Everyone seems to state that they didn't know how big this explosion was going to be. I strongly doubt that. Ammonium Nitrate is a commonly used explosive so the size of boom is well known.
I had the good fortune of witnessing the disposal of a 39,000 lb solid rocket engine last summer (a considerably larger boom than 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate) and the entire morning the demolition crew was monitoring the atmospheric conditions to guarantee that the shock wave wouldn't be reflected into Salt Lake City. It seems that in a previous disposal the atmospheric conditions were such that the shock wave from the explosion was reflected over 20 miles into the city where it too broke some windows.
This would seem to be a similar case. The size of the explosion would have been well known, however the technicians setting up the explosion may not have been aware of how the atmosphere could propagate the shock wave of a detonation of this scale.
Different air temperatures, or wind directions at the time of the detonation could easily have made this a non-issue.
Someone needs to take the crack pipe away from these guys. Making this crossing with a solar boat is a novel idea, but is is far from efficient, or even reasonable, especially at the slow speeds they plan to attain.
Sailing catamarans have been averaging over 20 knots on the open ocean for more than a decade. small sailing boats like Catalina 22's can travel at 5 or 6 knots (certainly not in the open ocean of course), but larger ocean going sailing (monohul) vessels go much faster these days.
For truly cutting edge clean and pure boat technology, check out the Hydroptere A hydroplaning sailing trimaran capable of over 45 knots!
Solar is fine for charging batteries for the electronics on the boat, but why try to propel a boat with it when the proven centuries old technology of sailing is still cheaper, cleaner, faster, and more efficient.
When a solar boat can make that crossing averaging more than 30 knots, I'll consider that to be news worthy. Until then, it is just a silly publicity stunt.
For the average ludite using windows and IE it is already one giant marketing tool.
I don't know how many windows machines that I've seen where the user is bombarded with popup adds, IM spam, and plain old email junk for just about everything under the sun. Having it built into the OS just seems to bypass (or augment) the third party groups (bastards) that are doing it already.
I think for the average user, there would be no noticeable change.
Lets have a look at this from a meat space point of view:
If I live in Tennessee and am hired by a New York company to build a storage unit in Tennessee, am I expected to pay New York state income tax because the company that is paying me is in New York?... NO! if this was the case just about every construction worker in the country would owe taxes to some foreign state.
Well o.k. maybe the argument could be made that the telecommuter's work is actually being put to use in New York...
If I live in Tennessee and am hired by a New York company to build modules in Tennessee that will be transported to and installed in a new building being built in New York, am I expected to pay New York state income tax?
How about if I'm required to attend a safety meeting once a month in New York? am I then required to pay New York income tax?
Basically this whole taxation of out of state workers that perform work out of state sounds like complete bullshit to me.
If I am in state x performing work in state x it shouldn't matter where paying company y is. I owe taxes in state x not whatever state company y may have a presence in.
When we started with computers, GUI didn't even exist, and it was rather simple to peck in a hello world or guess my number program in a couple of lines of Basic.
Now GUI is the norm, and only the "Geeks" have a use for text based interfaces.
So I say abandon any attempt at teaching anyone new to programming anything that is going to yield a command line program (at the onset at least). The results will be anti-climactic and discouraging at best.
I would start off with something like REALbasic which can very easily create those same hello world or guess my number type games only with a new GUI face. And the amount of code that you have to type still remains about the same. REALbasic has the added bonus that it is an object oriented language that can be used to teach techniques that will transfer to other languages in the future.
You don't want to throw a kid who has never seen a command line in his life into a situation where the product of his efforts is only usable in this foreign environment. Get him up and running in an environment that is familiar, and show him how easy it is to create useful tools for that environment.
How much more classic can you get (I mean besides maybe light)
As a kids rocks (and not the damn pet kind either) held quite a lot of our attention. We used them for everything from ammo to structural members of the dams we built over the streams of water running down the street. They were easy to come by and more durable than either legos or erector sets.
When we discovered that they came in house sized and larger models we were really hooked. We'd spend all day just trying to climb to the top. And after that the smaller versions didn't maintain nearly as much of our interest.
Now that I am an adult (by some standards) and have a child of my own (she'll be ~7 months old at Xmas) I'll be introducing her to the joy rocks have to offer. She'll be getting a trainer rock. Through the wonders of science, some genius has come up with a toddelerized inflatable rock wall that'll be more appealing to the wife than planting a full pitch sized piece of granite in the back yard.
The SkyFi and XM PCR have been hacked for digital out. you can buy the kit for the PCR as either a toslink http://www.myradiostore.us/parts-accessor ies/xmpcr -toslink-digital-output-board.html or coaxial http://www.myradiostore.us/parts-accessor ies/xmpcr -coaxial-digital-output-board.html
the SkyFi doesn't have as much space so there were a couple guys that were doing the mods, but didn't offer a kit.
These people had trouble punching a hole in a card. Adding computerized touch screen systems isn't going to help them. A punch card and a stylus was too much technology, so computers and touch screens will surely add to the confusion. I am amazed that only 134 people failed to properly cast a vote.
Since we seem to want to gear this country for the lowest common deniminator, we need a preschool approach:
1) Print pictures of every candidate on a page (or in a novel in the case of CA gubernatorial race) 2) The voter need only circle the face of their chosen candidate to cast their vote.
There is no reason to try to solve every problem by throwing technology at it. In many cases this will only add confusion and expense without solving anything.
You have to love a company that has the balls to publish a waranty that is short, sweet, unambiguous, and never been touched by their legal department.
This product contains copy protection that restricts its functionality, and may damage your playback equipment. Any attempts to execercise your fair use rights will result in criminal prosecution under the DMCA.
So I see the argument 'If porn is available on the internet supplied by the library, should porn magazines and videos not also be availabe?' in one form or another repeated in this forum.
Now the way I see the issue the first problem (porn on the internet) is that the libraries have to expend resources to limit the availabe content. My library doesn't expend it resources to limit the content of other media (I can still see topless women in National Geographic for example).
On the other hand my local library doesn't expend its resources to supply explicit porn for its patrons either (well, they do have madonna's book). However there is a "romance novel" section (not terribly explicit sex, but sex none the less in text form) that is rather popular with the teenage girls.
My personal opinion is that if internet computers are available, they should be in a public place (and in public view), and children under a certain age should be supervised (this is a library not a daycare). Part of being a parent is taking responsibility for the things your child has access to, I belive it is called parenting!
For those people that think the whole of society should have restrictions placed upon it because they don't want to take responsibility for their children, perhapse those people would be better off with silk plants than kids.
A large monopolistic software company anounced today that it plans to sue every one with a/. user id who has ever used the term WinBlows or refered to their company as MicroShaft or used the abbreviation M$.
They are currently amassing a list of soon to be defendants using the popular search engine google, It seems their MSN search site was recently rooted due to another security hole in their software.
The CEO was quoted as saying,"Last time I checked we were still using the US judicial system, where any one can sue for any reason, and the fattest wallet wins. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to writing my antitrust remedy."
this company has been making a personal finance package called MoneyDance, that I have been running on my linux box for two years now, and I am very happy with it. Now they are gunning for QuickBooks with their new product MyBooks.
here is a link to their feature matrix as compared to quick books.
oh, and best of all, MyBooks runs on whatever platform you choose. Their developers actually listen to customer requests, and you can get tech support without forking out your credit card number!
Slashdot Mirror
Everyone seems to state that they didn't know how big this explosion was going to be. I strongly doubt that. Ammonium Nitrate is a commonly used explosive so the size of boom is well known.
I had the good fortune of witnessing the disposal of a 39,000 lb solid rocket engine last summer (a considerably larger boom than 500 lbs of ammonium nitrate) and the entire morning the demolition crew was monitoring the atmospheric conditions to guarantee that the shock wave wouldn't be reflected into Salt Lake City. It seems that in a previous disposal the atmospheric conditions were such that the shock wave from the explosion was reflected over 20 miles into the city where it too broke some windows.
This would seem to be a similar case. The size of the explosion would have been well known, however the technicians setting up the explosion may not have been aware of how the atmosphere could propagate the shock wave of a detonation of this scale.
Different air temperatures, or wind directions at the time of the detonation could easily have made this a non-issue.
Someone needs to take the crack pipe away from these guys. Making this crossing with a solar boat is a novel idea, but is is far from efficient, or even reasonable, especially at the slow speeds they plan to attain.
Sailing catamarans have been averaging over 20 knots on the open ocean for more than a decade. small sailing boats like Catalina 22's can travel at 5 or 6 knots (certainly not in the open ocean of course), but larger ocean going sailing (monohul) vessels go much faster these days.
For truly cutting edge clean and pure boat technology, check out the Hydroptere A hydroplaning sailing trimaran capable of over 45 knots!
Solar is fine for charging batteries for the electronics on the boat, but why try to propel a boat with it when the proven centuries old technology of sailing is still cheaper, cleaner, faster, and more efficient.
When a solar boat can make that crossing averaging more than 30 knots, I'll consider that to be news worthy. Until then, it is just a silly publicity stunt.
Nope, That acronym is already taken by AppleScript Studio
For the average ludite using windows and IE it is already one giant marketing tool.
I don't know how many windows machines that I've seen where the user is bombarded with popup adds, IM spam, and plain old email junk for just about everything under the sun. Having it built into the OS just seems to bypass (or augment) the third party groups (bastards) that are doing it already.
I think for the average user, there would be no noticeable change.
O.K. this is just plain offensive.
... NO! if this was the case just about every construction worker in the country would owe taxes to some foreign state.
...
Lets have a look at this from a meat space point of view:
If I live in Tennessee and am hired by a New York company to build a storage unit in Tennessee, am I expected to pay New York state income tax because the company that is paying me is in New York?
Well o.k. maybe the argument could be made that the telecommuter's work is actually being put to use in New York
If I live in Tennessee and am hired by a New York company to build modules in Tennessee that will be transported to and installed in a new building being built in New York, am I expected to pay New York state income tax?
How about if I'm required to attend a safety meeting once a month in New York? am I then required to pay New York income tax?
Basically this whole taxation of out of state workers that perform work out of state sounds like complete bullshit to me.
If I am in state x performing work in state x it shouldn't matter where paying company y is. I owe taxes in state x not whatever state company y may have a presence in.
Lets face it, times have changed.
When we started with computers, GUI didn't even exist, and it was rather simple to peck in a hello world or guess my number program in a couple of lines of Basic.
Now GUI is the norm, and only the "Geeks" have a use for text based interfaces.
So I say abandon any attempt at teaching anyone new to programming anything that is going to yield a command line program (at the onset at least). The results will be anti-climactic and discouraging at best.
I would start off with something like REALbasic which can very easily create those same hello world or guess my number type games only with a new GUI face. And the amount of code that you have to type still remains about the same. REALbasic has the added bonus that it is an object oriented language that can be used to teach techniques that will transfer to other languages in the future.
You don't want to throw a kid who has never seen a command line in his life into a situation where the product of his efforts is only usable in this foreign environment. Get him up and running in an environment that is familiar, and show him how easy it is to create useful tools for that environment.
How much more classic can you get (I mean besides maybe light)
As a kids rocks (and not the damn pet kind either) held quite a lot of our attention. We used them for everything from ammo to structural members of the dams we built over the streams of water running down the street. They were easy to come by and more durable than either legos or erector sets.
When we discovered that they came in house sized and larger models we were really hooked. We'd spend all day just trying to climb to the top. And after that the smaller versions didn't maintain nearly as much of our interest.
Now that I am an adult (by some standards) and have a child of my own (she'll be ~7 months old at Xmas) I'll be introducing her to the joy rocks have to offer. She'll be getting a trainer rock. Through the wonders of science, some genius has come up with a toddelerized inflatable rock wall that'll be more appealing to the wife than planting a full pitch sized piece of granite in the back yard.
The SkyFi and XM PCR have been hacked for digital out.r ies/xmpcr -toslink-digital-output-board.htmlr ies/xmpcr -coaxial-digital-output-board.html
you can buy the kit for the PCR
as either a toslink
http://www.myradiostore.us/parts-accesso
or coaxial
http://www.myradiostore.us/parts-accesso
the SkyFi doesn't have as much space so there were a couple guys that were doing the mods, but didn't offer a kit.
These people had trouble punching a hole in a card. Adding computerized touch screen systems isn't going to help them. A punch card and a stylus was too much technology, so computers and touch screens will surely add to the confusion. I am amazed that only 134 people failed to properly cast a vote.
Since we seem to want to gear this country for the lowest common deniminator, we need a preschool approach:
1) Print pictures of every candidate on a page (or in a novel in the case of CA gubernatorial race)
2) The voter need only circle the face of their chosen candidate to cast their vote.
There is no reason to try to solve every problem by throwing technology at it. In many cases this will only add confusion and expense without solving anything.
You have to love a company that has the balls to publish a waranty that is short, sweet, unambiguous, and never been touched by their legal department.
"You break it, we replace it... forever."
WARNING:
This product contains copy protection that restricts its functionality, and may damage your playback equipment. Any attempts to execercise your fair use rights will result in criminal prosecution under the DMCA.
Now I know what to do with all those AOL CD's I keep getting in the mail!
So I see the argument 'If porn is available on the internet supplied by the library, should porn magazines and videos not also be availabe?' in one form or another repeated in this forum.
Now the way I see the issue the first problem (porn on the internet) is that the libraries have to expend resources to limit the availabe content. My library doesn't expend it resources to limit the content of other media (I can still see topless women in National Geographic for example).
On the other hand my local library doesn't expend its resources to supply explicit porn for its patrons either (well, they do have madonna's book). However there is a "romance novel" section (not terribly explicit sex, but sex none the less in text form) that is rather popular with the teenage girls.
My personal opinion is that if internet computers are available, they should be in a public place (and in public view), and children under a certain age should be supervised (this is a library not a daycare). Part of being a parent is taking responsibility for the things your child has access to, I belive it is called parenting!
For those people that think the whole of society should have restrictions placed upon it because they don't want to take responsibility for their children, perhapse those people would be better off with silk plants than kids.
/me dons his nomex
Ah, enigmail does the trick for me.
They are currently amassing a list of soon to be defendants using the popular search engine google, It seems their MSN search site was recently rooted due to another security hole in their software.
The CEO was quoted as saying,"Last time I checked we were still using the US judicial system, where any one can sue for any reason, and the fattest wallet wins. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to get back to writing my antitrust remedy."
here is a link to their feature matrix as compared to quick books.
oh, and best of all, MyBooks runs on whatever platform you choose. Their developers actually listen to customer requests, and you can get tech support without forking out your credit card number!
If ever I am in court I want the ability to write my own sentence like ms appears to be doing.