As a matter of fact, yes I *do* trust the government to count the ballots in Florida. They counted them once, and Bush won. They counted them a second time, and Bush still won. Furthermore, this whole myth that Bush lost the popular vote is a bunch of hogwash, since many states simply stopped counting votes once a sufficient victory margin was reached (lead > votes remaining). The goal is to reach a majority vote on the state level so votes can be counted on the electorate level; national counts are irrelevant to winning.
What people forget is that there is a "margin of error" in every election, sort of like a general adder that accounts for the inherhant dishonesty of the vote carriers & counters, and flaws in the voting material itself. For punchcard paper ballots, this works out to about 2.6% error.
That's normally a very good margin, when your candidates win by 15-20% victories, everyone looks the other way at the errors, because they don't matter. In close elections, that's when all the "dirty laundry" comes out, because each candidate needs to scrap together all the votes he or she can.
Many people are calling for a conversion to electronic recording systems, not realizing that there is error in these systems also. I've heard figures anywhere from 2 to 2.4% error, due to vote records "mysteriously" not delivered to be counted in the official ottals, plus interface errors leading to miscast votes. Then there's the issues in voting on "closed" systems -- some states have found voting machines that aren't even programmed correctly. Not exactly the end all solution there.
Then we have the California election on hold because opponents are calling for the installation of electronic balloting systems because a study shows votes will be miscounted... when a few days later, it turns out that the financial backers of the study are the electronic voting manufacturers... jeez, no impropriety here!
"What we should be concerned about is desertification due to the lack of veg(e)tation"
Yet, science is uncovering that the opposite is happening, as an increase in CO2 levels may help forests to start reclaiming the world's deserts, as forests are encroaching on the Negev desert. Higher CO2 concentrations reduces water absorption of trees, leaving more available for the surrounding regions, which resulted in more vegetation.
NASA & DOE found the same thing, as did the National Academy of Sciences when they found that grasslands become wetter as temperatures rise. Hotter temperatures kills off certain species of grasses that are poor water storers, leaving more room for more efficient species like oaks and summer flowers, with a net increase in water retention.
The more we do true research into global warming, the more we find that our models are wrong, our assumtions are wrong, and our predjudices are wrong.
Back when I was in junior high school, I ran across this book of short science fiction stories...
One of them was about a pair of scientists who was researching time to invent a chronoscope -- the device would look backwards in time and space. One of them had a noble dream, to look back in time to study the ancient greeks and egyptians, so that mankind could learn our lost histories. The second scientist had a child who died in a fire, and he only wanted to look back 15 years, to see him alive again.
They are contacted by the Catholic Church, and asked to cease their research, because they were afraid that they would look back in time and see who Jesus really was, and if he really wasn't what was recorded as gospel. The government wants a piece of the action too, because the device is the ultimate spying device. Why look dozens of years ago, when you look 1 second ago and reveal the plans of every enemy nation.
At the very end of the story, they suceed, and the invention shows them the past, that the government is planning to seize their research. The first scientist realizes that no one nation could be trusted with the ultimate spying device, so he releases the schematics to dozens of media outlets. The second scientist looks back and realizes that it was his cigarette that caused the fire that kills his child, and is wracked with guilt, and knows his wife will soon see the same. Only now do they both realize the error in knowing the absolute truth of the past, but it is too late to recall the plans, and they have spawned a new world without privacy...
Okay... we've uncovered yet another truth in nature... organisms are designed to withstand famine.
Although the human intellect has improved over the millenia, the genetic script for our bodies has been nearly unchanged since the last ice ages. We only see organisms today that can resist famine because evolution has weeded out those strains that couldn't survive. If the creature can't find food or water, it's in the best interest to "pause" some life functions so you can survive until nourishment can be found.
Our bodies are evolved to be fat-storage machines; we have to, because nature can never guarantee the next meal. Our noses, though not as good as some other creatures, are still very receptive to spoiled food. Salt tastes good because our body needs it for cellular processes. Sugar tastes good because it's high energy "food" rare in nature.
But we've broken the cycle. Our insulin proceses the sugars, but never before has so much sugar been available, so now we see diabetes where our insulin receptors are over-exposed and develop a tolerance. We still have fight-or-flight mechanisms, but most of us live such a mundane existance, we release stress chemicals over the slightest event. Then we try these starvation diets, and our bodies don't burn the fat, because it thinks there's real hard times ahead, not realizing we have more food than we can eat.
It's a battle of intellect over evolved chemistry... but slowly we understand what is really going on behind the scenes, and with knowledge comes the power to correct it.
What the? I would argue that it is the "right" in america that is "getting its shit together". They're watching from the sidelines as the democratic party self-destructs because of its inability to manage its members' interests. Is this a "party of the people" who gets more money from the rich than the "party of the rich"? Is this the party of "environmentalists" or the party of "labor", who seem to be functional opposites when it comes to industry? Or is this the party that plays off of its "historical equalities", when history shows that it was the opposite party that enacted the racial reforms? For a party "getting together", how many presidential candidates are there?
You obviously aren't a student of politics, given your comment about Bush's election. I find it suspect that it was the state judicial system of florida, one populated by members aligned with the Democratic party, who decided to overrule well-established state law in order to give a politician (affiliated with their party) a second chance to win an election that was already lost, and found to be lost again even under the "new rules". The very off-hand remark of "indoctrination" indicates your personal prejudices and misconceptions, and your ignorance of the core situtaions behind many events shaping our nation. If so, it's a sad commentary on your generation, but I suppose that when people give up their personal interests (and live under government programs & media slants), they give up their individualism and drive to learn what is going on for themselves.
The United States is not the source of the world's problems! I'm getting really sick and tired of "editorial journalists" who are so eager to dump on the USA that they don't bother to focus on the areas of the world where there are REAL problems:
"The report notes numerous instances where Internet users have been jailed by authorities for posting or hosting political material. Such countries include Egypt, China and a number of Middle Eastern countries where the Internet is tightly controlled and heavily monitored."
Now, it's time for the world to make a serious decision. If we're going to keep putting our chips in with the United Nations, maybe it's time for the United Nations to step in and start acting against these fascist governments, and demand some real reforms. That's what the UN is for, for governments to get together, come up with some common laws, and rule when some nations are in contempt of those laws. And we find the same nations are violating their citizens rights over and over, and the UN does nothing. Then we have nations crying "Why won't the USA step in?" See Monrovia, Liberia... But the US doesn't want to be "the policeman of the world", yet we seem to be drug into that role over and over.
Last time I checked, noone in the united states is prevented from legally acquiring any information they desire... you can get government records, money trails, electronic information, anything. We cry that there "might" be some infringement, yet we can't seem to find any evidence of some widespread conspiracy that the government is tracking our interests. But that doesn't stop our own media from trying to tear it down. It just saddens me that the Slashdot staff can't seem to separate their personal beliefs from "news".
And the Middle Class gets richer too!!
on
Tech Rich Get Richer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Shit, from January 1st to today, my measly stock portfolio of 8 companies is up 11%, and my 401k is up 19%... compared to the absolute rock bottom it was last year!!
Everyone's money is growing, its just that the CEOs have a LOT more money invested than I do. That's what makes the USA's model the best in the world, we have the most opportunities to better ourselves. Nothing is stopping me from investing my money any differently than the rich can, and with hard work, I'll have the money to live the lifestyle I want.
Besides, have you looked at the tax laws lately? A man and wife, combined income of $100k, which is two standard engineer salaries of 50k. Guess what, you're "rich". Not exactly "fair" is it, but hey, lets keep calling to tax the rich, and someday we'll realize we're taxing ourselves.
In a deregulated system, we build new power plants because they are more cost effective than old plants, not because we are short of capacity. You can then retire the old beast and produce same electricity for less cash = more profit. Most of the east coast USA is overcapacity anyways... it's transmission that's the problem. Go on the web and search for "new generation queue" and you'll see people are eager to build in deregulated markets.
Environmental safeguards at power plants are not trivial in cost (thanks EPA), so believe it or not, power companies are actually pro-enviroment when it comes to new generation... less toxins = less filters etc required = less cost = more profit. That's why you're seeing a big push in natural gas fuels, heat-capturing combined cycle plants, and a relative increase in non-traditional generation like windfarms and flywheels.
So, does this new plant reduce emissions? No, gasses are not sucked out of the atmosphere, what it should have said is that this type of generator produces fewer emissions than those produced by an equivalent sized fossil plant. Replacing the old with the new will be a net rate reduction.
Like Revolution, Evil Genius is not multiplayer. Too bad, it seems to have an interesting premise (like Dungeon Keeper), but I like having a human to compete against.
Sometimes progress is realizing you went down the wrong path, redesigning, and going down a new path.
Why does the Shuttle have windows up front? They are there because some air force committee decided that the "pilots" might need to land the "plane". They are structural weak points, and the shuttle has never made a landing in 100% manual mode. In the 30 years since, we've done a very good job of perfecting fly-by-wire and automated control... so in theory, you'd never need an on-board pilot. You could have crews of "common" citizens: scientists, engineers, etc. and more productive work could be done than what is going on now.
It's not a matter of stagnating by staying on earth... it's a matter of a more intelligent distribution of funds. There are plenty of chemical & phyisics discoveries that can be made on earth for a lot less money, and it's going to take years before we build the proper science laboratories in space to catch up to the common facilities available down here. It's going to be a lot of years of investment without return; that's ok for government, but taboo for private industry.
In both presidencies, you will find that the people that actually determine the budget were of opposite party than the president. The House of Republicans during Clinton went Republican, and they refused to pass many spending increases. When Bush was elected, the Democratic Senate is doing everything they can to increase spending (see Edward Kennedy's school bills). In both cases, the presidents needed to compromise in order to obtain their other goals.
Since you seem to enjoy demogoguing Bush, allow me the honor of doing the same to Clinton. Here we have a guy that approved reductions in military and science budgets, his appointees stifled government oversight of the markets (which is what governments are for, keeping things legal) leading to a bust larger than any in recent history (and yeah, the crap hit the fan in 2000, before Bush was in office). And guess what, there never was a surplus, the entire thing was projections based on growth that turned out to be fabrications (as we learned in 2001). That administration's policies drove a thriving economy into the ground, and its embarassing how many people defend it.
There should be a Slashdot "law"... the number of times you Preview your message is directly proportional to the number of errors you make in your post...
No. The Voltage component of Power is important when managing the health of the bulk power grid. For those that don't remember, Power is Volts Amps, and because current is directional, power is directional also. This is why people often use "power flow"...
The impedence in line in a function of the amount of energy flowing through it; as current increases, capacitive losses increase, causing the voltages at the ends to drop. This is sometimes called surge impedence loading. Impedence across a power line is constantly changing, and it is easier to wrap both variables into Power.
Next, the use of transformers makes amps by themselves meaningless. Power is near constant across a transformer, so High Amps Low Voltage can become Low Amps High Voltage. By talking about everything in the form of Power, then you can easily measure the transfer of energy between the various voltage levels of your system, which eases explaining the system.
Finally, Power is an easily understood market concept. If I run a generator at a low voltage (13kV), and produce 10 Amps, I'm generating 130 kW. I pipe that through a large number of transformers & lines, and deliver it to a load running at 23kV, and maybe tomorrow I sell it to someone at 9kV. By keeping everyone running in Power notation, we can all agree that money is exchanged for work, and the proper energy is delivered and paid for.
If MSBlaster got into the SCADA network, then more than just First Energy would have been hit by high network traffic... yet only First Energy reports network issues. Besides, "habitually" you use a Unix mainframe to communicate on the SCADA network, and and Win* machine to pull the data from the mainframe into a form you can view it.
I find it entirely more plausable that they were having network issues on their local networks that communicated with their mainframe, not the mainframe communicating with SCADA. (Occam's Razor) Due to the large number of alarms going on, I find it even more plausable that the human operators were simply overwhelmed by the amount of new data coming in.
It's not that bizarre if you think about it... the bulk power frequency is actually one big juggling act between all of the generators that are synchronized on the system...
The Eastern Interconnection (everything in North America east of the Rockies and north of Texas) is tied together at many stations, such that there are many parallel paths to deliver energy to a customer load, providing an excellent level of stability. Simply put, the frequency is the prime measure of the balance between energy production and consumption. Energy generation is not a smooth process, it spikes as fuel is delivered and burned. If enough generators are synchronized with one another, they can automatically cover for each other's dips, and thus the frequency stays balanced.
Now, when the system split, imagine you had all of the generation on the west side, and all the load on the east side. For those of us in PA, we saw a huge loss of load, and the frequency shoots up. For those on the wrong side of the blackout, you suddenly lost your generation source, and your frequency drops.
Transmission equipment is easily damaged at low frequencies, so many are equipped with underfrequency relays that open breakers to protect themselves. What happened is that lines tripped and load sheds, forming smaller and smaller zones, until there were only small pockets of load and generators remaining (see the notes on western NY). Without the rest of the interconnection to syncronize with, your local generator was trying to maintain the frequency by itself as best it could, and was probably all over the map due to uneven fuel burn. Then, a few minutes later, you might have auto-reclosing of breakers (try-backs). If a line trips, some are programmed to auto-reclose, which, in an event like this, can suddenly add thousands of MW of load to an already stressed system, pulling the frequency down even more until everything is black.
You go on believing that, until the first asteroid mining company latches on to a 50 cubic mile chunk of elemental iron, rust-free due to lack of atmosphere. That, or half a dozen other minerals that would be extremely valuable to find in bulk, left over from the formation of the solar system. Its just a matter of startup costs.
My dad's Dell PC arrived on August 11th... by late afternoon I assembled it and had him hooked up to a new ISP. And one day later (if you recall) the PC was hit by the Blaster worm.
My dad was not happy... The thing was fresh out of the box, and here I was explaining to him that the patches had been available at microsoft.com since mid-July, and Dell was shipping unpatched software.
Its a problem of electronics. If I run a power plant, chances are I have digital displays, fuel conveyors, sensors, etc all electrically powered. If the plants running, you can use that energy to power yourself. If not, normal operating assumptions are that you have an outside power source supplying plant load at least long enough for your generator to start. In the case of a total blackout, you don't have that luxury.
Now, we can't help that your town can't start a diesel generator in less than two hours. A properly maintained diesel unit should be up running at full output (say 8 MW) at 60 Hz in 30 seconds. Using that energy, we can supply electricity to a larger plant so they can run their controls, and get them going. Your average combustion turbine can start in 5 minutes, and can provide say 50 MW of power. You now have enough energy for 45,000+ people. A small fossil fuel plant can cold start in a couple hours, generates 600 MW, enough for say 550,000 people.
My suggestion: a TRIM worksheet function that matches the functionality of the VB Trim function. The worksheet version removes all duplicate whitespace (internal & edges), whereas the VB version only removes whitespace from the left and right edges of the text.
Next, extend the MATCH function to actually be useful. In MS Apps, Date/Time is internally stored as a floating point value. When you are importing data from other applications, precision errors can change your 00:00:10 to 00:00:09.99999999 (which is displayed as:10, you never know the difference)... and MATCH fails, because it's doing exact (byte-for-byte) matches.
There are these inventions called breakers that can be opened to isolate a circuit. Amazing!
Its not like you only have these things in your house... Breaker trips are the main reason that NJ & PA & everything South were saved on 8/14 after NY became a voltage vacuum. You normally have a set for each phase at each end of a transmission line, at both ends of a transformer, and throw in a couple more on each bus at a substation. If you need to do work, you flip the breakers, repair your small part, and energize.
I had heard the same thing watching Discovery channel one night... a quick Google query brings me this study on the perception of time, where researchers were measuring brain patterns as the subject tries to perceive a delay between two sounds. The thing on Discovery were measuring a subject who was supposed to push a button while watching a clock, and to push it at exactly the top of the minute. What they found was that the brain begins firing the neurons to the arm a few seconds before, an "anticipation" burst, followed by the observation by the eyes of the clock. Then you have the nerves firing from the arm telling the spine that the arm is moving and the button is pressed.
The brain organizes all of the input (clock + feedback from muscles) so the brain perceives that all of the actions happened at the same time, but in reality, the arm is actually moving earlier than the top of the minute, but it takes the brain some time to realize that the arm has moved.
Slashdot Mirror
As a matter of fact, yes I *do* trust the government to count the ballots in Florida. They counted them once, and Bush won. They counted them a second time, and Bush still won. Furthermore, this whole myth that Bush lost the popular vote is a bunch of hogwash, since many states simply stopped counting votes once a sufficient victory margin was reached (lead > votes remaining). The goal is to reach a majority vote on the state level so votes can be counted on the electorate level; national counts are irrelevant to winning.
What people forget is that there is a "margin of error" in every election, sort of like a general adder that accounts for the inherhant dishonesty of the vote carriers & counters, and flaws in the voting material itself. For punchcard paper ballots, this works out to about 2.6% error.
That's normally a very good margin, when your candidates win by 15-20% victories, everyone looks the other way at the errors, because they don't matter. In close elections, that's when all the "dirty laundry" comes out, because each candidate needs to scrap together all the votes he or she can.
Many people are calling for a conversion to electronic recording systems, not realizing that there is error in these systems also. I've heard figures anywhere from 2 to 2.4% error, due to vote records "mysteriously" not delivered to be counted in the official ottals, plus interface errors leading to miscast votes. Then there's the issues in voting on "closed" systems -- some states have found voting machines that aren't even programmed correctly. Not exactly the end all solution there.
Then we have the California election on hold because opponents are calling for the installation of electronic balloting systems because a study shows votes will be miscounted... when a few days later, it turns out that the financial backers of the study are the electronic voting manufacturers... jeez, no impropriety here!
"What we should be concerned about is desertification due to the lack of veg(e)tation"
Yet, science is uncovering that the opposite is happening, as an increase in CO2 levels may help forests to start reclaiming the world's deserts, as forests are encroaching on the Negev desert. Higher CO2 concentrations reduces water absorption of trees, leaving more available for the surrounding regions, which resulted in more vegetation.
NASA & DOE found the same thing, as did the National Academy of Sciences when they found that grasslands become wetter as temperatures rise. Hotter temperatures kills off certain species of grasses that are poor water storers, leaving more room for more efficient species like oaks and summer flowers, with a net increase in water retention.
The more we do true research into global warming, the more we find that our models are wrong, our assumtions are wrong, and our predjudices are wrong.
Back when I was in junior high school, I ran across this book of short science fiction stories...
One of them was about a pair of scientists who was researching time to invent a chronoscope -- the device would look backwards in time and space. One of them had a noble dream, to look back in time to study the ancient greeks and egyptians, so that mankind could learn our lost histories. The second scientist had a child who died in a fire, and he only wanted to look back 15 years, to see him alive again.
They are contacted by the Catholic Church, and asked to cease their research, because they were afraid that they would look back in time and see who Jesus really was, and if he really wasn't what was recorded as gospel. The government wants a piece of the action too, because the device is the ultimate spying device. Why look dozens of years ago, when you look 1 second ago and reveal the plans of every enemy nation.
At the very end of the story, they suceed, and the invention shows them the past, that the government is planning to seize their research. The first scientist realizes that no one nation could be trusted with the ultimate spying device, so he releases the schematics to dozens of media outlets. The second scientist looks back and realizes that it was his cigarette that caused the fire that kills his child, and is wracked with guilt, and knows his wife will soon see the same. Only now do they both realize the error in knowing the absolute truth of the past, but it is too late to recall the plans, and they have spawned a new world without privacy...
Maybe it is time to replace it...
Okay... we've uncovered yet another truth in nature... organisms are designed to withstand famine.
Although the human intellect has improved over the millenia, the genetic script for our bodies has been nearly unchanged since the last ice ages. We only see organisms today that can resist famine because evolution has weeded out those strains that couldn't survive. If the creature can't find food or water, it's in the best interest to "pause" some life functions so you can survive until nourishment can be found.
Our bodies are evolved to be fat-storage machines; we have to, because nature can never guarantee the next meal. Our noses, though not as good as some other creatures, are still very receptive to spoiled food. Salt tastes good because our body needs it for cellular processes. Sugar tastes good because it's high energy "food" rare in nature.
But we've broken the cycle. Our insulin proceses the sugars, but never before has so much sugar been available, so now we see diabetes where our insulin receptors are over-exposed and develop a tolerance. We still have fight-or-flight mechanisms, but most of us live such a mundane existance, we release stress chemicals over the slightest event. Then we try these starvation diets, and our bodies don't burn the fat, because it thinks there's real hard times ahead, not realizing we have more food than we can eat.
It's a battle of intellect over evolved chemistry... but slowly we understand what is really going on behind the scenes, and with knowledge comes the power to correct it.
So has the government...
What the? I would argue that it is the "right" in america that is "getting its shit together". They're watching from the sidelines as the democratic party self-destructs because of its inability to manage its members' interests. Is this a "party of the people" who gets more money from the rich than the "party of the rich"? Is this the party of "environmentalists" or the party of "labor", who seem to be functional opposites when it comes to industry? Or is this the party that plays off of its "historical equalities", when history shows that it was the opposite party that enacted the racial reforms? For a party "getting together", how many presidential candidates are there?
You obviously aren't a student of politics, given your comment about Bush's election. I find it suspect that it was the state judicial system of florida, one populated by members aligned with the Democratic party, who decided to overrule well-established state law in order to give a politician (affiliated with their party) a second chance to win an election that was already lost, and found to be lost again even under the "new rules". The very off-hand remark of "indoctrination" indicates your personal prejudices and misconceptions, and your ignorance of the core situtaions behind many events shaping our nation. If so, it's a sad commentary on your generation, but I suppose that when people give up their personal interests (and live under government programs & media slants), they give up their individualism and drive to learn what is going on for themselves.
The United States is not the source of the world's problems! I'm getting really sick and tired of "editorial journalists" who are so eager to dump on the USA that they don't bother to focus on the areas of the world where there are REAL problems:
"The report notes numerous instances where Internet users have been jailed by authorities for posting or hosting political material. Such countries include Egypt, China and a number of Middle Eastern countries where the Internet is tightly controlled and heavily monitored."
Now, it's time for the world to make a serious decision. If we're going to keep putting our chips in with the United Nations, maybe it's time for the United Nations to step in and start acting against these fascist governments, and demand some real reforms. That's what the UN is for, for governments to get together, come up with some common laws, and rule when some nations are in contempt of those laws. And we find the same nations are violating their citizens rights over and over, and the UN does nothing. Then we have nations crying "Why won't the USA step in?" See Monrovia, Liberia... But the US doesn't want to be "the policeman of the world", yet we seem to be drug into that role over and over.
Last time I checked, noone in the united states is prevented from legally acquiring any information they desire... you can get government records, money trails, electronic information, anything. We cry that there "might" be some infringement, yet we can't seem to find any evidence of some widespread conspiracy that the government is tracking our interests. But that doesn't stop our own media from trying to tear it down. It just saddens me that the Slashdot staff can't seem to separate their personal beliefs from "news".
Shit, from January 1st to today, my measly stock portfolio of 8 companies is up 11%, and my 401k is up 19%... compared to the absolute rock bottom it was last year!!
Everyone's money is growing, its just that the CEOs have a LOT more money invested than I do. That's what makes the USA's model the best in the world, we have the most opportunities to better ourselves. Nothing is stopping me from investing my money any differently than the rich can, and with hard work, I'll have the money to live the lifestyle I want.
Besides, have you looked at the tax laws lately? A man and wife, combined income of $100k, which is two standard engineer salaries of 50k. Guess what, you're "rich". Not exactly "fair" is it, but hey, lets keep calling to tax the rich, and someday we'll realize we're taxing ourselves.
In a deregulated system, we build new power plants because they are more cost effective than old plants, not because we are short of capacity. You can then retire the old beast and produce same electricity for less cash = more profit. Most of the east coast USA is overcapacity anyways... it's transmission that's the problem. Go on the web and search for "new generation queue" and you'll see people are eager to build in deregulated markets.
Environmental safeguards at power plants are not trivial in cost (thanks EPA), so believe it or not, power companies are actually pro-enviroment when it comes to new generation... less toxins = less filters etc required = less cost = more profit. That's why you're seeing a big push in natural gas fuels, heat-capturing combined cycle plants, and a relative increase in non-traditional generation like windfarms and flywheels.
So, does this new plant reduce emissions? No, gasses are not sucked out of the atmosphere, what it should have said is that this type of generator produces fewer emissions than those produced by an equivalent sized fossil plant. Replacing the old with the new will be a net rate reduction.
Like Revolution, Evil Genius is not multiplayer. Too bad, it seems to have an interesting premise (like Dungeon Keeper), but I like having a human to compete against.
Sometimes progress is realizing you went down the wrong path, redesigning, and going down a new path.
Why does the Shuttle have windows up front? They are there because some air force committee decided that the "pilots" might need to land the "plane". They are structural weak points, and the shuttle has never made a landing in 100% manual mode. In the 30 years since, we've done a very good job of perfecting fly-by-wire and automated control... so in theory, you'd never need an on-board pilot. You could have crews of "common" citizens: scientists, engineers, etc. and more productive work could be done than what is going on now.
It's not a matter of stagnating by staying on earth... it's a matter of a more intelligent distribution of funds. There are plenty of chemical & phyisics discoveries that can be made on earth for a lot less money, and it's going to take years before we build the proper science laboratories in space to catch up to the common facilities available down here. It's going to be a lot of years of investment without return; that's ok for government, but taboo for private industry.
In both presidencies, you will find that the people that actually determine the budget were of opposite party than the president. The House of Republicans during Clinton went Republican, and they refused to pass many spending increases. When Bush was elected, the Democratic Senate is doing everything they can to increase spending (see Edward Kennedy's school bills). In both cases, the presidents needed to compromise in order to obtain their other goals.
Since you seem to enjoy demogoguing Bush, allow me the honor of doing the same to Clinton. Here we have a guy that approved reductions in military and science budgets, his appointees stifled government oversight of the markets (which is what governments are for, keeping things legal) leading to a bust larger than any in recent history (and yeah, the crap hit the fan in 2000, before Bush was in office). And guess what, there never was a surplus, the entire thing was projections based on growth that turned out to be fabrications (as we learned in 2001). That administration's policies drove a thriving economy into the ground, and its embarassing how many people defend it.
There should be a Slashdot "law"... the number of times you Preview your message is directly proportional to the number of errors you make in your post...
..."
"The impedence in a line is a
Souvenier Melting Clocks...
No. The Voltage component of Power is important when managing the health of the bulk power grid. For those that don't remember, Power is Volts Amps, and because current is directional, power is directional also. This is why people often use "power flow"...
The impedence in line in a function of the amount of energy flowing through it; as current increases, capacitive losses increase, causing the voltages at the ends to drop. This is sometimes called surge impedence loading. Impedence across a power line is constantly changing, and it is easier to wrap both variables into Power.
Next, the use of transformers makes amps by themselves meaningless. Power is near constant across a transformer, so High Amps Low Voltage can become Low Amps High Voltage. By talking about everything in the form of Power, then you can easily measure the transfer of energy between the various voltage levels of your system, which eases explaining the system.
Finally, Power is an easily understood market concept. If I run a generator at a low voltage (13kV), and produce 10 Amps, I'm generating 130 kW. I pipe that through a large number of transformers & lines, and deliver it to a load running at 23kV, and maybe tomorrow I sell it to someone at 9kV. By keeping everyone running in Power notation, we can all agree that money is exchanged for work, and the proper energy is delivered and paid for.
If MSBlaster got into the SCADA network, then more than just First Energy would have been hit by high network traffic... yet only First Energy reports network issues. Besides, "habitually" you use a Unix mainframe to communicate on the SCADA network, and and Win* machine to pull the data from the mainframe into a form you can view it.
I find it entirely more plausable that they were having network issues on their local networks that communicated with their mainframe, not the mainframe communicating with SCADA. (Occam's Razor) Due to the large number of alarms going on, I find it even more plausable that the human operators were simply overwhelmed by the amount of new data coming in.
It's not that bizarre if you think about it... the bulk power frequency is actually one big juggling act between all of the generators that are synchronized on the system...
The Eastern Interconnection (everything in North America east of the Rockies and north of Texas) is tied together at many stations, such that there are many parallel paths to deliver energy to a customer load, providing an excellent level of stability. Simply put, the frequency is the prime measure of the balance between energy production and consumption. Energy generation is not a smooth process, it spikes as fuel is delivered and burned. If enough generators are synchronized with one another, they can automatically cover for each other's dips, and thus the frequency stays balanced.
Now, when the system split, imagine you had all of the generation on the west side, and all the load on the east side. For those of us in PA, we saw a huge loss of load, and the frequency shoots up. For those on the wrong side of the blackout, you suddenly lost your generation source, and your frequency drops.
Transmission equipment is easily damaged at low frequencies, so many are equipped with underfrequency relays that open breakers to protect themselves. What happened is that lines tripped and load sheds, forming smaller and smaller zones, until there were only small pockets of load and generators remaining (see the notes on western NY). Without the rest of the interconnection to syncronize with, your local generator was trying to maintain the frequency by itself as best it could, and was probably all over the map due to uneven fuel burn. Then, a few minutes later, you might have auto-reclosing of breakers (try-backs). If a line trips, some are programmed to auto-reclose, which, in an event like this, can suddenly add thousands of MW of load to an already stressed system, pulling the frequency down even more until everything is black.
You go on believing that, until the first asteroid mining company latches on to a 50 cubic mile chunk of elemental iron, rust-free due to lack of atmosphere. That, or half a dozen other minerals that would be extremely valuable to find in bulk, left over from the formation of the solar system. Its just a matter of startup costs.
"The good part is that, because of a glitch, the membership list of this charming organization was left exposed on the website."
What, so they know what email accounts not to spam?
My dad's Dell PC arrived on August 11th... by late afternoon I assembled it and had him hooked up to a new ISP. And one day later (if you recall) the PC was hit by the Blaster worm.
My dad was not happy... The thing was fresh out of the box, and here I was explaining to him that the patches had been available at microsoft.com since mid-July, and Dell was shipping unpatched software.
Its a problem of electronics. If I run a power plant, chances are I have digital displays, fuel conveyors, sensors, etc all electrically powered. If the plants running, you can use that energy to power yourself. If not, normal operating assumptions are that you have an outside power source supplying plant load at least long enough for your generator to start. In the case of a total blackout, you don't have that luxury.
Now, we can't help that your town can't start a diesel generator in less than two hours. A properly maintained diesel unit should be up running at full output (say 8 MW) at 60 Hz in 30 seconds. Using that energy, we can supply electricity to a larger plant so they can run their controls, and get them going. Your average combustion turbine can start in 5 minutes, and can provide say 50 MW of power. You now have enough energy for 45,000+ people. A small fossil fuel plant can cold start in a couple hours, generates 600 MW, enough for say 550,000 people.
My suggestion: a TRIM worksheet function that matches the functionality of the VB Trim function. The worksheet version removes all duplicate whitespace (internal & edges), whereas the VB version only removes whitespace from the left and right edges of the text.
:10, you never know the difference)... and MATCH fails, because it's doing exact (byte-for-byte) matches.
Next, extend the MATCH function to actually be useful. In MS Apps, Date/Time is internally stored as a floating point value. When you are importing data from other applications, precision errors can change your 00:00:10 to 00:00:09.99999999 (which is displayed as
Embrace and Extend!
There are these inventions called breakers that can be opened to isolate a circuit. Amazing!
Its not like you only have these things in your house... Breaker trips are the main reason that NJ & PA & everything South were saved on 8/14 after NY became a voltage vacuum. You normally have a set for each phase at each end of a transmission line, at both ends of a transformer, and throw in a couple more on each bus at a substation. If you need to do work, you flip the breakers, repair your small part, and energize.
I had heard the same thing watching Discovery channel one night... a quick Google query brings me this study on the perception of time, where researchers were measuring brain patterns as the subject tries to perceive a delay between two sounds. The thing on Discovery were measuring a subject who was supposed to push a button while watching a clock, and to push it at exactly the top of the minute. What they found was that the brain begins firing the neurons to the arm a few seconds before, an "anticipation" burst, followed by the observation by the eyes of the clock. Then you have the nerves firing from the arm telling the spine that the arm is moving and the button is pressed.
The brain organizes all of the input (clock + feedback from muscles) so the brain perceives that all of the actions happened at the same time, but in reality, the arm is actually moving earlier than the top of the minute, but it takes the brain some time to realize that the arm has moved.