If the 32km difference is due _entirely_ to an infinitesimal redefinition of the unit of measure, that implies that the earlier estimate and the new measured value are equivalent, i.e., that Eratosthenes' estimate was absolutely accurate.
Just because some particular life has evolved away (become extinct) doesn't mean that it can't come back given the right conditions. It might come back in a little bit different form.
Precisely what do you mean by "particular life" and "different form"?
Sure the "different form" could somehow end up being morphologically similar, even genetically identical, but does that make it the same species? That is, if A branches off to B1 and B2, as long as they branched, their descendants (C1 and C2) could never be considered the same, could they?
Saying they could is like saying if your descendants and your cousin's descendants just happened to somehow end up genetically close (to an arbitrary degree) you could call them siblings.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Of course security screening of passengers boarding airplanes does nothing for crowds of people in an airport, that's not what it's for. A big crowd of people in an airport is no more or less a terrorist target than a crowded train station, or shopping mall, or political convention, or football game.
But an aircraft is more vulnerable (and thus more attractive to an attacker) because its passengers are highly concentrated and confined. Passengers can't scatter away to safety as soon as the terrorist pulls out his weapon and starts his spiel. You can't send a commando squad up to an airliner ("Air Force One" notwithstanding). You can't have medical crews standing by to rush in as soon as the siege ends when it could end anywhere around the world. And of course you can't ram a shopping mall into a skyscraper to magnify the destruction.
Yes planes are expensive, but more importantly lives inside a plane are at higher risk.
I probably played Pac-Man before anyone else on Slashdot. It was September or October 1980, and I was a high school student living in Japan. My friends and I would go to a video arcade (or "game center" as they were called) in Jiyugaoka after school, and one day we came across this strange game with a cute yellow guy going around munching dots in a maze, completely unlike the Galaxian and other space-themed games we had been playing until then.
It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked. I can still play the pattern that my friend taught me then.
The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.
The original Pac-Man had level interludes too. The first was after the second round, when Pac-man came out from the left chased by a ghost, then came back giant-sized chasing the ghost. Then the next one where the red monster got stuck on a pin an its "hood" got ripped a bit. And so on....
And how long ago was it that public health in Europe was at the level of the current-day developing world? Probably less than 200 years (that's 7 to 8 generations).
It's just a matter of time - very little time compared to the time needed for evolution - before medicine is able to neutralize natural selection in the rest of the world.
From the article: "Without the incompatibility, PC makers and dealers could potentially start bundling the OS onto computers for business customers. Microsoft does not sell the OS separately. It sells it only to PC makers, who then load it onto PCs."
What MS wants to prevent is not businesses buying high-end PCs with Starter Edition instead of XP, because no business could get by on Starter anyway.
Rather, they want to prevent users (personal and business) from buying high-end PCs with Starter Edition, then just wiping out Starter and installing pirated XPs. In other words, buying a high-end PC _with XP neither installed nor paid for_.
Assuming continued improvements in technology, there's no reason why five years from now every cell-phone will have the power to run sophisticated PDA software, have a decent 3 megapixel lens,...
Actually all modern fighter aircraft these days are powered by afterburning turbofans. Even the F-22, F-15, MiG-29, Su-27 Flanker series, Eurofighter Typhoon... all of them. Efficiency from the fans, and power when they need them from the afterburners.
I challenge you find any dictionary definition of the word "abbreviation" and explain how "U" and "l8r" should not, in their context, legitimately be considered abbreviations. They are shortened forms of words, and they are perfectly understandable by those who use write them and read them. Just because they are not in the current dictionary, just because they are not part of your vocabulary, doesn't make them non-words.
Just as surely as "OK" is in the dictionary today, I'm sure some terms like "LOL" will make it in to the dictionary fifty years from now.
(Incidentally, both of the other Anonymous Coward replies to the above post make the same point, coherently and convincingly. Somebody please mod them up!)
"The assumption is that if songs cost only 5 cents, people would download exponentially more music."
There is no mention of growth (rate of change), only change (more = difference in magnitude). And to say that a difference in magnitude is exponential doesn't make any sense mathematically, does it?
So...if Wikipedia had been around way back when... the "world-is-flat" crowd would have edited out the silly "world-is-round" guy, right?
This is what keeps me from giving Wikipedia much credibility.
Yes, Wikipedia would say the earth is flat. That's what is should be saying. It's an encyclopedia, a compendium of factual knowledge as widely accepted. And the fact that it's created by huge number of uncredentialed editors does not affect it either way. Does Brittanica include crackpot theories in the name of fairness? Should it?
Wikipedia explicitly excludes original research, because it has not entered the body of widely accepted knowledge. That doesn't mean such research is not valid or "true", it just means that it's still provisional, just like crackpot theories that eventually become widely accepted.
Your schedule sounds frightfully similar to what I'm going through now, except I'm lucky if I get two days off a week, usually it's one, and this coming week it's seven days straight. (It's project crunch time, not a permanent thing.)
I typically get home between eleven P.M. and midnight. And I don't care what is due or scheduled the next day, I absolutely do not deny myself eight hours of healthy sleep, which means I get up around nine, and do not force myself out of bed before I feel awake. I get to the office at eleven an nobody says anything, but if ever challenged I know exactly how to answer (as above). A few months ago the schedule was a good deal lighter but I would always get drowsy in mid-afternoon. I almost never do so now.
I realize you're concerned about long-term health effects rather than day-to-day fatigue, but the latter undoubtedly contributes to the former.
I think it's a language called "Asian", which is the apparently the extent to which Anonymous Coward is capable of distinguishing between cultures and countries.
She puts in a lot more time than your average teacher, but she does it because she refuses to let her kids get a lesser education because she puts in less than 110% effort.
Maybe, MIT should call the new computer the "VIC-10" and ask Shatner if he wants to do some ads for it. I wonder how the audience in Vietnam would feel if they see William Shatner being dubbed to speak Vietnamese?
That would go over great. Kinda like Remington in Japan in the 1980s, who got CEO Victor "I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company" Kiam to appear in commercials doing the entire thing in Japanese. No, not dubbed. He actually read his lines phonetically from cue cards. God, it was hilarious/pathetic.
Slashdot Mirror
If the 32km difference is due _entirely_ to an infinitesimal redefinition of the unit of measure, that implies that the earlier estimate and the new measured value are equivalent, i.e., that Eratosthenes' estimate was absolutely accurate.
Obviously that's not the case.
Just because some particular life has evolved away (become extinct) doesn't mean that it can't come back given the right conditions. It might come back in a little bit different form.
Precisely what do you mean by "particular life" and "different form"?
Sure the "different form" could somehow end up being morphologically similar, even genetically identical, but does that make it the same species? That is, if A branches off to B1 and B2, as long as they branched, their descendants (C1 and C2) could never be considered the same, could they?
Saying they could is like saying if your descendants and your cousin's descendants just happened to somehow end up genetically close (to an arbitrary degree) you could call them siblings.
For instance, imagine the TSA actually catches a suicide bomber strapped with explosives. Well, he or she can take out hundreds of people in those parallel security lines, from a combination of different flights...
Thus, all the screening they have added is NOT for protecting people, but for protecting PLANES. Planes are expensive.
Of course security screening of passengers boarding airplanes does nothing for crowds of people in an airport, that's not what it's for. A big crowd of people in an airport is no more or less a terrorist target than a crowded train station, or shopping mall, or political convention, or football game.
But an aircraft is more vulnerable (and thus more attractive to an attacker) because its passengers are highly concentrated and confined. Passengers can't scatter away to safety as soon as the terrorist pulls out his weapon and starts his spiel. You can't send a commando squad up to an airliner ("Air Force One" notwithstanding). You can't have medical crews standing by to rush in as soon as the siege ends when it could end anywhere around the world. And of course you can't ram a shopping mall into a skyscraper to magnify the destruction.
Yes planes are expensive, but more importantly lives inside a plane are at higher risk.
Marge: "You'll love Japan, Homer. You liked Rashomon." ...
Homer: "That's not how I remember it!"
Imagine the climactic effects, and effects on the oceans ecosystems, if we had the equipment to pump that much water up from the floor?
Well, those effects are very gradual and would continue for some time, so I doubt they would be very climactic.
The energy use by the pumps might have some unexpected climatic effects, though.
>> ...but not "Rashomon."
>>
Hmm, I'm pretty sure it was on the list when I read it...
I probably played Pac-Man before anyone else on Slashdot. It was September or October 1980, and I was a high school student living in Japan. My friends and I would go to a video arcade (or "game center" as they were called) in Jiyugaoka after school, and one day we came across this strange game with a cute yellow guy going around munching dots in a maze, completely unlike the Galaxian and other space-themed games we had been playing until then.
It really was revolutionary, and we were all instantly hooked. I can still play the pattern that my friend taught me then.
The video arcade where I first played Pac-Man 25 years ago is still there, incidentally.
The original Pac-Man had level interludes too. The first was after the second round, when Pac-man came out from the left chased by a ghost, then came back giant-sized chasing the ghost. Then the next one where the red monster got stuck on a pin an its "hood" got ripped a bit. And so on....
Bart [over the radio] :"Rod! Todd! This is the Rod of God!"
And how long ago was it that public health in Europe was at the level of the current-day developing world? Probably less than 200 years (that's 7 to 8 generations).
It's just a matter of time - very little time compared to the time needed for evolution - before medicine is able to neutralize natural selection in the rest of the world.
From the article:
"Without the incompatibility, PC makers and dealers could potentially start bundling the OS onto computers for business customers. Microsoft does not sell the OS separately. It sells it only to PC makers, who then load it onto PCs."
What MS wants to prevent is not businesses buying high-end PCs with Starter Edition instead of XP, because no business could get by on Starter anyway.
Rather, they want to prevent users (personal and business) from buying high-end PCs with Starter Edition, then just wiping out Starter and installing pirated XPs. In other words, buying a high-end PC _with XP neither installed nor paid for_.
Yeah, they scrambled up the last three letters.
Assuming continued improvements in technology, there's no reason why five years from now every cell-phone will have the power to run sophisticated PDA software, have a decent 3 megapixel lens,...
Hmm, I haven't heard about these. Tell me more.
Actually all modern fighter aircraft these days are powered by afterburning turbofans. Even the F-22, F-15, MiG-29, Su-27 Flanker series, Eurofighter Typhoon ... all of them. Efficiency from the fans, and power when they need them from the afterburners.
The turbojet is an obsolete technology.
And what if they get their jollies from having their rubber hose beatings withhed?
>>>
I called the Wal-Mart customer service number, left a complaint, and suprisingly, was rewarded with a $20 gift card.
>>>
Did you try to exchange it for ten $2 gift cards?
I challenge you find any dictionary definition of the word "abbreviation" and explain how "U" and "l8r" should not, in their context, legitimately be considered abbreviations. They are shortened forms of words, and they are perfectly understandable by those who use write them and read them. Just because they are not in the current dictionary, just because they are not part of your vocabulary, doesn't make them non-words.
Just as surely as "OK" is in the dictionary today, I'm sure some terms like "LOL" will make it in to the dictionary fifty years from now.
(Incidentally, both of the other Anonymous Coward replies to the above post make the same point, coherently and convincingly. Somebody please mod them up!)
Actually, to quote the article:
"The assumption is that if songs cost only 5 cents, people would download exponentially more music."
There is no mention of growth (rate of change), only change (more = difference in magnitude). And to say that a difference in magnitude is exponential doesn't make any sense mathematically, does it?
So...if Wikipedia had been around way back when... the "world-is-flat" crowd would have edited out the silly "world-is-round" guy, right?
This is what keeps me from giving Wikipedia much credibility.
Yes, Wikipedia would say the earth is flat. That's what is should be saying. It's an encyclopedia, a compendium of factual knowledge as widely accepted. And the fact that it's created by huge number of uncredentialed editors does not affect it either way. Does Brittanica include crackpot theories in the name of fairness? Should it?
Wikipedia explicitly excludes original research, because it has not entered the body of widely accepted knowledge. That doesn't mean such research is not valid or "true", it just means that it's still provisional, just like crackpot theories that eventually become widely accepted.
I need to get a life!
Your schedule sounds frightfully similar to what I'm going through now, except I'm lucky if I get two days off a week, usually it's one, and this coming week it's seven days straight. (It's project crunch time, not a permanent thing.)
I typically get home between eleven P.M. and midnight. And I don't care what is due or scheduled the next day, I absolutely do not deny myself eight hours of healthy sleep, which means I get up around nine, and do not force myself out of bed before I feel awake. I get to the office at eleven an nobody says anything, but if ever challenged I know exactly how to answer (as above).
A few months ago the schedule was a good deal lighter but I would always get drowsy in mid-afternoon. I almost never do so now.
I realize you're concerned about long-term health effects rather than day-to-day fatigue, but the latter undoubtedly contributes to the former.
I think it's a language called "Asian", which is the apparently the extent to which Anonymous Coward is capable of distinguishing between cultures and countries.
She puts in a lot more time than your average teacher, but she does it because she refuses to let her kids get a lesser education because she puts in less than 110% effort.
I just hope she doesn't teach math.
After the World Economic Forum (WEF) and World Social Forum (WSF), can we look forward to the World Technical Forum (WTF)??
Maybe, MIT should call the new computer the "VIC-10" and ask Shatner if he wants to do some ads for it. I wonder how the audience in Vietnam would feel if they see William Shatner being dubbed to speak Vietnamese?
That would go over great. Kinda like Remington in Japan in the 1980s, who got CEO Victor "I liked the shaver so much, I bought the company" Kiam to appear in commercials doing the entire thing in Japanese. No, not dubbed. He actually read his lines phonetically from cue cards. God, it was hilarious/pathetic.