The danger in the pacemakers comes from chemical toxicity, the amount of radiation released from that quantity of Pu-238 is relatively minor. In fact, Am-241 (smoke detectors) has a decay energy of 2200 kEv, Pu-238's is 2400, a difference of only 8.4%; both are alpha decay.
I'd be really interested to see how much power per volume/weight the new betavoltaics are capable of generating. I think there's already a fairly large market for tritium products; exit signs, watches, comapsses, the ever-popular glowrings, and gun sights. But yes, there's certainly more economy in greater scale.
Hell yes, now I don't have to type one handed while looking at porn.
Seriously though, it's this kind of silly hysteria about radioactive material that prevents it from being more widely adopted. In reality the weak beta radiation from tritium cannot escape the illumination vial, nevermind the watch, and even if it could, it could not penetrate your skin. And even if you ate the entire thing, it is quickly flushed from your body, and even if it wasn't, it's still less the natural radioactivity you recieve in a month anyway.
Now contrast that with drinking the contents of a lead-acid battery, I'll let you guess which is the greater danger to human health.:)
How's that any different from Americium-241 based smoke detectors, multiples of which are installed in every home (by law)? A tiny amount of radioactive material just really isn't the threat you make it out to be.
Betavoltaics and plutonium thermopiles are both too expensive and don't provide enough power to be useful, and the latter is quite bulky. The only nuclear battery that is capable of supplying enough power is a Polonium-based battery, which is extremely expensive, highly toxic, and only has a half-life of a month. Due to the cost and short half-life, these were used mostly to demonstrate the power and promise of nuclear energy in a compact form, but were never commercially viable.
I love my tritium for illumination, but I'm afraid nuclear batteries are best suited for other applications in their current form and limitations.
What I think has the most promise is a conventional Li-Polymer cell augmented by solar cells or betavoltaics to increase the standby time, and maybe, if the current is enough to fulfill the stnadby requirements, even slowly recharge the battery when the device is off.
But using nuclear batteries as the main power source just isn't an option with the current technology available, I'm afraid.
Even if the US has good intentions with the moon, other countries probably do not. Consider Antartica for example-- supposedly neutral and unclaimable. Well, in reality, countries have already claimed all of it. How much of Antartica has the US claimed? None at all.
So it doesn't really matter what treaties or promises the US makes; other countries who didn't sign those treaties will greedily do whatever they can to increase their power and wealth.
Due to the cost of space travel this won't be an issue with the moon for a very long time. But I'm sure it will be someday.
Glocks have always showed up on both metal detectors and X-Ray machines. In addition to the 2 pounds of ordinance steel in the slide, the polymer frame shows up clear as day in an X-Ray. (the polymer frame also has numerous metal components within it, but I'll save you the technical dissertation)
You need metal to make a gun, period. In addition, the ammo casings and bullets are metal as well.
You've never used a MX1000, and you bash it because you didn't like the MX700, and call anyone who bought one stupid?
Yeah, ok. Try actually using it before you start inventing theories on how it performs.
Right, and that doesn't happen on the MX1000
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There is *no* delay in that. Maybe there is in some cordless mice-- I don't know. I've only used the MX1000. It sounds like you're taking the behavior of one mouse, and applying it to the MX1000 without having used it.
I'm not trying to be a Logitech fanboi here, but damn people, at least use the thing before you put it down.
As someone who's used both a MX1000 and MX510 extensively in gaming, including sniping in Counter-Strike or whatever as you state, I can assure you there's no latency or problems with the MX1000 as far as gaming goes. Try it before you slam it. You call people who use a product you've never even tried stupid? Based on what, wild ass assumptions? That's not very logical. Every review of the MX1000 out there states they're great for gaming. And they are. I use a cheap mouse at work; there's a world of difference in ergonomics, precision, and tracking between the MX1000 and it. Latency isn't a factor. Period.
I'm sorry, but I owned a Newton and I don't agree. At the time the MP was released in 1993, there were many similar devices in that category. Yes, Apple did coin the phrase PDA, and I give them credit for it. But overall I wasn't a huge fan of the PIM apps and the handwriting recognition was abysmal until you loaded Palm software (before they made the Pilot)'s Graffiti on it.
Palm made the Casio/Tandy Zoomer PDA apps, and I actually thought those were a lot more useful than the Newton's, though the Zoomer sucked pretty bad due to the low-contrast screen and slow CPU.
Anyway, the Newton did have some nice things about the OS and interface that were pretty unique and not even included in today's PDAs but overall while I had fun with the Newton it was a pretty flawed device.
Thanks for the information. The only time I got dehydrated enough to cause them was when I had food poisoning (diarreha - tons of fluid loss), I was drinking gatorade like crazy but it took a while for them to go away.
I get PVCs sometimes too, if I get really dehydrated or stressed (long periods w/o sleep, etc). Were these related to your heart failure? What medication did you try for them? A beta blocker?
Thanks.
(sorry, I don't see a way to PM/email)
"But officer, I just jacked my neighbor's car to prove how insecure his door locks were! I was going to return it!"
Sorry, but it's very easy to do any number of illegal things you can rationalize away all you want, some even of which are victimless, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.
It would be very easy for someone to pop my sliding glass door open and enter my home. It doesn't mean it should be legal, regardless of their intentions. I fail to see how electronic crime is any different.
The RealID thing isn't the collapse of Western Civilization in and of itself, no. However, it is yet another bump on a rather disturbing road of ineffectual post-9/11 laws curtailing our freedoms for not much of a tangible benefit to national security. I think you have to look at the big picture here and the overall political climate, which I find to be more disturbing than any single new law getting passed.
Sadly, it seems that the terrorists were more effective than they knew. Four years later, and we're still slowly chipping away at personal freedom and privacy. Where's the fine line? When will it end? How much more freedom and privacy will we continue to give up over 9/11, and how much of it is actually effective in preventing future attacks?
Too much, and very little, I fear.
(who ran as a Rep) And very good guy, one of the few politicians that stands up for his principles and individual freedoms. That's why there will never be a unanimous passage of bills like this in the House -- just the Senate.
Unfortunately, Rep. Ron Paul is only one man. My Democrat friends think it's incredibly sad that only a Libertarian these days will stand up against Republicans.
If you do a thomas.loc.gov search, you'll see Ron Paul has authored a number of bills to rescind laws and restore rights to Americans. Unfortunately, most of these never get anywhere. Because neither Democrat nor Republican will stand with the lone Libertarian in restoring freedoms to Americans.
Flamebait? Look at the voting record and the bill history before you're so quick to judge. It's all there and well documented.
Are you sure about that? The Real ID vote proves that right now, politicians are going to support "security" measures such as these, regardless of how many of their consituents or the ACLU write in.
I will bet you that every single provision in the Patriot Act is reinstated. NO politician is going to want to see "was weak on the war on terror" come reelection.
In fact, last I heard the Justice Department was actually asking for expanded powers in the Patriot Act. Whether or not that survived the transition of AG's, I can't tell you.
Remember, the Patriot Act passed by an overwhelming majority the first time, and the only that's changed in the political climate will increase support for it-- not decrease.
I fully expect us to lose more freedoms in the "War on Terror" before it becomes politically incorrect to support such measures. It hasn't yet. And it won't before the Patriot Act is renewed.
If we're lucky, the new Patriot Act will have a sunset provision in it as well, and next time around, we'll do better off. If we're lucky. They could also make it permanent.
The Real ID act just passed in the Senate 100-0. The Patriot Act also passed by an overwhelming majority. No Democrat or Republican is going to stand up for you or your freedom. 100-0 for Real ID! Wake up, America. Stop electing totalitarian corporate puppets.
Personally, I think overall the DS has the best library-- not because of the native DS titles, which I consider to be disappointing, but because of the machine's ability to run GBA titles very well. Better, in fact, than a GBA SP, because the DS's screen is much, much better.
I have both a PSP and DS. I like the hardware of the PSP more, and between PSP and DS native titles, I like the PSP native titles more, but the truth is I play the DS more because of the excellent GBA library.
Now, not everyone is like me and can have fun with Super-Nintendo technology era games. But right now, the overall library of the DS+GBA games is better than the PSP library, imo. Though I will agree with you that the native PSP titles are better than the native DS titles.
While this is a very cool feat, the problem is that the exploit they use to run the code only works on the early Japanese machines, and has since been fixed by Sony. So it won't help us American gamers with newer machines, unless they find a different way to run code on the PSP.
Here's a tip for you guys. Politicians don't care what you think. If you fax, write, call them, you're not talking to them-- you're talking to their secretary. They will send you an autoresponse the senator ghostwrote. If you're lucky, he might even sign it, but it's usually a preprinted signature.
The senator will probably never see what you wrote him. Instead, his assistants will give him summary statistics on an issue, which he will probably ignore in favor of voting his party line, or what the people who really matter to him think.
And those people are the wealthy and corporations. Because they give him tons of money, and that's what he needs to remain in office. They are the people that can communicate directly with him.
Do you really expect your senator to personally chat with you? To bite the hand that feeds him? He won't. No, you'll just get an autoreply, and will have wasted your time.
Democrat, republican. It doesn't matter. They all operate using this same MO.
I hope you like getting form letters in response, because that is all you will accomplish.
So uh, why are a good 10% of the comments I've seen on this blaming Bush for a bill the democrats are happily voting into law? Wake up guys, both political parties are in screw-you mode.
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Considering the price of nuclear materials, you'd be losing nuclear batteries with about the same frequency you lose your wedding ring.
The danger in the pacemakers comes from chemical toxicity, the amount of radiation released from that quantity of Pu-238 is relatively minor. In fact, Am-241 (smoke detectors) has a decay energy of 2200 kEv, Pu-238's is 2400, a difference of only 8.4%; both are alpha decay.
I'd be really interested to see how much power per volume/weight the new betavoltaics are capable of generating. I think there's already a fairly large market for tritium products; exit signs, watches, comapsses, the ever-popular glowrings, and gun sights. But yes, there's certainly more economy in greater scale.
Hell yes, now I don't have to type one handed while looking at porn.
Seriously though, it's this kind of silly hysteria about radioactive material that prevents it from being more widely adopted. In reality the weak beta radiation from tritium cannot escape the illumination vial, nevermind the watch, and even if it could, it could not penetrate your skin. And even if you ate the entire thing, it is quickly flushed from your body, and even if it wasn't, it's still less the natural radioactivity you recieve in a month anyway.
Now contrast that with drinking the contents of a lead-acid battery, I'll let you guess which is the greater danger to human health. :)
How's that any different from Americium-241 based smoke detectors, multiples of which are installed in every home (by law)? A tiny amount of radioactive material just really isn't the threat you make it out to be.
Betavoltaics and plutonium thermopiles are both too expensive and don't provide enough power to be useful, and the latter is quite bulky. The only nuclear battery that is capable of supplying enough power is a Polonium-based battery, which is extremely expensive, highly toxic, and only has a half-life of a month. Due to the cost and short half-life, these were used mostly to demonstrate the power and promise of nuclear energy in a compact form, but were never commercially viable. I love my tritium for illumination, but I'm afraid nuclear batteries are best suited for other applications in their current form and limitations. What I think has the most promise is a conventional Li-Polymer cell augmented by solar cells or betavoltaics to increase the standby time, and maybe, if the current is enough to fulfill the stnadby requirements, even slowly recharge the battery when the device is off. But using nuclear batteries as the main power source just isn't an option with the current technology available, I'm afraid.
Even if the US has good intentions with the moon, other countries probably do not. Consider Antartica for example-- supposedly neutral and unclaimable. Well, in reality, countries have already claimed all of it. How much of Antartica has the US claimed? None at all. So it doesn't really matter what treaties or promises the US makes; other countries who didn't sign those treaties will greedily do whatever they can to increase their power and wealth. Due to the cost of space travel this won't be an issue with the moon for a very long time. But I'm sure it will be someday.
Glocks have always showed up on both metal detectors and X-Ray machines. In addition to the 2 pounds of ordinance steel in the slide, the polymer frame shows up clear as day in an X-Ray. (the polymer frame also has numerous metal components within it, but I'll save you the technical dissertation) You need metal to make a gun, period. In addition, the ammo casings and bullets are metal as well.
You've never used a MX1000, and you bash it because you didn't like the MX700, and call anyone who bought one stupid? Yeah, ok. Try actually using it before you start inventing theories on how it performs.
There is *no* delay in that. Maybe there is in some cordless mice-- I don't know. I've only used the MX1000. It sounds like you're taking the behavior of one mouse, and applying it to the MX1000 without having used it. I'm not trying to be a Logitech fanboi here, but damn people, at least use the thing before you put it down.
As someone who's used both a MX1000 and MX510 extensively in gaming, including sniping in Counter-Strike or whatever as you state, I can assure you there's no latency or problems with the MX1000 as far as gaming goes. Try it before you slam it. You call people who use a product you've never even tried stupid? Based on what, wild ass assumptions? That's not very logical. Every review of the MX1000 out there states they're great for gaming. And they are. I use a cheap mouse at work; there's a world of difference in ergonomics, precision, and tracking between the MX1000 and it. Latency isn't a factor. Period.
I'm sorry, but I owned a Newton and I don't agree. At the time the MP was released in 1993, there were many similar devices in that category. Yes, Apple did coin the phrase PDA, and I give them credit for it. But overall I wasn't a huge fan of the PIM apps and the handwriting recognition was abysmal until you loaded Palm software (before they made the Pilot)'s Graffiti on it. Palm made the Casio/Tandy Zoomer PDA apps, and I actually thought those were a lot more useful than the Newton's, though the Zoomer sucked pretty bad due to the low-contrast screen and slow CPU. Anyway, the Newton did have some nice things about the OS and interface that were pretty unique and not even included in today's PDAs but overall while I had fun with the Newton it was a pretty flawed device.
Thanks for the information. The only time I got dehydrated enough to cause them was when I had food poisoning (diarreha - tons of fluid loss), I was drinking gatorade like crazy but it took a while for them to go away.
I get PVCs sometimes too, if I get really dehydrated or stressed (long periods w/o sleep, etc). Were these related to your heart failure? What medication did you try for them? A beta blocker? Thanks. (sorry, I don't see a way to PM/email)
"But officer, I just jacked my neighbor's car to prove how insecure his door locks were! I was going to return it!" Sorry, but it's very easy to do any number of illegal things you can rationalize away all you want, some even of which are victimless, but just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. It would be very easy for someone to pop my sliding glass door open and enter my home. It doesn't mean it should be legal, regardless of their intentions. I fail to see how electronic crime is any different.
Thanks, I was looking for a term for Ep 1/2!
The RealID thing isn't the collapse of Western Civilization in and of itself, no. However, it is yet another bump on a rather disturbing road of ineffectual post-9/11 laws curtailing our freedoms for not much of a tangible benefit to national security. I think you have to look at the big picture here and the overall political climate, which I find to be more disturbing than any single new law getting passed. Sadly, it seems that the terrorists were more effective than they knew. Four years later, and we're still slowly chipping away at personal freedom and privacy. Where's the fine line? When will it end? How much more freedom and privacy will we continue to give up over 9/11, and how much of it is actually effective in preventing future attacks? Too much, and very little, I fear.
(who ran as a Rep) And very good guy, one of the few politicians that stands up for his principles and individual freedoms. That's why there will never be a unanimous passage of bills like this in the House -- just the Senate. Unfortunately, Rep. Ron Paul is only one man. My Democrat friends think it's incredibly sad that only a Libertarian these days will stand up against Republicans. If you do a thomas.loc.gov search, you'll see Ron Paul has authored a number of bills to rescind laws and restore rights to Americans. Unfortunately, most of these never get anywhere. Because neither Democrat nor Republican will stand with the lone Libertarian in restoring freedoms to Americans. Flamebait? Look at the voting record and the bill history before you're so quick to judge. It's all there and well documented.
Are you sure about that? The Real ID vote proves that right now, politicians are going to support "security" measures such as these, regardless of how many of their consituents or the ACLU write in. I will bet you that every single provision in the Patriot Act is reinstated. NO politician is going to want to see "was weak on the war on terror" come reelection. In fact, last I heard the Justice Department was actually asking for expanded powers in the Patriot Act. Whether or not that survived the transition of AG's, I can't tell you. Remember, the Patriot Act passed by an overwhelming majority the first time, and the only that's changed in the political climate will increase support for it-- not decrease. I fully expect us to lose more freedoms in the "War on Terror" before it becomes politically incorrect to support such measures. It hasn't yet. And it won't before the Patriot Act is renewed. If we're lucky, the new Patriot Act will have a sunset provision in it as well, and next time around, we'll do better off. If we're lucky. They could also make it permanent.
Check the voting record, the democrats supported it by an overwhelming majority as well. This will not be a campaign issue for Republicans.
The Real ID act just passed in the Senate 100-0. The Patriot Act also passed by an overwhelming majority. No Democrat or Republican is going to stand up for you or your freedom. 100-0 for Real ID! Wake up, America. Stop electing totalitarian corporate puppets.
Personally, I think overall the DS has the best library-- not because of the native DS titles, which I consider to be disappointing, but because of the machine's ability to run GBA titles very well. Better, in fact, than a GBA SP, because the DS's screen is much, much better. I have both a PSP and DS. I like the hardware of the PSP more, and between PSP and DS native titles, I like the PSP native titles more, but the truth is I play the DS more because of the excellent GBA library. Now, not everyone is like me and can have fun with Super-Nintendo technology era games. But right now, the overall library of the DS+GBA games is better than the PSP library, imo. Though I will agree with you that the native PSP titles are better than the native DS titles.
While this is a very cool feat, the problem is that the exploit they use to run the code only works on the early Japanese machines, and has since been fixed by Sony. So it won't help us American gamers with newer machines, unless they find a different way to run code on the PSP.
Here's a tip for you guys. Politicians don't care what you think. If you fax, write, call them, you're not talking to them-- you're talking to their secretary. They will send you an autoresponse the senator ghostwrote. If you're lucky, he might even sign it, but it's usually a preprinted signature. The senator will probably never see what you wrote him. Instead, his assistants will give him summary statistics on an issue, which he will probably ignore in favor of voting his party line, or what the people who really matter to him think. And those people are the wealthy and corporations. Because they give him tons of money, and that's what he needs to remain in office. They are the people that can communicate directly with him. Do you really expect your senator to personally chat with you? To bite the hand that feeds him? He won't. No, you'll just get an autoreply, and will have wasted your time. Democrat, republican. It doesn't matter. They all operate using this same MO. I hope you like getting form letters in response, because that is all you will accomplish.
So uh, why are a good 10% of the comments I've seen on this blaming Bush for a bill the democrats are happily voting into law? Wake up guys, both political parties are in screw-you mode.