It will almost certainly be more economical to make something like a nerve agent using old fashioned chemistry. You can scale up a synthesis to bulk volumes much more easily than waiting for a printer to print out a bulk amount of product. Reaction rate (or reaction time) is independent of volume (ideally), whereas printing time will go linearly with volume.
I'm guessing there's a good reason, but do you by any chance know why NASA didn't test the final optical alignment of Hubble on the ground before it launched? Why not lay the thing on its side and point it at something really far away to make sure everything was in focus (or just point it up at the night sky)? Too much structural warping due to gravity?
In fact Science and Nature do peer-review their articles. The first step is a decision by the editor about whether or not it fits with the journal/has the scope of a Science/Nature article. That's usually the hard part to get by (I've heard 10% of articles get by this stage). Then it goes out for review, where at least two, sometimes three referees review it. This is true for short form ("reports") and long form ("research articles") papers.
I remember hearing once that the reason why Ted Williams had such an unbelievable hitting ability was that he could see lace rotation on incoming pitches with better fidelity than other batters. It had something to do with his eyes' "refresh rate", which was also fast enough that he had trouble watching movies because he could see the individual frames flashing by. Not sure if it's true, but makes for a great story.
I agree that it sounds like a scattering mechanism, but in that case how is it different than a simple matte finish? Matte finishes are just roughened enough to scatter rather than reflect images. I was hoping they'd announced a near perfect AR coating method.
I have to say that as annoying as the customer service is at Radio Shack, I respect the fact that you can still go in there, walk all the way to the back, and find racks and racks of honest to god electronic components. You can still get resistors, capacitors, jumpers, enclosures and tons of connectors. They're the only brick and mortar store I know of that still carries that stuff. I wish one of the big chains still had a "computer components" section for people who knew what they were doing. CompUSA, for all their faults, had a section in the store for people building PCs from scratch, so you could get motherboards, cases, etc.
Everywhere I've lived I've found a local computer repair store with better prices and service than BB or Staples or any big chain. I live in CT right now and around here it's PCW computers. They have intelligent people who don't bug you unless you ask them a question, and they sell high quality individual components. I don't know how the repair services are at these small stores, but it can't be worse than Geek Squad.
A few months ago I tried to set my Dad's computer up for wireless, so I went to BB for a standard PCI wireless card. They had absolutely none. I asked a salesperson if they had any, and he goes, "here's a USB one." He said USB is just like PCI, except it's on the outside of the computer. I explained that the computer has a lot of PCI slots, so I didn't want to waste a USB port on it. He goes, "computers don't even come with PCI slots anymore." I told him thanks for his time, I'm going to Staples. The guy at Staples had no idea what PCI was, and when I explained that it's a slot inside the computer, he couldn't believe that I'd actually take a cover off the computer. So I went to newegg and just ordered one.
And remember, I'm not talking about arresting. I'm talking about investigation.
I agree with you there. I certainly think that going off and arresting a person based on a 25% or 75% or even 99% chance that they'll commit a crime is ridiculous. But if that search inspires the local police department to, say tail you for a day or two to make sure you don't commit the crime, I don't see what the harm is. They wouldn't even have to talk to you - just make sure you're not doing something illegal. I think an analogous situation would be if you walked around in public asking strangers how to suffocate someone - eventually one of those strangers would get suspicious and go to the police, and the police would (or should) investigate.
Of course all this is in the limit of infinitely large police forces and budgets, and assuming people don't take advantage of it (e.g. using your buddy's phone to search for ways to kill someone, just for kicks...).
I agree with your logic, but I think the poster's argument was that NASA is still contributing to society outside of putting people into space. There's a vocal group of people out there that think the only things we got out of NASA were Tang and Velcro (neither of which came from NASA, incidentally), and that its current form is an utter waste of money. The poster is pointing out that NASA still is doing research relevant to society, not that society is necessarily better off than if NASA had never existed.
Wow you're the first person in this whole comments section to actually respond to the poster's question. Everyone else is so excited to tell the person what the best laptop is, they dont realize that the poster wants to know how to compare laptops, not which one to buy. I agree, newegg is the best place to go to make comparisons, especially for individual parts, but also for full systems.
Would they be able to use other, more modern wars/conflicts with more reliable numbers to test the same statistical analysis? For example, we know how many Americans died during, say, WWII better than during the U.S. Civil War. Would they be able to reproduce those numbers for WWII using their census-based analysis? Immigration/Emigration rates would be different, but they should be able to account for it in the same way they accounted for it in the 1860 timeframe. If they don't get it right for the 1940's, they're not going to get it right for the 1860's. The British also had quite a few wars (according to wikipedia) in the mid 1800's, during which there was a census, so they could compare to that as well if they wanted a comparable country in a comparable time.
I found that interesting as well. Even safari has small bumps up on the weekend. I do know that Firefox has become a lot more accepted in work environments probably because it's been around so long that IT trusts it by now. I wonder if the fact that Chrome usage increases more on Sundays is because enough people are still working on Saturdays that IE wins.
The Northeast grid has gone down before, and there were no meltdowns. As other folks have pointed out, those things have backup generators. I assume that in the blackout of 2003, those generators kicked on.
That's true, which is why I said "mid-latitude and high-latitude" in my original post. I'm aware of the possibility that MSesow lives in an equatorial region, but in case he/she lives in a mid- or high-latitude region, these charts may be useful.
You're totally right, my bad. I should have said the CME from the flare will deliver a glancing blow to the planet. I didn't know that bit about the AR1429 vs. AR11429, very interesting. Is that something that NOAA has started doing, or is it just spaceweather.com? (I didn't call it "spot number", I just called it "spot 1429". Should have said "AR11429".)
At the lower left of the spaceweather.com site, there's a little chart that tells you the chances of high-latitude and mid-latitude geomagnetic storms over the next 1 and 2 days.
If having the metal object on the "side" of your body results in it not being seen in the standard "front-side" image, then it will show up very clearly if they take a side-on image. All they'd have to do is take the standard front-side image of you (typically only a couple of seconds), then ask you to turn 90 degrees, and take another image (another couple of seconds). This way they could never miss a metal object being "hidden" on your side.
Did anyone else notice the joke in the sig of Norton employee?
Q: What do you get when you cross Apple & IBM? A: IBM
Awesome.
On a different note, I'm confused by the propagation mechanism of Michaelangelo. The virus itself was installed in the boot sector, but how did it infect a fresh floppy? Did it run from the boot sector?
Also, is there any information on the actual number of computers infected? Was the damage minimal because there were a lot of infected computers that got cleaned with the much-hyped antivirus, or were there not many infections in the first place?
I haven't read the leaks, but if they do prove that Stratfor had done or is doing something illegal, would the U.S. government take legal action? Given the fact that the government has been so anti-wikileaks, would it be wise for them to use wikileaks as a source to prosecute people in Stratfor?
On a related note, what if the information wikileaks had released was obtained completely illegally? I'm not saying that's the case here, but hypothetically speaking, if information was obtained by illegal hacking or trespassing, would the government be able to take any legal action against the company?
I'm a bit confused by the article. They say it's a consumptive use, where the cooling system evaporates 5% of its water on every pass. Doesn't that water go into the atmosphere and then condense and fall as rain eventually? If so then it's not really "lost" since it will pass back into the water table. Is the issue that the condensation and rainfall may not be a local process? I feel like I'm missing something here...
See I don't mind the escapist silly storylines that you get in games. For example, I love the storyline in the modern warfare series. I thought it was fantastic when they brought the fight to the American east coast. It was something totally new in FPS for me. I liked the story arcs with multiple characters over several games. Can I get better stories in a dime store? Sure. But just because the video game genre isn't great at writing beautiful stories yet doesn't mean they should just give up. We still watch stupid blockbuster movies despite there being better films out there, and for me it's the same thing with video games.
I bet they said the same thing about electrons, protons, and neutrons several decades ago. The positron is also an important particle in positron emission tomography, which has certainly saved lives. The research that went into the production of these facilities has also yielded very useful things, such as particle counting and cryogenics (neither of which was invented by particle physicists but certainly vastly improved upon by them).
Oh yeah, and the world wide web was invented at CERN, so I guess that was kind of important too...
Slashdot Mirror
It will almost certainly be more economical to make something like a nerve agent using old fashioned chemistry. You can scale up a synthesis to bulk volumes much more easily than waiting for a printer to print out a bulk amount of product. Reaction rate (or reaction time) is independent of volume (ideally), whereas printing time will go linearly with volume.
How many 3D Libraries of Congress per cubic centimeter will it be able to print?
I'm guessing there's a good reason, but do you by any chance know why NASA didn't test the final optical alignment of Hubble on the ground before it launched? Why not lay the thing on its side and point it at something really far away to make sure everything was in focus (or just point it up at the night sky)? Too much structural warping due to gravity?
In fact Science and Nature do peer-review their articles. The first step is a decision by the editor about whether or not it fits with the journal/has the scope of a Science/Nature article. That's usually the hard part to get by (I've heard 10% of articles get by this stage). Then it goes out for review, where at least two, sometimes three referees review it. This is true for short form ("reports") and long form ("research articles") papers.
I remember hearing once that the reason why Ted Williams had such an unbelievable hitting ability was that he could see lace rotation on incoming pitches with better fidelity than other batters. It had something to do with his eyes' "refresh rate", which was also fast enough that he had trouble watching movies because he could see the individual frames flashing by. Not sure if it's true, but makes for a great story.
I agree that it sounds like a scattering mechanism, but in that case how is it different than a simple matte finish? Matte finishes are just roughened enough to scatter rather than reflect images. I was hoping they'd announced a near perfect AR coating method.
I have to say that as annoying as the customer service is at Radio Shack, I respect the fact that you can still go in there, walk all the way to the back, and find racks and racks of honest to god electronic components. You can still get resistors, capacitors, jumpers, enclosures and tons of connectors. They're the only brick and mortar store I know of that still carries that stuff. I wish one of the big chains still had a "computer components" section for people who knew what they were doing. CompUSA, for all their faults, had a section in the store for people building PCs from scratch, so you could get motherboards, cases, etc.
Everywhere I've lived I've found a local computer repair store with better prices and service than BB or Staples or any big chain. I live in CT right now and around here it's PCW computers. They have intelligent people who don't bug you unless you ask them a question, and they sell high quality individual components. I don't know how the repair services are at these small stores, but it can't be worse than Geek Squad.
A few months ago I tried to set my Dad's computer up for wireless, so I went to BB for a standard PCI wireless card. They had absolutely none. I asked a salesperson if they had any, and he goes, "here's a USB one." He said USB is just like PCI, except it's on the outside of the computer. I explained that the computer has a lot of PCI slots, so I didn't want to waste a USB port on it. He goes, "computers don't even come with PCI slots anymore." I told him thanks for his time, I'm going to Staples. The guy at Staples had no idea what PCI was, and when I explained that it's a slot inside the computer, he couldn't believe that I'd actually take a cover off the computer. So I went to newegg and just ordered one.
I agree with you there. I certainly think that going off and arresting a person based on a 25% or 75% or even 99% chance that they'll commit a crime is ridiculous. But if that search inspires the local police department to, say tail you for a day or two to make sure you don't commit the crime, I don't see what the harm is. They wouldn't even have to talk to you - just make sure you're not doing something illegal. I think an analogous situation would be if you walked around in public asking strangers how to suffocate someone - eventually one of those strangers would get suspicious and go to the police, and the police would (or should) investigate.
Of course all this is in the limit of infinitely large police forces and budgets, and assuming people don't take advantage of it (e.g. using your buddy's phone to search for ways to kill someone, just for kicks...).
I agree with your logic, but I think the poster's argument was that NASA is still contributing to society outside of putting people into space. There's a vocal group of people out there that think the only things we got out of NASA were Tang and Velcro (neither of which came from NASA, incidentally), and that its current form is an utter waste of money. The poster is pointing out that NASA still is doing research relevant to society, not that society is necessarily better off than if NASA had never existed.
Wow you're the first person in this whole comments section to actually respond to the poster's question. Everyone else is so excited to tell the person what the best laptop is, they dont realize that the poster wants to know how to compare laptops, not which one to buy. I agree, newegg is the best place to go to make comparisons, especially for individual parts, but also for full systems.
Would they be able to use other, more modern wars/conflicts with more reliable numbers to test the same statistical analysis? For example, we know how many Americans died during, say, WWII better than during the U.S. Civil War. Would they be able to reproduce those numbers for WWII using their census-based analysis? Immigration/Emigration rates would be different, but they should be able to account for it in the same way they accounted for it in the 1860 timeframe. If they don't get it right for the 1940's, they're not going to get it right for the 1860's. The British also had quite a few wars (according to wikipedia) in the mid 1800's, during which there was a census, so they could compare to that as well if they wanted a comparable country in a comparable time.
I found that interesting as well. Even safari has small bumps up on the weekend. I do know that Firefox has become a lot more accepted in work environments probably because it's been around so long that IT trusts it by now. I wonder if the fact that Chrome usage increases more on Sundays is because enough people are still working on Saturdays that IE wins.
I thought you had to reverse the tachyon polarity.
Only if you route it through the deflector dish first.
The Northeast grid has gone down before, and there were no meltdowns. As other folks have pointed out, those things have backup generators. I assume that in the blackout of 2003, those generators kicked on.
That's true, which is why I said "mid-latitude and high-latitude" in my original post. I'm aware of the possibility that MSesow lives in an equatorial region, but in case he/she lives in a mid- or high-latitude region, these charts may be useful.
You're totally right, my bad. I should have said the CME from the flare will deliver a glancing blow to the planet. I didn't know that bit about the AR1429 vs. AR11429, very interesting. Is that something that NOAA has started doing, or is it just spaceweather.com? (I didn't call it "spot number", I just called it "spot 1429". Should have said "AR11429".)
At the lower left of the spaceweather.com site, there's a little chart that tells you the chances of high-latitude and mid-latitude geomagnetic storms over the next 1 and 2 days.
yeah yeah yeah, I noticed it after I submitted. Should've checked before hitting submit, yada yada yada...
If having the metal object on the "side" of your body results in it not being seen in the standard "front-side" image, then it will show up very clearly if they take a side-on image. All they'd have to do is take the standard front-side image of you (typically only a couple of seconds), then ask you to turn 90 degrees, and take another image (another couple of seconds). This way they could never miss a metal object being "hidden" on your side.
Did anyone else notice the joke in the sig of Norton employee?
Q: What do you get when you cross Apple & IBM?
A: IBM
Awesome.
On a different note, I'm confused by the propagation mechanism of Michaelangelo. The virus itself was installed in the boot sector, but how did it infect a fresh floppy? Did it run from the boot sector?
Also, is there any information on the actual number of computers infected? Was the damage minimal because there were a lot of infected computers that got cleaned with the much-hyped antivirus, or were there not many infections in the first place?
I haven't read the leaks, but if they do prove that Stratfor had done or is doing something illegal, would the U.S. government take legal action? Given the fact that the government has been so anti-wikileaks, would it be wise for them to use wikileaks as a source to prosecute people in Stratfor?
On a related note, what if the information wikileaks had released was obtained completely illegally? I'm not saying that's the case here, but hypothetically speaking, if information was obtained by illegal hacking or trespassing, would the government be able to take any legal action against the company?
I'm a bit confused by the article. They say it's a consumptive use, where the cooling system evaporates 5% of its water on every pass. Doesn't that water go into the atmosphere and then condense and fall as rain eventually? If so then it's not really "lost" since it will pass back into the water table. Is the issue that the condensation and rainfall may not be a local process? I feel like I'm missing something here...
See I don't mind the escapist silly storylines that you get in games. For example, I love the storyline in the modern warfare series. I thought it was fantastic when they brought the fight to the American east coast. It was something totally new in FPS for me. I liked the story arcs with multiple characters over several games. Can I get better stories in a dime store? Sure. But just because the video game genre isn't great at writing beautiful stories yet doesn't mean they should just give up. We still watch stupid blockbuster movies despite there being better films out there, and for me it's the same thing with video games.
I bet they said the same thing about electrons, protons, and neutrons several decades ago. The positron is also an important particle in positron emission tomography, which has certainly saved lives. The research that went into the production of these facilities has also yielded very useful things, such as particle counting and cryogenics (neither of which was invented by particle physicists but certainly vastly improved upon by them).
Oh yeah, and the world wide web was invented at CERN, so I guess that was kind of important too...