Is the scientific reason that gas can take 200,000 years to be pulled in by the most gravitationally massive type of object possible in the universe.
It is for two reasons; first off, gravitational time dilation - time gets slower the closer you get. The gas is orbitting the black hole, which also adds relativistic time dilation.
The gas, in fact, probably orbits at just under escape velocity - thanks to a fun little effect called (IANAA) relativistic frame dragging - basically the black hole drags the fabric of spacetime around itself - and objects within about 1.5 radii of the event horizon start feeling the effect - effectively locking them into a particular path. One way to look at this is to say that time is swallowed by the black hole same as mass - and therefore objects in the vicinity of the black hole fall in because their time arrow points to its dark, dark heart.
This frame dragging should happen at speeds approaching the speed of light - and require comparable amounts of energy to change your frame. There's even some theory that infalling matter will follow gravitational field lines, like you get around a magnet - but I'm not sure how much I believe that...
But being that this guy is using his computer 15 hours a day, I think less flexibility would be better, it would force him to get off the damn thing every once in a while.
Amen to that!!!!
(says the guy that was on his laptop from eight am to ten pm yesterday)
Would that be non-morisette style irony? Or just hypocrisy?
Well astigmatism isn't a rotation of the image (I don't even know what shape of lens you would need to achieve that effect - crazy whirlpool sounds about right though), it's an elongation of the eyeball such that the focal plane no longer lies on the retina. My first optician said that it was as if the eye was made to resemble the shape of a football somewhat...
The distance acuity measurements show how far away from the retina that focal plane is - or how severe the astigmatism is.
Until about a decade ago there was no way to treat astigmatism with contact lenses - they have since developed lenses to correct mild to moderate astigmatism.
I'm considering replacing my home computer with one too.
The problems you mention about ergonomics are non-issues.
See, laptops have these great things called ports on them. They let you plug in desktop peripherals, such as monitors, keyboards, and mice, directly into your laptop.
If you have a fixed location you'd like to use your computer from, a desktop docking station is inexpensive and keeps you from having to plug everything in; just drop your laptop on it and you're good to go.
For those curious, I'm thinking the Alienware Area 51-m is the way to go. I might talk myself into a Sentia before committing however.
Oh and just to compare ergonomics between a desktop and laptop... keep in mind I'm a "special needs" individual (was wheelchair bound for a year and half up until about 2 months ago due to acute joint pain, especially in my right knee - the pain is still there, but much more manageable now)
I can sit at my desk comfortably for anywhere from 15 minutes to about 2 hours before the pain really starts, depending on the barometric pressure, how much rest I got the night before, and how well I'm keeping up with physical therapy.
I can sit in a reclining chair for 30 minutes to 4 hours.
I can sit on a couch with my feet reclined for an hour to about 6 hours.
I can lay in bed prone with my legs straight in front of me forever.
If I move every 30 minutes or so, being careful to excercise the joint while not overdoing things, I can last all day - the important point being that when I sit back down I have to sit in a new posture. My knees should be relaxed and my legs as straight out as possible. Each chair has one (if I'm lucky) position where I'll be semi-comfortable in, and that's it.
As you can see, my laptop affords me flexibility that I've really come to appreciate in the last year and a half. Especially the freedom to change my working position and even furniture easily and frequently. I understand most people aren't in my situation - but there are definitely cases where the laptop can in fact be the more ergonomic option.
both are astigmatisms; technically the right eye would be fine as it is, except you really want both eyes to see at the same fidelity; I get triggered migraines very easily when I don't wear my glasses, even for a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
I spend a lot of time (13+ hours a day) in front of various display devices. Glasses are definitely better than contacts. Even then I still was getting occasional eye strain migraines - I changed the way I use my electrical display devices and that has been very effective in helping with the problem.
Here's what I did. Most of it is just common sense if you think about two facts:
a. In nature, there are exceedingly few light emissive objects. Everything except the sun, the moon, and a few insects, that primitive man would encounter would be illuminated reflectively. The moon is technically reflectively illuminated, but at that distance and intensity it is not much different than light emission.
b. Primitive man probably spent a lot more time looking far away than looking close up, at least until the development of agriculture approximately 30000 years ago.
So here's what I did:
1. Turn brightness down - light reflection has the property that everything is roughly the same brightness. Try to mimic that in your work environment
2. Move away from the screen - your eyes are not meant to focus on something 18 inches away for extremely long periods of time
3. Pay attention to your text colors. Go for highly-readable color schemes with mid to high contrast. Black text on a white background is only mediocre in terms of contrast, especially when that white background is emitting light instead of reflecting it. Red on green (or any primary on any other primary color) can be the worst.
4. Organize your work environment so that you find it easy to find opportunities to look away from the screen - putting your phone on a desk behind you, for instance. In my cube my screen is on the wall that the entrance is on - meaning it's easy for me to glance away and out into the hall frequently
5. Make sure your refresh rate is different from your electric cycle. US is mostly 60 Hz; Europe 50 Hz. Try to go higher than that, and avoid harmonics (for instance, though higher is better, 80 Hz is probably better than 90 Hz, and 90 Hz might just be better than 120 Hz) - the idea being to average out the amount of light entering your eye over time. If your monitor is set to the same cycle as your electricity, your eye muscles will work much harder trying to contract and dilate the pupil 60 times a second to correct for brightness changes.
6. Go to an LCD - though they have a refresh rate, the pixels are always on instead of scanned, meaning that the light output varies far less.
Other than that, do what the other posters mention. Go for a walk once every couple hours. See an eye doctor. Try the eye strain excercises you can find on google. And most importantly, get more sleep! 5 hours isn't anywhere near enough to prevent fatigue - and fatigued eyes are unhappy eyes. Let's not even talk about the effect a long-term abbreviated sleep cycle can have on your sanity...
My Youngest son was buying his drugs ( mostly pot, at least I fucking hope ) from this site. And after hacking into his profile, tracking his so-called friends and online buddies, my wife and I deetermined that the site was mostly being used by him for getting with his drug buddies.
The lady turns off her needie pointedly halfway through to indicate she's ready to give him an interview.
He keeps the thing in his lap for the whole interview and talks over it. You can't actually hear him talking in response to her in depth questions cause every time she finishes talking, he shifts a little and the damn thing goes off again...
If they want to sell these things they need to learn a few interview skills... like taking cues from your interviewer...
Technically, gamma radiation is both a wave and a particle. You can treat it as either and the math works out. One of the ways we know gamma radiation is a particle is that it is ionizing radiation - ionizing EM radiation was first predicted by einstein as a photoelectric effect - a prediction that depended upon treating the radiation as particles
I know for electromagnetic radiation it can be measured in mW/cm^2, not sure what the appropriate exposure unit is for gamma radiation.
Gamma is electromagnetic. mW/cm^2 is one way to measure it. A slightly better way may be grays (.5 Gy = 50% LD), rads, or even curies.
These are all different calibrated ways of measuring radiation and its impact on tissue. for instance, a human that receives half a gray exposure for one minute has a fifty percent chance of dying from it. IIRC, IANAP, YMMV, the only reason I know any of this is I looked it up to comment on that OTHER story...
I just spent about 30 seconds wondering how the US military managed to get a grotesquely huge savage dog, and what roll this gengineered dog might play in radioactive cleanup.
How exactly are electronics affected by this radiation?
Well there are four types of nuclear radiation - you usually get only one or two of these, depending on the cause.
Alpha particles are ionized helium nuclei - they are highly energetic and fast but lose speed quickly in air and do not penetrate solids. These do not affect unexposed electronics
Beta particles are high speed electrons. These can penetrate thin shields and have an ionizing effect on materials. These could with enough exposure affect electronics by ionizing np gates and making them behave erratically
Gamma particles are extremely energetic photons, X-rays are one category of Gamma particles (or, depending on whose classification you like, X-rays are similar to, but less energetic than, Gamma rays). Gamma radiation is penetrating and requires many feet of shielding to prevent. The plus side is this means that Gamma radiation is weakly interacting with materials - but some materials are less transparent that others... particularly, just as metal materials show up on medical X-rays, they tend to absorb Gamma rays. Whenever any conducting material absorbs a photon you can have a photoelectric effect - this photoelectric effect has a similar effect on electronics as beta radiation does
Neutron - neutrons are emitted by a variety of nuclear processes, especially fission reactions. Neutron radiation is almost always man-made, except for a small amount of background radiation from naturally occuring fission, and the slightly larger amount of radiation from a naturally occuring fission reactor - of which we've only found evidence of one, and it formed and ran out of fuel not long after the earth itself formed. Neutrons are subatomic particles with no charge - they penetrate most materials easily, travelling in many cases several feet before colliding with an atomic nucleus. A neutron colliding with a nucleus can do all sorts of things; usually it increases the weight of the atom, making a new isotope. It will ionize atoms, especially smaller atoms whose weight is close to hydrogen-1, by knocking the nucleus around and seperating it from its electrons.
isotopes tend to decay - resulting in secondary radiation such as alpha, beta, and gamma (depending on the exact isotope created - most elements only have one or two stable isotopes) - neutron exposed materials tend to be radioactive for some time. As they decay they tend to transmutate - becoming different materials due to the emission of alpha particles.
They can also re-emit neutron radiation or fission, which transmutates an atom into two new elements and usually emits neutron, alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Neutron bombardment if accompanied by alpha radiation can cause transmutation of light elements through fusion - adding neutrons to a nucleus will increase the weak force, making the nucleus more likely to capture protons from alpha radiation.
Neutron radiation is the most damaging to electronics as it not only can temporarily disrupt electronics through ionisation, but can transmutate materials - there are very few electronic components that continue to work after being transmutated. There is no other element than silicon that creates semiconductor junctions with the same chemistry, for instance. In addition, the residual radiation from neutron bombardment can cause long-term ionisation in electronic components that render them unusuable. It is not feasible in most non-fixed environments to provide adequate neutron shielding, as the amount of shielding required is generally far greater than the load bearing capacity of the device (think inchese or feet of steel or lead plating)
There are other types of radiation, of course - the most noteworthy being neutrino, not for its effect, but for its lack of one - they are so weakly interacting that it takes miles of shielding to block it. But that means, of course, that they are so weakly interacting that they don't have much of an effect on electronics (or people for that matter)
Well, considering the fact that Rogers Wireless is a Canadian company, and as far as I know, doesn't operate in the United States, I'd be deeply disturbed if the FBI stepped in.
Yeah, cause, you know, the US has never gotten involved in foreign policy matters that were completely outside of its jurisdiction. It sure would be disturbing if that started happening...
[/sarcasm]
Seriously folks I'm a US citizen and I'm disgusted at the foreign business we butt our noses into.
Build a stationary tower with it's top floor at the level of a space orbit, and you'll just feel the Earth's gravity.
Actually, not true. As you move away from the center of the earth, the speed of a circular free falling orbit approaches ground speed of the earth's rotation.
Space elevators capitalise on this. So do geosynchronous sattelites.
If you built a stationary tower on the equator and the top floor was at GEO, you would be weightless. In fact, when they build such a thing, it will be a bit higher than that; higher than GEO and you experience acceleration AWAY from earth. The space elevator will capitalise on this, using tension to hold the elevator in balance (rather than resting on the crust of the earth)
If you built such a tower anywhere else on earth you would experience precession directly - the only force you would feel would be due to the fact that your orbit isn't circular - your "weight" would no longer be attracted to the earth beneath your feet, but rather towards the equator.
Seems indeed that many people are stupid.. if we could manipulate gravity.. would not likely need rocket engines..
That is correct - in fact it's a principle part of the theory of relativity. To an inside observer with no knowledge of what's happening outside of his frame of reference, gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable.
So, from a pure macro physics standpoint, yes a machine that can maniuplate gravity would also be a reactionless thruster.
But there is an idea for an antigravity device that would violate this principle; that of a graviton-absorbing (or deflecting) material.
But, then, that's an entirely different idea; nullifying a gravity field as opposed to creating one. Chances are, if you can create one, you can do whatever you want... inertial dampeners, reactionless thrusters, if you're lucky even instant wormholes and warp drive.
For those curious, there is a real theory behind warp drive... it doesn't work quite the same way as on star trek... but the basic idea is to compress space as you move through it, so that you never violate speed of light constraints, but can still move at apparent velocities several times the speed of light... this idea would, of course, require the ability to build quite sophisticated gravity fields. In fact, in the case of warp drive, far more sophisticated than those required to just hold feet to a floor...
It's really a formality - if for instance you were getting laid off and they gave you two weeks notice (I know most companies don't give notice - the good ones do - happened here a while back) they can't compel you to work for the two weeks - though they are required to pay you regardless.
The flip side is if you give your notice, they aren't required to let you work through those two weeks - though they should pay you regardless (unless they're pricks and take the tack of "you-can't-quit-you're-fired!")
Now I understand security is important - but your CIO is obviously just a control freak exhibiting a knee-jerk reaction. Not too unusual; in my experience, most CIO's are control freaks and for most of them, knee-jerk reactions are their sole motivation besides 2 of the following 3: a) golf b) sports car c) 20-something mistress
So don't feel too bad about it; its a universal truth, CIO's are going to be jerks about pretty much everything, it comes with the territory, don't take it personally. The knowledge that the absolute best you can do for the company you work for is to NOT cause any problems, and the first screw up by anyone on your staff means you're probably going to lose your job, tends to make people act that way...
The space of two letter words is pretty full, but as the length of the words increases, the number of words does not increase as fast as the number of possible combinations.
I would contend that the space of two letter words is pretty sparse. I would think that it's when you get into the three and four letter words that you see maximum saturation...
Of course this is all assuming that, for instance, the english spellings of greek letters aren't counted as words...
The information at some of the links indicates it might be a problem with the power supply brick - one poster had three 360s (his and two friends')... one had a very different (color, size, prong size) power cord. That power cord, whichever xbox it was plugged into, wouldn't have a problem.
Sounds like its likely a combination of out-of-spec power conditioning and overheating. The two can reinforce each other AND combine to contribute instability... parts that are hot are less likely to be tolerant to poor power conditioning, and parts that are experiencing power fluctuations tend to produce more heat on the surge cycles.
Let me make this clear; I long ago purged myself of any desire of violence.
The start of my journey was one fateful day nearly 15 years ago when I hurt many people close to me in a violent rage. I vowed on that day to never do harm to another human being. A vow I keep to this day. I was meditating and concentrating on my inner self for several years before I ran across a Zen Buddhist. I found someone else who did these strange things I did and found that most of her thoughts and opinions were things I liked and/or believed myself.
Thank you for your recommendation of the Metta Bhavna; be assured I will look into it. There are many things I detest, some logical and consistent, some not so; and while I do not apologise for feeling and believing the way I do about these things, I appreciate the opportunity to examine these feelings and turn them into more positive things.
I'm going to have to agree with hackwrench here...
Look at it this way, if Jack were really ineffectual at what he did, well he wouldn't be on CNN every time you turn around. And if he were effective at what he did, then there would be plenty of opportunities to disprove him. Instead he's only partly effective, and in this state he is nearly untouchable to guys like me that don't get called by CNN every time some kid decides it's a good idea to murder eight people before lunch...
He gets to go on TV and say "won't someone think of the children!" and "it was satanic video games that made them do this!!!" while I get to sit at home and say "Jesus man you had to hack that video game just to get to that content, give it a rest!" but noone listens to me...
And thus you have found my central conflict; I am a hedonist who follows Buddhist teachings. But I do not believe in reincarnation. So I would be Zen Buddhist, who do not necessarily believe in reincarnation, but I am a hedonist.
This is a conflict I long ago resolved within myself; but I am willing to admit that to anyone else it seems strange. Of course, to most people, I seem strange all the time...
Slashdot Mirror
Is the scientific reason that gas can take 200,000 years to be pulled in by the most gravitationally massive type of object possible in the universe.
It is for two reasons; first off, gravitational time dilation - time gets slower the closer you get. The gas is orbitting the black hole, which also adds relativistic time dilation.
The gas, in fact, probably orbits at just under escape velocity - thanks to a fun little effect called (IANAA) relativistic frame dragging - basically the black hole drags the fabric of spacetime around itself - and objects within about 1.5 radii of the event horizon start feeling the effect - effectively locking them into a particular path. One way to look at this is to say that time is swallowed by the black hole same as mass - and therefore objects in the vicinity of the black hole fall in because their time arrow points to its dark, dark heart.
This frame dragging should happen at speeds approaching the speed of light - and require comparable amounts of energy to change your frame. There's even some theory that infalling matter will follow gravitational field lines, like you get around a magnet - but I'm not sure how much I believe that...
In Soviet Russia, products advertise slashdot!
No?
I can do better
In Soviet Russia, Yakhoff Smirnoff watches TV!!!!
(get it, it's a meta-soviet-russia-joke hahaha)
But being that this guy is using his computer 15 hours a day, I think less flexibility would be better, it would force him to get off the damn thing every once in a while.
Amen to that!!!!
(says the guy that was on his laptop from eight am to ten pm yesterday)
Would that be non-morisette style irony? Or just hypocrisy?
Well astigmatism isn't a rotation of the image (I don't even know what shape of lens you would need to achieve that effect - crazy whirlpool sounds about right though), it's an elongation of the eyeball such that the focal plane no longer lies on the retina. My first optician said that it was as if the eye was made to resemble the shape of a football somewhat...
The distance acuity measurements show how far away from the retina that focal plane is - or how severe the astigmatism is.
Until about a decade ago there was no way to treat astigmatism with contact lenses - they have since developed lenses to correct mild to moderate astigmatism.
My work computer is a laptop.
I'm considering replacing my home computer with one too.
The problems you mention about ergonomics are non-issues.
See, laptops have these great things called ports on them. They let you plug in desktop peripherals, such as monitors, keyboards, and mice, directly into your laptop.
If you have a fixed location you'd like to use your computer from, a desktop docking station is inexpensive and keeps you from having to plug everything in; just drop your laptop on it and you're good to go.
For those curious, I'm thinking the Alienware Area 51-m is the way to go. I might talk myself into a Sentia before committing however.
Oh and just to compare ergonomics between a desktop and laptop... keep in mind I'm a "special needs" individual (was wheelchair bound for a year and half up until about 2 months ago due to acute joint pain, especially in my right knee - the pain is still there, but much more manageable now)
I can sit at my desk comfortably for anywhere from 15 minutes to about 2 hours before the pain really starts, depending on the barometric pressure, how much rest I got the night before, and how well I'm keeping up with physical therapy.
I can sit in a reclining chair for 30 minutes to 4 hours.
I can sit on a couch with my feet reclined for an hour to about 6 hours.
I can lay in bed prone with my legs straight in front of me forever.
If I move every 30 minutes or so, being careful to excercise the joint while not overdoing things, I can last all day - the important point being that when I sit back down I have to sit in a new posture. My knees should be relaxed and my legs as straight out as possible. Each chair has one (if I'm lucky) position where I'll be semi-comfortable in, and that's it.
As you can see, my laptop affords me flexibility that I've really come to appreciate in the last year and a half. Especially the freedom to change my working position and even furniture easily and frequently. I understand most people aren't in my situation - but there are definitely cases where the laptop can in fact be the more ergonomic option.
My right eye is 15/20
My left eye is 90/20
both are astigmatisms; technically the right eye would be fine as it is, except you really want both eyes to see at the same fidelity; I get triggered migraines very easily when I don't wear my glasses, even for a trip to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
I spend a lot of time (13+ hours a day) in front of various display devices. Glasses are definitely better than contacts. Even then I still was getting occasional eye strain migraines - I changed the way I use my electrical display devices and that has been very effective in helping with the problem.
Here's what I did. Most of it is just common sense if you think about two facts:
a. In nature, there are exceedingly few light emissive objects. Everything except the sun, the moon, and a few insects, that primitive man would encounter would be illuminated reflectively. The moon is technically reflectively illuminated, but at that distance and intensity it is not much different than light emission.
b. Primitive man probably spent a lot more time looking far away than looking close up, at least until the development of agriculture approximately 30000 years ago.
So here's what I did:
1. Turn brightness down - light reflection has the property that everything is roughly the same brightness. Try to mimic that in your work environment
2. Move away from the screen - your eyes are not meant to focus on something 18 inches away for extremely long periods of time
3. Pay attention to your text colors. Go for highly-readable color schemes with mid to high contrast. Black text on a white background is only mediocre in terms of contrast, especially when that white background is emitting light instead of reflecting it. Red on green (or any primary on any other primary color) can be the worst.
4. Organize your work environment so that you find it easy to find opportunities to look away from the screen - putting your phone on a desk behind you, for instance. In my cube my screen is on the wall that the entrance is on - meaning it's easy for me to glance away and out into the hall frequently
5. Make sure your refresh rate is different from your electric cycle. US is mostly 60 Hz; Europe 50 Hz. Try to go higher than that, and avoid harmonics (for instance, though higher is better, 80 Hz is probably better than 90 Hz, and 90 Hz might just be better than 120 Hz) - the idea being to average out the amount of light entering your eye over time. If your monitor is set to the same cycle as your electricity, your eye muscles will work much harder trying to contract and dilate the pupil 60 times a second to correct for brightness changes.
6. Go to an LCD - though they have a refresh rate, the pixels are always on instead of scanned, meaning that the light output varies far less.
Other than that, do what the other posters mention. Go for a walk once every couple hours. See an eye doctor. Try the eye strain excercises you can find on google. And most importantly, get more sleep! 5 hours isn't anywhere near enough to prevent fatigue - and fatigued eyes are unhappy eyes. Let's not even talk about the effect a long-term abbreviated sleep cycle can have on your sanity...
My Youngest son was buying his drugs ( mostly pot, at least I fucking hope ) from this site. And after hacking into his profile, tracking his so-called friends and online buddies, my wife and I deetermined that the site was mostly being used by him for getting with his drug buddies.
;)
So... who was that friend again?
hehehe just kidding
Fox to approach the negotiations with some humility.
Fox.humility = true;
Runtime error - object does not support this property or method
The lady turns off her needie pointedly halfway through to indicate she's ready to give him an interview.
He keeps the thing in his lap for the whole interview and talks over it. You can't actually hear him talking in response to her in depth questions cause every time she finishes talking, he shifts a little and the damn thing goes off again...
If they want to sell these things they need to learn a few interview skills... like taking cues from your interviewer...
Technically, gamma radiation is both a wave and a particle. You can treat it as either and the math works out. One of the ways we know gamma radiation is a particle is that it is ionizing radiation - ionizing EM radiation was first predicted by einstein as a photoelectric effect - a prediction that depended upon treating the radiation as particles
I know for electromagnetic radiation it can be measured in mW/cm^2, not sure what the appropriate exposure unit is for gamma radiation.
Gamma is electromagnetic. mW/cm^2 is one way to measure it. A slightly better way may be grays (.5 Gy = 50% LD), rads, or even curies.
These are all different calibrated ways of measuring radiation and its impact on tissue. for instance, a human that receives half a gray exposure for one minute has a fifty percent chance of dying from it. IIRC, IANAP, YMMV, the only reason I know any of this is I looked it up to comment on that OTHER story...
oh bad snarky bad snarky hahaha
Dyslexia strikes again
Especially the 10-foot poll bit.
I just spent about 30 seconds wondering how the US military managed to get a grotesquely huge savage dog, and what roll this gengineered dog might play in radioactive cleanup.
How exactly are electronics affected by this radiation?
Well there are four types of nuclear radiation - you usually get only one or two of these, depending on the cause.
Alpha particles are ionized helium nuclei - they are highly energetic and fast but lose speed quickly in air and do not penetrate solids. These do not affect unexposed electronics
Beta particles are high speed electrons. These can penetrate thin shields and have an ionizing effect on materials. These could with enough exposure affect electronics by ionizing np gates and making them behave erratically
Gamma particles are extremely energetic photons, X-rays are one category of Gamma particles (or, depending on whose classification you like, X-rays are similar to, but less energetic than, Gamma rays). Gamma radiation is penetrating and requires many feet of shielding to prevent. The plus side is this means that Gamma radiation is weakly interacting with materials - but some materials are less transparent that others... particularly, just as metal materials show up on medical X-rays, they tend to absorb Gamma rays. Whenever any conducting material absorbs a photon you can have a photoelectric effect - this photoelectric effect has a similar effect on electronics as beta radiation does
Neutron - neutrons are emitted by a variety of nuclear processes, especially fission reactions. Neutron radiation is almost always man-made, except for a small amount of background radiation from naturally occuring fission, and the slightly larger amount of radiation from a naturally occuring fission reactor - of which we've only found evidence of one, and it formed and ran out of fuel not long after the earth itself formed. Neutrons are subatomic particles with no charge - they penetrate most materials easily, travelling in many cases several feet before colliding with an atomic nucleus. A neutron colliding with a nucleus can do all sorts of things; usually it increases the weight of the atom, making a new isotope. It will ionize atoms, especially smaller atoms whose weight is close to hydrogen-1, by knocking the nucleus around and seperating it from its electrons.
isotopes tend to decay - resulting in secondary radiation such as alpha, beta, and gamma (depending on the exact isotope created - most elements only have one or two stable isotopes) - neutron exposed materials tend to be radioactive for some time. As they decay they tend to transmutate - becoming different materials due to the emission of alpha particles.
They can also re-emit neutron radiation or fission, which transmutates an atom into two new elements and usually emits neutron, alpha, beta, and gamma radiation. Neutron bombardment if accompanied by alpha radiation can cause transmutation of light elements through fusion - adding neutrons to a nucleus will increase the weak force, making the nucleus more likely to capture protons from alpha radiation.
Neutron radiation is the most damaging to electronics as it not only can temporarily disrupt electronics through ionisation, but can transmutate materials - there are very few electronic components that continue to work after being transmutated. There is no other element than silicon that creates semiconductor junctions with the same chemistry, for instance. In addition, the residual radiation from neutron bombardment can cause long-term ionisation in electronic components that render them unusuable. It is not feasible in most non-fixed environments to provide adequate neutron shielding, as the amount of shielding required is generally far greater than the load bearing capacity of the device (think inchese or feet of steel or lead plating)
There are other types of radiation, of course - the most noteworthy being neutrino, not for its effect, but for its lack of one - they are so weakly interacting that it takes miles of shielding to block it. But that means, of course, that they are so weakly interacting that they don't have much of an effect on electronics (or people for that matter)
Well, considering the fact that Rogers Wireless is a Canadian company, and as far as I know, doesn't operate in the United States, I'd be deeply disturbed if the FBI stepped in.
Yeah, cause, you know, the US has never gotten involved in foreign policy matters that were completely outside of its jurisdiction. It sure would be disturbing if that started happening...
[/sarcasm]
Seriously folks I'm a US citizen and I'm disgusted at the foreign business we butt our noses into.
If two science fiction nerds on slashdot can get confused about orbital mechanics, who can blame idiots on reality tv?
I believe you mean jiggawatts
I mean WTF is a gigawatt?
Build a stationary tower with it's top floor at the level of a space orbit, and you'll just feel the Earth's gravity.
Actually, not true. As you move away from the center of the earth, the speed of a circular free falling orbit approaches ground speed of the earth's rotation.
Space elevators capitalise on this. So do geosynchronous sattelites.
If you built a stationary tower on the equator and the top floor was at GEO, you would be weightless. In fact, when they build such a thing, it will be a bit higher than that; higher than GEO and you experience acceleration AWAY from earth. The space elevator will capitalise on this, using tension to hold the elevator in balance (rather than resting on the crust of the earth)
If you built such a tower anywhere else on earth you would experience precession directly - the only force you would feel would be due to the fact that your orbit isn't circular - your "weight" would no longer be attracted to the earth beneath your feet, but rather towards the equator.
Seems indeed that many people are stupid.. if we could manipulate gravity.. would not likely need rocket engines..
That is correct - in fact it's a principle part of the theory of relativity. To an inside observer with no knowledge of what's happening outside of his frame of reference, gravity and acceleration are indistinguishable.
So, from a pure macro physics standpoint, yes a machine that can maniuplate gravity would also be a reactionless thruster.
But there is an idea for an antigravity device that would violate this principle; that of a graviton-absorbing (or deflecting) material.
But, then, that's an entirely different idea; nullifying a gravity field as opposed to creating one. Chances are, if you can create one, you can do whatever you want... inertial dampeners, reactionless thrusters, if you're lucky even instant wormholes and warp drive.
For those curious, there is a real theory behind warp drive... it doesn't work quite the same way as on star trek... but the basic idea is to compress space as you move through it, so that you never violate speed of light constraints, but can still move at apparent velocities several times the speed of light... this idea would, of course, require the ability to build quite sophisticated gravity fields. In fact, in the case of warp drive, far more sophisticated than those required to just hold feet to a floor...
It's really a formality - if for instance you were getting laid off and they gave you two weeks notice (I know most companies don't give notice - the good ones do - happened here a while back) they can't compel you to work for the two weeks - though they are required to pay you regardless.
The flip side is if you give your notice, they aren't required to let you work through those two weeks - though they should pay you regardless (unless they're pricks and take the tack of "you-can't-quit-you're-fired!")
Now I understand security is important - but your CIO is obviously just a control freak exhibiting a knee-jerk reaction. Not too unusual; in my experience, most CIO's are control freaks and for most of them, knee-jerk reactions are their sole motivation besides 2 of the following 3:
a) golf
b) sports car
c) 20-something mistress
So don't feel too bad about it; its a universal truth, CIO's are going to be jerks about pretty much everything, it comes with the territory, don't take it personally. The knowledge that the absolute best you can do for the company you work for is to NOT cause any problems, and the first screw up by anyone on your staff means you're probably going to lose your job, tends to make people act that way...
The space of two letter words is pretty full, but as the length of the words increases, the number of words does not increase as fast as the number of possible combinations.
I would contend that the space of two letter words is pretty sparse. I would think that it's when you get into the three and four letter words that you see maximum saturation...
Of course this is all assuming that, for instance, the english spellings of greek letters aren't counted as words...
The information at some of the links indicates it might be a problem with the power supply brick - one poster had three 360s (his and two friends')... one had a very different (color, size, prong size) power cord. That power cord, whichever xbox it was plugged into, wouldn't have a problem.
Sounds like its likely a combination of out-of-spec power conditioning and overheating. The two can reinforce each other AND combine to contribute instability... parts that are hot are less likely to be tolerant to poor power conditioning, and parts that are experiencing power fluctuations tend to produce more heat on the surge cycles.
Let me make this clear; I long ago purged myself of any desire of violence.
The start of my journey was one fateful day nearly 15 years ago when I hurt many people close to me in a violent rage. I vowed on that day to never do harm to another human being. A vow I keep to this day. I was meditating and concentrating on my inner self for several years before I ran across a Zen Buddhist. I found someone else who did these strange things I did and found that most of her thoughts and opinions were things I liked and/or believed myself.
Thank you for your recommendation of the Metta Bhavna; be assured I will look into it. There are many things I detest, some logical and consistent, some not so; and while I do not apologise for feeling and believing the way I do about these things, I appreciate the opportunity to examine these feelings and turn them into more positive things.
I'm going to have to agree with hackwrench here...
Look at it this way, if Jack were really ineffectual at what he did, well he wouldn't be on CNN every time you turn around. And if he were effective at what he did, then there would be plenty of opportunities to disprove him. Instead he's only partly effective, and in this state he is nearly untouchable to guys like me that don't get called by CNN every time some kid decides it's a good idea to murder eight people before lunch...
He gets to go on TV and say "won't someone think of the children!" and "it was satanic video games that made them do this!!!" while I get to sit at home and say "Jesus man you had to hack that video game just to get to that content, give it a rest!" but noone listens to me...
And thus you have found my central conflict; I am a hedonist who follows Buddhist teachings. But I do not believe in reincarnation. So I would be Zen Buddhist, who do not necessarily believe in reincarnation, but I am a hedonist.
This is a conflict I long ago resolved within myself; but I am willing to admit that to anyone else it seems strange. Of course, to most people, I seem strange all the time...