4089645
submission
dynamo52 writes:
Professor Jose Senovilla, and his colleagues at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao, Spain, have proposed a mind-bending alternative [to the theory of dark energy]."
From the article: "...to this day no one actually knows what dark energy is, or where it comes from. They propose that there is no such thing as dark energy at all, and we're looking at things backwards." "Senovilla proposes that we have been fooled into thinking the expansion of the universe is accelerating, when in reality, time itself is slowing down."
"...the appearance of acceleration is caused by time itself gradually slowing down, like a clock with a run-down battery.
831439
submission
dynamo52 writes:
Two Baylor students claim to have used string theory equations to explain a method of traveling at faster than light speeds.
From the introduction: "Naively one could envision a spacecraft with an exotic power generator that could create the necessary energies to locally manipulate the extra dimension(s). In this way, an advanced spacecraft would expand/contract the compactified spacetime around it, thereby creating the propulsion effect."
It kind of reminds me of the time Professor Farnsworth said "The ship stays in place, and the universe moves around it."
529118
submission
dynamo52 writes:
I am a freelance network admin who mainly services small business clients. Over the last few months, I have been noticing that anytime I have run any type of bandwidth testing for clients with Comcast accounts, the results have been amazingly fast; with some connections, Speakeasy will report up to 15Mbps down and 4Mbps up. Of course, clients get nowhere near this performance in everyday usage.
Upon further investigation, it appears that Comcast delivers this bandwidth only for a few seconds after any new request and it is immediately throttled down. The only way to get any type of accurate estimates are to actually download and upload a significantly large file (100MB+). Doing so yields results more in line with expectations (usually about 1.2Mbps down and about 250Kbps up but it varies).
My main question is this: Is there any valid reason Comcast would front load transfers in this way, or is it merely an effort to prevent end users from being able to accurately assess their bandwidth? Also, does anybody know of other ISPs that use similar practices? This can be quite annoying when trying to determine whether a small client really needs to switch over to a T1 or if their current ISP will suffice.
