LHC Fully Documented Online 239
Physicser writes "Want to read every single technical detail of the design and construction of the Large Hadron Collider and its six detectors? The whole shebang — seven reports totaling 1600 pages, 115 MB, with contributions from 8000 scientists and engineers — has been published electronically by the Journal of Instrumentation, free to read without a subscription."
Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)
Not particularly.
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Informative)
Hint: click on the word "abstract". It's turtles all the way down.
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)
It's like a giant hula-hoop(TM), lying on the ground, with tiny bits of things forced to circle inside it until they collide with one another, which results in the Earth disappearing into a black hole.
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:4, Funny)
You know, for kids.
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Or you could watch this TED lecture [ted.com] for a nice explanation:
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:4, Funny)
Actually you should. If you read between the lines--or better yet check the hidden information in the PDFs, you will find that they are hiding a certain set of circuitry labeled "B/H RETENT PD" with one dial normally set to 0. It's other setting: >0. And right under it there is a green indicator light with a label "DOOMSDAY DEVICE ACTIVE."
What does that mean? Don't touch that dial!
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Dials which only have settings of zero and > 0 don't scare me. It's those which have only 0 and 11 that we have to be wary of. In this case, the setting of non-zero is labeled "none more black" and no one has ever survived that one.
Re:Want to read every single technical detail...? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well now I did. Way to ruin my ignorance, dude! How about some <spoiler> tags next time?
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Mr. Smith: I move my finger one inch to use my turn signal. Why are these assholes so lazy they can't move their finger one fucking measly inch to drive more safely? You wanna know why?
DQ: Not particularly.
Mr. Smith: Because these rich bastards have to be callous and inconsiderate in the first place to make all that money, so when they get on the road, they can't help themselves. They've gotta be callous and inconsiderate drivers too. It's in their nature.
Re:Okay, other options (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Okay, other options (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Okay, other options (Score:5, Funny)
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PR0N! (Score:5, Funny)
This is something to download, store away, and reminisce some 30 years later.
What 30 years later? (Score:5, Funny)
I thought that there will be no 30 years later after they turn on the machine...
Re:What 30 years later? (Score:5, Funny)
If you end up in some evil mirror universe where W became President instread of Gore you could use the plans to build another LHC to get back home.
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(applause)
Re:What 30 years later? (Score:5, Funny)
W+ or W-?
And what's with Z?
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I'm just downloading it for the pictures.
I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)
I know it's going to get downloaded a ton of times and probably deleted before most readers ever get to the 3rd page, if it's even read at all.
Save them poor guys some bandwidth, torrent it. Too many people are going to be wasting their resources with no serious intentions of reading the contents.
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
well, they have the abstracts... you don't have to download the whole thing... but having read one abstract, i'm lost in the technical jargon, that large particle collider scientists write about without hesitation.
"Abstract. The TOTEM Experiment will measure the total pp cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and study elastic and diffractive scattering at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collisions in the interaction point IP5, two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity region 3.1 || 6.5, and Roman Pot stations will be placed at distances of ±147 m and ±220 m from IP5. Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS, TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue its own physics programme and at a later stage together with CMS for a common physics programme. This article gives a description of the TOTEM apparatus and its performance."
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Except for the "luminosity-independent method" part, which I am not familiar with, I understood that pretty well, maybe I should give it a download, and of course, as many others have said, build my own...
I wonder what these president candidates will do about my constitutional right to bear doomsday devices...
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
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or climate scientists ?
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Just because someone can throw technical jargon out at me doesn't necessaril
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What do you mean, the argument from authority fallacy only applies to people talking outside their field? I thought a main part of the spirit of science was a complete rejection of argument from authority in any form. If Richard Feynman himself showed up and told me something crazy about theoretical physics, I'd be like, "you fool, that's crazy."
Perhaps I misunderstood you.
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Richard Feynman himself showed up and told me something crazy about theoretical physics, I'd be like, "you fool, that's crazy."
From what I've studied, everything in theoretical physics is crazy.
Perhaps I misunderstood you.
I think you're conflating issues. When you're in a field, it's your job to question everything the other experts in the field claim, especially when the claims are dramatic or unexpected. When you're not in a field and want to know something about it, then it's perfectly OK to use experts analysis as a baseline for further study.
It's not OK to dismiss all the experts in that field as crackpots just because you don't understand what they're saying. For instance, if Feynman showed up and told me that there are charm quarks, then I'd be unjustified in dismissing him. That's what ID and anti-vaccine folks do all the time: reject all authority they disagree with. Call it "appeal to anti-authority".
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Funny)
Summary. The experience of Totem will measure the intersection of pp completed by the method of brightness and independent study and the rubber band diffractive dispersing the LHC. To fulfill the best possible coverage for advanced charged particles issued by conflicts pp mutual action show télescopes IP5, two of pistage, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side of the region of pseudofastness 3,1 | | 6,5 and Roman stations Pot will be at a distance of 147 meters ±
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To achieve optimum forward coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collisions in the interaction point
Warning: Do not cross the streams! This must really be a doomsday device.
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is interesting, because this is exactly the sort of thing that Tim Berners Lee sought to avoid when he envisioned the semantic web.
These papers and abstracts should be properly hyperlinked to other papers (or even a google search) to properly define what many of these terms mean. A lot of the jargon seems specific to either accelerator science, or even just the LHC.
I am a physicist who has worked on accelerator applications, and could only barely understand that abstract. It's very poorly written, and makes a far too extensive use of very specific jargon/acronyms to be comprehensible to even a physicist that happens to not be affiliated with the LHC.
Even an undergraduate should know better than to write an abstract like that. The general incomprehensibility, the use of extremely specific and unnecessary information ("±147 m and ±220 m from IP5") would be perfectly sufficient justification for a failing grade.
I'm truly ashamed of my colleagues for writing this.
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They're nerds. What do you expect? We like to seem smart and lack social skills :)
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Interesting)
However an important feature of a luminosity and diffractive phyics detector such as TOTEM is its coverage, ie at what angle it can go to. Therefor its pseudorapidy range (basically the angle it covers from the beam line) and the distances of the roman pots from CMS (and effecting the angular coverage of this part of the detector) are key peices of information. This is perhaps the most important thing to know about TOTEM.
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I understand every word. Any experimental particle physicist does. I will conceed its not clearn to non-experts.
However an important feature of a luminosity and diffractive phyics detector such as TOTEM is its coverage, ie at what angle it can go to. Therefor its pseudorapidy range (basically the angle it covers from the beam line) and the distances of the roman pots from CMS (and effecting the angular coverage of this part of the detector) are key peices of information. This is perhaps the most important t
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> You seem to be claiming that you understand this highly technical jargon (implying that you're a highly educated individual). However, you fail at basic spelling. You even fail to correctly spell a technical word that you should be familiar with ("pseudorapidity").
I assume he is also familiar with the words 'clear' and 'pieces'. Since he also missspells these words, he is probably either dyslexic or drunk, neither of which is reason to believe that he is not a highly educated individual (indeed, if he
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(also note that I say "well working code" since calling it "good code" is FAR from accurate!)
You are not the intended audience (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not in TOTEM (other side of the ring) but I understand the abstract just fine and consider it an immensely valuable contribution to the physics programme of the LHC.
These weren't written to be read end to end by the layman. They were meant as reference publications for professionals. I don't know how I would have gotten through my ph.d. without publications like these. Where else do I get the exact layout of the ATLAS semi-conductor tracker? Where else do I look for the muon momentum resolution of CMS vs. ATLAS? I am sorry if you think that renders them incomprehensible but this is what we need.
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)
"Abstract. The TOTEM Experiment will measure the total pp cross-section with the luminosity-independent method and study elastic and diffractive scattering at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collisions in the interaction point IP5, two tracking telescopes, T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity region 3.1 || 6.5, and Roman Pot stations will be placed at distances of ±147 m and ±220 m from IP5. Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS, TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue its own physics programme and at a later stage together with CMS for a common physics programme. This article gives a description of the TOTEM apparatus and its performance."
The TOTEM experiment will measure the total pp (proton-proton) cross-section (probability of collision) with the luminosity-independent method (does not depend on the amount of incoming particles) and study elastic and diffractive scattering (particle and wave scattering) at the LHC. To achieve optimum forward (close to the beam-pipe) coverage for charged particles emitted by the pp collision in the interaction point (where the beams cross) IP5, two tracking telescopes (planes of silicon or something that can detect charge particles), (named) T1 and T2, will be installed on each side in the pseudorapidity (the angle above the beampipe) region 3.1 (~5 degrees) || 6.5 (1 degree), and Roman Pot stations (to measure the luminosity) will be placed at distances of +- 147m and +-220m from IP5 (those distances from where the particles collide). Being an independent experiment but technically integrated into CMS (the Compact Muon Spectrometer), TOTEM will first operate in standalone mode to pursue it's own physics programme...
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)
There's a reason a Ph.D. takes 4-6 years. Gotta learn all this.
P.S. TOTEM is one of the minor experiments. Now go read about CMS and ATLAS. :)
Disclaimer: I am an American theoretical physicist at CERN.
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As in "you couldn't hit a barn with that thing"?
Is this physicist humour?
Re:I would but.... (Score:5, Informative)
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Apparently, yes. But it's not complete ironic as we might imagine, as the uranium nucleus is comparatively larger than other elements:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barn_(unit) [wikipedia.org]
http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/cms/?pid=1000258 [symmetrymagazine.org]
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No, but close. The barn is a measure of area. So it's barn as in "the broad side of a barn" (the classic measure for a large area).
In this case, it's a very small barn.
Physics is rife with stupid jokes. Dirac called vectors bra and ket since combined (as they're often seen) they form a bracket (which is how they're written).
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Save them poor guys some bandwidth, torrent it.
I have Comcast you insensitive clod!
Cool! I'm going to get started on mine right away! (Score:5, Funny)
If you need me, I'll be in my basement.
This is Slashdot... (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean your parent's basement?
Pfft (Score:2)
Pfft, some of us own or rent our own basements. In fact, there's a free basement above me at the moment, in case you want to rent it.
Some of us have better taste (Score:5, Funny)
Well, first of all, some of us have better taste than to wear a loincloth. A robe and wizard hat, for example, is much more stylish and comfortable for the aspiring sorcerer or warlock. A toga picta works too, for the aspiring Emperor. Well, at least until mom catches wind that you dyed one of her bedsheets purple ;)
But a loincloth? Ugh. We're civilized people, not some barbarians.
Second, some of us have our own basement to defend, thank you very much. I mean, have you tried taking over the world from your mom's basement? Ooer, talk about frustrating. It would go sorta like this.
Me: "Now we open the prayer books to the dark invocation psalm and..."
Mom (poking her head in): "Anyone want milk and cookies?"
Cultist 1: "I'll have some, please."
Cultist 2: "Me too."
Me: "Mooom!!"
Mom: "Oh, hush. Nice dress, by the way."
Me: "Mom, it's a robe."
Mom: "Sure it is. I just want you to know me and dad support your lifestyle choices."
Cultist 3: "Told you it looks gay."
Cultist 1: "Yeah."
Me: "Mom, you're interrupting our invocation!"
Mom: "Oh, hush, I'm your mom, I'm allowed to. What are you guys playing anyway? Dungeons and Dragons?"
Me: "No, it's serious. And you can start calling me High Overlord Moraelin the First."
Mom: "High, huh? Well, you know me and dad don't approve of _that_, but I guess it would explain a few things."
Cultist 4: "Heh!"
Me: "*sigh* Where are the sacrificial dagger and the sacred chalice anyway?"
Mom: "You mean our kitchen knife? I put it in the dishwasher, together with that plastic cup you had there. They were getting ridiculously dirty, and it's just not healthy."
Cultist 3: "Told ya."
A trip to the kitchen later:
Group chanting: "Nigrae legiones, ferus imperator, sinus occultus, fatum terminatum"
Mom (poking nose in again): "By the way, I'm going to sleep. Try to keep the noise down, please."
Me: "Ok, mom."
Mom: "By the way is that the chorus from Das Omen?"
Me: "No, it's an ancient and sacred invocation.."
Cultist 2: "Nah, I googled it, it's E Nomine."
Cultist 1: "Owned."
Cultist 4: "I thought you said you only listened to metal?"
Me: "Gah! Fine by me, chant Dies Irae if it makes you feel any better."
Cultist 3: "Why do we have to chant in Latin anyway?"
Me: "Because we're summoning an arsehole of a demon, and he wants it that way."
Mom: "Anyway, keep it down and turn off the lights when you're done, ok?"
Me: "Ok, mom. Now where were we?"
Cultist 3: "You know, screw this. Let's skip the henchman and work for the real overlord. Do you happen to need some accolytes, Mrs?"
Cultist 1: "Seconded."
Cultist 2: "No kidding."
Cultist 4: "Actually, I'm out of here. I promised mom I'll be home by eleven anyway."
(Disclaimer: it's fiction.)
How come they get to be mad scientists? (Score:2, Funny)
I have actually done some theoretical calculations based upon other people/scientist's "crazy" theories, and it is possible that an explosion the equivalent to a 3 gigaton TNT explosion ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT_equivalent [wikipedia.org] ) to be created. Depending on wher
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Will I have to bother going into work the day after they fire this thing up?
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Will I have to bother going into work the day after they fire this thing up?
Most workers find a faster Internet link at work, which will be essential to see all the videos of the unfolding doom. Remember, there will be no rebroadcasts!
Re:How come they get to be mad scientists? (Score:4, Funny)
Quick tip: "quotes" don't make theories less "crazy".
Wait! (Score:3, Insightful)
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doomed! (Score:4, Funny)
Now I can build my own the planet is DOOMED!
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It'll take them a while to get to New Zealand mate!
Look at this way... (Score:5, Funny)
...1600 pages for every detail of the making of a LHC, 6546 pages in the specs for OOXML and it's still not enough detail to let you open and create OOXML documents. Obviously the LHC is not adequately complex.
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I haven't had time to look at it, but I'm fairly certain that's 1600 pages of scientific documentation, not 1600 pages of engineering documentation describing the nuts and bolts for keeping it together or the components in any great detail. I have no idea how many parts the LHC has, but it's said that the space shuttle has 250,000 parts or so. 1600 pages would barely be enough to list that, far less describe their functional requirements. The OOXML specification on the other hand is supposed to define every
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> Obviously the LHC is not adequately complex.
Oh, my God! This means that anybody can just read those 1600 pages and build one for himself! Get out the lawyers and the DMCA, people, and let's fight!
TL;DR (Score:3, Funny)
Funny... (Score:3, Interesting)
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Were there any mentions of an unexpected resonance cascade?
On the serious side... (Score:3, Interesting)
Safe from black holes (Score:5, Funny)
At sixteen hundred pages, it can only create about a fourth of the suckiness of the OOXML standard. Since that hasn't generated a black hole - except for maybe a few terabytes of lost data here and there - we should be safe.
Now that I have the plans (Score:2, Funny)
It's time I applied for my personalized Capital One credit card.
With sharks.
And lasers.
And maybe some ninja midgets.
And warkittens.
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Simple introduction... (Score:5, Informative)
So I found some videos and articles to help me out: YouTube [youtube.com] to the rescue [youtube.com] Warning there's some crap with bird in there.
Finding the Higg's Boson is the big prize, if they find it it will help with this which disrupts the notion of black holes as "singularities" and raises some philosophical, and religious questions... largely if the theorized particle is not found. [wikipedia.org]
Also interesting is the evaporating black hole theory, which is all but proven so don't worry (Cough CNN).
Personally I've always been facinated by Virtual particles [wikipedia.org] and am curious about the implication of examining non-singularity black holes.
Enjoy it, it's gonna be cool as hell!
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Finding the Higg's Boson is the big prize
I thought the Hadron Collider was after the Bonre particle...
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Finding the Higg's Boson is the big prize
Well, that *is* the one that everybody talks about. If the Higgs exists, they ought to see it right away.
I found a vulnerability... (Score:5, Funny)
On page 867, there's mention of a two-meter-wide thermal exhaust port, right below the main port. The exhaust shaft leads directly to the reactor system, and a precise hit would start a chain reaction which should destroy the LHC.
Re:I found a vulnerability... (Score:5, Funny)
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Sounds pretty serious, can we cover it with some plywood or something?
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Plywood? Are you mad? This is a job for gaffer tape!
Re:I found a vulnerability... (Score:4, Informative)
Now that we're venturing out into the realm of "extremely offtopic," I should point out that Americans have no idea what gaffer tape is, unless they've worked as a roadie or stage tech at some point in their lives.
For those of you who still don't know what gaffer tape is, you may substitute "duct tape" to sufficiently understand the parent poster's humor.
However, gaffer tape is far superior to duct tape in many aspects. It's made from cloth, rather than plastic, and doesn't tend to destroy whatever surface it happens to be applied to. It can generally be removed without causing damage, despite being nearly as strong (if not stronger) than duct tape.
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Duct tape is made of cloth. It's vinyl coated to make it water resistant.
As for the "remove without damage" bit, that depends on the brand.
Though gorilla tape takes the fixes-practically-anything prize IMO. It's great for jury rig car repairs.
Neat! (Score:5, Funny)
I especially like appendix B, or "Build Your Own Large Hadron Collider"
I totally have a project for this weekend!
Home Depot has extra large superconducting electromagnets, right?
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Home Depot has extra large superconducting electromagnets, right?
No, they dont. Wal-Mart has Yttrium, Barium, and Copper Oxides on sale right now though. Pick up a tube furnace and a compressed oxygen cylinder and you can make your own
http://materials.binghamton.edu/labs/super/superc.html [binghamton.edu]
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No, they dont. Wal-Mart has Yttrium, Barium, and Copper Oxides on sale right now though
Ummm... isn't traffic in human beings illegal? Or do I not count? Please don't buy me. :-(
- Yttrium Oxide
Don't do it! (Score:2)
There's a big mistake on page 987: The neutrino coupling in the diagram is connected backwards and will cause ripples in the vortex when it reaches 57 MeV.
I'm trying to call them to abort the project but I'm in a different time zone. Let's hope they read this before it's too late!
Great... (Score:5, Funny)
Finally! Proof! (Score:2)
WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)
WMC (Weapons of Mass Collision)
WMB (Weapons of Mass Bullying)
WMA (Windows Media Audio)
There you have it, folks! WMA is the pinnacle of EVIL!
The documentation was released weeks ago. (Score:4, Interesting)
Come on, don't you remember the slashdot article [slashdot.org] about it?
Twenty-seven kilometers of tunnel under ground
Designed with mind to send protons around
A circle that crosses through Switzerland and France
Sixty nations contribute to scientific advance
Two beams of protons swing round, through the ring they ride
Til in the hearts of the detectors, theyre made to collide
And all that energy packed in such a tiny bit of room
Becomes mass, particles created from the vacuum
And then
LHCb sees where the antimatters gone
ALICE looks at collisions of lead ions
CMS and ATLAS are two of a kind
Theyre looking for whatever new particles they can find.
The LHC accelerates the protons and the lead
And the things that it discovers will rock you in the head.
Come on, let's drop some particle physics in the club!
You disappoint me... (Score:3, Funny)
TLA (Score:2, Redundant)
I don't think that it is illegitimate for me to say:
TLDR
JINST, huh (Score:2)
I had thought that NIM (Nuclear Instrumentation & Methods, owned by Elsevier) was the only game in town, but it's good to see that there's another journal for this sort of stuff.
(five minutes of browsing later) The Symmetry mag article has a link to the SLAC "blue book", which looks substantially more approachable.
Plus, given how slow my download is going, JINST is being slashdotted. ;)
Slightly offtopic, but (Score:3, Interesting)
Most copies of The Blue Book had vanished from the SLAC Library, and the librarians wanted to make it available electronically. But they ran into a snag: No one could figure out who owned the copyright, so there was no one to give permission to put it on the Web.
"It's an orphan work," SLAC archivist Jean Deken told me Friday. The original publisher was bought by another, which was bought by another, and so on. Finally, with the help of an expert from Stanford Law School, librarian Abraham Wheeler tracked down the current owner of the copyright-which said that since it could not find any documentation on the book, it could not grant permission to reproduce it.
This is outrageous! (Score:5, Insightful)
Are they mad? The work of thousands of scientists published on line for all to see. A reasonable generic copyright license. All downloadable.
What about the poor deserving lawyers? Where is the DRM? The commercial propaganda about "IP"? The hundred page license? The attempts by assorted hangers on to profit at other people's expense?
I think the lawyers should form a class action lawsuit for loss of income. It's just not right that somebody should be able to do something without numerous lawyers attached.
Need a Rev A (Score:2)
There's a mistake on page 1471.
Brett
Black hole? (Score:2)
Oblig... (Score:2)
Now at last I can build my own Large Hadron Collider, with hookers! and blackjack!
In fact, forget the LHC!
Announcing the Hadron XPrize (Score:4, Funny)
Help to save the world from being destroyed by a black hole! The specs to the LHC (Large Hole Creator) are available. Create a detailed proof showing that the LHC will create a planet-destroying black hole when it is switched on. Send the proof, with your $75 entry fee, directly to me. The person submitting the first valid proof will be awarded a prize of $50 Million, to be awarded on Sept 12th.
Funny? (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't it funny that the entire LHC spec is 1.600 pages, while the OOXML documentation, as submitted by Microsoft, is a full 6.000 pages.
Does this reflect a difference in complexity, or is it a sign of something else?
Class - thank you (Score:2)
Now *THAT* is the observation of the month.
Don't get carried away though, there are only a few day of August left :-)
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I was going to mod this up but can't decide if its funny, informative or what...
Regardless it doesn't reflect well on the OOXML spec - wonder how many of those pages could be culled by a good editing session and removing all the redundant repeated information?
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Less than Office Open XML (Score:2)