Why do you folks capitalize the nouns? What are the "evolutionary advantages" of this approach? Is this a bug or a feature?
It's a feature. It makes texts easier to read, at the expense of putting a little bit of extra burden on the person writing the text. The same can be found in many other encoding schemes that have one sender and (usually) mutliple recipients, for example MPEG or MP3 - encoding is complicated (and it can be, because it's done only once), while decoding is relatively simple (because it's done much more often than encoding, and therefore making it simple saves much more effort than making encoding simple).
The exact opposite can be found in (usually) one-sender-one-recipient messaging systems - the sender saves some effort by putting more burden on the recipient. u no wt i mn, r8 ?
Personally, I don't see why individuals should be having secret votes.
And that's because...
People always talk about thugs and corporate masters... if a thug tries to bully you into voting the way they say, you refuse. If they try to behave violently afterward, they go to jail. No different from any other thug.
... you have a really rosy view of thugs and how many of them are caught. And once you're maimed/dead, or your property is vandalized, it really does you a lot of good that the thugs may go to jail (if caught). Or how about losing your job because you voted for a party that $BOSS didn't like ? Or people coming after you because you've voted a certain way two decades ago ?
Even though they generate light from super-heating tungsten wire, incandescent lights still refresh 60 times per second due to their power source...your alternating current electricity.
No. If anything, the "refresh" at twice the line frequency (120 Hz or 100 Hz), since a resistor doesn't distinguish between the two half-waves of a sine.
All Americans sell off their childhood belongings once they reach adulthood in order to build capital, thus providing better opportunity for profit.
.. or was that Ferengi?
Must have been the Ferengi. The Americans sell off their childhood belongings so they can pay the interest on the loands they used to buy adulthood belongings (plasma TV, boat, SUV, house).
Don't they run from a DC battery? (I don't know how vehicles work, but I've never noticed flickering. Now that you've mentioned it, it'll probably drive me crazy.)
They run from the alternator if the vehicle is moving.
I hate them because I cannot see the flicker when looking directly at them, but see it clearly when they are in my peripheral vision (makes sense - cones have a longer time constant than rods, and more sensitivity). I find something that flickers at stroboscopic frequencies moving into my field of vision very distracting.
Refocus on what? If you're just looking at the text at the same range why would there be a need to refocus?
Your monitor isn't spherically curved. Stuff at the edge of the screen is farther away from your eyes than stuff in the middle of the screen. Also, you shouldn't hold your head perfectly still for several hours, since that's really bad for your neck muscles (which can also give you a headache).
Paper is a reflective medium. Screens emit and therefore looking at a white screen is going to give you the office worker's equivalent of snow blindness.
So your eye can magically tell the difference between "reflected" and "emitted" photons ?
Nothing gives me a headache quicker than a bright background, especially white.
Maybe you should get out more ? You know, sunlight and stuff ?
Which do you think your eyes would prefer - staring at the stars for 8 hours or staring at a bright torch trying to read some letters glued on the lens?
The average monitor is a few orders of magnitude away from the brightness that "a bright torch" can produce. And if the background it too bright, you can reduce it to a light grey (or other color of your choice).
Because when you are looking at a screen the focal distance is constant and you don't ever need to refocus, so depth of field is a complete non-issue.
Only if (1) you never, every move your head one bit and (2) your screen is curved spherically and (3) both of your eyes are exactly in the center of that sphere.
(1) is bad for your neck muscles, so don't try to do that.
(2) Commonly-available screens are flat, and not curved.
(3) I believe this is fairly painful, and at least one of the eyes isn't going to be in a workable condition after you try fulfilling this condition.
Dark - or dim - rooms are definitely easier on the eyes.
Also, what makes you think that large pupils are "relaxed" ? There are two muscles controlling pupil dilation, and one of them will have to contract in any given pupil configuration.
I never got a good explanation of why black on white is good (think original Apple Mac), vs. white on black is bad (original IBM CGA).
You'll get it now: Depth of focus. Bright-on-dark results in a darker screen overall than dark-on-bright. This means that your pupils will open wider (to let more light in), which results in a smaller depth of focus (optics 101, ask anyone whose hobby is photography). And this, in turn, means that your eye has to re-focus more often.
This combination is the most relaxing for the eye. Also, illuminate the area around and behind the monitor.
Why ? Depth-of-focus. Brightness will make the pupils contract, which increases the depth of focus and decreases the amount of regulating that the eye needs to do.
Maybe you need to have your vision checked, too. Having a quarter of a diopter too much or too little is hardly noticable, but wil give you headaches in the long run.
Subject seems to have a problem with comprehension, or is so prejudiced in his own view as to completely overwhelm fact.
1. Notice that it says "citizens". Not everyone is a US citizen.
2. Remember that not every instance of "bringing $STUFF into the country" is legally equivalent to "importing $STUFF". You can (legally) bring a car into the country without importing it (which is good, since you certainly don't want to go through the paperwork for importing a vehicle every time you drive across a border). You can (legally) bring a firearm into the country without importing it (which is good since not everyone who goes on a hunting trip abroad is actually licensed to import firearms). If I wanted to, I could have my car shipped from Europe to the States and could drive it around there. Would that mean I imported it ? No. Hence, I'm not allowed to sell it to anyone while over there, and have to take it with me when I leave (or have it destroyed). Same goes for guns if I go on a hunting trip.
Do you really think that a visitor is not allowed to bring necessary medications with them ? The people who made these laws aren't _that_ stupid. How's a diabetic visitor supposed to survive an 8-hour flight and several hours of being stuck at the airport without bringing insulin with him ?
Does the additional CO2 allow desert environments to keep that additional heat energy overnight,
Yes. Any substance that has better transparency around the visible part of the spectrum of light than in the infrared spectrum will do that (e.g. glass, duh. There's a reason why they call it "greenhouse effect"), simply because the solar heat input to Earth is mostly visible light, while Earths heat output is mostly infrared.
or is all the CO2 heating up the oceans instead?
No, but the CO2 is turning the oceans more acidic. Not related to any warming effects, but it could become a problem for marine life.
How do we know there isn't some underground volcanic activity heating up the convection currents of water around the North pole?
Ocean temperatures are pretty stable (oceans have _lots_ of thermal ineartia, due to consisting of _lots_ of a substance that has the highest specific heat capacity known).
Say that I created a new energy process that had a 1/1,000,000,000,000 chance of destroying the earth instantaneously but which would provide enough energy to support 20 billion people or let 6 billion people live like kings. Would it be worth using? (The age of the earth is only 4,500,000,000 after all so only a roughly 4.5% chance it would have failed since the earth was created).
Is that the chance per year ? Because if it is, I'm getting a 99.5% chance of not having a failure in 4.5 billion years.
Personally, I would say "let's use it". The chances of getting clobbered by an asteroid are several orders of magnitude higher than the chance of that thing failing. And if it fails, there won't be any lawyers involved.
We don't even get all of our electricity from that. Good luck getting all the extra energy to synthesize our gasoline.
Do you have any clue just how much energy in the form of gasoline the US consumes ?
About 130 billion gallons per year. At 36.4 kWh per gallon, that's 4732 billion kWh. A nice-sized fission plant
with two reactors produces about 4000 MW, and lets assume it runs 365*24h per year. Assuming a 100% efficiency
of converting that electrical power to chemical energy in the form of gasoline, you'd only need
(4632,000,000,000 kWh) / (4,000,000 kW * 365 * 24h) = 136 of these plants. And that's just for fscking
gasoline, not for the 50 billion gallons of diesel fuel, not for any kerosene, not for any
heating oil.
One-hundred and thirty-six nuclear plants. Sorry, but nuclear fission is not the energy
source to synthesize gasoline.
If the electricity is cheap enough, it doesn't have to be particularly efficient.
Make that 20% efficiency (probably still very, very optimistic), and you're at 680 nuclear plants,
just for gasoline, and just for the USA. Good luck.
I have seen things where it says it takes 1 barrel to make about 19 gallons. Currently that would mean gas should be about 7 bucks a gallon (it isnt). Which means a LOT of the numbers out there are fudged and manipulated to 'look bad' or 'look good' to manipulate people.
Erm, hello ? It might take 1 barrel of crude to make 19 gallons of gasoline, but at the same time you're also getting other products (natural gas, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, paraffins) out of that barrel of crude that can also be sold.
Absolutely no fudging necessary, just a bit of understanding of how a refinery works.
What we really need is a technology for synthesizing hydrocarbons like gasoline from CO2 + H20 + electricity.
No, we don't need that, since we've had it for almost a century (the Sabatier process).
What we really need it a technology capable of generating all the energy needed for the process (without burning more fossil fuels), and a technology that can efficiently extract CO2 from the air.
If you're not in the US yet, how can you have committed any crime in US jurisdiction?
If you are in the US then surely you're entitled to the protection of the US constitution?
Your prenineeleventhink is simply appalling, citizen.
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Why do you folks capitalize the nouns? What are the "evolutionary advantages" of this approach? Is this a bug or a feature?
It's a feature. It makes texts easier to read, at the expense of putting a little bit of extra burden on the person writing the text. The same can be found in many other encoding schemes that have one sender and (usually) mutliple recipients, for example MPEG or MP3 - encoding is complicated (and it can be, because it's done only once), while decoding is relatively simple (because it's done much more often than encoding, and therefore making it simple saves much more effort than making encoding simple).
The exact opposite can be found in (usually) one-sender-one-recipient messaging systems - the sender saves some effort by putting more burden on the recipient. u no wt i mn, r8 ?
Personally, I don't see why individuals should be having secret votes.
And that's because ...
People always talk about thugs and corporate masters... if a thug tries to bully you into voting the way they say, you refuse. If they try to behave violently afterward, they go to jail. No different from any other thug.
Or what is so magical about it that someone would actually buy one, and secondly, steal one?
It's worth something and can be stolen with practically zero risk of being caught (or at least the crooks thought so).
I've been trying to figure out lately why it is that the neocons seem hell bent on protecting IP?
Because doing so is good for the profit of big companies (i.e. big donors).
Has anyone seen any tinfoil hat links for this?
No need for any tinfoil hats ... this is so obvious that no conspiracy is necessary.
Unfortunately, this does not work on illegal aliens, spammers, trolls, and people who listen to Amy Winehouse.
You're just not using enough UV.
Even though they generate light from super-heating tungsten wire, incandescent lights still refresh 60 times per second due to their power source...your alternating current electricity.
No. If anything, the "refresh" at twice the line frequency (120 Hz or 100 Hz), since a resistor doesn't distinguish between the two half-waves of a sine.
Must have been the Ferengi. The Americans sell off their childhood belongings so they can pay the interest on the loands they used to buy adulthood belongings (plasma TV, boat, SUV, house).
They run from the alternator if the vehicle is moving.
I hate them because I cannot see the flicker when looking directly at them, but see it clearly when they are in my peripheral vision (makes sense - cones have a longer time constant than rods, and more sensitivity). I find something that flickers at stroboscopic frequencies moving into my field of vision very distracting.
Your monitor isn't spherically curved. Stuff at the edge of the screen is farther away from your eyes than stuff in the middle of the screen. Also, you shouldn't hold your head perfectly still for several hours, since that's really bad for your neck muscles (which can also give you a headache).
So your eye can magically tell the difference between "reflected" and "emitted" photons ?
Amazing.
Nothing gives me a headache quicker than a bright background, especially white.
Maybe you should get out more ? You know, sunlight and stuff ?
Which do you think your eyes would prefer - staring at the stars for 8 hours or staring at a bright torch trying to read some letters glued on the lens?
The average monitor is a few orders of magnitude away from the brightness that "a bright torch" can produce. And if the background it too bright, you can reduce it to a light grey (or other color of your choice).
Only if (1) you never, every move your head one bit and (2) your screen is curved spherically and (3) both of your eyes are exactly in the center of that sphere.
(1) is bad for your neck muscles, so don't try to do that.
(2) Commonly-available screens are flat, and not curved.
(3) I believe this is fairly painful, and at least one of the eyes isn't going to be in a workable condition after you try fulfilling this condition.
Dark - or dim - rooms are definitely easier on the eyes.
Also, what makes you think that large pupils are "relaxed" ? There are two muscles controlling pupil dilation, and one of them will have to contract in any given pupil configuration.
You'll get it now: Depth of focus. Bright-on-dark results in a darker screen overall than dark-on-bright. This means that your pupils will open wider (to let more light in), which results in a smaller depth of focus (optics 101, ask anyone whose hobby is photography). And this, in turn, means that your eye has to re-focus more often.
Why is that a good thing ?
This combination is the most relaxing for the eye. Also, illuminate the area around and behind the monitor.
Why ? Depth-of-focus. Brightness will make the pupils contract, which increases the depth of focus and decreases the amount of regulating that the eye needs to do.
Maybe you need to have your vision checked, too. Having a quarter of a diopter too much or too little is hardly noticable, but wil give you headaches in the long run.
Subject seems to have a problem with comprehension, or is so prejudiced in his own view as to completely overwhelm fact.
1. Notice that it says "citizens". Not everyone is a US citizen.
2. Remember that not every instance of "bringing $STUFF into the country" is legally equivalent to "importing $STUFF". You can (legally) bring a car into the country without importing it (which is good, since you certainly don't want to go through the paperwork for importing a vehicle every time you drive across a border). You can (legally) bring a firearm into the country without importing it (which is good since not everyone who goes on a hunting trip abroad is actually licensed to import firearms). If I wanted to, I could have my car shipped from Europe to the States and could drive it around there. Would that mean I imported it ? No. Hence, I'm not allowed to sell it to anyone while over there, and have to take it with me when I leave (or have it destroyed). Same goes for guns if I go on a hunting trip.
Do you really think that a visitor is not allowed to bring necessary medications with them ? The people who made these laws aren't _that_ stupid. How's a diabetic visitor supposed to survive an 8-hour flight and several hours of being stuck at the airport without bringing insulin with him ?
Does the additional CO2 allow desert environments to keep that additional heat energy overnight,
Yes. Any substance that has better transparency around the visible part of the spectrum of light than in the infrared spectrum will do that (e.g. glass, duh. There's a reason why they call it "greenhouse effect"), simply because the solar heat input to Earth is mostly visible light, while Earths heat output is mostly infrared.
or is all the CO2 heating up the oceans instead?
No, but the CO2 is turning the oceans more acidic. Not related to any warming effects, but it could become a problem for marine life.
How do we know there isn't some underground volcanic activity heating up the convection currents of water around the North pole?
Ocean temperatures are pretty stable (oceans have _lots_ of thermal ineartia, due to consisting of _lots_ of a substance that has the highest specific heat capacity known).
Bringing controlled substances into the USA without a license is a felony.
There's a difference between US residents and nonresidents. You may want to have a look at what the CBP has to say about the subject.
http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/travel/vacation/kbyg/prohibited_restricted.xml
(scroll down to "medication")
Is that the chance per year ? Because if it is, I'm getting a 99.5% chance of not having a failure in 4.5 billion years.
Personally, I would say "let's use it". The chances of getting clobbered by an asteroid are several orders of magnitude higher than the chance of that thing failing. And if it fails, there won't be any lawyers involved.
are they guilty of copyright infringement for in essence taking or copying my license?
No ... if anything, _they_ are now the legal licenseholder and _you_ are the dirty pirate. Isn't it nice to be the government ?
We don't even get all of our electricity from that. Good luck getting all the extra energy to synthesize our gasoline. Do you have any clue just how much energy in the form of gasoline the US consumes ?
About 130 billion gallons per year. At 36.4 kWh per gallon, that's 4732 billion kWh. A nice-sized fission plant with two reactors produces about 4000 MW, and lets assume it runs 365*24h per year. Assuming a 100% efficiency of converting that electrical power to chemical energy in the form of gasoline, you'd only need (4632,000,000,000 kWh) / (4,000,000 kW * 365 * 24h) = 136 of these plants. And that's just for fscking gasoline, not for the 50 billion gallons of diesel fuel, not for any kerosene, not for any heating oil.
One-hundred and thirty-six nuclear plants. Sorry, but nuclear fission is not the energy source to synthesize gasoline.
If the electricity is cheap enough, it doesn't have to be particularly efficient.
Make that 20% efficiency (probably still very, very optimistic), and you're at 680 nuclear plants, just for gasoline, and just for the USA. Good luck.
Erm, hello ? It might take 1 barrel of crude to make 19 gallons of gasoline, but at the same time you're also getting other products (natural gas, kerosene, diesel, fuel oil, paraffins) out of that barrel of crude that can also be sold.
Absolutely no fudging necessary, just a bit of understanding of how a refinery works.
What we really need is a technology for synthesizing hydrocarbons like gasoline from CO2 + H20 + electricity.
No, we don't need that, since we've had it for almost a century (the Sabatier process).
What we really need it a technology capable of generating all the energy needed for the process (without burning more fossil fuels), and a technology that can efficiently extract CO2 from the air.
Your prenineeleventhink is simply appalling, citizen.
You are overlooking what happens to you if you fail the check.
You don't get to infect the other 200 people aboard the plane with $NASTY_STUFF ?