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Kornbluth had an idea: Send them on a cruise!

There's no proof, and the "Global Competitiveness" crap in TFA is irrelevant to the millions of Japanese SMEs, because they are not competing globally.

Japan is on the edge of a demographics crisis. 25% of their population is over 65, compared with 59% that work. Having only ~2.36 people paying into public healthcare and social insurance for each person drawing out is not a good ratio, and with their notoriously low birth rates, is only going to worsen as time goes on.

In the meanwhile, Japan's racking up shittons of debt, and has to import nearly all of their energy.

So, what does this mean? It means productivity is really fucking important. If your aging population has fewer than 2 workers to cover each retiree, those workers better be really fucking productive or those healthcare costs are going to be an incredible burden. If you need to import 94% of your energy at great expense, you better put that energy to really fucking good use--i.e., be productive--or otherwise you're spending everything on coal and petrodollars instead of your own people. If your government debt is skyrocketing, but has fewer and fewer taxpayers to pay it down, those people better be really fucking productive or you're not going to have a government.

That latter point is especially important. Japan can get away with its debt load because of Japan's famously high savings rate--lots of people (or banks using people's savings) buying savings bonds means you can issue those bonds really cheaply. But, when people retire, they by necessity stop saving and start drawing on their savings instead. The government has double their yearly income in what's essentially an adjustable-rate mortgage, and the interest rates are going to skyrocket right as fewer people are there to pay it down.

It wasn't meant to be frightening, it just turned out that way.

http://mysite.du.edu/~treddell...

A friend wanted to replace his landscape bulbs with LEDs, the flicker was horrible.
We added a bridge rectifier and the 120 hz flicker was less offensive.
So, we added a capacitor, the flicker was gone and the LEDs were much brighter.
I noticed they were also becoming warm so I measured the voltage which was now over 18vdc.
I suddenly recalled that a load resistor was always added when I used to make linear power supplies, a few years ago.
Can't remember the formula I used to use but google found a nice article about this:
http://mysite.du.edu/~etuttle/...

Perhaps you misunderstood, due to my poor wording. I should have said "inverted U-formed pipe" or maybe an "n-formed pipe".

If that isn't what caused your "this is nonsense" statement, then perhaps you need to review simple mercury barometer construction

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Note the second paragraph on Siphons which discusses the maximum height:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Here is another reference for the maximum height of a suction pump:
http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert...

People do not use suction pumps to raise water beyond 10m in one stage. They can use various pump designs to push water from the bottom to much higher heights, but you can't "pull" it up more than about 10m without changing the local air pressure.

I would be interested to see any references or examples to the contrary.

Ok - so here's a reference for an 18th-Century canon that had a range of 2,400m: http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/cannon.htm. So more than a few hundred yards, but certainly not intercontinental...

More feel-good lefty lunacy from la-la land .... Next they'll pass legislation mandating Pi to equal 3 so their stupid kids don't have to think too hard.

You must be thinking of that liberal la-la land that is Indiana.

Believe it or not, the time domain reflectometer is real technology, and not particularly new either.

This from a five-digit palindromic slashdot ID. God rest my soul.

William Thompson (class instance Lord Kelvin) had his way with the telegrapher's equations in 1850 when the lack of a plastics industry proved to be a huge threat to the first trans-Atlantic cable. Notorious dullard that he was, he can't possibly have noticed, either in his equations or in real life, signal reflections originating from impedance discontinuities. Not doubt he thought his needle was possessed by nervous daemons.

While I was quickly checking my dates, I came across this humorous early expression of the BBQ assembly gene:

http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/cable.htm

The Anglo-American Atlantic Telegraph Company was formed in 1856 with money from Cyrus Field and technical expertise from Britain. The cable was projected to extend from Valentia Bay in Ireland to Trinity Bay in Newfoundland, 3039 km, in depths of 1700-2400 fathoms, which was by far the most ambitious project yet attempted. The project was rushed to completion in 1857, but the first attempt in that year quickly failed. The two companies independently manufacturing halves of the cable managed to spiral the armor in opposite directions, which caused splicing difficulties.

Picture the 3200 ton HMS Agamemnon and the 5000 ton USS Niagara engaged in a stern exchange at the moment of truth. If the Americans handed the semaphore flags to an Italian crew member, they probably got the better of the exchange. It takes half a cup of tea to text back FU2 in Morse code with the shutter contraption. Your average hot-blooded Italian can compress the Sodomites Compendium into three gestures.

Comments elicited by the great blackout of August 2003 brought up the speed of electrons, the average slashdotter's knowledge extending to the existence of electrons as carrying electrical energy but not much further.

The jamming will also easily be defeated by an entirely new branch of coding theory using the BBC algorithm (http://crisp.cs.du.edu/frisc/baird.pdf). Error correction is distributed throughout the data stream, so even if the jammer completely obliterates parts of the signal--to the point that the original signal is unintelligible--the coded message will still get through.

This coding theory is handy for all sorts of stuff, from military comms to cell phones to MIMO access points. And unlike most crypto stuff, it's rather simple to understand and implement.

1738. With bernoulli and newton, quite a few things could be explained.

http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/fluids/bernoul.htm

If only laws prevented that! Surely eugenics is the answer, or perhaps some other form of law to keep the higher-quality people from those lower-quality ones.

They're going to spend the rest of their miserable, worthless lives on welfare, no doubt failing to raise their bastard kids properly.

Who are you to say that their lives will be miserable and worthless? To those living them, perhaps their lives are rich and provide emotional sustenance, or seem worthy and interesting. It is dangerous to try and judge someone from the outside, and if you hold the rest of humanity in such low regard, perhaps you should think about what is happening in your own life that you castigate others as you do.

Robertson Davies sometimes writes about such people who are left behind by time or technology or society, and writes about them with great sympathy. In The Cunning Man a doctor treats patients with more than just science, and in Conversation with Robertson Davies this exchange occurs:

Cameron: Don't those novels show a fairly strong current of sympathy for some aspects of that [cultural] tradition?

Davies: It is sympathy for the people -- not, I think the tradition -- because they are people. They're not caricatures, they're not oddities, they're not cardboard. They bleed when you stick them and they weep when they are miserable, and their sorrows and their distresses are made sometimes more poignant by the fact that they don't know why things are happening to them.

I will lament that my penis has by then received so little use.

Most women, I suspect, would choose a carefree bad boy over an angry, uptight Republican with a chip on his shoulder; Dan Savage makes a similar point in some of his columns. If you think ignorant fools can get laid so easily but someone as perspicacious as you wants to and can't, who is smart?

So logically they should receive something near to what they paid to the Highway Trust Fund, right? Alaska receives $4.06 for every dollar paid. That is $3.06 too much.

What do most places do when they want to build bridges? They raise taxes and impose tolls. It might be hard for Alaskans to believe that sometimes you have to pay money to your government rather than getting handouts for public services, but it is the truth. And once they realize this, they will be much more careful with the funds. A $315 million bridge will look a lot less sensible when the federal contribution drops from $223 million to $55 million.

When was the last time you saw a right-wing group marching?

Conservatives seldom protest because they don't have the courage to stand up for their beliefs, or even have beliefs worth standing up for. Even the right-wingers that do march together have to hide their own faces because their "principles" are so ridiculous and shameful. HTH.

Never done anything with AC electricity, have you...try reading a little about residential house wiring.

http://www.answers.com/topic/three-phase-electric- power

http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/tech/threeph.htm

How to do Square roots by hand:

It's called algorism.

quick guide

Janet prefers to communicate in person and gets frustrated when people talk down to her:

https://portfolio.du.edu/pc/port?portfolio=jlawles s

Hmmm, I think google let me down this time...

Mmm, but people aren't interested in learning fluid dynamics these days.

See instructions here and here

From a web page about ammonia:

The name ammonia comes from Jupiter Ammon, whose temple in Libya was famous for producing sal ammoniac [Ammonium chloride, NH4Cl] from camel dung, noted from the 8th century.

A product of protein metabolism is urea, CO(NH2)2. This was the first "organic" compound artificially synthesized, by Wöhler in 1828. It probably occurs significantly in camel dung, since camels are noted water conservers. The rest of us excrete urea in urine. Heated, it gives off ammonia by pyrolysis.

In fact, the reaction of ammonia and carbon dioxide to form urea and water is reversible, pressure favoring the production of urea, heat the production of ammonia. This reaction is used commercially to make urea fertilizer from ammonia. An early source of ammonia was pyrolysis of hoofs and horns, giving spirits of hartshorn.

You can take any false math statement (like the one in the bill) and prove anything. Instead of pi=3.2, you could use the bill to prove 1=2. They never tried to set pi to anything and the link you provide has to work really hard to show they did.

Here is a fairer link.

Disclaimer: I grew up in Indiana. I don't live there any more.

In the entire history of electromechanical central offices in the Bell System, no central office was ever out of operation for more than thirty minutes for any reason other than a natural disaster. How many times has your VoIP switch crashed?

The University of Denver also has like four different Bachelor degrees in Game Development.

We'd all take the Secret Service a lot more seriously if they updated their name. Back in 1865 it may have been way cool to call your treasury cops a "secret service", but now it alternates between quaintness and confusion Since they're now part of DHS, how about "Homeland Enforcement"? Make a great TV show!

Yes, about a gram or so
Here's a whole bunch on phosphorus

The filter/power supply capacitors contain a lot of juice.

I felt compelled to do some Googling. Here are some results:

"Some of the large filter capacitors commonly found in line operated equipment store a potentially lethal charge."

"If any significant voltage is found after powering off some capacitors (like the high voltage of the CRT in a TV or video monitor), it will retain a dangerous or at least painful charge for days or longer!)"

"Be very careful, since these voltages are dangerous."

I'm not giving credence to the wild claims that the capacitors in a CRT device hold their charge for months, or that you have to let a CRT sit for 72 hours before taking the cover off (you can always discharge the capacitors). But they are dangerous and their is no question that they are lethal, particularly if you hooked them up to a home-made taser.
Also realize that any electrical current-even a small one-can be lethal if it passes through the human heart.

http://www.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/casimir.htm

You might want to surf the net in places other than just /., or perhaps go to the library and get out a bit. Oh, and before accusing someone of talking out of one's arse, you should be very, very certain you're not the one actually doing it.

Yes, initially I was thinking about yellow phosphorus, but its just white phosphorus with small amounts of red phosphorus in it.

In England a gallon of water is defined as weighing 10 pounds. Dividing this into 8 pints of 20 fluid ounces gives a fluid ounce of 28.4 ml.

In America a gallon is defined as 231 cubic inches. Dividing this into 8 pints of 16 fluid ounces gives a fluid ounce of 29.6 ml.

This all comes about because the imperial system got forked by a major reform of weights and measures in England in the 19th centurary.

It's all explained on this fascinating page

There's an existing telescope on the top of Mount Evans in Colorado at 14,000 ft - a few hours from where I live. There's a paved road right to the top of the mountain - this is the highest paved road in North America. I've been up there a few times since all but the telescope are open to the public. The views from the top are absolutely spectacular - and the area in general is fantastic for hiking.

However, there isn't much room. If you leveled the existing telescope at the top and tore up the tourist parking lot you might have enough space for a medium-large telescope. But nowhere near enough space for a giant like this one unless you wanted to remove the entire top of the mountain first. Which is certainly doable if whatever you needed to do it could be transported by road, but it would be expensive and the environmentalists wouldn't like you.

Plus the weather (cold, wind, snow) wouldn't exactly be great for delicate instruments up there unless they were seriously robust (the existing 2000 square foot telescope building up there is designed to withstand 200mph winds). I'm thinking that you'd have more luck in the middle of the desert - or out on the plains in the middle of nowhere - still occasional snow to deal with - but relatively high (the plains start at ~5000ft here in Colorado) - and lower winds.

During the snowy winter months, Unimogs are just about the only way for researchers and astronomers to access the Meyer-Womble Observatory atop Mount Evans, Colorado. 14,148 feet above sea level.

An image of the Halloween '99 DU Astronomy Unimog expedition is here.

During the snowy winter months, Unimogs are just about the only way for researchers and astronomers to access the Meyer-Womble Observatory atop Mount Evans, Colorado. 14,148 feet above sea level.

An image of the Halloween '99 DU Astronomy Unimog expedition is here.

During the snowy winter months, Unimogs are just about the only way for researchers and astronomers to access the Meyer-Womble Observatory atop Mount Evans, Colorado. 14,148 feet above sea level.

An image of the Halloween '99 DU Astronomy Unimog expedition is here.

My professor works for a privacy center at my school and one of the things he has looked into was a tivo. In my security class he explained to us how he went about figuring out what kind of information the tivo uploaded to it's servers. The thing calls home in the early morning and usualy transfers about 5 megs of data. He ended up setting up around $500 worth of equipment to get this stuff to work. The tivo was setup so that it's outgoing phone system was hooked up to his laptop, in one modem, and in another modem his laptop was hooked up to the phone jack. With a couple more peices of equipment and some simple programming he did a man-in-the-middle attack with the connection. When the tivo dialed it's home server the laptop listened to the number and then built a PPP connection to the server using the other modem. As the traffic flowed through each of the connections it was logged in a file. Afterwards, with a few unix tools, we converted the PPP data into tcp output, then the TCP output into raw data with time logs. As it turns out the tivo really does send *anonymous* data. In their privacy statement they say that they seperate your "personally identifiable data" from the "anonymous" data. The logs just showed when you changed the channel and when you started and stopped recording. The system also checked for updates for it's system, and downloaded a channel listing. However, it did tell the server it's serial number, and the ISP it used to login to the server was a local one. So if they REALLY needed to i bet they could track you down and match your records to your viewing habits. But really people, they are telling the truth they don't track you.

The University of Denver, where I am currently an undergrad, is into its second yearlaptop requirenment. So far, the results have been rather mixed. While their Laptops and Learning page gives some examples of how laptops are used in class, the vast majority of students have never had to take their laptop from their dorm rooms. As a response to the "laptop initiative," DU has started modifying a majority of their classrooms to be what they call "smart classrooms." These are basicly classrooms with a network jack and plug for every student. Half the network jacks don't work, and neither do half the plugs, however. And one of these smart classrooms has only 10MBPS ethernet. Good thing the CS class I have in that room doesn't even require that you bring your laptops. For online components, DU is using a system called Blackboard, which is an outsourced system that to me at least still feels like its getting some of the bugs worked out of it. I only have one class that does anything with it, and that professor doesn't do much with it. I also know there were quite a few instances of theft last year, and a lot of student's broke their laptops when they got unknowingly too rough with them. Fortunately, I brought a desktop in adition to my laptop, and that's where I do most of my work.

A demonstration "bugged" document for Word 97 and Word 2000 has been set up at:
http://www.privacycenter.du.edu/de mos/bugged.doc
We also found that Excel 2000 spreadsheet files and PowerPoint 2000 slideshows can be "bugged" in the same manner.

Top 12 things likely to be overheard if you worked with a Klingon Programmer:

• "Specifications are for the weak and timid!"
• "This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual 600MHz Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!"
• "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon."
• "Indentation?! - I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!"
• "What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software 'escapes,' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake."
• "Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' - they have 'arguments' - and they ALWAYS WIN THEM."
• "Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak."
• "I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again."
• "A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!"
• "By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. PREPARE TO DIE!"
• "You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!"
• "Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!