Meanwhile I've had an errie feeling for the past few years that quantum tunnelling is numerical error in the universal collision detection algorithm... but, well... that's a bit weird to think about.
The reason FTL results in time travel is a little more subtle than that. It has to do with intertial frames of reference: basically, if you can send a signal FTL, you can send it to a person (A) who's in the present of your inertial frame of reference but is in the past of someone else's (B) intertial frame of reference. A can then use the knowledge you've sent them to alter their future - which is B's past.
Or something like that. Here's an explanation that uses a wonderfully confusing picture to illustrate it.
If negative mass behaves like I remember it supposedly doing (a repulsive gravitational force instead of an attractive one), could it possibly explain the Pioneer anomaly? It seems to me that if there were any of that nearby, we'd find it between stars since it would be pushed there by the stars themselves. So you would expect to notice the effect of it as you got further from the star you're travelling away from.
Granted, it's a bit of a leap to go from this effect to lacing the galaxy with negative mass...
A bunch of friends saw the Midnight Madness screening last night. I actually had a ticket but had to bow out, and sold it to someone else. When I got to work this morning, I had an email from one of them, sent at 2 AM this morning. "You are a lucky, lucky man," it read.
They all thought it sucked, and they're big geeks like me. While there aren't a whole lot of reviews in yet, that seems to be the general consensus.
I don't think I'm in a rush to see this one, if I do.
From what I understand, the infrastructure to build new shuttles no longer exists, even if NASA wanted to do this - they just have what's needed to maintain them, and the expertise to build new ones may no longer be around, while the equipment to do so has sat unused for decades or gone been sent to the junk heap.
I'm not sure if this question is directed at me (I submitted the story), but a discovery like this would fill me with an immense amount of hope. Like Arthur C. Clarke, sometimes I feel we're alone in the universe; sometimes I don't. If we are, to me that seems to be a huge responsibility - being the most intelligent creatures in the universe, being the only ones who can begin to comprehend it. So if we kill ourselves off, which sometimes seems to be the direction we're headed in, I feel that would be a huge loss.
If we're not alone, though... well, even if we do do ourselves in, there's someone else out there. We might not survive, but someone has.
Unfortunately, there'd probably be too low a signal-to-noise ratio for anything good to turn up, considering the conclusions some people jump to when they know what they want to find.
Well, if you're really that worried, it would probably be a lot easier to toss out a ballot for someone other than your guy, than to change one... but either way, I'm pretty sure you'd get caught - there are quite a few checks and balances going on during the whole process.
Here in Canada, you vote by writing an 'X' in the box next to the candidate you want. Votes are then counted by hand, with representatives of each major party in at each polling station watching the counting. It's not likely anyone will do anything underhanded and mess with the tally. I'm sure there have been some issues, but I can't remember anything remotely close to the mess in Florida during any of our elections.
It's a fallacy that you need a high-tech solution for this. Voting is too important to be obscured through code and harware. It's something that should be transparent, where recounts are done where necessary, and where there is no room for ambiguity or interpretation when the numbers are reported.
Re:Space Age Refrigerator
on
Space-Age Houses
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
And your space-age refrigerator would have to be really curvy, alas. This is one of the reasons we still have boxy houses in this day and age: you can't put, say, a typical couch flush against the wall of a spherical house. And you might bang your head on the inwards-curving ceiling a lot, too...
I'm inclined to agree. Still, this really does look like the top view of some sort of growing structure. We have to assume it's abiological, of course; unless there's nothing that can create these without invoking life, it's probably something like you suggested.
It's funny how on Earth, of course, one would see those pictures and say, "Oh, hey, it's a forest" before invoking a gelological explanation. But here, life is the rule, of course.
And Arthur C. Clarke believes Martian life exists to this day. It's easy to see that the so-called spiders look life-like, and I'd like very much for that to turn out to be the case. Mind you, the human brain is pretty good forming patterns out of just about anything.
1 - Blue screen background.. very easy manipulation can take place in front of a blue screen.
Well, if the whole robot is a CG effect, there'd actually be no reason for the bluescreen - it'd be moving on top of the background plate. Bluescreen is generally used to key out portions of a movie to composite it on top of something else. If you're compositing on top of a plate, you don't need to key anything out.
Mind you, if they removed some strings that were guiding a real vehicle, and maybe composited just the moving blades in, then yeah, it'd be easier with a solid background.
...at least for now. Unless Virgin can offer a music buying experience that works as seamlessly with the iPod as Apple's - since it's clear that they're trying to sell their tunes to iPod owners - then they'll still be missing the point. I suspect what most people dig most about the iTunes store is integration and ease of use. They aren't terribly concerned about file formats and rights managements schemes. Sure, some are - plenty here on Slashdot, for instance - but I doubt the average person is too concerned by that.
Plus, Apple's the cool music company right now. I just saw someone on the street this morning walking with her nice custom-made iPod purse which still clearly had an Apple logo on it, so you knew it was an iPod in there, and that she dug Apple. I suspect she'd use the iTunes store (except I'm in Canada, alas).
But then, I may be underestimating the tech literacy of the average person. I'd be glad if that were the case.
...and as far as I know, none of those bombs you're referring to are WMDs.
Besides, that's not what I was suggesting; clearly terrorists have weapons that go beyond box cutters. But the point of terrorism is to inflict terror - and you don't need to have weapons of mass destruction to do that. You don't even have to kill that many people to create an undue amount of fear.
And yes, there is a real threat, but it's probably not big enough for most people to worry about it: the odds aren't really anything to get worked up over. (This isn't to say that you shouldn't be worried about terrorism, but it's wise to be rational about it.)
But back to the original point, you don't need WMDs to be a successful terrorist. It's much easier to build a bomb than to build and harvest prions and successfully introduce those into a population, so terrorism is more likely to be carried out through low-tech means.
Great, now we have yet another form of weapon of mass destruction.
That seems to suggest there were other WMDs. Coulda sworn they haven't found any...
Terrorists don't need weapons of mass descruction. The States has been mired in fear for the past three years and all the terrorists had were box cutters.
Okay, I'm officially much more excited about this movie next summer than Revenge of the Sith. It looks like they're going back to what works for Batman; George long ago lost sight of what was good in Star Wars.
Interesting to notice that there isn't a prominently featured love interest anywhere in the photos on the website. This is great to see: romantic subplots really don't jive with the whole disturbed-anarchist-hell-bent-on-vengance thing.
Slashdot Mirror
Meanwhile I've had an errie feeling for the past few years that quantum tunnelling is numerical error in the universal collision detection algorithm... but, well... that's a bit weird to think about.
Or something like that. Here's an explanation that uses a wonderfully confusing picture to illustrate it.
Granted, it's a bit of a leap to go from this effect to lacing the galaxy with negative mass...
What, you mean you don't hang on every word from JoBlo's Movie Emporium?
They all thought it sucked, and they're big geeks like me. While there aren't a whole lot of reviews in yet, that seems to be the general consensus.
I don't think I'm in a rush to see this one, if I do.
Maybe it could be combined with one of these things to get the mosquitos. Not that I want more machines going around generating greenhouse gasses...
From what I understand, the infrastructure to build new shuttles no longer exists, even if NASA wanted to do this - they just have what's needed to maintain them, and the expertise to build new ones may no longer be around, while the equipment to do so has sat unused for decades or gone been sent to the junk heap.
You really don't want to follow those links.
I'm not sure if this question is directed at me (I submitted the story), but a discovery like this would fill me with an immense amount of hope. Like Arthur C. Clarke, sometimes I feel we're alone in the universe; sometimes I don't. If we are, to me that seems to be a huge responsibility - being the most intelligent creatures in the universe, being the only ones who can begin to comprehend it. So if we kill ourselves off, which sometimes seems to be the direction we're headed in, I feel that would be a huge loss.
If we're not alone, though... well, even if we do do ourselves in, there's someone else out there. We might not survive, but someone has.
Unfortunately, there'd probably be too low a signal-to-noise ratio for anything good to turn up, considering the conclusions some people jump to when they know what they want to find.
Well, if you're really that worried, it would probably be a lot easier to toss out a ballot for someone other than your guy, than to change one... but either way, I'm pretty sure you'd get caught - there are quite a few checks and balances going on during the whole process.
According to this,, some people are doing just that. Hopefully it'll have some impact.
Here in Canada, you vote by writing an 'X' in the box next to the candidate you want. Votes are then counted by hand, with representatives of each major party in at each polling station watching the counting. It's not likely anyone will do anything underhanded and mess with the tally. I'm sure there have been some issues, but I can't remember anything remotely close to the mess in Florida during any of our elections.
It's a fallacy that you need a high-tech solution for this. Voting is too important to be obscured through code and harware. It's something that should be transparent, where recounts are done where necessary, and where there is no room for ambiguity or interpretation when the numbers are reported.
And your space-age refrigerator would have to be really curvy, alas. This is one of the reasons we still have boxy houses in this day and age: you can't put, say, a typical couch flush against the wall of a spherical house. And you might bang your head on the inwards-curving ceiling a lot, too...
...at least according to The Book of Ratings..
Avery Brooks must be pleased with this development.
Mind you, it's NASA, so you might not want to hold your breath too long.
I'm inclined to agree. Still, this really does look like the top view of some sort of growing structure. We have to assume it's abiological, of course; unless there's nothing that can create these without invoking life, it's probably something like you suggested.
It's funny how on Earth, of course, one would see those pictures and say, "Oh, hey, it's a forest" before invoking a gelological explanation. But here, life is the rule, of course.
And Arthur C. Clarke believes Martian life exists to this day. It's easy to see that the so-called spiders look life-like, and I'd like very much for that to turn out to be the case. Mind you, the human brain is pretty good forming patterns out of just about anything.
1 - Blue screen background .. very easy manipulation can take place in front of a blue screen.
Well, if the whole robot is a CG effect, there'd actually be no reason for the bluescreen - it'd be moving on top of the background plate. Bluescreen is generally used to key out portions of a movie to composite it on top of something else. If you're compositing on top of a plate, you don't need to key anything out.
Mind you, if they removed some strings that were guiding a real vehicle, and maybe composited just the moving blades in, then yeah, it'd be easier with a solid background.
"Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering."
It's amazing that not knowing the answer to this is somehow more comfortable than knowing the answer, either way.
...at least for now. Unless Virgin can offer a music buying experience that works as seamlessly with the iPod as Apple's - since it's clear that they're trying to sell their tunes to iPod owners - then they'll still be missing the point. I suspect what most people dig most about the iTunes store is integration and ease of use. They aren't terribly concerned about file formats and rights managements schemes. Sure, some are - plenty here on Slashdot, for instance - but I doubt the average person is too concerned by that.
Plus, Apple's the cool music company right now. I just saw someone on the street this morning walking with her nice custom-made iPod purse which still clearly had an Apple logo on it, so you knew it was an iPod in there, and that she dug Apple. I suspect she'd use the iTunes store (except I'm in Canada, alas).
But then, I may be underestimating the tech literacy of the average person. I'd be glad if that were the case.
Wow. So, like, our species owns the whole universe? Cool! If we ever do find ET, we can start charging rent!
...and as far as I know, none of those bombs you're referring to are WMDs.
Besides, that's not what I was suggesting; clearly terrorists have weapons that go beyond box cutters. But the point of terrorism is to inflict terror - and you don't need to have weapons of mass destruction to do that. You don't even have to kill that many people to create an undue amount of fear.
And yes, there is a real threat, but it's probably not big enough for most people to worry about it: the odds aren't really anything to get worked up over. (This isn't to say that you shouldn't be worried about terrorism, but it's wise to be rational about it.)
But back to the original point, you don't need WMDs to be a successful terrorist. It's much easier to build a bomb than to build and harvest prions and successfully introduce those into a population, so terrorism is more likely to be carried out through low-tech means.
That seems to suggest there were other WMDs. Coulda sworn they haven't found any...
Terrorists don't need weapons of mass descruction. The States has been mired in fear for the past three years and all the terrorists had were box cutters.
Okay, I'm officially much more excited about this movie next summer than Revenge of the Sith. It looks like they're going back to what works for Batman; George long ago lost sight of what was good in Star Wars.
Interesting to notice that there isn't a prominently featured love interest anywhere in the photos on the website. This is great to see: romantic subplots really don't jive with the whole disturbed-anarchist-hell-bent-on-vengance thing.