a continuous flow of matter and light (which also has mass)
Well, that really depends on who you ask, and how you phrase the question.
Light, like everything else, has momentum/energy. Mass is one of the observable manifestations of that, but it is not the only one. The reason light is generally considered to be massless is fairly simple: When you push against the motion of moving bowling ball, or anything else with mass, you remove kinetic energy from it. When the kinetic energy is gone, the thing stops moving. But it still exists, because it has mass potential energy as well. Light, however, ceases to exist once the kinetic energy is gone. That's all the energy it has, which would indicate it has no mass.
There's still the question of "relativistic mass", which IMHO is just an artifact of trying to make relativistic effects mesh better with our Newtonian perception. The real test of whether "relativistic mass" is actual real mass would be to see if the gravity well around a massive object is stronger when it is moving than when it is stationary.
The blue lines represent the path taken by light. The red lines represent the surface of the material.
The MPEGs might be worthwhile as well. I couldn't take the time to view them because of my dog-slow web access here at work.
And to clarify on the importance of these developments... No, left-handed materials are not really "new" in either theory or in practical use. What is new is materials that are left-handed for light in the visible spectrum. Recall that index of refraction is dependent on wavelength (or frequency, take your pick). To get left-handed material, you need two rare scenarios to occur at once: one electrical and one magnetic, and it has been more difficult to create this situation with some wavelengths (such as visible light) than with others (such as microwaves).
I believe they have taken to being called "metamaterials" because we need to "build" custom crystal structures tailored for our needs, and they don't tend to grow in "normal" ways.
When I said "people who dislike physical closeness", I was refering to extreme cases, such as people who have a phobia of touching others, or people who just psychological uncomfortable with physical closeness.
I'm not talking about shy people, because that's generally social in origin (though it may cause physical "symptoms").
Like any trait, there's a balance to be struck. People who are afraid of or dislike physical closeness can have trouble in life. People who like it a little too much can also have and/or cause trouble.
But the point I was getting at is that people who isolate themselves physically, even if not socially, are almost by definition not contributing to the gene pool. Not saying they're detrimental. Just that they are not physically contributing. It's awfully tough to spread your genes if you never let a person get within 10 feet of you.
On a side note:
A trait can be socially good (such as fidelity) and still be disadvantageous.
There are multiple scopes to look at when considering evolutionary "pressures" and "forces". Fidelity is not probably genetically advantageous to the individual in a population that doesn't, as a whole, value fidelity very much. But it can be very advantageous to the population as a whole to value fidelity in general. Especially if gestation is long and the development to sexual maturity is slow, such as in humans, fidelity can ensure that young are raised properly into functional adults, with properly cultivated and encouraged instincts, that are then able to continue the species. So the social advantage of fidelity is not just a social advantage to the individual, it is a genetic advantage to the species that, in the case of humans (usually), overriddes an opposing genetic advantage to the individual.
It may even be that the presence and flourishing of both opposing strategies is, in general, a benefit to the human species. Individual "promiscuity" probably promotes a certain amount of genetic variation and potential for further evolution among a certain proportion of the population. While the sub-population that values fidelity presents a safeguard for the species as a whole, against dramatic effects of a "bad" mutation, disease, etc. among the promiscuous sub-population. And the natural intermixing of the two prevents the species from splitting into two separate, more vulnerable, species with wildly different survival strategies.
In fact, even at the level of the animal kingdom in general we can see such factors. The animal kingdom is amazingly diversified. Why have just a few hundred thousand (wild estimate) sharks when the ocean can support billions of smaller fish? Because such diversification ensures that animal life in general will survive even if one specific type of environment or resource is totally wiped out. It also allows a higher number of individuals (and hence a better statistical chance of continuance/survival), while circumventing large-scale problems of resource competition. Fish eat different things than birds, and so they are ecologically separated. Not completely, but enough that they don't compete for food, and they don't depend on the same food sources to endure. If worms and bugs started to die out, birds would probably go too (of course there would be much bigger problems as well), but the majority of fish would be fairly safe. So even if the world was all fish and birds, that's safer for animal life in general than having just fish or just birds.
Evolution is simple term for an amazingly complex emergent phenomenon, which at it's roots builds right out of statistical thermodynamics. The oversimplification of evolution for the pallate of Joe Bagodonuts, while spurred by the same respectable initiatives behind the proliferation of any scientific information into the public awareness, has had the typical side effect of deluding people into thinking they understand it fully when in actuality they know virtually nothing about it. As with relativity or quantum mechanics, better than 99% of the population has no business attempting to either refute or explain evolution.
It's more subtle than you think... Take this statement:
Fish must, therefore, work against gravity to lift an amount of water equal to their own mass for each body length they move forward.
I was initially very confused by this statement. Why should the displaced water have the same mass as the fish. Like probably anyone else here, I was taught that the amount of liquid displaced by submersing something was equivalent in volume to the object submersed, not equivalent in mass.
But then I remembered the density equation (d = m/V). They had just stated that fish are effectively "weightless" in water. Which must mean their average density is effectively the same as water. So d1 = d2. And since V1 = V2, by the definition of displacement, the only other variable in the equation (m) must also be the same. So the amount of water displaced by a fish has both the same volume and the same mass as the fish. (It may be useful yo further note, as others have, that while mass may figure significantly in the equations governing both fish and bird motion, it probably doesn't figure in the same way, since birds are not "neutrally bouyant" in the air.)
At any rate... Simple, yes. Obvious, not necessarily.
Unfortunately, the article is not very technical. I would have enjoyed some more technical detail. But the research sounds fairly remarkable. I think to the general, non-technical audience to which this article was probably addressed, it may be surprising that there is an underlying pattern or set of principles shared by all different types of animal motion. But as someone who had more than my share of physics courses in college (I'm a Computer Engineer, not a Mechanical Engineer, dangit!), that's not the impressive discovery here. What impresses me is that they have nailed down what that pattern is, pretty much building it from basic concepts.
Plenty of others think they aren't. It is an interesting matter of strong debate at the moment.
I understand. I was just expressing my opinion, my personal preference, not trying to put opposers down. I think there are very good arguments on both sides, and I certainly understand why people like them. I expect that there will continue to be major languages long into the future that fall on both sides of the debate.
For as much as we communicate these days, I think the "real fear" was of a physical isolation, not a social isolation. A physical isolation carries a very real threat, because if you never form phyisical relationships, it's tough to propogate your genetic material. And I wouldn't exactly say that phones, TV, the internet, or video games, have encouraged physical relationships. Granted, they haven't exactly lead to the death of marriage or anything like that. The human population in general has always had a certain proportion of people who tend toward hermitage. They're not taking advantage of communication technologies, so they largely remain unaffected.
What these technologies do, which people worry about, is allow people who want social interaction, but also want a to maintain a physical distance, to have it both ways, which was difficult if not impossible in the past. So we have a growing population of people who are less likely to contribute to the gene pool of future generations. But the real question is... Will we miss them?
The tendency to physical isolation by way of technology is very unlikely to lead to the death of civilization, as some people seem to fear it might. Because it's not likely to sweep over the whole human race. In general, it's built-in that we need physical closeness with people. But these technologies just might help "cull the herd". We may lose some who would otherwise contribute to the gene pool. But it's arguable whether people who dislike physical closeness are really benefiting the human gene pool at all to begin with.
Nowhere was I informed as to what exceptions could be thrown.
Having been weaned on C++, I always assume anything could through an exception of any sort. But that doesn't mean the only way of handling the things is a try-catch block in the "main" function. The only thing worse than assuming you know exactly what your own code will do is assuming you know exactly what someone else's code will do.
Anticipating code segments that are subject to critical failures, taping off sections of code that can recover from a failure, and handling unexpected errors in the appropriate locations and ways to allow such recovery, is practically programming 101. Checked exceptions are only one method of getting this done. I prefer not to be "forced" to do it the way the Java designers thought was best. There were plenty of scenarios where it was just a big pain in the butt. You know, "one size never fits all", and all that.
I do understand the concern, and the reasoning behind the feature. It makes a certain intuitive sense that an exception, which is technically a special type of "output" of a function, should be part of the function's contract. But I see two big problems...
1) It can provide a false sense of security. Just because all the exception accounting balances out doesn't mean there are no problems, or that there won't be unexpected failures, or even that the handling that is satisfying the checking is correct. It seems to me, again, that it's better to just assume a function could fail in any possible way. Specifying the exceptions that can be thrown seems similar to specifying, in the function signature, the range of numbers allowed for an Integer argument. Yeah, it makes the contract stronger. But the same checking can be done in the code, if necessary, and can be left out altogether in the many cases that it's totally overkill.
2) Having to list all the types of exceptions that my function can throw can get to be a supreme pain in the butt. Especially if I'm just hacking or playing around, when I really don't care if an exception causes my program to crash out. If I'm just messing around, I really don't want to have to put in dummy code all over the place to appease the compiler gods.
I am not a fan of languages that attempt to protect programmers from themselves. Java seems to be doing that in this instance. That's probably the biggest reason I don't like the feature. Just give us the tools (exceptions) to do the job right and we'll figure out, as a community, what are the best ways of using the tools. There's no need to chain us to "the right tools".
"It'd be pretty silly to be missing something like dlopen or LoadLibrary..." Just like missing checked exceptions? Yeah that would be silly.
I'm pretty sure dynamic class loading has been around longer than Java, or even unchecked exceptions. So I say it would be sillier to be missing a way to dynamically load classes.
Out of curiosity, how many "major" languages have checked exceptions? Java is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
It's been a while since I worked with Java, and I'm far from an expert. But when I was dinking around with it, I found it extremely annoying that I had to label every function that could possibly throw an exception. The compiler needed to be smart enough to detect whether a function might throw an exception, in order to tell me that I had forgotten to label it... So if the compiler can tell this without me telling it so explicitly, that pretty much relegates the label to syntax-enforced documentation.
Not to mention people got so sick of being required to write pointless code to handle pointless exceptions, that they figured out a ways to hack around it, making the checking useless: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5559
All of that seems silly to me. But that's just MHO.
The other books in the series definitely do not contain a pro-war message. In light of the other 3 Ender books, it doesn't make any sense to claim that the overall message of the series is pro-war. Though I disagree with it, I can see how the argument could be made about Ender's Game as a stand-alone book. But not as a series. Maybe that's why Card wrote the later books, rather than letting it end with Ender's Game.
The Bean books are a slightly different story, but they are not strictly about war either. There is still a subtle anti-war message. But a point is also made that sometimes there really is no alternative, because some threats are too immediate and too grave.
But even when Card makes it clear that he believes such actions are necessary and unavoidable it is also made very clear that he believes we should be remorseful about it, because the lesser of two evils is still evil.
I think when they say "port", they are really just talking about a multi-platform release.
The impression I got was that they were referring to the much-talked-about claim that games designed for the XBox 360 and PS3 will be too demanding for the Revolution hardware. This article seems to refute that.
A science is meant to understand a phenomom or a set of phenomena, where as an art is about creation of something. Programming thus falls to the art class?
Sure. But "art" is very broad. Creation of "art" happens irrespective of a functional purpose. The creation need not acccomplish a task. The purpose of the creation may simply be "to exist", where no such thing existed before.
I think a more appropriate term for programming would be "engineering". Engineering is a process of creation (and so can probably be called an art), but it is specifically directed toward creating something to accomplish a task. And a program, almost by definition, accomplishes some sort of task, though that task may indeed be a trivial one.
And there are still further special cases. A codemonkey engages in "programming", but may blindly follow a program design which was cooked up entirely by someone else. In this case it is arguable that the codemonkey is neither engineer nor artist, since he did not create/design the program that is to accomplish the task. He is merely constructing it. So a codemonkey, I'd argue, may be more properly termed a skilled tradesman: an "artisan".
I agree with all of your technical arguments. But I didn't pick up on any claim that "having the source code available is a liability". I also disagree with calling the post FUD. Rather, I picked up on a very common POV among people who have considered using free and/or open source software at one point or another.
What I saw was a claim that the lack of economic incentive on the part of the developers is a liability. If Microsoft's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and MS will make less money than they would if everyone is happy. If Linux's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and... Nothing. No one misses them. Now, I understand your argument is that rather than just give up on OSS, they should take the money they saved by not buying proprietary source and invest it into making the OSS better for their own needs. But when OSS is publicly hailed for the fact that it is so much "cheaper" than OSS, how else should they react when they find out that they won't be able to save as much money as they were led to believe? More on this below...
The problem is that people want all the benefits that are always being extolled by proponents of open source. But they don't want to have to deal with the "hidden costs" (i.e., the personal responsibility for seeing to it that desired features get added) that are less broadcasted. The fact that they are unwilling to deal with these is their own choice. As is the eventuality that they have installed and begun to rely on OSS before they discover them. That should be part of the research that happens before any action is taken. But the fact that these costs are indeed "hidden", is the fault of the OSS evangelists.
I understand the frustration that these costs are not presented "up front" by the OSS proponents in the first place. We all hear "with OSS, you can do this, and that, and you never again have to deal with the other thing." But seldom is it mentioned proximately that to obtain this benefit, you will need to trade in some real, and often very important, benefits of closed/proprietary corporate-funded source. It's essentially a marketing trick, and it's dishonest even if our intentions are "good". We should not be surprised when there is a backlash in response to it. Unless we fix that, it's one way in which we have "stooped to their level" when dealing with closed source, and it undermines the "ethical" justifications that are so often offered up.
If we want to get people to adopt, of course we need to advertise the virtues of OSS. But if we want people to to be satsified and to remain loyal to open source, we also need to have better disclosure on the trade-offs and new responsibilities that the move will require of them.
This is also why photons are sometimes referred to as "connections" between two points in spacetime. They are the shortest possible path by which energy can be transferred between one point in spacetime and another. And, interestingly, as far as the photon itself is concerned it occupies no time and no space at all.
One might then wonder, how can energy be transferred between spacetime points except by light? If it can't, then this would imply that any energy in motion is really made of light. This certainly fits well with recent proposals that electrons (and by extrapolation, all matter) may simply be configurations of very energetic photons moving in a special pattern (in the case of the electron, a "twisted loop", which roughly follows the surface of a toroid in space). The only energy that would not be light, in this case, would be energy that is completely stationary. But quantum physics has a problem with that in its uncertainty principle disallows scenarios with such definite quantifications of location, time, end energy.
Of course, this is all "gedanken experiment" anyway, and is probably at best an oversimplification of a very complicated reality.
Regarding the minigames, I always thought FF games have been fairly good about not requiring you to "win" the minigames. The only thing you generally miss out on is a special item, and usually it's not something "ultimate", just something that would give you an edge for a little while. (Some glaring exceptions include the "avoid the lightning bolts" minigame, and Blitzball, in FFX, which were both difficult and tedious, and were the only way to obtain certain characters' ultimate weapons.
Regarding levelling of non-active party members... I actually prefer that they don't do that. I think the appropriate solution is to make sure that every character is balanced and interesting enough that you want to cycle them into the party. Chrono Trigger did this respectably, IMHO. And I thought FF X did this spectacularly well. It was also really cool that, after keeping the skill trees separate for most of the game, if you gained enough levels you could eventually start to transcend that limit, and really round people out. For example, you could take Lulu, a powerful magic user, put her on Auron's skill tree, and with a little patience turn her into a super-powerful wizard/tank.
An great example of an utter failure at this is Chrono Cross. All of your characters levelled regardless who was in the party and who wasn't. But there were 45 characters, and at least half of them were largely useless once you got out of the scenario where you didn't have access to anyone else, because even with the free levelling, they were distinctly underpowered. 90% of my time with that game was spent with maybe 8 of the 40 characters I collected. One of them (Sprigg) I literally never put into my party after the end of the scenario where I couldn't remove him.
But on the bright side, there were really no minigames at all in Chrono Cross.
If "Goliath" was a common name in Philistine culture, one would assume that archaeologists/anthropologists focused on this region and that time period would have recovered other artifacts with that name on it. This particular archaeologist is quoted as saying that this is the first real evidence that the name was actually used in Philistine culture at any point in history.
That doesn't remove the possiblity that the archaeologist is biased. However, lacking any information about the man, we can't really make a guess one way or another. I'd say we should lend the same credence to the core of this article (not the hype, mind you), as we would to any other "first-word" about a new archaeological find. In short, it's interesting that at some point in history someone named Goliath may have existed. And it is interesting that if this much is verified by peer review, that the man might possibly have served as at least partial inspiration for the Biblical account. But beyond that... What's the point of reporting it this way or at this time?
If you ask me, the real fault here lies with Reuters for the manner of the reporting. I'm sure it was worded as it was specifically because they knew that both Christians looking for evidence to back up their beliefs, and non-Christians watching out for religiously inspired pseudoscience, would inevitably want to read all about such claims.
I hate reading about archaeological finds of any sort in pop science or general news publications. As with any for-profit news organization, articles are almost universally worded to maximize readership, not the availability of factual information.
I don't know what the numbers are, but I would imagine that cable/satellite TV viewers are a significant portion, if not a majorty of US TV consumers.
I hadn't considered this. I would definitely be surprised if it were really a high percentage. I guess I'm biased in this respect. I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment. I really have no desire to have an extended TV service of any sort at this point, even though I could fairly easily afford it. I suppose if indeed a high percentage of people have cable or satellite TV of some sort, then you're probably right about how long NTSC TVs will remain on the market. Though I suspect at some point not far off they will be so devalued that all but the poorest people will be willing to buy a small HD TV instead.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I suppose it's anecdotal. I just haven't met many people at all who make under $50k a year who have TV's any bigger than 31".
I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs.
They're not, directly. They're interested in affordable TVs. And small TVs are much more affordable than big ones.
The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent.
I certainly wouldn't make that argument... But even within the context of America, there is still a large population of people who just don't have the funds to care that they don't have a big-screen TV.
Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need. A "small" TV is a minimal hindrance during only the fraction of time spent on entertainment. I don't see where this would be incompatible with what I'm saying. It's a question of priorities. The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
Since the story on japanese RPGs tends to be pretty samey overall and the number of worthwile variations on the same old "guy meets shy girl, fights villain, world gets destroyed, hero defeats villain and all is good" story that aren't done is rapidly shrinking there needs to be some focus on the other parts of the game.
Or they could come up with a more original storyline format. If they keep focusing on gameplay, pretty soon you might find you're no longer playing an RPG. I don't play RPGs for the gameplay, but rather the story. I don't care about the gameplay as long as it doesn't get in the way.
Let's also keep in mind that although the general story arch of most RPGs is fairly generic, it has been the reliable basis of countless successful stories for a very long time. There's much that can be done within that context. The overarching storyline is just a framework within which to do the really interesting stuff, like character development. The central themes of FF7, FF8, FFX (and from what I can see so far FFX-2) are about the person first and foremost. The quest is just a vehicle.
Anyway, I welcome the changes as well, but only if they make it easier to become immersed in the world of the game, to become one with the story and the characters. Random encounters and level-grinding definitely served to jolt me out of that in previous Final Fantasy games. Though they have been better about that lately. Unfortunately, the travesty of poorly-designed mini-games seems to be expanding. And those are waaaaay more annoying to me than random battles. I'm playing an RPG. Requiring strategy is one thing, because strategy can be integrated with story. But if I can't access a part of the story because my twitch reflexes aren't honed enough, the game designers need to sit and think about the priorities of the genre.
Once again, I'm not talking about big screen. I'm talking about "normal" TVs that blue-collar families concerned about prices have in their living rooms. I'm thinking in the 19" to 29" range. They are the bulk of the market, and CRT is the only cost-efficient option here. HD at this size is still uncommon, but that's because it doesn't matter to the consumer at that level, the extra cost is still too high. But it's getting close, as I noted with my 27" example.
Here is what I'm getting at...
The people who are worried about price more than quality aren't paying attention to the fact that the thing is HD, just that it costs $200 more. But that difference is shrinking every day. And soon, retailers can just drop the NTSCs (before they become too devalued), and consumers will just keep on paying what they've always paid, but now they'll have HD instead of NTSC. This phase-out has to happen sometime, because NTSC broadcasts are going to stop eventually.
Yes. And it does. For now. But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer. The only real barrier to doing this right now is price. HDTVs are currently more expensive than CRTs. So if the cheap TVs suddenly disappeared a lot of people would be pretty angry.
But the price difference is not as large as was implied by the poster that I was replying to. Small CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
Yes, they still are more expensive. But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
And how many other lobbying groups do the same thing? This should only be a problem if police are using their "power" to "commandeer" the TV or paper space for their announcements. Was that the case? If not, then they're no different from anyone else hawking their favorite cause.
You can get HDTV CRTs. And the prices on those are comparitive with good NTSC CRTs.
About 15 months ago I bought a Sony 27" flat-tube NTSC CRT with all the bells and whistles for about $500.
Yesterday I saw an RCA 27" HD CRT for $500, and that was not a "sale price".
Granted, we're comparing RCA to Sony. But the fact remains that you can get a "cheap" HDTV for not much more than a "good" NTSC TV. And the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Our problem here at/. lies in the logical slide that we tech-geeks get into whereby when we think "HD", we immediately think "large-screen flat-panel". The truth is, an HDTV doesn't need to be big and it doesn't need to be flat-panel.
To satsify the HD roadmap, all we need are small, cheap HD CRTs. They're already small, and those are getting close to cheap. I'd say 2 years is probably fairly reasonable to expect those prices to reach what NTSC CRTs have traditionally been.
Because I also believe in evolution... I think that covers all your questions.
We are not animals - we are humans
As far as cutting edge science can tell, humans are animals too. In fact what you just claimed is one of the most popular defenses that anti-science christians use to defend themselves. I avoid such worthless tactics, and in reward I get attacked with them. You're shameless, and you defeat your own premises in being so.
that treasonous... (and his warmongering jewboy sidekick) you idiots put in the whitehouse should face down a firing squad
Wow! There's so much to choose from, where do I start???
How do you know I'm not Canadian? I haven't said anything about being an American. (I am American, but I just wanted to point out your biased assumption.)
I didn't vote for Bush. I didn't want him in there any more than I wanted Kerry in there.
Expressing anti-semitic sentiment isn't going to bolster your arguement, <irony>Nazi.</irony>
I thought liberals were against the death penalty.
You... are destroying this country by undermining everything the patriots fought and died for
On the conrary, I'd argue that closed-minded bigots like you who harbor such anabashed and unbridled hatred for people who disagree with them and are completely unwilling to compromise or to try to understand opposing opinions, are undermining the things the founders fought for. And when I say that, I'm refering not just just far-left liberals like you who hate Christians, but also to far-right neo-cons like Pat Robertson that use their god as a crutch to whip up frenzied Christ-groupies to defend their greed and support prejudiced laws, and also to everyone in between who can't quit bickering like 3-year-olds and actually get something useful done around here. The unending posturing, finger-pointing, and name-calling that passes for government, and for political debate, in this country makes me physically ill .
Do you have anything intelligent to say, or are you just going to keep frothing at the mouth, spewing hatred and profanity like so much spittle?
Fair enough answer to my second question, though I'd still argue for the recourses outlined in the rest of my post. Otherwise "unfair" scenarios could still arise, such as that of my first question. You can only push the line so far back by saying that if the person really cared that much they could have done X. Because in the end it's the decision of all. And as far as I'm concerned, the law should not level class-level punishments regardless of individual fault. IMHO, it's enough punishment to the community as a whole that they got what they voted for: a school-board insensitive to consitutional rights. "Artificial" punitive damages for everyone, regardless of whether an individual supported the board in the elections or not, is going a bit far.
Slashdot Mirror
a continuous flow of matter and light (which also has mass)
Well, that really depends on who you ask, and how you phrase the question.
Light, like everything else, has momentum/energy. Mass is one of the observable manifestations of that, but it is not the only one. The reason light is generally considered to be massless is fairly simple: When you push against the motion of moving bowling ball, or anything else with mass, you remove kinetic energy from it. When the kinetic energy is gone, the thing stops moving. But it still exists, because it has mass potential energy as well. Light, however, ceases to exist once the kinetic energy is gone. That's all the energy it has, which would indicate it has no mass.
There's still the question of "relativistic mass", which IMHO is just an artifact of trying to make relativistic effects mesh better with our Newtonian perception. The real test of whether "relativistic mass" is actual real mass would be to see if the gravity well around a massive object is stronger when it is moving than when it is stationary.
The blue lines represent the path taken by light. The red lines represent the surface of the material.
The MPEGs might be worthwhile as well. I couldn't take the time to view them because of my dog-slow web access here at work.
And to clarify on the importance of these developments... No, left-handed materials are not really "new" in either theory or in practical use. What is new is materials that are left-handed for light in the visible spectrum. Recall that index of refraction is dependent on wavelength (or frequency, take your pick). To get left-handed material, you need two rare scenarios to occur at once: one electrical and one magnetic, and it has been more difficult to create this situation with some wavelengths (such as visible light) than with others (such as microwaves).
I believe they have taken to being called "metamaterials" because we need to "build" custom crystal structures tailored for our needs, and they don't tend to grow in "normal" ways.
I'm not talking about shy people, because that's generally social in origin (though it may cause physical "symptoms").
Like any trait, there's a balance to be struck. People who are afraid of or dislike physical closeness can have trouble in life. People who like it a little too much can also have and/or cause trouble.
But the point I was getting at is that people who isolate themselves physically, even if not socially, are almost by definition not contributing to the gene pool. Not saying they're detrimental. Just that they are not physically contributing. It's awfully tough to spread your genes if you never let a person get within 10 feet of you.
On a side note:
A trait can be socially good (such as fidelity) and still be disadvantageous.
There are multiple scopes to look at when considering evolutionary "pressures" and "forces". Fidelity is not probably genetically advantageous to the individual in a population that doesn't, as a whole, value fidelity very much. But it can be very advantageous to the population as a whole to value fidelity in general. Especially if gestation is long and the development to sexual maturity is slow, such as in humans, fidelity can ensure that young are raised properly into functional adults, with properly cultivated and encouraged instincts, that are then able to continue the species. So the social advantage of fidelity is not just a social advantage to the individual, it is a genetic advantage to the species that, in the case of humans (usually), overriddes an opposing genetic advantage to the individual.
It may even be that the presence and flourishing of both opposing strategies is, in general, a benefit to the human species. Individual "promiscuity" probably promotes a certain amount of genetic variation and potential for further evolution among a certain proportion of the population. While the sub-population that values fidelity presents a safeguard for the species as a whole, against dramatic effects of a "bad" mutation, disease, etc. among the promiscuous sub-population. And the natural intermixing of the two prevents the species from splitting into two separate, more vulnerable, species with wildly different survival strategies.
In fact, even at the level of the animal kingdom in general we can see such factors. The animal kingdom is amazingly diversified. Why have just a few hundred thousand (wild estimate) sharks when the ocean can support billions of smaller fish? Because such diversification ensures that animal life in general will survive even if one specific type of environment or resource is totally wiped out. It also allows a higher number of individuals (and hence a better statistical chance of continuance/survival), while circumventing large-scale problems of resource competition. Fish eat different things than birds, and so they are ecologically separated. Not completely, but enough that they don't compete for food, and they don't depend on the same food sources to endure. If worms and bugs started to die out, birds would probably go too (of course there would be much bigger problems as well), but the majority of fish would be fairly safe. So even if the world was all fish and birds, that's safer for animal life in general than having just fish or just birds.
Evolution is simple term for an amazingly complex emergent phenomenon, which at it's roots builds right out of statistical thermodynamics. The oversimplification of evolution for the pallate of Joe Bagodonuts, while spurred by the same respectable initiatives behind the proliferation of any scientific information into the public awareness, has had the typical side effect of deluding people into thinking they understand it fully when in actuality they know virtually nothing about it. As with relativity or quantum mechanics, better than 99% of the population has no business attempting to either refute or explain evolution.
It's more subtle than you think... Take this statement:
Fish must, therefore, work against gravity to lift an amount of water equal to their own mass for each body length they move forward.
I was initially very confused by this statement. Why should the displaced water have the same mass as the fish. Like probably anyone else here, I was taught that the amount of liquid displaced by submersing something was equivalent in volume to the object submersed, not equivalent in mass.
But then I remembered the density equation (d = m/V). They had just stated that fish are effectively "weightless" in water. Which must mean their average density is effectively the same as water. So d1 = d2. And since V1 = V2, by the definition of displacement, the only other variable in the equation (m) must also be the same. So the amount of water displaced by a fish has both the same volume and the same mass as the fish. (It may be useful yo further note, as others have, that while mass may figure significantly in the equations governing both fish and bird motion, it probably doesn't figure in the same way, since birds are not "neutrally bouyant" in the air.)
At any rate... Simple, yes. Obvious, not necessarily.
Unfortunately, the article is not very technical. I would have enjoyed some more technical detail. But the research sounds fairly remarkable. I think to the general, non-technical audience to which this article was probably addressed, it may be surprising that there is an underlying pattern or set of principles shared by all different types of animal motion. But as someone who had more than my share of physics courses in college (I'm a Computer Engineer, not a Mechanical Engineer, dangit!), that's not the impressive discovery here. What impresses me is that they have nailed down what that pattern is, pretty much building it from basic concepts.
IMHO that deserves some applause.
Plenty of others think they aren't. It is an interesting matter of strong debate at the moment. I understand. I was just expressing my opinion, my personal preference, not trying to put opposers down. I think there are very good arguments on both sides, and I certainly understand why people like them. I expect that there will continue to be major languages long into the future that fall on both sides of the debate.
For as much as we communicate these days, I think the "real fear" was of a physical isolation, not a social isolation. A physical isolation carries a very real threat, because if you never form phyisical relationships, it's tough to propogate your genetic material. And I wouldn't exactly say that phones, TV, the internet, or video games, have encouraged physical relationships. Granted, they haven't exactly lead to the death of marriage or anything like that. The human population in general has always had a certain proportion of people who tend toward hermitage. They're not taking advantage of communication technologies, so they largely remain unaffected.
What these technologies do, which people worry about, is allow people who want social interaction, but also want a to maintain a physical distance, to have it both ways, which was difficult if not impossible in the past. So we have a growing population of people who are less likely to contribute to the gene pool of future generations. But the real question is... Will we miss them?
The tendency to physical isolation by way of technology is very unlikely to lead to the death of civilization, as some people seem to fear it might. Because it's not likely to sweep over the whole human race. In general, it's built-in that we need physical closeness with people. But these technologies just might help "cull the herd". We may lose some who would otherwise contribute to the gene pool. But it's arguable whether people who dislike physical closeness are really benefiting the human gene pool at all to begin with.
Having been weaned on C++, I always assume anything could through an exception of any sort. But that doesn't mean the only way of handling the things is a try-catch block in the "main" function. The only thing worse than assuming you know exactly what your own code will do is assuming you know exactly what someone else's code will do.
Anticipating code segments that are subject to critical failures, taping off sections of code that can recover from a failure, and handling unexpected errors in the appropriate locations and ways to allow such recovery, is practically programming 101. Checked exceptions are only one method of getting this done. I prefer not to be "forced" to do it the way the Java designers thought was best. There were plenty of scenarios where it was just a big pain in the butt. You know, "one size never fits all", and all that.
I do understand the concern, and the reasoning behind the feature. It makes a certain intuitive sense that an exception, which is technically a special type of "output" of a function, should be part of the function's contract. But I see two big problems...
1) It can provide a false sense of security. Just because all the exception accounting balances out doesn't mean there are no problems, or that there won't be unexpected failures, or even that the handling that is satisfying the checking is correct. It seems to me, again, that it's better to just assume a function could fail in any possible way. Specifying the exceptions that can be thrown seems similar to specifying, in the function signature, the range of numbers allowed for an Integer argument. Yeah, it makes the contract stronger. But the same checking can be done in the code, if necessary, and can be left out altogether in the many cases that it's totally overkill.
2) Having to list all the types of exceptions that my function can throw can get to be a supreme pain in the butt. Especially if I'm just hacking or playing around, when I really don't care if an exception causes my program to crash out. If I'm just messing around, I really don't want to have to put in dummy code all over the place to appease the compiler gods.
I am not a fan of languages that attempt to protect programmers from themselves. Java seems to be doing that in this instance. That's probably the biggest reason I don't like the feature. Just give us the tools (exceptions) to do the job right and we'll figure out, as a community, what are the best ways of using the tools. There's no need to chain us to "the right tools".
"It'd be pretty silly to be missing something like dlopen or LoadLibrary..." Just like missing checked exceptions? Yeah that would be silly.
c eptions
I'm pretty sure dynamic class loading has been around longer than Java, or even unchecked exceptions. So I say it would be sillier to be missing a way to dynamically load classes.
Out of curiosity, how many "major" languages have checked exceptions? Java is the only one I can think of off the top of my head.
It's been a while since I worked with Java, and I'm far from an expert. But when I was dinking around with it, I found it extremely annoying that I had to label every function that could possibly throw an exception. The compiler needed to be smart enough to detect whether a function might throw an exception, in order to tell me that I had forgotten to label it... So if the compiler can tell this without me telling it so explicitly, that pretty much relegates the label to syntax-enforced documentation.
Not to mention people got so sick of being required to write pointless code to handle pointless exceptions, that they figured out a ways to hack around it, making the checking useless:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/wlg/5559
All of that seems silly to me. But that's just MHO.
Or maybe it's not just mine. This guy, and many others, seem to agree that checked exceptions in general are kind of silly:
http://www.mindview.net/Etc/Discussions/CheckedEx
The other books in the series definitely do not contain a pro-war message. In light of the other 3 Ender books, it doesn't make any sense to claim that the overall message of the series is pro-war. Though I disagree with it, I can see how the argument could be made about Ender's Game as a stand-alone book. But not as a series. Maybe that's why Card wrote the later books, rather than letting it end with Ender's Game.
The Bean books are a slightly different story, but they are not strictly about war either. There is still a subtle anti-war message. But a point is also made that sometimes there really is no alternative, because some threats are too immediate and too grave.
But even when Card makes it clear that he believes such actions are necessary and unavoidable it is also made very clear that he believes we should be remorseful about it, because the lesser of two evils is still evil.
I think when they say "port", they are really just talking about a multi-platform release.
The impression I got was that they were referring to the much-talked-about claim that games designed for the XBox 360 and PS3 will be too demanding for the Revolution hardware. This article seems to refute that.
A science is meant to understand a phenomom or a set of phenomena, where as an art is about creation of something. Programming thus falls to the art class?
Sure. But "art" is very broad. Creation of "art" happens irrespective of a functional purpose. The creation need not acccomplish a task. The purpose of the creation may simply be "to exist", where no such thing existed before.
I think a more appropriate term for programming would be "engineering". Engineering is a process of creation (and so can probably be called an art), but it is specifically directed toward creating something to accomplish a task. And a program, almost by definition, accomplishes some sort of task, though that task may indeed be a trivial one.
And there are still further special cases. A codemonkey engages in "programming", but may blindly follow a program design which was cooked up entirely by someone else. In this case it is arguable that the codemonkey is neither engineer nor artist, since he did not create/design the program that is to accomplish the task. He is merely constructing it. So a codemonkey, I'd argue, may be more properly termed a skilled tradesman: an "artisan".
I agree with all of your technical arguments. But I didn't pick up on any claim that "having the source code available is a liability". I also disagree with calling the post FUD. Rather, I picked up on a very common POV among people who have considered using free and/or open source software at one point or another.
What I saw was a claim that the lack of economic incentive on the part of the developers is a liability. If Microsoft's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and MS will make less money than they would if everyone is happy. If Linux's non-developer users aren't getting what they need, they will leave, and... Nothing. No one misses them. Now, I understand your argument is that rather than just give up on OSS, they should take the money they saved by not buying proprietary source and invest it into making the OSS better for their own needs. But when OSS is publicly hailed for the fact that it is so much "cheaper" than OSS, how else should they react when they find out that they won't be able to save as much money as they were led to believe? More on this below...
The problem is that people want all the benefits that are always being extolled by proponents of open source. But they don't want to have to deal with the "hidden costs" (i.e., the personal responsibility for seeing to it that desired features get added) that are less broadcasted. The fact that they are unwilling to deal with these is their own choice. As is the eventuality that they have installed and begun to rely on OSS before they discover them. That should be part of the research that happens before any action is taken. But the fact that these costs are indeed "hidden", is the fault of the OSS evangelists.
I understand the frustration that these costs are not presented "up front" by the OSS proponents in the first place. We all hear "with OSS, you can do this, and that, and you never again have to deal with the other thing." But seldom is it mentioned proximately that to obtain this benefit, you will need to trade in some real, and often very important, benefits of closed/proprietary corporate-funded source. It's essentially a marketing trick, and it's dishonest even if our intentions are "good". We should not be surprised when there is a backlash in response to it. Unless we fix that, it's one way in which we have "stooped to their level" when dealing with closed source, and it undermines the "ethical" justifications that are so often offered up.
If we want to get people to adopt, of course we need to advertise the virtues of OSS. But if we want people to to be satsified and to remain loyal to open source, we also need to have better disclosure on the trade-offs and new responsibilities that the move will require of them.
E^2 = (mc^2)^2 + (pc)^2
Off-topic, but... I don't think it could be called a "Bill of Rights" if it was "compelling" people to do things.
This is also why photons are sometimes referred to as "connections" between two points in spacetime. They are the shortest possible path by which energy can be transferred between one point in spacetime and another. And, interestingly, as far as the photon itself is concerned it occupies no time and no space at all.
One might then wonder, how can energy be transferred between spacetime points except by light? If it can't, then this would imply that any energy in motion is really made of light. This certainly fits well with recent proposals that electrons (and by extrapolation, all matter) may simply be configurations of very energetic photons moving in a special pattern (in the case of the electron, a "twisted loop", which roughly follows the surface of a toroid in space). The only energy that would not be light, in this case, would be energy that is completely stationary. But quantum physics has a problem with that in its uncertainty principle disallows scenarios with such definite quantifications of location, time, end energy.
Of course, this is all "gedanken experiment" anyway, and is probably at best an oversimplification of a very complicated reality.
Regarding levelling of non-active party members... I actually prefer that they don't do that. I think the appropriate solution is to make sure that every character is balanced and interesting enough that you want to cycle them into the party. Chrono Trigger did this respectably, IMHO. And I thought FF X did this spectacularly well. It was also really cool that, after keeping the skill trees separate for most of the game, if you gained enough levels you could eventually start to transcend that limit, and really round people out. For example, you could take Lulu, a powerful magic user, put her on Auron's skill tree, and with a little patience turn her into a super-powerful wizard/tank.
An great example of an utter failure at this is Chrono Cross. All of your characters levelled regardless who was in the party and who wasn't. But there were 45 characters, and at least half of them were largely useless once you got out of the scenario where you didn't have access to anyone else, because even with the free levelling, they were distinctly underpowered. 90% of my time with that game was spent with maybe 8 of the 40 characters I collected. One of them (Sprigg) I literally never put into my party after the end of the scenario where I couldn't remove him.
But on the bright side, there were really no minigames at all in Chrono Cross.
If "Goliath" was a common name in Philistine culture, one would assume that archaeologists/anthropologists focused on this region and that time period would have recovered other artifacts with that name on it. This particular archaeologist is quoted as saying that this is the first real evidence that the name was actually used in Philistine culture at any point in history.
That doesn't remove the possiblity that the archaeologist is biased. However, lacking any information about the man, we can't really make a guess one way or another. I'd say we should lend the same credence to the core of this article (not the hype, mind you), as we would to any other "first-word" about a new archaeological find. In short, it's interesting that at some point in history someone named Goliath may have existed. And it is interesting that if this much is verified by peer review, that the man might possibly have served as at least partial inspiration for the Biblical account. But beyond that... What's the point of reporting it this way or at this time?
If you ask me, the real fault here lies with Reuters for the manner of the reporting. I'm sure it was worded as it was specifically because they knew that both Christians looking for evidence to back up their beliefs, and non-Christians watching out for religiously inspired pseudoscience, would inevitably want to read all about such claims.
I hate reading about archaeological finds of any sort in pop science or general news publications. As with any for-profit news organization, articles are almost universally worded to maximize readership, not the availability of factual information.
I hadn't considered this. I would definitely be surprised if it were really a high percentage. I guess I'm biased in this respect. I spent most of my life without cable. I have "basic cable" now only because I can't get over-the-air channels with an antenna in my apartment. I really have no desire to have an extended TV service of any sort at this point, even though I could fairly easily afford it. I suppose if indeed a high percentage of people have cable or satellite TV of some sort, then you're probably right about how long NTSC TVs will remain on the market. Though I suspect at some point not far off they will be so devalued that all but the poorest people will be willing to buy a small HD TV instead.
I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but it doesn't make any sense to me at all.
I suppose it's anecdotal. I just haven't met many people at all who make under $50k a year who have TV's any bigger than 31".
I don't agree that the price-over-quality people are only interested in small TVs.
They're not, directly. They're interested in affordable TVs. And small TVs are much more affordable than big ones.
The vast majority of Americans are 'price-over-quality people' at least to an extent.
I certainly wouldn't make that argument... But even within the context of America, there is still a large population of people who just don't have the funds to care that they don't have a big-screen TV.
Where I live people pay for houses primarily on square footage, not on quality of construction, materials or anything else. The biggest house they can get for the money is what they will buy. Why would these same people think differently when purchasing a TV?
Well, for one thing, having enough living space is a basic human need. A "small" TV is a minimal hindrance during only the fraction of time spent on entertainment. I don't see where this would be incompatible with what I'm saying. It's a question of priorities. The average American has a huge number of things to pay for that are more important than getting that extra few square feet of screen space.
Or they could come up with a more original storyline format. If they keep focusing on gameplay, pretty soon you might find you're no longer playing an RPG. I don't play RPGs for the gameplay, but rather the story. I don't care about the gameplay as long as it doesn't get in the way.
Let's also keep in mind that although the general story arch of most RPGs is fairly generic, it has been the reliable basis of countless successful stories for a very long time. There's much that can be done within that context. The overarching storyline is just a framework within which to do the really interesting stuff, like character development. The central themes of FF7, FF8, FFX (and from what I can see so far FFX-2) are about the person first and foremost. The quest is just a vehicle.
Anyway, I welcome the changes as well, but only if they make it easier to become immersed in the world of the game, to become one with the story and the characters. Random encounters and level-grinding definitely served to jolt me out of that in previous Final Fantasy games. Though they have been better about that lately. Unfortunately, the travesty of poorly-designed mini-games seems to be expanding. And those are waaaaay more annoying to me than random battles. I'm playing an RPG. Requiring strategy is one thing, because strategy can be integrated with story. But if I can't access a part of the story because my twitch reflexes aren't honed enough, the game designers need to sit and think about the priorities of the genre.
Once again, I'm not talking about big screen. I'm talking about "normal" TVs that blue-collar families concerned about prices have in their living rooms. I'm thinking in the 19" to 29" range. They are the bulk of the market, and CRT is the only cost-efficient option here. HD at this size is still uncommon, but that's because it doesn't matter to the consumer at that level, the extra cost is still too high. But it's getting close, as I noted with my 27" example.
Here is what I'm getting at...
The people who are worried about price more than quality aren't paying attention to the fact that the thing is HD, just that it costs $200 more. But that difference is shrinking every day. And soon, retailers can just drop the NTSCs (before they become too devalued), and consumers will just keep on paying what they've always paid, but now they'll have HD instead of NTSC. This phase-out has to happen sometime, because NTSC broadcasts are going to stop eventually.
Yes. And it does. For now. But the FCC has laid out a roadmap for ceasing NTSC broadcasts. Which means that sooner or later, NTSC TVs will not be sold any longer. The only real barrier to doing this right now is price. HDTVs are currently more expensive than CRTs. So if the cheap TVs suddenly disappeared a lot of people would be pretty angry.
But the price difference is not as large as was implied by the poster that I was replying to. Small CRT HDTVs (and I don't consider 36" to be small) are not exorbitantly priced anymore, for a "lesser brand". And these small ones are the bulk of what the price-over-quality people are buying.
Yes, they still are more expensive. But soon it will be to the point where retailers can just stop selling NTSC (before it becomes to devalued by HD), and the people who look at price before quality won't even notice anything has happened, because the prices will all stay just about the same. My post was just saying I don't think it will take more than a couple years for this to begin.
And how many other lobbying groups do the same thing? This should only be a problem if police are using their "power" to "commandeer" the TV or paper space for their announcements. Was that the case? If not, then they're no different from anyone else hawking their favorite cause.
You can get HDTV CRTs. And the prices on those are comparitive with good NTSC CRTs.
/. lies in the logical slide that we tech-geeks get into whereby when we think "HD", we immediately think "large-screen flat-panel". The truth is, an HDTV doesn't need to be big and it doesn't need to be flat-panel.
About 15 months ago I bought a Sony 27" flat-tube NTSC CRT with all the bells and whistles for about $500.
Yesterday I saw an RCA 27" HD CRT for $500, and that was not a "sale price".
Granted, we're comparing RCA to Sony. But the fact remains that you can get a "cheap" HDTV for not much more than a "good" NTSC TV. And the vast majority of people who own TVs don't really care that much if their TV is from RCA, as long it works.
Our problem here at
To satsify the HD roadmap, all we need are small, cheap HD CRTs. They're already small, and those are getting close to cheap. I'd say 2 years is probably fairly reasonable to expect those prices to reach what NTSC CRTs have traditionally been.
Because I also believe in evolution... I think that covers all your questions.
We are not animals - we are humans
As far as cutting edge science can tell, humans are animals too. In fact what you just claimed is one of the most popular defenses that anti-science christians use to defend themselves. I avoid such worthless tactics, and in reward I get attacked with them. You're shameless, and you defeat your own premises in being so.
that treasonous ... (and his warmongering jewboy sidekick) you idiots put in the whitehouse should face down a firing squad
Wow! There's so much to choose from, where do I start???
You ... are destroying this country by undermining everything the patriots fought and died for
On the conrary, I'd argue that closed-minded bigots like you who harbor such anabashed and unbridled hatred for people who disagree with them and are completely unwilling to compromise or to try to understand opposing opinions, are undermining the things the founders fought for. And when I say that, I'm refering not just just far-left liberals like you who hate Christians, but also to far-right neo-cons like Pat Robertson that use their god as a crutch to whip up frenzied Christ-groupies to defend their greed and support prejudiced laws, and also to everyone in between who can't quit bickering like 3-year-olds and actually get something useful done around here. The unending posturing, finger-pointing, and name-calling that passes for government, and for political debate, in this country makes me physically ill .
Do you have anything intelligent to say, or are you just going to keep frothing at the mouth, spewing hatred and profanity like so much spittle?
Hypocrite.
Fair enough answer to my second question, though I'd still argue for the recourses outlined in the rest of my post. Otherwise "unfair" scenarios could still arise, such as that of my first question. You can only push the line so far back by saying that if the person really cared that much they could have done X. Because in the end it's the decision of all. And as far as I'm concerned, the law should not level class-level punishments regardless of individual fault. IMHO, it's enough punishment to the community as a whole that they got what they voted for: a school-board insensitive to consitutional rights. "Artificial" punitive damages for everyone, regardless of whether an individual supported the board in the elections or not, is going a bit far.