The fact is (and I'm speaking as an English undergraduate) that written and spoken language are (obviously) two very different beasts, but the rise of technology and the communications advances it brings have blurred the lines.
This is an excellent point, as evidenced by your post. Are postings in forums written or spoken forms of language?
There are several places in your post where you have written in a "speaking style;" i.e., the structure of sentences and choice of words would not necessarily be considered correct in an English classroom, but have a structure similar to conversational speech patterns. This is not a bad thing, since forums are usually structured as conversations of sorts, but it is an excellent illustration of your point (bold emphasize written grammatical inconsistencies):
All her friends do the same and it's so difficult to decipher it.
Logic would say written,...
...the future generations are gonna be really limited
Like I said before, this is not wrong. It is simply a part of the natural evolution of language, and a function of the context of the communication. In the context of posting on Slashdot, it is quite appropriate.
The real question here is whether or not the quality of the communication is diminished by the use of such abbreviations and slang. If people are able to effectively communicate the same various shades of meaning with Netspeak as they can with proper written English, then I don't see a problem here. However, just like any bilingual person knows, there are proper places and times to use each language, depending on your audience. If you are speaking in a chat room with other people who are fluent in Netspeak, for example, then it would be appropriate to use that form of communication. In a written essay for class or an official email to your boss or coworkers, on the other hand, it would be more appropriate to use standard written English. I think in these cases it should be made clear that there is a definite distinction between the two forms of communication, and the two should not generally be mixed.
Other languages have different word forms and sentence structures for formal and casual communication; I see this as a logical extension of that. Good English teachers will recognize the value of the two different forms of communication, and teach about proper use of the two, instead of treating "that lame AOLer stuff" like garbage, and simply ignoring it. If we, as a culture, simply ignore it, then the problem of casual Netspeak creeping into formal communication will only get worse.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee. Making available all the out of print works that would languish in obscurity otherwise, while still allowing the truely valuable properties to continue.
I agree, but where do we place the price point? Even if it's a million dollars a year, giant corporations like Disney will gladly pony up.
I propose that once the copyrights expire (no more than 35 years after initial publication), the fee to renew for one year is $1.00. Then the fee doubles for every year after that.
So if Disney wanted to extend copyrights an additional 35 years, they would be paying $2^33, or $8.5 billion, for the 35th year. That doesn't even count the $4.3 billion they paid for the 34th year, or the $2.2 billion they paid for the 33rd year, or...
Nothing like exponential math to "promote productivity." Hey, we might even reduce the national debt!
Anyway, the TiVo isn't a swiss army knife, but it's definately more than you think.
Point taken. I was not aware of all those other services/products TiVo offered.
But my point was that the TiVo service, no matter how flexible it might be now, is still a proprietary solution that has altered how the system works in response to pressures from entertainment groups (the recent argument between TiVo and the NFL over blacked out games comes to mind). If TiVo wanted to have you watch commercials during lineup browsing, there would be nothing you could do about it. You are only as in-control of your tv as TiVo lets you be. A homebrew system, once set up and running properly (and properly secured... I wouldn't build one on Windows or not put it behind a hardware firewall), is not harder to use than a TiVo, especially with automatic updates enabled. And it ultimately DOES put you in control of your television. If the networks decide somewhere down the road that it is only legal to keep their shows for 14 days, and TiVo upholds their decision--which is not an unreasonable prediction, given some of the things these media companies are pushing for, and the tactics they use to get their way--you have the power to give them a giant, collective "screw you."
TiVo gives you some control back, yes. A homebrew solution gives you *complete* control.
Ok, and then I will happily put up with TiVo deciding for me how long I'm allowed to keep my shows, and showing me those lovely advertisements while I'm browsing the channel lineup, and not allowing me to record more than one show at a time, and suddenly forcing me to not skip commercials, and tying me down to a proprietary channel data service which could stop working the moment TiVo folds, and forcing me to comply with every whim and wish of the all-powerful entertainment industry regardless of legality or sanity.
Oh, and by the way, it also does not support playing my music collection in flac/ogg/mp3/aac/itunes/wav format, or playing DVDs on the same box, or playing MPEG-4 encoded videos, or emulating old games, or checking the weather in a built-in module, or allowing me to upload other videos to it, or allowing me to rip my DVDs for easy access, or playing recorded shows on multiple frontends, or storing the data on a dedicated machine instead of the built-in hard drive, or...
Seriously, if all you want is the Fisher-Price(tm) version of a PVR, by all means get a TiVo. The rest of us want functionality.
I don't see a lot of use for this now that I think about it.
I think the most natural application of wireless speakers is in surround setups, where you don't want to poke holes in your walls (or can't, by lease agreement) or run wires under the carpet. The rear left and rear right channels would be wireless, and the left, right, center and woofer channels would be wired. Just set up your media player to reroute the audio through a program that splits the channels up, and sends the rear channels as a standard stereo signal over wireless to the rear speakers, and the front four channels to the front four speakers.
Does anyone know of a system to do this, or will I be forced to build it?
Of course people are going online just for fun. The internet is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It's just a medium.
Why do you read books? Is it purely for research purposes, or are you just having fun?
Why do you go to the mall? Are you there strictly for purchasing things, or are you also there to have fun?
What the national media has not seemed to grasp yet is that the Internet is not some spooky alternate reality with a different set of rules than the real world (for most people). It's just a way of moving information back and forth and communicating. Yes, it's the first medium to combine those two purposes. But people don't use the Internet just to use the Internet... they're just doing something that happens to be on the Internet. Asking why people go online is about as insightful as asking why people wake up in the morning.
Why do you wake up in the morning? Is your life just to work and make money to provide for yourself and your family, or do you also like to have some fun?
It's just a means to do other things, people. Some of us do work on it, some of use play on it, and most people do both.
Trivializing a good idea doesn't exactly make you appear smarter either.
But it's not a good idea. The cost savings in terms of delta-v are not enough to justify the ridiculous expense of setting up such a system, not to mention the unbelievable amount of electrical power it would take to run the thing. There are far better solutions for getting to space, that are actually a NET COST SAVINGS. A rail gun is not one of them. It would be MORE EXPENSIVE than just launching a regular rocket.
Cost is the biggest factor to getting to space. Everything else is secondary. The space elevator would make getting to orbit so incredibly cheap that it would pay for its own R&D and construction costs within a few years.
Yes, they did say that ripping CDs was fair use during the MGM v. Grokster case. However, from TFA, they also said, more recently:
"...the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."
Oh, I see. The Great, All-Powerful and Most Merciful RIAA was simply bestowing Their Permission for us to rip our CDs to our iPods. How generous of them.
It's all crap. They're just trying to redefine things so that they still have the upper hand. The Fair Use clause obviously upsets them, because without it people would be forced to pay for the same thing many times over. I'm sure some RIAA accountant is just drooling over the possibilities.
Basically, there is no more need for a record company. Their days are over, and the general public should realise that there are plenty possibilities to make do without them.
While I agree with your sentiment, that record companies in their current form are now obsolete, I would have to say that the days of the record companies in general are not over yet. However, their purpose and place in this business is quickly changing.
Sure, you can do all that stuff yourself, recording on your home PC, publishing online, marketing through deli.cio.us or whoever. But that just gets you "good enough." In order to get a GREAT product, you really should use a professional recording studio with extremely high-end microphones, a professionally trained producer, and marketers who actually went to marketing school. All of that stuff is expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and that's where the record company comes in.
The record company should really be thought of as a venture capital firm for musicians. They front some money to the artist to pay for all the recording, producing, distribution, and marketing fees, and then the artist gives them a percentage of their earnings from that album in return. In other areas of venture capitalism, the risk is shared by both parties, the VC firm and the startup. If the idea is a flop, they BOTH lose money. However, in the last 30 years or so, the record companies have gotten so powerful that their cut of earnings has steadily gone up, and they started adding clauses about the band having to pay back all that up-front cost as well, with interest, out of their cut. The net result is that the record companies will sign just about anybody, because the deal is so one-sided that the band will go broke and declare bankruptcy long before the record companies ever lose money. They just sit back and get rich off other people's music, and this worked because they were the only game in town. It was either them or printing flyers and posting them on street corners.
The next generation of record companies (and I am fairly sure a new generation is coming) will succeed because they will play nice. The deals they cut with the artists will be fair to both parties, the IP rights will be shared, and everyone will get rich if the band succeeds. When the risk is shared like that, there is pressure on the record company to only sign good bands that will be good long-term investments. The flavor-of-the-month approach only works when there's no risk to the record company, since there are 3 flops for every superstar. Signing bands with appeal AND musical talent is a long-term investment: the band will continue to grow and create more great music, develop a loyal following of fans, and be very visible. Marketers call that "building a brand"; musicians call it "fandom". Either way you look at it, it's good business: the record company has performers and albums they are proud of, the fans get better music on average, the musicians actually make money, and everyone gets to keep their soul. Good times.
Toxic toads bound across the northern tropics of Australia faster than ever, thanks to the evolution of longer legs in the few short decades since humans introduced them to their own little paradise...Last year, researchers announced they had successfully lured and trapped the toads using ultraviolet lights like those used in disco clubs.
I guess those long legs are being put to good use. I'll bet that hallucinogenic stuff they secrete is a hit with the ladies on the dance floor.
To launch something to 100,000 feet, assuming a vertical launch (which is not what most rail-gun designs propose... they usually have a sled on a horizontal track with an angled bit at the end):
h = v^2/(2a) --> v = sqrt(2*a*h) = sqrt(2*(9.81 m/s^2)*(30480 m)) = 773.3 m/s = 1,729.8 mph = Mach 2.2 (at sea level)
And that's just for getting to 100,000 feet, with no horizontal velocity, and no drag from wind resistance. You've only just broken the atmosphere at 100,000 feet, and not reached orbital altitudes.
Let's assume we launch at an angle, such that by the time we arrive at orbital altitude, we also have orbital velocity.
And that's with no air resistance! Once we factor in drag, the Mach numbers easily go hypersonic. Also keep in mind that this is just the *vertical* component... the horizontal component will be orbital velocity (7.7 km/s = 17,154 mph = Mach 22.5 at sea level) plus whatever velocity is lost to drag during the flight. If we assume that the craft loses 75% of it's initial velocity to drag during the course of the flight (not an unreasonable assumption), then the initial starting velocity would be:
Just for reference, the Shuttle reenters the atmostphere at about Mach 22. The heat involved at Mach 40 would be unbelievable. No currently known materials could handle such drag.
Rail gun launchers are a bad idea without strapping additional rockets and fuel to the craft, and then it becomes, essentially, just a slightly more efficient rocket.
The center of mass of the cable and counterweight need to be past geosynchronous altitude.
Not necessarily.
If the center of gravity is right at geosynchronous, then the cable would still reach down to the earth and be just fine. However, you want a robot to climb the cable without pulling it down, then you would need some *tension* between the Earth and the other end of the cable. Then the center of mass would have to be past geosynchronous, but not by much... just enough to counter-balance the weight of all the climbers.
However, the article mentioned a 62,000 mile long cable. Geosynchronous orbit is at an altitude of about 22,200 miles. If the center of mass of the cable were right at geosynchronous orbit, the cable would be 44,400 miles long. With a 62,000 mile long cable, the center of mass would be comfortably beyond geosynchronous orbit, with presumably enough tension to accomodate the climbers.
I don't know what the actual expected speeds will be, but I don't think that anything over 100 mph will be practical in the atmosphere due to wind resistance.
Let's see... 62,000 mile cable... the atmosphere extends about 62 miles up... the wind resistance will be a problem for about 0.1% of the trip. The robot will likely still be accelerating as it leaves the atmosphere anyway.
And once you get out of the atmosphere, you have no easy way of dissipating the heat from friction.
There are many ways of dissapating heat in a vaccuum; the robot could extend some radiators once it leaves the atmosphere, or it could use a liquid cooling system, or both. Even the ribbon itself could be used as a radiator. It's certainly an issue to be designed for, but it's not a showstopper. Since the ribbon could also be used as a power supply, and could carry electricity from either ground generators or solar sails at the GEO station, I see no reason why the robot couldn't be using a maglev system to climb the cable. Once out of the atmosphere, there would be no friction at all, save for the odd bit of space dust.
By necessity, the center of mass (radially from the surface of the Earth) must be at or near geosynchronous orbit, so it naturally remains centered over its ground anchor
For the simple case, yes. But (IIRC) Robert Forward proposed a modified concept that utilized solar sails to stabalize the orbit and allow for them to be in other orbits.
Well, sure. His point was that given adequate propulsion, one could put a tether anywhere. There is nothing magical about orbits, and there is just as much gravity in orbit as there is on earth (small inverse-squared effects notwithstanding). When in orbit, your horizontal velocity is perfectly tuned so that by the time you have fallen 10 feet vertically, you have moved far enough horizontally that the curve of the Earth's surface has also dropped ten feet. Through constant freefall, you stay the same distance from the Earth all through your circular orbit.
The difference with a space elevator is that the geosyncronous orbit allows for the elevator to stay motionless with respect to the ground.
If you wanted to have a tether in a different orbit, but still motionless with respect to the ground, then you have to alter gravity slightly. This can be accomplished by adding thrust, either against gravity (for orbits inside GEO) or with it (for orbits outside GEO). If your space elevator had rockets constantly firing down toward the Earth, then it would experience less than the standard 9.81 m/s^2 gravity, and it's "geosyncronous" orbit would be lower. This could also be accomplished by cleverly pointing a solar sail, or using small pellets at high velocity, or whatever. In fact, Liftport did this with their balloons. The bouyancy of the balloon provided a force against the pull of gravity, and the pull was enough that a geosyncronous orbit altitude of one mile was sufficient. (It's not a real orbit, of course, but it's a nice neat analogy.) Whether this thrust is "keeping you aloft" or "altering the pull of gravity" is all a matter of reference frame.
This thrust proposal would not work for non-equatorial orbits, however, if the spacecraft is in a true orbit (and not an analogous one, like the balloon). All circular orbits have to traverse a Great Circle around the planet; the center of the orbit would be at the center of the planet. So if you were standing at about 40 degrees north latitude and started your circular geosyncronous orbit, then 12 hours later the spacecraft would be at 40 degrees south latitude, along the same longitude. It would alternate back and forth between those two points on every rotation of the Earth, since the orbit itself would have to be tilted 40 degrees from the equator. This is the difference between "geosyncronous orbit" (period of 24 hours, possible precession) and "geostationary orbit" (period of 24 hours and equatorial, so there's no precession). Most commercial geosyncronous orbits are only tilted by a small amount, so if you are south of (or north of, in the southern hemisphere) a certain latitude, the satellite never dips below the horizon.
The article is a little short on technical specifics, but it's hard to imagine how a watermarking system would work with a lossy compression format.
If the watermark is applied to the file after compression to mp3, then it is very easily defeated by decompressing and recompressing with a non-watermarking encoder, of which many exist for mp3. The act of decompressing the file will obliterate whatever bits were flipped for watermarking purposes. If the hidden information is subtle enough, the lossy compressor will simply throw it out. If it's obvious enough to not be obliterated by lossy compression, then I can hear it in the file, and the product is inferior. The only option would be for the encoder to recognize the watermark and purposefully retain the data, and then we're tied to a specific piece of software just like DRM.
However, if the watermark was applied before the compression (i.e., directly to the wav file on the CD), then the act of compressing the file will change the watermarking somewhat, and matching the "fingerprints," as they are called in the article, would be statistical in nature, not exacting like a hash is. The fingerprint would have to be considered "close enough" to be a match.
Also, every single watermark would have to be unique in order to match it to a specific source, which means creating a Big Database (tm) of customer info, which is easily defeated by paying with cash. On the other hand, if the record companies weren't interested in identifying a specific source, but the presence of a watermarked file in an upload directory is sufficient, then that's no different than the existence of any other file in an upload directory which contains copyrighted material, which is what they've been going after for quite some time now.
Learn when and how to use word variants and punctuation to pace your sentences.
Although, overuse, of, punctuation? is, highly; distracting.
Understand the difference between passive and active voice, and know when and why to use which.
Active voice (taking responsibility): We made an error.
Passive voice (shifting responsibility): An error was made.
We should be concerned with deterioration of language to the point where we need emoticons to interpret other people's written communication.
I find it amusing that the deterioration of our language in many cases is cause by an overabundance of vocabulary. I think more words, with very subtle shades of meaning, can allow more depth in our communication. However, most people use these words with slightly different meanings almost interchangably, and that confuses the reader. What, exactly, is the difference between "paradigm," "model," "precedent," and "situation?" If you don't know the difference, don't use the words.
Resorting to requiring smilies for correspondence surely cannot help to reverse any possible erosion of language arts skills that prompted the requirement in the first place.
This is a chicken-and-egg problem. Were our language arts skills weakened by our poor typing skills (the main reason emoticons were developed in the first place--they are easier to type than words if you're not a touch typist), or were our poor typing skills a reflection of our weak language arts skills?
The clearest communicators I know are the ones that are the most broadly exposed to the world at large, and take a deep breath before saying/typing anything, the better to ask themselves: will the person about to receive this e-mail get it? Five extra seconds can save hours of backpeddling, re-explaining something, or salvaging that business/personal relationship. But we've switched to celebrating speed and quantity of noise over quality of actual communication.
I am inclined to agree with you there.
In my opinion, the surest way to improve one's writing--and therefore email communication--is to make a conscious and deliberate effort to improve one's speech patterns. Where the speech goes, the writing will follow.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated with people I know and/or work with who do not think before they speak. Their speech patterns are irregular, incomplete, and many times confusing; as a result, it takes them a very long time to write anything clearly, and many of their emails are downright obtuse. There are several people I know who could not speak in complete sentences if their lives depended on it: each statement is a rewording of the last sentence fragment in rapid-fire succession. This is not only difficult to follow, but also stressful to listen to. I can't imagine how often they are forced to clarify when communicating via written methods.
The ironic flip side to this is that when someone does take more time to write a more solid, contextually portable note, people not used to digesting that sort of thing presume it's either pretentious, condescending, or just verbose for the sake of verbosity. This is a cultural thing, and speaks to the continuing erosion in critical thinking skills and the obligation families feel to pass them along to children.
This is indeed a cultural phenomenon, but probably not for the reasons you suppose. When I send emails to my coworkers, I am balancing two forces: the need for completeness and the need for succinctness. I know if I write too much information, the person receiving the email will only skim it, and will need to call and/or reply to clarify, even though all the information they needed was right there in the text. This is usually not because they are lacking critical reasoning skills (these people are engineers, after all) but because they are very busy, and multi-paragraph emails can be a little intimidating. However, if I simplify the email down to the bare essentials, I run the risk of being misinterpreted on the other end. Thus, there is an ongoing struggle in my Outbox between clarity and context, and the fact of the matter is that emails containing both take much more time to write. I am willing to take the time, of course, but many people are not.
The other cultural issue is the blurring of distinction between different forms of communication. Email can feel very similar to instant messaging, when everyone in the office has automatic notifications enabled and responds to your emails almost instantly. The existence of instant clarification causes laziness of composition. Why would I take the time to craft a clear and concise email when the recipient can simply ask a question for clarification in real time?
Poorly composed emails are not necessarily a symptom of fewer critical reasoning skills; I think they are more the result of a shift in focus during communication, from a single point of context (such as a letter or a book) to interactive, real time textual communication (such as email or instant messaging). When writing begins to feel more like speaking, the two forms of communication will blur. Interactive, conversational communication allows instant clarification, and does not require rigorous composition.
However, I thought of a slightly bigger point which is still relevant: the article talks about how the use of these symbols is in direct contradiction with the ideals of the Red Cross, which is why they are being challenged. However, I don't think they can pick and choose which ones to allow simply because use of the cross lines up with their ideals.
What if a game came out that was set in WWII, but the plot involved the medical teams trying to end the war by refusing to work on any soldier wounded in an offensive maneuver? What if the plot was about the US government suddenly changing sides in the war, and joining Germany and Japan to defeat the rest of Europe? Would they challenge the use of the red Greek cross then?
Either they allow ficticious use of the symbol, or they don't. They shouldn't play favorites.
...Greek red cross on a white ground, or any sign or insignia made or colored in imitation thereof...
Sounds fairly straightforward to me. Just change one or both of the colors, and you're no longer violating the law. I think the Boy Scouts changed their first-aid merit badge to a green cross for just this reason.
I think what most people recognize as "medical" is the shape of a Greek cross on a white background, regardless of the color of the cross itself. Most of the travel first aid kits I've seen have green crosses on white backgrounds, and it would not be hard to imagine other colors would be instantly recognizable, such as yellow, purple, or orange.
Of course, if you settle on just the right shade of blue, you could still run into trademark trouble with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The Caduceus is certainly not trademarked or copyrighted, and most people instantly associate it with medicine. I imagine older games used the Greek cross for things like health pick-ups and HUD icons because it was easier to recognize in the smaller resolution. However, now that game resolutions are fairly high, it might be in developers' best interest to use the Caduceus instead.
M*A*S*H is fine because it's a historical fiction and the use is consistant with armed forces medical personnel. But many other uses, like on civilian ambulances and medical equipments would most likely be in violation. Games probably _aren't_ because they're depictions of armed forces and war.
But what if a game IS historical fiction? What about all those various WWII/Veitnam games where medkits, ambulances, and medical tents all have red crosses on them, exactly like they did in the real wars? Are they suddenly not exempt simply because they're a game, and not a TV show?
However, my basic original objection still stands; the web site is playing dumb games with numbers and dimensions and making conclusions without really understanding them.
Agreed. I don't think this website would last very long under a rigorous mathematical scrutiny.
As for the Mach number...
Yes, officially it's called a "Mach number," because it's dimensionless. It's also always capitalized, which you used correctly, and when referring to a Mach number value, the word "Mach" always precedes the value, as in "Mach 1.25".
Mach number is clearly dimensionless...but it gets larger in magnitude when you go faster, so it is a speed in a way.
But drag also increases as speed increases, and so do lift, skin friction and flow temperature, under certain conditions. But those things are clearly not speeds.
The Mach number, along with its cousin the Reynolds number, is merely a convenient normalization of quantities that would otherwise be variables in fluid dynamics equations. It's an easy way to talk about a fluid's regime--subsonic, transsonic, supersonic, hypersonic--without having to describe a bunch of other data. It also simplifies compressible flow calculations quite a bit. However, because of press coverage of Chuck Yaeger and others in the high-speed aerospace business, it has become a popular measurement of "very fast," just like the measurement of "Libraries of Congress" has been used to measure "a whole bunch of information," even though measuring something in "Libraries of Congress" has no physical meaning (are we talking about numbers of characters? numbers of bits if encoded in ASCII? what about Unicode? etc.).
It may be helpful to think that Mach 1 is faster than Mach 0.2, but in some cases larger Mach numbers can represent slower speeds. Mach number is velocity over the speed of sound, which is defined as the square root of the product of temperature (in absolute units, like Kelvin or Rankine), the specific gas constant, and the adiabatic index. The specific gas constant and the adiabatic index only change if the composition of the flow changes.
It's acually more accurate to think of Mach number as a measurement of "motion energy". While Mach 1.24 in warm air may be faster than Mach 1.27 in cold air, it takes more energy, in the form of thrust, to maintain Mach 1.27 than Mach 1.24 regardless of temperature.
Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed that does not violate any laws of physics, and what do you know--it's a dimensionless number.
Mach is not a speed, it's a ratio of your speed (measured in distance per time) to the speed of sound in whatever medium you happen to be travelling in (also measured in distance per time). It's only used because it is very convenient to use such a proportion when making calculations about compressible fluid flow (shock waves and the like)--properties of the flow are identical at identical Mach numbers, regardless of speed. Since the speed of sound varies with temperature and fluid composition, your speed at any given Mach number could vary with the temperature and type of fluid you are travelling through. In order to find our speed from Mach number, it is necessary to define additional information and introduce dimensions to the dimensionless Mach number.
That being said, I agree with your larger point about needing more than a first-year Calculus course to debunk the world's leading physicists. However, if we're going to discuss how rigorous math is needed to express complex ideas, then we must use rigorous math ourselves, and not fall into the trap of calling a dimensionless ratio a "speed", which is a number with dimensions. It may be useful to think of a ratio as a speed, but in reality it is not.
AeroIllini B.S. Aerospace Engineering, University of Illinois, 2003
Slashdot Mirror
The fact is (and I'm speaking as an English undergraduate) that written and spoken language are (obviously) two very different beasts, but the rise of technology and the communications advances it brings have blurred the lines.
...the future generations are gonna be really limited
This is an excellent point, as evidenced by your post. Are postings in forums written or spoken forms of language?
There are several places in your post where you have written in a "speaking style;" i.e., the structure of sentences and choice of words would not necessarily be considered correct in an English classroom, but have a structure similar to conversational speech patterns. This is not a bad thing, since forums are usually structured as conversations of sorts, but it is an excellent illustration of your point (bold emphasize written grammatical inconsistencies):
All her friends do the same and it's so difficult to decipher it.
Logic would say written,...
Like I said before, this is not wrong. It is simply a part of the natural evolution of language, and a function of the context of the communication. In the context of posting on Slashdot, it is quite appropriate.
The real question here is whether or not the quality of the communication is diminished by the use of such abbreviations and slang. If people are able to effectively communicate the same various shades of meaning with Netspeak as they can with proper written English, then I don't see a problem here. However, just like any bilingual person knows, there are proper places and times to use each language, depending on your audience. If you are speaking in a chat room with other people who are fluent in Netspeak, for example, then it would be appropriate to use that form of communication. In a written essay for class or an official email to your boss or coworkers, on the other hand, it would be more appropriate to use standard written English. I think in these cases it should be made clear that there is a definite distinction between the two forms of communication, and the two should not generally be mixed.
Other languages have different word forms and sentence structures for formal and casual communication; I see this as a logical extension of that. Good English teachers will recognize the value of the two different forms of communication, and teach about proper use of the two, instead of treating "that lame AOLer stuff" like garbage, and simply ignoring it. If we, as a culture, simply ignore it, then the problem of casual Netspeak creeping into formal communication will only get worse.
The most reasonable compromise I've seen suggested is to have them expire by default, but allow extensions for a fee. Making available all the out of print works that would languish in obscurity otherwise, while still allowing the truely valuable properties to continue.
I agree, but where do we place the price point? Even if it's a million dollars a year, giant corporations like Disney will gladly pony up.
I propose that once the copyrights expire (no more than 35 years after initial publication), the fee to renew for one year is $1.00. Then the fee doubles for every year after that.
So if Disney wanted to extend copyrights an additional 35 years, they would be paying $2^33, or $8.5 billion, for the 35th year. That doesn't even count the $4.3 billion they paid for the 34th year, or the $2.2 billion they paid for the 33rd year, or...
Nothing like exponential math to "promote productivity." Hey, we might even reduce the national debt!
Anyway, the TiVo isn't a swiss army knife, but it's definately more than you think.
Point taken. I was not aware of all those other services/products TiVo offered.
But my point was that the TiVo service, no matter how flexible it might be now, is still a proprietary solution that has altered how the system works in response to pressures from entertainment groups (the recent argument between TiVo and the NFL over blacked out games comes to mind). If TiVo wanted to have you watch commercials during lineup browsing, there would be nothing you could do about it. You are only as in-control of your tv as TiVo lets you be. A homebrew system, once set up and running properly (and properly secured... I wouldn't build one on Windows or not put it behind a hardware firewall), is not harder to use than a TiVo, especially with automatic updates enabled. And it ultimately DOES put you in control of your television. If the networks decide somewhere down the road that it is only legal to keep their shows for 14 days, and TiVo upholds their decision--which is not an unreasonable prediction, given some of the things these media companies are pushing for, and the tactics they use to get their way--you have the power to give them a giant, collective "screw you."
TiVo gives you some control back, yes. A homebrew solution gives you *complete* control.
Go buy a TiVo.
Ok, and then I will happily put up with TiVo deciding for me how long I'm allowed to keep my shows, and showing me those lovely advertisements while I'm browsing the channel lineup, and not allowing me to record more than one show at a time, and suddenly forcing me to not skip commercials, and tying me down to a proprietary channel data service which could stop working the moment TiVo folds, and forcing me to comply with every whim and wish of the all-powerful entertainment industry regardless of legality or sanity.
Oh, and by the way, it also does not support playing my music collection in flac/ogg/mp3/aac/itunes/wav format, or playing DVDs on the same box, or playing MPEG-4 encoded videos, or emulating old games, or checking the weather in a built-in module, or allowing me to upload other videos to it, or allowing me to rip my DVDs for easy access, or playing recorded shows on multiple frontends, or storing the data on a dedicated machine instead of the built-in hard drive, or...
Seriously, if all you want is the Fisher-Price(tm) version of a PVR, by all means get a TiVo. The rest of us want functionality.
As much as all us hate spam, child porno, junk mail, ads, laywers, etc, we must live them. It's something most people call "society".
I'm not sure what "society" you live in, but the one I live in calls child porno "illegal" and definitely not a freedom. The other stuff, sure.
Twenty million popups a day?
That's it?
Pfft. That's like 100,000 infected machines, tops.
I don't see a lot of use for this now that I think about it.
I think the most natural application of wireless speakers is in surround setups, where you don't want to poke holes in your walls (or can't, by lease agreement) or run wires under the carpet. The rear left and rear right channels would be wireless, and the left, right, center and woofer channels would be wired. Just set up your media player to reroute the audio through a program that splits the channels up, and sends the rear channels as a standard stereo signal over wireless to the rear speakers, and the front four channels to the front four speakers.
Does anyone know of a system to do this, or will I be forced to build it?
Of course people are going online just for fun. The internet is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. It's just a medium.
Why do you read books? Is it purely for research purposes, or are you just having fun?
Why do you go to the mall? Are you there strictly for purchasing things, or are you also there to have fun?
What the national media has not seemed to grasp yet is that the Internet is not some spooky alternate reality with a different set of rules than the real world (for most people). It's just a way of moving information back and forth and communicating. Yes, it's the first medium to combine those two purposes. But people don't use the Internet just to use the Internet... they're just doing something that happens to be on the Internet. Asking why people go online is about as insightful as asking why people wake up in the morning.
Why do you wake up in the morning? Is your life just to work and make money to provide for yourself and your family, or do you also like to have some fun?
It's just a means to do other things, people. Some of us do work on it, some of use play on it, and most people do both.
Trivializing a good idea doesn't exactly make you appear smarter either.
But it's not a good idea. The cost savings in terms of delta-v are not enough to justify the ridiculous expense of setting up such a system, not to mention the unbelievable amount of electrical power it would take to run the thing. There are far better solutions for getting to space, that are actually a NET COST SAVINGS. A rail gun is not one of them. It would be MORE EXPENSIVE than just launching a regular rocket.
Cost is the biggest factor to getting to space. Everything else is secondary. The space elevator would make getting to orbit so incredibly cheap that it would pay for its own R&D and construction costs within a few years.
Yes, they did say that ripping CDs was fair use during the MGM v. Grokster case. However, from TFA, they also said, more recently:
"...the statement attributed to counsel for copyright owners in the MGM v. Grokster case is simply a statement about authorization, not about fair use."
Oh, I see. The Great, All-Powerful and Most Merciful RIAA was simply bestowing Their Permission for us to rip our CDs to our iPods. How generous of them.
It's all crap. They're just trying to redefine things so that they still have the upper hand. The Fair Use clause obviously upsets them, because without it people would be forced to pay for the same thing many times over. I'm sure some RIAA accountant is just drooling over the possibilities.
Basically, there is no more need for a record company. Their days are over, and the general public should realise that there are plenty possibilities to make do without them.
While I agree with your sentiment, that record companies in their current form are now obsolete, I would have to say that the days of the record companies in general are not over yet. However, their purpose and place in this business is quickly changing.
Sure, you can do all that stuff yourself, recording on your home PC, publishing online, marketing through deli.cio.us or whoever. But that just gets you "good enough." In order to get a GREAT product, you really should use a professional recording studio with extremely high-end microphones, a professionally trained producer, and marketers who actually went to marketing school. All of that stuff is expensive, costing tens of thousands of dollars, and that's where the record company comes in.
The record company should really be thought of as a venture capital firm for musicians. They front some money to the artist to pay for all the recording, producing, distribution, and marketing fees, and then the artist gives them a percentage of their earnings from that album in return. In other areas of venture capitalism, the risk is shared by both parties, the VC firm and the startup. If the idea is a flop, they BOTH lose money. However, in the last 30 years or so, the record companies have gotten so powerful that their cut of earnings has steadily gone up, and they started adding clauses about the band having to pay back all that up-front cost as well, with interest, out of their cut. The net result is that the record companies will sign just about anybody, because the deal is so one-sided that the band will go broke and declare bankruptcy long before the record companies ever lose money. They just sit back and get rich off other people's music, and this worked because they were the only game in town. It was either them or printing flyers and posting them on street corners.
The next generation of record companies (and I am fairly sure a new generation is coming) will succeed because they will play nice. The deals they cut with the artists will be fair to both parties, the IP rights will be shared, and everyone will get rich if the band succeeds. When the risk is shared like that, there is pressure on the record company to only sign good bands that will be good long-term investments. The flavor-of-the-month approach only works when there's no risk to the record company, since there are 3 flops for every superstar. Signing bands with appeal AND musical talent is a long-term investment: the band will continue to grow and create more great music, develop a loyal following of fans, and be very visible. Marketers call that "building a brand"; musicians call it "fandom". Either way you look at it, it's good business: the record company has performers and albums they are proud of, the fans get better music on average, the musicians actually make money, and everyone gets to keep their soul. Good times.
From TFA:
Toxic toads bound across the northern tropics of Australia faster than ever, thanks to the evolution of longer legs in the few short decades since humans introduced them to their own little paradise...Last year, researchers announced they had successfully lured and trapped the toads using ultraviolet lights like those used in disco clubs.
I guess those long legs are being put to good use. I'll bet that hallucinogenic stuff they secrete is a hit with the ladies on the dance floor.
I agree with you completely. Let's work this out:
To launch something to 100,000 feet, assuming a vertical launch (which is not what most rail-gun designs propose... they usually have a sled on a horizontal track with an angled bit at the end):
h = v^2/(2a) --> v = sqrt(2*a*h) = sqrt(2*(9.81 m/s^2)*(30480 m)) = 773.3 m/s = 1,729.8 mph = Mach 2.2 (at sea level)
And that's just for getting to 100,000 feet, with no horizontal velocity, and no drag from wind resistance. You've only just broken the atmosphere at 100,000 feet, and not reached orbital altitudes.
Let's assume we launch at an angle, such that by the time we arrive at orbital altitude, we also have orbital velocity.
Vertical component (400km LEO):
v = sqrt(2*(9.81 m/s^2)*(400000 m)) = 2801.5 m/s = 6266.6 mph = Mach 8.23 (at sea level)
And that's with no air resistance! Once we factor in drag, the Mach numbers easily go hypersonic. Also keep in mind that this is just the *vertical* component... the horizontal component will be orbital velocity (7.7 km/s = 17,154 mph = Mach 22.5 at sea level) plus whatever velocity is lost to drag during the flight. If we assume that the craft loses 75% of it's initial velocity to drag during the course of the flight (not an unreasonable assumption), then the initial starting velocity would be:
sqrt((547mph)^2 + (17154mph)^2)*4 = 30,689.7 mph = Mach 40.3 at sea level
Just for reference, the Shuttle reenters the atmostphere at about Mach 22. The heat involved at Mach 40 would be unbelievable. No currently known materials could handle such drag.
Rail gun launchers are a bad idea without strapping additional rockets and fuel to the craft, and then it becomes, essentially, just a slightly more efficient rocket.
The center of mass of the cable and counterweight need to be past geosynchronous altitude.
Not necessarily.
If the center of gravity is right at geosynchronous, then the cable would still reach down to the earth and be just fine. However, you want a robot to climb the cable without pulling it down, then you would need some *tension* between the Earth and the other end of the cable. Then the center of mass would have to be past geosynchronous, but not by much... just enough to counter-balance the weight of all the climbers.
However, the article mentioned a 62,000 mile long cable. Geosynchronous orbit is at an altitude of about 22,200 miles. If the center of mass of the cable were right at geosynchronous orbit, the cable would be 44,400 miles long. With a 62,000 mile long cable, the center of mass would be comfortably beyond geosynchronous orbit, with presumably enough tension to accomodate the climbers.
You're not wrong, I'm just clarifying.
I don't know what the actual expected speeds will be, but I don't think that anything over 100 mph will be practical in the atmosphere due to wind resistance.
... 62,000 mile cable ... the atmosphere extends about 62 miles up ... the wind resistance will be a problem for about 0.1% of the trip. The robot will likely still be accelerating as it leaves the atmosphere anyway.
Let's see
And once you get out of the atmosphere, you have no easy way of dissipating the heat from friction.
There are many ways of dissapating heat in a vaccuum; the robot could extend some radiators once it leaves the atmosphere, or it could use a liquid cooling system, or both. Even the ribbon itself could be used as a radiator. It's certainly an issue to be designed for, but it's not a showstopper. Since the ribbon could also be used as a power supply, and could carry electricity from either ground generators or solar sails at the GEO station, I see no reason why the robot couldn't be using a maglev system to climb the cable. Once out of the atmosphere, there would be no friction at all, save for the odd bit of space dust.
By necessity, the center of mass (radially from the surface of the Earth) must be at or near geosynchronous orbit, so it naturally remains centered over its ground anchor
For the simple case, yes. But (IIRC) Robert Forward proposed a modified concept that utilized solar sails to stabalize the orbit and allow for them to be in other orbits.
Well, sure. His point was that given adequate propulsion, one could put a tether anywhere. There is nothing magical about orbits, and there is just as much gravity in orbit as there is on earth (small inverse-squared effects notwithstanding). When in orbit, your horizontal velocity is perfectly tuned so that by the time you have fallen 10 feet vertically, you have moved far enough horizontally that the curve of the Earth's surface has also dropped ten feet. Through constant freefall, you stay the same distance from the Earth all through your circular orbit.
The difference with a space elevator is that the geosyncronous orbit allows for the elevator to stay motionless with respect to the ground.
If you wanted to have a tether in a different orbit, but still motionless with respect to the ground, then you have to alter gravity slightly. This can be accomplished by adding thrust, either against gravity (for orbits inside GEO) or with it (for orbits outside GEO). If your space elevator had rockets constantly firing down toward the Earth, then it would experience less than the standard 9.81 m/s^2 gravity, and it's "geosyncronous" orbit would be lower. This could also be accomplished by cleverly pointing a solar sail, or using small pellets at high velocity, or whatever. In fact, Liftport did this with their balloons. The bouyancy of the balloon provided a force against the pull of gravity, and the pull was enough that a geosyncronous orbit altitude of one mile was sufficient. (It's not a real orbit, of course, but it's a nice neat analogy.) Whether this thrust is "keeping you aloft" or "altering the pull of gravity" is all a matter of reference frame.
This thrust proposal would not work for non-equatorial orbits, however, if the spacecraft is in a true orbit (and not an analogous one, like the balloon). All circular orbits have to traverse a Great Circle around the planet; the center of the orbit would be at the center of the planet. So if you were standing at about 40 degrees north latitude and started your circular geosyncronous orbit, then 12 hours later the spacecraft would be at 40 degrees south latitude, along the same longitude. It would alternate back and forth between those two points on every rotation of the Earth, since the orbit itself would have to be tilted 40 degrees from the equator. This is the difference between "geosyncronous orbit" (period of 24 hours, possible precession) and "geostationary orbit" (period of 24 hours and equatorial, so there's no precession). Most commercial geosyncronous orbits are only tilted by a small amount, so if you are south of (or north of, in the southern hemisphere) a certain latitude, the satellite never dips below the horizon.
The article is a little short on technical specifics, but it's hard to imagine how a watermarking system would work with a lossy compression format.
If the watermark is applied to the file after compression to mp3, then it is very easily defeated by decompressing and recompressing with a non-watermarking encoder, of which many exist for mp3. The act of decompressing the file will obliterate whatever bits were flipped for watermarking purposes. If the hidden information is subtle enough, the lossy compressor will simply throw it out. If it's obvious enough to not be obliterated by lossy compression, then I can hear it in the file, and the product is inferior. The only option would be for the encoder to recognize the watermark and purposefully retain the data, and then we're tied to a specific piece of software just like DRM.
However, if the watermark was applied before the compression (i.e., directly to the wav file on the CD), then the act of compressing the file will change the watermarking somewhat, and matching the "fingerprints," as they are called in the article, would be statistical in nature, not exacting like a hash is. The fingerprint would have to be considered "close enough" to be a match.
Also, every single watermark would have to be unique in order to match it to a specific source, which means creating a Big Database (tm) of customer info, which is easily defeated by paying with cash. On the other hand, if the record companies weren't interested in identifying a specific source, but the presence of a watermarked file in an upload directory is sufficient, then that's no different than the existence of any other file in an upload directory which contains copyrighted material, which is what they've been going after for quite some time now.
And the point is...?
Learn when and how to use word variants and punctuation to pace your sentences.
Although, overuse, of, punctuation? is, highly; distracting.
Understand the difference between passive and active voice, and know when and why to use which.
Active voice (taking responsibility):
We made an error.
Passive voice (shifting responsibility):
An error was made.
We should be concerned with deterioration of language to the point where we need emoticons to interpret other people's written communication.
I find it amusing that the deterioration of our language in many cases is cause by an overabundance of vocabulary. I think more words, with very subtle shades of meaning, can allow more depth in our communication. However, most people use these words with slightly different meanings almost interchangably, and that confuses the reader. What, exactly, is the difference between "paradigm," "model," "precedent," and "situation?" If you don't know the difference, don't use the words.
Resorting to requiring smilies for correspondence surely cannot help to reverse any possible erosion of language arts skills that prompted the requirement in the first place.
This is a chicken-and-egg problem. Were our language arts skills weakened by our poor typing skills (the main reason emoticons were developed in the first place--they are easier to type than words if you're not a touch typist), or were our poor typing skills a reflection of our weak language arts skills?
The real reason most flamewars start is the because Java is fast and better than .NET.
"You know, I wrote an entire operating system in Java back in '98."
"Oh? How did that work out?"
"I don't know. It's still booting."
The clearest communicators I know are the ones that are the most broadly exposed to the world at large, and take a deep breath before saying/typing anything, the better to ask themselves: will the person about to receive this e-mail get it? Five extra seconds can save hours of backpeddling, re-explaining something, or salvaging that business/personal relationship. But we've switched to celebrating speed and quantity of noise over quality of actual communication.
I am inclined to agree with you there.
In my opinion, the surest way to improve one's writing--and therefore email communication--is to make a conscious and deliberate effort to improve one's speech patterns. Where the speech goes, the writing will follow.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated with people I know and/or work with who do not think before they speak. Their speech patterns are irregular, incomplete, and many times confusing; as a result, it takes them a very long time to write anything clearly, and many of their emails are downright obtuse. There are several people I know who could not speak in complete sentences if their lives depended on it: each statement is a rewording of the last sentence fragment in rapid-fire succession. This is not only difficult to follow, but also stressful to listen to. I can't imagine how often they are forced to clarify when communicating via written methods.
The ironic flip side to this is that when someone does take more time to write a more solid, contextually portable note, people not used to digesting that sort of thing presume it's either pretentious, condescending, or just verbose for the sake of verbosity. This is a cultural thing, and speaks to the continuing erosion in critical thinking skills and the obligation families feel to pass them along to children.
This is indeed a cultural phenomenon, but probably not for the reasons you suppose. When I send emails to my coworkers, I am balancing two forces: the need for completeness and the need for succinctness. I know if I write too much information, the person receiving the email will only skim it, and will need to call and/or reply to clarify, even though all the information they needed was right there in the text. This is usually not because they are lacking critical reasoning skills (these people are engineers, after all) but because they are very busy, and multi-paragraph emails can be a little intimidating. However, if I simplify the email down to the bare essentials, I run the risk of being misinterpreted on the other end. Thus, there is an ongoing struggle in my Outbox between clarity and context, and the fact of the matter is that emails containing both take much more time to write. I am willing to take the time, of course, but many people are not.
The other cultural issue is the blurring of distinction between different forms of communication. Email can feel very similar to instant messaging, when everyone in the office has automatic notifications enabled and responds to your emails almost instantly. The existence of instant clarification causes laziness of composition. Why would I take the time to craft a clear and concise email when the recipient can simply ask a question for clarification in real time?
Poorly composed emails are not necessarily a symptom of fewer critical reasoning skills; I think they are more the result of a shift in focus during communication, from a single point of context (such as a letter or a book) to interactive, real time textual communication (such as email or instant messaging). When writing begins to feel more like speaking, the two forms of communication will blur. Interactive, conversational communication allows instant clarification, and does not require rigorous composition.
My apologies, I read that too fast.
However, I thought of a slightly bigger point which is still relevant: the article talks about how the use of these symbols is in direct contradiction with the ideals of the Red Cross, which is why they are being challenged. However, I don't think they can pick and choose which ones to allow simply because use of the cross lines up with their ideals.
What if a game came out that was set in WWII, but the plot involved the medical teams trying to end the war by refusing to work on any soldier wounded in an offensive maneuver? What if the plot was about the US government suddenly changing sides in the war, and joining Germany and Japan to defeat the rest of Europe? Would they challenge the use of the red Greek cross then?
Either they allow ficticious use of the symbol, or they don't. They shouldn't play favorites.
...Greek red cross on a white ground, or any sign or insignia made or colored in imitation thereof...
Sounds fairly straightforward to me. Just change one or both of the colors, and you're no longer violating the law. I think the Boy Scouts changed their first-aid merit badge to a green cross for just this reason.
I think what most people recognize as "medical" is the shape of a Greek cross on a white background, regardless of the color of the cross itself. Most of the travel first aid kits I've seen have green crosses on white backgrounds, and it would not be hard to imagine other colors would be instantly recognizable, such as yellow, purple, or orange.
Of course, if you settle on just the right shade of blue, you could still run into trademark trouble with Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The Caduceus is certainly not trademarked or copyrighted, and most people instantly associate it with medicine. I imagine older games used the Greek cross for things like health pick-ups and HUD icons because it was easier to recognize in the smaller resolution. However, now that game resolutions are fairly high, it might be in developers' best interest to use the Caduceus instead.
M*A*S*H is fine because it's a historical fiction and the use is consistant with armed forces medical personnel. But many other uses, like on civilian ambulances and medical equipments would most likely be in violation. Games probably _aren't_ because they're depictions of armed forces and war.
But what if a game IS historical fiction? What about all those various WWII/Veitnam games where medkits, ambulances, and medical tents all have red crosses on them, exactly like they did in the real wars? Are they suddenly not exempt simply because they're a game, and not a TV show?
However, my basic original objection still stands; the web site is playing dumb games with numbers and dimensions and making conclusions without really understanding them.
Agreed. I don't think this website would last very long under a rigorous mathematical scrutiny.
As for the Mach number...
Yes, officially it's called a "Mach number," because it's dimensionless. It's also always capitalized, which you used correctly, and when referring to a Mach number value, the word "Mach" always precedes the value, as in "Mach 1.25".
Mach number is clearly dimensionless...but it gets larger in magnitude when you go faster, so it is a speed in a way.
But drag also increases as speed increases, and so do lift, skin friction and flow temperature, under certain conditions. But those things are clearly not speeds.
The Mach number, along with its cousin the Reynolds number, is merely a convenient normalization of quantities that would otherwise be variables in fluid dynamics equations. It's an easy way to talk about a fluid's regime--subsonic, transsonic, supersonic, hypersonic--without having to describe a bunch of other data. It also simplifies compressible flow calculations quite a bit. However, because of press coverage of Chuck Yaeger and others in the high-speed aerospace business, it has become a popular measurement of "very fast," just like the measurement of "Libraries of Congress" has been used to measure "a whole bunch of information," even though measuring something in "Libraries of Congress" has no physical meaning (are we talking about numbers of characters? numbers of bits if encoded in ASCII? what about Unicode? etc.).
It may be helpful to think that Mach 1 is faster than Mach 0.2, but in some cases larger Mach numbers can represent slower speeds. Mach number is velocity over the speed of sound, which is defined as the square root of the product of temperature (in absolute units, like Kelvin or Rankine), the specific gas constant, and the adiabatic index. The specific gas constant and the adiabatic index only change if the composition of the flow changes.
It's acually more accurate to think of Mach number as a measurement of "motion energy". While Mach 1.24 in warm air may be faster than Mach 1.27 in cold air, it takes more energy, in the form of thrust, to maintain Mach 1.27 than Mach 1.24 regardless of temperature.
I hope that helps clarify things for you.
Mach 1.25 is a perfectly well-defined speed that does not violate any laws of physics, and what do you know--it's a dimensionless number.
Mach is not a speed, it's a ratio of your speed (measured in distance per time) to the speed of sound in whatever medium you happen to be travelling in (also measured in distance per time). It's only used because it is very convenient to use such a proportion when making calculations about compressible fluid flow (shock waves and the like)--properties of the flow are identical at identical Mach numbers, regardless of speed. Since the speed of sound varies with temperature and fluid composition, your speed at any given Mach number could vary with the temperature and type of fluid you are travelling through. In order to find our speed from Mach number, it is necessary to define additional information and introduce dimensions to the dimensionless Mach number.
That being said, I agree with your larger point about needing more than a first-year Calculus course to debunk the world's leading physicists. However, if we're going to discuss how rigorous math is needed to express complex ideas, then we must use rigorous math ourselves, and not fall into the trap of calling a dimensionless ratio a "speed", which is a number with dimensions. It may be useful to think of a ratio as a speed, but in reality it is not.
AeroIllini
B.S. Aerospace Engineering, University of Illinois, 2003