If your standard connector is going to have exposed contacts, then having the most exposed one at a voltage level of 0V (relative to other devices using the same power source) is probably a good idea.
Something with no exposed contacts would be a better idea though. Something using induction would be better still, but that would need AC and therefore rectification, and i've got no idea of the efficiencies of an inductive coupling, especially at low voltages.
I had exactly the same thought but you beat me to the post:)
At the very least, any low power power distribution system should include per device monitoring, with negotiation of power requirements. eg if a device says it wants 10W of power, and suddenly tries to draw 50W, something is probably wrong.
If the moisture in the air already consisted of tiny droplets then it might work. If the lasers turned the water to steam then you wouldn't be able to see it anymore. Remember, steam is invisible. What you see coming out of your kettle is steam which has condensed into tiny drops of water.
To further elaborate on your point, it only has to prevent the propogation of your genes to the next generation. This can be caused by many things, eg: . Not getting laid (warts etc making you undesirable) . Infertility (a few STD's do this) . Producing no viable offspring (still born etc or born very sick and dying shortly after. a few STD's do this too) . Dying before your offspring can take care of themselves (eg the STD doesn't have to kill you straight away).
All in all i think that STD's would provide some natural selection pressure, but i think you'd have to do a bit more study to try and find a causal link between STD's and monagamy...
Slime Moulds are basically single celled organisms, and while they can achieve some interesting feats, they don't have a nervous system that could in any way be called central.
Fascinating things though... never knew anything about them before just now:)
I'm right now struggling with the various implementations of NAT-T (IPSEC NAT Traversal) and the fact that they won't play nice together. Wouldn't be necessary with IPv6.
Ever tried to set up a VPN between two sites which both use 10.0.0.0/24 as their network range?
Ever wished you could just ssh direct to your desktop machine from home without futzing around with vpns?
So you may not want it or see the need for it, but if you understood the amount of work that has gone into making NAT the 'solution' it is today you might appreciate it a little more:p
The more I read polarised opinions like yours the more I warm to the idea that there is a wider biological difference between different people than is generally understood.
Most of the studies I am aware of on how humans react to different things (be it different sleeping patterns or food additives) fail to consider that the people in their sample group might be from a similar gene pool and so might react the same.
Consider the different 'races' (don't flame me for using that word please:) of humans. One group of people living in a hostile environment (lions, tigers, grue's, whatever) over a period of several thousand generations might have developed a completely different sleep pattern to a group living in relative safety. You don't want to be too much of a heavy sleeper if something could find you and eat you at a moments notice! On the other hand if you can sleep deeply in relative safely, it would be an advantage to do so.
So assuming that my reasoning is valid, there is an example of two groups who could respond quite differently to a study into sleeping patterns...
Uh oh... There are quite a few people on slashdot who are aware of the theories of thermodynamics... and you are probably going to hear from all of them!
Or more to the point, how does the current stuff work? What is the trigger for it turning from the liquid form into a solid?
I can make two guesses, either it hardens in the presence of oxygen (or something else in the air), which won't work in space, or it remains liquid under pressure and hardens once the pressure eases (eg it has sprung a leak). The pressure thing would result in the whole lot hardening once a hole occured, which still wouldn't work.
This is one thing that has always bugged me about (most) religions. On the one hand it is said that God (s/God/Deity of your choice) is infallible, and that the Bible (s/Bible/Religous text of your choice) is the word of God. But on the other hand, people say that their religion is flexible and adaptive. I can understand how the Bible is a bit hazy on some points, and this 'flexibility' can take the form of applying a different interpretation to some of the hazier points, but on some things it is pretty concrete.
I was going to continue along these lines but was just checking the ten commandments on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments) and noticed that #9 under "Jewish Understanding" is "eat a booger". This gave me enought of a laugh that I just don't feel like typing anymore. Hooray for wikipedia! I'm off to clean the kitchen.
I was sitting here reading this in frustration... there is no free energy!!! Any energy you generate from a car passing over something must take energy away from the car itself, presumably by slowing it down.
But then your comment on downhill slopes made it suddenly make a bit more sense. If you had a device which (somehow) harnessed the energy of a vehicle coming down a hill, or a truck slowing down at traffic lights, then you might be onto something. The vehicle is already turning its kenetic energy into heat (and noise) in the brake pads.
It all sounds like a bit of a wank though. Like the idiots that think they can tap the alternator on a car and get 'free' power.
The best bet to save energy would be a flywheel in a car that speeds up when you hit the brakes (energy that would normally go to heating up the brake pads instead speeds up the flywheel). Then when you accellerate again, that flywheel energy can be delivered back to the wheels. Start stop driving suddenly doesn't use nearly as much energy as it could. The flywheel also only really has energy when you are stopped at the lights, which is good from a safety point of view, and friction wouldn't be such a concern since you are only stopped for a short time.
You could make a _very_ thin playdoh film (or a film of something else) that slips over your fingerprint. It would only have to be thick enough to fill in the ridges in your fingerprint and provide a new set of it's own. I'm not sure if a thinly covered finger could be differentiated from a non-covered finger.
Thanks for giving me a laugh on an otherwise dull morning:)
One would assume that the persons ordering the pizza in the base would have contacted security to let them know that a pizza delivery was coming. Not that it really adds a lot to the security but you couldn't just put a sign on your car and rock up.
For most security systems that i'm aware of, the simplest way through would be to thwart the human element rather than concentrate on anything technical.
Hey i've got an idea. Instead of measuring some attribute of the body, for which a circumvention appears only moments away, why not instead have a string of symbols (letters, numbers, etc) that you have to commit to memory. When you wish to access a computer system, instead of presenting your finger or retina to be scanned, you just key in the string of symbols you have previously remembered. This would also allow such a system to work remotely where the scanners aren't available.
Obviously such a system has it's flaws, you would have to make sure that your pass string isn't something that would be easily guessable, and that the mechanism that you deliver your pass string to the system is secure. These are all flaws that could be worked out in time though.
I'm sure that my new pass string (or "pass word" if you like) authentication mechanism overcomes many of the flaws of the older finger/retina scanning systems, and is the way of the future. I don't suspect that I will have any problems getting a patent for my idea. I think i'm going to be rich!
When I broke a thermometer (was shaking it and it just flew out of my hand and into a wall!) I read up on what to do... Most of the information I read said that you could ingest liquid mercury and not expect too much hassle, it would just pass through you (but don't make a habit of it!:). The thing to watch out for was the vapour, as that would get into your body a lot more readily.
I think it gets to be a serious problem if you are breathing in the vapour over a long time.
In my case, I got hold of some sulphur, sprinkled it on the carpet, and vacuumed it up. The vacuum cleaner stunk of sulphur for months afterwards:(
The thing is, it's funny because it is based on a generalisation. It's also funny because it cleverly ties in some of the themes of the article and the current thread in a way that probably hadn't occured to most people (or at least, it hadn't for me)
I would score the joke a 7 out of 10, well above the lameness threshold.
I guess the same goes for what you pay the employees too. You can pay someone minimum wage and have them rip you off by your $300 amount, or you can pay them more (and possibly still have them rip you off).
I think the idea is that theft can just be opportunistic, you see something there and decide to put it under your coat. It's also harder to enforce in a lot of cases, and sometimes the motive can be hunger or mental illness (okay not really a motive but you see what i'm getting at).
Forgery though almost always implies premeditation. You can't just say "It was a spur of the moment thing, I don't know why I did it and i am truly sorry". The only expression of regret you can really give in a case of forgery is "i'm sorry i got caught", which doesn't go down really well with the judge.
But taking potshots at scientology is just so easy. I'd consider myself an athiest, but I can understand how followers of most mainstream religeons could believe what they believe based on the evidence presented to them. The bible is old enough that origins have been lost in the sands of time. I've seen enough evidence to consider that Jesus quite possibly existed, even if he was just another cult leader. And apart from a few fundamentalists, it is a widely held belief that the bible and other religious texts aren't actually meant to be taken literally, eg that 'God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days' was just the best description that could be given at the time. I kind of think that the scientology literature is meant to be taken as written, which is kind of stupid.
Many atrocities have been committed in the names of the various religions, and i'd agree that more bad things have been committed in the name of christianity than in the name of scientology, but just how many scientologists have existed, ever? Try thinking about it this way... create a system of point scoring per evil committed in the name of either faith (it probably doesn't matter how you score it, but probably stick to stuff that isn't too far away from the core beliefs of that faith... eg I don't think christianity actually says that witches should be burnt, or that the practice was carried out by any but a few small sects). That will give you a raw 'evil rating' for each faith. Now divide by the number of followers of that faith who have existed, ever, and come up with an number.
From what i've read about scientology, the manipulation and blackmail of people is actually built into it, rather than christianity where, really, all they're saying is be nice to each other.
Non-scientology religions have their problems, but I wouldn't hold anyone in contempt if they did some scientology bashing without batting an eye at any other faith. Afterall, the whole thing could have been put together by a sci-fi author.
Presently, minced up animal guts are only one of many ways to make biodiesel, and the animals were not killed for that purpose. I think using animals is only efficient because it's only leftovers... I suspect (my suspicions have been known to be wrong though:) that growing food to feed to animals for the primary purpose of making fuel would be less efficient than turning the food directly into fuel.
Anyway, depending on who you listen to, the current petroleum reserves we are using now come in part from animals, which also weren't killed to make fuel.
But whatever the reason, you have made the decision not to use animal products and there are enough vegetarians around that the marketplace is probably going to have to respect your choices... I can just imagine now the different types of bio-diesel being sold at the bowser one day...
Regular - containing whatever was available Kosher - no pig guts NoCow - no cow guts (there might be a more proper name for this) Vegetarian - not made from any leftovers from the death of an animal Vegan - not made from any animal products at all (hey... maybe they might be able to make biodiesel from wool fat or milk!)
Slashdot Mirror
If your standard connector is going to have exposed contacts, then having the most exposed one at a voltage level of 0V (relative to other devices using the same power source) is probably a good idea.
Something with no exposed contacts would be a better idea though. Something using induction would be better still, but that would need AC and therefore rectification, and i've got no idea of the efficiencies of an inductive coupling, especially at low voltages.
I had exactly the same thought but you beat me to the post :)
At the very least, any low power power distribution system should include per device monitoring, with negotiation of power requirements. eg if a device says it wants 10W of power, and suddenly tries to draw 50W, something is probably wrong.
If the moisture in the air already consisted of tiny droplets then it might work. If the lasers turned the water to steam then you wouldn't be able to see it anymore. Remember, steam is invisible. What you see coming out of your kettle is steam which has condensed into tiny drops of water.
:)
+1 pedantic
To further elaborate on your point, it only has to prevent the propogation of your genes to the next generation. This can be caused by many things, eg:
. Not getting laid (warts etc making you undesirable)
. Infertility (a few STD's do this)
. Producing no viable offspring (still born etc or born very sick and dying shortly after. a few STD's do this too)
. Dying before your offspring can take care of themselves (eg the STD doesn't have to kill you straight away).
All in all i think that STD's would provide some natural selection pressure, but i think you'd have to do a bit more study to try and find a causal link between STD's and monagamy...
Slime Moulds are basically single celled organisms, and while they can achieve some interesting feats, they don't have a nervous system that could in any way be called central.
Fascinating things though... never knew anything about them before just now :)
hmmmm... might work... what's the speed of sound in a vacuum again? :)
I'm right now struggling with the various implementations of NAT-T (IPSEC NAT Traversal) and the fact that they won't play nice together. Wouldn't be necessary with IPv6.
:p
Ever tried to set up a VPN between two sites which both use 10.0.0.0/24 as their network range?
Ever wished you could just ssh direct to your desktop machine from home without futzing around with vpns?
So you may not want it or see the need for it, but if you understood the amount of work that has gone into making NAT the 'solution' it is today you might appreciate it a little more
The more I read polarised opinions like yours the more I warm to the idea that there is a wider biological difference between different people than is generally understood.
:) of humans. One group of people living in a hostile environment (lions, tigers, grue's, whatever) over a period of several thousand generations might have developed a completely different sleep pattern to a group living in relative safety. You don't want to be too much of a heavy sleeper if something could find you and eat you at a moments notice! On the other hand if you can sleep deeply in relative safely, it would be an advantage to do so.
Most of the studies I am aware of on how humans react to different things (be it different sleeping patterns or food additives) fail to consider that the people in their sample group might be from a similar gene pool and so might react the same.
Consider the different 'races' (don't flame me for using that word please
So assuming that my reasoning is valid, there is an example of two groups who could respond quite differently to a study into sleeping patterns...
Uh oh... There are quite a few people on slashdot who are aware of the theories of thermodynamics... and you are probably going to hear from all of them!
I do this with some things, but so many things lose their time when you cut their power, even for a few seconds.
Oh for a perfect utopia where all household devices could timesync via some low bandwidth signal from the household electicity supply...
Or more to the point, how does the current stuff work? What is the trigger for it turning from the liquid form into a solid?
I can make two guesses, either it hardens in the presence of oxygen (or something else in the air), which won't work in space, or it remains liquid under pressure and hardens once the pressure eases (eg it has sprung a leak). The pressure thing would result in the whole lot hardening once a hole occured, which still wouldn't work.
hmmmm....
This is one thing that has always bugged me about (most) religions. On the one hand it is said that God (s/God/Deity of your choice) is infallible, and that the Bible (s/Bible/Religous text of your choice) is the word of God. But on the other hand, people say that their religion is flexible and adaptive. I can understand how the Bible is a bit hazy on some points, and this 'flexibility' can take the form of applying a different interpretation to some of the hazier points, but on some things it is pretty concrete.
I was going to continue along these lines but was just checking the ten commandments on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments) and noticed that #9 under "Jewish Understanding" is "eat a booger". This gave me enought of a laugh that I just don't feel like typing anymore. Hooray for wikipedia! I'm off to clean the kitchen.
if the bathrooms are a mess then your employer is a bum.
... or a man. Or, more seriously, your potential workmates are slobs.
I was sitting here reading this in frustration... there is no free energy!!! Any energy you generate from a car passing over something must take energy away from the car itself, presumably by slowing it down.
But then your comment on downhill slopes made it suddenly make a bit more sense. If you had a device which (somehow) harnessed the energy of a vehicle coming down a hill, or a truck slowing down at traffic lights, then you might be onto something. The vehicle is already turning its kenetic energy into heat (and noise) in the brake pads.
It all sounds like a bit of a wank though. Like the idiots that think they can tap the alternator on a car and get 'free' power.
The best bet to save energy would be a flywheel in a car that speeds up when you hit the brakes (energy that would normally go to heating up the brake pads instead speeds up the flywheel). Then when you accellerate again, that flywheel energy can be delivered back to the wheels. Start stop driving suddenly doesn't use nearly as much energy as it could. The flywheel also only really has energy when you are stopped at the lights, which is good from a safety point of view, and friction wouldn't be such a concern since you are only stopped for a short time.
No. That would be Unix Systems Administrators. Please surrender your geek card and pocket protector at the door.
You could make a _very_ thin playdoh film (or a film of something else) that slips over your fingerprint. It would only have to be thick enough to fill in the ridges in your fingerprint and provide a new set of it's own. I'm not sure if a thinly covered finger could be differentiated from a non-covered finger.
The guard had better be armed
That's generally the idea isn't it? Not much point having a guard who's best offensive action is to yell out "Stop right there you nasty, nasty man".
Thanks for giving me a laugh on an otherwise dull morning :)
One would assume that the persons ordering the pizza in the base would have contacted security to let them know that a pizza delivery was coming. Not that it really adds a lot to the security but you couldn't just put a sign on your car and rock up.
For most security systems that i'm aware of, the simplest way through would be to thwart the human element rather than concentrate on anything technical.
Hey i've got an idea. Instead of measuring some attribute of the body, for which a circumvention appears only moments away, why not instead have a string of symbols (letters, numbers, etc) that you have to commit to memory. When you wish to access a computer system, instead of presenting your finger or retina to be scanned, you just key in the string of symbols you have previously remembered. This would also allow such a system to work remotely where the scanners aren't available.
Obviously such a system has it's flaws, you would have to make sure that your pass string isn't something that would be easily guessable, and that the mechanism that you deliver your pass string to the system is secure. These are all flaws that could be worked out in time though.
I'm sure that my new pass string (or "pass word" if you like) authentication mechanism overcomes many of the flaws of the older finger/retina scanning systems, and is the way of the future. I don't suspect that I will have any problems getting a patent for my idea. I think i'm going to be rich!
When I broke a thermometer (was shaking it and it just flew out of my hand and into a wall!) I read up on what to do... Most of the information I read said that you could ingest liquid mercury and not expect too much hassle, it would just pass through you (but don't make a habit of it! :). The thing to watch out for was the vapour, as that would get into your body a lot more readily.
:(
I think it gets to be a serious problem if you are breathing in the vapour over a long time.
In my case, I got hold of some sulphur, sprinkled it on the carpet, and vacuumed it up. The vacuum cleaner stunk of sulphur for months afterwards
The thing is, it's funny because it is based on a generalisation. It's also funny because it cleverly ties in some of the themes of the article and the current thread in a way that probably hadn't occured to most people (or at least, it hadn't for me)
I would score the joke a 7 out of 10, well above the lameness threshold.
I guess the same goes for what you pay the employees too. You can pay someone minimum wage and have them rip you off by your $300 amount, or you can pay them more (and possibly still have them rip you off).
I think the idea is that theft can just be opportunistic, you see something there and decide to put it under your coat. It's also harder to enforce in a lot of cases, and sometimes the motive can be hunger or mental illness (okay not really a motive but you see what i'm getting at).
Forgery though almost always implies premeditation. You can't just say "It was a spur of the moment thing, I don't know why I did it and i am truly sorry". The only expression of regret you can really give in a case of forgery is "i'm sorry i got caught", which doesn't go down really well with the judge.
But taking potshots at scientology is just so easy. I'd consider myself an athiest, but I can understand how followers of most mainstream religeons could believe what they believe based on the evidence presented to them. The bible is old enough that origins have been lost in the sands of time. I've seen enough evidence to consider that Jesus quite possibly existed, even if he was just another cult leader. And apart from a few fundamentalists, it is a widely held belief that the bible and other religious texts aren't actually meant to be taken literally, eg that 'God created the heavens and the earth in 6 days' was just the best description that could be given at the time. I kind of think that the scientology literature is meant to be taken as written, which is kind of stupid.
Many atrocities have been committed in the names of the various religions, and i'd agree that more bad things have been committed in the name of christianity than in the name of scientology, but just how many scientologists have existed, ever? Try thinking about it this way... create a system of point scoring per evil committed in the name of either faith (it probably doesn't matter how you score it, but probably stick to stuff that isn't too far away from the core beliefs of that faith... eg I don't think christianity actually says that witches should be burnt, or that the practice was carried out by any but a few small sects). That will give you a raw 'evil rating' for each faith. Now divide by the number of followers of that faith who have existed, ever, and come up with an number.
From what i've read about scientology, the manipulation and blackmail of people is actually built into it, rather than christianity where, really, all they're saying is be nice to each other.
Non-scientology religions have their problems, but I wouldn't hold anyone in contempt if they did some scientology bashing without batting an eye at any other faith. Afterall, the whole thing could have been put together by a sci-fi author.
Presently, minced up animal guts are only one of many ways to make biodiesel, and the animals were not killed for that purpose. I think using animals is only efficient because it's only leftovers... I suspect (my suspicions have been known to be wrong though :) that growing food to feed to animals for the primary purpose of making fuel would be less efficient than turning the food directly into fuel.
Anyway, depending on who you listen to, the current petroleum reserves we are using now come in part from animals, which also weren't killed to make fuel.
But whatever the reason, you have made the decision not to use animal products and there are enough vegetarians around that the marketplace is probably going to have to respect your choices... I can just imagine now the different types of bio-diesel being sold at the bowser one day...
Regular - containing whatever was available
Kosher - no pig guts
NoCow - no cow guts (there might be a more proper name for this)
Vegetarian - not made from any leftovers from the death of an animal
Vegan - not made from any animal products at all (hey... maybe they might be able to make biodiesel from wool fat or milk!)