Could you live on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? As an undergraduate student I did. Now that I have a job, though, I've moved up to bologna and cheese.
Growing up in a rural area, I was always kinda dejected when the satellite images I'd look up were old and relatively low resolution compared to what was commonly available for more urbanized centers. Given the price tag for what Google is doing here (the article says between $125-$700), I understand why... there's less market for it, so there's less of a return on cost.
Still, the possibility that someday soon users will be able to submit their own images of various locations suggests that suburban and rural settings will start to be imaged in the same fashion. Does anybody want to put up some ideas regarding why this may or may not be a good thing?
doesn't that thing block cosmic rays and radiation and shit? What would that do to a laser? Not all radiation is created equal. Light--even visible light--is electromagnetic (EM) radiation. Another kind of radiation is particle radiation: actual particles of matter (protons, neutrons, electrons and the like) zipping around and hitting things. That's the kind of radiation that helps make fission work. Lasers emit EM radiation.
The gases and that make up our atmosphere interact differently with various "flavors" of EM radiation. You're right, it does work to block out some things; a popular example is how the ozone layer protects us from certain kinds of ultraviolet light (EM radiation). However, it is rarely an all-or-nothing affair. Some "flavors" of EM radiation pass through just fine... visible light is the simplest example. Each kind of EM radiation is reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through the atmosphere--and all other matter--in varying degrees. The "flavor" of EM radiation we want to use for our laser determines how well the light will propagate through the atmosphere. If we pick something that we know the atmosphere doesn't reflect or absorb so well, then there will be fewer problems with the atmosphere.
Would the laser require less intensity to be shot such a long distance due to the lack of interference from an atmosphere? Nope; I'd imagine it would be about the same. Space is not completely empty. There's still little specks of matter here and there, floating about in the void. Granted, they're very, very far apart... but we're talking about a very, very long distance, so it stands to reason that if we shoot a laser beam over that distance, this matter is also going to reflect, absorb, and transmit our light in a significant way.
What's been done here is that people have crunched some numbers and rigged up an experiment to produce approximate results. They have shortened the distance the laser light has to travel by a whole lot... but the number of specks of matter has been increased by a whole lot, too, because we're sending the light through our atmosphere. It becomes a relatively simple matter of scale.
It's an approximation, to be sure, but it is a pretty well-reasoned one.
I would think that the fact Chicago is a major metropolitan location and business center roughly in the center of the northern United States would still work to its advantage. Plenty of national and international organizations and businesses have branches in Chicago, despite the issues you set forward... why not build up where the customers are, to show them you're hale, hearty, and ready to do business? Sometimes it costs money to make money.
After reading the article, I'd like to see the actual papers they've written on this. A quick peek at a related link suggests that the viruses are in water, or within cells in the water. I want to know what happens when you get multiple media interfaces involved, such as within the body, and the degree to which these boundaries will cause a loss in wave "volume" (does Wired mean amplitude?).
My guess is that the experiment involved a very shallow field of activity. The technique as it stands now would be nifty for sterilization, but I'd imagine that to be effective for human viral treatments you'd need a laser wavelength capable of penetrating human membranes at least to the depth of bone marrow. Somebody correct me or back me up on this, please: if we're dealing with EM radiation of a low enough energy, aren't these guys in the domain of short bursts of directed radio waves? If so, then I guess that answers a few of my questions.
Another reason why relatively lower yield bombs have been retained is that they can be more effective. I can't remember the page or document, but I remember reading somewhere that the right dispersal patterns using multiple kT range devices will generate larger regions of destructive overpressure than a single MT range device. We hold onto the smaller weapons because we can do a better job with them, from a cold and technical viewpoint.
I agree that Best Buy should do something for this guy (i.e. replacement or refund) and talk with the manager in question, but really the ultimate culprit may be unknowable. Unless you can check the entire transport chain of the item, you can't really be sure how many different people handled the project, or might have something to gain from performing a switch.
That, or now some guy in Malaysia has a 1-TB tile on his bathroom floor.
The Monte Carlo you see on the track has as much in common with the Monte Carlos you see on the road as a Cessna has with a kite. The name is there for marketing and branding, really.
If you coat the solar panels with oil, then you're going to be reducing their efficiency because the photons from the Sun will have additional media and boundaries to get across... more opportunities for reflection & absorption to take their toll. Also, according to a previous post, traditional oils as you and I think of them wouldn't work in space, because they'd freeze or evaporate. Nice try, though.
What exactly is meant by primary and secondary levels? Are they talking about elementary and high schools? These do not necessarily equal science or engineering graduates. I want to know whether these numbers are a result of actual success in the classroom, or from a culture of academic hand-holding and feel-goodness. Does thi trying to imply that "No Child Left Behind" is a success? Will this story be true in five to ten years, when the current crop of grade schoolers enter their first post-college jobs?
it's already not suitable for vegetarians. I thought vegans were just a subset of vegetarians, not an alternate name. My understanding has been that vegetarians are against eating meat, while vegans are against anything that harms animals. Are all vegans vegetarians? Are all vegetarians vegans?
Internal combustion engines put out a lot of exhaust material that kinda make sustained life smelly/impossible if they're on long enough in places that aren't well ventilated. Do you really want your apartment reeking of exhaust fumes? Do you really want a carbon monoxide generator in your apartment?
A South Korean website polled its visitors about their nationalism in August 2006, asking them:
"If you were reborn, would you want to be Korean again?" The Culture and Debate sections of
the website Netease copied the idea, asking visitors if they would want to be Chinese again. The
poll ran from 4 September to 11 October. Of the 10,000 people who participated, 64 per cent said
they would not want to be Chinese. The main reasons identified were: "Being Chinese is not
honourable," "You cannot buy a house in China, happiness is too inaccessible," "No reason,"
"You cannot crack jokes in China" and "You cannot see good cartoons in China." Netease had to
fire Culture section editor Tang Yan and Debate section editor Liu Xianghui. And the Debate
section was closed down. Thus, the obligatory question: if you were reborn, would you want to join Slashdot again?
Slashdot Mirror
Tasha Yar begs to differ.
Growing up in a rural area, I was always kinda dejected when the satellite images I'd look up were old and relatively low resolution compared to what was commonly available for more urbanized centers. Given the price tag for what Google is doing here (the article says between $125-$700), I understand why... there's less market for it, so there's less of a return on cost.
Still, the possibility that someday soon users will be able to submit their own images of various locations suggests that suburban and rural settings will start to be imaged in the same fashion. Does anybody want to put up some ideas regarding why this may or may not be a good thing?
The gases and that make up our atmosphere interact differently with various "flavors" of EM radiation. You're right, it does work to block out some things; a popular example is how the ozone layer protects us from certain kinds of ultraviolet light (EM radiation). However, it is rarely an all-or-nothing affair. Some "flavors" of EM radiation pass through just fine... visible light is the simplest example. Each kind of EM radiation is reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through the atmosphere--and all other matter--in varying degrees. The "flavor" of EM radiation we want to use for our laser determines how well the light will propagate through the atmosphere. If we pick something that we know the atmosphere doesn't reflect or absorb so well, then there will be fewer problems with the atmosphere. Would the laser require less intensity to be shot such a long distance due to the lack of interference from an atmosphere? Nope; I'd imagine it would be about the same. Space is not completely empty. There's still little specks of matter here and there, floating about in the void. Granted, they're very, very far apart... but we're talking about a very, very long distance, so it stands to reason that if we shoot a laser beam over that distance, this matter is also going to reflect, absorb, and transmit our light in a significant way.
What's been done here is that people have crunched some numbers and rigged up an experiment to produce approximate results. They have shortened the distance the laser light has to travel by a whole lot... but the number of specks of matter has been increased by a whole lot, too, because we're sending the light through our atmosphere. It becomes a relatively simple matter of scale.
It's an approximation, to be sure, but it is a pretty well-reasoned one.
I would think that the fact Chicago is a major metropolitan location and business center roughly in the center of the northern United States would still work to its advantage. Plenty of national and international organizations and businesses have branches in Chicago, despite the issues you set forward... why not build up where the customers are, to show them you're hale, hearty, and ready to do business? Sometimes it costs money to make money.
After reading the article, I'd like to see the actual papers they've written on this. A quick peek at a related link suggests that the viruses are in water, or within cells in the water. I want to know what happens when you get multiple media interfaces involved, such as within the body, and the degree to which these boundaries will cause a loss in wave "volume" (does Wired mean amplitude?).
My guess is that the experiment involved a very shallow field of activity. The technique as it stands now would be nifty for sterilization, but I'd imagine that to be effective for human viral treatments you'd need a laser wavelength capable of penetrating human membranes at least to the depth of bone marrow. Somebody correct me or back me up on this, please: if we're dealing with EM radiation of a low enough energy, aren't these guys in the domain of short bursts of directed radio waves? If so, then I guess that answers a few of my questions.
Another reason why relatively lower yield bombs have been retained is that they can be more effective. I can't remember the page or document, but I remember reading somewhere that the right dispersal patterns using multiple kT range devices will generate larger regions of destructive overpressure than a single MT range device. We hold onto the smaller weapons because we can do a better job with them, from a cold and technical viewpoint.
I agree that Best Buy should do something for this guy (i.e. replacement or refund) and talk with the manager in question, but really the ultimate culprit may be unknowable. Unless you can check the entire transport chain of the item, you can't really be sure how many different people handled the project, or might have something to gain from performing a switch.
That, or now some guy in Malaysia has a 1-TB tile on his bathroom floor.
The Monte Carlo you see on the track has as much in common with the Monte Carlos you see on the road as a Cessna has with a kite. The name is there for marketing and branding, really.
If you coat the solar panels with oil, then you're going to be reducing their efficiency because the photons from the Sun will have additional media and boundaries to get across... more opportunities for reflection & absorption to take their toll. Also, according to a previous post, traditional oils as you and I think of them wouldn't work in space, because they'd freeze or evaporate. Nice try, though.
Not true. It is plainly clear that Picard is superior.
What exactly is meant by primary and secondary levels? Are they talking about elementary and high schools? These do not necessarily equal science or engineering graduates. I want to know whether these numbers are a result of actual success in the classroom, or from a culture of academic hand-holding and feel-goodness. Does thi trying to imply that "No Child Left Behind" is a success? Will this story be true in five to ten years, when the current crop of grade schoolers enter their first post-college jobs?
1.21
My God, I hope they don't Zerg rush.
...by letting them test their wits against other online players... Since when does anyone with any wits at all hang out on MySpace?Internal combustion engines put out a lot of exhaust material that kinda make sustained life smelly/impossible if they're on long enough in places that aren't well ventilated. Do you really want your apartment reeking of exhaust fumes? Do you really want a carbon monoxide generator in your apartment?
"You will be assimilated. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Resistance is futile."
I don't think the PDF covered that point. A quick search shows that most wouldn't like to be reborn as Korean, though.
So what happens if the blocking agent finds that site, and blacklists the whole thing?