I can't wait until you can just buy a replacement windshield so you can get stuff done on your long commute! Or combined with your onboard GPS naviagation system with the augmented reality thing going on.
It's transparent, so it's gotta be better than texting, right?
It appears the US is still a major player in the CPU market. China's current huge advantage isn't the ability to make top-end chips. Its advantage is in rock bottom assembly prices, combined with the flexibility to make almost overnight changes to manufacturing processes. That flexibility is partly due to their reliance on cheap human labor that might even be on call 24 hours a day. If you try to change a process in a mechanized/automated plant, it takes time and very possibly some retooling. To change a process in a factory relying on cheap labor, it takes a few hours of classroom time and a trainer.
That said, the US has some major manufacturing problems. The US is no longer capable of making what they used to make. It seems that some expertise is gained/maintained by being close to or involved in the end process, and if you rely on other people to do it all, you lose the ability. I'm not wading into the rest very deeply, but I will admit that there are a lot of reasons that it costs more to manufacture things in the US that don't involve labor costs or the environment.
I think it comes down to power to weight ratio......I do not understand why they haven't made a hybrid with a small (1 litre) efficient diesel engine that *only* kicks in to charge the batteries when they hit half charge.
Jaguar currently has a rather interesting hybrid concept car with a generator hooked to a turbine. Kind of interesting as a proof of concept. See here. One problem is that the turbine engine is a lot less efficient than the diesel engine, but you kind of make up for it in weight savings. Turbines weigh very little compared to a diesel. Obviously, this is not a daily driver, but hopefully they learn some stuff from just building it and it pays off.
A (rare) moment of US/EU strategic and economic briliance?
I'm not sure if it's brilliance, or just the opening salvo of another Smoot-Hawley, leading to a bad feedback loop. I don't know. Given the current economic situation in the US, I think it merits continued observation.
"No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law..."
constitution.org
Seems like a dead letter these days.
Well, it definitely counts as property if they're not being allowed to use it. (Yeah yeah, IANAL, gotta say it.)
Is it just me, or is it that if someone doesn't like what you're doing, they don't care if the charges stick so long as they get to hurt you financially? In a lot of cases it's legal fees, but sometimes it just seems that they see any form of financial pain as enough. That seems like punishment without a conviction, and that bothers me.
I'd imagine that any legal case being pursued against Megaupload would be preserved by spinning the data off onto a boxload of tape and letting Carpathia get back to business. Am I missing something, or is there someone that thinks that they need to hurt Carpathia regardless of what happens?
yes I know I'm ignoring the pain being caused to Megaupload and its (arguably former) users.
Maybe the Terrible, terrible movie whose name shall not be spoken
You mean The Crappening?
I'm glad someone made it obvious enough for me. I honestly had no frigging idea what he was talking about. I still know nothing about it, and apparently that makes me one of the lucky ones.
At first I was thinking "more positive and negative ions... Wouldn't they be attracted to each other and take care of that? Then I read TFA.
"Trees act as radon pumps, bringing the gas to the surface and releasing it to the atmosphere through transpiration - a process where water absorbed by the root system is evaporated into the atmosphere from leaves. This is especially prevalent for trees with deep root systems, such as eucalypts."
The QUT scientists estimated that, in a eucalyptus forest, trees may account for up to 37 per cent of the radon in the air when transpiration rates were highest.
So... If I go into the forest, I'm more likely to be breathing radon, and at greater concentrations? Um... I do like the trees, but from this I'm not sure the feeling is mutual...
"We can reduce the size of the haystack when we are looking for that one-in-a-billion terrorist," said TSA Administrator John Pistole.
lets hope those 6 guys dont have 100 bucks to throw at this scheme!
That quote didn't settle well with me either. I mean, I was an arts major in college, but, the math simply wasn't that hard. Yes, I DO know that it was meant as a broad expression to simply say "this is really rare", but "1 in a billion" is off by at least one order of magnitude.
It wasn't originally designed to suck, but when you refuse to spend money on infrastructure improvements,
you end up spending your time putting out fires instead of making improvements.
Ding ding ding!!!!
I think in Slashdotspeak, I should say "^This", and HARD.
Those are transmission towers. Structurally not the same at all. A lot of wind turbine towers, you climb up on the inside of them. It's still demanding as hell, and a lot of work, but it's a little less freaky than the transmission towers.
I will admit that I don't know the cultures of both places very well, but between the two...
Wouldn't you go with Australia based on population density alone? This is a radio telescope, something you want in someplace remote. You pick a square kilometer out in the middle of the outback, there's going to be like NO local interference. South Africa has approximately 40 times the population density, and they seem to be spread around the country a little more evenly than Australia.
Launch near the equator, you won't suffer from this problem.
I'll refer to another article regarding the Maglev Train idea. In the original article, they're talking about about a 1600km ride at around 3 g's. Since this maglev idea (at least for payloads if not people) is most easily achieved by running it up a mountain, if you want to use the equator, there are 2 that are probably the best options. Mount Kilimanjaro and Chimarazo.
Chimarazo is higher, and closer to the equator, but assuming you want to use the rotation of the earth to your advantage, it's only about 200km from the coast. I don't know what the rate of acceleration would have to be (is it too simple to assume that it would have to have 8 times the acceleration of the original plan?), but I'm pretty sure the acceleration would be too much for people. However, for payloads, having your start point close to the coast is a real advantage (think shipping).
Mount Kilamanjaro is pretty good too, and it does have land for 1000 miles to the west, but there's a problem. Well, starting point, Tanzania. That's not so bad! Let's draw a straight line heading west... Oh... Well, looks like we end up in the Congo, but we have to go through either Rwanda or Burundi. That might be a problem... Yeah, we might need to find a more clever location for the people maglev train to space, or go for a non-equatorial location.
I still think we need to get cheaper ways into space than what we have now... And honestly, the idea of using rockets to send people up in simplified lightweight capsules, and having them dock with service modules raw materials and equipment that we've fired up into space from a big magnetic cannon sounds like at least an improvement.
The attitude of "Oh, this is just an isolated case, when things get better they will go away" is the real problem. Once people realize that no, this bullshit is only going to get worse before it gets better, then we can begin to have a real discussion regarding what can be done about it.
Actually, this is quite close to how I was perceiving the comment. I perceived the comment I was responding to as a defeatist "the horse is out of the barn so why bother" statement. Perhaps I latched on to a small statement, and had a problem with reading comprehension.
I think it's ok, and even a good idea to not wait until it gets worse before we try to correct things. Even advisable. Some people think that once it gets bad enough, people will finally notice, and stand up, but history is full of examples where it got so bad as to be unlivable and people still didn't fight. Fight it early, fight it hard.
...I didn't want to see the girlfriend this weekend anyway.
Hmmm. you might be on to something. I'm trying to simultaneously break up with my girlfriend as well as learn more about system administration. Building a LFS box might help me learn to automate a process I'd rather not do manually.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually you have plenty of stuff to get done while commuting: what about driving the damn car?
I feel dirty for doing this for a response to one of my own posts but...
Whoosh. I thought I was obvious enough.
I can't wait until you can just buy a replacement windshield so you can get stuff done on your long commute! Or combined with your onboard GPS naviagation system with the augmented reality thing going on.
It's transparent, so it's gotta be better than texting, right?
There used to be lots of chipmakers in the United States.
Used to? (That's AMD's spin off).
It appears the US is still a major player in the CPU market. China's current huge advantage isn't the ability to make top-end chips. Its advantage is in rock bottom assembly prices, combined with the flexibility to make almost overnight changes to manufacturing processes. That flexibility is partly due to their reliance on cheap human labor that might even be on call 24 hours a day. If you try to change a process in a mechanized/automated plant, it takes time and very possibly some retooling. To change a process in a factory relying on cheap labor, it takes a few hours of classroom time and a trainer.
That said, the US has some major manufacturing problems. The US is no longer capable of making what they used to make. It seems that some expertise is gained/maintained by being close to or involved in the end process, and if you rely on other people to do it all, you lose the ability. I'm not wading into the rest very deeply, but I will admit that there are a lot of reasons that it costs more to manufacture things in the US that don't involve labor costs or the environment.
I think it comes down to power to weight ratio... ...I do not understand why they haven't made a hybrid with a small (1 litre) efficient diesel engine that *only* kicks in to charge the batteries when they hit half charge.
Jaguar currently has a rather interesting hybrid concept car with a generator hooked to a turbine. Kind of interesting as a proof of concept. See here. One problem is that the turbine engine is a lot less efficient than the diesel engine, but you kind of make up for it in weight savings. Turbines weigh very little compared to a diesel. Obviously, this is not a daily driver, but hopefully they learn some stuff from just building it and it pays off.
Goddang it, didn't close my tag properly. PIMF.
The only thing 16:9 is good for is watching HD videos...
I read a lot of documents. A lot of documents. The wider the screen the better, so long as I get to rotate it 90 degrees.
Is there a way to modify something as both funny and sad? This post would get it.
A (rare) moment of US/EU strategic and economic briliance?
I'm not sure if it's brilliance, or just the opening salvo of another Smoot-Hawley, leading to a bad feedback loop. I don't know. Given the current economic situation in the US, I think it merits continued observation.
"No person shall ... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law ..."
constitution.org
Seems like a dead letter these days.
Well, it definitely counts as property if they're not being allowed to use it. (Yeah yeah, IANAL, gotta say it.)
Is it just me, or is it that if someone doesn't like what you're doing, they don't care if the charges stick so long as they get to hurt you financially? In a lot of cases it's legal fees, but sometimes it just seems that they see any form of financial pain as enough. That seems like punishment without a conviction, and that bothers me.
I'd imagine that any legal case being pursued against Megaupload would be preserved by spinning the data off onto a boxload of tape and letting Carpathia get back to business. Am I missing something, or is there someone that thinks that they need to hurt Carpathia regardless of what happens?
yes I know I'm ignoring the pain being caused to Megaupload and its (arguably former) users.
Maybe the Terrible, terrible movie whose name shall not be spoken
You mean The Crappening?
I'm glad someone made it obvious enough for me. I honestly had no frigging idea what he was talking about. I still know nothing about it, and apparently that makes me one of the lucky ones.
"Trees act as radon pumps, bringing the gas to the surface and releasing it to the atmosphere through transpiration - a process where water absorbed by the root system is evaporated into the atmosphere from leaves. This is especially prevalent for trees with deep root systems, such as eucalypts."
The QUT scientists estimated that, in a eucalyptus forest, trees may account for up to 37 per cent of the radon in the air when transpiration rates were highest.
So... If I go into the forest, I'm more likely to be breathing radon, and at greater concentrations? Um... I do like the trees, but from this I'm not sure the feeling is mutual...
It looks like they've managed to export the Diebold voting machines!
"We can reduce the size of the haystack when we are looking for that one-in-a-billion terrorist," said TSA Administrator John Pistole.
lets hope those 6 guys dont have 100 bucks to throw at this scheme!
That quote didn't settle well with me either. I mean, I was an arts major in college, but, the math simply wasn't that hard. Yes, I DO know that it was meant as a broad expression to simply say "this is really rare", but "1 in a billion" is off by at least one order of magnitude.
It wasn't originally designed to suck, but when you refuse to spend money on infrastructure improvements, you end up spending your time putting out fires instead of making improvements.
Ding ding ding!!!!
I think in Slashdotspeak, I should say "^This", and HARD.
Just say it to "Do the Hustle," and whistle the tune. You'll never hear it the same way again.
Oh my, that's going to waste some time of my day, EVERY day, forever.
...can they explain to me what "do the needful" means? That's English to English, and I don't fully understand the subtext of it.
Going to the scrapyard can be avoided if interested parties take enough interest. It can be done, but it's not free.
I've visited the ship, and it's a mixed bag, but you're allowed an unguided tour with no time limits for 10 bucks? No complaints.
Watch this and tell me that 20 bucks/hour is enough for working on those sort of structures. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2A_h2AjJaMw
Those are transmission towers. Structurally not the same at all. A lot of wind turbine towers, you climb up on the inside of them. It's still demanding as hell, and a lot of work, but it's a little less freaky than the transmission towers.
(pops popcorn)
I will admit that I don't know the cultures of both places very well, but between the two...
Wouldn't you go with Australia based on population density alone? This is a radio telescope, something you want in someplace remote. You pick a square kilometer out in the middle of the outback, there's going to be like NO local interference. South Africa has approximately 40 times the population density, and they seem to be spread around the country a little more evenly than Australia.
Launch near the equator, you won't suffer from this problem.
I'll refer to another article regarding the Maglev Train idea. In the original article, they're talking about about a 1600km ride at around 3 g's. Since this maglev idea (at least for payloads if not people) is most easily achieved by running it up a mountain, if you want to use the equator, there are 2 that are probably the best options. Mount Kilimanjaro and Chimarazo.
Chimarazo is higher, and closer to the equator, but assuming you want to use the rotation of the earth to your advantage, it's only about 200km from the coast. I don't know what the rate of acceleration would have to be (is it too simple to assume that it would have to have 8 times the acceleration of the original plan?), but I'm pretty sure the acceleration would be too much for people. However, for payloads, having your start point close to the coast is a real advantage (think shipping).
Mount Kilamanjaro is pretty good too, and it does have land for 1000 miles to the west, but there's a problem. Well, starting point, Tanzania. That's not so bad! Let's draw a straight line heading west... Oh... Well, looks like we end up in the Congo, but we have to go through either Rwanda or Burundi. That might be a problem... Yeah, we might need to find a more clever location for the people maglev train to space, or go for a non-equatorial location.
I still think we need to get cheaper ways into space than what we have now... And honestly, the idea of using rockets to send people up in simplified lightweight capsules, and having them dock with service modules raw materials and equipment that we've fired up into space from a big magnetic cannon sounds like at least an improvement.
I certainly don't see anything that the Chinese are doing which could pull off anything close to that.
They have over a billion people and are going to select a person with the unlikely name of Yertle as their next leader?
The attitude of "Oh, this is just an isolated case, when things get better they will go away" is the real problem. Once people realize that no, this bullshit is only going to get worse before it gets better, then we can begin to have a real discussion regarding what can be done about it.
Actually, this is quite close to how I was perceiving the comment. I perceived the comment I was responding to as a defeatist "the horse is out of the barn so why bother" statement. Perhaps I latched on to a small statement, and had a problem with reading comprehension.
I think it's ok, and even a good idea to not wait until it gets worse before we try to correct things. Even advisable. Some people think that once it gets bad enough, people will finally notice, and stand up, but history is full of examples where it got so bad as to be unlivable and people still didn't fight. Fight it early, fight it hard.
...I didn't want to see the girlfriend this weekend anyway.
Hmmm. you might be on to something. I'm trying to simultaneously break up with my girlfriend as well as learn more about system administration. Building a LFS box might help me learn to automate a process I'd rather not do manually.
OTOH some of his critics were right. We didn't and don't *need* the hydrogen bomb.
Bite your tongue! Without the H-Bomb, the development of the Bikini would have been delayed for years!