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Ndi

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Posts posted by Ndi

  1. How large is you egg? I know it sounds silly, but I just measured one in the kitchen (chicken egg) and it's 6.5 cm in size.

     

    Not counting drag, you have 3.5 cm (not counting top -over the egg- layers) to stop an egg that has dropped 600 cm at g. You need to expose the egg at 171G to stop it, not counting the fact that it doesn't touch the ground, the collapsible layer still takes up space, pushing it over 200G. Built pressure is sure to break the shell from inside.

     

    Must be something I'm missing, but what? An attempt at terminal velocity shows that it's unlikely it will come close in 6 meters, considering a 10x10 package in free fall, in air. There's simply not enough drag, not to mention your cube is most likely rotating (thus becoming aerodynamic).

     

    Again it's silly, but maybe you have a smaller egg?

  2. Every time there's a brakethrough in a field, that ability sheds light on everything we had. Each step is a deeper understanding. We have no clue what the next one will be. Look at X-Ray, MRI, DNA, and how they kicked everything in motion. A single discovery (DNA) revolutionized crimefighting, disease fighting, engineering of new lifeforms, cloning, Human Genome Project, revival of extinct species, this discovery alone allows us to build better humans, thus invalidating whatever limits we had before we hit them.

     

    How can you worry?

  3. Even if no other chemical compound is ever achieved, as technology moves forward new uses are discovered to existing ones. There was a joke in the jokes section that went something like this:

     

    1000BC: Take these roots, they will cure you.

    4: AD: Pray, the belief will cure you.

    1700 AD: Have these leeches, they will cure you

    1970 AD: Take these antibiotics, they will cure you

    2007 AD: Take these roots, they will cure you.

     

    Wine was here thousands of years ago, yet we still discover its effects and qualities. Gold was useless, then priceless, now it's a good conductor. Copper was useless, then an excellent metal, now it's a good wire.

     

    Point is, we are *far* away from knowing what the heck we have, we know next to nothing regarding all known compounds and their uses in different applications, it will take loads to finally "max out" on known compounds and we need accidents and experiments to have new ones.

     

    And this is just chemistry. How about biology? Physics?

     

    I wouldn't worry about ceilings just yet. True, many of these experiments will be simulated via computers, since it's a lot easier to understand once, work once, then run hundreds of orders of magnitude in simulations than throw a pin every time. (see molecule processing with distributed computing).

  4. I have several problems with that page.

     

    In just a few lines,

    When putting a treatment together for AIDS, it is important to note the similarities between cancer and AIDS. Both diseases are caused by a microbe. In the case of cancer, it can be a virus, a yeast, a fungus, a mould, a bacteria or an amoeba. Once one of these microbes gets inside a normal cell, the cell becomes anaerobic (i.e. it ferments glucose rather than burns glucose) and may multiply. A Nobel Prize was given for discovering that cancer cells are anaerobic.

     

    AIDS is caused by a microbe, generally thought to be the HIV virus.

     

    * A microbe is not a virus. By definition, "A microorganism or microbe is an organism that is microscopic (too small to be visible to the human eye). Microorganisms can be bacteria, fungi, archaea or protists, but not viruses and prions because they are generally classified as non-living."

     

    * I thought (and several sources agree) that "cancer" is a condition in which mutation occurs within healthy cells and they multiply uncontrollably. Because they are the body's cells, they are immune to the human's immune system. There are cancers that are caused by virus infections, but "viruses are responsible for 15% of human cancers worldwide [wiki]". Antibiotics a cure for cancer makes not.

     

    I'll leave it to people into biology to pick on the page's contents, but the panicking manner of listing and the worldwide conspiracy to kill people with loads of money to spring on cures is odd to say the least. What do you think is more money, the donations or asking tens of thousands on cures/prolongers? Also, if you make millions on a stall technique and I have the cure, I move your money into my pocket. Why compete when you can take it all?

     

    The page also leaves out explanations. There are "types of silver" that poof in and out of the cells, killing everything. Heck, it might be true, but until someone who looks like they have a clue explains, no dice.

     

    Oh and, if you want a reply, don't use the reply button. Just go to <link>this site<link> and leave your phone number. [/sarcasm]

     

    As for diabetes being a profitable disease, check news on CBS:

    One year ago, Kleiman received a transfusion of donated islet cells. The procedure is relatively simple. Doctors infuse cells through a catheter into the liver, where they settle and start producing insulin.

     

    "I would consider this one of the most promising advances in diabetes research," says Dr. Richard Insel from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. "In the last four years, we're seeing an 80 percent success rate of islet cell transplantation."

     

    A successful transplant means no more insulin shots for most patients.

     

    I guess nobody let him in to the conspiracy. 80%? He should be dead by now.

     

    Worryingly, surveys show that many people think that there's a 'cure' for AIDS - which makes them feel safer, and perhaps take risks that they otherwise shouldn't. These people are wrong, though - there is still no cure for AIDS.

     

    There is antiretroviral medication which slows the progression from HIV to AIDS, and which can keep some people healthy for many years. In some cases, the antiretroviral medication seems to stop working after a number of years, but in other cases people can recover from AIDS and live with HIV for a very long time. But they have to take powerful medication every day of their lives, sometimes with very unpleasant side effects.

     

    There is still no way to cure HIV, and at the moment the only way to remain safe is not to become infected.

     

    What this page does is misinform with dire consequences. I sincerely hope nobody takes this seriously, but if they do and a single person dies I'd hold this person responsible.

     

    As for non-binding HIV, "They're called fusion inhibitors. Unlike existing drugs which stop the virus reproducing, fusion inhibitors stop it getting into human cells in the first place."[bBC News]. It's here already.

     

    Also here are several other experimentals.

  5. I'm with YT on this one, you said nothing about recovering the eggs, just no breaking them. Encase in tough, transparent material (so you can see them not broken).

     

    I thought about filling them with something tough but then it's arguably not an egg any more. It's also slightly larger than the egg itself. Aside from that, I'd go for water cushion.

     

    At 6 meters and 10x10cm the speed is too great for any cushioning, IMO. The egg is already some 5 cm (you don't want it on the side, you need the top-bottom arch strength), so it gives you under 5 cm to stop an egg doing something quite a few km/h.

     

    I'm not doing the math, a guesstimate doesn't look good on the stopping distance, especially if you take an initial shock into account. IMO it's a trick question, thinking outside the box is the point, since the drop is too big for an egg with no parachute. You can use all the sponge and bubble wrap, the walls will crack with acceleration. Strengthening the egg is the way to go.

  6. We are already hard pressed by atoms and molecules in miniaturization, as are we by the speed of light. Hard drives and optical systems already hit limits via molecules, CPUs hit electricity speed and so on. Downsizing by an order of magnitude or two ain't gonna be enough to run anything. After all, if you REALLY need an order of magnitude, you go for RAIC/multiprocessing.

     

    What we need is a brakethrough and I don't mean by a bit. We need to rediscover data storage and processing.

     

    Yes an electron is small, but the gear needed to actually move the charge in a controlled, reliable manner is the size of a building. What is the mass of the magnetized molecules on the surface on a HDD? What is the mass of a HD device? You get the point.

     

    It matters not how tightly you package the data, it's how you read/write it. Here: 42. I'll remember this number so you don't have to. The info itself takes no space as far as you are concerned. It's just that you need the two-meter-80-something-kilo-lump of me. And it's unreliable. I need food, drink, entertainment, not to mention I get *really* upset if you store me in a basement for 5 years and I simply refuse to tell you. "Aw, the number? That'll be 34$ please.".

     

    The mainframe you speak of that runs such a sim has NOTHING in common whatsoever with today's computers. They are probably so different it's not even binary/logic. And I sincerely doubt they are independent processing unit. Humanity computer most likely, the unified architecture in which we all have terminals and a single monstruosity at the very center. Take a good look at bandwidth evolution and computing power. One order of magnitude in computing power brought about three in a single technology and we aren't even trying - there's nothing to send.

     

    OTOH, who said it's realtime? We may run a frame every millennium. If time is not of the essence, but the result is, who's to say? We may have achieved eternal life, via technology, harnessed the universe and taimed it - speed is meaningless to eternal beings.

  7. In real life, you get away with it. In CSI, a palm print is found on his clothes. Also, a bruise on his back with the shape of your hand will pop out a few days later. Also, they will find his hairs on your shirt, some fibers from his clothes that pointed that he tried to grab something. Then, they will find that your reflection in a pool of water casts a shadow that was picked up by a camera on the other side of the ship. Additionally, they will solve another case in parallel because you're too boring. :D

  8. They do use CODIS, and they *do* have realistic stuff, like translating analog scans from bit copy color to a blurred grayscale which, ironically, does seem better not because they extract info but because we are a lot more accustomed to recognizing blurred shapes as opposed to pixelated images. It's what anti-aliasing does, with no extra information other than the image. Nice touch in documenting. This is a later episode than the thing that made me smile "Get those pictures by here, I have this software that extracts images from eyes". Yyyeeeeahh...

     

    I have virtually no experience in forensics so I'm buying everything the say about matching tire irons to a skull bump, but the IT stuff Ihave opinions about :)

     

    I've got some taped episodes from someone and I'm now viewing the older stuff at a rate of 2-3 at a time, instead of one per week. The increase in realism is noticeable. I'm just starting season 3.

  9. In theory you could pump whatever you need out of whatever engine, limited by efficiency alone. Higher RPMs require better balance in the engine, more expensive springs/valves/whatever, but 3 times the RPM means 3 times the gas and oxygen, which translates in three times the power.

     

    anyone's mentioned this one.

     

    I did. Nothing about heat dissipation, though, but I think that's a good thing, since it's a thermal engine with two sources, so the hotter the explosion and the cooler the engine, the better you get. The hotter the engine, the hotter the air-fuel mix, so the less you get into a cylinder.

  10. Well, it does happen

     

    Indeed. It is, however, rare enough, which was my intended point.

     

    Second, no, I do not know what MTBF is

     

    As swansont pointed out, it's Mean Time Between Failure and has nothing to do with NASA, it's how you measure hard drive reliability. 25.000 hours MTBF means that on average it goes south after roughly three years (3x365x24 hours). Another acronym used was MTTDL (indeed Mean Time To Data Loss). If you have a mirror, one disk fails so another is used. You don't lose data unless the second fails too, while the first is being rebuilt. This gives you a window of -say- 15 minutes for the secondary to fail. The window is 15 minutes every 3 years. Miss it and a new disk is in place. A third hard drive means that two HDDs must fail in the 15 minute window and so on. A threesome is -for all intents and purposes- invincible. (quit thinking dirty)

     

    Apollo 13 was a hardware issue[...]

     

    Decades have passed since, and we don't do things the same way. Components are *much* more reliable now; Just take the warning bulb versus million hours LEDs, in addition to storage reliability. Also, back then a surge was a disaster on its way, now everything is stabilized and protected.

     

    I'm a lot more concerned on mechanical component failure - like a gasket.

     

     

    beyond the scope of the original argument

     

    Indeed.

  11. CODIS

     

    Total number of profiles: 4,023,655. They find every one of them. I think they missed one or two DNAs in a hundred of episodes. True, my phrasing was lacking. There is no such database to the extent they use.

     

    9:39 am PT, Thursday, Mar 2, 2006

    Oregon State Police Forensic Lab Reaches Milestone DNA Database

     

    Salem, Oregon - The Oregon State Police Forensic Lab reached a milestone this month when the DNA unit announced its 1,000th DNA database hit, [...]

     

    1.000 hits in 10 years a series does not make.

     

    Also, CODIS is not an employee database. I know there is a criminal database. I'll track back the episode if it's really that important.

     

     

    DNA fragments have been extracted from remains that are millions of years old.

     

    They weren't decaying in the sun. The extracted DNA from what was preserved inside fossilized bones, frozen animals, etc - all preserved.

     

    I can't seem to find any references to DNA decay timeline in the human corpse, especially single cells left lying around - but decomposition implies breakdown of chemical structure. I know one of the effects of age of samples is DNA breakdown, through fragmentation, where the info exists, but there are gaps/order is wrong.

     

    I sincerely doubt you can use cells that have been staring at the Miami sun for days. While I found no timeline, it appears drying and heat are Bad Things.

  12. Polymerase chain reaction.

     

    Thanks :)

     

    Which reminds me, files stay with samples and evidence. I remember some shows (real) that showed some cases in which a killer went free because the blood type could narrow it down enough. About 5 years down the road, DNA testing was admissible in court, so they reviewed the file, did the test and locked him up.

     

    So basically even if you DO get away, you could get arrested next year as technology evolves and they can see into the past.

     

    It's not all that hard to get away with murder, what's hard is to do a perfect crime. While getting away with murder means nobody saw you, the perfect crime means that the whole police tries to catch you and there's nothing they can hold on to. Quite a different Holy Grail.

  13. To be honest, my DVD-player crashed a few weeks ago, and it's not some piece of crap from Wal-Mart. Every component has the possibility of crashing - whether or not it is a software issue. Overheating, miscalculating, manufacturing defects.

     

    OK, let's do a headcount. How many active components in your house? How many clocks? 10? TV, DVD, camera, phone, car? Do you drive a car? Know how many active processing units a car typically have? Let's estimate a total of 30 to be safe. A few weeks, 30 devices. I'll skip the fact that the DVD runs a decoder that can actually have a software issue that is not update-able from Huston. Few weeks (say, 3?) gives us a 21 day window, 30 devices, averaging MTBF(you should be familiar with that) at 630 days, roughly 15.000 hours.

     

    This is for fire-and-forget-the-sucker-who-already-payed stuff that is actually OK to fail from time to time. Not carefully tested hardware billions ride on.

     

    Do you have any idea what happens if your ECU (car computer) goes crazy on highway speeds? No, scratch that, I'm afraid you'll interpret that and tell me you drive for years. Let me remind you. Power steering is engine-powered. Power brakes are engine powered. Like many other systems in the car, such as stability, ABS and so on. Failure means that the car jolts violently and uncontrollably at 200 KPH, and you are out of brakes, helps and soft steering. If in a curve, the steering suddenly jolts as the wheels straighten.

     

    Did that happen to you? Does that happen often? No. Why? Because people pay attention and test it first. MTBF on that is huge. Cars 20 years old, sporting 5 computers (real computers, with CPUs and flash storage, not clocks) never had a fail point.

     

    Frankly, this kind of offended me. I work with computers and file storage every day

     

    It is your right to feel offended, for whatever reason. The fact that you work with computers doesn't make you an expert. Don't try to pull this into the flame area, a) because it was a generic reply and b) because I really feel you are mistaking.

     

    We'll elaborate on being right.

     

    I also know that this is due to the fact that I have a number of different working copies spread across multiple media and computers, some of which go through a hefty everyday beating.

     

    Then you also realize this has nothing to do whatsoever with a Mars mission, they don't use the same architecture.

     

    I certainly know what I'm doing - I've been programming computers since I was 11, much less using them.

     

    Again I say, I never said you never saw a computer, I said that these things work and they have incredible uptime. They run file systems over the Internet if needed be and there are storage solutions that are virtually indestructible.

     

    Also, I know exactly how to force a file to corrupt itself.

     

    This is relevant how? "Can be destroyed" and "will not self destruct for an estimated amount of time" are different concepts.

     

    Multi-mirrored systems are much more difficult than non-mirrored, but certainly not impossible. Viruses take out systems - even multi-mirrored ones - on a regular basis.

     

    You are mixing up software corruption and hardware failure. If you write gibberish, you read gibberish. Viruses are no concern on such a mission. Viruses don't run on the MarsRoverFirmWare.

     

    As far as non-mirrored goes, I'm currently running Windows on an extremely unstable NTFS file system, and I'm waiting for it to catastrophically fail (again).

     

    I'm sorry, I really try to stay flame free, but nobody will *ever* convince me you are an experienced professional when you claim that a self-healing, stable file system that runs servers with huge uptime and load is just a barrel of fun with you. Millions test that FS every day and it's been deemed stable. When a million people walk downstream and you are the only one going the other way you are either a visionary or you should take a look at your strategy again.

     

    I have more experience with dead file systems than I would ever want to have. If there is one thing I've learned in my life, it is that EVERYTHING has the potential to fail.

     

    Quit twisting my words. I never said a mirror is unkillable, I'm saying that given sufficient attention it will not fail on it's own to a point where data is unrecoverable KNOWING it's not a PC, it's not a commercial product and they don't use failing disk. I'm saying that a NASA-designed storage CAN make it safely and reliably to Mars and back. Not that it never made it before and much farther away on deep space crafts.

     

    You somehow made it look like I'm accusing you of being incompetent because your NTFS gets mangled data when you work from different unreliable and/or virused computers.

     

    The company where I work has huge databases, gigabytes in size, being accessed continuously for over 10 years now, with logs going back even more years. No catastrophic failure ever occurred, nor are any of those mangled. It CAN be done.

     

    No virus, either. There are such things as routing, DMZ, firewalls and bridges.

     

    --

     

    RAID mirrors can be made quite inexpensive. Flash disks that are commercially available and you play football with have over 1.000.000 hours MTBF. One 1Gb costs around 12$, complete with shiny handle, nice connector and stuff. How much of a mirror can you buy with NASA's money and a discount?

     

    Let's take a look at someone who's better than both of us, so we'll lose the competitive component of the argument. Microsoft states:

     

    This expression can be formally derived (see for example [MGB74]). Its intuitive meaning is that the mean time to failure of the mirror is the mean time till the first failure MTBF/2 multiplied by the inverse of the probability of a second failure during the repair time, which is equal to MTTR / MTBF. With a 5 year MTBF and a 3 hour MTTR, the mean time between failures of a mirrored disk, MTBFmirror, will be more than 30,000 years!

     

    Two disks, in mirror, with realistic 3-5 years MTBF, runs 30.000 years. And that's for a 25.000 hours MTBF (roughly 3 years continuous use). Use 1.000.000 hours MTBF flash and recompute. Then use 100 flash disks. What's the MTTDL now?

     

    Let's also add that a good flash disk has a rated 1500 Gs Operating Shock. No vulnerability to magnetic field. No air cushion heads. No thermal recalibration. Virtually no cooling. Ni instant power consumption for seeks and spins.

     

    So it's settled. Mirrored flash disks as well as processing units are reliable enough for the trip.

  14. No, you should not assume that. "Sleep soundly at night knowing we are on far more danger from something else" and "as close to impossible as possible" are not even close to being the same thing.

     

    I didn't. Different paragraphs, I was referring as theory (possible) and practice (safe ENOUGH).

     

    Still, the question remains. Do you agree that if we define "safe enough" as "the chance of this happening is a *lot* smaller than some other thing we can't control", such a lab can be made safe enough?

     

    It is my opinion that it can be made safe enough, just as data can be made safe enough by pushing the combinations very very far. Nothing is uncrackable, but if it takes you 2 million years to crack it, it's uncrackable for all intents and purposes.

  15. Code was generated as Bin(Ord(S)). Allow me to be thorough so we can skip this "I think" phase.

     

    You take a char, convert it to numbers (ASCII), the write it out as binary. Like this:

     

    A

    A is 65 in ASCII

    65 is 01000001

     

    In binary, you convert from right to left, each digit represents 2 to the power of the ID, starting from 0:

     

    87654321 << ID

    76543210 << power

    128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1, 1 is 2 ^0, 2 is 2^ 1, 4 is 2^2, etc, u to 2^7 (128). Then you add:

     

    01000001 has bits in the positions 7 and 1. 2^6 is 64, 2^0 is 1. That is 64+1=65. In ASCII, 65 = capital letter a (A).

     

    Encoding is done in reverse. It's not really encoding, it's really how it's stored. If you write the text in Notepad, save it, the use a disk editor, it reads as the "code" above.

     

    We have the code:

    function BinToDec(s: String): Integer;
    var
     i: Integer;
    begin
     // initialize
     Result := 0;
    
     // empty string (//) we treat as space.
     if Length(s) = 0 then
       begin
         Result := 32;
         Exit;
       end;
    
     // translate binary.
     for i := 1 to Length(s) do // for each number
       if s[i] = '1' then // if one (cheating - only in binary)
         Result := Result + Round(Power(2, Length(s) - (i))); // power + result
    end;
    

     

    Which does the transformation. Then we process as:

     

     // clear screen so we can reuse the lines when editing the screen.
     Memo1.Lines.Clear;
    
     // split the string by \
     Tok := TTokenizer.Create(Edit1.Text, '/');
    
     // for each "split", add explanation to a memo.
     for i := 0 to tok.Count - 1 do
       Memo1.Lines.Add(
         Tok[i] + 'bin = ' +                    // binary
         IntToStr(BinToDec(Tok[i])) + 'dec = "'+// deciman
         chr(BinToDec(Tok[i])) + '"ASCII'       // ASCII
         );
    

     

    The output reads:

    01000001bin = 65dec = "A"ASCII

    011011bin = 27dec = ""ASCII

    01100001bin = 97dec = "a"ASCII

    01110011bin = 115dec = "s"ASCII

    bin = 32dec = " "ASCII

    01000001bin = 65dec = "A"ASCII

    bin = 32dec = " "ASCII

    01010111bin = 87dec = "W"ASCII

    01101001bin = 105dec = "i"ASCII

    01101110bin = 110dec = "n"ASCII

    01101110bin = 110dec = "n"ASCII

    01100101bin = 101dec = "e"ASCII

    01110010bin = 114dec = "r"ASCII

     

     

    Now that we have code, we can type numbers over it so we see results in real time. Clues by the bad conception that zeros matter at the beginning, I tried at end, thus:

     

    01000001bin = 65dec = "A"ASCII

    01101100bin = 108dec = "l"ASCII

    01100001bin = 97dec = "a"ASCII

    01110011bin = 115dec = "s"ASCII

    bin = 32dec = " "ASCII

    01000001bin = 65dec = "A"ASCII

    bin = 32dec = " "ASCII

    01010111bin = 87dec = "W"ASCII

    01101001bin = 105dec = "i"ASCII

    01101110bin = 110dec = "n"ASCII

    01101110bin = 110dec = "n"ASCII

    01100101bin = 101dec = "e"ASCII

    01110010bin = 114dec = "r"ASCII

     

    The code reads: "Alas A Winner", with the capitalization[sic]. Grammar included. Now we can move on.

     

    Scooby Doo has nothing on me.

  16. I understand it is just a crime drama and has been greatly simplified for TV. The point is that they often find just a hair or a fiber and that is enough to give a starting direction in the investigation. It may be a false start, but it enough to start. That is the point -- no matter how hard you try, you are always going to leave some evidence behind.

     

    Indeed you do. You always leave evidence behind, heck, looking a mirror leaves some very faint imprint on it, as light modifies the metal behind. We are hundreds of years too early for the technology to extract such info. One day, buried mirrors will show us how pharaos looked like.

     

    Passing by a wall leaves a thermal imprint that decays with age so in theory one could track you by that imprint and know how long ago you were there.

     

    Such technology is way beyond us and even if we *have* the tech to inspect such data it's not portable, lightweight and can be used in the sunlight.

     

    could you please list them.. but how simplified does CSI make the procedures... its seems pretty tech what they GO ON about.

     

    Indeed. It's as realistic as Star Trek in a way. We have the technology to build a powerful laster, a force field, we have handheld computers and with a little pushing we could build a spaceship. Yet far away it is.

     

    A picture I inspected was 400x250, at the highest possible quality (it was generated, no noise). A lady in this picture is taking all the space (I trimmed the pic to eliminate the waste). Her eye is roughly 10x6 and the iris that reflects image is 4x4 pixels.

     

    In order to recognize ANYTHING, let alone writing, you need at least 120x120, something along the lines of thumbnail view in XP/2k. That's all you get, distinguish. Now. To get 4x4 to a resolution of 120x120, you need to store 30 times the data density. Meaning, the original pic must be 30x the original in every direction. 400x250x30x30, that is 20.000x7.500 pixels, roughly 150 MegaPixel camera. Some of the best there are in studios go as high as 12. Remember, this is a no-noise, no distortion, no compression scenario. I happen to know someone at Playboy and discussed digital imaging solutions. The pictures they take have a 11.7~ish megapixels and a standing person is so defined you can count eyelashes. Yet there is no retina/iris/whatever reflection. It's laughable even if you use a professional camera, in a perfect light, off a sunglasses reflection. Let alone iris.

     

    They also have those nearly-instant fiber recognition, printer that prints DNA in a colord Excel style table with plain writing that says 'NO MATCH'. DNA tests are very, very expensive for the resolutions they need to match. You can barely touch one in a paternity suit, and all they need is a few genes.

     

    There is no database containing employees and DNA at a traceable resolution. DNA is over 300 MB per person (uncompressed) so it's unlikey they have the storage to do that. They might do now but it would be 2-3 years old.

     

    There is no such thing as pinpointing the machine that did a rope because you don;t have a subsystem that does that.

     

    What happens in reality is the police narrows it down to a few, maybe one suspects then does a DNA as a confirmation. There is no DNA printer.

     

    Also, you can't trace DNA from a single cell that's been there for days, it decomposes. Also, tracing a single cell is very, very hard, as the DNA needs to be multiplied (replicated) in order to have enough for a test.

     

    Also, once you sprayed clothes with Luminol for blood, it glows because it reacted with the blood and formed a different compound. Once it did that, it's no longer blood, you can't test the same stain for 11 different tests. Nor can you use a fiber in 14 different ways.

     

    Some of the episodes are quire realistic, others are way off. Some of the techniques employed are way beyond our capabilities, others aren't, but are greatly exaggerated. Like the IR camera that prints out the impression of a person's back and position, IN THE SUN and heat, humid weather, to the resolution where you can see the bandage. The bandage is very slim and has the same temperature as the body, it doesn't stay cold. Nor do we have that resolution in a portable camera, NOR does it work in the <relatively> extreme conditions of a sunny day. A sensitive camera that measures 100th of a degree does not work in the sun.

     

    I could go on, but you get the idea. You watch Star Trek and you think "use the scanner. it DOES scan for gamma beta teleshiganny!" or "teleport! teleport!". We understand and are immersed in the logic of the series but it doesn't make it real.

     

    It's a great series, I watch it too but sometimes a sigh is in order. Nobody tests different sides of a stain nor do they "ping" every 2 cm to determine that a drop of someone's blood was in there. And contrary to what they say, you CAN wash blood off something. Blood is meaningless without blood cells and cells are large. You can't fully wipe chemicals because it's molecules, but cells? Sure.

     

    There are loads of things that don't work. Sand doesn't keep a good enough impression of a tire to match cracks, nobody has a slot for every PDA, cell and memory device in a school and real-time downloads the contents at the center (mob episode). Any of you synced your phone to the PC? Was that painless?

  17. [...]but everything else was nightmarish. I don't think dreams release stress.[...]

     

    They do, they just don't work that way. People believe that if you are upset you should see a field with flowers. And if you are happy, you should see a field with flowers.

     

    There are things that eat *you* up inside, frustration most likely, that you bury deep inside so you can continue to act within the society. These things get stored, pushed deeply and what your brain does is resurface them.

     

    Coping with frustration is recreating the frustration situation and solving it, letting of steam and balancing it. Think of it as simulation of "letting you have one of your own". The brain takes revenge on the world in this simulated environment, restoring the balance. The reason why you are upset at someone and it's all better in the morning is probably because you punched someone in the face all night.

     

    My worst nightmares pop off in the worst of the situations, not the best, it's because the brain tries to balance. Nice, pretty smelling dreams typically means there's nothing to balance.

     

    Interpretation is way trickier because the brain tries to recreate a situation that is what it understood of it. So if you feel frustrated about something but you know it wasn't X's fault (which is a conscious decision), your brain still functions at low level and still hates people below the threshold.

     

    An example: I won a scolarship and I was supposed to work in high-end IT (which I did), but the accomodations were terrible to the point where I needed a drink before coming home. My dream was I designed a game that killed my friends. I won't elaborate, since it's a long story and a horrible dream, but what my brain received was "high-tech hopes turned around and bit". It couldn't care less the job was a dream, it just added everything and recreated the feeling the best it could in order to counter it.

  18. \ is separator, \\ is space (word separator). Translated, it reads:

     

    A <27> a s \ a \ Winner

     

    A^zas A W i n n e r. You destroyed the second byte, it's not zeroed, as 27 is the only one not in the character range. It corresponds to Ctrl+Z, aka EOF.

     

    P.S. I'm late so I didn't check/recheck anything nor did i have the time to put any tools together, it's done in the mind so don't hold me responsible, mkay? :)

  19. Right. And yet we have the occasional spy case where we find a whole bunch of top-secret material has been turned over to the enemy, despite all of the safeguards.

     

    So you basically disagree that for all intents and purposes a bio lab can be made safe enough that we can sleep soundly at night knowing we are on far more danger from something else than the biohazard?

     

    Note I'm considering a military/government/international bio lab, not your average large-glass, tour-ready pharmaceutical lab.

  20. It's not that it's bad or anything but if you step on a tail, you'd rather not be one of the attack breeds. It's not what they do in their spare time, it's what they do when they are really upset.

     

    Out here these breeds are regulated, you need to declare each dog and get a paper individually to own one. Once in the books, you are obligated to special security measures - e.g. never let the dog off the leash, don't allow it to be accompanied by a child, never untied in public places, etc.

  21. [...]they estimate the chances of a solar mass blackhole spontaneously appearing in your porridge tomorrow is a few thousand times more likely.

     

    I understand they don't really understand the dynamics of a black hole completely, so how can you compute such a chance? They could be off by a lot.

     

    But all those safeguards are designed by humans, who are fallible. Hence the safeguards contain flaws.

     

    Indeed nothing is safe but you can make redundant controls for friggin ever. I know a lock can be picked, but if you have 1000 doors and 1000 locks with guards you have more than enough time to shoot the thief. Add more guards and it becomes as close to impossible as possible :) .

     

    Filters and seals fail, and nothing burns instantly. And you've discounted the disgruntled employee who does something on purpose.

     

    That's why you build several filters in sequence, so you have enough time to incinerate everything. A bio lab with the hazard can be rather small, like a big room which you can then encase in protective layers, like several rooms enclosing the previous, in concrete, with several bio-filters.

     

    The chance of all 10 filters malfunctioning and nobody noticing is quite low. You don't have to go to zero, just a very low number. With safety guards in place I believe we have a better chance of spontaneously combusting.

     

    What I'm saying is - bio filters are a lot more resilient and a heck of a lot cheaper and smaller than a magnetic containment field - thus the chance of having several fail-safes is quite high. I understand that magnetic containment have power backups but nothing resembling secondary coils so a bad wire can set it off. Because the field needs to be strong you can't build a secondary layer 2 meters away; plus, the effect is instantaneous and global. You can build a sealed door though - for bio containment.

     

    Also, when working with the deadliest agents in the world, there is no such thing as disgruntled employees. They are called residents. Because they don't leave home each evening. I suppose. Hope.

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