I worked on holographic memory. It has a huge capacity, but very very slow write times. It was something like 1 byte per second, or something ridiculous like that.
If people could come up with a medium that could be developed quickly, it could be neat.
As the Tor announcement stated, it will take place at the end of the Year of the Dragon. Cool beans.
I got to get dinner with Sanderson and Harriet Jordan on the Gathering Storm book tour. They're both very good people, and are the right people to be finishing this series.
I have no idea how Sanderson could possibly wrap up all the loose threads in just one more book, but if anyone can do it, he can.
Who is blaming the judges? I think they're actually doing what the law says most of the time. That's why I said reform of the system is necessary - we can't just look at something with these myopic glasses on, and say that if there is just one negative thing about a project, it needs to be scrapped. We have to look at the big picture, and weigh the pros and cons to make a rational decision.
>>What they'll say is you can't build it right there. Then you say okay, how about over there? Nope that won't work either. Then you say, okay how about this other place? Nope.
Yes, you got it exactly right.
The arguments they make in their landscapes is always, "Well, this place has a drawback, so we can't do it here." Ignoring, of course, the fact that every place on Earth will have some form of drawback, and that a lot of the time, the people building the railway line or solar plant or whatever have situated it on the most optimal site they could find, balancing a lot of factors.
The fact that judges allow these suits to proceed let alone win indicates that we desperately need reform of how the judicial system conducts reviews of major projects. I'm not saying that we should throw out all lawsuits, as some have merits, but rather that judges should look more holistically at the process, and not just rule on the narrow question of, 'Will 25 lizards be killed by this solar plant?'
>>Airports however are fee crazy and may very well charge for this
Yeah, trying to find power outlets in some airports is like a game of Where's Waldo. My local airport has all of the power outlets literally locked down under plates so that you can't get at them. In San Diego, I found a single open outlet behind a bunch of benches. I had to camp out next to the bathroom in SFO to recharge my phone while on a business trip. Etc.
Some places have paid-by-ads (usually Samsung) charging stations, which are nice... when they work. Typically half the outlets on them will be broken.
In all seriousness, airports are some of the least traveler-friendly places in America.
Yeah, I can hear the high pitched squeal from certain electronics. Back when my parents had a CRT television that they'd keep hidden in a cabinent, I could walk in and tell if they had it on (and muted) or if it was off.
It never really bothered me, though, and now I mostly ignore it. I have to concentrate to hear it now.
>>You opted to live in California. I didn't. You didn't do anything to prevent rate hikes there. I'm at least bringing up the issue in a public forum.
That's an... amazing... series of statements to say.
1) If doing nothing more than bitching on Slashdot counts as "doing something", then I've done far more than you, coward. 2) I've spent more than twenty thousand dollars of my own money to prevent rate hikes. I have solar on my house now, and pay next to nothing. What have you done, other than your aforementioned bitching? 3) Any voice that I have as a rational person is drowned out by the cacophony of idiot NIMBY/environmentalists in the state, who seem to prefer the status quo with high electricity prices and reliance on natural gas, over nuclear.
And yeah, if you're complaining about 10c/kWh power, then I've got a very small violin I'd like to play for you.
My solar system clicks on at around 6AM and clicks off around 6PM. (Adjust for seasonal variations.) I can hear it through the wall as the system engages, actually.
Tracking the production for today, it reached 25% of capacity at 10AM and continued until about 5:30PM. So about 7.5 hours of useful energy, and a couple more hours of producing below 25% of capacity. In winter.
The bigger problem, actually, is weather. Today I produced 21kWh. Yesterday, I produced 4.
More people died in the Japan disaster from the Chiba City natural gas plant exploding than the nuclear reactor. But guess which one got all the press?
Here in northern California, our power rates have skyrocketed, mostly due to the fact the environmentalists have been blocking all new power plants since the 80s.
How much do you pay for peak power, even after your doubling in rates? I'll grant you the right to complain if you can match the 50c/kWh I was paying for peak power last summer.
>>The point was that there were LOTS of reports from engineers saying the bridge was unsound.
No, no, no. It was "structurally deficient". Structurally deficient doesn't mean unsound, i.e., "this bridge should be torn down".
From the MA state highway administration: "The structurally deficient rating is an early warning sign for engineers to use to prioritize funding and to initiate repairs or to begin the process to replace the bridge. The rating applies to three main elements of a bridge... These elements are rated on a scale from zero (closed to traffic) to nine (relatively new). If any of the three elements is rated as a four or less, the bridge is categorized as structurally deficient by federal standards. This does not mean that the bridge is unsafe. If a bridge becomes unsafe, it will be closed."
The standard narrative told at the time was that the bridge collapsed due to underfunding. The reality was they didn't know about the design flaw of the bridge, which ended up killing those people.
>>And the rich get a LOT of benefit.
From infrastructure, police, military, etc.? They get benefit. Do they get 10x the benefit of a middle class citizen (as their share of taxes would indicate)? No, of course not.
>>They're rich because of what the middle class does
>>Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest.
Eh, you got to be careful there, boss. Generally speaking, they'll start with an advancement we don't have yet. As the author doesn't know how exactly a warp drive would work, he does indeed glaze over it.
But that's fine. That's one of the starting assumptions of the world the author is building.
What's interesting are the consequences that spin out of the starting assumptions. And these usually follow pretty tightly from the starting points.
Also, a lot of sci-fi authors absolutely obsess over a lot of the engineering details. Heinlein was famous for making sure all the calculations worked out right. If he had a space station X units in diameter, rotating at Y revolutions per minute, to generate Earth-standard gravity, there's a fairly good chance those numbers are actually correct.
>>There've already been a few high profile bridge collapses where engineers KNEW the bridge was unsafe and nobody wanted to spend the money.
Read before you speak.
If you're talking about the bridge collapse in Minnesota, this was actually overturned in the final report on the disaster. The primary cause was a design flaw, not underfunding to our infrastructure. They'd actually tried to retrofit it, but couldn't due to the way the bridge was built. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge) And if the engineers all-caps KNEW that the bridge was unsafe, they'd have shut it down. Suspicions are not "knowing".
The GP's point is spot on - the rich pay far greater shares of income tax than anyone else, but they don't get substantially greater benefit from it.
I will disagree with Archer on one point, though - police response times around here are MUCH faster in nice neighborhoods than poor neighborhoods. The police are also a lot rougher on teen runabouts in the nice part of town.
If the value of your house goes up from $200,000 to $500,000 (not uncommon during a bubble), and the IRS comes to your front door asking for you to pony up $45,000 (spotting the homeowner a nice tax bracket of 15%), and you're not liquid, you're fucked if you don't have that kind of money sitting in the bank. Then you're forced to sell the house for whatever price anyone will offer for it, you don't get the $500k the IRS thinks you can get for it, so you end up paying a ridiculously high tax rate, *and* lose your house, *and* have to pay moving costs, etc., based on a completely imaginary valuation. Then you buy a new house, the market does a 2007-style plunge, and you take $200k in losses instead. You don't pay income tax for a year (and even roll the losses forward for one more year), but then the market recovers, and you get to pay $30k on taxes just for your house returning to the value it was when you bought it.
Mark to market is *crazy* stupid, with the emphasis on the crazy.
Gingrich is really big on it (for valuating bank's assets), which might tip you off.
No, those people are intentionally trying to push the limits as fast as they can.
Reasonable drivers drive the same (safe) speed on a road regardless of the posted speed limit.
This is why the DMV sets the speed limit on most roads based on the 90th percentile of car speeds, or so.
Except on interstates. Those things are cash hogs for states, based on all the tickets they get to give out for people doing the safe road speed (75MPH) on roads that might be posted as low as 55MPH.
Well, imagine if you had the option of buying an Xbox 361 right now, that would function identically to the Xbox 360, but would get better frame rates. Would people want to buy it? Sure. I hate it when cutscenes suddenly drop down to 15fps, or when a game suddenly lags under the weight of all the action on the screen. I'd pay a hundred bucks or so to upgrade the 360 at this point.
You'd just have to enforce a decree that all games are playable on the low end systems, and try not to have too many different upgrade paths available.
Slashdot Mirror
Poland had a House of Representatives that effectively ruled by unanimous consent for several hundred years.
It didn't go well for them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto
>>The belief that a cosmic Jewish Zombie
Oh, for fuck's sake, I wish this meme would die.
Animate Dead is a 3rd level Cleric spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/a/animate-dead)
Resurrection is a 7th level spell (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/r/resurrection)
Please stop confusing the two.
Thanks,
A Concerned Christian
I worked on holographic memory. It has a huge capacity, but very very slow write times. It was something like 1 byte per second, or something ridiculous like that.
If people could come up with a medium that could be developed quickly, it could be neat.
As the Tor announcement stated, it will take place at the end of the Year of the Dragon. Cool beans.
I got to get dinner with Sanderson and Harriet Jordan on the Gathering Storm book tour. They're both very good people, and are the right people to be finishing this series.
I have no idea how Sanderson could possibly wrap up all the loose threads in just one more book, but if anyone can do it, he can.
Who is blaming the judges? I think they're actually doing what the law says most of the time. That's why I said reform of the system is necessary - we can't just look at something with these myopic glasses on, and say that if there is just one negative thing about a project, it needs to be scrapped. We have to look at the big picture, and weigh the pros and cons to make a rational decision.
>>What they'll say is you can't build it right there. Then you say okay, how about over there? Nope that won't work either. Then you say, okay how about this other place? Nope.
Yes, you got it exactly right.
The arguments they make in their landscapes is always, "Well, this place has a drawback, so we can't do it here." Ignoring, of course, the fact that every place on Earth will have some form of drawback, and that a lot of the time, the people building the railway line or solar plant or whatever have situated it on the most optimal site they could find, balancing a lot of factors.
The fact that judges allow these suits to proceed let alone win indicates that we desperately need reform of how the judicial system conducts reviews of major projects. I'm not saying that we should throw out all lawsuits, as some have merits, but rather that judges should look more holistically at the process, and not just rule on the narrow question of, 'Will 25 lizards be killed by this solar plant?'
Which terminal? I recall having trouble finding outlets in the United terminal I usually connect through.
>>Airports however are fee crazy and may very well charge for this
Yeah, trying to find power outlets in some airports is like a game of Where's Waldo. My local airport has all of the power outlets literally locked down under plates so that you can't get at them. In San Diego, I found a single open outlet behind a bunch of benches. I had to camp out next to the bathroom in SFO to recharge my phone while on a business trip. Etc.
Some places have paid-by-ads (usually Samsung) charging stations, which are nice... when they work. Typically half the outlets on them will be broken.
In all seriousness, airports are some of the least traveler-friendly places in America.
>BTW, it clearly doesn't work on toothpaste or any other metal container.
What?? Obviously you didn't read the summary, where it says it uses "visible light" but works through "opaque containers"!
=)
Yeah, I can hear the high pitched squeal from certain electronics. Back when my parents had a CRT television that they'd keep hidden in a cabinent, I could walk in and tell if they had it on (and muted) or if it was off.
It never really bothered me, though, and now I mostly ignore it. I have to concentrate to hear it now.
>>There's no clean way to ensure a new owner will provide service for your old email address to your satisfaction.
It's called a "contract" or "memorandum of understanding" in the business world.
If you haven't heard of them, they're sort of like source code, that run in people's heads, and get interpreted by lawyers and justices.
So in other words, you're accusing everyone who is against child porn to be secretly child pornographers?
You're no better than the ministers you're attacking.
I know Christopher Hitchens made a bunch of money accusing anyone anti-something to be that something, but it's not a very ethical thing to do.
>>You opted to live in California. I didn't. You didn't do anything to prevent rate hikes there. I'm at least bringing up the issue in a public forum.
That's an... amazing... series of statements to say.
1) If doing nothing more than bitching on Slashdot counts as "doing something", then I've done far more than you, coward.
2) I've spent more than twenty thousand dollars of my own money to prevent rate hikes. I have solar on my house now, and pay next to nothing. What have you done, other than your aforementioned bitching?
3) Any voice that I have as a rational person is drowned out by the cacophony of idiot NIMBY/environmentalists in the state, who seem to prefer the status quo with high electricity prices and reliance on natural gas, over nuclear.
And yeah, if you're complaining about 10c/kWh power, then I've got a very small violin I'd like to play for you.
My solar system clicks on at around 6AM and clicks off around 6PM. (Adjust for seasonal variations.) I can hear it through the wall as the system engages, actually.
Tracking the production for today, it reached 25% of capacity at 10AM and continued until about 5:30PM. So about 7.5 hours of useful energy, and a couple more hours of producing below 25% of capacity. In winter.
The bigger problem, actually, is weather. Today I produced 21kWh. Yesterday, I produced 4.
More people died in the Japan disaster from the Chiba City natural gas plant exploding than the nuclear reactor. But guess which one got all the press?
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/03/11/article-1365318-0D92E346000005DC-921_964x572.jpg
Roofers fall off roofs all the time putting solar in.
There's no utterly safe energy source, but nuclear has done a damn good job proving its track record.
Here in northern California, our power rates have skyrocketed, mostly due to the fact the environmentalists have been blocking all new power plants since the 80s.
How much do you pay for peak power, even after your doubling in rates? I'll grant you the right to complain if you can match the 50c/kWh I was paying for peak power last summer.
>>It was a no-win situation for IT professionals (at least in terms of the general public's view of them
We should have taken Newt's advice and let at least a couple big name disaster's happen then.
The only interesting thing from Y2K was my bank sending me a letter thanking me for my -95 years of loyalty to Wells Fargo.
Still not fast enough if you've run out of paper or ink.
But otherwise, yeah, Best Buy is a store I actively avoid. Most anti-customer store I've ever visited.
I miss the Fry's I used to live next to.
>>The point was that there were LOTS of reports from engineers saying the bridge was unsound.
No, no, no. It was "structurally deficient". Structurally deficient doesn't mean unsound, i.e., "this bridge should be torn down".
From the MA state highway administration:
"The structurally deficient rating is an early warning sign for engineers to use to prioritize funding and to initiate repairs or to begin the process to replace the bridge. The rating applies to three main elements of a bridge... These elements are rated on a scale from zero (closed to traffic) to nine (relatively new). If any of the three elements is rated as a four or less, the bridge is categorized as structurally deficient by federal standards. This does not mean that the bridge is unsafe. If a bridge becomes unsafe, it will be closed."
The standard narrative told at the time was that the bridge collapsed due to underfunding. The reality was they didn't know about the design flaw of the bridge, which ended up killing those people.
>>And the rich get a LOT of benefit.
From infrastructure, police, military, etc.? They get benefit. Do they get 10x the benefit of a middle class citizen (as their share of taxes would indicate)? No, of course not.
>>They're rich because of what the middle class does
Marxism.
Employment is not exploitation dude.
>>Most science-fiction authors, from my experience, have a poor understanding of actual scientific knowledge and, instead, rely on omission of fact to glaze over scientific points of interest.
Eh, you got to be careful there, boss. Generally speaking, they'll start with an advancement we don't have yet. As the author doesn't know how exactly a warp drive would work, he does indeed glaze over it.
But that's fine. That's one of the starting assumptions of the world the author is building.
What's interesting are the consequences that spin out of the starting assumptions. And these usually follow pretty tightly from the starting points.
Also, a lot of sci-fi authors absolutely obsess over a lot of the engineering details. Heinlein was famous for making sure all the calculations worked out right. If he had a space station X units in diameter, rotating at Y revolutions per minute, to generate Earth-standard gravity, there's a fairly good chance those numbers are actually correct.
>>There've already been a few high profile bridge collapses where engineers KNEW the bridge was unsafe and nobody wanted to spend the money.
Read before you speak.
If you're talking about the bridge collapse in Minnesota, this was actually overturned in the final report on the disaster. The primary cause was a design flaw, not underfunding to our infrastructure. They'd actually tried to retrofit it, but couldn't due to the way the bridge was built. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-35W_Mississippi_River_bridge) And if the engineers all-caps KNEW that the bridge was unsafe, they'd have shut it down. Suspicions are not "knowing".
The GP's point is spot on - the rich pay far greater shares of income tax than anyone else, but they don't get substantially greater benefit from it.
I will disagree with Archer on one point, though - police response times around here are MUCH faster in nice neighborhoods than poor neighborhoods. The police are also a lot rougher on teen runabouts in the nice part of town.
>>Can someone explain to me what capital brings to a state ? Zitch, nada, nothing.
You might want to check your front door. I think some Austrian fellows are looking to have some words with you.
Hint: the accumulation of capital is what builds successful economies.
>"Mark to market" has a lot of problems.
Exactly. Imagine if they did this for everyone.
If the value of your house goes up from $200,000 to $500,000 (not uncommon during a bubble), and the IRS comes to your front door asking for you to pony up $45,000 (spotting the homeowner a nice tax bracket of 15%), and you're not liquid, you're fucked if you don't have that kind of money sitting in the bank. Then you're forced to sell the house for whatever price anyone will offer for it, you don't get the $500k the IRS thinks you can get for it, so you end up paying a ridiculously high tax rate, *and* lose your house, *and* have to pay moving costs, etc., based on a completely imaginary valuation. Then you buy a new house, the market does a 2007-style plunge, and you take $200k in losses instead. You don't pay income tax for a year (and even roll the losses forward for one more year), but then the market recovers, and you get to pay $30k on taxes just for your house returning to the value it was when you bought it.
Mark to market is *crazy* stupid, with the emphasis on the crazy.
Gingrich is really big on it (for valuating bank's assets), which might tip you off.
No, those people are intentionally trying to push the limits as fast as they can.
Reasonable drivers drive the same (safe) speed on a road regardless of the posted speed limit.
This is why the DMV sets the speed limit on most roads based on the 90th percentile of car speeds, or so.
Except on interstates. Those things are cash hogs for states, based on all the tickets they get to give out for people doing the safe road speed (75MPH) on roads that might be posted as low as 55MPH.
Well, imagine if you had the option of buying an Xbox 361 right now, that would function identically to the Xbox 360, but would get better frame rates. Would people want to buy it? Sure. I hate it when cutscenes suddenly drop down to 15fps, or when a game suddenly lags under the weight of all the action on the screen. I'd pay a hundred bucks or so to upgrade the 360 at this point.
You'd just have to enforce a decree that all games are playable on the low end systems, and try not to have too many different upgrade paths available.