Slashdot Mirror

likewise, i would say a number of other "addictions" are really just trendy bullshit terms in order to decrease the stigma attached to being weak in character. such as "sex addiction" or "gambling addiction"

So you think a stigma on being weak in character is a good thing?

You talk like someone who did not have a bad childhood and has no understanding of what being weak is like.

I was someone who was weak in character in the past, simply because I had a crappy childhood. Thus I was susceptible to addiction and found myself addicted to marijuana for about 5 months and later world of warcraft for about 6 months. Sure, people who are weak in character are more susceptible to addiction, as the high so starkly contrasts with their depressing lives.

Such people are to be pitied and for those that have big enough hearts helped. How do you think you would do having no friends, oppressive critical parents, no self esteem and riddled with doubt and self hatred? It is fucking difficult hole to get out of my friend. I was lucky enough to be instilled with a spirit of hard work along with all the negative, thus after years of work I am much stronger and now happy.

but everyone from the casual layman to the hardcore professional needs to understand that something that acts on the brain directly via biochemical manipulation needs another word to describe what it does that a habit forming activity that sucks you in via simple sensory stimulus. there's a simple bifurcation of meaning here that needs to be addressed if indeed my terminology is wrong.

There is but not quite as you term it. There is physiological addiction and psychological addiction. Some drugs such as herion result in a withdrawal phase where the body physically sick and drives the person to take more of the substance. Other like LCD don't. People can still get addicted but the body doesn't add to the drive.

Still, the line is blurry, just as the line between drug addicitions and non-drug addictions is blurry. Like games for example, studies have shown that when playing games dopamine activity increases in the brain. Do you know what else causes dopamine activity to increase? Speed (which is typically methamphetamine).

So anyway. Typically people who are addicted are weak people with difficult pasts. The point is they are obsessively doing something as a form of escape. We need to help such people work through their problems, not pontificate about whether it is a habit or an addiction.

Top Ten Accidental Discoveries

I've seen him on Discovery Channel several times, he is definitely a bit looney, but he has also produced some pretty cool inventions, like his fire paste.

See the video here, http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=8/31/2 004. It's the 6th link down, titled "Fighting fire with fact".

Here's a link to Discovery Channel video that shows a product based on his "1313" paste, a lightweight blast pad, withstanding dynamite, sniper rifles, and shotguns.

http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=9/15/2 004#
(click the "Fire Jeep" video)

I don't think it would be honest to call this one, at least, a crackpot invention. This is enough to convince me that the stuff works as advertised. There's a segment of the clip showing an experiment where he wears a thin mask of his "fire paste" over his face, and has a guy blowtorch the other side.

No mention of "angel light" or "god light", however.

http://www.exn.ca/news/video/exn2003/09/03/exn2003 0903-firepaste.asx

Firepaste...Seems to work. Not all of his crack-pottedness is off-base.

DNA isn't an especially robust molecule. It probably didn't survive that long. It is prone to a variety of reactions that will degrade it over time relatively quickly. Though it was originally thought to survive much longer, DNA older than a million years is now considered pretty dubious, and is likely contamination from other sources, such as soil microbes, or it is degraded fragments with no meaningful signal left in them (e.g., older DNA extracted from fossils tens of millions of years old contains roughly equal left and right amino acids, whereas living tissues contain all left ones, implying the DNA has been severely degraded). Previous discoveries from fossils tens of millions of years old (e.g., from old amber) have proven unreproducible. There's a good review in this PDF format paper by Hofreiter et al., 2001.

By contrast, some organic molecules, such as collagen, are much more durable than DNA, and could plausibly survive much longer in the right conditions, such as if embedded in the minerals that form bone. This general fact has been known for a long time (those papers are from the 1960s and are both PDFs), though how old such remains might ultimately be found is still uncertain. Also, even if the organic molecules were severely degraded, it doesn't mean they vanish completely -- some degraded C-bearing organic residue might remain as long as it wasn't dissolved away, and it could still preserve the shape of the original tissues, even if it wasn't compositionally the same anymore.

Some organic molecules are extraordinarily durable and occur as fossils routinely. The sporopollenin that forms the cell wall of spores and pollen is like the "plastic garbage bag" of organic materials. It can survive multiple passages through the digestive system of animals, and still be intact. Fossil pollen and spores are often recovered from sedimentary rocks essentially unchanged, except for a bit of thermal alteration, and geologists use potent acids like concentrated HCl and HF to dissolve the minerals away, but the pollen and spores are untouched!

Finally, even if the organic molecules themselves get destroyed (e.g., it isn't, say, collagen anymore), minerals could precipitate in contact with the soft tissues and preserve their shape at microscopic scale. The soft tissue isn't actully there, but the structure is. Such preservation is rare, but is known for other types of soft tissues in an older dinosaur (the linked example of the dinosaur Scipionyx does show soft-tissue structures, such as intestines, but they are all mineralized).

As stated: NORAD == *North American* Aerospace Defense

Canada was involved from the beginning. As a matter of fact there is a Canadian counterpart to Cheyenne Mountain near North Bay, Ontario. It is buried about 200 metres into the solid granite of the Canadian Shield bedrock which makes up the geology of the area. There are American military personnel permanently working there, just as Canadian military work in Cheyenne Mountain.

The likely attack of Soviet bombers or missiles is over the pole. This was especially true during the late 1950's (when NORAD was formed), and probably continued to be the direction of most threat during the cold war. So most of the radar stations watching for this are in Canada. The famous early version was the DEW line (Distant Early Warning) of radar stations.

SCARY FACT!!!: Canada once had NUCLEAR TIPPED BOMARC ANTI-AIRCRAFT MISSILES to be used against Soviet bombers in the event of war. They were a purchased in part to move them further north (so that when they exploded after firing at Soviet bombers, it would be in the Arctic instead of say, over Winnipeg, Calgary or Edmonton if they were fired from the U.S.A.) and as an additional replacement for the ignorant John Diefenbaker's incompetent handling of Canada's defense when he canceled the Avro Arrow (a very advanced intercepter fighter whose speed was projected to eventually top Mach 3 and had the first fly-by-wire avionics).

I thought I had seen this sort of device already and a quick search shows that I rememberred correctly. Check out Ripesense and here and Juicy Idea and I am sure many more. Can a professor get in trouble for plagiarism???

I've seen this technology before. The fruit was pears and they were sold in fours in a clear plastic packaging. The packaging was square shaped with each pear sitting in a corner. The top was domed and on the inside of the packaging was the sticker. I believe the discovery channel had a piece about this last year.

Here is the video:
VIDEO

2) Definitions in Addiction Medicine,

3) Computer and Cyberspace Addiction,

4) When games stop being fun,

5) Video games: Cause for concern?,

6) Video games: Research, ratings, and recommendations, Contains many references for empirical studies

7) Video games addiction,

8) Are video games really so bad?,

9) Questions Answered,

10) Positron Emission Tomography ,

11) The Biochemistry of Human Addiction, Discusses the role of dopamine in addiction

There is a good webpage that has detailed information on this subject...

http://www.exn.ca/starwars/plasmasaber.cfm

It's a little-known Phact that holo-technology was originally developed as a sort of virtual answering machine, e.g.

Wesley: Captain Picard, will you talk to me?

Holo-Picard: Sure, sonny, what do you want?

Real Picard: (Snoozes)

This is like the show How It's Made on the Discovery Channel:

http://www.exn.ca/ontv/series.asp?series=43701526& TZ=0

Remember when the cargo ship crashed into Mir, causing partial depressurization they even considered fixing? Michael Foale certainly remembers. Any mold still growing in the Spektr module would have been exposed to vacuum and maybe even some UV if the ruptures were large enough.

The MIT kids did manage to burn some wood boat replica. Here's the video of successfully burning a model. It's an interview with the faculty member that setted up the experiment. It shows that it actually was possible, if not practical, to burn something using mirrors.

This was on the October 20th episode of Daily Planet a daily science news show on the Canadian Discovery channel. A show worth watching if I can say so myself. You can basically see it all a few days later on the web.

The MIT kids did manage to burn some wood boat replica. Here's the video of successfully burning a model. It's an interview with the faculty member that setted up the experiment. It shows that it actually was possible, if not practical, to burn something using mirrors.

This was on the October 20th episode of Daily Planet a daily science news show on the Canadian Discovery channel. A show worth watching if I can say so myself. You can basically see it all a few days later on the web.

As opposed to the government controlled ones which are known to have misrepresented their location?

Here's a link to a recent TV story done by Discover Channel Canada. See the article "Making a smarter dummy." http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=9/27/2 005 The only inaccuracy in the story is that the patient simulators are priced from ~$30K to 200K. And for the record (and a shameless plug), the manufacturer in Sarasota is METI. http://www.meti.com/

Daily Planet has a video on making a smarter dummy. It's basically the same idea. Sadly when I saw the show the first thing that came to mind was when does the hot chick version come out.

Pivoting on fulcrums... using balancing, one man can do an awful lot of stuff with very little energy.

I can't find the original page, but check out the video on exn....

Backyard Stonehenge

The show's web rerun is available here

In Russia, some scientists have discovered through selective breeding of foxes that it doesn't take very long for a significant change in an animal population to occur. They managed to obtain domesticated foxes within four decades and 30-some-odd generations. They also discovered that, while selecting solely based on behavioral traits in an attempt to get domesticated foxes, the foxes also developed traits such as unusual splotchy coloring and other dog-like features.

It's also been suggested that splotchy patterns on a lot of domesticated animals (cows, horses, dogs, cats) are the result of physical traits being developed that are genetically linked to domestication.

This may be old news, but here it is anyway:
http://www.exn.ca/FlightDeck/News/story.cfm?ID=199 81016-61

As far as I remember the project was canned in 1999.

We want to know about about Makeing REAL Light sabres. Check this out for info http://www.exn.ca/starwars/plasmasaber.cfm

Wallace & Rines' revamped spambone was to do just that. It didn't pan out.

Marc says that after this interview, he got a lot of email at PRO from around the world asking about how to build a lightsaber. Apparently some European Star Wars fanzine stated that he was actually researching building an actual working light saber. Lots of people sent him notes asking for details, and some were very disappointed to learn that he was not pursuing such research.

Marc says that after this interview, he got a lot of email at PRO from around the world asking about how to build a lightsaber. Apparently some European Star Wars fanzine stated that he was actually researching building an actual working light saber. Lots of people sent him notes asking for details, and some were very disappointed to learn that he was not pursuing such research.

Marc says that after this interview, he got a lot of email at PRO from around the world asking about how to build a lightsaber. Apparently some European Star Wars fanzine stated that he was actually researching building an actual working light saber. Lots of people sent him notes asking for details, and some were very disappointed to learn that he was not pursuing such research.

an article on how to make a real lightsaber

Geez, this story is disappointing. Usually Slashdot reports stuff a day before Daily Planet. Now it is a day after.

Armageddon has truly arrived.

The big killer of sea life isn't the prompt gamma rays but the destruction of the ozone layer by the various oxides of nitrogen that the flash produces plus there's immediate destruction of ozone by the gamma rays. Higher UV damages the land and low water depth ecosphere so the deep sea animals get less food (since most of their food filters down from surface water and land run off). Also, after the prompt gamma and X-ray flash there's a chance of a period of higher than normal cosmic rays from the explosion. Since some of those particles have charge, galactic and earth magnetic fields can bend them around (which is how they last a while, they travel a longer distance) to hit from any direction and delayed by enough time for the earth to rotate enough that the shadowing effect doesn't help. This page also explains that there's not just gamma rays but muons, these can penetrate many hundreds of meters of water and rock: http://www.exn.ca/Html/Templates/topicpage.cfm?ID= 19980713-60&Topic=Dinosaur

The Atacama receives a very small amount of water in the form of fog or dew. Although the Atacama is very dry, it is not very warm. Something like a million people live in the Atacama. In some particularly dry spots, they live from the water collected by giant "fog collectors".

The guys that developed this (Music Path Software) were my Electronic Music professor (Dr. Both) and my Advanced Algorithms professor (Dr. Diamond). The kid that it was invented for (Lucas Porter) goes to my church and is an incredible talent.
Read more here: http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/story.asp?id=2004030 253
and http://musicpath.acadiau.ca/main.htm

I did go to the movies once in the late 1940's and associated the strong perfume that some lady wore with the female character on the screen. It kinda enhanced the experience, even though women wore tall hats to the movies back then, and you really didn't see the whole screen.

It has been around for a while...

http://www.exn.ca/Stories/2003/03/18/56.cfm
http://www.anders-kern.de/presse/pr_holoscreen_en. html
http://www.innovations-vcs.co.uk/main/holoscreen.h tm

You can buy your own one cheap here:
http://www.av-sales.com/html/svs_holoscreen.html

Draw your own conclusions about this guy...

Eventually we will probably be like the chimpanzees, who have a pronounced lack of diversity in the genes for certain immune receptors as well as immunity to AIDS. Scientists view this as evidence that an AIDS-like plague swept through the Chimpanzee population in the not-too-distant past.

The idea that AIDS will one day burn itself out of the population may not be much comfort to those who have it, nor to those who must grow up in a world where they must face that risk -- especially for those growing up in coutries with 40% infection rates. But I find it comforting, anyway.

Incase you missed the Daily Planet Show; keep a lookout for the Dec 10th episode at the Discovery Channel Canada - they do have video on their site; http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/archivelist.asp

I, for one, do not understand why Pixar is given such a vaunted status.

Why not? Isn't that obvious enough to you when Toy Story 2 have been scientifically proven to be THE movie closet to the perfect movie formula? Having scientists to verify it means there is absolutely no excuse for any writer/studio on Earth to make boring, unprofitable movies. Even if you work for independent studios, you will NEED a blockbuster flick or two to not only keeping your job and earning respect as a movie maker, but to leave enough captial to survive box office disasters for failed attempts of defying existing formulae.

IIRC someone in the UK came up with the mathmatic
formula for parallel parking a car perfectly.
i'm pretty sure that everything in math is repeatable.
link here

Well, Discovery Canada manages to hang onto the science aspect by a thread.

Daily Planet, the former "@discovery.ca", is on every day at 7pm and 11pm.

I know at one point the show was repackaged for the US, but I don't know what happened with it.

OK, so substitute a laser target designator on a soldiers rifle on the ground, or a targeting laser for one of the Airbone laser laboratories. From a random google link:

"To the left is an image of a low powered visible beam that was used in the development of the system used by ABL to compensate for fluctuations in the atmosphere. An observer is visible on the deck below. He is watching for aircraft who may accidentally be in the region. Pilots can be dazzled by the laser, so as a last line of defense against his, someone armed with a cut-off switch keeps his eye on the skies."

If there is an accident with a laser you should probably at least consider the possibility of an accident with a government owned laser especially in that region which is ripe with labs, bases and military aircraft.

I call crap. If they wanted to replace the fat guy in fur with a puppet in 1976/1977 they would have had to do the scene with green/blue-screen or rear projection. (Watch the Rancor scene in RotJ) In 1977 there would have been absolutely no way to replace that actor in that scene as it was shot. (With all the interacting with and walking behind Harrison Ford) And why on earth would there be need for the fur costume?

No, that fur guy was planned as Jabba. Time constraints called for cuts and a Jabba that doesn't show up is somewhat more sinister anyway. Hitchcock taught us that what isn't shown in movies can be the most menacing.

However, after it became apparent that they couldn't do that scene with current technology, they moved all the information learned in that scene to the scene with Greedo.

So, yes, the scene is totally redundant and looked wrong (because it was originally designed around a different Jabba) as shot. This is why the 1997 version had Han Solo step on Jabbas tail - Harrison Ford walked around the stand-in in the original shot, before they really knew what Jabba would look like.

If they really had planned to replace the irish fur guy they would have needed to film Han (foreground), Jabba (middle) and the Falcon (background) seperately. Which they didn't. Which proves they never wanted to replace the irish fur model. And it would have looked shitty anyway. And it still wouldn't make sense to give a standin a costume.

I can't really find any good links on it, [...]

Because it's not true.

Link to pic of how the scene looked when shot:

http://www.exn.ca/news/images/1997/02/06/19970206- before.jpg

Why use a costume for a stand-in who is supposed to replaced by some speacial effect gimmick?

I'd never heard of the Canadian Arrow before it was mentioned on /. a while back. I can't find the answer on their webpage, so I'll ask if anyone knows: was the name "Canadian Arrow" chosen with the Canadian Avro Arrow in mind?

If so, that would be cool. If not, I hope it's a happy coincidence and not a prophetic one. Just don't let "US" steal the idea this time, guys.

Free flatscreens. Proof here.

...and also.

EXN.ca an article on the Canadian Discovery Channel about the relationship between Avro Arrow and NASA.

"When they were flying the Arrow," explains Gainor, "they decided that only one person should talk to the pilot, and that person should have experience as a pilot. At NASA, to this day, all the conversations with the crew are done through the capcom, which is always another astronaut."

The original, classic broken computer mod is probably still the best place to keep your purple octopus.

Unfortunately not. As the octopus is a very intelligent and curious creature, when placed in a small confined space, it will always try to find a way out. If placed in a fish tank, it will try and find a way out. It will climb over the edges of an open tank. Even when there is a lid on the fish tank, it will attempt to squeeze through the gaps of the lid. Failing that it will try and prise the lid open by attaching its arm suckers to the lid and walls, then contracting its muscles. And if that doesn't work, it will attempt to prise open the walls of the fish tank.
Even a a 1lb octopus can lift a 40lb aquarium lid.
As an example of the flexibility of an octopus, Discovery Channel Canada have a cool video of an octopus squeezing into a beer bottle.

More info on their car.

Perhaps they can finally do http://www.exn.ca/mammoth/Cloning.cfmsomething similar with the mammoth? It'll be interesting to see how this technique develops.

Care to back that up?

Last time I heard there was no consensus amongst investigators on how we ended up walking upright entirely.

Here's one theory.

Another I've heard is that since our ancestors spent a lot of time on the savanahs, standing upright was a great benefit, eg. priarie dogs lookouts. We went one better cause we could see predators for long distances without having to stop and stand, whilst making our way long distances. Definately a great benefit. Think about trying to make your way across a grassland with sparse trees, and large predators lurking for instance.

Truth is, there are many probable theories.

Also, that "less energy" argument sounds weak to me. Transportion is a very important function for all animals, and also energy efficiency right up there too. You mean to say that no other mammal as caught on to this bipedal thing as yet? From the fastest cheetahs to the slowest sloths?