If you actually THOUGHT (or read my other post), you'd realize that the claim of 325 CFM is utterly ridiculous, even without considering that he made no mention of his testing methods. 325 CFM would be a wind tunnel, and he most definately would have heard something (a vague howling sound perhaps?) if that number was accurate.
That sounds reasonable, although I question his quoted 325.00 CFM, which I saw no mention of how he measured. By comparison, most computer fans rate in the 10s of CFM, and this guy does 265 CFM.
Exactly. Numbers usually payout 37:1 -- if you placed 1 bet on every number you'd break even (or lose for 0/00). The house wins on that slight edge. If you could narrow the actual odds to, say, 8:1 by identifying a quadrant where the ball was most likely to fall, you could place a bet on every number in the quadrant and win more often.
In theory, that shouldn't be possible because of chaos theory; the ball can pretty much bounce all over the place, but in practice it seems that some wheels are biased. The crux of the issue is that casinos are forced to either tacitly allow the devices, or admit that the wheel is not truely random by banning them. Neither of those choices are particularly palletable, but we can probably assume that the will simply ban them and cite the desire to maintain a pleasurable "gaming experience" or some other BS.
Right.. winners bring in the losers, hence shills. Winning tables, particularly in roulette and craps, create crowds, and people will be waiting in line (or a large mob) to throw down/away their money.
Customs is responsible for everything that comes across the border. There is no probable cause required -- random inspections, or even 100% inspections, are perfectly legal. The USPS need only meet the burden of "suspicious." Again, there is no probable cause because you have voluntarily surrendered your documents (or whatever) to their possession.
The Civil War was a unique situation, and its precedents should no more apply to an undeclared war with an ill defined objective than should "seperate but equal" apply to modern society. Further, Lincoln had a clear understanding that he was violating the Constitution, and he was concerned about the future ramifications, but deemed it necessary to preserve the state of the union. Note that this goal is only considered "clearly moral" in hindsight, and the issue of slavery is often used to confuse the fact that half the nation's freedom of dissent was violently suppressed. Make no mistake -- slavery is wrong -- but the Civil War completely contradicted the idea that the states were formed of a voluntary union, and it set the stage for big centralized government; the antithesis of the Constitution.
At any rate, all of that was well before FISA was established to address this very loophole which incensed enough of the population that the government itself felt the need to close it. The investigations of the Church Committee showed clearly the dangers of unchecked surveillance power (as if they were not obvious).
All of this comes down to the fact that we wish to preserve our society, our nation, and our way of life. But what are we if not a nation of laws? Either the rule of law is important, or it is not. If, in "preserving" our nation, we see fit to ignore the law, then we have already lost our way, and are, in fact, preserving little.
It's of particular interest to those running HTPC machines - if their case is cool enough, they can have a "real" video card with which to do some serious gaming.
My HTPC is by no means quiet, but my split-unit AC makes more noise by far.
Yeah, parent is probably Old School like the Old School. They don't require people to login anymore, but they used to a few years ago. I'm not sure when they changed it.
Do you think it was legal during WWII to have people's mail they were receiving from a foreign country to be opened?
Yes, but for reasons that don't apply at all to NSA wiretaps.
1) It's subject to Customs inspection.
2) If it was written by a member of the US military, it's government property. Also anything in/on military installations is subject to arbitrary search and seizure. Everyone in the military is aware of this, or at least informed; whether they remember it or not is another matter. There are also nice signs at the entrance to bases stating the same.
3) The USPS has the authority to inspect suspicious packages/communications.
The 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure applies to all US Citizens (and legal residents, visitors, etc). The State is required to obtain a warrant. Not "law enforcement," not "the military," not "branch X that didn't exist when the Constitution was written," but THE STATE AS A WHOLE. There are exceptions for clear and present dangers and such, but the Constitution does not specify "law enforcement" as the only department subject to the burden of obtaining a warrant. The NSA is, the last time I checked, part of the US Government, so unless you have some enlightening piece of information that the rest of us don't, they're still subject to the US Constitution, which means they need a warrant.
Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information.
Not for everyone. I'm a horrible note-taker, and usually retained more information by simply paying attention. When I took notes, I'd frequently miss something that was said while I was writing. A small tape recorder (or whatever solid-state device is on the market nowadays) is usually sufficient so that an auditory learner has something to review. Overall though, when I'm shifting my attention from what the instructor is saying to what I'm writing/have written, I seem to miss a lot more, although I also have problems with attention in general.
I guess it comes down to what you feel the school's job is. I tend to side with the folks who believe that X thousand dollars per anum entitles one to expect that the institution do everything reasonably possible to accomodate a student's learning. I don't think it's unreasonable nowadays that a camera be present to record the lectures in digital format to download later. I understand there's an argument to be made that students need to "learn how to learn," because employers may not be very accomodating (although in my experience, most are, as long as the employee is an effective worker), but the school's responsibility to accurately and adequately communicate the cirriculae trumps that in most instances.
When a professor is charging for copies of a lecture, I don't blame the professor for innovating -- he's well within his rights -- but rather the institution for integrating his ideas as standard procedure. It's fairly trivial to digitize a recording, or just record in a digital format -- editing is optional/unnecessary in most cases -- and the potential gain for the students would be significant. If the professors really felt it was an excessive burden, the school could easily hire a couple of goons to do it, or a student aid.
Getting a diploma is just the beginning anyway; most learning takes place after that. People who have a skillset which enables them to learn more effectively, or effectively cope with their lesser ability through social or technical means, will usually succeed, while people who lack the skills will not. That's life though, and life's a competition, no matter what your parents told you.
Interesting, but Francisco isn't an unsual latino name, nor is the surname Rangel. It turns out there are at least 22 of them in Texas alone. Further, your site references a Francisco H Rangel, while the GP mentions Francisco X(avier?) Rangel. This guy is enough of a jerk on his own; there's no need to bring in the implications of involvement with arson without more than (extremely weak) circumstantial evidence. Please mod parent OT.
The only reason I bought a Core 2 Duo was because my last system was on the fritz. It's somehow managed to screw up 4 DIMMs in 3 years, along with a video card. Beyond that, it's AGP, ATA, and DDR. As those standards age, the price of the components is actually increasing due to lower supply. Since I would need to buy a new motherboard (and that's not even guaranteed to solve whatever the fsck is frying my components), I went ahead and bought a socket 775 motherboard. Since I was doing that, I went ahead and got a Core 2 Duo, a shiney new graphics card, a couple gigs of DDR2, an SATA HD, etc. Not the top of the line models mind you, but one step down. Comparable performance for half the price. I agree that I could have kept using my 3 year old system had it not suffered catastrophic failures, and I don't plan on any upgrades for another 3-5 years, barring some bizzare new market entry like a quantum computer for $300. I was an early adopter-type in my early-mid 20s, but that era has passed and now I'm content with what I have. I've learned that great graphics != great games, and the graphics eventually get tuned out anyway after a few hours of play.
That said, my new system does feel faster, and I don't regret having purchased it. It's both a vast improvement, and it (hopefully) solved my problem of randomly frying components (although I also bought a voltage regulator/UPS to protect my "investment" [insomuch as you can call something that's guaranteed to lose value an investment] since I'm pretty sure the power here is at least a contributory factor).
But really, this is nothing new in the computer world: If your system is good enough to meet your needs and/or wants, then don't upgrade. I'm sure there are more than a few people here still running P3-era systems, if not P2 and earlier. But if you want more power, the Core 2 Duo's really do provide it -- especially if your system is a 3+ year-old P4 like mine was. I still run an Athlon XP 2200 for my HTPC, and it works fine for that purpose, but I don't mind the extra processing power on my main rig at all.
...exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.
The very, very recent past, perhaps, but really it wasn't so long ago that seeing real life violence and death (and probably sex) was a common occurance. It wasn't SO long ago that 12 was considered an adult. I'm not saying that that was necessarily a good thing, but rather that a) Children are by no means growing up faster* and b) Even if they were, that's only a "bad thing" when compared to the values of our immediate ancestors.
Children (and humans in general) have an amazing capacity to adapt their level of normalcy. By that, I don't mean that they accept violence as OKAY, but rather they accept the fact that it exists in the world and learn to cope appropriately. It's only the children (and people) who are sheltered from the harsh realities of life who grow up with poor coping mechanisms and have trouble dealing with things. (The Flanders' kids are an exaggerated, but humorously accurate example.) Children in disfunctional/abusive families are far more likely to be a danger to themselves and others as they grow up.
That's all just my personal observation, of course, and I still cringe when my kids see something distasteful on TV, but I grew up in a very sheltered environment, and I can honestly say it did little for me. I was a step behind everyone else throughout most of my adolescence as far as my knowledge of, acceptance of, and skills to deal with the real world. It's natural to want to protect children, but it's equally important, and entirely possible, to expose them to the world at the same time. Furthermore, it's not "always better" to err on the side of caution; sometimes kids need to learn things the hard way. It may not be the most pleasant method of learning, but it's by far the most effective. I'm not advocating that people let their kids play in traffic (although if they're so inclined, then it might not be such a bad idea), but just like everything else, you have to find a balance between security and safety. I think that's something that our country in particular has a huge problem doing.
* If anything society (in the US at least) is constantly trying to extend the length of "childhood." Drinking ages are almost universally 21 throughout the US (with a few exceptions), and there's a huge push to raise the driving age as well. Meanwhile minors are consistantly tried as adults, which sends a very mixed message: You have all of the responsibility of an adult, but none of the privelages.
I'm pretty sure BSG (and other recent "hi def" productions) were actually filmed digitally, meaning the resolution can't exceed HD by definition. (High definition by definition? I should add that to my sig). Note also that film isn't unlimited resolution, although I'm not sure what the equivelant resolution of modern film stock would be in pixels.
#10 - Calling the judge a tool of big entertainment. #9 - Using the screen name IH8theRIAA on Gnutella. #8 - Arguing that what you downloaded can hardly be considered music. #7 - Putting a video on MySpace showing yourself downloading copyrighted music. #6 - Stalking Britney Spears to "try to get her to sign a release." #5 - Arguing that there were no copyright notices on the songs you downloaded. (Actually...?) #4 - Explaining that you're from the future, in a time when the copyrights had already expired. #3 - Telling the judge that you only downloaded music so you could afford crack. For your kids. Because they get so cranky without it. #2 - Putting your Blackberry down just long enough to explain to the judge that you're a technophobe. #1 - Arguing that you were only using the downloads as backups for all your copied CDs.
They don't specify in the article directly, but they imply that they're not using the pipes as conductors in the traditional sense, but rather transmitting the signal within the pipes, using them as waveguides. Waveguides are an excellent transmission medium for very specific frequencies -- namely the resonant frequency and its harmonics -- but they're very expensive, and dents, dings, and improper couplings add VSWR, which could (and often does) attenuate the signal dramatically or even entirely. Bends in waveguide also cannot be more than 1/2 the wavelength, so right angles tend not to work well. The solution they've proposed is to use ultrawideband, which apparently just means using a large swath of spectrum rather than a single frequency, so that if the VSWR of one frequency is too high, another frequency should still get through.
Anyway, having wires running along the pipe would make no difference, since the signal is internally reflected, not transmitted through the metal. Essentially you have two small antennae -- one at each end (although obviously more than that for this proposed setup) -- and the antennae is traditionally 1/4 wavelength, placed at a specific location within the waveguide to prevent phase cancelling. Since the signal is internally reflected (like fiberoptic, for example), nothing on the ouside of the "pipe" matters. You could possibly install coupling from the point where the copper pipe ends to some external line, but I think the existance of the plastic pipe would screw things up nonetheless, and the tracer wire likely isn't shielded or twisted, meaning it's a shitty transmission medium.
I've never heard of waveguide made out of plastic, but the wikipedia article says it's doable for optical frequencies. Obviously fiberoptics are fiberglass, but I sort of doubt it would work well for RF. If I'm not mistaken, it's the optically reflective characteristic of glass which makes fiber work, not the fact that it's a dialectric. I think that plastic would just get hot and melt/burn -- not a good thing for a flammable gas line.
At any rate, I doubt the system would work at all, since the network of pipes is so complex. Some houses may get great reception at all frequencies (doubtful), while others might get no signal at any frequency (almost guaranteed). Also, any time someone adds to or modifies the network of pipes, they'll change the transmission characteristics of the entire system. It's difficult enough to keep an RF waveguide system operational when it's purpose-designed, let alone when it was never a design consideration. The proposed ultrawideband solution may help, but I doubt it would work well.
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If you actually THOUGHT (or read my other post), you'd realize that the claim of 325 CFM is utterly ridiculous, even without considering that he made no mention of his testing methods. 325 CFM would be a wind tunnel, and he most definately would have heard something (a vague howling sound perhaps?) if that number was accurate.
That would be ironic cooling.
Except that he ripped apart a knockoff Ionic Breeze to build his cooler. If the real thing doesn't move air, why would his jerry-rigged version?
That sounds reasonable, although I question his quoted 325.00 CFM, which I saw no mention of how he measured. By comparison, most computer fans rate in the 10s of CFM, and this guy does 265 CFM.
Yeah, you'd think they could have raised the speed of light by now. I mean come on.
Exactly. Numbers usually payout 37:1 -- if you placed 1 bet on every number you'd break even (or lose for 0/00). The house wins on that slight edge. If you could narrow the actual odds to, say, 8:1 by identifying a quadrant where the ball was most likely to fall, you could place a bet on every number in the quadrant and win more often.
In theory, that shouldn't be possible because of chaos theory; the ball can pretty much bounce all over the place, but in practice it seems that some wheels are biased. The crux of the issue is that casinos are forced to either tacitly allow the devices, or admit that the wheel is not truely random by banning them. Neither of those choices are particularly palletable, but we can probably assume that the will simply ban them and cite the desire to maintain a pleasurable "gaming experience" or some other BS.
Right.. winners bring in the losers, hence shills. Winning tables, particularly in roulette and craps, create crowds, and people will be waiting in line (or a large mob) to throw down/away their money.
Customs is responsible for everything that comes across the border. There is no probable cause required -- random inspections, or even 100% inspections, are perfectly legal. The USPS need only meet the burden of "suspicious." Again, there is no probable cause because you have voluntarily surrendered your documents (or whatever) to their possession.
The Civil War was a unique situation, and its precedents should no more apply to an undeclared war with an ill defined objective than should "seperate but equal" apply to modern society. Further, Lincoln had a clear understanding that he was violating the Constitution, and he was concerned about the future ramifications, but deemed it necessary to preserve the state of the union. Note that this goal is only considered "clearly moral" in hindsight, and the issue of slavery is often used to confuse the fact that half the nation's freedom of dissent was violently suppressed. Make no mistake -- slavery is wrong -- but the Civil War completely contradicted the idea that the states were formed of a voluntary union, and it set the stage for big centralized government; the antithesis of the Constitution.
At any rate, all of that was well before FISA was established to address this very loophole which incensed enough of the population that the government itself felt the need to close it. The investigations of the Church Committee showed clearly the dangers of unchecked surveillance power (as if they were not obvious).
All of this comes down to the fact that we wish to preserve our society, our nation, and our way of life. But what are we if not a nation of laws? Either the rule of law is important, or it is not. If, in "preserving" our nation, we see fit to ignore the law, then we have already lost our way, and are, in fact, preserving little.
It's of particular interest to those running HTPC machines - if their case is cool enough, they can have a "real" video card with which to do some serious gaming.
My HTPC is by no means quiet, but my split-unit AC makes more noise by far.
At any rate, a good surround sound setup > all.
Yeah, parent is probably Old School like the Old School. They don't require people to login anymore, but they used to a few years ago. I'm not sure when they changed it.
Do you think it was legal during WWII to have people's mail they were receiving from a foreign country to be opened?
Yes, but for reasons that don't apply at all to NSA wiretaps.
1) It's subject to Customs inspection.
2) If it was written by a member of the US military, it's government property. Also anything in/on military installations is subject to arbitrary search and seizure. Everyone in the military is aware of this, or at least informed; whether they remember it or not is another matter. There are also nice signs at the entrance to bases stating the same.
3) The USPS has the authority to inspect suspicious packages/communications.
The 4th Amendment protection against unreasonable search and seizure applies to all US Citizens (and legal residents, visitors, etc). The State is required to obtain a warrant. Not "law enforcement," not "the military," not "branch X that didn't exist when the Constitution was written," but THE STATE AS A WHOLE. There are exceptions for clear and present dangers and such, but the Constitution does not specify "law enforcement" as the only department subject to the burden of obtaining a warrant. The NSA is, the last time I checked, part of the US Government, so unless you have some enlightening piece of information that the rest of us don't, they're still subject to the US Constitution, which means they need a warrant.
But you don't have to take my word for it. Bush admitted as much when "he insisted that any government wiretap required a court order."
Region codes are optional on DVDs too, and look how well that turned out.
Actually writing notes has been proven to help remember information better than just reading the same information.
Not for everyone. I'm a horrible note-taker, and usually retained more information by simply paying attention. When I took notes, I'd frequently miss something that was said while I was writing. A small tape recorder (or whatever solid-state device is on the market nowadays) is usually sufficient so that an auditory learner has something to review. Overall though, when I'm shifting my attention from what the instructor is saying to what I'm writing/have written, I seem to miss a lot more, although I also have problems with attention in general.
I guess it comes down to what you feel the school's job is. I tend to side with the folks who believe that X thousand dollars per anum entitles one to expect that the institution do everything reasonably possible to accomodate a student's learning. I don't think it's unreasonable nowadays that a camera be present to record the lectures in digital format to download later. I understand there's an argument to be made that students need to "learn how to learn," because employers may not be very accomodating (although in my experience, most are, as long as the employee is an effective worker), but the school's responsibility to accurately and adequately communicate the cirriculae trumps that in most instances.
When a professor is charging for copies of a lecture, I don't blame the professor for innovating -- he's well within his rights -- but rather the institution for integrating his ideas as standard procedure. It's fairly trivial to digitize a recording, or just record in a digital format -- editing is optional/unnecessary in most cases -- and the potential gain for the students would be significant. If the professors really felt it was an excessive burden, the school could easily hire a couple of goons to do it, or a student aid.
Getting a diploma is just the beginning anyway; most learning takes place after that. People who have a skillset which enables them to learn more effectively, or effectively cope with their lesser ability through social or technical means, will usually succeed, while people who lack the skills will not. That's life though, and life's a competition, no matter what your parents told you.
Interesting, but Francisco isn't an unsual latino name, nor is the surname Rangel. It turns out there are at least 22 of them in Texas alone. Further, your site references a Francisco H Rangel, while the GP mentions Francisco X(avier?) Rangel. This guy is enough of a jerk on his own; there's no need to bring in the implications of involvement with arson without more than (extremely weak) circumstantial evidence. Please mod parent OT.
Also forgot to mention:
I can't wait for AMD's 65nm to start shipping once their process is all sorted out, since 90nm SOI has worked so well for them.
They'd better hurry.. Intel is planning on moving to 45nm in mid-2007.
Many of the reviews I've seen show that the AMD systems consume significantly less power at idle than the equivalent C2D system.
Then you obviously haven't read this one.
Summary:
Intel's most power consuming C2D
C2X6800 Max: 217W Min: 160W (Speedstep)
AMD's most power consuming CPU
FX-62 Max: 283W Min: 192W
AMD's least power comsuming offering (with comparable performance)
64 FX-60 Max: 255W Min: 161W (Cool'n'Quiet mode)
Not really.. my Asus P5W is spec'd for 1066 (although the values must be set manually for most DDR2 modules). 667 is conservative.
There's a difference between can't and won't. ;)
The only reason I bought a Core 2 Duo was because my last system was on the fritz. It's somehow managed to screw up 4 DIMMs in 3 years, along with a video card. Beyond that, it's AGP, ATA, and DDR. As those standards age, the price of the components is actually increasing due to lower supply. Since I would need to buy a new motherboard (and that's not even guaranteed to solve whatever the fsck is frying my components), I went ahead and bought a socket 775 motherboard. Since I was doing that, I went ahead and got a Core 2 Duo, a shiney new graphics card, a couple gigs of DDR2, an SATA HD, etc. Not the top of the line models mind you, but one step down. Comparable performance for half the price. I agree that I could have kept using my 3 year old system had it not suffered catastrophic failures, and I don't plan on any upgrades for another 3-5 years, barring some bizzare new market entry like a quantum computer for $300. I was an early adopter-type in my early-mid 20s, but that era has passed and now I'm content with what I have. I've learned that great graphics != great games, and the graphics eventually get tuned out anyway after a few hours of play.
That said, my new system does feel faster, and I don't regret having purchased it. It's both a vast improvement, and it (hopefully) solved my problem of randomly frying components (although I also bought a voltage regulator/UPS to protect my "investment" [insomuch as you can call something that's guaranteed to lose value an investment] since I'm pretty sure the power here is at least a contributory factor).
But really, this is nothing new in the computer world: If your system is good enough to meet your needs and/or wants, then don't upgrade. I'm sure there are more than a few people here still running P3-era systems, if not P2 and earlier. But if you want more power, the Core 2 Duo's really do provide it -- especially if your system is a 3+ year-old P4 like mine was. I still run an Athlon XP 2200 for my HTPC, and it works fine for that purpose, but I don't mind the extra processing power on my main rig at all.
...exposed via the electronic media to material which would have been considered unsuitable for children even in the very recent past.
The very, very recent past, perhaps, but really it wasn't so long ago that seeing real life violence and death (and probably sex) was a common occurance. It wasn't SO long ago that 12 was considered an adult. I'm not saying that that was necessarily a good thing, but rather that a) Children are by no means growing up faster* and b) Even if they were, that's only a "bad thing" when compared to the values of our immediate ancestors.
Children (and humans in general) have an amazing capacity to adapt their level of normalcy. By that, I don't mean that they accept violence as OKAY, but rather they accept the fact that it exists in the world and learn to cope appropriately. It's only the children (and people) who are sheltered from the harsh realities of life who grow up with poor coping mechanisms and have trouble dealing with things. (The Flanders' kids are an exaggerated, but humorously accurate example.) Children in disfunctional/abusive families are far more likely to be a danger to themselves and others as they grow up.
That's all just my personal observation, of course, and I still cringe when my kids see something distasteful on TV, but I grew up in a very sheltered environment, and I can honestly say it did little for me. I was a step behind everyone else throughout most of my adolescence as far as my knowledge of, acceptance of, and skills to deal with the real world. It's natural to want to protect children, but it's equally important, and entirely possible, to expose them to the world at the same time. Furthermore, it's not "always better" to err on the side of caution; sometimes kids need to learn things the hard way. It may not be the most pleasant method of learning, but it's by far the most effective. I'm not advocating that people let their kids play in traffic (although if they're so inclined, then it might not be such a bad idea), but just like everything else, you have to find a balance between security and safety. I think that's something that our country in particular has a huge problem doing.
* If anything society (in the US at least) is constantly trying to extend the length of "childhood." Drinking ages are almost universally 21 throughout the US (with a few exceptions), and there's a huge push to raise the driving age as well. Meanwhile minors are consistantly tried as adults, which sends a very mixed message: You have all of the responsibility of an adult, but none of the privelages.
I'm pretty sure BSG (and other recent "hi def" productions) were actually filmed digitally, meaning the resolution can't exceed HD by definition. (High definition by definition? I should add that to my sig). Note also that film isn't unlimited resolution, although I'm not sure what the equivelant resolution of modern film stock would be in pixels.
Oh, fine.
#10 - Calling the judge a tool of big entertainment.
#9 - Using the screen name IH8theRIAA on Gnutella.
#8 - Arguing that what you downloaded can hardly be considered music.
#7 - Putting a video on MySpace showing yourself downloading copyrighted music.
#6 - Stalking Britney Spears to "try to get her to sign a release."
#5 - Arguing that there were no copyright notices on the songs you downloaded. (Actually...?)
#4 - Explaining that you're from the future, in a time when the copyrights had already expired.
#3 - Telling the judge that you only downloaded music so you could afford crack. For your kids. Because they get so cranky without it.
#2 - Putting your Blackberry down just long enough to explain to the judge that you're a technophobe.
#1 - Arguing that you were only using the downloads as backups for all your copied CDs.
They don't specify in the article directly, but they imply that they're not using the pipes as conductors in the traditional sense, but rather transmitting the signal within the pipes, using them as waveguides. Waveguides are an excellent transmission medium for very specific frequencies -- namely the resonant frequency and its harmonics -- but they're very expensive, and dents, dings, and improper couplings add VSWR, which could (and often does) attenuate the signal dramatically or even entirely. Bends in waveguide also cannot be more than 1/2 the wavelength, so right angles tend not to work well. The solution they've proposed is to use ultrawideband, which apparently just means using a large swath of spectrum rather than a single frequency, so that if the VSWR of one frequency is too high, another frequency should still get through.
Anyway, having wires running along the pipe would make no difference, since the signal is internally reflected, not transmitted through the metal. Essentially you have two small antennae -- one at each end (although obviously more than that for this proposed setup) -- and the antennae is traditionally 1/4 wavelength, placed at a specific location within the waveguide to prevent phase cancelling. Since the signal is internally reflected (like fiberoptic, for example), nothing on the ouside of the "pipe" matters. You could possibly install coupling from the point where the copper pipe ends to some external line, but I think the existance of the plastic pipe would screw things up nonetheless, and the tracer wire likely isn't shielded or twisted, meaning it's a shitty transmission medium.
I've never heard of waveguide made out of plastic, but the wikipedia article says it's doable for optical frequencies. Obviously fiberoptics are fiberglass, but I sort of doubt it would work well for RF. If I'm not mistaken, it's the optically reflective characteristic of glass which makes fiber work, not the fact that it's a dialectric. I think that plastic would just get hot and melt/burn -- not a good thing for a flammable gas line.
At any rate, I doubt the system would work at all, since the network of pipes is so complex. Some houses may get great reception at all frequencies (doubtful), while others might get no signal at any frequency (almost guaranteed). Also, any time someone adds to or modifies the network of pipes, they'll change the transmission characteristics of the entire system. It's difficult enough to keep an RF waveguide system operational when it's purpose-designed, let alone when it was never a design consideration. The proposed ultrawideband solution may help, but I doubt it would work well.
The article also shows the ultimate joke is to upload an actual BSOD image for authentic Windows looking panics right inside of OS X.
Ah man, now THAT'S humor. If by humor, you mean stupid.