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[2005-02-01 17:46:08] - paul: Smart man. I really can't stand real player at all - aaron
[2005-02-01 17:39:53] - jiznickery
~a[2005-02-01 17:39:51] - a: If you consider them cheat codes.
-Paul[2005-02-01 17:36:43] - theres a cheat code? ~a
[2005-02-01 17:30:31] - I want to watch some of their videos, but I don't have real-player installed. -Paul
[2005-02-01 17:29:16] - a: Probably not. The biggest reason being that I don't have proof of my scores anymore.
-Paul[2005-02-01 17:28:34] - Aaron: I also agree regarding the two bcolumn strategy. It's usually what I'm going for but there really is no way to deal with something like getting two or three greens or reds in a clump and it's so easy for it to just get out of whack, especially if you don't get that damn fourth piece. -Paul
[2005-02-01 17:26:49] - Aaron: Ah, ok. I understand what you're saying and that makes sense so you're probably right. -Paul
[2005-02-01 17:26:28] - paul: are you going to submit your scores? ~a
[2005-02-01 17:26:15] - well they would need to "pretreive" 8 billion results (and many trillion queries, i'm sure). not really something you can "pretrieve" even if you do a smallish subset and only store counts. ~a
[2005-02-01 17:25:04] - And slam-smear combos are where you can drop a piece, rotate it, and then slide it over - like, I think you might do those for purple and pink monos. - aaron
[2005-02-01 17:24:00] - paul: I think a slam is when you drop a block into place and then rotate it in (like the last yellow in a mono) and smear is when you press the D-pad diagonally to slide a piece in (like, uh, the last blue in a ton of different blocks) - aaron
[2005-02-01 17:22:53] - paul: The green/red thing? Sometimes you really have to regress to it, you just get blockfucked and there's nothing you can do. I would call their two-column strategy an optimistic strategy, because it's definitely not as flexible - aaron
[2005-02-01 17:17:01] - Aaron: I'm not sure I know what they mean, but it was cool seeing my strategy listed under their "elementary sprint strategies"
-Paul[2005-02-01 17:12:44] - paul: 848! That's really sick. What an awesome web page. I think i already know what they mean by "slam" and "smear". - aaron
[2005-02-01 17:07:48] - a: Obfuscated javascript! Lots and lots of javascript. I was mostly curious whether they pretreived a list of all search terms and result counts, or whether it was obtaining that dynamically. - aaron
[2005-02-01 16:43:49] - http://gilly.homeip.net/tetris Dashing my hopes that I might be one of the best in the world at something.
-Paul[2005-02-01 16:31:18] - Does the order of terms matter when doing searches in Google? -Paul
[2005-02-01 16:20:41] - http://www.simon.com/mall/default.aspx?ID=788
[2005-02-01 16:12:24] - aaron: read the link i just posted. ~a
[2005-02-01 16:12:13] - mel: http://www.google.com/ac.js i guess google doesn't have coding standards (paul: this page won't load in internet explorer
) ~a[2005-02-01 16:11:42] - mel: THAT IS INSANE. how do they do that. - aaron
[2005-02-01 16:04:17] - http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en Neat! Google suggest tries to figure out what you are searching for... -mel
[2005-02-01 15:37:04] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starcraft "Professional gamers, such as those in South Korea, have been known to achieve average APM ratings of over 300, and peak APM ratings, such as during a battle, of over 500 (8.33 actions per second)" Holy crap. -Paul
[2005-02-01 15:30:11] - http://www.drudgereport.com/ did iraqi militants take "toy" hostage? It's the cover story so it may not be up for too long but I thought this was pretty funny - aaron
[2005-02-01 15:19:49] - http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-superbowl-borrowingtogo&prov=ap&type=lgns I can't believe these people have houses and I can't afford one.
-Paul[2005-02-01 15:17:49] - Vinnie: I agree (the people that use other browsers are really the web power users), I'm just surprised that power users make up ~30% of the browser usage. -Paul
[2005-02-01 15:16:42] - a: oops. I meant 69%. the people that use other browsers are really the web power users, I would think - vinnie
[2005-02-01 15:00:28] - in other words, i trust w3schools because i've heard of them. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:59:31] - vinnie: if the ie 90% doesn't surprise you, how about the ie 69% from w3schools? ~a
[2005-02-01 14:55:50] - the 90% doesn't surprise me that much actually. all those stats are usage, not users, right? - vinnie
[2005-02-01 14:52:10] - I'm not entirely sure that counting people in the programming industry is a good way of judging who is using IE though. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:51:18] - a: No, I think the company I keep is definitely something I should be embarassed about.,
-Paul[2005-02-01 14:50:17] - it's very likely that the crossection of people that you come in contact with are disproportionate. it's perfectly normal and it's nothing to be embarassed about. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:49:31] - paul: same with me. many of my coworkers use firefox, mozilla, or netscape. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:46:06] - paul: almost everyone i work with doesn't use IE anymore - travis
[2005-02-01 14:33:59] - a: Ok, I'm still surprised that IE's share is supposedly that low. Other than a couple of my friends, I don't think I know anybody who is using anything besides IE. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:28:49] - this page has 5 sources. http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm ~a
[2005-02-01 14:27:05] - a: Anyway, I'm not really saying your figure is wrong. Just that I'm surprised that IE's share would be that low and I wouldn't be surprised if there were other, higher estimates. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:26:14] - a: I haven't really heard of either.
-Paul[2005-02-01 14:25:59] - a: No idea. I assume it's at least somewhat recent otherwise there wouldn't be a point to quoting it. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:24:19] - plus. who is betanews anyways? i've heard of w3schools and i have not heard of betanews. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:23:58] - a: Maybe, I'm just thinking that the more outside the mainstream websites you get, the lower percentage of IE users you get. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:23:40] - paul: "Usage of IE stood at 90.3 percent" stood is in the past tense. what date did it stand at 90.3? january 2004? 2005? ~a
[2005-02-01 14:21:39] - paul: i disagree. lots of manager type people (ie lovers) like to read usage reports. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:20:37] - a: I'll bet that most places that track browser usage for specific servers is going to have a lot more non-IE users than a broader survey. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:20:37] - firefox's major gains have been overseas. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:18:18] - i found another site that listed ie at 59% (again just for a specific server, so useless) ~a
[2005-02-01 14:17:50] - "We think that getting the first set of early adopters is a lot easier than getting the next set" That's pretty much what I was thinking. Getting the anti-MS people is easy. Getting my grandparents and parents to switch is going to be a lot tougher. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:16:40] - http://www.betanews.com/article/IE_Usage_Falls_Again_Firefox_Gains/1106320128 Here is something conflicting I guess. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:16:06] - http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest.html lists hits to a very specific server so i agree the information is useless. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:15:29] - I guess I just thought that firefox was still more of a niche thing than it really is. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:15:12] - i found a different site that listed ie at 62%. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:14:57] - a: Not really, I haven't been looking. It's just that I last heard that IE still had ~90% of the market so seeing such a drop in such a short period of time was surprising to me. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:13:19] - paul: great point. i guess the average user is switching. either that or you doubt the source. do you have conflicting information. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:12:26] - aaron: yes. i agree. but, extensions are nothing to laugh at. millions of people use firefox extensions. ~a
[2005-02-01 14:11:43] - I just can't imagine the average user switching from IE to firefox already and the ~20% or so that have switched seems a bit high for power users. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:08:55] - a: That's an extension! I think the reason a lot of people prefer Firefox is the built-in popup-blocking, tabbed browsing, and the pride in using something different - aaron
[2005-02-01 14:06:35] - paul: you doubt the power of mouse gestures!
~a[2005-02-01 14:03:19] - a: I'm surprised that IE has fallen to ~70% already. I would've thought it would have stayed aroun 90% for longer. -Paul
[2005-02-01 14:03:15] - also on that page, they have linux and mac both slowly slowly gaining ground (but still very very far behind). ~a
[2005-02-01 13:58:34] - http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp note: they split up mozilla&firefox into mozilla and firefox between 2004 and 2005. mozilla+firefox+netscape is at 24.6 today. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:57:18] - 69.7 to be exact. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:56:49] - paul: according to w3schools, yes. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:56:04] - a: You're saying IE only has 69% of the browser market now? -Paul
[2005-02-01 13:55:34] - Doesn't sound like a very clean solution though. -Paul
[2005-02-01 13:54:36] - vinnie: cool. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:54:34] - ie has gone down from 84% to 69% in the past year. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:53:39] - Vinnie: Ah, so it is. http://www.issociate.de/board/post/162508/asp.net_and_Firefox.html Maybe this will help? -Paul
[2005-02-01 13:47:50] - a: I understand and agree - vinnie
[2005-02-01 13:47:08] - paul: not it. that's just a meta tag. I commented it out and it didn't change anything. thanks though - vinnie
[2005-02-01 13:42:14] - vinnie: right, but those %s often change exponentially. don't expect it to stay very constant and if you make the wrong decision, you could look very unprofessional. ~a
[2005-02-01 13:40:22] - Vinnie: Well, just looking at a test form I made up, there is a line in the HTML which seems to be specifying Internet Explorer (content="http://schemas.microsoft.com/intellisense/ie5"). Is that line in your form and could it be causing a problem? -Paul
[2005-02-01 13:29:05] - paul: and to answer your question, I think my manager told me we are like 96-97% IE or something - vinnie
[2005-02-01 13:28:15] - the search for the answer is what will take time. anyway maybe one of you knows. I'm designing a webform in Visual Studio.NET that has a textbox with a specfied width. when I look at the source code for the page in firefox the width tag is missing (but it's there in IE) - vinnie
[2005-02-01 13:26:17] - mig: that's not the problem. if there is an answer I know it's a simple fix. I just don't know what that simple fix is and no one I've talked to knows either - vinnie
[2005-02-01 13:21:11] - also why couldn't he run? he hasn't been convicted of a crime. was there an ability for write-ins? ~a
[2005-02-01 13:05:01] - http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6893925/ I wonder if anybody has even told Saddam that a vote was going on or if they would've LET him go to a polling station. Also, if there is no absentee voting, than how exactly are Iraqis living abroad voting? -Paul
[2005-02-01 12:58:50] - Vinnie: Do you know how many people are going to be visiting your portlet with non-IE browsers and what the lifespan of it is? -Paul
[2005-02-01 12:55:17] - vinnie: I agree. What's giving you trouble? Is it javascript problems, or just general issues of appearance? - aaron
[2005-02-01 12:11:47] - vinnie: i would at least look into how much work it would be to make your portlet look nice on all browsers. - mig
[2005-02-01 11:54:46] - also it seems like a very trivial thing to do but I can't figure it out. maybe someone who picks the second option can help me - vinnie
[2005-02-01 11:54:12] - poll: I am designing a portlet for our company website. do I save myself time and not bother to design for non-IE users or figure out how to make it look nice for non-IE browsers? I can't decide - vinnie
[2005-02-01 11:25:26] - bomb threat!!!! w00t! - mig
[2005-02-01 09:50:52] - Dave: Death was Buffy's gift, being able to annoy anybody is mine. -Paul
[2005-02-01 08:32:26] - http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/01/technology/microsoft_search.reut/index.htm?cnn=yes microsoft search engine goes prime time -dave
[2005-02-01 08:06:13] - Paul: you're just talented that way ^_^ -dave
[2005-01-31 18:16:12] - aba: Well that's good to know. Although if you give me enough time I'm sure I'll eventually find a way to accidentally offend you. -Paul
[2005-01-31 18:13:33] - Aaron: Yeah, I think people just didn't give it much thought. After all, prior to the civil war common knowledge held that the best military strategy was a mass infantry charge.
-Paul[2005-01-31 17:47:14] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/01/31/volkswagen.ad.reut/index.html creators of VW spoof ad apologize - aaron
[2005-01-31 17:22:33] - paul: I suppose news wasn't as widely distributed back then, so maybe publishing articles about upcoming battles/food shortages/whatever seemed less stupid at the time. - aaron
[2005-01-31 17:22:29] - paul: youd have to say a lot worse than that to offend me
- aba[2005-01-31 17:21:30] - paul: Ha ha! - aaron
[2005-01-31 16:57:22] - I've read a couple of books where there were references to how southern generals often used newspapers from the north to figure out what the Union armies were doing just by reading the articles. -Paul
[2005-01-31 16:56:21] - Aaron: I'm not entirely sure that much encryption at all was used in the civil war. In fact, I think intelligence and counter intelligence seemed to be fairly undeveloped during the civil war. -Paul
[2005-01-31 16:43:27] - I kind of wonder if there was a time when people actually used substitution ciphers in wars, which word nerds could decipher with 30 minutes and a letter-frequency-sheet??? Maybe like, in the Civil war, or earlier... I would hope that stopped in the 20th century if not sooner - aaron
[2005-01-31 16:42:20] - mig: Somehow I'm skeptical that any portion of those documents has any use outside of solving the Cryptograms in GAMES magazine - but still a fun read - aaron
[2005-01-31 14:51:22] - http://www.umich.edu/~umich/fm-34-40-2/ a HOWTO on codebreaking. - mig
[2005-01-31 13:39:26] - Aaron: Pretty much. It would be nice to think that after all of this, maybe the Middle East (and Iraq in particular) will be a better place but somehow I doubt it. -Paul
[2005-01-31 13:15:07] - paul: Right, right, I think vox mentioned something about that. "The law of unintended consequences." - aaron
[2005-01-31 12:51:07] - So I'm just a little cautious of whatever plans America has to try to make the world a better place. -Paul
[2005-01-31 12:50:12] - Hell, two of America's biggest "enemies" of the past ten years or so were people that we used to actively give support to. -Paul
[2005-01-31 12:48:34] - Aaron: Quite possibly. It really does depend on what you're trying to accomplish. All I'll say is that history has shown that it's very hard to predict the future and very often trying to fix things only makes them worse. -Paul
[2005-01-31 12:43:03] - paul: Right, or if you're trying to minimize the threat to the neighboring countries. "leave" is a great ideal solution but realistically I think the best solution is more complex - aaron
[2005-01-31 12:40:11] - Although, honestly, a lot depends on what you want to accomplish. If you're trying to set up a friendly government in Iraq then leaving would be a bad idea, for example. -Paul
[2005-01-31 12:37:03] - Aaron: Probably as close as you can get with six words. Although "get out and leave them alone" might be a close second. -Paul
[2005-01-31 12:30:08] - paul: Am i close with "let iraq do whatever they want"? - aaron
[2005-01-31 11:59:29] - Dave: You want to know what I think the bext thing to do is? -Paul
[2005-01-31 11:47:29] - Paul: or how about this, who should be put into place in the govt now that these elections have taken place? -dave
[2005-01-31 11:46:38] - Paul: (shrug) does that mean you're not going to tell me? ^_^ -dave
[2005-01-31 11:35:29] - Dave: Somehow I think we'll disagree on the best and next bext thing to do.
-Paul[2005-01-31 11:28:29] - Paul: errr, next best -dave
[2005-01-31 11:28:19] - Paul: ok, well, next bext thing to do then ^_^ -dave
[2005-01-31 11:26:03] - I agree, that's a pretty insane article about germany - aaron
[2005-01-31 11:25:10] - Dave: Well, I know the author of that article is a big supporter of removing the troops fairly immediately. -Paul
[2005-01-31 11:23:46] - aba: np. Hopefully I didn't offend you by associating Indian culture with that of the American south. -Paul
[2005-01-31 11:22:22] - Paul: article brings up interesting points. Makes you wonder what the 'best' thing to do now is -dave
[2005-01-31 11:16:04] - paul: naw.... its not an analogy i wouldve used, but in a way it does work and you do have a point.
thanks for explaining what you meant though. - aba[2005-01-31 11:03:22] - Dave: They might want to give the movie a trial run in other countries to see how it does first before releasing it into the largest market. -Paul
[2005-01-31 11:02:46] - http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42625 Some reasons to not get too excited over the Iraqi elections. -Paul
[2005-01-31 11:00:12] - Paul: wow, that's amazing about Germany -dave
[2005-01-31 10:56:54] - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360486/releaseinfo Release dates for Constantine. Found it odd that it released in other countries before the US. For some reason I'd thought it would have released here first -dave
[2005-01-31 09:48:50] - http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=42615 A provision in the German welfare system is forcing out-of-work women to chose between taking jobs in the sex industry or losing their unemployment benefits. -Paul
[2005-01-31 09:42:57] - Dave: Can't trust those damn asians, eh?
-Paul[2005-01-31 09:04:08] - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050128-4563.html MPAA releases software that will search your computer for "potentially" illegal media. Apparently it just finds any audio/visual media and asks you if you want to delete it. You're supposed to know whether it's legal or not, and reply accordingly -dave
[2005-01-31 09:02:20] - http://www.physorg.com/weblog/news971.html RFID car alarm systems cracked -dave
[2005-01-31 08:10:25] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/01/28/internet.attack.ap/index.html Teen sentenced for 'Blaster' worm variant. Kid is 19 and got 1.5 years in prison with 10 months of community service. He has to pay unspecified damages as well -dave
[2005-01-31 08:06:41] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/01/28/germany.spam.reut/index.html Germany proposing 50k euro fine for spammers -dave
[2005-01-31 07:55:56] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/31/iraq.main/index.html article from CNN on the elections. They say rough numbers of voter turnout is 72% -dave
[2005-01-31 07:41:55] - mig: not that I think the info in your Iraqi article is wrong, but I would lend it much more credence if it was from some more US established paper, CNN, WashPost, NYTimes, etc. But the Asia Times? -dave
[2005-01-31 07:39:40] - Paul: I thought it was a good analogy ^_^ -dave
[2005-01-30 20:43:48] - aba: I'm guessing that means you don't agree at all but don't want to vocally disagree?
-Paul[2005-01-30 16:04:12] -
- aba[2005-01-30 12:26:04] - Mostly I was just remarking on the "its good to explain our culture to other people but on the other hand its very hurtful to hear such bad things about something thats so important to you" phrase and thinking that it's very similar to how southerners feel. -Paul
[2005-01-30 12:25:33] - It's not a perfect analogy, I fully admit, since slavery and the confederate flag are related in a way that the Indian swastika and nazis aren't. -Paul
[2005-01-30 12:24:31] - It would be like associating the current US flag with slavery. You can do it, but it's not really what the flag is supposed to stand for. -Paul
[2005-01-30 12:24:02] - It's only been over the years that the flag has been tied more to slavery, perverting the original intention. -Paul
[2005-01-30 12:23:28] - I was just remarking that at the time, the confederate flag had very little to do with standing for slavery and much more to do with standing for southern culture. -Paul
[2005-01-30 09:47:23] - yah exactly. im not sure how the comparison can be made since the original meaning of the swastika was completely independent of its eventual perversion while the confederate flag started off as something controversial. - aba
[2005-01-30 09:31:28] - aba: i think he's saying that the confederate flag is a symbol of the southern culture and a lot of people feel strongly about what the southern culture meant to them. the only problem is that back then, the southern culture was forged around a general agreement that slavery was acceptable. ~a
[2005-01-30 09:02:53] - paul: what was the original meaning of the confederate flag? - aba
[2005-01-29 17:04:37] - aba: Sounds very similar to the confederate flag issue. -Paul
[2005-01-29 02:45:04] - people have actually told her that they find it offensive and that she shouldnt wear it, which is really hard on her.... on one hand its good to explain our culture to other people but on the other hand its very hurtful to hear such bad things about something thats so important to you. - aba
[2005-01-29 02:44:07] - it gets very confusing.... http://www.webindia123.com/women/attire/tali.htm my moms mangalsutra has a swastika on it. - aba
[2005-01-28 18:09:30] - Vinnie: I'm surprised you didn't use wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika -Paul
[2005-01-28 17:54:40] - travis: the swastika has a confusing history http://history1900s.about.com/cs/swastika/a/swastikahistory.htm to sum up, both have meaning, but the other way used to be a sign of bad luck - vinnie
[2005-01-28 17:33:47] - http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GA27Ak07.html article on the farce that is the iraqi "elections". - mig
[2005-01-28 16:56:10] - You're going to poke your eye out! -Paul
[2005-01-28 16:44:35] - mig: a company actually manufactured those? i thought whenever i saw one the person had just made it themselves. i'm sure someone sued them when their kid got hit in the eye or something - travis
[2005-01-28 16:20:19] - in case you were unaware, a balloon tied to a mailbox is the international sign for party over here.
[2005-01-28 15:00:09] - when i was younger actually i remember having a wooden gun (well a gun shaped piece of wood, anyway) that would shoot rubber bands. i wondered if that company ever got sued? - mig
[2005-01-28 14:49:45] - Travis: Back in my day, I used my hand as a rubber band gun. None of this fancy wood you speak of.
-Paul[2005-01-28 14:42:49] - and back in my day, we had to use a block of wood with a clothespin for a rubberband gun, none of this fancy plastic and varying rates of fire - travis
[2005-01-28 14:07:54] - ever book of blade of the immortal has an explanation for why the main character wears a swastika symbol, although i thought the religious one pointed in the other direction - travis
[2005-01-28 13:01:02] - http://www.tomshardware.com/game/20050122/index.html Rubber Band Gun. -Paul
[2005-01-28 11:32:34] - Paul: Oh, I totally agree, I don't think they should be able to ban it either -dave
[2005-01-28 11:08:54] - Dave: I think they have a good point about their symbol being stolen though. If you're going to ban the swastika because some people wearing it did bad things then you could also make the argument to ban the cross. -Paul
[2005-01-28 11:04:15] - Paul: kinda interesting how they think that banning the swastika would be a Christian campaign to convert people 0_o -dave
[2005-01-28 10:36:27] - http://www.webindia123.com/news/showdetails.asp?id=63194&cat=India Hindus fiercely defend Swastika -Paul
[2005-01-28 08:10:03] - http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050126-4557.html rumors fly about an XM-Sirius merger -dave
[2005-01-28 07:49:12] - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43479-2005Jan28.html spongebob is asexual -dave
[2005-01-28 07:41:10] - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43363-2005Jan27.html wal-mart benefits to cover same-sex partners -dave
[2005-01-28 07:39:37] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/01/27/mouthwash.dui.ap/index.html woman found guilty of DUI after drinking 3 glasses of listerine 0_o -dave
[2005-01-28 07:30:55] - http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/3357794 Bryant accuser reaches settlement with tabloids for undislosed amount of money -dave
[2005-01-27 20:31:30] - - pierce
[2005-01-27 20:31:23] - Why is Austin Powers on ABC Family censored such that "horny" becomes "randy"? Aren't they exact synonyms? Also strange, why is Austin Powers on ABC Family in the first place? Doesn't seem like the best fit. -
[2005-01-27 19:07:05] - http://www.azcardinals.com/news/news_details.html?iid=2586 Here are some comparison pictures. -Paul
[2005-01-27 19:06:01] - http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ap-cardinalslogo&prov=ap&type=lgns The Cardinals have changed their logo to look "meaner". -Paul
[2005-01-27 17:19:18] - paul: > || <
- aaron[2005-01-27 16:41:46] - Aaron: Unlike my normal stuff, which is full of very implausible things?
-paul[2005-01-27 16:37:59] - paul: Interesting read. Nothing too implausible. - aaron
[2005-01-27 16:25:21] - yes that's what it was. ~a
[2005-01-27 15:56:44] - a: No, I meant underpopulation. I can see why you're confused, though, since I said "possibility" instead of "inevitability".
-Paul[2005-01-27 15:49:20] - silly paul. i think you meant to say overpopulation, not underpopulation. ~a
[2005-01-27 15:40:23] - http://techcentralstation.com/012705D.html A little too obsessed with the "pay-as-you-go system", but I think there is some good information here about the possibility of underpopulation. -Paul
[2005-01-27 15:03:17] - a: Is he what's taking the hit counter > 200 today?? What is he doing? - aaron
[2005-01-27 15:00:18] - man the googlebot sucks. ~a
[2005-01-27 10:54:28] - They need one of those "shut up! shut up! kiss my butt!" toys for Maddenisms - aaron
[2005-01-27 10:01:58] - http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/3347706?GT1=6065 How to fake it on Super Bowl Sunday -Paul
[2005-01-27 09:48:53] - Pierce: I didn't see that, thanks. -Paul
[2005-01-27 09:09:18] - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40192-2005Jan26.html China passes US as Japan's primary trading partner. Article also discusses some of the dynamics between the major trading countries -dave
[2005-01-27 08:38:08] - the missile launch platform is still for sale though -dave
[2005-01-27 08:37:55] - http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/internet/01/26/ebay.missile.reut/index.html A British man trying to sell a deactivated Soviet-era missile on eBay was forced to delete it after Web site staff contacted him for breaching company rules -dave
[2005-01-27 08:16:47] - http://entertainment.msn.com/movies/hotgossipb5 Keira doesn't mind baring top, but doesn't want to bare her rear. -dave
[2005-01-26 22:46:33] - Paul+Mig: I don't know if you guys saw this, but I thought you might enjoy it: http://www.pvponline.com/archive.php3?archive=20050116 - pierce
[2005-01-26 17:03:16] - Aaron: I understand the whole deal with scientific proof being fallible and whatnot but it just seems kinda misleading to me. -Paul
[2005-01-26 17:01:54] - Aaron: It seems to run counter to my idea of what proving something is. -Paul
[2005-01-26 17:01:23] - Aaron: I was just commenting that it seemed silly to say you can prove something if you readily admit that the thing you've proven could be wrong. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:57:16] - paul: I don't understand. Are you talking about demonstrating absolute truth, or are you talking about a scientific proof? Because the latter is obviously fallible - aaron
[2005-01-26 16:46:16] - a: Sure, I throw a right jab of logic at you. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:42:24] - paul: i think it's not a misuse of the word. do you want to fight about it? ~a
[2005-01-26 16:42:01] - paul: ok. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:41:41] - vacuum
[2005-01-26 16:41:27] - aaron: yeah. we were talking about through a vacuume. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:39:06] - a: Seems to me that it's a misuse of the word "prove" then, if something proven can later be disproved. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:38:30] - a: The experiment I read about a while ago, iirc, was about light taking a long time to travel a short distance, while travelling through a very strange medium, but that might have been because of the refraction or impeding of light beams somehow... - aaron
[2005-01-26 16:37:55] - paul: nope. have you been listening at all? everything in science is disprovable. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:35:04] - a: Then shouldn't it be impossible to prove it isn't constant?
-Paul[2005-01-26 16:34:34] - How does an event horizon shrinking violate the second rule of thermodynamics anyway? -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:33:31] - paul: because einstein proved it. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:32:27] - a: haha, actually, if ya think about it, the speed of light being constant or not has nothing to do with what we've proved or not ^_^ -dave
[2005-01-26 16:32:08] - a: Why is it constant until proven unconstant? Why can't it be the other way around? -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:31:40] - a: If their experiments are correct and the equation is correct.
-Paul[2005-01-26 16:31:13] - dave: right. the speed of light is constant until proven unconstant. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:30:35] - "Because the value of the fine structure constant depends on two quantities - the electron's charge (e) and the speed of light (c) - this implies that one of these two quantities has also changed. Either c has decreased over time, or e has increased." so either the SOL isn't constant or the 2nd law of thermodynamics may be incorrect? ~a
[2005-01-26 16:27:48] - course I think it's just a theory so who knows (shrug). article points out that almost everything about black holes is quite tentative anyways -dave
[2005-01-26 16:26:03] - http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2650 -dave
[2005-01-26 16:23:57] - Dave: I think what Adrian is saying is that these experiments are really just playing around with space and time so that light appears to be going slow or faster and it's not really speeding up or slowing down light at all. -paul
[2005-01-26 16:22:39] - a: So I guess we can almost define space and time by the speed of light?
-Paul[2005-01-26 16:22:08] - a: doesn't the theory of relativity also say that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light? Well I know almost for a fact that I read an article in the past half year or so that said that scientists were able to propogate some particles faster than the speed of light -dave
[2005-01-26 16:21:40] - a: Ok, right, we agree. I guess I phrased my example poorly. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:18:40] - "Finally, we come to the conclusion that the speed of light is not only observed to be constant; in the light of well tested theories of physics, it does not even make any sense to say that it varies." (1998) i don't know how much you want to trust that summary though. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:17:14] - paul: yes, but "the speed of light is constant" is not referring to whatever frame you want to give it. if that was the case, you could say that the speed of light is constant and is always equal to zero meters per second (from the photon's frame). ~a
[2005-01-26 16:16:47] - a: and I'm not sure if that answers the thing about black holes bending light around them - which seems to indicate that photons have some miniscule mass, which would also indicate that the speed would be changed by the black hole too -dave
[2005-01-26 16:15:58] - a: well, I dunno about time changing etc, but relative to us in our time that wasn't changing, the speed of the light would still be changing -dave
[2005-01-26 16:13:22] - a: It changes the speed of light relative to us though. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:12:31] - dave: black holes do not change the speed of light. they affect the time in the space near the hole, not the velocity of the light. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:11:50] - dave: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SpeedOfLight/speed_of_light.html ~a
[2005-01-26 16:11:25] - a: mebbe black holes, since black holes bend light, it seems reasonable to assume that the gravity of the black hole might slow some of the light down too -dave
[2005-01-26 16:09:36] - a: well, the speed of light varies in different mediums definitely. If you're talking about the speed of light in a pure vacuum, I'm not sure, i vaguely remember something about some scientists changing it with some fields, but then if a field is present, it might not technically be a vacuum anymore (shrug) -dave
[2005-01-26 16:08:52] - a: Well, I guess it depends on how we're measuring speed then, doesn't it?
-Paul[2005-01-26 16:07:47] - Paul: I dunno, mebbe, it's hard to say one way or another -dave
[2005-01-26 16:07:25] - i.e. time and space are not. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:07:13] - dave: i was under the impression that the speed of light is still constant. ~a
[2005-01-26 16:06:55] - dave: how so? ~a
[2005-01-26 16:06:13] - For instance, we might change our minds about moral and social issues about as much as our fathers did, but our children will be 50% more radical than we were compared to our parents. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:05:24] - paul: ah i see. yes, that makes sense then. - mig
[2005-01-26 16:04:57] - Dave: I definitely think there is some sort of limit, in general. Maybe it's that things change more from one generation to the next but the amount of change during a generation changes at the same speed. -paul
[2005-01-26 16:04:40] - a: actually, I do think that you can change the speed of light, albeit at the moment only under some specific laboratory conditions -dave
[2005-01-26 16:03:30] - Paul: true true. I just was reacting to the thought that moral rules of a group of people changed exponentially. I guess it's true that they have the ability to change faster now that there's more communication due to tech like aaron was saying, but I can't bring myself to think that it's exponential -dave
[2005-01-26 16:01:15] - Mig: Dave got it right. I didn't mean the men would be competing against the women as much as I was thinking the men would want to get the best grade to impress the women. -Paul
[2005-01-26 16:00:35] - Dave: I'm guessing it depends a great deal. Some things don't seem to vary as much as move in a linear progression (like our attitudes towards racism) whereas other things seem to go back and forth. -Paul
[2005-01-26 15:59:27] - aaron: Like I don't think people as a generation generally change their moral beliefs that much over their lifetime -dave
[2005-01-26 15:59:05] - Aaron: Ah, ok. I can really see that happening for television shows that we have now. Especially ones dealing with gays. I always thought future generations will look back on shows like Will and Grace and think strange things about us. -Paul
[2005-01-26 15:59:02] - aaron: I dunno, I think each generation kinda reacts to the previous one and decides its general moral stance. Then the next generation reacts to that one etc. That'd be my guess -dave
[2005-01-26 15:57:47] - dave: Really? I guessed it would be like technology, where the more advanced we get as a civilization, the more rapid things tend to change because we have a greater concentration of educated people analyzing and criticizing them - aaron
[2005-01-26 15:57:41] - mig: I think what paul's getting at is that men get the feeling to want to impress the women. Like if men were playing some sport and hot girls walked by -dave
[2005-01-26 15:57:02] - Over time i just have a feeling minute changes are going to happen one war or another ( i mean, even just look at the past 20 years... ) and eventually our old policies will seem really funny to us - aaron
[2005-01-26 15:56:52] - aaron: actually, I'm not sure if things like change in moral tendencies accelerate. If I had to guess, I would say it probably swings back and forth at a fairly constant rate that could be correlated to the amount of time it takes for one generation to pass and another to rise -dave
[2005-01-26 15:56:33] - paul: I know scientists in some labs somewhere have slowed down the speed of light to like < 100 mph using some weird technique. But i was thinking more like, attitudes towards immigration, or affirmative action, or abortion and things like that - aaron
[2005-01-26 15:56:11] - paul: well men tend to be more competetive with other men, not with females, really. that's just my impression though. - mig
[2005-01-26 15:52:47] - a: As for the point of the article, I don't think it was that the difference don't matter, but that it's not clear how much the differences matter. -Paul
[2005-01-26 15:52:29] - a: heck, a lotta readers probably dont' even know what a std. dev is -dave
[2005-01-26 15:52:00] - a: I don't think the majority of the readers care about the std dev, they just take the average at face value -dave
[2005-01-26 15:51:44] - a: I'm not sure those things entirely matter since I would guess it's unlikely to be something strange (ie, 90% of women do better but the other 10% do a lot worse) and even if it was something strange I think the average still imparts enough information. -Paul
[2005-01-26 15:50:45] - a: well, I think the article's just trying to make a point, and if you don't believe it or want to know more, I think they expect you to look up the study yourself -dave
[2005-01-26 15:50:26] - Aaron: Could be. We're already laughing about how we used to think the speed of light was constant (it isn't, right?
). -Paul[2005-01-26 15:47:31] - plus i think you missed the main point of the article and that was that it didn't matter anyways. ~a
[2005-01-26 15:47:11] - because we don't know if most women are unaffected by the number of men in the room, or how many women do better when there are more men in the room. ~a
[2005-01-26 15:45:37] - This kind of stuff tends to accelerate i think - aaron
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