As Newton's fourth law has just the same form as Coulomb's law, we can safely assume that a gravitational field can be calculated just the same way as an electrical field.
You are correct. Knowing that, and the formula involved, it's just simple caclculus. But there is a name for it, I just can't remember it or find it anywhere. Actually, it wasn't a law but a theorem.
(I got my physics degree 10 years ago and have a mind like a sieve...)
If the Sun suddenly disappears (hypothetically), would the Earth continue to hold its orbit for 8 or so minutes
If you believe that gravity obeys the speed of light (I do), yes.
would it go whizzing off into space instantly
If gravity is instantaneous, yes.
Of course, it's not that simple. The sun can't suddenly disappear.
It could explode. Assuming that it forms a sphere with all the mass at the outer edge, the gravity that the Earth feels wouldn't change at all until the mass reached the Earth's orbit, and then it would immediately drop to zero (I forget the law that tells us that the gravity of a spherical body is the same as if all the mass was contained at one point in the center.)
Unfortunately, the mass would come at the Earth at less than the speed of light, so this wouldn't be a good test. That, and it would kill us all, so if you do find a device to make the Sun blow up, I suggest not using it for this.
The Sun could be grabbed away by some massive force -- but the source of this `massive force' (super massive spaceship? God? Galacticus?) would have gravity too, and that would affect us. That, and the Sun couldn't leave at more than the speed of light, so even that's not a good test.
Actually, their usual price for 1 GB drives is a bit more than a dollar, but you can occasionally find one marked for $0.99...
note that I'm being silly;-)
Not really that silly. 1 GB drives are still useful. Actually, what would be really nice would be 10 GB drives for $10. Or even 10 GB notebook drives for $20:)
The comparison is not made to imply that X = Z. The problem is that the consumer has no experience or internal valuation of X.
My `question' was hypothetical -- I know why they do this (it makes their prices seem reasonable) but it's really misleading. They're trying to show how cheap their service is compared to these other `forms of entertainment' -- the problem is that their product isn't comparable to these other things at all.
They charge 6.95 a month (less than the cost of a movie, or 2 video game rentals)
Why must everybody make this sort of silly comparison?
So it's less than the cost of Z. So what? It's not Z, it's not even remotely like Z, so why do we care that it costs less than Z?
Buy this car! At only $25k, it's less than the cost of a super computer or three trips around the world!
When I pay $8 for a movie, I get to watch a movie. If I rent two games, well, I get to play two games for a few days. But when I subscribe to FilePlanet, they let me download files. Fast. Files that I can usually get somewhere else, or can even get from FilePlanet itself but slower.
Now, if these files were only available from FilePlanet, and if they let you play the newest game for a few days or watch a new feature film, the analogy would be good. But they don't. They're promotional trailers, or crippled demos. And I can get them elsewhere for free!
Micropayments would make a lot more sense here, I think. A few cents for the convenience of not having to look somewhere else. But don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that it's less than the cost of a movie.
Okay, no R/C plane near the White House. Preprogrammed flight route, with GPS in case the winds change. Launch it and leave.
The White House is a no-fly area. It also has anti-aircraft guns. They'd either shoot it down, or dispatch a fighter plane to follow it (it would be hard to track a tiny 30 mph plane in a jet, but they'd make do.) I don't know if they could track it on radar, but one way or another, they WOULD track it (or shoot it down.)
Once they got the plane, they'd tear it apart and find clues about who you are. A single fingerprint would probably do it, or maybe a serial number somewhere.
And they'd come and haul you off into a secret jail and violate your constitutional rights, trying to see if you're a terrorist or not. And even if you're not, they may just label you as one anyways, and use that as a pretext to ban/restrict all R/C planes nationwide, in the name of `National Security'.
You're obviously about as smart as this kid. Underestimating how seriously the Secret Service take their job is NOT wise.
Re:Shoe on other Foot?
on
Droning On
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
RC helis and planes over things like area 51, the White House...
I suspect that the MIBs would get you *in seconds* if you flew a R/C plane anywhere near these places.
It's possible to fly a R/C plane using only the view from the camera (and not being able to see the plane) but it's certainly not easy. People have made autopilots for R/C planes (and even tried to fly them across the Atlantic) but there's still many hurdles to overcome.
At least someone could make a hobby of dogfighting the drones...
You're probably already aware of this, but others may not be...
I haven't tried it myself (I usually just fly around and poke holes in the sky) but hope to someday. Need to make a nice slope soaring combat wing and try the `full contact' style at the local slope...
Re:Corporate Freedom of Speech ....
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2
Ok then...
Posted by
michael
on Wednesday January 01, @11:31AM from the no-sense-of-humor dept. tres3 writes "I stumbled across this
(that didn't quite quote correctly. Oh well.)
I went after the bold stuff. A simple enough mistake. Still, I'd suggest changing the format... what's more important -- that michael posted this, or tres3 actually wrote it?
My reading comprehension is fine, when I apply it properly. A better resolution would be to remember to double (and triple) check everything before I make silly mistakes in public. I've made a few so far, and the year is only a few hours old:)
Re:Corporate Freedom of Speech ....
on
Dow vs. Parody
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· Score: 2
Obviously you did, too.
Obviously I did.
Had I just found it by itself, I'd have attributed it to parody (I did mention that it reads like a parody, after all), but the/. story *said* it was from Dow --
What really sent me into orbit was Dow's response to all of this
and I took that at it's word. Perhaps I should have made a New Years Resolution to not take people I don't know at their word, especially when it just looks wrong.
Which makes it a very good parody indeed -- not just from The Yes Men, but also from the user `michael' on Slashdot. He told us that this was from Dow, and since we're all ready (me too) to believe that the mighty Corporation is out to get us, I believed him, even though it was somewhat absurd.
Let's hope that Dow doesn't get *too* sue-happy over this -- now they could go after michael too.
I don't see where the DMCA comes into play here, but there's still plenty of other things that Dow could use to make The Yes Men and michael's life unpleasant.
Corporate Freedom of Speech ....
on
Dow vs. Parody
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
What the reporters have done is perfectly legal, according to other posts here on/.
DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!
Most posters on/. ARE NOT LAWYERS (gasp!) And while they'll certainly say `that's not legal' or `that's legal', and often they're even right, often they don't really know what they're talking about.
Getting legal advice on/. is never a good plan:)
Of course, even a lawyer often doesn't know how a judge is going to rule on something. But at least they're usually in a good position to make an educated guess, and to assign some sort of score to that guess stating how reliable it's likely to be.
Personally, I tend to believe that what the reporters did was and should be legal. (But I'm not a lawyer.) But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking.
and nearly any game produced in 5 weeks certainly qualify no matter how young the industry is.
I doubt that Tetris took Alexey Pazhitnov more than five weeks to write (Tetris history). An incredibly simple game, but it's definately withstood the test of time.
Good games can be written in five weeks, even today. The key is to concentrate on gameplay, and keep it simple.
But it's not even in the same league as the games listed.
Actually, what made Daikatana suck so hard is the incredible hype that preceded it. Even Deus Ex or System Shock 2 (two *excellent* first person single player shooters) couldn't have quite lived up to all the hype.
Had we never heard of Daikatana before, and then it suddenly appeared out of the blue (especially in the bargain game aisle), nobody would be calling it the worst game ever.
Which bizarro universe do you live in? Apple used to use SCSI for almost everything (up until approximately the first Powermacs came out), but now most of their computers are either IDE or Firewire. They do still do some SCSI, but not much -- mostly in their high end machines.
Note that modern IDE drives come pretty close to this. I do consider myself a `SCSI bigot', but I must acknowledge that modern IDE drives do haul much ass. The problem is that they require massive amounts of your system's CPU to do so. SCSI is much nicer to your system -- but much harder to your pocketbook (seems like the price differential lately has been around 5:1 for SCSI vs IDE. Ugh!)
This opens the door to speculation about who would be interested in the data held by a military contractor and what they will do with the information.
Of course, there's another option --
That the thieves had no idea what data was stored on the computer(s), and just wanted to sell the hardware.
Needless to say, Triwest and the miltary have to plan for the worst, and have to assume that the data is actually going to be used for something, rather than just wiped when somebody fdisk's the computers and installs their OS of choice.
Unless the theives knew what they were stealing and stole it for the data (which I imagine would be worth way way way more than the hardware it's installed on -- the military and Triwest certainly will consider it so) and so they destroy the hardware rather than trying to pawn it, they're *very* likely to get caught. The serial numbers are likely to be known, and the police will be looking for them very actively.
And if they don't even bother to wipe the disk (quite common in stolen computers, apparantly), the buyer of the computer may find all this stuff on the computer, and may have heard of this story, and will call the police...
And if they do catch somebody, that guy is going to get hit with a lot more than just a simple burglary rap. He'll probably be lucky if they don't classify him as a terrorist (with all the civil rights violations that go along with that)... even if he's just a simple (but stupid!) burglar...
I used to do this too, but my `computer of choice' to mess with was the TI 99/4a. They usually had a speech synthesizer module connected to them.
Back then I'd enter in a short program to make it wait for a few minutes (for i = 1 to 10000 ; next) and then start spouting (saying out loud, not to the screen) obscenities.
The local grocery store (Carrs -- still there, but now owned by Safeway, blech!) had one for a demo (I guess they sold a few of them.) The people often didn't even know how to shut it off (and weren't smart enough to turn off the TV it was connected to,) which made it even more fun.
Ok, so it was immature. But to a 10 or so year old, it was great fun!
Darn, there's hasn't been a 7200 rpm SCSI drive for a couple of years now...
I only have to provide one example to prove you wrong, but here's a bunch for you. Some of these drives are older than two years old, but many are not.
Note that for backup use, you don't need a 15k drive. In fact, 3.6k would probably be just fine. Remember, this article is about the feasability of using hard drives as backup media -- after all, you can buy 120GB IDE drives for half as much as you could buy 120GB of DLT media (nevermind the drive itself!)
I definately prefer SCSI drives -- not because they're `so much more reliable' (they're not) and not because they're `so much faster' (they're not, not anymore) but because the interface is so much more efficient. My computer doesn't grind to a halt while accessing the SCSI drives like it does with the IDE drives.
As far as this article goes, I think that buying large IDE drives for backups is a reasonable plan, as long as you understand the limitations -- the drives (IDE or SCSI, high-end or low-end, it doesn't matter) may not spin back up after 10 or 20 years of sitting in a box, and you have have a hard time finding a computer that can even read it.
Consider if backups had been made like this 15 years ago. Do you have a computer that can read MFM hard drives? You may have a MFM controller sitting in the garage, but there's many possible problems --
It's probably ISA (maybe even 8 bit!) Does your computer even have an ISA slot anymore?
Does your OS support it?
Does the controller even work? If you were nice to it, it's in an anti-static bag, but there's a good chance you weren't.
Do you have cables for it?
Do you remember the needed jumper settings?
etc.
Yes, you could probably read from the drive -- assuming that it still works. But it would be a lot of work -- and let's hope you don't destroy/erase the drive through a mistake.
Note that this problem is not restricted to reading old hard drives -- old tapes have this sort of problem too. Finding a tape drive to read a 9 track tape is quite difficult nowadays, and while you can pay people to do it for you, they're going to charge you a lot. DAT and 8mm drives aren't so rare, but what's the block size? Was it variable or fixed? Was compression enabled? (does your drive even support it?) Was it stored in tar, bru, cpio or dump format? (if it's dump, dump from which OS?) Even worse, it may be in some proprietary backup program format -- made by a company that disappeared ten years ago!
And let's suppose you can read all your data, and you now have it on the hard drive on your modern computer. The data is 15 years old -- what's going to read it? What's a.pic file?.fli? This.tif file doesn't seem readable by anything today!.gif -- was pretty new back then, but we can still read it today.
Again, this problem isn't restricted to any one form of backup. So far, the only form of archival that has truly lasted the test of time has been data printed on paper. Microfiche and similar things have lasted a long time, but have yet to be tested for hundreds of years. But so far, with computers, even 30 years is a very long time to go back.
But for your normal backups (oops! I just deleted all my data!) using IDE hard drives instead of a tape drive isn't so bad, as long as you treat them like tapes (keep a few generations, keep offsite backups, etc.) and don't expect them to last more than a few years at most.
Slashdot Mirror
(I got my physics degree 10 years ago and have a mind like a sieve ...)
Of course, it's not that simple. The sun can't suddenly disappear.
It could explode. Assuming that it forms a sphere with all the mass at the outer edge, the gravity that the Earth feels wouldn't change at all until the mass reached the Earth's orbit, and then it would immediately drop to zero (I forget the law that tells us that the gravity of a spherical body is the same as if all the mass was contained at one point in the center.)
Unfortunately, the mass would come at the Earth at less than the speed of light, so this wouldn't be a good test. That, and it would kill us all, so if you do find a device to make the Sun blow up, I suggest not using it for this.
The Sun could be grabbed away by some massive force -- but the source of this `massive force' (super massive spaceship? God? Galacticus?) would have gravity too, and that would affect us. That, and the Sun couldn't leave at more than the speed of light, so even that's not a good test.
It's not easy to measure this :)
Still, I wonder how many people can have the `distinction' of having to call a locksmith when their Linux box crashes :)
Actually, their usual price for 1 GB drives is a bit more than a dollar, but you can occasionally find one marked for $0.99 ...
Not really that silly. 1 GB drives are still useful. Actually, what would be really nice would be 10 GB drives for $10. Or even 10 GB notebook drives for $20Sorry, accidently moderated this post `overrated' when I meant to make it `funny'. Hopefully this post will un-do my vote ...
So it's less than the cost of Z. So what? It's not Z, it's not even remotely like Z, so why do we care that it costs less than Z?
Buy this car! At only $25k, it's less than the cost of a super computer or three trips around the world!
When I pay $8 for a movie, I get to watch a movie. If I rent two games, well, I get to play two games for a few days. But when I subscribe to FilePlanet, they let me download files. Fast. Files that I can usually get somewhere else, or can even get from FilePlanet itself but slower.
Now, if these files were only available from FilePlanet, and if they let you play the newest game for a few days or watch a new feature film, the analogy would be good. But they don't. They're promotional trailers, or crippled demos. And I can get them elsewhere for free!
Micropayments would make a lot more sense here, I think. A few cents for the convenience of not having to look somewhere else. But don't insult my intelligence by suggesting that it's less than the cost of a movie.
Once they got the plane, they'd tear it apart and find clues about who you are. A single fingerprint would probably do it, or maybe a serial number somewhere.
And they'd come and haul you off into a secret jail and violate your constitutional rights, trying to see if you're a terrorist or not. And even if you're not, they may just label you as one anyways, and use that as a pretext to ban/restrict all R/C planes nationwide, in the name of `National Security'.
You're obviously about as smart as this kid. Underestimating how seriously the Secret Service take their job is NOT wise.
It's possible to fly a R/C plane using only the view from the camera (and not being able to see the plane) but it's certainly not easy. People have made autopilots for R/C planes (and even tried to fly them across the Atlantic) but there's still many hurdles to overcome.
You're probably already aware of this, but others may not bePeople do that now with R/C planes. Either they shoot beams of light at the other plane or they try to cut a ribbon trailing from the other plane, or they'll even deliberately ram your plane and try to make it crash.
I haven't tried it myself (I usually just fly around and poke holes in the sky) but hope to someday. Need to make a nice slope soaring combat wing and try the `full contact' style at the local slope ...
I went after the bold stuff. A simple enough mistake. Still, I'd suggest changing the format ... what's more important -- that michael posted this, or tres3 actually wrote it?
My reading comprehension is fine, when I apply it properly. A better resolution would be to remember to double (and triple) check everything before I make silly mistakes in public. I've made a few so far, and the year is only a few hours old :)
Had I just found it by itself, I'd have attributed it to parody (I did mention that it reads like a parody, after all), but the /. story *said* it was from Dow --
and I took that at it's word. Perhaps I should have made a New Years Resolution to not take people I don't know at their word, especially when it just looks wrong.Which makes it a very good parody indeed -- not just from The Yes Men, but also from the user `michael' on Slashdot. He told us that this was from Dow, and since we're all ready (me too) to believe that the mighty Corporation is out to get us, I believed him, even though it was somewhat absurd.
Let's hope that Dow doesn't get *too* sue-happy over this -- now they could go after michael too.
I don't see where the DMCA comes into play here, but there's still plenty of other things that Dow could use to make The Yes Men and michael's life unpleasant.
Yet according to Dow's press release, Corporate Freedom of Speech is one of our most precious Freedoms.
Obviously it's one of those freedoms that nobody except Dow talks about. (In fact, many of the google links are about Dow.)
Of course, the troubling part is that obviously it's more important than `generic' Freedom of Speech. At least according to Dow.
Their press release alone reads like a parody. I really hope it is. And if it's not, I hope they get spanked hard for it.
Most posters on /. ARE NOT LAWYERS (gasp!) And while they'll certainly say `that's not legal' or `that's legal', and often they're even right, often they don't really know what they're talking about.
Getting legal advice on /. is never a good plan :)
Of course, even a lawyer often doesn't know how a judge is going to rule on something. But at least they're usually in a good position to make an educated guess, and to assign some sort of score to that guess stating how reliable it's likely to be.
Personally, I tend to believe that what the reporters did was and should be legal. (But I'm not a lawyer.) But if they were to do it weekly, they could probably be arrested for stalking.
I heard that `Dune' before it was an adventure game. May have to try and find it sometime ...
Dune 2000 was mediocre -- Red Alert in the desert.
Emperor of Dune was reasonably good -- not great, but not bad either.
I guess Dune just lends itself really well to RTS games :)
It seemed to have promise (an intelligent sword! Woohoo!), but once you started playing it, it was *awful*.
The English translation was *awful*. It's like they used Bablefish to translate from German to Spanish, then back to German, then to English.
Bad translations in games are certainly nothing new -- but this was exceptionally bad.
The games we're discussing are truly awful :)
It was ok. Not great, but ok. I've no idea what you're talking about here. Of course, Descent `outside' isn't Descent anymore. It's Tie-Fighter or Crimson Skies(Yes, I know that Descent 3 lets you go outside for a bit, and that Descent Freespace and DF2 were *excellent* games.)
Hmm, didn't Microsoft have a rail-shooter where you were underwater? I always hated rail-shooters -- but I remember it being very pretty.Good games can be written in five weeks, even today. The key is to concentrate on gameplay, and keep it simple.
But it's not even in the same league as the games listed.
Actually, what made Daikatana suck so hard is the incredible hype that preceded it. Even Deus Ex or System Shock 2 (two *excellent* first person single player shooters) couldn't have quite lived up to all the hype.
Had we never heard of Daikatana before, and then it suddenly appeared out of the blue (especially in the bargain game aisle), nobody would be calling it the worst game ever.
And my Adaptec 29160 only cost me about $100 :)
Examples:
G4 Powerbook - IDE. ...
Power Mac G4 - IDE, but they say you can add a SCSI card
And those are their highest end non-server systems, which I found by going to http://www.apple.com and clicking on the pretty pictures ...
The spec sheet says 49-75 MB/s sustained transfers -- which is still really fast, but not as fast as you quoted.
The spec sheet is here.
Note that modern IDE drives come pretty close to this. I do consider myself a `SCSI bigot', but I must acknowledge that modern IDE drives do haul much ass. The problem is that they require massive amounts of your system's CPU to do so. SCSI is much nicer to your system -- but much harder to your pocketbook (seems like the price differential lately has been around 5:1 for SCSI vs IDE. Ugh!)
That the thieves had no idea what data was stored on the computer(s), and just wanted to sell the hardware.
Needless to say, Triwest and the miltary have to plan for the worst, and have to assume that the data is actually going to be used for something, rather than just wiped when somebody fdisk's the computers and installs their OS of choice.
Unless the theives knew what they were stealing and stole it for the data (which I imagine would be worth way way way more than the hardware it's installed on -- the military and Triwest certainly will consider it so) and so they destroy the hardware rather than trying to pawn it, they're *very* likely to get caught. The serial numbers are likely to be known, and the police will be looking for them very actively.
And if they don't even bother to wipe the disk (quite common in stolen computers, apparantly), the buyer of the computer may find all this stuff on the computer, and may have heard of this story, and will call the police ...
And if they do catch somebody, that guy is going to get hit with a lot more than just a simple burglary rap. He'll probably be lucky if they don't classify him as a terrorist (with all the civil rights violations that go along with that) ... even if he's just a simple (but stupid!) burglar ...
You needed 6 MB for it to really perform well.
(I haven't used OS/2 since 2.1, so I don't know about later versions, and nobody really seemed to use the pre 2.0 versions :) )
Back then I'd enter in a short program to make it wait for a few minutes (for i = 1 to 10000 ; next) and then start spouting (saying out loud, not to the screen) obscenities.
The local grocery store (Carrs -- still there, but now owned by Safeway, blech!) had one for a demo (I guess they sold a few of them.) The people often didn't even know how to shut it off (and weren't smart enough to turn off the TV it was connected to,) which made it even more fun.
Ok, so it was immature. But to a 10 or so year old, it was great fun!
More on the TI 99/4A here.
I also used to go to the hardware store, and put batteries in the motion alarms, and set them to go off when somebody walked by.
(In reterospect, I was an annoying little sh*t!)
Note that for backup use, you don't need a 15k drive. In fact, 3.6k would probably be just fine. Remember, this article is about the feasability of using hard drives as backup media -- after all, you can buy 120GB IDE drives for half as much as you could buy 120GB of DLT media (nevermind the drive itself!)
I definately prefer SCSI drives -- not because they're `so much more reliable' (they're not) and not because they're `so much faster' (they're not, not anymore) but because the interface is so much more efficient. My computer doesn't grind to a halt while accessing the SCSI drives like it does with the IDE drives.
As far as this article goes, I think that buying large IDE drives for backups is a reasonable plan, as long as you understand the limitations -- the drives (IDE or SCSI, high-end or low-end, it doesn't matter) may not spin back up after 10 or 20 years of sitting in a box, and you have have a hard time finding a computer that can even read it.
Consider if backups had been made like this 15 years ago. Do you have a computer that can read MFM hard drives? You may have a MFM controller sitting in the garage, but there's many possible problems --
It's probably ISA (maybe even 8 bit!) Does your computer even have an ISA slot anymore?
Does your OS support it?
Does the controller even work? If you were nice to it, it's in an anti-static bag, but there's a good chance you weren't.
Do you have cables for it?
Do you remember the needed jumper settings?
etc.
Yes, you could probably read from the drive -- assuming that it still works. But it would be a lot of work -- and let's hope you don't destroy/erase the drive through a mistake.
Note that this problem is not restricted to reading old hard drives -- old tapes have this sort of problem too. Finding a tape drive to read a 9 track tape is quite difficult nowadays, and while you can pay people to do it for you, they're going to charge you a lot. DAT and 8mm drives aren't so rare, but what's the block size? Was it variable or fixed? Was compression enabled? (does your drive even support it?) Was it stored in tar, bru, cpio or dump format? (if it's dump, dump from which OS?) Even worse, it may be in some proprietary backup program format -- made by a company that disappeared ten years ago!
And let's suppose you can read all your data, and you now have it on the hard drive on your modern computer. The data is 15 years old -- what's going to read it? What's a .pic file? .fli? This .tif file doesn't seem readable by anything today! .gif -- was pretty new back then, but we can still read it today.
Again, this problem isn't restricted to any one form of backup. So far, the only form of archival that has truly lasted the test of time has been data printed on paper. Microfiche and similar things have lasted a long time, but have yet to be tested for hundreds of years. But so far, with computers, even 30 years is a very long time to go back.
But for your normal backups (oops! I just deleted all my data!) using IDE hard drives instead of a tape drive isn't so bad, as long as you treat them like tapes (keep a few generations, keep offsite backups, etc.) and don't expect them to last more than a few years at most.