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Really depends on what the crime is. Blowing up people dancing in disco and freeing animals are quite different.

I am not sure that the energy from all the hydrogen on Earth will suffice to move the Earth and keep it warm enough to Alpha Centauri (for reasonable amount of time). Distances in space are really huge.

Here's the description of the experiment in question. http://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/0702188 So what I think i understood till now is, that every single photon (or other elementary particle for that matter) is a wave - a cloud of probabilities until something affects it's energy - then this quantum cloud of probabilities collapses to single point in space and time and manifests itself. Correct?

In what aspect will it "optimize OS behavior"? Could you give us examples. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts mergedI just read your report. The things you are describing as goals for the multi-agent "context sensitive" OS, are already implemented, and by much simpler means. Quick examples: - fingerprint recognition is implemented in many laptops, intended to protect sensitive business information. - Windows sets system recovery points before new driver installations, and i am sure SuSe had something similar too. - speech recognition is done very well on Windows 7 - the user is being able to command almost any software, using the speech recognition engine. There are some other generally good ideas in your report, but I think each of them could be implemented by individual software, rather than everything done by one multi-agent system. Now, memory optimization sounds interesting, but how can you apply the idea of MAS to it?

Yes. And apparent expert opinion is used very often to promote political, economical or personal interests. So in that way, blind belief in science is no better than blind belief in religion. I think you can get pretty good examples from some of the topics in these forums for people using some pseudo scientific "theories" trying to promote their brilliant debunking of the laws of physics. Sorry for not being so descriptive at my first post, now as I read it, I get why people misunderstood me.

Absolutely, i only want to point out that the crowd mentality is prone to accepting facts, based on authority only. For example, on this video after 3:35 Peter deMenocal talks how his name appeared on a list with 500 scientists that do not accept the global scientific position on climate change. Clearly a fabrication, but people really do not care to check facts, and instead just think "Ok, so 500 really smart scientists says it's a fraud! That must be true." Here obviously another factor comes to play - people are very likely to accept emotionally a scenario where someone lies to them, because... well nobody wants to be deceived. Ironically outrageous straight lies, sometimes are presented as scientifically proven facts, and for the most people this has the same weight as peer reviewed research publications, if not more. I think the discussion has gone a lot off topic, but i hope you see my point.

I think, you may have totally misunderstood me. I do not question the objectivity and credibility of science and by saying "confidence of many people in science" I do not refer to the obviously educated audience of this forum, but rather to the more general population, which has poor understanding of the scientific principles, they believe in. I want again to put an emphasis, that i am not saying science is as credible as religion, but the general audience's understanding of it is at the same level, as the belief of early civilizations of God. If the village elders say there are gods, it must be true. If the "smart russian scientists" have discovered something, who am I to argue. Basically what I am trying to say, is that most people just look for explanation of the world around them, and they turn with passion to science, as they do to religion.

I consider confidence of many people in science to be kind of religion itself. Most people does not have the needed educational basis to truly understand some scientific ideas, and yet, they act upon them, "believing" them to be true, on the sole basis of authority. So in a way, belief in science has replaced belief in God. I have noticed that in Bulgaria, for example (i don't know if it is similar around the world), there are many articles in media beginning "american/russian/british scientists have discovered" and then something completely ridiculous follows, or at least largely pulled out of context. Many people don't question such "research", and take such claims as proven truth. I would say, that such behaviour is pretty simillar, if not identical, to organized relligions.

I'am trying to say, that if the concept of "God" can be completely different from person to person, and if it can include some things that are unprovable by definition, trying to "science out" a "believer" is a battle already lost. Not only that, but in my opinion it's not moraly justified to try to.

Well, i am talking to the kind of faith that is often(but not always) associated with relligion, more specificaly the faith in some higher being, somehow affecting our reality.

Isn't trying to explain a matter of faith by scientific method flawed to begin with?

Terms like "detox" can be applied only to some part of the large group of the known psychoactive substances, because many others have no toxic effects on the body, and cause no physical addiction. It's true that there are very different kind of drugs, and by no means a parallels between them can(should) be drawn.

The good thing, though, is that when one ant walks in one direction, another ant, somewhere, walks in the opposite. Thank, god for that.

Wouldn't centrifugal force keep it on the moon?

I think, code will be much, much more readable, if you use interface macros for things like PORTB=0b00000001; // move left for example, you can use: #define MoveLeft() PORTB=0b00000001 and then use the macro in your code. Or even better, you can use SetBit and ClrBit macro, so you are sure that you are not mistaking bit masks: #define SetBit(Byte, BitNb) Byte = (unsigned char)Byte ^ (unsigned char)(1 << BitNb) #define SetBit(Byte, BitNb) Byte = (unsigned char)Byte & (unsigned char)~(1 << BitNb) and then #define MoveLeft() ClrBit(PORTB, 4); SetBit(PORTB, 1) #define MoveRight() ClrBit(PORTB, 1); SetBit(PORTB, 4) Or even better differentiate moving and stop moving commands: #define MoveLeft() SetBit(PORTB, 1) #define StopMovingLeft() ClrBit(PORTB, 1) #define MoveRight() SetBit(PORTB, 4) #define StopMovingRight() ClrBit(PORTB, 4) This is about code readability. Another thing - how does that light sensor work? Is it digital - i.e. you are sure that when light is "sensed" it sets PINC's 6th bit to 1? If it is analog, you would probably need filtering of the sensor's value. When you say you've programmed the robot, does that mean it is working correctly?

Zolar V, as you have mentioned lucid dreaming, i remember that there is anecdotal evidence about 360° vision during lucidity. I myself had two very realistic lucid dreams, in one of which, my hearing felt like it was improved significantly over what it is actually. As if it was not only "amplified" in volume, but i was able to hear very high pitch sounds, the likes of which i never heard in normal life. I think the brain is specialized to some degree (specific areas in the brain cortex), but is generaly very adaptive and is able to adjust itself to new stimuli - i.e. my father suffered a brain aneurism, resulting in loss of speech and some motor functions, but gradually he learned to do, most of the things he did before. This adaptation to new things, however is not without some limits, like for example, it's easy to learn to juggle with two balls, and to some degree it's also easy with three. But it takes enourmous effort, training and exercise to do it with 7 or 8.

Hmm, yes. Also if I am not wrong, Norwegian Government haven't been warned about the test. And was there no single astronomer in Norway, to point his spectroscope toward the spiral, so chemical composition could have been identified, leaving no space for speculation? If I were an astronomer, and if I had a spectroscope, that would be the first thing in my mind.

At the time of the posting I couldn't see how this can be a rocket, so i put "alleged" not because i was thinking that it was paranormal in nature, but because the official version did not convince me. Later on the day i saw Zolar V's explenation and a of a proposed simulation, so yeah i am pretty much now sure that it was russian rocket...But... why are government officials denying comments about the seemingly obvious connection between the observed spiral light and their failed missile test?

Don't be so hasty - let's stick to the facts - ITAR TASS does not say anything about the spiral light observed by local residents. From CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/12/10/norway.ufo.light/index.html In my opinion, it seems very plausable, but very plausable does not mean 100% undisputable truth...

Hmm, that actually makes perfect sense.

Ok, but still, the spiral seems pretty steady, untill something happens at it's center and suddently it dissolves very rapidly. Wouldn't it fade slowly, if it was exhaust gases.

Yes, actualy it is still behaving somewhat as a paraticle, because it hits one exact spot on the test screen, but when we fire more and more electrons, the dots on the screen begin to resemble an interference pattern. It's like the electrons intefere with eachother... at different time. The really curiuous part, however, comes when we put some device on one of the slits to watch if the electrons pass through slit #1 or slit #2. The result is, that if we try to measure exactly trough which slit did they pass, the electrons do not form interference pattern anymore, but just usual scattered pattern (like golfballs). As if the act of observation* turns off the wave-like properties of electrons. This is called, i believe, wave function collapse. * Be carefull to understand that 'observation' should be read as 'measurement' and not 'observation' as in "I am looking at it."

Maybe some of you are familiar with this, maybe not. On 9th December, early in the morning, before sunrise, many norwegians were witnesess to strange phenomenon, which lasted for about 10-12 minutes. earthfiles.com Article dailymail.co.uk Article with good quality video Short description of the event in Wikipedia When i first saw the pictures i immediately thought that they were fake, but seemingly later reports confirmed the spectacular nature of the event with more photos and videos. Not to mention that thousands of norwegian citizens eyewitnessed the phenomenon. The official explenation, which is propagated all over the internet news websites, is that it was a failed russian missle test - a RSM-56 Bulava Intercontinental Balistic Missle, that experienced a defect in it's third stage. I am not really a frantic pseudosience/conspiracy fan, but there are just some details about this, that arise questions... For example, first i was intrigued about the spiral, which seems so perfect and equaly expanding in all directions with constant speed, that i failed to imagine how an out of control rocket engine will "paint" it. Then when the official story began to add details, it seemed a little more plausable - in low air pressure and low gravity conditions, not many things can distrub a spiraling missle trajectory... Well, but it is moving already, right... so if it's engine applies constant thrust to the already moving rocket, how the spiral will form, as it seems from the video, in one plane? Another thing was that the spiral stayed pretty much undistrubed, until suddenly it collapsed and dissolved in space forming a dark circle in it's center (darker than the sky around it), so what could be the cause of that. Explosion? There is no shockwaves in space, so the only way matter can be blown out is by other matter, which it doesn't look like. Any thoughts?

Hello, i've been lurking these forums for some time now, and finaly decided to join the discussions.