Solubility is the major concern. The fact that they are radioactive is irrelevant when they're stuck in those bunkers deep underground. The problem is when they dissolve slowly into the underground lakes and such, which currently happens no matter where they're stored. That the bacteria make the Uranium insoluble is a major breakthrough.
It's only a side criticism if you consider your (I'm assuming you're dollar70) crackpot theory of a universe that's infinite in time. With a time-finite universe, the black holes take so long to get into thermal equilibrium, and spend so much of that time swallowing up gargantuan amounts of matter, and emitting humongous amounts of high energy radiation, that for all intents and purposes this strong light-emitting behaviour is what matters until you look some 500 billion years in the future to see how things are getting on now that there's nothing left to swallow and the 10^6+ solar masses size black holes have had time to get into thermal equilibrium with each other.
More like he doesn't want to be the idiot who has to pay for the legal fees after the lawsuit is thrown out on grounds of complete idiocy of the complaint!
Yeah but bigger black holes will emit slower (as per the Hawking effect). A supermassive black hole would take ages to dissipate like that.
However, the main criticism of the "black holes to cool down the universe" idea is that black holes of that size tend to be continually swallowing up matter, emitting humongous quantities of very high energy radiation in the process. They are actually some of the brightest objects in the sky, visible from over ten billion light-years away (also know as quasars, for quasi-stellar objects, which are actually just galaxies with huge black holes in the middle). Fortunately there aren't any in the vicinity, or they would probably burn the Milky Way to a crisp.
You don't really know what you're talking about very much do you? You've read a few pages here and there, a few articles, and now you think you know something about astrophysics and cosmology? I'm just curious where you claim to be having all these extraordinary ideas from - years of careful study, or articles?
OK, I will disagree with the whole idea/notion that the universe is of finite age, and that it all began with a "big bang". [...] At least that's *my* theory, and I'm stickin' to it.
And how does your theory explain away bothersome things like the CMB?
As I recall from my physics masters with major option in astrophysics, Olbers' paradox is used to discredit an infinite universe. You can check that from this explanation. Fair enough, in an infinite universe, the dust won't matter. In a finite universe with a finite age, it most certainly will, because it will take time to heat up enough to emit light. We could easily at a stage where the dust has not heated up to its equilibrium temperature yet, and is still absorbing more energy than it is emitting.
You need to check your physics. (and I should check mine, but unfortunately my physics knowledge doesn't come into my current work very much, especially not my astrophysics).
If the universe is finite, there is a finite amount of matter and energy in it. So again, depending on how much there is, we might be burnt to a crisp, but then again we might not.
I fail to see how a finite universe would burn us to a crisp. It depends on the density of light-emitting matter, and on how much light-absorbing matter there is to balance it. I think you got your cosmological arguments confused (but I'm willing to read your reply if you can corroborate your hypothesis with some sort of explanation).
Can't people spell-check their submissions at least in the most basic manner? I can bear with the possessive errors (its/it's), and on a good day I can even cope with you're/your, but anomolies... man...
The lag is irrelevant, so long as the communications get through. The trick is you don't necessarily want to prevent people from doing something bad immediately, but rather to punish them once you see a pattern of invalid actions. ie, whenever a client reacts in a "bad" way, the clients around it should automatically log that and put a bad mark towards this client. With a centralised server it's trivial from here - the server periodically queries clients (eg when they log off/on), and when a client has too many bad marks it is "downgraded" to a lower level of trust (eg where all its actions are double-checked). If it becomes obvious that the client is attempting to cheat, it can be banned through the central authority.
This is a lot more tricky to work out in a completely distributed way, but the concept is the same - distributed trust metrics.
Daniel
PS: No, we didn't implement it in a concrete project, but we got quite far along the design of a p2p community piece of software and thought about this quite a bit. And we arrived at this system which isn't very complicated and may not prevent people from cheating (ie behaving in a malicious manner, for a p2p community) rarely but prevents them from cheating in any consistent way. Depending on how often you want to let them cheat, you can change the threshold for lowering their trust - you could make it so that any suspicious behaviour reported by several trustworthy people puts them under the magnifying glass.
Actually, you could. It would be complex, but not impossible. All you need is a system of distributed checks and balances along with trust metrics. As long as the majority of the users are using legit clients, this system can work even with no centralised authority whatsoever. This would be difficult for non-persistent games like HL & co, but for persistent stuff it works like a charm.
Perhaps you need an online-dialect recognition class -- oh, and probably a "how to get your head out of your ass" manual. The latter can also be found in physical form. Just make your smart-ass remarks to enough people and you will eventually receive a free lesson and some physical help with that difficult problem.
Slashdot Mirror
It just looks like a variation of the old pay to send idea to me.
So why'd you bother posting it? Too much free time?
Daniel
But I was only eight years old or so back then. And it was a second hand C64... (C128D actually).
Daniel
Ah ok, fair enough. But then the whole argument is based on a flawed hypothesis...
Daniel
Solubility is the major concern. The fact that they are radioactive is irrelevant when they're stuck in those bunkers deep underground. The problem is when they dissolve slowly into the underground lakes and such, which currently happens no matter where they're stored. That the bacteria make the Uranium insoluble is a major breakthrough.
Daniel
It's only a side criticism if you consider your (I'm assuming you're dollar70) crackpot theory of a universe that's infinite in time. With a time-finite universe, the black holes take so long to get into thermal equilibrium, and spend so much of that time swallowing up gargantuan amounts of matter, and emitting humongous amounts of high energy radiation, that for all intents and purposes this strong light-emitting behaviour is what matters until you look some 500 billion years in the future to see how things are getting on now that there's nothing left to swallow and the 10^6+ solar masses size black holes have had time to get into thermal equilibrium with each other.
Daniel
That is great news. Makes nuclear power plants all that more attractive, as if their short-term-pollution-free power wasn't attractive enough already.
Daniel
More like he doesn't want to be the idiot who has to pay for the legal fees after the lawsuit is thrown out on grounds of complete idiocy of the complaint!
Daniel
They will, once the MMORPG's are Better Than Life.
Daniel
Isn't a microwave laser more succinctly known as a maser?
Yes.
Daniel
Or even better:
Guiness: If you can spell it, you haven't drunk enough yet
Daniel
Yeah but bigger black holes will emit slower (as per the Hawking effect). A supermassive black hole would take ages to dissipate like that.
However, the main criticism of the "black holes to cool down the universe" idea is that black holes of that size tend to be continually swallowing up matter, emitting humongous quantities of very high energy radiation in the process. They are actually some of the brightest objects in the sky, visible from over ten billion light-years away (also know as quasars, for quasi-stellar objects, which are actually just galaxies with huge black holes in the middle). Fortunately there aren't any in the vicinity, or they would probably burn the Milky Way to a crisp.
Daniel
You don't really know what you're talking about very much do you? You've read a few pages here and there, a few articles, and now you think you know something about astrophysics and cosmology? I'm just curious where you claim to be having all these extraordinary ideas from - years of careful study, or articles?
Daniel
OK, I will disagree with the whole idea/notion that the universe is of finite age, and that it all began with a "big bang". [...] At least that's *my* theory, and I'm stickin' to it.
And how does your theory explain away bothersome things like the CMB?
Daniel
As I recall from my physics masters with major option in astrophysics, Olbers' paradox is used to discredit an infinite universe. You can check that from this explanation. Fair enough, in an infinite universe, the dust won't matter. In a finite universe with a finite age, it most certainly will, because it will take time to heat up enough to emit light. We could easily at a stage where the dust has not heated up to its equilibrium temperature yet, and is still absorbing more energy than it is emitting.
You need to check your physics. (and I should check mine, but unfortunately my physics knowledge doesn't come into my current work very much, especially not my astrophysics).
Daniel
If the universe is finite, there is a finite amount of matter and energy in it. So again, depending on how much there is, we might be burnt to a crisp, but then again we might not.
Daniel
I fail to see how a finite universe would burn us to a crisp. It depends on the density of light-emitting matter, and on how much light-absorbing matter there is to balance it. I think you got your cosmological arguments confused (but I'm willing to read your reply if you can corroborate your hypothesis with some sort of explanation).
Hmm... it's too rude to say on a forum which may be visited by children.
Daniel
Can't people spell-check their submissions at least in the most basic manner? I can bear with the possessive errors (its/it's), and on a good day I can even cope with you're/your, but anomolies... man...
Daniel
The lag is irrelevant, so long as the communications get through. The trick is you don't necessarily want to prevent people from doing something bad immediately, but rather to punish them once you see a pattern of invalid actions. ie, whenever a client reacts in a "bad" way, the clients around it should automatically log that and put a bad mark towards this client. With a centralised server it's trivial from here - the server periodically queries clients (eg when they log off/on), and when a client has too many bad marks it is "downgraded" to a lower level of trust (eg where all its actions are double-checked). If it becomes obvious that the client is attempting to cheat, it can be banned through the central authority.
This is a lot more tricky to work out in a completely distributed way, but the concept is the same - distributed trust metrics.
Daniel
PS: No, we didn't implement it in a concrete project, but we got quite far along the design of a p2p community piece of software and thought about this quite a bit. And we arrived at this system which isn't very complicated and may not prevent people from cheating (ie behaving in a malicious manner, for a p2p community) rarely but prevents them from cheating in any consistent way. Depending on how often you want to let them cheat, you can change the threshold for lowering their trust - you could make it so that any suspicious behaviour reported by several trustworthy people puts them under the magnifying glass.
Actually, you could. It would be complex, but not impossible. All you need is a system of distributed checks and balances along with trust metrics. As long as the majority of the users are using legit clients, this system can work even with no centralised authority whatsoever. This would be difficult for non-persistent games like HL & co, but for persistent stuff it works like a charm.
Daniel
Perhaps you need an online-dialect recognition class -- oh, and probably a "how to get your head out of your ass" manual. The latter can also be found in physical form. Just make your smart-ass remarks to enough people and you will eventually receive a free lesson and some physical help with that difficult problem.
Daniel
True dat. Playing it right now, great game. Love all the historical info peppered into it.
Daniel
... is it?
Daniel
Damn those AC karma whores...
Daniel
The mythical solar-powered flashlight becomes achievable!
Daniel