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Comment Elephant in the room... (Score 2) 166

... lipid hypothesis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L...
So I get that the "Eskimo Diet" doesn't improve cardiovascular health. But then it doesn't degrade it either. Then why all the "heart smart" low-fat, no-fat, low-cholesterol propaganda we're constantly bombarded with?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...
It seems Uffe Ravnskov may be right. Dietary cholesterol very likely has little or no bad effects on health. It is probably "good" for you. In fact, statin drugs used to treat CAD are far worse for your health.
Proof: If statins actually were effective against CAD, then the ads on TV could make that claim. If you listen carefully, they don't make any claim that they lower the incidence of CAD. Their sole claim for "effectiveness" is that they lower your blood cholesterol numbers. It would be more compelling if they could claim health benefits of course, but their is no compelling evidence for this.

Comment Re: In space ... (Score 1) 50

Objects "in orbit" around the Earth are actually falling freely to the Earth. But thanks to the very large horizontal component in their motion, orbiting objects always overshoot the horizon and thus stay in orbit.
Such objects have no "weight", because weight is defined as, F=mg, a force F exerted by an object with mass m in a gravity field g, resting on a surface preventing the object from falling freely.
The mass of an object is thus independent of gravity, but it's "weight" is just an artifact imposed by surface constraints, and can vary greatly.

Comment Re:Probably pretty cold (Score 4, Informative) 43

> ... sad part ...

No need to be sad. Increasing effective aperture size of the telescope increases its resolving power. The imaging element doesn't have to be a single mirror or lens, but can consist of an array of elements scattered over a large area. Tricky part is getting all of the elements in phase agreement. Also doesn't have to be visible light. We are already 'imaging' surfaces of planets with synthetic aperture radar, operating on the same principle.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Telescope

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Very_Large_Array

So imagine a much larger optical array network, many miles in diameter, for imaging the surfaces of these exoplanets.

Comment Re:wikipedia's got the wrong name (Score 5, Informative) 51

> Wikipedia has the name wrong.

No, you are wrong. Bob Bruinga, WB4APR, the inventor of APRS has reverted in the naming convention, and now supports the "_packet_ reporting" moniker because he wants to emphasize that APRS is not just for position reporting. For example, it's extensively used for weather reporting from mostly non-mobile CWOP (Citizen Weather Observers Program) volunteers, who include a lot of non-amateur radio enthusiasts who augment NWS mesolevel forecasts with thousands of home-made stations reporting every ten minutes or so over the Internet. (The ham-radio CWOP volunteers can also report weather via amateur RF frequencies).

Also APRS has been used ("firenet") for reporting brush and forest fires.
http://wa8lmf.net/aprs/get_nws_shapefiles.htm

Comment No Big Deal (Score 1) 159

The first humanoid "words" were probably grunted utterances representing names of other humanoids, animals, places and (eventually) events.

Even so, automatically generating unique labels is no big deal for a computer. Every automatic "builder" program already do this. Except they're usually enumerated (i.e. box1,box2, box3, ..., box999), instead of randomly generated ciphers ("xyzzy" etc). But computers don't do anything randomly, it all has to be programmed by a human.
Google

Google Caffeine Drops MapReduce, Adds "Colossus" 65

An anonymous reader writes "With its new Caffeine search indexing system, Google has moved away from its MapReduce distributed number crunching platform in favor of a setup that mirrors database programming. The index is stored in Google's BigTable distributed database, and Caffeine allows for incremental changes to the database itself. The system also uses an update to the Google File System codenamed 'Colossus.'"

Comment Re:Thorium Reactors people! (Score 1) 764

>> ... thousands of years of _safe_ operation ...
Completely "safe"? Then how do you explain this paragraph about 'decommissioning' the ORNL test MSR from the article you cited?
"After shutdown the salt was believed to be in long-term safe storage, but beginning in the mid-1980s, there was concern that radioactivity was migrating through the system. Sampling in 1994 revealed concentrations of uranium that created a potential for a nuclear criticality accident, as well as a potentially dangerous build-up of fluorine gas —"
Movies

Why Are Video Game Movies So Awful? 385

An article at CNN discusses why big screen interpretations of video games, even successful ones, often fail to succeed at the box office. Quoting: "The problem with successfully adapting video games into hit Hollywood spin-offs may lie in the way in which stories for both mediums are designed and implemented. Game makers chasing the dream of playing George Lucas or Steven Spielberg will always strive to coax human emotion and convincing drama from increasingly photorealistic virtual elements. The Hollywood machine, in its endless chase for big bucks, can't help but exploit the latest hit interactive outing, often failing to realize it's often a specific gameplay mechanic, psychological meme or technical feature that makes the title so compelling. Both sides may very well continue to look down in disdain on the work that the opposite is doing, which can doom any collaborative efforts. But where the two roads truly diverge is in the way stories are fundamentally told. Films offer a single, linear tale that's open to individual interpretation, whereas games are meant to be experienced differently and in a multitude of ways by every player." On a related note, reader OrangeMonkey11 points out that an 8-minute short has showed up online that appears part of a pitch for a potential Mortal Kombat reboot movie. Hit the link below to take a look.

Comment Internet is free (Score 1) 245

You already are paying one very low fee to use the Internet: zero dollars.

What you're paying real dollars for is the right to access the Internet by means of various physical carriers: price to be negotiated between carrier and user.

Peronally I prefer the Asok (Dilbert's intern) sewage activated access. Whereever you have a sewer pipe, then you have turdo-charged access!

:-]

Comment Re:hmm (Score 1) 316

Technology similar to the Omega system is still in operation in Russian, known as "Radiotehnicheskaya Sistema Dal'ney Navigatsii", RSDN-20. In the West it's known by the nickname "Alpha" and is based on a system of three VLF transmitters located in western, middle and eastern Russian. It provides nearly world-wide coverage and is used primarily by the Russian maritime fleet, some using very ancient semi-mechanical receivers still in operation.

http://www.vlf.it/alphatrond/alpha.htm

If you want to see how these Alpha signal look like, take a peak at this Web Softwarre Defined Radio located in the Netherlands, operating in the VLF band. It is picking up 2 of the 3 stations (Krasnodar and Novosibirsk). They look like long Morse dashes around 11 to 15 kHz frequencies.

http://websdr.pa3weg.nl/

Johanus

Comment FYI, these clouds are in the mesosphere ... (Score 1) 132

... which is the layer of the atmosphere, 50km-85km, immediately above the statosphere. This is a very lonely place, the air's too thin to float baloons, airplanes and such, and too thick for orbiting spacecraft. Its major inhabitants are falling meteors and rocket ships enroute to outer spaces. Also hosts the D Layer of the ionosphere (during daylight hours) which tends to absorb radio waves transmitted from the ground.
Convection stops in the stratosphere (because there is no temperature inversion there) so very difficult for gases and vapors rising from the ground to reach this desolate place.
:-)

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