The planet Vulcan was "destroyed" when it was discovered that perturbations in Mercury's orbit were due to relativistic effects rather than due to the presense of another orbiting mass.
For those who don't know what i'm talking about, at one point a "wobble" in Mercury's orbit caused scientists to theorize that there was another inner planet inside the orbit of Mercury. They named it "Vulcan". There's your science history lesson for the day.
Pluto also doesn't orbit like a normal planet. Most planets have near circular orbits; besides Pluto, the greatest
eccentricity of the planets in our Solar system is 0.20563 (Mercury) and the rest are on the order of 0.04. Pluto
has an eccentricity of 0.2444. That isn't much of an argument, but if you look at the fact that the inclination of its
orbit is 17 degrees while the rest are around 1 or 2 degrees (Mercury is 7 degrees) it doesn't orbit like a planet
but more like a captured object.
And what if Pluto is a captured planet that used to be in the inner solar system, but was flung outward early in its life?
A few years ago i wrote a gravity simulation engine and found that occasionally inner objects that were gravitationally flung outward still orbited the central star, only at far greater distances, and with eccentric orbits. Actually, now that i think about it, i'm surprised i've never seen that theory put forward.
to release the zero-point energy of empty space, you have to leave that space in a lower energy state after you're done. We don't know if such a lower-energy state even exists.
You don't actually have to have a lower energy state, i think. You could have a fluctuating energy state, and an asymmetric process. (think hysteresis) I don't know what that could be, though, or if in the process it violates some other law.
Black holes *appear* (i'm sure they don't really) to violate the conservation of energy when two virtual particles are created near the event horizon, and one gets sucked in but the other doesn't, rendering them real particles forevermore. Then again, there are competing models that can explain gravity nicely, too, without blackholes, but blackholes are in vogue so everybody insists they're real.
slashdot editor writes: Personally, I'd
recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's
clearly a better browser - and will remain so.
Well, guess my mother in law can skate to work now since the whole place has frozen over.
The patent office should be quasi-privatized, like the post office, and allowed to keep whatever revenue it collects, and not have its budget gutted by congress for other programs.
IMHO it should not be privatized (semi or otherwise) because privatization has one goal - profit. The problem (as i see it) now with the patent office is that the examiners have a financial imperative to approve as many patents as they can. Remove that imperative, you remove the desire to approve every patent flying across their desk, which appears to be part of the problem now.
You're right! That is the error I made. I went back and re-read the quote, and although the original quote is not (IMHO) clear, i believe you are correct. Thanks for pointing that out. My misunderstanding arose the comparison of the mass of the black hole relative to the mass of our sun, which put me in a heliocentric frame of mind. Once there, my mind was not prepared to discuss the size of an celestial body as a diameter measured as a radius outward from our sun.
At least i know i was not alone in my mistake...this time.;-)
The CNN article says: The black hole could hold 2.6 million stars the mass of the sun inside a relatively tiny area -- less than the distance from the sun to Mars.
That shouldn't be at all shocking. Even if we take the minimum orbital distance of Mars (~206.7e6 kms), you can fit the equivalent of 26,193,511 Sol volumes within that space. (given the radius of Sol to be 6.96e5 kms)
So, even NOT counting on compression from the incredible amount of mass, you could fit 26 million stars the mass of the sun into the "relatively tiny space".
Given that the numbers match so closely, except for the decimal place, i suspect one of two things:
1) The article writer is amazed you can fit the volume of a marble into the volume of a basketball.
or
2) The article writer put the decimal in the wrong spot, and discovered you can put volume "V" into the space of volume "V"
Most of us are focussing on the bad points on this. (It is bad!)
Picture this giant billboard for one of your local ISPs: "We do not track your internet activity. Only our competitors do that!". Bingo bango, that will stir up a lot of shit, and my guess is that all but the big AOL, Sprint, etc will opt for *not* tracking because the bad smelling PR is too dangerous for them.
It is a good marketing tool for the ISPs that DON'T use tracking.
Then again, what do i know?
In this house we OBEY the laws of thermodynamics!
on
Magnetic Microchips
·
· Score: 1
From the article: "The other big advantage is energy consumption. Electronic chips use up energy during operation, whereas a magnet does not."
I sincerely hope it is the reporter and not the scientist/engineers that think this. In order to perform computation, energy is consumed. Thermodynamics says so. If you do not use up energy, you are not computing. Period.
Perhaps the reporter meant to say that it consumes a lot less energy during operation.
This column was inspired by an e-mail from a newspaper editor, asking me if I knew what might make the people who read Slashdot want to read daily papers.
I moved into not reading newspapers slowly. First i subscribed daily. Those papers just piled up unread. I then subscribed weekly, for the comics and tv guide. Sometimes i'd read the paper, but i would get pissed off at the sensationalistic pandering to emotion (instead of logic), the poor grammar, and the general lack of understanding about the topics on which they were reporting.
While my newpaper readership was eroding, my online readership was increasing. Online i could find (and this is the important part) PEER REVIEWED (or at least feedback-enabled) topical articles on everything from local issues to worldwide issues. As an example, contrast the recent reporting of "evil hackers" in newspapers with those online (in places such as slashdot). Compare the reporting in the traditional media of the WTO in Seattle with the articles/discussions online. Try it again with Columbine. I would have loved to hear what the people inside the compound at Waco, Texax had to say about the government killing all of them.
Again and again, the newspapers (and "traditional" media) write biased, one-sided, and usually uninformed stories. It is a waste of my time to read the newspaper.
Aside from that rant, two other important things to me are that:
1. You can't grep dead trees.
2. You must kill something to make a newspaper. (see #1 if you can't figure out what this is)
Borrowing a phrase about the internet, "linux sees (bad) patents as damage, and routes around them". If this patent is no problem, nobody will care. If it is a problem, the linux community will find a free (open) way around it, rendering the question of the patent moot.
All I gotta say is that I am glad I am running an alternative OS. I know for a fact that nobody at my company could even figure out the whole lilo: thing, let alone get inside my machine and poke around.
Good idea. It falls a little short in that there might be somebody who understands linux. The solution: don't use lilo for booting linux, have it default to dos/win3.1 (with no prompt!) and use a boot disk for linux. Pop the boot disk, and they'll never know linux even exists on the machine!
My buddy owns one ISP and has his hands in another. I asked him about the use of usenet recently, and he said that only 3-5% of their userbase uses usenet.
On a related matter, today i saw a "public service" announcement describing what the internet is. Of course, to them, Internet = WWW. At first i was mad, thinking that the dumb were preaching to the masses. After reading the posts in this article i thought "yeah...that's good - don't let the ignorant know about usenet and all the other goodies that they'll just fsck up for the rest of us!"
South Park was right. The Canadians are trying to rape (God's One and Only) America by stealing our superior broadcasting and claiming it as their own.
Sheesh. Don't you know that we've already taken over Hollywood? Our plans were set back a bit with Lorne Greene's death, but soon all the actors in Hollywood are going to up and move back to their homeland - Canada!...and they're taking Hollywood with them!
I bet you didn't even know that one of the largest Canadian cities by population is Los Angeles, did you.
Now go watch the Canadian Conspiracy and slap yourself upside the head with a cod.
and don't send plain email. you have to send a pdf file or a word document with sufficient information about yourself.
What i find interesting about this is the choice of required submission file formats. Although i believe that adobe is available for *nix, word perfect or microsoft word is certainly showing an OS preference, which started this mess in the first place! (and yes, i know about StarOffice)
It would have been nice and neutral to allow submissions in plain text (why don't they *always* ask for that!?!), postscript, or even HTML!
Even if we ignore the platform independence thoughts, all the formats in which they want to receive the information are closed source!
I think the ideals of this case need to be explained more fully to the court.
I love nethack's screen. When i see the little white f or d following me, their dedication warms my heart. Steal for me, doggie! When i see that yellow c coming up behind me while i'm facing a VRT&& surrounding my other side, its brown trousers time! I'm pleased, disturbingly enough, when i'm inside the energy vortex while hallucinating...look at the colours, man! I dream nethack screens! Can you say that for your eye candy?
If they've hijacked GPL code which explicitly states it and its offshoots are GPL'd, then take whatever you can get of this guy's code (source and or binaries) and start distributing it. Let him take you to court, and lose.
Except for the frozen embryo part which is a new advancement, wasn't this done between 5-10 years ago with a cow giving birth to a goat or something like that? I swear i saw something along those lines in science news[1] years ago.
I'm no biologist, so there's a good chance i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.
[1] General science news, not the magazine known as Science News.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who don't know what i'm talking about, at one point a "wobble" in Mercury's orbit caused scientists to theorize that there was another inner planet inside the orbit of Mercury. They named it "Vulcan". There's your science history lesson for the day.
And what if Pluto is a captured planet that used to be in the inner solar system, but was flung outward early in its life?
A few years ago i wrote a gravity simulation engine and found that occasionally inner objects that were gravitationally flung outward still orbited the central star, only at far greater distances, and with eccentric orbits. Actually, now that i think about it, i'm surprised i've never seen that theory put forward.
You don't actually have to have a lower energy state, i think. You could have a fluctuating energy state, and an asymmetric process. (think hysteresis) I don't know what that could be, though, or if in the process it violates some other law.
Black holes *appear* (i'm sure they don't really) to violate the conservation of energy when two virtual particles are created near the event horizon, and one gets sucked in but the other doesn't, rendering them real particles forevermore. Then again, there are competing models that can explain gravity nicely, too, without blackholes, but blackholes are in vogue so everybody insists they're real.
Then again, maybe i'm just confused. ;)
(emphasis added)
That is HILARIOUS!
Well, guess my mother in law can skate to work now since the whole place has frozen over.
IMHO it should not be privatized (semi or otherwise) because privatization has one goal - profit. The problem (as i see it) now with the patent office is that the examiners have a financial imperative to approve as many patents as they can. Remove that imperative, you remove the desire to approve every patent flying across their desk, which appears to be part of the problem now.
At least i know i was not alone in my mistake...this time. ;-)
That shouldn't be at all shocking. Even if we take the minimum orbital distance of Mars (~206.7e6 kms), you can fit the equivalent of 26,193,511 Sol volumes within that space. (given the radius of Sol to be 6.96e5 kms)
So, even NOT counting on compression from the incredible amount of mass, you could fit 26 million stars the mass of the sun into the "relatively tiny space".
Given that the numbers match so closely, except for the decimal place, i suspect one of two things:
1) The article writer is amazed you can fit the volume of a marble into the volume of a basketball.
or
2) The article writer put the decimal in the wrong spot, and discovered you can put volume "V" into the space of volume "V"
Bluedove's homepage is at http://www.gatewest.net/~bluedove/stickinit/sticki n_it.html, not the one referenced in the quickies (characters truncated)
Picture this giant billboard for one of your local ISPs: "We do not track your internet activity. Only our competitors do that!". Bingo bango, that will stir up a lot of shit, and my guess is that all but the big AOL, Sprint, etc will opt for *not* tracking because the bad smelling PR is too dangerous for them.
It is a good marketing tool for the ISPs that DON'T use tracking.
Then again, what do i know?
I sincerely hope it is the reporter and not the scientist/engineers that think this. In order to perform computation, energy is consumed. Thermodynamics says so. If you do not use up energy, you are not computing. Period.
Perhaps the reporter meant to say that it consumes a lot less energy during operation.
Free energy machine flames to /dev/null.
I moved into not reading newspapers slowly. First i subscribed daily. Those papers just piled up unread. I then subscribed weekly, for the comics and tv guide. Sometimes i'd read the paper, but i would get pissed off at the sensationalistic pandering to emotion (instead of logic), the poor grammar, and the general lack of understanding about the topics on which they were reporting.
While my newpaper readership was eroding, my online readership was increasing. Online i could find (and this is the important part) PEER REVIEWED (or at least feedback-enabled) topical articles on everything from local issues to worldwide issues. As an example, contrast the recent reporting of "evil hackers" in newspapers with those online (in places such as slashdot). Compare the reporting in the traditional media of the WTO in Seattle with the articles/discussions online. Try it again with Columbine. I would have loved to hear what the people inside the compound at Waco, Texax had to say about the government killing all of them.
Again and again, the newspapers (and "traditional" media) write biased, one-sided, and usually uninformed stories. It is a waste of my time to read the newspaper.
Aside from that rant, two other important things to me are that:
1. You can't grep dead trees.
2. You must kill something to make a newspaper. (see #1 if you can't figure out what this is)
You are able to get the source code, look at it, modify it, distribute, copy it, but not to actually use (execute) it, or any derivatives of it.
Something smells funny, here.
Is there a "bad" patent that costs a different price? :-P
Borrowing a phrase about the internet, "linux sees (bad) patents as damage, and routes around them". If this patent is no problem, nobody will care. If it is a problem, the linux community will find a free (open) way around it, rendering the question of the patent moot.
Good idea. It falls a little short in that there might be somebody who understands linux. The solution: don't use lilo for booting linux, have it default to dos/win3.1 (with no prompt!) and use a boot disk for linux. Pop the boot disk, and they'll never know linux even exists on the machine!
Although the letter didn't ask for it, if this bothers you, write to Aventis Pharmaceuticals about this matter. Remember, be polite, but firm.
Follow me
On a related matter, today i saw a "public service" announcement describing what the internet is. Of course, to them, Internet = WWW. At first i was mad, thinking that the dumb were preaching to the masses. After reading the posts in this article i thought "yeah...that's good - don't let the ignorant know about usenet and all the other goodies that they'll just fsck up for the rest of us!"
Sheesh. Don't you know that we've already taken over Hollywood? Our plans were set back a bit with Lorne Greene's death, but soon all the actors in Hollywood are going to up and move back to their homeland - Canada! ...and they're taking Hollywood with them!
I bet you didn't even know that one of the largest Canadian cities by population is Los Angeles, did you.
Now go watch the Canadian Conspiracy and slap yourself upside the head with a cod.
What i find interesting about this is the choice of required submission file formats. Although i believe that adobe is available for *nix, word perfect or microsoft word is certainly showing an OS preference, which started this mess in the first place! (and yes, i know about StarOffice)
It would have been nice and neutral to allow submissions in plain text (why don't they *always* ask for that!?!), postscript, or even HTML!
Even if we ignore the platform independence thoughts, all the formats in which they want to receive the information are closed source!
I think the ideals of this case need to be explained more fully to the court.
I love nethack's screen. When i see the little white f or d following me, their dedication warms my heart. Steal for me, doggie! When i see that yellow c coming up behind me while i'm facing a VRT&& surrounding my other side, its brown trousers time! I'm pleased, disturbingly enough, when i'm inside the energy vortex while hallucinating...look at the colours, man! I dream nethack screens! Can you say that for your eye candy?
Nethack is the eye candy for me, unix or no!
If they've hijacked GPL code which explicitly states it and its offshoots are GPL'd, then take whatever you can get of this guy's code (source and or binaries) and start distributing it. Let him take you to court, and lose.
I'm no biologist, so there's a good chance i don't know what the hell i'm talking about.
[1] General science news, not the magazine known as Science News.
get them both really drunk?
Seriously, you should know from that Loverboy song that "...a pig and an elephant's DNA just won't splice!"