They give you a piece of paper that says it's authentic, but there is nothing that ties the paper to the diamond. And why should we trust "they" either? We all know that it's all a racket with the De Beers cartel keeping diamonds off the market to prop up the price and we should trust them to give us a piece pf paper that has some sort of truth on it? We can manufacture bigger and better diamonds than natural ones, and even CZ are hard to tell from diamonds except by their unnatural perfection.
Now the fish market has taken a cue from De Beers. They're going to do DNA sequencing and print a certificate to identify species, but what restaurant goers know which species of fish they want to eat and which they don't? It's like the jewelry store showing you a diamond under a microscope. You get the illusion that you know something, but you don't really know if you're even looking at a diamond. And how does the paper DNA test report "attach" to the fish it came from?
Next it will be wine-marketing- "this particular fish was caught by Mr. X, a 5th generation fisherman, at great risk to his life and limb, and was caught in 234' of water in the Bering sea at 2:37am yesterday. It was prepared by Mr. Y, a fourth generation chef who has studied under Mr. Z for 14 years before finally being allowed to do more than cut vegetables. It was seasoned with the essence of ptanga from Zanzibar..." etc. Today it's on special for only $342.
The bullshit will just keep piling higher and higher until only the 1% can afford to eat fish.
I actually saw a post from someone on the Gizmodo site claiming that it was dangerous to use a cell phone during a storm because "it might attract lightening (sic)". When probed to explain further he said that the electromagnetic field between the phone and antenna tower would provide a path for the lightening (sic).
It was such an interesting idea (I don't know where he got it from) I thought it would make a good story about a geek figuring out a way to murder someone by calling their cell phone during a storm so that lightning traveled along the EM field between the cell tower and the phone, killing the called person. The caller would be somewhere safe- like in another state where there was no storm- when he called, of course.
and it's wrong. Tesla coils produce high frequency -i.e AC- discharges at very high voltage and very low current. Lightning, on the other hand is a DC or very low frequency phenomenon combining extremely high voltages with extremely high currents. The currents are so high that they instantaneously heat the air and produce a loud boom- you may have heard it before- it's called thunder.
If he really wanted to duplicate lightning he'd charge up some big capacitors to extremely high voltages and draw arcs between their terminals. THAT would be a better simulation of lightning than the output of any Tesla coil.
Major props to the guy for marketing his idea. It's been picked up by every news agency from here to Mumbai. I'm sure he'll get the funding he needs to go through with the project.
Oh gawd, Saint Steve is the example everyone should follow!
Schools have structure because most people require it. If everyone just drops into classes they think will be better for them than the standard stuff most will never finish school or manage to accomplish anything. Who will go to the required classes if everything is optional? Do you want to go to a doctor who skipped required classes and just dropped into the classes he felt were more interesting? Yes, required classes are often boring, but everyone who will eventually be successful needs to learn how to communicate, do basic math, etc., and no, texting your friends is not the type of communication I am talking about.
If you're in the SF bay area and want to see where all the geeks get their toys you can't pass up the Foothill College electronics swap meet that happens once each month (I don't recall the exact schedule, you'll have to look it up). You'll find everything imaginable there, and some things you couldn't have imagined.
I hear there are some awesome surplus shops around Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico, too, where you can buy cool missile parts, etc. While you're there stop by Roswell and buy some of the UFO souvenir junk they sell so much of. White Sands national monument is worth stopping to take some pictures of, too.
for failure to yield to a pedestrian while driving down University Ave at the UCB campus. Two idiots stepped out into the street in the middle of the block right in front of me without looking- I guess their conversation was more important than preserving their lives. I slammed on the brakes, leaned on the horn, and they jumped about 10 feet into the air. The noise drew the attention of a cop who was across the street. He wrote me a ticket for failure to yield even after I explained to him that had I actually failed to yield the idiots would have been under my car instead of across the street sipping cappuccino. Arguing with cops is as much a waste of time as arguing with idiots.
My car was not a hybrid or electric. The problem was not car sound, it was idiots not looking before they stepped into the street. Nothing you do to cars will change that sort of behavior. People who run over such people should be handed awards for service to the human race for removing those defective genes from the pool.
that sound like wet farts and tiny cars that rice-boys put noisy tail pipes in to make them feel like the cars are faster. The motorcyclists claim the extra noise makes them more noticeable to cars, but if you want to be a tough guy riding a motorcycle isn't the extra danger the whole reason to ride a bike? Anyway, I digress... Normal vehicles traveling on a road where pedestrians cross (i.e. relatively low speed limit areas, not freeways) are already so quiet you can't hear them. I think the whole noise maker thing is being pushed by makers of gasoline only vehicles to add a few more $ to the cost of a hybrid and to give people who are on the fence about it reason to stay with the old technology.
OTOH, gangstas love hybrids because they make drive-bys so easy. Like U-Turn says, in a hybrid he can "really sneak up on the motherf**kers!"
Yeah, I don't get the point of this project except that it's going to make big sparks. AC vs DC arc physics are quite different, as is the energy contained in the discharge of lightning vs the spark from a Tesla coil. Lightning can produce thousands if not millions of amps (the source of thunder) whereas a Tesla coil might come close to matching the voltages involved, it can't produce anywhere near the same current. I think this whole thing is just some hobbyist's wet-dream Tesla coil project and he's trying to get others to fund it for him.
I used a Livescribe pen to get through my last didactic year of dental school. I recorded lectures using the binaural mic and made marks in the note book when something of particular importance was said and when PPT files were switched. When studying I would review the ppt file and play back the recording. Tapping marks in the notebook would instantly playback the audio that was recorded at the moment the mark was made in the notebook. All recordings and notes get stored on computer HDD. Mt 1 GB pen had adequate internal storage for about 2 weeks of lectures, all day every day.
I still use the pen and notebooks for engineering project notes. I haven't seen any tablet computer that has fast enough/precise enough written note recording to replace the Livescribe pen, and none that can record audio as clearly as the binaural mic with the pen.
California is almost a "direct-democracy" due to the large number of ballot measures voted on by the public. California is a disaster. Direct democracy doesn't work because people are not fully educated on all the issues and to become fully educated would take away from their time spent doing other, more interesting activities.
I used to dual boot win XP and Ubuntu. Win XP started trashing the file system on the HDD and I tried to run chkdsk to fix it but Grub wouldn't allow chkdsk to run. So the file system kept getting worse and worse and the performance suffered mightily. I finally had to wipe the whole thing and start over.
The best way to run windows in in a virtual machine in the Linux or your choice. Who needs Windows anymore any way? OK, I do- I still need it to run Google Sketchup- and that even requires IE- yuck!
As I predicted, those iPod watch straps have shown of for $1 on the deal-a-day type web sites. No one wants to have to push a button to see the time. That went out on the 80s when LCD displays displaced LED displays from digital watches. People forgot about that when they came up with the iPod-as-a-watch idea a couple years ago, but now they've figured it out again.
Now some dopes are proposing the same folly with a device that runs Android. If you call it a watch it is doomed to failure. People will stop wearing their watches for a week or so until they figure out how inconvenient it is to push a button to check the time. Then they'll take off the Android device and put their watches back on and that will be the end of that. If you don't call it a watch people may wear the Android device and their watches and will then revel in all the cool stuff the Android device can do.
That's $60 per hour when they are working. American companies throw people out into the street at the drop of a hat. If you average out an autoworker's pay over a year or two you'll probably find a number close to minimum wage.
at interest that varies between 6.5 and 8.5%. The government sure likes to say that education is the future of this country, and that everyone who wants to should be able to go to school, but what does charging 6.5-8.5% on the loans say? Mortgages on houses can be had for 4% interest, and we've all seen how safe an investment a home is (thanks 1%ers for demonstrating it to us!). If getting an education is so important and means so much to the future, why is the interest charged so damned high? What investment is more secure than education? The interest rates for student loans should reflect the underlying security of that investment.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know what else to say.
http://gizmodo.com/5830907/every-single-gadget-should-be-waterproof-like-the-motorola-defy%252B-android-phone
Look for comments by and in reply to "prometeum"
Sounds like a Lego Mindstorms project... Start building!
They give you a piece of paper that says it's authentic, but there is nothing that ties the paper to the diamond. And why should we trust "they" either? We all know that it's all a racket with the De Beers cartel keeping diamonds off the market to prop up the price and we should trust them to give us a piece pf paper that has some sort of truth on it? We can manufacture bigger and better diamonds than natural ones, and even CZ are hard to tell from diamonds except by their unnatural perfection.
Now the fish market has taken a cue from De Beers. They're going to do DNA sequencing and print a certificate to identify species, but what restaurant goers know which species of fish they want to eat and which they don't? It's like the jewelry store showing you a diamond under a microscope. You get the illusion that you know something, but you don't really know if you're even looking at a diamond. And how does the paper DNA test report "attach" to the fish it came from?
Next it will be wine-marketing- "this particular fish was caught by Mr. X, a 5th generation fisherman, at great risk to his life and limb, and was caught in 234' of water in the Bering sea at 2:37am yesterday. It was prepared by Mr. Y, a fourth generation chef who has studied under Mr. Z for 14 years before finally being allowed to do more than cut vegetables. It was seasoned with the essence of ptanga from Zanzibar..." etc. Today it's on special for only $342.
The bullshit will just keep piling higher and higher until only the 1% can afford to eat fish.
Try telling the guy over at Gizmodo! No one could even get him to spell lightning correctly...
More like a Marx generator.
I actually saw a post from someone on the Gizmodo site claiming that it was dangerous to use a cell phone during a storm because "it might attract lightening (sic)". When probed to explain further he said that the electromagnetic field between the phone and antenna tower would provide a path for the lightening (sic).
It was such an interesting idea (I don't know where he got it from) I thought it would make a good story about a geek figuring out a way to murder someone by calling their cell phone during a storm so that lightning traveled along the EM field between the cell tower and the phone, killing the called person. The caller would be somewhere safe- like in another state where there was no storm- when he called, of course.
and it's wrong. Tesla coils produce high frequency -i.e AC- discharges at very high voltage and very low current. Lightning, on the other hand is a DC or very low frequency phenomenon combining extremely high voltages with extremely high currents. The currents are so high that they instantaneously heat the air and produce a loud boom- you may have heard it before- it's called thunder.
If he really wanted to duplicate lightning he'd charge up some big capacitors to extremely high voltages and draw arcs between their terminals. THAT would be a better simulation of lightning than the output of any Tesla coil.
Major props to the guy for marketing his idea. It's been picked up by every news agency from here to Mumbai. I'm sure he'll get the funding he needs to go through with the project.
Oh gawd, Saint Steve is the example everyone should follow!
Schools have structure because most people require it. If everyone just drops into classes they think will be better for them than the standard stuff most will never finish school or manage to accomplish anything. Who will go to the required classes if everything is optional? Do you want to go to a doctor who skipped required classes and just dropped into the classes he felt were more interesting? Yes, required classes are often boring, but everyone who will eventually be successful needs to learn how to communicate, do basic math, etc., and no, texting your friends is not the type of communication I am talking about.
to the US where they can work as H1B slaves and displace worthless Americans. Corporate America (the only one that counts) wins! China wins!
You'd think that if they're going to try to set a speed record they'd mess with the gears a bit...
Why is the speed so low with so much power available? Is it poor aerodynamics or is there something else that explains it?
If you're in the SF bay area and want to see where all the geeks get their toys you can't pass up the Foothill College electronics swap meet that happens once each month (I don't recall the exact schedule, you'll have to look it up). You'll find everything imaginable there, and some things you couldn't have imagined.
I hear there are some awesome surplus shops around Los Alamos Labs in New Mexico, too, where you can buy cool missile parts, etc. While you're there stop by Roswell and buy some of the UFO souvenir junk they sell so much of. White Sands national monument is worth stopping to take some pictures of, too.
for failure to yield to a pedestrian while driving down University Ave at the UCB campus. Two idiots stepped out into the street in the middle of the block right in front of me without looking- I guess their conversation was more important than preserving their lives. I slammed on the brakes, leaned on the horn, and they jumped about 10 feet into the air. The noise drew the attention of a cop who was across the street. He wrote me a ticket for failure to yield even after I explained to him that had I actually failed to yield the idiots would have been under my car instead of across the street sipping cappuccino. Arguing with cops is as much a waste of time as arguing with idiots.
My car was not a hybrid or electric. The problem was not car sound, it was idiots not looking before they stepped into the street. Nothing you do to cars will change that sort of behavior. People who run over such people should be handed awards for service to the human race for removing those defective genes from the pool.
that sound like wet farts and tiny cars that rice-boys put noisy tail pipes in to make them feel like the cars are faster. The motorcyclists claim the extra noise makes them more noticeable to cars, but if you want to be a tough guy riding a motorcycle isn't the extra danger the whole reason to ride a bike? Anyway, I digress... Normal vehicles traveling on a road where pedestrians cross (i.e. relatively low speed limit areas, not freeways) are already so quiet you can't hear them. I think the whole noise maker thing is being pushed by makers of gasoline only vehicles to add a few more $ to the cost of a hybrid and to give people who are on the fence about it reason to stay with the old technology.
OTOH, gangstas love hybrids because they make drive-bys so easy. Like U-Turn says, in a hybrid he can "really sneak up on the motherf**kers!"
Yeah, I don't get the point of this project except that it's going to make big sparks. AC vs DC arc physics are quite different, as is the energy contained in the discharge of lightning vs the spark from a Tesla coil. Lightning can produce thousands if not millions of amps (the source of thunder) whereas a Tesla coil might come close to matching the voltages involved, it can't produce anywhere near the same current. I think this whole thing is just some hobbyist's wet-dream Tesla coil project and he's trying to get others to fund it for him.
I used a Livescribe pen to get through my last didactic year of dental school. I recorded lectures using the binaural mic and made marks in the note book when something of particular importance was said and when PPT files were switched. When studying I would review the ppt file and play back the recording. Tapping marks in the notebook would instantly playback the audio that was recorded at the moment the mark was made in the notebook. All recordings and notes get stored on computer HDD. Mt 1 GB pen had adequate internal storage for about 2 weeks of lectures, all day every day.
I still use the pen and notebooks for engineering project notes. I haven't seen any tablet computer that has fast enough/precise enough written note recording to replace the Livescribe pen, and none that can record audio as clearly as the binaural mic with the pen.
We need voter qualification tests. Counting everyone's vote equally is silly. Stupid people's votes should not be equal to smarter people's votes.
California is almost a "direct-democracy" due to the large number of ballot measures voted on by the public. California is a disaster. Direct democracy doesn't work because people are not fully educated on all the issues and to become fully educated would take away from their time spent doing other, more interesting activities.
I used to dual boot win XP and Ubuntu. Win XP started trashing the file system on the HDD and I tried to run chkdsk to fix it but Grub wouldn't allow chkdsk to run. So the file system kept getting worse and worse and the performance suffered mightily. I finally had to wipe the whole thing and start over.
The best way to run windows in in a virtual machine in the Linux or your choice. Who needs Windows anymore any way? OK, I do- I still need it to run Google Sketchup- and that even requires IE- yuck!
As I predicted, those iPod watch straps have shown of for $1 on the deal-a-day type web sites. No one wants to have to push a button to see the time. That went out on the 80s when LCD displays displaced LED displays from digital watches. People forgot about that when they came up with the iPod-as-a-watch idea a couple years ago, but now they've figured it out again.
Now some dopes are proposing the same folly with a device that runs Android. If you call it a watch it is doomed to failure. People will stop wearing their watches for a week or so until they figure out how inconvenient it is to push a button to check the time. Then they'll take off the Android device and put their watches back on and that will be the end of that. If you don't call it a watch people may wear the Android device and their watches and will then revel in all the cool stuff the Android device can do.
That's $60 per hour when they are working. American companies throw people out into the street at the drop of a hat. If you average out an autoworker's pay over a year or two you'll probably find a number close to minimum wage.
I meant to say Thimerosal, but I guess they are the same thing. Nevermind
I think you mean Thiomersal...
at interest that varies between 6.5 and 8.5%. The government sure likes to say that education is the future of this country, and that everyone who wants to should be able to go to school, but what does charging 6.5-8.5% on the loans say? Mortgages on houses can be had for 4% interest, and we've all seen how safe an investment a home is (thanks 1%ers for demonstrating it to us!). If getting an education is so important and means so much to the future, why is the interest charged so damned high? What investment is more secure than education? The interest rates for student loans should reflect the underlying security of that investment.