I was greatly disappointed to learn of your lawsuit against Jose Avila for operating a website describing furniture constructed from FedEx shipping boxes. I don't see how his furniture making or website could possibly harm FedEx in any way, and I consider your legal action a case of pointless bullying and a misuse of the DMCA.
Accordingly, I have begun using United Parcel Service for all my non-USPS personal and business shipping needs. I hope to do business with your company in the future, but I will no longer be using any FedEx products or services until the lawsuit against Avila has been dropped.
Finding free boxes shouldn't be a big issue. If you work in a sizeable office building, visit the copy rooms on every floor daily and pick up the boxes the paper comes in, the kind with the slip-on lids. When I needed storage boxes a while back, I got one per day on average from a 5-story building. In a month I had more than enough. If you can't wait to gather them gradually, go to a few print shops and ask them to put aside their boxes for you to pick up in a couple days.
That's if you need uniform size boxes. If you don't mind assorted sizes, the best source I've found is liquor stores. They go through TONS of boxes, mostly smaller than copy paper ones, so they're good for heavy stuff like books.
Some company sells templates for making dovetail joints in wood. The template is just a piece of plastic with a pattern cut into the edge. You could easily use the template to make an identical template, but the template comes with a EULA that specifically forbids you doing that. The EULA also states that the template is for personal hobby use by the buyer only; you cannot lend it to someone else or use it to make anything to sell.
Next we'll have paper that restricts what you are allowed to write or print on it.
What would be really cool is to go to a website and create your own custom distro by selecting from a list of apps and features. Then the server would generate an ISO and burn it for you, and you get it in the mail or download it. There could be a few templates for starting points, or you could start from scratch. Linux installation programs usually let you select which apps to install. A smorgasboard distro generator would just move that step upstream. I wonder if a pay service like this would make money.
At this point anything Darl says is about as important as where Paris Hilton had dinner last night. Darl has pretty much wiped out his company, screwed his own investors, and generally wasted far more of other people's time than anybody should have a right to. He's not getting any more of my attention.
Dang. I was hoping his day would go more like this:
Wake up. Go to internet cafe. Discover all my credit cards are maxxed out and my bank accounts are empty. WTF? See CNN report about manhunt for international child porn dealer. Hey, that's my photo! That's my address! Notice geeky looking guys with laptops at the next table. What are they laughing at?
Astronaut 1: 2-1/2 years of trash loaded. Phew! Ready to undock. Astronaut 2: Dibs on the front seat. Astronaut 1: I'm not ridin' in the back this time. Astronaut 2: Well Iiii'm not ridin' in the back. Astronaut 1: Yes you are. Astronaut 2: Am not. Astronaut 1: I'm the oldest, and I am NOT riding in the back. Astronaut 2: MOM!!!!
Doctor, you already HAVE this technology and you've had it all your life. It's called pieces of paper. People who WANT to keep a good record of their medical history have always had the ability to do it. It's a matter of their choice, not your convenience. It's certainly no reason to dog-tag the entire country.
I get your rant about the proposed hydrogen economy, but all this product appears to do is separate hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then let them recombine to produce flame. The part about adding oxygen "for color and brightness" is moronic, and the device is obviously not a demonstration of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, or anything else. It's just a cute little expensive novelty item.
Seeing a contradiction between favoring the death penalty and opposing abortion assumes that adult prison inmates and fetuses are equivalent, which they aren't. Thinking that supporting copyright reform or the opensource movement conflicts with wanting personal privacy implies that all information is equivalent, which it isn't. This post is a laughable mishmash of non sequiters that are only sound semi-reasonable on the surface. Picking it apart bit by bit just isn't worth the trouble.
One thing this and most other articles fail to mention is that radiation exposure on the Martian surface is about 75% of that in space. The thin Martian atmosphere offers little protection, and when particles get through and strike atoms in the soil they create a scatter of secondary radiation, some of which scatters upward.
One of NASA's Design Reference Missions to Mars involves a total mission duration of 900 days with a 500 day stay on the surface. This mission would expose the crew to more than their allowable lifetime radiation dosage. Another mission profile involves a 435-day duration. Both of these missions involve a year's round trip travel time, and virtually doom the crew to early cancer deaths after their return to Earth.
Gaseous Core Nuclear Rockets would make Mars missions truly feasible. For reasons discussed in detail here,here and here, among other places, GCNR rockets would get a mission to Mars and back in 270 days, with 7 months travel time and 60 days on the surface. Additionally, the GCNR rocket would have huge carrying capacity, enough for the craft to carry a foot-thick water shield in a double hull. Such a ship would reduce the crew's total radiation exposure to about 1/5 of the 435-day mission and 1/10th of the 900 day mission. The water layer would also act as a giant passive heat sink, eliminating the need for a complex refrigeration system. It would also be a self-sealing micrometeorite shield -- the outer few inches of water would freeze, and if a micrometeorite punctured the hull the escaping water would refreeze over the hole immediately.
Yet another story about NASA "next generation" designs that are just reengineering old technology. NASA should bite the bullet and develop nuclear rockets. Experimentation in the 60s produced a crude solid-core reactor engine called NERVA, but it was heavy and underpowered, and would have released a lot of radioactive pollution. There are much more promising, non-polluting nuclear engine designs now that would outperform anything NASA has on the drawing board. One is called a Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor, also known as a "nuclear lightbulb."
Basically it's a big quartz bulb containing a cloud of gaseous uranium such as UF6, confined to the center of the bulb by a buffer gas swirling around the inside. The UF6 heats up to 25000 C, about 7 times the melting temp of any solid core reactor. It emits intense ultraviolet, which passes through the quartz and is absorbed by slightly doped hydrogen flowing over the outside. The hydrogen heats and expands, exiting the nozzle to provide thrust. There is no actual combustion and no need to carry liquid oxygen. The nuclides confined within the bulb do not enter the exhaust stream, and the hydrogen exhaust itself is not radioactive.
Here is an article on NuclearSpace.com that describes a detailed design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, which would not only lift 1000 tons of payload into orbit but also return intact to a powered landing in the manner of the now defunct Delta Clipper.
GCNR rockets would not only be able to launch entire space hotels in one shot, their enormous lifting capacity would also make Mars missions practical. Proposed 2-year Mars missions using traditional planetary gravity assist trajectories would give the crew fatal radiation doses. A GCNR rocket could carry a fantastically equipped Mars mission with a foot-thick layer of water/ice shielding, on a point-and-shoot trajectory that takes three months each way. But that's another topic all its own.
Anything nuclear is going to create a big PR problem, but NASA is supposed to be all about public education as well as putting things into space. I had hoped for more guts from their new leadership. We've been mucking around in earth orbit for decades. It's time we built real spaceships that can handle really significant cargo.
Whenever I read one of these NASA "next generation" designs that are just reengineering old technology, I wonder when they are going to bite the bullet and go for nuclear rockets. Experimentation in the 60s produced a crude solid-core reactor engine called NERVA, but it was heavy and underpowered, and would have released a lot of radioactive pollution. There are much more promising designs now. One is called a Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor, also known as a "nuclear lightbulb."
Basically it's a big quartz bulb containing gaseous uranium such as UF6, confined to the center of the bulb by a buffer gas swirling around the inside. The UF6 cloud heats up to 25000 C, about 7 times the melting temp of any solid core reactor. It emits intense ultraviolet, which passes through the quartz and is absorbed by slightly doped hydrogen flowing over the outside. The hydrogen heats and expands rather than combusting, exiting the nozzle to provide thrust. No need to carry liquid oxygen. The nuclides confined within the bulb do not enter the exhaust stream, and the hydrogen exhaust itself is not radioactive.
Here is a really interesting article that describes a detailed design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, able to lift 1000 tons of payload into orbit (ten times NASA's latest new design) and return intact to a powered landing in the manner of the now defunct Delta Clipper.
GCNR rockets would not only be able to launch entire space hotels in one shot, their enormous lifting capacity would also make Mars missions practical. Proposed 2-year Mars missions using traditional planetary gravity assist trajectories would give the crew fatal radiation doses. A GCNR rocket could carry a fantastically equipped Mars mission with a foot-thick layer of water/ice shielding, on a point-and-shoot trajectory that takes three months each way. But that's another topic all its own.
Sure, anything nuclear creates a big PR problem, but NASA is supposed to be all about public education as well as putting things into space. I had hoped for more guts from their new leadership. We've been mucking around in earth orbit for decades. It's time we built real spaceships that can handle really significant cargo.
A few years ago there were similar claims that Microsoft Research, which is several times the size of Google and Yahoo search combined, was creating a brain drain in academia. During the ensuing discussion somebody pointed out that the number of technical PhDs earned every year was like a hundred times the MSR hiring rate. It seems like one of those ridiculous themes that get revisited in business news every few years, like whether we are about to see another tech stock bubble.
The question is, what are you and I actually going to do about it other than comment on Slashdot. Answer: nothing. That's why their overall plan will succeed, and 10 years from now we'll be living in the United States of Business and Christianity.
In a vaguely related historical note, the King of England once forbade the manufacture of shovels and other metal tools in the American colonies. This was to ensure continued dependence on the mother country to import those tools. Enforcement was relatively easy because there weren't all that many forges and blacksmiths in the colonies at that time. Enterprising colonial farmers countered by using simple tools to make their own shovels out of hardwood. Examples still exist.
I was surprised there was no mention of the fact that employees were widely known to goof off BEFORE the Internet existed. Any meaningful measurement would have to include a comparison between the two.
What about those text image generators like the church announcement board? Over on Fark the current and most annoying one is the HA-HA man, a laughing Quaker-type guy who says whatever you want. There's also Albert Einstein writing your text on a chalkboard. hetemeel.com - don't say I didn't warn you.
Good points. Also I had trouble getting the unfold gesture to work. Seemed like trying to get the wand motions right for a magic spell at Hogwarts.
Fold-n-drop is cute but doesn't seem like an actual usability improvement over simply hitting Alt-Tab while dragging. The big problem I see with fold-n-drop is the chance of knowing for sure which window you are actually dropping onto, especially if you have folders open with similar contents. You could of course fold the window tops out of the way so you could see the title bars. But hitting alt-tab while dragging is already so easy.
Ahem, Pepsi won the Pepsi Challenge because it was the Pepsi Challenge. If it had been the Gatorade Challenge Gatorade would have won. If it had been the Olde Bearwizz Lager Challenge then Olde Bearwizz Lager would have won. Otherwise we never hear about these marketing studies.
Slashdot Mirror
you can remote start the car, and connect to it from inside the house
Now that my car has turned 21, I want the ability to send it to the store to get beer.
FedEx Customer Relations
3875 Airways, Module H3 Department 4634
Memphis, TN 38116
Dear FedEx,
I was greatly disappointed to learn of your lawsuit against Jose Avila for operating a website describing furniture constructed from FedEx shipping boxes. I don't see how his furniture making or website could possibly harm FedEx in any way, and I consider your legal action a case of pointless bullying and a misuse of the DMCA.
Accordingly, I have begun using United Parcel Service for all my non-USPS personal and business shipping needs. I hope to do business with your company in the future, but I will no longer be using any FedEx products or services until the lawsuit against Avila has been dropped.
Have a nice day.
Finding free boxes shouldn't be a big issue. If you work in a sizeable office building, visit the copy rooms on every floor daily and pick up the boxes the paper comes in, the kind with the slip-on lids. When I needed storage boxes a while back, I got one per day on average from a 5-story building. In a month I had more than enough. If you can't wait to gather them gradually, go to a few print shops and ask them to put aside their boxes for you to pick up in a couple days.
That's if you need uniform size boxes. If you don't mind assorted sizes, the best source I've found is liquor stores. They go through TONS of boxes, mostly smaller than copy paper ones, so they're good for heavy stuff like books.
Some company sells templates for making dovetail joints in wood. The template is just a piece of plastic with a pattern cut into the edge. You could easily use the template to make an identical template, but the template comes with a EULA that specifically forbids you doing that. The EULA also states that the template is for personal hobby use by the buyer only; you cannot lend it to someone else or use it to make anything to sell.
Next we'll have paper that restricts what you are allowed to write or print on it.
What would be really cool is to go to a website and create your own custom distro by selecting from a list of apps and features. Then the server would generate an ISO and burn it for you, and you get it in the mail or download it. There could be a few templates for starting points, or you could start from scratch. Linux installation programs usually let you select which apps to install. A smorgasboard distro generator would just move that step upstream. I wonder if a pay service like this would make money.
At this point anything Darl says is about as important as where Paris Hilton had dinner last night. Darl has pretty much wiped out his company, screwed his own investors, and generally wasted far more of other people's time than anybody should have a right to. He's not getting any more of my attention.
Dang. I was hoping his day would go more like this:
Wake up.
Go to internet cafe.
Discover all my credit cards are maxxed out and my bank accounts are empty. WTF?
See CNN report about manhunt for international child porn dealer. Hey, that's my photo! That's my address!
Notice geeky looking guys with laptops at the next table. What are they laughing at?
Astronaut 1: 2-1/2 years of trash loaded. Phew! Ready to undock.
Astronaut 2: Dibs on the front seat.
Astronaut 1: I'm not ridin' in the back this time.
Astronaut 2: Well Iiii'm not ridin' in the back.
Astronaut 1: Yes you are.
Astronaut 2: Am not.
Astronaut 1: I'm the oldest, and I am NOT riding in the back.
Astronaut 2: MOM!!!!
Sheesh! Those Japanese have a different word for Everything!
Doctor, you already HAVE this technology and you've had it all your life. It's called pieces of paper. People who WANT to keep a good record of their medical history have always had the ability to do it. It's a matter of their choice, not your convenience. It's certainly no reason to dog-tag the entire country.
I get your rant about the proposed hydrogen economy, but all this product appears to do is separate hydrogen and oxygen by electrolysis and then let them recombine to produce flame. The part about adding oxygen "for color and brightness" is moronic, and the device is obviously not a demonstration of hydrogen as an alternative fuel, or anything else. It's just a cute little expensive novelty item.
Seeing a contradiction between favoring the death penalty and opposing abortion assumes that adult prison inmates and fetuses are equivalent, which they aren't. Thinking that supporting copyright reform or the opensource movement conflicts with wanting personal privacy implies that all information is equivalent, which it isn't. This post is a laughable mishmash of non sequiters that are only sound semi-reasonable on the surface. Picking it apart bit by bit just isn't worth the trouble.
One thing this and most other articles fail to mention is that radiation exposure on the Martian surface is about 75% of that in space. The thin Martian atmosphere offers little protection, and when particles get through and strike atoms in the soil they create a scatter of secondary radiation, some of which scatters upward.
One of NASA's Design Reference Missions to Mars involves a total mission duration of 900 days with a 500 day stay on the surface. This mission would expose the crew to more than their allowable lifetime radiation dosage. Another mission profile involves a 435-day duration. Both of these missions involve a year's round trip travel time, and virtually doom the crew to early cancer deaths after their return to Earth.
Gaseous Core Nuclear Rockets would make Mars missions truly feasible. For reasons discussed in detail here, here and here, among other places, GCNR rockets would get a mission to Mars and back in 270 days, with 7 months travel time and 60 days on the surface. Additionally, the GCNR rocket would have huge carrying capacity, enough for the craft to carry a foot-thick water shield in a double hull. Such a ship would reduce the crew's total radiation exposure to about 1/5 of the 435-day mission and 1/10th of the 900 day mission. The water layer would also act as a giant passive heat sink, eliminating the need for a complex refrigeration system. It would also be a self-sealing micrometeorite shield -- the outer few inches of water would freeze, and if a micrometeorite punctured the hull the escaping water would refreeze over the hole immediately.
Yet another story about NASA "next generation" designs that are just reengineering old technology. NASA should bite the bullet and develop nuclear rockets. Experimentation in the 60s produced a crude solid-core reactor engine called NERVA, but it was heavy and underpowered, and would have released a lot of radioactive pollution. There are much more promising, non-polluting nuclear engine designs now that would outperform anything NASA has on the drawing board. One is called a Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor, also known as a "nuclear lightbulb."
Basically it's a big quartz bulb containing a cloud of gaseous uranium such as UF6, confined to the center of the bulb by a buffer gas swirling around the inside. The UF6 heats up to 25000 C, about 7 times the melting temp of any solid core reactor. It emits intense ultraviolet, which passes through the quartz and is absorbed by slightly doped hydrogen flowing over the outside. The hydrogen heats and expands, exiting the nozzle to provide thrust. There is no actual combustion and no need to carry liquid oxygen. The nuclides confined within the bulb do not enter the exhaust stream, and the hydrogen exhaust itself is not radioactive.
Here is an article on NuclearSpace.com that describes a detailed design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, which would not only lift 1000 tons of payload into orbit but also return intact to a powered landing in the manner of the now defunct Delta Clipper.
GCNR rockets would not only be able to launch entire space hotels in one shot, their enormous lifting capacity would also make Mars missions practical. Proposed 2-year Mars missions using traditional planetary gravity assist trajectories would give the crew fatal radiation doses. A GCNR rocket could carry a fantastically equipped Mars mission with a foot-thick layer of water/ice shielding, on a point-and-shoot trajectory that takes three months each way. But that's another topic all its own.
Anything nuclear is going to create a big PR problem, but NASA is supposed to be all about public education as well as putting things into space. I had hoped for more guts from their new leadership. We've been mucking around in earth orbit for decades. It's time we built real spaceships that can handle really significant cargo.
Whenever I read one of these NASA "next generation" designs that are just reengineering old technology, I wonder when they are going to bite the bullet and go for nuclear rockets. Experimentation in the 60s produced a crude solid-core reactor engine called NERVA, but it was heavy and underpowered, and would have released a lot of radioactive pollution. There are much more promising designs now. One is called a Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor, also known as a "nuclear lightbulb."
Basically it's a big quartz bulb containing gaseous uranium such as UF6, confined to the center of the bulb by a buffer gas swirling around the inside. The UF6 cloud heats up to 25000 C, about 7 times the melting temp of any solid core reactor. It emits intense ultraviolet, which passes through the quartz and is absorbed by slightly doped hydrogen flowing over the outside. The hydrogen heats and expands rather than combusting, exiting the nozzle to provide thrust. No need to carry liquid oxygen. The nuclides confined within the bulb do not enter the exhaust stream, and the hydrogen exhaust itself is not radioactive.
Here is a really interesting article that describes a detailed design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, able to lift 1000 tons of payload into orbit (ten times NASA's latest new design) and return intact to a powered landing in the manner of the now defunct Delta Clipper.
GCNR rockets would not only be able to launch entire space hotels in one shot, their enormous lifting capacity would also make Mars missions practical. Proposed 2-year Mars missions using traditional planetary gravity assist trajectories would give the crew fatal radiation doses. A GCNR rocket could carry a fantastically equipped Mars mission with a foot-thick layer of water/ice shielding, on a point-and-shoot trajectory that takes three months each way. But that's another topic all its own.
Sure, anything nuclear creates a big PR problem, but NASA is supposed to be all about public education as well as putting things into space. I had hoped for more guts from their new leadership.
We've been mucking around in earth orbit for decades. It's time we built real spaceships that can handle really significant cargo.
A few years ago there were similar claims that Microsoft Research, which is several times the size of Google and Yahoo search combined, was creating a brain drain in academia. During the ensuing discussion somebody pointed out that the number of technical PhDs earned every year was like a hundred times the MSR hiring rate. It seems like one of those ridiculous themes that get revisited in business news every few years, like whether we are about to see another tech stock bubble.
The question is, what are you and I actually going to do about it other than comment on Slashdot. Answer: nothing. That's why their overall plan will succeed, and 10 years from now we'll be living in the United States of Business and Christianity.
The only line in the article that says anything concrete:
the addition of a wireless component to the cable bundle of services is primarily in the planning stages
I thought you meant Hillary
In a vaguely related historical note, the King of England once forbade the manufacture of shovels and other metal tools in the American colonies. This was to ensure continued dependence on the mother country to import those tools. Enforcement was relatively easy because there weren't all that many forges and blacksmiths in the colonies at that time. Enterprising colonial farmers countered by using simple tools to make their own shovels out of hardwood. Examples still exist.
I was surprised there was no mention of the fact that employees were widely known to goof off BEFORE the Internet existed. Any meaningful measurement would have to include a comparison between the two.
What about those text image generators like the church announcement board? Over on Fark the current and most annoying one is the HA-HA man, a laughing Quaker-type guy who says whatever you want. There's also Albert Einstein writing your text on a chalkboard. hetemeel.com - don't say I didn't warn you.
Good points. Also I had trouble getting the unfold gesture to work. Seemed like trying to get the wand motions right for a magic spell at Hogwarts.
Fold-n-drop is cute but doesn't seem like an actual usability improvement over simply hitting Alt-Tab while dragging. The big problem I see with fold-n-drop is the chance of knowing for sure which window you are actually dropping onto, especially if you have folders open with similar contents. You could of course fold the window tops out of the way so you could see the title bars. But hitting alt-tab while dragging is already so easy.
I think it's "watery tarts," not "strange women." But that's just my memory.
Ahem, Pepsi won the Pepsi Challenge because it was the Pepsi Challenge. If it had been the Gatorade Challenge Gatorade would have won. If it had been the Olde Bearwizz Lager Challenge then Olde Bearwizz Lager would have won. Otherwise we never hear about these marketing studies.