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Technological Requirements for Terraforming Mars
by Robert M. Zubrin. Pioneer Astronautics.
by Christopher P. McKay. NASA Ames Research Center

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

Back in the good ol' days, when men were men, and Java was just a retarded twinkle in Gosling's eye, we had 256-byte competitions in assembly language. Anything using an interpreter is an immediate disqualification, unless your interpreter + script somehow fit inside the 256 byte limit. Basically, any dependency that isn't part of the hardware, BIOS, or low-level OS functionality like disk I/O, must be included in the byte total. Libraries, interpreters, resource blobs, it all adds up.

And now, a real Tetris in 256 bytes: http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jchap/tvprotet.htm

Get that goddamned Javascript hack out of my face.

... unless of course, you're horribly allergic to peanuts. ... because you'd probably be dead :)

Peanut allergies are caused by a reaction to peanut protein not to the oil. Peanut allergy sufferers should not react to refined peanut oil. Of course unrefined, or poor quality oil which may be contaminated with nut protein could be dangerous.

If Utz use good quality ingredients then you probably wouldn't be dead. On the other hand, having a nut allergy, I would avoid them myself.

There's little to no evidence that asthma is primarily linked to genetics. Pesticides, herbicides, tobacco smoke, paints, carpet fumes, colds and bronchitis early in life, lack of exposure to certain infections, bird droppings, and lots of other possible causes are being looked at as environmental causes or triggers of asthma.

http://www.healthinsite.gov.au/topics/Causes_of_As thma
http://www.lungdiseasefocus.com/articles/about-ast hma/asthma-causes.php
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~aair/asthma_caus es.htm
http://www.wrongdiagnosis.com/a/asthma/causes.htm
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/Asthm a/Asthma_Causes.html

It's terribly cold-hearted and factually wrong to blame the guy for his son having asthma.

I played this one on the Apple II and it was fairly entertaining. Not sure why you would have such a hard time with getting some action. All you had to do was drive to any house that was flashing (indicating it was being haunted) and trap the ghost. Take ghosts back to GBHQ and go get another. Rinse and repeat.

There were quite a few options you could get, but bait was basically required. If you didn't have bait and the marshmallow alert went off staypuft would trash a building and you would get charged. The portable laser confinement system was nice to have but so expensive you could not afford anything else. If you had the vacuum, any of the four ghosts that comes in from the corners that you crossed while driving, you sucked up, and this slowed the PK rise and let you catch more ghosts before the final battle. The goggles did help with ghost catching but were not required. I don't remember what the other options were.

When PK energy maxed you were pulled to the middle to battle staypuft. To do this you had to get two of your three men to run under the hopping staypuft, which only required timing.

Here you go, http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/yr12/yr 12_36.htm

we don't really have 'rednecks' in the UK

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/type-in s/zx-comp/zx_names.htm
--> http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/pourri/ zxmaster.zip

RST 38H ;-)

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/type-in s/zx-comp/zx_names.htm
--> http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~jg27paw4/pourri/ zxmaster.zip

RST 38H ;-)

I don't know what level of effort is being put into refining magnesium from sea water or sea salt, but this is likely to be very energy-intensive also.

That is a well-known technique that was developed before WWII. Here's an abandoned American plant from that time.

In my home town of Porsgrunn, Norway, the production of magnesium from sea water and dolomite was discontinued a few years ago, mostly because of Chinese competition. The reason for building this factory in Norway in the first place was of course our vast amounts of relatively cheap hydroelectric power. In spite of that, several aluminum smelting plants beside the magnesium plant has been put out of business in the last decade because of the soaring wages and general cost level of our country.

Just one step closer to Darius Twin! And YES, they have freakin lasers attached to their heads.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~bevhome/dtwinrev .htm

Regarding Queen, is it 20 out of 29 what available? Queen have officially released 21 albums (including "best of"-s) and I'm _positive_ I searched for a few of my favorite songs ("The prophet's song", "Mustapha" among them) and they were not there. "Under pressure" was available but only in a David Bowie album.

This is the complete Queen discography for reference

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~choh/qdisc.htm

no clue why Jamiroquai is not licensed for Canada.

BTW yes, you can switch the store with a click, but I don't think you're allowed to order from it if your c/c doesn't have a billing address in the relevant country.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

Since the underwater robot relies on a source of electricity, why not help it out by generating some electricity with the salt water it's submerged in? I don't know how much salt is contained in the water at those depths, but salt water batteries aren't huge, are completely passive and require little to no maintenance.

this came on vinyl iirc

As seems to be increasingly the case, I already submitted (rejected) variants of this story twice over the past week. I've pasted one of those variants below, which has links to sources far more information than the freakin' Guardian:

Greenhouse gases could breathe life into Mars

MSNBC, New Scientist and PhysOrg report on research by Margarita Marinova and others on using synthetic greenhouse gases to warm the Martian atmosphere and create the conditions for life to thrive. The study focused on fluorine-based gases (dubbed "super-greenhouse gases"), which would be non-toxic, nearly 10,000 times as effective at capturing heat as CO2, and could be made from Martian resources. The research concluded that adding 300 parts per million of these gases would lead to a feedback effect by unfreezing CO2 and water on the surface. According to Marinova, 'Since warming Mars effectively reverts it to its past, more habitable state, this would give any possibly dormant life on Mars the chance to be revived and develop further.' The feasibility and consequences of such terraforming have been debated in the past.

Also, note that contrary to the accepted submission's title, NASA hasn't done any sort of proposal of actually doing this. This is simply cool research exploring a very interesting "What-if".

Presumably you haven't seen Alley Cat. Or any of the games available for "home computers" at the time.

Are you unable to read?

I said this:

"The thing is, I'd love to see you do better on 1981 hardware."

Given that you're quoting games from 1984 - by which point, the hardware was much more capable - one must assume that you have reading comprehension problems.

Alley Cat was released in 1984.

Here's a screenshot of what most games released in 1981 looked like. ZX81 screenshot

Are you kidding me?

Ramanujan's Tau function had so much trouble proving that equality, and generalizing it for polynomial continued fractions.

Not to mention the difficulty people have had in proving that trivial equalities are indeed generalizable across various degrees.

Dude, that equation probably has had more effort put in (and continues to have more effort put in, in terms of trivial results in infinity-related operations and operands) than any other.

My favorite is 0 = 0, because it's the one that most often indicates you're done with the math exercise. :-)

And it also indicates the beginning of a lot of problems for a mathematician.

this may mean that the devil will take take the shape of a cool robot

You mean like this?

Here are some links:

UK. There're quite a few sites out there about facilities in the UK. Anyone remember a film (fiction) from the 80', called 'secret underground', or 'underground London', or some such?

Tokyo. Google +tokyo +underground +secret +"Shun Akiba" for more. Thanks for reminding me that i want to look into whether Mr. Akiba's book has been translated to english.

Moscow. Great article. Riveting stuff. Google +Moscow +underground +diggers "Vadim Mikhailov" for more. You might see a bunch of links to stories about the Moscow theatre hostage event (by Chechen extremists). Yes, Mr. Mikhailov showed the police how to approach the theatre basement from below.

Washington/US is much trickier, as there is a *lot* of foil-hat-type stuff out there. here's a good overview of some places.

Despite this being /. I decided to perform a bit of research, so here are a few links to pages that I think support my point, that terraforming as far as a more hospitable atmosphere on Mars is possible:

• http://quest.arc.nasa.gov/mars/background/terra2.h tml
• http://ganymede.nmsu.edu/tharriso/ast301/class23.h tml
• http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast22jun_2 .htm?list
• http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm

They may be wrong, I may be wrong, but simply claiming the fact that the current Martian atmosphere is very thin as proof that no sustainable atmosphere is possible on Mars, that does not cut it. I will grant you that a 99% earth-like biosphere is unlikely, but a lot less is needed for it to be of use to a colony. Even a slight increase in temperature and pressure would make it easier to live on Mars, some plants might be able to grow (genetically modified mountain plants), the domes (or whatever it might be) needed for habitation might have to handle a smaller difference in pressure, or the time an astronaut might survive in an accident might increase.

And besides, even if it only lasts a few thousand years, an atmosphere might still prove useful. Not that I think we should do something like this without considering the consequenses, but once we have the technology, the trade-offs and risks might prove to be small enough for us to attempt terraforming Mars.

If the atmosphere is increased by 500 fold (high mountain on Earth type pressure) it will have much much more CO2 than it does now. remember that it's only 7 bars on Mars now while it's 1024 bars on Earth. There will be plenty of CO2 to trap heat.

CO2 is really weak too remember. Heating up the atmosphere will need to be done with a coctail of CO2, CFCs PFCs, amonia, water and methane.

See here for a NASA study.

Not that Blade Runner was a bad movie (it's one of my personal favorites), but it's not really a straightforward adaptation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. It certainly borrows some themes -- the androids, the bounty hunters (not called "blade runners" anywhere in the novel), and the artificial animals -- but the characters, the world vision, and the story structure are all quite different. The book, for example, contains no hints that Deckard is an android, and the film leaves out elements that were central to the novel -- Mercerism, Buster Friendly and his Friendly Friends, the pervasive radiation that made the world of Do Androids Dreams of Electric Sheep nearly uninhabitable, and probably some others that I'm forgetting.

In short: a faithful adaptation of the book would look nothing like Blade Runner.

Mars has lots of water. not a problem. Nitrogen and heat are the big missing components. Check out this and specificaly this for some good reading on terraforming.

Mars has lots of water. not a problem. Nitrogen and heat are the big missing components. Check out this and specificaly this for some good reading on terraforming.

I don't know why this got modded as "offtopic". Granted it's flippant and not serious but if we terraform Mars or Venus, we'll need to do pretty much what this post says.

Granted, we don't have the tech to do it right this minute but by the time any terraforming effort is undertaken, the technology will either exist or it will become reasonable to develop it.

Not only does this object have water, but it probably has (literally) tons of ammonia and other useful compounds and elements. If that can be deposited into the Martian atmosphere, it will generate heat on entry, add pressure to the atmosphere and deliver the raw materials to manufacture some of the super-greenhouse gasses that will be needed.

Check out this if you want to see more about this and other proposed terraforming tech.

Does anyone else thing that the wakamaru looks a bit like a Dalek?

Someday, some hacker is going to reprogram these robots to run around screaming "Ex-Ter-Min-Ate" like a demented Hitler (until they fall down the stairs, at least).

Just picturing a Marine Research/ Rollins Band collaboration. Scary.

Some pictures of Cathy, with Marine Research.

Dig the long hair.

spreer

Defining a 'best' in electronic music is like defining a 'best' in rock....Electronic music has the most sub-genres of any music type I know of. Nevertheless, there are the major categories, but keep in mind that often the most talented artists do not confine their music to one type alone.

The most well known word for electronic music is probably techno, however techno != electronic, rather it is a type of electronic popular earlier in the 90s, while electronic music was growing more mainstream. You'll most often hear (for subgenres):

Techno | Trance | Drum n' Bass | Breakbeat | House | Jungle | Industrial | Ambient | Chill

often used with the modifiers 'hard', 'acid', or 'progressive' as in hard house, or progressive trance. In a lot of ways, these are self-explanatory...hard means that the music is rougher, and is usually faster paced; drum n bass consists of drum beats and heavy basslines.

Everyone here will try to tell you the best artist to listen to....but I can tell you for sure that I know no two people with the same taste in electronic music. You really have to discover for yourself the kind that interests you most. I suggest listening to some generic online radio if you want to know the mainstream electronica, most of which is a carryover from europe's tech-pop eurotrash trance. That's where you'll find the names most people will refer to you.

However, the best way to discover electronic music is to support your local scene. I would list true local websites, but being low-budget community supported as they are, I wouldn't subject them to the bandwidth of the slightest slashdotting. You can, however, find your nearest real record store (good electronic comes out on analog lps for real djs) and they will be happy to direct you to flyers and websites informing you of local happenings. Go out and hear some of your best local djs, and truly experience the music for yourself (many djs of different styles will play in the same night) - that will be the fastest path to knowing your interests. Also, once you find a dj you like, find out his/her influences, and that will point you to some excellent (lesser-known?) artists.

Some of the best cuts are the hardest to find, but there's a ton of great music out there. I wish you (all) luck, and PLUR!!

You'd think so, but, amazement of all amazements, Fox ordered up a new sci-fi series from Joss Whedon (Buffy/Angel/Ripper) called "Firefly". Sure, it looks like it might be Buffy In Space, but as Joss put it (and I wish like hell I could find the quote, so this is a paraphrase), it will be humans doing evil things to humans; no aliens need apply.

YMMV, but I'm looking forward to at least giving it a try, hoping that he has enough clout to keep the fingers of money-hungry network execs from making it the kind of pablum you'd expect from Fox. (Mind you, I won't scream if the show has a little soft-core porn.)

And if it flies, Joss would have his shows on four major TV networks. (Fox, BBC, WB, UPN.) Go rah.

the Russo-Japanese bovine terminal velocity experiments of1991.

You're thinking of Aramis, a failed system very much like this one that the French government tried to run in Paris. Bruno Latour wrote a book about this in the 1990s... I remember that the grandmother scenario was a particularly chilling factor to which Latour attributes no small responsibility.

It says it's ignoring them, but the top few "hits" typically do include the exact page. I just tried, for instance, "All your base are belong to us". It claims to ignore "are" and "to" but the top few hits contain the exact phrase. (The same happens with your example "Hail to the chief", though it says it's ignoring "to the".)

1. From http://www.lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/~matsuoka/EG-Clare. html:
   "
   The sound seemed taken out of her voice; it was husky as the notes on an old harpsichord when the strings have ceased to vibrate. She read her answer in my face, I suppose, for I could not speak. Her look was one of intense fear, but that died away into an aspect of most humble patience. At length she seemed to force herself to face behind and around her: she saw the purple moors, the blue distant hills, quivering in the sunlight, but nothing else.
   
   'Will you take me home?' she said meekly.
   
   I took her by the hand, and led her silently through the budding heather - we dared not speak; for we could not tell but that the dread creature was listening, although unseen - but that IT might appear and push us asunder. I never loved her more fondly than now when - and that was the unspeakable misery - the idea of her was becoming so inextricably blended with the shuddering thought of IT. She seemed to understand what I must be feeling. She let go my hand, which she had kept clasped until then, when we reached the garden gate, and went forwards to meet her anxious friend, who was standing by the window looking for her. I could not enter the house: I needed silence, society, leisure, change - I knew not what - to shake off the sensation of that creature's presence. Yet I lingered about the garden - I hardly know why; partly, I suppose, because I feared to encounter the resemblance again on the solitary common, where it had vanished, and partly from a feeling of inexpressible compassion for Lucy. In a few minutes Mistress Clarke came forth and joined me. We walked some paces in silence.
   "
   
   
2. From http://www.clareweb.com/eolas/coclare/history/dutt on_su rvey/dutton_survey_chapter5.5.htm:
   "
   Mr. Ledwich, in his Epitome of the Antiquities of Ireland, says, that in the reign of King John the clergy did not receive any tithes; the veneration for the church at that time was so great, that regulations were unnecessary; they were supported by oblations. The piety of modern times, I fear, would influence but very small collections. The whole ecclesiastical revenue to a late period was divided into four parts, one to the Bishop, one to the clergy, one to the poor, and one to support the church and other uses, and he says this mode exists at this day in the diocese of Clonfert.
   
   To throw as much light on this subject as possible, I shall make a few extracts from Mr. Rawson's admirable Survey of Kildare, lately published. In page 27 he mentions one tithe-dealer having exacted thirty shillings per acre for wheat;** "the dread of citation, and the loss of his straw, made the timorous ploughman yield to any terms." Again, page 31, "It must appear evident to every man, that the entire weight of the church establishment falls on the sweat from the brow of industry, whilst the feeder of one thousand bullocks does not pay as much as the herdsman for his garden. Can it be denied, but that the dread of tithe keeps much land in pasture, which would otherwise give bread to thousands, encrease population twenty-fold, do away all necessity of emigration, and make little Ireland not only a granary to England, but to the whole world." In page 33, and which deserves peculiar attention, "The assertors, that the titles to tithes and to estates are of equal strength, should consider that, if estates were to be let at undefined rents from year to year, and the landlord at each harvest to view the crops and exact some proportion in lieu of rent, would any occupier in such case be anxious to till or improve? Would not the kingdom soon become a dreary uninhabited waste? Yet exactly such is the conduct towards the tenth of the produce, the tithe. Let the land-holder be ascertained at what yearly rent he is to pay for one and the other, and all complaint is at an end.[...]
   "
   
   
3. From http://www.victorybaptist.org/books/johnbunyan/fea rofgod/part1.htm:
   "
   3. Add to this the revelation of God's goodness, and it must needs make his presence dreadful to us; for when a poor defiled creature shall see that this great God hath, notwithstanding his greatness, goodness in his heart, and mercy to bestow upon him: this makes his presence yet the more dreadful. They "shall fear the Lord and his goodness" (Hosea 3:5). The goodness as well as the greatness of God doth beget in the heart of his elect an awful reverence of his majesty. "Fear ye not me? saith the Lord; will ye not tremble at my presence?" And then, to engage us in our soul to the duty, he adds one of his wonderful mercies to the world, for a motive, "Fear ye not me?" Why, who are thou? He answers, Even I, "which have" set, or "placed the sand for the bound of the sea by a perpetual decree, that it cannot pass it; and though the waves thereof toss themselves, yet can they not prevail; though they roar, yet can they not pass over it?" (Jer 5:22). Also, when Job had God present with him, making manifest the goodness of his great heart to him, what doth he say? how doth he behave himself in his presence? "I have heard of thee," says he, "by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5,6).
   
   And what mean the tremblings, the tears, those breakings and shakings of heart that attend the people of God, when in an eminent manner they receive the pronunciation of the forgiveness of sins at his mouth, but that the dread of the majesty of God is in their sight mixed therewith? God must appear like himself, speak to the soul like himself; nor can the sinner, when under these glorious discoveries of his Lord and Saviour, keep out the beams of his majesty from the eyes of his understanding. "I will cleanse them," saith he, "from all their iniquity, whereby they have sinned against me, and I will pardon all their iniquities whereby they have sinned, and whereby they have transgressed against me." And what then? "And they shall fear and tremble for all the goodness, and for all the prosperity that I procure unto it" (Jer 33:8,9). Alas! there is a company of poor, light, frothy professors in the world, that carry it under that which they call the presence of God, more like to antics, than sober sensible Christians; yea, more like to a fool of a play, than those that have the presence of God. They would not carry it so in the presence of a king, nor yet of the lord of their land, were they but receivers of mercy at his hand. They carry it even in their most eminent seasons, as if the sense and sight of God, and his blessed grace to their souls in Christ, had a tendency in them to make men wanton: but indeed it is the most humbling and heart-breaking sight in the world; it is fearful.
   "
   
   
4. From http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~turing/T/003397. html:
   "
   But that the dread of someone else could win that game, puzzles the will and makes us rather bear those ills we have. Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; and thus the native hue of resolution is sicklied over with the pale cast of thought, and enterprises of great pith and moment. With this regard their currents turn awry, and lose the name of action.
   "
   
   (This last attempts to quote the original, except the phrase "could win the game".)

As you can see, the 'Pro' provides more protection from the elements.

Also found a photo of a 'Metro' being pushed back to the lab after a mechanical failure:

As you can see, the 'Pro' provides more protection from the elements.

Also found a photo of a 'Metro' being pushed back to the lab after a mechanical failure:

if you're running a networking OS you can check out
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~echobase/index.h tml
and it will tell you how to network your palm to your computer through the cradle. Then check out
http://www.palm.com/support/downloads/netsync.html
and it will tell you how to hotsync over a network. At this point all you have to do is go to the hotsync manager on your desktop and turn off local sync and turn on network sync. Then take your palm, go to the hotsync menu; select the modem sync prefs; set to network. You then half to fiddle with a few other options the palm explains quite well on their site. Only downside to this setup is when you hotsync you can't push the button on the cradle. Instead you have to open the hotsync program on the palm, select modem, and push the big hotsync button. Don't know if this will work for linux as I haven't tried. But if it works on w2k then with a little bit of work it will probably work that much better with linux.

• Not only will they pay damages to Hasbro, they will cease selling the products in question (which were for the most part "game packs" of bargain-priced titles). The result is that Hasbro's right to control these intellectual properties - which have been copied, imitated, modified and expanded throughout the history of video game development - has now been established.

The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been shown, at least in some cases, to be true. More info here.

There's a wonderful Pulp song that is incredibly relevant to this situation.
"Mis-shapes" from their "Different Class" album.
The lyrics:
http://www.users.globa lnet.co.uk/~inferno/index/19/19353.htm

Observe the application called Sh*t which is an (albiet Windows) app for posting/reading PlanetCrap (I'm serious....).

I'm sure someone could come up with something similar for Slashdot.

Either that, or Rob just makes a Gecko-only version and gets high on DHTML :-)