So where are the perpetual motion machines?

This is a great question. Let me rephrase it: "How can we collect dark energy and convert it into something useful?"

Nobody knows. Nobody knows if it's possible, for that matter. But yes, energy is constantly being pumped into spacetime; that's what's causing the expansion of spacetime. The nature of that energy and its origin (is it produced ex nihilo? Is it leaking in from another universe?) are currently hotly debated within physics.

But again, it's a great question. I wish we had an answer for it! :)

Try high-school level details. The basic principles of relativity ("no preferred reference frames; time and space are relative; the speed of light is constant") are taught in high school physics, as are such things as barycenters (although they usually call it the "center of gravity"). The bit about the Uncertainty Principle is college-level physics, but the rest is straight-up high school physics -- and not AP Physics, either.

And if you say the earth goes 'round the sun, you're every bit as wrong as if you say the sun goes 'round the earth. The reason why you're just as wrong is because you're making the same fundamental mistake: you're assuming the existence of a preferred reference frame.

So, in a sense, thanks for proving my points.

I've never heard of this Goedel guy but he sounds like either a hippy or a troll or both.

Kurt Goedel is widely regarded as the finest logician since Aristotle. Guy was Einstein's best friend (Einstein said he worked at Princeton "solely for the privilege of walking Kurt Goedel home"), did foundational work in general relativity, developed the Goedel Metric for GR, tore mathematics down to its foundations so violently that Bertrand Russell was shaken, lay the foundation for modern computer science, and more.

Not knowing who Kurt Goedel is, is kind of like not knowing who Isaac Newton is. Seriously. The guy was a major player in mathematics and physics from the 20s up until the 1970s. And when people call him the greatest logician since Aristotle, they're not kidding.

You are correct, sir! I spoke too broadly.

And yes, "tremendous unpopularity" would be a good way of describing the non-local hidden variable theories. :)

From any point of reference the sun is the centre of this solar system and everything in this system orbits the sun.

Not at all. Nothing orbits the sun. The planets and the sun all orbit the barycenter of Sol System, which happens to almost coincide with the center of the Sun. See, e.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

Anyway, the claim that "from any point of reference the sun is the centre of this solar system" is just wrong. Walk out your front door on a clear night and you can watch the planets and stars rotate around you. You're the center, from that particular frame of reference. Sure, to describe the motions of the planets accurately requires an absurdly complex set of epicycles, so complex that they cannot be evaluated without the use of computers... but you can do it: the math gives equivalent results. The math may be easier in one reference frame, but that doesn't make one reference frame more correct.

Here's another example: stand still and spin around really fast. Your arms will naturally lift and move outwards. In one frame of reference, you're spinning and centrifugal forces are lifting your arms up. In another frame of reference, you're standing still and the entire universe has started spinning around you, and the tidal forces generated by that much mass (at, admittedly, that great a distance) generate a pull on your arms that lift them up.

That may sound pretty out there, and it is -- it was one of the arguments Kurt Goedel used against relativity back in the early 20th century. ("That's all well and good, Einstein, but if there's no preferred reference frame then how do you account for this?") Then Goedel sat down with the math, crunched a ridiculous lot of numbers, and discovered that yes, General Relativity gave the exact same results as classical physics.

We may want to choose one reference frame or another to make the math easier -- but that doesn't make one reference frame more correct than another.

Look at how many people think they're scientifically literate because they think --

1. The Earth goes around the sun. It doesn't, and in fact, this is just as wrong as saying the sun goes round the Earth. Both positions implicitly advocate there's some privileged and special frame of reference in which to view the universe, and Einstein says there isn't one. It's sort of like people who say there's no such thing as centrifugal force: stand inside a rotating reference frame and derive Newton's Laws and yes, yes it exists, and yes, yes it's real. The mistake: "some reference frames are more true than others." The reality: "you pay your money and you take your frame of reference."
2. Conservation of energy. Conservation of energy only happens in a static spacetime; astronomy says our spacetime is dynamical; energy is not conserved in our universe.
3. E=mc**2. Only true for objects at rest, and pretty much nothing in the universe is at rest. The real equation is E**2=m**2c**4 + p**2c**2. This is why light can have energy without mass: a photon's energy is carried entirely in its momentum.
4. If you measure a particle's position, you'll necessarily tweak its velocity. That's the Uncertainty Principle. No, that's the Observer Effect. The Uncertainty Principle isn't a statement about the fidelity of our measurement apparatus: it's a statement about the total information available, period. If you think the data actually exists but we just can't measure it, then you're subscribing to a Hidden Variables interpretation of quantum mechanics, and the Aspect experiments put a pretty comprehensive set of nails in that coffin.

... and that's just the tip of the iceberg. You don't have to talk to flat earthers and antivaxxers to see profound science illiteracy; usually, the people condemning the science illiteracy are just as wrong, but about different things.

So, basically the Fujifilm X100 series then?

sPh

XT-1 if you really need interchangeable lenses.

- - - - - and living like a king in Patagonia. - - - - -

And a good argument that would have been. If the FBI had tracked him down at a resort in Patagonia with no Internet connection that is, instead of a library in California.

- - - - - and the only way to prevent that is for Dave to kill Fred, - - - - -

As with most glibertarian arguments, there is a hidden clause that does a lot of heavy lifting.

sPh

I remember reading a thread on netnews back around 1983 where an 'old-timer' observed, "This discussion has reached the FIJA stage. Time to log off".

Good to see some things never change.

sPh

As a fellow libertarian fucktard, I'm ashamed of you. Really? Really?

And I'll take a unicorn, as long as you have enough for everyone.

There's never going to be an infinite supply of unicorns! That's why we have markets, so that the buyers and sellers of unicorns can meet and negotiate prices at the intersection of the supply and demand curves, ensuring that everyone who's willing to pay the price for a unicorn is able to get one! Come on! Adam Smith! Invisible Hand! Milt Friedman! Nozick! Rothbard! PAUL KRUG--

-- wait, hold on, belay that last one. My bad. But the rest, yes, carry on!

(Note to the humorless: this is all tongue firmly in cheek.)

- - - - - Yes. You're talking about a singular FEATURE. Yes, the feature helped revolutionize the market. But the market existed BEFORE the feature. - - - - -

Funny how the Newton gets left off the canonical list of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand then.

sPh

- - - - - That's not creating a new business out of nothing, nor is it being particularly visionary. It's a natural improvement on an existing market segment. - - - - -

One has to be careful about trusting accounts written later, whether written by the winners or the losers. But multiple sources have reported that the response to the introductory demo of the iPhone at the highest levels of both Nokia and Blackberry was "that's impossible - they must be faking it". Nokia and Ericsson at least did a reality reset within a year and tried to get back in the game, but Blackberry only realized the iPhone was for real 18 months ago - say early 2014, 7 years after the iPhone was introduced.

I'd call that creating, or recreating, a new segment.

sPh

This is true and good, so long as you're interested in making software that can be done entirely with existing technologies. As soon as you hit the brick wall of "but there isn't anything in the standard library that does this," you need the old graybeards who spent their entire careers making the standard libraries you rely on.

Speaking as one of them, the pay and hours are both good and it keeps me on the cutting edge of some fascinating technologies.

The common idea is that we over-40s who've been doing this professionally for 25+ years can't adapt to modern software dev practices. Quite the opposite, really. Mostly we're kept so busy that we don't have the time.

None of this is meant to disrespect what the younger generation does with (as you say) "connect the dots library calls". That code needs to be written, and it's best if it's written by smart people who care about their work. :)

Terrible. It insulted my intelligence at every opportunity. To pick just three:

1. A hard drive that's been at Ground Zero of a Chernobyl-level event, exposed to hundreds of sieverts of ionizing radiation, extraordinary extremes of temperature, a hydrogen-oxygen explosion with such tremendous overpressure that it blew the containment dome, and seawater pumped through the building as a last-ditch effort at cooling the core, is still somehow so readable that it just requires a classified forensics program to recover it fully.
2. The main bad guy's ultimate plan involves speculating on the future of a commodity that isn't exactly rare.
3. Targeting nuclear reactors in the U.S. and China as a practice run for the real attack is pretty stupid, as the practice run is so devastating that it guarantees an immediate and vigorous reaction from two world-power countries known to have active cyberwarfare programs, thereby announcing your presence to exactly the people you want to keep completely in the dark

This movie insulted my intelligence at every turn. I have a long (and spoilerific) list of all the what-the no-they-didn't good-Christ moments I saw in the movie; if there's interest I'll post them here.