I agree, the higher-resolution image tends to support the idea that it is a single object, however, as I stated before, that doesn't rule out mechanical weathering.
And the fact that the object appears smooth doesn't rule it out either. The behavior of wind-blown dust on the surface of Mars is not the same as we experience here on Earth. We could be talking about smaller particles of dust being blown about, which would lend a finer surface to objects of the correct composition.
Most of the smaller body you suggest is another spherule has a shadow cast over it, so it is possible it's nothing more than a portion of the substrate that stubbornly refuses to detach from the spherule.
Or... it could just be a spherule that has a bump on it. There are irregularly shaped spherules as well as the nearly spherical variety. I don't see why this shape should be outside the parameters of the process I'm describing.
I could care less if my computer consumes a lot of time performing a task. It's when I have to consume a lot of time performing a task that annoys me.
And screwing around with RPM's consumes a lot of my time.
With Gentoo, I can issue one or two commands and be done with it.
(don't tell anybody, but Linux is a multitasking operating system, so when I do compiles I can actually be accomplishing other work on that very same computer at the very same time.)
Secondly, it isn't random physical phenomena we're talking about here.
Third, why do you assume the rock fragments were of variable size and shape? All that is required for my hypothesis to be correct is that the original material was light enough to be displaced by the wind. Those materials of a given size and composition were therefore subject to this effect, those differing in size and composition were not. As we can plainly see, there is an abundance of material on the surface of Mars that is neither similar in size or shape.
The fact that they are the same size is easily explained by the terrain. The size of the stone or particle in question has a great deal to do with how it interacts with the surface as the wind propels it; similarly sized particles are going to behave similarly as the conditions of the surface change, i.e., a depression in the surface will "catch" particles of a certain size, but not particles that are larger, or smaller.
Nobody is shouting anything, and I fail to see how mysticism plays any role here whatsoever (your previous inane reference to Martian rock-frog eggs notwithstanding.)
The differences between the planets is anything but minor. The difference in gravity alone undoubtedly carries with it a tremendous potential to impact geological processes. As does the air pressure, temperature and chemical composition of the various materials being studied. Moreover, your depiction of the processes that take place here on Earth is similarly flawed... pebbles don't form in streams at the kind of altitudes that are remotely comparable to Mars. If you're going to throw stones at the conjectures others have on geological processes on other planets, it would behoove you to have a better grasp on those that take place on your own.
If they were solidified droplets of molten rock, the surface should be a great deal smoother. The surface on the spheroids in contrast have considerable detail, and these details appear to be consistent with a long lifetime of tiny impacts with other spheroids/rocks, gradually creating the spherical shape we are observing today.
Aye, but the scale is different. These spherules are said to be approximately the size of BB's. This causes them to interact with the surrounding terrain in a much different fashion; something as small as a grain has a greater likelihood to get caught by a rock or some other feature of the landscape than something as big as a BB.
I don't see what's mysterious about these at all. You have to remember that Mars has much less gravity than Earth, ergo, the amount of force required to displace a pebble is so much less. So while the atmosphere is thinner there than it is over here, it is still sufficiently dense to allow for substantial winds to develop; winds that displace these pebbles and cause them to move over the ground, and over time--millions and millions of years--this repeated displacement causes the tiny stones to become spheroid in shape. The end.
Yeah, there's very little info. For instance, I want to be able to pick up HDTV over satellite (either DirecTV or DishNetwork) and watch it on my PC. Will this card let me do that? It doesn't say.
If it does--and if I can get it to work with my nVidia GPU--then I buy both the card and a satellite subscription right away.
I find it amusing that you should reply to the parent post as Federal law in America says we can invade the Netherlands should one of our many war criminals be put on trial over there.
Oh please, please sue ME! I could use fifteen-minutes of fame! Not only that, I'm installing LFS on my Rev. A Bondi iMac even as I'm typing this post! I'm such an outlaw! Come and get me!!!
I would fully expect that the entire point of stores adopting this technology would be to reduce costs, i.e., eliminate payrolls.
And even if that weren't the case, the filet mignon which goes for $14.99@lb gets its RFID code "augmented" so it looks like $1.99@lb ground chuck. Who's going to look that closely?
And what are they going to do even if they catch you? Just feign ignorance... they'll have to assume it's a snafu on their end.
You're wrong. Look at how they're "reading" the data. They are using a fixed number of chemicals, using each chemical as a bit, i.e., no more than one type of chemical per RFID. Now suddenly you're introducing hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical chemicals. There is no way for them to discriminate between a chemical that's in a legitimate RFID and a chemical that is chaff.
Think about it... if it's so easy and so cheap to produce RFID's, then what's to prevent us from printing out reams of the stuff, like a stack of paper where each sheet has a thousand RFID's printed on it, and then carrying whatever documents we'd like within that stack of paper.
This also makes it easy to forge RFID's, doesn't it? Why pay full cost at the local market when you can play "The Price is Right" using your printer at home.
Which is why methanol is the better choice, since not only can methanol can be used by fuel cells to produce energy, but it can be easily produced from hemp, which can grow just about anywhere.
I find it highly ironic that the editors at/. can joke about using a drug that kills so many people and is so addictive, like alcohol, yet ignore story submissions that detail the considerable energy producing potential of a plant who recreational use to date is responsible for exactly zero deaths, despite thousands and thousands of years of use by most if not all of human civilization.
There is Title 10 that considers sex with an animal an act of sodomy, and for which you can be court martialed.
In any case, what has to be made clear here is that we're talking about pictures of animal sex acts, not the act itself. It's legal for instance to photograph many criminal acts, and to then distribute those photos, but the act itself remains illegal, yes?
And as the other AC points out, hehe, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Some of those very same bodegas sell drugs and front for prostitution, and anybody who has lived in the city for any period of time knows this shit goes on.
Slashdot Mirror
nt
I had thought Microsoft TM'd it, but maybe Xerox is licensing it now?
heh
I agree, the higher-resolution image tends to support the idea that it is a single object, however, as I stated before, that doesn't rule out mechanical weathering.
And the fact that the object appears smooth doesn't rule it out either. The behavior of wind-blown dust on the surface of Mars is not the same as we experience here on Earth. We could be talking about smaller particles of dust being blown about, which would lend a finer surface to objects of the correct composition.
Most of the smaller body you suggest is another spherule has a shadow cast over it, so it is possible it's nothing more than a portion of the substrate that stubbornly refuses to detach from the spherule.
Or... it could just be a spherule that has a bump on it. There are irregularly shaped spherules as well as the nearly spherical variety. I don't see why this shape should be outside the parameters of the process I'm describing.
Exactly.
I could care less if my computer consumes a lot of time performing a task. It's when I have to consume a lot of time performing a task that annoys me.
And screwing around with RPM's consumes a lot of my time.
With Gentoo, I can issue one or two commands and be done with it.
(don't tell anybody, but Linux is a multitasking operating system, so when I do compiles I can actually be accomplishing other work on that very same computer at the very same time.)
First of all, they aren't perfect spheres.
Secondly, it isn't random physical phenomena we're talking about here.
Third, why do you assume the rock fragments were of variable size and shape? All that is required for my hypothesis to be correct is that the original material was light enough to be displaced by the wind. Those materials of a given size and composition were therefore subject to this effect, those differing in size and composition were not. As we can plainly see, there is an abundance of material on the surface of Mars that is neither similar in size or shape.
The fact that they are the same size is easily explained by the terrain. The size of the stone or particle in question has a great deal to do with how it interacts with the surface as the wind propels it; similarly sized particles are going to behave similarly as the conditions of the surface change, i.e., a depression in the surface will "catch" particles of a certain size, but not particles that are larger, or smaller.
Nobody is shouting anything, and I fail to see how mysticism plays any role here whatsoever (your previous inane reference to Martian rock-frog eggs notwithstanding.)
The differences between the planets is anything but minor. The difference in gravity alone undoubtedly carries with it a tremendous potential to impact geological processes. As does the air pressure, temperature and chemical composition of the various materials being studied. Moreover, your depiction of the processes that take place here on Earth is similarly flawed... pebbles don't form in streams at the kind of altitudes that are remotely comparable to Mars. If you're going to throw stones at the conjectures others have on geological processes on other planets, it would behoove you to have a better grasp on those that take place on your own.
But they aren't perfect spheres.
If they were solidified droplets of molten rock, the surface should be a great deal smoother. The surface on the spheroids in contrast have considerable detail, and these details appear to be consistent with a long lifetime of tiny impacts with other spheroids/rocks, gradually creating the spherical shape we are observing today.
Rounded pebbles are "rounded", not "perfectly spherical" like these spherules.
Rounded pebbles on Earth.
Aye, but the scale is different. These spherules are said to be approximately the size of BB's. This causes them to interact with the surrounding terrain in a much different fashion; something as small as a grain has a greater likelihood to get caught by a rock or some other feature of the landscape than something as big as a BB.
I don't see what's mysterious about these at all. You have to remember that Mars has much less gravity than Earth, ergo, the amount of force required to displace a pebble is so much less. So while the atmosphere is thinner there than it is over here, it is still sufficiently dense to allow for substantial winds to develop; winds that displace these pebbles and cause them to move over the ground, and over time--millions and millions of years--this repeated displacement causes the tiny stones to become spheroid in shape. The end.
My monitor (a Sony 21" GDM-F520) can do 2048x1536 @ 85Hz, and has a .22mm aperture grill no less.
If anything, it's the graphics card that are holding things up. My GeForce 4 Ti4800SE can only do 2048x1536 @ 60Hz in 8-bit mode.
It can however handle 1920x1080 @ 85Hz in 32-bit mode, so for 1080i viewing I should be OK.
Yeah, there's very little info. For instance, I want to be able to pick up HDTV over satellite (either DirecTV or DishNetwork) and watch it on my PC. Will this card let me do that? It doesn't say.
If it does--and if I can get it to work with my nVidia GPU--then I buy both the card and a satellite subscription right away.
If not, I stick with Netflix.
I find it amusing that you should reply to the parent post as Federal law in America says we can invade the Netherlands should one of our many war criminals be put on trial over there.
You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged.
And they moderate accordingly.
We lost our rights and our liberty a long time ago, when most of you bowed down before the war on drugs.
I'm slowly getting used to it. You should too.
Oh please, please sue ME! I could use fifteen-minutes of fame! Not only that, I'm installing LFS on my Rev. A Bondi iMac even as I'm typing this post! I'm such an outlaw! Come and get me!!!
I would fully expect that the entire point of stores adopting this technology would be to reduce costs, i.e., eliminate payrolls.
And even if that weren't the case, the filet mignon which goes for $14.99@lb gets its RFID code "augmented" so it looks like $1.99@lb ground chuck. Who's going to look that closely?
And what are they going to do even if they catch you? Just feign ignorance... they'll have to assume it's a snafu on their end.
Hilarious.
Cute. Of course, were the system they propose adopted, such printers would become standard fare.
(unless of course you're running Linux, and waiting for them to open-source the driver.)
You're wrong. Look at how they're "reading" the data. They are using a fixed number of chemicals, using each chemical as a bit, i.e., no more than one type of chemical per RFID. Now suddenly you're introducing hundreds, perhaps thousands of identical chemicals. There is no way for them to discriminate between a chemical that's in a legitimate RFID and a chemical that is chaff.
Think about it... if it's so easy and so cheap to produce RFID's, then what's to prevent us from printing out reams of the stuff, like a stack of paper where each sheet has a thousand RFID's printed on it, and then carrying whatever documents we'd like within that stack of paper.
This also makes it easy to forge RFID's, doesn't it? Why pay full cost at the local market when you can play "The Price is Right" using your printer at home.
IIRC, Canada does provide for the legal growing of hemp, but interestingly enough, not at the quantities necessary to produce energy.
Which is why methanol is the better choice, since not only can methanol can be used by fuel cells to produce energy, but it can be easily produced from hemp, which can grow just about anywhere.
/. can joke about using a drug that kills so many people and is so addictive, like alcohol, yet ignore story submissions that detail the considerable energy producing potential of a plant who recreational use to date is responsible for exactly zero deaths, despite thousands and thousands of years of use by most if not all of human civilization.
Of course, were you to try to do this in America, you risk being executed by the government.
Ah, freedom.
I find it highly ironic that the editors at
...so don't expect the series to go that far.
(a shame really, the premiere was *very* good)
There is Title 10 that considers sex with an animal an act of sodomy, and for which you can be court martialed.
In any case, what has to be made clear here is that we're talking about pictures of animal sex acts, not the act itself. It's legal for instance to photograph many criminal acts, and to then distribute those photos, but the act itself remains illegal, yes?
And as the other AC points out, hehe, just because something is illegal doesn't mean it doesn't happen. Some of those very same bodegas sell drugs and front for prostitution, and anybody who has lived in the city for any period of time knows this shit goes on.