But a pound of just about any fat contains the same number of calories. We could just send along 130 pounds of butter, margarine, shortening, and oil for each astronaut.
What's wrong with us here in the US that we can't confront anyone anymore? Everyone has to just pretend that everyone is nice all the time, then of course talk about these people behind their backs.
Since when were people in the U.S. known for being polite and nonconfrontational?
Not all people jump into ice-cold water after sauna. But there is a small minority who practise that every day. They claim that it is good for your health and in general they tend to avoid flu and cold better compared to folks who don't do it.
They tend to better resist colds and the flue because all the weak ones were killed by this treatment a long time ago.
Each of the two Keck telescopes cost about $94 million U.S. to construct. If we amortize that over twenty years, that's five million per year, $14,000 per day, or nearly six hundred dollars per hour. You'll settle for one Keck, right?
And that's just your sticker price. Actually operating the damn thing requires a lot of money. This site gives a figure of about a dollar per second--that's about four thousand dollars an hour. It's not cheap to haul astronomers, mirror bits, refrigeration units, and everything else up a mountain, you know.
Oh, and if it's cloudy while you're up there, too bad. You can apply for more time now, but your request likely won't be granted for another year or so. Not that the group responsible for adminstering the Kecks would let you play with their toy anyway. There are real scientific projects that already suck up all the available observing time--and many more waiting in the wings that would kill for some. Do you think that CERN would let you mess around with their collider?
Your best bet for getting to play with mid-scale scientific toys (linear accelerators, van de Graff generators, telescopes in the three meter class, and so forth) would be to befriend someone at a university owning such facilities. Once you know the right people, you can get in for free.
The parent post is bang-on correct. Getting hired through making cold calls is not like any job you've ever done before, and it is nothing like the job that you're looking to get.
Applying for work is a full-time job of its own, with its own unique required skills set, suited to a set of aptitudes that are probably quite different from the ones that you're hoping to capitalize on.
To do this job correctly, you need to work on your marketing. Practice your public speaking. Practice interview technique with friends. Network. (With people, not just computers.) Learn a little bit--then learn a lot--about layout and design. Make damn well sure your resume is two pages or less. Use bullets. Use sufficient whitespace. Keep up your skills by reading, taking courses, or volunteering to admin for local charities. Pray.
Remember--you're no longer doing just IT. It's sometimes frustrating, maybe even galling to admit it, but now you're in advertising, too.
In a way, using a 3rd party remote is like going down to the local keycutters shop and getting a copy of your front door key made. It's not authorised by the manufacturer of your front door lock and it's a direct copy of part of their product. I wouldn't want that to be illegal. If I needed a spare key, I'd have to go to the door lock manufacturer every time, and hope they didn't go out of business, otherwise I'd have to change the lock.
My parents bought a new Nissan Sentra a couple of years ago. They tried having a local locksmith cut a copy of their keys, but no dice. I suppose there are theft prevention arguments, but to get an extra set of keys, you have to show up in person at the dealership with cash in hand. I was visiting my parents shortly after they bought the car, and my father called ahead to the dealership, asking for new keys--he sent me down to pick them up. Despite having an original set of keys, the same surname as the car's registered owner, and the actual vehicle in my possession they refused to hand over the new keys to me, since I wasn't the owner of record.
I really hope that Nissan never starts pressing CDs.
At least they're on solid financial ground--my parents wouldn't be able to get new car keys cut if the company went under. So your door lock scenario is not a scary vision of the future. It's here today.
If someone gives you a contract in.001 font size, no it is not illegal. It is up to you to say "I won't sign this, and I won't use your product."
If someone decides to "hide" some options down a scroll list, or maybe on a back page, it is still your responsibility to see if there is more, before signing it.
Actually, such a contract is not legally binding. At best, a civil court would attempt to return both parties to a state as close as possible to that which existed before the contract was signed, because no 'meeting of the minds' existed and thus no real contract. (IANAL, but this is stuff that is covered in high school law classes.)
If there was evidence of a deliberate attempt to deceive on the part of one party, then there would likely be (potentially hefty) damages awarded.
If someone presents you with an apparently complete contract with text and a signature line on the front, then hides extra clauses in fine print on the back, that would probably be held to be deceptive. Many jurisdictions place legal limits on minimum text size in contracts. There is also quite a body of common law built up regarding these types of practices in meatspace.
I could take it to the symphony so that receiving important messages ("Your wife is in labour" or "A kidney donor has been found" or "The server melted down and we're losing $6000 per minute and the other admin is in a coma") can get through without annoying people around me. Your phone/pager/SMS device is set to vibrate (at most) when you receive a call, right? Less important messages ("Honey, can you pick up some milk on your way home") can be safely filed for future reference. No furtive and very annoying (to those around you) conversations, no cryptic number on a little tiny pager display.
I can take it to the pub and not have to find a quiet place to hear messages. I have on more than one occasion been unable to receive an ordinary call because of ambient noise. SMS might have been very helpful.
I can always leave my phone at home if I don't want to be disturbed--I'm not dumb enough to have given my boss the number.
A father of a friend runs a soup kitchen, and I helped hack together a barcoded ID card system to keep track of who visited and how often.
Cool--it's like a library card for food!
Actually, the first time I read the post, I missed the phrase "barcoded ID card"--I wondered whether you had to have someone hold the homeless folks down while you tattooed them with a barcode, or if you just slipped a tranquilizer into their soup.
Don't knock the Saturn V, it was the cheapest launch system(per pound) that Nasa has ever had. It's all nice and good to talk about how the shuttle has reusable parts and how that saves so much money, but it is not in anyway true.
The original post looks at the new solid fuel more from an environmental standpoint. In that respect, reusable boosters with an environmentally friendly fuel are good because you're not throwing away all that shell material on each launch. Also, my point was that solid rockets are easier to operate and maintain than liquid-fuelled ones, and making them less environmentally noxious is a Good Thing. They have different applications, and I imagine that both technologies will have a place as long as we're putting stuff is space by pushing reaction mass around. Lastly, I certainly don't dispute that the Shuttle is costly to operate.
At the begining of the Shuttle program Nasa did everything that they could do make sure that the Saturn V's would never be built again, they destroyed all of the blueprints and attempted to destroy all of the equipment used to make them.
This is a popular urbanlegend. The Saturn V blueprints still exist stored on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Rocketdyne still has significant documentation describing the F-1 (first stage) and J-2 (second and third stage) engines. The national archives also contain significant documentation on almost all NASA projects--including Saturn V. Although much of the equipment used to build Saturn has been lost or dismantled, it's not really surprising--the last Saturn V flight was what, nearly thirty years ago? Do we expect IBM to still have the hardware on hand to build an S/370 machine whenever we want one? Yes, the launch facilities for the Saturn V were dismantled or repurposed. NASA had to launch the Shuttle from somewhere, and the Saturn V program was coming to a close.
For what it's worth, I agree with you on the ISS. It would make more sense to update the Saturn V design--use modern materials where appropriate, and certainly new avionics--to do heavy lifting for the ISS. Unfortunately, such an option seems politically untenable at the moment, and there really aren't any other major projects happening right now that demand such lift capacity. (A Mars mission would be neat--but who's going to fund it?)
Well, the first stage, at any rate. The second and third stage engines were hydrogen fuelled. (Liquid oxygen served as oxidizer for all three stages.) Granted; both fuels are significantly friendlier to the environment than the solid fuels used aboard the Shuttle.
The thing about the Saturn V is that it wasn't reusable. It had great payload capacity to earth orbit, but you had to throw away twenty or thirty storeys of rocket parts to put stuff up there. With the Shuttle, the solid rocket booster shells are recovered, inspected, reassembled, and refuelled.
Probably the most important consideration: liquid fuels are finicky--you need pumps, valves, and cryogenics. Solid fuel doesn't slosh. Solid rocket boosters are easy to use. Still rocket science, but simpler, more reliable, cheaper rocket science. Kudos to NASA for improving their technology while considering the environment.
If you hit a website for a retailer and find that someone graffiti'd their front page, would you still buy something there, or would you go someplace else?
Sure I'd buy something there--after I had some reassurance that my credit card numbers and personal information weren't as weakly protected as the rest of the web site. "Graffiti" on a web site isn't quite like graffiti in real life. Web graffiti requires sloppy security on the part of the web site owner. Although it is only petty vandalism, it also does point up a lack of security.
To be fair, if it is a reputable retailer that was a victim of a deliberate and sophisticated attack, I can accept that. In real life, if my safe deposit box at the bank is emptied by crooks, I have to ask: did someone forget to lock the safe last night, or did the thieves--all armed with Uzis--blow the safe with shaped explosive charges? Two very different cases. I'd like to think that I'd evaluate the defacement of a web site the same way.
Of course I understand your point--for the length of time that the web site remains vandalized, there will probably be no retail sales. The punishment of the offender should reflect that reality, as a reasonable person (any idiot, really) should understand that loss of business would be a concern. Perhaps that is a matter that would be well addressed by civil courts, and not solely as a criminal matter?
Actually... they lined their hats with lead, not mercury. But I'm sure it would have had the same effect.
The felt used in Victorian-era hats was treated with mercury salts to make it easier with which to work. Whether this is the actual origin of the phrase "mad as a hatter" is debated, but it was definitely mercury compounds that caused hatters' neurological problems.
The aesthetics aren't bad, and the concept is solid. It'll be interesting to see if this catches on. I kind of doubt it.
Well, that's pessimistic. "It's good, but nobody will buy it."
If the airflow is as good as they claim, then that's excellent. I've had a number of problems over the years with poor cooling, and I'm certainly not a hardcore gamer or 3D renderer.
Easy access to everything in the case is also a big plus. It just looks so elegant. No more fumbling with lots of little screws and trying to get Tab A into Slot B reassembling my case.
There are a few potential problems: the manufacture of this case will be more costly--it's not just a box. So bargain hunters won't buy it. The shape of the case won't fit into a narrow slot that some desks leave; it wouldn't be a problem at my desk, but I can see trouble in cramped environments. Aesthetically, the shape is novel, but I don't know if it's as attractive as the poster makes out. Finally, are drive cables long enough to reach all the drive bays, or are we limited to technologies that permit longer cable runs (serial ATA, for example)?
My sis used to get comments like "Geez, you're smart for a girl" at least once a semester -- that's a pretty shitty thing to say; if you think it's a compliment, it's not.
The correct response is, "Geez, you're pretty dumb, even for a guy."
Seriously, what are these guys thinking? There's only three girls in their entire CS class, and they've already alienated one of them. Because of them, I'm embarrassed on behalf of my entire gender.
For the record, my mother got her CS degree more than twenty-five years ago. That would be before many of you/.ers were born. Scary, eh?
The first actual (recorded) "bug" found caught in the relays of a computer system was found in 1947, however the term appears to predate that time--possibly back to the telegraph era.
There's an excellent etymology--or should that be entomology?--in the Jargon File.
The degree of involvement of Lady Ada Lovelace in developing algorithms for Babbage's computing engines has been hotly debated by historians in recent years.
There's a fairly balanced story here if you're interested. (It was the first one I found on Google. It contains links to a number of potentially useful primary sources.) Enjoy.
The problem...is that most women simply aren't intersted in IT. It's pretty obvious to me. How many of you found it beneficial to expound on the virtues of open source software or the beauty of TCP/IP structure during a date? Probably not many.
I don't know if the implications of that statement with regard to IT are entirely fair. I know a number of girls who would be interested in such a conversation--many of whom are in CS. (My work at the moment involves both theoretical/computational and experimental chemistry.) Then again, there are a lot of people--male and female--who would be bored to tears.
At my university, the biochemistry program is mostly female, by a generous margin. I gather that this is typical of most schools now. But if I were to talk about messenger RNA, antisense inhibitors, or DNA polymerase with an arbitrary woman I pulled off the street, I'd get some pretty blank looks. (I would also expect blank looks from men selected in a similar manner.)
Nursing programs are almost entirely female. Do the latest techniques in Foley catheter insertion make good dinner conversation with someone who isn't in the health sciences?
Guess what--people who only talk about their work when out on dates are generally pretty boring, no matter what they do for a living. To say that most women aren't interested in hardcore IT is true...but then, most men aren't either.
This is easier to answer than you might expect. When you have a rock hit the surface of the moon at a relative velocity of many kilometers per second, a good bit of the asteroid's kinetic energy gets converted very rapidly into heat. We're talking about energies on the order of hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT here. For a short period of time, part of the surface and some of the ejected matter will glow white hot, hence the 'flash'.
Well, on a Russian ship it would be "Welcome to my ship. Isn't he splendid?" as the Russian navy refers to ships in the masculine, as opposed to the feminine in the US navy.
Yes, but on a Russian ship it is also traditional to speak Russian. Yes, literal translation of the words spoken does assign the masculine pronoun--but it is still not classical English usage.
To be fair, English is a rapidly growing and evolving language. Usage changes. 'Access' used to be a noun. Then, it became a verb as well. Now, it's an annoying piece of software. Still, I'm not going to advocate changes to the language because people are too lazy to learn the correct use of a pronoun and too caught up in a wave of warm-fuzzy political correctness to care.
Slashdot Mirror
But a pound of just about any fat contains the same number of calories. We could just send along 130 pounds of butter, margarine, shortening, and oil for each astronaut.
Since when were people in the U.S. known for being polite and nonconfrontational?
Now, I will sit and wait for flames...
They tend to better resist colds and the flue because all the weak ones were killed by this treatment a long time ago.
Each of the two Keck telescopes cost about $94 million U.S. to construct. If we amortize that over twenty years, that's five million per year, $14,000 per day, or nearly six hundred dollars per hour. You'll settle for one Keck, right?
And that's just your sticker price. Actually operating the damn thing requires a lot of money. This site gives a figure of about a dollar per second--that's about four thousand dollars an hour. It's not cheap to haul astronomers, mirror bits, refrigeration units, and everything else up a mountain, you know.
Oh, and if it's cloudy while you're up there, too bad. You can apply for more time now, but your request likely won't be granted for another year or so. Not that the group responsible for adminstering the Kecks would let you play with their toy anyway. There are real scientific projects that already suck up all the available observing time--and many more waiting in the wings that would kill for some. Do you think that CERN would let you mess around with their collider?
Your best bet for getting to play with mid-scale scientific toys (linear accelerators, van de Graff generators, telescopes in the three meter class, and so forth) would be to befriend someone at a university owning such facilities. Once you know the right people, you can get in for free.
Applying for work is a full-time job of its own, with its own unique required skills set, suited to a set of aptitudes that are probably quite different from the ones that you're hoping to capitalize on.
To do this job correctly, you need to work on your marketing. Practice your public speaking. Practice interview technique with friends. Network. (With people, not just computers.) Learn a little bit--then learn a lot--about layout and design. Make damn well sure your resume is two pages or less. Use bullets. Use sufficient whitespace. Keep up your skills by reading, taking courses, or volunteering to admin for local charities. Pray.
Remember--you're no longer doing just IT. It's sometimes frustrating, maybe even galling to admit it, but now you're in advertising, too.
My parents bought a new Nissan Sentra a couple of years ago. They tried having a local locksmith cut a copy of their keys, but no dice. I suppose there are theft prevention arguments, but to get an extra set of keys, you have to show up in person at the dealership with cash in hand. I was visiting my parents shortly after they bought the car, and my father called ahead to the dealership, asking for new keys--he sent me down to pick them up. Despite having an original set of keys, the same surname as the car's registered owner, and the actual vehicle in my possession they refused to hand over the new keys to me, since I wasn't the owner of record.
I really hope that Nissan never starts pressing CDs.
At least they're on solid financial ground--my parents wouldn't be able to get new car keys cut if the company went under. So your door lock scenario is not a scary vision of the future. It's here today.
If someone decides to "hide" some options down a scroll list, or maybe on a back page, it is still your responsibility to see if there is more, before signing it.
Actually, such a contract is not legally binding. At best, a civil court would attempt to return both parties to a state as close as possible to that which existed before the contract was signed, because no 'meeting of the minds' existed and thus no real contract. (IANAL, but this is stuff that is covered in high school law classes.)
If there was evidence of a deliberate attempt to deceive on the part of one party, then there would likely be (potentially hefty) damages awarded.
If someone presents you with an apparently complete contract with text and a signature line on the front, then hides extra clauses in fine print on the back, that would probably be held to be deceptive. Many jurisdictions place legal limits on minimum text size in contracts. There is also quite a body of common law built up regarding these types of practices in meatspace.
I could take it to the symphony so that receiving important messages ("Your wife is in labour" or "A kidney donor has been found" or "The server melted down and we're losing $6000 per minute and the other admin is in a coma") can get through without annoying people around me. Your phone/pager/SMS device is set to vibrate (at most) when you receive a call, right? Less important messages ("Honey, can you pick up some milk on your way home") can be safely filed for future reference. No furtive and very annoying (to those around you) conversations, no cryptic number on a little tiny pager display.
I can take it to the pub and not have to find a quiet place to hear messages. I have on more than one occasion been unable to receive an ordinary call because of ambient noise. SMS might have been very helpful.
I can always leave my phone at home if I don't want to be disturbed--I'm not dumb enough to have given my boss the number.
Cool--it's like a library card for food!
Actually, the first time I read the post, I missed the phrase "barcoded ID card"--I wondered whether you had to have someone hold the homeless folks down while you tattooed them with a barcode, or if you just slipped a tranquilizer into their soup.
Try searching for Yahoo -"George W Bush" and watch the number of hits plummet.
The original post looks at the new solid fuel more from an environmental standpoint. In that respect, reusable boosters with an environmentally friendly fuel are good because you're not throwing away all that shell material on each launch. Also, my point was that solid rockets are easier to operate and maintain than liquid-fuelled ones, and making them less environmentally noxious is a Good Thing. They have different applications, and I imagine that both technologies will have a place as long as we're putting stuff is space by pushing reaction mass around. Lastly, I certainly don't dispute that the Shuttle is costly to operate.
At the begining of the Shuttle program Nasa did everything that they could do make sure that the Saturn V's would never be built again, they destroyed all of the blueprints and attempted to destroy all of the equipment used to make them.
This is a popular urban legend. The Saturn V blueprints still exist stored on microfilm at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Rocketdyne still has significant documentation describing the F-1 (first stage) and J-2 (second and third stage) engines. The national archives also contain significant documentation on almost all NASA projects--including Saturn V. Although much of the equipment used to build Saturn has been lost or dismantled, it's not really surprising--the last Saturn V flight was what, nearly thirty years ago? Do we expect IBM to still have the hardware on hand to build an S/370 machine whenever we want one? Yes, the launch facilities for the Saturn V were dismantled or repurposed. NASA had to launch the Shuttle from somewhere, and the Saturn V program was coming to a close.
For what it's worth, I agree with you on the ISS. It would make more sense to update the Saturn V design--use modern materials where appropriate, and certainly new avionics--to do heavy lifting for the ISS. Unfortunately, such an option seems politically untenable at the moment, and there really aren't any other major projects happening right now that demand such lift capacity. (A Mars mission would be neat--but who's going to fund it?)
Well, the first stage, at any rate. The second and third stage engines were hydrogen fuelled. (Liquid oxygen served as oxidizer for all three stages.) Granted; both fuels are significantly friendlier to the environment than the solid fuels used aboard the Shuttle.
The thing about the Saturn V is that it wasn't reusable. It had great payload capacity to earth orbit, but you had to throw away twenty or thirty storeys of rocket parts to put stuff up there. With the Shuttle, the solid rocket booster shells are recovered, inspected, reassembled, and refuelled.
Probably the most important consideration: liquid fuels are finicky--you need pumps, valves, and cryogenics. Solid fuel doesn't slosh. Solid rocket boosters are easy to use. Still rocket science, but simpler, more reliable, cheaper rocket science. Kudos to NASA for improving their technology while considering the environment.
Oh.
Ew.
Sure I'd buy something there--after I had some reassurance that my credit card numbers and personal information weren't as weakly protected as the rest of the web site. "Graffiti" on a web site isn't quite like graffiti in real life. Web graffiti requires sloppy security on the part of the web site owner. Although it is only petty vandalism, it also does point up a lack of security.
To be fair, if it is a reputable retailer that was a victim of a deliberate and sophisticated attack, I can accept that. In real life, if my safe deposit box at the bank is emptied by crooks, I have to ask: did someone forget to lock the safe last night, or did the thieves--all armed with Uzis--blow the safe with shaped explosive charges? Two very different cases. I'd like to think that I'd evaluate the defacement of a web site the same way.
Of course I understand your point--for the length of time that the web site remains vandalized, there will probably be no retail sales. The punishment of the offender should reflect that reality, as a reasonable person (any idiot, really) should understand that loss of business would be a concern. Perhaps that is a matter that would be well addressed by civil courts, and not solely as a criminal matter?
Oh really?
The felt used in Victorian-era hats was treated with mercury salts to make it easier with which to work. Whether this is the actual origin of the phrase "mad as a hatter" is debated, but it was definitely mercury compounds that caused hatters' neurological problems.
Well, that's pessimistic. "It's good, but nobody will buy it."
If the airflow is as good as they claim, then that's excellent. I've had a number of problems over the years with poor cooling, and I'm certainly not a hardcore gamer or 3D renderer.
Easy access to everything in the case is also a big plus. It just looks so elegant. No more fumbling with lots of little screws and trying to get Tab A into Slot B reassembling my case.
There are a few potential problems: the manufacture of this case will be more costly--it's not just a box. So bargain hunters won't buy it. The shape of the case won't fit into a narrow slot that some desks leave; it wouldn't be a problem at my desk, but I can see trouble in cramped environments. Aesthetically, the shape is novel, but I don't know if it's as attractive as the poster makes out. Finally, are drive cables long enough to reach all the drive bays, or are we limited to technologies that permit longer cable runs (serial ATA, for example)?
My two cents.
So women use gcc?
The correct response is, "Geez, you're pretty dumb, even for a guy."
Seriously, what are these guys thinking? There's only three girls in their entire CS class, and they've already alienated one of them. Because of them, I'm embarrassed on behalf of my entire gender.
For the record, my mother got her CS degree more than twenty-five years ago. That would be before many of you /.ers were born. Scary, eh?
There's an excellent etymology--or should that be entomology?--in the Jargon File.
There's a fairly balanced story here if you're interested. (It was the first one I found on Google. It contains links to a number of potentially useful primary sources.) Enjoy.
I don't know if the implications of that statement with regard to IT are entirely fair. I know a number of girls who would be interested in such a conversation--many of whom are in CS. (My work at the moment involves both theoretical/computational and experimental chemistry.) Then again, there are a lot of people--male and female--who would be bored to tears.
At my university, the biochemistry program is mostly female, by a generous margin. I gather that this is typical of most schools now. But if I were to talk about messenger RNA, antisense inhibitors, or DNA polymerase with an arbitrary woman I pulled off the street, I'd get some pretty blank looks. (I would also expect blank looks from men selected in a similar manner.)
Nursing programs are almost entirely female. Do the latest techniques in Foley catheter insertion make good dinner conversation with someone who isn't in the health sciences?
Guess what--people who only talk about their work when out on dates are generally pretty boring, no matter what they do for a living. To say that most women aren't interested in hardcore IT is true...but then, most men aren't either.
Right, because UK newspapers are renowned the world over for their not-at-all-sensational nature.
This is easier to answer than you might expect. When you have a rock hit the surface of the moon at a relative velocity of many kilometers per second, a good bit of the asteroid's kinetic energy gets converted very rapidly into heat. We're talking about energies on the order of hundreds of thousands of tons of TNT here. For a short period of time, part of the surface and some of the ejected matter will glow white hot, hence the 'flash'.
Yes, but on a Russian ship it is also traditional to speak Russian. Yes, literal translation of the words spoken does assign the masculine pronoun--but it is still not classical English usage.
To be fair, English is a rapidly growing and evolving language. Usage changes. 'Access' used to be a noun. Then, it became a verb as well. Now, it's an annoying piece of software. Still, I'm not going to advocate changes to the language because people are too lazy to learn the correct use of a pronoun and too caught up in a wave of warm-fuzzy political correctness to care.