H2O is pretty easy to create actually - burn some hydrogen in some oxygen and bingo! H2O.
"Beer Molecules" is actually a misunderstanding, since there's various compounds that make up beer, all with different molecular structures. It's mainly water, some alcohol (C2H5OH - again, not massively complicated, but a bit tougher to make than water) and various compounds that give it it's taste. Chances of all of these appearing in the right concentration to make it drinkable are slim, to say the least, but then it is an infinite universe (probably).....
PS - Slashdot really needs to come up with a way to type subscripts in chemical formulas.
OK, I've got a few questions about solar-powered cars that I've been wondering about for a few years and I guess this is as good a place as any to ask:
Does the race route have to be carefully planned to avoid long tunnels or deep forests?
What sort of percentage of maximum speed is attainable on a cloudy day (compared to a sunny day)?
Do the cars carry batteries as a backup in case of sudden eclipses etc. that block out the light briefly?
If batteries (or some other energy store) are carried, how much running time can be added before the weight of the storage reduces the efficiency to a point where it'd be better to just run off solar power?
Do you ever get kids who think it's funny to throw tins of paint at your cars to cover the photovoltaic cells?
What sort of a drain on the speed is the Linux-GPS setup?
Just how fast do these cars go anyway? Are we talking Smokey and The Bandit or what?
The Gulf Stream and the prevailing winds both flow/blow East. Sure, you might end up landing in Africa instead of Ireland, but if you've just sailed across the Atlantic, following the coastline North shouldn't be too intimidating.
I'm long gone when these 3.9999999999999999 billion years has passed;)
Well, ignoring the fact that they say it's 3 billion years, not 4;
4,000,000,000 years - 3,999,999,999.9999999 years = 0.0000001 years = 0.0000365 days = 0.000876 hours = 0.05256 minutes = 3.1536 seconds until you'll be "long gone". Since it's now considerably more than 3 seconds since the parent post was made, I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Faile. Perhaps Slashdot could put up a black colour-scheme every July 11th in rememberence of this noble member of the community, who used his dying breaths to post to/.
Now books would never go out of print again. I'll bet Amazon will be setting up kiosks in airports pretty soon. And someone ought to give this functionality to suggest possible books for you to print out based on your tastes.
Oh, and when I've written my biography (hah!) I'll be able to get it published and give it to difficult-to-buy-for friends and family at Christmas without actually needing to include anything in there that would make it worth publishing in the first place. Sweeeeeeet.
I'm looking for a job and this sounds just dandy. Let me get this straight - the other editors do what they're already doing, then I check that they can spell and that they're actually halfway informed about the article by reading it myself. No problem. I've even got my own dictionary! And screw needing an English degree - I am English. And my karma's up at 50, so I must be a useful member of the community.
Of course, seeing as I'm so over qualified, I'd like £20,000 p/a, but I'm sure you could spare this.
Hey, chuck in a new PC and I'll even read all the way through Jon Katz's articles!
Oh, and I'd like my official job title to be Meta-Moderator
OK, so it'll be easier to wipe coffe off it, and it looks kinda like it's from Star Trek. But I really wouldn't like to replace a usual keyboard with one of these for the following reasons:
I like to have to exert force on keys - I can currently rest on the home keys or even brush past others without my cack-handedness appearing on screen.
How on Earth would you touch type on this? I'm not the greatest touch typist (got bored with Mavis Beacon too easily), but I still like to be able to type about half of what I'm writing without staring at the keyboard.
I've seen similar products that are too slow, or unresonsive (there was some stupid programmable game controller like this a few years back with interchangeable sheets for different games, that was horrible to use) - does this suffer any of these problems?
There's probably other potential problems, but even from a cursory examination it seems like a waste of cash. Thoughts/opinions?
True; it's now owned by a French company. But it was originally a British invention. From the article:
...Meccano, which this year celebrates the 100th anniversary of its invention by a Liverpool shipping clerk, Frank Hornby...
and
Meccano made a fortune for Hornby, who had been inspired by the cranes in Liverpool's dockyards. Declining popularity, however, forced the closure of the Liverpool Meccano factory in 1979.
I was unaware that Meccano was no longer made in the UK, and I suspect that most people in this country think the same.
Ignoring for a sec what I've already said about the problems with the railways.....
Lego is still a contruction toy that encourages kids to be inventive and use their imaginations - it provides more of an engineering experience than Action Man or Playstation or something, and has clearly been a major toy in the childhood of a lot of/.ers.
We should encourage any toy that stimulates kids, not just the most complicated ones.
I also suspect that there may be a patriotic side to this too (Meccanno is British like Sir Kroto, Lego is Danish), though of course that's just my unfounded speculation.
OK, the article says "the DVD application of the console's chip could be used for military purposes", though the military uses for an MPEG-2 decoder are limited, to say the least. Others have suggested that it's actually our buddies at MPAA who're trying to block this, but we've already got DeCSS and China and Taiwan already produce DVD players, so this isn't going to make the slightest bit of difference.
Well, perhaps they want that Emotion chip that Saddam was after. Thing is, Iraq is subject to trade restrictions and doesn't really have the industry to make it's own high-end processors. Taiwan, though, has the resources to make it's own processors if it really wanted, and it has access to Pentiums, Athlons etc as freely as most of us do - so what's the point blocking this one chip in the PS2?
There's been plenty of media coverage about these issues, so the government should be aware. So what's the real danger here (other than giving jobs to people in other countries)? I can't see how the PS2 will provide China with any technology that isn't already freely available to them.
...they will ask for your age, gender, and ZIP code...
So what happens if I don't have a ZIP code? I live in the UK, so what ads are US-based radio stations going to send to me? Frankly, I doubt that there's a lot of places near where I live that are on the ball enough to advertise in this way, so do I just get generic ads, and are they for US or UK products?
You've got a fair point here - perhaps the original post should've made some sort of point about monopolies. Cases in point - BT is now in competition with several companies (since I switched to Cable and Wireless I've had much lower bills and better service) and is going down the pan as a result. But Railtrack are the only ones who get control of the railways and allow carriers to run on them, so they can do what they like and they have passengers over a barrel because there's no alternative (which is why they can ask the government for millions of pounds subsidies one week, and give a huge payout to their shareholders or executives the next week).
Spot on there - the railways were constructed just fine, but then woefully neglected, particularly under the management of Railtrack. for those who don't live in the UK, Railtrack is the private body who took over management of the national rail network when it was privatised (and it was split up into several regional operators instead of just British Rail). This was supposed to improve services and revenue, but in fact it stinks.
And Railtrack keep going to the government asking for more money (they're supposed to be a private company remember, not a nationalised service), and all they seem to do with the cash is come up with more reasons why they need more cash. BR wasn't great, but Railtrack are really poor (as is demonstrated by the terrible number of deaths and accidents over the past couple of years).
Saying that giving more kids Meccano would solve this is totally unfounded. Whilst I respect Harry Kroto (he discovered Buckminster Fullerenes), and think that kids should be exposed to more engineering toys, I think that he's way off the mark with his comment.
A physics teacher back at my high school always used to blame any electrical experiments that he had problems with on stray capacitance - in 20 years time I'm looking forward to excusing segmentation faults as being an unavoidable result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle (and not just me counting from 1 instead of 0).
I'm afraid I've never heard of that one - I live in the UK, and while we've got a lot of the same brands as the US I don't think that one's out over here.
As I said in my original post - most brands do nothing. It's about time they came up with some that do, though I'd rather have anti-perspirant cos sweat is still kinda gross even if it doesn't smell.
The smelly part of sweat is produced by bacteria, and deodorants try to keep those bacteria from growing.
Actually, the majority of deodorants are nothing more than perfumes to mask the smell - they do nothing to prevent the bacteria. There's also anti-perspirants, which stop you sweating (with limited success) and give the bacteria less food, but don't directly kill them.
The only such product I've seen that has anti-bacterial properties is a King Of Shaves spray with some sort of bacteria-killing herbal extract - dunno if you'd call this a deodorant or not
Mmmm, sounds so appealing. Wouldn't it be simpler to just put these in a deodorant stick/ball/spray? That way you can apply them direct to your sweaty bits. For example - if the British summer ever gets warm enough I frequently take my shirt off, but my pits still sweat. Plus, this wouldn't mean you have to replace your entire wardrobe - you could just change deodorant.
Incidentally, does anyone know just how close to the skin these clothes have to be? I don't want to have to have a permanent wedgie when it's warm just because my ass sweats a lot.
That was what made home videotape machine demand sufficient to justify mass production, bringing the price down for everybody.
In particular, pr0n played a large part in VHS winning over Betamax, since VHS was adopted more widely by the industry.
And let's not forget the really old stuff - one of the major early uses of the printing press was printing lewd literature to keep the peasants entertained. Smut is a powerful ally indeed.
Yup, as Heatseeker151 pointed out, I can't spell properly. I've checked it though - substitute the word "civillian" in the result for "common people". Apologies for my mistake.
Well, we all know this is going to be used to make super powered soldiers that can turn over tanks with their bare hands etc. (incidentally, didn't they have one of these in Dark Angel), but I've got another use for it - the ultimate home exercise machine. Just set it to oppose movement instead of helping, and you've got an all-over workout that you can do while you're doing regular stuff. Assuming you're doing something more than just watching TV all day.
Source:
Hello civillian; I mean you no harm. Please could you direct me and my men to the nearest source of fresh water. Please don't be alarmed by our huge pointy knives and lethal semi-automatic weapons.
Result:
Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm. Please can your directly I and my person to the fresh water most neighbor origin. Please do not report to the police by ours huge pointy knife and the lethal semi automatic weapon.
N.B. there doesn't seem to be a Chinese word for civillian or pointy.
Heh, so I guess maybe they're going to have fun working the kinks out.
Slashdot Mirror
"Beer Molecules" is actually a misunderstanding, since there's various compounds that make up beer, all with different molecular structures. It's mainly water, some alcohol (C2H5OH - again, not massively complicated, but a bit tougher to make than water) and various compounds that give it it's taste. Chances of all of these appearing in the right concentration to make it drinkable are slim, to say the least, but then it is an infinite universe (probably).....
PS - Slashdot really needs to come up with a way to type subscripts in chemical formulas.
- Does the race route have to be carefully planned to avoid long tunnels or deep forests?
- What sort of percentage of maximum speed is attainable on a cloudy day (compared to a sunny day)?
- Do the cars carry batteries as a backup in case of sudden eclipses etc. that block out the light briefly?
- If batteries (or some other energy store) are carried, how much running time can be added before the weight of the storage reduces the efficiency to a point where it'd be better to just run off solar power?
- Do you ever get kids who think it's funny to throw tins of paint at your cars to cover the photovoltaic cells?
- What sort of a drain on the speed is the Linux-GPS setup?
- Just how fast do these cars go anyway? Are we talking Smokey and The Bandit or what?
Cheers. I look forward to being enlightened.The Gulf Stream and the prevailing winds both flow/blow East. Sure, you might end up landing in Africa instead of Ireland, but if you've just sailed across the Atlantic, following the coastline North shouldn't be too intimidating.
4,000,000,000 years - 3,999,999,999.9999999 years /.
= 0.0000001 years = 0.0000365 days = 0.000876 hours = 0.05256 minutes = 3.1536 seconds until you'll be "long gone". Since it's now considerably more than 3 seconds since the parent post was made, I'd like to offer my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Faile. Perhaps Slashdot could put up a black colour-scheme every July 11th in rememberence of this noble member of the community, who used his dying breaths to post to
Oops - my bad; it's just LA that're taxing stuff that isn't even on their planet.
3 billion years, eh? That ought to give California plenty of time to figure out how to tax Andromeda.
Oh, and when I've written my biography (hah!) I'll be able to get it published and give it to difficult-to-buy-for friends and family at Christmas without actually needing to include anything in there that would make it worth publishing in the first place. Sweeeeeeet.
Of course, seeing as I'm so over qualified, I'd like £20,000 p/a, but I'm sure you could spare this.
Hey, chuck in a new PC and I'll even read all the way through Jon Katz's articles!
Oh, and I'd like my official job title to be Meta-Moderator
- I like to have to exert force on keys - I can currently rest on the home keys or even brush past others without my cack-handedness appearing on screen.
- How on Earth would you touch type on this? I'm not the greatest touch typist (got bored with Mavis Beacon too easily), but I still like to be able to type about half of what I'm writing without staring at the keyboard.
- I've seen similar products that are too slow, or unresonsive (there was some stupid programmable game controller like this a few years back with interchangeable sheets for different games, that was horrible to use) - does this suffer any of these problems?
There's probably other potential problems, but even from a cursory examination it seems like a waste of cash. Thoughts/opinions?PLUG PRICE="cheap"There's more random crap over at my homepage too/PLUG
Lego is still a contruction toy that encourages kids to be inventive and use their imaginations - it provides more of an engineering experience than Action Man or Playstation or something, and has clearly been a major toy in the childhood of a lot of /.ers.
We should encourage any toy that stimulates kids, not just the most complicated ones.
I also suspect that there may be a patriotic side to this too (Meccanno is British like Sir Kroto, Lego is Danish), though of course that's just my unfounded speculation.
Well, perhaps they want that Emotion chip that Saddam was after. Thing is, Iraq is subject to trade restrictions and doesn't really have the industry to make it's own high-end processors. Taiwan, though, has the resources to make it's own processors if it really wanted, and it has access to Pentiums, Athlons etc as freely as most of us do - so what's the point blocking this one chip in the PS2?
There's been plenty of media coverage about these issues, so the government should be aware. So what's the real danger here (other than giving jobs to people in other countries)? I can't see how the PS2 will provide China with any technology that isn't already freely available to them.
You've got a fair point here - perhaps the original post should've made some sort of point about monopolies. Cases in point - BT is now in competition with several companies (since I switched to Cable and Wireless I've had much lower bills and better service) and is going down the pan as a result. But Railtrack are the only ones who get control of the railways and allow carriers to run on them, so they can do what they like and they have passengers over a barrel because there's no alternative (which is why they can ask the government for millions of pounds subsidies one week, and give a huge payout to their shareholders or executives the next week).
And Railtrack keep going to the government asking for more money (they're supposed to be a private company remember, not a nationalised service), and all they seem to do with the cash is come up with more reasons why they need more cash. BR wasn't great, but Railtrack are really poor (as is demonstrated by the terrible number of deaths and accidents over the past couple of years).
Saying that giving more kids Meccano would solve this is totally unfounded. Whilst I respect Harry Kroto (he discovered Buckminster Fullerenes), and think that kids should be exposed to more engineering toys, I think that he's way off the mark with his comment.
A physics teacher back at my high school always used to blame any electrical experiments that he had problems with on stray capacitance - in 20 years time I'm looking forward to excusing segmentation faults as being an unavoidable result of the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle (and not just me counting from 1 instead of 0).
As I said in my original post - most brands do nothing. It's about time they came up with some that do, though I'd rather have anti-perspirant cos sweat is still kinda gross even if it doesn't smell.
The only such product I've seen that has anti-bacterial properties is a King Of Shaves spray with some sort of bacteria-killing herbal extract - dunno if you'd call this a deodorant or not
Incidentally, does anyone know just how close to the skin these clothes have to be? I don't want to have to have a permanent wedgie when it's warm just because my ass sweats a lot.
And let's not forget the really old stuff - one of the major early uses of the printing press was printing lewd literature to keep the peasants entertained. Smut is a powerful ally indeed.
And Connery's going to turn 71 on August 25th (he must have been a very young father in the movie : ) - can you say "Stunt doubles"?
Yup, as Heatseeker151 pointed out, I can't spell properly. I've checked it though - substitute the word "civillian" in the result for "common people". Apologies for my mistake.
Well, we all know this is going to be used to make super powered soldiers that can turn over tanks with their bare hands etc. (incidentally, didn't they have one of these in Dark Angel), but I've got another use for it - the ultimate home exercise machine. Just set it to oppose movement instead of helping, and you've got an all-over workout that you can do while you're doing regular stuff. Assuming you're doing something more than just watching TV all day.
Source:
Hello civillian; I mean you no harm. Please could you direct me and my men to the nearest source of fresh water. Please don't be alarmed by our huge pointy knives and lethal semi-automatic weapons.
Result:
Your good civillian; I mean you do not have the harm. Please can your directly I and my person to the fresh water most neighbor origin. Please do not report to the police by ours huge pointy knife and the lethal semi automatic weapon.
N.B. there doesn't seem to be a Chinese word for civillian or pointy.
Heh, so I guess maybe they're going to have fun working the kinks out.