Even though they don't have wheels, they still require large engines for power generation. So right there you've got most of the same noise a traditional train makes.
The rest of the noise is likely from the high voltages and speeds involved. Ever hear a transformer buzz? Or an old flourecent light fixture? Same idea really. The eerie buzzing noises are probably what freak people out. =Smidge=
Actually, "American English" is closer to the pre-1776 english than what they speak in the UK, because of America's geological isolation from the rest of the world.
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
<joke>So you limey Brits can take your extra vowels and shove it!</joke> =Smidge=
Notice that it does not just say Congress can create copyrights. It is very specific, not only in what they can do, but why: "to promote progress". Not "to give authors a method of income", to promote progress.
That's actually the opposite - it's very generic! It does not say anything about how to promote progress, only that congress is empowered to come up with a way to do it. Copyright law promotes development of ideas by granting the creator exclusive rights to his creation, and it promotes progress by limiting how long he can retain those exclusive rights. It takes advantage of human greed to intice people to do stuff, then forces the fruits of their efforts into the public domain. The key is that for a limited time, the creator owns that fruit.
One definition of "own" is to have control over. (transitive verb, sense 2). If you have exclusive control over the work, you own it. It's mine, hands off buddy! Just because it doesn't use the word "own" doesn't change the intention that the creator has "exclusive rights" to whatever, and if you are the only person who can reproduce, create derivative works, distribute copies or show it in public, that's control. Control = ownership.
Now let's visit your analogy to show you the point I was making more clearly.
Let's say you had the best friggin bundt cake recipe ever. I mean this kind of thing puts you on the map. You decide you can make some cash by selling bundt cakes out of your house. You start baking and turning a tidy profit. You can't make them fast enough.
One day, you and me are talking over a slice of bundt cake, and you tell me how you make it so damn good.
The next day, someone from ConglomoCorp calls my house offering me a huge lump of cash for that recipe. I decide our friendship isn't worth that much cash, so I give it to them. Next month, grocery stores across the country are having problems keeping ConglomoCorp Bundt Cakes on the shelves. They are just as good as yours and are a fraction of the price because of mass production.
Suddenly, you ain't making any money from your cottage industry. Because you insist that you can never own an idea, you can't do jack about it. Guess you have to find a new job, eh?
Let's take this in a more abstract direction. Say you're putzing around one day and come up with an idea for a story about this young boy named Larry Topper who ends up becoming a powerful magician and having all sorts of adventures. You write your book and share it with your friends, who in turn share it with their friends, and so forth.
You don't care, you can't own ideas. Information wants to be free!
Two years later the mega-blockbuster hit "Larry Topper and the Secret Decoder Ring", the third installment of a tremendously popular series of feature length movies, comes to a theater near you. You haven't made a penny from the billions of dollars this franchise has made. You're not even mentioned in the credits.
Why should they? You can't own ideas, and you've lost nothing, right? You still have your idea and a copy of the original manuscript, right? They didn't steal anything from you...
Copyright is about not having to "share" ideas. It's about greed and control. That's also what capitalism is about, in case you didn't figure that one out. Humans are greedy, selfish bastards and in order to benefit the whole of society laws have to be structured to take advantage of it while providing checks and balances to make sure it stays under control. "We'll give you exclusive legal control over your ideas, but only if you promise to give up that control after n years. Sound fair?"
Unfortunately, once a company gets powerful enough they can start to change those laws and upset the balance, but that's another topic. =Smidge=
Sorry, Copyright is not about benefiting society. It's incentive is that it grants the creator the exclusive right to to copy it. That's benefiting the creator only, and that guaranteed benefit is what gives the creator the incentive to release his ideas in the first place.
Copyrights are designed to expire for the benefit of society. This is why Disney and others are constantly trying to extend the duration of copyrights, so they can keep control of their property. It is for the benefit of society to prevent copyrights from becoming fucntionally permanent, not abolishing them altogether.
Arguing that ideas are not physical is merely a matter of symantics. When you copyright something, you own it in every legal sense of the word. You might not be able to deprive someone of an idea, but you can deprive them of the fruits of their imagination - and that's what copyright law is intended to prevent.
Nobody wants to steal ideas anyway. Ideas are worthless. It's what you can do with those ideas that is valuable, and the result of acting on your ideas becomes your property. Intellectual Property. Protected, for a limited time at least, by law. If you decide to give it away that's great, you can do that. If you want to sue the guy making cheap plastic knockoffs of your "idea", you can do that too. Because you own it. =Smidge=
Then there is no such thing as a valid license when it comes to ideas. Not even the GPL. If it's not property, then nobody can control it. If nobody can control it then nobody can be stopped from using it any way they see fit - including ways that the author deems unfair.
Do you contribute to any open source projects, or otherwise produce any work that is protected by a public license? If so, how would you feel if you discovered that your work was incorporated into a commercial product that was not open source? If intellectual property is not property, than nobody has ANY right to say 'no'. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, dude!
Freedom is either had by all or by none. Can't be selective and still consider it a 'freedom'. =Smidge=
Correct me if I'm wrong, since I've (thankfully, I feel) not had much experience with the court system... but when you appeal don't you move up in the court heirarchy? Or at least to a DIFFERENT court? Sooner or later they're going to run out of courtrooms, then they'll have to accept the verdict! =Smidge=
Have it record (and remember) the past, say, 60 seconds of happenings automatically. This will cut down on the 'junk' significantly, but allow for enough time to capture that unexpected moment and save it.
Have two additional modes: Full time record (For constant recording beyone 1 minute) and snapshot (still images). that way you'll always have your camera readt to take a picture or video at a moment's notice, and won't have to go back and find what you really want to keep. =Smidge=
From the article: The company has been showing a range of features that it hopes will make its MSN service more of a draw to Web users who rely on search engines as starting points for finding information and services on the Internet.
...like complete integration with the Windows Operating System? =Smidge=
Juno has a "Central spam filter" like that. It works damn good, too. I've had the same (free) e-mail account for nearly five years now, and if I get 3 spam mails a day that's a lot. (INCLUDING Juno's own mass-mailings to it's users for their premium service)
Spam pops up in the "Junk mail" folder, which does not count towards your storage limit (messages are automatically deleted after a few days). This gives you a chance to glance through the junk and see if any good mail got caught in the net. If so, you can "remove from junk", which also reports to the system that this type of e-mail might not be junk. This creates a balance preventing people from tricking the filter into thinking EVERYTHING is junk mail.
Sure there's a 2MB storage limit and a 2MB attachment limit, but it's always been more than enough for me. (Especially for the price!) =Smidge=
For example, a template engine is used in phpBB (as with many message board systems). There's a lot of very dynamic and conditional content on message boards, and I honestly can't see how XHTML and CSS can effectively handle it.
By abstracting the markup from the data, you can also simplify the markup. For example, if you are generating a table with an unknown number of rows, you can define a single row in your template and the engine will duplicate it as required. Same thing if you even have multiple tables of multiple rows.
Personally, I think phpBB's engine is a little overboard, but it's like that to be more flexible than the boards I maintain require. For example, I don't see the need to a separate language file for anything I do (although I understand it's usefulness). Similarly, I don't really care for the style table it generates in code from the database (although this makes changing the styles easier via web interface). So to save overhead I remove these features and just put the data directly into the templates.
What I'm really getting at is: Use the right tool for the job. PHP Template engines are a Good Thing(tm) but definately not the Only Thing(tm) =Smidge=
What's the point of linking a story that simply repeats, word for word, the Slashdot story?
You must be new here...
Nobody is expected to actually read the articles. Therefore, the story summary must be detailed enough for people to:
1) Form strong (sometimes overbearing) opinions on the subject 2) Draw "Insightful" conclusions about the scenario, based only on the summary of course 3) Claim to be an expert on the subject 4) Completely refute any arguments in the summary, and declare the whole subject moot 5) Bitch and moan about the summary being too similar or identical to the first paragraph of the linked story
I downloaded some utilities for a Western Digital HD. It make a boodisk with - to my surprize - DrDOS as the base. First thing I thought was "Hey wow, haven't see that in awhile!"
It makes sense, though. DOS will run on just about any x86 based machine out there, insuring a very wide compatability, it's something most people are used to (ie: DOS, as opposed to a linux based bootloader, which fewer people are accustomed to) and I'm sure the licensing is a mere fraction of MSDOS - or at least it would be if MS still supported it.
Makes you wonder about things like FreeDOS... maybe it's still a bit unrefined for these uses? Maybe buyers actually do want a "real company" behind the products they use? =Smidge=
Same thing with the pebble-bed reactor idea: prove to me, the guy (or municipality) paying for it, that it works.
Since one has never been built, it's unproven technology. Not many people are willing to piss away hundreds of millions (or even billions) of dollars on unproven technology, especially one that, if *anything* goes wrong, becomes a public relations nightmare... like, say, a nuclear reactor. There's so many unknowns, too: Actual building cost, maintenance cost, actual lifecycle, ect. You can do all the math you want but the proof is in the metal. That just makes it more of a gamble.
Why do you think Toshiba wants to give it away? If you don't have to pay for it it becomes a more appealing offer. If it pans out, Toshiba "gets its foot in the door" in the small reactor market and others will be more willing to invest. Good luck to them, I say. =Smidge=
If nuclear reactors were mass produced, then making a "farm" of smaller units would make sense. But they are not. The navy uses small reactors because they have to fit into the boat and still have enough room for everything else.
So when building individual units - bigger = more power for your money. Economics. Plus, nearly all of the engineering work for building a regular plant has been completely worked out, which means you have a set of plans that you know works. Why fix what isn't broken?
Now, if you could come up with a way to build a modular nuclear station with cost-per-megawatt lower than a traditional plant, you might get someone to listen. Then you have to convince people that it's just as effective, which means getting someone to pay for the first plant wil be a challange. Once you've got your foot in the door it might be a little easier, though. =Smidge=
Working as a game tester is not something you should plan a friggin' career on. Of course you're going to be disposable - the job takes virtually nothing to qualify for and there's plenty of people willing to do it. If you're *really* lucky, you might get a few contacts in the company you can use if you want to get into game development, but I'm thinking that's pretty damn rare.
Working as a game tester is just like mopping floors at McDonalds. No brains, very tedious, and you're not exactly contibuting anything unique to the company. =Smidge=
I think the parent was commenting on how many people disregard ideas that are not compatible with their views (eg: Creation and Evolution) by saying "it's just a theory".
A "theory" is usually given much more weight than a "belief", because theories are typically based on observation and experimentation, reviewed by peers, and have been used to make accurate, testable and verifiable predictions. Beliefs tend to be more based on emotion and hearsay. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a "theory" is closer to reality than a belief, if only in a practical sense.
Moreover, theories are seldom touted as absolute facts, and most credible scientists will admit their theory wrong/flawed when given sufficient evidence. =Smidge=
Probably none. Don't confuse ionizing air with generating plasma.
This is very similar to the "Ionic Breeze" air cleaners, using high voltage potentials to move air. The heat it generates is absolutely negligible. =Smidge=
No, it was a bad design. First, I haven't read anything to suggest that it was a redundant component. There just happens to be two of them (one "high" and one "low", which suggests they aren't redundant...)
Second, there's a hundred ways to make sure a component can only be put in one way: Use a helical or tapered gear, use a specially keyed and/or tapered shaft, put a groove in the back of the gear and modify the clearance with a tab so that it can't be reversed, etc.
This is not to say the engineers on the Shuttle were dopes. On the contrary, they are extremely well designed and built considering how long they've lasted and what they've been through. BUT... this one particular case is an example of not thinking out every detail. Luckily (?) it wasn't bad enough to be catastrophic.
If it really matters which way it goes in, make sure it is physically impossible to put it in wrong. (Computer cables, 208 and 480 volt electrical plugs, and so forth) =Smidge=
I think it's more of a design problem than an inspection problem. Either the gear should have been designed to be perfectly symmetrical, or to not fit at all if someone tried to install it incorrectly.
But in the short term you can highlight a RANGE of e-mails, say... the ones both before and after the infected one, and delete all three.
You have to highlight by clickign the one above and holding shift while clicking the one below to highlight all three. It's not selecting the mail that's the problem, it's clicking on it.
Of course, any mail you wanted to keep might be in the trash now. Visit your deleted items folder and view them if you need to. Just DO NOT click the infected message.
When you're done dancing, get a nice, clean webmail interface or some SMTP client that's not Outlook[Express]... =Smidge=
Well he said he's dealing with 120 degree outdoor temperatures, so derate the AC's effectiveness a bit. This also cushions some of the other guestimates: You can definitely find AC units with better than 10 SEER, panels more than 10% efficient, and it's likely you can get more than 90 watts/sq.ft. solar energy if you're hitting 120F outside. The factor of 3 should give you a very nice cushion, but only a detailed calculation can assure it.
It works out to 30BTU/sq.ft., which is admittedly high for typical residential and a common design for light commercial/office applications. Typical home can probably get away with half that. If you buy a properly sized AC unit and size your energy collection for 30BTU/SF, though, you'll have plenty of spare capacity.
The hitch with radiant cooling (actually, any cooling!) is condensation. The last thing you want is damp, mildew smelling concrete walls in your house! If there's a way to handle this (ie: there's a system for draining it so there's no damage or potential for mildew/mold) then you're good. If not, you have to keep the water temp above the dew point and can only remove sensible heat from the space.
Of course, if you have very low humidity in the area, a swamp cooler will be the most energy efficient way to cool off!
If you're suggesting using concrete for thermal storage only, that's great. I imagined using tanks only because they would act as a reservoir AND storage, and be cheap to set up and easy to break down as well as easy to repair if it springs a leak. (Try fixing a leaky pipe imbedded in a solid block of concrete!)
And lastly, a lot of others have mentioned "smart" management of your home: Good insulation, good windows, mylar/tinted windowshades, light colored paints/siding/roofs and shade trees, all help to reduce the amount of heat your home absorbs in the first place, and will save you bundles in energy costs while using no energy whatsoever! =Smidge=
Slashdot Mirror
Even though they don't have wheels, they still require large engines for power generation. So right there you've got most of the same noise a traditional train makes.
The rest of the noise is likely from the high voltages and speeds involved. Ever hear a transformer buzz? Or an old flourecent light fixture? Same idea really. The eerie buzzing noises are probably what freak people out.
=Smidge=
Actually, "American English" is closer to the pre-1776 english than what they speak in the UK, because of America's geological isolation from the rest of the world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English
This is why "the universal language is American English" - Britian spread English throughout the world during it's rampant empire building in the 15th and 16th centuries, and because of the distances involved British "english" evolved and the rest of the world was largely uneffected by the changes.
<joke>So you limey Brits can take your extra vowels and shove it!</joke>
=Smidge=
And I thought Nigerians were the most honest people on earth!
=Smidge=
Notice that it does not just say Congress can create copyrights. It is very specific, not only in what they can do, but why: "to promote progress". Not "to give authors a method of income", to promote progress.
That's actually the opposite - it's very generic! It does not say anything about how to promote progress, only that congress is empowered to come up with a way to do it. Copyright law promotes development of ideas by granting the creator exclusive rights to his creation, and it promotes progress by limiting how long he can retain those exclusive rights. It takes advantage of human greed to intice people to do stuff, then forces the fruits of their efforts into the public domain. The key is that for a limited time, the creator owns that fruit.
One definition of "own" is to have control over. (transitive verb, sense 2). If you have exclusive control over the work, you own it. It's mine, hands off buddy! Just because it doesn't use the word "own" doesn't change the intention that the creator has "exclusive rights" to whatever, and if you are the only person who can reproduce, create derivative works, distribute copies or show it in public, that's control. Control = ownership.
Now let's visit your analogy to show you the point I was making more clearly.
Let's say you had the best friggin bundt cake recipe ever. I mean this kind of thing puts you on the map. You decide you can make some cash by selling bundt cakes out of your house. You start baking and turning a tidy profit. You can't make them fast enough.
One day, you and me are talking over a slice of bundt cake, and you tell me how you make it so damn good.
The next day, someone from ConglomoCorp calls my house offering me a huge lump of cash for that recipe. I decide our friendship isn't worth that much cash, so I give it to them. Next month, grocery stores across the country are having problems keeping ConglomoCorp Bundt Cakes on the shelves. They are just as good as yours and are a fraction of the price because of mass production.
Suddenly, you ain't making any money from your cottage industry. Because you insist that you can never own an idea, you can't do jack about it. Guess you have to find a new job, eh?
Let's take this in a more abstract direction. Say you're putzing around one day and come up with an idea for a story about this young boy named Larry Topper who ends up becoming a powerful magician and having all sorts of adventures. You write your book and share it with your friends, who in turn share it with their friends, and so forth.
You don't care, you can't own ideas. Information wants to be free!
Two years later the mega-blockbuster hit "Larry Topper and the Secret Decoder Ring", the third installment of a tremendously popular series of feature length movies, comes to a theater near you. You haven't made a penny from the billions of dollars this franchise has made. You're not even mentioned in the credits.
Why should they? You can't own ideas, and you've lost nothing, right? You still have your idea and a copy of the original manuscript, right? They didn't steal anything from you...
Copyright is about not having to "share" ideas. It's about greed and control. That's also what capitalism is about, in case you didn't figure that one out. Humans are greedy, selfish bastards and in order to benefit the whole of society laws have to be structured to take advantage of it while providing checks and balances to make sure it stays under control. "We'll give you exclusive legal control over your ideas, but only if you promise to give up that control after n years. Sound fair?"
Unfortunately, once a company gets powerful enough they can start to change those laws and upset the balance, but that's another topic.
=Smidge=
Sorry, Copyright is not about benefiting society. It's incentive is that it grants the creator the exclusive right to to copy it. That's benefiting the creator only, and that guaranteed benefit is what gives the creator the incentive to release his ideas in the first place.
Copyrights are designed to expire for the benefit of society. This is why Disney and others are constantly trying to extend the duration of copyrights, so they can keep control of their property. It is for the benefit of society to prevent copyrights from becoming fucntionally permanent, not abolishing them altogether.
Arguing that ideas are not physical is merely a matter of symantics. When you copyright something, you own it in every legal sense of the word. You might not be able to deprive someone of an idea, but you can deprive them of the fruits of their imagination - and that's what copyright law is intended to prevent.
Nobody wants to steal ideas anyway. Ideas are worthless. It's what you can do with those ideas that is valuable, and the result of acting on your ideas becomes your property. Intellectual Property. Protected, for a limited time at least, by law. If you decide to give it away that's great, you can do that. If you want to sue the guy making cheap plastic knockoffs of your "idea", you can do that too. Because you own it.
=Smidge=
Intellectual property is NOT property.
Then there is no such thing as a valid license when it comes to ideas. Not even the GPL. If it's not property, then nobody can control it. If nobody can control it then nobody can be stopped from using it any way they see fit - including ways that the author deems unfair.
Do you contribute to any open source projects, or otherwise produce any work that is protected by a public license? If so, how would you feel if you discovered that your work was incorporated into a commercial product that was not open source? If intellectual property is not property, than nobody has ANY right to say 'no'. Way to shoot yourself in the foot, dude!
Freedom is either had by all or by none. Can't be selective and still consider it a 'freedom'.
=Smidge=
How about a limit on the number of appeals, then?
Correct me if I'm wrong, since I've (thankfully, I feel) not had much experience with the court system... but when you appeal don't you move up in the court heirarchy? Or at least to a DIFFERENT court? Sooner or later they're going to run out of courtrooms, then they'll have to accept the verdict!
=Smidge=
Have it record (and remember) the past, say, 60 seconds of happenings automatically. This will cut down on the 'junk' significantly, but allow for enough time to capture that unexpected moment and save it.
Have two additional modes: Full time record (For constant recording beyone 1 minute) and snapshot (still images). that way you'll always have your camera readt to take a picture or video at a moment's notice, and won't have to go back and find what you really want to keep.
=Smidge=
=Smidge=
Juno has a "Central spam filter" like that. It works damn good, too. I've had the same (free) e-mail account for nearly five years now, and if I get 3 spam mails a day that's a lot. (INCLUDING Juno's own mass-mailings to it's users for their premium service)
Spam pops up in the "Junk mail" folder, which does not count towards your storage limit (messages are automatically deleted after a few days). This gives you a chance to glance through the junk and see if any good mail got caught in the net. If so, you can "remove from junk", which also reports to the system that this type of e-mail might not be junk. This creates a balance preventing people from tricking the filter into thinking EVERYTHING is junk mail.
Sure there's a 2MB storage limit and a 2MB attachment limit, but it's always been more than enough for me. (Especially for the price!)
=Smidge=
It depends on your application.
For example, a template engine is used in phpBB (as with many message board systems). There's a lot of very dynamic and conditional content on message boards, and I honestly can't see how XHTML and CSS can effectively handle it.
By abstracting the markup from the data, you can also simplify the markup. For example, if you are generating a table with an unknown number of rows, you can define a single row in your template and the engine will duplicate it as required. Same thing if you even have multiple tables of multiple rows.
Personally, I think phpBB's engine is a little overboard, but it's like that to be more flexible than the boards I maintain require. For example, I don't see the need to a separate language file for anything I do (although I understand it's usefulness). Similarly, I don't really care for the style table it generates in code from the database (although this makes changing the styles easier via web interface). So to save overhead I remove these features and just put the data directly into the templates.
What I'm really getting at is: Use the right tool for the job. PHP Template engines are a Good Thing(tm) but definately not the Only Thing(tm)
=Smidge=
1) He's #162816. You were reading the post number.
Hah! Speaking of not reading...
2) If you want to see real laziness in reading, check out this guy.
*facepalms*
=Smidge=
What's the point of linking a story that simply repeats, word for word, the Slashdot story?
/. #8708117!
You must be new here...
Nobody is expected to actually read the articles. Therefore, the story summary must be detailed enough for people to:
1) Form strong (sometimes overbearing) opinions on the subject
2) Draw "Insightful" conclusions about the scenario, based only on the summary of course
3) Claim to be an expert on the subject
4) Completely refute any arguments in the summary, and declare the whole subject moot
5) Bitch and moan about the summary being too similar or identical to the first paragraph of the linked story
Welcome to
=Smidge=
I downloaded some utilities for a Western Digital HD. It make a boodisk with - to my surprize - DrDOS as the base. First thing I thought was "Hey wow, haven't see that in awhile!"
It makes sense, though. DOS will run on just about any x86 based machine out there, insuring a very wide compatability, it's something most people are used to (ie: DOS, as opposed to a linux based bootloader, which fewer people are accustomed to) and I'm sure the licensing is a mere fraction of MSDOS - or at least it would be if MS still supported it.
Makes you wonder about things like FreeDOS... maybe it's still a bit unrefined for these uses? Maybe buyers actually do want a "real company" behind the products they use?
=Smidge=
Same thing with the pebble-bed reactor idea: prove to me, the guy (or municipality) paying for it, that it works.
Since one has never been built, it's unproven technology. Not many people are willing to piss away hundreds of millions (or even billions) of dollars on unproven technology, especially one that, if *anything* goes wrong, becomes a public relations nightmare... like, say, a nuclear reactor. There's so many unknowns, too: Actual building cost, maintenance cost, actual lifecycle, ect. You can do all the math you want but the proof is in the metal. That just makes it more of a gamble.
Why do you think Toshiba wants to give it away? If you don't have to pay for it it becomes a more appealing offer. If it pans out, Toshiba "gets its foot in the door" in the small reactor market and others will be more willing to invest. Good luck to them, I say.
=Smidge=
It's economics, really.
If nuclear reactors were mass produced, then making a "farm" of smaller units would make sense. But they are not. The navy uses small reactors because they have to fit into the boat and still have enough room for everything else.
So when building individual units - bigger = more power for your money. Economics. Plus, nearly all of the engineering work for building a regular plant has been completely worked out, which means you have a set of plans that you know works. Why fix what isn't broken?
Now, if you could come up with a way to build a modular nuclear station with cost-per-megawatt lower than a traditional plant, you might get someone to listen. Then you have to convince people that it's just as effective, which means getting someone to pay for the first plant wil be a challange. Once you've got your foot in the door it might be a little easier, though.
=Smidge=
What about the greek Antikythera Device estimated to have been built in 82 B.C.? That's a lot older than Charles Babbage!
=Smidge=
Working as a game tester is not something you should plan a friggin' career on. Of course you're going to be disposable - the job takes virtually nothing to qualify for and there's plenty of people willing to do it. If you're *really* lucky, you might get a few contacts in the company you can use if you want to get into game development, but I'm thinking that's pretty damn rare.
Working as a game tester is just like mopping floors at McDonalds. No brains, very tedious, and you're not exactly contibuting anything unique to the company.
=Smidge=
I think the parent was commenting on how many people disregard ideas that are not compatible with their views (eg: Creation and Evolution) by saying "it's just a theory".
A "theory" is usually given much more weight than a "belief", because theories are typically based on observation and experimentation, reviewed by peers, and have been used to make accurate, testable and verifiable predictions. Beliefs tend to be more based on emotion and hearsay. It is therefore reasonable to assume that a "theory" is closer to reality than a belief, if only in a practical sense.
Moreover, theories are seldom touted as absolute facts, and most credible scientists will admit their theory wrong/flawed when given sufficient evidence.
=Smidge=
Probably none. Don't confuse ionizing air with generating plasma.
This is very similar to the "Ionic Breeze" air cleaners, using high voltage potentials to move air. The heat it generates is absolutely negligible.
=Smidge=
No, it was a bad design. First, I haven't read anything to suggest that it was a redundant component. There just happens to be two of them (one "high" and one "low", which suggests they aren't redundant...)
Second, there's a hundred ways to make sure a component can only be put in one way: Use a helical or tapered gear, use a specially keyed and/or tapered shaft, put a groove in the back of the gear and modify the clearance with a tab so that it can't be reversed, etc.
This is not to say the engineers on the Shuttle were dopes. On the contrary, they are extremely well designed and built considering how long they've lasted and what they've been through. BUT... this one particular case is an example of not thinking out every detail. Luckily (?) it wasn't bad enough to be catastrophic.
If it really matters which way it goes in, make sure it is physically impossible to put it in wrong. (Computer cables, 208 and 480 volt electrical plugs, and so forth)
=Smidge=
I think it's more of a design problem than an inspection problem. Either the gear should have been designed to be perfectly symmetrical, or to not fit at all if someone tried to install it incorrectly.
=Smidge=
That's a great marketing strategy!
1) Make drives cheap (everyone buys one). Make media expensive (Few people buy in any quantity).
2) Lack of media in circulation + paranoia over screwing up a burn and wasting $75 = fewer individuals using technology (lower piracy rates?)
3) Profit!
=Smidge=
That would be the proper solution, I suppose.
But in the short term you can highlight a RANGE of e-mails, say... the ones both before and after the infected one, and delete all three.
You have to highlight by clickign the one above and holding shift while clicking the one below to highlight all three. It's not selecting the mail that's the problem, it's clicking on it.
Of course, any mail you wanted to keep might be in the trash now. Visit your deleted items folder and view them if you need to. Just DO NOT click the infected message.
When you're done dancing, get a nice, clean webmail interface or some SMTP client that's not Outlook[Express]...
=Smidge=
Well he said he's dealing with 120 degree outdoor temperatures, so derate the AC's effectiveness a bit. This also cushions some of the other guestimates: You can definitely find AC units with better than 10 SEER, panels more than 10% efficient, and it's likely you can get more than 90 watts/sq.ft. solar energy if you're hitting 120F outside. The factor of 3 should give you a very nice cushion, but only a detailed calculation can assure it.
It works out to 30BTU/sq.ft., which is admittedly high for typical residential and a common design for light commercial/office applications. Typical home can probably get away with half that. If you buy a properly sized AC unit and size your energy collection for 30BTU/SF, though, you'll have plenty of spare capacity.
The hitch with radiant cooling (actually, any cooling!) is condensation. The last thing you want is damp, mildew smelling concrete walls in your house! If there's a way to handle this (ie: there's a system for draining it so there's no damage or potential for mildew/mold) then you're good. If not, you have to keep the water temp above the dew point and can only remove sensible heat from the space.
Of course, if you have very low humidity in the area, a swamp cooler will be the most energy efficient way to cool off!
If you're suggesting using concrete for thermal storage only, that's great. I imagined using tanks only because they would act as a reservoir AND storage, and be cheap to set up and easy to break down as well as easy to repair if it springs a leak. (Try fixing a leaky pipe imbedded in a solid block of concrete!)
And lastly, a lot of others have mentioned "smart" management of your home: Good insulation, good windows, mylar/tinted windowshades, light colored paints/siding/roofs and shade trees, all help to reduce the amount of heat your home absorbs in the first place, and will save you bundles in energy costs while using no energy whatsoever!
=Smidge=