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Outside of making 3D printers accessible I'm not sure how libraries could feasibly offer workshops. People don't only work in plastic, and presently 3D printing is a novelty for your average person.

With the Chicago library's lab, they offer various workshops on some small example projects (e.g. a 3D printed trinket or a laser cut greeting card) to expose people to the basic process and offer open lab hours. You can look at the schedule here. I'm not sure where you see a problem with the feasibility of this.

3D printing is to a large extent still in the novelty phase, but as it gains in popularity so will the practical applications. I have a broken plastic component of a relay in a 70s era pinball machine for which purchasing a replacement isn't an option. It is however a simple geometric design and I plan on printing a replacement at the library.

According to this link found in the article from the grandparent's link about the freight tunnels, and to your Wikipedia link, the tunnels are actually one and the same.

"So instead we have an increase in religious discrimination"

Catholics weren't discriminated against a hundred years ago? Of course they were.

"exploitation of anybody with a low income"

And that didn't happen previously, you know when there wasn't a 40 hour work week, no unions, no OSHA, etc?

"the inability to effectively protest without being labeled a terrorist"

Bonus riots, Haymarket riots, Kent State, etc. It's happened for hundreds of years.

"and people living to work not working to live."

Read this. I think you'll be amazed at how you've overstated your position, and at how little you know about the subject.

http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/1900/fam.html

The other guy is right. Things were much worse in the past. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to make them better, but let's not act like we're living during the Inquisition.

Actually, Chicago used to be quite prone to flooding from Lake Michigan, which was only a couple feet below street level. The city's roads and streets were impassable every winter because they would freeze over, and impassable every spring because the rain would turn them to mud. Unlike New Orleans, however, Chicago made the decision to raise its street level by up to 14 feet, thus lifting itself out of the muck and greatly reducing the city's susceptibility to flooding. Not only were streets and sidewalks rebuilt on vaulted arches, but entire buildings were also lifted from their foundations by mechanical jacks, even as people within them went about their business as usual. This was done back in the mid-19th century.

Why New Orleans never followed Chicago's lead is something I'd like to know.

The Chicago Public Library just got all new Dells at their branches. I helped deliver them. Almost every one of these libraries was pretty nice. I have not been to every city/town in Illinois yet, but I would wager that the libraries here are better than those in other states.

No Toronto and Chicago seem pretty similar:

Toronto the city has a population of 2.48 million people, and there are 5 million in the greater Toronto area (cities touching Toronto).http://www.city.toronto.on.ca/toronto_fac ts/diversity.htm

Chicago has 2.9 million people in the city and 5.4 million in the county.http://www.chipublib.org/004chicago/chifact s.html

Why do you say Chicago has 1 million more people ?

There are several stories/theories that are put out there, all claiming to be the right one.

For example, The Chicago Public Library tells us that it's because originally a sports league of four schools, the number four being "IV" in Roman numerals.

The straight dope, on the other hand, basically says it's the "Big Eight" (formerly "Big Three") who got together for sports competitions, and the "Ivy" in "Ivy League" refers to the Ivy growing on the walls. Wikipedia seems to agree with this, but has a much more detailed information on the league and the schools which form it, as well as other related information.

Are you suggesting that every state in the US use an election model that has been tested in Louisiana?

No thanks. You might as well be suggesting it come from Chicago.

I'd agree with you that it would be a problem if that isolated part of the lake were being used as a heat sink, but that's just not the case. What IS happening there is that there is a net loss of colder water in that region, at that particular strata of the lake. But the fluid dynamics of water (and the persistence of temperature strata) will tend to disperse the effect over a fairly wide area. The comparison to 7 additional seconds of sunlight over a year is probably about as accurate as you can get without a lot more math.

I'm sure the reversal of the Chicago River more than a century ago has affected Lake Michigan more than this will Lake Ontario.

...are doomed to misquote it, poorly. The limit imposed by the British House of Commons was 15 miles per hour.

Interesting discussion. Later articles enthuse about journalists carrying news about England at a steady 15 miles per hour, such that news happening in London on Monday might be read by even the most isolated Highlander by Friday.

Bah, my initial starting figures for the surface of the earth are off by 1000. :(

Earth surface = 5.1*10^14 m2
Volume extruded from surface, 1km high, ignoring spherical distortion = 5.1*10^17 m3.
# atoms in that space = 1.48*10^46
one IP address for every 43 million atoms, which is a bit of a different story from my first post. But maybe my assumptions were too conservative?

This raises another question, which is what is the rough lower bound for the size (in terms of # of atoms) for a working nano-device? I evaded this question a bit in my earlier analysis, but remembering the Times Ten size comparisons showing viruses, particularly rhinoviruses as the smallest living things, I went to look at how many atoms make up such a thing. A google search led to a Caltech thesis saying that "The smallest important viruses, the picornaviruses (responsible for polio, the common cold, and hoof-and-mouth disease) are composed of protein coats of about 0.5 million atoms and a nucleic acid genome of about the same size." (Some smallest virus in theory calculations suggest lower sizes, I dunno how good the underlying assumptions are.) So 1 million atoms is a reasonable size for a nanodevice, right? Well, partially-- viruses can't do much without a host cell infrastructure to tap into. But on the flip side, for a working nanodevice sufficient to have its own IP address, we wouldn't necessarily need the self-replication infrastructure of a virus. So I'm not sure this line of thinking leads anywhere.

Stepping back, my volumetric analysis was probably too conservative (1km high all over the earth's surface?) Tallest buildings size today is ~400 meters to the top occupied floor, so in that respect my analysis isn't too off. But what's the average density likely to be anytime in the near future? My guess is there's a 1/x power law distribution of some kind (hmm, perhaps so?) More googling leads to a paper saying that average building height in Los Angeles is really more like 12 meters (with cities like Phoenix at 5 meters). So maybe we can chop off two orders of magnitude from our 1km height estimate. So 430K atoms per IP #?

Then there are two other factors that lead to further overestimates of usable volumetric space; that urbanization itself isn't spread evenly over the surface of the earth, and that within this, say, 10meter high volume, there's a limit to the nanodevice density that humans (and the atmosphere) will accomodate. That alone cuts the max number of atoms worldwide dedicated to nanodevices down by several orders of magnitude further. Enough so that I'm still pretty comfortable that nanotech won't exhaust IPv6.

OK, I've spent way too long satisfying my curiousity. Hope someone out there found it interesting. :)

--LP

Erm, am I the only one who remembers that the "great Chicago Blizzard" was in '79 not '78? Don't believe my rusty old memory? See for yourself.

Truman suggested the nuclear bomb to Stalin 57 years ago TODAY, and you nerds are discussing the first wind-up phone charger review? MY GOD, GET SOME FRICKIN' PRIORITIES!!!

The Mormons first settled in Utah and founded Salt Lake City 155 years ago TODAY, and you people are JACKING OVER a wind up phone charger? JESUS H. CHRIST, PEOPLE, GET SOME PRIORITIES!!!

Martin Van Buren died 140 years ago TODAY, and you people are STILL going on about that phone charger? DAMMIT, GET SOME PRIORITIES, YOU SICK FREAKS?!?!?!

While I don't believe Tiananmen could be justified, I don't think this could be either. Politics? Sure, land disputes are political, right? Darn that Andrew Jackson!

You can not compare the organized slaughter at Tiananmen Square to the actions of a few frightened National Guardsmen at Kent State.

How do you know those Chinese soldiers weren't frightened? I'd be frightened if I was outnumbered by screaming protesters too. Or are you taking the liberty to imply those farmboys in the PLA are conditioned murderers?

The Federal Government didn't order the attack at Kent State. The Chinese Government ordered the attacks.

I submit exhibit A and exhibit B. Right, different eras and different context.

Students at Kent State were not put in prison for thier actions, while protesters at Tiananmen Square were thrown in prison.

There's different reasons you can get thrown in prison. 1. Arrest 2. Detainment

The National Guard at Kent State didn't send in Armored units to put down the protests, like the Chinese did at Tiananmen Square. Read the text of Deng Xiaoping's speech to the Martial Law Units from June 9th, 1989. http://tsquare.tv/chronology/Deng.html

From what I read (no, not published by the PRC), they had officers try to put down the protests, but when the students refused to move, Deng and company got nervous seeing how the country's inability to put down a protest would influence the world's opinion (trail by television). I wouldn't trust a .tv domain even if it spouted stuff I agreed w/.

Those things, coupled with the Chinese oppression of the Fal Lun Gong, Chirstians, Tibet and the 20-40 million that died because of the Great Leap Foreward, give the rest of the world the right to shake our fingers at the Chinese.

Nice, picking out the choice topics. I'm do the same to justify my desire to shake my fingers at people I don't like either. Just like blaming the government for Hurricane Andrew. OTOH, I'd do my own research about said topics before pointing to them. But it's really easy to ignore that, and imply I did, right? btw, don't forget you can create friends and foes lists on slashdot now.

I've posted this once in reply, but I think it bears repeating since there's already 10 posts concerning this topic... the Sears Tower IS the tallest building in the world. The Sears Tower once again became the tallest building in the world in 1997, when the Council on Tall Buildings met and announced new standards upon which the tallest building would be judged.

The Petronas Towers were previously the world's tallest building, but only because of a decorative spire on top of both of the towers, the Empire State building is the tallest including the antenna, the Sears Tower is the tallest in the other two categories (highest occupied floor and highest to the top of the roof). You can read all about it here.

Actually, the Sears Tower was dethroned by the Petronas Twin Towers in 1996, but regained the title in 1997. The way the Petronas Twin Towers gained the title was by putting decorative spires on top of the top floor of the buildings. In 1997 the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat met and declared the Sears Tower the tallest building again. You can read about it at this link.