Finding a job is your first practical experience. Finding a job is the most important project which will repeat throughour your career:) I am a Perl programmer, and I get most of my jobs through Perl Mongers, directly or indirectly. Build up your personal coding experience, and build up your reputation in the local groups for your programming language. Also, when in doubt take an internship. Working for $10 an hour as a programmer keeps the lights on and ramen on the table, and builds up lots of resume fodder.
Was quoting the article which simply used the term supercritical. Looks like they used the same wording as a NASA article, linked on the wikipedia page. Yes, it was prompt supercritical or prompt critical. Prompt simply means quickly, and looks like supercritical in an atomic context means growing in reaction. They are simply saying the reaction grew, as opposed to saying it grew explosively, which are both true statements. Why they chose supercritical, I don't know.... Parhaps the author was attempting to be reserved. Looks like both are correct.
From the NASA report: The SL-1 reactor accident was initiated by the withdrawal
of its central control rod to a level of approximately 20
inches in the space of 0.5 seconds. Starting from a fully
shutdown condition, the action produced a condition in
the core technically known as a "prompt criticality," also
known as a supercritical state without the contribution of
delayed neutrons emitted after fission has occurred.
Thanks for the feedback though, would be interested in hearing your opinion on the Starfish Prime experiment.
Because one of the test teams died miserable deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 . They found one engineer pinned to the roof several days later.... "The third man was not discovered for several days because he was pinned to the ceiling above the reactor by a control rod. On 9 January, in relays of two at a time, a team of eight men, allowed no more than 65 seconds exposure each, used a net and crane arrangement to recover his body.
The bodies of all three were buried in lead-lined caskets sealed with concrete and placed in metal vaults with a concrete cover. All had major physical injuries, including severed limbs and fragments of the fuel assembly in their wounds. Richard Leroy McKinley is buried in section 31 of Arlington National Cemetery."
The radiation levels were too high for the rescue teams to get near the reactor and figure out what happened. After they recovered one body, they use the radation levels of his body and the rare isotopes they found on his possessions (Gold 198 anyone?) to prove the reactor had gone super critical.
Much nuclear space research was put on hold after the effects of the Starfish Prime experiment were understood.
Pitty their website doesn't work with Firefox 1.5 in Linux, I can't choose options such as OS. Doubt this qualifies as being slashdotted. Dell, we love you guys, but first things first....
Does it have motion sensing like an iPhone? Could you reboot the thing by shaking it up and down like an etchasketch? How about drawing by moving the thing around? Now, just because somebody has one of these things in a lab somewhere doesn't mean it's a realistic product. Lots of strange things hiding in labs in this world.
By saying they are about to support the XO system, they create doubt about the current XO system and limit supporters. Enough people will wait to see what Microsoft will do, that even if Microsoft doesn't do anything, the support for the Linux XO system will be limited. This is similar to what Microsoft did to Novell Directory Server and other systems. If Microsoft was genuinely interested on a computer on every desk, they would have put out their own XO system a decade ago and would be supporting the current XO project. No, they are interested solely in control.
Yes! Just what we need, voting that is dependent on the level of infrastructure you pay to support, causes brain cancer, lowers your sperm count and your IQ! As if the conspiracy theorists don't have enough to talk about already. So, do people with cheap unreliable cell phones petition to have government provided cell phones in order to ensure the reliability of their voting? Or, how about petitioning that the radio towers in their region aren't reliable so therefore the vote was flawed and biased against them? So, could people who don't think a region would vote the way they do put up radio interference to prevent voting in that area? Closed source voting machines are nothing in comparison to closed hardware voting machines. Or, your five year old gets a-hold of your cell-phone for you and votes for Barney. After hurricanes, would people not be able to vote? People getting a-hold of the numbers around the voting numbers and phishing them. Is it just me, or is this just yet another voting method which is biased to rich, consistent, and forward thinking people? A voting method which kills you in the process, lovely.
This is remarkable because this is only the second craft I know of that Armadillo has lost. They've blown gaskets, blown many engines, done hundreds of engine fire tests, but only lost two craft. The built two of this type of craft just in case they lost one. How many craft are lost normally? These guys are doing great and I'm looking forward to watching a launch some day. Also significant because nobody died. This is a learning experience. There's an old hardware saying, the amount of knowledge gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed. If you haven't been out to their website, http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/, it's great. Lots of videos and pictures and descriptions.
This sounds like a metaphysical question. How do you back up a telephone? Or, what would the backup procedure be if the website is responding? How many Slashdoters can dance on port 80 of a webserver?
I know! Forced bluetooth backups in the restroom! Put bluetooth readers by every toilet/urinal/sink (get it?) so when people visit the restroom their phones get backed up. Just don't ask me how they'd do a restore.... As a security measure, only allow the bluetooth to be activated when their pants are down.
Seriously though, backing up smartphones is annoying. Took me two years to get to the point I could reliably backup my Treo on Fedora 4. Would love to sort out a way that my Treo can back itself up via SCP to my home computer every X days over the cellular network....
It can't be cracked by a ten year old. We have it in writing now! Quick, look for 9 year old Math PHDs.... All it takes is a hammer and that Blue Ray Disk is cracked up... Seriously though, there's nothing about that piece of plastic which means we can't figure out how it works. Taunting people like this just speeds up the process. Weren't these the same people who used a DRM scheme which crashed MACs and could be defeated by a sharpie?
I wouldn't recommend it. The one in Dallas has a security guard. Never seen a security guard at a 7/11 before. Must be some secret-plan Kwik-E-Mart security guard who was in some simpson's episode I never saw. One where they killed people and you learned what the hot dogs really are made of....
This is a redundant and old story. Last updated date from the article: 6 July, 2004 , almost three years old. Everyone should be aware of this science, but I would hope others have spent time trying to reproduce the data and find other ways to measure solar activity. Solar activity in general is undermeasured in the global warming/climate change debate, if only because of the difficulty of measuring the sun as a whole.
Good thing no one was hurt! Would hate to think that someone was once again killed by theoretical physics and bad calculus. Please tell me this wasn't another traditional to metric conversion problem.... What's with runnimg from the cloud of Helium, were they scared of sounding funny while describing on TV what the explosion sounded like? Would be funny to hear the chipmunks describing an accident at the nuclear/quantum research facility. I know I know, nothing quite like a cloud of radiactive, potentially cryogenic or super-heated to scare the living daylight out of you.
The problem isn't power point. The problem is trying to cram too much into presentations. Using power point is a little like using pie charts, which are also considered bad for communicating data. If you make more than three points, or if you are communicating sincerely new data, you can not use power point or pie charts for presentations. Power point should be considered either a publishing format, so that your attendees have your notes afterwards. Or, only be used for communicating a minimum set of data to people who already understand part of the data. Using 50 page powerpoint presentations, or 50 slices in a pie chart makes for non-communication.
A certain amount of this is bad presentation skills, going through the pages too fast or reading from a script.
However, if you are communicating a concrete set of data to people who do really understand part of the data, pie charts and presentation software are great. But, keep it limited to three points in each. Powerpoint itself is just a symptom of a larger problem. I've written my own presentation program, in about 100 lines of Perl. Not that big of a deal, but has to be used correctly. For example, spedometers could be considered a type of pie chart, and I know of no one arguing their efficiency. The best presenter I hear of, only had one slide.
One could presume that exercise grows new cells to replace cells damaged by the motion. Therefore, beating your head against a wall would contribute to the growth of new cells as well. Which would explain why I beat my head against a wall so often! Beating your head against a wall is not only a stress reducer, it's fun, it also contributes to your overall....wait. What were we talking about again?
When probes starting flying by Mars in the seventies Mars was undergoing a global dust storm. This would have had the effect of a nuclear winter and cooled the entire planet, allowing the ice caps to grow. Our initial point of reference is immediately after this period before Mars completely recovered. The fact that the ice caps have receded and the planet has warmed up since then is unsurprising.
We are only touching the surface of martian and earth weather. Adding multi-month and possible several year long global dust storms to the mix makes predictions much much harder. Scientists can't even adequately explain why Venus and Mars are so acidic. Which probably has the simple explanation that a lack of an effective magnetic shield has allowed solar wind to strip away surface and atmosphere hydrogen...
Now, granted, I normally argue on the side of people disproving greenhouse gas induced climate change, but arguing with Mars as a counter point is old news. We need to find an effective way to track the thermal output of the sun over long periods of time. We only have anecdotal evidence and unproven simulations on either side of the argument. Right now we are running a fever without having an appropriate solar thermometer or even long term precise records of Earth(millions of years).
Just hire Tom Hanks to jump into it. If that doesn't work, at least we'll be rid of Tom Hanks and have a great new You Tube Video!.
Seriously though, by adding these concrete balls, isn't that like putting shot into a black powder gun? The reason this is happening is to release pressure. Backing up the volcano and building up more pressure can't be a good thing. Especially with such conveniently sized plugs... I can just imagine the first report of someone being killed by man-made volcano debris.
OK, so people are willing to pay $20 Million to participate in one flight, and the Russians are having problems getting people to participate for free/for small pay? The problem is probably not lack of interest. There's something else going on here.... They could be being too selective, they could not really be accepting anyone into the program, maybe the problem is they only take Russian's and ex-Soviet's. Then again, maybe a lot of people can't deal with leaving their fate for 10 years left up to a bureaucracy and then still stand an unlikely chance of accomplishing anything.
Sorry, that's a new one. Gootube? Is that the time machine the Gooback's came through in that one Southpark episode? Are there Goodita's involved? Is Google becomming so powerful that we need to start studying Goospeak? Are we going to need to start calling it Goo/Linux? If Google wins, can we call him Mark Gooban? Mark, you goo baby!
Slashdot doesn't work on mobile phones either. On my normally web-capable Treo-650, Slashdot comes across as one long, vertical, unreadable string of text in the middle of the screen. Even when I turn off images I can not read slashdot. This is new Slashdot only, old Slashdot worked fine. Wonder what the Slashdot admins are trying to say by saying that Web 2.0 doesn't work doesn't work on mobile phones? The Treo 650 brower I have is called Blazer v4.0 . I can ~jimmy~ the loading by stopping the xfer after about 100k, then it's nearly readable.
Slashdot Mirror
Finding a job is your first practical experience. Finding a job is the most important project which will repeat throughour your career :) I am a Perl programmer, and I get most of my jobs through Perl Mongers, directly or indirectly. Build up your personal coding experience, and build up your reputation in the local groups for your programming language. Also, when in doubt take an internship. Working for $10 an hour as a programmer keeps the lights on and ramen on the table, and builds up lots of resume fodder.
Here's a picture of one of the apollo abort tests: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Pad_abort_test_1.jpg . The wiki has a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pad_Abort_Test-1_%28Apollo%29
OK, which spacecraft do you consider beautiful? Most are more functional than aesthetically pleasing.
For those that havn't seen pictures, Ulysses is one of the most beautiful spacecraft ever built. Some future archeologist will love getting this for their museum: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/68/Ulysses_spacecraft.jpg
Covered mostly in gold and other types of metals, the craft looks more like something out of a movie than a real craft.Was quoting the article which simply used the term supercritical. Looks like they used the same wording as a NASA article, linked on the wikipedia page. Yes, it was prompt supercritical or prompt critical. Prompt simply means quickly, and looks like supercritical in an atomic context means growing in reaction. They are simply saying the reaction grew, as opposed to saying it grew explosively, which are both true statements. Why they chose supercritical, I don't know.... Parhaps the author was attempting to be reserved. Looks like both are correct.
From the NASA report: The SL-1 reactor accident was initiated by the withdrawal of its central control rod to a level of approximately 20 inches in the space of 0.5 seconds. Starting from a fully shutdown condition, the action produced a condition in the core technically known as a "prompt criticality," also known as a supercritical state without the contribution of delayed neutrons emitted after fission has occurred.
Thanks for the feedback though, would be interested in hearing your opinion on the Starfish Prime experiment.
Because one of the test teams died miserable deaths: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1 . They found one engineer pinned to the roof several days later.... "The third man was not discovered for several days because he was pinned to the ceiling above the reactor by a control rod. On 9 January, in relays of two at a time, a team of eight men, allowed no more than 65 seconds exposure each, used a net and crane arrangement to recover his body.
The bodies of all three were buried in lead-lined caskets sealed with concrete and placed in metal vaults with a concrete cover. All had major physical injuries, including severed limbs and fragments of the fuel assembly in their wounds. Richard Leroy McKinley is buried in section 31 of Arlington National Cemetery."
The radiation levels were too high for the rescue teams to get near the reactor and figure out what happened. After they recovered one body, they use the radation levels of his body and the rare isotopes they found on his possessions (Gold 198 anyone?) to prove the reactor had gone super critical.
Much nuclear space research was put on hold after the effects of the Starfish Prime experiment were understood.
Pitty their website doesn't work with Firefox 1.5 in Linux, I can't choose options such as OS. Doubt this qualifies as being slashdotted. Dell, we love you guys, but first things first....
Does it have motion sensing like an iPhone? Could you reboot the thing by shaking it up and down like an etchasketch? How about drawing by moving the thing around? Now, just because somebody has one of these things in a lab somewhere doesn't mean it's a realistic product. Lots of strange things hiding in labs in this world.
By saying they are about to support the XO system, they create doubt about the current XO system and limit supporters. Enough people will wait to see what Microsoft will do, that even if Microsoft doesn't do anything, the support for the Linux XO system will be limited. This is similar to what Microsoft did to Novell Directory Server and other systems. If Microsoft was genuinely interested on a computer on every desk, they would have put out their own XO system a decade ago and would be supporting the current XO project. No, they are interested solely in control.
Yes! Just what we need, voting that is dependent on the level of infrastructure you pay to support, causes brain cancer, lowers your sperm count and your IQ! As if the conspiracy theorists don't have enough to talk about already. So, do people with cheap unreliable cell phones petition to have government provided cell phones in order to ensure the reliability of their voting? Or, how about petitioning that the radio towers in their region aren't reliable so therefore the vote was flawed and biased against them? So, could people who don't think a region would vote the way they do put up radio interference to prevent voting in that area? Closed source voting machines are nothing in comparison to closed hardware voting machines. Or, your five year old gets a-hold of your cell-phone for you and votes for Barney. After hurricanes, would people not be able to vote? People getting a-hold of the numbers around the voting numbers and phishing them. Is it just me, or is this just yet another voting method which is biased to rich, consistent, and forward thinking people? A voting method which kills you in the process, lovely.
This is remarkable because this is only the second craft I know of that Armadillo has lost. They've blown gaskets, blown many engines, done hundreds of engine fire tests, but only lost two craft. The built two of this type of craft just in case they lost one. How many craft are lost normally? These guys are doing great and I'm looking forward to watching a launch some day. Also significant because nobody died. This is a learning experience. There's an old hardware saying, the amount of knowledge gained is directly proportional to the amount of equipment destroyed. If you haven't been out to their website, http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/, it's great. Lots of videos and pictures and descriptions.
This sounds like a metaphysical question. How do you back up a telephone? Or, what would the backup procedure be if the website is responding? How many Slashdoters can dance on port 80 of a webserver?
I know! Forced bluetooth backups in the restroom! Put bluetooth readers by every toilet/urinal/sink (get it?) so when people visit the restroom their phones get backed up. Just don't ask me how they'd do a restore.... As a security measure, only allow the bluetooth to be activated when their pants are down.
Seriously though, backing up smartphones is annoying. Took me two years to get to the point I could reliably backup my Treo on Fedora 4. Would love to sort out a way that my Treo can back itself up via SCP to my home computer every X days over the cellular network....
It can't be cracked by a ten year old. We have it in writing now! Quick, look for 9 year old Math PHDs.... All it takes is a hammer and that Blue Ray Disk is cracked up... Seriously though, there's nothing about that piece of plastic which means we can't figure out how it works. Taunting people like this just speeds up the process. Weren't these the same people who used a DRM scheme which crashed MACs and could be defeated by a sharpie?
I wouldn't recommend it. The one in Dallas has a security guard. Never seen a security guard at a 7/11 before. Must be some secret-plan Kwik-E-Mart security guard who was in some simpson's episode I never saw. One where they killed people and you learned what the hot dogs really are made of....
Makes you understand why William Shatner refused a free flight on the maiden voyage of a Space Ship Two :) These guys jinxed themselves...
You have to view it at an angle like a laser. Then everything becomes bars. View it from a triangle and everything becomes even better.
This is a redundant and old story. Last updated date from the article: 6 July, 2004 , almost three years old. Everyone should be aware of this science, but I would hope others have spent time trying to reproduce the data and find other ways to measure solar activity. Solar activity in general is undermeasured in the global warming/climate change debate, if only because of the difficulty of measuring the sun as a whole.
Good thing no one was hurt! Would hate to think that someone was once again killed by theoretical physics and bad calculus. Please tell me this wasn't another traditional to metric conversion problem.... What's with runnimg from the cloud of Helium, were they scared of sounding funny while describing on TV what the explosion sounded like? Would be funny to hear the chipmunks describing an accident at the nuclear/quantum research facility. I know I know, nothing quite like a cloud of radiactive, potentially cryogenic or super-heated to scare the living daylight out of you.
The problem isn't power point. The problem is trying to cram too much into presentations. Using power point is a little like using pie charts, which are also considered bad for communicating data. If you make more than three points, or if you are communicating sincerely new data, you can not use power point or pie charts for presentations. Power point should be considered either a publishing format, so that your attendees have your notes afterwards. Or, only be used for communicating a minimum set of data to people who already understand part of the data. Using 50 page powerpoint presentations, or 50 slices in a pie chart makes for non-communication.
A certain amount of this is bad presentation skills, going through the pages too fast or reading from a script.
However, if you are communicating a concrete set of data to people who do really understand part of the data, pie charts and presentation software are great. But, keep it limited to three points in each. Powerpoint itself is just a symptom of a larger problem. I've written my own presentation program, in about 100 lines of Perl. Not that big of a deal, but has to be used correctly. For example, spedometers could be considered a type of pie chart, and I know of no one arguing their efficiency. The best presenter I hear of, only had one slide.
One could presume that exercise grows new cells to replace cells damaged by the motion. Therefore, beating your head against a wall would contribute to the growth of new cells as well. Which would explain why I beat my head against a wall so often! Beating your head against a wall is not only a stress reducer, it's fun, it also contributes to your overall....wait. What were we talking about again?
When probes starting flying by Mars in the seventies Mars was undergoing a global dust storm. This would have had the effect of a nuclear winter and cooled the entire planet, allowing the ice caps to grow. Our initial point of reference is immediately after this period before Mars completely recovered. The fact that the ice caps have receded and the planet has warmed up since then is unsurprising.
We are only touching the surface of martian and earth weather. Adding multi-month and possible several year long global dust storms to the mix makes predictions much much harder. Scientists can't even adequately explain why Venus and Mars are so acidic. Which probably has the simple explanation that a lack of an effective magnetic shield has allowed solar wind to strip away surface and atmosphere hydrogen...
Now, granted, I normally argue on the side of people disproving greenhouse gas induced climate change, but arguing with Mars as a counter point is old news. We need to find an effective way to track the thermal output of the sun over long periods of time. We only have anecdotal evidence and unproven simulations on either side of the argument. Right now we are running a fever without having an appropriate solar thermometer or even long term precise records of Earth(millions of years).
Just hire Tom Hanks to jump into it. If that doesn't work, at least we'll be rid of Tom Hanks and have a great new You Tube Video!.
Seriously though, by adding these concrete balls, isn't that like putting shot into a black powder gun? The reason this is happening is to release pressure. Backing up the volcano and building up more pressure can't be a good thing. Especially with such conveniently sized plugs... I can just imagine the first report of someone being killed by man-made volcano debris.
OK, so people are willing to pay $20 Million to participate in one flight, and the Russians are having problems getting people to participate for free/for small pay? The problem is probably not lack of interest. There's something else going on here.... They could be being too selective, they could not really be accepting anyone into the program, maybe the problem is they only take Russian's and ex-Soviet's. Then again, maybe a lot of people can't deal with leaving their fate for 10 years left up to a bureaucracy and then still stand an unlikely chance of accomplishing anything.
Sorry, that's a new one. Gootube? Is that the time machine the Gooback's came through in that one Southpark episode? Are there Goodita's involved? Is Google becomming so powerful that we need to start studying Goospeak? Are we going to need to start calling it Goo/Linux? If Google wins, can we call him Mark Gooban? Mark, you goo baby!
Slashdot doesn't work on mobile phones either. On my normally web-capable Treo-650, Slashdot comes across as one long, vertical, unreadable string of text in the middle of the screen. Even when I turn off images I can not read slashdot. This is new Slashdot only, old Slashdot worked fine. Wonder what the Slashdot admins are trying to say by saying that Web 2.0 doesn't work doesn't work on mobile phones? The Treo 650 brower I have is called Blazer v4.0 . I can ~jimmy~ the loading by stopping the xfer after about 100k, then it's nearly readable.