A leak in use - in a moving vehicle - isn't significantly more likely than a hydrocarbon leak, nor more dangerous, as you have to be very unlucky to achieve the right fuel/air mixture at the right ignition point for sustained combustion.
Tell that to the poor shmucks on the last Concorde flight.
_Am
Re - "FAA regs against using 'anything that sends or receives a signal'"
It's actually not an FAA rule. It's FCC. The FCC forbids using a cellphone from any platform not attached to the ground.
It's against FCC rules to use a phone from a hot-air baloon, and from parachutes - both of which are not regulated by the FAA.
Both the FCC and FAA websites suck, but here's a pretty interesting article. The rule is in FCC reg 22.925 - maybe somebody else will have better luck finding the text.
The nutshell is that the problem hasn't got anything do to with interference with navigation, but rather interference with ground systems. Cellphone just weren't designed to be able to "see" so many different cell towers.
Their "about" section is meaningless. All we know that is that they're a: a company, b: partly owned by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Besos. Of course we all know that Jeff Besos is responsible for one of the more ludicrous "business logic" patents.
If you look at their corporate identity, all they talk about is how they're trying to "Market Reform" the patent process. What does this mean?
It seems to me that
a: they're a for profit corporation.
b: they have clients.
c: these clients pay for their services.
My question is this: Who are their clients, and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
If you browse the link with IE, it takes you to a page comparing the speed and accuracy of running vbscript vs javascript. Surprisingly, the author of the page goes on to great lengths about the inherient superiority of javascript
As a skydiver, this is quite possibly the single most ludicrous thing I've ever heard.
The article mentions jumping from a hight of 62 miles. That's interesting.
The highest jump ever performed to date was done by a guy name Joe Kittinger back in the 60's. His jump from a weather balloon was from an altitude of about 103,000 feet - or 19.5 miles.
The highest skydive EVER done was only at 19 miles, when this space article is talking about over 60 miles. Hrm. Yeah, I'll just line up for that one.
Whenever you hear stories about NASA (the air force, actually) testing escape procedures during the moon program, well - this is it. Kittinger was an air force captain.
It's interesting to note that Kittinger actually experienced a failure of his spacesuit during the jump. He landed with a (american) football sized right hand. He did not suffer any long term effects of the injury.
Kittinger's jump was scheduled to be one of three jumps. It was not repeated because a: it was two dangerous, b: it was too expensive.
Cheryl Sterns is going just a few thousand feet higher in her attempt. Read about it on Discover.com Should she succeed she will hold the record for the highest jump. To pay for her jump, Cheryl has organized the support of a great many sponsors.
You'll often hear snipits about both Kittinger and Sterns having to wear drogue parachutes to help keep them stable. While it was true for Kittinger, it is not true for Sterns. Kittinger required a drogue parachute for one simple reason: they hadn't figured out how to maintain a stable body position at any altitude.
Sterns will not require one, but may choose to use one. As she gets higher, obviously the air preasure gets smaller. The reduced air preasure will allow her to fall faster. The higher you go, the faster you fall. The faster you fall, the "wind" in your face increases. Your ability to control yourself is dependant upon the amount of "wind" in your face.
IE - if you're at terminal velocity, you can control yourself. As the air preasure decreases, terminal velocity increases.
Anyways, why is this absurd?
First of all the cost. Skydivers are really going to pay for a DISPOSABLE TWO-PHASE SOLID FUEL ROCKET???? WTF??? ARE YOU NUTS?
Secondly, it's a HELL OF A LOT cheaper to go to the altitude that Kittinger did or Sterns will. Why? weather balloons are a hell of a lot cheaper then two-phase rockets.
Thirdly, the return on investment just isn't that great. I mean, you've tripple the altitude (19 miles vs 60), but you need to remember that the higher you go, the less air resistance, the faster you go. By tripleing the distance, I seriously doubt you'd get a significantly longer freefall.
Heh - I was watching my local fox station a few weeks ago - they're headline? "Fat fighting hoes - film at 11". Turned out to be a story about a new kind of womens underwear that thinned the thighs.
Fact is, local news in America sucks. Bigtime. Toronto has City-TV, which does an excellent newshour. Their ratings have actually gone up over the years, too. It's hip, informative, and they report on things that matter.
It's not that younger Americans don't want TV news, it's just that the networks, in the battle for the eyeballs have aimed for the lowest common denominator. While well educated adults might put up with it because there was nothing available, the younger generations know that there is so much better stuff out there by and for people who can actually THINK.
There has been case law (IANAL), and I don't remember the name of the case, but in general:
An American company or individual can be held responsible for content/binaries held in an offshore site. The logic is that the Internet was a scale up of of the mainframe dumb terminal, and the fact that the storage site is located offshore is irrelavant. The actual work (read: whatever illegal violations) was actually done on the American side of the connection.
Nutshell: There has been American case law holding individuals responsible for acts done in America but hosted offshore.
Regardless of how effective it is, for years Netscape used (still does?) some sort of DNS/Whois combination to determine location when downloading 128 bit versions of Navigator.
I've set up a few major commercial sites, and so far I've hosted them all at AT&T Cerf Net.
It aint cheap, but the addage is true that you get what you pay for.
Which isn't to say that AT&T is without critisism, for one their sales people are completely clueless, and by and large it's their sales people that you have to start with whenever you want something done.
Cerfnet is physically located in San Diego, which means I get to have regular jaunts to lotusland. This is a good thing, I live in Cleveland.:)
On a more serious note, They offer 24/7 access to the hardware, have 24/7 security services on site, to the point that when you need access to your box, a security guard will be there to open the cabinet. Ring their door-bell at 3:30 am on a sunday night, and you have access.
As for security, they seem to have enough policies in place to avoid being socially engineered, but you have to take responsability for the software-level security - this is despite what they advertise.
They offer complate hosting packages to the point where they'll order the hardware, install the OS, install the server (IIS, apache, etc), and just leave you a place to drop your content. Despite what they advertise, they leave these boxes in increadibly unsecured states. Any competent person hosting with them would be a fool not to tighten the security on the boxes after Cerf'net is done with it.
Advantages are near %100 uptime, complete fail-safe systems including diesel generators, UPS, tape and redundant net connections. On top of this, they'll set up a second box in New York in the case of a catestrophic failure of the California location.
These are the "big boys", and the advantages and draw-backs are what you'd expect.
a) stable b) rewarding ($$$) c) rewarding (enables personal growth)
To toot the horn of Cleveland, I've gotten close to a 1,500 square foot apartment in Shaker Heights, complete with all the luxuries, including a 10 minute subway ride downtown. It's costing me $750 / month.
What the city needs? Better connectivity (ADSL, Cable not yet avail.) and better shopping. A few more fine restaurants would be nice, too. All of those are comming, though.
I'm a firm believer that geeks are no different then others. Unless you're into telecommuting, there's no real reason you need high speed conectivity at home, because most geeks (IMHO) like to leave work at the office when they go home. As much as I joked that DSL service was a requisite during my apartment hunting, the reality is that the ability to grow my MP3 collection at ludicrous speeds can wait, I'd much rather live in a real "community" then those you find in the more wired centers.
Back in high school I asked myself a question, and it was a simple one. Did I want to be the high tech guru in a low tech organization, or one of many "assembly-line" workers in a high tech organization. To me, the answer was obvious.
I took that decision and made another, that I would spend my college years getting an education, rather then a training. I signed up for Canadian Studies, rather then Comp-Sci. I went through school with many of the guys who are now in some very interesting places - Alex at Red Hat, Shaver at Mozilla, Dave at Nortel - just to name a few.
Working in the corporate world is radically different then the high tech one. Priorities are radically different, and management's preasures reflect this. It's by no means the utopia of the working man, but those who are feeling the downward force of high tech might do all right to consider the alternatives.
__
Andrew Metcalfe IT Specialist - Web Technologies Molson Breweries National Office
Slashdot Mirror
I think it's very interesting that microsoft was smart enough to apply for this in 1999. This was long before any of the recent DRM crap.
It will also be interesting to see if they ever deploy this on the desktop. It's my guess that this will fit primarly into set top boxes.
Forcing this onto desktop users would be great for Linux. Every mp3 sporting dad would be downloading red hat.
This is midly off-topic, but I'd love to hear an answer if anyone's got one.
Has anything come out of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory? Net resources seem to be over my head.
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory put 1000 tons of heavy water into a geodesic dome two miles deep in an abandoned nickel mine, up in Northern Ontario.
I last heard news about SNO about 6 years ago when they were building it, but haven't heard a thing since.
Anyone got any updates?
<a href=http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/>SNO</a>
Re - "FAA regs against using 'anything that sends or receives a signal'"
It's actually not an FAA rule. It's FCC. The FCC forbids using a cellphone from any platform not attached to the ground.
It's against FCC rules to use a phone from a hot-air baloon, and from parachutes - both of which are not regulated by the FAA.
Both the FCC and FAA websites suck, but here's a pretty interesting article. The rule is in FCC reg 22.925 - maybe somebody else will have better luck finding the text.
The nutshell is that the problem hasn't got anything do to with interference with navigation, but rather interference with ground systems. Cellphone just weren't designed to be able to "see" so many different cell towers.
_Am
Their "about" section is meaningless. All we know that is that they're a: a company, b: partly owned by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Besos. Of course we all know that Jeff Besos is responsible for one of the more ludicrous "business logic" patents.
If you look at their corporate identity, all they talk about is how they're trying to "Market Reform" the patent process. What does this mean?
It seems to me that
a: they're a for profit corporation.
b: they have clients.
c: these clients pay for their services.
My question is this: Who are their clients, and how much are these corporations paying for people like us to do the dirtywork?
How do we know that the dirt that we're digging up on existing patents, isn't simply going to be used for even more intrusive patents?
If you browse the link with IE, it takes you to a page comparing the speed and accuracy of running vbscript vs javascript. Surprisingly, the author of the page goes on to great lengths about the inherient superiority of javascript
As a skydiver, this is quite possibly the single most ludicrous thing I've ever heard.
The article mentions jumping from a hight of 62 miles. That's interesting.
The highest jump ever performed to date was done by a guy name Joe Kittinger back in the 60's. His jump from a weather balloon was from an altitude of about 103,000 feet - or 19.5 miles.
The highest skydive EVER done was only at 19 miles, when this space article is talking about over 60 miles. Hrm. Yeah, I'll just line up for that one.
Whenever you hear stories about NASA (the air force, actually) testing escape procedures during the moon program, well - this is it. Kittinger was an air force captain.
It's interesting to note that Kittinger actually experienced a failure of his spacesuit during the jump. He landed with a (american) football sized right hand. He did not suffer any long term effects of the injury.
Kittinger's jump was scheduled to be one of three jumps. It was not repeated because a: it was two dangerous, b: it was too expensive.
Cheryl Sterns is going just a few thousand feet higher in her attempt. Read about it on Discover.com Should she succeed she will hold the record for the highest jump. To pay for her jump, Cheryl has organized the support of a great many sponsors.
You'll often hear snipits about both Kittinger and Sterns having to wear drogue parachutes to help keep them stable. While it was true for Kittinger, it is not true for Sterns. Kittinger required a drogue parachute for one simple reason: they hadn't figured out how to maintain a stable body position at any altitude.
Sterns will not require one, but may choose to use one. As she gets higher, obviously the air preasure gets smaller. The reduced air preasure will allow her to fall faster. The higher you go, the faster you fall. The faster you fall, the "wind" in your face increases. Your ability to control yourself is dependant upon the amount of "wind" in your face.
IE - if you're at terminal velocity, you can control yourself. As the air preasure decreases, terminal velocity increases.
Anyways, why is this absurd?
First of all the cost. Skydivers are really going to pay for a DISPOSABLE TWO-PHASE SOLID FUEL ROCKET???? WTF??? ARE YOU NUTS?
Secondly, it's a HELL OF A LOT cheaper to go to the altitude that Kittinger did or Sterns will. Why? weather balloons are a hell of a lot cheaper then two-phase rockets.
Thirdly, the return on investment just isn't that great. I mean, you've tripple the altitude (19 miles vs 60), but you need to remember that the higher you go, the less air resistance, the faster you go. By tripleing the distance, I seriously doubt you'd get a significantly longer freefall.
known estimated freefall times:
10,000 feet: 40 seconds. [*]
15,000 feet: 60 seconds. [*]
26,000 feet: 100 seconds. [*]
100,000 feet: 220 seconds!
327,000 feet: ???
* - from my personal log book.
Anyways, I'm offering bets that we won't be seeing this anytime in our lifetime... or our kids... or our grandkids... It just doesn't make sense.
_Am
Well, if that's not enough, they're doing it again.
I submitted this weeks ago and was rejected...
_Am
Heh - I was watching my local fox station a few weeks ago - they're headline? "Fat fighting hoes - film at 11". Turned out to be a story about a new kind of womens underwear that thinned the thighs.
Fact is, local news in America sucks. Bigtime. Toronto has City-TV, which does an excellent newshour. Their ratings have actually gone up over the years, too. It's hip, informative, and they report on things that matter.
It's not that younger Americans don't want TV news, it's just that the networks, in the battle for the eyeballs have aimed for the lowest common denominator. While well educated adults might put up with it because there was nothing available, the younger generations know that there is so much better stuff out there by and for people who can actually THINK.
And instead of staring at the screen trying to write one line of code, I'm staring at the clouds all day trying NOT to write one line of code.
But I feel much better now.
I don't think you want to use Candu as an example of a safe system.
Ontario Hydro has been running several major Candu reactors for about 20 years, everyone blindly assuming that they were safe.
In the last few years we've seen most of Ontario Hydro's candu reactors shut down for extended period of time after major leaks, etc.
Candu is not as safe as we've heard.
_Am
This is really quite common in large databases.
Hell, SQL Server is cheap compared to Oracle. Check out Sybase, or Informix, or any of the Enterprise class DBMS's.
If you want cheap, go MySQL or Access (Muahahaha!), but generally you get what you pay for. - and no I'm not implying MySQL is comparable to Access...
This is true.
There has been case law (IANAL), and I don't remember the name of the case, but in general:
An American company or individual can be held responsible for content/binaries held in an offshore site. The logic is that the Internet was a scale up of of the mainframe dumb terminal, and the fact that the storage site is located offshore is irrelavant. The actual work (read: whatever illegal violations) was actually done on the American side of the connection.
Nutshell: There has been American case law holding individuals responsible for acts done in America but hosted offshore.
_Am
Regardless of how effective it is, for years Netscape used (still does?) some sort of DNS/Whois combination to determine location when downloading 128 bit versions of Navigator.
I've set up a few major commercial sites, and so far I've hosted them all at AT&T Cerf Net.
:)
It aint cheap, but the addage is true that you get what you pay for.
Which isn't to say that AT&T is without critisism, for one their sales people are completely clueless, and by and large it's their sales people that you have to start with whenever you want something done.
Cerfnet is physically located in San Diego, which means I get to have regular jaunts to lotusland. This is a good thing, I live in Cleveland.
On a more serious note, They offer 24/7 access to the hardware, have 24/7 security services on site, to the point that when you need access to your box, a security guard will be there to open the cabinet. Ring their door-bell at 3:30 am on a sunday night, and you have access.
As for security, they seem to have enough policies in place to avoid being socially engineered, but you have to take responsability for the software-level security - this is despite what they advertise.
They offer complate hosting packages to the point where they'll order the hardware, install the OS, install the server (IIS, apache, etc), and just leave you a place to drop your content. Despite what they advertise, they leave these boxes in increadibly unsecured states. Any competent person hosting with them would be a fool not to tighten the security on the boxes after Cerf'net is done with it.
Advantages are near %100 uptime, complete fail-safe systems including diesel generators, UPS, tape and redundant net connections. On top of this, they'll set up a second box in New York in the case of a catestrophic failure of the California location.
These are the "big boys", and the advantages and draw-backs are what you'd expect.
Neighbourhoods that are
a) safe
b) attractive
c) affordable
Employment that is
a) stable
b) rewarding ($$$)
c) rewarding (enables personal growth)
To toot the horn of Cleveland, I've gotten close to a 1,500 square foot apartment in Shaker Heights, complete with all the luxuries, including a 10 minute subway ride downtown. It's costing me $750 / month.
What the city needs? Better connectivity (ADSL, Cable not yet avail.) and better shopping. A few more fine restaurants would be nice, too. All of those are comming, though.
I'm a firm believer that geeks are no different then others. Unless you're into telecommuting, there's no real reason you need high speed conectivity at home, because most geeks (IMHO) like to leave work at the office when they go home. As much as I joked that DSL service was a requisite during my apartment hunting, the reality is that the ability to grow my MP3 collection at ludicrous speeds can wait, I'd much rather live in a real "community" then those you find in the more wired centers.
I think you're confusing France with Quebec.
HTH,
_Am
Back in high school I asked myself a question, and it was a simple one. Did I want to be the high tech guru in a low tech organization, or one of many "assembly-line" workers in a high tech organization. To me, the answer was obvious.
I took that decision and made another, that I would spend my college years getting an education, rather then a training. I signed up for Canadian Studies, rather then Comp-Sci. I went through school with many of the guys who are now in some very interesting places - Alex at Red Hat, Shaver at Mozilla, Dave at Nortel - just to name a few.
Me? I work for beer. Seriously. I work for Molson - purveyors of fine beverages. I get many of the advantages of the high tech worker - half decent pay, good benefits (actually, Great benefits), plus a 24 hr bar in the office. I also don't get the stress, the long hours, or the intensity that many of my colleagues end up with.
Working in the corporate world is radically different then the high tech one. Priorities are radically different, and management's preasures reflect this. It's by no means the utopia of the working man, but those who are feeling the downward force of high tech might do all right to consider the alternatives.
__
Andrew Metcalfe
IT Specialist - Web Technologies
Molson Breweries National Office