While they can be spotted at a distance, a mugger might thing I have a portable 8-track and not steal from me.
... only because a portable 8-track would weigh like 25 pounds and you'd be one tough mofo to be just strolling down the street with one in your... hmm, can't figure out how you'd carry that inconspicuously...
So the second conclusion would be that you have something expensive to hide (like a really cool magic bag) thus making you a good target.;)
I believe the word "planet" has origins in Greek, and means "wanderer". Hence, the "planets" were called such because they appeared as wandering stars by human eyes on earth. Certainly anything in orbit around our Sun, out to about a light year, will have enough "wandering" associated with it (by parallax due to Earth's revolution about the Sun) to fit this classification. Unfortunately, that simply isn't a very useful way to classify things since we already have some sort of common notion about what "planet" means, even though it still a little vague.
Orbital inclination might be a good start to finding a not-so arbitrary way to classify things as "planets" or maybe at least as "primary planets". Maybe everything with an orbit inclined less than 10 degrees from the ecliptic can be a planet. Other than the specific degree-cuttoff, this criteria is not arbitrary, since the ecliptic plane exists due to the rotation of the Sun. Things orbiting far off of the ecliptic are more likely to be things which were thrown out of the system at the onset of fusion, so maybe they shouldn't be called "planets", or maybe they can be "secondary planets". (Pluto's orbit is inclined *17 degrees*, the next most inclined is Mercury at *7 degrees*)
Perhaps we can add a mass criterion based on the size of the Earth, which is admittedly totally arbitrary, but when coupled with orbital inclination, it's much less so. Maybe nothing with less than 1% the mass of the Earth should be classified as a planet. That excludes asteroids from accidentally being "planets" under the orbital inclination criterion, but we can still have Mercury, which has about 5.5% the mass of the Earth. (Pluto has about 0.2% the mass of the Earth)
Finally, to account for moons, we could add that for multiple bodies orbiting one another, and together orbiting the Sun, in the case that both are more than 1% Earth-mass, the one containing the center of mass is the planet and the other(s) the moon(s). If the center of mass is outside both or all (if there are many), then it's a double- or triple- planet system.
(Oh, bear in mind--you'll be stuck with a US QWERTY keyboard. No Euro key or Pound key, among other things--you'll need to remap and remember...)
Yes, but since you suggested the Apple Store, it's wise to point out that Mac laptops give you really easy keyboard shortcuts for the "special characters" and you can even open a little picture of the keyboard on your screen that shows you which modifier keys do what, as you type! (in case you forget how to get umlauts, for instance)
So, Alt-3 gives you a pound symbol, and Alt-Shift-2 gives you a euro. No remapping required.
Maybe that's a printer for beefy American manly-men, but...
The men who need it to be less of a battlebot and more of a device would have it weigh next to nothing but be incredibly resistant to scratches, dents, or otherwise falling apart. In fact, the "correct" way to fix simple problems would actually be to bang/kick it a few times.
It would have a compass, a barometer, a thermometer, an altimeter, and a scientific calculator, and it would glow different colors for different print status stuff (or at least just have lots of blinky lights).
It would be voice activated, and possibly IR activated too, there would be like 50 buttons to push, some of them just for the sake of having buttons to push.
It would have to be a combo-printer, with a phone, fax, scanner, copier, and hi-res camera, maybe it would sync with your Palm device, it would email/call/page/IM you when it's out of paper/ink/toner/fuel cells (or maybe it could just order the stuff itelf).
There would be a built-in multimeter and toolkit that hide in some little compartment.
It would be natively 64bit, have at least a 120GB hard drive, a huge print buffer, several types of card readers, I/O to ethernet (and an 802.11g card, of course), bluetooth, IR, video (sv, dvi, vga, and composite), quadraphonic audio, a few USB ports, firewire, and maybe a serial port for connecting extra "sensors".
And to save cost, it wouldn't come with a manual (men don't read instructions) or warranty (you're going to void that by taking it apart anyway), but don't worry there would intentionally be lots of "extra pieces" for when you put it back together.
Yes, I used to work for a company that did a majority of the tech support via email. There were two of us who did the support, one guy in the morning, and me in the afternoon. More than 3/4 of his email responses were to the effect of "Clear your browser cache and delete the cookies, and thanks for using our software!"
So, he'd leave at lunch with a vast majority of the questions "answered", and I'd get slowed up for two reasons: 1) actually answering new questions that came in and 2) re-answering the questions he'd "answered" when the customers wrote back in the afternoon.
... in which case you get a stupid promo shirt from some lame festival that happened 5-7 months ago, in another state, which you didn't attend, and probably never will.
This year I got yet another "Poteet Strawberry Festival" shirt and a "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" shirt, and my brother got a "Texas Folklive Festival" shirt (which I already had -- birthday).
It's too bad he lost the official Fiesta deal, at least those shirts would sell on eBay.
The clear plastic storage drawer sets you get from the Container Store hold up better and make more efficient use of space (less "rounded" corners and sides) than the Rubbermaid ones from Wal-Mart. They're stackable and come with wheels too.
For extra extra organization, I have mine categorized and labeled just in case I can't immediately identify the types of cables/connectors/weird stuff from the outside. It's also worth the time to untangle, roll up, and secure the cables with twist ties . That way not only are your cables organized and *useful*, but you also get rid of most of the twist ties that have been collecting in your kitchen drawer for years (the ones that come with garbage bags).
Of course, it helps to get rid of all the completely obsolete stuff you *know* you will never use again too. Here's a good rule: find everything you don't need now, haven't used for three or more years, and don't actually plan to use in the forseeable future, and list it on eBay in lots (SCSI cables, 500MB hard drives, 150W AT power supplies, 286 boards, giant ISA video cards with 2MB ram or less, dot matrix printers, those cables you acquired some years ago and never figured out what they were for, etc). Whatever meets those criteria and doesn't sell on eBay, throw away; it's junk. Trust me, you will not miss it.
Department of Energy doesn't seem to think that battery technology... deserves even one project. Nothing on portable fuel cells, microturbines, biodiesel, wave power, or other energy-related technologies either, except fusion.
Well I don't know how it goes in your neck of the woods, but at least in the southern US, when a (chemical/mechanical engineering) research team working on fuel cells or other energy technology submits a proposal to the appropriate DoE board, they're generally given first dibs on the cash. Additionally, they usually also have at least one or two corporate sponsors for their projects. (Hint: if you can show that your project is applicable to portable clean energy, you get instant funding)
This, of course, is in addition to independent corporate research in batteries, fuel cells, and other energy technology (except fusion).
This DoE article is generally only concerned with projects which meet the following criteria:
Little immediate direct practical application
Very expensive equipment/techonology required to carry out the research
Few, if any corporate sponsors (see previous reasons)
HUGE benefits to the world of science/technology in general, as well as unanticipated future benefits
For example, the particle collider mentioned has absolutely no immediate practical application. Particle physics typically doesn't attract corporate sponsors. But better understanding of particle physics, ironically, brings some of the most profound benefits to society once the newfound knowledge is applied to other areas of physics and engineering. Television, the Internet, MRIs, CAT scans, etc., are all here thanks to fundamental physics research, and none of them were anticipated at the outset of funding.
It simply isn't neccessary to declare "better battery technology" a large-scale project in the 20-year-plan. It's already being worked on, and while the battery research teams may disagree, it doesn't lack funding nearly as much as the listed projects do.
there won't be any left over for schools...
I seriously doubt you can easily blame this part of the science budget for a lack of funding in schools. Take a look at the DoE
Budget Summary (2002-2004, pdf). It's nice to note that "weapons activities" has been requested to recieve twice the funding as all "science" combined, which amounts to 6 trillion dollars.
You'll also notice that there's no real increase in DoE request for science funds since last year, so while the article makes note of all the projects which the DoE thinks are in need of extra funds, precious few will actually see any funding.
Why build another supercollider when there is one in Europe?
What a waste of money!The ones currently in existence in Europe are too old to output the energies requried for more advanced and in-depth studies in particle physics. They're still good for refining the studies they were built for.
The new collider at CERN, the LHC, will be a circular Hadron Collider, which is fundamentally (heh) different from the linear Lepton collider discussed in the article. They're meant for studying some different physics.
The big topics on the list are asymmetry (to understand the difference between matter and antimatter) and finding a Higgs boson (to understand why anything has mass).
With regard to the Higgs, what many people don't seem to realize is that not finding one, even at the highest energies at which it's predicted to exist, would be equally (if not much more) exciting than finding one, since it would mean a number of things in physics need to be reformulated.
Children do not have the cognitive maturity to understand what it is they're looking at. Exposing them to it when they are too young to understand it warps their perceptions and confuses their understanding of a relationship.
Of course children may not understand what they're looking at for what it really is, but that doesn't neccessitate that it will warp their understanding of a relationship. Children see ads for all kinds of products, and in the ads there may be males and females engaging in activities related to the product, so does that mean children are going to interpret this activity as necessary to a relationship as well? Unlikely.
My parents really didn't try to shield me from porn in any way, and neither did my grandparets. As a result, the dirty magazines were never really difficult to find (like, say, right on top the living room table in plain view). I remember flipping through them when I was about 3 or 4 and interpreting the situations as adults playing dress-up and make-believe and "wrestling" and generally just having a good time. I remember asking my mom if this was what grown-ups did after I went to sleep (although it was for a completely different reason -- my parents would invite the neighbors over for poker and drinks on the weekend sometimes, and naturally would put us kids to sleep beforehand. But duh, I knew they were playing without me, they got pretty loud after a few drinks!).
So to me at that age, I just knew there were grown-up games and they were different from kid games, and didn't really look like they they would be all that much fun even though the adults seemed to like it (like poker and drinks, that didn't look like much fun either -- poker was boring and drinks tasted like medicine, yuck!).
It wasn't until one of my cousins explained ALL of these situations to me when I was about 8 that suddenly it was intriguing and took on a whole different meaning. Even then, there certainly wasn't any confusion involved. I just "understood" why the grown-ups found all those games fun.
I believe the only time children confuse relationships as a result of porn is when some dumb adult explains it to them as "something mommies and daddies do when they love each other". That's gotta be the worst explanation you can give to a child. The child has no reason to associate sex with love until you do that. It'll leave them confused not only about why people would do such a weird thing out of love, but also about other situations they may encounter like homosexuality. I understand that the intention here may be to convince the children not to go trying this with all their friends... but young children will tell you they "love" their friends. Young children can in fact understand love, but they usually have to grow up a little before they can understand "romantic love" vs. "friendly love" vs. "family love", etc.
Of course, the fact that I wasn't warped by porn doesn't mean children *can't* be warped by porn, it just means that it isn't generally true.
And even if they can be warped by porn, it doesn't remove the parental responsibility to supervise and give responsible explanations that leave room for later expansion without contradiction (the sun shines because it's very hot, sex is a game that only grown-ups know how to play) rather than weird fantasy-world confusing explanations (the sun shines because god loves you, sex is something mommies and daddies do because they love each other).
Censorship of porn on the internet is not the answer, and is futile at best.
I think the philosophy of many advertisers seems to be that they have some kind of "right" to bombard the public with ads, regardless of privacy laws and the like. Lawmakers seem to agree. Even worse, I once heard my brother seriously remark "but if there weren't ads all over the place, how would I find out about all the great products out there?!"
There seems to be a (creepy) growing consensus among the brainwashed portion of the general public that businesses have some kind of "right to stay in business", regardless of how crappy their product is, so we just have to put up with advertisers filling our mailboxes with crap, calling our homes, sending us email, etc.
Kind of like the MPAA and RIAA claiming that their declining sales are a result of just about anything but the declining quality of the "art" they sling.
I don't think much will ever be done to correct this problem until we bring it to the table that there's no such thing as a "right to sell complete shit and bother people about it", even in free-market America.
Not exactly the same 'grab and smash things' like the other OS's.
No, but once your hammer's adjusted, you can smash much larger problems with greater ease and elegance. Different tools have different purposes, my friend.
You wouldn't want to use a chainsaw to cut a loaf of bread, a simple knife will do the trick. Plus you'd have all that setup/breakdown/maintenance to do on the chainsaw, just to eat a sandwich! And your sandwich would be all sloppy!
The chainsaw will indeed cut the bread, but the hassle isn't worth it.
I personally don't think that linux, in it's current state of development (embedded devices excluded) is really worthwhile for users who just want use email, look at pictures, browse the web, and do some word processing, with a warranty in case they suddenly can't do that anymore.
The data entry clerk doesn't stay a data entry clerk forever... So when management needs to fill a role in IT...
Interesting. That exact same thing happened to me when I was 18 and working at an insurance company. I applied for Data Entry (didn't want responsibility), but got hired as the Claims Clerical Manager (responsibility, go figure) because I could do math and use a computer, unlike most of the other employees. Then after a month I was moved to IT where I got to learn all kinds of stuff that became very useful skills once I realized they expected to keep paying me Data Entry wages forever.;)
So here I am a few years later, back at the University where I belong, but getting hella cooler research jobs than my classmates who also study physics, all thanks to my cross-experience in IT.:)
Incidentally, here I'm *expected* to have zero experience with computers and technical stuff, and it's expected that I'd be unlikely to have room for the classes in it. Thus, I'm *expected* to "pick-up" tech skills required to carry out meaningful physics research.
Last summer, I did everything in FORTRAN. This past spring, I refined (read: re-learned) my C++ skills and picked up a considerable amount of Python too. This summer, I've picked up mainframe programming and a little Perl.
Our group could probably hire someone a little cheaper, who knows these languages (or whichever is needed) more thoroughly than I do... but it's faster to have a physicist learn programming than it is to teach physics to a programmer!;)
Hmm, I'm female and I seem to be profoundly missing that ability!;-)
I have to finish one thought/project before moving on to the next one, or for long-term projects, I have to separate the time of day that I work on more than one of them.
As I type, the guy next to me has like 8 terminals open on each of 4 desktops and hops between email, server config, etc, etc, etc. =P
I don't buy this male/female crap. I think multitasking has more to do with environmental stimuli than some kind of inborn skill.
I think if your employees have THAT much time on their hands, you have a different problem: Too goddamn many employees! Fire some of them, give the rest the work the fired ones used to do, then Alacazam!: Far less company bandwidth being used for stuff other than working. And give these people lunch breaks for christ sake!
Just because your business plan doesn't work is not my problem.
Bingo!
If they can't afford to dish out 256k connections at $40 a month... they shouldn't! Sure, a lot of people (including me) would whine about paying more for the same service... but so fucking what?
Well, his door *is* simultaneously open and closed!
Those guys have their door wide freaking open, but face their desks away from it. They always look like you could just walk up and ask them something, but if you hesitate, you'll notice they're like, in the middle of a video conference with all the other QM Profs in the freaking country, or they're deciphering/writing code for some cryptic particle physics program.
They'll usually acknowledge that you've requested their attention, then possibly ask you to wait in a chair or at the door for a few minutes, then go back to what they were doing and completely forget that you're there until you ask again!
The good news is, if you do manage to capture their attention, it's yours for quite awhile.;)
I graded exams for a couple of *large* freshman classes taught by a "Dr. Absent" last semester... the Absent is not only missing from his office, but he seems to be missing from most of his life. Worse, he appears to have absolutely no control over this, and doesn't notice it happening unless someone points it out. At that time he'll sincerely apologize (and he means it!), but it's not something that bothers him.
He usually has 3 or 4 phone numbers, at least 2 of which are answered by a secretary of some sort (or wife/kid, who are just as clueless as to his whereabouts), 3 or 4 email addresses, at least 2 of which forward to the other two, sometimes in circles, and 1 random one is always unavailable each week, for no apparent reason.
This person rarely checks their mailbox in the department office, and the department secretary hasn't seen him for *at least* a week.
If you ever get into Dr. Absent's office, you'll think it's been hit by a tornado or something. He doesn't seem to notice this. He has no idea what's in there, but it's all in a large heap. There are precious few books on the bookshelves -- if any at all. If books exist in this man's office, they're on the floor (read: trash heap) under a few lunch trays, t-shirts, and the "lost finals" from two years ago that suddenly "popped up" last time Dr. Absent lost his cell phone and dug through the heap hoping to find it. Sometimes there's a computer in one of these heaps (maybe on the one that's kind of desk-shaped?), and sometimes there's a file cabinet. If there is a computer or file cabinet, Dr. Absent has no keys or password to use it, and has no idea what's stored there.
If you *do* manage to catch this person, NEVER GIVE HIM ANYTHING, FOR HE WILL IMMEDIATELY LOSE IT. He will be more than happy to help students with any class work, but they usually have to take a number since at least 10 of them will be piled up in the hallway at any given time (office hours or not) hoping to catch a glimpse of Dr. Absent. This tends to happen a LOT near midterms and finals since Dr. Absent never returns old homework/tests/quizzes, regardless of whether they're graded: he lost them or forgot whether they were graded.
If you think you might be faced with working for (or worse, taking a class with!) a Dr. Absent, my advice to you is to pretend you're doing correspondence work, because you will never find this guy. He simply isn't around. He's not on campus, he's not in his private lab, he's not at home, he's not at the bar you *know* he frequents (though never for more than an hour), he's not out with his wife, girlfriend, kids, colleagues, business partners, or anyone else. Just give up, because this man is unavailable for contact, and probably doesn't know/care that everyone is looking for him.
... but common usage of the word "dimension" as in "in another dimension" is synonomous with "universe". "Alternate Dimensions" and "Parallel Universes" would be referring to the same thing.
Slashdot Mirror
While they can be spotted at a distance, a mugger might thing I have a portable 8-track and not steal from me.
... only because a portable 8-track would weigh like 25 pounds and you'd be one tough mofo to be just strolling down the street with one in your ... hmm, can't figure out how you'd carry that inconspicuously ...
;)
So the second conclusion would be that you have something expensive to hide (like a really cool magic bag) thus making you a good target.
I believe the word "planet" has origins in Greek, and means "wanderer". Hence, the "planets" were called such because they appeared as wandering stars by human eyes on earth. Certainly anything in orbit around our Sun, out to about a light year, will have enough "wandering" associated with it (by parallax due to Earth's revolution about the Sun) to fit this classification. Unfortunately, that simply isn't a very useful way to classify things since we already have some sort of common notion about what "planet" means, even though it still a little vague.
Orbital inclination might be a good start to finding a not-so arbitrary way to classify things as "planets" or maybe at least as "primary planets". Maybe everything with an orbit inclined less than 10 degrees from the ecliptic can be a planet. Other than the specific degree-cuttoff, this criteria is not arbitrary, since the ecliptic plane exists due to the rotation of the Sun. Things orbiting far off of the ecliptic are more likely to be things which were thrown out of the system at the onset of fusion, so maybe they shouldn't be called "planets", or maybe they can be "secondary planets". (Pluto's orbit is inclined *17 degrees*, the next most inclined is Mercury at *7 degrees*)
Perhaps we can add a mass criterion based on the size of the Earth, which is admittedly totally arbitrary, but when coupled with orbital inclination, it's much less so. Maybe nothing with less than 1% the mass of the Earth should be classified as a planet. That excludes asteroids from accidentally being "planets" under the orbital inclination criterion, but we can still have Mercury, which has about 5.5% the mass of the Earth. (Pluto has about 0.2% the mass of the Earth)
Finally, to account for moons, we could add that for multiple bodies orbiting one another, and together orbiting the Sun, in the case that both are more than 1% Earth-mass, the one containing the center of mass is the planet and the other(s) the moon(s). If the center of mass is outside both or all (if there are many), then it's a double- or triple- planet system.
How does that sound?
(Oh, bear in mind--you'll be stuck with a US QWERTY keyboard. No Euro key or Pound key, among other things--you'll need to remap and remember...)
Yes, but since you suggested the Apple Store, it's wise to point out that Mac laptops give you really easy keyboard shortcuts for the "special characters" and you can even open a little picture of the keyboard on your screen that shows you which modifier keys do what, as you type! (in case you forget how to get umlauts, for instance)
So, Alt-3 gives you a pound symbol, and Alt-Shift-2 gives you a euro. No remapping required.
Maybe that's a printer for beefy American manly-men, but...
The men who need it to be less of a battlebot and more of a device would have it weigh next to nothing but be incredibly resistant to scratches, dents, or otherwise falling apart. In fact, the "correct" way to fix simple problems would actually be to bang/kick it a few times.
It would have a compass, a barometer, a thermometer, an altimeter, and a scientific calculator, and it would glow different colors for different print status stuff (or at least just have lots of blinky lights).
It would be voice activated, and possibly IR activated too, there would be like 50 buttons to push, some of them just for the sake of having buttons to push.
It would have to be a combo-printer, with a phone, fax, scanner, copier, and hi-res camera, maybe it would sync with your Palm device, it would email/call/page/IM you when it's out of paper/ink/toner/fuel cells (or maybe it could just order the stuff itelf).
There would be a built-in multimeter and toolkit that hide in some little compartment.
It would be natively 64bit, have at least a 120GB hard drive, a huge print buffer, several types of card readers, I/O to ethernet (and an 802.11g card, of course), bluetooth, IR, video (sv, dvi, vga, and composite), quadraphonic audio, a few USB ports, firewire, and maybe a serial port for connecting extra "sensors".
And to save cost, it wouldn't come with a manual (men don't read instructions) or warranty (you're going to void that by taking it apart anyway), but don't worry there would intentionally be lots of "extra pieces" for when you put it back together.
Yes, I used to work for a company that did a majority of the tech support via email. There were two of us who did the support, one guy in the morning, and me in the afternoon. More than 3/4 of his email responses were to the effect of "Clear your browser cache and delete the cookies, and thanks for using our software!"
So, he'd leave at lunch with a vast majority of the questions "answered", and I'd get slowed up for two reasons: 1) actually answering new questions that came in and 2) re-answering the questions he'd "answered" when the customers wrote back in the afternoon.
Guess who was promoted?
... in which case you get a stupid promo shirt from some lame festival that happened 5-7 months ago, in another state, which you didn't attend, and probably never will.
This year I got yet another "Poteet Strawberry Festival" shirt and a "St. Valentine's Day Massacre" shirt, and my brother got a "Texas Folklive Festival" shirt (which I already had -- birthday).
It's too bad he lost the official Fiesta deal, at least those shirts would sell on eBay.
Apparently you haven't studied Quantum Mechanics.
Mr. Kepler: Wow, it can't get much worse than that. Earth: Wanna bet? I always have to do it in the same amount of time too!!
The clear plastic storage drawer sets you get from the Container Store hold up better and make more efficient use of space (less "rounded" corners and sides) than the Rubbermaid ones from Wal-Mart. They're stackable and come with wheels too.
For extra extra organization, I have mine categorized and labeled just in case I can't immediately identify the types of cables/connectors/weird stuff from the outside. It's also worth the time to untangle, roll up, and secure the cables with twist ties . That way not only are your cables organized and *useful*, but you also get rid of most of the twist ties that have been collecting in your kitchen drawer for years (the ones that come with garbage bags).
Of course, it helps to get rid of all the completely obsolete stuff you *know* you will never use again too. Here's a good rule: find everything you don't need now, haven't used for three or more years, and don't actually plan to use in the forseeable future, and list it on eBay in lots (SCSI cables, 500MB hard drives, 150W AT power supplies, 286 boards, giant ISA video cards with 2MB ram or less, dot matrix printers, those cables you acquired some years ago and never figured out what they were for, etc). Whatever meets those criteria and doesn't sell on eBay, throw away; it's junk. Trust me, you will not miss it.
correction: 6 billion ;)
Well I don't know how it goes in your neck of the woods, but at least in the southern US, when a (chemical/mechanical engineering) research team working on fuel cells or other energy technology submits a proposal to the appropriate DoE board, they're generally given first dibs on the cash. Additionally, they usually also have at least one or two corporate sponsors for their projects. (Hint: if you can show that your project is applicable to portable clean energy, you get instant funding)
This, of course, is in addition to independent corporate research in batteries, fuel cells, and other energy technology (except fusion).
This DoE article is generally only concerned with projects which meet the following criteria:
- Little immediate direct practical application
- Very expensive equipment/techonology required to carry out the research
- Few, if any corporate sponsors (see previous reasons)
- HUGE benefits to the world of science/technology in general, as well as unanticipated future benefits
For example, the particle collider mentioned has absolutely no immediate practical application. Particle physics typically doesn't attract corporate sponsors. But better understanding of particle physics, ironically, brings some of the most profound benefits to society once the newfound knowledge is applied to other areas of physics and engineering. Television, the Internet, MRIs, CAT scans, etc., are all here thanks to fundamental physics research, and none of them were anticipated at the outset of funding.It simply isn't neccessary to declare "better battery technology" a large-scale project in the 20-year-plan. It's already being worked on, and while the battery research teams may disagree, it doesn't lack funding nearly as much as the listed projects do.
there won't be any left over for schools...
I seriously doubt you can easily blame this part of the science budget for a lack of funding in schools. Take a look at the DoE Budget Summary (2002-2004, pdf). It's nice to note that "weapons activities" has been requested to recieve twice the funding as all "science" combined, which amounts to 6 trillion dollars
You'll also notice that there's no real increase in DoE request for science funds since last year, so while the article makes note of all the projects which the DoE thinks are in need of extra funds, precious few will actually see any funding.
Why build another supercollider when there is one in Europe?
What a waste of money!The ones currently in existence in Europe are too old to output the energies requried for more advanced and in-depth studies in particle physics. They're still good for refining the studies they were built for.
The new collider at CERN, the LHC, will be a circular Hadron Collider, which is fundamentally (heh) different from the linear Lepton collider discussed in the article. They're meant for studying some different physics.
The big topics on the list are asymmetry (to understand the difference between matter and antimatter) and finding a Higgs boson (to understand why anything has mass).
With regard to the Higgs, what many people don't seem to realize is that not finding one, even at the highest energies at which it's predicted to exist, would be equally (if not much more) exciting than finding one, since it would mean a number of things in physics need to be reformulated.
Children do not have the cognitive maturity to understand what it is they're looking at. Exposing them to it when they are too young to understand it warps their perceptions and confuses their understanding of a relationship.
... but young children will tell you they "love" their friends. Young children can in fact understand love, but they usually have to grow up a little before they can understand "romantic love" vs. "friendly love" vs. "family love", etc.
Of course children may not understand what they're looking at for what it really is, but that doesn't neccessitate that it will warp their understanding of a relationship. Children see ads for all kinds of products, and in the ads there may be males and females engaging in activities related to the product, so does that mean children are going to interpret this activity as necessary to a relationship as well? Unlikely.
My parents really didn't try to shield me from porn in any way, and neither did my grandparets. As a result, the dirty magazines were never really difficult to find (like, say, right on top the living room table in plain view). I remember flipping through them when I was about 3 or 4 and interpreting the situations as adults playing dress-up and make-believe and "wrestling" and generally just having a good time. I remember asking my mom if this was what grown-ups did after I went to sleep (although it was for a completely different reason -- my parents would invite the neighbors over for poker and drinks on the weekend sometimes, and naturally would put us kids to sleep beforehand. But duh, I knew they were playing without me, they got pretty loud after a few drinks!).
So to me at that age, I just knew there were grown-up games and they were different from kid games, and didn't really look like they they would be all that much fun even though the adults seemed to like it (like poker and drinks, that didn't look like much fun either -- poker was boring and drinks tasted like medicine, yuck!).
It wasn't until one of my cousins explained ALL of these situations to me when I was about 8 that suddenly it was intriguing and took on a whole different meaning. Even then, there certainly wasn't any confusion involved. I just "understood" why the grown-ups found all those games fun.
I believe the only time children confuse relationships as a result of porn is when some dumb adult explains it to them as "something mommies and daddies do when they love each other". That's gotta be the worst explanation you can give to a child. The child has no reason to associate sex with love until you do that. It'll leave them confused not only about why people would do such a weird thing out of love, but also about other situations they may encounter like homosexuality. I understand that the intention here may be to convince the children not to go trying this with all their friends
Of course, the fact that I wasn't warped by porn doesn't mean children *can't* be warped by porn, it just means that it isn't generally true.
And even if they can be warped by porn, it doesn't remove the parental responsibility to supervise and give responsible explanations that leave room for later expansion without contradiction (the sun shines because it's very hot, sex is a game that only grown-ups know how to play) rather than weird fantasy-world confusing explanations (the sun shines because god loves you, sex is something mommies and daddies do because they love each other).
Censorship of porn on the internet is not the answer, and is futile at best.
I think the philosophy of many advertisers seems to be that they have some kind of "right" to bombard the public with ads, regardless of privacy laws and the like. Lawmakers seem to agree. Even worse, I once heard my brother seriously remark "but if there weren't ads all over the place, how would I find out about all the great products out there?!"
There seems to be a (creepy) growing consensus among the brainwashed portion of the general public that businesses have some kind of "right to stay in business", regardless of how crappy their product is, so we just have to put up with advertisers filling our mailboxes with crap, calling our homes, sending us email, etc.
Kind of like the MPAA and RIAA claiming that their declining sales are a result of just about anything but the declining quality of the "art" they sling.
I don't think much will ever be done to correct this problem until we bring it to the table that there's no such thing as a "right to sell complete shit and bother people about it", even in free-market America.
Unless, of course you kill your brother.
Not exactly the same 'grab and smash things' like the other OS's.
No, but once your hammer's adjusted, you can smash much larger problems with greater ease and elegance. Different tools have different purposes, my friend.
You wouldn't want to use a chainsaw to cut a loaf of bread, a simple knife will do the trick. Plus you'd have all that setup/breakdown/maintenance to do on the chainsaw, just to eat a sandwich! And your sandwich would be all sloppy! The chainsaw will indeed cut the bread, but the hassle isn't worth it.
I personally don't think that linux, in it's current state of development (embedded devices excluded) is really worthwhile for users who just want use email, look at pictures, browse the web, and do some word processing, with a warranty in case they suddenly can't do that anymore.
The data entry clerk doesn't stay a data entry clerk forever ... So when management needs to fill a role in IT ...
;)
:)
... but it's faster to have a physicist learn programming than it is to teach physics to a programmer! ;)
Interesting. That exact same thing happened to me when I was 18 and working at an insurance company. I applied for Data Entry (didn't want responsibility), but got hired as the Claims Clerical Manager (responsibility, go figure) because I could do math and use a computer, unlike most of the other employees. Then after a month I was moved to IT where I got to learn all kinds of stuff that became very useful skills once I realized they expected to keep paying me Data Entry wages forever.
So here I am a few years later, back at the University where I belong, but getting hella cooler research jobs than my classmates who also study physics, all thanks to my cross-experience in IT.
Incidentally, here I'm *expected* to have zero experience with computers and technical stuff, and it's expected that I'd be unlikely to have room for the classes in it. Thus, I'm *expected* to "pick-up" tech skills required to carry out meaningful physics research.
Last summer, I did everything in FORTRAN. This past spring, I refined (read: re-learned) my C++ skills and picked up a considerable amount of Python too. This summer, I've picked up mainframe programming and a little Perl.
Our group could probably hire someone a little cheaper, who knows these languages (or whichever is needed) more thoroughly than I do
Hmm, I'm female and I seem to be profoundly missing that ability! ;-)
I have to finish one thought/project before moving on to the next one, or for long-term projects, I have to separate the time of day that I work on more than one of them.
;-)
As I type, the guy next to me has like 8 terminals open on each of 4 desktops and hops between email, server config, etc, etc, etc. =P
I don't buy this male/female crap. I think multitasking has more to do with environmental stimuli than some kind of inborn skill.
Just my $0.02
I think if your employees have THAT much time on their hands, you have a different problem: Too goddamn many employees! Fire some of them, give the rest the work the fired ones used to do, then Alacazam!: Far less company bandwidth being used for stuff other than working. And give these people lunch breaks for christ sake!
Just because your business plan doesn't work is not my problem.
... they shouldn't! Sure, a lot of people (including me) would whine about paying more for the same service ... but so fucking what?
Bingo!
If they can't afford to dish out 256k connections at $40 a month
Well, his door *is* simultaneously open and closed!
;)
Those guys have their door wide freaking open, but face their desks away from it. They always look like you could just walk up and ask them something, but if you hesitate, you'll notice they're like, in the middle of a video conference with all the other QM Profs in the freaking country, or they're deciphering/writing code for some cryptic particle physics program.
They'll usually acknowledge that you've requested their attention, then possibly ask you to wait in a chair or at the door for a few minutes, then go back to what they were doing and completely forget that you're there until you ask again!
The good news is, if you do manage to capture their attention, it's yours for quite awhile.
I graded exams for a couple of *large* freshman classes taught by a "Dr. Absent" last semester ... the Absent is not only missing from his office, but he seems to be missing from most of his life. Worse, he appears to have absolutely no control over this, and doesn't notice it happening unless someone points it out. At that time he'll sincerely apologize (and he means it!), but it's not something that bothers him.
He usually has 3 or 4 phone numbers, at least 2 of which are answered by a secretary of some sort (or wife/kid, who are just as clueless as to his whereabouts), 3 or 4 email addresses, at least 2 of which forward to the other two, sometimes in circles, and 1 random one is always unavailable each week, for no apparent reason.
This person rarely checks their mailbox in the department office, and the department secretary hasn't seen him for *at least* a week.
If you ever get into Dr. Absent's office, you'll think it's been hit by a tornado or something. He doesn't seem to notice this. He has no idea what's in there, but it's all in a large heap. There are precious few books on the bookshelves -- if any at all. If books exist in this man's office, they're on the floor (read: trash heap) under a few lunch trays, t-shirts, and the "lost finals" from two years ago that suddenly "popped up" last time Dr. Absent lost his cell phone and dug through the heap hoping to find it. Sometimes there's a computer in one of these heaps (maybe on the one that's kind of desk-shaped?), and sometimes there's a file cabinet. If there is a computer or file cabinet, Dr. Absent has no keys or password to use it, and has no idea what's stored there.
If you *do* manage to catch this person, NEVER GIVE HIM ANYTHING, FOR HE WILL IMMEDIATELY LOSE IT. He will be more than happy to help students with any class work, but they usually have to take a number since at least 10 of them will be piled up in the hallway at any given time (office hours or not) hoping to catch a glimpse of Dr. Absent. This tends to happen a LOT near midterms and finals since Dr. Absent never returns old homework/tests/quizzes, regardless of whether they're graded: he lost them or forgot whether they were graded.
If you think you might be faced with working for (or worse, taking a class with!) a Dr. Absent, my advice to you is to pretend you're doing correspondence work, because you will never find this guy. He simply isn't around. He's not on campus, he's not in his private lab, he's not at home, he's not at the bar you *know* he frequents (though never for more than an hour), he's not out with his wife, girlfriend, kids, colleagues, business partners, or anyone else. Just give up, because this man is unavailable for contact, and probably doesn't know/care that everyone is looking for him.
But if the universe really is massively parallel, then this proves nothing.
What's the difference between "massively parallel" and "multiverse" ?!
The multiverse they talk about in that sciam article is the same one Reese is talking about, it's just a lot shorter to read ;)
Technically, you're absolutely correct ...
... but common usage of the word "dimension" as in "in another dimension" is synonomous with "universe". "Alternate Dimensions" and "Parallel Universes" would be referring to the same thing.
So it's nothing more than unsettled terminology.