Around here (Spokane), electricity is so cheap that if 100watts of solar panels costs $1000, the payoff time is 75+ years (assuming an average of 10 hours of power generation a day).
For that matter, searching for "paris hilton" brings up a bunch of sites claiming to have the sex video, as expected. Searching for "paris hilton hotel" also brings up sites with the sex video, and nothing about Hilton hotels in Paris -- unlike Google, where the same search brings up a page full of useful links, with www.hilton-paris.com as the first hit.
I'd think a bigger mystery is why crocodiles and sharks have survived virtually unchanged. What's a croc got that T-Rex didnt?
A T-Rex is functionally warm-blooded. It may not be able to regulate its temperature, but between its mass and activity level, the core body temperature of a T-Rex will remain fairly constant. It's quite likely that the dinosaurs evolved to take advantage of this. Reduce the environmental temperature by a few degrees, though, and a T-Rex will need to increase its activity level to maintain body temperature. If there isn't enough food for the increased activity, it'll either starve to death or freeze to death.
A croc is functionally cold-blooded. Global cooling just means it'll slow down for a while.
That's assuming you recovered it intact, and the engines and plumbing are in reusable condition. I'm not sure what the heaviest object ever dropped by parachute was, but I expect a Saturn V first stage is a lot heavier. Recovering it intact would be quite an engineering challenge.
If you only need to go around once, there are tricks you can use, such as atmospheric skipping to make it easier. You can't use them for longer flights.
80% of the dry mass has to be re-usable. The Saturn V doesn't even come close -- even if you managed a parachute recovery of the first stage, you wouldn't get more than 20% re-use.
The NASA approach was very simple: stick a guy on top of an Air Force missile and fire him off. Most of the X-Prize contestants could manage it just by making their rockets larger.
Problem is, it doesn't scale very well, and nobody's figured out how to recover and re-use the entire launch vehicle.
Digital satellite and digital cable use a different encoding system, so no, it doesn't work with them. It does work with analog cable, though, and does a reasonably good job with it.
There is good science to suggest that the conservation of energy is real. This has been tested repeatedly.
There is also good science to suggest that the theory of relativity is real, every day in particle accelerators across the world it's used to make predictions that turn out.
The combination of conservation of energy, and relativity suggests that on any largish scale, there can be no teleportation. Of course these things break down when quantum theory is important, but quantum theory seems to be unlikely to be important for the teleportation of large scale objects over large distances.
the way this goes is that conservation of energy (and mass, which is energy in relativity) must be a local phenomena, because if it is non-local, then two different observers will see things differently, one sees that mass a disappears and mass b appears simultaneously at a different spot, another observer moving in a different relative frame will NOT see these as simultaneous, thereby violating conservation of energy since mass b will appear first, then mass a disappear.
Actually, it works out. Observer A sees what's happening as teleportation, while Observer B sees it as time travel. You get the same phenomenon when moving something through a wormhole, and the physics of that are fairly well worked out.
It's tough being a fiscal conservative with a liberal social bias. We look for the moderate candidates which can't seem to win the primaries. You end up with a far, far, far left candidate and a mid-right with lots of faults. You leave the voting booth feeling unclean no matter who you voted for.
Which election are you talking about here? From my viewpoint, Kerry is slightly right of center, while Bush is far right. Even going back to the primaries, there wasn't a single left-leaning candidate fielded by either major party.
Depending on how you define "fiscal conservative", you want either the Libertarian party or the Green party.
not true otherwise every single soundcard would show up working in windows with 8bitsound.
most soundcards are bizzare compared to every other soundcard.
I should have a generic soundcard.dll or soundcard.o driver that will work with ANY soundcard at the basic level. then load the specific driver for the added features.
At least the last time I checked, most soundcards were still "Soundblaster compatible" with respect to old MS-DOS games. Since the original Soundblaster predated plug-and-play by quite a bit, Windows doesn't autodetect the compatibility layer.
However sound cards? When was the last time you upgraded your 5.1 built-in sound card especially for a game or application?
About two years ago, I upgraded the sound card in my computer from one that only supported original Soundblaster emulation to one that supported Soundblaster 16 emulation. Older games sound so much better in 16-bit sound.
Social Engineering covers a much wider range of activities: any non-technological technique for getting protected information. Rubber-hose cryptography, for example, is social engineering. So is sending a fake OS update that really installs a rootkit.
I mean are you really going to give up that obvious and drastic improvement in image quality (apparent in every single screenshot posted in these comparisons) because one or two questionable choices were made for each DVD?
Slashdot Mirror
If black hole "A" combines with black hole "B", the resulting black hole will have a greater mass, and thus a larger event horizon.
100watts of solar panels (Less than $1000)
Around here (Spokane), electricity is so cheap that if 100watts of solar panels costs $1000, the payoff time is 75+ years (assuming an average of 10 hours of power generation a day).
It's very simple:
Version 1 = alpha
Version 2 = beta
Version 3 = final
Version 4 = bugfix
This has held true with any number of Microsoft products. Look at Windows. Look at IE. Look at DirectX.
For that matter, searching for "paris hilton" brings up a bunch of sites claiming to have the sex video, as expected. Searching for "paris hilton hotel" also brings up sites with the sex video, and nothing about Hilton hotels in Paris -- unlike Google, where the same search brings up a page full of useful links, with www.hilton-paris.com as the first hit.
What does that tell you about humans and their values?
It tells me that someone realized he can make a reasonable living off of returning abandoned grocery carts.
How many valid Slashdot logins did you get from that?
I'd think a bigger mystery is why crocodiles and sharks have survived virtually unchanged. What's a croc got that T-Rex didnt?
A T-Rex is functionally warm-blooded. It may not be able to regulate its temperature, but between its mass and activity level, the core body temperature of a T-Rex will remain fairly constant. It's quite likely that the dinosaurs evolved to take advantage of this. Reduce the environmental temperature by a few degrees, though, and a T-Rex will need to increase its activity level to maintain body temperature. If there isn't enough food for the increased activity, it'll either starve to death or freeze to death.
A croc is functionally cold-blooded. Global cooling just means it'll slow down for a while.
That's assuming you recovered it intact, and the engines and plumbing are in reusable condition. I'm not sure what the heaviest object ever dropped by parachute was, but I expect a Saturn V first stage is a lot heavier. Recovering it intact would be quite an engineering challenge.
If you only need to go around once, there are tricks you can use, such as atmospheric skipping to make it easier. You can't use them for longer flights.
80% of the dry mass has to be re-usable. The Saturn V doesn't even come close -- even if you managed a parachute recovery of the first stage, you wouldn't get more than 20% re-use.
The NASA approach was very simple: stick a guy on top of an Air Force missile and fire him off. Most of the X-Prize contestants could manage it just by making their rockets larger.
Problem is, it doesn't scale very well, and nobody's figured out how to recover and re-use the entire launch vehicle.
Digital satellite and digital cable use a different encoding system, so no, it doesn't work with them. It does work with analog cable, though, and does a reasonably good job with it.
There is good science to suggest that the conservation of energy is real. This has been tested repeatedly.
There is also good science to suggest that the theory of relativity is real, every day in particle accelerators across the world it's used to make predictions that turn out.
The combination of conservation of energy, and relativity suggests that on any largish scale, there can be no teleportation. Of course these things break down when quantum theory is important, but quantum theory seems to be unlikely to be important for the teleportation of large scale objects over large distances.
the way this goes is that conservation of energy (and mass, which is energy in relativity) must be a local phenomena, because if it is non-local, then two different observers will see things differently, one sees that mass a disappears and mass b appears simultaneously at a different spot, another observer moving in a different relative frame will NOT see these as simultaneous, thereby violating conservation of energy since mass b will appear first, then mass a disappear.
Actually, it works out. Observer A sees what's happening as teleportation, while Observer B sees it as time travel. You get the same phenomenon when moving something through a wormhole, and the physics of that are fairly well worked out.
You mean, besides announcing that God speaks through him?
It's tough being a fiscal conservative with a liberal social bias. We look for the moderate candidates which can't seem to win the primaries. You end up with a far, far, far left candidate and a mid-right with lots of faults. You leave the voting booth feeling unclean no matter who you voted for.
Which election are you talking about here? From my viewpoint, Kerry is slightly right of center, while Bush is far right. Even going back to the primaries, there wasn't a single left-leaning candidate fielded by either major party.
Depending on how you define "fiscal conservative", you want either the Libertarian party or the Green party.
not true otherwise every single soundcard would show up working in windows with 8bitsound.
most soundcards are bizzare compared to every other soundcard.
I should have a generic soundcard.dll or soundcard.o driver that will work with ANY soundcard at the basic level. then load the specific driver for the added features.
At least the last time I checked, most soundcards were still "Soundblaster compatible" with respect to old MS-DOS games. Since the original Soundblaster predated plug-and-play by quite a bit, Windows doesn't autodetect the compatibility layer.
The code that allows you to play copy-protected games is closed source; that was the only way they could get the details of the mechanisms.
Please. There is no country in the world where its >legal to bootleg movies.
Not quite true. Iran doesn't recognize copyright, so bootleg movies are perfectly legal there.
However sound cards? When was the last time you upgraded your 5.1 built-in sound card especially for a game or application?
About two years ago, I upgraded the sound card in my computer from one that only supported original Soundblaster emulation to one that supported Soundblaster 16 emulation. Older games sound so much better in 16-bit sound.
much like a video card. all video cards give you a display without a driver. why cant audio do the same?
In general, they can. Your program just needs to talk to the sound card as if it were an 8-bit ISA Soundblaster card.
Social Engineering covers a much wider range of activities: any non-technological technique for getting protected information. Rubber-hose cryptography, for example, is social engineering. So is sending a fake OS update that really installs a rootkit.
Me spell chucker work grate. Need grandma chicken.
Shouldn't that be "Me spill chucker work grate. Knead grandma chicken."?
I mean are you really going to give up that obvious and drastic improvement in image quality (apparent in every single screenshot posted in these comparisons) because one or two questionable choices were made for each DVD?
Yes.
It has, but under the terms of the USAPATRIOT act, I am not allowed to provide any details.
Does the lunar soil have nutrients for plant life or would we have to send it up too?
No nutrients. Lunar regolith is only good for providing structure; anything else would need to be sent up.
(Nitpick: the stuff on the Moon is regolith -- powdered rock. Soil has significant amounts of organic content as well.)