If it gets to the point where the "bad guys" have enough capital to invest in significant supplies of ammo of that sort, then they will probably also have a capital somewhere that we can turn into glass for them. Now, I don't know the first thing about the cost of that kind of ammo, but I have to think that it's a little harder to come by than your vanilla bullet.
How do you coax a chimp into teaching a human child? How do you coax the child into agreeing to "learn from a monkey"? Hell, how do you convince the parents?
"We'll pay your child $10 an hour to learn how to shuck corn from this chimpanzee."
How do you coax a chimp into teaching a human child? How do you coax the child into agreeing to "learn from a monkey"? Hell, how do you convince the parents?
"We'll pay your child $10 an hour to learn how to shuck corn from this chimpanzee."
When did I say it was? I said that radiation, at least, has been positively linked to cancer--radiation was an example of one definite cause, not the main cause.
There isn't one cause for cancer, unless you count the broad category of "cell damage."
Radiation beats up cells, causing damage. Damage predisposes you to cancer. Radiation exposure, I think, has been pretty well linked to cancers. There may ALSO be other, less controllable factors for cancer, such as viral infection.
It's totally possible that we're seeing more cancer because more people are living longer, or because of better reporting of cancers.
Might have something to do with her being a giant rat, but who can say? She also happens to have a strong personality, despite her existence pretty much revolving around her boyfriend. But that's really not fair to say, because she picks up her duties as a Dragon Knight once her home's actually put in danger.
The laser on my LG CED8120B is Class I--says so right on the laser safety note. I think that class is "too little power per area to cause eye damage even on direct exposure." IR diode lasers close to the visible might put out enough red to be seen--I swear the inside of my Liteon was bright red with obvious laser speckle when I had this happen, but I'm not going to pull out my DVD drive just to check the laser diode out. Then again, it's probably different from a CD drive, being a DVD writer and all.
Now my "Aurora" laser pointer here is Class IIIa, which is pretty bad for your eyes on direct or specular reflection. Of course, it also says that is output ranges between 400-800 nm. Getting out my handy dandy diffraction grating (read: compact disc), I don't see much blue or green in that spot. Maybe the output's too low to be seen by the eye, and it's just one of those dumb engineering numbers copied from the spec sheet and pasted onto the tag.
It seems to me that besides the practical limit of the computer side of things, designers don't do much to try and "clever up" their system. But in a sense it really comes down to a problem with the players. The MMO player collective consciousness ferrets out the most efficient ways of doing things, and then the world sees a new expectation that everyone rise up to that standard. It's not a measure of the system reacting intelligently to the player, as if a real DM were playing--that's not even possible in NWN where there IS a real DM, mostly because you can't arbitrarily change the parameters of the game on the fly. I totally understand the whole "way a computer programs works" thing.
What I'm saying is that, at present, no matter how much developers try to obfuscate the mechanics behind the game--not giving concrete units for damage, for instance--there's someone out there with enough time and dedication to produce a reasonably accurate metric for the effectiveness of a weapon, spell, or whatever. The maximum among these is chosen, prices skyrocket, and players who don't come to follow this trend--whether or not they're actually that much less effective--are ridiculed as being ignorant of the proper way the game is played. The "way the game is played" should NOT involve a road map: "when you reach level 3, go and buy your Wolfram Sword and Quartz Pants." You hear of people who do the stupidest and most interesting things, like beat up Weapons using nothing but Cloud and the Nail Bat. But how much of that do you see in an MMO? Where are the Black Mages who cast no spells but instead fight totally naked with madly swinging fists?
Good character class balance prevents this effect from taking place as far as character classes go--for the most part. I mean, you might see a thousand Fighters or whatever running around, but you _need_ White Mages, no matter how rare they may be. What I'm really mourning is the fact that so much content does get or could be added to games that never sees any use because it's not maximally efficient for "winning." You never really see, I dunno, Fighter/Black Mages around, because they're just not that good at what they do, either Fighting or Black Magic. Or, like I said, there's the "copycat" syndrome. Using FFXI again, there were so few faces and so few good armor sets that you'd see thousands of dorks wandering around town in full Scale Mail armor, and sometimes even all having the same face. Tons of items sat around never being bought or used--like those slightly upgraded, slightly cooler-looking but much more expensive armors (admittedly a pricing problem, along with the fact that you had usually two viable armor choices for a given level).
In a very hardcore game of tournament-level Starcraft or whatever, where you pretty much have boiled off all the "game" elements to create a strategy/button-pushing-order simulator (I knew a guy who played with music and sound turned off just because it was a distraction--he took the Starcraft prize at ReCon in I think 2001), you don't do inefficient things because you're trying your damndest to WIN WIN WIN, and if you waste gas on Queens or something and don't have a secret master plan, you just lose and go home crying. You can't lose an MMO, and you can't win one either, (in-game competitions aside, which aren't usually the entire focus of the game) so I really don't understand the drive to absolutely maximize your character's potential... unless a person is just THAT desperate to get through the boring parts of the game, which means it's really less a game and more a chore. But everyone knows that.
I guess what I'm saying is that, in the ideal case, you basically want the number of "viable builds" to go to a high number. You want there to be many viable and well-accepted character styles or builds or whatever so that you stimulate cleverness on the part of the players within the bounds of the game mechanics. You certainly don't want to crush it by having OMG MUST HAVE items that no self-respecting paladin would
Honestly, you make a pretty good point. I never thought any MMO stuck around long enough for people to be _so_ into it that they'd pay real money to effectively change classes. But that makes sense. Still, though--and I KNOW this is a truism--but getting rid of the grind would make leveling up fun again.
Hey, I guess FFXI did one thing right: job change! I always did like that about FFXI, even though all your levels besides your current first and second jobs meant nothing--no paralytic fear of spending four months making a really really crappy high-level character and then being stuck with his job. Sure, you have to grind your way back up, but at least you have a ton of gil to do it with, and maybe even some cool items.
And, uh, no offense at all intended, but how does a guy take pains to watch someone pull a safety belt snug and breathe into a plastic mask?
I swear that I opened up my Liteon the other day before the laser shut off. Maybe it's class I, but you'd think that there wouldn't be a reason to have the laser on when the drive is spinning down and the door's actually in the process of opening.
Though I can't prove it, I'd be willing to bet that someone who purchases their way to the front of the line in your analogy will also have missed the safety lecture. Not knowing to buckle his harness, the rider will fly out of the car and injure or at least seriously inconvenience other riders.
It's hard for me to believe that someone who leaps over the early stages will be as competent a party member as someone who has ground their way to the top. What is there then for the level-99 newbie to do? With whom will this noob form a party, having not made any online acquaintances on the way up? How will he ever learn when he's constantly kicked out of groups for getting people killed? Even if he's an FFXI veteran, will that do him any good in WoW? As much as I hate to say it, the player is depriving themselves of the chance to develop the "skills" needed for an MMO, and won't have had that long, long, long period of time in which to find other players with similar interests.
I can understand wanting to subvert the underhanded treadmill design scheme, that stretching of level-gains and money by which designers milk every last play hour from MMO gamers. This really highlights a massive problem with the massively multiplayer game scheme: people are willing to pay real money to start at a different point in the game. Either grind away and hope the game starts getting fun after level 60 or so, or jump stright into the mess and start searching for something interesting left to do.
(I have lots of problems with MMOs that I shouldn't go into right now, but will anyhow. I think that any item that becomes recognized by the community as "uber" should suddenly randomize its appearance each time it spawns, so gamers can't just go hunting and hunting (or shopping and shopping) for the "Super Yellow Sword of the Graveyard Fist" so they can get their damage potential up by that extra.002 dps. This'd at least make player equipment have a little more variety, and mabye this effect could trickle down so that every level 11 Fighter isn't wearing Scale Mail. Frankly, I think a game should encourage a player to make do with what they have or can get their hands upon without Herculean effort--like the old D&D spirit of using role-playing and cleverness (_player_ characteristics) to overcome deficiencies in a _character's_ skills and attributes. MMOs that I've seen boil down to getting numbers up high in order to play the game the "right" way. Unless I have an understanding group of friends, I'll have to spend fifteen hours getting a marginally (or perhaps even significantly) better sword/spell so that a group of gamer-gunners can kill stuff ever-so-slightly faster. What if I _LIKE_ how my character looks in the "Rusty Leather Armor of the Ninja Puppy School," even though all the other Iron Chefs are using "Superb Hot Pants of the Damned" and I'm obviously a fool and a n00b for not following the herd?)
First, a suggestion: start with the older Rom Pit games. The new guy just can't keep up the pace.
Now that that's said, also don't forget their Game Reviews over on the left-hand bar--same sort of deal as the rom pit, but with modern games (and hentai, if you're not at work). Modern games usually don't have as much of the "WTF" factor, leaning more towards the "Broken half-assed crap" factor, largely thanks to cut-rate publishers/distributors/whatever. The movie reviews are good if you enjoy raw human failure, but unfortunately most of the old links to video clips are broken.
I honestly don't know if there are clear diagnostic tests for autism or Asperger's, or even if such tests are necessary, but could this methodology be extended to allow for conclusive medical diagnosis of autism? As I understand, it's a disorder that's characterized like other mental disorders by looking at symptoms--display enough of these signs, and you can be said to be autistic.
Does this method allow for any child to be scanned with a medical imaging device and a conclusive diagnosis of autism given? Is this even necessary, or are neurologists/psychologists accurate enough and the symptoms clear enough not to need a diagnostic test? How many people are estimated to be autistic or to display Asperger's syndrome without knowing fairly early on about the disorder? (I know you can't count how many people aren't diagnosed, but if many cases of the disorder which I assume develops as a child are diagnosed for the first time in adults, then I think it's reasonable to say that most patients go for a long while without diagnosis.)
THIS is Japanese? I would expect in a Japanese arcade to be able play the game in a functional HEV suit--and what do I see before me? Pedals and two joysticks.
I don't know what it's like to be an extrovert, but I've been around a couple in my life. Conversation can really separate the one from the other--at least, that's what I've noticed.
Seems to me like extroverts _plan_ their conversations. They might be listening to you, sure, but on some deeper level they're busy thinking of what's coming next--or perhaps looking around to see who else is around they can draw into the conversation.
I'm an introvert. I don't like a lot of "change" in my conversations--new people cause repetition, get me off on tangents, or cause the subject to change prematurely. Extroverts plan as they go for this kind of stuff--"Hey, there's Bob. Bob knows Optics. I'll get him over here and see what he has to say." My reaction to Bob's presence--unless for some reason Bob is already part of the conversation--is, "Oh, it's Bob."
Unless I've planned well ahead of time, I'm so busy trying to come up with what to say _as I'm talking_ that I don't have much ability to map out my thoughts. Even when the other party is talking, I'm too busy pondering what _they_ are saying to think about what _I_ am going to say. I converse by inspiration: if the other party doesn't give me any good inroads to a new topic, I have a hard time holding up my end--unless I don't feel the need to pay attention because, for instance, I've heard a story before. Then I'm free to sit and think about what's been said.
If I had to guess at the main mental difference between extroverts and introverts, it would really be that the former can think off the cuff and get along, whereas we introverts are compelled to reflect and concentrate, whether or not we can get along by winging it.
Lunar dust, being a compound of silicon as is quartz, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous.
So it _has_ silicon in it, and it's probably chemically similar to quartz. After a little google work, I turned up This presentation that outlines the stuff a little. It appears to be mostly silicon monoxide--similar in composition to silica, but not chemically the same. But, hell, just looking at those particles, they look "sharp edged," and it's not really a chemical effect in the lungs anyhow--that's why it's not "toxic," there's no chemical action in the lungs, just a physical one.
Um... Does anyone know the chemical composition of this dust? How different is it from the stuff you'd find on Earth, chemically speaking? I don't care what it does, I care what makes it up.
On a different note now, silica dust seems to me like it'd be basically glass or ceramic powder, and it makes intuitive sense that powdered glass would be very bad for the lungs. But couldn't any finely divided dust of materials with similar properties to silica be expected to cause a similar condition if inhaled over time? I'm thinking steel dust or granite powder, or something like that. It's not like asbestos, where the "toxicity" is really "carcinogenicity."
In fact, calling the dust "toxic" makes it out to be a poison, when it's really more of a severe and persistent irritant. To call this or asbestos toxic seems a bit misleading and sensational--not to understate the dangers, but you want people to understand why things are dangerous, and in what way. Dimethyl mercury is toxic by contact; phosgene is toxic by inhalation; I think that both do more than just irritate.
We had a little optics lab "image processing" computer with: no active ethernet connection (within reasonable cord distance), no usb ports, and no CD burner.
Aside from bodily moving the CPU (don't want to do that when it needs to be near the microscope), there wasn't really any other convenient way to get modestly sized images and text files off it than through floppies. The next challenge was to find a machine in the department that: was connected to the school's intranet, had a floppy drive, and wasn't behind a locked door.
Of course, when we started needing to move movie files, well, we had the shop techs wire us up a very long cord. Just one more thing to trip over in the dark.
Sure, they're not fast, but for just one or two small files nothing really beats them in price and ease of use, especially when you have some machines that are still running Win 95 or 98. Besides, the FDD chunking sound is soothing.
Please limit application of this technique to temporal measurements.
Engineer: The bridge will support no more than 300 people at a time.
Boss: Ok, so you're saying the bridge can hold 150 great apes. Why the hell are you designing bridges for primates? You're fired.
Slashdot Mirror
If it gets to the point where the "bad guys" have enough capital to invest in significant supplies of ammo of that sort, then they will probably also have a capital somewhere that we can turn into glass for them. Now, I don't know the first thing about the cost of that kind of ammo, but I have to think that it's a little harder to come by than your vanilla bullet.
They should've just called him "Speedy."
who's going to pay for it
EU ISP customers. One way or the other.
How do you coax a chimp into teaching a human child? How do you coax the child into agreeing to "learn from a monkey"? Hell, how do you convince the parents?
"We'll pay your child $10 an hour to learn how to shuck corn from this chimpanzee."
That'd be one hell of a reality show.
How do you coax a chimp into teaching a human child? How do you coax the child into agreeing to "learn from a monkey"? Hell, how do you convince the parents?
"We'll pay your child $10 an hour to learn how to shuck corn from this chimpanzee."
That'd be one hell of a reality show.
We PC players had to put up with the exact same crap. Eternal install times, stupid interfaces, bad jazz music. Then there were the patches...
When did I say it was? I said that radiation, at least, has been positively linked to cancer--radiation was an example of one definite cause, not the main cause.
There isn't one cause for cancer, unless you count the broad category of "cell damage."
Radiation beats up cells, causing damage. Damage predisposes you to cancer. Radiation exposure, I think, has been pretty well linked to cancers. There may ALSO be other, less controllable factors for cancer, such as viral infection.
It's totally possible that we're seeing more cancer because more people are living longer, or because of better reporting of cancers.
A fully clothed female fighter. One of the few.
Might have something to do with her being a giant rat, but who can say? She also happens to have a strong personality, despite her existence pretty much revolving around her boyfriend. But that's really not fair to say, because she picks up her duties as a Dragon Knight once her home's actually put in danger.
The laser on my LG CED8120B is Class I--says so right on the laser safety note. I think that class is "too little power per area to cause eye damage even on direct exposure." IR diode lasers close to the visible might put out enough red to be seen--I swear the inside of my Liteon was bright red with obvious laser speckle when I had this happen, but I'm not going to pull out my DVD drive just to check the laser diode out. Then again, it's probably different from a CD drive, being a DVD writer and all.
Now my "Aurora" laser pointer here is Class IIIa, which is pretty bad for your eyes on direct or specular reflection. Of course, it also says that is output ranges between 400-800 nm. Getting out my handy dandy diffraction grating (read: compact disc), I don't see much blue or green in that spot. Maybe the output's too low to be seen by the eye, and it's just one of those dumb engineering numbers copied from the spec sheet and pasted onto the tag.
It seems to me that besides the practical limit of the computer side of things, designers don't do much to try and "clever up" their system. But in a sense it really comes down to a problem with the players. The MMO player collective consciousness ferrets out the most efficient ways of doing things, and then the world sees a new expectation that everyone rise up to that standard. It's not a measure of the system reacting intelligently to the player, as if a real DM were playing--that's not even possible in NWN where there IS a real DM, mostly because you can't arbitrarily change the parameters of the game on the fly. I totally understand the whole "way a computer programs works" thing.
What I'm saying is that, at present, no matter how much developers try to obfuscate the mechanics behind the game--not giving concrete units for damage, for instance--there's someone out there with enough time and dedication to produce a reasonably accurate metric for the effectiveness of a weapon, spell, or whatever. The maximum among these is chosen, prices skyrocket, and players who don't come to follow this trend--whether or not they're actually that much less effective--are ridiculed as being ignorant of the proper way the game is played. The "way the game is played" should NOT involve a road map: "when you reach level 3, go and buy your Wolfram Sword and Quartz Pants." You hear of people who do the stupidest and most interesting things, like beat up Weapons using nothing but Cloud and the Nail Bat. But how much of that do you see in an MMO? Where are the Black Mages who cast no spells but instead fight totally naked with madly swinging fists?
Good character class balance prevents this effect from taking place as far as character classes go--for the most part. I mean, you might see a thousand Fighters or whatever running around, but you _need_ White Mages, no matter how rare they may be. What I'm really mourning is the fact that so much content does get or could be added to games that never sees any use because it's not maximally efficient for "winning." You never really see, I dunno, Fighter/Black Mages around, because they're just not that good at what they do, either Fighting or Black Magic. Or, like I said, there's the "copycat" syndrome. Using FFXI again, there were so few faces and so few good armor sets that you'd see thousands of dorks wandering around town in full Scale Mail armor, and sometimes even all having the same face. Tons of items sat around never being bought or used--like those slightly upgraded, slightly cooler-looking but much more expensive armors (admittedly a pricing problem, along with the fact that you had usually two viable armor choices for a given level).
In a very hardcore game of tournament-level Starcraft or whatever, where you pretty much have boiled off all the "game" elements to create a strategy/button-pushing-order simulator (I knew a guy who played with music and sound turned off just because it was a distraction--he took the Starcraft prize at ReCon in I think 2001), you don't do inefficient things because you're trying your damndest to WIN WIN WIN, and if you waste gas on Queens or something and don't have a secret master plan, you just lose and go home crying. You can't lose an MMO, and you can't win one either, (in-game competitions aside, which aren't usually the entire focus of the game) so I really don't understand the drive to absolutely maximize your character's potential... unless a person is just THAT desperate to get through the boring parts of the game, which means it's really less a game and more a chore. But everyone knows that.
I guess what I'm saying is that, in the ideal case, you basically want the number of "viable builds" to go to a high number. You want there to be many viable and well-accepted character styles or builds or whatever so that you stimulate cleverness on the part of the players within the bounds of the game mechanics. You certainly don't want to crush it by having OMG MUST HAVE items that no self-respecting paladin would
Honestly, you make a pretty good point. I never thought any MMO stuck around long enough for people to be _so_ into it that they'd pay real money to effectively change classes. But that makes sense. Still, though--and I KNOW this is a truism--but getting rid of the grind would make leveling up fun again.
Hey, I guess FFXI did one thing right: job change! I always did like that about FFXI, even though all your levels besides your current first and second jobs meant nothing--no paralytic fear of spending four months making a really really crappy high-level character and then being stuck with his job. Sure, you have to grind your way back up, but at least you have a ton of gil to do it with, and maybe even some cool items.
And, uh, no offense at all intended, but how does a guy take pains to watch someone pull a safety belt snug and breathe into a plastic mask?
They're stripping it of its oxygen atoms, replacing them with cut-rate hydrogen.
I'll give you a hint: it's bright and red.
I swear that I opened up my Liteon the other day before the laser shut off. Maybe it's class I, but you'd think that there wouldn't be a reason to have the laser on when the drive is spinning down and the door's actually in the process of opening.
Though I can't prove it, I'd be willing to bet that someone who purchases their way to the front of the line in your analogy will also have missed the safety lecture. Not knowing to buckle his harness, the rider will fly out of the car and injure or at least seriously inconvenience other riders.
.002 dps. This'd at least make player equipment have a little more variety, and mabye this effect could trickle down so that every level 11 Fighter isn't wearing Scale Mail. Frankly, I think a game should encourage a player to make do with what they have or can get their hands upon without Herculean effort--like the old D&D spirit of using role-playing and cleverness (_player_ characteristics) to overcome deficiencies in a _character's_ skills and attributes. MMOs that I've seen boil down to getting numbers up high in order to play the game the "right" way. Unless I have an understanding group of friends, I'll have to spend fifteen hours getting a marginally (or perhaps even significantly) better sword/spell so that a group of gamer-gunners can kill stuff ever-so-slightly faster. What if I _LIKE_ how my character looks in the "Rusty Leather Armor of the Ninja Puppy School," even though all the other Iron Chefs are using "Superb Hot Pants of the Damned" and I'm obviously a fool and a n00b for not following the herd?)
It's hard for me to believe that someone who leaps over the early stages will be as competent a party member as someone who has ground their way to the top. What is there then for the level-99 newbie to do? With whom will this noob form a party, having not made any online acquaintances on the way up? How will he ever learn when he's constantly kicked out of groups for getting people killed? Even if he's an FFXI veteran, will that do him any good in WoW? As much as I hate to say it, the player is depriving themselves of the chance to develop the "skills" needed for an MMO, and won't have had that long, long, long period of time in which to find other players with similar interests.
I can understand wanting to subvert the underhanded treadmill design scheme, that stretching of level-gains and money by which designers milk every last play hour from MMO gamers. This really highlights a massive problem with the massively multiplayer game scheme: people are willing to pay real money to start at a different point in the game. Either grind away and hope the game starts getting fun after level 60 or so, or jump stright into the mess and start searching for something interesting left to do.
(I have lots of problems with MMOs that I shouldn't go into right now, but will anyhow. I think that any item that becomes recognized by the community as "uber" should suddenly randomize its appearance each time it spawns, so gamers can't just go hunting and hunting (or shopping and shopping) for the "Super Yellow Sword of the Graveyard Fist" so they can get their damage potential up by that extra
First, a suggestion: start with the older Rom Pit games. The new guy just can't keep up the pace.
Now that that's said, also don't forget their Game Reviews over on the left-hand bar--same sort of deal as the rom pit, but with modern games (and hentai, if you're not at work). Modern games usually don't have as much of the "WTF" factor, leaning more towards the "Broken half-assed crap" factor, largely thanks to cut-rate publishers/distributors/whatever. The movie reviews are good if you enjoy raw human failure, but unfortunately most of the old links to video clips are broken.
No, I don't work for SA, I'm just easily amused.
I honestly don't know if there are clear diagnostic tests for autism or Asperger's, or even if such tests are necessary, but could this methodology be extended to allow for conclusive medical diagnosis of autism? As I understand, it's a disorder that's characterized like other mental disorders by looking at symptoms--display enough of these signs, and you can be said to be autistic.
Does this method allow for any child to be scanned with a medical imaging device and a conclusive diagnosis of autism given? Is this even necessary, or are neurologists/psychologists accurate enough and the symptoms clear enough not to need a diagnostic test? How many people are estimated to be autistic or to display Asperger's syndrome without knowing fairly early on about the disorder? (I know you can't count how many people aren't diagnosed, but if many cases of the disorder which I assume develops as a child are diagnosed for the first time in adults, then I think it's reasonable to say that most patients go for a long while without diagnosis.)
I've been called a Square fanboy (so shoot me), but I still think this is just embarrassing.
THIS is Japanese? I would expect in a Japanese arcade to be able play the game in a functional HEV suit--and what do I see before me? Pedals and two joysticks.
Shame on you, Japan.
I don't know what it's like to be an extrovert, but I've been around a couple in my life. Conversation can really separate the one from the other--at least, that's what I've noticed.
Seems to me like extroverts _plan_ their conversations. They might be listening to you, sure, but on some deeper level they're busy thinking of what's coming next--or perhaps looking around to see who else is around they can draw into the conversation.
I'm an introvert. I don't like a lot of "change" in my conversations--new people cause repetition, get me off on tangents, or cause the subject to change prematurely. Extroverts plan as they go for this kind of stuff--"Hey, there's Bob. Bob knows Optics. I'll get him over here and see what he has to say." My reaction to Bob's presence--unless for some reason Bob is already part of the conversation--is, "Oh, it's Bob."
Unless I've planned well ahead of time, I'm so busy trying to come up with what to say _as I'm talking_ that I don't have much ability to map out my thoughts. Even when the other party is talking, I'm too busy pondering what _they_ are saying to think about what _I_ am going to say. I converse by inspiration: if the other party doesn't give me any good inroads to a new topic, I have a hard time holding up my end--unless I don't feel the need to pay attention because, for instance, I've heard a story before. Then I'm free to sit and think about what's been said.
If I had to guess at the main mental difference between extroverts and introverts, it would really be that the former can think off the cuff and get along, whereas we introverts are compelled to reflect and concentrate, whether or not we can get along by winging it.
Extroverts bubble; introverts stew.
Wow, I totally missed that article.
OK, so, from the article:
Lunar dust, being a compound of silicon as is quartz, is (to our current knowledge) also not poisonous.
So it _has_ silicon in it, and it's probably chemically similar to quartz. After a little google work, I turned up This presentation that outlines the stuff a little. It appears to be mostly silicon monoxide--similar in composition to silica, but not chemically the same. But, hell, just looking at those particles, they look "sharp edged," and it's not really a chemical effect in the lungs anyhow--that's why it's not "toxic," there's no chemical action in the lungs, just a physical one.
Um... Does anyone know the chemical composition of this dust? How different is it from the stuff you'd find on Earth, chemically speaking? I don't care what it does, I care what makes it up.
On a different note now, silica dust seems to me like it'd be basically glass or ceramic powder, and it makes intuitive sense that powdered glass would be very bad for the lungs. But couldn't any finely divided dust of materials with similar properties to silica be expected to cause a similar condition if inhaled over time? I'm thinking steel dust or granite powder, or something like that. It's not like asbestos, where the "toxicity" is really "carcinogenicity."
In fact, calling the dust "toxic" makes it out to be a poison, when it's really more of a severe and persistent irritant. To call this or asbestos toxic seems a bit misleading and sensational--not to understate the dangers, but you want people to understand why things are dangerous, and in what way. Dimethyl mercury is toxic by contact; phosgene is toxic by inhalation; I think that both do more than just irritate.
We had a little optics lab "image processing" computer with: no active ethernet connection (within reasonable cord distance), no usb ports, and no CD burner.
Aside from bodily moving the CPU (don't want to do that when it needs to be near the microscope), there wasn't really any other convenient way to get modestly sized images and text files off it than through floppies. The next challenge was to find a machine in the department that: was connected to the school's intranet, had a floppy drive, and wasn't behind a locked door.
Of course, when we started needing to move movie files, well, we had the shop techs wire us up a very long cord. Just one more thing to trip over in the dark.
Sure, they're not fast, but for just one or two small files nothing really beats them in price and ease of use, especially when you have some machines that are still running Win 95 or 98. Besides, the FDD chunking sound is soothing.
Please limit application of this technique to temporal measurements.
Engineer: The bridge will support no more than 300 people at a time.
Boss: Ok, so you're saying the bridge can hold 150 great apes. Why the hell are you designing bridges for primates? You're fired.
Didn't the original XBox eventually have some power issues as well? Or was that a faulty cord?
MS needs to hire some EEs.