It prostrated both parents (in their early 30's) and the eldest daughter, leaving only the five-year-old daughter (later my grandmother) to prepare food for the family and care for her baby sister.
The quaratine period for smallpox is 17 days, so I assume the relatives or local health officials would leave food on the doorstep for them (brave people!)
Given today that most people in the US don't have relatives living nearby to perform such a service, how many/. readers have 17 day's worth of food in their houses?
I just want to know why the gas station pump can't remember that I *don't* want a car wash today, and I *do* want the receipt. Why can't they bring back this information when they authorize my card, or easier, store it on the card itself?
Because we were 'audited' and told repeatedly it was non-threating and the new CIO was just getting a *pulse* of who was there and what we did... when we showed up for the wrap-up meeting that was to be an information exchange of what was discovered and what the next move was, we were quite surprised to get our walking papers.
Another Office Space quote:
"Hi, this is, uhhhh, Bob. He's going to be, ummm, helping us out for a while. Yeahhhh.
There are a number of reasons why train travel in the US is so slow. Track maintenance (or lack thereof) is certainly high on the list. Also, freight usually has priority over passenger trains (more money is made off freight). Surprisingly, in Connecticut, trains aren't legally allowed to go faster than 70mph. So Amtrak's shiny new Acella trains (which are capable of 150mph) aren't allowed to make use of their abilities in that state.
I've ridden the train from Raleigh to Washington, and it's about a break-even so far as time is concerned (once you include the effort to find a parking spot in downtown Washington near Union Station). The proposed southeast high-speed rail link should shorten that considerably. Only bummer is that you will have to change trains in Washington if you're going to New York, as the SEHSR will be diesel, not electric like the lines in the rest of the Northeast.
Low-flying missle detection can be done by the PAVE PAWS radar system. While the USAF says the mission of the systems is to detect SLBM and ICBMs, it's actually quite capable of detecting low-flying missles. US Space Command doesn't regularly do that anymore, as the RF energy can be a health hazard.
Some of the stories I've heard about the AN/FPS-115 is that while tuning the antenna elements, they had the beam steered out to sea and 200 feet down. A fishing boat went through afterwards and found cooked fish floating on the surface. At the one in California, the techs would roll soft drink cans down the face of the array -- they would be half-melted when they hit the ground.
Thinking about it, in the context of those "virtual credit card numbers", imagine a special PIN that is good for one transaction.
The CitiBank virtual credit card account number feature actually doesn't work like you'd expect -- instead of being a "one-time" number, it's actually a "30-day" number. They set the expiration date to the end of the upcoming month to limit the time it's valid. I'm disappointed in the way it works, but the positives still outweigh the negatives so I still plan on using it until something better comes along.
If you want to see ugly, take a look at the North Carolina 12th district. It's been re-drawn more times than I can remember, and been ruled illegal almost as many.
The NC Libertarian Party offered to redraw the districts as a disinterested 3rd party to the process (theirs would have mostly followed county lines), but the Democrats & Republicans would have none of that, and so we have our snake-like boundaries. A better view is available in this pdf (area in gray).
What a Lagrange point is useful for is a place to park satellites. I envision a truss like the one for the ISS, that you can mount various systems onto (Lunar positioning system, Earth-Lunar communications, Lunar HBO/Cinemax, etc). The truss would provide a common power buss from shared solar panels, and have the station-keeping thrusters mounted on it. This would significantly reduce the complexity of the systems that are connected to it, as they could concentrate on their needed tasks, and not have to worry about all the support stuff.
The other "what's next" was ISDN, which would give you the full 64k channel (because signalling is always done on a separate dedicated channel with ISDN), or 128k if you use both channels (the base ISDN line is a BRI, which has 2 64k data channels plus a signalling channel). However, ISDN use was slowed because it was complicated to configure (you couldn't just plug a phone in and use it), required all new equipment, and even the telcos really never understood it well (so when there was a problem, it could take weeks to get it fixed).
I was one of the few people in Raleigh to have an ISDN line from BellSouth. Man, it rocked -- with both channels bonded to get 128kbs, I could download 2.3 times as fast as anyone else! But then... one day it stopped working. The BellSouth techs kept saying it passed their circuit tests, but it wouldn't connect to my ISP. I'm sure they changed the provisioning for some arbitrary reason, but wouldn't admit to it. After 3 weeks without service I had to go back to dial-up in order to get stuff done online. What a letdown after high speed connectivity!
The biggest problem (and what ultimately killed the service in general) was the price. ISDN pricing was set back then by the state utilities commission at $73 a month. Checking the BellSouth site, PRI ISDN (1.45mbps) is the only option listed and only for small businesses. Residential BRI ISDN isn't even listed anymore -- it's "call us for a quote", so it's effectively dead.
So, it looks like quality won't be increasing for the average Joe. Dell will probably keep sending support calls from home users to India until it makes enough "cents" to do otherwise.
I went through their customer support hell a few months ago when I was trying to order some parts for a used Precision Workstation I had bought. After 5 or 6 phone calls to people I couldn't understand, returning the wrong parts that were shipped, ordering the correct parts, getting my credit card refunded, and so forth, I was ready to shoot someone.
As a result, when my father wanted to buy a laptop last week, I steered him away from Dell. They make decent (not great, but decent) laptops, but if he ever had to make a support call on it, I'm sure he would have defenestrated the offending hardware. So I told him to get a HP (again, not the best, but pretty decent for the money).
You fucking idiot, power consumption always equals heat dissipation
Not so in the real world.
If you pump 25 watts of power into the chip, you need a way to extract 25 watts (or more) of heat from it in order to prevent a chip-sized Chernobyl. This is done via physical contact with a device to carry the heat away (heatsink, heatsink + fan, Peltier device, etc, etc.). The smaller the contact area, the smaller amount of heat that can be transferred (until we get a substance which is a perfect thermal conductor) across the mechanical junction.
However, like the other person who replied said, the die size will be staying the same in these new chips, so surface-slash-contact area will remain the same, thus potential heat transfer should stay the same.
I was going to ask what about heat dissipation? When devices get smaller you have a smaller area to shed heat. This issue (which is pretty serious - ask any Athlon owner) wasn't covered in the article.
Now we issue you a badge'' with the option to work anywhere, Vass said. ``It's instant productivity.''
Sure, if you're a paper-pusher.
If you're a software developer or hardware engineer, it takes a certain amount of isolation in order to be productive. Even though I have an office (shared) at work, both of us in there find that we get our best work done after all the interruptions have gone home at 5pm.
I've known about Wal-Mart's pressure on it's suppliers for a long time. Chrysler (now Daimler-Chrysler) did it for years -- how many tenths of a cent can they force you to shave off your price in order to keep their business.
If I were in the position of selling to Wal-Mart, and they came to me and said "You know, you sold us this item last year for $8.73. This year we won't pay more than $8.11 for it." And if that new price was below my cost -- there's just no way I can sell that item to them and stay in business. What am I going to do? Make it up on volume? At that point I've no alternative but to tell them to go buy their widgets elsewhere and lay off part (maybe most of) my workforce.
Yes, it's capitalism in action. I accept that.
But at the same time these kinds of tactics leave a bad taste in my mouth. As a result, I haven't shopped at Wal-Mart in two years (I'm going to Target instead), and dropped my Sam's Club membership in favor of BJ's Wholesale.
"The silicon carbide coatings that surround the uranium fuel particles within the pebble form a miniature pressure vessel. This pressure vessel provides a highly efficient barrier against the release of fission products during operation."
I'm in favor of the technology, but I am curious about one thing: Silicon Carbide is also used to make drill bits and saw blades because it's hard and abrasive. So what happens to the reactor when you have all these little abrasive balls that are vibrating against the metal pressure vessel for years at a time? Is that something that you can design out... just make the vessel thicker, and when you reload the reactor, make sure the balls line up in a different pattern to spread the wear around?
Slashdot Mirror
It prostrated both parents (in their early 30's) and the eldest daughter, leaving only the five-year-old daughter (later my grandmother) to prepare food for the family and care for her baby sister.
/. readers have 17 day's worth of food in their houses?
The quaratine period for smallpox is 17 days, so I assume the relatives or local health officials would leave food on the doorstep for them (brave people!)
Given today that most people in the US don't have relatives living nearby to perform such a service, how many
Chip H.
Duracell actually tried about 7 or 8 years ago. But none of the major laptop manufacturers took them up on it.
Link
Chip H.
I just want to know why the gas station pump can't remember that I *don't* want a car wash today, and I *do* want the receipt. Why can't they bring back this information when they authorize my card, or easier, store it on the card itself?
Chip H.
Because we were 'audited' and told repeatedly it was non-threating and the new CIO was just getting a *pulse* of who was there and what we did... when we showed up for the wrap-up meeting that was to be an information exchange of what was discovered and what the next move was, we were quite surprised to get our walking papers.
Another Office Space quote:
"Hi, this is, uhhhh, Bob. He's going to be, ummm, helping us out for a while. Yeahhhh.
Chip H.
There are a number of reasons why train travel in the US is so slow. Track maintenance (or lack thereof) is certainly high on the list. Also, freight usually has priority over passenger trains (more money is made off freight). Surprisingly, in Connecticut, trains aren't legally allowed to go faster than 70mph. So Amtrak's shiny new Acella trains (which are capable of 150mph) aren't allowed to make use of their abilities in that state.
I've ridden the train from Raleigh to Washington, and it's about a break-even so far as time is concerned (once you include the effort to find a parking spot in downtown Washington near Union Station). The proposed southeast high-speed rail link should shorten that considerably. Only bummer is that you will have to change trains in Washington if you're going to New York, as the SEHSR will be diesel, not electric like the lines in the rest of the Northeast.
Chip H.
For the minimalists out there, try We by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
So, I can expect 1/8th less spam over the next few days, right?
Chip H.
Low-flying missle detection can be done by the PAVE PAWS radar system. While the USAF says the mission of the systems is to detect SLBM and ICBMs, it's actually quite capable of detecting low-flying missles. US Space Command doesn't regularly do that anymore, as the RF energy can be a health hazard.
Some of the stories I've heard about the AN/FPS-115 is that while tuning the antenna elements, they had the beam steered out to sea and 200 feet down. A fishing boat went through afterwards and found cooked fish floating on the surface. At the one in California, the techs would roll soft drink cans down the face of the array -- they would be half-melted when they hit the ground.
Chip H.
Thinking about it, in the context of those "virtual credit card numbers", imagine a special PIN that is good for one transaction.
The CitiBank virtual credit card account number feature actually doesn't work like you'd expect -- instead of being a "one-time" number, it's actually a "30-day" number. They set the expiration date to the end of the upcoming month to limit the time it's valid. I'm disappointed in the way it works, but the positives still outweigh the negatives so I still plan on using it until something better comes along.
Chip H.
If you want to see ugly, take a look at the North Carolina 12th district. It's been re-drawn more times than I can remember, and been ruled illegal almost as many.
The NC Libertarian Party offered to redraw the districts as a disinterested 3rd party to the process (theirs would have mostly followed county lines), but the Democrats & Republicans would have none of that, and so we have our snake-like boundaries. A better view is available in this pdf (area in gray).
Chip H.
What a Lagrange point is useful for is a place to park satellites. I envision a truss like the one for the ISS, that you can mount various systems onto (Lunar positioning system, Earth-Lunar communications, Lunar HBO/Cinemax, etc). The truss would provide a common power buss from shared solar panels, and have the station-keeping thrusters mounted on it. This would significantly reduce the complexity of the systems that are connected to it, as they could concentrate on their needed tasks, and not have to worry about all the support stuff.
Chip H.
I regard my ballot as my right-to-bitch.
Chip H.
Terminatrix In Space!
The other "what's next" was ISDN, which would give you the full 64k channel (because signalling is always done on a separate dedicated channel with ISDN), or 128k if you use both channels (the base ISDN line is a BRI, which has 2 64k data channels plus a signalling channel). However, ISDN use was slowed because it was complicated to configure (you couldn't just plug a phone in and use it), required all new equipment, and even the telcos really never understood it well (so when there was a problem, it could take weeks to get it fixed).
... one day it stopped working. The BellSouth techs kept saying it passed their circuit tests, but it wouldn't connect to my ISP. I'm sure they changed the provisioning for some arbitrary reason, but wouldn't admit to it. After 3 weeks without service I had to go back to dial-up in order to get stuff done online. What a letdown after high speed connectivity!
I was one of the few people in Raleigh to have an ISDN line from BellSouth. Man, it rocked -- with both channels bonded to get 128kbs, I could download 2.3 times as fast as anyone else! But then
The biggest problem (and what ultimately killed the service in general) was the price. ISDN pricing was set back then by the state utilities commission at $73 a month. Checking the BellSouth site, PRI ISDN (1.45mbps) is the only option listed and only for small businesses. Residential BRI ISDN isn't even listed anymore -- it's "call us for a quote", so it's effectively dead.
Chip H.
ROT13'd spoiler:
Fuvc penfurf urnqsvefg vagb znpuvar pvgl. Gevavgl raqf hc sylvat onpxjneqf bagb funec cbvagl guvatf. Pyrne ivbyngvba bs Arjgbavna culfvpf. Cyhf, ure qrngu jnf zrnavatyrff. "Trr, Gevavgl pna'g tb vagb gur znpuvar pvgl 'pnhfr Arb unf gb qb vg nybar. Bu, jr'yy xvyy ure ng gur ynfg zbzrag fbzrubj.".
My opinion is, if they hadn't followed the first Matrix, they would have been pretty good movies on their own merits.
Chip H.
So, it looks like quality won't be increasing for the average Joe. Dell will probably keep sending support calls from home users to India until it makes enough "cents" to do otherwise.
I went through their customer support hell a few months ago when I was trying to order some parts for a used Precision Workstation I had bought. After 5 or 6 phone calls to people I couldn't understand, returning the wrong parts that were shipped, ordering the correct parts, getting my credit card refunded, and so forth, I was ready to shoot someone.
As a result, when my father wanted to buy a laptop last week, I steered him away from Dell. They make decent (not great, but decent) laptops, but if he ever had to make a support call on it, I'm sure he would have defenestrated the offending hardware. So I told him to get a HP (again, not the best, but pretty decent for the money).
Chip H.
You fucking idiot, power consumption always equals heat dissipation
Not so in the real world.
If you pump 25 watts of power into the chip, you need a way to extract 25 watts (or more) of heat from it in order to prevent a chip-sized Chernobyl. This is done via physical contact with a device to carry the heat away (heatsink, heatsink + fan, Peltier device, etc, etc.). The smaller the contact area, the smaller amount of heat that can be transferred (until we get a substance which is a perfect thermal conductor) across the mechanical junction.
However, like the other person who replied said, the die size will be staying the same in these new chips, so surface-slash-contact area will remain the same, thus potential heat transfer should stay the same.
Chip H.
I was going to ask what about heat dissipation? When devices get smaller you have a smaller area to shed heat. This issue (which is pretty serious - ask any Athlon owner) wasn't covered in the article.
Chip H.
Because the large ISPs with the n-tier redundant power systems closed up shop when the market crashed.
Everyone still around was feeling lucky to be alive, and didn't have the money to buy batteries *and* generators.
Chip H.
I'm glad you're back, Opus. I've missed you and the whole woodland critter crowd.
Too bad the Hawaiian babe thing didn't work out.
Chip H.
Now we issue you a badge'' with the option to work anywhere, Vass said. ``It's instant productivity.''
Sure, if you're a paper-pusher.
If you're a software developer or hardware engineer, it takes a certain amount of isolation in order to be productive. Even though I have an office (shared) at work, both of us in there find that we get our best work done after all the interruptions have gone home at 5pm.
Chip H.
I've known about Wal-Mart's pressure on it's suppliers for a long time. Chrysler (now Daimler-Chrysler) did it for years -- how many tenths of a cent can they force you to shave off your price in order to keep their business.
If I were in the position of selling to Wal-Mart, and they came to me and said "You know, you sold us this item last year for $8.73. This year we won't pay more than $8.11 for it." And if that new price was below my cost -- there's just no way I can sell that item to them and stay in business. What am I going to do? Make it up on volume? At that point I've no alternative but to tell them to go buy their widgets elsewhere and lay off part (maybe most of) my workforce.
Yes, it's capitalism in action. I accept that.
But at the same time these kinds of tactics leave a bad taste in my mouth. As a result, I haven't shopped at Wal-Mart in two years (I'm going to Target instead), and dropped my Sam's Club membership in favor of BJ's Wholesale.
Chip H.
"The silicon carbide coatings that surround the uranium fuel particles within the pebble form a miniature pressure vessel. This pressure vessel provides a highly efficient barrier against the release of fission products during operation."
... just make the vessel thicker, and when you reload the reactor, make sure the balls line up in a different pattern to spread the wear around?
I'm in favor of the technology, but I am curious about one thing: Silicon Carbide is also used to make drill bits and saw blades because it's hard and abrasive. So what happens to the reactor when you have all these little abrasive balls that are vibrating against the metal pressure vessel for years at a time? Is that something that you can design out
Chip H.
My cat would love this thing.
Chip H.
Glad to have my Laserdisc, I am.