Ha ha. This story just reminded me that my brother, a volunteer firefighter, had a 360 in the firestation. Fire wasn't their main concern with the 360's heat problem-- obviously, it was something they could handle, and the building was made completely out of concrete-- but due the fact that the console was typically running 24 hours a day. The thing crashed all the time. Because the way the shifts worked out, someone always had the ability to sit down in front of it, so this quickly got on their nerves. Anyway, they solved their problem by building a cage with two 12" fans attached. Plenty of airflow!
Its very difficult to maintain high standards in isolation. This is so true. I am currently pursuing a CS degree at a program that offers all classes after-hours (that is to say, after 5PM). This is quite a difficult thing to do, as many of us in the class do programming (or something equivalently technical) 8 hours a day and then we head to class to learn about optimizing finite state machines and designing compilers. The resources that are available to typical daytime students are not available to us, like study sessions and tutors, because those things are typically during the day. And even if they were, we wouldn't have the time-- we're already busy taking classes at night or doing our homework. Thankfully, I do not have a family to support, but many of my classmates do.
But back to the isolation part-- really tough problems are a lot tougher when you don't have someone to talk to about them. Just sitting down and talking to someone about a problem is enormously helpful-- sometimes, in the phrasing of the question, you find the piece you were missing and it all snaps into place.
On the plus side, being a nontraditional student is pleasant in some different ways. I recall feeling the performance pressure as an undergrad, but I don't any longer. For one, as an undergrad, my parents were paying for college, and I felt a pressure to perform. Now, I pay out of my own pocket, so the motivation is different-- it's not so much that I want to perform as much as I want to exploit what the program has to offer. I want my money's worth. But beyond that-- I already have a Bachelor's Degree and a good job. I'm in this now for the pure fun of it, and yeah, it can get hard, and it can get stressful (never had to program until 5AM, but 3AM is pretty common-- I guess I'm 2 hours smarter than you guys), but I put it all into perspective because I can remind myself that I really want to be doing this.
Did you read TFA? CSP can generate power when the sun is not shining due to the high thermal mass of the fluid it uses, which at present are oil or molten salt. Since you are using heat to provide the power (by boiling water to turn a turbine), it doesn't matter that you aren't generating more heat at night-- because you're using the store you created during the day. As far as CSP being the "silver bullet", the author addresses this directly:
Certainly we will need many different technologies to stop global warming As for base load-- peak power usage is during the day, when the sun is shining. So even if this system did not have the ability to generate electrical power during the night, solar power is worth pursuing. Besides, you want to talk about subsidies? The corn subsidy may be misguided, but how about the Iraq war? That's a war fought to maintain the U.S.'s interests in the region. What interests are those? Oil. We're at $600 billion and counting for that subsidy. "Spreading democracy" is obviously a red herring, since there are plenty of places we've turned a blind eye to that were doing just that. Sometimes, we've even helped out the bad guys.
I would love to see $600 billion poured into alternative fuels. It would be a boon to our economy, it would be a great opportunity for scientists and engineers, and it would isolate us from oil politics. Not to mention that it is an ethical thing to do, if we care about our planet.
Important question: Did the IT staff deny access because there are unprotected services on the university LAN? The engineering department's stunt may have just created a security vulnerability on your campus network.
Of course, none of us really know the real story, since we're all hearing it {2nd,3rd}-hand. Maybe they really are a bunch of idiots.
Instead of educating users and providing them the ability to solve problems, IT mirrors large software companies and media companies, and removes any control, forcing them to be "stupid." I'm all for software freedom, but come on-- users are dumb. The difference between today's users and the "original computer users" is that the latter knew what they were doing. Trust me, training only goes so far. When the nth receptionist this month (where n approaches infinity) installs OMGLinsdayLohanSearchBarAkaComputerDefilerToolbar on the front desk machine, you might change your mind about locking things down.
Let's also not forget-- these are company machines. If my resident computer revolutionaries feel like paying for the equipment and IT overtime when they hose something important, I'm all for it. If they want something, they need to talk to me. It's sad that this doesn't happen in some places, but hey, that's life.
OTOH, you'd be hard pressed to find a user that can get single-sign-on working across a heterogeneous network (hint: we have it working on Windows, Macs, Linux, *and* OpenBSD machines), or backing up 7TB of storage *nightly* (or heck, even providing 7TB of storage), containing virus outbreaks, and so on. There are plenty of IT departments that suck, and there are plenty that don't. Sometimes IT needs to give users some slack, but other times, IT needs to smack it down, hard. We've learned the hard way that users tend to make uninformed purchases of software-- this often leads to the company relying on a proprietary (and expensive) file format, when a few moments of consideration ahead of time would have saved the company a lot of pain. Yes, Adobe, I'm talking about YOU.
IBM might have created a better product and closer competitor to Tukwila better if Power6
had been a quad design based on a Power5 core worked over to
improve performance/power but then its wouldn't have the mega-
giga for headlines in the WSJ and given IBM Micro a measure of
bragging rights to help justify its continued existence.;-) I dunno-- this chip is more than just faster. IBM's chip can do decimal arithmetic on silicon. Have you ever had to work with real decimal numbers on a computer? It's a PITA. IA-32 has some basic support for BCD, but it leaves a lot up to you-- the processor really wants you to work with 32-bit binary numbers. IBM is nice enough to provide a library you can use if you're too poor to afford a chip that can do real decimal math, though.
Financial institutions are required by law to perform financial calculations on a computer as they would on paper, so a chip that can do these calculations natively have a built-in market that is willing to pay the extra for the features. This is a special-purpose processor. There have been and will continue to be purpose-built calculating machines, so it's really not fair to say that IBM is simply trying to dazzle us to justify their existence. As long as no one else makes these machines, their existence is justified.
There's also the recent Puccinia graminis "wheat blight" currently happening across Asia. Puccinia graminis affects both wheat and barley (and some other crops). Combine that with a weak U.S. dollar, which means we are exporting more, and the fact that U.S. growers have been switching to the more-profitable corn growing, and you can see why grain prices have gone up, at least in the U.S.
I can't tell you how many times my Christian friends have argued that me being an atheist is the same as "believing that there isn't a God" despite explaining no, I am "not believing that there is a God", which is quite a different thing. Discussion of the etymology of the word "atheist" doesn't seem to help in these cases, because they've already latched onto something that they believe about me and won't let go of. Maybe I should simply accept that this is par for the course.
As a former Montrealer and a soon-to-be Ottawan, I just have to ask -- what the hell sort of monstrous snow creature spawned you?!?;) I was born in NH and grew up in ME and MA, and I just can't stand summers in MA. I don't mind sweating, but the humidity and haze really get to me now that I live in the Boston area. I'd been pushing for Calgary, but my girlfriend thinks getting board certified in Canada would be prohibitively difficult (she's a soon-to-be optometrist). So we're probably going to settle for Colorado or Maine, but I'd very much prefer to go further north. I guess I've never just minded the cold as much as the heat.
I do feel for you, though-- I once spent a week in Montreal in September thinking that it would be a pleasant, cool break from the end-of-summer heat here. I didn't bring a jacket. It snowed nearly the whole time. After that, I stopped wondering why there were electrical plugs coming out of the front of everyone's cars;^)
After doing a 2 year bout training for long-distance XC events and ultramarathon events, I am down to the 40 miles/week range. Previously, I was in the 50-60/wk range, but that level of training became very difficult to maintain when I started going to school again. Actually, the training wasn't difficult-- the school was-- and after a long run, I just couldn't focus anymore. Prior to that period, I was in the 40's range like I am now, and it seems to suit me well. My diet is a more "normal" now, which means I am not hungry all the time, although my girlfriend thinks I still eat like a horse;^) I'm not sure what I consume daily at the moment, but if I had to guess, I'd say around the 4500 kcal/day range.
But my really big bout with calorie consumption was when I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2003. That was 6 months of very long days, and at the height of the summer, when you could hike all day and though a lot of the night, I estimate, conservatively, that I was consuming about 12,000 kcal a day. My daily GORP consumption alone could be measured in pounds! I don't think it was surprising that at that level, I was gravitating toward peanuts, which are just loaded with calories (from fat). That's for 17 miles a day. I was lean when I started, but boy, was I lean when I got back! I lost quite a bit of muscle as well, despite stuffing my face every opportunity I got. I actually had dreams about pizza, which for some odd reason, I could not find ANYWHERE in Georgia or North Carolina.
Yes, the US is in a sorry state. I think we all know that now.
But, I have also learned over the years that the U.S. is the birthplace of many good things, and those things always came through the tireless efforts of people who refused to believe that they were beaten. I've thought about leaving the U.S. many times-- our northern neighbor is still a liberal society, and the climate suits me better-- but the thing that keeps me here is the thought that if people like me leave (that is, people who care), then this country will be filled with people who don't care. Anger at our government, and at our people, our rotten culture, may serve to provide us with some perspective, but it is not a motivator in the long term.
We need to return to running our country for the long term, a return to intelligent leadership and real compassion, but the only way to get there is to work for it. Support people with brains, get to know your neighbors, and do good work yourself, and you've taken steps toward making the U.S. a better place. The only reason I can think of for giving up is that it is the easy thing to do, and that's precisely what you chide everyone else for doing, so don't give up.
OTOH when mass adoption of the software that "enables you to get done what you need and want to get done" causes nightmares like SPAM zombie nets and an malware/adware-ridden internet, then I think there is some legitimacy in asking someone to consider using another platform. It's like dumping chemicals in your backyard. It may help you get things done ("PCBs, gone!"), but it's not a good thing for the rest of us, so in "getting things done" is not, in my mind, a sufficient excuse in general.
I am not looking down on you for your choice of Windows, but in the interests of stopping the general shitting in the pool that Windows engenders, I ask you to consider another platform that lets you get things done. There are lots of them out there. Of course, my own personal loathing of Windows has less to do with the technical details of the operating system and more to do with the vile business practices of the company that produces it, but that's another story.
You know, I've been hearing a lot about caloric restriction these days, probably because it is a lot easier for most people to stop eating than to start exercising-- but I've been wondering if there are any studies comparing the two approaches. My gut feeling (as an athlete) is that it would be a bad idea to try to combine the two approaches, and that the obvious positive benefits of exercise (mood improvements, bone density and joint toughness, physical capability, etc) are lacking in caloric restriction. Maybe you live longer with the restriction approach, but are you healthier and happier? I don't know.
Your logic is flawed. Eating saturated fats may produce LDL and HDL in a fixed ratio, but that ratio is still not good for you. Trans fats are even worse, as you point out. But the former type, in general, should still be moderated. Your own source says it here, simply:
What is becoming clearer and clearer is that bad fats, meaning saturated and trans fats, increase the risk for certain diseases while good fats, meaning monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, lower the risk. The key is to substitute good fats for bad fats.
If you work in medicine or biology, most of the research on the effects of various foods on the body is unambiguous. The fact that people feel the way you do is a testament to the efficacy of the PR efforts by the various food industries. Read this sometime.
It is true that most cholesterol is produced in the body, but that does not mean that dietary cholesterol is not important. First of all, the typical American diet is heavily weighted in favor of saturated fats. Saturated fats stimulate the body to release more cholesterol into the blood, of the LDL ("bad") variety. So while eating a food high in cholesterol may not contribute directly to your cholesterol level, typically those high cholesterol containing foods also contain large amounts of saturated fats, and those saturated fats will contribute to your cholesterol level. Steak is definitely a rich source of saturated fat, so you should moderate your intake.
Which brings up another point: some people are more susceptible to the effects of high blood cholesterol than others. Unless you know for sure which group you're in (and who really does?), don't you think you should use a little discretion in choosing your diet? Furthermore, by getting your daily fat intake from vegetable sources, you're doing yourself additional favors, because you are probably also increasing your intake of dietary fiber, bioavailable vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants (which also has an LDL-lowering effect).
You're right about the exercise bit, though. If people spent half as much energy worrying about their exercise regimen as they do fretting about whether they should eat carbs or not, people in general would be a lot healthier. Trust me, once you reach a certain level of daily exertion, your body will burn just about anything efficiently.
Mod parent flamebait. Right, and as a holder of a philosophy degree, I don't understand why you nitwit mathematicians can't get it through your thick skulls that we "statistical inference" is just yet another flawed manifestation of the Cartesian dichotomy. See where I'm going with this?
Why all the hate, people? Different disciplines have different terminology. Sure, there are probably some mathematical generalizations for common computer science problems. And there are probably some CS generalizations for common accounting problems. But you know why actual traveling salesmen don't call their travels the Traveling Salesman problem? They don't fucking care, and for the most part, it doesn't matter to them.
Now that I'm a CS student, I can appreciate where my current field and where my former field overlap. In my book, nobody who puts their mind to work is the butt of anybody else's joke.
In the early 90's, my dad used to bring me to work every now and then when he worked at BBN. Since BBN was an early internet pioneer, they had some really big pipes (er, tubes?) to the arpa/internet. I was in high school at the time. I would fill my backpack with blank floppies and spend the day on gopher and FTP (anyone remember Anarchie?) just filling those disks up with freeware/shareware and every other cool thing I came across. Their offices had an interesting mix of phonenet (Appletalk) and BNC ethernet. Lots of Macs around back then, and those networks were fast, but crashed all the time.
Anyway, one day I came across this image and my brain just about exploded. Keep in mind that I was a high school aged male. Yep, that was the beginning of the end for me...;^)
As for the "web", I remember an MIT postdoc excitedly showing me this new "world wide web browser called Mosaic", and he just couldn't get me enthused. "You mean it's read-only?" I remember asking. I just couldn't see the point.
Slashdot Mirror
B12, unless you like eating fungus.
As far as I can tell, canine teeth were made for eating stale peeps.
Ha ha. This story just reminded me that my brother, a volunteer firefighter, had a 360 in the firestation. Fire wasn't their main concern with the 360's heat problem-- obviously, it was something they could handle, and the building was made completely out of concrete-- but due the fact that the console was typically running 24 hours a day. The thing crashed all the time. Because the way the shifts worked out, someone always had the ability to sit down in front of it, so this quickly got on their nerves. Anyway, they solved their problem by building a cage with two 12" fans attached. Plenty of airflow!
Except that even Linus Torvalds can't seem to get swfdec running correctly.
But back to the isolation part-- really tough problems are a lot tougher when you don't have someone to talk to about them. Just sitting down and talking to someone about a problem is enormously helpful-- sometimes, in the phrasing of the question, you find the piece you were missing and it all snaps into place.
On the plus side, being a nontraditional student is pleasant in some different ways. I recall feeling the performance pressure as an undergrad, but I don't any longer. For one, as an undergrad, my parents were paying for college, and I felt a pressure to perform. Now, I pay out of my own pocket, so the motivation is different-- it's not so much that I want to perform as much as I want to exploit what the program has to offer. I want my money's worth. But beyond that-- I already have a Bachelor's Degree and a good job. I'm in this now for the pure fun of it, and yeah, it can get hard, and it can get stressful (never had to program until 5AM, but 3AM is pretty common-- I guess I'm 2 hours smarter than you guys), but I put it all into perspective because I can remind myself that I really want to be doing this.
I would love to see $600 billion poured into alternative fuels. It would be a boon to our economy, it would be a great opportunity for scientists and engineers, and it would isolate us from oil politics. Not to mention that it is an ethical thing to do, if we care about our planet.
Important question: Did the IT staff deny access because there are unprotected services on the university LAN? The engineering department's stunt may have just created a security vulnerability on your campus network.
Of course, none of us really know the real story, since we're all hearing it {2nd,3rd}-hand. Maybe they really are a bunch of idiots.
Let's also not forget-- these are company machines. If my resident computer revolutionaries feel like paying for the equipment and IT overtime when they hose something important, I'm all for it. If they want something, they need to talk to me. It's sad that this doesn't happen in some places, but hey, that's life.
OTOH, you'd be hard pressed to find a user that can get single-sign-on working across a heterogeneous network (hint: we have it working on Windows, Macs, Linux, *and* OpenBSD machines), or backing up 7TB of storage *nightly* (or heck, even providing 7TB of storage), containing virus outbreaks, and so on. There are plenty of IT departments that suck, and there are plenty that don't. Sometimes IT needs to give users some slack, but other times, IT needs to smack it down, hard. We've learned the hard way that users tend to make uninformed purchases of software-- this often leads to the company relying on a proprietary (and expensive) file format, when a few moments of consideration ahead of time would have saved the company a lot of pain. Yes, Adobe, I'm talking about YOU.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem#History_of_the_problem
Financial institutions are required by law to perform financial calculations on a computer as they would on paper, so a chip that can do these calculations natively have a built-in market that is willing to pay the extra for the features. This is a special-purpose processor. There have been and will continue to be purpose-built calculating machines, so it's really not fair to say that IBM is simply trying to dazzle us to justify their existence. As long as no one else makes these machines, their existence is justified.
There's also the recent Puccinia graminis "wheat blight" currently happening across Asia. Puccinia graminis affects both wheat and barley (and some other crops). Combine that with a weak U.S. dollar, which means we are exporting more, and the fact that U.S. growers have been switching to the more-profitable corn growing, and you can see why grain prices have gone up, at least in the U.S.
I can't tell you how many times my Christian friends have argued that me being an atheist is the same as "believing that there isn't a God" despite explaining no, I am "not believing that there is a God", which is quite a different thing. Discussion of the etymology of the word "atheist" doesn't seem to help in these cases, because they've already latched onto something that they believe about me and won't let go of. Maybe I should simply accept that this is par for the course.
I do feel for you, though-- I once spent a week in Montreal in September thinking that it would be a pleasant, cool break from the end-of-summer heat here. I didn't bring a jacket. It snowed nearly the whole time. After that, I stopped wondering why there were electrical plugs coming out of the front of everyone's cars
After doing a 2 year bout training for long-distance XC events and ultramarathon events, I am down to the 40 miles/week range. Previously, I was in the 50-60/wk range, but that level of training became very difficult to maintain when I started going to school again. Actually, the training wasn't difficult-- the school was-- and after a long run, I just couldn't focus anymore. Prior to that period, I was in the 40's range like I am now, and it seems to suit me well. My diet is a more "normal" now, which means I am not hungry all the time, although my girlfriend thinks I still eat like a horse ;^) I'm not sure what I consume daily at the moment, but if I had to guess, I'd say around the 4500 kcal/day range.
But my really big bout with calorie consumption was when I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2003. That was 6 months of very long days, and at the height of the summer, when you could hike all day and though a lot of the night, I estimate, conservatively, that I was consuming about 12,000 kcal a day. My daily GORP consumption alone could be measured in pounds! I don't think it was surprising that at that level, I was gravitating toward peanuts, which are just loaded with calories (from fat). That's for 17 miles a day. I was lean when I started, but boy, was I lean when I got back! I lost quite a bit of muscle as well, despite stuffing my face every opportunity I got. I actually had dreams about pizza, which for some odd reason, I could not find ANYWHERE in Georgia or North Carolina.
Yes, the US is in a sorry state. I think we all know that now.
But, I have also learned over the years that the U.S. is the birthplace of many good things, and those things always came through the tireless efforts of people who refused to believe that they were beaten. I've thought about leaving the U.S. many times-- our northern neighbor is still a liberal society, and the climate suits me better-- but the thing that keeps me here is the thought that if people like me leave (that is, people who care), then this country will be filled with people who don't care. Anger at our government, and at our people, our rotten culture, may serve to provide us with some perspective, but it is not a motivator in the long term.
We need to return to running our country for the long term, a return to intelligent leadership and real compassion, but the only way to get there is to work for it. Support people with brains, get to know your neighbors, and do good work yourself, and you've taken steps toward making the U.S. a better place. The only reason I can think of for giving up is that it is the easy thing to do, and that's precisely what you chide everyone else for doing, so don't give up.
OTOH when mass adoption of the software that "enables you to get done what you need and want to get done" causes nightmares like SPAM zombie nets and an malware/adware-ridden internet, then I think there is some legitimacy in asking someone to consider using another platform. It's like dumping chemicals in your backyard. It may help you get things done ("PCBs, gone!"), but it's not a good thing for the rest of us, so in "getting things done" is not, in my mind, a sufficient excuse in general.
I am not looking down on you for your choice of Windows, but in the interests of stopping the general shitting in the pool that Windows engenders, I ask you to consider another platform that lets you get things done. There are lots of them out there. Of course, my own personal loathing of Windows has less to do with the technical details of the operating system and more to do with the vile business practices of the company that produces it, but that's another story.
You know, I've been hearing a lot about caloric restriction these days, probably because it is a lot easier for most people to stop eating than to start exercising-- but I've been wondering if there are any studies comparing the two approaches. My gut feeling (as an athlete) is that it would be a bad idea to try to combine the two approaches, and that the obvious positive benefits of exercise (mood improvements, bone density and joint toughness, physical capability, etc) are lacking in caloric restriction. Maybe you live longer with the restriction approach, but are you healthier and happier? I don't know.
It seems a lot weirder to me that if you play "Paul is dead, Paul is dead" backward, you hear a solar tsunami.
If you work in medicine or biology, most of the research on the effects of various foods on the body is unambiguous. The fact that people feel the way you do is a testament to the efficacy of the PR efforts by the various food industries. Read this sometime.
It is true that most cholesterol is produced in the body, but that does not mean that dietary cholesterol is not important. First of all, the typical American diet is heavily weighted in favor of saturated fats. Saturated fats stimulate the body to release more cholesterol into the blood, of the LDL ("bad") variety. So while eating a food high in cholesterol may not contribute directly to your cholesterol level, typically those high cholesterol containing foods also contain large amounts of saturated fats, and those saturated fats will contribute to your cholesterol level. Steak is definitely a rich source of saturated fat, so you should moderate your intake.
Which brings up another point: some people are more susceptible to the effects of high blood cholesterol than others. Unless you know for sure which group you're in (and who really does?), don't you think you should use a little discretion in choosing your diet? Furthermore, by getting your daily fat intake from vegetable sources, you're doing yourself additional favors, because you are probably also increasing your intake of dietary fiber, bioavailable vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants (which also has an LDL-lowering effect).
You're right about the exercise bit, though. If people spent half as much energy worrying about their exercise regimen as they do fretting about whether they should eat carbs or not, people in general would be a lot healthier. Trust me, once you reach a certain level of daily exertion, your body will burn just about anything efficiently.
Mod parent flamebait. Right, and as a holder of a philosophy degree, I don't understand why you nitwit mathematicians can't get it through your thick skulls that we "statistical inference" is just yet another flawed manifestation of the Cartesian dichotomy. See where I'm going with this?
Why all the hate, people? Different disciplines have different terminology. Sure, there are probably some mathematical generalizations for common computer science problems. And there are probably some CS generalizations for common accounting problems. But you know why actual traveling salesmen don't call their travels the Traveling Salesman problem? They don't fucking care, and for the most part, it doesn't matter to them.
Now that I'm a CS student, I can appreciate where my current field and where my former field overlap. In my book, nobody who puts their mind to work is the butt of anybody else's joke.
In the early 90's, my dad used to bring me to work every now and then when he worked at BBN. Since BBN was an early internet pioneer, they had some really big pipes (er, tubes?) to the arpa/internet. I was in high school at the time. I would fill my backpack with blank floppies and spend the day on gopher and FTP (anyone remember Anarchie?) just filling those disks up with freeware/shareware and every other cool thing I came across. Their offices had an interesting mix of phonenet (Appletalk) and BNC ethernet. Lots of Macs around back then, and those networks were fast, but crashed all the time.
;^)
Anyway, one day I came across this image and my brain just about exploded. Keep in mind that I was a high school aged male. Yep, that was the beginning of the end for me...
As for the "web", I remember an MIT postdoc excitedly showing me this new "world wide web browser called Mosaic", and he just couldn't get me enthused. "You mean it's read-only?" I remember asking. I just couldn't see the point.
All of this makes me think that the charters of newly-formed bureaucracies should have a "kill yourself" clause in them.