There are several forms of nitrogen oxides. Nitrous oxide is the one used for an anesthetic and foaming agent. Nitric oxides are formed from electric discharges along with ozone and are generally considered harmful when inhaled even in low concentrations. Those produced by lightning gets diluted by vast amounts of air, and eventually nitric oxides are converted to nitric acid when exposed to water and is beneficial to plants when precipitated by rain. In an urban environment these same substances can build up and cause health problems. They are a toxic component of automotive exhaust.
Pointing out possible hazards of something is not always "crying wolf".
Wouldn't heating oxygen and nitrogen in air with lasers to the point of making glowing plasma also create ozone and nitric oxides? This sounds like it would be the same as having dozens of electric arcs going off in mid air.
As much as I like the idea of being assailed with even more ads everywhere I look, this seems to be a very environmentally harmful idea. Along with harmful gases being produced by plasma discharges, it would be noisy as well, not to mention that displays like this would give off UV light as well, just like an electric arc. Bad idea.
Reading up on THEL further, it is being developed by Northrop-Grumman and Israeli companies. Boeing may want to develop their own design. The article seemed a "been there, done that" sort of thing, but there's probably lots of reasons for designing an alternate system.
I've worked in pubs that have video lottery machines and have talked with friends who work as addiction and abuse counselors, and they gave me a lot of insight as to why that may be.
In many cases it may not be that people are actually trying to win, but they get addicted to the emotional rush of either winning -or- losing. I tended to see it more often with older people who are lonely or with people that I've known to be in emotionally starved relationships. The negative rush of losing that last twenty in the VLT seems to be just as addictive as the positive rush they get when they hit the jackpot, and I suppose it may be part of the same mechanism where some people stay in abusive relationships. What keeps them sitting there is not necessarily the urge to win, but the desire to -feel-. Be it the elderly person whose kids don't visit anymore and they go home to an empty apartment, or the woman who's boyfriend that makes her feel like she doesn't exist. It's the stimulus they seem to be after. And I've noticed that the crowd that play those machines tend to develop their own social group apart from everyone else, with the lottery machine at the center.
That's a vast over-simplification of course, but after talking with people who deal with addictions, it does seem to make some sense. People can get addicted to stimuli, and ones that are negative or painful can be just as addictive as pleasurable ones. You get to see a lot of examples working in places like that, from the guy who gets shitfaced every night because he doesn't want to go home and face the wife and kids, to the lonely woman staring emptily at the screen because there's nobody worth going home to.
"and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number"
I'd rather have 10 or so people who are worth communicating with than 200 who I could barely keep up with. Most people who have enormous lists of friends probably view themselves as being in a popularity contest anyway.
"What is rather funny is that all the main chips in the device seem to be made by samsung for apple."
It's not really surprising. Samsung is a major chip fabricator. Even though they have their own mobile division, making parts for Apple's phone probably wouldn't impact their market segment much. As for Apple, they don't make any of their own chips, and just contract all that out.
It's great to know that there's at least a few people with a sense of integrity and responsibility walking the halls of government agencies. People like Bill Proenza.
Being modded funny doesn't boost one's karma. Lately more people have been modding insightful or informative to help boost fellow contributor's karma points.
Either that or someone is really digging a hole in their garden.
"I just realized that I made almost all BSG fans that remember the old show spit all over the screen and scream "OH GOD NO!"
But just think, they had FLYING MOTORCYCLES!!! And Adama could pace around miserably, taking advice from a snot-nosed kid dressed in white.
And we could watch as the entire colonial fleet collectively slap their foreheads when they realize that all they needed to take out the Cylons was a leaky microwave oven.
"In one case, the author said that I had basically ruined his life by wrecking the whole concept of the book that he had been writing for the last few years."
Jeez! What does the guy expect? Maybe he'd want you to change the laws of physics just because his premise for his novel doesn't wash?
Sounds like you have a real doofus on your hands. You should get him to send you a sample of his writing - the giggles might make up for having to put up with him. (I would never condone posting a link to it. Naah. Never.;)
Even though I was snarky in my opinion in the choice of naming, the meaning of the word "pidgin" was not totally fucking lost on me. I still think it's a poor choice.
I apologize for insulting your haughty sense of elegance with my great unwashedness.
I'd hope for the same thing too. Pidgin??? Seriously, it sounds stupid. You'd think that they'd be able to come up with a better name than that. It doesn't have to be an acronym either.
So when someone is driving along and is told that there's a stretch of road with bad road conditions, they're going to be anticipating it. But while they're before that stretch are they going to be as attentive as if they always have to rely on their own skill and judgment in the meantime? I'm all for technology making everyday life safer (within being rational), but I don't like the idea of "dumbing down" an activity that requires forethought and responsibility such as driving.
For some reason I remember articles from newspapers about some people who, when using their onboard GPS, it advises them to "turn now", and they end up ramming their car into a meridian.
Technology should not be an excuse for people to be stupid and negligent. Especially when it comes to guiding a few thousand pounds of steel in the presence of others.
If a person at one end of the two parallel rods were to cross the rods by taking one (let's call it rod A) and passing it over the other (rod B), as opposed to crossing rod B over rod A, would it not transmit to an observer at the other end one of the two states faster than the crossing motion (which for this instance would be referred to being slower than light)?
(I realize that this thought experiment has logical faults - crossing the rods and having them still straight would assume that the rods themselves would be impervious to the effects of forces upon them like bending, and in some way invalidates the experiment. But it's an interesting puzzle nonetheless, since the point of the rods crossing would travel faster than light, and in this case could transmit the state of either "over" or "under".)
I know it's offtopic, but the article reminded me of an old ST-TNG novel called "Contagion", where a genetically engineered supervirus was spreading around planets in the Federation. While Dr. Crusher was working on decoding a strange sequence in the viral DNA, they were astonished to find the phrase "HAHA YOU'RE DEAD" come up on the computer screen.
Point taken. I probably jumped the gun by implying censorship being the main motivation behind the program. Addiction to being online seems to be a growing problem, and I certainly wouldn't like seeing my family or friends with a problem like that. But I can't help but think that the Chinese government wouldn't mind the idea of having the internet being painted as an evil vice and that people who access it should be rigorously monitored by their family, lest one becomes a victim of addiction. And the statement "Thanks to his parents' intervention and the treatment, he now has life mapped out until he's 84." makes it seem that he was "treated" for more than just being an internet addict.
In the case of China, I don't believe that trying to cure people of a dubious internet "addiction" is their intent. It's probably more along the lines of having people believe that individuals who actively communicate over the net, having access to knowledge and ideas that are not controlled by the state is a sign of some sort of disease.
China does everything possible to isolate its population from ideas of democracy and freedom. A google.ch search on Tianamen Square yields vastly different results than a Google search from anywhere else. Having people who have access to information that is not sanctioned by the state is a danger to a government that seeks to completely control its populace, so they brand them as being "sick", and cart them off for "treatment".
"One of the funniest, most well adjusted people I know was molested at six; it doesn't scar you for life"
No pitchforks, but I just have to pipe up here. I have strong feelings about this.
One of my closest friends was molested when she was young, and it has had a -profound- impact on her life. To this day it still haunts her, and those events destroyed her sense of self-worth for a large part of her life. From abusive relationships and having feelings of shame, anger, to alcoholism, she's finally taken control of her life and moving forward. Maybe not everything that happened to her was a result of being abused as a kid, but a lot of it did. It's heart-rending when she sometimes talks about it, and she still has nightmares to this day. For some people, some wounds just don't heal.
I'm glad your friends life turned out well, and I'm glad that my friend is doing good now, too. I guess I just wanted to say that there's some people that can cope better when something terrible happens to them, and there's those that the same sort of thing can consume them. People are different.
...seeing that he posted a trojan on a newsgroup to infect anyone who downloaded it, it's completely possible that another hacker could have reverse engineered the same trojan to gain access to the same machines. Seeing that this guy compromised -thousands- of machines for his little glory fest, maybe he should take the time to ponder whether or not someone else could have used his exploit to upload kiddie porn to these computers to be used as illicit servers, or maybe just for kicks. It's bad enough that he invaded the privacy of thousands of people, but he also left them wide open to any sicko that had the skills and inclination to do so.
And in Concert Crasher Monthly, it is reported that the Concert Merchandisers Alliance (CMA), is getting tough on certain concert-goers. They are demanding that any and all t-shirts with band logos be authenticated and an original invoice be provided to prove the items validity. If the t-shirt you are wearing is not genuine, and you do not have the proper license, legal action may be taken against you.
Open source looks more attractive all the time. Bullying tactics like this may well end up compelling people to look at alternatives other than proprietary software. Vendor lock-in is bad enough without having to show "your papers" everytime the software gestapo decides to come for a visit.
If a typical radio or television broadcast station transmits at a power of say, 500 kilowatts, what would be the greatest distance that one could detect the signal (with a reasonably sized detector)? I would think that broadcast stations would transmit omnidirectionally, and a signal would be reduced to a quarter of its intensity each time the distance is doubled. Given a distance of thirty light-years, would we even be able to pick up a signal, even if we knew a transmitter existed at a certain location? If I understand correctly, longer wavelengths like the FM or VHF bands would need a larger detector array to pick up, and perhaps using a dish to recieve those frequencies would be impractical to some extent (you'd need a really big dish to focus those wavelengths).
Does anyone know the math for something like this?
Slashdot Mirror
Pointing out possible hazards of something is not always "crying wolf".
As much as I like the idea of being assailed with even more ads everywhere I look, this seems to be a very environmentally harmful idea. Along with harmful gases being produced by plasma discharges, it would be noisy as well, not to mention that displays like this would give off UV light as well, just like an electric arc. Bad idea.
Reading up on THEL further, it is being developed by Northrop-Grumman and Israeli companies. Boeing may want to develop their own design. The article seemed a "been there, done that" sort of thing, but there's probably lots of reasons for designing an alternate system.
Pretty impressive technology though.
Why don't they just work with the already tested MTHEL system?
I've worked in pubs that have video lottery machines and have talked with friends who work as addiction and abuse counselors, and they gave me a lot of insight as to why that may be.
In many cases it may not be that people are actually trying to win, but they get addicted to the emotional rush of either winning -or- losing. I tended to see it more often with older people who are lonely or with people that I've known to be in emotionally starved relationships. The negative rush of losing that last twenty in the VLT seems to be just as addictive as the positive rush they get when they hit the jackpot, and I suppose it may be part of the same mechanism where some people stay in abusive relationships. What keeps them sitting there is not necessarily the urge to win, but the desire to -feel-. Be it the elderly person whose kids don't visit anymore and they go home to an empty apartment, or the woman who's boyfriend that makes her feel like she doesn't exist. It's the stimulus they seem to be after. And I've noticed that the crowd that play those machines tend to develop their own social group apart from everyone else, with the lottery machine at the center.
That's a vast over-simplification of course, but after talking with people who deal with addictions, it does seem to make some sense. People can get addicted to stimuli, and ones that are negative or painful can be just as addictive as pleasurable ones. You get to see a lot of examples working in places like that, from the guy who gets shitfaced every night because he doesn't want to go home and face the wife and kids, to the lonely woman staring emptily at the screen because there's nobody worth going home to.
"and while they may have 50, 100, 200 friends they will mockingly see that you have a pathetically small number" I'd rather have 10 or so people who are worth communicating with than 200 who I could barely keep up with. Most people who have enormous lists of friends probably view themselves as being in a popularity contest anyway.
"What is rather funny is that all the main chips in the device seem to be made by samsung for apple."
It's not really surprising. Samsung is a major chip fabricator. Even though they have their own mobile division, making parts for Apple's phone probably wouldn't impact their market segment much. As for Apple, they don't make any of their own chips, and just contract all that out.
It's great to know that there's at least a few people with a sense of integrity and responsibility walking the halls of government agencies. People like Bill Proenza.
He'll be fired within a year.
Being modded funny doesn't boost one's karma. Lately more people have been modding insightful or informative to help boost fellow contributor's karma points.
Either that or someone is really digging a hole in their garden.
"I just realized that I made almost all BSG fans that remember the old show spit all over the screen and scream "OH GOD NO!"
But just think, they had FLYING MOTORCYCLES!!! And Adama could pace around miserably, taking advice from a snot-nosed kid dressed in white.
And we could watch as the entire colonial fleet collectively slap their foreheads when they realize that all they needed to take out the Cylons was a leaky microwave oven.
"In one case, the author said that I had basically ruined his life by wrecking the whole concept of the book that he had been writing for the last few years." Jeez! What does the guy expect? Maybe he'd want you to change the laws of physics just because his premise for his novel doesn't wash? Sounds like you have a real doofus on your hands. You should get him to send you a sample of his writing - the giggles might make up for having to put up with him. (I would never condone posting a link to it. Naah. Never. ;)
Even though I was snarky in my opinion in the choice of naming, the meaning of the word "pidgin" was not totally fucking lost on me. I still think it's a poor choice.
I apologize for insulting your haughty sense of elegance with my great unwashedness.
I'd hope for the same thing too. Pidgin??? Seriously, it sounds stupid. You'd think that they'd be able to come up with a better name than that. It doesn't have to be an acronym either.
The same goes for GIMP as well.
THIS IS A JOKE.
GOD
LOL
So when someone is driving along and is told that there's a stretch of road with bad road conditions, they're going to be anticipating it. But while they're before that stretch are they going to be as attentive as if they always have to rely on their own skill and judgment in the meantime? I'm all for technology making everyday life safer (within being rational), but I don't like the idea of "dumbing down" an activity that requires forethought and responsibility such as driving.
For some reason I remember articles from newspapers about some people who, when using their onboard GPS, it advises them to "turn now", and they end up ramming their car into a meridian.
Technology should not be an excuse for people to be stupid and negligent. Especially when it comes to guiding a few thousand pounds of steel in the presence of others.
Okay...
If a person at one end of the two parallel rods were to cross the rods by taking one (let's call it rod A) and passing it over the other (rod B), as opposed to crossing rod B over rod A, would it not transmit to an observer at the other end one of the two states faster than the crossing motion (which for this instance would be referred to being slower than light)?
(I realize that this thought experiment has logical faults - crossing the rods and having them still straight would assume that the rods themselves would be impervious to the effects of forces upon them like bending, and in some way invalidates the experiment. But it's an interesting puzzle nonetheless, since the point of the rods crossing would travel faster than light, and in this case could transmit the state of either "over" or "under".)
I know it's offtopic, but the article reminded me of an old ST-TNG novel called "Contagion", where a genetically engineered supervirus was spreading around planets in the Federation. While Dr. Crusher was working on decoding a strange sequence in the viral DNA, they were astonished to find the phrase "HAHA YOU'RE DEAD" come up on the computer screen.
Point taken. I probably jumped the gun by implying censorship being the main motivation behind the program. Addiction to being online seems to be a growing problem, and I certainly wouldn't like seeing my family or friends with a problem like that. But I can't help but think that the Chinese government wouldn't mind the idea of having the internet being painted as an evil vice and that people who access it should be rigorously monitored by their family, lest one becomes a victim of addiction. And the statement "Thanks to his parents' intervention and the treatment, he now has life mapped out until he's 84." makes it seem that he was "treated" for more than just being an internet addict.
In the case of China, I don't believe that trying to cure people of a dubious internet "addiction" is their intent. It's probably more along the lines of having people believe that individuals who actively communicate over the net, having access to knowledge and ideas that are not controlled by the state is a sign of some sort of disease. China does everything possible to isolate its population from ideas of democracy and freedom. A google.ch search on Tianamen Square yields vastly different results than a Google search from anywhere else. Having people who have access to information that is not sanctioned by the state is a danger to a government that seeks to completely control its populace, so they brand them as being "sick", and cart them off for "treatment".
"One of the funniest, most well adjusted people I know was molested at six; it doesn't scar you for life"
No pitchforks, but I just have to pipe up here. I have strong feelings about this.
One of my closest friends was molested when she was young, and it has had a -profound- impact on her life. To this day it still haunts her, and those events destroyed her sense of self-worth for a large part of her life. From abusive relationships and having feelings of shame, anger, to alcoholism, she's finally taken control of her life and moving forward. Maybe not everything that happened to her was a result of being abused as a kid, but a lot of it did. It's heart-rending when she sometimes talks about it, and she still has nightmares to this day. For some people, some wounds just don't heal.
I'm glad your friends life turned out well, and I'm glad that my friend is doing good now, too. I guess I just wanted to say that there's some people that can cope better when something terrible happens to them, and there's those that the same sort of thing can consume them. People are different.
...seeing that he posted a trojan on a newsgroup to infect anyone who downloaded it, it's completely possible that another hacker could have reverse engineered the same trojan to gain access to the same machines. Seeing that this guy compromised -thousands- of machines for his little glory fest, maybe he should take the time to ponder whether or not someone else could have used his exploit to upload kiddie porn to these computers to be used as illicit servers, or maybe just for kicks. It's bad enough that he invaded the privacy of thousands of people, but he also left them wide open to any sicko that had the skills and inclination to do so.
The letter was from Macrovision, not Macromedia.
And in Concert Crasher Monthly, it is reported that the Concert Merchandisers Alliance (CMA), is getting tough on certain concert-goers. They are demanding that any and all t-shirts with band logos be authenticated and an original invoice be provided to prove the items validity. If the t-shirt you are wearing is not genuine, and you do not have the proper license, legal action may be taken against you.
Open source looks more attractive all the time. Bullying tactics like this may well end up compelling people to look at alternatives other than proprietary software. Vendor lock-in is bad enough without having to show "your papers" everytime the software gestapo decides to come for a visit.
If a typical radio or television broadcast station transmits at a power of say, 500 kilowatts, what would be the greatest distance that one could detect the signal (with a reasonably sized detector)? I would think that broadcast stations would transmit omnidirectionally, and a signal would be reduced to a quarter of its intensity each time the distance is doubled. Given a distance of thirty light-years, would we even be able to pick up a signal, even if we knew a transmitter existed at a certain location? If I understand correctly, longer wavelengths like the FM or VHF bands would need a larger detector array to pick up, and perhaps using a dish to recieve those frequencies would be impractical to some extent (you'd need a really big dish to focus those wavelengths).
Does anyone know the math for something like this?
I don't quite like the idea of my car announcing to all and sundry that it thinks I'm intoxicated just because I happen to be wearing cologne.