And I've wondeded whether the reaction to the War of the Worlds broadcast made people in the US, at the time, more skeptical of radio broadcasts, thus less susceptable to broadcast propaganda than those in other countries (or audiences), and thus led to the US neutrality in WW II until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
One thing the reaction to this item shows: The current government has some people prepared to believe that martial law and fascism are on their agenda.
Not sure if the rumor is a good or bad thing. On one hand it will make people more skeptical again. On the other, like the parable of the kid who cried "Wolf!", it could delay or abort public opposition if the real thing does come along. (How convenient for any hypothetical neofascists.)
The last thing I want to see is the idea planted in the heads of ANY US administration that they COULD get away with it. B-(
You can... dig a ditch in an hour or so with a string of small charges detonated simultaneously. rather than weeks of work with earthmoving equipment or months of backbreaking labor...
The simultaneous detonations cause the displaced dirt to end up in two banks beside a trench, rather than making a string of discrete holes.
Interestingly, during the "nuclear plowshare" period just after WWII, when the government was trying to find nonmilitary uses for nuclear technology, one of the plans examined was to make a backup for the Panama Canal, through Nicaragua, using the "string of simultaneous underground explosions" written large, i.e. simultaneous detonation of a string of underground nukes. (Like the plan to melt the snow off interstate highways by embedding nuclear waste in the pavement, this one was rejected.)
The no-electricity fluorescent tubes would have worked just fine, with negligible radiation exposure to the users (like smoke detectors). Fortunately somebody calculated the radiation levels in a warehouse filled with pallets of 'em.
But bomb-making by itself isn't a crime is it? I have a few friends that still live in the woods, and they have a bit of fun with blowing stuff up occasionally, like stumps and old cars. It's their property.
Ask F-troop.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and (recently added) Explosives seems to think it is, if you didn't get the right certifications and licenses and pay the right taxes.
Your state may think so, too.
Explosives are a very useful tool for, among other things, farming. You can remove a stump quickly with a little dynamite, girdle or fell a tree in seconds, dig a ditch in an hour or so with a string of small charges detonated simultaneously. rather than weeks of work with earthmoving equipment or months of backbreaking labor, and I could go on. (There was one guy who got the snow off his sidewalks and driveways in a couple minutes with a little primacord, too.)
But our federal government has injected its jackboots into this, as well as firearms, since about 1934.
The amazing thing isn't how much our society has let our rights be destroyed over the past 9 years, it's how little the people in power have taken advantage of it so far, as far as we know.
Fixed that for you.
The US investigative agencies have a long history of abuses that only make it to the public perception decades after the fact. This produces a perpetual state of plausible deniability: "Well, yeah, 'way back then there were some systematic abuses - by people long since retired or dead. But it's not like that anymore." Then another twenty years later you find out about what was going on THEN. Rinse and repeat.
One thing that's different now is that the Internet makes any conspiracy of silence among the commercial media visible in something close to real time. But even the bloggers have problems finding out about such abuses and bringing evidence of them to the public attention - above the endless background clamor of baseless accusations and government attempts to shut them, or their access to outlets, down. This is especially difficult given the current laws that make it a felony to even mention that certain abuses are occurring - ESPECIALLY if they're happening TO YOU.
(ever tried injecting yourself? It can be done but it's not fun -...
Yes, I have. An intramuscular preparation. Went through the training but only succeeded once - then couldn't bring myself to do it again. (Sat there with needle in hand and cleaned thigh telling myself that I'll do it on the NEXT count of three, over and over.)
Found out later that IM is harder than IV or subcu, and that over a third of those who attempt it can't manage it. Of course they don't mention that until after you find out you're one of the wimpy third of the population. B-(
(IMHO it would have helped if they'd had a three-ring holder for the syringe, like those dentists use for injecting the gums. For IM you need to do a "pull" step to make sure you haven't hit a blood vessel. Given that the instructions include squeezing the muscle with one hand and injecting with the other you need a third hand to do that test if you're not going to let go the "pinch" to pull the plunger out - dragging the muscle sideways against the needle's point and changing the depth of the tip. With the three-ring you could do the "pull" with the thumb of the injecting hand while retaining the steadying "pinch" with the other.)
... you can skip all the fancy western hospital one-time-use assemblies that would be impractical in the field;
Expensive? They're a machine-built assembly of plastic, synthetic rubber, and metal, cheap as the dirt they carefully don't contain.
At commercial pharmacies in the US, disposable intramuscular syringes sell for about 33 cents in lots of ten. I believe subcutaneous syringes are even cheaper. (And most of that price is the red tape involved with keeping the government happy that you have a prescription for them.) Expect them to be far cheaper yet in the large lots involved in a countrywide immunization program.
And when you're packaging an injectable formulation it may be cheaper yet to do it as ready-to-use preloaded syringes than as a supply bottle plus a comparable count of unloaded syringes. The only practical difference between a preloaded and an unloaded syringe is that the machinery squirted a measured quantity of the formulation into the barrel before inserting the plunger and sealing the syringe into the wrapper. This is not more complicated than a non-loading syringe line plus a bottle loader line.
If the middle of the ocean doesnt count as roaming what does?
What bugs me is when a cruise ship leaves its cell turned on while in port, the phones of people nearby select it as the strongest cell for their service, and they're hit with an oceanic roaming charge while walking about in their own neighborhood. B-b
Maybe the promotional video didn't show everything it was capable of, but that machine moved really, REALLY slowly.
It's the first model. The important point is that it works AT ALL. Look at how far automobiles came from the first prototypes to even the model T. Or compare the computers at Dreamworks, on your desk, in your phone, or even in your microwave oven to the ENIAC.
Speed will improve. Capabilities will improve, too. Now that the proof of concept is in place and paraplegics are moving around it's largely a matter of tuning and incremental design improvement.
Cost will come down, too. Right now we're seeing the early-adopter penalty, when the cost of design and business startup has to be covered.
Cupping your hand over an imaginary mouse is fine for maybe an hour at a time, but is going to cause all sorts of strain for those who use a mouse for 6+ hours a day.
The hand doesn't need to be in an unnatural shape - it is at rest in an appropriate shape for this.
The problem will be if you can't support the hand, arm, or fingers by letting them sit on the desk without "pressing the buttons".
What killed touch screens on vertical-face monitors (until they reemerged in the more usable form of tablets) was having to support the arm to manipulate them. OK for a few touches. But for long-term use you'd tire the arm muscles, producing the malady called "gorilla arm".
This thing looks like it might do the same to the finger-lift muscles, unless the fingers can be allowed to drag on the table and the "press" gesture be something like pulling them inward, rather than hovering them and tapping downward.
Scratch for scroll wheel. In two-D. B-) Or do touchpad without the pad.
OK, so the laptop was stolen on school grounds. But the problem is now to locate and recover it from another state. The school cops have jurisdiction on school grounds and keep the peace there. So if the laptop turns out to be on another campus you could try the cops in THAT school (though it seems unlikely, since the person holding the laptop is using a service). Don't expect the cops at the school where it was lifted to go out of their way to chase down stolen property in another state, outside their jurisdiction. Once you have a specific thing to ask for (like trying to get the location from the ISP and forward that info to the cops of local jurisdiction there) maybe they'll do it - and maybe not.
Got the report number? You (or a lawyer) might be able to get the ISP to cough up the info with that, or get started on getting a court order if they're reticent.
(You might also try the county sheriff. In some states they have overriding jurisdiction on school grounds. File a crime report with them, too.)
= = = =
The laptop is phoning home from an apparently static IP address - or a long-duration connection. Can you remotely log into it? If so you might be able to do things like turn on the microphone, look at files the new user is taking notes in, or follow his browsing. Does it have a built-in camera? Does it have any remote administration or monitoring software installed - or could you install some remotely?
Does it have built-in WiFi and if so do you have the MAC address of it? (You could probably get it by that hypothetical remote login if you don't have it recorded.) If the WiFi is on or can be turned on and if you can get the neighborhood information you could then sniff the location when nearby. (That would also help the cops with jurisdiction in the area if you go along with them to sniff it when they want to bust it. Gives 'em probable cause.)
Note that IANAL. So I could be talking through my Stetson.
Check with a lawyer if you can find one with the appropriate specialization. If you're a student at that university you might have legal advice resources available through them. Or if they have a law school ask who among the faculty is expert on this and talk to that prof. Academics sometimes like to help, especially where the law is squishy. B-)
Maybe it sucked up too much matter and had to fart?
Funny but true. Jets from black holes aren't the hole emitting matter. They're the part of the accretion disk of infalling matter which gets caught in the spinning magnetic field near the black hole's poles and is propelled away from the hole at extreme velocity. Meanwhile the infalling matter, "circling the drain", spins up the black hole further as it is finally captured.
So jets like these are produced by the combination of the hole having a strong mag field when it formed with a lot of infalling matter adding more angular momentum to more than replace what's lost flinging off the matter and energy in the polar jets.
The IEEE 802.3at-2009 PoE standard, also known as PoE+ or PoE plus (ratified September 11, 2009), provides up to 25.5 W of power[5]. Some vendors have announced products that claim to comply with the new 802.3at standard and offer up to 51 W of power over a single cable by utilizing all 4 pairs in the Cat.5 cable.
The laptop I'm using now has a 75W brick, which can charge and run it simultaneously. So it might take half again as long to charge if off, and might not charge very fast at all if it were running. But that would still be better than running on batteries if I forgot (or didn't carry) the brick.
The journalists who write about science often use bad, confusing, or just plain nonsensical terms. But it's almost always the journalists, and you can't really fault them for dumbing down their story to appeal to the largest group of readers.
Sure I can. Because it breaks the story, making it false. This confuses the readers further and makes the story have less value than not running the story at all. Yes I know the REAL job of newsies is to attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers. But they pay for the eyeballs by offering information, so "dumbing down" the story until it's worse-than-useless is outright fraud. (And it's a big part of why the old news media are dying.)
English is a very expressive language. It's usually possible to come up with wording that can get the meaning across just as clearly and just about as tersely. For instance, in this case the proton didn't just "get smaller" i.e. suddenly change size. "New measurement technique finds protons unexpectedly smaller." is my first attempt - and I'm NOT an expert in such composition. News writers are SUPPOSED to be experts in this, so there's no excuse for them.
Slashdot had an article and discussion on this - and science popularization - a few days ago.
There's never a theoretical particle physicist when you need one. (Never thought I'd say that phrase)
Theoretical physicist? I'd prefer the question be answered by an ACTUAL physicist. B-)
(And if I weren't on a slow dialup link right now I'd hunt up the issue of "nukees" - a web comic written and drawn by an actual nuclear engineering PhD - where the new berkeley student opens the door to the "Theoretical physics conference room" and finds it opens into thin air about three stories up.)
Don't they know MD5 is deprecated. They should be using SHA-1. Off to a disappointing start already...
Military group logos are not intended to be secure. They are intended to be easy to recognize quickly and to inspire group pride. So they are symbolic, transparent, sometimes ironic and/or making an in-joke (such as three spur gears meshed, an arrangement which could not possibly turn), and often using archaic elements as historical references.
MD5 is a cryptographic hash that, though now dated, was strong for its time, is commonly recognized, and if I recall correctly was the FIRST such hash function to achieve broad recognition for its use as a digest hash for detecting message tampering. Using an MD5 hash of the mission statement as an element of the logo is perfect form.
The logo will no doubt outlast any current hash, so using a more modern digest algorithm would just date it - and make it less historic.
Why not run and/or charge from power-over-ethernet? Then if you're plugged into a LAN that provides it (and your laptop doesn't eat too much to be fed that way) you don't need a separate power connection.
And accept a slow rechage from a GSMA mini-USB standardized cellphone charger. Handy if you're on the road and making light use of the laptop - or lost the main line-power brick. (Lets the laptop be a client on another machines USB hub, too.)
The power supply is already in control of the charging. And it has its own computer, which takes advice from an application on the laptop. Why not treat the input as a raw supply input to a switcher and be intelligent about using it? Then you would just need an adapter cord, not an additional brick, for a number of sources.
For instance: If the laptop's power supply could:
- Operate (run the laptop and/or charge the battery) on voltages from 11.75 to 14
- Survive overvoltage spikes and noise.
- Shut down the load on the external source (and continue running on internal batteries if appropriate) when the voltage drops to a point that indicates 25% charge on the battery (so you don't damage it and can still start the vehicle engine if it's in good repair).
you could plug it directly into a 12V vehicular supply. No brick - just a cord with a fused cigarette lighter plug on one end and a laptop power connector on the other.
Input voltage sensing could even let the power supply take a guess at what's connected and do something safe until the power control application gave it advice. Portable solar panel? Aircraft EmPower (15V DC version)? 24V semitractor electrical system? (12 and 24V nominal home renewable energy systems could be handled with essentially the same algorithms as vehicles - perhaps with a tweak to the shutdown setpoint or debouncing algorithm.)
Why do people always consider the mobile devices first [when the story is about a possible improved method of energy storage]???
Because fixed devices generally have access to a local power-supply infrastructure, while many mobile devices are limited by available energy storage technology.
Even though solar panels make MANY TIMES more energy than it takes to build them, comparing input energy to delivered electricity is an apples-oranges comparison, for several reasons. Among them:
- Much of the energy needed to make the cells is raw heat (for things like melting the glass and metal that make up its housing). You'd be a fool to use solar electricity for smelting - paying a carnot cycle penalty.
- The job is delivering electricity in usable form to a particular location. The main competitor is the power grid. Power grids consume considerably more energy than they deliver, largely from carbon-emitting fossil fuel or nuclear reactions, on an ongoing basis. It's called "less than perfect efficiency". Solar panels consume only sunlight. Power grids also take energy - and other valueable stuff - to build: Energy to make the transformers, wire, insulators, poles, generators, boilers, switches, meters. Energy to clear a path and install them, take workers to and from the site. Trees to make poles. Land to be dedicated to power lines for lifetimes. I could go on.
There are many things of value involved in making solar power installations and power grids. Price is a good way of summarizing a basket of costs to human value. So as a first approximation when solar power is more affordable than grid power it's approximately less damaging to and consumptive of things people value.
As of about ten years ago Solar power was past cost break-even only for situations where the cost of a grid hookup was high: New construction in remote areas where the cost of running grid power was several grand, or small loads distant from a plug-in (road signs, emergency telephones, decorative yard lighting,...) Recently, even without government subsidies, it has been approaching price break-even for sunny suburban locations.
Oops. I see that source DID use constant dollars. So it says what you claimed.
= = = =
I note, however, that it does not address the real point of the original statistic: That essentially half the electorate pays no taxes. That's the tipping point for the classic collapse of a democracy or republic: When the majority votes for ever more goodies stolen from the producing classes, who then throw in the towel and stop producing.
I like how you conveniently left out that the top 10% have seen their income rise from $172,000 in 1980 to $339,000 in 2005 - that's a nice doubling of their income.
Did you use nominal dollars or something corrected for inflation?
Given that the value of money as measured by the consumer price index (and a number of other measures) dropped by more than half in that time (DESPITE advances in manufacturing technology that SHOULD have made stuff CHEAPER) your numbers suggest that even the despised rich ended somewhat behind where they started.
They ran a Red Queen's Race and didn't quite run hard enough to stay in the same place.
I thought that the New Deal actually worsened the pre-WWII economic situation in retrospect. Not sure why this seems like a good idea now.
Yeah right. The tens of thousands of people who would otherwise have starved beg to differ.
Grandparent poster has it right.
"Government stimulus" programs destroy more jobs than they create. So they fed a million people - by starving 3.5 million others? Thanks a lot.
The very programs claimed to combat it turned the latest of a series of short economic downturns into "The Great Depression" soup lines, regional migrations, blockades, and all. (But it was great for destroying civil rights and increasing government power.)
And, no, it wasn't WW II that pulled us out, either. That just made the people willing to put up with EVEN MORE austerity. The recovery came when the surviving veterans returned, plowshared the factories, and threw out some corrupt city- and county-level governments - sometimes at gunpoint. The end of the wartime economic controls took many of the depression-era controls with them. And the newly freed economy, like that after the Black Plague or those of many totalitarian states, also got a mild form of the "genocide boost": If you kill ENOUGH people there's more food and hardware for the rest of them.
Now the US government is doing EXACTLY the SAME THING as it did in the '30s and therabouts, with the single exception that it no longer has a gold standard to put SOME floor under inflation. As with the early years of the previous Great Depression we're now in a "jobless recovery", and if things were to follow true to form the next step is the second dip - going down for a decade or more. But without a gold standard this one has no floor - and could end up like a reprise of Weimar Germany's hyperinflation. Are you ready to fight for your place in line at the grocery store because the cashier is listening to the radio and adjusting the price multiplier, so your food costs a bunch more when you get to the end of the line than when you entered it?
So "If it feeds just one person" isn't going to distract the rest of us from the larger number it starves.
Slashdot Mirror
It's War of the Worlds 2010.
And I've wondeded whether the reaction to the War of the Worlds broadcast made people in the US, at the time, more skeptical of radio broadcasts, thus less susceptable to broadcast propaganda than those in other countries (or audiences), and thus led to the US neutrality in WW II until the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
One thing the reaction to this item shows: The current government has some people prepared to believe that martial law and fascism are on their agenda.
Not sure if the rumor is a good or bad thing. On one hand it will make people more skeptical again. On the other, like the parable of the kid who cried "Wolf!", it could delay or abort public opposition if the real thing does come along. (How convenient for any hypothetical neofascists.)
The last thing I want to see is the idea planted in the heads of ANY US administration that they COULD get away with it. B-(
You can ... dig a ditch in an hour or so with a string of small charges detonated simultaneously. rather than weeks of work with earthmoving equipment or months of backbreaking labor ...
The simultaneous detonations cause the displaced dirt to end up in two banks beside a trench, rather than making a string of discrete holes.
Interestingly, during the "nuclear plowshare" period just after WWII, when the government was trying to find nonmilitary uses for nuclear technology, one of the plans examined was to make a backup for the Panama Canal, through Nicaragua, using the "string of simultaneous underground explosions" written large, i.e. simultaneous detonation of a string of underground nukes. (Like the plan to melt the snow off interstate highways by embedding nuclear waste in the pavement, this one was rejected.)
The no-electricity fluorescent tubes would have worked just fine, with negligible radiation exposure to the users (like smoke detectors). Fortunately somebody calculated the radiation levels in a warehouse filled with pallets of 'em.
But bomb-making by itself isn't a crime is it? I have a few friends that still live in the woods, and they have a bit of fun with blowing stuff up occasionally, like stumps and old cars. It's their property.
Ask F-troop.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and (recently added) Explosives seems to think it is, if you didn't get the right certifications and licenses and pay the right taxes.
Your state may think so, too.
Explosives are a very useful tool for, among other things, farming. You can remove a stump quickly with a little dynamite, girdle or fell a tree in seconds, dig a ditch in an hour or so with a string of small charges detonated simultaneously. rather than weeks of work with earthmoving equipment or months of backbreaking labor, and I could go on. (There was one guy who got the snow off his sidewalks and driveways in a couple minutes with a little primacord, too.)
But our federal government has injected its jackboots into this, as well as firearms, since about 1934.
The amazing thing isn't how much our society has let our rights be destroyed over the past 9 years, it's how little the people in power have taken advantage of it so far, as far as we know.
Fixed that for you.
The US investigative agencies have a long history of abuses that only make it to the public perception decades after the fact. This produces a perpetual state of plausible deniability: "Well, yeah, 'way back then there were some systematic abuses - by people long since retired or dead. But it's not like that anymore." Then another twenty years later you find out about what was going on THEN. Rinse and repeat.
One thing that's different now is that the Internet makes any conspiracy of silence among the commercial media visible in something close to real time. But even the bloggers have problems finding out about such abuses and bringing evidence of them to the public attention - above the endless background clamor of baseless accusations and government attempts to shut them, or their access to outlets, down. This is especially difficult given the current laws that make it a felony to even mention that certain abuses are occurring - ESPECIALLY if they're happening TO YOU.
(ever tried injecting yourself? It can be done but it's not fun - ...
Yes, I have. An intramuscular preparation. Went through the training but only succeeded once - then couldn't bring myself to do it again. (Sat there with needle in hand and cleaned thigh telling myself that I'll do it on the NEXT count of three, over and over.)
Found out later that IM is harder than IV or subcu, and that over a third of those who attempt it can't manage it. Of course they don't mention that until after you find out you're one of the wimpy third of the population. B-(
(IMHO it would have helped if they'd had a three-ring holder for the syringe, like those dentists use for injecting the gums. For IM you need to do a "pull" step to make sure you haven't hit a blood vessel. Given that the instructions include squeezing the muscle with one hand and injecting with the other you need a third hand to do that test if you're not going to let go the "pinch" to pull the plunger out - dragging the muscle sideways against the needle's point and changing the depth of the tip. With the three-ring you could do the "pull" with the thumb of the injecting hand while retaining the steadying "pinch" with the other.)
... you can skip all the fancy western hospital one-time-use assemblies that would be impractical in the field;
Expensive? They're a machine-built assembly of plastic, synthetic rubber, and metal, cheap as the dirt they carefully don't contain.
At commercial pharmacies in the US, disposable intramuscular syringes sell for about 33 cents in lots of ten. I believe subcutaneous syringes are even cheaper. (And most of that price is the red tape involved with keeping the government happy that you have a prescription for them.) Expect them to be far cheaper yet in the large lots involved in a countrywide immunization program.
And when you're packaging an injectable formulation it may be cheaper yet to do it as ready-to-use preloaded syringes than as a supply bottle plus a comparable count of unloaded syringes. The only practical difference between a preloaded and an unloaded syringe is that the machinery squirted a measured quantity of the formulation into the barrel before inserting the plunger and sealing the syringe into the wrapper. This is not more complicated than a non-loading syringe line plus a bottle loader line.
If the middle of the ocean doesnt count as roaming what does?
What bugs me is when a cruise ship leaves its cell turned on while in port, the phones of people nearby select it as the strongest cell for their service, and they're hit with an oceanic roaming charge while walking about in their own neighborhood. B-b
Maybe the promotional video didn't show everything it was capable of, but that machine moved really, REALLY slowly.
It's the first model. The important point is that it works AT ALL. Look at how far automobiles came from the first prototypes to even the model T. Or compare the computers at Dreamworks, on your desk, in your phone, or even in your microwave oven to the ENIAC.
Speed will improve. Capabilities will improve, too. Now that the proof of concept is in place and paraplegics are moving around it's largely a matter of tuning and incremental design improvement.
Cost will come down, too. Right now we're seeing the early-adopter penalty, when the cost of design and business startup has to be covered.
Cupping your hand over an imaginary mouse is fine for maybe an hour at a time, but is going to cause all sorts of strain for those who use a mouse for 6+ hours a day.
The hand doesn't need to be in an unnatural shape - it is at rest in an appropriate shape for this.
The problem will be if you can't support the hand, arm, or fingers by letting them sit on the desk without "pressing the buttons".
What killed touch screens on vertical-face monitors (until they reemerged in the more usable form of tablets) was having to support the arm to manipulate them. OK for a few touches. But for long-term use you'd tire the arm muscles, producing the malady called "gorilla arm".
This thing looks like it might do the same to the finger-lift muscles, unless the fingers can be allowed to drag on the table and the "press" gesture be something like pulling them inward, rather than hovering them and tapping downward.
Scratch for scroll wheel. In two-D. B-) Or do touchpad without the pad.
OK, so the laptop was stolen on school grounds. But the problem is now to locate and recover it from another state. The school cops have jurisdiction on school grounds and keep the peace there. So if the laptop turns out to be on another campus you could try the cops in THAT school (though it seems unlikely, since the person holding the laptop is using a service). Don't expect the cops at the school where it was lifted to go out of their way to chase down stolen property in another state, outside their jurisdiction. Once you have a specific thing to ask for (like trying to get the location from the ISP and forward that info to the cops of local jurisdiction there) maybe they'll do it - and maybe not.
Got the report number? You (or a lawyer) might be able to get the ISP to cough up the info with that, or get started on getting a court order if they're reticent.
(You might also try the county sheriff. In some states they have overriding jurisdiction on school grounds. File a crime report with them, too.)
= = = =
The laptop is phoning home from an apparently static IP address - or a long-duration connection. Can you remotely log into it? If so you might be able to do things like turn on the microphone, look at files the new user is taking notes in, or follow his browsing. Does it have a built-in camera? Does it have any remote administration or monitoring software installed - or could you install some remotely?
Does it have built-in WiFi and if so do you have the MAC address of it? (You could probably get it by that hypothetical remote login if you don't have it recorded.) If the WiFi is on or can be turned on and if you can get the neighborhood information you could then sniff the location when nearby. (That would also help the cops with jurisdiction in the area if you go along with them to sniff it when they want to bust it. Gives 'em probable cause.)
Note that IANAL. So I could be talking through my Stetson.
Check with a lawyer if you can find one with the appropriate specialization. If you're a student at that university you might have legal advice resources available through them. Or if they have a law school ask who among the faculty is expert on this and talk to that prof. Academics sometimes like to help, especially where the law is squishy. B-)
Maybe it sucked up too much matter and had to fart?
Funny but true. Jets from black holes aren't the hole emitting matter. They're the part of the accretion disk of infalling matter which gets caught in the spinning magnetic field near the black hole's poles and is propelled away from the hole at extreme velocity. Meanwhile the infalling matter, "circling the drain", spins up the black hole further as it is finally captured.
So jets like these are produced by the combination of the hole having a strong mag field when it formed with a lot of infalling matter adding more angular momentum to more than replace what's lost flinging off the matter and energy in the polar jets.
PoE only provides 15.4 watts - it's not enough.
From your own reference:
The laptop I'm using now has a 75W brick, which can charge and run it simultaneously. So it might take half again as long to charge if off, and might not charge very fast at all if it were running. But that would still be better than running on batteries if I forgot (or didn't carry) the brick.
The journalists who write about science often use bad, confusing, or just plain nonsensical terms. But it's almost always the journalists, and you can't really fault them for dumbing down their story to appeal to the largest group of readers.
Sure I can. Because it breaks the story, making it false. This confuses the readers further and makes the story have less value than not running the story at all. Yes I know the REAL job of newsies is to attract eyeballs to sell to advertisers. But they pay for the eyeballs by offering information, so "dumbing down" the story until it's worse-than-useless is outright fraud. (And it's a big part of why the old news media are dying.)
English is a very expressive language. It's usually possible to come up with wording that can get the meaning across just as clearly and just about as tersely. For instance, in this case the proton didn't just "get smaller" i.e. suddenly change size. "New measurement technique finds protons unexpectedly smaller." is my first attempt - and I'm NOT an expert in such composition. News writers are SUPPOSED to be experts in this, so there's no excuse for them.
Slashdot had an article and discussion on this - and science popularization - a few days ago.
There's never a theoretical particle physicist when you need one. (Never thought I'd say that phrase)
Theoretical physicist? I'd prefer the question be answered by an ACTUAL physicist. B-)
(And if I weren't on a slow dialup link right now I'd hunt up the issue of "nukees" - a web comic written and drawn by an actual nuclear engineering PhD - where the new berkeley student opens the door to the "Theoretical physics conference room" and finds it opens into thin air about three stories up.)
Don't they know MD5 is deprecated. They should be using SHA-1. Off to a disappointing start already...
Military group logos are not intended to be secure. They are intended to be easy to recognize quickly and to inspire group pride. So they are symbolic, transparent, sometimes ironic and/or making an in-joke (such as three spur gears meshed, an arrangement which could not possibly turn), and often using archaic elements as historical references.
MD5 is a cryptographic hash that, though now dated, was strong for its time, is commonly recognized, and if I recall correctly was the FIRST such hash function to achieve broad recognition for its use as a digest hash for detecting message tampering. Using an MD5 hash of the mission statement as an element of the logo is perfect form.
The logo will no doubt outlast any current hash, so using a more modern digest algorithm would just date it - and make it less historic.
But if you're going to do that why throw away a carnot-cycle penalty? Use a solar furnace and get the heat directly. Much cheaper.
Induction furnaces are about control, not efficiency.
While we're at it:
Why not run and/or charge from power-over-ethernet? Then if you're plugged into a LAN that provides it (and your laptop doesn't eat too much to be fed that way) you don't need a separate power connection.
And accept a slow rechage from a GSMA mini-USB standardized cellphone charger. Handy if you're on the road and making light use of the laptop - or lost the main line-power brick. (Lets the laptop be a client on another machines USB hub, too.)
The power supply is already in control of the charging. And it has its own computer, which takes advice from an application on the laptop. Why not treat the input as a raw supply input to a switcher and be intelligent about using it? Then you would just need an adapter cord, not an additional brick, for a number of sources.
For instance: If the laptop's power supply could:
- Operate (run the laptop and/or charge the battery) on voltages from 11.75 to 14
- Survive overvoltage spikes and noise.
- Shut down the load on the external source (and continue running on internal batteries if appropriate) when the voltage drops to a point that indicates 25% charge on the battery (so you don't damage it and can still start the vehicle engine if it's in good repair).
you could plug it directly into a 12V vehicular supply. No brick - just a cord with a fused cigarette lighter plug on one end and a laptop power connector on the other.
Input voltage sensing could even let the power supply take a guess at what's connected and do something safe until the power control application gave it advice. Portable solar panel? Aircraft EmPower (15V DC version)? 24V semitractor electrical system? (12 and 24V nominal home renewable energy systems could be handled with essentially the same algorithms as vehicles - perhaps with a tweak to the shutdown setpoint or debouncing algorithm.)
Why do people always consider the mobile devices first [when the story is about a possible improved method of energy storage]???
Because fixed devices generally have access to a local power-supply infrastructure, while many mobile devices are limited by available energy storage technology.
thermodynamics is some of the coolest math I have ever seen.
Wouldn't it be some of the hottest math you've ever seen?
Both, actually. B-)
Even though solar panels make MANY TIMES more energy than it takes to build them, comparing input energy to delivered electricity is an apples-oranges comparison, for several reasons. Among them:
- Much of the energy needed to make the cells is raw heat (for things like melting the glass and metal that make up its housing). You'd be a fool to use solar electricity for smelting - paying a carnot cycle penalty.
- The job is delivering electricity in usable form to a particular location. The main competitor is the power grid. Power grids consume considerably more energy than they deliver, largely from carbon-emitting fossil fuel or nuclear reactions, on an ongoing basis. It's called "less than perfect efficiency". Solar panels consume only sunlight. Power grids also take energy - and other valueable stuff - to build: Energy to make the transformers, wire, insulators, poles, generators, boilers, switches, meters. Energy to clear a path and install them, take workers to and from the site. Trees to make poles. Land to be dedicated to power lines for lifetimes. I could go on.
There are many things of value involved in making solar power installations and power grids. Price is a good way of summarizing a basket of costs to human value. So as a first approximation when solar power is more affordable than grid power it's approximately less damaging to and consumptive of things people value.
As of about ten years ago Solar power was past cost break-even only for situations where the cost of a grid hookup was high: New construction in remote areas where the cost of running grid power was several grand, or small loads distant from a plug-in (road signs, emergency telephones, decorative yard lighting, ...) Recently, even without government subsidies, it has been approaching price break-even for sunny suburban locations.
Reminds me of a cartoon in an adult magazine:
Proctologist, patient, and nurse in examining room. Nurse is handing the proctologist a beer. Proctologist is saying: "Nurse, I said a butt light."
Oops. I see that source DID use constant dollars. So it says what you claimed.
= = = =
I note, however, that it does not address the real point of the original statistic: That essentially half the electorate pays no taxes. That's the tipping point for the classic collapse of a democracy or republic: When the majority votes for ever more goodies stolen from the producing classes, who then throw in the towel and stop producing.
I like how you conveniently left out that the top 10% have seen their income rise from $172,000 in 1980 to $339,000 in 2005 - that's a nice doubling of their income.
Did you use nominal dollars or something corrected for inflation?
Given that the value of money as measured by the consumer price index (and a number of other measures) dropped by more than half in that time (DESPITE advances in manufacturing technology that SHOULD have made stuff CHEAPER) your numbers suggest that even the despised rich ended somewhat behind where they started.
They ran a Red Queen's Race and didn't quite run hard enough to stay in the same place.
I thought that the New Deal actually worsened the pre-WWII economic situation in retrospect. Not sure why this seems like a good idea now.
Yeah right. The tens of thousands of people who would otherwise have starved beg to differ.
Grandparent poster has it right.
"Government stimulus" programs destroy more jobs than they create. So they fed a million people - by starving 3.5 million others? Thanks a lot.
The very programs claimed to combat it turned the latest of a series of short economic downturns into "The Great Depression" soup lines, regional migrations, blockades, and all. (But it was great for destroying civil rights and increasing government power.)
And, no, it wasn't WW II that pulled us out, either. That just made the people willing to put up with EVEN MORE austerity. The recovery came when the surviving veterans returned, plowshared the factories, and threw out some corrupt city- and county-level governments - sometimes at gunpoint. The end of the wartime economic controls took many of the depression-era controls with them. And the newly freed economy, like that after the Black Plague or those of many totalitarian states, also got a mild form of the "genocide boost": If you kill ENOUGH people there's more food and hardware for the rest of them.
Now the US government is doing EXACTLY the SAME THING as it did in the '30s and therabouts, with the single exception that it no longer has a gold standard to put SOME floor under inflation. As with the early years of the previous Great Depression we're now in a "jobless recovery", and if things were to follow true to form the next step is the second dip - going down for a decade or more. But without a gold standard this one has no floor - and could end up like a reprise of Weimar Germany's hyperinflation. Are you ready to fight for your place in line at the grocery store because the cashier is listening to the radio and adjusting the price multiplier, so your food costs a bunch more when you get to the end of the line than when you entered it?
So "If it feeds just one person" isn't going to distract the rest of us from the larger number it starves.