Capitalism is built on having capital equipment/finances. It exists even in non capital situations like gulags and death camps - which is usually the consequences of societies that don't know better. It's the stuff that differentiates us from lower life forms. Even if you tried to go back to the hunter gatherer lifestyle - life will still be easier (or should be say survival) if you have a few capital goods, like a bow and a bucket for hunting and gathering.
As for the gov. messing with TV and wanting to be compassionate with your hard-earned money - which they figure is better spent by them making sure some else who already had to spend what money they had on something they considered more important, like crack cocaine, can watch TV just like you.
You're injecting the assumptions that man is the cause for global warming and that CO2 has a serious effect in trace quantities. You've only got two facts. One, CO2 level is up. Two, man is creating more CO2 than he used to. From this, you are assuming man is warming the planet and that a warmer planet is either all bad or more bad than good. The rest of your 'facts' are BS.
About the climate, it can only be said that the planet is currently warming, cooling or remaining the same and that it will either continue to do what it is doing or it will change directions, perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly. All the evidence you have to say it is warming is actually inconclusive when it comes to predicting what is going to be happening over even the next few decades.
Suffice to say that the models have been grossly incomplete with primary causes of temperature change being ignored in the calculations as having uncertain consequences on the climate while secondary and tertiary factors have been played to the hilt. Man might have achieved becoming a tertiary factor - maybe - if you want to become generous in the extreme.
CO2 is not the primary green house gas, it's a tiny fraction of the whole. Water vapor alone makes up 96%. Methane is 20 times more effective than CO2. And when water vapor forms into clouds - there is a massive change in the arrival of solar energy. A cloudy day in my neighborhood is good for a 10 to 20 degree drop in peak surface temperatures (deg. F)over a clear sunny one.
The only reason that the man made global warming scare made it this far was the lack of scientific research tying the very close short term relationship of the sun's magnetic activities to that of temperature effects via cloud formation. I expect the shrillness and more radical means being persued by the global warming fanatics and their political masters is being pushed by the realization that the jig is up and they are very time limited in their persuit of power and control. That's why they've started abandoning their supposed mantle of science and have started to resort to force or at least threats of force.
BTW, due to the tie in between the suns 11 yr sunspot cycle and cloud formation (via cosmic ray flux) you should expect a doozy of a ride for the next decade. This one is expected to be the strongest, most active one since at least the 1950s. While it's going to haver serious effects on shortwave transmissions and probably on some broadcast TV, it's also going to cut down the cloud cover. That means hotter temperatures in the day and drought. It will probably mean more storm activities in the gulf and pacific. At present we are at the dead bottom of the last cycle, which went down rather hard with a off the scale coronal mass ejection just before it hit bottom - back just after the very busy hurricane season of 2005.
Perhaps you should try inventing something to cut down on the sun's magnetic activity and really do something about global warming if you're that worried about it. Or maybe start taking water skiing lessons. It's obvious you've got way too much time on your hands with nothing better to do.
Inside an arm, different objects can have relatively different speeds along the direction of the arm rotation. Also, objects can bob up and down as they go around. Different speeds can be achieved by slight variations and by the changes in gravitational attraction. The arm has got to move at the average speed and it's components generally have to move at this same velocity as it rotates - but some components may be ejected out of the arm. Essentially, each object in the arm is in orbit around the core but is also subject to influence from other arm objects.
Astronomers and amateur astronomers usually think in two dimensions as the problem is finding particular objects in the sky. It's all direction. Distance is not something that can be measured directly outside our immediate area where the parallax of stars from the earth's orbit position changes can be used to determine it. Beyond that, it's inferring from other things like cephid variables or even type 1a supernovae brightness (assumptions). There are quite a few objects that are fairly commonly observed that we don't truly know exactly how far they really are.
One simulation program that has attempted to break this mold is Whereis M13. It used to be shareware but it may be a low cost item now. It will show you where various objects are located in our galaxy. Unfortunately, I don't think it can vary in time.
Even the planetarium programs which offer tremendously wide time variations of thousands of years do not offer views of millions of years and probably don't offer a 3 d look at the galaxy even though they may offer a 3-d look at the solar system. Some of the problem may be the accuracy of our numbers on the relative motions may not be good enough to take us back to the skies of the dinosaurs when we were on the other side of the galaxy.
At present, there is a natural separation of software from political viewpoint. THE reason is socialism is FORCED compliance from government, enforced by violence and ultimately even threat of death. There is no socialist software just because it's being given away free.
Free software is the CHOICE of those who made it. They were not forced to make it by anyone or any entity. They were not forced to give it away and could have opted to sell it had they wanted to. Note too for those of you who shave, it's been a classical long time marketing ploy to give away the razor and to then sell the blades - in a rather lucrative fashion.
It's quite possible in some cases that many contributors to a free project did so without the realization that those leading the project then profited significantly by consulting fees, maintenance contracts, book royalties and other means than selling the software work for money. Then again, they considered their work product a donation to something which wasn't really a charity. It's sort of like going down to the local used car lot on saturdays and washing the cars for free because you like soapy water and the feel of wax.
Software doesn't just happen and its creation isn't free. When one spends 10 man months working on a project full time, you've got to have food, electricity, computer, perhaps medical, shelter and maybe even transportation and during that time you're not working somewhere else. Note that these are not free since they come from the work product of others. Even in the case where a donation is being made part time, this is either work product which could have been sold or was perhaps even stolen from an employer who was paying for something else to be done.
In all cases, software creation is not free and has an overall expense to society. Perhaps the expense is born by those donating their time and perhaps it's been shifted to others unaware of the activity. In some cases, it can be an investment in self by the donor, chalking up the time spent to self education and perhaps gaining in the long term or perhaps profiting by feeling of making a donation to something they believe in - or perhaps it's the fame part of fame and fortune.
Making a donation is not something that any political viewpoint has a lock on, even though one tends to find those on the left rather skimpy with historical charities. Evidently, they'd rather have gov. force you to 'donate' more than you want and then waste most of that donation before it reaches the intended recipient. Free software tends to be a donation just as working on a free software project is donation of time.
Just because a software product is for money doesn't mean it's superior to a software product that is given away. Choices are made for many reasons of features and affordability and sometimes compatibility - as well as for reasons of security and protection from sabotage.
As for socialism, it's not only the basis of an inferior society, it's proven to fail every time it's tried. It only works with ants, bees and termites. For higher life forms such as human beings, it's an utter disaster doomed to failure. The only questions are how soon and at the cost of how many lives.
Is the kid planning on selling his invention to pay for law school? That way he can sue all the owners for accidents and retire his first year outa law school????
maybe he should re-invent paintball - use tequila instead of paint.
What's really shocking is that supposedly over 50% are deemed qualified. One must take that with a grain of salt as there was no complete listing of qualifications provided. Mathematical ability may be at the bottom of the list if it's even on the list. Public education is more and more about knowing the fraudulent and faulty methods of educating taught in education courses than about the materails that should be covered to educate one in the fundamentals necessary in a complex technological society. Besides, who needs much learning to use a 4-banger calculator.
Unfortunately, your 70% wasn't funny. It's no longer possible now to tell if it was a joke or not. Such doubt dampens the humor and it merely becomes a sad note of sarcasm on the results of the destruction of public education and the negative impacts of unions on society.
>>Microsoft is doing what they think is in their best interest. Their purpose isn't to justify your education, or try and boost the number of CS majors. Their purpose is not to give you, or anyone else, employment. Nor is that the purpose of any company.
THat's true. And it's true that some immigrants are superior in education, work ethic and and desire to become Americans - loving it already from afar. And it's a fer sure bet that they will contribute. However, every good thing has untended results, some of which totally negate the good and even turn out to be fatal.
There are businesses around which want cheap labor, including the use of illegals, to gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Part of that advantage may include the knowledge on their part that they won't be raided or fined by the gov. for using illegals which may not be the case for their competitor down the street who may be stood up against the wall for hiring a couple of people with fake IDs.
One thing you find with the unskilled illegals is the businesses hiring them are successfully shifting the cost of this employment to others - you and me. There are hospital emergency rooms closing because that most expensive of medical treatments is being innundated by illegals (and others) who come for relatively minor treatments and don't pay - shifting the costs to the hospital and/or government. Schools are being innundated with kids from illegals and the costs are being shifted to you and me. And if you are a blue collar construction worker, I hope you habla espanol if you plan on working ever again. Just don't expect to get paid what you used to. And if you're not, you better try finding a night job to help pay the taxes for those unemployed Americans who can't find a job because they've been filled by some cut in line illegal.
Then again, there are quite a few illegals here for crime and apparently terrorism.
As for CS in general, mickiesoft doesn't have to hire immigrants to work for them because they can hire the same people in place for even less and judging by my last bout with customer assistance - do. That way they can even get around minimum wage for technically educated employees.
Having never seen a microsoft program since the advent of window's 3.1 which wasn't a major piece of crap, two things appear to be evident. First, they didn't hire the best and brightest. Second, they probably didn't hire enough even run of the mill legal immigrants. Then again, item 2 might be in serious error. I suppose most of our best and brightest decided to become doctors and lawyers, probably more lawyers now than doctors. But at least there were plenty who became doctors before lawyers made it no longer worth while for them to due to massive amounts of lawsuit abuse.
It still remains to be seen what Bill Gates really is. Is he the business genius many think, or is he an incompetent dweeb that accidently stumbled across the perfect mix of buggy software and incompatibility problems that keeps getting repackaged and resold to the same customers looking for cures to the bugs?
One thing is for certain, some immigration - especially for educated people desiring to be part of America is good. And, it's the most regulated and restricted of all, unlike the access to our borders where anyone from anywhere for any reason at almost any time can cross over, transporting anything they desire to carry.
So with this implemented, hijackers will need to not only take flying lessons but also some will need to take autopilot repair and maintenance training. Or maybe they can forego the pilot training and just do the autopilot repair and maintenance training. I wonder which is easier?
Actually, my favorite stupid 'foolproof' idea is remote control. That could permit the hijackers to take over the airplane and fly it into whatever - without ever having to go thru security screening at the airport. And if they do it by satellite - maybe without having to enter the country.
Anyone who wants 1/10th the performance at 10 times the price should consider such a scheme. However even that grimm a cost guess won't reflect but a fraction of the overall cost of such malarky. And, that doesn't include the cost shifting to cover the homeless and total illiterates who must be trained.
'free' internet initially makes sense to drive paid competitors out of business or to keep them from entering the market. Once that is accomplished, the 'free' providers can then start exacting the costs of total government monopoly and control. That's when you find out that 'free' meant free access to your property and freedom.
But you don't have any of the prerequisite education courses, the ones that tell you how you must teach (so that as few students as possible will learn to think for themselves and so that significant numbers ofthem won't be able to make correct change at the burger dump - even with the smart cash register).
Also, you failed to mention your coaching credentials which are far more important to the school than your ability to read rite an do 'rithmetic.
Not to fail to mention here, your involvement with that dastardly PETA organization. No - not the ethical treatment one - the other one! People Eating Tasty Animals.
maybe the lid to the petri dish is lined with aerogel out past Pluto.
It's always best to posit new physics as the answer rather than to blame it on the rather mundane things. After all, it's not a perfect vacuum there, light carries momentum as does cosmic radiation and there are likely to be plenty of objects out there with gravitational effects that haven't or can't be seen. There are many fairly mundane reasons why. But, it's more fun to decide it's the reason why the Michaelson Morely experiment failed to discover our velocity thru the aether.
The Space Pen was a typical goofy invention to kludge fix a problem with an existing technology that didn't work in a new environment (no gravity). It made for a mediocre tourist souvenir and an impractical solution to a nonproblem. The felt tip pen (Flair??) didn't need gravity to operate and it offered easier to read results. Hence, the 99 cent simple solution was established by those using it over complicated, overpriced solution dictated from 'on high' by the bureaucracy. Fortunately, back then NASA hadn't created its entrenched bureaucracy yet and the mission superceded the internal politics.
As for the hate america thing, there's no mystery. Overseas, they hate us because they're jealous of our freedoms and accomplishments. For those who by in to leftist(communist/socialist) propaganda, they blame us for everything, including the myth of global warming. The dweeb tourists that go over there include the typical 'ugly american' (ignorant fools asking why don't they all speak english in....) and those self hating, hate america types - sometimes looking for cheap drugs etc. that help crime organizations establish virtual control over the local region. Lots of these amateur amabassadors create quite an impression, virtually all of it negative.
The fact that the soviet union is dormant at the moment doesn't mean that the idiological struggle is ended, only that it has changed.
Any sane, rational individual should love America (the concept/ideal) and fear government (any government, all government). That is what the founders did and the reasons why they did are all around us for anyone to see now.
I believe you could find that the sun's magnetic activity has increased 20-40 % over the last 40 years. The sun is a variable star at all time frames although the intensity output we've seen has remained to around 0.1% over the last 40 years.
The real key is the magnetic activity which cycles around every 11 years or so. Right now - we're at absolute minimum of the cycle or should I say at the very beginning of cycle 24. I believe the reversal indications have shown it's flippedand the sunspots are starting to come out for cycle 24. It's been promised by predictors that 24 is going to be a doozey, affecting the ionosphere more than any since the cycle during the 1950s.
Considering that the climatic correlation being studied indicates that higher magnetic activity with the sun reduces cosmic rays entering our atmosphere which reduce the rate of cloud formation - which has a direct and immediate effect on our temperatures, it's probably going to get hot and dry in a lot of areas by the time this one peaks out and starts dropping.
Note that sunspot cycles have been observed since around the invention of the telescope. During the time (I believe it's around 1750 to 1800 or so) there were no sunspots. This is also the time frame when the Thames river in London froze over solid to the point that it was used for commercial purposes with vendor shacks and the like.
As for Mars, there seems to be two alternatives. First, Mars could be warming due to increased solar activity like the earth could. Alternatively, perhaps those solar powered go-carts called Mars Rovers are boogering up the environment. If the second is true - it bodes ill for electric powered vehicles and/or solar power.
Note that there are clouds on Mars, despite the lack decent atmosphere and Mars has no magnetic field of its own. It can also be covered in planet wide dust storms. There are plenty of factors that are not in common with the earth but it sure would be strange to find that both planets are undergoing the same effects at the same time but caused by different factors. Note too that if increased storms are indicative of global warming, that Jupiter has developed a new red spot, Red Jr. last year and also Saturn had one huge storm about a year ago too.
As for man-made global warming - it's hard to tell where the political agendas and media hype end and where any actual science begins. After the coldest january on record down here in the tropics (below 28 N. Lat), it froze again last night. It's perhaps telling that all these conferences and hearings on it recently seem to be being cancelled due to cold weather. I'm sure they'll learn to schedule them for July 9th or so when record heat is far more likely.
Having mistakenly been forced to witness The Juiceman's live presentation once, I became aware of the completely brainless (yet very pretty and handsome) bodies floating around the presentation, tasting the fresh potato juice. It appeared the bodies were housed at the gym and sent out during the day to perform a variety of actions that resulted in an income stream to the gym.
It would seem that such useful power mechanisms from exercise have been around quite some time. I remember a stationary bicycle that powered a little TV set in the movie Soylent Green. It seemed like a useful idea, but evidently never one that resulted in practical sales.
Considering a horse being worked to death can produce 1 horse power which amounts to 640 Watts of power. I'd think a human might do about 1/4 of that while exercising vigorously, although that would seem perhaps a bit much. Hmm, that sounds familar - 160 Watts - that sounds like about the amount of power used in a 4 tube florescent fixture. I suppose that means if the gym fills up, they might be able to provide enough power to light up most of the lights in the place. That still leaves the power needed to heat the water for the showers and cool and ventilate the place.
It sort of sounds like it's the typical touchy feely feel good barf so common in society now, probably from the same bunch that thinks drinking fruit and veggie juice after removing all the fiber and bulk leads to a long and healthy life. All we need is more 'green' energy that isn't even close to the break-even mark so that more scarce resources (like money and power generation) in society is wasted.
Flux of not so micrometeors isn't well determined. However, CME and other radiation sources are a bit better known although not consistant in occurance. Somehow, inflatable just doesn't seem to give me any warm and fuzzies inside - maybe that's due to 15 pounds / in^2 of atmospheric insulation combined with a significant magnetic field keeping out so many of those little nasties here at the moment.
If I recall right, that story dates back to the 80s. If so - it was not a US company, but rather a Japanese one. Considering the Japanese are at considerable risk from a powerful China, you'd think they'd have avoided doing what they did to their own country.
Perhaps the first and foremost problem was that anyone in the military or US gov. ever considered outsourcing anything to an overseas company, much less something of strategic consequence or a legitimately classified secret.
SOmeone refresh my memory - wasn't japan the folks who brought us the Pearl Harbor attack of Dec. 7 1941???? Then again, maybe that was the mea culpa for the japanese use of chinese civilians for medical and biowarfare experiments and bayonet practice back during those times. Considering there's people still alive from them, you'd think the Chinese might still be really ticked off about it.
As for the stolen data - I get the feeling it wasn't anything short of genuine foreign espionage. The only question remaining is who was actively involved in it who is still in place.
>>All the major organised religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die.
If that were the case, then organized religions wouldn't have invented the hospital nor would they have created schools that are superior to public ones. Nowadays, if you want uneducated children, you send them to public schools.
As for the word evolution, it's been around for quite some time now and has a public definition which implies changes from species to species and a continual inevitable progress to some end result. There is some relation here to the situation of the word 'planet' which began long before modern science began and recently essentially been hijacked in an attempt to make it a scientifically precise term (the Pluto flap). The origins go back to the meaning of wanderer (among the fixed stars).
Since bacteria adapting to some new situation doesn't involve changing from bacteria to frogs, the use of the word 'evolve' is way too strong. It would seem to be rather similar to the notion that when a dog puts on a winter coat of fur in the fall, that one could claim this dog evolved and when this dog sheds his winter coat in the spring - then this same dog evolved again.
Perhaps someone injected a political agenda into science quite some time ago.
Actually, that should be global cooling. Since oceans are closer to the molton innards which is nasty rock melting hot still, it's obviously a bit of a thermal leak and when the heat leaks out, the remaining material cools down. Note that some heat is residual (or perhaps may be regenerated by some sort of natural nukular (w.r.t. gw bush) reactor at the core) and some heat is doubtlessy cause by the shifting of tectonic plates and the gravitational effects of sun and moon. However, it is reasonable to assume that that we do have global cooling going on and that eventually, the core will solidify. When that happens, we can probably say adios to our magnetic field and when that is gone, it's probably gonna get rather cloudy and cold, at least until our atmosphere gets mostly stripped away by the solar wind. All this probably occurs long before the sun turns red giant and creates some major bit of global warming around here - before we're totally evaporated. At that point, we're likely due to be blown out in a pretty, colorful planetary nebula (nothing to do with planets - just misnamed long ago), perhaps a bit like the Dumbbell nebula (sorry algore).
A common myth that is pervaisive is that throwing more time at a problem solves it quicker. Hint, when someone isn't at peak rested awareness, they make mistakes and sometimes when debugging miss the obvious.
Sure the grandstanding, stay up all night to fix the problem looks good to fools that don't know any better but the net results is more likely to require more days and more nights to fix the additional problems injected due to fatigue. Those problems would never have existed were one to leave at normal times then come back refreshed to tackle the original problem the next morning.
In a real crunch, one stupid stay late for an evening stunt can result in two days of wasted effort trying to fix both the original problem and the additional screwups due to fatigue.
While there are people around who have no life after work, this still applies because sleep deprivation has an impact.
This is not to say all is well and can be accomplished inside of 40 hours per week. Getting a degree and learning to do something well are different things. One doesn't learn any craft by quiting every day at 5pm. Any high paying job is going to demand more than the usual 40 hrs/wk out of you. If you don't have a demanding job, you still need to spend extra time on learning the craft (programming, engineering or whatever). And, if you go into business for yourself, the work load goes up, usually to 7 days per week over the long term.
But, you never ever try to move a project along when you're exhausted or tired because you'll be moving it in the wrong direction.
The wonderful thing about nasty polluting chemicals is they don't reproduce.
The terrifying thing about bacteria is that they not only reproduce, they mutate and adapt while preproducing.
History has quite a few examples of man's attempt to manipulate his environment by using 'organic' or 'natural' means, like introducing new species into an environment with no existing predators.
All actions have consequences, some acceptable, some not. Some are known beforehand, others found out after it's too late.
What if the 'bugs' adapt slightly to sandy loam soils - will it turn them into hardpan or concrete and spread like another plague?
you don't need to haul a big trailer around with a generator capable of 100kw+, you just need a big honkin extension cord.
Actually, I sorta like the notion of wireless - so nix the cord and replace it by a microwave link pushing 100kw+ - that way you won't have to worry about anyone sneakin' up behind you. It would seem the greenies got left on this one since doing an orbiting microwave powered by solar energy seems to be left out, otherwise why would they need the laser.
I guess maybe the active armor might work too. Maybe make it outa charcoal so as soon as it's hit - it starts smoking out all sorts of co2 - blocking the ir from penetrating.
Gee and I was already to see what new LGM phenomenon (little green men - initial terminology for radio pulsars prior to any understanding of what it might be) was going to be about. That is assuming it wasn't a virus or worm screwing up some poor sap's computer.
As for Mr Spock and ET, I suspect they are both a single cell fungus - even though Mr Spock is/was far smarter than the late Dr. Spock.
As for/. - it seems to be an interesting source of information of the obscure type.
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Capitalism is built on having capital equipment/finances. It exists even in non capital situations like gulags and death camps - which is usually the consequences of societies that don't know better. It's the stuff that differentiates us from lower life forms. Even if you tried to go back to the hunter gatherer lifestyle - life will still be easier (or should be say survival) if you have a few capital goods, like a bow and a bucket for hunting and gathering.
As for the gov. messing with TV and wanting to be compassionate with your hard-earned money - which they figure is better spent by them making sure some else who already had to spend what money they had on something they considered more important, like crack cocaine, can watch TV just like you.
dark matter comes from the darkest recesses of funding competition and the search for fame at any price.
You're injecting the assumptions that man is the cause for global warming and that CO2 has a serious effect in trace quantities. You've only got two facts. One, CO2 level is up. Two, man is creating more CO2 than he used to. From this, you are assuming man is warming the planet and that a warmer planet is either all bad or more bad than good. The rest of your 'facts' are BS.
About the climate, it can only be said that the planet is currently warming, cooling or remaining the same and that it will either continue to do what it is doing or it will change directions, perhaps slowly, perhaps quickly. All the evidence you have to say it is warming is actually inconclusive when it comes to predicting what is going to be happening over even the next few decades.
Suffice to say that the models have been grossly incomplete with primary causes of temperature change being ignored in the calculations as having uncertain consequences on the climate while secondary and tertiary factors have been played to the hilt. Man might have achieved becoming a tertiary factor - maybe - if you want to become generous in the extreme.
CO2 is not the primary green house gas, it's a tiny fraction of the whole. Water vapor alone makes up 96%. Methane is 20 times more effective than CO2. And when water vapor forms into clouds - there is a massive change in the arrival of solar energy. A cloudy day in my neighborhood is good for a 10 to 20 degree drop in peak surface temperatures (deg. F)over a clear sunny one.
The only reason that the man made global warming scare made it this far was the lack of scientific research tying the very close short term relationship of the sun's magnetic activities to that of temperature effects via cloud formation. I expect the shrillness and more radical means being persued by the global warming fanatics and their political masters is being pushed by the realization that the jig is up and they are very time limited in their persuit of power and control. That's why they've started abandoning their supposed mantle of science and have started to resort to force or at least threats of force.
BTW, due to the tie in between the suns 11 yr sunspot cycle and cloud formation (via cosmic ray flux) you should expect a doozy of a ride for the next decade. This one is expected to be the strongest, most active one since at least the 1950s. While it's going to haver serious effects on shortwave transmissions and probably on some broadcast TV, it's also going to cut down the cloud cover. That means hotter temperatures in the day and drought. It will probably mean more storm activities in the gulf and pacific. At present we are at the dead bottom of the last cycle, which went down rather hard with a off the scale coronal mass ejection just before it hit bottom - back just after the very busy hurricane season of 2005.
Perhaps you should try inventing something to cut down on the sun's magnetic activity and really do something about global warming if you're that worried about it. Or maybe start taking water skiing lessons. It's obvious you've got way too much time on your hands with nothing better to do.
The Bald Eagle has seen its day as the national bird. It's time for the Ostrich to take over the mantle.
Inside an arm, different objects can have relatively different speeds along the direction of the arm rotation. Also, objects can bob up and down as they go around. Different speeds can be achieved by slight variations and by the changes in gravitational attraction. The arm has got to move at the average speed and it's components generally have to move at this same velocity as it rotates - but some components may be ejected out of the arm. Essentially, each object in the arm is in orbit around the core but is also subject to influence from other arm objects.
Astronomers and amateur astronomers usually think in two dimensions as the problem is finding particular objects in the sky. It's all direction. Distance is not something that can be measured directly outside our immediate area where the parallax of stars from the earth's orbit position changes can be used to determine it. Beyond that, it's inferring from other things like cephid variables or even type 1a supernovae brightness (assumptions). There are quite a few objects that are fairly commonly observed that we don't truly know exactly how far they really are.
One simulation program that has attempted to break this mold is Whereis M13. It used to be shareware but it may be a low cost item now. It will show you where various objects are located in our galaxy. Unfortunately, I don't think it can vary in time.
http://www.thinkastronomy.com/M13/index.html
Even the planetarium programs which offer tremendously wide time variations of thousands of years do not offer views of millions of years and probably don't offer a 3 d look at the galaxy even though they may offer a 3-d look at the solar system. Some of the problem may be the accuracy of our numbers on the relative motions may not be good enough to take us back to the skies of the dinosaurs when we were on the other side of the galaxy.
At present, there is a natural separation of software from political viewpoint. THE reason is socialism is FORCED compliance from government, enforced by violence and ultimately even threat of death. There is no socialist software just because it's being given away free.
Free software is the CHOICE of those who made it. They were not forced to make it by anyone or any entity. They were not forced to give it away and could have opted to sell it had they wanted to. Note too for those of you who shave, it's been a classical long time marketing ploy to give away the razor and to then sell the blades - in a rather lucrative fashion.
It's quite possible in some cases that many contributors to a free project did so without the realization that those leading the project then profited significantly by consulting fees, maintenance contracts, book royalties and other means than selling the software work for money. Then again, they considered their work product a donation to something which wasn't really a charity. It's sort of like going down to the local used car lot on saturdays and washing the cars for free because you like soapy water and the feel of wax.
Software doesn't just happen and its creation isn't free. When one spends 10 man months working on a project full time, you've got to have food, electricity, computer, perhaps medical, shelter and maybe even transportation and during that time you're not working somewhere else. Note that these are not free since they come from the work product of others. Even in the case where a donation is being made part time, this is either work product which could have been sold or was perhaps even stolen from an employer who was paying for something else to be done.
In all cases, software creation is not free and has an overall expense to society. Perhaps the expense is born by those donating their time and perhaps it's been shifted to others unaware of the activity. In some cases, it can be an investment in self by the donor, chalking up the time spent to self education and perhaps gaining in the long term or perhaps profiting by feeling of making a donation to something they believe in - or perhaps it's the fame part of fame and fortune.
Making a donation is not something that any political viewpoint has a lock on, even though one tends to find those on the left rather skimpy with historical charities. Evidently, they'd rather have gov. force you to 'donate' more than you want and then waste most of that donation before it reaches the intended recipient. Free software tends to be a donation just as working on a free software project is donation of time.
Just because a software product is for money doesn't mean it's superior to a software product that is given away. Choices are made for many reasons of features and affordability and sometimes compatibility - as well as for reasons of security and protection from sabotage.
As for socialism, it's not only the basis of an inferior society, it's proven to fail every time it's tried. It only works with ants, bees and termites. For higher life forms such as human beings, it's an utter disaster doomed to failure. The only questions are how soon and at the cost of how many lives.
Is the kid planning on selling his invention to pay for law school? That way he can sue all the owners for accidents and retire his first year outa law school????
maybe he should re-invent paintball - use tequila instead of paint.
What's really shocking is that supposedly over 50% are deemed qualified. One must take that with a grain of salt as there was no complete listing of qualifications provided. Mathematical ability may be at the bottom of the list if it's even on the list. Public education is more and more about knowing the fraudulent and faulty methods of educating taught in education courses than about the materails that should be covered to educate one in the fundamentals necessary in a complex technological society. Besides, who needs much learning to use a 4-banger calculator.
Unfortunately, your 70% wasn't funny. It's no longer possible now to tell if it was a joke or not. Such doubt dampens the humor and it merely becomes a sad note of sarcasm on the results of the destruction of public education and the negative impacts of unions on society.
>>Microsoft is doing what they think is in their best interest. Their purpose isn't to justify your education, or try and boost the number of CS majors. Their purpose is not to give you, or anyone else, employment. Nor is that the purpose of any company.
THat's true. And it's true that some immigrants are superior in education, work ethic and and desire to become Americans - loving it already from afar. And it's a fer sure bet that they will contribute. However, every good thing has untended results, some of which totally negate the good and even turn out to be fatal.
There are businesses around which want cheap labor, including the use of illegals, to gain a competitive advantage over their competition. Part of that advantage may include the knowledge on their part that they won't be raided or fined by the gov. for using illegals which may not be the case for their competitor down the street who may be stood up against the wall for hiring a couple of people with fake IDs.
One thing you find with the unskilled illegals is the businesses hiring them are successfully shifting the cost of this employment to others - you and me. There are hospital emergency rooms closing because that most expensive of medical treatments is being innundated by illegals (and others) who come for relatively minor treatments and don't pay - shifting the costs to the hospital and/or government. Schools are being innundated with kids from illegals and the costs are being shifted to you and me. And if you are a blue collar construction worker, I hope you habla espanol if you plan on working ever again. Just don't expect to get paid what you used to. And if you're not, you better try finding a night job to help pay the taxes for those unemployed Americans who can't find a job because they've been filled by some cut in line illegal.
Then again, there are quite a few illegals here for crime and apparently terrorism.
As for CS in general, mickiesoft doesn't have to hire immigrants to work for them because they can hire the same people in place for even less and judging by my last bout with customer assistance - do. That way they can even get around minimum wage for technically educated employees.
Having never seen a microsoft program since the advent of window's 3.1 which wasn't a major piece of crap, two things appear to be evident. First, they didn't hire the best and brightest. Second, they probably didn't hire enough even run of the mill legal immigrants. Then again, item 2 might be in serious error. I suppose most of our best and brightest decided to become doctors and lawyers, probably more lawyers now than doctors. But at least there were plenty who became doctors before lawyers made it no longer worth while for them to due to massive amounts of lawsuit abuse.
It still remains to be seen what Bill Gates really is. Is he the business genius many think, or is he an incompetent dweeb that accidently stumbled across the perfect mix of buggy software and incompatibility problems that keeps getting repackaged and resold to the same customers looking for cures to the bugs?
One thing is for certain, some immigration - especially for educated people desiring to be part of America is good. And, it's the most regulated and restricted of all, unlike the access to our borders where anyone from anywhere for any reason at almost any time can cross over, transporting anything they desire to carry.
So with this implemented, hijackers will need to not only take flying lessons but also some will need to take autopilot repair and maintenance training. Or maybe they can forego the pilot training and just do the autopilot repair and maintenance training. I wonder which is easier?
Actually, my favorite stupid 'foolproof' idea is remote control. That could permit the hijackers to take over the airplane and fly it into whatever - without ever having to go thru security screening at the airport. And if they do it by satellite - maybe without having to enter the country.
Anyone who wants 1/10th the performance at 10 times the price should consider such a scheme. However even that grimm a cost guess won't reflect but a fraction of the overall cost of such malarky. And, that doesn't include the cost shifting to cover the homeless and total illiterates who must be trained.
'free' internet initially makes sense to drive paid competitors out of business or to keep them from entering the market. Once that is accomplished, the 'free' providers can then start exacting the costs of total government monopoly and control. That's when you find out that 'free' meant free access to your property and freedom.
But you don't have any of the prerequisite education courses, the ones that tell you how you must teach (so that as few students as possible will learn to think for themselves and so that significant numbers ofthem won't be able to make correct change at the burger dump - even with the smart cash register).
Also, you failed to mention your coaching credentials which are far more important to the school than your ability to read rite an do 'rithmetic.
Not to fail to mention here, your involvement with that dastardly PETA organization. No - not the ethical treatment one - the other one! People Eating Tasty Animals.
maybe the lid to the petri dish is lined with aerogel out past Pluto.
It's always best to posit new physics as the answer rather than to blame it on the rather mundane things. After all, it's not a perfect vacuum there, light carries momentum as does cosmic radiation and there are likely to be plenty of objects out there with gravitational effects that haven't or can't be seen. There are many fairly mundane reasons why. But, it's more fun to decide it's the reason why the Michaelson Morely experiment failed to discover our velocity thru the aether.
The Space Pen was a typical goofy invention to kludge fix a problem with an existing technology that didn't work in a new environment (no gravity). It made for a mediocre tourist souvenir and an impractical solution to a nonproblem. The felt tip pen (Flair??) didn't need gravity to operate and it offered easier to read results. Hence, the 99 cent simple solution was established by those using it over complicated, overpriced solution dictated from 'on high' by the bureaucracy. Fortunately, back then NASA hadn't created its entrenched bureaucracy yet and the mission superceded the internal politics.
As for the hate america thing, there's no mystery. Overseas, they hate us because they're jealous of our freedoms and accomplishments. For those who by in to leftist(communist/socialist) propaganda, they blame us for everything, including the myth of global warming. The dweeb tourists that go over there include the typical 'ugly american' (ignorant fools asking why don't they all speak english in....) and those self hating, hate america types - sometimes looking for cheap drugs etc. that help crime organizations establish virtual control over the local region. Lots of these amateur amabassadors create quite an impression, virtually all of it negative.
The fact that the soviet union is dormant at the moment doesn't mean that the idiological struggle is ended, only that it has changed.
As for cannuckland - who's jealous of an icecube.
Any sane, rational individual should love America (the concept/ideal) and fear government (any government, all government). That is what the founders did and the reasons why they did are all around us for anyone to see now.
I believe you could find that the sun's magnetic activity has increased 20-40 % over the last 40 years. The sun is a variable star at all time frames although the intensity output we've seen has remained to around 0.1% over the last 40 years.
The real key is the magnetic activity which cycles around every 11 years or so. Right now - we're at absolute minimum of the cycle or should I say at the very beginning of cycle 24. I believe the reversal indications have shown it's flippedand the sunspots are starting to come out for cycle 24. It's been promised by predictors that 24 is going to be a doozey, affecting the ionosphere more than any since the cycle during the 1950s.
Considering that the climatic correlation being studied indicates that higher magnetic activity with the sun reduces cosmic rays entering our atmosphere which reduce the rate of cloud formation - which has a direct and immediate effect on our temperatures, it's probably going to get hot and dry in a lot of areas by the time this one peaks out and starts dropping.
Note that sunspot cycles have been observed since around the invention of the telescope. During the time (I believe it's around 1750 to 1800 or so) there were no sunspots. This is also the time frame when the Thames river in London froze over solid to the point that it was used for commercial purposes with vendor shacks and the like.
As for Mars, there seems to be two alternatives. First, Mars could be warming due to increased solar activity like the earth could. Alternatively, perhaps those solar powered go-carts called Mars Rovers are boogering up the environment. If the second is true - it bodes ill for electric powered vehicles and/or solar power.
Note that there are clouds on Mars, despite the lack decent atmosphere and Mars has no magnetic field of its own. It can also be covered in planet wide dust storms. There are plenty of factors that are not in common with the earth but it sure would be strange to find that both planets are undergoing the same effects at the same time but caused by different factors. Note too that if increased storms are indicative of global warming, that Jupiter has developed a new red spot, Red Jr. last year and also Saturn had one huge storm about a year ago too.
As for man-made global warming - it's hard to tell where the political agendas and media hype end and where any actual science begins. After the coldest january on record down here in the tropics (below 28 N. Lat), it froze again last night. It's perhaps telling that all these conferences and hearings on it recently seem to be being cancelled due to cold weather. I'm sure they'll learn to schedule them for July 9th or so when record heat is far more likely.
Having mistakenly been forced to witness The Juiceman's live presentation once, I became aware of the completely brainless (yet very pretty and handsome) bodies floating around the presentation, tasting the fresh potato juice. It appeared the bodies were housed at the gym and sent out during the day to perform a variety of actions that resulted in an income stream to the gym.
It would seem that such useful power mechanisms from exercise have been around quite some time. I remember a stationary bicycle that powered a little TV set in the movie Soylent Green. It seemed like a useful idea, but evidently never one that resulted in practical sales.
Considering a horse being worked to death can produce 1 horse power which amounts to 640 Watts of power. I'd think a human might do about 1/4 of that while exercising vigorously, although that would seem perhaps a bit much. Hmm, that sounds familar - 160 Watts - that sounds like about the amount of power used in a 4 tube florescent fixture. I suppose that means if the gym fills up, they might be able to provide enough power to light up most of the lights in the place. That still leaves the power needed to heat the water for the showers and cool and ventilate the place.
It sort of sounds like it's the typical touchy feely feel good barf so common in society now, probably from the same bunch that thinks drinking fruit and veggie juice after removing all the fiber and bulk leads to a long and healthy life. All we need is more 'green' energy that isn't even close to the break-even mark so that more scarce resources (like money and power generation) in society is wasted.
Flux of not so micrometeors isn't well determined. However, CME and other radiation sources are a bit better known although not consistant in occurance. Somehow, inflatable just doesn't seem to give me any warm and fuzzies inside - maybe that's due to 15 pounds / in^2 of atmospheric insulation combined with a significant magnetic field keeping out so many of those little nasties here at the moment.
If I recall right, that story dates back to the 80s. If so - it was not a US company, but rather a Japanese one. Considering the Japanese are at considerable risk from a powerful China, you'd think they'd have avoided doing what they did to their own country.
Perhaps the first and foremost problem was that anyone in the military or US gov. ever considered outsourcing anything to an overseas company, much less something of strategic consequence or a legitimately classified secret.
SOmeone refresh my memory - wasn't japan the folks who brought us the Pearl Harbor attack of Dec. 7 1941???? Then again, maybe that was the mea culpa for the japanese use of chinese civilians for medical and biowarfare experiments and bayonet practice back during those times. Considering there's people still alive from them, you'd think the Chinese might still be really ticked off about it.
As for the stolen data - I get the feeling it wasn't anything short of genuine foreign espionage. The only question remaining is who was actively involved in it who is still in place.
>>All the major organised religions seem to want is lots of uneducated children who think they are going to go to 'heaven' when they die.
If that were the case, then organized religions wouldn't have invented the hospital nor would they have created schools that are superior to public ones. Nowadays, if you want uneducated children, you send them to public schools.
As for the word evolution, it's been around for quite some time now and has a public definition which implies changes from species to species and a continual inevitable progress to some end result. There is some relation here to the situation of the word 'planet' which began long before modern science began and recently essentially been hijacked in an attempt to make it a scientifically precise term (the Pluto flap). The origins go back to the meaning of wanderer (among the fixed stars).
Since bacteria adapting to some new situation doesn't involve changing from bacteria to frogs, the use of the word 'evolve' is way too strong. It would seem to be rather similar to the notion that when a dog puts on a winter coat of fur in the fall, that one could claim this dog evolved and when this dog sheds his winter coat in the spring - then this same dog evolved again.
Perhaps someone injected a political agenda into science quite some time ago.
Actually, that should be global cooling. Since oceans are closer to the molton innards which is nasty rock melting hot still, it's obviously a bit of a thermal leak and when the heat leaks out, the remaining material cools down. Note that some heat is residual (or perhaps may be regenerated by some sort of natural nukular (w.r.t. gw bush) reactor at the core) and some heat is doubtlessy cause by the shifting of tectonic plates and the gravitational effects of sun and moon. However, it is reasonable to assume that that we do have global cooling going on and that eventually, the core will solidify. When that happens, we can probably say adios to our magnetic field and when that is gone, it's probably gonna get rather cloudy and cold, at least until our atmosphere gets mostly stripped away by the solar wind. All this probably occurs long before the sun turns red giant and creates some major bit of global warming around here - before we're totally evaporated. At that point, we're likely due to be blown out in a pretty, colorful planetary nebula (nothing to do with planets - just misnamed long ago), perhaps a bit like the Dumbbell nebula (sorry algore).
A common myth that is pervaisive is that throwing more time at a problem solves it quicker. Hint, when someone isn't at peak rested awareness, they make mistakes and sometimes when debugging miss the obvious.
Sure the grandstanding, stay up all night to fix the problem looks good to fools that don't know any better but the net results is more likely to require more days and more nights to fix the additional problems injected due to fatigue. Those problems would never have existed were one to leave at normal times then come back refreshed to tackle the original problem the next morning.
In a real crunch, one stupid stay late for an evening stunt can result in two days of wasted effort trying to fix both the original problem and the additional screwups due to fatigue.
While there are people around who have no life after work, this still applies because sleep deprivation has an impact.
This is not to say all is well and can be accomplished inside of 40 hours per week. Getting a degree and learning to do something well are different things. One doesn't learn any craft by quiting every day at 5pm. Any high paying job is going to demand more than the usual 40 hrs/wk out of you. If you don't have a demanding job, you still need to spend extra time on learning the craft (programming, engineering or whatever). And, if you go into business for yourself, the work load goes up, usually to 7 days per week over the long term.
But, you never ever try to move a project along when you're exhausted or tired because you'll be moving it in the wrong direction.
The wonderful thing about nasty polluting chemicals is they don't reproduce.
The terrifying thing about bacteria is that they not only reproduce, they mutate and adapt while preproducing.
History has quite a few examples of man's attempt to manipulate his environment by using 'organic' or 'natural' means, like introducing new species into an environment with no existing predators.
All actions have consequences, some acceptable, some not. Some are known beforehand, others found out after it's too late.
What if the 'bugs' adapt slightly to sandy loam soils - will it turn them into hardpan or concrete and spread like another plague?
you don't need to haul a big trailer around with a generator capable of 100kw+, you just need a big honkin extension cord.
Actually, I sorta like the notion of wireless - so nix the cord and replace it by a microwave link pushing 100kw+ - that way you won't have to worry about anyone sneakin' up behind you. It would seem the greenies got left on this one since doing an orbiting microwave powered by solar energy seems to be left out, otherwise why would they need the laser.
I guess maybe the active armor might work too. Maybe make it outa charcoal so as soon as it's hit - it starts smoking out all sorts of co2 - blocking the ir from penetrating.
Gee and I was already to see what new LGM phenomenon (little green men - initial terminology for radio pulsars prior to any understanding of what it might be) was going to be about. That is assuming it wasn't a virus or worm screwing up some poor sap's computer.
/. - it seems to be an interesting source of information of the obscure type.
As for Mr Spock and ET, I suspect they are both a single cell fungus - even though Mr Spock is/was far smarter than the late Dr. Spock.
As for