But yeah. I can understand not wanting to hear someone in a library, or a movie theater. But an elevator? Would the above poster be upset about two people having a conversation in one?
My favorite is the public restroom. Sometimes I'd be sitting in a stall and I'd think that one of my colleagues has walked in and sat down next to me. I'd pull out my cell phone and dial his phone. If he answered I'd quickly hang up, the yell "You use your phone on the toilet? That's disgusting!"
It's chic to hate the SUV, but I don't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that my Ford Explorer has gotten me (or, better put, others) out of trouble, mostly from people driving their front wheel drive econoboxes in the snow like it was the Indy 500. I know that I'm in the minority, but a small resort town in the mountains requires some sort of four wheel drive vehicle with a little bit of oomph. There's no way that a small passenger car is going to get through the roads after an overnight, two foot snowstorm. And even after the roads are plowed, they're still incredibly treacherous. And don't get me started on how in the world I'll get up to service a microwave link at the top of the mountain in a Subaru Justy.
Like most tools, don't hate the tool, hate the person who missuses it. The SUV problem isn't a problem with SUVs, but is a problem with SUV owners. Take, for example, the extreme case of the Hummer. A few years ago they started popping up on roads around here (metro NYC) like crazy because they became a status symbol for the stock broker to drive out to the Hamptons. Most of them never got off pavement, and most of the drivers would have been a dangerous menace in a snowstorm. SUVs are not "good citizens" on the roads, and so it is incumbant that their drivers be good citizens. In too many cases that is not true.
Personally, this is the list of people who should have SUVs...
People who work in construction and the like and need to haul tools and material.
People who need to tow a boat or trailer.
People who actually pursue off road driving as a hobby/sport.
People who have vital jobs (police/fire/nurses/utility crews) in areas that frequently suffer severe snowfalls.
People who farm, ranch, or travel on unimproved roads very often.
...and this is the list of people who shouldn't have SUVs...
Soccer moms - get a minivan instead.
People who have vital jobs (police/fire/nurses/utility crews) in areas that don't suffer severe snowfalls - a Subaru is going to do just as well.
People who want a status symbol - get a BMW instead.
Unfortunately for us, companies need revenue to provide content. That means at least one of 1) subscriptions, 2) advertising, 3) pay-as-you-go.
Take the NY Times for instance. The same content that one needs to pay $6 a week for a subscription is available free on the web. Some of that cost is newsprint and delivery, but -over the long term- they need a way to make revenue from their product.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a system where I would be charged $0.05 to read a particular article. I usually only read a few items each day.
The other option that we, the community, have to maintain are user experience is to attempt to actively patronize advertisers who choose less intrusive means, and boycott those who choose intrusive advertising. If the least instrusive advertising is most effective, the more intrusive methods will be abandoned.
Re:The real future of NASA (as I see it)
on
The Future of NASA
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
We've already seen this in the failure of NASA management to save Columbia by having it dock with the ISS until another shuttle could launch...
I thought that this wasn't a real option simply on account of the different orbital inclination of the Columbia mission and the ISS? (I'm not sure I'm using the right terminology. I mean the angle of the orbital plane and the equator.)
The ISS orbits on a fairly large inclination. This allows craft from the Russian launch facilities to reach the station easily. Nearly all flights (other than ISS missions) from the Kennedy Space Center orbit at a shallower angle.
It is relatively easy to adjust your orbital altitude in flight, but large changes in inclination require a lot of energy. I doubt that the shuttles manuevering thrusters would have been able to perform the large adjustment of inclination.
As a general rule of thumb, most ISPs don't want a "consumer" user to operate a server. Right to operate a server is usually part of a "commercial" level service plan. That BitTorrent you have running is probably the culprit.
You're talking about the US military here: by the time it hits the battlefield it will probably cost a billion dollars and be considered far too valuable to actually risk in a combat zone.
Actually, it is very much the opposite. The modern US military is a 100% volunteer force. Generally speaking, every member represents an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in training. Even beyond the humanitarian and political ramifications, the US military would rather lose just about anything but a trained soldier.
Historically, this has been true of portions of the military. One great example was that during the Battle of Britain, British industry was producing sufficient planes to replace losses, but experienced pilots were in very short supply. "Combat Search and Rescue" was basicly invented to recover every possible downed pilot in order to get them back in the air.
The modern US military is not conscript based like it was from WWII through Vietnam. When you only have a soldier for two years, you are unlikely to invest too much in training. However, a very high proportion of today's soldiers intend to stay in the service for at least 6 years, many of them even for 20 or more. These people recieve lots of advanced training. They represent a big investment and are incredibly valuable.
If I were a soldier, the first thing I'd do is reprogram my dog to walk ahead of me, not behind me. Let it step on the landmines, absorb enemy fire, etc.
Oh wait, this robot is worth $2.5m, eh? Ah, now I understand why the soldier is in front.
Like most things in life, reality is more complex.
First, the $2.5m is to develop the dog. The actually cost of manufacturing one will likely be quite a bit less.
Second, if you sent the dog ahead, you probably sacrifice many of the advantages that you can bring to the battle - reducing your safety i the long run. for instance, an enemy spotting the dog could take a reasonable guess at your position and fire upon you with mortars before you have the opportunity to spot the enemy, evaluate their strength and position, and form a plan to engage. You've given up tactical initiative.
You forgot the biggest need for 64bit - Database hosting.
Video editing and large data set computing are both somewhat niche uses.
Virtually every moderate and large size business is running a whole lot of databases, be they Oracle, Sybase, DB2, or even (egads) SQLServer. Nothing helps a database scale like more memory. Memory allows more buffering of data as well as the ability to do sorting and join operations without resorting to temp space on disk.
Thanks for a "+1, Informative" reply. I already addressed some of your points in clarifications and corrections I made here.
-When the body runs out of glycogen it starts using another method of making glucose, the gluconeogenic pathway. This normally occurs every night while you sleep, and also during the day if you're fasting, starving, or on an very low-carbohydrate diet. This pathway operates by breaking down protein (your muscles) to glucose, to help keep your brain (the primary user of energy in your body) running.
An important point is that "low-carb" diets such as Atkins actually require not only a reduced carb intake but a dramatically increased protein intake. This dietary protein serves the same gluconeogenic pathway, so muscle canabilization is avoided. In fact, most people on these diets add significant lean muscle mass during the first few months on an Atkins-like program. (It is somewhat unnerving to go on a diet and gain 10 pounds but also drop two inches from one's waist.
-Here's the kicker, though: The brain, under normal circumstances, uses _only_ glucose as its energy source, and glucose _cannot_ be synthesized from fatty acids. The only reason the Atkins diet works at all is because after a long enough time without enough carbohydrates, your body enters starvation mode and your liver directs the synthesis of ketone bodies (a safe, transportable form of acetyl-CoA) from fatty acids to supply the brain with energy. This allows the body to slow (but not stop) the breakdown of muscle tissue and survive as long as the supply of fat lasts.
The phrases "starvation mode" is somewhat loaded here. The "Fatty Acid Spiral" does indeed produce Acetyl-CoA from fats, but in a high protein environment, this process is not indicative of starvation. This is simply a normal metabolic process that allows the body to adjust to a different balance of macro-nutrients. To bring up an example I used before, the Inuit have almost zero access to any carbohydrate food source, relying instead on fat and protein in seals, fish, caribou, etc. Their culture has survived several thousands of years like this. Hardly an example of "starvation".
The healthy body requires a substantial amount of protein. It requires a small amount of fat. There is demonstrably no metabolic product of carb, however, that can not be substituted with a product of fat or protein.
The problem is not the FM signal technology, but your cheap-o FM tuner, and likely your crappy FM broadcaster. If you ever get a chance to listen to a good FM tuner (which these days pretty much means one made by Magnum Dynalab) with a decent antenna, you'd be amazed at how good FM is capable of sounding.
Does my McIntosh MR-71 count as a good FM tuner? I use it to feed my Marantz Model 7/8 pre-amp/amp. It is a great system, but the NetBSD people still don't have a port for it!
I don't have time to counter you point by point, but here are some corrections to your corrections...as well as some corrections to my original statements.
First, I confused glycogen with glycogon. Glycogon is the hormone that generally "opposes" insulin.
- Carbohydrates are not stored in fat cells.
Not directly - depending on the availablity of glucose, the body will convert acetyl byproducts of glucolysis into fat, or further metabolize it. More below:
- *Fat* is stored in fat cells, generally as triglycerides.
- Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscle tissue, not in fat cells.
I was probably unclear, but I didn't mean to make that claim. Glycogen in the liver is the primary storage of excess glucose. When glucose is not abundant, the body will further metabolize the byproduct acetyls from glucose metabolization via the citric acid cycle. When glucose is abundant, the body will instead process excess acetyls into fats and cholesterol via lipogenesis. Fat and cholesterol production are based upon glucose availability; they store the leftovers energy from glucose metabolization, whereas in low glucose states those leftovers would be more completely metabolized.
- The body is incapable of producing its own glucose.
Ever hear of glyconeogenesis? It is the process by which the liver synthesizes glucose from fatty acids.
My best guess as to how Atkins works is that it triggers ketosis, a pathological metabolism characteristic of advanced untreated Type I diabetes. Under conditions of carbohydrate deprivation, the body hydrolizes triglycerides, using the glycerol to fuel the brain (necessary because fatty acids can't cross the blood-brain barrier, but glycerol and carbohydrates can). The fatty acids that are left over are thrown into a metabolic scrap heap, where they are eventually broken down into ketones, e.g. acetone, nail polish remover. If your breath is sweet when you're on the Atkins diet, that's probably the reason. The "glycogenic state" description sounds like an attempt to paint a pretty face on a pathological metabolism. I'm not sure Atkins is any better than tapeworms as an approach to dieting.
Ketosis is indeed a state that many low-carb diets try to maintain. Keep in mind that there is no evidence that ketosis itself is, in and of itself, a "pathological metabolism". If a person is ingesting enough carb to serve the bodies energy requirements, ketosis is indeed a symptom of something amiss. However, if the person is attempting to burn fat, ketosis is the optimal state.
Caffeine has numerous side effects that are negative; the degree to which each effect troubles any one individual varies. These are what researchers have found in the lab.
Side effects of caffeine include:... anger...
Anger is perhaps the symptom I've seen the most in other people.
Who the hell do you think you are complaining that we coffee drinkers are angry! Why don't you get off your FSCKING high horse, you god-damned pissant. You can take your whiney little opinions about angry coffee drinkes and stick them where the sun doesn't shine! Bloody health food eating, toad sucking, argument for post-natal abortion.
Whatever ever happened to a balanced diet? Atkins seems to me to be swinging the pendulum more and more away from equilibrium.
There actually is a pretty good rationale for low carb dieting. I'll try to sum up two major lines of evidence:
First, carbs didn't make up a large part of the human diet until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Sugars and starchs are simply not available in large consistenet quantities to hunter/gatherers dominant for the previous 90,000 years. Studies comparing the remains of pre-agricultural people and agricultural people show that diabetes and heart disease only appear in populations once agriculture is introduced. The correlation was shown not to be an effect of lifespan. today, cultures such as the Inuit exist on nearly carb free diets and show a similar absence of diabetes and heart disease.
Second, carbs are nearly instantaneously converted to glucose by the digestive system. Where the digestive system easily discards unneeded fat and protein, glucose enters the blood stream very quickly. Excessively high glucose levels are toxic to the brain, so glucose triggers an insulin response. Insulin triggers the fat cells to remove glucose and store it, and it triggers the liver to remove glucose and store it as cholesterol. By removing the carb component of the diet, the body needs to produce its own glucose. The glycogen response triggers the fat cells to release stored glucose into the blood stream and it triggers the liver to convert cholesterol to glucose. Low carb dieting causes the body to spend most time in a glycogenic state, which means the body is burning fat and cholesterol as fuel. Hence, less fat and cholesterol.
One small shot of espresso for man,
One 5-shot Venti White Chocolate Mocha for mankind!
My personal favorite is the "quint expresso machiatto". I know that in the Pacific Northwest barrista is considered a profession, but everywhere else it is considered a slight step up from "Do you want fries with that?" Most have to ask "Quint? How many is that?"
Also, I always order an odd number, so that the person making the drink will have an extra shot of expresso left over, and perhaps offer it to me for free. Nothing like a hexpresso drink to get you going after the post lunch doldrums kick in.
AT&T, as well as some of the other major long distance carriers, have already partially converted to VoIP, and have plans to completely convert in the next few years.
In the next 5 years or so, expect that circuit oriented POTS will only exist from the customer premises to local exchange office. VoIP between exchange offices is allowing the carriers to carry more traffic on the same copper or fiber trunks than the current multiplexed circuit systems.
There is no easy answer. Remember northern ireland? How long that has taken and is still taking? Hundreds of years.
I agree with you virtually a hundred percent.
Something to keep in mind in N. Ireland is that the modern conflict had very little to do with religion per se, but had far more to do with two economic/political classes that were marked by religion. In the last twenty or so years the British have pursued a policy of granting Catholics in N. Ireland full political rights and enforcing anti-discriminatory legislation in both education and employment. As the Catholic population has become more "middle class", Catholic violence has declined markedly. (Conversely, some Unionists have become more radical as they have lost their "priviledged" status.)
This was one of the false arguments laid by the Oslo people: let us reach for a temporary solution, the two people will get to know each other, and surely will respect each other so much that war will not be possible.
The failure of the peace process in Palestine goes further than that. I don't believe there will ever be peace until the Palestinian people achieve some level of economic prosperity. When a people have something tangible to lose, they naturally shy away from violence. A prosperous Palestinian economy would isolate the terrorists to the most extreme ideologues.
That being said, I don't know what steps Israel might take to foster such a situation (I believe that massive public works projects do more to hurt than to help), and I certainly categorize Arafat as a poverty pimp, who has more to gain by keeping his people in poverty.
The best start that I can recommend would be the creation of programs that would teach the advanced farming techniques so successful in Israel to the Paelstinians.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and NCR made Unix computers
I used to work on an AT&T 3b2. I can also script pretty well in DCL. Does that make me a sleestak?
Extra points for anyone younger than 30 who can prove they actually know DCL. Demonstrate something good - maybe set up IPC using mailboxes or something.
Screens aren't a possiblity. Think about how much debris will collect in these screens. You'll now create a need to clean 14,000 screens (both sides of the turbine to be truly safe) regularly to prevent a major degregation in efficiency. Screens aren't an acceptable alternative. They've never used them on turbine-powered aircraft and for obvious reasons.
What if you set up a system of radar triggered shotguns that would automatically shoot any birds that approached the screens. The screens would need to be cleaned much less.
Come back when you can tell me all the differences between TMI and Chernobyl.
...but I think I can.
Chernobyl was designed with a "positive temperature coefficient." As the temperature rose, the reaction became more efficient, leading to a runaway.
American Commercial nuclear power plants have a negative temperature coefficient. By design, the reaction becomes less efficient as the temperature rises. By its very nature it is self limiting, and can't runaway.
Note the subject. If a message identifies itself as a troll, it can't really be a troll, but is rather an attempt at humor. (Conversely, any message that denies being a troll is most likely a troll, but hat is a different topic.) If you feel like wasting mod-points on this, do it on the basis of whether it was funny or not. Don't waste your mod-points calling it a troll.
Slashdot Mirror
My favorite is the public restroom. Sometimes I'd be sitting in a stall and I'd think that one of my colleagues has walked in and sat down next to me. I'd pull out my cell phone and dial his phone. If he answered I'd quickly hang up, the yell "You use your phone on the toilet? That's disgusting!"
Like most tools, don't hate the tool, hate the person who missuses it. The SUV problem isn't a problem with SUVs, but is a problem with SUV owners. Take, for example, the extreme case of the Hummer. A few years ago they started popping up on roads around here (metro NYC) like crazy because they became a status symbol for the stock broker to drive out to the Hamptons. Most of them never got off pavement, and most of the drivers would have been a dangerous menace in a snowstorm. SUVs are not "good citizens" on the roads, and so it is incumbant that their drivers be good citizens. In too many cases that is not true.
Personally, this is the list of people who should have SUVs...
...and this is the list of people who shouldn't have SUVs...
Unfortunately for us, companies need revenue to provide content. That means at least one of 1) subscriptions, 2) advertising, 3) pay-as-you-go.
Take the NY Times for instance. The same content that one needs to pay $6 a week for a subscription is available free on the web. Some of that cost is newsprint and delivery, but -over the long term- they need a way to make revenue from their product.
Personally, I wouldn't mind a system where I would be charged $0.05 to read a particular article. I usually only read a few items each day.
The other option that we, the community, have to maintain are user experience is to attempt to actively patronize advertisers who choose less intrusive means, and boycott those who choose intrusive advertising. If the least instrusive advertising is most effective, the more intrusive methods will be abandoned.
goatse.cx man!
We've already seen this in the failure of NASA management to save Columbia by having it dock with the ISS until another shuttle could launch...
I thought that this wasn't a real option simply on account of the different orbital inclination of the Columbia mission and the ISS? (I'm not sure I'm using the right terminology. I mean the angle of the orbital plane and the equator.)
The ISS orbits on a fairly large inclination. This allows craft from the Russian launch facilities to reach the station easily. Nearly all flights (other than ISS missions) from the Kennedy Space Center orbit at a shallower angle.
It is relatively easy to adjust your orbital altitude in flight, but large changes in inclination require a lot of energy. I doubt that the shuttles manuevering thrusters would have been able to perform the large adjustment of inclination.
What does a car need with Hit Points?
If a car has enough hit points, it can be a tank.
As a general rule of thumb, most ISPs don't want a "consumer" user to operate a server. Right to operate a server is usually part of a "commercial" level service plan. That BitTorrent you have running is probably the culprit.
You're talking about the US military here: by the time it hits the battlefield it will probably cost a billion dollars and be considered far too valuable to actually risk in a combat zone.
Actually, it is very much the opposite. The modern US military is a 100% volunteer force. Generally speaking, every member represents an investment of hundreds of thousands of dollars in training. Even beyond the humanitarian and political ramifications, the US military would rather lose just about anything but a trained soldier.
Historically, this has been true of portions of the military. One great example was that during the Battle of Britain, British industry was producing sufficient planes to replace losses, but experienced pilots were in very short supply. "Combat Search and Rescue" was basicly invented to recover every possible downed pilot in order to get them back in the air.
The modern US military is not conscript based like it was from WWII through Vietnam. When you only have a soldier for two years, you are unlikely to invest too much in training. However, a very high proportion of today's soldiers intend to stay in the service for at least 6 years, many of them even for 20 or more. These people recieve lots of advanced training. They represent a big investment and are incredibly valuable.
Like most things in life, reality is more complex.
First, the $2.5m is to develop the dog. The actually cost of manufacturing one will likely be quite a bit less.
Second, if you sent the dog ahead, you probably sacrifice many of the advantages that you can bring to the battle - reducing your safety i the long run. for instance, an enemy spotting the dog could take a reasonable guess at your position and fire upon you with mortars before you have the opportunity to spot the enemy, evaluate their strength and position, and form a plan to engage. You've given up tactical initiative.
I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?"
Who is deploying giant robot ants? If no one is deployiong such a weapon, why are we creating something to eat them?
You forgot the biggest need for 64bit - Database hosting.
Video editing and large data set computing are both somewhat niche uses.
Virtually every moderate and large size business is running a whole lot of databases, be they Oracle, Sybase, DB2, or even (egads) SQLServer. Nothing helps a database scale like more memory. Memory allows more buffering of data as well as the ability to do sorting and join operations without resorting to temp space on disk.
Thanks for a "+1, Informative" reply. I already addressed some of your points in clarifications and corrections I made here.
An important point is that "low-carb" diets such as Atkins actually require not only a reduced carb intake but a dramatically increased protein intake. This dietary protein serves the same gluconeogenic pathway, so muscle canabilization is avoided. In fact, most people on these diets add significant lean muscle mass during the first few months on an Atkins-like program. (It is somewhat unnerving to go on a diet and gain 10 pounds but also drop two inches from one's waist.
The phrases "starvation mode" is somewhat loaded here. The "Fatty Acid Spiral" does indeed produce Acetyl-CoA from fats, but in a high protein environment, this process is not indicative of starvation. This is simply a normal metabolic process that allows the body to adjust to a different balance of macro-nutrients. To bring up an example I used before, the Inuit have almost zero access to any carbohydrate food source, relying instead on fat and protein in seals, fish, caribou, etc. Their culture has survived several thousands of years like this. Hardly an example of "starvation".
The healthy body requires a substantial amount of protein. It requires a small amount of fat. There is demonstrably no metabolic product of carb, however, that can not be substituted with a product of fat or protein.
Does my McIntosh MR-71 count as a good FM tuner? I use it to feed my Marantz Model 7/8 pre-amp/amp. It is a great system, but the NetBSD people still don't have a port for it!
I don't have time to counter you point by point, but here are some corrections to your corrections...as well as some corrections to my original statements.
First, I confused glycogen with glycogon. Glycogon is the hormone that generally "opposes" insulin.
- Carbohydrates are not stored in fat cells.
Not directly - depending on the availablity of glucose, the body will convert acetyl byproducts of glucolysis into fat, or further metabolize it. More below:
- *Fat* is stored in fat cells, generally as triglycerides.
- Glycogen is stored in the liver and in muscle tissue, not in fat cells.
I was probably unclear, but I didn't mean to make that claim. Glycogen in the liver is the primary storage of excess glucose. When glucose is not abundant, the body will further metabolize the byproduct acetyls from glucose metabolization via the citric acid cycle. When glucose is abundant, the body will instead process excess acetyls into fats and cholesterol via lipogenesis. Fat and cholesterol production are based upon glucose availability; they store the leftovers energy from glucose metabolization, whereas in low glucose states those leftovers would be more completely metabolized.
- The body is incapable of producing its own glucose.
Ever hear of glyconeogenesis? It is the process by which the liver synthesizes glucose from fatty acids.
My best guess as to how Atkins works is that it triggers ketosis, a pathological metabolism characteristic of advanced untreated Type I diabetes. Under conditions of carbohydrate deprivation, the body hydrolizes triglycerides, using the glycerol to fuel the brain (necessary because fatty acids can't cross the blood-brain barrier, but glycerol and carbohydrates can). The fatty acids that are left over are thrown into a metabolic scrap heap, where they are eventually broken down into ketones, e.g. acetone, nail polish remover. If your breath is sweet when you're on the Atkins diet, that's probably the reason. The "glycogenic state" description sounds like an attempt to paint a pretty face on a pathological metabolism. I'm not sure Atkins is any better than tapeworms as an approach to dieting.
Ketosis is indeed a state that many low-carb diets try to maintain. Keep in mind that there is no evidence that ketosis itself is, in and of itself, a "pathological metabolism". If a person is ingesting enough carb to serve the bodies energy requirements, ketosis is indeed a symptom of something amiss. However, if the person is attempting to burn fat, ketosis is the optimal state.
Who the hell do you think you are complaining that we coffee drinkers are angry! Why don't you get off your FSCKING high horse, you god-damned pissant. You can take your whiney little opinions about angry coffee drinkes and stick them where the sun doesn't shine! Bloody health food eating, toad sucking, argument for post-natal abortion.
There actually is a pretty good rationale for low carb dieting. I'll try to sum up two major lines of evidence:
First, carbs didn't make up a large part of the human diet until the invention of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Sugars and starchs are simply not available in large consistenet quantities to hunter/gatherers dominant for the previous 90,000 years. Studies comparing the remains of pre-agricultural people and agricultural people show that diabetes and heart disease only appear in populations once agriculture is introduced. The correlation was shown not to be an effect of lifespan. today, cultures such as the Inuit exist on nearly carb free diets and show a similar absence of diabetes and heart disease.
Second, carbs are nearly instantaneously converted to glucose by the digestive system. Where the digestive system easily discards unneeded fat and protein, glucose enters the blood stream very quickly. Excessively high glucose levels are toxic to the brain, so glucose triggers an insulin response. Insulin triggers the fat cells to remove glucose and store it, and it triggers the liver to remove glucose and store it as cholesterol. By removing the carb component of the diet, the body needs to produce its own glucose. The glycogen response triggers the fat cells to release stored glucose into the blood stream and it triggers the liver to convert cholesterol to glucose. Low carb dieting causes the body to spend most time in a glycogenic state, which means the body is burning fat and cholesterol as fuel. Hence, less fat and cholesterol.
My personal favorite is the "quint expresso machiatto". I know that in the Pacific Northwest barrista is considered a profession, but everywhere else it is considered a slight step up from "Do you want fries with that?" Most have to ask "Quint? How many is that?"
Also, I always order an odd number, so that the person making the drink will have an extra shot of expresso left over, and perhaps offer it to me for free. Nothing like a hexpresso drink to get you going after the post lunch doldrums kick in.
AT&T, as well as some of the other major long distance carriers, have already partially converted to VoIP, and have plans to completely convert in the next few years.
In the next 5 years or so, expect that circuit oriented POTS will only exist from the customer premises to local exchange office. VoIP between exchange offices is allowing the carriers to carry more traffic on the same copper or fiber trunks than the current multiplexed circuit systems.
There is no easy answer. Remember northern ireland? How long that has taken and is still taking? Hundreds of years.
I agree with you virtually a hundred percent.
Something to keep in mind in N. Ireland is that the modern conflict had very little to do with religion per se, but had far more to do with two economic/political classes that were marked by religion. In the last twenty or so years the British have pursued a policy of granting Catholics in N. Ireland full political rights and enforcing anti-discriminatory legislation in both education and employment. As the Catholic population has become more "middle class", Catholic violence has declined markedly. (Conversely, some Unionists have become more radical as they have lost their "priviledged" status.)
The failure of the peace process in Palestine goes further than that. I don't believe there will ever be peace until the Palestinian people achieve some level of economic prosperity. When a people have something tangible to lose, they naturally shy away from violence. A prosperous Palestinian economy would isolate the terrorists to the most extreme ideologues.
That being said, I don't know what steps Israel might take to foster such a situation (I believe that massive public works projects do more to hurt than to help), and I certainly categorize Arafat as a poverty pimp, who has more to gain by keeping his people in poverty.
The best start that I can recommend would be the creation of programs that would teach the advanced farming techniques so successful in Israel to the Paelstinians.
Back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and NCR made Unix computers
I used to work on an AT&T 3b2. I can also script pretty well in DCL. Does that make me a sleestak?
Extra points for anyone younger than 30 who can prove they actually know DCL. Demonstrate something good - maybe set up IPC using mailboxes or something.
IIRC, Kochan wrote a prety good ANSI C textbook.
What if you set up a system of radar triggered shotguns that would automatically shoot any birds that approached the screens. The screens would need to be cleaned much less.
I wasn't the grandparent poster...
Come back when you can tell me all the differences between TMI and Chernobyl.
...but I think I can.
Chernobyl was designed with a "positive temperature coefficient." As the temperature rose, the reaction became more efficient, leading to a runaway.
American Commercial nuclear power plants have a negative temperature coefficient. By design, the reaction becomes less efficient as the temperature rises. By its very nature it is self limiting, and can't runaway.
Why would anyone want to do this? BSD is dying!
Attention! You with the mod points. Yes, you.
Note the subject. If a message identifies itself as a troll, it can't really be a troll, but is rather an attempt at humor. (Conversely, any message that denies being a troll is most likely a troll, but hat is a different topic.) If you feel like wasting mod-points on this, do it on the basis of whether it was funny or not. Don't waste your mod-points calling it a troll.