The Millau bridge. At over 300m it's the tallest bridge in the world, the only delays appear to have been weather related. It opened ahead of the revised schedule. A quick google search for "millau bridge" and controversy/delays other words threw up lots of US projects, but no real stories about the bridge. When engineers push boundaries there will always be problems, but I think mankinds' overall record in bridge building is pretty good. Judgeing by recent Slashdot comments the US does have a problem with large civil engineering projects, but I don't think this is a worldwide problem. Then again, maybe the rest of the world is better at covering things up...
Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore, where the winds blow steady and reliable? Relocated when economical according to satellites tracking the seasonal winds.
Wiring, have you seen the cableing required to carry 1.3GW? It's not the kind of thing you can move around. Thus the plan to build multiple wind farms arpund the coast. If you race in one of the Around Britain races you are practically garaunteed to hit a gale at some point. There's always a lot of wind somewhere on the British coast. Something to do with our love of curries, I suspect.
I'm always amazed by Cabbies knowledge of London. They know where the traffic jams are at different times of day, and how to avoid them. They know about road works, about avoiding the football statiums on match days and about all the other factors that can affect journey times. Getting GPS systems to take all that into account is very difficult, impossible almost. A GPS system cannot replace a decent cabbie, and getting rid of the Knowledge requirement would punish the best drivers. If someone can't be bothered to do the Knowledge then I don't want them driving me home.
It's not that hard, seriously. Modern generators happily sync together under load; once the 'slave' is running the same as the 'master' it switches in. At which point each generator is handling half the load. Two 1MW generators with a backup don't take up too much space, and will run 24/7 until the new one arrives. Why don't they phone a hire company? I've never seen problems with brownouts or frequency errors, but evn if there are won't the UPSes take care of that?
When I was subscribing to Telewest in the UK I felt exactly the opposite. I'm paying for the connection, the adverts are paying for the programmes, why the hell should I pay more to see more channels? The cable company are already pipeing all 200+ channels to my set-top box, £10 extra a month to be able to view those channels seems silly.
The cable/satalite only channels have way more adverts, I assume to make up for the lack of viewers compared to the terestrial channels. The adverts are also far more intrusive and annoying. If Channel 4 can buy and broadcast SG-1 and, I assume, break even by showing enough adverts to pad the show out to 45 mins. Sky 1 pass the broadcasting costs over to the subscriber and yet need 15 mins extra of advertising per episode...
I would like to see a standard all-in subscription price, where you pay for the connection only, and the channels then compete for advertising.
But I've never really seen it answered... Why does the US favour voting machines?
In Britain we are given a piece of paper with a list of candidates, and we put a cross by the one we want to vote for. There's a paper trail, and the votes are usually counted up and available that night. By the following morning there's usually a only a few places left to declare, but the overall results are known. Recounts happen fairly swiftly, and the candidates seem to be happy with the accuracy of the system, if not the outcome. If there are any serious problems with this method I've never heard them mentioned. So, what are the flaws in this method that means that the US must use machines?
1500 kWh a month?!? What are you doing with all that power? Here in London, in an admittedly brand new 2 bedroom flat, we're using 300 kWh a month. We don't have gas. Seriously, I'm fasinated, where is all that extra power going?
Brits are well represented in GNUcash development, and there's a en_GB translation. The wonderfully named Nigel Titley has been using it for VAT invoices and submitting bugs, while Neil Williams is a major contributer. The developers and testers are from an array of countries, so any US bias tends to be dealt with quickley.
I've never seen this mentioned on Slashdot, but I think of it every time I see the 'CD sales are declining because of copyright infringement' meme repeated. CD sales are affected by a lot more than a few copyright infringers.
When they first appeared we saw people rushing out and buying replacements for their old vinyl and tape albums. Then we saw the collectors boxsets, and now we get the desperate 'best-of' rehashes. Consumers have consumed and having replaced their old collections are mainly interested in buying new releases, and so the CD market has slowed down. What would be more interesting would be to see what has happened to sales of genuinely new releases(and a new Eagles compilation doesn't count).
Yawn, no it's a completely different one. British Rail was the nationalised company that was given no money to keep our railways going. Thatcher made them reduce costs by 30%, and, when they were successful made them do it again. The trains were still very reliable.
The railways were privatised in the early 90s, leading to vast increases in fares, delays and cancellations. Inexperienced managers were brought in to replace the old BR staff and they wasted alarming amounts of money buying crap. Railtrack gave up on track maintainence until several fatel accidents. They then went to parliment begging for money to do what they were supposed to have done anyway. Rather then closing one lane at a time they used 'blockades' in which whole sections of track are closed at once, leading to mass cancellations and severe inconvienience for passengers.
Oh yes, and tax-payer subsides have more than doubled since privatisation. The private companies can't even sort out the signalling at Waterloo, let alone think about UFOs.
People aren't starving because we lack food, only because we're crap at distributing it. Here in Britain we pay the Queen £500,000 a year not to grow food on her land, as Europe has far too much food. Dumping it on developing countries undercuts their own farmers and trashes their economy. Look at how much good farmland is given over to tobacco, coffee and opium.
The answer is not in improving food production, no matter what Monsanto will tell you, the answer is in better economics. International politics can end hunger, soy beans can't.
Just out of interest, have you checked out Ruby On Rails' testing? It comes 'out of the box' with all the bits you need to create a test database and break it in all kinds of interesting ways. It automatically rolls the database back to a sane state ready for your next unit test, so you can test your transactions all you like. It also allows you to call webpages as functions and test them, and there's addons that will automatically validate your pages using w3c's validators. It does seem to answer a lot of your issues with web testing, although if you're already knee deep in ASP code it's too late... Obviously it stills relies somewhat on the developer taking testing seriously, but the ease with which you can do this stuff encourages them to 'do the right thing'.
Going back further, 'Steptoe and Son' had 2 characters and 1 set, 'Hancocks Half Hour' was written around him, 'The Young Ones' was 5 (inc. Alexi Sayles' characters) and 2-3 sets. It's all about the characters...
The animated shows such as The Simpsons and South Park have raised the bar somewhat as the don't need to build new sets everytime the characters go somewhere else, nor do they have to audition actors every time they introduce a new character.
The BBC has been doing it with shows such as 'Mighty Boosh', another comedy aimed at young adults... It's a shame that had to use such an annoying codec. Any ideas why they didn't just stick to mpeg-2, or offer a selection?
Er, I think they're saying that there is a lack of top quality engineers and that isn't helped by discouraging half the population from pursuing those careers. I suspect that if there were more females in comp.sci. lectures then it would encourage more males to join.
Here in the UK there is growing evidence that the Liberals *love* both men and women.
I don't think you're quite right. When it loops it loops over all the {*to++ = *from++}s so that the first time it only does it count % 8 times, if n>1 then it goes back and does it 8 times until n = 0.
You've obviously not been listening to Chumbawamba. Their first release was an angry reaction to Live Aid called
'Pictures of Starving Children Sell Albums'. Everything they've done before and after Tubthumping has shown little regard for what the market demands. There's lots of decent music out there, you just have to look beyond the mainstream media.
I imagine that their market research has shown that users don't like to wait, and that they're not bothered by the way Windows tricks them. It would be good for my 500MHz K6 because I tend to switch it on, wait an age for the login screen, then wait again for X windows to start up. If they could move some of the initial startup(httpd, mysql etc) to after Gnome is running then that would only give me one wait. Of course you are welcome to make whatever improvements you like, and we would all appreciate it if you shared them.
As for hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) leading to diabetic coma, this is easily avoided by any diabetic with even "rough" control due to the fact that they will readily feel blood sugar levels dropping far in advance of danger and a quick ingestion of some sweet substance will solve the problem in a matter of a couple of minutes - actually, it's quite remarkable how quickly the sugar is absorbed and works it's magic.
I've lost most of the symptoms of hypos. Sometimes the only sign is loss of mental faculties, something that is very worrying for people around me, especially at work. The lack of sugar slows down my thinking leaving me confused and disorientated, and it usually takes me a while to figure out why. In one instance I was unable to walk in a straight line. In my case my control isn't particualy good, but to say it's a treatable and predictable ailment in all cases(as you appear to be saying) would be way out.
Because Ogg Vorbis and AAC sound better while taking up the same amount of space. Also you can't be sure that mp3's will last forever. It would be nice to play CD quality tracks off a HD through my stereo. I can sometimes hear compression, even if others can't. I'd to like to put AAC tracks on my laptop, and ogg onto my Rio Karma, so burning to a lossless format then converting to whatever makes sense for me.
Er, as a physicist it appears that you are making a few assumptions about the setup, namely that the source has no impedance, that the destination has infinate impedance and that the there is no inductance or capacitance in the cable. In the real world these effects are real. There will usually be a large DC blocking capacitor in both the source and the destination circuits; putting different resistances between them causes changes in the overall resistance at different frequencies. The screening around the cable will form a capacitor with the signal core. The cable itself forms a large inductor. Whether or not you notice these effects, or find them irritating is a matter of personal taste, but to deny their existance is, er, futile.
People have to specifically give permission for their organs to be used. Also I think there are problems with the recipients body rejecting the cells, so they need specific types of donors. Fairly powerful treatments are needed to prevent the body rejecting the cells, which bring their own unplesant side-effects.
I can't give blood, as the effects of giving non-diabetic people blood with artificial insulin are not certain. I assume this means that my organs would not be welcome either. There are a number of other medications which prevent you from being a donor.
I expect this rules out a large proportion of potential donors.
Slashdot Mirror
The Millau bridge. At over 300m it's the tallest bridge in the world, the only delays appear to have been weather related. It opened ahead of the revised schedule. A quick google search for "millau bridge" and controversy/delays other words threw up lots of US projects, but no real stories about the bridge. When engineers push boundaries there will always be problems, but I think mankinds' overall record in bridge building is pretty good. Judgeing by recent Slashdot comments the US does have a problem with large civil engineering projects, but I don't think this is a worldwide problem. Then again, maybe the rest of the world is better at covering things up...
Why don't they put these wind farms on barges floating around the seas offshore, where the winds blow steady and reliable? Relocated when economical according to satellites tracking the seasonal winds. Wiring, have you seen the cableing required to carry 1.3GW? It's not the kind of thing you can move around. Thus the plan to build multiple wind farms arpund the coast. If you race in one of the Around Britain races you are practically garaunteed to hit a gale at some point. There's always a lot of wind somewhere on the British coast. Something to do with our love of curries, I suspect.
I'm always amazed by Cabbies knowledge of London. They know where the traffic jams are at different times of day, and how to avoid them. They know about road works, about avoiding the football statiums on match days and about all the other factors that can affect journey times. Getting GPS systems to take all that into account is very difficult, impossible almost. A GPS system cannot replace a decent cabbie, and getting rid of the Knowledge requirement would punish the best drivers. If someone can't be bothered to do the Knowledge then I don't want them driving me home.
It's not that hard, seriously. Modern generators happily sync together under load; once the 'slave' is running the same as the 'master' it switches in. At which point each generator is handling half the load. Two 1MW generators with a backup don't take up too much space, and will run 24/7 until the new one arrives. Why don't they phone a hire company? I've never seen problems with brownouts or frequency errors, but evn if there are won't the UPSes take care of that?
cfdisk /dev/hda && mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1 && mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/ && chroot /mnt/gentoo/ && env-update && . /etc/profile && emerge sync && cd /usr/portage && scripts/bootsrap.sh && emerge system && emerge vim && vi /etc/fstab && emerge gentoo-dev-sources && cd /usr/src/linux && make menuconfig && make install modules_install && emerge gnome mozilla-firefox openoffice && emerge grub && cp /boot/grub/grub.conf.sample /boot/grub/grub.conf && vi /boot/grub/grub.conf && grub && init 6
Shouldn't that be scripts/bootstrap.sh? Honestly it's that kind of low quality documentation that makes Gentoo so hard...
When I was subscribing to Telewest in the UK I felt exactly the opposite. I'm paying for the connection, the adverts are paying for the programmes, why the hell should I pay more to see more channels? The cable company are already pipeing all 200+ channels to my set-top box, £10 extra a month to be able to view those channels seems silly.
The cable/satalite only channels have way more adverts, I assume to make up for the lack of viewers compared to the terestrial channels. The adverts are also far more intrusive and annoying. If Channel 4 can buy and broadcast SG-1 and, I assume, break even by showing enough adverts to pad the show out to 45 mins. Sky 1 pass the broadcasting costs over to the subscriber and yet need 15 mins extra of advertising per episode...
I would like to see a standard all-in subscription price, where you pay for the connection only, and the channels then compete for advertising.
I agree with your conclusion: Cable vendors SUCK.
But I've never really seen it answered...
Why does the US favour voting machines?
In Britain we are given a piece of paper with a list of candidates, and we put a cross by the one we want to vote for. There's a paper trail, and the votes are usually counted up and available that night. By the following morning there's usually a only a few places left to declare, but the overall results are known. Recounts happen fairly swiftly, and the candidates seem to be happy with the accuracy of the system, if not the outcome. If there are any serious problems with this method I've never heard them mentioned. So, what are the flaws in this method that means that the US must use machines?
1500 kWh a month?!? What are you doing with all that power? Here in London, in an admittedly brand new 2 bedroom flat, we're using 300 kWh a month. We don't have gas. Seriously, I'm fasinated, where is all that extra power going?
Brits are well represented in GNUcash development, and there's a en_GB translation. The wonderfully named Nigel Titley has been using it for VAT invoices and submitting bugs, while Neil Williams is a major contributer. The developers and testers are from an array of countries, so any US bias tends to be dealt with quickley.
I've never seen this mentioned on Slashdot, but I think of it every time I see the 'CD sales are declining because of copyright infringement' meme repeated. CD sales are affected by a lot more than a few copyright infringers.
When they first appeared we saw people rushing out and buying replacements for their old vinyl and tape albums. Then we saw the collectors boxsets, and now we get the desperate 'best-of' rehashes. Consumers have consumed and having replaced their old collections are mainly interested in buying new releases, and so the CD market has slowed down. What would be more interesting would be to see what has happened to sales of genuinely new releases(and a new Eagles compilation doesn't count).
Yawn, no it's a completely different one. British Rail was the nationalised company that was given no money to keep our railways going. Thatcher made them reduce costs by 30%, and, when they were successful made them do it again. The trains were still very reliable.
The railways were privatised in the early 90s, leading to vast increases in fares, delays and cancellations. Inexperienced managers were brought in to replace the old BR staff and they wasted alarming amounts of money buying crap. Railtrack gave up on track maintainence until several fatel accidents. They then went to parliment begging for money to do what they were supposed to have done anyway. Rather then closing one lane at a time they used 'blockades' in which whole sections of track are closed at once, leading to mass cancellations and severe inconvienience for passengers.
Oh yes, and tax-payer subsides have more than doubled since privatisation. The private companies can't even sort out the signalling at Waterloo, let alone think about UFOs.
People aren't starving because we lack food, only because we're crap at distributing it. Here in Britain we pay the Queen £500,000 a year not to grow food on her land, as Europe has far too much food. Dumping it on developing countries undercuts their own farmers and trashes their economy. Look at how much good farmland is given over to tobacco, coffee and opium.
The answer is not in improving food production, no matter what Monsanto will tell you, the answer is in better economics. International politics can end hunger, soy beans can't.
Just out of interest, have you checked out Ruby On Rails' testing? It comes 'out of the box' with all the bits you need to create a test database and break it in all kinds of interesting ways. It automatically rolls the database back to a sane state ready for your next unit test, so you can test your transactions all you like. It also allows you to call webpages as functions and test them, and there's addons that will automatically validate your pages using w3c's validators. It does seem to answer a lot of your issues with web testing, although if you're already knee deep in ASP code it's too late... Obviously it stills relies somewhat on the developer taking testing seriously, but the ease with which you can do this stuff encourages them to 'do the right thing'.
Going back further, 'Steptoe and Son' had 2 characters and 1 set, 'Hancocks Half Hour' was written around him, 'The Young Ones' was 5 (inc. Alexi Sayles' characters) and 2-3 sets. It's all about the characters...
The animated shows such as The Simpsons and South Park have raised the bar somewhat as the don't need to build new sets everytime the characters go somewhere else, nor do they have to audition actors every time they introduce a new character.
The BBC has been doing it with shows such as 'Mighty Boosh', another comedy aimed at young adults... It's a shame that had to use such an annoying codec. Any ideas why they didn't just stick to mpeg-2, or offer a selection?
Er, I think they're saying that there is a lack of top quality engineers and that isn't helped by discouraging half the population from pursuing those careers. I suspect that if there were more females in comp.sci. lectures then it would encourage more males to join.
Here in the UK there is growing evidence that the Liberals *love* both men and women.
I don't think you're quite right. When it loops it loops over all the {*to++ = *from++}s so that the first time it only does it count % 8 times, if n>1 then it goes back and does it 8 times until n = 0.
You've obviously not been listening to Chumbawamba. Their first release was an angry reaction to Live Aid called
'Pictures of Starving Children Sell Albums'. Everything they've done before and after Tubthumping has shown little regard for what the market demands. There's lots of decent music out there, you just have to look beyond the mainstream media.
A big red sign saying, "If this sign is blue you're going too fast".
Is the jr in Geir Magnusson Jr not redundant?
I imagine that their market research has shown that users don't like to wait, and that they're not bothered by the way Windows tricks them. It would be good for my 500MHz K6 because I tend to switch it on, wait an age for the login screen, then wait again for X windows to start up. If they could move some of the initial startup(httpd, mysql etc) to after Gnome is running then that would only give me one wait.
Of course you are welcome to make whatever improvements you like, and we would all appreciate it if you shared them.
As for hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) leading to diabetic coma, this is easily avoided by any diabetic with even "rough" control due to the fact that they will readily feel blood sugar levels dropping far in advance of danger and a quick ingestion of some sweet substance will solve the problem in a matter of a couple of minutes - actually, it's quite remarkable how quickly the sugar is absorbed and works it's magic.
I've lost most of the symptoms of hypos. Sometimes the only sign is loss of mental faculties, something that is very worrying for people around me, especially at work. The lack of sugar slows down my thinking leaving me confused and disorientated, and it usually takes me a while to figure out why. In one instance I was unable to walk in a straight line.
In my case my control isn't particualy good, but to say it's a treatable and predictable ailment in all cases(as you appear to be saying) would be way out.
Because Ogg Vorbis and AAC sound better while taking up the same amount of space. Also you can't be sure that mp3's will last forever. It would be nice to play CD quality tracks off a HD through my stereo. I can sometimes hear compression, even if others can't. I'd to like to put AAC tracks on my laptop, and ogg onto my Rio Karma, so burning to a lossless format then converting to whatever makes sense for me.
Er, as a physicist it appears that you are making a few assumptions about the setup, namely that the source has no impedance, that the destination has infinate impedance and that the there is no inductance or capacitance in the cable. In the real world these effects are real. There will usually be a large DC blocking capacitor in both the source and the destination circuits; putting different resistances between them causes changes in the overall resistance at different frequencies. The screening around the cable will form a capacitor with the signal core. The cable itself forms a large inductor. Whether or not you notice these effects, or find them irritating is a matter of personal taste, but to deny their existance is, er, futile.
People have to specifically give permission for their organs to be used. Also I think there are problems with the recipients body rejecting the cells, so they need specific types of donors. Fairly powerful treatments are needed to prevent the body rejecting the cells, which bring their own unplesant side-effects.
I can't give blood, as the effects of giving non-diabetic people blood with artificial insulin are not certain. I assume this means that my organs would not be welcome either. There are a number of other medications which prevent you from being a donor.
I expect this rules out a large proportion of potential donors.