Cap'n Refsmmat

It's just that this obsession with terminology often seems to distract us from the actual idea being presented. We could all just say "Well, it's a hypothesis more than a theory" and get on with it, but we decide to obsess over it instead.

What books are you reading now? Doesn't matter what kind, what subject, whatever. It'll just be fun to see what everyone's reading. I'd certainly like to get more reading material in. I'll start: I'm currently starting The Blind Watchmaker, by Richard Dawkins, as I'm currently writing a report discussing evolution and I spotted it in the library while doing research.

Why do we always end up arguing about what "theory" means instead of actually discussing the idea?

Probably running, screaming, and unzipping your pants.

I now live on the fifth floor of my dorm, and I basically refuse to take the elevators. It kills you for the first week or so, but now I can't wear pants without a belt. Excellent.

You could use L'Hopital's Rule on it. [math]\lim_{t\to 0} \frac{\sin t}{t} = \lim_{t \to 0} \frac{\cos t}{1} = 1[/math]

What DJBruce means is could you please look at this: [thread]4236[/thread] Then you can make your equations look pretty: [math]\iiint_D f(x,y,z) \, dx \, dy \, dz[/math]

Yes, but it would be very diluted.

Just type the command I listed above. From all I know about Plesk, the file should be there and you should be given your password.

I am fairly certain that constitutes a threat. Ivan: please do not ever threaten anyone in that way again. (It doesn't matter if you don't think it's a "threat"; just don't do it.) If you want to convince anyone of the dangers of the LHC you'd do a much better job without threatening them first. Now, I'd like this thread to move on. Ivan, you have posted about magnetic holes before. Why have we not observed magnetic holes already from high-energy cosmic rays colliding with the upper atmosphere?

Indeed. The force due to gravity on two objects is: [math]F=\frac{GmM}{r^2}[/math] where G is the universal gravitational constant and m and M are the two masses. If you put in the mass of the earth as M and the radius of the earth as r, it turns out that [math]F = g m[/math] because [imath]\frac{GM}{r^2} = g[/imath]. It only works when you're on the surface of the earth (so the distance is the radius of the Earth).

An object with more mass has more gravitational force acting upon it, but it also has more inertia to resist motion.

Eh. What I said was true for net work: the net work is zero if the kinetic energy does not change. As for the work of one particular person, saying [imath]w= \Delta E[/imath] works if you don't consider friction or anything else, because the gravitational potential change is equal to the work done by the gravitational force. Friction messes things up a bit though.

Well, look at it this way: The force of gravity on an object is mg -- mass times the acceleration due to gravity. The acceleration resulting is: [math]F = ma[/math] [math]mg = ma[/math] [math]\frac{mg}{m} = a[/math] You can see that if we, say, triple the mass, the acceleration is still exactly the same -- the masses cancel out.

I don't think that's right. That may represent the net work (and I have doubts about that), but friction is contributing negative work (since it acts to oppose the motion), so the work required from Madison is greater. Also, [math]w = \Delta KE[/math], not total mechanical energy. I'd draw a free-body diagram and work from there.

Do you want to draw up a nice set of criteria to determine exactly if the consumption did encourage further production? You know, take into account price, date of purchase, date of production, whether the producer did it as a business or as a hobby, just how much material the consumer downloaded, if the producer had time to notice it had been downloaded, whether the producer could see view statistics for the video... Saying "it's legal to view it.... but only if you download it for free, ten years after it was made" will not work.

No. I thought everyone agreed above that the opposition is gone. No. The point is that they would not oppose it in that situation -- but we do not believe that situation would ever realistically exist. Please stop assigning motives to people and declaring they're "just rationalizing" beliefs they hold for no good reason. It is rather tiresome.

I point to the free/open-source software movement as evidence that people can use "other people find it useful" as sufficient motivation to produce more material, even without monetary gain.

You put hide tags around it: [hide]hidden text[/hide]

Try this while as root: cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow If the .psa.shadow file is not there, check around other /etc/ locations on the system -- I recall the last FreeBSD system I worked on had /usr/local/etc/ and a few other places.

Select the black box with your cursor and you'll see the text underneath.

I think you'll have trouble proving that MrSkeptic and A_Tripolation are the only two people in existence.

Let him know that he can win $1 million from James Randi if he can repeat that test successfully.

I believe James Randi held a test of divining rods used to find water and found that they were no better than chance.

iNow: Sounds reasonable enough to me, if you accept your assumption of consumer<->producer disconnect.