I use a Microsoft windows system at work, and have Norton Antivirus installed. It has a feature called "LiveUpdate", in which you pay $10/year to download protections against the latest viruses (virii?)
On reading this article, it occurs to me that I run this utility every week or two (mostly to get a chance to drink my coffee) and it downloads on the order of 200K of data.
Does anyone have any evidence that they might be "padding" the downloads to make sure there is often something to download, or that the download is large, to ensure that people think "Oh, there's a lot of bad stuff out there, I better keep my subscription!"?
From the microsoft frontpage EULA:
* You may not create obscene or scandalous works, as defined by federal law at the time the work is created, using the Media Elements.
What's to prevent them from adding a provision in Office like, "You may not use this software to write or read anything critical of Microsoft Corporation?"
Of course, if the superconductors do act to exclude the gravitational waves, then you have a good reflector for the gravitational waves. You could easily make a reflecting dish to shape the beam into a smaller beam width.
This is absolutely right.
I was a physics grad student at Berkeley when I first heard about this idea. The excitement was not about antigravity, but about producing and detecting gravitational waves. The predicted coupling of gravitational waves to matter is very weak, and experiments to date (using very large block cooled to very low temperatures, and looking for vibrations) have been inconclusive.
Their extistence is pretty well confirmed by the observation, over a long period of time, of the decay in the orbits of a binary star system. (Two people from Princeton won the Nobel prize for this, but I've forgotten who and when).
Chiao's idea was that a superfluid would move instaneously, because it was a single quantum state. His proposed experiment is exactely as Wocko describes, and is a version of the classic experiment which detected electomagnetic radiation.
If you're into pie-in-the-sky application possibilities, imaging wireless communications, except because the wave interacts so weakly with matter, there is almost no interference from intervening matter or other radiation sources. Sort of like ELF except with some real bandwidth.
Everyone has posted numerous very good reasons why this white paper is worthless. The question we need to ask is, to whom is this targeted? And how do we counteract it?
It's unclear to me whether it's directed at lawmakers, consumers, or the general public. Is it actually supposed to change people's minds, or is it just so policymakers who already are pro-microsoft can point to it as an "objective" study?
Or is it just generalized FUD?
It seems, though, if someone is paying for it, they have a specific purpose in mind. Any ideas out there?
Slashdot Mirror
On reading this article, it occurs to me that I run this utility every week or two (mostly to get a chance to drink my coffee) and it downloads on the order of 200K of data.
Does anyone have any evidence that they might be "padding" the downloads to make sure there is often something to download, or that the download is large, to ensure that people think "Oh, there's a lot of bad stuff out there, I better keep my subscription!"?
Just a paranoid thought.
The goal of a company is to make a profit, within the bounds of the law. Like the Sherman Anti-Trust act.
Making money by ignoring the law is called racketeering.
From the microsoft frontpage EULA: * You may not create obscene or scandalous works, as defined by federal law at the time the work is created, using the Media Elements. What's to prevent them from adding a provision in Office like, "You may not use this software to write or read anything critical of Microsoft Corporation?"
Of course, if the superconductors do act to exclude the gravitational waves, then you have a good reflector for the gravitational waves. You could easily make a reflecting dish to shape the beam into a smaller beam width.
A phased array should also work, I think.
This is absolutely right. I was a physics grad student at Berkeley when I first heard about this idea. The excitement was not about antigravity, but about producing and detecting gravitational waves. The predicted coupling of gravitational waves to matter is very weak, and experiments to date (using very large block cooled to very low temperatures, and looking for vibrations) have been inconclusive. Their extistence is pretty well confirmed by the observation, over a long period of time, of the decay in the orbits of a binary star system. (Two people from Princeton won the Nobel prize for this, but I've forgotten who and when). Chiao's idea was that a superfluid would move instaneously, because it was a single quantum state. His proposed experiment is exactely as Wocko describes, and is a version of the classic experiment which detected electomagnetic radiation. If you're into pie-in-the-sky application possibilities, imaging wireless communications, except because the wave interacts so weakly with matter, there is almost no interference from intervening matter or other radiation sources. Sort of like ELF except with some real bandwidth.
Everyone has posted numerous very good reasons why this white paper is worthless. The question we need to ask is, to whom is this targeted? And how do we counteract it? It's unclear to me whether it's directed at lawmakers, consumers, or the general public. Is it actually supposed to change people's minds, or is it just so policymakers who already are pro-microsoft can point to it as an "objective" study? Or is it just generalized FUD? It seems, though, if someone is paying for it, they have a specific purpose in mind. Any ideas out there?