That said, They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then. With a helluva lotta chutzpah.
For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests. Gingrich for one may be a cynical bastard, but Santorum is one of the various flavors of fools you refer to. So are Bachmann and Palin, among others in the spotlight and/or in a position of power, which is what happens when they cater to these fools, some of them rise among the ranks to a national stage. NOTE: To get the correct spelling of Bachmann in here, I Googled "Lyin' Ass Bitch".
The statement that time isn't infinite has always bugged me, because there were events before "time" (as we measure it) began, before our Universe and markers of reference, a state where (and when) quantum fluctuations occurred, at the very least. Let's put a name to it and call it Meta-Time. In this Meta-Time, some event precipitated the Big Bang, or False-Vacuum Inflation, or whatever Everything is.
As for infinity, I have no difficulty visualizing time going forward forever, but backwards... a Meta-Clock having already ticked an infinity with no discrete moment of origin... I get a weird vertigo just thinking about it, like my mind is on a tightrope and there's no safety net underneath.
From the second Wikipedia link in your post: "If the universe is finite but unbounded, it is also possible that the universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the universe."
If your side projects are in an area that overlaps with your employer's business, then they have a legitimate right to refuse.
You bring up a very valid point. On first impression, overly restrictive intellectual property smacks of intellectual slavery, but then there's always the risk of an employer's ideas, know-how and internal processes being used against them by ambitious yet unimaginative and unscrupulous employees.
It's a classic scenario, isn't it? The manager of a X business quits and opens a copycat store, sometimes even right across the street, and a working relationship has turned into a rivalry, with the new business having privileged information about how his former employer does what he/she does. Then, the new business could sell tacos, sandwiches, salads, pitas, gyros, ANYTHING, but inevitably it's also gotta be burgers, right? WHY does it have to be the exact same fucking thing?
True story: An office/school supply store was doing pretty good business, until some misguided imbecile tried to duplicate lightning in a bottle and opened another supply store next door. Now there's two businesses sharing the same number of customers in the same block, both struggling to make ends meet now, a toil and chore just to stay afloat.
Another one: For ages, there were no Spanish cuisine restaurants in my town. One finally opens up, and it's a resounding success. Within a year, there were five Spanish restaurants. Within another year, all had closed down, not enough customers to go around. Meanwhile, during all that time, no Thai or Vietnamese, no Peruvian or Brazilian, no Greek or Turkish, not even a place to get a decent baked potato with toppings. BRILLIANT!!!
Mr Turing was subjected to a quack treatment for his "ailment", at a certain point he chose suicide, a horrible and unjust fate. However, if Mr Turing had lived in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, he may very well have ended up dead of starvation and exposure at a forced-labor camp, or even by a random act of cruelty by the guards.
Across the globe, those were not enlightened times on the subject of homosexuality, and some places were decidedly more brutal than others. Even today, there are countries and societies where this particular type of ignorance prevails at an official level, and the UK is not one of them.
While I'm not justifying the standing verdict on Mr Turing, I am also not going to hold it too heavy against contemporary British society.
Above all, Hats Off To Mr Alan Turing! Next time I'm at the pub, I'll have a pint or three in your honor, you bloody old pooftah!
Just like the party of "secret racists" appointed the first black judge on the Supreme Court in the middle of the crucial, decisive Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s, Mr Thurgood Marshall.
Your post just makes me thankful that he was in charge at the time, rather than you.
Damn right. Weekend armchair presidenting is little more than a Rorschach Test, and in no way represents complex realities and political minefields that have to be navigated. Like a friend of mine said, and I paraphrase - "I know I don't think like Obama, and that's the point. I wouldn't want somebody that thinks like me at the helm, I'd prefer someone with more discipline and patience to know which political fights to pick and get at least some things done properly. You can attempt to bring some things to Obama's attention, but imagine a thousand different voices, from corporations to farmers, all wanting their pony all the same time".
"SOPA and PIPA so far" was posted around 6 hours after midnight PST, which is nine hours after the first websites went black, assuming it all started at EST.
The MPAA and SOPA-sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) are trying to brush off the protests as a stunt, and Smith has announced markup for the bill will resume in February.
Cynical corporate sluts in positions of political power are tenacious, to say the least.
My thoughts exactly, I came in here a couple of hours ago expecting some SOPA/PIPA acknowledgement, was truly puzzled by the chirping crickets. Also but less shocking, the lack of a banner on the issue raises the question: Is Slashdot management neutral, apolitical, or something a little more insidious? I'm guessing apolitical, by which I mean, management keeping their opinions to themselves and allowing the users to fire the cannons from all sides, with no interference.
The portrayal of New Mexico with the cartoonish Looney Tunes cliffs and plateaus.
Let's not forget George Herriman's seminal comic strip Krazy Kat, source of my sig. Kokonino Kounty's mesas and surrealistic landscapes predate The Road Runner by more than a quarter century.
Finally, I can't resist taking a jab at that headline: New Mexico Is Yawning, Sonar Reveals.
The way I understand it, it's not the flu itself that will kill you, but the body's prophylactic overreaction. Does an immune system react with the same level of intensity with a vaccine as with a full-fledged, live flu? Because if the worst-case vaccine scenario is less intense than the worst-case flu scenario, gimme the shot (as much as I hate needles).
This happened to me once. I crossed the International Date line on December 24. It was December 26 on the other side. It was the year without a Christmas.
If this was in 2004, and you'd have gone from December 25th to the 27th, maybe the Boxing Day Tsunami could have been averted.
From the Tom Wolfe book, the world needs "heroes" like this, like it needs a hole in the head:
"More fighter pilots died in automobiles than in airplanes. Fortunately, there was always some kindly soul up the chain to certify the papers `line of duty,' so that the widow could get a better break on the insurance. That was okay and only proper because somehow the system itself had long ago said Skol! and Quite right! to the military cycle of Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving, as if there were no other way. Every young fighter jock knew the feeling of getting two or three hours' sleep and then waking up at 5:30 a.m. and having a few cups of coffee, a few cigarettes, and then carting his poor quivering liver out to the field for another day of flying. There were those who arrived not merely hungover but still drunk, slapping oxygen tank cones over their faces and trying to burn the alcohol out of their systems, and then going up, remarking later: `I don't advise it, you understand, but it can be done. (Provided you have the right stuff, you miserable pudknocker).'" The Right Stuff (1979)
Five billion years from now... oh fuck it, I need a drink.
Sobering up now, this "dead star" is really a white dwarf, isn't it? Time scales become truly mind-boggling when, after eons as a white dwarf, the nuclear reaction peters out, the "ember" still emitting heat for eons upon eons.
If the proton decays, when the last white dwarf goes out, around 10^14 years from now, the Universe passes from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era, everything slowly cooling down, matter slowly disintegrating or being sucked into black holes, beyond the point when all free-floating matter has reached 1-to-1 odds of evaporating, roughly 10^40 years from now.
If the proton decays, then the Universe enters the Black Hole Era, when there is no more matter to be sucked into singularities, so that they now begin the excruciatingly slow process of evaporating via Hawking Radiation. The last of the supermassive black holes will have evaporated by 10^100 from now. Then we enter a period of virtual infinity, named the Dark Era, the Universe inconceivably vast and empty and still accelerating.
However, if the proton does NOT decay, circumstances and numbers become even more surreal/nasty, all stars NOT sucked into black holes reach 1-to-1 odds of becoming iron spheres at around 10^1500 years from now. That's right, all baryonic matter in the Universe will have frozen into an iron state. Finally, the last iron star will collapse into a neutron star or black hole at 10^10^76 (ten to the ten to the seventy six).
If the leader of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel says "build me a tunnel", do you have to option of saying "no sir, that stuff is BAD for people"?
It would seem like the guy tackled a difficult engineering problem and applied himself with the pride of Alec Guinness in "The Bridge On The River Kwai".
It was crystalline and of unmentioned metals, but concerning the topic of this thread, and since silicon is a metalloid, the principle is too similar to dismiss.
Slashdot Mirror
Does being Welsh make you arrive 63 years late at 99.99% the speed of light?
Mod this guy up.
That said,
They're not dumb, they're just following an agenda that requires a bit of science denial now and then.
With a helluva lotta chutzpah.
For creationism, it's because there aren't enough rich people to win elections, so they have to con various flavors of fools into voting against their own best interests.
Gingrich for one may be a cynical bastard, but Santorum is one of the various flavors of fools you refer to. So are Bachmann and Palin, among others in the spotlight and/or in a position of power, which is what happens when they cater to these fools, some of them rise among the ranks to a national stage.
NOTE: To get the correct spelling of Bachmann in here, I Googled "Lyin' Ass Bitch".
Cats in particular have never done as well as today, and their star seems to be still rising.
And it shall remain so, until the Nibblers finally come to usurp the throne of the LOLcat.
The statement that time isn't infinite has always bugged me, because there were events before "time" (as we measure it) began, before our Universe and markers of reference, a state where (and when) quantum fluctuations occurred, at the very least. Let's put a name to it and call it Meta-Time.
In this Meta-Time, some event precipitated the Big Bang, or False-Vacuum Inflation, or whatever Everything is.
As for infinity, I have no difficulty visualizing time going forward forever, but backwards... a Meta-Clock having already ticked an infinity with no discrete moment of origin... I get a weird vertigo just thinking about it, like my mind is on a tightrope and there's no safety net underneath.
From the second Wikipedia link in your post:
"If the universe is finite but unbounded, it is also possible that the universe is smaller than the observable universe. In this case, what we take to be very distant galaxies may actually be duplicate images of nearby galaxies, formed by light that has circumnavigated the universe."
Mind blown.
If your side projects are in an area that overlaps with your employer's business, then they have a legitimate right to refuse.
You bring up a very valid point. On first impression, overly restrictive intellectual property smacks of intellectual slavery, but then there's always the risk of an employer's ideas, know-how and internal processes being used against them by ambitious yet unimaginative and unscrupulous employees.
It's a classic scenario, isn't it? The manager of a X business quits and opens a copycat store, sometimes even right across the street, and a working relationship has turned into a rivalry, with the new business having privileged information about how his former employer does what he/she does.
Then, the new business could sell tacos, sandwiches, salads, pitas, gyros, ANYTHING, but inevitably it's also gotta be burgers, right? WHY does it have to be the exact same fucking thing?
True story: An office/school supply store was doing pretty good business, until some misguided imbecile tried to duplicate lightning in a bottle and opened another supply store next door. Now there's two businesses sharing the same number of customers in the same block, both struggling to make ends meet now, a toil and chore just to stay afloat.
Another one: For ages, there were no Spanish cuisine restaurants in my town. One finally opens up, and it's a resounding success. Within a year, there were five Spanish restaurants. Within another year, all had closed down, not enough customers to go around. Meanwhile, during all that time, no Thai or Vietnamese, no Peruvian or Brazilian, no Greek or Turkish, not even a place to get a decent baked potato with toppings. BRILLIANT!!!
Mr Turing was subjected to a quack treatment for his "ailment", at a certain point he chose suicide, a horrible and unjust fate.
However, if Mr Turing had lived in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, he may very well have ended up dead of starvation and exposure at a forced-labor camp, or even by a random act of cruelty by the guards.
Across the globe, those were not enlightened times on the subject of homosexuality, and some places were decidedly more brutal than others.
Even today, there are countries and societies where this particular type of ignorance prevails at an official level, and the UK is not one of them.
While I'm not justifying the standing verdict on Mr Turing, I am also not going to hold it too heavy against contemporary British society.
Above all, Hats Off To Mr Alan Turing! Next time I'm at the pub, I'll have a pint or three in your honor, you bloody old pooftah!
Just like the party of "secret racists" appointed the first black judge on the Supreme Court in the middle of the crucial, decisive Civil Rights Campaign of the 1960s, Mr Thurgood Marshall.
Your post just makes me thankful that he was in charge at the time, rather than you.
Damn right. Weekend armchair presidenting is little more than a Rorschach Test, and in no way represents complex realities and political minefields that have to be navigated. Like a friend of mine said, and I paraphrase - "I know I don't think like Obama, and that's the point. I wouldn't want somebody that thinks like me at the helm, I'd prefer someone with more discipline and patience to know which political fights to pick and get at least some things done properly. You can attempt to bring some things to Obama's attention, but imagine a thousand different voices, from corporations to farmers, all wanting their pony all the same time".
Goddamit, and it HAD to be sponsored by a corporate slut Senator from the PAN (National Action Party).
Another link in Spanish, very good summary about this young privileged asshole and his proposed legislation:
http://www.animalpolitico.com/blogueros-blog-invitado/2011/12/20/ley-doring-o-las-leyes-contra-las-personas-impipolicial/
So it's pretty much a standard Heat Pump, then.
NO, let Mr lukewarm milquetoast fossil Reid rush the bill, so it can die the death it deserves right now.
My god, if only a day like today could have happened back in the day with the (un)Patriot Act.
"SOPA and PIPA so far" was posted around 6 hours after midnight PST, which is nine hours after the first websites went black, assuming it all started at EST.
The MPAA and SOPA-sponsor Lamar Smith (R-TX) are trying to brush off the protests as a stunt, and Smith has announced markup for the bill will resume in February.
Cynical corporate sluts in positions of political power are tenacious, to say the least.
Parent is obviously referring to the blackout in progress. Today is a day of civil action.
My thoughts exactly, I came in here a couple of hours ago expecting some SOPA/PIPA acknowledgement, was truly puzzled by the chirping crickets.
Also but less shocking, the lack of a banner on the issue raises the question: Is Slashdot management neutral, apolitical, or something a little more insidious?
I'm guessing apolitical, by which I mean, management keeping their opinions to themselves and allowing the users to fire the cannons from all sides, with no interference.
The portrayal of New Mexico with the cartoonish Looney Tunes cliffs and plateaus.
Let's not forget George Herriman's seminal comic strip Krazy Kat, source of my sig.
Kokonino Kounty's mesas and surrealistic landscapes predate The Road Runner by more than a quarter century.
Finally, I can't resist taking a jab at that headline:
New Mexico Is Yawning, Sonar Reveals.
The way I understand it, it's not the flu itself that will kill you, but the body's prophylactic overreaction.
Does an immune system react with the same level of intensity with a vaccine as with a full-fledged, live flu?
Because if the worst-case vaccine scenario is less intense than the worst-case flu scenario, gimme the shot (as much as I hate needles).
This happened to me once. I crossed the International Date line on December 24. It was December 26 on the other side. It was the year without a Christmas.
If this was in 2004, and you'd have gone from December 25th to the 27th, maybe the Boxing Day Tsunami could have been averted.
Zulu time is kept by observing quasars.
Wait, shouldn't that be pulsars?
From the Tom Wolfe book, the world needs "heroes" like this, like it needs a hole in the head:
"More fighter pilots died in automobiles than in airplanes. Fortunately, there was always some kindly soul up the chain to certify the papers `line of duty,' so that the widow could get a better break on the insurance. That was okay and only proper because somehow the system itself had long ago said Skol! and Quite right! to the military cycle of Flying & Drinking and Drinking & Driving, as if there were no other way. Every young fighter jock knew the feeling of getting two or three hours' sleep and then waking up at 5:30 a.m. and having a few cups of coffee, a few cigarettes, and then carting his poor quivering liver out to the field for another day of flying. There were those who arrived not merely hungover but still drunk, slapping oxygen tank cones over their faces and trying to burn the alcohol out of their systems, and then going up, remarking later: `I don't advise it, you understand, but it can be done. (Provided you have the right stuff, you miserable pudknocker).'" The Right Stuff (1979)
Five billion years from now... oh fuck it, I need a drink.
Sobering up now, this "dead star" is really a white dwarf, isn't it?
Time scales become truly mind-boggling when, after eons as a white dwarf, the nuclear reaction peters out, the "ember" still emitting heat for eons upon eons.
If the proton decays, when the last white dwarf goes out, around 10^14 years from now, the Universe passes from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era, everything slowly cooling down, matter slowly disintegrating or being sucked into black holes, beyond the point when all free-floating matter has reached 1-to-1 odds of evaporating, roughly 10^40 years from now.
If the proton decays, then the Universe enters the Black Hole Era, when there is no more matter to be sucked into singularities, so that they now begin the excruciatingly slow process of evaporating via Hawking Radiation. The last of the supermassive black holes will have evaporated by 10^100 from now. Then we enter a period of virtual infinity, named the Dark Era, the Universe inconceivably vast and empty and still accelerating.
However, if the proton does NOT decay, circumstances and numbers become even more surreal/nasty, all stars NOT sucked into black holes reach 1-to-1 odds of becoming iron spheres at around 10^1500 years from now. That's right, all baryonic matter in the Universe will have frozen into an iron state. Finally, the last iron star will collapse into a neutron star or black hole at 10^10^76 (ten to the ten to the seventy six).
And that's how thing will end and remain ended.
If the leader of Mexico's most powerful drug cartel says "build me a tunnel", do you have to option of saying "no sir, that stuff is BAD for people"?
It would seem like the guy tackled a difficult engineering problem and applied himself with the pride of Alec Guinness in "The Bridge On The River Kwai".
The cops can outright confiscate your money if you're holding more than $10k in cash.
Was that a Lindsay Lohan joke?
Do they ever mention it being silicon-based?
It was crystalline and of unmentioned metals, but concerning the topic of this thread, and since silicon is a metalloid, the principle is too similar to dismiss.