Posts by Chemist

Re: Water?

"If you need water as a solvent and an atmospheric airflow you'll need a method to stop it drying out or having it topped up"

"The last important ingredient is a small amount of water." - the solvent is dimethoxyethane (b.pt. ~85C) (in this case).

But yes lots of hurdles to overcome.

Re: Oxygen makes things burn brightly

"As pure oxygen is toxic above 0.5 atmospheres, it seems unlikely it was both "pure" and "high pressure"...."

I think it was both, an initial 100% oxygen at slightly higher than atmospheric reducing to 100% at ~1/3 atm. for almost all of the flight. I think after the fire they changed to using oxygen/nitrogen.

I didn't downvote BTW - you are quite correct about oxygen tox.

Re: Did I miss the part...

"Where they talked about how much more energy these things can store? History, design, chemistry,"

It sounds like a fair step forward in absolute energy density but AFAIK* the output current is low for reasonable efficiency. Still these are very early days - this is a paper in Science after all.

* writing from memory, I've read about this a week or two ago but can't find where. In fact I thought it was published in Nature. In fact Nature has just published a supplement all about batteries. It will probably tell most people far more than they want to know.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v526/n7575_supp/index.html

Re: Windows 7

"Could someone rationally explain what's this thing is with windowz users, "

Simple - in any other area if people didn't like the function, design or cost of something they'd vote with their feet and buy something else. Even with phones there is some choice but MIcrosoft have wormed their way into a position of power where, now, most people don't see another choice. Not just the OS but some of the major applications and file formats Most people are now stuck or think they are. They're frustrated, see a future of jumping through hoops, at greater cost and all the time burying themselves even deeper into this sorry morass.

Re: Another highly satisfied Mint user here.

"Another highly satisfied Mint user here. "

Having said earlier that I'd not installed Mint I thought I should. So i downloaded a KDE .iso and just installed it ( into a VM admittedly) It was almost exactly the same as OpenSUSE, fill in forms, tick boxes and then smooth and fast install.

Re: Linux, still not the way

A link to the installation screenshots

https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Installation/Screenshots

Re: Linux, still not the way

"Honest question: Really, really point and click?"

Absolutely yes. Never even open a terminal window.

Set to boot from USB, plug-in liveUSB, reboot, Several pages of options like locale, passwords, choices on partitions, etc, finally press the go button.

It's been like that for years.

Re: Linux, still not the way

"It needs to be plug and play, and point and click "

I can confirm that OpenSUSE install is just point and click

BTW have you ever installed Windows onto fresh hardware i.e. not a re-install ?

Re: Linux

"Mostly what's been slowing me down is trying to decide what to go with - currently considering Zorin OS"

It is difficult having so much choice. If you're happy running a VM like Virtualbox then try a few in that firstly, otherwise a LiveCD or USB will let you check your hardware without committing to installation although it will be a slow-ish system. I've installed OpenSUSE 13.1KDE on quite a range of desktops, laptops and netbooks without any hardware issues so I'd suggest that - it is fairly heavyweight so 2GB+ memory helps keep it snappy although I do have it on a 1GB celeron laptop and a 1GB netbook but both are sluggish with more than a few programs open. The consensus seems to be that Mint is also an easy distro to install but I've not used it.

Re: Trust, indeed

"nstalling software a nightmare of compiling and other arcane command line rubbish."

Right - you make a list of programs that need to be compiled by normal users and I'll make a list of the most common ones I use that don't. and the ones I use that do.

Firefox

Thunderbird

LibreOffice

Google Earth

VLC

LibreOffice

Virtualbox

Skype

Darktable - RAW photo developer

Kdenlive - video editor

Inkscape - vector graphics

MPLAB - PIC programming system

Hugin - panorama creator

Gwenview - image viewer

CUPS - print server

NFSD - fileserver

And ones that I use that need compiling are all my own programs, nothing else !

Don't have to take my word for it - I'm sure others here will confirm

Re: Trust, indeed

"and installing software a nightmare of compiling and other arcane command line rubbish."

Ah, an 'expert' - an expert with no experience of the subject that is.

Re: Linux to the rescue! Again!

"and open port 22 on your router"

I suggest a very diff. port. I've had just one attempt in 10 years on my non-standard port - every little helps.

Re: Van-load of tapes

"It's ~5000 photos from a decent mobile camera. Not hard to exceed at all."

Certainly 5000 photos in RAW format from my 6D would be ~150GB, and clips from my HD video would add 3MB/sec.

Re: XP

"I /am/ having a lot of trouble. However, I don't like the path Microsoft has chosen,"

Well I'm sorry for that but I'd repeat the advice from Chika and use a more forgiving distro like Mint or my usual choice of OpenSUSE. But I reiterate flash isn't a problem usually and most installs don't need cli work.

Re: XP

"For all things internet I moved away from Win7 and started using Linux (Debian 8.2) a while ago."

Why ? - you seem to be having a lot of trouble. Are you sure that this isn't an attempt by an AC to spread some FUD about Linux. It certainly doesn't explain why you continue to use Linux.

Re: XP

"it can't handle Flash (I play one online game, hence I need the Flash); "

Don't know where you got that from . Any number of people here will confirm that if you want to it will run flash.

Re: Linux

" the learning curve is vertical and no software supports it"

Firefox

Thunderbird

Google Earth

VLC

LibreOffice

Virtualbox

Skype

and those are just some of the cross-platform ones.

Darktable - RAW photo developer

Kdenlive - video editor

Inkscape - vector graphics

"Thalidomide is currently regarded the A Number 1 Wonder Drug for the treatment of leprosy."

Have you a good ref. for this. AFAIK antibiotics and dapsone are the usual & effective treatments. Thalidomide has been used for certain complications.

"I thought vasodilation can be achieved simply by sustained low-level exercise ?"

But it still is mediated by nitric oxide release

"How soon before all Linux users are leaking more personal data to the "cloud" than Microsoft users?"

So don't use Ubuntu !!. There are plenty of good distros - many would pack it all in if they thought that the scenario you conjecture would happen. Any Ubuntu users care to comment - I've not used it for years.

Re: Just do the flipping update

"All the linuxians"

You clearly don't know much about Linux - I'm a long-term user (20+years) and I install/update/upgrade when I want

Re: Yes please

"Whether this or any other brand, I'm really interested in the availability of new equipment that either isn't tainted with Windows 10 "

In UK google "pc components" - they have a Linux forum too.

Re: Opportunistic pathogens

"I don't understand though, why does the immune system get suppressed in spaaaaace?"

Don't have a ready answer to that although I do know all sorts of biological systems seem to be affected by weightlessness + ?. In particular calcium metabolism/mobilization. Calcium levels have a direct and profound effect on lots of systems in the body.

Given the complexity of the immune system and the known effects of various interventions I'd think it might be quite a time before all of the possible effects might be know.

One, rather obvious one, given that sitting on top of a giant firework is in the job description is stress. This is known to have +ve & -ve effects on the immune system.

Re: VOCs

"it's the high VOC stuff that turns yellow, the water based low VOC stuff is much whiter and stays that way. "

In my experience it's the low VOC but non-water based gloss that gives a good finish but yellows rapidly. I'd guess that to make it easy to apply the amount of VOC removed has been replaced with even more of the (necessary) binder which is what yellows.

UV probably works by getting the TiO2 pigment to oxidize the yellowing binder. Water-based, having no need for a large amount of binder stay whiter longer at the expense of poor finish