Not to sound sour but this is more like a magnifying glass than a microscope. You'll notice they call it a microscope, but don't post the magnifying specs in the link you posted. It will be good for identifing geologic features (inderect evidence) but be nowhere near high enough power to image baterialogical scale structures.
Too bad beagle doesn't appear to have survived landing on mars. From the description of its mission it seemed more directed at finding evidence of life more directly. NASA seems to have concluded the Viking data was the last word on the subject and would rather gather indirect evidence of life for now, rather than direct evidence and have it seem a failure if none is discovered. Viking sat on the Mars for years transmitting back data. I imagine the most useful info would have been transmitted in the first days after a complete scan had been made of the area. Now granted Spirit and Opportunity can wheel around to new local each day, but most of the data will be of the nature Hey-NASA-I've-Found-Another-Red-Rock. How much better to have a decent microscope that can scan unending detail in samples taken. Some say the stew of nutrients Viking used showed circadian rhythm like responses. Had this been true biological activity, no doubt a microscopic examination would have shown the beasties, regardless of their chemistry. Speaking of chemistry, Viking only seemed to include one nutrient mix. For fauna adapted to a desicating environment, one can only wonder if perhaps they drowned the poor buggers.
All and all, I don't understand why a range of microscopes has not been standard issue on all Mars lander missions.
Your reply and the one before it have taken most of my points, but one more to add is that just like high frequency sounds can add to produce a beat tone, so to can high frequency lighting. I usually have no trouble with a monitor at a 60hz refresh rate, but try it with florescent lighting and it becomes almost unwatchable, even higher refresh rates can appear to beat under certain lighting conditions. Incandescent lighting produces less flicker because the filament doesn't have time to cool between cycles (at least not completely).
I'm sure we'll all be using LED lighting soon as a matter of economics, but there may be situations where various lighting and viewing sources will "beat" you to death.
In the short range, company visibility, and advertising. If Sony makes cute impressive robots, you may conclude (correctly) Sony is an on the ball technical company and therefore its VCRs, Televisions, Computers, and Games are likely to be of a superior quality.
Spin off technologies used in industry the general public is unaware of.
Long range goals (something American companies often neglect). Someday everyone will have robotic aids and servants. It won't happen overnight, nor necessarily in our life time, but its an easy prediction to make for something almost certain to happen within the next hundred years.
I probably should leave this topic alone, I already have my mod points, but there is just a lot of bad physics in this thread, some of it mod'ed, up mostly because it makes some kind of intuitive sense, but is wrong none the less.
When I said you wouldn't even notice, I only meant in the short term from the lack of gravitational influence. In fact I stated this in a couple of ways, and yet some have responded as if I think we don't need a Sun. Bihma had an interesting eventual outcome response but lets clear some things up about losing the influence of the Sun's gravity.
Suppose you where weightless aboard the ISS and the Earth disappeared. Would you suddenly say "HEY! We were weightless before, but now we're even more weightless!" No. Weightless is weightless. The same would be true of the relationship between the Earth and Sun. We feel the Earth's gravity because we are on it with it's surface preventing us from traveling some weightless trajectory. We don't feels the Sun's gravity because we are in orbit around it, following an unimpeded trajectory, which just happens to follow the curve our medium size star leaves in space. There is a small tidal force from the Sun, but it is much smaller than the tidal force from the Moon. Ah, ha you say, the Moon and Sun are pulling on the oceans! Wrong. Lets just consider the Earth-Moon system first, since this is the strongest tidal component. The Moon orbits Earth, and the Earth orbits the Moon. They both orbit a mutual center of gravity, located much closer to the Earth than the Moon because the Earth is Bigger. Imagine twirling a baton that had a one pound weight on one end and a ten pound weight on the other. When spun it would spin around some point close to the ten pound weight, but not the ten pound weight itself. Now because the Earth is orbiting this common center of gravity the closer side wants to follow a closer arc, and the farther side a wider arc, because their orbital distances are different by the diameter of the Earth. Because the oceans are fluid they try to follow these two different arcs, resulting in tides, but it is not the pull of the Moon directly. If it were, then the tide would only occur on the side facing the Moon. BUT NO! An equal tide occurs on the side facing away from the moon! Since the Sun is much farther away, its tidal force is much less, the two sides of the planet following very similar arcs.
Losing this week tidal force from the Sun is the only difference you would notice on the night-side, it wouldn't likely cause much immediate tectonic change. You might see the Moon go dark, if you were looking at it when it happened, but all in all it would be a non event until the catastrophic cooling began to kick in. I never said you wouldn't eventually notice. Brrrrrr.
P.S. Though now dark, the moon would continue to orbit the Earth with no change noticed on its part (other than no sunlight) as the Earth-Moon pair follow a slightly less complicated dance without their partner the Sun.
P.S.S. We don't just orbit the Sun, the Sun orbits the Earth as well, though because of its huge mass, the mutual center of gravity falls within the boundaries of its surface, but significantly removed from the actual center, though probably swamped by the jitter and confusion of all the mutual gravitational interactions from all the other, and some much larger, planets. And this jittering dance is just what scientists are using to detect planets around other stars.
Boy I'm feeling old, I never got a chance to play with Mindstorm Legos. We had regular Legos, but Erector Sets were still going strong when I was a kid. When you built something with an Erector Set you felt you'd really constructed something. In fact I once worked later in life for a mom and pop business where the owner had constructed a motorized ticket dispenser constructed mostly from Erector Set pieces and Roller Skate wheels. I also recall seeing several High School science experiments held together by Erector Set, and I'm talking the teachers semi-permanent devices, not Rube-Goldberg science fair projects (though they were there also).
I'm sure Mindstorm Lego people must have some similar tails to tell, and await a few replies.
If you saw the moon go dark, that would be odd, but how many people look at the moon non-stop?
How many people if they hadn't seen it go dark, would look up after and say HEY! I know the MOON should be right there!
How many people do you know that can detect the motion of the stars by just looking up? The daily rotation of the Earth would swamp out any yearly changes no longer occuring even if you could notice the nightly march of stars across the stars.
When you hold onto a leash you are part of a system, and you feel centripital force. Though compared to a leash, Gravity is not a leash, you follow the curve in space it makes. There is a significant centripital force from the Earth's rotation, and you would feel suddenly slightly heavier if it ceased. Then yes, every active fault would come alive. But that's not what we are talking about. The stress on fault lines are more from the day to day rotation under the pull of gravity. They are use to being stressed and relieved this much every 24 hours already. Solid Rock is a stubborn thing, it might take quite some time for it to react to the missing stress of the Sun, which would only be of a magnatude swing the planet is use to (though in a shorter time frame). Systems very close to giving already might be affected. But overall, the effects on the planet would be far less violent than you would imagine. It would take some days for global tempratures to plumet to below zero all over, and the winds would kick up quite quickly in the zones that were light and went dark immediately. But if it was midnight for you, all you might notice is the moon going dark.
Let me ask you this, do you think you are lighter at noon and heavier at midnight because the Sun's gravity subtracts and adds to the Earth's? (It doesn't). You do not feel the affect of traveling along a curve, and wouldn't notice it was now a straight line, other than side effects that accumlate from lack of solar flux.
I think most scientists believe the Sun's gravity will lag at the same speed as light.
BUT, assume the Sun winked out while it was night for you.
You wouldn't feel a thing.
No massive, "Oh, MY GOD we're lurching into space!" That's the whole point of space curved by gravity, you can't tell that you're not traveling a straight line. The weather would goto hell in a handbasket fast from no incoming heat after a few minutes or hours, and of course dawn wouldn't come. There might be some tectonic activity, some isolated magnitude seven and eights here and there, but most likely not immediately.
No you wouldn't even notice at first as the night hung on forever, and Earth continued on a straight line into the blackness...
This is great scientific news, I would imagine astronomical observations should allow for accurate predictions of resultant gravity wave phenomenon. By knowing the time and amplitude of the gravity waves emanating, one should be able to calibrate and adust LIGO to a great deal of precision. I think till know we have been in a I-Duh-Know-Maybe-It's-Working state. Once we know LIGO is working, we will be able to finally detect gravitational phenomenon directly.
As an aside, with a system this unique, and not to sound too much like a loon, but perhaps we should look for an ET presence. Not as the creators, but there maybe unique physical process than can be exploited in such a system, and doing so may give off a detectable technological signature.
I don't count myself among the Bush bashers on/. but what a pointless directive. Want to be really bold? Place a moratorium on manned space exploration until new truly cheaper, truly safer means are developed to get people in orbit. Let's see a commitment to building a space catapult that will drastically reduce the payload to vehicle weight ratio. Let's fling bulk cargo up with super cannons (this method would be really cheap, though inappropriate for people or sensitive components). We don't even have a space tug in orbit yet! Rather than rely on elaborate and fragile deploying mechanisms, lets assemble space probes and space telescopes in orbit and then have our (so far nonexistent) space tug ferry them to station. Hey a purpose for the ISS!
Lets start harvesting resources in orbit. How about dipping into the atmosphere to capture oxygen (and nitrogen if needed) then regenerate the momentum with Solar Energy pumped into a Electromagnetic Tether boosting system. Then all we need to haul up for space probe fuel is light weight hydrogen.
Lets build a super telescopes (optical and radio) on the far side of moon, but do it with robots. I think this could be done on cheap, buy making the primary spherical (like Arecibo or the proposed OWL), so you ferry out hundreds of paper thin identical spherical portions, with tiny adjustable stilts. A robot plants them around a suitable crater, Adjusting the stilts until each section is properly positioned to focus on a central boom. Some portions of the crater may be too irregular to properly position a mirror section or to high or too low for the stills to compensate for. Doesn't matter, you just need to get enough aggregate surface covered, it doesn't have to be uniform. Does require a halo orbit moon probe to stay in contact with earth.
Then there's that water that might exist on the poles of the moon that could be cracked for fuel, or just used for sustenance and radiation shielding.
Autonomous robots could do a lot of work Earth, and space would be a good proving ground and science driver for autonomous robot development.
Lets exhaust the search for life on Mars with probes before we contaminate the biosphere with human exploration.
The global warming camp insists on shooting themselves in the foot. Global warming may exist, but so far the real data hasn't shown a correlation beyond statistical variation on a long enough time scale. The Maunder Minimum was probably as severe or more severe (albeit in the other direction) and I don't see any reports of massive die offs during in it. I have seen studies seeking to prove Global Warming by showing the effect on animal migrations or germinating times. This of course is a completely backward way of going about proving something. There are dozens of confounding variables to factor in with regard to animal based studies. Plus this type of research suffers from the worse type of experimentation bias -- forming an opinion as to what the outcome should be, then scrounge for any and all evidence that would support that bias.
Now don't flame me that Global Warming exists, I'm not disputing there may be evidence that it may exist to some degree. But it almost certainly doesn't exist to the degree Global Warming zealots proclaim. To some degree all science and scientists are seen in a more skeptical light by the general public when Chicken Little prognostications don't come to pass.
We know species are stressed by man's activities on Earth (Global Warming or no). So if one makes predictions that species will become extinct due to Global Warming, and low and behold they become extinct, then perhaps the general public will suddenly get religion about Global Warming. Who cares if Global Warming is really to blame.
Sojourner did not travel far from its landing site,
Beagle II (if alive) will not travel at all.
While Spirit and Opportunity may travel far, there is always the chance they could breakdown or get hung up close to the landing site. In any event, they won't have to worry about how far is far enough to avoid all contamination.
It may not be a primary consideration, but I'll bet it was give a lot of weight in choosing between on-plume vs bag-bounce. Especially for Beagal II (God rest her soul).
Of course the biggest reason is, hey-it-worked-before:-)
Controled landing takes rocket fuel and rockets which add weight and complexity and cost.
Mars has a very thin atmosphere so a parachute landing directly is going to be a hard landing, plus the danger of getting tangled in the chute after you land.
By slowing to a halt just feet about the surface with one burts, you get away from the parachute that could entangle you, but have nowhere near the complexity and weight of an expensive landing on rocket plume solution (Viking).
I have never seen this mentioned, but would guess also you avoid scouring, contaminating, or sterilizing your landing site with your rocket plume.
I have a red-blue pair of stereo glasses, So I wish a red-blue pair had also been posted.
My stereo glasses came from inside a science magazine attached to a Pfizer ad about microbes to show the micrographs in 3D.
As an office joke I pasted the glasses which featured the Pfizer logo promenantly to my own ad...
NEW VIRTUAL VIAGRA!
Paint left side of penis blue, paint right side of penis red.
Penis Now Appears Erect!
Re:WAS JESUS A GAY NIGGER? YES HE WAS!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 1
I had considered this was the case, and also the reason for the mod'ing offtopic (which I shameless and trollishly bashed), but I figured what the hell, time for this guy's 15 minutes of fame. And mine as well, as it certainly gave my post high visability.
Re:WAS JESUS A GAY NIGGER? YES HE WAS!
on
What You Can't Say
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
How can such a outrageously controversial statement be mod'ed offtopic?
Isn't the whole point here to discuss what is un-discussable? Did the moderator actually read the article? Or even the post topic?
Perhaps it is stated in offensive terms, but it puts forth a reasonable proposition, and one that can't be known to be untrue by secular means of truth seeking. In fact there is considerable evidence in a secular sense the it is true.
I had expected better from the Slashdot crowd in general, and especially the moderators. Hopefully this will be meta-moderated unfair.
This article is about fear, and how to deal with this fear and discuss important ideas in light of pillorying that come from their discussion. I rarely use the word "nigger," I have no need to use it, but now I feel I must use it to dis-empower it. Nigger, nigger, nigger.
I've noted that western media have labeled Osama Bin Laden a monster not only for orchestrating 9-11 but for having more than one wife, one of whom was something like 13 at the time of marriage. Multiple wives and age of consent are social constructs and say nothing about their actual true moral content. But because we believe killing thousands of people is immoral, we can strengthen our belief the other two practices are evil as well.
The Nazis believed in eugenics. Therefor any discussion of forced sterilization of mentally retarded people is evil and Nazi like.
I do not believe in the tenants of NAMBLA, but sadly its existence squashes any discussion of what the real age of consent should be. Fear of PC backlash requires that I say I don't know what the age of consent should be, that I am not for lower it, just that it should be possible to discuss the issue. Ideally it would be based on some testable mental maturity of a minor wishing to enter adulthood. For the majority of Americans this might end up being 30, but for some percentage it would almost certainly be below 18.
I live in a college town. When The Bell Curve came out (dealing with race IQ differences), I found none of the college book stores actually carried this title.
There is a more open debate on drugs, but what about prostitution? Why are either illegal? They may have negative impacts on society, but this not how the debate is couched, it is always couched in moral terms. Why is paying people to have sex while you video tape them legal, but not for you to pay directly for sex?
Well that's enough anti-PC ideas for one post, hopefully someone will add a lot more to this thread.
But seriously, since a scramjet will only work in an atmosphere this only makes getting to LOE (low Earth orbit) easier. Of course if it is cheaper, you can haul more rockets up, more quickly, with more fuel. Speed and Time of travel are always a trade off in space based on fuel, so the more you fuel can haul up to start your journey the faster it will be.
I read the article, and while the overall answer is no, I can see a couple of loop holes. If some kind of tracer could be introduced into the body, it might be possible to tag specific neuronal connections as having occurred after introducing the tagging agent. I haven't seen the movie, but if the plan is to wipe the memories from the start, you would dose your subject with this tagging agent before acquiring the memories to be erased.
Now granted memory is a combination of forming new connections and strengthening or weakening others. But I suspect severing all new connections formed in a tight time frame would have the desired effect, and would probably only require the right chemical agent latching onto the specially designed tagging agent which as been bound to the sites of all new connections. How these tagging and latching agents are activated, and how they would actually sever the new connections I will not speculate. For an even more thorough wiping, recently strengthened and weakened connections could also be tagged and severed, but at the risk of losing more memory than intended.
Good God! I have probably just inspired some research project.
I remember running some falavor of Solaris on a 386 at Wolfram Research over 13 years ago, so Sun has been making x86 for quite some time. Like most other OS's, it can be ported to other architectures.
I don't think many people read the article. While Michael suggest this could replace reporters, it is not about summarizing a whole article, but merely paraphrasing individual sentences and elements. This would be useful for checking
for plagiarism where one author has merely line by line paraphrased another. Another useful area is in language translation, where the paraphrasing may make the translation more understandable. I don't think todays translation programs allow you to say the the same thing two or three times, but repeat it back differently (paraphrase) if not understood by your listener the first time.
Of course the time will come when machines summarize articles, and I believe I have seen where this has already been tried with mixed success. It would be kind of neat to see/. use both a summary engine and a paraphrase engine on
submitted articles. Then we could have 3 article descriptions: the posters description; a machine summary of the same article; and a machine paraphrase of the original posters summary.
I kind of like the concept in general, but implemented like Seti@Home.
How about the receiver have the sender complete a set of operations that contribute to distributed projects like Set@Home or Folding@Home?
The receiver sets the project (or project percentages), and an amount of raw CPU cycles (which would obviously be scaled up over time). The calculation engines would have to be written to be self verifying and self checking so the spammers couldn't spoof the calculation with garbage, but these are just details.
There should be a way to write this as a mail filter to all platforms and OSs.
It should also include a buddy list that make the calculation portion unneeded.
Slashdot Mirror
This "microscope" is really more of a good magnifying glass. It won't image microbes.
All and all, I don't understand why a range of microscopes has not been standard issue on all Mars lander missions.
I'm sure we'll all be using LED lighting soon as a matter of economics, but there may be situations where various lighting and viewing sources will "beat" you to death.
Spin off technologies used in industry the general public is unaware of.
Long range goals (something American companies often neglect). Someday everyone will have robotic aids and servants. It won't happen overnight, nor necessarily in our life time, but its an easy prediction to make for something almost certain to happen within the next hundred years.
When I said you wouldn't even notice, I only meant in the short term from the lack of gravitational influence. In fact I stated this in a couple of ways, and yet some have responded as if I think we don't need a Sun. Bihma had an interesting eventual outcome response but lets clear some things up about losing the influence of the Sun's gravity.
Suppose you where weightless aboard the ISS and the Earth disappeared. Would you suddenly say "HEY! We were weightless before, but now we're even more weightless!" No. Weightless is weightless. The same would be true of the relationship between the Earth and Sun. We feel the Earth's gravity because we are on it with it's surface preventing us from traveling some weightless trajectory. We don't feels the Sun's gravity because we are in orbit around it, following an unimpeded trajectory, which just happens to follow the curve our medium size star leaves in space. There is a small tidal force from the Sun, but it is much smaller than the tidal force from the Moon. Ah, ha you say, the Moon and Sun are pulling on the oceans! Wrong. Lets just consider the Earth-Moon system first, since this is the strongest tidal component. The Moon orbits Earth, and the Earth orbits the Moon. They both orbit a mutual center of gravity, located much closer to the Earth than the Moon because the Earth is Bigger. Imagine twirling a baton that had a one pound weight on one end and a ten pound weight on the other. When spun it would spin around some point close to the ten pound weight, but not the ten pound weight itself. Now because the Earth is orbiting this common center of gravity the closer side wants to follow a closer arc, and the farther side a wider arc, because their orbital distances are different by the diameter of the Earth. Because the oceans are fluid they try to follow these two different arcs, resulting in tides, but it is not the pull of the Moon directly. If it were, then the tide would only occur on the side facing the Moon. BUT NO! An equal tide occurs on the side facing away from the moon! Since the Sun is much farther away, its tidal force is much less, the two sides of the planet following very similar arcs.
Losing this week tidal force from the Sun is the only difference you would notice on the night-side, it wouldn't likely cause much immediate tectonic change. You might see the Moon go dark, if you were looking at it when it happened, but all in all it would be a non event until the catastrophic cooling began to kick in. I never said you wouldn't eventually notice. Brrrrrr.
P.S. Though now dark, the moon would continue to orbit the Earth with no change noticed on its part (other than no sunlight) as the Earth-Moon pair follow a slightly less complicated dance without their partner the Sun.
P.S.S. We don't just orbit the Sun, the Sun orbits the Earth as well, though because of its huge mass, the mutual center of gravity falls within the boundaries of its surface, but significantly removed from the actual center, though probably swamped by the jitter and confusion of all the mutual gravitational interactions from all the other, and some much larger, planets. And this jittering dance is just what scientists are using to detect planets around other stars.
I'm sure Mindstorm Lego people must have some similar tails to tell, and await a few replies.
How many people if they hadn't seen it go dark, would look up after and say HEY! I know the MOON should be right there!
How many people do you know that can detect the motion of the stars by just looking up? The daily rotation of the Earth would swamp out any yearly changes no longer occuring even if you could notice the nightly march of stars across the stars.
Man you have better eyes than mine! :-)
Let me ask you this, do you think you are lighter at noon and heavier at midnight because the Sun's gravity subtracts and adds to the Earth's? (It doesn't). You do not feel the affect of traveling along a curve, and wouldn't notice it was now a straight line, other than side effects that accumlate from lack of solar flux.
BUT, assume the Sun winked out while it was night for you.
You wouldn't feel a thing.
No massive, "Oh, MY GOD we're lurching into space!" That's the whole point of space curved by gravity, you can't tell that you're not traveling a straight line. The weather would goto hell in a handbasket fast from no incoming heat after a few minutes or hours, and of course dawn wouldn't come. There might be some tectonic activity, some isolated magnitude seven and eights here and there, but most likely not immediately.
No you wouldn't even notice at first as the night hung on forever, and Earth continued on a straight line into the blackness...
As an aside, with a system this unique, and not to sound too much like a loon, but perhaps we should look for an ET presence. Not as the creators, but there maybe unique physical process than can be exploited in such a system, and doing so may give off a detectable technological signature.
Lets start harvesting resources in orbit. How about dipping into the atmosphere to capture oxygen (and nitrogen if needed) then regenerate the momentum with Solar Energy pumped into a Electromagnetic Tether boosting system. Then all we need to haul up for space probe fuel is light weight hydrogen.
Lets build a super telescopes (optical and radio) on the far side of moon, but do it with robots. I think this could be done on cheap, buy making the primary spherical (like Arecibo or the proposed OWL), so you ferry out hundreds of paper thin identical spherical portions, with tiny adjustable stilts. A robot plants them around a suitable crater, Adjusting the stilts until each section is properly positioned to focus on a central boom. Some portions of the crater may be too irregular to properly position a mirror section or to high or too low for the stills to compensate for. Doesn't matter, you just need to get enough aggregate surface covered, it doesn't have to be uniform. Does require a halo orbit moon probe to stay in contact with earth.
Then there's that water that might exist on the poles of the moon that could be cracked for fuel, or just used for sustenance and radiation shielding.
Autonomous robots could do a lot of work Earth, and space would be a good proving ground and science driver for autonomous robot development.
Lets exhaust the search for life on Mars with probes before we contaminate the biosphere with human exploration.
That's enough rants for one post.
Now don't flame me that Global Warming exists, I'm not disputing there may be evidence that it may exist to some degree. But it almost certainly doesn't exist to the degree Global Warming zealots proclaim. To some degree all science and scientists are seen in a more skeptical light by the general public when Chicken Little prognostications don't come to pass.
We know species are stressed by man's activities on Earth (Global Warming or no). So if one makes predictions that species will become extinct due to Global Warming, and low and behold they become extinct, then perhaps the general public will suddenly get religion about Global Warming. Who cares if Global Warming is really to blame.
Go to your options homepage
Exclude Apple or whatever else you're tired of seeing.
Or, more practically, see the apple logo, Don't read the summary or the article, then enter the thread and whine about it.
While Spirit and Opportunity may travel far, there is always the chance they could breakdown or get hung up close to the landing site. In any event, they won't have to worry about how far is far enough to avoid all contamination.
It may not be a primary consideration, but I'll bet it was give a lot of weight in choosing between on-plume vs bag-bounce. Especially for Beagal II (God rest her soul).
Of course the biggest reason is, hey-it-worked-before :-)
Mars has a very thin atmosphere so a parachute landing directly is going to be a hard landing, plus the danger of getting tangled in the chute after you land.
By slowing to a halt just feet about the surface with one burts, you get away from the parachute that could entangle you, but have nowhere near the complexity and weight of an expensive landing on rocket plume solution (Viking).
I have never seen this mentioned, but would guess also you avoid scouring, contaminating, or sterilizing your landing site with your rocket plume.
My stereo glasses came from inside a science magazine attached to a Pfizer ad about microbes to show the micrographs in 3D.
As an office joke I pasted the glasses which featured the Pfizer logo promenantly to my own ad...
NEW VIRTUAL VIAGRA!
Paint left side of penis blue, paint right side of penis red.
Penis Now Appears Erect!
I had considered this was the case, and also the reason for the mod'ing offtopic (which I shameless and trollishly bashed), but I figured what the hell, time for this guy's 15 minutes of fame. And mine as well, as it certainly gave my post high visability.
Isn't the whole point here to discuss what is un-discussable? Did the moderator actually read the article? Or even the post topic?
Perhaps it is stated in offensive terms, but it puts forth a reasonable proposition, and one that can't be known to be untrue by secular means of truth seeking. In fact there is considerable evidence in a secular sense the it is true.
I had expected better from the Slashdot crowd in general, and especially the moderators.
Hopefully this will be meta-moderated unfair.
This article is about fear, and how to deal with this fear and discuss important ideas in light of pillorying that come from their discussion. I rarely use the word "nigger," I have no need to use it, but now I feel I must use it to dis-empower it. Nigger, nigger, nigger.
I've noted that western media have labeled Osama Bin Laden a monster not only for orchestrating 9-11 but for having more than one wife, one of whom was something like 13 at the time of marriage. Multiple wives and age of consent are social constructs and say nothing about their actual true moral content. But because we believe killing thousands of people is immoral, we can strengthen our belief the other two practices are evil as well.
The Nazis believed in eugenics. Therefor any discussion of forced sterilization of mentally retarded people is evil and Nazi like.
I do not believe in the tenants of NAMBLA, but sadly its existence squashes any discussion of what the real age of consent should be. Fear of PC backlash requires that I say I don't know what the age of consent should be, that I am not for lower it, just that it should be possible to discuss the issue. Ideally it would be based on some testable mental maturity of a minor wishing to enter adulthood. For the majority of Americans this might end up being 30, but for some percentage it would almost certainly be below 18.
I live in a college town. When The Bell Curve came out (dealing with race IQ differences), I found none of the college book stores actually carried this title.
There is a more open debate on drugs, but what about prostitution? Why are either illegal? They may have negative impacts on society, but this not how the debate is couched, it is always couched in moral terms. Why is paying people to have sex while you video tape them legal, but not for you to pay directly for sex?
Well that's enough anti-PC ideas for one post, hopefully someone will add a lot more to this thread.
But seriously, since a scramjet will only work in an atmosphere this only makes getting to LOE (low Earth orbit) easier. Of course if it is cheaper, you can haul more rockets up, more quickly, with more fuel. Speed and Time of travel are always a trade off in space based on fuel, so the more you fuel can haul up to start your journey the faster it will be.
Now granted memory is a combination of forming new connections and strengthening or weakening others. But I suspect severing all new connections formed in a tight time frame would have the desired effect, and would probably only require the right chemical agent latching onto the specially designed tagging agent which as been bound to the sites of all new connections. How these tagging and latching agents are activated, and how they would actually sever the new connections I will not speculate. For an even more thorough wiping, recently strengthened and weakened connections could also be tagged and severed, but at the risk of losing more memory than intended.
Good God! I have probably just inspired some research project.
He has indeed pointed out a mistake, and I misread his correction. So much for my promising career as an editor.
from: Solaris 2.6
Supported Hardware Platforms: SPARC: sun4c, sun4m, sun4d, sun4u Intel 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro
Of course the time will come when machines summarize articles, and I believe I have seen where this has already been tried with mixed success. It would be kind of neat to see /. use both a summary engine and a paraphrase engine on
submitted articles. Then we could have 3 article descriptions: the posters description; a machine summary of the same article; and a machine paraphrase of the original posters summary.
How about the receiver have the sender complete a set of operations that contribute to distributed projects like Set@Home or Folding@Home?
The receiver sets the project (or project percentages), and an amount of raw CPU cycles (which would obviously be scaled up over time). The calculation engines would have to be written to be self verifying and self checking so the spammers couldn't spoof the calculation with garbage, but these are just details.
There should be a way to write this as a mail filter to all platforms and OSs. It should also include a buddy list that make the calculation portion unneeded.