My officemate pointed me to a paper the other day where the authors (Distler, Grinstein, and Rothstein) were saying it might be possible to falsify strig theory with WW and ZZ scattering measurements (although they don't talk specifically about these measurements at LHC). The paper is on lanl.gov and the reference is hep-ph/0604255. I'm not a theorist, but it looks to me like the basic argument is that if there is no light higgs, and certain bounds on the WW and ZZ cross-sections are not satisfied, then the S-matrix is either non-analytic, non-unitary, or not Lorentz invariant at some scale. And the authors say that since string theory is constructed to satisfy these assumptions at all scales, it would be invalidated if one of them were not correct.
But I do find it rather amusing that you'd have to give up something like Lorentz invariance or unitarity to disprove string theory.
I was always told the sheep are natural lawn mowers.
I've heard this theory too (I think it comes from a Wired article), but it doesn't really make economic sense - you'd need buildings to house the sheep, food for them to eat over winter, somebody to take care of them, etc. And besides, CERN has real (i.e. mechanical) lawnmowers too. Moreover, there are certain areas, like the hill in front of Restaurant 2, which appear to be reserved for sheep-grazing because they are fenced off and the mechanical lawnmowers don't mow there very often.
On top of that, grazing sheep don't actually do a really good job mowing lawns - some grass does get eaten, and more gets flattened when the sheep lay down, but an awful lot of the grass just gets really long and the area doesn't look well-maintained at all until the mechanical lawnmowers come do their thing (which they do every once in a while, even in the sheep-grazing areas).
For what it's worth, I still think the king-granting-permanent-grazing-rights theory fits the data the best.:)
And if you wonder about the sheep on the CERN grounds, they are living dosimeters.
Are you sure about this? I'm actually kind of curious, because CERN is not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to see a bunch of sheep grazing. The story I've heard (quite possibly an urban legend of sorts) is that back in the day, some king decided that a certain family would have permanent grazing rights to the land that CERN would eventually be built on, and when CERN was built, the organization had to respect those grazing rights.
After some cursory googling, I was unable to find any webpage that substantiates this story, but it does seem that the sheep are privately owned. (This webpage briefly mentions the "privately owned sheep" at CERN.) If you (or anybody else) can point me to an authoritative explaination of the sheep, I'd appreciate it...:)
To be honest, I find the "living dosimeters" explaination a little hard to believe on a number of levels. The sheep aren't always in the same place (I see them only sporadically on the hill in front of Restauant 2), they're privately owned, and besides, how do you get a good measurement of radiation levels out of a bunch of sheep?:)
...control the "depth" of your mouse pointer in the desktop just using a standard mouse with a scrollwheel...
Yeah, I've seen one or two people mention ideas like this. It makes sense, because what else are you going to do? Personally, though, I think the idea of using a mouse's scroll wheel to control the z-position would be hard to get used to. Imagine trying to control the pointer on your ordinary 2-d desktop using an Etch-a-sketch style interface. You can do it, but it's not so intuitive for everybody because spinning a wheel doesn't map very well to moving something in a linear direction. (Granted, it's not hard to use a scroll wheel to scroll down a webpage, but I don't see how this is the same thing. There, you're moving your finger in the y-direction in order to make the page move in the y-direction.)
It's not so obvious to me how a mouse-like device could operate really effectively in a 3-d environment, and I have trouble imagining a world where everybody uses contraptions like nintendo's old "power glove" to interact with their computers. IMHO, before 3-d environments can really offer any meaningful functionality over the usual 2-d desktop (eye candy excluded, of course), some more thought will have to go into input devices.
That having been said, kudos to the Sun people. They seem to have had some reasonably cool ideas and made some nice eye candy.
After all, everything from your son's shoplifting to the destruction of the towers at the World Trade Center could have been prevented if we had less of an ability to do things in secret.
Would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on this? In particular, what do you mean by 'secret'? Secret from who - the government or the public, or both? And how would you change the average person's right to privacy in order to prevent bad things from happening?
One of the things that worries me about certain measures to increase security at the cost of privacy is that such measures sometimes hamper other important rights, such as the right to free speech, or the right to peaceably assemble. Although I am not aware of any anti-privacy measures that explicitly negate any of these rights, it's not too hard to imagine situations where people might choose not to exercise their rights for fear of what law enforcement officials or angry mobs might do; in such situations, you might as well not have the right to free speech at all. Especially during periods where certain opinions are unpopular, it is important to have strong protections of privacy because the ability to communicate ideas to trusted friends (and in so doing, refine & strengthen your arguments) without fear of being targetted by public/government scrutiny is (IMHO) a very important part of the democratic process.
Any references I can read? astro-ph will do fine...:-)
I think he's talking about an anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft of around 8.5x10^-8 cm/s^2 that was first reported several years ago. As far as I can tell, whether or not this effect can be explained by conventional sources is still a subject of some debate. I'm not an expert on the literature, but some references that talk abut the issue are J.D.Anderson et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81,2858(1998) and L.K. Scheffer, Phys. Rev. D 67,084021(2003). These articles provide some estimates of the size of the anomalous acceleration and some attempts at explaining it using conventional physics. A quick search on lanl turns up, for example, this paper along with numerous others.
It seems strange to expect a right to privacy in a public facility.
Well, yes and no - some phone booths (especially older ones) have doors for a reason, no?:) I realize that not everybody sees eye-to-eye on this issue, but my feeling is that privacy, and the sense of security that can come with it, is essential to the functioning of freedom of speech. It's important to be able to exchange ideas with trusted friends without having to worry about what other people would think. It's important to be able to post anonymously to a discussion forum and know that you won't be placed on some 'suspicious persons' list because you made the post from a library computer that was being monitored by the FBI as a part of some investigation that has nothing to do with you. It's important to be able to go to an internet cafe and (provided you're not already the subject of an investigation) write an email that says you think the US needs a new government because privacy, even in a public library's computer room, is a tangible guarantee that you won't be judged (in the criminal sense) for exercising your constitutional right to free speech. Of course, there ought to be sensible limits to a person's right to privacy, but my point here is that it's just as important to avoid overwhelmingly strong government surveillance as it is to avoid the opposite extreme, where the government is so totally paralyzed that it can't do anything.
Terrorist were using cell phones to avoid the FBI, when the FBI or other agency would get a wiretap on one of the numbers the suspect would just get a new cell phone, the government is just trying to keep up with technology and the tactics of the enemy.
Yes, this is a good point; roving wiretaps may be able to save lives, so in principle they are a good idea. What bothers me, however, is that (as far as I can tell) there aren't really any new checks to make sure that the government doesn't abuse its new power. It's my feeling that, any time the government's power is augmented, it's critical that somebody sits down and thinks through *exactly* what purpose the new power should serve, how such power might be abused, and what measures need to be taken to prevent such abuse. That simply didn't happen in the case of the patriot act; it was rushed through congress so fast that many lawmakers didn't even read it.
Most people would probably agree with the statement that law enforcement should only collect information about people when they have probable cause to suspect that person is guilty of a crime. Lots of red tape exists to prevent this rule of thumb from being violated, but thanks to the patriot act, a fair amount of that red tape has been cleared away. I guess what it boils down to is this: How much do you trust law enforcement agencies? If there were no mechanism to force them to comply with the stipulation that no probable cause means no investigation, do you think that they would follow that rule anyways? I know that this is a (very) old cliche, and I apologize for using it here, but power corrupts. Even if you do trust the current administration, if there aren't strong mechanisms in place to protect people's rights, then it's just a matter of time until some greasy little troll works his way into a position of authority and starts using his power to push people he doesn't like around.
AC's post some of the most intelligent things on this site
You mean like this? As you've noted, the moderation system is not exactly perfect...useless comments like the one in the link don't always get modded down, but they rarely get modded up. Yes, I'm sure I miss a fair amount of intelligent discussion by not always reading everything that gets posted to every article, but hey, that's life - there's no sense getting bent out of shape about something like this because (as far as I can tell), it's unavoidable to some extent.
Second of all, the post was already modded to 1 when he replied.
Sorry, didn't notice. My bad.
Finally, aren't you the guy I got pissed at in the first place?
Well, yes, but I'm starting to get the impression that this distinction doesn't uniquely identify me....
If you want to post why not do the research first? That's what google is for.
Because knowing about google does not make one an expert about privacy law in the US - it's very hard to get a really complete picture of something as complex as that by just googling for it. One could go and find out how wiretapping was handled in the past, but to do a really good job of it is a lot more work than is warranted by a silly slashdot post - my feeling is that to do it really well you'd need to be a lawyer. (I'm not, are you?)
I mean, come on, man, I can play the google game too. A few short minutes googling&reading will show that the fight over citizens' rights to privacy goes back much farther than the 1968 act of congress that you mentioned in one of your earlier posts. It goes back at least as far as 1928, when the US supreme court considered the case of Olmstead v. United States, which dealt with a bootlegger who was convicted based (at least in part) on wiretap information. So I found an earlier link, does that mean I win? Of course not - First of all, Olmstead v. United States was overturned by Katz v. United States in 1967, but in my mind theres a bigger issue at stake here: it doesn't matter. I'm under the impression that the patriot act is a little bit more relevant than something that happened in 1928 or even earlier because it's new. We are probably still just starting to feel its effects, and it is new enough and not-well-established enough that people can still argue against it and have some hope that it will be overturned by the Supreme Court or some future act of Congress. So apart from the fact that it's clearly good to have a solid understanding of the history of an issue, why should I bother digging up links to information that is (in some ways) beside the point?
How is it that people post without reading all of the posts in the thread ahead of them.
That's easy - when you post anonymously, you post with a default score of 0. By default, people reading the page usually don't see your post unless they click on the "n replies beneath your current threshold" link. You can get around this to some extent by getting an account and logging in - If you do that, then the default is to post with a score of 1, which makes it more likely to be seen by readers. Check the FAQ for more details.
You're right, the FBI did already have the right to do wiretapping, and as you point out, the PATRIOT act does expand that ability from wiretapping one line to "roving wiretaps," as outlined in section 206 (I think - if I'm wrong about this I'm sure someone will correct me). However, as the epic webpage points out:
Such "generic" orders could have a significant impact on the privacy rights of large numbers of innocent users, particularly those who access the Internet through public facilities such as libraries, university computer labs and cybercafes. Upon the suspicion that an intelligence target might use such a facility, the FBI can now monitor all communications transmitted at the facility. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the recipient of the assistance order (for instance, a library) would be prohibited from disclosing the fact that monitoring is occurring.
The "generic" roving wiretap orders raise significant constitutional issues, as they do not comport with the Fourth Amendment's requirement that any search warrant "particularly describe the place to be searched." That deficiency becomes even more significant where the private communications of law-abiding American citizens might be intercepted incidentally.
Of course (note the sarcasm here), all this should be obvious to any fool who reads the text of section 206:
Section 105(c)(2)(B) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(2)(B)) is amended by inserting `, or in circumstances where the Court finds that the actions of the target of the application may have the effect of thwarting the identification of a specified person, such other persons,' after `specified person'.
And to think that some people find the American legal system a baffling black box:)
for god's sake make it so we dont have to log in each time we turn it on.
What are you running? Under redhat 7.2 +gnome, (yes, I know RH7.2 is old) you just go to the gnome icon on the panel and click programs->system->GDM configurator. Enter the root password and click on the automatic login tab. Check the box that says "Login a user on first bootup" and enter the username in the text window. I wouldn't expect it to be much harder than this in other environments, but who knows...at any rate, if your distribution's website doesn't have any documentation, maybe you'd be better off with some other distribution...?:)
-Bill
(disclaimer: I haven't tried this procedure; I guess I just like entering my password when I log in or something)
What about Mame and http://www.classicgaming.com ? That's pretty free...
true, but I think that the sales pitch here is that it's legal to buy roms from StarRoms.
Now personally, I think that it *should* be legal to get old roms from classicgaming.com, but unless they've signed some sort of royalty agreement with atari (or whoever) they probably won't be able to legally distribute that Asteroids rom for another 99 years (+ life of author) at least. But then again, I'm not a lawer...
Isn't this the experiment which some say could end the world by creating a black hole?
Well, some people say this, but they don't really know what they're talking about. (I seem to recall some people saying that RHIC would be the downfall of all human civilization, by the way, yet we're still here.) Black holes decay via Hawking radiation. The smaller they are, the faster they decay, and the ones that might be produced at LHC would be mighty small. (...if they could even be produced at all, which is sort of doubtful in my mind) They would decay long before they even reached the inner wall of the detector.
I think that in general, it's a good idea to be sceptical about end-of-the-world scenarios like this. If it were possible to destroy the world by smashing particles together, it would have happened long before humans ever existed - Earth is continuously bombarded by cosmic rays that have **much** higher energies than anything we could ever hope to create in a lab. Any kind of strangelet, black hole, or whatever that could ever be produced in an accelerator has been produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. So don't worry about this sort of thing.
Slashdot Mirror
My officemate pointed me to a paper the other day where the authors (Distler, Grinstein, and Rothstein) were saying it might be possible to falsify strig theory with WW and ZZ scattering measurements (although they don't talk specifically about these measurements at LHC). The paper is on lanl.gov and the reference is hep-ph/0604255. I'm not a theorist, but it looks to me like the basic argument is that if there is no light higgs, and certain bounds on the WW and ZZ cross-sections are not satisfied, then the S-matrix is either non-analytic, non-unitary, or not Lorentz invariant at some scale. And the authors say that since string theory is constructed to satisfy these assumptions at all scales, it would be invalidated if one of them were not correct.
But I do find it rather amusing that you'd have to give up something like Lorentz invariance or unitarity to disprove string theory.
I've heard this theory too (I think it comes from a Wired article), but it doesn't really make economic sense - you'd need buildings to house the sheep, food for them to eat over winter, somebody to take care of them, etc. And besides, CERN has real (i.e. mechanical) lawnmowers too. Moreover, there are certain areas, like the hill in front of Restaurant 2, which appear to be reserved for sheep-grazing because they are fenced off and the mechanical lawnmowers don't mow there very often. On top of that, grazing sheep don't actually do a really good job mowing lawns - some grass does get eaten, and more gets flattened when the sheep lay down, but an awful lot of the grass just gets really long and the area doesn't look well-maintained at all until the mechanical lawnmowers come do their thing (which they do every once in a while, even in the sheep-grazing areas).
For what it's worth, I still think the king-granting-permanent-grazing-rights theory fits the data the best. :)
And if you wonder about the sheep on the CERN grounds, they are living dosimeters.
:)
:)
Are you sure about this? I'm actually kind of curious, because CERN is not exactly the kind of place you'd expect to see a bunch of sheep grazing. The story I've heard (quite possibly an urban legend of sorts) is that back in the day, some king decided that a certain family would have permanent grazing rights to the land that CERN would eventually be built on, and when CERN was built, the organization had to respect those grazing rights.
After some cursory googling, I was unable to find any webpage that substantiates this story, but it does seem that the sheep are privately owned. (This webpage briefly mentions the "privately owned sheep" at CERN.) If you (or anybody else) can point me to an authoritative explaination of the sheep, I'd appreciate it...
To be honest, I find the "living dosimeters" explaination a little hard to believe on a number of levels. The sheep aren't always in the same place (I see them only sporadically on the hill in front of Restauant 2), they're privately owned, and besides, how do you get a good measurement of radiation levels out of a bunch of sheep?
Yeah, I've seen one or two people mention ideas like this. It makes sense, because what else are you going to do? Personally, though, I think the idea of using a mouse's scroll wheel to control the z-position would be hard to get used to. Imagine trying to control the pointer on your ordinary 2-d desktop using an Etch-a-sketch style interface. You can do it, but it's not so intuitive for everybody because spinning a wheel doesn't map very well to moving something in a linear direction. (Granted, it's not hard to use a scroll wheel to scroll down a webpage, but I don't see how this is the same thing. There, you're moving your finger in the y-direction in order to make the page move in the y-direction.)
It's not so obvious to me how a mouse-like device could operate really effectively in a 3-d environment, and I have trouble imagining a world where everybody uses contraptions like nintendo's old "power glove" to interact with their computers. IMHO, before 3-d environments can really offer any meaningful functionality over the usual 2-d desktop (eye candy excluded, of course), some more thought will have to go into input devices.
That having been said, kudos to the Sun people. They seem to have had some reasonably cool ideas and made some nice eye candy.
Would you be willing to elaborate a little bit on this? In particular, what do you mean by 'secret'? Secret from who - the government or the public, or both? And how would you change the average person's right to privacy in order to prevent bad things from happening?
One of the things that worries me about certain measures to increase security at the cost of privacy is that such measures sometimes hamper other important rights, such as the right to free speech, or the right to peaceably assemble. Although I am not aware of any anti-privacy measures that explicitly negate any of these rights, it's not too hard to imagine situations where people might choose not to exercise their rights for fear of what law enforcement officials or angry mobs might do; in such situations, you might as well not have the right to free speech at all. Especially during periods where certain opinions are unpopular, it is important to have strong protections of privacy because the ability to communicate ideas to trusted friends (and in so doing, refine & strengthen your arguments) without fear of being targetted by public/government scrutiny is (IMHO) a very important part of the democratic process.
It appears that every time Spirit tries to load the software it encounters a problem and then tries to re-boot
I think he's talking about an anomalous acceleration of the Pioneer spacecraft of around 8.5x10^-8 cm/s^2 that was first reported several years ago. As far as I can tell, whether or not this effect can be explained by conventional sources is still a subject of some debate. I'm not an expert on the literature, but some references that talk abut the issue are J.D.Anderson et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 81,2858(1998) and L.K. Scheffer, Phys. Rev. D 67,084021(2003). These articles provide some estimates of the size of the anomalous acceleration and some attempts at explaining it using conventional physics. A quick search on lanl turns up, for example, this paper along with numerous others.
Well, yes and no - some phone booths (especially older ones) have doors for a reason, no? :) I realize that not everybody sees eye-to-eye on this issue, but my feeling is that privacy, and the sense of security that can come with it, is essential to the functioning of freedom of speech. It's important to be able to exchange ideas with trusted friends without having to worry about what other people would think. It's important to be able to post anonymously to a discussion forum and know that you won't be placed on some 'suspicious persons' list because you made the post from a library computer that was being monitored by the FBI as a part of some investigation that has nothing to do with you. It's important to be able to go to an internet cafe and (provided you're not already the subject of an investigation) write an email that says you think the US needs a new government because privacy, even in a public library's computer room, is a tangible guarantee that you won't be judged (in the criminal sense) for exercising your constitutional right to free speech. Of course, there ought to be sensible limits to a person's right to privacy, but my point here is that it's just as important to avoid overwhelmingly strong government surveillance as it is to avoid the opposite extreme, where the government is so totally paralyzed that it can't do anything.
Terrorist were using cell phones to avoid the FBI, when the FBI or other agency would get a wiretap on one of the numbers the suspect would just get a new cell phone, the government is just trying to keep up with technology and the tactics of the enemy.
Yes, this is a good point; roving wiretaps may be able to save lives, so in principle they are a good idea. What bothers me, however, is that (as far as I can tell) there aren't really any new checks to make sure that the government doesn't abuse its new power. It's my feeling that, any time the government's power is augmented, it's critical that somebody sits down and thinks through *exactly* what purpose the new power should serve, how such power might be abused, and what measures need to be taken to prevent such abuse. That simply didn't happen in the case of the patriot act; it was rushed through congress so fast that many lawmakers didn't even read it.
Most people would probably agree with the statement that law enforcement should only collect information about people when they have probable cause to suspect that person is guilty of a crime. Lots of red tape exists to prevent this rule of thumb from being violated, but thanks to the patriot act, a fair amount of that red tape has been cleared away. I guess what it boils down to is this: How much do you trust law enforcement agencies? If there were no mechanism to force them to comply with the stipulation that no probable cause means no investigation, do you think that they would follow that rule anyways? I know that this is a (very) old cliche, and I apologize for using it here, but power corrupts. Even if you do trust the current administration, if there aren't strong mechanisms in place to protect people's rights, then it's just a matter of time until some greasy little troll works his way into a position of authority and starts using his power to push people he doesn't like around.
Cheers,
-Bill
You mean like this? As you've noted, the moderation system is not exactly perfect...useless comments like the one in the link don't always get modded down, but they rarely get modded up. Yes, I'm sure I miss a fair amount of intelligent discussion by not always reading everything that gets posted to every article, but hey, that's life - there's no sense getting bent out of shape about something like this because (as far as I can tell), it's unavoidable to some extent.
Second of all, the post was already modded to 1 when he replied.
Sorry, didn't notice. My bad.
Finally, aren't you the guy I got pissed at in the first place?
Well, yes, but I'm starting to get the impression that this distinction doesn't uniquely identify me....
If you want to post why not do the research first? That's what google is for.
Because knowing about google does not make one an expert about privacy law in the US - it's very hard to get a really complete picture of something as complex as that by just googling for it. One could go and find out how wiretapping was handled in the past, but to do a really good job of it is a lot more work than is warranted by a silly slashdot post - my feeling is that to do it really well you'd need to be a lawyer. (I'm not, are you?)
I mean, come on, man, I can play the google game too. A few short minutes googling&reading will show that the fight over citizens' rights to privacy goes back much farther than the 1968 act of congress that you mentioned in one of your earlier posts. It goes back at least as far as 1928, when the US supreme court considered the case of Olmstead v. United States, which dealt with a bootlegger who was convicted based (at least in part) on wiretap information. So I found an earlier link, does that mean I win? Of course not - First of all, Olmstead v. United States was overturned by Katz v. United States in 1967, but in my mind theres a bigger issue at stake here: it doesn't matter. I'm under the impression that the patriot act is a little bit more relevant than something that happened in 1928 or even earlier because it's new. We are probably still just starting to feel its effects, and it is new enough and not-well-established enough that people can still argue against it and have some hope that it will be overturned by the Supreme Court or some future act of Congress. So apart from the fact that it's clearly good to have a solid understanding of the history of an issue, why should I bother digging up links to information that is (in some ways) beside the point?
That's easy - when you post anonymously, you post with a default score of 0. By default, people reading the page usually don't see your post unless they click on the "n replies beneath your current threshold" link. You can get around this to some extent by getting an account and logging in - If you do that, then the default is to post with a score of 1, which makes it more likely to be seen by readers. Check the FAQ for more details.
Such "generic" orders could have a significant impact on the privacy rights of large numbers of innocent users, particularly those who access the Internet through public facilities such as libraries, university computer labs and cybercafes. Upon the suspicion that an intelligence target might use such a facility, the FBI can now monitor all communications transmitted at the facility. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that the recipient of the assistance order (for instance, a library) would be prohibited from disclosing the fact that monitoring is occurring.
The "generic" roving wiretap orders raise significant constitutional issues, as they do not comport with the Fourth Amendment's requirement that any search warrant "particularly describe the place to be searched." That deficiency becomes even more significant where the private communications of law-abiding American citizens might be intercepted incidentally.
Of course (note the sarcasm here), all this should be obvious to any fool who reads the text of section 206:
Section 105(c)(2)(B) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1805(c)(2)(B)) is amended by inserting `, or in circumstances where the Court finds that the actions of the target of the application may have the effect of thwarting the identification of a specified person, such other persons,' after `specified person'.
And to think that some people find the American legal system a baffling black box :)
Cheers,
-Bill
Oh, at least since the PATRIOT ACT was made into law - it probably goes back to long before that though. (I am not a lawyer)
What are you running? Under redhat 7.2 +gnome, (yes, I know RH7.2 is old) you just go to the gnome icon on the panel and click programs->system->GDM configurator. Enter the root password and click on the automatic login tab. Check the box that says "Login a user on first bootup" and enter the username in the text window. I wouldn't expect it to be much harder than this in other environments, but who knows...at any rate, if your distribution's website doesn't have any documentation, maybe you'd be better off with some other distribution...? :)
-Bill
(disclaimer: I haven't tried this procedure; I guess I just like entering my password when I log in or something)
true, but I think that the sales pitch here is that it's legal to buy roms from StarRoms.
Now personally, I think that it *should* be legal to get old roms from classicgaming.com, but unless they've signed some sort of royalty agreement with atari (or whoever) they probably won't be able to legally distribute that Asteroids rom for another 99 years (+ life of author) at least. But then again, I'm not a lawer...
-Bill
Well, some people say this, but they don't really know what they're talking about. (I seem to recall some people saying that RHIC would be the downfall of all human civilization, by the way, yet we're still here.) Black holes decay via Hawking radiation. The smaller they are, the faster they decay, and the ones that might be produced at LHC would be mighty small. (...if they could even be produced at all, which is sort of doubtful in my mind) They would decay long before they even reached the inner wall of the detector.
I think that in general, it's a good idea to be sceptical about end-of-the-world scenarios like this. If it were possible to destroy the world by smashing particles together, it would have happened long before humans ever existed - Earth is continuously bombarded by cosmic rays that have **much** higher energies than anything we could ever hope to create in a lab. Any kind of strangelet, black hole, or whatever that could ever be produced in an accelerator has been produced by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. So don't worry about this sort of thing.
-Bill