This may be OT, but think of how this kind of thing, misapplied (and it *will* be misapplied, as all technology eventually is) could affect a kid.
Picture a child, who...
never cuts class
is never late
always goes where he's supposed to
always says "please" and "thank you"
never gets in with the "wrong crowd"
never gets into fights
never watches TV until his homework's done
never watches violent movies or TV
never looks at porn or "inapproprite content" online
always has dinner with his parents
has the "right" friends, made at soccer practice and trombone lessons and nature camp and Sunday school and community service weekends and every other Very Important Character-Building Activity
Was this you when you were young? Would you really be a better person if you had done these things? Would you be happier? My vote is NO, as I spent all of high school doing most of these things and was ready to kill myself freshman year of college, when I was given an ID card, a room key and told to fend for myself.
My mind drifts to Jonbenet Ramsey as I wonder why American parents have such sterilized, plastic-molded ideals for their children.
Ordinarily I wouldn't respond to something that smelled quite so strongly of troll, but I feel compelled to point a few things out.
Do me a favor. Find the cord connected to the back of your keyboard and follow it for a while. You see that big, humming box with all the flashing lights it's connected to? That's called a computer, and it wouldn't be possible if certain other "Johnnies" (Bohr, Pauli, et. al.) hadn't got tenure. Theory preceeds implementation, unless you're fantastically lucky or patenting a perpetual-motion machine.
This myth that people working (yes, WORKING, as in 80 hour weeks in the lab) to advance the frontiers of human knowledge are all slackers trying to avoid work at Joe-Bob's Tire and Brake Emporium is just insulting.
And I know people in academia. I even know people in paleontology and archaeology. They are some of the hardest-working people on the planet. But if you're really comfortable with knowing history only back to 1,000 years or so, feel free to picket your local museum.
As for "uprooting everything," in some cases it's a valid point. That (among other resons) is why it's so hard to get permission to work in the Great Pyramids. But in other cases, things are going to hell in a handbasket so fast it's better to get there before the looters.
I have to admit I've never understood curve grading. True, I'm a physics major and so can't speak to other disciplines (in particular economics and electrical engineering, not to mention the humanities), but to me grading always seemed simple. One of my intro physics professors stated it well:
If you perfectly learn all of the material, you get 100%. If you don't learn any of the material, you get 0%.
I've taken classes where I've learned about 60% (average grade on tests) and gotten an B because that's how the grading was curved. Leaving those classes, I've always been confused about the material and have to go back and learn it right the next time I encounter it. I can properly apply a skill set that's 90% complete (A-), but not one that's 60% complete. There's just too little to work with; none of it sticks together.
Of course, everyone learns at different rates. Some might be bored to tears while others are struggling. Philosophically, my answer is that IT DOESN'T MATTER. A class presents material, and the grade is an *absolute* indicator of how much of it you successfully pick up. People who are having trouble need to put in more effort than those who aren't. That may seem harsh, but it's not my intention. There really shouldn't be anything wrong with doing your best and getting a C (75%). That's still a damn good fraction of the material, and I'd rather get a true C (75%) than an inflated B (60%) any day.
Just because no force can travel faster than c doesn't mean that time is all wacky.
YES it DOES. Time dilation is a well-established and experimentally measured effect of relativity. Hell, we even have to correct for it to properly calibrate aircraft navigational systems!
Interestingly, it's not strictly forces that can't travel faster than c, it's energy. Which means mass, and possibly information, depending on who you talk to. Since we have good reason to believe that all forces are mediated by particles, that would indeed seem to limit them to c.
It's been a while since I studied special relativity, but there are certain things that stuck with me. One of the most amazing things Einstein said is that there is NO SUCH THING as "simultaneous" events. Such a concept would require that there be an absolute reference time frame a la Newton. If you have a couple of observers watching events happen, be they signal flares, radio waves or even detonating alarm clocks, they will in general NOT agree on WHEN the events occur. Even more spooky, even if you correct for the speed-of-light delay between the observers and the events, their observed time intevals will still not match up.
The "altered mental state" you refer to among physicists is not a convenient falsehood or an approximation to make the calculations easier to grasp. It's what the universe is really like... more amazing and harder to understand than anything else in our lives. And that includes RPGs.:)
Actually, that's only the approximation for points *outside* the earth's surface. Once you cross the boundary that approximation is meaningless.
What's REALLY interesting is that for a point *inside* the earth, the gravitational effect can again be represented as that from a point mass. The difference this time is that you don't give it the mass of the whole Earth, just the bit between the center and the point you're measuring. This is because the net gravitational pull of the other bit (the shell between your position and the Earth's surface) works out to ZERO. So as you approach the center, your "mini-Earth" gets smaller and smaller, and the gravitational effect drops off until it's zero at the exact center.
Re: Re:Of course not....
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 3, Funny
... If you do i will have to shoot some sense into you all.
Will your bullets have momentum or should I quiver in fear at their rest energy?:)
That's the paradox...
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...and the beauty of special relativity.
They key thing is that the speed of light is fixed relative to *everything*. This means that if I'm standing by the highway and measure it, I get the same speed as a person in a car going 60 mph away from me. And since the speed of light is fixed, everything ELSE distorts to make up for it. That includes time (time dilation) and space (Lorentz contraction). It leads to some pretty freaky and amazing consequences.
Of course not....
on
E ~ mc^2
·
· Score: 2, Informative
It's (E^2) = (m^2)(c^4) + (p^2)(c^2).
Unless everything in the universe has zero momentum, that is.:)
I've always loved Linux, ever since I was introduced to it during a summer internship. I do, however, use Windows 2000 for just about everything on my home machine. Why? Here's a short list:
Looks better. Really. This may seem unimportant, but the Windows UI is sooo much better than anything I've seen in KDE or Gnome. One of the reasons is RATIOS. Every time I have to use one of those annoying thin scroll bars in a GTK+ application it makes me sad.
Hardware support. I can pretty much buy any consumer card, drive or peripheral and have it work, without scouring the internet for drivers.
Asks less of the user. I really love the amount of freedom Linux gives you in configuration and setup. You really can make Linux do anything you want! But sometimes I want basic, reasonable assumptions made for me so that I don't have to edit config files.
PS: When I started writing this, there were 7 comments. Now there are 260... Linux zealots, please don't flame me!:)
The radiation mentioned in the article is just the emission of beta particles -- in other words, ordinary electrons. At the energy levels associated with atomic decays they would be stopped by a thick piece of paper, to say nothing of human skin.
So this actually sounds like quite a novel and safe approach. It's not like they're shoving a few pounds of plutonium into the thing and trying to get energy from the heat -- like NASA does on space probes.
It's really great that these kinds of things are finally being archived and shown to the world. Not only is it good for nostalgia, but it's a nice research pool for those of us who like to learn from the past.
However, one thing I've never seen posted in these kinds of online compilations (and not in the Google cache of this posting) are the original advertisements. Whatever your opinion on Big Evil Corporations (tm), it's really fascinating to see how the business world dealt with emerging trends. And how they understood (or misunderstood) the market.
I've spent a fair amount of time in the library looking at bound copies of old tech magazines, and while rewarding it does take a lot of time in dead-tree format. Does anybody know of any online compilations of this sort with ads included? Or even better, compilations of just ads?
Slashdot Mirror
So how long until we get They Hunger 4?
Freessssshhhh... braaaaaaains....
Picture a child, who...
Was this you when you were young? Would you really be a better person if you had done these things? Would you be happier? My vote is NO, as I spent all of high school doing most of these things and was ready to kill myself freshman year of college, when I was given an ID card, a room key and told to fend for myself.
My mind drifts to Jonbenet Ramsey as I wonder why American parents have such sterilized, plastic-molded ideals for their children.
Ordinarily I wouldn't respond to something that smelled quite so strongly of troll, but I feel compelled to point a few things out.
Do me a favor. Find the cord connected to the back of your keyboard and follow it for a while. You see that big, humming box with all the flashing lights it's connected to? That's called a computer, and it wouldn't be possible if certain other "Johnnies" (Bohr, Pauli, et. al.) hadn't got tenure. Theory preceeds implementation, unless you're fantastically lucky or patenting a perpetual-motion machine. This myth that people working (yes, WORKING, as in 80 hour weeks in the lab) to advance the frontiers of human knowledge are all slackers trying to avoid work at Joe-Bob's Tire and Brake Emporium is just insulting.
And I know people in academia. I even know people in paleontology and archaeology. They are some of the hardest-working people on the planet. But if you're really comfortable with knowing history only back to 1,000 years or so, feel free to picket your local museum.
As for "uprooting everything," in some cases it's a valid point. That (among other resons) is why it's so hard to get permission to work in the Great Pyramids. But in other cases, things are going to hell in a handbasket so fast it's better to get there before the looters.
... also a very nice collection of free software for Windows. It's what I use, and I've been very happy with it.
:)
Plus the mascot is cute.
... in a proper fashion. :)
Red Dwarf... the "Holly Hop" episode, I believe.
I feel oddly sad that I recognized it so fast.
I have to admit I've never understood curve grading. True, I'm a physics major and so can't speak to other disciplines (in particular economics and electrical engineering, not to mention the humanities), but to me grading always seemed simple. One of my intro physics professors stated it well:
If you perfectly learn all of the material, you get 100%. If you don't learn any of the material, you get 0%.
I've taken classes where I've learned about 60% (average grade on tests) and gotten an B because that's how the grading was curved. Leaving those classes, I've always been confused about the material and have to go back and learn it right the next time I encounter it. I can properly apply a skill set that's 90% complete (A-), but not one that's 60% complete. There's just too little to work with; none of it sticks together.
Of course, everyone learns at different rates. Some might be bored to tears while others are struggling. Philosophically, my answer is that IT DOESN'T MATTER. A class presents material, and the grade is an *absolute* indicator of how much of it you successfully pick up. People who are having trouble need to put in more effort than those who aren't. That may seem harsh, but it's not my intention. There really shouldn't be anything wrong with doing your best and getting a C (75%). That's still a damn good fraction of the material, and I'd rather get a true C (75%) than an inflated B (60%) any day.
Of course, there's still the "pre-dawn-raid-and-seize-hard-drive" tactic which I've heard makes that moot...
Just because no force can travel faster than c doesn't mean that time is all wacky.
YES it DOES. Time dilation is a well-established and experimentally measured effect of relativity. Hell, we even have to correct for it to properly calibrate aircraft navigational systems!
Interestingly, it's not strictly forces that can't travel faster than c, it's energy. Which means mass, and possibly information, depending on who you talk to. Since we have good reason to believe that all forces are mediated by particles, that would indeed seem to limit them to c.
It's been a while since I studied special relativity, but there are certain things that stuck with me. One of the most amazing things Einstein said is that there is NO SUCH THING as "simultaneous" events. Such a concept would require that there be an absolute reference time frame a la Newton. If you have a couple of observers watching events happen, be they signal flares, radio waves or even detonating alarm clocks, they will in general NOT agree on WHEN the events occur. Even more spooky, even if you correct for the speed-of-light delay between the observers and the events, their observed time intevals will still not match up.
The "altered mental state" you refer to among physicists is not a convenient falsehood or an approximation to make the calculations easier to grasp. It's what the universe is really like... more amazing and harder to understand than anything else in our lives. And that includes RPGs. :)
Actually, that's only the approximation for points *outside* the earth's surface. Once you cross the boundary that approximation is meaningless.
What's REALLY interesting is that for a point *inside* the earth, the gravitational effect can again be represented as that from a point mass. The difference this time is that you don't give it the mass of the whole Earth, just the bit between the center and the point you're measuring. This is because the net gravitational pull of the other bit (the shell between your position and the Earth's surface) works out to ZERO. So as you approach the center, your "mini-Earth" gets smaller and smaller, and the gravitational effect drops off until it's zero at the exact center.
... If you do i will have to shoot some sense into you all.
:)
Will your bullets have momentum or should I quiver in fear at their rest energy?
...and the beauty of special relativity.
They key thing is that the speed of light is fixed relative to *everything*. This means that if I'm standing by the highway and measure it, I get the same speed as a person in a car going 60 mph away from me. And since the speed of light is fixed, everything ELSE distorts to make up for it. That includes time (time dilation) and space (Lorentz contraction). It leads to some pretty freaky and amazing consequences.
It's (E^2) = (m^2)(c^4) + (p^2)(c^2).
:)
Unless everything in the universe has zero momentum, that is.
Area of a circle is
:)
(pi)*( radius^2 ), not (pi*radius)^2.
And, the volume of a sphere is
(4/3)*(pi)*( radius^3 ), again not involving pi^3.
Also, 'cause the Earth isn't a perfect sphere you'd have to do a LOT of measurement.
I've always loved Linux, ever since I was introduced to it during a summer internship. I do, however, use Windows 2000 for just about everything on my home machine. Why? Here's a short list:
PS: When I started writing this, there were 7 comments. Now there are 260... Linux zealots, please don't flame me! :)
The radiation mentioned in the article is just the emission of beta particles -- in other words, ordinary electrons. At the energy levels associated with atomic decays they would be stopped by a thick piece of paper, to say nothing of human skin.
So this actually sounds like quite a novel and safe approach. It's not like they're shoving a few pounds of plutonium into the thing and trying to get energy from the heat -- like NASA does on space probes.
It's really great that these kinds of things are finally being archived and shown to the world. Not only is it good for nostalgia, but it's a nice research pool for those of us who like to learn from the past.
However, one thing I've never seen posted in these kinds of online compilations (and not in the Google cache of this posting) are the original advertisements. Whatever your opinion on Big Evil Corporations (tm), it's really fascinating to see how the business world dealt with emerging trends. And how they understood (or misunderstood) the market.
I've spent a fair amount of time in the library looking at bound copies of old tech magazines, and while rewarding it does take a lot of time in dead-tree format. Does anybody know of any online compilations of this sort with ads included? Or even better, compilations of just ads?
- Get cygwin
- wget -m http://www.atarimagazines.com
And nothing beats bash scripts running under Win2k.