Well yeah that was my point. A theory that claimed to violate conservation, when obviously there is no experimental evidence for such, is going to get laughed out of Bob's Discount Journal of Non-Retarded Physics, much more so the Nobel Prize committee.
I mean it's not like these guys would have developed the entire electroweak theory and tested it without at some point noticing it broke conservation of energy... if it did. Which it doesn't.:)
Her dad was an electrical engineer at Hewlett Packard. People are *very* good at compartmentalizing, when what they believe conflicts with their paycheck.
Very true. But surely there had to be some rationalization about how the E-meter worked, assuming he had ever bothered to look at it enough to realize it was just a wheatstone bridge. I mean I rationalize the supposed conflict between geology and the Book of Genesis by saying it was speaking of metaphorical "days", not literal ones. Or was it just a matter of never questioning the Church's magic device?
My contention that the reason Scientology is all crazy about how "psychiatry kills!" as her mom had painted across the side of the family minivan, was just because Scientology was scared of anyone who could reverse what Scientology did to people's critical thinking skills, also didn't go over so well...
I can imagine. Though it's rather obvious that's the problem, and not only can psychology undo the damage, but anyone even passingly versed in it (like high school level) can see that Scientology "audits" are basically brainwashing via conditioning. They abuse psychology to their own ends. Elron was no dummy -- anything that threatened to expose their secrets or weaken their ability to gain new recruits is "the enemy".
It's not really clear why we were dating, in fact, aside from hormones. (And, uh, she bit me in preschool and that gave us something to talk about? I guess?)
Does there need to be any more explanation for hormones to at least go out on some dates? Though the biting thing is funny. I once had an administrative assistant bite me. I will admit I was affected in a way that could be called "allured", though also "frightened".:)
Right. Just as every GPL author has allowed you to do over the years.
Not that they necessarily wanted you to. Many GPL authors have considered this a loophole, something that wasn't considered when the GPLv2 was written and would have been addressed had they considered it.
So given that entire multi-MLOC stack, your 32KLOC running on top of it all are the only ones that can't be locally modified without releasing the changes.
The whole point of the "you can modify it locally and run it without releasing changes" is that you (or your organization) modify it, you run it, and you use it. It's intended for cases where the modifier and the user are the same person.
It was not intended for cases where the user is someone outside your organization. The whole web-app phenomenon is a way to get around distribution -- letting others use your app on their browser, without technically "distributing" it. If it was a java applet they had to download, then you'd be required to give them your modified source. But by keeping the code effectively local yet making it accessible to everyone, you get around that and are able to enjoy the benefits of open source code, and being able to let everyone and their brother use your modified software without having to share your changes.
The article gives no indication that light passing near the device will get sucked into it, but only that all light hitting the device gets sucked into the center. So instead of requiring those huge parabolic mirrors, you'll instead require these huge cylindrical structures.
No, think about it. All light that intersects the volume of the device from any direction, vs. only light parallel to the optical axis and incident on the concave side of the mirror. It's obvious that this device will collect a lot more light for a given surface area, especially when light is diffuse. But even in places with lots of direct sunlight, this could be a boon. Imagine a mirror-based solar collector in the desert. Think about the amount of light that reflects off the surrounding sand. Useless to the mirror, but it could be absorbed by this device.
That's not to say it will end up being practical. But I sure hope it will.
That's splitting hairs. Milk and eggs are still animal products, and there are many who would object to their consumption.
Yes and they're called "vegans". People who only object to killing animals for food, aka "vegetarians", don't mind eating animal byproducts including unfertilized eggs. I don't think killing vs not killing is splitting hairs.
Oh and it also gets to your point about B12 being unavailable from unfortified vegetables, so unless you were just nitpicking, it's a valid point.
The simple fact is we've evolved over millions of years to consume a diet that includes meat. Hell, it's the entire reason we were able to evolve these huge brains of ours: only meat could provide the density of calories needed such that the surplus could be used to fuel an oversized brain. Put simply, anyone who believes that eating meat or animal products isn't part of our fundamental biology is kidding themselves. There is, after all, a reason humans no longer have an organ for digesting cellulose.
Because we aren't grazing animals? Yes we evolved to eat meat "or animal products". We still retained the ability to eat a wide variety of vegetable matter. We kept our molars. We are omnivores.
And the evolutionary impetus of taking advantage of the additional source of food and high caloric density of meat is not the same as a biological requirement. It's a simple fact that human beings do not have to eat meat and can still be perfectly healthy.
So just because ancient humans didn't realistically have the option of avoiding meat, that doesn't mean you're denying your body "what it needs" as drinkypoo said by choosing, today, not to eat meat.
As an aside, humans didn't start consuming milk as a regular component of our diet until after the development of domestication, long after meat became a regular part of the human diet. The consumption of milk just made it easier for humans to live a sedentary lifestyle (which itself was a precursor to modern societies).
Yes, that is a recent evolutionary development and one that isn't present in the entire species. And... that means it's not a valid adaptation from which to inform choices about diet why? I mean I realize you aren't explicitly claiming it isn't. But the poster I first replied to was essentially saying that vegetarianism is not a valid ethical choice because humans evolved to "need" meat.
Except we haven't stopped evolving, both genetically and culturally, and today we do not "need" meat. So if someone chooses to take advantage of that fact, whether because of ethics, economics, or health, I see no reason to judge them for it. Especially not on the basis of human evolution. It's not a choice I make, but that's the whole point. We're not unthinking animals. We can make choices about our lifestyles. We are not tied to the lifestyles which we genetically evolved into, and that is humanity's greatest strength.
He spent two winters down there and he said the stink of penguins, particularly of penguin poo, was the worst smell he'd ever smelled in his whole life. He didn't go back a third winter purely because of the stink.
Wow, so I guess they do need someone to shovel penguin shit? That's pretty amazing in a disgusting way. Maybe penguins are better appreciated from afar.
On an unrelated note regarding your post, I can't imagine why a relationship between a Scientologist and, uh, someone who knows science didn't take off. Picture the looks on their faces made me lol.
real magnetic monopoles would provide perpetual motion of the first (and awesomest) kind, the kind that violates conservation of energy.
LOL, no. Not at all. Magnetic monopoles are not magic. They're basically an analog of the electric monopoles, which also don't violate conservation of energy.
Sorry Dirac, but you don't mess with Noether.
He didn't, which is why he got a Nobel. A hundred years of physicists didn't fail to consider conservation of energy when positing the existence of monopoles.
The laughability of the Peace Prize notwithstanding, you don't get a Nobel Prize for Physics by claiming to violate Conservation of Energy.
Good point. And really, reading my own post, the implied thing that would actually break special relativity is the existence of a privileged reference frame.
Okay, I'm replying to myself as I thought I should immediately after posting the above.
Yes, Gauss's Law of Magnetism, one of Maxwell's Equations, says the magnetic field has zero divergence, meaning there is no net magnetic charge.
That is an assumption based on the lack of experimental evidence for a monopoles.
This does not mean Maxwell's Equations preclude the existence of monopoles, because they don't. What's the difference between precluding their existence, and presuming their non-existence? Well, let's look at something that is both assumed and precluded by theory: the speed of light being different for different inertial observers, and Special Relativity.
Special Relativity assumesc is constant for all inertial observers. It also precludes the possibility of that not being true, because the entire theory is based on that assumption, and falls apart if that assumption does not hold. All the equations of special relativity contradict observer-relative speed of light. If you ever discovered a case where this was not true, you would have to scrap Relativity and re-write the theory from scratch. That's precluding.
Maxwell's Equations assume net magnetic charge is zero, but if that assumption doesn't hold, then you simply have another term in the equations and you don't need to go back to the drawing board. Gauss' Law of Magnetism simply becomes a special case where net magnetic charge is zero (though this 'special' case is the most common case). You don't need to re-write the theory of electromagnetism. These researchers are not claiming to be re-writing the theory of electromagnetism, because the theory does not preclude magnetic monopoles.
When people get nominated by the Supreme Court, they are often asked if they believe there is a "right to privacy". If you think rights are granted by the constitution, then you kind of have to say no because it clearly does not say that.
By the same logic, this hypothetical justice nominee would have to say "no" to the question "is there a right to free speech?" Because the Constitution does not say that.
However "right to free speech" is just the affirmative way of saying "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". It doesn't say you have the right to free speech, it says Congress can't make a law abridging free speech. By the same token, "right to privacy" is just the affirmative way of saying "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated".
What do you call a "right to be secure in your effects and free from unreasonable searches" if not a right to privacy?
I think the point the GP was making was that there was no reason that they couldn't exist...
Exactly. It isn't necessary that they exist, but there's no reason they could not exist and it makes a lot of sense for them to exist for various reasons (charge quantization and symmetry between aspects of the same force being big reasons). But we've never observed them, hence the equations as stated do not account for them. Observe one, and you can trivially modify the equations to account for the fact. The theory is pre-built to accept them. Hence they're not "crying".
The law may need to be rewritten, but as written it does say no monopoles.
Which is trivial to do, and doesn't contradict the rest of the theory, and hence they aren't "crying". The possibility of monopoles has been accepted for a very long time. It's simply the lack of experimental observation that ever caused them to be written in the first place. Re-write Maxwell's equations given the existence of 'magnetic charge', set that charge to always be zero, and you get the equations as written.
Maxwell's equations don't preclude the existence of monopoles. They are simply stated in terms that assume there aren't any based on the lack of evidence for them. His theory is fine, his equations are not "crying".
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. Outside of the fact that you're all just being pedantic. I guess I should have said Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.
That's only an artifact of Maxwell's equations assuming there are no magnetic monopoles. Add them in, and the equations are perfectly symmetrical for electricity and magnetism, the only difference is the name of the variables and the quantities they represent are swapped. Their partial differentials are identical otherwise.
Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of the same force, electromagnetism. They are mediated by the same particle, the photon. The lack of symmetry in this one aspect is theoretically unnecessary, and philosophically kinda weird. That's not proof, of course. Demonstration of net magnetic charges is.
That's an equation, note lack of plural, and it's based on the lack of observation of a monopole. Observe one, change that one equation, and the rest of the equations compensate nicely. Neither Maxwell nor his equations are "crying" because of the discovery of monopoles and magnetic current. The theory doesn't preclude them, it was simply based on observation (as science should be). It's not like we observed that c was different in a vacuum for different inertial observers, which would undo the entire theory of Special Relativity. Maxwell's theory is compatible with magnetic monopoles. That was my point.
Okay, yes, I almost replied to myself to point out that the one equation based on the lack of the observation of magnetic monopoles would change. But none of the rest of the theory would change, and as you point out Maxwell's theory perfectly accommodates this change, so yeah, Maxwell's equations(plural) aren't "crying", except maybe with joy that now the expected symmetry has been discovered.
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Well yeah that was my point. A theory that claimed to violate conservation, when obviously there is no experimental evidence for such, is going to get laughed out of Bob's Discount Journal of Non-Retarded Physics, much more so the Nobel Prize committee.
I mean it's not like these guys would have developed the entire electroweak theory and tested it without at some point noticing it broke conservation of energy... if it did. Which it doesn't. :)
Um... Squeak?
And?
You're talking about existence, I'm talking about becoming a significant problem for free software, and yes that is fairly new.
Either way, it's a problem that the GPLv2 overlooked.
Her dad was an electrical engineer at Hewlett Packard. People are *very* good at compartmentalizing, when what they believe conflicts with their paycheck.
Very true. But surely there had to be some rationalization about how the E-meter worked, assuming he had ever bothered to look at it enough to realize it was just a wheatstone bridge. I mean I rationalize the supposed conflict between geology and the Book of Genesis by saying it was speaking of metaphorical "days", not literal ones. Or was it just a matter of never questioning the Church's magic device?
My contention that the reason Scientology is all crazy about how "psychiatry kills!" as her mom had painted across the side of the family minivan, was just because Scientology was scared of anyone who could reverse what Scientology did to people's critical thinking skills, also didn't go over so well...
I can imagine. Though it's rather obvious that's the problem, and not only can psychology undo the damage, but anyone even passingly versed in it (like high school level) can see that Scientology "audits" are basically brainwashing via conditioning. They abuse psychology to their own ends. Elron was no dummy -- anything that threatened to expose their secrets or weaken their ability to gain new recruits is "the enemy".
It's not really clear why we were dating, in fact, aside from hormones. (And, uh, she bit me in preschool and that gave us something to talk about? I guess?)
Does there need to be any more explanation for hormones to at least go out on some dates? Though the biting thing is funny. I once had an administrative assistant bite me. I will admit I was affected in a way that could be called "allured", though also "frightened". :)
Hey, we've already worked out that electromagnetism and the weak force are the same. We're still working on gravity!
In terms of galactic civilizations, we're barely out of our brachiating simian stage. Cut us some slack!
That is not the spirit of the GPL.
Or more specifically, not the spirit of the GPL as some GPL authors view it.
Those who don't view it that way are free to continue using GPLv2.
And the Apache authors didn't use any GPL license at all.
So what makes his code special that he can decide that he likes the spirit of GPLv3? He wrote it.
Right. Just as every GPL author has allowed you to do over the years.
Not that they necessarily wanted you to. Many GPL authors have considered this a loophole, something that wasn't considered when the GPLv2 was written and would have been addressed had they considered it.
So given that entire multi-MLOC stack, your 32KLOC running on top of it all are the only ones that can't be locally modified without releasing the changes.
The whole point of the "you can modify it locally and run it without releasing changes" is that you (or your organization) modify it, you run it, and you use it. It's intended for cases where the modifier and the user are the same person.
It was not intended for cases where the user is someone outside your organization. The whole web-app phenomenon is a way to get around distribution -- letting others use your app on their browser, without technically "distributing" it. If it was a java applet they had to download, then you'd be required to give them your modified source. But by keeping the code effectively local yet making it accessible to everyone, you get around that and are able to enjoy the benefits of open source code, and being able to let everyone and their brother use your modified software without having to share your changes.
That is not the spirit of the GPL.
The article gives no indication that light passing near the device will get sucked into it, but only that all light hitting the device gets sucked into the center. So instead of requiring those huge parabolic mirrors, you'll instead require these huge cylindrical structures.
No, think about it. All light that intersects the volume of the device from any direction, vs. only light parallel to the optical axis and incident on the concave side of the mirror. It's obvious that this device will collect a lot more light for a given surface area, especially when light is diffuse. But even in places with lots of direct sunlight, this could be a boon. Imagine a mirror-based solar collector in the desert. Think about the amount of light that reflects off the surrounding sand. Useless to the mirror, but it could be absorbed by this device.
That's not to say it will end up being practical. But I sure hope it will.
That's splitting hairs. Milk and eggs are still animal products, and there are many who would object to their consumption.
Yes and they're called "vegans". People who only object to killing animals for food, aka "vegetarians", don't mind eating animal byproducts including unfertilized eggs. I don't think killing vs not killing is splitting hairs.
Oh and it also gets to your point about B12 being unavailable from unfortified vegetables, so unless you were just nitpicking, it's a valid point.
The simple fact is we've evolved over millions of years to consume a diet that includes meat. Hell, it's the entire reason we were able to evolve these huge brains of ours: only meat could provide the density of calories needed such that the surplus could be used to fuel an oversized brain. Put simply, anyone who believes that eating meat or animal products isn't part of our fundamental biology is kidding themselves. There is, after all, a reason humans no longer have an organ for digesting cellulose.
Because we aren't grazing animals? Yes we evolved to eat meat "or animal products". We still retained the ability to eat a wide variety of vegetable matter. We kept our molars. We are omnivores.
And the evolutionary impetus of taking advantage of the additional source of food and high caloric density of meat is not the same as a biological requirement. It's a simple fact that human beings do not have to eat meat and can still be perfectly healthy.
So just because ancient humans didn't realistically have the option of avoiding meat, that doesn't mean you're denying your body "what it needs" as drinkypoo said by choosing, today, not to eat meat.
As an aside, humans didn't start consuming milk as a regular component of our diet until after the development of domestication, long after meat became a regular part of the human diet. The consumption of milk just made it easier for humans to live a sedentary lifestyle (which itself was a precursor to modern societies).
Yes, that is a recent evolutionary development and one that isn't present in the entire species. And... that means it's not a valid adaptation from which to inform choices about diet why? I mean I realize you aren't explicitly claiming it isn't. But the poster I first replied to was essentially saying that vegetarianism is not a valid ethical choice because humans evolved to "need" meat.
Except we haven't stopped evolving, both genetically and culturally, and today we do not "need" meat. So if someone chooses to take advantage of that fact, whether because of ethics, economics, or health, I see no reason to judge them for it. Especially not on the basis of human evolution. It's not a choice I make, but that's the whole point. We're not unthinking animals. We can make choices about our lifestyles. We are not tied to the lifestyles which we genetically evolved into, and that is humanity's greatest strength.
Charlie Murphy: Damnit, Rick James, I told you to stop calling me that.
He spent two winters down there and he said the stink of penguins, particularly of penguin poo, was the worst smell he'd ever smelled in his whole life. He didn't go back a third winter purely because of the stink.
Wow, so I guess they do need someone to shovel penguin shit? That's pretty amazing in a disgusting way. Maybe penguins are better appreciated from afar.
On an unrelated note regarding your post, I can't imagine why a relationship between a Scientologist and, uh, someone who knows science didn't take off. Picture the looks on their faces made me lol.
Yeah, just call it what it is -- a Light Sucker.
Which the masses will understand as the long-theorized counterpart to the everyday item, the Dark Sucker.
Read the rest of this thread for understanding.
real magnetic monopoles would provide perpetual motion of the first (and awesomest) kind, the kind that violates conservation of energy.
LOL, no. Not at all. Magnetic monopoles are not magic. They're basically an analog of the electric monopoles, which also don't violate conservation of energy.
Sorry Dirac, but you don't mess with Noether.
He didn't, which is why he got a Nobel. A hundred years of physicists didn't fail to consider conservation of energy when positing the existence of monopoles.
The laughability of the Peace Prize notwithstanding, you don't get a Nobel Prize for Physics by claiming to violate Conservation of Energy.
Good point. And really, reading my own post, the implied thing that would actually break special relativity is the existence of a privileged reference frame.
Note to self: physics-based sarcasm is a bad idea.
There is negative energy. At least, there is negative potential energy.
Okay, I'm replying to myself as I thought I should immediately after posting the above.
Yes, Gauss's Law of Magnetism, one of Maxwell's Equations, says the magnetic field has zero divergence, meaning there is no net magnetic charge.
That is an assumption based on the lack of experimental evidence for a monopoles.
This does not mean Maxwell's Equations preclude the existence of monopoles, because they don't. What's the difference between precluding their existence, and presuming their non-existence? Well, let's look at something that is both assumed and precluded by theory: the speed of light being different for different inertial observers, and Special Relativity.
Special Relativity assumes c is constant for all inertial observers. It also precludes the possibility of that not being true, because the entire theory is based on that assumption, and falls apart if that assumption does not hold. All the equations of special relativity contradict observer-relative speed of light. If you ever discovered a case where this was not true, you would have to scrap Relativity and re-write the theory from scratch. That's precluding.
Maxwell's Equations assume net magnetic charge is zero, but if that assumption doesn't hold, then you simply have another term in the equations and you don't need to go back to the drawing board. Gauss' Law of Magnetism simply becomes a special case where net magnetic charge is zero (though this 'special' case is the most common case). You don't need to re-write the theory of electromagnetism. These researchers are not claiming to be re-writing the theory of electromagnetism, because the theory does not preclude magnetic monopoles.
When people get nominated by the Supreme Court, they are often asked if they believe there is a "right to privacy". If you think rights are granted by the constitution, then you kind of have to say no because it clearly does not say that.
By the same logic, this hypothetical justice nominee would have to say "no" to the question "is there a right to free speech?" Because the Constitution does not say that.
However "right to free speech" is just the affirmative way of saying "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech". It doesn't say you have the right to free speech, it says Congress can't make a law abridging free speech. By the same token, "right to privacy" is just the affirmative way of saying "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated".
What do you call a "right to be secure in your effects and free from unreasonable searches" if not a right to privacy?
I think the point the GP was making was that there was no reason that they couldn't exist...
Exactly. It isn't necessary that they exist, but there's no reason they could not exist and it makes a lot of sense for them to exist for various reasons (charge quantization and symmetry between aspects of the same force being big reasons). But we've never observed them, hence the equations as stated do not account for them. Observe one, and you can trivially modify the equations to account for the fact. The theory is pre-built to accept them. Hence they're not "crying".
The law may need to be rewritten, but as written it does say no monopoles.
Which is trivial to do, and doesn't contradict the rest of the theory, and hence they aren't "crying". The possibility of monopoles has been accepted for a very long time. It's simply the lack of experimental observation that ever caused them to be written in the first place. Re-write Maxwell's equations given the existence of 'magnetic charge', set that charge to always be zero, and you get the equations as written.
Maxwell's equations don't preclude the existence of monopoles. They are simply stated in terms that assume there aren't any based on the lack of evidence for them. His theory is fine, his equations are not "crying".
I don't understand why this is so hard to understand. Outside of the fact that you're all just being pedantic. I guess I should have said Maxwell's theory of electromagnetism.
That's only an artifact of Maxwell's equations assuming there are no magnetic monopoles. Add them in, and the equations are perfectly symmetrical for electricity and magnetism, the only difference is the name of the variables and the quantities they represent are swapped. Their partial differentials are identical otherwise.
Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of the same force, electromagnetism. They are mediated by the same particle, the photon. The lack of symmetry in this one aspect is theoretically unnecessary, and philosophically kinda weird. That's not proof, of course. Demonstration of net magnetic charges is.
That's an equation, note lack of plural, and it's based on the lack of observation of a monopole. Observe one, change that one equation, and the rest of the equations compensate nicely. Neither Maxwell nor his equations are "crying" because of the discovery of monopoles and magnetic current. The theory doesn't preclude them, it was simply based on observation (as science should be). It's not like we observed that c was different in a vacuum for different inertial observers, which would undo the entire theory of Special Relativity. Maxwell's theory is compatible with magnetic monopoles. That was my point.
Okay, yes, I almost replied to myself to point out that the one equation based on the lack of the observation of magnetic monopoles would change. But none of the rest of the theory would change, and as you point out Maxwell's theory perfectly accommodates this change, so yeah, Maxwell's equations(plural) aren't "crying", except maybe with joy that now the expected symmetry has been discovered.
Yeah I agree it sucks.
I think they should call it "Magnetocurrent", since whether he was aware of it or not Magneto has been creating magnetic currents since WWII. :)