Sorry, the comment you linked to used the example of a hammer. And no, actually, you can dispute this "fact" in principle if we're talking about the rate at which the objects fall. It involves the idea of an accelerating frame of reference. See, in typical usage we refer to the "falling" object as the less massive one. It falls towards the center of gravity of the more massive object. If you fixed the more massive object(which is how we tend to think of these systems), two objects, regardless of mass, will reach the massive object at the same exact time. Even if you don't fix the massive object, the two objects still accelerate at the *exact* same rate. This is because you can't just vectorially add accelerations acting on *different* objects - in this case, the free-fall acceleration of the less massive objects and the minute acceleration that the more massive object experiences are completely separate. This has to do with something that is in some ways related to the Twin paradox(which is usually in the context of special relativity but the idea of inertial vs. non-inertial"reference frames" still obtains). One brother can leave his twin brother on Earth, come back, and the twin he left behind will be much older than the twin who travelled . This is because the twins take two separate paths through space - one which is accelerated, while the other is not.
The same principle applies here, and this is the principle I was arguing for, because it appeared from the parent's math and his flawed "proof" that this is the principle he was arguing against:
Gravity accelerates all objects at the same rate? What does this mean? My understanding is that two objects of difference masses will fall at different rates. More massive objects will reach their destination quicker than the less massive objects. This has been mathematically proven. I even had a physics teacher help me write out the hypothetical trials.
Quite frankly he's wrong about the "rate" part, while he may not be wrong about which object reaches the ground first which sort of erects a straw man argument because no one has really argued that the body being orbited experiences no effect from the gravity of the orbiting object. Typically Newton's laws are only useful if you isolate the forces and fields acting on bodies so you can determine the net acceleration acting on them and them alone. The fact remains that the falling object has a frame of reference that is accelerating, and the more massive object has a frame of reference that while accelerating, is doing so at a much lower rate. Two objects experiencing the same gravitational field will experience the *exact* same gravitational acceleration regardless of mass, and so will reach the actual physical "destination" dictated by their respective acceleration at the *same* exact time. Whether or not the surface of the Earth coincides with this destination or arrives at one object before the other isn't really important since the property I'm talking about is mass, not volume (and moreso because relativity demolishes the idea of provable simultaneity). The physical destination I'm talking about is the gravitational origin of the field the objects experience.
Now, you are all right in saying that in practice the destination of the "surface" of the object they are travelling towards is going to reach one before the other, but this is obvious and doesn't really say anything, since what we actually care about is the rate at which they fall, not the order in which they land. Again, I'm actually talking about the fact that two objects experiencing the same gravitation will experience the exact same acceleration, regardless of the acceleration they are imposing on their "destination" body.
I'm pretty sure Parallels runs using a hypervisor too, IIRC. It's not Mac virtualizing a Windows platform, it's Parallels virtualizing both Mac and Windows. The Mac acts as a host operating system, and Windows as a guest but only in appearance, because Apple won't allow OS X to boot on anything else besides TPM. If Apple would allow booting OS X outside of TPM in some circumstances(which is probably never going to happen) you could conceivably do it the other way around - run Mac as a guest OS to Windows. Is there a Virtual Machine that makes the guest OS think it's running inside a trusted platform? I'm not sure about the specifics.
I could definitely see Mac supporting Windows inside a built-in "Classic"-type virtualization environment and integrating with the OS, so that double-clicking on an exe file in the Mac would launch it in Windows. I could even see them doing that in "rootless" mode like they did with Classic when they first made the transition to OS X - run Windows applications as though they were running on OS X directly - they draw regular Aqua windows instead of Windows Windows, can be switched to from the Dock, and have the same background as other OS X applications (although Classic still head a lot of the appearance of Mac OS 9).
Some people have suggested reproducing the Windows API inside of Mac OS X, since Apple has been given access to the entire Windows API but I think that would run counter to Apple's commitment to comparmentalizing different APIs inside of different protected memory stacks, so that a crash inside a Windows application doesn't take down the whole host OS with it. While reproducing the Windows API doesn't preclude the possibility of running it on top of OS X, instead of parallel to it, it's not worth the effort when an instance of Windows itself can already run on top of OS X. I also don't think that would be better than virtualizing Windows, since a hack could easily make Windows run applications in rootless mode inside the OS X graphical environment . Then they could advertise that Mac OS X now runs Windows programs just as well as it runs Mac programs - even though really it would be Windows running Windows programs on top of Mac programs.
not really. the gravitational acceleration that the hammer(or any other small object) imposes on the earth is so small as to be completely negligible(it is 1 For all meaningful purposes the hammer and the feather will drop at the same acceleration in a vacuum. So, for any usual meaning of the world "fall", (i.e. the one that you and I use to talk about objects day to day), two objects with the same mass will fall to the Earth at the same acceleration. For big objects you have to do a force balance for both bodies with the universal theory of gravitation. The fundamental law, the gravity is a force and force is equal to mass times acceleration, remain correct (mostly).
Yes, but the parent poster seems to be under the impression that even objects that don't appreciably change the center of mass of their system vary in free fall acceleration. The classical universal theory of gravitation is very accurate even for systems where the center of mass is different from the center of mass of one of the bodies. It's just not *as* accurate as Einstein's General Relativity, which includes (and predicts) systems where the gravitational potential is close in proportion to c^2(black holes, and other incredibly massive systems)
Are you serious? All objects will fall to the earth at the same rate at the same distance. This is pretty basic. It's one of the first observations of classical physics.
F = G * m(1) * m(2) / (r^2) = m(1) * a
(equate Newton's second law with Newton's theory of gravitation where a is acceleration, m1 is the body being accelerated, and m2 is the massive body m1 is being accelerated towards.)
If you cancel m1 on both sides you get G * m2 / (r^2) = a
This means that the gravity of a massive body is always going to accelerate an orbiting body at the same rate if that body remains at the same distance. So, two masses let go at the same height above the earth will fall to the earth at the same rate (9.81 m/s^2). They each have different *forces* responsible for that acceleration, but since m*a = F, that extra force for the more massive object is needed to accelerate it at the same rate.
I read a lot of articles listed under less controversial(scientific, historical) topics, and while I am not necessarily looking out for them, I usually don't detect any gross violations. Maybe I'm just missing a lot of the more egregious examples. I don't know. I think generally the articles are written by people who are taking time out of their day to contribute to a growing slice of human knowledge and therefore demonstrate some respect for the facts, as this hobby is not something that appeals to the more factually lazy(or even just generally lazy) among us(Writing encyclopedia articles for fun? Who does that? A lot of people, apparently.) Most of the Wiki articles I read are impartial and very informative, and while I wouldn't cite a Wiki article in a research paper, I do go to Wikipedia often for general knowledge purposes, and my expectations for objectivity and impartiality are often fulfilled, as far as I can tell.
Wikipedia's an honorable undertaking. IMHO it's doing a very good job. It's never going to be perfect. It's a learning process - people have always had a hard time separating facts and opinions. Some even believe there's actually no meaningful difference between the two(I'm not one of those people, although I do believe impartiality is a limit we approach, not an end we achieve.) But as Wiki matures it will probably, eventually approximate objective facts a lot more.
Re:Too recent & controversial for an encyclope
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When Wikipedia Fails
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The sentence violates several of the Wiki community's guidelines for article authorship. Using the word "speculation" is not enough. There has to be a credible source cited to be behind the speculation so that the "fact" of the speculation can be established as either belonging to a majority or significant minority. Otherwise the sentence is reporting nothing more than an individual opinion(whether it is the author's or not, or whether it belongs to many people) and can slant the overall impartiality of the article - simply mentioning such speculation can skew a future reader's opinion of the subject of the article. In any case, it's way too soon to tell what the concensus is regarding Lay's death, so remarking on such speculation as fact is ridiculous.
You people might have a point if you actually looked at the ad, which clearly deliberately draws attention to a distinction in skin color. While whether this constitutes racism is up for argument, the ad definitely asks its audience to differentiate between white and black skin. That would be the whole point of the ad: The black woman is wearing black, and the white woman is wearing white, and it depicts the black woman as basically prostate, being rigidly held by the more physically prominent white woman, and the subtitle is "Playstation Portable: White is Coming" - so yes, the ad definitely emphasizes the difference in color of the two women.
The only thing left to question in deciding whether is whether or not the comparatively 'victorious' stance of the white woman and the reference to color constitutes a value judgment. I don't think it necessarily does, or that the creators themselves are racist, but they are *definitely* trying to be racially provocative. Some people would say that deliberately drawing a distinction based on race provides a stimulus and an excuse for a racial impulse that we should condemn. So, no, it's not entirely unracist - it might even be out and out racist. Not all racism is deliberate either - one can merely try to be provocative and end up crossing the line.
Comparing the market share of Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows is really not very informative. Apple has positioned itself as a platform company - that means it competes both as a software and hardware vendor, both with Microsoft and Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.(but more with Dell, HP, Gateway than Microsoft, since OS X can't be sold or licensed to third party vendors.) Comparing Apple market share isn't a very good way to guage it's success in the market, since even a tiny percentage of market share gain over Microsoft for Apple means they've just made billions of dollars in new hardware revenue. One can't say that about a market share gain for Windows, which can be divided up among several different OEM manufacturers. It's not even a good estimation of *future* success - since the installed base percentage (the number of computers currently running OS X) for Apple is much, much larger than the market share(15% was a number I heard) . This reflects the total mindshare Apple has in the computer market, and as such, is a more promising statistic for measuring future growth for the company's computer division. Moreover market share just measures what percentage of world or US computer sales Apple is responsible for - but the entire industry is growing at such a substantial rate that even keeping up with past years means that Apple is an extremely successful company. And *any* market share gain therefore means Apple is exceeding expectations by a *lot* - the emphasis is on *change* versus a snapshot of what Apple's slice of the market is right now. I for one prefer that Apple be below 5% to 10% of market share. There have been quality issues with iPods and other Apple products that have hindered their success, and I believe these problems have stemmed from Apple not being able to handle that scale of production, having spent so long as a marginalized hardware company. If they grew too quickly too fast we're likely to see some more problematic quality failures as well. Being small preserves their ability to innovate.
[...] sitting in the empty meeting hall at the Mohawk Correctional Facility in Rome, N.Y., where he is serving a two- to four-year term."
Two to four years? Gosh, if he goes in front of the parole board after the two are up, what is he going to say to convince them he's reformed? Maybe this will work:
"I get scared that when I get out, I might have a problem and relapse because it would be so easy to take $300 and turn it into several thousand."
I hope those folks at Mohawk in N.Y. missed today's issue of the most *widely read newspaper in the world.* Seriously, he must have some sort of brain disorder.
and also miss the point...Phipps is trying to impose a conception of how open source should function inside a capitalist system by making open source itself part and parcel of that system. From the article:
"For open source to prosper, people need to stop thinking of it as "free" and instead think of it as "connected capitalism", delegates at an open source conference in London were told on Tuesday."
We disagree on what the definition of open source "prosperity" is. Phipps, as a executive, is thinking entirely in terms of financial prosperity.But what's valuable for Phipps isn't necessarily valuable for open source. In other words, open source's value lies not in the revenues it earns(though that may be what makes it valuable to the private sector), but in the degree to which it is truly open. It is valuable because its sole concern is making available useful products that anyone - not just companies - can modify to suit their needs. As such, it doesn't obey any rigid economic rules or favor any particular economic entity. It is agile, and adapts to many different market circumstances.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Phipps' argument here is dangerous for open source. "Connected self-interest" is not something that easily preserves openness. If we take his advice, I see open source gradually being appropriated by private entities to the extent that it becomes indistinguishable from a proprietary product to the outsider. Most corporations tend towards proprietarizing - it fits into a basic principle of capitalism(ownership). This has always been the case, and it runs in direct opposition to the openness which open source seeks to preserve. In any case, until intellectual property and licensing laws are revised, it will be very difficult to achieve the vision for open source of "connected capitalism" that Phipps has, since he seems to be ignoring the whole element of market *competition* and why it creates concerns over what constitutes private property.Open source may be a part of how companies make revenue, but open source *itself* should remain mostly independent and non-profit. That's the only way to preserve its openness, IMHO.
Saying there is a debate over whether global warming is real like saying there is a debate over whether the earth is not the center of the universe. What we really have is a debate between the interests of the special interest establishment and the interests of the environmentalists. This debate has been going on in various modes for many many hundreds of years - but science hasn't lost yet. You can't argue down evolution, and you can't argue down global warming - to scientists, these are "theories" because they pass the test for "theory" - which for them is the same test we use to determine *Facts*. IN all meaningful ways, the debate is moot - it's not about facts, it's about obsolete beliefs being replaced in the popular consciousness by newer, accurate beliefs. This needs to happen quickly because we have to start mobilizing our government to action.
Data obtained by examining the layers(ice sheets and glaciers form like trees, they have lines indicating how old they are because there is a warming and cooling season *once a year*) of ice sheets which contain bubbles of air(from which we can derive the temperature they were frozen at) trapped from freezing cycles as early as 650,000 years ago reveal a very, very regular periodic cooling and warming cycle. However, it also shows what concentration of CO2 existed in the atmosphere during those cycles, and this graph is almost identical to the temperature graph during the same intervals. The correlation is so strong between CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature that it becomes very, very clear that atmospheric CO2 reflects radiation back into our atmosphere, causing global temperature to rise. . Now, it happens that the concentrations of CO2 are rising at a higher rate than they have ever been measured to rise according to the data obtained from the ice sheets. THey are also at a higher level than has ever been measured according to the ice sheets. This indicates that the global temperature is continuing to increase at a much higher rate than has ever been seen before. This trend started around the time that humans began pouring tons and tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, during the industrial revolution, and is getting worse every year. There is thus a very strong correlation between the trend of human industry and the trend of rapid global warming. Now, you might think - humans can't possibly be contributing that much gas into the atmosphere, the atmosphere is huge! That's crap. 6 billion humans contribute to our pollution, and pour gasses into the atmosphere 24 hours a day 365 days a year, and have been doing so for over a century. Moreover, the atmosphere is not very thick - it represents a sliver of earth's total diameter, equivalent to a *much* smaller volume of gasses than we intuit from looking at the sky. It's very easy to see that humans are very capable of influencing the composition of the atmosphere.
The only reason there's a "Debate" over the human cause of global warming is because hack scientists(a minority of scientists) funded by energy lobbies continue to be enlisted(and paid) for their testimonies in front of Congress, which itself is heavily bankrolled by energy companies, who have a very loud voice when it comes to their own interests, and often share the interests of the very wealthy politicans whose campaigns they pay for. The vast majority of scientists believe that global warming has a significant human contribution. There is no meaningful debate over the scientific fact that humans cause global warming, just like there is no good argument against evolution. Even if there was, we should err on the side of caution and as a country(and world) change our attitudes, because this not only relates to global climate, but also the *air* we are breathing. Combustion engines and power plants emit a lot of pollutants, not just CO2. These pollutants cause health problems. BUt casting doubt over global warming undermines *all* environmental endeavors by wrongly discrediting the credible people who want to help protect our health and the earth. There are a lo
You have a lot of very good points, but the fact remains that the market is exceptionally good at producing advances simply because it is dynamic in a way that federal agencies are not and will never be. Technological advances become exponential - one innovation by one competitor will spawn a slew of innovations elsewhere. So while private companies are motivated by profit in the short term, just by their nature they produce incremental advancers towards long term goals. Moreover, there are other industries where private companies compete where the cost of entry and overhead are *huge* - the airline industry for instance, where purchasing and maintaining a fleet of aircraft costs *billions*, yet the government still makes it (sometimes) attractive to compete in the industry, and there are plenty of airlines. If the government provided the same incentives to compete in space industry, I think we'd have seen a lot more progress by now. NASA is a dangling relic of the Cold War - it needs to be down-sized to just the components where there is no conceivable private interest to accomplish the same goals, as you say pure science research, etc. If the shuttle program were canceled and the technology spun off to private corporations, I think we could see a lot more advances in the immediate goal of making space travel affordable and just as commonplace as airline travel. NOt to mention, it would really help our deficit.
Yeah, but being most popular does equate to being the latest craze. Popularity in the sense of this survey is defined not just by how many people *like* something. We all share a lot of plain "likes." For example, a lot of American students like watching TV , but they would hardly describe TV as being "popular" in the same sense that the iPod is. The cultural sensation of TV wore off about 50 years ago. As for beer, the fact that it still ranks so high on the list can be attributed to the fact that drinking it is a relatively new activity among this group of people, what with the country's puritanical drinking laws. The fact that the novelty of the iPod can compete with the novelty of beer either suggests that kids are drinking earlier(and the novelty wears off) or the iPod is one, ahem, intoxicating device. I tend to think the study is showing the latter, because beer shows up as still being very "in" at 71 percent - and that probably indicates that it's still a fresh part of the kids' lives that they haven't grown tired of yet. This is market research, and sales of a trendy product like the iPod depend on saturating the popular consciousness - beer still has a very large mindshare, but the iPod is more "in" because it has the most mindshare, and that is a great indicator of future sales as well as present ones.
You can hardly call what Mengele did "science" or even an attempt to gain knowledge of any kind. His "experiments" were conceived of as vehicles by which he exercised control and satisfied his sadistic impulses. Comparing him to modern-day scientists is like comparing Bush to Einstein. Yet for some reason people still call him (ironically) Dr. Mengele, even though he forfeited his right to the title of doctor and that token of respect should have been long abandoned with regard to his name. This is another poorly conceived Nazi comparison that not only trivializes the meaning of "Nazis" but also trivializes science.
What we're talking about with stem cell research involves no cost to humanity whatsoever, besides the "cost" of funding it, which entails the benefit of saving millions of adult human lives that will otherwise be lost. The equation is pretty simple: Saving the lives of demonstrably sentient beings(child/adult humans) in favor of saving non-sentient beings(embryos) which will be destroyed anyway, without any benefits to humanity or to them.
There is no debate on whether stem-cell research is ethical, let alone Mengele-esque. It is unethical not to allow stem-cell research when the possibility is open to us.
Actually, from the article, about FTp, telnet, and Usenet(NNTP):
"All these old technologies actually live on and in some cases thrive (and in the case of the Usenet, still consume (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet) enormous amounts (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&rls=en&q=U senet+binary&btnG=Search) of bandwidth and offer very useful (http://groups.google.com/) information) but have been mostly superceded by newer protocols."
He's right - the technology is still very much around(that's why in the previous sentence he has "abandoned" in quotes) - but adoption just isn't as big percentage-wise as it used to be - while FTP is used for a file download, it's mostly transparent to the user because most ftp downloads are initiated from a web page, and HTTP can perform file transfers just fine. Usenet is HUGE but it's not known about among the less experienced users - and many many people who do use USENET access it through a web site, such as Google Groups. FTP and Telnet also both have secure counterparts - SFTP and SSH, which most responsible system administrators opt for in the interest of maximizing security. It's reasonable to assume that SMTP could be phased out and replaced with a newer, encrypted protocol just like the other protocols - or at least phased out enough that adoption of a more secure protocol would vastly outweigh the use of SMTP. I can envision a system like our domain system where ISP, Companies, and Universities who want Mail Exchangers have to register with a central registrar and (perhaps) pay a small fee for their mail exchange to resolve for other mail exchanges. The only way they permit a mail exchange to participate is if the software they use conforms to some stipulations 1) Only users in the same domain are allowed to send mail - no outside users 2) the mail is encrypted and each individual user has to have a unique signature or something - they can remain anonymous, but they must be authorized by the compliant mail exchange, which will limit how many anonymous users there will be. 3) There is a max send rate of like 100 mails per user per hour, or whatever reasonable number that would accomodate the largest number of non-spammers - above that the mail exchange starts paying fines, so there's an incentive to enforce no-spam policies in addition to the bandwidth incentive. 4) The user/agencyregistering their mail exchange has to be a real person. The central agency can suspend abusers and other people for sending spam, etc, This is just me imagining, feel to free to shoot me down, but I think if there was a pact, contract, and agreement among all secure mail exchangers to keep spammers out, we could fix the concept and use of electronic mail.
Yeah, see, I should have mentioned the whole "age of the internet" thing in greater detail. See, we're in the age of the internet, where if subscriptions for software can be paid for and delivered online then missing a payment isn't as big of a risk or a problem, since you can renew instantly. In fact the internet is what enables the service model to exist, since subscriptions can be bought/renewed online and the software can be very quickly delivered by download for relatively low cost per unit. $1400 for a renewal? I doubt that they would make you pay for the intervening months when you didn't use the software. More like you're paying $20 for a month's access to the software every time you want to use it. We need to get rid of this consumer attitude of excess - we're all about ownership in our country, and while it is fine to own your house, your car, everything else, many people spend too much on things they don 't use often at all just to *say*/*feel* they own it. In an age where transcations can occur almost instantly over the internet, ownership access is not meaningfully different from service access, and the benefits of service models for things like software outweigh the benefits of the ownership model..
Perhaps the perfect tense would have been more suitable. Of course he's not going to attack drug addicts after being revealed to be one himself. The point is he was a drug addict even while he was ranting and raving against drug addicts, without revealing this to the public, and so during this time he was a pot calling the kettle black, as they say. Hypocrisy is a failure of integrity. The fact of whether it was known that he was addicted at the time he was is irrelevant. It doesn't change the fact that he was a drug addict. And the fact that he was ranting against drug addicts while he was addicted to narcotics *is* the definition of hypocrisy.
I agree. The kneejerk reaction to software as a service is striking from Slashdot members, since typically the slashdot mentality is pro-availability as opposed to pro-(intellectual, private property) ownership. I think the service model benefits users as well as developers. It provides developers with a steady, reliable \ revenueand the users only have to be subscribed when they need to use the software.
Let's examine the implications of the two models for the consumer:
1) You spend several hundred dollars on an office or graphics suite so you can do word processing from home for your company. But, a couple of months later, you lose or switch your job or find another one, where you rarely need to use Office to complete assignments. Suddenly, you don't need the software anymore, and a lot of the value that the software originally had for you has been lost, along with a hundred or so dollars. And if you don't switch your job, you have to pay $100 or so every time a new upgrade comes out, so that you can remain compatible with all your co-workers.
Or
2) You pay $20 to rent a piece of software online so you can complete your assignment. A month later you realize you don't really need the software anymore, so you cancel your subscription. You've just saved yourself a couple hundred dollars, and the upgrades are installed automatically every time there's a new release.
Of course, for people who need the software forever, $20/month is a lot easier to come up with than $300 at one time. And the cost pays itself back because the program is useful enough for you to keep renewing your subscription.
No one loses. IMHO, software in the age of the internet more naturally fits a service model than a product model.
I would consider the writer to be the main creative force behind a story. While a director may tweak the nuances of a story, the story itself is crafted by the writer.
That's a nice thought, but it simply isn't true in the case of films. The director collaborates with the writer - but the director is the story-teller, and has creative control over every aspect of how the story is finally expressed - what motifs, what visual cues, what images, etc etc. The creative thoughts of the writer have an influence, along with a host of other people's thoughts, but every formal and content-oriented aspect of a movie is ultimately controlled by the director, especially a very precise director like Ridley Scott, and so it is primarily his vision that is finally expressed in the product.
Here you're missing my point entirely. I never said Gaff knew Deckard's dream. In fact, my point is that he did not know it. When symbolism is used in books/movies/etc. the same symbol will typically pop up repeatedly, often independently of each other. This is what the unicorn is - an indepenently repeated symbol.
That's precisely my point - which you are missing entirely. Why do we have to invent a motivation for Gaff to create a unicorn spontaneously, not knowing what it means, by sheer coincidence matching up to Deckard's dream/memory even though Deckard has not communicated this dream to anyone else in the film? There is a clear motivation within the story line - Gaff is communicating that he knows what Deckard's dream is. It is too much of a coincidence for Gaff to know about the unicorn, to leave it for Deckard, and smacks of deus ex machina if it is explained your way, a cheap narrative trick. There is already the context of artificial memory, created elaborately at the beginning. The only way the unicorn makes sense is as a signifier of Deckard's being a replicant. Otherwise, the origami unicorn is a sheer arbitrary coincidence which has no meaning and can be interpreted any which way - as you say by arbitrarily saying it's a symbol for Rachel. It might as well be a symbol for any of the other replicants, since the only particular quality it represents is being a myth - artificial. Besides, what does a unicorn have to do with love? You can't draw parallel lines with only one point on each. No, the film is much more coherent if you take the pre-established context of artifice and use it to explain the coincidence of the origami unicorn. You're free to interpret it any way you like, but the changed ending was Scott's idea, and Scott has said the Deckard is a replicant.
How is this any more arbitrary than any of the other symbolism in the movie? How is the Rachael as Unicorn symbol implausible within the narrative?
In your interpretation, Gaff's origami is a sheer coincidence that is highly unlikely, and creates a dangling symbol that doesn't really fit into the rest of the film and doesn't really communicate anything as I explained.
...and here is one of my other main problems with your argument: This is Deckard's dream. Dreams are not the same thing as memories. So, unless you're trying to say that Decard really was in a field watching a unicorn running at him, and was simply remembering it, your argument breaks down.
Even though you're nitpicking, I'll explain anyway. Even if it were a dream, it's some subjective vision that he has that he has no preceding phenomenal experience for. That would be why it's artificial - it's implanted. If I recall correctly, he has it while he is sitting at the piano in his apartment, fully awake. Even if this isn't true, it's still a vision that he has no previous experience of - it has no motivation in the context of the film unless it is implanted. In any case it's still too much of a coincidence for Gaff to bring out the particular unicorn that he does. The whole thing is much more coherently and plausibly explained in the artificial memory context.
Slashdot Mirror
The same principle applies here, and this is the principle I was arguing for, because it appeared from the parent's math and his flawed "proof" that this is the principle he was arguing against:
Quite frankly he's wrong about the "rate" part, while he may not be wrong about which object reaches the ground first which sort of erects a straw man argument because no one has really argued that the body being orbited experiences no effect from the gravity of the orbiting object. Typically Newton's laws are only useful if you isolate the forces and fields acting on bodies so you can determine the net acceleration acting on them and them alone. The fact remains that the falling object has a frame of reference that is accelerating, and the more massive object has a frame of reference that while accelerating, is doing so at a much lower rate. Two objects experiencing the same gravitational field will experience the *exact* same gravitational acceleration regardless of mass, and so will reach the actual physical "destination" dictated by their respective acceleration at the *same* exact time. Whether or not the surface of the Earth coincides with this destination or arrives at one object before the other isn't really important since the property I'm talking about is mass, not volume (and moreso because relativity demolishes the idea of provable simultaneity). The physical destination I'm talking about is the gravitational origin of the field the objects experience.
Now, you are all right in saying that in practice the destination of the "surface" of the object they are travelling towards is going to reach one before the other, but this is obvious and doesn't really say anything, since what we actually care about is the rate at which they fall, not the order in which they land. Again, I'm actually talking about the fact that two objects experiencing the same gravitation will experience the exact same acceleration, regardless of the acceleration they are imposing on their "destination" body.
I'm pretty sure Parallels runs using a hypervisor too, IIRC. It's not Mac virtualizing a Windows platform, it's Parallels virtualizing both Mac and Windows. The Mac acts as a host operating system, and Windows as a guest but only in appearance, because Apple won't allow OS X to boot on anything else besides TPM. If Apple would allow booting OS X outside of TPM in some circumstances(which is probably never going to happen) you could conceivably do it the other way around - run Mac as a guest OS to Windows. Is there a Virtual Machine that makes the guest OS think it's running inside a trusted platform? I'm not sure about the specifics.
I could definitely see Mac supporting Windows inside a built-in "Classic"-type virtualization environment and integrating with the OS, so that double-clicking on an exe file in the Mac would launch it in Windows. I could even see them doing that in "rootless" mode like they did with Classic when they first made the transition to OS X - run Windows applications as though they were running on OS X directly - they draw regular Aqua windows instead of Windows Windows, can be switched to from the Dock, and have the same background as other OS X applications (although Classic still head a lot of the appearance of Mac OS 9).
Some people have suggested reproducing the Windows API inside of Mac OS X, since Apple has been given access to the entire Windows API but I think that would run counter to Apple's commitment to comparmentalizing different APIs inside of different protected memory stacks, so that a crash inside a Windows application doesn't take down the whole host OS with it. While reproducing the Windows API doesn't preclude the possibility of running it on top of OS X, instead of parallel to it, it's not worth the effort when an instance of Windows itself can already run on top of OS X. I also don't think that would be better than virtualizing Windows, since a hack could easily make Windows run applications in rootless mode inside the OS X graphical environment . Then they could advertise that Mac OS X now runs Windows programs just as well as it runs Mac programs - even though really it would be Windows running Windows programs on top of Mac programs.
not really. the gravitational acceleration that the hammer(or any other small object) imposes on the earth is so small as to be completely negligible(it is 1 For all meaningful purposes the hammer and the feather will drop at the same acceleration in a vacuum. So, for any usual meaning of the world "fall", (i.e. the one that you and I use to talk about objects day to day), two objects with the same mass will fall to the Earth at the same acceleration. For big objects you have to do a force balance for both bodies with the universal theory of gravitation. The fundamental law, the gravity is a force and force is equal to mass times acceleration, remain correct (mostly).
Yes, but the parent poster seems to be under the impression that even objects that don't appreciably change the center of mass of their system vary in free fall acceleration. The classical universal theory of gravitation is very accurate even for systems where the center of mass is different from the center of mass of one of the bodies. It's just not *as* accurate as Einstein's General Relativity, which includes (and predicts) systems where the gravitational potential is close in proportion to c^2(black holes, and other incredibly massive systems)
Just because someone is modded funny doesn't mean they weren't serious. If you read down the thread, it becomes quite clear that he was.
Sigh.
Are you serious? All objects will fall to the earth at the same rate at the same distance.
This is pretty basic. It's one of the first observations of classical physics.
F = G * m(1) * m(2) / (r^2) = m(1) * a
(equate Newton's second law with Newton's theory of gravitation where a is acceleration, m1 is the body being accelerated, and m2 is the massive body m1 is being accelerated towards.)
If you cancel m1 on both sides you get G * m2 / (r^2) = a
This means that the gravity of a massive body is always going to accelerate an orbiting body at the same rate if that body remains at the same distance. So, two masses let go at the same height above the earth will fall to the earth at the same rate (9.81 m/s^2). They each have different *forces* responsible for that acceleration, but since m*a = F, that extra force for the more massive object is needed to accelerate it at the same rate.
I read a lot of articles listed under less controversial(scientific, historical) topics, and while I am not necessarily looking out for them, I usually don't detect any gross violations. Maybe I'm just missing a lot of the more egregious examples. I don't know. I think generally the articles are written by people who are taking time out of their day to contribute to a growing slice of human knowledge and therefore demonstrate some respect for the facts, as this hobby is not something that appeals to the more factually lazy(or even just generally lazy) among us(Writing encyclopedia articles for fun? Who does that? A lot of people, apparently.) Most of the Wiki articles I read are impartial and very informative, and while I wouldn't cite a Wiki article in a research paper, I do go to Wikipedia often for general knowledge purposes, and my expectations for objectivity and impartiality are often fulfilled, as far as I can tell.
Wikipedia's an honorable undertaking. IMHO it's doing a very good job. It's never going to be perfect. It's a learning process - people have always had a hard time separating facts and opinions. Some even believe there's actually no meaningful difference between the two(I'm not one of those people, although I do believe impartiality is a limit we approach, not an end we achieve.) But as Wiki matures it will probably, eventually approximate objective facts a lot more.
The sentence violates several of the Wiki community's guidelines for article authorship. Using the word "speculation" is not enough. There has to be a credible source cited to be behind the speculation so that the "fact" of the speculation can be established as either belonging to a majority or significant minority. Otherwise the sentence is reporting nothing more than an individual opinion(whether it is the author's or not, or whether it belongs to many people) and can slant the overall impartiality of the article - simply mentioning such speculation can skew a future reader's opinion of the subject of the article. In any case, it's way too soon to tell what the concensus is regarding Lay's death, so remarking on such speculation as fact is ridiculous.
That was meant to be "Prostrate" not "prostate". Heh
You people might have a point if you actually looked at the ad, which clearly deliberately draws attention to a distinction in skin color. While whether this constitutes racism is up for argument, the ad definitely asks its audience to differentiate between white and black skin. That would be the whole point of the ad: The black woman is wearing black, and the white woman is wearing white, and it depicts the black woman as basically prostate, being rigidly held by the more physically prominent white woman, and the subtitle is "Playstation Portable: White is Coming" - so yes, the ad definitely emphasizes the difference in color of the two women. The only thing left to question in deciding whether is whether or not the comparatively 'victorious' stance of the white woman and the reference to color constitutes a value judgment. I don't think it necessarily does, or that the creators themselves are racist, but they are *definitely* trying to be racially provocative. Some people would say that deliberately drawing a distinction based on race provides a stimulus and an excuse for a racial impulse that we should condemn. So, no, it's not entirely unracist - it might even be out and out racist. Not all racism is deliberate either - one can merely try to be provocative and end up crossing the line.
Comparing the market share of Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows is really not very informative. Apple has positioned itself as a platform company - that means it competes both as a software and hardware vendor, both with Microsoft and Dell, HP, Gateway, etc.(but more with Dell, HP, Gateway than Microsoft, since OS X can't be sold or licensed to third party vendors.) Comparing Apple market share isn't a very good way to guage it's success in the market, since even a tiny percentage of market share gain over Microsoft for Apple means they've just made billions of dollars in new hardware revenue. One can't say that about a market share gain for Windows, which can be divided up among several different OEM manufacturers. It's not even a good estimation of *future* success - since the installed base percentage (the number of computers currently running OS X) for Apple is much, much larger than the market share(15% was a number I heard) . This reflects the total mindshare Apple has in the computer market, and as such, is a more promising statistic for measuring future growth for the company's computer division. Moreover market share just measures what percentage of world or US computer sales Apple is responsible for - but the entire industry is growing at such a substantial rate that even keeping up with past years means that Apple is an extremely successful company. And *any* market share gain therefore means Apple is exceeding expectations by a *lot* - the emphasis is on *change* versus a snapshot of what Apple's slice of the market is right now. I for one prefer that Apple be below 5% to 10% of market share. There have been quality issues with iPods and other Apple products that have hindered their success, and I believe these problems have stemmed from Apple not being able to handle that scale of production, having spent so long as a marginalized hardware company. If they grew too quickly too fast we're likely to see some more problematic quality failures as well. Being small preserves their ability to innovate.
Only kernel developers can access that site.
We disagree on what the definition of open source "prosperity" is. Phipps, as a executive, is thinking entirely in terms of financial prosperity.But what's valuable for Phipps isn't necessarily valuable for open source. In other words, open source's value lies not in the revenues it earns(though that may be what makes it valuable to the private sector), but in the degree to which it is truly open. It is valuable because its sole concern is making available useful products that anyone - not just companies - can modify to suit their needs. As such, it doesn't obey any rigid economic rules or favor any particular economic entity. It is agile, and adapts to many different market circumstances.
I'm not entirely sure, but I think that Phipps' argument here is dangerous for open source. "Connected self-interest" is not something that easily preserves openness. If we take his advice, I see open source gradually being appropriated by private entities to the extent that it becomes indistinguishable from a proprietary product to the outsider. Most corporations tend towards proprietarizing - it fits into a basic principle of capitalism(ownership). This has always been the case, and it runs in direct opposition to the openness which open source seeks to preserve. In any case, until intellectual property and licensing laws are revised, it will be very difficult to achieve the vision for open source of "connected capitalism" that Phipps has, since he seems to be ignoring the whole element of market *competition* and why it creates concerns over what constitutes private property.Open source may be a part of how companies make revenue, but open source *itself* should remain mostly independent and non-profit. That's the only way to preserve its openness, IMHO.
Saying there is a debate over whether global warming is real like saying there is a debate over whether the earth is not the center of the universe. What we really have is a debate between the interests of the special interest establishment and the interests of the environmentalists. This debate has been going on in various modes for many many hundreds of years - but science hasn't lost yet. You can't argue down evolution, and you can't argue down global warming - to scientists, these are "theories" because they pass the test for "theory" - which for them is the same test we use to determine *Facts*. IN all meaningful ways, the debate is moot - it's not about facts, it's about obsolete beliefs being replaced in the popular consciousness by newer, accurate beliefs. This needs to happen quickly because we have to start mobilizing our government to action. Data obtained by examining the layers(ice sheets and glaciers form like trees, they have lines indicating how old they are because there is a warming and cooling season *once a year*) of ice sheets which contain bubbles of air(from which we can derive the temperature they were frozen at) trapped from freezing cycles as early as 650,000 years ago reveal a very, very regular periodic cooling and warming cycle. However, it also shows what concentration of CO2 existed in the atmosphere during those cycles, and this graph is almost identical to the temperature graph during the same intervals. The correlation is so strong between CO2 in the atmosphere and temperature that it becomes very, very clear that atmospheric CO2 reflects radiation back into our atmosphere, causing global temperature to rise. . Now, it happens that the concentrations of CO2 are rising at a higher rate than they have ever been measured to rise according to the data obtained from the ice sheets. THey are also at a higher level than has ever been measured according to the ice sheets. This indicates that the global temperature is continuing to increase at a much higher rate than has ever been seen before. This trend started around the time that humans began pouring tons and tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, during the industrial revolution, and is getting worse every year. There is thus a very strong correlation between the trend of human industry and the trend of rapid global warming. Now, you might think - humans can't possibly be contributing that much gas into the atmosphere, the atmosphere is huge! That's crap. 6 billion humans contribute to our pollution, and pour gasses into the atmosphere 24 hours a day 365 days a year, and have been doing so for over a century. Moreover, the atmosphere is not very thick - it represents a sliver of earth's total diameter, equivalent to a *much* smaller volume of gasses than we intuit from looking at the sky. It's very easy to see that humans are very capable of influencing the composition of the atmosphere. The only reason there's a "Debate" over the human cause of global warming is because hack scientists(a minority of scientists) funded by energy lobbies continue to be enlisted(and paid) for their testimonies in front of Congress, which itself is heavily bankrolled by energy companies, who have a very loud voice when it comes to their own interests, and often share the interests of the very wealthy politicans whose campaigns they pay for. The vast majority of scientists believe that global warming has a significant human contribution. There is no meaningful debate over the scientific fact that humans cause global warming, just like there is no good argument against evolution. Even if there was, we should err on the side of caution and as a country(and world) change our attitudes, because this not only relates to global climate, but also the *air* we are breathing. Combustion engines and power plants emit a lot of pollutants, not just CO2. These pollutants cause health problems. BUt casting doubt over global warming undermines *all* environmental endeavors by wrongly discrediting the credible people who want to help protect our health and the earth. There are a lo
Ha ha! Like the NSA hires blondes!
You have a lot of very good points, but the fact remains that the market is exceptionally good at producing advances simply because it is dynamic in a way that federal agencies are not and will never be. Technological advances become exponential - one innovation by one competitor will spawn a slew of innovations elsewhere. So while private companies are motivated by profit in the short term, just by their nature they produce incremental advancers towards long term goals. Moreover, there are other industries where private companies compete where the cost of entry and overhead are *huge* - the airline industry for instance, where purchasing and maintaining a fleet of aircraft costs *billions*, yet the government still makes it (sometimes) attractive to compete in the industry, and there are plenty of airlines. If the government provided the same incentives to compete in space industry, I think we'd have seen a lot more progress by now. NASA is a dangling relic of the Cold War - it needs to be down-sized to just the components where there is no conceivable private interest to accomplish the same goals, as you say pure science research, etc. If the shuttle program were canceled and the technology spun off to private corporations, I think we could see a lot more advances in the immediate goal of making space travel affordable and just as commonplace as airline travel. NOt to mention, it would really help our deficit.
Yeah, but being most popular does equate to being the latest craze. Popularity in the sense of this survey is defined not just by how many people *like* something. We all share a lot of plain "likes." For example, a lot of American students like watching TV , but they would hardly describe TV as being "popular" in the same sense that the iPod is. The cultural sensation of TV wore off about 50 years ago. As for beer, the fact that it still ranks so high on the list can be attributed to the fact that drinking it is a relatively new activity among this group of people, what with the country's puritanical drinking laws. The fact that the novelty of the iPod can compete with the novelty of beer either suggests that kids are drinking earlier(and the novelty wears off) or the iPod is one, ahem, intoxicating device. I tend to think the study is showing the latter, because beer shows up as still being very "in" at 71 percent - and that probably indicates that it's still a fresh part of the kids' lives that they haven't grown tired of yet. This is market research, and sales of a trendy product like the iPod depend on saturating the popular consciousness - beer still has a very large mindshare, but the iPod is more "in" because it has the most mindshare, and that is a great indicator of future sales as well as present ones.
You can hardly call what Mengele did "science" or even an attempt to gain knowledge of any kind. His "experiments" were conceived of as vehicles by which he exercised control and satisfied his sadistic impulses. Comparing him to modern-day scientists is like comparing Bush to Einstein. Yet for some reason people still call him (ironically) Dr. Mengele, even though he forfeited his right to the title of doctor and that token of respect should have been long abandoned with regard to his name. This is another poorly conceived Nazi comparison that not only trivializes the meaning of "Nazis" but also trivializes science.
What we're talking about with stem cell research involves no cost to humanity whatsoever, besides the "cost" of funding it, which entails the benefit of saving millions of adult human lives that will otherwise be lost. The equation is pretty simple: Saving the lives of demonstrably sentient beings(child/adult humans) in favor of saving non-sentient beings(embryos) which will be destroyed anyway, without any benefits to humanity or to them.
There is no debate on whether stem-cell research is ethical, let alone Mengele-esque. It is unethical not to allow stem-cell research when the possibility is open to us.
Yeah, see, I should have mentioned the whole "age of the internet" thing in greater detail. See, we're in the age of the internet, where if subscriptions for software can be paid for and delivered online then missing a payment isn't as big of a risk or a problem, since you can renew instantly. In fact the internet is what enables the service model to exist, since subscriptions can be bought/renewed online and the software can be very quickly delivered by download for relatively low cost per unit. $1400 for a renewal? I doubt that they would make you pay for the intervening months when you didn't use the software. More like you're paying $20 for a month's access to the software every time you want to use it. We need to get rid of this consumer attitude of excess - we're all about ownership in our country, and while it is fine to own your house, your car, everything else, many people spend too much on things they don 't use often at all just to *say*/*feel* they own it. In an age where transcations can occur almost instantly over the internet, ownership access is not meaningfully different from service access, and the benefits of service models for things like software outweigh the benefits of the ownership model..
Perhaps the perfect tense would have been more suitable. Of course he's not going to attack drug addicts after being revealed to be one himself. The point is he was a drug addict even while he was ranting and raving against drug addicts, without revealing this to the public, and so during this time he was a pot calling the kettle black, as they say. Hypocrisy is a failure of integrity. The fact of whether it was known that he was addicted at the time he was is irrelevant. It doesn't change the fact that he was a drug addict. And the fact that he was ranting against drug addicts while he was addicted to narcotics *is* the definition of hypocrisy.
An endangered Hobby? We better get AHPS(the American Hobby Preservation Society) on this before the hobbies become extinct! Poor, furry hobbies.
I agree. The kneejerk reaction to software as a service is striking from Slashdot members, since typically the slashdot mentality is pro-availability as opposed to pro-(intellectual, private property) ownership. I think the service model benefits users as well as developers. It provides developers with a steady, reliable \ revenueand the users only have to be subscribed when they need to use the software.
Let's examine the implications of the two models for the consumer:
1) You spend several hundred dollars on an office or graphics suite so you can do word processing from home for your company. But, a couple of months later, you lose or switch your job or find another one, where you rarely need to use Office to complete assignments. Suddenly, you don't need the software anymore, and a lot of the value that the software originally had for you has been lost, along with a hundred or so dollars. And if you don't switch your job, you have to pay $100 or so every time a new upgrade comes out, so that you can remain compatible with all your co-workers.
Or
2) You pay $20 to rent a piece of software online so you can complete your assignment. A month later you realize you don't really need the software anymore, so you cancel your subscription. You've just saved yourself a couple hundred dollars, and the upgrades are installed automatically every time there's a new release.
Of course, for people who need the software forever, $20/month is a lot easier to come up with than $300 at one time. And the cost pays itself back because the program is useful enough for you to keep renewing your subscription.
No one loses. IMHO, software in the age of the internet more naturally fits a service model than a product model.
I would consider the writer to be the main creative force behind a story. While a director may tweak the nuances of a story, the story itself is crafted by the writer.
...and here is one of my other main problems with your argument: This is Deckard's dream. Dreams are not the same thing as memories. So, unless you're trying to say that Decard really was in a field watching a unicorn running at him, and was simply remembering it, your argument breaks down.
That's a nice thought, but it simply isn't true in the case of films. The director collaborates with the writer - but the director is the story-teller, and has creative control over every aspect of how the story is finally expressed - what motifs, what visual cues, what images, etc etc. The creative thoughts of the writer have an influence, along with a host of other people's thoughts, but every formal and content-oriented aspect of a movie is ultimately controlled by the director, especially a very precise director like Ridley Scott, and so it is primarily his vision that is finally expressed in the product.
Here you're missing my point entirely. I never said Gaff knew Deckard's dream. In fact, my point is that he did not know it. When symbolism is used in books/movies/etc. the same symbol will typically pop up repeatedly, often independently of each other. This is what the unicorn is - an indepenently repeated symbol.
That's precisely my point - which you are missing entirely. Why do we have to invent a motivation for Gaff to create a unicorn spontaneously, not knowing what it means, by sheer coincidence matching up to Deckard's dream/memory even though Deckard has not communicated this dream to anyone else in the film? There is a clear motivation within the story line - Gaff is communicating that he knows what Deckard's dream is. It is too much of a coincidence for Gaff to know about the unicorn, to leave it for Deckard, and smacks of deus ex machina if it is explained your way, a cheap narrative trick. There is already the context of artificial memory, created elaborately at the beginning. The only way the unicorn makes sense is as a signifier of Deckard's being a replicant. Otherwise, the origami unicorn is a sheer arbitrary coincidence which has no meaning and can be interpreted any which way - as you say by arbitrarily saying it's a symbol for Rachel. It might as well be a symbol for any of the other replicants, since the only particular quality it represents is being a myth - artificial. Besides, what does a unicorn have to do with love? You can't draw parallel lines with only one point on each. No, the film is much more coherent if you take the pre-established context of artifice and use it to explain the coincidence of the origami unicorn. You're free to interpret it any way you like, but the changed ending was Scott's idea, and Scott has said the Deckard is a replicant.
How is this any more arbitrary than any of the other symbolism in the movie? How is the Rachael as Unicorn symbol implausible within the narrative?
In your interpretation, Gaff's origami is a sheer coincidence that is highly unlikely, and creates a dangling symbol that doesn't really fit into the rest of the film and doesn't really communicate anything as I explained.
Even though you're nitpicking, I'll explain anyway. Even if it were a dream, it's some subjective vision that he has that he has no preceding phenomenal experience for. That would be why it's artificial - it's implanted. If I recall correctly, he has it while he is sitting at the piano in his apartment, fully awake. Even if this isn't true, it's still a vision that he has no previous experience of - it has no motivation in the context of the film unless it is implanted. In any case it's still too much of a coincidence for Gaff to bring out the particular unicorn that he does. The whole thing is much more coherently and plausibly explained in the artificial memory context.