From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Nov 17 00:57:59 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 58D7C16A4CE for ; Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:57:59 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mxout4.cac.washington.edu (mxout4.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.19]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 21C6743D45 for ; Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:57:59 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dsyphers@u.washington.edu) Received: from smtp.washington.edu (smtp.washington.edu [140.142.33.9]) ESMTP id iAH0vwto021018; Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:57:58 -0800 Received: from yggdrasil.seektruth.org (c-67-171-38-33.client.comcast.net [67.171.38.33]) (authenticated bits=0)iAH0vvaU027428 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=RC4-MD5 bits=128 verify=NOT); Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:57:58 -0800 From: David Syphers To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, rob@pythonemproject.com Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:58:31 -0800 User-Agent: KMail/1.7 References: <419A7FC3.30900@optusnet.com.au> <20041116172445.GA14385@kayjay.xs4all.nl> <419A6ED9.9030301@pythonemproject.com> In-Reply-To: <419A6ED9.9030301@pythonemproject.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200411161658.31536.dsyphers@u.washington.edu> Subject: Re: What OS are you? fun X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 17 Nov 2004 00:57:59 -0000 On Tuesday 16 November 2004 01:19 pm, Rob wrote: > Karel J. Bosschaart wrote: > >On Tue, Nov 16, 2004 at 07:39:13AM -0700, Dan MacMillan wrote: > >>>-----Original Message----- > >>>From: Andrew Sinclair > >>>By the way, speed of light in the other thread is way off. The "accepted > >>>constant" is bogus. The average speed is actually closer to 2.4 million > >>>kilometers per second. > >> > >>You'd better cite your source and / or reasoning, as ~3*10^8m/s =is= the > >>accepted constant speed of light in vacuum. > > > >Yes indeed. Also, the word 'average' makes the statement pretty > >meaningless without specifying how the averaging is done (different > >materials I think?). > > OK, I'll bite on this. Check www.nist.gov. They occasionally update > the fundamental physical constants, but we are talking about incredibly > small amounts. I have no idea how this got onto stable@, but I just have to comment. The speed of light in a vacuum, in m/s, is never going to change because... yes, that's right, the meter is defined so that c=299792458 m/s. This is why CODATA says the value is exact. Of course, it's a lot easier just to use natural units where c=1... -David