Comment Re:Polarization (Score 1) 178

by Matt Edd on Friday December 05, 2008 @09:56PM (#26010087) Attached to: NFL's First Broadcast In 3-D, Still Has Work To Do

The grandparent is correct. The magnetic field doesn't play a part in the polarization. The vertical electric waves get absorbed by the vertical polarizer and the horizontal do not. (As the GP does I'm not going into detail about the absorption.) To spell it out explicitly it's not the slit that does the filtering.

Comment Re:Can science find God? (Score 1) 683

by Matt Edd on Monday November 17, 2008 @10:24AM (#25785361) Attached to: Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator

And before we discern if god exists we need a clear definition. We don't even have one of those at this point.

Comment Re:Anthropic Principle (Score 3, Informative) 683

by Matt Edd on Monday November 17, 2008 @10:23AM (#25785345) Attached to: Science's Alternative To an Intelligent Creator

Because the odds of 1 universe getting created that has the right properties for any complex systems to exist are beyond astronomical. The odds of something as complex as solar systems even less likely. And things as complex as life even more remote.

Reference please? Seriously... because many scientists disagree. Vic Stenger (http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/) argues that the chance of complex life appearing given random fundamental constants is about 50 percent. That doesn't seem to astronomical to me.

ISP Block on Pirate Bay Not Having Desired Effect 177

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 11, 2008 @02:03PM from the never-underestimate-the-pirates dept.

TechDirt is reporting that the recent block placed on The Pirate Bay torrent site is not only relatively ineffective, but actually driving more traffic to the site because of the attention. "The news from The Pirate Bay appears to confirm this suspicion. According to The Pirate Bay's new Court Blog, Danish traffic has not dropped since the implementation of the block. '...the number of visits from Denmark has increased by 12% thanks to IFPI,' the blog post reads. 'Our site http://thejesperbay.org is growing more because of the media attention than people actually coming to learn how to bypass the filter - our guess is that alot of the users on the site now run OpenDNS instead of the censoring DNS at Tele2.dk.' 'We also started tracking some stats before and after the block. There's no noticeable difference between the number of users from Tele2.dk before and after.'"

Submission + - Massive Disruption Of PayPal Subscription Service

Submitted by

hausmasta

on Saturday September 01, 2007 @08:21PM

hausmasta writes: "Since August 30, there are massive problems with PayPal subscriptions. The atomatic renewal of subscriptions stopped that day, causing headaches for lots of web site owners that rely on this kind of revenue. The problem is global, as this thread in the PayPal Developer Community shows. PayPal hasn't shown any reaction yet, so it is unclear whether they are working on it or even, if they are aware of the problem.

https://www.paypaldeveloper.com/pdn/board/message? board.id=basicpayments&thread.id=11355"

Feed Engadget: Clockwork model of the solar system is straight out of Myst (engadget.com)

From feed by engfeed on Saturday September 01, 2007 @08:12PM

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

We've seen some far-out personal astronomy devices, but this mechanical "planetarium" from Richard Mille is also one of the most intricate pieces of clockwork we've ever come across. The model, which took 10 years to develop, displays the time, date, signs of the zodiac, phases of the moon, and relative placement of the planets in the solar system, and runs for 15 days once its spring windings are fully tightened. No word on price, but since Mille handbuilt just one of these, we're guessing "not cheap" would be a strong first guess.

[Via Watch Luxus]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Submission + - New Royalty Rates Could Kill Internet Radio

Submitted by FlatCatInASlatVat on Saturday March 03, 2007 @04:52PM

FlatCatInASlatVat writes: Kurt Hanson's Radio Internet Newsletter has an analysis of the new royalty rates for Internet Radio announced by the US Copyright Office. The decision is likely to put most internet radio stations out of business by making the cost of broadcasting much higher than revenues. From the article: "The Copyright Royalty Board is rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange (a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA)...[The] math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues." Clear Channel, in the meantime, pays nothing. So long Radio Paradise, and all the other wonderful internet stations.