Ah, you've been listening to the advertising people again haven't you? Remember : a swift kick in the nuts to get them onto the floor, then a really thorough kicking when they're down is the only sensible response to meeting such professional liars.
On general principles I'd disbelieve all claims of the form "here's a pill that will cure 90% of lifestyle diseases". But that does sound an interesting combination of properties.
half of the fat from the buffalo wings
Buffalo crossed with chickens? Or is this some marketing name for ostrich steaks - they're good by the way?
I don't know what you mean by "white gas" - it's normally kerosene (paraffin) that I use, though my stove will take anything from diesel to light petroleum spirits (they can get... interesting... if you let the pressure chamber get too warm). Goes in polythene or polycarbonate drinks bottles perfectly well, though I wouldn't store or transport it in polycarbonate because that tends to crease and I wouldn't trust the microfractures. But I've got a couple of dedicated polythene fuel bottles which I've used for 30-odd years, so I use them. Obviously, your fuel bottle goes in an outside pocket of the rucksac, not in the main body with the food.
I've long wondered if just an encoding schema combined with a foreign (in this case, alien) language would be enough to render a communication indistinguishable from noise.
Shannon answered this decades ago. Noise is random ; if there's something non-random in there, then there some sort of signal in there, even if it's only a carrier wave. To return to randomness (or something that is statistically indistinguishable from it), you need to have pretty good compression and/ or encryption going on. And in a practical setting, you'd still see header and or routing information. Look at the structure of an IP packet, for example. Even if it's carrying an encrypted payload of data, there is regularly arranged unencrypted information in there.
The other way of looking at it... you have a data stream which really is indistinguishable from noise. And your receiver drifts off target, or there's a solar flare, or a gamma ray burst, or some other source of noise which causes you to lose lock on the signal. How do you regain synchronisation? You have to have those (occasional) periods of structured information. Which means that you've got something that looks very non-random.
I suppose that you could have two completely separate data streams, one that looks random and one that carries the synchronisation information... but then you'd be looking at the synch channel to try to decode that, wouldn't you? When I'm trying to solve puzzles, I start by attacking the weakest piece of the puzzle, not the strongest. Be that playing Go or solving a sudoku.
You are half-right. Far more coal remains in the ground than has been mined,
That's considerably more debatable than you make it sound. I was reading an article a couple of years ago in my trade journal ("GeoScientist" ; there's a hint there), which suggested that we're already something like half way through our exploitable reserves of coal.
Similarly, although the price of coal has quintupled since 2002, most countriesâ(TM) reserves have stayed static or fallen.
That is very much not what conventional economics would suggest : as the price goes up, people should search for (and find) more resources. If, of course, there are more reserves to find.
Crap loads of thorium sitting outside almost every metal mine in the nation. More thorium than we could use in 100,000 years at current rates, IMO.
Citation needed.
I'm a geologist, and it's pretty likely that I've visited more metal mines (active and closed) than you, collected more minerals, and have a better chance of recognising thorium minerals than you.
In my mineral chest, I've got two (probable) grains of thorium minerals. Total of a few milligrams.
Radioactive fallout is not a useful weapon in war.
Which is why rational combatants wouldn't be targeting nuclear reactors and waste reprocessing plants. Weapons stores and military concentrations are prime targets ; then civilian concentrations for "shock and awe" (otherwise known as terrorism - just state-backed instead of freelance). If you intend to take over a country with it's population, then you don't go around destroying infrastructure any more than your military strategy requires. If you intend to take over a country, without it's population, then you need to use neutron bombs on the populace, but you still need most of the infrastructure in order to move your new population in.
SpaceX is not a federal agency and doesn't have to play by the same onerous, costly sets of rules as a federal agency (i.e purchasing requirements, safety requirements, etc.)
Are you implying that SpaceX are a dangerous operation for either their employees or the people their hardware flies over?
Are you prepared to back that up with specific claims? Like "they cut corners on their o-rings temperature tolerances" (as wrecked the Sea Launch launcher vessel during it's first lifetime, killing it's radio operator, Timothy Williams).
5,416 species of known mammals in 2006 ; Birds (with some quibbles about lumping or splitting diverse species) are about 10,000 species. The birds are not doing too badly in the "age of the mammals". Or even in the "anthropocene".
Browsing the web with a keyboard and mouse with a monitor is going the way of the dinosaur very rapidly.
What? You mean that it's got 63+ million years of abundance ahead of it?
Since I use an office, on a boat, which moves around the world, I don't see my keyboard and mouse going anywhere soon. And my favourite pocket computer (a Psion 5MX) had a keyboard, with a nice tactile response. They've not been made for over a decade now, so I have to downgrade to a modern tablet, but that has a keyboard too. It's a 3rd party add-on, but it makes the machine much more usable (as well as doubling up as a protective case). I just wish the tablet had the month of battery life that the Psion had, instead of 3-4 hours.
Especially today, the idea that stealerships compete with each other is mostly a misnomer.
Can't you just go over the border and buy the car you want in a different country at the best price you can get, and then return it to your home country?
It's not so easy here, because we drive on the other side of the road to most of our near neighbours. But that's not difficult to either get around (buy a RHD car in a right hand of the road country) or to ignore (drive a LHD car here, on the left hand side of the road ; not difficult). but even so, I see something like several percent of the cars on the road with Irish plates (our only RHD co-continentals), which I deduce are imports for reduced prices or taxes.
That's an argument for making a funeral memorable. That doesn't necessarily mean making it expensive.
If I thought about plans for my funeral, it would probably start off with a proper wake (with my corpse in attendance, of course). Then throw my stiff into a shroud with a couple of coins (for dating when discovered), throw it into a hole in the ground and stick a tree on top of it. Nail a plaque to the tree when the tree is big enough if you really want.
If the initials SCI appear anywhere around any boneyard, don't walk, run away...
Why?
I'm guessing that you've had some horrible run-in with "Service Corporation International, an American funeral service provider" in the past... which is peculiar. Aren't graveyards public (well, city/ state/ nation) property in your country? They are here. OK, we do have the habit of re-using lairs (grave sites) after a few decades (less if they've been leased by, for example, a family), so you get several coffins stacked one on top of the other.
*Two* stem cells? For her entire body? How do they actually know that.
They do tell you in the article, but it's not spelled out. They looked at the range of mutations in the leucocytes in her blood and found that they had only two common patterns of mutations. That implies only two remaining blood stem cells.
And did they really harvest both of them, and then leave them in the fridge for TEN years? Sheesh..
They don't say that they harvested either of them. They say that they looked at blood samples. To have collected the blood stem cells, they'd need to have extracted the marrow from her long bones - femur and/ or ribs most likely. That's a much more intrusive operation, even if the patient is a corpse.
Neither the donor nor her next of kin were under any obligation to allow samples to be taken. Nor were they under any obligation to allow any additional testing to be performed on samples that were taken for therapeutic reasons. Nor were they under any obligation to allow any publication of data obtained either as a part of her therapies, or any publication of the researches (which they were under no obligation to allow) carried out on her body. So... you're complaining that it took 10 years to get the research done, or that perhaps they imposed a moratorium on the work before it's publication? That's within their rights. As is privacy.
Isn't this Slashdot, where people foam at the mouth over governmental intrusion into privacy every 30 attoseconds? And you want to violate the privacy of a dead old woman before her ashes have cooled?
One would have thought we would have reached into the fridge to study that sample by now...
Considering that the lady was under no obligation to allow her body to be used for any sort of research, precisely what are you complaining about? That she (or her family, the legal owners of the body and of any tissue samples) imposed some restriction on when research could be performed?
Oh, it's an AC. For the cowardly reason, not the anonymity reason.
Ukraine inherited significant portions of the Soviet ICMB design and manufacturing infrastructure.
Most of which is in the Eastern Ukraine provinces, which are (popularly, as far as I hear from Auntie Vala, who lives there) moving towards secession. So I doubt that Ukraine will have that capability for more than a few days more.
and most of the time I'm there I've been deleting old photos, posts, etc
Plus, of course, spending 20 minutes flagging absolutely every advert they show me as being one of "offensive", "repetitive" or "sexually explicit". Shitting in their data mine like that may not be very effective, but it's a small strike for the common man against the corporations.
Do you mean that you've asked people in that group, and they've told you that they don't post things about you on FB ; or do you mean that you've asked all people who know you to NOT post stuff about you on FB?
For the last year I've been logging into my FB account less than once every 3 months, and most of the time I'm there I've been deleting old photos, posts, etc. It must be a couple of years since I added a friend to my circle (or whatever they're called). Deeply, deeply distrustful of FB. And Google.
Really guys, if I wanted meteor insurance, I'm sure I could get someone at Lloyd's to write it for me,
Let us know how you get on. I can't even get tsunami insurance even when I do the actuarial work for them (I put it at a 1% chance of £50,000 worth of damage over 30 years, for this location ; other flood risks are considerably lower, because I'm not an idiot and I don't live on a flood plain.)
While I love dinosaurs (the extinct, non-avian ones) as much as the next geologist down the street, their mental prowess is unlikely to have extended far enough for abstract thought. Looking at the extant dinosaurs (see my signature), you might just be able to argue for some abstract thought in crows and maybe parrots too. But I don't see crows in space any time soon.
Crows in space... birds in general... now there's an idea. I don't fancy clearing up the shit though.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, you've been listening to the advertising people again haven't you? Remember : a swift kick in the nuts to get them onto the floor, then a really thorough kicking when they're down is the only sensible response to meeting such professional liars.
No. Who's he and what's his relevance?
Why?
Buffalo crossed with chickens? Or is this some marketing name for ostrich steaks - they're good by the way?
I don't know what you mean by "white gas" - it's normally kerosene (paraffin) that I use, though my stove will take anything from diesel to light petroleum spirits (they can get ... interesting ... if you let the pressure chamber get too warm). Goes in polythene or polycarbonate drinks bottles perfectly well, though I wouldn't store or transport it in polycarbonate because that tends to crease and I wouldn't trust the microfractures. But I've got a couple of dedicated polythene fuel bottles which I've used for 30-odd years, so I use them. Obviously, your fuel bottle goes in an outside pocket of the rucksac, not in the main body with the food.
Shannon answered this decades ago. Noise is random ; if there's something non-random in there, then there some sort of signal in there, even if it's only a carrier wave. To return to randomness (or something that is statistically indistinguishable from it), you need to have pretty good compression and/ or encryption going on. And in a practical setting, you'd still see header and or routing information. Look at the structure of an IP packet, for example. Even if it's carrying an encrypted payload of data, there is regularly arranged unencrypted information in there.
The other way of looking at it ... you have a data stream which really is indistinguishable from noise. And your receiver drifts off target, or there's a solar flare, or a gamma ray burst, or some other source of noise which causes you to lose lock on the signal. How do you regain synchronisation? You have to have those (occasional) periods of structured information. Which means that you've got something that looks very non-random.
I suppose that you could have two completely separate data streams, one that looks random and one that carries the synchronisation information ... but then you'd be looking at the synch channel to try to decode that, wouldn't you? When I'm trying to solve puzzles, I start by attacking the weakest piece of the puzzle, not the strongest. Be that playing Go or solving a sudoku.
Contraception would be a rather cheaper way of achieving that aim. Or regular wars.
That's considerably more debatable than you make it sound. I was reading an article a couple of years ago in my trade journal ("GeoScientist" ; there's a hint there), which suggested that we're already something like half way through our exploitable reserves of coal.
Just one quotation from the article (here).
That is very much not what conventional economics would suggest : as the price goes up, people should search for (and find) more resources. If, of course, there are more reserves to find.
Which there don't appear to be.
Citation needed.
I'm a geologist, and it's pretty likely that I've visited more metal mines (active and closed) than you, collected more minerals, and have a better chance of recognising thorium minerals than you.
In my mineral chest, I've got two (probable) grains of thorium minerals. Total of a few milligrams.
Which is why rational combatants wouldn't be targeting nuclear reactors and waste reprocessing plants. Weapons stores and military concentrations are prime targets ; then civilian concentrations for "shock and awe" (otherwise known as terrorism - just state-backed instead of freelance). If you intend to take over a country with it's population, then you don't go around destroying infrastructure any more than your military strategy requires. If you intend to take over a country, without it's population, then you need to use neutron bombs on the populace, but you still need most of the infrastructure in order to move your new population in.
Are you implying that SpaceX are a dangerous operation for either their employees or the people their hardware flies over?
Are you prepared to back that up with specific claims? Like "they cut corners on their o-rings temperature tolerances" (as wrecked the Sea Launch launcher vessel during it's first lifetime, killing it's radio operator, Timothy Williams).
5,416 species of known mammals in 2006 ; Birds (with some quibbles about lumping or splitting diverse species) are about 10,000 species. The birds are not doing too badly in the "age of the mammals". Or even in the "anthropocene".
What? You mean that it's got 63+ million years of abundance ahead of it?
Since I use an office, on a boat, which moves around the world, I don't see my keyboard and mouse going anywhere soon. And my favourite pocket computer (a Psion 5MX) had a keyboard, with a nice tactile response. They've not been made for over a decade now, so I have to downgrade to a modern tablet, but that has a keyboard too. It's a 3rd party add-on, but it makes the machine much more usable (as well as doubling up as a protective case). I just wish the tablet had the month of battery life that the Psion had, instead of 3-4 hours.
Can't you just go over the border and buy the car you want in a different country at the best price you can get, and then return it to your home country?
It's not so easy here, because we drive on the other side of the road to most of our near neighbours. But that's not difficult to either get around (buy a RHD car in a right hand of the road country) or to ignore (drive a LHD car here, on the left hand side of the road ; not difficult). but even so, I see something like several percent of the cars on the road with Irish plates (our only RHD co-continentals), which I deduce are imports for reduced prices or taxes.
If I thought about plans for my funeral, it would probably start off with a proper wake (with my corpse in attendance, of course). Then throw my stiff into a shroud with a couple of coins (for dating when discovered), throw it into a hole in the ground and stick a tree on top of it. Nail a plaque to the tree when the tree is big enough if you really want.
Why?
I'm guessing that you've had some horrible run-in with "Service Corporation International, an American funeral service provider" in the past ... which is peculiar. Aren't graveyards public (well, city/ state/ nation) property in your country? They are here. OK, we do have the habit of re-using lairs (grave sites) after a few decades (less if they've been leased by, for example, a family), so you get several coffins stacked one on top of the other.
They do tell you in the article, but it's not spelled out. They looked at the range of mutations in the leucocytes in her blood and found that they had only two common patterns of mutations. That implies only two remaining blood stem cells.
They don't say that they harvested either of them. They say that they looked at blood samples. To have collected the blood stem cells, they'd need to have extracted the marrow from her long bones - femur and/ or ribs most likely. That's a much more intrusive operation, even if the patient is a corpse.
Neither the donor nor her next of kin were under any obligation to allow samples to be taken. Nor were they under any obligation to allow any additional testing to be performed on samples that were taken for therapeutic reasons. Nor were they under any obligation to allow any publication of data obtained either as a part of her therapies, or any publication of the researches (which they were under no obligation to allow) carried out on her body. So ... you're complaining that it took 10 years to get the research done, or that perhaps they imposed a moratorium on the work before it's publication? That's within their rights. As is privacy.
Isn't this Slashdot, where people foam at the mouth over governmental intrusion into privacy every 30 attoseconds? And you want to violate the privacy of a dead old woman before her ashes have cooled?
Considering that the lady was under no obligation to allow her body to be used for any sort of research, precisely what are you complaining about? That she (or her family, the legal owners of the body and of any tissue samples) imposed some restriction on when research could be performed?
Oh, it's an AC. For the cowardly reason, not the anonymity reason.
Why do people use that phrase? Do you know of any examples, ever, of a native invader?
Most of which is in the Eastern Ukraine provinces, which are (popularly, as far as I hear from Auntie Vala, who lives there) moving towards secession. So I doubt that Ukraine will have that capability for more than a few days more.
Plus, of course, spending 20 minutes flagging absolutely every advert they show me as being one of "offensive", "repetitive" or "sexually explicit". Shitting in their data mine like that may not be very effective, but it's a small strike for the common man against the corporations.
For the last year I've been logging into my FB account less than once every 3 months, and most of the time I'm there I've been deleting old photos, posts, etc. It must be a couple of years since I added a friend to my circle (or whatever they're called). Deeply, deeply distrustful of FB. And Google.
What? No increase in the size of hammers available? You're fucked!
That reminds me that I need to get a new burner phone.
Let us know how you get on. I can't even get tsunami insurance even when I do the actuarial work for them (I put it at a 1% chance of £50,000 worth of damage over 30 years, for this location ; other flood risks are considerably lower, because I'm not an idiot and I don't live on a flood plain.)
While I love dinosaurs (the extinct, non-avian ones) as much as the next geologist down the street, their mental prowess is unlikely to have extended far enough for abstract thought. Looking at the extant dinosaurs (see my signature), you might just be able to argue for some abstract thought in crows and maybe parrots too. But I don't see crows in space any time soon.
Crows in space ... birds in general ... now there's an idea. I don't fancy clearing up the shit though.