Don't get bent out of shape over the fact that zebra mussels (Dreissena polymorpha) or rats (Rattus rattus) are "ranked" below seaweed (Caulerpa taxifolia), despite the fact that seaweed is benign compared to them.
You should take issue with the people who invented the alphabet, since they're the ones who put 'c' before 'd' and 'r'.
I'm sure that there will be a story about Rutan and friends as soon as there's something to report on other than the fact that today is the day they're going for the prize, since that's already been posted. When (or if, i guess) the flight succeeds, I'm sure there will be a story about it.
We've known gecko feet work like this for years
on
Hairy Adhesives
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· Score: 5, Informative
I don't think this is as much of a breakthrough as the article makes it out to be. We've known that geckos use Van der Waals forces to climb things for years.
Here's an article from nature.com from 2000 that talks about gecko feet, and here's another from 2002 about how scientists have developed prototype adhesives based on what they learned from geckos. One of the articles even talks about experiments from 30 years ago, wherein researchers found that geckos do not stick to Teflon, which does not produce Van der Waals forces.
So while we may not have known that spiders use Van der Waals forces as well, we have known for years that animals have been using the force to stick to things.
If you're resourceful, you can just grab a pair of welding goggles and use them. We would often go outside during shop class and look at the sun because we had nothing better to do.
As far as the time of transit goes, it will last about 6 hours, and will be visible in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. So if you live in the Americas like I do, you won't be able to see it.
I don't think this is a matter of double standards. The article even says that there's no shame in what Intel has done:
"There's no shame in it," Halfhill said of the reverse-engineering. "AMD has reverse-engineered everything Intel has done for years."
Intel may or may not have copied, reverse-engineered, or otherwise duplicated the AMD spec. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that it is Intel who is having to catch up to AMD, rather than the other way around.
To answer your questions, A British ton weighs more than an American ton, and A pound is the same in America as it is in England. Canada uses the metric system, so they use the Metric ton.
(You can ignore the rest of this if I've explained things sufficiently. I like Imperial measurements, so I'm going to continue.)
Technically, a ton is 20 hundredweight. However, there are two kinds of hundredweight. The short (or American) hundredweight is 100 pounds, and the long (British) hundredweight is 112 pounds.
A British hundredweight was defined to be 112 pounds because it translated almost directly to foreign units of the time (the 1400s). 112 also divides easily into quarters (28 lb), stone (14 lb), and cloves (7 lb). If you're interested in the history of units of measurement, check out this page or any of a number of others you can find on Google.
I totally agree. Here at Iowa State, they shut down the local file indexing services, so people turned to kazaa, which completely flooded our outside connection.
The IT folks have tried to fix the problem with packet shaping and things like that to no avail. They need to (try to) block p2p at the internet gateway so that kazaa & company only work inside the network. Most of the time, someone else on campus is going to have what you're looking for anyway, so there's no need to tie up the outside line to get the same thing.
Is it feasible to just run wires? I know wireless is "cool" and the "next big thing", but it may not be the best option if you've got a lot of interference to deal with. I don't know if wireless is the only way to go for you or not, but using wires is worth considering.
Wireless may be cleaner and less involved when it comes to physical setup, but wires "just work" after you've strung them (unless you've miscrimped them, you poor soul:-). There's no messing with channels, positioning antennae, or worrying about outside interference, as there is with wireless.
If you've ever been to a LAN party where lots of people have wireless keyboards and mice, the advantage of wires is apparent. Instead of having to deal with the noise and lag caused by all the wireless cross-talk, you can glide effortlessly through the map, fragging people as you please.
As far as actually wiring the room goes, there are lots of ways to run cable without having to actually drill holes in walls or otherwise disfigure the building. You can sneak them along the baseboards or up through drop-tile ceilings (though you do have to deal with conealing drop-down points when running cable overhead).
Like I said, this may not be practical in your case, but it is worth mentioning.
I think a big part of the problem is that when someone decides to be a complete a**hole, the negative repercussions are not nearly as severe as they would be in the real world. The real world and the internet are two very different beasts, which makes creating and upholding justice in one very different than doing so in the other.
If I decide to create an Everquest character and then go around slaughtering newbies, the worst that can happen is that my account is disabled/removed and I'm out about 15 bucks (or whatever the subcription fee is). Then, if I want to, I can create another account and do the same thing until I tire of it or run out of money.
Punishing a player's character is all well and good, but it doesn't carry the same weight as punishing the player themselves (like fining them for stealing something). I don't think having real-world consequences for online actions is a very good idea, nor would it be very easy to do. However, if it were implemented somehow, I'm almost certain that the amount of despicable behavior online would drop significantly.
Regarding question two, I think.
on
Can You Raed Tihs?
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This has turned into a theory as to why English can be mangled so. Here it is in all its splendor:
Modern English is the offspring of many different older languages (as you may know). These languages all had varying ways of representing different sounds with the alphabet given to them by the Romans. When English took all of these methods and combined them into one language. Thus, there are many different ways of creating the same sound, or phoneme.
Therefore, English does not encode the spoken language into text exactly. Though there are some sounds that can only be created one way ('ng' and 'ch' come to mind), many can be spelled numerous ways. For example: whir, were, and work have the same sound in them, but are spelled differently. This makes spelling words in English more difficult, but makes identifying misspelled words easier. You could say English now comes with error-correction. This has no doubt helped it remain in existence, despite its lack of consistent grammar rules and general lack of user-friendliness.
Disclaimer: I blame any grammatical or logical errors on my lack of sleep. Now I'm going to bed.
Slashdot Mirror
"We're such a cool website. We've got images from Hackers!"
goingupriver.mov.torrent
Yeah, pretty much. But at least I'll be providing a faster link to the torrents.
As soon as I get the torrent downloaded, a link will follow.
You should take issue with the people who invented the alphabet, since they're the ones who put 'c' before 'd' and 'r'.
I'm sure that there will be a story about Rutan and friends as soon as there's something to report on other than the fact that today is the day they're going for the prize, since that's already been posted. When (or if, i guess) the flight succeeds, I'm sure there will be a story about it.
The post isn't redundant, since the article summary fails to mention the title of the movie.
here
Here's an article from nature.com from 2000 that talks about gecko feet, and here's another from 2002 about how scientists have developed prototype adhesives based on what they learned from geckos. One of the articles even talks about experiments from 30 years ago, wherein researchers found that geckos do not stick to Teflon, which does not produce Van der Waals forces.
So while we may not have known that spiders use Van der Waals forces as well, we have known for years that animals have been using the force to stick to things.
As far as the time of transit goes, it will last about 6 hours, and will be visible in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia. So if you live in the Americas like I do, you won't be able to see it.
That's what I get for not re-reading things when I post.
That page is located here.
Where else can I get my News for Nerds?
(You can ignore the rest of this if I've explained things sufficiently. I like Imperial measurements, so I'm going to continue.)
Technically, a ton is 20 hundredweight. However, there are two kinds of hundredweight. The short (or American) hundredweight is 100 pounds, and the long (British) hundredweight is 112 pounds.
A British hundredweight was defined to be 112 pounds because it translated almost directly to foreign units of the time (the 1400s). 112 also divides easily into quarters (28 lb), stone (14 lb), and cloves (7 lb). If you're interested in the history of units of measurement, check out this page or any of a number of others you can find on Google.
A light pen, perhaps. Or maybe a ballpoint one...
They're probably great at running Folding@Home.
The IT folks have tried to fix the problem with packet shaping and things like that to no avail. They need to (try to) block p2p at the internet gateway so that kazaa & company only work inside the network. Most of the time, someone else on campus is going to have what you're looking for anyway, so there's no need to tie up the outside line to get the same thing.
Wireless may be cleaner and less involved when it comes to physical setup, but wires "just work" after you've strung them (unless you've miscrimped them, you poor soul :-). There's no messing with channels, positioning antennae, or worrying about outside interference, as there is with wireless.
If you've ever been to a LAN party where lots of people have wireless keyboards and mice, the advantage of wires is apparent. Instead of having to deal with the noise and lag caused by all the wireless cross-talk, you can glide effortlessly through the map, fragging people as you please.
As far as actually wiring the room goes, there are lots of ways to run cable without having to actually drill holes in walls or otherwise disfigure the building. You can sneak them along the baseboards or up through drop-tile ceilings (though you do have to deal with conealing drop-down points when running cable overhead).
Like I said, this may not be practical in your case, but it is worth mentioning.
Here's a direct link to the image, if you're feeling lazy.
In RPGs, cars and other inanimate objects have HP for the same reason people have HP. Things can only take so much abuse before breaking/dying.
Apparently I can't spell.
If I decide to create an Everquest character and then go around slaughtering newbies, the worst that can happen is that my account is disabled/removed and I'm out about 15 bucks (or whatever the subcription fee is). Then, if I want to, I can create another account and do the same thing until I tire of it or run out of money.
Punishing a player's character is all well and good, but it doesn't carry the same weight as punishing the player themselves (like fining them for stealing something). I don't think having real-world consequences for online actions is a very good idea, nor would it be very easy to do. However, if it were implemented somehow, I'm almost certain that the amount of despicable behavior online would drop significantly.
Modern English is the offspring of many different older languages (as you may know). These languages all had varying ways of representing different sounds with the alphabet given to them by the Romans. When English took all of these methods and combined them into one language. Thus, there are many different ways of creating the same sound, or phoneme.
Therefore, English does not encode the spoken language into text exactly. Though there are some sounds that can only be created one way ('ng' and 'ch' come to mind), many can be spelled numerous ways. For example: whir, were, and work have the same sound in them, but are spelled differently. This makes spelling words in English more difficult, but makes identifying misspelled words easier. You could say English now comes with error-correction. This has no doubt helped it remain in existence, despite its lack of consistent grammar rules and general lack of user-friendliness.
Disclaimer: I blame any grammatical or logical errors on my lack of sleep. Now I'm going to bed.
IIRC, the Datahand was used on Seaquest as well as in Contact.