Geiger counters are useless for someone without at least a basic education in nuclear physics.
I wouldn't go that far. If you have two cans of beans in front of you and pointing the geiger counter at one gives you the same reading as background and pointing it at the other makes the thing go crazy then I think it's pretty clear which is the safer[1] one to eat.
Likewise, with a geiger counter it should be easy to tell the difference between a lettuce still full of radioactive fallout and one that's at least been rinsed off:)
[1] that's 'safer', which doesn't necessarily imply safe...
Not necessarily - all you know is one is emitting more penetrating particles than the other - whose particles are probably already penetrating your skin as well. The other can could be loaded with alpha emitters which are blocked by the can. Once you eat them, however...
As a result, your readings don't amount to a hill of beans when it comes to assessing safety...
But are they useful for testing radiation levels in the air? I live less than 100km from the edge of the evacuation zone and really would like to go there by bicycle(almost impossible to get in by car because they have barricaded off most of the area, but from what people have said, it's pretty easy to sneak in on foot or cycle). How much risk would I actually be exposing myself too? Also, would a geiger counter help?
Not really - you need a device to suck air through a filter and then test the filter. Once you get the counts, wait a while and retest to get the half life and try to see what the source may be.
Mod parent informative... Even Jesus didn't know when the rapture was to occur. This guy somehow knows better?
For those who don't want/care to look this up, Matthew 24:36 states (in reference to the rapture) "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." - NIV translation
Well, since some Christian religions believe that the Father and the Son (along with the Holy Spirit to be complete) are all one in the same God. So if the Son doesn't know; then neither must the Father or the Bible is wrong.
Of course, a Trinity solves this but arguing about faith is like reasoning with a cat.
That's fine, as long as you filter MY credit card number out of your random number generator, thank you very much.
While I seem to recall that someone actually did this - randomly generated loads of credit card numbers for billing to a sex site, and hoped that most people would be to embarrassed to complain about a $9.95 charge for wierdsex.com; if credit card processors simply ignored bad cards and paid the good ones if you submit a massive amount of transactions there's o need for spamming. Criminals would simply push thousands of card numbers through since even if only 1% were good that's still potentially a lot of money. By the time charge backs occur they'd have closed shop and moved on nude a new name. Since that seems not to be occurring it's probably not a problem.
Michael Crichton (yes, that Michael Crichton) actually wrote an article about this in Creative Computing magazine back in the early 80s. He even included a BASIC program to demonstrate the idea. I believe it was called MouseTrap.
Before that, morse code operators could identify each other by their "fist" - the unique way they types the code on the morse key.
In this age of Call Of Duty 3000, people even sell on games they like and get the sequel.
The obvious solution is to release games at the 'used' price point, then everyone will consider it worth it from the start. There wouldn't be much of a used market if all the guys who wait for sensible prices buy the game as soon as it's released.. you'd still get some supercheap guys who want used copies, but not that many. Especially when physical media dies out! I wonder if people sell Steam accounts..
Actually, depending on the game's demand, a high initial price followed by fairly regular and rapid price drops would be as effective and more profitable.
Consider the economics involved. When a game first comes out, there are no used copies and a set number of people who must have the game. They will buy at a highr price then the used buyer, so it makes sense to extract the extra revenue. Game companies can tell, based on sales, when the used market starts to impact sales. They can either wait to drop the price, or drop the price in anticipation of the rise in availability of used games. The used market, because of the cash investment and risk, needs to make a high margin to be profitable. Look at the delta between the price they pay and the price they ask for a game - cut into the margin and used sales no longer are profitable. If they used dealer knows the price is going to drop quickly they can't offer as much for a game - which will make selling a game less worthwhile for the game. As a result, the used market dries up and the game company makes the money that the used market makes.
The developers could also offer to buy back the game from the original buyer to prevent it from ever entering the used market; although that would add some costs to ship back the disk. Your purchase essentially becomes a rental model - except you decide weather to keep or return it. Alternatively, they could inscribe a unique ID on each disk; they buyback the disk and the used buyer cannot buy any of the items the original buyer got for free; or has to pay a higher price. Since used game buyers wouldn't know if a game was "returned" the value of used games would decrease by they added cost of the extras. By making it harder to find out (such as requiring a valid credit card/paypal account/etc before providing the price hay can make it time consuming to check every game a store buys prior to purchase.
The goal is to destroy the margins on used games to make it unattractive to shops. Of course, shops that primarily sell ganes (new and used) will find themselves squeezed and probably go out of business - since used games provide a significant percentage of their revenue and profit.
The developers, no doubt, would prefer not to do all of the above but simply get laws enacted to destroy the market for them and enable them to get higher prices and sales for longer periods over the life of the game.
It's mindboggling. And i'm very glad i don't have to live in that country. But surely there are still enough rational people in the US to put up a reasonable battle against the loonies? Or have all the sane people given up and retreated into apathy?
Theres a part of the US system that sets up these sorts of things. In many states, school boards are elected - often in off (non-national) elections so a small, but dedicated group can elect a board to push their cause. Sure, courts eventually toss the nonsense, after hundred of thousands or millions of dollars are spent by the board fighting for "fairness." Money that could have gone to (gasP) actually improving education
Opponents, IMHO, ought to recognize that a sword cuts both ways. Push for the flying spaghetti monster theory, Chariots of the Gods, and every wacko, out there idea you can dream up. After all, they want "critical thought," and what better way than to introduce other "theories." After all, who knows what the creator was? (Well, actually I do, but it'll cost you to find out. I take cash and credit cards.)
Of course, that will set them off, since they want their version heard, not others. They really fear objective thought because someone may actually disagree with them. As Nate Hentoff wrote, they want "Free speech for me but not for thee."
Your confusing my definition of operators and operations. All the plants I have seen have had engineers as part of the operations team. They are often called Ops Engineers and they work directly with operators side by side deciding on how things run, but in many cases they do not run out and turn a valve. I was not talking about some fancy oversight engineering division. I have never seen anything like that. Often actually it's some process engineering group who make suggestions and only ever suggestions which the ops engineers evaluate, and ultimately the operators carry out. Operations are king and I haven't seen a plant which doesn't have "Operations personnel only" written at the entry of the control room.
Yes, the control room is the center of the known universe. Just ask any operator.
I think we are in general talking about the same thing, and that is that the operations department is not a dumb group relying on some other mysterious knowledgeable entity, but rather a group who in themselves contain the vast knowledge necessary to run the plant and the intelligence to figure out what happens outside normal operations.
It sounds like we are. In a nuke control room, you typically have a Shift Supervisor, with a Senior Reactor Operator license, who has overall responsibility for safe operation. The rest of the team are the reactor operators - who operate equipment in the control room, plant operators who operate equipment outside the control room, and a shift technical advisor (STA) who is the engineering support. They are a team, since safe operations depends on all of them applying their knowledge and skills to ensure things are done properly. The are backed up by the rest of the plant divisions, including operations, engineering, maintenance, etc.
I have never seen an industrial plant of any kind where operators are not ruled by engineers with deep knowledge of the process. Operators are button pushers and bring units into certain positions, but it is ultimately the decision of qualified professional engineers who decide on what operating point to bring a unit to, who diagnose why a unit isn't behaving exactly as predicted, and when the shit hits the fan, if they can then they go running into the control room providing live technical support.
This can be taken to extremes and I've even heard of Russian oil refineries who's operators aren't allowed to make any changes without authorisation unless an operating envelope is breached. There are few if any places where operators have true autonomy as to how to run their plants.
You've obviously never seen a nuke plant in operation. Their operators aren't "button pushers;" rather they have an in-depth knowledge not only of the physical operation of the plant but the theory as well. They complete years of training and retraining, and in many cases they are engineers as well. They run the plant with the support of the engineers responsible for the various systems. When a problem occurs, the systems engineers do help with the diagnosis, but as part of the operations team, not as some sort of all knowing overseer.
There are few if any places where operators have true autonomy as to how to run their plants.
One of which is a nuke plant. In fact, no one can enter the control room without the operator's permission; for in the control room, they are the ultimate decision makers, very much like the crew on an aircraft.
Or tax them based upon the amount of gas they use, since that actually determines the damage to the environment. Couldn't you just increase that if your goal is to raise revenue through taxes?
The problem is as cars get more fuel efficient the amount of money collect goes down but the road impact doesn't; the lim->0 is the electric vehicle with no tax but significant road usage as they become more prevalent.
My company sells and supports business software and gets bombarded all the time about "a Mac version".
Developing the software for Windows is already more than expensive enough, not to mention having Windows-centric dependencies. Creating a Mac port just ain't in the cards.
It would seem to me if you get" bombarded all the time about 'a Mac version.'" the question is - "What is the potential revenue?" It may not be worth it based on the added costs; but it's also possible that there is an untapped (and maybe growing) market opportunity. I can understand not developing for the Mac based on the potential market but to simply dismiss another market simply because "Developing the software for Windows is already more than expensive enough seems shortsighted.
We have to continually give them a polite "Get a real OS" speech.
While I understand the polite part; what's the point of suggesting a "real OS?" You aren't going to convert them and all you do is brand your company as another one to write off when they consider buying software. A simple "we're don't have any plans right now" would, IMHO, be more effective and keep the door open if in the future you do decide to do a version for the Mac or Linux or whatever.
Ok, here's the problem. Let's say that there actually was a successful raid which led to the killing of bin Laden.
First, the body was buried at sea, according to the US military, which means there's no proof he's actually dead. In other words, he's going to turn into the Elvis of Islamic terrorism. Either there is a conspiracy, and he's not dead, or conspiracy theorists will claim that he's still alive somewhere. We live in a world where (some) people believe that the President of the United States forged his own birth certificate with the collusion of the state of Hawaii; you think a 19-year-old terrorist recruit in Whatthefuckistan is gonna just take the word of the United States government that the leader of Al Qaeda was buried at sea?
A few points:
Killing him (or even capturing him) is a nice, and important outcome; the real value is what was found in the compound. That potentially is a treasure trove of intelligence, as would be any survivors. Killing him makes headlines; learning what he was doing with whom and how doesn't but is even more valuable.
The US followed Islamic tradition; which sends an important message to the vast percentage of Muslims who aren't extremists. Those who still think he's alive will do so regardless of the evidence.
In a side note, Donald Trump has demanded a copy of the deceased birth and death certificates.
I scan to pdfs and then shred the originals. Most of my bank and credit card statements I get electronically so all I need to do is file those. I bought a sheet feed scanner for convenience (If I buy another it'll be a dual sided scanner so I can do front and back in one pass) and use Vuescan (www.hammrick.com) for input. Some things must be originals so I keep those in a safe deposit box. I don't bother with OCR as it is to time intensive; I do have a system way to name files so it is easy to search for them if needed. If I find I need one relatively frequently I add tags as well.
On a day to day basis I use iXepenseit on my iphone - it allows me to categorize all my expenses and take photos of receipts. Not only is that handy for expense accounts (it exports the photos to a pdf file) as well as.xls files; I create categories such as Home Depot / Sears / Best Buy so I have a copy of my receipt for warranty purposes. I just export reports for each major category and save them. A a bonus all my receipt photos are backed up in iTunes as well.
Not going to happen for two reasons:
- More often than not, technology or techniques developed from said projects are used in future or ongoing projects.
- Only one thing worse than your project failing is releasing it in the wild and having another company or group making it successful without you.
Another reason - liability. If something goes wrong with a project they developed and then open sourced, they may find themselves the target of a lawsuit since they will have the deep pockets.
Engineering and medical education takes more equipment and resources. Lab costs, technicians to run the machines, have to compete with the industry to get qualified teachers etc. So it makes sense to charge more for these disciplines.
They also bring in large research grants, so it makes sense to offset those costs with the grants. I doubt the English Department gets large sums of money from the DoD or private industry.
I decide to major in the lowest tuition cost field but decide to take a whole bunch of STEM class, along with those required by my major, as electives? Will schools then ghettoize majors, saying you can't take so much of the higher cost classes, or charge for them? Why not make all majors free, in exchange for a fixed percentage of you roost graduation income for a set number of years?
Is it because this fuel packs more bang for the buck than traditional one, or is it because everyone wants to "feel" being green, even when trying to fly to other planets (and using all of 0.0000001% of world's "non-green" emissions of "whatever")?;)
Just curious,
Paul B.
Actually, NASA has a very large and robust set of aeronautical research activities, that are largely unknown outside of the aviation community because either they generally aren't "cool" and "newsworthy" unless you're into planes. the aero research predates NASA back to the old NACA days.
While the green aspect is a good hook; the reran value is developing alternatives to fossil fuels as a price hedge. As the price of oil rises; alternatives become more desirable, even if they are less energy - compact, since they become price competitive to fossils. That acts as a natural break on the price of crude as well can actually cut the cost of the main product since byproducts now have greeter value and / or lower / no disposal costs.
I recall an article that mentioned free fry oil is becoming harder to find as companies spring up to collect and process it into fuels commercially; proving green becomes popular provided it's the right type of "green."
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
You're making an implication that this means that we have to stand behind them with a heavy stick to obey. The German Bahn system works by letting pretty much anyone on board. If it's ICE, or regional then you're probably going to have your ticket checked by an attendant....
The advantages of this system are: no annoying turnstiles that don't let you through unless you have a ticket, no need to hire armed guards to patrol the facilities looking for people trying to beat the system, and while sure, some people get through without paying, and perhaps even ride a lot without paying, those that you do catch end up paying for a monthly ticket anyways, so you still get the funding that you need to keep operating, and the person learns a lesson in social responsibility...
Of course, the first time or so you use it as a foreigner you wonder "Where do I pay?" I looked for the conductor (like they used to do in Europe years ago) and none was to be found. I asked a co-worker about it and he explained the process to me.
BTW - the US does this as well. Portland, OR has a pay before you board system. I actually had trouble with it - it didn't vend a ticket, and I got on so as not to miss my tram. Of course, that was the one with a random check - I explained what happened, the guy said "Next time, tell the driver," and went on his way. Americans can actually be reasonable as well.
That is my main reason for sticking to Engineering.
Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people... Those positions are not rewarding, and you have to leave your soul at the door. Science, Engineering, Construction, Mechanics are the jobs for me. Always will be. I couldn't live with myself knowing that my livelyhood came on the back of others, earned by shiesting a percentage out of something I didn't build because I shuffled some paperwork and talked on the phone. Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.
Couple points:
At some point, you need to sell the wonderful things you create - companies (at least for profit) don't exist to let engineers et al play with neat toys. No money, no mission.
The real soulless asshats are design engineers - who seem to think a really cool design is all that's needed; and aren't around when the crap breaks in the field and the real engineers - field engineers - get it running and keep the client happy. They should be forced to come to the field, with their ties and pocket protectors, so we can stick the tie into some rotating machinery and beat some sense into their tiny little brains. they only good thing is they don't have partners so maybe, just maybe, they won't reproduce.
Considering that's probably 98% of the machines in use it's a non-issue,
During version 6's heyday, IE had almost that amount of marketshare Browser innovation by Microsoft came to a grinding halt for years. Cool progressive technologies like svg support? Fuggedaboutit. Fast javascript engine? Yeah, right. You wouldn't want to make the browser too powerful right? Might usurp some of the need for, you know, a particular desktop operating system. Fortunately, Firefox got some traction and now we have a very healthy browser market with newer and more advanced capabilities coming down the pike all the time. Why go back to the bad old days of the internet? The argument that, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" isn't good enough. It wasn't good enough then and it isn't now.
I think you are confusing the platform with the technology. Ensuring your technology (Silverlight) runs on the two platforms (Win/OSX) that dominate the desktop means virtually everyone will have access to your technology; they few who don't us either platform simply are not worth expending resources to reach. Once a platform reaches critical mass (such tablet OS's) the technology will move to them as well (well, unless the Steve dictates is sucks). While the platform can limit the technologies performance (due to speed, storage, etc) it does not limit innovation, just as having a Linux/Solaris/Chrome/Whatever version ensures a product will be innovative.
The argument that, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" is actually good enough because that is where innovative products gain traction and success (on the desktop); and without such a large base products such as Firefox would never gain traction beyond being a neat toy for a small fraction of the user base. Sure, IE6 had the lion share of the market - but as others saw the potential they moved in with more innovative products forcing MS to move forward - and did so in MS' turf, not on some backwater. So, as a result, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" is really more than justt good enough; in fact it is sufficient.
Flash runs on (almost) everything, and is being ported to run on everything (that's more than trivially worth porting to).
Silverlight is being deliberately hoarded for use only by Windows and Macintosh machines.
Considering that's probably 98% of the machines in use it's a non-issue, especially since Moonlight is there for Linux, and if it doesn't work, well you can just grab the source and fix it yourself.
As for Flash, Steve has said it sucks, so it must. Along with Blu-Ray.
Personally, I'd like them to make the lectures available cheaply on DVD or available via download; because the bigger issue, for me, is I'd like to watch them when I don't have net access, such as an 8 hour plane flight.
As you note, this was not illegal, since Tivo Inc. complied with the license in so far as they distributed the sources they changed for use in their product. On the other hand, the practice was clearly not in line with the spirit of the GPL license and thus the spirit in which that software was offered. Morals are not as black and white as the law, I'll grant you, but I don't think you'll find many who think that shipping a device dependent on a stack of software licensed in a way designed to promote the freedom to tinker, but with a lock on it that prevents any such tinkering, is an unassailable moral position.
No, it's not an "unassailable moral position." TIVO complied with the terms and made the software available - you are free to do whatever you want with it; including creating hardware to run it. I find unreasonable the idea that using software under the gpl requires you to make your hardware open to modified versions as well. Clearly, some people don't agree and thus we have v3.
Ultimately, I think v3 is counterproductive if the goal is to increase the acceptance of OSS. Separate from the licensing issue there may be liability issues as well. If a device running modified code ran into problems, the manufacturer could very well face expensive law suits; whether or not we think that is reasonable. So, it'd be smarter to either fork v2 software or go with non-OSS code; rather than be forced to open up your hardware to modified code. Another solution is to minimize teh use of gpl'd code by using proprietary code to perform functions separate from gpl'd code and merely use gpl'd code to perform basic OS functions.
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Geiger counters are useless for someone without at least a basic education in nuclear physics.
I wouldn't go that far. If you have two cans of beans in front of you and pointing the geiger counter at one gives you the same reading as background and pointing it at the other makes the thing go crazy then I think it's pretty clear which is the safer[1] one to eat.
Likewise, with a geiger counter it should be easy to tell the difference between a lettuce still full of radioactive fallout and one that's at least been rinsed off :)
[1] that's 'safer', which doesn't necessarily imply safe...
Not necessarily - all you know is one is emitting more penetrating particles than the other - whose particles are probably already penetrating your skin as well. The other can could be loaded with alpha emitters which are blocked by the can. Once you eat them, however...
As a result, your readings don't amount to a hill of beans when it comes to assessing safety...
But are they useful for testing radiation levels in the air? I live less than 100km from the edge of the evacuation zone and really would like to go there by bicycle(almost impossible to get in by car because they have barricaded off most of the area, but from what people have said, it's pretty easy to sneak in on foot or cycle). How much risk would I actually be exposing myself too? Also, would a geiger counter help?
Not really - you need a device to suck air through a filter and then test the filter. Once you get the counts, wait a while and retest to get the half life and try to see what the source may be.
Mod parent informative... Even Jesus didn't know when the rapture was to occur. This guy somehow knows better? For those who don't want/care to look this up, Matthew 24:36 states (in reference to the rapture) "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." - NIV translation
Well, since some Christian religions believe that the Father and the Son (along with the Holy Spirit to be complete) are all one in the same God. So if the Son doesn't know; then neither must the Father or the Bible is wrong.
Of course, a Trinity solves this but arguing about faith is like reasoning with a cat.
That's fine, as long as you filter MY credit card number out of your random number generator, thank you very much.
While I seem to recall that someone actually did this - randomly generated loads of credit card numbers for billing to a sex site, and hoped that most people would be to embarrassed to complain about a $9.95 charge for wierdsex.com; if credit card processors simply ignored bad cards and paid the good ones if you submit a massive amount of transactions there's o need for spamming. Criminals would simply push thousands of card numbers through since even if only 1% were good that's still potentially a lot of money. By the time charge backs occur they'd have closed shop and moved on nude a new name. Since that seems not to be occurring it's probably not a problem.
Michael Crichton (yes, that Michael Crichton) actually wrote an article about this in Creative Computing magazine back in the early 80s. He even included a BASIC program to demonstrate the idea. I believe it was called MouseTrap.
Before that, morse code operators could identify each other by their "fist" - the unique way they types the code on the morse key.
In this age of Call Of Duty 3000, people even sell on games they like and get the sequel.
The obvious solution is to release games at the 'used' price point, then everyone will consider it worth it from the start. There wouldn't be much of a used market if all the guys who wait for sensible prices buy the game as soon as it's released.. you'd still get some supercheap guys who want used copies, but not that many. Especially when physical media dies out! I wonder if people sell Steam accounts..
Actually, depending on the game's demand, a high initial price followed by fairly regular and rapid price drops would be as effective and more profitable.
Consider the economics involved. When a game first comes out, there are no used copies and a set number of people who must have the game. They will buy at a highr price then the used buyer, so it makes sense to extract the extra revenue. Game companies can tell, based on sales, when the used market starts to impact sales. They can either wait to drop the price, or drop the price in anticipation of the rise in availability of used games. The used market, because of the cash investment and risk, needs to make a high margin to be profitable. Look at the delta between the price they pay and the price they ask for a game - cut into the margin and used sales no longer are profitable. If they used dealer knows the price is going to drop quickly they can't offer as much for a game - which will make selling a game less worthwhile for the game. As a result, the used market dries up and the game company makes the money that the used market makes.
The developers could also offer to buy back the game from the original buyer to prevent it from ever entering the used market; although that would add some costs to ship back the disk. Your purchase essentially becomes a rental model - except you decide weather to keep or return it. Alternatively, they could inscribe a unique ID on each disk; they buyback the disk and the used buyer cannot buy any of the items the original buyer got for free; or has to pay a higher price. Since used game buyers wouldn't know if a game was "returned" the value of used games would decrease by they added cost of the extras. By making it harder to find out (such as requiring a valid credit card/paypal account/etc before providing the price hay can make it time consuming to check every game a store buys prior to purchase.
The goal is to destroy the margins on used games to make it unattractive to shops. Of course, shops that primarily sell ganes (new and used) will find themselves squeezed and probably go out of business - since used games provide a significant percentage of their revenue and profit.
The developers, no doubt, would prefer not to do all of the above but simply get laws enacted to destroy the market for them and enable them to get higher prices and sales for longer periods over the life of the game.
It's mindboggling. And i'm very glad i don't have to live in that country. But surely there are still enough rational people in the US to put up a reasonable battle against the loonies? Or have all the sane people given up and retreated into apathy?
Theres a part of the US system that sets up these sorts of things. In many states, school boards are elected - often in off (non-national) elections so a small, but dedicated group can elect a board to push their cause. Sure, courts eventually toss the nonsense, after hundred of thousands or millions of dollars are spent by the board fighting for "fairness." Money that could have gone to (gasP) actually improving education
Opponents, IMHO, ought to recognize that a sword cuts both ways. Push for the flying spaghetti monster theory, Chariots of the Gods, and every wacko, out there idea you can dream up. After all, they want "critical thought," and what better way than to introduce other "theories." After all, who knows what the creator was? (Well, actually I do, but it'll cost you to find out. I take cash and credit cards.)
Of course, that will set them off, since they want their version heard, not others. They really fear objective thought because someone may actually disagree with them. As Nate Hentoff wrote, they want "Free speech for me but not for thee."
Your confusing my definition of operators and operations. All the plants I have seen have had engineers as part of the operations team. They are often called Ops Engineers and they work directly with operators side by side deciding on how things run, but in many cases they do not run out and turn a valve. I was not talking about some fancy oversight engineering division. I have never seen anything like that. Often actually it's some process engineering group who make suggestions and only ever suggestions which the ops engineers evaluate, and ultimately the operators carry out. Operations are king and I haven't seen a plant which doesn't have "Operations personnel only" written at the entry of the control room.
Yes, the control room is the center of the known universe. Just ask any operator.
I think we are in general talking about the same thing, and that is that the operations department is not a dumb group relying on some other mysterious knowledgeable entity, but rather a group who in themselves contain the vast knowledge necessary to run the plant and the intelligence to figure out what happens outside normal operations.
It sounds like we are. In a nuke control room, you typically have a Shift Supervisor, with a Senior Reactor Operator license, who has overall responsibility for safe operation. The rest of the team are the reactor operators - who operate equipment in the control room, plant operators who operate equipment outside the control room, and a shift technical advisor (STA) who is the engineering support. They are a team, since safe operations depends on all of them applying their knowledge and skills to ensure things are done properly. The are backed up by the rest of the plant divisions, including operations, engineering, maintenance, etc.
I have never seen an industrial plant of any kind where operators are not ruled by engineers with deep knowledge of the process. Operators are button pushers and bring units into certain positions, but it is ultimately the decision of qualified professional engineers who decide on what operating point to bring a unit to, who diagnose why a unit isn't behaving exactly as predicted, and when the shit hits the fan, if they can then they go running into the control room providing live technical support.
This can be taken to extremes and I've even heard of Russian oil refineries who's operators aren't allowed to make any changes without authorisation unless an operating envelope is breached. There are few if any places where operators have true autonomy as to how to run their plants.
You've obviously never seen a nuke plant in operation. Their operators aren't "button pushers;" rather they have an in-depth knowledge not only of the physical operation of the plant but the theory as well. They complete years of training and retraining, and in many cases they are engineers as well. They run the plant with the support of the engineers responsible for the various systems. When a problem occurs, the systems engineers do help with the diagnosis, but as part of the operations team, not as some sort of all knowing overseer.
There are few if any places where operators have true autonomy as to how to run their plants.
One of which is a nuke plant. In fact, no one can enter the control room without the operator's permission; for in the control room, they are the ultimate decision makers, very much like the crew on an aircraft.
Or tax them based upon the amount of gas they use, since that actually determines the damage to the environment. Couldn't you just increase that if your goal is to raise revenue through taxes?
The problem is as cars get more fuel efficient the amount of money collect goes down but the road impact doesn't; the lim->0 is the electric vehicle with no tax but significant road usage as they become more prevalent.
Wish I had mod points for this.
My company sells and supports business software and gets bombarded all the time about "a Mac version".
Developing the software for Windows is already more than expensive enough, not to mention having Windows-centric dependencies. Creating a Mac port just ain't in the cards.
It would seem to me if you get" bombarded all the time about 'a Mac version.'" the question is - "What is the potential revenue?" It may not be worth it based on the added costs; but it's also possible that there is an untapped (and maybe growing) market opportunity. I can understand not developing for the Mac based on the potential market but to simply dismiss another market simply because "Developing the software for Windows is already more than expensive enough seems shortsighted.
We have to continually give them a polite "Get a real OS" speech.
While I understand the polite part; what's the point of suggesting a "real OS?" You aren't going to convert them and all you do is brand your company as another one to write off when they consider buying software. A simple "we're don't have any plans right now" would, IMHO, be more effective and keep the door open if in the future you do decide to do a version for the Mac or Linux or whatever.
Ok, here's the problem. Let's say that there actually was a successful raid which led to the killing of bin Laden.
First, the body was buried at sea, according to the US military, which means there's no proof he's actually dead. In other words, he's going to turn into the Elvis of Islamic terrorism. Either there is a conspiracy, and he's not dead, or conspiracy theorists will claim that he's still alive somewhere. We live in a world where (some) people believe that the President of the United States forged his own birth certificate with the collusion of the state of Hawaii; you think a 19-year-old terrorist recruit in Whatthefuckistan is gonna just take the word of the United States government that the leader of Al Qaeda was buried at sea?
A few points:
Killing him (or even capturing him) is a nice, and important outcome; the real value is what was found in the compound. That potentially is a treasure trove of intelligence, as would be any survivors. Killing him makes headlines; learning what he was doing with whom and how doesn't but is even more valuable.
The US followed Islamic tradition; which sends an important message to the vast percentage of Muslims who aren't extremists. Those who still think he's alive will do so regardless of the evidence.
In a side note, Donald Trump has demanded a copy of the deceased birth and death certificates.
I scan to pdfs and then shred the originals. Most of my bank and credit card statements I get electronically so all I need to do is file those. I bought a sheet feed scanner for convenience (If I buy another it'll be a dual sided scanner so I can do front and back in one pass) and use Vuescan (www.hammrick.com) for input. Some things must be originals so I keep those in a safe deposit box. I don't bother with OCR as it is to time intensive; I do have a system way to name files so it is easy to search for them if needed. If I find I need one relatively frequently I add tags as well.
On a day to day basis I use iXepenseit on my iphone - it allows me to categorize all my expenses and take photos of receipts. Not only is that handy for expense accounts (it exports the photos to a pdf file) as well as .xls files; I create categories such as Home Depot / Sears / Best Buy so I have a copy of my receipt for warranty purposes. I just export reports for each major category and save them. A a bonus all my receipt photos are backed up in iTunes as well.
Ok I know you're just flaming, but what the hell.
Which would you rather name your sports team:
The "Wolverines?"
The Buckeyes.
Not going to happen for two reasons: - More often than not, technology or techniques developed from said projects are used in future or ongoing projects. - Only one thing worse than your project failing is releasing it in the wild and having another company or group making it successful without you.
Another reason - liability. If something goes wrong with a project they developed and then open sourced, they may find themselves the target of a lawsuit since they will have the deep pockets.
Engineering and medical education takes more equipment and resources. Lab costs, technicians to run the machines, have to compete with the industry to get qualified teachers etc. So it makes sense to charge more for these disciplines.
They also bring in large research grants, so it makes sense to offset those costs with the grants. I doubt the English Department gets large sums of money from the DoD or private industry.
I decide to major in the lowest tuition cost field but decide to take a whole bunch of STEM class, along with those required by my major, as electives? Will schools then ghettoize majors, saying you can't take so much of the higher cost classes, or charge for them? Why not make all majors free, in exchange for a fixed percentage of you roost graduation income for a set number of years?
If it burned human fat Jenny Craig Airlines with autoliposucting seats could have great rates and you get to your destination 50 lbs lighter!
and we'd see "skinny people" surcharges...
Is it because this fuel packs more bang for the buck than traditional one, or is it because everyone wants to "feel" being green, even when trying to fly to other planets (and using all of 0.0000001% of world's "non-green" emissions of "whatever")? ;)
Just curious,
Paul B.
Actually, NASA has a very large and robust set of aeronautical research activities, that are largely unknown outside of the aviation community because either they generally aren't "cool" and "newsworthy" unless you're into planes. the aero research predates NASA back to the old NACA days.
While the green aspect is a good hook; the reran value is developing alternatives to fossil fuels as a price hedge. As the price of oil rises; alternatives become more desirable, even if they are less energy - compact, since they become price competitive to fossils. That acts as a natural break on the price of crude as well can actually cut the cost of the main product since byproducts now have greeter value and / or lower / no disposal costs.
I recall an article that mentioned free fry oil is becoming harder to find as companies spring up to collect and process it into fuels commercially; proving green becomes popular provided it's the right type of "green."
This is actually a useful social study and most liberals will NOT like the result. This "experiment" shows that a large number of people will ONLY obey the rules of society if somebody is standing behind them with a heavy stick.
You're making an implication that this means that we have to stand behind them with a heavy stick to obey. The German Bahn system works by letting pretty much anyone on board. If it's ICE, or regional then you're probably going to have your ticket checked by an attendant....
The advantages of this system are: no annoying turnstiles that don't let you through unless you have a ticket, no need to hire armed guards to patrol the facilities looking for people trying to beat the system, and while sure, some people get through without paying, and perhaps even ride a lot without paying, those that you do catch end up paying for a monthly ticket anyways, so you still get the funding that you need to keep operating, and the person learns a lesson in social responsibility...
Of course, the first time or so you use it as a foreigner you wonder "Where do I pay?" I looked for the conductor (like they used to do in Europe years ago) and none was to be found. I asked a co-worker about it and he explained the process to me.
BTW - the US does this as well. Portland, OR has a pay before you board system. I actually had trouble with it - it didn't vend a ticket, and I got on so as not to miss my tram. Of course, that was the one with a random check - I explained what happened, the guy said "Next time, tell the driver," and went on his way. Americans can actually be reasonable as well.
That is my main reason for sticking to Engineering. Sales guys, stock brokers, marketing people... Those positions are not rewarding, and you have to leave your soul at the door. Science, Engineering, Construction, Mechanics are the jobs for me. Always will be. I couldn't live with myself knowing that my livelyhood came on the back of others, earned by shiesting a percentage out of something I didn't build because I shuffled some paperwork and talked on the phone. Those people live empty soulless lives. They cheat on their partners. And they drive like assholes on the freeway.
Couple points:
At some point, you need to sell the wonderful things you create - companies (at least for profit) don't exist to let engineers et al play with neat toys. No money, no mission.
The real soulless asshats are design engineers - who seem to think a really cool design is all that's needed; and aren't around when the crap breaks in the field and the real engineers - field engineers - get it running and keep the client happy. They should be forced to come to the field, with their ties and pocket protectors, so we can stick the tie into some rotating machinery and beat some sense into their tiny little brains. they only good thing is they don't have partners so maybe, just maybe, they won't reproduce.
In other news, I have a picture of someone standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. The image meta-data indicates the person was in Paris at the time.
You've revealed even more info with your post - you do not work for the USPS. If you did, the meta-data would indicate you are in Las Vegas.
Considering that's probably 98% of the machines in use it's a non-issue,
During version 6's heyday, IE had almost that amount of marketshare Browser innovation by Microsoft came to a grinding halt for years. Cool progressive technologies like svg support? Fuggedaboutit. Fast javascript engine? Yeah, right. You wouldn't want to make the browser too powerful right? Might usurp some of the need for, you know, a particular desktop operating system. Fortunately, Firefox got some traction and now we have a very healthy browser market with newer and more advanced capabilities coming down the pike all the time. Why go back to the bad old days of the internet? The argument that, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" isn't good enough. It wasn't good enough then and it isn't now.
I think you are confusing the platform with the technology. Ensuring your technology (Silverlight) runs on the two platforms (Win/OSX) that dominate the desktop means virtually everyone will have access to your technology; they few who don't us either platform simply are not worth expending resources to reach. Once a platform reaches critical mass (such tablet OS's) the technology will move to them as well (well, unless the Steve dictates is sucks). While the platform can limit the technologies performance (due to speed, storage, etc) it does not limit innovation, just as having a Linux/Solaris/Chrome/Whatever version ensures a product will be innovative.
The argument that, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" is actually good enough because that is where innovative products gain traction and success (on the desktop); and without such a large base products such as Firefox would never gain traction beyond being a neat toy for a small fraction of the user base. Sure, IE6 had the lion share of the market - but as others saw the potential they moved in with more innovative products forcing MS to move forward - and did so in MS' turf, not on some backwater. So, as a result, "well, it works on Winders and mcintosh" is really more than justt good enough; in fact it is sufficient.
Flash runs on (almost) everything, and is being ported to run on everything (that's more than trivially worth porting to).
Silverlight is being deliberately hoarded for use only by Windows and Macintosh machines.
Considering that's probably 98% of the machines in use it's a non-issue, especially since Moonlight is there for Linux, and if it doesn't work, well you can just grab the source and fix it yourself.
As for Flash, Steve has said it sucks, so it must. Along with Blu-Ray.
Personally, I'd like them to make the lectures available cheaply on DVD or available via download; because the bigger issue, for me, is I'd like to watch them when I don't have net access, such as an 8 hour plane flight.
As you note, this was not illegal, since Tivo Inc. complied with the license in so far as they distributed the sources they changed for use in their product. On the other hand, the practice was clearly not in line with the spirit of the GPL license and thus the spirit in which that software was offered. Morals are not as black and white as the law, I'll grant you, but I don't think you'll find many who think that shipping a device dependent on a stack of software licensed in a way designed to promote the freedom to tinker, but with a lock on it that prevents any such tinkering, is an unassailable moral position.
No, it's not an "unassailable moral position." TIVO complied with the terms and made the software available - you are free to do whatever you want with it; including creating hardware to run it. I find unreasonable the idea that using software under the gpl requires you to make your hardware open to modified versions as well. Clearly, some people don't agree and thus we have v3.
Ultimately, I think v3 is counterproductive if the goal is to increase the acceptance of OSS. Separate from the licensing issue there may be liability issues as well. If a device running modified code ran into problems, the manufacturer could very well face expensive law suits; whether or not we think that is reasonable. So, it'd be smarter to either fork v2 software or go with non-OSS code; rather than be forced to open up your hardware to modified code. Another solution is to minimize teh use of gpl'd code by using proprietary code to perform functions separate from gpl'd code and merely use gpl'd code to perform basic OS functions.