Stephen Speicher

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Posts posted by Stephen Speicher

  1. Posted · Report post

    What Spartans fought for was the idea of freedom, and not abstract freedom. They fought for their freedom.... All the great fights for freedom in the West have never been abstract, but particular, and not about principles unrelated to them personally, but exclusively related to them personally, and only by extension made into general principles true for everyone.

    You seem to using "abstract" here as something disconnected from reality, but the "idea of freedom" is an abstraction. Perhaps it is worthwhile clarifying your meaning, so as not to be misunderstood.

  2. Posted · Report post

    So if you wanted to upgrade from 32-bit Media Center XP to 64-bit Windows Ultimate (which has the Media Center functionality), you might not be able to use the upgrade wizard, but you could still buy the full version and install it in 64-bit if you wanted. But then you have to worry about making sure your hardware, which came with a 32-bit OS, all has 64-bit drivers...

    I'm having trouble finding any off-the-shelf machines set up (at BestBuy, at Fry's -- Dell, Gateway, Sony, HP, etc.) with 64-bit Vista Ultimate to run Media Center. I do not want to have to worry about finding drivers myself, which is why I would like to have the machine already set up that way. Is there someplace else I should be looking?

  4. Posted · Report post

    Going back to the men's abs, which kept haunting me, I found this video clip of Lena Heady very funny. Where she mentioned that she was surrounded by flesh! (The video is in the 300 website - Making of 300 - Video Journals - 6: Lena Heady). I was so envious! :angry:

    The URL for the movie became garbled above, so here is the pointer to the 300 website. (The video with Lena Headey is delightful. Thanks, Lu.)

  7. Posted · Report post

    If anyone is interested, here is a link where you can purchase the DVD

    http://www.wagtv.com/acatalog/store.asp

    Thanks for providing the pointer to the DVD of the show.

    Allan Chapman's Great Scientists DVD looks interesting. Do you know who are the five scientists that he focuses on?

    Also, when the price is only in pounds, as it is for Great Scientists, I assume that is because the DVD is available for Region 2 only. Do you know if that is right?

  12. Posted · Report post

    The fine structure constant is a dimensionless number that relates several fundemantal constants of physics, including the speed of light, Planck's constant, and the electric charge. The number 137 is actually the inverse of the fine structure constant, and it is close to but not exactly 137.

    Stephen, could you define dimensionless number?

    It just means a quantity which itself has no physical units (no distance, no time, etc.). Most often, the number itself relates together various quantities that themselves do have physical units, but the relationship among the quantities is such that all the units cancel out. So, the fine structure constant relates the speed of light, Planck's constant, and the electric charge in such a way that the units cancel each other out, whatever consistent system of units they are expressed in.

    A more common dimensionless quantity that almost everyone has some sense of, is a drag coefficient. Most all know that a sleekly designed car has less air resistance than a car in the shape of a box. The dimensionless quantity that expresses that relationship is known as the drag coefficient.

  13. Posted · Report post

    Whatever the cause, it would be best for you to upgrade to SP2 to rule that out ...

    Ha! I found the group microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter, and a whole bunch of guys who applied the DST update to SP2 are complaining about their own one-hour-off problem. It seems that, for them, the schedule appears correctly, but the recording time is one hour off. (You can't win. :angry: )

    Before I found that group, I poked around in Media Center and found that the software uses zap2it as the scheduling source. I put in my zip code at zap2it.com and viewed the same-named provider that I downloaded to Media Center. The website schedule has the correct times, but the Media Center schedule times are off by an hour.

    At this point I have concluded two things:

    1. Getting the 6 o'clock news at 5 o'clock should be interesting, especially for live news. :)

    2. I'll wait until the old DST comes into effect. I suspect the problem will go away then.

  14. Posted · Report post

    Do you know anyone else with Media Center who has the same problem, with or without the SP2 upgrade?

    I don't know anyone around my area who is using it, though some members of THE FORUM use Media Center.

    Regarding Jeff's several suppositions, I have confirmed one thing: whatever is going on is independent of the local time on my computer. I set my computer time to be hours off of the actual time and when downloading the schedule everything is off by one hour, just like before.

  15. Posted · Report post

    The scene was an exceptional illustration of a rarely grasped idea. I wonder how Miller could have seen this and yet not excised the use of "sacrifice" from other parts of the film.

    A question: looking at the context where the word "sacrifice" is used in the movie, what meaning does it convey? Might Miller be using the proper concept but using a word that to many Objectivists conveys a different meaning?

    I have had countless conversations with people who use the word "sacrifice" and upon inquiry most often it turns out that their intended meaning is not the surrender of a higher value for a lesser one. A typical conversation might go like this:

    He: My uncle sacrificed his life in World War II.

    Me: How did he sacrifice his life?

    He: He enlisted in the army as a soldier and he died fighting in the Battle of the Bulge in 1944.

    Me: Why did he enlist and choose to fight?

    He: Because he loved his family and his country and wanted to protect them.

    Me: But didn't he love his own life?

    He: Oh, yes. He had a passion for living, but he did not want to live in a world where he, his family, and his country were ruled by the Nazis.

    Me: And that's why he sacrificed his life?

    He: Yes.

    I have found this sense of "sacrifice" to be quite common usage. In fact, in the OED, after the first two definitions of "sacrifice" (which are given in a religious context, like sacrificing sheep to the Gods) the third definition of the verb "sacrifice is:

    To surrender or give up (something) for the attainment of some higher advantage or dearer object.

    Is this not the sense of "sacrifice" as Miller used?

  16. Posted · Report post

    This is interesting: http://www.thespacereview.com/article/427/1

    Apparently Richard Garriot - computer game industry pioneer and creator of the famed Ultima series - had a hand in getting the space tourism industry off the ground (pun intended).

    That's a fascinating little piece of space history. Thanks for posting this. Apparently, even Dennis Tito, the first "space tourist," did not know of the ground work Garriot had done.

  17. Posted · Report post

    This is a region where the tides run so strong in both directions through narrow passages that nearby there is also a "reversing falls" which acts like a "water fall" that flows in whichever direction the tide is moving.

    The picture of it looks beautiful. I've never actually seen anything like that.

    I will leave it for Stephen to give the relativistic quantum gravitational explanation of whirlpools. :angry:

    The best I can do is M51, the magnificent Whirlpool Galaxy, which speaks for itself. :)

    WhirlpoolGalaxyStarbirth.jpg

  18. Posted · Report post

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17596139/wid/11915773/

    This is, sadly, not surprising. But sometimes I just think, "This has to be a joke, right? People can't really be this ridiculous!" Yes, they can.

    Well, at least this gives the bureaucrats something to do. :angry:

    To get a better idea of the shapes of Spanish women’s bodies, the government is employing some heavy technology. Using laser-fitted booths that can take 130 measurements of a body in 30 seconds, the Health Ministry is fanning out across the country to assess the sizes of Spanish women.

  21. Posted · Report post

    Ah, I see. Although it might adjust based on your computer's time zone, your time zone is correctly set--just the time (universal) itself is off. (One wouldn't expect the schedule to adjust, say, by 5 minutes, if your clock were 5 minutes off.) Or...would it? Perhaps the downloaded schedule is used to schedule your computer to record programs? If the software is measuring your computer clock's offset from a remote clock, then it might be adjusting to ensure that your computer always records or alerts you at the right time.

    If that's not the case, then I'm not sure. Maybe they're just having a server or software problem. :angry:

    Just in case I was not clear ... On the Media Center guide schedule, Lost is shown as starting at 9PM, even though it is actually scheduled for 10PM. And, the cable box guide shows Lost correctly, as scheduled for 10PM.

    Sort of confusing. :)

  23. Posted · Report post

    Yes, I think simply disabling automatic daylight saving adjustment would allow manually setting the time so your computer always has the correct local time.

    I set the time manually and everything has worked just fine, until now. I noticed that the TV program schedules for my Media Center are listed at times an hour earlier than they are actually on. I reloaded the guide data, but still the same. The cable box itself has all programs listed at the correct times.

    Anyone have a clue?

    p.s. I have tried this with and without disabling "Automatically adjust clock for daylight savings changes," and nothing changed.

  24. Posted · Report post

    I checked the news this morning and came across something I didn't expect at all, a giant whirlpool right next to my country. :angry:

    http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0...283-911,00.html

    A MASSIVE, mysterious whirlpool of cold water has developed off the coast of Sydney, forcing the sea surface to fall almost 1m and ocean currents to change course.

    Dubbed a sea "monster" by CSIRO oceanographers, the huge body of water stretches almost 200km across and plunges 1000m towards the ocean floor. Its centre sits just 100km off the coast of Sydney and could stay there for months.

    Scientists are baffled by the powerful cold-water eddy, which is invisible to the human eye but can be tracked through satellite images....

    Well, this certainly sounds ominous. A "MASSIVE, mysterious whirlpool," a "sea 'monster'," which "cientists are baffled by." And at the end of the story it seems as if a meeting was convened so that the "whirlpool will today be discussed in Hobart at a meeting of 200 Australian, European and US scientists."

    But if we read the actual CSIRO announcement (CSIRO is the "Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, ... Australia's national science agency"), we learn,

    Dr Griffin, from the Wealth from Oceans Flagship Research program, said cold-water eddies regularly appear off Sydney.

    “Until 20 years ago we would not have known they even existed without accidentally steaming through them on a research vessel,” he said.

    “However, now that we can routinely identify them from space via satellite, marine scientists can evaluate their role as a source of life in the marine ecosystem.”

    Seems a bit less ominous, don't you think? And, regarding the meeting,

    The cold-water eddy phenomena will be one of a wide range of issues to be discussed during a meeting ...

    (Bold added.)

    It seems then that with the advance of satellite imagery this not-that-unusual phenomena is now being investigated at a level of cause and effect detail not previously possible. Interesting, but not exactly a mysterious sea monster that baffles scientific inquiry.