Aside from gravity and the windstorm....
on
Review: The Martian
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· Score: 1
Another post noted that the gravity on Mars was not depicted properly in the movie.
The author admitted that the windstorm was not plausible.
One other big thing - the sun. The sun was too big in the film. There is a scene shortly after Watney is stranded, and he is watching the sun set over the ridges and mountains in the distance. The sun was its size as seen from Earth, not as it would be seen from Mars.
Loved the movie anyhow, of course. Go see it if you haven't!
Your home or the high-rise in which you work are unlikely to be consumed by fire. Are fire drills important?
Is it important to know where, for example, the nearest exit is on an airplane or in a theater, even though it is extremely unlikely that you will be confronted with a disabled airplane or a theater massacre-in-the-making?
Preparation for disasters - whether in terms of visualizing the scenario or actual drills to practice response - can be extremely effective in boosting survival.
If you are interested in some of the academic study on this and related topics, see this book, The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, and Why. The author did a tremendous amount of research, distilling academic papers and studies of recent and not-so-recent disasters to explore human behavior both culturally w/r/t preparedness and engineering, and in the context of the disaster events.
The author of the summary is not up to date on the recent release of info on Dreadnoughtus schrani, now believed to be the largest creature to ever have walked on land.
Unfortunately at no price point will they go above 8GB RAM.
I'll pay more for 16GB RAM! I guarantee other people are out there waiting for the 16GB model. Please MSFT, manufacture a 16GB RAM model.
All that and water resistant, too
on
The $5,600 Tablet
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· Score: 5, Informative
I handled procurement of a few of these for a client two years ago. They are impressive for their sturdiness and resistance to the environment, and I was able to view the screen very well even in the mid-day sunlight. The model I played with was everything the summary described and a bit more. It was submersible for up to two hours in salt or fresh water as long as the ports were sealed with the silicone port glands.
It is an impressive device for what it provides to people on the move in challenging environments.
Not clear to me that his is a viable objective. 80% of the masses do not think like programmers. Some might be trainable. Some, not so much. Many will not want to think the way problem-solving in code requires. I'm not sure how to quantify it, but the amount of effort expended on a project like this may not see an appropriate payback.
Even if we change the environment and act of "coding", the problem-solving itself still requires clear thinking and it *probably* always will.
inevitable mission creep, ending with the proof of self being required at polling places, to rent a house, buy a gun, open a bank account, acquire credit, board a plane or even attend a sporting event or log on the internet.
Except for some sporting events and accessing the internet, the other events all require ID, some require photo ID and others do not. Please, stop the hysterics. The issue is not whether you need to show an ID to vote, or to rent a house (credit report, anyone?), or buy a gun (background check, hello?), or board a plane (where have you been for the last 12 years?).
The bigger issue is does the DHS - or a client of their data - have authority to prevent you from carrying out these activities based on the data - identity and other - stored its databases. That would be a sensible concern.
Stop whining about policies of private institutions and state and local governments that are sensible and non-invasive. The arm-waving and yelling is immature, and cheapens other more valid concerns about the use of personally identifying (and classifying) data.
Get up from your desk a few times during the day, perhaps once in the morning, once at - or just after - lunchtime, once in the afternoon, and walk briskly for 10 minutes - OUTSIDE.
Walking lowers blood pressure, reduces stress levels, give you a chance to breathe non-recycled, fresh, or at least fresher, air (depending on where you work), and burns calories.
Diet is important. But even if your dietary choices are poor, a simple brisk walk of short duration a few times a day will measurably lengthen your life.
So in amber, or some other similar impermeable substance, the chemical reactions requiring water or air might well be prevented or dramatically slowed, thus the degradation of DNA might be substantially slower than the 521 years described in the summary.
Not necessarily the end of the Jurassic Park idea.
We used ViaCord for our first, and will be using them for our second. Similar to other services, you pay a collection fee (blood approx $1500, blood+tissue approx $2700) and then a small annual fee for storage.
It remains unclear to me that cord-tissue preservation will be worth the gamble; the option wasn't available several years ago for our first, but is now. We are debating about whether the extra cost is worthwhile, considering no studies have demonstrated effective therapies using cryo-preserved cord tissue.
HIIT has actually been around and been discussed in running groups for a number of years. Lest you think I am pulling this from where the sun doesn't shine, I write this from some personal experience; I am an experienced ultramarathoner (six 50 milers). HIIT is extremely difficult for "normal" people to do as an ongoing exercise program.
The great majority of Americans are simply not capable of pushing themselves as hard as is required for a successful HIIT regimen. If you're not capable of pushing yourself to do this type of strenuous exercise, you're not going to do it. It's as simple as that.
HIIT will work extraordinarily well for people that are already moderately fit or even overweight if they are capable of pushing through their pain (not the physical pain, the mental pain). Again, and again, and again; and each iteration is harder than the last.
Most people - especially the great unwashed overweight masses (pun intended) - aren't willing or capable of doing this, and simply aren't going to do it. They would be better served starting out just walking briskly for 30 minutes four or five times a week.
argue with me about whether vaccines are, in fact, the greatest medical development for humanity in the past two centuries
This is demonstrably false, though I am too busy to find citations right now.
I agree that vaccines have been a substantial boon to human health, but it pales beside the most truly important development. The development and maintenance of properly functioning public sanitation systems has clearly been the greatest medical development for humanity in the past two centuries.
“The pattern in the U.S. is not to do anything until there’s a disaster,” he said. “The way we’re going to find out if someone has the capability is we’ll wake up one day and the lights won’t work.”
“If you interview power companies and say, ‘Is your control system connected to the Internet,’ they’ll say, ‘Of course not,’” James Lewis, technology program director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said in an interview. “It turns out in almost every case a control system is connected to the Internet and it’s vulnerable to being hacked.”
I encourage you to pursue the online coursework, whether or not you seek a certificate or a degree, if you enjoy the coursework.
I spent five calendar years taking online courses for an MS in a technology field, because I was unwilling to sacrifice time at work for in-person classes. My team at work - colleagues and supervisory staff - respected the discipline required to attend and successfully complete online courses (4.0), and my salary bump after the degree was granted was significant.
As long as the parent institution is accredited by an appropriate higher education accreditation authority, your hard work will pay off.
You could try examining potential recipients at Charity Navigator. They evaluate charities based on their operational effectiveness and allow you to compare a potential recipient against others that serve similar needs.
I have used it many times and find it extremely helpful.
No "clean" or "renewable" energy source scales the way nuclear can.
No "clean" or "renewable" energy source can provide on-demand base-load power the way nuclear can.
Reliability can be built into nuclear plants in ways that distributed "small" clean power cannot match.
Safety record of nuclear power generation speaks for itself, esp. when context is provided (coal, hydro).
Waste management is an issue that is primarily an engineering challenge, not an obstacle.
Can designs be improved? Certainly, and much work is ongoing in this space (Toshiba, Hyperion, others).
Over the long term, nuclear is the cleanest base-load power source we have, and it is inevitable that more nuclear power plants will be built and brought on-line worldwide.
Redbox pricing change and Netflix erstwhile split are not really in the same league.
Netflix customers would have had to pay two membership fees monthly with the new Qwikster arrangement, a 60% increase over the prior setup. The key here is that the "service" that customers were paying for and to which they were accustomed, was being substantially modified - into two new services.
Redbox is simply raising their price, by a marginal $0.20 per rental. For heavy renters, this may be significant over the course of a month. But for most normal renters, this increase is tolerable.
Even at one rental per day, the difference over a month is only $6. If this is too much for you, perhaps you shouldn't be renting 30 DVDs a month.
Slashdot Mirror
Another post noted that the gravity on Mars was not depicted properly in the movie.
The author admitted that the windstorm was not plausible.
One other big thing - the sun. The sun was too big in the film. There is a scene shortly after Watney is stranded, and he is watching the sun set over the ridges and mountains in the distance. The sun was its size as seen from Earth, not as it would be seen from Mars.
Loved the movie anyhow, of course. Go see it if you haven't!
ShanghaiBill,
Your home or the high-rise in which you work are unlikely to be consumed by fire. Are fire drills important?
Is it important to know where, for example, the nearest exit is on an airplane or in a theater, even though it is extremely unlikely that you will be confronted with a disabled airplane or a theater massacre-in-the-making?
Preparation for disasters - whether in terms of visualizing the scenario or actual drills to practice response - can be extremely effective in boosting survival.
If you are interested in some of the academic study on this and related topics, see this book, The Unthinkable - Who Survives When Disaster Strikes, and Why. The author did a tremendous amount of research, distilling academic papers and studies of recent and not-so-recent disasters to explore human behavior both culturally w/r/t preparedness and engineering, and in the context of the disaster events.
See the following:
http://drexel.edu/now/archive/2014/September/Dreadnoughtus-Dinosaur/
http://www.cnn.com/2014/09/04/world/americas/dreadnoughtus-huge-dinosaur/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadnoughtus
Posted the wrong link.
Spec file here.
Specs and prices are available in this file: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/press/2014/may14/05-20surfacepr.aspx.
Unfortunately at no price point will they go above 8GB RAM.
I'll pay more for 16GB RAM! I guarantee other people are out there waiting for the 16GB model. Please MSFT, manufacture a 16GB RAM model.
I handled procurement of a few of these for a client two years ago. They are impressive for their sturdiness and resistance to the environment, and I was able to view the screen very well even in the mid-day sunlight. The model I played with was everything the summary described and a bit more. It was submersible for up to two hours in salt or fresh water as long as the ports were sealed with the silicone port glands.
It is an impressive device for what it provides to people on the move in challenging environments.
Not clear to me that his is a viable objective. 80% of the masses do not think like programmers. Some might be trainable. Some, not so much. Many will not want to think the way problem-solving in code requires. I'm not sure how to quantify it, but the amount of effort expended on a project like this may not see an appropriate payback.
Even if we change the environment and act of "coding", the problem-solving itself still requires clear thinking and it *probably* always will.
I love the jumble of Imperial and SI units in the summary. Great work!
Except for some sporting events and accessing the internet, the other events all require ID, some require photo ID and others do not. Please, stop the hysterics. The issue is not whether you need to show an ID to vote, or to rent a house (credit report, anyone?), or buy a gun (background check, hello?), or board a plane (where have you been for the last 12 years?).
The bigger issue is does the DHS - or a client of their data - have authority to prevent you from carrying out these activities based on the data - identity and other - stored its databases. That would be a sensible concern.
Stop whining about policies of private institutions and state and local governments that are sensible and non-invasive. The arm-waving and yelling is immature, and cheapens other more valid concerns about the use of personally identifying (and classifying) data.
Get up from your desk a few times during the day, perhaps once in the morning, once at - or just after - lunchtime, once in the afternoon, and walk briskly for 10 minutes - OUTSIDE.
Walking lowers blood pressure, reduces stress levels, give you a chance to breathe non-recycled, fresh, or at least fresher, air (depending on where you work), and burns calories.
Diet is important. But even if your dietary choices are poor, a simple brisk walk of short duration a few times a day will measurably lengthen your life.
So in amber, or some other similar impermeable substance, the chemical reactions requiring water or air might well be prevented or dramatically slowed, thus the degradation of DNA might be substantially slower than the 521 years described in the summary.
Not necessarily the end of the Jurassic Park idea.
This assumes that the interpretation of binary in the far future is the same as what you intend here, which is ASCII.
And while ASCII is portable, is it guaranteed to be a known, useful encoding a hundred years from now? A thousand years?
great reference
thank you for sharing this
We used ViaCord for our first, and will be using them for our second. Similar to other services, you pay a collection fee (blood approx $1500, blood+tissue approx $2700) and then a small annual fee for storage.
It remains unclear to me that cord-tissue preservation will be worth the gamble; the option wasn't available several years ago for our first, but is now. We are debating about whether the extra cost is worthwhile, considering no studies have demonstrated effective therapies using cryo-preserved cord tissue.
Your mileage may vary.
Enjoy the adventure with the new one.
It's filled with random bits. All the way down.
and therein lies the problem.
HIIT has actually been around and been discussed in running groups for a number of years. Lest you think I am pulling this from where the sun doesn't shine, I write this from some personal experience; I am an experienced ultramarathoner (six 50 milers). HIIT is extremely difficult for "normal" people to do as an ongoing exercise program.
The great majority of Americans are simply not capable of pushing themselves as hard as is required for a successful HIIT regimen. If you're not capable of pushing yourself to do this type of strenuous exercise, you're not going to do it. It's as simple as that.
HIIT will work extraordinarily well for people that are already moderately fit or even overweight if they are capable of pushing through their pain (not the physical pain, the mental pain). Again, and again, and again; and each iteration is harder than the last.
Most people - especially the great unwashed overweight masses (pun intended) - aren't willing or capable of doing this, and simply aren't going to do it. They would be better served starting out just walking briskly for 30 minutes four or five times a week.
This is demonstrably false, though I am too busy to find citations right now.
I agree that vaccines have been a substantial boon to human health, but it pales beside the most truly important development. The development and maintenance of properly functioning public sanitation systems has clearly been the greatest medical development for humanity in the past two centuries.
I encourage you to pursue the online coursework, whether or not you seek a certificate or a degree, if you enjoy the coursework.
I spent five calendar years taking online courses for an MS in a technology field, because I was unwilling to sacrifice time at work for in-person classes. My team at work - colleagues and supervisory staff - respected the discipline required to attend and successfully complete online courses (4.0), and my salary bump after the degree was granted was significant.
As long as the parent institution is accredited by an appropriate higher education accreditation authority, your hard work will pay off.
Good luck -
The story was posted long after the situation was resolved, according to the linked Politico article.
Doesn't seem worthy of a front-page location on Slashdot.
You could try examining potential recipients at Charity Navigator. They evaluate charities based on their operational effectiveness and allow you to compare a potential recipient against others that serve similar needs.
I have used it many times and find it extremely helpful.
No "clean" or "renewable" energy source scales the way nuclear can.
No "clean" or "renewable" energy source can provide on-demand base-load power the way nuclear can.
Reliability can be built into nuclear plants in ways that distributed "small" clean power cannot match.
Safety record of nuclear power generation speaks for itself, esp. when context is provided (coal, hydro).
Waste management is an issue that is primarily an engineering challenge, not an obstacle.
Can designs be improved? Certainly, and much work is ongoing in this space (Toshiba, Hyperion, others).
Over the long term, nuclear is the cleanest base-load power source we have, and it is inevitable that more nuclear power plants will be built and brought on-line worldwide.
Redbox pricing change and Netflix erstwhile split are not really in the same league.
Netflix customers would have had to pay two membership fees monthly with the new Qwikster arrangement, a 60% increase over the prior setup. The key here is that the "service" that customers were paying for and to which they were accustomed, was being substantially modified - into two new services.
Redbox is simply raising their price, by a marginal $0.20 per rental. For heavy renters, this may be significant over the course of a month. But for most normal renters, this increase is tolerable.
Even at one rental per day, the difference over a month is only $6. If this is too much for you, perhaps you shouldn't be renting 30 DVDs a month.
Unless you live in the US Midwest, where grasslands are natural habitat, you should plant some trees on that six acre plot of earth.
In most of the rest of the country, the natural habitat is NOT grassland, its either woodlands, desert, or wetlands.
If you simply must have grass, don't mow it a large portion of the six acres, let it mature into a semi-natural meadow.