AFAIK, neither the deep ocean nore the sides of the continental shelf have yet been thoroughly explored. Some early explorations were discouraging, but MOST exploration is discouraging.

Have you noticed at all that these new finds are in areas where it is more expensive to extract the oil? Underwater is a lot more expensive than on land. Under the Arctic Ocean? Well, waiting 5 years will probably make it cheaper, as ice heaves are terrible to construct around. Of course, 5 years may not be long enough to clear the ice.

FWIW, I'd bet that there are lots of undiscovered oil fields under deep ocean, or perhaps that you need to access by drilling sideways into the continental shelf. But that's expensive even compared to working in the Arctic Ocean.

Additionally, of course, every gallon of oil we burn increases our CO2 level. That's not just greenhouse, that's also ocean acidification. But you can't measure the damage that is done in any one day...so you don't need to worry about that, right?

There was some seismic activity for a period of time before it happened - but this is Japan; there's always seismic activity happening. According to interviewed researchers there really was no warning beforehand.

You aren't understanding. Since it was explained fairly clearly, I'd guess you don't want to understand. But I'll try again anyway.

These chips are broken. So they are sold cheap. You don't want to pay full price for seconds. Before they sell them, they use software to set the broken parts as not working. Some of them aren't broken enough that you'll immediately notice, but that doesn't mean they aren't broken.

Usually the breaks are only in one area. Some die didn't burn properly, or traces weren't properly laid down. Whatever. So that area is sealed off. The manufacturer doesn't do a detailed investigation of exactly what's broken, just one that's good enough so they can figure out what needs to be sealed off to have a working chip. Then the sell the working chip (with reduced functionality) for a much cheaper price.

So if you don't need the full functions of the chip, you can buy the cheaper, reduced functionality, model at a cheaper price.

IC manufacturers have been doing this since the i8086, or maybe the i80186. (Intel was the first one I ever heard of doing it.)

This is a deal for those who don't need the functionality of the full model. It also cuts the prices for those that do, as selling the seconds defrays some of the cost of manufacturing.

Those who are removing the imposed limits and selling the seconds as if they were first quality are the ones who are cheating the customers. They are also impugning the name of the original manufacturer.

Underwater earthquakes often, perhaps even usually, set off huge underwater landslides. Sometimes the tsunami from the landslide is worse than that from the quake. Quite often they will reinforce each other, at least in some directions.

So in this case it sounds like a huge earthquake acted in a normal way, but with an unfortunate direction of reinforcement. It also sounds as if it could have been a lot worse. The landslide was not huge as such things go. IIUC the one in Indonesia a year or so earlier had a larger associated landslide. And even that one is a lot smaller than some that there is evidence for. IIUC (again) a *LONG* time ago Puget Sound (in Washington on the Pacifc US coast) once had a much bigger tsunami that was triggered by an underwater landslide.

Please note: I am not an Oceanographer or even a Geologist. These "facts" are derived from general reading.

The video is deceiving; that trail is much steeper than it looks. Slowly stumbling downwards is pretty much all they could do. Also, most deaths from eruptions are either from poisonous gas or from heat. A small hut will shield you from neither. But both gas concentration and heat will disspiate by distance, so simply trying to get away from it may well be your best chance to survive.

But which do you think is more common?

Mind you, doing it in a way so easily traceable is a sign of being so upset that you count as crazy, but there's often a reason (or more than one) that people go crazy.

FWIW, "going crazy" in ways analogous to this is a part of our evolutionary toolkit for dealing with abusive management. It doesn't work as well in modern society, as those in control have learned to isolate themselves from the possibility of retribution, but in earlier times reactions analogous to this would lead to the abused person being killed, and the abuser being injured, often permanently. Which would make it much easier for his successor to take him down. The math justifying this is too complex for me to follow, but those who have worked it out say "it's probably right". It does assume that most of our evolution happened in small groups of reasonably closely related individuals, but that seems a quite reasonable assumption.

The ballast in a CFL can't handle the dimmer.

Its not that you replace the dimmer,but that you need to use "cold cathode" florescent bulbs with them--andin the smaller sizes (candelabra mount), you can't get these (or LED) that are very strong.

My house has been almost completely devoid of incandescent for about ten years--more initially for heat (broken AC in the Vegas desert!) than power.

The only place they're left are in the refrigerator (don't want mercury there if it breaks . . .) and oven (heat). But the socket is bad in the refrigerator, and the oven is dead an needs replacing, leaving only the halogens in the stove hood. Inadequate LEDs in the ceiling fans family & dining room (3 25 watt equiv, all I can find), and just about everythign ese is CFL (and will slowly swap out to LED as they fail)

hawk

You are right. But sometimes if you don't have a car, you don't have a job. If your car dies, what are you supposed to do? Some people can scrape together enough to get the use of a car. Clearly, however, they couldn't get access to the car where you looked.

Actually, often it would be cheaper to buy a car from the current owner, but that can take significantly longer, and by the time they got the car, they might no longer have the job. I'll agree that it can also be quicker, but it's a gamble. And how do you go to look for the car if you don't have a car?

That said, I'll agree that many people make choices that I consider stupid. But often they're making the best choice that they can.

FWIW, I only own a car so that my wife can drive. I don't drive. There was a time when I did, but *I* decided that I wasn't a safe driver.

You were right, however:
I can't consider Wikipedia a better source than the history text I read in college.

(Actually, I'm always rather dubious about any "fact" that I find on Wikipedia. Many of them I have known-for-sure weren't facts at all. OTOH, most were indeed correct. But don't use it as a reference site for anything where anyone disagrees with it.)

OTOH: (from http://www.phrases.org.uk/mean...)

As to the origin of the expression, two notable contemporaries of Marie-Antoinette - Louis XVIII and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, attribute the phrase to a source other than her. In Louis XVIII's memoir Relation d'un voyage a Bruxelles et d Coblentz, 1791, he states that the phrase 'Que ne mangent-ils de la croÃte de pÃté?' (Why don't they eat pastry?) was used by Marie-ThérÃse (1638-83), the wife of Louis XIV. That account was published almost a century after Marie-ThérÃse's death though, so it must be treated with some caution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's 12-volume autobiographical work Confessions, was written in 1770. In Book 6, which was written around 1767, he recalls:

        At length I recollected the thoughtless saying of a great princess, who, on being informed that the country people had no bread, replied, "Then let them eat pastry!"

So I guess my history book was wrong. And apparently nobody knowns who originally said it, either.

There are definitely many who simply can't get ahead. AFAIKT, it's the great majority of them. Unfortunately, that's not newsworthy, so it doesn't get written up. What gets written up is the 1 in 100,000 who scams the system up to a middle class level of living.

I also agree that often poor people go for "shiney!". This is often because they don't have any hope of any real value, but sometimes it's just short-sightedness.

If you have no hope of getting ahead anyway, then borrowing will put you behind some time in the future, when you may not even be alive. (Many really poor people don't expect to live very long.) And at least for a short period of time you can have SOME measure of ,,, (it's here I get stuck. I don't understand their reasoning either. I think it's the admiration of their peers, but I'm not sure.)

FWIW, I've never known anyone who really fell for this loan scam, but I've known several who fell for the analogous credit card scam. (20%/month is just unconsciousable usury. There's no excuse for allowing that to be legal.) And I *do* consider that to be a strictly analogous scam.

So why are people generally using quadcopters for autonomous systems? What's the disadvantage of a single-rotor copter when you're doing autonomous flight? I can imagine that perhaps it's a size issue - quadcopters are lighter or cheaper or more efficient below a certain size or when indoors? Or is it much more difficult to write a reliable control system for a single-rotor system?

Could they handle that weight for such a distance, though? And in very rough weather, including rain and strong headwinds?

Here's some data on the hardware, from http://ca.reuters.com/article/...

* 65 km/h peak speed, and will cover the distance in about 15-30 minutes;
* It weighs 5kg, and can carry a payload of up to 1.2kg

With 1.2kg it can certainly carry a complement of medicines or even small, urgently needed hardware and parts (batteries or spare bits for medical equipment for instance). Not general use of cours, but it does look like more than just a stunt.