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kamagmar

> the first fundamental particle observed since the quarks in the 1980's

A minor correction -- the tau neutrino wasn't discovered until 2000.

Re:Court Overturns Conviction of Ex-Goldman Programmer on Friday February 17, 2012 @09:47AM (#3603457)
He didn't intentionally upload code to Germany. He uploaded to xp-dev.com, and the server happened to be in Germany.
Re:America’s top export in 2011 was . . . fuel? on Saturday December 31, 2011 @05:22PM (#3412037)
According to this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/big-shift-for-gas-guz...

we exported $37.1B worth of vacuum tubes last year. I could be wrong but that amount seems wildly implausible. Could the category actually be "Vacuum tubes, etc." where "etc" is semiconductors?

Re:CERN Press Release: Higgs Search Update on Tuesday December 13, 2011 @02:18PM (#3348783)
Just to be clear: what they've ruled out is the Standard Model version of the Higgs boson. There are actually many possible kinds of Higgs bosons, the SM version being the simplest.
Re:Examples of errors detected in various open-source projects on Wednesday November 02, 2011 @01:06PM (#3187780)
Reminds me of this article on how hard it is to convince companies to use static analysis:

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/2/69354-a-few-billion-lin...

Re:Forbidden Fruits: Infographic Guide to Illegal Fruit on Saturday October 01, 2011 @08:18PM (#3061578)
Mangosteens may be legally imported to the US from SE Asia if irradiated. They may also be imported from Puerto Rico.

The Chicago fois gras ban ended in 2008.

> it's possible there are actually meth-heads who are also into identity theft

Not just possible, it's actually quite common, and has been for awhile. For example, see this article from 2004:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4460349/

Re:Should we worry about what the LHC is not finding? on Monday July 25, 2011 @03:46PM (#2804281)
I believe the main RS discovery channel is looking for a p pbar -> graviton -> e+ e- resonance, where p is a parton (i.e., quark or gluon).
Re:Should we worry about what the LHC is not finding? on Monday July 25, 2011 @02:03PM (#2803760)
Standard gravitons are already constrained to be almost massless, so i'm guessing the article is referring to Randall-Sundrum type massive gravitons in 5D.
Re:Greece defaults on Friday July 22, 2011 @01:11AM (#2792515)
> FYI there is no such thing as a "kind of" or "selective" default.

Yes there is. If this plan goes through, S&P will downgrade Greece's credit rating from CCC to SD ("selective default").

Re:Apple Reports Third Quarter Results on Tuesday July 19, 2011 @05:47PM (#2783253)
I thought enterprise value was market cap plus debt?
Re:Physicists: Universe Almost Certainly Not a Hologram on Wednesday July 06, 2011 @02:42PM (#2735286)
The title goes a bit too far. The new experiment doesn't rule out the Holographic Principle, it rules out Craig Hogan's model, which was inspired by the Principle.
Re:Youth unemployment: The outsiders on Wednesday July 06, 2011 @12:34PM (#2734637)
> Business owners who take a loss are defined by the government as living in poverty.

The poverty line sets a minimum level of consumption. These people are consuming above that threshold, so i don't think the government counts them as poor.

> If it weren't, consumption would be equal to income + change in net worth.

You're forgetting change in asset prices. If i own a house, and consume all my income, my net worth can still change if the price of the house changes.

Re:Youth unemployment: The outsiders on Wednesday July 06, 2011 @01:41AM (#2732712)
I took a look at the data you cite in your blog post. You seem to imply people earning < $5k/yr receive on average ~$20k in welfare. However, in the BLS Expenditure Survey you used to create the figure, under the section marked "Sources of income and personal taxes", the real number is only $467.[0]

This cohort doesn't appear to be very poor at all, in fact -- they report negative self-employment income. I wonder if you've confused low income with poverty. Or perhaps i'm confused, and haven't grasped your argument.

[0] I'm taking welfare to be the sum of "Unemployment and workers' compensation, veterans' benefits" and "Public assistance, supplemental security income, food stamps".

Re:What every programmer should know about time on Sunday July 03, 2011 @11:26PM (#2725272)
> UTC (which is an arbitrary human invention)

Hmm, i wouldn't call it totally arbitrary. UTC = TAI + LS, such that |UTC - UT1| < 1 second, where:

* LS are leap seconds,

* TAI is "physicist" time, based on the ticking of atomic clocks at mean sea level. The length of a second is constant.

* UT1 is "astronomer" time, the rotation angle of the Earth with respect to the quasar reference frame. The length of a second is not constant.

The Earth's rotation is slowing down, so UT1 is gradually drifting away from TAI. UTC is a pretty natural scheme to reconcile these two systems.

Re:Bank of Canada: The New $100 Note on Friday June 24, 2011 @09:57PM (#2694683)
We should get rid of the penny and the nickel, and then issue 10, 20, 50, 100, and 200 cent coins.