For those of you too lazy to read the Feynman appendix, the key message Feynman added to the Challenger report was that the Challenger accident wasn't so much a result of the wrong kind of o-ring rubber as much as a result of NASA management's inability to hear the truth from its engineers and suppliers.
When an organization fosters dishonesty, as Feynman documented, you can pour trillions in and not get results.
Alien Technology, the people who make these things, anticipated that attack. The RFID tags disconnect their attenna when they sense a power surge. When the power dies down, the tag re-connects and it's working again.
This Stanford seminar gave a good overview of the underlying technology.
I've used 8 different printers over the past 4 years. I've printed about 1/2 million sheets over the past two years.
When I buy a new printer, I check the total cost and so far, HP has come out ahead. The Lexmarks always get dropped from consideration when it comes to the toner cart costs - they're typically twice as high as HP's carts.
The funny thing is I used to buy remanufactured HP cartridges but gave them up as a lost cause. Two out of three would be fine but the third one would give me enough problems to make them not worth the extra labor costs. So I buy new HP carts simply because they're trouble free and HP hasn't had to resort to any strong arm measures to get me to do it.
The fact that Lexmark feels it's necessary to force their customers to buy toner from Lexmark says that Lexmark isn't offering a value proposition. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to resort to this nonsense.
...which are worthless after a few years how about a the certification agency just maintains a user-searchable comments database. You take your car/washer/computer into the shop and get it serviced. Two weeks after you've fetched it back, you get an email from the agency asking you if the shop did what they were supposed to. The agency's operating expense is covered by the "certification" fees.
Sort of a mix between the BBB and resellerratings.com. Resellerratings.com is excellent for the market it serves.
Your story illustrates that your daughter has quite an imagination, not that she has an excellent memory (though she may have that too.)
Had she reminded you of some incident or another that you had forgotten then that would better demonstrate your point. For example, if she described that jumper your wife just loved dressing her in when she was 3 months old.
If you decide to quiz her on said jumper or some such, be on guard against Clever Hans syndrome.
The images you reference sure look an awful like this one taken by the Hubble. You too can flip one of them 180 degrees and put your name on it if you like.
That's quite true - when I saw the size of the thing I flashed on the Spruce Goose as well. It would be truly ironic if the Pelican suffered the same fate as the Spruce Goose.
Boeing has this picture. The plane gets its fuel economy from exploiting the ground effect. When a wing gets within about a wingspan's distance of the ground, the wing tip vortices break up. As the vortices are a significant source of drag, the result is the wing becomes considerably more efficient near the ground.
The article mentions flying at 20 feet above the ocean to exploit the effect which makes me wonder how they'll handle the odd rogue wave.
Maybe I'm missing something here but if TIPS is a bad thing (and I agree it is) then why is it ok to use a simulation against Poindexter? Is it a question of degree? It's ok if individuals do it but not governments? How is it ok to do to Poindexter what he's proposing to do to us?
The wrong is in the doing, not in the whom it is done to.
You cited yet another web site that used the quote without saying where the quote came from.
When Barlow first sent the quote out, I googled and altavista'd the quote and came up empty-handed. I really wanted to use it as a sig. Now the quote is everywhere and yet nowhere. The best citation I've found is in a paper on variablity analysis. The author found attributions to Bohr via Barlow, Yogi Berra and Mark Twain. The author cites some suspect reference counts. I say suspect because when I attempted googling Mark Twain sans Bohr, I came up with much smaller counts. In fact, I even found a site that attributes the quote to a Chinese proverb.
What's even more interesting is that the quote morphs not only in who said it but what they said. For example, searching for "prediction is difficult" and "prediction is very difficult" pops different result sets.
Even odder thing about the quote is its impact varies with attribution. Tack on Niels Bohr as the source and it acquires an appeal accorded to quantum mechanics and those who suss it. Change the source to Yogi Berra and the quote feels very much as something he would have said. A sort of "man in the street" feel. Put Mark Twain on the quote and it's classic American humor. Make it a Chinese proverb and it feels ancient.
It's a great quote but I do wonder who said it first.
"Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." ~Niels Bohr
Unfortunately, I can't vouchsafe the quote. John Perry Barlow circulated it a few years back and when I asked him where he found it, he couldn't remember. So perhaps if Bohr didn't say it, he should have.
Yeah they pissed you and me off so we won't buy the product but that just says the ad didn't work on you or me. It doesn't say the ads don't work.
Don't believe the ad worked? Before those ads came out, the sponsor was but a dim memory. Notice that you and I both know what camera ad you're talking about. That is exactly what a marketing department's job is - to get the company noticed.
Just because neither you nor I would care to be marketeers doesn't mean you need to diss them - they do serve a real function.
I developed a burning pain in my wrists because I wasn't holding my wrists perfectly flat while I typed and I was typing quite a bit more than coding normally requires. I had heard Dvorak made a difference and the pain was a sufficient enough prod that I took the plunge and switched. Didn't help. At first it did, but that was because I was barely typing.
Once my speed had picked up to the point where I could actually get something done, my old habit of letting my wrist bend came back to haunt me. If the gloves look nerdy, imagine a man with sharp pencils strapped to the top of his arms with velcro for an even nerdier image. The pencil points would poke me every time my wrists bent which would remind me to straighten my wrists. That was what this geek needed to get rid of the problem. I've since discarded the pencils and instead, stacked two keyboard wrist rests on top of each other so I don't have to think about wrist posture - it comes automatically. YMMV.
For what it's worth, I never did regain my qwerty speed. I type at 70 wpm now but back in the days when cpu speed was measured in khz I'd hit bursts of 95 wpm. The other down side is it annoys the hell out of people I work with because nobody ever knows what the current state of the keyboard is until they start typing and discover they're typing gibberish.
It's not clear that the ISS is one of those steps.
For some reason, our society has become so risk adverse that we'd be hard pressed to settle the West if that's what was called for. A lunar colony won't be tackled not because a useless space station isn't cutting it but because nobody is willing to risk a life any more.
The flame is invisible so if the tank is on fire, it may not be obvious. When they were setting up for the first Hydrogen bomb test, they had to vent some hydrogen for some reason or another. They lit the escaping gas and all they could sense was the noise from the flame - they couldn't see it. Unfortunately, neither could the few seagulls who flew directly over the flame and fell dead at the physcist's feet. I hear roasted seagull isn't very tasty.
How does Mozilla help? If the site depends on active x scripts to run on my machine and I'm not allowing them to run for security purposes, it doesn't much matter what browser I use - the script isn't going to work.
My point is that too many sites require scripting without realizing that that choice means cutting off those of us who don't want to get bitten by malicious scripts, or gee, maybe even use Mozilla.
I wanted to buy the rocket car for one of my students but I can't see the site. It's not slashdotted, it's just not visible to Internet Explorer if the security settings are high.
The steady stream of security patches to IE have prompted me to disable scripting. That means there are way too many websites such as the rocket car which just don't render in my browser.
Unfortunately, as more sites demand scripting because the designer doesn't know how to design sans scripting, more sites become invisible due to more people realizing that Microsoft's implementation of scripting is fundamentally flawed.
...came out, either Pixar or Industrial Light and Magic (don't remember which), was working on a data visualization package that displayed MRI data. The demo was pretty impressive - it was a 3d rendering of someone's pelvic region, white bones, pink kidney, etc. It was as if you were looking at a digital invisible man.
At a guess, the technology didn't go anywhere because it was too slow to be of much use.
If my experience is indicative, Fossil watches lean more towards glitz than function.
I had a Fossil watch that lasted all of a year. The first battery went south after 6 months and the stainless steel finish rubbed off after 10 months. What had started out as a very nice looking, functional watch ended up being shabby and definitely not worth the $125 price tag.
OT: Did you know that...
on
Science Askew
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· Score: 2
Well I used to run with all the bells and whistles enabled. Unfortunately, I stumbled across a website whose author was more interested in causing havoc on my machine than in providing content.
It's true that well-intentioned scripting features can make things easier. It's also true that, in the wrong hands, those features can cause havoc. To me, it's not worth it.
As to your last comment, E-commerce doesn't require DHTML, Flash, CSS, java or javascript. In fact, if you ever read the W3 specs, they make a point of saying that web sites shouldn't require any of those technologies to function properly. If you want animated pictures of butterfly-costumed men obscuring your screen, be my guest. Just don't insist that I watch them too.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of you too lazy to read the Feynman appendix, the key message Feynman added to the Challenger report was that the Challenger accident wasn't so much a result of the wrong kind of o-ring rubber as much as a result of NASA management's inability to hear the truth from its engineers and suppliers.
When an organization fosters dishonesty, as Feynman documented, you can pour trillions in and not get results.
This Stanford seminar gave a good overview of the underlying technology.
120 mph is 2 miles/minute.
2 miles/minute is 176 ft/sec
0 to 176 ft/sec in 4 seconds is 44 ft/sec/sec
1 G is 32 ft/sec/sec so it's 44/32 or about 1.4 G.
Going a little further, if you weigh 220 lbs, you'll enjoy the feeling of 302 (220x1.4) lbs squishing you into your seat. wotta thrill....
I've used 8 different printers over the past 4 years. I've printed about 1/2 million sheets over the past two years.
When I buy a new printer, I check the total cost and so far, HP has come out ahead. The Lexmarks always get dropped from consideration when it comes to the toner cart costs - they're typically twice as high as HP's carts.
The funny thing is I used to buy remanufactured HP cartridges but gave them up as a lost cause. Two out of three would be fine but the third one would give me enough problems to make them not worth the extra labor costs. So I buy new HP carts simply because they're trouble free and HP hasn't had to resort to any strong arm measures to get me to do it.
The fact that Lexmark feels it's necessary to force their customers to buy toner from Lexmark says that Lexmark isn't offering a value proposition. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to resort to this nonsense.
...which are worthless after a few years how about a the certification agency just maintains a user-searchable comments database. You take your car/washer/computer into the shop and get it serviced. Two weeks after you've fetched it back, you get an email from the agency asking you if the shop did what they were supposed to. The agency's operating expense is covered by the "certification" fees.
Sort of a mix between the BBB and resellerratings.com. Resellerratings.com is excellent for the market it serves.
Had she reminded you of some incident or another that you had forgotten then that would better demonstrate your point. For example, if she described that jumper your wife just loved dressing her in when she was 3 months old.
If you decide to quiz her on said jumper or some such, be on guard against Clever Hans syndrome.
The images you reference sure look an awful like this one taken by the Hubble. You too can flip one of them 180 degrees and put your name on it if you like.
That's quite true - when I saw the size of the thing I flashed on the Spruce Goose as well. It would be truly ironic if the Pelican suffered the same fate as the Spruce Goose.
The article mentions flying at 20 feet above the ocean to exploit the effect which makes me wonder how they'll handle the odd rogue wave.
The wrong is in the doing, not in the whom it is done to.
When Barlow first sent the quote out, I googled and altavista'd the quote and came up empty-handed. I really wanted to use it as a sig. Now the quote is everywhere and yet nowhere. The best citation I've found is in a paper on variablity analysis. The author found attributions to Bohr via Barlow, Yogi Berra and Mark Twain. The author cites some suspect reference counts. I say suspect because when I attempted googling Mark Twain sans Bohr, I came up with much smaller counts. In fact, I even found a site that attributes the quote to a Chinese proverb.
What's even more interesting is that the quote morphs not only in who said it but what they said. For example, searching for "prediction is difficult" and "prediction is very difficult" pops different result sets.
Even odder thing about the quote is its impact varies with attribution. Tack on Niels Bohr as the source and it acquires an appeal accorded to quantum mechanics and those who suss it. Change the source to Yogi Berra and the quote feels very much as something he would have said. A sort of "man in the street" feel. Put Mark Twain on the quote and it's classic American humor. Make it a Chinese proverb and it feels ancient.
It's a great quote but I do wonder who said it first.
~Niels Bohr
Unfortunately, I can't vouchsafe the quote. John Perry Barlow circulated it a few years back and when I asked him where he found it, he couldn't remember. So perhaps if Bohr didn't say it, he should have.
Don't believe the ad worked? Before those ads came out, the sponsor was but a dim memory. Notice that you and I both know what camera ad you're talking about. That is exactly what a marketing department's job is - to get the company noticed.
Just because neither you nor I would care to be marketeers doesn't mean you need to diss them - they do serve a real function.
Once my speed had picked up to the point where I could actually get something done, my old habit of letting my wrist bend came back to haunt me. If the gloves look nerdy, imagine a man with sharp pencils strapped to the top of his arms with velcro for an even nerdier image. The pencil points would poke me every time my wrists bent which would remind me to straighten my wrists. That was what this geek needed to get rid of the problem. I've since discarded the pencils and instead, stacked two keyboard wrist rests on top of each other so I don't have to think about wrist posture - it comes automatically. YMMV.
For what it's worth, I never did regain my qwerty speed. I type at 70 wpm now but back in the days when cpu speed was measured in khz I'd hit bursts of 95 wpm. The other down side is it annoys the hell out of people I work with because nobody ever knows what the current state of the keyboard is until they start typing and discover they're typing gibberish.
For some reason, our society has become so risk adverse that we'd be hard pressed to settle the West if that's what was called for. A lunar colony won't be tackled not because a useless space station isn't cutting it but because nobody is willing to risk a life any more.
The flame is invisible so if the tank is on fire, it may not be obvious. When they were setting up for the first Hydrogen bomb test, they had to vent some hydrogen for some reason or another. They lit the escaping gas and all they could sense was the noise from the flame - they couldn't see it. Unfortunately, neither could the few seagulls who flew directly over the flame and fell dead at the physcist's feet. I hear roasted seagull isn't very tasty.
My point is that too many sites require scripting without realizing that that choice means cutting off those of us who don't want to get bitten by malicious scripts, or gee, maybe even use Mozilla.
The steady stream of security patches to IE have prompted me to disable scripting. That means there are way too many websites such as the rocket car which just don't render in my browser.
Unfortunately, as more sites demand scripting because the designer doesn't know how to design sans scripting, more sites become invisible due to more people realizing that Microsoft's implementation of scripting is fundamentally flawed.
At a guess, the technology didn't go anywhere because it was too slow to be of much use.
I had a Fossil watch that lasted all of a year. The first battery went south after 6 months and the stainless steel finish rubbed off after 10 months. What had started out as a very nice looking, functional watch ended up being shabby and definitely not worth the $125 price tag.
... 1 isn't prime and 2 is?
Maybe true, maybe not but whatever it is, The Legend of the Rocket Car is easily one of the funniest storys on the net.
Unless the projectile takes a few seconds to heat up.
Well I used to run with all the bells and whistles enabled. Unfortunately, I stumbled across a website whose author was more interested in causing havoc on my machine than in providing content.
It's true that well-intentioned scripting features can make things easier. It's also true that, in the wrong hands, those features can cause havoc. To me, it's not worth it.
As to your last comment, E-commerce doesn't require DHTML, Flash, CSS, java or javascript. In fact, if you ever read the W3 specs, they make a point of saying that web sites shouldn't require any of those technologies to function properly. If you want animated pictures of butterfly-costumed men obscuring your screen, be my guest. Just don't insist that I watch them too.