Actually the russians don't use pencils, they just use ordinary ballpoint pens.
They work fine in microgravity... and besides, I dont't believe anybody actually writes anything outside the space station/shuttle, so the temperature thing is pretty much overkill as well.
hmmm... so wouldn't put options be the way to go? buy SCO stocks now, sell them. When the price has gone down buy the stocks again, use your put option and score the difference in price.
I'm definitely not a stock broker (probably used the words wrong and all), but I've always liked the idea that you could earn money on something loosing value that way:)
I have a few plumbers, painters, etc. in the family. What I've noticed is that people expect to pay these guys to come around and fix something.... Even if it's relatively close family.
For some reason my time seems to be worth less than theirs:-/
The explanation i got from a biochemist when i tried to quit was that the signal-molecules that are there when you are tired compete with the caffeine molecules for the cells receptors (cafeeine is a competitive inhibitor).
The body compensates by overexpressing the receptors, so after a while everything works like you before you started drinking coffee, but if you try to quit you become tired very quickly (because of the extra receptors).
The receptors have a turnover time of a little more than a week, so if you that long you should be ok again... but it's not really a question of the caffeine leaving the body, as much as a question of protein-turnover in your brain.
The advantage over cafeeine addiction over cigarette addiction is that when the physical addiction is gone, then you are ok. With smoking, the physical addiction is just a tiny part of your addiction.
Well... as long as you live in a democracy the people can easily take back the power. The problem is that, from where I am standing (the other side of the pond), it doesn't look like the people are interested in taking back the power. How many people vote in the US?
You shouldn't bitch about the politicians or the companies who try to take as much power as they can for them selves... that is like complaining about a force of nature. People will try to become powerful, face it.... stop whining about it.
What you can whine about however, is people who don't vote, or people who don't take the time to figure out who's the right person to vote for. It takes more time than the 30 seconds you need to watch a tv commercial, and politics is more complicated than for or against terrorism.
I praise my self lucky to live in a country with a 90% voter turnout.
What doesn't add up? Both statements are in complete concord.
The US is specifically quoted for politicizing the decision, and the BBC science editor says that the decision is political. nothing strange there... no conjectures, the US says straight out that it supports japan for political reasons.
Your points are perfectly valid. I'm just saying that the articly explicitely said that the US gave Iraq as a reason for supporting Japan... not the nearby port.
" Last time I checked, Canada, Russia and China preferred the Japanese site. And I seem to recall they all opposed the Iraq War."
But Germany backs France, and they opposed the Iraq War... where does that put the US? Can they back anyone? What are you saying?
The article states that the US backs Japan to avoid backing France because they opposed the Iraq war. I'm pretty sure that the US is the only country that cares enough about the war to let it influence a descision on fusion power... Again your reasoning is flawed...
If you know of a better source than the BBC to back your claim as to why the US backs Japan, please post it.
+5 informative? where's the information? It's speculation, and its flawed at that.
Viewing the science and exploration as a competition makes it appear like you are more interested in the nationalistic aspects of it than the scientific.
IF you have to discuss it, the "we've sent waaay more robotic explorers out there" is a pretty bad point.
I live in Denmark, we had Vikings; The vikings ruled the sea for a very long time. After that we had a LARGE fleet that was comparable to the english for the better part of 18th and 19th century. Now we can just sit back on our asses for the next couple of decades and STILL have ruled the sea for longer than the americans... This obviously translates into: Danish sailors kicks american sailor ass. just like NASA kicks everyone elses ass because they went to the moon before everyone else.
Well definitely not Denmark...
No voting machines there, just old fahioned pen and paper voting.
Can somebody explain to me why it's not possible to simply count the votes manually in the US.
Judging from the turnout in the US compared to Denmark there are about almost twice as many votes in Denmark (relative to the size of the population) and manual counting of the votes has never been a problem here.
There has been a lot of comments on exactly how stupid this system is, because you could just tax fuel or have ordinary toll booths... But destroying the roads isn't the point, it's about supporting public transportation in cities whith too many cars.
of course you could raise the tax on gasoline, but that would hit people in rural areas just as hard as (or harder than) people congesting traffic in the major cities.
although I see the privacy issues, fact is that public transportation IS better suited for cities than cars.
Re:Arnt Microwaves on the body dangerious?
on
Swiping Out Cancer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Has it even been shown that microwaves cause cancer?
To the best of my knowledge there's no conclusive evidence.
The reasoning behind it is shaky as well:
"We all know that sticking your head in a microwave oven is bad for you... right?"
Microwaves induce movement of water molecules (when its in liquid form).
so does your stove... why should we fear this without any hard scientific evidence that it is dangerous?
A European president?!?! It's true that Chirac would like to have a french president of the European Union, but france is one member state, and if you'd done your homework (before calling me an idiot).
You would have seen that the small states are overrepresented in european parliament.
A european president would never go through, especially after Schroder has taken the side of the small nations.
If you ask a californian(?) wether he considers himself a californian of an american, my bet is he'd say american.
A european indentifies himself with the country he's born in, and with his native language.
The flag means something to an American... The European flag invokes no emotions in a european.
You cannot compare Democrat vs. Republican to French vs. German.
If you truly believe that the ESA's surge of space exploration has no goal other than pure scientific discovery, you're seriously beyond naive.
I never said anything like it, I'm sure that the main motivation for ESA is primarily economic, and to a lesser degree scientific.
I assure you, ESA has nothing todo with bringing the European people together. There is no glorification of european astronauts in the media, the only times you hear about it is when the local university has built something for an upcoming mission.
It's understandable that you try to impose your frame of reference onto your understanding of Europe... But you couldnt possibly be more wrong.
It is not possible for you as an american to make any analysis on how ESA is being used internally in europe.
You have a simplistic perception of how Europe works because you've blindly accepted the propaganda fed to you by the american media.
If you didn't believe european policy in the "war against terror" was motivated by some sort of european rebellion, you'd be forced to consider the fact, that europe (and the rest of the world) could have a valid point.
But the main point you seemed to miss in my post was this:
I did NOT try to argue as to wether ESA is economically, scientifically or politically (it isn't) motivated... I merely reflected on the fact that the relatively scientific minded readers of slashdot couldn't see the postive in space exploration, but has to make it into a pissing contest with the chinese and europeans.
Why it mattered more to them that the europeans would be second, and that the americans are better than the europeans, rather than just be glad that somebody want's to take space exploration beyond ant farms in low earth orbit.
It probably wouldn't convince them that it wasn't a hoax...
They'll just say: "look, it took 40 years before the technology was advanced enough to ACTUALLY do it.
Why wouldn't they have gone back back before if it was really so easy?"
So, you think the slashdot crowd is interested in science for the sake of science?
The first thing that happens when some other country tries to go to the moon is that there's nooo reason to do it, it's been done... the us has already won...
and we all know that science is about winning right?...RIGHT?
not about the pursuit of knowledge.
America won science 40 years ago...
and of course ESA is planning to test equipment on the moon for nationalistic reasons... becuase Europe is a nation?
If this story tells us anything, it'd have to be that technology is at a point where it's economically feasible to go to the moon for scientific reasons... of course we can do incredible things if there are political reasons to do it... but what can we do for purely scientific reasons? In my mind a far more interesting question.
Would have thought the slashdot crowd had the same interest in science.. but I guess I was wrong.
>> ...there are only two kinds of scientific theories: those that are demonstrably false, and those that are not yet demonstrably false.
> Well, yeah - that's why they are theories and not laws.
w00t?!?!
How can you say that? You mange to contradict yourself in one sentence...
If all theories will eventually become demonstrably false, how does a theory become a law then?
The approach could also be applied to sifting through other types of information. Identifying word bursts within email messages sent to a company's customer support address might help maintenance staff spot a major new problem.
I'm sure customer support employees are going to love this idea... This way you can keep up an appearance of actually having read the customer emails, while really just redirecting to/dev/null (through the filter of course).
wouldn't the fact that there isn't much selection going on, provide us with a lot of diversity, that might ensure a fast evolution if some radical change occured?
I mean... a lot of the genetic defects that are inconvenient but not directly lethal, could prove to be an advantage in the face of some particular disease...
so while theres not much of a evolutionary pressure, we will probably be able to adabt really fast if something were to happen...
oh... and it seems that we forget that there are also people living outside the united states and europe... life isn't necessarily as rosy red there...
I know americans value their low oil prices, and right to cause global warming higher than their lives... but they are still human, and should (for the sake of completeness) be included in discussions about humanity as a whole.
Slashdot Mirror
Mercantilism is all about establishing colonies and vassal states to exploit raw materials and create markets while building industry at home.
In case you haven't noticed, the US is doing the exact opposite since WW2.
I get it!
it's irony right?
Actually the russians don't use pencils, they just use ordinary ballpoint pens.
They work fine in microgravity... and besides, I dont't believe anybody actually writes anything outside the space station/shuttle, so the temperature thing is pretty much overkill as well.
hmmm...
:)
so wouldn't put options be the way to go?
buy SCO stocks now, sell them.
When the price has gone down buy the stocks again, use your put option and score the difference in price.
I'm definitely not a stock broker (probably used the words wrong and all), but I've always liked the idea that you could earn money on something loosing value that way
You're probably right :)
And simply learning to say no would probably go along way towards solving alot of my problems.
I have a few plumbers, painters, etc. in the family.
:-/
What I've noticed is that people expect to pay these guys to come around and fix something.... Even if it's relatively close family.
For some reason my time seems to be worth less than theirs
nothing better than this, sorry:0 3/nonbel iever/page50.html
http://bennyhills.fortunecity.com/hardy/2
but as you can see, it's George Bush sr. not jr.
Not that I have reason to believe the president should have a more nuanced opinion.
The explanation i got from a biochemist when i tried to quit was that the signal-molecules that are there when you are tired compete with the caffeine molecules for the cells receptors (cafeeine is a competitive inhibitor).
The body compensates by overexpressing the receptors, so after a while everything works like you before you started drinking coffee, but if you try to quit you become tired very quickly (because of the extra receptors).
The receptors have a turnover time of a little more than a week, so if you that long you should be ok again... but it's not really a question of the caffeine leaving the body, as much as a question of protein-turnover in your brain.
The advantage over cafeeine addiction over cigarette addiction is that when the physical addiction is gone, then you are ok.
With smoking, the physical addiction is just a tiny part of your addiction.
(note: I am NOT a biochemist)
Well... as long as you live in a democracy the people can easily take back the power.
The problem is that, from where I am standing (the other side of the pond), it doesn't look like the people are interested in taking back the power.
How many people vote in the US?
You shouldn't bitch about the politicians or the companies who try to take as much power as they can for them selves... that is like complaining about a force of nature.
People will try to become powerful, face it.... stop whining about it.
What you can whine about however, is people who don't vote, or people who don't take the time to figure out who's the right person to vote for.
It takes more time than the 30 seconds you need to watch a tv commercial, and politics is more complicated than for or against terrorism.
I praise my self lucky to live in a country with a 90% voter turnout.
the fish sounds like a bottle-opener
What doesn't add up?
Both statements are in complete concord.
The US is specifically quoted for politicizing the decision, and the BBC science editor says that the decision is political.
nothing strange there... no conjectures, the US says straight out that it supports japan for political reasons.
Your points are perfectly valid.
I'm just saying that the articly explicitely said that the US gave Iraq as a reason for supporting Japan... not the nearby port.
the article says:
The US, in particular, has raised objections to the French option, citing its opposition to the Iraq invasion.
Does that look like an opinion to you, or does he say that the US explicitly gave iraq as reason for supporting Japan?
" Last time I checked, Canada, Russia and China preferred the Japanese site. And I seem to recall they all opposed the Iraq War."
But Germany backs France, and they opposed the Iraq War... where does that put the US? Can they back anyone?
What are you saying?
The article states that the US backs Japan to avoid backing France because they opposed the Iraq war.
I'm pretty sure that the US is the only country that cares enough about the war to let it influence a descision on fusion power...
Again your reasoning is flawed...
If you know of a better source than the BBC to back your claim as to why the US backs Japan, please post it.
+5 informative? where's the information? It's speculation, and its flawed at that.
How did this get modded insightful?
Viewing the science and exploration as a competition makes it appear like you are more interested in the nationalistic aspects of it than the scientific.
IF you have to discuss it, the "we've sent waaay more robotic explorers out there" is a pretty bad point.
I live in Denmark, we had Vikings; The vikings ruled the sea for a very long time. After that we had a LARGE fleet that was comparable to the english for the better part of 18th and 19th century.
Now we can just sit back on our asses for the next couple of decades and STILL have ruled the sea for longer than the americans...
This obviously translates into: Danish sailors kicks american sailor ass.
just like NASA kicks everyone elses ass because they went to the moon before everyone else.
Well definitely not Denmark... No voting machines there, just old fahioned pen and paper voting. Can somebody explain to me why it's not possible to simply count the votes manually in the US. Judging from the turnout in the US compared to Denmark there are about almost twice as many votes in Denmark (relative to the size of the population) and manual counting of the votes has never been a problem here.
Spamming HAS become a high-stakes felony
I'm sure I have done this in a shell script once...
... 2> error.txt
cat error.txt | mail -s "script error" bill@microsoft.com
It extract information about a program failure (even non fatal), and establishes contact with a repository (my mailbox)
prior art?
If I'd only thought to patent that, I could have been rich, I tell you! RICH!
There has been a lot of comments on exactly how stupid this system is, because you could just tax fuel or have ordinary toll booths...
But destroying the roads isn't the point, it's about supporting public transportation in cities whith too many cars.
of course you could raise the tax on gasoline, but that would hit people in rural areas just as hard as (or harder than) people congesting traffic in the major cities.
although I see the privacy issues, fact is that public transportation IS better suited for cities than cars.
Has it even been shown that microwaves cause cancer? To the best of my knowledge there's no conclusive evidence. The reasoning behind it is shaky as well: "We all know that sticking your head in a microwave oven is bad for you... right?" Microwaves induce movement of water molecules (when its in liquid form). so does your stove... why should we fear this without any hard scientific evidence that it is dangerous?
ohhh... where to start...
A European president?!?! It's true that Chirac would like to have a french president of the European Union, but france is one member state, and if you'd done your homework (before calling me an idiot).
You would have seen that the small states are overrepresented in european parliament. A european president would never go through, especially after Schroder has taken the side of the small nations.
If you ask a californian(?) wether he considers himself a californian of an american, my bet is he'd say american.
A european indentifies himself with the country he's born in, and with his native language.
The flag means something to an American... The European flag invokes no emotions in a european.
You cannot compare Democrat vs. Republican to French vs. German.
If you truly believe that the ESA's surge of space exploration has no goal other than pure scientific discovery, you're seriously beyond naive.
I never said anything like it, I'm sure that the main motivation for ESA is primarily economic, and to a lesser degree scientific.
I assure you, ESA has nothing todo with bringing the European people together. There is no glorification of european astronauts in the media, the only times you hear about it is when the local university has built something for an upcoming mission.
It's understandable that you try to impose your frame of reference onto your understanding of Europe... But you couldnt possibly be more wrong.
It is not possible for you as an american to make any analysis on how ESA is being used internally in europe.
You have a simplistic perception of how Europe works because you've blindly accepted the propaganda fed to you by the american media.
If you didn't believe european policy in the "war against terror" was motivated by some sort of european rebellion, you'd be forced to consider the fact, that europe (and the rest of the world) could have a valid point.
But the main point you seemed to miss in my post was this: I did NOT try to argue as to wether ESA is economically, scientifically or politically (it isn't) motivated... I merely reflected on the fact that the relatively scientific minded readers of slashdot couldn't see the postive in space exploration, but has to make it into a pissing contest with the chinese and europeans. Why it mattered more to them that the europeans would be second, and that the americans are better than the europeans, rather than just be glad that somebody want's to take space exploration beyond ant farms in low earth orbit.
It probably wouldn't convince them that it wasn't a hoax... They'll just say: "look, it took 40 years before the technology was advanced enough to ACTUALLY do it. Why wouldn't they have gone back back before if it was really so easy?"
So, you think the slashdot crowd is interested in science for the sake of science?
...RIGHT?
The first thing that happens when some other country tries to go to the moon is that there's nooo reason to do it, it's been done... the us has already won...
and we all know that science is about winning right?
not about the pursuit of knowledge.
America won science 40 years ago...
and of course ESA is planning to test equipment on the moon for nationalistic reasons...
becuase Europe is a nation?
If this story tells us anything, it'd have to be that technology is at a point where it's economically feasible to go to the moon for scientific reasons...
of course we can do incredible things if there are political reasons to do it... but what can we do for purely scientific reasons?
In my mind a far more interesting question.
Would have thought the slashdot crowd had the same interest in science.. but I guess I was wrong.
>> ...there are only two kinds of scientific theories: those that are demonstrably false, and those that are not yet demonstrably false.
> Well, yeah - that's why they are theories and not laws.
w00t?!?!
How can you say that? You mange to contradict yourself in one sentence...
If all theories will eventually become demonstrably false, how does a theory become a law then?
The approach could also be applied to sifting through other types of information. Identifying word bursts within email messages sent to a company's customer support address might help maintenance staff spot a major new problem.
/dev/null (through the filter of course).
I'm sure customer support employees are going to love this idea... This way you can keep up an appearance of actually having read the customer emails, while really just redirecting to
wouldn't the fact that there isn't much selection going on, provide us with a lot of diversity, that might ensure a fast evolution if some radical change occured?
I mean... a lot of the genetic defects that are inconvenient but not directly lethal, could prove to be an advantage in the face of some particular disease...
so while theres not much of a evolutionary pressure, we will probably be able to adabt really fast if something were to happen...
oh... and it seems that we forget that there are also people living outside the united states and europe... life isn't necessarily as rosy red there...
I know americans value their low oil prices, and right to cause global warming higher than their lives... but they are still human, and should (for the sake of completeness) be included in discussions about humanity as a whole.