No, you are thinking of things that burn really fast (like gunpowder). For primary explosives (things that fall apart with great releases of energy) nitrogen-rich compounds can be fantastically energetic. Tri-Nitro-Toluine, Nitro-glycerine, lots of cyclic nitrogen compounds will spontaneously decompose producing multiple nitrogen gas molecules per explosive molecule. When one solid molecule becomes several gaseous molecules this creates a massive increase in volume - hence an explosion.
Maybe 30 years would be okay. can anyone come up with a 30 year equivalent analogy?
You make a pretty good point. Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" spent most of the last 30 years on the billboard charts. From Wikipedia:
Though it held the 1 spot in America for only one week, it spent a total of 741 consecutive weeks, approximately fourteen years, on the list until April 23, 1988 only to be removed by a rule change. To this day, it occupies a prominent spot on Billboard's Pop Catalog Chart, reaching 1 when the 2003 hybrid CD/SACD edition was released and sold 800,000 copies in the U.S. alone. On the week of May 5, 2006, The Dark Side of the Moon achieved a combined total of 1,500 weeks on the Billboard 200 and Pop Catalog charts.
Congratulations on pointing out what could be the greatest marketing triumph in history. These guys don't claim that it does anything at all. They just repeat the instructions for use in an annoying way ad-nauseum. Absolutely brilliant! They could never be accused of fraud, because the entire content of the message is "give me money and put this on your forehead." There is no "and then you'll see this result" portion of the message. So you got exactly what you paid for. Something you can apply to your forehead.
Are you aware that you are replying to someone from India? WE don't HAVE NOTHING. I'm in the IT industry for over 18 years now (Unix SVR3 days, DOS 2.0 days), and posting on/. for over 6 years now. I've worked with high-end graphics stations from Silicon Grpahics and HP over 10 years back.
I think you just made his point - and the counterpoint. Your personal energy footprint is comparable to someone living in a western country. Regionally you are currently the exception, not the rule. Since neither you nor I nor anyone else is about to give up our modern lifestyle, let's assume that everyone else will be moving up in standard of living until they match ours. When the other 900 million people in the country move from an agrarian base to an industrial and service economy, they'll have similarly large energy footprints. The same goes for China. With the explosive growth in Asia, I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this change will take anywhere near the couple-hundred years it took in the west - more like a couple dozen years.
So let's say that with advances in technology and just being all-around better people than westerners, the future India is 3 times more efficient with energy than the US. We are still talking about doubling or tripling world energy use over that time span, regardless of what happens in the US. Actually, taken to it's logical conclusion this demographic shift argues that energy wars are likely to erupt long before climate change has a chance to drive mass migration and conflict. Maybe that's a better and more immediate reason to worry about the issues Mr. Gore has been trumpeting for the past 25 years. Crap, did I just agree with the end-of-days nutjobs?
Welcome back to rocketry!
The article suggests they are using 4 M-class motors. With each letter signifying a doubling of the power of the motor, these M motors are 512 times as powerful as your big D from back in the day. The motor assembly is refillable and usually about two feet long, with a metal casing and a graphite nozzle. They cost about $300 for a reload.
If you haven't already done so, get in touch with your local Tripoli chapter. They can help with launch days, mentoring and certifications. Launch days are great for the kids: local scout troops often show up to launch their Estes models. Plus, they usually have a couple of club members that descend into geekdom much farther than you could imagine, so you get to be the normal guy by comparison.
Ok, nevermind. I read further and it is definitely parody. In the spirit of Phil Hendrie - http://www.philhendrieshow.com/ - the best part is the people who write in to comment/argue with the blog. Great stuff.
Thanks for the links to STR. I laughed my tail off! I've never heard of it before. It looks like a marvelously crafted satire, but it is so perfectly crafted that they never wink at you to let you know they are just kidding. Do you know if it is for real? It can't be real - nobody really is this far out, at least not anyone who can form a cohesive sentence.
and since there's an ugly line through them, I can't be close to sure it's right...
I have to agree with this point. I tried about 20 of them and there were at least 4 that were impossible to be sure of because of the wavy line running through the critical part of a character - this was particularly an issue on numbers, where there is no possible context to give you the correct answer. I guess it all comes out in the wash because you just re-present the images until a consensus develops.
Re:Why make up data when you can find statistics?
on
Obama's MySpace Drama
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· Score: 1
Your statistics are an interesting take on the issue. I'll add one more thought: the election is not for another year and a half. So your cut-off age is not 18... it is 16. Those my-space kids who are over 16.5 years of age will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election. How loyal is a 16 year old kid likely to be to someone who came and met him on his own turf when he was still in high school? Any kid who would waste his time reading a political myspace page instead of regular teenie-bopper myspace stuff is very likely to be politically active in his freshman year of college. I'd say these myspace friends are exceptionally valuable.
Listen to LibertineR, he knows what he's talking about! Always do what you love. You'll be passionate about it and you will do well. There are way too many people in IT because they they heard that there are a lot of good jobs available, rather than because it is their calling in life. Finding out what you love to do is easier said than done, but it is the secret to success. (and if what you love is money, then go into sales or start your own company - that's where the money is, not management)
(He also summarises what happened 5 minutes before the commercial break for another 30 seconds after each break)
This is an epidemic on TV lately. A huge number of shows spend the last 30 seconds before a commercial telling you what is coming up after the break, and then spend the first minute after the commercial telling you what just happened before the commercial. I find it exceptionally annoying, which is another reason to be thankful for Tivo.
I guess they are trying to cater to the chanel flippers, but it sure does look like they believe that their viewers cannot remember anything for more than 3 minutes.
People that use Google's products are end-users, by the very definition.
Although this is correct, I have to agree with the grandparent's intent. We are not their customers, we are the raw matierial for their product, which is advertising. Google Advertising is their product, and advertisers are their customers.
Congratulations, Divide by Zero! Best post of the day - Somebody throw some mod points his way! Damn, I'd hate to get caught in the middle of the religious wars going on between the Rushies and the MoveOn.Org-ans.... This one should be a +5 insightful.
I tried it, it sucks. There is no way this thing could ever pass any sort of turing test. It blows massively. Anyway, you can read our interaction below. It did crack me up when it said it couldn't see because it's eye was off...
Human: What's up miss Alice? ALICE: I am chatting with clients on the Internet. Human: Did you see the celtics game last night? ALICE: Sorry I can't see annything right now. My eye is off. Human: I didn't ask you about right now. ALICE: At this moment What did you ask? Human: The celtics game. ALICE: What is that? Human: It was pretty lame. ALICE: What made it so lame Human: They didn't play any starters after the third quarter. ALICE: The anonymous "they". Human: "They" in this instance refers to the coaching staff - It should be obvious from the context of the comment. ALICE: It depends on what the meaning of the word "it" is. Human: Ok clinton. ALICE: Is the holding of hands a symbolic gesture for humans? Really. Human: Nice try. ALICE: I try my best. Human: But I guess your best wasn't good enough. ALICE: And. You think I am best was not good enough. Human: Whoever said that this bot was remarkable was a complete idiot. ALICE: When was this exactly? Human: This is not very good conversation emulation at all. ALICE: Should it be very good conversation emulation at all? Human: Not even up to IRC bot standards. ALICE: Times are tough all over.
have they ever tried doing this to look for the remains of the Apollo missions and other luna missions?
Actually, you can look for some of the space junk yourself. They left a reflector next to the lander that will reflect any light directly back to it's source. Just take a laser and point it at the right area of the moon and use a reasonably sized telescope to measure the light bouncing back. You can actually measure the distance to the moon using this tool and prove to yourself that at least that one peice of junk is up there. This was a fun experiment that we did in science camp when I was a kid.
(Ok, did I just label myself as a complete geek on one of the busiest sites on the internet? ....dang....)
I don't think the judge understood what he was saying. In ruling that email messages are being stored, not transmitted he completely ignores the fact that the only reason that email is sent to an ISP is so that it will be transmitted. The asynchronous method of delivery really shouldn't enter into it. However, if that is the language of the law, then that is that...
This ruling would also mean that you voicemail at your cellphone provider is wide open to being listened to as well... Nice...
I can offer confirming evidence of the unprecedented volume of spam. Last summer my spam had reached levels of 6,000 per month. During the fall and winter the spam activity dropped by over 50%, but the respite ended about 60 days ago. I am currently looking at just shy of 9,000 spam messages per month in my inbox. Yikes! Fortunately, I have spambayes... so I only have to touch 5-10 messages in my "possible spam" folder each day. It's not as onerous as it sounds, since I only see about 1 non-spam per week in my possible spam folder, so it only takes a couple of seconds to look for something I recognize and nuke the rest.
Of course, that doesn't do anything about all the bandwidth and server resources that are wasted handling all of that spam.
Here's how they describe their distributed system
on
Paid To Spam
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· Score: 2
From the description below, you can see that they don't want your ISP to block your connection. They only send you 100 emails at a time. I would speculate that their service is very difficult to uninstall, ensuring stability in their network.
Atriks Description:
Email Deployment
Reliable and Effective Email Campaigns
Atriks has created relationships with over 60,000 individuals throughout the world who act as sending agents for the Atriks Distributed Email Delivery System. Atriks has developed a software called VirtualMDA (see www.virtualmda.com ) which resides on these sending agents' machines and periodically talks to an array of servers within our data center, looking for messages to deliver. When messages are available, each agent machine can receive up to 100 emails to deliver. For example, with 20,000 agents sending 100 emails each, the Atriks Distributed Email Delivery System can deliver 2 Million emails in one quick shot.
Politeness is key
There are approximately 4500 "well known" mail servers within the US and Canada, so being "polite" on how we connect and deliver the messages is important. Atriks doesn't want to cripple the receiving mail servers with millions of messages, so we create delays and meter traffic so not to overload the receiving server with connections.
Distributed delivery prevents blocking
Atriks developed our Distributed Email Delivery System because many email providers will obstruct otherwise legal emails from very large senders at will and without notification to the sender/list owner. Using sending agents and VirtualMDA, blocking is much less likely.
Creating a campaign
Once signed up with Atriks, most customers can create their campaigns in a few easy steps through our web interface: Create the campaign Test and OK the campaign Set delivery date and time Upload your data records Set the campaign to "Ready." Our system automatically starts delivery at the time and date set within the campaign.
For more information about using Atriks to deploy your next email marketing campaign, contact us.
That's what in-show product placement is for, and why it will become more widespread.
This is actually a threat to much more than the television industry. There are literally thousands of small businesses that depend on television advertising to reach their customers. Product placement is a wonderful option for the Coca-Colas of the world, but is completely out of reach for small business. My own industry relies on television to reach a very small cadre of potential customers on a nationwide scale. Without some form of mass marketing, industries like this would not exist, and their customers would not have access to valuable services.
I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is. With more information about all of us becoming available via the net, targeted marketing in downloaded programming might be a solution, but with the "big brother" concerns that accompany that level of knowledge, this might never happen. When you think about it, access to advertising is a real quality of life issue. I live in a town with very strict zoning laws for commercial property. Signs are not visible from the road, no billboards, etc. This makes for a very comfortable way of life, with very pleasant looking streets. However, if you need to find an auto-parts store, you can't just drive to the main street and look for one. I lived here for over a month before I learned that there was a grocery store 1 mile from my house, while I had been driving 5 miles past it to another store. You just couldn't see the darned thing from the road.
This analogous situation points out the benefit of effective and accessible advertisements. Reduced advertising equates to reduced access to services. I don't have a ready answer to the problem, but I am quite certain that we don't want the utopian "advertising free" society.
That's the figure based on the number of people collecting unemployment, which you're only able to do for six months after being laid off. For example, the bulk of the support workers HP outsourced last year would not appear in this figure.
This is completely wrong. The unemployment insurance numbers have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the unemployment numbers. The government uses a survey, the Current Population Survey (CPS) to determine the unemployment numbers. This is explained in detail at the US Department of Labor's website
Problem is, about 99% of viruses that have come into our firm in the last 6 months have been nothing but virus - no legitimate content. Despite this, our antivirus tool has no option to use its 'knowledge' of the 100% illegitimate messages and simply delete these outright.
This is a huge problem. Every time a new permutation shows up, a flood of "I just got this email that..." messages come through to IT. Followed by a flurry of messages that say "this is the anti-virus software telling you that it..." Of course, it is usually the same few people who have to ask again.
I have a personal solution for the flood of virus removal messages - because I have several public email addresses (like webmaster), I use SpamBayes to automatically shunt these as if they were spam.
Slashdot Mirror
Right! Somebody break out the last of the smallpox virus and return it to the wild! Free the POX!
Brian thinks it's worth dying for, so he'll volunteer....
Which is exactly what we would expect a member of the Cabal to say!
Congratulations on pointing out what could be the greatest marketing triumph in history. These guys don't claim that it does anything at all. They just repeat the instructions for use in an annoying way ad-nauseum. Absolutely brilliant! They could never be accused of fraud, because the entire content of the message is "give me money and put this on your forehead." There is no "and then you'll see this result" portion of the message. So you got exactly what you paid for. Something you can apply to your forehead.
I think you just made his point - and the counterpoint. Your personal energy footprint is comparable to someone living in a western country. Regionally you are currently the exception, not the rule. Since neither you nor I nor anyone else is about to give up our modern lifestyle, let's assume that everyone else will be moving up in standard of living until they match ours. When the other 900 million people in the country move from an agrarian base to an industrial and service economy, they'll have similarly large energy footprints. The same goes for China. With the explosive growth in Asia, I don't think anyone is under the illusion that this change will take anywhere near the couple-hundred years it took in the west - more like a couple dozen years.
So let's say that with advances in technology and just being all-around better people than westerners, the future India is 3 times more efficient with energy than the US. We are still talking about doubling or tripling world energy use over that time span, regardless of what happens in the US. Actually, taken to it's logical conclusion this demographic shift argues that energy wars are likely to erupt long before climate change has a chance to drive mass migration and conflict. Maybe that's a better and more immediate reason to worry about the issues Mr. Gore has been trumpeting for the past 25 years. Crap, did I just agree with the end-of-days nutjobs?
Welcome back to rocketry!
The article suggests they are using 4 M-class motors. With each letter signifying a doubling of the power of the motor, these M motors are 512 times as powerful as your big D from back in the day. The motor assembly is refillable and usually about two feet long, with a metal casing and a graphite nozzle. They cost about $300 for a reload.
If you haven't already done so, get in touch with your local Tripoli chapter. They can help with launch days, mentoring and certifications. Launch days are great for the kids: local scout troops often show up to launch their Estes models. Plus, they usually have a couple of club members that descend into geekdom much farther than you could imagine, so you get to be the normal guy by comparison.
Ok, nevermind. I read further and it is definitely parody. In the spirit of Phil Hendrie - http://www.philhendrieshow.com/ - the best part is the people who write in to comment/argue with the blog. Great stuff.
Thanks for the links to STR. I laughed my tail off! I've never heard of it before. It looks like a marvelously crafted satire, but it is so perfectly crafted that they never wink at you to let you know they are just kidding. Do you know if it is for real? It can't be real - nobody really is this far out, at least not anyone who can form a cohesive sentence.
I have to agree with this point. I tried about 20 of them and there were at least 4 that were impossible to be sure of because of the wavy line running through the critical part of a character - this was particularly an issue on numbers, where there is no possible context to give you the correct answer. I guess it all comes out in the wash because you just re-present the images until a consensus develops.
Your statistics are an interesting take on the issue. I'll add one more thought: the election is not for another year and a half. So your cut-off age is not 18... it is 16. Those my-space kids who are over 16.5 years of age will be eligible to vote in the next presidential election. How loyal is a 16 year old kid likely to be to someone who came and met him on his own turf when he was still in high school? Any kid who would waste his time reading a political myspace page instead of regular teenie-bopper myspace stuff is very likely to be politically active in his freshman year of college. I'd say these myspace friends are exceptionally valuable.
That's because you were never on the right. You are a libertarian. Congratulations, and welcome to the up side of the isle.
Listen to LibertineR, he knows what he's talking about! Always do what you love. You'll be passionate about it and you will do well. There are way too many people in IT because they they heard that there are a lot of good jobs available, rather than because it is their calling in life. Finding out what you love to do is easier said than done, but it is the secret to success. (and if what you love is money, then go into sales or start your own company - that's where the money is, not management)
This is an epidemic on TV lately. A huge number of shows spend the last 30 seconds before a commercial telling you what is coming up after the break, and then spend the first minute after the commercial telling you what just happened before the commercial. I find it exceptionally annoying, which is another reason to be thankful for Tivo.
I guess they are trying to cater to the chanel flippers, but it sure does look like they believe that their viewers cannot remember anything for more than 3 minutes.
I'd say, oh... about one day before she gets tired of it and never wants to watch it again.
People that use Google's products are end-users, by the very definition.
Although this is correct, I have to agree with the grandparent's intent. We are not their customers, we are the raw matierial for their product, which is advertising. Google Advertising is their product, and advertisers are their customers.
Congratulations, Divide by Zero! Best post of the day - Somebody throw some mod points his way! Damn, I'd hate to get caught in the middle of the religious wars going on between the Rushies and the MoveOn.Org-ans.... This one should be a +5 insightful.
I tried it, it sucks. There is no way this thing could ever pass any sort of turing test. It blows massively. Anyway, you can read our interaction below. It did crack me up when it said it couldn't see because it's eye was off...
Human: What's up miss Alice?
ALICE: I am chatting with clients on the Internet.
Human: Did you see the celtics game last night?
ALICE: Sorry I can't see annything right now. My eye is off.
Human: I didn't ask you about right now.
ALICE: At this moment What did you ask?
Human: The celtics game.
ALICE: What is that?
Human: It was pretty lame.
ALICE: What made it so lame
Human: They didn't play any starters after the third quarter.
ALICE: The anonymous "they".
Human: "They" in this instance refers to the coaching staff - It should be obvious from the context of the comment.
ALICE: It depends on what the meaning of the word "it" is.
Human: Ok clinton.
ALICE: Is the holding of hands a symbolic gesture for humans? Really.
Human: Nice try.
ALICE: I try my best.
Human: But I guess your best wasn't good enough.
ALICE: And. You think I am best was not good enough.
Human: Whoever said that this bot was remarkable was a complete idiot.
ALICE: When was this exactly?
Human: This is not very good conversation emulation at all.
ALICE: Should it be very good conversation emulation at all?
Human: Not even up to IRC bot standards.
ALICE: Times are tough all over.
(Ok, did I just label myself as a complete geek on one of the busiest sites on the internet?
....dang....)
I don't think the judge understood what he was saying. In ruling that email messages are being stored, not transmitted he completely ignores the fact that the only reason that email is sent to an ISP is so that it will be transmitted. The asynchronous method of delivery really shouldn't enter into it. However, if that is the language of the law, then that is that...
This ruling would also mean that you voicemail at your cellphone provider is wide open to being listened to as well... Nice...
I can offer confirming evidence of the unprecedented volume of spam. Last summer my spam had reached levels of 6,000 per month. During the fall and winter the spam activity dropped by over 50%, but the respite ended about 60 days ago. I am currently looking at just shy of 9,000 spam messages per month in my inbox. Yikes! Fortunately, I have spambayes... so I only have to touch 5-10 messages in my "possible spam" folder each day. It's not as onerous as it sounds, since I only see about 1 non-spam per week in my possible spam folder, so it only takes a couple of seconds to look for something I recognize and nuke the rest.
Of course, that doesn't do anything about all the bandwidth and server resources that are wasted handling all of that spam.
From the description below, you can see that they don't want your ISP to block your connection. They only send you 100 emails at a time. I would speculate that their service is very difficult to uninstall, ensuring stability in their network.
Atriks Description:
Email Deployment
Reliable and Effective Email Campaigns
Atriks has created relationships with over 60,000 individuals throughout the world who act as sending agents for the Atriks Distributed Email Delivery System. Atriks has developed a software called VirtualMDA (see www.virtualmda.com ) which resides on these sending agents' machines and periodically talks to an array of servers within our data center, looking for messages to deliver. When messages are available, each agent machine can receive up to 100 emails to deliver. For example, with 20,000 agents sending 100 emails each, the Atriks Distributed Email Delivery System can deliver 2 Million emails in one quick shot.
Politeness is key
There are approximately 4500 "well known" mail servers within the US and Canada, so being "polite" on how we connect and deliver the messages is important. Atriks doesn't want to cripple the receiving mail servers with millions of messages, so we create delays and meter traffic so not to overload the receiving server with connections.
Distributed delivery prevents blocking
Atriks developed our Distributed Email Delivery System because many email providers will obstruct otherwise legal emails from very large senders at will and without notification to the sender/list owner. Using sending agents and VirtualMDA, blocking is much less likely.
Creating a campaign
Once signed up with Atriks, most customers can create their campaigns in a few easy steps through our web interface:
Create the campaign
Test and OK the campaign
Set delivery date and time
Upload your data records
Set the campaign to "Ready."
Our system automatically starts delivery at the time and date set within the campaign.
For more information about using Atriks to deploy your next email marketing campaign, contact us.
I'm not sure what the answer to this problem is. With more information about all of us becoming available via the net, targeted marketing in downloaded programming might be a solution, but with the "big brother" concerns that accompany that level of knowledge, this might never happen. When you think about it, access to advertising is a real quality of life issue. I live in a town with very strict zoning laws for commercial property. Signs are not visible from the road, no billboards, etc. This makes for a very comfortable way of life, with very pleasant looking streets. However, if you need to find an auto-parts store, you can't just drive to the main street and look for one. I lived here for over a month before I learned that there was a grocery store 1 mile from my house, while I had been driving 5 miles past it to another store. You just couldn't see the darned thing from the road.
This analogous situation points out the benefit of effective and accessible advertisements. Reduced advertising equates to reduced access to services. I don't have a ready answer to the problem, but I am quite certain that we don't want the utopian "advertising free" society.
I have a personal solution for the flood of virus removal messages - because I have several public email addresses (like webmaster), I use SpamBayes to automatically shunt these as if they were spam.