This device manipulates atoms and molecules, not individual protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom. So no, it can't make gold out of another element. You can do that with nuclear reactions if you want to live the alchemists' dream. It's still really amazing. I wish Feynman had lived to see it.
I'm one of the few that rather liked the last Superman film.
I really liked it as well. It seemed to me that it captured all of the good things about the Superman films from the 70s and 80s, and none of the bad aspects. In fact, after watching it, I went back and re-watched the originals and was shocked at how weak they seemed in comparison to Superman Returns.
The major problem was a lack of action, and a ridiculous plot hole at the end (landing on the kryptonite land mass nearly killed him, but later he can lift a giant kryptonite continent with no problems).
Well, I think "with no problems" is an exaggeration, although I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it. Superman needed some prep work before he could do it, and it certainly took its toll on the character.
I've been given the option to be awake for several procedures, and I always say yes, but then they always change their minds at the last minute and knock me out.
Are you sure they actually put you under? For many procedures, instead of full general anaesthesia, the patient will be administered a sedative (hypnotic?) that keeps them awake, but without any memory of the procedure. I've had that done a couple of times, and from my perspective it was just like general anaesthetic (a discontinuity of consciousness, after which I felt like I had just woken up), but from the perspective of the doctors I had been conscious the whole time.
Heh. Someone told me yesterday that Unix is all voodoo and yet Windows has XXX.{BB64F8A7-BEE7-4E1A-AB8D-7D8273F7FDB6}!
In all fairness to Windows, only Windows developers actually need to use this hidden feature. One of the reasons a lot of people find Unix/Linux arcane is that many common end-user scenarios involve this level of complexity.
How practical is it to travel to Florida to see a shuttle launch in person? It seems like most of the launches these days are delayed weeks or longer from their originally-scheduled dates. I'd like to see the last one, but obviously if it means renting a room there for a month it's not really something I could do.
Probably the same reason that the old USSR called itself CCCP.
Well, to nitpick, "CCCP" in that sense isn't pronounced "see see see pee". It's more like "ehs ehs ehs ehr". Cyrillic has some of the same glyphs that are in the Latin alphabet, but even the shared characters don't necessarily have the same meaning.
There is a lot of infrared film out there, but most (maybe all?) of it is sensitive to near-infrared light, not long- or medium-wavelength infrared, which is what's needed for thermal imaging. Because almost everyone (including companies like FLIR, who should know better) just calls it all "infrared", it leads people to think they're all the same. I know I did when I first got a (near-)infrared scope.
I don't know enough about the history of thermal imaging to give a good answer about whether it was ever effectively done with film or not, but I suspect it wasn't. Prior to a decade or so ago, all of the thermal imaging systems required active cooling, which to me implies electronic recording, not film. I guess it could have been a system that captured the thermal image electronically and then upconverted it to visible light to put on a film negative, but that sounds a little far-fetched.
One way you could tell would be if you found the camera - near-infrared gear usually has an opaque (to our eyes) filter over a transparent ("") lens, but the thermal imagers I've seen have lenses that are opaque ("") all the way through. And, of course, if you or your mother have any of the pictures he took, those would be a dead giveaway as to which type of infrared it was. Near-infrared and thermal images both have very distinct (and very different) appearances.
Also, specifically in regards to this comment from the grandparent post:
You used to be able to pay a guy (or a kid with a hobby) to shoot some pictures of your house with IR film and show you where it was leaking heat.
Anyone who claims they can tell you where your home is leaking heat with a conventional camera (whether it's film or digital) is either misinformed or being deliberately deceptive. You can see a lot of interesting things with near-infrared film (or a modded digital camera), but unless the house is within a few degrees of glowing incandescently, temperature differences aren't one of them.
BTW, infrared camera's can only see the heat coming off an object, they can't see through another object.
It depends on what the object is. Just like glass is transparent to the light we can see, other materials are transparent to thermal infrared radiation. I can't find it now, but awhile ago I saw a vivid example where it was shown that a black plastic garbage bag is totally transparent to thermal IR.
People use digital cameras to make heat images all the time.
No, they really don't.
I wasn't going to try to pimp out my own site in this thread, but since you posted this type of comment twice, I wrote a fairly lengthy article about it, with pictures. Claiming that a modded digital camera is a "thermal imager" is like saying that your eyes are thermal imagers because molten lava appears to glow. True thermal imaging requires expensive, specialized sensors and lenses, and it allows the device to create an image in complete darkness (e.g. deep inside a cave). Near infrared imaging is basically just like a regular camera, it just happens to involve a wavelength we can't see with our own eyes (for the most part).
you obviously can't just buy a roll of 35mm "thermal" film and pop it in a nikon.
The other problem is that conventional camera lenses are opaque to mid- and long-wave infrared. So yeah, it really is a whole separate device, not a modification to a standard camera of any kind.
something about being able to email other blackberry users directly, and their Blackberry would get it even if their mail server was down... maybe? I don't know.
A user with a BlackBerry can send an email directly to a user with another BlackBerry (bypassing their normal email system) if they know the device PIN of the recipient. Things may have changed in the last couple of years (I don't have to deal with BlackBerries anymore, thankfully), but the last time I checked RIM's recommended approach was to do something like regularly send an Excel file with each user and their device PIN to each of their BlackBerries for use in this kind of situation.
It seemed to me like one of those things that was an interesting piece of trivia, but unlikely to ever be used. If we had actually lost an Exchange server, it would have been much faster to bring up a replacement (that would give users the ability to send and receive new email until the mailbox backups were restored - what Microsoft calls a "dialtone" replacement) than to try to teach managers and executives how to copy device PINs out of an Excel spreadsheet and into a new message on their BlackBerries. Maybe it takes longer to do the equivalent with Domino.
What kind of self-respecting geek shops at "Sear's" (sic)?
Um, Craftsman tools? The only remaining semi-affordable Made in the USA (with the extra precision and reliability over bargain-basement imports, including a lifetime warranty) that that implies?
I get most of my tools at Harbor Freight, but if I want something I know will last (e.g. a socket wrench, because it's pretty lame when you break your only socket wrench while your car's engine is not fully assembled) I go with Craftsman.
If the source for the GPL software is unmodified and freely available from other sources why should the vendor have to duplicate it's availability?
I'm going to guess it's because it's a lot easier to require that each vendor distribute the code than to come up with an effect-but-byzantine, legally-sound method of requiring the vendor to determine if the code is "freely available from other sources" before requiring them to make it available themselves or not, as well as regularly checking to see if the same situation is true in a year, five years, a decade, etc.
If further reinforcement is needed, I loaned my VHS copy to a coworker. It literally drove him to drink - he was a teetotaler until he'd sat through the Holiday Special. It is far, far worse than the Ewok movies.
A little off on a tangent, but I was just watching another BBC series (Planet Earth - I know, I'm a little late to that party), and there are numerous extremophiles covered in it. I knew about some of them already, but I was particularly surprised at the bacteria and animals that live in naturally-occurring sulfuric acid. I'd been doing a little reading about bacteria that live off of the sulfur cycle (as opposed to the carbon cycle) already because my multispectral photos of the hotsprings at Yellowstone reminded me of NASA's imagery of Io and I wanted to see if it were even possible that there was more than a superficial similarity at work, but I had no idea there were larger life forms (e.g. fish) that make that sort of environment their home. Life seems to have found a way to thrive in every possible bizarre environment here on Earth. I suspect that except for planets and moons that are incredibly isolated in some way, we'll find at least microorganisms on many of them. Of course, actually confirming that would be mind-bogglingly-important news, but I wouldn't be surprised.
The real problem isn't detecting it. It's knowing that you need to be trying to detect it in the first place, and approximately when and in what area.
Monitor for changes in the field of gravity (or magnetic field to use a more mature technology, although I don't know how well that would work in e.g. deep space where there isn't a planetary magnetic field). If there isn't a corresponding change in the visual (or thermal, etc.) appearance of the same area, throw an alert that there's probably a cloaked object wherever the magnetic/gravitic disturbance is.
A side bonus is that if the gravity-based version of this detection system fails to pick something up, at least you get the consolation prize of knowing that it's possible to artificially manipulate gravity fields to effectively render an object massless.
Given the (almost strikingly low) prices of online photo-finishers these days, the only reasons to print pictures at home are: a)I need them now. b)they "appeal to the prurient interest".
You forgot "c) you don't want the staff of said print shop walking off with the ability to print unlimited unauthorized high-resolution copies of your artwork".
Not only that, the man page rarely has useful examples, one of the biggest problems.
Exactly. If you ask me, there are two layers of problem with the "man page model". The first is that it expects the user to know which command they want to use (so they can call up the man page for it), and the second is that (as genkael wrote) the man pages generally describe the syntax of the command, not how to accomplish various real-world tasks with it.
There are certainly times when I already know what command I want to use and what parameters I want to pass to it, but usually if I'm reading documentation it's because I know what task I want to accomplish, not necessarily how to map that task to a command and its associated parameters.
I figure removing SETI@home alone will cost at least $50,000
Oh please. The worst-case scenario is that someone writes a script that calls msiexec to uninstall the software, and either makes it a startup script for all PCs using group policy, or they use psexec to call it on all systems by name. If someone thinks they have to pay $50,000 for that I'll give them a great deal and do it for $10k, but the actual cost should be 1-2 days' wages for one person.
We've observed nothing, as yet, to suggest there is anybody else "out there", and yet these people are scanning for radio signals they may have sent to us.
What about the "wow" signal?
Beyond that, the universe is enormous. Unless you believe there's something supernaturally special about human life, the chances of ours being the only planet with intelligent life are ludicrously small.
Slashdot Mirror
In fact he could be describing any company working in any industry.
Not really. There are plenty of companies out there that don't require ridiculous hours of their employees.
Can they make gold?
This device manipulates atoms and molecules, not individual protons and neutrons within the nucleus of an atom. So no, it can't make gold out of another element. You can do that with nuclear reactions if you want to live the alchemists' dream.
It's still really amazing. I wish Feynman had lived to see it.
I seriously doubt that we have enough surface area to replace eating with photosynthesis.
That can be remedied. Who doesn't want enormous green wings sprouting out of their back?
I'm one of the few that rather liked the last Superman film.
I really liked it as well. It seemed to me that it captured all of the good things about the Superman films from the 70s and 80s, and none of the bad aspects. In fact, after watching it, I went back and re-watched the originals and was shocked at how weak they seemed in comparison to Superman Returns.
The major problem was a lack of action, and a ridiculous plot hole at the end (landing on the kryptonite land mass nearly killed him, but later he can lift a giant kryptonite continent with no problems).
Well, I think "with no problems" is an exaggeration, although I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone who hasn't seen it. Superman needed some prep work before he could do it, and it certainly took its toll on the character.
I've been given the option to be awake for several procedures, and I always say yes, but then they always change their minds at the last minute and knock me out.
Are you sure they actually put you under? For many procedures, instead of full general anaesthesia, the patient will be administered a sedative (hypnotic?) that keeps them awake, but without any memory of the procedure. I've had that done a couple of times, and from my perspective it was just like general anaesthetic (a discontinuity of consciousness, after which I felt like I had just woken up), but from the perspective of the doctors I had been conscious the whole time.
Heh. Someone told me yesterday that Unix is all voodoo and yet Windows has XXX.{BB64F8A7-BEE7-4E1A-AB8D-7D8273F7FDB6}!
In all fairness to Windows, only Windows developers actually need to use this hidden feature. One of the reasons a lot of people find Unix/Linux arcane is that many common end-user scenarios involve this level of complexity.
How practical is it to travel to Florida to see a shuttle launch in person? It seems like most of the launches these days are delayed weeks or longer from their originally-scheduled dates. I'd like to see the last one, but obviously if it means renting a room there for a month it's not really something I could do.
I'm waiting for the meta-reference ad campaign with "I want more life, fucker - I ain't done" as the tag line.
Probably the same reason that the old USSR called itself CCCP.
Well, to nitpick, "CCCP" in that sense isn't pronounced "see see see pee". It's more like "ehs ehs ehs ehr". Cyrillic has some of the same glyphs that are in the Latin alphabet, but even the shared characters don't necessarily have the same meaning.
You can (or could) get infrared film.
There is a lot of infrared film out there, but most (maybe all?) of it is sensitive to near-infrared light, not long- or medium-wavelength infrared, which is what's needed for thermal imaging. Because almost everyone (including companies like FLIR, who should know better) just calls it all "infrared", it leads people to think they're all the same. I know I did when I first got a (near-)infrared scope.
I don't know enough about the history of thermal imaging to give a good answer about whether it was ever effectively done with film or not, but I suspect it wasn't. Prior to a decade or so ago, all of the thermal imaging systems required active cooling, which to me implies electronic recording, not film. I guess it could have been a system that captured the thermal image electronically and then upconverted it to visible light to put on a film negative, but that sounds a little far-fetched.
One way you could tell would be if you found the camera - near-infrared gear usually has an opaque (to our eyes) filter over a transparent ("") lens, but the thermal imagers I've seen have lenses that are opaque ("") all the way through. And, of course, if you or your mother have any of the pictures he took, those would be a dead giveaway as to which type of infrared it was. Near-infrared and thermal images both have very distinct (and very different) appearances.
Also, specifically in regards to this comment from the grandparent post:
You used to be able to pay a guy (or a kid with a hobby) to shoot some pictures of your house with IR film and show you where it was leaking heat.
Anyone who claims they can tell you where your home is leaking heat with a conventional camera (whether it's film or digital) is either misinformed or being deliberately deceptive. You can see a lot of interesting things with near-infrared film (or a modded digital camera), but unless the house is within a few degrees of glowing incandescently, temperature differences aren't one of them.
BTW, infrared camera's can only see the heat coming off an object, they can't see through another object.
It depends on what the object is. Just like glass is transparent to the light we can see, other materials are transparent to thermal infrared radiation. I can't find it now, but awhile ago I saw a vivid example where it was shown that a black plastic garbage bag is totally transparent to thermal IR.
People use digital cameras to make heat images all the time.
No, they really don't.
I wasn't going to try to pimp out my own site in this thread, but since you posted this type of comment twice, I wrote a fairly lengthy article about it, with pictures. Claiming that a modded digital camera is a "thermal imager" is like saying that your eyes are thermal imagers because molten lava appears to glow. True thermal imaging requires expensive, specialized sensors and lenses, and it allows the device to create an image in complete darkness (e.g. deep inside a cave). Near infrared imaging is basically just like a regular camera, it just happens to involve a wavelength we can't see with our own eyes (for the most part).
you obviously can't just buy a roll of 35mm "thermal" film and pop it in a nikon.
The other problem is that conventional camera lenses are opaque to mid- and long-wave infrared. So yeah, it really is a whole separate device, not a modification to a standard camera of any kind.
something about being able to email other blackberry users directly, and their Blackberry would get it even if their mail server was down... maybe? I don't know.
A user with a BlackBerry can send an email directly to a user with another BlackBerry (bypassing their normal email system) if they know the device PIN of the recipient. Things may have changed in the last couple of years (I don't have to deal with BlackBerries anymore, thankfully), but the last time I checked RIM's recommended approach was to do something like regularly send an Excel file with each user and their device PIN to each of their BlackBerries for use in this kind of situation.
It seemed to me like one of those things that was an interesting piece of trivia, but unlikely to ever be used. If we had actually lost an Exchange server, it would have been much faster to bring up a replacement (that would give users the ability to send and receive new email until the mailbox backups were restored - what Microsoft calls a "dialtone" replacement) than to try to teach managers and executives how to copy device PINs out of an Excel spreadsheet and into a new message on their BlackBerries. Maybe it takes longer to do the equivalent with Domino.
What kind of self-respecting geek shops at "Sear's" (sic)?
Um, Craftsman tools? The only remaining semi-affordable Made in the USA (with the extra precision and reliability over bargain-basement imports, including a lifetime warranty) that that implies?
I get most of my tools at Harbor Freight, but if I want something I know will last (e.g. a socket wrench, because it's pretty lame when you break your only socket wrench while your car's engine is not fully assembled) I go with Craftsman.
If the source for the GPL software is unmodified and freely available from other sources why should the vendor have to duplicate it's availability?
I'm going to guess it's because it's a lot easier to require that each vendor distribute the code than to come up with an effect-but-byzantine, legally-sound method of requiring the vendor to determine if the code is "freely available from other sources" before requiring them to make it available themselves or not, as well as regularly checking to see if the same situation is true in a year, five years, a decade, etc.
You are a cruel, cruel man, Bill McGonicle, misusing your low user ID to spread that sort of deception.
If further reinforcement is needed, I loaned my VHS copy to a coworker. It literally drove him to drink - he was a teetotaler until he'd sat through the Holiday Special.
It is far, far worse than the Ewok movies.
Almost as good as the BBC TV series...
A little off on a tangent, but I was just watching another BBC series (Planet Earth - I know, I'm a little late to that party), and there are numerous extremophiles covered in it. I knew about some of them already, but I was particularly surprised at the bacteria and animals that live in naturally-occurring sulfuric acid.
I'd been doing a little reading about bacteria that live off of the sulfur cycle (as opposed to the carbon cycle) already because my multispectral photos of the hotsprings at Yellowstone reminded me of NASA's imagery of Io and I wanted to see if it were even possible that there was more than a superficial similarity at work, but I had no idea there were larger life forms (e.g. fish) that make that sort of environment their home.
Life seems to have found a way to thrive in every possible bizarre environment here on Earth. I suspect that except for planets and moons that are incredibly isolated in some way, we'll find at least microorganisms on many of them. Of course, actually confirming that would be mind-bogglingly-important news, but I wouldn't be surprised.
The real problem isn't detecting it. It's knowing that you need to be trying to detect it in the first place, and approximately when and in what area.
Monitor for changes in the field of gravity (or magnetic field to use a more mature technology, although I don't know how well that would work in e.g. deep space where there isn't a planetary magnetic field). If there isn't a corresponding change in the visual (or thermal, etc.) appearance of the same area, throw an alert that there's probably a cloaked object wherever the magnetic/gravitic disturbance is.
A side bonus is that if the gravity-based version of this detection system fails to pick something up, at least you get the consolation prize of knowing that it's possible to artificially manipulate gravity fields to effectively render an object massless.
Given the (almost strikingly low) prices of online photo-finishers these days, the only reasons to print pictures at home are: a)I need them now. b)they "appeal to the prurient interest".
You forgot "c) you don't want the staff of said print shop walking off with the ability to print unlimited unauthorized high-resolution copies of your artwork".
Not only that, the man page rarely has useful examples, one of the biggest problems.
Exactly. If you ask me, there are two layers of problem with the "man page model". The first is that it expects the user to know which command they want to use (so they can call up the man page for it), and the second is that (as genkael wrote) the man pages generally describe the syntax of the command, not how to accomplish various real-world tasks with it.
There are certainly times when I already know what command I want to use and what parameters I want to pass to it, but usually if I'm reading documentation it's because I know what task I want to accomplish, not necessarily how to map that task to a command and its associated parameters.
I figure removing SETI@home alone will cost at least $50,000
Oh please. The worst-case scenario is that someone writes a script that calls msiexec to uninstall the software, and either makes it a startup script for all PCs using group policy, or they use psexec to call it on all systems by name. If someone thinks they have to pay $50,000 for that I'll give them a great deal and do it for $10k, but the actual cost should be 1-2 days' wages for one person.
We've observed nothing, as yet, to suggest there is anybody else "out there", and yet these people are scanning for radio signals they may have sent to us.
What about the "wow" signal?
Beyond that, the universe is enormous. Unless you believe there's something supernaturally special about human life, the chances of ours being the only planet with intelligent life are ludicrously small.