I think that if there was a ghost of a chance that this would work, I'd be making some CD's for my wife, convincing her of the joys of bisexual encounters with a tall thin red-head and her husband. Since I'd just be wasting my time though.... I'll be reading Slashdot for the next great idea on how this can be accomplished!!!!
I fail to see how fooling humans into thinking that they are having a conversation with another human, when it is really a chatbot, will do anything to produce artificial intelligence. It's an illusion, using technology, nothing more. Truly, our illusions are becoming more and more sophisticated as our technology grows, but artificial intelligence will require a deeper understanding than simple information processing and deduction from that information. Human intelligence, and the advancements that we have made with that intelligence, has been largely dependent on intuitive leaps: people who processed the information at hand (and quite often available to everyone) in a new and unique way. Learning to emulate the more standard thought processes of a day so that a conversation can be emulated is merely an exercise in sharpre usage of processing power and data storage, not a method of understanding the uniqueness of human thought.
It's an apt description of us anyways, no matter what the "most correct" word is. We have rampaged across the 'net leaving destruction in our wake. No where is safe: we shall decend upon you unexpectedly, pillage your music and movies, delight in your women, and rampage off to new conquests faster than the attention span of a child.... Our hordes shall be feared throughout the net!!
Or at least by servers everywhere.....
I've done it quite a few times over the last couple of years. I'm apparently either a doctor or a quite well known computer scientist. Dayaum...... who can I sue?
I'd say that there isn't a lot of difference in difficulties between teahing computer tech and trademan's tech to someone. Both skills require fairly similar aptitudes, and it's really quite remarkable how quickly my "tradesman" friends seem able to pick up on the inner workings of a computer, especially when I compare them to some friends in the legal and medical professions. Computers and the trades are both logical systems: for a given architecture there is a set of possible solutions that will function within the constraints of the architecture. A tech in any of those fields approaches a problem in much the same way: ascertain the architecture used (what type of computer, what type of building construction), collect data to discern the solution set originally used to perform the faulty function (how is the computer SUPPOSED to be networked or how was the house supposed to be plumbed to remove waste from the bathroom), and then using logic and reasonable expectations of performance, zero in on the failure. The main difference between a plumber and a computer tech is the language and the tools used. I've found it remakrably easy to teach a lot of my friends in the building trades how to perform most of the routine maintenance of their computers, and they seem to readily grasp the importance of maintenance on their computer's operating systems.
...to either just "tell the truth" or play the "what they don't know can't hurt them" games. And the best part is that a company like this has found another way to profit off other people's pain -not that profiting from people's pain is anything new- in a novel way....
I've been down the roads of deception and truth with a wife who was kinda going over the deep end... Telling the truth would earn me days if not weeks of her stomping around the house pissed at me for something as simple as a buddy stopping by to show off a new toy. It only took a couple years of this (as I slowly stopped doing more and more of the things I enjoyed) before I started trying the deception approach. This too has it's curses, namely, living with your own lies, keeping them straight, not getting caught, and giving the other person an actual reason not to trust you. And to those of you who have said "she'd be out of my life," well. that is what finally came to pass. This too is not an easy road, two years in court, fighting for custody of my kids, having to pay her significant child support even though I had 50% custody in the end, the fun life, ya know? The good news is, somewhere along the way she came to her senses... not sure what happened, but we tried again just before the divorce was final, and these days, I do what I want without complaints. And now that I'm totally off topic: I'd probably have purchassed this product 5 years ago, but today I'm just laughing at them.
I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else, and the local cops always pulled the same people in for questioning every time that something happened in town. We coined a new charge for the local cops (not that they appreciated our "attitude") and named it "Suspicion of being Suspicious." This was 20 years ago, and I see that things haven't really changed much in the attitudes of the police, but there's something larger at stake here: this court case risks institutionalizing such behavior by our police. If this case goes the wrong way with the court, it will no longer be a tounge in cheek charge in some rivalry between some small town teens and ego tripping small town cops, but instead a simple fact of un-Ameican life that the cops have a right to do this sort of thing.
It would seem to me that all of the "take off your tin-foil hat" crowd are missing the obvious. Yes, I understand (and if you rtfa you'd see that the author does too) that the planned use of these tags are for very legitimate reasons, but hasn't anyone learned through history that abuse occurs? If some technology has the potential to be abused, then sooner or later, the government, spammers, advertisers or even Wal-Mart WILL abuse it and our privacy will be invaded. This isn't to say that laws governing the use of RFID tags will prevent abuse entirely, but lets at least TRY to prevent what we can before simply allowing these things to go into widespread use and abuse.
But they will get you through the most energy demanding part of the trip without having to carry the oxygen. It is as you observed though, to get "into orbit" a hypersonic space plane will need one final kick from a rocket carrying it's own oxygen. This is a far cry from the massive quantities of oxidizers currently carried to launch the shuttles, both in thier liquid fuel and mixed as a solid in the external boosters.
this will be THE means to get to a station in Earth orbit, and from there, nuclear rockets out into the farther reaches of the solar system. I'd love to see colonies on Mars as much as the next geek, but until we get it through our heads that we need to have stepping stones along the way, we aren't going to be successful. It is simply too damn expensive to develop an entirely new system for every "space objective". We need a new way into Earth orbit... and a space station whose primary objective is to be a way station where deep space nuclear propulsion systems can launch for the rest of the solar system without contaminating the environment here on earth. Maybe someday materials science will make possible the space elevator (and it may be closer than I think, but until they're spinning line, I'm not counting on it....) but until then, we need a different solution beyond out brute force approach. This could be the technology that opens up just these sorts of possibilities.
My second car was a Pinto, following on the heels of a totalled Opel GT that lost a major arguement with a white-tail here in the North-East. The Opel was a NICE car, and I've owned some nice trucks, a couple of SUV's and a Buick Park Avenue. But the best car I've ever owned was my Ford Pinto..
We had all kinds of terrible nick-names for the poor thing. We abused it terribly, lots of crazy experiences -like having the deck-lid behind the rear seat blow out at some whatever the things top speed was, causing the interior of the car to fill with sound-proofing insulation and cause us to come to a screeching halt. The "end" finally came when the rear spring mounts rusted out on one side and all of a sudden the rear wheels locked up when the emergency brake cable went taut.... amazingly the cable held until the car came to a stop. I drove the car home VERY slowly -in reverse so that the flexing of the axle wouldn't cause the wheels to lock up. There was 220,000 miles on it... I cut the car up with an axe and slowly loaded the pieces onto the back of a pickup and when all that remained of the car was the belly-pan, drive train and engine, we decided to take it for a spin... Dropped the steering wheel onto it (why bother putting the nut back on when you're only going to take it back off again?) set a seat into it and fired it up. A friend was driving, he slid it into reverse, sped backwards about 20 feet and rammed it into drive intending to "burn out" The body flexed in the middle terribley, making the drivers seat (driver included) to fall over backwards holding the steering wheel (now attached to nothing but his hands) up in the air as the Pinto sped forward..... fortunately my friend found the brake with his foot before impacting. So ya see, gotta disagree, that Pinto might have been the best car I've ever owned......
Heh.... Dead right that it doesn't change what you said overall, but the scary thig is that while the moderators were posting your comment up to +5, they, and many others, were reading along and simply accepting that "Congress shall make no law RESPECTING the freedom of speech" when quite the opposite was true. The main body of your article was still both informative and interesting, and I've posted before myself only to say after, "Whoops, not that was an f-up!" but I felt that the error was important enough to point out even if you knew what it was you MEANT to say.
Not to nit-pick, but the actual lines from the US Constitution are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It's article I, otherwise known as "the first amendment in the Bill of Rights" and it's quite a bit different from your line of "Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of speech" Your paraphrasing couldn't be much more in opposition to what the Constitution intended. This is what we get for making the study of the Constitution a two week interlude in the middle of American History in 9th grade, and the silent masses stay silent as freedom after freedom is abridged because it is too easy to pretend that these freedoms were never ours in the first place.
$44 a month for Road-Runner and $48 for DSL from Citizens Telecom.... I'd say that aren't even using vaseline.
Simple way to remember passwords
on
Real Security?
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Here's a simple trick to curing the password problem. Think of a sentence that describes the purpose of using the password. I might use a sentence like "I want to see how much money I have in the bank." to help me remember my banking password, the password then becomes either the first or last letters of the sentence, complete with punctuation. I mentally say the sentence to myself until the password itself is memorized (and even then, I find myself thinking the sentence) and type the appropriate letters. My banking password then becomes" IwtshmmIhitb." I find that it is much easier to remember a sentence than it is to remember some obsure password, and that a strange enough sentence (Wow man! Did you see the size of those CHICKENS? Wm!DystsotC? ) makes for some unusual but easily remembered passwords.
Innovation and invention rely on the exchange of ideas in order to happen. The more freely ideas are echanged, the greater the pace of innovation and invention. There used to be a wonderful show on TLC that illustrated this idea called "Connections", back in the day when TLC still carried original and interesting programming... It would seem to me that political interests -being wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate interests- are trying to legislate innovation and invention out of existance. Furthermore, this isn't a partisan problem: Dems and Repubs alike are more interested in serving the corporate dollars that have elected them than they are interested in serving their constituents. While we all yell about Bush, Haliburton and Diebold we are ingnoring the real problem of election reform, and if and when the Dems ever regain the high office, the problem will be as negleted as it is under the current administration. If we are to restore the free exchange of ideas to stimulate invention and innovation, we need to sperate the politicians from the corporate dollar.
...that most of the people who post to slashdot don't need to worry about being in violation if this bill passes. Facts have never stopped anyone here yet!
OK, so we all recognize that obtaining music without renumeration for the various artists that made the music is WRONG. I don't care what you call it, semantics may be useful for shaping public opinion, but the general opinion is that it is just plain WRONG to get something for nothing. The problem I see is that no one can make up their minds and decide if we are going to revolt against the music companies that rob both artists and listeners, or if we are going to be good little sheep and not do ANYTHING. In order to change the way the music business operates, either the existing structure needs to be taken down by less than desirable means, or else we need (somehow) to get our congresscritters out of the pockets of executives. It would certainly help if some high profile artists would endorse and use alternative distribution methods while abondoning the big labels. Otherwise, the only thing that will work is if EVERYONE starts trading songs with complete abandon: swamp the RIAA with massive lists everwhere... hackers writing viral song swapping code so that everyone who logs on to the net is guilty in the RIAA's eyes... I think I'd rather see a change that was initiated by the artists and consumers themselves whereby I could legally (and simply) download my music for a FAIR price while being assured that most of the $$ goes to the artist, but remember, the toothless get ruthless.
You forgot all about the inspectors that the state (at least in NY) sends around to make sure that private contractors are doing he work properly... You can tell them apart from the workers, unfortunately, but on many an occasion, our crew (12 guys, "bridge trolls" replacing the suspension systems under the bridges) would be outnumbered by inspectors. We'd just shake our head realizing how bad that must look..
Local 7 in NY didn't seem to mind when these things first started into use in NY, literally YEARS ago.... The machines really didn't affect the number of guys working a crew as there is still a lot of "cleanup" work to be done behind the machine, but rather, the overall pace of the jobs were simply quickened, making it possible for our company to get more done in a year with the same crew of guys. And in reply to all the construction worker jokes flying around: yes, quite funny, I can laugh about it, but for the most part, it's not like that within a private company, (the state workers are another matter entirely) at least in upstate NY... We busted our balls repairing bridges, and I have the nerve damage up and down both arms from running jack-hammers to prove it. Hands that cramp up savagely, circulation that simply disappears if the temp drops towards 60, sleep 4-5 hours a night from because that's all the pain will allow.... I WISH I'd of had a beer gut and let it run those hammers for me, I'd not be like this now.
I worked construction for years, jacking bridges up as part of their "rehabilitation" and repairing and replacing their suspension systems. These things have been around for years and years... The company I worked for was by no means a "large" outfit, and they subcontracted out all the work to some people using a Flowcorp machine, then a team of our own guys would come along behind the maching and clean up the mess it left behind: digging out the rebar that didn't get cut free because the Flow crew didn't have the machine set right, cleaning up the mud, cutting the edges in (and sometimes a lot more because the Flow guys were trying to look as if they were on schedule...) etc. The most amazing part of that those machines could only come from a "bridge troll" like myself, working BELOW the bridge... Occasionally, the concrete of the bridge would be bad all the way through, and the pressure would tear right through the bridge instead of just down below the first layer of rebar. This was where you could REALLY appreciate the power of those water jets: something like a shotgun blast would go off, then shards of concrete would ricochette all over below the bridge, and the 5-6 guys on our crew would all be praising the powers that be that none of us were directly unde the thing. I somehow don't think that the designers of hard-hats ever thought that we might need to be safe from shot-gun blasts on construction jobs...
It would seem that the editors are doing their best to lighten our workloads, they've already posted all the commentary needed! And now, with thought not being required, I can skip out on reading the rest of slashdot and head straight off to surfing porn... good day all!
OK... I know absolutely NOTHING about what it takes to write a game; the last time I did any kind of programming it was to get the computer to do my math homework for me and I plugged numbered lines of BASIC into an Apple... but here's an idea that might be workable, and I'd kill to see this on the shelves: a computer game derived from the old Squad Leader games... all of the stategy and tactics games on the market are just so incredibly superficial. I want a turn based battlefield game where EVERY piece becomes important and I'm not simply overwhelmed by the guy who occupied an enviable position where he could fight no battles until he had armies made up entirely of mounted cavalry.. If you're not familiar with Squad Leader, think Axis and Allies but with a LOT more detail... Get cracking you three, I wanna be able to put this game on my Christmas "wish list"
Slashdot Mirror
I think that if there was a ghost of a chance that this would work, I'd be making some CD's for my wife, convincing her of the joys of bisexual encounters with a tall thin red-head and her husband. Since I'd just be wasting my time though.... I'll be reading Slashdot for the next great idea on how this can be accomplished!!!!
I fail to see how fooling humans into thinking that they are having a conversation with another human, when it is really a chatbot, will do anything to produce artificial intelligence. It's an illusion, using technology, nothing more. Truly, our illusions are becoming more and more sophisticated as our technology grows, but artificial intelligence will require a deeper understanding than simple information processing and deduction from that information. Human intelligence, and the advancements that we have made with that intelligence, has been largely dependent on intuitive leaps: people who processed the information at hand (and quite often available to everyone) in a new and unique way. Learning to emulate the more standard thought processes of a day so that a conversation can be emulated is merely an exercise in sharpre usage of processing power and data storage, not a method of understanding the uniqueness of human thought.
...is trying to turn all of our isp's into Stool Pigeons anyways.
It's an apt description of us anyways, no matter what the "most correct" word is. We have rampaged across the 'net leaving destruction in our wake. No where is safe: we shall decend upon you unexpectedly, pillage your music and movies, delight in your women, and rampage off to new conquests faster than the attention span of a child.... Our hordes shall be feared throughout the net!! Or at least by servers everywhere.....
I've done it quite a few times over the last couple of years. I'm apparently either a doctor or a quite well known computer scientist. Dayaum...... who can I sue?
I'd say that there isn't a lot of difference in difficulties between teahing computer tech and trademan's tech to someone. Both skills require fairly similar aptitudes, and it's really quite remarkable how quickly my "tradesman" friends seem able to pick up on the inner workings of a computer, especially when I compare them to some friends in the legal and medical professions. Computers and the trades are both logical systems: for a given architecture there is a set of possible solutions that will function within the constraints of the architecture. A tech in any of those fields approaches a problem in much the same way: ascertain the architecture used (what type of computer, what type of building construction), collect data to discern the solution set originally used to perform the faulty function (how is the computer SUPPOSED to be networked or how was the house supposed to be plumbed to remove waste from the bathroom), and then using logic and reasonable expectations of performance, zero in on the failure. The main difference between a plumber and a computer tech is the language and the tools used. I've found it remakrably easy to teach a lot of my friends in the building trades how to perform most of the routine maintenance of their computers, and they seem to readily grasp the importance of maintenance on their computer's operating systems.
...to either just "tell the truth" or play the "what they don't know can't hurt them" games. And the best part is that a company like this has found another way to profit off other people's pain -not that profiting from people's pain is anything new- in a novel way.... I've been down the roads of deception and truth with a wife who was kinda going over the deep end... Telling the truth would earn me days if not weeks of her stomping around the house pissed at me for something as simple as a buddy stopping by to show off a new toy. It only took a couple years of this (as I slowly stopped doing more and more of the things I enjoyed) before I started trying the deception approach. This too has it's curses, namely, living with your own lies, keeping them straight, not getting caught, and giving the other person an actual reason not to trust you. And to those of you who have said "she'd be out of my life," well. that is what finally came to pass. This too is not an easy road, two years in court, fighting for custody of my kids, having to pay her significant child support even though I had 50% custody in the end, the fun life, ya know? The good news is, somewhere along the way she came to her senses... not sure what happened, but we tried again just before the divorce was final, and these days, I do what I want without complaints. And now that I'm totally off topic: I'd probably have purchassed this product 5 years ago, but today I'm just laughing at them.
I grew up in a small town where everyone knew everyone else, and the local cops always pulled the same people in for questioning every time that something happened in town. We coined a new charge for the local cops (not that they appreciated our "attitude") and named it "Suspicion of being Suspicious." This was 20 years ago, and I see that things haven't really changed much in the attitudes of the police, but there's something larger at stake here: this court case risks institutionalizing such behavior by our police. If this case goes the wrong way with the court, it will no longer be a tounge in cheek charge in some rivalry between some small town teens and ego tripping small town cops, but instead a simple fact of un-Ameican life that the cops have a right to do this sort of thing.
It would seem to me that all of the "take off your tin-foil hat" crowd are missing the obvious. Yes, I understand (and if you rtfa you'd see that the author does too) that the planned use of these tags are for very legitimate reasons, but hasn't anyone learned through history that abuse occurs? If some technology has the potential to be abused, then sooner or later, the government, spammers, advertisers or even Wal-Mart WILL abuse it and our privacy will be invaded. This isn't to say that laws governing the use of RFID tags will prevent abuse entirely, but lets at least TRY to prevent what we can before simply allowing these things to go into widespread use and abuse.
But they will get you through the most energy demanding part of the trip without having to carry the oxygen. It is as you observed though, to get "into orbit" a hypersonic space plane will need one final kick from a rocket carrying it's own oxygen. This is a far cry from the massive quantities of oxidizers currently carried to launch the shuttles, both in thier liquid fuel and mixed as a solid in the external boosters.
this will be THE means to get to a station in Earth orbit, and from there, nuclear rockets out into the farther reaches of the solar system. I'd love to see colonies on Mars as much as the next geek, but until we get it through our heads that we need to have stepping stones along the way, we aren't going to be successful. It is simply too damn expensive to develop an entirely new system for every "space objective". We need a new way into Earth orbit... and a space station whose primary objective is to be a way station where deep space nuclear propulsion systems can launch for the rest of the solar system without contaminating the environment here on earth. Maybe someday materials science will make possible the space elevator (and it may be closer than I think, but until they're spinning line, I'm not counting on it....) but until then, we need a different solution beyond out brute force approach. This could be the technology that opens up just these sorts of possibilities.
My second car was a Pinto, following on the heels of a totalled Opel GT that lost a major arguement with a white-tail here in the North-East. The Opel was a NICE car, and I've owned some nice trucks, a couple of SUV's and a Buick Park Avenue. But the best car I've ever owned was my Ford Pinto.. We had all kinds of terrible nick-names for the poor thing. We abused it terribly, lots of crazy experiences -like having the deck-lid behind the rear seat blow out at some whatever the things top speed was, causing the interior of the car to fill with sound-proofing insulation and cause us to come to a screeching halt. The "end" finally came when the rear spring mounts rusted out on one side and all of a sudden the rear wheels locked up when the emergency brake cable went taut.... amazingly the cable held until the car came to a stop. I drove the car home VERY slowly -in reverse so that the flexing of the axle wouldn't cause the wheels to lock up. There was 220,000 miles on it... I cut the car up with an axe and slowly loaded the pieces onto the back of a pickup and when all that remained of the car was the belly-pan, drive train and engine, we decided to take it for a spin... Dropped the steering wheel onto it (why bother putting the nut back on when you're only going to take it back off again?) set a seat into it and fired it up. A friend was driving, he slid it into reverse, sped backwards about 20 feet and rammed it into drive intending to "burn out" The body flexed in the middle terribley, making the drivers seat (driver included) to fall over backwards holding the steering wheel (now attached to nothing but his hands) up in the air as the Pinto sped forward..... fortunately my friend found the brake with his foot before impacting. So ya see, gotta disagree, that Pinto might have been the best car I've ever owned......
Heh.... Dead right that it doesn't change what you said overall, but the scary thig is that while the moderators were posting your comment up to +5, they, and many others, were reading along and simply accepting that "Congress shall make no law RESPECTING the freedom of speech" when quite the opposite was true. The main body of your article was still both informative and interesting, and I've posted before myself only to say after, "Whoops, not that was an f-up!" but I felt that the error was important enough to point out even if you knew what it was you MEANT to say.
Not to nit-pick, but the actual lines from the US Constitution are "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It's article I, otherwise known as "the first amendment in the Bill of Rights" and it's quite a bit different from your line of "Congress shall make no law respecting the freedom of speech" Your paraphrasing couldn't be much more in opposition to what the Constitution intended. This is what we get for making the study of the Constitution a two week interlude in the middle of American History in 9th grade, and the silent masses stay silent as freedom after freedom is abridged because it is too easy to pretend that these freedoms were never ours in the first place.
$44 a month for Road-Runner and $48 for DSL from Citizens Telecom.... I'd say that aren't even using vaseline.
Here's a simple trick to curing the password problem. Think of a sentence that describes the purpose of using the password. I might use a sentence like "I want to see how much money I have in the bank." to help me remember my banking password, the password then becomes either the first or last letters of the sentence, complete with punctuation. I mentally say the sentence to myself until the password itself is memorized (and even then, I find myself thinking the sentence) and type the appropriate letters. My banking password then becomes" IwtshmmIhitb." I find that it is much easier to remember a sentence than it is to remember some obsure password, and that a strange enough sentence (Wow man! Did you see the size of those CHICKENS? Wm!DystsotC? ) makes for some unusual but easily remembered passwords.
Innovation and invention rely on the exchange of ideas in order to happen. The more freely ideas are echanged, the greater the pace of innovation and invention. There used to be a wonderful show on TLC that illustrated this idea called "Connections", back in the day when TLC still carried original and interesting programming... It would seem to me that political interests -being wholly owned subsidiaries of corporate interests- are trying to legislate innovation and invention out of existance. Furthermore, this isn't a partisan problem: Dems and Repubs alike are more interested in serving the corporate dollars that have elected them than they are interested in serving their constituents. While we all yell about Bush, Haliburton and Diebold we are ingnoring the real problem of election reform, and if and when the Dems ever regain the high office, the problem will be as negleted as it is under the current administration. If we are to restore the free exchange of ideas to stimulate invention and innovation, we need to sperate the politicians from the corporate dollar.
...that most of the people who post to slashdot don't need to worry about being in violation if this bill passes. Facts have never stopped anyone here yet!
My family and friends wont call to ask computer or electronic advice ever again? I think you may be onto something.......
OK, so we all recognize that obtaining music without renumeration for the various artists that made the music is WRONG. I don't care what you call it, semantics may be useful for shaping public opinion, but the general opinion is that it is just plain WRONG to get something for nothing. The problem I see is that no one can make up their minds and decide if we are going to revolt against the music companies that rob both artists and listeners, or if we are going to be good little sheep and not do ANYTHING. In order to change the way the music business operates, either the existing structure needs to be taken down by less than desirable means, or else we need (somehow) to get our congresscritters out of the pockets of executives. It would certainly help if some high profile artists would endorse and use alternative distribution methods while abondoning the big labels. Otherwise, the only thing that will work is if EVERYONE starts trading songs with complete abandon: swamp the RIAA with massive lists everwhere... hackers writing viral song swapping code so that everyone who logs on to the net is guilty in the RIAA's eyes... I think I'd rather see a change that was initiated by the artists and consumers themselves whereby I could legally (and simply) download my music for a FAIR price while being assured that most of the $$ goes to the artist, but remember, the toothless get ruthless.
You forgot all about the inspectors that the state (at least in NY) sends around to make sure that private contractors are doing he work properly... You can tell them apart from the workers, unfortunately, but on many an occasion, our crew (12 guys, "bridge trolls" replacing the suspension systems under the bridges) would be outnumbered by inspectors. We'd just shake our head realizing how bad that must look..
Local 7 in NY didn't seem to mind when these things first started into use in NY, literally YEARS ago.... The machines really didn't affect the number of guys working a crew as there is still a lot of "cleanup" work to be done behind the machine, but rather, the overall pace of the jobs were simply quickened, making it possible for our company to get more done in a year with the same crew of guys. And in reply to all the construction worker jokes flying around: yes, quite funny, I can laugh about it, but for the most part, it's not like that within a private company, (the state workers are another matter entirely) at least in upstate NY... We busted our balls repairing bridges, and I have the nerve damage up and down both arms from running jack-hammers to prove it. Hands that cramp up savagely, circulation that simply disappears if the temp drops towards 60, sleep 4-5 hours a night from because that's all the pain will allow.... I WISH I'd of had a beer gut and let it run those hammers for me, I'd not be like this now.
I worked construction for years, jacking bridges up as part of their "rehabilitation" and repairing and replacing their suspension systems. These things have been around for years and years... The company I worked for was by no means a "large" outfit, and they subcontracted out all the work to some people using a Flowcorp machine, then a team of our own guys would come along behind the maching and clean up the mess it left behind: digging out the rebar that didn't get cut free because the Flow crew didn't have the machine set right, cleaning up the mud, cutting the edges in (and sometimes a lot more because the Flow guys were trying to look as if they were on schedule...) etc. The most amazing part of that those machines could only come from a "bridge troll" like myself, working BELOW the bridge... Occasionally, the concrete of the bridge would be bad all the way through, and the pressure would tear right through the bridge instead of just down below the first layer of rebar. This was where you could REALLY appreciate the power of those water jets: something like a shotgun blast would go off, then shards of concrete would ricochette all over below the bridge, and the 5-6 guys on our crew would all be praising the powers that be that none of us were directly unde the thing. I somehow don't think that the designers of hard-hats ever thought that we might need to be safe from shot-gun blasts on construction jobs...
It would seem that the editors are doing their best to lighten our workloads, they've already posted all the commentary needed! And now, with thought not being required, I can skip out on reading the rest of slashdot and head straight off to surfing porn... good day all!
OK... I know absolutely NOTHING about what it takes to write a game; the last time I did any kind of programming it was to get the computer to do my math homework for me and I plugged numbered lines of BASIC into an Apple... but here's an idea that might be workable, and I'd kill to see this on the shelves: a computer game derived from the old Squad Leader games... all of the stategy and tactics games on the market are just so incredibly superficial. I want a turn based battlefield game where EVERY piece becomes important and I'm not simply overwhelmed by the guy who occupied an enviable position where he could fight no battles until he had armies made up entirely of mounted cavalry.. If you're not familiar with Squad Leader, think Axis and Allies but with a LOT more detail... Get cracking you three, I wanna be able to put this game on my Christmas "wish list"