from the article: "British Airways has agreed to move the flight path of high- flying supersonic Concorde further to the south to take it away from the balloon. "
Well, given that it's a newspaper that found this, I can't see that there'll be a big problem as far as non-disclosure on this one. Not to mention the fact that it's been posted to slashdot of course:-)
On a side note, could the newspaper be held liable for this, given that they were intruding on the network without permission? If the newspaper gets screwed over this, it could generate some much-needed publicity and the following public backlash over this BIG problem in the current internet legal scene (namely that if someone finds an insecure network, they usually can't disclose it without getting whacked. Sometimes even if they only tell the company concerned, the company fixes it and then whacks them).
Exactly, so if you need any animations (which is what gif is mostly useful for AFAIAC), you need gif. And while hacks and stuff may be possible, is it worth my time as a website developer to fiddle with that stuff (and still possibly have it not work right) when I can just use a gif? If I give a customer the following options, I can tell you what they'll pick 9 times out of ten... 1) use gif which doesn't look quite as good, but generally looks fine or 2) use PNG and pay extra for me to fiddle with a bunch of hacks to get it to work correctly and potentially face future problems when MS decides to fiddle with its browser again, but it's an open format
did anyone even look at that ice cream page? it's freakin' hilarious! The shit they ended up with looks nasty as hell, but the best part is the quote from one of the captions: "hohohoh, nitrogenio!"
I'm just curious, but have we had any missions with RTGs aboard that have failed on launch before? have we ever de-orbited a sattelite with an RTG aboard? Testing is fine and dandy, but are there any examples of how these capsules behave in a real failure?
Another point is that those little portable TVs essentially NEED broadcast TV. They've come in handy on more than one occaision when there was a hockey game I didn't want to miss.
As a student who doesn't get cable in res, I have to say broadcast is excellent and actually (AFAIK) is well utilized with lots of viewers.
Um, okay, how about the obvious example you left out of your expansionist list: Nazi Germany? What drove them to expand? Nationalism. Pure and simple national pride, a hatred of the slavic peoples (not to mention Jews), and a belief that their nation was destined to control the globe because it was superior. The moon offers an ENOURMOUS boost in national pride to the Chinese, and I'm sure they'll capitalize on it.
Re:Things that I like after 40 years of reading Sc
on
A Good Summer Read?
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· Score: 1
I concur.
As an aside, does anyone here remember the old RPG that was based off of Pohl's Gateway? It went by the same name as was actually pretty good.
Back to books though, I'd also reccomend Moving Mars by Greg Bear, it's a good read and is not as well known as it deserves to be.
"The fact is humans tolerate a certain amount of radiation. Regarding Plutonium being poisonous do you know Caffeine is more poisonous than Plutonium? Think about it next time you have a cup of Coffee or drink Jolt."
Whoa, I just went to do some googling to prove you stupid but all I could come up with are this, this, and this. These give the LD50 data for both of these substances. LD50 means the lethal dose that kills 50% of a given population within 30 days (given in milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass).
Caffeine has an LD50 of 57-260 mg/kg, while plutonium has an LD50 similar to that of pantothenic acid which is up to 10 g/kg (if taken orally) or 820 mg/kg (if injected). Caffeine is clearly more toxic than plutonium according to this! I still don't quite believe this, so can someone come up with better numbers or a good reason why this isn't the case?
Re:CIA Humint - Sigint - Remote Sensing
on
IT at the CIA
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· Score: 1
Actually, one of the parents was completely wrong on that one. A teacher of mine was in NATO hq in brussels almost 3 months before the attempted coup in the USSR against Gorbachev, and they already knew about the coup and had even declassified it to the point where they could tell my teacher. When the coup happened, the media reported that it was a huge surprise to everyone, but many people, and at least NATO were well aware of it months ahead of time. So they didn't miss that, and the parent poster's mistake there really should call into question the reliability ofthe rest of his list. The media does NOT constitute a reliable source for this kind of info AFAIAC, let someone who is actually in a position to know these things testify and then we can talk.
Would it maybe be possible to place a limited GPS system on mars? I imagine deploying just three sattlites in geosynchronous orbit over the area where the tumbleweed probe is to land. Or, as alternative, deploy the sattelites in another orbit and settle for just collecting data periodically when the trio of sattelites are overhead. This second mechanism would have the advantage that it would still work if the tumbleweed traveled further than initially expected.
At what altitude does a nations airspace end and space begin?
Just kind of curious, b/c what if North Korea (somehow) managed to shoot down an American sattelite, and then claimed it was in their airspace... Are there international treaties/laws (that only some nations have signed) that dictate this, or is it just common sense (which doesn't hold any legal ground at all)?
The other thing with this guys system is this: If a voter goes home, checks his vote, and it's not what he voted, what happen? Does the vote get changed to what he SAID he voted (bad idea, he can then vote with more info than other voters had), or, not quite as bad but still an election nono, does the vote get nullified (bad for the same reason). I fail to see the accountability here...
"[Btw.: hybrid = internal combustion+electro car engine efficiency is close to 30-40% of theory right now on commercial models - far better than fuel cell experimantal designs]"
I call bull. Fuel cell efficiency is up to 90% in theory, and well over 50% in practice. The reason you see some numbers that are lower is that they also factor in the efficiency of the electrolysis to create the hydrogen, which is currently at ~80% IIRC. A quick bit of googling seems to confirm my numbers over yours.
Um, actually the "boom" from a reactor meltdown is not a thermonuclear "boom", it's just the boom of a couple steam-pipes busting from too much pressure. Of course, this is still bad as it realeases all the radiation into the atmosphere, but not not nearly as bad as a nuclear "boom". As the parent stated, it's actually REALLY hard to make a nuclear explosion. I mean heck, the basic principle is taught in highschool physics yet most countries still can't manage it...
Wow, 108 comments and I have yet to find one that discusses the proposition in any detail. (maybe all those fluid dynamics equations are as foreign to other slashdotters as they are to me:-) At any rate, I just finished reading the annotated paper, and I've got a few comments and questions:
1) Why, instead of using all this iron buisiness, don't we simply use a radioactive ball of goo? This would mean that the whole blob could be a lot smaller as you wouldn't have to worry about maintaining the heat - the radioactivity can do that for you! As well, given that melting point increases proportionally to pressure, and that the pressure in near the earth's core is extremely high, you don't have to worry about getting the iron hot enough to not worry about that. The guy writing the paper does mention the possibility of using nuclear, but he doesn't give any good reason why not.
2) Nice quote - "The correct application of this energy to open up a crack and the technological challenge of emplacing the iron should be much less challenging than the manhattan project." He does realize how difficult the manhatten project was, doesn't he?
3) He mentions that the hole would not completely close up behind the probe (NB - this would not cause a volcano, for reasons he points out, mostly due to tube size and geometry). Why is this the case? does some of the matter get combusted into a gas and escape out the chimney? or is there something else here that makes this not violate the conservation of matter? On another thought, would it be possible to lower a second probe down this chimney?!
4) The sensor package he discusses would look for temperature, pressure, trace + major elements, and electrical conductivity, etc. I can understand the pressure bit, but wouldn't the temperature and element sensors only be sensing the iron casing that the probe was injected with? unless he has some other method of sensing these things at some distance away from the probe I don't see how this is possible (maybe trace elements mixed with iron on the way down, but the experimental error in this would be huge). On another note, using the nuclear probe proposal in point 1, could it be possible to moderate the nuclear reaction and thus stop the probe for a bit, do some sensoring (whatever that may be, and I know I made that word up) and geology, then start up again? Also, this would be valuable for point 5...
5) He mentions that we don't know much about working with seismic waves. Wouldn't all this iron buisiness and the fact that its fluid potentially cause problems with the seismic signal? (like distortion, etc) Given that we haven't done much encoding/modulating, and transmitting of data using seismic waves, it might be a good idea to perfect this first. The only other option I could see would be emitting a constant signal and watching how it varies as the probe descends, and then extrapolating this for data (of course, then you don't get the juicy data at the probe itself).
There's more I could think of, but I do want to get this out, and I've got other things I should be doing. All the same, the article was an interesting read and stimulated the brain cells fairly well, even if it is completely impossible!
the reason your analogy fails is because leaving your front door unlocked does not equivocate making your house public space. Therefore, the cop doesn't have a legal reason/right to be there. However, if you leave your ftp server open, some would equivocate that with making it public. Therefore, ANYONE is free to come and go as they please, including cops. Kinda like how the walkway up to your house is considered "public" unless explicitly signed otherwise. If a cop walks up and knocks on the door and you answer it and he spots your pipe - your getting busted (or not, if the cop is nice:-)
I think the researchers actually went about this the wrong way. A computer is not a typewriter: there are important differences that I think would make a typewriter work better than a computer (for the purposes of producing random text anyways): a) If you hold down a key on a typewriter, it doesn't fill 6 pages with that one character. b) I would imagine that the mechanical action of the typewriter is more appealing to primates than silent techno-wizardry (more sensory feedback as a response to manipulating the typewriter) c) While it might be neccesary to simplify the typewriter (think carriage returns), it's easier than simplifying and bomb-proofing a computer d) and the list goes on...
Since you are (apparently) a judge, may I suggest as an item in next years scavenger hunt?
#x. _____ The login/pass for the account that gets First Post on the inevitable slashdot story about this scavenger hunt (no points if the post is AC, if there is a dupe, it counts too:-) (x points)
Slashdot Mirror
from the article:
"British Airways has agreed to move the flight path of high- flying supersonic Concorde further to the south to take it away from the balloon. "
Hasn't the concorde already been grounded?
How do the accelerometers they use work? That sounds like a pretty interesting piece of technology right there...
Well, given that it's a newspaper that found this, I can't see that there'll be a big problem as far as non-disclosure on this one. Not to mention the fact that it's been posted to slashdot of course :-)
On a side note, could the newspaper be held liable for this, given that they were intruding on the network without permission? If the newspaper gets screwed over this, it could generate some much-needed publicity and the following public backlash over this BIG problem in the current internet legal scene (namely that if someone finds an insecure network, they usually can't disclose it without getting whacked. Sometimes even if they only tell the company concerned, the company fixes it and then whacks them).
Actually, the ancient babylonians used base 60.
And as for muiltiplaction, its hard no matter what base you use if you ask me...
Exactly, so if you need any animations (which is what gif is mostly useful for AFAIAC), you need gif. And while hacks and stuff may be possible, is it worth my time as a website developer to fiddle with that stuff (and still possibly have it not work right) when I can just use a gif? If I give a customer the following options, I can tell you what they'll pick 9 times out of ten...
1) use gif which doesn't look quite as good, but generally looks fine or
2) use PNG and pay extra for me to fiddle with a bunch of hacks to get it to work correctly and potentially face future problems when MS decides to fiddle with its browser again, but it's an open format
4. Star in Playboy's "Women of the Internet" issue.
um, have you seen Ms. Rosen? I don't think you could pay playboy to print that...
did anyone even look at that ice cream page? it's freakin' hilarious! The shit they ended up with looks nasty as hell, but the best part is the quote from one of the captions: "hohohoh, nitrogenio!"
:-)
I found my new sig today
between an advert for haemerroid cream and an article about someone who has grown an amusingly shaped vegetable (usually a turnip or swede).
Could you please post a link to a story about the person that grew an amusingly shaped swedish person? It sounds really interesting...
Google cache here. No pics as usual, but the text content is mirrored.
I'm just curious, but have we had any missions with RTGs aboard that have failed on launch before? have we ever de-orbited a sattelite with an RTG aboard? Testing is fine and dandy, but are there any examples of how these capsules behave in a real failure?
Another point is that those little portable TVs essentially NEED broadcast TV. They've come in handy on more than one occaision when there was a hockey game I didn't want to miss.
As a student who doesn't get cable in res, I have to say broadcast is excellent and actually (AFAIK) is well utilized with lots of viewers.
Um, okay, how about the obvious example you left out of your expansionist list: Nazi Germany? What drove them to expand? Nationalism. Pure and simple national pride, a hatred of the slavic peoples (not to mention Jews), and a belief that their nation was destined to control the globe because it was superior. The moon offers an ENOURMOUS boost in national pride to the Chinese, and I'm sure they'll capitalize on it.
I concur.
As an aside, does anyone here remember the old RPG that was based off of Pohl's Gateway? It went by the same name as was actually pretty good.
Back to books though, I'd also reccomend Moving Mars by Greg Bear, it's a good read and is not as well known as it deserves to be.
"The fact is humans tolerate a certain amount of radiation. Regarding Plutonium being poisonous do you know Caffeine is more poisonous than Plutonium? Think about it next time you have a cup of Coffee or drink Jolt."
Whoa, I just went to do some googling to prove you stupid but all I could come up with are this, this, and this. These give the LD50 data for both of these substances. LD50 means the lethal dose that kills 50% of a given population within 30 days (given in milligrams of substance per kilogram of body mass).
Caffeine has an LD50 of 57-260 mg/kg, while plutonium has an LD50 similar to that of pantothenic acid which is up to 10 g/kg (if taken orally) or 820 mg/kg (if injected). Caffeine is clearly more toxic than plutonium according to this! I still don't quite believe this, so can someone come up with better numbers or a good reason why this isn't the case?
Actually, one of the parents was completely wrong on that one. A teacher of mine was in NATO hq in brussels almost 3 months before the attempted coup in the USSR against Gorbachev, and they already knew about the coup and had even declassified it to the point where they could tell my teacher. When the coup happened, the media reported that it was a huge surprise to everyone, but many people, and at least NATO were well aware of it months ahead of time. So they didn't miss that, and the parent poster's mistake there really should call into question the reliability ofthe rest of his list. The media does NOT constitute a reliable source for this kind of info AFAIAC, let someone who is actually in a position to know these things testify and then we can talk.
Would it maybe be possible to place a limited GPS system on mars? I imagine deploying just three sattlites in geosynchronous orbit over the area where the tumbleweed probe is to land. Or, as alternative, deploy the sattelites in another orbit and settle for just collecting data periodically when the trio of sattelites are overhead. This second mechanism would have the advantage that it would still work if the tumbleweed traveled further than initially expected.
At what altitude does a nations airspace end and space begin?
Just kind of curious, b/c what if North Korea (somehow) managed to shoot down an American sattelite, and then claimed it was in their airspace... Are there international treaties/laws (that only some nations have signed) that dictate this, or is it just common sense (which doesn't hold any legal ground at all)?
The other thing with this guys system is this: If a voter goes home, checks his vote, and it's not what he voted, what happen? Does the vote get changed to what he SAID he voted (bad idea, he can then vote with more info than other voters had), or, not quite as bad but still an election nono, does the vote get nullified (bad for the same reason). I fail to see the accountability here...
"[Btw.: hybrid = internal combustion+electro car engine efficiency is close to 30-40% of theory right now on commercial models - far better than fuel cell experimantal designs]"
I call bull. Fuel cell efficiency is up to 90% in theory, and well over 50% in practice. The reason you see some numbers that are lower is that they also factor in the efficiency of the electrolysis to create the hydrogen, which is currently at ~80% IIRC. A quick bit of googling seems to confirm my numbers over yours.
Um, actually the "boom" from a reactor meltdown is not a thermonuclear "boom", it's just the boom of a couple steam-pipes busting from too much pressure. Of course, this is still bad as it realeases all the radiation into the atmosphere, but not not nearly as bad as a nuclear "boom". As the parent stated, it's actually REALLY hard to make a nuclear explosion. I mean heck, the basic principle is taught in highschool physics yet most countries still can't manage it...
Wow, 108 comments and I have yet to find one that discusses the proposition in any detail. (maybe all those fluid dynamics equations are as foreign to other slashdotters as they are to me :-) At any rate, I just finished reading the annotated paper, and I've got a few comments and questions:
1) Why, instead of using all this iron buisiness, don't we simply use a radioactive ball of goo? This would mean that the whole blob could be a lot smaller as you wouldn't have to worry about maintaining the heat - the radioactivity can do that for you! As well, given that melting point increases proportionally to pressure, and that the pressure in near the earth's core is extremely high, you don't have to worry about getting the iron hot enough to not worry about that. The guy writing the paper does mention the possibility of using nuclear, but he doesn't give any good reason why not.
2) Nice quote - "The correct application of this energy to open up a crack and the technological challenge of emplacing the iron should be much less challenging than the manhattan project." He does realize how difficult the manhatten project was, doesn't he?
3) He mentions that the hole would not completely close up behind the probe (NB - this would not cause a volcano, for reasons he points out, mostly due to tube size and geometry). Why is this the case? does some of the matter get combusted into a gas and escape out the chimney? or is there something else here that makes this not violate the conservation of matter? On another thought, would it be possible to lower a second probe down this chimney?!
4) The sensor package he discusses would look for temperature, pressure, trace + major elements, and electrical conductivity, etc. I can understand the pressure bit, but wouldn't the temperature and element sensors only be sensing the iron casing that the probe was injected with? unless he has some other method of sensing these things at some distance away from the probe I don't see how this is possible (maybe trace elements mixed with iron on the way down, but the experimental error in this would be huge). On another note, using the nuclear probe proposal in point 1, could it be possible to moderate the nuclear reaction and thus stop the probe for a bit, do some sensoring (whatever that may be, and I know I made that word up) and geology, then start up again? Also, this would be valuable for point 5...
5) He mentions that we don't know much about working with seismic waves. Wouldn't all this iron buisiness and the fact that its fluid potentially cause problems with the seismic signal? (like distortion, etc) Given that we haven't done much encoding/modulating, and transmitting of data using seismic waves, it might be a good idea to perfect this first. The only other option I could see would be emitting a constant signal and watching how it varies as the probe descends, and then extrapolating this for data (of course, then you don't get the juicy data at the probe itself).
There's more I could think of, but I do want to get this out, and I've got other things I should be doing. All the same, the article was an interesting read and stimulated the brain cells fairly well, even if it is completely impossible!
the reason your analogy fails is because leaving your front door unlocked does not equivocate making your house public space. Therefore, the cop doesn't have a legal reason/right to be there. However, if you leave your ftp server open, some would equivocate that with making it public. Therefore, ANYONE is free to come and go as they please, including cops. Kinda like how the walkway up to your house is considered "public" unless explicitly signed otherwise. If a cop walks up and knocks on the door and you answer it and he spots your pipe - your getting busted (or not, if the cop is nice :-)
both to the parent and you, for making my day.
I think the researchers actually went about this the wrong way. A computer is not a typewriter: there are important differences that I think would make a typewriter work better than a computer (for the purposes of producing random text anyways):
a) If you hold down a key on a typewriter, it doesn't fill 6 pages with that one character.
b) I would imagine that the mechanical action of the typewriter is more appealing to primates than silent techno-wizardry (more sensory feedback as a response to manipulating the typewriter)
c) While it might be neccesary to simplify the typewriter (think carriage returns), it's easier than simplifying and bomb-proofing a computer
d) and the list goes on...
Since you are (apparently) a judge, may I suggest as an item in next years scavenger hunt?
:-) (x points)
#x. _____ The login/pass for the account that gets First Post on the inevitable slashdot story about this scavenger hunt (no points if the post is AC, if there is a dupe, it counts too