Now THAT would be fascinating... First "charge" a piece of the graphene aerogel with hydrogen, then bring it out into the air and try to light one corner with a match or small torch. I'll bet that the mechanical structure is delicate enough that the match or torch would trigger the release of some hydrogen, which would then burn. The interesting part would be if that flame triggered a cascade or just died out, and if a cascade were triggered, how fast it would be, and how much the carbon would participate.
I don't believe TFA does this, but a few days back I saw an article hosted at MIT about cameras/video processing that "sees the unseen" by amplification of small differences. For instance, by exaggerating minute color changes in the face they were able to see peoples' heartbeats. They also amplified small movements of buildings, peoples' eyes, etc.
There is a whole slew of visual cues that we don't normally perceive, at least not consciously. The MIT article shows some of them. Now put together TFA with what MIT has done, and your statistics get better - perhaps frighteningly. (Perhaps what's even more frightening is when the statistics really haven't gotten better, but people believe that they have.)
First is greater acceptance of OSS and Linux. (Not that OSS and Linux are new - acceptance of them is.) This makes platform and instruction set matter less. For some set of OS and applications it makes an alternative instruction set and platform a compile away. Though it's never as simple as "just recompile" it's still far simpler than "develop from near-scratch", especially as the better OSS tends to be closer to "just recompile"..
Second is the ARM big.little architecture. It's an interesting solution to the problem, "How do I save power on the super-CPU when most of the time it just fields keyboard interrupts?"
Third (out of 2) is that cellphones and tablets are rapidly going to become "legacy". Just wait until someone wants a grown-up version of their tablet/phone app to run on their desktop.
Close to a year back, I did check the broadband map. They said that I might be able to get a local provider, Sovernet, whose name I was familiar with. I checked out their web site, and not only did they permit servers, they would assist me with setup, host my dns records, etc. So I contacted them, ready to take the bandwidth drop from 4 bonded down-channels at Comcast to DSL, just for the better TOS.
No-go. If the network touches fiber between the CO and me, the ILEC is permitted to exclude CLECs. That was one of the freebies the FCC granted in order to encourage the rollout of fiber. I have no "enlightened TOS" available to me. Nor do I have fiber to the curb or home - the fiber is there for Fairpoint's benefit, not mine.
One other thought... Your kids will find their own paths. My daughter is into the sciences, my son is working on becoming a history teacher - even though he has always watched science fiction with me.
When both kids were younger and we were having a rough time controlling the scatalogical humor at dinner time, my wife would say, "The Kennedy's discussed politics at the dinner table!" Fast-forward a few years and dinners can be quit civil with sophisticated discourse - or not. But there capable of it, and at other times we can all share in the humor.
Mod this up. Comcast is the same as ATT, in this respect.
I'm rather surprised that only one A.C. mentions TOS. I was about to, but I was scanning the comments looking to see if anyone else had. In all of the comments you're the only one. Most of the comments were concerned about the MafiAA, kiddie pr0n, and loss of bandwidth.
But TOS is a civil matter. Share your connection and they're entitled to cut you off.
Have fun. Sometimes that's hard to remember, in the early years.
The other telling activity with my daughter was in the Fall of first grade, when she was building villages and roads out in the yard for the wooly bear caterpillars. On "take your daughter to work day" she would hang out around the microscope.
The book that started me down the path that ended in a career in engineering was, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", by Verne, which I read the summer after second grade.
When my daughter was in fifth grade we read "The Hot Zone" together. She's in the last semester of her Masters, and is planning to start her PhD in the fall, in the biological sciences.
I was diagnosed with apnea, but there were various delays in getting treatment. In that interval I "fell off the cliff" and found that in my fifties I had the energy level of someone in their eighties. (From caring for my mother, I had good experience of what that was like.) I didn't connect it with the apnea diagnosis at first but eventually getting on CPAP fixed the problem. The problems of sleep apnea can be deeper than suspected - don't look for just sleepiness.
> And since we don't even have the technology to move an asteroid yet
Yet it's essential that we develop that technology. The Earth has been hit before - and odds are that it is going to be hit again, it's just a matter of time. It's a simple matter of long-term self-preservation that we need to be able to adjust asteroid orbits. Asteroid mining is an excellent idea, because it lets us learn those techniques - and it may defray some of the costs.
It doesn't stop at precious metals, either. Even if SpaceX hits its target launch costs of $150/lb, that means that a ton of anything we bring back to Earth orbit has a starting value of $300,000. (Today the numbers are closer to 10X that.) Even if it's "worthless rock", others could call it "radiation shielding" or "thermal mass" and it becomes valuable. Given an adequate supply of focused solar energy, I suspect just about anything can be refined, in orbit.
Which brings us back to the "Death Star" mention in the article.
As you say, the idea is to use something cheap to bring the asteroid back near Earth, where we use the expensive facilities to mine/refine it. The real weapon here is bringing the asteroid back to Earth - all the way to Earth - with slightly different aiming.
No, think back a few years to the massive blackout in the Eastern part of the US. That was an accident, but that's the kind of thing a well-run attack on SCADA could do. Then if you want to kill people, as part of the attack, attack hospital utility systems. You know, like the stuff that brings the backup generators online when the mains fail. There are all sorts of regulations about keeping patient data safe, but it wouldn't surprise me if the utility systems are just as secure as a lot of the rest of them. (not very)
But it basically boils down to this, for the most part, TPTB simply don't like the peer-to-peer nature of the internet, precisely because it is egalitarian and empowering.
By design, internet access really ought to be a utility, serviced, managed, and regulated just like electricity, POTS, natural gas, etc. For one simple reason, that's because the last mile requires monopoly infrastructure just like all of those other utilities. Some level of regulation is actually more important because internet access is far more susceptible to neutrality abuse.
At the same time current ISPs are already those regulated incumbents, and they REALLY don't want to be running yet another regulated utility - they see the big bucks and they want to grab their share. Cable TV and POTS are both regulated monopolies, but once those providers become ISPs they can sell corresponding streaming video and VOIP services, and better yet those options are unregulated.
So to the ISP the internet becomes primarily a content delivery system, and one that has already solved the content-ordering problem for them. Yet once the internet pipes exist, the ISP has no monopoly over the streaming video and VOIP services, unless they can break network neutrality.
The company sees the internet as a great communications and distribution capability. My employer had something very internet-like, minus the graphical stuff, over 10 years before the internet really hit the scene. They were also spending money developing and deploying that internal network. The internet gives it to them for "free". (Not really free, but at least at lower cost.)
In both cases, the internet is a tremendous advantage for incumbent TPTB. But in both cases there's no particular advantage to the peer-to-peer, egalitarian, empowering nature of the internet. In fact that nature is really only good for ordinary people and entrepreneurs trying to create or break into a market. For TPTB enabling entrepreneurs to break into their market is a disadvantage.
As one who happens to be 6'4", I'll say that on Earth a 6 foot ceiling is very different from a 20 foot ceiling. I'm not normally claustrophobic, but every now and then I just like to have some space around me. Skylab was interesting, in that respect, including the open framework floors.
Never having been in microgravity I can't tell how I'd respond, if being in a space 6'x6'x tens of feet would be sufficient for me, when I'm capable of moving in any of those dimensions.
Have you seen any of the videos sent back from the ISS? From what the videos show, that thing is basically a maze of tunnels. There are a few (tiny) "rooms" off to the side, the cupola being the most notable and most different. (and biggest?) What's the long-term psychological impact of living in a "warren", and how great would the benefit be of having some real rooms?
Slashdot Mirror
Now THAT would be fascinating... First "charge" a piece of the graphene aerogel with hydrogen, then bring it out into the air and try to light one corner with a match or small torch. I'll bet that the mechanical structure is delicate enough that the match or torch would trigger the release of some hydrogen, which would then burn. The interesting part would be if that flame triggered a cascade or just died out, and if a cascade were triggered, how fast it would be, and how much the carbon would participate.
I thought it was Napoleon's troops' government-subsidized artillery practice, not the original government-subsidized construction.
Bill Murray tried and failed. It didn't go well for him until well after he gave up.
I don't believe TFA does this, but a few days back I saw an article hosted at MIT about cameras/video processing that "sees the unseen" by amplification of small differences. For instance, by exaggerating minute color changes in the face they were able to see peoples' heartbeats. They also amplified small movements of buildings, peoples' eyes, etc.
There is a whole slew of visual cues that we don't normally perceive, at least not consciously. The MIT article shows some of them. Now put together TFA with what MIT has done, and your statistics get better - perhaps frighteningly. (Perhaps what's even more frightening is when the statistics really haven't gotten better, but people believe that they have.)
There are 2 things new under the sun...
First is greater acceptance of OSS and Linux. (Not that OSS and Linux are new - acceptance of them is.) This makes platform and instruction set matter less. For some set of OS and applications it makes an alternative instruction set and platform a compile away. Though it's never as simple as "just recompile" it's still far simpler than "develop from near-scratch", especially as the better OSS tends to be closer to "just recompile"..
Second is the ARM big.little architecture. It's an interesting solution to the problem, "How do I save power on the super-CPU when most of the time it just fields keyboard interrupts?"
Third (out of 2) is that cellphones and tablets are rapidly going to become "legacy". Just wait until someone wants a grown-up version of their tablet/phone app to run on their desktop.
Time to play "Dog Pile on the Rabbit" with the mockery.
After all, one can never let the topic of Global Warming go un-mocked - that would be a dereliction of duty!
You're lucky.
Close to a year back, I did check the broadband map. They said that I might be able to get a local provider, Sovernet, whose name I was familiar with. I checked out their web site, and not only did they permit servers, they would assist me with setup, host my dns records, etc. So I contacted them, ready to take the bandwidth drop from 4 bonded down-channels at Comcast to DSL, just for the better TOS.
No-go. If the network touches fiber between the CO and me, the ILEC is permitted to exclude CLECs. That was one of the freebies the FCC granted in order to encourage the rollout of fiber. I have no "enlightened TOS" available to me. Nor do I have fiber to the curb or home - the fiber is there for Fairpoint's benefit, not mine.
One other thought... Your kids will find their own paths. My daughter is into the sciences, my son is working on becoming a history teacher - even though he has always watched science fiction with me.
When both kids were younger and we were having a rough time controlling the scatalogical humor at dinner time, my wife would say, "The Kennedy's discussed politics at the dinner table!" Fast-forward a few years and dinners can be quit civil with sophisticated discourse - or not. But there capable of it, and at other times we can all share in the humor.
Mod this up. Comcast is the same as ATT, in this respect.
I'm rather surprised that only one A.C. mentions TOS. I was about to, but I was scanning the comments looking to see if anyone else had. In all of the comments you're the only one. Most of the comments were concerned about the MafiAA, kiddie pr0n, and loss of bandwidth.
But TOS is a civil matter. Share your connection and they're entitled to cut you off.
Have fun. Sometimes that's hard to remember, in the early years.
The other telling activity with my daughter was in the Fall of first grade, when she was building villages and roads out in the yard for the wooly bear caterpillars. On "take your daughter to work day" she would hang out around the microscope.
She's working in aquatic macro-invertebrates.
I would argue that US interest in bioweapons started much earlier, when we gave blankets from smallpox patients to the native Americans.
The book that started me down the path that ended in a career in engineering was, "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", by Verne, which I read the summer after second grade.
When my daughter was in fifth grade we read "The Hot Zone" together. She's in the last semester of her Masters, and is planning to start her PhD in the fall, in the biological sciences.
Except Dawn Wells never did do the promised Playboy spread.
You're not the only one here with chronologically enhanced flatulence.
I don't think that there is a typical out there, there's everything up to Vesta. (+ or -)
T=1/2*m*v^2
Slingshot around a friendly nearby planet and bring it into a retrograde collision path. Much more effective.
I was diagnosed with apnea, but there were various delays in getting treatment. In that interval I "fell off the cliff" and found that in my fifties I had the energy level of someone in their eighties. (From caring for my mother, I had good experience of what that was like.) I didn't connect it with the apnea diagnosis at first but eventually getting on CPAP fixed the problem. The problems of sleep apnea can be deeper than suspected - don't look for just sleepiness.
> And since we don't even have the technology to move an asteroid yet
Yet it's essential that we develop that technology. The Earth has been hit before - and odds are that it is going to be hit again, it's just a matter of time. It's a simple matter of long-term self-preservation that we need to be able to adjust asteroid orbits. Asteroid mining is an excellent idea, because it lets us learn those techniques - and it may defray some of the costs.
It doesn't stop at precious metals, either. Even if SpaceX hits its target launch costs of $150/lb, that means that a ton of anything we bring back to Earth orbit has a starting value of $300,000. (Today the numbers are closer to 10X that.) Even if it's "worthless rock", others could call it "radiation shielding" or "thermal mass" and it becomes valuable. Given an adequate supply of focused solar energy, I suspect just about anything can be refined, in orbit.
Which brings us back to the "Death Star" mention in the article.
As you say, the idea is to use something cheap to bring the asteroid back near Earth, where we use the expensive facilities to mine/refine it. The real weapon here is bringing the asteroid back to Earth - all the way to Earth - with slightly different aiming.
Odd, it's usually the wife educating the husband about such shrinkage. As you also mention, perhaps this is a latitude issue.
He'd rather feed, house, and clothe his family, perhaps?
I wondered who the Jack Daniels corporate spokesperson was and why you didn't name him.
Then I wondered how many hours per week they work on average in the whiskey business, to be giving advice in this way.
After finishing reading your post, I began feeling sorry for the guy, wondering how many whiskey jokes he's the butt of.
No, think back a few years to the massive blackout in the Eastern part of the US. That was an accident, but that's the kind of thing a well-run attack on SCADA could do. Then if you want to kill people, as part of the attack, attack hospital utility systems. You know, like the stuff that brings the backup generators online when the mains fail. There are all sorts of regulations about keeping patient data safe, but it wouldn't surprise me if the utility systems are just as secure as a lot of the rest of them. (not very)
You and MickeyTheIdiot in this post http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3386471&cid=42603673 are saying essentially the same thing, from two different perspectives.
But it basically boils down to this, for the most part, TPTB simply don't like the peer-to-peer nature of the internet, precisely because it is egalitarian and empowering.
By design, internet access really ought to be a utility, serviced, managed, and regulated just like electricity, POTS, natural gas, etc. For one simple reason, that's because the last mile requires monopoly infrastructure just like all of those other utilities. Some level of regulation is actually more important because internet access is far more susceptible to neutrality abuse.
At the same time current ISPs are already those regulated incumbents, and they REALLY don't want to be running yet another regulated utility - they see the big bucks and they want to grab their share. Cable TV and POTS are both regulated monopolies, but once those providers become ISPs they can sell corresponding streaming video and VOIP services, and better yet those options are unregulated.
So to the ISP the internet becomes primarily a content delivery system, and one that has already solved the content-ordering problem for them. Yet once the internet pipes exist, the ISP has no monopoly over the streaming video and VOIP services, unless they can break network neutrality.
The company sees the internet as a great communications and distribution capability. My employer had something very internet-like, minus the graphical stuff, over 10 years before the internet really hit the scene. They were also spending money developing and deploying that internal network. The internet gives it to them for "free". (Not really free, but at least at lower cost.)
In both cases, the internet is a tremendous advantage for incumbent TPTB. But in both cases there's no particular advantage to the peer-to-peer, egalitarian, empowering nature of the internet. In fact that nature is really only good for ordinary people and entrepreneurs trying to create or break into a market. For TPTB enabling entrepreneurs to break into their market is a disadvantage.
Oh come on... The duct-tape patch is old news.
As one who happens to be 6'4", I'll say that on Earth a 6 foot ceiling is very different from a 20 foot ceiling. I'm not normally claustrophobic, but every now and then I just like to have some space around me. Skylab was interesting, in that respect, including the open framework floors.
Never having been in microgravity I can't tell how I'd respond, if being in a space 6'x6'x tens of feet would be sufficient for me, when I'm capable of moving in any of those dimensions.
psychology....
Have you seen any of the videos sent back from the ISS? From what the videos show, that thing is basically a maze of tunnels. There are a few (tiny) "rooms" off to the side, the cupola being the most notable and most different. (and biggest?) What's the long-term psychological impact of living in a "warren", and how great would the benefit be of having some real rooms?