Get a stylus already. iPad compatible ones are easily available. And jailbreak your iPad. It's a simple, fast, risk free operation and Apple doesn't really give a hoot whether you do it or not. Then you've got a little UNIX machine just like your Gentoo box except in a tablet form.
Sorry, I'm not going to listen to you spout things like "and before you get your panties in a bunch about observation" and then patiently explain it to you. If you care to actually find out the answers to your questions (they do exist), then you can probably find them using Google.
"Just because I am not a physicist and suck at math does not mean that I cannot think and reason through what knowledge I have acquired."
That seems to be the problem. Some of the knowledge you've acquired seems to be inaccurate and the rest appears to be much less comprehensive than you appear to believe.
The second article is about John Singleton and the polarization synchrotron. Unfortunately that article, which has been regurgitated all over the net gets WAY ahead of itself. I wasn't able to find out whether Singleton actually claimed faster than light data transmission while talking to that reporter (I very much doubt it) or if the reporter made it up, but no such thing was demonstrated.
This article is about the same thing and Singleton specifically says that special relativity is not violated, which means no information could be transmitted faster than light. The description of what's going on also makes it clear that the effect is very similar to the "waving a laser at the moon" example (used by Singleton himself), which does not involve any information transmission.
The speed of light in a vacuum (yes, when people say "the speed of light" in this context they mean in a vacuum) isn't the sacred thing. Nor is relativity. The real sacred principle is causality which, like the conservation of energy, has never been observed to be violated and would lead to all kinds of weird stuff if it ever were.
Maybe someone will one day figure out how to transmit a signal faster than light. At present no one has even described theoretically how it might reasonably be done.
You say you're not a physicist. May I suggest you take a bit more humble approach when criticizing actual physicists? Oh, and don't believe everything you read on the Internet.
Free electrons are already essentially a plasma. You can generate 9 V of potential (some 32 times what you're talking about) with a little 9 V battery. What happens if those electrons get out?
Read a little more carefully. You can't use group velocity manipulation of the kind in the article you linked to transmit information faster than the speed of light. So no, there is as yet no reasonable potential for faster than light computing of any kind.
"How many of these drivers were traveling at a safe posted speed limit and caught a yellow on a rainy day and had no choice but to either enter a skidding sliding stop or get a ticket."
Around here driving in a manner unsafe for the conditions is a more serious ticket than going through a stop sign. I guess those drivers could probably get their minor ticket switched for the more serious one if they wanted.
The problem with rolling stops is that they turn into slow-down-a-bits, and it's much harder to look around for pedestrians or bicycles when you're still moving forward. Just stop and look.
There are likely a lot of other benefits to reasonable sun exposure. You can also get your vitamins from a nice pill instead of eating vegetables - do you suppose it's a good idea to skip the veggies to reduce the risk of getting e. coli?
As for photoaging, if you're that vain that EVERY LITTLE BIT counts, you probably wouldn't mind a little cancer, sleep disorder, MS, whatever, in the pursuit of aging gracefully.
Yeah, there are people who crack open the modules in a car or do interesting things to circuit boards, without the help of schematics. There are also people who do the equivalents of those things to software, without the source.
Personally I don't think we'd gain anything from making it mandatory to publish the source code OR the engineering documentation for a 777, say. Although the average Slashdotter thinks he's a software engineering expert, the expertise to properly assess either of those things is fairly rare, and the people with that expertise are generally too busy with their real jobs to do thorough code validation for free.
If you read the actual article, written by a journalist and all, it mentions that this isn't the only DNA repair mechanism, that we do in fact have some other ones, but that this one is particularly effective.
While I agree with you that the GP is full of it, you're not entirely correct either.
Several studies have shown that people who live at temperate latitudes have lower than recommended serum vitamin D levels, particularly during the winter. Certainly not using sunscreen and going out and getting burned is a bad idea, but there's growing evidence that avoiding all unprotected sun exposure (as seems to be commonly recommended) is also not such a good idea. It seems likely that a reasonable amount of sun exposure, not leading to a burn, is good for you.
There's quite good evidence that grandparents contribute very positively to their grandchildren's well-being long after their actively reproductive age. Grandma is quite capable of sitting around pounding palm fibre into edible carbohydrates, after all (in fact, she's usually better at it than the whippersnappers), she tends to share most with her close kin, and she's not busy trying to get pregnant, risking childbirth, or making risky investments of energy in nursing, pregnancy or child rearing. A quite good theory for the existence of menopause in women is that it ends their childbearing years when the risk of childbirth and rearing becomes too high but leaves them alive to help support their close relatives.
You might, but your genes only win if they get to be in MORE offspring than most of the others and those offspring are also better at putting genes in more offspring.
I've heard the figure in modern times is actually closer to 250,000. I doubt very much it is anything like constant over time.
Regardless, most of those bullets are used in situations where the enemy isn't standing around in the open waiting to get shot. That is, not in the situations where a heat ray is going to be useful.
Wars very rarely result in a large percentage of combatants being killed or maimed. Successfully prosecuting a war involves removing your opponent's ability to fight, primarily through capturing or destroying his economic and industrial capability, rather than killing all his troops.
Nonlethal weapons are not particularly useful for a military force because they're short range, finicky, unreliable and have very little psychological impact.
Security through obscurity by itself is to be avoided. Obscurity does add security to an otherwise secure system. Ask a secure facility sometime if you can have a copy of their guard patrol schedule.
Giving up the extra security requires something in return. It's far from clear that the extra bug-finding ability (if there actually is any) that is associated with open code is enough to be worth it.
Mechanics also don't fix the cruise control hardware. They throw out the unit and buy a new one. Ditto with pacemakers and 777s. If the part doesn't work, you get a new one. The provided information usually only describes the system down to the level of replaceable components, not below. The software in each of those replaceable components is part of the black box.
Did your computer come with the circuit diagram for the motherboard (the Apple II did)? Suppose something goes wrong and you need to fix it? Today you don't - you toss it and get a new one.
I very much doubt the full engineering documentation is available, and it is almost never available publicly. Many critical systems manufacturers will already make some parts of the software specifications, testing methodology, troubleshooting guides, etc. available to people authorized to make repairs or do troubleshooting.
Slashdot Mirror
Run a simple app and you can do all of those things, no problem.
Get a stylus already. iPad compatible ones are easily available. And jailbreak your iPad. It's a simple, fast, risk free operation and Apple doesn't really give a hoot whether you do it or not. Then you've got a little UNIX machine just like your Gentoo box except in a tablet form.
You're not going to get that with Windows.
Sorry, I'm not going to listen to you spout things like "and before you get your panties in a bunch about observation" and then patiently explain it to you. If you care to actually find out the answers to your questions (they do exist), then you can probably find them using Google.
"Just because I am not a physicist and suck at math does not mean that I cannot think and reason through what knowledge I have acquired."
That seems to be the problem. Some of the knowledge you've acquired seems to be inaccurate and the rest appears to be much less comprehensive than you appear to believe.
The second article is about John Singleton and the polarization synchrotron. Unfortunately that article, which has been regurgitated all over the net gets WAY ahead of itself. I wasn't able to find out whether Singleton actually claimed faster than light data transmission while talking to that reporter (I very much doubt it) or if the reporter made it up, but no such thing was demonstrated.
This article is about the same thing and Singleton specifically says that special relativity is not violated, which means no information could be transmitted faster than light. The description of what's going on also makes it clear that the effect is very similar to the "waving a laser at the moon" example (used by Singleton himself), which does not involve any information transmission.
The speed of light in a vacuum (yes, when people say "the speed of light" in this context they mean in a vacuum) isn't the sacred thing. Nor is relativity. The real sacred principle is causality which, like the conservation of energy, has never been observed to be violated and would lead to all kinds of weird stuff if it ever were.
Maybe someone will one day figure out how to transmit a signal faster than light. At present no one has even described theoretically how it might reasonably be done.
You say you're not a physicist. May I suggest you take a bit more humble approach when criticizing actual physicists? Oh, and don't believe everything you read on the Internet.
Free electrons are already essentially a plasma. You can generate 9 V of potential (some 32 times what you're talking about) with a little 9 V battery. What happens if those electrons get out?
Read a little more carefully. You can't use group velocity manipulation of the kind in the article you linked to transmit information faster than the speed of light. So no, there is as yet no reasonable potential for faster than light computing of any kind.
"How many of these drivers were traveling at a safe posted speed limit and caught a yellow on a rainy day and had no choice but to either enter a skidding sliding stop or get a ticket."
Around here driving in a manner unsafe for the conditions is a more serious ticket than going through a stop sign. I guess those drivers could probably get their minor ticket switched for the more serious one if they wanted.
So if nobody gets hurt (this time) it's okay?
The problem with rolling stops is that they turn into slow-down-a-bits, and it's much harder to look around for pedestrians or bicycles when you're still moving forward. Just stop and look.
I'm sorry, I wasn't able to download the CAD files for the wing design of the 777. Perhaps you could provide a deeper link?
Actually, the page you linked to seems to be talking a lot about software.
There are likely a lot of other benefits to reasonable sun exposure. You can also get your vitamins from a nice pill instead of eating vegetables - do you suppose it's a good idea to skip the veggies to reduce the risk of getting e. coli?
As for photoaging, if you're that vain that EVERY LITTLE BIT counts, you probably wouldn't mind a little cancer, sleep disorder, MS, whatever, in the pursuit of aging gracefully.
Yeah, there are people who crack open the modules in a car or do interesting things to circuit boards, without the help of schematics. There are also people who do the equivalents of those things to software, without the source.
Personally I don't think we'd gain anything from making it mandatory to publish the source code OR the engineering documentation for a 777, say. Although the average Slashdotter thinks he's a software engineering expert, the expertise to properly assess either of those things is fairly rare, and the people with that expertise are generally too busy with their real jobs to do thorough code validation for free.
If you read the actual article, written by a journalist and all, it mentions that this isn't the only DNA repair mechanism, that we do in fact have some other ones, but that this one is particularly effective.
It's God punishing you for your sins. On purpose.
(there's a reasonable discussion of genetic drift and subterranean mammals a few threads above)
While I agree with you that the GP is full of it, you're not entirely correct either.
Several studies have shown that people who live at temperate latitudes have lower than recommended serum vitamin D levels, particularly during the winter. Certainly not using sunscreen and going out and getting burned is a bad idea, but there's growing evidence that avoiding all unprotected sun exposure (as seems to be commonly recommended) is also not such a good idea. It seems likely that a reasonable amount of sun exposure, not leading to a burn, is good for you.
There's quite good evidence that grandparents contribute very positively to their grandchildren's well-being long after their actively reproductive age. Grandma is quite capable of sitting around pounding palm fibre into edible carbohydrates, after all (in fact, she's usually better at it than the whippersnappers), she tends to share most with her close kin, and she's not busy trying to get pregnant, risking childbirth, or making risky investments of energy in nursing, pregnancy or child rearing. A quite good theory for the existence of menopause in women is that it ends their childbearing years when the risk of childbirth and rearing becomes too high but leaves them alive to help support their close relatives.
You might, but your genes only win if they get to be in MORE offspring than most of the others and those offspring are also better at putting genes in more offspring.
I've heard the figure in modern times is actually closer to 250,000. I doubt very much it is anything like constant over time.
Regardless, most of those bullets are used in situations where the enemy isn't standing around in the open waiting to get shot. That is, not in the situations where a heat ray is going to be useful.
Wars very rarely result in a large percentage of combatants being killed or maimed. Successfully prosecuting a war involves removing your opponent's ability to fight, primarily through capturing or destroying his economic and industrial capability, rather than killing all his troops.
Nonlethal weapons are not particularly useful for a military force because they're short range, finicky, unreliable and have very little psychological impact.
So what? Engineering hardware is just the same. The Pinto is the classic example.
Security through obscurity by itself is to be avoided. Obscurity does add security to an otherwise secure system. Ask a secure facility sometime if you can have a copy of their guard patrol schedule.
Giving up the extra security requires something in return. It's far from clear that the extra bug-finding ability (if there actually is any) that is associated with open code is enough to be worth it.
If any of those scenarios are possible they are possible with hardware just as easily as with software.
Mechanics also don't fix the cruise control hardware. They throw out the unit and buy a new one. Ditto with pacemakers and 777s. If the part doesn't work, you get a new one. The provided information usually only describes the system down to the level of replaceable components, not below. The software in each of those replaceable components is part of the black box.
Did your computer come with the circuit diagram for the motherboard (the Apple II did)? Suppose something goes wrong and you need to fix it? Today you don't - you toss it and get a new one.
I very much doubt the full engineering documentation is available, and it is almost never available publicly. Many critical systems manufacturers will already make some parts of the software specifications, testing methodology, troubleshooting guides, etc. available to people authorized to make repairs or do troubleshooting.
Because Apple expects that most of their customers are going to buy the base RAM, throw it away, and pour in third-party RAM.
In that case the engineering drawings for a 777 (or anything else) should also be open to public scrutiny. Is that reasonable?