Yeah, technically. I was pretty disappointed to see it was a balloon though. An airplane made from scratch out of simple materials would have been something.
Considering the Russians have launched more orbital rockets than everyone else in the world put together, it might be fair to say they have the most experience, no?
And if you want to just compare the reliability of the latest systems, go ahead. Historical track record still counts for something. Note that NASA will not be doing heavy lift with Deltas or the shuttle, but something new. If it takes them thirty years to iron out all the bugs and get to that 98% value then there's still a problem.
I see you're being more polite though. It's a nice change.
It's not trivial to write a working, modern video codec without using techniques other people have invented, and the patents on those techniques are fairly specific. The parts that aren't fall under "obvious." Again, "software patents" is too broad a category - there are good patents on algorithms and poor, overly broad patents on non-software. I do agree that a better patent search mechanism would be a good idea though. On the other hand, the algorithms that are protected by good patents tend to come with a clear warning in books.
I remember when I was doing some graphics work, VTK came with a marching cubes filter with a warnings stamped all over the documentation that it was patented.
A video codec is about as close to the expression of an idea as you get get without limiting patents to actual machines (and I just have to switch around a gear or something to make my expression different than yours).
Stupid software patents like CSS tricks and one click are bad, but they're bad because they're obvious or trivial, things that are already not supposed to be patentable. Clever, nontrivial or obvious algorithms themselves should be patentable just like a clever chemical process or mechanical process should be patentable. Video codecs fall into the latter category.
Prescription requirements don't have anything to do with patents. Albuterol is pretty safe, but it does have a few adverse side effects, some of which can be serious. Asthma is one of those things that is sometimes considered trendy too. Asthma should often be treated with something other than just rescue inhalers. All in all it's not a bad idea to have asthmatics actually visit a doctor for a diagnosis rather than treating themselves.
I have a few asthmatic friends and I've never heard one of them complain about having to get a prescription. They get it, get their inhaler and carry it with them. No mad searching for a drugstore when you can't breathe.
In maybe. In Canada, I didn't even realize there was such a thing as an epinephrine inhaler. Yeah, nope, the Canadian Lung Association doesn't list any such thing.
Slashdot, is this some kind of made up or trivial story to drive up hits or something?
Who cares if you can transport 100,000 people and make them independent? We have bases in the antarctic and arctic that aren't even close to that, and we maintain them for scientific purposes. The moon would be a fantastic place to build some giant telescopes, for example.
Oh, and since you keep repeating yourself, let me tell you a little secret. Ready? There's nothing magical about space travel.
If you can get the material to build a craft (or fuel it) from the moon, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than lifting it all out of Earth's gravity well. It's all well and good not to go down any gravity wells, but that's where all the matter is.
So you'd have scientists work in secrecy until they have a discovery to announce? That doesn't sound like a very good way to do science, or to keep the people who pay for it informed about what's going on.
I'd propose a much better solution is for the media to educate their readers about the scientific process and not to hype things so much. Having said that, from what I've seen of the coverage of the Higgs search, most of the reporting has been relatively hype free. Most of the stories are along the lines of "LHC narrows the possible energies for the Higgs" or "LHC sees hints of the Higgs."
If you're taking those kind of stories and looking for "fruition" then the media have probably failed in the first part of their job - to communicate to readers how science works.
Nobody is making any "claims." The people who did the study are being very careful to say that they've got some interesting data and are looking for ideas from the community.
Unfortunately this guy spends so much time explaining how it can't possibly be right, and being snarky, that he doesn't really have much space left over to give any constructive ideas about where the experiment might have gone wrong.
Speaking of which, you're kind of snarky too. Maybe you should have some coffee or something.
Because most "do-it-yourselfers" these days really want someone else to do ALMOST all of the work for them.
The culture isn't really any more DIY oriented than before. The hardcore DIYers are still out there but today there's a large number of pretenders as well. Kind of like geeks.
Personally, I'd prefer not to have a pacemaker with a large, cryogenically cooled shield around it. Walking around with a liquid nitrogen can and hoses going into my chest would seriously cramp my lifestyle.
I'm not even sure it would work properly - most of the danger to metallic implants, particularly sensitive electronic ones, in an MRI is from RF signals, not the magnetic field.
Random as in there's a cap but it's arbitrarily enforced. That's what companies that sell "unlimited" connections do. Try using your connection at 10 mb/s 24-7 for a while and see what happens.
Requiring the monthly average and the burst speed to be the same is ridiculous. You'd either end up with hugely expensive connections if you allocated enough bandwidth for everyone to use it to capacity, or unnecessarily throttled connections. The vast majority of people, even heavy users, don't use their connection to capacity at all times.
Sure, it's a dirty trick. But not because they're imposing a cap, but because they didn't tell you about the cap in the first place. It's like your electric company charging you a flat rate and then cutting off the power if you use too much, where "too much" is defined arbitrarily.
No, Sprint probably didn't discover it overnight. They're probably getting the iPhone soon and they realized that their network is going to melt unless they impose some limits. 5 GB for tethering isn't even close to useless. Many (most?) people could get away with using that as their home connection (I have a friend using a 1 GB cell plan). Many of the rest would be just fine using it for any mobile (i.e. away from home and wifi) needs.
There are no actual medical applications. Somehow I think a patient will object to being opened up, their implant surrounded by a large, layered device containing liquid nitrogen or helium, then scanned. It would be easier just to remove the implant, scan, then put it back.
The problem is homogeneity of the field. And no, this won't help. To get a homogenous, strong magnetic field over a reasonably sized volume (head size, for example) requires a big magnet with a lot of coils. Thus, expensive. "Distortion" has nothing to do with it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, technically. I was pretty disappointed to see it was a balloon though. An airplane made from scratch out of simple materials would have been something.
Teenage? Sounds like fun on a boring winter weekend.
Don't forget the part where opening a "PDF" asks for your admin password. Hm....
(Note: I couldn't find out whether it actually asks for your admin password, but if it actually wants to do much it's going to have to)
Considering the Russians have launched more orbital rockets than everyone else in the world put together, it might be fair to say they have the most experience, no?
And if you want to just compare the reliability of the latest systems, go ahead. Historical track record still counts for something. Note that NASA will not be doing heavy lift with Deltas or the shuttle, but something new. If it takes them thirty years to iron out all the bugs and get to that 98% value then there's still a problem.
I see you're being more polite though. It's a nice change.
The Russians have both more experience and more reliable launch systems: http://www.ewp.rpi.edu/hartford/~cedenc/SMRE/Project/Space%20Shuttle%20Vehicle%20Reliability.pdf
You're the one being stupid.
It's not trivial to write a working, modern video codec without using techniques other people have invented, and the patents on those techniques are fairly specific. The parts that aren't fall under "obvious." Again, "software patents" is too broad a category - there are good patents on algorithms and poor, overly broad patents on non-software. I do agree that a better patent search mechanism would be a good idea though. On the other hand, the algorithms that are protected by good patents tend to come with a clear warning in books.
I remember when I was doing some graphics work, VTK came with a marching cubes filter with a warnings stamped all over the documentation that it was patented.
A video codec is about as close to the expression of an idea as you get get without limiting patents to actual machines (and I just have to switch around a gear or something to make my expression different than yours).
Stupid software patents like CSS tricks and one click are bad, but they're bad because they're obvious or trivial, things that are already not supposed to be patentable. Clever, nontrivial or obvious algorithms themselves should be patentable just like a clever chemical process or mechanical process should be patentable. Video codecs fall into the latter category.
Prescription requirements don't have anything to do with patents. Albuterol is pretty safe, but it does have a few adverse side effects, some of which can be serious. Asthma is one of those things that is sometimes considered trendy too. Asthma should often be treated with something other than just rescue inhalers. All in all it's not a bad idea to have asthmatics actually visit a doctor for a diagnosis rather than treating themselves.
I have a few asthmatic friends and I've never heard one of them complain about having to get a prescription. They get it, get their inhaler and carry it with them. No mad searching for a drugstore when you can't breathe.
Because if the summary were to talk about the same medication it wouldn't be able to claim an outrageous three fold increase in cost!
In maybe. In Canada, I didn't even realize there was such a thing as an epinephrine inhaler. Yeah, nope, the Canadian Lung Association doesn't list any such thing.
Slashdot, is this some kind of made up or trivial story to drive up hits or something?
Who cares if you can transport 100,000 people and make them independent? We have bases in the antarctic and arctic that aren't even close to that, and we maintain them for scientific purposes. The moon would be a fantastic place to build some giant telescopes, for example.
Oh, and since you keep repeating yourself, let me tell you a little secret. Ready? There's nothing magical about space travel.
If you can get the material to build a craft (or fuel it) from the moon, it would be a hell of a lot cheaper than lifting it all out of Earth's gravity well. It's all well and good not to go down any gravity wells, but that's where all the matter is.
The problem is, NASA can't build them anymore. And the ones they can build have a nasty habit of blowing up.
Well, if you really wanted to run whatever OS you want, you could always buy a Mac.
Oh, the irony.
So you'd have scientists work in secrecy until they have a discovery to announce? That doesn't sound like a very good way to do science, or to keep the people who pay for it informed about what's going on.
I'd propose a much better solution is for the media to educate their readers about the scientific process and not to hype things so much. Having said that, from what I've seen of the coverage of the Higgs search, most of the reporting has been relatively hype free. Most of the stories are along the lines of "LHC narrows the possible energies for the Higgs" or "LHC sees hints of the Higgs."
If you're taking those kind of stories and looking for "fruition" then the media have probably failed in the first part of their job - to communicate to readers how science works.
Nobody is making any "claims." The people who did the study are being very careful to say that they've got some interesting data and are looking for ideas from the community.
Unfortunately this guy spends so much time explaining how it can't possibly be right, and being snarky, that he doesn't really have much space left over to give any constructive ideas about where the experiment might have gone wrong.
Speaking of which, you're kind of snarky too. Maybe you should have some coffee or something.
Because most "do-it-yourselfers" these days really want someone else to do ALMOST all of the work for them.
The culture isn't really any more DIY oriented than before. The hardcore DIYers are still out there but today there's a large number of pretenders as well. Kind of like geeks.
Personally, I'd prefer not to have a pacemaker with a large, cryogenically cooled shield around it. Walking around with a liquid nitrogen can and hoses going into my chest would seriously cramp my lifestyle.
I'm not even sure it would work properly - most of the danger to metallic implants, particularly sensitive electronic ones, in an MRI is from RF signals, not the magnetic field.
Random as in there's a cap but it's arbitrarily enforced. That's what companies that sell "unlimited" connections do. Try using your connection at 10 mb/s 24-7 for a while and see what happens.
Requiring the monthly average and the burst speed to be the same is ridiculous. You'd either end up with hugely expensive connections if you allocated enough bandwidth for everyone to use it to capacity, or unnecessarily throttled connections. The vast majority of people, even heavy users, don't use their connection to capacity at all times.
Pretty well, I imagine. You don't seriously think that the markets of any of those countries are worth less now than they were in 1913, do you?
Certainly if you'd spread your money around a little bit, rather than concentrating it in one country, you'd have done quite well.
Why is that? Why would you want to put your magnetometer into a device that cloaks it from external detection?
If you mean screening out external fields to make a quieter environment, you can do that just fine using existing shielding techniques.
Sure, it's a dirty trick. But not because they're imposing a cap, but because they didn't tell you about the cap in the first place. It's like your electric company charging you a flat rate and then cutting off the power if you use too much, where "too much" is defined arbitrarily.
No, Sprint probably didn't discover it overnight. They're probably getting the iPhone soon and they realized that their network is going to melt unless they impose some limits. 5 GB for tethering isn't even close to useless. Many (most?) people could get away with using that as their home connection (I have a friend using a 1 GB cell plan). Many of the rest would be just fine using it for any mobile (i.e. away from home and wifi) needs.
There are no actual medical applications. Somehow I think a patient will object to being opened up, their implant surrounded by a large, layered device containing liquid nitrogen or helium, then scanned. It would be easier just to remove the implant, scan, then put it back.
The problem is homogeneity of the field. And no, this won't help. To get a homogenous, strong magnetic field over a reasonably sized volume (head size, for example) requires a big magnet with a lot of coils. Thus, expensive. "Distortion" has nothing to do with it.
Sure! The metal detector would be useless. You might want to search the guy walking through with a big bundle venting white vapour though.