Wormhole papers always make an assumption that bothers me: that the distance you need to travel inside the wormhole is negligible. Or that if you move the ends of the hole away from each other, the length of the tunnel won't increase as well. Why does anyone consider that reasonable?
The standard simplification of wormhole illustration is a rubber sheet representing 2-dimensional space. To do a wormhole, the author invariably folds the entire sheet in half, so that Point A and Point B line up perfectly, then pokes a little tube through to join them.
IMO, the universe is more likely to follow a different geometry -- perhaps a spheroid. The surface distance from Baltimore to Singapore is about 12000 miles. But if you could make a "wormhole" that tunnels direct from here to there, it would be... just under 8000 miles. Gee, 1/3rd off, what tremendous savings! Now we can travel interstellar distances easily.
So please tell me why I'm completely off base here.
This is a bad idea, as you could then be liable for harrassment.
True. But I really don't think it's very likely that a hit and run spammer will sue me for harrassment. They're sending unsolicited adverts, with forged headers, and abusing someone else's server. Would they really want all of their contact information laid out in court documents? They'd be sitting ducks for counter-suits and other fun.
they were using false email addresses and there was no point trying to get the providers to disbar them
Email addresses are irrelevant, unless the spammers are stupid enough to give you a valid reply address (like "write to sales@idiot.com for a catalog!"). The name of the game in spam-busting is the Received: headers.
Track the spam back to the SMTP server it was sent from. Do a WHOIS on that domain. Email the listed sysadmin, as well as abuse@that_domain.com and explain how open relays are just like letting spammers steal their money. Also:
If they list a web site, WHOIS again and send more email. If they own the domain, TRACEROUTE and do recursive WHOISes until you find their provider.
If the URL is a weird 10 to 12 digit decimal number, convert it to 8 digits of hex, break the hex into 4 parts, and convert the parts back to decimal to get the real IP. Then DNSQuery on the IP.
If they have an 800 number, call them repeatedly and waste their time.
Do I take spam-busting too seriously? Hell yes. But I've inflicted a lot of damage on dozens of spammers, and gotten a few dozen open relays shut. Every little bit helps.
I don't personally believe that Linux is an OS that should allow for absolutely no background knowledge of the OS.
Yes, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars unless they can rebuild a slip differential, or at least explain the design principles of a four stroke internal combustion engine. ;-p
There is certainly a place for deep-wizardry versions of Linux (like servers and render farms), but there is also a place for appliance-style versions (like an office desktop that's trying to escape M$).
I'm being a total idiot by replying to an AC, but here goes.
So you're saying the government created `all the benefits of living here'?
No, the US government didn't create the American Dream any more than Microsoft created DOS. But they are in charge of it, and there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't like it, you're free to go elsewhere.
not wanting to fork over 30-40 percent per annum of these benefits to a bloated intrusive government
So perhaps you'd rather live in Europe or Japan, and fork over 50-70 percent to an even bigger government? Or move to a 3rd world country with a really low tax rate (and little or no services)? Have you actually taken a look at life outside the US? I think the middle class here has it damn good.
Last time I checked, US citizens (other than convicts) can quit any time they like. It's called emigration. Of course, if you quit then you usually have to vacate the premises, since it's not your country any more.
Or are you saying you want to quit the government but still get all the benefits of living here? You can do that too, just be a survivalist fuckwad and move to Montana.
However, if Ted Turner or Imelda Marcos or the Sultan of Brunei had gone up to Marc Andreesen and said "here's a billion dollars, go beat MSIE", things would be different -- it's all about a level playing field.
IE vs NN isn't about open vs closed, it's about a big company spending a whole lot of $$$ to drive a smaller company out of business. In the game of life, money is trump.
A responsible site that claims to be "News" does not put this story under the category of "Space"
But on the bright side, I'm really glad there are several folks in the/. readership who know even more physics than I do. Among my friends I'm almost always called upon as the "random science answer guy". It's nice to have a place I can turn to when trivia goes too far.
I don't think regulation is the answer... Maybe what is needed is in order to buy or have a license for one of these vehicles, you would need to take a lengthy test-track kind of test
An additional test requirement sounds suspiciously like regulation to me.;-) About the official distinction between truck and light truck -- I think the simplest solution is for the US DoT to repeal that distinction (implicitly narrowing the scope of a standard license). Look, that way there's less regulation, fewer categories of the law, so that must be a good thing!
it isn't the car that is at fault, it's the driver behind the wheel.
Of course the drunk driver is at fault for causing the accident. He deserves prison time and a fat damages settlement against him.
But I still argue that his SUV is to blame for making the accident worse. Statistically, car vs car injuries are less serious than car vs truck. Most suburban idiots (drunk or sober) drive SUVs as if they're just cars, but they are trucks, and their drivers should be regulated as such.
I understood the main advantage of Quantum technology was its ability to perform parallel calculations. How could we outdo that advantage?
If large QCs ever become operational, then our current computer cryptosystems will need to be scrapped immediately. You don't outdo a QC, you have to change the rules instead.
For example, neither digital or quantum computer algorithms can break a private code. If your group creates a codebook where "The moon is in the 7th house" actually means "Let's order pepperoni for dinner", and so on with random phrases, then all the quantum power in town won't figure it out. That sort of thing requires actual human beings to break.
Of course, codebooks won't work for e-commerce and secure internet connections... The only way to protect that stuff would be to switch to quantum crypto (a different technology altogether).
Drunk drivers are destestable fucks, but we shouldn't ignore the vehicle either. Jason Haas probably wouldn't be laid up with head trauma in a ventilator if the idiot drunk were driving a Bug instead of a Canyonero.
After 7 long years, our Waffle-in-Chief Clinton finally implemented some limited EPA measures. It will require harsher mileage and emissions limits on "light trucks" (the category for SUVs, minivans, & pickups), starting in the year 2004! Obviously if W Bush gets elected those limits will go straight in the toilet before they even start. (side note: W is also a big Big BIG fan of Microsoft. Do you need more reasons?)
I'd like the DOT to change the standard drivers license so that it doesn't include "light trucks". If you want to drive a huge killing machine, you should be required to pass a harsher test.
Brian, Tim, Doug (and Jason & Dave) are all great guys. I'm sure their company will produce cool stuff once they get set up properly. As long as someone can convince Jason not to use DirectX for multiplay. You've got business independence, now go for platform independence!
But my main complaint with BHG is that they're so damn busy. I hope they're at least spending some time with their families.
the bandwidth and Inet connection itself is provided for the use of the students.
No. The bandwidth is provided for the use of the University. Students are a PART of that. So are Administrators, Professors, and Technicians. If students running Napster are burning up bandwidth that could be used instead by a class with a streaming lecture, then the school certainly has a Right (and probably has a Responsibility) to control usage.
I'm really glad about this turn of events. Having +1 Talent at each base will really cut down on Drone Riots. They don't happen very often in Baltimore, but I've seen a few in D.C.
I can't see why the majority of Net sales should or even CAN be regarded as anything other than Mail Order or Telephone Service sales
Amen. Person A places an order at Location B to receive goods or services from Company C. Why make such a big deal because SOME of those orders travel through the magical mystical INTERNET? (ooh! But iTax must be different because it's ON THE INTERNET! ooh!)
We should pay close attention to http://www.ecommerce.gov/ and make sure they don't screw up TOO badly. Why make absurd new laws? The ones we already have apply to this situation just fine.
Re:Biggest question for older Mac owners...
on
MacOS X DP3
·
· Score: 1
will Mac OS X run on non-G3/G4 Power Macs?
Maybe, but think how godawful S-L-O-W it would be on anything other than a 604e. Even without the insane amounts of chrome, the OS will probably hog double the CPU and RAM of current MacOS.
I agree, the Vaio subnotebooks are amazing toys, with just as much cool design & sex appeal as anything from Apple. If Steve Jobs weren't so damn stubborn about his Four Model strategy, he'd make a Duo G3. The market is there -- deep afficionados still pay big $$$ for the 2300c.
No they didn't - USB technology was bought from (someone) by Intel.
You miss the point. Yes, USB doesn't belong to Apple. But without Steve, USB would have remained vaporware, except for a few unused jacks gathering dust on the back of some PCs.
In July of 1998, how many USB peripherals were on the market? Five, maybe six. Manufacturers were perfectly happy to stick with EPP or maybe Serial. But then came the iMac, which threw out all the old connects (no Din8 serial, no ADB, no SCSI). Suddenly USB mice, printers, scanners, drives, etc, flooded into stores everywhere.
The iBookSE is sort of new, but really just a new color and a speed bump with no new features. The 500MHz G4 isn't new at all -- it's what the G4 was supposed to be from the beginning, if only Motorola's chip factory hadn't screwed things up.
No, the truly new machine at Apple is the PowerBook. It finally matches the other modern Macs -- Firewire, Airport, AGP 2x, etc.
Sadly, my favorite amazing PowerBook feature has passed away -- SCSI Dock Mode. Just plug a PowerBook into another Mac's SCSI chain and treat it as an external hard drive -- the uses are obvious. I guess we're supposed to use ethernet file sharing instead, but I wish they could have invented FireDock mode.
would web designers be able to sue other sites for coding, from scratch, a site that has the same look and feel as their own?
That already happens now. There was a recent lawsuit between Go Network and GoTo.com that resulted in one of them losing rights to their color scheme and logo (and some cash, I believe).
Apple have no right to tell us what we can and cannot put on our desktop.
Although we may not like it, look and feel is a standard business concern. Companies are pretty much obligated to defend their products and trademarks. It would be the same situation if some upstart cola bottler imitated a certain blue white & red circular logo, or if eMachines made an all-in-one PC out of translucent blue plastic (oh wait, that actually happened)...
Apple would actually be negligent to its shareholders if it didn't bring suit against people who copy Apple designs. Aqua cost Apple some amount of money to come up with, and imitators cause that work to be diluted in value.
It's evil lawyer stuff, and the only way to prevent it is to change the entire trademark/brand name system.
It's good to see that they're not letting the first failure stop them
Umm...that was a gene therapy trial, using adenovirus to transfect cells with new genes. The kid probably died because it still contained enough "wild" virii to give him a nasty infection.
It had nothing at all to do with nanotech, except that they're both relatively new fields -- the kind that most people only know about from poorly written Star Trek episodes.
Wasn't there someone who used an Electron Beam Microscope to write their company logo in Gold atoms
IBM, and not quite. Her e's the scoop, and note that STMs are very big, very finicky, very energy-intensive machines.
In 1989 two IBM researchers penned their employer's acronym by manipulating 35 xenon atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope-a device that dragged the atoms across a nickel surface. The atoms moved because of chemical bonding interactions that occurred when the microscope's tungsten tip came to within a tenth of a nanometer or so of each atom. Jones notes the difficulties involved: The IBM logo was created in an extremely high vacuum at the supercooled temperature of liquid helium using inert xenon atoms. Outside this rarefied environment, the world becomes much less stable. "Single atoms of more structurally useful elements at or near room temperature are amazingly mobile and reactive," Jones writes. "They will combine instantly with ambient air, water, each other, the fluid supporting the assemblers, or the assemblers themselves."
In short, atomic manipulation ain't anywhere near ready for prime time.
Slashdot Mirror
A question for deep physicists in the crowd.
... just under 8000 miles. Gee, 1/3rd off, what tremendous savings! Now we can travel interstellar distances easily.
Wormhole papers always make an assumption that bothers me: that the distance you need to travel inside the wormhole is negligible. Or that if you move the ends of the hole away from each other, the length of the tunnel won't increase as well. Why does anyone consider that reasonable?
The standard simplification of wormhole illustration is a rubber sheet representing 2-dimensional space. To do a wormhole, the author invariably folds the entire sheet in half, so that Point A and Point B line up perfectly, then pokes a little tube through to join them.
IMO, the universe is more likely to follow a different geometry -- perhaps a spheroid. The surface distance from Baltimore to Singapore is about 12000 miles. But if you could make a "wormhole" that tunnels direct from here to there, it would be
So please tell me why I'm completely off base here.
True. But I really don't think it's very likely that a hit and run spammer will sue me for harrassment. They're sending unsolicited adverts, with forged headers, and abusing someone else's server. Would they really want all of their contact information laid out in court documents? They'd be sitting ducks for counter-suits and other fun.
Email addresses are irrelevant, unless the spammers are stupid enough to give you a valid reply address (like "write to sales@idiot.com for a catalog!"). The name of the game in spam-busting is the Received: headers.
Track the spam back to the SMTP server it was sent from. Do a WHOIS on that domain. Email the listed sysadmin, as well as abuse@that_domain.com and explain how open relays are just like letting spammers steal their money. Also:
Do I take spam-busting too seriously? Hell yes. But I've inflicted a lot of damage on dozens of spammers, and gotten a few dozen open relays shut. Every little bit helps.
Yes, and people shouldn't be allowed to drive cars unless they can rebuild a slip differential, or at least explain the design principles of a four stroke internal combustion engine. ;-p
There is certainly a place for deep-wizardry versions of Linux (like servers and render farms), but there is also a place for appliance-style versions (like an office desktop that's trying to escape M$).
I'm being a total idiot by replying to an AC, but here goes.
So you're saying the government created `all the benefits of living here'?No, the US government didn't create the American Dream any more than Microsoft created DOS. But they are in charge of it, and there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. If you don't like it, you're free to go elsewhere.
not wanting to fork over 30-40 percent per annum of these benefits to a bloated intrusive governmentSo perhaps you'd rather live in Europe or Japan, and fork over 50-70 percent to an even bigger government? Or move to a 3rd world country with a really low tax rate (and little or no services)? Have you actually taken a look at life outside the US? I think the middle class here has it damn good.
Last time I checked, US citizens (other than convicts) can quit any time they like. It's called emigration. Of course, if you quit then you usually have to vacate the premises, since it's not your country any more.
Or are you saying you want to quit the government but still get all the benefits of living here? You can do that too, just be a survivalist fuckwad and move to Montana.
However, if Ted Turner or Imelda Marcos or the Sultan of Brunei had gone up to Marc Andreesen and said "here's a billion dollars, go beat MSIE", things would be different -- it's all about a level playing field.
IE vs NN isn't about open vs closed, it's about a big company spending a whole lot of $$$ to drive a smaller company out of business. In the game of life, money is trump.
But on the bright side, I'm really glad there are several folks in the /. readership who know even more physics than I do. Among my friends I'm almost always called upon as the "random science answer guy". It's nice to have a place I can turn to when trivia goes too far.
An additional test requirement sounds suspiciously like regulation to me. ;-) About the official distinction between truck and light truck -- I think the simplest solution is for the US DoT to repeal that distinction (implicitly narrowing the scope of a standard license). Look, that way there's less regulation, fewer categories of the law, so that must be a good thing!
Of course the drunk driver is at fault for causing the accident. He deserves prison time and a fat damages settlement against him.
But I still argue that his SUV is to blame for making the accident worse. Statistically, car vs car injuries are less serious than car vs truck. Most suburban idiots (drunk or sober) drive SUVs as if they're just cars, but they are trucks, and their drivers should be regulated as such.
If large QCs ever become operational, then our current computer cryptosystems will need to be scrapped immediately. You don't outdo a QC, you have to change the rules instead.
For example, neither digital or quantum computer algorithms can break a private code. If your group creates a codebook where "The moon is in the 7th house" actually means "Let's order pepperoni for dinner", and so on with random phrases, then all the quantum power in town won't figure it out. That sort of thing requires actual human beings to break.
Of course, codebooks won't work for e-commerce and secure internet connections... The only way to protect that stuff would be to switch to quantum crypto (a different technology altogether).
Drunk drivers are destestable fucks, but we shouldn't ignore the vehicle either. Jason Haas probably wouldn't be laid up with head trauma in a ventilator if the idiot drunk were driving a Bug instead of a Canyonero.
After 7 long years, our Waffle-in-Chief Clinton finally implemented some limited EPA measures. It will require harsher mileage and emissions limits on "light trucks" (the category for SUVs, minivans, & pickups), starting in the year 2004! Obviously if W Bush gets elected those limits will go straight in the toilet before they even start. (side note: W is also a big Big BIG fan of Microsoft. Do you need more reasons?)
I'd like the DOT to change the standard drivers license so that it doesn't include "light trucks". If you want to drive a huge killing machine, you should be required to pass a harsher test.
Brian, Tim, Doug (and Jason & Dave) are all great guys. I'm sure their company will produce cool stuff once they get set up properly. As long as someone can convince Jason not to use DirectX for multiplay. You've got business independence, now go for platform independence!
But my main complaint with BHG is that they're so damn busy. I hope they're at least spending some time with their families.
No. The bandwidth is provided for the use of the University. Students are a PART of that. So are Administrators, Professors, and Technicians. If students running Napster are burning up bandwidth that could be used instead by a class with a streaming lecture, then the school certainly has a Right (and probably has a Responsibility) to control usage.
I'm really glad about this turn of events. Having +1 Talent at each base will really cut down on Drone Riots. They don't happen very often in Baltimore, but I've seen a few in D.C.
Amen. Person A places an order at Location B to receive goods or services from Company C. Why make such a big deal because SOME of those orders travel through the magical mystical INTERNET? (ooh! But iTax must be different because it's ON THE INTERNET! ooh!)
We should pay close attention to http://www.ecommerce.gov/ and make sure they don't screw up TOO badly. Why make absurd new laws? The ones we already have apply to this situation just fine.
Maybe, but think how godawful S-L-O-W it would be on anything other than a 604e. Even without the insane amounts of chrome, the OS will probably hog double the CPU and RAM of current MacOS.
True. But... his ego does get in the way sometimes. For example:
I agree, the Vaio subnotebooks are amazing toys, with just as much cool design & sex appeal as anything from Apple. If Steve Jobs weren't so damn stubborn about his Four Model strategy, he'd make a Duo G3. The market is there -- deep afficionados still pay big $$$ for the 2300c.
You miss the point. Yes, USB doesn't belong to Apple. But without Steve, USB would have remained vaporware, except for a few unused jacks gathering dust on the back of some PCs.
In July of 1998, how many USB peripherals were on the market? Five, maybe six. Manufacturers were perfectly happy to stick with EPP or maybe Serial. But then came the iMac, which threw out all the old connects (no Din8 serial, no ADB, no SCSI). Suddenly USB mice, printers, scanners, drives, etc, flooded into stores everywhere.
The iBookSE is sort of new, but really just a new color and a speed bump with no new features. The 500MHz G4 isn't new at all -- it's what the G4 was supposed to be from the beginning, if only Motorola's chip factory hadn't screwed things up.
No, the truly new machine at Apple is the PowerBook . It finally matches the other modern Macs -- Firewire, Airport, AGP 2x, etc.
Sadly, my favorite amazing PowerBook feature has passed away -- SCSI Dock Mode. Just plug a PowerBook into another Mac's SCSI chain and treat it as an external hard drive -- the uses are obvious. I guess we're supposed to use ethernet file sharing instead, but I wish they could have invented FireDock mode.
That already happens now. There was a recent lawsuit between Go Network and GoTo.com that resulted in one of them losing rights to their color scheme and logo (and some cash, I believe).
Although we may not like it, look and feel is a standard business concern. Companies are pretty much obligated to defend their products and trademarks. It would be the same situation if some upstart cola bottler imitated a certain blue white & red circular logo, or if eMachines made an all-in-one PC out of translucent blue plastic (oh wait, that actually happened)...
Apple would actually be negligent to its shareholders if it didn't bring suit against people who copy Apple designs. Aqua cost Apple some amount of money to come up with, and imitators cause that work to be diluted in value.
It's evil lawyer stuff, and the only way to prevent it is to change the entire trademark/brand name system.
Umm...that was a gene therapy trial, using adenovirus to transfect cells with new genes. The kid probably died because it still contained enough "wild" virii to give him a nasty infection.
It had nothing at all to do with nanotech, except that they're both relatively new fields -- the kind that most people only know about from poorly written Star Trek episodes.
IBM, and not quite. Her e's the scoop, and note that STMs are very big, very finicky, very energy-intensive machines.
In short, atomic manipulation ain't anywhere near ready for prime time.