If you own the VHS tape of a movie, and shoplift the DVD, are you stealing?
Yes, but that's not the same situation. The same situation is "Is it legal to download a higher-resolution copy of a VHS film you already own?"
The main question is "what did you buy?" If all you bought was a physical copy of the media, then you should be able to copy it at will - you own it, after all. If, instead, you bought a license to watch the media, then you can legally download it since you already own it - you can't steal something you already have.
The grandparent brings up a good point - the *AA can't have it both ways, although they will undoubtedly try to.
If you just attached a mass of stuff to the asteroid, wouldn't that change its course over time because the gravitational effects from all the heavenly bodies would then be different?
Nope. All gravitational force exerted on an asteroid is directly proportional to its mass. Since Force=Mass*acceleration, the mass cancels out of the equation - the acceleration (and hence the trajectory) is independent of its mass. This is the exact same reason why objects of different weights fall at the same rate - both acceleration AND gravitational force are proportional to mass, so mass cancels out of the equation.
Of course, I'm assuming that gravitational interactions with objects of comparable size (i.e. other asteroids) are negligible. My argument only holds if everything the asteroid interacts with is much more massive than it (and thus not affected much by the asteroid's gravitational pull). But I would bet that's a pretty good assumption.
Actually, it would take precisely the same amount of fuel - either way, you're moving the tug plus the asteroid. The whole idea with this method is simply that gravity is a very gentle force. Pushing the asteroid by attaching a rocket to it or exploding something next to it are both very sharp, uneven forces that could very well break it up in to little pieces. Some of those pieces would probably hit the earth, even if the main bulk didn't.
Ahh... the most successful reupublican talking point ever. A hilarious, utterly pervasive fabrication. Slashdot needs a Snopes filter to weed out these idiots.
Other than pure unadulterated obscene greed, there is no reason that a CD costs more than a DVD.
Well, that's not really true - the two primary determinants of the cost here, are what the market will bear and the scarcity of what they're selling. The market will indeed bear exorbitantly high prices, because they're selling extremely unique products. The cost it takes them to produce it doesn't have anything to do with it.
It's greedy, sure, but isn't that the entire point of capitalism?
My definition was definitely wasn't the technical one, just trying to explain it in plain language. A better choice of words than 'can breed' would be 'can produce viable offspring,' so horses and donkeys are right out.
But yes, in the genetic sense of the word, dogs and wolves are the same species. Horses and donkeys are not, because they don't produce viable offspring.
And if horses and zebras can produce offspring at all, then I totally want one.
Friend, you need to understand a theory before you can criticise it. You clearly don't understand what speciation IS. That's why everything you say is bullshit.
There's no such thing as 'half-mutated.' That only makes sense if you're talking about trans-substantion from one species to another, like a fish turning into a dog. That's not evolution.
What we're talking about is constantly changing species that sometimes that sometimes branches off into different lines of change. We aren't desended from monkeys - if you go far enough back in genetic time, we are the exact same species as monkeys. At some point, we went our way and they went theirs.
I don't need a link, I'll give you an example of a divergent ancestry: Us, neanderthals, gorillas, apes, monkeys. Many species, all descended from a single common ancestor. The fossil record shows how all these species have divergent phenotypes arising from a single species; the genetic code shows that we all mutated from a common genetic base.
As a Christian, I find the backlash against ID vaguely amusing. What needs to be understood is the distinction between micro- and macro-evolution.
Wow. You must be smarter than all those dumb scientists out there. Glad you're here with you're condescening bemusement. Oh... except it's full of bullshit.
The only point of difference between evolutionists and ID (different from creationism) is macro-evolution. We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given that intra-species changes occur.
Wow, that's some nice bullshit there. It is, of course, not true. At all. It is, after all, bullshit.
Do you even know what speciation is? It's when a population of breedable organisms splits into two separate populations that cannot produce viable offspring with each other. Since you already accept that species do, in fact, change over time - what happens if two population of the same species are isolated from each other for a long time?
This - their genetic differences become so great that they cannot breed with each other. They are thus, by definition, two different species! Viola!
The evidence in the fossil AND genetic record is ubiquitous, and speciation can be easily induced in the laboratory by forcing two initially identical populations of yeast to rapidly mutate. Now, take your bullshit and crawl back into your hole.
BOTH SIDES want political control over your kids. The Federal Government telling Kansas what they can or cannot teach is political.
Bullshit. One side is saying 'Scientific ideas should be taught in science class.' The other side is saying 'Christian ideas should be taught in science class.' These two statements are NOT equivalent. The first follows from the definition of 'science class;' the second follows from a christian political viewpoint.
In some debates, one side is RIGHT, and one side is WRONG. The truth is not political - it's just the truth. And that's what pisses off these intelligent design wackos so much.
Dude! While that's an excellent answer to 99% of people justifying their terrorism-funding, crappy american-made road hog, he actually makes a very good point.
The single most important thing you can do to cure your gasoline addiction is to live close to your job. I live within biking distance of work, and fill my car up less than once a month. I recently calculated that even if I drove a hummer, I'd still spend under $50/month on gas.
/saving up for a down payment on a Prius //whoops, this isn't fark
When you get to college... how many professors actually teach science and how many spend all of their time seeking new grants to ensure the university can afford a new football stadium?
WTF are you talking about? You do realize that research grant money goes directly into research, and that things like building football stadiums come from a completely different pot, mostly from alumni contributions...
I really don't know how to respond to this. Your post makes me think that you have been near a University recently, or that you weren't paying much attention if you were.
And of the precious little research that actually is happening, how much is classified and never sees the light of day
Every single tenured faculty member I know (and, being a graduate student, I know way too many) is completely obsessed with their research. Those who aren't simply can't get hired. On what basis to can you possibly say that there is 'precious little' research happening? IMHO, there's TOO MUCH research happening and not enough time spent teaching.
Also, how much research is classified? I'm sure it's different at National Labs and Military Research Facilities, but of the 200 or so research projects in my department, the number is exactly 0.
There are many, many problems with our higher education system, but you're shooting blanks here, friend.
Re:Great movie with free market touches
on
Serenity Opens Today
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Well, for what it's worth, and knowing how us geeks can be both opinionated AND polite* in expressing those opinions, here's some contact information for 20th Century Fox TV:
askfox@foxinc.com 10201 West Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 Phone: 310-369-3553 Fax: 310-369-8471
*e.g.: My message to them upon finishing watching Firefly for the 1st time: "I fucking hate you guys SO MUCH. Signed, someone who just discovered firefly." This is only because I couldn't figure out how to say "Baboon's ass" in Chinese. Remember, you catch a lot of flies with honey, but you get them ALL with nuclear fallout.
I know what you mean, man... the gf called me, breathless, to tell me to download the trailer. I have to give Joss big props - If you need a way to get your non-geek girlfriend to be excited about spaceships and hot girls in tight outfits doing acrobatics, you can't go wrong with Firefly and Buffy.
More on topic, IMD actually does have support for force-feedback joysticks. You can, for instance, use the joystick to stretch a muscle protein out, and feel its resistance to the stretch.
I always personally interpretted the classic double slit experiement as indicatiing "time" as we know it -- linear time, from moment to moment... Is BS.
I'll take the bait - There's really no basis for that intepretation. I'm sorry, but Quantum Mechanics isn't the nihilistic "We don't know anything about reality, nothing is true, etc." theory that many laypeople take it to be. In fact, quantum mechanics (which is the whole point of the double slit experiment) treats time in a VERY linear manner. Ideas of where things are and where they're going get a little more complicated than we're used to in everyday life, which is what the double slit experiment shows. However, quantum systems evolve in a very orderly fashion as time progresses.
Even such a strange conception of quantum mechanics such as Feynmann's "the particle takes every possible path simultaneously" approach still treats time linearly. Hell, even the many-worlds approach treats time linearly. Again, I'm sorry quantum mechanics doesn't say what you want it to, but that's physical reality for you. Or, put more bluntly, what in God's name are you blathering about?
By the way, I very much like Dao of Physics, and I am a physicist (well, at least a grad student who wishes he were a physicist). Open your mind, man!
I'm not objecting the the article, but to the fact that yet again, the submitter plaigiarized the article. You can write 'Larry Greenmeier reports' or 'according to the InformationWeek Weblog' then quote to your heart's content. When the submitter simply copies and pastes the article and includes no attribution, it implies that the submitter wrote that paragraph. That's plagiarism. Editors, get it together - this is unacceptable.
Is Fortran worth learning? And are there any things that it does a lot better than other languages?
Maybe, and absolutely. Note that the article ignorantly used FORTRAN to mean FORTRAN 66. In fact, Fortran 90 has all the features of a modern programming language. Add to that the fact that fixed-format produces far prettier looking code than C's mess of curly braces and parentheses, although you can also use free-format if you choose. Really, the article makes no sense if you look at what FORTRAN is today.
Answering your questions directly:
Fortran 90 does array, vector, and matrix processing better than any other language, and can do some parallelization of vector processing with a compiler flag. If you're doing scientific programming, Fortran 90 is really the language you should be using. On the other hand, for programs that are actually supposed used by laypeople, there's not much support for doing that with FORTRAN.
The only problem with this game is the layer of marketing that they slopped all over it. The annoncer and all of the music tracks are there to make the game feel like a big frat party. Most of the music is seriously insulting to your intelligence (interesting fact: 'We are the lazy generation' was written by a single brain cell, shared among three band members) and the announcer is a jackass, but not in the good DDR jackass sort of way.
Of course, once you've turned off the music and the announcer, it's an awesome game. It just feels like EAs marketing department decided they needed yet another game to appeal to frat boys, and decided to layer some bullshit on some random game.
You failed science class, didn't you? You don't assume things and then try to disprove them.
Well, actually, that's PRECISELY our modern conception of science. Karl Popper, who's ideas are pretty much the modern canon of scientific philosophy, described a system something along these lines:
You look at the empirical data at hand.
You build some sort of theory, usually as simple a theory as possible, that explains the data. This theory always has to contain some assumptions about the phenomena underlying your experiments. The thoery be falsifiable, i.e. it must make concrete predictions that can be experimentally tested. If the predictions are incorrect, then your assumptions are wrong.
You then test your theory by attempting to falsify it. When scientists say they've found 'confirmation' of a theory, what they really mean (from a Popperian standpoint) is that they've failed to falsify one of the predictions of the theory.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but that's not the same situation. The same situation is "Is it legal to download a higher-resolution copy of a VHS film you already own?"
The main question is "what did you buy?" If all you bought was a physical copy of the media, then you should be able to copy it at will - you own it, after all. If, instead, you bought a license to watch the media, then you can legally download it since you already own it - you can't steal something you already have.
The grandparent brings up a good point - the *AA can't have it both ways, although they will undoubtedly try to.
Already been done.
Or ... I just got confused about which thread I was reading. Whatever!!
So, I understand, sometimes, reusing relevant posts ... but reusing conversations? ... youre one of them, aren't you?
Nope. All gravitational force exerted on an asteroid is directly proportional to its mass. Since Force=Mass*acceleration, the mass cancels out of the equation - the acceleration (and hence the trajectory) is independent of its mass. This is the exact same reason why objects of different weights fall at the same rate - both acceleration AND gravitational force are proportional to mass, so mass cancels out of the equation.
Of course, I'm assuming that gravitational interactions with objects of comparable size (i.e. other asteroids) are negligible. My argument only holds if everything the asteroid interacts with is much more massive than it (and thus not affected much by the asteroid's gravitational pull). But I would bet that's a pretty good assumption.
Actually, it would take precisely the same amount of fuel - either way, you're moving the tug plus the asteroid. The whole idea with this method is simply that gravity is a very gentle force. Pushing the asteroid by attaching a rocket to it or exploding something next to it are both very sharp, uneven forces that could very well break it up in to little pieces. Some of those pieces would probably hit the earth, even if the main bulk didn't.
Ahh ... the most successful reupublican talking point ever. A hilarious, utterly pervasive fabrication. Slashdot needs a Snopes filter to weed out these idiots.
Well, that's not really true - the two primary determinants of the cost here, are what the market will bear and the scarcity of what they're selling. The market will indeed bear exorbitantly high prices, because they're selling extremely unique products. The cost it takes them to produce it doesn't have anything to do with it.
It's greedy, sure, but isn't that the entire point of capitalism?
But yes, in the genetic sense of the word, dogs and wolves are the same species. Horses and donkeys are not, because they don't produce viable offspring.
And if horses and zebras can produce offspring at all, then I totally want one.
There's no such thing as 'half-mutated.' That only makes sense if you're talking about trans-substantion from one species to another, like a fish turning into a dog. That's not evolution.
What we're talking about is constantly changing species that sometimes that sometimes branches off into different lines of change. We aren't desended from monkeys - if you go far enough back in genetic time, we are the exact same species as monkeys. At some point, we went our way and they went theirs.
I don't need a link, I'll give you an example of a divergent ancestry: Us, neanderthals, gorillas, apes, monkeys. Many species, all descended from a single common ancestor. The fossil record shows how all these species have divergent phenotypes arising from a single species; the genetic code shows that we all mutated from a common genetic base.
Wow. You must be smarter than all those dumb scientists out there. Glad you're here with you're condescening bemusement. Oh ... except it's full of bullshit.
The only point of difference between evolutionists and ID (different from creationism) is macro-evolution. We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes, just the assumption that it could occur, given that intra-species changes occur.
Wow, that's some nice bullshit there. It is, of course, not true. At all. It is, after all, bullshit.
Do you even know what speciation is? It's when a population of breedable organisms splits into two separate populations that cannot produce viable offspring with each other. Since you already accept that species do, in fact, change over time - what happens if two population of the same species are isolated from each other for a long time?
This - their genetic differences become so great that they cannot breed with each other. They are thus, by definition, two different species! Viola!
The evidence in the fossil AND genetic record is ubiquitous, and speciation can be easily induced in the laboratory by forcing two initially identical populations of yeast to rapidly mutate. Now, take your bullshit and crawl back into your hole.
Bullshit. One side is saying 'Scientific ideas should be taught in science class.' The other side is saying 'Christian ideas should be taught in science class.' These two statements are NOT equivalent. The first follows from the definition of 'science class;' the second follows from a christian political viewpoint.
In some debates, one side is RIGHT, and one side is WRONG. The truth is not political - it's just the truth. And that's what pisses off these intelligent design wackos so much.
The single most important thing you can do to cure your gasoline addiction is to live close to your job. I live within biking distance of work, and fill my car up less than once a month. I recently calculated that even if I drove a hummer, I'd still spend under $50/month on gas.
//whoops, this isn't fark
Heh.
WTF are you talking about? You do realize that research grant money goes directly into research, and that things like building football stadiums come from a completely different pot, mostly from alumni contributions ...
I really don't know how to respond to this. Your post makes me think that you have been near a University recently, or that you weren't paying much attention if you were.
And of the precious little research that actually is happening, how much is classified and never sees the light of day
Every single tenured faculty member I know (and, being a graduate student, I know way too many) is completely obsessed with their research. Those who aren't simply can't get hired. On what basis to can you possibly say that there is 'precious little' research happening? IMHO, there's TOO MUCH research happening and not enough time spent teaching.
Also, how much research is classified? I'm sure it's different at National Labs and Military Research Facilities, but of the 200 or so research projects in my department, the number is exactly 0.
There are many, many problems with our higher education system, but you're shooting blanks here, friend.
Well, for what it's worth, and knowing how us geeks can be both opinionated AND polite* in expressing those opinions, here's some contact information for 20th Century Fox TV:
askfox@foxinc.com
10201 West Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
Phone: 310-369-3553
Fax: 310-369-8471
*e.g.: My message to them upon finishing watching Firefly for the 1st time: "I fucking hate you guys SO MUCH. Signed, someone who just discovered firefly." This is only because I couldn't figure out how to say "Baboon's ass" in Chinese. Remember, you catch a lot of flies with honey, but you get them ALL with nuclear fallout.
I know what you mean, man ... the gf called me, breathless, to tell me to download the trailer. I have to give Joss big props - If you need a way to get your non-geek girlfriend to be excited about spaceships and hot girls in tight outfits doing acrobatics, you can't go wrong with Firefly and Buffy.
Heh. You work for Klaus, don't you. .
More on topic, IMD actually does have support for force-feedback joysticks. You can, for instance, use the joystick to stretch a muscle protein out, and feel its resistance to the stretch.
I'll take the bait - There's really no basis for that intepretation. I'm sorry, but Quantum Mechanics isn't the nihilistic "We don't know anything about reality, nothing is true, etc." theory that many laypeople take it to be. In fact, quantum mechanics (which is the whole point of the double slit experiment) treats time in a VERY linear manner. Ideas of where things are and where they're going get a little more complicated than we're used to in everyday life, which is what the double slit experiment shows. However, quantum systems evolve in a very orderly fashion as time progresses.
Even such a strange conception of quantum mechanics such as Feynmann's "the particle takes every possible path simultaneously" approach still treats time linearly. Hell, even the many-worlds approach treats time linearly. Again, I'm sorry quantum mechanics doesn't say what you want it to, but that's physical reality for you. Or, put more bluntly, what in God's name are you blathering about?
By the way, I very much like Dao of Physics, and I am a physicist (well, at least a grad student who wishes he were a physicist). Open your mind, man!
Also see University of Illinois' brand-spanking-new Turing Cluster, 640 dual-processor XServe G5s running X.3 Server.
I'm not objecting the the article, but to the fact that yet again, the submitter plaigiarized the article. You can write 'Larry Greenmeier reports' or 'according to the InformationWeek Weblog' then quote to your heart's content. When the submitter simply copies and pastes the article and includes no attribution, it implies that the submitter wrote that paragraph. That's plagiarism. Editors, get it together - this is unacceptable.
Maybe, and absolutely. Note that the article ignorantly used FORTRAN to mean FORTRAN 66. In fact, Fortran 90 has all the features of a modern programming language. Add to that the fact that fixed-format produces far prettier looking code than C's mess of curly braces and parentheses, although you can also use free-format if you choose. Really, the article makes no sense if you look at what FORTRAN is today.
Answering your questions directly:
Fortran 90 does array, vector, and matrix processing better than any other language, and can do some parallelization of vector processing with a compiler flag. If you're doing scientific programming, Fortran 90 is really the language you should be using. On the other hand, for programs that are actually supposed used by laypeople, there's not much support for doing that with FORTRAN.
The only problem with this game is the layer of marketing that they slopped all over it. The annoncer and all of the music tracks are there to make the game feel like a big frat party. Most of the music is seriously insulting to your intelligence (interesting fact: 'We are the lazy generation' was written by a single brain cell, shared among three band members) and the announcer is a jackass, but not in the good DDR jackass sort of way. Of course, once you've turned off the music and the announcer, it's an awesome game. It just feels like EAs marketing department decided they needed yet another game to appeal to frat boys, and decided to layer some bullshit on some random game.
Well, actually, that's PRECISELY our modern conception of science. Karl Popper, who's ideas are pretty much the modern canon of scientific philosophy, described a system something along these lines: