But trespassing doesn't work as a decent analogy either. Because when you put your foot in my yard and then walk away, are you walking away with a perfect copy of my yard?
That's where this analogy gets sticky. Granted, yes I still have my original property, but now you have a copy of my property now too. While in this case it may not hurt me (since I'm not selling my yard), you are still walking away with something that isn't really yours.
Except in the case of music, the copy you are walking away with is something you should have payed for to get, regardless of whether there was an exchange of property or not. That is where this whole issue gets really sticky.
So it does border on actually stealing in my humble opinion. Copyright doesn't even have anything to do with it really. You're taking something that you can only get (legally) if you had paid for it.
Mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I personally don't like paying > $14 USD for 2 good songs and 13 filler tracks. If you want to call me a thief, so be it. But it's amazing how far people will go to justify stealing music. Just say you steal and move on. There's nothing to argue about and no one will judge you any different.
I mean no harm in breaking laws right? We've all gone slightly over the speed limit as well as jay walked.:-P
Considering Slashdot doesn't write their own articles and it is basically an aggregate of postings from other sites, I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
Technically, any news on Slashdot is old news since it has been reported already.:P
Read The Case For Mars by Robert Zubrin. It speaks of how we could go about terraforming Mars, which is quite a complex process and would take *thousands* of years! It definitely isn't something that would happen overnight.
In fact, even after terraforming Mars so that there is free oxygen in the atmosphere and the temperatures would be sufficient, there is still the problem of air pressure, which would be far to low to support walking around outside without the aid of at least an oxygen tank. In fact, his book concludes that it will probably never be possible to walk around Mars without the aid of some breathing device.
(Though interestingly enough, certain plants would be able to do well, or so he says in his book.)
I mean, how long did it take for them to even confirm it was once wet?
I don't think that ultimately mattered. People have been obsessed with life on Mars since it was first discovered and the possibility of canals that were built by other beings.
The thought that water once flowed on the planet wasn't really that much of a profound/thought provoking concept in the scheme of things. There is some fairly obvious evidence that has hinted at the possibility of water. (I know, that image is from Mars Express, but we've known about major valleys and canyons since at least the time of the Viking Landers).
Regarding whether we are being eased into the possibility of life being on other planets. There is a greater chance of that than trying to prepare of for the possibility of water existing on another body.
However, I think the confirmation of life would be such huge and amazing news, I doubt word of it could be covered up for very long before it got out.
I was also a kid at the time of the incident. In fact, I believe I was only 4 years old, so I was quite far removed. However, looking back on it, it really is a HUGE deal.
Yes, but the caldera itself isn't very likely to erupt. What you would get is a relatively small (as far as volcanic eruptions go) eruption at Mammoth Mountain or at one of the craters in a chain that runs to the north.
Volcanic activity has occured there within the last 600 years or so as well. Just take a short drive up 395 to Obsidian Dome. That pile of obsidian wasn't there 600 years ago! What is actually interesting is that you can sit on top of Obsidian Dome and look north towards Mono Lake and you will see a series of similiar looking hills that form the Mono-Inyo Craters.
There is a lot of evidence that there is magma beneath the ground. From various earthquake swarms, to the hot springs towards the south to the treekill at Horseshow Lake.
Really, he doesn't earn much money and probably would be earning more money had he gone to college and gotten a decent job (at least 50k) and I'm sure he's capable.
According to this article, he took home over $100K in prize money in 2001 alone...:-O
I agree for the most part. However, I don't know if I'd want to take something like this out in the field. Dust/Rain/Mud/Trees are no match for your Brunton, but I'd be hesitant to get down and dirty with this.
Another plus is that if my Brunton somehow goes tumbling down a cliff, it should still work. What will happen if I accidentially drop this All-In-One device when trying to get dip on an outcrop that is on a cliff?
I myself don't understand what the big deal with the iPod Mini is? I have a 20gig second generation Ipod that I think is perfectly fine. I don't complain about the size at all (my sister has a 3rd generation Ipod which is even smaller!). Granted, having something that small that could play loads of music is nice, but for $249, it seems somewhat steep. Especially so, considering that for a mere $50 more, you can have 15 times the storage space!!!
Do the new pretty colors justify that much of a rip off? I don't get it.:(
I've been to 3 different colleges all throughout California. I generally keep my books in extraordinary condition, I don't even write or highlight in them.
Try to sell back my $109 Calculus and Analytic Geometry book when the quarter is over: The bookstore's "fair" offer? $20. It was in perfectly fine condition.
That is one example, I've had this happen with numerous text books. The most insulting example was some $120 American History book which they offered to buy back for $12. $12!!! When I checked the book prices next semester for used, they were selling them for $85! And most of them were in pathetic condition.
The whole process is absolutely absurd. I feel it is especially painful for any of us science majors. Total cost for 3 books this semester? $377. Ugh.
Yeah, you figure if he's curious enough to take the time to post "why?" he'd be curious enough to CTFL! (Click the fucking link).
Anyway, clicking around the site, this prime example of what it's all about: My current research is concerned with the dynamics of avalanches. Avalanches are sometimes treated as a special sort of granular flow. These have been studied for a long time but because they can have solids, fluid and gaseous properties satisfactory theories do not exist except in special situations. An excellent starting point is Taguchi's Powder Page. To understand these flows better a series of experiments was started last year of ping-pong ball avalanches on a ski jump in the outskirts of Sapporo. Up to 300,000 ping-pong balls were released from the top of the landing slope and their subsequent motion analyzed using video cameras. These flows are a much simpler than real avalanches but they do have similarities and any model that cannot explain these flows will certainly fail on real avalanches. I am developing a model to predict these kind of flows.
Well the 7 second delay you are speaking of in terms of radio is artificially induced to catch callers and other people on the air from using swear words or anything else deemed inappropriate by the FCC.
A comparison I heard fairly recently while studying radio waves and the speed of light:
If there was a symphony being performed at Carnegie Hall (New York City) and it was being broadcast live over the radio, someone listening to the performance on the radio in Los Angeles would actually hear the sound before someone sitting in the back of Carnegie Hall! Interesting take on speed of light versus speed of sound.
From what I recall hearing recently (though I can't find any articles, maybe someone can either dispute this for me or back it up?), growing plants on the moon for food or even oxygen isn't the most viable thing in the world. With a 28 day long day/night cycle, the darkness would be far too long for plants to survive.
Even to provide light for a large greenhouse during the lunar nights (not to mention maintain a constant temperature during this cycle that ranges from -180 C to 110 C would be an enormous amount. I suppose a nuclear reactor would provide enough power for something like that, I don't know enough about the energy requirements of a moonbase to even speculate.
I do think a base on the moon would be an extreme benefit to science however and is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of space exploration.
The thing with storing the nuclear waste is the fact that we must store if for such a long time. Yucca Mountain in Neveda is intended to store the waste for 10,000 years. In geologic time, that isn't too significant, however a lot can still happen. I mean there was volcanic activity in the Mojave Desert 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The whole basin and range province is still somewhat tectonically active as well, undergoing extension. Who's to say that a new fault won't be created through Yucca Mountain, allowing underground springs to seep up into the storage area, contaminating the water supply?
Granted, there are many top scientists working on this project who know far more than this geology major, so my fears could possibly be unfounded. One even spoke at our school recently.
It still seems like we're doing a risky bet with mother nature, especially trying to construct a facility that will stand the "test of time." Even the Pyramids are only about 4,000 years old at the most.
Despite this, Nuclear Power itself is a fairly economical way to get mostly clean energy in my opinion. It's just a shame the the by products (as small as they are) are so dangerous and toxic.
You're on the right track. As I understand it from a Sedimentary Petrology course I took, we also classified material as mud based on the size of grains apparent. We use something called the Wentworth Size Class. Mud is generally composed of clay to silt sized grains which range anywhere from.00006mm -.0530mm in diameter. When these grains solidify, they form Mudstones, Claystones and Siltstones.
Mud traditionally implies an element of H20 though, so I think scientists would have to be somewhat anal about classifying it as such. The implications for saying water can currently exist at the surface of Mars is quite staggering for all sorts of scientific reasons.
Judging from the pictures (though I have nothing to scale it too), much of the material looks very very fine grained, in the realm of medium grained silt to clay sized particles. But without the presence of H20, that is all they are, just silt or clay (note, using the Wentworth Scale, clay indicates the finest grains).
Now the processes that created these fine silts and clays are very indicative of having sometime of wet environment that broke down materials into these fine grains.
They all do pretty decent jobs making 1:1 backup copies of software. Granted, there are some copy protection schemes they have trouble with (I believe Alcohol 120 had problems with Safecast2 for awhile. Not sure if they've fixed it yet), but all of them are being actively developed and reasonably priced if you're looking for that sort of thing.
Well this really can't be applied to all that much. In fact, I change out the seismograph drum at our school every few days. *I* can make a mark on the seismograph by jumping up and down (and this is with the gain set to 80 instead of 95). Then again, the seismometer is in the basement of the building, it should be buried about 60 ft. underground.
Regardless of that though, we can still pick up the ground noise of construction equipment completely on the otherside of campus.
Basically, anything hitting/moving along the ground is going to create shock waves. How large depends on the KE involved.:P
(Hmm, I think the point of this was to say that it doesn't need to be a large group of people, my wussy 165 lb. frame can also create a "small blip on the Richter Scale.")
Well given that the Beagle 2 was meant to announce it's successful landing on Mars by playing a piece of music by Blur maybe it's just the case that the Martians have better taste in music than the builders of the Beagle 2?
Slashdot Mirror
But trespassing doesn't work as a decent analogy either. Because when you put your foot in my yard and then walk away, are you walking away with a perfect copy of my yard?
:-P
That's where this analogy gets sticky. Granted, yes I still have my original property, but now you have a copy of my property now too. While in this case it may not hurt me (since I'm not selling my yard), you are still walking away with something that isn't really yours.
Except in the case of music, the copy you are walking away with is something you should have payed for to get, regardless of whether there was an exchange of property or not. That is where this whole issue gets really sticky.
So it does border on actually stealing in my humble opinion. Copyright doesn't even have anything to do with it really. You're taking something that you can only get (legally) if you had paid for it.
Mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I personally don't like paying > $14 USD for 2 good songs and 13 filler tracks. If you want to call me a thief, so be it. But it's amazing how far people will go to justify stealing music. Just say you steal and move on. There's nothing to argue about and no one will judge you any different.
I mean no harm in breaking laws right? We've all gone slightly over the speed limit as well as jay walked.
Considering Slashdot doesn't write their own articles and it is basically an aggregate of postings from other sites, I'm not sure what you're complaining about.
:P
Technically, any news on Slashdot is old news since it has been reported already.
Of course he is! Don't you know that Al Gore is responsible for the web that we all love?
:)
I even have links for you too!
http://www.sethf.com/gore/
Read The Case For Mars by Robert Zubrin. It speaks of how we could go about terraforming Mars, which is quite a complex process and would take *thousands* of years! It definitely isn't something that would happen overnight.
In fact, even after terraforming Mars so that there is free oxygen in the atmosphere and the temperatures would be sufficient, there is still the problem of air pressure, which would be far to low to support walking around outside without the aid of at least an oxygen tank. In fact, his book concludes that it will probably never be possible to walk around Mars without the aid of some breathing device.
(Though interestingly enough, certain plants would be able to do well, or so he says in his book.)
I mean, how long did it take for them to even confirm it was once wet?
I don't think that ultimately mattered. People have been obsessed with life on Mars since it was first discovered and the possibility of canals that were built by other beings.
The thought that water once flowed on the planet wasn't really that much of a profound/thought provoking concept in the scheme of things. There is some fairly obvious evidence that has hinted at the possibility of water. (I know, that image is from Mars Express, but we've known about major valleys and canyons since at least the time of the Viking Landers).
Regarding whether we are being eased into the possibility of life being on other planets. There is a greater chance of that than trying to prepare of for the possibility of water existing on another body.
However, I think the confirmation of life would be such huge and amazing news, I doubt word of it could be covered up for very long before it got out.
I was also a kid at the time of the incident. In fact, I believe I was only 4 years old, so I was quite far removed. However, looking back on it, it really is a HUGE deal.
3 249&st=0&#entry66842
A friend of mine's dad wrote an interesting policy paper on Chernobyl and how it contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. He posted the paper here: http://central.masterzen.net/index.php?showtopic=
Overall, it is an excellent read as it does delve into what exactly happened and the aftermath.
When I try to view the counter now, it gives me a broken image. Perhaps it can't count that high? ;)
Yes, but the caldera itself isn't very likely to erupt. What you would get is a relatively small (as far as volcanic eruptions go) eruption at Mammoth Mountain or at one of the craters in a chain that runs to the north.
.
Volcanic activity has occured there within the last 600 years or so as well. Just take a short drive up 395 to Obsidian Dome. That pile of obsidian wasn't there 600 years ago! What is actually interesting is that you can sit on top of Obsidian Dome and look north towards Mono Lake and you will see a series of similiar looking hills that form the Mono-Inyo Craters.
There is a lot of evidence that there is magma beneath the ground. From various earthquake swarms, to the hot springs towards the south to the treekill at Horseshow Lake.
Anyway, check out the USGS's outlook on the Long Valley Caldera and also browse around the
0% since the discs would be blank ;)
Really, he doesn't earn much money and probably would be earning more money had he gone to college and gotten a decent job (at least 50k) and I'm sure he's capable.
:-O
According to this article, he took home over $100K in prize money in 2001 alone...
I agree for the most part. However, I don't know if I'd want to take something like this out in the field. Dust/Rain/Mud/Trees are no match for your Brunton, but I'd be hesitant to get down and dirty with this.
Another plus is that if my Brunton somehow goes tumbling down a cliff, it should still work. What will happen if I accidentially drop this All-In-One device when trying to get dip on an outcrop that is on a cliff?
Err... I thought they were 1GB in capacity for some reason. Doh!
Anyway, they are 4GB, which is a little more reasonable.
I myself don't understand what the big deal with the iPod Mini is? I have a 20gig second generation Ipod that I think is perfectly fine. I don't complain about the size at all (my sister has a 3rd generation Ipod which is even smaller!). Granted, having something that small that could play loads of music is nice, but for $249, it seems somewhat steep. Especially so, considering that for a mere $50 more, you can have 15 times the storage space!!!
:(
Do the new pretty colors justify that much of a rip off? I don't get it.
To each his own I guess...
I've been to 3 different colleges all throughout California. I generally keep my books in extraordinary condition, I don't even write or highlight in them.
Try to sell back my $109 Calculus and Analytic Geometry book when the quarter is over: The bookstore's "fair" offer? $20. It was in perfectly fine condition.
That is one example, I've had this happen with numerous text books. The most insulting example was some $120 American History book which they offered to buy back for $12. $12!!! When I checked the book prices next semester for used, they were selling them for $85! And most of them were in pathetic condition.
The whole process is absolutely absurd. I feel it is especially painful for any of us science majors. Total cost for 3 books this semester? $377. Ugh.
You will be interested in the following links:
1 2crewfate.html
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078062/
http://cbsnews.cbs.com/network/news/space/51Lchap
Yeah, you figure if he's curious enough to take the time to post "why?" he'd be curious enough to CTFL! (Click the fucking link).
Anyway, clicking around the site, this prime example of what it's all about:
My current research is concerned with the dynamics of avalanches. Avalanches are sometimes treated as a special sort of granular flow. These have been studied for a long time but because they can have solids, fluid and gaseous properties satisfactory theories do not exist except in special situations. An excellent starting point is Taguchi's Powder Page. To understand these flows better a series of experiments was started last year of ping-pong ball avalanches on a ski jump in the outskirts of Sapporo. Up to 300,000 ping-pong balls were released from the top of the landing slope and their subsequent motion analyzed using video cameras. These flows are a much simpler than real avalanches but they do have similarities and any model that cannot explain these flows will certainly fail on real avalanches. I am developing a model to predict these kind of flows.
Well the 7 second delay you are speaking of in terms of radio is artificially induced to catch callers and other people on the air from using swear words or anything else deemed inappropriate by the FCC.
;)
A comparison I heard fairly recently while studying radio waves and the speed of light:
If there was a symphony being performed at Carnegie Hall (New York City) and it was being broadcast live over the radio, someone listening to the performance on the radio in Los Angeles would actually hear the sound before someone sitting in the back of Carnegie Hall! Interesting take on speed of light versus speed of sound.
Anyway, this was slightly off topic. Forgive me
Perl hurts my head.
Some say it is a language,
but we know the truth!
From what I recall hearing recently (though I can't find any articles, maybe someone can either dispute this for me or back it up?), growing plants on the moon for food or even oxygen isn't the most viable thing in the world. With a 28 day long day/night cycle, the darkness would be far too long for plants to survive.
Even to provide light for a large greenhouse during the lunar nights (not to mention maintain a constant temperature during this cycle that ranges from -180 C to 110 C would be an enormous amount. I suppose a nuclear reactor would provide enough power for something like that, I don't know enough about the energy requirements of a moonbase to even speculate.
I do think a base on the moon would be an extreme benefit to science however and is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of space exploration.
The thing with storing the nuclear waste is the fact that we must store if for such a long time. Yucca Mountain in Neveda is intended to store the waste for 10,000 years. In geologic time, that isn't too significant, however a lot can still happen. I mean there was volcanic activity in the Mojave Desert 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.
The whole basin and range province is still somewhat tectonically active as well, undergoing extension. Who's to say that a new fault won't be created through Yucca Mountain, allowing underground springs to seep up into the storage area, contaminating the water supply?
Granted, there are many top scientists working on this project who know far more than this geology major, so my fears could possibly be unfounded. One even spoke at our school recently.
It still seems like we're doing a risky bet with mother nature, especially trying to construct a facility that will stand the "test of time." Even the Pyramids are only about 4,000 years old at the most.
Despite this, Nuclear Power itself is a fairly economical way to get mostly clean energy in my opinion. It's just a shame the the by products (as small as they are) are so dangerous and toxic.
You're on the right track. As I understand it from a Sedimentary Petrology course I took, we also classified material as mud based on the size of grains apparent. We use something called the Wentworth Size Class. Mud is generally composed of clay to silt sized grains which range anywhere from .00006mm - .0530mm in diameter. When these grains solidify, they form Mudstones, Claystones and Siltstones.
Mud traditionally implies an element of H20 though, so I think scientists would have to be somewhat anal about classifying it as such. The implications for saying water can currently exist at the surface of Mars is quite staggering for all sorts of scientific reasons.
Judging from the pictures (though I have nothing to scale it too), much of the material looks very very fine grained, in the realm of medium grained silt to clay sized particles. But without the presence of H20, that is all they are, just silt or clay (note, using the Wentworth Scale, clay indicates the finest grains).
Now the processes that created these fine silts and clays are very indicative of having sometime of wet environment that broke down materials into these fine grains.
There are a few programs that do just this already.
Alcohol 120
Blindwrite
CloneCD
They all do pretty decent jobs making 1:1 backup copies of software. Granted, there are some copy protection schemes they have trouble with (I believe Alcohol 120 had problems with Safecast2 for awhile. Not sure if they've fixed it yet), but all of them are being actively developed and reasonably priced if you're looking for that sort of thing.
Because obviously, the Mojave Desert has no plant life in it.
Well this really can't be applied to all that much. In fact, I change out the seismograph drum at our school every few days. *I* can make a mark on the seismograph by jumping up and down (and this is with the gain set to 80 instead of 95). Then again, the seismometer is in the basement of the building, it should be buried about 60 ft. underground.
:P
Regardless of that though, we can still pick up the ground noise of construction equipment completely on the otherside of campus.
Basically, anything hitting/moving along the ground is going to create shock waves. How large depends on the KE involved.
(Hmm, I think the point of this was to say that it doesn't need to be a large group of people, my wussy 165 lb. frame can also create a "small blip on the Richter Scale.")
Well given that the Beagle 2 was meant to announce it's successful landing on Mars by playing a piece of music by Blur maybe it's just the case that the Martians have better taste in music than the builders of the Beagle 2?
;)
Such as 4'33" by John Cage?