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From: jmfbahciv on 5 May 2010 08:43 Michelle Steiner wrote: > In article <PM000485C336C38E0C(a)aca25eab.ipt.aol.com>, > jmfbahciv <username(a)isp.net.invalid> wrote: > >> Did you know that Mark Twain wrote science fiction? I don't have the >> book unpacked so I can't give you the title. > > A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. > I'd forgotten about that one. There is another, too. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 5 May 2010 08:43 Joe Pfeiffer wrote: > Charles Richmond <frizzle(a)tx.rr.com> writes: > >> Joe Pfeiffer wrote: >>> Warren Oates <warren.oates(a)gmail.com> writes: >>> >>>> In article <1b4oin4ow5.fsf(a)snowball.wb.pfeifferfamily.net>, >>>> Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer(a)cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: >>>> >>>>> That's a common response, but simply is not true. Nobody laughed at >>>>> Copernicus and Galileo; Galileo wan't placed under house arrest because >>>>> his ideas were regarded as crazy, it was because the Church was afraid >>>>> of the theological implications of those ideas. Nobody laughed at >>>>> Newton. Nobody laughed at Darwin (and, once again, the only real >>>>> opposition to evolution is based on theology). Nobody laughed at the >>>>> Wright Brothers or Edison. >>>> But they _did_ laugh at Tesla. >>>> >>>> <http://recombu.com/news/nikola-tesla-predicted-mobile-phones-in-1909_M11 683.html> >>> >>> Because Tesla was the single best example I've ever heard of of somebody >>> who was both a genius and a certifiable loon. >> >> And even Lord Kelvin said that heavier-than-air machines can *not* >> fly. > > I wonder in what context he said it -- he must have been talking > engineering practicalities, not violations of fundamental laws of > physics. Right. > >> Different groups of scientists often propose different theories of how >> things work. Their support of their theories is often highly colored >> by their opinions and egos. >> >> For a new theory to be fully accepted, often the "old guard" have to >> die out. > > You don't appear to understand the extent that virtually everything we > think we know about relativity would have to be completely wrong for > those theories to work even remotely as presented in science fiction. Geometry is the key. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 5 May 2010 08:43 Charles Richmond wrote: > Michelle Steiner wrote: >> In article <hrpt30$q3r$4(a)news.eternal-september.org>, >> Charles Richmond <frizzle(a)tx.rr.com> wrote: >> >>> And even Lord Kelvin said that heavier-than-air machines can *not* fly. >>> >>> Different groups of scientists often propose different theories of how >>> things work. Their support of their theories is often highly colored by >>> their opinions and egos. >>> >>> For a new theory to be fully accepted, often the "old guard" have to die >>> out. >> >> Clarke's Laws: >> >> 1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is >> possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is >> impossible, he is probably wrong. >> >> 2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture >> a little way past them into the impossible. >> >> 3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. >> > > I have heard of a speech giving to freshmen in the college of > engineering: "In the four years you are here, half of everything > we teach you will be wrong. It's your job to figure out which half." > That's easy to figure out. The direction of the flow of charge. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 5 May 2010 08:43 Charles Richmond wrote: > Joe Pfeiffer wrote: >> Warren Oates <warren.oates(a)gmail.com> writes: >> >>> In article <1b4oin4ow5.fsf(a)snowball.wb.pfeifferfamily.net>, >>> Joe Pfeiffer <pfeiffer(a)cs.nmsu.edu> wrote: >>> >>>> That's a common response, but simply is not true. Nobody laughed at >>>> Copernicus and Galileo; Galileo wan't placed under house arrest because >>>> his ideas were regarded as crazy, it was because the Church was afraid >>>> of the theological implications of those ideas. Nobody laughed at >>>> Newton. Nobody laughed at Darwin (and, once again, the only real >>>> opposition to evolution is based on theology). Nobody laughed at the >>>> Wright Brothers or Edison. >>> But they _did_ laugh at Tesla. >>> >>> <http://recombu.com/news/nikola-tesla-predicted-mobile-phones-in-1909_M116 83.html> >> >> Because Tesla was the single best example I've ever heard of of somebody >> who was both a genius and a certifiable loon. > > And even Lord Kelvin said that heavier-than-air machines can *not* > fly. Not with the techonology of that time. > > Different groups of scientists often propose different theories of > how things work. Their support of their theories is often highly > colored by their opinions and egos. > > For a new theory to be fully accepted, often the "old guard" have > to die out. > Wrong. that's not how the work is done. Sigh! Thou art, obviously, an engineer. ;-) /BAH
From: Richard Maine on 5 May 2010 08:48
jmfbahciv <username(a)isp.net.invalid> wrote: > Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote: > > jmfbahciv wrote: > > > >> Nope. What remains of the work produced by DEC is all over the place; > >> it's simply not recognized. > > > > And their misdeeds too, for example, that stupid backwards memory model for > > storing data that was the exact opposite of everyone else's. > > I don't understand what you're talking about. You can store data any which > way you wanted to. > > > > It was picked up by Intel and we stuck with it today on the Mac. > > > > In comparison, the PPC used the saner model. > > Are you talking about push down lists? I hesitate to even mention matters of religion, so I'll just say that he is obviously (to me - though maybe that's just because I tend to share his religious beliefs) referring to big endian versus little endian. No further will I comment. -- Richard Maine | Good judgment comes from experience; email: last name at domain . net | experience comes from bad judgment. domain: summertriangle | -- Mark Twain |