The question is not "how can we learn to do a thousand difficult tasks in zero gee?", but "how can we provide artificial gravity so we don't have to?" We've spent tens of billions of dollars learning to do everything imaginable in microgravity, and mere millions trying to develop a workable centrifugal gravity system for long-duration spaceflight. And Robert Zubrin, divisive as he is, is probably right about why: there's an entire industry of NASA scientists working on solving microgravity problems, and they're not interested in solutions which make their work irrelevant.
My question is, how the hell can we trust her to work hard for the citizens of Maine when she can't even find the time to pug a few heroic dungeons? Her gear is terrible! Does she even know where the justice point vendor is?
Seriously though, it looks like she played heavily up until a few years ago. I guess she's spent more time lately on real-life issues. Like running for Senate.
Getting it wrong an important part of doing science. Papers with errors should be corrected by new publications, not retracted. The incorrect paper inspired the correct one, and so is a useful part of the dialogue. Also, anyone else who has the same wrong idea can follow the paper trail, see the correction, and avoid making the same mistake again.
Classic but extreme example: the Bohr model of the atom, with the electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets around a star. It's wrong. Very wrong. But we still teach it today, because only by studying it you realize the flaws in the classical description of subatomic particles, and the need for quantum mechanics.
Parent is right. Small errors which don't affect the outcome are published as short "correction" notes. Larger, more subtle errors are corrected by the author and/or whoever noticed he was wrong writing a new paper which critiques the old one. But the original paper remains, because it's a useful part of the dialogue.
(And *that* is why you should always do a reverse bibliography search on any paper you read.)
First off, why should Africa build highways?... peak oil is looming. Railroad (which they have) is good but the car may be hammer in a time when a screwdriver is needed.
It's not about cars. It's about *trucks*. Sub-Saharan Africa represents the biggest pool of cheap labor on the planet. Its coastal cities have the potential to become the next Shanghai; its inland cities have the potential to become the next Chengdu a decade later. With wages across the Far East skyrocketing, why aren't manufacturers falling over themselves to build factories in African cities where they can pay their workers 10 cents a day? Because they can't be sure they'll be able to get their raw materials to the factory, get their finished goods out, and keep the lights on.
I'm worried about peak oil too. I don't care if Africa runs its trucks on diesel, biofuel, electricity, or broken promises: what it needs is a reliable technology to get individual cargo containers to any point on the map. And that means trucks of some kind, on reliable paved roads.
And second, just because a nation/continent hasn't solve all of it's problems doesn't mean it should make a full-stop until everyone is caught up. Poverty is still a problem in the US, but somehow I doubt we'd be better off if we never had NASA, or work on transistor and later microchip. With so many people, we can concentrate on more than 1 problem at a time, and sometimes, solving some in a seemingly unrelated domain will open solutions in another one.
The problem I have is that everyone treats Africa as the place to turn their personal interests into a humanitarian project. If I'm a doctor, and I'm in a helping mood, I'll support people building medical clinics in Africa. And when those clinics shut down because they can't get supplies, I never hear about it. If I'm a religious man, I say that what Africa really needs is more churches. And when those churches do what churches have always done, namely provide solace rather than solving problems, I feel like I've done a good deed. And when nerds get in the mood to do good, they decide that what Africa needs is one laptop per child, or robots for learning. And when those high-tech gadgets break down and can't be fixed because nobody can get the parts and tools, the nerds are off playing WoW with a warm glow in their hearts.
By all means, design some robots for Africa. Maybe you'll help some kid learn something. But just remember that when you think first of your personal interests, and second of what Africa needs, you're being selfish. "Selfish humanitariansm" seems like it should be a contradiction in terms, but sadly isn't.
Africa doesn't need robots for its kids. It needs highways, and trucks, and rails, and trains, it needs stable electrical power, it needs industrial water treatment networks. Starting in its coastal cities, and building into the interior. That's how China got where it is today: infrastructure.
Big manned space news of the week: NASA dropped an empty metal can into a pool of water.
I guess this is progress. But over the last few years SpaceX went from zero to human-capable (if not human-rated) spacecraft with just a couple press releases along the way. That's because their payroll is full of engineers, not public relations officials.
I'm the OP, checking in: Yep. But Step 3 is also unusual. Usually party A blames party B for stuff party B did, but the Republicans are faulting Obama for problems the Republicans created, which I've never seen before. Obama's supposed crimes include failing to get the country out of recession, failing to strengthen America's leadership role in foreign affairs, allowing American soldiers' lives to be wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the present case, failing to implement a viable manned spaceflight program. But the recession, the loss of international respect, the wars, and the ludicrous space program were all created under the Bush administration.
The truth is, neither of the two main political parties in America give a damn about NASA or the space program.
I agree with this 100%. But if your Dad says he'll buy you a jet-ski, your Mom says "sorry honey, we can't afford a jet-ski", and your uncle says "what a horrible Mom, depriving her kid of a jet-ski" --- might as well face it, you're not getting a jet-ski. But at least your Mom was straight with you.
The article's editorializing isn't really fair. No, Romney doesn't have a plan, but the goal of the article isn't to propose a space policy, but to bash Obama's. And it's true that space exploration has taken a hit during the Obama administration, but all the key events took place before his administration.
Bush, 2004: "Screw that space shuttle, boys, we're going back to the moon!" NASA, 2004: "Cool! Just so you know, that's kind of expensive." Bush, 2006: "Is a buck fifty enough?" NASA, 2006: "No. And BTW, we're cancelling the shuttles like you asked." Obama, 2009: "Umm, guys? Let's be honest here, going to the moon on a buck fifty isn't going to happen. We need a new plan for what to do with your buck fifty." Congress, 2009: "What buck fifty?" Obama, 2011: "Oh for fuck's sake."
I've talked to lots of NASA employees over the year. Lots of them are really pissed off at Washington politics. But the names that inspire curses are George Bush and Congress. Obama is rarely mentioned.
NASA's woes are a classic case of the Republican game plan: 1) When in power, make grand plans without sweating the details or the cost. 2) When out of power, block all solutions to the problems that arise from your grand plans. 3) When seeking power, blame the opposition for failing to solve the problems you caused.
If you give all of NASA's budget to them, they'll still be poor. Still poor, but their kids will have one less reason to stay in school. It's really hard to buy people up from poverty, but you can teach their kids up from it.
The Slashdot crowd is going to rave that this course should be about hardware, or computer fundamentals, or at least include open-source alternatives. But I disagree: this class does need to exist, so the elderly, the disadvantaged, and the recently immigrated can get some basic workplace skills. It could use a different name, but the content is important. And yes, it does have to be Office. Teaching anything else would be like teaching typing on Dvorak keyboards.
The problem isn't the class, it's that the submitter is required to take it. He/she should be able to get out of it by talking to an advisor, or taking a placement test, or something. Shame on his/her school for being so inflexible.
This is not just annoying, it's the beginning of the end of Ubuntu as free software. No matter how unobtrusive the ads are, if Amazon is paying Ubuntu, Ubuntu is bound to become dependent on that cash stream, which means Amazon controls what happens to Ubuntu. And Amazon has shown little interest in the future of free software.
Now, this isn't entirely a new thing: companies like IBM and Google have been paying for Linux development (in the form of hiring Linux developers) for years. But when an entire distro is financially captured by the biggest online retailer on the planet... that's something new.
Seems to me it's pretty easy to solve the problem of the helium leaking out: fill the drive with helium at low pressure -- just below the lowest atmospheric pressure you intend to use the disk. The helium will try to diffuse out through the metal, but it's an uphill battle. Now all you've got to do is seal the disk so air can't get *in*, which is easy enough, and your drive will last forever. I haven't done the math, but it should work.
"Its a by-product of natural gas production. And what with the way that is growing, the supply coming out of the ground should be increasing as well."
Ah-ah-ah! No! Natural gas and helium are formed in two different kind of rocks, but in a traditional natural gas reservoir, there's a dome of cap rock which traps and pools the gas and keeps it from leaking to the surface. The cap traps both natural gas and helium.
But the growing supply of natural gas in the past few years comes from fracking. There's no cap in a fracked well, just source rock, and so they *won't* produce helium.
Yes. In chemists' jargon, "oxidation" is the process of giving away electrons. The process is named after the most common electron recipient, oxygen, but lots of molecules can be oxidizers.
Or to put it another way, if I mix hydrogen with oxygen, and you mix it with chlorine, and we both add a spark, we'll get pretty much the same effect. Either way, there'll be a tremendous bang, and neither of us will have any eyebrows. Of course, after a few deep breaths, your nose might start bleeding as hydrochloric acid eats your mucous membranes, but that's a separate issue.
One explanation for your first point is that these folks have lived under a dictatorship for their entire lives. They may not really understand that how things work in countries where people can act outside the government. Doesn't excuse it, of course.
But my response to your second point answers the first too. What kind of ignorant asshole disrespects Mohammed? What kind of ignorant Muslim murders innocents in response to heresy? People who are trying to inflame a holy war, that's who.
Here's the deal. The radical Christian right is deliberately insulting Islam to provoke events like this, to convince us moderates that the Muslims are all murderous lunatics. The radical Islamic right is deliberately overreacting with acts of murder, trying to provoke racist hatred or military response from the US, proving to moderate muslims that we're racist gun-happy heathens. The two sides play off each other. Their goal in inciting a holy war is to force the rest of us to choose sides. As the extremists play off each other, they force the moderates into their arms, increasing their power.
I'm a professional scientist with a pile of published papers, and I'm here to say that amateur science is a very good thing. Who are we to tell young Calvin to turn off his inquisitive mind when he hits puberty? The guy who wrote TFA is a *far* more interesting person than the people who're mocking him.
Now, do I believe that he's right, and this *is* a crater? Nope. I suspect it's wishful thinking. Does his work meet the standards of peer-reviewed scientific literature? Definitely not. Does his work meet the standards of Slashdot? I dunno, does Slashdot have standards? All I can say is I'd rather read articles like this than the Apple flame wars or hackneyed political debates that fill the rest of the news feed.
I have a feeling emachineshop.com will refuse to make you anything obviously intended to kill people. Their terms of use allow them to refuse for any reason, and it's just not worth it from a public relations perspective.
I posted elsewhere that the problem with 3d printing enthusiasts is that they think their machines are a new paradigm, which allows them to ignore a civilization's worth of engineering experience.
The guys in 1520 weren't banging rocks and sticks together. They were working from centuries of metalworking experience, and were doing incredible things with metal. Some geek with a glorified hot-glue-gun and some CAD software is not going to be able to match what they were doing. Not without *learning* their techniques rather than rejecting them as old-fashioned.
Their idea is stupid, but you're missing its point. The idea is that guns, more than othermanufactured items, are heavily regulated by state and federal law. The goal is to hack the legal system surrounding gun control, rendering them pointless, in the same way that digital media hacked copyright law, rendering it moot (they say).
I think their plan is stupid (and I said so elsewhere), but there's more to it than just "LET'S MAKE MOAR GUNZ CUZ GUNZ ARE COOL".
Slashdot Mirror
The question is not "how can we learn to do a thousand difficult tasks in zero gee?", but "how can we provide artificial gravity so we don't have to?" We've spent tens of billions of dollars learning to do everything imaginable in microgravity, and mere millions trying to develop a workable centrifugal gravity system for long-duration spaceflight. And Robert Zubrin, divisive as he is, is probably right about why: there's an entire industry of NASA scientists working on solving microgravity problems, and they're not interested in solutions which make their work irrelevant.
It's ironic that the one country in the world most in need of a Marxist revolution is "communist" China.
You're all going to do it anyway, so I'll save you the trouble. Here's her character:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/garrosh/Santiaga/simple
My question is, how the hell can we trust her to work hard for the citizens of Maine when she can't even find the time to pug a few heroic dungeons? Her gear is terrible! Does she even know where the justice point vendor is?
Seriously though, it looks like she played heavily up until a few years ago. I guess she's spent more time lately on real-life issues. Like running for Senate.
Getting it wrong an important part of doing science. Papers with errors should be corrected by new publications, not retracted. The incorrect paper inspired the correct one, and so is a useful part of the dialogue. Also, anyone else who has the same wrong idea can follow the paper trail, see the correction, and avoid making the same mistake again.
Classic but extreme example: the Bohr model of the atom, with the electrons orbiting the nucleus like planets around a star. It's wrong. Very wrong. But we still teach it today, because only by studying it you realize the flaws in the classical description of subatomic particles, and the need for quantum mechanics.
Parent is right. Small errors which don't affect the outcome are published as short "correction" notes. Larger, more subtle errors are corrected by the author and/or whoever noticed he was wrong writing a new paper which critiques the old one. But the original paper remains, because it's a useful part of the dialogue.
(And *that* is why you should always do a reverse bibliography search on any paper you read.)
It's not about cars. It's about *trucks*. Sub-Saharan Africa represents the biggest pool of cheap labor on the planet. Its coastal cities have the potential to become the next Shanghai; its inland cities have the potential to become the next Chengdu a decade later. With wages across the Far East skyrocketing, why aren't manufacturers falling over themselves to build factories in African cities where they can pay their workers 10 cents a day? Because they can't be sure they'll be able to get their raw materials to the factory, get their finished goods out, and keep the lights on.
I'm worried about peak oil too. I don't care if Africa runs its trucks on diesel, biofuel, electricity, or broken promises: what it needs is a reliable technology to get individual cargo containers to any point on the map. And that means trucks of some kind, on reliable paved roads.
The problem I have is that everyone treats Africa as the place to turn their personal interests into a humanitarian project. If I'm a doctor, and I'm in a helping mood, I'll support people building medical clinics in Africa. And when those clinics shut down because they can't get supplies, I never hear about it. If I'm a religious man, I say that what Africa really needs is more churches. And when those churches do what churches have always done, namely provide solace rather than solving problems, I feel like I've done a good deed. And when nerds get in the mood to do good, they decide that what Africa needs is one laptop per child, or robots for learning. And when those high-tech gadgets break down and can't be fixed because nobody can get the parts and tools, the nerds are off playing WoW with a warm glow in their hearts.
By all means, design some robots for Africa. Maybe you'll help some kid learn something. But just remember that when you think first of your personal interests, and second of what Africa needs, you're being selfish. "Selfish humanitariansm" seems like it should be a contradiction in terms, but sadly isn't.
Africa doesn't need robots for its kids. It needs highways, and trucks, and rails, and trains, it needs stable electrical power, it needs industrial water treatment networks. Starting in its coastal cities, and building into the interior. That's how China got where it is today: infrastructure.
Big manned space news of the week: NASA dropped an empty metal can into a pool of water.
I guess this is progress. But over the last few years SpaceX went from zero to human-capable (if not human-rated) spacecraft with just a couple press releases along the way. That's because their payroll is full of engineers, not public relations officials.
I'm the OP, checking in: Yep. But Step 3 is also unusual. Usually party A blames party B for stuff party B did, but the Republicans are faulting Obama for problems the Republicans created, which I've never seen before. Obama's supposed crimes include failing to get the country out of recession, failing to strengthen America's leadership role in foreign affairs, allowing American soldiers' lives to be wasted in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in the present case, failing to implement a viable manned spaceflight program. But the recession, the loss of international respect, the wars, and the ludicrous space program were all created under the Bush administration.
I agree with this 100%. But if your Dad says he'll buy you a jet-ski, your Mom says "sorry honey, we can't afford a jet-ski", and your uncle says "what a horrible Mom, depriving her kid of a jet-ski" --- might as well face it, you're not getting a jet-ski. But at least your Mom was straight with you.
The article's editorializing isn't really fair. No, Romney doesn't have a plan, but the goal of the article isn't to propose a space policy, but to bash Obama's. And it's true that space exploration has taken a hit during the Obama administration, but all the key events took place before his administration.
Bush, 2004: "Screw that space shuttle, boys, we're going back to the moon!"
NASA, 2004: "Cool! Just so you know, that's kind of expensive."
Bush, 2006: "Is a buck fifty enough?"
NASA, 2006: "No. And BTW, we're cancelling the shuttles like you asked."
Obama, 2009: "Umm, guys? Let's be honest here, going to the moon on a buck fifty isn't going to happen. We need a new plan for what to do with your buck fifty."
Congress, 2009: "What buck fifty?"
Obama, 2011: "Oh for fuck's sake."
I've talked to lots of NASA employees over the year. Lots of them are really pissed off at Washington politics. But the names that inspire curses are George Bush and Congress. Obama is rarely mentioned.
NASA's woes are a classic case of the Republican game plan:
1) When in power, make grand plans without sweating the details or the cost.
2) When out of power, block all solutions to the problems that arise from your grand plans.
3) When seeking power, blame the opposition for failing to solve the problems you caused.
If you give all of NASA's budget to them, they'll still be poor. Still poor, but their kids will have one less reason to stay in school. It's really hard to buy people up from poverty, but you can teach their kids up from it.
The Slashdot crowd is going to rave that this course should be about hardware, or computer fundamentals, or at least include open-source alternatives. But I disagree: this class does need to exist, so the elderly, the disadvantaged, and the recently immigrated can get some basic workplace skills. It could use a different name, but the content is important. And yes, it does have to be Office. Teaching anything else would be like teaching typing on Dvorak keyboards.
The problem isn't the class, it's that the submitter is required to take it. He/she should be able to get out of it by talking to an advisor, or taking a placement test, or something. Shame on his/her school for being so inflexible.
This is not just annoying, it's the beginning of the end of Ubuntu as free software. No matter how unobtrusive the ads are, if Amazon is paying Ubuntu, Ubuntu is bound to become dependent on that cash stream, which means Amazon controls what happens to Ubuntu. And Amazon has shown little interest in the future of free software.
Now, this isn't entirely a new thing: companies like IBM and Google have been paying for Linux development (in the form of hiring Linux developers) for years. But when an entire distro is financially captured by the biggest online retailer on the planet... that's something new.
"Apple does this. At least they did from my brief exposure to them. Built right into the main file menu."
Anybody know what this anonymous coward is on about? I've used Macs since 1989, and I have no idea what he's referring to.
Seems to me it's pretty easy to solve the problem of the helium leaking out: fill the drive with helium at low pressure -- just below the lowest atmospheric pressure you intend to use the disk. The helium will try to diffuse out through the metal, but it's an uphill battle. Now all you've got to do is seal the disk so air can't get *in*, which is easy enough, and your drive will last forever. I haven't done the math, but it should work.
"Its a by-product of natural gas production. And what with the way that is growing, the supply coming out of the ground should be increasing as well."
Ah-ah-ah! No! Natural gas and helium are formed in two different kind of rocks, but in a traditional natural gas reservoir, there's a dome of cap rock which traps and pools the gas and keeps it from leaking to the surface. The cap traps both natural gas and helium.
But the growing supply of natural gas in the past few years comes from fracking. There's no cap in a fracked well, just source rock, and so they *won't* produce helium.
Yes. In chemists' jargon, "oxidation" is the process of giving away electrons. The process is named after the most common electron recipient, oxygen, but lots of molecules can be oxidizers.
Or to put it another way, if I mix hydrogen with oxygen, and you mix it with chlorine, and we both add a spark, we'll get pretty much the same effect. Either way, there'll be a tremendous bang, and neither of us will have any eyebrows. Of course, after a few deep breaths, your nose might start bleeding as hydrochloric acid eats your mucous membranes, but that's a separate issue.
One explanation for your first point is that these folks have lived under a dictatorship for their entire lives. They may not really understand that how things work in countries where people can act outside the government. Doesn't excuse it, of course.
But my response to your second point answers the first too. What kind of ignorant asshole disrespects Mohammed? What kind of ignorant Muslim murders innocents in response to heresy? People who are trying to inflame a holy war, that's who.
Here's the deal. The radical Christian right is deliberately insulting Islam to provoke events like this, to convince us moderates that the Muslims are all murderous lunatics. The radical Islamic right is deliberately overreacting with acts of murder, trying to provoke racist hatred or military response from the US, proving to moderate muslims that we're racist gun-happy heathens. The two sides play off each other. Their goal in inciting a holy war is to force the rest of us to choose sides. As the extremists play off each other, they force the moderates into their arms, increasing their power.
Don't play their game.
"$1 million in bitcoins" ... and they say *Romney's* out of touch with the real world?
WHAT. It is a crime, a *crime*, I tell you, that this article doesn't even mention the NASA team's slogan for this phase of the mission.
http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/hasta_la_vesta.asp
I'm a professional scientist with a pile of published papers, and I'm here to say that amateur science is a very good thing. Who are we to tell young Calvin to turn off his inquisitive mind when he hits puberty? The guy who wrote TFA is a *far* more interesting person than the people who're mocking him.
Now, do I believe that he's right, and this *is* a crater? Nope. I suspect it's wishful thinking. Does his work meet the standards of peer-reviewed scientific literature? Definitely not. Does his work meet the standards of Slashdot? I dunno, does Slashdot have standards? All I can say is I'd rather read articles like this than the Apple flame wars or hackneyed political debates that fill the rest of the news feed.
I have a feeling emachineshop.com will refuse to make you anything obviously intended to kill people. Their terms of use allow them to refuse for any reason, and it's just not worth it from a public relations perspective.
I posted elsewhere that the problem with 3d printing enthusiasts is that they think their machines are a new paradigm, which allows them to ignore a civilization's worth of engineering experience.
The guys in 1520 weren't banging rocks and sticks together. They were working from centuries of metalworking experience, and were doing incredible things with metal. Some geek with a glorified hot-glue-gun and some CAD software is not going to be able to match what they were doing. Not without *learning* their techniques rather than rejecting them as old-fashioned.
Their idea is stupid, but you're missing its point. The idea is that guns, more than othermanufactured items, are heavily regulated by state and federal law. The goal is to hack the legal system surrounding gun control, rendering them pointless, in the same way that digital media hacked copyright law, rendering it moot (they say).
I think their plan is stupid (and I said so elsewhere), but there's more to it than just "LET'S MAKE MOAR GUNZ CUZ GUNZ ARE COOL".