I would have to say that the airlines and online travel agencies are far worse than any of the industries mentioned here. Most of the people in the India (etc.) based call centers have never been on a trip by plane, and they simply don't understand the realities of travel.
Most websites have settled on Adobe Acrobat as the preferred format for posting documents for download. Do you think that someone who doesn't have Acrobat is justified in complaining that "X" website has not posted their documents in a format their computer can read? Adobe Acrobat is an application program that implements a published standard called PDF. I do complain if someone posts a PDF file that doesn't open in, for instance, Apple Preview.
First of all, let me say that it's an honor to reply to The Real Bruce Perens.
Xilinx actually does publish at least some information on their configuration bitstream formats. See, for example, application note XAPP452 for the Spartan-3, or UG071 for the Virtex-4. I have not studied them in enough detail to know whether they are complete; it is clear that they have to be read together with other documentation on the device architecture to make any sense at all.
Yes, metal works for the x-rays, but you also need something like concrete to deal with the neutrons.
I would trust that surplus medical equipment is properly shielded.
You shouldn't trust anything. You make your own calculations of expected radiation levels, and you verify your calculations with measurements as you slowly ramp up the beam current.
I work on an experiment located at one of the world's highest intensity cyclotrons, at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. It has a proton beam current of almost 2 milliamps. The radiation protection issues there are quite serious, and are carefully managed. This kind of activity needs to take place within a regulatory framework, not in some guy's backyard.
you forgot E) they have discovered a business plan that does not actually require that they make a profit. The shortfall is made up by begging off the american taxpayer.
True, but we subsidize all forms of transportation in the US, not just Amtrak. Your state highway department doesn't make a profit either.
Railroads generally use a whole lot less energy (i.e. fuel) per passenger or unit of cargo than a truck/bus (not to mention a plane). There are economies of scale in running one large engine (or electric motor) relative to lots of smaller ones, and with a metal wheel you don't dissipate energy into the tires. Amtrak's problems come from several sources: (a) they don't own the tracks, but have to lease them from private owners on very poor terms; (b) the management isn't exactly clever; (c) the labor costs are extremely high; (d) they operate under an immense set of regulations. It's nothing fundamental about railroad technology, just that we aren't willing to run one sensibly in the US.
Sure, there are obstinate bureaucrats in most any organization. I don't know how it is at Purdue, but the University of California has a procurement credit card system that basically eliminates POs for anything under $2500. We just order it and reconcile the paperwork later.
Incidentally, this is one reason why it's extremely important to fund university groups even in the era of "big science." An environment where intellectual curiosity is expected and rewarded will be more cost-effective than a mega-contractor with a "what's your account number" mentality every time.
Written as a university postdoc in physics...
In the UNIX world, the idea is that only the most carefully security-vetted code runs setuid, and still there are lots of local exploits that come from bugs in these programs. In the Windows world, apparently the idea is to make the least security-conscious programs setuid. Interesting philosophy.:-)
I checked out the site you mentioned (http://www.off-road.com/toc/) in FireFox 1.0 for MacOS X and it renders just fine. It has lots of pictures of idiots doing jumps with snowmobiles, but I guess that's part of the deal.:-)
The bubble sort (there! I said it!) is actually very efficient for the case where you know for a fact that you're starting with very-nearly-sorted data. That's the only excuse I can imagine for using it.
not just classified but ALL work was stopped on friday...Really its a good thing and its happening because the head of Los Alamos is a former admiral who runs a tight ship and does not tolerate anything but teamwork.
Actually, in my view, it's totally ridiculous. There are a large number of people working at Los Alamos who have absolutely nothing to do with the weapons programs, but who work "outside the fence" on open research. Involving them in this security farce is just wasting their time (which, remember, we all pay for).
4 years ago, our Health Physics people told me that I had the highest recorded occupational dose of anyone in Canada," which turns out to be 150 mrem.
I would be amazed if that were true. A few years ago, I was talking to a health physics guy at a US national lab. He had previously worked for a contractor that did radiation surveys at a number of US nuclear power plants. He said that, in that business, it was standard practice to push the techs up to the NRC limit of 5000 mrem/year, then send them home for the rest of the year.
Essentially all steel contains a measurable amount of cobalt-60. It can come from "orphaned" sources, as in this case, but it's also introduced intentionally by many steel mills. In order to monitor the integrity of the bricks that line the furnace, it is a common technique to embed small cobalt-60 sources in them. When you stop seeing the 2.5 MeV gamma radiation, you know it's time for new bricks. (I understand that many mills have switched to a different monitoring technique involving lasers, but there are still plenty in the world that use the cobalt-60 method.)
In general, the level of radiation is too small to be a serious health concern, but it is a real problem for those of us who are putting together very low-background detectors to look at neutrinos, etc.
You have to be very careful with the "involved" statistic. It counts every accident where any party, at fault or not, had any measurable blood alcohol level. In other words, if a completely sober driver rear-ends someone who had a beer five hours before (say, a 0.01% blood alcohol level), that counts.
I witnessed a scene very much like this in Berkeley this morning (about 8:30 a.m., Congregation Beth Israel polling place). That wasn't you by any chance, was it?
You know, they're always advertising for precinct workers. I think it would be a great service to our country if lots of us tech-savvy types took the day off November 2 and helped out.
It doesn't seem to me that the your actual votes are stored on the voting machine itself, but instead on the actual card.
We also have the Diebold machines in Alameda County, California. I can tell you that your vote is not stored on the smart card. The precinct workers have a machine that activates the smart card, writing a token onto it that identifies which party's ballot you should get. Once you select "cast ballot" on the machine, it deletes the token from the smart card so that you can't vote twice. The smart cards are reused repeatedly during the day.
You know, for classroom demonstrations a sound card should be perfectly acceptable for all kinds of things...
My understanding is that sound card inputs are AC coupled, so you won't be able to see anything much slower than about 20 Hz. That might be OK, but it's not quite an oscilloscope.
Thanks for the Pat Buchanan link. Except for the one sentence where he momentarily jumps the tracks onto his "culture war," I agree that this piece is nicely done. And that's coming from a hardcore Berkeley liberal.:-)
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
So, a treaty does not override the Constitution, but it does carry the force of Federal law.
Slashdot Mirror
I highly recommend getting a copy of the Student Manual for The Art of Electronics by Hayes and Horowitz:
http://frank.harvard.edu/aoe/sm/index.htm
Good luck!
I would have to say that the airlines and online travel agencies are far worse than any of the industries mentioned here. Most of the people in the India (etc.) based call centers have never been on a trip by plane, and they simply don't understand the realities of travel.
First of all, let me say that it's an honor to reply to The Real Bruce Perens.
Xilinx actually does publish at least some information on their configuration bitstream formats. See, for example, application note XAPP452 for the Spartan-3, or UG071 for the Virtex-4. I have not studied them in enough detail to know whether they are complete; it is clear that they have to be read together with other documentation on the device architecture to make any sense at all.
I would trust that surplus medical equipment is properly shielded.
You shouldn't trust anything. You make your own calculations of expected radiation levels, and you verify your calculations with measurements as you slowly ramp up the beam current.
I work on an experiment located at one of the world's highest intensity cyclotrons, at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland. It has a proton beam current of almost 2 milliamps. The radiation protection issues there are quite serious, and are carefully managed. This kind of activity needs to take place within a regulatory framework, not in some guy's backyard.
True, but we subsidize all forms of transportation in the US, not just Amtrak. Your state highway department doesn't make a profit either.
Railroads generally use a whole lot less energy (i.e. fuel) per passenger or unit of cargo than a truck/bus (not to mention a plane). There are economies of scale in running one large engine (or electric motor) relative to lots of smaller ones, and with a metal wheel you don't dissipate energy into the tires. Amtrak's problems come from several sources: (a) they don't own the tracks, but have to lease them from private owners on very poor terms; (b) the management isn't exactly clever; (c) the labor costs are extremely high; (d) they operate under an immense set of regulations. It's nothing fundamental about railroad technology, just that we aren't willing to run one sensibly in the US.
34 degrees C = 93 degrees F, so there seems to be a unit conversion problem here.
Sure, there are obstinate bureaucrats in most any organization. I don't know how it is at Purdue, but the University of California has a procurement credit card system that basically eliminates POs for anything under $2500. We just order it and reconcile the paperwork later.
Incidentally, this is one reason why it's extremely important to fund university groups even in the era of "big science." An environment where intellectual curiosity is expected and rewarded will be more cost-effective than a mega-contractor with a "what's your account number" mentality every time. Written as a university postdoc in physics...
In the UNIX world, the idea is that only the most carefully security-vetted code runs setuid, and still there are lots of local exploits that come from bugs in these programs. In the Windows world, apparently the idea is to make the least security-conscious programs setuid. Interesting philosophy. :-)
I checked out the site you mentioned (http://www.off-road.com/toc/) in FireFox 1.0 for MacOS X and it renders just fine. It has lots of pictures of idiots doing jumps with snowmobiles, but I guess that's part of the deal. :-)
The bubble sort (there! I said it!) is actually very efficient for the case where you know for a fact that you're starting with very-nearly-sorted data. That's the only excuse I can imagine for using it.
Actually, in my view, it's totally ridiculous. There are a large number of people working at Los Alamos who have absolutely nothing to do with the weapons programs, but who work "outside the fence" on open research. Involving them in this security farce is just wasting their time (which, remember, we all pay for).
I would be amazed if that were true. A few years ago, I was talking to a health physics guy at a US national lab. He had previously worked for a contractor that did radiation surveys at a number of US nuclear power plants. He said that, in that business, it was standard practice to push the techs up to the NRC limit of 5000 mrem/year, then send them home for the rest of the year.
In general, the level of radiation is too small to be a serious health concern, but it is a real problem for those of us who are putting together very low-background detectors to look at neutrinos, etc.
That's public performance, one of the exclusive rights explicitly granted to copyright holders.
You have to be very careful with the "involved" statistic. It counts every accident where any party, at fault or not, had any measurable blood alcohol level. In other words, if a completely sober driver rear-ends someone who had a beer five hours before (say, a 0.01% blood alcohol level), that counts.
You know, they're always advertising for precinct workers. I think it would be a great service to our country if lots of us tech-savvy types took the day off November 2 and helped out.
We also have the Diebold machines in Alameda County, California. I can tell you that your vote is not stored on the smart card. The precinct workers have a machine that activates the smart card, writing a token onto it that identifies which party's ballot you should get. Once you select "cast ballot" on the machine, it deletes the token from the smart card so that you can't vote twice. The smart cards are reused repeatedly during the day.
My understanding is that sound card inputs are AC coupled, so you won't be able to see anything much slower than about 20 Hz. That might be OK, but it's not quite an oscilloscope.
Thanks for the Pat Buchanan link. Except for the one sentence where he momentarily jumps the tracks onto his "culture war," I agree that this piece is nicely done. And that's coming from a hardcore Berkeley liberal. :-)
This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
So, a treaty does not override the Constitution, but it does carry the force of Federal law.