[Please excuse my kurtness but my real response was lost when I clicked options and then saved so I have to retype this from memory.] I'm just saying it reminds me of the Relativistic Light Curvature experiments by Professor Ronald Mallett at UConn-Storrs. I know it's not a direct match between quantum entanglement and relativistic light curvature, but you never know if the two concepts could end up paying off. I will say that clearly even if we have a Unified Definition of Time between the Quantum and Relativistic world through a use of defining time through isolated systems, but we still have Gravity to contend with so we're not done with the Unification of Physics yet. But as for Professor Mallett's work, I will say in the end it's better to let him do his experiment and fail that to spend time deriding him because you think it won't work.
"They're being recovered VERY slowly these days, as all of the foreign stations that episodes were sold to have been searched, etc. The above URL explains a lot."
Except Iran.
Since they showed Marco Polo in Iran there IS a possibility that it may still exist intact deep within some television vault in Tehran...
Re:Theory of Time Travel (Too bad no-one will read
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Time Travel
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It is a time machine in the Einsteinian sense because it allows FTL travel and for someone to be able to affect the universe out of ones time sphere. The time sphere is the sphere created with R=ct, where c is the speed of light and t is the time since the action. Your actions in can only affect the light sphere because in Einstein's universe no information can travel faster than light. Thus, if you can suddenly travel from some region in the light sphere to some region outside the light sphere, you have reached a point before you left WRT the light sphere.
In other words, the "Transporter" can only travel a the speed of light, but the "Voyager" enters at year x but sees the effects on the world from year (x-1). So although he cannot affect the world of (x-1) he is essentially there, in the light sphere of THAT world, not of his own. His own has only just begun to grow and will take a year to reach him. Unfortunately, this "observer's" time travel is not the type we would most like to have but I fear it may be the only one possible. What's more, because the true "Era of Time Travel" doesn't begin until AFTER the "transporter" is built, so one could not, for instance, travel out in space with a big antenna and catch the entire broadcast of "Doctor Who - Marco Polo" as it reaches out into space, because that was boadcast in 1964, many years before we built the "transporter". And that is the only reason *I* would build the transporter since everything is videotaped now anyway!:)
Mmmmm. New copy of "Evil of the Daleks"...
And yes, subspace communications are simply a plot device.
Theory of Time Travel (Too bad no-one will read)
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Time Travel
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My theory of time travel is simple and is based on the concept of worm-hole gateways.
To travel through time, you must create both ends of the gateway. Such gateways may or may not exist through the universe naturally, but as we've never been able to spot, let alone capture, one, let's just assume we have to create them artificially.
Now, if the gateways (physical presence) are created on Earth, then they can be sent from Earth into outerspace at no more than the speed of light. Thus, the maximum distance the gateway can travel is related to the speed of light (~300,000 km/s). However, in a Trans-Einstein way, the two gateways maintain simultenaity. Thus, any object sent through the Earth gateway would "simultaneously" appear in the time-space frame of the outer space Gateway.
Now, imagine that we place a Gateway on the head of a photon (and yet let it be big enough to fit a camera and telescope via fibre-optics, perhaps) and send it out into space at the speed of light for one year in some direct tangential vector to Earth. After 1 year, the other Gateway will be exactly 1 lightyear (ly) from Earth. Thus, the light that that Gateway sees will be exactly from 1 year ago -- the day the Gateway was launched.
Because we attached a camera to the outer space Gateway and ran the fibre-optic cable through the Gateway to receive the signal "instantaenously" on Earth, we can essentially see a snapshot of Earth as it was 1 year ago. We have accomplished Time Travel!
Unfortunately, there is no clear way to return to an "Earth" of the past. The Gateways allow you to observe the Earth in a prior state, but as soon as you tried to return to Earth, you would be approaching Earth's "now" and therefore loose the "time-space" differential. In other words, as you approach Earth at maximum speed (the speed of Light), your "1 year" difference would decrease until you arrived home exactly 1 year after you left. This is without applying Lorenz's Time Transforms of course, as we are not calculating the acceleration of each trip, simply the velocity.
Now, what is interesting about this theory is that first, you can't go back BEFORE the first Time Machine was built. What's past is past and always was, what will be we know not because. Thus, it WOULD be possible to build a Time Machine yet not possible to "kill ones grandfather" or "advice onself" on its construction because that kind of Time Travel is impossible IMHO. The area availible to us for Time Travel consists of a light-sphere that is exactly the surface that would be created by a photon being sent in every direction from the point at which the Time Machine was created. That is your "playground" and no more. As time goes on, we can have a pretty big Time Travel Sphere, but it will take years for it to be of any use.
OTOH, imagine such a Gateway system in deep-space exploration: Send a Man-Sized Gateway probe out at maximum feasable speed (much less than the speed of light for any physical object) and when it arrives on planet "X", just send the population through! Only one deep space mission would be required! All subsequent travel can be through the Gateway. If only we could build the Gateway and build it Man-Sized...:o
Um, first let me understand you comment in context; let's review the DVD formats again:
DVD-ROM / DVD: 9 GB Dual-Layered Single Sided / 18 GB Dual-Layered Double-Sided commercial DVD
DVD-R: 1.0: ~3.7 GB / 2.0: ~4.5 GB Single-Sided Single Layered; Pioneer owns sole mastering hardware rights. Discs around $10-$15. 95% Compatable with DVD.
DVD-RAM: Single-Sided ~2.6 GB, Double-Sided ~5.2 GB, media in case, EM/Optical Hybrid allows Random Access to data sectors unlike all others. Media about $10-$15 for Singles, $25-$30 for Double. 0% Compatible.
DVD-RW: ~4.5 GB Rewritable version of the DVD-R. Designed, developed and owned by Pioneer. Expected Media Cost ~$15. 85% Compatible.
DVD+R: 4.7 GB Write-Once media designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD-R but not exactly the same. Media cost would be ~$10-$15. NO MEDIA OF THIS TYPE HAS EVER BEEN PRODUCED so one can only speculate that it would be about 85% compatible with DVD.
DVD+RW: 4.7 GB Re-writable format designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD+RW but not exactly the same. Media costs about ~$10-$15 IIRC. 65% compatible with DVD.
So, as you can see, the loss of DVD+R is not the great tragedy you claim it to be because it was not 100% compatible and in fact was never produced. Yes, there is DVD-R, but that's a different format and owned by Pioneer alone, not Sony, Phillips or HP. So don't ever expect an HP player to write DVD-R discs and don't ever expect to see DVD+R discs as they were decided against before any were ever produced.
Just enjoy your Second-Gen DVD+RW writer when it comes out and if it plays in your DVD player great! If not, it probably never will. After all, even with DVD-R the MOST compatible format, you don't have a sure thing. And anyway, do you really think they are going to continue making DVD players in the future that ONLY play MPEG2 Encoded Video when DivX;-) / MPEG4 is so much more effecient. Imagine entire seasons of programmes on a singe disk! That's the future, my friends! After all, it's a perfect excuse for the studios to come up with a new Copy Protection Standard....:o
Well, here's my take, this may have happened and I won't refute it, but I would like to point out one thing: We are talking the Mongol Dynasty of Chinese rule here, and by that virtue would it not be more appropriate to give credit where credit is due: The Mongolians discovered America! Who knew!?
In context, the Mongols were expansionists and certainly welcomed Venetian Marco Polo to study among their empire, but when the Mongols fell to the Han Race Ming Emperors, China entered into a period of isolationism. The Great Wall was rebuilt to keep others out as well as the Chinese people in. Had the Ming been more like the Tang or Mongol dynasties, we might all be speaking Zhong gui right now.:)
What's the problem if Joe Rube decides to build a new one? I mean, if he smegs up because he didn't ask Jane the Ubergeek to help him, all he has to know is to boot the prior kernel and no damage done for the most part. If he's using Mandrake, he doesn't even need to worry about how the LILO prompt works as he'll be able to select the old Kernal from a list at bootup. Force a timeout for LILO and keep the old Kernel and you're ALMOST Idiotproof, IMHO.
Ultima II is a game that most people seem to forget. It, like Ultima 1 is a GCA-graphics (read: 3 colour + black) game BUT unlike Ultima II, Ultima 1 was remade in the early 1990s for EGA so thus has the same graphics quality as Ultima III, leaving Ultima II to look the old, unexciting game of the lot. What's more, the current distributor (austensibly EA, though at one time it was Sierra "Online") can't even be bothered to fix an install bug in which the original version contained 2 floppy discs where some of the files had the same name. When this game is distributed now, those 2 discs are copied onto 1 CD and the files (map files) with the same name on disc 2 are erased. Thus, game play is incorrect for acts of the game because the maps are wrong.
Ultima II was an epic tale in which one visited Earth in the past, future and present as well as the planets of her solar system. The black sheep of the Umtima series, it has been much forgotten most likely because of its CGA Graphics.
In conclusion, much as a NEW NEW Ultima I would be nice, could we at LEAST have an EGA version of Ultima II FIRST?? I mean, a game series is only as strong as its weekest link...
Okay, I don't like First person -- or 3rd person shooters, PERIOD! But I know they will always top such lists of games for I don't know what reason but I accept it. OTOH, any list that puts Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss -- my personal #1 at #8, Legend of Zelda at #10, Diablo at #6 and Civilization at #4 is definitely worth looking at even for folks like me. I would have put Wolfenstein higher and will never underestimate the power of Solitare for its simple convenience ("Quick Fix") value, but all in all, agreeing with 4 of the top 10 is pretty darn good in a list of 50.
I agree. I think if there is another one of the Sci Fi polls with blah blah blah Star Wars blah blah blah Star Trek blah blah blah X-Files without even a MENTION of the 26-year Sci-Fi series that PREDATES them all, I'm going to be sick. Now don't get me wrong, I like Farscape and I like Babylon 5 and I even like the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne which Sci Fi cancelled -- though it's still being produced. Of course, Doctor Who IS available on DVD -- at least in the U.K and Australia, and in the U.S. next month. So why not we show some support for the good Doctor and get him on this poll to show all these young'ins what are only interested in the glitsy, $100k budget Sci Fi what some REAL television is about.:)
Well, I know the guy in charge of much of the government atmospheric research dollars being spent and let me tell you something about old porky, provincial congress: a case study in why we need to let scientists not polititions run the direction of research. I should preface that the people who decide funding are Scientists themselves and are very technical. So don't think about proposing a new weather control device or such as they can see right past and cookyness at NSF, the place where Weather research gets its funding.
Case 1: NCAR [National Centre for Atmospheric Research] in Boulder, CO is the nation's formost weather and climate research organisation. They were one of the first customers for the CRAY-1 and if anyone has ever been to the Smithsonian / Air and Space museum in Washington, D.C. you can see one of NCAR's old Cray's there. So, a couple of years ago NCAR was looking to buy a new super computer. They got bids from Cray, Toshiba and NEC. NSF, being the "Money" was then given responsibility to decide which machine they could buy. Carefully examining each proposition, the folks at NSF and NCAR eventually decided that the most bang for the buck would be from NEC [Nippon (Japanese) Electronics Corporation]. Now, you think we'd have had enough of this in the 1980s now that the Japanese economy is STILL in recession, but sure enough the folks at Cray cried foul and laid unfounded accusations that NEC was "dumping" their supercomputer below cost. Needless to say, they got congress involved and convinced one congressman to introduce a bill that would have eliminated pay for any NSF employee that okayed the purchase. HELLO! Try to save the American Tax Payer a little money and they take away your salary? If you didn't know it before, it's corporations that control your money, not congress. Corporations that want you to prop up a clearly failing business just because it is an American company and "we need to protect American Jobs". Look, I don't want my Tax Dollars wasted on Corporate Welfare, and neither should you! As an epilogue, since SGI bought Cray and SGI wanted to do business with NEC, they convinced Cray to drop the Dumping suit. Obviously the no salary bill also did not pass in Congress, thank goodness.
Case 2: North Magnetic Pole research. As any good Canadian will tell you, the North Magnetic Pole is in Canada. So, if you wanted to do research into how the Magnetic Pole effects weather paterns and such, where would be the best place to build your station? Acording to Congress Alaska. Being that any point in Alaska or anywhere else is so far from the poll that any type of research facilities would be completely useless over there, basically Congress would rather waste money than actually spend it on useful research! If you want to study the Northern Magnetic Pole, you go to Canada, because that's where the Northern Magnetic Pole is. It's a no-brainer. Yet Congress even fouled that up.
And you wonder why the U.S. is so behind Europe in the weather bis. If we ran it by the Military like most European nations do, we could probably get better results given the Military budget compared to NSF's budget, but then we'd probably not get ANY weather reports because all the research would be classified, like it is in Europe.
Do you know, it would be just like/. to convert all my <<>> to nothing even when selecting "Plain Old Text" and thus delete all my lovely quoted samples. Sorry folks, no backups but I hope the text at least gives the post meaning and y'all can probably figure out what each quote said by the context, n'est-ce pas?
Thank you -- with at least 75,000,000 native French speakers in the world by my guestimate, it is sad really that we wouldn't have a true Francophone making the translations but honestly I appreciate anyone trying. Anyway, I'll explain Vous, Toi and tu. First, let's transpose the meanings in English for the first person, that is I -> you = tu; me -> you = toi; to me -> to you = à toi; myself -> yourself = toi-même (genetive) or te (reflexive). And yes, I:We as Tu:Vous and as you point out, Vous is also an address of politess. But to understand this more clearly let's visit a bit of a Chausserian age of English, when You, Ye and Thou were in much more common parlance -- King James Bible should do by example. Back in the days of yore, we had no less than THREE words for 'you' in the nominative (I is nominative, me is accutisive, [to] me is dative and myself is genetive). Many other cultures consider our lack of a formal address to be a sign of familiarity, but ironically it is the formal (VOUS) form that all English speakers are using, not the 'tu' form, which for a single person was Thou (God always refers to his flock in the informal in the Bible as a sign of both intamacy and superiority.) and multiple friends were 'ye'. Ye was actually much like 'You' in the same way Vous would mean both 'You' formal and 'You' plural when used as an object (not subject) of a sentance, since ye, you, you, yourself congugated similar to you, you, you, yourself. In French you have vous, vous, vous, vous-même (Genetive) / vous (reflexive). Anyway, so Tu clearly equals thou in english, and toi is thee, and of course there is thyself or toi-même / te. Since English is a Germanic language, this is actually based on and more similar to German, Dutch, Danish and other Germanic language grammars, and clearly in Dutch where "U" is the Dutch word for "Sie" or "You" in the old sense of Formality, there is an exact parellel to what I describe.
Unfortunately, without ye and thou, the difference between tu and vous would be lost on most Anglophones. But the point is, saying tu and toi are masculine and feminine is like saying "I" is masculine and "Me" is feminine, or visa-verse. Oh, well, c'est amusent. Anyway, let me parse Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir:
Literally, this is:
>
Keep in mind that in old English, inversion of subject and verb formed a question the same way it does in French and German and most Indo-European languages (anyone want to tell me how it is said in Farci or Urdu to prove me wrong??:) However, most Americans, and athough heard it is more common in the U.K. and elsewhere to use the question form:
>
This actually has a different meaning in French as well, namely:
>
Literally: >
Okay, that takes care of Voulez-vous, now on to coucher. Coucher means "To go to bed" and is typically reflexive:
Je me couche = I put myself to bed.
Just as "to go to bed" and "to sleep" have slightly different meanings in English, so do "coucher" and "dormir" in French. Dormir means to sleep and actually I don't see it used as frequently to mean "sex" as "coucher" unlike in English where "to sleep with " almost always means sex. More often, the transitive (state-changing) verb "to go to bed" is used in place of the intransitive (state-describing) verb "to sleep", just as we think of "sex" as an action, not a state. Thus in fact coucher makes more sense when referring to sex than does dormir, but that's just my personal view.
Anyway, so normally se coucher, "to put oneself to bed", is how coucher is used. However, here it is used non-reflexively as simply coucher, or "to go to bed". This allows for another person to be involved in the action of "going to bed", as otherwise "Voulons-nous nous coucher ce soir" would be "Do we want to put ourselves to bed tonight" would not be the desired meaning. Specifically by saying "with me" (avec moi) we are inserting ourselves into the action of "going to bed" and thus the dynamic changes from the simple action of retiring for the evening to the steamy, passionate act of the most intimate of intercourse. Also note that "Voulez-vous vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" would mean "Do you want to put yourself to bed with me this evening?" or more figuratively "Do you need my help in getting ready for bed this evening?" Not sexual.
Of course, "avec moi ce soir" is easy to translate since it means the same thing in English. Also note here is one of your gender differences: "Voulez-vour coucher avec moi celle journée?" or "Do you want to sleep with me today?" uses "celle" and not "ce" because "soir" is Masculine and "Journée" is feminine. Of course, there are a LOT of other examples of Masculine and Feminine forms, especially with "a", "the" and posessive", but also with adjectives and even some past participals when used in the adjectival form: "Il est arrivé; elle est arrivée" ("He has arrived; she has arrived" or literally "He is arrived; she is arrived").
Also, keep in mind that "Voudrez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir" means "Would you want [like] to sleep with me this evening?" which if I recall how how a merchant might address a client would be the more common turn of phrase of temptation.
And finally, if you are with your wife/husband, you are more likely to hear: "veux-tu coucher avec moi ce soir." or simply "veux-tu coucher" (non-reflexive) since your spouse would be informally addressed.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
This post presented entirely for the enjoyment of others -- and facts here-in mis-representing, mis-leading or even mis-spelling of words of any language is purely accidental and thus it should be taken with a grain of salt.
My point however is this is not JUST a property of UNIX. For one thing, your old friend Bill Gates has been using the same system for years and I'm sure you'll find a lot of other 'post-Unix' OSes using the same thing. Now I happen to know that MS is really mixed up because they use the ANSI time_t which you admit at least IS part of the standard, as well as the tm structure, also part of the standard, CTime and CTimeSpan, part of MFC and DATE / COleDateTime which actually measures DAYS, not seconds since the Epoch, in this case 31 December 1899 in a double-precision floating point value where the 'fraction' represents the fraction of the day in question (always positive, which makes negative numbers a real pain to parse). This is a much more elegant solution (for 'positive' dates) IMHO but believe me I still prefer using time_t, the numeric type often implemented as long;) to anything MS specific, and more so because FP Arithmatic is always slower than integer in the practical sense.:)
Now chill out and don't get so moody. I'm merely trying to point out that this turnover is even BIGGER than UNIX and really effects almost every computer in use today. So let's celebrate together and be happy! Party Time!!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
P.S. the last time the bits in little-endien read FEDCBA9876543210 on a Date object was 3.3e+300 years ago and I missed it, bugger!:(
ANSI C defined the epoch as 00:00:00 UTC 1 January 1970 C.E. and defines the set of functions in the time.h library as returning a structure -- among others -- as time_t, defined as a long, which is 32-bits, and is the number of seconds since the epoch. The problem is of course that a 32-bit number can only store so-many seconds, so that come Jan 2038, when just over 2 billion (2e+9) seconds have passed, we go into negative numbers, perhaps around 1902?:) Anyway, so all you are saying is if we do a "time(NULL)" the time_t, or long, returned when converted to decimal will be "987654321" and that we are rapidly approaching "1000000000" and expect "1234567890" sometime later this decade. Okay, I see. Now as for any other language which uses the same time structure, keep in mind that it was probably compiled, if not directly, than inderectly under C at some point (even if it is now 'self-compiling' as C is. So let's give credit where credit is due, people! Long live ANSI C!!!
You want death on an unimaginable scale, try the Big Finish Doctor Who Audio: 'Dalek Empire: The Apocalypse Element'. He who says Audio can't be spell-binding obviously hasn't heard this and how can a mere planet or species' extinction compare to the utter EX-TER-MIN-A-TION of an entire GALAXY!!! Few stories have described devistation on such a cosmic scale. Thus by your definition, this is by far one of the goriest works of fiction ever produced, and not ONE second of video was ever rendered. The power of Audio!
Well, technically that's part of Chili. Maybe it could fix Democracy in Fiji all in one blow by taking out that racist anti-Indian pseudo-nationalists with really his own interest at heart, George Speight, literally killing 2 birds with one stone!:)
>The TimeHorse has now been permanently banned from ever setting foot on Fiji<
They're no doubt hoping for this to increase a desired mass exodus of money from the West. Probably predict the cars to literally be filled with USD on the way back.:)
This is not original. We saw it on our NoVaDWVS list a few weeks ago and it was passed on by member Joanne's sister, I believe. Forgot where she got it from.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
(NoVaDWVS = Northern Virginia Doctor Who Viewing Society, http://www.egroups.com/groups/novadwvs/)
Personally, I'd rather work in Milano than Italia.
You probably need to be Milanese to get that. >sheepish grin<
Now, seriously, I've worked as a technical in Switzerland and to work there you literally 'have to know somebody' as I did, especially with that nasty ultra-nationalist they elected a few years ago. Schweitz pour i Rheto-romani!:)
But if you can re-write your Resumé in French and post it on Monster.com I Guarentee you you will be hearing from French recruiters within a week. In fact, most European countries will contact you if you check the box indicating willingness to relocate to their countries and my Finacée and I have been vascillating over whether we'll find a pair of high-tech jobs over there for a year or buy a house in the vastly over-priced Northern Virginia / Washington D.C. area. As for France, I strongly recommend learning the language pretty well first because they're pretty protective of it over there, and you might think about working in Québec, Canada en lieu of it because getting the Province and Government of Canada to approve you I've found rather easy in the past if you can just find a job. Montréal is doing better than it was 5 years ago when I was trying to extend my visa so I think your prospects may be good. What, you think it's too cold? Wimp!:) Anyway, back to Europe, the countries I recommend are Ireland -- they have a LOT of High-Tech jobs over there, England/Scottland/Whales, France, Italy, and Germany. You also might enjoy Finland as they are a very High-Tech nation but since they don't speak an Indo-European language (Urgo-Finnish actually) you may have a more difficult time mastering the language. 40% or so of the population is Sweedish so perhaps if you want to learn another Germanic language like English, Dutch, Northern and Southern Norwegian, Danish or of course Sweedish, then Scandinavia is for you (But don't confuse the Flemish with the Dutch, trust me!:) The Iberians have some very interesting jobs too, if you want to bone up on Spanish, which you can use on your return, or Portugues, for those spontaneous trips to Brazil. In fact, have you thought about looking in Argentina or Ecuador or Chile? Just because we live in the 'New World' doesn't mean the continent is all like the United States, and all of those countries have a relatively stable government and a pretty reasonable high-tech sector. Anyway, my best advice is go to Monster.com and post your Resume in French and Italian, mark that that's where you want to work, and if you can get through the recruiters enjoy your stay in Europe and bonne chance!:)
Is that they own the Cable Company rights around here and there is no DSL router within 18000 feet. Not only that, but we got a northern exposure. Can you say monopoly? Still, I suppose I should be happy I get ANY kind of broadband service out here in 'high-tech' Reston, Virginia!:S
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[Please excuse my kurtness but my real response was lost when I clicked options and then saved so I have to retype this from memory.]
I'm just saying it reminds me of the Relativistic Light Curvature experiments by Professor Ronald Mallett at UConn-Storrs. I know it's not a direct match between quantum entanglement and relativistic light curvature, but you never know if the two concepts could end up paying off. I will say that clearly even if we have a Unified Definition of Time between the Quantum and Relativistic world through a use of defining time through isolated systems, but we still have Gravity to contend with so we're not done with the Unification of Physics yet. But as for Professor Mallett's work, I will say in the end it's better to let him do his experiment and fail that to spend time deriding him because you think it won't work.
"They're being recovered VERY slowly these days, as all of the foreign stations that episodes were sold to have been searched, etc. The above URL explains a lot."
Except Iran.
Since they showed Marco Polo in Iran there IS a possibility that it may still exist intact deep within some television vault in Tehran...
It is a time machine in the Einsteinian sense because it allows FTL travel and for someone to be able to affect the universe out of ones time sphere. The time sphere is the sphere created with R=ct, where c is the speed of light and t is the time since the action. Your actions in can only affect the light sphere because in Einstein's universe no information can travel faster than light. Thus, if you can suddenly travel from some region in the light sphere to some region outside the light sphere, you have reached a point before you left WRT the light sphere.
:)
In other words, the "Transporter" can only travel a the speed of light, but the "Voyager" enters at year x but sees the effects on the world from year (x-1). So although he cannot affect the world of (x-1) he is essentially there, in the light sphere of THAT world, not of his own. His own has only just begun to grow and will take a year to reach him. Unfortunately, this "observer's" time travel is not the type we would most like to have but I fear it may be the only one possible. What's more, because the true "Era of Time Travel" doesn't begin until AFTER the "transporter" is built, so one could not, for instance, travel out in space with a big antenna and catch the entire broadcast of "Doctor Who - Marco Polo" as it reaches out into space, because that was boadcast in 1964, many years before we built the "transporter". And that is the only reason *I* would build the transporter since everything is videotaped now anyway!
Mmmmm. New copy of "Evil of the Daleks"...
And yes, subspace communications are simply a plot device.
My theory of time travel is simple and is based on the concept of worm-hole gateways.
:o
To travel through time, you must create both ends of the gateway. Such gateways may or may not exist through the universe naturally, but as we've never been able to spot, let alone capture, one, let's just assume we have to create them artificially.
Now, if the gateways (physical presence) are created on Earth, then they can be sent from Earth into outerspace at no more than the speed of light. Thus, the maximum distance the gateway can travel is related to the speed of light (~300,000 km/s). However, in a Trans-Einstein way, the two gateways maintain simultenaity. Thus, any object sent through the Earth gateway would "simultaneously" appear in the time-space frame of the outer space Gateway.
Now, imagine that we place a Gateway on the head of a photon (and yet let it be big enough to fit a camera and telescope via fibre-optics, perhaps) and send it out into space at the speed of light for one year in some direct tangential vector to Earth. After 1 year, the other Gateway will be exactly 1 lightyear (ly) from Earth. Thus, the light that that Gateway sees will be exactly from 1 year ago -- the day the Gateway was launched.
Because we attached a camera to the outer space Gateway and ran the fibre-optic cable through the Gateway to receive the signal "instantaenously" on Earth, we can essentially see a snapshot of Earth as it was 1 year ago. We have accomplished Time Travel!
Unfortunately, there is no clear way to return to an "Earth" of the past. The Gateways allow you to observe the Earth in a prior state, but as soon as you tried to return to Earth, you would be approaching Earth's "now" and therefore loose the "time-space" differential. In other words, as you approach Earth at maximum speed (the speed of Light), your "1 year" difference would decrease until you arrived home exactly 1 year after you left. This is without applying Lorenz's Time Transforms of course, as we are not calculating the acceleration of each trip, simply the velocity.
Now, what is interesting about this theory is that first, you can't go back BEFORE the first Time Machine was built. What's past is past and always was, what will be we know not because. Thus, it WOULD be possible to build a Time Machine yet not possible to "kill ones grandfather" or "advice onself" on its construction because that kind of Time Travel is impossible IMHO. The area availible to us for Time Travel consists of a light-sphere that is exactly the surface that would be created by a photon being sent in every direction from the point at which the Time Machine was created. That is your "playground" and no more. As time goes on, we can have a pretty big Time Travel Sphere, but it will take years for it to be of any use.
OTOH, imagine such a Gateway system in deep-space exploration: Send a Man-Sized Gateway probe out at maximum feasable speed (much less than the speed of light for any physical object) and when it arrives on planet "X", just send the population through! Only one deep space mission would be required! All subsequent travel can be through the Gateway. If only we could build the Gateway and build it Man-Sized...
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Um, first let me understand you comment in context; let's review the DVD formats again:
:o
DVD-ROM / DVD: 9 GB Dual-Layered Single Sided / 18 GB Dual-Layered Double-Sided commercial DVD
DVD-R: 1.0: ~3.7 GB / 2.0: ~4.5 GB Single-Sided Single Layered; Pioneer owns sole mastering hardware rights. Discs around $10-$15. 95% Compatable with DVD.
DVD-RAM: Single-Sided ~2.6 GB, Double-Sided ~5.2 GB, media in case, EM/Optical Hybrid allows Random Access to data sectors unlike all others. Media about $10-$15 for Singles, $25-$30 for Double. 0% Compatible.
DVD-RW: ~4.5 GB Rewritable version of the DVD-R. Designed, developed and owned by Pioneer. Expected Media Cost ~$15. 85% Compatible.
DVD+R: 4.7 GB Write-Once media designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD-R but not exactly the same. Media cost would be ~$10-$15. NO MEDIA OF THIS TYPE HAS EVER BEEN PRODUCED so one can only speculate that it would be about 85% compatible with DVD.
DVD+RW: 4.7 GB Re-writable format designed by Phillips, Sony and HP. Similar to DVD+RW but not exactly the same. Media costs about ~$10-$15 IIRC. 65% compatible with DVD.
So, as you can see, the loss of DVD+R is not the great tragedy you claim it to be because it was not 100% compatible and in fact was never produced. Yes, there is DVD-R, but that's a different format and owned by Pioneer alone, not Sony, Phillips or HP. So don't ever expect an HP player to write DVD-R discs and don't ever expect to see DVD+R discs as they were decided against before any were ever produced.
Just enjoy your Second-Gen DVD+RW writer when it comes out and if it plays in your DVD player great! If not, it probably never will. After all, even with DVD-R the MOST compatible format, you don't have a sure thing. And anyway, do you really think they are going to continue making DVD players in the future that ONLY play MPEG2 Encoded Video when DivX;-) / MPEG4 is so much more effecient. Imagine entire seasons of programmes on a singe disk! That's the future, my friends! After all, it's a perfect excuse for the studios to come up with a new Copy Protection Standard....
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Well, here's my take, this may have happened and I won't refute it, but I would like to point out one thing: We are talking the Mongol Dynasty of Chinese rule here, and by that virtue would it not be more appropriate to give credit where credit is due: The Mongolians discovered America! Who knew!?
:)
In context, the Mongols were expansionists and certainly welcomed Venetian Marco Polo to study among their empire, but when the Mongols fell to the Han Race Ming Emperors, China entered into a period of isolationism. The Great Wall was rebuilt to keep others out as well as the Chinese people in. Had the Ming been more like the Tang or Mongol dynasties, we might all be speaking Zhong gui right now.
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
What's the problem if Joe Rube decides to build a new one? I mean, if he smegs up because he didn't ask Jane the Ubergeek to help him, all he has to know is to boot the prior kernel and no damage done for the most part. If he's using Mandrake, he doesn't even need to worry about how the LILO prompt works as he'll be able to select the old Kernal from a list at bootup. Force a timeout for LILO and keep the old Kernel and you're ALMOST Idiotproof, IMHO.
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Ultima II is a game that most people seem to forget. It, like Ultima 1 is a GCA-graphics (read: 3 colour + black) game BUT unlike Ultima II, Ultima 1 was remade in the early 1990s for EGA so thus has the same graphics quality as Ultima III, leaving Ultima II to look the old, unexciting game of the lot. What's more, the current distributor (austensibly EA, though at one time it was Sierra "Online") can't even be bothered to fix an install bug in which the original version contained 2 floppy discs where some of the files had the same name. When this game is distributed now, those 2 discs are copied onto 1 CD and the files (map files) with the same name on disc 2 are erased. Thus, game play is incorrect for acts of the game because the maps are wrong.
Ultima II was an epic tale in which one visited Earth in the past, future and present as well as the planets of her solar system. The black sheep of the Umtima series, it has been much forgotten most likely because of its CGA Graphics.
In conclusion, much as a NEW NEW Ultima I would be nice, could we at LEAST have an EGA version of Ultima II FIRST?? I mean, a game series is only as strong as its weekest link...
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
extern const Universal_Quantity my_universal_constant;
Universal_Quantity& my_universal_variable = const_cast<Universal_Quantity &>(my_universal_constant);
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Okay, I don't like First person -- or 3rd person shooters, PERIOD! But I know they will always top such lists of games for I don't know what reason but I accept it. OTOH, any list that puts Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss -- my personal #1 at #8, Legend of Zelda at #10, Diablo at #6 and Civilization at #4 is definitely worth looking at even for folks like me. I would have put Wolfenstein higher and will never underestimate the power of Solitare for its simple convenience ("Quick Fix") value, but all in all, agreeing with 4 of the top 10 is pretty darn good in a list of 50.
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
I agree. I think if there is another one of the Sci Fi polls with blah blah blah Star Wars blah blah blah Star Trek blah blah blah X-Files without even a MENTION of the 26-year Sci-Fi series that PREDATES them all, I'm going to be sick. Now don't get me wrong, I like Farscape and I like Babylon 5 and I even like the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne which Sci Fi cancelled -- though it's still being produced. Of course, Doctor Who IS available on DVD -- at least in the U.K and Australia, and in the U.S. next month. So why not we show some support for the good Doctor and get him on this poll to show all these young'ins what are only interested in the glitsy, $100k budget Sci Fi what some REAL television is about. :)
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Well, I know the guy in charge of much of the government atmospheric research dollars being spent and let me tell you something about old porky, provincial congress: a case study in why we need to let scientists not polititions run the direction of research. I should preface that the people who decide funding are Scientists themselves and are very technical. So don't think about proposing a new weather control device or such as they can see right past and cookyness at NSF, the place where Weather research gets its funding.
Case 1: NCAR [National Centre for Atmospheric Research] in Boulder, CO is the nation's formost weather and climate research organisation. They were one of the first customers for the CRAY-1 and if anyone has ever been to the Smithsonian / Air and Space museum in Washington, D.C. you can see one of NCAR's old Cray's there. So, a couple of years ago NCAR was looking to buy a new super computer. They got bids from Cray, Toshiba and NEC. NSF, being the "Money" was then given responsibility to decide which machine they could buy. Carefully examining each proposition, the folks at NSF and NCAR eventually decided that the most bang for the buck would be from NEC [Nippon (Japanese) Electronics Corporation]. Now, you think we'd have had enough of this in the 1980s now that the Japanese economy is STILL in recession, but sure enough the folks at Cray cried foul and laid unfounded accusations that NEC was "dumping" their supercomputer below cost. Needless to say, they got congress involved and convinced one congressman to introduce a bill that would have eliminated pay for any NSF employee that okayed the purchase. HELLO! Try to save the American Tax Payer a little money and they take away your salary? If you didn't know it before, it's corporations that control your money, not congress. Corporations that want you to prop up a clearly failing business just because it is an American company and "we need to protect American Jobs". Look, I don't want my Tax Dollars wasted on Corporate Welfare, and neither should you! As an epilogue, since SGI bought Cray and SGI wanted to do business with NEC, they convinced Cray to drop the Dumping suit. Obviously the no salary bill also did not pass in Congress, thank goodness.
Case 2: North Magnetic Pole research. As any good Canadian will tell you, the North Magnetic Pole is in Canada. So, if you wanted to do research into how the Magnetic Pole effects weather paterns and such, where would be the best place to build your station? Acording to Congress Alaska. Being that any point in Alaska or anywhere else is so far from the poll that any type of research facilities would be completely useless over there, basically Congress would rather waste money than actually spend it on useful research! If you want to study the Northern Magnetic Pole, you go to Canada, because that's where the Northern Magnetic Pole is. It's a no-brainer. Yet Congress even fouled that up.
And you wonder why the U.S. is so behind Europe in the weather bis. If we ran it by the Military like most European nations do, we could probably get better results given the Military budget compared to NSF's budget, but then we'd probably not get ANY weather reports because all the research would be classified, like it is in Europe.
Devo Andare,
Jeffrey.
Here are the missing bits from that last post. I am only providing the lines missing and context to save bandwidth so if this offends, sorry.
[...]
Literally, this is:
<<Want you to go to bed with me this evening?>>
[...]
<<Do you want to go to bed with me tonight?>>
This actually has a different meaning in French as well, namely:
<<Est-ce que vous voulez coucher avec moi ce soir?>>
Literally: <<Is it that you want to go to bed with me this evening?>>
[...] unlike in English where "to sleep with <someone>" almost always means sex. [...]
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Do you know, it would be just like /. to convert all my <<>> to nothing even when selecting "Plain Old Text" and thus delete all my lovely quoted samples. Sorry folks, no backups but I hope the text at least gives the post meaning and y'all can probably figure out what each quote said by the context, n'est-ce pas?
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Thank you -- with at least 75,000,000 native French speakers in the world by my guestimate, it is sad really that we wouldn't have a true Francophone making the translations but honestly I appreciate anyone trying. Anyway, I'll explain Vous, Toi and tu. First, let's transpose the meanings in English for the first person, that is I -> you = tu; me -> you = toi; to me -> to you = à toi; myself -> yourself = toi-même (genetive) or te (reflexive). And yes, I:We as Tu:Vous and as you point out, Vous is also an address of politess. But to understand this more clearly let's visit a bit of a Chausserian age of English, when You, Ye and Thou were in much more common parlance -- King James Bible should do by example. Back in the days of yore, we had no less than THREE words for 'you' in the nominative (I is nominative, me is accutisive, [to] me is dative and myself is genetive). Many other cultures consider our lack of a formal address to be a sign of familiarity, but ironically it is the formal (VOUS) form that all English speakers are using, not the 'tu' form, which for a single person was Thou (God always refers to his flock in the informal in the Bible as a sign of both intamacy and superiority.) and multiple friends were 'ye'. Ye was actually much like 'You' in the same way Vous would mean both 'You' formal and 'You' plural when used as an object (not subject) of a sentance, since ye, you, you, yourself congugated similar to you, you, you, yourself. In French you have vous, vous, vous, vous-même (Genetive) / vous (reflexive). Anyway, so Tu clearly equals thou in english, and toi is thee, and of course there is thyself or toi-même / te. Since English is a Germanic language, this is actually based on and more similar to German, Dutch, Danish and other Germanic language grammars, and clearly in Dutch where "U" is the Dutch word for "Sie" or "You" in the old sense of Formality, there is an exact parellel to what I describe.
:) However, most Americans, and athough heard it is more common in the U.K. and elsewhere to use the question form:
Unfortunately, without ye and thou, the difference between tu and vous would be lost on most Anglophones. But the point is, saying tu and toi are masculine and feminine is like saying "I" is masculine and "Me" is feminine, or visa-verse. Oh, well, c'est amusent. Anyway, let me parse Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir:
Literally, this is:
>
Keep in mind that in old English, inversion of subject and verb formed a question the same way it does in French and German and most Indo-European languages (anyone want to tell me how it is said in Farci or Urdu to prove me wrong??
>
This actually has a different meaning in French as well, namely:
>
Literally: >
Okay, that takes care of Voulez-vous, now on to coucher. Coucher means "To go to bed" and is typically reflexive:
Je me couche = I put myself to bed.
Just as "to go to bed" and "to sleep" have slightly different meanings in English, so do "coucher" and "dormir" in French. Dormir means to sleep and actually I don't see it used as frequently to mean "sex" as "coucher" unlike in English where "to sleep with " almost always means sex. More often, the transitive (state-changing) verb "to go to bed" is used in place of the intransitive (state-describing) verb "to sleep", just as we think of "sex" as an action, not a state. Thus in fact coucher makes more sense when referring to sex than does dormir, but that's just my personal view.
Anyway, so normally se coucher, "to put oneself to bed", is how coucher is used. However, here it is used non-reflexively as simply coucher, or "to go to bed". This allows for another person to be involved in the action of "going to bed", as otherwise "Voulons-nous nous coucher ce soir" would be "Do we want to put ourselves to bed tonight" would not be the desired meaning. Specifically by saying "with me" (avec moi) we are inserting ourselves into the action of "going to bed" and thus the dynamic changes from the simple action of retiring for the evening to the steamy, passionate act of the most intimate of intercourse. Also note that "Voulez-vous vous coucher avec moi ce soir?" would mean "Do you want to put yourself to bed with me this evening?" or more figuratively "Do you need my help in getting ready for bed this evening?" Not sexual.
Of course, "avec moi ce soir" is easy to translate since it means the same thing in English. Also note here is one of your gender differences: "Voulez-vour coucher avec moi celle journée?" or "Do you want to sleep with me today?" uses "celle" and not "ce" because "soir" is Masculine and "Journée" is feminine. Of course, there are a LOT of other examples of Masculine and Feminine forms, especially with "a", "the" and posessive", but also with adjectives and even some past participals when used in the adjectival form: "Il est arrivé; elle est arrivée" ("He has arrived; she has arrived" or literally "He is arrived; she is arrived").
Also, keep in mind that "Voudrez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir" means "Would you want [like] to sleep with me this evening?" which if I recall how how a merchant might address a client would be the more common turn of phrase of temptation.
And finally, if you are with your wife/husband, you are more likely to hear: "veux-tu coucher avec moi ce soir." or simply "veux-tu coucher" (non-reflexive) since your spouse would be informally addressed.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
This post presented entirely for the enjoyment of others -- and facts here-in mis-representing, mis-leading or even mis-spelling of words of any language is purely accidental and thus it should be taken with a grain of salt.
My point however is this is not JUST a property of UNIX. For one thing, your old friend Bill Gates has been using the same system for years and I'm sure you'll find a lot of other 'post-Unix' OSes using the same thing. Now I happen to know that MS is really mixed up because they use the ANSI time_t which you admit at least IS part of the standard, as well as the tm structure, also part of the standard, CTime and CTimeSpan, part of MFC and DATE / COleDateTime which actually measures DAYS, not seconds since the Epoch, in this case 31 December 1899 in a double-precision floating point value where the 'fraction' represents the fraction of the day in question (always positive, which makes negative numbers a real pain to parse). This is a much more elegant solution (for 'positive' dates) IMHO but believe me I still prefer using time_t, the numeric type often implemented as long ;) to anything MS specific, and more so because FP Arithmatic is always slower than integer in the practical sense. :)
:(
Now chill out and don't get so moody. I'm merely trying to point out that this turnover is even BIGGER than UNIX and really effects almost every computer in use today. So let's celebrate together and be happy! Party Time!!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
P.S. the last time the bits in little-endien read FEDCBA9876543210 on a Date object was 3.3e+300 years ago and I missed it, bugger!
ANSI C defined the epoch as 00:00:00 UTC 1 January 1970 C.E. and defines the set of functions in the time.h library as returning a structure -- among others -- as time_t, defined as a long, which is 32-bits, and is the number of seconds since the epoch. The problem is of course that a 32-bit number can only store so-many seconds, so that come Jan 2038, when just over 2 billion (2e+9) seconds have passed, we go into negative numbers, perhaps around 1902? :) Anyway, so all you are saying is if we do a "time(NULL)" the time_t, or long, returned when converted to decimal will be "987654321" and that we are rapidly approaching "1000000000" and expect "1234567890" sometime later this decade. Okay, I see. Now as for any other language which uses the same time structure, keep in mind that it was probably compiled, if not directly, than inderectly under C at some point (even if it is now 'self-compiling' as C is. So let's give credit where credit is due, people! Long live ANSI C!!!
Be Seeing You,
A C++ programmer, really!
You want death on an unimaginable scale, try the Big Finish Doctor Who Audio: 'Dalek Empire: The Apocalypse Element'. He who says Audio can't be spell-binding obviously hasn't heard this and how can a mere planet or species' extinction compare to the utter EX-TER-MIN-A-TION of an entire GALAXY!!! Few stories have described devistation on such a cosmic scale. Thus by your definition, this is by far one of the goriest works of fiction ever produced, and not ONE second of video was ever rendered. The power of Audio!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
And Voilà, a new statue for Easter Island.
:)
Well, technically that's part of Chili. Maybe it could fix Democracy in Fiji all in one blow by taking out that racist anti-Indian pseudo-nationalists with really his own interest at heart, George Speight, literally killing 2 birds with one stone!
>The TimeHorse has now been permanently banned from ever setting foot on Fiji<
ultimately travel from Tierra del Fuego to Johannesburg by train
To just build a train from Tierra del Fuego to McMurdo and from the pole head back from there? Now, how do we connect Australia and New Zealand... :)
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
They're no doubt hoping for this to increase a desired mass exodus of money from the West. Probably predict the cars to literally be filled with USD on the way back. :)
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Looks like a linguistic junta to me! :o
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
This is not original. We saw it on our NoVaDWVS list a few weeks ago and it was passed on by member Joanne's sister, I believe. Forgot where she got it from.
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
(NoVaDWVS = Northern Virginia Doctor Who Viewing Society, http://www.egroups.com/groups/novadwvs/)
Personally, I'd rather work in Milano than Italia.
:)
:) Anyway, back to Europe, the countries I recommend are Ireland -- they have a LOT of High-Tech jobs over there, England/Scottland/Whales, France, Italy, and Germany. You also might enjoy Finland as they are a very High-Tech nation but since they don't speak an Indo-European language (Urgo-Finnish actually) you may have a more difficult time mastering the language. 40% or so of the population is Sweedish so perhaps if you want to learn another Germanic language like English, Dutch, Northern and Southern Norwegian, Danish or of course Sweedish, then Scandinavia is for you (But don't confuse the Flemish with the Dutch, trust me! :) The Iberians have some very interesting jobs too, if you want to bone up on Spanish, which you can use on your return, or Portugues, for those spontaneous trips to Brazil. In fact, have you thought about looking in Argentina or Ecuador or Chile? Just because we live in the 'New World' doesn't mean the continent is all like the United States, and all of those countries have a relatively stable government and a pretty reasonable high-tech sector. Anyway, my best advice is go to Monster.com and post your Resume in French and Italian, mark that that's where you want to work, and if you can get through the recruiters enjoy your stay in Europe and bonne chance! :)
You probably need to be Milanese to get that. >sheepish grin<
Now, seriously, I've worked as a technical in Switzerland and to work there you literally 'have to know somebody' as I did, especially with that nasty ultra-nationalist they elected a few years ago. Schweitz pour i Rheto-romani!
But if you can re-write your Resumé in French and post it on Monster.com I Guarentee you you will be hearing from French recruiters within a week. In fact, most European countries will contact you if you check the box indicating willingness to relocate to their countries and my Finacée and I have been vascillating over whether we'll find a pair of high-tech jobs over there for a year or buy a house in the vastly over-priced Northern Virginia / Washington D.C. area. As for France, I strongly recommend learning the language pretty well first because they're pretty protective of it over there, and you might think about working in Québec, Canada en lieu of it because getting the Province and Government of Canada to approve you I've found rather easy in the past if you can just find a job. Montréal is doing better than it was 5 years ago when I was trying to extend my visa so I think your prospects may be good. What, you think it's too cold? Wimp!
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.
Is that they own the Cable Company rights around here and there is no DSL router within 18000 feet. Not only that, but we got a northern exposure. Can you say monopoly? Still, I suppose I should be happy I get ANY kind of broadband service out here in 'high-tech' Reston, Virginia! :S
Be Seeing You,
Jeffrey.