Billion-km is useless but AU is meaningless too. For a unit of measurement to be meaningful you have to link it to a physical observation. No human will ever observe an AU, even if they go into space. If you ever get far enough out to have an AU in your field of view then the Earth will be too small to see.
Light-hours is not that useful either since we're not fast enough (or sensitive enough) to see photons of light traveling at the speed of light.
The only thing I can think of that might be useful is the speed of sound. Nearly everyone has observed the difference between lightning and thunder. So, in those terms it would take about 1400 years for you to hear the thunder.
You make some good points but colour perception is not completely arbitrary. Life on Earth evolved to perceive a specific band of wavelengths due to the absorption characteristics of water. It is reasonable to assume that aliens would perceive the same range of colors if they also started out in water. Of course, their idea of beauty will not necessarily match ours. But, at the least, they would be able to see all the same colours that we do.
I don't see how this gets modded up. Freedom of the press should not be described as: "... reporters to be able to go anywhere without revealing their identity". There are some serious privacy issues in a statement like that. A journalist is not a government appointed position. They cannot have any rights above those granted to an ordinay person. A person cannot invade a home or a private party. Defcon is very much like a private party. An allowance has been made for journalists to attend so long as they identify themselves. That seems fair.
I agree with the spirit of the parent post. However, I wanted to clear something up which may not be apparent to people outside of NASA. JPL is a government faclity, but it has no employees. All of the people who work at the JPL facility are Caltech employees. The lawyers EccentricAnomaly refers to are Caltech lawyers.
This is an unusual situation and causes a lot of confusion. On the one hand, all of the work is government funded. OTOH, all of the employees and their IP are private sector.
This duality makes it really hard to develop and release software at JPL.
EA, you should review your employment contract with Caltech. I'm surprised that you aren't allowed to contribute to OSS in your spare time.
How does this get modded informative? The linked site provides zero supporting documentation for how the numbers are computed. This could only be modded speculative. A category which does not exist (for good reason).
Note the original poster's point: "Supply is low" because of scalpers (who have no intention of actually using the product) waiting on line to grab the PS3s before legitimate buyers can.
...
Scalping isn't an instance of "the free market", it's actually an attempt to profit through interference with the processes of the free market. So yes: "Parasites" is actually an excellent choice of word.
Don't get confused, there are two free markets here. A PS3 market and a labor market.
Supply of PS3 is not "low". Low is a relative word that requires comparison to something else. There is simply a quantity of PS3s for sale and a quantity of demand for those PS3s. The supply and demand set a fair price. This is basic economics taught at the high school level.
Labor is work. It is a free market where high demand and low supply workers clear at higher prices (i.e. get higher salaries).
Example 1: high priced CEOs don't write computer software. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced programmers to write the software for them.
Example 2: high priced computer programmers don't wait in line. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced line-waiters to stand in line for them.
You can call these line-waiters scalpers or parasites all you want. But don't tell me that they're interfering with the process of the free market.
Ain't it funny his writing was entitled, "The Origin of the Species." When he did not mean origin. Heh.
Actually, the book is titled:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
(source: Wikipedia)
The book is about (the act of) speciation. The title refers to the mechanism by which scientists create categories and assign creatures to a category. More interestingly, it covers what separates categories and how categories are created or changed over time. i.e. evolution.
The book is not about the ancestral origin of a species or "the Species".
I don't know how NOAA is doing it. But, an obvious method would be to use projected cubemaps. A cubemap is basically a cube inscribed in a sphere. It is very easy to work with since the data is planar. Ask any computer graphics expert or game developer for more details.
You would need 6 projectors, positive x, negative x, positive y, negative y, positive z, negative z. The screenshots I saw suggested they don't have full coverage. It looks like they are using 4 external projectors to project onto the screen. Unsurprisingly, 4/6 = partial coverage.
An interesting approach would be to embed 6 projectors inside a large sphere and back-project onto the surface. This would give you the full 4*pi steradians coverage (minus the hole for running cables inside). Cooling would be a problem.
MAD is working. If you recall, there were several "little" wars during the Cold War. A lawsuit like this is the Transnat Megacorp equivalent of the US of A and USSR duking it out in some south east asian country. Don't worry, we're not at Global Thermonuclear Patent War yet...
(Geez, I'm re-reading my post and that last sentence scares the shit out of me.)
(Analogy: imagine someone had invented a pill that kept people from thinking about molesting children, and that they wouldn't let anyone move to their town unless they agreed to take that pill. Would you feel comfortable agreeing to that, even though it was for a good cause? What if you knew the pill could easily be altered in the future to, say, force people to vote for a particular political party? Remember, once you've moved to the new town, you'll have to either accept any additional pills they decide to require in the future, or pack up and move to another town again... which might be very inconvenient for you, especially if there are no longer any "pill-free" towns nearby)
The answer for me and millions of people (probably including you) is yes. Floridation of the water supply. A chemical agent for a "good cause". This is a real world issue that people still debate today. However, the general populace could care less.
That is a great explanation. But I don't really understand why you would wait for stress to break the hollow fibers. If the released resin makes the material stronger, then why not just pre-break the hollow fibers here on Earth before launching the spacecraft.
IOW, just build it strong in the first place.
I was thinking it would be something more like a circulatory system. Suppose that you don't know in advance which parts of the spacecraft will undergo stress. To ensure mission success you would have to harden every part of the spacecraft, which is very expensive. Instead, you build the spacecraft with a nominal hardness and globally circulate some small quantity of glue/resin through tubes. When a part of the craft breaks the resin spills out locally and hardens. That would allow building more durable spacecraft more cheaply.
Would something like that make sense?
Note: I am not a material scientist. Please explain it to me. Thanks.
Interesting to see other users commenting that they read Slashdot at 4+. I have always done so and I find Slashdot unbearable otherwise. (Currently reading 4+ with -2 to everything except Informative.)
If Slashdot wants to attract more users, perhaps consider making the default filter 4+?
Since it is only one type of molecule and only one molecule thick, the refractive index of the material would be constant. So if it had any color at all, it would be a constant color, not a rainbow like oil or a prism produces.
Treatment using refractive index is not possible. A material like this would be subject to quantum chromodynamics. By the way, a rainbow like oil is caused by iridescence, a phenomenon caused by light reflecting off two surfaces with varying separation. There is a bit of a simple write up on this at the end of chapter 1 of Feynman's QED.
Heisenberg is driving his car, when he gets pulled over by a cop. The cop asks him "Do you know how fast you were going?"
To which Heisenberg replies "No, but I know where I am!"
I am somewhate loathe to respond, but I feel that I must. Please, please do not spread this joke any more, despite how funny it is. It is scientifically incorrect.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (UP) is not an either/or proposition. It makes a statement about the minimum error in the measurement of both momentum and position. (delta-x * delta-p) >= (h / (4 * pi)). You can read more on the UP here.
In the joke, Heisenberg states "No, but I know where I am!". The joke seems to imply that some sort of trade off has occurred between him knowing his speed (momentum) and knowing his position. This is incorrect. The UP has nothing to do with exchanging knowledge of one with the other.
Furthermore, the joke is forgiveably wrong about the "... I know where I am!" part. It is impossible to know exactly where you are because a zero error in position violates the UP. This is trivially shown by plugging in zero for delta-x. The inequality is violated.
Why should we care? It is funny anyways, right? We should care because modern physics is becoming increasingly non-intuitive. It is important that people grasp the correct meaning of physics principles since they cannot rely on their common sense to guide them. So let's not spread this joke anymore, okay?
Filesize: Size always matters. Will a 10 GB music collection fit on a budget portable player? I want to fit mine on a memory stick. I think that would be pretty exciting.
Quality: Funny how you mention 192 KB/s MP3 as good enough. I remember that when MP3 first came out myself and my friends all encoded at 128. That was the "standard". Over the next few years it has slowly crept up to 192. I wouldn't be surprised if in another few years 256 becomes normal.
Portability: You claim portability is the killer feature. What is portability anyway? It's high quality with a small filesize. So the main advantage of MP3 is exactly the two attributes you were dismissive of.
Bottom line is that people do care and they do want a format better than MP3.
Slashdot Mirror
Billion-km is useless but AU is meaningless too. For a unit of measurement to be meaningful you have to link it to a physical observation. No human will ever observe an AU, even if they go into space. If you ever get far enough out to have an AU in your field of view then the Earth will be too small to see.
Light-hours is not that useful either since we're not fast enough (or sensitive enough) to see photons of light traveling at the speed of light.
The only thing I can think of that might be useful is the speed of sound. Nearly everyone has observed the difference between lightning and thunder. So, in those terms it would take about 1400 years for you to hear the thunder.
You make some good points but colour perception is not completely arbitrary. Life on Earth evolved to perceive a specific band of wavelengths due to the absorption characteristics of water. It is reasonable to assume that aliens would perceive the same range of colors if they also started out in water. Of course, their idea of beauty will not necessarily match ours. But, at the least, they would be able to see all the same colours that we do.
I don't see how this gets modded up. Freedom of the press should not be described as: "... reporters to be able to go anywhere without revealing their identity". There are some serious privacy issues in a statement like that. A journalist is not a government appointed position. They cannot have any rights above those granted to an ordinay person. A person cannot invade a home or a private party. Defcon is very much like a private party. An allowance has been made for journalists to attend so long as they identify themselves. That seems fair.
I assume that someone has a patent on this protein making it ... Intellectual Property.
I agree with the spirit of the parent post. However, I wanted to clear something up which may not be apparent to people outside of NASA. JPL is a government faclity, but it has no employees. All of the people who work at the JPL facility are Caltech employees. The lawyers EccentricAnomaly refers to are Caltech lawyers.
This is an unusual situation and causes a lot of confusion. On the one hand, all of the work is government funded. OTOH, all of the employees and their IP are private sector.
This duality makes it really hard to develop and release software at JPL.
EA, you should review your employment contract with Caltech. I'm surprised that you aren't allowed to contribute to OSS in your spare time.
How does this get modded informative? The linked site provides zero supporting documentation for how the numbers are computed. This could only be modded speculative. A category which does not exist (for good reason).
Note the original poster's point: "Supply is low" because of scalpers (who have no intention of actually using the product) waiting on line to grab the PS3s before legitimate buyers can.
Scalping isn't an instance of "the free market", it's actually an attempt to profit through interference with the processes of the free market. So yes: "Parasites" is actually an excellent choice of word.
Don't get confused, there are two free markets here. A PS3 market and a labor market.
Supply of PS3 is not "low". Low is a relative word that requires comparison to something else. There is simply a quantity of PS3s for sale and a quantity of demand for those PS3s. The supply and demand set a fair price. This is basic economics taught at the high school level.
Labor is work. It is a free market where high demand and low supply workers clear at higher prices (i.e. get higher salaries).
Example 1: high priced CEOs don't write computer software. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced programmers to write the software for them.
Example 2: high priced computer programmers don't wait in line. Instead they hire (relatively) lower priced line-waiters to stand in line for them.
You can call these line-waiters scalpers or parasites all you want. But don't tell me that they're interfering with the process of the free market.
Looks like it is real, but seems like a hoax due to the mislinked 2005 press release. Here is a 2006 nasa.gov press release
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/dec/HQ_06371_ Ames_Google.html
which names
"Chris C. Kemp, director of strategic business development at Ames"
Ain't it funny his writing was entitled, "The Origin of the Species." When he did not mean origin. Heh.
Actually, the book is titled:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
(source: Wikipedia)
The book is about (the act of) speciation. The title refers to the mechanism by which scientists create categories and assign creatures to a category. More interestingly, it covers what separates categories and how categories are created or changed over time. i.e. evolution.
The book is not about the ancestral origin of a species or "the Species".
Huh? I don't underst-
You mean,
this isn't ... real?
Noooooo!
Please note that Spore has not been released yet.
I don't know how NOAA is doing it. But, an obvious method would be to use projected cubemaps. A cubemap is basically a cube inscribed in a sphere. It is very easy to work with since the data is planar. Ask any computer graphics expert or game developer for more details.
You would need 6 projectors, positive x, negative x, positive y, negative y, positive z, negative z. The screenshots I saw suggested they don't have full coverage. It looks like they are using 4 external projectors to project onto the screen. Unsurprisingly, 4/6 = partial coverage.
An interesting approach would be to embed 6 projectors inside a large sphere and back-project onto the surface. This would give you the full 4*pi steradians coverage (minus the hole for running cables inside). Cooling would be a problem.
MAD is working. If you recall, there were several "little" wars during the Cold War. A lawsuit like this is the Transnat Megacorp equivalent of the US of A and USSR duking it out in some south east asian country. Don't worry, we're not at Global Thermonuclear Patent War yet ...
(Geez, I'm re-reading my post and that last sentence scares the shit out of me.)
The answer for me and millions of people (probably including you) is yes. Floridation of the water supply. A chemical agent for a "good cause". This is a real world issue that people still debate today. However, the general populace could care less.
IOW, just build it strong in the first place.
I was thinking it would be something more like a circulatory system. Suppose that you don't know in advance which parts of the spacecraft will undergo stress. To ensure mission success you would have to harden every part of the spacecraft, which is very expensive. Instead, you build the spacecraft with a nominal hardness and globally circulate some small quantity of glue/resin through tubes. When a part of the craft breaks the resin spills out locally and hardens. That would allow building more durable spacecraft more cheaply.
Would something like that make sense?
Note: I am not a material scientist. Please explain it to me. Thanks.
WOO-HOO!
(I didn't read past that point.)
If Slashdot wants to attract more users, perhaps consider making the default filter 4+?
NetHack. Play online by telnet at nethack.alt.org. You can spectate other people's games and send them messages while they're playing.
Warning: map24 uses Java.
Seems to be a hoax.
The future of Google desktop. Your keys.
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (UP) is not an either/or proposition. It makes a statement about the minimum error in the measurement of both momentum and position. (delta-x * delta-p) >= (h / (4 * pi)). You can read more on the UP here.
In the joke, Heisenberg states "No, but I know where I am!". The joke seems to imply that some sort of trade off has occurred between him knowing his speed (momentum) and knowing his position. This is incorrect. The UP has nothing to do with exchanging knowledge of one with the other.
Furthermore, the joke is forgiveably wrong about the "... I know where I am!" part. It is impossible to know exactly where you are because a zero error in position violates the UP. This is trivially shown by plugging in zero for delta-x. The inequality is violated.
Why should we care? It is funny anyways, right? We should care because modern physics is becoming increasingly non-intuitive. It is important that people grasp the correct meaning of physics principles since they cannot rely on their common sense to guide them. So let's not spread this joke anymore, okay?
Quality: Funny how you mention 192 KB/s MP3 as good enough. I remember that when MP3 first came out myself and my friends all encoded at 128. That was the "standard". Over the next few years it has slowly crept up to 192. I wouldn't be surprised if in another few years 256 becomes normal.
Portability: You claim portability is the killer feature. What is portability anyway? It's high quality with a small filesize. So the main advantage of MP3 is exactly the two attributes you were dismissive of.
Bottom line is that people do care and they do want a format better than MP3.