One other thing, most of the accidents and fatalities on Everest occur on the way down not on the way up, by the time your coming down your exhausted, sometimes not real lucid, your body has not been digesting food for at least a couple of days so your internal heat source is running on low, hence the frostbite injuries are usually incurred on the way down.
Thats the point make it more accesible to the average Joe by taking out some of the risk. What kills these climbers is getting stranded in a spot where no one can even attempt a rescue. I don't know who has watched the recent show on Discovery on Everest, but basically that is what killed that one climber near the summit, if he could have been evacuated chances are he would still be alive today.
Perhaps better than a tube is just to hook up a zip line from from the North or South Col that stretches all the way to Advanced Base Camp or further. This would require less maintenance and also be less of an impact on the environment. I know this could be done because of similar cables stretching off of mountains all over the world usually for Gondola rides etc... Then you could evacuate people off of the mountain very quickly and efficiently should a medical emergency arrive.
The only real problem I see is somehow getting the necessary supplies to the spot in order to create the anchor point for the cable. Of course, the word around for this would be to simply run a cable long enough to stretch down both sides of the mountains so no anchor point needed at an extreme elevation, it simply rests on the ridge line at one of the cols and then anchors on both ends like a suspension bridge.
Not only could you send people down a cable like this but you could also ferry supplies up with some sort of cable climber apparatus (ie. medical supplies, food, shelters, oxygen etc...)
Ok some of these are really dumb but some of them are actually quite interesting.
For one I didn't realize that the fatality rate on Everest was so high, that's pretty scarey. I guess there goes my Everest attempt, my wife was never in favor of it anyway.
I was thinking about it the other night and I had an idea, they need to put a fire escape type of tube on Everest, the kind you see installed on some high rises. Just a super long one on Everest, that way if someone is having a problem just pop them into the tube and let them slide down to advanced base camp, no rescue operation necessary and no endangering further lives in trying to evacuate an incapacitated climber.
Would something like this actually work? Could it be done in stages? A tube stretching from one camp to the next?
That is what I can never figure out with these community driven things. All these saps putting there time and energy into it, when they know that behind the scenes someone owns it and for them regardless of the personal investment or emotional attachment the bottom line (money) is going to call the shots at the end of the day.
I have quite a view of my old customers who know me personally from my webhosting company and they still can't understand how I would abandon them and sell the company, not that I wanted to, it was a financial decision.
Its like with the wikipedia phenomenom, are these people being paid for all the time they put into editing articles and reviewing content? Then possibly a year from now they get bought up by Google and the whole structure of the thing changes, then what?
People get a clue... why support some other venture, even if it is well organized and ground breaking etc..., get out there and start your own business or try to develop the next big thing! Thats what I did back in 1999.
Yes, there is the risk factor too. I'd much rather have my kids trying to do a 30 foot jump on a skateboard in virtual reality, definately safer and no broken bones or emergency room visits.
I remember we had the first Nintendo growing up, my brothers and I would spend countless hours playing Zelda and Mario Brothers, usually later in the evening, during the day we either were at school or working on the farm.
I've got a four year old girl now and so far I have held off on buying and consoles. I watch her already spending way too much time watching Nick Jr. and Cartoon Networks and it really bugs me. Even though my brothers and I did spend a good deal of time playing games, at the same time we also worked on the farm and lived on a forested five acre lot and were continually chopping down trees and building tree forts etc... so it wasn't like we were couch potatoes either.
This new game console (Wii) seems at bit more interesting though, with its motion detection system, it actually encourages physical activity. But then again does it really replace the activities that it models? I think I would rather take my child to the bowling alley then have her play it on a video game.
From a convenience standpoint though it makes sense, its a lot easier to turn on a bowling game then pack all the kids in the car and spend an entire evening at the bowling alley. In a sense what the video game consoles have become are baby sitters for parents who do not have the time or inclination to spend quality time with their kids. Even though a couple hours spent playing with your kids with a video game can be time well spent as well. I guess what it boils down to is finding a balance, a little gaming isn't bad but to plop your kid down in front of a console and then leave them for hours on end is not my idea or appropriate parenting.
Something of Interest
on
Pac-Man Turns 25
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
I laugh when I read horror stories like these, not because I wish this sort of thing to happen to people. But that people never learn. They always want something for nothing or "very cheap". I have been in the web hosting and domain business for 6 years now. I have clients who contact me on a regular basis asking me if we will match so and so's GREAT deal. I always warn them that if it sounds too good to be true chances are it is. I have had quite of few customers leave us only to return back in a month or two because of serious reliability problems or a total lack of service from these companies who appear to have these GREAT deals.
Bottom line is, do a little research, don't always go for a deal that is the cheapest. Word of mouth is your best bet or actual reviews from current or past customers. We sell domains for $13.00 per year, which seems outrageous compared to some. But you will always get a person responding within 24 hours or less and usually by phone.
All I can say really is be smart. Watch out for the shysters, there are plenty of them. Remember everyone has got to eat therefore if the deal seems almost too good chances are there is a problem with it.
Just a dumb question, but if I remember correctly the regular segway works by having the operator balance it somewhat like a bicycle, hence the small learning curve to operate the Segway.
So my question is, does this robot have some sort of balancing algorithm programmed into it so it doesn't fall flat on its face?
As CEO of a company I think I have a better grasp on this than most Slashdot readers, you see most of you are the 90's version of the hippy, your outlook on life is everything should be free, no boundaries, that is why you embrace freeware and not Microsoft. Not to say that I don't have quite a few gripes about MS myself but fundamentally your outlook on life is flawed.
Everything in life cost money, and every piece or property with any sort of value is "owned". Eventually, space will become more accessible to the average person/corporation and once it does you can bet that the same system that exists on earth will be transplanted to any extra-terrestial body. Come on, stop spouting your utopia crap and lets get real. Space is only free since we can only really access it through our telescopes and we can't even do that very well. When the astronauts finally made it to the moon, what was one of the first things they did? They laid sovereign claim to Terra Luna by erecting an American flag.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is the way the world/universe works.
We only use Win2k since we have too many of our clients using ASP and ASP.NET on our servers, if there were a good replacement on Apache/FreeBSD I would love to switch everything away from MS. Too many headaches, downtime, instability, crashes, customer problems, cost, more headaches, licensing, security problems, etc... Need I go on?
A link like this could easily overload Slashdot's servers and this isn't even hard to do:
Possible Scenario
So I wouldn't take something like this so lightly...
I give the new satellite radio stations a better chance of surviving than internet radio, the problem with internet radio is that it require too many underlying serious infrastructural support to actually work, jeez if I want to list to the radio (FM/AM) I can just buy a cheap receiver for a couple of bucks, put in some lithium batteries and I'm set for months, not Internet connections, Real Play, computer, 24/7 broadband etc...
Lets face it, it's just too complicated that is the problem. Granted for some geeks like myself, who sit in front of there computers almost 18 hours out of any given day, it might make some sense, but people like myself probably only account for about 1.5% of the population.
This is ludacrous. My brother got one of these "renewal" notices for a domain that I personally registered for him through Tucows, my brother is a roofer so he has no idea what is going on, I just barely stopped him before he had send a check to Verisign for $29.99 for renewal which would have moved the domain away from my busines www.npsis.com where we only charge $13.00 per year for domain registrations, in my brother's case of course I just renew it for free. I am appalled at the nasty tactics that a reputable company like Verisign would stoop to. I thought that once Verisign took over from NSI, things would be cleaned up a bit, I guess nothing has changed.
We run both FreeBSD servers and Win2k Servers for hosting platforms, granted FreeBSD is still by far the most stable, however I must admit that Win2k is rock solid when compared with NT4, I would usually reboot NT4 at least once a week just to get it back on its feet again. Now I can usually just leave my Win2k servers and maybe reboot once a month or once every 2 months.
Don't you love these... I remember when it was "software" then it became "solutions". Sites like IBM's didn't offer products anymore, they offered solutions or better yet "e-solutions". Its all the same thing people, for instance we provide web hosting, you can call it what you like... e-commerce, virtual server, e-business, it doesn't change a thing. Now everyone is talking about architecture and throwing around cool words like "IP" and "Pipeline", don't you just love those Qwest and Sprint commercials... Come on "VPN" most average TV viewers have no clue what that is, but it sounds cool to them, I guess. Its these big companies that are trying to re-market the same old thing with a new fancy label, some of the marketing execs need serious help.
I'm not one for violating our freedoms however something like this may help in scaring would be virus creators, hackers and others problematic computer uses (ie. DDOS attackers). If it will help eliminate problems like that I'm all for it, even if my overall freedoms are curbed a little.
You have a good point here, since the final stage of energy production involves the production of water in large ammounts then why not recycle the water that you are creating and use it in the first reaction, thereby minimizing the size of the water tank required. In fact the size of the water tank would only need to be large enough to provide enough water to initiate the reaction since the final stage produces more than enough water for an ongoing reaction, plus or minus some for evaporation and other losses...
I agree we have made considerable progress however we haven't made progress on a fundamental level, our primary energy source is still the same, fossil fuels...
The thing that gets me is the energy has to come from some where. Everyone has been touting electric cars however you still have to plug them in to charge the batteries, well where does that energy come from, in the US it comes primarily from large coal burning power plants. Trust me coal burning is probably one of the dirtiest forms of producing energy, worse then oil or gas by far. So yes, our cars might be emitting less emissions but we haven't made any real progress if we are spewing out tons of coal burning byproducts just to generate the electricity.
My feeling is that we need to either harness solar power more effectively or other natural phenomena such as wind or wave. Maybe even Fusion has a chance eventually, regardless any of these methods will be considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.
Hasn't anyone being paying attention to VIA? What about the P4X266 chipset, even Tyan has a board with it: http://tyan.com/products/html/trinity510.html
Intel motherboards and chipsets are fine however you don't have to wait for Intel to come out with a DDR chipset for your P4. VIA has one already.
Slashdot Mirror
One other thing, most of the accidents and fatalities on Everest occur on the way down not on the way up, by the time your coming down your exhausted, sometimes not real lucid, your body has not been digesting food for at least a couple of days so your internal heat source is running on low, hence the frostbite injuries are usually incurred on the way down.
Thats the point make it more accesible to the average Joe by taking out some of the risk. What kills these climbers is getting stranded in a spot where no one can even attempt a rescue. I don't know who has watched the recent show on Discovery on Everest, but basically that is what killed that one climber near the summit, if he could have been evacuated chances are he would still be alive today.
Perhaps better than a tube is just to hook up a zip line from from the North or South Col that stretches all the way to Advanced Base Camp or further. This would require less maintenance and also be less of an impact on the environment. I know this could be done because of similar cables stretching off of mountains all over the world usually for Gondola rides etc... Then you could evacuate people off of the mountain very quickly and efficiently should a medical emergency arrive.
The only real problem I see is somehow getting the necessary supplies to the spot in order to create the anchor point for the cable. Of course, the word around for this would be to simply run a cable long enough to stretch down both sides of the mountains so no anchor point needed at an extreme elevation, it simply rests on the ridge line at one of the cols and then anchors on both ends like a suspension bridge.
Not only could you send people down a cable like this but you could also ferry supplies up with some sort of cable climber apparatus (ie. medical supplies, food, shelters, oxygen etc...)
Ok some of these are really dumb but some of them are actually quite interesting.
For one I didn't realize that the fatality rate on Everest was so high, that's pretty scarey. I guess there goes my Everest attempt, my wife was never in favor of it anyway.
I was thinking about it the other night and I had an idea, they need to put a fire escape type of tube on Everest, the kind you see installed on some high rises. Just a super long one on Everest, that way if someone is having a problem just pop them into the tube and let them slide down to advanced base camp, no rescue operation necessary and no endangering further lives in trying to evacuate an incapacitated climber.
Would something like this actually work? Could it be done in stages? A tube stretching from one camp to the next?
That is what I can never figure out with these community driven things. All these saps putting there time and energy into it, when they know that behind the scenes someone owns it and for them regardless of the personal investment or emotional attachment the bottom line (money) is going to call the shots at the end of the day.
I have quite a view of my old customers who know me personally from my webhosting company and they still can't understand how I would abandon them and sell the company, not that I wanted to, it was a financial decision.
Its like with the wikipedia phenomenom, are these people being paid for all the time they put into editing articles and reviewing content? Then possibly a year from now they get bought up by Google and the whole structure of the thing changes, then what?
People get a clue... why support some other venture, even if it is well organized and ground breaking etc..., get out there and start your own business or try to develop the next big thing! Thats what I did back in 1999.
Yes, there is the risk factor too. I'd much rather have my kids trying to do a 30 foot jump on a skateboard in virtual reality, definately safer and no broken bones or emergency room visits.
I remember we had the first Nintendo growing up, my brothers and I would spend countless hours playing Zelda and Mario Brothers, usually later in the evening, during the day we either were at school or working on the farm.
I've got a four year old girl now and so far I have held off on buying and consoles. I watch her already spending way too much time watching Nick Jr. and Cartoon Networks and it really bugs me. Even though my brothers and I did spend a good deal of time playing games, at the same time we also worked on the farm and lived on a forested five acre lot and were continually chopping down trees and building tree forts etc... so it wasn't like we were couch potatoes either.
This new game console (Wii) seems at bit more interesting though, with its motion detection system, it actually encourages physical activity. But then again does it really replace the activities that it models?
I think I would rather take my child to the bowling alley then have her play it on a video game.
From a convenience standpoint though it makes sense, its a lot easier to turn on a bowling game then pack all the kids in the car and spend an entire evening at the bowling alley. In a sense what the video game consoles have become are baby sitters for parents who do not have the time or inclination to spend quality time with their kids. Even though a couple hours spent playing with your kids with a video game can be time well spent as well. I guess what it boils down to is finding a balance, a little gaming isn't bad but to plop your kid down in front of a console and then leave them for hours on end is not my idea or appropriate parenting.
Take a look at this page, off topic but definately interesting: http://wilkersondesign.com/nathan/lego.html
I laugh when I read horror stories like these, not because I wish this sort of thing to happen to people. But that people never learn. They always want something for nothing or "very cheap". I have been in the web hosting and domain business for 6 years now. I have clients who contact me on a regular basis asking me if we will match so and so's GREAT deal. I always warn them that if it sounds too good to be true chances are it is. I have had quite of few customers leave us only to return back in a month or two because of serious reliability problems or a total lack of service from these companies who appear to have these GREAT deals.
Bottom line is, do a little research, don't always go for a deal that is the cheapest. Word of mouth is your best bet or actual reviews from current or past customers. We sell domains for $13.00 per year, which seems outrageous compared to some. But you will always get a person responding within 24 hours or less and usually by phone.
All I can say really is be smart. Watch out for the shysters, there are plenty of them. Remember everyone has got to eat therefore if the deal seems almost too good chances are there is a problem with it.
Just my two cents.
Just a dumb question, but if I remember correctly the regular segway works by having the operator balance it somewhat like a bicycle, hence the small learning curve to operate the Segway.
So my question is, does this robot have some sort of balancing algorithm programmed into it so it doesn't fall flat on its face?
As CEO of a company I think I have a better grasp on this than most Slashdot readers, you see most of you are the 90's version of the hippy, your outlook on life is everything should be free, no boundaries, that is why you embrace freeware and not Microsoft. Not to say that I don't have quite a few gripes about MS myself but fundamentally your outlook on life is flawed.
Everything in life cost money, and every piece or property with any sort of value is "owned". Eventually, space will become more accessible to the average person/corporation and once it does you can bet that the same system that exists on earth will be transplanted to any extra-terrestial body. Come on, stop spouting your utopia crap and lets get real. Space is only free since we can only really access it through our telescopes and we can't even do that very well. When the astronauts finally made it to the moon, what was one of the first things they did? They laid sovereign claim to Terra Luna by erecting an American flag.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but this is the way the world/universe works.
We only use Win2k since we have too many of our clients using ASP and ASP.NET on our servers, if there were a good replacement on Apache/FreeBSD I would love to switch everything away from MS. Too many headaches, downtime, instability, crashes, customer problems, cost, more headaches, licensing, security problems, etc... Need I go on?
I agree, why doesn't someone come up with something really simple for once and just functional, no fancy lights, just a silver box, minimalization...
A link like this could easily overload Slashdot's servers and this isn't even hard to do:
Possible Scenario
So I wouldn't take something like this so lightly...
Considering we are right in the middle of connecting a T1 through UUNET.
By the way what exactly is a beowulf cluster?
I give the new satellite radio stations a better chance of surviving than internet radio, the problem with internet radio is that it require too many underlying serious infrastructural support to actually work, jeez if I want to list to the radio (FM/AM) I can just buy a cheap receiver for a couple of bucks, put in some lithium batteries and I'm set for months, not Internet connections, Real Play, computer, 24/7 broadband etc...
Lets face it, it's just too complicated that is the problem. Granted for some geeks like myself, who sit in front of there computers almost 18 hours out of any given day, it might make some sense, but people like myself probably only account for about 1.5% of the population.
This is ludacrous. My brother got one of these "renewal" notices for a domain that I personally registered for him through Tucows, my brother is a roofer so he has no idea what is going on, I just barely stopped him before he had send a check to Verisign for $29.99 for renewal which would have moved the domain away from my busines www.npsis.com where we only charge $13.00 per year for domain registrations, in my brother's case of course I just renew it for free. I am appalled at the nasty tactics that a reputable company like Verisign would stoop to. I thought that once Verisign took over from NSI, things would be cleaned up a bit, I guess nothing has changed.
As I have said previously why not set ICANN up like the UN that way there would be no one dominating party and all voices would be heard.
We run both FreeBSD servers and Win2k Servers for hosting platforms, granted FreeBSD is still by far the most stable, however I must admit that Win2k is rock solid when compared with NT4, I would usually reboot NT4 at least once a week just to get it back on its feet again. Now I can usually just leave my Win2k servers and maybe reboot once a month or once every 2 months.
Don't you love these... I remember when it was "software" then it became "solutions". Sites like IBM's didn't offer products anymore, they offered solutions or better yet "e-solutions". Its all the same thing people, for instance we provide web hosting, you can call it what you like... e-commerce, virtual server, e-business, it doesn't change a thing. Now everyone is talking about architecture and throwing around cool words like "IP" and "Pipeline", don't you just love those Qwest and Sprint commercials... Come on "VPN" most average TV viewers have no clue what that is, but it sounds cool to them, I guess. Its these big companies that are trying to re-market the same old thing with a new fancy label, some of the marketing execs need serious help.
I'm not one for violating our freedoms however something like this may help in scaring would be virus creators, hackers and others problematic computer uses (ie. DDOS attackers). If it will help eliminate problems like that I'm all for it, even if my overall freedoms are curbed a little.
You have a good point here, since the final stage of energy production involves the production of water in large ammounts then why not recycle the water that you are creating and use it in the first reaction, thereby minimizing the size of the water tank required. In fact the size of the water tank would only need to be large enough to provide enough water to initiate the reaction since the final stage produces more than enough water for an ongoing reaction, plus or minus some for evaporation and other losses...
I agree we have made considerable progress however we haven't made progress on a fundamental level, our primary energy source is still the same, fossil fuels...
The thing that gets me is the energy has to come from some where. Everyone has been touting electric cars however you still have to plug them in to charge the batteries, well where does that energy come from, in the US it comes primarily from large coal burning power plants. Trust me coal burning is probably one of the dirtiest forms of producing energy, worse then oil or gas by far. So yes, our cars might be emitting less emissions but we haven't made any real progress if we are spewing out tons of coal burning byproducts just to generate the electricity.
My feeling is that we need to either harness solar power more effectively or other natural phenomena such as wind or wave. Maybe even Fusion has a chance eventually, regardless any of these methods will be considerably cleaner than fossil fuels.
Hasn't anyone being paying attention to VIA? What about the P4X266 chipset, even Tyan has a board with it: http://tyan.com/products/html/trinity510.html
Intel motherboards and chipsets are fine however you don't have to wait for Intel to come out with a DDR chipset for your P4. VIA has one already.