Three Mile Island, it took seven and a half hours to apply the correct remidy for the problem (for over five of which the reactor core was exposed). At nine hours there was an explosion in the reactor core. After 15 hours the core was covered in coolent again.
The explosion was in the primary containment (the concrete structure housing the reactor vessel), not the core. What happened was hydrogen vented into the containment, and the exploded - resulting in a sharp pressure spike, but no failure of the containment (i.e. it did what it was designed to do).
As a side note, had the TMI operators done nothing but watch the safety systems respond, TMI would have been a non-event. Unfortunately, the operators failed to realize a pressurizer relief was open (valve position is measured from teh valve operationg mechanism, not the actual valve - just as you decide a faucet is closed because you no longer can turn it; and the downstream temperatures were near atmospheric temp, misleading the operators into think no steam was escaping since it would be nearly 1000 deg F - forgetting that expanding gases cool, so the temperature was that of steam at the exit pressure) and were afraid of overpressurizing the vessel, so they shut off the safety injection systems.
Sarcasm aside I think those three sentences pretty much sum up my feelings (and most other/.'ers?) on all types of outsourcing (techie or otherwise).
So it's bad that Disney outsourced animation to Pixar, Linus outsourced Linux development to the *entire* world (shoulda kept it at home rather than let those greedy Americans have a go at it), not to mention all that elctronic production in places like China that drove computer prices into the dirt instead of keepingthem high and support American jobs manufacturing components.
It's an excuse to pad the pockets of the fat shareholders at the expense of the middle class.
Considering the rise in stock ownership by the middle class, it's not just the fat shareholders who benefit.
I fear we may wind up proving poor old Karl Marx correct. It's really a crying shame too because capitalism actually does drive innovation. Too bad it also drives greed.
I dobut KM will be proved correct, especially since his economic ideas have proven to be incorrect (at least those in Das Kapital. And greed isn't necessarilly bad - it is what drives innovation, reproduction (something most/.'s probably don't have to worry about) and most of the advances we see today.
And you know what - we've been outsourcing work for quite some time, and yet have enjoyed the largest economic expansion, to the greatest part of society, ever.
I did this with a gamecube once. It wasn't that I didn't have the gamecube, it was that I didn't have a digital camera. Or a regular camera. Or a scanner. Or a friend with any of those items. So I borrowed a picture from someone else's auction. 99% of sellers would never have noticed. Kudos to you for taking note, but there are legitamate reasons for borrowing pictures from other auctions. One good reason is laziness.
True, but if you want to borrow a pic, why not email the owner, and put it on your site or auction, instead of a bandwidth using link?
The problem is there is a great deal of doubt whether this system will do any of that. First off I really doubt wanted felons and known terrorists are going to get on an airline in the U.S. now unless they are stupid or have really good fake/stolen ID's
Oddly enough, many criminals are just that stupid - such as the bank robber who was caught by a ticket agent when he tried to check in for a flight and the agent recognized him from news reports. many criminals are criminals because they are too stupid to do anything else.
At this point its undefined how an innocent person will go about clearing the discrepency because the TSA will probably not tell you why you have been red flagged. If you need to fly for your job, welcome to unemployment.
That is a key point, but not an unsolvable one. I have worked in places where they do a background check as part of teh access procedure, and seen people get flagged and denied access. What then happens is the check is reviewed, and the error corrected. No big battle, no mysterious process - a simple human intervention that quickly notices the 5'2" lady is not a 6'4" covicted felon.
Making airlines reasonably safe is already a well defined task:
- Armored locked cockpit doors - Screen passengers and luggage for explosives and weapons - Stop the out of control bureaucracy run amuck syndrome and focus the resources on the first two which are really easy to do.
It's not that easy, unfortunately. As someone who flies a lot, I've seen or heard of plenty cases where security was innocently breached and no one noticed - friends who carried knoves through flights, security agents who left guns in airports / on planes, or people getting access to secured areas because the security folks forgot that even if you control access to secure areas by ke card, elevators that go to secure and non-secure areas can be caled from teh secure area, giving the person inside (without an access key) a ride to the secure area.
Bottom line - air travel is a contracted interaction between the airline and passenger , and teh contract can be changed to require more information for security checks.
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries.
While we're at it, lets get the British out of Ireland and give the Basques and Kurds and whomever else takes up a gun a seperate state as well.
Not quite true - Enigma wa scracked not only through brillant code breaking, but through a technique even older than computers - steal the device used to enchiper the message, along with the code books. The Brits captured two devices, plus the vital encoding information, from two German submarines. The US captured one when the U505 was boarded and captured in the North Atlantic. The Poles, if I recall correctly, also captured a device - an Army one though, not a Navy one.
Key was the codes used to set the wheels - that enabled decryption of messages for the period that the code was used. Of course, since Enigma used a sophisticated non-repeating cypher (at least for short messages), the Germans believed it uncrackable and failed to take precautions when faced with the possibility. Of course, we made the same assumptions about our codes during the Cold war, only to later discover the USSR used the age old technique on us - pay someone to steal them.
Interestingly enough, the US used a variant for coding messages well into the '70s., giving US subamariners a strange link to their WWII German counterparts.
And to the person doubting you could get an LOA for it...that's crap. The question is would you want to fly it?
Aside from the (rich) pilot who wants a US jet instead of a MIG, maybe someone interested in setting a few records?
A while back, the owner of Red Baron Flying Servcie built his own F104 from spare parts (literally - getting the engine was the hard part) and set some records with it before he had a gear problem and ejected.
It's a real cool story (and more interesting since I lived in Idaho while at prototype and saw his other warbird, a racing P51).
Not true. Most Coke and Pepsi is bottled by a regional distributor. that distributor may only handle the bottling for 2 or 3 states, 1 if its a big state, so they do bar code them according to their distribution point, by region.
I wonder if scanning the bar code and making multiple copies to tape on the can would work - since a copy would be less than the deposit, you'd still be ahead.
Wrong. Try again. When I lived in Oregon, which was a return state, I often bought soda on my weekend trips to Seattle, and threw the empties later into the can bag in my trunk. At first, the can machines didn't differentiate between the two, but by 2002 it had changed, because I started getting a lot of refusals.
Becauses there's big money in un refunded deposits - years ago, NY made noise about claiming unrefunded bottle deposits for the states and the soda companies acted like they were being robbed.
You may laugh at me for trash-can diving...but I ended up getting a nice backpack, a mini-Mag lite, a DVD of Jackie Chan's Gorgeous...and, for 255 bottlecaps, a 16 meg RIO mp3 player. That's a lot of stuff.
Years ago, sodas came in glass bottles with caps - made of a ferrous metal. Soda machines had bottle openers and the caps were dropped into a box that was emptied when the machine was refilled.
Sprite ran a promotion that required collecting a complete set of caps of the local NFL team, which you could trade in for various prizes. A magnet, some string, and permission from the local gas station owners to "mine" their machine netted me 2.045 gas powered cars and various Colts memoriabilia. Still have both of teh cars - nice foot long plastic open wheel racers designed to run in circles via a tether. So i would b the last to laugh at anyone for trash can diving.
So after years of school and experiance we should just go work at a fast food joint? Please explain why. Also, keep in mind that this is NOT free trade. It is a one way deal. They get our jobs, but we get nothing and cant go over there to work.
Schooling shouldn't be conused with marketability. I've seen too many new CIS/ENG grads that expect a job simply because they've survived 4 or more years of trade school (even if it is a university)and so believe they have a unique skill. The problem is they've entered a field where labor is a significant cost of production, so it's only natural that it move to lower ocst areas that can meet the required quality standards. Coding, in that respect, is no different than making a shirt - labor is a major cost and the only way to significantly reduce it is to lower the hourly rate. As long as the labor is undifferentaited 9i.e. you provide a detailed set of specs and I provide a product that meets them) it's hard to keep it in high cost areas (which is why India should be worried about places like Russia near term and china long term - both have the technical skills and cost advantages that will widen as as demand starts to drive up the cost of Indian programmers)
We do get something - lower costs and less inflation - which is why Dell PC's are cheaper today in real dollars than ever before, increasing the standard of living for us as well as India.
G Washington at 1600 Penn Ave; Attila T. Hun, Berlin Germany, and J H Christ, Bethleham PA. I assume mr. S Claus' mail will get through as well - couldn't have kids get bad beef for Christmas.
I'm not sure where you got your seemingly arbitrary distinctions of what makes a toy a toy, and what can be used for 'grown-up' work; apparently you are blinding yourself to the ease of use, standard sizes, flexible assembly and unique qualities that Lego has.
Actually, Lego has some very grown up uses - such as quickly and easily modeling a building where you want someone to do a forced entry/hostage rescue. Lego quickly makes it easy to create a 3D model...
I don't believe the 777 has a backup, hydraulic control system, although I may be mistaken. Suffice it to say that the operation of modern jetliners absolutely depends on having computers that work.
You might think this is a bad idea, but there are lots of very smart engineers who disagree with you. The pilot is an essential part of current systems, but the computer is as well. Having either compromised is a Serious Problem.
I'm not disagreeing with the concept of fly by wire - and I realize it is the way planes are built today.
My issue is with teh idea that given a choice between allowing the pilot to overide computer control inputs or having the computer be the ultimate decision maker; I believe the pilot is better equiped to make decisions, especially in extremis, simply because engineers cannot envision every scenario the computer may need to deal with, and may actually write rules that prevents a pilot from saving an aircraft by taking an action that is highly unusual and not in the book but that saves the a/c.
The computer flies the plane, but ultimately the pilot must be able to override it when his or her experience and decision making process deems it necessary to take an action other than what the computer is doing - there are simply too many variables and too many potential failure modes to cover every possibility. This is not to say the pilot should automatically take control - that's why you train them to understand and think and work with the system to fly safely.
I ask you to find one thing in my post where I said the pilot should not have the ability to break away. Hell I know computers aren't perfect and I agree a 100% that taking control away is a bad idea. I just disagreed with your reasons because they weren't applicable to current commercial jetliners.
I belive his comments are very valid wrt today's airliners - fly-by-wire and fancy computers still lack the reasoning and problem solving skills needed to successfully react to an emergency. They're great at providing repeated warnings, but not very good at taking diverse inputs and figuring out what is wrong, or making cognitive problem solving leaps to deal with unexpected deviations from normal flight. I belive one flaw with the idea is now you are placing the flight decisions in the hands of some engineers and programs, who may be able to come up with a set of rules for proper reactions in all teh scenarios they dream up -but what if the actual flight condition is different? Now, the pilot could very well be fighting the aircraft for control (such as happened with an Airbus that eventually ceased flying when it unexpectedly impacted the ground) or be prevented from taking an action because it places the a/c out of the allowable envelope (who would risk overstressing the a/c by lowering the gear above the maximum a/s?) - when such actions may be needed to save the a/c.
Suppose something gets cross rigged (yes, an unlikely occurance but it wasn't supposed to happen with the old mechanical systems yet it did) - a pilot would notice the plane yawed left instead of right when the right rudder pedal was depressed - a situation where a computer might add more right rudder to correct the yaw, worsening the problem.
What happens if the system reboots in flight? (again, ask Airbus about that) or has a silent failure? Even with independent hardware systems, unless the software is also truely independently developed and not merely mirrores 3 times on the systems, there the risk of a bug simultaneously affecting the primary and backup systems.
There's also the effect of automation on operator skill levels - as people rely on computers to perform routine tasks there's the risk that they lose the ability to perform them when the computer fails or don't recognize an error because the computer is always right (KAL 007 comes to mind here)
Computers are great aids - but there needs to be a clear and unambigous way to take them out of the loop when the pilot decides to fly the a/c. In the end, computers have phenomal cosmic computaion ability, but pilots have experience.
Chernobyl has nothing in common with US, or any non-russian plant. Take TMI. Destroyed the core, but released no appreciable radiation to the public.
Come back when you can tell me all the differences between TMI and Chernobyl.
While it is true that the RBMK plant used at Chernobyl is very different than the Pressurized Water Reactor:
Russian vs US Graphite moderated (it burns) vs. Water No containment vs Concrete Positive power coefficent vs Negitive power coefficent
for starters;
both accidents had one thing in common - operator error.
At Chernobyl, the operators deliberately bypassed safety systems in order to run a test;
At TMI - operators missinterpreted readings and incorrectly decided the greatest danger to the core was overpressurizing the vessel, and shut down safety systems; when what actually was happening was a leak was lowering level. had the TMI operators done nothing but watch the lights blink in the control room, it would have been a non-event.
TMI's containment, prevented any significant release and appears to also have withstood an Hydrogen burn as well.
as a result of TMI, INPO was created to share info between planst and improve performance. Chernobyl resulted in WANO for a worldwide effort. INPO has been much more successful, - US operators fear INPO, but WANO has much less worldwide clout (unless much has changed in the last 5 years)
As for the future of nuclear power, plant values are rising because they are a cheap way to produce lots of power; I predict we'll see a US order of a new plant by 2015; though it probably will be built on an existing site that was licensed for more plants than were actually built. (To avoid siting problems delaying a license)
If the email is sent using government, rtaher than private or party equipment, doe sthe list become a record that can be obtained using FOIA (Freedom of Information Act?) If so, Congress could very well help spammers harvest email addresses for at lost less than buying an email database that has been matched to records.
If you can get the list, how long before someone spoofs a Congressman's addresse and sends his or her constiuents an email that upsets them and forces the rep to deal with the backlash?
So, to resume, if the CD had been just a dumb directory full of jpegs from the NG, the publisher would have been in the clear. But instead, he tried to add a search engine, and as a result the CD qualifies as a "new work". A search engine is a feature that I would expect from a multimedia CD. But it should be considered an ancillary function, something that's expected on such a medium, that's not the core of the product. The core stays the pictures.
(snip)
The basic idea is that photos released on paper, CDs, microfiles,... are all the same work.
That the photos are the same is not what is at issue here - the freelance photographers sold the right to use them in NG magazine, and only the magazine. If the NGS wants to use them in a different work than the magazine, then they need to pay for that right. The photographer, not NGS, owns the rights to the photograph.
The basic idea is that photos released on paper, CDs, microfiles,... are all the same work.
What is at issue here is not wether the phot is a new work, but wether a CD compilation of a magazine is - no one is claiming the photo is a new work, rather taht publishing them in a different medium with new capabilities is a new work. Now, whether a compilation on CD is a new work is a point on which the courts obviously disagree, and is one that should be resolved because it clarifies what is a new work.
Arguing that the CD is the same as the magazine is akin to saying since my subscription entitles me to all issues of the magazine for a certain period, I am owed the CD because it is no different than the magazine and contains the issues that covers my subscription - something I think NGS would disagree with and point out the Cd is a different beast.
When I first read about iPod's Dirty Secret, it reminded me of the bad old days, when I worked for a PC company that soldered those Dallas clock/battery chips directly onto the motherboard, instead of spending the extra buck to mount them into a socket. There's something about that that turned my stomach; the idea that in five years, this screamingly fast 286 would be landfill material.
Fortunately it only took 3 years so your clock battery was still good...
The american public has been brainwashed into believeing that if a company sends their lawyers after you then you must be doing something illegal or commiting a crime.
Mirimax owns the US rights to the film - so they have the right to control the sale of that movie in the US - which includes preventing imports. Companies prevent the drect import of their goods at many times.
I don't think they should be able to do that (but they can) - I wonder how companies get around import (trademark, in this case, IFAIR) woth grey market electronic and camera gear.
One place to check used prices is www.keh.com. They sell an extensive rabge of gear, and you can get qoutes on equipment you plan to "sell" to get a an idea of price ranges.
The parent makes excellent points - only thing is that if you get a manual-everything camera, even with a lot of practice, quickly getting a picture is nigh impossible
Uh, it's called prefocusing and depth of field. By focusing on the area you expect the action and setting your aperture / shutter speed properly, you can simply point and shot action shots.
One piece of advice - see if the lens for the cameras your considering work on the manufacturers current range of SLR/dSLRs. Some manufacturers (Nikon, as I recall) have kept backwards compatibility while others (Canon) introduced a new lens mount with their later gear.
The biggest investment will be in lenses aka glass - by planing for growth, you don't have to start over when you get a dSLR or newer body.
BTW - most automatic SLRs can be used in a manual mode; instead of a match needle you have LEDS or LCDs; or as a point and shot - f16, shutter speed = 1/film speed - on a sunny day, all you need is to focus and shoot.
Italian Job == Mini (BMW) advertisment Tomb Raiders == Land Rover then Jeep adverstisement Mission Impossible == Apple advertisment Top Gun == RayBan advertisement The African Queen == Gordens Gin advertisement etc...
The question is, is it subliminal or not (read illegal)? And does it even work? Personally, I've gotten very good at filtering advertising...
I'd say your filter needs updating - it seems a number of ads are getting by and making an impression on you...
Seriously, product placement will probably be the next big wave - since one goal of an ad is to get you to remember the product.
Slashdot Mirror
Three Mile Island, it took seven and a half hours to apply the correct remidy for the problem (for over five of which the reactor core was exposed). At nine hours there was an explosion in the reactor core. After 15 hours the core was covered in coolent again.
The explosion was in the primary containment (the concrete structure housing the reactor vessel), not the core. What happened was hydrogen vented into the containment, and the exploded - resulting in a sharp pressure spike, but no failure of the containment (i.e. it did what it was designed to do).
As a side note, had the TMI operators done nothing but watch the safety systems respond, TMI would have been a non-event. Unfortunately, the operators failed to realize a pressurizer relief was open (valve position is measured from teh valve operationg mechanism, not the actual valve - just as you decide a faucet is closed because you no longer can turn it; and the downstream temperatures were near atmospheric temp, misleading the operators into think no steam was escaping since it would be nearly 1000 deg F - forgetting that expanding gases cool, so the temperature was that of steam at the exit pressure) and were afraid of overpressurizing the vessel, so they shut off the safety injection systems.
BN Price - 19.95, (You save $5)
yet in the publisher's description (on the BN website), it shows the price as $14.95
Sarcasm aside I think those three sentences pretty much sum up my feelings (and most other /.'ers?) on all types of outsourcing (techie or otherwise).
/.'s probably don't have to worry about) and most of the advances we see today.
So it's bad that Disney outsourced animation to Pixar, Linus outsourced Linux development to the *entire* world (shoulda kept it at home rather than let those greedy Americans have a go at it), not to mention all that elctronic production in places like China that drove computer prices into the dirt instead of keepingthem high and support American jobs manufacturing components.
It's an excuse to pad the pockets of the fat shareholders at the expense of the middle class.
Considering the rise in stock ownership by the middle class, it's not just the fat shareholders who benefit.
I fear we may wind up proving poor old Karl Marx correct. It's really a crying shame too because capitalism actually does drive innovation. Too bad it also drives greed.
I dobut KM will be proved correct, especially since his economic ideas have proven to be incorrect (at least those in Das Kapital. And greed isn't necessarilly bad - it is what drives innovation, reproduction (something most
And you know what - we've been outsourcing work for quite some time, and yet have enjoyed the largest economic expansion, to the greatest part of society, ever.
I did this with a gamecube once. It wasn't that I didn't have the gamecube, it was that I didn't have a digital camera. Or a regular camera. Or a scanner. Or a friend with any of those items. So I borrowed a picture from someone else's auction. 99% of sellers would never have noticed. Kudos to you for taking note, but there are legitamate reasons for borrowing pictures from other auctions. One good reason is laziness.
True, but if you want to borrow a pic, why not email the owner, and put it on your site or auction, instead of a bandwidth using link?
The problem is there is a great deal of doubt whether this system will do any of that. First off I really doubt wanted felons and known terrorists are going to get on an airline in the U.S. now unless they are stupid or have really good fake/stolen ID's
Oddly enough, many criminals are just that stupid - such as the bank robber who was caught by a ticket agent when he tried to check in for a flight and the agent recognized him from news reports. many criminals are criminals because they are too stupid to do anything else.
At this point its undefined how an innocent person will go about clearing the discrepency because the TSA will probably not tell you why you have been red flagged. If you need to fly for your job, welcome to unemployment.
That is a key point, but not an unsolvable one. I have worked in places where they do a background check as part of teh access procedure, and seen people get flagged and denied access. What then happens is the check is reviewed, and the error corrected. No big battle, no mysterious process - a simple human intervention that quickly notices the 5'2" lady is not a 6'4" covicted felon.
Making airlines reasonably safe is already a well defined task:
- Armored locked cockpit doors
- Screen passengers and luggage for explosives and weapons
- Stop the out of control bureaucracy run amuck syndrome and focus the resources on the first two which are really easy to do.
It's not that easy, unfortunately. As someone who flies a lot, I've seen or heard of plenty cases where security was innocently breached and no one noticed - friends who carried knoves through flights, security agents who left guns in airports / on planes, or people getting access to secured areas because the security folks forgot that even if you control access to secure areas by ke card, elevators that go to secure and non-secure areas can be caled from teh secure area, giving the person inside (without an access key) a ride to the secure area.
Bottom line - air travel is a contracted interaction between the airline and passenger , and teh contract can be changed to require more information for security checks.
Better yet, to win the war on terrorism compell a real peace in Isreal and the West Bank and get U.S. occupation troops out Islamic countries.
While we're at it, lets get the British out of Ireland and give the Basques and Kurds and whomever else takes up a gun a seperate state as well.
Not quite true - Enigma wa scracked not only through brillant code breaking, but through a technique even older than computers - steal the device used to enchiper the message, along with the code books. The Brits captured two devices, plus the vital encoding information, from two German submarines. The US captured one when the U505 was boarded and captured in the North Atlantic. The Poles, if I recall correctly, also captured a device - an Army one though, not a Navy one.
Key was the codes used to set the wheels - that enabled decryption of messages for the period that the code was used. Of course, since Enigma used a sophisticated non-repeating cypher (at least for short messages), the Germans believed it uncrackable and failed to take precautions when faced with the possibility. Of course, we made the same assumptions about our codes during the Cold war, only to later discover the USSR used the age old technique on us - pay someone to steal them.
Interestingly enough, the US used a variant for coding messages well into the '70s., giving US subamariners a strange link to their WWII German counterparts.
And to the person doubting you could get an LOA for it...that's crap. The question is would you want to fly it?
Aside from the (rich) pilot who wants a US jet instead of a MIG, maybe someone interested in setting a few records?
A while back, the owner of Red Baron Flying Servcie built his own F104 from spare parts (literally - getting the engine was the hard part) and set some records with it before he had a gear problem and ejected.
It's a real cool story (and more interesting since I lived in Idaho while at prototype and saw his other warbird, a racing P51).
wow! I really don't know how to listen to MP3 AND make phone call, AND GAIN PRODUCTIVITY! Can anybody tell me?
Sure - now you can play music when you put a caller on hold on your cell phone while you answer as econd call...
Not true. Most Coke and Pepsi is bottled by a regional distributor. that distributor may only handle the bottling for 2 or 3 states, 1 if its a big state, so they do bar code them according to their distribution point, by region.
I wonder if scanning the bar code and making multiple copies to tape on the can would work - since a copy would be less than the deposit, you'd still be ahead.
Wrong. Try again. When I lived in Oregon, which was a return state, I often bought soda on my weekend trips to Seattle, and threw the empties later into the can bag in my trunk. At first, the can machines didn't differentiate between the two, but by 2002 it had changed, because I started getting a lot of refusals.
Becauses there's big money in un refunded deposits - years ago, NY made noise about claiming unrefunded bottle deposits for the states and the soda companies acted like they were being robbed.
You may laugh at me for trash-can diving...but I ended up getting a nice backpack, a mini-Mag lite, a DVD of Jackie Chan's Gorgeous...and, for 255 bottlecaps, a 16 meg RIO mp3 player. That's a lot of stuff.
.045 gas powered cars and various Colts memoriabilia. Still have both of teh cars - nice foot long plastic open wheel racers designed to run in circles via a tether. So i would b the last to laugh at anyone for trash can diving.
Years ago, sodas came in glass bottles with caps - made of a ferrous metal. Soda machines had bottle openers and the caps were dropped into a box that was emptied when the machine was refilled.
Sprite ran a promotion that required collecting a complete set of caps of the local NFL team, which you could trade in for various prizes. A magnet, some string, and permission from the local gas station owners to "mine" their machine netted me 2
So after years of school and experiance we should just go work at a fast food joint? Please explain why. Also, keep in mind that this is NOT free trade. It is a one way deal. They get our jobs, but we get nothing and cant go over there to work.
Schooling shouldn't be conused with marketability. I've seen too many new CIS/ENG grads that expect a job simply because they've survived 4 or more years of trade school (even if it is a university)and so believe they have a unique skill. The problem is they've entered a field where labor is a significant cost of production, so it's only natural that it move to lower ocst areas that can meet the required quality standards. Coding, in that respect, is no different than making a shirt - labor is a major cost and the only way to significantly reduce it is to lower the hourly rate. As long as the labor is undifferentaited 9i.e. you provide a detailed set of specs and I provide a product that meets them) it's hard to keep it in high cost areas (which is why India should be worried about places like Russia near term and china long term - both have the technical skills and cost advantages that will widen as as demand starts to drive up the cost of Indian programmers)
We do get something - lower costs and less inflation - which is why Dell PC's are cheaper today in real dollars than ever before, increasing the standard of living for us as well as India.
G Washington at 1600 Penn Ave; Attila T. Hun, Berlin Germany, and J H Christ, Bethleham PA. I assume mr. S Claus' mail will get through as well - couldn't have kids get bad beef for Christmas.
I'm not sure where you got your seemingly arbitrary distinctions of what makes a toy a toy, and what can be used for 'grown-up' work; apparently you are blinding yourself to the ease of use, standard sizes, flexible assembly and unique qualities that Lego has.
Actually, Lego has some very grown up uses - such as quickly and easily modeling a building where you want someone to do a forced entry/hostage rescue. Lego quickly makes it easy to create a 3D model...
Fly by wire is a fact of life.
I don't believe the 777 has a backup, hydraulic control system, although I may be mistaken. Suffice it to say that the operation of modern jetliners absolutely depends on having computers that work.
You might think this is a bad idea, but there are lots of very smart engineers who disagree with you. The pilot is an essential part of current systems, but the computer is as well. Having either compromised is a Serious Problem.
I'm not disagreeing with the concept of fly by wire - and I realize it is the way planes are built today.
My issue is with teh idea that given a choice between allowing the pilot to overide computer control inputs or having the computer be the ultimate decision maker; I believe the pilot is better equiped to make decisions, especially in extremis, simply because engineers cannot envision every scenario the computer may need to deal with, and may actually write rules that prevents a pilot from saving an aircraft by taking an action that is highly unusual and not in the book but that saves the a/c.
The computer flies the plane, but ultimately the pilot must be able to override it when his or her experience and decision making process deems it necessary to take an action other than what the computer is doing - there are simply too many variables and too many potential failure modes to cover every possibility. This is not to say the pilot should automatically take control - that's why you train them to understand and think and work with the system to fly safely.
I ask you to find one thing in my post where I said the pilot should not have the ability to break away. Hell I know computers aren't perfect and I agree a 100% that taking control away is a bad idea. I just disagreed with your reasons because they weren't applicable to current commercial jetliners.
I belive his comments are very valid wrt today's airliners - fly-by-wire and fancy computers still lack the reasoning and problem solving skills needed to successfully react to an emergency. They're great at providing repeated warnings, but not very good at taking diverse inputs and figuring out what is wrong, or making cognitive problem solving leaps to deal with unexpected deviations from normal flight.
I belive one flaw with the idea is now you are placing the flight decisions in the hands of some engineers and programs, who may be able to come up with a set of rules for proper reactions in all teh scenarios they dream up -but what if the actual flight condition is different? Now, the pilot could very well be fighting the aircraft for control (such as happened with an Airbus that eventually ceased flying when it unexpectedly impacted the ground) or be prevented from taking an action because it places the a/c out of the allowable envelope (who would risk overstressing the a/c by lowering the gear above the maximum a/s?) - when such actions may be needed to save the a/c.
Suppose something gets cross rigged (yes, an unlikely occurance but it wasn't supposed to happen with the old mechanical systems yet it did) - a pilot would notice the plane yawed left instead of right when the right rudder pedal was depressed - a situation where a computer might add more right rudder to correct the yaw, worsening the problem.
What happens if the system reboots in flight? (again, ask Airbus about that) or has a silent failure? Even with independent hardware systems, unless the software is also truely independently developed and not merely mirrores 3 times on the systems, there the risk of a bug simultaneously affecting the primary and backup systems.
There's also the effect of automation on operator skill levels - as people rely on computers to perform routine tasks there's the risk that they lose the ability to perform them when the computer fails or don't recognize an error because the computer is always right (KAL 007 comes to mind here)
Computers are great aids - but there needs to be a clear and unambigous way to take them out of the loop when the pilot decides to fly the a/c. In the end, computers have phenomal cosmic computaion ability, but pilots have experience.
Chernobyl has nothing in common with US, or any non-russian plant. Take TMI. Destroyed the core, but released no appreciable radiation to the public.
Come back when you can tell me all the differences between TMI and Chernobyl.
While it is true that the RBMK plant used at Chernobyl is very different than the Pressurized Water Reactor:
Russian vs US
Graphite moderated (it burns) vs. Water
No containment vs Concrete
Positive power coefficent vs Negitive power coefficent
for starters;
both accidents had one thing in common - operator error.
At Chernobyl, the operators deliberately bypassed safety systems in order to run a test;
At TMI - operators missinterpreted readings and incorrectly decided the greatest danger to the core was overpressurizing the vessel, and shut down safety systems; when what actually was happening was a leak was lowering level. had the TMI operators done nothing but watch the lights blink in the control room, it would have been a non-event.
TMI's containment, prevented any significant release and appears to also have withstood an Hydrogen burn as well.
as a result of TMI, INPO was created to share info between planst and improve performance. Chernobyl resulted in WANO for a worldwide effort. INPO has been much more successful, - US operators fear INPO, but WANO has much less worldwide clout (unless much has changed in the last 5 years)
As for the future of nuclear power, plant values are rising because they are a cheap way to produce lots of power; I predict we'll see a US order of a new plant by 2015; though it probably will be built on an existing site that was licensed for more plants than were actually built. (To avoid siting problems delaying a license)
If the email is sent using government, rtaher than private or party equipment, doe sthe list become a record that can be obtained using FOIA (Freedom of Information Act?) If so, Congress could very well help spammers harvest email addresses for at lost less than buying an email database that has been matched to records.
If you can get the list, how long before someone spoofs a Congressman's addresse and sends his or her constiuents an email that upsets them and forces the rep to deal with the backlash?
So, to resume, if the CD had been just a dumb directory full of jpegs from the NG, the publisher would have been in the clear. But instead, he tried to add a search engine, and as a result the CD qualifies as a "new work". A search engine is a feature that I would expect from a multimedia CD. But it should be considered an ancillary function, something that's expected on such a medium, that's not the core of the product. The core stays the pictures.
... are all the same work.
... are all the same work.
(snip)
The basic idea is that photos released on paper, CDs, microfiles,
That the photos are the same is not what is at issue here - the freelance photographers sold the right to use them in NG magazine, and only the magazine. If the NGS wants to use them in a different work than the magazine, then they need to pay for that right. The photographer, not NGS, owns the rights to the photograph.
The basic idea is that photos released on paper, CDs, microfiles,
What is at issue here is not wether the phot is a new work, but wether a CD compilation of a magazine is - no one is claiming the photo is a new work, rather taht publishing them in a different medium with new capabilities is a new work. Now, whether a compilation on CD is a new work is a point on which the courts obviously disagree, and is one that should be resolved because it clarifies what is a new work.
Arguing that the CD is the same as the magazine is akin to saying since my subscription entitles me to all issues of the magazine for a certain period, I am owed the CD because it is no different than the magazine and contains the issues that covers my subscription - something I think NGS would disagree with and point out the Cd is a different beast.
When I first read about iPod's Dirty Secret, it reminded me of the bad old days, when I worked for a PC company that soldered those Dallas clock/battery chips directly onto the motherboard, instead of spending the extra buck to mount them into a socket. There's something about that that turned my stomach; the idea that in five years, this screamingly fast 286 would be landfill material.
Fortunately it only took 3 years so your clock battery was still good...
The american public has been brainwashed into believeing that if a company sends their lawyers after you then you must be doing something illegal or commiting a crime.
Mirimax owns the US rights to the film - so they have the right to control the sale of that movie in the US - which includes preventing imports. Companies prevent the drect import of their goods at many times.
I don't think they should be able to do that (but they can) - I wonder how companies get around import (trademark, in this case, IFAIR) woth grey market electronic and camera gear.
Article qoute:
Recovered in the raid were two AK 47 rifles, a pistol, $750,000 in $100 denominations and a white and orange taxi.
Looks like he was planning to move to NYC and buy a medallion...
One place to check used prices is www.keh.com. They sell an extensive rabge of gear, and you can get qoutes on equipment you plan to "sell" to get a an idea of price ranges.
The parent makes excellent points - only thing is that if you get a manual-everything camera, even with a lot of practice, quickly getting a picture is nigh impossible
Uh, it's called prefocusing and depth of field. By focusing on the area you expect the action and setting your aperture / shutter speed properly, you can simply point and shot action shots.
One piece of advice - see if the lens for the cameras your considering work on the manufacturers current range of SLR/dSLRs. Some manufacturers (Nikon, as I recall) have kept backwards compatibility while others (Canon) introduced a new lens mount with their later gear.
The biggest investment will be in lenses aka glass - by planing for growth, you don't have to start over when you get a dSLR or newer body.
BTW - most automatic SLRs can be used in a manual mode; instead of a match needle you have LEDS or LCDs; or as a point and shot - f16, shutter speed = 1/film speed - on a sunny day, all you need is to focus and shoot.
Italian Job == Mini (BMW) advertisment
Tomb Raiders == Land Rover then Jeep adverstisement
Mission Impossible == Apple advertisment
Top Gun == RayBan advertisement
The African Queen == Gordens Gin advertisement
etc...
The question is, is it subliminal or not (read illegal)? And does it even work? Personally, I've gotten very good at filtering advertising...
I'd say your filter needs updating - it seems a number of ads are getting by and making an impression on you...
Seriously, product placement will probably be the next big wave - since one goal of an ad is to get you to remember the product.