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Comment Re:this report is inconsistent (Score 1) 142

This is a scientific paper being written for the author's peers, none of whom would ever misinterpret it. I've seen this issue come up in a couple of places where laypeople are confused by the language of physics.

This is not a problem with the language of physics: it is a problem with laypeople.

I'm all for clear scientific communication, but at the end of the day, communication is hard and worrying about how some random person on the 'Net might misinterpret a term you use every day in your professional work is just not a good use of anyone's precious attention.

When I write poetry I do so in a pretty technical way. If people don't appreciate that, sucks to be them, because they are not my audience. I'm the same way in scientific communication: I write for my peers, and everyone else does the same. Let the popular science authors do the translation. They need the work.

Comment Re:Difficult to reconcile with SN 1987A (Score 2) 142

The primary difficulty here is going to be the same data that was really tought to reconcile with in the OPERA experiment, namely the data from SN 1987A.

I had the same thought, but it turns out not to be the case. Given the model he's working with, the neutrinos will be as much above the speed of light as they would have been below it if they had the same real mass (0.3 eV or something like that.)

For ~10 MeV neutrinos this gives gamma absurdly close to unity, and it's as impossible to distinguish neutrinos traveling just over c from ones traveling at c from ones traveling just under c.

The paper actually mentions SN1987A and talks a bit about the time resolution required.

Comment Re:LENR is not fusion (Score 1) 183

the best theory so far is that of Widom-Larsen

Widom-Larsen requires an implausible mix of scales. The effective mass of heavy electrons in the solid state is a collective phenomenon happening over distances and time-scales that are large relative to the nucleus and nuclear time-scales and affect the dynamics of the electron's interaction with the lattice, on those scales. To impute to these large-scale effects efficacy at the nuclear scale is very unlikely to be correct.

Consider a car analogy: a car moving along a freeway in dense traffic interacts with all the cars around it. If the driver accelerates, they will pull up close to the care behind and that driver may speed up a bit too, sending a diminishing wave of acceleration through the traffic, so compared to the same car alone on the road the car in dense traffic appears to have a much higher effective mass. Alone, you hit the gas and speed up a lot. In traffic, you hit the gas and speed up a little bit. That's what the electron in the surface looks like: a car in traffic.

But on the scale of car-car interactions, the "bare" mass of the car is what matters. If two cars collide you get an energy of 0.5*m*v^2, not 0.5*Meff*v^2.

Yeah, there are multi-car pileups that muddy the analogy, but they add up to nothing like the effective mass of the whole traffic block, so there. And the difference in scales between "cars and traffic" is tiny compared to the difference in scales between "nuclei and the lattice", so the effect that analogy hopefully makes obvious will be that much larger in the latter case.

Comment Re:Scam (Score 1) 183

This smells like a scam of some sort

While I don't disagree on the smell, Gates is richer than God, and the first thing I thought on seeing this was that if I had that kind of money I might spend a bit of it on wigged-out ideas, just in case. It's like me throwing a panhandler a buck just 'cause I can.

Comment Re:didn't go didn't download, don't care (Score 4, Insightful) 148

Because not believing, with little evidence, NK is competent enough to pull this off makes you a B357 K0r34n 1337 h4xx0r.

What on earth makes you think that NK has to have the native talent? The didn't figure out how to make nukes on their own either. They didn't home-grow their substantial currency counterfeiting operation, either. They likewise don't design and build their own military equipment. But that doesn't stop them from having nukes, from doing big business in phony currency, and sinking other people's ships.

Comment Re:They're assholes. (Score 4, Insightful) 336

The only victims here are the users who bought into a DRM'ed, locked down platform.

You're right, all those people should have chosen to buy fun, well-developed, richly supported gaming platforms from one of the many providers who offer open source, freedom-minded, anti-IP, systems that have a large selection of really cool massive multiplayer games with giant networks supporting all of that activity. There are so many to choose from that I'm sure it's why you just didn't have time to list them.

Comment Re: They're assholes. (Score 4, Insightful) 336

A door and windows are real.

It's idiots like you, who think that businesses, networks, people's entertainment time, and the like "aren't real" that give comfort and encouragement to idiots like the guys who pulled this. They did it to be dicks, just like other dicks might throw a rock through your window and nail your TV right before you were going to watch the World Cup match you've been waiting weeks to watch with your friends. Or, in a closer analogy, waiting until moments before the game starts, and then cutting the cable that services your house or apartment building.

Let me guess: that soccer game's not real! They're not at the stadium in person, so denying them the chance to watch it as they planned isn't actually harmful! Destruction of the time someone plans to use in a certain way is a theft more real, in many ways, than stealing physical objects. You'll never be able to replace the time. Which is one of the reasons these guys are dicks. Deliberate, purposeful, not noble in any way, dicks.

Comment 44, with all-new outlooks ahead. Nerd Advantage. (Score 1) 286

I'm 44, my daughter is 17 and roughly two years away from leaving the house. I've picked up more physical activity again and plan to do dive into regular intensive yoga next year. Also as a long term investment in my health and old age.

Sex is better than ever, allthough I've finally had a pleasant share of affairs in the last few years and thus don't feel like I'm missing out all the time anymore - which takes away quite some pressure and is a great thing too. I've also grown man enough not to take any crap from woman anymore whilst at the same time treating them with respect and fairness. I picked up tango dancing 7 years back and since have gained a bunch of lady-friends that are smart, intelligent, breathtakingly beautiful and of the type I wouldn't have dreamt of even talking to 15 years ago.

I've gained in self-respect and in respect for others and I've made a point of systematically and continously improving my social skills. Wore a tie for the first time in my life 2 weeks back. Gray hair == shirt & tie person with decision authority. Neat. I've gained solid experience for the job (web-centric FOSS web development), smell bad projects from miles away and know how to treat marketing, customers and collegues so as to get along with them.

It's the nerd advantage all over, if you take good care of yourself. Which I strongly recommend. And don't wait to long for having children. 27 seemed to early for me back then and I was scared shitless, but I'm so glad it happend so early today. Later in life your former jock classmates will be all fat and wasted and you'll just be running up to full throttle.

Avoid alcohol and smoking, pick up something intelligent with excercise (Martial Art like Aikido, Kung-Fu or something, or social dancing like Swing or Argentine Tango (helps you meet the ladies too)) and see to it that you have a solid throughput of encounters with the opposite sex. Learn a musical instrument and learn to shut off the computer, go out, meet and talk to people. Learn to technically manage your habits, especially the bad ones.

Who knows, once my daughter is on her own I might even to a career switch or move to some cool city like Amsterdam, Berlin or Paris.

Stay healthy, avoid dept and to many material goods and bondings like the plague and be ready to learn and change your vantage point on life once in a while. Do all that and aside from some wrinkles, gray hair and a constant increasing pool of experience and coolness you won't have any signs of aging for most of your life. Types of people of whom you never thought would be interested in you will ask your advice, crave your presence and even look up to you. It's a very awkward and suprising, and a whole new experience - but an ultimately rewarding one. Don't miss out on that.

Good luck in your life.

Comment Re:No soul (Score 2) 351

Peter Jackson ripped the soul out of Lord of the Rings when he neglected to film The Scouring of the Shire.

But he did film it, kinda. He just didn't put it into the story. It shows up a little bit in the Mirror of Galadriel sequence.

One could argue that that was the correct way to play it, too. I know people who claim to have "walked out of the theater after the first ending and skipped all of the other ones," as it is.

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I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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