there's no such thing as a monopole. whatever it is, will have another side. and on that other side, there's the magnetic field lines, going on their merry way. a magnet is just atoms lined up in a certain way. are you telling me you can have one-sided atoms?
I think the stupidity is yours. Magnets are not just atoms lined up, atoms themselves have magnetic poles. In fact, the components of atoms (such as electrons) have magnetic poles as well.
It's perfectly conceivable to think of a point source of just North or South where the field lines radiate outwards in all directions. They would arc toward the nearest magnetic pole of opposite polarity. The diagrams are simple to draw and have been accepted by just giants in the field as Dirac for eighty years. The only question is: do they actually occur?
This doesn't make any sense. Is Mac required to bundle IE? Windows comes with a default browser, and using said browser (an essential piece of software) you can get any other browser you wish. This is simply a double standard for Microsoft.
I hear upgrading RAM in a Mac desktop is very cheap - that's mostly the point I want to make. You're going to pay a Mac tax on every upgrade over an equivalent PC component, and that isn't factored in to the price of ownership.
You're ignoring many things. First, upgrading the RAM is still relevant and easy to do on a PC. My work computer was choking with the 512 MB it shipped with trying to view PDFs, edit PowerPoints and have other applications open at the same time. Simple, I spent $30 on RAM and doubled it to 1 gig. There is absolutely no reason for me to have bought a new desktop, this one has the processing power necessary, and now the RAM to multitask with today's more memory heavy programs.
What about a new hard drive? HD's keep getting cheaper, maybe I want to upgrade to 500 gigs from an old 60 gig? Maybe I want to add another one for internal backup, or maybe my boss decided a RAID setup would provide better protection against HD failure and the subsequent data loss?
At home I can get by just adding RAM and replacing the video card every few years. Sometimes you want to add another drive in the bay, maybe something proprietary or card specific, maybe you want to take your DVD read and CD RW to a DVD-RW. Pretending there's not a lot of circumstances in which upgrading is the best option is foolish, and this applies both in the office and at home.
No, even if you harvested 100% of the solar energy hitting the building, there is no way in hell it is enough to grow the volume of plants pictured.
This, above all else, is a fundamental limitation. You simply need more square footage of sunlight to collect, and you can't do that without shading half of Manhattan.
And AFAIK while depression can result from a purely physiological event the vast majority of cases result from psychological events.
Untrue, and this is a major misconception. Depression often arises, without contributing factors, from fundamentally physiological and chemical problems in the brain. It then generates problems in the sufferer's life as they make bad decisions, certainly giving reasons for more psychological distress. But do not mistake the underlying problem in the majority of true depression cases: a physiological cause, independent of top-level psychological problems or events in a person's life.
Depression is not just the lack of positive thinking, and it is not just psychological. Depression is physiological and has very many low level, chemical impacts and observable symptoms beyond "thinking negatively". Do not confuse a pessimist with someone suffering from depression.
Newton is a measurement of force, and therefore weight, not mass, as you point out. However, pounds are ALSO a unit of force, not mass, and therefore tons (2,000 pounds) is weight. I think your pedantry is wrong, you've merely converted from Imperial weight/force to metric weight/force.
He doesn't screw up the jargon, he screws up the concepts. If someone so intimately related to the future of the Internet cannot understand it, and we can't take away his responsibility for the Internet's future, our last recourse is ridicule before sobbing into our beers.
Have we completely forsaken science in this country?
Burning something breaks high energy bonds and forms low energy bonds. The energy released is the difference. If you're burning alcohol with oxygen, you are forming the lower energy compounds of carbon dioxide and water. The energy doesn't "come" only from the alcohol or oxygen.
And, for the love of Ned, burning ANYTHING with ANYTHING releases heat. That's the definition of "burning". Any chemical reaction that is spontaneous once start (burning) releases energy, which becomes heat.
This is very simple. Energy is always conserved. So let's start at the beginning of the system.
Water is low-energy. It is the end product of burning. If you want to get energy from water, you need to convert it, or something else, to an even lower energy form. In this case they're converting it to a much higher energy form (separating the hydrogen), so something else has to be losing energy.
If you're suggesting that anything else in the system (membranes, catalysts, aluminum, whatever else people on this page have suggested) is losing energy, it has to lose a lot. It has to lose enough to power a car. It's not going to be cheap : it's the same damn thing as ethanol, gasoline, a big ol' charged battery, pure hydrogen, whatever. You have to put high energy stuff into your car, and you're not going to get away with $5 worth of some magic membrane.
No one seems to be commenting on what I consider to be an obvious theory: mobile hardware is not ergonomically designed.
We went through this in the 90's on desktop hardware. There was a rash of repetitive strain injuries, and almost every office made some concession to ergonomics. Keyboard trays that could be precisely positioned, wrist pads and adjustable chairs became the norm. Every office seemed to offer courses on how to avoid RSI's at your desk including how to sit properly, how to position your keyboard properly, etc.
However, all that training and equipment remains in the office. The Microsoft study points to the rising use of mobile hardware. People work on their laptops holding them hunched over their knees, balanced on books on a couch, etc etc. How many times can you get your laptop positioned at just the right angle for your wrists? How much different is your laptop keyboard's size and aspect ratio from the desktop keyboard? Once your at the optimal distance for typing, do you find yourself bending over to see the smaller, dimmer screen more easily?
Slashdot Mirror
I think the stupidity is yours. Magnets are not just atoms lined up, atoms themselves have magnetic poles. In fact, the components of atoms (such as electrons) have magnetic poles as well.
It's perfectly conceivable to think of a point source of just North or South where the field lines radiate outwards in all directions. They would arc toward the nearest magnetic pole of opposite polarity. The diagrams are simple to draw and have been accepted by just giants in the field as Dirac for eighty years. The only question is: do they actually occur?
Parent is correct.
This doesn't make any sense. Is Mac required to bundle IE? Windows comes with a default browser, and using said browser (an essential piece of software) you can get any other browser you wish. This is simply a double standard for Microsoft.
I hear upgrading RAM in a Mac desktop is very cheap - that's mostly the point I want to make. You're going to pay a Mac tax on every upgrade over an equivalent PC component, and that isn't factored in to the price of ownership.
You're ignoring many things. First, upgrading the RAM is still relevant and easy to do on a PC. My work computer was choking with the 512 MB it shipped with trying to view PDFs, edit PowerPoints and have other applications open at the same time. Simple, I spent $30 on RAM and doubled it to 1 gig. There is absolutely no reason for me to have bought a new desktop, this one has the processing power necessary, and now the RAM to multitask with today's more memory heavy programs. What about a new hard drive? HD's keep getting cheaper, maybe I want to upgrade to 500 gigs from an old 60 gig? Maybe I want to add another one for internal backup, or maybe my boss decided a RAID setup would provide better protection against HD failure and the subsequent data loss? At home I can get by just adding RAM and replacing the video card every few years. Sometimes you want to add another drive in the bay, maybe something proprietary or card specific, maybe you want to take your DVD read and CD RW to a DVD-RW. Pretending there's not a lot of circumstances in which upgrading is the best option is foolish, and this applies both in the office and at home.
Thank you, a sense of proportion about who is damaged is so often missing in these cases.
Mod parent down! I can't believe you would post a naked spoiler. I had not yet finished catching up in BSG, what a fucking asshole move.
I hear China didn't destroy a satellite in space recently, creating a very large junk field, on purpose.
Yes, those D-pads were particularly brutal on the thumb, the repeated friction of sliding your thumb across the rough surface.
Thank you, I laughed out loud.
No, even if you harvested 100% of the solar energy hitting the building, there is no way in hell it is enough to grow the volume of plants pictured.
This, above all else, is a fundamental limitation. You simply need more square footage of sunlight to collect, and you can't do that without shading half of Manhattan.
Untrue, and this is a major misconception. Depression often arises, without contributing factors, from fundamentally physiological and chemical problems in the brain. It then generates problems in the sufferer's life as they make bad decisions, certainly giving reasons for more psychological distress. But do not mistake the underlying problem in the majority of true depression cases: a physiological cause, independent of top-level psychological problems or events in a person's life.
Depression is not just the lack of positive thinking, and it is not just psychological. Depression is physiological and has very many low level, chemical impacts and observable symptoms beyond "thinking negatively". Do not confuse a pessimist with someone suffering from depression.
Newton is a measurement of force, and therefore weight, not mass, as you point out. However, pounds are ALSO a unit of force, not mass, and therefore tons (2,000 pounds) is weight. I think your pedantry is wrong, you've merely converted from Imperial weight/force to metric weight/force.
He doesn't screw up the jargon, he screws up the concepts. If someone so intimately related to the future of the Internet cannot understand it, and we can't take away his responsibility for the Internet's future, our last recourse is ridicule before sobbing into our beers.
Interesting.
Excellent point, and often overlooked.
Good point!
Mod parent up, insightful stuff!
Have we completely forsaken science in this country?
Burning something breaks high energy bonds and forms low energy bonds. The energy released is the difference. If you're burning alcohol with oxygen, you are forming the lower energy compounds of carbon dioxide and water. The energy doesn't "come" only from the alcohol or oxygen.
And, for the love of Ned, burning ANYTHING with ANYTHING releases heat. That's the definition of "burning". Any chemical reaction that is spontaneous once start (burning) releases energy, which becomes heat.
The Jaunt?
I enjoy your ideas, and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
This is very simple. Energy is always conserved. So let's start at the beginning of the system.
Water is low-energy. It is the end product of burning. If you want to get energy from water, you need to convert it, or something else, to an even lower energy form. In this case they're converting it to a much higher energy form (separating the hydrogen), so something else has to be losing energy.
If you're suggesting that anything else in the system (membranes, catalysts, aluminum, whatever else people on this page have suggested) is losing energy, it has to lose a lot. It has to lose enough to power a car. It's not going to be cheap : it's the same damn thing as ethanol, gasoline, a big ol' charged battery, pure hydrogen, whatever. You have to put high energy stuff into your car, and you're not going to get away with $5 worth of some magic membrane.
Repeat after me: There is no free lunch.
No one seems to be commenting on what I consider to be an obvious theory: mobile hardware is not ergonomically designed.
We went through this in the 90's on desktop hardware. There was a rash of repetitive strain injuries, and almost every office made some concession to ergonomics. Keyboard trays that could be precisely positioned, wrist pads and adjustable chairs became the norm. Every office seemed to offer courses on how to avoid RSI's at your desk including how to sit properly, how to position your keyboard properly, etc.
However, all that training and equipment remains in the office. The Microsoft study points to the rising use of mobile hardware. People work on their laptops holding them hunched over their knees, balanced on books on a couch, etc etc. How many times can you get your laptop positioned at just the right angle for your wrists? How much different is your laptop keyboard's size and aspect ratio from the desktop keyboard? Once your at the optimal distance for typing, do you find yourself bending over to see the smaller, dimmer screen more easily?
Agreed!