Dunno 'bout Teoma being by the wayside. Ggole is good enough for computer tech stuff, but Teoma shines for science stuff (I'm talking scientific papers and the like here, the stuff you'd see on arxiv). Every search engine has it's focus.
Exactly! Sometimes you don't even know wtf is out there...using the 'word in/exclude' technique, you would miss out on much info you might actually be (more) interested in.
Using something like Grokker gives you some more insight into the whole available field.
Whenever stories like this pop up, I'm reminded of my first year as a naive mechanical engineering student. We had to design and make a one-man hovercraft, and a friend and me where in charge of sorting out the rubber skirt (the thing underneath the hovercraft which keeps the air in). Anyway, we need tough vulcanised rubber sheets, prefferably in strips about 30cm wide.
So I go to google......and I type in rubber......and hit enter......=8o...
Two things; one, sailing in that day and age was dangerous. It wasn't for nothing that if you could pull off one successfull voyage there and back and arrive with a hold of spices, you'de be rich for life ('s where the phrase 'to have your ship come in' comes from...for the investors who stayed home, of course:)). Man, if it wasn't half of the ships which never came back in the beginning, it was damn close.
Second, why do you think people watch all those fear factor type things? They're secretly hoping that someone dies...that's why the ratings are so high; poeple want to see calamity. If you where suggesting a reality soap thing (which parent poster wasn't, btw), the best thing to happen for the ratings would be the crew dying. There'd be ripp-off's asap.
You don't need a biosphere...just something that can provide for a year (half year flight time there, a week or so on the planet and another halfyear back...that's the current flighttime, not a decade), which is much, much easier.
The difficult thing is ensuring medical safety of the crew; just one flight doc can't handle broken arms, tooth probs, accute appendicitis, radiation poisoning (oh, those cosmic rays!), and whatever else can go wrong with a human in a year's time.
Sorry, but from where I sit I see any loss of any scientific experiment as a loss to all the people of the planet. Who cares about nationality? It's the data that's important.
And that's the whole thing about the EU law; it doesn't matter what Nintendo, Sony or MS say or do in their warrenties; no matter if even the store says "you only have 3 months warrenty". For new stuff, the EU garranties a warrenty time of 2 years.
Same happens when you read a book. Even though the words don't change at your direction, your mind is consiously engaged and will take tangents from what is written; your mind actively creates scenes from the book, to such an extent that you also consider the possibilities (ie "why did he do that!", "why doesn't she do so and so?" etc).
Thinking of an alternate possibility in your minds eye and doing it on screen are essentially the same, as they both live in a kind of 'possibility space', where neither affect the real world directly, but only indirectly. In this way, books, films and video games are the same, and thus should all be classified as free speech.
Although you're spot on about the airbags. Hell, the original pair blew up during pressure testing too!
But don't overestimate our geographical knowledge of Mars, or underestimate Mars' irregularity. Landing something in an unfamiliar, hostile atmosphere without complete knowlede of the landing zone is difficult. Just have a look at where the Mars Rover was meant to go and where it actually landed for a good idea of the uncertainties involved.
What will you do with that fuel formula? Will you give it to the public domain (on the one hand helping everyone with the same problem and stimulating [future] 'amature' spaceflight, one the other hand losing some of your competitive edge on the xprize) or will you try to make money from it (you did do the research!...and it could become quite profitable)?
I agree; thing is, there's too many people around now adays for copyright/patenting to work. Even AC (:))Clarke talks about the proverbial 'idea whose time has come'. Fact of the matter is that with so many people on the planet, most idea's will occur/happen one way or another (hell, I've seen some of my idea's which were worth money appear in the news...when someone else 'invented' them). Rewarding someone whilst restricting their use to others, just becuase someone made it happen a few months earlier than the rest just doest make sense. And the more (educated) people on the planet, the more this'll happen.
And let's not forget that the revolutions of the printing press and modern pc's would not have happened with current intellectual property laws being in place/enforced. There would be no industrial or information revelution if they tried to happen under current laws.
First off, the reason that bird got shot down is that the US, stupidly and against doctine and even common sense, flew sorties using the same flight paths for days in a row. Result; someone hears these things fly over (stealthy is really just relative), puts AA in the line of flight and BOOM. After that the USAF changed it's flight paths pretty quick.
Second, not only is stealth not stealth if you change the frequency your radar operates on (or if you go optical, like some russian/british systems), but it's not cost effetive when fighting against a first world nation; sure, an F22 can take on 5 f16's and win...but you can buy about 10-15 (if not more) f16's for the price of one f22. It's called saturation, and is a real strategy (formerly known as rules of attrition:)).
Nop...the gas was a compound the Iraqi's never even did research in, let alone have factories for. Only the US has the stuff in production...and the US has even admitted to selling the stuff (to the Iranians, actually...it is more than just likely that it was the Iranbians who gassed the Kurds, not the Iraqi's...blame the media for that cock up of public perception).
The US is most definitely not the best system that work; it has third world death rates in it's cities, as well as widespread illiteracy and poverty. It is not without reason that USAID (an agency for providing relief to third world countries) has now got programs running in the US itself. For a better system, go look in the EU; high-tech and high standards of living, education and sanitation.
Not only that, but would you care to discuss the US' sales of nuclear tech to Israel? Or the US' recent decision to sanction the deployment of low yield nukes in a tactical (not strategic!) scenario?
Anyway, wtf was the US doing interfering in the souvereignety of the states in that region anyway? Why was it meddling in a region it has nothing to do with in the first place? Isn't that a direct contravention of the concept of capitalism?
I dunno 'bout that. Bacteria, once you have 'em, are pretty cheap. Even keeping 'em in a presurised environment and feeding 'em would probably be cheaper than the current method of going out and drilling in godforsaken area's (like deserts/seas) and transporting the oil back to be processed. Look at artificial diamonds, or the making of beer:)
And, of course, if this can be done (or even if it is bacteria who make the stuff) we'd be dealing with a non-limited resource, which is good news for the plastics industry, let alone the gasoline/diesel engine manufacturors.
Not only that....thing is, if it turns out bacteria can make oil, it means we can breed and harvest those selfsame bacteria and make oil! Do that large scale enough, and no more oil shortage...but it sure is unhealthy, though:(
Man, just compare overal gun availablity in the EU and the US to guncrime in the EU and the US...same (if not more) difersity, same (if not more) population, hardly any guns in the EU, more in the US; loadsa guncrime in the US, hardly any in the EU (as in insignificant in comparison).
There is something you're not taking into account; guns are subject to kinda the same laws of diffusion as gasses are (yeah, I made that up, but it's a good analogy here); guns are readily available in neighbouring areas, so criminals can get to guns easily. Fact reamains, in a large geographical area where guns are in short supply, gun crime is insignificant compared to the US.
Plus there is less of a social stigma associated with guns in the states anyway, so having a gun in an area in the US where guns are less legal, owning a gun is more 'allright'.
I call partial bollocks on that:) Ever since relativity came along, we know that although plausible, Euclidian mathematics doesn't describe the universe properly, since it states that two paralel lines can never cross each other...but with curved space-time, they can:)
As previous poster points out, the photoelectric effetc article was in many ways more important than the work on relativity; the abnormal notion that not only was energy quantisd, but that was intrinsic to the description of the 'photon' rather than just a handy model to use was quite important.
Funnily enough, this concept was harder to swallow for many people than relativity; many people at the time, while honouring him, said someething to effect of "he's brilliant, but that photoelectric effect explanation thingy, that was just misguided":)
The whole cold war reference was made to cover my ass; I never meant that the US was/had been resting on it's laurels...and hell, the cold war produced more tech in any number of fields.
But my point is twofold: one, that tech has made it's way to a number of EU nations too (either through tech transfer or in-house dev's) and two, that since ww2 there has been no shooting war involving subs (yeah, intel etc...but AFAIK no ships have been sunk by subs, kinda thing) so the effect of subs on both sides is pretty much underrated. Especially with for example 'supersonic' torpedoes (and you can bet your ass that subs are soon to follow...who cares if they can hear you when you can out run/turn 'em?) developed by the russians (and the UK getting there quick too), passive sonar tech/pattern recognition, wireless guided torps, etc.
Thing is, whne both sides are quite as hell, bith sides are blind...and both can equally shoot shit out of each other...but the subject under discussion (I think;)) was a US incursion to the EU...in which case it's the US who has to cross the ocean:)
Slashdot Mirror
Dunno 'bout Teoma being by the wayside. Ggole is good enough for computer tech stuff, but Teoma shines for science stuff (I'm talking scientific papers and the like here, the stuff you'd see on arxiv).
Every search engine has it's focus.
Exactly! Sometimes you don't even know wtf is out there...using the 'word in/exclude' technique, you would miss out on much info you might actually be (more) interested in.
Using something like Grokker gives you some more insight into the whole available field.
Whenever stories like this pop up, I'm reminded of my first year as a naive mechanical engineering student. We had to design and make a one-man hovercraft, and a friend and me where in charge of sorting out the rubber skirt (the thing underneath the hovercraft which keeps the air in). Anyway, we need tough vulcanised rubber sheets, prefferably in strips about 30cm wide.
...and I type in rubber... ...and hit enter... ...=8o...
:)
So I go to google...
I wised up real fast after that
Two things; one, sailing in that day and age was dangerous. It wasn't for nothing that if you could pull off one successfull voyage there and back and arrive with a hold of spices, you'de be rich for life ('s where the phrase 'to have your ship come in' comes from...for the investors who stayed home, of course :)). Man, if it wasn't half of the ships which never came back in the beginning, it was damn close.
Second, why do you think people watch all those fear factor type things? They're secretly hoping that someone dies...that's why the ratings are so high; poeple want to see calamity. If you where suggesting a reality soap thing (which parent poster wasn't, btw), the best thing to happen for the ratings would be the crew dying. There'd be ripp-off's asap.
You don't need a biosphere...just something that can provide for a year (half year flight time there, a week or so on the planet and another halfyear back...that's the current flighttime, not a decade), which is much, much easier.
The difficult thing is ensuring medical safety of the crew; just one flight doc can't handle broken arms, tooth probs, accute appendicitis, radiation poisoning (oh, those cosmic rays!), and whatever else can go wrong with a human in a year's time.
Sorry, but from where I sit I see any loss of any scientific experiment as a loss to all the people of the planet. Who cares about nationality? It's the data that's important.
"DVD Comes On Everything These Days"
Dude....ewww!
And that's the whole thing about the EU law; it doesn't matter what Nintendo, Sony or MS say or do in their warrenties; no matter if even the store says "you only have 3 months warrenty". For new stuff, the EU garranties a warrenty time of 2 years.
Same happens when you read a book. Even though the words don't change at your direction, your mind is consiously engaged and will take tangents from what is written; your mind actively creates scenes from the book, to such an extent that you also consider the possibilities (ie "why did he do that!", "why doesn't she do so and so?" etc).
Thinking of an alternate possibility in your minds eye and doing it on screen are essentially the same, as they both live in a kind of 'possibility space', where neither affect the real world directly, but only indirectly. In this way, books, films and video games are the same, and thus should all be classified as free speech.
*cough*basicsofmaterialscience*cough*usebestmateri alsforjob*cough*
Although you're spot on about the airbags. Hell, the original pair blew up during pressure testing too!
But don't overestimate our geographical knowledge of Mars, or underestimate Mars' irregularity. Landing something in an unfamiliar, hostile atmosphere without complete knowlede of the landing zone is difficult. Just have a look at where the Mars Rover was meant to go and where it actually landed for a good idea of the uncertainties involved.
What will you do with that fuel formula?
Will you give it to the public domain (on the one hand helping everyone with the same problem and stimulating [future] 'amature' spaceflight, one the other hand losing some of your competitive edge on the xprize) or will you try to make money from it (you did do the research!...and it could become quite profitable)?
The one that got me was his prediction of Lucas doing 'the lord of the rings'...nearly right :)
I agree; thing is, there's too many people around now adays for copyright/patenting to work. Even AC (:))Clarke talks about the proverbial 'idea whose time has come'.
Fact of the matter is that with so many people on the planet, most idea's will occur/happen one way or another (hell, I've seen some of my idea's which were worth money appear in the news...when someone else 'invented' them). Rewarding someone whilst restricting their use to others, just becuase someone made it happen a few months earlier than the rest just doest make sense. And the more (educated) people on the planet, the more this'll happen.
And let's not forget that the revolutions of the printing press and modern pc's would not have happened with current intellectual property laws being in place/enforced. There would be no industrial or information revelution if they tried to happen under current laws.
Which is exactly the point Detritus is making against your original post.
First off, the reason that bird got shot down is that the US, stupidly and against doctine and even common sense, flew sorties using the same flight paths for days in a row. Result; someone hears these things fly over (stealthy is really just relative), puts AA in the line of flight and BOOM. After that the USAF changed it's flight paths pretty quick.
:)).
Second, not only is stealth not stealth if you change the frequency your radar operates on (or if you go optical, like some russian/british systems), but it's not cost effetive when fighting against a first world nation; sure, an F22 can take on 5 f16's and win...but you can buy about 10-15 (if not more) f16's for the price of one f22. It's called saturation, and is a real strategy (formerly known as rules of attrition
"regarding high/low band radars, you can design aircraft to be stealthy to both."
No, you can't. Not basic physics, but physics nonetheless. And if you can track 'em (which you can), you can shoot 'em.
Nop...the gas was a compound the Iraqi's never even did research in, let alone have factories for. Only the US has the stuff in production...and the US has even admitted to selling the stuff (to the Iranians, actually...it is more than just likely that it was the Iranbians who gassed the Kurds, not the Iraqi's...blame the media for that cock up of public perception).
The US is most definitely not the best system that work; it has third world death rates in it's cities, as well as widespread illiteracy and poverty. It is not without reason that USAID (an agency for providing relief to third world countries) has now got programs running in the US itself.
For a better system, go look in the EU; high-tech and high standards of living, education and sanitation.
Not only that, but would you care to discuss the US' sales of nuclear tech to Israel? Or the US' recent decision to sanction the deployment of low yield nukes in a tactical (not strategic!) scenario?
Anyway, wtf was the US doing interfering in the souvereignety of the states in that region anyway? Why was it meddling in a region it has nothing to do with in the first place? Isn't that a direct contravention of the concept of capitalism?
I dunno 'bout that. Bacteria, once you have 'em, are pretty cheap. Even keeping 'em in a presurised environment and feeding 'em would probably be cheaper than the current method of going out and drilling in godforsaken area's (like deserts/seas) and transporting the oil back to be processed. Look at artificial diamonds, or the making of beer :)
And, of course, if this can be done (or even if it is bacteria who make the stuff) we'd be dealing with a non-limited resource, which is good news for the plastics industry, let alone the gasoline/diesel engine manufacturors.
In the words of Dennis Leary: "I want a Patriot missile! I pay my taxes! Why can't I have one!?!"
Not only that....thing is, if it turns out bacteria can make oil, it means we can breed and harvest those selfsame bacteria and make oil! Do that large scale enough, and no more oil shortage...but it sure is unhealthy, though :(
Man, just compare overal gun availablity in the EU and the US to guncrime in the EU and the US...same (if not more) difersity, same (if not more) population, hardly any guns in the EU, more in the US; loadsa guncrime in the US, hardly any in the EU (as in insignificant in comparison).
There is something you're not taking into account; guns are subject to kinda the same laws of diffusion as gasses are (yeah, I made that up, but it's a good analogy here); guns are readily available in neighbouring areas, so criminals can get to guns easily. Fact reamains, in a large geographical area where guns are in short supply, gun crime is insignificant compared to the US.
Plus there is less of a social stigma associated with guns in the states anyway, so having a gun in an area in the US where guns are less legal, owning a gun is more 'allright'.
I call partial bollocks on that :) Ever since relativity came along, we know that although plausible, Euclidian mathematics doesn't describe the universe properly, since it states that two paralel lines can never cross each other...but with curved space-time, they can :)
As previous poster points out, the photoelectric effetc article was in many ways more important than the work on relativity; the abnormal notion that not only was energy quantisd, but that was intrinsic to the description of the 'photon' rather than just a handy model to use was quite important.
:)
Funnily enough, this concept was harder to swallow for many people than relativity; many people at the time, while honouring him, said someething to effect of "he's brilliant, but that photoelectric effect explanation thingy, that was just misguided"
The whole cold war reference was made to cover my ass; I never meant that the US was/had been resting on it's laurels...and hell, the cold war produced more tech in any number of fields.
;)) was a US incursion to the EU...in which case it's the US who has to cross the ocean :)
But my point is twofold: one, that tech has made it's way to a number of EU nations too (either through tech transfer or in-house dev's) and two, that since ww2 there has been no shooting war involving subs (yeah, intel etc...but AFAIK no ships have been sunk by subs, kinda thing) so the effect of subs on both sides is pretty much underrated. Especially with for example 'supersonic' torpedoes (and you can bet your ass that subs are soon to follow...who cares if they can hear you when you can out run/turn 'em?) developed by the russians (and the UK getting there quick too), passive sonar tech/pattern recognition, wireless guided torps, etc.
Thing is, whne both sides are quite as hell, bith sides are blind...and both can equally shoot shit out of each other...but the subject under discussion (I think