Methanol is by itself almost completely non-toxic; the danger arises from the metabolic breakdown products.
When you ingest ethanol (aka grain alcohol), alcohol dehydrogenase (an enzyme)catalyzes the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. If you oxidize acetaldehyde, you get then get acetic acid, which can then be oxidized to carbon dioxide.
Conversly, when you oxidize methanol (aka wood alcohol), you get formaldehyde. If you then oxidize that, you get formic acid. The formaldehyde and the formic acid are both toxic with formic acid being the more toxic of the two. The formaldehyde attacks the sensitive protein in the retina making you blind while the formic acid is what kills you.
Because the rate limiting step in methanol oxidation is availability of alcohol dehydrogenase, the clinical treatment for methanol poisoning is, you guessed it, to give large amounts of ethanol. Because the alcohol dehydrogenase has a higher affinity for ethanol than methanol, giving you ethanol will keep the methanol from being catabolized. The "unprocessed" non-toxic methanol can then be cleared by the kidneys.
Also, it should be noted that the prohibition on distilling has absolutely nothing to do with public safety. It is a taxation issue pure and simple. I suggest you pull out a history text and read about something called the Whiskey Rebellion.
If instead, you are refering to the Mac Toolbox that used to live in the ROM, you would still be wrong. This has not been the case since the first iMac's were rolled out in 1998. Machines prior to this era are now refered to as Old World Macs while those that came after this change are refered to as New World macs.
The saddest part about the iSmell is that the damn thing actually worked. I've seen and smelled a working unit. They actually had a scented version of Quake at GDC. Their smell of hot brass was friggin amazing. It smelled *just* like spent casings.
If the bubble had lasted another 6 months, this product would be on the market and we'd have smellovision. But instead, I'm afraid that investors will look at the DigiScents story and mistakenly blame the product and the idea, rather than the market, for its failure.
It may take another 15 years for someone to try, but I'm sure I will see this sort of product in my lifetime.
Carbon Tetrachloride does baaaaad things to living organisms. Besides destroying your kidneys and liver, it can affect visual field, dark adaptation and color perception. And if that isn't bad enough, it is fetotoxic and a probable human carcinogen. (Probable because it definately causes hepatic cancer in rats, but the human data is inconclusive.)
I'm sick of hearing folks bitch about the amount of funding athletics get as compared to academics. It appears as if people around here have a very simple world view wherein jocks and geeks must be mutually exclusive.
I played lacrosse in High School and loved it. I was also a national merit scholar and graduated with a BS from Cornell last spring. Nor was I unique. Out of my graduating class from high school, the starting quarterback for our football team, the captain of the swim team and the captain of the crosscountry team all went on to Harvard. The starting pitcher for our baseball team went to Stanford. In fact, about half of my AP Calc class were varsity athletes.
Did you ever consider that athletics are frequently funded by alternate revenue streams? Those people in the Booster Club actually donate and raise a lot of the those funds, not your tax dollars. The school budget gets voted down, athletics are often the first to go. You want play football this year? Fine, you'll need to come up with a check for $150. The coaches at my school were paid $1 salaries for their time.
Cutting athletics to free up cash to throw away on shiny new computers are not the answer. In fact throwing money at the problem, no matter what the source, will not improve things. Finding dedicated, caring people to lead the way for those less technologically adept will.
In short, please don't lash out against other cliques, be they jocks, bandies, goths, straight-edgers or whatever just because the shop teacher turned technology coordinator lacks a clue. Be proactive rather than reactive.
Darwin is not "pimary creted"(sic) for PPC. Darwin is essentially an opensourced, updated version of the underpinings of OpenStep. Most of the x86 stuff is already in there. Apple just hasn't released an x86 binary. Why should they? Overextending themselves won't help anybody.
Once Darwin is further along, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple simply recompile the remaining layers,(ie Quartz and Cocoa) and release OSX/x86 ala Rhapsody DR2/x86. I am unaware of any technical reason they couldn't do this. With this approach, they can provide a larger market for their developers without dooming the project by attempting to do too much initially.
(For those of you who don't know, Quartz is the replacement for the DisplayPostScript imaging model found in OSXServer and Openstep. Cocoa is the new name for the Obj.C and Java API's formerly known as YellowBox)
Why? Last year AMD had sale of something like 2.5 billion dollars. Last _quarter_, Motorola had sales of 7.2 billion. And Intel? 7.1 billion last quarter.
x86 is a dying technology. Compaq knows it. Sun knows it. Motorola knows it. SGI should have known it.
Why should Motorola purchase AMD and saddle itself with a potential liability. Don't get me wrong, I really like AMD. I own 2 AMD boxes myself. But I think it would be a mistake for Motorola to enter this market. The PowerPC 750 is a damn fine chip. With LinuxPPC picking up speed and OpenStep 5.3 (err....MacOS X Server) running on the PPC750, I think Motorola is making the right decision in bidding their time.
Anytime you hear the Motorola is dropping the PowerPC, you can be sure that it is Intel FUD, pure and simple. Don't forget that Motorola virtually owns the embedded market and is making buckets of money that way.
Slashdot Mirror
Methanol is by itself almost completely non-toxic; the danger arises from the metabolic breakdown products.
When you ingest ethanol (aka grain alcohol), alcohol dehydrogenase (an enzyme)catalyzes the oxidation of ethanol to acetaldehyde. If you oxidize acetaldehyde, you get then get acetic acid, which can then be oxidized to carbon dioxide.
Conversly, when you oxidize methanol (aka wood alcohol), you get formaldehyde. If you then oxidize that, you get formic acid. The formaldehyde and the formic acid are both toxic with formic acid being the more toxic of the two. The formaldehyde attacks the sensitive protein in the retina making you blind while the formic acid is what kills you.
Because the rate limiting step in methanol oxidation is availability of alcohol dehydrogenase, the clinical treatment for methanol poisoning is, you guessed it, to give large amounts of ethanol. Because the alcohol dehydrogenase has a higher affinity for ethanol than methanol, giving you ethanol will keep the methanol from being catabolized. The "unprocessed" non-toxic methanol can then be cleared by the kidneys.
Also, it should be noted that the prohibition on distilling has absolutely nothing to do with public safety. It is a taxation issue pure and simple. I suggest you pull out a history text and read about something called the Whiskey Rebellion.
Check out http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=27009&cid=2915 041 for an answer to your question.
http://playground.sun.com/1275
If instead, you are refering to the Mac Toolbox that used to live in the ROM, you would still be wrong. This has not been the case since the first iMac's were rolled out in 1998. Machines prior to this era are now refered to as Old World Macs while those that came after this change are refered to as New World macs.
http://www.imaclinux.net/gh.php?single=76%2Bindex= 0
If the bubble had lasted another 6 months, this product would be on the market and we'd have smellovision. But instead, I'm afraid that investors will look at the DigiScents story and mistakenly blame the product and the idea, rather than the market, for its failure.
It may take another 15 years for someone to try, but I'm sure I will see this sort of product in my lifetime.
http://www.scs.uiuc.edu/suslick/pdf/nature00710.pd f
In short, stick to mineral oil.
I played lacrosse in High School and loved it. I was also a national merit scholar and graduated with a BS from Cornell last spring. Nor was I unique. Out of my graduating class from high school, the starting quarterback for our football team, the captain of the swim team and the captain of the crosscountry team all went on to Harvard. The starting pitcher for our baseball team went to Stanford. In fact, about half of my AP Calc class were varsity athletes.
Did you ever consider that athletics are frequently funded by alternate revenue streams? Those people in the Booster Club actually donate and raise a lot of the those funds, not your tax dollars. The school budget gets voted down, athletics are often the first to go. You want play football this year? Fine, you'll need to come up with a check for $150. The coaches at my school were paid $1 salaries for their time.
Cutting athletics to free up cash to throw away on shiny new computers are not the answer. In fact throwing money at the problem, no matter what the source, will not improve things. Finding dedicated, caring people to lead the way for those less technologically adept will.
In short, please don't lash out against other cliques, be they jocks, bandies, goths, straight-edgers or whatever just because the shop teacher turned technology coordinator lacks a clue. Be proactive rather than reactive.
Once Darwin is further along, I wouldn't be surprised to see Apple simply recompile the remaining layers,(ie Quartz and Cocoa) and release OSX/x86 ala Rhapsody DR2/x86. I am unaware of any technical reason they couldn't do this. With this approach, they can provide a larger market for their developers without dooming the project by attempting to do too much initially.
(For those of you who don't know, Quartz is the replacement for the DisplayPostScript imaging model found in OSXServer and Openstep. Cocoa is the new name for the Obj.C and Java API's formerly known as YellowBox)
Openstep is Dead! Long Live Openstep!
Why? Last year AMD had sale of something like 2.5 billion dollars. Last _quarter_, Motorola had sales of 7.2 billion. And Intel? 7.1 billion last quarter.
x86 is a dying technology. Compaq knows it. Sun knows it. Motorola knows it. SGI should have known it.
Why should Motorola purchase AMD and saddle itself with a potential liability. Don't get me wrong, I really like AMD. I own 2 AMD boxes myself. But I think it would be a mistake for Motorola to enter this market. The PowerPC 750 is a damn fine chip. With LinuxPPC picking up speed and OpenStep 5.3 (err....MacOS X Server) running on the PPC750, I think Motorola is making the right decision in bidding their time.
Anytime you hear the Motorola is dropping the PowerPC, you can be sure that it is Intel FUD, pure and simple. Don't forget that Motorola virtually owns the embedded market and is making buckets of money that way.