I don't use Windows because trying to configure your system through their abysmally stupid GUIs is like trying to overhaul an automatic transmission with a baby rattle.
Tin foil is tin (Captain Obvious strikes again!), whose permeability is more or less that of free space (mu0 = 4*pi*10^-7 Henries/meter) at any frequency. You get none of the flux concentration effect of iron or some other permeable material. (This effect, by the way, is _very_ similar to the effect that causes refraction of light passing through an air-water boundary---two materials with different permeabilities cause a refraction angle on their boundary. Bigger difference---iron has a permeability 1000ish times that of free space---means an angle forcing the flux closer to parallel to the boundary. In the limit of infinite permeability, no flux can escape into free space.)
The reason that high frequency fields are bucked by metals is because the field induces a current in the metal. Lenz's law says that these currents must be directed such that they generate a magnetic field opposite in direction to the one that creates the current, which in turn reduces the magnitude of the magnetic field.
So if you have a solenoid and you put a conductive cylindrical surface inside it, the field inside the conductive tube must be less than the one outside it.
A good reference on E&M is Electromagnetic Field Theory: A Problem-Solving Approach by Markus Zahn. Everyone should know its entirety by heart; the world would be that much better a place.
Judging by some of Hajimiri's "selected works" (for example, "A 24 GHz CMOS Front End"), it appears that they're talking about the carrier frequency, not the data rate. Of course, higher carrier frequency generally implies more bandwidth, but this isn't a wireless 24 Gbps backbone.
Oh, cut the condescension. It's an _effect_ of gravity, not a _form_ of gravity. That's like saying "erosion is a form of wind" when you mean "erosion is an effect of wind."
As far as my comment about shitty pseudoscience, it was referring specifically to that statement. If you'd paid more attention in reading comprehension class you'd have noted that, as I didn't read the rest of the article, I wasn't commenting on same.
So modulate in hardware and demod to baseband in software.
With a simple analog multipler (for example, the Analog Devices AD834) and e.g. a 5 KHz oscillator, you can AM a band-limited (say, DC-500 Hz) signal, put it in your sound card, then do the demod in software (another multiplication will work).
This will cost you, in total, about $5 (you can get free samples of the AD834 and you'll need some resistors, some caps, a couple op-amps, and some wire) and will give you DC-500Hz through your modulator or 20Hz-24KHz without it. Not too shabby, especially compared with $500.
By the way, if you're going to spend $500ish anyway, why not pick up a Tektronix 2445 or 2465 on EBay? The 2465 has 350MHz bandwidth and is, IMHO, one of the nicest all-around scopes out there.
The aircraft, still in development, will be similar to a submarine that changes its buoyancy, a form of gravity, to float on the surface of the sea or cruise 300 ft below it.
Stephen J. Mraz, "Senior Editor," is in need of a severe beating. Since when is buoyancy "a form of gravity?"
I stopped reading there. Nothing bothers me more than shitty pseudoscience.
It was with bewilderment and sadness that I read your article "Give Back Take-Two" [1]. It seems to me that your opinion is that somehow consenting adults looking for entertainment are unfit to choose how they busy themselves. As if they are still children on their mothers' apron-strings, you presume to tell them that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is somehow bad for them, that playing a video game---pushing buttons and reacting to pixels on their television---is akin to the "glorification of mass murder."
You compare GTA:VC to child pornography, cock fighting, and dwarf throwing. Your comparison falls short, however, because you fail to acknowledge the real reason for banning kiddie porn et al: they _victimize_. A child can't give consent to sexual acts, so any such acts are illegal. Cock fighting is cruel to the animals involved. Dwarf throwing is presumably only illegal in the case that the dwarf doesn't want to participate---after all, if a guy asks me to throw him across the room, I'm fairly certain I can comply without running afoul of the law. Unlike child pornography, cock fighting, and dwarf throwing, playing GTA:VC is simply a matter of sitting in my living room pushing some buttons.
You employ a classic argument in your tirade against GTA:VC: "violent video games cause violent behavior." Having done research in the primary literature on studies attempting to link violent video games to violent behavior, I can assure you (or, if you'd prefer, provide a bibliography that supports my claims) that there is no conclusive scientific answer to the question of whether violent video games are causally linked to violent behavior. Your anecdotal evidence---the two teens playing a video game and then using real guns to shoot at real people---doesn't pass muster. Finding causality in a case like this is a question of analyzing massive amounts of data, and unfortunately the two Tennessee teens are by themselves statistically insignificant.
Another claim in your article is that an age limit is unenforceable and useless. First of all, I have my doubts that you can substantiate the claim that such a limit is unenforceable, which is presumably why you appeal to the tired litany, "everyone knows it." I can remember quite vividly being refused video games when I was 16 years old, and as far as I know every store at which I have ever purchased video games enforces the age limits. Hell, when I shave I'm still often asked for my ID when purchasing a mature video game.
Your other claim, that the age limit is useless, is a very curious one. Mr. Byron, do you drink alcohol? If not this might be unfamiliar territory, but otherwise consider that once someone in the US turns 21 they suddenly become able to drink alcohol legally. Is this a statement of some intangible quality possessed by those over 21 years of age? Of course not---it's a somewhat arbitrary distinction made in the name of codifying the requirement that those who drink alcohol must be mature enough to handle it. In the same way, requiring those who purchase GTA:VC to be 17 years old is a way of admitting that those under 17 might not be mature enough to handle it---or, at the very least, that it might make their parents uncomfortable. In effect, by rating the game "M for Mature," Rock Star is putting control where it should be---in the hands of people mature enough to make decisions for themselves and/or their children.
Mr. Byron, you actually go so far as to claim that pushing buttons on a controller in response to pixels on a television screen is "10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to that little boy." Well, either everyone has started thinking Jacko is innocent, or you're seriously confused. As far as I can tell, non-consentual sodomy with someone who's under age beats brainless button-mashing hands down. Consider it this way, Mr. Byron:you're in the minority if you'd r
Intellectual property rights arise as a result of laws that specifically give government protection to the creator of an idea or work. In contrast, license terms are a contract between two entities (people, companies, etc.).
If intellectual property laws ceased to exist, the GPL would still be enforceable, since it's a contract. The difference is, without IP laws, I would be able to rely only on contracts to control the distribution of my creations.
The fact is, contracts are a much better way of getting the job done (as evidenced by the fact that almost every piece of software, despite being copyrighted, also comes with a licensing agreement of some sort). Beyond that, the notion of property without scarcity is completely contrary to the economic principles upon which capitalism is built. Why does IP still exist, then? Because it serves the interests of people who can afford to line the pockets of corrupt politicians.
If you'd like to sample some Vinge first, I have True Names on my server. It's available in.ps and.pdf format, as well as in a tarball with.dvi files and images.
You may as well not use Zeners. It's likely that you're going to store voltage between 12 and 24 volts, in which case, switching (dc-dc) converters are more efficient.
Zener regulator setups burn the excess voltage in order to get the proper output; switching converters will (ideally) only use as much power as the load is drawing (of course, it takes a little bit of power to run the switching logic, but that's no big deal). In particular, imagine that you want a 5V supply from a 12V battery, and further that you're drawing 100 mA. If you are using a Zener setup, you'll be pulling a full 1.2 Watts from the battery and only using 500 mW. With a switching power supply, you'll be getting the full 500 mW to the load; the control logic will likely use no more than 50 or 100 mW.
Since storing energy in batteries at higher voltages is more efficient, the payoff is likely to be even greater than this.
A specific and interesting example, from a talk Dennis Richie gave a while ago:
Imagine that you want your compiler to support a "vertical tab" escape, '\v'. When you write the compiler, you'll have some statement somewhere that reads a character and decides what to do with it, and in that statement you'll have something like:
case '\v':
printf(0x0B);
Compile this code, and suddenly your compiler can recognize the vertical tab character. Now, since it can, you can simplify the above code. You modify it to:
case '\v':
printf('\v');
You compile this code with your new compiler, and, because you can recognize the '\v' character escape, everything works. Now you can just replace the original source with the above source and, using your compiler, it will compile. Strangely enough, however, nowhere in the source is it evident that '\v' == 0x0B!
This can be applied in nefarious ways, as well. Let's imagine that I want to install a back door in the 'login' program. I can write the code to give 'login' a backdoor, but a code audit will show that it's there. Instead, I can modify the C compiler so that when it recognizes that it's compiling 'login' it will modify the code to have a backdoor. However, as above, an audit of the C compiler source will show that this is going on.
The solution? I modify the compiler such that when it recognizes that it is compiling a compiler, it adds in the code the recognizes the 'login' binary being compiled and adds a backdoor, and the code the recognizes a compiler and makes it modify compilers in the proper way. Then I compile the new compiler and replace the code with the old, unmodified code.
Now anyone can audit the source code for the compiler and find that it's perfectly clean. If they compile it on the system with the modified compiler, however, their compiler will have both the 'login' backdoor and will make compilers that have the backdoors included. All from clean source.
The moral of the story? It doesn't matter how trusted your source is, you always place an implicit trust in lower level utilities unless you're writing opcodes for the processor directly (and even then, a processor microcode virus isn't so far-fetched that you can completely disregard the risk). That's why your C library and your compiler, while seemingly unrelated to system security, are actually a critical part of your system's integrity.
In its introductory CS course (6.001), MIT uses scheme.
The reason that MIT uses scheme is that it teaches the most important concepts of programming without complex syntax. The point of 6.001 is to teach students how to think about problems recursively, how to approach an iterative process, how to break large problems into smaller ones. These should be the main objectives of any introductory CS class; the particular language used isn't that important as long as it doesn't get in the way of the concepts.
Unfortunately, Java does just that. Its syntax is complex and arguably clumsy; it forces the OOP paradigm (which is, for most things, absolute crap!); it can, for a beginner, turn the easiest task into a fight with the compiler. In essence, it fails the "doesn't impede learning the concepts" litmus test. As such, it's not the right language to use for an introductory course.
Interestingly, the same arguments can (to a lesser extent) be made against C++ as an introductory programming language. Perhaps even ANSI C is too complex syntactically and semantically to be good for people just being introduced to programming concepts. I happen to like programming in C a hell of a lot more than in scheme (as I'm sure most here do), but try to remember the first time you ever wrote a program. Which would you rather write?
A separate issue related to the above is, of course, the procedural vs. functional language argument; that's something else entirely, and enough arguments have already been made on that topic, so I won't expend any more wrist on the subject.:-)
Since you're only planning on spending $1500, it's important to make sure that you don't overspend on your receiver and end up with bad speakers. If you're spending any more than $500 on your receiver, you're spending too much.
For receivers, I'd recommend you look at the following (you can compare their relevant features at Crutchfield.com, even if you plan on buying from somewhere else):
Onkyo TX-DS484
Onkyo TX-DS575X
Sony STR-DE845
Sony STR-DB840
Yamaha HTR-5240
As to speakers, spend as much as you possibly can on them. I'm very serious when I say this---the more you spend, the better they'll sound. Some people recommend Bose, but with only about $1000-$1200 to spend after getting your receiver, you'll get more for your money with other speaker manufacturers, such as Cambridge Soundworks.
Make sure that you buy speakers whose sonic quailties compliment each other. You'll also want to consider whether to get dipole or bipole radiator rear speakers (although Cambridge Soundworks makes at least one set of rears that switches between them---I have them and they're great). I'd recommend the Cambridge Soundworks MovieWorks 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System (or the less expensive MovieWorks II if your budget is constrained).
I'm spending all of your money, but when you watch a movie like The Matrix you'll know where it went. Remember, no matter what you choose, choose a receiver that meets your requirements and then spend everything you can on speakers. If you only spend 50% of your money on speakers you'll be disappointed. 70% is much more appropriate.
The matter swirling towards the black hole forms a disc which is in the plane of the spinning of the black hole (most black holes are thought to spin on an axis much in the way that the earth does). This disc, the accretion disc, is the way in which most suspected black holes are spotted--we can't see the black hole itself, but as the matter around the hole is heated up it releases energy in the form of EM radiation (it "fluoresces").
Sometimes, as in the case of quasars (quasi-stellar objects), the radiation is at the wavelength of visible light, making an object that looks like a star, but is not. In some cases, there are very nifty effects such as jets shooting off of the black hole at the poles. (This particular effect is currently not well-understood, but there are several theories as to the mechanism behind this.)
In addition to the jets shooting off the poles, quasars (and in general very large black holes with large accretion discs) can have enough matter in the accretion disc that the energy that builds up is enough to blow off some of the outer matter. It is thought that small black holes do not exhibit this effect as much because they do not tend to build up large accretion discs, and the matter that does accrete is too close to the hole--that is, under too much gravitational force--to be blown off).
In all of these cases, the black hole still sucks:-); the matter blowing off has not crossed the event horizon (that is, it has not "entered" the black hole yet), so it can still escape the gravitational forces of the black hole given enough energy.
I can't be the only techie out (t)here that manages to work like a maniac and still spend a lot of time with my girlfriend. It's not my sex life that suffers, it's my sleep life that suffers.:-)
In all seriousness, I agree completely with the sentiment that this is a worthless article on a trite topic. It may be entertaining for some (hehe, those geeks aren't getting any), but in general it's non-journalism.
I do know this. If you're working 15+ hours a day 6 days a week, don't go home and check your e-mail. This tends to piss your girlfriend off (or mine, anyway). Spend that hard-earned money on her--it's somehow more satisfying than buying another Palm(tm).
Slashdot Mirror
Conspicuously missing was Chuck Yeager. Why wasn't he invited!? He's the original badass test pilot!
I don't use Windows because trying to configure your system through their abysmally stupid GUIs is like trying to overhaul an automatic transmission with a baby rattle.
Not quite.
Tin foil is tin (Captain Obvious strikes again!), whose permeability is more or less that of free space (mu0 = 4*pi*10^-7 Henries/meter) at any frequency. You get none of the flux concentration effect of iron or some other permeable material. (This effect, by the way, is _very_ similar to the effect that causes refraction of light passing through an air-water boundary---two materials with different permeabilities cause a refraction angle on their boundary. Bigger difference---iron has a permeability 1000ish times that of free space---means an angle forcing the flux closer to parallel to the boundary. In the limit of infinite permeability, no flux can escape into free space.)
The reason that high frequency fields are bucked by metals is because the field induces a current in the metal. Lenz's law says that these currents must be directed such that they generate a magnetic field opposite in direction to the one that creates the current, which in turn reduces the magnitude of the magnetic field.
So if you have a solenoid and you put a conductive cylindrical surface inside it, the field inside the conductive tube must be less than the one outside it.
A good reference on E&M is Electromagnetic Field Theory: A Problem-Solving Approach by Markus Zahn. Everyone should know its entirety by heart; the world would be that much better a place.
Now---finally---sleep, delicious sleep.
Uhhh... Chaotic _GOOD_, not lawful.
Lawful is on the same axis as Chaotic.
{ Lawful, Neutral, Chaotic }
{ Good, Neutral, Evil }
I'm a huge dork.
Judging by some of Hajimiri's "selected works" (for example, "A 24 GHz CMOS Front End"), it appears that they're talking about the carrier frequency, not the data rate. Of course, higher carrier frequency generally implies more bandwidth, but this isn't a wireless 24 Gbps backbone.
Oh, cut the condescension. It's an _effect_ of gravity, not a _form_ of gravity. That's like saying "erosion is a form of wind" when you mean "erosion is an effect of wind."
As far as my comment about shitty pseudoscience, it was referring specifically to that statement. If you'd paid more attention in reading comprehension class you'd have noted that, as I didn't read the rest of the article, I wasn't commenting on same.
So modulate in hardware and demod to baseband in software.
With a simple analog multipler (for example, the Analog Devices AD834) and e.g. a 5 KHz oscillator, you can AM a band-limited (say, DC-500 Hz) signal, put it in your sound card, then do the demod in software (another multiplication will work).
This will cost you, in total, about $5 (you can get free samples of the AD834 and you'll need some resistors, some caps, a couple op-amps, and some wire) and will give you DC-500Hz through your modulator or 20Hz-24KHz without it. Not too shabby, especially compared with $500.
By the way, if you're going to spend $500ish anyway, why not pick up a Tektronix 2445 or 2465 on EBay? The 2465 has 350MHz bandwidth and is, IMHO, one of the nicest all-around scopes out there.
The aircraft, still in development, will be similar to a submarine that changes its buoyancy, a form of gravity, to float on the surface of the sea or cruise 300 ft below it.
Stephen J. Mraz, "Senior Editor," is in need of a severe beating. Since when is buoyancy "a form of gravity?"
I stopped reading there. Nothing bothers me more than shitty pseudoscience.
To: cbyron@nypost.com
:you're in the minority if you'd r
Subject: Vice City
From: me
Mr. Byron,
It was with bewilderment and sadness that I read your article "Give Back Take-Two" [1]. It seems to me that your opinion is that somehow consenting adults looking for entertainment are unfit to choose how they busy themselves. As if they are still children on their mothers' apron-strings, you presume to tell them that Grand Theft Auto: Vice City is somehow bad for them, that playing a video game---pushing buttons and reacting to pixels on their television---is akin to the "glorification of mass murder."
You compare GTA:VC to child pornography, cock fighting, and dwarf throwing. Your comparison falls short, however, because you fail to acknowledge the real reason for banning kiddie porn et al: they _victimize_. A child can't give consent to sexual acts, so any such acts are illegal. Cock fighting is cruel to the animals involved. Dwarf throwing is presumably only illegal in the case that the dwarf doesn't want to participate---after all, if a guy asks me to throw him across the room, I'm fairly certain I can comply without running afoul of the law. Unlike child pornography, cock fighting, and dwarf throwing, playing GTA:VC is simply a matter of sitting in my living room pushing some buttons.
You employ a classic argument in your tirade against GTA:VC: "violent video games cause violent behavior." Having done research in the primary literature on studies attempting to link violent video games to violent behavior, I can assure you (or, if you'd prefer, provide a bibliography that supports my claims) that there is no conclusive scientific answer to the question of whether violent video games are causally linked to violent behavior. Your anecdotal evidence---the two teens playing a video game and then using real guns to shoot at real people---doesn't pass muster. Finding causality in a case like this is a question of analyzing massive amounts of data, and unfortunately the two Tennessee teens are by themselves statistically insignificant.
Another claim in your article is that an age limit is unenforceable and useless. First of all, I have my doubts that you can substantiate the claim that such a limit is unenforceable, which is presumably why you appeal to the tired litany, "everyone knows it." I can remember quite vividly being refused video games when I was 16 years old, and as far as I know every store at which I have ever purchased video games enforces the age limits. Hell, when I shave I'm still often asked for my ID when purchasing a mature video game.
Your other claim, that the age limit is useless, is a very curious one. Mr. Byron, do you drink alcohol? If not this might be unfamiliar territory, but otherwise consider that once someone in the US turns 21 they suddenly become able to drink alcohol legally. Is this a statement of some intangible quality possessed by those over 21 years of age? Of course not---it's a somewhat arbitrary distinction made in the name of codifying the requirement that those who drink alcohol must be mature enough to handle it. In the same way, requiring those who purchase GTA:VC to be 17 years old is a way of admitting that those under 17 might not be mature enough to handle it---or, at the very least, that it might make their parents uncomfortable. In effect, by rating the game "M for Mature," Rock Star is putting control where it should be---in the hands of people mature enough to make decisions for themselves and/or their children.
Mr. Byron, you actually go so far as to claim that pushing buttons on a controller in response to pixels on a television screen is "10,000 times worse than the worst thing anybody thinks Michael Jackson ever did to that little boy." Well, either everyone has started thinking Jacko is innocent, or you're seriously confused. As far as I can tell, non-consentual sodomy with someone who's under age beats brainless button-mashing hands down. Consider it this way, Mr. Byron
You're very confused.
Intellectual property rights arise as a result of laws that specifically give government protection to the creator of an idea or work. In contrast, license terms are a contract between two entities (people, companies, etc.).
If intellectual property laws ceased to exist, the GPL would still be enforceable, since it's a contract. The difference is, without IP laws, I would be able to rely only on contracts to control the distribution of my creations.
The fact is, contracts are a much better way of getting the job done (as evidenced by the fact that almost every piece of software, despite being copyrighted, also comes with a licensing agreement of some sort). Beyond that, the notion of property without scarcity is completely contrary to the economic principles upon which capitalism is built. Why does IP still exist, then? Because it serves the interests of people who can afford to line the pockets of corrupt politicians.
Bastards all.
If you'd like to sample some Vinge first, I have True Names on my server. It's available in .ps and .pdf format, as well as in a tarball with .dvi files and images.
http://positron.jfet.org/pub/truename/
The actual papers are available online.
Part I
Part II
Mirrored:
Part I
Part II
You may as well not use Zeners. It's likely that you're going to store voltage between 12 and 24 volts, in which case, switching (dc-dc) converters are more efficient.
Zener regulator setups burn the excess voltage in order to get the proper output; switching converters will (ideally) only use as much power as the load is drawing (of course, it takes a little bit of power to run the switching logic, but that's no big deal). In particular, imagine that you want a 5V supply from a 12V battery, and further that you're drawing 100 mA. If you are using a Zener setup, you'll be pulling a full 1.2 Watts from the battery and only using 500 mW. With a switching power supply, you'll be getting the full 500 mW to the load; the control logic will likely use no more than 50 or 100 mW.
Since storing energy in batteries at higher voltages is more efficient, the payoff is likely to be even greater than this.
A specific and interesting example, from a talk Dennis Richie gave a while ago:
Imagine that you want your compiler to support a "vertical tab" escape, '\v'. When you write the compiler, you'll have some statement somewhere that reads a character and decides what to do with it, and in that statement you'll have something like:
case '\v':
printf(0x0B);
Compile this code, and suddenly your compiler can recognize the vertical tab character. Now, since it can, you can simplify the above code. You modify it to:
case '\v':
printf('\v');
You compile this code with your new compiler, and, because you can recognize the '\v' character escape, everything works. Now you can just replace the original source with the above source and, using your compiler, it will compile. Strangely enough, however, nowhere in the source is it evident that '\v' == 0x0B!
This can be applied in nefarious ways, as well. Let's imagine that I want to install a back door in the 'login' program. I can write the code to give 'login' a backdoor, but a code audit will show that it's there. Instead, I can modify the C compiler so that when it recognizes that it's compiling 'login' it will modify the code to have a backdoor. However, as above, an audit of the C compiler source will show that this is going on.
The solution? I modify the compiler such that when it recognizes that it is compiling a compiler, it adds in the code the recognizes the 'login' binary being compiled and adds a backdoor, and the code the recognizes a compiler and makes it modify compilers in the proper way. Then I compile the new compiler and replace the code with the old, unmodified code.
Now anyone can audit the source code for the compiler and find that it's perfectly clean. If they compile it on the system with the modified compiler, however, their compiler will have both the 'login' backdoor and will make compilers that have the backdoors included. All from clean source.
The moral of the story? It doesn't matter how trusted your source is, you always place an implicit trust in lower level utilities unless you're writing opcodes for the processor directly (and even then, a processor microcode virus isn't so far-fetched that you can completely disregard the risk). That's why your C library and your compiler, while seemingly unrelated to system security, are actually a critical part of your system's integrity.
In its introductory CS course (6.001), MIT uses scheme.
:-)
The reason that MIT uses scheme is that it teaches the most important concepts of programming without complex syntax. The point of 6.001 is to teach students how to think about problems recursively, how to approach an iterative process, how to break large problems into smaller ones. These should be the main objectives of any introductory CS class; the particular language used isn't that important as long as it doesn't get in the way of the concepts.
Unfortunately, Java does just that. Its syntax is complex and arguably clumsy; it forces the OOP paradigm (which is, for most things, absolute crap!); it can, for a beginner, turn the easiest task into a fight with the compiler. In essence, it fails the "doesn't impede learning the concepts" litmus test. As such, it's not the right language to use for an introductory course.
Interestingly, the same arguments can (to a lesser extent) be made against C++ as an introductory programming language. Perhaps even ANSI C is too complex syntactically and semantically to be good for people just being introduced to programming concepts. I happen to like programming in C a hell of a lot more than in scheme (as I'm sure most here do), but try to remember the first time you ever wrote a program. Which would you rather write?
#include <stdio.h>
void main(void)
{
printf("Hello world!\n");
return;
}
or
(display "Hello world")
A separate issue related to the above is, of course, the procedural vs. functional language argument; that's something else entirely, and enough arguments have already been made on that topic, so I won't expend any more wrist on the subject.
For receivers, I'd recommend you look at the following (you can compare their relevant features at Crutchfield.com, even if you plan on buying from somewhere else):
As to speakers, spend as much as you possibly can on them. I'm very serious when I say this---the more you spend, the better they'll sound. Some people recommend Bose, but with only about $1000-$1200 to spend after getting your receiver, you'll get more for your money with other speaker manufacturers, such as Cambridge Soundworks.
Make sure that you buy speakers whose sonic quailties compliment each other. You'll also want to consider whether to get dipole or bipole radiator rear speakers (although Cambridge Soundworks makes at least one set of rears that switches between them---I have them and they're great). I'd recommend the Cambridge Soundworks MovieWorks 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System (or the less expensive MovieWorks II if your budget is constrained).
I'm spending all of your money, but when you watch a movie like The Matrix you'll know where it went. Remember, no matter what you choose, choose a receiver that meets your requirements and then spend everything you can on speakers. If you only spend 50% of your money on speakers you'll be disappointed. 70% is much more appropriate.
For violinists, anyway, C# and D- are not quite the same thing. D- should be played "flatter" than C# as a matter of style.
Obviously, for pianists this doesn't hold true.
Exactly right.
:-); the matter blowing off has not crossed the event horizon (that is, it has not "entered" the black hole yet), so it can still escape the gravitational forces of the black hole given enough energy.
The matter swirling towards the black hole forms a disc which is in the plane of the spinning of the black hole (most black holes are thought to spin on an axis much in the way that the earth does). This disc, the accretion disc, is the way in which most suspected black holes are spotted--we can't see the black hole itself, but as the matter around the hole is heated up it releases energy in the form of EM radiation (it "fluoresces").
Sometimes, as in the case of quasars (quasi-stellar objects), the radiation is at the wavelength of visible light, making an object that looks like a star, but is not. In some cases, there are very nifty effects such as jets shooting off of the black hole at the poles. (This particular effect is currently not well-understood, but there are several theories as to the mechanism behind this.)
In addition to the jets shooting off the poles, quasars (and in general very large black holes with large accretion discs) can have enough matter in the accretion disc that the energy that builds up is enough to blow off some of the outer matter. It is thought that small black holes do not exhibit this effect as much because they do not tend to build up large accretion discs, and the matter that does accrete is too close to the hole--that is, under too much gravitational force--to be blown off).
In all of these cases, the black hole still sucks
I can't be the only techie out (t)here that manages to work like a maniac and still spend a lot of time with my girlfriend. It's not my sex life that suffers, it's my sleep life that suffers. :-)
In all seriousness, I agree completely with the sentiment that this is a worthless article on a trite topic. It may be entertaining for some (hehe, those geeks aren't getting any), but in general it's non-journalism.
I do know this. If you're working 15+ hours a day 6 days a week, don't go home and check your e-mail. This tends to piss your girlfriend off (or mine, anyway). Spend that hard-earned money on her--it's somehow more satisfying than buying another Palm(tm).
--
Riad Wahby
http://www.phonon.net/