1a) Orbits a star or 1b) Has a common center of orbit shared with another body that is outside both their masses, and orbits a star (this covers double planets, but not our Moon) 2) Has enough mass to maintain a roughly spherical shape (ignore the little stuff) 3) Has insufficient mass to produce heat (ignores the near-stars & stars) 4) Does not share its orbit with other bodies (excludes 'belts', regardless of object mass)
I imagine I've missed a few things. You'd need a name for big rocks not orbiting a star, to begin with... even though we're unlikely to ever find any because they're not lit up, and they're tiny.
It seems silly that the current argument is more geared to 'how do we define a planet to keep the Solar System at 9 planets' instead of 'we need to define a planet and that might change how we categorize bodies in the Solar System'.
True, but in a small closed ecosystem with little to no variance in conditions you will find that speciation comes to pretty much a complete stop once all major niches are filled. At that point, new minor mutations are unlikely to have enough of a benefit to help out compete the existing population.
While evolution may only have slowed down remarkably, in such an environment we might choose to be a little inaccurate and say it has 'stopped' because no noticable change has occured for [insert really long time here].
But what about the NEXT phase transition? Can we predict if there will be one, can we produce it in a lab, and do we have an idea at what average temp it will occur?
I assume that since we can chill some elements to near-absolute zero that we should be able to put an upper limit on the temperature at which the next potential phase change could occur.
I don't know about that... why should I have to buy media and programs and spend time altering their deliberately buggered up product, when I can just get it off the net right away?
They don't respect me (attempting to deny me the 'play', 'menu', and 'fast forward' functions on my player), making crap and tuning their ad campaigns to misrepresent it as quality - and charge $20 for it. Why in hell should I respect them?
Most of my DVDs are under 4.7 GB. The extra space is often extras and crap, not just a larger file due to movie length or the quality of the encoding.
With few exceptions, I have not noticed any significant quality loss when making a DivX that comes out around 10MB/min, and pushing it further to get 90 minutes under 700MB to put it on a CD doesn't hurt enough for me to care in most cases.
A car manufacturer certainly has to deal with competing with another car manufacture ripping off their engineering and design, then producing it at a lower cost.
Fuel cells are an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
Centralizing power generation should be more efficient than millions of smaller generators all over the place.
Now, it's just a matter of finding out if generating, transporting, and storing the required hydrogen is environmentally/economically better than diesel or gasoline.
Well, since his 'powers' will be based on an electrode in his brain, I assume a good HERF weapon will cause him some difficulty.
I can manage a cape and a HERF gun, so if it comes down to it, I will become a superhero and stop this mad scientist./Don't expect spandex and a speedo, though.
That's funny, because it's been my experience that organizing people into tight groups results in the top performers being dragged down by the poor performers while overall productivity drops because nobody can close their door to focus on a task for a while.
I'm all for consultation and coordination between team members, but lumping them together and expecting to get a 'superemployee' out of the mix is foolish.
Athiests will never betray the concept of the seperation of Church and State. What if they force people not to practice religion?
Err... that'd be betraying the concept of the seperation of Church and State? I'm not sure how you'd force people to not practice religion anyways... though you can squash public displays. At any rate, the idea is that the State doesn't take it's direction from the Church.
Athiests will never make policy based on the precepts of a particular faith. Not all Atheists are rational. They just don't believe in God. An Atheist could believe that ghost pirates are real and he enacts legislation based on stopping ghost pirates from invading.
Well, I'd argue that said athiest believes in ghost pirates and as such has faith (because I've never, ever heard of anyone providing credible proof of their existence) and as such, isn't much of an athiest.
Athiests will never favour the moral code of one small group over their multitude of neighbours because they attend the same church. So whose moral code do they favour, then? That of the majority? Is that better? If "fundies" favour miniority morals, then why are they elected by the majority? Choosing morals based on considered thought is better than, "Because the priest said so last Sunday".
An atheist believes life is very precious because when you die, it's over. Not necessarily. Atheists might believe life sucks because there is no God. All being an Atheist means is you don't believe in God. Possibly true. However, I'd certainly be willing to argue that those athiests are unlikely to be the kind of dynamic individual who wants to lead the county. They're more likely to dress all in black and hang around with anarchists.
Some religious fundies are a little freer with human life because the afterlife is so much better if you're good, and if it isn't you deserved it anyway. Sure, some are. Don't put them in power, please. But don't discriminate against religious people because some of their members give them a bad name. ALL religious people take their orders from their sky-dwelling invisible friend, sometimes as those orders are interpreted by a professional assistant to the invisible friend. Since I can't speak with this invisible friend and ask him to confirm his orders, I'd rather not have anyone acting on his authority have authority over me, thank you very much.
Athiests will never betray the concept of the seperation of Church and State.
Athiests will never make policy based on the precepts of a particular faith.
Athiests will never favour the moral code of one small group over their multitude of neighbours because they attend the same church.
An atheist believes life is very precious because when you die, it's over. Some religious fundies are a little freer with human life because the afterlife is so much better if you're good, and if it isn't you deserved it anyway.
It was part of the vendor's hardware solution. I suspect there should be a similar utility with almost any fingerprint reader... it's done as a 'gee-whiz' gimic with the cheaper consumer solutions.
It appears the loops and whorls of my fingerprints are a little lower than average - so when I first tried to use a fingerprint reader I couldn't register with the system, nevermind authenticate with it later. Then, I finally loaded up an admin utility that showed the scanned image that the recognition engine was using - and I noticed the print didn't look complete.
Solution: I put almost half of the required fingertip over the top of the imaging sensor, so the stupid little device gets the part of my print it really wants.
Anyway, it might be worth a try to play around with finger positioning.
I'd think hotter air would be thinner, what with all the molecules being more excited.
However, on second thought I'd guess that whatever air mass is over the high temp zone would compress the air resulting in higher pressure, so the effects should cancel out. Never mind that planes have flown over hot deserts before...
I'll admit I'm confused by this bit of information.
I saw a climber once with a bungie-augmented suit.
Since very little muscle effort was used to raise his arms and legs, but a lot was used to pull/push himself upwards, he strapped on bungie cords to make raising his arms and legs harder.
As a result, he temporarily stored energy from muscles he otherwise was underutilizing, and transferred it via elastics to aid the muscles he was pushing to their limits.
He claimed it made climbing much easier, though I'd hope he had a quick-release to avoid being pulled into the fetal position when he tired...
I believe that with fuel cells, it's not just heat generated, but an OPERATING temperature that is required for the reactions to occur.
I have no idea how much waste heat most fuel cells generate once they're at their operating temperature. You'd want to be very careful about how much heat you skim off the top to run a steam engine.
I actually got laughed at for doing that in a small shop (IT = 6 people). However, given that we only ever touched some things a couple of times a year, having every server, network device, KVM, power cable, data cable, monitor, etc with a nice clear ID tag on it made life a LOT easier.
And when I left for bigger and better things, it made training my replacement much easier.
You don't have to have doubts about your theories to be a scientist! You merely have to be able to show your theory matches known reality, make some predicitions about the future, and then test in a rational way to see if those predicitions are accurate....It really does help if you can accept that you were wrong if the test results don't match the predicitions. Lots of 'scientists' have failed at that step and fudged their numbers rationalizing that the tests were flawed in some way, and just a little more research will find out why and vindicate them.
Anyway, I don't necessarily see de Grey as a bad scientist simply because he's a dreamer. He may be a bad scientist because his theories are too vague to test - but they are interesting enough ideas to follow up on until we do have a test to prove or disprove them.
I happen to believe de Grey is right - the human body is just a machine. It happens to be an incredibly complicated machine composed of many smaller machine (which, in turn, are supported by even more, even smaller machines) that we barely understand as yet, but overall the body is just a machine.
His major point (as I understand it) is that we don't necessarily have to know the WHYs of the body, as long as we know the WHATs and can correct them when they change. Watch what changes in the body over time (after full maturity) and then periodically undo those changes when they've gone too far. This is also the point on which most biologists argue with him - they want the WHY before they fiddle with the WHAT.
The only thing I'm still very wary of is perfoming such procedures, should they ever be developed) on the brain. I don't want to be the first.
It's never made sense to me either, but there is a polarity to A/C... and if you wire it incorrectly, some electronic devices will erroneously detect a line fault. I had it explained to me once, but the explanation just didn't stick well enough in my grey matter.
I learned about this when I got my first UPS and couldn't figure out why it had a red error light lit up. I learned about it again last year when my father wired a new basement and had to redo it because it wasn't to code for the same reason.
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A planet should fit the following
1a) Orbits a star or
1b) Has a common center of orbit shared with another body that is outside both their masses, and orbits a star (this covers double planets, but not our Moon)
2) Has enough mass to maintain a roughly spherical shape (ignore the little stuff)
3) Has insufficient mass to produce heat (ignores the near-stars & stars)
4) Does not share its orbit with other bodies (excludes 'belts', regardless of object mass)
I imagine I've missed a few things. You'd need a name for big rocks not orbiting a star, to begin with... even though we're unlikely to ever find any because they're not lit up, and they're tiny.
It seems silly that the current argument is more geared to 'how do we define a planet to keep the Solar System at 9 planets' instead of 'we need to define a planet and that might change how we categorize bodies in the Solar System'.
True, but in a small closed ecosystem with little to no variance in conditions you will find that speciation comes to pretty much a complete stop once all major niches are filled. At that point, new minor mutations are unlikely to have enough of a benefit to help out compete the existing population.
While evolution may only have slowed down remarkably, in such an environment we might choose to be a little inaccurate and say it has 'stopped' because no noticable change has occured for [insert really long time here].
But what about the NEXT phase transition? Can we predict if there will be one, can we produce it in a lab, and do we have an idea at what average temp it will occur?
I assume that since we can chill some elements to near-absolute zero that we should be able to put an upper limit on the temperature at which the next potential phase change could occur.
I don't know about that... why should I have to buy media and programs and spend time altering their deliberately buggered up product, when I can just get it off the net right away?
They don't respect me (attempting to deny me the 'play', 'menu', and 'fast forward' functions on my player), making crap and tuning their ad campaigns to misrepresent it as quality - and charge $20 for it. Why in hell should I respect them?
Most of my DVDs are under 4.7 GB. The extra space is often extras and crap, not just a larger file due to movie length or the quality of the encoding.
With few exceptions, I have not noticed any significant quality loss when making a DivX that comes out around 10MB/min, and pushing it further to get 90 minutes under 700MB to put it on a CD doesn't hurt enough for me to care in most cases.
A car manufacturer certainly has to deal with competing with another car manufacture ripping off their engineering and design, then producing it at a lower cost.
If I BUY a DVD, I get warnings, ads and stupid menus that I can't bypass on my standard DVD player.
If I download a ripped movie, I get the movie I want without the crap. It starts the moment I put it in the player.
Right now, I prefer downloaded movies over pressed copies because I'm actually getting a superior product.
Fuel cells are an energy storage medium, not an energy source.
Centralizing power generation should be more efficient than millions of smaller generators all over the place.
Now, it's just a matter of finding out if generating, transporting, and storing the required hydrogen is environmentally/economically better than diesel or gasoline.
I will review Edna's report tonight and reconsider the cape... but I was really counting on it to help disguise my lack of super-muscles.
Well, since his 'powers' will be based on an electrode in his brain, I assume a good HERF weapon will cause him some difficulty.
/Don't expect spandex and a speedo, though.
I can manage a cape and a HERF gun, so if it comes down to it, I will become a superhero and stop this mad scientist.
That's funny, because it's been my experience that organizing people into tight groups results in the top performers being dragged down by the poor performers while overall productivity drops because nobody can close their door to focus on a task for a while.
I'm all for consultation and coordination between team members, but lumping them together and expecting to get a 'superemployee' out of the mix is foolish.
Athiests will never betray the concept of the seperation of Church and State.
What if they force people not to practice religion?
Err... that'd be betraying the concept of the seperation of Church and State? I'm not sure how you'd force people to not practice religion anyways... though you can squash public displays. At any rate, the idea is that the State doesn't take it's direction from the Church.
Athiests will never make policy based on the precepts of a particular faith.
Not all Atheists are rational. They just don't believe in God. An Atheist could believe that ghost pirates are real and he enacts legislation based on stopping ghost pirates from invading.
Well, I'd argue that said athiest believes in ghost pirates and as such has faith (because I've never, ever heard of anyone providing credible proof of their existence) and as such, isn't much of an athiest.
Athiests will never favour the moral code of one small group over their multitude of neighbours because they attend the same church.
So whose moral code do they favour, then? That of the majority? Is that better? If "fundies" favour miniority morals, then why are they elected by the majority?
Choosing morals based on considered thought is better than, "Because the priest said so last Sunday".
An atheist believes life is very precious because when you die, it's over.
Not necessarily. Atheists might believe life sucks because there is no God. All being an Atheist means is you don't believe in God.
Possibly true. However, I'd certainly be willing to argue that those athiests are unlikely to be the kind of dynamic individual who wants to lead the county. They're more likely to dress all in black and hang around with anarchists.
Some religious fundies are a little freer with human life because the afterlife is so much better if you're good, and if it isn't you deserved it anyway.
Sure, some are. Don't put them in power, please. But don't discriminate against religious people because some of their members give them a bad name.
ALL religious people take their orders from their sky-dwelling invisible friend, sometimes as those orders are interpreted by a professional assistant to the invisible friend. Since I can't speak with this invisible friend and ask him to confirm his orders, I'd rather not have anyone acting on his authority have authority over me, thank you very much.
Athiests will never betray the concept of the seperation of Church and State. Athiests will never make policy based on the precepts of a particular faith. Athiests will never favour the moral code of one small group over their multitude of neighbours because they attend the same church. An atheist believes life is very precious because when you die, it's over. Some religious fundies are a little freer with human life because the afterlife is so much better if you're good, and if it isn't you deserved it anyway.
It was part of the vendor's hardware solution. I suspect there should be a similar utility with almost any fingerprint reader... it's done as a 'gee-whiz' gimic with the cheaper consumer solutions.
It appears the loops and whorls of my fingerprints are a little lower than average - so when I first tried to use a fingerprint reader I couldn't register with the system, nevermind authenticate with it later. Then, I finally loaded up an admin utility that showed the scanned image that the recognition engine was using - and I noticed the print didn't look complete.
Solution: I put almost half of the required fingertip over the top of the imaging sensor, so the stupid little device gets the part of my print it really wants.
Anyway, it might be worth a try to play around with finger positioning.
Actually, I've always thought that artificial retinas were a perfect candidate for that blood-powered fuel cell that was invented a little while ago.
And during the day you can use solar, right?
I'd think hotter air would be thinner, what with all the molecules being more excited.
However, on second thought I'd guess that whatever air mass is over the high temp zone would compress the air resulting in higher pressure, so the effects should cancel out. Never mind that planes have flown over hot deserts before...
I'll admit I'm confused by this bit of information.
I saw a climber once with a bungie-augmented suit.
Since very little muscle effort was used to raise his arms and legs, but a lot was used to pull/push himself upwards, he strapped on bungie cords to make raising his arms and legs harder.
As a result, he temporarily stored energy from muscles he otherwise was underutilizing, and transferred it via elastics to aid the muscles he was pushing to their limits.
He claimed it made climbing much easier, though I'd hope he had a quick-release to avoid being pulled into the fetal position when he tired...
I believe that with fuel cells, it's not just heat generated, but an OPERATING temperature that is required for the reactions to occur.
I have no idea how much waste heat most fuel cells generate once they're at their operating temperature. You'd want to be very careful about how much heat you skim off the top to run a steam engine.
YES!
I actually got laughed at for doing that in a small shop (IT = 6 people). However, given that we only ever touched some things a couple of times a year, having every server, network device, KVM, power cable, data cable, monitor, etc with a nice clear ID tag on it made life a LOT easier.
And when I left for bigger and better things, it made training my replacement much easier.
You don't have to have doubts about your theories to be a scientist! You merely have to be able to show your theory matches known reality, make some predicitions about the future, and then test in a rational way to see if those predicitions are accurate. ...It really does help if you can accept that you were wrong if the test results don't match the predicitions. Lots of 'scientists' have failed at that step and fudged their numbers rationalizing that the tests were flawed in some way, and just a little more research will find out why and vindicate them.
Anyway, I don't necessarily see de Grey as a bad scientist simply because he's a dreamer. He may be a bad scientist because his theories are too vague to test - but they are interesting enough ideas to follow up on until we do have a test to prove or disprove them.
I happen to believe de Grey is right - the human body is just a machine. It happens to be an incredibly complicated machine composed of many smaller machine (which, in turn, are supported by even more, even smaller machines) that we barely understand as yet, but overall the body is just a machine.
His major point (as I understand it) is that we don't necessarily have to know the WHYs of the body, as long as we know the WHATs and can correct them when they change. Watch what changes in the body over time (after full maturity) and then periodically undo those changes when they've gone too far. This is also the point on which most biologists argue with him - they want the WHY before they fiddle with the WHAT.
The only thing I'm still very wary of is perfoming such procedures, should they ever be developed) on the brain. I don't want to be the first.
It's never made sense to me either, but there is a polarity to A/C... and if you wire it incorrectly, some electronic devices will erroneously detect a line fault. I had it explained to me once, but the explanation just didn't stick well enough in my grey matter.
I learned about this when I got my first UPS and couldn't figure out why it had a red error light lit up. I learned about it again last year when my father wired a new basement and had to redo it because it wasn't to code for the same reason.
Ahh, but how much energy would it take to flatten your orbit into an elipse that passes through the corona?
I find I have a lot of rectal discomfort related to this issue if I use Windows to configure my wireless settings and use a passphrase.