The reason why car companies can't sell diesels in the US is because our emissions regulations are a lot more strict Balderdash. The reasons car companies can't sell diesels in the US are:
US Diesel (at the pump) is high in sulfur and other contaminants. Euro diesel is mandated to be virutally sulfur free (so low in sulfur that France forced oil companies to add 5% biodiesel to their Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel to regain the lubricity that sulfur gives). If the fuel you burn is full of crap, so will the smoke that's spat out of the other side.
US cars are heavy. Because they're generally much larger than their European equivalents, US cars can't use any of the clean, efficient, 1.4-2.2l diesel engines that are popular in Europe without being unbearably slow.
There's no diesel culture. Because of the above three factors, Diesel is nowhere near as widely available in the US as it is in Europe.
Diesel engines will crack the US eventually. Clean diesel will eventually become more widely available, and the negative conotations of the original diesels will gradually recede. What's surprising is that it hasn't caught on already - there's plenty of people driving 12MPG SUVs that would easily be 20+MPG if they used an appropriately sized diesel engine instead of their >4.0l gasoline engines.
If you want to leave university (having spent an easy three years doing sod all) to join some faceless corporation's graduate training scheme, then do an IT degree.
If you are actually interested in computers and want to work in a technical field (coding, system administration etc.), then a Computer Science / Software Engineering / Computer Systems Engineering degree is the way forward.
Or at least that's how the dividing line was when I left uni in 2003.
...how exactly do you tell a child what Easter is without telling them about the crucifixion?
I'd probably say something like: "Easter was originally a Pagan festival that celebrated the end of the dark nights of winter and the coming of new life to the world in spring. That's why we have the eggs-and-bunnies thing. Some time later, the Roman Catholic Church thought that the best way to convert the Pagans to their brand of religion was to hijack all of their festivals so they tied in with Christianity. So they moved Jesus' birthday to Midwinter and his 'deathday' to Eastre - an ancient word for spring. Which is why we have all that hot-cross-buns-and-going-to-church thing."
Lots of people were crucified in Roman times. To non-christians (who don't believe in the resurrection) there's not much point in 'celebrating' Jesus' crucifiction in particular as he was just another bloke nailed to a bit of wood.
I say teaching about religious beliefs should be left to the RE teachers. I don't bang on about Atheism in my ICT lessons, why should this idiot be allowed to bang on about Christianity in his history lessons?
gasoline taxes fail to force people to buy fuel efficient vehicles.
Not if they're high enough to actually make a difference, they don't. Try visiting a coutry where gasoline taxes have pushed the cost to over $7/US gallon, and you might notice people buying more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Easy - get the Network Manager to do it. Her school does have a Network Manager, right? Right?
All the terrible stories I've heard about the US education system no longer seem like exaggerations. This school had a computer lab where the *teacher* was responsible for network security?!
Here in the UK, the teaching unions would be up in arms over something like this. Teachers are paid (and trained) to teach, not to be a sys-admin in their all-too-short spare time. Yes, teachers should have input into security policies, but to have them in charge of the day-to-day administration of those policies is a terrible waste of their talents.
Use the right tool for the job. You wouldn't get a sysadmin to teach a class, why get a teacher to administrate a network?/me makes a mental note to let our school ICT Technicians know just how much we appreciate them.
The anonymous coward is lying! The demo was released at the same time as the full release (just type in your authorization key and it upgrades the demo to the full version). Also, the Introversion web site does not mention any staff member named Paul, nor any details of a money back guarantee...
If you want to play at Global Thermonuclear war yourself, you might want to have a look at DEFCON from Introversion. I've been waiting for this game since April - it looks like it's going to a lot of fun.
I'm an ICT teacher, and recently went to a conference where there was a presentation about so-called Digital Natives (today's kids) and Digital Immigrants (adults).
Apparently, the fundamental difference between us old-fart teachers (I'm 25, by the way) and today's kids is that they have grown up surrounded by technology to such an extent that their methods of working and interacting with others are totally different to ours.
For example, today's children are likely to be much better multi-taskers. They are used to an environment where the television is on, they are typing to friends using IM, chatting to other friends on the phone whilst simultaneously using Wikipedia to research that night's homework. That feeds back into today's classrom environments, because some kids can't cope without a busy, multi-tasking environment. Their idea of hell is to be sat in silence for an hour trying to revise, or working solidly on a piece of coursework without taking time-out to do something else every other minute.
All in all it was an interesting presentation, but I felt the speaker's idea that the dividing line is purely age based was nonsense. I'd consider myself (and I' d imagine a lot of the/. crowd) a 'Digital Native', despite my age. Plus, for every kid with 'techno-joy', there will be another with 'techno-fear' (to paraphrase Mr. Izzard).
I teach kids aged 11-18, and luckily I don't teach GCSE - in years 10 and 11 my school teaches GNVQ ICT, currently being phased out for the new DiDA courses. In the Sixth Form, we teach a combination of AVCE ICT and A Level Computing, both of whih are being replaced with Single and Double award A Levels in Applied ICT.
I used to be a programmer. Got a Masters of Engineering degree in Software Engineering, spent a few months as a research programmer for the university I went to.
But I got fed up writing code all day for someone else's benefit. I'm not going to go into the sorts of stuff I was doing, but even in the unlikely event the code I was writing became useful in the wider world, I knew for certain that the powers that be would just sell the whole code base to some outside company for a paltry fee. They always do.
So I jacked it in and became an ICT teacher. It took me another year of College and School placements to get my PGCE and Qualified Teacher Status. And now I couldn't be happier with my job.
Yeah, the pay could be better (but at lease here in the North UK teachers get paid a living wage). But I'm pretty much my own boss. I choose what I want to teach (within the limits of the national curriculum) and how I want to teach it. Yes, there are kids you just wish you could throw out of your class. But for every one of those, there are always others who are really into the work your doing. And there's nothing better than seeing that light-bulb switch on above one of your pupils' heads. The career progression's not too bad in the UK - yes, there are incompetent people in schools' management hierarchies (just like in industry), but they're becoming fewer and fewer. These days if you want to become a head of department, assistant head or whatever, you've got to be *really* good at your job.
There are loads of other benefits, but I think the best one for me personally is the holidays - 13 weeks a year. Yes, I probably spend 6 of those weeks doing lesson planning, marking etc. But I get to spend pretty much my whole summer break working on things I want to do. I'm currently developing some educational software as a hobby, which is something I would never have done in my old job (Coding without getting paid for it!!!)
I could earn 50% more if I worked in industry than I do now, but you know what? I don't care. I wouldn't go back to being a programmer for a 200% raise.
The newly delivered aircraft was to perform a charter flight on behalf of the Mulhouse Flying Club. The crew was to overfly Mulhouse-Habsheim airport two times (first at low speed, gear down at 100ft and the other at high speed in clean configuration) as part of an airshow. The aircraft took off from Basle-Mulhouse at 2:41pm local time and climbed to 1000 feet. The crew started the descent three minutes later and Habsheim was in sight at 450ft agl. The first officer informed the captain that the aircraft was reaching 100ft at 14:45:14. The descent continued to 50ft 8 seconds later and further to 30-35ft. Go-around power was added at 14.45:35. The A320 continued and touched trees at the end of the runway at 14:45:40 with a 14 pitch attitude and an engine speed of 83% N1. The plane sank slowly into the forest and a fire broke out. Failure of the Captain to maintain sufficient altitude and airspeed for recovery after a low approach to a runway with obstacles near the departure end.
True, but it does make a story more likely to be accepted. For what it's worth, I heartily believe that the proposed technological advances of Galileo (much higher resolution, better up-time during times of international crisis) vastlyoutweigh the costs of a 'redundant' system. But I know that if I hadn't added something to stir up debate at the end this story was never going to be accepted. That's the state of/. these days:-/
Don't blame me - I submitted it for the Space section, and only added the flamebait/discussion fodder last sentence as I knew it had a cat in hell's chance of being accepted as a story without it.
Cumbria (Or "Cumberland" as parts of it used to be called until the mid 70s) is far from desolate. It's home to nearly half a million people. It also contains parts of one of the most popular tourist attraction in the UK (the Lake District).
Now, I will agree with you that parts of the county can seem pretty empty, but that's because it's traditionally sheep-farming land, and has been for long before Sellafield arrived on the scene. In fact, as Sellafield is the biggest (over 12 000 jobs at present) employer in the West of the county by some considerable margin (and has been ever since the local mining industry closed down), you could quite easily argue that West Cumbria would be more desolate without Sellafield than with it.
Introversion claim to be "the last of the bedroom programmers".
They've released two games so far, Uplink & Darwinia. I bought 'em both, and thought they were great - definitely not the sort of games a company like EA would release.
For the unitiated, Uplink is a "hacking" game, intended to replicate the experiences of hacking you see in the movies. It's also littered with references to movies, and other computer games (I particularly liek the Frontier-style bulletin boards!) Darwinia is a little harder to classify. It's sort of part RTS, part God Game, tied together with a stylishly done 80's-video-game feel. (That's a rubbish explanation - you'll have to try the demo to see what I mean.)
At the end of the day, I suppose it all comes down to acceptable risks. EA have got so used to raking it in from their annual updates to the NFL, NBA, NHL, FIFA (etc. etc.) series that they can't see the benefit in trying out anything that isn't a sure-fire-money-spinner (read, anything that isn't highly derivative of something they've done before). For the little guys to get noticed, I suppose they have to come up with something new/unconventional.
Slashdot Mirror
I can see at least another 30 from my bedroom window on a clear day.
Come to think of it, isn't the wind farm off Walney Island (Barrow in Furness way) 30 turbines too?
US Diesel (at the pump) is high in sulfur and other contaminants. Euro diesel is mandated to be virutally sulfur free (so low in sulfur that France forced oil companies to add 5% biodiesel to their Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel to regain the lubricity that sulfur gives). If the fuel you burn is full of crap, so will the smoke that's spat out of the other side.
The first US Diesel motors were rubbish. So utterly terrible that no-one who had ever driven a car with an Oldsmobile V8 Diesel (at a whopping 350 cubic inches) would never want to drive anything that wasn't powered by gasoline ever again.
US cars are heavy. Because they're generally much larger than their European equivalents, US cars can't use any of the clean, efficient, 1.4-2.2l diesel engines that are popular in Europe without being unbearably slow.
There's no diesel culture. Because of the above three factors, Diesel is nowhere near as widely available in the US as it is in Europe.
Diesel engines will crack the US eventually. Clean diesel will eventually become more widely available, and the negative conotations of the original diesels will gradually recede. What's surprising is that it hasn't caught on already - there's plenty of people driving 12MPG SUVs that would easily be 20+MPG if they used an appropriately sized diesel engine instead of their >4.0l gasoline engines.
If you want to leave university (having spent an easy three years doing sod all) to join some faceless corporation's graduate training scheme, then do an IT degree. If you are actually interested in computers and want to work in a technical field (coding, system administration etc.), then a Computer Science / Software Engineering / Computer Systems Engineering degree is the way forward. Or at least that's how the dividing line was when I left uni in 2003.
I'd probably say something like: "Easter was originally a Pagan festival that celebrated the end of the dark nights of winter and the coming of new life to the world in spring. That's why we have the eggs-and-bunnies thing. Some time later, the Roman Catholic Church thought that the best way to convert the Pagans to their brand of religion was to hijack all of their festivals so they tied in with Christianity. So they moved Jesus' birthday to Midwinter and his 'deathday' to Eastre - an ancient word for spring. Which is why we have all that hot-cross-buns-and-going-to-church thing."
Lots of people were crucified in Roman times. To non-christians (who don't believe in the resurrection) there's not much point in 'celebrating' Jesus' crucifiction in particular as he was just another bloke nailed to a bit of wood.
I say teaching about religious beliefs should be left to the RE teachers. I don't bang on about Atheism in my ICT lessons, why should this idiot be allowed to bang on about Christianity in his history lessons?
I thought it was "Coke adds life"?
Not if they're high enough to actually make a difference, they don't. Try visiting a coutry where gasoline taxes have pushed the cost to over $7/US gallon, and you might notice people buying more fuel-efficient vehicles.
Easy - get the Network Manager to do it. Her school does have a Network Manager, right? Right?
/me makes a mental note to let our school ICT Technicians know just how much we appreciate them.
All the terrible stories I've heard about the US education system no longer seem like exaggerations. This school had a computer lab where the *teacher* was responsible for network security?!
Here in the UK, the teaching unions would be up in arms over something like this. Teachers are paid (and trained) to teach, not to be a sys-admin in their all-too-short spare time. Yes, teachers should have input into security policies, but to have them in charge of the day-to-day administration of those policies is a terrible waste of their talents.
Use the right tool for the job. You wouldn't get a sysadmin to teach a class, why get a teacher to administrate a network?
/me wanders off into the wilderness with a solar panel, two wires and a bucket of water... What was the point of your test again?
The anonymous coward is lying! The demo was released at the same time as the full release (just type in your authorization key and it upgrades the demo to the full version). Also, the Introversion web site does not mention any staff member named Paul, nor any details of a money back guarantee...
If you want to play at Global Thermonuclear war yourself, you might want to have a look at DEFCON from Introversion. I've been waiting for this game since April - it looks like it's going to a lot of fun.
I'm an ICT teacher, and recently went to a conference where there was a presentation about so-called Digital Natives (today's kids) and Digital Immigrants (adults).
/. crowd) a 'Digital Native', despite my age. Plus, for every kid with 'techno-joy', there will be another with 'techno-fear' (to paraphrase Mr. Izzard).
Apparently, the fundamental difference between us old-fart teachers (I'm 25, by the way) and today's kids is that they have grown up surrounded by technology to such an extent that their methods of working and interacting with others are totally different to ours.
For example, today's children are likely to be much better multi-taskers. They are used to an environment where the television is on, they are typing to friends using IM, chatting to other friends on the phone whilst simultaneously using Wikipedia to research that night's homework. That feeds back into today's classrom environments, because some kids can't cope without a busy, multi-tasking environment. Their idea of hell is to be sat in silence for an hour trying to revise, or working solidly on a piece of coursework without taking time-out to do something else every other minute.
All in all it was an interesting presentation, but I felt the speaker's idea that the dividing line is purely age based was nonsense. I'd consider myself (and I' d imagine a lot of the
I teach kids aged 11-18, and luckily I don't teach GCSE - in years 10 and 11 my school teaches GNVQ ICT, currently being phased out for the new DiDA courses. In the Sixth Form, we teach a combination of AVCE ICT and A Level Computing, both of whih are being replaced with Single and Double award A Levels in Applied ICT.
I used to be a programmer. Got a Masters of Engineering degree in Software Engineering, spent a few months as a research programmer for the university I went to.
But I got fed up writing code all day for someone else's benefit. I'm not going to go into the sorts of stuff I was doing, but even in the unlikely event the code I was writing became useful in the wider world, I knew for certain that the powers that be would just sell the whole code base to some outside company for a paltry fee. They always do.
So I jacked it in and became an ICT teacher. It took me another year of College and School placements to get my PGCE and Qualified Teacher Status. And now I couldn't be happier with my job.
Yeah, the pay could be better (but at lease here in the North UK teachers get paid a living wage). But I'm pretty much my own boss. I choose what I want to teach (within the limits of the national curriculum) and how I want to teach it. Yes, there are kids you just wish you could throw out of your class. But for every one of those, there are always others who are really into the work your doing. And there's nothing better than seeing that light-bulb switch on above one of your pupils' heads. The career progression's not too bad in the UK - yes, there are incompetent people in schools' management hierarchies (just like in industry), but they're becoming fewer and fewer. These days if you want to become a head of department, assistant head or whatever, you've got to be *really* good at your job.
There are loads of other benefits, but I think the best one for me personally is the holidays - 13 weeks a year. Yes, I probably spend 6 of those weeks doing lesson planning, marking etc. But I get to spend pretty much my whole summer break working on things I want to do. I'm currently developing some educational software as a hobby, which is something I would never have done in my old job (Coding without getting paid for it!!!)
I could earn 50% more if I worked in industry than I do now, but you know what? I don't care. I wouldn't go back to being a programmer for a 200% raise.
See here.
I'm not much of a Cee-lo fan, but DangerMouse is the shit.
Someone appears to have snuck a superfluous 'the' into that sentence...
Multi-tasking, pure and simple. My miggy 500 feels miles more responsive then my PC when running multiple applications.
FWIW, The submitter is Canadian...
True, but it does make a story more likely to be accepted. For what it's worth, I heartily believe that the proposed technological advances of Galileo (much higher resolution, better up-time during times of international crisis) vastlyoutweigh the costs of a 'redundant' system. But I know that if I hadn't added something to stir up debate at the end this story was never going to be accepted. That's the state of /. these days :-/
Don't blame me - I submitted it for the Space section, and only added the flamebait/discussion fodder last sentence as I knew it had a cat in hell's chance of being accepted as a story without it.
Of course, mining coal for fuel and power never hurt anybody...
The original lego technic beams had studs on top - the studless variety are a reasonably recent invention.
Apathetism?
If ever there was an argument for using SI units, this post is it.
Now, I will agree with you that parts of the county can seem pretty empty, but that's because it's traditionally sheep-farming land, and has been for long before Sellafield arrived on the scene. In fact, as Sellafield is the biggest (over 12 000 jobs at present) employer in the West of the county by some considerable margin (and has been ever since the local mining industry closed down), you could quite easily argue that West Cumbria would be more desolate without Sellafield than with it.
Introversion claim to be "the last of the bedroom programmers".
They've released two games so far, Uplink & Darwinia. I bought 'em both, and thought they were great - definitely not the sort of games a company like EA would release.
For the unitiated, Uplink is a "hacking" game, intended to replicate the experiences of hacking you see in the movies. It's also littered with references to movies, and other computer games (I particularly liek the Frontier-style bulletin boards!) Darwinia is a little harder to classify. It's sort of part RTS, part God Game, tied together with a stylishly done 80's-video-game feel. (That's a rubbish explanation - you'll have to try the demo to see what I mean.)
At the end of the day, I suppose it all comes down to acceptable risks. EA have got so used to raking it in from their annual updates to the NFL, NBA, NHL, FIFA (etc. etc.) series that they can't see the benefit in trying out anything that isn't a sure-fire-money-spinner (read, anything that isn't highly derivative of something they've done before). For the little guys to get noticed, I suppose they have to come up with something new/unconventional.
I know which I'd rather play...