'Interest absolutely drops away when you get to the types of pricing that you might charge for a new physical disc. People's perceptions are that they're not prepared to pay as much for digital content -- they make the connection that it's not a physical disc and therefore it should be cheaper.'
Consumers are NOT STUPID. Maybe most people could not clearly explain why they feel downloads should be less expensive, but their perception that downloads are intrinsically less valuable than physical media is accurate and justified. Here are some of the reasons why:
1> You cannot sell, trade, or loan a digital download, therefore it intrinsically has less value than physical media.
2> You cannot trust that you'd be able to re-download something if your copy gets lost in a hardware failure. So owning it comes with more risk of loss, and that risk reduces its value.
3> Downloads cost less to distribute than physical media, and it is basically unfair for the publisher not to charge less for something that has less overhead. As human beings we understand trade and we understand greed. We are greedy ourselves, and we recognize greed in others. How can you expect consumers to take you seriously if you don't want to give them a fair shake?
According to the theory here if I modify Side A, Side B must also change right?
No. That's what the GP's post said multiple times.
Quantum entanglement's strangeness is all about how observations of entangled particles correlate in a way that defies explanation without resorting to time travel, faster-than-light exchange of information, reverse causality, or a deterministic universe.
First, we would have to be making continuous measurements of Side B and placing them into a buffer.
You cannot observe a quantum thing without changing it. This means all subsequent measurements are invalid. Example: you observe the polarization of a photon by passing it through a polarizer and seeing if it hits a detector on the other side. This happens 50% of the time. The process involves the destruction of the photon either way, because it's either absorbed by the polarizer, or by the detector. Boom, no more photon.
Now, interestingly enough, if you put a second polarizer between the first polarizer and the detector, and you orient the second polarizer at exactly the same angle as the first, ythe chances of each individual photon reaching the detector are still 50%. Why? Because after a photon makes it through the first polarizer, it will subsequently pass through any polarizer oriented the same way. The photon has been altered in such a way that it is now polarized to that exact angle. This effect is classic physics, observable to the naked eye with two pieces of polarized glass.
At the quantum level, the results are the same even if you suspend an individual atom and observe its spin with magnetic fields. The first time you detect the atom's spin, its spin becomes aligned with the angle you tested for, and subsequent measurements at that same angle will always give the same result. Your observation changed the object you measured.
It is not possible to observe the precise angle of a photon's polarization. You can only try to pass it through a polarizer and see if it passes through or not. It's the same for spins -- you can test for "up" or "down" along any axis you choose, but you cannot discover any particular axis along which the particle can be said to be spinning. This is the nature of quantum mechanics: it's the place where the math of the universe becomes integral; there are no real numbers there, only whole ones. The Planck length is 1 unit of distance that cannot be subdivided. Photon wavelengths are always in even multiples of the Planck length. Spin is either up or down. Polarization is either "yes" or "no" for any particular angle (or "clockwise" or "counter-clockwise" for circular polarization filters).
According to you, and many interpretations I have read on Slashdot
The problem is, science reporting tends to sensationalize (because dry science is boring to the layman) and journalists tend to misunderstand (because they're writers, not rocket scientists, god dammit Jim!). In the jargon of quantum mechanics, it is understood that to observe something is to change it, and that to determine something is to learn it (not to cause it). So, by simple misunderstanding of the language, it gets reported that by changing one particle (by observing it) you can change its entangled mate (by determining one of its properties by inference). That is quite the sensational misunderstanding! And the fallacy gets repeated until so many believe it that it becomes self-sustaining.
Because you cannot both entangle the two photons and store information in them at the same time. Entangled quantum particles are by definition in a "superposition of states", which basically means that their values are essentially random when observed.
Storing information in a quantum particle requires observing it, to wrangle it into a desired non-random state. Observation destroys entanglement, because an observed particle is no longer in a superposition of states. Entangling quantum particles requires re-superposing their states. Creation of entanglement destroys information.
So, a pair of these quantum memory cells can store only one of the three following:
1> The same information
2> Unrelated information
3> Entanglement (which is unknown randomness that is correlated between the two cells)
The "spooky-action-at-a-distance" thing is in how the observations of separated but entangled quantum systems correlate. It's weirder than it seems on the surface -- read up on what a Bell Inequality is. That's where the strangeness is; because separate observation of entangled pairs of particles correlates more than is possible by the rules of classical physics and the rules of math and logic.
Then the cops should record everything they do and keep the recordings for a few years, so they can show the whole truth, when these things happen. Plus, anyone should be able to obtain and keep a copy all footage of them that the cops take of them. On top of that, all surveillance cameras viewing public space should have publicly accessible live streaming feeds at all times.
When you steal from a company, you are depriving them from twice the value of the item that you stole (the lost sale to you, and the lost sale to someone else for that particular item).
That doesn't make any sense. The stolen physical property could not have been sold to both the thief and to someone else, so there's no logical basis to count its value twice. At best, you can break it down as the theft having directly deprived them of the wholesale value of the item they bought and paid for, and the profit they might have realized by selling the item at retail, assuming they didn't discount it, return it, take a hit on it as a loss leader, or just tossed it in the bin.
The difference between illegal software copying is that you're creating the copy of the thing being stolen, at your own expense, just denying the publisher and manufacturer and the retailer their profits from a sale they clearly weren't going to make anyway.
Plus their ad campaign is basically "Bing - when you want fewer results!"
Fewer results is a good thing if it has a better signal-to-noise ratio. Right now they both suck at it, but Google sucks at it slightly less. I understand people are getting better at poisoning the indexes, but the search engines are getting fuzzier too. For example, they all now seem to search using information from my prior searches, and to correct my "typos" and search for words that have similar letters to the actual terms I entered but which are in fact entirely different from what I am actually looking for.
The result is searching is becoming an increasingly frustrating experience, where the search engines in their eagerness to give me some results will give me loads of useless results instead of telling me the Interwebs just don't have exactly what I'm after.
8% of every wager? That sounds pretty extortionate. Consider that many games have a return rate in the high 90%s.
Agree. Also, what constitutes a "wager"?
For example, in casino craps, some of the wagers (like field bets, horn bets) are one throw. Some, like the hardway bets, are per-throw but a frequent outcome is a tie between the player and the hosue, so may not resolve for several throws. These you can place and pull back at will but technically it's a new wager for every throw of the dice. Only the pass line, behind-the-line and come bets are multi-roll wagers.
The pass line bet gives the house only a 1.4% edge, and even the worst of the Craps sucker bet still wouldn't leave the house room to profit if the state is skimming 8%.
A better approach would be to tax the casinos of 50% of their gross profit. If a brick-and-mortar casino can profit off Craps' thin edges then an electronic online Craps table could still mint cash off half that edge.
The problem is lawmakers will consider 8% to be a tiny vigorish compared to what they make off the state lotteries. In those, the state makes 50%, and on top of it they get a usury bonus for jackpots, because they either borrow the winnings over 20 years interest-free from the winner or they discount it for interest if the winner takes the payout up front. Rapacious bastards.
I have horrible vision requiring heavy thick corrective lenses, but I'm able to wear the circularly polarized glasses for 3D movies over my corrective glasses with no issues.
when two pieces of her composite metal foam are inserted "behind the bumper of a car traveling at 28 mph, the impact would feel the same to passengers as an impact traveling at only 5 mph."
Yeah, try that without a seatbelt or airbag then. You'd still be crushing your chest into your steering wheel at 28 MPH, unless this stuff also generates a star trek inertial dampening field.
If there are two 5-score posts and I think the second one is better and should therefore appear first,I will mod the top one as Overrated so it drops down. This doesn't mean I feel the one I modded down is in any way bad on its own, it's just not as good as the other, for whatever reason. But since I can't mod the better post up any more, my only choice is to mod down the one that I feel is, well, overrated.
LCD panels are linearly polarized. There are already some polarization-based 3D LCD displays on the market. Some of them use one panel, alternating the polarization of each row of pixels. Some of them use semireflective glass to combine images from two separate displays, so the image resolution isn't effectively cut in half.
The problem with linear polarization is you have to hold your head horizontal with the display. If you tilt your lenses so their polarization doesn't align with the display's, it doesn't work.
Theater projection systems use circularly polarized light. This allows you to tilt your head without messing up the effect.
I for one think shutter glasses suck. They require electronics and power, which makes them more expensive, where polarized glasses are cheap enough to be disposable. I personally am very sensitive to flicker. CRTs are hard for me to look at, but shutter glasses are worse because they black out the image for half of each frame. I also believe the industry is hyping shutter glasses because they'd be more profitable, not because they are a superior technology.
I absolutely will not consider a shutter glasses system for my home. Give me a DLP or LCD solution that uses circular polarization and glasses that cost $1 per pair and for the first time in my life I'll be an early adopter.
Are you seriously? I stopped reading at the beginning of book 10 when I nearly fell asleep reading the prologue. I flipped back a couple pages to resume at the last part I remembered, paused a moment to see how long the prologue actually was, and just flat dropped the book when I discovered it went on for another seventy pages.
The whole series of thousand-page tomes has just been hit or miss for me. I quite frankly have grown to loathe most of the characters, and since no plot line seems to ever get resolved I have no faith that the (eventual, theoretical) ending will actually bring any closure. Which, due to the very nature of the Wheel and the mantra about it that opens the first chapter of every book, seems like a very real and un-ironic possibility.
So should I just skip #10? Or just give up on the series completely?
I personally can't stand shutter glasses. My vision is very sensitive to flicker. It's not a matter of refresh rate but one of how much time is spent in blackness between frames; 3D necessitates a relatively long blanking of each eye.
Theater screens using circular polarization work extremely well. The glasses are super cheap and do not require electronics. Without needing to black out the image to each eye for half of each frame, my personal flicker issues are avoided. The circular polarization allows the viewer to tilt his head off horizontal and not mess up the 3D effect. It seems to me that circular polarization is a clear winner over shutter glasses. What is the potential of circularly polarized 3D LCD displays?
Also, what about DLP? I have great love for my DLP TV, and would be very much interested in a 3D DLP display. Does the screen screw up polarization there as well, and would one that could preserve the polarization suffer from the fragility you speak of?
The original BG was a corny pile of crap. I ate it up as a child, but even back then I realized that they filled every episode with some boilerplate "laser turret homing in on triad of cylon ships and finally blowing the middle one up"; even before I grew up and gained some sophistication I realized that the show was cheap. Now, as an adult, it's unwatchable!
The new BG started off strong, was a lot more sophisticated and believable and consistent, but it went downhill and the ending was not only horrific but also completely unbelievable.
I could use a little mind bleach. A re-re-imagining is ok by me.
And then there's the malpractice insurance. Part of the $6 for that aspirin was a lottery ticket, and if that one-in-millions number had come up and that aspirin caused harm, there'd have received a nice and disproportionately high cash settlement and a parade. A parade of happy lawyers.
In the nineties, living in a ghetto for the cheap rent while going to college in a medium-size city, my roommates and I used to toss our aluminum beer cans out the open window (the place was too cheap for screens or air conditioning). Those who couldn't even afford to pay $150/mo in rent would come by in the night with their stolen supermarket shopping carts and pick the cans up to sell for recycling. It was a win/win -- we got to be lazy and they got a little cash.
Ahh, those were the days. We spent more on beer and pot than we did on food or rent. Wouldn't care to go back, but I wouldn't erase the experience from my past either.
1. General Relativity shows us that if it were possible to travel or communicate faster than light, then it would be possible to communicate with the past.
2. If you can communicate with the past, then either causality does not apply or the universe has some way set up to deal with potential paradox. Lack of evidence to the contrary seems to indicate that causality holds and the universe can't allow paradox.
3. Alternatively, there are many worlds theories and other such stuff to allow for communication with an alternate universe's past, but I don't think there's strong evidence to support those kinds of theories.
4. If causality holds and temporal paradox is not possible, then the universe could still allow for communication with the past, but only in some way that could not allow for paradox to arise. Like, for instance, if the universe were completely deterministic.
So, in order for FTL to be a reality, the universe must be far weirder than we can imagine -- either effect can precede cause, or the entire structure of spacetime (to include the complete past and future the universe) is set in stone, or there are an infinite number of alternate universes.
So, that's just Relativity. Now, along comes quantum physics, which shows that there actually are measurable quantum effects that operate faster than light. This is the whole point of Bell's Theorem, which proves to us that either local realism doesn't hold, or the universe is deterministic, or there is a third option that our math and logic and philosophy just can't understand right now.
To the Democrats: when Obama wins this election, you're going to claim that you have a mandate from the people and as a result you're going to go hog wild and pass bill after bill under President Obama's rubber stamp. You feel like you've got a decade of repression to overcome. You also are blinded by your own hubris; you think that somehow humankind can overpower the universe itself and all that is needed is just willpower. But you're wrong, and you're stupid, and despite being on the short end of the stick for so long you just can't learn any humility. I hate you because you wear rose-tinted glasses. I hate you because you fight against the fundamental forces of the universe -- you think you can change human nature; you think you can turn basic economic principles on their ear and things will work better merely by the force of will; you think that all of humanity is somehow collectively more powerful than the very planet we live on and brighter than the sun we orbit. I hate you, you elitist snobs.
To the Republicans: thanks for turning your back on fiscal conservatism and mortgaging my child's future. Again. Also, while I think Jesus is great, but please keep your fucking religion out of government. It is not for you to judge me; most of you sensibly relegate that responsibility to God. Now you just need to tell your radical right-wing to shut the fuck up and "live and let live". Unfortunately, many of you allow your faith to blind you to reality. I hate you because you are hypocrites. I hate you because your being in power for so long has corrupted all of you, and you don't even realize it. You deserve to continue to lose power because you need to learn some lessons. But I know you won't, not really, and I hate you for that too. I hate you most of all because you have real contempt for the common man but you're too stupid to realize it; you don't even understand that you are condescending to an entire nation!
I hate both of you because you treat me like a ten-year-old; I hate how you try to pander to my base instincts and assume I have an IQ of 80. I hate both of you because none of you have any balls and won't allow yourselves to go off script; I hate both of you because you both require your politicians to toe the line. I hate both of you because you lie and you "spin". I hate both of you because of your implicit collusion to keep the status quo.
I lament the death of the U.S. I hate you, Republican and Democrat alike, for killing our great nation.
Are they seriously suggesting that something people saw for a few hours a week in black and white determined how they dream for the rest of their lives?
My mother, who is one of those 55+ talked about in the article, says she often dreams in monochrome. In conversations about it, black-and-white movies and television have come up as a possible cause.
I've never dreamed in black-and-white, but for a few nights during a time when I was playing Ultima Online way, way too much, I dreamed in that game's third person isometric viewpoint and art style.
I disagree with you. Either we are a nation of laws or we are NOT.
Yes, we are a nation of laws. The nice thing about that is that when something is not explicitly spelled out in the law, people have leeway to do as they see fit.
The law in this case is a contract between the state and political parties, stating that if the political parties jump through all the right hoops then the state is compelled to put the party's candidate on the ballot.
It doesn't say anything at all about what the state can or cannot do if a party fails to jump through a hoop. So that means it's up to the actual officials involved, all the way up to the Texas Secretary of State.
In this case, it means that the political parties involved have no legal recourse if their candidates' names do not appear on the ballot. They missed the deadline, so the state is not compelled to include their names on the ballot. But the state certainly is still allowed to put those names on the ballot, because the law does not forbit it.
Slashdot Mirror
Consumers are NOT STUPID. Maybe most people could not clearly explain why they feel downloads should be less expensive, but their perception that downloads are intrinsically less valuable than physical media is accurate and justified. Here are some of the reasons why:
1> You cannot sell, trade, or loan a digital download, therefore it intrinsically has less value than physical media.
2> You cannot trust that you'd be able to re-download something if your copy gets lost in a hardware failure. So owning it comes with more risk of loss, and that risk reduces its value.
3> Downloads cost less to distribute than physical media, and it is basically unfair for the publisher not to charge less for something that has less overhead. As human beings we understand trade and we understand greed. We are greedy ourselves, and we recognize greed in others. How can you expect consumers to take you seriously if you don't want to give them a fair shake?
No. That's what the GP's post said multiple times.
Quantum entanglement's strangeness is all about how observations of entangled particles correlate in a way that defies explanation without resorting to time travel, faster-than-light exchange of information, reverse causality, or a deterministic universe.
You cannot observe a quantum thing without changing it. This means all subsequent measurements are invalid. Example: you observe the polarization of a photon by passing it through a polarizer and seeing if it hits a detector on the other side. This happens 50% of the time. The process involves the destruction of the photon either way, because it's either absorbed by the polarizer, or by the detector. Boom, no more photon.
Now, interestingly enough, if you put a second polarizer between the first polarizer and the detector, and you orient the second polarizer at exactly the same angle as the first, ythe chances of each individual photon reaching the detector are still 50%. Why? Because after a photon makes it through the first polarizer, it will subsequently pass through any polarizer oriented the same way. The photon has been altered in such a way that it is now polarized to that exact angle. This effect is classic physics, observable to the naked eye with two pieces of polarized glass.
At the quantum level, the results are the same even if you suspend an individual atom and observe its spin with magnetic fields. The first time you detect the atom's spin, its spin becomes aligned with the angle you tested for, and subsequent measurements at that same angle will always give the same result. Your observation changed the object you measured.
It is not possible to observe the precise angle of a photon's polarization. You can only try to pass it through a polarizer and see if it passes through or not. It's the same for spins -- you can test for "up" or "down" along any axis you choose, but you cannot discover any particular axis along which the particle can be said to be spinning. This is the nature of quantum mechanics: it's the place where the math of the universe becomes integral; there are no real numbers there, only whole ones. The Planck length is 1 unit of distance that cannot be subdivided. Photon wavelengths are always in even multiples of the Planck length. Spin is either up or down. Polarization is either "yes" or "no" for any particular angle (or "clockwise" or "counter-clockwise" for circular polarization filters).
The problem is, science reporting tends to sensationalize (because dry science is boring to the layman) and journalists tend to misunderstand (because they're writers, not rocket scientists, god dammit Jim!). In the jargon of quantum mechanics, it is understood that to observe something is to change it, and that to determine something is to learn it (not to cause it). So, by simple misunderstanding of the language, it gets reported that by changing one particle (by observing it) you can change its entangled mate (by determining one of its properties by inference). That is quite the sensational misunderstanding! And the fallacy gets repeated until so many believe it that it becomes self-sustaining.
Because you cannot both entangle the two photons and store information in them at the same time. Entangled quantum particles are by definition in a "superposition of states", which basically means that their values are essentially random when observed.
Storing information in a quantum particle requires observing it, to wrangle it into a desired non-random state. Observation destroys entanglement, because an observed particle is no longer in a superposition of states. Entangling quantum particles requires re-superposing their states. Creation of entanglement destroys information.
So, a pair of these quantum memory cells can store only one of the three following:
1> The same information
2> Unrelated information
3> Entanglement (which is unknown randomness that is correlated between the two cells)
The "spooky-action-at-a-distance" thing is in how the observations of separated but entangled quantum systems correlate. It's weirder than it seems on the surface -- read up on what a Bell Inequality is. That's where the strangeness is; because separate observation of entangled pairs of particles correlates more than is possible by the rules of classical physics and the rules of math and logic.
Then the cops should record everything they do and keep the recordings for a few years, so they can show the whole truth, when these things happen. Plus, anyone should be able to obtain and keep a copy all footage of them that the cops take of them. On top of that, all surveillance cameras viewing public space should have publicly accessible live streaming feeds at all times.
That doesn't make any sense. The stolen physical property could not have been sold to both the thief and to someone else, so there's no logical basis to count its value twice. At best, you can break it down as the theft having directly deprived them of the wholesale value of the item they bought and paid for, and the profit they might have realized by selling the item at retail, assuming they didn't discount it, return it, take a hit on it as a loss leader, or just tossed it in the bin.
The difference between illegal software copying is that you're creating the copy of the thing being stolen, at your own expense, just denying the publisher and manufacturer and the retailer their profits from a sale they clearly weren't going to make anyway.
Fewer results is a good thing if it has a better signal-to-noise ratio. Right now they both suck at it, but Google sucks at it slightly less. I understand people are getting better at poisoning the indexes, but the search engines are getting fuzzier too. For example, they all now seem to search using information from my prior searches, and to correct my "typos" and search for words that have similar letters to the actual terms I entered but which are in fact entirely different from what I am actually looking for.
The result is searching is becoming an increasingly frustrating experience, where the search engines in their eagerness to give me some results will give me loads of useless results instead of telling me the Interwebs just don't have exactly what I'm after.
Agree. Also, what constitutes a "wager"?
For example, in casino craps, some of the wagers (like field bets, horn bets) are one throw. Some, like the hardway bets, are per-throw but a frequent outcome is a tie between the player and the hosue, so may not resolve for several throws. These you can place and pull back at will but technically it's a new wager for every throw of the dice. Only the pass line, behind-the-line and come bets are multi-roll wagers.
The pass line bet gives the house only a 1.4% edge, and even the worst of the Craps sucker bet still wouldn't leave the house room to profit if the state is skimming 8%.
A better approach would be to tax the casinos of 50% of their gross profit. If a brick-and-mortar casino can profit off Craps' thin edges then an electronic online Craps table could still mint cash off half that edge.
The problem is lawmakers will consider 8% to be a tiny vigorish compared to what they make off the state lotteries. In those, the state makes 50%, and on top of it they get a usury bonus for jackpots, because they either borrow the winnings over 20 years interest-free from the winner or they discount it for interest if the winner takes the payout up front. Rapacious bastards.
Bell inequalities don't melt a brain that believes the universe is completely deterministic.
I have horrible vision requiring heavy thick corrective lenses, but I'm able to wear the circularly polarized glasses for 3D movies over my corrective glasses with no issues.
Yeah, try that without a seatbelt or airbag then. You'd still be crushing your chest into your steering wheel at 28 MPH, unless this stuff also generates a star trek inertial dampening field.
If there are two 5-score posts and I think the second one is better and should therefore appear first,I will mod the top one as Overrated so it drops down. This doesn't mean I feel the one I modded down is in any way bad on its own, it's just not as good as the other, for whatever reason. But since I can't mod the better post up any more, my only choice is to mod down the one that I feel is, well, overrated.
LCD panels are linearly polarized. There are already some polarization-based 3D LCD displays on the market. Some of them use one panel, alternating the polarization of each row of pixels. Some of them use semireflective glass to combine images from two separate displays, so the image resolution isn't effectively cut in half.
The problem with linear polarization is you have to hold your head horizontal with the display. If you tilt your lenses so their polarization doesn't align with the display's, it doesn't work.
Theater projection systems use circularly polarized light. This allows you to tilt your head without messing up the effect.
I for one think shutter glasses suck. They require electronics and power, which makes them more expensive, where polarized glasses are cheap enough to be disposable. I personally am very sensitive to flicker. CRTs are hard for me to look at, but shutter glasses are worse because they black out the image for half of each frame. I also believe the industry is hyping shutter glasses because they'd be more profitable, not because they are a superior technology.
I absolutely will not consider a shutter glasses system for my home. Give me a DLP or LCD solution that uses circular polarization and glasses that cost $1 per pair and for the first time in my life I'll be an early adopter.
Are you seriously? I stopped reading at the beginning of book 10 when I nearly fell asleep reading the prologue. I flipped back a couple pages to resume at the last part I remembered, paused a moment to see how long the prologue actually was, and just flat dropped the book when I discovered it went on for another seventy pages.
The whole series of thousand-page tomes has just been hit or miss for me. I quite frankly have grown to loathe most of the characters, and since no plot line seems to ever get resolved I have no faith that the (eventual, theoretical) ending will actually bring any closure. Which, due to the very nature of the Wheel and the mantra about it that opens the first chapter of every book, seems like a very real and un-ironic possibility.
So should I just skip #10? Or just give up on the series completely?
I personally can't stand shutter glasses. My vision is very sensitive to flicker. It's not a matter of refresh rate but one of how much time is spent in blackness between frames; 3D necessitates a relatively long blanking of each eye.
Theater screens using circular polarization work extremely well. The glasses are super cheap and do not require electronics. Without needing to black out the image to each eye for half of each frame, my personal flicker issues are avoided. The circular polarization allows the viewer to tilt his head off horizontal and not mess up the 3D effect. It seems to me that circular polarization is a clear winner over shutter glasses. What is the potential of circularly polarized 3D LCD displays?
Also, what about DLP? I have great love for my DLP TV, and would be very much interested in a 3D DLP display. Does the screen screw up polarization there as well, and would one that could preserve the polarization suffer from the fragility you speak of?
The original BG was a corny pile of crap. I ate it up as a child, but even back then I realized that they filled every episode with some boilerplate "laser turret homing in on triad of cylon ships and finally blowing the middle one up"; even before I grew up and gained some sophistication I realized that the show was cheap. Now, as an adult, it's unwatchable!
The new BG started off strong, was a lot more sophisticated and believable and consistent, but it went downhill and the ending was not only horrific but also completely unbelievable.
I could use a little mind bleach. A re-re-imagining is ok by me.
And then there's the malpractice insurance. Part of the $6 for that aspirin was a lottery ticket, and if that one-in-millions number had come up and that aspirin caused harm, there'd have received a nice and disproportionately high cash settlement and a parade. A parade of happy lawyers.
In the nineties, living in a ghetto for the cheap rent while going to college in a medium-size city, my roommates and I used to toss our aluminum beer cans out the open window (the place was too cheap for screens or air conditioning). Those who couldn't even afford to pay $150/mo in rent would come by in the night with their stolen supermarket shopping carts and pick the cans up to sell for recycling. It was a win/win -- we got to be lazy and they got a little cash.
Ahh, those were the days. We spent more on beer and pot than we did on food or rent. Wouldn't care to go back, but I wouldn't erase the experience from my past either.
If the Earth suddenly became a black hole, its mass wouldn't change. It would just occupy a lot less space all of a sudden.
If this thing is a malicious software delivery system, wouldn't it be possible to hijack it and have it download something that removes it?
1. General Relativity shows us that if it were possible to travel or communicate faster than light, then it would be possible to communicate with the past.
2. If you can communicate with the past, then either causality does not apply or the universe has some way set up to deal with potential paradox. Lack of evidence to the contrary seems to indicate that causality holds and the universe can't allow paradox.
3. Alternatively, there are many worlds theories and other such stuff to allow for communication with an alternate universe's past, but I don't think there's strong evidence to support those kinds of theories.
4. If causality holds and temporal paradox is not possible, then the universe could still allow for communication with the past, but only in some way that could not allow for paradox to arise. Like, for instance, if the universe were completely deterministic.
So, in order for FTL to be a reality, the universe must be far weirder than we can imagine -- either effect can precede cause, or the entire structure of spacetime (to include the complete past and future the universe) is set in stone, or there are an infinite number of alternate universes.
So, that's just Relativity. Now, along comes quantum physics, which shows that there actually are measurable quantum effects that operate faster than light. This is the whole point of Bell's Theorem, which proves to us that either local realism doesn't hold, or the universe is deterministic, or there is a third option that our math and logic and philosophy just can't understand right now.
I watched a bit of BBC's coverage last night and it was just as slanted as everything else.
To the Democrats: when Obama wins this election, you're going to claim that you have a mandate from the people and as a result you're going to go hog wild and pass bill after bill under President Obama's rubber stamp. You feel like you've got a decade of repression to overcome. You also are blinded by your own hubris; you think that somehow humankind can overpower the universe itself and all that is needed is just willpower. But you're wrong, and you're stupid, and despite being on the short end of the stick for so long you just can't learn any humility. I hate you because you wear rose-tinted glasses. I hate you because you fight against the fundamental forces of the universe -- you think you can change human nature; you think you can turn basic economic principles on their ear and things will work better merely by the force of will; you think that all of humanity is somehow collectively more powerful than the very planet we live on and brighter than the sun we orbit. I hate you, you elitist snobs.
To the Republicans: thanks for turning your back on fiscal conservatism and mortgaging my child's future. Again. Also, while I think Jesus is great, but please keep your fucking religion out of government. It is not for you to judge me; most of you sensibly relegate that responsibility to God. Now you just need to tell your radical right-wing to shut the fuck up and "live and let live". Unfortunately, many of you allow your faith to blind you to reality. I hate you because you are hypocrites. I hate you because your being in power for so long has corrupted all of you, and you don't even realize it. You deserve to continue to lose power because you need to learn some lessons. But I know you won't, not really, and I hate you for that too. I hate you most of all because you have real contempt for the common man but you're too stupid to realize it; you don't even understand that you are condescending to an entire nation!
I hate both of you because you treat me like a ten-year-old; I hate how you try to pander to my base instincts and assume I have an IQ of 80. I hate both of you because none of you have any balls and won't allow yourselves to go off script; I hate both of you because you both require your politicians to toe the line. I hate both of you because you lie and you "spin". I hate both of you because of your implicit collusion to keep the status quo.
I lament the death of the U.S. I hate you, Republican and Democrat alike, for killing our great nation.
My mother, who is one of those 55+ talked about in the article, says she often dreams in monochrome. In conversations about it, black-and-white movies and television have come up as a possible cause.
I've never dreamed in black-and-white, but for a few nights during a time when I was playing Ultima Online way, way too much, I dreamed in that game's third person isometric viewpoint and art style.
Yes, we are a nation of laws. The nice thing about that is that when something is not explicitly spelled out in the law, people have leeway to do as they see fit.
The law in this case is a contract between the state and political parties, stating that if the political parties jump through all the right hoops then the state is compelled to put the party's candidate on the ballot.
It doesn't say anything at all about what the state can or cannot do if a party fails to jump through a hoop. So that means it's up to the actual officials involved, all the way up to the Texas Secretary of State.
In this case, it means that the political parties involved have no legal recourse if their candidates' names do not appear on the ballot. They missed the deadline, so the state is not compelled to include their names on the ballot. But the state certainly is still allowed to put those names on the ballot, because the law does not forbit it.
He's picking apart a piece of administrative trivia just to make a stink.
I also think that getting the courts involved in this is the opposite of the Libertarian ideal.
He's also using spurious logic and/or misinterpreting the letter of the law.
So I stand by what I wrote. This is a jackass move by Barr and it just shows that he's no better than McLiberal or O'Commie.