You're not trying to say that the speed of light has ANYTHING to do with the speed at which a beam of light can be swept across a medium, are you?
A point of light can be moved as fast or as slow as you want it to be. Aim a laser at the moon, now sweep it across the moon as fast as you want. Poof! The "spot" of light just moved across the moon at 18 times the speed of light... no problem.
No, the real limitation to the speed at which light can be moved along a medium has more to do with how long the spot of light must be focused on each point on the medium for enough photons to reflect back to be read. The faster you sweep your laser across a surface, the more dimly that surface is illuminated.
(At the limit, you're moving the spot of light faster than the rate photons are being emitted, although at 1 Watt that's something like 10^20 photons per second. If you need at least 10 photons per nanometer, say, you can do the math to find your maximum speed.)
>This means that I have to clutter my desktop with useless shit
Nobody's asking you to smear poop on your desk...
Joking aside, I think you've missed the point: It's a "disappear when not in use" idea. No clutter. When you're not holding down the hotkey, the widgets are not visible.
I do, however, think that this eye-candy feature is being overhyped. But it will be genuinely useful to a number of people. And until somebody holds a gun to my head making me use it, I'm certainly not going to get upset about it.:)
saying that you fired someone for a "legal reason" implies that you had some sort of significant reason for firing them, like, imbezzlement or somesuch.
Whereas it's perfectly fine to fire somebody 'cause you want to. or cause you want somone new. or you felt like it.
BUT, it is ILLEGAL to fire someone because of their gender, ethnic background, age, religion, etc, except in some very specfic circumstances.
So, the succinct way to put it is, you may fire someone for any non-illegal reason.:)
FYI, Minnesota requires 2-week notice from either employer or employee, but nothing more.
I buy myself a new Leatherman Wave every year or two. It's my present to myself. The joy of having a brand-new one more than justifies the cost.
Truly a day does not go by that I don't draw my leatherman for something. I'm hard enough on them that I do gradually wear them out in some way or another. I keep the old ones around, though, and more than once I've been grateful to fall back on an old one when I temporarily misplace my current one.
Pointy-haired bosses at Sprint PCS must see this as an excuse to take away their customers' ability to compose free ringtones, since obviously we're depriving Sprint of some good revenue.
But I'm one really happy customer, since I've composed one and two-letter morse-code "songs" in MIDI and use them as custom ringtones for all the people who frequently call my phone. Irritating songs be damned, my phone gently beeps to me the identity of my caller. It's fabulous.
I'd like to STRANGLE these people who use LOUD, OBNOXIOUS songs for their ringtones, and then don't even have their phone on their person... "oh god, that purse is now ringing at top volume. during the concert. naturally, during the quiet part. AAAAAAAAAAH!"
You're missing the important point here: We need a definition that others can reliably reproduce, to whatever precision they need.
It's not about just writing down a number and truncating it... it's being able to arrive at that number TO THAT PRECISION again in the future.
>It doesn't really matter that there might plausibly be more or less atoms.
YES IT DOES! If you're _defining_ something to be a certain number of atoms, you'd better be pretty damn sure it's the right number of atoms.
We didn't just fudge the definition of the meter: it's now defined in such a way that you can get yourself a meter of however much precision your equipment is capable of, and ANYBODY can recreate that equipment and come up with the same meter. It's based on physical constants in such a way that it doesn't matter what physical objects you use to measure it.
(Well, you have to have some Cesium and some photons. With those two, and any equipment to measure some their properties, you get the second and the meter.)
>All that's really important is to have a defined conversion from whatever more useful units you're using.
You can have a defined conversion specified to a hundred decimal places, if you want... but it's useless if the unit you're comparing it to can only be measured accurately to 6 places. (and has the possibility of CHANGING because it could gain or lose mass, being a physical artifact)
There is NO limit to the precision we can measure time or distance in, now, except the fundamental limits of the universe itself. (quantum effects) We need the ability to do that with mass, now, too.
> If he meant Burma, he really meant Myanmar (aka the country formerly known as Burma)
Not so much.
The United States officially does not recognize "Myanmar" as the name of that country, instead continuing to use the official name of "Repulic of Burma" adopted by their former, democraticly elected, government.
Imagine if we had a material light and strong enough to contain a vacuum, thus obtaining buoyancy. If the whole thing scaled enough, you could have a vacuum pump on-board with you, and let air back in to lower buoyancy, suck out more to have more.
Basically, build a boat that floats in our atmosphere. I wonder how strongly physics is stacked against us... would such a thing ever be possible even with "advanced" materials?
Oddly enough, these are not dimmable!? Whatever power regulation they're doing to get 120VAC to power their LEDs must not like being dimmed, at least by SCRs. Odd.
Re:Amount of water in urine
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 1
Neat fact: 180 liters of fluid are removed from your blood each day by your kidneys. They then go on to reabsorb most of the water from that fluid, leaving behind what you excrete as urine.
But so 180l would be about the maximum you could ever pass in one day, though something tells me you'd likely have other problems to deal with if you ever had to remove that much fluid for any reason.
- Peter
Re:Speaking of filters...
on
Hacking Vodka
·
· Score: 4, Informative
>your urine will be only about 5% water
Urine is almost entirely water, with a little bit of other substances dissolved in it. I doubt it's ever more than 5% solutes by weight, in 95% water.
It was really really strange that night. I got home around midnight in Minneapolis, and saw dim aurora straight overhead, but the brightest lights were to the SOUTH.
One usually doesn't expect "northern" lights to the south.:)
no way... how fast can an incandescent filament change brightness? Could you get audio frequencies as high as a few thousand Hertz?
I've seen kits to modulate lasers with audio (and even video) -- they specifically use a laser module with the proper (lack of) regulation so that it works cleanly. Similar circuits are used with simple IR LEDs for those "wireless" headphones that are line-of-sight.
With those solid state devices, i'd expect pretty "instant" response in brightness output. That's really neat that your dad got it working with a plain old flashlight.
>>But then, a 100% efficient windfarm would take out 100% of the kinetic energy of the wind moving past it.
>no, 100% efficient windfarms would convert 100% of energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
I'd (nitpickily) disagree. A 100% efficient turbine would convert 100% of the energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
But the power input into a wind farm is the total kinetic energy of the wind moving past it. A 100% efficient farm would convert 100% of that energy.
(Of course, you could never do that even theoretically, because you can't have stationary air -- you have to let the slow air out of the way so more fast air can come in and be slowed down.)
Yep. He'll announce that, ooops it turns out he didn't win in 2000, he's very sorry, but he'll be glad to make it up to everybody in a "second term" in 2008.
> The estimates are that we'd have a ~100 year supply of Uranium if all power was switched to nuclear power today. This figure does not take reprocessing and non-uranium fission into account.
But if you DO take into account reprocessing, you can arrive at an estimate of a 1,000,000,000 year supply of fission fuel on Earth. See this FAQ on some of the issues involved in nuclear power. It's an excellent FUD-buster.
The major premise of that faq and its related site is that human progress depends on, and will benefit tremendously from, MORE energy, not less. Conservation is a false "alternative" for energy problems. Fuel efficient vehicles that still burn petroleum products only postpone the inevitable.
I wish people would better understand how amazingly safe nuclear energy is, and can continue to be, and especially how in the big picture is is much much MORE safe than coal, or natural gas, or oil. Thousands of people die EACH YEAR in accidents related to those industries, whereas a TOTAL of about a thousand have ever died from nuclear accidents, EVER.
Everyone just thinks of "nuclear" as scary.
Even the waste issue is easily solved: bake the stuff into glass or ceramics, which makes it chemically stable. Then store it away somewhere. It doesn't matter if that somewhere has an earthquake, because the waste won't "leak" even if shattered.
But as this election cycle has shown more clearly than ever, Americans cannot have a rational discussion about pretty much anything, because rational discussions don't fit into soundbites.
Slashdot Mirror
>where 0K is dirt-cheap.
:)
Well, 3K anyway. Still gotta do some work to get below that.
You're not trying to say that the speed of light has ANYTHING to do with the speed at which a beam of light can be swept across a medium, are you?
A point of light can be moved as fast or as slow as you want it to be. Aim a laser at the moon, now sweep it across the moon as fast as you want. Poof! The "spot" of light just moved across the moon at 18 times the speed of light... no problem.
No, the real limitation to the speed at which light can be moved along a medium has more to do with how long the spot of light must be focused on each point on the medium for enough photons to reflect back to be read. The faster you sweep your laser across a surface, the more dimly that surface is illuminated.
(At the limit, you're moving the spot of light faster than the rate photons are being emitted, although at 1 Watt that's something like 10^20 photons per second. If you need at least 10 photons per nanometer, say, you can do the math to find your maximum speed.)
>This means that I have to clutter my desktop with useless shit
:)
Nobody's asking you to smear poop on your desk...
Joking aside, I think you've missed the point: It's a "disappear when not in use" idea. No clutter. When you're not holding down the hotkey, the widgets are not visible.
I do, however, think that this eye-candy feature is being overhyped. But it will be genuinely useful to a number of people. And until somebody holds a gun to my head making me use it, I'm certainly not going to get upset about it.
- Peter
Why am I getting a slot-machine image here...
*shudder*
> "Non-illegal?" Is that the same as "legal?"
:)
actually, no.
saying that you fired someone for a "legal reason" implies that you had some sort of significant reason for firing them, like, imbezzlement or somesuch.
Whereas it's perfectly fine to fire somebody 'cause you want to. or cause you want somone new. or you felt like it.
BUT, it is ILLEGAL to fire someone because of their gender, ethnic background, age, religion, etc, except in some very specfic circumstances.
So, the succinct way to put it is, you may fire someone for any non-illegal reason.
FYI, Minnesota requires 2-week notice from either employer or employee, but nothing more.
- Peter
>Shit, nothing!
:p
Well, you do know that morphine has a constapating effect... maybe it is working?
- Peter
I buy myself a new Leatherman Wave every year or two. It's my present to myself. The joy of having a brand-new one more than justifies the cost.
:)
Truly a day does not go by that I don't draw my leatherman for something. I'm hard enough on them that I do gradually wear them out in some way or another. I keep the old ones around, though, and more than once I've been grateful to fall back on an old one when I temporarily misplace my current one.
I'm definitely less of a man without my Wave.
- Peter
if the phone has web service, you just use any of the freely available upload services out there to send .mid or .qcp files to your phone.
- Peter
Pointy-haired bosses at Sprint PCS must see this as an excuse to take away their customers' ability to compose free ringtones, since obviously we're depriving Sprint of some good revenue.
But I'm one really happy customer, since I've composed one and two-letter morse-code "songs" in MIDI and use them as custom ringtones for all the people who frequently call my phone. Irritating songs be damned, my phone gently beeps to me the identity of my caller. It's fabulous.
I'd like to STRANGLE these people who use LOUD, OBNOXIOUS songs for their ringtones, and then don't even have their phone on their person... "oh god, that purse is now ringing at top volume. during the concert. naturally, during the quiet part. AAAAAAAAAAH!"
- Peter
You're missing the important point here: We need a definition that others can reliably reproduce, to whatever precision they need.
It's not about just writing down a number and truncating it... it's being able to arrive at that number TO THAT PRECISION again in the future.
>It doesn't really matter that there might plausibly be more or less atoms.
YES IT DOES! If you're _defining_ something to be a certain number of atoms, you'd better be pretty damn sure it's the right number of atoms.
We didn't just fudge the definition of the meter: it's now defined in such a way that you can get yourself a meter of however much precision your equipment is capable of, and ANYBODY can recreate that equipment and come up with the same meter. It's based on physical constants in such a way that it doesn't matter what physical objects you use to measure it.
(Well, you have to have some Cesium and some photons. With those two, and any equipment to measure some their properties, you get the second and the meter.)
>All that's really important is to have a defined conversion from whatever more useful units you're using.
You can have a defined conversion specified to a hundred decimal places, if you want... but it's useless if the unit you're comparing it to can only be measured accurately to 6 places. (and has the possibility of CHANGING because it could gain or lose mass, being a physical artifact)
There is NO limit to the precision we can measure time or distance in, now, except the fundamental limits of the universe itself. (quantum effects) We need the ability to do that with mass, now, too.
- Peter
> If he meant Burma, he really meant Myanmar (aka the country formerly known as Burma)
Not so much.
The United States officially does not recognize "Myanmar" as the name of that country, instead continuing to use the official name of "Repulic of Burma" adopted by their former, democraticly elected, government.
(see wikipedia article)
- Peter
Made me think about truly empty balloons again...
Imagine if we had a material light and strong enough to contain a vacuum, thus obtaining buoyancy. If the whole thing scaled enough, you could have a vacuum pump on-board with you, and let air back in to lower buoyancy, suck out more to have more.
Basically, build a boat that floats in our atmosphere. I wonder how strongly physics is stacked against us... would such a thing ever be possible even with "advanced" materials?
>>On the internet, the ISP does NOT dictate internet ads.
>This will be news to the maintainers of my ISPs website.
Huh? What does an ISP's website have to do with internet ads on the rest of the web?
- Peter
Oddly enough, these are not dimmable!? Whatever power regulation they're doing to get 120VAC to power their LEDs must not like being dimmed, at least by SCRs. Odd.
Neat fact: 180 liters of fluid are removed from your blood each day by your kidneys. They then go on to reabsorb most of the water from that fluid, leaving behind what you excrete as urine.
But so 180l would be about the maximum you could ever pass in one day, though something tells me you'd likely have other problems to deal with if you ever had to remove that much fluid for any reason.
- Peter
>your urine will be only about 5% water
Urine is almost entirely water, with a little bit of other substances dissolved in it. I doubt it's ever more than 5% solutes by weight, in 95% water.
Wow, what a photo.
:)
It was really really strange that night. I got home around midnight in Minneapolis, and saw dim aurora straight overhead, but the brightest lights were to the SOUTH.
One usually doesn't expect "northern" lights to the south.
- Peter
>Doesn't anyone consider birds?
I consider them to be evil feather-covered lizards. Does that count?
no way... how fast can an incandescent filament change brightness? Could you get audio frequencies as high as a few thousand Hertz?
I've seen kits to modulate lasers with audio (and even video) -- they specifically use a laser module with the proper (lack of) regulation so that it works cleanly. Similar circuits are used with simple IR LEDs for those "wireless" headphones that are line-of-sight.
With those solid state devices, i'd expect pretty "instant" response in brightness output. That's really neat that your dad got it working with a plain old flashlight.
>>But then, a 100% efficient windfarm would take out 100% of the kinetic energy of the wind moving past it.
>no, 100% efficient windfarms would convert 100% of energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
I'd (nitpickily) disagree. A 100% efficient turbine would convert 100% of the energy taken from the air into electrical energy.
But the power input into a wind farm is the total kinetic energy of the wind moving past it. A 100% efficient farm would convert 100% of that energy.
(Of course, you could never do that even theoretically, because you can't have stationary air -- you have to let the slow air out of the way so more fast air can come in and be slowed down.)
- Peter
Don't count your chickens before their replacements are appointed.
Assuming the crowbar survived reentry, by the time it reached the ground it would have slowed to its terminal velocity in air.
So it would do exactly as much damage as if it had been dropped from an airplane.
Crowbars ain't no spaceweapon.
Yep. He'll announce that, ooops it turns out he didn't win in 2000, he's very sorry, but he'll be glad to make it up to everybody in a "second term" in 2008.
> The estimates are that we'd have a ~100 year supply of Uranium if all power was switched to nuclear power today. This figure does not take reprocessing and non-uranium fission into account.
But if you DO take into account reprocessing, you can arrive at an estimate of a 1,000,000,000 year supply of fission fuel on Earth. See this FAQ on some of the issues involved in nuclear power. It's an excellent FUD-buster.
The major premise of that faq and its related site is that human progress depends on, and will benefit tremendously from, MORE energy, not less. Conservation is a false "alternative" for energy problems. Fuel efficient vehicles that still burn petroleum products only postpone the inevitable.
I wish people would better understand how amazingly safe nuclear energy is, and can continue to be, and especially how in the big picture is is much much MORE safe than coal, or natural gas, or oil. Thousands of people die EACH YEAR in accidents related to those industries, whereas a TOTAL of about a thousand have ever died from nuclear accidents, EVER.
Everyone just thinks of "nuclear" as scary.
Even the waste issue is easily solved: bake the stuff into glass or ceramics, which makes it chemically stable. Then store it away somewhere. It doesn't matter if that somewhere has an earthquake, because the waste won't "leak" even if shattered.
But as this election cycle has shown more clearly than ever, Americans cannot have a rational discussion about pretty much anything, because rational discussions don't fit into soundbites.
- Peter
So now that he's got an honest to goodness "mandate"...
What are the chances he's even going to try to be a uniter?