Comment Re:Good reason for it to be illegal (Score 1) 383
Touch screens go out of calibration, leading to opportunities for all sorts of shenanigans.
Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpGd74DrBM
Touch screens go out of calibration, leading to opportunities for all sorts of shenanigans.
Like this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdpGd74DrBM
or get and Android Phone. That is what I am going to do.
Never underestimate what people are willing to go through (on any device) to mask the cognitive dissonant that the latest precious they just bought does not justify its price or hype. The effort people go through to justify the sunk cost, both in economy and psychology.
They have to pay for the ex-Google Mappers somehow. It's either that or convince people to start renaming continents.
It seems someone at Apple is reading xkcd:
http://what-if.xkcd.com/10/
And all those distorted map image makes sense once you realized Apple is mapping our dreams, Inception style.
... what pot are the smoking when the set the price point
Something wrong with the 'y' key on your keyboard?
How so? The age of the universe was 13.7 billion years in 2006, now its 14.6 billion years old. According to science, the universe has aged 900 million years in just six years.
Details of your statement aside, you have inadvertently alighted on the fundamental difference between science and religion: when new evidence comes in, science is obligated to change their theories to account for it, whereas religion is obligated to deny the evidence in order to preserve their beliefs.
Even more to the point, there are multiple methods of measuring the age of the universe. Some more precise than other; Some more accurate than other. They are not in huge contradiction with each other, certainly no where near the ridiculus claims religion is making. http://astro.berkeley.edu/~dperley/univage/univage.html
People really needs to learn statistic and in addition to findings, reporter really need be able to report on the uncertainty of the findings.
That's a great example of where trying to use plain language does more harm than good. On the other hand 'black hole' rather than 'completely gravitationally collapsed object' probably conveys the concept reasonably well.
Unfortunately science has a habit of using language, and then finding out it does a bad job of describing something, e.g. atoms, and neural networks, which are, despite the names not indivisible and not actually all that similar to neuron connections in the brain respectively.
Trying to reduce everything to a 6th grade reading level makes people think problems can actually be explained at a 6th grade level, and they can't. That this has crept into economic discourse has caused us no end of grief in trying to have honest fact based discussions about the current economic crisis for example.
The difference is as follow: in proper scientific papers and textbooks, the said gravitationally collapsed objects are actually called "blackhole". It is not a term exclusively for layman. Physicists are actually very good at naming important things (unlike in biology and medicine): black hole, dark matter, dark energy, red dwarf, photon, etc. Only when things become hardly distinguishable that physicists give them boring names: muon, tauon, pion, etc. Unless "god" actually can convey some distinguishing physical properties, it is not suited for a physics name.
if I tell my son to do something and he asks why, that is encouraged and a reason is given, things are explained. I don't subject to the "because I said so" mentality of parenting. Sometimes you let them do stupid things to learn and see the consequences. If a parent can't give a good reason for why something can or can't be done, perhaps that isn't a rule that needs to be enforced.
I really try to do this to, but it is so hard.
Me: Get in the car.
Child: Why?
M: Because we have to go to school?
C: Why?
M: Because you need to learn things and play with other kids, and Daddy has to go to work?
C: Why?
M: Well, social development is important and I have to make money so we have a house and food to eat?
C: Why?
M: Why what?
C: Why we need food to eat?
M: If we don't eat we will die.
C: Why?
And this doesn't end. He will keep going until I either say, "I don't know" or "Just because. That's the way it is." I hate saying it, but I don't know how to break the cycle. I'm trying out other options such as, "I don't know, why do you think we will die if we don't eat?"
How about: I don't really know, but I have a good idea where to look for the answer. Then go hit the local library (grasp!!) for books on basic human biology.
I have the Nexus 7.
First of all, the unboxing wasn't that bad. The box was taped, yes, but once I sliced it the box slid apart with no issues. The wrap around the Nexus 7 was not that hard to remove. The only way you can bugger that up is to not notice the directions. There's arrows, move this, then that, and it slides out. When I unpacked some iPads for work they were basically similar in their unpacking.
However, the part that got me about the packing is the sleeve. The box itself was fine. The box slid into a sleeve that had the artwork.
I was about ready to throw the goddamned thing against the wall. The sleeve was pressure fit so tightly that Hercu-Thumbs couldn't even slide it out. After fussing with it for a few minutes I went into a rage and tore that sonovabitch up. If I had to do it again I wouldn't even bother with sliding it off, I'd get a letter opener or something like it to take apart the sleeve at its seam.
Whoever thought of that packing design should be dragged out to the street and SHOT.
I did not find putting the box back to the sleeve too hard. Maybe every box is different?
If the only thing keeping this secure
Secure from what? The goal is not to secure you from a bootloader virus; I doubt that was discussed for more than five minutes while this system was being designed. The goal is to secure DRM systems from you, the user, because of what happened with DVDs and deCSS, what happens with software cracking tools, etc. The goal is to turn PCs into iPads. This is a trap, designed to rob you of the freedom you have right now, which as it so happens is the freedom that PCs were meant to provide in the first place.
Right. I would agree this crap is for security if, for example, mobo manufacture can put a jumper or something in that would by pass secure boot. This way, people who are the weak link in security, who wouldn't know what a jumper is, stay "secured" (as secure as you trust the vendor from whom you buy the hardware has not tinkered with it), while the rest of us who actually has a clue, can go on doing what we have been doing: actually owning the hardware we pay good money for.
Interesting.
But my question still stands - would a particle with negative mass be bound by speed-of-light restrictions? Or, alternatively, could manipulation of the Higgs field result in imaginary mass as well?
Yes it would. A particle with negative mass is just a particle that if you exert on it force to the right, it will accelerate to the left. A particle whose velocity vector and momentum vector are in the opposite direction. Besides this vectoral reversal, relativistic dynamics applies just as well to it as particle with positive mass.
Indeed, in semiconductor physics, it is perfectly acceptable mathematically to treat absent of electron on the valence band (called hole) as having a negative effective mass and negative charge. It is just more convenience and intuitive to instead consider hole as a pseudo particle with a positive mass and a positive charge. So that's what we do. The same physics is mathematically identical to that of the Fermi sea of the Dirac equation. Negative mass is not too terribly interesting in this respect, unlike the tachyon, which has imaginary mass.
So you think that money is the root of all evil. Have you ever asked what is the root of money? -- Ayn Rand
