It doesn't actually make sense to measure the distance across it, just as it doesn't make sense to divide by zero.
I'm not making much sense of that.
How can it not make sense to measure the distance across it?
If you have two objects approaching it from either side starting from known locations and travelling at known velocities, is it not possible to determine when they reach it?
Since they start from known locations then the distance they travel to reach it is measurable.
Since you know the distance apart of the starting points of the two objects you can infer the size of the event horizon.
What part of this measurement makes no sense?
I mean if its something that you can *collide* with its location and size are important things to know for matters of interstellar navigation, surely?
People in the past have said (and continue to say) stupid things - would you really "defend to my death their right to say it"?:
None of the 3 examples cited would require a fight to the death to defend. People often make the mistake of using examples that noone is going to fight to the death over.
There are plenty of better examples like oh I don't know how about "Islam is a stupid, childish religion and Mohammed probably had sex with pigs and his mother was a dog." for example?
If there were ever going to be a war to defend free speech and in which people may well have to lay down their lives to protect peoples right to say such a thing... well it may be closer than you think.
So to all those who spout the "fight to the death to defend peoples right to say whatever they want to say" line, be warned. War with Islam is NOT going to be pretty.
"Passing the Turing test is the holy grail of artificial intelligence"
is total rubbish.
The Turing Test was a *thought* *experiment* nothing more. It was *never* intended to define anything in AI nor set any kind of standard. It was a 'what if?'.
People have grabbed onto it as if its really hard and a mark of a good AI system but it isn't!
Its trivially easy to get people to believe that they are communicating with a human being! Trivial!
People are inherently gullible. They *want* to believe. You think Fox Mulder was unusual?
To pass the 'Turing test' you don't need anything like decent language skills since most people don't *expect* good language skills from other people! Not even from native speakers!
It's just not possible to understand it if you start reading The Children of Hurin. You need to read the Silmarillion before.
Reading between the lines I see that you appear to imply that its possible to understand the Silmarillion?
Or are you saying that reading the Silmarillion, even though it cannot be understood either, you are more likely to understand this?
If so, is there something one can read in order to be able to understand the Silmarillion?
Because I've 'read' the Silmarillion (if it can properly be called 'reading').
Its incomprehensible to me as is much of LoTR.
And I never *ever* figured out how to tell when Tolkien intended 'ere' to mean 'before', 'after', 'where', 'when', 'here', 'there' or various other possibilities...
what I generate with my brain is MY intellectuall property and
No man is an island.
The ideas etc that you generate with your brain are not emanating only from you but are generated by your experiences; your education, the society in which you grew up, your life experience.
They do not arise out of some kind of vacuum, unless you really *are* empty-headed.
Hence, if there really is *property* here it must be said to be the property of all of society; you *didn't* come up with it *all* by yourself. Never. Ever.
The "Right" wants to tax everyone and distribute it among the "deserving" (supposedly corporations and things that benefit their districts), and the "Left" wants to tax everyone and distribute it among the "deserving" (supposedly the poor and things that benefit their districs).
Theres an old saying, a salesmans adage:
"Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes."
Think of it this way, if you were running a MMORPG, the uptime on your datacenter's internet connections is the *hard limit* on your game's uptime. No matter how hard you work to make your servers robust and redundant, you can't stay online more than your connection.
I play WoW. Thats am MMORPG. Well maybe not so 'massive' what with all the instancing...
They (Blizzard) seem to measure their uptime in 8's. EIGHTS!!!!
But to clarify, the 'boardroom' notion is rather misguided - the 'board' of a company is not the same at all as 'senior management'.... They are supposed to be the guys who see beyond buzzwords, don't get seduced by pet projects, and see the entire company as a whole.
See beyond the buzzwords? Our directors are all *about* the buzzwords!
Not get seduced by pet projects? Our directors are only interested in pet projects!
When I was younger in a moment of anger at Microsoft I once exclaimed "I'm gonna write my own O/S one without any bugs at all!" to which my friend sagely replied, "So your not gonna let anyone write any software for it?" This is something to think about.
So what? You went on to develop the iPhone and took your friends comment to heart?
Having a record of being arrested should ideally not be a problem.
It's thanks to idiots and bigoted assholes who turn up their nose at arrest records that it becomes a problem.
I'm not sure that I understand why an arrest with no conviction would be a matter of public record anyway? How are they going to find out? Do the authorities tell you, if asked, whether a given person has ever been arrested?
That would be the problem in my opinion... its just not something that should be on record for potential employers to even find out.
Is it true that, in the USA, being arrested for *any* reason whether probable cause was present or not, whether you were being victimised by someone bearing false witness -- *any* reason -- the fact that there is now a record of you being arrested means that you will have a VERY hard time ever getting a decent job again?
Slashdot Mirror
It doesn't actually make sense to measure the distance across it, just as it doesn't make sense to divide by zero.
I'm not making much sense of that.
How can it not make sense to measure the distance across it?
If you have two objects approaching it from either side starting from known locations and travelling at known velocities, is it not possible to determine when they reach it?
Since they start from known locations then the distance they travel to reach it is measurable.
Since you know the distance apart of the starting points of the two objects you can infer the size of the event horizon.
What part of this measurement makes no sense?
I mean if its something that you can *collide* with its location and size are important things to know for matters of interstellar navigation, surely?
it doesn't actually have a well-defined radius (since you can't measure across the middle!)
Why do you need to measure *across* the middle to measure the radius?
Is there a (theoretical) problem with using some kind of high tech space calipers to measure the radius without going anywhere near the 'middle'?
(Background; I was involved with the Practical Guide for OS X 10.4.)
:(
How practical is that book in practice?
Because I got a copy of "OSX; the missing manual" and I feel like taking it back to the shop and asking where in hell the missing chapters are...
I'd like a *book* on OSX "under the hood" and Apple seem to be hell bent on keeping people away from that sort of thing
Bear in mind that most search requests are really, really dumb.
I followed your link and... holy crap!
Most of them are World of Warcraft searches!
People in the past have said (and continue to say) stupid things - would you really "defend to my death their right to say it"?:
None of the 3 examples cited would require a fight to the death to defend. People often make the mistake of using examples that noone is going to fight to the death over.
There are plenty of better examples like oh I don't know how about "Islam is a stupid, childish religion and Mohammed probably had sex with pigs and his mother was a dog." for example?
If there were ever going to be a war to defend free speech and in which people may well have to lay down their lives to protect peoples right to say such a thing... well it may be closer than you think.
So to all those who spout the "fight to the death to defend peoples right to say whatever they want to say" line, be warned. War with Islam is NOT going to be pretty.
Maybe, but Yahoo isn't just a search engine, is it..
No, its also a huge, gigantic joke.
One of New Zealands 'largest' ISPs (Xtra) dropped their in-house email system some time ago and converted it all to Yahoo mail.
Since then there have been ongoing problems sending email to Xtra users.
Yahoo mails smtp server appears to be running qmail.
*rimshot*
roflmao Yahoo, qmail, Xtra!
Isn't this what Tactical Nuclear Weapons were designed for?
Good point.
Of course the only sane way to clear the entire internet of all malware of any kind...
is to explode many nuclear weapons in orbit thus frying most of the electronics on the planet.
Lets call that "Plan B".
Its worse than that...
"Passing the Turing test is the holy grail of artificial intelligence"
is total rubbish.
The Turing Test was a *thought* *experiment* nothing more. It was *never* intended to define anything in AI nor set any kind of standard. It was a 'what if?'.
People have grabbed onto it as if its really hard and a mark of a good AI system but it isn't!
Its trivially easy to get people to believe that they are communicating with a human being! Trivial!
People are inherently gullible. They *want* to believe. You think Fox Mulder was unusual?
To pass the 'Turing test' you don't need anything like decent language skills since most people don't *expect* good language skills from other people! Not even from native speakers!
It's just not possible to understand it if you start reading The Children of Hurin. You need to read the Silmarillion before.
Reading between the lines I see that you appear to imply that its possible to understand the Silmarillion?
Or are you saying that reading the Silmarillion, even though it cannot be understood either, you are more likely to understand this?
If so, is there something one can read in order to be able to understand the Silmarillion?
Because I've 'read' the Silmarillion (if it can properly be called 'reading').
Its incomprehensible to me as is much of LoTR.
And I never *ever* figured out how to tell when Tolkien intended 'ere' to mean 'before', 'after', 'where', 'when', 'here', 'there' or various other possibilities...
Its not bogeyman-communism, you idiot, its a simple statement of *fact*
Or what? Do you think that the ideas you have somehow spring into being out of the vacuum inside your head??
what I generate with my brain is MY intellectuall property and
No man is an island.
The ideas etc that you generate with your brain are not emanating only from you but are generated by your experiences; your education, the society in which you grew up, your life experience.
They do not arise out of some kind of vacuum, unless you really *are* empty-headed.
Hence, if there really is *property* here it must be said to be the property of all of society; you *didn't* come up with it *all* by yourself. Never. Ever.
We probably DDOS'ed the entirely NZ pipe because of this.
:( /. owes me 5g for repairs now!
You aren't kidding...
I just got killed in WoW because of the lag
Sure, but I bet it's not the fault of the guys providing their line to the internet.
Exactly.
The "Right" wants to tax everyone and distribute it among the "deserving" (supposedly corporations and things that benefit their districts), and the "Left" wants to tax everyone and distribute it among the "deserving" (supposedly the poor and things that benefit their districs).
Theres an old saying, a salesmans adage:
"Sell to the classes, live with the masses. Sell to the masses, live with the classes."
I think somehow it applies here...
Think of it this way, if you were running a MMORPG, the uptime on your datacenter's internet connections is the *hard limit* on your game's uptime. No matter how hard you work to make your servers robust and redundant, you can't stay online more than your connection.
I play WoW. Thats am MMORPG. Well maybe not so 'massive' what with all the instancing...
They (Blizzard) seem to measure their uptime in 8's. EIGHTS!!!!
'five nines' of uptime is a ridiculous and exaggerated expectation for pretty much anything technological for anything that is not life threatening.
Whenever people talk about 99.999 uptime for a service delivered over the internet I laugh in their faces.
But to clarify, the 'boardroom' notion is rather misguided - the 'board' of a company is not the same at all as 'senior management'. ... They are supposed to be the guys who see beyond buzzwords, don't get seduced by pet projects, and see the entire company as a whole.
See beyond the buzzwords? Our directors are all *about* the buzzwords!
Not get seduced by pet projects? Our directors are only interested in pet projects!
When I was younger in a moment of anger at Microsoft I once exclaimed "I'm gonna write my own O/S one without any bugs at all!" to which my friend sagely replied, "So your not gonna let anyone write any software for it?" This is something to think about.
So what? You went on to develop the iPhone and took your friends comment to heart?
Can we *PLEASE* have an MMORPG in which character development is more than just acquiring new gear?
Having a record of being arrested should ideally not be a problem.
It's thanks to idiots and bigoted assholes who turn up their nose at arrest records that it becomes a problem.
I'm not sure that I understand why an arrest with no conviction would be a matter of public record anyway? How are they going to find out? Do the authorities tell you, if asked, whether a given person has ever been arrested?
That would be the problem in my opinion... its just not something that should be on record for potential employers to even find out.
Is it true that, in the USA, being arrested for *any* reason whether probable cause was present or not, whether you were being victimised by someone bearing false witness -- *any* reason -- the fact that there is now a record of you being arrested means that you will have a VERY hard time ever getting a decent job again?
or they'll print out all our spam.
I had a client who *insisted* on printing out *every* *single* email they received.
Every one of them. And this was before I set them up with spam filtering; they printed ALL their email and they got TONS of spam.
Some people really do need to be taken out and shot.
I got to that page after waiting patiently for each intervening page to load...
I'm downloading on a Mac so no WGA validation for me...
Will Smith as Bill Gates
Thats about the worst casting for the role that I could think of.
How about Woody Allen as Bill Gates?
You say that like it's a good thing... I guess you don't live in the UK :(
I don't think its a good thing.
I did live in the UK until it became a media-run police-state.
Modern, western 'democracies' would more be more aptly named 'mediacracies'
Rule by media. Thats what they've got.