SCO's infamous initiative is "to create new and innovative licensing programs" for their "UNIX(R) System intellectual property". They've decided to become a litigation company and have found it to be a very unpopular thing to sue every human possible for the benefit of themselves and their shareholders.
What if SCO concentrated on suing on behalf of others instead of for themselves? They have the will and the means to sue just about anybody, and they think they own Linux somehow. What if they only went after those that were violating the GPL? They could be heros. They could do the dirty work that most open-source developers don't want to have to stoop to, and they could keep actual non-imaginary IP violations in check.
Maybe someone else already does legal stuff for linux. I never bother to RTFA.
I don't think the loop will be finished after 1 second. An infinite loop is "One that never terminates". There can be no satisfiable loop exit condition in a finite amount of time (interpretting "never" to mean "not at any time; not while forever is still happening").
Your machine would require being able to do an infinite number of loops in an infinitely small time. You could also do it if you had a machine that could do an infinite number of iterations simultaneously in finite time, which I personally think would be easier to build. After 1 second, an infinite number of iterations will have taken place, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's "finished". You can complete an infinite number of iterations and still have an infinite (or infinity times a billion!) more to go.
What blows my mind is... what happens to your machine at 1 second? It's doing an infinite number of iterations in an infinitely small time. Does it go on like this? Does it keep going faster? Does it destroy the universe?
If you interpret "never" as "not after any finite number of iterations", then maybe you can get it to finish, depending on the loop condition.
While the anti-piracy commercials they now play in theaters always bring a tear to my eye for the poor movie makers, I think the RIAA's and MPAA's actions just make it easier for people to feel good about sharing movies and music. I no longer feel like I shouldn't share music because it's hurting artists, I feel like it's nothing compared to what the RIAA is doing.
To really be able to sleep at night, I'd like to bribe congressmen to make everything I want to do legal. That way I could always stay on the side of moral and legal right!
> that human hands are still sooooo much more complex and beautiful that the same sounds can be produced by human hands without a godawful collection of pumps and levers hovering tenuously over the strings.
Human hands could be said to be connected to a collection of pumps and levers (and tubing and actuators and wiring and such) that is godawful as well, at least in that it makes most people want to vomit if seen without its cover.
My stupid opinion
on
Back To SCO
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
In SCO's letter they make it sound like it's an "Open Source Community" thing to use copyrighted code. If someone at SGI did this, why does SCO think that they wouldn't put copyright-protected code into closed, proprietary code? What makes them think that other closed-source corporations don't do this? (I suppose to answer my own question, those corporations would be more directly liable for such copyright violations, so they care more about preventing it, obfuscating it, or hiding it).
Open-source development cares a lot about copyright stuff. The GNU license list notes which licenses are compatible with the GPL. It's not like they think that any code can be and becomes GPL licensed, regardless of where it came from, regardless of what previous licenses may have applied.
So, copyright violation occurs in other software development models. What's weird is that SCO is going after individual users. When someone sues MS over something stolen, they sue the company, they don't tell users of MS products that they have to pay additional licensing fees.
>> If BeOS were easily dual-booted, more people would consider BeOS applications (the "OS barrier" would erode), and eventually more would be written (the "applications barrier" would erode).
>
> I assume you haven't tried BeOS as it was highly dual-bootable with a very good graphical boot manager, and easily configured. BeOS could even live within a file inside the fat32/ntfs filesystems. The ability to dual boot is a non-issue for BeOS systems as this was one of the primary design goals, to co-exist with other Operating Systems in world dominated by one OS.
Oops, I said that wrong. I didn't mean that BeOS isn't easily dual-booted because it doesn't work so well or is hard to do, I mean that it isn't easily dual-booted because MS threw around monopolistic power to prevent it. I should have said, "If average people had a simple option of dual-booting into BeOS..." I think Hitachi was working on making that possible, and MS came in and crushed it.
I never tried BeOS, because the perceived effort required to get it up and running was greater for me, than the perceived benefit. In that, I think I'm fairly average as far as users go. I didn't know much about BeOS. I'd have to be shown how useful and easy it is, to be interested. Most of us use computers for what we already know they do, or what fun things we're shown (which is why companies can sell computers by advertising how fun e-mail is or that your grandchildren can send you pictures). If I had to work with digital media, I'd probably have researched BeOS. If it was pre-installed I would have played around with it.
>Have you considered that Linus is the single point of control for the Linux kernel?
Well... it does bother me that Linux is a registered trademark in his name, however he hasn't done anything "evil" that I've heard about. But I suppose we'll soon see what happens when one group (eg. SCO) tries to control or limit Linux for personal gain to the detriment of others. I think people would turn their backs on Linus if he ever became like Bill Gates, and I think the GPL would let people continue development under a different name?
> Why would anybody take the effort to replace something that currently works?
Not many would (I'm lazy myself, plus most games are for Windows). But if something's already there, and is useful and easy to get into, then people will use it and it becomes easier to invest time in it and use it for more things. That's why pre-installation and dual-boot would be so good. But MS doesn't even let others stand on the same ground as them, and compete fairly.
I agree. But Microsoft's concern with cash isn't like normal people's concern with cash, that if we use it unwisely or extravagantly, we'll run out. For MS, it's not always a matter of getting as much money for themselves as it is a matter of keeping it away from others, especially serious competitors (ie. those they want to "extinguish"). It's probably ok to hand over cash only after the extinguishing is done.
To maintain its monopoly, MS really must extinguish its competitors. If BeOS were easily dual-booted, more people would consider BeOS applications (the "OS barrier" would erode), and eventually more would be written (the "applications barrier" would erode). MS currently maintains both barriers, but if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to maintain the monopoly against all the competing and/or superior products out there. If MS doesn't completely destroy even small competitors, there will always be a foot in the door leading to further threats of competition.
What we really need is a competing OS that has a full suite of applications, both of which are freely developed by anyone who wishes to, rather than being controlled by a single corporation, and it will probably need to be possible to buy a computer with these pre-installed, for it to truly break both of the barriers mentioned above. Then, the only barrier will be in the mind -- the fact that people don't yet know about the potential of the OS and its applications, or that they're not yet ready to accept it over what it replaces. When that happens (it seems to be beginning), there will begin to be true competition for MS.
Now... MS products aren't all completely crap. But they must be seriously scared of anyone who can get their foot in the door, because a lot of their dominant products are dominant only because of monopoly. They're like someone viciously squashing mosquitos because they're terrified of West Nile virus.
> One could argue that it is not really yellow, since outside of our atmospheric filter it is actually white.
So the "atmospheric filter" makes white light shining through it yellow? When you have a predominantly translucent material, it's "color" is usually the color of light that shines through it. A yellow filter looks yellow.
So the sky could be called yellow, because it's a yellow filter, but then it's not absorbing other wavelengths like normal filters do. Or it could be called blue because it looks blue, but is the scattering of blue wavelengths the same as reflection?
Materials can have different colors, they can simultaneously reflect light, filter it, refract it, and maybe some other stuff too why not... So I'd say either this discussion is way over my head, or the sky has multiple color properties.
There is a lot of "that license allowed it to be legally copied" stuff going on here. What happens to licensed code that gets combined with code that will be released with a different license? Do various sections have various license agreements applied? Or does the new license apply (implying that the licensed code was licensed to allow the merged code to be licensed differently)? Does anyone involved with modifying open-source code have to be aware of all applicable licenses, and make sure none of the agreements interfere? And if there is an interference, who is liable?
Apparently, SCO is arguing that the one who modifies the code is liable (IBM), but so is everyone else.
These questions worry me, and a case like this could really determine a lot of important things regarding what can and can't be done with copied code. Some devastating roadblocks to source sharing could be created.
It seems that the legally safe way to manage code is to keep everything secret, and keep others' secret code that you've stolen extra secret, and have a quick and quiet court case when they find out. Most big software companies have evolved this way due to copyright laws, and I think copyright laws have evolved to keep such companies' interests in mind. The whole open-source methodology is being challenged in this case, and there are a lot of details it's going up against. I think.
Yikes, it makes me wonder what "carefully crafted marketing image" they were going for with Gigli. I knew it was bad without having to see it, and without having anyone tell me so. The commercials for it are nothing more than sequences of mediocre content-free scenes that show the major players. I can't remember if they alluded to a story or not. Usually in movie commercials they show some scenes that are at least interesting.
As far as I can tell, the "carefully crafted market image" was "See how charming Ben Affleck and J-Lo are, in these example scenes which clearly show them speaking miscellaneous words! You can see many more such scenes in the full movie!"
I wouldn't blame Gigli on texting. If they wanted to lure audiences into the theaters, they shouldn't have shown Affleck in the commercials.
Don't be retarded. Bill would pick up a single dollar if he happened to find it on the ground. If he didn't, someone else might get it.
MS isn't the victim of anything in this case. They made a ton of cash on other peoples' work, why stand up for them when they have to give some of it away?
With less resistance you could spin the wheel (at whatever speed you want, for whatever duration you want), and then brake the wheel with your finger. I think it would be pretty useful once you got used to it?
I haven't read everything but I can identify with the person who said "...I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
Either I can't grasp what Lynds is talking about, or I've already come across too many ideas I don't accept, and it's impossible to continue and try to understand concepts that use those ideas as a base.
What bothers me about this is that he is inventing interesting ideas that solve various time paradoxes, when the paradoxes can already be solved with understanding instead of invention. Whether or not his ideas are true doesn't matter -- It's like trying to explain the Achilles and the tortoise paradox using General Relativity: It's not needed and it only detracts from an understanding of the paradox.
As for whether or not his ideas have merit, they will need to be shown to explain more than a paradox that is already explained with classical physics.
As for Lynds' theories... Suppose an object is travelling a distance 1m from position 0 to 1 in some time interval. There is no time t for which the object is at position 0.5. However there must be an interval t0-t1 where the object is clearly behind 0.5 and some time t2-t3 where the object is past 0.5. For any such intervals, t2 > t1 according to Lynds. This seems to imply that there is some time interval during which the object is superpositioned behind and in front of 0.5m. I tried to derive a contradiction but couldn't. His theories might help marry macroscopic and quantum uh, stuff...
Recently I got stuck on the Achilles paradox and thought it through instead of researching it. So, here I'll post what I came up with, and hope that someone reads it and finds something new in it. I am not a mathematician, and the stuff below could use some serious cleaning up and development.
-----------
The paradox goes something like this:
A tortoise and a hare are racing. The tortoise is ahead but the hare is running twice as fast and is catching up.
Hypotheses: H1: The hare will take some time t to cover the distance between itself and the tortoise, but during that time the tortoise will have moved. H2: By induction on H1, the hare will never catch up to the tortoise.
This is a paradox because we know that the hare will catch up. So, clearly there must be something wrong with either our observations (H1) or the conclusion (H2).
The simple solution to this paradox is that H2 requires us to redefine the meaning of "time", and we unwittingly ambiguously refer to both this redefined time, and to "our" normal perception of time, and thus H2 is an incorrect conclusion. The not-so-simple solution, if you allow for such a redefinition of time, is that the hare does indeed never catch up to the tortoise.
This is all a matter of perspective though. Let us call the perspective described in the hypotheses as the "observer's" perspective, and the real-world view where the hare does catch up to the tortoise we will call "our" perspective.
If this doesn't make satisfactory sense, I hope to explain it away until it is as simple enough to understand as the "infinite sum of halves" trick, which is simply that the sum of 1/2^n for all n in { 1, 2, 3... } adds up to only 1. The basic idea here is that you can add an infinite number of positive numbers and the result can be a finite number.
This trick is the key to figuring out the paradox, but it is also what makes it so complex.
Anyway, back to the paradox. H2 states that the hare will "never" catch up. By our understanding of "never" and the passing of time, this means that there is no instant in time T for which the hare has caught up. We can choose any time (eg. one year from now) and the hare will not have caught up. In other words, the sum of all times t from H1 is unbounded. But it should be intuitively clear from the sum of halves trick that this is wrong.
During time interval t(i) the hare moves a distan
On the 27th there will be a new moon, which will make Mars even better to watch.
The "(next to the moon)" looks like it was added as a correction, but it's more misleading than true. Mars will be the brightest object in the night sky that night.
I agree. I think one of the problems is that special effects are based on existing special effects rather than on anything resembling reality. The next big movie's effects look just like the last big movie's effects, only bigger and badder. There is little diversity. A lot of effects get faker and turn into more refined versions of the same thing we've seen before, but no matter how good the CG gets, it never looks real.
I remember seeing really old Russian sci fi special effects, with rockets in space emitting cool blue exhaust flames. It still looks amazing, because it's subtle and different. Modern Hollywood does not seem to like difference, subtlety, or reality in its effects.
One example of all of this is that anything involving fire (eg. a missile launch, an explosion, a house on fire) now makes a "Schwepp!" sound. I've never heard this sound occur in reality, and I'd never heard it in sci fi before coming across it with the end boss in Doom II. But now because the last rocket effect used that sound, the next rocket effect must, only they'll make it even bigger and stupider and maybe add some more glitz.
Re:How they manage it still has them puzzled...
on
Camouflage in Motion
·
· Score: 1
I think this theory is on the right track! Sure it wouldn't be enough to JUST keep the prey at the same position, but I would guess that anyone who thinks "It must be a lot more complex than that!" is heading down the wrong path. Insects are pretty simple, and simple can be very effective.
So let's keep things simple. First assume that the prey is simple enough that its eyes don't move relative to its head/body.
In order to stay in the same spot in the prey's retina, the dragonfly must maintain a position that doesn't move relative to the prey's position and orientation, as if hovering at the end of an imaginary stick protruding from the prey. As the prey moves and turns, so does the imaginary stick. In other words, the dragonfly must move to keep the orientation and distance of its prey relative to itself fairly constant.
This simplifies things a bit because the dragonfly doesn't have to "think" about whether the prey is moving or not. Just think about the end of that stick.
If we assume the dragonfly doesn't have the ability to deal with analysing the orientation of complex 3d shapes, we could conjecture that it might detect changes in rotation as "optical flow" similar to the way motion is detected. It might maintain orientation by moving to avoid changes in the image of its prey. It might simply react to changes it sees. Analysing orientation is difficult, but detecting changes in orientation is easier.
So the dragonfly might do just what Yarn proposed. It might keep the prey in the same position in its retina, but also keep the prey in the same orientation. The easiest way to be able to detect change in the prey is to hover very still relative to it, not changing its own orientation which would let the prey move in its retina. The dragonfly might not be able to see the prey so well, but that's what it wants. Maybe it's dealing with what's not moving, ignoring the moving background behind it. As soon as it "sees" movement it can react.
Anyway this is just an idea. I'm fairly certain that whatever turns out to be happening is about as simple as that, with anything that seems to require brainpower turning out to be an interesting trick.
I wonder though if maybe we've all seen this type of behavior but never really looked close enough to notice? The next time I see any bugs hovering in one spot I'm going to stick my hand out and twist it around like a sock puppet to see what happens.
Re:Can anyone say cloaking devices ?
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 1
There is still conservation of energy when something adds energy to something else. Energy of light in + energy of shockwave = energy of light out + energy lost.
I hope that when they say this technique is efficient, they mean that there is the potential for a very small overall energy loss, rather than say just a small loss due to light absorption. Ideas for more efficient lightbulbs won't go too far if you have to keep shooting bullets at them.
Re:Can anyone say cloaking devices ?
on
Mastering Light
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
I'm no physicist but I doubt that the light energy in is the same as the light energy out (I'd be more inclined to think that the number of photons remains the same). I think that the shock wave applying the Doppler effect is probably changing the energy? So, you may be able to build death rays out of ordinary "harmless" light, but you'd have to apply a lot of energy to the shockwave.
The way I understand this system, it would be like tossing a pingpong ball into a match with a couple of mad pingpong players. The paddles, moving back and forth as a well-timed shockwave would, add energy to the ball and it is shot out of the system with higher energy than it was tossed in.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm gonna say "SCO" but this isn't a joke post.
SCO's infamous initiative is "to create new and innovative licensing programs" for their "UNIX(R) System intellectual property". They've decided to become a litigation company and have found it to be a very unpopular thing to sue every human possible for the benefit of themselves and their shareholders.
What if SCO concentrated on suing on behalf of others instead of for themselves? They have the will and the means to sue just about anybody, and they think they own Linux somehow. What if they only went after those that were violating the GPL? They could be heros. They could do the dirty work that most open-source developers don't want to have to stoop to, and they could keep actual non-imaginary IP violations in check.
Maybe someone else already does legal stuff for linux. I never bother to RTFA.
Urghhh... infinity paradox!
I don't think the loop will be finished after 1 second. An infinite loop is "One that never terminates". There can be no satisfiable loop exit condition in a finite amount of time (interpretting "never" to mean "not at any time; not while forever is still happening").
Your machine would require being able to do an infinite number of loops in an infinitely small time. You could also do it if you had a machine that could do an infinite number of iterations simultaneously in finite time, which I personally think would be easier to build. After 1 second, an infinite number of iterations will have taken place, but that doesn't necessarily mean that it's "finished". You can complete an infinite number of iterations and still have an infinite (or infinity times a billion!) more to go.
What blows my mind is... what happens to your machine at 1 second? It's doing an infinite number of iterations in an infinitely small time. Does it go on like this? Does it keep going faster? Does it destroy the universe?
If you interpret "never" as "not after any finite number of iterations", then maybe you can get it to finish, depending on the loop condition.
While the anti-piracy commercials they now play in theaters always bring a tear to my eye for the poor movie makers, I think the RIAA's and MPAA's actions just make it easier for people to feel good about sharing movies and music. I no longer feel like I shouldn't share music because it's hurting artists, I feel like it's nothing compared to what the RIAA is doing.
To really be able to sleep at night, I'd like to bribe congressmen to make everything I want to do legal. That way I could always stay on the side of moral and legal right!
Human hands could be said to be connected to a collection of pumps and levers (and tubing and actuators and wiring and such) that is godawful as well, at least in that it makes most people want to vomit if seen without its cover.
In SCO's letter they make it sound like it's an "Open Source Community" thing to use copyrighted code. If someone at SGI did this, why does SCO think that they wouldn't put copyright-protected code into closed, proprietary code? What makes them think that other closed-source corporations don't do this? (I suppose to answer my own question, those corporations would be more directly liable for such copyright violations, so they care more about preventing it, obfuscating it, or hiding it).
Open-source development cares a lot about copyright stuff. The GNU license list notes which licenses are compatible with the GPL. It's not like they think that any code can be and becomes GPL licensed, regardless of where it came from, regardless of what previous licenses may have applied.
So, copyright violation occurs in other software development models. What's weird is that SCO is going after individual users. When someone sues MS over something stolen, they sue the company, they don't tell users of MS products that they have to pay additional licensing fees.
>> If BeOS were easily dual-booted, more people would consider BeOS applications (the "OS barrier" would erode), and eventually more would be written (the "applications barrier" would erode).
>
> I assume you haven't tried BeOS as it was highly dual-bootable with a very good graphical boot manager, and easily configured. BeOS could even live within a file inside the fat32/ntfs filesystems. The ability to dual boot is a non-issue for BeOS systems as this was one of the primary design goals, to co-exist with other Operating Systems in world dominated by one OS.
Oops, I said that wrong. I didn't mean that BeOS isn't easily dual-booted because it doesn't work so well or is hard to do, I mean that it isn't easily dual-booted because MS threw around monopolistic power to prevent it. I should have said, "If average people had a simple option of dual-booting into BeOS..." I think Hitachi was working on making that possible, and MS came in and crushed it.
I never tried BeOS, because the perceived effort required to get it up and running was greater for me, than the perceived benefit. In that, I think I'm fairly average as far as users go. I didn't know much about BeOS. I'd have to be shown how useful and easy it is, to be interested. Most of us use computers for what we already know they do, or what fun things we're shown (which is why companies can sell computers by advertising how fun e-mail is or that your grandchildren can send you pictures). If I had to work with digital media, I'd probably have researched BeOS. If it was pre-installed I would have played around with it.
>Have you considered that Linus is the single point of control for the Linux kernel?
Well... it does bother me that Linux is a registered trademark in his name, however he hasn't done anything "evil" that I've heard about. But I suppose we'll soon see what happens when one group (eg. SCO) tries to control or limit Linux for personal gain to the detriment of others. I think people would turn their backs on Linus if he ever became like Bill Gates, and I think the GPL would let people continue development under a different name?
> Why would anybody take the effort to replace something that currently works?
Not many would (I'm lazy myself, plus most games are for Windows). But if something's already there, and is useful and easy to get into, then people will use it and it becomes easier to invest time in it and use it for more things. That's why pre-installation and dual-boot would be so good. But MS doesn't even let others stand on the same ground as them, and compete fairly.
I agree. But Microsoft's concern with cash isn't like normal people's concern with cash, that if we use it unwisely or extravagantly, we'll run out. For MS, it's not always a matter of getting as much money for themselves as it is a matter of keeping it away from others, especially serious competitors (ie. those they want to "extinguish"). It's probably ok to hand over cash only after the extinguishing is done.
To maintain its monopoly, MS really must extinguish its competitors. If BeOS were easily dual-booted, more people would consider BeOS applications (the "OS barrier" would erode), and eventually more would be written (the "applications barrier" would erode). MS currently maintains both barriers, but if they didn't, they wouldn't be able to maintain the monopoly against all the competing and/or superior products out there. If MS doesn't completely destroy even small competitors, there will always be a foot in the door leading to further threats of competition.
What we really need is a competing OS that has a full suite of applications, both of which are freely developed by anyone who wishes to, rather than being controlled by a single corporation, and it will probably need to be possible to buy a computer with these pre-installed, for it to truly break both of the barriers mentioned above. Then, the only barrier will be in the mind -- the fact that people don't yet know about the potential of the OS and its applications, or that they're not yet ready to accept it over what it replaces. When that happens (it seems to be beginning), there will begin to be true competition for MS.
Now... MS products aren't all completely crap. But they must be seriously scared of anyone who can get their foot in the door, because a lot of their dominant products are dominant only because of monopoly. They're like someone viciously squashing mosquitos because they're terrified of West Nile virus.
> One could argue that it is not really yellow, since outside of our atmospheric filter it is actually white.
So the "atmospheric filter" makes white light shining through it yellow? When you have a predominantly translucent material, it's "color" is usually the color of light that shines through it. A yellow filter looks yellow.
So the sky could be called yellow, because it's a yellow filter, but then it's not absorbing other wavelengths like normal filters do. Or it could be called blue because it looks blue, but is the scattering of blue wavelengths the same as reflection?
Materials can have different colors, they can simultaneously reflect light, filter it, refract it, and maybe some other stuff too why not... So I'd say either this discussion is way over my head, or the sky has multiple color properties.
There is a lot of "that license allowed it to be legally copied" stuff going on here. What happens to licensed code that gets combined with code that will be released with a different license? Do various sections have various license agreements applied? Or does the new license apply (implying that the licensed code was licensed to allow the merged code to be licensed differently)? Does anyone involved with modifying open-source code have to be aware of all applicable licenses, and make sure none of the agreements interfere? And if there is an interference, who is liable?
Apparently, SCO is arguing that the one who modifies the code is liable (IBM), but so is everyone else.
These questions worry me, and a case like this could really determine a lot of important things regarding what can and can't be done with copied code. Some devastating roadblocks to source sharing could be created.
It seems that the legally safe way to manage code is to keep everything secret, and keep others' secret code that you've stolen extra secret, and have a quick and quiet court case when they find out. Most big software companies have evolved this way due to copyright laws, and I think copyright laws have evolved to keep such companies' interests in mind. The whole open-source methodology is being challenged in this case, and there are a lot of details it's going up against. I think.
Yikes, it makes me wonder what "carefully crafted marketing image" they were going for with Gigli. I knew it was bad without having to see it, and without having anyone tell me so. The commercials for it are nothing more than sequences of mediocre content-free scenes that show the major players. I can't remember if they alluded to a story or not. Usually in movie commercials they show some scenes that are at least interesting.
As far as I can tell, the "carefully crafted market image" was "See how charming Ben Affleck and J-Lo are, in these example scenes which clearly show them speaking miscellaneous words! You can see many more such scenes in the full movie!"
I wouldn't blame Gigli on texting. If they wanted to lure audiences into the theaters, they shouldn't have shown Affleck in the commercials.
Don't be retarded. Bill would pick up a single dollar if he happened to find it on the ground. If he didn't, someone else might get it.
MS isn't the victim of anything in this case. They made a ton of cash on other peoples' work, why stand up for them when they have to give some of it away?
On the other hand, myself and everyone around the office have a bad habit of repeatedly flicking to navigate a document that's too long.
Flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick flick.
With less resistance you could spin the wheel (at whatever speed you want, for whatever duration you want), and then brake the wheel with your finger. I think it would be pretty useful once you got used to it?
I haven't read everything but I can identify with the person who said "...I'm afraid I am unwilling to waste any time reading further, and recommend terminal rejection."
... } adds up to only 1. The basic idea here is that you can add an infinite number of positive numbers and the result can be a finite number.
Either I can't grasp what Lynds is talking about, or I've already come across too many ideas I don't accept, and it's impossible to continue and try to understand concepts that use those ideas as a base.
What bothers me about this is that he is inventing interesting ideas that solve various time paradoxes, when the paradoxes can already be solved with understanding instead of invention. Whether or not his ideas are true doesn't matter -- It's like trying to explain the Achilles and the tortoise paradox using General Relativity: It's not needed and it only detracts from an understanding of the paradox.
As for whether or not his ideas have merit, they will need to be shown to explain more than a paradox that is already explained with classical physics.
As for Lynds' theories...
Suppose an object is travelling a distance 1m from position 0 to 1 in some time interval. There is no time t for which the object is at position 0.5. However there must be an interval t0-t1 where the object is clearly behind 0.5 and some time t2-t3 where the object is past 0.5. For any such intervals, t2 > t1 according to Lynds. This seems to imply that there is some time interval during which the object is superpositioned behind and in front of 0.5m. I tried to derive a contradiction but couldn't. His theories might help marry macroscopic and quantum uh, stuff...
Recently I got stuck on the Achilles paradox and thought it through instead of researching it. So, here I'll post what I came up with, and hope that someone reads it and finds something new in it. I am not a mathematician, and the stuff below could use some serious cleaning up and development.
-----------
The paradox goes something like this:
A tortoise and a hare are racing. The tortoise is ahead but the hare is running twice as fast and is catching up.
Hypotheses:
H1: The hare will take some time t to cover the distance between itself and the tortoise, but during that time the tortoise will have moved.
H2: By induction on H1, the hare will never catch up to the tortoise.
This is a paradox because we know that the hare will catch up. So, clearly there must be something wrong with either our observations (H1) or the conclusion (H2).
The simple solution to this paradox is that H2 requires us to redefine the meaning of "time", and we unwittingly ambiguously refer to both this redefined time, and to "our" normal perception of time, and thus H2 is an incorrect conclusion. The not-so-simple solution, if you allow for such a redefinition of time, is that the hare does indeed never catch up to the tortoise.
This is all a matter of perspective though. Let us call the perspective described in the hypotheses as the "observer's" perspective, and the real-world view where the hare does catch up to the tortoise we will call "our" perspective.
If this doesn't make satisfactory sense, I hope to explain it away until it is as simple enough to understand as the "infinite sum of halves" trick, which is simply that the sum of 1/2^n for all n in { 1, 2, 3
This trick is the key to figuring out the paradox, but it is also what makes it so complex.
Anyway, back to the paradox. H2 states that the hare will "never" catch up. By our understanding of "never" and the passing of time, this means that there is no instant in time T for which the hare has caught up. We can choose any time (eg. one year from now) and the hare will not have caught up. In other words, the sum of all times t from H1 is unbounded. But it should be intuitively clear from the sum of halves trick that this is wrong.
During time interval t(i) the hare moves a distan
On the 27th there will be a new moon, which will make Mars even better to watch.
The "(next to the moon)" looks like it was added as a correction, but it's more misleading than true. Mars will be the brightest object in the night sky that night.
I agree. I think one of the problems is that special effects are based on existing special effects rather than on anything resembling reality. The next big movie's effects look just like the last big movie's effects, only bigger and badder. There is little diversity. A lot of effects get faker and turn into more refined versions of the same thing we've seen before, but no matter how good the CG gets, it never looks real.
I remember seeing really old Russian sci fi special effects, with rockets in space emitting cool blue exhaust flames. It still looks amazing, because it's subtle and different. Modern Hollywood does not seem to like difference, subtlety, or reality in its effects.
One example of all of this is that anything involving fire (eg. a missile launch, an explosion, a house on fire) now makes a "Schwepp!" sound. I've never heard this sound occur in reality, and I'd never heard it in sci fi before coming across it with the end boss in Doom II. But now because the last rocket effect used that sound, the next rocket effect must, only they'll make it even bigger and stupider and maybe add some more glitz.
I think this theory is on the right track! Sure it wouldn't be enough to JUST keep the prey at the same position, but I would guess that anyone who thinks "It must be a lot more complex than that!" is heading down the wrong path. Insects are pretty simple, and simple can be very effective.
So let's keep things simple. First assume that the prey is simple enough that its eyes don't move relative to its head/body.
In order to stay in the same spot in the prey's retina, the dragonfly must maintain a position that doesn't move relative to the prey's position and orientation, as if hovering at the end of an imaginary stick protruding from the prey. As the prey moves and turns, so does the imaginary stick. In other words, the dragonfly must move to keep the orientation and distance of its prey relative to itself fairly constant.
This simplifies things a bit because the dragonfly doesn't have to "think" about whether the prey is moving or not. Just think about the end of that stick.
If we assume the dragonfly doesn't have the ability to deal with analysing the orientation of complex 3d shapes, we could conjecture that it might detect changes in rotation as "optical flow" similar to the way motion is detected. It might maintain orientation by moving to avoid changes in the image of its prey. It might simply react to changes it sees. Analysing orientation is difficult, but detecting changes in orientation is easier.
So the dragonfly might do just what Yarn proposed. It might keep the prey in the same position in its retina, but also keep the prey in the same orientation. The easiest way to be able to detect change in the prey is to hover very still relative to it, not changing its own orientation which would let the prey move in its retina. The dragonfly might not be able to see the prey so well, but that's what it wants. Maybe it's dealing with what's not moving, ignoring the moving background behind it. As soon as it "sees" movement it can react.
Anyway this is just an idea. I'm fairly certain that whatever turns out to be happening is about as simple as that, with anything that seems to require brainpower turning out to be an interesting trick.
I wonder though if maybe we've all seen this type of behavior but never really looked close enough to notice? The next time I see any bugs hovering in one spot I'm going to stick my hand out and twist it around like a sock puppet to see what happens.
There is still conservation of energy when something adds energy to something else. Energy of light in + energy of shockwave = energy of light out + energy lost.
I hope that when they say this technique is efficient, they mean that there is the potential for a very small overall energy loss, rather than say just a small loss due to light absorption. Ideas for more efficient lightbulbs won't go too far if you have to keep shooting bullets at them.
I'm no physicist but I doubt that the light energy in is the same as the light energy out (I'd be more inclined to think that the number of photons remains the same). I think that the shock wave applying the Doppler effect is probably changing the energy? So, you may be able to build death rays out of ordinary "harmless" light, but you'd have to apply a lot of energy to the shockwave.
The way I understand this system, it would be like tossing a pingpong ball into a match with a couple of mad pingpong players. The paddles, moving back and forth as a well-timed shockwave would, add energy to the ball and it is shot out of the system with higher energy than it was tossed in.
Is this analogy accurate?