I actually did that, and Ubuntu was very nice; I wasn't even bothered by the brown. But there wasn't anything I could use. Oh, sure, I could surf the net. I could even type into a simple document. Of course, I couldn't get to a bunch of the files on my server. OO doesn't play nice with formatting or graphic elements in the.doc format. That's true the other way around, btw. I couldn't access my calendar or contacts, since I'm not aware of an app that reads those parts of an outlook file. I couldn't program my Pronto - that's a win executable only. I couldn't find a program to easily create a DVD from a string of VOBs, which I had created from my TiVo...which reminded me that I didn't have an extraction program for my TiVo written for Linux. I tried Gimp. Yikes. I really don't have the free time to re-learn a photoshop level app. And then there's the apps I use at work, none of which are even close to Linux apps (AutoCAD, AdvanSE, WoodWorks, RetainPro, RAM SBeam). I suppose I could try to play with Wine, but that's another whole set of stuff.
I think linux is ready for young power users who don't have an installed knowledge base of Windows utilities, and for older folks who are too likely to screw things up and don't really know Windows well enough to be comfortable with the standard apps. It may even be good for middle to large corporations where there's money to staff a real IT department that is Linux savvy. Everybody in the middle is, sadly, still better off with windows. Not because Linux isn't better, or doesn't equivalent applications, or isn't more secure, or isn't easier to maintain, but because of (1) the aggregate existing training in windows and (2) the installed knowledge base of applications. It would likely cost me between $100,000-$150,000 to switch my 3 person engineering shop to Linux. It's probably worth about $10,000. Until that ratio flips, we'll stay windows.
Because MS is the leader here, and because MS has marketing and mindshare.
Linux is playing a game of catchup even when they're ahead because so few people know about what Linux can do. If linux had a billion dollar advertising budget, thousands of salesdrones, 90% of the installed desktops, hisghschools and colleges "training" the kids in OpenOffice and Firefox, and most portable devices supporting it, then MS would be playing "me too" also.
I'm no big fan of MS, but like it or not they are the one to beat. To win, we must be better in practially every aspect and significantly so in a majority. Linus is not looking to beat MS, it is looking to unseat them. That's a big obstacle to hurdle. Hell, I'm still looking for something to replace the calendaring and contact portions of Outlook that will be multi-user and sync with my portable (which...suprise...is MS based).
Man, linux needs less programmers and more marketing (or at least an American dictionary) if they're ever going to break into the corporate world. Zope? Plone? At least MS can fire somebody over the whole "zune" name.
mass/volume is pretty easy to predict, as is the traction of heavy equipment once you characterize the soil. And I use soil here as an engineering term, not a terrestrial one. For excavation and such, soil science is fairly decent when only the basic conditions of a soil are known. On the moon, there are far fewer ways to create soil thatn there are on earth, so the beginning set of possible conditions is likely to be a bit smaller. Once the basic characteristics are known, models can account for the difference in gravity. Whether I've got 105pcf #57 stone on earth or 17pcf moon gravel is just different factors in an equation. Sure, you have to go back to basics becuase most equations are simplified based on 32.2 ft/s^2, but it's just a little more math.
Making concrete is an issue (cement+aggregate+water=concrete), especially since there is no cement on the moon, and it is fantastically energy intensive to create cement from lime, or CaOH. The moon has about 4-5% CaO, but I'm no chemist, so I don't really know what problems that causes (I suspect just more energy). Give you have cement. And water. You've got lots of aggregate. Concrete curing is really just a hyrdation reaction, and wouldn't really depend much on actual weight of the mix. Plus, without air there's less concern for bubbles. Also, the tension capacity of concrete is never used - that's what the steel is for. Just have to figure out how to make rebar from all the FeO up there.
The coils do need to match up, and there are losses for coils running without a primary load (resistance in the coils themselves, for example). For a really large sheet of coils (there are multiple small coils in the sheet), that could add up, and add a thermal load to the space that might not be insignificant.
There are certainly some interesting applications, but the cost will likely be prohibitive for the "electrified wall/floor" in the foreseeable future. Working in the building industry, I can say for certain that the ability to correctly apply this product in a residential setting would require more care that exists in an entire job crew, including the cabinet, trim, and electricians combined. It's taken 10-15 years to get electrical floor heaters - simple resistance lines - to the point where you can trust a tilesetter to put them in, and they still have a pretty good failure rate (better then 1:100, if I had to guess). I'll admit one of my first thoughts after reading the moveable TV was to embed this in drywall. Then I instantly flashed back to how drywall is hung. Yikes.
Still, it would be nice to eliminate docking stations for all my gadgets, and be able to just drop the cell phone/ipod/pda/whatever onto a surface with embedded powered (desk/nightstand) or get it in close contact with the furniture to keep th charge up.
I am certain that if we skipped immunization of the elderly and infirm in favor of immunizing all children and food service employees, we'd stand a much better chance of containing any outbreak.
Very rare, from what my urologist told me. He went so far as to say if the first post-operative sample was clean, and your wife gets pregnant, she's far more likely to be having an affair than you growing a new, working vas deferens.
But they're on a 5 year upgrade plan, so $1000/5 years is only $200 a year. Besides, this is a marketing company (or something similar) - they're not linux geeks, so the "new" windows has a great cool factor for them.
If the lunar surface is primarily aluminum oxide of some form (not that it is, but that sounds kind of right) then is will be both durable and abrasive. If testing is required to determine life expectancies of both operating equipment and excavation/drilling machinery then they will need to replicate both the particle size, distribution (in terms of seive percentages) and durability/hardness.
Excuse me...I need to go start my RFP paperwork...
I see a lot of posts about how we have far more important things to worry about than space exploration - wars, poverty, famine, global warming, disease - and that we should ignore space and fix these problems first. I've got bad news for you folk - they ain't gonna get fixed if we drop the space program.
Now, being an ex-NASA guy, I feel fully justified in saying that the Administration is not a bastion of efficiency or efficient use of science dollars for science sake. Manned spaceflight will probably never be as cost effective as robotic exploration or remote sensing. Still, it can be a very valuable resource for the inspiration of younger generations to go into science and engineering. Both of those fields are critical to advancement against the world's ills of poverty, famine, globla warming, and disease. Since science doesn't pay as well as non-productive professions like accountancy, law, and real estate sales, we need some way to inspire the next generation to do something other than make enough disposable income to buy the latest iPod. NASA fuels both interest and the work they do has far reaching impact for science (and not just pens that write upside down and expensive mattresses).
What we do need is a real mission and real results. Without that, the popultation is going to see NASA for what it currently is: a rudderless agency spending lots of money to do very little real science. Sadly, with the pork included in its budget, NASA will never garner the excitement and focus it has had in the past. Plus with the contractor mentality it will never have the in-house expertise keep and propogate the corporate knowledge that allows for efficent and consistent advances in aeronautic science.
Right now the NASA beurocracy and the year-to-year funding methodology by congress has doomed the agency to its current fate - mundane and uninspired. I would love to see a rebirth of the agency, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sad to say, the cost of upgrading the machines is trivial in comparison to 5 years of salary for even a low-paid white collar worker. More importantly, the psychological boost of getting new hardware is much more significant than a bonus check that barely breaks 1-2% of your annual salary. Now, I'll agree that most people would have been just as happy with new hardware and a clean XP install, but there's still a little tick you get for getting "the new stuff".
Also, when a potential employee interviews they look around at the equipment - would you take the job with a brand new desktop and 20" LCD monitor, or the one with a 5 year old, smudged beige box and a 17" CRT and an extra $400/yr in salary?
I'm not a big fanboi of MS, but some of their stuff really does work, and the rollout tools have been high on the list for quite some time. If you really hate them, just call this anecdotal evidence and sweep it under the carpet.
I see no naughtyness. Search results are search results. Paid ads are paid ads. We can all tell the difference, and for those a little less intellectually endowed, Google has colored the ad bar and noted it "sponsored link(s)". An ad placed by google has opportunity cost associated with it.
FWIW, a google for "Online Maps" brings up Mapquest in second place. You know who was in first? Multimap.com. Google maps hit the top of the blue bar; Mapquest was the top of the sidebar. Google maps, btw, wasn't in the first two pages of search results. (A Google search for "map" has maps.google.com first, mapquest second, with that order recreated in the blue bar)
Yes, I've heard of the S/93-AOL stuff, but had filed it somewhere inaccessible.
I thought something actually happened this past September on the usenet and I somehow missed it. There are times I'm just too busy to get on and catch up. There was a bit of panic that my source for audio and video on the net might be somehow threatened. Luckily, it's just iTunes that's borked.
Well, he night take this as payback for being supercareful in his answers to the ask-slashdot he did a while ago. He really gave pretty useless answers, to be honest, though in normal/. topics he's a bit more open.
As soon as he mentioned he was council in the summary, I knew this was going to be a useless topic. Who knows, though...maybe he will get a post or two that is relavent.
Depends on the material. To be a witness in engineering matters, you need to be a professional engineer, which takes a minimum of about 8 years if you pass the exams the first time. Oh, sure you can try to pass an an expert witness without a PE, but you may get shot down, as happened recently somewhere in the midwest. Naturally, this varies from state to state. Good money in it, though. A lawyer I work for gave me a hard time about only charging $150/hr last time we worked together.
Oh, you wouldn't believe the free* content I've downloaded and watched in the past month. Good grief there's probably enough to put me behind bars for years.
The amazing thing is that it's just so easy, and I even got a free* box to do it on! There's this website..I think it's okay to link it here that will give you the box that downloads literally tens of thousands of shows every month. It will store them so you can watch them over and over again. They'll even come to your house and set it up for you - in multiple rooms! They use wireless broadband (broadcast, whatever) to send you the files continuously, and you just tell it what you want to record. Unfuckingbelievable, I tell you, and it's all FREE*. Just $48 a month for all the normal free* stuff. Heck for a few bucks more a month you can get soft porn for free*, too (something called skinamax or some such).
Now, they also have some pay services - you can see the "newest" movies for $3-$5, and there's other porn for fee as well, but all the free* stuff. Wow. I hope the authorities don't find these guys out or I'm in big trouble.
*Free, as defined here, just as free goo-tube videos on Verizon phones, or as in monthly audio services. A bit of a stretch of the use of the word, but I'm certainly not paying per program or view as the industry would prefer.
Sorry. Not the Carter is a nerd part - that's a given - but that Ford dying is News for Nerds because he lost to Carter in his only presidential election. That's stretching it. I suppose an extra nerd point is due for the simple trivia that Ford was never on a winning ticket in a presidential election.
That's what popped into my ming reading your post.
Still, you're correct. Paypal is about the last corporation I would trust with my money. I have an account which I use for ebay purposes, and it's liked to a small, lightly used checking account separate from my "real" account. I never pay with instant transfer, always using a CC as an intermediary.
As for OTU numbers - I loved them when I had them. Amex canned their program years ago. Visa/MC don't have a system wide program, and my card of choice - Chase - doesn't offer it. I have a discover card for the business, but that's pretty much only because I hate carrying cash at Sams, and I value my money too much to play Debit-roulette with my bank account (if someone scams my CC#, I want it to be somebody else's money they take, not mine).
I'd use OTU numbers exclusively online if I could - the extra "inconvenience" is trivial, imho. Hell, I'd use OTU numbers for physical transactions if I could.
I heard about this on NPR a couple of weeks ago. The new congress purports to be more open and honest, and c-span is calling them on it. Everybody knew they wouldn't expand coverage. If congress really wanted to open up, they'd put in a bunch of cameras, offer real-time feeds - including votes - to anyone citizen or registered US corporation who wants them, and archive the video footage in a way that could be easily retrieved by any citizen.
My question is: does the Congressional Record include all the conversations on the house floor and in the ante-chambers? That's where the real work gets done, and the real deals are made. What's in the congressional record is just the official words - primped and preened for public consumption.
I agree with another poster (who I was darned close to modding up instead of posting in this thread): If you have nothing to hide, you shoudn't fear offering up access to all of the goings on the congressional chambers.
I work in a small office, and nobody else has a clue about computers. Coming from the corporate world, I'm used to having somebody else with better knowledge to collaborate with - even if it's just a peer who knows different parts of the systems better than I do. Bootstrapping is hard in a vacuum, with limited time. I'm always happy to rant about that!
Well, since the OP is in LA (from the freeways he listed) - I would presume the legal limit is 65 (mph, that is), but the "free flow" of traffic is likely to be closer to 80-85 if there are no other obstructions. So, in reality the 50 the OP mentioned is probably more like 65 - practically standing still by LA standards.
I lived outside of LA for a couple of years, and found that the OP is correct, and it applies somewhat everywhere. There is an "efficient" speed at which 90-95% of interstate highway drivers find comfortable. This varies slightly with terrain and time on the road (California has coined a term - "velocitation" - for the effect), as you get comfortable at increasingly higher speeds while driving, but is generally somewhere between 75 and 90 mph in good weather. The upper limit has a lot to do with road and wind noise, along with the responsiveness of steering of your car at higher speeds.
The problem (yes, I believe it's a problem in this context) is that the speed limit is generally 10-20mph below that limit. Conscientious drivers and the small percentage who are uncomfortable at speed (generally older drivers, but includes tentative inexperienced drivers of all ages) view the limits as a "reason" to drive slower than the flow of traffic. Yes, yes, speed limits are the law...blah, blah, blah. Stay with me for a minute - we're talking physics and human interaction, not legislation right now. Because a majority of drivers are comfortable driving significatnly faster than the limit, they tend to drive at/near the limit of enforcement, or about 7-9mph above the posted limit. A minority will carefully abide by the law, maintaining the speed limit plus or minus a couple of mph. This creates a differential in the traffic flow, and the result is platoons on single (and some double) lane roads, with the platoon leader, aka slow driver, at the head. Yes, they're really called that, according to the USDOT. In multi-lane conditions, this forms a moving blockage, with a net 10-15mph differential. Looking at it as a particle flow problem, and knowing that the cars going around the obstruction will not speed up to equalize the pressure (think Bernoulli's principle), you get a build up of traffic and an eventual blockage / traffic jam.
Trucks can cause horrible traffic jams in hilly terrain. Here in Virginia, I-81 has some hellacious slow-downs due to a two-lane traffic area and some significant grades. Full trucks will drop to 25-40mph on the up hill climbs, and then do 80+ down the next hill. Talk about a recipe for disaster. Add that to the relative inexperience in dense traffic for most of the local residents, and we have a bunch of accidents. It's not the speed, it's the speed differential. Hitting a tractor-trailer at 30mph is just about as deadly as hitting one at 70mph when there's just a guardrail between you and a 50-200' dropoff in the mountains.
OTOH, on the 210 east of Pasadena outside of LA, it's not uncommon to find 85-90mph "traffic flow" with very few incidents of jams or wrecks. Of the two I can remember, both were caused by a driver either falling asleep or drifting into the guardrail (distracted?), both were "one driver" accidents that led to messes. They probably would have caused their damage if they were going 40. One part is that there is a limited flow volume on 4 lanes - lots of space for the slow folks (i.e. anyone going less than 10 over the limit) and everyone else to have their own lanes. Often there wouldn't be but a 4-6mph difference between lanes. Very orderly, few variables.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually did that, and Ubuntu was very nice; I wasn't even bothered by the brown. But there wasn't anything I could use. Oh, sure, I could surf the net. I could even type into a simple document. Of course, I couldn't get to a bunch of the files on my server. OO doesn't play nice with formatting or graphic elements in the .doc format. That's true the other way around, btw. I couldn't access my calendar or contacts, since I'm not aware of an app that reads those parts of an outlook file. I couldn't program my Pronto - that's a win executable only. I couldn't find a program to easily create a DVD from a string of VOBs, which I had created from my TiVo...which reminded me that I didn't have an extraction program for my TiVo written for Linux. I tried Gimp. Yikes. I really don't have the free time to re-learn a photoshop level app. And then there's the apps I use at work, none of which are even close to Linux apps (AutoCAD, AdvanSE, WoodWorks, RetainPro, RAM SBeam). I suppose I could try to play with Wine, but that's another whole set of stuff.
I think linux is ready for young power users who don't have an installed knowledge base of Windows utilities, and for older folks who are too likely to screw things up and don't really know Windows well enough to be comfortable with the standard apps. It may even be good for middle to large corporations where there's money to staff a real IT department that is Linux savvy. Everybody in the middle is, sadly, still better off with windows. Not because Linux isn't better, or doesn't equivalent applications, or isn't more secure, or isn't easier to maintain, but because of (1) the aggregate existing training in windows and (2) the installed knowledge base of applications. It would likely cost me between $100,000-$150,000 to switch my 3 person engineering shop to Linux. It's probably worth about $10,000. Until that ratio flips, we'll stay windows.
Because MS is the leader here, and because MS has marketing and mindshare.
Linux is playing a game of catchup even when they're ahead because so few people know about what Linux can do. If linux had a billion dollar advertising budget, thousands of salesdrones, 90% of the installed desktops, hisghschools and colleges "training" the kids in OpenOffice and Firefox, and most portable devices supporting it, then MS would be playing "me too" also.
I'm no big fan of MS, but like it or not they are the one to beat. To win, we must be better in practially every aspect and significantly so in a majority. Linus is not looking to beat MS, it is looking to unseat them. That's a big obstacle to hurdle. Hell, I'm still looking for something to replace the calendaring and contact portions of Outlook that will be multi-user and sync with my portable (which...suprise...is MS based).
Man, linux needs less programmers and more marketing (or at least an American dictionary) if they're ever going to break into the corporate world. Zope? Plone? At least MS can fire somebody over the whole "zune" name.
Late getting back to /., but here goes:
mass/volume is pretty easy to predict, as is the traction of heavy equipment once you characterize the soil. And I use soil here as an engineering term, not a terrestrial one. For excavation and such, soil science is fairly decent when only the basic conditions of a soil are known. On the moon, there are far fewer ways to create soil thatn there are on earth, so the beginning set of possible conditions is likely to be a bit smaller. Once the basic characteristics are known, models can account for the difference in gravity. Whether I've got 105pcf #57 stone on earth or 17pcf moon gravel is just different factors in an equation. Sure, you have to go back to basics becuase most equations are simplified based on 32.2 ft/s^2, but it's just a little more math.
Making concrete is an issue (cement+aggregate+water=concrete), especially since there is no cement on the moon, and it is fantastically energy intensive to create cement from lime, or CaOH. The moon has about 4-5% CaO, but I'm no chemist, so I don't really know what problems that causes (I suspect just more energy). Give you have cement. And water. You've got lots of aggregate. Concrete curing is really just a hyrdation reaction, and wouldn't really depend much on actual weight of the mix. Plus, without air there's less concern for bubbles. Also, the tension capacity of concrete is never used - that's what the steel is for. Just have to figure out how to make rebar from all the FeO up there.
The coils do need to match up, and there are losses for coils running without a primary load (resistance in the coils themselves, for example). For a really large sheet of coils (there are multiple small coils in the sheet), that could add up, and add a thermal load to the space that might not be insignificant.
There are certainly some interesting applications, but the cost will likely be prohibitive for the "electrified wall/floor" in the foreseeable future. Working in the building industry, I can say for certain that the ability to correctly apply this product in a residential setting would require more care that exists in an entire job crew, including the cabinet, trim, and electricians combined. It's taken 10-15 years to get electrical floor heaters - simple resistance lines - to the point where you can trust a tilesetter to put them in, and they still have a pretty good failure rate (better then 1:100, if I had to guess). I'll admit one of my first thoughts after reading the moveable TV was to embed this in drywall. Then I instantly flashed back to how drywall is hung. Yikes.
Still, it would be nice to eliminate docking stations for all my gadgets, and be able to just drop the cell phone/ipod/pda/whatever onto a surface with embedded powered (desk/nightstand) or get it in close contact with the furniture to keep th charge up.
I am certain that if we skipped immunization of the elderly and infirm in favor of immunizing all children and food service employees, we'd stand a much better chance of containing any outbreak.
Very rare, from what my urologist told me. He went so far as to say if the first post-operative sample was clean, and your wife gets pregnant, she's far more likely to be having an affair than you growing a new, working vas deferens.
But they're on a 5 year upgrade plan, so $1000/5 years is only $200 a year. Besides, this is a marketing company (or something similar) - they're not linux geeks, so the "new" windows has a great cool factor for them.
If the lunar surface is primarily aluminum oxide of some form (not that it is, but that sounds kind of right) then is will be both durable and abrasive. If testing is required to determine life expectancies of both operating equipment and excavation/drilling machinery then they will need to replicate both the particle size, distribution (in terms of seive percentages) and durability/hardness.
Excuse me...I need to go start my RFP paperwork...
I see a lot of posts about how we have far more important things to worry about than space exploration - wars, poverty, famine, global warming, disease - and that we should ignore space and fix these problems first. I've got bad news for you folk - they ain't gonna get fixed if we drop the space program.
Now, being an ex-NASA guy, I feel fully justified in saying that the Administration is not a bastion of efficiency or efficient use of science dollars for science sake. Manned spaceflight will probably never be as cost effective as robotic exploration or remote sensing. Still, it can be a very valuable resource for the inspiration of younger generations to go into science and engineering. Both of those fields are critical to advancement against the world's ills of poverty, famine, globla warming, and disease. Since science doesn't pay as well as non-productive professions like accountancy, law, and real estate sales, we need some way to inspire the next generation to do something other than make enough disposable income to buy the latest iPod. NASA fuels both interest and the work they do has far reaching impact for science (and not just pens that write upside down and expensive mattresses).
What we do need is a real mission and real results. Without that, the popultation is going to see NASA for what it currently is: a rudderless agency spending lots of money to do very little real science. Sadly, with the pork included in its budget, NASA will never garner the excitement and focus it has had in the past. Plus with the contractor mentality it will never have the in-house expertise keep and propogate the corporate knowledge that allows for efficent and consistent advances in aeronautic science.
Right now the NASA beurocracy and the year-to-year funding methodology by congress has doomed the agency to its current fate - mundane and uninspired. I would love to see a rebirth of the agency, but I'm not holding my breath.
Sad to say, the cost of upgrading the machines is trivial in comparison to 5 years of salary for even a low-paid white collar worker. More importantly, the psychological boost of getting new hardware is much more significant than a bonus check that barely breaks 1-2% of your annual salary. Now, I'll agree that most people would have been just as happy with new hardware and a clean XP install, but there's still a little tick you get for getting "the new stuff".
Also, when a potential employee interviews they look around at the equipment - would you take the job with a brand new desktop and 20" LCD monitor, or the one with a 5 year old, smudged beige box and a 17" CRT and an extra $400/yr in salary?
I'm not a big fanboi of MS, but some of their stuff really does work, and the rollout tools have been high on the list for quite some time. If you really hate them, just call this anecdotal evidence and sweep it under the carpet.
I see no naughtyness. Search results are search results. Paid ads are paid ads. We can all tell the difference, and for those a little less intellectually endowed, Google has colored the ad bar and noted it "sponsored link(s)". An ad placed by google has opportunity cost associated with it.
FWIW, a google for "Online Maps" brings up Mapquest in second place. You know who was in first? Multimap.com. Google maps hit the top of the blue bar; Mapquest was the top of the sidebar. Google maps, btw, wasn't in the first two pages of search results. (A Google search for "map" has maps.google.com first, mapquest second, with that order recreated in the blue bar)
No, OP had a senior moment, but some moderator was kind enough to "laugh" at the "joke". ;-)
Yes, I've heard of the S/93-AOL stuff, but had filed it somewhere inaccessible.
I thought something actually happened this past September on the usenet and I somehow missed it. There are times I'm just too busy to get on and catch up. There was a bit of panic that my source for audio and video on the net might be somehow threatened. Luckily, it's just iTunes that's borked.
Well, he night take this as payback for being supercareful in his answers to the ask-slashdot he did a while ago. He really gave pretty useless answers, to be honest, though in normal /. topics he's a bit more open.
As soon as he mentioned he was council in the summary, I knew this was going to be a useless topic. Who knows, though...maybe he will get a post or two that is relavent.
I don't get it. What happend with the usenet in September?
No, we are going to bill him!
What's the going rate for a hundred snarky responses?
Depends on the material. To be a witness in engineering matters, you need to be a professional engineer, which takes a minimum of about 8 years if you pass the exams the first time. Oh, sure you can try to pass an an expert witness without a PE, but you may get shot down, as happened recently somewhere in the midwest. Naturally, this varies from state to state. Good money in it, though. A lawyer I work for gave me a hard time about only charging $150/hr last time we worked together.
Oh, you wouldn't believe the free* content I've downloaded and watched in the past month. Good grief there's probably enough to put me behind bars for years.
The amazing thing is that it's just so easy, and I even got a free* box to do it on! There's this website..I think it's okay to link it here that will give you the box that downloads literally tens of thousands of shows every month. It will store them so you can watch them over and over again. They'll even come to your house and set it up for you - in multiple rooms! They use wireless broadband (broadcast, whatever) to send you the files continuously, and you just tell it what you want to record. Unfuckingbelievable, I tell you, and it's all FREE*. Just $48 a month for all the normal free* stuff. Heck for a few bucks more a month you can get soft porn for free*, too (something called skinamax or some such).
Now, they also have some pay services - you can see the "newest" movies for $3-$5, and there's other porn for fee as well, but all the free* stuff. Wow. I hope the authorities don't find these guys out or I'm in big trouble.
*Free, as defined here, just as free goo-tube videos on Verizon phones, or as in monthly audio services. A bit of a stretch of the use of the word, but I'm certainly not paying per program or view as the industry would prefer.
Sorry. Not the Carter is a nerd part - that's a given - but that Ford dying is News for Nerds because he lost to Carter in his only presidential election. That's stretching it. I suppose an extra nerd point is due for the simple trivia that Ford was never on a winning ticket in a presidential election.
That's what popped into my ming reading your post.
Still, you're correct. Paypal is about the last corporation I would trust with my money. I have an account which I use for ebay purposes, and it's liked to a small, lightly used checking account separate from my "real" account. I never pay with instant transfer, always using a CC as an intermediary.
As for OTU numbers - I loved them when I had them. Amex canned their program years ago. Visa/MC don't have a system wide program, and my card of choice - Chase - doesn't offer it. I have a discover card for the business, but that's pretty much only because I hate carrying cash at Sams, and I value my money too much to play Debit-roulette with my bank account (if someone scams my CC#, I want it to be somebody else's money they take, not mine).
I'd use OTU numbers exclusively online if I could - the extra "inconvenience" is trivial, imho. Hell, I'd use OTU numbers for physical transactions if I could.
I heard about this on NPR a couple of weeks ago. The new congress purports to be more open and honest, and c-span is calling them on it. Everybody knew they wouldn't expand coverage. If congress really wanted to open up, they'd put in a bunch of cameras, offer real-time feeds - including votes - to anyone citizen or registered US corporation who wants them, and archive the video footage in a way that could be easily retrieved by any citizen.
My question is: does the Congressional Record include all the conversations on the house floor and in the ante-chambers? That's where the real work gets done, and the real deals are made. What's in the congressional record is just the official words - primped and preened for public consumption.
I agree with another poster (who I was darned close to modding up instead of posting in this thread): If you have nothing to hide, you shoudn't fear offering up access to all of the goings on the congressional chambers.
Because he was succeeded in office my one of the biggest nerds ever?
I know, it's a stretch, but I'm trying to work with you here.
I never feel silly for long rants. :-)
I work in a small office, and nobody else has a clue about computers. Coming from the corporate world, I'm used to having somebody else with better knowledge to collaborate with - even if it's just a peer who knows different parts of the systems better than I do. Bootstrapping is hard in a vacuum, with limited time. I'm always happy to rant about that!
Well, since the OP is in LA (from the freeways he listed) - I would presume the legal limit is 65 (mph, that is), but the "free flow" of traffic is likely to be closer to 80-85 if there are no other obstructions. So, in reality the 50 the OP mentioned is probably more like 65 - practically standing still by LA standards.
I lived outside of LA for a couple of years, and found that the OP is correct, and it applies somewhat everywhere. There is an "efficient" speed at which 90-95% of interstate highway drivers find comfortable. This varies slightly with terrain and time on the road (California has coined a term - "velocitation" - for the effect), as you get comfortable at increasingly higher speeds while driving, but is generally somewhere between 75 and 90 mph in good weather. The upper limit has a lot to do with road and wind noise, along with the responsiveness of steering of your car at higher speeds.
The problem (yes, I believe it's a problem in this context) is that the speed limit is generally 10-20mph below that limit. Conscientious drivers and the small percentage who are uncomfortable at speed (generally older drivers, but includes tentative inexperienced drivers of all ages) view the limits as a "reason" to drive slower than the flow of traffic. Yes, yes, speed limits are the law...blah, blah, blah. Stay with me for a minute - we're talking physics and human interaction, not legislation right now. Because a majority of drivers are comfortable driving significatnly faster than the limit, they tend to drive at/near the limit of enforcement, or about 7-9mph above the posted limit. A minority will carefully abide by the law, maintaining the speed limit plus or minus a couple of mph. This creates a differential in the traffic flow, and the result is platoons on single (and some double) lane roads, with the platoon leader, aka slow driver, at the head. Yes, they're really called that, according to the USDOT. In multi-lane conditions, this forms a moving blockage, with a net 10-15mph differential. Looking at it as a particle flow problem, and knowing that the cars going around the obstruction will not speed up to equalize the pressure (think Bernoulli's principle), you get a build up of traffic and an eventual blockage / traffic jam.
Trucks can cause horrible traffic jams in hilly terrain. Here in Virginia, I-81 has some hellacious slow-downs due to a two-lane traffic area and some significant grades. Full trucks will drop to 25-40mph on the up hill climbs, and then do 80+ down the next hill. Talk about a recipe for disaster. Add that to the relative inexperience in dense traffic for most of the local residents, and we have a bunch of accidents. It's not the speed, it's the speed differential. Hitting a tractor-trailer at 30mph is just about as deadly as hitting one at 70mph when there's just a guardrail between you and a 50-200' dropoff in the mountains.
OTOH, on the 210 east of Pasadena outside of LA, it's not uncommon to find 85-90mph "traffic flow" with very few incidents of jams or wrecks. Of the two I can remember, both were caused by a driver either falling asleep or drifting into the guardrail (distracted?), both were "one driver" accidents that led to messes. They probably would have caused their damage if they were going 40. One part is that there is a limited flow volume on 4 lanes - lots of space for the slow folks (i.e. anyone going less than 10 over the limit) and everyone else to have their own lanes. Often there wouldn't be but a 4-6mph difference between lanes. Very orderly, few variables.