vehicles to smog freely.... as in "beer". Did you have a look at the gas prices ? Noticed any difference ? That alone makes drivers in Europe much, much more concerned about how much gas their vehicle guzzles.
Most editors I've worked for have been very clear about working to a 'ad dept does not talk to editorial' policy.
You can usually guess that such a policy is in place when you read an article about the negative impact of Chinese gold farmers in WoW and see a "Buy WoW gold here" ad on the next page.
And that's just one example. This argument has been used often to weasel out of discussions about ads that are disliked by a majority of the readership.
Sorry, whoever told you that is either trying to deceive you or mindlessly spouting BS he heard elsewhere.
Why ?
Timescales. Yes, the sun will brighten as it gets older (or rather: it will appear more luminous because it increases in size, even though its temperature/brightness drops). It will have brightened by a whole fscking five percent in about one billion years. This isn't an effect that we're ever going to observe on anything close to a human timescale.
And why aren't we observing corresponding warming on all of then dozens of larged bodies in the solar system (no, Mars and Pluto don't count. They're just two and their warming definitely has other reasons. Pluto, for example, has just passed perihelion not too long ago and is still rather "close" to the sun).
Yep. That's also how they keep diesel particulate filters working. Every couple of hundred miles, raise the exhaust temperature for a few minutes, and you're good again.
Because we'd have no way of knowing who detonated the device -
The list of suspects is very short, and the list of suspects with a MAD scenario in case of nuclear attack is even shorter. The suspects who are on the former list but not on the latter would find their country reduced to a radioactive desert in a matter of hours.
That's why you _need_ appropriate delivery methods (i.e. ones that can deliver nukes within a matter of minutes) if you want to play nuclear war.
Yes they can. Just use an imaginary or real external threat, tell them that any measures are just for their own security, and denounce anyone who doesn't agree with that as "unpatriotic".
I have heard of claims of tests where a small crude electromagnetic bomb was set off and for hundreds of yards around, cars would not start and various other electromagnetic devices were ruined.
I would believe that to be an overstatement. Sure, you can fry some circuits, but what you're basically doing it simulating a nearby lightning strike. That's an event that happens... I dunno... tens of thousands of times every year ?
I have heard several claims that a more powerful, more advanced EMP bomb could destroy electronic devices for hundreds of miles. Is that really true?
Yes, that is true. Such an "EMP bomb" would actually be a nuclear bomb that is detonated in the upper atmosphere.
Have we done anything at all to prepare major cities for such an attack?
No. It's not necessary. If the terrorists ever get their hands on a nuke, sure as heck they won't detonate it in the upper atmosphere.
Still, an instrumentation downlink from the plane to the ground is enough to land the damn thing by remote control anyways.
It's also good enough to fly the plane into the nearest skyscraper, once you disable/disrupt/jam/take over the legitimate transmitter and know the protocol and encryption keys.
Didn't one airline (may have been Israeli) suggest that they actually build a bulkhead between the cockpit and the passenger compartment?
And then, both pilots die from food poisoning and a whole plane full of retired pilots crashes since no once could actually get into the cockpit to land the darn thing.
"rare" is relative term, high mass stars can have sulphur and silicon in their core. There are billions of those in the universe. Just like there are high chlorine content stars, big universe, lots of possibilities.
Still, the nuclear binding energy curve (google for it, I'm too lazy) shows plainly _why_ there's more carbon and oxygen than other heavy elements. Both elements lie at a local maximum of the binding energy curve. The elements for life "as we know it" are much, much more abundant than those for life that works with oddball chemistry, so it's a very good guess to say that alien life is most likely carbon based, too.
That's somewhat inaccurate, as far as I know. AFAIK CFCs aren't greenhouse gasses, but make a hole in the ozone layer.
It's accurate. In addition to making holes in the ozone layer, CFCs are also greenhouse gases that are several thousand times as strong as CO2. However, the relatively small amounts released on Earth do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect. However... if we were to deliberately manufacture the stuff and release it into the atmosphere in large quantities, things might be different.
If you want to do better than CO2, may I humbly suggest the tried-and-tested methane?
Methan isn't stable, especially not in an oxygen-rich atmosphere like Earth's.
It does some 200 times better than CO2.
CFCs do a few thousand times better. And they're not poisonous, so we might even get to experience Earth turning into hell.
There's a shitload of the stuff in frozen peat bogs in Siberia. Warm the planet just enough to defrost Siberia by other means (e.g., CO2), and you might just see a helluva lot of methane escaping.
Yep, that's what I meand by "runaway". Once you warm the atmosphere enough, several things will add to the greenhouse effect. The trapped methane is one of them, the ability of a warmer atmosphere to hold more water vapor (also a greenhouse gas) is another.
Umm... We don't yet have the capability to wipe life off this planet.
Well, maybe if we tried really, really hard, we could start a runaway greenhouse effect and turn Earth into a slightly cooler (only 400 degrees Celsius) version of Venus. We'd have to work really hard on that, though - simple CO2 isn't going to cut it, we'd have to use CFCs and such.
nonsense, sulfur can form chains and hugely complex molecules of any length, and chlorine and arsenic can take the place of oxygen.
All three are fairly rare elements in the universe, compared to carbon and oxygen.
just saying all life must be earthlike life, a ridiculous assertion given the severe limitations of sets of data on the subject.
It's not a ridiculous assertion. The building blocks for carbon-based life are just much, much more common than those for life based on "exotic" chemistries, because they are more likely to be generated in fusion reaction in stars.
Silicon and special nitrogen/phosphorous compounds
In terms of abundance in the universe, carbon (4th most abundant, after oxygen) dwarfs those three (nitrogen 7th, silicon 8th, phosphorus... not even in the top 10).
Life "as we know it" (carbon-based) is more likely than life based on other types of elements, simply because its building blocks (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen) are very abundant elements.
Whoever wrote the article doesn't know about the life that lives around volcanic vents deep in the ocean or the things living deep underground at extreme temps and pressures.
The "extreme" in "extremophile" refers to being "just" outside the relatively narrow temperature range that most life we know needs to work best. So while human enzymes need about 36 degrees Celsius to do their stuff best, an extremophile microbe might have enzymes that work best at 60 or at 6 degrees Celsius. That doesn't contradict the observation that it's just too cold for most chemical reactions to occur at a speed necessary for life on a frozen iceball like Pluto, and that temperatures over, say, 200 degrees Celsius are not very conducive to forming the long molecules that life needs.
Neither Mars nor Venus lie in the habitable zone, although they are both close.
If their atmospheres were different, both Mars and Venus could sustain liquid water on their surface (or, at least, on parts of their surface). Mars most likely did have liquid water in the past, and it is assumed that Venus used to be cooler, too.
What confuses me, is why scientist believe that having conditions the same (or very close to) those on Earth is necessary for life. For all we know, life could be able to live at thousands of degrees hot. You just don't know.
Chemistry works the same way, regardless of which solar system you are in. While it might be possible that life exists on planets that are slightly colder or slightly warmer than Earth, the chances of it existing on places as cold as Pluto or as hot as Venus/Mercury are infinitesimally slim, because reaction speeds on the former are just too slow, and the high temperatures on the latter are not very conducive to the formation of complex molecules.
Also, water has some fairly unique properties that basically no other liquid has (for example, it's denser in liquid form than in solid form).
Over 10 years ago, I was using a "visual programming language" created by National Instruments called LabView.
The language isn't called LabView, it's called "G". LabView is the whole package (G interpreter/compiler, drivers, libraries, etc).
And, yeah, G is pretty cool. National Instruments offers a slightly dated, but otherwise completely functional version of LabView for free for noncommercial use.
The sky is blue
It is dark at night
One plus one equals two
US Opposes G8 Climate Proposals
Pi is an irrational number
Latin is a dead language
It is wet when it rains
Too much beer will make people drunk.
Slashdot Mirror
Odd. Sale of leaded gasoline has been banned in the EU for almost seven years.
vehicles to smog freely. ... as in "beer". Did you have a look at the gas prices ? Noticed any difference ? That alone makes drivers in Europe much, much more concerned about how much gas their vehicle guzzles.
Cars are growing heavier so they can withstand the impact of cars that are growing heavier.
It just like bureaucracy, which is also expanding to meet the needs ot the expanding bureaucracy.
You can usually guess that such a policy is in place when you read an article about the negative impact of Chinese gold farmers in WoW and see a "Buy WoW gold here" ad on the next page.
And that's just one example. This argument has been used often to weasel out of discussions about ads that are disliked by a majority of the readership.
Sorry, whoever told you that is either trying to deceive you or mindlessly spouting BS he heard elsewhere.
Why ?
Timescales. Yes, the sun will brighten as it gets older (or rather: it will appear more luminous because it increases in size, even though its temperature/brightness drops). It will have brightened by a whole fscking five percent in about one billion years. This isn't an effect that we're ever going to observe on anything close to a human timescale.
And why aren't we observing corresponding warming on all of then dozens of larged bodies in the solar system (no, Mars and Pluto don't count. They're just two and their warming definitely has other reasons. Pluto, for example, has just passed perihelion not too long ago and is still rather "close" to the sun).
It takes some sort of fuel and oxidizes it.
and there is no CO2 byproduct either
Of course. And the hydrogen is generated magically "out of thin air" ? Last thing I heard was that today, most hydrogen is generated from natural gas.
Yep. That's also how they keep diesel particulate filters working. Every couple of hundred miles, raise the exhaust temperature for a few minutes, and you're good again.
The list of suspects is very short, and the list of suspects with a MAD scenario in case of nuclear attack is even shorter. The suspects who are on the former list but not on the latter would find their country reduced to a radioactive desert in a matter of hours.
That's why you _need_ appropriate delivery methods (i.e. ones that can deliver nukes within a matter of minutes) if you want to play nuclear war.
Yes they can. Just use an imaginary or real external threat, tell them that any measures are just for their own security, and denounce anyone who doesn't agree with that as "unpatriotic".
Or just bring bigger guns.
I would believe that to be an overstatement. Sure, you can fry some circuits, but what you're basically doing it simulating a nearby lightning strike. That's an event that happens
I have heard several claims that a more powerful, more advanced EMP bomb could destroy electronic devices for hundreds of miles. Is that really true?
Yes, that is true. Such an "EMP bomb" would actually be a nuclear bomb that is detonated in the upper atmosphere.
Have we done anything at all to prepare major cities for such an attack?
No. It's not necessary. If the terrorists ever get their hands on a nuke, sure as heck they won't detonate it in the upper atmosphere.
Wasn't that the whole idea behind "Con Air" ? And we all know how that ended.
I think you need to read up on what makes explosives (including gunpowder) go boom, actually. Hint: They do contain their own oxidizer.
It's also good enough to fly the plane into the nearest skyscraper, once you disable/disrupt/jam/take over the legitimate transmitter and know the protocol and encryption keys.
And then, both pilots die from food poisoning and a whole plane full of retired pilots crashes since no once could actually get into the cockpit to land the darn thing.
"rare" is relative term, high mass stars can have sulphur and silicon in their core. There are billions of those in the universe. Just like there are high chlorine content stars, big universe, lots of possibilities. Still, the nuclear binding energy curve (google for it, I'm too lazy) shows plainly _why_ there's more carbon and oxygen than other heavy elements. Both elements lie at a local maximum of the binding energy curve. The elements for life "as we know it" are much, much more abundant than those for life that works with oddball chemistry, so it's a very good guess to say that alien life is most likely carbon based, too.
It's accurate. In addition to making holes in the ozone layer, CFCs are also greenhouse gases that are several thousand times as strong as CO2. However, the relatively small amounts released on Earth do not contribute significantly to the greenhouse effect. However ... if we were to deliberately manufacture the stuff and release it into the atmosphere in large quantities, things might be different.
If you want to do better than CO2, may I humbly suggest the tried-and-tested methane?
Methan isn't stable, especially not in an oxygen-rich atmosphere like Earth's.
It does some 200 times better than CO2.
CFCs do a few thousand times better. And they're not poisonous, so we might even get to experience Earth turning into hell.
There's a shitload of the stuff in frozen peat bogs in Siberia. Warm the planet just enough to defrost Siberia by other means (e.g., CO2), and you might just see a helluva lot of methane escaping.
Yep, that's what I meand by "runaway". Once you warm the atmosphere enough, several things will add to the greenhouse effect. The trapped methane is one of them, the ability of a warmer atmosphere to hold more water vapor (also a greenhouse gas) is another.
Well, maybe if we tried really, really hard, we could start a runaway greenhouse effect and turn Earth into a slightly cooler (only 400 degrees Celsius) version of Venus. We'd have to work really hard on that, though - simple CO2 isn't going to cut it, we'd have to use CFCs and such.
All three are fairly rare elements in the universe, compared to carbon and oxygen.
just saying all life must be earthlike life, a ridiculous assertion given the severe limitations of sets of data on the subject.
It's not a ridiculous assertion. The building blocks for carbon-based life are just much, much more common than those for life based on "exotic" chemistries, because they are more likely to be generated in fusion reaction in stars.
In terms of abundance in the universe, carbon (4th most abundant, after oxygen) dwarfs those three (nitrogen 7th, silicon 8th, phosphorus
Life "as we know it" (carbon-based) is more likely than life based on other types of elements, simply because its building blocks (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen) are very abundant elements.
The "extreme" in "extremophile" refers to being "just" outside the relatively narrow temperature range that most life we know needs to work best. So while human enzymes need about 36 degrees Celsius to do their stuff best, an extremophile microbe might have enzymes that work best at 60 or at 6 degrees Celsius. That doesn't contradict the observation that it's just too cold for most chemical reactions to occur at a speed necessary for life on a frozen iceball like Pluto, and that temperatures over, say, 200 degrees Celsius are not very conducive to forming the long molecules that life needs.
If their atmospheres were different, both Mars and Venus could sustain liquid water on their surface (or, at least, on parts of their surface). Mars most likely did have liquid water in the past, and it is assumed that Venus used to be cooler, too.
Chemistry works the same way, regardless of which solar system you are in. While it might be possible that life exists on planets that are slightly colder or slightly warmer than Earth, the chances of it existing on places as cold as Pluto or as hot as Venus/Mercury are infinitesimally slim, because reaction speeds on the former are just too slow, and the high temperatures on the latter are not very conducive to the formation of complex molecules.
Also, water has some fairly unique properties that basically no other liquid has (for example, it's denser in liquid form than in solid form).
The language isn't called LabView, it's called "G". LabView is the whole package (G interpreter/compiler, drivers, libraries, etc).
And, yeah, G is pretty cool. National Instruments offers a slightly dated, but otherwise completely functional version of LabView for free for noncommercial use.
It is dark at night
One plus one equals two
US Opposes G8 Climate Proposals
Pi is an irrational number
Latin is a dead language
It is wet when it rains
Too much beer will make people drunk.
C will still be dying when most languages that are alive and kicking right now are already buried.