$941 million could have bought a lot of cool science gadgets. Just think, that's a couple Mars probes right there. Or, more topically, that's a couple million XBox 360's.
The underlying idea of A la carte programming seems like a good idea, and will even cost those of us who couldn't care less about sports a LOT less (disgustingly enough, the bulk of your "extended basic" cable bill goes toward subsidizing the sports channels, which cost more than premium channels like HBO and contractually force cable carriers to include them in anything beyond their most basic package).
So THAT's why I have ESPN8 (the Ocho)! Seriously, I've watched ESPN2 maybe twice, once when I was bored and wanted to watch sumo wrestling and once when I was bored and wanted to watch the Worlds Strongest Man contest (I wish I had a name like Magnus Samuelssen). It would be great if I could drop most of the sports channels along with all the Christian channels and Lifetime and BET, etc etc and get cheaper cable.
I agree. I started out using Red Hat, but then decided to switch to Slackware. It was as easy as partition hard drive, boot to cd, choose packages, run.
Because they're obviously testing us, man. You see, right now the dupes are pretty damn easy to see, but eventually the dupes will get harder to spot and the stakes will get higher. Those who don't point out the dupes will be eliminated and the ones who point them out get lower numbers. In the end, there will be one person and he will be crowned King of Slashdot, and he will get girls. And touch their boobies.
Only $3000? That's still about 3 times as much as the US government spends on each Alaskan resident (Alaska being the largest per capita pork state). It's not like this is critical infrastructure, it's a marginal improvement in the quality of life of a small village, an improvement they've been doing on their own by walking a mere 10 minutes. The exercise is good for them, let them walk! And they wonder why people are so opposed to taxes....
I agree. Remember, this is America, where geography education is SERIOUSLY lacking. I think it's more likely for people to know what time zone they're in than how to pick their state on a map.
In addition, the article states that Earth and Mars are usually 140 million miles apart, as if they just stay stationary and only occasionally move closer. 140 million may be the average, but the separation is always changing. Seriously, this is why other countries laugh at the US, because even our science writers lack even a grade-school education in science.
"Because this concept is outside the reductionistic-chemical paradigm that governs the drug industry, this not usually discussed by medical science."
Of course it's outside the reductionistic-chemical paradigm, because it's crap! I'll file this one in the same place I file the Electric Universe theory and the UFO's-riding-behind-Comet-Hale-Bopp theory.
"I know you can get a LOT of hydrogen out of a little water"
Not really. 1 gram of water will yield.11 g of hydrogen. By comparison, though, 1 gram of methane (natural gas) yields.25 g of hydrogen, ethanol (sweet sweet alcohol) yields.13g of hydrogen, and gasoline will give on average.16 g of hydrogen. So really, water is not all that efficient if you want hydrogen. Overall, this implementation of a hydrogen vehicle doesn't seem that workable, especially compared to others I've seen.
Actually, NASA's Prometheus project does just that. They seek to combine a nuclear reactor with an ion engine. The result is more thrust and more power to do some really cool science once they get to where they're going. I had hoped the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter would be the testbed, but that's been cancelled/postponed.
Don't forget about the little eminent domain ruling the Supreme Court handed down this summer. We can now implicate all 3 branches as being pro-"whoever has the most money".
I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait at all, but it seems to me that Apple is guilty of a lot of the same stuff Microsoft is, but gets away with it because they're the underdog (or the Apple-cult phenomenon). I mean, how many non-techie Mac users have anything except Adobe or Apple software on their systems? iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, Safari? Microsoft's got a horizontal monopoly, but it looks like Apple's going for the vertical monopoly.
Additionally, planetary formation theories state that during the Earth's formation, it would have melted from the accretion impacts that created it. While pressure alone will melt the metal-silicate materials deep in the Earth, it won't create heat (melting actually costs energy, even if kept at constant temperature). Gravitational contraction will create heat, but the Earth hasn't contracted much in the past 4 billion years (gravitational contraction was a proposed mechanism for the Sun's output, but was shown to be insufficient). While my explanation was simplified and doesn't tell the whole story, it is mostly correct.
You make a good point. The materials from which rubies and sapphires are composed are an aluminum (aluminium) oxide, but one wouldn't call them "transparent aluminum". Just one thing to add is that a metal can never be transparent to optical light. Using Maxwell's equations, it can be shown that for a conductor (a fundamental property of metal), incoming EM waves drop off exponentially within a wavelength. So, for optical light, any metal layer thicker than about half a micron will be opaque. It's one of those fundamental properties you can't get around.
The cooling of Mars's core has nothing to do with insolation. Planetary cores are molten (or not) due to the presence of radioactive elements which release heat as they decay. Mars is less dense than Earth, meaning it's core is much smaller and probably has a smaller proportion of uranium, etc than Earth. Thus, the amount of heat generated by radioactive decay dropped off much faster than here, thus ending most geological activity billions of years ago (not all of it, though, as there are indications of volcanic activity as recent as 100 million years ago which is a small fraction of Mars's lifetime). If solar influx had anything to do with tectonics, we would expect Mercury to be much more active than Earth, but it's not. It's about as dead as the Moon, geologically speaking.
I RTFA and looked at the picture, which looked Photoshopped. And while cold plasmas exist, what they described is not a cold plasma. And really, how does a stream of oxygen radicals distinguish between bacteria and human cells? It all sounds too good to be true, and I think it IS too good to be true.
Slashdot Mirror
$941 million could have bought a lot of cool science gadgets. Just think, that's a couple Mars probes right there. Or, more topically, that's a couple million XBox 360's.
The underlying idea of A la carte programming seems like a good idea, and will even cost those of us who couldn't care less about sports a LOT less (disgustingly enough, the bulk of your "extended basic" cable bill goes toward subsidizing the sports channels, which cost more than premium channels like HBO and contractually force cable carriers to include them in anything beyond their most basic package).
So THAT's why I have ESPN8 (the Ocho)! Seriously, I've watched ESPN2 maybe twice, once when I was bored and wanted to watch sumo wrestling and once when I was bored and wanted to watch the Worlds Strongest Man contest (I wish I had a name like Magnus Samuelssen). It would be great if I could drop most of the sports channels along with all the Christian channels and Lifetime and BET, etc etc and get cheaper cable.
Hey, I don't know about you, but I'm a discerning moviegoer. I demand more than the "occasional" breast.
I agree. I started out using Red Hat, but then decided to switch to Slackware. It was as easy as partition hard drive, boot to cd, choose packages, run.
Because they're obviously testing us, man. You see, right now the dupes are pretty damn easy to see, but eventually the dupes will get harder to spot and the stakes will get higher. Those who don't point out the dupes will be eliminated and the ones who point them out get lower numbers. In the end, there will be one person and he will be crowned King of Slashdot, and he will get girls. And touch their boobies.
Jack Thompson Sues Alabama
Only $3000? That's still about 3 times as much as the US government spends on each Alaskan resident (Alaska being the largest per capita pork state). It's not like this is critical infrastructure, it's a marginal improvement in the quality of life of a small village, an improvement they've been doing on their own by walking a mere 10 minutes. The exercise is good for them, let them walk! And they wonder why people are so opposed to taxes....
Most of the people I know are on Yahoo, not AOL. Hell, I haven't even had to install GAIM.
Or the people who showed it's mathematically impossible for a bumblebee to fly....
I agree. Remember, this is America, where geography education is SERIOUSLY lacking. I think it's more likely for people to know what time zone they're in than how to pick their state on a map.
I don't buy CDs anymore.
In addition, the article states that Earth and Mars are usually 140 million miles apart, as if they just stay stationary and only occasionally move closer. 140 million may be the average, but the separation is always changing. Seriously, this is why other countries laugh at the US, because even our science writers lack even a grade-school education in science.
"Because this concept is outside the reductionistic-chemical paradigm that governs the drug industry, this not usually discussed by medical science."
Of course it's outside the reductionistic-chemical paradigm, because it's crap! I'll file this one in the same place I file the Electric Universe theory and the UFO's-riding-behind-Comet-Hale-Bopp theory.
"I know you can get a LOT of hydrogen out of a little water"
.11 g of hydrogen. By comparison, though, 1 gram of methane (natural gas) yields .25 g of hydrogen, ethanol (sweet sweet alcohol) yields .13g of hydrogen, and gasoline will give on average .16 g of hydrogen. So really, water is not all that efficient if you want hydrogen. Overall, this implementation of a hydrogen vehicle doesn't seem that workable, especially compared to others I've seen.
Not really. 1 gram of water will yield
Actually, NASA's Prometheus project does just that. They seek to combine a nuclear reactor with an ion engine. The result is more thrust and more power to do some really cool science once they get to where they're going. I had hoped the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter would be the testbed, but that's been cancelled/postponed.
Don't forget about the little eminent domain ruling the Supreme Court handed down this summer. We can now implicate all 3 branches as being pro-"whoever has the most money".
Don't forget Nader. I dislike the guy on many levels, but he still should have been allowed to debate.
Shit, I didn't even know it was out for Windows yet. Where the hell have I been?
I'm not trying to be a troll or flamebait at all, but it seems to me that Apple is guilty of a lot of the same stuff Microsoft is, but gets away with it because they're the underdog (or the Apple-cult phenomenon). I mean, how many non-techie Mac users have anything except Adobe or Apple software on their systems? iTunes, iChat, iPhoto, Safari? Microsoft's got a horizontal monopoly, but it looks like Apple's going for the vertical monopoly.
I noticed Freedom Wireless is based in Las Vegas. Any business in LV has GOT to be a little crooked.
At least some of the heat in the Earth's core is from radioactive decay.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725
Additionally, planetary formation theories state that during the Earth's formation, it would have melted from the accretion impacts that created it. While pressure alone will melt the metal-silicate materials deep in the Earth, it won't create heat (melting actually costs energy, even if kept at constant temperature). Gravitational contraction will create heat, but the Earth hasn't contracted much in the past 4 billion years (gravitational contraction was a proposed mechanism for the Sun's output, but was shown to be insufficient). While my explanation was simplified and doesn't tell the whole story, it is mostly correct.
Here's a link to a better map on the MGS website.
1 02_42_connerney/
http://mgs-mager.gsfc.nasa.gov/publications/pnas_
The one you linked was from the original data back in 1999.
You make a good point. The materials from which rubies and sapphires are composed are an aluminum (aluminium) oxide, but one wouldn't call them "transparent aluminum". Just one thing to add is that a metal can never be transparent to optical light. Using Maxwell's equations, it can be shown that for a conductor (a fundamental property of metal), incoming EM waves drop off exponentially within a wavelength. So, for optical light, any metal layer thicker than about half a micron will be opaque. It's one of those fundamental properties you can't get around.
The cooling of Mars's core has nothing to do with insolation. Planetary cores are molten (or not) due to the presence of radioactive elements which release heat as they decay. Mars is less dense than Earth, meaning it's core is much smaller and probably has a smaller proportion of uranium, etc than Earth. Thus, the amount of heat generated by radioactive decay dropped off much faster than here, thus ending most geological activity billions of years ago (not all of it, though, as there are indications of volcanic activity as recent as 100 million years ago which is a small fraction of Mars's lifetime). If solar influx had anything to do with tectonics, we would expect Mercury to be much more active than Earth, but it's not. It's about as dead as the Moon, geologically speaking.
I RTFA and looked at the picture, which looked Photoshopped. And while cold plasmas exist, what they described is not a cold plasma. And really, how does a stream of oxygen radicals distinguish between bacteria and human cells? It all sounds too good to be true, and I think it IS too good to be true.