Enough suburban white bread eating 5th generation American protestants need to step up and press our leaders to do as Robert Kennedy did 40 years ago in his famous speach in the Senate. I don't think his brother has the standing to do it...maybe McCain?
This is the critical element here, otherwise the good science will get muddled into the google soup along with the gibberish that some religious or political fanatics or degree for hire bozos pass off as science.
Although one still needs to take anyone elses work critically, at least one can be reasonably assured that something in an establilshed journal is less likely to be hogwash, or at least it will have the equations internally self consistant and biblio's are for real.
Just today there was a bit on public radio on how North Dakota came up with their own models for computing coal fired emissions. Scientists within the EPA came up with a number concerns with their methods (which were essentially derived to fit the regulations). ND meanwhile went to Washington and got the bosses approval bypassing a scientific review. This sort of crap could become the norm if the filters for publishing are removed.
I have a Shuttle bare bones that comes with liquid cooling out of the box. All I needed to do was pop on a processor, RAM, HD, and DVD.
The high quality of this case will actually push me toward the Apple design for my next box. It has many of the features I appreciate in my Shuttle and then some!
Greg Lehey who recommends 'that the best thing for IBM to do would be to print out every single version as requested and send the resultant 20 tonnes or so of paper to SCO
You don't think SCO could find a way twist 20 tons of stuff into at least a few hundred pounds of FUD?
Suppose they do some indiscriminant diff's and aggregate that into "statistical" correlation. They could say 14% of the IBM code is COPIED from SCO!!!
Nevermind that the offending code is...flower boxes, {, }, return; etc etc.
This would not necessarily preclude a backup/disaster recovery strategy.
Is having data spread across 1,000,000 floppy disks...or 1,000 CD's more secure from loss or corruption?
I should think not.
If a backup can be generated in a short period of time, have persistance (not degrade over time tape media) and be re-writable... a compact media like this would be fantastic.
There are plenty out there that have "virtual sex" out there in porno land and spend billions for the privilage, it seems an obvious extension to sell the same dorks "virtual penis extenders"...yachts, sports cars, beach houses...
...but wait...I don't think the virtual chicks are fooled by the virtual trappings of wealth...damn!
Another thing to consider is they may have actually been looking ahead to the future. I remember reading an article in 1991-1992 timeframe saying that the current PC technology had hit a plateau and there was little need for more powerful machines. Granted for a class of users this is true, but not many would want to be stuck with a 1 year old machine if they had a choice.
Putting network infrastructure into older buildings not originally designed for it is expensive. I can see how they may want a solution that will last them more then 2 or 3 years before a major upgrade cycle.
Another thought is this...apologies in advance to any alumni of this institution... but this is great marketing for a school that may otherwise have trouble distinguishing itself from the pack.
True, and as a father of 4 I do believe my raising emotionally healthy boys is of considerable worth. However, the point I was trying to make was that much of our time is spent mired in the mundane. Granted, someone needs to scrub toilets (like I did last night), but how much of the boring soul-less parts of our existance can we eliminate and replace with meaninful pursuits?
It would be nice to have an unsatisfying occupation "on the periphery", but since counting commuting is 10-12 hours per day, it is hard to marginalize it versus the 4 hours in the evening spent with children.
Neccesity is the mother of invention. If the fate of the world is at stake one can become very inspired.
The challenge for each of us is to find a way to change the world with what we do.
At the beginning of my career 14 years ago flying home from my first big interview I talked at length with someone on an airplane about a literature, travel, educational background etc. he summed up his career with "I sell sunflower seeds for human consumption" although someone needs to do it I suppose, sadly many of us spend more than half of our waking hours on occupations no more inspiring.
There was a day when academic integrity meant something. There have been many sad (and pathetic) days since. In my opinion Universities have gone soft on the cheats...one was lucky to have a Prof give an F, the alternative was getting the boot from the institution, and rightly so!
In many classes students critique each others work so there is a deal of trust required with your peers. Wouldn't it be the shits to have your work published for the first time under someone elses name?
One - Practical implementations of Stirling Engines are rare. There are reasons for it that I am sure someone can explain. The elegant thermal cycle is well understood.
Two - Radioisotopes are rather difficult to turn off. If they disperse enough energy to make my laptop go for 9 hours of the work day, they are also generating energy/heat the other 15 hours. Stuff that laptop in a padded bag, put in trunk, wait a few hours and have a china syndrome car-b-que. It is a matter of energy conservation...it has to go somewhere!
You propose as an option a square piston in the engine...the trouble with this is sealing and wear at the corners. Also, precision boring and turning operations can holder better part to part tolerances.
More to the point, remember when folks coded embedded systems to work with very light resources.
The overhead is staggering. Systems many years ago with real usable capability lived with very little power, memory, processor speed etc.
It is encouraging that this development is being taken up as a greenfield project. Yankee ingenuity will win in the end.
Sadly the Marines will get their gear 5 years after the rest. In Desert Storm I they didn't have Desert Camo for everyone so they stood out like a sore thumb. It worked out because anyone that messed with them got pounded so hard word got around not to mess with the guys in the dark green.
Whether there is that much waste to convert or not shouldn't be the main point. If you could lock up a load of carbon that would otherwise go up as C02 emissions that would be a good thing in itself. Cleanly and economically generating 5% of the nations energy otherwise coming from fossil fuels would be a tremendous advancement. If there was not enough doodoo to completely replace oil, it is still a step forward.
If there was a silver bullet to our tricky problems, the Lone Ranger would have showed up by now. I think our energy dependancy and reliance on fossil fuels will need to change incrementally (not to discount a sense of urgency either). It is a workable problem (always the optimist) and fortunately the business drivers will increase as oil supplies become more both financially and environmentally costly to extract.
There would be a distinct difference if their popup was triggered by something besides LL Bean. If it was triggered by "Portland, Maine" then their popups would potentially be very annoying for folks in Maine. Suppose a browser is looking for a schedule for the municiple pool, a rotor rooter man, or researching news stories on a murder in Maine.
"Assault victim beaten over head with frying pan dies in Portland Maine hospital, boyfriend charged with murder...SHOP AT NORDSTROM HOUSEWARES - NON-STICK PANS ON SALE NOW!"
I used to work at Boeing in the performance group working out how to do this. The approaches and procedures are all worked out with margins for all obstacles and provisions for engine out, performance adjustments for temperature etc. In the case of Hong Kong it is at sea level so the performance is much better than it would be at 8000 ft somewhere in the Sierras or Rockies
In the case of dropping on a fire, it is an ad hoc mission, the pilots would have to eyeball the situation and think on their feet. Also, suppose they count on being rid of 150,000 lbs of water before they need to do a climbing turn at the end of a valley and a hydraulic valve sticks? The only good news as that 25,000 gallons of water would help extinguish the 30,000 gallons of jet fuel.
The wind conditions around a forest fire are also dangerous. Fires create their own weather.
One thing the Russians are good at is making things tough. Their design philosophy on military aircraft (including their fighters) is to make them robust to hostile environments including unimproved runways etc. On the surface this looks like a far more economical model using either the Russian or Canadian equipment than to retrofit some used up aircraft not designed for anything like this mission.
One would not need to be going at cruise speed, but you bring up a very important point. I would shudder to think of a 747 trying to deal with a low altitude drop in mountainous terrain.
I am not sure a commercial airliner is the best recipe for this problem. In general they are designed to get up to Mach 0.78 - 0.84 and cruise along at 35,000 ft.
A derivative of a military aircraft would be more appropriate. Problem is, by the time the National Guard has used them up (repair costs exceed operating value) there is not much left to the structural integrity.
Bottom line, you get what you pay for. Hearing the dollars on NPR, it is amazing to me that companies were able to keep WWII vintage aircraft in the air for what they make.
Now that quaint family farm probably ran no more than 50 milk cows. Some of the factory operations in California have 5000 cows.
I shit you not...but the cows sure do!
For those large confinements be they dairy cows, hogs (huge ones in Iowa), chickens...whatever... Conventional means of managing the waste are not safe (or friendly to neighbors).
Cogeneration and other technology is a must for these beasts to not become health hazards.
A little off the subject, but it is sad to see family farms go.
I think you more likely heard that on Rush's show. There is a rather insignificant amount habitat in the lower 48 that would qualify as "Old Growth" habitat. Factoring in Alaska there is quite a bit of forest up there, but then Alaska is huge! I still doubt this unless unlogged, tundra, prairie, farmland and desert is counted as "old growth".
If we cut down the last 3% of lower 48 states old growth and leave the less accessable parts of Alaska's timber alone is it any less of an environmental tragedy?
This is an unfortunate outcome of an uninformed populace. Where are the true journalists out there connecting the dots and telling cogent stories. They report on the bits and pieces, but don't help in exposing the trends.
Last year regarding prisoners in Cuba:
"How long does it take to question a man?" Doumar wondered. "A year? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime? How long?"
"The present detention is lawful," the government lawyer said.
"If they sat him in boiling oil," Doumar asked, "would that be lawful?"
Just weeks ago before the Supreme court, Ashcroft's man told the justices in effect "In a time of war you just have to trust us." Short weeks later we find the CIA and Army are torturing prisoners in Iraq and Afganistan. Not far from the boiling oil really.
As a very wise man once said:
We will not be judged by how we treat our friends, but in how we treat our enemies.
The devil took our leaders to the mountain top...and they said yes.
Slashdot Mirror
Propoganda != Bad Guy != Reality
McCarthyism
Communists != Spies != Liberal Counterculture
Ashcroftism
Islamic Fanatics != Terrorists != Politically active/concerned Muslims
Enough suburban white bread eating 5th generation American protestants need to step up and press our leaders to do as Robert Kennedy did 40 years ago in his famous speach in the Senate. I don't think his brother has the standing to do it...maybe McCain?
This is the critical element here, otherwise the good science will get muddled into the google soup along with the gibberish that some religious or political fanatics or degree for hire bozos pass off as science.
Although one still needs to take anyone elses work critically, at least one can be reasonably assured that something in an establilshed journal is less likely to be hogwash, or at least it will have the equations internally self consistant and biblio's are for real.
Just today there was a bit on public radio on how North Dakota came up with their own models for computing coal fired emissions. Scientists within the EPA came up with a number concerns with their methods (which were essentially derived to fit the regulations). ND meanwhile went to Washington and got the bosses approval bypassing a scientific review. This sort of crap could become the norm if the filters for publishing are removed.
The high quality of this case will actually push me toward the Apple design for my next box. It has many of the features I appreciate in my Shuttle and then some!
You don't think SCO could find a way twist 20 tons of stuff into at least a few hundred pounds of FUD?
Suppose they do some indiscriminant diff's and aggregate that into "statistical" correlation. They could say 14% of the IBM code is COPIED from SCO!!!
Nevermind that the offending code is...flower boxes, {, }, return; etc etc.
Is having data spread across 1,000,000 floppy disks...or 1,000 CD's more secure from loss or corruption?
I should think not.
If a backup can be generated in a short period of time, have persistance (not degrade over time tape media) and be re-writable ... a compact media like this would be fantastic.
There are plenty out there that have "virtual sex" out there in porno land and spend billions for the privilage, it seems an obvious extension to sell the same dorks "virtual penis extenders"...yachts, sports cars, beach houses...
...but wait...I don't think the virtual chicks are fooled by the virtual trappings of wealth...damn!
So for a campus...no problem.
Another thing to consider is they may have actually been looking ahead to the future. I remember reading an article in 1991-1992 timeframe saying that the current PC technology had hit a plateau and there was little need for more powerful machines. Granted for a class of users this is true, but not many would want to be stuck with a 1 year old machine if they had a choice.
Putting network infrastructure into older buildings not originally designed for it is expensive. I can see how they may want a solution that will last them more then 2 or 3 years before a major upgrade cycle.
Another thought is this...apologies in advance to any alumni of this institution... but this is great marketing for a school that may otherwise have trouble distinguishing itself from the pack.
It would be nice to have an unsatisfying occupation "on the periphery", but since counting commuting is 10-12 hours per day, it is hard to marginalize it versus the 4 hours in the evening spent with children.
The challenge for each of us is to find a way to change the world with what we do.
At the beginning of my career 14 years ago flying home from my first big interview I talked at length with someone on an airplane about a literature, travel, educational background etc. he summed up his career with "I sell sunflower seeds for human consumption" although someone needs to do it I suppose, sadly many of us spend more than half of our waking hours on occupations no more inspiring.
There was a day when academic integrity meant something. There have been many sad (and pathetic) days since. In my opinion Universities have gone soft on the cheats...one was lucky to have a Prof give an F, the alternative was getting the boot from the institution, and rightly so!
In many classes students critique each others work so there is a deal of trust required with your peers. Wouldn't it be the shits to have your work published for the first time under someone elses name?
One - Practical implementations of Stirling Engines are rare. There are reasons for it that I am sure someone can explain. The elegant thermal cycle is well understood.
Two - Radioisotopes are rather difficult to turn off. If they disperse enough energy to make my laptop go for 9 hours of the work day, they are also generating energy/heat the other 15 hours. Stuff that laptop in a padded bag, put in trunk, wait a few hours and have a china syndrome car-b-que. It is a matter of energy conservation...it has to go somewhere!
You propose as an option a square piston in the engine...the trouble with this is sealing and wear at the corners. Also, precision boring and turning operations can holder better part to part tolerances.
The overhead is staggering. Systems many years ago with real usable capability lived with very little power, memory, processor speed etc.
It is encouraging that this development is being taken up as a greenfield project. Yankee ingenuity will win in the end.
Sadly the Marines will get their gear 5 years after the rest. In Desert Storm I they didn't have Desert Camo for everyone so they stood out like a sore thumb. It worked out because anyone that messed with them got pounded so hard word got around not to mess with the guys in the dark green.
If there was a silver bullet to our tricky problems, the Lone Ranger would have showed up by now. I think our energy dependancy and reliance on fossil fuels will need to change incrementally (not to discount a sense of urgency either). It is a workable problem (always the optimist) and fortunately the business drivers will increase as oil supplies become more both financially and environmentally costly to extract.
"Assault victim beaten over head with frying pan dies in Portland Maine hospital, boyfriend charged with murder...SHOP AT NORDSTROM HOUSEWARES - NON-STICK PANS ON SALE NOW!"
Now that is wonderful product placement!
In the case of dropping on a fire, it is an ad hoc mission, the pilots would have to eyeball the situation and think on their feet. Also, suppose they count on being rid of 150,000 lbs of water before they need to do a climbing turn at the end of a valley and a hydraulic valve sticks? The only good news as that 25,000 gallons of water would help extinguish the 30,000 gallons of jet fuel.
The wind conditions around a forest fire are also dangerous. Fires create their own weather.
Is it just North of Margaritaville?
One thing the Russians are good at is making things tough. Their design philosophy on military aircraft (including their fighters) is to make them robust to hostile environments including unimproved runways etc. On the surface this looks like a far more economical model using either the Russian or Canadian equipment than to retrofit some used up aircraft not designed for anything like this mission.
I am not sure a commercial airliner is the best recipe for this problem. In general they are designed to get up to Mach 0.78 - 0.84 and cruise along at 35,000 ft.
A derivative of a military aircraft would be more appropriate. Problem is, by the time the National Guard has used them up (repair costs exceed operating value) there is not much left to the structural integrity.
Bottom line, you get what you pay for. Hearing the dollars on NPR, it is amazing to me that companies were able to keep WWII vintage aircraft in the air for what they make.
And the TT is a Beetle with no headroom.
I shit you not...but the cows sure do!
For those large confinements be they dairy cows, hogs (huge ones in Iowa), chickens ...whatever... Conventional means of managing the waste are not safe (or friendly to neighbors).
Cogeneration and other technology is a must for these beasts to not become health hazards.
A little off the subject, but it is sad to see family farms go.
Some interesting satelite images.
Not so safe! Park boundaries are manipulated more than you might think as well.
If we cut down the last 3% of lower 48 states old growth and leave the less accessable parts of Alaska's timber alone is it any less of an environmental tragedy?
"I am not as evil as the devil himself" doesn't put you on the moral high ground.
Last year regarding prisoners in Cuba:
"How long does it take to question a man?" Doumar wondered. "A year? Two years? Ten years? A lifetime? How long?"
"The present detention is lawful," the government lawyer said.
"If they sat him in boiling oil," Doumar asked, "would that be lawful?"
Just weeks ago before the Supreme court, Ashcroft's man told the justices in effect "In a time of war you just have to trust us." Short weeks later we find the CIA and Army are torturing prisoners in Iraq and Afganistan. Not far from the boiling oil really.
As a very wise man once said:
The devil took our leaders to the mountain top...and they said yes.