This is fun. Let's see what we can do if money really is no object, Bronx Bomber style. First, you can take that picoliter of ink and stuff it full of all elements of the periodic table including isotopes. All of those have distinct spectroscopic signatures, so you can get 200-300 8 bit markers in one dot. On top of that there are techniques which discern bond energies (look up coherent anti-stokes resonance for instance). Once you make complex molecules and have sensitive enough equipment to read attomolar concentrations, the playing field widens considerably. It may take several years and billions of dollars to write an image like this and the same to read it off but I'll bet even hundreds of terabytes are possible if you are wealthy and tricky enough. Of course it may be easier to weave the paper out of double stranded DNA and sequence it (around 1e17 bits for a 2 nm thick A4 sized sheet).
Strictly speaking he could use many colors. The resonable width of color spectrum is around 1000 nm and good optical filters will give you a window of 2 nm bandpass, so assuming he used 500 wavelengths/colors he could store 700 Gb per page. Also, I am aware of prototype, in the lab printers (by Canon) which do 9600 dpi (Google it), so pushing technology to its limits and cost notwithstanding you could write 31 Tb on an A4 sheet. And I am pretty sure one can make this work for not much more than a yearly budget of one National Lab in the US:).
This was true up to a certain point in time. What has happened in the last twenty or so years is that funding for science has plunged relative to the overall research needs. What used to be: People got a PhD or MD and went on to do research. People used to get tenure either when they were hired or shortly thereafter. Abundant funding and early starting times made it possible for people to enjoy doing science in their most productive years.
What is there now: 5-10 year postdocs when you get paid next to nothing (yeah, a bit above grad student but nowhere near enough to buy a house), then 5-6 years of tenure-track when you cannot make a misstep or else you are out. Assistant professors cannot do high risk research because it's now a publish or perish world quite literally. Once you get tenure, those that become big shots do have spare funds to do interesting research but get little time to do it themselves (the fun part). They end up managing huge numbers of people and become managers. Everyone else struggles for money, most often so much they have no time to spend in the lab anyway.
So current generation of scientists is increasingly bitter and feels like the system is using them without letting us do what we signed up for: explore. People do feel that using the system to their own benefit is only fair. Some feel that current system has got so bad that they have no obligation to it whatsoever, hence deterioration of research ethics (the end of the world scenario if you ask me but I see where it comes from).
Current system underpays scientists greatly, either in terms of direct compensation or by underfunding our research efforts turning us into grant writing machines rather than scientists. In your terms, we have few financial perks, but the nonfinancial have also largely disappeared. In short, don't be surprised that people are less and less willing "to put up with reduced economics".
Dude, I am not a military person. Still, all the retired Marines I have dealt with have been pretty sharp people. They are a bit weird usually, as they take discipline more seriously than even best trained dogs, but otherwise their brains work fine. More generally, until recently US forces had some decent aptitude tests even for service ranks far below Marines. The rep for stupidity probably has to do with the fact that mostly poor kids go for military service and hence military folks often give off a strong redneck vibe. However, except for the more recent (get somebody, anybody, to Iraq) recruits they are likely just fine mentally.
1. The forms usually ask for your name, address, and other stuff. I have never seen an admin restrict themselves to just asking for your email. It's very typically set up along the lines of: tell us about yourself and we will respond.
2. Your submission does not get copied to your "sent" folder so you forget you ever communicated with the company. I like to keep a record.
This is a horrible solution. Please, people, don't do this. I never fill out any form unless pressed to do so, because I assume it is itself a harvester of sorts, meaning I do not trust companies who say that they will not resell my information. Also, please do not use javascript, since many people (including myself) browse with javascript off, and only enable it in tabs where it is absolutely necessary. I hate the bother of turning on javascript. Please avoid it if at all possible. Granted, I would love for all the web to go back to HTML 1.0 days - it looked good and was easy to read - but even less conservative people probably hate javascript widgets which are not needed.
My favorite solutions: either use a slightly scrambled image or spell things like dot and at so the text would not look like an email. You can also replace just the dots and ats with images. Please, please, please, do not use forms, javascript or anything dynamic.
When was Resolution 678 supposed to expire? The resolution itself does not say.
Now, to quote the original [quoted from http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html%5D: "Autorizes member states [...] to use all necessary means to [...] and to restore international peace and security in the area".
The way it was worded, it was a "do whatever you want to Iraq" resolution. I am not aware of any modification to the above (Clause 2 btw). Nor does it say who gets to decide when the area is secure and peaceful, suggesting that whoever goes into Iraq gets to decide for themselves (the resolution only requests information on how things are going from whoever goes into Iraq). Under resolution 678, any UN member state could do what US has done, including Iran, Israel, and Turkey.
The US apparently broke many international laws (for instance, it seems we are torturing people) but invading Iraq was legit (stupid and shortsighted but legit). US had authorization to use force since the first Gulf war.
In that case I can only conclude it is Microsoft culture that got into you. Consider for instance the question about an old bug and how it could have gotten into new IE. The answer (if I may summarize) was: Microsoft cares and we will fix it. Oh, and attackers innovate. None of which addresses the question. You have an old bug. A new release. And the old bug is still not fixed. How can this be reconciled with a focus on security? Users do not care that you *will* fix it. And this did not come from innovation - it is an old bug. So when the grandparent talks of "doublespeak and back speak" he/she is not being a troll. I too found your answers deceptive and lacking in clarity.
AllOfMP3 has the right price: around $0.10 per song. A typical CD should not cost more than $1 plus cost of media (no more than $1.50 total). The only way a CD should cost more is if it comes signed by the artist and it was signed in front of you not at a factory.
May I ask: how does this help Bush? As people above said, this just makes it obvious his campaign against WMDs in the hands of dictators is in shambles. The decision to invade Iraq looks even worse now, and the inability to wrap up the war, if it keeps up much longer, may lead to him being thrown out of office (assuming democrats gain control of both houses). This will also destabilise Asian markets, something Bush really does not need right now. Bush cannot say: "those North Koreans have nukes - we need a strong man at the helm", simply because he was at the helm when North Koreans got nukes in the first place. There is no upside for Bush, unless he and everyone at Haliburton shorted Asian markets.
You laugh but this could work. Make the paper and toner chargeable. Printing would be as simple as coating the paper with clear toner and "burning" in text with a laser. The coating would be electrostatic and thus reversible - feed the page into the printer and it reverses the charge on paper, collects ink that was blown off the page and is ready to print again. The charge on paper will degrade with time (e.g. due to many touches) and so the print will not last, making it transient. Making toner reusable would also save a lot of money and reduce cost per page several times.
Too much mass is not a problem - just build your station a bit farther from planet's center. Notice that surface gravity on Jupiter is only about 2.5 times that on Earth, so it would be conceivably colonizable. The challenges to colonizing Jupiter are huge but not insurmountable even though its surface is not solid. Too little gravity though can have big health effects. We already know that long term exposure to weightlessness can have adverse health effects similar to aging. What we don't know is its effect on human development, i.e. whether a baby born and raised in microgravity would be viable and mentally capable. The level of gravity where the health effects become significant is where we should draw the line at acceptable lowest gravity and hence planetary size. Consider also the ratio of surface gravity of current nine planets to Earth's: mercury 0.28 venus 0.90 earth 1 mars 0.38 jupiter 2.5 saturn 1.1 uranus 0.91 neptune 1.1 pluto 0.06
Notice how Pluto is almost certainly not life-sustaining. Notice also that Mars and Mercury are questionable. After thinking about it some more I am willing to give Mercury a shot at being a planet but again, it would ultimately depend on "safe" lowest gravity level.
I think we need to make a distinction between bodies within the star's termination shock and outside. Those outside are fundamentally different in that they start to feel the galactic plasma more and star's radiation less. This is especially true if we intend to eventually colonize things because we would want to classify them by how much solar energy they get and how consistent the cycles are. This also means that bodies which orbit the star are different from those bodies' satellites, since their weather patterns would differ fundamentally and present different challenges to colonization. Thus, I propose:
1. A planet is a body orbiting its star... 2.... which has enough mass to support a human colony (g > 0.1*g_earth)... 3.... is within solar termination shock.
This would kill Mercury and Pluto as planets, which is just as well since those aren't colonizable. It would also assure that any object we discover far from the Sun will not be a planet. The mass cutoff is a bit arbitrary but if Mars is indeed colonizable then 0.1 of Earth would be reasonable. I remain open to the idea of adding a surface area cutoff.
Your page says that the IP part of TCP/IP emerged in 1978 and was finalized around 1980, whereas Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. So at least technically the OP is right.
Sounds like we are approaching 300 dpi resolution for LCDs. Can't wait to see this in 10" laptop screens (something like 1800x2400 displays) and in projectors.
You are not getting it. There are, broadly speaking, two kinds of guys - the ones who are self-confident and the ones who are not. The second group has one ultimate fantasy: a woman recognizes their inherent worth (the whole "what's inside that counts" crap) and pursues them. In short, a great number of guys would love nothing more than for a woman to sweep them off their feet. The problem is only a confident woman who is sure of here self worth could do that. So these "sexist" jokes are nothing more than a challenge to weed out women who are not strong enough. I predict that once it truly flips to being a woman-dominated society, where women pick guys up in bars, then there will be an influx of women into male-dominated areas and those mailing lists will finally be full of women-initiated flirting.
Re:Comments from people who actually create Creati
on
Beginning GIMP
·
· Score: 1
Hotkeys are not intuitive since they are not graphically represented. The way to draw a line in GIMP (using only a mouse) is to use the "Create and Edit Paths" tool, click on the two end points, click Edit->Stroke Path, select your options and you are done.
Slashdot Mirror
This is fun. Let's see what we can do if money really is no object, Bronx Bomber style.
First, you can take that picoliter of ink and stuff it full of all elements of the periodic
table including isotopes. All of those have distinct spectroscopic signatures, so you can
get 200-300 8 bit markers in one dot. On top of that there are techniques which discern
bond energies (look up coherent anti-stokes resonance for instance). Once you make complex
molecules and have sensitive enough equipment to read attomolar concentrations, the playing
field widens considerably. It may take several years and billions of dollars to write an image
like this and the same to read it off but I'll bet even hundreds of terabytes are possible if
you are wealthy and tricky enough. Of course it may be easier to weave the paper out of
double stranded DNA and sequence it (around 1e17 bits for a 2 nm thick A4 sized sheet).
Strictly speaking he could use many colors. The resonable width of color spectrum is around :).
1000 nm and good optical filters will give you a window of 2 nm bandpass, so assuming he used
500 wavelengths/colors he could store 700 Gb per page. Also, I am aware of prototype, in the lab
printers (by Canon) which do 9600 dpi (Google it), so pushing technology to its limits and
cost notwithstanding you could write 31 Tb on an A4 sheet. And I am pretty sure one can make
this work for not much more than a yearly budget of one National Lab in the US
This was true up to a certain point in time. What has happened in the last twenty or so years is that funding for science has plunged relative to the overall research needs.
What used to be:
People got a PhD or MD and went on to do research. People used to get tenure either when they were hired or shortly thereafter.
Abundant funding and early starting times made it possible for people to enjoy doing science in their most productive years.
What is there now:
5-10 year postdocs when you get paid next to nothing (yeah, a bit above grad student but nowhere near enough to buy a house), then 5-6 years of tenure-track when you cannot make a misstep or else you are out. Assistant professors cannot do high risk research because it's now a publish or perish world quite literally. Once you get tenure, those that become big shots do have spare funds to do interesting research but get little time to do it themselves (the fun part). They end up managing huge numbers of people and become managers. Everyone else struggles for money, most often so much they have no time to spend in the lab anyway.
So current generation of scientists is increasingly bitter and feels like the system is using them without letting us do what we signed up for: explore. People do feel that using the system to their own benefit is only fair. Some feel that current system has got so bad that they have no obligation to it whatsoever, hence deterioration of research ethics (the end of the world scenario if you ask me but I see where it comes from).
Current system underpays scientists greatly, either in terms of direct compensation or by underfunding our research efforts turning us into grant writing machines rather than scientists. In your terms, we have few financial perks, but the nonfinancial have also largely disappeared. In short, don't be surprised that people are less and less willing "to put up with reduced economics".
Dude, I am not a military person. Still, all the retired Marines I have dealt with have been pretty sharp people. They are a bit weird usually, as they take discipline more seriously than even best trained dogs, but otherwise their brains work fine.
More generally, until recently US forces had some decent aptitude tests even for service ranks far below Marines. The rep for stupidity probably has to do with the fact that mostly poor kids go for military service and hence military folks often give off a strong redneck vibe. However, except for the more recent (get somebody, anybody, to Iraq) recruits they are likely just fine mentally.
OK, why not provide both options then?
How about:
E-mail: ____
Message: _______
Send me a copy of the message [checkbox]
Two distinctions:
1. The forms usually ask for your name, address, and other stuff.
I have never seen an admin restrict themselves to just asking for your email.
It's very typically set up along the lines of: tell us about yourself and we will
respond.
2. Your submission does not get copied to your "sent" folder so you forget you ever
communicated with the company. I like to keep a record.
This is a horrible solution. Please, people, don't do this. I never fill out any form
unless pressed to do so, because I assume it is itself a harvester of sorts, meaning I do
not trust companies who say that they will not resell my information.
Also, please do not use javascript, since many people (including myself) browse with
javascript off, and only enable it in tabs where it is absolutely necessary. I hate the
bother of turning on javascript. Please avoid it if at all possible. Granted, I would love
for all the web to go back to HTML 1.0 days - it looked good and was easy to read - but
even less conservative people probably hate javascript widgets which are not needed.
My favorite solutions: either use a slightly scrambled image or spell things like dot and
at so the text would not look like an email. You can also replace just the dots and ats
with images. Please, please, please, do not use forms, javascript or anything dynamic.
I agree with the AC who responded to you first. I especially abhor the fact that US citizens
can be declared enemy combatants and held without rights.
When was Resolution 678 supposed to expire? The resolution itself does not say.
Now, to quote the original [quoted from http://www.casi.org.uk/info/scriraq.html%5D:
"Autorizes member states [...] to use all necessary means to [...] and to restore
international peace and security in the area".
The way it was worded, it was a "do whatever you want to Iraq" resolution. I am not aware
of any modification to the above (Clause 2 btw). Nor does it say who gets to decide when
the area is secure and peaceful, suggesting that whoever goes into Iraq gets to decide for
themselves (the resolution only requests information on how things are going from whoever
goes into Iraq). Under resolution 678, any UN member state could do what US has done,
including Iran, Israel, and Turkey.
The US apparently broke many international laws
(for instance, it seems we are torturing people)
but invading Iraq was legit (stupid and shortsighted
but legit). US had authorization to use force
since the first Gulf war.
You are absolutely right. Indeed, we see poisonous algae flourishing already.
In that case I can only conclude it is Microsoft culture that got into you.
Consider for instance the question about an old bug and how it could have
gotten into new IE. The answer (if I may summarize) was:
Microsoft cares and we will fix it. Oh, and attackers innovate.
None of which addresses the question. You have an old bug. A new release.
And the old bug is still not fixed. How can this be reconciled with a focus
on security? Users do not care that you *will* fix it. And this did not come
from innovation - it is an old bug.
So when the grandparent talks of "doublespeak and back speak" he/she is not being
a troll. I too found your answers deceptive and lacking in clarity.
AllOfMP3 has the right price: around $0.10 per song. A typical CD should
not cost more than $1 plus cost of media (no more than $1.50 total).
The only way a CD should cost more is if it comes signed by the artist
and it was signed in front of you not at a factory.
May I ask: how does this help Bush? As people above said, this just makes
it obvious his campaign against WMDs in the hands of dictators is in shambles.
The decision to invade Iraq looks even worse now, and the inability to
wrap up the war, if it keeps up much longer, may lead to him being thrown out
of office (assuming democrats gain control of both houses).
This will also destabilise Asian markets, something Bush really does not need
right now. Bush cannot say: "those North Koreans have nukes - we need a
strong man at the helm", simply because he was at the helm when North Koreans
got nukes in the first place. There is no upside for Bush, unless he and everyone
at Haliburton shorted Asian markets.
You laugh but this could work. Make the paper and toner chargeable. Printing would be
as simple as coating the paper with clear toner and "burning" in text with a laser.
The coating would be electrostatic and thus reversible - feed the page into the printer
and it reverses the charge on paper, collects ink that was blown off the page and is
ready to print again. The charge on paper will degrade with time (e.g. due to many
touches) and so the print will not last, making it transient. Making toner reusable
would also save a lot of money and reduce cost per page several times.
For most points, copy the common answer into clipboard and just paste.
Me, I'll wait for a Firefox extension to do it all for me...
Clearly he meant 10^30...
Too much mass is not a problem - just build your station a bit
farther from planet's center. Notice that surface gravity on
Jupiter is only about 2.5 times that on Earth, so it would be
conceivably colonizable. The challenges to colonizing Jupiter
are huge but not insurmountable even though its surface is not
solid.
Too little gravity though can have big health effects. We already
know that long term exposure to weightlessness can have adverse
health effects similar to aging. What we don't know is its effect
on human development, i.e. whether a baby born and raised in
microgravity would be viable and mentally capable. The level of
gravity where the health effects become significant is where
we should draw the line at acceptable lowest gravity and hence
planetary size.
Consider also the ratio of surface gravity of current nine planets
to Earth's:
mercury 0.28
venus 0.90
earth 1
mars 0.38
jupiter 2.5
saturn 1.1
uranus 0.91
neptune 1.1
pluto 0.06
Notice how Pluto is almost certainly not life-sustaining. Notice
also that Mars and Mercury are questionable. After thinking about
it some more I am willing to give Mercury a shot at being a planet
but again, it would ultimately depend on "safe" lowest gravity
level.
I think we need to make a distinction between bodies within
... ... which has enough mass to support a human colony (g > 0.1*g_earth) ... ... is within solar termination shock.
the star's termination shock and outside. Those outside are
fundamentally different in that they start to feel the galactic
plasma more and star's radiation less. This is especially true
if we intend to eventually colonize things because we would want
to classify them by how much solar energy they get and how
consistent the cycles are. This also means that bodies which
orbit the star are different from those bodies' satellites, since
their weather patterns would differ fundamentally and present
different challenges to colonization. Thus, I propose:
1. A planet is a body orbiting its star
2.
3.
This would kill Mercury and Pluto as planets, which is just as
well since those aren't colonizable. It would also assure that
any object we discover far from the Sun will not be a planet.
The mass cutoff is a bit arbitrary but if Mars is indeed
colonizable then 0.1 of Earth would be reasonable. I remain open
to the idea of adding a surface area cutoff.
Your page says that the IP part of TCP/IP emerged in 1978 and was finalized around
1980, whereas Voyager 1 was launched in 1977. So at least technically the OP is right.
Sounds like we are approaching 300 dpi resolution for LCDs. Can't wait to see this
in 10" laptop screens (something like 1800x2400 displays) and in projectors.
You are not getting it. There are, broadly speaking, two
kinds of guys - the ones who are self-confident and the ones
who are not. The second group has one ultimate fantasy: a
woman recognizes their inherent worth (the whole "what's inside
that counts" crap) and pursues them. In short, a great number
of guys would love nothing more than for a woman to sweep
them off their feet. The problem is only a confident woman
who is sure of here self worth could do that. So these "sexist"
jokes are nothing more than a challenge to weed out women
who are not strong enough.
I predict that once it truly flips to being a woman-dominated
society, where women pick guys up in bars, then there will be an
influx of women into male-dominated areas and those mailing
lists will finally be full of women-initiated flirting.
Hotkeys are not intuitive since they are not graphically represented.
The way to draw a line in GIMP (using only a mouse) is to use the
"Create and Edit Paths" tool, click on the two end points, click
Edit->Stroke Path, select your options and you are done.
See review, then see subject.