"It then drags three steel conduits -- casing that houses the fiber and shields it from the sewage"
In this article they have a bit at the end detailing how it works. First the robot inserts steel rings into the pipe, then it drags the steel conduit into the pipe and attaches it to the rings. The cable is then blown through the conduit with pressurized air.
I'm also fairly certain that if a site with fiber optic cable in its sewer pipes had plumbing problems, they'd be sure to let the plumber know before hand. There may even be warning lables attached to said pipes.
Praxair will deliver the cylinders of Hydrogen, at your request. They'll pick up empty tanks too. In fact, go to their website, praxair.com, and you can place your orders online.
A nuclear war isn't an attack on the networks themselves. This, however, is an attack on the networks. A subterranean bunker is designed to withstand nuclear wars, but what do you think would happen if the nuke was inside the bunker?
Having built my first *new* system ever (ie: not from scraps I had here and there), the power supply was one of my highest priorities. I read and looked around, and Enermax looked pretty tight. So I get one. 450W model. Build the system, turn it on for the first time.
Well, I'll spare the details. I went through several expensive components, after which I take the box into a local shop, because at least if they break something, it won't cost me anything. The tech says I should replace my power supply on grounds that it "smells funny". So I replaced it with another Enermax, 350W model. Everything works, but not because I replaced the PS.
So now I've got this 450W Enermax power supply sitting around. I email Enermax, claiming their power supply has cost me a lot of money in damage. They offered to test it. So, they had a shipping guy sent to pick up the power supply, then they paid to have the power supply shipped to Taiwan. They proceeded to test the power supply using a test rig identical to my hardware.
Then, they sent me pictures, via email, of the power supply with s/n visible, the system components (no case), and the monitor displaying a working system at the BIOS setup.
Then, they paid to have the power supply returned to me. All the way back from Taiwan (in case you missed that part.)
I now have that power supply running my new server that I built from spare components accumulated during the whole ordeal.
Needless to say, after having helped me out so much at their own expense, I'm a huge fan of Enermax (also because I've found their power supplies to be really nice, too.;) I don't think I've ever heard of customer service that great.
Wouldn't what they're doing exceed environmental specifications for the chips? I looked around ati.com and intel.com, but couldn't find any specifications on what the upper and lower bounds are as far as temerpature is concerned. I recall seeing in most product specifications for electronic devices temperature limits, and I thought the lower was usually around -15 degrees celcius. Or does the temperature of the chips ever get that low? Do they hit some kind of equilibrium that keeps them from reaching their lower limit?
No danger what so ever. In my first year (university) Physics lab, we got to play with some Liquid Nitrogen. I held my fingers in it up to the first knuckle (would have been deeper, but we just had small styrofoam cups) for at least 5-10 seconds. The Nitrogen boils around your warm fingers for a while, before they start cooling down enough for the liquid to come in contact. Even if that happened, it would take a while longer before you'd be in danger of loosing your fingers. You might suffer from some blistering or frost bite, but that would heal. Liquid Nitrogen is actually used in direct contact with skin as a treatment for warts. It's not really that dangerous.
Heh, your Dr. Sbaitso sig reminded me of an error.. If you swore at Sbaitso too much, he dumped core:P (Or pretended to dump something anyway, maybe his pants, always a good time with Dr. Sbaitso.;)
Heh, I had some funky x86 hardware that often caused Linux to crash. I can't remember the details exactly, but I think there was usually a big dump to screen, followed by:
Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
And the system halted. I always gotta kick out of my computer screaming "Aiee!" Once I nearly went "Aiee!" because my system crashed (in the same manner) after a 175 day uptime, my personal record.
If you're in the US, I bet half (or more) of the calls you get are from Canada. I have several friends who were telemarketers for summer jobs, and they only called the states. The telemarketing companies may operate here because a) cheaper labour, and b) the laws in the US don't apply. But IANAL, so I could be wrong.
I find the first link above rediculous because their DNC list requires a payment and subscription fee. I recall my friends saying that they have to provide instructions on how a person can be removed from telemarketing lists (or files, as they called them, I guess.) There was no charge for being removed from said files.
That's a good point, actually. I would say that refer's to Microsoft's Embrace and Extend (TM) strategy. Sure, Microsoft could lead the way and make an effort to come out with new technologies and ideas, but why bother. They can let their competitors do the R&D, then they can Embrace and Extend, shutting out said competitors. It kills two birds with one stone. New technology and less competition.
Are these changes retroactive? Can they be? IANAL, but if not, you can continue to use whatever players you currently have, free of charge. I don't think they could charge you 75 cents for an mp3 player you already bought. Or downloaded for that matter.
Last year, for both of my first year CS courses, all assignments had to be handed in on a 3.5" floppy. Kinda sucked when I had to sprint across campus to hand in an assignment that I put off until the last minute (ie: most of my assingments;) The prof I had second semester actually used linux, and when discussing it with him, he said he wished our computer labs were linux/unix/whatever based (as opposed to, ugh, NT). He said that'd make it easier for him to automate handing in assignments via email.
Did you read the whole article? Like this part, for example:
"I bought a ridiculous number of CDs while I worked there, because I found out about music that I wouldn't have otherwise."
I can say the same thing. Over a half of my 200 CD collection is due to AudioGalaxy (it was my file sharing app of choice.) That's 100+ legitimate CD purchases due to file sharing, and file sharing only. Gee, who'd have figured, eh?
If Kennon Ballou did it, and I did it, it makes me wonder how many other people did too.
And by $40/mo he means $43/month in Canadian currency. That's around $28 USD. So long as you live in Sault Ste. Marie, ON (Shaw's eastern most distribution center) or West of there, you'll get Shaw. I worked for them for a while, and was told that Shaw doesn't really care what you do with the service, or how much you use it. They have their own fibre pipe running along the Canadian National Railway. Bandwidth really doesn't cost them anything, except for the one time cost of laying the pipe, and whatever it costs to transmit data off their network. I think they're getting into VoIP soon too. Like the guy above said - mad speeds. The service has only improved since I subscribed.
Re:Gentoo's Portage system r00lz
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 2
If you go to Gentoo's Website and read about the portage system, you'll see they make reference to the fact that it's similar to BSD's ports system. They mention that portage is certainly not just a ports "ripoff". I recall reading somewhere that the portage system uses the best features of ports and Debian's apt. Although I've never used Debian, and have limited experience with ports, I wouldn't doubt it. Portage is pretty tight.
A lot of people seem to say that "As long as they mark your problem solving skills and not how perfect your code is, it's ok."
I agree, however, that's not the way it works. In my first year CS courses, we lost marks if we so much as forgot a bracket. That's rediculous. Small things like that happen when you ask someone to write code on paper under exam conditions.
What I think should be done, if writing midterms and finals on a computer is out of the question, is that assignments should be given the most weight on the final grade. Our CS assignments were handed out weekly, and due the following week. That allows you to take it home, code as many solutions as you can in a week, debug it, etc. I think this approach is a far more accurate description of one's skills as a programmer. Another way about it would be to have a "final assingment", which combines all of the skills taught during the semester into one larger than average assignment. You'd have a week to complete this assignment, like the others, but it'd be weighted more.
Of course, an obvious problem with my suggestions would be cheating. And at the moment, all solutions to this problem I can think of don't seem like they'd be any good. I'm open to suggestions.
Another approach is to change the way CS tests (midterms and finals) are designed. Drop as much of the coding as possible, and simply ask the student to apply the principles they've learned to a variety of problems. This would be a mostly written exam, which leaves it open to subjective grading. Maybe that's the way it should be. Computer Science is about problem solving, not coding. Anyone in CS should know that programming is a drop in the bucket of Computer Science. If you're designing a solution to a problem, you should know how to express your solution in words just as well as you can think of it.
Trinity (one of the hackers) jumps five feet off the ground and pauses in mid air before kicking a policeman just below his neck.
I thought the pause was just that, a pause. Not just Trinity pausing in mid-air (uh hello, with that much time, the police officer could have ducked, shot her, emptied a can of mace.) Notice how no one else in the scene moves either. It's just a pause so we can see the cool sweeping camera effect as it circles around the scene. I believe it's called "Bullet-Time" or something.
While the site is an interesting read, I think these guys are a little too eager to point out the flaws in movie physics. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't go to the movies to see an accurate depiction of reality.
Is it just me, or does this picture look very similar to one of the opening shots from the X-Files, where what seems to be a spirit or alien form with arms outstretched depicts the "X". The same could be said for this picture but the lines are too narrow.
Is it really the keyboard that causes carpal tunnel syndrome? I've been going with a regular keyboard since my first computer (~10 years), and I'm just fine. Maybe some people are just more prone to carpal tunnel than others. Maybe it's just really bad typing habits (or not, because I think mine are horrible;).
Shaw and Rogers make you buy TV first
on
What Free Cable?
·
· Score: 1
Shaw and Rogers Cable (two cable co's here in Canada, which have actually merged, I think) won't give you internet service on cable unless you've subscribed to their minimum cable TV package. For most people that's fine, because they generally have cable TV or digital TV through Shaw/Rogers anyway. So, if you subscribe to their minimum TV package, all channles, except those in that package and the internet, are filtered out. But you can't get your own modem and steal internet service because your modem has to be programmed by Shaw/Rogers for your location before it will work.
Think about that. There you are, starting a little project so you and your buddies can play a game over your network. Things are looking good, the code is working, and suddenly you realise what a good idea it would be to expand the project to do what the commercial/proprietary software does.
Why on earth would you even think about legal consultation? It's a small project, a hobby, and when you're working on stuff like that legal implications generally don't cross your mind. Why would they? For one thing, what these guys are doing is perfectly legal, everyone knows that. When this project started, I don't think there was even a thought that it might be slightly illegal.
I remember when Napster first came out, and me and some buddies reverse engineered the protocol to make our own Linux client and server. Just for fun, something to do, y'know. It was interesting for me because I was learning how to reverse engineer a protocol. Something I had never done. Legal implications never once crossed our minds.
It just comes down to Blizzard being a bunch of rotten eggs, afraid of a little competiton. Personally, I won't be buying a Blizzard product ever again.
(Linux is too small right now, but maybe they will get bought by HPaq!)
First of all, Linux isn't for sale. That's part of how the GPL works, and partially why Microsoft can't take it down.
Secondly, when talking about Linux, there is no they. With all the people working on it, and with all its different forms, it can barely be considered a single entity. You refer to it as business or corporation that can be bought. It is not and can not be any of those things.
Where are we, the public, going to get the resources to fight this kind of thing? The media companies are enormous, have enormous resources, and seem to have much more political power than the public. Maybe it's not that we're lethargic, maybe we have lost so much faith in the legal system that it seems pointless to fight.
Critics of this type of study, including some in the record industry, have speculated that people don't always tell the truth to researchers on controversial issues such as this.
Those critics have just discredited their own surveys and studies. And think about it - who are you more likely and comfortable to tell the truth to? A researcher backed by big, bad RIAA, or another group who's interests aren't biased.
I wouldn't be totally honest with the RIAA guys, just because I'd be nerveous about being busted, as unlikely as it is. I also don't like the RIAA, so I'd lie just to skew their results.
On the other hand, I'd tell the truth and help the unbiased party as much as I could. Just because it's an honest study where I'm sure my results wouldn't be rejected or skewed to fit some kind of unconstitutional agenda.
Slashdot Mirror
"It then drags three steel conduits -- casing that houses the fiber and shields it from the sewage"
In this article they have a bit at the end detailing how it works. First the robot inserts steel rings into the pipe, then it drags the steel conduit into the pipe and attaches it to the rings.
The cable is then blown through the conduit with pressurized air.
I'm also fairly certain that if a site with fiber optic cable in its sewer pipes had plumbing problems, they'd be sure to let the plumber know before hand. There may even be warning lables attached to said pipes.
Praxair will deliver the cylinders of Hydrogen, at your request. They'll pick up empty tanks too.
In fact, go to their website, praxair.com, and you can place your orders online.
A nuclear war isn't an attack on the networks themselves. This, however, is an attack on the networks.
A subterranean bunker is designed to withstand nuclear wars, but what do you think would happen if the nuke was inside the bunker?
Having built my first *new* system ever (ie: not from scraps I had here and there), the power supply was one of my highest priorities. I read and looked around, and Enermax looked pretty tight.
;) I don't think I've ever heard of customer service that great.
So I get one. 450W model. Build the system, turn it on for the first time.
Well, I'll spare the details. I went through several expensive components, after which I take the box into a local shop, because at least if they break something, it won't cost me anything. The tech says I should replace my power supply on grounds that it "smells funny". So I replaced it with another Enermax, 350W model. Everything works, but not because I replaced the PS.
So now I've got this 450W Enermax power supply sitting around. I email Enermax, claiming their power supply has cost me a lot of money in damage. They offered to test it. So, they had a shipping guy sent to pick up the power supply, then they paid to have the power supply shipped to Taiwan. They proceeded to test the power supply using a test rig identical to my hardware.
Then, they sent me pictures, via email, of the power supply with s/n visible, the system components (no case), and the monitor displaying a working system at the BIOS setup.
Then, they paid to have the power supply returned to me. All the way back from Taiwan (in case you missed that part.)
I now have that power supply running my new server that I built from spare components accumulated during the whole ordeal.
Needless to say, after having helped me out so much at their own expense, I'm a huge fan of Enermax (also because I've found their power supplies to be really nice, too.
Wouldn't what they're doing exceed environmental specifications for the chips?
I looked around ati.com and intel.com, but couldn't find any specifications on what the upper and lower bounds are as far as temerpature is concerned. I recall seeing in most product specifications for electronic devices temperature limits, and I thought the lower was usually around -15 degrees celcius.
Or does the temperature of the chips ever get that low? Do they hit some kind of equilibrium that keeps them from reaching their lower limit?
No danger what so ever. In my first year (university) Physics lab, we got to play with some Liquid Nitrogen. I held my fingers in it up to the first knuckle (would have been deeper, but we just had small styrofoam cups) for at least 5-10 seconds. The Nitrogen boils around your warm fingers for a while, before they start cooling down enough for the liquid to come in contact.
Even if that happened, it would take a while longer before you'd be in danger of loosing your fingers. You might suffer from some blistering or frost bite, but that would heal.
Liquid Nitrogen is actually used in direct contact with skin as a treatment for warts. It's not really that dangerous.
Heh, your Dr. Sbaitso sig reminded me of an error.. :P ;)
If you swore at Sbaitso too much, he dumped core
(Or pretended to dump something anyway, maybe his pants, always a good time with Dr. Sbaitso.
Heh, I had some funky x86 hardware that often caused Linux to crash. I can't remember the details exactly, but I think there was usually a big dump to screen, followed by:
Aiee, killing interrupt handler!
And the system halted. I always gotta kick out of my computer screaming "Aiee!"
Once I nearly went "Aiee!" because my system crashed (in the same manner) after a 175 day uptime, my personal record.
If you're in the US, I bet half (or more) of the calls you get are from Canada. I have several friends who were telemarketers for summer jobs, and they only called the states.
The telemarketing companies may operate here because a) cheaper labour, and b) the laws in the US don't apply. But IANAL, so I could be wrong.
I find the first link above rediculous because their DNC list requires a payment and subscription fee. I recall my friends saying that they have to provide instructions on how a person can be removed from telemarketing lists (or files, as they called them, I guess.) There was no charge for being removed from said files.
That's a good point, actually.
I would say that refer's to Microsoft's Embrace and Extend (TM) strategy. Sure, Microsoft could lead the way and make an effort to come out with new technologies and ideas, but why bother. They can let their competitors do the R&D, then they can Embrace and Extend, shutting out said competitors.
It kills two birds with one stone. New technology and less competition.
In his post, he mentioned that there are only a few radio stations in his area.
... and a few talk stations, but that's about it."
"There are a couple of country stations, a couple of 'today's hit music' stations
He'd have his pick of frequencies, I imagine.
Besides, Internet Radio seems to be far more expensive and restrictive.
Are these changes retroactive? Can they be?
IANAL, but if not, you can continue to use whatever players you currently have, free of charge.
I don't think they could charge you 75 cents for an mp3 player you already bought. Or downloaded for that matter.
Last year, for both of my first year CS courses, all assignments had to be handed in on a 3.5" floppy. Kinda sucked when I had to sprint across campus to hand in an assignment that I put off until the last minute (ie: most of my assingments ;)
The prof I had second semester actually used linux, and when discussing it with him, he said he wished our computer labs were linux/unix/whatever based (as opposed to, ugh, NT). He said that'd make it easier for him to automate handing in assignments via email.
Did you read the whole article? Like this part, for example:
"I bought a ridiculous number of CDs while I worked there, because I found out about music that I wouldn't have otherwise."
I can say the same thing. Over a half of my 200 CD collection is due to AudioGalaxy (it was my file sharing app of choice.) That's 100+ legitimate CD purchases due to file sharing, and file sharing only.
Gee, who'd have figured, eh?
If Kennon Ballou did it, and I did it, it makes me wonder how many other people did too.
And by $40/mo he means $43/month in Canadian currency. That's around $28 USD.
So long as you live in Sault Ste. Marie, ON (Shaw's eastern most distribution center) or West of there, you'll get Shaw. I worked for them for a while, and was told that Shaw doesn't really care what you do with the service, or how much you use it. They have their own fibre pipe running along the Canadian National Railway. Bandwidth really doesn't cost them anything, except for the one time cost of laying the pipe, and whatever it costs to transmit data off their network. I think they're getting into VoIP soon too.
Like the guy above said - mad speeds. The service has only improved since I subscribed.
If you go to Gentoo's Website and read about the portage system, you'll see they make reference to the fact that it's similar to BSD's ports system. They mention that portage is certainly not just a ports "ripoff". I recall reading somewhere that the portage system uses the best features of ports and Debian's apt.
Although I've never used Debian, and have limited experience with ports, I wouldn't doubt it. Portage is pretty tight.
A lot of people seem to say that "As long as they mark your problem solving skills and not how perfect your code is, it's ok."
I agree, however, that's not the way it works. In my first year CS courses, we lost marks if we so much as forgot a bracket. That's rediculous. Small things like that happen when you ask someone to write code on paper under exam conditions.
What I think should be done, if writing midterms and finals on a computer is out of the question, is that assignments should be given the most weight on the final grade. Our CS assignments were handed out weekly, and due the following week. That allows you to take it home, code as many solutions as you can in a week, debug it, etc. I think this approach is a far more accurate description of one's skills as a programmer.
Another way about it would be to have a "final assingment", which combines all of the skills taught during the semester into one larger than average assignment. You'd have a week to complete this assignment, like the others, but it'd be weighted more.
Of course, an obvious problem with my suggestions would be cheating. And at the moment, all solutions to this problem I can think of don't seem like they'd be any good.
I'm open to suggestions.
Another approach is to change the way CS tests (midterms and finals) are designed. Drop as much of the coding as possible, and simply ask the student to apply the principles they've learned to a variety of problems. This would be a mostly written exam, which leaves it open to subjective grading. Maybe that's the way it should be. Computer Science is about problem solving, not coding. Anyone in CS should know that programming is a drop in the bucket of Computer Science. If you're designing a solution to a problem, you should know how to express your solution in words just as well as you can think of it.
Trinity (one of the hackers) jumps five feet off the ground and pauses in mid air before kicking a policeman just below his neck.
I thought the pause was just that, a pause. Not just Trinity pausing in mid-air (uh hello, with that much time, the police officer could have ducked, shot her, emptied a can of mace.) Notice how no one else in the scene moves either. It's just a pause so we can see the cool sweeping camera effect as it circles around the scene. I believe it's called "Bullet-Time" or something.
While the site is an interesting read, I think these guys are a little too eager to point out the flaws in movie physics. I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't go to the movies to see an accurate depiction of reality.
Is it just me, or does this picture look very similar to one of the opening shots from the X-Files, where what seems to be a spirit or alien form with arms outstretched depicts the "X".
The same could be said for this picture but the lines are too narrow.
Is it really the keyboard that causes carpal tunnel syndrome? I've been going with a regular keyboard since my first computer (~10 years), and I'm just fine. ;).
Maybe some people are just more prone to carpal tunnel than others. Maybe it's just really bad typing habits (or not, because I think mine are horrible
Shaw and Rogers Cable (two cable co's here in Canada, which have actually merged, I think) won't give you internet service on cable unless you've subscribed to their minimum cable TV package. For most people that's fine, because they generally have cable TV or digital TV through Shaw/Rogers anyway.
So, if you subscribe to their minimum TV package, all channles, except those in that package and the internet, are filtered out. But you can't get your own modem and steal internet service because your modem has to be programmed by Shaw/Rogers for your location before it will work.
Think about that. There you are, starting a little project so you and your buddies can play a game over your network. Things are looking good, the code is working, and suddenly you realise what a good idea it would be to expand the project to do what the commercial/proprietary software does.
Why on earth would you even think about legal consultation? It's a small project, a hobby, and when you're working on stuff like that legal implications generally don't cross your mind. Why would they? For one thing, what these guys are doing is perfectly legal, everyone knows that. When this project started, I don't think there was even a thought that it might be slightly illegal.
I remember when Napster first came out, and me and some buddies reverse engineered the protocol to make our own Linux client and server. Just for fun, something to do, y'know. It was interesting for me because I was learning how to reverse engineer a protocol. Something I had never done. Legal implications never once crossed our minds.
It just comes down to Blizzard being a bunch of rotten eggs, afraid of a little competiton.
Personally, I won't be buying a Blizzard product ever again.
(Linux is too small right now, but maybe they will get bought by HPaq!)
First of all, Linux isn't for sale. That's part of how the GPL works, and partially why Microsoft can't take it down.
Secondly, when talking about Linux, there is no they. With all the people working on it, and with all its different forms, it can barely be considered a single entity. You refer to it as business or corporation that can be bought. It is not and can not be any of those things.
Where are we, the public, going to get the resources to fight this kind of thing?
The media companies are enormous, have enormous resources, and seem to have much more political power than the public.
Maybe it's not that we're lethargic, maybe we have lost so much faith in the legal system that it seems pointless to fight.
Critics of this type of study, including some in the record industry, have speculated that people don't always tell the truth to researchers on controversial issues such as this.
Those critics have just discredited their own surveys and studies. And think about it - who are you more likely and comfortable to tell the truth to? A researcher backed by big, bad RIAA, or another group who's interests aren't biased.
I wouldn't be totally honest with the RIAA guys, just because I'd be nerveous about being busted, as unlikely as it is. I also don't like the RIAA, so I'd lie just to skew their results.
On the other hand, I'd tell the truth and help the unbiased party as much as I could. Just because it's an honest study where I'm sure my results wouldn't be rejected or skewed to fit some kind of unconstitutional agenda.