Actually, even at 128 (at 48 kHz) you can tell a difference. With mp3, higher frequency sounds (ex. cymbal crashes) can artifact heavily. The more that's going on, the worse it gets. Higher range vocals also are affected. I have some bebop styled tracks that use a lot of the stand up bass and brass percussion. The vocals often sound very metallic, especially when she starts hitting the higher notes.
For most of my archival I use OGG at a quality setting of 7 (~224k/s) and transcode it to mp3 @ 128-192 when ever I need to play them on my portable. Eventually, when I quit my profession as a poor student, I might buy a portable that plays more than mp3's and wma's. Until then, I have noticed very little to no quality loss by transcoding to a lower rate. The only real problem I've noticed with OGG is that sometimes lower frequency sounds (60 -100 Hz) sometimes sound fuzzy, but noting to be too concerned with.
Anything below 128k/s (in my opinion) is only good for streaming and embedding. Even 128 is the bare minimum for anything that sounds decent. Are there any comprehensive articles that deal with comparing high encoding rates (192+) of multiple formats?
It should also be noted that it is not recommended using CBR encoding with OGG. It is a native VBR codec that is only forced into CBR for steaming. The quality of CBR is much lower than VBR. It would be very nice to see a comparison that uses VBR for all codecs that stick to the same bitrate range.
If anyone sends me, or a hyperlink downloads any sort of restricted media, I will treat it like I treat every piece of apple and real media.....
With unrelenting use of the delete key.
About 3 or 4 years ago I started buying things on ebay. As a student, I spent much of my day on campus. Many times, if I needed to get on the internet, a workstation wasn't always available or convenient to get to. The school did have many old 386 and 486 linux boxes that did nothing more than ssh into PINE for email. These things were all over the place. So sometimes I need to be notified of bidding while I was out. Without thinking, I had these sent to my school account.
Nobody outside of friends, family, or school related people ever got my address besides ebay. In one year's time, I was getting so much spam that my account (60M quota) would overflow up to 3 times a week. I found myself logging on between classes to delete 30-50 messages. Eventually, I paid the school $25 to give me a new name on the network.
This time, I still have only given my address to friends, family, and school related people... but no ebay this tame. 2 years later I still have to get one piece. It should be noted that my school has promised to NEVER use any sort of filtering. They cite censorship concerns, but I have some thought otherwise.
Yeah... my car gets 1260 furlongs to the barrel... and it's gonna stay that way damnit.
If you are afraid that evil decimals will place you under the oppressive whim of metric (but not US imperial), you should go to your safe haevn of roman numerals and weights and measures based on the Kings' anatomy.
Actually.. all political parties are evil, idiot. Though a partys' words may say that their concern is for the voter, their actions show that their primary duty is to the party.
Cutting taxes is a tool used on constituents to make them think that politicians really care. If politicians really cared, they wouldn't be catering to the selfish wants of individuals (capital gains/dividends/etc tax cuts), they would find better solutions to more pressing social concerns. I feel so loved by people who want to cut my capital gains taxes. Now I don't have to sell my summer estate in the Hamptons in order to keep my winter ranch in the southwest. These are truly good people!!
If President Bubba needs money, and there isn't any to spare, he isn't going to say "Oh well, let's wait for the next fiscal year." He's either going to tax or add another exponent to the rate of the national debit. Saying republicans don't tax is as foolish as saying they will take a pay cut so they can fund a program that needs it. The real tax difference between the 2 parties isn't IF they will tax... it's what they will tax for.
Binary storage and processing is not comparable to any of our standard SI units are all on a base 10 numeral system. Standard systems are based in relation to another measuring stick (circumference of the earth, water freezing or boiling at sea level, speed of light through a vacuum, etc.) There is often a relationship between volume, mass or weight, and length because all these are base 10 numbers. Some people think it's because we have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Some people, like the Roman's even kept numbers in another base.
Binary only knows 2 numbers (or possibilities). False (or 0) is usually recorded or used in physical (or optical) representations such as absence of voltage, magnetism (or S), or charge; while True (or 1) would be the presence of one of the forces. This is the method used because data is also processed as binary information. It makes things easy because everything is in base 2 relations. You can directly and simply relate bits, frequency, and rate (like MB/second).
If you think of it like probabilities you see that you only have 2 choices (1 or 0). For each binary number you add you another exponent (2^5 with 10110). We get 1024 because it's 2^10 and as close to an even decimal (as in kilo = 1000) number as there is. You could actually represent storage as octal (base 8) or hexadecimal (base 16). It's easier to use existing words because all you need to know is that with binary you multiply or divide by 1024 instead of 1000. 1 kilobit = 1024 bits and 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes and 1 byte = 8 bits.
Look at the context. Most everything at the lowest level in a binary computer operates on the base 2 system. The ONLY reason that HD makers round like this is to make the marketing teams' job easier.
I also wouldn't get hasty about the government intervening on standards. If they really cared about universal standards, I'd be bitching about my car getting less than 9 kilometers to the liter. In fat, if they did step in, I'd be worried about them upholding the other standard.
The president found a source of money large enough to occupy... errrr... liberate Iraq for another 6 months.
Also...
The president read in a newspaper that it is possible to tax the internet. A veto on HR 49 is expected.
Many places won't sell games rated Mature to mionors. WalMart, Target, and Meijer need an ID to sell them.
That is until this suit makes producers create an alternate version for sale in those stores. The next kids rated GTA from WalMart is going to be a bunch of 8 bit pixels running around.
Just sue the victims for presenting themselves as digital characters? Or maybe they should sue the people who make the weapons and ammo poseurs. Thank god they didn't pick up hookers, take them to the park, and beat the money out of them.
It's obvious these people don't care about making a statement and trying to prevent this in the future. If they did, they would be making sue every one of the other parents paychecks would be garnished for the rest of their lives. By going after deep pockets they paint themselves as the type whose grief follows the greenbacks. What are they asking themselves? "I'll teach them to stop making violent games." Yeah right.
Too bad the people at PARC did't patent the idea of a graphic windowing operating system. Where do you think Jobs and Gates got the idea? You very well could be buying your OS from Xerox.
Re:I can see it now... BabyBell propaganda campaig
on
New VOIP App. Profiled
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like a good idea, after all Apple's trying to make video chat easy to use for the mases
Not to be trollish... but if it's apple users... how is it going to be for the masses? Is Jobs considering a hostile takeover of my hardware? Oh well. As long as their software for video chat is quality like quicktime for pc, count me in.
Simply amazing, how the same slashbots decrying "CENSORSHIP!!" at every turn have no problem doing it to others where it suits them.
I don't see a single person crying censorship. Please cut and paste an example. Just because someone moderated it as a troll doesn't mean it's censored. I mean, you could read it... right?
Who do we blame for nicotine, 02, alcohol, chlorine, fluoride, petroleum, Freon, phosphates, nitrates, nitrites, and the millions of other lethal compounds that we run across every day? Aren't they just as lethal as meth? I guarantee that history will back me up in saying that more people have died from bad booze than meth. When will the feds bust some moon shiner from Kentucky with the wrath they bestow on people who run meth labs?
Look at the case of "Disco" Donnie. If you want to see a host of misguided drug laws click here to see laws that target music and not drugs. In the mid 80's politicians drafted and passed a law nicknamed the "crack house" law (Title 21, USC Section 856). Basically, anyone providing a safe place to do drugs is vulnerable. Good idea in principal, but vaguely worded. This could apply to almost every venue owner or event promoter. For much of the modern era, new musical genres have had the stigma of a related drug. Jazz and marijuana, Rock & Roll and alcohol, Rock and hallucinogens, Disco and cocaine are just a few examples. Now it's electronic music and ecstasy. These days, politicians aren't fighting the drugs, they are fighting the music. Their "logic" tells them that if they stop the music, people won't do the drugs. I don't do drugs, and I don't break laws... but dancing late at night has made me a criminal. Just because you think you aren't breaking any laws now, doesn't mean you won't be a criminal someday either. Most of these laws can't get passed on their own merits. The "RAVE" act was tried 2 separate sessions, and failed. So instead, the author buried it in the Amber Alert law.
The problem here is that the "Patriot" mistake we call a law is that it's being used for things that it was not intended for. It was passed during the flurry of legislation after Sept. 11th as a promise to reduce the chances of another 3000 people dying at the same time. While I agree that meth is bad stuff, and it should be stopped, laws need to be made to deal it with it directly instead of slipping through some back door. We all know this won't stop with drugs either. With the way politicians draft vaguely worded legislation, laws passed today will be used for the most unimaginable things later.
From what I understand the DC feed is used to spin DC motors. They are coupled to mechanical transmissions that spin AC generators. This is an effective way of converting, but no energy conversion system is lossless. Energy is lost to heat and friction.
When we are talking about transmission lines with upwards of half a million volts, some loss is acceptable. When you are talking about energy from solar glass I bet this would be too prohibitive. It might be cheaper to import some electrical outlets from a DC powered nation and make buildings with 2 standards. IT could start ordering devices that are made to accept DC input.
I know the sign says "Do NOT Feed the Trolls" but:
i think he was talking about the religous, and not the source of. and i think he was making a statement about people who beleive everything they are told because they have been conditioned to do so since birth. or it could have been a statement about the illusion of freedom of religion, because most people are only free to practice their family's religion.
either way, this is not the forum for such discussions. one thing that is not limited to religous practice (practice principle) is intolerance. we all know what the outcome is when two people with rock solid minds start debating theology on slashdot... "36 replies beneath your current threshold."
Second, if this gets implemented and than a couple days of no sun pop up wouldn't it stress out the grid a bit more than normal
There is one problem with that. Solar cells produce DC energy. The power grid is AC (with the exception of a few high current DC transmission lines). It is possible to 'convert' DC to AC, but it's won't be a natural, clean sine wave. Inverters get better and better, but theystill produce more of a square wave than a sine. It would create 'dirty' energy if dumped onto the grid. Some things could handle it, but others will die. It's just like plugging a computer and a laser printer into a UPS. The computer will probably work, but you'll kill the printer, and maybe the UPS. Most things can be made to work with DC because most of our technology uses it directly. Your power supply turns 110v or 220v AC into multiple voltages of DC. All you would need to do is replace the power supplies.
Basically, you would need two seperate power systems. It could even evolve outside of the power conglomerates. It starts when ine building with a DC system links to another and an arrangement is hammered out. Heavily populated areas would be where it starts, because it is much cheaper to run a high power line under and across the street than it is to string a line across town. And while it won't become a replacement to our current system, it could be a nice suppliment to reduce the pull on the grid.
What about enforcement? Would you require users to identify themselves by some sort of ID? Who would police the network and with what money? How would you make people feel safe with identity concerns?
How/would you segment the Internet from nations that don't allow licensing? Wouldn't it be unfair to require some people to be licensed while others do not?
The internet is lake any other megalopolis. Existing in such a populated community means you will catch some illness eventually, and every once and a while some big bug will start spreading. All you can do is take the 'vaccines' and take care of yourself.
Observing the state of a photon would change it. This makes quantum encryption perfect for evesdropping situations. You will know if someone has seen your data. Also, you can't be sure of it's exact path. The thing about those pesky subatomics is that you can't know their exact position and path at the same time.
Here's some magic for you, then: the reference I was using to Hiroshima wasn't about fission, it was about what was being fissioned: plutonium. In the 1940's they didn't even know that (trace amounts of) plutonium actually occur naturally. Every milligram of plutonium used in that bomb was transmuted from a different element.
Many disciplines of today do have their ancestral roots in alchemy, but there is a reason that word is not used. It's like a tribal shaman who knows what plants to use to treat wounds, but doesn't have the tools to heal some serious damage. They may have had the idea of transmuting elements, but in all honesty having a broad idea is rather easy when you don't have any concept of a working model. Because it wasn't a true science, they didn't have the facilities to expand and grow.
Plutonium does occur naturally, but the processes that produce it are not common around here. The scientists were going to use uranium at first, and it would have worked, but they realized that plutonium was much more adept at fast fission. This made it much more favorable for weapons use because it would lead to higher yields.
The scientists just learned that exposing uranium to a nuclear reactor is much better than searching for very rare atoms. Most of the material used was separated and purified in Tennessee. They built magnetic accelerators the shape of a horse tracks. The principal is that the heavier element they were looking for would not hold as tight around the turn as the lighter uranium. Then it was trapped as it flew outwards. The downside is that it's a very slow process. The DoD borrowed millions of dollars worth of silver from the treasury to make the wire for the accelerators because copper was needed badly for the war.
Near the end, gas diffusion was used. They use a highly corrosive and toxic gas to separate and suspend each atom. Then they made a barrier with holes the exact size of the atoms they needed and used a high pressure current to force a separation. It's much more efficient, but you need a barrier made to stay at exact specifications despite corrosive gasses.
Try using Firebird. I haven't seen a bulk ad or pup-up since I switched form mozilla. Even mozilla stopped almost every popup. It will run where you uncompress it, so you don't need privileges to install it. Download a plugin (aka extensions) called AdBlock. Go into the normal options and turn off unrequested popups. Also set the options so that only images from the originating server are downloaded. With AdBlock, you can block images by name server (ex. ads.x10.com). There is a comprehensive list that you can output in many block formats here).
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, even at 128 (at 48 kHz) you can tell a difference. With mp3, higher frequency sounds (ex. cymbal crashes) can artifact heavily. The more that's going on, the worse it gets. Higher range vocals also are affected. I have some bebop styled tracks that use a lot of the stand up bass and brass percussion. The vocals often sound very metallic, especially when she starts hitting the higher notes.
For most of my archival I use OGG at a quality setting of 7 (~224k/s) and transcode it to mp3 @ 128-192 when ever I need to play them on my portable. Eventually, when I quit my profession as a poor student, I might buy a portable that plays more than mp3's and wma's. Until then, I have noticed very little to no quality loss by transcoding to a lower rate. The only real problem I've noticed with OGG is that sometimes lower frequency sounds (60 -100 Hz) sometimes sound fuzzy, but noting to be too concerned with.
Anything below 128k/s (in my opinion) is only good for streaming and embedding. Even 128 is the bare minimum for anything that sounds decent. Are there any comprehensive articles that deal with comparing high encoding rates (192+) of multiple formats?
It should also be noted that it is not recommended using CBR encoding with OGG. It is a native VBR codec that is only forced into CBR for steaming. The quality of CBR is much lower than VBR. It would be very nice to see a comparison that uses VBR for all codecs that stick to the same bitrate range.
If anyone sends me, or a hyperlink downloads any sort of restricted media, I will treat it like I treat every piece of apple and real media..... With unrelenting use of the delete key.
Closed media is for closed minds.
About 3 or 4 years ago I started buying things on ebay. As a student, I spent much of my day on campus. Many times, if I needed to get on the internet, a workstation wasn't always available or convenient to get to. The school did have many old 386 and 486 linux boxes that did nothing more than ssh into PINE for email. These things were all over the place. So sometimes I need to be notified of bidding while I was out. Without thinking, I had these sent to my school account. Nobody outside of friends, family, or school related people ever got my address besides ebay. In one year's time, I was getting so much spam that my account (60M quota) would overflow up to 3 times a week. I found myself logging on between classes to delete 30-50 messages. Eventually, I paid the school $25 to give me a new name on the network. This time, I still have only given my address to friends, family, and school related people... but no ebay this tame. 2 years later I still have to get one piece. It should be noted that my school has promised to NEVER use any sort of filtering. They cite censorship concerns, but I have some thought otherwise.
Yeah... my car gets 1260 furlongs to the barrel... and it's gonna stay that way damnit.
If you are afraid that evil decimals will place you under the oppressive whim of metric (but not US imperial), you should go to your safe haevn of roman numerals and weights and measures based on the Kings' anatomy.
Actually.. all political parties are evil, idiot. Though a partys' words may say that their concern is for the voter, their actions show that their primary duty is to the party.
Cutting taxes is a tool used on constituents to make them think that politicians really care. If politicians really cared, they wouldn't be catering to the selfish wants of individuals (capital gains/dividends/etc tax cuts), they would find better solutions to more pressing social concerns. I feel so loved by people who want to cut my capital gains taxes. Now I don't have to sell my summer estate in the Hamptons in order to keep my winter ranch in the southwest. These are truly good people!!
If President Bubba needs money, and there isn't any to spare, he isn't going to say "Oh well, let's wait for the next fiscal year." He's either going to tax or add another exponent to the rate of the national debit. Saying republicans don't tax is as foolish as saying they will take a pay cut so they can fund a program that needs it. The real tax difference between the 2 parties isn't IF they will tax... it's what they will tax for.
Please keep your propaganda to yourself...
Binary storage and processing is not comparable to any of our standard SI units are all on a base 10 numeral system. Standard systems are based in relation to another measuring stick (circumference of the earth, water freezing or boiling at sea level, speed of light through a vacuum, etc.) There is often a relationship between volume, mass or weight, and length because all these are base 10 numbers. Some people think it's because we have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Some people, like the Roman's even kept numbers in another base.
Binary only knows 2 numbers (or possibilities). False (or 0) is usually recorded or used in physical (or optical) representations such as absence of voltage, magnetism (or S), or charge; while True (or 1) would be the presence of one of the forces. This is the method used because data is also processed as binary information. It makes things easy because everything is in base 2 relations. You can directly and simply relate bits, frequency, and rate (like MB/second).
If you think of it like probabilities you see that you only have 2 choices (1 or 0). For each binary number you add you another exponent (2^5 with 10110). We get 1024 because it's 2^10 and as close to an even decimal (as in kilo = 1000) number as there is. You could actually represent storage as octal (base 8) or hexadecimal (base 16). It's easier to use existing words because all you need to know is that with binary you multiply or divide by 1024 instead of 1000. 1 kilobit = 1024 bits and 1 kilobyte = 1024 bytes and 1 byte = 8 bits.
Look at the context. Most everything at the lowest level in a binary computer operates on the base 2 system. The ONLY reason that HD makers round like this is to make the marketing teams' job easier.
I also wouldn't get hasty about the government intervening on standards. If they really cared about universal standards, I'd be bitching about my car getting less than 9 kilometers to the liter. In fat, if they did step in, I'd be worried about them upholding the other standard.
The president found a source of money large enough to occupy... errrr... liberate Iraq for another 6 months. Also... The president read in a newspaper that it is possible to tax the internet. A veto on HR 49 is expected.
Many places won't sell games rated Mature to mionors. WalMart, Target, and Meijer need an ID to sell them.
That is until this suit makes producers create an alternate version for sale in those stores. The next kids rated GTA from WalMart is going to be a bunch of 8 bit pixels running around.
Just sue the victims for presenting themselves as digital characters? Or maybe they should sue the people who make the weapons and ammo poseurs. Thank god they didn't pick up hookers, take them to the park, and beat the money out of them.
It's obvious these people don't care about making a statement and trying to prevent this in the future. If they did, they would be making sue every one of the other parents paychecks would be garnished for the rest of their lives. By going after deep pockets they paint themselves as the type whose grief follows the greenbacks. What are they asking themselves? "I'll teach them to stop making violent games." Yeah right.
Too bad the people at PARC did't patent the idea of a graphic windowing operating system. Where do you think Jobs and Gates got the idea? You very well could be buying your OS from Xerox.
Sounds like a good idea, after all Apple's trying to make video chat easy to use for the mases
Not to be trollish... but if it's apple users... how is it going to be for the masses? Is Jobs considering a hostile takeover of my hardware? Oh well. As long as their software for video chat is quality like quicktime for pc, count me in.
I don't think the beta has any spyware....
At least that's what ad-aware says...
Simply amazing, how the same slashbots decrying "CENSORSHIP!!" at every turn have no problem doing it to others where it suits them.
I don't see a single person crying censorship. Please cut and paste an example. Just because someone moderated it as a troll doesn't mean it's censored. I mean, you could read it... right?
Whoever modded this troll should be kicked in the teeth with a steel toed boot. Idiot moderators.
Too bad there isn't an option for the more appropriate -1 Ignorant Fool.
Who do we blame for nicotine, 02, alcohol, chlorine, fluoride, petroleum, Freon, phosphates, nitrates, nitrites, and the millions of other lethal compounds that we run across every day? Aren't they just as lethal as meth? I guarantee that history will back me up in saying that more people have died from bad booze than meth. When will the feds bust some moon shiner from Kentucky with the wrath they bestow on people who run meth labs?
Look at the case of "Disco" Donnie. If you want to see a host of misguided drug laws click here to see laws that target music and not drugs. In the mid 80's politicians drafted and passed a law nicknamed the "crack house" law (Title 21, USC Section 856). Basically, anyone providing a safe place to do drugs is vulnerable. Good idea in principal, but vaguely worded. This could apply to almost every venue owner or event promoter. For much of the modern era, new musical genres have had the stigma of a related drug. Jazz and marijuana, Rock & Roll and alcohol, Rock and hallucinogens, Disco and cocaine are just a few examples. Now it's electronic music and ecstasy. These days, politicians aren't fighting the drugs, they are fighting the music. Their "logic" tells them that if they stop the music, people won't do the drugs. I don't do drugs, and I don't break laws... but dancing late at night has made me a criminal. Just because you think you aren't breaking any laws now, doesn't mean you won't be a criminal someday either. Most of these laws can't get passed on their own merits. The "RAVE" act was tried 2 separate sessions, and failed. So instead, the author buried it in the Amber Alert law.
The problem here is that the "Patriot" mistake we call a law is that it's being used for things that it was not intended for. It was passed during the flurry of legislation after Sept. 11th as a promise to reduce the chances of another 3000 people dying at the same time. While I agree that meth is bad stuff, and it should be stopped, laws need to be made to deal it with it directly instead of slipping through some back door. We all know this won't stop with drugs either. With the way politicians draft vaguely worded legislation, laws passed today will be used for the most unimaginable things later.
From what I understand the DC feed is used to spin DC motors. They are coupled to mechanical transmissions that spin AC generators. This is an effective way of converting, but no energy conversion system is lossless. Energy is lost to heat and friction.
When we are talking about transmission lines with upwards of half a million volts, some loss is acceptable. When you are talking about energy from solar glass I bet this would be too prohibitive. It might be cheaper to import some electrical outlets from a DC powered nation and make buildings with 2 standards. IT could start ordering devices that are made to accept DC input.
I know the sign says "Do NOT Feed the Trolls" but:
i think he was talking about the religous, and not the source of. and i think he was making a statement about people who beleive everything they are told because they have been conditioned to do so since birth. or it could have been a statement about the illusion of freedom of religion, because most people are only free to practice their family's religion.
either way, this is not the forum for such discussions. one thing that is not limited to religous practice (practice principle) is intolerance. we all know what the outcome is when two people with rock solid minds start debating theology on slashdot... "36 replies beneath your current threshold."
Second, if this gets implemented and than a couple days of no sun pop up wouldn't it stress out the grid a bit more than normal
There is one problem with that. Solar cells produce DC energy. The power grid is AC (with the exception of a few high current DC transmission lines). It is possible to 'convert' DC to AC, but it's won't be a natural, clean sine wave. Inverters get better and better, but theystill produce more of a square wave than a sine. It would create 'dirty' energy if dumped onto the grid. Some things could handle it, but others will die. It's just like plugging a computer and a laser printer into a UPS. The computer will probably work, but you'll kill the printer, and maybe the UPS. Most things can be made to work with DC because most of our technology uses it directly. Your power supply turns 110v or 220v AC into multiple voltages of DC. All you would need to do is replace the power supplies.
Basically, you would need two seperate power systems. It could even evolve outside of the power conglomerates. It starts when ine building with a DC system links to another and an arrangement is hammered out. Heavily populated areas would be where it starts, because it is much cheaper to run a high power line under and across the street than it is to string a line across town. And while it won't become a replacement to our current system, it could be a nice suppliment to reduce the pull on the grid.
What about enforcement? Would you require users to identify themselves by some sort of ID? Who would police the network and with what money? How would you make people feel safe with identity concerns?
How/would you segment the Internet from nations that don't allow licensing? Wouldn't it be unfair to require some people to be licensed while others do not?
The internet is lake any other megalopolis. Existing in such a populated community means you will catch some illness eventually, and every once and a while some big bug will start spreading. All you can do is take the 'vaccines' and take care of yourself.
True, but the price of equipment involved (for now) would keep this out of the hands of your average hacker.
Observing the state of a photon would change it. This makes quantum encryption perfect for evesdropping situations. You will know if someone has seen your data. Also, you can't be sure of it's exact path. The thing about those pesky subatomics is that you can't know their exact position and path at the same time.
Here's some magic for you, then: the reference I was using to Hiroshima wasn't about fission, it was about what was being fissioned: plutonium. In the 1940's they didn't even know that (trace amounts of) plutonium actually occur naturally. Every milligram of plutonium used in that bomb was transmuted from a different element.
Many disciplines of today do have their ancestral roots in alchemy, but there is a reason that word is not used. It's like a tribal shaman who knows what plants to use to treat wounds, but doesn't have the tools to heal some serious damage. They may have had the idea of transmuting elements, but in all honesty having a broad idea is rather easy when you don't have any concept of a working model. Because it wasn't a true science, they didn't have the facilities to expand and grow.
Plutonium does occur naturally, but the processes that produce it are not common around here. The scientists were going to use uranium at first, and it would have worked, but they realized that plutonium was much more adept at fast fission. This made it much more favorable for weapons use because it would lead to higher yields.
The scientists just learned that exposing uranium to a nuclear reactor is much better than searching for very rare atoms. Most of the material used was separated and purified in Tennessee. They built magnetic accelerators the shape of a horse tracks. The principal is that the heavier element they were looking for would not hold as tight around the turn as the lighter uranium. Then it was trapped as it flew outwards. The downside is that it's a very slow process. The DoD borrowed millions of dollars worth of silver from the treasury to make the wire for the accelerators because copper was needed badly for the war.
Near the end, gas diffusion was used. They use a highly corrosive and toxic gas to separate and suspend each atom. Then they made a barrier with holes the exact size of the atoms they needed and used a high pressure current to force a separation. It's much more efficient, but you need a barrier made to stay at exact specifications despite corrosive gasses.
Try using Firebird. I haven't seen a bulk ad or pup-up since I switched form mozilla. Even mozilla stopped almost every popup. It will run where you uncompress it, so you don't need privileges to install it. Download a plugin (aka extensions) called AdBlock. Go into the normal options and turn off unrequested popups. Also set the options so that only images from the originating server are downloaded. With AdBlock, you can block images by name server (ex. ads.x10.com). There is a comprehensive list that you can output in many block formats here).