Customer, one month after purchase , "Hi, yeah, for some reason, my door won't unlock. Can you guys do a remote open for me? I'm late for work."
Dealer: "Sorry, Mr. Smith, your door unlock feature was only available for an introductory month. Would you care to renew for the $99.99 / qtr lease at this point?"
And eventually there will be a recall as that conversation will start ending something like this:
"No thanks Mr. car dealership guy. I'll use my hammer to unlock it Oh, and by the way, I leave work at 5:00. Please expect me to stop by shortly thereafter to pry your skull open with the other side of said hammer. If you wish to discontinue this new service I'm offering, you may lease the rest of your life for the low introductory price of $199.99 per quarter. Have a wonderful day."
10krpm SCSI drives aren’t “consumer-grade” though. And last I checked (which was admittedly quite a while ago,) Seagate still has a five-year warranty on even their low-end HDs, while most other manufacturers top out at three years for consumer drives.
I believe you can get 10K RPM SATA drives the last time I checked. I assume WD still has Velociraptors. I have some 15K RPM SCSI drives in a couple of my systems. I mostly use them as secondary cache these days. It still makes me chuckle when I think about when I upgraded to SSD from those for my primary drive. It was a noticeable difference, but nothing like what people who had 5400 and 7200 RPM drives went on about. Still, there was a time when all Apple computers came with SCSI drives.
You need to check again on Seagate's warranty. I don't think they even have a drive with more than three years. OEM being 1 year, and retail being 2. They may have some enterprise class drives that are 3 years, but I'm not even sure about that. I had switched to Samsung drives, but they've been bought by Seagate.
I actually did this once (did not get the job, despite being recommended by a friend who worked there):
-Name three of your strengths.
-Well... I'm honest and... let's see... I'm reasonably quick to spot and diagnose flaws in any given system... and I'd say I'm creative.
-Good. And do you have any weaknesses?
-I'm a liar.
I went to an interview once and the first question was, "What do you think your biggest weakness is?" It caught me off guard a little as it's an odd opening question. Almost immediately the interviewer told me there was no wrong answer to this question. I told him my biggest weakness was that I didn't particularly care for people who were stupid enough to expect me to believe obvious lies.
The time of the formation of the star does not necessarily correspond to the biblical timeframe for when the universe was created.
For anyone that holds the book of genesis as a literal telling of events, it has to. I forget which day it was, but the bible pretty clearly stipulated that on day X, God created light.
It also did not clearly stipulate how long a day was for an omnipotent being. Perhaps a day for god is one revolution of our galaxy If he created our solar system perhaps a "day" is how long it took to for gravity to make the sun coalesce, compress and ignite. Like the rest of us, I don't really know, but I try to keep an open mind.
Menards has been selling 18 packs of incandescent bulbs for $1.99. The shelves are stock full of them because the ban was never on the sell of them, but the manufacturing of them and the manufacturers turned out tons of product. By the time the oversupply is used up, production will have ramped back up.
It depends on the wattage and what kind of bulbs you want. 60 watt are still on sale everywhere that I've bothered to look. How many 100 or 75 watt incandescents are at Menards? And are they a decent looking CRI,or some yellow nasty crap? 40 watt incandescent bulbs are also still around as they haven't been "phased out" yet.
Not mine - Dems and Pubs are both asshats. Any change that reduces the intrusion of government into my daily habits is a good change, regardless of party.
Too bad you probably won't be able to find incandescent bulbs anyhow. Production has been ramped way back, or disassembled on these by the companies that make/made them. With the production lines gone, there is no way they are going to put them back into production. Why would they. It's too big of a gamble to start up again and then be told that they are banned again when the winds change.
I've heard from friends in other countries that there is even talk of bring them back due to so many people not wanting to go through the "hassle" of disposing of them properly. I'm a big fan of being able to choose, but I prefer CFL/LED when I can find ones in a spectrum I like. I've found some that I much prefer to incandescent, then there are many that are awful. I know a few people who have had CFL catch on fire too. I guess you have a few more components that can fail catastrophically compared to a standard bulb.
I completely agree with you except one problem with your logic. People, for centuries, spent hours a day looking down at their desks before these new-fangled computer monitors let us look levelly.
Have a good day though, and I love the anti-touchscreen, pro-mouse/keyboard sentiment!
Meh. I guess it depended on what they did. Typists, it's hard to believe that was once a profession (and considered "women's work"), typically used something to hold their notes up to type them. My father worked in an office in the 60's and 70's. He would typically read papers while holding them in front of him. I think many people did. They also took phone calls and such. I think most of the things that would break up the monotony of staring at the desk have been removed by computers. Even our distractions are now on the computer. So we tend to look up even less than in the past. Plus writing allows you to rest on one of your arms if you wish, where typing doesn't. Still, you make a good point.
I'm not pro-mouse/keyboard per se. I'm just a strong believer that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Getting rid of the keyboard to make a tablet more portable makes sense. Getting rid of the keyboard for a desktop computer that the user is going to be drafting letters on in favor of a touch screen is simply stupid. I wish you well also.
1) Remove keyboard/mouse
2) slide monitor down, almost facing up (as you currently do with your smartphone.
3) enjoy the future of computing
No thank you. Have you ever tried typing multiple pages of text on a touch screen? or on a phone? I'll keep my keyboard. I don't know exactly how fast I can type, I'd guess it's over100 wpm on a standard keyboard as I can type what someone is saying real time. Probably closer to 10 wpm on a phone, and less than that on my wife's iPad.
I still don't see and advantage of touch screens over a mouse for everyday tasks. I have a thumb operated trackball. It is very easy to use. I can't imagine using my dual 24" display as a touch screen being a better option. It's probably even worse on larger displays. I work in the medical field. I still remember seeing the Microsoft booth at a conference a couple of years ago. They were touting the Kinect for use in medical imaging. The guys at the booth were practically doing jumping jacks to get anything done. It seemed like they were trying to find something to replace a mouse just for the sake of replacing the mouse. Not because it was better or more efficient. If the intent is to get an aerobic workout while also trying to be semi-productive on your computer, then fine, great idea. But if it's to improve the work itself, it's a giant step backward.
My neck starts to hurt from looking at my phone for more than 20 minutes at a stretch. You think having people look down all day long is a good idea? Unless something better comes along, you can enjoy the future of counter productivity, bad posture and repetitive strain injuries without me.
There are bicycles that have gone more than twice as fast as 90 km/h.
None that weren't downhill or drafting off of a motor vehicle of some sort. Except for absolute highest speed. That was done on a "rolling road", effectively a very large treadmill, and he was towed up to 100 mph before he even started pedaling. It's the fastest anyone has gone on a bicycle, but not completely under the riders power. 83 MPH (133.78Km/h) is the current fastest on level ground. Most cars can't even do 180 MPH
No it won't. It will become obsolete faster as it's completely unmaintainable. Anything that breaks will be harder to deal with. Obsolete components can't be swapped out.
You are clueless. Nobody upgrades computers. Nobody.
Strange. I just upped my sisters computer she got in 2009 to 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and Win7.
All the stuff could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes in orbit.
[citation needed]
There is no all purpose robot that I am aware of that is flexible enough to be able to replace the general purpose abilities of a human. There is R&D cost involved in building these robots. It's not as simple as going down to "Space Robots 'R' Us" and charging it to your credit card. Mars Curiosity cost $2.5 billion.
The space shuttle (which was a terribly expensive program compared to what it should have been) ran from 1972 until 2011 at a total cost of $450 billion or a little over $11.5 billion per year, or with 135 missions it cost $3.3 billion per launch. Since the shuttle is no longer in operation, US astronauts cost $71 million per seat to go the the ISS, which is up from the $22 million per seat from back in 2006. So getting there is pretty damn cheap. It's hard to say how much the ISS cost overall, but at the current plans, it will cost $2.3 billion per year, including the $71 million cost per seat to get there. regardless the biggest expense has already taken care of, so it would be pretty damn stupid to abandon it now.
Unfortunately NASA is run by ex-pilots from Houston who think Star Trek was a documentary; they are forever poaching funds from JPL's planetary missions. This is why Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray started the Planetary Society; to stop the siphoning to the manned mission that were always busting their budgets. Now it is worse than ever.
We need both manned and unmanned programs.Eventually we will need to either develop near light-speed travel, spacial warping, etc. or know for sure that it's simply not possible. Either way, there is no reason to think we won't continue to make new discoveries and develop new technologies that will be useful to us in everyday life as we've seen from past manned space flight. There is a bunch of spinoff tech that has come from both the manned and unmanned programs.
Curiosity has just started its mission and has not yet reached its destination, but it already has found clays and proof of running streams on Mars. It has also dispelled the Mars Methane theory or severely constrained it. It has also done some important isotope studies that reflect climate change on Mars.
What destination? Mars? It didn't "just start" its mission. Curiosity was designed for a two year mission. It landed on Mars in August of 2012, so it has completed 17 months of it's original 24 month mission. However it was recently extended indefinitely. Every mission we send to Mars shows more evidence that supports there was once water on Mars surface. But I wasn't aware that Curiosity had single-handedly proven it beyond any doubt. A major part of its mission is also to determine "planetary habitability studies in preparation for future human exploration."
There a lot of other current and past robotic probes that have done far more sciences than manned missions ever will at a fraction of the cost and without killing astronauts. Voyager for instance. More recently, the Kepler probed has discovered a large number of planets orbiting other stars. But that is just a small sample.
They are different types of research. Obviously sending a person up to look through Hubble would be stupid. But discoveries like some of what Donald Pettit did, would not have happened with robots.It's interesting that you mention Kepler. Its mission it to find Earth like planets in habitable distances from their sun. Why do you think that is
This is not real science; it is just pork for NASA/Houston. The real science in space is happening at NASA/JPL with their robotic missions such as Curiosity And the O'Admin is trying to kill off all the other planetary missions.
Yes. Curiosity has been playing in the dirt on Mars for two years now. Please do tell what ground breaking "real science" has been done.
Meanwhile the ISS has been used to grow protein crystals which have helped our understanding of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. This type of research will be helpful for stroke prevention and cancer as well as treatment for emphysema and immune system disorders.
The Materials Science Lab is giving us insights into making better alloys here on earth. There are other experiments going on regarding fluid dynamics and research that helps us better understand superconductors, Additionally there are experiments that we hope will give us a better understanding of combustion to help with efficiencies here on earth.
Astronaut Donald Pettit is known for his own private experiments during his down time. I believe he used cracker crumbs to show how particles tend to clump in microgravity. Prior to this there was no definitive proof about how particles would behave in this environment.
Curiosity is doing some very cool stuff, but please don't' act like the robotics division of NASA is the only one doing "real science". Much of the work on the ISS will have a real impact on our life here on earth. While the various probes we send out will give us a better understanding of the universe around us. See the difference? They are complimentary, not competitive.
When surgeons set out to repair holes in the walls of the heart's chambers or in blood vessels,
There are already transcatheter VSD/ASD occulders that are minimally invasive (considering)and fairly well proven. They are used all the time to repair congenital defects. I am assuming that they are talking about repairing ventricular septal defects, or atrial.septal defects Since a hole in the free wall of the heart is going to kill you pretty damn fast, and will generally be caused by some type of trauma. In which case you probably have to have foreign material removed as well. I'm not as familiar with what is available for vascular repair once it's ruptured, so this sounds pretty cool. It looks like it may be more elegant than an occulder, but the images show a clamp being used. So using this, for now, means cracking the chest open. I'd say that going into the cath lab for a ASD/VSD repair is still a better option. But if they can shrink this down to the point they can fish this stuff up through the femoral artery, it will be very cool indeed.
Gates criticized Obama for be willing to change his mind about the Afghanistan war policy. Gates admired Bush's no-more-thinking passion about war.. Does Gates sound a like a reasoned person? NO.
I seem to have missed that. Where in the linked article did he state that?
I'd guess there was a big damn difference. Congress critters are now full time, well salaried positions. In 1813, they were not. In 1813 a congressman was paid $6 per day in session Or just under $90 inflation adjusted for today. Even if they were in session five days a week, 52 weeks per year, it works out to $1560 per year, which is just under $23K per year in today's dollars. Currently a new member of the house receives $174K per year as a base salary. Since they are elected every other year, they basically spend half of their time campaigning these days and voting in a manner that will get them reelected the other half.
Personally, I'd like to see a bill passed that would penalize congress critters for not doing their job. They should be financially penalized for every day the country has to run without a real budget in place. Continuing resolutions don't count. Failure to pay taxes, or abuses of office should be grounds for removal, or at the very least trigger a recall election. Violating laws related to the office should be grounds for immediate removal from office, loss of any pension, and be ineligible to run for that office again.
His perspective is not unique, any number of higher-ups have the same view.
Perhaps, but it's pretty rare for someone that high up to be so forthcoming. In general they try not to burn any bridges. Which does not seem to be the case here.
Which is clouded by their own myopia and cataracts.
Barring mental illness, very few people are are able to or are willing to look beyond what they know. And even fewer are by the time they are old enough to get cataracts.
Slashdot Mirror
Customer, one month after purchase , "Hi, yeah, for some reason, my door won't unlock. Can you guys do a remote open for me? I'm late for work."
Dealer: "Sorry, Mr. Smith, your door unlock feature was only available for an introductory month. Would you care to renew for the $99.99 / qtr lease at this point?"
And eventually there will be a recall as that conversation will start ending something like this:
"No thanks Mr. car dealership guy. I'll use my hammer to unlock it Oh, and by the way, I leave work at 5:00. Please expect me to stop by shortly thereafter to pry your skull open with the other side of said hammer. If you wish to discontinue this new service I'm offering, you may lease the rest of your life for the low introductory price of $199.99 per quarter. Have a wonderful day."
10krpm SCSI drives aren’t “consumer-grade” though. And last I checked (which was admittedly quite a while ago,) Seagate still has a five-year warranty on even their low-end HDs, while most other manufacturers top out at three years for consumer drives.
I believe you can get 10K RPM SATA drives the last time I checked. I assume WD still has Velociraptors. I have some 15K RPM SCSI drives in a couple of my systems. I mostly use them as secondary cache these days. It still makes me chuckle when I think about when I upgraded to SSD from those for my primary drive. It was a noticeable difference, but nothing like what people who had 5400 and 7200 RPM drives went on about. Still, there was a time when all Apple computers came with SCSI drives.
You need to check again on Seagate's warranty. I don't think they even have a drive with more than three years. OEM being 1 year, and retail being 2. They may have some enterprise class drives that are 3 years, but I'm not even sure about that. I had switched to Samsung drives, but they've been bought by Seagate.
Fixed that for you
You joke but that's pretty much how it is:
Windows 98 -- Worked windows ME --Sucked Windows XP -- Decent Windows Vista -- Sucked Windows 7 -- Functional Again Windows 8 -- Sucks Again
It seems to take them one generation to flush the problems out of each new release so windows 8 is basically "windows 9 beta"
You seem to have missed a few things:
Windows 95 -Sucked
Windows 98 -Sucked
Windows 98SE -worked
Windows ME -Sucked
Windows 2000 -Best OS Microsoft released until Windows 7 (except for initial issues with drives in 2K)
Windows XP -Sucked
Windows XP sp1 and up -Worked well. Basically Windows 2K with add-ons, eye candy, and DRM
Windows XP 64-bit -Frustrating (Could increase RAM at the expense of having more driver issues than any other version of Windows.)
Vista -Sucked (probably fixed in a service pack, but I never was willing to find out)
Windows 7 -Best OS Microsoft released for the desktop once you got used to the new locations for stuff.
Windows 8 Sucks
Windows 8.1 Sucks less than 8 (Has some nice advantages over 7, but not enough to "embrace the suck" IMHO)
I actually did this once (did not get the job, despite being recommended by a friend who worked there):
-Name three of your strengths. -Well... I'm honest and... let's see... I'm reasonably quick to spot and diagnose flaws in any given system... and I'd say I'm creative. -Good. And do you have any weaknesses? -I'm a liar.
I went to an interview once and the first question was, "What do you think your biggest weakness is?" It caught me off guard a little as it's an odd opening question. Almost immediately the interviewer told me there was no wrong answer to this question. I told him my biggest weakness was that I didn't particularly care for people who were stupid enough to expect me to believe obvious lies.
The time of the formation of the star does not necessarily correspond to the biblical timeframe for when the universe was created.
For anyone that holds the book of genesis as a literal telling of events, it has to. I forget which day it was, but the bible pretty clearly stipulated that on day X, God created light.
It also did not clearly stipulate how long a day was for an omnipotent being. Perhaps a day for god is one revolution of our galaxy If he created our solar system perhaps a "day" is how long it took to for gravity to make the sun coalesce, compress and ignite. Like the rest of us, I don't really know, but I try to keep an open mind.
... is doomed to repeat it.
Does anyone else get the impression that we're on the downside of civilization?
I know, right. First Dr. Who, and now this.
Menards has been selling 18 packs of incandescent bulbs for $1.99. The shelves are stock full of them because the ban was never on the sell of them, but the manufacturing of them and the manufacturers turned out tons of product. By the time the oversupply is used up, production will have ramped back up.
It depends on the wattage and what kind of bulbs you want. 60 watt are still on sale everywhere that I've bothered to look. How many 100 or 75 watt incandescents are at Menards? And are they a decent looking CRI,or some yellow nasty crap? 40 watt incandescent bulbs are also still around as they haven't been "phased out" yet.
Not mine - Dems and Pubs are both asshats. Any change that reduces the intrusion of government into my daily habits is a good change, regardless of party.
Too bad you probably won't be able to find incandescent bulbs anyhow. Production has been ramped way back, or disassembled on these by the companies that make/made them. With the production lines gone, there is no way they are going to put them back into production. Why would they. It's too big of a gamble to start up again and then be told that they are banned again when the winds change.
I've heard from friends in other countries that there is even talk of bring them back due to so many people not wanting to go through the "hassle" of disposing of them properly. I'm a big fan of being able to choose, but I prefer CFL/LED when I can find ones in a spectrum I like. I've found some that I much prefer to incandescent, then there are many that are awful. I know a few people who have had CFL catch on fire too. I guess you have a few more components that can fail catastrophically compared to a standard bulb.
I completely agree with you except one problem with your logic. People, for centuries, spent hours a day looking down at their desks before these new-fangled computer monitors let us look levelly.
Have a good day though, and I love the anti-touchscreen, pro-mouse/keyboard sentiment!
Meh. I guess it depended on what they did. Typists, it's hard to believe that was once a profession (and considered "women's work"), typically used something to hold their notes up to type them. My father worked in an office in the 60's and 70's. He would typically read papers while holding them in front of him. I think many people did. They also took phone calls and such. I think most of the things that would break up the monotony of staring at the desk have been removed by computers. Even our distractions are now on the computer. So we tend to look up even less than in the past. Plus writing allows you to rest on one of your arms if you wish, where typing doesn't. Still, you make a good point.
I'm not pro-mouse/keyboard per se. I'm just a strong believer that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Getting rid of the keyboard to make a tablet more portable makes sense. Getting rid of the keyboard for a desktop computer that the user is going to be drafting letters on in favor of a touch screen is simply stupid. I wish you well also.
1) Remove keyboard/mouse 2) slide monitor down, almost facing up (as you currently do with your smartphone. 3) enjoy the future of computing
No thank you. Have you ever tried typing multiple pages of text on a touch screen? or on a phone? I'll keep my keyboard. I don't know exactly how fast I can type, I'd guess it's over100 wpm on a standard keyboard as I can type what someone is saying real time. Probably closer to 10 wpm on a phone, and less than that on my wife's iPad.
I still don't see and advantage of touch screens over a mouse for everyday tasks. I have a thumb operated trackball. It is very easy to use. I can't imagine using my dual 24" display as a touch screen being a better option. It's probably even worse on larger displays. I work in the medical field. I still remember seeing the Microsoft booth at a conference a couple of years ago. They were touting the Kinect for use in medical imaging. The guys at the booth were practically doing jumping jacks to get anything done. It seemed like they were trying to find something to replace a mouse just for the sake of replacing the mouse. Not because it was better or more efficient. If the intent is to get an aerobic workout while also trying to be semi-productive on your computer, then fine, great idea. But if it's to improve the work itself, it's a giant step backward.
My neck starts to hurt from looking at my phone for more than 20 minutes at a stretch. You think having people look down all day long is a good idea? Unless something better comes along, you can enjoy the future of counter productivity, bad posture and repetitive strain injuries without me.
There are bicycles that have gone more than twice as fast as 90 km/h.
None that weren't downhill or drafting off of a motor vehicle of some sort. Except for absolute highest speed. That was done on a "rolling road", effectively a very large treadmill, and he was towed up to 100 mph before he even started pedaling. It's the fastest anyone has gone on a bicycle, but not completely under the riders power. 83 MPH (133.78Km/h) is the current fastest on level ground. Most cars can't even do 180 MPH
Stupidity does not equal fraud
Unless it's Sony. We still hate them, right? ;-)
No it won't. It will become obsolete faster as it's completely unmaintainable. Anything that breaks will be harder to deal with. Obsolete components can't be swapped out.
You are clueless. Nobody upgrades computers. Nobody.
Strange. I just upped my sisters computer she got in 2009 to 8 GB of RAM, 256 GB SSD, and Win7.
I can't believe people are choosing other tablets.
So you think people buying a $70 Android tablet should be buying $1000 Surface tablets instead?
He works at Microsoft, go figure. ;-)
Water and hydrogen peroxide are also pretty damn close. H2O, H2O2. How much difference could an additional hydrogen atom make?
They did this in a Simpson episode
By your logic, Churchill and FDR were also unreasonable people.
Did I say all? Or very few? Obviously there are exceptional people. They just happen to be very rare.
All the stuff could be done for a fraction of the cost with robotic probes in orbit.
[citation needed]
There is no all purpose robot that I am aware of that is flexible enough to be able to replace the general purpose abilities of a human. There is R&D cost involved in building these robots. It's not as simple as going down to "Space Robots 'R' Us" and charging it to your credit card. Mars Curiosity cost $2.5 billion.
The space shuttle (which was a terribly expensive program compared to what it should have been) ran from 1972 until 2011 at a total cost of $450 billion or a little over $11.5 billion per year, or with 135 missions it cost $3.3 billion per launch. Since the shuttle is no longer in operation, US astronauts cost $71 million per seat to go the the ISS, which is up from the $22 million per seat from back in 2006. So getting there is pretty damn cheap. It's hard to say how much the ISS cost overall, but at the current plans, it will cost $2.3 billion per year, including the $71 million cost per seat to get there. regardless the biggest expense has already taken care of, so it would be pretty damn stupid to abandon it now.
Unfortunately NASA is run by ex-pilots from Houston who think Star Trek was a documentary; they are forever poaching funds from JPL's planetary missions. This is why Carl Sagan and Bruce Murray started the Planetary Society; to stop the siphoning to the manned mission that were always busting their budgets. Now it is worse than ever.
We need both manned and unmanned programs.Eventually we will need to either develop near light-speed travel, spacial warping, etc. or know for sure that it's simply not possible. Either way, there is no reason to think we won't continue to make new discoveries and develop new technologies that will be useful to us in everyday life as we've seen from past manned space flight. There is a bunch of spinoff tech that has come from both the manned and unmanned programs.
Curiosity has just started its mission and has not yet reached its destination, but it already has found clays and proof of running streams on Mars. It has also dispelled the Mars Methane theory or severely constrained it. It has also done some important isotope studies that reflect climate change on Mars.
What destination? Mars? It didn't "just start" its mission. Curiosity was designed for a two year mission. It landed on Mars in August of 2012, so it has completed 17 months of it's original 24 month mission. However it was recently extended indefinitely. Every mission we send to Mars shows more evidence that supports there was once water on Mars surface. But I wasn't aware that Curiosity had single-handedly proven it beyond any doubt. A major part of its mission is also to determine "planetary habitability studies in preparation for future human exploration."
There a lot of other current and past robotic probes that have done far more sciences than manned missions ever will at a fraction of the cost and without killing astronauts. Voyager for instance. More recently, the Kepler probed has discovered a large number of planets orbiting other stars. But that is just a small sample.
They are different types of research. Obviously sending a person up to look through Hubble would be stupid. But discoveries like some of what Donald Pettit did, would not have happened with robots.It's interesting that you mention Kepler. Its mission it to find Earth like planets in habitable distances from their sun. Why do you think that is
Here's a good start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_research_on_the_International_Space_Station
This is not real science; it is just pork for NASA/Houston. The real science in space is happening at NASA/JPL with their robotic missions such as Curiosity And the O'Admin is trying to kill off all the other planetary missions.
Yes. Curiosity has been playing in the dirt on Mars for two years now. Please do tell what ground breaking "real science" has been done.
Meanwhile the ISS has been used to grow protein crystals which have helped our understanding of Duchenne's muscular dystrophy. This type of research will be helpful for stroke prevention and cancer as well as treatment for emphysema and immune system disorders.
The Materials Science Lab is giving us insights into making better alloys here on earth. There are other experiments going on regarding fluid dynamics and research that helps us better understand superconductors, Additionally there are experiments that we hope will give us a better understanding of combustion to help with efficiencies here on earth.
Astronaut Donald Pettit is known for his own private experiments during his down time. I believe he used cracker crumbs to show how particles tend to clump in microgravity. Prior to this there was no definitive proof about how particles would behave in this environment.
Curiosity is doing some very cool stuff, but please don't' act like the robotics division of NASA is the only one doing "real science". Much of the work on the ISS will have a real impact on our life here on earth. While the various probes we send out will give us a better understanding of the universe around us. See the difference? They are complimentary, not competitive.
When surgeons set out to repair holes in the walls of the heart's chambers or in blood vessels,
There are already transcatheter VSD/ASD occulders that are minimally invasive (considering)and fairly well proven. They are used all the time to repair congenital defects. I am assuming that they are talking about repairing ventricular septal defects, or atrial.septal defects Since a hole in the free wall of the heart is going to kill you pretty damn fast, and will generally be caused by some type of trauma. In which case you probably have to have foreign material removed as well. I'm not as familiar with what is available for vascular repair once it's ruptured, so this sounds pretty cool. It looks like it may be more elegant than an occulder, but the images show a clamp being used. So using this, for now, means cracking the chest open. I'd say that going into the cath lab for a ASD/VSD repair is still a better option. But if they can shrink this down to the point they can fish this stuff up through the femoral artery, it will be very cool indeed.
For the love of all that is good and decent in this world, find and protect John Conner.
Gates criticized Obama for be willing to change his mind about the Afghanistan war policy. Gates admired Bush's no-more-thinking passion about war.. Does Gates sound a like a reasoned person? NO.
I seem to have missed that. Where in the linked article did he state that?
I doubt it was any different 200 years ago.
I'd guess there was a big damn difference. Congress critters are now full time, well salaried positions. In 1813, they were not. In 1813 a congressman was paid $6 per day in session Or just under $90 inflation adjusted for today. Even if they were in session five days a week, 52 weeks per year, it works out to $1560 per year, which is just under $23K per year in today's dollars. Currently a new member of the house receives $174K per year as a base salary. Since they are elected every other year, they basically spend half of their time campaigning these days and voting in a manner that will get them reelected the other half.
Personally, I'd like to see a bill passed that would penalize congress critters for not doing their job. They should be financially penalized for every day the country has to run without a real budget in place. Continuing resolutions don't count. Failure to pay taxes, or abuses of office should be grounds for removal, or at the very least trigger a recall election. Violating laws related to the office should be grounds for immediate removal from office, loss of any pension, and be ineligible to run for that office again.
His perspective is not unique, any number of higher-ups have the same view.
Perhaps, but it's pretty rare for someone that high up to be so forthcoming. In general they try not to burn any bridges. Which does not seem to be the case here.
Which is clouded by their own myopia and cataracts.
Barring mental illness, very few people are are able to or are willing to look beyond what they know. And even fewer are by the time they are old enough to get cataracts.