it doesn't help people trapped above the fire at all
Sure it does, assuming the tubes are adaquately insulated.
Of course, then you might as well make sure the stairwells have adequate
insulation.
Stairwells would probably have better bandwidth overall,
as you don't have to wait for the entire length of the tube
to clear before you can go. (You can't just wait for the tube above you to clear, because different people would have different rates of fall, depending on type of clothing etc.) It'd just take one scaredy-cat clinging
to the edge when the system is trying to let him drop to bring the
whole thing to a screeching halt.
The main problems with the WTC stairways were 1) the inadequate
insulation, and 2) they were too narrow. That latter factor
meant that the firefighters going up the stairs were actually
disrupting traffic severely, ironically costing lives as
they prevented more people from escaping.
So building a wider staircase would probably be more effective than any fancy roller-coaster system. The reason such a system would (might) work for a rocket-launcher tower is that you have a small number of people involved, who would be well-trained to use it. Also, it's much more likely that an emergency situation could mean the entire thing exploding at once.
That said, I doubt this rail system will ever be used to successfully get anyone away from a rocket before it explodes. From what we've seen so far, such explosions are already underway before anyone is actually aware of a problem.
I'm sure this message will have an audience of <= 1, as I'm rather late to the party, but I just want to write this down somewhere.
This is a very neat idea, that of taking "has an atmosphere" into consideration. That gets to a deeper point: what classification system you use depends on what you're going to do with it. If you're an interstellar species looking to colonize, you're going to categories based on not just whether there's an atmosphere, but what type, what temperature, etc. -- i.e. how useful it's going to be to you, for your purposes.
But the reality right now is that we really don't have enough examples to come up with any really decent classification system. It'll have to wait until we can acertain the full populations of multiple other star systems for us to really get started.
I, for one, like that Pluto is getting "demoted," because instead of being the dinkiest, most pathetic little "planet", it is now our featured ambassador to the Kuiper Belt -- one of the largest, and definitely the closest. Not that it wasn't before, but this fact will become clearer in the public's mind. Add that in with the new designation of Ceres (is that the name) as "dwarf planet" instead of "asteroid", and the result is that the Solar System has just expanded greatly in people's minds, not shrunk.
Though I'd prefer "minor planet" rather than "dwarf".
I also don't like the phrase "has cleared its orbit", because that's far too strict -- you can easily say that Jupiter hasn't cleared its orbit, with those various asteroids it has sitting at its lagrange points. Rather, a much better term would be "dominates its orbit." Then the main 8 bodies in our solar system clearly become planets, and Pluto gets demoted not because it's moon is so big, but because it's in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune -- i.e. Pluto and Neptune have shared, interacting orbits, and Neptune is the dominant body.
I'd also like the "planet" definition to work just as well for "moon," if you replace "Sun" with "Jupiter" or "Saturn", etc., and drop the "round" requirement. Then all those "moons" that Saturn has would have clearer definitions. For example, I remember that there are two of Saturn's moons that actually swap orbits every time the pass each other, in a special kind of resonance. As such, neither by itself should be considered a "moon", but rather the two together would be a "double moon". Similarly for Pluto and Charon -- the two should be called a "double minor planet".
Ok, that completes my brain dump on the subject. Thanks for reading, if anyone is.
For me, it is this fact that really slams the door on Pluto's status as a planet.
One of the articles I've read on this (the best I've seen so far) points out that another way to say that a body "has cleared its orbit" is that it is the dominant body within its orbital range.
Pluto, being locked in a resonance with Neptune, can't be said to be dominating its orbit. In fact, it is Neptune that is dominating Pluto's orbit (because it's so much bigger than Pluto).
I find Starbucks' ability to shoot-down/kill the cylon raider - then somehow getting inside, cutting its guts out - and still flying it much more unplausible.
Well, alright, I'll give you that.
Except that our current state of knowledge about artifically-created sentient life and bio-technology in general is so limited, that I'm willing to cut the writers quite a bit of slack in that area.
But when they directly contradict basic knowledge like how much water is around on planets, especially when they didn't have to (e.g. the problem could have been the purity instead of the absolute scarcity)... well, that's just a bit irksome.
And of course, another thing is there's an extra irksomeness when a show that's trying to be accurate like this one goes and makes a dumb conceptual mistake like that.
Sorry, but parent post doesn't deserve a 5 on this.
So, sure, water in some form is abundant in space/planets, etc.
Yes, ice, for one. LOTS of it. See Rei's post later on the specifics for our system.
Remember, in the episode, they found the water they were looking for on the surface of a planet/moon with virtually no atmosphere -- and that means ice. And, from the look of it, it's just a little patch in an isolated spot on the surface. Whereas, in our own system, virtually all of the moons of the large, outer planets are covered with layers of ice tens of miles thick at least.
But they need water "now"
They had time to search multiple star systems, all of which had planets. Their odds of not finding more water than they could ever mine would be astronomically low.
So now you're on a search for potable water...
Now this would make sense, except that, if I remember correctly, there are multiple occasions where characters describe the planets as "dry". i.e. they make it pretty clear that they're going to be able to make use of whatever water they can find, and their problem is that there is no water at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
So yeah, it would have made a lot more sense if the characters went into how they needed to find very pure water; say, if the Galactica's purifiers were not designed to process that much all at once. And then at the end, when the "find" was made, if the graphic showed something like "purity levels at 98 percent blah blah...". I don't think that would have complicated the plot any.
But the writers apprently didn't think of that. Too bad.
And WINE/VirtualPC running so well may be the biggest disaster for MacOS -- why should Microsoft continue to support MSOffice/Mac when you can just run the Windows version in WINE?
Yeah... I'm sure MS will have no problem recommending an OSS product for its users...
Tritium consists of a proton, 2 neutrons, and, unless it is ionized, a single electron. When tritium decays into helium 3, one of the two neutrons breaks down into a proton and an electron that goes whizzing off until it hits something.
Hmmm, so you end up with two hydrogen atoms (or a hydrogen and a deuterium). That means that the volume effectivly doubles, and so the pressure in the sealed chamber of the battery will increase over time...
Probably not a big deal, but interesting to think about.
Re:Very "interesting" quote...
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1
Hmmm...
Google should release a distribution of Linux -- but this would be a version tuned to make your computer act as something
of a dumb terminal, using Google's Most Excellent Server Farm as the computing resource. It would have a standard set of productivity software, games, etc. available with no setup required.
This would fit with Google's business model, and would make
for a computing environment with less administration overhead
than windows! (if the user sticks to software available via
google's servers; it ought to also have the ability to install
program locally, to keep the real Linux users happy).
Seems like they could roll out something like this pretty darn quick,
if they wanted to. I think it would get popular fast, and
soon hardware vendors could start selling machines optimized for it.
The credit card company took care of the charges but seemed totally uninterested in pursuing the matter, even after I provided them contact information at Amazon.
Just a cost of doing business.
Far cheaper than actually investing in any real security measures.
And besides, with the new bankruptcy bill that Congress just passed, their profits are going to be higher than ever.
So a few people here and there get their identity stolen and their credit ratings thrashed; no skin off their margins!
What kind of idiot would think that this "parallel"
stereo viewing method is a good idea, without special
viewing equipment?
Cross-eye is far superior, as your
eyes are naturally built to do that (e.g. if you hold your
finger in front of your face and focus on it). It's just
a matter of loosening up your association between going
cross-eyed and focusing close-up.
I don't know how other people feel about this, but for me, the Secure Digital format is pretty close to being as small as I want to get. I don't want to have to use tweezers to get my memory into and out of devices.
For me, it's CompactFlash. Maybe that's just the one I imprinted with, but to me the SD cards look so skinny I'm afraid of them getting bent too easily.
CF cards have a nice, solid feel to them. I don't feel afraid to toss one onto my desk lest it get broken or lost, yet you can still fit plenty of them in your pocket at once.
McGrath is not making a technical argument, but a management/legal one. In business, security (ie peace of mind) is not defined by the tightness of a piece of code but by who you can make accountable for any failure.
Exactly -- he doesn't understand (or is forcefully ignoring) the "common good" concepts that apply to FOSS. Security of the Linux kernel may not be anyone's individual responsibility, but everyone who works on it to any serious degree understands the importance of it, and will work to prevent problems or fix them quickly. Those individuals who don't take it seriously will tend not to have their code accepted by the community.
So, true, there's no one to sue if your business is somehow damaged by a security bug in FOSS software. But the very nature of it means that such problems are far less likely to happen in the first place.* Now which is the approach that truly supplies greater peace of mind?
Remember that the lawsuit is the corporate world's traditional feedback mechanism to correct problems. This is what McGrath -- and, unfortunately, most PHB's -- take as gospel. They don't realize that alternate mechanisms are possible and can be more effective.
* Note that this is only true for
large community FOSS projects -- OS, browser, etc. Programs that many, many people will use, and has lots of contributors, including a very dedicated set of core programmers (at least, relative to the size of the code base). A project that caters to only a niche application space won't have the "many eyes" aspect working in its favor, and so can in deed be inferior to a company-produced product -- if such a product could make money.
Social Security is currently "invested" in US Treasury bonds. If Social Security is privitized and all those US Treasury bonds are called as people make their own investment choices, how will paying off that US Treasury bond debt affect the US dollar? Maybe this is GWB's way to control the declining US dollar.
I don't see how this would increase the value of the dollar; in fact, it would run the risk of a steep decline.
If the US govt. were suddenly expected to pay off a big chunk of its debt all at once, it would have trouble doing so (e.g. big tax hike, big spending cut, etc). This would make US Treasury bonds look less stable, and scare away a huge number of investors, including currency investors. They'd sell their US bonds and start buying bonds from other countries, corporations, etc. All out-of-country purchases would mean less dollars wanted. If the panic were big enough, the dollar would crash outright.
The problem is that U.S. government bonds, held by the U.S. government, represent nothing more than a promise to tax the American people.
Hmm, yes. Actually I already realized this, but somehow this is helping me clarify my understanding. Let me see if I can sum it all up:
- In reality, the S.S. system is an insurance system, not a pension plan.
- All revenues paid out to beneficiaries in a given year come out of that year's tax receipts (+ borrowing from outside sources).
- A portion of the tax burden, which is earmarked specifically for Social Security, is distributed among the population differently from the main tax burden. In fact, it is distributed regressively, as there is a cap on it, and is a constant percentage.
- Any excess revenue from that earmarked tax goes into the general fund.
- Any shortfall vs. S.S. payouts is supplemented from the general fund.
Interestingly, this means that the S.S. tax currently makes the tax system more regressive than it "should" be. Conversely, when the "reserve fund" starts to be "drawn down", and the payments are supplemented with cash from the general fund, that means this regressiveness is reduced -- i.e. the rich start having to bear more of a burden of the payouts.
<conspiracy-theory mode>
I wonder if that's what Bush et. al are really worried about?
</conspiracy-theory mode>
Anyways, there's just one practical question that this all boils down to, in terms of the "solvency" of S.S.:
In any given year in the future, will the payouts be large enough relative to that year's tax revenue that the U.S. Govt. would have to issue so many bonds that it would be seen as bankrupt?
That's really all there is to it. If the answer is "yes", then something definitely needs to be done -- e.g. index the payouts by inflation only, not by that "wage index", or expect to raise taxes when the time comes, etc.. Otherwise, if the answer is "no", then don't touch a damn thing. Except perhaps a restructuring to make it clear that the system is as described above.
Alright -- to everyone who complains about how the SS money has been "stolen" by being lent to the federal govt., I ask this:
What else should have been done with it?
The current debate is whether it can be invested in stocks etc. Ruling that out for the moment (as it has been until now), there were two choices:
1. Leave it in cash.
2. Invest it in U.S. Treasury bonds
U.S. Treasury bonds are recognized by the global financial community as the safest investment one can make. That's where the "bond" mutual funds put most of their money, for example. In fact, it's seen as even safer than leaving it in cash, because you're still guaranteed some return on investment -- whereas cash's value will waste away due to inflation. Bonds may still give back less than inflation takes away, but it's better than nothing.
So why are U.S. govt. bonds seen as the safest?
Think about it this way: if the U.S. govt. becomes insolvent (the only case where you won't get your money back + interest on those bonds), the world financial system will have collapsed, and you've lost your money virtually no matter where you put it. Yes, gold and the like would survive, but if you've been investing in gold, so far you've been losing money vs. inflation while you're waiting for the world to end.
So I ask again: what else should have been done with the S.S. money?
If my company let me spend 20% of my time on my own projects, most likely the company would still own everything I create. (I haven't heard what Google's policy on that is).
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I knew that all my "personal" projects would have to be left behind when I get laid off or whatever, that wouldn't exactly inspire my creativity a whole lot.
Hydrogen is only a vector. It is not an energy source, it's only a way to carry energy created elsewhere. There is no "hydrogen economy"...
Actually, I think the term "hydrogen economy" is actually quite apt -- it's like "cash economy" or "barter economy" -- i.e. the first word refers to the medium of exchange, not what's actually driving things.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure it does, assuming the tubes are adaquately insulated.
Of course, then you might as well make sure the stairwells have adequate insulation.
Stairwells would probably have better bandwidth overall, as you don't have to wait for the entire length of the tube to clear before you can go. (You can't just wait for the tube above you to clear, because different people would have different rates of fall, depending on type of clothing etc.) It'd just take one scaredy-cat clinging to the edge when the system is trying to let him drop to bring the whole thing to a screeching halt.
The main problems with the WTC stairways were 1) the inadequate insulation, and 2) they were too narrow. That latter factor meant that the firefighters going up the stairs were actually disrupting traffic severely, ironically costing lives as they prevented more people from escaping.
So building a wider staircase would probably be more effective than any fancy roller-coaster system. The reason such a system would (might) work for a rocket-launcher tower is that you have a small number of people involved, who would be well-trained to use it. Also, it's much more likely that an emergency situation could mean the entire thing exploding at once.
That said, I doubt this rail system will ever be used to successfully get anyone away from a rocket before it explodes. From what we've seen so far, such explosions are already underway before anyone is actually aware of a problem.
I've heard there's a system somewhat like this, in Holland, I think.
It's called "bike stealing."
I'm sure this message will have an audience of <= 1, as I'm rather late to the
party, but I just want to write this down somewhere.
This is a very neat idea, that of taking "has an atmosphere" into consideration.
That gets to a deeper point: what classification system you use depends on what
you're going to do with it. If you're an interstellar species looking to
colonize, you're going to categories based on not just whether there's an
atmosphere, but what type, what temperature, etc. -- i.e. how useful it's
going to be to you, for your purposes.
But the reality right now is that we really don't have enough examples to come
up with any really decent classification system. It'll have to wait until we
can acertain the full populations of multiple other star systems for us to
really get started.
I, for one, like that Pluto is getting "demoted," because instead of being the
dinkiest, most pathetic little "planet", it is now our featured ambassador to
the Kuiper Belt -- one of the largest, and definitely the closest. Not that
it wasn't before, but this fact will become clearer in the public's mind. Add
that in with the new designation of Ceres (is that the name) as "dwarf planet"
instead of "asteroid", and the result is that the Solar System has just
expanded greatly in people's minds, not shrunk.
Though I'd prefer "minor planet" rather than "dwarf".
I also don't like the phrase "has cleared its orbit", because that's far too
strict -- you can easily say that Jupiter hasn't cleared its orbit, with those
various asteroids it has sitting at its lagrange points. Rather, a much
better term would be "dominates its orbit." Then the main 8 bodies in
our solar system clearly become planets, and Pluto gets demoted not because
it's moon is so big, but because it's in a 3:2 resonance with Neptune -- i.e.
Pluto and Neptune have shared, interacting orbits, and Neptune is the dominant
body.
I'd also like the "planet" definition to work just as well for "moon," if you
replace "Sun" with "Jupiter" or "Saturn", etc., and drop the "round"
requirement. Then all those "moons" that Saturn has would have clearer
definitions. For example, I remember that there are two of Saturn's moons
that actually swap orbits every time the pass each other, in a special kind of
resonance. As such, neither by itself should be considered a "moon", but
rather the two together would be a "double moon". Similarly for Pluto and
Charon -- the two should be called a "double minor planet".
Ok, that completes my brain dump on the subject. Thanks for reading,
if anyone is.
- Doug
Here's the article I was referring to.
To explore an example: Has there ever been a Firefox/Mozilla security flaw that wasn't only for the Windows version?
Well, alright, I'll give you that.
Except that our current state of knowledge about artifically-created sentient life and bio-technology in general is so limited, that I'm willing to cut the writers quite a bit of slack in that area.
But when they directly contradict basic knowledge like how much water is around on planets, especially when they didn't have to (e.g. the problem could have been the purity instead of the absolute scarcity)... well, that's just a bit irksome.
And of course, another thing is there's an extra irksomeness when a show that's trying to be accurate like this one goes and makes a dumb conceptual mistake like that.
So, sure, water in some form is abundant in space/planets, etc.
Yes, ice, for one. LOTS of it. See Rei's post later on the specifics for our system.
Remember, in the episode, they found the water they were looking for on the surface of a planet/moon with virtually no atmosphere -- and that means ice. And, from the look of it, it's just a little patch in an isolated spot on the surface. Whereas, in our own system, virtually all of the moons of the large, outer planets are covered with layers of ice tens of miles thick at least.
But they need water "now"
They had time to search multiple star systems, all of which had planets. Their odds of not finding more water than they could ever mine would be astronomically low.
So now you're on a search for potable water...
Now this would make sense, except that, if I remember correctly, there are multiple occasions where characters describe the planets as "dry". i.e. they make it pretty clear that they're going to be able to make use of whatever water they can find, and their problem is that there is no water at all. Please correct me if I'm wrong on that.
So yeah, it would have made a lot more sense if the characters went into how they needed to find very pure water; say, if the Galactica's purifiers were not designed to process that much all at once. And then at the end, when the "find" was made, if the graphic showed something like "purity levels at 98 percent blah blah...". I don't think that would have complicated the plot any.
But the writers apprently didn't think of that. Too bad.
You'd expect slashdotters to be better informed on matters of science than this!
One word: Minesweeper.
My right hand will never be the same. I had to start mouse'ing with my left.
Yeah... I'm sure MS will have no problem recommending an OSS product for its users...
Hmmm, so you end up with two hydrogen atoms (or a hydrogen and a deuterium). That means that the volume effectivly doubles, and so the pressure in the sealed chamber of the battery will increase over time...
Probably not a big deal, but interesting to think about.
Google should release a distribution of Linux -- but this would be a version tuned to make your computer act as something of a dumb terminal, using Google's Most Excellent Server Farm as the computing resource. It would have a standard set of productivity software, games, etc. available with no setup required.
This would fit with Google's business model, and would make for a computing environment with less administration overhead than windows! (if the user sticks to software available via google's servers; it ought to also have the ability to install program locally, to keep the real Linux users happy).
Seems like they could roll out something like this pretty darn quick, if they wanted to. I think it would get popular fast, and soon hardware vendors could start selling machines optimized for it.
Talk about your Microsoft killer...
Just a cost of doing business.
Far cheaper than actually investing in any real security measures.
And besides, with the new bankruptcy bill that Congress just passed, their profits are going to be higher than ever.
So a few people here and there get their identity stolen and their credit ratings thrashed; no skin off their margins!
What kind of idiot would think that this "parallel" stereo viewing method is a good idea, without special viewing equipment?
Cross-eye is far superior, as your eyes are naturally built to do that (e.g. if you hold your finger in front of your face and focus on it). It's just a matter of loosening up your association between going cross-eyed and focusing close-up.
For me, it's CompactFlash. Maybe that's just the one I imprinted with, but to me the SD cards look so skinny I'm afraid of them getting bent too easily.
CF cards have a nice, solid feel to them. I don't feel afraid to toss one onto my desk lest it get broken or lost, yet you can still fit plenty of them in your pocket at once.
Exactly -- he doesn't understand (or is forcefully ignoring) the "common good" concepts that apply to FOSS. Security of the Linux kernel may not be anyone's individual responsibility, but everyone who works on it to any serious degree understands the importance of it, and will work to prevent problems or fix them quickly. Those individuals who don't take it seriously will tend not to have their code accepted by the community.
So, true, there's no one to sue if your business is somehow damaged by a security bug in FOSS software. But the very nature of it means that such problems are far less likely to happen in the first place.* Now which is the approach that truly supplies greater peace of mind?
Remember that the lawsuit is the corporate world's traditional feedback mechanism to correct problems. This is what McGrath -- and, unfortunately, most PHB's -- take as gospel. They don't realize that alternate mechanisms are possible and can be more effective.
burblebeepburblewarble
I don't see how this would increase the value of the dollar; in fact, it would run the risk of a steep decline.
If the US govt. were suddenly expected to pay off a big chunk of its debt all at once, it would have trouble doing so (e.g. big tax hike, big spending cut, etc). This would make US Treasury bonds look less stable, and scare away a huge number of investors, including currency investors. They'd sell their US bonds and start buying bonds from other countries, corporations, etc. All out-of-country purchases would mean less dollars wanted. If the panic were big enough, the dollar would crash outright.
Hmm, yes. Actually I already realized this, but somehow this is helping me clarify my understanding. Let me see if I can sum it all up:
Interestingly, this means that the S.S. tax currently makes the tax system more regressive than it "should" be. Conversely, when the "reserve fund" starts to be "drawn down", and the payments are supplemented with cash from the general fund, that means this regressiveness is reduced -- i.e. the rich start having to bear more of a burden of the payouts.<conspiracy-theory mode>
</conspiracy-theory mode>Anyways, there's just one practical question that this all boils down to, in terms of the "solvency" of S.S.:
That's really all there is to it. If the answer is "yes", then something definitely needs to be done -- e.g. index the payouts by inflation only, not by that "wage index", or expect to raise taxes when the time comes, etc.. Otherwise, if the answer is "no", then don't touch a damn thing. Except perhaps a restructuring to make it clear that the system is as described above.So why are U.S. govt. bonds seen as the safest?
Think about it this way: if the U.S. govt. becomes insolvent (the only case where you won't get your money back + interest on those bonds), the world financial system will have collapsed, and you've lost your money virtually no matter where you put it. Yes, gold and the like would survive, but if you've been investing in gold, so far you've been losing money vs. inflation while you're waiting for the world to end.
So I ask again: what else should have been done with the S.S. money?
If my company let me spend 20% of my time on my own projects, most likely the company would still own everything I create. (I haven't heard what Google's policy on that is).
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I knew that all my "personal" projects would have to be left behind when I get laid off or whatever, that wouldn't exactly inspire my creativity a whole lot.
That
And therefore, That's if you define the universe as the sum of all matter/energy, and God as "the greatest mind".Hydrogen is only a vector. It is not an energy source, it's only a way to carry energy created elsewhere. There is no "hydrogen economy"...
Actually, I think the term "hydrogen economy" is actually quite apt -- it's like "cash economy" or "barter economy" -- i.e. the first word refers to the medium of exchange, not what's actually driving things.