Same story with the jetliners we're flying in. They're pressurized containers flying at altitude. In theory, one can fly longer than the air would last in the cabin... How do they manage to keep enough breathable air in the plane to last for a 10 hour international flight?
Jetliners don't move in a vacuum, so they take air from the outside by bleeding it from the turbo-engines compressors.
A car running in an evacuated tunnel cannot obviously do this, so it will have to resort to a spaceship/submarine-like recycling system, where carbon dioxyde is absorbed by lime/soda scrubber cartridge, and the depleted oxygen is replaced.
Such a system is however not immune to a hull puncture; the problem is to stop the car and get it out of in time from the evacuated tunnel before the people die of anoxia...
A legislative chamber makes laws, according to the needs/wants of each constituency.
The problem with partisan elections is that the political parties have all
the power, and constituencies are not properly represented, as constituency
representatives are forced to act along the party line - in effect, the party
chief has *ALL* the power.
Worse still, in a britshit-type parliamentary system, who holds the power has
often nothing to do with the totality of votes expressed: our current assembly
has one party with twice as much members than the opposition, yet the ruling
party had less than two percent votes more than the opposition.
Here is my proposal to eliminate this:
The assembly has twice as many seats than there are constituencies.
Each constituency therefore has two seats:
One for the power side,
One for the opposition side.
Representatives are elected in two rounds:
The first round selects the two most wanted/appreciated candidates,
The second round (runoff) selects who will be on the power
side, and who will be on the opposition side.
Each constituency has *ONE* vote in the chamber.
The vote of each constituency is split amongst the power
and the opposition according to the percentage of the vote they get.
Since the representatives represent the constituency, they sit together,
side by side, at the same 2 seat desk.
Therefore, the influence of the political party is largely diminished in
the chamber, since the actual power yielded by the candidates is tempered
by the actual vote they get, and, most importantly, who holds the power is
not determined by the number of representatives they have elected.
It seemed that the authors went out of their way to CREATE connections, and with that in mind, they felt it necessary to connect to EVERYTHING. I find it hard to believe that in a Galaxy whose history is well over 12,000 years old, that we would see the beginnings of so many familiar settings within a span of a year. I would think they would be stretched out over a greater period of time.
Everybody seems to be doing that Georges Lucas thingy. Isaac Asimov did exactly that when he connected his robots novels and prequels to his Foundation novels, and then it got worse with the tree Foundation prequels written by the "three killer Bs" after Asimov's death (10 years ago already!!!).
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, the Butlerian Jihad was started after Jehanne Butler had her pregnancy aborted by an automated clinic, and was unable to get any reason for it from the condescending robot administrator of the clinic.
And the Jihad ended when cyborged Ibrahim Holzmann returned from his 400 year orbit, and was blow-up by some volunteer whose name escapes me.
I wrote a decompiler that produced compilable Forth code from competitor's ROMs (and we had loads of laughs looking at their inept examples of programming, such as "1 = if 1 else 0 endif" which basically did nothing at all), and I also managed to squeeze in a 4K bytes ROM an insurance rate table with 10,000 integer entries (the second derivative did fit in three bits or something silly like that).
This must be a Hallowe'en story about the ghost of Thomas Watson sr....
The last 35 years development in computers were precisely to move away from the "metered service" model which made IBM's fortune.
On will recall that IBM's data-processing customers since the 1920's were charged by units of information stored/processed by the way of forcing customers to buy Hollerith (punch) cards solely from IBM, and run them in rented machines whose rental price was directly proportionnal to the throughtput of those (a card reader that processed 600 cards per minutes cost twice as much as one that processed 300, yet the only difference was the size of the pulley off the main motor - and you could upgrade by having an IBM tech that came and changed the pulley for a bigger one).
So is it that the ghost of Thomas Watson sr has made a comeback to IBM's board of directors????
Re:there must be a lot of recent IT employees on /
on
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Having an exact dress code lower liability for corporations. Less chance of somebody wearing something offensive. Less aribtrary on who is wearing something in appropriate. More professional look.
Reminds me of many years ago, a new young librarian appeared in the public library. However young she was, she already had the prototypical pinched appearance of the generic librarian, including the pointed glasses with a neckband. For months, I went by her jokeless/smileless ways, and one day, she was there, with her pointy glasses, and a tee-shirt with that (french) cartoon character on it!!!!
It's an ugly but true fact that if you dress better, people treat you better. People in stores are more attentive, and women are more likely to give you a first chance if at first glance you look like you have a job with responsibilities, rather than some guy who unloads trucks at UPS.
Not always. I know a grandson of some robber baron of the 18th century; the guy is a total geek and dresses the way; add to that his stutter and no one will pay attention to the guy.
So, as it happens, my bank used to be in an office building he happens to own, and one day, I get off my motorcycle dressed like a bum (and unshaven for about a week), and meet him as he came out of the building. So, we chatted for about 15 minutes outside, then we split. As I went in, the security guard opened the door for me and said "good morning, sir"...
If you don't like the tie, get it caught in a laser printer fuser and claim it almost killed you (yank the cord before it squeezes your face, please). I think OSHA would have fun with that one.
The last day I wore a tie to work was when it got caught in a $8000 wire-wrapped prototype computer board installed in a mainframe on an extender board. It took 8 days to repair the damage (including recreating the data on the trashed filesystems - the computer promptly crashed, of course), and it probably helped delaying the project enough for it to be scrapped.
No, I did not hear anything about it, nor lost my job for it.
the nightclub i went to last saturday, kicked us out just because of the sport shoes.
That oughta teach you to go to leather/latex bars!
Re:You know everyone, dockers won't kill you
on
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Ever see those shots of NASA, back in the Apollo program? Buzzcut, tie, cigarette, each and every one of them. And these were engineers! Sending people to the moon!
Hey, that's just because their head honcho was a nazi...
Most beancounters will automatically consider a sysadmin in jeans and tux t-shirt as being less "impressive" than a guy in a shirt and tie - as long as both get the job done.
And it is well known that a beancounter has no fucking clue as what is "the job done" by a sysadmin, so he'll hire the suiter over the jeaner.
Once the PHB-types realize it is about COMFORT that drives productivity, and not LOOKS, that drive success, maybe they'll slacken up a bit and watch their profits rise. Also, when job applicants realize that the workplace is a comfortable, easy-going-but-fast-paced place to work, the line will be out the door, without ever advertising for employees.
It used to be that yankees used to think like that, and that made their industry superior to what was coming out of stiff-necked europeans. But it seems that the superficial bullshit has caught on with the yankees, and they are hard-pressed to crank-out any product worthy of the name...
It's been a long time in coming, but no real surprise, working in the City in London has always required you to wear a suit no matter what job you did, which is why I avoid the city now.
That's nothing. Back in 1827, on the Stockton & Darlington Railway, enginemen wore top-hats...
A few times, I had to show up at work wearing flashy spandex. Nobody ever said anything at all.
Nevertheless, I dress cleanly as a mark of respect for them.
Re:Suit and Tie do not make the programmer.
on
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I worked for EDS in the late '70s as a result of a wierd deal whereby we didn't have to join the corporate culture. I had a direct authorization from Ross Perot to wear a beard (possibly an EDS first).
I only went to the Dallas country club headquarters once, but I remember a guy staring at my beard so hard he tripped getting off an elevator. Of course, I was wearing a suit THERE.
Some 35 years ago, my father was working for (insert old insurance company name here) whose head of personnel perhaps had a dump only 3 or 4 times a month and who took his holidays in South Africa. Needless to say, he was adamantly opposed to any kind of facial hair whatsoever.
One day, some advertising manager walked in back from a holiday with a beard. In tears, the head of personnel stampeded to the president's office with the guy's death warrant.
- But why do you want to fire him? His latest ad campaign increased "sales" more than 15%, asked the president.
- Because he is wearing a - sob - beard!!!
- And why is that bad? Look at our founding fathers here (pointing to a painting of the first directors, back around 1880 or so on the wall), they certainly didn't think that beards were bad...
My dad was never seen without a moustache since...
It is OK to smoke cigarettes in the server room at Philip Morris. They keep ashtrays there for the sysadmins.
20 years ago, I was working at a Phillip Morris subsidiary, and the HP-3000 server not only had a big "THANK-YOU FOR SMOKING" sign on the wall, but one of those big ashtrays right on top of the CPU.
HP was so happy to have the account that they didn't bitch at all each time they had to replace a disk drive every 3 weeks or so...
Slashdot Mirror
A car running in an evacuated tunnel cannot obviously do this, so it will have to resort to a spaceship/submarine-like recycling system, where carbon dioxyde is absorbed by lime/soda scrubber cartridge, and the depleted oxygen is replaced.
Such a system is however not immune to a hull puncture; the problem is to stop the car and get it out of in time from the evacuated tunnel before the people die of anoxia...
The problem with partisan elections is that the political parties have all the power, and constituencies are not properly represented, as constituency representatives are forced to act along the party line - in effect, the party chief has *ALL* the power.
Worse still, in a britshit-type parliamentary system, who holds the power has often nothing to do with the totality of votes expressed: our current assembly has one party with twice as much members than the opposition, yet the ruling party had less than two percent votes more than the opposition.
Here is my proposal to eliminate this:
Since when hacking is a crime? It's ***CRACKING*** that's the crime!!!
And snail-mail correspondance will arrive in plain brown wrappers????
What's next? Prequels to
And the Jihad ended when cyborged Ibrahim Holzmann returned from his 400 year orbit, and was blow-up by some volunteer whose name escapes me.
I wrote a decompiler that produced compilable Forth code from competitor's ROMs (and we had loads of laughs looking at their inept examples of programming, such as "1 = if 1 else 0 endif" which basically did nothing at all), and I also managed to squeeze in a 4K bytes ROM an insurance rate table with 10,000 integer entries (the second derivative did fit in three bits or something silly like that).
The last 35 years development in computers were precisely to move away from the "metered service" model which made IBM's fortune.
On will recall that IBM's data-processing customers since the 1920's were charged by units of information stored/processed by the way of forcing customers to buy Hollerith (punch) cards solely from IBM, and run them in rented machines whose rental price was directly proportionnal to the throughtput of those (a card reader that processed 600 cards per minutes cost twice as much as one that processed 300, yet the only difference was the size of the pulley off the main motor - and you could upgrade by having an IBM tech that came and changed the pulley for a bigger one).
So is it that the ghost of Thomas Watson sr has made a comeback to IBM's board of directors????
Since it's canadian, it won't have a built-in gun, thus removing much of whatever appeal it may have for gun-crazy yankees.
Teledildonics.
I'm still flabberghasted when I think about it.
So, as it happens, my bank used to be in an office building he happens to own, and one day, I get off my motorcycle dressed like a bum (and unshaven for about a week), and meet him as he came out of the building. So, we chatted for about 15 minutes outside, then we split. As I went in, the security guard opened the door for me and said "good morning, sir"...
No, I did not hear anything about it, nor lost my job for it.
Nevertheless, I dress cleanly as a mark of respect for them.
One day, some advertising manager walked in back from a holiday with a beard. In tears, the head of personnel stampeded to the president's office with the guy's death warrant.
- But why do you want to fire him? His latest ad campaign increased "sales" more than 15%, asked the president.
- Because he is wearing a - sob - beard!!!
- And why is that bad? Look at our founding fathers here (pointing to a painting of the first directors, back around 1880 or so on the wall), they certainly didn't think that beards were bad...
My dad was never seen without a moustache since...
I've shown-up more than once off my bike in bright spandex, and no one minded.
Is that 10 (decimal) or $10 (hex) - 0x10 for you Intel assembler guys.
HP was so happy to have the account that they didn't bitch at all each time they had to replace a disk drive every 3 weeks or so...