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Too bad one other curious sight given by the ISS to its occupants is missing, aurora:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Australis_From_ISS.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis_from_Expedition_6.ogg

Also, I won't complain if the next attempt would be less jerky... if not by longer exposures (which would introduce some motion blur, but probably also make lightning less visible), then at least by capturing photos more often.

Too bad one other curious sight given by the ISS to its occupants is missing, aurora:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Australis_From_ISS.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis_from_Expedition_6.ogg

Also, I won't complain if the next attempt would be less jerky... if not by longer exposures (which would introduce some motion blur, but probably also make lightning less visible), then at least by capturing photos more often.

Too bad one other curious sight given by the ISS to its occupants is missing, aurora:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Australis_From_ISS.JPG
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aurora_Borealis_from_Expedition_6.ogg

Also, I won't complain if the next attempt would be less jerky... if not by longer exposures (which would introduce some motion blur, but probably also make lightning less visible), then at least by capturing photos more often.

Yeah, because it is sooooo much more difficult to take out a card and swipe it than it is to take my phone out of its case, unlock it, find and launch the app, and then "tap" it on some reader thing.

I would totally go for such a thing if it worked like a disposable credit card number. Those significantly increase my privacy by preventing merchants from using a service to cross-reference my purchases based on my CC#.

Of course Google would love to use their privileged access to become the only company capable of providing such a cross-referencing service, so the idea is moot in this context. Doesn't mean someone else couldn't do it better though.

Hey, Obama's shilling for corporations is enough to condemn him. You don't need to bring your racism into this. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Lawn_jockey

This is a popular problem in microfluidics. For lab-on-a-chip technology it is very difficult to make a pump with moving parts on the micrometre scale, so researchers have turned to more obscure phenomena. Electro-osmosis is commonly used. Essentially, in a channel with dielectric walls, a very thin ionic double layer naturally forms at the solid-liquid interface. If an electric field is applied in the direction of travel, this drags the thin ionic layer, which in turn mobilises the bulk liquid.

Researchers have been playing with magnetic nano-particles in microfluidic systems for years, usually in the context of a separation system. This spinning phenomena is interesting, and could well be used for more than just pumping. In narrow enough channels, if there is only a moderate concentration of these particles then I doubt they would be close enough together to act as described here.

It's a shame the paywall makes it hard for most of us to really RTFA. I'll report back if there's anything interesting...

I have a (general) policy of avoiding companies who believe in the "what the big print giveth...the fine print taketh away." As they are not really interested in serving me, as raping me.

FUCK. THEM.

I'll stick to smaller, local companies whom actually CARE that I'm happy - ALL THE TIME. They'll actually try to help me - even if it means me moving companies - but they won't intentionally try to fuck me.

Somehow, I don't find it at all odd that Muse's 'Uprising' decided to play via my music player's random function as I read this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8KQmps-Sog
https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Uprising_(song)

Maybe you should read the Wikipedia page to find out what this is all about. It's more frightening than you think!

"The Pillsbury Bake-Off is a cooking contest, first run by Pillsbury Company from 1949 to 1976 as an annual contest. Since then, the contest has been held biennially."

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Pillsbury_Bake-Off

Would you rather deal with 2 systems (variable thrust engine and an air bag deploy system) or just 1 system?

You would need an engine regardless, there is no atmosphere on the moon so you can use the Martian solution. You could use a parachute for the bulk of the descent and then have the air bag.

I wouldn't even dream of using an air bag for manned missions, no control of the impact at all.

With variable thrust you have controls systems to keep things stable and can vector out of the way like Neil did on Apollo 13.

An aircraft is not a spacecraft so "imagine controlling an aircraft without control surfaces" is a non sequitor. In fact, some aircraft can be partially controlled without flight surfaces (vectored thrust fighters that stand on their tails and use engine thrust to spin about, see Cobra maneuver.

No atmosphere, no control surfaces. All you are left with is thrusters and what little gravity there is.

The government makes money from asset forfeiture https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Asset_forfeiture - you deal drugs from your house? They take your house. Sell it. You deal drugs from car? They get car... etc

Then the private sector gets involved. Many new prisons today are privately owned and run, and contract their services to governments. They turn profits on the prisoners labor. (They'll be paid a pittance for their time, $0.25/hour) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Penal_labour#Non-punitive_prison_labour Then, the businesses behind these industries lobby for tougher sentencing, and more laws with which to put folks in prison, thus requiring more facilities.

The government makes money from asset forfeiture https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Asset_forfeiture - you deal drugs from your house? They take your house. Sell it. You deal drugs from car? They get car... etc

Then the private sector gets involved. Many new prisons today are privately owned and run, and contract their services to governments. They turn profits on the prisoners labor. (They'll be paid a pittance for their time, $0.25/hour) https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Penal_labour#Non-punitive_prison_labour Then, the businesses behind these industries lobby for tougher sentencing, and more laws with which to put folks in prison, thus requiring more facilities.

Rare earth magnets operate at room temperature just fine. The problem is that they are not statically stable. Any pitching beyond perfectly aligned will cause the device to quickly and violently flip over, requiring excessive force to subsequently remove it from the ground.

Disregarding the hoverboard feasibility issue for a moment, I wanted to point out that it is possible to force the magnetic flux of an array to be almost entirely on one side of the array: Halbach Array. Use the array's flux to induce an opposing field in loops of wire via induction.

Fun fact: Halbach Arrays are the reason many of those flat sheet refrigerator magnets only "stick" with one side and fall off if applied facing reverse.

So, now we have replaced the issue of prying the hoverboard free if it is flipped deck-side down by making it twice as difficult to free the hoverboard if it sticks to a light pole deck-side up. Progress! (haha)

Rare earth magnets operate at room temperature just fine. The problem is that they are not statically stable. Any pitching beyond perfectly aligned will cause the device to quickly and violently flip over, requiring excessive force to subsequently remove it from the ground.

Disregarding the hoverboard feasibility issue for a moment, I wanted to point out that it is possible to force the magnetic flux of an array to be almost entirely on one side of the array: Halbach Array. Use the array's flux to induce an opposing field in loops of wire via induction.

Fun fact: Halbach Arrays are the reason many of those flat sheet refrigerator magnets only "stick" with one side and fall off if applied facing reverse.

So, now we have replaced the issue of prying the hoverboard free if it is flipped deck-side down by making it twice as difficult to free the hoverboard if it sticks to a light pole deck-side up. Progress! (haha)

If you can see your genitals while wearing jeans, you are doing it wrong.

Depends on the person in the jeans. Camel toe can be aesthetically pleasing.

I don't know about aessthetically pleasing, but it does send out the message that she probably will, given a bare minimum of effort/cash on your part.

If you can see your genitals while wearing jeans, you are doing it wrong.

Depends on the person in the jeans. Camel toe can be aesthetically pleasing.

Yeah but who wants to attack Canadiens eh?

John Candy, that's who!

No, but they built planets there.

Who decides what is 'hate-speech'?

The Canadian Human Rights Commission?

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

Right now, in reality, the private sector is not doing it at all, out side of some sub-orbital test flights. Whine about government all you want to, but they got to the moon in 10 years of trying, and so far a private company hasn't even orbited around the planet one time...

No, there's no company that's completely privately developed three new rocket engines and launched two new classes of launch vehicles into orbit with a third, even larger, on the way...

You're clearly right, private sector is not doing it at all. Oh wait, no, you're an ignorant clod.

I'd love to be able to reach my home connection from that distance, but do we really want 10,000 "linksys" APs showing up when doing a scan?

The article is talking about something more like wimax rather than personal access points.

Modern high bypass turbofan aircraft engines are sort of more akin to turboprops than to early turbojet engines. Propfan is one of more promising improvements. "Frames" go for composites, so organic materials...

Maybe what NASA says is that they've made a mistake. One almost not done by anyone else* ...but very popular in works of fiction. Maybe it's simply how dreams about expected modes of space travel turned out to be wrong; dreams extrapolating (not understanding, generally) rates and directions of observed progress. Look at those airplanes from "our" times (imagined during rapid advances of marine tech; and we can even build them - take a Harrier, remove wings and canopy... still a horrible idea vs. "boring" reality)

Consider how the "spaceplanes" came to dominate scifi... around the 40s, during rapid advances of airplane tech (I can see a pattern...); how the designers and decision-makers of the Shuttle were undoubtedly raised on those works of fiction. And how they gave us an analogue of Catalina, at best (Spruce Goose, at worst); but something which looked very soothing and "inspiring" to the already constrained public imagination, already quite accustomed to airliners / Concorde. Something which probably robbed us at least of a decade of progress; was conceptually obsolete (with automatic rendezvous, docking and routine return of large valuable cargo done in the 60s) before it seriously got onto drawing boards. It was a retreat to early dreams.

Short spurs of progress are generally typical of our civilisation, in the Real World(tm); it's what tends to happen with everything. BTW, have you seen the ideas of Archimedes about floating improved? Come on, his law is over 2k years old, surely we should be able to ignore it by now...


*The Shuttle appears to make more sense if you look at it as a geopolitical engineering project, to provoke the ignorant Soviet generals[1] into pushing for a rampant spending of their counterpart, to have a parity for (non-existent) "strategic advantage" of the STS. Of course, then one has to ask why was it allowed to continue sucking NASA dry for the past two decades?... there even was a good opportunity to terminate the program post-Challenger (of course, that in turn could be also a "revenge of the Buran" of sorts - it was essentially being prepped on its launchpad at the time, and of course the Soviets couldn't be allowed to be the only ones with a shuttle[2])

1. Their engineers very much didn't want to go there, preferring Spiral approach. With the vehicle being just a dumb payload of medium launcher ...ultimately, when forced, doing the same with STS-class vehicle (Energia was a more sensible approach from the start, one very similar to this Space Launch System) - but it bled them dry, killed what they really wanted (Zarya "super Soyuz")

2. Who knows, the history might judge the last laugh was even more on Buran - in its only flight, it demonstared the whole main "point" behind a shuttle (its flight profile) to a much fuller degree than any of STS vehicles ever did. With the secondary point (LEO space station) being essentially, for STS fleet, in the form of maintenance and expansion of two space stations meant for Buran...

No jobs will be lost in that transaction, but about 5,000 Cisco employees will be transferred to Foxconn

Read the articles and get that chip off of your shoulder.

there are things worse than being laid off; like the despair foxconn inflicts on its employees.

You probably heard an audio beat note between the TV sweep rate and the tinnitus.

A beat frequency is the difference between two closely tuned audio tones. Musicians listen to the beat notes to tune their string instruments.

I don't think that's the case here. Beat frequencies are the result of two actual sound waves interfering with each other; in tinnitus I don't think anyone is suggesting that the perceived sound is actually being produced (otherwise it could be measured with an in-ear microphone). Having both fired too many guns in my life and spent time studying music I have tinnitus and can recognize beat patterns; when I'm exposed to real audio frequencies close to my tinnitus frequency I've never heard beat frequencies.

I have to agree with the other posters in this thread that the GP's experience was simply hearing the flyback transformers whine.

Where are the sane, rational and decent options?!

I'm in exactly the same position as you -- and moreover, I feel like we probably represent the majority viewpoint in this country, but nobody realizes it because the politicians and media refuse to ask the right questions. Anyway, No Labels is about the closest thing I've seen to what we're looking for.

Keep these as reminders of a time when we still sent men into space, when the U.S. was a superpower, and when we thought we would always keep moving forward.

Easier to watch reruns of "The Jetsons".

It's neither. The reason is because the environments we live in have become less dangerous. There's only so many hours in the day to worry about things, so the more dangerous things take priority. As we've removed more and more dangers through scientific and social progress, it has freed up room in our busy schedules to worry about less significant things.

Think of it as a Maslow-style hierarchy of risks. You only start worrying about things higher on the hierarchy when you no longer have to worry about the things beneath it. At the bottom are things like "being eaten by bears." Then above that is "plague." Then above that is "being crushed by industrial machinery." And then above that is "peanut allergy."

I'm pretty sure we have no idea what wifi, cellphones, etc. are doing to us.

Yes we do. We've studied it do death. At the absolute worst it might cause a tiny, tiny bit of increase in certain cancers and / or cause some local radiative effects near the antenna. It probably doesn't cause anything above the noise floor of people dying from the Usual Suspects. In other words, if you're worried about that cell phone, put down the damned cigarette first. And buckle your seat belt.

It's like how mercury was first treated... we all just think it's fine and laugh at anyone who says otherwise because we don't experience the problem or haven't seen it with our own eyes. But, we really have no idea.

Actually, Mercury was readily identified as an industrial poison soon after it became widely used (Mad as a Hatter).

discutable. Today's special word!

French
Pronunciation
        IPA: /dis.ky.tabl/
Adjective
discutable (epicene, plural discutables)
        debatable, arguable

Antonyms
        indiscutable

Derived terms
        discutablement

Of course, chaos theory also includes the notion of attractors. https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Attractor

Even though we cannot predict the chaotic day to day movements, there is no such limitation on predicting where the attractor will be. The weather will fluctuate around that attractor at a very similar range as it is doing today.

For the same reason, it is easy to predict that in New York, the average July temperature will be higher than the average January temperature, and we can predict the actual average better than we can predict the weather next week.

I though the Police solved the Synchronicity problem in 1983....

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Synchronicity_(album) - a wiki article about their research.

This 1ms advantage is worth 100m USD, isn't relevant to transatlantic bandwidth.

The quote from wikipedia https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Low_latency_(capital_markets) is

"A 1-millisecond advantage in trading applications can be worth $100 million a year to a major brokerage firm, by one estimate."

I can't find the original source of this - but IIRC its from the CTO of someone like Goldman's or BoA.

If you are doing high frequency trading on a NY or London based exchange, you don't buy the lowest latency connectivity from the exchange to you. You put your systems as close to the exchange as possible AND THEN you buy the lowest latency connectivity from the exchange to you. Your systems which trade in NY are based in NY, and your systems which trade in London are based in London.

I'm sure there is some minor advantage of NY and London being slightly closer together from a latency perspective, but I'm sure its not as much as 100M USD.

Alex

Reactive losses *are* losses. They heat the wires. Reactive reserves for phase stabilization can help get that back under control, but they don't undo the losses already in the wires. Reactive losses are a well known issue with submarine AC cables and limit their length.

DC not only is viable, as the person below you notes, it's already *in use*. The majority of new long-distance high power links being strung up in Europe (red=existing, green=under construction, blue=proposed), and a number in North America as well, are HVDC. Learn about it. Conversion is now efficient and no longer nearly as expensive using modern thyristor-based digital converters. Long-distance HVDC links are much more efficient than long-distance AC links.

Enough of this "I'm pontificating about a subject I've never read about" nonsense.

They can then set a precedent for future cases by all authors.

I'm convinced that's exactly what they are trying to accomplish: they want to be the MAFIAA of written works, and seem determined to keep trying until they can bootstrap themselves into that position.

It's like watching The Omen , only real.

OK-dokey, so presume we're trying to put solar panels on Cassini.

Solar flux @ 1 A.U. (Earth's orbit) -- round to 1kW/m^2
Solar flux @ 10 A.U. (Saturn's aphelion) -- 10W/m^2

Power needed: 700W (to be generated by solar panels instead of RTGs)
Space-rated solar panel efficiency: ~10% (conservative figure takes into account degradation due to age and radiation)

Needed area: (700W)/(0.1)/(10W/m^2) = 700m^2

That's a freaking huge panel, almost as big as a pair of U.S. wing arrays on ISS. For a sense of scale, here's how big the darn things are.

Besides, you need extra fuel or energy to keep the damn things oriented towards the sun. This would likely add more weight since Cassini had to, first and foremost, take lots of pictures. Good luck with taking pics *and* pointing the solar panels. Of course you can have batteries like ISS does. All of this hassle adds significant risk to the mission.

Actually, no. The privileges and immunities clause has pretty much been written out of the constitution--it refers only to a very few things, such as the right to petition the government. In the MacDonald case (Chicago 2nd amendment case a few years back) there was an effort to make it mean something, but SCOTUS decided the only reason they wanted it to was to write law review articles--they used the due process clause instead, IIRC, but they certainly didn't use the PI clause.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Incorporation_of_the_Bill_of_Rights

Constitutional free speech is a "due process" protection--and even that was not clear until long after the Fourteenth Amendment was passed. Look up the incorporation doctrine.

The federal government guaranteed it as against the federal government at first, and it was only later that it applied to the states. Some states also give free speech rights in their constitutions. It still doesn't apply to private actors.

The fourth amendment, likewise, was not incorporated to apply against state agents until Mapp v. Ohio in 1961. It too was incorporated not under the privileges and immunities clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, but under the Due Process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Well if you use a laptop in compact spaces and/or while travelling, your only alternative to "shitty touchscreen interface" would be keyboard and even shittier touchpad.... I'd poke at the screen with my finger all day long before having to use a fucking touchpad. But for real Power Computing(TM) a keyboard and mouse is definitely best.

A properly made keyboard clit is easier to use both for precision and large movements than any damn touchpad. I usually disable the touchpad shortly after getting a new laptop at work (I do try them, but they always suck). The mouse is far superior as a pointing device, of course.

Yes.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Aleph_number

Have you seen what's happened to his career after TNG finished? Basically, nothing except Reading Rainbow. Unlike Wil Wheaton, who has published a lot, been in a load of TV shows and films (and even voiced some of the Romulans in the new Star Trek movie, so seems not to be too out of favour with Paramount).

More likely, he realises that he gets a percentage of every BluRay sale. I'd imagine that Star Trek DVD sales have been slacking recently, but there are enough geeks who will buy the new release, just like they bought the DVDs and VHS tapes before, if it's perceived as better...

Cars physically interconnect all our lives and, with their massive fiscal and environmental costs, they directly connect all of our destinies, as well. Our entire lives, at least in the US, are designed around then. ... They're a public good, not a private right.

That exact same argument can be made about houses, only more so. I think you would have a hell of a time arguing that houses are a public good.

I thought its "thing" was the weirdly shaped bottle.

Germany has one of the highest rates of solar installation in the world.

Splendid.

So, with all that installation, how much electricity does it produce from solar?

Oh, less thanit gets from burning straw. I see.

However, I'm pretty sure this isn't the case in Germany: it's farther north, it's not that sunny, it probably doesn't get that hot in the summer, and it gets cold in the winter and at night.

Germany has one of the highest rates of solar installation in the world.

According to this insolation map most of Finland receives only a tad less useful solar radiation than most of Germany - one gradation step on their scale.

Plus, cold temps actually make most PV systems work more efficiently. Those arizona summers can knock nearly 40% off the efficiency.

However, I'm pretty sure this isn't the case in Germany: it's farther north, it's not that sunny, it probably doesn't get that hot in the summer, and it gets cold in the winter and at night.

Germany has one of the highest rates of solar installation in the world.

According to this insolation map most of Finland receives only a tad less useful solar radiation than most of Germany - one gradation step on their scale.

Plus, cold temps actually make most PV systems work more efficiently. Those arizona summers can knock nearly 40% off the efficiency.

If humanity is to survive, we must pledge to eliminate all carbon dioxide from our atmosphere by 2030

Pure and utter nonsense. For thousands of years the level of CO2 in the atmosphere oscillated around 280 ppm. Even if we were financially and physically able to remove 100 ppm of CO2 from the atmosphere it would have little affect on the temperature of the Earth, which has varied widely over the Millennia. see it here