You don't know what the practical benefits of currently theoretical science will be. There existence (or lack thereof) and state could prove or disprove theories about the nature of the universe, theories that could be much further reaching than just the black holes. Black hole theories seem often to be about much more than the black holes themselves.
There is no reason at all to assume the rules the universe operates under actually are intelligible to humans at all (our brains evolved for survival, not science), let alone the average layperson.
People study areas of science (not just phsyics) for years becuase this stuff is highly complex, often involving very counter-intuitive ideas and difficult maths.
People working on this stuff need to think in these complex and specialised terms, and not all of them have the quite different and rather rare gift of being able to explain it it the average person. Some of the stuff really can't be explained to the average person.
Just becuase you (or I) don't understand it doesn't mean the people behind it don't. To think so strike me as a massive act of hubris.
Escape velocity though is the speed an unpowered object needs to leave the source of the gravity field. An object under its own power does not need to reach escape veloctiy to leave say, a planet, it just has to excert more force than the planet's gravity.
So, why can the same be true for black holes? I assume there is a reason, and like the grandparent would be interestead to know.
The difference is we have proof the world is not flat. Can you offer proof that relativity is wrong?
Not to disagee that scientists are human, and for all the "if new facts disprove it, the theory will change" some will have a personal investment in old theories and not want to let go.
Still, if someone told me they didn't beleive in relativity I'd be inclinded to dismiss them unless they had something pretty good to back it up. I mean do I beleive Einstien (and all the physics built on his work) or some guy I don't know? If you couldn't produce any proof or alternates I wouldn't expect anyone to treat you seriously.
Depends, what is a magnetic drive and how does it work?
On a small scale the elctro-magnetic force is orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational one. However, and event horizion is described as being the point beyond which no electormagnetic energy can escape (and reach an observer).
So, it would seem the defintion of event horizon has em covered.
Well, if some guy on Slashdot did the maths it must be right. I'm sure astrophysists world wide will be awed and relieved. Maybe you would share it?
I thought some dark matter was supposed to be pretty mundane stuff anyway, despite the mysterious name, that is thought to be out there, no need to invent it.
What is "true science?". Science is a process, not a result. Things that turned out to be wrong, like phlogiston or ether, aren't necessarily bad science, they are still part of the process.
They were disproved, and lead to better (as in having more accurate predictive power) theories. Black Holes are extrapolations of existing theories that seem good (like General Relativity), so they shouldn't be dismissed unless we can disprove them or come up with a better theory.
We haven't been at "the whim of the crown" for a long time (well before my lifetime). You may have notived it is parliment that makes the laws, and the royalty is a figure head. Laws are nominally passed in their name, but it has been parliment for a long time.
British law doesn't let you conesnt to have violence done against your person. The thinking here is to protect people, otherwise they could be coerced into saying they consented, or feel they should consent to settle something by a fight becuase of peer or social presure.
It is also there to protect people from being hurt. You could quite easily have someone loose their temper in a consensual fight, or just hit the other guy too hard or in the wrong place and do them a serious injury.
If you do allow it, where do you draw the line? Is it OK to hurt somone? Burise them? Break a bone? Cripple them? Kill them?
There a laws in most countries to stop people doing things that are likely to be dangerous to themselves, as well as other people. If someone is involved in an activity that is likely to get somehurt it is the concern of the law. This isn't unique to the UK, I don't know if it got passed, but check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1456 831.stm for "Australia consider new laws to protect "stupid people" after boatloads risk injury to touch sharks feeding on a whale carcass". Protecting stupid people from themselves.
To come back on topic, I don't think games like this would be legal in most countries (out side military training) becuase even if the person constented to the shock the law wouldn't recognise that consent.
Nothing about anarchism say that living under a government is worse then death. Maybe you personally feel that way, but it isn't a tennant of anarchism.
Mars doesn't have an environment in the sense Earth does, so how can you damage it? It isn't like you can kill the wildlife or upset the ecosystem or poison anything.
Way off topic but what the hey, so was the parent and it got modded up.
I'm from the UK, and I lived and worked in the US (Chicago) for a while. The thing I noticed was that in the US you had to go to more effort to get news about the rest of the world. The news was pretty much all US, or foreign things the US was directly involved in. You were exposed to less about the rest of the world unless you put a bit more effort in. However, it didn't take much (news.bbc.co.uk;) ).
Also, I don't know about Eastern Europe, but a lot of Western Countries like UK, France and Spain still have close ties to their former empires, as well as quite a lot of immigrants from those countries bring those cultures with them.
I've not visited Eastern Europe, but the impression I think most people in the west would have (rightly or wrongly) is they are more insular.
Of course you can be exposed to foreign countries and cultures and still be ignorant. Most people will be me-centric and mostly concerened about what happens around them, human nature.
The great thing about fan fiction in its various forms is you can completely ignore it. Even if you don't it costs you nothing, just stop reading or watching if you don't like it. OK, if you hear about some slash fiction ideas you want to wash your brain out, but apart from that;)
So, you don't have to endure it. It is really Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap, only with the lowering costs to produce/publish/distribute the bar is lowered. So instead of getting loads of crap and some good stuff just from people paid to make it, now you get it from people doing it for fun.
Some of the people are learning how to use the tools, some are just having fun. Some are actually pretty good (check out Troops for a good Star Wars fan film). Plus there people are doing it for free. So some people get to enjoy making it, and some get to enjoy watching or reading it. People have fun and nothing is forced on you, and you are complaining? Do you somehow object to people having fun?
Everyone gets to decide if it they think it is SF or not.
Quite a lot of people would consider something "real SF" if it is examining the impact of science and/or technology on people or society, probably making comments on modern society in the process.
Or out it another way, it is fiction about science (and by extention technology) rather than fiction that just happens to have sciencs and technology in it.
Of course everyone probably has their own view, and stuff like Star Wars sometimes gets called Science Fantasy, which is also SF just to be confusing. There is also the whole hard/soft Sci-Fi thing as well.
Like any genre, start to break it down and actually things become become blurry. When someone says "real SF" I generally have a good idea what they mean (by contrast "hard SF" seems to get used several different ways, as both relatively plausable to current thinking science, and science with all the consequences thought out).
The response to strong passwords is frequently users writing them down on post-it notes, resulting in less security.
Or they pick a word with a number at the end, and just keep upping the number. Once you have the word, or an old version of the pasword, it is quick work to figure out what "version" they have reached.
A..NET IS Java (1.3) Numerous lawsuits were filed, some lost, some won, but ultimately, Microsoft is still producing.NET
Wrong. Very, very wrong. The lawsuits were about MS distributing an incompatable version of the JVM with windows only extention..Net takes (steals?) lots of ideas from Java, but it is most definately not Java.
As for which is the most "free", neither really, although both have unoffical free versions.
Consider carefully why only promoters of dull tools endlessly intone "the right tool for the job"? A sharp tool works well everywhere.
You can't be serious. You would use C++ for everything? There is a reason C++ CGI largely died out and was replaced by a bunch of other things, they were better for web apps than C++ is. Use it for small batch jobs instead of perl or shell scripts?
You know some people saying "best tool for the job" also use C++ and recognise sometimes it is still the best.
Programs written as if performance doesn't matter interfere with operation of other programs where it does. Sometimes the performance isn't about the language but the algorithm or SQL query.
There is a huge difference between "performance doesn't matter" and "performance is king". Programs have to perform well enough to be usable, and after that you need to prioritise how you spend development time.
Honestly you are coming across as one of those weirdo language bigots who have waaay to much invested in their own choices to consider anything else.
In a way you are right, Free Software doesn't have the same problems that things like Java and.Net are designed to tackle.
In the Free Software world you can take as long as you like to complete something, there isn't the same pressure to get either get stuff out to sell to the customer, or complete internal projects by a deadline.
Java and.Net are really geared at productivity, hence their large libraries and IDEs. They let good developers produce good code very quickly, rather than the best code but taking longer.
In fact the bytecode vs compiled is almost irrelevant in a lot of cases. If the bytecode runs fast enough, and it will for the vast majority of things, the user doesn't need know they are running something in bytecode anymore than they would know they were running something in C++.
Of course, you don't really build and run where you like, it isn't like you can just compile any C++ program on Windows and *nix and expect it to work. You can write cross platform code, but with an overhead, and many toolkits don't look native. Java often doesn't look native either, I don't know how well Mono Window Forms stuff looks.
Really nobody can run anywhere yet if you want to have a GUI and not a lot of extra development work.
C++ has a large base of programmers, and a lot of people have a weird snobbery about the languages they know, and types of languages (compiled vs interpreted, IDE vs vi, oo or not). Ultimately they are just tools though, and more tool equal more options.
If.Net on Linux lets people write code as easily as it does Windows it can pretty much only be a good thing. Nobody forces you to install the CLR and run them, but again it provides more choice.
My company has a big extranet site that is COM/ASP/.Net and works fine on non IE6 browsers becuase those are all server side technologies. As long as you end up serving reasonably standard HTML + Javascript there should be no problem.
Now you can do things like serve up Active X and client side.Net stuff in IE. That's OK for internal apps, but if the outside world needs to see them, that is lousy design. Fortunately such sites seem very rare on the internet, becuase if you do it, you risk losing people to other sites.
That must be the most misued quote on Slashdot. Plenty of things get laughed at and ignored, and then just vanish.
Not that I think this will, but the quote itself means nothing.
The counter-quote of course is "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
It is what, 20 something MB? Once you have installed it, that is it. OK, bigger than the VB6 runtime, but unless they are using really old machines I can't see how it could possibly be an issue.
Slashdot Mirror
You don't know what the practical benefits of currently theoretical science will be. There existence (or lack thereof) and state could prove or disprove theories about the nature of the universe, theories that could be much further reaching than just the black holes. Black hole theories seem often to be about much more than the black holes themselves.
There is no reason at all to assume the rules the universe operates under actually are intelligible to humans at all (our brains evolved for survival, not science), let alone the average layperson.
People study areas of science (not just phsyics) for years becuase this stuff is highly complex, often involving very counter-intuitive ideas and difficult maths.
People working on this stuff need to think in these complex and specialised terms, and not all of them have the quite different and rather rare gift of being able to explain it it the average person. Some of the stuff really can't be explained to the average person.
Just becuase you (or I) don't understand it doesn't mean the people behind it don't. To think so strike me as a massive act of hubris.
Escape velocity though is the speed an unpowered object needs to leave the source of the gravity field. An object under its own power does not need to reach escape veloctiy to leave say, a planet, it just has to excert more force than the planet's gravity.
So, why can the same be true for black holes? I assume there is a reason, and like the grandparent would be interestead to know.
The difference is we have proof the world is not flat. Can you offer proof that relativity is wrong?
Not to disagee that scientists are human, and for all the "if new facts disprove it, the theory will change" some will have a personal investment in old theories and not want to let go.
Still, if someone told me they didn't beleive in relativity I'd be inclinded to dismiss them unless they had something pretty good to back it up. I mean do I beleive Einstien (and all the physics built on his work) or some guy I don't know? If you couldn't produce any proof or alternates I wouldn't expect anyone to treat you seriously.
Depends, what is a magnetic drive and how does it work?
On a small scale the elctro-magnetic force is orders of magnitude greater than the gravitational one. However, and event horizion is described as being the point beyond which no electormagnetic energy can escape (and reach an observer).
So, it would seem the defintion of event horizon has em covered.
Well, if some guy on Slashdot did the maths it must be right. I'm sure astrophysists world wide will be awed and relieved. Maybe you would share it?
I thought some dark matter was supposed to be pretty mundane stuff anyway, despite the mysterious name, that is thought to be out there, no need to invent it.
What is "true science?". Science is a process, not a result. Things that turned out to be wrong, like phlogiston or ether, aren't necessarily bad science, they are still part of the process.
They were disproved, and lead to better (as in having more accurate predictive power) theories. Black Holes are extrapolations of existing theories that seem good (like General Relativity), so they shouldn't be dismissed unless we can disprove them or come up with a better theory.
That, after all, is science.
We haven't been at "the whim of the crown" for a long time (well before my lifetime). You may have notived it is parliment that makes the laws, and the royalty is a figure head. Laws are nominally passed in their name, but it has been parliment for a long time.
British law doesn't let you conesnt to have violence done against your person. The thinking here is to protect people, otherwise they could be coerced into saying they consented, or feel they should consent to settle something by a fight becuase of peer or social presure.
It is also there to protect people from being hurt. You could quite easily have someone loose their temper in a consensual fight, or just hit the other guy too hard or in the wrong place and do them a serious injury.
If you do allow it, where do you draw the line? Is it OK to hurt somone? Burise them? Break a bone? Cripple them? Kill them?
There a laws in most countries to stop people doing things that are likely to be dangerous to themselves, as well as other people. If someone is involved in an activity that is likely to get somehurt it is the concern of the law. This isn't unique to the UK, I don't know if it got passed, but check out http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/1456 831.stm for "Australia consider new laws to protect "stupid people" after boatloads risk injury to touch sharks feeding on a whale carcass". Protecting stupid people from themselves.
To come back on topic, I don't think games like this would be legal in most countries (out side military training) becuase even if the person constented to the shock the law wouldn't recognise that consent.
Nothing about anarchism say that living under a government is worse then death. Maybe you personally feel that way, but it isn't a tennant of anarchism.
Mars doesn't have an environment in the sense Earth does, so how can you damage it? It isn't like you can kill the wildlife or upset the ecosystem or poison anything.
Way off topic but what the hey, so was the parent and it got modded up.
I'm from the UK, and I lived and worked in the US (Chicago) for a while. The thing I noticed was that in the US you had to go to more effort to get news about the rest of the world. The news was pretty much all US, or foreign things the US was directly involved in. You were exposed to less about the rest of the world unless you put a bit more effort in. However, it didn't take much (news.bbc.co.uk ;) ).
Also, I don't know about Eastern Europe, but a lot of Western Countries like UK, France and Spain still have close ties to their former empires, as well as quite a lot of immigrants from those countries bring those cultures with them.
I've not visited Eastern Europe, but the impression I think most people in the west would have (rightly or wrongly) is they are more insular.
Of course you can be exposed to foreign countries and cultures and still be ignorant. Most people will be me-centric and mostly concerened about what happens around them, human nature.
The great thing about fan fiction in its various forms is you can completely ignore it. Even if you don't it costs you nothing, just stop reading or watching if you don't like it. OK, if you hear about some slash fiction ideas you want to wash your brain out, but apart from that ;)
So, you don't have to endure it. It is really Sturgeon's Law, 90% of everything is crap, only with the lowering costs to produce/publish/distribute the bar is lowered. So instead of getting loads of crap and some good stuff just from people paid to make it, now you get it from people doing it for fun.
Some of the people are learning how to use the tools, some are just having fun. Some are actually pretty good (check out Troops for a good Star Wars fan film). Plus there people are doing it for free. So some people get to enjoy making it, and some get to enjoy watching or reading it. People have fun and nothing is forced on you, and you are complaining? Do you somehow object to people having fun?
Everyone gets to decide if it they think it is SF or not.
Quite a lot of people would consider something "real SF" if it is examining the impact of science and/or technology on people or society, probably making comments on modern society in the process.
Or out it another way, it is fiction about science (and by extention technology) rather than fiction that just happens to have sciencs and technology in it.
Of course everyone probably has their own view, and stuff like Star Wars sometimes gets called Science Fantasy, which is also SF just to be confusing. There is also the whole hard/soft Sci-Fi thing as well.
Like any genre, start to break it down and actually things become become blurry. When someone says "real SF" I generally have a good idea what they mean (by contrast "hard SF" seems to get used several different ways, as both relatively plausable to current thinking science, and science with all the consequences thought out).
Unless the colony is self-sufficient that doesn't really help much, if anything happens to Earth the coloney is screwed as well.
The response to strong passwords is frequently users writing them down on post-it notes, resulting in less security.
Or they pick a word with a number at the end, and just keep upping the number. Once you have the word, or an old version of the pasword, it is quick work to figure out what "version" they have reached.
A. .NET IS Java (1.3) Numerous lawsuits were filed, some lost, some won, but ultimately, Microsoft is still producing .NET
Wrong. Very, very wrong. The lawsuits were about MS distributing an incompatable version of the JVM with windows only extention. .Net takes (steals?) lots of ideas from Java, but it is most definately not Java.
As for which is the most "free", neither really, although both have unoffical free versions.
Consider carefully why only promoters of dull tools endlessly intone "the right tool for the job"? A sharp tool works well everywhere.
You can't be serious. You would use C++ for everything? There is a reason C++ CGI largely died out and was replaced by a bunch of other things, they were better for web apps than C++ is. Use it for small batch jobs instead of perl or shell scripts?
You know some people saying "best tool for the job" also use C++ and recognise sometimes it is still the best.
Programs written as if performance doesn't matter interfere with operation of other programs where it does. Sometimes the performance isn't about the language but the algorithm or SQL query.
There is a huge difference between "performance doesn't matter" and "performance is king". Programs have to perform well enough to be usable, and after that you need to prioritise how you spend development time.
Honestly you are coming across as one of those weirdo language bigots who have waaay to much invested in their own choices to consider anything else.
If you want LISP I'm sure there is a LISP implementation for .Net. One of the points of .Net is to get away from being language specific.
In a way you are right, Free Software doesn't have the same problems that things like Java and .Net are designed to tackle.
In the Free Software world you can take as long as you like to complete something, there isn't the same pressure to get either get stuff out to sell to the customer, or complete internal projects by a deadline.
Java and .Net are really geared at productivity, hence their large libraries and IDEs. They let good developers produce good code very quickly, rather than the best code but taking longer.
In fact the bytecode vs compiled is almost irrelevant in a lot of cases. If the bytecode runs fast enough, and it will for the vast majority of things, the user doesn't need know they are running something in bytecode anymore than they would know they were running something in C++.
Of course, you don't really build and run where you like, it isn't like you can just compile any C++ program on Windows and *nix and expect it to work. You can write cross platform code, but with an overhead, and many toolkits don't look native. Java often doesn't look native either, I don't know how well Mono Window Forms stuff looks.
Really nobody can run anywhere yet if you want to have a GUI and not a lot of extra development work.
C++ has a large base of programmers, and a lot of people have a weird snobbery about the languages they know, and types of languages (compiled vs interpreted, IDE vs vi, oo or not). Ultimately they are just tools though, and more tool equal more options.
If .Net on Linux lets people write code as easily as it does Windows it can pretty much only be a good thing. Nobody forces you to install the CLR and run them, but again it provides more choice.
My company has a big extranet site that is COM/ASP/.Net and works fine on non IE6 browsers becuase those are all server side technologies. As long as you end up serving reasonably standard HTML + Javascript there should be no problem.
Now you can do things like serve up Active X and client side .Net stuff in IE. That's OK for internal apps, but if the outside world needs to see them, that is lousy design. Fortunately such sites seem very rare on the internet, becuase if you do it, you risk losing people to other sites.
That must be the most misued quote on Slashdot. Plenty of things get laughed at and ignored, and then just vanish.
Not that I think this will, but the quote itself means nothing.
The counter-quote of course is "They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown." - Carl Sagan
It is what, 20 something MB? Once you have installed it, that is it. OK, bigger than the VB6 runtime, but unless they are using really old machines I can't see how it could possibly be an issue.
You need to update the browser capabilities in the machine.config file to tell the webserver what the other browsers support.
Try here for some updated xml.
So you would rather Google not create new good services so as not to confuse you?
My understanding was that you would take cells from the victim, use them to make a clone embryo, and extract the stem cells from that.
Hence the same DNA.