- As for the IRS seizing property, there is at least some sort of process that happens before they do that. They don't just go in without any prior warning and take everything. -
Actually, they can and do. It's called a jeopardy assessment.http://www.answers.com/topic/assessment -of-deficiency-1?cat=biz-fin
against the members of RIAA? Are the members of RIAA shielded from any responsibility for actions the organization takes, presumably in their interests? Do the members have a sufficient quantum of control over RIAA (either explicit in the membership agreement, or de facto) that they could be sued for its activities? Sort of analogous to "piercing the corporate veil" and going after a corporation's owners, which can be done in limited circumstances? As long as the RIAA members can live comfortably above the fray, absolutely nothing will change. If they can be reached, even just to be served and brought to court, with some non-zero probability of losing a large judgment against them, it would help put the brakes on this out of control train.
when I had to clean salt water spray off a bunch of electrophysiology gear I used in a seawater aquarium room when I was a grad student. I didn't have a dishwasher, so I used warm DI water with a little bit of Ivory dish soap for a surfactant. Wash, rinse, repeat, leave to dry in the sun until the next day. Voila! High-impedance intracellular amps and pulse generators restored to function for another two weeks of experiments.
how predictably people label things they don't understand as "junk"? Well, gee willikers, we sure can't figure out what that there stretch of DNA is doing, it must be junk! Oh, you wanna know why, if it's useless, it's been preserved for a couple of billion years or so? Dunno, maybe my grad student has an idea. Gimme a beer.
look normal to me from the way the palm trees are moving. It's usually windy there. The apparent vehicle sway is actually the camera mount structure swaying, which you can see by using the upper left corner of the image frame as a position reference and watching the tree sway in perfect synchrony with the rocket. Since the tree and rocket present very different wind loads, it's the camera that's moving.
I'll bet every asset the PMTR has on Kwaj is pointed at the launch vehicle. Nothing like a live launch by somebody outside of your organization to calibrate the tracking sensors and wring out procedures. Hope the USAF and the others on the island don't fry the LV electronics with all those radar emissions....
Um, yeah, I'm an escaped neuroscientist, I've done extracellular and intracellular recording from single and multiple neurons in both vertebrate and invertebrate systems, and I think this extraordinary claim needs its extraordinary proof. Most recording methodology would be able (in fact, couldn't avoid) to pick up sonic signals. It'll be interesting to follow this. If even partially true, might be cause for rethinking routine use of ultrasound scans of kids in utero.
would be to deposit wavelength-selective reflective films on the inside envelope surface to direct IR and UV energy back to the filament, allowing visible light to pass through. This would cause the filament to run hotter than it otherwise would for a given amount of electrical power input. It follows that you could then reduce the amount of electrical power needed to attain the "normal" incandescent filament operating temperature.
You would need a directional reflector to get the reflected radiation back to the filament. You could do this by patterning the envelope surface with small corner reflectors. Orthogonal corner reflectors direct incident light right back to its source, regardless of the incident direction (so long as it's within the acceptance angle of the corner pit).
The corner reflector technology is used in such common items as traffic reflectors. Dielectric bandpass mirror stacks are old news as well. Given that around 90+% of the radiation from a hot filament comes off beyond visible range, you could recover a large chunk of power if you picked off this waste radiation and sent it back to the filament to reduce the electrical input requirements.
If an applicant knowingly fails to disclose relevant prior art in their patent application, doesn't that constitute fraud on the patent office? Particularly in this instance, when Microsoft clearly knows of the prior art? IIRC, fraud on the patent office is a cause of action that the P.O. takes pretty seriously.
OK - When I started my first tech company, in 1984, we used then-new IBM PCs with (ta-daa) MSDOS. It was a royal pain. My memory of using MSDOS was that whenever I used my IBM PC, I sat in front of it with a pile of manuals on my lap and the desk. With lots of luck, patience, and time, I might eventually get the machine to do what I needed.
So one long-ago Thursday morning, I came in and all three of our IBM PCs were toes-up and gasping, each for a different reason, but all MS-software related, not due to hardware. We were in trouble. My friend and co-founder went home and brought in his new Mac Classic. I sat down and began to use the thing - a couple of hours later, I hopped in my car and went out to buy four new machines. Next Monday morning, I took our three IBM systems to the local high school and left them in the Principal's office as a donation - which, come to think of it, was a disservice to the students. I remember that within the first week, I'd misplaced the user's manuals for the Macs, and it didn't matter!
So what did I learn from this? I learned that someone cared to design computer products that served me, the user, to help me move uphill in my struggle against entropy. And by contrast, I learned that MS didn't find it worthwhile to take that road.
Every company I've done since has used the Mac. During the following quarter of a century, I've checked in on MS from time to time to see if they had gained any ground in providing products I could integrate into my work. Every time, the answer was no.
My antipathy against Microsoft is manifold and complex, and includes the following:
a. The Microsoft OS was designed by people (Bill, mainly) who had no care for, nor understanding of, customers who weren't interested in computers per se, but who just wanted a tool to get new things done. This orientation has continued to the present. At a time when Apple has long since shown how to field an OS and hardware that amplify the users' talents, MS continues to complexify, obfuscate, cripple, and compromise their products in the name of their perceived self-interest above serving their customers. A founder determines his/her company's mindset: Bill cared next to nothing for MS's customers, and hired accordingly for twenty years. And here we are.
b. The Microsoft business strategy was designed by people (Bill, mainly) who took as their highest objective to gather to MS the entire blossoming personal computing market, whatever it took, regardless of the merits: competitors? take 'em out with FUD, not superior products; security? screw it, it costs too much to re-do our spaghetti code, patch it with a Band-Aid and shove it down their throats; whoa! what is this FOSS you speak of? We better embrace/extend/FUD/buy legislators, judges to drown this sucker so we don't have to actually improve our products. Make it so, Steve. Oh, you need more chairs? OK, whatever.
c. Think of all the times you've sat through the BSOD. Think of all the times you had to use . Think of the $ you've paid out for antivirus apps. Think of the times when your legal, bought-and-paid-for copy of XP failed the Windows Genuine Advantage Nazi ID check (Youah papers, pliss!). Recall the time you've spent helping your friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, fixing freezes, recovering data, purging viruses, spyware, trojans, etc. - and ask yourself, with all the money and brains that MS has had over the years, is there really any excuse for their poor product quality and their heedless expenditure of your irreplacible time?
Specifics, you ask? Well, yeah, there are one or two...thousand. How about the time I linked a Word document to an Excel spreadsheet, only to find that for every single value in the Excel sheet, Word would open Excel, import the value, then close Excel and move on to the next value. Look ahead and keep Excel open until all the values were imported? Naaahhh. Our user has infinite time, so let's make it take an hour instead of two minutes to import those Excel values. OK, further on that them
For some synthetic elements (like Pu, Np, etc.) the abundance of isotopes in the material can be an identifier of the production site, and in some cases, of the particular reactor that made the material. Is anyone here enough of a nuclear synthetic chemist to know if what is nominally Po210 actually has enough other minor Po isotopes that one might identify the production site by the mix, or secondarily, by looking at the decay product mix?
As long as they learn the material, it's immaterial whether they attend class or not. Different people learn differently. At CalTech (long time back), I attended every single class without fail. My roommate attended very few, kind of spent most of his study time in a psychotropic/psychodelic haze, if you know what I mean. So...he graduated with a 4.3 average (4.0 = A; 4.3 = A+). I didn't.
In Physics classes for the first two years, Tech had class notes (done by a paid grad student who attended the lectures) available for everyone within 24 hours after the lecture. This was fantastic, and was helpful to everyone, regular attendees or not. You're trying to help develop someone's mind - give them the resources and forget the petty attendance stats.
So...when I was working at one of the jillions of small companies under the north departure (less frequently, arrival) route at San Jose, the aircraft were about 400 feet overhead, based on the Jepp chart info for SJC and timing angular rates with normal flight profile speeds. As I recall, aircraft were easily viewable (i.e., targetable) for at least 3 seconds. A 737 inbound occupied about 45 degrees in the sky. We're not talking about a 2km shot here, we're talking about pretty near unmissable with only one shot allowed. Yeah, the 50 has a big kick, so you might rig a simple mount. I mean, think about it - if you were 400 feet away from a 737 (no 747s routinely into SJC), don't you think you could hit it? I could have gotten one of the aluminum geese with a good compound bow!
I agree the world is dangerous. I just don't think it's worth spending N billions on a defense against a low probability threat. Between 1992 and 2002, we lost about 3,000 people in the U.S. to terrorism. In the same period, we lost about 400,000 to traffic fatalities, and about 4,000,000 dead from smoking-caused cancer and heart disease. Screw the MANPADS laser whizbang defense, give me stem cell research anytime!
For example - the (normal) northbound departure from San Jose goes over about a jillion small industrial buildings and hard-to-inspect back alleys. A single person on one of the roofs under the departure route could badly damage departing aircraft with a rifle. A.223 or better would hole a wing (and fuel tank) with no trouble, and with good marksmanship, I doubt the Kevlar blade containment shields would stand up to a 50 cal round. No missile needed. No help from the can of laser whupass. Hell, the jihadi would probably even get away, although I understand that's supposed to be optional. How many billions are we going to spend on this? Do you feel safer? I didn't think so.
Agreed. Any synthesis process that requires 400KBar is just about guaranteed to be too expensive to use for mass markets. An example is diamond synthesis using the high pressure high temperature process - while you can make single crystal diamonds this way, they're not economic (i.e., they're more costly than natural gem-grade material) for esthetic or industrial apps that need big (>5mm diameter) chunks. There is a big market for diamond abrasives made with the HPHT processes, but even so, diamond grit is a lot more expensive than silicon carbide. The cost has mostly to do with the extreme pressure needed. It's expensive to get to those pressures, expecially if you want to make more than a milligram or so, which is what the Italian researchers did.
on how thick the light sabre active region is. If it's only a few molecules thick, the amount of material vaporized will be relatively low, given that most stuff it's slicing doesn't have very high thermal conductivity (limits heat spread away from the blade). It's too late at night to push the specific heat & volume numbers, but as a guess, if the active region could dump, say, 100KW minimum into a 10nm x 2" x 60" volume, there would be plenty of energy to immediately vaporize any material in that small volume. Since there's not much material being vaporized, there won't be much damage to surrounding entities (like the Jedi sword wielder) or fixtures. As for temperature, I think that will depend on the specific heat of the material being sliced, if we assume that the energy integrated over time being dumped into the material is constant. Something with a low specific heat (air, wood) will get to a higher temperature than something like water or flesh. Once you get over around 5000K, everything's a gas.
Another way to determine the temperature would be to look at the emission spectrum of the air when the blade is energized. That would tell you how hot the air is within the blade active region. However, there seem to be big differences between the emission spectra of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys. That could complicate the determination of temperature. Just like the 4/1 Slashdot color scheme.....
Slashdot Mirror
- As for the IRS seizing property, there is at least some sort of process that happens before they do that. They don't just go in without any prior warning and take everything. - Actually, they can and do. It's called a jeopardy assessment.http://www.answers.com/topic/assessment -of-deficiency-1?cat=biz-fin
against the members of RIAA? Are the members of RIAA shielded from any responsibility for actions the organization takes, presumably in their interests? Do the members have a sufficient quantum of control over RIAA (either explicit in the membership agreement, or de facto) that they could be sued for its activities? Sort of analogous to "piercing the corporate veil" and going after a corporation's owners, which can be done in limited circumstances? As long as the RIAA members can live comfortably above the fray, absolutely nothing will change. If they can be reached, even just to be served and brought to court, with some non-zero probability of losing a large judgment against them, it would help put the brakes on this out of control train.
when I had to clean salt water spray off a bunch of electrophysiology gear I used in a seawater aquarium room when I was a grad student. I didn't have a dishwasher, so I used warm DI water with a little bit of Ivory dish soap for a surfactant. Wash, rinse, repeat, leave to dry in the sun until the next day. Voila! High-impedance intracellular amps and pulse generators restored to function for another two weeks of experiments.
how predictably people label things they don't understand as "junk"? Well, gee willikers, we sure can't figure out what that there stretch of DNA is doing, it must be junk! Oh, you wanna know why, if it's useless, it's been preserved for a couple of billion years or so? Dunno, maybe my grad student has an idea. Gimme a beer.
probably was half of what pulled me into the sci/tech lifepath when I was a tyke. Thanks, and bon voyage, Don! Very glad we have your reruns.
the Krell, and how they ended.
Tom, just saw your reply. Thank you for the info.
since rhenium is more costly than platinum.
look normal to me from the way the palm trees are moving. It's usually windy there. The apparent vehicle sway is actually the camera mount structure swaying, which you can see by using the upper left corner of the image frame as a position reference and watching the tree sway in perfect synchrony with the rocket. Since the tree and rocket present very different wind loads, it's the camera that's moving.
I'll bet every asset the PMTR has on Kwaj is pointed at the launch vehicle. Nothing like a live launch by somebody outside of your organization to calibrate the tracking sensors and wring out procedures. Hope the USAF and the others on the island don't fry the LV electronics with all those radar emissions....
Um, yeah, I'm an escaped neuroscientist, I've done extracellular and intracellular recording from single and multiple neurons in both vertebrate and invertebrate systems, and I think this extraordinary claim needs its extraordinary proof. Most recording methodology would be able (in fact, couldn't avoid) to pick up sonic signals. It'll be interesting to follow this. If even partially true, might be cause for rethinking routine use of ultrasound scans of kids in utero.
would be to deposit wavelength-selective reflective films on the inside envelope surface to direct IR and UV energy back to the filament, allowing visible light to pass through. This would cause the filament to run hotter than it otherwise would for a given amount of electrical power input. It follows that you could then reduce the amount of electrical power needed to attain the "normal" incandescent filament operating temperature.
You would need a directional reflector to get the reflected radiation back to the filament. You could do this by patterning the envelope surface with small corner reflectors. Orthogonal corner reflectors direct incident light right back to its source, regardless of the incident direction (so long as it's within the acceptance angle of the corner pit).
The corner reflector technology is used in such common items as traffic reflectors. Dielectric bandpass mirror stacks are old news as well. Given that around 90+% of the radiation from a hot filament comes off beyond visible range, you could recover a large chunk of power if you picked off this waste radiation and sent it back to the filament to reduce the electrical input requirements.
Is it likely that these accelerators can be cascaded to get higher energies?
If an applicant knowingly fails to disclose relevant prior art in their patent application, doesn't that constitute fraud on the patent office? Particularly in this instance, when Microsoft clearly knows of the prior art? IIRC, fraud on the patent office is a cause of action that the P.O. takes pretty seriously.
OK - When I started my first tech company, in 1984, we used then-new IBM PCs with (ta-daa) MSDOS. It was a royal pain. My memory of using MSDOS was that whenever I used my IBM PC, I sat in front of it with a pile of manuals on my lap and the desk. With lots of luck, patience, and time, I might eventually get the machine to do what I needed. So one long-ago Thursday morning, I came in and all three of our IBM PCs were toes-up and gasping, each for a different reason, but all MS-software related, not due to hardware. We were in trouble. My friend and co-founder went home and brought in his new Mac Classic. I sat down and began to use the thing - a couple of hours later, I hopped in my car and went out to buy four new machines. Next Monday morning, I took our three IBM systems to the local high school and left them in the Principal's office as a donation - which, come to think of it, was a disservice to the students. I remember that within the first week, I'd misplaced the user's manuals for the Macs, and it didn't matter! So what did I learn from this? I learned that someone cared to design computer products that served me, the user, to help me move uphill in my struggle against entropy. And by contrast, I learned that MS didn't find it worthwhile to take that road. Every company I've done since has used the Mac. During the following quarter of a century, I've checked in on MS from time to time to see if they had gained any ground in providing products I could integrate into my work. Every time, the answer was no. My antipathy against Microsoft is manifold and complex, and includes the following: a. The Microsoft OS was designed by people (Bill, mainly) who had no care for, nor understanding of, customers who weren't interested in computers per se, but who just wanted a tool to get new things done. This orientation has continued to the present. At a time when Apple has long since shown how to field an OS and hardware that amplify the users' talents, MS continues to complexify, obfuscate, cripple, and compromise their products in the name of their perceived self-interest above serving their customers. A founder determines his/her company's mindset: Bill cared next to nothing for MS's customers, and hired accordingly for twenty years. And here we are. b. The Microsoft business strategy was designed by people (Bill, mainly) who took as their highest objective to gather to MS the entire blossoming personal computing market, whatever it took, regardless of the merits: competitors? take 'em out with FUD, not superior products; security? screw it, it costs too much to re-do our spaghetti code, patch it with a Band-Aid and shove it down their throats; whoa! what is this FOSS you speak of? We better embrace/extend/FUD/buy legislators, judges to drown this sucker so we don't have to actually improve our products. Make it so, Steve. Oh, you need more chairs? OK, whatever. c. Think of all the times you've sat through the BSOD. Think of all the times you had to use . Think of the $ you've paid out for antivirus apps. Think of the times when your legal, bought-and-paid-for copy of XP failed the Windows Genuine Advantage Nazi ID check (Youah papers, pliss!). Recall the time you've spent helping your friends, family, co-workers, colleagues, fixing freezes, recovering data, purging viruses, spyware, trojans, etc. - and ask yourself, with all the money and brains that MS has had over the years, is there really any excuse for their poor product quality and their heedless expenditure of your irreplacible time? Specifics, you ask? Well, yeah, there are one or two...thousand. How about the time I linked a Word document to an Excel spreadsheet, only to find that for every single value in the Excel sheet, Word would open Excel, import the value, then close Excel and move on to the next value. Look ahead and keep Excel open until all the values were imported? Naaahhh. Our user has infinite time, so let's make it take an hour instead of two minutes to import those Excel values. OK, further on that them
For some synthetic elements (like Pu, Np, etc.) the abundance of isotopes in the material can be an identifier of the production site, and in some cases, of the particular reactor that made the material. Is anyone here enough of a nuclear synthetic chemist to know if what is nominally Po210 actually has enough other minor Po isotopes that one might identify the production site by the mix, or secondarily, by looking at the decay product mix?
As long as they learn the material, it's immaterial whether they attend class or not. Different people learn differently. At CalTech (long time back), I attended every single class without fail. My roommate attended very few, kind of spent most of his study time in a psychotropic/psychodelic haze, if you know what I mean. So...he graduated with a 4.3 average (4.0 = A; 4.3 = A+). I didn't. In Physics classes for the first two years, Tech had class notes (done by a paid grad student who attended the lectures) available for everyone within 24 hours after the lecture. This was fantastic, and was helpful to everyone, regular attendees or not. You're trying to help develop someone's mind - give them the resources and forget the petty attendance stats.
So...when I was working at one of the jillions of small companies under the north departure (less frequently, arrival) route at San Jose, the aircraft were about 400 feet overhead, based on the Jepp chart info for SJC and timing angular rates with normal flight profile speeds. As I recall, aircraft were easily viewable (i.e., targetable) for at least 3 seconds. A 737 inbound occupied about 45 degrees in the sky. We're not talking about a 2km shot here, we're talking about pretty near unmissable with only one shot allowed. Yeah, the 50 has a big kick, so you might rig a simple mount. I mean, think about it - if you were 400 feet away from a 737 (no 747s routinely into SJC), don't you think you could hit it? I could have gotten one of the aluminum geese with a good compound bow! I agree the world is dangerous. I just don't think it's worth spending N billions on a defense against a low probability threat. Between 1992 and 2002, we lost about 3,000 people in the U.S. to terrorism. In the same period, we lost about 400,000 to traffic fatalities, and about 4,000,000 dead from smoking-caused cancer and heart disease. Screw the MANPADS laser whizbang defense, give me stem cell research anytime!
For example - the (normal) northbound departure from San Jose goes over about a jillion small industrial buildings and hard-to-inspect back alleys. A single person on one of the roofs under the departure route could badly damage departing aircraft with a rifle. A .223 or better would hole a wing (and fuel tank) with no trouble, and with good marksmanship, I doubt the Kevlar blade containment shields would stand up to a 50 cal round. No missile needed. No help from the can of laser whupass. Hell, the jihadi would probably even get away, although I understand that's supposed to be optional. How many billions are we going to spend on this? Do you feel safer? I didn't think so.
BSOD at 200 mph - where do you want to go today? don' matter, boy, you're headed for a crash!
Agreed. Any synthesis process that requires 400KBar is just about guaranteed to be too expensive to use for mass markets. An example is diamond synthesis using the high pressure high temperature process - while you can make single crystal diamonds this way, they're not economic (i.e., they're more costly than natural gem-grade material) for esthetic or industrial apps that need big (>5mm diameter) chunks. There is a big market for diamond abrasives made with the HPHT processes, but even so, diamond grit is a lot more expensive than silicon carbide. The cost has mostly to do with the extreme pressure needed. It's expensive to get to those pressures, expecially if you want to make more than a milligram or so, which is what the Italian researchers did.
This would be worth a try...RICO is a pretty big hammer.
on how thick the light sabre active region is. If it's only a few molecules thick, the amount of material vaporized will be relatively low, given that most stuff it's slicing doesn't have very high thermal conductivity (limits heat spread away from the blade). It's too late at night to push the specific heat & volume numbers, but as a guess, if the active region could dump, say, 100KW minimum into a 10nm x 2" x 60" volume, there would be plenty of energy to immediately vaporize any material in that small volume. Since there's not much material being vaporized, there won't be much damage to surrounding entities (like the Jedi sword wielder) or fixtures. As for temperature, I think that will depend on the specific heat of the material being sliced, if we assume that the energy integrated over time being dumped into the material is constant. Something with a low specific heat (air, wood) will get to a higher temperature than something like water or flesh. Once you get over around 5000K, everything's a gas. Another way to determine the temperature would be to look at the emission spectrum of the air when the blade is energized. That would tell you how hot the air is within the blade active region. However, there seem to be big differences between the emission spectra of the Good Guys vs. the Bad Guys. That could complicate the determination of temperature. Just like the 4/1 Slashdot color scheme.....