I think the USA should abandon its ISS investments, or sell it to Bigelow Aerospace. It is pretty clear to me that the only remaining science they are doing there these days is the effects of dehydration and malnutrition in space. I would have a lot more respect for the ISS if they put a tug on the Hubble, dragged it over to the ISS and made the ISS a well-managed observatory. Someone tell me why that is a bad idea, please. And don't say it can't be done logistically.
Of course, all things considered, the CCCP or whatever they go by now, is a much cheaper ferry ticket, and unless I am mistaken on my numbers, far less fatal.
I made about 13 US Cents an hour playing that game. I think I burned twice that on electricity and heat. It took me a solid month to get it out of my system, like a binge, of sorts. The real problem with PE was that they would regularly NOT treat the in-game money like real money. I was a salaried member of the leading society at the time of the general public release, and at one point, our society pulled up its tent stakes and said "no more."
What may cause that, you wonder? Our banker character's holdings were zeroed out. That would be $4000 USD, gone. Explanation? Our banker had bought an item (third-hand) from someone who had crafted an item which was fake, somehow. Members of our society were pulling down about $400 a month playing this game. Enough to pay rent to Mom and Dad, I suppose. Sad, pathetic, and lonely in so many ways that matter, but true enough.
One of our businesses was banking. We would trade in-game money for real money, back when PayPal was trustworthy. The makers of PE had something like 10% transaction fees, we charged a much more competitive rate, and managed perhaps 20-30% of the real money going into the game, early on.
As a direct result of this game, I read most of a field guide for geology, learned how to write some pretty solid Active Server Pages, and had some noteworthy personal growth.
I find those job openings to be rather insulting. They want a test drive of your skills and personality before they decide to keep you. Their line about hiring is total crap. They just want to see if they like you or not. I've seen it elsewhere before; the premise is that if they don't like you for some reason, they can dispose of you without qualms or concerns. Once you are an employee, that's not so simple. They have to build a case against you. Let's say your new manager is a flaming liberal, and you are a right-wing nut; if the flaming liberal doesn't like you, and doesn't have the social grace to tolerate a difference of opinion, he/she can continue to be a narrow-minded political animal and retain the one-party engineering team. On the flip side, let's say you are a waste of oxygen, but your resume' reads well, and you are a charmer in interviews. Two weeks into your job, your manager discovers that a traffic light has more analytical skills. Rather than firing you for incompetence, they just politely endure your chatter long enough to get your contract dropped.
If you know your stuff and you are socially merited, well, what I would do is keep interviewing and take the job. That way, 3 months later when they have an offer, you might have an alternative.
I used to work in the printer business, before their bottom line dropped too close to red for comfort, and they saved money by two subsequent 30% staff reductions. The product manager calls printers "ink and media dispensers." A lot of effort does go into making the ink and paper come out with just the right colors, but several of the knock-off inks, such as is made from Pelikan, all good stuff, good, accurate gammut. You need a decent color profile (ICM file), and the profile for OEM inks never quite does the trick.
It sounds to me like Lexmark is struggling financially, and they have turned to blood-sucking lawyers and unscrupulous programmers writing spyware. Too bad their execs know nothing of the concept of brand image/reputation, because from this point on, I expect several of us won't touch their product. Like it or not, the in-the-know technical crowd tends to influence a larger buyer volume than their own. Consider the multitudes that ask us for shopping advice.
Fear this, Lexmark:
"This holiday season, I would recommend [HP, Canon, Epson] over Lexmark. In addition to this particular brand being my favorite, Lexmark has engaged in unscrupulous practices, and uses the internet to watch you use your ink. Who knows what else they plan to do in their printer drivers next year?"
We have a rough enough time keeping ahead of worms and OS patches, to be bothered with disinfecting device drivers. Lexmark, feel free to fire the idiots who came up with this, along with all guilty parties. You have my permission. When this makes market-based media, heads will roll.
Okay, anonymous cowards, do calm down! Let's just break out the dictionary an settle this:
torture is anguish of the body or mind. Anguish is extreme pain or anxiety. I don't think anyone would argue that the craziness in that prison was mental anguish. Those terrorist thugs will never be able to show themselves in polite society again. Well, unless you count Hollywood.
A fundamentalist Christian cannot accept the teaching of macroevolution because of two main issues:
The implication is that the Creation history did not occur over six days.
Without the Creation history, the untold billions of years requires death prior to the commiting of the original sin.
Believer, we are required to understand the Bible as it is written, not assume that clever interpretations and stretching the truth of God's word to satisfy a contemporary world's view somehow placates the dischord between the world and God. To strike some measure of medium, a balance, is to subject God's soverignty to a global test. Who has power in this world, God or Satan? Do not mistake the pricking of reason for the gift of discernment. Romans used the worldly tool of reason to deny themselves the message of the Apostle Paul. The writer of this article has merely demonstrated the flexibility of design for human cells. It takes faith greater than I have to then believe that all sight in all that is living proceeded through a series of imperfect designs, atypically productive mutations, and in the wee narrow time secular humanists give for the age of this earth.
Answer why you think God is incapable of producing a man more perfect than men of this day, on the sixth day of creation. The value of understanding similarities between human eye and brain cells is in medicine. Just as we now can use our own bone marrow stem cells, painfully inserted in the human heart, to heal in minutes the damage of heart disease, we may some day find good purpose for this new knowledge of similarities. Perhaps a procedure can be designed to restore the sight to the blind? Life is by design, not a series of bumbling accidents that turned out for the best.
My above post was so unclear, I got called at home for the misunderstanding! Dan Rather "called" the election for Al Gore, and it affected voters in other time zones where polls had not closed.
Miami Dade county is historical in their voter fraud, look up the Daly family in politics. As for Pat Buchanan, even he was surprised for votes in his favor to those numbers. Clearly voter fraud. Based on my leanings, fraud is clearly on the other side of the aisle, but gosh, just the same, wouldn't it be interesting?
It would be like a correlation between BMW owners and speeding tickets; you know, but you want to say you've got proof somewhere.
I'll never forget the box of votes they "found" inside a closet in Miami-Dade county late that night when Dan Rather was telling us like it is (in his mind anyway), or the seeming popularity for Pat Buchanan in predominantly Latino districts.
Do they have statistics on fraudulent votes, though?
I'm a bit confused now. I thought they were making these experiments to some productive end. I suppose a fusion bomb might be construed as a productive end, in case we ever need to deal with a Hollywood-sized meteor, hurtling through space, with a trajectory precisely aligned with a large population center on earth. I can't imagine it is even en-vogue with the military to use it in war. My guess is tactical nukes are the only strategically useful remnant of that cold war era.
Once the scientists get the tungsten threads or whatever to this target temperature, then what? Is this useful for new rocket technology, energy generation, novel way to make grilled cheese sandwiches, or just something to do when the weather is ho-hum outside? Forgive my sarcasm, I mean nothing by it, I just am "not seeing the forest" despite all the proverbial trees.
Thank you for your input, and I'm glad they were able to do all this research without the need for mind-controlled robotic arms, sporting an amazingly vulnerable inhibitor chip.
I think it belongs on an episode of the Wiggles. Maybe it is just those bright shirts, but I would almost bet I've seen Captain Feathersword at the helm of that thing.
This is just an opinion, but I think Mt. Rainier is more likely to have a substantial eruption and a big "ka-boom" than Mt. St. Helens will again in my lifetime. It has been ~150 years since Mt. Rainier did anything eruptive. Assuming a mildly linear behavior, taking into consideration the frequency of substantial eruptions in the area, Mt. Rainier is due, baby. I wish we had a deeper understanding of the earth. Something beyond the ~50 mile crust and 62 mile atmosphere. There is so much more to the story.
Anyway, there's a really big datacenter in Portland, I hope Rainier goes before St. Helens, we don't have Disaster Recovery set up yet!
Thank you for the information on solar panels, I do appreciate it. As I recall, silicon wafers use some pretty fierce chemistry to produce and purify, and that was not listed there, just the energy involved. What is irresponsible about dropping the waste into an open lava pit? Or a subduction zone? Or doping it into glass and putting it in stainless steel cases inside sheds inside salt mines?
In Minnesota, we don't see that 1800 KwH of sunlight, nor do we see the sun, and our home energy consumption is easily 4x as high in the winter when everything outside is dead or migrating to survive. They want to use windmills out here, and stick them in the middle of the cornfields. I think, largely, that can be a good idea, but I understand they are a hazard to birds. I think as long as they don't kill raptors and perching birds, I'm fine with the occasional Canada Goose and umpteenth crow. The rotting carcass of a dead goose or crow would do good for the soil in the corn fields.
A half-hour power cut daily sounds like California a couple years ago to me, sure you're in India?
Aside from the comments about how solar cells produce about as much energy as was used in their production, is it me, or are solar cells made of really nasty, noxious chemicals? Alloys with heavy metals and all. It can't all be soy-based and recycled aluminium cans! Those roof-based water heaters are miserable. I remember them at a campsite once. Every time a cloud would pass over, the water would get cold; I guess they were not well-insulated!
Someone explain to me why the green crowd considers nuclear energy to be dirty; the radwaste is designed to be used in stepper reactors, and what is left over can be dumped in the nearest volcano or subduction zone. Sure, we don't have stepper reactors, but still their design exists. I know we have innovations since the TRIGA design.
Okay, I've watched the X-Files, I know Agent Scully is this crack-investigator, with just a hint of Kiki Stockhammer in her, but what qualifies her as a scientist? Because of her education? I'm sorry, but I fail to see any research going on in her division of the government. It looks entirely to me like investigation and reporting, not hypothesis and experiments.
The Ghostbusters were scientists. Sure, they had the odd job or two, but that was just gathering samples for their analysis. Maybe not Peter Venkman, he wasn't really on task most of the time.
Now, if Scully was trying to get a Toyota Rav4 to run around the California desert autonomously, then I would grant the laurel of scientist to her. Do all of you who got Computer Science degrees think you are doing computer science inside an IT department?
I'm sorry, but I think that the US pulling out of their own program was entirely political in the first place, and it is the same sort of mistake as the US abandoning their OWN space station, and instead contributing to the rustbucket known as the International Space Station, which is late, over-budget, and missing several modules, not to mention leaking air, losing parts, and making strange noises.
I'm sure the US will play catch-up once China announces their all five of their orbital Shenzou modules have combined to form some sort of giant robot bent on taking over the world from space. Oh wait, that's Japan.:-)
They should make a nuclear fusion version of the Ansari X-Prize. That'd be fun. Once.
I'll give Aristotle Perfect and Lifeless, but unchanging we've already wiped out. Lifeless might take a bit of work to prove or otherwise alter, but perfect is a tough word to manage. Perfectly smooth/sphere(oid|ic)al? Perfectly boring?
I think it is safe to say, at this point, we are the only planet teeming with indigenous life in the solar system.
On the other side of your comments, when are the alien-life seekers going to call it quits? Every planet in the milky-way? The universe? Talk about faith! I, for one, would rather see our space dollars go a little more on the side of business/hard sciences. Get a little ROI. Like Velcro, Tang, and multitasking computers...
What is your answer, then? Socialism? Frankly, I haven't found a governmental model that works time and again. Socialism fails because people are corrupt, Democracy fails because the majority isn't always right, I was a minor fan of the triumvirate, but everything else fails that I've seen. Military dictatorships obviously don't work, and Monarchy fails in mixed cultures. Should we go back to city states, ala Snow Crash?
I don't know if you and I are on the same side of the issues (whatever issues are), but we both agree that governments are imperfect. Here's an open mind waiting on your input, then.
The vote in particular was for the entitlement of special interests again, as you say; it was something abhorrent and unnatural, but cultural. Cannibalism or animal sacrifice? I'm having trouble with the details. What's the point of voting anymore, I mean really, if "the people" can't be trusted to make decisions, why let them vote? I mean, we could just let the judges make all the decisions, and forget this whole thing, I'm sure it would save money; why wouldn't we trust the judges to make decisions for us simpletons? In my lifetime, I fully expect this nation to be an oligarchy of robed patricians. Flowing robes, with hoods, like Emperor Palpatine.
Go read Fahrenheit 451 and tell me which candidate you would have voted for in the book. Hmm. Good fodder for the Slashdot poll, I think.
I think a bank run would be kind of cool once in a while. That'd be the ultimate flash mob, a 21st Century bank run! Those small branches never have that much cash on them. If you picked a bank branch out in the country, I'm betting $100,000 in cash would be about enough to flatten a small branch bank. They distribute more money out of ATMs anyway.
This from a guy who helped colorize It's a Wonderful Life.
Still, I'd bet the bank would probably sue the organizer, and somehow that would be construed as illegal, even though I'm hard pressed to find a law this violates. If not, judges these days are pretty good at making stuff up, like declaring a publically voted law to be unconstitutional, as was the case this week in Washington State.
Indeed, who wouldn't consider the average church youth group of 10-50 kids a social circle? I could see a Movie Night at Joel Osten's sports arena/mega church raising trouble, but who wouldn't be able to do this? I remember a church I went to 3 years ago had a movie night, they showed Road to Perdition. Wait. Road to Redemption. yeah, sorry about that. I do wonder, though, it was used as sort of an "invite a friend" outreach, if they paid whatever studio did that movie (Worldwide Pictures?) an additional fee. Or, more to the point, if they could get that movie any other way than through the studio.
In this movie the idea is originated. Can't you tell a B-movie when you see it? No? This movie should be a little bit closer. Aliens, flatworms, nanorobots, it is all the same.
Forgive my pessimism, but I am having trouble believing this one. What meager fraction of the system's mass is a solitary CD tray + CD?
If, by some stretch of my imagination, this did happen, the dufus who moved the rack is to blame, if blame is to be had. Thanks for the story, either way!
My worst computer accident was installing the PCI board from a Polish Amiga hardware company called Matay into my A4000T. It wasn't a regular board, it had power requirements. One had to attach it to a standard Zorro III slot, but in addition, a hard drive power cable needed to be plugged in.
Much like Polish mathematical notations, I managed to plug the power cord in backwards (I know, HOW did I do that? it was an ambiguous connector and a poor diagram). Needless to say, I crippled my Buster chip, killed the Matay board, and lost Zorro III functionality completely. Zorro II still worked, though. I gave it to a long-time acquaintance of mine who happened to have part of Commodore's old West Chester inventory, and wanted to fix it himself.
On the plus side, Win UAE is the fastest Amiga I have ever owned.
They mean the average earthlink user has 28 spyware programs. Think about that a minute. That is quite an accomplishment if it isn't cookies. I mean, you'd have to be hitting a true variety of sites to accomplish that. I know there are more than 28 spyware programs out there, but goshers!
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, all things considered, the CCCP or whatever they go by now, is a much cheaper ferry ticket, and unless I am mistaken on my numbers, far less fatal.
What may cause that, you wonder? Our banker character's holdings were zeroed out. That would be $4000 USD, gone. Explanation? Our banker had bought an item (third-hand) from someone who had crafted an item which was fake, somehow. Members of our society were pulling down about $400 a month playing this game. Enough to pay rent to Mom and Dad, I suppose. Sad, pathetic, and lonely in so many ways that matter, but true enough.
One of our businesses was banking. We would trade in-game money for real money, back when PayPal was trustworthy. The makers of PE had something like 10% transaction fees, we charged a much more competitive rate, and managed perhaps 20-30% of the real money going into the game, early on.
As a direct result of this game, I read most of a field guide for geology, learned how to write some pretty solid Active Server Pages, and had some noteworthy personal growth.
If you know your stuff and you are socially merited, well, what I would do is keep interviewing and take the job. That way, 3 months later when they have an offer, you might have an alternative.
I used to work in the printer business, before their bottom line dropped too close to red for comfort, and they saved money by two subsequent 30% staff reductions. The product manager calls printers "ink and media dispensers." A lot of effort does go into making the ink and paper come out with just the right colors, but several of the knock-off inks, such as is made from Pelikan, all good stuff, good, accurate gammut. You need a decent color profile (ICM file), and the profile for OEM inks never quite does the trick.
It sounds to me like Lexmark is struggling financially, and they have turned to blood-sucking lawyers and unscrupulous programmers writing spyware. Too bad their execs know nothing of the concept of brand image/reputation, because from this point on, I expect several of us won't touch their product. Like it or not, the in-the-know technical crowd tends to influence a larger buyer volume than their own. Consider the multitudes that ask us for shopping advice.
Fear this, Lexmark:
"This holiday season, I would recommend [HP, Canon, Epson] over Lexmark. In addition to this particular brand being my favorite, Lexmark has engaged in unscrupulous practices, and uses the internet to watch you use your ink. Who knows what else they plan to do in their printer drivers next year?"
We have a rough enough time keeping ahead of worms and OS patches, to be bothered with disinfecting device drivers. Lexmark, feel free to fire the idiots who came up with this, along with all guilty parties. You have my permission. When this makes market-based media, heads will roll.
A fundamentalist Christian cannot accept the teaching of macroevolution because of two main issues:
The implication is that the Creation history did not occur over six days.
Without the Creation history, the untold billions of years requires death prior to the commiting of the original sin.
Believer, we are required to understand the Bible as it is written, not assume that clever interpretations and stretching the truth of God's word to satisfy a contemporary world's view somehow placates the dischord between the world and God. To strike some measure of medium, a balance, is to subject God's soverignty to a global test. Who has power in this world, God or Satan? Do not mistake the pricking of reason for the gift of discernment. Romans used the worldly tool of reason to deny themselves the message of the Apostle Paul.
The writer of this article has merely demonstrated the flexibility of design for human cells. It takes faith greater than I have to then believe that all sight in all that is living proceeded through a series of imperfect designs, atypically productive mutations, and in the wee narrow time secular humanists give for the age of this earth.
Answer why you think God is incapable of producing a man more perfect than men of this day, on the sixth day of creation. The value of understanding similarities between human eye and brain cells is in medicine. Just as we now can use our own bone marrow stem cells, painfully inserted in the human heart, to heal in minutes the damage of heart disease, we may some day find good purpose for this new knowledge of similarities. Perhaps a procedure can be designed to restore the sight to the blind? Life is by design, not a series of bumbling accidents that turned out for the best.
Miami Dade county is historical in their voter fraud, look up the Daly family in politics. As for Pat Buchanan, even he was surprised for votes in his favor to those numbers. Clearly voter fraud. Based on my leanings, fraud is clearly on the other side of the aisle, but gosh, just the same, wouldn't it be interesting?
It would be like a correlation between BMW owners and speeding tickets; you know, but you want to say you've got proof somewhere.
Do they have statistics on fraudulent votes, though?
Once the scientists get the tungsten threads or whatever to this target temperature, then what? Is this useful for new rocket technology, energy generation, novel way to make grilled cheese sandwiches, or just something to do when the weather is ho-hum outside? Forgive my sarcasm, I mean nothing by it, I just am "not seeing the forest" despite all the proverbial trees.
Thank you for your input, and I'm glad they were able to do all this research without the need for mind-controlled robotic arms, sporting an amazingly vulnerable inhibitor chip.
I think it belongs on an episode of the Wiggles. Maybe it is just those bright shirts, but I would almost bet I've seen Captain Feathersword at the helm of that thing.
This is just an opinion, but I think Mt. Rainier is more likely to have a substantial eruption and a big "ka-boom" than Mt. St. Helens will again in my lifetime. It has been ~150 years since Mt. Rainier did anything eruptive. Assuming a mildly linear behavior, taking into consideration the frequency of substantial eruptions in the area, Mt. Rainier is due, baby. I wish we had a deeper understanding of the earth. Something beyond the ~50 mile crust and 62 mile atmosphere. There is so much more to the story. Anyway, there's a really big datacenter in Portland, I hope Rainier goes before St. Helens, we don't have Disaster Recovery set up yet!
In Minnesota, we don't see that 1800 KwH of sunlight, nor do we see the sun, and our home energy consumption is easily 4x as high in the winter when everything outside is dead or migrating to survive. They want to use windmills out here, and stick them in the middle of the cornfields. I think, largely, that can be a good idea, but I understand they are a hazard to birds. I think as long as they don't kill raptors and perching birds, I'm fine with the occasional Canada Goose and umpteenth crow. The rotting carcass of a dead goose or crow would do good for the soil in the corn fields.
Aside from the comments about how solar cells produce about as much energy as was used in their production, is it me, or are solar cells made of really nasty, noxious chemicals? Alloys with heavy metals and all. It can't all be soy-based and recycled aluminium cans! Those roof-based water heaters are miserable. I remember them at a campsite once. Every time a cloud would pass over, the water would get cold; I guess they were not well-insulated!
Someone explain to me why the green crowd considers nuclear energy to be dirty; the radwaste is designed to be used in stepper reactors, and what is left over can be dumped in the nearest volcano or subduction zone. Sure, we don't have stepper reactors, but still their design exists. I know we have innovations since the TRIGA design.
The Ghostbusters were scientists. Sure, they had the odd job or two, but that was just gathering samples for their analysis. Maybe not Peter Venkman, he wasn't really on task most of the time.
Now, if Scully was trying to get a Toyota Rav4 to run around the California desert autonomously, then I would grant the laurel of scientist to her. Do all of you who got Computer Science degrees think you are doing computer science inside an IT department?
I'm sure the US will play catch-up once China announces their all five of their orbital Shenzou modules have combined to form some sort of giant robot bent on taking over the world from space. Oh wait, that's Japan. :-)
They should make a nuclear fusion version of the Ansari X-Prize. That'd be fun. Once.
I think it is safe to say, at this point, we are the only planet teeming with indigenous life in the solar system.
On the other side of your comments, when are the alien-life seekers going to call it quits? Every planet in the milky-way? The universe? Talk about faith! I, for one, would rather see our space dollars go a little more on the side of business/hard sciences. Get a little ROI. Like Velcro, Tang, and multitasking computers...
I don't know if you and I are on the same side of the issues (whatever issues are), but we both agree that governments are imperfect. Here's an open mind waiting on your input, then.
Go read Fahrenheit 451 and tell me which candidate you would have voted for in the book. Hmm. Good fodder for the Slashdot poll, I think.
This from a guy who helped colorize It's a Wonderful Life.
Still, I'd bet the bank would probably sue the organizer, and somehow that would be construed as illegal, even though I'm hard pressed to find a law this violates. If not, judges these days are pretty good at making stuff up, like declaring a publically voted law to be unconstitutional, as was the case this week in Washington State.
Remember that when you Americans vote this fall. John Edwards is a very wealthy trial lawyer.
I wonder, can you rent computer projectors?
In this movie the idea is originated. Can't you tell a B-movie when you see it? No? This movie should be a little bit closer. Aliens, flatworms, nanorobots, it is all the same.
If, by some stretch of my imagination, this did happen, the dufus who moved the rack is to blame, if blame is to be had. Thanks for the story, either way!
Much like Polish mathematical notations, I managed to plug the power cord in backwards (I know, HOW did I do that? it was an ambiguous connector and a poor diagram). Needless to say, I crippled my Buster chip, killed the Matay board, and lost Zorro III functionality completely. Zorro II still worked, though. I gave it to a long-time acquaintance of mine who happened to have part of Commodore's old West Chester inventory, and wanted to fix it himself.
On the plus side, Win UAE is the fastest Amiga I have ever owned.
They mean the average earthlink user has 28 spyware programs. Think about that a minute. That is quite an accomplishment if it isn't cookies. I mean, you'd have to be hitting a true variety of sites to accomplish that. I know there are more than 28 spyware programs out there, but goshers!