So, how many of the following beliefs do YOU share?
Creationism No such thing as (human caused) global warming Birthers Saddam Hussein had WMDs and worked with Al Queda (believe it or not, a lot of Americans still think this, especially Fox viewers) George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the first time George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the second time Sarah Palin is an intelligent, thoughtful person worthy of the highest offices in the land Being "elite" (definition: the best at anything) is bad Deficit spending is bad in a recession (unfortunately the Europeans seem to really think this) Teaching students critical thinking is a bad thing (well at least in Texas)
I could go on and on (unfortunately) but you get the point. I would imagine there is a high correlation between these beliefs, right or wrong. If you're not embarrassed by them, why mod me down? Anyway, may I add one last contentious point that may or may not fit this demographic?
now claim that Apple's patents are invalid or that they do not infringe them.
In Samsung's appeal against Apple's injunction against the Galaxy tablet: "Apple failed to provide sufficient evidence that the Galaxy Nexus caused "irreparable harm" in the form of market share lost to Samsung. The filing also suggests that such market share losses "must be substantial" and directly caused by the infringing feature, rather than the product as a whole."
So Samsung does not argue that the patents are invalid or that it violated them but rather that it doesn't hurt Apple too much.
"HTC believes that Apple's claims exceed the bounds of the original complaint. The statement by the ITC is seemingly not a denial of Apple for lack of propriety, but more a lack of information."
So HTC believes that Apple is overreaching when it says that HTC has not re-engineered it's products enough to avoid Apple's patent. It does not deny the fact that it violated Apple's patent.
It appears that Apple has a winning case when it comes to patents when they are no longer being challenged.
If you haven't seen the Leap motion (and no I'm not in any way shape or form connected to the company, although I wish I were!) you should check it out.
It's a super-accurate (I think sub-millimeter), low latency 3D tracker with the ability to follow up to 10 fingers (or other objects like pencils) at once. All in a very small box (USB powered?) box that's expected to sell for $70 (this year). I don't know the volume in which it can track the objects but on the demos it appears to be pretty large, large enough that a belt mounted (or necklace version) would be sufficient.
Voice recognition is good and getting better but there are many time when a point and click(?) interface is still much more efficient. Like when you want to access one link out of many on a web page. Or control a complex virtual device that has many degrees of freedom. Humans have evolved to have hands of extraordinary flexibility and control; just look at the amount of our brain dedicated to them. So let's use them! (The reasons why this Leap device is so good as opposed to say "finger detection" using the Google glasses video-camera is because the resolution is much higher, it tracks in 3D and there might not be a problem with occlusion.)
Of course the Google glasses should be updated to have a stereo display (I think currently it's only in the right eye). That would allow truly interacting with items in 3D. (Of course, the above comments about people gesticulating in space would come to pass! I'm wondering if "I'm sorry your honor but I didn't mean to touch the young lady like that, I was turning the knobs on my virtual stereo receiver" would be a valid defense.)
This is the way that Google should be fighting Apple. Not by making incremental changes to Apple's tech (or so it appears to most people* and, apparently some judges) but by revolutionizing the field. If they're right, then in three to five years Apple may only control the remains of a vast but dying industry. Sounds like Microsoft before or IBM before it.
*look, prior to the iPhone, smartphones looked one way and then suddenly they (the successful ones that is) completely changed their basic appearance and interface (touchscreens using fingers not stylii, icons, slide to access, pinch zoom). Coincidence? Coming from companies with decades of experience in making hundreds of cellphone models? That's how most lay-persons (and at least some legal experts) might view it.
I'm not sure about the rules involved but doesn't the IAAA (or something) allow the "discoverer" (which in this case I guess will be a corporation) to name minor bodies and maybe even other things like comets.
So they should allow their sponsors to name these bodies in their stead. They're going to find thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands depending on the sensitivity of the instruments.
I won't donate money to save the world but to have my own private Idaho, I mean asteroid, would be cool! Especially if I knew it would wipe out all life on earth! I'll be famous (for a short time at least).
Even better would be a U.N. treaty saying that for objects up to say 1km in size, the first person to characterize a body's orbit would get to OWN IT! Not only would this make a lot of people into asteroid hunters but it would really promote the development of technology to exploit them, especially if such ownership would expire in say 20 years if no landings were achieved. It is been said that the best way to get undeveloped countries in like Africa to develop would be to get clear and effective (supported by government) title to land; this provides the incentive to invest. (I don't know what the current laws are, presumably there is something in place to allow the Google guys to profit from their asteroid venture).
By the way, what's the LOWER limit for the size of a minor body (I think the upper limit are "dwarf planets"). 500 meters? 5 meters? 5 centimeters?
I don't know how practical a weapon this would be in a military engagement (like with other guys shooting back at you) but in a situation where you needed to scare the bejeezes out of some people (like a riot or maybe a hostage situation) I can definitely see it being useful.
I mean most weapons (flamethrowers excepted) are pretty hard to see (not hear). You can see the flash of muzzles and maybe the pitting of concrete from near misses but other than getting hit you wouldn't know how close they were to you.
THIS on the other hand would be a terrifying weapon. Like a thunderbolt thrown at you, the flash would probably blind you for a few seconds and the clap of thunder make you deaf. People would just start running unless they dropped dead due to a heart attack! Think of it as god's version of a taser.
It reminds me of that lightning weapon used in "District 9". Don't know if it's powerful enough to make people literally explode.
Look, obtaining good information isn't always easy (and sometimes can get you killed as the rising numbers of killed journalists will attest to). It is also VERY valuable, if the person playing the devils advocate wants to live WITH the deprived information access of the middle ages, he should be prepared to live IN the middle ages. Haven't you heard of the trite expression "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance?. Well information is like a real-time version of education and is probably even more valuable. (Ok, the devils advocate has a point about not necessarily needing instantaneous access but I still contend good information and Analysis is very worthwhile).
Unfortunately the world is now being divided into the rich, educated and well informed and the poor, uneducated and ignorant. Sadly, in many countries (like the U.S.) it is a self-reinforcing cycle where the uneducated ignorant don't realize that they're uneducated and ignorant. So they vote for policies that put them even further behind not understanding that the "liberal elites" are abandoning them to their fates and putting their kids in private schools etc. I'm looking at you, you home schooled creationist anti-global warming religious fanatics (not just Fundamentalist Christian but Ultra-Orthodox Jews and don't even get me started on madras attending Muslims).
Just as I'm a proud taxpayer because I feel it buys civilization (as opposed to Somalia), I immediately signed on to the NYTimes pay service without even bothering with the one month free trial. It buys very good journalism (as opposed to Fox).
Even if his DNA wasn't sequenced, it should be possible to clone him (and the females mentioned in the article). I'm hoping they took tissue samples from the females, otherwise there would just be an endless line of lonesome georges (unless he could be bred with other sub-species).
I would assume that cloning reptiles is much easier than cloning mammals, didn't they do a frog decades ago? Of course it would be ironic if, due to "mistakes" in the cloning process, they expressed some long inactive part of the DNA and ended up with a dinosaur instead! (I'm not sure if a turtle is technically a dinosaur already but you know what I mean; big, scary and capable of starring in a movie).
"In 2005, we discovered for the first time something five times the size of pluto orbiting between Mars and Jupiter"
That statement is so obviously wrong that it made me want to dismiss the entire post because, well honestly, if somebody's gonna make such a stupid statement it's like when a person makes a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. You know they COULD be an informed, intelligent person but your inner bias says no.
Look, if astronomers discovered something in 2005 that was five times the "size" (Mass? Volume? Diameter?) of Pluto between Mars and Jupiter the entire astronomical community should be ashamed of itself for not spotting it CENTURIES earlier (it should be naked to the visible eye unless painted flat black, with a new coat of paint every week). Shit, the gravitational perturbations alone should have made it discoverable long ago, that's how Neptune and (I think) Pluto were found, much much farther away.
Now that I've got that off my chest, there are some problems with your idea. Why put these chunks of rock (iron?) in lunar orbit? Because of the three-body problem which even Newton (and everyone since) couldn't solve, these orbits may not be stable and may indeed be chaotic (hence the "interplanetary highway"). So after a (very long) period of time, when humanity (if it's still around) may not have a space program, these big (and they've got to be big in order to do serious damage to an asteroid that's already in cislunar space) may come crashing down onto earth. Why not put them in a stable trojan point either earth-moon L4 or L5 or sun-earth L4 or L5? Or, considering all the effort you're putting into doing this, why not just track all the earth orbit crossing asteroids a century or two out and (gently) tweak their orbits. Orbital mechanics IS a science and as long as you're not trying to project very far into the future, we could easily predict what's gonna hit us with much less effort than putting kilotons of rocks in motion.
I'm not sure if the plans are available anywhere but since (I think) it's built off a standard MindStorms LEGO set anyone should be able to recreate it.
I understand, however, that LEGO will be unable to provide an infinite number of bricks that are needed for full implementation.
Absolutely positively evidence that the universe was crawling with life!
It would mean life is not only not based on DNA (and thus couldn't be a result of cross-contamination with earth as has been suggested might be the case for any Maryian life we might come across), but wouldn't even be based on WATER! It would mean that perhaps anywhere there was a liquid at perhaps almost any temperature we should be on the lookout for life! (Liquid helium on Pluto? Molton magma in the earth's mantle?)
I read in the book "Life as we do not know it" that Titan could be the home to up to three(!) completely separate "Domains" (the authors term) of life. Water based (around some heated cryo-volcanoes perhaps), ammonia-water, and methane based.
Someday we'll send a manned mission to orbit Titan. Then using remote balloons(!) and boats(!) they'll be able to really investigate these possibilities. Until then, the time lag will make things difficult (but not impossible I hope).
I just looked again at SpaceX's announcement and saw that they claim the Heavy will put 53 tons in LEO or "more than 12 tons" into GTO.
Well unless the "more than 12 tons" is a lot more than 12 tons, it means you're only getting 1/4 the payload into GTO that the same launch vehicle can put into LEO. That's terrible! (to me). Wasn't it Heinlein who said get to earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere? Seems like you're only a quarter of the way. Also, GTO (Geo-sync Transfer Orbit?) isn't even all the way there yet, you've still got to circularize the orbit otherwise you're just in a big ellipse. So your profit margin I mean payload is even smaller.
I don't know if this is due to some peculiarity with the Heavy or its launch site (Geosync orbit is on the equatorial plane) so maybe with other launch vehicles/launch sites it isn't so bad (now I know why the ESA uses their jungle launch site). Still, I'm thinking that those systems still can't do that much better.
There REALLY is a crying need for an efficient, powerful (high) thrust ion engine system that will cut this ratio down to less than 2:1. 26 tons to Geo sync (or escape) and you're talking big useful payloads. For science think Mars sample return or Europa sub. For commerce think worldwide wristwatch satellite phones (big antennas in space = little ones on earth). It needs to be (relatively, for an ion engine) high thrust so it'll take months and not years to get there. Of course you'll need some big-ass solar arrays but remember, once you get to your destination (or coasting when your engine is off), you can use all that electricity for your spacecraft and powerful transmitters.
Am I mistaken or will the Falcon Heavy have 27(!) engines going at liftoff? (3 x the nine engines of a Falcon 9).
I guess they really have the control systems for such a large number of engines licked (in a previous thread I noted that back in the 60s the Russian Moon super-rocket N-1 had 30 engines. It failed, repeatedly.)
So are large numbers of small rockets preferable, efficiency wise, to a few large ones (think the five F-1s of the Saturn V first stage). Or they cheaper in aggregate? Or are they more reliable? (less superhigh pressures in the turbines, I dunno). Or if they fail is there the simple fact of more redundancy (I read that if any one of the Falcon 9s engines conked out it could still make it to orbit. Except right at lift off).
Or did Space-X just not have the funds to develop a really big engine (In which case couldn't they have licensed the design for the F-1 or J-1 from NASA?). Not knocking them, it's still an INCREDIBLE achievement, just wondering.
To quote an Airforce General: "A new plane doesn't make possible a new engine, a new engine makes possible a new plane.". So it's great to see an (obviously) flight worthy new rocket engine!
Too bad this test is probably not nearly as entertaining as the one in which Will Smith, confronted with a street full of "snarling"(?) aliens, shoots the little schoolgirl carrying books right between the eyes. Which presumably was the right thing to do as it demonstrated creative(?) thinking.
He, of course, got the job. By the way, anyone see the new MIB 3 yet? Is it any good?
If it were dishwasher safe could be used on dishes and cookware.
I'm sure there must be a million applications for a durable, super hydrophobic coating. Ship hulls, runners on skates and skis, hell if it's durable (and safe enough) why not a spray on for a once a year application at your dentist? Who knows what other applications coud be practical depending on its exact properties (think, ink jet printers, coating the particles in e-ink displays to make them "spin" faster, micro fluidics for lab equipment, etc.). There are a LOT of technologies that use water/fluids in some way.
Long time ago, a worker at a big toothpaste manufacturer made a suggestion:
"Why not increase the diameter of the toothpaste nozzle?"
See, people put on toothpaste on their toothbrushes based on the LENGTH not VOLUME of the paste. By increasing the diameter or width of the applied toothpaste, the consumer would use up much more of the toothpaste with every application. Thus they would use up the toothpaste more quickly (and since it's not a high cost expense, be unlikely to be tracking it closely). Thus sales and profits would go up.
Supposedly this man was given a nice corner office for life.
Mark Twain aside, if you still wanted to promote laissez-faire economics (not that that's always appropriate), the FCC should ensure that there is enough competition in a given market (far from today's sorry reality in the U.S.), publish GOOD (useful) STATISTICS on speed (indexed by time of day perhaps), latency, uptime, etc. Then let the consumers decide how they want to be billed. Or at least that's how it SHOULD work out, I don't understand how market forces haven't eliminated the insanely complex and restrictive 2-year contracts most people are locked into. Lobbyists perhaps?
If people are provided accurate information they SHOULD choose the most efficient/best product for the cheapest price (except for "Geffen goods"). That's why ratings agencies are absolutely crucial to a properly functioning market; nothing was "wrong" with sub-prime mortgages, it's just that the ratings agencies were giving them AAA ratings (because they were being paid by the issuers). Those guys should be "castrated and blinded" (another literary reference, this one from "The Visit") or at least made bankrupt and their officers thrown in prison!
Since Apple announced "their planned solar array" just "days after Greenpeace's protest" it is clear Greenpeace didn't push them into doing anything (except maybe making their press release earlier). You don't spec, design, budget and plan a multi-megawatt facility in a few days.
I'm as green/liberal as any other guy (supported Gore, yada yada) but this Apple bashing just because they're Apple is stupid. Why don't people make a fuss about Google or Facebook? Likewise I like my non-Apple electronics (my hi-def TV says "SAMSUNG") but don't people get the fact that EVERYBODY makes their electronics in Chinese sweatshops and that the working conditions at Apple suppliers are probably the best? That's why there are thousands of "apple-icants" whenever there's openings at Foxconn's plants making Apple products. Nobody ever focuses on the fact that ALL the other global electronics makers are building their stuff at places where the conditions are most likely considerably worse (not to mention the second and third tier companies).
I read somewhere that the problem was with (slightly?) high pressure in engine number 5 (out of nine). The commentator mentioned that on the first Falcon launch, the engine at the same position failed/had problems.
Does anyone know if it was the same (high pressure) problem? Is engine number 5 in an unusual spot (in the center?) that could cause it additional problems? (I don't know how the clustering of the engines are.). This is pretty wonky I know but I'm just curious if there is some correlation.
I also read somewhere that one of the reasons for the failure of the Russian mega-rocket, the N-1, which was to put their man on the moon first, was because the first stage had 30(!) engines and it was impossible (at that time) to control them all. By comparison, of course the Saturn V had 5 engines in its first stage (each generating a million and half pounds of thrust!). I would assume that modern digital systems have made these control problems a thing of the past and that the Falcon 9 is not vulnerable to that problem. So more is better right? Could the Falcon 9 have made it to orbit even losing one?
I was kinda hoping for some sort of package that, just like the self-destructing SSDs, would only make available this fake data when the proper key wasn't presented. Up until then it could be used normally (rather than just being a decoy). Of course maybe it would take too long to replace the original data with the phony data...
You do have a good point about that very few INDIVIDUALS would need this, I imagine that their main (only?) customers would be governments wanting to send other governments into wild goose chases. Individuals are, like you said, too prone to be forced legally or otherwise(!) to disclose their encryption keys.
Does anyone offer a product (hardware or software) that rewrites a disk with "fake" encryption?
I mean, how about encrypting worthless or random data, or even better if you know your adversary, misleading data?
(The capabilities of our latest super secret bomber are contained in this document, what the enemy should never find out is that it is incapable of flying above 50,000 ft. So let's hope they never figure out the 4-digit PIN, I mean encryption key "0000".)
If used on something that the enemy thinks is valuable enough, you could really force them to spend lots of time trying to decrypt something. (The White House had no comment today on a report that President Obama lost his personal BlackBerry while at the G-8 summit. It has not been verified if, in fact, the hotel housekepers were Chinese nationals at the Hyatt hotel. However due to the chain being recently acquired by a Chinese military corporation, officials cannot rule out that possibility.)
Wasn't there a Stanislaw Lem book that postulated mankind receiving an indecipherable alien signal? Upon more and more sophisticated analysis, the message "seemed" to hint at deeper and deeper levels of meaning that *just* eluded the investigators. It seemed that they were just projecting their own hopes and fears onto what was really a random signal.
(Oh, I just noticed a previous post that says it installs Windows CE, or other garbage data).
(Sorry about the abbreviations). A friend of mine pointed out that extending the life of a mouse by say 25 percent cancer free may not do the same when extending the life of a human by 25 percent.
The reason of course is because if it takes say 3 years for a cancer to develop because of this therapy (given to the mice when they were adults), the mice would still have died of other causes before the cancer could kill them (a 25 percent increase in a mouse's lifespan is only about a year). Whereas with people, if the therapy causes cancer just 3 years after the treatment then they have really got a problem because the therapy (should hopefully) make them live 20 years longer.
Still I am hopeful for this (or other treatments) to hopefully add on a decade or two of (very hopefully) healthy life to my lifespan. As my friend also pointed out, even a modest increase in lifespan will absolutely wreck every social safety net and pension. Perhaps there will be legislation correcting this saying, perhaps, if you elect to get this treatment you agree that your benefits won't kick in for another decade or two.
Working longer (or being poorer) is still preferable to dying younger.
Slashdot Mirror
So, how many of the following beliefs do YOU share?
Creationism
No such thing as (human caused) global warming
Birthers
Saddam Hussein had WMDs and worked with Al Queda (believe it or not, a lot of Americans still think this, especially Fox viewers)
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the first time
George W. Bush was the right person to vote for the second time
Sarah Palin is an intelligent, thoughtful person worthy of the highest offices in the land
Being "elite" (definition: the best at anything) is bad
Deficit spending is bad in a recession (unfortunately the Europeans seem to really think this)
Teaching students critical thinking is a bad thing (well at least in Texas)
I could go on and on (unfortunately) but you get the point. I would imagine there is a high correlation between these beliefs, right or wrong. If you're not embarrassed by them, why mod me down? Anyway, may I add one last contentious point that may or may not fit this demographic?
These people are Apple haters.
now claim that Apple's patents are invalid or that they do not infringe them.
In Samsung's appeal against Apple's injunction against the Galaxy tablet: "Apple failed to provide sufficient evidence that the Galaxy Nexus caused "irreparable harm" in the form of market share lost to Samsung. The filing also suggests that such market share losses "must be substantial" and directly caused by the infringing feature, rather than the product as a whole."
So Samsung does not argue that the patents are invalid or that it violated them but rather that it doesn't hurt Apple too much.
"HTC believes that Apple's claims exceed the bounds of the original complaint. The statement by the ITC is seemingly not a denial of Apple for lack of propriety, but more a lack of information."
So HTC believes that Apple is overreaching when it says that HTC has not re-engineered it's products enough to avoid Apple's patent. It does not deny the fact that it violated Apple's patent.
It appears that Apple has a winning case when it comes to patents when they are no longer being challenged.
If you haven't seen the Leap motion (and no I'm not in any way shape or form connected to the company, although I wish I were!) you should check it out.
It's a super-accurate (I think sub-millimeter), low latency 3D tracker with the ability to follow up to 10 fingers (or other objects like pencils) at once. All in a very small box (USB powered?) box that's expected to sell for $70 (this year). I don't know the volume in which it can track the objects but on the demos it appears to be pretty large, large enough that a belt mounted (or necklace version) would be sufficient.
Voice recognition is good and getting better but there are many time when a point and click(?) interface is still much more efficient. Like when you want to access one link out of many on a web page. Or control a complex virtual device that has many degrees of freedom. Humans have evolved to have hands of extraordinary flexibility and control; just look at the amount of our brain dedicated to them. So let's use them! (The reasons why this Leap device is so good as opposed to say "finger detection" using the Google glasses video-camera is because the resolution is much higher, it tracks in 3D and there might not be a problem with occlusion.)
Of course the Google glasses should be updated to have a stereo display (I think currently it's only in the right eye). That would allow truly interacting with items in 3D. (Of course, the above comments about people gesticulating in space would come to pass! I'm wondering if "I'm sorry your honor but I didn't mean to touch the young lady like that, I was turning the knobs on my virtual stereo receiver" would be a valid defense.)
This is the way that Google should be fighting Apple. Not by making incremental changes to Apple's tech (or so it appears to most people* and, apparently some judges) but by revolutionizing the field. If they're right, then in three to five years Apple may only control the remains of a vast but dying industry. Sounds like Microsoft before or IBM before it.
*look, prior to the iPhone, smartphones looked one way and then suddenly they (the successful ones that is) completely changed their basic appearance and interface (touchscreens using fingers not stylii, icons, slide to access, pinch zoom). Coincidence? Coming from companies with decades of experience in making hundreds of cellphone models? That's how most lay-persons (and at least some legal experts) might view it.
I'm not sure about the rules involved but doesn't the IAAA (or something) allow the "discoverer" (which in this case I guess will be a corporation) to name minor bodies and maybe even other things like comets.
So they should allow their sponsors to name these bodies in their stead. They're going to find thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands depending on the sensitivity of the instruments.
I won't donate money to save the world but to have my own private Idaho, I mean asteroid, would be cool! Especially if I knew it would wipe out all life on earth! I'll be famous (for a short time at least).
Even better would be a U.N. treaty saying that for objects up to say 1km in size, the first person to characterize a body's orbit would get to OWN IT! Not only would this make a lot of people into asteroid hunters but it would really promote the development of technology to exploit them, especially if such ownership would expire in say 20 years if no landings were achieved. It is been said that the best way to get undeveloped countries in like Africa to develop would be to get clear and effective (supported by government) title to land; this provides the incentive to invest. (I don't know what the current laws are, presumably there is something in place to allow the Google guys to profit from their asteroid venture).
By the way, what's the LOWER limit for the size of a minor body (I think the upper limit are "dwarf planets"). 500 meters? 5 meters? 5 centimeters?
I don't know how practical a weapon this would be in a military engagement (like with other guys shooting back at you) but in a situation where you needed to scare the bejeezes out of some people (like a riot or maybe a hostage situation) I can definitely see it being useful.
I mean most weapons (flamethrowers excepted) are pretty hard to see (not hear). You can see the flash of muzzles and maybe the pitting of concrete from near misses but other than getting hit you wouldn't know how close they were to you.
THIS on the other hand would be a terrifying weapon. Like a thunderbolt thrown at you, the flash would probably blind you for a few seconds and the clap of thunder make you deaf. People would just start running unless they dropped dead due to a heart attack! Think of it as god's version of a taser.
It reminds me of that lightning weapon used in "District 9". Don't know if it's powerful enough to make people literally explode.
Look, obtaining good information isn't always easy (and sometimes can get you killed as the rising numbers of killed journalists will attest to). It is also VERY valuable, if the person playing the devils advocate wants to live WITH the deprived information access of the middle ages, he should be prepared to live IN the middle ages. Haven't you heard of the trite expression "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance?. Well information is like a real-time version of education and is probably even more valuable. (Ok, the devils advocate has a point about not necessarily needing instantaneous access but I still contend good information and Analysis is very worthwhile).
Unfortunately the world is now being divided into the rich, educated and well informed and the poor, uneducated and ignorant. Sadly, in many countries (like the U.S.) it is a self-reinforcing cycle where the uneducated ignorant don't realize that they're uneducated and ignorant. So they vote for policies that put them even further behind not understanding that the "liberal elites" are abandoning them to their fates and putting their kids in private schools etc. I'm looking at you, you home schooled creationist anti-global warming religious fanatics (not just Fundamentalist Christian but Ultra-Orthodox Jews and don't even get me started on madras attending Muslims).
Just as I'm a proud taxpayer because I feel it buys civilization (as opposed to Somalia), I immediately signed on to the NYTimes pay service without even bothering with the one month free trial. It buys very good journalism (as opposed to Fox).
Even if his DNA wasn't sequenced, it should be possible to clone him (and the females mentioned in the article). I'm hoping they took tissue samples from the females, otherwise there would just be an endless line of lonesome georges (unless he could be bred with other sub-species).
I would assume that cloning reptiles is much easier than cloning mammals, didn't they do a frog decades ago? Of course it would be ironic if, due to "mistakes" in the cloning process, they expressed some long inactive part of the DNA and ended up with a dinosaur instead! (I'm not sure if a turtle is technically a dinosaur already but you know what I mean; big, scary and capable of starring in a movie).
I kid you not (I read TFA). At least the have a good acronym (BIO).
"In 2005, we discovered for the first time something five times the size of pluto orbiting between Mars and Jupiter"
That statement is so obviously wrong that it made me want to dismiss the entire post because, well honestly, if somebody's gonna make such a stupid statement it's like when a person makes a lot of grammatical and spelling errors. You know they COULD be an informed, intelligent person but your inner bias says no.
Look, if astronomers discovered something in 2005 that was five times the "size" (Mass? Volume? Diameter?) of Pluto between Mars and Jupiter the entire astronomical community should be ashamed of itself for not spotting it CENTURIES earlier (it should be naked to the visible eye unless painted flat black, with a new coat of paint every week). Shit, the gravitational perturbations alone should have made it discoverable long ago, that's how Neptune and (I think) Pluto were found, much much farther away.
Now that I've got that off my chest, there are some problems with your idea. Why put these chunks of rock (iron?) in lunar orbit? Because of the three-body problem which even Newton (and everyone since) couldn't solve, these orbits may not be stable and may indeed be chaotic (hence the "interplanetary highway"). So after a (very long) period of time, when humanity (if it's still around) may not have a space program, these big (and they've got to be big in order to do serious damage to an asteroid that's already in cislunar space) may come crashing down onto earth. Why not put them in a stable trojan point either earth-moon L4 or L5 or sun-earth L4 or L5? Or, considering all the effort you're putting into doing this, why not just track all the earth orbit crossing asteroids a century or two out and (gently) tweak their orbits. Orbital mechanics IS a science and as long as you're not trying to project very far into the future, we could easily predict what's gonna hit us with much less effort than putting kilotons of rocks in motion.
Now get off my lawn.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYw2ewoO6c4
I'm not sure if the plans are available anywhere but since (I think) it's built off a standard MindStorms LEGO set anyone should be able to recreate it.
I understand, however, that LEGO will be unable to provide an infinite number of bricks that are needed for full implementation.
Absolutely positively evidence that the universe was crawling with life!
It would mean life is not only not based on DNA (and thus couldn't be a result of cross-contamination with earth as has been suggested might be the case for any Maryian life we might come across), but wouldn't even be based on WATER! It would mean that perhaps anywhere there was a liquid at perhaps almost any temperature we should be on the lookout for life! (Liquid helium on Pluto? Molton magma in the earth's mantle?)
I read in the book "Life as we do not know it" that Titan could be the home to up to three(!) completely separate "Domains" (the authors term) of life. Water based (around some heated cryo-volcanoes perhaps), ammonia-water, and methane based.
Someday we'll send a manned mission to orbit Titan. Then using remote balloons(!) and boats(!) they'll be able to really investigate these possibilities. Until then, the time lag will make things difficult (but not impossible I hope).
I just looked again at SpaceX's announcement and saw that they claim the Heavy will put 53 tons in LEO or "more than 12 tons" into GTO.
Well unless the "more than 12 tons" is a lot more than 12 tons, it means you're only getting 1/4 the payload into GTO that the same launch vehicle can put into LEO. That's terrible! (to me). Wasn't it Heinlein who said get to earth orbit and you're halfway to anywhere? Seems like you're only a quarter of the way. Also, GTO (Geo-sync Transfer Orbit?) isn't even all the way there yet, you've still got to circularize the orbit otherwise you're just in a big ellipse. So your profit margin I mean payload is even smaller.
I don't know if this is due to some peculiarity with the Heavy or its launch site (Geosync orbit is on the equatorial plane) so maybe with other launch vehicles/launch sites it isn't so bad (now I know why the ESA uses their jungle launch site). Still, I'm thinking that those systems still can't do that much better.
There REALLY is a crying need for an efficient, powerful (high) thrust ion engine system that will cut this ratio down to less than 2:1. 26 tons to Geo sync (or escape) and you're talking big useful payloads. For science think Mars sample return or Europa sub. For commerce think worldwide wristwatch satellite phones (big antennas in space = little ones on earth). It needs to be (relatively, for an ion engine) high thrust so it'll take months and not years to get there. Of course you'll need some big-ass solar arrays but remember, once you get to your destination (or coasting when your engine is off), you can use all that electricity for your spacecraft and powerful transmitters.
Am I mistaken or will the Falcon Heavy have 27(!) engines going at liftoff? (3 x the nine engines of a Falcon 9).
I guess they really have the control systems for such a large number of engines licked (in a previous thread I noted that back in the 60s the Russian Moon super-rocket N-1 had 30 engines. It failed, repeatedly.)
So are large numbers of small rockets preferable, efficiency wise, to a few large ones (think the five F-1s of the Saturn V first stage). Or they cheaper in aggregate? Or are they more reliable? (less superhigh pressures in the turbines, I dunno). Or if they fail is there the simple fact of more redundancy (I read that if any one of the Falcon 9s engines conked out it could still make it to orbit. Except right at lift off).
Or did Space-X just not have the funds to develop a really big engine (In which case couldn't they have licensed the design for the F-1 or J-1 from NASA?). Not knocking them, it's still an INCREDIBLE achievement, just wondering.
To quote an Airforce General: "A new plane doesn't make possible a new engine, a new engine makes possible a new plane.". So it's great to see an (obviously) flight worthy new rocket engine!
Too bad this test is probably not nearly as entertaining as the one in which Will Smith, confronted with a street full of "snarling"(?) aliens, shoots the little schoolgirl carrying books right between the eyes. Which presumably was the right thing to do as it demonstrated creative(?) thinking.
He, of course, got the job. By the way, anyone see the new MIB 3 yet? Is it any good?
Is using the robotic arm the only way the Dragon spacecraft will be allowed to dock with the ISS? It seems to be cumbersome and to take a long time.
Or is this only being done now for safety reasons and, with more experience, a direct approach and docking will be allowed?
It could make cleaning less frequent and onerous.
If it were dishwasher safe could be used on dishes and cookware.
I'm sure there must be a million applications for a durable, super hydrophobic coating. Ship hulls, runners on skates and skis, hell if it's durable (and safe enough) why not a spray on for a once a year application at your dentist? Who knows what other applications coud be practical depending on its exact properties (think, ink jet printers, coating the particles in e-ink displays to make them "spin" faster, micro fluidics for lab equipment, etc.). There are a LOT of technologies that use water/fluids in some way.
Take a pill (or drink) of this stuff right before a meal. Food would just fly right through.
Then again, it could give a whole new meaning to "having the runs".
(Not sure if this an urban myth)
Long time ago, a worker at a big toothpaste manufacturer made a suggestion:
"Why not increase the diameter of the toothpaste nozzle?"
See, people put on toothpaste on their toothbrushes based on the LENGTH not VOLUME of the paste. By increasing the diameter or width of the applied toothpaste, the consumer would use up much more of the toothpaste with every application. Thus they would use up the toothpaste more quickly (and since it's not a high cost expense, be unlikely to be tracking it closely). Thus sales and profits would go up.
Supposedly this man was given a nice corner office for life.
(I know, I know: lies, damned lies and...)
Mark Twain aside, if you still wanted to promote laissez-faire economics (not that that's always appropriate), the FCC should ensure that there is enough competition in a given market (far from today's sorry reality in the U.S.), publish GOOD (useful) STATISTICS on speed (indexed by time of day perhaps), latency, uptime, etc. Then let the consumers decide how they want to be billed. Or at least that's how it SHOULD work out, I don't understand how market forces haven't eliminated the insanely complex and restrictive 2-year contracts most people are locked into. Lobbyists perhaps?
If people are provided accurate information they SHOULD choose the most efficient/best product for the cheapest price (except for "Geffen goods"). That's why ratings agencies are absolutely crucial to a properly functioning market; nothing was "wrong" with sub-prime mortgages, it's just that the ratings agencies were giving them AAA ratings (because they were being paid by the issuers). Those guys should be "castrated and blinded" (another literary reference, this one from "The Visit") or at least made bankrupt and their officers thrown in prison!
Since Apple announced "their planned solar array" just "days after Greenpeace's protest" it is clear Greenpeace didn't push them into doing anything (except maybe making their press release earlier). You don't spec, design, budget and plan a multi-megawatt facility in a few days.
I'm as green/liberal as any other guy (supported Gore, yada yada) but this Apple bashing just because they're Apple is stupid. Why don't people make a fuss about Google or Facebook? Likewise I like my non-Apple electronics (my hi-def TV says "SAMSUNG") but don't people get the fact that EVERYBODY makes their electronics in Chinese sweatshops and that the working conditions at Apple suppliers are probably the best? That's why there are thousands of "apple-icants" whenever there's openings at Foxconn's plants making Apple products. Nobody ever focuses on the fact that ALL the other global electronics makers are building their stuff at places where the conditions are most likely considerably worse (not to mention the second and third tier companies).
I read somewhere that the problem was with (slightly?) high pressure in engine number 5 (out of nine). The commentator mentioned that on the first Falcon launch, the engine at the same position failed/had problems.
Does anyone know if it was the same (high pressure) problem? Is engine number 5 in an unusual spot (in the center?) that could cause it additional problems? (I don't know how the clustering of the engines are.). This is pretty wonky I know but I'm just curious if there is some correlation.
I also read somewhere that one of the reasons for the failure of the Russian mega-rocket, the N-1, which was to put their man on the moon first, was because the first stage had 30(!) engines and it was impossible (at that time) to control them all. By comparison, of course the Saturn V had 5 engines in its first stage (each generating a million and half pounds of thrust!). I would assume that modern digital systems have made these control problems a thing of the past and that the Falcon 9 is not vulnerable to that problem. So more is better right? Could the Falcon 9 have made it to orbit even losing one?
I was kinda hoping for some sort of package that, just like the self-destructing SSDs, would only make available this fake data when the proper key wasn't presented. Up until then it could be used normally (rather than just being a decoy). Of course maybe it would take too long to replace the original data with the phony data...
You do have a good point about that very few INDIVIDUALS would need this, I imagine that their main (only?) customers would be governments wanting to send other governments into wild goose chases. Individuals are, like you said, too prone to be forced legally or otherwise(!) to disclose their encryption keys.
Too bad the name is already taken by a company making a drone control system that runs on iPhones and iPads!
Does anyone offer a product (hardware or software) that rewrites a disk with "fake" encryption?
I mean, how about encrypting worthless or random data, or even better if you know your adversary, misleading data?
(The capabilities of our latest super secret bomber are contained in this document, what the enemy should never find out is that it is incapable of flying above 50,000 ft. So let's hope they never figure out the 4-digit PIN, I mean encryption key "0000".)
If used on something that the enemy thinks is valuable enough, you could really force them to spend lots of time trying to decrypt something. (The White House had no comment today on a report that President Obama lost his personal BlackBerry while at the G-8 summit. It has not been verified if, in fact, the hotel housekepers were Chinese nationals at the Hyatt hotel. However due to the chain being recently acquired by a Chinese military corporation, officials cannot rule out that possibility.)
Wasn't there a Stanislaw Lem book that postulated mankind receiving an indecipherable alien signal? Upon more and more sophisticated analysis, the message "seemed" to hint at deeper and deeper levels of meaning that *just* eluded the investigators. It seemed that they were just projecting their own hopes and fears onto what was really a random signal.
(Oh, I just noticed a previous post that says it installs Windows CE, or other garbage data).
(Sorry about the abbreviations). A friend of mine pointed out that extending the life of a mouse by say 25 percent cancer free may not do the same when extending the life of a human by 25 percent.
The reason of course is because if it takes say 3 years for a cancer to develop because of this therapy (given to the mice when they were adults), the mice would still have died of other causes before the cancer could kill them (a 25 percent increase in a mouse's lifespan is only about a year). Whereas with people, if the therapy causes cancer just 3 years after the treatment then they have really got a problem because the therapy (should hopefully) make them live 20 years longer.
Still I am hopeful for this (or other treatments) to hopefully add on a decade or two of (very hopefully) healthy life to my lifespan. As my friend also pointed out, even a modest increase in lifespan will absolutely wreck every social safety net and pension. Perhaps there will be legislation correcting this saying, perhaps, if you elect to get this treatment you agree that your benefits won't kick in for another decade or two.
Working longer (or being poorer) is still preferable to dying younger.