Two days ago HP came into my office and gave a 2 hour roadmap presentation to let us know what will happen to Risk/Alpha over the next few years.
Well, Risk and Alpha are going away, and Itanium is the way of the future for HP-UX and OpenVMS. What was interesting was what they told us about the forthcoming Intel processors - the entire Alpha team was hired by Intel and the next gen intel chips will use the Alpha style switchless mesh architecture. This style architecture removes roadblocks inside the box -- no more intermediaries. Your data takes a straight line to its destination.
In other words - it connects processors directly to one another to render true linear scalability. This differs from other architectures in that there is no traditional bus, and you can add processors, memory and I/O capacity in a Lego block-like fashion.
They also mentioned they will be coming out with quad core in 2007.
Protecting your identity is really very easy. I have been doing it without problem for a quite a while.
First - don't pay your bills on time. Wrack up lots of late fees, and never pay them.
Second - default on your student loans, if you have any.
Third - Don't pay your late fees and switch job frequently to aviod a wage garnish for the student loans you have defaulted on. All this will result in a VERY poor credit rating. End result - no one wants my identity, and even if they did, they couldn't get a credit card with it.
If Microsoft products are truly superior, then why is it that high volume websites such as the new Microsoft search engine, for example, are running on Linux and/or Apache. See netcraft results.
There is a simple reason why they didn't make the Hobbit first.
They don't own the movie rights to it. Tolkien sold the movie rights to LOTR at a time when he was having some financial problems, but he never sold the rights to the Hobbit.
And with articles like this, I don't think the Tolkien estate has any intentions of selling those rights either.
I've gotten a couple of these e-mails -
full test of the e-mail is pasted below.
This is a test of the AMD emergency broadcast message. This is only a test. If this had been an actual email, you door would have been kicked in by federal agents, your AMD CPU's would have been confiscated, and you would have been arrested for violation of the DMCA. We now return you to your regularly scheduled email.
I agree 100%. There is just something about reals books that is great. However, I have noticed over the past few years my increasing annoyance at things I can't do with conventional books.
I REALLY get bothered when I'm reading a book, or a newspaper/magazine/etc, and I can't grep for a phrase.
Or look up a words definition (without refering to another book).
Or find other titles by the same author (ok, sometimes these are in the book).
Maybe conventional books with electronic covers w/small lcds would work.
Modern water guns suck.
on
Water Guns
·
· Score: 1
Waterguns have been a strange focus of my life recently, as I have been playing in a game of Assassin and I have done some significant searching for a truly bad-ass weapon.
What I've found (after going to about 15 different toy stores) is that even with all the range and volume that ultra-modern water weaponry have they still suck.
Most of the problem is that sometime around the early 1990's companies stopped making toy guns that looked realistic. All the new supersoakers and even new conventional water pistols are multi-flourescent colored futuristicly aero-dynamic peices of crap.
I mean, how can you be stealthy with a gun enemies can see from 100 feet away? I understand why the guns aren't made to look real anymore, but when I was a kid (god, I feel old all of a sudden) toys were dangerous and sometimes you poked yourself in the eye, but dammit, TOYS WERE FUN. Nowadays, everything is ultra-safe at the expense of ultra-cool.
I remember the best watergun I ever had. It was an Intertek Uzi. Batterypowered. All black. Spare clip that could hook onto a belt. It LOOKED like a real gun. It made sounds like a real gun. Just hold down the trigger and you got full auto. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. It only shot 20-25 feet but it kicked ass.
Hmmmmm....time to go to eBay and see if I can find one.
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
I love linux and all, but it's more like Free Parking than Parkplace. Parkplace makes money. I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
Disclaimer - I do not work for Verizon and in no way benfit from this message.
It seems that lots of people here like to complain about how crappy their service is. Well, in my opinion, you get what you pay for. The majority of the problems I have seen first hand are almost always from DSL providers who buy and resell from Covad, never pay their bills, and get cut off.
Everyone also likes to bitch about Verizon's DSL, ranging from crappy support to constant outages. I have Verizon DSL. I like it. I like it alot. I pay $60/month for 1.5 down and 512 up, consistantly get much higher down speeds than what I pay for, only waited 3 weeks for install, have had zero outages in 3 months, and have never even had to call tech support.
Spend the extra money on Verizon, go buy yourself a router that supports PPPoe (I use LinkSys - 8 port $200) and you won't run into the "we don't support Linux" problems.
I mean, come on, $60/month is really not that much for basically having your own T1. 3 years ago this would have been an astounding price (when people were paying 1500/month for similar bandwidth). In 3 more years I wouldn't be surpirsed if we could get 10Mbit/sec for little more than an addition charge on your phone bill equivalent to call waiting or caller ID.
Dial-up is dying. I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
2000-03-14 01:12:22 (Score:)
by Tarlyn (vincentc@marlboro.edu on soon (#)
http://10lbcock.go.to
2000-03-14 01:12:22
Hmmmm, my original guess was 2000-03-14 01:12:22, but the lameness filter rejected it. Does/. have some inside information on the Mir crash, or is the lameness filter smart enough to know I'm a moron and forgot it was 2001. Here's my real guess - 2001-03-14 01:12:22.
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
Mars is actually between 100 million km and 380 million km. Closest approach happens once every 2 years and trajectories give an actual distance of about 150,000,000 km.
d = v(initial)*t + 1/2(a*t^2)
Since we have a positive acceleration half way and a negative (with respect to earth) acceleration half way, we solve for t = 1 week with a distance of 75,000,000 km.
75,000,000 km = 0 + 1/2(a*1week^2)
7.5*10^10 meters = 1/2(a*604800s^2)
a = 0.41m/s^2
By the same token, a 1G acceleration will get you halfway in 1.4 days, or all the way in about 3 days.
Have you considered Ireland? They speak english (mostly), have a great economy, and are booming in IT areas. Additionally - become a citizen, pay no income tax (at least, that's what I've been told)! I did a quick google search and found this site which returned more than a few jobs in Dublin that sounded reasonable.
Jim Lehrer: Welcome to the second presidential
debate between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W.
Bush. The candidates have agreed on these rules: I will ask
a question. The candidate will ignore the question and
deliver rehearsed remarks designed to appeal to undecided
women voters. The opponent will then have one minute to
respond by trying to frighten senior citizens into voting
for him. When a speaker's time has expired, I will whimper
softly while he continues to spew incomprehensible
statistics for three more minutes. Let's start with the
vice president. Mr. Gore, can you give us the name of a
downtrodden citizen and then tell us his or her story in a
way that strains the bounds of common sense?
Gore: As I was saying to Tipper last night after we
tenderly made love the way we have so often during the 30
years of our rock-solid marriage, the downtrodden have a
clear choice in this election. My opponent wants to cut
taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans. I, on the
other hand, want to put the richest 1 percent in an iron
clad lockbox so they can't hurt old people like Roberta
Frampinhamper, who is here tonight. Mrs. Frampinhamper has
been selling her internal organs, one by one, to pay for
gas so that she can travel to these debates and personify
problems for me. Also, her poodle has arthritis.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush, your rebuttal.
Bush: Governors are on the front lines every day,
hugging people, crying with them, relieving suffering
anywhere a photo opportunity exists. I want to empower
those crying people to make their own decisions, unlike my
opponent, whose mother is not Barbara Bush.
Lehrer: Let's turn to foreign affairs. Gov. Bush,
if Slobodan Milosevic were to launch a bid to return to
power in Yugoslavia, would you be able to pronounce his
name?
Bush: The current administration had eight years
to deal with that guy and didn't get it done. If I'm
elected, the first thing I would do about that guy is have
Dick Cheney confer with our allies. And then Dick would
present me several options for dealing with that guy. And
then Dick would tell me which one to choose. You know, as
governor of Texas, I have to make tough foreign policy
decisions every day about how we're going to deal with New
Mexico.
Lehrer: Mr. Gore, your rebuttal.
Gore: Foreign policy is something I've always been
keenly interested in. I served my country in Vietnam. I had
an uncle who was a victim of poison gas in World War I. I
myself lost a leg in the Franco-Prussian War. And when that
war was over, I came home and tenderly made love to Tipper
in a way that any undecided woman voter would find romantic.
If I'm entrusted with the office of president, I pledge to
deal knowledgeably with any threat, foreign or domestic, by
putting it in an iron clad lockbox. Because the American
people deserve a president who can comfort them with simple
metaphors.
Lehrer: Vice President Gore, how would you reform
the Social Security system?
Gore: It's a vital issue, Jim. That's why Joe
Lieberman and I have proposed changing the laws of
mathematics to allow us to give $50,000 to every senior
citizen without having it cost the federal treasury a single
penny until the year 2250. In addition, my budget commits
$60 trillion over the next 10 years to guarantee that all
senior citizens can have drugs delivered free to their
homes every Monday by a federal employee who will also help
them with the child-proof cap.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush?
Bush: That's fuzzy math. I know, because as
governor of Texas, I have to do math every day. I have to
add up the numbers and decide whether I'm going to fill
potholes out on Rt. 36 east of Abilene or commit funds to
reroof the sheep barn at the Texas state fairgrounds.
Lehrer: It's time for closing statements.
Gore: I'm my own man. I may not be the most exciting
politician, but I will fight for the working families of
America, in addition to turning the White House into a
lusty pit of marital love for Tipper and me.
Bush: It's time to put aside the partisanship of
the past by electing no one but Republicans.
would a large amount of carbon dioxide make feasible the possibility of creating an atmosphere on Mars?
IANAPSY - I am not a planetary scientist yet (working on getting into a grad program), but I do have an undergraduate degree in Physics and Astronomy, so I'll try to field this question.
Well, with lots of CO2, and a mechanism to release it into the atmosphere (large scale collision, covering it in black dust, et), sure, you would get a few millibars naybe more depending on how much you had to work with.
I really doubt there is enough there to have a real impact (ie, provide earthlike pressure), and you really don't want earthlike pressure from CO2 anyhow. Sure, it will warm the planet some, and increase the air pressure, but it would be a real pain in the ass to remove it later. Unless of course, you don't mind suffocating.
What Mars REALLY needs is lots of Nitrogen. And I mean LOTS.
I'm sure this must have been mentioned earlier, but there is a great trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson about terraforming Mars. The books are called Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. Also White Mars (a prequel I have yet to read). The science is a bit iffy at times, but Robinson really did some research and put a lot of thought into a terraforming project. A great read.
Legal issues, yes, it could be considered fraud. But technically (i think, but maybe I misunderstand the whole process), it could be done. Example: I go to Amazon.com to buy a book. Along the way, I hit an at&t backbone router, which now knows where I'm going and it turns a flag on for a potential online purchase. Now it watches my packets, and it KNOWS by reading my packet headers when I request a SSL for a purchase. Instead of sending me along on my way, it establishes a SSL session with me (pretending to be Amazon). Hmmmm....ok now I see where my argument falls apart. Well, with access to some high level DNS' you might still be able to pull it off. But that is certainly illegal.
Actually, one of the more ingenious ideas I've read was to sprinkle black particulate matter on the icecaps, thereby increasing their heat absorption. Since one of the caps is supposedly predominantly carbon dioxide one can presume that melting it would chain-reaction (once a "critical mass" is met, if we cannot find a catalyst) of greenhouse effect
The problem with this is that we don't want anymore CO2 in the atmosphere. Sure, it will warm the planet some, and increase the air pressure, but it's a REAL pain in the ass to get it out of the atmosphere later. What we really need is a way to get LOTS of nitrogen into the atmosphere and a way to melt the permafrost (if there is one). Smashing an asteroid or one of Mars' moons into the surface might do the trick.
Hmmmmm, on second thought, maybe melting the cap is a good idea. Even with all that CO2 we would still need to raise the pressure significantly, so it's possible (IANAPSY - I am not a planetary scientist yet) that the CO2 released could be close to the right amount in the long run.
Does anyone know of any possible way that this plan could work?
I fail to see the problem SSL presents. AT&T OWNS the backbone. They are the ultimate man-in-the-middle. Sure, spoofing and proxying every retail site would be a pain in the ass, but it is feasable.
Lego Mindstorm is a programmable robotics kit based on the course developed at MIT. It uses a control board you can program from your PC through an IR port in a language VERY sismlar to C. The robotics you can create with this can become really sofisticated, including temperature, pressure, and light sensitive sensors, just to name a few. It would be great for HS kids to play with. I believe that Lego also has an ongoing contest for creative uses of their product, recent winners being a working "typewriter," and a working scanner. Don't know what your budget is like though, the set wasn't very cheap when I used it 3-4 years ago.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, Risk and Alpha are going away, and Itanium is the way of the future for HP-UX and OpenVMS. What was interesting was what they told us about the forthcoming Intel processors - the entire Alpha team was hired by Intel and the next gen intel chips will use the Alpha style switchless mesh architecture. This style architecture removes roadblocks inside the box -- no more intermediaries. Your data takes a straight line to its destination.
In other words - it connects processors directly to one another to render true linear scalability. This differs from other architectures in that there is no traditional bus, and you can add processors, memory and I/O capacity in a Lego block-like fashion.
They also mentioned they will be coming out with quad core in 2007.
First - don't pay your bills on time. Wrack up lots of late fees, and never pay them.
Second - default on your student loans, if you have any.
Third - Don't pay your late fees and switch job frequently to aviod a wage garnish for the student loans you have defaulted on.
All this will result in a VERY poor credit rating. End result - no one wants my identity, and even if they did, they couldn't get a credit card with it.
If Microsoft products are truly superior, then why is it that high volume websites such as the new Microsoft search engine, for example, are running on Linux and/or Apache. See netcraft results.
Who said Make won't have any boobies? I heard one of their first issues will cover a DIY Real Doll.
There is a simple reason why they didn't make the Hobbit first.
They don't own the movie rights to it. Tolkien sold the movie rights to LOTR at a time when he was having some financial problems, but he never sold the rights to the Hobbit.
And with articles like this, I don't think the Tolkien estate has any intentions of selling those rights either.
I've gotten a couple of these e-mails - full test of the e-mail is pasted below.
This is a test of the AMD emergency broadcast message. This is only a test. If this had been an actual email, you door would have been kicked in by federal agents, your AMD CPU's would have been confiscated, and you would have been arrested for violation of the DMCA. We now return you to your regularly scheduled email.
I agree 100%. There is just something about reals books that is great. However, I have noticed over the past few years my increasing annoyance at things I can't do with conventional books.
I REALLY get bothered when I'm reading a book, or a newspaper/magazine/etc, and I can't grep for a phrase.
Or look up a words definition (without refering to another book).
Or find other titles by the same author (ok, sometimes these are in the book).
Maybe conventional books with electronic covers w/small lcds would work.
Waterguns have been a strange focus of my life recently, as I have been playing in a game of Assassin and I have done some significant searching for a truly bad-ass weapon.
What I've found (after going to about 15 different toy stores) is that even with all the range and volume that ultra-modern water weaponry have they still suck.
Most of the problem is that sometime around the early 1990's companies stopped making toy guns that looked realistic. All the new supersoakers and even new conventional water pistols are multi-flourescent colored futuristicly aero-dynamic peices of crap.
I mean, how can you be stealthy with a gun enemies can see from 100 feet away? I understand why the guns aren't made to look real anymore, but when I was a kid (god, I feel old all of a sudden) toys were dangerous and sometimes you poked yourself in the eye, but dammit, TOYS WERE FUN. Nowadays, everything is ultra-safe at the expense of ultra-cool.
I remember the best watergun I ever had. It was an Intertek Uzi. Batterypowered. All black. Spare clip that could hook onto a belt. It LOOKED like a real gun. It made sounds like a real gun. Just hold down the trigger and you got full auto. Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat. It only shot 20-25 feet but it kicked ass.
Hmmmmm....time to go to eBay and see if I can find one.
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
I love linux and all, but it's more like Free Parking than Parkplace. Parkplace makes money.
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
Disclaimer - I do not work for Verizon and in no way benfit from this message.
It seems that lots of people here like to complain about how crappy their service is. Well, in my opinion, you get what you pay for. The majority of the problems I have seen first hand are almost always from DSL providers who buy and resell from Covad, never pay their bills, and get cut off.
Everyone also likes to bitch about Verizon's DSL, ranging from crappy support to constant outages. I have Verizon DSL. I like it. I like it alot. I pay $60/month for 1.5 down and 512 up, consistantly get much higher down speeds than what I pay for, only waited 3 weeks for install, have had zero outages in 3 months, and have never even had to call tech support.
Spend the extra money on Verizon, go buy yourself a router that supports PPPoe (I use LinkSys - 8 port $200) and you won't run into the "we don't support Linux" problems.
I mean, come on, $60/month is really not that much for basically having your own T1. 3 years ago this would have been an astounding price (when people were paying 1500/month for similar bandwidth). In 3 more years I wouldn't be surpirsed if we could get 10Mbit/sec for little more than an addition charge on your phone bill equivalent to call waiting or caller ID.
Dial-up is dying.
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted.
2000-03-14 01:12:22 (Score:)
by Tarlyn (vincentc@marlboro.edu on soon (#)
http://10lbcock.go.to
2000-03-14 01:12:22
Hmmmm, my original guess was 2000-03-14 01:12:22, but the lameness filter rejected it. Does
I am Jack's broken heart
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise
1G accelleration for a week gets you -
1,792,336,896 km.
Mars is actually between 100 million km and 380 million km. Closest approach happens once every 2 years and trajectories give an actual distance of about 150,000,000 km.
d = v(initial)*t + 1/2(a*t^2)
Since we have a positive acceleration half way and a negative (with respect to earth) acceleration half way, we solve for t = 1 week with a distance of 75,000,000 km.
75,000,000 km = 0 + 1/2(a*1week^2)
7.5*10^10 meters = 1/2(a*604800s^2)
a = 0.41m/s^2
By the same token, a 1G acceleration will get you halfway in 1.4 days, or all the way in about 3 days.
Have you considered Ireland? They speak english (mostly), have a great economy, and are booming in IT areas. Additionally - become a citizen, pay no income tax (at least, that's what I've been told)! I did a quick google search and found this site which returned more than a few jobs in Dublin that sounded reasonable.
Tarlyn
Jim Lehrer: Welcome to the second presidential debate between Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush. The candidates have agreed on these rules: I will ask a question. The candidate will ignore the question and deliver rehearsed remarks designed to appeal to undecided women voters. The opponent will then have one minute to respond by trying to frighten senior citizens into voting for him. When a speaker's time has expired, I will whimper softly while he continues to spew incomprehensible statistics for three more minutes. Let's start with the vice president. Mr. Gore, can you give us the name of a downtrodden citizen and then tell us his or her story in a way that strains the bounds of common sense?
Gore: As I was saying to Tipper last night after we tenderly made love the way we have so often during the 30 years of our rock-solid marriage, the downtrodden have a clear choice in this election. My opponent wants to cut taxes for the richest 1 percent of Americans. I, on the other hand, want to put the richest 1 percent in an iron clad lockbox so they can't hurt old people like Roberta Frampinhamper, who is here tonight. Mrs. Frampinhamper has been selling her internal organs, one by one, to pay for gas so that she can travel to these debates and personify problems for me. Also, her poodle has arthritis.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush, your rebuttal.
Bush: Governors are on the front lines every day, hugging people, crying with them, relieving suffering anywhere a photo opportunity exists. I want to empower those crying people to make their own decisions, unlike my opponent, whose mother is not Barbara Bush.
Lehrer: Let's turn to foreign affairs. Gov. Bush, if Slobodan Milosevic were to launch a bid to return to power in Yugoslavia, would you be able to pronounce his name?
Bush: The current administration had eight years to deal with that guy and didn't get it done. If I'm elected, the first thing I would do about that guy is have Dick Cheney confer with our allies. And then Dick would present me several options for dealing with that guy. And then Dick would tell me which one to choose. You know, as governor of Texas, I have to make tough foreign policy decisions every day about how we're going to deal with New Mexico.
Lehrer: Mr. Gore, your rebuttal.
Gore: Foreign policy is something I've always been keenly interested in. I served my country in Vietnam. I had an uncle who was a victim of poison gas in World War I. I myself lost a leg in the Franco-Prussian War. And when that war was over, I came home and tenderly made love to Tipper in a way that any undecided woman voter would find romantic. If I'm entrusted with the office of president, I pledge to deal knowledgeably with any threat, foreign or domestic, by putting it in an iron clad lockbox. Because the American people deserve a president who can comfort them with simple metaphors.
Lehrer: Vice President Gore, how would you reform the Social Security system?
Gore: It's a vital issue, Jim. That's why Joe Lieberman and I have proposed changing the laws of mathematics to allow us to give $50,000 to every senior citizen without having it cost the federal treasury a single penny until the year 2250. In addition, my budget commits $60 trillion over the next 10 years to guarantee that all senior citizens can have drugs delivered free to their homes every Monday by a federal employee who will also help them with the child-proof cap.
Lehrer: Gov. Bush?
Bush: That's fuzzy math. I know, because as governor of Texas, I have to do math every day. I have to add up the numbers and decide whether I'm going to fill potholes out on Rt. 36 east of Abilene or commit funds to reroof the sheep barn at the Texas state fairgrounds.
Lehrer: It's time for closing statements.
Gore: I'm my own man. I may not be the most exciting politician, but I will fight for the working families of America, in addition to turning the White House into a lusty pit of marital love for Tipper and me.
Bush: It's time to put aside the partisanship of the past by electing no one but Republicans.
Lehrer: Good night.
For those interested in seeing the inside of one of these things without going to the UK or stealing one here's a link with lots of photos.
Ooops, my mistake. r=about 70au, not 1au, soooo Solar Escape Velocity = closer to 100 km/sec. I guess it can make it.
As of Jan. 1, 1997 Pioneer 10 was at about 67 AU from the Sun near the ecliptic plane and heading outward from the Sun at 2.6 AU/year
hmmm....2.6 AU/year. 1 AU = 1.5 * 10^11 m. There are about 31 million seconds in a year, so Pioneer is going about 123km/sec.
Escape velocity - sqrt(G*M*2/r).
r=1AU
G=6.67 * 10^-11
M(sun)=1.989 * 10^30
Solar Escape velocity = 297 km/sec.
So how long till Pioneer comes crashing back into the solar system?
Also, isn't the Kupier Belt at around 70-100 AU? Maybe Pioneer got smashed by some icy object out there...
would a large amount of carbon dioxide make feasible the possibility of creating an atmosphere on Mars?
IANAPSY - I am not a planetary scientist yet (working on getting into a grad program), but I do have an undergraduate degree in Physics and Astronomy, so I'll try to field this question.
Well, with lots of CO2, and a mechanism to release it into the atmosphere (large scale collision, covering it in black dust, et), sure, you would get a few millibars naybe more depending on how much you had to work with.
I really doubt there is enough there to have a real impact (ie, provide earthlike pressure), and you really don't want earthlike pressure from CO2 anyhow. Sure, it will warm the planet some, and increase the air pressure, but it would be a real pain in the ass to remove it later. Unless of course, you don't mind suffocating.
What Mars REALLY needs is lots of Nitrogen. And I mean LOTS.
I'm sure this must have been mentioned earlier, but there is a great trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson about terraforming Mars. The books are called Red Mars, Green Mars, and Blue Mars. Also White Mars (a prequel I have yet to read). The science is a bit iffy at times, but Robinson really did some research and put a lot of thought into a terraforming project. A great read.
Legal issues, yes, it could be considered fraud. But technically (i think, but maybe I misunderstand the whole process), it could be done. Example: I go to Amazon.com to buy a book. Along the way, I hit an at&t backbone router, which now knows where I'm going and it turns a flag on for a potential online purchase. Now it watches my packets, and it KNOWS by reading my packet headers when I request a SSL for a purchase. Instead of sending me along on my way, it establishes a SSL session with me (pretending to be Amazon). Hmmmm....ok now I see where my argument falls apart. Well, with access to some high level DNS' you might still be able to pull it off. But that is certainly illegal.
Actually, one of the more ingenious ideas I've read was to sprinkle black particulate matter on the icecaps, thereby increasing their heat absorption. Since one of the caps is supposedly predominantly carbon dioxide one can presume that melting it would chain-reaction (once a "critical mass" is met, if we cannot find a catalyst) of greenhouse effect
The problem with this is that we don't want anymore CO2 in the atmosphere. Sure, it will warm the planet some, and increase the air pressure, but it's a REAL pain in the ass to get it out of the atmosphere later. What we really need is a way to get LOTS of nitrogen into the atmosphere and a way to melt the permafrost (if there is one). Smashing an asteroid or one of Mars' moons into the surface might do the trick.
Hmmmmm, on second thought, maybe melting the cap is a good idea. Even with all that CO2 we would still need to raise the pressure significantly, so it's possible (IANAPSY - I am not a planetary scientist yet) that the CO2 released could be close to the right amount in the long run.
Does anyone know of any possible way that this plan could work?
I fail to see the problem SSL presents. AT&T OWNS the backbone. They are the ultimate man-in-the-middle. Sure, spoofing and proxying every retail site would be a pain in the ass, but it is feasable.
Lego Mindstorm is a programmable robotics kit based on the course developed at MIT. It uses a control board you can program from your PC through an IR port in a language VERY sismlar to C. The robotics you can create with this can become really sofisticated, including temperature, pressure, and light sensitive sensors, just to name a few. It would be great for HS kids to play with. I believe that Lego also has an ongoing contest for creative uses of their product, recent winners being a working "typewriter," and a working scanner. Don't know what your budget is like though, the set wasn't very cheap when I used it 3-4 years ago.
-Tarlyn
10lbc ---not pr0n, Punk Rock!