I would hope they had taken isostatic rebound into account. Actually what puzzles me is how they measured sea level. Are they comparing it to the earth's geode? For those who never heard this before, the geode is an imaginary surface that represents where sea level would be if water were magically allowed to flow without viscosity underneath the earth's land mass. It is not a sphere or even a spheroid but follows the local gravity variations so that it actually rises underneath mountains and dips over marine trenches. The net force of gravity is always perpendicular to the surface of the geode, and when they report the height of Mount Everest it is with respect to the geode, not to the sea level a thousand miles away (which is lower).
So again, how are they measuring this? I can't think of any measurement that makes any sense. The ocean cannot be above the geode in one part of the world and below it in another _by definition_. At least not on average over a year.
Okay, here is my off-the-wall speculation: a new change in wind patterns has resulted in a net outflow of wind at the earth's surface around antarctica, effectively blowing the water away.
No. Every generation tends to get rid of bad mutations. It's called natural selection. While a few alarming but non-fatal mutations will occasionally be expressed, most mutations will simply result in reduced fertility due to terminated abnormal pregnancy. But wild animals are generally fecund enough to make up for the losses.
Consider that the average human conception has about three dangerous mutations even without Chernobyl. Why aren't we oatmeal? Because a goodly percentage of conceptions never make it past the blastocyst stage due to excessive nasty chromosomal damage, while we lucky survivors had fewer.
Snarky headlines are entertaining and help create a feeling of superiority among the readers who get the joke. This is probably some of the appeal of http://economist.com/index.html, which often even uses witty headlines and even obscure double-entendre photographs to illustrate their softer pieces.
On the cover of an issue headlining corporate mergers a couple of years back they had a full-cover photo of copulating camels---a memorable low point for bad taste, IMO.
That was the whole point. They stood out like elephants in the living room. No one talked about them but their presence enforced submission.
Talking about the gestapo would cause them to pay you a visit. The FUD they generated just by _existing_ was invaluable to the Hitler regime.
The CIA, otoh, generates FUD as well but it is all internal. WHenever any of that FUD escapes into the wild someone in the US govt gets in trouble, which seems to happen about once a year.
Probably. The earliest sighting I know of is the "gangster of uncertain origin" from the 1984 movie, Johnny Dangerouslyhttp://imdb.com/title/tt0087507/, a silly gangster spoof.
I still have my voting card from Miami. It looks like something I could have printed out at home except that it would take effort to make it appear so amateurish. Besides, real live voters seem to be outnumbered by dead ones here.
But civilian receivers have had the same accuracy since the Clinton administration. The only difference now is that military receivers can be programmed with the daily anti-jamming code.
Civilian GPS can be jammed economically but military GPS is much more resistant to interference.
Other people have posted interesting (disturbing?) examples of civil disobedience on this topic, but your post is a lame rant that borders on flame-bait. If you are going to be unapologetically political, you could at least be on topic.
. ..and someone just moderated it "interesting", like they've never seen that particular bumper sticker before.
Don't know why the parent was modded down. Perhaps the moderator was as clueless as the author. Pedantic tirade, anyone?
For those who do not understand the term Deus ex machina---and are therefore smart enough not to use it in public---a good example of the term would be the eagles from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. They were invoked to resolve a plot problem and seem to require a bit too much suspension of disbelief, since a reader is left wondering why the heck they didn't just use the eagles to fly to Mordor instead of engaging on that perilous quest. Also, see any of the works by Stephen King.
The Greek tragedian Euripides was infamous for resolving difficulties in his plays by lowering a god from a crane (the machina, in Latin) who would then resolve all the outstanding issues.
For the pedants who think the literal meaning might be good to describe artificial intelligence, think again. The term in Latin is a calque, which is a literal translation from the Greek, not perhaps a phrase the Romans would have coined.
It sounded like a hoax 24 years ago when we debunked it for homework in my high school chemistry class. Yeah, baby, we all calculated about 1-2% efficiency as well.
That's not to say it cannot work, but considering the small amounts of energy you are starting with, and the small fraction of that which would be available for work, I'd liken it to trying to install electric power turbines in the Gulf Stream (appropriate since it is driven by temperature differences), instead of some place more suitable like Niagra Falls.
Australia was used as a penal colony because after the War for Independence they could no longer use America as a penal colony. Previously, those sentenced to "transportation" were shipped to Georgia.
I recently discovered that B&H has a wonderful brick & mortar shop in Manattan. If you are not from NY it's worth a visit just to see the automated merchandise transferral system (interesting shoplifting prevention) and the stereotypical Hasidic clerks.
It's a lot cheaper than visiting another planet but just as fascinating for the photographer.
This would have the net effect over a prolonged run-time (perhaps someone is taking a shower) of making the system very efficient. Perhaps 90% net.
Except that it is electric powered, which means it has all the efficiency of electricity, which is low, compared to gas and oil.
At the least, this kind of system should obsolete electric hot water heaters, as well as electric assists to solar and geothermal systems.
Except that this system is an electric hot water heater; they just found a different way to apply the heat. Demand-applied electric water heaters with simple elements have been around for a long time. They are all more efficient than this microwave heater, only far less expensive and void of any need for maintenance. The only advantage of this monster is that it does not require a heat transfer surface for 50% of the energy because the microwaves just beam into the water. This probably makes it less bulky. For the other half of the heat--which conducts out of the magnetron--it functions identically to technology that is 20 years old, only with more expensive and less reliable parts.
After I RTA, I was inspired to install and run RootKitRevealer http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevea ler.html. I didn't find any Sony malware, but I did find the IBIS Websearch Toolbar rootkit for that other malware vector, Internet Explorer.
Why do we care about the author's original intent?
Because the original work gained a reputation, and applying that reputation to other works which are miscontrued as to be the originals is forgery.
Also, who are we to edit the great works? Many people alive to day think that Shakespeare was a genius, but if all we had of his works were the re-written scripts of the nineteenth century (which Dickens delighted in making such fun of in Nicholas Nickelby) then today we would consider his works second-rate mawkish melodrama.
The Oz disc should have carried a warning label: PARENTAL ADVISORY: All edginess and potential embarassment has been deleted from this film in order to prevent creating a topic for conversation. Watching this film may cause symptoms of mental sluggishness. If extreme stupidity occurs, discontinue use. If symptoms persist, consult a physician,
It never got out of planning because it was useless and expensive.
The use of infrastructure construction to get get votes is a very old ploy in Italy. Usually construction stops forever right after the election. The only surprise here is that Italians seem to fall for it over and over again. I suppose it it the triumph of hope over experience.
To summarize what others have already pointed out, this project will cut twenty minutes off of a two day drive. If the money were spent on roads, instead, then they might cut two days off a two day drive.
The rail connection is interesting, however, since ferries are awkward for short-distance transferral of containers. This will give Sicily a rail connection to the rest of Europe, which is hard to shake a stick at.
Nevertheless, I'll believe when traffic starts flowing.
It is not illegal to download things HBO is offering for free, i.e., whatever their feed is, poisoned bits or not. If HBO were actually giving out good packets then they would probably not be able to threaten you with infringement.
It is illegal to violate their copyright, which you are doing if you participate in a bittorrent distribution of their copyrighted material. The "intent" angle is moot.
They participate in the stream merely to identify alleged culprits, not to supply the red paint for your hands. If HBO started a fake torrent itself (and they have, stupidly even before the show aired) then they would not be able to bother you legally. No more than the D.A. could prosecute you for accepting fake money from a bank teller who was giving it away on a street corner.
To add irony to the story, it was covered by a simple prayerbook. The discoverer was only able to make a tantalizing transcription of some of the text before it was lost. Before it was recovered some con-artist had painted fake devotional paintings over some of the pages in order to increase the value. Then I believe it was bought by a collector who did not understand what it was and taken to France, where his heirs made the re-discovery.
I believe Louis Savain now calls himself "Traveler" on usenet. He's been a crackpot fixture for many years. He is currently claiming that the xian bible predicts the development of artificial intelligence technology.
But his best known comment is this annoying rejoinder, applied whenever he does not have an answer:
"And your point is...?"
Somehow he thinks that nullifies whatever point you just made, whether reasoned and sublime or terse and derogatory. It seems to be his mantra.
A gravity anomoly is anything other than what you would expect from a continuous, uncratered surface. It would not be something you could measure without very precise instruments.
The ice would definitely prevent large tsunami. I have seen even the lightest coating of snow tame the rough north atlantic.
As far as the meteor causing magnetic pole reversal, I don't see how. The earth's magnetic fields originate in the spinning iron core. Perhaps disturbing the spin slightly might help trigger a field reversal but that would be more likely to occur after an oblique equatorial collision than after a polar strike. The melting of the antarctic ice sheet would not even affect the planet's rotational inertia the way it would if Greenland's suddenly melted. But all of these effects are miniscule. The field reversal timing is almost certainly a coincidence.
I think my esteem for the Economist just dropped a notch. This scientific article is borderline crank. The fact that it was published at arXiv doesn't help any for its respectability. The argument amounts to "I have eliminated all sources of error, therefore the effect is real." But the effect is still tremendously unlikely, so he needs to do a tremendous job of demonstrating that he has eliminated sources of error. If Nature publishes it, then we can be more reasonably sure that a few good sets of eyes have examined the paper for obvious problems.
Slashdot Mirror
I would hope they had taken isostatic rebound into account. Actually what puzzles me is how they measured sea level. Are they comparing it to the earth's geode? For those who never heard this before, the geode is an imaginary surface that represents where sea level would be if water were magically allowed to flow without viscosity underneath the earth's land mass. It is not a sphere or even a spheroid but follows the local gravity variations so that it actually rises underneath mountains and dips over marine trenches. The net force of gravity is always perpendicular to the surface of the geode, and when they report the height of Mount Everest it is with respect to the geode, not to the sea level a thousand miles away (which is lower).
So again, how are they measuring this? I can't think of any measurement that makes any sense. The ocean cannot be above the geode in one part of the world and below it in another _by definition_. At least not on average over a year.
Okay, here is my off-the-wall speculation: a new change in wind patterns has resulted in a net outflow of wind at the earth's surface around antarctica, effectively blowing the water away.
No. Every generation tends to get rid of bad mutations. It's called natural selection. While a few alarming but non-fatal mutations will occasionally be expressed, most mutations will simply result in reduced fertility due to terminated abnormal pregnancy. But wild animals are generally fecund enough to make up for the losses.
Consider that the average human conception has about three dangerous mutations even without Chernobyl. Why aren't we oatmeal? Because a goodly percentage of conceptions never make it past the blastocyst stage due to excessive nasty chromosomal damage, while we lucky survivors had fewer.
Snarky headlines are entertaining and help create a feeling of superiority among the readers who get the joke. This is probably some of the appeal of http://economist.com/index.html, which often even uses witty headlines and even obscure double-entendre photographs to illustrate their softer pieces.
On the cover of an issue headlining corporate mergers a couple of years back they had a full-cover photo of copulating camels---a memorable low point for bad taste, IMO.
That was the whole point. They stood out like elephants in the living room. No one talked about them but their presence enforced submission.
Talking about the gestapo would cause them to pay you a visit. The FUD they generated just by _existing_ was invaluable to the Hitler regime.
The CIA, otoh, generates FUD as well but it is all internal. WHenever any of that FUD escapes into the wild someone in the US govt gets in trouble, which seems to happen about once a year.
Probably. The earliest sighting I know of is the "gangster of uncertain origin" from the 1984 movie, Johnny Dangerously http://imdb.com/title/tt0087507/, a silly gangster spoof.
I still have my voting card from Miami. It looks like something I could have printed out at home except that it would take effort to make it appear so amateurish. Besides, real live voters seem to be outnumbered by dead ones here.
But civilian receivers have had the same accuracy since the Clinton administration. The only difference now is that military receivers can be programmed with the daily anti-jamming code.
Civilian GPS can be jammed economically but military GPS is much more resistant to interference.
I dont appologise for being political.
.and someone just moderated it "interesting", like they've never seen that particular bumper sticker before.
A bold statement from Ms/Mr. Anonymous Coward.
Other people have posted interesting (disturbing?) examples of civil disobedience on this topic, but your post is a lame rant that borders on flame-bait. If you are going to be unapologetically political, you could at least be on topic.
. .
Cynical? Moi?
Don't know why the parent was modded down. Perhaps the moderator was as clueless as the author. Pedantic tirade, anyone?
For those who do not understand the term Deus ex machina---and are therefore smart enough not to use it in public---a good example of the term would be the eagles from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. They were invoked to resolve a plot problem and seem to require a bit too much suspension of disbelief, since a reader is left wondering why the heck they didn't just use the eagles to fly to Mordor instead of engaging on that perilous quest. Also, see any of the works by Stephen King.
The Greek tragedian Euripides was infamous for resolving difficulties in his plays by lowering a god from a crane (the machina, in Latin) who would then resolve all the outstanding issues.
For the pedants who think the literal meaning might be good to describe artificial intelligence, think again. The term in Latin is a calque, which is a literal translation from the Greek, not perhaps a phrase the Romans would have coined.
It sounded like a hoax 24 years ago when we debunked it for homework in my high school chemistry class. Yeah, baby, we all calculated about 1-2% efficiency as well.
That's not to say it cannot work, but considering the small amounts of energy you are starting with, and the small fraction of that which would be available for work, I'd liken it to trying to install electric power turbines in the Gulf Stream (appropriate since it is driven by temperature differences), instead of some place more suitable like Niagra Falls.
Australia was used as a penal colony because after the War for Independence they could no longer use America as a penal colony. Previously, those sentenced to "transportation" were shipped to Georgia.
I recently discovered that B&H has a wonderful brick & mortar shop in Manattan. If you are not from NY it's worth a visit just to see the automated merchandise transferral system (interesting shoplifting prevention) and the stereotypical Hasidic clerks.
It's a lot cheaper than visiting another planet but just as fascinating for the photographer.
This would have the net effect over a prolonged run-time (perhaps someone is taking a shower) of making the system very efficient. Perhaps 90% net.
Except that it is electric powered, which means it has all the efficiency of electricity, which is low, compared to gas and oil.
At the least, this kind of system should obsolete electric hot water heaters, as well as electric assists to solar and geothermal systems.
Except that this system is an electric hot water heater; they just found a different way to apply the heat. Demand-applied electric water heaters with simple elements have been around for a long time. They are all more efficient than this microwave heater, only far less expensive and void of any need for maintenance. The only advantage of this monster is that it does not require a heat transfer surface for 50% of the energy because the microwaves just beam into the water. This probably makes it less bulky. For the other half of the heat--which conducts out of the magnetron--it functions identically to technology that is 20 years old, only with more expensive and less reliable parts.
After I RTA, I was inspired to install and run RootKitRevealer http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevea ler.html. I didn't find any Sony malware, but I did find the IBIS Websearch Toolbar rootkit for that other malware vector, Internet Explorer.
Now how to get rid ot it . . ?
Why do we care about the author's original intent?
Because the original work gained a reputation, and applying that reputation to other works which are miscontrued as to be the originals is forgery.
Also, who are we to edit the great works? Many people alive to day think that Shakespeare was a genius, but if all we had of his works were the re-written scripts of the nineteenth century (which Dickens delighted in making such fun of in Nicholas Nickelby) then today we would consider his works second-rate mawkish melodrama.
The Oz disc should have carried a warning label: PARENTAL ADVISORY: All edginess and potential embarassment has been deleted from this film in order to prevent creating a topic for conversation. Watching this film may cause symptoms of mental sluggishness. If extreme stupidity occurs, discontinue use. If symptoms persist, consult a physician,
"SERVER STATUS: We are currently being Slashdotted. Please check back soon. "
This was at 11:24 EDT
It never got out of planning because it was useless and expensive.
The use of infrastructure construction to get get votes is a very old ploy in Italy. Usually construction stops forever right after the election. The only surprise here is that Italians seem to fall for it over and over again. I suppose it it the triumph of hope over experience.
To summarize what others have already pointed out, this project will cut twenty minutes off of a two day drive. If the money were spent on roads, instead, then they might cut two days off a two day drive.
The rail connection is interesting, however, since ferries are awkward for short-distance transferral of containers. This will give Sicily a rail connection to the rest of Europe, which is hard to shake a stick at.
Nevertheless, I'll believe when traffic starts flowing.
It is not illegal to download things HBO is offering for free, i.e., whatever their feed is, poisoned bits or not. If HBO were actually giving out good packets then they would probably not be able to threaten you with infringement.
It is illegal to violate their copyright, which you are doing if you participate in a bittorrent distribution of their copyrighted material. The "intent" angle is moot.
They participate in the stream merely to identify alleged culprits, not to supply the red paint for your hands. If HBO started a fake torrent itself (and they have, stupidly even before the show aired) then they would not be able to bother you legally. No more than the D.A. could prosecute you for accepting fake money from a bank teller who was giving it away on a street corner.
To add irony to the story, it was covered by a simple prayerbook. The discoverer was only able to make a tantalizing transcription of some of the text before it was lost. Before it was recovered some con-artist had painted fake devotional paintings over some of the pages in order to increase the value. Then I believe it was bought by a collector who did not understand what it was and taken to France, where his heirs made the re-discovery.
Thank you for not making that link clickable. I am eating my lunch.
I believe Louis Savain now calls himself "Traveler" on usenet. He's been a crackpot fixture for many years. He is currently claiming that the xian bible predicts the development of artificial intelligence technology.
But his best known comment is this annoying rejoinder, applied whenever he does not have an answer:
"And your point is...?"
Somehow he thinks that nullifies whatever point you just made, whether reasoned and sublime or terse and derogatory. It seems to be his mantra.
A gravity anomoly is anything other than what you would expect from a continuous, uncratered surface. It would not be something you could measure without very precise instruments.
The ice would definitely prevent large tsunami. I have seen even the lightest coating of snow tame the rough north atlantic.
As far as the meteor causing magnetic pole reversal, I don't see how. The earth's magnetic fields originate in the spinning iron core. Perhaps disturbing the spin slightly might help trigger a field reversal but that would be more likely to occur after an oblique equatorial collision than after a polar strike. The melting of the antarctic ice sheet would not even affect the planet's rotational inertia the way it would if Greenland's suddenly melted. But all of these effects are miniscule. The field reversal timing is almost certainly a coincidence.
I think my esteem for the Economist just dropped a notch. This scientific article is borderline crank. The fact that it was published at arXiv doesn't help any for its respectability. The argument amounts to "I have eliminated all sources of error, therefore the effect is real." But the effect is still tremendously unlikely, so he needs to do a tremendous job of demonstrating that he has eliminated sources of error. If Nature publishes it, then we can be more reasonably sure that a few good sets of eyes have examined the paper for obvious problems.
I think that was the original point. All the cracked versions will have 0x00 in the tags, but legitimate users will be encumbered.
When a copy protection scheme makes it desireable for legitimate users to used cracked versions of the software then there needs to be a rethink.
This seems to be the philosophy behind Java: it assumes that programmers are stupid, thus bounds-checking is automatic.
What does this say about Java programmers? That the stupid ones fo a better job in Java than C++