I consider myself to be pretty liberal, maybe especially in environmental issues. On the other hand, I think a lot of the far left are complete assholes who really lower the level of the discourse. I'd far rather have safe, reasonably clean, nuclear reactors than the giant foul coal/oil plants we have now.
I toured a closed nuclear power plant on the Savannah river once. Like most nuclear reactors, it sat in the middle of a big swath of gov't owned land. When they closed the plant (which they did because it was leaking radioactive coolant), they let the land surrounding it do its own thing.
I was amazed at how healthy everythign looked. Sad to say that, as long as we're not dropping nukes on them, it's better for the wildlife to live next radioactive waste than it is for them to live next to people.
Sure, but the reaction is self-sustaining, meaning that without the coolant to moderate the reaction it can run away...go critical, and meltdown.
With a bead reactor, you have to have the coolant to have a reaction, so if you lose the coolant (which is pretty much your most likely failure in a power plant), all that happens is your reaction grinds to a halt and cools down. No super critical, no meltdown.
Reactor science has gotten pretty damn cool. I've been waiting for a major power to start investing in modern nuclear tech for a while (other than the sort that people use to blow each other up). Pretty damn embarassing for the US to have nuclear tech that is among the most primitive in the world, just to prop up our obsession with petroleum and coal.
REALITY 2: All the plants in this country have run past their intended design lives, AND are 30-40 years out of date with modern technology.
REALITY 3: Modern bead reactors of the type the chinese are building are VASTLY less likely to meltdown than any reactor currently running in the US. The coolant in a bead reactor actually catalyses the reaction, so without coolant, there is no reaction.
People in this country are totally irrational when it comes to nuclear power. We need this stuff, if only to replace the seriously aging reactors we already have. This is one place where I want to beat the snot out of all the left-wingers who won't be happy with anything that doesn't run on fairy dust and pot.
The problem with saying that is that, in the places where the population is densest, we still have broadband that is no better than the places where it is less dense.
I moved to Georgia (112 psm) from New Jersey (1030 psm) and had exactly the same speed internet in both locations. The capability for better exists in both places, but they feel no need to provide it.
Our telecom regulations suck. We protect companies that provide inferior service.
Hey, we know its an unfair criticism, compared to small densly populated countries like Japan and Korea...Still, articles like this may light a fire under some suceptables asses, and get us better broadband.
So let me be the second or third in decrying the deplorable state of broadband in this country! More porn! Faster porn! We are a shameful tech backwater! We might as well just be banging rocks together, settling for these crappy 3 megabit home internet connections. You know there is a direct correlation between the size of your pipe and the size of your penis, which means the Japanese and the Koreans have penises 33 times the size of ours! Even the women!
I call upon all of you to complain to your senators about the tiny nature of our pipes. It's flat out un-american. How can we hold up our heads in the world? No wonder we're having to invade other countries to prove our manhood.
Especially with shooters and strategy games, the game engine is the most important, and most expensive, piece of development. Relicsencing that engine to other companies is an important source of revenue. Obviously it would be incredible if they open sourced it as well...
Still, game companies end up in the toilet so often, I can't think they could easily toss the unique part of their work into the public domain and not suffer for it financially.
I think this would be a good place for 5 year software patents or something, because I think these things SHOULD end up in the public domain, eventually, but the originating company should be free to make a profit on it in the meantime.
"In response to IBM's discovery requests and the Court's orders, SCO did not [give] (and still has not [given]) any competent evidence that IBM's Linux activities infringe SCO's alleged copyrights (or even that SCO owns valid copyrights)"
Its a fun read. I'll be really suprised if they don't get a summary judgement in their favor.
It really underlines the brilliance of IBMs legal team, because now they can point back to all the shit SCO said, show clearly that they are either unable or unwilling to back it up with fact, and hit them with big ugly damages just for saying it.
I can say from experience that no one in radio gives a damn about who might be recording their broadcasts. When you take into account FM distortion, and tape distortion, your copy is going to sound like crap anyway. Also, you have to sit there and do it; they know that most people are too lazy to do that.
It's really just about throwing in more ads, more self promotion, and more FCC required station IDs. They spend hours teaching you to do that, as a DJ, and they consider you to be really GOOD at it when you can talk all the way up to the first word of the song. How much does that suck?
I had a friend who got a laptop stolen. As he was also running a side business as an alarm installer, this pissed him off. So he installed the most ridiculously HUGE alarm system, everything you can think of...Then got his new laptop stolen because he didn't have it on.
What it really all comes down to is: Keep an eye on your stuff. Lock your doors, keep your valuable stuff out of plain sight.
A weird one: Where I went to school, if you lived in the better part of town, you were MUCH more likely to have your stuff stolen, even if you took precautions. If you lived in the "bad" part of town, you could leave your doors unlocked---and this is New Jersey we're talking here.
The biggest problem with this is its sheer complexity. The current filesystem setup is very simple, very easy to understand. It's pretty much idiot proof. This is a beautiful thing, because the more simple a thing is, the more stable and reliable it is.
Turn this around and try to imagine replacing that simplicity with a relational database. I say, sure, it's possible, but why would you want to do it? It would be FAR easier to add a second tier service that keeps track of user/type/relationship, and leave the current file index alone. I think that would buy you the best of both worlds, allowing you ease of navigation while preserving a simple, functional, lower tier.
I am not at all suprised that they abandoned their attempt to make it work. The problems that COULD crop up are frankly terrifying, and I can't imagine this increasing the stability or reliablity of the Windows platform.
Re:Sounds perfect for Florida...
on
Space-Age Houses
·
· Score: 5, Informative
It's no dumber than a lot of the stuff they do in coastal areas to try and make houses "hurricane proof". I used to build them, so I know more about it than I ever wanted to.
First, three meters of water is no big deal. Three meters of water hitting your house as a storm surge is a big fucking deal. Most houses on the coast are build on sand, under the cement. Sand is good. Makes a nice foundation...Until hurricane driven tides wash it and your heavy ass house away.
As for durability...Most modern houses aren't set to last anywhere near 100 years. Sheetrock and plywood only go so far.
Considering what a subdivision of stilt-houses looks like now, I don't see what the difference is. What looks weirder, a normal house on stilts or a house that looks like it's SUPPOSED to be on stilts?
Seems like a perfectly decent idea to me. Solar power is way underutilized on the coast, and god knows regular housing doesn't fare all that well.
I inherited an "hINSPERON" laptop, and during the course of use ran across an odd LED error code. Found nothing about it online, had nothing better to do, so, what the hell, I called hell.
I have called hell many times in the past, but this was one of the longest waits I've ever had, raising the question of where all this money they're saving is going. Finally I get through to a support rep with an indian accent that was understandable, at least to me.
However, clearly she did not understand anything I was saying. I needed one piece of information, very specific (Middle LED Orange-Orange-Green repeating), which SHOULD have been available on their website. I asked the question, she put me on hold for ten minutes, came back and said, "It's not important".
"Maybe not," sez I, "but I still want to know."
Ten more minutes. "It's not important"
"Yes, you said that, and I said I still want to know."
Ten more minutes. "You don't need to know."
I DO need to know, to justify the last two hours of my life!"
Ten more minutes. "It's a battery code."
"No, really? The little battery ideogram next to the LED would never have given me that impression. what does it MEAN?"
Five more minutes, then I hung up. I've had many bad experiences with hell, but that was the worst in terms of sheer pointlessness.
The levels of bad feeling now are so much higher than they were before. It's foolish to move in and screw things up over there, especially when you have no concrete plan, and no concrete reason.
9/11 was planned by Bin Laden, and his grudge with us dates back to the '70s. Probably somethign to do with the fact that we used him against the soviets and then left him in a bombed out wasteland of a country.
They don't forgive and forget, but despite that we just romp around fucking with things, and pretend like the only consequences are the immediate ones. We're going to be paying for Bush's ego and Bush's oil cronies for decades to come.
Heh. With some of the jokers we had working for us, a lava lamp would have incited some in-studio attempts to relive the most chemical portions of the '60s.
Doubt it would have played though. With a phone light, you have to use the bit of high current that makes it ring to trip your switch, to cause all the lights to go, so a lava lamp would only be on for a few seconds, maybe three or four times before someone realized the phone was on. People'd have to call continuously to get it hot enough to work.
Hehe. Love that two minute drum solo in the long version of inna-gadda-da-vida. Think that guy was unclear on the concept of a solo.
What kind of moron doesn't think a big DDOS like that is going to be traced? The reason everyone gets away with it with MS and SCO is because everyone hates them, so there are too many suspects...But when its your biggest competitor? You're going down. And then to skip bail? "Noooooo please don't send me to white collar CEO prison for a week. Waaaaaaah."
In professional radio, they always have lights hooked up to the phone line, because, obviously, it would sound like shit to have the phone suddenly ringing when you're on the air.
My boss had a thing with people not answering the phone, so the phone light moved from being a modified desk lamp, to being a strobe light, to being two strobe lights, to being two strobe lights and a red rotating police light.
All this being said, and since I know for a fact its a pretty easy electrical hack, why stop with a silly lava lamp? If my old General Manager was in IT these days, a failed build would result in a temporarily blind and deaf dev team, and an office space that would occasionally have the lighting and decible range of a metal concert.
The example they gave in the article was GTA, referring to the billboards on the streets. I can honestly say that it wouldn't bother me at all to see companies pay to put their real product ads in games in that manner. Same goes for sports games, which the ads in the arena, yadda yadda.
These are places where, in our every day lives, we are used to seeing ads. This is no change, as long as its done in a non-invasive sort of way...That is as long as you aren't forced to sit and absorb the ad.
Nothing. Nothing in the whole freaking world, makes me madder than being forced to sit through an advertisement. If I have paid for a freaking movie, and they make me watch some goddamn annoying commercial at the beginning, I find that completely intolerable. I doubt I'm alone.
So it all comes down to the same thing; how much advertising can be done without making people crazy? I think GTA would be a good testbed, because if the ads make the players crazy, you know someone is going to go to the ad company and kill everyone there. Its a given.
I have never felt so much like an english major.
on
Cheating Made Easy
·
· Score: 1
Okay people. Let me explain.
The Odyssey was written by Homer 4000 years ago, and is about a famous greek and his trip home. It is a fun and easy read.
Ulysses is by James Joyce, it is almost 700 pages of the most ferociously post modern work ever put to paper and is simultaniously the "Best book ever written" and one of the most hated and feared pieces of modern lit.
Hmmm, I don't know. Does this look familiar?
on
Cheating Made Easy
·
· Score: 1
Random paragraph from Ulysses:
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
If your intellectual snobbery was a rib, I would repeatedly rape you with it, before forcing you to eat it.
It's stupid anyway. Either they'll find a way to do it without help, which, since major phone companies are offering VOIP now, seems pretty likely, or they'll find another way of spying on people who they formerly wiretapped. Where theres a will, and billions of taxpayer dollars, theres a way.
I don't know why they would telegraph their intentions like this. I mean, we all already knew, but still, they hadn't SAID it, we just assumed, but now they've SAID it. Weird.
Speaking as someone who actually read Ulysses, I think actually taking the time to read the book actually makes you LESS able to write an intelligent essay. I sure as hell had a better idea of what the book was about before I read it.
I thought it was just me, but then I ran accross this guy who described reading Ulysses as "...like having a rib ripped out of my body, being beaten with it, raped with it, and then being forced to eat it," which about sums up my feelings for it.
In conclusion, if there are any schoolchildren out there, there is no course of academic plagarism whose punishment is worse than actually having to read Ulysses! For gods sake, don't let it kill again.
Slashdot Mirror
Q: Why are pioneer 10 & 11 moving off course?
A: Because dark matter sucks.
A2: Because intersteller space sucks.
A3: Because SCO sucks less, the farther away you get from it.
I'm going to be here all week people, and the 10:00am show is completely different once I get my coffee.
I consider myself to be pretty liberal, maybe especially in environmental issues. On the other hand, I think a lot of the far left are complete assholes who really lower the level of the discourse. I'd far rather have safe, reasonably clean, nuclear reactors than the giant foul coal/oil plants we have now.
I toured a closed nuclear power plant on the Savannah river once. Like most nuclear reactors, it sat in the middle of a big swath of gov't owned land. When they closed the plant (which they did because it was leaking radioactive coolant), they let the land surrounding it do its own thing.
I was amazed at how healthy everythign looked. Sad to say that, as long as we're not dropping nukes on them, it's better for the wildlife to live next radioactive waste than it is for them to live next to people.
Sure, but the reaction is self-sustaining, meaning that without the coolant to moderate the reaction it can run away...go critical, and meltdown.
With a bead reactor, you have to have the coolant to have a reaction, so if you lose the coolant (which is pretty much your most likely failure in a power plant), all that happens is your reaction grinds to a halt and cools down. No super critical, no meltdown.
Reactor science has gotten pretty damn cool. I've been waiting for a major power to start investing in modern nuclear tech for a while (other than the sort that people use to blow each other up). Pretty damn embarassing for the US to have nuclear tech that is among the most primitive in the world, just to prop up our obsession with petroleum and coal.
We can't live without it at this time.
REALITY 2:
All the plants in this country have run past their intended design lives, AND are 30-40 years out of date with modern technology.
REALITY 3:
Modern bead reactors of the type the chinese are building are VASTLY less likely to meltdown than any reactor currently running in the US. The coolant in a bead reactor actually catalyses the reaction, so without coolant, there is no reaction.
People in this country are totally irrational when it comes to nuclear power. We need this stuff, if only to replace the seriously aging reactors we already have. This is one place where I want to beat the snot out of all the left-wingers who won't be happy with anything that doesn't run on fairy dust and pot.
The problem with saying that is that, in the places where the population is densest, we still have broadband that is no better than the places where it is less dense.
I moved to Georgia (112 psm) from New Jersey (1030 psm) and had exactly the same speed internet in both locations. The capability for better exists in both places, but they feel no need to provide it.
Our telecom regulations suck. We protect companies that provide inferior service.
Hey, we know its an unfair criticism, compared to small densly populated countries like Japan and Korea...Still, articles like this may light a fire under some suceptables asses, and get us better broadband.
So let me be the second or third in decrying the deplorable state of broadband in this country! More porn! Faster porn! We are a shameful tech backwater! We might as well just be banging rocks together, settling for these crappy 3 megabit home internet connections. You know there is a direct correlation between the size of your pipe and the size of your penis, which means the Japanese and the Koreans have penises 33 times the size of ours! Even the women!
I call upon all of you to complain to your senators about the tiny nature of our pipes. It's flat out un-american. How can we hold up our heads in the world? No wonder we're having to invade other countries to prove our manhood.
Sorry. I've got 2 patent chips on my shoulder, and that's the other one. One: they last too long. Two: they lock out reverse engineering.
I don't know. We need some serious reform.
Especially with shooters and strategy games, the game engine is the most important, and most expensive, piece of development. Relicsencing that engine to other companies is an important source of revenue. Obviously it would be incredible if they open sourced it as well...
Still, game companies end up in the toilet so often, I can't think they could easily toss the unique part of their work into the public domain and not suffer for it financially.
I think this would be a good place for 5 year software patents or something, because I think these things SHOULD end up in the public domain, eventually, but the originating company should be free to make a profit on it in the meantime.
Just my opinion.
"In response to IBM's discovery requests and the Court's orders, SCO did not [give] (and still has not [given]) any competent evidence that IBM's Linux activities infringe SCO's alleged copyrights (or even that SCO owns valid copyrights)"
Its a fun read. I'll be really suprised if they don't get a summary judgement in their favor.
It really underlines the brilliance of IBMs legal team, because now they can point back to all the shit SCO said, show clearly that they are either unable or unwilling to back it up with fact, and hit them with big ugly damages just for saying it.
I can say from experience that no one in radio gives a damn about who might be recording their broadcasts. When you take into account FM distortion, and tape distortion, your copy is going to sound like crap anyway. Also, you have to sit there and do it; they know that most people are too lazy to do that.
It's really just about throwing in more ads, more self promotion, and more FCC required station IDs. They spend hours teaching you to do that, as a DJ, and they consider you to be really GOOD at it when you can talk all the way up to the first word of the song. How much does that suck?
I had a friend who got a laptop stolen. As he was also running a side business as an alarm installer, this pissed him off. So he installed the most ridiculously HUGE alarm system, everything you can think of...Then got his new laptop stolen because he didn't have it on.
What it really all comes down to is: Keep an eye on your stuff. Lock your doors, keep your valuable stuff out of plain sight.
A weird one: Where I went to school, if you lived in the better part of town, you were MUCH more likely to have your stuff stolen, even if you took precautions. If you lived in the "bad" part of town, you could leave your doors unlocked---and this is New Jersey we're talking here.
The biggest problem with this is its sheer complexity. The current filesystem setup is very simple, very easy to understand. It's pretty much idiot proof. This is a beautiful thing, because the more simple a thing is, the more stable and reliable it is.
Turn this around and try to imagine replacing that simplicity with a relational database. I say, sure, it's possible, but why would you want to do it? It would be FAR easier to add a second tier service that keeps track of user/type/relationship, and leave the current file index alone. I think that would buy you the best of both worlds, allowing you ease of navigation while preserving a simple, functional, lower tier.
I am not at all suprised that they abandoned their attempt to make it work. The problems that COULD crop up are frankly terrifying, and I can't imagine this increasing the stability or reliablity of the Windows platform.
It's no dumber than a lot of the stuff they do in coastal areas to try and make houses "hurricane proof". I used to build them, so I know more about it than I ever wanted to.
First, three meters of water is no big deal. Three meters of water hitting your house as a storm surge is a big fucking deal. Most houses on the coast are build on sand, under the cement. Sand is good. Makes a nice foundation...Until hurricane driven tides wash it and your heavy ass house away.
As for durability...Most modern houses aren't set to last anywhere near 100 years. Sheetrock and plywood only go so far.
Considering what a subdivision of stilt-houses looks like now, I don't see what the difference is. What looks weirder, a normal house on stilts or a house that looks like it's SUPPOSED to be on stilts?
Seems like a perfectly decent idea to me. Solar power is way underutilized on the coast, and god knows regular housing doesn't fare all that well.
Funny story.
I inherited an "hINSPERON" laptop, and during the course of use ran across an odd LED error code. Found nothing about it online, had nothing better to do, so, what the hell, I called hell.
I have called hell many times in the past, but this was one of the longest waits I've ever had, raising the question of where all this money they're saving is going. Finally I get through to a support rep with an indian accent that was understandable, at least to me.
However, clearly she did not understand anything I was saying. I needed one piece of information, very specific (Middle LED Orange-Orange-Green repeating), which SHOULD have been available on their website. I asked the question, she put me on hold for ten minutes, came back and said, "It's not important".
"Maybe not," sez I, "but I still want to know."
Ten more minutes. "It's not important"
"Yes, you said that, and I said I still want to know."
Ten more minutes. "You don't need to know."
I DO need to know, to justify the last two hours of my life!"
Ten more minutes. "It's a battery code."
"No, really? The little battery ideogram next to the LED would never have given me that impression. what does it MEAN?"
Five more minutes, then I hung up. I've had many bad experiences with hell, but that was the worst in terms of sheer pointlessness.
The levels of bad feeling now are so much higher than they were before. It's foolish to move in and screw things up over there, especially when you have no concrete plan, and no concrete reason.
9/11 was planned by Bin Laden, and his grudge with us dates back to the '70s. Probably somethign to do with the fact that we used him against the soviets and then left him in a bombed out wasteland of a country.
They don't forgive and forget, but despite that we just romp around fucking with things, and pretend like the only consequences are the immediate ones. We're going to be paying for Bush's ego and Bush's oil cronies for decades to come.
I HAVE mod points. God I'm a fricking idiot. Gotta get more sweet sweet caffiene.
Heh. With some of the jokers we had working for us, a lava lamp would have incited some in-studio attempts to relive the most chemical portions of the '60s.
Doubt it would have played though. With a phone light, you have to use the bit of high current that makes it ring to trip your switch, to cause all the lights to go, so a lava lamp would only be on for a few seconds, maybe three or four times before someone realized the phone was on. People'd have to call continuously to get it hot enough to work.
Hehe. Love that two minute drum solo in the long version of inna-gadda-da-vida. Think that guy was unclear on the concept of a solo.
Mod parent up, that's exactly what I thought.
What kind of moron doesn't think a big DDOS like that is going to be traced? The reason everyone gets away with it with MS and SCO is because everyone hates them, so there are too many suspects...But when its your biggest competitor? You're going down.
And then to skip bail? "Noooooo please don't send me to white collar CEO prison for a week. Waaaaaaah."
This is almost too dumb to make a Dilbert strip.
In professional radio, they always have lights hooked up to the phone line, because, obviously, it would sound like shit to have the phone suddenly ringing when you're on the air.
My boss had a thing with people not answering the phone, so the phone light moved from being a modified desk lamp, to being a strobe light, to being two strobe lights, to being two strobe lights and a red rotating police light.
All this being said, and since I know for a fact its a pretty easy electrical hack, why stop with a silly lava lamp? If my old General Manager was in IT these days, a failed build would result in a temporarily blind and deaf dev team, and an office space that would occasionally have the lighting and decible range of a metal concert.
The example they gave in the article was GTA, referring to the billboards on the streets. I can honestly say that it wouldn't bother me at all to see companies pay to put their real product ads in games in that manner. Same goes for sports games, which the ads in the arena, yadda yadda.
These are places where, in our every day lives, we are used to seeing ads. This is no change, as long as its done in a non-invasive sort of way...That is as long as you aren't forced to sit and absorb the ad.
Nothing. Nothing in the whole freaking world, makes me madder than being forced to sit through an advertisement. If I have paid for a freaking movie, and they make me watch some goddamn annoying commercial at the beginning, I find that completely intolerable. I doubt I'm alone.
So it all comes down to the same thing; how much advertising can be done without making people crazy? I think GTA would be a good testbed, because if the ads make the players crazy, you know someone is going to go to the ad company and kill everyone there. Its a given.
Okay people. Let me explain.
The Odyssey was written by Homer 4000 years ago, and is about a famous greek and his trip home. It is a fun and easy read.
Ulysses is by James Joyce, it is almost 700 pages of the most ferociously post modern work ever put to paper and is simultaniously the "Best book ever written" and one of the most hated and feared pieces of modern lit.
Random paragraph from Ulysses:
It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible. Aristotle's phrase formed itself within the gabbled verses and floated out into the studious silence of the library of Saint Genevieve where he had read, sheltered from the sin of Paris, night by night. By his elbow a delicate Siamese conned a handbook of strategy. Fed and feeding brains about me: under glowlamps, impaled, with faintly beating feelers: and in my mind's darkness a sloth of the underworld, reluctant, shy of brightness, shifting her dragon scaly folds. Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.
If your intellectual snobbery was a rib, I would repeatedly rape you with it, before forcing you to eat it.
It's stupid anyway. Either they'll find a way to do it without help, which, since major phone companies are offering VOIP now, seems pretty likely, or they'll find another way of spying on people who they formerly wiretapped. Where theres a will, and billions of taxpayer dollars, theres a way.
I don't know why they would telegraph their intentions like this. I mean, we all already knew, but still, they hadn't SAID it, we just assumed, but now they've SAID it. Weird.
Speaking as someone who actually read Ulysses, I think actually taking the time to read the book actually makes you LESS able to write an intelligent essay. I sure as hell had a better idea of what the book was about before I read it.
I thought it was just me, but then I ran accross this guy who described reading Ulysses as "...like having a rib ripped out of my body, being beaten with it, raped with it, and then being forced to eat it," which about sums up my feelings for it.
In conclusion, if there are any schoolchildren out there, there is no course of academic plagarism whose punishment is worse than actually having to read Ulysses! For gods sake, don't let it kill again.
Kids have always been sly. I know I was a sneaky little bastard. The internet just gives a lot more options for this sort of plagarism.