Would it still be a suicide mission if you're sent with sufficient resources (possibly through intermittent resupplying) to live out the rest of your normal lifespan on Mars? And by the time round trips are realistic, you might even someday get to come back!
For what it's worth, the promise of an outer space joy ride nowadays is a bit more realistic than Pan Am's promise of a future moon trip was in the 1960s, when it started taking reservations for the moon trip.
Your implicit assumption that higher energy photons are universally more dangerous than lower energy photons would seem to speak for the latter.
This has been experimentally verified in experiments on the photoelectric effect. Indeed, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" (emphasis mine; notice that Einstein did not win the prize "because of relativity", as many would assume). Below a certain energy level per photon, nothing happens no matter how intense the light. Above the threshold, something happens (with the rate dependent on the intensity of the light).
Of course, thermal warming can also happen. In recent years, microwave-assisted organic synthesis was a big fad. But the most careful studies have demonstrated that the so-called "microwave effect" is simple thermal heating in all known cases, and despite theoretical explanations for why a non-thermal microwave effect might exist (going so far as to predict the types of reactions for which the largest effect might be found) and papers claiming the discovery of such effects, effects seen to date are purely thermal. See this J Org Chem paper. Any effect we see from a cell phone in the pocket would appear to be the same effect as simply warming our thigh a miniscule bit.
Then why not just get a bit more RAM and load the whole site into RAM during boot-up? It's faster and more cost effective than getting a SSD hard drive if you're only going to use a few GB (if that) of the SSD drive.
I agree that this probably should not be solved purely on the technology end of things. One of the great things about the Internet is that one can access things from most anywhere. Your website may cater to locals, but you need to consider the possibility that someone who is generally local to the area but currently elsewhere might want to access the site. That's a pretty serious problem for filtering based on geography.
Where's the line between Force Majeure and simply a regrettable business decision? Globally, lots of people in all walks of life are suffering from their decisions (whether sound at the time or not) made during better times that are haunting them in these rough economic times. What about this situation is unique to the MCP? How would the situation look if we allowed people across the board to declare Force Majeure?
As for no salesmen = no sales, it's commonly accepted that Microsoft is a de facto monopoly. If we take that to be true, then there may not be much cost to MS in hanging the MCPs out to dry. The MCP's customer still needs the MS product, and a new MCP undoubtedly will fill in the void when times get better.
Microsoft's customer in this case is the MCP. Unless the MCP goes bankrupt and the contract gets voided (assuming things work similarly in Iceland as in the US), why shouldn't Microsoft be demanding payment? Whether or not the MCP has a good use for the contract isn't Microsoft's problem.
This "click of death", or "hardware virus", affected the Zip drive, too. I let a friend borrow my computer once in 2000, and I returned to find my Zip drive affected. Iomega told me that since my Zip drive was an OEM part, I should contact Apple for a replacement. Apple wouldn't do anything about it (not for free, anyway) since it was out of warranty. So I called Iomega back up and explained what happened when I contacted Apple, and true to their recent (at the time) promise to replace every Zip drive that was affected with this problem, they replaced my Zip drive, free of charge. I continued to use it for some time after that, last using it in 2003. I assume it still works, though I haven't had reason to check.
The boiling point depends on the atmospheric pressure. Boiling points are typically reported based on sea level on Earth. With a much lower atmospheric pressure on Pluto, boiling points will drop.
I'm regularly frustrated by the subtle hubris of completeness that underlies so many scientific assertions. It's as though we continually forget that science is fundamentally provisional, and that we're just hominids who only recently got refrigeration.
See sushi science and hamburger science. First published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, the author expounds on his idea that Western scientists tend to be reductionists, trying to fit all the observations into simple theories, and Eastern scientists tend to just accept results for what they are, without as much generalization. It's not that one way or the other is necessarily better; they're complimentary methods of looking at something, and both viewpoints have their place.
Probably lots. In all fields of science, major discoveries often do not get credited to the first person (or instrument, in this case) to observe something. The credit goes to the first person who both recognizes the significance of what they observed and shares with the world. Newton was not the first to observe objects falling down. He was the first to truly understand the scientific significance of that observation. Fleming was not the first to observe the antibacterial properties of Penicillum mold (which led to the development of penicillin). He wasn't even the first to document it. But he was the first to follow up on it in a major way.
How can the results be reproducible if you don't keep the original data?
As others noted, there are cases where raw data is king, and others where raw data is virtually useless. LHC raw data will be invaluable. Raw data from genetic sequencing is a waste of time to keep. Why store huge graphics files when the only thing we will ever want from them is the sequence of a few letters? One must be able to distinguish between these two possibilities (and more subtle, less black and white cases, too), and there is no one size fits all solution.
That said, you may be surprised how well really valuable data is stored by good principal investigators. I recently helped my PI re-digitize a prized result from 1988 (showing the first example of a synthetic enediyne compound cleaving DNA). The journal did not do a good job of scanning it, and it therefore was hard to interpret in the printed journal. So we dug up the original raw data (the original UV photograph of the DNA gel showing this result), which had been carefully filed away in our offsite storage location all these years, and re-digitized the image for a recent review article.
Furthermore, the early universe was much less rich in elements other than hydrogen and helium. Anything we might recognize as an advanced life form almost certainly would require a few generations of star formation to go by first before there's enough heavier elements given off by all the supernovas out there (admittedly, a lot more back then) to give them a chance. That said, it's not out of the question that something evolved that quickly. Sure, it wasn't so fast on earth, but one data point hardly makes for a rule.
This makes sense only if the new projects are, on average, equally lucrative. (Apple's iPod, for example, is highly profitable.) Otherwise, the money could be better used to generate dividends or do share buybacks. Companies can't grow bigger indefinitely. At some point, a successful company should start generating a consistent revenue stream for its owners (shareholders).
Not true. Commercial aircraft are spec'd so that they can take off safely with the loss of one engine at the most critical time during the takeoff. Power needed in cruise is not that high compared with power needed at takeoff. Indeed, there was an incident a few years ago where a British Airways 747 flight continued on 3 engines for 11 hours rather than divert due to loss of an engine. (It did eventually divert because of low fuel due to unexpectedly strong headwinds.) http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2005-03-01-britair-la_x.htm
"Apple is still a small company", is a bit of a stretch for a company with a market cap of about $90 billion (mind you, this is down quite a bit in recent months) and $25 billion in cash at its disposal. For comparison, Google has a market cap of about $120 billion (was lower than Apple's for a while) and $15 billion in cash. Is Google a "small company"? I don't know where I stand on this issue, but Apple most certainly is not a "small company".
That's $90,000 average per card! How did they find accounts where people are keeping that much cash in an account with a debit/ATM card? Or did the hack go to the extent of even allowing withdrawals once accounts went to zero?
Reminds me of a news story where someone held up a bank for $20, then waited for the police and turned himself in. In court, he asked to be put in prison until the end of the year in order to save money. In the news article I read, the judge said something to the effect of "It's not the best financial planning, but at least there's a plan."
I, too, find the switch quite easy to do. My personal computers have their keyboards mapped for Dvorak (including keyboard shortcuts), but I often have to use shared computers (and QWERTY). Occasionally, I get confused for a few seconds when switching in either direction (especially if I was just on the other keyboard), but a few seconds later I'm fine. I guess that comes from years of exclusive QWERTY typing and now about 10 years of Dvorak typing.
Learning isn't so hard, too. At first, I tried to learn through a typing program that encouraged the Dvorak layout. But that was going too slowly, so after about an hour a day for a week, one day I decided to type a paper that I had to write by having a keyboard layout on-screen to be able to refer to when necessary. By the end of that paper, my Dvorak typing was just fine and Dvorak became my default layout.
Actually, Air Force One is the call sign only if the aircraft is an Air Force aircraft. Other potential names include Navy One (for example, when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier), Marine One, and Army One (for obvious reasons). If not flown by the armed services, the call sign would be Executive One.
And yes, when not flying the president or the vice president (Air Force Two in that case), the planes would be referred to simply by tail numbers.
The actual scientific publication is currently an advanced article (i.e. available online, but not yet in print) in Current Biology. I found the beginning of the experimental procedures interesting (emphasis mine): "A single specimen of Dolichopteryx longipes..." They deduced an awful lot of information from one fish. There's pictures of the fish and the eyes in the article. I don't understand much of the articles, but the pictures and diagrams are fascinating.
Slashdot Mirror
Would it still be a suicide mission if you're sent with sufficient resources (possibly through intermittent resupplying) to live out the rest of your normal lifespan on Mars? And by the time round trips are realistic, you might even someday get to come back!
Actually, it may well increase your bill with all those PCs turning on at the same time and going through a high energy period at the same time.
For what it's worth, the promise of an outer space joy ride nowadays is a bit more realistic than Pan Am's promise of a future moon trip was in the 1960s, when it started taking reservations for the moon trip.
Your implicit assumption that higher energy photons are universally more dangerous than lower energy photons would seem to speak for the latter.
This has been experimentally verified in experiments on the photoelectric effect. Indeed, Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921 "for his services to Theoretical Physics, and especially for his discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect" (emphasis mine; notice that Einstein did not win the prize "because of relativity", as many would assume). Below a certain energy level per photon, nothing happens no matter how intense the light. Above the threshold, something happens (with the rate dependent on the intensity of the light).
Of course, thermal warming can also happen. In recent years, microwave-assisted organic synthesis was a big fad. But the most careful studies have demonstrated that the so-called "microwave effect" is simple thermal heating in all known cases, and despite theoretical explanations for why a non-thermal microwave effect might exist (going so far as to predict the types of reactions for which the largest effect might be found) and papers claiming the discovery of such effects, effects seen to date are purely thermal. See this J Org Chem paper. Any effect we see from a cell phone in the pocket would appear to be the same effect as simply warming our thigh a miniscule bit.
Then why not just get a bit more RAM and load the whole site into RAM during boot-up? It's faster and more cost effective than getting a SSD hard drive if you're only going to use a few GB (if that) of the SSD drive.
I agree that this probably should not be solved purely on the technology end of things. One of the great things about the Internet is that one can access things from most anywhere. Your website may cater to locals, but you need to consider the possibility that someone who is generally local to the area but currently elsewhere might want to access the site. That's a pretty serious problem for filtering based on geography.
Where's the line between Force Majeure and simply a regrettable business decision? Globally, lots of people in all walks of life are suffering from their decisions (whether sound at the time or not) made during better times that are haunting them in these rough economic times. What about this situation is unique to the MCP? How would the situation look if we allowed people across the board to declare Force Majeure?
As for no salesmen = no sales, it's commonly accepted that Microsoft is a de facto monopoly. If we take that to be true, then there may not be much cost to MS in hanging the MCPs out to dry. The MCP's customer still needs the MS product, and a new MCP undoubtedly will fill in the void when times get better.
Microsoft's customer in this case is the MCP. Unless the MCP goes bankrupt and the contract gets voided (assuming things work similarly in Iceland as in the US), why shouldn't Microsoft be demanding payment? Whether or not the MCP has a good use for the contract isn't Microsoft's problem.
This "click of death", or "hardware virus", affected the Zip drive, too. I let a friend borrow my computer once in 2000, and I returned to find my Zip drive affected. Iomega told me that since my Zip drive was an OEM part, I should contact Apple for a replacement. Apple wouldn't do anything about it (not for free, anyway) since it was out of warranty. So I called Iomega back up and explained what happened when I contacted Apple, and true to their recent (at the time) promise to replace every Zip drive that was affected with this problem, they replaced my Zip drive, free of charge. I continued to use it for some time after that, last using it in 2003. I assume it still works, though I haven't had reason to check.
The boiling point depends on the atmospheric pressure. Boiling points are typically reported based on sea level on Earth. With a much lower atmospheric pressure on Pluto, boiling points will drop.
I'm regularly frustrated by the subtle hubris of completeness that underlies so many scientific assertions. It's as though we continually forget that science is fundamentally provisional, and that we're just hominids who only recently got refrigeration.
See sushi science and hamburger science. First published in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, the author expounds on his idea that Western scientists tend to be reductionists, trying to fit all the observations into simple theories, and Eastern scientists tend to just accept results for what they are, without as much generalization. It's not that one way or the other is necessarily better; they're complimentary methods of looking at something, and both viewpoints have their place.
Probably lots. In all fields of science, major discoveries often do not get credited to the first person (or instrument, in this case) to observe something. The credit goes to the first person who both recognizes the significance of what they observed and shares with the world. Newton was not the first to observe objects falling down. He was the first to truly understand the scientific significance of that observation. Fleming was not the first to observe the antibacterial properties of Penicillum mold (which led to the development of penicillin). He wasn't even the first to document it. But he was the first to follow up on it in a major way.
How can the results be reproducible if you don't keep the original data?
As others noted, there are cases where raw data is king, and others where raw data is virtually useless. LHC raw data will be invaluable. Raw data from genetic sequencing is a waste of time to keep. Why store huge graphics files when the only thing we will ever want from them is the sequence of a few letters? One must be able to distinguish between these two possibilities (and more subtle, less black and white cases, too), and there is no one size fits all solution.
That said, you may be surprised how well really valuable data is stored by good principal investigators. I recently helped my PI re-digitize a prized result from 1988 (showing the first example of a synthetic enediyne compound cleaving DNA). The journal did not do a good job of scanning it, and it therefore was hard to interpret in the printed journal. So we dug up the original raw data (the original UV photograph of the DNA gel showing this result), which had been carefully filed away in our offsite storage location all these years, and re-digitized the image for a recent review article.
Furthermore, the early universe was much less rich in elements other than hydrogen and helium. Anything we might recognize as an advanced life form almost certainly would require a few generations of star formation to go by first before there's enough heavier elements given off by all the supernovas out there (admittedly, a lot more back then) to give them a chance. That said, it's not out of the question that something evolved that quickly. Sure, it wasn't so fast on earth, but one data point hardly makes for a rule.
This makes sense only if the new projects are, on average, equally lucrative. (Apple's iPod, for example, is highly profitable.) Otherwise, the money could be better used to generate dividends or do share buybacks. Companies can't grow bigger indefinitely. At some point, a successful company should start generating a consistent revenue stream for its owners (shareholders).
Maybe he likes base 5?
Not true. Commercial aircraft are spec'd so that they can take off safely with the loss of one engine at the most critical time during the takeoff. Power needed in cruise is not that high compared with power needed at takeoff. Indeed, there was an incident a few years ago where a British Airways 747 flight continued on 3 engines for 11 hours rather than divert due to loss of an engine. (It did eventually divert because of low fuel due to unexpectedly strong headwinds.) http://www.usatoday.com/travel/flights/2005-03-01-britair-la_x.htm
"Apple is still a small company", is a bit of a stretch for a company with a market cap of about $90 billion (mind you, this is down quite a bit in recent months) and $25 billion in cash at its disposal. For comparison, Google has a market cap of about $120 billion (was lower than Apple's for a while) and $15 billion in cash. Is Google a "small company"? I don't know where I stand on this issue, but Apple most certainly is not a "small company".
That's $90,000 average per card! How did they find accounts where people are keeping that much cash in an account with a debit/ATM card? Or did the hack go to the extent of even allowing withdrawals once accounts went to zero?
Reminds me of a news story where someone held up a bank for $20, then waited for the police and turned himself in. In court, he asked to be put in prison until the end of the year in order to save money. In the news article I read, the judge said something to the effect of "It's not the best financial planning, but at least there's a plan."
Don't worry, dude. You can get IE on that shiny Mac of yours by installing Vista on it.
Of course no cigar! There's no tobacco. Not yet, anyway.
I, too, find the switch quite easy to do. My personal computers have their keyboards mapped for Dvorak (including keyboard shortcuts), but I often have to use shared computers (and QWERTY). Occasionally, I get confused for a few seconds when switching in either direction (especially if I was just on the other keyboard), but a few seconds later I'm fine. I guess that comes from years of exclusive QWERTY typing and now about 10 years of Dvorak typing.
Learning isn't so hard, too. At first, I tried to learn through a typing program that encouraged the Dvorak layout. But that was going too slowly, so after about an hour a day for a week, one day I decided to type a paper that I had to write by having a keyboard layout on-screen to be able to refer to when necessary. By the end of that paper, my Dvorak typing was just fine and Dvorak became my default layout.
Actually, Air Force One is the call sign only if the aircraft is an Air Force aircraft. Other potential names include Navy One (for example, when Bush landed on an aircraft carrier), Marine One, and Army One (for obvious reasons). If not flown by the armed services, the call sign would be Executive One. And yes, when not flying the president or the vice president (Air Force Two in that case), the planes would be referred to simply by tail numbers.
The actual scientific publication is currently an advanced article (i.e. available online, but not yet in print) in Current Biology. I found the beginning of the experimental procedures interesting (emphasis mine): "A single specimen of Dolichopteryx longipes..." They deduced an awful lot of information from one fish. There's pictures of the fish and the eyes in the article. I don't understand much of the articles, but the pictures and diagrams are fascinating.