Even if it DOES grow much faster, you're still talking faster in Geological terms.
It will be thousands and more likely tens of thousands of years before Lo'ihi breaks the surface.
Also (was on the big island not 2 weeks ago) while visiting I the USGS site in Volcanoes National park, the prevailing belief is that long term Lo'ihi will merge with the big island as another peak the way Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea already have.
Some of us also registered 2-3 times before settling on an account. I still wonder if I could ever recover my 5 digit account. Not even sure what email I used now.
I think thats partly true. More so in contested offices.
Someone like Barney Frank can be as blunt and to the point about what he feels and thats exactly the reason he gets re-elected. That being said he represents a district where thats exactly what his constituents want.
The problem is when there needs to be all out pandering in order to get elected. Then you seldom get what you think you're getting when you elect someone.
And to the points made in the dissent in this case, at least they were well thought out and reasonable. I think the court made the right call, but I did find it interesting in Thomas' argument about how even in speech matters the parent is still the intermediary, I can say what I want, but the parent has control over what their children can here. I don't find this totally unreasonable of a concept.
My issue with the law was that government would have to make a determination of what content meets a violent standard and that is definitely against the free speech framework. Its also a slipper slope in terms of ever changing social standards.
I think in this case the 2 dissenting votes had more to do with interpretation of the role of the parent in the law as it was structured, versus the role of government in the law.
The whole point to the CDC even mentioning this I believe was some recent research pointing out how a potential zombie apocalypse makes a great case study for any type of outbreak. Tweak a constraint here or there and you get some very interesting outbreak scenarios to study.
For instance, what if the infection vector changes, such that its airborne and emitted from rotting zombies? How do the infection rates change, how does this impact quarantine procedure, and on and on.
These are the sorts of things that the CDC needs to consider as a matter of course for ANY disease.
As for zombies specifically, I think the more important aspect of the mythos is how it relates to our society and our place within it. You could probably keep every aspect of the lore and simply change the infection criteria and you would suddenly have something very plausible. (microbe in the water? asymptomatic pest carrier? airborne or multiple infection vectors? extended incubation time, these are all minimal mutations to the lore)
In general I've been staunchly pro-nuclear, especially with the current generation technology (pellet reactors etc).
My issue is mostly with:
1) oversight of existing reactors. At some point they SHOULD be decommissioned, but profiteering means that thats not going to happen and they will keep running them until accidents DO start to occur more frequently.
2) The issue with nuclear in my mind isn't with the death toll, but rather the land impact. If something of the Japan scale was to happen at a plant in the Northeast US, you're looking at HEAVILY populated areas that would need to be evacuated potentially for years. That would have MASSIVE economic impact. For instance a quick look at a map in my area (Boston), puts much of the metro Boston area within 30 miles of Pilgrim. Last I heard the evac zone in Japan was 20-30 miles at least from the plant. Thats like 3-4 million people in the case of Boston. While few people might die, it would SERIOUSLY impact the country as a whole.
I personally would like to see US policy shift from maintaining old aging reactors shift to building newer/safer/more efficient ones and decommissioning aging ones. I realize that reactors are cheap to operate and in order to recoup costs you need to keep running them, but eventually the cost of an accident also needs to be factored into the maintenance cost (X likelihood of accident * cost / time, etc).
Additionally many have postulated that it would take going to the stars to truely put humanity in perspective and allow us to co-exist. There will always be political infighting, but going to the stars will make many of the things we squabble over seem rather minor in comparison. Additionally any generational craft like this would likely have to be a cross national mission, which has the potential to foster a more unified humanity as it progresses.
The somewhat depressing thing is that back 30 years ago NASA was given a supply of fuel by the Energy Department for RTG's. They were given a specific allotment of them that they could use over the years for various spacecraft.
If I recall correctly the last one is going into the new Mars rover (MSL/Curiosity).
Its a shame all the insane nuclear fear mongering is preventing them from really developing new RTG technology. I imagine with some decent research the things we could be doing with these would be incredible. Alas, we have things like the massive campaign to prevent New Horizon from launching for fear its plutonium would end up crashing back to earth.
Except that when I paid for my last ATT contract it was 2005 and NOBODY was tethering. I got a razr with their "unlimited" data plan. Since then I've been using a collection of unlocked devices as upgrades (Currently a Nexus One). I signed nothing that restricted my data use. Admittedly at the time the most I could use in a month was MAYBE 100KB from java apps for gmail, etc, but still I paid for unlimited and I am still paying for the terms of THAT contract.
That being said I'm sure there is some BS in there about how they can amend and alter the terms of the contract at any time, which seems to pretty much defeat the point of a contract in the first place.
I still know people (through my brother), working on MSL, the next rover. They are still doing cool stuff, but all the oversight and funding debates don't help things. Plus internally it sounded like every project is a massive political game for people to work on what they want to work on, or to work on things that are rewarding.
More and more it sounded like they are also contracting parts of missions to private companies, Boeing for this, some tool manufacturer for that, an instrument company for this sensor, etc. If you can work at one of those companies you get to do the same stuff without the headaches.
JPL isn't without its issues either, but at least they accomplish stuff. My brother worked for them for 5 years until the bureaucratic mess became too much. To hear him describe it, they have a serious brain drain issue where the lure of the private sector takes a lot of their best and brightest. Its a hearty bunch that stay for the long term and manage to get past the politicking.
Level 3 could leverage far more than just netflix. If Level 3 cut off access to Comcast from any of its customers that it provides volume capacity for it might make them blink. Suddenly that becomes an issue for the customer where only on comcast do they lose access to a broad swath of the internet.
That being said, a better plan is to spread information like this article to your less informed/enlightened friends who are also Comcast users. Let them know that something they like (netflix) might go away as a result of Comcast's shady business practices. While many people don't have a choice as to ISP, many do. If those with an option begin to dump Comcast as a result of this it can still impact their bottom line.
As mentioned by another poster, MS, XBox and other entertainment properties have been operating in the black for about 2-3 years now. Now that likely hasn't made up for the capital investment/losses over the first 6-7 years of the platform, but I suspect MS is fine writing that off as a startup expense, if they continue to operate in the black.
With new console revs at least a couple of years away (all major players have said this gen will last longer than the last one and no prototypes are on the horizon), MS's entertainment should be in pretty good place to stay in the black and increase its profit (if not revenue) for the foreseeable future.
Its also worth noting that MS is driving significant integration with its install base, that they hope to leverage beyond traditional gaming markets. MS is making a lot of residuals now by helping push things like Netflix and ESPN.
That being said MS isn't unique in these things. Sony and Nintendo are banking on many of the same things. It would however be disingenuous to say that MS is losing big on the XBox and associated assets.
You could argue that Google is allowing this while they build up critical mass. You would hope that once google is firmly entrenched in the market they would start to dictate what defines the Android brand better.
Play nice with the carriers until they have to play nice with you or risk losing their Android users.
Carly had the ability to at least make you believe every now and then there was progress in the right direction. My stock and compensation tells me Carly was worse, my morale tells me Hurd was far worse.
I guess at least under Hurd the shareholder me benefited, but I could have been just as invested without having to put up with the horrid work environment in the process.
I can't speak for the above since it sounds like he/she still works at HP, but 2 years of Hurd was enough for me, I cut my shares and ran. Thanked him for the profit and gave him the finger on the way out the door. Moving to a start-up with bright energetic folks in all corners of the company has been an amazing breath of fresh air after my last few years at HP. Since I left I've kept in touch with a number of old workers and its amazing how the youngest and best engineers (not mutually exclusive) have been leaving.
As the above poster mentioned I think a lot more would be leaving if not for A) the economy and B) people just hanging on till the next early retirement offer.
I would be one of those senior engineers who jumped ship about 2 years ago.
Operational efficiency is great and all, and I cashed out a bunch as the stock price rose, but it was a MISERABLE place to work after a while. Every day wondering if your division (regardless of your personal performance) would be axed in the name of efficiency. Seeing the best and brightest in the various teams you interact with leaving in droves (sales, marketing, engineering that I knew). Seeing best in breed products axed in favor of legacy partnerships.
It was refreshing after Carly to see the company start to perform, but after 2 years it began to become obvious to a lot of folks that this would be the way of life under Hurd.
There needs to be a balance between keeping your best employees happy and driving profitability. The brain drain has been pretty severe speaking to old coworkers. You wonder how long before the drain impacts their innovation and development. The company still does plenty right (and why I still hold a bunch of stock), but I don't think it takes Hurd to run the ship as it stands now.
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Even if it DOES grow much faster, you're still talking faster in Geological terms.
It will be thousands and more likely tens of thousands of years before Lo'ihi breaks the surface.
Also (was on the big island not 2 weeks ago) while visiting I the USGS site in Volcanoes National park, the prevailing belief is that long term Lo'ihi will merge with the big island as another peak the way Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea already have.
And the things you will discover. I'm so psyched about the RTG on this thing. Certainly years, and hopefully decades of work to be done.
Some of us also registered 2-3 times before settling on an account. I still wonder if I could ever recover my 5 digit account. Not even sure what email I used now.
Could be worse, I lost the login info for my 5 digit and had to re-register with this gaudy 6 digit thing.
OR, just buy an unlocked phone. I've had ZERO issues using Tethering since March '10 on my N1 and more recently on my Nexus S on ATT.
I wonder if ATT/Verizon are purely targeting jailbroken phones or will unlocked phones fall under this as well.
I think thats partly true. More so in contested offices.
Someone like Barney Frank can be as blunt and to the point about what he feels and thats exactly the reason he gets re-elected. That being said he represents a district where thats exactly what his constituents want.
The problem is when there needs to be all out pandering in order to get elected. Then you seldom get what you think you're getting when you elect someone.
And to the points made in the dissent in this case, at least they were well thought out and reasonable. I think the court made the right call, but I did find it interesting in Thomas' argument about how even in speech matters the parent is still the intermediary, I can say what I want, but the parent has control over what their children can here. I don't find this totally unreasonable of a concept.
My issue with the law was that government would have to make a determination of what content meets a violent standard and that is definitely against the free speech framework. Its also a slipper slope in terms of ever changing social standards.
I think in this case the 2 dissenting votes had more to do with interpretation of the role of the parent in the law as it was structured, versus the role of government in the law.
The whole point to the CDC even mentioning this I believe was some recent research pointing out how a potential zombie apocalypse makes a great case study for any type of outbreak. Tweak a constraint here or there and you get some very interesting outbreak scenarios to study.
For instance, what if the infection vector changes, such that its airborne and emitted from rotting zombies? How do the infection rates change, how does this impact quarantine procedure, and on and on.
These are the sorts of things that the CDC needs to consider as a matter of course for ANY disease.
As for zombies specifically, I think the more important aspect of the mythos is how it relates to our society and our place within it. You could probably keep every aspect of the lore and simply change the infection criteria and you would suddenly have something very plausible. (microbe in the water? asymptomatic pest carrier? airborne or multiple infection vectors? extended incubation time, these are all minimal mutations to the lore)
Godzilla.
Then again, he could save us when Mothra attacks, so maybe its not that big a deal.
In general I've been staunchly pro-nuclear, especially with the current generation technology (pellet reactors etc).
My issue is mostly with:
1) oversight of existing reactors. At some point they SHOULD be decommissioned, but profiteering means that thats not going to happen and they will keep running them until accidents DO start to occur more frequently.
2) The issue with nuclear in my mind isn't with the death toll, but rather the land impact. If something of the Japan scale was to happen at a plant in the Northeast US, you're looking at HEAVILY populated areas that would need to be evacuated potentially for years. That would have MASSIVE economic impact. For instance a quick look at a map in my area (Boston), puts much of the metro Boston area within 30 miles of Pilgrim. Last I heard the evac zone in Japan was 20-30 miles at least from the plant. Thats like 3-4 million people in the case of Boston. While few people might die, it would SERIOUSLY impact the country as a whole.
I personally would like to see US policy shift from maintaining old aging reactors shift to building newer/safer/more efficient ones and decommissioning aging ones. I realize that reactors are cheap to operate and in order to recoup costs you need to keep running them, but eventually the cost of an accident also needs to be factored into the maintenance cost (X likelihood of accident * cost / time, etc).
Additionally many have postulated that it would take going to the stars to truely put humanity in perspective and allow us to co-exist. There will always be political infighting, but going to the stars will make many of the things we squabble over seem rather minor in comparison. Additionally any generational craft like this would likely have to be a cross national mission, which has the potential to foster a more unified humanity as it progresses.
The somewhat depressing thing is that back 30 years ago NASA was given a supply of fuel by the Energy Department for RTG's. They were given a specific allotment of them that they could use over the years for various spacecraft.
If I recall correctly the last one is going into the new Mars rover (MSL/Curiosity).
Its a shame all the insane nuclear fear mongering is preventing them from really developing new RTG technology. I imagine with some decent research the things we could be doing with these would be incredible. Alas, we have things like the massive campaign to prevent New Horizon from launching for fear its plutonium would end up crashing back to earth.
Except that when I paid for my last ATT contract it was 2005 and NOBODY was tethering. I got a razr with their "unlimited" data plan. Since then I've been using a collection of unlocked devices as upgrades (Currently a Nexus One). I signed nothing that restricted my data use. Admittedly at the time the most I could use in a month was MAYBE 100KB from java apps for gmail, etc, but still I paid for unlimited and I am still paying for the terms of THAT contract.
That being said I'm sure there is some BS in there about how they can amend and alter the terms of the contract at any time, which seems to pretty much defeat the point of a contract in the first place.
Not even just Windows. I've been doing tethering since Day one on my Nexus 1 since I got it.
This is obviously a money grab from ATT directed specifically at iPhone users.
Yet one more reason I will never buy a locked phone. Nexus S or follow on unlocked phones for me.
I still know people (through my brother), working on MSL, the next rover. They are still doing cool stuff, but all the oversight and funding debates don't help things. Plus internally it sounded like every project is a massive political game for people to work on what they want to work on, or to work on things that are rewarding.
More and more it sounded like they are also contracting parts of missions to private companies, Boeing for this, some tool manufacturer for that, an instrument company for this sensor, etc. If you can work at one of those companies you get to do the same stuff without the headaches.
JPL isn't without its issues either, but at least they accomplish stuff. My brother worked for them for 5 years until the bureaucratic mess became too much. To hear him describe it, they have a serious brain drain issue where the lure of the private sector takes a lot of their best and brightest. Its a hearty bunch that stay for the long term and manage to get past the politicking.
Maybe he's only MOSTLY dead?
I hear he's not doing much of anything these days.
He was always proponent of the engineers in high places and had a rather large disdain for business type folks.
crap forgot to log in... :(
Level 3 could leverage far more than just netflix. If Level 3 cut off access to Comcast from any of its customers that it provides volume capacity for it might make them blink. Suddenly that becomes an issue for the customer where only on comcast do they lose access to a broad swath of the internet.
That being said, a better plan is to spread information like this article to your less informed/enlightened friends who are also Comcast users. Let them know that something they like (netflix) might go away as a result of Comcast's shady business practices. While many people don't have a choice as to ISP, many do. If those with an option begin to dump Comcast as a result of this it can still impact their bottom line.
As mentioned by another poster, MS, XBox and other entertainment properties have been operating in the black for about 2-3 years now. Now that likely hasn't made up for the capital investment/losses over the first 6-7 years of the platform, but I suspect MS is fine writing that off as a startup expense, if they continue to operate in the black.
With new console revs at least a couple of years away (all major players have said this gen will last longer than the last one and no prototypes are on the horizon), MS's entertainment should be in pretty good place to stay in the black and increase its profit (if not revenue) for the foreseeable future.
Its also worth noting that MS is driving significant integration with its install base, that they hope to leverage beyond traditional gaming markets. MS is making a lot of residuals now by helping push things like Netflix and ESPN.
That being said MS isn't unique in these things. Sony and Nintendo are banking on many of the same things. It would however be disingenuous to say that MS is losing big on the XBox and associated assets.
Macross and a few other sources predate that even by up to a decade going back to the mid 80's. Still, interesting to see this in the real world.
You could argue that Google is allowing this while they build up critical mass. You would hope that once google is firmly entrenched in the market they would start to dictate what defines the Android brand better.
Play nice with the carriers until they have to play nice with you or risk losing their Android users.
Carly had the ability to at least make you believe every now and then there was progress in the right direction. My stock and compensation tells me Carly was worse, my morale tells me Hurd was far worse.
I guess at least under Hurd the shareholder me benefited, but I could have been just as invested without having to put up with the horrid work environment in the process.
I can't speak for the above since it sounds like he/she still works at HP, but 2 years of Hurd was enough for me, I cut my shares and ran. Thanked him for the profit and gave him the finger on the way out the door. Moving to a start-up with bright energetic folks in all corners of the company has been an amazing breath of fresh air after my last few years at HP. Since I left I've kept in touch with a number of old workers and its amazing how the youngest and best engineers (not mutually exclusive) have been leaving.
As the above poster mentioned I think a lot more would be leaving if not for A) the economy and B) people just hanging on till the next early retirement offer.
I would be one of those senior engineers who jumped ship about 2 years ago.
Operational efficiency is great and all, and I cashed out a bunch as the stock price rose, but it was a MISERABLE place to work after a while. Every day wondering if your division (regardless of your personal performance) would be axed in the name of efficiency. Seeing the best and brightest in the various teams you interact with leaving in droves (sales, marketing, engineering that I knew). Seeing best in breed products axed in favor of legacy partnerships.
It was refreshing after Carly to see the company start to perform, but after 2 years it began to become obvious to a lot of folks that this would be the way of life under Hurd.
There needs to be a balance between keeping your best employees happy and driving profitability. The brain drain has been pretty severe speaking to old coworkers. You wonder how long before the drain impacts their innovation and development. The company still does plenty right (and why I still hold a bunch of stock), but I don't think it takes Hurd to run the ship as it stands now.