My degree is in geology; while I have no problem with the idea that some of the deposits came from asteroids and the like, there are far too many other ways that many of these deposits can be formed here on earth. I know that for precious metals like gold and silver, hydro-thermal deposits are quite common sources of these ores (with a large number of these being found in or around granite sources.)
The question isn't really about where the deposits near the surface come from; these are almost always the product of circulation of water/rock through the crust and upper mantle, as you suggest. The question is why these very dense minerals are available in the upper mantle/crust to be deposited in the first place. Going by density alone, one would expect that the same processes that resulted in an iron/nickel core during early stages of the formation of the Earth would result in the majority of precious metals also being incorporated into the core - after all, the specific gravity of iron and nickel are only ~7.5-8.5, while gold and platinum are ~18-21. The fact that this isn't the case could be explained if the gold/silver/etc. we see in deposits near the surface (and the parent source scattered throughout the crust and upper mantle) is the result of enrichment from meteor impacts after the differentiation/stratification of the Earth into core/mantle/crust.
Of course, iron and nickel are widely available near the surface too, so I'm not sure that a mystery really exists here - obviously there could be some precious metals incorporated into the core, and some that remained near the surface by being parts of melts of sufficiently low density or being bonded to oxygen or sulfur or other low-density elements.
While I'm sure that some precious metals have arrived from space after the earth's accretion, I think it's rather a stretch to think that the concentration in places like South Dakota or Alaska/Yukon are the result of impact events.
It's true that these elements settled into lower strata, but it must also be remembered that many volcanic events are fueled by plumes of material that emanate from the core itself (the Yellowstone Caldera is believed to be such). That certain metals were concentrated in the lower strata during Earth's early formation does not mean that 100% of them stayed there.
I think there is a slight misunderstanding here. Even the so-called mantle "superplumes" only originate at the core-mantle boundary; it is not generally considered (afaik) that they actually involve any significant amount of core material. The density difference between the liquid outer core and the lower mantle is too great for significant amounts of the core to join an upwelling through the less-dense mantle, even if significantly hotter. These plumes are generally considered to be made up of mantle material that is greatly heated (through direct contact with/close proximity to the core) and which forms a large plume rising through the mantle.
For example, when Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at Associated Bank, deployed just three SSDs for his B.I. applications, the flash storage outperformed 60 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives in small-block reads. But when Marbes used the SSDs for large-block random reads and any writes, 'the 60 15K spindles crushed the SSDs,' he said,"
So when you need lots of small, random reads, 3x SSDs beat 60x HDDs. Most of the time is spent seeking the file on the HDDs, your ~4.6 ms random seek time is an order of magnitude or more slower than the flash-based drives. No surprise here.
When you are just transferring large files, most of the time is spent actually transferring data. A modern SSD might manage 300-400 MB/s read, but 20x as many HDDs are still going to beat the crap out of them.
The only mildly surprising part is that part about the HDDs winning for all writes, but I guess that really depends on how the test is set up - unless you are actually writing to random parts of the HDD, it is basically a straight-up write operation, so only throughput matters - and again, 60x HDDs are going to beat 3x SSDs (though it is important to note that SSDs are significantly slower at writing than reading in general, although still much faster than an HDD on an individual basis).
According to the Netflix FAQ, no Roku device supports streaming subtitles.
I'd link to the FAQ, but there doesn't appear to be a way to do that, so instead, here's the list of devices that support subtitles:
* PC/Mac * PS3 * Wii * Google TV Devices such as Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV * Boxee Box by D-Link * iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
Note that on the PS3 at least, you have to turn on subtitles before starting to stream, and if subtitles aren't available, the option is just missing entirely.
So they claim that the PS3 supports their streaming subtitles, and yet I haven't seen a single movie that actually offers streaming subtitles. Hong Kong movies - dubbed. Anime - dubbed. Girl w/ Dragon Tattoo (all three) - dubbed. Where is this mysterious subtitled Netflix content available? It drives me crazy - even when they have things I want to watch, I can't (well, won't), because they insist on only offering dubbed versions. I wish there was a feedback button for every originally foreign language movie they have saying something like "Give me subtitles!" Instead I always say that audio/video were out of sync. Somehow I don't think they get it.
It's too bad that Good Thoughts won't help these companies out.
They don't need 'Good Thoughts', they need a viable business plan.
Of course that's not actually possible with 'green technology' because very little of it makes any financial sense.
What do you mean, they had an awesome business plan. Talk big, attract the interest of the government who offers to guarantee your loans, max out that new credit line and transfer the funds to your board, executives, and "supplier" cronies.
On a more serious note, it seems to me that with an emerging technology like this it would make more sense for the government to put in steady orders rather than directly subsidize the company. If $500 million of guaranteed orders over a couple of years aren't enough to keep them stable and/or growing, then not much is. Plus, that would at least leave the government with the useful (if probably overpriced) products at the end, rather than having nothing (well, they may have a share of whatever equity is left in the company after creditors are paid off - which I somehow think will be very little, see baseless accusations above).
Just wanted to say thanks for your years of hard work in creating and maintaining the site that, to me, embodies what the internet is all about. A great place to discuss ideas and be exposed to new and interesting information. I can't think of any other sites (well, besides Google) that I've been visiting regularly for 10+ years.
I'm sad to see you go, and hope that you find success in future endeavors.
your faithful readers are now super concerned about the future without any founders direction!
It's okay, now we can have endless discussions about whether such-and-such story submission or minor alteration in site design is in keeping with the founders' vision.
a fair number of those "students" are funded by PRC government; for them, it's just a job. the roof over their head and the food on their table are paid for by PRC. so really, is it a surprise that they're out in force whenever anyone disagree with the current party line?
I'm pretty sure nearly all of the Chinese students here are funded by the Chinese government. Out of state tuition is a bitch.
Oh, did you mean that they are specifically paid to also protest?
No, you are misinterpreting that statement. The NRC said that there was a 1/22,000 chance of a large enough earthquake occurring that could possibly cause core damage:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission's estimate of the risk each year of an earthquake intense enough to cause core damage to the reactor at North Anna was 1 in 22,727, according to an NRC study published in August 2010.[9][10]
Note core damage does not equal core breech. Furthermore just because a large enough earthquake to possibly cause core damage occurs does not necessitate that core damage does occur.
You're right about damage vs. breach, but that wasn't really my question. I just find it ironic that just after they did the study, apparently the largest ever recorded earthquake in the region strikes. The risk estimate for damage to the core is based on shaking power at various frequency bands (actually, I think specific frequencies, like 1 Hz and 5 Hz and 10 Hz), and I am just wondering how the shaking from this quake compares to their estimates. Unfortunately I don't think that USGS publishes such frequency-specific shaking intensity data (if they even generally collect it).
Actually, from reading the NRC document, it looks like the damage probability for the North Anna plant was estimated from peak ground acceleration, not from shaking intensity at the various frequencies as some of the others were. From USGS shaking intensity maps it appears that peak ground acceleration at the plant was in the range of 0.04-0.09 g's. According to the NRC quake risk document, the North Anna plant has a 1% chance of failure at 0.16 g's, so shaking from this should have been well under what would be expected to cause damage. I just wonder how this new data point changes their risk calculations.
The USGS site has it occurring a few minutes earlier - 1:51pm - while here we say 1:58pm. Not sure where the slashdot article gets its time from, or what the discrepancy comes from...
Probably depends on where the observer is. USGS puts in the time at the epicenter (theoretical, back calculated from when it was detected at whatever seismometers were used for the location fix). P-wave travel time from the epicenter to New York, for example, is about 1 minute (theoretical). Most people that far away probably wouldn't have felt the p-wave, but rather the S-wave, which takes significantly longer to travel. I would guess the 1:58 is the arrival time of the S-waves at whatever place was reporting it.
Yeah, I was wondering why this is even news. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake is just not that big of a deal. I always laugh when the East Coast based news outlets make a big deal out of such small earthquakes.
I get letting it be local news, but this is hardly worth talking about on a national level. The discussion that needs to happen is on the East Coast where they think they're impervious to earthquakes, not nationally. The rest of us know better.
I'm from California, and live here still; a 5.8 would be all over the news unless it was in the middle of East Bumfuck, San Bernardino County. That, and on the east coast you can generally feel the shaking from a lot farther away. Oh, and there's the fact that this is the largest earthquake ever recorded in that area (though I'm sure there is paleoseismic evidence of larger quakes), coupled with buildings on the east coast not generally being constructed to withstand even moderate quakes (by California standards), there is the potential for significant damage at least in the immediate area of the epicenter.
So yes, I know that in California we generally take these things in stride (though I guarantee you would be talking about a 5.8 if it hit near you), but just quit with the bullshit.
Nice. Apparently it was just rated as having a 1/22,000 chance or so of suffering a core breach from seismic activity. I wonder what they were basing it on - a 5.9 is pretty damn big for that area.
Or how about the Boeing 787, their next generation mid body plane? Expensive little thing, because of all the carbon fibre, and has had more than a few delays in delivery (if it gets certified it'll start shipping fourth quarter of this year). Yet despite that they still have 827 orders for the thing.
Seems like Boeing is doing just fine when it comes to aircraft, in particular making aircraft companies actually want.
Yes, let's look at the 787. Designed from the ground up to make use of sub-assemblies from the lowest bidder, with only final assembly taking place in the U.S. Apparently the only part that Boeing actually builds is the vertical stabilizer (with the rudder and vertical stabilizer leading edge built in China). Sure, for now a significant portion of the aircraft is built in the U.S. (maybe 50%, if that), but that can change at any time as manufacturers gain experience.
Well, let's just say, I would be reluctant to go to a black doctor and would be more inclined to go to a doctor from India. Does that make me a racist?
Well, by definition, yes. You are basing the decision on race, rather than the actual qualifications of the hypothetical doctors you are choosing between. Whether that racism has a real and logical base, as you claim, is a somewhat separate issue - it is still racist to make the choice based on race alone.
Why are there names at all on grant applications? Shouldn't the quality of the thing be able to stand up by itself?
Because past work of the investigator is part of what is factored into the strength of the application, the thinking being that someone who has successfully conducted research projects in the past and produced solid results is more likely to be successful than someone who has no track record.
I don't know how they review grants at NIH, but I know that for some other institutions there are several groups of reviewers. One is more of an administrative group, which rates the strength of the applicants based on previous work and institutional affiliation (some dude working in his garage may be highly technically competent and write an excellent proposal, but if he/she doesn't have access to the facilities necessary to actually carry out the work it doesn't make sense to fund their grant proposal). A separate group, usually a collection of people working in the specific field, then get the applications with names and identifying information redacted and give a rating based on the content of the proposal. A magic formula is then used to combine the ratings into a final ranking to decide which applications get funded.
Open cable cards will hopefully set us free. If not, sic the bureaucrats on your cable company.
Miraculously, the cost to rent a card suddenly increased to the price they used to charge for the entire box.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but as far as I can tell the new rules say nothing about what the cable companies may charge for the cards; I wouldn't expect to see any reduction on monthly bills for someone renting a card instead of a box.
Parent is trolling or joking or something, it's not out until 11/11
Parent was suggesting that people should plan on pirating Skyrim in retaliation for Bethesda/Zenimax's actions. Typical juvenile reaction.
Anyway, it isn't like Bethesda is trying to sue Notch into the ground. They are suing him to change the name of his upcoming (not released) game. I don't exactly agree with them, but I think that there is enough to their claim not to reject out of hand the notion that a fantasy-themed computer game called "Scrolls" could potentially cause some amount of confusion with a long-running series of fantasy-themed computer games called "Elder Scrolls".
"It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean's tides than comet Elenin ever will."
No kidding. What the hell kind of subcompact can blot out the sun and cause the tectonic plates to shift?
Slashdot Mirror
If you paid money for it, then you are allowed to complain all you want.
If you didn't pay money for it, you're free to critique it. But NO COMPLAINING!
My degree is in geology; while I have no problem with the idea that some of the deposits came from asteroids and the like, there are far too many other ways that many of these deposits can be formed here on earth. I know that for precious metals like gold and silver, hydro-thermal deposits are quite common sources of these ores (with a large number of these being found in or around granite sources.)
The question isn't really about where the deposits near the surface come from; these are almost always the product of circulation of water/rock through the crust and upper mantle, as you suggest. The question is why these very dense minerals are available in the upper mantle/crust to be deposited in the first place. Going by density alone, one would expect that the same processes that resulted in an iron/nickel core during early stages of the formation of the Earth would result in the majority of precious metals also being incorporated into the core - after all, the specific gravity of iron and nickel are only ~7.5-8.5, while gold and platinum are ~18-21. The fact that this isn't the case could be explained if the gold/silver/etc. we see in deposits near the surface (and the parent source scattered throughout the crust and upper mantle) is the result of enrichment from meteor impacts after the differentiation/stratification of the Earth into core/mantle/crust.
Of course, iron and nickel are widely available near the surface too, so I'm not sure that a mystery really exists here - obviously there could be some precious metals incorporated into the core, and some that remained near the surface by being parts of melts of sufficiently low density or being bonded to oxygen or sulfur or other low-density elements.
While I'm sure that some precious metals have arrived from space after the earth's accretion, I think it's rather a stretch to think that the concentration in places like South Dakota or Alaska/Yukon are the result of impact events.
It's true that these elements settled into lower strata, but it must also be remembered that many volcanic events are fueled by plumes of material that emanate from the core itself (the Yellowstone Caldera is believed to be such). That certain metals were concentrated in the lower strata during Earth's early formation does not mean that 100% of them stayed there.
I think there is a slight misunderstanding here. Even the so-called mantle "superplumes" only originate at the core-mantle boundary; it is not generally considered (afaik) that they actually involve any significant amount of core material. The density difference between the liquid outer core and the lower mantle is too great for significant amounts of the core to join an upwelling through the less-dense mantle, even if significantly hotter. These plumes are generally considered to be made up of mantle material that is greatly heated (through direct contact with/close proximity to the core) and which forms a large plume rising through the mantle.
4TB is where it's at!
For example, when Dan Marbes, a systems engineer at Associated Bank, deployed just three SSDs for his B.I. applications, the flash storage outperformed 60 15,000rpm Fibre Channel disk drives in small-block reads. But when Marbes used the SSDs for large-block random reads and any writes, 'the 60 15K spindles crushed the SSDs,' he said,"
So when you need lots of small, random reads, 3x SSDs beat 60x HDDs. Most of the time is spent seeking the file on the HDDs, your ~4.6 ms random seek time is an order of magnitude or more slower than the flash-based drives. No surprise here.
When you are just transferring large files, most of the time is spent actually transferring data. A modern SSD might manage 300-400 MB/s read, but 20x as many HDDs are still going to beat the crap out of them.
The only mildly surprising part is that part about the HDDs winning for all writes, but I guess that really depends on how the test is set up - unless you are actually writing to random parts of the HDD, it is basically a straight-up write operation, so only throughput matters - and again, 60x HDDs are going to beat 3x SSDs (though it is important to note that SSDs are significantly slower at writing than reading in general, although still much faster than an HDD on an individual basis).
Now I won't be allowed to wear shoes when I sign on to PSN.
According to the Netflix FAQ, no Roku device supports streaming subtitles.
I'd link to the FAQ, but there doesn't appear to be a way to do that, so instead, here's the list of devices that support subtitles:
* PC/Mac
* PS3
* Wii
* Google TV Devices such as Logitech Revue and Sony Internet TV
* Boxee Box by D-Link
* iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
Note that on the PS3 at least, you have to turn on subtitles before starting to stream, and if subtitles aren't available, the option is just missing entirely.
So they claim that the PS3 supports their streaming subtitles, and yet I haven't seen a single movie that actually offers streaming subtitles. Hong Kong movies - dubbed. Anime - dubbed. Girl w/ Dragon Tattoo (all three) - dubbed. Where is this mysterious subtitled Netflix content available? It drives me crazy - even when they have things I want to watch, I can't (well, won't), because they insist on only offering dubbed versions. I wish there was a feedback button for every originally foreign language movie they have saying something like "Give me subtitles!" Instead I always say that audio/video were out of sync. Somehow I don't think they get it.
It's too bad that Good Thoughts won't help these companies out.
They don't need 'Good Thoughts', they need a viable business plan.
Of course that's not actually possible with 'green technology' because very little of it makes any financial sense.
What do you mean, they had an awesome business plan. Talk big, attract the interest of the government who offers to guarantee your loans, max out that new credit line and transfer the funds to your board, executives, and "supplier" cronies.
On a more serious note, it seems to me that with an emerging technology like this it would make more sense for the government to put in steady orders rather than directly subsidize the company. If $500 million of guaranteed orders over a couple of years aren't enough to keep them stable and/or growing, then not much is. Plus, that would at least leave the government with the useful (if probably overpriced) products at the end, rather than having nothing (well, they may have a share of whatever equity is left in the company after creditors are paid off - which I somehow think will be very little, see baseless accusations above).
IMO, while not as good as decent local places, the "new" Dominoes pizza is much better than it used to be.
I agree. Instead of "absolutely awful", it has climbed to the level of "merely dreadful".
Actually not that bad. I would willingly eat it, though not if there is any other pizza available (well, maybe not Pizza Hut).
Ad? I see this more as a warning: Don't do lunar tourism early on - the only pizza there will be Dominos...
Yes, but its safe to assume there will also be a Taco Bell and a Chinese place.
Well, if you consider Panda Express to be Chinese, anyway.
Just wanted to say thanks for your years of hard work in creating and maintaining the site that, to me, embodies what the internet is all about. A great place to discuss ideas and be exposed to new and interesting information. I can't think of any other sites (well, besides Google) that I've been visiting regularly for 10+ years.
I'm sad to see you go, and hope that you find success in future endeavors.
your faithful readers are now super concerned about the future without any founders direction!
It's okay, now we can have endless discussions about whether such-and-such story submission or minor alteration in site design is in keeping with the founders' vision.
a fair number of those "students" are funded by PRC government; for them, it's just a job. the roof over their head and the food on their table are paid for by PRC. so really, is it a surprise that they're out in force whenever anyone disagree with the current party line?
I'm pretty sure nearly all of the Chinese students here are funded by the Chinese government. Out of state tuition is a bitch.
Oh, did you mean that they are specifically paid to also protest?
No, you are misinterpreting that statement. The NRC said that there was a 1/22,000 chance of a large enough earthquake occurring that could possibly cause core damage:
Note core damage does not equal core breech. Furthermore just because a large enough earthquake to possibly cause core damage occurs does not necessitate that core damage does occur.
You're right about damage vs. breach, but that wasn't really my question. I just find it ironic that just after they did the study, apparently the largest ever recorded earthquake in the region strikes. The risk estimate for damage to the core is based on shaking power at various frequency bands (actually, I think specific frequencies, like 1 Hz and 5 Hz and 10 Hz), and I am just wondering how the shaking from this quake compares to their estimates. Unfortunately I don't think that USGS publishes such frequency-specific shaking intensity data (if they even generally collect it).
Actually, from reading the NRC document, it looks like the damage probability for the North Anna plant was estimated from peak ground acceleration, not from shaking intensity at the various frequencies as some of the others were. From USGS shaking intensity maps it appears that peak ground acceleration at the plant was in the range of 0.04-0.09 g's. According to the NRC quake risk document, the North Anna plant has a 1% chance of failure at 0.16 g's, so shaking from this should have been well under what would be expected to cause damage. I just wonder how this new data point changes their risk calculations.
The USGS site has it occurring a few minutes earlier - 1:51pm - while here we say 1:58pm. Not sure where the slashdot article gets its time from, or what the discrepancy comes from...
Probably depends on where the observer is. USGS puts in the time at the epicenter (theoretical, back calculated from when it was detected at whatever seismometers were used for the location fix). P-wave travel time from the epicenter to New York, for example, is about 1 minute (theoretical). Most people that far away probably wouldn't have felt the p-wave, but rather the S-wave, which takes significantly longer to travel. I would guess the 1:58 is the arrival time of the S-waves at whatever place was reporting it.
Yeah, I was wondering why this is even news. A 5.8 magnitude earthquake is just not that big of a deal. I always laugh when the East Coast based news outlets make a big deal out of such small earthquakes.
I get letting it be local news, but this is hardly worth talking about on a national level. The discussion that needs to happen is on the East Coast where they think they're impervious to earthquakes, not nationally. The rest of us know better.
I'm from California, and live here still; a 5.8 would be all over the news unless it was in the middle of East Bumfuck, San Bernardino County. That, and on the east coast you can generally feel the shaking from a lot farther away. Oh, and there's the fact that this is the largest earthquake ever recorded in that area (though I'm sure there is paleoseismic evidence of larger quakes), coupled with buildings on the east coast not generally being constructed to withstand even moderate quakes (by California standards), there is the potential for significant damage at least in the immediate area of the epicenter.
So yes, I know that in California we generally take these things in stride (though I guarantee you would be talking about a 5.8 if it hit near you), but just quit with the bullshit.
The epicenter of the earthquake was apparently just a few miles away from North Anna Nuclear Power Plant.
Nice. Apparently it was just rated as having a 1/22,000 chance or so of suffering a core breach from seismic activity. I wonder what they were basing it on - a 5.9 is pretty damn big for that area.
Or how about the Boeing 787, their next generation mid body plane? Expensive little thing, because of all the carbon fibre, and has had more than a few delays in delivery (if it gets certified it'll start shipping fourth quarter of this year). Yet despite that they still have 827 orders for the thing.
Seems like Boeing is doing just fine when it comes to aircraft, in particular making aircraft companies actually want.
Yes, let's look at the 787. Designed from the ground up to make use of sub-assemblies from the lowest bidder, with only final assembly taking place in the U.S. Apparently the only part that Boeing actually builds is the vertical stabilizer (with the rudder and vertical stabilizer leading edge built in China). Sure, for now a significant portion of the aircraft is built in the U.S. (maybe 50%, if that), but that can change at any time as manufacturers gain experience.
Adjusted for inflation? What, are we going to have to pay $140 in 1972 dollars for the next version of Windows or something?
Well, let's just say, I would be reluctant to go to a black doctor and would be more inclined to go to a doctor from India. Does that make me a racist?
Well, by definition, yes. You are basing the decision on race, rather than the actual qualifications of the hypothetical doctors you are choosing between. Whether that racism has a real and logical base, as you claim, is a somewhat separate issue - it is still racist to make the choice based on race alone.
Why are there names at all on grant applications? Shouldn't the quality of the thing be able to stand up by itself?
Because past work of the investigator is part of what is factored into the strength of the application, the thinking being that someone who has successfully conducted research projects in the past and produced solid results is more likely to be successful than someone who has no track record.
I don't know how they review grants at NIH, but I know that for some other institutions there are several groups of reviewers. One is more of an administrative group, which rates the strength of the applicants based on previous work and institutional affiliation (some dude working in his garage may be highly technically competent and write an excellent proposal, but if he/she doesn't have access to the facilities necessary to actually carry out the work it doesn't make sense to fund their grant proposal). A separate group, usually a collection of people working in the specific field, then get the applications with names and identifying information redacted and give a rating based on the content of the proposal. A magic formula is then used to combine the ratings into a final ranking to decide which applications get funded.
On 8/8/11 the new FCC rules on cable cards went into effect.
See http://www.fcc.gov/guides/cablecard-know-your-rights for more information
Open cable cards will hopefully set us free. If not, sic the bureaucrats on your cable company.
Miraculously, the cost to rent a card suddenly increased to the price they used to charge for the entire box.
Maybe I'm just pessimistic, but as far as I can tell the new rules say nothing about what the cable companies may charge for the cards; I wouldn't expect to see any reduction on monthly bills for someone renting a card instead of a box.
Parent is trolling or joking or something, it's not out until 11/11
Parent was suggesting that people should plan on pirating Skyrim in retaliation for Bethesda/Zenimax's actions. Typical juvenile reaction.
Anyway, it isn't like Bethesda is trying to sue Notch into the ground. They are suing him to change the name of his upcoming (not released) game. I don't exactly agree with them, but I think that there is enough to their claim not to reject out of hand the notion that a fantasy-themed computer game called "Scrolls" could potentially cause some amount of confusion with a long-running series of fantasy-themed computer games called "Elder Scrolls".
"It will have an immeasurably miniscule influence on our planet. By comparison, my subcompact automobile exerts a greater influence on the ocean's tides than comet Elenin ever will."
No kidding. What the hell kind of subcompact can blot out the sun and cause the tectonic plates to shift?
That's nearly twice as tall as the Burj Khalifa according to the graphic in TFA 8-(
Nah, only about 500 feet (or 20%) taller.