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User: Enocasiones

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  1. Re:Regarding the permanent silence of Huygens... on Huygens Probe Lands on Titan · · Score: 2
    Why didn't they just use an RTG on Huygens instead of Batteries.
    Size, Weight. It would be like killing a fly with a cannonball.

    See for instance http://fti.neep.wisc.edu/neep602/SPRING00/lecture6 .pdf. An RTG needs quite a bit of supporting material besides the fuel pellets, gives way more power than Huygen needs and wouldn't fit.

  2. Ah... Sleep... on Sleep Less, Eat More? · · Score: 1
    There's a subject I like! Unfortunately, I sometimes get it too irregularly to be beneficial, but, as we all know, sleep is good for you.

    You get your damaged cells repaired, your brain gets into weird activity (although with Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, see http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fmri_intro/ we may soon discover it to be not so bizarre, but this should go into another topic) and a couple other nice things go on. For once, you may enjoy verrry nice dreams! And even encourage them! Is "lucid dreaming" still famous?

    And what about what goes before and sometimes after sleep? Specially if in good company...

    But enough veering off topic... (though it's been long since I posted and it's difficult...) Something interesting about the article is the fact it's so vague as to be totally worthless: what happens at the extremes, when people start sleeping too little or too much?

    (but of course, I cannot think there is such a thing as too much sleep!)

  3. Re:I have a question... on The Plastic Fractal Magnet · · Score: 1
    But eventually you'll reach the limits of physical matter: atoms, neutrons, protons, electrons, quarks; or the limits of whatever you're using to represent the fractal ... What does it happen when you reach that limit? Can't you say a fractal is limited by a tiny epsilon? (epsilon being the minimum measure you can take)

    I thought a fractal's characteristic property was its self-repeating structure through scale changes. The scale changes should be theoretically unlimited, but practically you do have a limit.

  4. You are confusing SF with Space Opera, on Planets May Form in Hundreds, Not Millions, of Years · · Score: 1
    Fantasy with Sword&Sorcery. You're ascribing properties of a subgenre to the whole genre.

    However, you're right about self-consistency and plot. Not that the time to form a giant gaseous planet is usually much relevant to any plot, but we all like our (fantasy) worlds solidly built.

  5. Content on Salon, Nearly No Money and Ultramercials · · Score: 1

    Someone has to write the articles and edit them. Then there's system administration. Salaries are probably their biggest fixed cost. Just guessing, but it makes sense.

  6. Cannonical, apocryphal, whatever on Animated Star Wars on Cartoon Network · · Score: 1

    With all the talk about the "canon", I can picture the archaelogists of the 30th century quite surprised when they find a "Project Time" bag enclosing a video tape depicting His Fallen Lord Faeder and His Son Lucca (or a teen Angel Solo?) as stylized cartoons. They will be known as the Apocryphal Vids.

  7. Re:Motivation? on Cheating at Seti@home · · Score: 1

    Did you read the article? Or the Slashdot excerpt. for what it matters. It all hangs around the NE team...

  8. Re:Wasn't cheating to be "impossible" ? on Cheating at Seti@home · · Score: 3, Interesting

    M$ products & others' are closed and look at all the "cheats" (exploits) you can use on them. You cant stop the cheating through obscurity, as the linked page in the First Post states.

  9. Re:Motivation? on Cheating at Seti@home · · Score: 3, Informative
    YOU should read the article:

    Nealon has also identified ways in which the cheating could pervert the accuracy of data received by the project.

    "Pervert the accuracy" means "corrupt" in my dictionary.

  10. Motivation? on Cheating at Seti@home · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What drives people to do this? You may brag about being first, but still, you'll be first together with all your teammates. Lots of people to share the credit, not much left for an individual. And the fact that the cheating could corrupt the results just makes matters worse.

  11. Re:The problem with your logic is... on Homing In On Laser Weapons · · Score: 1
    OK, In your case the total energy is 1KJ, which over a small area can be quite intense. With the 500/500 pulse the energy total is ridiculous.

    My somewhat cryptic point was that you have to pay attention to the power AND to the energy transmitted, i.e., the length of the pulse also matters. Just giving a power output is not that significant. Theres energy and theres power, and you shouldnt mix both.

  12. Re:We`ll have to on Homing In On Laser Weapons · · Score: 1
    that's for a 500mJ, 500ns pulse

    a 100KW IR laser will vaporize pretty much anything

    But your laser is actually quite powerful!

    500mJ/500ns=500*10E-3J/500*10E-9s=1*10E6W=1MW

    That's 1 Megawatt, 10 times more powerful than the 100KW one! Its not strange that you have problems. Not much energy because of the short time interval, but the intensity is tremendous.

  13. Re:excellent on Panasonic Combined DVD-R & PVR Device · · Score: 1
    I wonder what those thought who mod'ed this "Overrated" before it started going up as "Funny"...

  14. Consider this on Cellphones On Airplanes · · Score: 3, Interesting
    If it weren't for the ubiquitous cellphones: 1) another plane would have crashed in washington

    Who tells you the plane didnt crash where it did because of all those people talking on their mobiles and interfering with the plane's instruments?

  15. Re:More stupidity on Cellphones On Airplanes · · Score: 1
    I have yet to figure out why the airlines are so "scared" of electronics, if the RF output of my Visor or some kids GameBoy is enough to bring the plane down there is a serious problem, who needs a box cutter...."I have a GameBoy and I'm not afraid to use it!"

    Well, maybe not a conventional Gameboy. But if you take the GB apart and mod it to broadcast radiofrequencies over the whole spectrum... well, then it could be fun.

    As they say, there are miles of wiring on a plane. However properly they are isolated, radiowaves could get there and wreak havock. Or maybe not, but look at your monitor when you receive a call... And the frequencies of mobiles and screens are MHz apart. As a poster above said, think of all the harmonics you're getting with all the wires and metallic stuff around in a plane cockpit.

  16. Re:Can someone explain on Cellphones On Airplanes · · Score: 2, Informative

    As they say here, read the article:

    "The FAA bars cell phone use in flight as well as other electronic devices during takeoff and landing to avoid disrupting plane electronics. AirCell's system would reduce cell phones' power and limit the number in use at once."

    and

    "The FCC bans use because of ground concerns. Cell phones often don't work at 30,000 feet, but when they do, signals can reach hundreds of towers at once, clogging networks."

  17. Broccoli and candy on Scientific Battlegrounds in Diets · · Score: 1
    It depends on how the broccoli is cooked, and the type of candy. But broccoli with bechamel in the oven with a bit of bacon and a cheese topping, or steak with crumbed and fried broccoli... yummy! Much better than some candy Ive tasted (ever heard of the Jar Jar sucker/lollypop?).

    However, it depends on you mood and "type" of hunger: my sister for instance knows that when shes craving for something and she cant quite pin it down, its normally lentils that she needs. I normally prefer anything salty to sweet foods.

    As stated above by another poster, its a matter of uprising...

  18. You're welcome on Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity · · Score: 1

    And your post made me find out where the thing actually originated, so thanks to you. I always thought it had been the Nintendo USA CEO the one who said it in 1989. Ah, the wonders of Internet search...

  19. Dyslexia&Videogames on Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity · · Score: 1
    This was in '83, but I feel it's quite on topic.

    Children with learning disabilities in upstate New York, where playing videogames is proving valuable in helping youngsters to overcome the life-stunting, and often embarassing, handicap of dyslexia

    also

    Videogames may be hazardous to our nation's youth, says United States Surgeon General, Dr. C. Everett Koop. Admitting that he has absolutely no scientific evidence whatsoever to support this brazien statement, Dr. Kopp adds the good news that many young people in this country are already addicted to the games "body and soul". And, no, he has no proof to support that allegation, either.

    Some people find some things irrelevant, others find those same things funny and history repeats itself...

  20. Re:but what about the tube? on Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Right! I can just say: dyslexics of the world untie!

  21. Nice stolen quote on Video Games Found To Decrease Brain Activity · · Score: 1
    "Computer games don't affect kids, I mean if Pac Man affected us as kids, we'd all run around in a darkened room munching pills and listening to repetitive music..."

    - Marcus Brigstocke, British Comedian

    It is my Joke. I wrote it, then I took the rest of the day off as I was so chuffed with it. I am gutted that it has been claimed and passed around by so many people. Intelectual property law will not save me, the false claims will continue until I am man enough to give it all up. All I can say is - it seems that it is very unlikely that it was written by a Nintendo employee in 1989, being as Pac Man was still around and not much of a childhood memory, there were very few claims that gaming influenced childrens behaviour, and that the wording of it is identical to how it has been deliverd in my stand up routine for 6 years

    (the Pac Man quote is also apocryphally attributed to Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989, and Karen Price, Nintendo Representative)

  22. What�s your point? on The AudioGalaxy Story · · Score: 1
    First you say a series of things is "pretty damn liberal and leftist in my book".

    Then you write a very nice rant, but could you please tell us what it all has to do with your funny definitions of "liberal" in your first post? You yourself seem to be quite liberal in my book. Or did you just want an excuse to stand on the soapbox?

  23. Re:And that excuses theft? on The AudioGalaxy Story · · Score: 1
    would you buy windows if you had to buy office and 10 other ms products with it and the price came out to 20 times that of the price for what you actualy wanted?

    In fact that already happens: when buying windows you get not only an OS, which is what youre supposed to get, but also a browser (which I dont use), an email/news client a media player (dont use), an archiving tool (dont use) and a couple of other things (which many dont use). Were all this bloat absent, MSW would be much cheaper. Or at least should.

  24. Re:25 Hours? on Isn't it Time for Metric Time? · · Score: 1

    I thought periods go inside the quote when the quote itself has a period, otherwise you can put it out.

  25. Re:Simple on Do You Have The Time? · · Score: 1
    I guess too much browsing leads to a lack of use of ones brains and that leads to sentences like "I have gotten so I can convert between 24hr and 12hr time with relative ease", because that is such a stupid, trivial and even unnecessary task that just reading that sentence causes me to wonder about the posters and humankinds place in the universe. The bit where he explains the process is just hilarious.

    Sorry for the flame, but come on... the way you write, it looks like you need to have a nuclear engineering PhD to know that 19:00 is 7pm. Argh. I guess youve never used a 24hr clock (which is quite good if you tend to have a funny schedule and dont know if that "8:00" is AM or PM, while "20:00" is unequivocal.)