Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 16:58:31 -0800 From: David Syphers <dsyphers@u.washington.edu> To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org, rob@pythonemproject.com Subject: Re: What OS are you? fun Message-ID: <200411161658.31536.dsyphers@u.washington.edu> In-Reply-To: <419A6ED9.9030301@pythonemproject.com> References: <419A7FC3.30900@optusnet.com.au> <20041116172445.GA14385@kayjay.xs4all.nl> <419A6ED9.9030301@pythonemproject.com>
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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
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