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Comment thousand monkeys (Score 1) 513

Reminds me of the "thousand monkeys at a thousand typewriters" thought experiment.

As a side note, I think that this confirms my pet theory concerning time travel: any attempt to do it will change the past, which changes the conditions of the travel slightly, which changes the past, and so on, until the travel never occurs and the past stops changing. In other words, a spacetime where time travel happens is unstable and decays into one where it won't. Quantum uncertainty would, in this interpretation, be there to allow causality to "stretch" enough to allow such decay; a hypothethical universe without quantum uncertainty but with sentience and time travel (which is an inevitable outcome of the Theory of Relativity, which in turn is an inevitable outcome from the laws of physics being the same for all observers) would tear itself apart. You can thus deduct the Uncertainty Principle from the Anthropic Principle (we are here, so this universe must be able to support sentient life).

I wonder if you could calculate the minimum required amount of uncertainty for spacetime to stay consistent, and how it would relate to observed/otherwise calculated values? Assume that the first singularity formed at t=0, and has been moving infinitely close to lightspeed ever since, and connects to every other time period through a wormhole, and go from there. The math is beyond me, does anyone else care to try?

Comment Re:Flame on... (Score 1) 1262

Give me a break. I guess you don't want your web browser to keep bookmarks of your favorite sites, because you can easily keep a small notebook on your desk and write down your favorite sites, then type the address in each time you want to visit them?

Safari uses a standard text box provided by Apple's Cocoa API, and one of the abilities of that text box is to check your spelling. You can turn it off if you don't like it.

Comment Where did they get their stats? (Score 4, Interesting) 209

"90% of files transmitted were copyrighted files."

Does that percentage include traffic to Canadian computers, where such downloads are legal?

Does that percentage account for people who own the songs they are downloading in some other media format?

Does that percetage account for people who tried to download a song but got a RIAA-hijacked song instead?

What a waste of resources. They are playing at a very losing game. Before Napster there was always IRC, usenet, and FTP -- those are still there. After Napster came Morpheus/Grokster, which may/may not be left alive. But already the file sharing community has moved past into DirectConnect hubs, bit torrent, private WASTE networks, etc. Why do they even bother anymore?

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