Why is that? If all mass is attracted by gravity, it doesn't matter what's lighter and what's heavier, they're all attracted to some degree. Unless something is pushing them away from earth? Does helium reach 'escape velocity"?
It's very simple: Temperature. Temperature relates directly to the average kinetic energy of the particles in a gas/fluid. Smaller particles (such as helium and hydrogen) have higher velocities than heavier particles (other gases) at the same kinetic energy. This velocity is indeed above the escape velocity, so over a long enough time span, helium and hydrogen in the atmosphere will just drift off into space, while heavier molecules will be retained by gravity.
Re:Of course AMD will survive.
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Is AMD Dead Yet?
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· Score: 4, Insightful
they just bought ATI and are thus in a position to better integrate CPUs and GPUs (for lower price), which is something that I'm sure the mass market might be interested in.
Fixed that for you. Anyway, the mass market is where the money is. Pandering to gamers is more of a prestige thing, 90-something percent of the PC buyers don't care about that.
Wouldn't the lighter gasses be found out in whatever you call that, the thinning layer around the outer atmosphere? A good place to find things like helium? Think of all those balloons that popped:)
Helium (and Hydrogen) are actually light enough to escape Earths gravity on their own. Which is why we don't have significant amounts of them in the atmosphere.
I remember that during medical school (maybe 7 or 8 years ago) we were told that while identical twins have extremely similar DNA to each other, that DNA is not 100% identical.
Well, quite probably not even all the cells of your body have 100% identical DNA.
How much of the cool stuff you enjoy using today would even exist if it had to be coded in assembly?
Maybe less in terms of quantity, but more in terms of quality.
You think you'd be using a nice, modern web browser or game if they had to code the whole thing in assembly?
Quite possibly, yes. The assembly requirement would present quite a barrier of entry, but at least it would raise the overall quality of the software. People who manage to write bug-ridden crapfests in high level languages would have a hard time getting their program to start in assembly.
Afaik the last "big" game written entirely in assembly was Elite 2:Frontier. And while the game suffered from its own set of problems (namely: it was kinda boring), it was technically extremely impressive (not to mention that it fit on a single freakin' floppy disk).
Shooting this thing down 7 days before it reenters is for one purpose only. There is something on the satellite they don't want landing.
My bet would be: Target practice. Pure and simple.
They have a target that is otherwise worthless, it's in a place where it won't leave a long-term debris cloud (hello China!) in orbit, and they can conveniently claim that they're trying to keep the public safe while actually conducting an anti-satellite weapons test.
I'm not in the field, but I can imagine that a single person can program a whole lot of different washing machines,
No. Because for the programmer of the washing machine, it isn't acceptable to soak your silk shirts in near-boiling water and then flood your basement with hot, soapy water. That's what most "accepted" bugs in PC apps would result in if they were applied to embedded software. You also probably don't want your car to think that it's a good idea to turn off the engine when you're going 75 mph on the highway, or your pacemaker to have the equivalent of a BSOD.
Is it just that there is atmosphere, but it's very very thin, getting thinner and thinner as you get farther from earth?
Precisely. The atmosphere doesn't have a hard stop. It just gets thinner and thinner as you move away from the planets surface. Basically anything in low earth orbit is still subject to significant orbital decay due to atmospheric drag.
Doing something GPS-like with LEO sats is certainly possible, but both mathematically, technically and logistically more complex by orders of magnitude.
You just need to see 3 satellites and know if you're in outer space or not...
Actually, you need to see 4 satellites, since GPS sees time as a fourth coordinate.
And with non-geostationary satellites, you'd face a number of issues. You'd need a lot more of the satellites (to ensure that you can see four of them, at any time and place), you'd have to precisely know their orbits, deal with crap like doppler shift (since those sats will be moving quite fast in relation to you), and whatnot.
I suspect that the air force in particular has the capacity to deploy a gps-comparablebackup system in the course of a few hours on the backs of ballistic missiles.
Ballistic missile to geosynchronous orbit ? I don't think so.
If you blow up a big satellite, you end up with a bunch of little satellites, and that doesn't make them de-orbit much faster does it?
Yes, it does, at least if this takes place at the edge of the atmosphere. Atmospheric drag is what makes that thing come down, and drag is directly related to the cross-section of the object. And a bunch of small pieces will present a much larger cross-section than a relatively compact chunk of metal.
Yes, you are. You're thinking way too technical and way too little in marketing terms. If you want to make money, the easiest way is to find enough clueless users that will swallow your marketing babble hook, line and sinker and sell your stuff to them.
XOR is not an encryption method, it's just a binary operation. It's what you XOR your data with that determines if your encryption is good or not. That's what is the problem in this case.
Indeed. I XOR the data with itself, making sure that it can never, ever be decrypted.
Well, a program has control over the maximum number of cores it will run on (if it has only two threads, it will utilitze two cores, but not more), but it can only set the actual number of cores to one (a program that has exactly one thread will only run on one core). As soon as it has more than one thread, it's up to the OS to assign the actual number of cores to it.
For those gamers who find a game locks up on their multicore computer, this is usually a sound issue that can be cured by reducing the number of cores the game uses to one.
This usually happens in single-threaded games that somehow don't like being moved between CPUs, afaik. The solution is to explicitly assign a core to the game by the OS (via the task manager).
Wouldn't it be feasible that intelligent life could arise on a planet that is liquid?
Complex life, certainly. Intelligent... I'm not so sure, probably depends on your definition of intelligence. Complex social structures and communication ? Possible. Tool use ? I'd say that is less probable. In an aquatic environment, fins beat tool-compatible appendages any day.
Do you really want a CPU that had a part of it fail testing?
Well, give me any CPU and I'll design a test for it that it will fail. You probably have lots and lots of parts in your PC that are "consumer"-grade, i.e. they were never tested or failed some of the harsher environmental tests.
When I buy a CPU, I'm not interested in what it can't do - I want to know what it can do, and that's what I'm going to pay for. If it can't do what the manufacturer says it can (in the datasheet), then it is defective.
If one has broken, does that increase the odds of another breaking, compared to one with none broken?
Not really. Flaws on the silicon (which is what causes "broken" processors) are randomly distributed. Having a flaw on the die that "breaks" one core does not mean that other flaws are more likely to be in the vicinity.
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So you'd rather have the thermodynamic inefficiency of distributed generation than the bureaucratic inefficiency of centralized generation?
Don't forget about distribution and conversion losses.
Your math is most likely correct, but your assumption that the density of the sun is uniform is not.
Why is that? If all mass is attracted by gravity, it doesn't matter what's lighter and what's heavier, they're all attracted to some degree. Unless something is pushing them away from earth? Does helium reach 'escape velocity"? It's very simple: Temperature. Temperature relates directly to the average kinetic energy of the particles in a gas/fluid. Smaller particles (such as helium and hydrogen) have higher velocities than heavier particles (other gases) at the same kinetic energy. This velocity is indeed above the escape velocity, so over a long enough time span, helium and hydrogen in the atmosphere will just drift off into space, while heavier molecules will be retained by gravity.
Fixed that for you. Anyway, the mass market is where the money is. Pandering to gamers is more of a prestige thing, 90-something percent of the PC buyers don't care about that.
GPS sats are 12600 km up, that's not exactly "low orbit".
When everyone can destroy satellites, why should the US allied sats survive ?
Helium (and Hydrogen) are actually light enough to escape Earths gravity on their own. Which is why we don't have significant amounts of them in the atmosphere.
I remember that during medical school (maybe 7 or 8 years ago) we were told that while identical twins have extremely similar DNA to each other, that DNA is not 100% identical.
Well, quite probably not even all the cells of your body have 100% identical DNA.
Quite obviously, you must not be a (neo-) conservative. No self-respecting conservative would endorse a commie organization like NPR.
Sorry, those became way obsolete with Dos 6.22s ability (iirc) to have multiple configurations to chose from.
Anyone remember countless runs of memmaker to squeeze the last byte of RAM out of a config ?
Maybe less in terms of quantity, but more in terms of quality.
You think you'd be using a nice, modern web browser or game if they had to code the whole thing in assembly?
Quite possibly, yes. The assembly requirement would present quite a barrier of entry, but at least it would raise the overall quality of the software. People who manage to write bug-ridden crapfests in high level languages would have a hard time getting their program to start in assembly.
Afaik the last "big" game written entirely in assembly was Elite 2:Frontier. And while the game suffered from its own set of problems (namely: it was kinda boring), it was technically extremely impressive (not to mention that it fit on a single freakin' floppy disk).
My bet would be: Target practice. Pure and simple.
They have a target that is otherwise worthless, it's in a place where it won't leave a long-term debris cloud (hello China!) in orbit, and they can conveniently claim that they're trying to keep the public safe while actually conducting an anti-satellite weapons test.
I'm not in the field, but I can imagine that a single person can program a whole lot of different washing machines,
No. Because for the programmer of the washing machine, it isn't acceptable to soak your silk shirts in near-boiling water and then flood your basement with hot, soapy water. That's what most "accepted" bugs in PC apps would result in if they were applied to embedded software. You also probably don't want your car to think that it's a good idea to turn off the engine when you're going 75 mph on the highway, or your pacemaker to have the equivalent of a BSOD.
Precisely. The atmosphere doesn't have a hard stop. It just gets thinner and thinner as you move away from the planets surface. Basically anything in low earth orbit is still subject to significant orbital decay due to atmospheric drag.
Doing something GPS-like with LEO sats is certainly possible, but both mathematically, technically and logistically more complex by orders of magnitude.
You just need to see 3 satellites and know if you're in outer space or not...
Actually, you need to see 4 satellites, since GPS sees time as a fourth coordinate.
And with non-geostationary satellites, you'd face a number of issues. You'd need a lot more of the satellites (to ensure that you can see four of them, at any time and place), you'd have to precisely know their orbits, deal with crap like doppler shift (since those sats will be moving quite fast in relation to you), and whatnot.
Ballistic missile to geosynchronous orbit ? I don't think so.
Yes, it does, at least if this takes place at the edge of the atmosphere. Atmospheric drag is what makes that thing come down, and drag is directly related to the cross-section of the object. And a bunch of small pieces will present a much larger cross-section than a relatively compact chunk of metal.
Yes, you are. You're thinking way too technical and way too little in marketing terms. If you want to make money, the easiest way is to find enough clueless users that will swallow your marketing babble hook, line and sinker and sell your stuff to them.
Linux runs on the XBOX360, which has a three-core processor (not x86-compatible, though, but that doesn't really matter).
Indeed. I XOR the data with itself, making sure that it can never, ever be decrypted.
Do NOT look through binoculars at secret government laser satellite with remaining eye.
Well, a program has control over the maximum number of cores it will run on (if it has only two threads, it will utilitze two cores, but not more), but it can only set the actual number of cores to one (a program that has exactly one thread will only run on one core). As soon as it has more than one thread, it's up to the OS to assign the actual number of cores to it.
For those gamers who find a game locks up on their multicore computer, this is usually a sound issue that can be cured by reducing the number of cores the game uses to one.
This usually happens in single-threaded games that somehow don't like being moved between CPUs, afaik. The solution is to explicitly assign a core to the game by the OS (via the task manager).
Wouldn't it be feasible that intelligent life could arise on a planet that is liquid?
... I'm not so sure, probably depends on your definition of intelligence. Complex social structures and communication ? Possible. Tool use ? I'd say that is less probable. In an aquatic environment, fins beat tool-compatible appendages any day.
Complex life, certainly. Intelligent
Well, give me any CPU and I'll design a test for it that it will fail. You probably have lots and lots of parts in your PC that are "consumer"-grade, i.e. they were never tested or failed some of the harsher environmental tests.
When I buy a CPU, I'm not interested in what it can't do - I want to know what it can do, and that's what I'm going to pay for. If it can't do what the manufacturer says it can (in the datasheet), then it is defective.
Not really. Flaws on the silicon (which is what causes "broken" processors) are randomly distributed. Having a flaw on the die that "breaks" one core does not mean that other flaws are more likely to be in the vicinity.