I mean -- for 5 million dollars. christ man... *GIVE AWAY SOME PHONES*. you don't have to hire actor/actresses, you sure as f*k don't have to train them, and you get the same publicity ANYWAY, and it's not limited to the 60 day period. they way every dollar you spend will be twice as effective because the money you would be otherwise spending on hot women would be actually converted into a dozen or so phones floating around in some chatty salesperson's hand, who would go and talk to strangers in a bar about nothing *anyway*.
moreover, even if you get this advertised like so, and whatnot, and people want it -- how much are you willing to bet people will get a "free" motorola with reasonable features vs. paying 200 bux extra for one of these, when they set up a plan? here again, the 5 million should better go toward discounts and stuff.
lastly, it's very annoying if you found out that you got dressed up on friday, invested a good hour on this chick and all she really wanted to talk to you for is to sell you a f*king phone. it's kinda cheap and i think morally it's wrong because you are talking to people under a false pretence, for blatent alterior motives. not to say that this sort of things don't happen -- but to encourage this breach of morality and mutual trust is quite low.
To scout for cops hiding behind bushes etc. when i am speeding on the highway. hehe... takes the radar-gun / radar-detector war to a whole new level.
i'd imagine they make it illegal for spy-cams to fly above the speeding limit, though. (or just outlaw them on public highways outright.) if, that is, too many people start using it for that purpose.
actually i thought about building something for that (a bit larger, though), but havn't got the chance to yet. will keep y'all posted
there is the Corvette office chair. i can't find any links online but the ad is *always* in Car & Drivers' ad section in the back. just go flip through it at a supermarket and you will find it.
not that i would buy one -- but for those of you who have such fetishes...
it's a shame that it never caught on (critical-mass) wise. but it's a great technology that really should be standarized and widely used as a floppy replacement.
Both me and my friend was like "awwww.... shucks" when we heard the news that the asteroid has decided not to come down in a hurry; seems like 2060 might be hazy too.
before anybody label me as genocidal: think about it.
if it was gonna hit, there are two possible outcomes 1) in a small chance, i die, but take the world with me. 2) some *major* space developments, including but not limited to moon bases and zero-g sex, etc.
but moreover -- if they are going for "life-like", the really need to implement moveable "eyes" (cameras) instead of having the head do all the moving. it mould make the head go through much extaneous range of movements, while still not have the flexibility of a human head / eye system. (bend head one way to avoid, say, a beam, while still be able to look to your left side.)
otherwise very cool -- even if it's just half-a-robot. but even if mounted on a cart i bet i can program it to clean my room.
I don't think it's easy for them to "just come my and bloody ask questions" if your opinion of them is "suck" (from the "make them suck less" part). i mean... if you want the less experienced developers to feel comfortable asking questions and actually *care* about what you care about, then you'd better damn well care about them too instead of acting like (i am not accusing you of, but you may want to check if you are) an elitist who think they are just dumb ass drones.
now -- i would say first is to set intermediate goals (divide project into smaller portions) and get daily updates. spend 15 min every day and see if they ran into any trouble with today's work, etc etc. this way deadline is always 8 hours away, and there won't be any CS-101 "i will wait till the night before the project is due" symptoms
two -- get together with them and do some stuff -- be *friends* and THEN work-partners. an activity that requires no social interaction and gets a lot of bonding is 1) drinking. 2) drinking at a strip club. or golfing or whatever. when you guys are buddies, 1) they will feel at ease about seeking your help, and 2) they would hopefully get your vibe on the urgency of things. sidenote: be friendly but draw the line if people start to take advantage of this relationship
3) plan for the worst and be prepared for extreme measures. "kill a chicken to demonstrate to the monkeys" is a badly translated old chinese proverb. if it's necessary, fire somebody and be prepared to take up the slack. if everything else fails this should get people into a more productive mode.
well... that pretty much covers everything from holistic to draconian... so...
1) for the love of **, in the two bursts, this thing burns through 800KJ!! that is a *lot* of power. capacitive storage for that kind of power is improbabble, so they are likely going to use generators that bring out the power on-the-fly.
which would be lighter, but still a *hefty* load. i also do not think that the firing apature would be easily radar-proofable. -- we will see though.
2) lasers are generally grossly in-efficient when the power gets high; putting 1kw into a laser (i am drawing info from CO2 lasers, which is one of the easiest high-power infrared laser you can make) -- would yield a beam of ~ 100W. I am curious when they say it's a such such power rating -- is it the CONSUMED power, or DELIVERED power?
3) unless the IR radiation is really on the brink of visible, glass does not pass it. so, while your window might melt etc, you don't have to worry about getting blind *so* much. but indeed NIR passes through glass -- so there is still a danger, depending of what frequency the damn thing is -- if they want to be humane, however, it is easy to make the laser not pass through glass, though. however, with a high powered laser shooting down at me, i am somewhat certain that the first thing i will worry about is the melting metal and scorching skin.
p.s. IR radiation causes sub-surface burns -- so technically you won't have "scorching skin", but erm... die from IR laser is not something pleasant... FYI.
*lastly: i know i linked it before, but it's such a good site on lasers: Sam's laser faq
Not to mention that it's unlikely they'll include a provision to do an oil change on these things.
heh... the day that i need to take my computer to Jiffy Lube / Grease Monkey to get serviced, i am officially never, ever touching on of them for the rest of eternity.
on a more serious note: Abrasives are not so bad when you get your race(s) sealed up well enough. and since they are never supposed to touch eachother, (and this is not like a crankshaft that's under tremendous load / temperture stress) -- the problem with particles getting suspendid in the oil / whatever would be fairly small.
i would, however, but concerned about the start and stop of the drive. when they spin up / down the liquid film has not formed yet and that's when, if ever, the races will grind into eachother -- albeit for a short time only.
right, but *if* what i say is correct, they can simply "bend the law" by raising the job requirements.
requirement1: C++ exp; TCP/IP; BS (2 citizen and 1 possible H1B qualify)
company looked at the resumes, decides: C++ exp; TCP/IP; BS w/ min 3.2GPA (1 H1B qualify);
or they can just put out rediculous job reqs so that anyway you look at it, nobody qualifies so they can choose the "best of the losers", so to speak, and as i mentioned before, if GPA is a factor, i'd bet a dollar to a donut that H1B gets hired.
i mean -- i am not saying that the hiring of forigners are not affecting the US economy -- it definitely is; however it is not fair to say that it is a detrimental effect.
furthermore, it is hard enough being on a H1B visa, but after contributing so much to this country, $$ and productivity wise -- getting blamed as a "source of economical problem" just do not seem fair.
Arcade-quality stuff can be very beneficial to the home user if they just *sells* the damn things
consoles suck at giving me the enjoyment i want:
1) every single gun i used for the console sucks ass. (compared to Time Crisis II guns in the arcades) 2) think DDR (dance dance revolution). you know how flimsy the "home" pads are? many people resorts to building their own, or ebay (it's popular), or buying a machine outright (it's a 5k machine!). 3) some of the more specialized contronls (just a *tad* specialized) are completely un-available. think any racing game. you have any idea how cheesy the logitech steering wheels are?
but at the mean time -- if they just sold some high quality stuff, (that can be used for more than one game), you bet i will get them.
there are good reasons why people are not hiring: maybe the ECONOMY IS DOWN?
i mean -- let's think about this for a bit. the economy wasn't nearly recovered (companies have no money) and now the scandals from worldcom / enron (means all the execs are right now tighter than amish when comes to spending for capital equip and human resources) -- and you wonder why people are not hiring?
unless i missed something -- the unemployment rates does not track the difference between unemployed citizens and non-citizens -- i know plenty of former H1B people who are out of a job right now. moreover -- non-citizens who are out of a job for a long time leaves the country -- so i would not trust the statistics *anyway*.
lastly... I know this will draw flames from hell -- but have anyone considered that maybe H1B holders actually got better grades in school? There are so many people who think that college is just a place to have fun, drink beer, blah blah, and 2.5 is an acceptable GPA. well -- for most forigner students, unless you get 3.0 / 3.5, your scholarship gets cut and you can't pay for your schooling cuz you have no work permit. so it is quite often that forign students gets better grades than domestic students because they have no choice. if you were an employer, say both are "qualified" but one has a 1/2 point GPA advantage in core curriculum, who are you goint to choose?
this is a classic "i want to blame all my problems on other people" syndrom. quite discusting stuff. even more so that IEEE is supporting this sh*t.
there really isn't a way around that you know -- i hate the phrase "viscious cycle" but it's very necessary to use it here.
there are some basic facts we have to deal with when doing this
1) laying 1 fibre vs. laying 32 fibres costs about the same 2) you need to lay tons of fibres regardless (because the US is sparced out compared to, say, Tokyo / Seoul) 3) you need capacity *today*. not 32-fibre worth of capacity, maybe 1 or 2 fibre worth. 4) you probabbly need the 32-fibre worth of capacity in the future -- okay -- not the *near* future, but you know for a fact it will be utilized later
so basically, you need to invest in this infrastructure regardless -- because let's face it, you need them damn fibre runs even for today's economy. the choice boils down to 1) you spend 85 billion for 2 fibres today, and another 80 3 years later when you need to double the capacity 2) you spend 100 billion for 32 fibres today, and be home free for 12 years or so.
okay -- simplified math, bs statistics. but pretty much the same point.
if you were the CEO / CTO, what's gonna be your plan? i know i will bank on the 100 billion.
so they took a bet and ran out of $$ before it turned profitable. but it's was a lost gamble -- not a bad decision.
i like to point out that the interstate highway system is pretty much the same except the US got enough cash to cover it while it slowly became... profitable (on a entire economy scale)
look at the "blast" heading -- this is mostly what we are concerned with. (i linked to a higher level of the hiarchy in case anyone is interested in the other effects as well.
anyway... you can see from the data that on earth, one megaton bomb can devastate a radious of ~3km -- which is already larger than the asteroid... but i digress, and will try to look at this systematically
1) delivery of the weapon
this is probabbly the most no-brainer of the whole deal. all current ICBMs go into sub-orbit already anyway, strapping a few boosters onto them for escape velocity should not be a big problem.
it is useful to note that the asteroid will be a threat even if no impact occurs on 2019; in fact it would be a much larger threat down the line. however, the frequent encounters with it in the near future gives up plenty of time to approach it and take action.
2) effective-ness of the weapon
this is somewhat harder to determine. see -- the problem is that all of our data on nuclear weapons is earth-based; i.e in a atmospheric environment. -- the 3km effective radius is based on this fact as well -- the destruction is not from the blast of the weapon -- but instead the sudden compressiong / decompression of the atmosphere that transmit the detonation energy to do the destruction. if the asteroid is indeed loosely packet -- much of the energy will just escape; while if the asteroid is solid-packet -- the bomb may not be powerful enough to break it all the way apart.
before we go further -- it is very obvious that the bomb(s) need to be deeply implanted inside the asteroid for maximum effective-ness.
the best scenario to hope for is that the asteroid have a large ice content. the vaporization of the ice would then be the medium of energy transfer -- breaking apart the asteroids into chunks that the earth's atmosphere can handle - which is probabbly the best we can hope for.
similar things can happen with solidified CO2 / methane / whatever. but we won't know about the asteroid's contents until later (more observations).
the good news is that if the asteroid was ever broken apart -- the gravitational force between the pieces should be small enough that they won't meaningfully get back together.
3) possible hiccups
the fact is that simply not enough is known about the behavior of nuclear weapons in vacuum -- which is both very cold, and lack the aforementioned energy transfer medium. so it may be that the weapon is actually quite in-effective in space. furthermore, depending on nuclear bombs to vaporize a whole asteroid is only a dream -- nuclear weapons destroy via shockwaves, and the thermal energy is actually comparatively low for what we need to accomplish.
this basically lead to the fact that if we press the red button, the bomb goes off, and nothing happens to the asteroid except a shockwave rings through its structure but it remains intact.
moreover -- drilling 1km down on an asteroid in as un-proven technology at best -- so there may be tons of problems there.
4) some alternatives
besides straight-up disintergration of the asteroid, there can be other things to try, for example, if you insert bombs in a planar fashion - it *may* be possible to break the asteroid into two or more chunks -- and if it is properly calculated -- it should be possible to get the thing either crash into mars, or get into earth orbit. (on a side note -- this would be very cool -- space elevator baby) and the smaller chunk can be much more easily broken down by nuclear means. (this is assuming the asteroid is a fairly rigid body of iron, etc etc.
i had some other points -- but since this *might* be the end of the world after all -- i am going to go out and try to get laid now.
The lanugae is not truely Turning complete. Which could have been fixed by taking some more time and making the language more complete.
i would really love to give some witty comments here -- but am at a loss of words. which could be fixed by thinking up a few words to form a witty comment with.
as our need of bandwidth grow -- more and more of these will circulate the sky. not only will you be bombarded by the rediculous amount of ads -- something that has always been taken for granted: sunshine -- will now be a luxury.
the first thing i thought when i read this was "controlling blah blah using sector-programmable EEPROM"... sigh; been in the hardware side too long.
side point: flash programs themselves are small and neat -- but the actual client (that reads, processes, and displays the animations and all that) always have seemed quite processor intensive to me, though... so besides being fancy and neat -- i am sure there are more power-saving interfaces you can use if that's really what you are after.
Sounds like an interesting concept but it is unclear how the scientists will account for every source of gravity, including the elusive dark matter.
i am sure this can be empirically figured out. send hundreds of thousands of little probes all over the solar system and track their movement. each probe only need to be a beacon w/ a solar panel so they should be make very, very light. (prefabbly something degradable so no more space trash! -- or crash all of them into jupiter later, so something).
this way you can figure out to a good degree what the gravimetric forces are within a good error margin.
p.s. there is no accepted theory on what, or where dark matters exist. frankly so far their interactions we can see is on a galaxy-level. hence their existance, or effect within something as small (ha!) as the solar system is not well understood; and since we pretty much sent all the other probes etc (say, voyager) on their routes fairly predictably, i would say contemplating about dark matter interactions within the solar system is unnecessary.
roll-up stuff is fine and good until you have to carry something around -- i believe a very important aspect of this technology is its portability. however, if i decided to carry my 42" roll up screen around (say, on a road trip), it would still not fit into my briefcase because when it's rolled up it will be a large tube around 30 inches long.
however, if such technology can be made so that the material can be folded (like paper) and does not cause distortions of the pixels at the edges of where i fold -- i am all for it. fine, everywhere i look there will probabbly be billboards because of this technology. but then, i can carry around my own and display stuff i want to see instead.
Why are they so excited about a location that is over 100 miles from their nearest constituent company (IBM)?
same reason as (one of the reasons) why Silicon valley started:
1) cheap land 2) cheap energy
somebody mentioned something about pollution: well, right now rochester, NY is one of the most heavily polluted cities in the US because of the Kodak plant there. i'm just dying to see (no pun, really) what's gonna happen after all these companies drop in. NY used to have more lax environmental laws than CA, which might be one of the reasons. that should (hopefully, anyway) be changing though.
Volvo's company image survey indicated it is now the world's *least* saft car.
also, after many volvo curiously ran into the ditches, Microsoft spoksperson stepped up to defend Volvo, saying that it was a not a bug, but a feature.
Now everyone on Slashdot knows about the game. People reading the news will know
erm... *everyone* knows that carrot-top does CALL-ATT commercials. does that mean i will ever use that service? hell no. on principle, i might add.
it's not really "free advertising", it's more like "free bad publicity"...
p.s. i have to say, though, i did see ONE funny carrot-top commercial. incedentally the little f*ker wasn't in it (thank god). it was a Spaceghost commercial where he was supposed to interview carrot-top etc. catch it on the cartoon channel sometimes.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean -- for 5 million dollars. christ man... *GIVE AWAY SOME PHONES*. you don't have to hire actor/actresses, you sure as f*k don't have to train them, and you get the same publicity ANYWAY, and it's not limited to the 60 day period. they way every dollar you spend will be twice as effective because the money you would be otherwise spending on hot women would be actually converted into a dozen or so phones floating around in some chatty salesperson's hand, who would go and talk to strangers in a bar about nothing *anyway*.
moreover, even if you get this advertised like so, and whatnot, and people want it -- how much are you willing to bet people will get a "free" motorola with reasonable features vs. paying 200 bux extra for one of these, when they set up a plan? here again, the 5 million should better go toward discounts and stuff.
lastly, it's very annoying if you found out that you got dressed up on friday, invested a good hour on this chick and all she really wanted to talk to you for is to sell you a f*king phone. it's kinda cheap and i think morally it's wrong because you are talking to people under a false pretence, for blatent alterior motives. not to say that this sort of things don't happen -- but to encourage this breach of morality and mutual trust is quite low.
To scout for cops hiding behind bushes etc. when i am speeding on the highway. hehe... takes the radar-gun / radar-detector war to a whole new level.
i'd imagine they make it illegal for spy-cams to fly above the speeding limit, though. (or just outlaw them on public highways outright.) if, that is, too many people start using it for that purpose.
actually i thought about building something for that (a bit larger, though), but havn't got the chance to yet. will keep y'all posted
there is the Corvette office chair. i can't find any links online but the ad is *always* in Car & Drivers' ad section in the back. just go flip through it at a supermarket and you will find it.
not that i would buy one -- but for those of you who have such fetishes...
it's a shame that it never caught on (critical-mass) wise. but it's a great technology that really should be standarized and widely used as a floppy replacement.
Both me and my friend was like "awwww.... shucks" when we heard the news that the asteroid has decided not to come down in a hurry; seems like 2060 might be hazy too.
before anybody label me as genocidal: think about it.
if it was gonna hit, there are two possible outcomes
1) in a small chance, i die, but take the world with me.
2) some *major* space developments, including but not limited to moon bases and zero-g sex, etc.
hmm.....
look like the Fett;
but moreover -- if they are going for "life-like", the really need to implement moveable "eyes" (cameras) instead of having the head do all the moving. it mould make the head go through much extaneous range of movements, while still not have the flexibility of a human head / eye system. (bend head one way to avoid, say, a beam, while still be able to look to your left side.)
otherwise very cool -- even if it's just half-a-robot. but even if mounted on a cart i bet i can program it to clean my room.
hmm... wait a sec; i can't even clean my room.
I don't think it's easy for them to "just come my and bloody ask questions" if your opinion of them is "suck" (from the "make them suck less" part). i mean... if you want the less experienced developers to feel comfortable asking questions and actually *care* about what you care about, then you'd better damn well care about them too instead of acting like (i am not accusing you of, but you may want to check if you are) an elitist who think they are just dumb ass drones.
now -- i would say first is to set intermediate goals (divide project into smaller portions) and get daily updates. spend 15 min every day and see if they ran into any trouble with today's work, etc etc. this way deadline is always 8 hours away, and there won't be any CS-101 "i will wait till the night before the project is due" symptoms
two -- get together with them and do some stuff -- be *friends* and THEN work-partners. an activity that requires no social interaction and gets a lot of bonding is 1) drinking. 2) drinking at a strip club. or golfing or whatever. when you guys are buddies, 1) they will feel at ease about seeking your help, and 2) they would hopefully get your vibe on the urgency of things. sidenote: be friendly but draw the line if people start to take advantage of this relationship
3) plan for the worst and be prepared for extreme measures. "kill a chicken to demonstrate to the monkeys" is a badly translated old chinese proverb. if it's necessary, fire somebody and be prepared to take up the slack. if everything else fails this should get people into a more productive mode.
well... that pretty much covers everything from holistic to draconian... so...
2) lasers are generally grossly in-efficient when the power gets high; putting 1kw into a laser (i am drawing info from CO2 lasers, which is one of the easiest high-power infrared laser you can make) -- would yield a beam of ~ 100W. I am curious when they say it's a such such power rating -- is it the CONSUMED power, or DELIVERED power?
3) unless the IR radiation is really on the brink of visible, glass does not pass it. so, while your window might melt etc, you don't have to worry about getting blind *so* much. but indeed NIR passes through glass -- so there is still a danger, depending of what frequency the damn thing is -- if they want to be humane, however, it is easy to make the laser not pass through glass, though. however, with a high powered laser shooting down at me, i am somewhat certain that the first thing i will worry about is the melting metal and scorching skin.
p.s. IR radiation causes sub-surface burns -- so technically you won't have "scorching skin", but erm... die from IR laser is not something pleasant... FYI.
*lastly: i know i linked it before, but it's such a good site on lasers: Sam's laser faq
heh... the day that i need to take my computer to Jiffy Lube / Grease Monkey to get serviced, i am officially never, ever touching on of them for the rest of eternity.
on a more serious note: Abrasives are not so bad when you get your race(s) sealed up well enough. and since they are never supposed to touch eachother, (and this is not like a crankshaft that's under tremendous load / temperture stress) -- the problem with particles getting suspendid in the oil / whatever would be fairly small.
i would, however, but concerned about the start and stop of the drive. when they spin up / down the liquid film has not formed yet and that's when, if ever, the races will grind into eachother -- albeit for a short time only.
right, but *if* what i say is correct, they can simply "bend the law" by raising the job requirements.
requirement1:
C++ exp; TCP/IP; BS (2 citizen and 1 possible H1B qualify)
company looked at the resumes, decides:
C++ exp; TCP/IP; BS w/ min 3.2GPA (1 H1B qualify);
or they can just put out rediculous job reqs so that anyway you look at it, nobody qualifies so they can choose the "best of the losers", so to speak, and as i mentioned before, if GPA is a factor, i'd bet a dollar to a donut that H1B gets hired.
i mean -- i am not saying that the hiring of forigners are not affecting the US economy -- it definitely is; however it is not fair to say that it is a detrimental effect.
furthermore, it is hard enough being on a H1B visa, but after contributing so much to this country, $$ and productivity wise -- getting blamed as a "source of economical problem" just do not seem fair.
Arcade-quality stuff can be very beneficial to the home user if they just *sells* the damn things
consoles suck at giving me the enjoyment i want:
1) every single gun i used for the console sucks ass. (compared to Time Crisis II guns in the arcades)
2) think DDR (dance dance revolution). you know how flimsy the "home" pads are? many people resorts to building their own, or ebay (it's popular), or buying a machine outright (it's a 5k machine!).
3) some of the more specialized contronls (just a *tad* specialized) are completely un-available. think any racing game. you have any idea how cheesy the logitech steering wheels are?
but at the mean time -- if they just sold some high quality stuff, (that can be used for more than one game), you bet i will get them.
there are good reasons why people are not hiring: maybe the ECONOMY IS DOWN?
i mean -- let's think about this for a bit. the economy wasn't nearly recovered (companies have no money) and now the scandals from worldcom / enron (means all the execs are right now tighter than amish when comes to spending for capital equip and human resources) -- and you wonder why people are not hiring?
unless i missed something -- the unemployment rates does not track the difference between unemployed citizens and non-citizens -- i know plenty of former H1B people who are out of a job right now. moreover -- non-citizens who are out of a job for a long time leaves the country -- so i would not trust the statistics *anyway*.
lastly... I know this will draw flames from hell -- but have anyone considered that maybe H1B holders actually got better grades in school? There are so many people who think that college is just a place to have fun, drink beer, blah blah, and 2.5 is an acceptable GPA. well -- for most forigner students, unless you get 3.0 / 3.5, your scholarship gets cut and you can't pay for your schooling cuz you have no work permit. so it is quite often that forign students gets better grades than domestic students because they have no choice. if you were an employer, say both are "qualified" but one has a 1/2 point GPA advantage in core curriculum, who are you goint to choose?
this is a classic "i want to blame all my problems on other people" syndrom. quite discusting stuff. even more so that IEEE is supporting this sh*t.
there really isn't a way around that you know -- i hate the phrase "viscious cycle" but it's very necessary to use it here.
there are some basic facts we have to deal with when doing this
1) laying 1 fibre vs. laying 32 fibres costs about the same
2) you need to lay tons of fibres regardless (because the US is sparced out compared to, say, Tokyo / Seoul)
3) you need capacity *today*. not 32-fibre worth of capacity, maybe 1 or 2 fibre worth.
4) you probabbly need the 32-fibre worth of capacity in the future -- okay -- not the *near* future, but you know for a fact it will be utilized later
so basically, you need to invest in this infrastructure regardless -- because let's face it, you need them damn fibre runs even for today's economy. the choice boils down to
1) you spend 85 billion for 2 fibres today, and another 80 3 years later when you need to double the capacity
2) you spend 100 billion for 32 fibres today, and be home free for 12 years or so.
okay -- simplified math, bs statistics. but pretty much the same point.
if you were the CEO / CTO, what's gonna be your plan? i know i will bank on the 100 billion.
so they took a bet and ran out of $$ before it turned profitable. but it's was a lost gamble -- not a bad decision.
i like to point out that the interstate highway system is pretty much the same except the US got enough cash to cover it while it slowly became... profitable (on a entire economy scale)
check out turducken here.
check it out here
look at the "blast" heading -- this is mostly what we are concerned with. (i linked to a higher level of the hiarchy in case anyone is interested in the other effects as well.
anyway... you can see from the data that on earth, one megaton bomb can devastate a radious of ~3km -- which is already larger than the asteroid... but i digress, and will try to look at this systematically
1) delivery of the weapon
this is probabbly the most no-brainer of the whole deal. all current ICBMs go into sub-orbit already anyway, strapping a few boosters onto them for escape velocity should not be a big problem.
it is useful to note that the asteroid will be a threat even if no impact occurs on 2019; in fact it would be a much larger threat down the line. however, the frequent encounters with it in the near future gives up plenty of time to approach it and take action.
2) effective-ness of the weapon
this is somewhat harder to determine. see -- the problem is that all of our data on nuclear weapons is earth-based; i.e in a atmospheric environment. -- the 3km effective radius is based on this fact as well -- the destruction is not from the blast of the weapon -- but instead the sudden compressiong / decompression of the atmosphere that transmit the detonation energy to do the destruction. if the asteroid is indeed loosely packet -- much of the energy will just escape; while if the asteroid is solid-packet -- the bomb may not be powerful enough to break it all the way apart.
before we go further -- it is very obvious that the bomb(s) need to be deeply implanted inside the asteroid for maximum effective-ness.
the best scenario to hope for is that the asteroid have a large ice content. the vaporization of the ice would then be the medium of energy transfer -- breaking apart the asteroids into chunks that the earth's atmosphere can handle - which is probabbly the best we can hope for.
similar things can happen with solidified CO2 / methane / whatever. but we won't know about the asteroid's contents until later (more observations).
the good news is that if the asteroid was ever broken apart -- the gravitational force between the pieces should be small enough that they won't meaningfully get back together.
3) possible hiccups
the fact is that simply not enough is known about the behavior of nuclear weapons in vacuum -- which is both very cold, and lack the aforementioned energy transfer medium. so it may be that the weapon is actually quite in-effective in space. furthermore, depending on nuclear bombs to vaporize a whole asteroid is only a dream -- nuclear weapons destroy via shockwaves, and the thermal energy is actually comparatively low for what we need to accomplish.
this basically lead to the fact that if we press the red button, the bomb goes off, and nothing happens to the asteroid except a shockwave rings through its structure but it remains intact.
moreover -- drilling 1km down on an asteroid in as un-proven technology at best -- so there may be tons of problems there.
4) some alternatives
besides straight-up disintergration of the asteroid, there can be other things to try, for example, if you insert bombs in a planar fashion - it *may* be possible to break the asteroid into two or more chunks -- and if it is properly calculated -- it should be possible to get the thing either crash into mars, or get into earth orbit. (on a side note -- this would be very cool -- space elevator baby) and the smaller chunk can be much more easily broken down by nuclear means. (this is assuming the asteroid is a fairly rigid body of iron, etc etc.
i had some other points -- but since this *might* be the end of the world after all -- i am going to go out and try to get laid now.
would that be four thousand five hundred people, or four to five hundred people?
it's a big difference; so please let us (me, anyway) know.
i would really love to give some witty comments here -- but am at a loss of words. which could be fixed by thinking up a few words to form a witty comment with.
as our need of bandwidth grow -- more and more of these will circulate the sky. not only will you be bombarded by the rediculous amount of ads -- something that has always been taken for granted: sunshine -- will now be a luxury.
the first thing i thought when i read this was "controlling blah blah using sector-programmable EEPROM"... sigh; been in the hardware side too long.
side point: flash programs themselves are small and neat -- but the actual client (that reads, processes, and displays the animations and all that) always have seemed quite processor intensive to me, though... so besides being fancy and neat -- i am sure there are more power-saving interfaces you can use if that's really what you are after.
i am sure this can be empirically figured out. send hundreds of thousands of little probes all over the solar system and track their movement. each probe only need to be a beacon w/ a solar panel so they should be make very, very light. (prefabbly something degradable so no more space trash! -- or crash all of them into jupiter later, so something).
this way you can figure out to a good degree what the gravimetric forces are within a good error margin.
p.s. there is no accepted theory on what, or where dark matters exist. frankly so far their interactions we can see is on a galaxy-level. hence their existance, or effect within something as small (ha!) as the solar system is not well understood; and since we pretty much sent all the other probes etc (say, voyager) on their routes fairly predictably, i would say contemplating about dark matter interactions within the solar system is unnecessary.
but, if you really wanted to, you could ;-)
roll-up stuff is fine and good until you have to carry something around -- i believe a very important aspect of this technology is its portability. however, if i decided to carry my 42" roll up screen around (say, on a road trip), it would still not fit into my briefcase because when it's rolled up it will be a large tube around 30 inches long.
however, if such technology can be made so that the material can be folded (like paper) and does not cause distortions of the pixels at the edges of where i fold -- i am all for it. fine, everywhere i look there will probabbly be billboards because of this technology. but then, i can carry around my own and display stuff i want to see instead.
same reason as (one of the reasons) why Silicon valley started:
1) cheap land
2) cheap energy
somebody mentioned something about pollution: well, right now rochester, NY is one of the most heavily polluted cities in the US because of the Kodak plant there. i'm just dying to see (no pun, really) what's gonna happen after all these companies drop in. NY used to have more lax environmental laws than CA, which might be one of the reasons. that should (hopefully, anyway) be changing though.
it's kinda long. will talk more when i go through the damn thing.
Volvo's company image survey indicated it is now the world's *least* saft car.
also, after many volvo curiously ran into the ditches, Microsoft spoksperson stepped up to defend Volvo, saying that it was a not a bug, but a feature.
erm... *everyone* knows that carrot-top does CALL-ATT commercials. does that mean i will ever use that service? hell no. on principle, i might add.
it's not really "free advertising", it's more like "free bad publicity"...
p.s. i have to say, though, i did see ONE funny carrot-top commercial. incedentally the little f*ker wasn't in it (thank god). it was a Spaceghost commercial where he was supposed to interview carrot-top etc. catch it on the cartoon channel sometimes.