I don't know all the details, but carbon-14 is pretty much a constant in the atmosphere. It comes from cosmic rays through various processes making thermal (low-energy) neutrons. These hit nitrogen-14 atoms and up the mass by one. The new nitrogen-15 isotope is now unstable and eventually kicks out a proton (hydrogen ion) to become carbon-14.
The process is fairly constant so an equilibrium level of carbon-14 builds up in the atmosphere. Living things are breathing in and eating this constant ratio of carbon-12 and carbon-14. When it dies, it stops maintaining the equilibrium ratio and the carbon-14 begins to decay with a specific rate constant / half life (5730 years).
So if the carbon-14 in a sample has decreased by 1/2 of the original equilibrium level, it's 5730 years old.
Carbon dating starts getting iffy with really old samples because of the uncertainty in the measurements of small numbers of carbon-14 atoms. The practical limit is around 10 half lives or 60,000 years.
But the process that makes carbon-14 is pretty constant because the cosmic radiation is pretty constant and since it's basically inert, the concentration of nitrogen in the atmosphere is also basically a constant. So when rate of production equals rate of decay, the level of carbon-14 stabilzes and can be used as a starting point to see how old certain items are.
Sorting CO2 by isotope would probably have some issues. You wouldn't just be sorting the carbon. You would also be sorting the oxygen. Oxygen has a mass 18 isotope of small abundance. If you have a carbon-12, an oxygen-16, and an oxygen-18, that would have the same nominal mass as carbon-14 and two oxygen-16's.
Without running the numbers, and more details on what you are proposing, it's hard to say how big the oxygen-18 interference would be.
You could go with a high-resolution separation, but throughput would go way down and it would take much longer for a given mass of CO2 to come out the other end.
Someone above said to mix whiskey made from fossil fuels with post-1950's whiskey to tailor the age. I think you would still need to use pre-nuclear testing whiskey because I'll bet there is more than just extra carbon-14 in post-testing whiskey. For example, strontium could show up wherever you would expect magnesium or calcium and if it was a radioactive isotope, it probably would indicate post-testing.
I think to make sure the whiskey was free of anything produced in the testing, you would want to start with pre-testing whiskey and dilute it with isotopically "pure" ethanol (pretty sure that's available) and other materials made with the carbon-12 isotope.
Overall I think it would be pretty expensive - possibly more expensive than the extreme cost of whatever whiskey was mimicked. That's also provided you could get a decent flavor and aroma.
If the bottle is corked and someone doesn't want to insert a very tiny needle to get a sample of the whiskey itself, a fleck of cork could probably be tested to see how old it is.
While the age of the cork doesn't guarantee the age of the whiskey, it might be an indication. Hard to say though.
But the amount withdrawn is going to be in the uL range which isn't even a significant portion of a single drop.
Now that's an interesting thought. Carbon-14 is made in the upper atmosphere by nitrogen being hit by thermal neutrons so there is always a fairly constant amount aside from the nuclear testing thing. It's when things stop living and incorporating the carbon-14 and it starts decaying is how things are dated.
But if you harvest the CO2 from fossil fuels, and do it right, you could blow these tester's minds when they find you have 300 million year old whiskey!
Yep - I think if he was able to do that, the technique itself would be worth far more than any whiskey tricks.
But for anyone thinking it could somehow be filtered, that's simply not possible. All the alcohol and the stuff that gives it flavor are organic molecules with carbon making the backbone. There isn't a way to go in and find which are the carbon-14 atoms and selectively replacing them with carbon-12.
The technique used is guaranteed to be mass spectroscopy which destroys the sample because it has to be atomized and ionized. All the atoms basically get weighed at the same time so you don't know which atom came from where. You just know the isotope ratios.
There are mass spec techniques that would allow finding where a particular atom would be located, but I don't believe it would work if you have millions of molecules with random substitutions which is probably the case.
I didn't say that. What I said is that there is a huge infrastructure in place with huge costs associated with Windows.
Linux and OSX both have and will have weaknesses. The tend to be more local exploits than remote, but they aren't perfect either. I know Apple has caught a lot of flack for being slow to fix weaknesses too - apparently generally slower than Microsoft or the Linux distro maintainers.
I know security is not easy. Security is a big part of my work. But I think that both Apple and Microsoft could do a better job about educating users regarding security. All too often I hear Windows and Mac users claiming they have never had an intrusion/virus. Particularly Mac users. Linux users, on the other hand, really do tend to be more computer literate and the distros now also tend to have everything turned off and ports need to be opened to use services. A default closed stance is a good one.
But the fact is that Microsoft is the target of the lion's share of exploits and attacks. It does get the criminals the most bang for the buck. But for whatever reason, a lot of Microsoft users don't update. I think it's a bad decision, but Microsoft now excludes pirate copy users from being able to get updates. That just guarantees a ready pool of systems to be used in botnets.
I think Apple and Microsoft both would benefit from including a multimedia presentation with their computers that covers the basics of computer security. They could explain the risks of various activities and also the best ways to combat computer crime. If people actually understood what the difference was between an administrator account and a user account, that in itself would go a long way to make it more difficult to compromise PCs.
I almost feel bad for Microsoft because of the number of people attacking their code. Almost.
As I was perusing the various security boards and newsletters I frequent, I started thinking of how amazingly large the array of people making their livings off of Windows' security deficiencies. It's huge.
There are a multitude of websites that might as well be devoted to Windows security issues. There are the people who constantly write AV signatures. People who collect malware in honeypots and distribute it to security researchers. People who have to write and test patches - both at Microsoft and at other software publishers. People who lecture on Windows security. People who do forensics on compromised machines. People who try to contain the damage when an organization's computers are compromised. People who have to notify the people who are affected by the compromises. People who have to untangle and try to block unauthorized bank charges and identity theft. Etc.
It's like the bump on the log at the bottom of the sea song. The chain just goes and goes and goes. At least it is employing people but you have to wonder what the total global expenditures are in dealing with the consequences of security issues in Microsoft Windows.
This isn't meant to be a troll. It's a legitimate concern and I wonder when people will finally say "enough".
Exactly. And for anyone that doesn't have/home on a separate partition, it's easy enough to just back that up and write it back after the upgrade. The only thing you have to do in that case is recreate the entries in the passwd and shadow files.
Codeweavers is a vendor that sells and supports Crossover Office. It works great for running Windows applications directly under Linux and is how I run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc, when I have to run them.
Codeweavers is also a major contributor to Wine. If you get Crossover Office, though, you can get professional support if you have problems. I've never had problems in Crossover Office, though.
I can say this weekend I helped my neighbor install SuSe 11.1 after their Windows partition quit working and they didn't have a backup of their legitimate Windows XP disc since it was only available on the hard drive.
After we got it all set up, got the multimedia stuff from Pacman, added malware and tracking sites to the hosts file, installed No-Script, configured his firewall, and loaded his music so Amarok could play, and gave them a tour of all the stuff Linux could do right "out of the box" and without costing a single cent, all of the educational programs and games, etc, they were floored.
They had a chance to explore yesterday and said they liked it so much better than Windows it wasn't funny. They regret not having switched before.
The simple fact is that Linux really does work beautifully for most people's purposes and with all the applications available for it and included in the distros, I don't see how people aren't flocking to Linux in droves. Maybe the word just needs to get out. I know my neighbors are planning to tell all their family members about it.
Actually, the plant does become radioactive. All those neutrons running around in a reactor do this thing called neutron activation which makes a lot of things radioactive. The primary coolant loop, the reactor itself, and the near containment all build up certain levels of radioactivity due to this.
And it's not just state taxes. There are city/local taxes as well. And since these vary widely, either some database will have to be compiled and maintained or the tax levies will have to be made uniform. Or state taxes will be made uniform and there won't be local taxes. Or it will end up being governed by the state the business operates in - but then imagine states wheeling and dealing with tax rates to get certain businesses to locate in them. Or, you could make the buyer responsible for local taxes - maybe through reporting all mail order / internet sales to the government along with descriptions of what is bought since some locales don't tax food or prescription items.
Or, maybe they could do like what the RIAA and MPAA do and get some kind of royalty built into every item sold that then gets divvied up later however the states decide to divide the spoils.
Slashdot Mirror
Like a GPS ankle bracelet. Already in use on people restricted to home detention.
This is Slashdot. If you can't get the answer in one guess.... ;-)
I could write a pushbutton computer program that could pass a local driver's test.
Dude, DARPA wants to hear from you!
Oh no - those pictures of alien babies are very terrifyingly real.
I don't know all the details, but carbon-14 is pretty much a constant in the atmosphere. It comes from cosmic rays through various processes making thermal (low-energy) neutrons. These hit nitrogen-14 atoms and up the mass by one. The new nitrogen-15 isotope is now unstable and eventually kicks out a proton (hydrogen ion) to become carbon-14.
The process is fairly constant so an equilibrium level of carbon-14 builds up in the atmosphere. Living things are breathing in and eating this constant ratio of carbon-12 and carbon-14. When it dies, it stops maintaining the equilibrium ratio and the carbon-14 begins to decay with a specific rate constant / half life (5730 years).
So if the carbon-14 in a sample has decreased by 1/2 of the original equilibrium level, it's 5730 years old.
Carbon dating starts getting iffy with really old samples because of the uncertainty in the measurements of small numbers of carbon-14 atoms. The practical limit is around 10 half lives or 60,000 years.
But the process that makes carbon-14 is pretty constant because the cosmic radiation is pretty constant and since it's basically inert, the concentration of nitrogen in the atmosphere is also basically a constant. So when rate of production equals rate of decay, the level of carbon-14 stabilzes and can be used as a starting point to see how old certain items are.
Sorting CO2 by isotope would probably have some issues. You wouldn't just be sorting the carbon. You would also be sorting the oxygen. Oxygen has a mass 18 isotope of small abundance. If you have a carbon-12, an oxygen-16, and an oxygen-18, that would have the same nominal mass as carbon-14 and two oxygen-16's.
Without running the numbers, and more details on what you are proposing, it's hard to say how big the oxygen-18 interference would be.
You could go with a high-resolution separation, but throughput would go way down and it would take much longer for a given mass of CO2 to come out the other end.
Someone above said to mix whiskey made from fossil fuels with post-1950's whiskey to tailor the age. I think you would still need to use pre-nuclear testing whiskey because I'll bet there is more than just extra carbon-14 in post-testing whiskey. For example, strontium could show up wherever you would expect magnesium or calcium and if it was a radioactive isotope, it probably would indicate post-testing.
I think to make sure the whiskey was free of anything produced in the testing, you would want to start with pre-testing whiskey and dilute it with isotopically "pure" ethanol (pretty sure that's available) and other materials made with the carbon-12 isotope.
Overall I think it would be pretty expensive - possibly more expensive than the extreme cost of whatever whiskey was mimicked. That's also provided you could get a decent flavor and aroma.
If the bottle is corked and someone doesn't want to insert a very tiny needle to get a sample of the whiskey itself, a fleck of cork could probably be tested to see how old it is.
While the age of the cork doesn't guarantee the age of the whiskey, it might be an indication. Hard to say though.
But the amount withdrawn is going to be in the uL range which isn't even a significant portion of a single drop.
Now that's an interesting thought. Carbon-14 is made in the upper atmosphere by nitrogen being hit by thermal neutrons so there is always a fairly constant amount aside from the nuclear testing thing. It's when things stop living and incorporating the carbon-14 and it starts decaying is how things are dated.
But if you harvest the CO2 from fossil fuels, and do it right, you could blow these tester's minds when they find you have 300 million year old whiskey!
Yep - I think if he was able to do that, the technique itself would be worth far more than any whiskey tricks.
But for anyone thinking it could somehow be filtered, that's simply not possible. All the alcohol and the stuff that gives it flavor are organic molecules with carbon making the backbone. There isn't a way to go in and find which are the carbon-14 atoms and selectively replacing them with carbon-12.
The technique used is guaranteed to be mass spectroscopy which destroys the sample because it has to be atomized and ionized. All the atoms basically get weighed at the same time so you don't know which atom came from where. You just know the isotope ratios.
There are mass spec techniques that would allow finding where a particular atom would be located, but I don't believe it would work if you have millions of molecules with random substitutions which is probably the case.
All you need to do is re-bottle 1940 and earlier whiskey as the super old stuff. That totally eliminates this test as a way to tell the difference.
Beats being a politician ;-)
I didn't say that. What I said is that there is a huge infrastructure in place with huge costs associated with Windows.
Linux and OSX both have and will have weaknesses. The tend to be more local exploits than remote, but they aren't perfect either. I know Apple has caught a lot of flack for being slow to fix weaknesses too - apparently generally slower than Microsoft or the Linux distro maintainers.
I know security is not easy. Security is a big part of my work. But I think that both Apple and Microsoft could do a better job about educating users regarding security. All too often I hear Windows and Mac users claiming they have never had an intrusion/virus. Particularly Mac users. Linux users, on the other hand, really do tend to be more computer literate and the distros now also tend to have everything turned off and ports need to be opened to use services. A default closed stance is a good one.
But the fact is that Microsoft is the target of the lion's share of exploits and attacks. It does get the criminals the most bang for the buck. But for whatever reason, a lot of Microsoft users don't update. I think it's a bad decision, but Microsoft now excludes pirate copy users from being able to get updates. That just guarantees a ready pool of systems to be used in botnets.
I think Apple and Microsoft both would benefit from including a multimedia presentation with their computers that covers the basics of computer security. They could explain the risks of various activities and also the best ways to combat computer crime. If people actually understood what the difference was between an administrator account and a user account, that in itself would go a long way to make it more difficult to compromise PCs.
I'm still trying to figure out how to get my cup holder to come out when I want it to and not just when it wants to.
One time it spilled coffee all over my desk. That was the last time I trusted it.
I almost feel bad for Microsoft because of the number of people attacking their code. Almost.
As I was perusing the various security boards and newsletters I frequent, I started thinking of how amazingly large the array of people making their livings off of Windows' security deficiencies. It's huge.
There are a multitude of websites that might as well be devoted to Windows security issues. There are the people who constantly write AV signatures. People who collect malware in honeypots and distribute it to security researchers. People who have to write and test patches - both at Microsoft and at other software publishers. People who lecture on Windows security. People who do forensics on compromised machines. People who try to contain the damage when an organization's computers are compromised. People who have to notify the people who are affected by the compromises. People who have to untangle and try to block unauthorized bank charges and identity theft. Etc.
It's like the bump on the log at the bottom of the sea song. The chain just goes and goes and goes. At least it is employing people but you have to wonder what the total global expenditures are in dealing with the consequences of security issues in Microsoft Windows.
This isn't meant to be a troll. It's a legitimate concern and I wonder when people will finally say "enough".
I wonder what they will call it on Windows 11?
"X11" maybe? That would be cool! It would be like turning Windows up to 11 and such.
An X11 Windows manager - now that has a ring! And to think, we just have to wait through 4 more Windows releases to get X11.
I wonder how I can ever wait that long. If only I could have X11 now...
Well, I for one can't wait for Windows running on a cluster.
;-)
That's called job security and on call pay for a system administrator...
Have you seen the Windows 8 mascot? Forget "Clippy"...
http://www.manywallpapers.com/files/vfwJXu2C.jpg
Exactly - the OP needs more ports.
Exactly. And for anyone that doesn't have /home on a separate partition, it's easy enough to just back that up and write it back after the upgrade. The only thing you have to do in that case is recreate the entries in the passwd and shadow files.
Codeweavers is a vendor that sells and supports Crossover Office. It works great for running Windows applications directly under Linux and is how I run Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc, when I have to run them.
Codeweavers is also a major contributor to Wine. If you get Crossover Office, though, you can get professional support if you have problems. I've never had problems in Crossover Office, though.
I can say this weekend I helped my neighbor install SuSe 11.1 after their Windows partition quit working and they didn't have a backup of their legitimate Windows XP disc since it was only available on the hard drive.
After we got it all set up, got the multimedia stuff from Pacman, added malware and tracking sites to the hosts file, installed No-Script, configured his firewall, and loaded his music so Amarok could play, and gave them a tour of all the stuff Linux could do right "out of the box" and without costing a single cent, all of the educational programs and games, etc, they were floored.
They had a chance to explore yesterday and said they liked it so much better than Windows it wasn't funny. They regret not having switched before.
The simple fact is that Linux really does work beautifully for most people's purposes and with all the applications available for it and included in the distros, I don't see how people aren't flocking to Linux in droves. Maybe the word just needs to get out. I know my neighbors are planning to tell all their family members about it.
Actually, the plant does become radioactive. All those neutrons running around in a reactor do this thing called neutron activation which makes a lot of things radioactive. The primary coolant loop, the reactor itself, and the near containment all build up certain levels of radioactivity due to this.
Dude! That's 1.150 Gigawatts!
They need to turn that bad boy up to 11 and make it 1.21 Gigawatts! That's how much you need to send a Delorean back to the future!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XV_Dh2zvwLI
You can also rent or purchase from Amazon. They are already set up on the Roku player and I'm sure a number of other platforms as well.
And it's not just state taxes. There are city/local taxes as well. And since these vary widely, either some database will have to be compiled and maintained or the tax levies will have to be made uniform. Or state taxes will be made uniform and there won't be local taxes. Or it will end up being governed by the state the business operates in - but then imagine states wheeling and dealing with tax rates to get certain businesses to locate in them. Or, you could make the buyer responsible for local taxes - maybe through reporting all mail order / internet sales to the government along with descriptions of what is bought since some locales don't tax food or prescription items.
Or, maybe they could do like what the RIAA and MPAA do and get some kind of royalty built into every item sold that then gets divvied up later however the states decide to divide the spoils.
Yep, the possibilities are endless!