. At least that's what they told me.
To be fair to them, the first time was an accident.
If this were an electromagnetic effect, we should be able to duplicate it in the lab. It's not hard to produce immense electromagnetic fields in the laboratory, and to subject radioactive samples to the most extreme of conditions. Yet as far as laboratory experiment has been able to determine, electric and magnetic fields, however strong they may be, do not affect radioactive decay rates at all.
Hence the suggestion that neutrino interactions may be responsible. Neutrinos interact through nuclear forces and therefore it is at least conceivable that they might affect radioactive decay.
Like this one?
If you have a fantastically intense neutrino source handy, go to it. But that probably means a nuclear reactor. In which case reprocessing the stuff and putting it back in the reactor for fuel will probably be more effective.
We've already sent radioactive samples to other planets. Every deep-space probe carries a radioactive power source, which I believe means a lump of plutonium and a thermocouple to produce a current from its heat. Has the power supply to Voyager been dropping off faster than expected? If so, keep an eye out for the same effect as New Horizons heads out into interstellar space over the next couple of decades.
On a timescale of billions of years, however, the luminosity of the Sun has increased substantially, and if that accelerates radioactive decays by some neutrino interaction then the uranium-lead clock would be off and the Earth might be considerably older than we thought.
You would think so, wouldn't you? Apparently American citizens have something called 'rights', which means they cannot be extradited without the evidence against them being put before an American court. So Congress have not ratified the treaty. It only goes one way: we bend over, and get no reach-around.
I never minded Roland doing that. The articles he submitted were relevant and interesting. So he linked to his own blog; well, what of it? If he's trying to launch himself as some kind of tech pundit, then surely submitting interesting articles direct to your target audience is exactly the way to go about it. Nothing wrong with that. He gets page views, we get good info. Everybody wins.
The one that got my goat was that other guy whose name I forget, who linked in a site that was basically just a link farm for search engine spam. Trying to use /.'s colossal PageRank to push himself up Google. That's just plain dishonourable behaviour.
America's top universities are absolutely first-class. No doubt about it. The system? I'm less sure. You either have to be rich, or brilliant enough to get a scholarship, or steroid-addled enough to get onto the football team, or you go in expecting to graduate with colossal debts which means you're likely to study law or creative accountancy or something like that instead of theoretical physics.
it is my understanding that although you've got pretty good schools, they are very difficult to get into
Is that not the whole point of the best schools? Surely that at least is the same everywhere.
And while the US is still leading the way in science research that will surely remain true. How's the Superconducting Supercollider coming along, by the way? How about those breeder reactors that are going to solve the whole nuclear fuel issue? And are we still on schedule to finish the space station?
Now the Roman Empire was enormously successful. Despite its grotesque taste in sports, its often appalling system of government, and its slave economy, it lasted for many centuries, and the lands of the empire enjoyed stability and prosperity year after year after year. They weren't plunderers, like so many barbarian kings who seized a land only to loot its wealth; they invested in what they conquered. Aqueducts. Sanitation. Roads. Irrigation. Medicine. Education. Wine. Baths. They knew how to keep order, and on the whole they brought peace.
Were America successfully to mimic Rome, it might do good for much of the world. But from a practical perspective, there are few places left an imperialist can go without running up against the interests of a nuclear-armed rival. Imperialism today would be a dangerous business. So a tyrant America would not occupy lands like the Romans; they'd build a merchant empire like the British. Already the basics are in place: airbases dotted around the world, battlegroups at sea each with more firepower than most nations. The Empire would not require a vast bureaucracy, nor legions occupying each and every city; all that would be needed would be a tremendous mobility, and the threat to all nations that if they disobey, they'll be destroyed. Fear would keep them in line. America cannot do this at present, for all the world knows they have enough on their hands just in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a tyrant could simply bring in conscription, build more carriers, more planes, more bombs...
Alas, however, this empire would not be one of investment. When your rule is based not on legions on the ground, nor on merchants in port, but on the threat of annihilation, why would you share the wealth? So this would be no Roman empire at all; just another barbarian plunderer.
There's no 'should' about it. Illicit drugs are banned by definition - that's what 'illicit' means. Legalise all drugs and suddenly there's no such thing as an illicit drug.
There are plenty of disreputable news sources around, but would their readership be interested in Hugo Chavez's email? I can't see the average Sun reader caring too much. Unless some of the emails were sexually explicit and addressed to a former Big Brother contestant.
No they won't. The first company to do this will go out of business because they'll be undercut in the marketplace by all the other companies burning carbon with mad abandon. Then when the ecological shit hits the fan the people running those other companies die rich, and the people running that one company die poor.