As TFA says, there are already "camera pills" you can swallow, but they don't gain you much. The drugs you get for a colonoscopy make it a non-event...the hard part is the 24 hours of purging that leads up to it, and you'll still have to do that with the camera pill. I expect the same would apply to the bot.
Also, if the doctor finds a polyp with a colonoscope he can whack it out on the spot; if the pill/bot finds one, you may have to do the purge all over again.
rj
Re:Where are the bunkers to protect Citizens ?
on
Back to the Bunker
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I'm gonna cover my roof with school desks. That's 5/8 inch particle board...nothing goes through that.
That trick of selective absorption of laser light has some pretty neat applications...you can actually cool a gas by shining a laser into it.
If a photon of precisely the right frequency (and therefore energy) hits an atom, two things happen:
(1) It gets absorbed, and transfers its momentum to the atom -- i.e., gives it a little push.
(2) One electron in the atom absorbs the photon's energy, exciting it to a higher energy level.
Then, after a random time interval, two more things happen:
(3) The electron drops back down to its old energy level.
(4) The atom emits a photon, carrying the energy given up by the electron, and the photon's momentum delivers another push to the atom.
But while the first push was in the direction of the laser beam, the second one is in a random direction -- so the affected atoms, statistically speaking, wind up with a net gain of momentum in the direction of the laser beam.
So far, the laser is basically just stirring the gas. Now you tune the frequency of the laser a little bit lower. The "average" atom sees the photons at the wrong frequency, and the photons just truck on by. But atoms that happen to be moving toward the laser see the photons Doppler-shifted up to just the right frequency and they receive a push away from it -- so their average speed is reduced. Ba-bing, ba-boom, the gas is colder.
Laser cooling, along with a couple of other techniques, made it possible to get the super-low temperature needed to isolate the Bose-Einstein Condensate which got the 2001 Nobel.
I had some stock in a company called Chill Can Corp circa 1965. It had a patent on a self-cooling drink can looking much like the one in TFA...it went nowhere.
A cardboard forerunner of the urinal game, called Whizzers, was marketed in the 70s.
Jet fuel is not more or less like kerosene. Jet fuel is kerosene.
It has certain antifungal and other additives in small concentrations, and the solid crap has been filtered out of it, but other than that it's your grandfather's coal oil.
Yes on the ground effect, no on the Spruce Goose. Hughes didn't make any effort to climb out of ground effect because the airplane had stability and control problems and very likely would have crashed if he had.
Designing an ultra-big airplane that will lift itself is no big deal: aerodynamic principles scale very well. The unknown area lay in the design of wood structures that big, and it turned out to be so floppy it was hard to control.
The B-36 bomber flew at 410,000 pounds gross weight on six P&W R-4360 engines; the Goose weighed maybe 350,000 on its flight and had eight of the same engines and a longer wing.
rj
Re:Why Then Not Now?
on
Back to the Moon
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It's called a corner reflector: three mirror surfaces mutually perpendicular. It has the interesting property that light striking it from any direction will wind up going back exactly the way it came -- after reflecting off one, two or three surfaces depending on where it hits first.
Make it from sheet metal and it works for radio waves...hang one from the mast of your sailboat and vessels with radar will see you as easily as they can see the Love Boat.
Yes, Morbius indeed. Not a one-dimensional wacko, but a respectable guy who went into his project with the best of motives only to have it blow up on him. Genuinely tragic figure.
If you look at it, in some situations, format and reload is generally QUICKER than spending hours on a problem.
Oh, it's quicker all right...I had a situation where it was treated as mandatory.
Seems the Ol' Lady bought a house brand machine from MicroCenter and let them talk her into an extended warranty (best of motives -- she didn't want to make me drive across town to play SA). So the machine quit reading its floppy drive, during the extension period, and she called the provider who was several states away.
No problemo, he said, just get the CD out of the orange sleeve and put it in the drive...she realized just in time that he was talking her through a format/reinstall. No way, she says, the machine boots and runs fine, it's just a problem with the floppy drive and I'm not going to wipe the data.
Sorry, he says, we warranty your computer, not your data, and we will not go further until you follow our instructions. When we're done, your computer will be as good as new. Of course, she gave him some instructions. I made a scene with the store management in front of customers and came away with some freebies, and the problem turned out to be a disk label that peeled off inside the drive.
I know it's hard to moderate the thousands of user submitted articles we get here, but these are concepts taught in English classes at the elementary school level.
Well, all the supermarkets in my area just hand you the card and a form. Doesn't matter if you send it in or not...the card still works. I've had cards from all the area markets for years, and they haven't the foggiest idea who I am.
Slashdot Mirror
You might be able to license that idea to Harry Turtledove for a novel...
rj
As TFA says, there are already "camera pills" you can swallow, but they don't gain you much. The drugs you get for a colonoscopy make it a non-event...the hard part is the 24 hours of purging that leads up to it, and you'll still have to do that with the camera pill. I expect the same would apply to the bot.
Also, if the doctor finds a polyp with a colonoscope he can whack it out on the spot; if the pill/bot finds one, you may have to do the purge all over again.
rj
I'm gonna cover my roof with school desks. That's 5/8 inch particle board...nothing goes through that.
rj
See, this is why engineers get annoyed when computer engineers call themselves engineers...
rj
rj
When the foundation of your house starts to move, it's a little late to start running.
rj
The gamblers known as businessmen view with austere disapproval the businessmen known as gamblers.
--Ambrose Bierce
rj
If a photon of precisely the right frequency (and therefore energy) hits an atom, two things happen:
(1) It gets absorbed, and transfers its momentum to the atom -- i.e., gives it a little push.
(2) One electron in the atom absorbs the photon's energy, exciting it to a higher energy level.
Then, after a random time interval, two more things happen:
(3) The electron drops back down to its old energy level.
(4) The atom emits a photon, carrying the energy given up by the electron, and the photon's momentum delivers another push to the atom.
But while the first push was in the direction of the laser beam, the second one is in a random direction -- so the affected atoms, statistically speaking, wind up with a net gain of momentum in the direction of the laser beam.
So far, the laser is basically just stirring the gas. Now you tune the frequency of the laser a little bit lower. The "average" atom sees the photons at the wrong frequency, and the photons just truck on by. But atoms that happen to be moving toward the laser see the photons Doppler-shifted up to just the right frequency and they receive a push away from it -- so their average speed is reduced. Ba-bing, ba-boom, the gas is colder.
Laser cooling, along with a couple of other techniques, made it possible to get the super-low temperature needed to isolate the Bose-Einstein Condensate which got the 2001 Nobel.
rj
I had some stock in a company called Chill Can Corp circa 1965. It had a patent on a self-cooling drink can looking much like the one in TFA...it went nowhere.
A cardboard forerunner of the urinal game, called Whizzers, was marketed in the 70s.
rj
...it lets you install XP on a new build from an Upgrade package.
rj
rj
Jet fuel is not more or less like kerosene. Jet fuel is kerosene.
It has certain antifungal and other additives in small concentrations, and the solid crap has been filtered out of it, but other than that it's your grandfather's coal oil.
rj
Yes on the ground effect, no on the Spruce Goose. Hughes didn't make any effort to climb out of ground effect because the airplane had stability and control problems and very likely would have crashed if he had.
Designing an ultra-big airplane that will lift itself is no big deal: aerodynamic principles scale very well. The unknown area lay in the design of wood structures that big, and it turned out to be so floppy it was hard to control.
The B-36 bomber flew at 410,000 pounds gross weight on six P&W R-4360 engines; the Goose weighed maybe 350,000 on its flight and had eight of the same engines and a longer wing.
rj
It's called a corner reflector: three mirror surfaces mutually perpendicular. It has the interesting property that light striking it from any direction will wind up going back exactly the way it came -- after reflecting off one, two or three surfaces depending on where it hits first.
Make it from sheet metal and it works for radio waves...hang one from the mast of your sailboat and vessels with radar will see you as easily as they can see the Love Boat.
rj
...for mimes.
rj
Yes, Morbius indeed. Not a one-dimensional wacko, but a respectable guy who went into his project with the best of motives only to have it blow up on him. Genuinely tragic figure.
rj
http://usmilitary.about.com/od/marinejoin/a/usmcga smask.htm
rj
rj
No...that comes when they film Star Trek: Gilligan's Planet.
And all they wanted was a five-year mission.
rj
Oh, it's quicker all right...I had a situation where it was treated as mandatory.
Seems the Ol' Lady bought a house brand machine from MicroCenter and let them talk her into an extended warranty (best of motives -- she didn't want to make me drive across town to play SA). So the machine quit reading its floppy drive, during the extension period, and she called the provider who was several states away. No problemo, he said, just get the CD out of the orange sleeve and put it in the drive...she realized just in time that he was talking her through a format/reinstall. No way, she says, the machine boots and runs fine, it's just a problem with the floppy drive and I'm not going to wipe the data.
Sorry, he says, we warranty your computer, not your data, and we will not go further until you follow our instructions. When we're done, your computer will be as good as new. Of course, she gave him some instructions. I made a scene with the store management in front of customers and came away with some freebies, and the problem turned out to be a disk label that peeled off inside the drive.
rj
I've seen similar comments about the stuff that barnacles glue themselves to ship bottoms with...wonder how this compares?
rj
Hmmm, let's see if I can guess your sign. Onager?
rj
In Deutschland sagt man "Konkurrenz."
rj
rj
One more. At least in my area, they hand you the card and say please fill out this form and send it in. You mean some people actually do that?
rj