Slashdot Mirror

Didn't recent news articles about a Yale study say that we're going to be short on copper soon? Then why are we shooting "huge copper slugs" at mars? Why not huge slugs made of some slightly more abundant metal? Or is the study just bunk?

I think it is the same sompetition, where an Indian (from Bangalore) won $50,000 for a comp named "schoolpak", more info on the competition can be found http://www.startsomethingpc.com>here

The real cost to America of the Iraq war is likely to be between $1 trillion and $2 trillion, up to 10 times more than previously thought, according to a report written by a Nobel prize-winning economist and a Harvard budget expert.

The study, which expands on traditional estimates by including such costs as lifetime disability and healthcare for troops injured in the conflict as well as the impact on the American economy, concludes that the U.S. Government is continuing to grossly underestimate the cost of the war.

Some people'd definitely take the trouble (especially when some huge company with excess of money's gonna start charging licensing fees from you for all kinds of stupid things)
Check this out
http://www.hindu.com/2005/03/09/stories/2005030902 381300.htm

In this particular case along with saying - uhm, we knew that.... they'd shown proof of people using the technique from a long time also though.

condensing things like this for humor

Exactly. A classic example of this is the Reduced Shakespeare Company, which does plays like The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged). They fit all of Shakespeare's plays into a single hour and a half work. They also do things like the "Complete History of America (Abridged)", "The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged)", and "All The Great Books (Abridged)" (wherein they cover 83 major pieces of western literature). A bit more info here.

b) actually, it was the trade in manufactured goods back to India which kept the shipping companies in business; especially once the opium trade from India to China dried up.

c) Well, they got the goods for basically the cost of shipping. When they couldn't fill the ships with things to sell back on the return trip, they cost twice as much. All of British Colonialism relied on some form of bidirectional or triangle trade to make each leg of the shipping route profitable. d) As I mentioned, the laws being resisted were unenforceable in any volume; thus the overflowing jails you mentioned.

You should note that just the salt tax was 5% of the tax income in India (see here )

While it isn't where I first read about it (which was so many years ago I'd be hard pressed to remember), you might try reading this summary of the writings of Arundhati Roy; in particular:

Roy has unkind words for people who treat nonviolence as political theater. They may indeed appeal to the conscience of the oppressors and seek to win hearts by self-suffering; they may get attention and dramatize their views; they may go to jail or on hunger strikes. But they do not make salt. It may be, of course, that the same people who are doing "picture demonstrations" in the morning to get anti-war images onto television screens, are busy in the afternoon running a food not bombs kitchen or a collective repair shop for recycled bicycles, in other words, making salt.

The second example Roy gives to show Gandhi's realism is the khadi based alternative economy, to which Gandhi gave most of twenty-five years of his life, when he was not in jail. Gandhi believed that the main motive that brought the British to India was to make money. He reasoned that on the day when they find that they can no longer make money, but could only lose money, they would leave. If Indians would practice, swadeshi, buying their own products, the British would lose their markets, and thus lose the main point of their presence on somebody else's subcontinent.

Roy implies that Gandhi wannabes who identify nonviolence with passive resistance have misunderstood him. They should learn from the master and get real. As Richard Deats has pointed out Gandhi never intended any separation of nonviolence from constructive program. *Nonviolence was constructive program. Constructive program was nonviolence. Gandhi always regarded the slow violence of economic injustice as equivalent to the fast violence of war. Nonviolence was their common antidote. The principles Gandhi believed would lead to economic justice - village self-sufficiency, non-possession, voluntary poverty, trusteeship... etc.-- were for him every bit as essential to a nonviolent way of life as submitting to the lati (steel-tipped baton) blows of the police without striking back.

However my body is sitting here killing millions of bacteria every day.

Well there's a significant difference between bacteria and higher forms of life, e.g. the sensation of pain, a nervous system, etc. On googling, I found PETA saying that insects don't feel pain because they do not have pain-transmitting chemicals such as bradykinin and Substance P. However Ui-Tei K et al directly contradict them, having found Substance P in the common fruit fly. So you can't use the "non-cute animals don't feel pain but cute animals do" defence. There isn't a significant difference there; in fact you could argue that killing fruit flies is wrong but killing naked mole rats is not since they don't have that particular neurotransmitter.

Now, by your judgement, the morally consistent vegetarian would kill himself IMMEDIATELY to prevent himself for having to destroy or maim tiny creatures to prevent them taking over his body or home (bacteria, ants, etc.).

No, not even close.

The morally consistent approach would be to not kill them. It doesn't matter how you avoid killing them, but killing yourself simply isn't necessary.

it could be argued that [veganism] IMPROVES my quality of life.

I'm not arguing that veganism/vegetarianism isn't a good idea for practical reasons. That is actually what I believe, but it's a completely separate argument that I am not going to let you distract me with.

I'm arguing that any moral choice to avoid killing cute animals through veganism is completely undermined and inconsistent with your actions when you kill non-cute animals (in this case ants) out of convenience.

If your choice of veganism is entirely practical (i.e. you do it solely because it improves your quality of life), then it isn't morally inconsistent because morals aren't a factor at all.

If your choice of veganism is moral and you afford all animals this respect, not just the cute ones, then you are being morally consistent. For instance, if you practice veganism as part of Jainism, then that would be morally consistent.

It certainly does not "inconvenience" friends that I won't eat their food... because I don't demand they prepare something special for me.

Bullshit. If I know a vegetarian/vegan is visiting me, I'll make sure I've prepared something for them to eat. They wouldn't demand it, but I'd be a bad host if I fed everyone else but left them out. Their presence compels me to go out of my way to prepare something special, whether or not they ask for it directly. That is an inconvenience.

If you're interested in more details about the Mobilis here's another article with couple different photos.

Whenever subject of solid state computers comes up I have to throw in a few words about the Audrey, a failed Internet appliance made by 3Com a few years ago. When they didn't sell for $499 3Com dumped them and they are readily available on EBay for about $85.

The Audrey has a 7-inch 640x480 color touch screen built into a 2-inch-thick package that looks like like a Jetson's version of an Etch-a-Sketch. Several dedicated buttons on the front were intended to start dedicated apps like email, address book and web browser. It was made to sit on the kitchen table so you could read the news, send email and look up recipes. Inside is about a P200, 32Mb ROM and a 32 Mb flashcard for RAM. The original built-in software included a telephony app. There is a built-in 56K modem, microphone and two tiny speakers, also 2 USB ports and an audio out jack, and a no-frills wireless IR keyboard. Most of the ones sold on EBay include a USB LAN interface and have replacement software, an embedded Unix called QNX.

When these things came out on the market for such a low price a hacking community quickly sprang up (for example Audreyhacking.com). You can find lots of free goodies such as an mp3 player and home automation software. Because of the touch screen I bought 5 of them to use as UIs for streaming music to stereos all over the house. Anyway, they are fun toys.

Apollo was different. As you said, Apollo used a much lower working pressure, with a higher proportion of O2 to yield a normal O2 partial pressure. However, both ISS and Shuttle use sea-level normal atmospheric pressure.

References:

Indian newspaper, gives pressure in mmHg.
Random science site, gives pressure in psi.
Space.com article about the pressure leak that was experienced last year, gives the pressure in psi.

You're wrong, sorry. ISS and Shuttle use an oxy/nitro mix at full atmospheric pressure; not being a biomed person, I can't give you a good answer as to why, but I can confirm (both from publicly available information and personal experience working on Shuttle) that this is true.

Things should fast change, though, after they launch the Cartosat in May.

I'm surprised Yahoo has a larger user base than Google. All the people I talk to have given up using Yahoo and use Google all the time, including me.

I was using Google exclusively until recently. You might want to search on more than one search engine in case you're looking for something a little obscure. If you're looking for a reasonably "popular" (whatever that might mean in the internet context) phrase/word, then the chances are that any search engine is good for you. There will be a significant overlap in the top matches returned by Yahoo or Google.

While we're on the subject of obscure topics, it also seems to me that a Google search is not that trustworthy anymore. I once read some newspaper articles in an Indian newspaper which referred to a couple of Indian musicians. A few months ago, I wanted to check if these articles were online and Google did point me to them. Today a Google search doesn't work whereas a Yahoo! search does. Since Yahoo! points you to the right links, it can't be that the newspaper doesn't want its content to be indexed. So either the Google index doesn't have this or the newspaper's been blacklisted by Google for some reason.

Google India launches Google India Code Jam 2005 with a payoff of Rs. 3lakh (roughly enquivalent to $20k (my estimate after adjusting for cost of living and annual salaries)). This contest is also being organized by TopCoder.

The Google India News page also links to this news article about Anurag Acharya, a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technlogy and the engineer behind Google Scholar. Incidentally, Krishan Bharat the Principle Scientist at Google who created Google News is also an IIT graduate.

Russia to launch spy satellites for Iran

By Vladimir Radyuhin

MOSCOW, FEB. 2. Russia will launch two spy and one telecommunications satellites for Iran in what may be a sign of strengthening strategic tie-up between the two countries.

The Russian military space forces this year will place two Iranian remote earth-probe (reconnaissance) satellites to geo-stationary orbits, a Russian business daily reported today. The satellites, Italian-built Mesbah and indigenous Sinah-1 will be lifted by the Russian Kosmos-3M booster from the Russian military space port, Plisetsk, in the second quarter of 2005, the Kommersant daily reported.

Russia will also build and launch a geo-stationary telecom satellite, Zohreh (Venus), for Iran under a $132-million deal signed earlier this week in Teheran. Moscow will also help the Islamic Republic in setting up two ground control stations and train local personnel.

india will be the next superpower.

watch out you capitalist bastards, national socialism is on it's way.

In fact Werner von Braun took some interest in the Indian space programme, in the 60s.

India's first satellite was launched 30 years ago, called Aryabhata-I named after the 6th century Indian mathematician, Aryabhata.

Also, the launching station at Thumba is right on the Magnetic Equator. A story covering this can be seen here. Also,

A map of the world's space centers is available.

I find it interesting that the heat is being generated in tiny "hot spots" in small explosions. I wonder if this is related to the microfusion effects observed in cavitation. Tiny collapsing bubbles can produce incredible heat - in one experiment in deuterium-containing acetone, an emission spectrum from accoustic cavitation matched that expected from nuclear fusion, with temperatures as high as 10 million degrees in a tiny area. If fusion is actually occurring there, why could there not be some sort of induced cavitation reaction here as well?

Of course, the potential from this working (or other microfusion experiments) should be obvious to us all. You know all of those predictions from the 1950s of "nuclear powered everything" (even cars)? And how ridiculous that looks in the present day? If we can get microfusion ("cold fusion") to work, such things could actually be reality, and energy prices would be miniscule. And, as the global economy is incredibly tied to energy prices, the standard of living and rate of human achievement would be phenominal. So, I think it's more than worth it to put a little money into the study. :)

Here's the proof:
Article from the Times of India. A blurb
TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ THURSDAY, MAY 29, 2003 12:06:03 AM ]
PUNE: President A P J Abdul Kalam on Wednesday urged Indian IT professionals to develop and specialise in open source code software rather than use proprietary solutions based on systems such as Microsoft Windows.

Stallman's visit reported in The Hindu and elsewhere:
Kalam, Stallman discuss open source software NEW DELHI, JAN. 31. The President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, last Thursday played host to two radically divergent poles of the global software industry.

Though the second link does not say 2004, I'm sure it was earlier this year, and a Google search should help you confirm that. Also the URL is dated 20040201.

The above information renders your argument incorrect and w/o H20.

Yes, it does.

Chris Kattan

Prime Minister

You, my friend are victim of the Aryan Invasion Propaganda that was initiated by European to divide Hindus. The Brahmins are not 'one people' but are as diverse and are form rest of the 'races'.

In fact, one of the most vocal supporter of this theory, Romila Thapar (she is a leading Indian historian) now also conceeds that the Aryan theory was crap.

Redefining secularism

Swamy's reply

You, my friend are victim of the Aryan Invasion Propaganda that was initiated by European to divide Hindus. The Brahmins are not 'one people' but are as diverse and are form rest of the 'races'.

In fact, one of the most vocal supporter of this theory, Romila Thapar (she is a leading Indian historian) now also conceeds that the Aryan theory was crap.

Redefining secularism

Swamy's reply

raj

A lone researcher did it to make cheap bifocals a few years back. It is an extremely inexpensive way to provide a "one size fits all" pair of glasses for everyone who needs them. No custom lenswork needed - just pump liquid in or out :)

The Pakistani web site was just first one I had in my link-list on this subject.
My bad, here's some additional links that should be more verifiable.

The Hindu : IAF working on weapon platforms in space
CDI: Developments in Military Space: Movement toward space weapons? [PDF]

The Hindu reported some statistics on India outsourcing giving a good perspective on how outsourcing to India givings savings in US. Read Outsourcing IT? These are the real numbers... to get insight into the economics behind outsourcing.

Perhaps this is why. While Moron-at-large is busy killing Iraqis for oil and the Twits in London are busy sucking up to "Sir" Bill, the President of India discusses the role of open source software in society with Richard Stallman. http://www.hindu.com/2004/02/01/stories/2004020104 231000.htm

• Quality healthcare? (good enough that your leaders get treated in the damn country as opposed to wasting taxpayer money and scurrying to the US for medical treatment? I might add: lots of sorry India-originated Asses there too!) Or is world-class healthcare the right of India's top 0.1% only?
  
  
• Good education for their kids? India's education system is a purgatory: great talent filtration but little teaching. Of course, with the crowds you have this is acceptable.
  
  
• Higher education? little innovative work, and what innovation happens is mostly "cost innovation" -- a ceaseless struggle to "optimize" generally available tech to suit "deshi" budgets: Simputer, Cordect. No wonder *good* IITians sneer at doing graduate school there.
  
  
• Somewhat less seriously - a BMW Series 5? Surely the 44X people should be able to afford it? Why do they keep driving stuff like the Hyundai Accent and the Corolla (rock bottom cars here?)
  

People have replied to most things you said, I'll just add a note. You seem to talk about only half of the evolution theory. It states there is variability and then selection of the fittest organisms. That's why you don't need the 4^4000 combinations to get a useful molecule with 4000 bases. The molecule is sequentially improved, not by design and not at random, but by natural selection.

Incidentally, 4000 nucleotides is rather excessive for a useful DNA chain. There are useful chains that are less than 100 nucleotides long (reference here) and even a single aminoacid can work as an enzyme (reference here, even if I'm not sure The Hindu is a credible resource for this...). Naturally, one would think that the first forms of life had very small RNA/DNA molecules, that started replicating and got selected based on their ability to do so.