CES allows or at least turns a blind eye to vendors who have rented space on the floor and also show products in their suites, or there might be restrictions on when the suites are used, etc.
The hotel staff who told the vendors who did not have floor space, that here were no restrictions probably did not know the hotels had a contractual agreement with CES, specifically not to allow suites to be used by vendors who did not have floor space.
There's a simple reason for this. CES spends a lot of money to rent facilities, guarantee occupancy and advertise the event. Some portion of the fee$ paid by the vendors who rent floor space goes to this.
The vendors who don't rent floor space are capitalizing on the attendees, who are their because of the efforts of CES and those vendors who rented floor space. Before anyone makes the analogy - this is NOT akin to filesharing or the alledged piracy of music or video. This is more akin to pirating someones' signal and replacing their content with your own.
The suite only vendors are not only not paying CES for their services, they are reducing the amount of face time for the vendors who are paying for those services. If they make a sale - it really is potentially at the cost of someone else who paid to show at the conference.
The agreements with the hotels are CES' insurance that attendees only view the wares of those who have paid to be at the conference, for the duration of the conference. It costs them money (or occupancy guarantees/penalties) to get those agreements..
It's not uncommon for large organizations to require access to code, have a third party audit it, or require some form of liability insurance from the vendor when closed source code is purchased. There's also the not very reliable, and very dangerous, assumption that vendors have already vetted the code against malicious/non-secure code.
For open source code - there's no-one accountable vouching for the code or offering insurance - so organizations are forced to audit the code Plus there's the usually wrong, overly paranoid but safer assumption that the code might well harbor something malicious/non-secure.
1. Not a cult classic 2. Not overly popular 3. Not a new release. 4. Popular in only certain regions. 5. Not recently nominated for an award. 6. Not starring or featuring someone recently in the news, newly popular or deceased.
If any of the above are true, the sample for a given timeframe could be skewed and the student data would not be significantly large enough to be seen. If there was particular demographic information available that would allow the "regular" population to be filtered out - you might be able to spot the students - which might itself be useless if a significant number of the students use a parent's or partner's credit card. .
Actually the film student model would not necessarily create a cluster. The student might be taking a class via a distance, on-line or weekend program, and the school may not be local. The other students could be scattered over a large area, even distributed across the country.
As a native of NY (and a past resident of Missouri) I'm always amazed at how everyone thinks the entire state has the population density of NYC, Westchester or LI. Most of the population lives in less than 1/3 of the land area, and a good portion of the rest is clustered along the Thruways. Most of NY has population densities closer to the great plains or the west. And it may not be the Rockies, but it's not flat. Getting cable, DSL or fiber in some parts of the state is either next to impossible for fiendishly expensive, unless you're lucky enough to have a neighbor who paid for extending the trunk into your area.
As far as European population densities, most Americans do seem to think that the whole continent is like London, Paris or Frankfurt. I lived in Germany for 2 years and traveled extensively - there are lots of relatively unpopulated areas, and a lot of terrain that would pose challenges to power and comm networks, even in some of the most densely populated areas. So the usual arguments don't not hold up.
I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to take the "green" trend and apply it to something not at all meant for the label. Oil is organic in the same way uranium is organic. Yes, technically they both come from the natural world, but they hardly match the renewable/healthy/eco-friendly definition that the term organic has come to mean today. If PR folks keep following this logic, we'll soon be seeing ads for 90% organic cars and other such nonsense.
Uranium is a metallic element, mined as a mineral - and not organic in any sense of the word.
Oil, or petroleum is decomposed plant and animal matter, organic sources and still organic in nature. The subject of the chemistry of polymers and oil based substances (as well material sourced from anything that was once alive) is Organic Chemistry.
Organic in chemistry generally refers to anything that is or was alive. In other subjects, organic is used to describe things that are natural and not "manufactured".
The commercial term Organic - as used for produce, does not refer to the crops themselves, it refers to the method of growing them, which does not employ industrially derived fertilizers or pesticides, and using manure, etc as fertilizers.
In actuality the term is misleading, since most of the industrial fertilizers and pesticides are produced from organic sources, and minerals, which can be used to enrich organic crops, are inorganic substances.
"Organic materials offer the capability to significantly lower the price of memory," because they can be processed much more cheaply than silicon, says Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the work. The demonstration of plastic flash "is a very important milestone in organic memory," says Yang.
The plastic memory was made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya. The key to making the plastic memory device work, says Someya, is a hybrid insulating layer made of a polymer and a metal oxide. This layer electrically isolates the metal gate in which charges are stored. An applied voltage causes the metal gates to accumulate charge--charged and uncharged gates represents binary 1s and 0s, as in silicon flash. The better the insulator works, the longer the data can be stored before the electrons leak away and the data degrades.
Story continues below
Someya's group starts by placing metal transistor gates on top of a plastic substrate. Then a thin layer of aluminum oxide is deposited on top and the plastic film is submerged in a solution containing an insulating polymer. The polymer finally self-assembles on the surface of the aluminum oxide. The plastic devices can endure 1,000 writing and reading cycles. In contrast, silicon flash can be written to about 100,000 times.
I might be missing something; which part of the process is done with organic materials. I see that it's not silicon based, but perhaps I am misunderstanding their usage of organic. Regardless to that fact, though, it's still pretty interesting stuff.
Plastic, which is a polymer, is usually made from oil - which is organic. Some plastic is made from vegetable matter, which is also organic.
As an employee I never received overtime pay for being on call or overtime, though I always got comp time.
Technically contracting and consulting are not the same thing.
As a contractor, I've always been paid by the hour for a specific time span, when the contract expired it was extended or dropped. As far as support, I didn't get paid unless I was actually called in - my contracts always stated terms and rates. On some contracts there were ceilings on the amount I could bill.
As a consultant (current situation) I have specific deliverables, and scheduled dates for delivery. I'm paid a fixed amount for the work, with the final payment held until the acceptance conditions are met. My contracts usually include a support rider as well, for 6 months to a year after acceptance. further support requires a new contract. In any case there's no payment unless there's a problem. If I'm called in and the cause of the problem is determined not to be a "fault" in what I've delivered, I'm paid at a specified rate, otherwise, I eat the time.
The Japanese were convinced that Dolittle's raid was conducted by submarine launched bombers to such an extent they spent an enormous amount of effort developing them.
Like many such items during the war - these subs attempted too many innovations in one jump and were not reliable. The Germans and the Japanese had a penchant for attempting to produce super weapons as opposed to incremental improvements in existing stuff. Some of what they produced was incredible, but none of it was really ready for prime time, or available in sufficient quantity to significantly have any effect on the war.
One of the most draconian decisions of the war was on the part of the US - it was recognized that the Sherman was no match for the heavier German tanks. There were some improvements, but the US counted on the fact that we were producing and delivering tanks at a rate that outstripped the Germans ability to destroy them or replace their own.
I don't know about local driving rules where you are, but in NY State it's illegal to drive w/o having one ear "free" - so not a good solution for driving.
An no, I don't think this is more convenient than a button either.
Actually the ideal would be to cover the purchase of the device and the software, but not additional services - there would be no need to pay for internet or cell access- although you could probably make a case for services in the case of some conditions.
The issue is that the accounting rules require that the funds be used for a device for medical purposes only, so a multipurpose devices is deemed to include items that can't be paid for with those funds.
The "specialized" devices in many cases are consumer gear whose general purpose software (OS) has been crippled and a specific app loaded. A netbook, iPhone or PDA with the same app would do the job just as well (possibly better), but includes non-medical apps and features.
The insurance companies/medicare/medicaid think they're paying for additional functionality (even though the consumer product is usually much cheaper) and will force a client to buy the more expensive, more limited item.
It is one of the more stupid aspects of a law that was originally designed to limit waste, by making sure that only the features needed by a patient would be present on the device. There are numerous other laws and regulations on the books that work the same way and have the same effect. The rules have not kept up with technology and now work to the opposite of their intent.
The universities and some companies were good about accepting changes and re-issuing,
I did get a lot of card decks and paper tape while I was in college (early '70s) and at my first couple of employers(same time frame), but a lot of it came 3rd hand or later, and there may not have even been an indication of where it originated from.
Also a lot of the software came along with a programmer (that is, when someone joined the staff they brought code.) it may not have been theirs originally, they might not know the originator - and at that time another fork would take place - you'd copy it and make your own revisions, which might or might not get incorporated back into the code from the provider. You might encounter variants of the code later at other organizations, and they would be vastly different (not necessarily better) that your own version.
You're right in that a lot of "public domain" software was distributed as source, but there were no repositories - you could get the original version (or the latest version from the originators) or you could get varients from other developers, but it was rare to have a mechanism in place to submit changes anywhere or pass updates to all the users (remember - no internet, few modems, source mostly passed on 7 or 9 track tape reels).
When Bulletin Board Systems came into vogue in the late '70s, this started to change. In the original article what was unique was that changes could be submitted to IBM, who'd include them in later releases or distribute them as additional code with the source. The same was true of my own ealier post. If the code did not originate with Datapoint, they would forward submitted changes back to the author, who could incorporate them in later versions or allow Datapoint to distribute more than one version (early fork?).
It was not true OSS, but it was a clear pre-cursor.
Actually there were IBM "clones" after the DOJ forced unbundling of OS and apps from hardware, you could get the code and run it on a number of mainframes that were specifically designed to look like IBMs.
I'm old enough to have been active in this timeframe (you don't have to get off my lawn).
Interestingly there was also a budding OSS type effort in the minicomputer world - mostly with a vendor called Datapoint. There were quite a few apps and utilities that had been developed by end-users whose source was distributed for free by the vendor (or passed along by developers). The architecture was similar to the IBM PC (look here for more details wiki article on Datapoint ) and when the PC arrived the compiler and many apps were ported to that platform. I personally worked on a "Turnkey" system that eventually was ported to the PC using a 3'rd party compiler. I was also an author of some of those early pre-OSS apps, and I ported and distributed them as well.
Squatters' rights are not universal and vary from place to place. In some locales the test is harder than others. In most squatters' rights can be challenged. None of the examples in the article clearly indicated a case where squatter was involved.
In the case of season tickets - you're essentially a leasee, and subject to the terms of whatever rental contract you have with the actual property owner - you can be "evicted" w/o refund and have privileges revoked for a variety of causes. Read the fine print on the tickets.
In the case of "beautifying" a park - there have been cases where such actions have lead to charges of vandalism and destruction from the property owners - in my home town such unsanctioned beatification has often lead to removal of the modifications or even chain link around the property in order to avoid event the whiff of a squatter case. Even in the event where changes are sanctioned by a locality there is no guarantee the local authorities won't decide to sell or alter the property after you've invested considerable time and effort.. There are usually caveats when the permissions are given. They may allow you to use the property or even alter it, but will not relinquish ownership and disposition rights.
If you RTFA (pardon me, I forgot this is SlashDot) the same effect can be gotten by mixing salt water with more highly salinated water (made by evaporating sea water - say, using a solar evaporation pool) or lightly polluted water (non-potable).
I could also venture a guess, based on the fact this is a solution postulated for coastal locations, that the process could also be sited at or near the mouth of a river - say one the empties into the sea or ocean? In that case only fresh water that was destined to end up mixed into salt water would be used.
How does banks deal with blocking concurrency using clusters? wasn't the GP premise that banks need systems with great locking?
Where needed the banks buy cluster solutions - but usually from whoever has the contract for hardware. If IBM has the overall contract they'll get that contract as well. But the reality is the vast majority of systems are not clustered. There can be thousands of non-clustered servers in some of the banks, maybe 100 or so clusters (plus back-ups and DR facility in equal quantity).
The problem is that even the megabanks have cost concerns.
I worked for one of the largest international banks and the overall plan was to ditch Sun and other non x86 hardware in favor of a "sea" of uniform blades that could run virtualized images of XP, Windows Server 2003 or RHEL. Only systems that used 3rd party components that required Solaris or AIX would remain on non-x86 platforms.
IBM got the contract for the racks and blades. As of this time, over 85% of the apps have been migrated to the new environment. No new Sun hardware has been bought for a couple of years - old hardware has been recycled for those systems still on Sun. Sun has lost millions of dollars in sales and maintenance fees.
Not having seen the rules - I don't know how vague they are - but the mission statement is pretty clear. The specific issue in the article the comes to mind was the disallowing of the scavenged fuel tanks.
Recycling of technology is a good idea for this contest, but not use of "discounted" or surplus equipment that would violate the mission statement.
In any case I would also be p-o'd if I discovered this far into the effort that something novel was disallowed, only due to the vagueness of the rule.
Anyone (with the right team and skills) can scavenge parts to build a lander - but the idea is to develop technologies and components that could be used on and reduce the cost of real missions.
Using stuff that's cheap because it's left over doesn't meet the goals.
Spending limits are also a good idea in contests of this kind - if you win, with a solution even more expensive than currently in use technologies - what have you accomplished?
This is not just a gee whiz contest, the idea is to advance the science and technology in hopes of jump starting private industry in the space arena.
At the 20 year mark in IT, mostly in the investment world - I found myself in the same position. I opted to go into management.
After a couple of years, I found myself no happier. Management is doing all the unfun portions of IT w/o any of the really interesting parts.
I went back to being a developer. The work was more interesting, but I still has many of the same issues about my employers.
I've looked at a number of other pursuits - really never found anything I enjoyed more, and frankly, if it's not going to be a better experience, and isn't going to pay as much, why do it?
I've since gone on to consulting, so I don't have to deal with some of the internal nonsense from my employers and it leaves me free to pick and choose my projects.
It's not a perfect solution, but honestly I don't think there is a perfect solution. Management surely wasn't.
The whole idea of enjoying your profession is a luxury if you think about it. Most of the world simply does what it needs to do to survive. So if you enjoy IT and can find an employer that doesn't drive you batty - you're ahead of the game.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok let's get it straight.
CES allows or at least turns a blind eye to vendors who have rented space on the floor and also show products in their suites, or there might be restrictions on when the suites are used, etc.
The hotel staff who told the vendors who did not have floor space, that here were no restrictions probably did not know the hotels had a contractual agreement with CES, specifically not to allow suites to be used by vendors who did not have floor space.
There's a simple reason for this. CES spends a lot of money to rent facilities, guarantee occupancy and advertise the event. Some portion of the fee$ paid by the vendors who rent floor space goes to this.
The vendors who don't rent floor space are capitalizing on the attendees, who are their because of the efforts of CES and those vendors who rented floor space. Before anyone makes the analogy - this is NOT akin to filesharing or the alledged piracy of music or video. This is more akin to pirating someones' signal and replacing their content with your own.
The suite only vendors are not only not paying CES for their services, they are reducing the amount of face time for the vendors who are paying for those services. If they make a sale - it really is potentially at the cost of someone else who paid to show at the conference.
The agreements with the hotels are CES' insurance that attendees only view the wares of those who have paid to be at the conference, for the duration of the conference. It costs them money (or occupancy guarantees/penalties) to get those agreements..
Assuming you're buying a package from someone, in which case you're buying from a vendor. See my original comment for what's expected from a vendor.
It's not uncommon for large organizations to require access to code, have a third party audit it, or require some form of liability insurance from the vendor when closed source code is purchased. There's also the not very reliable, and very dangerous, assumption that vendors have already vetted the code against malicious/non-secure code.
For open source code - there's no-one accountable vouching for the code or offering insurance - so organizations are forced to audit the code Plus there's the usually wrong, overly paranoid but safer assumption that the code might well harbor something malicious/non-secure.
Try this url -
http://www.tboonepickensfoundation.org/pdf/PCQU%20Pickens%20FINAL.pdf
There are others as well.
Quite possible, assuming the film is:
1. Not a cult classic
2. Not overly popular
3. Not a new release.
4. Popular in only certain regions.
5. Not recently nominated for an award.
6. Not starring or featuring someone recently in the news, newly popular or deceased.
If any of the above are true, the sample for a given timeframe could be skewed and the student data would not be significantly large enough to be seen.
If there was particular demographic information available that would allow the "regular" population to be filtered out - you might be able to spot the students - which might itself be useless if a significant number of the students use a parent's or partner's credit card. .
Actually the film student model would not necessarily create a cluster.
The student might be taking a class via a distance, on-line or weekend program, and the school may not be local. The other students could be scattered over a large area, even distributed across the country.
As a native of NY (and a past resident of Missouri) I'm always amazed at how everyone thinks the entire state has the population density of NYC, Westchester or LI. Most of the population lives in less than 1/3 of the land area, and a good portion of the rest is clustered along the Thruways. Most of NY has population densities closer to the great plains or the west. And it may not be the Rockies, but it's not flat. Getting cable, DSL or fiber in some parts of the state is either next to impossible for fiendishly expensive, unless you're lucky enough to have a neighbor who paid for extending the trunk into your area.
As far as European population densities, most Americans do seem to think that the whole continent is like London, Paris or Frankfurt. I lived in Germany for 2 years and traveled extensively - there are lots of relatively unpopulated areas, and a lot of terrain that would pose challenges to power and comm networks, even in some of the most densely populated areas. So the usual arguments don't not hold up.
I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to take the "green" trend and apply it to something not at all meant for the label. Oil is organic in the same way uranium is organic. Yes, technically they both come from the natural world, but they hardly match the renewable/healthy/eco-friendly definition that the term organic has come to mean today. If PR folks keep following this logic, we'll soon be seeing ads for 90% organic cars and other such nonsense.
Uranium is a metallic element, mined as a mineral - and not organic in any sense of the word.
Oil, or petroleum is decomposed plant and animal matter, organic sources and still organic in nature.
The subject of the chemistry of polymers and oil based substances (as well material sourced from anything that was once alive) is Organic Chemistry.
Organic in chemistry generally refers to anything that is or was alive. In other subjects, organic is used to describe things that are natural and not "manufactured".
The commercial term Organic - as used for produce, does not refer to the crops themselves, it refers to the method of growing them, which does not employ industrially derived fertilizers or pesticides, and using manure, etc as fertilizers.
In actuality the term is misleading, since most of the industrial fertilizers and pesticides are produced from organic sources, and minerals, which can be used to enrich organic crops, are inorganic substances.
"Organic materials offer the capability to significantly lower the price of memory," because they can be processed much more cheaply than silicon, says Yang Yang, professor of materials science and engineering at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved with the work. The demonstration of plastic flash "is a very important milestone in organic memory," says Yang.
The plastic memory was made by a team of researchers at the University of Tokyo led by electrical engineering professor Takao Someya. The key to making the plastic memory device work, says Someya, is a hybrid insulating layer made of a polymer and a metal oxide. This layer electrically isolates the metal gate in which charges are stored. An applied voltage causes the metal gates to accumulate charge--charged and uncharged gates represents binary 1s and 0s, as in silicon flash. The better the insulator works, the longer the data can be stored before the electrons leak away and the data degrades.
Story continues below
Someya's group starts by placing metal transistor gates on top of a plastic substrate. Then a thin layer of aluminum oxide is deposited on top and the plastic film is submerged in a solution containing an insulating polymer. The polymer finally self-assembles on the surface of the aluminum oxide. The plastic devices can endure 1,000 writing and reading cycles. In contrast, silicon flash can be written to about 100,000 times.
I might be missing something; which part of the process is done with organic materials. I see that it's not silicon based, but perhaps I am misunderstanding their usage of organic. Regardless to that fact, though, it's still pretty interesting stuff.
Plastic, which is a polymer, is usually made from oil - which is organic. Some plastic is made from vegetable matter, which is also organic.
As an employee I never received overtime pay for being on call or overtime, though I always got comp time.
Technically contracting and consulting are not the same thing.
As a contractor, I've always been paid by the hour for a specific time span, when the contract expired it was extended or dropped. As far as support, I didn't get paid unless I was actually called in - my contracts always stated terms and rates. On some contracts there were ceilings on the amount I could bill.
As a consultant (current situation) I have specific deliverables, and scheduled dates for delivery. I'm paid a fixed amount for the work, with the final payment held until the acceptance conditions are met. My contracts usually include a support rider as well, for 6 months to a year after acceptance. further support requires a new contract. In any case there's no payment unless there's a problem. If I'm called in and the cause of the problem is determined not to be a "fault" in what I've delivered, I'm paid at a specified rate, otherwise, I eat the time.
The Japanese were convinced that Dolittle's raid was conducted by submarine launched bombers to such an extent they spent an enormous amount of effort developing them.
Like many such items during the war - these subs attempted too many innovations in one jump and were not reliable. The Germans and the Japanese had a penchant for attempting to produce super weapons as opposed to incremental improvements in existing stuff. Some of what they produced was incredible, but none of it was really ready for prime time, or available in sufficient quantity to significantly have any effect on the war.
One of the most draconian decisions of the war was on the part of the US - it was recognized that the Sherman was no match for the heavier German tanks. There were some improvements, but the US counted on the fact that we were producing and delivering tanks at a rate that outstripped the Germans ability to destroy them or replace their own.
If you had read the article - you would know that there were pieces of a large number of individuals found.
You can assume carbon testing was done, it's routine.
There's also the issue of associated plant and animal material in the fossil layer - which tends to give credence to the find.
I don't know about local driving rules where you are, but in NY State it's illegal to drive w/o having one ear "free" - so not a good solution for driving.
An no, I don't think this is more convenient than a button either.
Actually the ideal would be to cover the purchase of the device and the software, but not additional services - there would be no need to pay for internet or cell access- although you could probably make a case for services in the case of some conditions.
The issue is that the accounting rules require that the funds be used for a device for medical purposes only, so a multipurpose devices is deemed to include items that can't be paid for with those funds.
The "specialized" devices in many cases are consumer gear whose general purpose software (OS) has been crippled and a specific app loaded. A netbook, iPhone or PDA with the same app would do the job just as well (possibly better), but includes non-medical apps and features.
The insurance companies/medicare/medicaid think they're paying for additional functionality (even though the consumer product is usually much cheaper) and will force a client to buy the more expensive, more limited item.
It is one of the more stupid aspects of a law that was originally designed to limit waste, by making sure that only the features needed by a patient would be present on the device. There are numerous other laws and regulations on the books that work the same way and have the same effect. The rules have not kept up with technology and now work to the opposite of their intent.
I did say rare - not unknown.
The universities and some companies were good about accepting changes and re-issuing,
I did get a lot of card decks and paper tape while I was in college (early '70s) and at my first couple of employers(same time frame), but a lot of it came 3rd hand or later, and there may not have even been an indication of where it originated from.
Also a lot of the software came along with a programmer (that is, when someone joined the staff they brought code.) it may not have been theirs originally, they might not know the originator - and at that time another fork would take place - you'd copy it and make your own revisions, which might or might not get incorporated back into the code from the provider. You might encounter variants of the code later at other organizations, and they would be vastly different (not necessarily better) that your own version.
You're right in that a lot of "public domain" software was distributed as source, but there were no repositories - you could get the original version (or the latest version from the originators) or you could get varients from other developers, but it was rare to have a mechanism in place to submit changes anywhere or pass updates to all the users (remember - no internet, few modems, source mostly passed on 7 or 9 track tape reels).
When Bulletin Board Systems came into vogue in the late '70s, this started to change. In the original article what was unique was that changes could be submitted to IBM, who'd include them in later releases or distribute them as additional code with the source. The same was true of my own ealier post. If the code did not originate with Datapoint, they would forward submitted changes back to the author, who could incorporate them in later versions or allow Datapoint to distribute more than one version (early fork?).
It was not true OSS, but it was a clear pre-cursor.
Actually there were IBM "clones" after the DOJ forced unbundling of OS and apps from hardware, you could get the code and run it on a number of mainframes that were specifically designed to look like IBMs.
I'm old enough to have been active in this timeframe (you don't have to get off my lawn).
Interestingly there was also a budding OSS type effort in the minicomputer world - mostly with a vendor called Datapoint. There were quite a few apps and utilities that had been developed by end-users whose source was distributed for free by the vendor (or passed along by developers). The architecture was similar to the IBM PC (look here for more details wiki article on Datapoint ) and when the PC arrived the compiler and many apps were ported to that platform. I personally worked on a "Turnkey" system that eventually was ported to the PC using a 3'rd party compiler. I was also an author of some of those early pre-OSS apps, and I ported and distributed them as well.
Squatters' rights are not universal and vary from place to place. In some locales the test is harder than others. In most squatters' rights can be challenged. None of the examples in the article clearly indicated a case where squatter was involved.
In the case of season tickets - you're essentially a leasee, and subject to the terms of whatever rental contract you have with the actual property owner - you can be "evicted" w/o refund and have privileges revoked for a variety of causes. Read the fine print on the tickets.
In the case of "beautifying" a park - there have been cases where such actions have lead to charges of vandalism and destruction from the property owners - in my home town such unsanctioned beatification has often lead to removal of the modifications or even chain link around the property in order to avoid event the whiff of a squatter case. Even in the event where changes are sanctioned by a locality there is no guarantee the local authorities won't decide to sell or alter the property after you've invested considerable time and effort.. There are usually caveats when the permissions are given. They may allow you to use the property or even alter it, but will not relinquish ownership and disposition rights.
If you RTFA (pardon me, I forgot this is SlashDot) the same effect can be gotten by mixing salt water with more highly salinated water (made by evaporating sea water - say, using a solar evaporation pool) or lightly polluted water (non-potable).
I could also venture a guess, based on the fact this is a solution postulated for coastal locations, that the process could also be sited at or near the mouth of a river - say one the empties into the sea or ocean? In that case only fresh water that was destined to end up mixed into salt water would be used.
How does banks deal with blocking concurrency using clusters? wasn't the GP premise that banks need systems with great locking?
Where needed the banks buy cluster solutions - but usually from whoever has the contract for hardware. If IBM has the overall contract they'll get that contract as well. But the reality is the vast majority of systems are not clustered. There can be thousands of non-clustered servers in some of the banks, maybe 100 or so clusters (plus back-ups and DR facility in equal quantity).
The problem is that even the megabanks have cost concerns.
I worked for one of the largest international banks and the overall plan was to ditch Sun and other non x86 hardware in favor of a "sea" of uniform blades that could run virtualized images of XP, Windows Server 2003 or RHEL.
Only systems that used 3rd party components that required Solaris or AIX would remain on non-x86 platforms.
IBM got the contract for the racks and blades. As of this time, over 85% of the apps have been migrated to the new environment. No new Sun hardware has been bought for a couple of years - old hardware has been recycled for those systems still on Sun. Sun has lost millions of dollars in sales and maintenance fees.
Sounds like someone can't find their un-kosher salt...
Not having seen the rules - I don't know how vague they are - but the mission statement is pretty clear. The specific issue in the article the comes to mind was the disallowing of the scavenged fuel tanks.
Recycling of technology is a good idea for this contest, but not use of "discounted" or surplus equipment that would violate the mission statement.
In any case I would also be p-o'd if I discovered this far into the effort that something novel was disallowed, only due to the vagueness of the rule.
Anyone (with the right team and skills) can scavenge parts to build a lander - but the idea is to develop technologies and components that could be used on and reduce the cost of real missions.
Using stuff that's cheap because it's left over doesn't meet the goals.
Spending limits are also a good idea in contests of this kind - if you win, with a solution even more expensive than currently in use technologies - what have you accomplished?
This is not just a gee whiz contest, the idea is to advance the science and technology in hopes of jump starting private industry in the space arena.
At the 20 year mark in IT, mostly in the investment world - I found myself in the same position. I opted to go into management.
After a couple of years, I found myself no happier. Management is doing all the unfun portions of IT w/o any of the really interesting parts.
I went back to being a developer. The work was more interesting, but I still has many of the same issues about my employers.
I've looked at a number of other pursuits - really never found anything I enjoyed more, and frankly, if it's not going to be a better experience, and isn't going to pay as much, why do it?
I've since gone on to consulting, so I don't have to deal with some of the internal nonsense from my employers and it leaves me free to pick and choose my projects.
It's not a perfect solution, but honestly I don't think there is a perfect solution. Management surely wasn't.
The whole idea of enjoying your profession is a luxury if you think about it. Most of the world simply does what it needs to do to survive. So if you enjoy IT and can find an employer that doesn't drive you batty - you're ahead of the game.
Good luck.