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User: drooling-dog

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  1. Re:8% weight is a bad way to put it on Buckyballs Can Store Concentrated Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    If it's 8% by weight, then 100 grams of C60 can hold 8 g of H2, which is 4 moles or about 90 liters (or 3.2 cubic feet) at standard atmosperic pressure & temp. Sounds more impressive when you convert to volume, doesn't it?

    It's going to take a whole lot of C60 to store enough H2 to get you very far, though.

  2. Re:8% weight is a bad way to put it on Buckyballs Can Store Concentrated Hydrogen · · Score: 1

    He must be referring to H2 molecules...

  3. Programmed Obsolescence on Questions Arising On Mercury In Compact Fluorescents · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No problem; they'll just do what the printer ink cartridge manufacturers do: Build in a chip that commits suicide after some specified period of time. That could be in hours of operation, or even calendar time. In the latter case, you're virtually renting them.

  4. Re:come here, sweetheart on MD Bill Would Criminalize Theft of Wireless Access · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Somebody comes into your home and their defense is "Your dog invited me in!" Well, if my dog could do that, I suppose I might worry!

    The router is not sentient. It has no ability to judge, and despite the fact that it may invite some people in does not mean it is entitled to do so or that they are entitled to enter. It's the job of the router to grant or deny permission to connect to the network. That's precisely what it's designed to do, and an entire protocol exists just for that purpose. When my laptop asks for permission to connect to your network and your router says, "Sure! Let me help you with that," how am I supposed to know (or even ask) your true feelings about it? Your router is your authorized agent in that case. It's not a difficult thing to choose a password and turn encryption on.

    Suppose you encounter a vending machine selling snacks for 10 cents. That's a bargain, but the sign on the machine says "Only 10 cents!" and when you insert your dime, out pops a package of twinkies. A little while later the SWAT squad shows up in full armor, because the owner of the vending machine actually intended the price to be $1, but because he's not a technophile he didn't know how to change the price on the old machines he bought and maybe didn't even realize that he had to. You have twinkie cream all over your chin, so you're busted. How much prison time are you OK with?

    You'll get off, though, because the vending maching - "sentient" or not - was acting as the authorized agent of its owner, and he is liable for the cost of failing to operate it properly. If there's a difference between a case like this and the unencrypted router, it's that the vending machine guy is actually out tangible goods, but in most cases the owner of the router suffers no real loss.
  5. Re:come here, sweetheart on MD Bill Would Criminalize Theft of Wireless Access · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You say "no," but your router says "yes." You were modded "funny", but that's quite literally what is taking place. Nobody's "stealing" anything; your router is being asked for permission, and it's not only granting it, it's assisting by providing an IP address for you to use and telling you where you might find a good DNS server or two.

    Now the owner of that router might say, "But I didn't know it was doing that on my behalf!" I suppose it's a little like coming home to find that your kid has been inviting people into your house who you'd rather not have there. But that's an issue to be settled between you and your errant kid, isn't it? Law enforcement generally isn't interested.

    Since there is no groundswell of outrage from people who are providing bandwidth to their neighbors - unwittingly or not - you have to assume that the "victims" here are the ISPs: Comcast, Time-Warner and the like. That guy who checks his email or the weather using "free" wireless is, in their eyes, $50 a month in lost revenue. Not that they could possibly influence legislators in a state like Maryland, of course...
  6. Re:spoon millionaires? on What You Don't Know About Living in Space · · Score: 1, Insightful

    A million spoons? It seems like there'd be better things to take up into space than that... True, but it's still a good name for a band...
  7. Re:Because it's fun indeed on The REAL Reason We Use Linux · · Score: 1

    One of my favorite things about Free software in general is that the programmers and the people who write the documentation don't feel like they have to keep this "professional" face on their work. In some respects, though, I'd argue the opposite. People who program open source apps are quite conscious that their code is going to be seen and modified by their peers, and that usually translates into greater care taken w.r.t. coding style and correctness. It also takes a certain amount of balls (in the gender-free sense, of course) to put your code out there for all to see and critique.

    The quality of proprietary software varies across the whole spectrum, depending on the standards and practices of the organization. I've seen some that won my immediate admiration, and some that was truly horrendous. But if you can't see the code, you'll never know for sure.
  8. Toxoplasmosis on Cat Ownership Correlated With Heart Health · · Score: 1

    Everyone's assuming that the effect - if there is one at all - is related to stress reduction, and that may well be the case. Another possibility: Could there be some cardioprotective effect from chronic toxoplasmosis infections?

    Toxoplasma gondii is a parasite spread mainly through cats, and a significant proportion of long-term cat owners have it. Among its stranger symptoms is an effect on the brain that makes the host want to take care of more cats (e.g., the "cat lady" syndrome). Infected rodents are affected that way, too; they tend to lose their fear of cats specifically. It's not such a stretch to suppose there might be something cardioprotective going on, either directly or indirectly through the stress response.

  9. Re:Heh. on Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group · · Score: 1

    Sometimes we have to see the beauty in something before we can be motivated to understand it, and it's a shame that Fourier transforms were presented in such a way to conceal that beauty. My degree was in economics (and I'm now in computational biology), but I've always been interested in signal analysis and processing on the side. Encountering Fourier transforms and the idea of reciprocal time and frequency domains years ago was nothing short of a revelation and I couldn't get enough of it, even though it had little relevance to my declared field or any formal coursework I was doing. But, it's definitely come in handy many times, and it's also given me a perspective on problems in other domains that I wouldn't have had otherwise. Sometimes you don't know what a tool might be good for until you've had it in your toolbox for a while.

    I guess the point is to allow youself to get deeply interested in stuff regardless of whether you "have to know it" for a test or some immediate application, and then to beat the hell out of it until you're satisfied. That can be hard to do when you're "required" to study something; I know I always learn best when I'm following my own interests, independently. But you might find yourself eagerly returning to once-dreaded subjects with new insight after the obligation has long past.

  10. Re:I shall answer the question! on Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is this about discussing problems collaboratively, or is it about copying someone else's answers and representing them as your own? If it's the latter, why shouldn't the grading system recognize the students that make the effort to understand the problems and work them out independently?

    Real learning requires time and effort, and yes, this does cut into the time we have available for partying, gaming and our Facebook friends. It's a tragedy that universities are giving degrees to people who see actual learning, understanding and problem solving as dispensible barriers to their success. That leaves it to employers to find their own ways of separating wheat from chaff, because degrees and grades no longer signify anything. It does explain a lot of the people I encounter who seem almost completely clueless in their own supposed fields, however...

  11. Re:Indeed, this is a failure in policy. on Student Faces Expulsion for Facebook Study Group · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You needed a group just to face the horror of Fourier transforms. If I still even remember how to spell Fourier right. I'll bet you would, if you'd have bothered to do the problems yourself!
  12. Re:Hmmm..... on More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies · · Score: 1

    Just want to make sure: are you certain that you are not mistaking error in simulation (which gets absolutely huge when the bodies are very close to one another) for a real effect? That's a good point. The "bodies" are point masses, and the accelerations they are subjected to at close proximity would probably rip apart a real 3-dimensional object. Numerical integration errors are certainly a big issue as well, especially when bodies are very near each other. Discrete (but variable) timesteps are used with no effort to interpolate properly between them. But then, it was never my aim to simulate real celestial mechanics in a precise and comprehensive way; there's little physics there beyond Newton's law of gravitation and f=ma.

    Or, as a subset of that question, does this effect you are talking about conserve energy, momentum, and angular momentum? Momentum is conserved, and bodies in stable orbits obey Kepler's laws, but that's as much as I've tried to verify. I'm a sunday afternoon celestial mechanic at best, and probably overdrew my inference from a simple model...
  13. Re:Hmmm..... on More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies · · Score: 1

    One I've written (C++, gtkmm, Linux), primarily for amusement and to satisfy my own curiosity. It's pretty on the screen, but one of the key features is the attachment of probes to specified bodies to collect data (velocity, acceleration, distance to other bodies) for subsequent presentation analysis. That's not much of a reference, is it?

  14. Re:Hmmm..... on More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies · · Score: 1

    If such a source did exist, and was in fact the cause of the Pioneer anomaly - it wouldn't be be the Pioneer anomaly as we'd have seen it's effects on the outer planets decades ago. That's true... I run a lot of n-body simulations just for fun, and one of the striking things that you learn by doing that is how disruptive a new body is as it approaches a system. Planets get knocked into radically different orbits very, very quickly. That's one reason not to worry about the sun going supernova; the odds are much greater that the earth will be knocked out of its life-friendly orbit by some invading body long before that happens. There must be a lot of relatively big stuff flying around interstellar space at very high speeds, because it's easy for stuff to get violently flung out of unstable gravitational systems.

    But you're right: If it's affecting a spacecraft, we should also see it affecting other objects in the solar system...
  15. Re:Hmmm..... on More Spacecraft Velocity Anomalies · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or, there could be some more conventional gravitational source in the vicinity, one that hasn't yet been detected by other means. It doesn't take a hell of a lot to create an anomaly of that magnitude, and if an object were fairly massive it could still be quite far away.

  16. Re:I'm confused on Nanoparticles Could Make Hydrogen Cheaper Than Gasoline · · Score: 1

    Why wouldn't I cut the middle step out and simply use 100% of the energy to make the wheels go round and round? Because then you wouldn't be eligible to collect the subsidies and tax credits that will come with this sort of thing. Those will more than make up for the 4% you'll lose in efficiency!
  17. Re:I just don't get it on White House Says Phone Wiretaps Will Resume For Now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What does Bush want, other than to spy on everyone with no supervision whatsoever? Exactly this. The FISA court is practically a rubber stamp for legitimate surveillance, and yet Bush's spying needs are so super-sensitive that not even it can be allowed to catch wind of them. Unless you believe that the court has been infiltrated somehow by "the terrorists", there's only one logical reason for this: both the court and the public would be outraged if the real reason for the surveillance became known. Are they collecting commercial intelligence for their closest corporate patrons? Do they intend to tamper with the upcoming elections? Are they going to mess with political and ideological opponents? I'd worry about all three.
  18. Re:Hardly just a childish rivalry on Yahoo Sued for Spurning Microsoft · · Score: 1

    The most important thing is that Microsoft would destroy the company as it's known now. Unfortunately, that doesn't matter as far as shareholder lawsuits are concerned. The Yahoo directors have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize returns for the investors, and if it a court can be convinced that the MS deal does that, then they may not have a lot of choice. It's the downside of taking a company public.
  19. Of course on Natural Selection Can Act on Human Culture · · Score: 1

    Since culture is heritable and mutable, and affects survival and reproductive prospects at the levels of individuals as well as populations, it would be surprising if it weren't a target of natural selection.

  20. Re:Power and Cooling - the top DataCenter expenses on Google's Addiction to Cheap Electricity · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The draw is a lot of extremely cheap electricity combined with cold outside air It's a shame that the Buffalo/Niagara area is missing out on this, then. Lots of hydroelectric, plenty of cold air. They could use the business...
  21. Re:"human right to privacy" on Secret Printer ID Codes May Be Illegal In the EU · · Score: 1

    other than illegal search and seizure (which has been bastardized into 'we can invade your house and do a sneek-and-peek anytime we SAY so') - there is no right to privacy. Well, the 4th Amendment does specifically cite "papers and effects" as things that can't be seized without a proper warrant. I don't know what would motivate that if not a right to privacy. Back then, "papers and effects" encompassed just about all forms of nonvolatile communication. Strict constructionists may point to the failure of the framers to explicitly cite electronic signals and magnetic storage, but in my experience that degree of literal-mindedness is usually a sign of idiocy or worse.
  22. Re:Well... on Sci-Fi Tech We Could Have Right Now (For a Price) · · Score: 1

    Conversely, for no more than the price of that maglev and a few thousand lives, we could buy 2 or 3 months of a preemptive war against Iran. We're going to make our kids pay for it anyway, so why not go a little nuts?

  23. Re:Primary use on Breakthrough in Holographic Displays · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Judging by the article illustration its primary use will be to create Hollywood-style zombies. Surely porn won't be far behind...
  24. Re:Blashphemy ! on 111 Years Ago, Indiana Almost Legislated Pi · · Score: 1

    Then make sure the steps described take up at least three pages. ...and make sure to refer to them as a multiplicity of steps.
  25. Re:you answered your own question.... on Open Source Code In a Closed Source Company · · Score: 4, Insightful

    why not give me permission to open source it? It will make the company look good. Well, I can think of one reason why not. He said the code was supplanted by other code that performs the same function. That seems to imply that the company's new product may one day be in competition with older code that it paid to develop, and that its author continues to work on despite being an employee. Sounds like a tough sell to me!