Sorry, I should have clarified: there are no commercial, power-generation nuclear reactors in Alberta. I forgot the DP building had a little reactor in the basement. Guess you can tell i'm not a physics student, huh?:)
Er, Focalin isn't chemically different than Ritalin - they're both C14-H19-NO2. The difference between the two, apparently, is that Focalin contains only one stereoisomer of the compound and Ritalin contains both. As a (gross) example my bio prof once used, if you had two bags full of severed hands, Ritalin would be the bag of left and right hands but Focalin would only contain left hands. They're all the same compound (hands), but some of them are mirror images of the others (left vs right).
An interesting aside is that the body commonly treats steroisomers very differently. A good example of this would be Thalidomide, which was commonly prescribed to pregnant women in the 50's: One isomer of Thalidomide is a sedative (was prescribed for morning sickness), but the other isomer wreaked all kinds of havoc on the fetus and caused birth defects. Since the body freely metabolizes one form from the other (ie: even given a pure dose of L-Thalidomide, the body would convert some of it to R-Thalidomide), the drug is no longer used. This all varies by compound though. In some cases, steroisomers have different effects, in some cases they have the same (or similar) effect. And sometimes one isomer of a compound is active and the other inert - penicillin is an example of that. Biochemistry is crazy stuff.:)
Spoken like someone who's never been west of Thunder Bay.
There are NO nuclear reactors in Alberta. None. One has been proposed, but so far has met some pretty stiff opposition (we likes our god-given coal, yessir). So unless the price of oil skyrockets again or electricity suddenly becomes very very cheap in Alberta (not likely, given our lack of hydro and the snails pace of the wind sector), lots of oil in the oilsands will remain untouched until it becomes economically feasible to extract it. Capiche?
1. Water becomes scarce 2. Gov't begins rationing 3. Megacorp Inc profits decline 4. Megacorp Inc lobbies government for increased share of water on threat of pulling out 5. Gov't caves. Thirsty people are better than unemployed people, right? 6. Scarcity worsens. People start falling ill and/or dying 7. Populace protests. 8a. Gov't tells Megacorp to pound sand, gives water to the people. 8b. Gov't attempts to placate people and fails. Protests turn into riots. More death. Megacorp comes under attack. 9. Megacorp pulls out, country enters recession. But the people have water! 10. Megacorp relocates to x, cycle begins anew. 11. Profit?
Or it just makes the entire class feel like idiots because they didn't/can't come up with the single "correct" answer.
But that's what you get when your education system is obsessed with regurgitation of a limited set of accepted facts and not encouragement of critical thinking.
Anecdotal, but in my intro CS course we did quite a lot of programming. Simple programming, but programming nonetheless. Almost all of the labs involved creating or debugging some kind of simple C++ program. Everything else we covered in the course (particularly the first half) was supplementary: circuits, logic, pseudocode, bin/hex/dec, etc.
It seemed to be a fairly popular course, but before long almost half of the class had dropped out upon discovering it wasn't a cakewalk (at least for non-geeks). The remainder of the class had a B+ average. Funny that.
Oh. Owch. I forgot that slashdot likes to eat less-than signs.:(
For my grievous error and for dishonoring the revered slash-and-dot with my buggy code, I shall stand in the corner-of-shame and recite pi to one hundred places, one hundred times.
No one in the history of anything and anywhere has ever read the entirety of an EULA *and* understood every word of it.
They're the digital equivalent of the guy and the end of the commercials going "side effects may include... nauseavomitinghypertensionswollenheaddeathdepression, anorexiaspontaneoushumancombustionsorethroat, tumourscancerdiabetesparkinsonslossofvisionandnumbness." The stuff said so fast no one can comprehend it... but hey, it's there because the law said so!
Wow, a second metabolism for charging my cellphone/laptop/plug-in hybrid? Sounds great! I wonder approximately how many miles of range you could get out of a big mac? "Yeah I better supersize that sucker, i'm headed out of town this weekend!"
Yeah. Why would anyone drive a stick when it means they can't talk on their cell phone, put on their makeup and stuff a big mac into their faces at the same time? Sheesh....and before anyone says it, yes, I have seen people talk on their phones or eat or put makeup on while driving a stick. Just not all three at once.
The new aspect is that this planetary gearset actually has TWO inputs, and the output is determined by the *difference* in speeds between the two. That's how it can go from reverse to forward seamlessly. V1 > V2 is Forward, V1 V2 is Reverse, V1 = V2 is Neutral. Assuming there are no practical limits on the velocity of either input, the possible difference between them is infinite.
Personally I find this really exciting, because i've always been in love with the idea of a variable transmission. Ignoring electric motors for a minute, there are some absolutely INSANE things you can do to a small motor with cams, turbocharging, etc, to extract absolutely massive amounts of power from teeny engines. Like, 1000+hp from sub 2 litre motors. The problem is they end up being extremely peaky (power is only made at a narrow RPM band, or a terribly high one)... but with a variable transmission you can let the engine hunker down in it's sweet spot and let the tranny worry about all the fiddly bits. Hell, you can even do the same thing with a big engine... I wonder if its possible to make five figures of power from a 7 litre? With this we just might find out.
If you ever replace a brake caliper or drum cylinder, you'll want to pinch off the brake line hose with some kind of locking clamp. It keeps the lines from dripping all over the place while they're disconnected, and it also prevents too much air from entering the system (bleeding brakes by hand isn't fun).
Now if you ever try to drive a car with said clamps still attached (as people have accidentally done), you'll quickly find that your "new" brakes don't work so well when they lines are pinched off.:)
When you use Steam, you agree to the EULA, which basically states that you are not buying the game, you are purchasing a license through Valve.
How is this different than any other physical copy of a game? They all have EULA's that must be accepted before you can install/run the program, and they tend to amount to "You have no rights and never will, ha ha thanks for the new yacht." too. If their DRM breaks (see: Assassins Creed, Settlers), or your dog decides that shiny CD looks a lot like a frisbee, or whatever, you're just as screwwed. Whoever you bought the game from has no obligation to sell you a working copy of the game either. The only difference is with steam, all your eggs are in one (virtual) basket. It's like keeping all your games in a single CD wallet and entrusting it to someone elses care (someone who happens to have a pretty good track record, mind you).
Unfortunately, for all parties to be happy there has to be some kind of accommodation to everyone's desires. Otherwise we'll just see more and more horrid DRM schemes and ever expanding piracy. Steam does a pretty good job of keeping almost everyone happy... I think it deserves our support, even if it's not ideal, for the sole reason that it focuses the market on more reasonable DRM & distribution schemes. God help us the day truly draconian DRM becomes successful.
Oh, and as for cheating and being banned... my viewpoint is that if you cheat in a multiplayer game, you're disrupting someone elses legitimate copy of that game - you have no right to complain when someone disrupts yours. In other words, if you kick someones dog, don't bitch when someone bigger and meaner comes and kicks YOU.:)
The website has always been running with ads to generate revenue. It shouldn't make a difference who's handling the money or where the excess goes to. More likely GW is just being it's usual incompetent self and suing the people who love them best.
Saturday: 1. Get up early and be at the head of the Mr.Nimoy line. Bring a bucket. Get autograph, perform vulcan salute, high-five, hurl in bucket (if applicable) and then bolt. 2. Swing by nearest liquor store, purchase bottle of champagne and bag of ice. Rinse out bucket, put ice and champagne in bucket, throw in trunk of car. 3. Pick up girlfriend, drive to Banff (or wherever you're headed). Rent cosy little faux-log-cabin hotel room. Put ice-bucket in room. 4. Have dinner with girlfriend. Return to hotel room, break out champagne. 5. ??? 6. Profit?
Sunday: 7. Wake up early, leave cash and note on nightstand that girlfriend is to spend day shopping. 8. Locate friend, hit slopes. 9. Have dinner with friend and girlfriend (if possible) 10. Return home autographed, sucked off and covered in white powder. These three things will now constitute "the best weekend of my life".
As I understand it, you can only get an ASBO *after* you've engaged in delinquency. So if you keep doing lots of stupid little things that won't always result in prosecution, they can sort of lump them all together and then slap you with an ASBO. It's retroactive punishment for minor offenses, with the intent of reducing further offenses. More like probation than pre-crime.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, I should have clarified: there are no commercial, power-generation nuclear reactors in Alberta. I forgot the DP building had a little reactor in the basement. Guess you can tell i'm not a physics student, huh? :)
Er, Focalin isn't chemically different than Ritalin - they're both C14-H19-NO2. The difference between the two, apparently, is that Focalin contains only one stereoisomer of the compound and Ritalin contains both. As a (gross) example my bio prof once used, if you had two bags full of severed hands, Ritalin would be the bag of left and right hands but Focalin would only contain left hands. They're all the same compound (hands), but some of them are mirror images of the others (left vs right).
An interesting aside is that the body commonly treats steroisomers very differently. A good example of this would be Thalidomide, which was commonly prescribed to pregnant women in the 50's: One isomer of Thalidomide is a sedative (was prescribed for morning sickness), but the other isomer wreaked all kinds of havoc on the fetus and caused birth defects. Since the body freely metabolizes one form from the other (ie: even given a pure dose of L-Thalidomide, the body would convert some of it to R-Thalidomide), the drug is no longer used. This all varies by compound though. In some cases, steroisomers have different effects, in some cases they have the same (or similar) effect. And sometimes one isomer of a compound is active and the other inert - penicillin is an example of that. :)
Biochemistry is crazy stuff.
Spoken like someone who's never been west of Thunder Bay.
There are NO nuclear reactors in Alberta. None. One has been proposed, but so far has met some pretty stiff opposition (we likes our god-given coal, yessir).
So unless the price of oil skyrockets again or electricity suddenly becomes very very cheap in Alberta (not likely, given our lack of hydro and the snails pace of the wind sector), lots of oil in the oilsands will remain untouched until it becomes economically feasible to extract it.
Capiche?
Upon consulting my crystal ball...
1. Water becomes scarce
2. Gov't begins rationing
3. Megacorp Inc profits decline
4. Megacorp Inc lobbies government for increased share of water on threat of pulling out
5. Gov't caves. Thirsty people are better than unemployed people, right?
6. Scarcity worsens. People start falling ill and/or dying
7. Populace protests.
8a. Gov't tells Megacorp to pound sand, gives water to the people.
8b. Gov't attempts to placate people and fails. Protests turn into riots. More death. Megacorp comes under attack.
9. Megacorp pulls out, country enters recession. But the people have water!
10. Megacorp relocates to x, cycle begins anew.
11. Profit?
-1 Redundant? The mods have a cruel sense of humour today!
Or it just makes the entire class feel like idiots because they didn't/can't come up with the single "correct" answer.
But that's what you get when your education system is obsessed with regurgitation of a limited set of accepted facts and not encouragement of critical thinking.
Anecdotal, but in my intro CS course we did quite a lot of programming. Simple programming, but programming nonetheless. Almost all of the labs involved creating or debugging some kind of simple C++ program. Everything else we covered in the course (particularly the first half) was supplementary: circuits, logic, pseudocode, bin/hex/dec, etc.
It seemed to be a fairly popular course, but before long almost half of the class had dropped out upon discovering it wasn't a cakewalk (at least for non-geeks). The remainder of the class had a B+ average. Funny that.
Oh. Owch. I forgot that slashdot likes to eat less-than signs. :(
For my grievous error and for dishonoring the revered slash-and-dot with my buggy code, I shall stand in the corner-of-shame and recite pi to one hundred places, one hundred times.
More like for(bad=swearing; bad=kill; bad++){ do(bad);}
No one in the history of anything and anywhere has ever read the entirety of an EULA *and* understood every word of it.
They're the digital equivalent of the guy and the end of the commercials going "side effects may include... nauseavomitinghypertensionswollenheaddeathdepression, anorexiaspontaneoushumancombustionsorethroat, tumourscancerdiabetesparkinsonslossofvisionandnumbness." The stuff said so fast no one can comprehend it... but hey, it's there because the law said so!
This one comes to mind.
Wow, a second metabolism for charging my cellphone/laptop/plug-in hybrid? Sounds great! I wonder approximately how many miles of range you could get out of a big mac? "Yeah I better supersize that sucker, i'm headed out of town this weekend!"
Don't worry, you won't.
Yeah. Why would anyone drive a stick when it means they can't talk on their cell phone, put on their makeup and stuff a big mac into their faces at the same time? Sheesh. ...and before anyone says it, yes, I have seen people talk on their phones or eat or put makeup on while driving a stick. Just not all three at once.
The new aspect is that this planetary gearset actually has TWO inputs, and the output is determined by the *difference* in speeds between the two. That's how it can go from reverse to forward seamlessly. V1 > V2 is Forward, V1 V2 is Reverse, V1 = V2 is Neutral. Assuming there are no practical limits on the velocity of either input, the possible difference between them is infinite.
Personally I find this really exciting, because i've always been in love with the idea of a variable transmission. Ignoring electric motors for a minute, there are some absolutely INSANE things you can do to a small motor with cams, turbocharging, etc, to extract absolutely massive amounts of power from teeny engines. Like, 1000+hp from sub 2 litre motors. The problem is they end up being extremely peaky (power is only made at a narrow RPM band, or a terribly high one)... but with a variable transmission you can let the engine hunker down in it's sweet spot and let the tranny worry about all the fiddly bits. Hell, you can even do the same thing with a big engine... I wonder if its possible to make five figures of power from a 7 litre? With this we just might find out.
If you ever replace a brake caliper or drum cylinder, you'll want to pinch off the brake line hose with some kind of locking clamp. It keeps the lines from dripping all over the place while they're disconnected, and it also prevents too much air from entering the system (bleeding brakes by hand isn't fun).
Now if you ever try to drive a car with said clamps still attached (as people have accidentally done), you'll quickly find that your "new" brakes don't work so well when they lines are pinched off. :)
In soviet Germany, WiFi unsecures you!
Or your wallet, anyways.
How is this different than any other physical copy of a game? They all have EULA's that must be accepted before you can install/run the program, and they tend to amount to "You have no rights and never will, ha ha thanks for the new yacht." too. If their DRM breaks (see: Assassins Creed, Settlers), or your dog decides that shiny CD looks a lot like a frisbee, or whatever, you're just as screwwed. Whoever you bought the game from has no obligation to sell you a working copy of the game either. The only difference is with steam, all your eggs are in one (virtual) basket. It's like keeping all your games in a single CD wallet and entrusting it to someone elses care (someone who happens to have a pretty good track record, mind you).
Unfortunately, for all parties to be happy there has to be some kind of accommodation to everyone's desires. Otherwise we'll just see more and more horrid DRM schemes and ever expanding piracy. Steam does a pretty good job of keeping almost everyone happy... I think it deserves our support, even if it's not ideal, for the sole reason that it focuses the market on more reasonable DRM & distribution schemes. God help us the day truly draconian DRM becomes successful.
Oh, and as for cheating and being banned... my viewpoint is that if you cheat in a multiplayer game, you're disrupting someone elses legitimate copy of that game - you have no right to complain when someone disrupts yours. :)
In other words, if you kick someones dog, don't bitch when someone bigger and meaner comes and kicks YOU.
The website has always been running with ads to generate revenue. It shouldn't make a difference who's handling the money or where the excess goes to.
More likely GW is just being it's usual incompetent self and suing the people who love them best.
-A former fan (15 years ago)
The real question is... will it blend?
Saturday:
1. Get up early and be at the head of the Mr.Nimoy line. Bring a bucket. Get autograph, perform vulcan salute, high-five, hurl in bucket (if applicable) and then bolt.
2. Swing by nearest liquor store, purchase bottle of champagne and bag of ice. Rinse out bucket, put ice and champagne in bucket, throw in trunk of car.
3. Pick up girlfriend, drive to Banff (or wherever you're headed). Rent cosy little faux-log-cabin hotel room. Put ice-bucket in room.
4. Have dinner with girlfriend. Return to hotel room, break out champagne.
5. ???
6. Profit?
Sunday:
7. Wake up early, leave cash and note on nightstand that girlfriend is to spend day shopping.
8. Locate friend, hit slopes.
9. Have dinner with friend and girlfriend (if possible)
10. Return home autographed, sucked off and covered in white powder. These three things will now constitute "the best weekend of my life".
You can thank me later.
As I understand it, you can only get an ASBO *after* you've engaged in delinquency. So if you keep doing lots of stupid little things that won't always result in prosecution, they can sort of lump them all together and then slap you with an ASBO. It's retroactive punishment for minor offenses, with the intent of reducing further offenses. More like probation than pre-crime.
Not if it collects samples during the service!
Blame whoever came up with the term "codon" :)
My kingdom for a mod point.
And a towel to wipe up the water I just spit out laughing.