...you'll be upgraded to pound sand with both hands.
North Carolina was promised FIOS "real soon now" for years. At this point, it's pretty clear that if you don't already have it, you won't be getting it. Google blimps, drones, and sewer lines will bring us high-speed broadband long before Verizon significantly extends their buildout.
Well, if it tries to explode them out its nose, it doesn't go in the right direction.
Get back to us when you can take a crew of 200 to Mars and back. In a month.
...are they trying to say that "Arbiter macht frei"?
Okay, as long as I've got you on the line...
What's supposed to happen when negative and positive mass collide?
If I throw a tennis ball at a wall, it bounces off (and the wall recoils imperceptibly). If I throw a negative tennis ball at a wall -- or throw it away, causing it to move toward the wall, whatever -- what happens when it hits? It seems like it would try to "recoil" in the same direction it was traveling, maybe even giving the wall a "tug" instead of a "push" when it hit. But it can't move forward, because presumably negative and positive matter can't simply interpenetrate -- or can they?
Gaah, so many microscopic/macroscopic behavior assumption violations...
Negative mass is very diferent from antimatter. Antimatter is opposite to normal matter in charge and quantum numbers (such as baryon number, etc.), but still has positive mass.
Negative mass reacts oppositely to both gravity and intertia. Oddly, that means that negative mass still falls down in a gravitational field: The gravitational force is opposite, but negative mass responds negatively to force (a=F/m, where both F and m are negative). So negative mass particles repel each other gravitationally, but are attracted to positive mass objects.
Trying my best to ignore my intuition, which is heavily biased toward "all mass is positive":
A negative mass would fall down in a gravitational field (generated by a positive mass) -- it would experience a force directed away from the positive mass, and it would respond to that force by moving toward the positive mass.
However, the negative mass would repel the positive mass gravitationally -- effectively, exert a force directed away from itself -- correct?
It seems to me that if you had two equal but opposite masses in freefall, the negative mass would accelerate toward the positive, the positive would accelerate away from the negative, and the negative mass would chase the positive mass off the edge of the universe at constant acceleration.
It also seems like two negative masses would repel each other (exert a force directed away from each other), but respond to that repulsion by accelerating toward each other.
What am I missing?
Still does nothing to explain the similar sorting of Slashdot comments, as illustrated in this thread.
'... I say, when they git ready...... ever hear tell of a shoggoth?"
Terminator 2? Feh.
Step 1: Build buckyball model out of wooden skewers and string.
Step 2: Wrap skewers in raw bacon.
Step 3: Microwave.
Step 4: Post to YouTube.
Step 5: Profit!
(Note to whoever actually tries this: Depending on the scale of your model, some of the bacon loops may resonantly couple with the field in your microwave oven. Don't be surprised at arcs and flames. Please don't skip Step 4.)
That's not the way it worked for us. Overdraw charges? Sounds like you're talking about a debit card, not a credit card.
No, "issued for circulation" means the Mint sends them to the Fed for distribution -- so they can be spent, given out as change, and so forth. The last few years of dollar coins haven't been issued for circulation. Yes, they're still legal tender, but since you have to pay more than face value to get them, it's kind of dumb to spend them.
Kennedy halves haven't been issued for circulation in years, either, but you'll still find recent-date ones in rolls occasionally. People inherit or steal them, don't care about collectable value, and just spend the coins or turn them in at the bank.
State quarters (and now America The Beautiful national park quarters) are issued for circulation -- at least, the ones minted in Philadelphia and Denver.
Yeah, I think it's time for a full reset on our cash denominations. Knock out the cent and nickel (each one costs more than its face value to produce). Make dimes and half-dollars of the same general size and shape as today's cent and nickel. Make dollar coins like today's dime, and bring back the "eagles" -- quarter-eagle ($2.50), half-eagle ($5), eagle ($10), and double eagle ($20). Heck, you could even reinstate the half-union and union ($50 and $100), which never made it into circulation during the original 1850's gold rush.
But this will never happen. There's too much inertia around our current system, and by the time inflation trivializes all current denominations, the "cashless society" folks will most likely have won. Maybe the black and grey markets will go over to true hard currency, the silver and gold that's currently the domain of collectors and doomsayers.
They're no longer issued for circulation. They're only made for collectors. This seems like an odd business for a government (manufacturing collectibles), but it does produce a small profit, so I guess there's not a lot of motivation for shutting it down completely.
The thug prowling around in the woods can take and spend my $20s, and I've got no recourse unless he's caught. If he steals my credit cards, they're only good for him until I phone in the theft, and I'm out zero money in the end. Plus all that terrible OMG-Big-Brother-Ate-My-Privacy tracking can tell the police a good bit about where he's been and what he's been doing.
The Powers That Be have never frozen any of my accounts, but thugs have burglarized my house more than once. I have no desire to see cash go away, but it's disingenuous to claim that it's less risky than e-money.
That's got to be the weirdest "THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!!" argument I've ever seen.
Ya'll hear about the geometer who went to the beach to catch some rays and became a tangent ?
