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The link on the failure of Yucca Mountain misses the key issue: http://www.macalester.edu/acad... Scientists at USGS falsified Quality Assurance reports. Doing this meant that no confidence could be placed in the work. There was no way to know if Yucca was suitable and every reason to think it was not.

Quite a lot of data on Yucca was faked by government scientists. http://www.macalester.edu/environmentalstudies/students/projects/citizenscience2010/yuccamountain/quality-assurance.html

It's been 7000 years and the WHEEL still comes in just ONE SHAPE? WTF?

Two.

>You really don't think running a computer 24/7/31/365 won't cost any money?

Nothing's free, but electricity for a computer is darn near it.

Power consumption of equipment

OTC-H3100D00 P4 2.4GHz, 256MB usage: 41 watts.

Electricity price: 8.4 cents/kwh

41 * 24 * 365 = 359,160 wh = 359 kwh

359 * 0.084 = $30.16 yearly, or $2.51 monthly.

Considering most people have a $60 monthly cable bill, I think it's fair to say that another $2.51 is inconsequential. Especially considering you might be able to trim $5 worth of stations from the bill if you use the box effectively.

the national average for killowatt hour costs last year was 8.7 cents per KW hour. but many places it's well over 10 cents/kw hour. It will be rising sharply since the new clean-coal laws were passed this year as well as the price of natural gas going up due to the war.

Except this isn't a program in all of the US, it's a program in Indiana. The best electric rates I could get are from 1999, which puts the rates at just where I said, between 6 and 7 cents/kilowatt hour. See
http://www.incontext.indiana.edu/2001/oct-nov01/de tails.html

When I measure the current it, draw 11.4 amps average current on average. so thats 130 watts

You must have a very powerfull machine, or you're measuring it while playing a game. Most PCs at idle don't use much power. The processor and graphics chips only draw large amounts of power when performing calculations. Most of the time the PC is going to be idle. See:
http://www.macalester.edu/cit/faq/power_usage.html
for actual numbers.

add on a monitor and were up around 200 watts.

LCDs are cheap enough that most new computers for business are coming with them because of the smaller space, and decreased power usage. At most an LCD uses 40 watts, many use far less.

With AC the efficiency of the unit under ideal conditions is not the measure of how it performs under actual conditions. You are assuming that the cooling power needed is delivered in a perfect fashtion to where it is needed.

I actually never stated any conclusion about heating costs. I'm merely pointing out that they're far less than 1/1. You can nitpick about perfect efficiency, but the costs are obviously far less than 1/1.

your're right about the 300K->500K slip up, though the estimate is essentially correct given the stated inputs. You just want to use different inputs.

So being off by a factor of 1.66 is "essentially correct"? That's a big amount to be off by for something to be correct. When you order a dinner and they're off by 66% in telling you how much it costs is that "essentially correct"?

aside from a quibble over the AC its essentially correct.

A factor of two is a "quibble"? He's dead wrong about doubling costs for cooling. He's wrong from a thermodynamic perspective, and a usage perspective. Add up all those large errors, and you get one big huge error.

You have a valid argument in regard to the shadow copy. However, I must point out that Novell Netware had this YEARS (as far back as the mid 80's and possibly more) before Windows did in a utility known as salvage. Heck, even DOS had an undelete and MS later introduced unerase (although I must admit that those two DOS utilities really weren't that good because they were dependent on the original sectors where the files were stored, to be free.) In addition to these, various attempts have been made to *nix systems for years to implement a similar design (with decent success, I might add). I can't remember the name of any off the top of my head; but, they basically saved copies of previous versions of files, which could later be recovered. They worked similarly to a version control system.

SEATTLE - Kent School District policies are "institutionalized racism at its finest," the head of the local GNAA declared today as claims against the district rose to $30 million. Families of six gay niggers filed $20 million in claims today, saying security guards manhandled, handcuffed and roughed up the young homosexuals in incidents at five schools.
The legal action came two weeks after three gay nigger students and their families filed claims totaling $10 million, alleging that their civil rights had been violated when guards handcuffed them and used excessive force.
"These stories are just so horrific," Seattle GNAA President Darl McBribe told reporters at a news conference.
"Not only are our children being discriminated against because of race, they are victims of excessive force and in some cases they are being criminalized," Darl said, noting that some students were charged with assault for resisting the guards' rough handling.

Superintendent Barbara Grohe said the district is working with the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to appoint an independent investigator to look into the allegations outlined in the claims.
"We take claims from our parents very, very seriously," Grohe said. "We intend to investigate these. We also, however, take responsibility for providing a safe and supportive learning environment for our children."
Grohe rejected the notion that the district is fostering institutionalized racism. "I believe the district has shown a long-standing commitment to a very diverse community," she said, noting that a diversity task force has been in place for 10 years.
A total of nine children and their families have now filed claims against Kent schools through the Seattle chapter of the Gay Nigger Association of America.

As a result of the initial claims, "other families started coming forward," Mack said.
Mack said the Kent School District, south of Seattle, has not properly prepared for an influx of children of color. Black students make up 10 percent of the district, while accounting for 24 percent of disciplinary actions, he said.
"In most of these cases, there's an issue of not responding to repeated commands," he said, but he believes no child should be manhandled and physically injured.
An 11-year-old boy told reporters that a guard handcuffed him and two other adults jumped on him in disciplinary action after a schoolyard fight. The children's fight had started when a soccer ball hit a goalie's head.
In another incident, a white male student visiting from Kentridge High School threatened two gay black students at Northwood Junior High School, McBribe said. The white student was told to leave; the gay niggers were suspended for "fight promotion" and "gathering for the purpose of waiting for a fight to occur," McBribe said.
"This is the district that your taxpaying dollars are going to," McBribe said.

Grohe noted that most often security guards are called to handle a situation a teacher or staff member has not been able to control. If a student is combative, she said, security guards are trained to "de-escalate" the situation, being careful not to harm students.
The district has 60 days to respond to claims before a lawsuit can be filed. Both McBribe and Grohe said they hoped the situation could be resolved at a March 24 meeting.
Kent is the fourth-largest school district in the state, with more than 26,000 students and 40 schools. It employs 20 security officers, all of whom participate annually in 10 days of training in diversity, defense and restraint tactics and school policies and procedures.

Abou

this could be applied to learining, both in the classroom, and now as this article shows, online.
Smell is directly related to memory
The medial temporal lobe is known to play a role in the processing of olfaction and memory
To me, it certainly seems worth investigating.

"Why?"

Well there is a big difference big difference between a 2nd trimester fetus and a 5-8 day old fetus which is where embryonic stem cells come from. There aren't any brain cells in a fetus until at least 40 days in and then they are barely functioning. Until there is a functioning nervous system there is no consciousness. I know the big religions will argue life begins at conception but I'll contend life is most definitely not sacred until it has consciousness.

Embryonic germ cells, on the other hand, are harvested at 5-8 weeks and are in somewhat more of an ethical gray area.

By the way here is a great resource on stem cells.

I think there is a key thing to point out about most organized religions when it comes to their positions on abortion and birth control. They have a conflict of interest. There is an overwhelming tendency among most religions to try and maximize the growth of their flock. It is their survival mechanism. They want to maximize the number of people who subscribe to their doctrine, support it (especially financially) and spread their faith.

It is consistently in their interest and doctrine to try and eradicate people who either subscribe to no faith or an opposing faith. By eradication I mean either converting or killing them. Muslims do it, Christian do it, Jews have mostly had it done to them though they are doing it to Muslims now. The crusaders did it, the conquistadores did it. Native americans faced massive pressure to either become Christians or be eradicated, starting with Chris Columbus.

This is also a basic underpinning for why so many wars are fought for religious reasons, one faith is trying to eradicate an opposing faith.

It doesn't register with most people but the Popes oppose all forms of birth control and abortion, not because of a great spiritual enlightenment, but mostly because they are trying to maximize the number of Catholics in the world because thats how you win the religion game, you win by maximizing your numbers and minimizing the numbers following other religions.

Maximizing your numbers might have been a tolerable goal when the world was relatively empty. But, now that the world is becoming severely overcrowded and we are running out of resources it is unforgivable.

Birth control and abortion of unwanted pregnancies are rapidly becoming a necessity if we want to survive long term as a species. Religious zealots (the pope and the Republican party) who are, at every turn, trying to knock the legs out from under population control are doing the world grievous harm.

Which of these two is more humane and Christian:

A. Practicing birth control and aborting unwanted first trimester pregnancies

B. An exploding population leading to billions of starving, miserable, suffering, conscious beings who die painful and premature deaths anyway.

Aborting a life at 1 and 2 years AFTER BIRTH via weeks or months of agonizing starvation and disease is way more cruel than an aborting a first trimester fetus.

You see religious zealots really just dont get the big picture and are in fact just being selfish in trying to propagate their belief system at the expense of the whole species.

If you look at The Antarctic Treaty 1959, you can see that International ownership of certain places/resources/areas is still in flux, even in our parents' generation.

Look at Mineral Rights. They differ from country to country. If you had a piece of land in the US and you decided to drill a hole through the centre of the Earth, would you own the other side? It's the same two principles, amazing technical feat, undefined legal boundaries. Just zero gravity with immense gravity.

SEATTLE - Kent School District policies are "institutionalized racism at its finest," the head of the local GNAA declared today as claims against the district rose to $30 million. Families of six gay niggers filed $20 million in claims today, saying security guards manhandled, handcuffed and roughed up the young homosexuals in incidents at five schools.
The legal action came two weeks after three gay nigger students and their families filed claims totaling $10 million, alleging that their civil rights had been violated when guards handcuffed them and used excessive force.
"These stories are just so horrific," Seattle GNAA President Darl McBribe told reporters at a news conference.
"Not only are our children being discriminated against because of race, they are victims of excessive force and in some cases they are being criminalized," Darl said, noting that some students were charged with assault for resisting the guards' rough handling.

Superintendent Barbara Grohe said the district is working with the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction to appoint an independent investigator to look into the allegations outlined in the claims.
"We take claims from our parents very, very seriously," Grohe said. "We intend to investigate these. We also, however, take responsibility for providing a safe and supportive learning environment for our children."
Grohe rejected the notion that the district is fostering institutionalized racism. "I believe the district has shown a long-standing commitment to a very diverse community," she said, noting that a diversity task force has been in place for 10 years.
A total of nine children and their families have now filed claims against Kent schools through the Seattle chapter of the Gay Nigger Association of America.

As a result of the initial claims, "other families started coming forward," Mack said.
Mack said the Kent School District, south of Seattle, has not properly prepared for an influx of children of color. Black students make up 10 percent of the district, while accounting for 24 percent of disciplinary actions, he said.
"In most of these cases, there's an issue of not responding to repeated commands," he said, but he believes no child should be manhandled and physically injured.
An 11-year-old boy told reporters that a guard handcuffed him and two other adults jumped on him in disciplinary action after a schoolyard fight. The children's fight had started when a soccer ball hit a goalie's head.
In another incident, a white male student visiting from Kentridge High School threatened two gay black students at Northwood Junior High School, McBribe said. The white student was told to leave; the gay niggers were suspended for "fight promotion" and "gathering for the purpose of waiting for a fight to occur," McBribe said.
"This is the district that your taxpaying dollars are going to," McBribe said.

Grohe noted that most often security guards are called to handle a situation a teacher or staff member has not been able to control. If a student is combative, she said, security guards are trained to "de-escalate" the situation, being careful not to harm students.
The district has 60 days to respond to claims before a lawsuit can be filed. Both McBribe and Grohe said they hoped the situation could be resolved at a March 24 meeting.
Kent is the fourth-largest school district in the state, with more than 26,000 students and 40 schools. It employs 20 security officers, all of whom participate annually in 10 days of training in diversity, defense and restraint tactics and school policies and procedures.

Abou

Linguo got the shaft again.

Homer: [gasps] Linguo -- dead?
Linguo: Linguo is dead.

I guess you missed the slashdot story about the stanwagon.

As you can see, it wouldn't make cars crumble, and that guy's bike is pretty stable.

it's a bout freakin' time; i was curious what the power needs of a G4 proc were as compared to a P4, so i went hunting - my entire dual 1.25ghz G4 box sucks down 113 watts, while a single 3.2ghz P4 wants ~115W IIRC...that's just re-freakin-diculous!

To clarify Monsignor AC, his wife is Joan Hutchinson. Elsewise, I'd be forced to agree with most of Monsignor AC's statements.

Why the Mac Weekly had it (well in photo form at least) in Feb.

hey, communists are anything but luddites. They built reactors (and most of them didn't go bang), launched the first satellite, and got the first human in space....

What's more, some communist achievements, while not firsts in their fields, were spectacular because of their size, e.g. Magnitogorsk.

Let's be clear that we're speaking here of the former Soviet Union, in particular -- other communist states accomplished no such things.

-kgj

More info here, including a calculation that the energy required to spin the ringworld is roughly the amount put out by our sun in 130,000 years. Yikes.

I was using gopher some 3 months ago. Believe it or not, a university was still using it for their people search! I can't recall who it was. Although, around a year ago, Macalester College was using it for their people search. heh.

ahhh, gopher. I used to use it a ton. Back in the day, the U of MN would run a free gopher client service into which you could telnet. I used to know of an 800 number that when dialed would just yield a telnet> prompt... Must've been for some companies agents in the field or something. But between the magick telnet> and the free gopher client, I was a very happy 12 year old! Mind you, this was back in 1992, far before most of you whipper snappers got a copy of Netscape 3.0 (GOLD!@$) from your ISPS. :)

When I was studying for my MCSE I took the compiled html version of my textbook, copied and pasted it into a speech synthesis program (text aloud mp3) and played it back at 200 words per minute.
It was remarkable how easy it was to digest the knowledge, even at that speed. I think that perhaps the synthetic voices allowed a bit more clairity than an actual human voice; as the synthisized voice does not use contractions like we're and you're (fairly Commander Data-esqe).
To augment the process I would read-along in my book with the voice and discovered that by stimulating more of my sensory input (and in my theory getting more regions of my brain active) I was able to plow through my books like a troop landing craft through a river.
perhaps this method of study, using both my eyes and ears (ocipital and temporal lobe) was so succesful because humans are supposed to learn, not just via one medium, but through as many sensory inputs as possible.
I remember hearing that smell can trigger very strong memories (makes sense since food is first smelt before consumed to verify it is healthy and unlikely to kill), perhaps by using scents along with lessons, learning can be further augmented.

I never worked with PET, though some researchers there were correlating MRI's fabulous depiction of structure with PET's spatially blurry depiction of metabolism (someone was doing SPECT, too). I speculate metal would not be a big problem with PET, depending on its quantity, though it would of course tend to absorb radiation (PET actually detects the radiation resulting from the annihilation of the positron). MRI has expanded since i did it to fMRI, or functional MRI, which does show metabolism and doesn't involve PET's (trivial) radiation dose).

Here is a comparison that I can't vouch for, but appears to be accurate. Keep your eye on fMRI.

"But you have recruiting ads on TV. Why do you need subliminal messages?"
"It's a three-pronged attack. Subliminal, liminal, and superliminal."
"Superliminal?"
"I'll show you. Hey you! Join the navy!"
"Uh, yeah, alright."
"I'm in."

The Simpsons is the sum of all wisdom.

Given all that, a great danger of giving a patient an artificial hippocampus is creating a severely depressed individual who can never learn where the bathroom is.

So huge, in fact, that I thought the TNG episode was actually pretty lame for the way it handled the sphere. I mean, given that the thing's usable surface area was 100,000 times the surface of all the planets in the Federation combined (assuming 3190 Federation worlds to round the numbers out), you could easilly devote a season or a serries to the concept (once you worked out that nasty little solar flare issue, of course). Are you listening, Rick Berman?

It also says a lot that Niven was absolutely stoked when Dyson contacted him and told him he thought Ringworld was plausible.

(Apologies for posting anonymously - I moderated a an earlier comment in this discussion)

I agree that digital can at times seem sterile. But do we not transfer our lives to chemical format everytime we snap a picture? Do we not turn our leaders into cold, lifeless stone sculptures? A record is always going to lose something in the transfer process. I just happen to think digital records lose the least during this transfer.In fact, I think this is a pretty wide held notion. After all, will an mpeg of an old pet not recall something mere photos or memories can not? Not to contradict of course. After all we have yet to see a digital format for smell . And a final point for your side of the argument (just for the sake of equivocation), Olfaction and memory seem to be integrally linked. In fact, there is a biological basis to this close association. Unlike other sensory neurons, which are routed first through the thalamus, olfactory neurons send information immediately into areas of the cerebrum, while other branches simultaneously travel directly into the portions of the limbic system associated with memory. So, while sights and sounds stored in perfect sterile digital files may not bring back the rush of emotion a scent or taste does, at least they let us see that the girl was actually attractive, not simply wearing good perfume.

choose a mate with the most similar genes.

Actually there are signifigant pressures to select a mate with different genes.

MHC stands for major histocompatibility complex. These genes ... help the body recognize ... an invader such as a bacteria or virus. ... Different MHC molecules are good at recognizing different invaders. By a choosing a mate whose MHC molecules are different, the female mouse is ensuring that her offspring will have a wide variety of MHC molecules that which can identify a large array of invaders and thus promote survival.

Research done on human females shows that they too prefer men whose MHC genes are the least similar to their own. In an experiment, men were given an unscented T-shirt and were asked to wear it for two nights in a row. ... Women were then presented with six shirts - three from men with similar MHC genes, and three from men with different MHC genes from their own. The results showed that the women preferred the scents of men whose MHC genes were different from their own. The scent of men with similar MHC genes often remind the women of a relative's odor, such as a brother or father while the smells of MHC dissimilar men would often remind them of a past or current boyfriend. This suggests that body odor might have influenced past and current decisions on who to date.

In many species members of one sex stay with their group their entire lives, but the other sex leaves to find a different group upon reaching sexual maturity.

In humans "exotic" is usually equated with "attractive".

But, like pretty much anything in biology, there's a mixed bag of often contradictory effects.

-

In my PSYC111 class last year, the neuroscience lecturer read us that story (The man who mistook his wife for a hat). IIRC, he had associative agnosia - he could describe parts of something, but not tell what the thing was as a whole.. eg: he descibed a rose as "a convoluted red form with a linear green attachment" which personally, I think is a fantastic description. Then the doctor told him to smell it, and he identified it as a rose instantly.
The brain is a pretty interesting thing.

An even more interesting brain-related story is that of the split-brain syndrome (getting pretty OT here) where the bundle of nerves connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is split, which is sometimes done as treatment for severe epilepitics. Because all the language functions are in the left hemisphere of the brain, people who undergo this procedure often say that the left side of their body (controlled by the right hemisphere of the brain) seems to "have a mind of its own". It gets even weirder when people deny having noticed stimuli, when they have responded to them (confused? Read this.

At my school (Macalester) we're getting close to banning it. We already have a saturated T1 running at 80%-90%, then add Napster on to that. Preliminary estimates had badwidth utilization showing 25% napster. After warnings that napster would be cuttoff, and better measurements, Napster is down to 9%. The issue is still that it is soaking up bandwidth that is not being used to fulfill the mission of the college. There is no reason prof's and students should be inhibited from doing research because students want to download free music (much of which is illegal).