Here's a better request: "I want an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++ and a pony."
Anyone that would think it'd be a good idea to Ask Slashdot(tm) for advice on how to write the program you described isn't smart enough to write said program. Seriously. Call your boss/manager/lab supervisor/cult leader and tell them to find somebody else for the job, because you will fuck it up just as sure as the sun will rise.
And for all of you folks suggesting this guy/gal writes it in Python/Perl/.Net/Whatever instead of C++, give it a rest. Please. Does the questioner sound like the kind of person that would bother to write exception handlers? That would even bother to buy a frickin' book already to find out what an exception was? No, they do not.
Interestingly enough, checking Map24 I see the single road outside my cul-de-sac, in fact, a divided highway. And that I live on the outlet to the cul-de-sac, rather than in the big loopy part.
So, it's really much too late in this discussion for you to a) see this or b) bother to respond, but I am curious about one thing:
he problem with gay marriage is that it grants a moral sanction to homosexuality . . . If he wants to do it anyway, let him do it cowering and hiding, in shame and regret
It seems that you're saying that one makes a choice to engage in homosexual activities, and by choosing to do so, you violate a commonly accepted (heck, just say absolute) standard of decency/morals - you sin, in effect - and therefore should be condemned. We have free will, we can choose our behavior, and if we choose wrong (sin) we should be condemned and pay the price. Fair assessment?
OK, now we move on to what I think is the crux of this issue: choice. Can you sin without choice? Let's say you were standing on the 23rd floor of an office building, minding your own business, and suddenly the floor underneath you collapsed. As you fall to the 22nd floor, you happen to hit someone who had the misfortune to be standing underneath you, break their neck, and kill them. Sure, it's a ridiculous situation, but run with it - would you have sinned in killing them? You falling on them was the cause of their death. Killing is wrong, of course. But it's not like you chose to have the floor drop out underneath you - it just happened. I would say (and I imagine few would disagree) that no, you haven't sinned.
In fact, I would say choice is a prerequisite to sin - without a choice, one cannot sin. Do you agree?
That brings us to the matter of homosexuality. Specifically, does someone choose to be a homosexual, or is it just an accident of biology? I don't have the answer to this - I don't think anyone does. But let's say (hypothetically speaking) that tomorrow someone announced conclusive proof that homosexuality was entirely biological - a "gay gene" is found in 100% of people identifying themselves as homosexual, and 0% of the non-homosexual population.
Under this circumstance (direct biological cause of homosexuality) - would you still feel that there is a moral prohibition against homosexuality? That homosexual acts should be considered a sin? That homosexuals had a choice in the matter? Or maybe would you argue that despite this (hypothetical) gay gene, one still makes a choice every time one has sex, and by choosing to have sex with a member of the same sex (even with the preference driven by this gay gene) one sins?
The US typically keeps an aircraft carrier in the region when things get hot . . . . American air support would blow them to bits.
You're assuming the US involves itself. There's no guarantee that will happen.
You're also assuming the rest of the world will embargo them. I don't think that will happen, either.
But let's say there was an embargo. The government won't collapse. You'll have a situaion in China akin to the Cultural Revolution. Millions upon millions will die of starvation, no doubt. But they'll be dying "for the good of China and the Party" which will make it OK.
Patriotism and war make people do really stupid things.
Some of your other questions aren't as easy to answer, but you did ask why a laptop vs desktop, which is a no-brainer - portability.
Laptops move from classroom to classroom. Laptops move into the lab then back to the desk. Laptops can go home (!) then back to school. Kids aren't fixed in place in school - they wander from room to room during the day.
With a desktop system, you'd waste a couple minutes a period (maybe 5-10% of their class time) logging in/out of accounts. Plus - then you'd need to worry about network home drives, which is going to require hiring at least 1 administrator, plus additional hardware, possible upgrades to network equipment, etc. There's something to be said for simplicity.
As for why iBooks rather than x86: as has been said many times before, Apple laptops are very price-competitive with name-brand x86 machines, which is what a school district is going to be interested in. Apple's currently selling iBooks for $849/each to schools (if they buy 20): 800 MHz G3, 256 MB Ram, 30 GB HD, OS 9 & OS X 10.3, and a wireless card. With a G4, the price is $1083 without a bulk discount. I checked Dell's website - with Texas education pricing, comparable laptops were $1000 - $1200.
China and India have increased their Carbon Dioxide emissions a total exceeding total US Output by some 5 times(Each)!
No they haven't. 2002 statistics here. from BP Statistical Review of World Energy. In teragrams of CO2: USA: 6175.9; China: 3342; India: 1044. India + China = 4386.6.
The south east asians have polluted the Pacific Ocean to the point where about 10% of it is DEAD
Have any proof of this? Google for "pacific dead zone" turns up nothing. More telling, ISI's Web of Science doesn't either. Not to say it doesn't turn up mention of China-contributed Pacific Ocean pollution - because it does, obviously. But 10%?
The USA has stabilized its output of pollution and in some areas reduced it.
Possibly true. Not for CO2 though - we're up 16% from 1990 to 2002 levels. See the BP report above. The average of the "industralized" countries over the same period is down 0.6%.
The China Coal burning as of now is approaching 5 Billion Tons a year and US consumption of coal has dropped to 0.7 Billion Tons from a high of 1.2 Billion Tons
The BP report agrees China uses more coal than the US. But only 20% more coal. 0.7 is not 80% of 5 billion.
Does anyone remember the "Acid Rain" issue
You said it was caused by trees spewing out acid. Interesing idea. Doesn't seem to be supported by the scientific literature in the field though - after my quickie search on Web of Science I'd say look at the Bryologist: Vol. 106, No. 2, pp. 257-269 (2003). It'll point you to a number of other studies if you're so inclined.
The greatest CO2 emission in north America in 2003 was the fires in California and these owe to the Eco-Nuts who would not even let a DEAD tree be cut.
Well, you're correct in that forest fires can release HUGE amounts of CO2. But no such studies have been conducted & published yet as far as Web of Science is concerned on the California fires. But, as a point of reference, boreal forest fires in Russia & North America in 1998 were responsible for ~1000 teragrams of CO2 release - roughly as much as India generated in power consumption.
And eco-nuts opposed to burning can't really claim to be good environmentalists - it's been more than a decade (I'd say approaching 20 years now) that folks realized the old "Smokey the Bear" idea of stamping out fire ASAP was a horrible horrible mistake. My googling for lawsuit + burn + california came up with a group trying to stop burns at a former army base which was contaminated with all sorts of chemicals/unexploded ordanance. That's it. I'd bet most opposition came (foolishly) from homeowners thinking of the Los Alamos fires from 4-5 years ago (controlled burn that got out of hand). I'd bet some of them lost their homes because of it. Costly mistake.
Before the development Alabama was barren having only about 20% forrest and now it is 81% forrest.
More like 67% forest. The number of trees has doubled in the last 50 years. A fine accomplishment.
In general, I agree with the gist of your rant - China and India pollute too much. Having them develop to a western level before cutting back emissions is a really really bad idea. Lots of us "eco-nuts" as you so charmingly put it feel the same way. So please don't call us eco-nuts. And get some more facts to back what you say - it makes you look bad.
Assuming you live in the USA - have you taken a look at your state budget recently? In particular, the dollars being spent on higher education?
Here's a fun game to play: find the total budget for your state university system. Calculate the percentage of that budget coming from state financing. Perform the same calculation using 1995, 1990, 1980, and 1970 budgets.
Do the math in a state like Wisconsin, and the percentage has fallen quite dramatically. That lost financing has to be made up from somewhere. Universities have a choice - cut classes, faculty, and facilities; raise tuition; or come up with new sources of revenue. Most lean towards options B & C - and patent licensing revenue is generally preferred to tuition increases.
Well, considering they've left unpatched the SSH bugs in 10.1 (which was released Sept. 2001) for which 10.2 fixes were released a month ago, I'd say history lies on the side of those claiming no more updates.
I think we're pretty much in agreement here - you use the electronic tabulation because it's basically instantaneous. Presumably recounts would be more common in close races than in blowouts, and if you need a recount, you go by what the paper says.
paper receipts are worthless -- not only do they rely on everyone keeping theirs, in case of a recount, but there's no guarantee that the vote printed on the receipt matches the vote recorded in the eVoting system.
Right, so if you were to design a system like this, one has to make sure the paper ballot gets turned back in (think ballot prints out, big flashing lights go off, ballot has to be re-inserted into box under touchscreen before lights stop flashing). AND you have to spot-check a certain fraction of the machines by hand-counting the paper ballots and making sure they match the electronic vote tabulation.
I think a system like this would be reliable and verifiable, and I could support an e-voting system which worked in this fashion. And I think it is technically possible to build such a system.
Now, with that out of the way - would it be any more effective or have a lower rejected-ballot rate than a scantron system? I seriously doubt it. And there's no way it'd be as cheap. And nobody's even come close to building a system like this, that I am aware of. Unless I was seriously mistaken about contention #1, I'd say go scantron all the way.
And as for the wireless LAN support - gak. GAK. Looking at that page made my brain hurt. That's just such a really really bad idea.
Yes - ballot receipts are a huge mistake if and only if the voter keeps the receipt when leaving the polling station.
A printed receipt which the voter can examine (to verify the vote was recorded as intended) then deposits in a secure ballot box is something else entirely. This allows validation of the electronic vote count as well as a fallback in the event of a recount.
You're asking me how many mistakes were made, and by whom? Sorry - but the surgeon general says continuous typing can lead to carpel tunnel syndrome. Plus I've only got 512 MB RAM, and at 2 bytes a character I might run out.
Nobody thinks Bush and Cheney are updating the website. Jeeze. But the folks that are running the website (and I would bet this extends down to the actual webmaster/tech guy) are political appointees who are there to make the president look good. That is their job. Their actions are all filtered through this political role.
Let's present an alternate scenario - since you have no evidence for yours, I don't have to present any evidence for mine.
It's May - Pres. makes his speech on the Carrier, the assumption by those-in-charge are that Chalabi's government will have control of the country within a couple of weeks and the US troops will be heading on home. The web folks (who want to make B & C look good) declare "combat's done! the troops are coming home! re-elect Bush!"
A few months later, that rosy scenario hasn't quite panned out. The aircraft carrier speech is becoming a liability for Bush - people started counting the number of dead troops in Iraq since he gave the speech, and it keeps going up. The web folks (who want to make B & C look good) say to themselves "this is a potential embarrassment to the president - let's see how we can make it less embarrassing."
The complaint is they've done it before - "combat operations are done" became "major combat operations are done" when the fighting didn't stop. You can check here.
Compare the screenshots of what used to be on the white house website vs what's currently on the website.
Yes, I know, "how do we know this blogger didn't alter the screenshots?" You don't.
I wasted a year of my life thinking about cokers. Thanks for bringing the pain back.
No, you're right - you can't get rid of all of your goop, because you usually don't have enough hydrogen to get all you carbon to C1's, C2, C3's, etc. So you end up with coke + however many light products you could generate out of the hydrogen present.
Hydrocracking is an option, but it requires a good source of hydrogen. I think the common way to get hydrogen industrially is via water-gas shift, which requires water (duh) and CO, as well as heat. I imagine one could burn the coke under low O2 conditions to generate sufficient CO and heat to run the WGS. But then you'd need the coke for something.
I suspect economics are the big reason this isn't always done currently, but there's quite a bit I don't know about hydrocracking (among the many things I don't know much about) so there's probably more to it than that.
if you separate enough oil to get gloop to make plastic out of, you get as a side effect lots and lots of, well, gasoline. What are they supposed to do with it?
A brief lesson on refining and plastics:
Common plastic precursors are typically ethylene (C2), propylene (C3), or styrene (C8). "Gasoline" is ~C5-C15. "Goop" is C20+. So it's not the goop you use to make plastics - it's the light stuff.
"Distillation-only" units are but a small part of a modern refinery - usually the first step in processing crude. The various fractions out of a crude distillation tower get sent to other units (which likely all have a distillation component) to get processed down into something approaching gasoline (presuming that's where the given refinery makes its money - which is not always the case)
For example, "goop" gets fed to a cracker (catalytic or thermal) which (oddly enough) cracks the C20's into smaller pieces. While one typically aims for the the gasoline range as the max product out of cracking units (assuming that's where the money is), going down to C1-C2 is not difficult - you just have longer catalyst contact times or higher temperatures.
So, to answer your question of what'd they do with all that gas - they'd keep cracking it.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they're making new high risk pools, scheduled to be in effect in 90 days.
The answer is yes.
Google high risk pools (which looks to be the short term fix until 2014) and community rating (which starts in 2014, I believe.)
Way before you showed up, newbie.
Here's a better request: "I want an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++ and a pony."
Anyone that would think it'd be a good idea to Ask Slashdot(tm) for advice on how to write the program you described isn't smart enough to write said program. Seriously. Call your boss/manager/lab supervisor/cult leader and tell them to find somebody else for the job, because you will fuck it up just as sure as the sun will rise.
And for all of you folks suggesting this guy/gal writes it in Python/Perl/.Net/Whatever instead of C++, give it a rest. Please. Does the questioner sound like the kind of person that would bother to write exception handlers? That would even bother to buy a frickin' book already to find out what an exception was? No, they do not.
Christ. I'm sick of this sea of idiots.
Unless, of course, you happen to suffer from a degenerative muscle disease, in which case no matter how much you exercise your muscles get weaker.
This kind of power assist device could be a godsend for folks in that condition, wouldn't you agree?
Interestingly enough, checking Map24 I see the single road outside my cul-de-sac, in fact, a divided highway. And that I live on the outlet to the cul-de-sac, rather than in the big loopy part.
I guess I moved.
Feel free to share the hidden trick with the rest of the class :)
Tell me about it - I used to use this great newsgroup reader called emacs, then some bonehead added in support for text editing.
It seems that you're saying that one makes a choice to engage in homosexual activities, and by choosing to do so, you violate a commonly accepted (heck, just say absolute) standard of decency/morals - you sin, in effect - and therefore should be condemned. We have free will, we can choose our behavior, and if we choose wrong (sin) we should be condemned and pay the price. Fair assessment?
OK, now we move on to what I think is the crux of this issue: choice. Can you sin without choice? Let's say you were standing on the 23rd floor of an office building, minding your own business, and suddenly the floor underneath you collapsed. As you fall to the 22nd floor, you happen to hit someone who had the misfortune to be standing underneath you, break their neck, and kill them. Sure, it's a ridiculous situation, but run with it - would you have sinned in killing them? You falling on them was the cause of their death. Killing is wrong, of course. But it's not like you chose to have the floor drop out underneath you - it just happened. I would say (and I imagine few would disagree) that no, you haven't sinned.
In fact, I would say choice is a prerequisite to sin - without a choice, one cannot sin. Do you agree?
That brings us to the matter of homosexuality. Specifically, does someone choose to be a homosexual, or is it just an accident of biology? I don't have the answer to this - I don't think anyone does. But let's say (hypothetically speaking) that tomorrow someone announced conclusive proof that homosexuality was entirely biological - a "gay gene" is found in 100% of people identifying themselves as homosexual, and 0% of the non-homosexual population.
Under this circumstance (direct biological cause of homosexuality) - would you still feel that there is a moral prohibition against homosexuality? That homosexual acts should be considered a sin? That homosexuals had a choice in the matter? Or maybe would you argue that despite this (hypothetical) gay gene, one still makes a choice every time one has sex, and by choosing to have sex with a member of the same sex (even with the preference driven by this gay gene) one sins?
Your thoughts?
You're assuming the US involves itself. There's no guarantee that will happen.
You're also assuming the rest of the world will embargo them. I don't think that will happen, either.
But let's say there was an embargo. The government won't collapse. You'll have a situaion in China akin to the Cultural Revolution. Millions upon millions will die of starvation, no doubt. But they'll be dying "for the good of China and the Party" which will make it OK.
Patriotism and war make people do really stupid things.
Some of your other questions aren't as easy to answer, but you did ask why a laptop vs desktop, which is a no-brainer - portability.
Laptops move from classroom to classroom. Laptops move into the lab then back to the desk. Laptops can go home (!) then back to school. Kids aren't fixed in place in school - they wander from room to room during the day.
With a desktop system, you'd waste a couple minutes a period (maybe 5-10% of their class time) logging in/out of accounts. Plus - then you'd need to worry about network home drives, which is going to require hiring at least 1 administrator, plus additional hardware, possible upgrades to network equipment, etc. There's something to be said for simplicity.
As for why iBooks rather than x86: as has been said many times before, Apple laptops are very price-competitive with name-brand x86 machines, which is what a school district is going to be interested in. Apple's currently selling iBooks for $849/each to schools (if they buy 20): 800 MHz G3, 256 MB Ram, 30 GB HD, OS 9 & OS X 10.3, and a wireless card. With a G4, the price is $1083 without a bulk discount. I checked Dell's website - with Texas education pricing, comparable laptops were $1000 - $1200.
No they haven't. 2002 statistics here. from BP Statistical Review of World Energy. In teragrams of CO2: USA: 6175.9; China: 3342; India: 1044. India + China = 4386.6.
Have any proof of this? Google for "pacific dead zone" turns up nothing. More telling, ISI's Web of Science doesn't either. Not to say it doesn't turn up mention of China-contributed Pacific Ocean pollution - because it does, obviously. But 10%?
Possibly true. Not for CO2 though - we're up 16% from 1990 to 2002 levels. See the BP report above. The average of the "industralized" countries over the same period is down 0.6%.
The BP report agrees China uses more coal than the US. But only 20% more coal. 0.7 is not 80% of 5 billion.
You said it was caused by trees spewing out acid. Interesing idea. Doesn't seem to be supported by the scientific literature in the field though - after my quickie search on Web of Science I'd say look at the Bryologist: Vol. 106, No. 2, pp. 257-269 (2003). It'll point you to a number of other studies if you're so inclined.
Well, you're correct in that forest fires can release HUGE amounts of CO2. But no such studies have been conducted & published yet as far as Web of Science is concerned on the California fires. But, as a point of reference, boreal forest fires in Russia & North America in 1998 were responsible for ~1000 teragrams of CO2 release - roughly as much as India generated in power consumption.
And eco-nuts opposed to burning can't really claim to be good environmentalists - it's been more than a decade (I'd say approaching 20 years now) that folks realized the old "Smokey the Bear" idea of stamping out fire ASAP was a horrible horrible mistake. My googling for lawsuit + burn + california came up with a group trying to stop burns at a former army base which was contaminated with all sorts of chemicals/unexploded ordanance. That's it. I'd bet most opposition came (foolishly) from homeowners thinking of the Los Alamos fires from 4-5 years ago (controlled burn that got out of hand). I'd bet some of them lost their homes because of it. Costly mistake.
More like 67% forest. The number of trees has doubled in the last 50 years. A fine accomplishment.
In general, I agree with the gist of your rant - China and India pollute too much. Having them develop to a western level before cutting back emissions is a really really bad idea. Lots of us "eco-nuts" as you so charmingly put it feel the same way. So please don't call us eco-nuts. And get some more facts to back what you say - it makes you look bad.
Assuming you live in the USA - have you taken a look at your state budget recently? In particular, the dollars being spent on higher education?
Here's a fun game to play: find the total budget for your state university system. Calculate the percentage of that budget coming from state financing. Perform the same calculation using 1995, 1990, 1980, and 1970 budgets.
Do the math in a state like Wisconsin, and the percentage has fallen quite dramatically. That lost financing has to be made up from somewhere. Universities have a choice - cut classes, faculty, and facilities; raise tuition; or come up with new sources of revenue. Most lean towards options B & C - and patent licensing revenue is generally preferred to tuition increases.
Well, considering they've left unpatched the SSH bugs in 10.1 (which was released Sept. 2001) for which 10.2 fixes were released a month ago, I'd say history lies on the side of those claiming no more updates.
I think we're pretty much in agreement here - you use the electronic tabulation because it's basically instantaneous. Presumably recounts would be more common in close races than in blowouts, and if you need a recount, you go by what the paper says.
Right, so if you were to design a system like this, one has to make sure the paper ballot gets turned back in (think ballot prints out, big flashing lights go off, ballot has to be re-inserted into box under touchscreen before lights stop flashing). AND you have to spot-check a certain fraction of the machines by hand-counting the paper ballots and making sure they match the electronic vote tabulation.
I think a system like this would be reliable and verifiable, and I could support an e-voting system which worked in this fashion. And I think it is technically possible to build such a system.
Now, with that out of the way - would it be any more effective or have a lower rejected-ballot rate than a scantron system? I seriously doubt it. And there's no way it'd be as cheap. And nobody's even come close to building a system like this, that I am aware of. Unless I was seriously mistaken about contention #1, I'd say go scantron all the way.
And as for the wireless LAN support - gak. GAK. Looking at that page made my brain hurt. That's just such a really really bad idea.
Yes - ballot receipts are a huge mistake if and only if the voter keeps the receipt when leaving the polling station.
A printed receipt which the voter can examine (to verify the vote was recorded as intended) then deposits in a secure ballot box is something else entirely. This allows validation of the electronic vote count as well as a fallback in the event of a recount.
I like the title. Very Kissinger.
You're asking me how many mistakes were made, and by whom? Sorry - but the surgeon general says continuous typing can lead to carpel tunnel syndrome. Plus I've only got 512 MB RAM, and at 2 bytes a character I might run out.
Normally, when I hear about somebody trying to pull material leaked onto the web, I go to Kazaa and download a copy
In this case, I'll make an exception.
Nobody thinks Bush and Cheney are updating the website. Jeeze. But the folks that are running the website (and I would bet this extends down to the actual webmaster/tech guy) are political appointees who are there to make the president look good. That is their job. Their actions are all filtered through this political role.
Let's present an alternate scenario - since you have no evidence for yours, I don't have to present any evidence for mine.
It's May - Pres. makes his speech on the Carrier, the assumption by those-in-charge are that Chalabi's government will have control of the country within a couple of weeks and the US troops will be heading on home. The web folks (who want to make B & C look good) declare "combat's done! the troops are coming home! re-elect Bush!"
A few months later, that rosy scenario hasn't quite panned out. The aircraft carrier speech is becoming a liability for Bush - people started counting the number of dead troops in Iraq since he gave the speech, and it keeps going up. The web folks (who want to make B & C look good) say to themselves "this is a potential embarrassment to the president - let's see how we can make it less embarrassing."
And there you have it.
The complaint is they've done it before - "combat operations are done" became "major combat operations are done" when the fighting didn't stop. You can check here.
Compare the screenshots of what used to be on the white house website vs what's currently on the website.
Yes, I know, "how do we know this blogger didn't alter the screenshots?" You don't.
Checking the website . . . it says G5 required. Have you tried it on a G4, or can point me to another location that verifies it works on G4?
Thanks in advance . . .
I wasted a year of my life thinking about cokers. Thanks for bringing the pain back.
No, you're right - you can't get rid of all of your goop, because you usually don't have enough hydrogen to get all you carbon to C1's, C2, C3's, etc. So you end up with coke + however many light products you could generate out of the hydrogen present.
Hydrocracking is an option, but it requires a good source of hydrogen. I think the common way to get hydrogen industrially is via water-gas shift, which requires water (duh) and CO, as well as heat. I imagine one could burn the coke under low O2 conditions to generate sufficient CO and heat to run the WGS. But then you'd need the coke for something.
I suspect economics are the big reason this isn't always done currently, but there's quite a bit I don't know about hydrocracking (among the many things I don't know much about) so there's probably more to it than that.
A brief lesson on refining and plastics:
Common plastic precursors are typically ethylene (C2), propylene (C3), or styrene (C8). "Gasoline" is ~C5-C15. "Goop" is C20+. So it's not the goop you use to make plastics - it's the light stuff.
"Distillation-only" units are but a small part of a modern refinery - usually the first step in processing crude. The various fractions out of a crude distillation tower get sent to other units (which likely all have a distillation component) to get processed down into something approaching gasoline (presuming that's where the given refinery makes its money - which is not always the case)
For example, "goop" gets fed to a cracker (catalytic or thermal) which (oddly enough) cracks the C20's into smaller pieces. While one typically aims for the the gasoline range as the max product out of cracking units (assuming that's where the money is), going down to C1-C2 is not difficult - you just have longer catalyst contact times or higher temperatures.
So, to answer your question of what'd they do with all that gas - they'd keep cracking it.