Of course, the best solution is to create a superior protocol and set of clients, get it standardized, and somehow get them widely adopted (yeah, I know, this is the hard part), and make it so that Yahoo and MSN want their messengers to be compatible with IT.
I know this is pie in the sky, but this whole messenger war seems so stupid. Wasn't someone working on a standards for a messenger protocol? This whole messenger war thing seems so stupid and only serves to piss users off.
This is ind of like copy protection and DRM. They keep trying to stop people and people just keep getting around it. Nobody ever seems to learn. Are they just going to keep beating their heads against the wall until the end of time? Are all these guys that clueless and stubborn?
Sorry dude, but "Republique Francaise" isn't the name of my country. France is however.
While France may be the short form name of your country, the long form name of your country is actually La Republique Franciase. Did you know your country is a republic? Maybe you should check here (see "Official Name" on right) or here (see Local Long Form), or here, a French Government site.
Maybe it's time for you to learn a bit about your own country. And I can site a few hundred more examples if you'd like, as well as plenty for "Repubblica Italiana". So, before you start telling me what's wrong with the name of MY country, get familiar with the name of your own!
You know, I hear Mexicans complain about this all the time.
Mexico is part of the CONTINENT of North America. But they are not Americans. American is a nationality. When someone says I'm from xyz, they usually don't mean the continent. They usually mean "I'm from country xyz".
We talk about "Europeans" a great deal, but if you ask someone from France where they're from, are they going to say "I'm from Europe" or "I'm from France?"
America is the short form of United States of America. America is the name of our country. It also happens to be part of the name of the continent on which it resides, but you and many Mexicans often confuse this as some sort of American (that's intentional) conceit. It is not. It's simply the name of our country. Get over it.
I've never once heard a Mexican respond to that question "I'm from America." You ask them where they're from, they'll say, "Mexico." It's that simple.
What are you going to do next rename Bordeaux into Bordo
Why not? Here in Arkansas, we took the "Aux Arc" mountains and renamed them the Ozarks because, well hell, you expect us hicks to be able to pronounce "Aux Arc?"
On a serious note though, the conversion to metric is long overdue. As someone who travels a lot and has lived outside of the country for a number of years, I find it very frustrating to go back and forth between the two units. Really, weights and measures aren't that bad. It's the temperature stuff that still gets me.
Temperature is one of those things where, in America, if someone says, "It's 75 degrees outside," you have an immediate idea of what that feels like. But if someone in Mexico says, "It's 22 degrees outside," I have no idea what that means to me. I have to sit down, do the math (and I still haven't found a quick way to do 9/5 or 5/9) before I'm even sure if I need a jacket or not.
They ought to just railroad us with metric and ignore the people. They'll figure it out eventually.
Complaining that salaries have gone down is just plain pathetic. I mean, that stuff happens when the economy goes to hell, like it has.
On the other hand, a good thing to complain about is the fact that staff and lower management salaries have gone down but upper management salaries continue to go up. Now that's just plain robbery.
I've been programming for a living for 15 years. I've tried management, I hated it. I've seen the writing on the walls. I'm not going to go much further in this field than I've gone, so I'm getting out. I'm sure I'll still write software as a hobby, but no more of this crazy field for me anymore.
I just took a 9 month vacation and realized I still love programming for myself, which was a relief. I was starting to think that I was hating programming, but it looks like it's just the business.
I think we need to get George Bush more directly involved to find out what's going on here and to ask the really tough questions like, "Is our children learning?"
The truth is that the/. community has maligned this legitimate, above the boards company just for trying to get restitution for code that they really did buy.
People here are always complaining about registering to read news. All those jokes about giving your first born child to the New York Times. Yeah, they're funny, but let's be serious for a moment.
First of all, the New York Times is a FOR PROFIT company. Second of all, they have employees to pay so that their employees can then eat and feed their families. They offer their service for free. All they ask in return is that you provide some information so that they can target ads. Is that so much to ask for? Would you rather just lay out cash?
Frankly, I was more than happy to provide the NYT with real registration information. I use their service and I'm very happy that they provide it for free. I'd be pretty upset if they had to start charging for it because everyone was sharing registrations or providing false information.
Complain about it all you want, but I think it's a very small price to pay. I registered years ago with correct information and to date, they have not sucked my checking account dry, trashed my computer, or done anything else sinister with the information that I'm aware of.
Too many people in the online community feel they're entitled to get stuff for free, but you have to remember that there are people behind the scenes, real people, with jobs that need to feed their families.
I'm personally very thankful that so many news sites do offer their stories for free.
Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would probably Copy and Paste, not Cut and Paste, since I tend to want to keep my copy. But when it comes to e-mails, I usually use attachments which require no cut, copy, or paste. But maybe I've been doing it all wrong all these years.
From the article: "It's scary," Felton said. "These services are easy and free, so people don't even think about using them."
Well, there you go. That's what happens when you don't think.
Re:where have we heard this before?
on
NYT on Spam Cops
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
In addition to what jfengel said, the DMA is doing what it can to look like a legitimate organization. SPAM has seriously hurt the reputation of the DMA and all its members. If they don't start working to look like a legitimate organization, they're not going to have a chance lobbying congress. It's probably too little too late but they're definitely seeing the writing on the wall.
And a small correction, I don't believe the DMA actually sends SPAM. It's their members that send it...
I just started using Firefox for the first time last week. I was stunned by how cool it is. I love the tabbed browsing. And the Mycroft search plugins are the coolest thing in browsing as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, yesterday, I finally took the plunge and made it my default browser and am quite happy with the switch, though it did crash on me yesterday as well. But I don't mind because unlike IE, I can submit the bug and monitor the progress in Bugzilla. That alone is worth the switch.
Now I'm pissed the MSN Messenger forces me to use IE to open my hotmail account. And then after disassembling MSN Messenger (trying to figure out how to fix this), I noticed that it does something with the mozregistry.dat file, so I'm curious if there's anything untoward going on there... Still looking...
I think Slashdot needs to change the way redundant moderation works. I keep getting posts marked as redundant, which is correct, IF I'M NOT THE FIRST TO SAY IT!!!
You should have to site a previous post that makes the post redundant and meta-moderation can keep it in check.
First: It takes a huge amount of energy to create anti-matter, a hell of a lot more goes into the production than comes from using it.
Nobody has ever seriously considered antimatter as a fuel source, aside from a few science fiction writers. It's simply too impractical for exactly the reasons you mention. Impractical to the point where it's pointless to even think about it, at least not right now.
Define "nobody." Because if you read through the sponsored proposals, you'll see there are a number that suggest anti-matter as the fuel. In fact, I don't recall seeing a single one that offered an alternative to anti-matter for interstellar fuels.
Yes, it's impractical now, but 50 years ago, nobody had ever created nor seen an anti-particle (though 49 years ago the first antiproton was discovered). NIAC isn't about what we're going to build a year down the road. It's about what we're going to build 10, 20, 50 years down the road.
Fusion isn't quite ready for real applications
Electric power generation isn't real enough for you?
Sure, show me a commercial fusion reactor being used today. That's what I mean in terms of it not being ready for real applications. The only fusion reactors in existence are fairly small scale experimental reactors that, as far as I know, still can't maintain a sustained reaction because of flux in the magnetic fields. Has that changed without me noticing it?
For an interstellar journey, you'll need a power plant that can survive for no less than decades, if not centuries, without maintenance.
There already are these huge fusion plants which survive in space for billions of years with no maintenance. They're called "stars.":-) More seriously, the engineering issues involved in designing a fusion reactor center exclusively on the multi-million-degree plasma which must be confined. In comparison to that, the problem of making the thing run in outer space is a toy issue. What's more difficult to design for: the emptyness and relative quiet of space on the outside of the reactor, or the extremely hot, energetic, radiation-soaked interior of the reactor? I think once we have fusion figured out, flying in space will be a piece of cake in comparison.
As I said in my response above, I'm aware of this being an issue. What makes you think space is empty? There's a tremendous amount of ionizing radiation in space. There's gas, debris, etc. A device such as this has to be able to operate for decades if not centuries without enough wear and tear to cause it to break down. I think that's going to be much harder to solve than the relatively minor issue of stabilizing the magnetic flux in the plasma, which I will probably be solved in the next 5 to 10 years.
What "radiation-soaked interior" are you speaking of? The only radiation generated are the energy itself and the neutrons which are fairly easy to manage. This is fusion, not fission.
As most here are probably aware, fuel mass is a serious issue for space travel.
Fuel mass is important because it determines the momentum of the escaping exhaust. But momentum is the product of two numbers: mass and velocity. You can make up for low propellant mass by increasing the exhaust velocity. A high-power reactor like a fusion reactor is precisely the way to do this.
And a reactor capable of producing a few megawatts could drive a high-power laser, and the craft could use pure light pressure to propel itself: no propellant required. Of course, this depends on how light you can make the craft, because even 100 megawatts of power will only produce 0.33 newtons of thrust:-)
Precisely why a Bussard Ramjet style collector and hydrogen/deuterium & tritium separation equipment would be an excellent way to reduce overall mass. Instead of taking all your fuel with you, you simply take enough to get you up to a speed where the ramjet can start collecting significant amounts of fuel. Again, we're talking about travelling light years in distance. That's going to take a significant amount of fuel to do in a reasonable time period, whether it's powered fusion or something else.
After the slashdot story a few weeks ago on the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (sorry, I'm too lazy to go look up the original Slashdot reference, but at least I'm honest about it), I started reading a lot of their proposals and most of the ones regarding how to handle interstellar travel involved anti-matter.
I started thinking about that and the two biggest problems with that are: A> It takes a huge amount of energy to create anti-matter, a hell of a lot more goes into the production than comes from using it. B> We don't really have a system for containing significant amounts of anti-matter.
So I started thinking about alternative energy sources and one of them was fusion. Pound for pound, fusion produces about 1/27th of the energy of anti-matter (based on my naive calculations, so I may be way off) whereas other types of fuel are several orders of magnitude less efficient.
To me, that makes fusion a pretty good option. The only problems I have encountered so far with the idea are:
1: Fusion isn't quite ready for real applications, though by the time we're capable of sending an interstellar craft, I believe it will be.
2: For an interstellar journey, you'll need a power plant that can survive for no less than decades, if not centuries, without maintenance. That's a serious issue given the harsh environment it would be operating in.
I'm sure there are additional problems I haven't thought of yet, but I'm still thinking it might be a good option. Perhaps some sort of self-repairing reactor could be built to solve #2.
But another huge advantage of hydrogen is that you could collect fuel along the way using the Bussard Ramjet idea. You'd just need a way of separating out deuterium and tritium from the hydrogen that doesn't suffer from problem #2 as well, but it should be doable. As most here are probably aware, fuel mass is a serious issue for space travel.
Anyway, I think fusion has a great deal to offer in a number of ways. Maybe I ought to work on my NIAC proposal;-)
The guy is 84 years old. Now, I'm not anti-"old-fart" and maybe he's still got his squash together, but before I start taking advice from an 84 year-old, I want to see them either in person or on TV to get a feel for how together they are.
I know a lot of 80+ year-olds that I know aren't the kind of people you want to be taking advice from. A lot of them still have it together, but a good number don't. I'd definitely hesitate to make a radical change in the world's energy production plans based on a single 84 year-old's ideas.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on Slashdot. Seriously though, I too have suffered for years with anxiety and panic. It sucks. E-mail me and I can give you loads of information.
My own experience (and from talking to many others who have suffered from panic/anxiety) is that once you've started having the attacks, you will likely continue to have them unless treated. Not necessarily through medication, but it will likely need to be treated.
Though quitting smoking may have actually triggered the attacks to begin, my guess is that if you started smoking again you would find that, not only do the attacks not stop, but that smoking will antagonize them. Remember, nicotine is a stimulant. And again, this is from experience. I smoke and smoking definitely makes my attacks worse when I have them, and that's fairly common.
As for treatment, there are a number of options. If Welbutrin doesn't work, try something else (if you want to go the medication route). There are a few dozen drugs that can be used to treat panic and anxiety. Different drugs work for different people. Some people experience intolerable side-effects from some and none from others and something in between with others still.
If you want to avoid medication, find a therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders. I found Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to be quite effective and so have many others. I stopped taking Paxil about 2 years ago and except for two panic attacks in the first week, I haven't had a real panic attack since.
I still have generalized anxiety from time to time and CBT hasn't been completely effective for that. I generally take small doses of valium when that happens. 2.5-5mg is usually plenty.
In general, you don't want to take valium or other benzodiazepines regularly, though. Besides being potentially quite addictive, the withdrawal from long-term use can be deadly if you go cold turkey without them.
I would recommend you check out the Anxiety Disorder Association of America web site. Particularly the forums. They're a sort of online peer support group and they're a fountain of knowledge. I highly recommend them. You may also want to check out the book The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook. It has excellent techniques for managing anxiety and panic as well as terrific information.
Anyway, like I said, feel free to e-mail me (and that goes for anyone out there with anxiety/panic issues) and I'll be happy to help out if I can.
If we're ever forced to acknowledge that there are no intelligent radio signals in the universe, then we must also acknowledge that the odds of our own survival just became much bleaker.
I've been doing SETI@Home since it first came out. I still run it. What some people find odd is that I don't think we'll find anything, yet I continue to run it. I agree that a negative result is just as important as a positive result. The truth is, we won't really have a true negative result until we've traveled around the galaxy and checked every nook and cranny. After all, there could be an intelligent civilization out there that simply has no interest beyond their own planet and therefore aren't trying to contact us or using any sort of technology we can detect, if they use technology at all.
If there is other intelligent life in our galaxy (and for the moment, we'll go ahead and consider humans intelligent), I think it will likely be of that type. I just don't believe more than one intelligent, exploring species can exists in a given galaxy. Or at least I think it's highly unlikely.
On the other hand, I believe there's probably maybe 1 intelligent, exploring species for every 2 or 3 galaxies. Just a rough guesstimate, with no particular hard evidence to base it on, of course.
But still, I think the search is as important as the actual results. It's part of our nature to be inquisitive and to explore. We'll always be that way I'm sure. Eventually, I have no doubt that we will start colonizing beyond our planet and solar system and at that point, we will ensure the survival of our species for a considerable amount of time in the future. As it is right now, all it takes is one big rock or some insane maniac (and we've got those in abundance, don't we?) to put an end to us.
I think one of the most important issues in dealing with schizophrenia is medication. I'll be totally honest in that I don't trust doctors much when it comes to medication. All too often, doctors act like automatons when it comes to prescribing medication. They prescribe the medication, declare they have done their job, and go home.
In reality, particularly when it comes to mental disorders, finding the right medication or combination of medications should be a long-term exercise in trial-and-error. Some drugs are partially effective, completely ineffective, or have intolerable side-effects. It's almost completely specific to the individual in question.
For example, I used to suffer from panic attacks and still suffer from some generalized anxiety. Typical treatment is a seratonin-specific reuptake inhibitor (or SSRI, a family of antidepressent). But every drug in this family is slightly different, and while one may work for one person, it may not work for someone else. In my case, Paxil was 100% effective for panic but completely ineffective for generalized anxiety. And don't even get me started on the 3 month withdrawal I went through (while withdrawal from Paxil isn't all that uncommon, 3 months of it is). I was tried other drugs in the SSRI family as well as other anti-depressants in other families.
The same issues apply to medication for treating schizophrenia. Often you'll want to go through various different medications until you find the one(s) with a combination of efficacy and tolerable or no side-effects. Some of the drugs take weeks to a few months to determine if it works or not, so you really have to hang in there and just ride it out. It can take a long time to find the right medication. Be patient.
The only other piece of advice I'd give, and it seems like you're already following it (though Slashdot probably isn't the best source), is educate yourself about the condition.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are peer support web sites around for this. I would try to locate them and get involved. In the case of panic and anxiety, I found the online peer support groups to be a much better source of knowledge than doctors. Largely because, unless the doctor has suffered from the condition, they don't really understand it. Somone who has lived with a schizophrenic relative for 10 years is going to be able to give you a lot more sound advice than a doctor who's only exposure to schizophrenics has been in his office. He hasn't had to manage their lives.
There's no doubt you're in for a really rough ride. Schizophrenia is a really difficult condition to deal with both for the person who suffers from it and those around them. I wish you the best of luck.
My car is getting old. It's current value is down to about $450, so it's getting to the point that the only upgrades that are worthwhile are the ones I build myself.
This would also let me build entirely new skills like jet-assisted parallel parking.
I'm sorry, but any virus or worm writer that gets busted is just plain stupid. It's so simply to NOT get caught:
Step 1: Write virus/worm without your name, intials, alias, or any other identifying info.
Step 2: Release your virus/worm from an internet cafe, preferably one far from home, even a different city or country.
Step 3: Keep your mouth shut!!!
I mean, how hard can it be to avoid getting caught? I think most of these morons have the most trouble with steps 1 & 3, even if they're smart enough to manage step 2.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, the best solution is to create a superior protocol and set of clients, get it standardized, and somehow get them widely adopted (yeah, I know, this is the hard part), and make it so that Yahoo and MSN want their messengers to be compatible with IT.
I know this is pie in the sky, but this whole messenger war seems so stupid. Wasn't someone working on a standards for a messenger protocol? This whole messenger war thing seems so stupid and only serves to piss users off.
This is ind of like copy protection and DRM. They keep trying to stop people and people just keep getting around it. Nobody ever seems to learn. Are they just going to keep beating their heads against the wall until the end of time? Are all these guys that clueless and stubborn?
Sorry dude, but "Republique Francaise" isn't the name of my country. France is however.
While France may be the short form name of your country, the long form name of your country is actually La Republique Franciase. Did you know your country is a republic? Maybe you should check
here (see "Official Name" on right) or here (see Local Long Form), or here, a French Government site.
Maybe it's time for you to learn a bit about your own country. And I can site a few hundred more examples if you'd like, as well as plenty for "Repubblica Italiana". So, before you start telling me what's wrong with the name of MY country, get familiar with the name of your own!
First of all, Mexico is part of "America."
You know, I hear Mexicans complain about this all the time.
Mexico is part of the CONTINENT of North America. But they are not Americans. American is a nationality. When someone says I'm from xyz, they usually don't mean the continent. They usually mean "I'm from country xyz".
We talk about "Europeans" a great deal, but if you ask someone from France where they're from, are they going to say "I'm from Europe" or "I'm from France?"
America is the short form of United States of America. America is the name of our country. It also happens to be part of the name of the continent on which it resides, but you and many Mexicans often confuse this as some sort of American (that's intentional) conceit. It is not. It's simply the name of our country. Get over it.
I've never once heard a Mexican respond to that question "I'm from America." You ask them where they're from, they'll say, "Mexico." It's that simple.
What are you going to do next rename Bordeaux into Bordo
Why not? Here in Arkansas, we took the "Aux Arc" mountains and renamed them the Ozarks because, well hell, you expect us hicks to be able to pronounce "Aux Arc?"
On a serious note though, the conversion to metric is long overdue. As someone who travels a lot and has lived outside of the country for a number of years, I find it very frustrating to go back and forth between the two units. Really, weights and measures aren't that bad. It's the temperature stuff that still gets me.
Temperature is one of those things where, in America, if someone says, "It's 75 degrees outside," you have an immediate idea of what that feels like. But if someone in Mexico says, "It's 22 degrees outside," I have no idea what that means to me. I have to sit down, do the math (and I still haven't found a quick way to do 9/5 or 5/9) before I'm even sure if I need a jacket or not.
They ought to just railroad us with metric and ignore the people. They'll figure it out eventually.
Complaining that salaries have gone down is just plain pathetic. I mean, that stuff happens when the economy goes to hell, like it has.
On the other hand, a good thing to complain about is the fact that staff and lower management salaries have gone down but upper management salaries continue to go up. Now that's just plain robbery.
I've been programming for a living for 15 years. I've tried management, I hated it. I've seen the writing on the walls. I'm not going to go much further in this field than I've gone, so I'm getting out. I'm sure I'll still write software as a hobby, but no more of this crazy field for me anymore.
I just took a 9 month vacation and realized I still love programming for myself, which was a relief. I was starting to think that I was hating programming, but it looks like it's just the business.
I think we need to get George Bush more directly involved to find out what's going on here and to ask the really tough questions like, "Is our children learning?"
The truth is that the /. community has maligned this legitimate, above the boards company just for trying to get restitution for code that they really did buy.
Nice try Darl... I mean, Doug.
People here are always complaining about registering to read news. All those jokes about giving your first born child to the New York Times. Yeah, they're funny, but let's be serious for a moment.
First of all, the New York Times is a FOR PROFIT company. Second of all, they have employees to pay so that their employees can then eat and feed their families. They offer their service for free. All they ask in return is that you provide some information so that they can target ads. Is that so much to ask for? Would you rather just lay out cash?
Frankly, I was more than happy to provide the NYT with real registration information. I use their service and I'm very happy that they provide it for free. I'd be pretty upset if they had to start charging for it because everyone was sharing registrations or providing false information.
Complain about it all you want, but I think it's a very small price to pay. I registered years ago with correct information and to date, they have not sucked my checking account dry, trashed my computer, or done anything else sinister with the information that I'm aware of.
Too many people in the online community feel they're entitled to get stuff for free, but you have to remember that there are people behind the scenes, real people, with jobs that need to feed their families.
I'm personally very thankful that so many news sites do offer their stories for free.
Chances are that you cut the desired element and paste it into your e-mail program to send it.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I would probably Copy and Paste, not Cut and Paste, since I tend to want to keep my copy. But when it comes to e-mails, I usually use attachments which require no cut, copy, or paste. But maybe I've been doing it all wrong all these years.
From the article: "It's scary," Felton said. "These services are easy and free, so people don't even think about using them."
Well, there you go. That's what happens when you don't think.
In addition to what jfengel said, the DMA is doing what it can to look like a legitimate organization. SPAM has seriously hurt the reputation of the DMA and all its members. If they don't start working to look like a legitimate organization, they're not going to have a chance lobbying congress. It's probably too little too late but they're definitely seeing the writing on the wall.
And a small correction, I don't believe the DMA actually sends SPAM. It's their members that send it...
I just started using Firefox for the first time last week. I was stunned by how cool it is. I love the tabbed browsing. And the Mycroft search plugins are the coolest thing in browsing as far as I'm concerned.
In fact, yesterday, I finally took the plunge and made it my default browser and am quite happy with the switch, though it did crash on me yesterday as well. But I don't mind because unlike IE, I can submit the bug and monitor the progress in Bugzilla. That alone is worth the switch.
Now I'm pissed the MSN Messenger forces me to use IE to open my hotmail account. And then after disassembling MSN Messenger (trying to figure out how to fix this), I noticed that it does something with the mozregistry.dat file, so I'm curious if there's anything untoward going on there... Still looking...
And maybe *you* should read RTFA (the McKusick interview)?
And maybe *you* should learn the difference between a question and a statement and use the appropriate punctuation mark.
And when you're done with that, maybe *you* should work on recognizing tongue-in-cheek comments.
To the people who marked my post as redundant, please site the post BEFORE mine that make mine redundant.
Maybe Mr. McKusick should have read this earlier post about how Linus is already on top of it. Can someone mark this story as redundant?
I think Slashdot needs to change the way redundant moderation works. I keep getting posts marked as redundant, which is correct, IF I'M NOT THE FIRST TO SAY IT!!!
You should have to site a previous post that makes the post redundant and meta-moderation can keep it in check.
First: It takes a huge amount of energy to create anti-matter, a hell of a lot more goes into the production than comes from using it.
:-) More seriously, the engineering issues involved in designing a fusion reactor center exclusively on the multi-million-degree plasma which must be confined. In comparison to that, the problem of making the thing run in outer space is a toy issue. What's more difficult to design for: the emptyness and relative quiet of space on the outside of the reactor, or the extremely hot, energetic, radiation-soaked interior of the reactor? I think once we have fusion figured out, flying in space will be a piece of cake in comparison.
:-)
Nobody has ever seriously considered antimatter as a fuel source, aside from a few science fiction writers. It's simply too impractical for exactly the reasons you mention. Impractical to the point where it's pointless to even think about it, at least not right now.
Define "nobody." Because if you read through the sponsored proposals, you'll see there are a number that suggest anti-matter as the fuel. In fact, I don't recall seeing a single one that offered an alternative to anti-matter for interstellar fuels.
Yes, it's impractical now, but 50 years ago, nobody had ever created nor seen an anti-particle (though 49 years ago the first antiproton was discovered). NIAC isn't about what we're going to build a year down the road. It's about what we're going to build 10, 20, 50 years down the road.
Fusion isn't quite ready for real applications
Electric power generation isn't real enough for you?
Sure, show me a commercial fusion reactor being used today. That's what I mean in terms of it not being ready for real applications. The only fusion reactors in existence are fairly small scale experimental reactors that, as far as I know, still can't maintain a sustained reaction because of flux in the magnetic fields. Has that changed without me noticing it?
For an interstellar journey, you'll need a power plant that can survive for no less than decades, if not centuries, without maintenance.
There already are these huge fusion plants which survive in space for billions of years with no maintenance. They're called "stars."
As I said in my response above, I'm aware of this being an issue. What makes you think space is empty? There's a tremendous amount of ionizing radiation in space. There's gas, debris, etc. A device such as this has to be able to operate for decades if not centuries without enough wear and tear to cause it to break down. I think that's going to be much harder to solve than the relatively minor issue of stabilizing the magnetic flux in the plasma, which I will probably be solved in the next 5 to 10 years.
What "radiation-soaked interior" are you speaking of? The only radiation generated are the energy itself and the neutrons which are fairly easy to manage. This is fusion, not fission.
As most here are probably aware, fuel mass is a serious issue for space travel.
Fuel mass is important because it determines the momentum of the escaping exhaust. But momentum is the product of two numbers: mass and velocity. You can make up for low propellant mass by increasing the exhaust velocity. A high-power reactor like a fusion reactor is precisely the way to do this.
And a reactor capable of producing a few megawatts could drive a high-power laser, and the craft could use pure light pressure to propel itself: no propellant required. Of course, this depends on how light you can make the craft, because even 100 megawatts of power will only produce 0.33 newtons of thrust
Precisely why a Bussard Ramjet style collector and hydrogen/deuterium & tritium separation equipment would be an excellent way to reduce overall mass. Instead of taking all your fuel with you, you simply take enough to get you up to a speed where the ramjet can start collecting significant amounts of fuel. Again, we're talking about travelling light years in distance. That's going to take a significant amount of fuel to do in a reasonable time period, whether it's powered fusion or something else.
After the slashdot story a few weeks ago on the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (sorry, I'm too lazy to go look up the original Slashdot reference, but at least I'm honest about it), I started reading a lot of their proposals and most of the ones regarding how to handle interstellar travel involved anti-matter.
;-)
I started thinking about that and the two biggest problems with that are: A> It takes a huge amount of energy to create anti-matter, a hell of a lot more goes into the production than comes from using it. B> We don't really have a system for containing significant amounts of anti-matter.
So I started thinking about alternative energy sources and one of them was fusion. Pound for pound, fusion produces about 1/27th of the energy of anti-matter (based on my naive calculations, so I may be way off) whereas other types of fuel are several orders of magnitude less efficient.
To me, that makes fusion a pretty good option. The only problems I have encountered so far with the idea are:
1: Fusion isn't quite ready for real applications, though by the time we're capable of sending an interstellar craft, I believe it will be.
2: For an interstellar journey, you'll need a power plant that can survive for no less than decades, if not centuries, without maintenance. That's a serious issue given the harsh environment it would be operating in.
I'm sure there are additional problems I haven't thought of yet, but I'm still thinking it might be a good option. Perhaps some sort of self-repairing reactor could be built to solve #2.
But another huge advantage of hydrogen is that you could collect fuel along the way using the Bussard Ramjet idea. You'd just need a way of separating out deuterium and tritium from the hydrogen that doesn't suffer from problem #2 as well, but it should be doable. As most here are probably aware, fuel mass is a serious issue for space travel.
Anyway, I think fusion has a great deal to offer in a number of ways. Maybe I ought to work on my NIAC proposal
Mazarin increases the accessibility of Gutenberg's 10,000+ books
In a related story, the Slashdot effect decreases the accessibility of Gutenberg's 10,000+ book.
Did anyone actually read the article?
The guy is 84 years old. Now, I'm not anti-"old-fart" and maybe he's still got his squash together, but before I start taking advice from an 84 year-old, I want to see them either in person or on TV to get a feel for how together they are.
I know a lot of 80+ year-olds that I know aren't the kind of people you want to be taking advice from. A lot of them still have it together, but a good number don't. I'd definitely hesitate to make a radical change in the world's energy production plans based on a single 84 year-old's ideas.
I'm not a doctor, but I play one on Slashdot. Seriously though, I too have suffered for years with anxiety and panic. It sucks. E-mail me and I can give you loads of information.
My own experience (and from talking to many others who have suffered from panic/anxiety) is that once you've started having the attacks, you will likely continue to have them unless treated. Not necessarily through medication, but it will likely need to be treated.
Though quitting smoking may have actually triggered the attacks to begin, my guess is that if you started smoking again you would find that, not only do the attacks not stop, but that smoking will antagonize them. Remember, nicotine is a stimulant. And again, this is from experience. I smoke and smoking definitely makes my attacks worse when I have them, and that's fairly common.
As for treatment, there are a number of options. If Welbutrin doesn't work, try something else (if you want to go the medication route). There are a few dozen drugs that can be used to treat panic and anxiety. Different drugs work for different people. Some people experience intolerable side-effects from some and none from others and something in between with others still.
If you want to avoid medication, find a therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders. I found Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) to be quite effective and so have many others. I stopped taking Paxil about 2 years ago and except for two panic attacks in the first week, I haven't had a real panic attack since.
I still have generalized anxiety from time to time and CBT hasn't been completely effective for that. I generally take small doses of valium when that happens. 2.5-5mg is usually plenty.
In general, you don't want to take valium or other benzodiazepines regularly, though. Besides being potentially quite addictive, the withdrawal from long-term use can be deadly if you go cold turkey without them.
I would recommend you check out the Anxiety Disorder Association of America web site. Particularly the forums. They're a sort of online peer support group and they're a fountain of knowledge. I highly recommend them. You may also want to check out the book The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook. It has excellent techniques for managing anxiety and panic as well as terrific information.
Anyway, like I said, feel free to e-mail me (and that goes for anyone out there with anxiety/panic issues) and I'll be happy to help out if I can.
If we're ever forced to acknowledge that there are no intelligent radio signals in the universe, then we must also acknowledge that the odds of our own survival just became much bleaker.
I've been doing SETI@Home since it first came out. I still run it. What some people find odd is that I don't think we'll find anything, yet I continue to run it. I agree that a negative result is just as important as a positive result. The truth is, we won't really have a true negative result until we've traveled around the galaxy and checked every nook and cranny. After all, there could be an intelligent civilization out there that simply has no interest beyond their own planet and therefore aren't trying to contact us or using any sort of technology we can detect, if they use technology at all.
If there is other intelligent life in our galaxy (and for the moment, we'll go ahead and consider humans intelligent), I think it will likely be of that type. I just don't believe more than one intelligent, exploring species can exists in a given galaxy. Or at least I think it's highly unlikely.
On the other hand, I believe there's probably maybe 1 intelligent, exploring species for every 2 or 3 galaxies. Just a rough guesstimate, with no particular hard evidence to base it on, of course.
But still, I think the search is as important as the actual results. It's part of our nature to be inquisitive and to explore. We'll always be that way I'm sure. Eventually, I have no doubt that we will start colonizing beyond our planet and solar system and at that point, we will ensure the survival of our species for a considerable amount of time in the future. As it is right now, all it takes is one big rock or some insane maniac (and we've got those in abundance, don't we?) to put an end to us.
I think one of the most important issues in dealing with schizophrenia is medication. I'll be totally honest in that I don't trust doctors much when it comes to medication. All too often, doctors act like automatons when it comes to prescribing medication. They prescribe the medication, declare they have done their job, and go home.
In reality, particularly when it comes to mental disorders, finding the right medication or combination of medications should be a long-term exercise in trial-and-error. Some drugs are partially effective, completely ineffective, or have intolerable side-effects. It's almost completely specific to the individual in question.
For example, I used to suffer from panic attacks and still suffer from some generalized anxiety. Typical treatment is a seratonin-specific reuptake inhibitor (or SSRI, a family of antidepressent). But every drug in this family is slightly different, and while one may work for one person, it may not work for someone else. In my case, Paxil was 100% effective for panic but completely ineffective for generalized anxiety. And don't even get me started on the 3 month withdrawal I went through (while withdrawal from Paxil isn't all that uncommon, 3 months of it is). I was tried other drugs in the SSRI family as well as other anti-depressants in other families.
The same issues apply to medication for treating schizophrenia. Often you'll want to go through various different medications until you find the one(s) with a combination of efficacy and tolerable or no side-effects. Some of the drugs take weeks to a few months to determine if it works or not, so you really have to hang in there and just ride it out. It can take a long time to find the right medication. Be patient.
The only other piece of advice I'd give, and it seems like you're already following it (though Slashdot probably isn't the best source), is educate yourself about the condition.
I wouldn't be surprised if there are peer support web sites around for this. I would try to locate them and get involved. In the case of panic and anxiety, I found the online peer support groups to be a much better source of knowledge than doctors. Largely because, unless the doctor has suffered from the condition, they don't really understand it. Somone who has lived with a schizophrenic relative for 10 years is going to be able to give you a lot more sound advice than a doctor who's only exposure to schizophrenics has been in his office. He hasn't had to manage their lives.
There's no doubt you're in for a really rough ride. Schizophrenia is a really difficult condition to deal with both for the person who suffers from it and those around them. I wish you the best of luck.
My car is getting old. It's current value is down to about $450, so it's getting to the point that the only upgrades that are worthwhile are the ones I build myself.
This would also let me build entirely new skills like jet-assisted parallel parking.
I'm sorry, but any virus or worm writer that gets busted is just plain stupid. It's so simply to NOT get caught:
Step 1: Write virus/worm without your name, intials, alias, or any other identifying info.
Step 2: Release your virus/worm from an internet cafe, preferably one far from home, even a different city or country.
Step 3: Keep your mouth shut!!!
I mean, how hard can it be to avoid getting caught? I think most of these morons have the most trouble with steps 1 & 3, even if they're smart enough to manage step 2.