It really aggravates me that decisions keep being made to help a few big companies at the expense of everyone else. It seems obvious that keeping more local control over TV stations is in the viewer's best interest, and yet the decision was made to let these stations get taken over. It seems it's only getting easier and easier for big money to grease the wheels of government.
The fact that this report was ordered to be destroyed only goes to show that someone's best interests other than the public's are being defended here. How far will this sort of thing go? How much are people going to take before they push back, or are we pretty much screwed to slide down this slope to a place where we have no voice and no control? I sure hope not.
The article states the galaxy is 13 billion light years away. At first I read this as "the light took 13 billion years to reach us," but that doesn't make sense if you think about it. To get 13 billion light years away in a galaxy which is a mere 13.6 billion years old, each galaxy would need to be moving at nearly 0.48c. Assuming that the galaxies are moving in opposite directions at the same speed, this means that the light has been catching up to us at a rate of 0.52c since the time it left the other galaxy.
Here are two equations we can write, with T being the time the light travelled (years), and D being the distance between our galaxies at the time the light was emitted (light years).
A) T = D * 0.52 B) D + 0.96 * T = 13 billion
D + 0.96 * (D * 0.52) = 13 billion D = 8.67 billion T = 4.51 billion
So the light departed the other galaxy about 4.5 billion light years ago, when our galaxies were about 8.7 billion light years apart. I know I've made some big assumptions, but am I on the right track with this?
It's too soon for a planet named Xena. You've got to give it about 1000 years, when the lens of history has changed the common understanding of Xena from "television warrior bimbo" to "goddess of war worshipped at the start of the last millenium."
The main problem with this second analogy is that the service is not advertised this way. It's more like they rent you the lawnmower for a year. You take it home and start cutting your lawn, which happens to be a rather large lawn. An hour later, Guido shows up to take your lawnmower and bring it to another customer, because they figure an hour should be plenty of time to cut your lawn. But you didn't sign up for an hour a week, you signed up for a lawnmower for a year!
You might also add that the car came with a restriction which prevented you from buying insurance, so if anything happened to it you would be forced to buy a new one. Also, if you tried to drive it on roads which the car's computer didn't recognize, it would simply shut off the engine to make sure you weren't using the car in a way the manufacturer didn't intend. Also, if you tried to modify the car to allow it to drive on these roads, or to allow your wife to drive it, you would be breaking a federal law. The hood would come welded shut to make it difficult for you attempt any such modifications. The fact that the hood was welded shut would also have the side effect of preventing other modifications or tuning to the engine if you wanted to do that. Even though laws existed giving you the specific right to make such modifications, you couldn't exercise those rights without breaking that other law about not cutting through the hood welds. Oh yeah, and as a result of all this you would now be paying more money for an inferior and less useful vehicle.
Huh, this really put the DRM issue in perspective for me, because this offer is simply not appealing to me. Even when the price is FREE, if I can't play the music where and when and how I want, I'm simply not interested any longer. I'd rather just listen to what I already have.
Obviously to fit the most CDs in the smallest place, you're going to want to crush them or melt them. (Remember, you already have the data backed up, so it's ok!) CDs don't melt so well and tend to give off toxic fumes when heated, so I'd suggest crushing. Here's what you'll need:
A garage with a smooth concrete floor and sturdy walls.
A wood chipper
A small steam roller (or modified zamboni)
Simply aim the chipper at the middle of the room and toss the CDs in after they are backed up. Once a week, smooth everything out with the steam roller. Have fun!
So what if we discovered a star system with a giant planet like Jupiter which assumed an orbit similar to Pluto's? Would we call it a dwarf planet even though it dwarfs the size of the other planets in the system? Affections for Pluto aside, I just don't think we got this definition right yet.
They're focusing on the first weekend way too much. This is a movie which is going to have a cult following. This is a movie that's going to sell DVDs up the wazoo. This is a movie with LEGS, man!
I don't know why you concluded I have an American money-is-everything attitude. My point was that by refusing this award, he makes a bigger deal out of himself and out of the whole situation. If he doesn't care about the award, he should just accept it quietly. He could send his regrets that he is unable to attend the ceremony if he doesn't want to go.
I received a couple of minor academic awards as a student, and I really didn't care about them. But I didn't make a stink about it and refuse them. It just seems like common sense and common decency to accept the attempted kindness.
Thank you for helping us all resist the temptation to idolize you and attempt to imitate you. I can just imagine the stories of kids pulling a brain muscle trying to prove some obscure hypothesis at home.
Seriously, why not just accept the prize? Refusing it doesn't demonstrate your humility; in fact I suspect it shows you think too much of yourself. Just smile, say thanks, put the medal on your shelf, and move on with life.
It's pretty cool of Yahoo to provide so much to the dev community. It's definitely improved my feelings about the company.
I wonder why they've made this foray into the Python world? I know they decided to focus on PHP a few years back. Did they find some tasks were easier to accomplish in Python? Or are they simply trying to reach out to another developer community?
Why is online anonymity so hard to come by? It seems that every service I use on the web keeps logs and statistics, and there always seems to be some trail linking me to whatever I've done online. Perhaps there are searches and discussions I've had online that I don't want a potential employer to come across, for example. No matter how careful I may be, I never feel too confident that I've been successfully shielded by anonymity.
It would be nice to see more online services that at least make an effort to maintain your anonymity. How about a proxy that will do all your google searches from a set of hundreds of random IP addresses, selecting a new one each time and never connecting the searches to one another? Or how about an ISP that gives you a new, random IP address on request, and keeps NO LOGS of who had which IP in the past?
There are two obstacles to this - first, the average joe doesn't think too carefully about anonymity, so the demand for such services is low. Second, there are legal issues regarding what information would be recorded. It would be very interesting to see the RIAA come to the ISP in my above example and request the account information of a file trader. What would happen if they literally had no logs and no way of telling which user had been using that IP? It seems like they might get in trouble, but why should they? Grocery stores aren't required to keep careful logs of each person walking through their doors. Don't ISPs have the same right to allow people to come and go?
I use Carbonite, and I've backed up over 100GB so far. My cost is $5 per month. The cost with rsync would be $126 per month. How can there be such a massive discrepancy? I'm sure the rsync service is probably more robust, but it costs 25 times as much? Something is not right here.
If a Pizza Hut pizza costs you $10, a quality pizza from a local place might cost you $15. But if rsync was running the local place, you'd have to pay $250 for that pizza. Momma mia!
Newegg.com is selling a 320G hard drive for $95. Assuming a RAID-1 setup with the average HD lasting 3 years, the cost of storage is 1.7 cents per GB per month. Yes, cents! Now, of course they have other expenses besides hard drives, but rsync's prices look way out of proportion.
Slashdot Mirror
AIDS isn't an infection either. It's just a biological lock on your immune system.
Semantics are fun!
It really aggravates me that decisions keep being made to help a few big companies at the expense of everyone else. It seems obvious that keeping more local control over TV stations is in the viewer's best interest, and yet the decision was made to let these stations get taken over. It seems it's only getting easier and easier for big money to grease the wheels of government.
The fact that this report was ordered to be destroyed only goes to show that someone's best interests other than the public's are being defended here. How far will this sort of thing go? How much are people going to take before they push back, or are we pretty much screwed to slide down this slope to a place where we have no voice and no control? I sure hope not.
When I first glanced at this headline, I read it as "Wil to Launch..." and I thought "Wow, Wil Wheaton is going into space?" That would be sweet! :)
The article states the galaxy is 13 billion light years away. At first I read this as "the light took 13 billion years to reach us," but that doesn't make sense if you think about it. To get 13 billion light years away in a galaxy which is a mere 13.6 billion years old, each galaxy would need to be moving at nearly 0.48c. Assuming that the galaxies are moving in opposite directions at the same speed, this means that the light has been catching up to us at a rate of 0.52c since the time it left the other galaxy.
Here are two equations we can write, with T being the time the light travelled (years), and D being the distance between our galaxies at the time the light was emitted (light years).
A) T = D * 0.52
B) D + 0.96 * T = 13 billion
D + 0.96 * (D * 0.52) = 13 billion
D = 8.67 billion
T = 4.51 billion
So the light departed the other galaxy about 4.5 billion light years ago, when our galaxies were about 8.7 billion light years apart. I know I've made some big assumptions, but am I on the right track with this?
It's too soon for a planet named Xena. You've got to give it about 1000 years, when the lens of history has changed the common understanding of Xena from "television warrior bimbo" to "goddess of war worshipped at the start of the last millenium."
The main problem with this second analogy is that the service is not advertised this way. It's more like they rent you the lawnmower for a year. You take it home and start cutting your lawn, which happens to be a rather large lawn. An hour later, Guido shows up to take your lawnmower and bring it to another customer, because they figure an hour should be plenty of time to cut your lawn. But you didn't sign up for an hour a week, you signed up for a lawnmower for a year!
I keep trying to search for google with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but it just erases my search term. Can anyone help me?
You might also add that the car came with a restriction which prevented you from buying insurance, so if anything happened to it you would be forced to buy a new one. Also, if you tried to drive it on roads which the car's computer didn't recognize, it would simply shut off the engine to make sure you weren't using the car in a way the manufacturer didn't intend. Also, if you tried to modify the car to allow it to drive on these roads, or to allow your wife to drive it, you would be breaking a federal law. The hood would come welded shut to make it difficult for you attempt any such modifications. The fact that the hood was welded shut would also have the side effect of preventing other modifications or tuning to the engine if you wanted to do that. Even though laws existed giving you the specific right to make such modifications, you couldn't exercise those rights without breaking that other law about not cutting through the hood welds. Oh yeah, and as a result of all this you would now be paying more money for an inferior and less useful vehicle.
Welcome to the future, kid.
Huh, this really put the DRM issue in perspective for me, because this offer is simply not appealing to me. Even when the price is FREE, if I can't play the music where and when and how I want, I'm simply not interested any longer. I'd rather just listen to what I already have.
Obviously to fit the most CDs in the smallest place, you're going to want to crush them or melt them. (Remember, you already have the data backed up, so it's ok!) CDs don't melt so well and tend to give off toxic fumes when heated, so I'd suggest crushing. Here's what you'll need:
Simply aim the chipper at the middle of the room and toss the CDs in after they are backed up. Once a week, smooth everything out with the steam roller. Have fun!
So what if we discovered a star system with a giant planet like Jupiter which assumed an orbit similar to Pluto's? Would we call it a dwarf planet even though it dwarfs the size of the other planets in the system? Affections for Pluto aside, I just don't think we got this definition right yet.
Oh dammit... I obviously didn't RTFA and didn't realize they made the same joke. At least my delivery was better.
They're focusing on the first weekend way too much. This is a movie which is going to have a cult following. This is a movie that's going to sell DVDs up the wazoo. This is a movie with LEGS, man!
Oh, wait...
I don't know why you concluded I have an American money-is-everything attitude. My point was that by refusing this award, he makes a bigger deal out of himself and out of the whole situation. If he doesn't care about the award, he should just accept it quietly. He could send his regrets that he is unable to attend the ceremony if he doesn't want to go.
I received a couple of minor academic awards as a student, and I really didn't care about them. But I didn't make a stink about it and refuse them. It just seems like common sense and common decency to accept the attempted kindness.
Dear Grigory Perelman,
Thank you for helping us all resist the temptation to idolize you and attempt to imitate you. I can just imagine the stories of kids pulling a brain muscle trying to prove some obscure hypothesis at home.
Seriously, why not just accept the prize? Refusing it doesn't demonstrate your humility; in fact I suspect it shows you think too much of yourself. Just smile, say thanks, put the medal on your shelf, and move on with life.
Ah, but over a darknet, he could have safely and anonymously admitted to reading it!
Did anyone else notice that according to TFSlideshow, "Crystal Methamphetamine Lab" is of the technologies being used in the war against drugs?
Would you like it if they were not these the fledgling footsteps of an emerging ai or just the babbling beginnings of a bloated database?
So, you're saying that anything that's only 5.5 times smaller than a planet should also be considered a planet?
Earth/5.5 = 2300km => Pluto is a planet
Pluto/5.5 = 420km => Vesta asteroid (450km) is a planet
Vesta/5.5 = 82km => 61 Danaë asteroid (82km) is a planet
61 Danaë/5.5 = 15km => 2685 Masursky asteroid is a planet
2685 Masursky/5.5 = 2.5km => 2002 JF56 asteroid is a planet
2002 JF56/5.5 = 455 meters => CN Tower (550m) is a planet
CN Tower/5.5 = 100m => Eyeglass orbital telescope would be a planet
Eyeglass/5.5 = 18m => The Titan Missle silo was a planet
Titan/5.5 = 10.7 feet => Your bathroom is a planet
Bathroom/5.5 = 2 feet => Your Mom is a planet! Oh, snap!
It's pretty cool of Yahoo to provide so much to the dev community. It's definitely improved my feelings about the company.
I wonder why they've made this foray into the Python world? I know they decided to focus on PHP a few years back. Did they find some tasks were easier to accomplish in Python? Or are they simply trying to reach out to another developer community?
Don't take your laptop to bed.
Doh!
Noone has proved that any of these wireless devices cause cancer. And charging/changing 9 sets of batteries can be fun!
Why is online anonymity so hard to come by? It seems that every service I use on the web keeps logs and statistics, and there always seems to be some trail linking me to whatever I've done online. Perhaps there are searches and discussions I've had online that I don't want a potential employer to come across, for example. No matter how careful I may be, I never feel too confident that I've been successfully shielded by anonymity.
It would be nice to see more online services that at least make an effort to maintain your anonymity. How about a proxy that will do all your google searches from a set of hundreds of random IP addresses, selecting a new one each time and never connecting the searches to one another? Or how about an ISP that gives you a new, random IP address on request, and keeps NO LOGS of who had which IP in the past?
There are two obstacles to this - first, the average joe doesn't think too carefully about anonymity, so the demand for such services is low. Second, there are legal issues regarding what information would be recorded. It would be very interesting to see the RIAA come to the ISP in my above example and request the account information of a file trader. What would happen if they literally had no logs and no way of telling which user had been using that IP? It seems like they might get in trouble, but why should they? Grocery stores aren't required to keep careful logs of each person walking through their doors. Don't ISPs have the same right to allow people to come and go?
The Hollywood Stock Exchange
I use Carbonite, and I've backed up over 100GB so far. My cost is $5 per month. The cost with rsync would be $126 per month. How can there be such a massive discrepancy? I'm sure the rsync service is probably more robust, but it costs 25 times as much? Something is not right here.
If a Pizza Hut pizza costs you $10, a quality pizza from a local place might cost you $15. But if rsync was running the local place, you'd have to pay $250 for that pizza. Momma mia!
Newegg.com is selling a 320G hard drive for $95. Assuming a RAID-1 setup with the average HD lasting 3 years, the cost of storage is 1.7 cents per GB per month. Yes, cents! Now, of course they have other expenses besides hard drives, but rsync's prices look way out of proportion.