Actually, this day is a lot closer than you might think. Do a Google on "wine reverse osmosis", and you'll see what I mean. Reverese osmosis allows the vintner to selectively remove water and sugar so as to adjust the brix, acidity, and concentration of volatiles, tannins, etc. Nobody produces crappy years anymore, because even good vintages are run through a reverse osmosis machine to make them better and more consistent... more "mass produced". Every year is a good year, although some are still outstanding.
The grape varieties are being modified with modern agronomic breeding tools, including genetic modifications, to make them better able to produce decent juice from poorer soils/sites. As with beer, the yeast strains used in wine making are being controlled with sophisticated molecular biology tools to get the mixes of micromolar end products of fermentation that make for an interesting wine. Precision agriculture has been used in high-value crops like wine grapes for many years, it's just that now it's starting to be wirelessly networked and automated.
Only small-volume boutique wines are made by Francois/Guisseppe relying solely on the wisdom his father handed down to him from his father before him.
So, is this the first step toward a railgul type launching platform? The payload on this sled was about 200 pounds. Can you make satellites that small?
Bluetooth capability is available as an insert for the SD coard slot:
http://www.palm.com/products/accessories/expansi on cards/bluetooth/
However, this is only compatible with the older i705, m515, m505, m500, m130 and m125 handhelds. $129, for those who don't want to change their PDA, just upgrade the capabilities.
Arrgh! Hulk's brain... on fire! Too much.... Slashdot! Hulk SMASH puny Slashdot! Hulk SMASH!! ARRRRRGH!!!!
... and in other news, hell freezes over.
on
Open Node In A Bag
·
· Score: 1
Brokaw: This just in, a recent Slashdot posting appears to have provided links to mirrors, reportedly within the posting itself. Is Slashdot finally taking responsibility for proactively avoiding the dreaded "Slashdot effect"? We turn to our Internet correspondent, Last Mile, for analysis. Last?
Mile: Thanks, Tom. After a series of early morning explosions across the continental United States, in which unsuspecting webservers literally burst into flame following attempted access by over 45 million Slashdot readers, the spiritual head of Slashdot, who goes by the "Internet name" of Commander Taco, has apparently said, "Enough is enough."
CmdrTaco: "Enough is enough."
Mile: By approving a posting which provides multiple sites to serve the same webpage, a process known as a "load sharing" can prevent the kind of catstrophic overloading of webservers traditionally associated with having a link on Slashdot. Will this overloading, called "Slashdotting", become a thing of the past? Only time will tell. Back to you, Tom.
Brokaw: Thanks, Last. Up next, XML: is it as good, or as bad, as it's creators claim? Stay tuned.
Actually, near the end of the article, the company states that while they've never actually built any small arms, they've been involved in design work for this kind of gasdynamic laser as a follow-on to the M61A2 Vulcan 20mm cannon, specifically intended for aircraft use. It looks like they are trying to repackage their large scale laser system for hand use. (Good luck, boys.)
I agree, you might, maybe, perhaps get this thing to work if mounted on a ship, a plane or a Bradley/Abrams, where you can use some other heat source, but I can't imagine it as an effective hand weapon.
On the other hand, maybe that's why phasers/blasters go "Bweeeoo! Bweeeoo!" when you shoot, and are visibly bright blue/red/green/etc., and make little sparks when they hit, even if they hit non-sparking material like wood/stone/flesh/etc.....that is, to let the enemy know that, not only are you really shooting, you are really shooting at them.
The radioactive heat source (Po-210) is supposed to keep the tank of highly pressurized (272 atm) gas very hot (2173 degrees K) to deliver 1.9kW to the target 170 times a minute... in a package small and light enough to be a shoulder-fired weapon.
Right.
It probably has an evil bit, too. And a USB cable. And the government will pay for them with the proceeds from the sale of the Liberty Bell. And...
"Anyone that has had a high school physics class or a few semesters of introductory physics in college..."
If you regard these as equivalent, I've gotta ask, where did you go to college? Or maybe the better question would be, where did you go to high school?
Seriously, this game was pretty much the only reason I kept OS/2 Warp on my machine as a dual boot with Win 3.1 back in 1996-97. I loved OS/2... the multiple virtual desktops, the multithreading of all the programs, the clean looks, the stability... but what I really loved was GalCiv and the responsive way that Stardock and Brad Wardell would update the AIs on a regular basis, based on feedback from the players. I can't wait for GalCiv to make its return to my machine. (No, I am not in their employ... I just really, really loved that game, and really, really hated being forced to give it up when I finally gave up on OS/2.)
Free radicals aren't the problem, as the half-life for radiolytic free radicals (which would be primarily oxygen and hydroxyl radicals in a water-based matrix) is on the order of a few seconds at best. A more pressing concern might be the novel radiolytic chemicals produced when existing organic material is fractured by the radicals and recombines in new ways. New chains, new branches, rings broken or reformed...
Of course, it's only even remotely a concern by terrestrial standards. Some of these compounds are carcinogenic/teratogenic to humans, although they aren't produced in high enough quantities to be of concern in, say, irradiated foods. On Europa, they would just be one more ingredient in the organic soup, maybe even serving as a food source in the primordial ooze.
215 also covers a lot of the Philadelphia suburbs Montgomery County. A call a couple of streets over requires at least 10-digit, often 11-digit dialing. This is nothing new here.
Disclaimer: I love science fiction, always have, always will, however...
Science fiction did indeed predict (in some form, anyway) communications satellites, cell phones, rocket fins, particle weapons, the floppy drive, etc. However, it also predicted antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, mind control rays, time machines and stasis fields. The trouble with looking back at science fiction and picking out the accurate predictions is that you ignore the 99.9% that was inaccurate, and distort the perceived value of the source material. It's like finding one potato out of a thousand that's shaped kind of like Elvis... you would not seriously conclude that potato fields are a good place to look for new sculptures, would you?
When you say to your friends, "You know what would have been cool? If they had gone to a planet where...", and they agree, that's normal fan behavior.
When you actually write up the idea you were thinking of in a 200 word concept and share it with your friends, who all like it, that's committed fan behavior.
When you flesh out the concept to a 10 page script treatment, that's borderline wierd fan behavior. If your friends offer revisions to correct continuity errors, that's definitely wierd fan behavior.
When you write out an entire script in three acts and actually perform it with your friends, that's borderline obsessive fan behavior. Defintiely obsessive if you film the process.
When you perform it with homemade costumes, props, etc., and have special effects and a musical score to go with the footage, and then reformat the film as downloadable Quicktime videos for all the world to see, you are ready for film school.
Either that, or the plastic pointy ears you wear to bed every night are cutting off the flow of blood to the brain.
... unless you try to screw a Mac addict. Then you'll be hunted down in meatspace like a, like a, like a something-or-other.
Serves the thief right for messing with a Mac type. Everybody knows they're unstable to begin with, and all it takes is a just a little push for them to go postal.
(So, +1 Funny for the first paragraph, -1 Flamebait for the second? Worth the risk.)
Why is this post moderated "Interesting"? I'm not trying to start a flamewar, I really want to know how someone arrived at this determination. "Funny", I could see.
Can I introduce the phrase, "Conservation of mass" to this thread? The magic bacteria eat 1kg of rock, and then... what? That 1kg has somehow dissapeared? No, it has turned into 1kg of bacteria. Would there be any appreciable difference between being crushed by 10^7kg of rock vs. 10^7kg of bacterial crud?
Would anyone seriously use the dinky little stylus that's part of the band? Talk about an ergonomic nightmare (and a choking hazard). Why not just include a selectable-point pen with every watch, that will let you switch between blue/black/red ink and a stylus? That seems to make much more sense from an actual functionality standpoint than that tiny stylus, letting you use the PDA concurrently and seamlessly with more traditional dead-tree technology.
You can see all the horns at the top! Just above the central blackness! It's Satan and his minions! Reverend Bobby was RIGHT! It's the SCIENTISTS and all of their TECNOLOGY have finally!!! opened the DOOR TO HELL!!!!! He said they put DAEMONS in our computers, and on the InterNet, but I didn't believe!
Oh, JESUS, I am heartily sorry for the sins I have committed, and I reject the **EVIL** TECNOLOGY of the SCIENTISTS and their DAEMONS! Have Mercy On ME, oh LORD, and on my brother, Willum Jeffry Scraggins, who now lives in New York under the name of Will Craig, and also on his wife Rachel (though she is an Unbeliever, if you know what I mean).
Re:Supes threw the fight already (plus, the stats)
on
Superhero Smackdown
·
· Score: 2
re: the kryptonite that Batman has, "just in case"....
This was referred to in the Death of Superman cycle, after Doomsday offed the big blue schoolboy. Just before the funeral, Batman is standing in the 'cave, musing and reflecting, and comments on the kryptonite that Superman had given him, sort of as an observation that the only thing kryptonite was useful for was defeating Superman, so now it's worthless.
BTW, it is pathetic that a grown man who has just refinanced his mortgage would even know this, much less feel it appropriate to share that knowledge.
Actually, I think they are *implying* that, not *inferring* that.
Regards,
The Grammar Police
p.s. Please don't mod me down for this... someone has to take a stand for approriate usage of language. Besides, I have a wife and kids at home who rely on my maintaining a good Karma.
Sure. IANAA, but the problem with Pluto isn't that astronomers have some personal grudge against Pluto, but that it's orbital details and composition don't fit the pattern set by the other planets. The orbit *is* way too elliptical, it's too eccentric (e.g. Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune for a good part of its year) and it's on a weird angle with regard to the orbital plane set by the others. The rest of the solar system fits the pattern of small, rocky planets close in, big gassy planets farther out, with a bunch of tiny ice-balls way, way out.
When you compare Pluto to the various trans-Neptunian objects in the Kuiper Belt, though, it fits right in. Composition, orbit, distance, everything. Even if you want to get picky about Charon, there have been examples of small rocky bodies in mutual orbit in the asteroid belt, so a small moonlet of a small planetoid isn't that big of a deal.
I think astronomers are just tired of having to say, "... except for Pluto." when discussing the solar system's arrangment.
IMHO, Pluto was identified first because it is among the largest, if not *the* largest, of the trans-Neptunian objects, discovered using 19th century optical technology. Now that the lenses, cameras and data analysis tools are so much improved, objects of comparable size are starting to be identifed. This isn't to take away any historical significance from Pluto for being the first of its class to be observed, but I don't really consider it a really small planet, more of a really big planetoid.
Absolutely! I am always amazed when this experiment doesn't get its due when people compose "Top Ten" lists. Aside from the impact it had, it is one of the great examples of the significance of negative results. They tried to find the Doppler shift in light caused by the aether, and when they didn't find it, did they just shrug and say, "Negative results.", and drop it? NO! This was the classic "dog that didn't bark", and it was important!
I apologize for getting up on this soapbox, but I've several times had the expereience of submitting a manuscript to a journal and having the reviewers criticize me for including negative results along with the positive ones, as though we shouldn't even discuss negative results, much less try to draw conclusions from them. IMNSHO, if the experiment was well designed and there are no artifacts creeping in, then an experiment is only a failure if you don't learn anything from it.
I just tried your suggestion about exporting to a.pdf and looking at the thumbnail view. Better, but still not what I want. Acrobat will let me do facing pages, and then zoom out, so I have a long column of 2-by-n thumbnails.
After I wrote my first post, I did some checking. Both MS-Word and OO will let me do this, set up a page-preview with a variable display size. What I want is a grid of x-by-y, usually something like 3-by-7 to let me look at 21 pages at a shot, but with the ability to vary that if the document has a mix of portrait and landscape. I've been playing around with OO for a few weeks now... maybe it's time to get serious? I'd hate to give up the "reveal codes" feature, though, and I am so proficient with keystroke combinations to get my work done that I usually leave the mouseketeer-typers in the dust. It looks as though most of OO is exclusively mouse/menu driven, rather than having keystroke comination equivalents for most mouse actions.
Slashdot Mirror
The beer powers it's own coolant system .... it would be like a dream come true.
(Version 3.0 produces Smartfood as a byproduct.)
Actually, this day is a lot closer than you might think. Do a Google on "wine reverse osmosis", and you'll see what I mean. Reverese osmosis allows the vintner to selectively remove water and sugar so as to adjust the brix, acidity, and concentration of volatiles, tannins, etc. Nobody produces crappy years anymore, because even good vintages are run through a reverse osmosis machine to make them better and more consistent... more "mass produced". Every year is a good year, although some are still outstanding.
The grape varieties are being modified with modern agronomic breeding tools, including genetic modifications, to make them better able to produce decent juice from poorer soils/sites. As with beer, the yeast strains used in wine making are being controlled with sophisticated molecular biology tools to get the mixes of micromolar end products of fermentation that make for an interesting wine. Precision agriculture has been used in high-value crops like wine grapes for many years, it's just that now it's starting to be wirelessly networked and automated.
Only small-volume boutique wines are made by Francois/Guisseppe relying solely on the wisdom his father handed down to him from his father before him.
So, is this the first step toward a railgul type launching platform? The payload on this sled was about 200 pounds. Can you make satellites that small?
Bluetooth capability is available as an insert for the SD coard slot:
i on cards/bluetooth/
http://www.palm.com/products/accessories/expans
However, this is only compatible with the older i705, m515, m505, m500, m130 and m125 handhelds. $129, for those who don't want to change their PDA, just upgrade the capabilities.
Arrgh! Hulk's brain... on fire! Too much .... Slashdot! Hulk SMASH puny Slashdot! Hulk SMASH!! ARRRRRGH!!!!
Brokaw: This just in, a recent Slashdot posting appears to have provided links to mirrors, reportedly within the posting itself. Is Slashdot finally taking responsibility for proactively avoiding the dreaded "Slashdot effect"? We turn to our Internet correspondent, Last Mile, for analysis. Last?
Mile: Thanks, Tom. After a series of early morning explosions across the continental United States, in which unsuspecting webservers literally burst into flame following attempted access by over 45 million Slashdot readers, the spiritual head of Slashdot, who goes by the "Internet name" of Commander Taco, has apparently said, "Enough is enough."
CmdrTaco: "Enough is enough."
Mile: By approving a posting which provides multiple sites to serve the same webpage, a process known as a "load sharing" can prevent the kind of catstrophic overloading of webservers traditionally associated with having a link on Slashdot. Will this overloading, called "Slashdotting", become a thing of the past? Only time will tell. Back to you, Tom.
Brokaw: Thanks, Last. Up next, XML: is it as good, or as bad, as it's creators claim? Stay tuned.
"...large scale version for fighter aircraft..."
Actually, near the end of the article, the company states that while they've never actually built any small arms, they've been involved in design work for this kind of gasdynamic laser as a follow-on to the M61A2 Vulcan 20mm cannon, specifically intended for aircraft use. It looks like they are trying to repackage their large scale laser system for hand use. (Good luck, boys.)
I agree, you might, maybe, perhaps get this thing to work if mounted on a ship, a plane or a Bradley/Abrams, where you can use some other heat source, but I can't imagine it as an effective hand weapon.
On the other hand, maybe that's why phasers/blasters go "Bweeeoo! Bweeeoo!" when you shoot, and are visibly bright blue/red/green/etc., and make little sparks when they hit, even if they hit non-sparking material like wood/stone/flesh/etc.....that is, to let the enemy know that, not only are you really shooting, you are really shooting at them.
The radioactive heat source (Po-210) is supposed to keep the tank of highly pressurized (272 atm) gas very hot (2173 degrees K) to deliver 1.9kW to the target 170 times a minute... in a package small and light enough to be a shoulder-fired weapon.
Right.
It probably has an evil bit, too. And a USB cable. And the government will pay for them with the proceeds from the sale of the Liberty Bell. And...
"Anyone that has had a high school physics class or a few semesters of introductory physics in college..."
If you regard these as equivalent, I've gotta ask, where did you go to college? Or maybe the better question would be, where did you go to high school?
Seriously, this game was pretty much the only reason I kept OS/2 Warp on my machine as a dual boot with Win 3.1 back in 1996-97. I loved OS/2... the multiple virtual desktops, the multithreading of all the programs, the clean looks, the stability... but what I really loved was GalCiv and the responsive way that Stardock and Brad Wardell would update the AIs on a regular basis, based on feedback from the players. I can't wait for GalCiv to make its return to my machine. (No, I am not in their employ... I just really, really loved that game, and really, really hated being forced to give it up when I finally gave up on OS/2.)
Free radicals aren't the problem, as the half-life for radiolytic free radicals (which would be primarily oxygen and hydroxyl radicals in a water-based matrix) is on the order of a few seconds at best. A more pressing concern might be the novel radiolytic chemicals produced when existing organic material is fractured by the radicals and recombines in new ways. New chains, new branches, rings broken or reformed...
Of course, it's only even remotely a concern by terrestrial standards. Some of these compounds are carcinogenic/teratogenic to humans, although they aren't produced in high enough quantities to be of concern in, say, irradiated foods. On Europa, they would just be one more ingredient in the organic soup, maybe even serving as a food source in the primordial ooze.
"Imagine an aircraft carrier and a few destroyer escorts with flank speeds in excess of 70 knots (it would have to have hydrofoils as well,..."
An aircraft carrier with hydorfoils? I've gotta say, just the mental image of that is pretty amazing.
Can you imagine surfing on the wake from a nuclear-powered hydrofoil aircraft carrier?
"...touch sensitive sides...stroke the side...I enjoy the peephole"
They say that porn drives technological innovation in information distribution technologies. This gives a whole new meaning to the term "peep show".
I can't imagine I'm going to get first post on this.
215 also covers a lot of the Philadelphia suburbs Montgomery County. A call a couple of streets over requires at least 10-digit, often 11-digit dialing. This is nothing new here.
Disclaimer: I love science fiction, always have, always will, however...
Science fiction did indeed predict (in some form, anyway) communications satellites, cell phones, rocket fins, particle weapons, the floppy drive, etc. However, it also predicted antigravity, rolling roads, matter converters, mind control rays, time machines and stasis fields. The trouble with looking back at science fiction and picking out the accurate predictions is that you ignore the 99.9% that was inaccurate, and distort the perceived value of the source material. It's like finding one potato out of a thousand that's shaped kind of like Elvis... you would not seriously conclude that potato fields are a good place to look for new sculptures, would you?
When you say to your friends, "You know what would have been cool? If they had gone to a planet where...", and they agree, that's normal fan behavior.
When you actually write up the idea you were thinking of in a 200 word concept and share it with your friends, who all like it, that's committed fan behavior.
When you flesh out the concept to a 10 page script treatment, that's borderline wierd fan behavior. If your friends offer revisions to correct continuity errors, that's definitely wierd fan behavior.
When you write out an entire script in three acts and actually perform it with your friends, that's borderline obsessive fan behavior. Defintiely obsessive if you film the process.
When you perform it with homemade costumes, props, etc., and have special effects and a musical score to go with the footage, and then reformat the film as downloadable Quicktime videos for all the world to see, you are ready for film school.
Either that, or the plastic pointy ears you wear to bed every night are cutting off the flow of blood to the brain.
... unless you try to screw a Mac addict. Then you'll be hunted down in meatspace like a, like a, like a something-or-other.
Serves the thief right for messing with a Mac type. Everybody knows they're unstable to begin with, and all it takes is a just a little push for them to go postal.
(So, +1 Funny for the first paragraph, -1 Flamebait for the second? Worth the risk.)
Why is this post moderated "Interesting"? I'm not trying to start a flamewar, I really want to know how someone arrived at this determination. "Funny", I could see.
Can I introduce the phrase, "Conservation of mass" to this thread? The magic bacteria eat 1kg of rock, and then... what? That 1kg has somehow dissapeared? No, it has turned into 1kg of bacteria. Would there be any appreciable difference between being crushed by 10^7kg of rock vs. 10^7kg of bacterial crud?
Would anyone seriously use the dinky little stylus that's part of the band? Talk about an ergonomic nightmare (and a choking hazard). Why not just include a selectable-point pen with every watch, that will let you switch between blue/black/red ink and a stylus? That seems to make much more sense from an actual functionality standpoint than that tiny stylus, letting you use the PDA concurrently and seamlessly with more traditional dead-tree technology.
OH MY GOD!!!!! LOOK AT IT, JUST LOOK AT IT!!!!!!!
You can see all the horns at the top! Just above the central blackness! It's Satan and his minions! Reverend Bobby was RIGHT! It's the SCIENTISTS and all of their TECNOLOGY have finally!!! opened the DOOR TO HELL!!!!! He said they put DAEMONS in our computers, and on the InterNet, but I didn't believe!
Oh, JESUS, I am heartily sorry for the sins I have committed, and I reject the **EVIL** TECNOLOGY of the SCIENTISTS and their DAEMONS! Have Mercy On ME, oh LORD, and on my brother, Willum Jeffry Scraggins, who now lives in New York under the name of Will Craig, and also on his wife Rachel (though she is an Unbeliever, if you know what I mean).
re: the kryptonite that Batman has, "just in case"....
This was referred to in the Death of Superman cycle, after Doomsday offed the big blue schoolboy. Just before the funeral, Batman is standing in the 'cave, musing and reflecting, and comments on the kryptonite that Superman had given him, sort of as an observation that the only thing kryptonite was useful for was defeating Superman, so now it's worthless.
BTW, it is pathetic that a grown man who has just refinanced his mortgage would even know this, much less feel it appropriate to share that knowledge.
Actually, I think they are *implying* that, not *inferring* that.
Regards,
The Grammar Police
p.s. Please don't mod me down for this... someone has to take a stand for approriate usage of language. Besides, I have a wife and kids at home who rely on my maintaining a good Karma.
Sure. IANAA, but the problem with Pluto isn't that astronomers have some personal grudge against Pluto, but that it's orbital details and composition don't fit the pattern set by the other planets. The orbit *is* way too elliptical, it's too eccentric (e.g. Pluto is closer to the sun than Neptune for a good part of its year) and it's on a weird angle with regard to the orbital plane set by the others. The rest of the solar system fits the pattern of small, rocky planets close in, big gassy planets farther out, with a bunch of tiny ice-balls way, way out.
When you compare Pluto to the various trans-Neptunian objects in the Kuiper Belt, though, it fits right in. Composition, orbit, distance, everything. Even if you want to get picky about Charon, there have been examples of small rocky bodies in mutual orbit in the asteroid belt, so a small moonlet of a small planetoid isn't that big of a deal.
I think astronomers are just tired of having to say, "... except for Pluto." when discussing the solar system's arrangment.
IMHO, Pluto was identified first because it is among the largest, if not *the* largest, of the trans-Neptunian objects, discovered using 19th century optical technology. Now that the lenses, cameras and data analysis tools are so much improved, objects of comparable size are starting to be identifed. This isn't to take away any historical significance from Pluto for being the first of its class to be observed, but I don't really consider it a really small planet, more of a really big planetoid.
Absolutely! I am always amazed when this experiment doesn't get its due when people compose "Top Ten" lists. Aside from the impact it had, it is one of the great examples of the significance of negative results. They tried to find the Doppler shift in light caused by the aether, and when they didn't find it, did they just shrug and say, "Negative results.", and drop it? NO! This was the classic "dog that didn't bark", and it was important!
I apologize for getting up on this soapbox, but I've several times had the expereience of submitting a manuscript to a journal and having the reviewers criticize me for including negative results along with the positive ones, as though we shouldn't even discuss negative results, much less try to draw conclusions from them. IMNSHO, if the experiment was well designed and there are no artifacts creeping in, then an experiment is only a failure if you don't learn anything from it.
re: thumbnails in WP
.pdf and looking at the thumbnail view. Better, but still not what I want. Acrobat will let me do facing pages, and then zoom out, so I have a long column of 2-by-n thumbnails.
I just tried your suggestion about exporting to a
After I wrote my first post, I did some checking. Both MS-Word and OO will let me do this, set up a page-preview with a variable display size. What I want is a grid of x-by-y, usually something like 3-by-7 to let me look at 21 pages at a shot, but with the ability to vary that if the document has a mix of portrait and landscape. I've been playing around with OO for a few weeks now... maybe it's time to get serious? I'd hate to give up the "reveal codes" feature, though, and I am so proficient with keystroke combinations to get my work done that I usually leave the mouseketeer-typers in the dust. It looks as though most of OO is exclusively mouse/menu driven, rather than having keystroke comination equivalents for most mouse actions.