Become a fan of Slashdot on Facebook

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror

Comment Re:Uh... I have a bad feeling about this. (Score 2) 28

F = G * (m1 * m2) / r^2

Or as we call it, Newton's inverse square law, where the force of gravity on any two objects is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Space is really really really really really big (the observable universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light-years), so it is literally impossible for any combination of mergers to have any effect beyond an infinitesimal region of the universe. Even a galactic merger which caused two supermassive blackholes to merge would have little or no measurable effect on a neighbouring galaxy as far away as Andromeda is from us (about 2.54 million light years away).

In fact, it's not until LIGO that we have even been able to detect the mergers of super dense and super massive objects like neutron stars and black holes, just to give you an idea of how the inverse square law limits the influences of gravity over very large distances.

Comment Re:Lines aren't frozen. (Score 3, Insightful) 242

Good point. An army that sees all others as subhuman and sees only the next death is one that has to keep fighting. It has no choice. It's the only thing it knows. It can keep conquering more territory outwards, or it can slaughter its own government inwards. History shows those are your two options.

Whether or not Russia conquers Ukraine, it will attack other countries - vast numbers of bored, underpaid soldiers would seek entertainment elsewhere if they didn't.

Comment Re:Two simple questions. (Score 1) 240

This is what I'm going by:

The report said that in December 2018, the US Federal Aviation Administration issued a special airworthiness information bulletin based on reports from operators of model 737 planes that the fuel control switches were installed with the locking feature disengaged.

The airworthiness concern was not considered an unsafe condition that would warrant an airworthiness directive – a legally enforceable regulation to correct unsafe conditions.

The same switch design is used in Boeing 787-8 aircraft, including Air India’s VT-ANB, which crashed. The report added: “As per the information from Air India, the suggested inspections were not carried out as the SAIB was advisory and not mandatory.”

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fwo...

Comment Re:China's energy policy is coal first ... (Score 1) 215

While China's CO2 output is the highest globally, per capita its output is just over half of the US. That's even without considering that much of China's output is as in this article, manufacturing pollution imported from other countries. The bill for this pollution should fall on the country that consumed the manufacturing output.

Comment Two simple questions. (Score 1) 240

1. Were the safety guards, which were optional, installed?

2. We know investigators are looking into the computer system, does this mean the computer can also set the switch settings?

If the answers are "no" and "no" respectively, it was likely an accidental bump.

If the answers are "yes" and "no", then one of the pilots lied.

If the answer to the second one is yes, then regardless of the answer to the first, I'd hope the investigation thoroughly checks whether the software can be triggered into doing so through faulty data or the existence of software defects.

Comment Not mentioned (Score 1) 13

>the Nokia feature phone business from Microsoft, which had in turn bought the ailing brand in 2014.

No mention that Microsoft sent executive Stephen Elop to dismantle Nokia as its CEO in 2010. Nor that in 2014 as part of the deal to acquire Nokia's phone business leaving the rest of the company to soldier on, Nokia insisted that Microsoft repossess him.

Slashdot Top Deals

One of the chief duties of the mathematician in acting as an advisor... is to discourage... from expecting too much from mathematics. -- N. Wiener

Working...