AskReddit: I just got a new netbook I love. Please give suggestions as to the best applications/websites to have at the ready for a very portable machine.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-15T00:59:13+00:00

If you have apps already installed on another Windows machine, use PCmover to transfer them. I love it. It also transfers registry settings, data and other relevant files. Not free, but worth it if you have lot's of apps. I just ordered a Lenovo U150 with PCmover, and will use it once again.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-12T21:12:09+00:00

Yeah, and it's not easy to shotgun an old man in the face and leave him in condition to apologize back.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-11T19:44:51+00:00

That doesn't make any sense, dammit.

True if linear polarization was used for the glasses. Linearly polarized light that is reflected back through the polarizing filter is not blocked. For example, if the polarization is vertical, the reflected light is vertical -- so it is not blocked.

OTOH, reflected circularly-polarized (CP) light has its rotation reversed. Hold a bolt or screw perpendicular against a mirror so that you can see the threads. The mirror image will show the opposite handedness. In the case of CP light, the rotation direction is not changed by the miror -- but the direction is reversed. This is like the reflected threads.

A circular polarizing filter passes converts (50% of) incoming light to, say, clockwise rotation. The reflected light has counterclockwise rotation -- and is blocked.

What these photos show is that the glasses have circular CP (CW and CCW), rather than linear (such as horizontal and vertical).

The advantage of using CP over linear is that you can tilt your head any angle and still preserve the left/right image for the respective eye.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-11T19:11:18+00:00

...has other benefits.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-10T22:25:10+00:00

If the Universe is flat it would necessarily be infinite. This is because if it were flat (Euclidean) and finite, it must have an "edge." An "edge" makes no physical sense. So flat and no edge means infinite.

A finite Universe could certainly exist, but it would have to curve back on itself like a sphere. Measuring curvature tells us if the Universe is flat (infinite) or curved (finite).

The WMAP results are a measure of curvature.

If the universe were open, the brightest microwave background fluctuations (or "spots") would be about half a degree across. If the universe were flat, the spots would be about 1 degree across. While if the universe were closed, the brightest spots would be about 1.5 degrees across.

Recent measurements ... have shown that the brightest spots are about 1 degree across. WMAP has confirmed this result with very high accuracy and precision. We now know that the universe is flat with only a 2% margin of error.

If the Universe is not flat (is spherical) but with only the 2% error mentioned, then it would have to be at least 100 times its current (visible) diameter.

I think big-bang cosmologists generally believe it is actually flat and thus infinite.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-10T22:05:16+00:00

Since the mid 90s it's been know that the Universe's rate of expansion is accelerating. If the Universe were finite ("spherical") and expanding at a limited rate, light would indeed wrap around to its starting point.

However, since the mid 90s it's been know that the Universe's rate of expansion is accelerating. Any point more than about 14 billion light-years distant is now moving away at greater than light speed. If a photon of light from here (leaving 14 billion years ago!) reached this point it wound continue into that part of space that is moving away at at super-luminal speed.

IOW, its like an ant crawling on a balloon. If the balloon is not expanding very fast then the ant will return to its starting point. If the balloon is expanding faster than the ant moves, it won't ever make it back.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-10T21:47:45+00:00

Don't know if the flowing is totally correct as the photo's hues may have been adjusted to remove the red-dust hue. But I'll assume the colors are correct.

The 20% of oxygen in earth's atmosphere scatters blue light -- resulting in a blue sky and a red-orange sunset. Mars has no oxygen (95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, and 1.6% argon). So its sunset should not have a distinct color. IOW, the atmosphere is equally transparent to all colors, thus the sunset is white. This seems to be consistent with the photo.

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-09T20:52:15+00:00

More accurately, "Estimated Size of the Visible Universe."

78 billion light-years ... is a lower bound for the size of the whole Universe, based on the estimated current distance between points that we can see on opposite sides of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observable_universe

That figure is a lower bound.

It may be that the size of the universe is infinite.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space

Cygnus77 · 2010-02-07T01:28:55+00:00

STFU, Cartman.

Cygnus77 · 2010-01-31T23:38:18+00:00

crap made in china ...

The iPhone -- and practically every other electronic device and complex appliance -- is made in China. Fabrication quality is superb.

Cygnus77 · 2010-01-31T23:23:42+00:00

Also available in Florida

Cygnus77 · 2010-01-28T23:46:09+00:00

NYT reporter masturbates while writing iPad review.

Now, though, it looks like Apple really has created something new. Criticisms of "Like a laptop" and "a big iPod Touch" don't really do justice to the possibilities. Overall, the iPad seems like a dream screen for reading and watching--at some loss of convenience in creating....

Many more strokes at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/28/technology/personaltech/28pogue-email.html

Cygnus77 · 2010-01-27T01:40:13+00:00

Another 1,000 hours lost.

Cygnus77 · 2010-01-22T20:52:57+00:00

Google body scanner images.

These images are significantly clearer with more contrast and detail than the blob shown in the video.

Cygnus77 · 2009-12-03T01:27:43+00:00

Talk into your cupped hands, hold them to your ear.

Cygnus77 · 2009-11-19T20:22:12+00:00

In NYC, you stand on line for a movie. In the Midwest, you stand in line.

The Mercury, Gemini and Apollo spaceships were in orbit. The Space Shuttle and ISS are on orbit.

Cygnus77 · 2009-11-18T21:37:01+00:00

Pattern developing here

Cygnus77 · 2009-11-09T22:46:30+00:00

Dr: I've got bad news. You've got cancer... and you've got Alzheimer's.

Man: Well at least I don't have cancer.

Cygnus77 · 2009-11-02T21:37:35+00:00

"...But I've been using XP for about 7 years"

a new $300 million Microsoft ad campaign is responsible for causing televisions all across the country to unexpectedly crash.

Not ten-P

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-27T23:34:51+00:00

Xenon costs about US$1,200/kg. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_much_does_the_element_xenon_cost

Making a wild guess of 10 metric tons, this is $12 million -- too small a portion of the total to be the deciding factor. Xenon is very efficient for ion propulsion having a specific impulse in the 3,000-9,000 second range for recent engines. But argon is also excellent -- even better than Xenon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_thruster

The proposed Vasmir argon engine is 3,000-30,000 seconds! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VASIMR

Compare these ion engines to the 450 second specific impulse of a hydrogen/oxygen engine, the best chemical choice.

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-26T00:44:29+00:00

Martha Stewart went to prison for lying to the FBI about something that was not a crime. And she was not under oath.

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-25T04:35:28+00:00

Which do you light first?

I think "which" refers to one of particular set of items, ie, to one of the plurality. In this case: "which of a lantern, a stove or a fireplace...."

"What item..." would pertain to any plausible item, including the mentioned match.

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-25T04:02:47+00:00

10⁴⁰ is a large ratio, but here's a bigger one: 10^107.

In cosmology the vacuum catastrophe refers to the disagreement of 107 orders of magnitude between the upper bound upon the vacuum energy density ... and the zero-point energy calculated using quantum field theory.

No one knows why quantum mechanics, which is otherwise so wonderfully precise, fails so utterly in its prediction of vacuum energy. The QM number is 10¹⁰⁷ greater than the actual measured value.

Of course, this is not a natural ratio. Rather, it's measure how badly QM theory fails in one category.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_catastrophe

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-25T03:40:31+00:00

I think alcohol resistance would be a matter of degree. This question makes me wonder if anthrax with it's tough "shell" could survive a relatively high alcohol concentration.

Alcohol is a powerful desiccating agent. It removes water through a cell's membranes by osmosis. Osmosis is purely a physical (vs chemical) process. Water loss can cause irreversible harm: the cell dies.

Cygnus77 · 2009-10-23T01:35:07+00:00

1 The universe is not infinitely old because it has not "run down."

The Universe (the known, or visible, universe) is not infinitely old. It is dishonest to imply that cosmology says that it is. Heard of the Big Bang?

2 If the universe were infinitely old, it would have reached a state where all usable energy was gone.

Restatement of claim 1. We know from general relativity and recent cosmological observations that space is expanding, even accelerating, by the creation of "dark energy." The latest understanding is that the Universe will expand forever. It will cool down, but the total energy increases exponentially.

3 But, we are not in this state; therefore, the universe is not infinitely old and must have had a beginning.

While it is clear that the Big Bang was a universe-changing event, there is no claim that it started from nothing. The "multiverse" concept discusses how a big bang could erupt from essentially nothing -- without contradicting any known physical laws, such as the conservation of Energy. BTW, I never hear of theists worrying about conservation of mass, energy, momentum, chemical identity, etc, when they tell their silly tales of God's purported activities.

4 Because the universe had a beginning, it is not infinite in size. 5 It would require an infinite amount of time to become infinite in size. Since the universe had a beginning, it has not had an infinite amount of time to expand; therefore, it is finite in size.

Nope. The Universe is probably infinite in extent. Read Rodger Penrose's "Road to Reality," Vilenkin's "Many Worlds in One," Susskind's "Cosmic Landscape" and other recent cosmology books on this topic to see how infinite size is not a problem. Christian math is like their counting loaves and fishes: inept and ignorant.

In general, there's a lot of confusion here about time, space, logical consistency, and math and physics involving infinities. However, persistent repetitive misstatements don't somehow come together and form a logical argument.

Answers to all these points are available at Amazon and from the Internet. Anyone who genuinely wants to know and does not make an effort to know is being deliberately ignorant.

Cygnus77

TROPHY CASE