I know you were actually there, but your concerns seem a bit off. My not-an-engineer take:
they would need to fire one of these off every 0.1 second, so once every 10 seconds is not even close.
But for a prototype, a proof of concept? 3 orders of magnitude isn't childs play, but it sure seems like they're moving in the right direction.
Plus, the simple fact that there's an enormous explosion going off ten times a second, which destroys the chamber that holds the capsule, makes it seem like there's a definite engineering feat to overcome, otherwise the whole thing is liable to crumble to bits.
Just a matter of finding the right isotope of Unobtainium... really, though, it's "just" a materials science question.
Right now, they only fire off the Z machine a few hundred times a year... going from that to a few hundred times a minute is a big step.
From TFA: "A test cavity in Sandias Technical Area 4 has fired without flaw more than 11,000 times."
I also wouldn't want to live anywhere near there; it feels like a moderately strong earthquake in the area everytime they fire that thing; it seems like the ground beneath and around a rapid-fire facility would quickly weaken and collapse.
My advice: don't put the machine over a cave. Otherwise, I think we're safe from the Earth opening up and swallowing the machine whole.
So yes, the Z machine is an excellent source of x-rays, and those x-rays can definitely be used to collapse a fusion capsule, but how applicable is it for fusion power?
That, I wouldn't know... but at least a few dozen folks seem to think it's a distinct possibility.
This is a huge story among us techno types, but does the general public have any clue?
Just last night, I got the usual pack of coupons in the mail... including one inviting me to choose Vonage for my local phone service. I'd wager nobody on my block has ever heard of the Vonage vs. Verizon patent battle. What happens to these folks -- especially the non-technical ones who don't even understand the 911 and VoIP thing -- if Vonage eventually loses its case entirely?
Or is Vonage's strategy now built around pumping up the customer base in advance of the inevitable bankruptcy and fire sale of their only remaining asset: their customer list?
by Alzheimers: Seeing your initials at the top justified the hundreds of dollars spent in practice and the pursuit of glory. Unless you were one of those punks that entered A-S-S.
by Arthur Scott Smith: Calling me a punk? Jerk.
Wow. The legendary "A.S.S." It's great meeting you after all these years. You absolutely ROCKED on Galaga. And Dig Dug. And Crystal Castles. Heck, I think I saw you on EVERY game in town! And the crazy thing is, you must have been running from Tulsa to Dallas, because when I'd go visit relatives in Big D, you had already been to the mall there, too!
I think you even made it to the huge arcade at the 1982 World's Fair. Wasn't that AWESOME? Wish I could have seen you play.
Re:Vista: the cowtow starts now
on
AMD's New DRM
·
· Score: 1
Cowtow? As in, towing bovines? I didn't realize Microsoft was in the cattle hauling business (though it's been suggested that they're in the cattle byproduct business, fertilizer in particular).
Sitting Pretty: The Custom of Kowtow "'Sitting' [as understood in ancient times] is generally known as kowtow today: Both knees bent down on the mat, with the buttocks resting on the heels. When meeting a guest, the host usually had to stretch the upper part of the body to show respect. Gradually, the custom of kowtow became a part of daily life."
I can't seem to find the link (Google is not friendly today), but does this perhaps justify the researcher who postulated that the sense of smell comes from something akin to detecting nuclear resonance, not a simple chemical interaction? I recall that one detractor said that his theory was as outlandish as saying that food was digested in the stomach via tiny nuclear reactors. But it explained many things that didn't make sense otherwise -- like why cyanide smells like almonds.
He's apparently gone on to success in the perfume industry.
$2 a song seems entirely reasonable. Giving the price of every song on GH is a bogus comparision, because I doubt I'd have bought every song on GH if I'd been given the chance to cherry-pick.
The bundling is obnixious, though. It's like cable and satellite TV, where you pay extra for channels you'll never watch, just so you can get the one channel you actually want.
But compare it with other music-related deals in the marketplace. People pay ridiculous amounts of money for *ringtones* -- you don't even hear the whole song, but you pay many times what you would on iTunes.
People even pay for musical ringback tones (aka CallerTunes, etc) -- they *pay* to make *me* listen to their crappy taste in music. And as a bonus, I suspect I'm paying to listen to it with cell minutes that would have otherwise not been charged. No more "ring ring, hang up". What a deal for the wireless companies -- they get paid on both ends.
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one irked by this. There's no way for me to undo years of habit and start typing a single space. If modern browsers want to close up the space, fine... but I'm going to keep typing two spaces.
What's frustrating is when automatic HTML formatting tools like Nvu automatically turn the second space into a non-breaking space (nbsp). Half my sentences end at the end of a line and have a CRLF after them, which is treated like a normal space... and the result is that some sentences are separated by single spaces, and others are separated by two spaces. Worse, though: if a sentence is at the start of a line, but has nbsp at the start, my left margin is shot. D'oh!
Wow. Thanks for giving me an excuse to get *that* off my chest.
If you're as tired of these (indirectly) revenue generating pieces as I am, please join me and tag them as "ohnoitsroland" -- I'm doing that to all of his submissions now.
Actually, I've been tagging them as "pigpile" (piquepaille, pig pile, get it?) for quite a while. Easier to remember and humorous without being whiney.
Actually, there's a Slashdot article on this very subject. I know, because I submitted it!
Pants Were Optional, 100,000 Years Ago Posted by timothy on Tue Aug 19, '03 08:48 PM from the lousy-research-methods dept. RobertB-DC writes "German scientists have used differences in the DNA of lice to determine when humans started wearing clothes. It seems lice are highly specialized -- head lice lay their eggs only on hair, while body lice hide theirs in the folds of clothing. Using the differences in the two species' DNA and a "standard" mutation rate, the scientists determined when clothing-specific lice (and by extention, clothes) came into existence. No comment, though, from Calvin Klein."
Unfortunately, the primary link (to a Washington Post story) is dead. However, the link I included for Calvin Klein is still live. I shudder to think what that says about how our society will look to future cyber-archaeologists.
I think it's fair to say that I cheated a bit by using CmdrTaco's tagline in the article title.:)
The result is that the air, land and water on which local people depend have all been poisoned. Local well water is already undrinkable, even after boiling, and fresh supplies must be trucked in from the town of Chan Dim 15 kilometres away.
I think the mention of boiling as a method of purifying the water shows the unfortunate region's ignorance about the materials they're "processing". It makes me think that some poor bunch of folks got sick from the contamination, reported the illnesses to officials, and were told "just boil your water and you won't get sick any more."
For those still scratching their heads: boiling water kills microbes, but doesn't do a thing about heavy metals and other chemical contaminants. If there's a cholera outbreak, you boil your water. If there's a mercury outbreak, you move. Or, in the case of these folks who can't move, you die. Slowly. Along with your kids.
After reading the "stepmother's" reply I have to say yea it probably was the parent's fault. This kid seems to have been tossed back and forth between the "father" and the mother. The stepmother's language in her reply was what I would expect for a high school kid and not a parent of a child. In all the discussion of what they did and didn't do, I at no time heard the word love. I heard hate a lot but not love. Yea this kid might have had issues from the start but I have to say that didn't sound like he had much of a chance with the parents he had. Yes he was unmanageable at 15 but what about at two? How about at five? How much love and time did he get at seven?
Read a bit more closely, and you'll catch this bit:
I am sorry this got so long. I have been reading PA since the very beginning, and I feel that both of you are very much like me. I think we are the same age (29) and I have been a lifelong gamer like the two of you.
If she's 29, then she would have been around 14 when the kid was born -- and remember, she describes herself as a kind-of stepmother. It sounds like she didn't get involved until he was already a teenager -- too late for her to have much impact, especially if she was only in her mid-20's herself.
So we can't draw any conclusions about her bad parenting when he was a baby. Also, note that he was living with his dad until he decided to leave -- and move in with his natural mom, who had even less control over the situation. If we must conclude that nurture had a larger role than nature, then we have to look at her role, long before the letter's author was involved.
It's not such a bad thing, really. Navel-gazing is, in some ways, what differentiates humans from all other species. Your dog or your cat never asks where it came from -- or where it's going, for that matter.
The concept isn't that much different from those early web pages, where you posted pictures of your kids as though it was the most amazing thing ever. Now, there's MySpace, which just makes it easier to put your life online. Why not take it one step further, and put your entire existential experience online?
Now, whether your internal dialog about your origins and destinations holds any interest for the rest of humanity... I guess the worst that can happen is that your digitally recorded existance is erased in favor of the latest 3D porn video, but at least you tried.
I actually submitted this story (via journal entry) back in September, but it didn't make it -- it happened at the same time as Atlantis was docking with the ISS, so I guess the editors didn't have more space for more space. When the craft was launched, Chinese officials were cited as saying that "seeds exposed to space radiation and microgravity contain more vitamins and other crucial minerals.".
Wow. I guess science class in China consists of repeated viewings of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, or perhaps the Chinese scientists are simply polishing up their Ig Nobel acceptance speeches.
While I'm sure the gee-whiz factor of more accurately simulating Lara Croft swimming is the hook for the story, shouldn't it at least pay lip service to real-world applications of this new technique? Wind-tunnel testing is one area that currently requires massive physical facilities, and would clearly benefit from this research -- air is a "fluid", too. You could even apply it to thicker fluids, perhaps devising new ways to fabricate items from glass or non-destructively test metal part designs for weaknesses that wouldn't have been otherwise revealed.
Though the importance of properly modelling Lara Croft's swimsuit can hardly be overstated.
China just need to put all the dollars they have accumulated in market and boom!!! it would affect US economy more than if they a war instead.
I assume you mean that they could "pull" all their dollars out of the US economy -- and you're right. It would strike a devastating blow to us. It would impact the Chinese people as well, but they're only one generation removed from the Cultural Revolution. We, on the other hand, have grown quite accustomed to our comforts. A XX% drop in our economic output would be devastating, while the mirror effect on theirs would be... annoying.
But you then conclude that China doesn't have to worry about its military, since it can crush us economically. I think you're missing the big picture.
First, they destroy our economy, and with it our ability to effectively wage war. Think of it as an economic Pearl Harbor.
Then, the military takes over. Remember the high male-to-female ratio generated by the "One Child" policy? In the old days, that was called "cannon fodder".
It's enough to make you look for real estate in Montana.
If worse comes to worse you raid your old "Super Advance Kiddee Chemistry Set" and dose yourself.
For what it's worth, I suspect that "Chemistry Store" is Canadian for "Pharmacy". I know that in Britain, you go to the "chemist's" to get your prescription filled. Although it would be cool to be able to stroll down to the "chemistry store" and pick up a couple of ounces of, say, salt's better half.
Wow, and I thought I was on the cutting edge by stamping bills and entering them into Where's George?
In fact, a April Fool's joke I recall was that WG had developed a way to track US dollar coins, with a machine that would emboss a unique serial number into the coin's smooth edge. The new project would be "Where's Sackie?"
Looks like the Canadian government is way ahead of the curve on that one. Better alert the folks at Where's Willy?, the northern branch of Where's George?.
A hundred years ago a couple of guys tried to measure our speed through the "ether". They found that there was no ether. This lead to the idea that light must travel at the same speed no matter what reference frame you're in. This (and a few other things) lead to the ideas of quantum physics.
That's interesting -- another addition to the always-growing list of things I didn't know. I poked around for a link and found this: Is The Speed of Light Constant? Scroll down to the "Special Relativity" section for a description of how the search for the Speed of Light in the Ether led to the discovery of the slippery notion of "spacetime".
let's cover the next warzone with depleted Hassium !
Sounds great, except that in the 30 seconds or so it took you to look at your battleground map, you'll have half as much Hassium as you started with...
Looking at the Open Design folks site brings up this tidbit:
The Open Design Alliance understands that Autodesk has, for approximately two years, been distributing application programs which include our copyrighted DGNdirect libraries, for reading and writing DGN V8 format files. Autodesk does not have, nor has it ever had, any license or right to use DGNdirect in its application programs. We believe that Autodesk, by its actions, is infringing our copyright.
All Autodesk had to do was join the Open Design Alliance, and they could use the ODA libraries without restriction. Instead, they filed suit.
Don't forget to read The Autodesk File for more insights into how the once-revered company became just another soulless money hole.
Slashdot Mirror
I know you were actually there, but your concerns seem a bit off. My not-an-engineer take:
they would need to fire one of these off every 0.1 second, so once every 10 seconds is not even close.
But for a prototype, a proof of concept? 3 orders of magnitude isn't childs play, but it sure seems like they're moving in the right direction.
Plus, the simple fact that there's an enormous explosion going off ten times a second, which destroys the chamber that holds the capsule, makes it seem like there's a definite engineering feat to overcome, otherwise the whole thing is liable to crumble to bits.
Just a matter of finding the right isotope of Unobtainium... really, though, it's "just" a materials science question.
Right now, they only fire off the Z machine a few hundred times a year... going from that to a few hundred times a minute is a big step.
From TFA: "A test cavity in Sandias Technical Area 4 has fired without flaw more than 11,000 times."
I also wouldn't want to live anywhere near there; it feels like a moderately strong earthquake in the area everytime they fire that thing; it seems like the ground beneath and around a rapid-fire facility would quickly weaken and collapse.
My advice: don't put the machine over a cave. Otherwise, I think we're safe from the Earth opening up and swallowing the machine whole.
So yes, the Z machine is an excellent source of x-rays, and those x-rays can definitely be used to collapse a fusion capsule, but how applicable is it for fusion power?
That, I wouldn't know... but at least a few dozen folks seem to think it's a distinct possibility.
This is a huge story among us techno types, but does the general public have any clue?
Just last night, I got the usual pack of coupons in the mail... including one inviting me to choose Vonage for my local phone service. I'd wager nobody on my block has ever heard of the Vonage vs. Verizon patent battle. What happens to these folks -- especially the non-technical ones who don't even understand the 911 and VoIP thing -- if Vonage eventually loses its case entirely?
Or is Vonage's strategy now built around pumping up the customer base in advance of the inevitable bankruptcy and fire sale of their only remaining asset: their customer list?
by Alzheimers: Seeing your initials at the top justified the hundreds of dollars spent in practice and the pursuit of glory. Unless you were one of those punks that entered A-S-S.
by Arthur Scott Smith: Calling me a punk? Jerk.
Wow. The legendary "A.S.S." It's great meeting you after all these years. You absolutely ROCKED on Galaga. And Dig Dug. And Crystal Castles. Heck, I think I saw you on EVERY game in town! And the crazy thing is, you must have been running from Tulsa to Dallas, because when I'd go visit relatives in Big D, you had already been to the mall there, too!
I think you even made it to the huge arcade at the 1982 World's Fair. Wasn't that AWESOME? Wish I could have seen you play.
Cowtow? As in, towing bovines? I didn't realize Microsoft was in the cattle hauling business (though it's been suggested that they're in the cattle byproduct business, fertilizer in particular).
Sitting Pretty: The Custom of Kowtow
"'Sitting' [as understood in ancient times] is generally known as kowtow today: Both knees bent down on the mat, with the buttocks resting on the heels. When meeting a guest, the host usually had to stretch the upper part of the body to show respect. Gradually, the custom of kowtow became a part of daily life."
I can't seem to find the link (Google is not friendly today), but does this perhaps justify the researcher who postulated that the sense of smell comes from something akin to detecting nuclear resonance, not a simple chemical interaction? I recall that one detractor said that his theory was as outlandish as saying that food was digested in the stomach via tiny nuclear reactors. But it explained many things that didn't make sense otherwise -- like why cyanide smells like almonds.
He's apparently gone on to success in the perfume industry.
Someone find the link... this is driving me nuts.
$2 a song seems entirely reasonable. Giving the price of every song on GH is a bogus comparision, because I doubt I'd have bought every song on GH if I'd been given the chance to cherry-pick.
The bundling is obnixious, though. It's like cable and satellite TV, where you pay extra for channels you'll never watch, just so you can get the one channel you actually want.
But compare it with other music-related deals in the marketplace. People pay ridiculous amounts of money for *ringtones* -- you don't even hear the whole song, but you pay many times what you would on iTunes.
People even pay for musical ringback tones (aka CallerTunes, etc) -- they *pay* to make *me* listen to their crappy taste in music. And as a bonus, I suspect I'm paying to listen to it with cell minutes that would have otherwise not been charged. No more "ring ring, hang up". What a deal for the wireless companies -- they get paid on both ends.
Who the f*** decided that sentences on the Internet shall no longer be formatted with two spaces after a period?!
I'm so glad I'm not the only one irked by this. There's no way for me to undo years of habit and start typing a single space. If modern browsers want to close up the space, fine... but I'm going to keep typing two spaces.
What's frustrating is when automatic HTML formatting tools like Nvu automatically turn the second space into a non-breaking space (nbsp). Half my sentences end at the end of a line and have a CRLF after them, which is treated like a normal space... and the result is that some sentences are separated by single spaces, and others are separated by two spaces. Worse, though: if a sentence is at the start of a line, but has nbsp at the start, my left margin is shot. D'oh!
Wow. Thanks for giving me an excuse to get *that* off my chest.
If you're as tired of these (indirectly) revenue generating pieces as I am, please join me and tag them as "ohnoitsroland" -- I'm doing that to all of his submissions now.
Actually, I've been tagging them as "pigpile" (piquepaille, pig pile, get it?) for quite a while. Easier to remember and humorous without being whiney.
Actually, there's a Slashdot article on this very subject. I know, because I submitted it!
:)
Pants Were Optional, 100,000 Years Ago
Posted by timothy on Tue Aug 19, '03 08:48 PM
from the lousy-research-methods dept.
RobertB-DC writes
"German scientists have used differences in the DNA of lice to determine when humans started wearing clothes. It seems lice are highly specialized -- head lice lay their eggs only on hair, while body lice hide theirs in the folds of clothing. Using the differences in the two species' DNA and a "standard" mutation rate, the scientists determined when clothing-specific lice (and by extention, clothes) came into existence. No comment, though, from Calvin Klein."
Unfortunately, the primary link (to a Washington Post story) is dead. However, the link I included for Calvin Klein is still live. I shudder to think what that says about how our society will look to future cyber-archaeologists.
I think it's fair to say that I cheated a bit by using CmdrTaco's tagline in the article title.
The explosion alone could have with the power of 100 million tons of dynamite, enough to devastate an entire state, such as Maryland, they said.
Maryland? Here in Texas, we call that a "county". Call me when you have something that can devastate a real state.
I think the mention of boiling as a method of purifying the water shows the unfortunate region's ignorance about the materials they're "processing". It makes me think that some poor bunch of folks got sick from the contamination, reported the illnesses to officials, and were told "just boil your water and you won't get sick any more."
For those still scratching their heads: boiling water kills microbes, but doesn't do a thing about heavy metals and other chemical contaminants. If there's a cholera outbreak, you boil your water. If there's a mercury outbreak, you move. Or, in the case of these folks who can't move, you die. Slowly. Along with your kids.
After reading the "stepmother's" reply I have to say yea it probably was the parent's fault. This kid seems to have been tossed back and forth between the "father" and the mother. The stepmother's language in her reply was what I would expect for a high school kid and not a parent of a child. In all the discussion of what they did and didn't do, I at no time heard the word love. I heard hate a lot but not love. Yea this kid might have had issues from the start but I have to say that didn't sound like he had much of a chance with the parents he had.
Yes he was unmanageable at 15 but what about at two? How about at five? How much love and time did he get at seven?
Read a bit more closely, and you'll catch this bit:
I am sorry this got so long. I have been reading PA since the very beginning, and I feel that both of you are very much like me. I think we are the same age (29) and I have been a lifelong gamer like the two of you.
If she's 29, then she would have been around 14 when the kid was born -- and remember, she describes herself as a kind-of stepmother. It sounds like she didn't get involved until he was already a teenager -- too late for her to have much impact, especially if she was only in her mid-20's herself.
So we can't draw any conclusions about her bad parenting when he was a baby. Also, note that he was living with his dad until he decided to leave -- and move in with his natural mom, who had even less control over the situation. If we must conclude that nurture had a larger role than nature, then we have to look at her role, long before the letter's author was involved.
It's not such a bad thing, really. Navel-gazing is, in some ways, what differentiates humans from all other species. Your dog or your cat never asks where it came from -- or where it's going, for that matter.
The concept isn't that much different from those early web pages, where you posted pictures of your kids as though it was the most amazing thing ever. Now, there's MySpace, which just makes it easier to put your life online. Why not take it one step further, and put your entire existential experience online?
Now, whether your internal dialog about your origins and destinations holds any interest for the rest of humanity... I guess the worst that can happen is that your digitally recorded existance is erased in favor of the latest 3D porn video, but at least you tried.
I actually submitted this story (via journal entry) back in September, but it didn't make it -- it happened at the same time as Atlantis was docking with the ISS, so I guess the editors didn't have more space for more space. When the craft was launched, Chinese officials were cited as saying that "seeds exposed to space radiation and microgravity contain more vitamins and other crucial minerals.".
Wow. I guess science class in China consists of repeated viewings of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes , or perhaps the Chinese scientists are simply polishing up their Ig Nobel acceptance speeches.
While I'm sure the gee-whiz factor of more accurately simulating Lara Croft swimming is the hook for the story, shouldn't it at least pay lip service to real-world applications of this new technique? Wind-tunnel testing is one area that currently requires massive physical facilities, and would clearly benefit from this research -- air is a "fluid", too. You could even apply it to thicker fluids, perhaps devising new ways to fabricate items from glass or non-destructively test metal part designs for weaknesses that wouldn't have been otherwise revealed.
Though the importance of properly modelling Lara Croft's swimsuit can hardly be overstated.
Ok, then.
"Exploding Robots May Scout Fjqvking Hazardous Asteroids"
Makes at least as much sense as "Jackdaws love my big sphinx of quartz."
China just need to put all the dollars they have accumulated in market and boom!!! it would affect US economy more than if they a war instead.
I assume you mean that they could "pull" all their dollars out of the US economy -- and you're right. It would strike a devastating blow to us. It would impact the Chinese people as well, but they're only one generation removed from the Cultural Revolution. We, on the other hand, have grown quite accustomed to our comforts. A XX% drop in our economic output would be devastating, while the mirror effect on theirs would be... annoying.
But you then conclude that China doesn't have to worry about its military, since it can crush us economically. I think you're missing the big picture.
First, they destroy our economy, and with it our ability to effectively wage war. Think of it as an economic Pearl Harbor.
Then, the military takes over. Remember the high male-to-female ratio generated by the "One Child" policy? In the old days, that was called "cannon fodder".
It's enough to make you look for real estate in Montana.
If worse comes to worse you raid your old "Super Advance Kiddee Chemistry Set" and dose yourself.
For what it's worth, I suspect that "Chemistry Store" is Canadian for "Pharmacy". I know that in Britain, you go to the "chemist's" to get your prescription filled. Although it would be cool to be able to stroll down to the "chemistry store" and pick up a couple of ounces of, say, salt's better half.
... I thought turkeys could fly.
MINI calls the interactive billboards "Motherboards."
Um, the FA actually says:
Look MINI USA to roll-out the Motorboard program to a wider MINI-owning audience later in 2007.
Looks like somebody does need to get out of his parents' basement...
(Note that the date is 5 January, not May 1, as may be misread by my fellow Americans.)
I would expect another "news" article soon, dated 11/01/07 (11 Jan): "WikiLeaks flooded: Slashdotted!"
Wow, and I thought I was on the cutting edge by stamping bills and entering them into Where's George?
In fact, a April Fool's joke I recall was that WG had developed a way to track US dollar coins, with a machine that would emboss a unique serial number into the coin's smooth edge. The new project would be "Where's Sackie?"
Looks like the Canadian government is way ahead of the curve on that one. Better alert the folks at Where's Willy?, the northern branch of Where's George?.
A hundred years ago a couple of guys tried to measure our speed through the "ether". They found that there was no ether. This lead to the idea that light must travel at the same speed no matter what reference frame you're in. This (and a few other things) lead to the ideas of quantum physics.
That's interesting -- another addition to the always-growing list of things I didn't know. I poked around for a link and found this: Is The Speed of Light Constant? Scroll down to the "Special Relativity" section for a description of how the search for the Speed of Light in the Ether led to the discovery of the slippery notion of "spacetime".
let's cover the next warzone with depleted Hassium !
Sounds great, except that in the 30 seconds or so it took you to look at your battleground map, you'll have half as much Hassium as you started with...
All Autodesk had to do was join the Open Design Alliance, and they could use the ODA libraries without restriction. Instead, they filed suit.
Don't forget to read The Autodesk File for more insights into how the once-revered company became just another soulless money hole.