Just underneath the Great Red Spot are three white spots in a line. Does anyone know, are these storm systems or are they leftover from the Shoemaker-Levy 9 cometary impact?
IIRC Mir and the ISS are in different orbits, at different inclinations to the equator. Shifting the 140 odd tons of Mir into a new orbit would be costly, to say the least.
It's shape would change during the freezing process. Also, freezing the mercury would lead to a very cold mirror, which might alter the optical properties of the air the light is passing through.
New Zealand allows people to gain permanent residency after two years, and become citizens in less than four. Furthermore, you are allowed to retain citizenship in your country of origin as well as have NZ citizenship.
New Zealand regularly takes in refugees from places like Kosovo, Angola, Somalia, and Fiji.
Perhaps we just recognise the value in having a diverse population more than other countries.
America is not the most friendly country to foreigners in the world. It's certainly far from being the worst, but it's not the best.
It seems to me that the USA really needs some good privacy laws. In New Zealand, when personal information is collected, you must be informed for what it is to be used for, and it is illegal to use that information for any other purpose. Bascially, it means that information about yourself is your personal property, and cannot be used or divulged by anyone else without your permission. This has several side effects:
- a few years ago, the university I work for used to publish in the local newspaper what papers each student passed. This became illegal under the Privacy Act.
- we cannot display on notice boards student assessment marks next to their names - we can only use their ID numbers
- we have the right to have our name and number removed from the public phone listings
- we have the right to demand that any business or ministry turn over to us a copy of all data held by them
- we have the right to have erroneous data corrected so far as it pertains to us as individuals
- a company can't have you register for a product, then turn that data over to another company without your permission - no spammers buying e-mail lists!
I think the USA should start looking at getting some similar laws, it might fix a lot of the problems they seem to be having.
Sounds like a fair trade to me: I contribute what I know, and, being from a different culture, bring a different perspective to things. In return, I get some experience in working in another country.
I don't live in a 3rd world country, so I won't be undercutting American's wages, and I don't want to settle there permanently, so you won't have to support me in my old age. Any position I get will be because I am the best one for the job, there is no other reason to hire me. Also, I am likely to be going for a position in academia: this is scarcely the easiest area to get into for anyone, nor is the highest paid.
Velcro under normal atmospheric pressure in air does not burn readily at all (it just kind of melts). Velcro under high-pressure pure oxygen (a la Apollo 1) will explode into flame quite happily. The shuttle does not use a pure oxygen atmosphere, it is closer to ordinary air (an O/N mix). This is why astronauts have to pre-breathe pure oxygen before going EVA, they have to purge the nitrogen from their bloodstreams.
OK, I'm completing my PhD in AI. I will probably be applying for a H1B visa sometime in the next couple of years. While I like America, I have no desire to settle down there (i.e. become a resident - I want to get experience there, not a green card). Being rather highly educated (as well as a moderately good programmer) I think I will genuinely contribute to America by sharing my expertise with whatever company (or companies) I work for. Now, complaining about low-skilled workers undercutting your jobs is all very well, but ditching the H1B scheme altogether would also block out people like me that can make a genuine contribution.
As always, things are never as black-or-white as we would like.
I attended a seminar by our department's security lecturer, and he (briefly) described the following case:
The police / FBI / SS / whoever burst into this guy's workroom with a warrant. He immediately pushes himself away from the computer, gets up and meekly stands in the corner while they pack up his machine and carry it off. When they get back to their headquarters, they find that the machine has been wiped clean. Completely. Turns out, the guy had built a big electromagnet into the door frame that was activatd by a pressure switch in the corner.
So, yeah, it has happend before, but I can't give you a reference for it.
You know, I checked out this page, and laughed my head off at the clever satire in it. Defining the GPL as the "Glorious People's Licence". Calling a Finnish hacker group a "cult".
Publishing in academia is a bit of a nasty area, to be honest. I'm a PhD candidate, and this is what I have observed about publishing in my field (mostly artificial neural networks, with a little bit of software engineering).
In academia, it is very much "publish or perish". One of the first things other researchers will ask you when discussing your future is "how many publications do you have?". Full time academic staff have to maintain a certain level of publishing quality and quantity to retain their tenure, and research grants are also strongly influenced by the publishing record of the applicants.
Unfortunately, this can lead to some abuses of the publishing system. I have heard of people being bullied into putting a supervisor's name onto a paper, even though the supervisor didn't contribute anything to the paper. Stories also circulate about reviewers that reject papers, then publish the same material as their own work. Then there are the papers that are simply fraudulent, making claims that cannot be substantiated or are simply bogus.
From my own experience of publishing, I can say that copyright of a paper rests in the first instance with the authors. When the paper is published, copyright is usually transferred to the publishers (I recently sent off a copyright transfer form for a conference paper).
In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copyright was only awarded for the 40% the Israeli researcher inferred, not the rest of the information in the scrolls. Furthermore, the American editors used a paper without the author's permission, including it into their own work without informing the author. In my opinion, this is almost as bad an abuse as the examples I cited above. I his position, I would be after their blood too.
Just goes to prove - the US Congress is the best legislature money can buy;)
Seriously, though, I like America, I spent two weeks there in May and loved every minute of it. But the US system of government is really broken. They seem to be getting closer to the Gibsonian "Ruled by the corporations" every day.
The really fun thing about Slavic Languages (at least Bulgarian and Russian, I don't know about the others) is that double negatives are grammatically correct, and only reinforce the negativity of the statement. For example, saying "I don't have no money" is perfectly acceptable, and means "I don't have _any_ money". So, you could imagine Slavic C, where:
!!a is actually equivalent to !a
Then there's the whole Cyrillic character set, which has some characters in common with Roman, but they mean different things (b == v, p == r etc)
This is akin to New Zealand fining every driver in the USA for driving on the wrong side of the road.
If the US goverment wasn't so mind-numbingly arrogant as to believe their laws apply everywhere else in the world, they wouldn't piss so many people off, and they wouldn't have so many people gunning for American blood.
At least some of the photorecon satellites in the Cosmos series were based on the old Vostok design (remember Gargarin?). The cameras and film were in the spherical cabin section, and the whole lot parachuted down for a landing in central asia.
IIRC Dolly's offspring have normal length telomeres, as they were produced via sexual reproduction. But although Dolly's telomeres are shorter, I do not know if she is actually aging faster. Time will tell, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Just underneath the Great Red Spot are three white spots in a line. Does anyone know, are these storm systems or are they leftover from the Shoemaker-Levy 9 cometary impact?
IIRC Mir and the ISS are in different orbits, at different inclinations to the equator. Shifting the 140 odd tons of Mir into a new orbit would be costly, to say the least.
It's shape would change during the freezing process. Also, freezing the mercury would lead to a very cold mirror, which might alter the optical properties of the air the light is passing through.
New Zealand allows people to gain permanent residency after two years, and become citizens in less than four. Furthermore, you are allowed to retain citizenship in your country of origin as well as have NZ citizenship.
New Zealand regularly takes in refugees from places like Kosovo, Angola, Somalia, and Fiji.
Perhaps we just recognise the value in having a diverse population more than other countries.
America is not the most friendly country to foreigners in the world. It's certainly far from being the worst, but it's not the best.
Sic Stallman and Maddog on them? Talk about cruel and unusual punishment...
It seems to me that the USA really needs some good privacy laws. In New Zealand, when personal information is collected, you must be informed for what it is to be used for, and it is illegal to use that information for any other purpose. Bascially, it means that information about yourself is your personal property, and cannot be used or divulged by anyone else without your permission. This has several side effects:
- a few years ago, the university I work for used to publish in the local newspaper what papers each student passed. This became illegal under the Privacy Act.
- we cannot display on notice boards student assessment marks next to their names - we can only use their ID numbers
- we have the right to have our name and number removed from the public phone listings
- we have the right to demand that any business or ministry turn over to us a copy of all data held by them
- we have the right to have erroneous data corrected so far as it pertains to us as individuals
- a company can't have you register for a product, then turn that data over to another company without your permission - no spammers buying e-mail lists!
I think the USA should start looking at getting some similar laws, it might fix a lot of the problems they seem to be having.
Sounds like a fair trade to me: I contribute what I know, and, being from a different culture, bring a different perspective to things. In return, I get some experience in working in another country.
I don't live in a 3rd world country, so I won't be undercutting American's wages, and I don't want to settle there permanently, so you won't have to support me in my old age. Any position I get will be because I am the best one for the job, there is no other reason to hire me. Also, I am likely to be going for a position in academia: this is scarcely the easiest area to get into for anyone, nor is the highest paid.
Velcro under normal atmospheric pressure in air does not burn readily at all (it just kind of melts). Velcro under high-pressure pure oxygen (a la Apollo 1) will explode into flame quite happily. The shuttle does not use a pure oxygen atmosphere, it is closer to ordinary air (an O/N mix). This is why astronauts have to pre-breathe pure oxygen before going EVA, they have to purge the nitrogen from their bloodstreams.
OK, I'm completing my PhD in AI. I will probably be applying for a H1B visa sometime in the next couple of years. While I like America, I have no desire to settle down there (i.e. become a resident - I want to get experience there, not a green card). Being rather highly educated (as well as a moderately good programmer) I think I will genuinely contribute to America by sharing my expertise with whatever company (or companies) I work for. Now, complaining about low-skilled workers undercutting your jobs is all very well, but ditching the H1B scheme altogether would also block out people like me that can make a genuine contribution.
As always, things are never as black-or-white as we would like.
I attended a seminar by our department's security lecturer, and he (briefly) described the following case:
The police / FBI / SS / whoever burst into this guy's workroom with a warrant. He immediately pushes himself away from the computer, gets up and meekly stands in the corner while they pack up his machine and carry it off. When they get back to their headquarters, they find that the machine has been wiped clean. Completely. Turns out, the guy had built a big electromagnet into the door frame that was activatd by a pressure switch in the corner.
So, yeah, it has happend before, but I can't give you a reference for it.
You know, I checked out this page, and laughed my head off at the clever satire in it. Defining the GPL as the "Glorious People's Licence". Calling a Finnish hacker group a "cult".
Then I realised, they might actually be serious.
Oh, dear...
Alright, time to throw in my $.02 worth...
Publishing in academia is a bit of a nasty area, to be honest. I'm a PhD candidate, and this is what I have observed about publishing in my field (mostly artificial neural networks, with a little bit of software engineering).
In academia, it is very much "publish or perish". One of the first things other researchers will ask you when discussing your future is "how many publications do you have?". Full time academic staff have to maintain a certain level of publishing quality and quantity to retain their tenure, and research grants are also strongly influenced by the publishing record of the applicants.
Unfortunately, this can lead to some abuses of the publishing system. I have heard of people being bullied into putting a supervisor's name onto a paper, even though the supervisor didn't contribute anything to the paper. Stories also circulate about reviewers that reject papers, then publish the same material as their own work. Then there are the papers that are simply fraudulent, making claims that cannot be substantiated or are simply bogus.
From my own experience of publishing, I can say that copyright of a paper rests in the first instance with the authors. When the paper is published, copyright is usually transferred to the publishers (I recently sent off a copyright transfer form for a conference paper).
In the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the copyright was only awarded for the 40% the Israeli researcher inferred, not the rest of the information in the scrolls. Furthermore, the American editors used a paper without the author's permission, including it into their own work without informing the author. In my opinion, this is almost as bad an abuse as the examples I cited above. I his position, I would be after their blood too.
Shop sign I saw in Japan: "Every Day Low Plice"
Well, English is a difficult language...
Imagine if they cloned a Moa - drum sticks the size of your leg, baby!
Now, Moa must have been good to eat, they were all eaten by Maori after all...
I don't think you would want to eat a dodo, according to accounts from the time they were still alive, the meat was disgusting.
Just goes to prove - the US Congress is the best legislature money can buy ;)
Seriously, though, I like America, I spent two weeks there in May and loved every minute of it. But the US system of government is really broken. They seem to be getting closer to the Gibsonian "Ruled by the corporations" every day.
The really fun thing about Slavic Languages (at least Bulgarian and Russian, I don't know about the others) is that double negatives are grammatically correct, and only reinforce the negativity of the statement. For example, saying "I don't have no money" is perfectly acceptable, and means "I don't have _any_ money". So, you could imagine Slavic C, where:
!!a is actually equivalent to !a
Then there's the whole Cyrillic character set, which has some characters in common with Roman, but they mean different things (b == v, p == r etc)
Wouldn't be as bad as having Denis Leary's "Asshole" song starting up ;)
This is akin to New Zealand fining every driver in the USA for driving on the wrong side of the road.
If the US goverment wasn't so mind-numbingly arrogant as to believe their laws apply everywhere else in the world, they wouldn't piss so many people off, and they wouldn't have so many people gunning for American blood.
At least some of the photorecon satellites in the Cosmos series were based on the old Vostok design (remember Gargarin?). The cameras and film were in the spherical cabin section, and the whole lot parachuted down for a landing in central asia.
Here is NZ, you are also free to determine the disposition of personal information, which is what a phone listing is.
You have to _pay_ to get your name out of the phone book? You guys really need some privacy laws enacted.
IIRC Dolly's offspring have normal length telomeres, as they were produced via sexual reproduction. But although Dolly's telomeres are shorter, I do not know if she is actually aging faster. Time will tell, I guess.
Kiwis live in a different niche to the Huia. Anything that did fill the Huia's niche would be an introduced species, and they're not rare.