I didn't say it explains everything, but "everything" means something quite different to "every known observation". The cosmologists have a model they don't have a theory. They can explain the observations, they don't have an underlying mechanism yet.
I am not an astronomer, but I am a physisist and I have been at recent talks given by cosmologists who are ecstatic about the recent developments, namely the concordance model. It gets the name 'concordance' precisely because it brings all of the previously seemingly paradoxical observations into 'concordance' in one single unified model.
Now it doesn't actually explain much (it is a model, not a theory), for example it says that almost all of the energy in the universe is in the form of 'dark' matter or 'dark' energy, and it gives rather precise figures for exactly how much dark matter and energy there is, doesn't say what dark matter actually is. Nor does it say anything about inflation theories (except that space is flat, and inflation is a plausible reason for this).
A link for large-scale structure is here. As for why galaxies collide, well, they attract each other gravitationally! If they are too close together, they collide. Where is the deep mystery? The link has more info on galaxy formation too.
You are a couple of years behind the times. There is now a consistent model of cosmology (the 'Concorance Model') which, although it has obvious gaps, explains basically every known observation.
For example, (your points 1 and 2) the error margin on the age of the universe is down to 1%, at 13.7 +/- 0.2 billion years. That there are objects that appeared to be older than that is due to another recently discovered phenomena, that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. That nowscape.com page you point to is obsolete.
(3) I have heard of the galactic rotation problem, I don't know what (if anything) the concordance model says about it.
(4) The large scale structure depends a lot on the nature of fluctuations in the early universe. Not enough is known about them to say anything, but there is no reason why a structure should take a long time to form just because it is large.
See here for a more recent article on the age of the universe.
Acutally, most of the rest of the world does not agree that the right to carry guns is a basic human right, but still gets along quite happily.
Indeed, from the number of firearm deaths in the US versus the rest of the world (an order of magnitude higher in the US), they are arguably much happier. I suspect they are also a bit more stable mentally, because they were never under the delusion that a bunch of consumers wielding handguns is ever going to start a revolution, never mind actually succeeding at one.
The notion that humanity should plan their future is not incompatible with the notion that cancer and aids are dangerous diseases that we should work toward irradicating.
How about Uncle Sam stays out of the web design business?? What's next, we bomb some country whose web designers don't follow "our" rules?
On the other hand, isn't it good that the government is involved in some projects which are intrinsically non-violent? Or do you think the only role of the fed government is to bomb the crap out of anyone who don't roll over to US foreign policy?
Yeah but there is no way Moore's law can hold for that long. Too many fundamental limits in the way. For silicon, a further 10x reduction in feature size is probably impossible. Likewise, another 10x increase in clock speed will be difficult. Individual transistors have been built at 30GHz but at that speed its going to take multiple clock cycles simply to propogate a signal from one side of the chip to the other.
Beyond silicon, its anybodys guess. Waaaaaaay beyond the applicability of Moore's law.
Acutally, technology used in filming has changed quite a lot recently. Motion control of the camera enables quite a lot of new tricks.
Forced perspective with a moving camera depends on moving parts of the scenery in sync with the camera. The scene with Gandalf and Frodo at the table in Bag End is a good example of this - no post production tricks at all.
Also, tricks where you film one person on a blue-screen, record the camera moves, replay the same camera move somewhere else (possibly with a scale transform) and combine the images. The post-production combining is completely trivial, but the technique is enabled by being able to track exactly where the camera is during the shot and replaying the same moves later.
No. Bus width is completely different to the word size of the CPU.
Ever since the Pentium, the memory bus width on x86 CPU's has been at least 64 bits. Would you say that that qualifies a Pentium to be a 64 bit machine?
Because the advantages dimishish. the progression from 4 bits -> 8,16,32,64 is not exponential, but an exponential of an exponential. The more 'natural' progression would be word sizes increasing by some constant number of bits every generation, which would imply the range of arithmetic (and memory sizes) increasing exponentially. But it is technically easier to have word sizes that are themselves a power of 2. We have now reached the limit where 32 bits is barely enough to address the amount of memory desirable even for a small machine, but with 64 bits increases that tremendously. If it took 30 years to get to 64 bits, it should take another 30 years to get to 128.
Of course, this is completely independent of things like memory bandwith tricks (I/O with multiple words at a time) and vector processing (operating on multiple words at a time). But that is orthogonal to the underlying word size. '256-bit GPU' is just a marketing term, that has nothing to do with the amount of memory it can address or the number of bits of precision of the arithmetic, which is what is really meant by the CPU word size.
Because assembly language is fragile and not portable.
A scheme for automating optimization choices is not fragile (when the code changes, just re-run the optimizer) and portable (when compiling on another machine, just re-run the optimizer). Beats assembly hands down.
That part of the analogy still holds, but the curvature of space-time is irrelevant to equal red-shift. The universe is expanding uniformly and symmeterically everywhere, and doesn't depend on where in the universe you are observing from.
For another example, take a piece of pastry of uniform thickness. Put in some rasins in a grid spaced at equal distances. Now roll out the pastry smoothly in all directions. All of the rasins move the same distance from their nearest neighbors, and rasins initally at a distance x are now at a distance K x (here, K is bascally the 'Hubble constant' of the pastry:-).
The balloon is used because its easier to demonstrate blowing up a balloon versus rolling pastry (scientists are usually not good a cooking!). The curvature of the balloon is irrelevant - and misleading because the whole point is that all points (ahem, no pun intended) in the universe are moving away from all other points - there is no center of the universe, or not one that can be determined by simple red-shift experiments anyway.
The large-scale curvature of the universe is very nearly zero, so you need to think of the space-time being very nearly flat, and a long way from the boundary. Either a very very large pastry sheet (the edges are beyond the horizon) or a very very large balloon.
The analogy between expansion of the universe and expansion of a balloon is just that, an analogy. Just like all analogies in physics, it breaks down if you push it too far.
Space-time is 4-dimensional, but curved in such a way that it is not possible to embed the curved 4-D space-time into a flat 5-D space - or even a flat space of any finite dimension.
For an example, take a one-dimensional piece of string. Now I can curve this into something that can be embedded in two dimensions (say, by wrapping it into a circle), but I can also curve it in a way that cannot be embedded in two dimensions. ie, as well as curving it along a plane, curve it out of the plane, as in a ball of string.
If you apply an arbitary curve do an N-dimensional surface, you cannot, in general, embed this in N+1 dimensions. In the example of a ball of string, we needed N+2 dimensions. Going further, we could wrap the string around a 4-dimensional hypercube (although that is a little harder to demonstrate;-), and an ant walking along the string will still think its in a 1D universe.
In summary, it is not meaningful to think of space-time as being 'curved into an extra dimension', except as a very rough first-approximation. Just like the ant walking along a piece of string, you can curve it in much more interesting ways than is allowed by just adding one extra dimension.
Please stop replying with statements about the ending of LOTR!
The parent is in reply to a comment about the book "CLOCKWORK ORANGE" and how there is (apparantly) an extra chapter in the book which is not in the movie.
No, he is not making any assumption about Windows. What he said was:
I have worked with hundreds if not thousands of Personal Computers 99% of which have had windows installed as the primary [or only] operating system. [ed: presumably, he works in tech support or something like that] Altho you ARE correct in that Windows SUPPORTS the multiple desktop, I have YET to see it implemented "out of the box" [ed: meaning the default install doesn't give you multiple desktops, and he's never seen any resellers add it to the default install ] (ie:Software for multiple desktop and have only ONCE seen Multiple desktops used in ANY case with windows, [ed: the implication here is, that in the real world, less than 1% of Windows users utilize multiple desktops ] and that was where a VERY nice graphics card [radeon] shipped the software for such with the drivers. [ed: and in the only known case where the Windows user had installed the software enabling multiple desktops, it came bundled with the graphics card driver.]
It sounds to me like, in the real world, support for virtual desktops in Windows is substantially lacking, for whatever reason (perhaps M$ need to advertize PowerToys more? perhaps they just suck?).
Again, I mostly agree but just to play devil's advocate...
We don't know where the 9 were at the time. Most likely, they were spread all across middle earth looking for Frodo. And the last thing Sauron would want is to scare Frodo into using the ring in anger. The movies did a terrible job of showing the distance scale in middle earth, even if Sauron immediately sent out every army he had to converge on Osgiliath it would still take of the order of days (not minutes or hours) to get there.
As for the women, I had forgotten that Eowen led them into the hills. But one of the main themes in the books (which is less of a theme in the movies, unfortunately) is that there are real cultural differences between the various races of middle earth, and between humans then and humans now. It is quite plausible that the women of Rohan took an active part in the fighting. I don't know how many women fought in WW1 (or WW2) but in modern times where were sugnificant numbers of women in the soviet army (in combat roles too). But yeah the role of women in the movie is quite consistent with the books. Its just that it struck me as weird that they were in a life & death struggle, outnumbered 30-1 with no hope of the women & children escaping, yet they still didn't give the women any swords to defend themselves? Best would have been if the movies followed the books and the women wern't there (as you said originally;), but given that they were there, it is silly that they didn't fight.
What I'd actually like to see is the whole series done as a single movie, without the changes made to make the breaks work. (One thing that hard about making a book into a movie is that people read books in chapters, and put the book down in between, but watch movies in theaters all together. On a DVD, however, you can watch a few scenes and then go do something else)
Which implies he'd like to see the movies re-edited to be one long movie, without the plot interruptions and reviews that come with three separate movies. The extended editions are still cut as 3 separate movies, and they still follow (approximately) the usual movie formula of pacing the beginning, middle, ending.
Frodo didn't look into the palantir(sp?) - he left the party at Amon Sul and never went to Isengard. The palantir happens to either Merry or Pippin, can't remember which (probably Pippin).
The trailers to ROTK imply that the palantir incident does occur, so presumably somehow Jackson found a way to edit it such that the palantir makes it in but Saruman doesn't.
And what the hell gave you the idea that Saruman was the son of Faramir? Saruman isn't even a man, he's a 3000 year old (at least) Wizard. But of an age disparity!
But in the book, Sauron knew (roughly) where the ring was anyway, but he incorrectly assumed it was on its way to Minas Tirith(sp?). The encounter with the Nazgul at the end of TTT fits in OK with the book, the war has already begun, Osgiliath is about to fall, the orcs are about to cross the river and assault Minas Tirith itself (where Sauron assumed that Frodo was heading).
The whole plot of book 5 is based around Gandalf doing everything he can to make it appear to Sauron that the ring really is in Gondor, and about to be used against Sauron, to provide cover to Frodo sneaking in the back door to Mordor. Why does the Nazgul encounter at Osgiliath not reinforce that?
I tend to agree with the rest though - except that it isn't stated where Eomer and Gandalf got the rest of the troops from - presumably Edoras and Helm's deep are not the only places in Rohan where troops are stationed.
And what is that about women and children? Did you mean they should have left them undefended at edoras while the army fled to helm's deep? Actually I was disappointed there were not more women involved in the fighting. Eowen led us to believe that the Rohan women were pretty handy with a sword.
Slashdot Mirror
I am not an astronomer, but I am a physisist and I have been at recent talks given by cosmologists who are ecstatic about the recent developments, namely the concordance model. It gets the name 'concordance' precisely because it brings all of the previously seemingly paradoxical observations into 'concordance' in one single unified model.
Now it doesn't actually explain much (it is a model, not a theory), for example it says that almost all of the energy in the universe is in the form of 'dark' matter or 'dark' energy, and it gives rather precise figures for exactly how much dark matter and energy there is, doesn't say what dark matter actually is. Nor does it say anything about inflation theories (except that space is flat, and inflation is a plausible reason for this).
A link for large-scale structure is here. As for why galaxies collide, well, they attract each other gravitationally! If they are too close together, they collide. Where is the deep mystery? The link has more info on galaxy formation too.
For example, (your points 1 and 2) the error margin on the age of the universe is down to 1%, at 13.7 +/- 0.2 billion years. That there are objects that appeared to be older than that is due to another recently discovered phenomena, that the expansion of the universe is actually accelerating. That nowscape.com page you point to is obsolete.
(3) I have heard of the galactic rotation problem, I don't know what (if anything) the concordance model says about it.
(4) The large scale structure depends a lot on the nature of fluctuations in the early universe. Not enough is known about them to say anything, but there is no reason why a structure should take a long time to form just because it is large.
See here for a more recent article on the age of the universe.
Indeed, from the number of firearm deaths in the US versus the rest of the world (an order of magnitude higher in the US), they are arguably much happier. I suspect they are also a bit more stable mentally, because they were never under the delusion that a bunch of consumers wielding handguns is ever going to start a revolution, never mind actually succeeding at one.
The notion that humanity should plan their future is not incompatible with the notion that cancer and aids are dangerous diseases that we should work toward irradicating.
On the other hand, isn't it good that the government is involved in some projects which are intrinsically non-violent? Or do you think the only role of the fed government is to bomb the crap out of anyone who don't roll over to US foreign policy?
On the other hand, it is nice to have a fast computer to play with now, not in 50 years time!
And after the second eye gets compromised, you can train yourguide dog to log onto your computer for you ;)
Beyond silicon, its anybodys guess. Waaaaaaay beyond the applicability of Moore's law.
But that is just a sot in the dark of course.
Forced perspective with a moving camera depends on moving parts of the scenery in sync with the camera. The scene with Gandalf and Frodo at the table in Bag End is a good example of this - no post production tricks at all.
Also, tricks where you film one person on a blue-screen, record the camera moves, replay the same camera move somewhere else (possibly with a scale transform) and combine the images. The post-production combining is completely trivial, but the technique is enabled by being able to track exactly where the camera is during the shot and replaying the same moves later.
I don't get it, how can McDonalds' boiling water be hotter than ordinary boiling water? I thought the boiling point of water was a constant?
Ever since the Pentium, the memory bus width on x86 CPU's has been at least 64 bits. Would you say that that qualifies a Pentium to be a 64 bit machine?
Of course, this is completely independent of things like memory bandwith tricks (I/O with multiple words at a time) and vector processing (operating on multiple words at a time). But that is orthogonal to the underlying word size. '256-bit GPU' is just a marketing term, that has nothing to do with the amount of memory it can address or the number of bits of precision of the arithmetic, which is what is really meant by the CPU word size.
A scheme for automating optimization choices is not fragile (when the code changes, just re-run the optimizer) and portable (when compiling on another machine, just re-run the optimizer). Beats assembly hands down.
For another example, take a piece of pastry of uniform thickness. Put in some rasins in a grid spaced at equal distances. Now roll out the pastry smoothly in all directions. All of the rasins move the same distance from their nearest neighbors, and rasins initally at a distance x are now at a distance K x (here, K is bascally the 'Hubble constant' of the pastry :-).
The balloon is used because its easier to demonstrate blowing up a balloon versus rolling pastry (scientists are usually not good a cooking!). The curvature of the balloon is irrelevant - and misleading because the whole point is that all points (ahem, no pun intended) in the universe are moving away from all other points - there is no center of the universe, or not one that can be determined by simple red-shift experiments anyway.
The large-scale curvature of the universe is very nearly zero, so you need to think of the space-time being very nearly flat, and a long way from the boundary. Either a very very large pastry sheet (the edges are beyond the horizon) or a very very large balloon.
Space-time is 4-dimensional, but curved in such a way that it is not possible to embed the curved 4-D space-time into a flat 5-D space - or even a flat space of any finite dimension.
For an example, take a one-dimensional piece of string. Now I can curve this into something that can be embedded in two dimensions (say, by wrapping it into a circle), but I can also curve it in a way that cannot be embedded in two dimensions. ie, as well as curving it along a plane, curve it out of the plane, as in a ball of string.
If you apply an arbitary curve do an N-dimensional surface, you cannot, in general, embed this in N+1 dimensions. In the example of a ball of string, we needed N+2 dimensions. Going further, we could wrap the string around a 4-dimensional hypercube (although that is a little harder to demonstrate;-), and an ant walking along the string will still think its in a 1D universe.
In summary, it is not meaningful to think of space-time as being 'curved into an extra dimension', except as a very rough first-approximation. Just like the ant walking along a piece of string, you can curve it in much more interesting ways than is allowed by just adding one extra dimension.
The parent is in reply to a comment about the book "CLOCKWORK ORANGE" and how there is (apparantly) an extra chapter in the book which is not in the movie.
Goddammit, read the parent post to my comment!
My question is, what happens in the last chapter of the book of "CLOCKWORK ORANGE"?
I've never read the book, only seen the movie. What happens in the last chapter?
I have worked with hundreds if not thousands of Personal Computers 99% of which have had windows installed as the primary [or only] operating system. [ed: presumably, he works in tech support or something like that] Altho you ARE correct in that Windows SUPPORTS the multiple desktop, I have YET to see it implemented "out of the box" [ed: meaning the default install doesn't give you multiple desktops, and he's never seen any resellers add it to the default install ] (ie:Software for multiple desktop and have only ONCE seen Multiple desktops used in ANY case with windows, [ed: the implication here is, that in the real world, less than 1% of Windows users utilize multiple desktops ] and that was where a VERY nice graphics card [radeon] shipped the software for such with the drivers. [ed: and in the only known case where the Windows user had installed the software enabling multiple desktops, it came bundled with the graphics card driver.]
It sounds to me like, in the real world, support for virtual desktops in Windows is substantially lacking, for whatever reason (perhaps M$ need to advertize PowerToys more? perhaps they just suck?).
We don't know where the 9 were at the time. Most likely, they were spread all across middle earth looking for Frodo. And the last thing Sauron would want is to scare Frodo into using the ring in anger. The movies did a terrible job of showing the distance scale in middle earth, even if Sauron immediately sent out every army he had to converge on Osgiliath it would still take of the order of days (not minutes or hours) to get there.
As for the women, I had forgotten that Eowen led them into the hills. But one of the main themes in the books (which is less of a theme in the movies, unfortunately) is that there are real cultural differences between the various races of middle earth, and between humans then and humans now. It is quite plausible that the women of Rohan took an active part in the fighting. I don't know how many women fought in WW1 (or WW2) but in modern times where were sugnificant numbers of women in the soviet army (in combat roles too). But yeah the role of women in the movie is quite consistent with the books. Its just that it struck me as weird that they were in a life & death struggle, outnumbered 30-1 with no hope of the women & children escaping, yet they still didn't give the women any swords to defend themselves? Best would have been if the movies followed the books and the women wern't there (as you said originally;), but given that they were there, it is silly that they didn't fight.
What I'd actually like to see is the whole series done as a single movie, without the changes made to make the breaks work. (One thing that hard about making a book into a movie is that people read books in chapters, and put the book down in between, but watch movies in theaters all together. On a DVD, however, you can watch a few scenes and then go do something else)
Which implies he'd like to see the movies re-edited to be one long movie, without the plot interruptions and reviews that come with three separate movies. The extended editions are still cut as 3 separate movies, and they still follow (approximately) the usual movie formula of pacing the beginning, middle, ending.
The trailers to ROTK imply that the palantir incident does occur, so presumably somehow Jackson found a way to edit it such that the palantir makes it in but Saruman doesn't.
And what the hell gave you the idea that Saruman was the son of Faramir? Saruman isn't even a man, he's a 3000 year old (at least) Wizard. But of an age disparity!
The whole plot of book 5 is based around Gandalf doing everything he can to make it appear to Sauron that the ring really is in Gondor, and about to be used against Sauron, to provide cover to Frodo sneaking in the back door to Mordor. Why does the Nazgul encounter at Osgiliath not reinforce that?
I tend to agree with the rest though - except that it isn't stated where Eomer and Gandalf got the rest of the troops from - presumably Edoras and Helm's deep are not the only places in Rohan where troops are stationed.
And what is that about women and children? Did you mean they should have left them undefended at edoras while the army fled to helm's deep? Actually I was disappointed there were not more women involved in the fighting. Eowen led us to believe that the Rohan women were pretty handy with a sword.