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Phil Deakins

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Everything posted by Phil Deakins

  1. You inadvertantly highlighted the main reason why I'm not drawn to putting time and money into astronomy. That is, with relatively low cost equipment (I don't mean cheap), there's not a lot to see and, once you've seen them all, then what? - other than spending more money on better equipment. I prefer to read, so I buy books. Madelaine mentioned Brian Greene. I haven't read the book she mentioned but I have his follow-up book - "The Fabric Of The Cosmos". I found a real gem (for me) in that one, which, to me, is much better than seeing Saturn's rings, for instance. He said that everything, including you and me, is in motion at the speed of light. The speed I travel through space, plus the speed of my personal time, adds up to the speed of light. A real gem. So, the quicker I move through space, the slower my time clock ticks, and vice versa. It really helps me to get a grasp of personal time. A conclusion I drew from it is that, from a photon of light's point of view, there is no time, and it is simultaneously everywhere it will ever be. I like that
  2. Madelaine McMasters wrote: Well, we can't prove negatives, so I don't try. I can actually imagine endless alternative ways we might have come into existence, but the religious (and perhaps the string/brane/multiverse theorists ;-) are so good at it that I feel woefully outclassed. And just because a question goes around begging doesn't mean I'm gonna make up an answer for it. I have no problem with admitting I don't know. And this has seemed to be the dividing line between me and my faithful friends. They need to know "why" right now. I can wait. Nothing can be proved either way, of course, but I'd be interested to hear some of your alternative ways that existance might have come to happen - alternatives to that it was created, that is. I can only imagine one alternative - that it was always there - but I can't believe that because of the question, "How come?" I suspect that the reluctance among many to acknowledge that the universe might have a creator is simply that they prefer it not to be the case.
  3. Madelaine McMasters wrote: The "creation" argument is really looking for a sentient creator, possibily one that looks after us. I understand the comfort that ideology can bring to some, but it brings none to me, as I like to poke and prod and ponder and I see no evidence to support that ideology. If you allow for the possibility that the dimensions of space and time we observe spring from some larger dimensional space we can't probe, then we're sorta stuck in a state of perpetual wonderment. Could it get any better than that?! ;-) At the same time, you see no evidence against that ideoligy. What you also don't see is any alternative way that existance came to exist. (Existance includes such things as our universe springing from an existing multiverse, and some existing "larger dimensional space") I see no alternative to existance having beed created. Even the 'always there' idea begs the question, "How come?", which in turn leads to the conclusion that it was created and not always there. I've been careful not to suggest a sentient creator, to the extent of writing "someone or something" and such.
  4. Yes, what came before the Big Bang is meaningless. Even using the word 'before' is meaningless because it entails time, which also didn't exist. Stephen Hawking, a friend of Roger Penrose, said the same thing. The various theories you mentioned only apply to the realm of existance. It's meaningless to ask what it was like before existance. But we are talking about how existance came to exist. What happened after the universe came into existance is irrelevant. When the universe came into existance, it may have been comprised of only energy and contained in the tiniest point possible, but it was still the universe existing in dimensions. We can't know anything about the nothingness when the universe didn't exist. We can't even imagine it, because it isn't anything to imagine. You are talking about the existing universe (inflation, Big Bang, multiverses, etc.), which necessarily means during the time it exists. I have no heartfelt disagreement with such theories, but they apply after the universe came into being and they don't even try to address whether or not it was created. What it boils down is this. (1) the universe (or universes) always existed; i.e. existance always existed. Or (2) existance was created, and when it didn't exist there was absolute nothingness. In both cases the question arises "How come the universe exists?" and the answer must be a creator of some sort. ETA: I just re-read your post and you do seem to accept that the universe was created. You said, "when all of space and time was created in the Big Bang itself" and "Pre-big bang nothingness is absolute.", which is something I've been saying here. You suggest that the universe was created at the Big Bang, so we appear to agree that the universe had a creator of some sort, which is what I've been saying.
  5. I've had a pair of binoculars and a small telescope for a very long time. For me to get into astronomy these days, I'd need a much better telescope and I don't feel the urge to go to those lengths.
  6. Nyll Bergbahn wrote: I wouldn't say that. Scientist may not have all the answers but certainly have many explanations and the overwhelming evidence is for the Big Bang theory. However, it is still a theory. To say that nobody has any concept of how there was 'nothing' and then there was 'something' is not quite correct. Although unproven, the inflationary theory offers one possible answer for example and I like this explanation. You have a vacuum with zero energy and zero mass. Quantum mechanics however says that entities are not exactly any number, not even exactly zero. So the amount of mass fluctuates around zero, with bits and particles fleeting into existence for the briefest of moments here and there with most flipping instantly back into nothingness. However, the bit of mass (or field of energy as mass and energy are equivalent) that started our universe came attached to an inflationery field and this field has an antigravitional force (negative energy) causing it to expand at an immense rate. So, you have a huge field of negative energy coupled with the sudden appearance of greater than zero mass but mass and energy are equivalent so when added together you still have zero total mass and energy. If you add up all the energy and mass in the universe, it may still come to zero. So the question "How did something come from nothing?" ceases to be an issue because there is no 'something'. We live in a universe exactly equivalent to the 'nothing' that came before the Big Bang. The problem with all of that is that it entirely misses the point. It's impossible to imagine absolute nothingness - no space, however tiny, no matter, no vacuum, no energy - nothing whatsover. The Big Bang theory requires something to bang, however tiny the something is. It also requires somewhere (dimensions) for the bang to occur in, however tiny that somewhere is. The Big Bang theory describes what may or may not have happened when something already existed. It doesn't describe anything about how that something came into being. The inflationary theory needs something to inflate, of course. It's not possible to imagine absolute nothingness - no place, no matter, no energy, no vacuum - absolute nothingness. But, unless the universe was always 'there', there had to be absolute nothingness, and then there was something. The something had to be created, since there is nothing in absolute nothingness that could cause it to happen. Alternatively, the universe may always have been there. Both cases beg the question, "How come?". And the only answer is a creator of some sort. Your post started when something already existed but where did that something come from?
  7. Madelaine. I have to say that I found your lengthy second reply to me to be very persuasive. Apart from the fact that the estimated number of stars in our galaxy seems to fluctuate wildly all the time - from 100 million not many years ago to the 300 million of your post - the reply was equation-free, which made it much more interesting to me, and much easier to follow. My first thought was to say that the combined starlight of galaxies is irrelevant, because we'd still see the light of a single star that is in that location, but, as I read further, I did away with that thought. Most persuasive. Thank you. Madelaine McMasters wrote: Welcome to astronomy, Phil! ;-) I've always found astronomy to be very interesting and, when I was a young man, it was a hobby that I would have liked to take up. Unfortunately, the lack of time and money prevented it. Also, there were other things to do. Now that I have the time, and money isn't a barrier, it doesn't draw me enough to get into it. I still find it very interesting but not interesting enough to invest time and money on. Apart from that, I live in a light-polluted city, so doing it wouldn't be very good where I am.
  8. Nyll Bergbahn wrote: Does science need a deity, an intelligence that created everything? Many would say no, we have the scientific explanations to dispel any notion of a deity. And many would be wrong. We don't have the scientific explanations at all. The best minds on the planet have found it impossible to do away with a 'creator' and still explain how the universe/matter exists at all, including the space for it to exist in. Remember, there was absolutely nothing - no space, no matter, nothing - and then there was something. Nobody has any concept of how that could have happened other than it was arbitrarily created by someone or something. The more you ponder "How come it exists?", the more you are forced towards the idea of 'it must have been created'. The steady-state idea raises the same question - "How come?" - which leads to the same conclusion.
  9. Peggy. The word 'bandwidth' is used for both speed (amount per second) and quantity (e.g. n gigs per month or you have to pay more). Judging by the posts in this thread, there is a real problem that was recently introduced, so it's better to discuss that than quibble about a word.
  10. Thank you for your long and detailed explanation, Madelaine. The maths is beyond me, of course, so I can't really comprehend the detail. Regardless of that, it doesn't change my view, which applies to a star that is millions or billions of light years away and not just a mere hundred light years away. I can't accept that such a star could perpetually emit sufficient particles (light), spreading outward from the star, that I can see at all points on earth - and even at all points in the universe. I should add that I can't really see how waves in a medium could survive over such distances either. Mainly because of all the other waves interfering with it. But I like the waves idea better than the idea of the perpetual emission of sufficient particles so that, from billions of light years away, I can see the light from the star at all points on earth and in the universe.
  11. What Madelaine said But seriously... remember how long it took String Theory to gain a good degree of acceptance. It was coceived in the 60s, became a failure, and was then resurrected in the late 80 and 90s. Even if your ideas have been considered and rejected by people who are able to realistically evaluate them, don't lose heart - that's what happened to string theory for a long time. However, theories come and fail. E.g. Lee Smolin, a respected theoretical physicist, came up with a good one ("cosmological natural selection") in the 90s, but it wasn't accepted by his peers. It failed - so far. Personally, I dislike the particularity of light idea for one simple reason. If if stand and look at a star in the cloudless night sky, I see light from it, if I move a fraction to the right, I still see light from it. If I move a fraction more, I still the light. I can move to an infinite number of points in any direction and I always see the light from the star. For that to happen, either the star must emit an infinite amount of light all the time, which is impossible, or what it does emit must cause spreading waves in some medium - like the waves of water when a pebble is dropped into a pond. The pebble doesn't spread - the medium does. So, for decades, I've been of the opinion that space is such a medium, that photons are the waves in that medium that are caused by the star, and that it is those waves that hit my retinas rather than some substance that was originally emitted by the star. I can't account for the experimental results that Madelaine mentioned, but there is a lot of physics that can't yet be accounted for, or that is re-evaluated in the future. So I was well pleased when I first heard of the Higgs Ocean idea. It suited my thinking down to the ground
  12. Oops. I hadn't noticed that Serena's "No it's not" was a reply to Innula. My mistake :smileysurprised:
  13. I don't agree that most SL users are odd (I prefer 'unusual') but some certainly are. A number of people have said it of themselves in the forum, stating that SL is a great help to them. I met one person who told me that she was in a mental home, and she was. We talked on voice and I could hear other obvious patients in the background. But it doesn't matter. A person I am communicating with is what I perceive them to be. If s/he appears 'normal' then s/he is normal to me, regardless of how s/he is in the real world. The opposite is also true.
  14. Since the OP has received all the answers, I thought I'd chip in with a comment on a small dialog that occured in the thread. In answer to the OP's question "Is spying legal?", Serena correctly answered, "No it's not", 16 replied to Serena with, "Yes it is", which is the wrong answer, and Serena accepted the correction. Serena's first reply was correct, 16 misunderstood the reply and erroneously corrected Serena, whereupon Serena accepted the erroneous correction but still understood the correct answer. Life's weird, init?
  15. Sorry to interupt this discussion but I just have to express my pleasure at your picture finally being back :matte-motes-big-grin: Back to the topic... Report it. It may not do any good but it won't do any harm and it may do some good.
  16. That's good to know, Qie. I encountered it with the security device that I made and sell. A customer reprted it to me and I was over there checking it when I was suddenly in an earthquake, so I remember it very well .
  17. Qie Niangao wrote: There have been some very odd glitches in sensors that span a sim border, such that reports may come from across the wrong sim border. That can be pretty mystifying, the first time it's encountered. But for a security system, it hardly matters, since they pretty much always use llOverMyLand() to stay within ToS. There is or was a flaw so that llOverMyLand() didn't stop people who were in the next sim, but in range, from being sent the 'leave or be removed' message, and a workaround is or was needed. I discovered it when a customer IMed to tell me that people on the adjacent sim were receiving the messages, even though the device didn't (couldn't) remove them from the parcel they were on. The customer's parcel was on the sim border. It shouldn't have happened at all and I was so mystified by it that I had to ask about it in the Scripting forum. It turned out to be a known flaw and someone suggested a workaround that worked. I've no idea whether or not the flaw still exists. Getting all avs in the sim and checking distances, rather than getting all avs in range, will avoid that flaw - and allow for >96m ranges, of course.
  18. Qie Niangao wrote: Mostly llGetAgentList(). That's a modest improvement for fixed-sensor scripts (things that don't try to "secure" beyond a 96m radius of the device itself). It's a massive win compared to rezzing multiple moving sensor probes. Cheers Qie. The one I sell is fixed-sensor so, if it's only a modest improvement on script time, it doesn't seem worth it, but I could make use of it to do away the 96m limit. It would also do away with the workaround that's needed to prevent the SL system from thinking that in-range avs on an adjoining sim are actually on the parcel - if that flaw still exists, that is.
  19. Qie Niangao wrote: (Also, any scripts of this type that haven't been updated in the past year are several times more laggy than they need to be. But bad settings will still be bad settings, however shiny the scripts.) How come? What's changed that would reduce any lag caused by security devices? I can only think of a device's regular scans. Has LL changed things so that an event need only be generated when there's a 'hit'?
  20. See your PMs, Dillon. Just out of interest, the reason that there's a multi-second delay before the security device goes off is because security devices scan at regular intervals and they only spot avs when they scan. If an av enters range at the precise scan time, it will go off immediately. If an av enters immediately after the scan, there will be several seconds delay before the device scans again and becomes aware of it. So it can go off anywhere between immediately and the number of seconds in the scan period, and the number of seconds before it communicates with an av can't be adjusted.
  21. Dillon. A thought occured to me concerning your discussion with Qie... You said that all the person needs to do it step off the bed or stand up to be safe, and that they aren't given that information. You also said that you set it up so that it only kicked in when a poseball had been activated - something like that. If you can control it to that degree, perhaps you can rewrite the messages that the device issues so that the person can know to simply step off the bed or stand up. If you can do that, it would be very helpful.
  22. Qie Niangao wrote: Yeah, maybe. I mean, to each his own -- except when it's harmful to others. And that's where settings come into play. Right on this page we see 10 seconds being mentioned as if it were a reasonable time to escape, whereas it's obviously not even close to adequate. I agree that 10 seconds isn't enough time for a stranger to read the message and realise that they have to leave, figure out which way to go and actually clear the device's limit, not knowing where the limit is, before being booted. It wouldn't be too bad if the device ejected them so they are placed just outside the parcel, but booting to Home would be very bad. The devices that I came across way back in the past gave several warnings before removing the person, so there was a visible countdown that took a lot longer than 10 seconds. They were in the form of, 1. You must leave, 2. You must leave, 3. Final warning, 4. boot, and there was around 10 seconds between each. That's apart from one device that sent you Home you on sight. It was on a relatively small parcel but you didn't even have time to fly straight across its narrow dimension before being sent Home. That was really bad. An IM to the owner got it changed. So, as long as a reasonable time is given for the person to leave, there's nothing wrong or negative with security devices, imo.
  23. Qie Niangao wrote: They are stupid and pointless, Security devices are neither stupid nor pointless. I doesn't matter whether or not some people think that it's fine for people to wander around other people's property when the owner is offline, or that security devices need only cover certain parts of a property. The only thing that matters is what the owner thinks. And, if the owner doesn't want people on the propertry, preventing it is neither stupid nor pointless. The point of it is that the owner wants it that way, so it's not pointless. It's not stupid because it's a sensible way to fulfil the owner's requirements.
  24. Orca Flotta wrote: Thank you, Dillon, I get the picture :smileywink: That's good and maybe even wise use of orb. And as Triple and you have pointed out orbs are thousand times better than banlines. Still I don't see the need for any sort of security. My land is open, it must be since I have a public marina there and my café. My sexbed I keep mobile, in an airship which I rezz somewhere else if and when needed. Out of sight, out of mind, ya know? I know most people are more homely and cocooning in but then, what do they care about their "private" stuff once they are logged off? Your preferences are not a template that everyone should have. For instance, not everyone wants to have their usable stuff mobile, and not everyone is happy with other people using their stuff. As someone said, not everyone wants to log in to find other people using their animated bed. The idea of, 'if you want to use a sexbed, buy one or find a freebie', is perfectly acceptable to all. You are more than welcome to operate the way you do but don't imagine that other people ought to operate the same way. So security devices are a big positive and not in any way a negative - unless the device is set to remove people instantly, without warning. They should never be set to do that.
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