Data files to the accountant is definitely a desirable thing. As for migration, my movement from Quickbooks to gnucash was so seamless and painless that I may have made an unwarranted assumption about the ease of going the other way. I hope I'll never know.
I don't know about that. My small business accounting software, gnucash, was pretty easy to adapt from its intended function as a personal finance manager. My Schedule C small business is running along quite happily under it with the addition of a couple payroll tax tables. As a non-accountant, my experience with gnucash has so far been much better than with the proprietary software it replaced. YMMV
it's nearly impossible with current ecigs to OD on nicotine (something you probably can't do with tobacco,
Spoken like someone who never swallowed a teaspoon-sized plug of chewing tobacco as a 10-year-old. I didn't die (obviously) but I really wanted to. I'm convinced a larger dose could have killed me.
(If I set out to do a project on what the food was at the Last Supper, I would generally have to have as a presupposition that the meal happened).
But... But... But - This was a study on how the Last Supper was portrayed, not what was actually served. Those who don't want to posit that there ever was a Last Supper could view this as being intellectually equivalent to a study looking at the chronology of changes in Wonder Woman's apparent bra size. You don't have to believe she actually existed to study changes in depictions of her.
...what about nightclubs? I'm pretty sure the heavy bass would be able to produce at least enough energy to cover the lights, especially since they're off for the most part.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but it sounds like you're calling environmentalists hypocrites because they live in cities.
I can see how it sounds like that, but that was the farthest thing from my mind.
I'm an old codger who grew up in the 50's in a rural area about 12 miles southwest of Greenville, SC, and I can remember glancing up at night and being overwhelmed by the presence of the Milky Way. I can also remember the first mercury vapor nightlight we could see from the house. Now from that house you can see more nightlights than you can see stars. Of course there are more neighbors, but my point is that there are more nightlights. In the 50's in that neighborhood, no one had lights that they left on all night, not even 60-watt bulbs, much less 400-watt. It would have seemed profligate.
So what I intended to convey was that we could save a lot of energy (and therefore a lot of carbon emissions under current energy-production conditions) by simply turning off nightlights. I recall that in the 50's the power companies pushed really hard to light up the night, giving major rate reductions for night lighting. The rationale they expressed was that it leveled out their load. I think that by now they can find other ways to compensate. In my view, most of that light is wasted anyway, since no one sees it. As you can tell, I'm not fond of light pollution, so I'm sure that colors my attitudes.
Since my first post I've fallen to wondering if it would actually be cheaper for a municipality to issue night vision gear to each resident than to provide streetlighting. And how far that would go toward satisfying whatever needs there are that are currently satisfied by lighting up the night. I think that if I were a bad guy who wanted the cover of darkness to sneak around under, I would rather have street lights than a town full of night vision gear. But that's just me. YMMV
I like to tell people that I'm not going to believe this country (US) is serious about energy conservation until Democrats can see the Milky Way. Then it's fun to let people sputter for a while before explaining: If you compare a satellite image of the US at night, to a political map showing red/blue counties in a fairly close national race, you see that the lighted areas are mostly blue, and the blue areas are mostly lighted.
When we stop throwing megawatts into production of photons that will never be intercepted by a human retina, then a typical Democrat will be able to step outside on a clear night, look up, and see the Milky Way. Until then, there's just too much light pollution for the typical Democrat to see the night sky clearly, and IMO the country is not serious about conserving energy.
I'd like to see some indication of what prompted Paypal to do this. Not that it would make a lot of difference, but "because we could" would lead to a different attitude on my part than "because they were a source of malware that kept making unauthorized deposits into their account."
Not that I think either of those is likely to be their public explanation.
Probably Lance Armstrong can produce over 250W for much of a day. I on the other hand, break a sweat just thinking about it. A hardworking horse can keep up about 750W (definition of a horsepower). Imagine yourself and two buddies playing tug-of-war with a Clydesdale.
OK, how about capitol punishment - forced attendance at a paranomasiacs' convention in Washington, D.C. (or Rome, London, Oslo, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, whatever)?
Although this would run afoul of the 8th Amendment in the US.
It would definitely be unusual, and for many, cruel.
Of course a person can be charged with drunk driving if they haven't had anything to drink. Reasons for this might include, but will not be limited to:
1. Evil cops (not likely, IMO, but definitely possible).
2. Deluded cops (more likely, but still a stretch).
3. Overzealous cops, particularly if you're exhibiting something that looks like inebriated behavior but isn't; for example, several neurological conditions can cause you to have slurred speech or an unsteady gait but still be fine to drive.
4. Getting framed by an enemy.
5. Being acquainted with Ashton Kutcher.
In addition, as several posters have already pointed out, a person can be charged with drunk driving if they haven't actually driven and are not going to drive.
I'd be fine with capital punishment for people convicted of causing an accident while driving drunk, but I'm a little uneasy about draconian punishments for those who haven't actually caused damage yet, and I'm adamantly opposed to punishment of people without due process. To me, publishing names of arrestees is punishment without due process.
why cant you just string a data line right below the transmission lines?
Why bother? You already have the high tension line. Run the data on that. Physical security against most attackers is built in by the numerous volts sitting on the line already, and by the redundant network already in place. IT security should be no worse than you already have on the internet, and you should be exempt from attacks by casual hackers because they don't have easy access. Concerted attacks by dedicated evil-doers are another matter, because anyone can gain access. but the evil-doers are going to be a problem anywhere.
No, it doesn't contain a ton of NOx. The NOx in Diesel exhaust, high as it may be for vehicle exhaust, can be measured in the parts per million.
While that's undoubtedly true, it doesn't actually convey much useful information. After all, the silicon content of a wafer as delivered to a chip plant "can be measured in the parts per million," too.
(Hint: It's really, really close to 1,000,000 ppm.)
My guess is that NOx content of diesel exhaust is in the tens or hundreds of ppm and is therefore not comparable to the usable N content of fertilizer, but you didn't tell me that.
Somehow you're reminding me: what makes me want to ROFL convulsively is watching the morons yelling into their Bluetooths in places like an airport or a downtown sidewalk, while clearly expecting privacy. Don't believe it? Try holding a running tape recorder near their face and see how they respond. Be ready to run (or fight).
I haven't assumed privacy on a telephone since 1954, and never, ever on a cell phone. For me this means that things I want to keep secret aren't mentioned on the phone. If I have to talk about them, it's face to face or STFU. Of course, it'd be different if I were in a business that required secrets. But still...
Remeber, it's impossible to solve any problem you have without the law! Hire a lawyer! Did you find that spelling error annoying?
Well, I would have called it a typo, but now that you mention it...
Hire a lawyer! Legal action is the only way to solve problems! Actually hashing out issues with other human beings is for chumps!
Right on, brother!! I think "Zeke" owes Captain Sarcastic a broken kneecap and three broken knuckles on his preferred hand, but maybe I'm too old school.
As for you, I would consider your getting a hangnail or maybe a paper cut to be more than adequate compensation for my annoyance at your typo.;-)
Of course, when you mod me to oblivion, that'll be overkill.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
When dealing with physical books it's almost inconceivable that you mishandle the book and accidentally "turn the page".
My experience with physical books has been that if you take your hands off the book or drop it, it turns its own pages.
the ability to scribble free-form notes (typing is too cumbersome/inconvenient for such notes)
I would much rather type than scribble, if for no other reason than that I would like to be able later to read what I wrote.
...so what's the benefit in having a device that lets you store multiple books?
How about to take on an extended trip on which you would have time to read four or five or more books. Also, I'm inevitably reading more than one book at a time for entertainment purposes, so to me it's almost inconceivable to have only one book going at a time.
You can rip a page if you don't like it
Seriously? I - I - I - don't quite know what to say. How would you remember the precise details of what you didn't like? How would you stir up the embers of your indignation? How would you lend it to a friend after it's been modified that way?
I agree with the rest of your post, especially the part about the dead tree book being unable to fail you. Of particular importance to me is the concept that no one can modify it without your knowing about the modification.
TFA speaks of filtering the semiconducting fibers from the conducting ones as if this might be a big deal. I would have thought that magnetic separation would be the obvious solution. Am I missing something?
The physical behavior of a conductor moving with respect to a magnetic field is so dramatically different than that of a non-conductor that I have to believe that a semiconductor would behave differently also.
My favorite demo of this effect is to drop a strong magnet through a section of aluminum conduit. The magnet falls normally when released next to but outside the pipe, but a strong magnet can take up to five minutes to fall through the inside. A cow magnetin a half inch pipe is particularly effective.
Also according to the Wikipedia article, it made 85 horsepower. I didn't see how much it weighed, but unless it was under a ton it would underperform modern expectations when merging onto an interstate.
Yeah, but I don't see that wire being much bigger than 30 gauge (which is about 1cm thick; pretty darn thick). 190,000 meters (it was meters, not feet) of 30 gauge copper wire only weighs a little over 200 pounds. That's less than a passenger + luggage.
Um, AWG 30 is less than a millimeter, not a centimeter, and a lot of the wiring in an airplane would be bigger than 30 gauge.
On the OP's link they claim that 2% of the weight of a 747 is copper. Boeing says a fully loaded 747 is about 875,000 lbs . If this post is accurate, carbon nanotube conductors might weight as little as 1/7 of what copper conductors weigh. My calculator says that means a savings of 15,000 pounds.
That's a pretty porky passenger, but I might have sat next to him on an Oregon-Ohio trip.
Slashdot Mirror
Clear hydraulic fluid in clear lines; transparent aluminum wiring in nylon insulation. What a concept!
Data files to the accountant is definitely a desirable thing. As for migration, my movement from Quickbooks to gnucash was so seamless and painless that I may have made an unwarranted assumption about the ease of going the other way. I hope I'll never know.
Point-of-sale... Yeah, that would be tough.
I don't know about that. My small business accounting software, gnucash, was pretty easy to adapt from its intended function as a personal finance manager. My Schedule C small business is running along quite happily under it with the addition of a couple payroll tax tables. As a non-accountant, my experience with gnucash has so far been much better than with the proprietary software it replaced. YMMV
Its a bit like correlating car crashes with the movement of galaxies.
AHA!! I just knew astrology had merit!
...require all government contract business show that 25% of their workforce telecommute.
As an electrician, I would love to telecommute, but no one can tell me how to twist that wire nut from home.
That's a nice thought, but a real number would be more effective.
How about "1.21 jigadollars"?
it's nearly impossible with current ecigs to OD on nicotine (something you probably can't do with tobacco,
Spoken like someone who never swallowed a teaspoon-sized plug of chewing tobacco as a 10-year-old. I didn't die (obviously) but I really wanted to. I'm convinced a larger dose could have killed me.
(If I set out to do a project on what the food was at the Last Supper, I would generally have to have as a presupposition that the meal happened).
But... But... But - This was a study on how the Last Supper was portrayed, not what was actually served. Those who don't want to posit that there ever was a Last Supper could view this as being intellectually equivalent to a study looking at the chronology of changes in Wonder Woman's apparent bra size. You don't have to believe she actually existed to study changes in depictions of her.
...what about nightclubs? I'm pretty sure the heavy bass would be able to produce at least enough energy to cover the lights, especially since they're off for the most part.
Nightclubs?
Nightclubs?
What about Congress?
This invention is screaming to be used in DC.
The price will probably drop as demand increases
I believe I learned that it was the other way around in school. But well, maybe that was too long ago, and economists changed their mind since then...
Or maybe you misinterpreted what you heard in the lecture? You probably needed hearing aids. :-)
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but it sounds like you're calling environmentalists hypocrites because they live in cities.
I can see how it sounds like that, but that was the farthest thing from my mind.
I'm an old codger who grew up in the 50's in a rural area about 12 miles southwest of Greenville, SC, and I can remember glancing up at night and being overwhelmed by the presence of the Milky Way. I can also remember the first mercury vapor nightlight we could see from the house. Now from that house you can see more nightlights than you can see stars. Of course there are more neighbors, but my point is that there are more nightlights. In the 50's in that neighborhood, no one had lights that they left on all night, not even 60-watt bulbs, much less 400-watt. It would have seemed profligate.
So what I intended to convey was that we could save a lot of energy (and therefore a lot of carbon emissions under current energy-production conditions) by simply turning off nightlights. I recall that in the 50's the power companies pushed really hard to light up the night, giving major rate reductions for night lighting. The rationale they expressed was that it leveled out their load. I think that by now they can find other ways to compensate. In my view, most of that light is wasted anyway, since no one sees it. As you can tell, I'm not fond of light pollution, so I'm sure that colors my attitudes.
Since my first post I've fallen to wondering if it would actually be cheaper for a municipality to issue night vision gear to each resident than to provide streetlighting. And how far that would go toward satisfying whatever needs there are that are currently satisfied by lighting up the night. I think that if I were a bad guy who wanted the cover of darkness to sneak around under, I would rather have street lights than a town full of night vision gear. But that's just me. YMMV
I like to tell people that I'm not going to believe this country (US) is serious about energy conservation until Democrats can see the Milky Way. Then it's fun to let people sputter for a while before explaining: If you compare a satellite image of the US at night, to a political map showing red/blue counties in a fairly close national race, you see that the lighted areas are mostly blue, and the blue areas are mostly lighted.
When we stop throwing megawatts into production of photons that will never be intercepted by a human retina, then a typical Democrat will be able to step outside on a clear night, look up, and see the Milky Way. Until then, there's just too much light pollution for the typical Democrat to see the night sky clearly, and IMO the country is not serious about conserving energy.
I'd like to see some indication of what prompted Paypal to do this. Not that it would make a lot of difference, but "because we could" would lead to a different attitude on my part than "because they were a source of malware that kept making unauthorized deposits into their account."
Not that I think either of those is likely to be their public explanation.
Probably Lance Armstrong can produce over 250W for much of a day. I on the other hand, break a sweat just thinking about it. A hardworking horse can keep up about 750W (definition of a horsepower). Imagine yourself and two buddies playing tug-of-war with a Clydesdale.
OK, how about capitol punishment - forced attendance at a paranomasiacs' convention in Washington, D.C. (or Rome, London, Oslo, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, whatever)?
Although this would run afoul of the 8th Amendment in the US.
It would definitely be unusual, and for many, cruel.
Of course a person can be charged with drunk driving if they haven't had anything to drink. Reasons for this might include, but will not be limited to:
1. Evil cops (not likely, IMO, but definitely possible).
2. Deluded cops (more likely, but still a stretch).
3. Overzealous cops, particularly if you're exhibiting something that looks like inebriated behavior but isn't; for example, several neurological conditions can cause you to have slurred speech or an unsteady gait but still be fine to drive.
4. Getting framed by an enemy.
5. Being acquainted with Ashton Kutcher.
In addition, as several posters have already pointed out, a person can be charged with drunk driving if they haven't actually driven and are not going to drive.
I'd be fine with capital punishment for people convicted of causing an accident while driving drunk, but I'm a little uneasy about draconian punishments for those who haven't actually caused damage yet, and I'm adamantly opposed to punishment of people without due process. To me, publishing names of arrestees is punishment without due process.
why cant you just string a data line right below the transmission lines?
Why bother? You already have the high tension line. Run the data on that. Physical security against most attackers is built in by the numerous volts sitting on the line already, and by the redundant network already in place. IT security should be no worse than you already have on the internet, and you should be exempt from attacks by casual hackers because they don't have easy access. Concerted attacks by dedicated evil-doers are another matter, because anyone can gain access. but the evil-doers are going to be a problem anywhere.
No, it doesn't contain a ton of NOx. The NOx in Diesel exhaust, high as it may be for vehicle exhaust, can be measured in the parts per million.
While that's undoubtedly true, it doesn't actually convey much useful information. After all, the silicon content of a wafer as delivered to a chip plant "can be measured in the parts per million," too.
(Hint: It's really, really close to 1,000,000 ppm.)
My guess is that NOx content of diesel exhaust is in the tens or hundreds of ppm and is therefore not comparable to the usable N content of fertilizer, but you didn't tell me that.
Somehow you're reminding me: what makes me want to ROFL convulsively is watching the morons yelling into their Bluetooths in places like an airport or a downtown sidewalk, while clearly expecting privacy. Don't believe it? Try holding a running tape recorder near their face and see how they respond. Be ready to run (or fight).
I haven't assumed privacy on a telephone since 1954, and never, ever on a cell phone. For me this means that things I want to keep secret aren't mentioned on the phone. If I have to talk about them, it's face to face or STFU. Of course, it'd be different if I were in a business that required secrets. But still...
Remeber, it's impossible to solve any problem you have without the law! Hire a lawyer! Did you find that spelling error annoying?
Well, I would have called it a typo, but now that you mention it...
Hire a lawyer! Legal action is the only way to solve problems! Actually hashing out issues with other human beings is for chumps!
Right on, brother!! I think "Zeke" owes Captain Sarcastic a broken kneecap and three broken knuckles on his preferred hand, but maybe I'm too old school.
As for you, I would consider your getting a hangnail or maybe a paper cut to be more than adequate compensation for my annoyance at your typo. ;-)
Of course, when you mod me to oblivion, that'll be overkill.
I don't think that word means what you think it means.
When dealing with physical books it's almost inconceivable that you mishandle the book and accidentally "turn the page".
My experience with physical books has been that if you take your hands off the book or drop it, it turns its own pages.
the ability to scribble free-form notes (typing is too cumbersome/inconvenient for such notes)
I would much rather type than scribble, if for no other reason than that I would like to be able later to read what I wrote.
...so what's the benefit in having a device that lets you store multiple books?
How about to take on an extended trip on which you would have time to read four or five or more books. Also, I'm inevitably reading more than one book at a time for entertainment purposes, so to me it's almost inconceivable to have only one book going at a time.
You can rip a page if you don't like it
Seriously? I - I - I - don't quite know what to say. How would you remember the precise details of what you didn't like? How would you stir up the embers of your indignation? How would you lend it to a friend after it's been modified that way?
I agree with the rest of your post, especially the part about the dead tree book being unable to fail you. Of particular importance to me is the concept that no one can modify it without your knowing about the modification.
What happens when the power goes out? Does the $20 dollar device have a battery?
Don't worry. The power never goes out in a fire.
TFA speaks of filtering the semiconducting fibers from the conducting ones as if this might be a big deal. I would have thought that magnetic separation would be the obvious solution. Am I missing something?
The physical behavior of a conductor moving with respect to a magnetic field is so dramatically different than that of a non-conductor that I have to believe that a semiconductor would behave differently also.
My favorite demo of this effect is to drop a strong magnet through a section of aluminum conduit. The magnet falls normally when released next to but outside the pipe, but a strong magnet can take up to five minutes to fall through the inside. A cow magnetin a half inch pipe is particularly effective.
Also according to the Wikipedia article, it made 85 horsepower. I didn't see how much it weighed, but unless it was under a ton it would underperform modern expectations when merging onto an interstate.
Yeah, but I don't see that wire being much bigger than 30 gauge (which is about 1cm thick; pretty darn thick). 190,000 meters (it was meters, not feet) of 30 gauge copper wire only weighs a little over 200 pounds. That's less than a passenger + luggage.
Um, AWG 30 is less than a millimeter, not a centimeter, and a lot of the wiring in an airplane would be bigger than 30 gauge.
On the OP's link they claim that 2% of the weight of a 747 is copper. Boeing says a fully loaded 747 is about 875,000 lbs . If this post is accurate, carbon nanotube conductors might weight as little as 1/7 of what copper conductors weigh. My calculator says that means a savings of 15,000 pounds.
That's a pretty porky passenger, but I might have sat next to him on an Oregon-Ohio trip.