Sure, Murdoch owns the "sky" in Skype, but you're not reporting on the fact that Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his "we sue over any use of the word 'easy'" wanna-be Virgin operation have laid claim to the "e" in Skype. That just leaves the "p", which, obviously, already belongs to Sean "P Diddy" Combs. But not to worry, the former Skype will be able to Trademark the null set, which is an extraordinarily powerful identity...
As an architect, I can say that you are thinking about this problem exactly how architects and engineers do, and you've identified most of the critical problems. Along with the fact that "falling stuff inside the building" (e.g. filing cabinets and light fixtures) kill building occupants, fire also kills many people in earthquakes. This "more stretchy" steel won't necessarily help with either of these. Most of our systems for limiting the spread of fire (like drywall, spray-on-fireproofing and concrete block interior walls) are very much "not stretchy" and will crack/crumble when the building frame deforms, leaving them useless for limiting the spread of smoke and fire when the shaking stops. This stuff may turn out to be great, but it won't make much of a difference any time soon, and it doesn't sound like it would be particularly "revolutionary."
My father-in-law has a HeartmateII. In planning a family vacation after his recovery, we called the airline we were flying to review the issues with his having the implanted device. Someone took a bunch of notes and forwarded them to some sort of engineering staff at the airline. The response was "It's no problem. He just needs to turn off the device at takeoff and landing." Bwahahahahhah! (In the end, everything went fine, and, no, he didn't shut off his pump at takeoff or landing!)
Sorry to be Captain Safety, but I just want to point out the obvious:
1. Be very careful when using a generator - they produce lots of carbon monoxide and kill several people a year. Don't run them in an attached garage - even with the door open.
2. Only a qualified electrician should make the kind of wiring changes that are required to add a generator to a house electrical system. The building code requirements are complex, but more importantly, the potential for a fire that would burn down your house is very real.
Personally, I'd rather go without electricity for a few days than either die from carbon monoxide poisoning or have my house burn down.
Enough with the doom and gloom - adding a generator to a house electrical system is done frequently and generally isn't exceptionally complicated. It's worth it to hire an experienced, licensed, insured electrical contractor to do it right.
Well, this is now "yesterday's news", but Hey, might as well chuck in my two cents.
I was burglarized a few years ago, and I actually got back some of my stuff! The dolt who robbed me, robbed some other guy who had an 'idiosycratic' CD collection and a database of the discs. The cops didn't do much, so this guy faxed copies of his disc database to every used CD shop in the city, and bingo, a shop called him back with a match. The bonehead burglar had even used his real ID while selling CDs and pawning stuff. I got back two cameras (but not my CDs, laptop, nice video camera, etc., etc.) which he had pawned with his real ID.
I'm not a big fan of recording IDs or waiting periods, but there are real world situations where these can actually make a difference in catching theives and recovering property.
First of all, I want to say that this 'computer generated, human verifiable, if wrong throw it out and start over' system is exactly what I have been advocating over beers for a few years now!
Any way, as long as there are random audits, it doesn't matter that the barcode isn't readable by the voter. The random audits would verify that the barcodes correspond with the human readable text.
When is the last time you put a coin into a water fountain to get water? Like me, I'll bet your answer is 'never'. It costs money to install the plumbing and the fountain. It costs money to maintian the building's plumbing. You could charge for water, but you don't. You have now seen the future of WiFi.
Yes indeed! It is dangerous for us to know where we are. Only the government can be trusted to know where we are at any given time! We should make the US more like those bastions of justice and democracy, Russia and Turkey! In Russia, you can be jailed for having a GPS system, and in Turkey, topo maps are considered military secrets! We have already made our justice system like Pinochet's system of secrect courts and dissappeared people, why not extend that to 'dangerous' information like maps!
USGS DLG format ! ^^^ !
on
Open Maps?
·
· Score: 1
I suspect that the USGS DLG maps are the source of a lot of other maps. The above post does a good job of explaining their limitations, but they are very useful for many, many mapping tasks. The only problem with them is translating the format. I just went ahead and bought a US$180 app that loads the files, lets you view them and will export them in many formats. I used SVG becuase that's what I'm trying to base my map server on. (I need to tie into a database and display search results semi-dynamically, and SVG seems to be the way to go.)
used his University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Engineering degree to play small-stakes poker for a living at small US casinos that don't have house players. From what I heard, he made a decent living and it funded his hang-gliding habit.
Let's face it, most people playing $20 a hand poker out there don't know squat about statistics. This guy said that he could really clean up in the weird variation games where the odds get skewed compared to standard poker.
It's one of the very few activities that completely grabs your focus. And I mean completely. Had a really crappy week at work? Project falling apart? That weekend try being 80' up a cliff and finding that you're out of gear (placing protection) that will fit that narrow finger jam. Work doesn't exist. Poof. Gone.
Hmmm...can't get a good placement here - looks like there's a good spot 10 feet higher. Nope, no good, maybe a bit higher...nope. Where's my last piece? 30' down there? Uh oh.
I just devoted a whopping 20 seconds to looking, and I can't find a good link, but I seem to remember that about a third of the original (D)ARPAnet team were rock climbers.
Out of my climbing buddies, I am a geek who became a (real) architect, my frequent climbing partner is a network admin for a wine importer (and set up/ran the "Iraqi Playing Card" merchant site), an old buddy is a member of the NetBSD team, another old buddy is a software sales guy (hmmm, shaky geek cred there), and on and on.
Rock climbers are very un-jocky. Bulked up (American) football players make lousy climbers - too much weight, little delicacy. Not surprisingly dancers and gymnasts make great climbers. But the vast majority of climbers are non-athletes who fall in love with the movement and challenge of climbing. I have no natural athletic ability, but I have built myself into a half-way decent climber.
I think you're on to something. In the abstract, rock climbing is a form of problem solving. For many climbs, the trick to getting to the top without falling is to figure out the most efficient combination and/or sequence of hand/foot moves becuase, if you hit a difficult strech of the climb near the top (a.k.a. a 'crux') and you are tired from the bottom, then you won't have the endurance to make those hard moves and you fall.
But in reality, you aren't thinking about that sort of thing conciously. With some experience, you non-conciously 'read' the rock and execute a sequence of movement. At it's best, you are 'out of your head' while doing this. Is the geek appeal of climbing primarily the fact that you get 'out of your head' for a while?
Or is it the fact that you actually get to apply the fact that you know that tangent approaches infinity as you near 90 degrees while building anchors?
Certain chapters (e.g. West Virginia) have even advocated banning books they disagree with, as happened with a textbook proposing "Intelligent Design" models of cosmology.
That is factually incorrect. I can not know wether you intentionally lied or are merely ignorant. The ACLU in no way attempted to prohibit the publication or private distribution of any book that promotes the "Intelligent Design" mode of promoting theism. Rather, they have worked to prevent it being 'taught' in public schools along side science. "Intelligent Design" is not science becuase it can not be tested. It is an offshoot of religion, and as such, should not be promoted in public school science texts or classes. (Except, perhaps, in University level psychology classes that discuss pheomenological frameworks?) At issue is the fact that theists are attempting to promote religion through public institutions by presenting this pseudo-theory as comparable to actual cosmological theories.
They also support restricting religious speech in many, many venues, such as student-initiated prayers, spontaneous group events, etc.
Furthermore, the ACLU is not acting to restrict religious speech, per se, in any way. Rather, they are attempting to prevent situations where publicly funded events and facilites are used to promote religion and, in some cases, coerce those who believe differently from the mainstream. Nothing prevents Christians from meeting at a nearby chruch before a football game and having a prayer rally. There is no reason to, immediately before the start of a game, use the stadium PA system to perform a religious ritual, other than to 'stake a claim' on the the proceeding, regardless of the sensitivities of those attending. At issue is the use of the publicly owned equipment. If, at the middle of the second quarter of every game, members of the crowd broke into a vocal prayer that did not use the school's equipment, but was simply spoken aloud, the ACLU would have no problem with that.
Imagine what it would be like for a Christian to move to a town and pay taxes, only to have the Pagan majority in the town use tax dollars to buy and sacrifice a goat on the field before all their home public high school home games. The ACLU would be all over that!
Do a search for Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Reasoning. You operate on level 4 and the ACLU operates on level 5. That's why you are confused that the ACLU both fights the USA-PATRIOT act, which you view as "good" and does other things that you view as "bad". The US constitution doesn't operate on a black/white or good/bad level of reasoning. It seeks to balance many conflicting rights and interests. This confuses the hell out of most Americans, George W. Bush included.
Did you look at the photo on the press release? One word for you: KANJI. Japanese (and similar written languages) have much, much more complex character sets (and much more complex/smaller accent marks) than the Western European character sets. There are kanji that combine three or four root characters and are differentiated from each other by two, three or four little tic marks inside the character!
Also, I've tried to put fairly complex maps on a palm-type device for outdoor recreation uses, and they just don't work well. Higher resolution will help a lot!
Too bad for your idea - Tokyo is insanely safe (at least from my perspective growing up and living in the city center of Chicago). I suspect that you could pass out drunk on the street almost anywhere in Tokyo and wake up hours later with your wallet still in your pocket.
I like SVG enough that I'm putting a lot of hours into a database-->svg-->web thingy. That said, no one is going to use it until IE supports SVG either "out of the box" or with a plug-in that is small and highly reliable. Sadly, SVG isn't going to be part of your grannie's browser for years. At least for what I want to do with it, I'm jousting windmills (but it's fun!)
Remember - we're talking about blocking FOUR Bush nominees. The Republicans blocked something like 50 Clinton nominees.
In contrast to the false impression given by the quote above, more than a dozen, well-qualified Clinton nominees had to wait over 500 days to be confirmed, including nine who waited over 700 days, four who waited over 900 days, two who waited over 1,000 days, and one, Richard Paez, who waited 1,520 days from nomination to confirmation.
I heard an analysis recently of Tyco/Enron/Martha that was along the lines of "Power and success leads to hubris. That hubris leads one to think that they are above the rules or that one thinks that (s)he can get away with things." With the White House, House and Senate in their clutches, there's just a bit of hubris among most of the Republicans.
It also seems important to point out the irony of this kind of illegal activity among members of the JUDICIARY committee.
Finally, even with this secret information, the Republicans still had to stoop to some really sick stuff - remember Protestant Orrin Hatch acusing Catholic Richar Durbin of anti-Catholic prejudice? Or other ultra-whitey Republicans acusing Democrats of racism? Crazy.
This reminds me of Watergate - Nixon was solid going into the election, but he couldn't resist going that extra bit and got into this sort of illegal 'dirty tricks'.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, Murdoch owns the "sky" in Skype, but you're not reporting on the fact that Stelios Haji-Ioannou and his "we sue over any use of the word 'easy'" wanna-be Virgin operation have laid claim to the "e" in Skype. That just leaves the "p", which, obviously, already belongs to Sean "P Diddy" Combs. But not to worry, the former Skype will be able to Trademark the null set, which is an extraordinarily powerful identity...
So he's "Emeritus Professor of Spanish at Utah State University" - in other words, this study was done by Senior Chang Sr.!
As an architect, I can say that you are thinking about this problem exactly how architects and engineers do, and you've identified most of the critical problems. Along with the fact that "falling stuff inside the building" (e.g. filing cabinets and light fixtures) kill building occupants, fire also kills many people in earthquakes. This "more stretchy" steel won't necessarily help with either of these. Most of our systems for limiting the spread of fire (like drywall, spray-on-fireproofing and concrete block interior walls) are very much "not stretchy" and will crack/crumble when the building frame deforms, leaving them useless for limiting the spread of smoke and fire when the shaking stops. This stuff may turn out to be great, but it won't make much of a difference any time soon, and it doesn't sound like it would be particularly "revolutionary."
My father-in-law has a HeartmateII. In planning a family vacation after his recovery, we called the airline we were flying to review the issues with his having the implanted device. Someone took a bunch of notes and forwarded them to some sort of engineering staff at the airline. The response was "It's no problem. He just needs to turn off the device at takeoff and landing." Bwahahahahhah! (In the end, everything went fine, and, no, he didn't shut off his pump at takeoff or landing!)
Hi! It looks like you're trying to speak English. I'm Clippy for English Language the! Help can I how?
Sorry to be Captain Safety, but I just want to point out the obvious: 1. Be very careful when using a generator - they produce lots of carbon monoxide and kill several people a year. Don't run them in an attached garage - even with the door open. 2. Only a qualified electrician should make the kind of wiring changes that are required to add a generator to a house electrical system. The building code requirements are complex, but more importantly, the potential for a fire that would burn down your house is very real. Personally, I'd rather go without electricity for a few days than either die from carbon monoxide poisoning or have my house burn down. Enough with the doom and gloom - adding a generator to a house electrical system is done frequently and generally isn't exceptionally complicated. It's worth it to hire an experienced, licensed, insured electrical contractor to do it right.
I was burglarized a few years ago, and I actually got back some of my stuff! The dolt who robbed me, robbed some other guy who had an 'idiosycratic' CD collection and a database of the discs. The cops didn't do much, so this guy faxed copies of his disc database to every used CD shop in the city, and bingo, a shop called him back with a match. The bonehead burglar had even used his real ID while selling CDs and pawning stuff. I got back two cameras (but not my CDs, laptop, nice video camera, etc., etc.) which he had pawned with his real ID.
I'm not a big fan of recording IDs or waiting periods, but there are real world situations where these can actually make a difference in catching theives and recovering property.
Any way, as long as there are random audits, it doesn't matter that the barcode isn't readable by the voter. The random audits would verify that the barcodes correspond with the human readable text.
When is the last time you put a coin into a water fountain to get water? Like me, I'll bet your answer is 'never'. It costs money to install the plumbing and the fountain. It costs money to maintian the building's plumbing. You could charge for water, but you don't. You have now seen the future of WiFi.
Yes indeed! It is dangerous for us to know where we are. Only the government can be trusted to know where we are at any given time! We should make the US more like those bastions of justice and democracy, Russia and Turkey! In Russia, you can be jailed for having a GPS system, and in Turkey, topo maps are considered military secrets! We have already made our justice system like Pinochet's system of secrect courts and dissappeared people, why not extend that to 'dangerous' information like maps!
I suspect that the USGS DLG maps are the source of a lot of other maps. The above post does a good job of explaining their limitations, but they are very useful for many, many mapping tasks. The only problem with them is translating the format. I just went ahead and bought a US$180 app that loads the files, lets you view them and will export them in many formats. I used SVG becuase that's what I'm trying to base my map server on. (I need to tie into a database and display search results semi-dynamically, and SVG seems to be the way to go.)
Let's face it, most people playing $20 a hand poker out there don't know squat about statistics. This guy said that he could really clean up in the weird variation games where the odds get skewed compared to standard poker.
Hmmm...can't get a good placement here - looks like there's a good spot 10 feet higher. Nope, no good, maybe a bit higher...nope. Where's my last piece? 30' down there? Uh oh.
Run it to the anchors!
(Or be smart and don't take my advice!)
Out of my climbing buddies, I am a geek who became a (real) architect, my frequent climbing partner is a network admin for a wine importer (and set up/ran the "Iraqi Playing Card" merchant site), an old buddy is a member of the NetBSD team, another old buddy is a software sales guy (hmmm, shaky geek cred there), and on and on.
Rock climbers are very un-jocky. Bulked up (American) football players make lousy climbers - too much weight, little delicacy. Not surprisingly dancers and gymnasts make great climbers. But the vast majority of climbers are non-athletes who fall in love with the movement and challenge of climbing. I have no natural athletic ability, but I have built myself into a half-way decent climber.
But in reality, you aren't thinking about that sort of thing conciously. With some experience, you non-conciously 'read' the rock and execute a sequence of movement. At it's best, you are 'out of your head' while doing this. Is the geek appeal of climbing primarily the fact that you get 'out of your head' for a while?
Or is it the fact that you actually get to apply the fact that you know that tangent approaches infinity as you near 90 degrees while building anchors?
That is factually incorrect. I can not know wether you intentionally lied or are merely ignorant. The ACLU in no way attempted to prohibit the publication or private distribution of any book that promotes the "Intelligent Design" mode of promoting theism. Rather, they have worked to prevent it being 'taught' in public schools along side science. "Intelligent Design" is not science becuase it can not be tested. It is an offshoot of religion, and as such, should not be promoted in public school science texts or classes. (Except, perhaps, in University level psychology classes that discuss pheomenological frameworks?) At issue is the fact that theists are attempting to promote religion through public institutions by presenting this pseudo-theory as comparable to actual cosmological theories.
They also support restricting religious speech in many, many venues, such as student-initiated prayers, spontaneous group events, etc.
Furthermore, the ACLU is not acting to restrict religious speech, per se, in any way. Rather, they are attempting to prevent situations where publicly funded events and facilites are used to promote religion and, in some cases, coerce those who believe differently from the mainstream. Nothing prevents Christians from meeting at a nearby chruch before a football game and having a prayer rally. There is no reason to, immediately before the start of a game, use the stadium PA system to perform a religious ritual, other than to 'stake a claim' on the the proceeding, regardless of the sensitivities of those attending. At issue is the use of the publicly owned equipment. If, at the middle of the second quarter of every game, members of the crowd broke into a vocal prayer that did not use the school's equipment, but was simply spoken aloud, the ACLU would have no problem with that.
Imagine what it would be like for a Christian to move to a town and pay taxes, only to have the Pagan majority in the town use tax dollars to buy and sacrifice a goat on the field before all their home public high school home games. The ACLU would be all over that!
Do a search for Kohlberg's Levels of Moral Reasoning. You operate on level 4 and the ACLU operates on level 5. That's why you are confused that the ACLU both fights the USA-PATRIOT act, which you view as "good" and does other things that you view as "bad". The US constitution doesn't operate on a black/white or good/bad level of reasoning. It seeks to balance many conflicting rights and interests. This confuses the hell out of most Americans, George W. Bush included.
Did you look at the photo on the press release? One word for you: KANJI. Japanese (and similar written languages) have much, much more complex character sets (and much more complex/smaller accent marks) than the Western European character sets. There are kanji that combine three or four root characters and are differentiated from each other by two, three or four little tic marks inside the character! Also, I've tried to put fairly complex maps on a palm-type device for outdoor recreation uses, and they just don't work well. Higher resolution will help a lot!
Too bad for your idea - Tokyo is insanely safe (at least from my perspective growing up and living in the city center of Chicago). I suspect that you could pass out drunk on the street almost anywhere in Tokyo and wake up hours later with your wallet still in your pocket.
I like SVG enough that I'm putting a lot of hours into a database-->svg-->web thingy. That said, no one is going to use it until IE supports SVG either "out of the box" or with a plug-in that is small and highly reliable. Sadly, SVG isn't going to be part of your grannie's browser for years. At least for what I want to do with it, I'm jousting windmills (but it's fun!)
The above post hits all the major points - good stuff!
In contrast to the false impression given by the quote above, more than a dozen, well-qualified Clinton nominees had to wait over 500 days to be confirmed, including nine who waited over 700 days, four who waited over 900 days, two who waited over 1,000 days, and one, Richard Paez, who waited 1,520 days from nomination to confirmation.
No, of course (s)he can't. Just like the lie of 'liberal media bias' can't be proven.
It also seems important to point out the irony of this kind of illegal activity among members of the JUDICIARY committee.
Finally, even with this secret information, the Republicans still had to stoop to some really sick stuff - remember Protestant Orrin Hatch acusing Catholic Richar Durbin of anti-Catholic prejudice? Or other ultra-whitey Republicans acusing Democrats of racism? Crazy. This reminds me of Watergate - Nixon was solid going into the election, but he couldn't resist going that extra bit and got into this sort of illegal 'dirty tricks'.
Because it's a Nozomi Express Probe, I can't use my JRPass on it!