It is my understanding that if you put high-octane fuel in a car that doesn't require it the fuel won't burn as completely. This leads to extra pollution and poorer performance. Thus, high-octane fuel can be "worse" in some circumstances.
It seems you're not looking at the article either.:)
From the first paragraph of the article:
A recent global wave of legislation is compelling government agencies, and in some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free software unless proprietary software is the only feasible option.
And further on in the article:
The cradle of the new wave of laws mandating free software appears to be Brazil, where four cities--Amparo, Solonopole, Ribeirao Pires and Recife--have passed laws giving preference to or requiring the use of "software libre." Other municipalities, states and the national government have mulled similar legislation....
Elsewhere around the globe, Florence in June passed a motion mandating the use of "software libero" when feasible. A handful of smaller Italian municipalities, including Pavia, have passed similar motions.
This isn't about restricting the freedom of an individual to use whatever software they want. It is about government setting policies for its agencies, just like any company is free to dictate what software is used within the company.
Interestingly RMS has this to say about the recent wave of new laws:
Activists and programmers, while they welcome the free-software-only initiatives, say they're holding out for more sweeping legal protections for their work.
"These laws are not the kind of help we most ask for from governments," said Stallman. "What we ask is that they not interfere with us with things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with software patents, with prohibitions on reverse engineering that enable companies like Microsoft to make proprietary data formats and prohibit our work. Those are the main obstacles to satisfying the software needs of humanity."
It seems that he partially agrees with you. At least this isn't something that he is actively pushing for. All he wants is the freedom to produce software. Seems reasonable, doesn't it?
They're a huge pain to deal with - we've had a bunch spontaneously die. Apparently the earlier boards were more sensitive to pressure and things like that, and they just gave up on life as a result.
Here is my understanding of the situation. The internals of the 4758 are wrapped in paper that has a grid of conduting ink inside it. If any change in the conductivity of the ink is detected the 4758 is zeroed. So if someone manages to stick a logic probe thorugh the epoxy that seals the box, piercing the paper will zero the memory.
The supplier of this wrapper intially used ink that was past the expiration date. It degraded after manufacture and the boards detected this as an intrusion attempt. This has been fixed now.
Shipping the boards is also a pain. I think they are made in Italy and the changes that occur in temperature and pressure while they are in transit used to cause them to zero.
As I understand it Brazil in not obligated to honor patents that were granted prior to their entry to the WTO. I think this happened in 1996 or 1997.
They honor patents on new drugs but on the older ones they have figured out a great way to get them for cheap:
They reverse engineer the drug.
They figure out how much it would cost them to manufacture it themselves.
They approach the drug companies and say, "We can make this drug for $x. We are not obligated to honor the patent. How much are you willing to sell it to us for?"
Drug companies figure they can either sell the drug to them for cheap and still make a profit or lose the market.
So now Brazil is either buying the drug from the drug company for cheaper than they would otherwise be or they are making it themselves.
They can't do it on drugs that were patented since they joined the WTO or they will get kick out. This strategy might come back to haunt them when the drug companies decide to jack up prices for Brazil for new drugs in order to get back at them.
While living in Brazil I often wondered whether alcohol-based fuel was really cleaner. Instead of using corn (as we try to in the USA) they use cane sugar to produce the alcohol.
Burning the cane field is part of the harvesting process. It removes the leaves making the cane easier to handle. It also covers everything within a mile in ashes. It was always a joy to come home and find my laundry on the line covered in soot.
Does anyone know how polluting it is to burn the fields?
As a side note, many Brazilians that I met felt that alcohol-powered cars were inferior. They were VERY hard (if not impossible) to start when it was cold (not very often where I was) and the exhaust smelled like a frat party.
With the revival of missle defense and renewed interested in destroying the environment I think that many of my favorite strips from Bloom County are as relevant now as in the 1980s.
Certainly, there's a huge motivation to studying it, especially if it can be harnessed as easily as magnetism. How much does a Space Shuttle booster tank cost to fill?
The guys at Thiokol tell me that each solid rocket booster costs $20 million make (without fuel) and another $20 million to fill up with rocket fuel. Through in the fact that each launch uses two of them and the segments are only designed for about 20 uses, though I am told that they usually only last for 8-13 times.
In 1987 in Goiania, Brazil. Four people died quickly and the long term effects are still not known. It is considered the second worst nuclear disaster ever, yet almost nobody seems to have heard about it.
Are we to assume there's other evidence? Like, if they find the illegal stuff in my possesion... Ah well then, that's another matter, isn't it?
That is exactly my point. The cash will lead them to you and give them a cause for further investigation. The cash alone won't get you convicted. That isn't what I am saying. It will however lead to your investigation, which wouldn't have happened without it.
Frankly, I would be worrying a lot more about the cameras in Tampa Bay
Are you worried about the cameras in Tampa Bay? You could just argue that the person on the camera buying the drugs just "looks like you". Of course when they bring out the evidence from the cameras and the ATM machine together suddenly you can't argue it away quite so easily. A jury of your peers wouldn't need to deliberate for 15 minutes with both pieces of evidence together. With either one alone and a good lawyer you'd get off.
What percentage of $100 bills do you think get spent at swap meets? Also, if legitimate bills had RFID tags in them, wouldn't you want to be able to read them at your swap meet to ensure that they are real bills? The bank you try to deposit them in sure will.
I would argue that the vast majority of $100 bills that are used in legitimate transactions get withdrawn from a bank, spend some time in a wallet, and then are spent at a store and sent right back to a bank. Remember, you will NEVER get a $100 back as change at a store.
Besides, for tracking purposes it doesn't matter if 10% of the bills go through someone else's hands before being spent. "They" are getting the aggregate data they want anyhow.
Anyhow they could timestamp the RFID tag when you withdraw the money from the bank and then if the cops bust some drug dealer with it the next day they can be pretty sure that you are the one that spent it with the drug dealer. Even if they don't charge you with anything you are likely to enter into the investigation in some way. Now if the bills are found 30 days after you withdrew them the connection gets a lot easier to argue away.
In any case, doesn't the possibility of this bother you? Are you going to "argue away" a large database keeping track of all the large transactions you've ever made?
Let's say that you withdraw several $100 bills from the ATM and use them to buy cocaine. A day later your dealer gets busted and still has the $100 bills you gave him. Do you think that can't be traced?
Also, I would guess that this sort of technology would initially be used only on $100 bills, and maybe $50 bills. Have you ever received a $100 bill as change? You never have, since it is the largest bill available. So basically you get a $100 bill from the ATM, spend it at the store, they take it to the bank, somebody else spends it at the store, and it gets taken to the bank again. If you start paying cash to individuals, that money will get tracked when they deposit/spend/get caught with it as in the example above. So as long as nobody ever goes to the store or the bank you're ok.
Maybe I'm just too PC suddenly, but you have a good point. Yes, Hitler was evil. In fact, he seems to have become the reference point for evil. All the same, how wonderful are we when we think that running around shooting WWII Germans is OK? I'm not saying it should be banned, just that it is something that you should think about.
My sources tell me that the MX and Peacekeeper are the same thing. Name was changed since MX sounds very vicious.
Agreed though that the shockwave is great. Also nifty was the prototype motor fired off for the airforce last fall. Same basic size as the PK but packed even more punch.
Yeah, a night firing would be better. I saw the last one on the news and wished I had known about it. I saw two or three daytime firings during the last year. Actually, the Peacekeeper test firings are the ones to see. They only last about half as long but pack a lot more punch.
When I was up there plenty of people talked about the M36 accident. The guy who took us on the tour was especially descriptive. Since M597 was on the military side of the plant it didn't get discussed as much.
There will be a static test firing of a shuttle motor at the Thiokol plant on Thursday, May 24, 2001 at 1 pm. The plant is located about 23 miles west of Brigham City, Utah. These are really fun to see, since the motor is sitting there only about 1/2 mile away for the entire 123.4 second burn time. It gives you a real feel for the amount of power it takes to put the shuttle up.
On the subject of paperwork:
I just spent the last year contracted out to Thiokol. They make the reusable solid rocket motors for the shuttle. I did the editor for their new documentation system that is getting finished up. What they told me was that in the old days when they shipped a motor to NASA they shipped an equivalent VOLUME in paperwork. It was literally a trainload of paper. They have to document who did EVERYTHING and who inspected what and any deviations from normal procedure.
They have been sending electronic documents for about six years now but are migrating to a new system. The new documents are XML and the editor is written in Java. You would think that a bunch of instructions with checkpoints and buyoffs would be a pretty simple application but they go way beyound that. The documents are incredibly complex and powerful. Luckily the new system is going to be a lot easier to use than the old one.
The new system should go into production this summer. It will make the job of creating, maintaining, and keeping track of so much documentation much easier.
You have a great point. One thing to keep in mind though is the issue raised by ESR in this Slashdot article. Unfortunately the link from the article to ESR's actual comments appears to be dead.
Here's a very quick summary:
The hidden agenda of CSS is to prevent who can make a DVD player.
Aside from the above article this never seems to get mentioned.
Actually the IBM lab at Santa Teresa (now called the Silicon Valley lab) uses the heat from the one-acre computer room to heat the rest of the lab, which is eight four story towers.
I believe that the system actually produces less heat than it used to (the price of progress I guess) and they have had to supplement the heat it puts out with an actual heating system in the winter.
http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml lists the stories with the most comments. The #1 story seems to be mostly automated junk comments, but the Co$ story is in the top ten.
In the article the Iomega guy spends most of his time whining that Utah politicians don't seek him out for advice enough. Most of the article has nothing to do with the lifestyle in Utah.
The local liquor laws are silly, but mostly just take some getting used to. It isn't as if Utah is a 'dry' state. I think that those who aren't members of the LDS church would worry more about simply being surrounded by Moromons than about the liquor laws in particular.
Utah has a lot to offer to offset all the strangeness if you are into skiing, hiking, mountain biking, or rock climbing. However if you like big cities, or can't stand the lack of diversity, then Utah isn't for you.
The problem wasn't the ratings. It was one of the top ten shows of the season, and the most popular new show. The expense of the show is what killed it at about $1,000,000 per episode.
Wanting to capitalize on the popularity of the show without spending money is what led us to Galatica 1980, which should be forgotten.
Slashdot Mirror
It is my understanding that if you put high-octane fuel in a car that doesn't require it the fuel won't burn as completely. This leads to extra pollution and poorer performance. Thus, high-octane fuel can be "worse" in some circumstances.
It seems you're not looking at the article either. :)
From the first paragraph of the article:
A recent global wave of legislation is compelling government agencies, and in some cases government-owned companies, to use open-source or free software unless proprietary software is the only feasible option.
And further on in the article:
The cradle of the new wave of laws mandating free software appears to be Brazil, where four cities--Amparo, Solonopole, Ribeirao Pires and Recife--have passed laws giving preference to or requiring the use of "software libre." Other municipalities, states and the national government have mulled similar legislation....
Elsewhere around the globe, Florence in June passed a motion mandating the use of "software libero" when feasible. A handful of smaller Italian municipalities, including Pavia, have passed similar motions. This isn't about restricting the freedom of an individual to use whatever software they want. It is about government setting policies for its agencies, just like any company is free to dictate what software is used within the company.
Interestingly RMS has this to say about the recent wave of new laws:
Activists and programmers, while they welcome the free-software-only initiatives, say they're holding out for more sweeping legal protections for their work.
"These laws are not the kind of help we most ask for from governments," said Stallman. "What we ask is that they not interfere with us with things like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, with software patents, with prohibitions on reverse engineering that enable companies like Microsoft to make proprietary data formats and prohibit our work. Those are the main obstacles to satisfying the software needs of humanity."
It seems that he partially agrees with you. At least this isn't something that he is actively pushing for. All he wants is the freedom to produce software. Seems reasonable, doesn't it?
Here is my understanding of the situation. The internals of the 4758 are wrapped in paper that has a grid of conduting ink inside it. If any change in the conductivity of the ink is detected the 4758 is zeroed. So if someone manages to stick a logic probe thorugh the epoxy that seals the box, piercing the paper will zero the memory.
The supplier of this wrapper intially used ink that was past the expiration date. It degraded after manufacture and the boards detected this as an intrusion attempt. This has been fixed now.
Shipping the boards is also a pain. I think they are made in Italy and the changes that occur in temperature and pressure while they are in transit used to cause them to zero.
They honor patents on new drugs but on the older ones they have figured out a great way to get them for cheap:
- They reverse engineer the drug.
- They figure out how much it would cost them to manufacture it themselves.
- They approach the drug companies and say, "We can make this drug for $x. We are not obligated to honor the patent. How much are you willing to sell it to us for?"
- Drug companies figure they can either sell the drug to them for cheap and still make a profit or lose the market.
- So now Brazil is either buying the drug from the drug company for cheaper than they would otherwise be or they are making it themselves.
They can't do it on drugs that were patented since they joined the WTO or they will get kick out. This strategy might come back to haunt them when the drug companies decide to jack up prices for Brazil for new drugs in order to get back at them.While living in Brazil I often wondered whether alcohol-based fuel was really cleaner. Instead of using corn (as we try to in the USA) they use cane sugar to produce the alcohol.
Burning the cane field is part of the harvesting process. It removes the leaves making the cane easier to handle. It also covers everything within a mile in ashes. It was always a joy to come home and find my laundry on the line covered in soot.
Does anyone know how polluting it is to burn the fields?
As a side note, many Brazilians that I met felt that alcohol-powered cars were inferior. They were VERY hard (if not impossible) to start when it was cold (not very often where I was) and the exhaust smelled like a frat party.
GW thinks he is Ronald Reagan.
VisualAge for Java takes a few days to get used to, but you'll never go back.
Having the version control tightly integrated and finely grained is sooooo nice.
Disclaimer: I am employeed by IBM.
You are right, and CNet has posted a correction here.
Final upgrade to buggy version 6
The release isn't a beta. The article itself mentions that the beta came out in June. Strange that MSNBC would miss a tiny detail like that. :)
The guys at Thiokol tell me that each solid rocket booster costs $20 million make (without fuel) and another $20 million to fill up with rocket fuel. Through in the fact that each launch uses two of them and the segments are only designed for about 20 uses, though I am told that they usually only last for 8-13 times.
Google results about the accident
"Battery Dead" works well on people who have just bought a phone and don't understand the battery meter yet.
That is exactly my point. The cash will lead them to you and give them a cause for further investigation. The cash alone won't get you convicted. That isn't what I am saying. It will however lead to your investigation, which wouldn't have happened without it.
Frankly, I would be worrying a lot more about the cameras in Tampa Bay
Are you worried about the cameras in Tampa Bay? You could just argue that the person on the camera buying the drugs just "looks like you". Of course when they bring out the evidence from the cameras and the ATM machine together suddenly you can't argue it away quite so easily. A jury of your peers wouldn't need to deliberate for 15 minutes with both pieces of evidence together. With either one alone and a good lawyer you'd get off.
What percentage of $100 bills do you think get spent at swap meets? Also, if legitimate bills had RFID tags in them, wouldn't you want to be able to read them at your swap meet to ensure that they are real bills? The bank you try to deposit them in sure will.
I would argue that the vast majority of $100 bills that are used in legitimate transactions get withdrawn from a bank, spend some time in a wallet, and then are spent at a store and sent right back to a bank. Remember, you will NEVER get a $100 back as change at a store.
Besides, for tracking purposes it doesn't matter if 10% of the bills go through someone else's hands before being spent. "They" are getting the aggregate data they want anyhow.
Anyhow they could timestamp the RFID tag when you withdraw the money from the bank and then if the cops bust some drug dealer with it the next day they can be pretty sure that you are the one that spent it with the drug dealer. Even if they don't charge you with anything you are likely to enter into the investigation in some way. Now if the bills are found 30 days after you withdrew them the connection gets a lot easier to argue away.
In any case, doesn't the possibility of this bother you? Are you going to "argue away" a large database keeping track of all the large transactions you've ever made?
You might be missing something...
Let's say that you withdraw several $100 bills from the ATM and use them to buy cocaine. A day later your dealer gets busted and still has the $100 bills you gave him. Do you think that can't be traced?
Also, I would guess that this sort of technology would initially be used only on $100 bills, and maybe $50 bills. Have you ever received a $100 bill as change? You never have, since it is the largest bill available. So basically you get a $100 bill from the ATM, spend it at the store, they take it to the bank, somebody else spends it at the store, and it gets taken to the bank again. If you start paying cash to individuals, that money will get tracked when they deposit/spend/get caught with it as in the example above. So as long as nobody ever goes to the store or the bank you're ok.
So just buy a Faraday cage wallet and you'll be OK, right?
Maybe I'm just too PC suddenly, but you have a good point. Yes, Hitler was evil. In fact, he seems to have become the reference point for evil. All the same, how wonderful are we when we think that running around shooting WWII Germans is OK? I'm not saying it should be banned, just that it is something that you should think about.
My sources tell me that the MX and Peacekeeper are the same thing. Name was changed since MX sounds very vicious. Agreed though that the shockwave is great. Also nifty was the prototype motor fired off for the airforce last fall. Same basic size as the PK but packed even more punch.
Yeah, a night firing would be better. I saw the last one on the news and wished I had known about it. I saw two or three daytime firings during the last year. Actually, the Peacekeeper test firings are the ones to see. They only last about half as long but pack a lot more punch. When I was up there plenty of people talked about the M36 accident. The guy who took us on the tour was especially descriptive. Since M597 was on the military side of the plant it didn't get discussed as much.
There will be a static test firing of a shuttle motor at the Thiokol plant on Thursday, May 24, 2001 at 1 pm. The plant is located about 23 miles west of Brigham City, Utah. These are really fun to see, since the motor is sitting there only about 1/2 mile away for the entire 123.4 second burn time. It gives you a real feel for the amount of power it takes to put the shuttle up.
On the subject of paperwork:
I just spent the last year contracted out to Thiokol. They make the reusable solid rocket motors for the shuttle. I did the editor for their new documentation system that is getting finished up. What they told me was that in the old days when they shipped a motor to NASA they shipped an equivalent VOLUME in paperwork. It was literally a trainload of paper. They have to document who did EVERYTHING and who inspected what and any deviations from normal procedure.
They have been sending electronic documents for about six years now but are migrating to a new system. The new documents are XML and the editor is written in Java. You would think that a bunch of instructions with checkpoints and buyoffs would be a pretty simple application but they go way beyound that. The documents are incredibly complex and powerful. Luckily the new system is going to be a lot easier to use than the old one.
The new system should go into production this summer. It will make the job of creating, maintaining, and keeping track of so much documentation much easier.
Here's a very quick summary:
The hidden agenda of CSS is to prevent who can make a DVD player.
Aside from the above article this never seems to get mentioned.
Actually the IBM lab at Santa Teresa (now called the Silicon Valley lab) uses the heat from the one-acre computer room to heat the rest of the lab, which is eight four story towers.
I believe that the system actually produces less heat than it used to (the price of progress I guess) and they have had to supplement the heat it puts out with an actual heating system in the winter.
http://slashdot.org/hof.shtml lists the stories with the most comments. The #1 story seems to be mostly automated junk comments, but the Co$ story is in the top ten.
The local liquor laws are silly, but mostly just take some getting used to. It isn't as if Utah is a 'dry' state. I think that those who aren't members of the LDS church would worry more about simply being surrounded by Moromons than about the liquor laws in particular.
Utah has a lot to offer to offset all the strangeness if you are into skiing, hiking, mountain biking, or rock climbing. However if you like big cities, or can't stand the lack of diversity, then Utah isn't for you.
The problem wasn't the ratings. It was one of the top ten shows of the season, and the most popular new show. The expense of the show is what killed it at about $1,000,000 per episode. Wanting to capitalize on the popularity of the show without spending money is what led us to Galatica 1980, which should be forgotten.