kamykazee

Speaking of CAD or software companies like Autodesk, for example, they are actually making their products FREE to download now. You can just put in your school name, make an account (even with fake details and pick a school you've never been to) and then they allow you to get all or most of their software for free - no trial, indefinetly. That's an example of one company that has adapted to the situation and, the way i see it, is acting smart My argument to that would be that the majority of those who use their products won't make the leap into making a living out of it and will probably stop using that piece of software sooner or later. As Rocco said, since the software would have cost 4000$+ it's safe to say they wouldn't have bought it in the first place, hence no gain, no loss for Autodesk. Your argument that, regardless of whether or not they lose money, the mere fact that they've stolen something and deprived a person/entity of their intellectual rights wouldn't make alot of difference in this case because, as far as Autodesk is concerned, all they care about is the money. Everything else is secondary to it. If it brings them no loss/gains and hence does not affect them they could care less. More so, it's free publicity for them to have their product gain such widespread use. Now let us take the other outcome - people pirate their software, they stick to it and end up making a living out of it. At that point they will be forced into buying a copy of the product(s), which results in a profit for Autodesk, profit which, i would like to add, may or may not have come otherwise to Autodesk, since the person who pirated the software in the first place might not have even dreamed of going into the bussiness if he had not been able to try it out first and see that he likes it. Now that would mean that Autodesk made a profit and, more so, secured a future customer, wouldn't it? What they are doing is effectively nurturing a class of people which will grow up with their products and end up making a profit for the company where there very well could have been none. As far as i see it with CAD, animation, modeling, editing and such programs, as long as you're not making any profit with them they could be given for free. Ofcourse the problem there is that people would start lieing and say 'im not making any profit, get off my back' even when they ARE making profits. Now you might say 'Well, he could have just gone to a school and had a legal copy there to practice his hobby, if he liked this type of stuff so much'. That's a valid argument, but i would say that alot of those who pirate it simply dont have the means to go to such a school, or maybe they don't know they want to before expriencing the product for themselves.

Modern measurements of the speed of light are accurate to much less than 1 m/s. The size of the discrepancy is large, not small. That said, the first place to look is errors in the apparatus, but it must be subtle or it would have been detected already. The fact is that if we leave aside the systematic error as the most likely cause of this, this is the point where the search must be and surely will be centered by serious theorists long time before they even seriously consider something's wrong with relativity. (the media is a different matter, all newpapers I've seen have already decided "Einstein was wrong"). Here is one persons's thoughts on why the result is incorrect and how CERN made an embarassing mistake http://johncostella.webs.com/neutrino-blunder.pdf In short, it's conclusion is : From the above, the OPERA result becomes 61 ns with a statistical uncertainty of 24 ns and a systematic uncertainty of 7 ns. Even if we were to take the systematic uncertainty to be accurate, this result is now within two standard errors, which disqualifies it as a “discovery”, rendering it simply “an interesting result”. Given the much tighter bounds that we have on the neutrino speed from other sources such as Supernova 1987A, one must conclude that OPERA has simply made a mistake, albeit a highly embarrassing one which has gathered international media coverage today. Now that's just one persons's thoughts on it and it may very well be wrong, but still it's nice to finally have some opinions on where the error is.

Yes, that's one idea being thrown about - that the neutrino took a shortcut through another dimension. Here's a few more ideas to spark interest: (1) Based on current understanding it means that the neutrino has negative mass. It could possibly account for the expansion of the universe if it's found that each neutrino has a very slightly repulsive effect on all matter in the universe. (2) If it has positive mass and still travels faster than the speed of light, then it'll overturn... um... every equation with the number "c" in it, not the least of which will be E=mc2. (3) If it's a measurement error that has been confirmed to this degree, then it will tell us something about our current understanding of metrology and measurement sciences. Remember that this result was first reported by MINOS in 2007, this is a confirmation experiment. Keep in mind that these folks compensated for CONTINENTAL FREAKIN' DRIFT! I hardly think they forgot time dilation and special relativity effects.

Actually, if i understood correctly, Quantum Mechanics was the most recently universally adopted theory. General Relativity explained things on a large scale and Quantum Mechanics proved very successful at explaining things at a microscopic scale. These two, Eintein's General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, were at odds for some time since they couldn't explain things that were both small but incredibly massive. That's where String Theory (and more recently M-Theory) came into play and tried to unify it (i got that from Brian Greene's books :P) I'm not sure where this discovery would fit with these if proven to be true, but i've seen some pretty convincing arguments that made me highly doubt it's veridicity aswell.

Here is a picture from the live CERN webcast, showing conclusions:

I'm not familiar with all of this myself, but here's an interesting suggestions i read about this on another forums: Person 1: i am now utterly baffled. the CERN guys surely cannot believe they have measured a non-zero mass particle travelling faster than C. any non-zero mass must be accelerated from zero velocity to move. the basic math tells you that it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate a neutrino to C, and a greater-than-infinite amount to accelrate it past C. to even be considering that this effect is real makes me wonder about CERN losing its mind. Person 2:This is not strictly true. When a particle is first created in a nuclear reaction it will generally have some non-zero initial velocity. That said, regardless of the initial velocity you are correct about the energy requirements to accelerate it further, but they are not claiming faster than c, only faster than light. The implication being that light doesn't travel at c. Person 1: So then c would be the "speed limit", and the speed of light would be something slightly less...This still doesn't explain why photons have the same speed no matter your reference point. Person 2: It would be explained due to the fact that our measurements were not sufficiently sensitive until now. Of course, that is quite a statement and I think would require an extensive review. But that is the only way that this result could be confirmed and be compatible with previous data. From that we might also interpret that the speed limit itself hasn't been broken, rather that light doesn't at C after all. So it wouldn't necessarily toss everything we know into the bin, rather it might be that we just need to interpret it slightly different. General Relativity has given very accurate predicitions which have been verified experimentally. So has Quantum Mechanics. But the two are incompatible so we KNOW that something must be wrong with one of them, or both. It shouldn't really come as a surprise that we're missing something, and perhaps this, if it's true, might explain what. Now if we consider that it is indeed an experiemental error, i still believe it would have a significant implication. This group is not stupid and have had 4 years to figure this out. It seems to me that any outcome is bound to have important implications, even an experimental anomaly, since so many experiments are based on similar methodologies. Anyone here care to speculate on that end of it (since speculation is all we have today)? Comments here so far seem too focus on errors in measuring source/detector separation, equipment latencies, etc, but certainly they have gone over that ground ad nauseum. Well, an institute such as CERN wouldn't have given this result without thoroughly testing it themselves. They were simply unable to find a flaw, and that's why they're putting the problem out in the open for others to find a flaw (if there is one) OR to interpret the result in another way. Also, read the above statement. Here is also another possibility to stirr things up: John Learned, a neutrino astronomer at the University of Hawaii, said that if the results of the Opera researchers turned out to be true, it could be the first hint that neutrinos can take a shortcut through space, through extra dimensions. Joe Lykken of Fermilab said, “Special relativity only holds in flat space, so if there is a warped fifth dimension, it is possible that on other slices of it, the speed of light is different.” If you're interested in a more specialised debate here's a link. Also, i believe that today (23rd September) at 14 CET, CERN will be holding a live webcast about this. CERN Live webcast The official published results by CERN can be found here Published CERN results

A pillar of physics — that nothing can go faster than the speed of light — appears to be smashed by an oddball subatomic particle that has apparently made a giant end run around Albert Einstein's theories. Scientists at the world's largest physics lab said Thursday they have clocked neutrinos traveling faster than light. That's something that according to Einstein's 1905 special theory of relativity — the famous E (equals) mc2 equation — just doesn't happen. "The feeling that most people have is this can't be right, this can't be real," said James Gillies, a spokesman for the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The organization, known as CERN, hosted part of the experiment, which is unrelated to the massive $10 billion Large Hadron Collider also located at the site. Gillies told The Associated Press that the readings have so astounded researchers that they are asking others to independently verify the measurements before claiming an actual discovery. "They are inviting the broader physics community to look at what they've done and really scrutinize it in great detail, and ideally for someone elsewhere in the world to repeat the measurements," he said Thursday. Scientists at the competing Fermilab in Chicago have promised to start such work immediately. "It's a shock," said Fermilab head theoretician Stephen Parke, who was not part of the research in Geneva. "It's going to cause us problems, no doubt about that — if it's true." The Chicago team had similar faster-than-light results in 2007, but those came with a giant margin of error that undercut its scientific significance. Other outside scientists expressed skepticism at CERN's claim that the neutrinos — one of the strangest well-known particles in physics — were observed smashing past the cosmic speed barrier of 186,282 miles per second (299,792 kilometers per second). University of Maryland physics department Chairman Drew Baden called it "a flying carpet," something that was too fantastic to be believable. CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant. But given the enormous implications of the find, they still spent months checking and rechecking their results to make sure there were no flaws in the experiment. "We have not found any instrumental effect that could explain the result of the measurement," said Antonio Ereditato, a physicist at the University of Bern, Switzerland, who was involved in the experiment known as OPERA. The researchers are now looking to the United States and Japan to confirm the results. A similar neutrino experiment at Fermilab near Chicago would be capable of running the tests, said Stavros Katsanevas, the deputy director of France's National Institute for Nuclear and Particle Physics Research. The institute collaborated with Italy's Gran Sasso National Laboratory for the experiment at CERN. Katsanevas said help could also come from the T2K experiment in Japan, though that is currently on hold after the country's devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Scientists agree if the results are confirmed, that it would force a fundamental rethink of the laws of nature. Einstein's special relativity theory that says energy equals mass times the speed of light squared underlies "pretty much everything in modern physics," said John Ellis, a theoretical physicist at CERN who was not involved in the experiment. "It has worked perfectly up until now." He cautioned that the neutrino researchers would have to explain why similar results weren't detected before. "This would be such a sensational discovery if it were true that one has to treat it extremely carefully," said Ellis.

I wake up without any problems when i'm in the middle of the University year. That's not to say i always get a good nights sleep - far from it. I usually wake up 3-4 times which i believe severely affects the quality of my sleep. During holidays i used to sleep from about 2-3 am until close to noon. Recently i've managed to somehow get myself to wake up early (at 8 am) and just not sleep the whole day until about 11 pm. This way i seem to manage to wake up at about 8 am everyday even on holiday. The main thing for me is, if i have something interesting to do i'll wake up, otherwise i'll just lay in bed since i know the day will be a dragg. I don't like going to bed late and waking up late as it gives me the feeling i've wasted the day, and if i try to do during the night (past 11pm) mental activities i just don't give a good performance. My brain just works better during the day, hence i deduced i need to force myself to sleep at night and not during the day.

Now that you mention it, i also am annoyed when people say 'he was a good kid' or 'he's a good kid' about their children, even if those kids are drugs addicted murderers. And then they wonder 'where have i gone wrong as a parent, oh noes!!!!11' when their child does something bad. But they didn't do anything to properly raise them up either...

My actual job, the place i will be earning a living from atleast in the beginning, will be as a deck officer in the commercial navy. I made that choice, under my parents guidance, because where i live it is one of the few decent ways of earning an honest (!) living. I've finished my second year of University and starting the third (out of 4 overal) in less than a month. Before i become a full-fledged third mate, however, i will need exactly 1 year practice as a cadet onboard an actual vessel. Now this is a problem since not many are looking to take on cadets at this time and i can't finish my studies without doing 1 year, so that's a tricky part. Now there's also another catch: I don't think this is what i want to do, but i also don't really know anything i'd like to do. Personally i'd like to do a bit of everything, although with my mathematical background i'd like to focus on adjacent topics (computer engineering, software engineering, electrical circuits, and some others). I would also like to explore other fields such as CGI, chemistry and it's various branches, and in general i'd like to explore pretty much everything. I don't think i actually want a job because i see that as limiting myself to one role. I can't say i want that at this point, i want to explore and discover various fields. But i also need to earn a living and perhaps even money to fund this, hence why i made the first choice. My carrer choice will involve me staying for months (4 or more) at a time at sea, only seeing the outskirts of some ports. Ofcourse i will also have about 2 or so months for every 4-6, where i get to stay home and pursue other interests. My plan is to spend my first years at sea for lengthy periods of time and put some money aside, and gradually reduce it to 2, 3 or 4 months per year, time spent at sea. Hopefully that will provide a steady income and also allow me quite alot of time to pursue my other interests, maybe even switch to an entirely new career at some point. That's pretty much the master plan for me, at the moment.

What i would do is have my cat beat the dog up. Alright, it can't do that, but it will still give it a nice scratch before running off in terror. Kick the dog out gather an army of cats in secret for later :blink: I don't use cologne and rarely use deodorant. I pretty much just bathe alot to keep unpleasant odors away. I am annoyed by the fact that i have alot of past fondness of Runescape but i find it utterly boring now. Aswell it has changed so much that it no longer looks like anything i have in my memories from 2003 - 2006 of it. I guess it was just a big part of my life, but it still annoys me sometimes.

I've never done or had to do public speeches, but from my normal social behaviour i am a reclusive person. But i've said to myself countless times that if i indeed have an idea that i'm passionate about, which i truly think will bring something new or interesting, insteading of re-treading over old ground and making people yawn, then i'd step up with the utter most confidence in my ideas and spew them out. Ofcourse i've never had such ideas that i truly thought would be interesting, hence never wanted to stand out and give presentations or speeches.

I found that works until you actually manage to somehow screw something up and things go bad. You can't really act confident and say 'i don't care' when you mess up, since those who put you there or allowed you to hold that speech will say 'why did you go up there if you didn't care, then? GTFO next time'. Although the confidence that gives you usually allows you to perform decently.

5.8 is indeed relatively small. Still i guess it could have caused some injuries or even deaths if people who never felt an earthquake did something really stupid, or someone was very unlucky (i'm thinking having a lamp fall on your head maybe). Anywhere from 6 onwards and i think it could have caused more serious damage. I'm not informed on this - have there been any injuries/deaths?

Cheesy scenarios are only cheesy when you see them in Hollywood movies. When you're the one thinking them up, they apply directly to you, hence are much more relevant and less cheesy.

Duff-man is making sure Tip.it has quality posts! :D I've been wondering for some time if your name has any relation to Duff-man from simpsons :o By the way, this thread and the 'Today' one seem to be 'post anything you like and discuss about anything' threads.

McDonalds is seen as kids food here mostly. Adults don't really eat there, we have other more prominent forms of fast food - kebabs and such, sold at independent stores. Burger King - never saw one here, never ate one, haven't eaten at McDonalds for years atleast, hence it doesn't matter to me either.

I checked out those 2 links - very funny. I have to give most props to CSI, though. Especially in the GUI scene:p I always noticed that hackers are portrayed as super-cool people who are smart but geeky. That kind of stuff. There are also ofcourse more accurate Hollywood films on that.

Very interesting topic - glad someone finally brought this up. I myself have nothing to add as i know nothing of it really, i just read what others say and try to get a general picture :D Alot of the financial terms you guys are using are something i've never heard, so pardon me if i'm a little confused. After watching the film 'Inside Job' on the 2008 crisis i did understand some of the issues at hand and now this topic has come at an appropriate time. I said i wouldn't talk since i don't really know anything on the matter, but i'll break that promise: The two main people who i see debating at the moment in this thread are just bringing up arguments based on personal beliefs, in other words i think they lack figures or stats to back them up or arguments as to why increasing spending won't work. I've seen the illustrations you guys have brought forth, i didn't understand some of them so perhaps i am wrong about that part. Perhaps i am wrong here. I also don't think this problem can fully be solved until the grip the banks and Wall Street has on the government is loosened. As long as Wall Street and the big banks dictate the economy of the US (hence the world) and do anything to make a few individuals rich, then we can philosophise on and on about how the economy should be steered and what policies to adopt, to no avail. People have been educated into spending, buying, consuming all they need and don't need, for the hell of it. That's capitalism. People in it have a consumerist mentality. Perhaps a solution to that would be to better educate people in this, but how, when universities are also pretty much under the control of the afore-mentioned bankers and economists (that's something i picked up from the movie :D). By the way, where i live the best education you can hope for is still state-funded education, which is free for the most part up until University, and even there about half the people don't pay anything because they have a scholarship. I hope i didn't say too much rubbish :D

Very unusual fictional - loved it. I was disappointed with one part of it though - the conclusion. We don't know if it was real or not or if there is some other twisted plot :o There's some things about the article that make me think it's a bit older. Firstly the fact that he mentions level 126's as a level of authority, instead of using 138's. Also perhaps the fact that he's using windows XP. I just don't know - something about the mistery around that article enhances it - Perhaps the author wrote it awhile back and by now the mysterious figure got him, while his ghostly remains came back to submit it as anonymous. Yeah i know, i was just day-dreaming :P

I can't sat i miss anything. It's just a dull game, graphics or no graphics. ( I don't play it anymore in case someone will come up with that in future posts)

I saw Just The Inside Job. Thought it was a good, digestable explanation of the 2008 - present global economic crisis. Really put forward explanations and ways of looking at it that i previously hadn't known about.

Sale of baseball bats has gone up by 7000% on Amazon, hmmm :ohnoes: Could it be related ? :o Oh noes

I've never looked at it, but I'm going to guess that that thread isn't an accurate representation of TIF. Aren't you exaggerating a bit by assuming most on TIF are overweight and they are somehow lieing by saying they are not? :shades:

So people went out and started rioting just because they saw others do it on tv? That would be just...stupid...