Sarcasm is a fine balance. One must speak closely enough to the principles of the subject of ridicule, but also give some obvious clue to one's true intentions. GPP failed to give the latter (ie: his use indicated that he was an ID'er with an actual sense of humor - which, by the way, SHOULD have tipped us off), which is why the discussion progressed in a fashion decidedly critical of ID.
Meanwhile, I've found that the ability of Slashdotters to smell sarcasm seems to have a very high standard deviation (ie: some of these people are completely humorless). It happens; geeks and nerds - a group with a higher statistical occurence of mild autism than the general population - are bound to be able to either very easily sense the more vague areas of humor, or to feel the lovely cooling 'whoosh' as it flies right over their heads.
Ok, so how difficult would it be to suppress all the ink-4 (stopping the cancerous property) and increasing the telomerase output of cells? Would that not make effectively immortal, noncancerous cells?
Possibly. But they'd also be completely unable to repair themselves. You'd get a population much like the late Brunnen'gee.
"Sounds to me like Planned obsolescence... that is, if you believe in a higher power."
You don't have to believe in a higher power for that. Sounds to me like a natural function of the balance between being able to repair yourself and exploding into a ball of disorganized meat (ie: developing cancer in every cell). Based on the amount of damage your body takes, it automatically determines how much it needs to be able to redivide its cells.
"Why is it that back in Biblical times, people like Abraham & Moses used to live several hundred years? Did they all have cancer? (Assuming that cancer is an anti-aging program)"
Nah. I would guess it's because of a trans-generational game of 'rumour' that happened before any of it got written down. Don't get me wrong; much of Exodus actually happened (the plagues, parting, etc, are easily explained by a volcano eruption that happened as moses returned to Egypt; I can't blame him for using it as a way to extort pharoh and reinforce judaism - we all have our agendas, after all, and they're almost always good in our eyes). But Genesis... it all sounds a bit like stories passed from father to son that eventually got written out.
"What's even more disappointing, however, is that many of these Republicans have barely a high school education."
Sorry, but when the subject of your point ('of these Republicans') can be easily replaced with an asterisk, your point suffers. For example, I could replace it with 'inteliigent designers', 'radio pundits', or 'of the citizens of pennsylvania', and it would still be true.
That doesn't make it a point. It makes it astroturfing.
Actually there really was no point to that, man. I mean, I'm one of the first to say, 'Science takes precedence over religion', but if this guy wants to frame hard science in terms of his imaginary friend, that's fine - so long as he's not refuting the science, science has still taken precedence.
Sure, he can use it as a further argument for ID. And the rest of the world can, as they always have, either ignore his dumb ass, or feed the academic troll (which is where I feel it best to place IDers in the forum heirarchy of life).
"you can believe that the recipient doesn't own the server at all"
Well, not exactly. The user leases a portion of the server for the purpose of recieving mail. The spammer, through his actions, has spam on your property. It's more like flinging baseballs at your mailbox several times a day.
Still, after the bluefrog debacle, I'm all for blood. Jail's too nice for these spammers (though as you said, getting ass raped by large men named 'rhino' is a good first step).
Judge Wolf: (this law is too broad because) "You purchase an e-mail address list, alter the transmission information in the header of your e-mail to avoid retaliation, and on Easter morning send out a three-word e-mail to thousands of people: 'Christ is risen!' You have committed a felony in Virginia,"
Well, yeah. Religious spam is still spam, you hick.
Actually, it's unlimited downloads for the period of a month - which is great if you can strip out the DRM, and thus use it properly. Unfortunately, FU4WM doesn't seem to strip vongo movies. Dunno why.
Meh. It's already rebroken. And this time, with video support.
MS is just way too slow for t3h hax0rz.
Meanwhile, I'm testing the new version in conjunction with Vongo (Downloading a movie now). Let's see how that works. If so, I may stick to Vongo rather than BitTorrent ('cept, the very rare/hard-to-find stuff will still get me on BT).
I'm sure the DRM astroturfers on here will scoff, and say, "Yeah right, you spoiled rich college kid theif scumbag criminal. You're just going to keep stealing from the mouths of millionaires like the incorrugible brat you are." If you'll just take it as read that I said 'Fuck off, tool.', we can avoid the whole thing.
"first, make it so hard to make copies that only the elitist of techo-geeks will bother"
They've already done this (read: Fair Play 6). Fortunately, it only takes one 'techno-geek' to crack it in order for it to become easy for the remainder of humanity (read: QTFairUse6).
"second, drive file-sharing sites far underground to avoid the law"
This, too is already being done. Take a look at Kazaa. The cool thing about that is that there's now a consumer demand for file-sharing. As such, there will always be another one willing to spring up its head for the masses.
Once again, it only takes one 'techno-geek' to bring an idea back.
"If objects lose mass when they emit photons, where does it go?"
Well that's not always true.
In a star, it loses mass which is converted to the energy of the photon. In a lightbulb, the photon's energy comes from the covering of a potential difference in voltage.
The thing is, while E=mc^2 and E=hw (E is Energy; m is mass; c is speed of light; h is planck's constant; w is angular frequency [similar to frequency, but in radians per time unit]) state that more energetic photons have more apparent mass than non-energetic photons (m=hw/c^2), the fact is that they have no rest mass (at rest, w=0, so m=0).
The truth is, however, that a photon's apparent mass is only really useful for momentum calculations. Higher frequency light takes more energy to redirect than lower frequency light.
Though, it gives me a question about the idea behind solar sails: picture two perfectly paralell low-mass perfect reflectors (ie: no loss in the reflected light). They are in vacuum, and there is no friction. According to the theory that predicts the way a light sail would work, you should be able to shine a light perpendicular to one of the sails from between them, and they would slowly accelerate apart. When you shut the light off, the light bouncing back and forth would keep pushing.
Would the light decrease in frequency until it is 'at rest', and thus nonexistant? If not, where does the energy come from? Would the light, instead, decrease in speed, becoming normal matter? Is this even possible?
Google "electron volt in amu":
1 electron volt = 1.07354412 × 10-9 atomic mass units
That's five whole orders of magnitude lighter than an electron. That sounds like a good reason they don't interact; it'd be like saying a dust cloud should interact with a chain-link fence.
Slashdot Mirror
Eh. I get annoyed at any religious spam. Being not-religious, and all.
Anyway, I was criticizing the guy who responded for flipping out, not for missing the humour. My point is still a very good one.
Sarcasm is a fine balance. One must speak closely enough to the principles of the subject of ridicule, but also give some obvious clue to one's true intentions. GPP failed to give the latter (ie: his use indicated that he was an ID'er with an actual sense of humor - which, by the way, SHOULD have tipped us off), which is why the discussion progressed in a fashion decidedly critical of ID.
Meanwhile, I've found that the ability of Slashdotters to smell sarcasm seems to have a very high standard deviation (ie: some of these people are completely humorless). It happens; geeks and nerds - a group with a higher statistical occurence of mild autism than the general population - are bound to be able to either very easily sense the more vague areas of humor, or to feel the lovely cooling 'whoosh' as it flies right over their heads.
Ok, so how difficult would it be to suppress all the ink-4 (stopping the cancerous property) and increasing the telomerase output of cells? Would that not make effectively immortal, noncancerous cells?
Possibly. But they'd also be completely unable to repair themselves. You'd get a population much like the late Brunnen'gee.
"Sounds to me like Planned obsolescence... that is, if you believe in a higher power."
You don't have to believe in a higher power for that. Sounds to me like a natural function of the balance between being able to repair yourself and exploding into a ball of disorganized meat (ie: developing cancer in every cell). Based on the amount of damage your body takes, it automatically determines how much it needs to be able to redivide its cells.
"Why is it that back in Biblical times, people like Abraham & Moses used to live several hundred years? Did they all have cancer? (Assuming that cancer is an anti-aging program)"
Nah. I would guess it's because of a trans-generational game of 'rumour' that happened before any of it got written down. Don't get me wrong; much of Exodus actually happened (the plagues, parting, etc, are easily explained by a volcano eruption that happened as moses returned to Egypt; I can't blame him for using it as a way to extort pharoh and reinforce judaism - we all have our agendas, after all, and they're almost always good in our eyes). But Genesis... it all sounds a bit like stories passed from father to son that eventually got written out.
"What's even more disappointing, however, is that many of these Republicans have barely a high school education."
Sorry, but when the subject of your point ('of these Republicans') can be easily replaced with an asterisk, your point suffers. For example, I could replace it with 'inteliigent designers', 'radio pundits', or 'of the citizens of pennsylvania', and it would still be true.
That doesn't make it a point. It makes it astroturfing.
Actually there really was no point to that, man. I mean, I'm one of the first to say, 'Science takes precedence over religion', but if this guy wants to frame hard science in terms of his imaginary friend, that's fine - so long as he's not refuting the science, science has still taken precedence.
Sure, he can use it as a further argument for ID. And the rest of the world can, as they always have, either ignore his dumb ass, or feed the academic troll (which is where I feel it best to place IDers in the forum heirarchy of life).
"you can believe that the recipient doesn't own the server at all"
Well, not exactly. The user leases a portion of the server for the purpose of recieving mail. The spammer, through his actions, has spam on your property. It's more like flinging baseballs at your mailbox several times a day.
Still, after the bluefrog debacle, I'm all for blood. Jail's too nice for these spammers (though as you said, getting ass raped by large men named 'rhino' is a good first step).
Judge Wolf: (this law is too broad because) "You purchase an e-mail address list, alter the transmission information in the header of your e-mail to avoid retaliation, and on Easter morning send out a three-word e-mail to thousands of people: 'Christ is risen!' You have committed a felony in Virginia,"
Well, yeah. Religious spam is still spam, you hick.
*jumps and sings*
Yayyyy! The sons of bitches are getting some punishment for being sons of bitches! I wonder what the buzz on the spammer boards is now (hehehe).
Actually, it's unlimited downloads for the period of a month - which is great if you can strip out the DRM, and thus use it properly. Unfortunately, FU4WM doesn't seem to strip vongo movies. Dunno why.
Update: Don't bother. It doesn't seem to work with Vongo, and I'm too lazy to figure out why.
Meh. It's already rebroken. And this time, with video support.
MS is just way too slow for t3h hax0rz.
Meanwhile, I'm testing the new version in conjunction with Vongo (Downloading a movie now). Let's see how that works. If so, I may stick to Vongo rather than BitTorrent ('cept, the very rare/hard-to-find stuff will still get me on BT).
I'm sure the DRM astroturfers on here will scoff, and say, "Yeah right, you spoiled rich college kid theif scumbag criminal. You're just going to keep stealing from the mouths of millionaires like the incorrugible brat you are." If you'll just take it as read that I said 'Fuck off, tool.', we can avoid the whole thing.
^_^ Thanks for the timely answer: The frequency would decrease.
"first, make it so hard to make copies that only the elitist of techo-geeks will bother"
They've already done this (read: Fair Play 6). Fortunately, it only takes one 'techno-geek' to crack it in order for it to become easy for the remainder of humanity (read: QTFairUse6).
"second, drive file-sharing sites far underground to avoid the law"
This, too is already being done. Take a look at Kazaa. The cool thing about that is that there's now a consumer demand for file-sharing. As such, there will always be another one willing to spring up its head for the masses.
Once again, it only takes one 'techno-geek' to bring an idea back.
"all you really have to do is remove the ability to program machines that can either display drm content, or connect to the internet."
Yes, and the spherical cow just trampled over your deus ex machina.
"If objects lose mass when they emit photons, where does it go?"
Well that's not always true.
In a star, it loses mass which is converted to the energy of the photon. In a lightbulb, the photon's energy comes from the covering of a potential difference in voltage.
The thing is, while E=mc^2 and E=hw (E is Energy; m is mass; c is speed of light; h is planck's constant; w is angular frequency [similar to frequency, but in radians per time unit]) state that more energetic photons have more apparent mass than non-energetic photons (m=hw/c^2), the fact is that they have no rest mass (at rest, w=0, so m=0).
The truth is, however, that a photon's apparent mass is only really useful for momentum calculations. Higher frequency light takes more energy to redirect than lower frequency light.
Though, it gives me a question about the idea behind solar sails:
picture two perfectly paralell low-mass perfect reflectors (ie: no loss in the reflected light). They are in vacuum, and there is no friction. According to the theory that predicts the way a light sail would work, you should be able to shine a light perpendicular to one of the sails from between them, and they would slowly accelerate apart. When you shut the light off, the light bouncing back and forth would keep pushing.
Would the light decrease in frequency until it is 'at rest', and thus nonexistant? If not, where does the energy come from? Would the light, instead, decrease in speed, becoming normal matter? Is this even possible?
And photons that are 'clumped', would thus have no mass.
On the other hand, query: Do high-energy (ie: high mass) photons have a gravitational effect? Or do the formulae only work given a rest mass?
Electron Volt
^_^
Very good analogy. Much better than BadAnalogyGuy's.
Um.
Google "electron volt in amu":
That's five whole orders of magnitude lighter than an electron. That sounds like a good reason they don't interact; it'd be like saying a dust cloud should interact with a chain-link fence.1 electron volt = 1.07354412 × 10-9 atomic mass units
Do I look like I make money off it?
Forget that... I'm allowed. This is 'News for Nerds', not 'Circle-Jerks for Fanboys'.
Fail to be funny, fail to get the joke, call me humorless.
You're good. ^_^
Why, praytell, is this news?
It's a freaking advert.
don't think so. It's based on the Phonic64 transform with numbers and punctuation at >10 characters.