Urban legends aside, NASA did not throw the plans for the Saturn V away.
Then they just SAID they couldn't find them any more when private space industry startups tried to get them when NASA was designing the shuttle and Congress was wondering why they couldn't continue to do launches with the proven technology rather than having to fund all this new stuff, including new big engines?
(I heard that "urban myth" from one of the players in private launches at the time.)
Please enlighten us with the details, if you have them.
Oops. I was following some links on other drugs RELATED to the story and lost track of who discovered what. This one was UCLA, not the nice-priicing drug company.
But not if this cure is going to cost an arm and a leg.
The drug company in question is very much into going after fast nickels rather than slow dimes and/or supporting populations other than the rich and well insured. It is noted for pricing its products low in order to make them widely available, including to the poor and those in non-industrialized countries.
Unfortunately it doesn't ALWAYS work. USUALLY it turns rambling prose into something punchy, without distorting the meaning. But this is one example where it does not. Instead it changes the semantics, turning a true assertion into one both different and false.
(I thought about mentioning it at the time, as an example of a recommendation that doesn't work on its own text. But I decided to let somebody else try for a "funny" mod.)
Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night....
Indeed.
Another issue with cow vs. human milk is risk of Multiple Sclerosis. Feeding cow milk to human infants drastically increases that risk.
MS is an autoimmune reaction against the myelin sheaths of nerves. Much of the avoidance of autoimmune reactions is done soon after birth, when the differentiated immune cells take a "grand tour" and those that recognize the body's own structures commit suicide. But myelin sheaths is one of a handfull of things not present until after this period. So it avoids attack later by having a "I'm special, don't attack me." sequence coded into the protein, next to its major antigenic region.
There's a protein in milk that has the same sequence. Unfortunately, the bovine version of the protein is slightly different in that region. So heavy exposure to cow's milk (perhaps in combination with other factors) occasionally leads to the immune system missing the signal, becoming sensitized to the myelin protein, and eventually attacking and destroying the nerve sheaths, creating one of the forms of MS.
To prevent this, some recombinant cattle have been created that express the human, rather than the bovine, version of the protein in question. Expected result, if this were to become the norm in dairy herds: No more risk of MS from drinking cow's milk than from drinking human milk.
At least for people. Calves might occasionally get MS as a result, unless the rest of the systems in question are also replaced with the human version.
I suppose you could kill someone with one if you put it under their bed for a few years and they get cancer from the neutron radiation.
The Bremsstrahlung radiation from the particle accelerator beam hitting the target or whatever would be more of a problem for the guy in the bed than the fusion neutrons.
Ditto with fusors: The main loss of power there is electrons and ions hitting the inner electrode - at several kV. Lots of nice X-rays - just like an old, pre-HV-regulator, color TV set, only more so. You gotta shield that garage device or be far away when it's running. The relative handful of neutrons produced are far less of an issue (though they DO wander through some sorts of shielding and also make some of the stuff that finally traps them mildly radioactive).
Except if firefighters use electricity instead of water to extinguish the flames, they won't be wet.
It's not all from the fire suppression sprays. Some of it is called "sweat". Lots of salt in it so it's very conductive. Drops the skin resistance by several orders of magnitude.
People tend to emit a lot of it, coating their bodies, when covered with protective gear, toting lots of heavy fire suppression gear or rescued victims, jogging up and down stairs, or hacking their way through doors or walls, all in an environment where the ambient temperature is above that of the human body's homeostasis setpoint.
Crime doesn't come from density, but from poor people.
Crime comes from blocking people from defending themselves, turning them into helpless victims. Then the predators take advantage of the situation. Police normally can't get there in time to take over the protection job, just to clean up after it. Even if they feel like trying.
You see it mainly with poor people because they're the ones who can't get around the rules and have to knuckle under. Then they get victimized by the predators around them - usually more poor people of the same ethnic group, sometimes by a gang of a rival (but also typically poor) ethnic group settled nearby. (And of course to the extent police can provide any protection or crook removal they tend not to try as hard to protect the poor as to protect those with enough clout to annoy their administrators.)
Oh please! Isn't this what the FOSS community has been wanting for years? Haven't all the FOSS guys said 'if MSFT has patents lets see them"? Well here you go, now it is up to the courts to ultimately decide.
Even if that was what the FOSS community had been asking for, this isn't going to produce it.
There's no reason Microsoft needs to produce ALL the patents they might try to apply. They can just select a handful and throw them at the court to see if any of them stick. Ten years later, even if none have, they can just pick another handfull and try again.
Repeat for as long as they hold software patents - which will be as long as they exist and software is patentable.
Violation of free speech? what about my rights to have a clean search and not have to worry about my children seeing things that I don't want them to see.
Sorry. You don't have that "right". The rights to free speech and a free press take precedence.
Free speech and press were recognized because interfering with them interferes with peaceful removal of tyrannical regimes, leading to more tyranny on one hand and more violence when they finally do get replaced on the other. Give tyrants ANY excuse to suppress speech or press and they'll use it to hobble their political opposition.
Further: The internet, like printing, was created by adults for adults. You don't let your toddlers wander alone in the part of town that includes porn shops and bars. Why should the internet be any different? Minding your kids is YOUR responsibility. Trying to kid-proof the whole world is not an acceptable substitute. Do it yourself, hire it done, or teach your kids (once they can handle it) how to handle the "bad stuff" responsibly rather than trying to shield them from it.
The.xxx domain provides the equivalent of zoning, establishing an "area of town" where the porn stores can set up voluntarily. Seems to me that's a move in the right direction.
To support a $25 BILLion valuation you need to make something like $2.5 BILLioin profit annually.
If you can negotiate deep discounts on group purchases and have that much left over after the stuff is sold at deeply cut rates, it sends a message to the sellers AND other, existing, discount stores that they're WAY overpriced and can make more by going after fast nickles rather than slow dimes.
(Of course it DOES, like discount stores, give the manufacturers a handy way to dispose of their "seconds" in boxcar lots. But enough to support an ADDITIONAL $2.5 B?)
It surprised the hell out of me that spent fuel rods would be stored in pools on top of a reactor. That enormously complcates the problem if there is any structural damage to the building.
Think about it:
If they were to be stored anywhere else you'd have the problem of moving them there - when they're "spent", which is when they're about the most radioactive they've ever been before or will be later and have the greatest load of volatile short-lived radioactive material (like radioiodine). They're also producing a LOT of heat and will melt themselves if taken out of the cooling water for even a few minutes. (AND the reactor is out of service until you've gotten them replaced and everything buttoned up.)
Take them out of the outer containment and ship them across the lawn to storage? Not if I'm designing the plant. Ideally they'd stay underwater the whole time they're being moved and if they must leave one water vessel they should go into the next one in as few seconds as possible.
That puts the storage pool right next to the reactor, inside the same shielded room, and with the water level about the same height as the access port at the top of the reactor vessel.
In my nearby plant, the nuclear engineers were found sleeping on the job during afternoons, and playing board games when awake.
I'm reminded of millwrights at auto manufacturing plants. If they're not spending 3/4 of their time playing Euchre you don't have enough of 'em for when something breaks or it's time to do maintenance or model changeover.
... for anybody who would put their lives on the line like this.
Hearty agreement.
The Japanese are better at this than anyone else on Earth - honor and duty above all else.
Not to denigrate the Japanese heroes. But there's plenty of heroism in the power industry worldwide - including in cultures where there isn't such pressure to chose heroism.
And while we're at it, let's not forget other power company workers who regularly risk their lives. Such as the linemen who, in storms or wildfires, wrestle with wires carrying thousands of volts (and sometimes end their career and life or health by being "burned" when it "reaches out and touches" them), to restore power that is critical to other lifesaving (but anonymous) infrastructure. Or those who take similar risks to keep dams from breaking, steam plants from exploding, etc.
As with other first responders, heroism is part of the job description for power company workers. Here's to 'em all.
If any didn't actually have something melt (and the water didn't have significant cobalt) they COULD be cleaned up and restarted. But it would be SO expensive that it's far cheaper to build new ones. (Post-apocalypse approval process and all...)
That would be ~$160,000 per barrel. I suppose oil will never reach that high.
Fight enough wars for it and it will.
Nope. Because you can synthesize it from a lot of other stuff far cheaper than that. (Proven sources include garbage, sewage, and crop waste.) Potential replacements become more numerous if you're replacing the various refined products piecemeal rather than replacing the crude oil feedstock itself.
Oil is used because it's CHEAPER than the alternatives. Once it gets more expensive the usage switches to alternatives (after a short startup time) and demand goes away.
Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock,...
In which case the bottle would be the least of your worries.
Which is why I only eat and drink things that are made solely of basic ingredients that DON'T have the allergen in question in them to START with. That way whether the purification steps are adequate to take it out are not an issue.
And, yes, I HAVE had trouble with companies that change the formulation and not the labeling, or are simply mislabeled. Jolt, for instance, added corn syrup while still advertising "real sugar..." and I had to give it up some time before they were caught at it. The few bread products that don't have an on-label corn product are still sometimes a problem due to bakers using corn flour as an anti-stick agent. (Fortunately that's visible.) And so on.
And that's why I'm concerned about bottling soda in a corn-derived biodegradable (INTENDED to break down) container. The container ingredients will be off-label, while the soda - water and acid - will have been leaching any soluble contaminants out of it for months by the time it's opened. Oops!
You're allergic to corn and drink soda that contains Hight Fructose Corn Syrup...and you're worried about the bottle?
I'm allergic to corn and DON'T drink soda that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. (I had to give up Jolt when they started putting HFCS into it - well before the students at Stanford discovered this.)
I normally drink soda sweetened with aspartame (a dipeptide synthesized from precursors which are adequately denatured or purified regardless of the source) or occasionally with sucrose (which is from cane or beets). And while caramel coloring is often made from corn sugars, whatever it is that sets me off is apparently denatured by the caramelization heating. (At least in the case of PepsiCo products.)
This is PET, it does not matter if they make it from dead dinos, corn, or your corpse it is not going to set off anyone's corn allergies since the FUCKING MOLECULE IS PET not some corn protein.
The immune system is the most sensitive chemical detector currently known. It apparently takes only one molecule - binding to only two IgE molecules - to trigger a mast cell.
If they purify it REALLY well - far beyond Reagent Grade, to spectroscopic grade - then, yes, it's just PET and won't set off allergies.
If they purify it the way they purify glucose, fructose, and a host of other corn-derived chemicals that are used as ingredients in food products, it is to laugh.
Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, what level of purity do you think would be used by the chemical industry when making material for a food CONTAINER?
Slashdot Mirror
Urban legends aside, NASA did not throw the plans for the Saturn V away.
Then they just SAID they couldn't find them any more when private space industry startups tried to get them when NASA was designing the shuttle and Congress was wondering why they couldn't continue to do launches with the proven technology rather than having to fund all this new stuff, including new big engines?
(I heard that "urban myth" from one of the players in private launches at the time.)
Please enlighten us with the details, if you have them.
Has anyone figured out what these posts are all about?
Don't know this is what it is. But it would be an interesting way to use Steganography to broadcast or exchange a small amount of information.
The drug company in question ...
Oops. I was following some links on other drugs RELATED to the story and lost track of who discovered what. This one was UCLA, not the nice-priicing drug company.
My bad.
But not if this cure is going to cost an arm and a leg.
The drug company in question is very much into going after fast nickels rather than slow dimes and/or supporting populations other than the rich and well insured. It is noted for pricing its products low in order to make them widely available, including to the poor and those in non-industrialized countries.
You don't truly realize what your hair does for you until it's gone. It provides built-in thermal regulation, optical shielding and insect protection.
And if it's long and straight (or only gently waved) it doubles as a rain hat.
Eliminating adverbs works better.
Eliminating adverbs works.
Unfortunately it doesn't ALWAYS work. USUALLY it turns rambling prose into something punchy, without distorting the meaning. But this is one example where it does not. Instead it changes the semantics, turning a true assertion into one both different and false.
(I thought about mentioning it at the time, as an example of a recommendation that doesn't work on its own text. But I decided to let somebody else try for a "funny" mod.)
Eliminating adverbs works better.
Formula manufacturers have been trying to replicate human milk for YEARS without success. Milk is more than chemicals. It's hormones, it's enzymes, it changes based on what illnesses the mother is currently making antibodies for, it even changes from morning to night. ...
Indeed.
Another issue with cow vs. human milk is risk of Multiple Sclerosis. Feeding cow milk to human infants drastically increases that risk.
MS is an autoimmune reaction against the myelin sheaths of nerves. Much of the avoidance of autoimmune reactions is done soon after birth, when the differentiated immune cells take a "grand tour" and those that recognize the body's own structures commit suicide. But myelin sheaths is one of a handfull of things not present until after this period. So it avoids attack later by having a "I'm special, don't attack me." sequence coded into the protein, next to its major antigenic region.
There's a protein in milk that has the same sequence. Unfortunately, the bovine version of the protein is slightly different in that region. So heavy exposure to cow's milk (perhaps in combination with other factors) occasionally leads to the immune system missing the signal, becoming sensitized to the myelin protein, and eventually attacking and destroying the nerve sheaths, creating one of the forms of MS.
To prevent this, some recombinant cattle have been created that express the human, rather than the bovine, version of the protein in question. Expected result, if this were to become the norm in dairy herds: No more risk of MS from drinking cow's milk than from drinking human milk.
At least for people. Calves might occasionally get MS as a result, unless the rest of the systems in question are also replaced with the human version.
I suppose you could kill someone with one if you put it under their bed for a few years and they get cancer from the neutron radiation.
The Bremsstrahlung radiation from the particle accelerator beam hitting the target or whatever would be more of a problem for the guy in the bed than the fusion neutrons.
Ditto with fusors: The main loss of power there is electrons and ions hitting the inner electrode - at several kV. Lots of nice X-rays - just like an old, pre-HV-regulator, color TV set, only more so. You gotta shield that garage device or be far away when it's running. The relative handful of neutrons produced are far less of an issue (though they DO wander through some sorts of shielding and also make some of the stuff that finally traps them mildly radioactive).
Except if firefighters use electricity instead of water to extinguish the flames, they won't be wet.
It's not all from the fire suppression sprays. Some of it is called "sweat". Lots of salt in it so it's very conductive. Drops the skin resistance by several orders of magnitude.
People tend to emit a lot of it, coating their bodies, when covered with protective gear, toting lots of heavy fire suppression gear or rescued victims, jogging up and down stairs, or hacking their way through doors or walls, all in an environment where the ambient temperature is above that of the human body's homeostasis setpoint.
Crime doesn't come from density, but from poor people.
Crime comes from blocking people from defending themselves, turning them into helpless victims. Then the predators take advantage of the situation. Police normally can't get there in time to take over the protection job, just to clean up after it. Even if they feel like trying.
You see it mainly with poor people because they're the ones who can't get around the rules and have to knuckle under. Then they get victimized by the predators around them - usually more poor people of the same ethnic group, sometimes by a gang of a rival (but also typically poor) ethnic group settled nearby. (And of course to the extent police can provide any protection or crook removal they tend not to try as hard to protect the poor as to protect those with enough clout to annoy their administrators.)
You want me to cite a joke?
When it's a ethnic and culturalist slur, yes.
Oh please! Isn't this what the FOSS community has been wanting for years? Haven't all the FOSS guys said 'if MSFT has patents lets see them"? Well here you go, now it is up to the courts to ultimately decide.
Even if that was what the FOSS community had been asking for, this isn't going to produce it.
There's no reason Microsoft needs to produce ALL the patents they might try to apply. They can just select a handful and throw them at the court to see if any of them stick. Ten years later, even if none have, they can just pick another handfull and try again.
Repeat for as long as they hold software patents - which will be as long as they exist and software is patentable.
Violation of free speech? what about my rights to have a clean search and not have to worry about my children seeing things that I don't want them to see.
Sorry. You don't have that "right". The rights to free speech and a free press take precedence.
Free speech and press were recognized because interfering with them interferes with peaceful removal of tyrannical regimes, leading to more tyranny on one hand and more violence when they finally do get replaced on the other. Give tyrants ANY excuse to suppress speech or press and they'll use it to hobble their political opposition.
Further: The internet, like printing, was created by adults for adults. You don't let your toddlers wander alone in the part of town that includes porn shops and bars. Why should the internet be any different? Minding your kids is YOUR responsibility. Trying to kid-proof the whole world is not an acceptable substitute. Do it yourself, hire it done, or teach your kids (once they can handle it) how to handle the "bad stuff" responsibly rather than trying to shield them from it.
The .xxx domain provides the equivalent of zoning, establishing an "area of town" where the porn stores can set up voluntarily. Seems to me that's a move in the right direction.
There is probably tons of software that points at sun.com, automatically downloading software, docs, etc.
There's lot of other stuff, too.
Like @sun.com mail addresses, just for starters.
Groupon has a great business idea ...
Really?
To support a $25 BILLion valuation you need to make something like $2.5 BILLioin profit annually.
If you can negotiate deep discounts on group purchases and have that much left over after the stuff is sold at deeply cut rates, it sends a message to the sellers AND other, existing, discount stores that they're WAY overpriced and can make more by going after fast nickles rather than slow dimes.
(Of course it DOES, like discount stores, give the manufacturers a handy way to dispose of their "seconds" in boxcar lots. But enough to support an ADDITIONAL $2.5 B?)
It surprised the hell out of me that spent fuel rods would be stored in pools on top of a reactor. That enormously complcates the problem if there is any structural damage to the building.
Think about it:
If they were to be stored anywhere else you'd have the problem of moving them there - when they're "spent", which is when they're about the most radioactive they've ever been before or will be later and have the greatest load of volatile short-lived radioactive material (like radioiodine). They're also producing a LOT of heat and will melt themselves if taken out of the cooling water for even a few minutes. (AND the reactor is out of service until you've gotten them replaced and everything buttoned up.)
Take them out of the outer containment and ship them across the lawn to storage? Not if I'm designing the plant. Ideally they'd stay underwater the whole time they're being moved and if they must leave one water vessel they should go into the next one in as few seconds as possible.
That puts the storage pool right next to the reactor, inside the same shielded room, and with the water level about the same height as the access port at the top of the reactor vessel.
In my nearby plant, the nuclear engineers were found sleeping on the job during afternoons, and playing board games when awake.
I'm reminded of millwrights at auto manufacturing plants. If they're not spending 3/4 of their time playing Euchre you don't have enough of 'em for when something breaks or it's time to do maintenance or model changeover.
... for anybody who would put their lives on the line like this.
Hearty agreement.
The Japanese are better at this than anyone else on Earth - honor and duty above all else.
Not to denigrate the Japanese heroes. But there's plenty of heroism in the power industry worldwide - including in cultures where there isn't such pressure to chose heroism.
And while we're at it, let's not forget other power company workers who regularly risk their lives. Such as the linemen who, in storms or wildfires, wrestle with wires carrying thousands of volts (and sometimes end their career and life or health by being "burned" when it "reaches out and touches" them), to restore power that is critical to other lifesaving (but anonymous) infrastructure. Or those who take similar risks to keep dams from breaking, steam plants from exploding, etc.
As with other first responders, heroism is part of the job description for power company workers. Here's to 'em all.
Those reactors are useless forever now.
If any didn't actually have something melt (and the water didn't have significant cobalt) they COULD be cleaned up and restarted. But it would be SO expensive that it's far cheaper to build new ones. (Post-apocalypse approval process and all...)
That would be ~$160,000 per barrel. I suppose oil will never reach that high.
Fight enough wars for it and it will.
Nope. Because you can synthesize it from a lot of other stuff far cheaper than that. (Proven sources include garbage, sewage, and crop waste.) Potential replacements become more numerous if you're replacing the various refined products piecemeal rather than replacing the crude oil feedstock itself.
Oil is used because it's CHEAPER than the alternatives. Once it gets more expensive the usage switches to alternatives (after a short startup time) and demand goes away.
Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, ...
In which case the bottle would be the least of your worries.
Which is why I only eat and drink things that are made solely of basic ingredients that DON'T have the allergen in question in them to START with. That way whether the purification steps are adequate to take it out are not an issue.
And, yes, I HAVE had trouble with companies that change the formulation and not the labeling, or are simply mislabeled. Jolt, for instance, added corn syrup while still advertising "real sugar ..." and I had to give it up some time before they were caught at it. The few bread products that don't have an on-label corn product are still sometimes a problem due to bakers using corn flour as an anti-stick agent. (Fortunately that's visible.) And so on.
And that's why I'm concerned about bottling soda in a corn-derived biodegradable (INTENDED to break down) container. The container ingredients will be off-label, while the soda - water and acid - will have been leaching any soluble contaminants out of it for months by the time it's opened. Oops!
You're allergic to corn and drink soda that contains Hight Fructose Corn Syrup...and you're worried about the bottle?
I'm allergic to corn and DON'T drink soda that contains High Fructose Corn Syrup. (I had to give up Jolt when they started putting HFCS into it - well before the students at Stanford discovered this.)
I normally drink soda sweetened with aspartame (a dipeptide synthesized from precursors which are adequately denatured or purified regardless of the source) or occasionally with sucrose (which is from cane or beets). And while caramel coloring is often made from corn sugars, whatever it is that sets me off is apparently denatured by the caramelization heating. (At least in the case of PepsiCo products.)
This is PET, it does not matter if they make it from dead dinos, corn, or your corpse it is not going to set off anyone's corn allergies since the FUCKING MOLECULE IS PET not some corn protein.
The immune system is the most sensitive chemical detector currently known. It apparently takes only one molecule - binding to only two IgE molecules - to trigger a mast cell.
If they purify it REALLY well - far beyond Reagent Grade, to spectroscopic grade - then, yes, it's just PET and won't set off allergies.
If they purify it the way they purify glucose, fructose, and a host of other corn-derived chemicals that are used as ingredients in food products, it is to laugh.
Given that they don't purify food INGREDIENTS to levels that avoid creating anaphylactic shock, what level of purity do you think would be used by the chemical industry when making material for a food CONTAINER?
Oh, yeah. No spin on the planet, too.