padren

The problem I have with your idea is that the "smooth fashion" is not subjective to our perception - the clockwork of everything will grind on in a very predictable manner regardless of whether we see the world every 1000 years or every nanofraction of a second. While you can misread and see chaos where there is order, misreading as order where there is chaos consistently is a major statistical anomoly that is as safe to rule out as mice running the world. I think, therefore, its safe to assume that any chaos we see in short increments (or long ones) is the illusion...not the well ordered world. The other issue is that physics describe a universe where it is perfectly logical and infact likely for life to form, or matter to "self organize" as you put it. It doesn't make it likely for Mars to spontanieously reform, because it doesn't have the required conditions. But remember, the formation of cells and life on Earth are by no means startling. It occured over a very long time, with countless bodies of water all over the world giving the possibility that the combining chemical patterns may at some point, be self replicating. It may have been a long shot lottery, but there were enough tickets bought in enough places over enough time that it was closer to inevitable than to miraculous. Now, when it comes to the issue of first cause, don't forget that any event capable of creating "time" must have created the very casuality that our brains evolved in to deal with....we may never understand what laws let time come into existance if there was no time beforehand in which something could occur that could make time. This again, is a limitation of our perceptions, not the physical laws of the universe. Looking deeply at the universe until your mind is blown is not proof of maricles - just proof of your current incapacity to understand how the same rules running like clockwork everywhere could produce such effects.

If I am to gather this right, evolution is in the mix because when someone argues creation vs. evolution, they are arguing our existance is miraculous and not a result of natural processes. What you are saying is that since you think physics can only work if miracles are responsible...and that you feel that the evolution debate is really a debate if the universe is miraculous, and feel that this wins that debate. Let me know if I am off on that. Regarding the chaos you describe at very very very short intervals of time - isn't the fact that such random events (including spontaneous creation of ford trucks) really mess up the wonderful predictability we find in classical physics? If a truck can "just" appear without any rules then why would there be any rules to make it go away before we noticed it? Why wouldn't any of these events throw off our very accurate models? You can say at some level there is no connection and everything just changes "states" like frames on a movie screen that look connected but aren't...but if that was really true it would not make sense that the laws of physics are so consistent and good at making predictions. It reminds me of the old paradox-ish question, where someone walks 10 feet towards the door traveling at 1 foot a minute, when you examine his progress in increments exactly half of the last. So at 5 feet he's taken 5 minutes, 7 and a half 7 and a half minutes, but you keep cutting them in half and half and half and it looks like he can never get there - there are an infinite number of increments of time to measure...and how can you add up an infinite series of numbers and get a finite value? Of course, we know from experience that you can move 10 feet traveling at 1 foot a minute and it only takes 10 minutes, every single time. The formulas and emperical evidence tends to back this up very solidly. I think you are getting lost in the same sort of mental issue - the question of what we can examine vs. what can (and is) happening. On the definition of miracle, the closest I can come up with is an instance of "exception" to the normal rules, presumably where god intervenes and makes sure a baseball goes over the fence when physics says it shouldn't, or that a car's tires keep traction when they'd naturally slip. So far, it doesn't look like there are miracles in physics of that definition - it looks like the same rules that appear to be in effect are the same ones that have been since as far back as we can measure. When we wonder if something is miraculous, we tend to discover the miracle event is just the result of the same rules that have always been there getting a rare outcome because of a rarely introduced factor that just happened to effect that instance.

Lateral velocity relative to the surface of the earth, since we were looking at a scenario when the shuttle was being launched from the back of a jet that was within the moving atmosphere. You still have to be able to circle the earth every 24 hrs but we are doing that right now sitting in our chairs.

First though, its a hydrogen consuming car that produces water as a result. The twist though is he claims to have a process that is 1700% more effecient than classical electrolisis resulting in the ability to break water down and recombine it, gaining energy instead of loosing energy. That doesn't sit well with the laws of thermodynamics, and if it is producing that energy it has to be coming from somewhere, so it would be vital to understand exactly what is occuring in the process.

I know, its a low orbit craft. I was citing geosynchronous orbit as the only means to achieve orbit without immense laterial velocity, which it cannot do even with the full solid rocket boosters and external fuel tank, and to achieve the laterial velocity required for a low orbit would be impossible from a boeing 747. Speaking of shuttles its great to see Discovery off to a great start today.

I haven't seen the movie so I don't know if the shuttle in question was trying to achieve a stable orbit or just escape earth's atmosphere, but you need a heck of a lot of forward velocity to get into orbit. If you are not moving forward, you'd have to go into geosynchronous orbit to not fall, which from wikipedia is: According to the same source to enter low earth orbit (200 - 1200 km (124 - 726 miles) ) you'd need to be travelling forward at 27,400 km/h (8 km/s) to stay up. It also says the Boeing 747 travels "typically mach 0.85 (1041 km/h)" so that little shuttle would really have to kick it to both get up and get into orbit....not much chance of that.

I don't think the extreme comments and comparisons are accurate, nor do I think that those people made the comparisons due to careful consideration, and did so more for the emotional effect. I do think Cindy Sheehan may honestly feel that Bush is the world's greatest terrorist, but I doubt it is due to great and careful consideration. All the same, it is her right to say it, and up to us whether we agree with it or not. I don't know what most people think who are against the war, but my personal feelings are that I am against limiting criticism because it is the nature of debate that ideas and strategies can be improved upon. I don't care what side of the isle the leader is from as long as he does a good job...when he is faced with criticism I want to hear a strong rebuttal that sets the record straight on way his way is good, or why it was wrong but is being corrected and what steps are taken to ensure what caused those mistakes won't occur again. I don't want to be told no one should say ill thus be accused of making the terrorists feel warm and fuzzy inside. Debate is our process, its our way, and the terrorists can take it however the hell they want. If they want to believe it is a sign of weakness that is their fault, and they'll learn that quickly enough when our open processes allow us to fight them with the ever improving effeciency of an ever improving military machine. Authoritarian-minded ideaologies learned this lesson throughout the first two world wars and the cold war, I don't think it will be any different now.

Status is just one out of many elements that mean different things to different people and of varying importance. I do think in general people like other people that challenge them and make them have to push themselves, strive a little. People tend to dislike people that act like fanboys and put them on a pedestal. And you tend to like people that impress you. People that are impressed by status will find people of status more impressive. Others are impressed by artistic talents, or by a broke guy that helps out at the animal shelter.

just another little hackish story: the same client had purchased a commerce package from a very relibable company (4 figure pricetag) that allowed image uploads, using the image path in a URL parameter that was hidden inside a frame. I tested the hole on his server, and I was able to upload a script file to the web accessible directory of my choice. With that, I could easily upload a script that printed the raw unprocessed source for any of the pages (to extract the variable names for the database), rewrite any of the pages, add my own account as an admin with my own password, and even replace the cybercash plugin to email me with every credit card used for any of the online stores within the mall itself, and then later run cybercash transactions to credit those stolen cards with all the money inside his cybercash account, and then search for the brand name on yet other sites that had also used that product and do the same thing to hundreds of other servers and their customers. It was a pretty big hole and I patched it for the client, and informed the vendor...though I never did follow up to ensure they patched it themselves for their customers.

personally I like to hardcode the list of valid pages into a hashtable, and then require a check to see if that key exists before running that page. You can also use symbolic names then, with the key being "contact" and the value "contact.php" or such, which is the best way I think to do that. If for any reason you *absolutely* need to pass a filename to the server and cannot check against valid files, at the very very least validate that it does not contain any slashes and keep it fixed in the directory it is supposed to read from. PHP is frightfully insecure in many ways. In the mail() function they claim the second parameter is the "subject" field, yet, you can pass text that includes line breaks and additional headers, and many spammers exploit poorly validated input on mail forms to do just this, and the other arguments are vulnerable to this as well. The general rule is always consider anything a browser sends your server to be tainted and not validated. If they are just filling in a name and you are displaying the output of "piglatinize($GET[name]);" then it is not a big issue, because that variable isn't determining what script to run, where to store an uploaded image, what sorting order to query data in the database etc - it has no impact on what code will run. As soon as you need to have the client tell the server "what it wants to do" you want to be very sure it can only pick out of a list of the things you will let it do, that is validated on the server. About this instance: I looked at the error message, and it looks like all the hacker did was change the value of the MySQL host server variable. I can only imagine he did not crack the site, because he didn't change any data in the normal pages, nor the database. If I had to venture a guess, he did one of two things: 1) Called a URL to a "setup wizard" (install.asp or something) just to see if it was left on the server, found it, and punched in values he knew could deliver his message on every page - by putting his message into the HOST field which he knew would be displayed inside the "could not connect" error message. 2) fooled an admin config page into thinking he was authenticated when he wasn't, and changing the value there. I had a client who paid 5 digits to a programming firm for software that was protected in the admin section by nothing more than "admin=Y" in a cookie, so anything is possible. I honestly think it is more likely to be (1) because most admin tools store variables in the database except for the information on how to connect to the database (since you would need the db info to extract the db info if you did) which is in a config file that is generated during the install. I would recommend checking to see if you can find either any install scripts or any pages that let you change the database host name. If it is not an install script, than it is a config page with poor or non-persistant authentication. I am betting this guy was trying to put on the biggest show he could, and since he did not change any data in the database, nor changed any file contents, it appears the biggest show he could pull off was to change the config setup. Therefore, find any place you can do that which does not give you access to more - if he could of done more he would have.

It just shows how wacko-right things have gotten - that we even have the issue of tribunals to make a ruling on in the first place at all. If they overturn roe vs wade, and put us back behind.....I think its every other first world nation in yet another department....of course the left and a huge amount of the middle will cry bloody murder. If someone is against the death penalty, and sees the supreme court rule against executing a child prisoner, it doesn't make the other executions more palable or less outrageous, so all it does is give one less outrageous act to fight over. I think you are confusing the issue: you seem to think this vote should give them credibility they can leverage, whereas it just prevents what little credibility they have from erroding further today, and a bad roe vs wade vote would really errode it yet more. If they want credibility with the left, they could rule in favor of something moderate, instead of against something so far to the right you can't believe its on the table at all.

While I actually agree that the US is the greatest threat to world stability, I also think it is one of the greatest assets in world stability. If you were to poll the same people, and find out if they thought the US aided global stability during say, the cold war, and if the the US is a great asset in defending western values and keeping those who would threaten them in check, the numbers would be much higher than 36%. Keep in mind too, that the US has gone off into some pretty uncharted waters, with a doctrine of pre-emptive attack without requiring thorough intelligence nor consensus, and has moved towards the use of tactical nuclear weapons in otherwise non-nuclear combat conditions. The US has swung much more radically in changing its military policies in the last 6 years than any other western nation, so even if they don't think we are a threat exactly now we have demonstrated that we are both very powerful and can take radical shifts, so it leaves the door open to a much wider degree than other nations.

That really depends on which one it is

Nope, I've been working with the http://www.ogre3d.org graphics engine in C++, but my project is largely on hold until I "make my biggy cash" with much simplier web projects. If I get to a real production point I'll definately post about it.

mmorpg programming

I think we are experiencing every moment at the same time, but at any given point of time, our minds' have a computational state that contains past data accrude via the senses and no way to percieve what occurs later, creating the illusion of the passage of time. Since the illusion aids any species' survival, its presense is likely to stay. You can think of the subconscious as the part of our brain that is always working but we which has processes we do not observe. We get so use to the conscious "voice in our head" of our minds while we think and do math, that we forget that we actually have a 6th sense in the brain to sense the data we are thinking consciously. We cannot sense all the data and computation of course, because the sensing process itself requires managing of data and computation, so we would always need "more brains" to sense that data too and it would get pretty useless to know that you know that you know that you are thinking of something etc. The subconscious, while mysterious, is still based on data input from the senses, and that input occurs due to the laws of the universe applied over time, ie causality. Therefore, the only way to have any knowledge of the future, would be if there is a process within physics that allows for counter-causal reactions (events in the present caused by events in the future), which have not yet been observed anywhere in physics to my knowledge. Then you have the issue of changing the future, which if everything is happening "at the same time" is already written. A moment in time is either this or that, and will always be such. To change anything in a point of time would require the word "change" which is inherently a function of time and causality itself. You would actually need a second temporal dimension to track "when" you changed a point in time and that really starts not to make sense.

Pangloss, I think that is a fair breakdown of nation's views on war, but keep in mind that the first two types are actually much closer to the "survival at stake" level than postindustrial nations, so you could say all three are "survival at stake" fighters. The only two reasons I think people want to fight is either their own survival is threatened, or the survival of others they empathize with and feel they can help by contributing. Keep in mind, leaders may have other reasons for war, but they do not fight - they just send off others to do so. So its not the post industrial nations loose their warrior ethic, it is just the warrior ethic applies to threats, and they don't feel nearly as threatened. Other than our survival and the survival of our allies, what is a good justification for a 1% casualty rate in our armed forces?

10. Micro-lasergun necktie (for those bad meetings with the boss) 9. Most of these (not to mention the other categories) 8. Copterpack if he works on a high floor and hates the crowded elevators 7. An A+ on your final exam 6. Orthopedic shoes 5. Army of 3" tall robotic ninjas 4. Pre-paid weekend trip to vermont for him and the misses (house party ) 3. One of those swear-word button gizmos, but in the voice of his most annoying co-worker 2. His own water cooler for the office, stocked instead with his favorite bourbon 1. Let him beat you at basketball one last time Top 10 strategies domestic animals may use to take over the world

I don't agree with a fixed timetable set in stone, but I think it is a great disservice to the troops to not hold our military leaders and the administration to the effectiveness of their planning. Failing to meet the deadlines wouldn't be a reason to cut and run - it would be a reason to shake up the leadership, perhaps up to the top of this administration if nessesary. I think it is horrible that while we have measures for how long a drive in attendant can take when serving food at a fast-food joint, we have no such measures in place to evaluate those sending our soldiers into the field to put their lives on the line. We owe it to the troops to hold those sending them into battle to know what the heck they are doing and tighten up their stragedies or face replacement by those who can better serve the troops.

I do think it was intended as a double shot. On the one hand, the macro-economics of American and Chinese competition and at the same time, its a knock on the sort of chinese propaganda that is routinely produced. If it was pure left-wing "oh china's better cuz its not hillibilly president" they wouldn't have included the slums, and shown the undercurrent in those visuals, but it was intended to cut both ways.

Science is generally relatively expensive, and the studies that get done must inevitably be the ones viewed as the most relevant to someone with money to give. Some more generous funders probably only need to know the science is being done well and will add to the scientific knowledge of mankind, and that is what they want so they are happy to objectively fund any science that adheres to that. Other funding is likely to be more forthcoming if it deals with a "scary" issue that is hyped to make it even more scary, or if it is in the interests of a commercial company such as big tabacco or big oil. It does make sense that the need for money creates an inherent need to pitch studies that get the attention of people with money as a general "pressure" but the question is how manageable is it. We have a "pressure" to hurt each other the more densely we are packed into cities and we get road rage, but it is a pretty minor effect when most people deal with the pressure just fine. I think the principle is sound, the question I am more curious about is the impact and pervasiveness of it.

10. Loose Lips 9. Golf balls when I play, even if there are no water hazards 8. Really Big Unsinkable Ships on maiden voyages 7. Hope for a democrat with a clue when one of them opens their mouth 6. Glasses when looking over the side of the warf 5. Fellow SFNer's opinion of my capacity for making humorous top 10 posts. 4. Heat away from my CPU (when I have it installed right ) 3. homosexual narcoleptic cows in man costumes (like a garden gnome) 2. garden gnomes 1. Second term approval ratings 10. That's exactly what I think too. 9. Oh yeah, I was also thinking we should just be friends - thats actually better for me. 8. Any of these 7. I know I've asked you this waaay too many times, but what is your name again? 6. You look....nice 5. You know...you're always screaming in all my nightmares, whats up with that? 4. I hate you on principle 3. Stop talking, keep drinking 2. You're legal right? 1. I keep a baggie of massage oil in the back of my van if you are interested. Top 10 foods and/or technologies that should never be combined: