It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up...:/
You watch. They will get paid. Obama already said so.
But its all funny money, and speculative accounting.
The money not spent is still sitting in the treasury.
The Park not open, didn't need to be policed or maintained. The federal employee not at their desk didn't impose more useless make work regulations on the country, and by and large weren't missed.
There are actually only a few areas that were really affected in a meaningful way. Crab fishing in the north Pacific came to a halt because rubber-stamp bureaucrats weren't there to issue permits. (The permits cost money (big money), so the fishermen didn't have to cough up those funds, but Crab won't arrive in the supermarkets on time in quantity). It could have been solved by simply having the "essential employee" publish an edict saying Fish on your last year's permit and mail in your fees same as last year. The idea that you can't harvest and market food without a government rubber stamp is ridiculous.
The whole thing was grandstanding, and now we are into the blame casting phase.
But in the end, it was all bean counter funny money. Nothing of value was lost.
Will it pick up once government employees are paid for their time off?
But they weren't working. Why should they get back pay?
So unless you view government employment as one huge welfare program, why would you compensate them for work not performed. Government employees have the greatest job security in the entire country. Everyone else's job is at risk of shutdown, loss of employment and disruption every day of the year.
Why should Federal workers get an additional vacation AND get paid for it, on top of their normal vacation?
But, watch and see... Nobody will go unpaid in the end.
At most, any delayed payments may (possibly) earn interest, and so cost a small amount more. On the other hand, the offset by not wasting more tax payers dollars by shuffling more papers or imposing more useless regulations has to be worth something.
(Damn slashdot editors allowing blog hyping instead of linking to the actual sources!!!)
Close reading of that indicates this is just a huge trick played on the body's temperature regulation system. There is no actual heating or cooling of the body. Its probably dangerous at some level, and the body would also probably "learn" to ignore it.
Sure, I would pass out once the body got too warm and I had tricked my sweat glands to not work to keep me cool, so it would be rather pointless and maybe horrifying... which gets us to that the bracelet would have to either do that(block sweating) or not really work at all then.
Exactly. Our use a cap, or a sweater, or thinner clothing in hot weather.
Letting engineers regulate the human body so that the building can be run on less energy is the perfect definition of ASS BACKWARDS.
MIT should grow a Medical school instead of leaching off of Harvard. Perhaps then they might actually understand what they are messing with and perhaps grow to have a concept of ethics as well.
Once your follow the link from the self promoting blog to the actual article from MIT you find this
Over the course of developing its technology, the Wristify team made a key discovery: Human skin is very sensitive to minute, rapid changes in temperature, which affect the whole body. They found they needed to heat or cool any body part (in their case, the wrist) at a rate of at least 0.1 C per second in order to make the entire body, overall, feel several degrees warmer or colder.
After 15 prototypes, the team landed on its final product, which resembles a wristwatch and can be powered, for up to eight hours, by a lithium polymer battery. This prototype demonstrated a rate of change of up to 0.4 C per second.
The “watch” part of the prototype actually consists of the team’s custom copper-alloy-based heat sink (a component that lowers a device’s temperature by dissipating heat). Attached is an automated control system that manages the intensity and duration of the thermal pulses delivered to the heat sink. Integrated thermometers also measure external and body temperature to adjust accordingly.
Its clear from the article that there is no actual heating of the body involved. Their system does not have enough power to heat 150 pounds of (essentially) water even one degree in the time period mentioned, let alone maintain any elevated temperature over 8 hours.
They are simply tricking the body into thinking it is warm enough or cool enough so that you don't FEEL cold / hot. You still actually ARE too cold or too hot.
This sounds interesting but I wonder just how safe it is to trick the body's thermal regulation its cool enough such that it no longer pays attention to the fact that it might be running dangerously close to heat induced stroke? Or trick it into thinking its cold, so it ramps up the metabolism.
In fact this might be a more useful as w weight loss device than an energy saving device. But I'm still not convinced we should let engineers start micromanaging bodily functions, when all they are worried about is the device and the energy consumption.
Technology to do the same thing was invented a LONG time ago. Its called a sweater.
Even cheaper is a simple cap. Put it on, and you reduce heat loss through your head sufficiently enough to actually warm your entire body. Take it off and the reverse happens. The cap will last for years with no need for environment polluting batteries, and never has to be plugged in or recharged.
So a sample of gasses violently encapsulated in molten rock after a impact of a rather large body upon a planet with enough force to eject significant amounts of rock has the exact same components as the atmosphere it was blasted through?
That's amazing. More amazing that a random rock from Mars landing on earth.
I have to agree with your last paragraph, Russian dash cam videos are addictive. You can learn a lot about dangerous driving practices that cause accidents. Watching them makes you a more defensive driver.
I've seen it alleged that the reason these are so popular in Russia is that the police are so easily corrupted and bribed into writing up the accident as being the fault of who ever offers the smallest bribe.
Of course I have no way of knowing if this is true. In most places in the US and Canada, any suggestion of a bribe will get you in handcuffs. (I'm sure there are exceptions in some places in the US, but it is rare enough that the traveler never dares make such an offer.) In Mexico the cuffs appear only if your bribe offer is too small).
So dash cams are not that necessary in the US, and most of Western Europe because most accidents will be reported fairly, and most insurance companies will conduct their own investigation for large claims.
So "have to" as mentioned by the GP refers to protecting one's self from corrupt police.
I don't think you get to define "No difference in reactor performance".
Performance includes all kinds of things, such a electrical production, prevention of radiation leaks, days between on the job injuries, the need to take unusual protective steps up to and including shutting down the reactor.
Anything that affects or triggers changes in electrical output is not the sole measure of performance. There is absolutely nothing in the article or the summary that would lead you to any such conclusion.
A bank account number is not sufficient to enact a withdrawal in the US either.
But when combined with other information, its enough to give leverage to some major scammers, forgers, and check kiters, requiring you to spend all sorts of time fending them off, and answering questions.
For many years a company I worked for published their bank account number because they received a lot of business from Europe and payers liked to do wire transfers for some reason.
On multiple occasions people would use this number to phony up checks which they would successfully cash, or pay bills or whatever. In each case, our bank denied the payment. In many cases we would get calls from fraud investigators, asking if we knew this person or that person or had ever done business with this merchant 20 states away.
Now that company, (which I no longer work for) makes their payers request the bank account number in stead of publishing it on their web page, because there is no reason to make it easier for forgers, and having to deal with it takes time, even if they don't get your money.
If you are so confident that this is not the case in your country, publish details sufficient for someone to send you a wire transfer on some web site, and see how long it takes for you to start getting calls.
Except I can receive money in my paypal account as long as they have my tax id for tax purposes, and I can spend that money directly out of that account at a large number of merchants without giving access to my bank account.
It is also possible that the utilities in the SE are doing a better job.
The story clearly says:
The striking variations do not appear to reflect real differences in reactor performance. Instead, the report says, the differences suggest that regulators interpret rules and guidelines differently among regions,
This report places no such condemnation or accolades on the operators. It lays the problem directly at the NRC's doorstep.
The regulators are at fault here, not the operators.
This is what happens when you let companies oversee themselves without any real penalties.
No, its not.
the differences suggest that regulators interpret rules and guidelines differently
The problem is more likely that the regulators are ill-trained, and ill-supervised. Anywhere away from the NRC's central office the oversight of its OWN STAFF is lax.
Inspectors and regulators should rotate, like Baseball umpires, not always covering the same area, and thereby making the regulations more evenly applied and making it harder for these (in your opinion) evil plant operators to come to an agreement under the table.
Also, without knowing the exact nature of these so called safety violations, you can't tell how many of them are for having too few "Remember your hard hat" signs and a fresh supply of toilet paper in each stall, as opposed to things that actually have serious implications. Anyone having dealt with any federal regulator knows that they nit pick stuff that allows them to write up infractions and make it look like they are doing their job, while overlooking big issues. I had an uncle that was a HUD building inspector that always ran around with a thermometer in his pocket protector to make sure the hot water wasn't too hot, and would write building managers up for two degrees over the limit. Of course he would totally overlook drug dealing out of apartments and broken elevators.
Square requires your debit card info and SQUARE gets the recipients bank account details not the guy paying.
Yes, good catch, that't what I meant to type, but my fingers occasionally get ahead of me.
Still, Square ends up knowing a whole hell of a lot about people who may use the service exactly once. We can only hope they have good security, because a break-in of their site could cause wide spread financial chaos.
They have to keep lots of backup, simply to protect themselves and research transactions. Presumably all of their data is heavily encrypted, and they have off-site backups other than the NSA.
From the summary: "Square asks the sending for their debit card info..."
That sounds like bank participation to me.
Further, Square asks the Recipient for their bank account info. That sounds even more like bank participation. Willingly or not.
How many people are going to receive an email purporting to be from Square offering an amount of money which will give them a link to click to post their bank account details, directly into a website run by some 419 scammers?
You have to have an inordinate amount of trust in Square to use this service from EITHER end.
Sender hands over Debit Card info. Receiver hands over BANK Account info. Really?
Much as people love to hate PayPal, their process is more reliable. Paypal offers a Paypal balance backed Debit Card if you want to fund the kid at college without co-signing a credit card application. Even Google will transfer money for you these days.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow. Just wow.
It's not a vacation when you don't plan for it, dont know when you're going to get paid and still have to meet all your financial responsibilities in the mean time. Sign me up... :/
You watch. They will get paid. Obama already said so.
But its all funny money, and speculative accounting.
The money not spent is still sitting in the treasury.
The Park not open, didn't need to be policed or maintained.
The federal employee not at their desk didn't impose more useless make work regulations on the country, and by and large weren't missed.
There are actually only a few areas that were really affected in a meaningful way. Crab fishing in the north Pacific came to a halt
because rubber-stamp bureaucrats weren't there to issue permits. (The permits cost money (big money), so the fishermen didn't have to
cough up those funds, but Crab won't arrive in the supermarkets on time in quantity). It could have been solved by simply having
the "essential employee" publish an edict saying Fish on your last year's permit and mail in your fees same as last year. The idea
that you can't harvest and market food without a government rubber stamp is ridiculous.
The whole thing was grandstanding, and now we are into the blame casting phase.
But in the end, it was all bean counter funny money. Nothing of value was lost.
Will it pick up once government employees are paid for their time off?
But they weren't working. Why should they get back pay?
So unless you view government employment as one huge welfare program, why would you compensate them for work not performed.
Government employees have the greatest job security in the entire country. Everyone else's job is at risk of shutdown, loss of employment
and disruption every day of the year.
Why should Federal workers get an additional vacation AND get paid for it, on top of their normal vacation?
Exactly.
But, watch and see... Nobody will go unpaid in the end.
At most, any delayed payments may (possibly) earn interest, and so cost a small amount more.
On the other hand, the offset by not wasting more tax payers dollars by shuffling more papers or imposing more useless regulations has to be worth something.
The real article is here: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/madmec-design-competition-1017.html
(Damn slashdot editors allowing blog hyping instead of linking to the actual sources!!!)
Close reading of that indicates this is just a huge trick played on the body's temperature regulation system.
There is no actual heating or cooling of the body. Its probably dangerous at some level, and the body would
also probably "learn" to ignore it.
but I could take drugs for that.
Sure, I would pass out once the body got too warm and I had tricked my sweat glands to not work to keep me cool, so it would be rather pointless and maybe horrifying... which gets us to that the bracelet would have to either do that(block sweating) or not really work at all then.
Exactly. Our use a cap, or a sweater, or thinner clothing in hot weather.
Letting engineers regulate the human body so that the building can be run on less energy is the perfect definition of ASS BACKWARDS.
MIT should grow a Medical school instead of leaching off of Harvard. Perhaps then they might actually understand what they are messing with and perhaps grow to have a concept of ethics as well.
Once your follow the link from the self promoting blog to the actual article from MIT you find this
Over the course of developing its technology, the Wristify team made a key discovery: Human skin is very sensitive to minute, rapid changes in temperature, which affect the whole body. They found they needed to heat or cool any body part (in their case, the wrist) at a rate of at least 0.1 C per second in order to make the entire body, overall, feel several degrees warmer or colder.
After 15 prototypes, the team landed on its final product, which resembles a wristwatch and can be powered, for up to eight hours, by a lithium polymer battery. This prototype demonstrated a rate of change of up to 0.4 C per second.
The “watch” part of the prototype actually consists of the team’s custom copper-alloy-based heat sink (a component that lowers a device’s temperature by dissipating heat). Attached is an automated control system that manages the intensity and duration of the thermal pulses delivered to the heat sink. Integrated thermometers also measure external and body temperature to adjust accordingly.
Its clear from the article that there is no actual heating of the body involved. Their system does not have enough power to heat 150 pounds of (essentially) water even one degree in the time period mentioned, let alone maintain any elevated temperature over 8 hours.
They are simply tricking the body into thinking it is warm enough or cool enough so that you don't FEEL cold / hot. You still actually ARE too cold or too hot.
This sounds interesting but I wonder just how safe it is to trick the body's thermal regulation its cool enough such that it no longer pays attention to the fact that it might be running dangerously close to heat induced stroke? Or trick it into thinking its cold, so it ramps up the metabolism.
In fact this might be a more useful as w weight loss device than an energy saving device.
But I'm still not convinced we should let engineers start micromanaging bodily functions, when all they are worried about is the device and the energy consumption.
Technology to do the same thing was invented a LONG time ago. Its called a sweater.
Even cheaper is a simple cap. Put it on, and you reduce heat loss through your head sufficiently enough to actually warm your entire body. Take it off and the reverse happens. The cap will last for years with no need for environment polluting batteries, and never has to be plugged in or recharged.
Well, it actually is the same amount of energy transfer, its just that our cooling systems aren't as efficient as our heating systems.
Source?
So a sample of gasses violently encapsulated in molten rock after a impact of a rather large body upon a planet with enough force to eject significant amounts of rock has the exact same components as the atmosphere it was blasted through?
That's amazing. More amazing that a random rock from Mars landing on earth.
I have to agree with your last paragraph, Russian dash cam videos are addictive. You can learn a lot about dangerous driving practices that cause accidents. Watching them makes you a more defensive driver.
I've seen it alleged that the reason these are so popular in Russia is that the police are so easily corrupted and bribed into writing up the accident as being the fault of who ever offers the smallest bribe.
Of course I have no way of knowing if this is true. In most places in the US and Canada, any suggestion of a bribe will get you in handcuffs. (I'm sure there are exceptions in some places in the US, but it is rare enough that the traveler never dares make such an offer.) In Mexico the cuffs appear only if your bribe offer is too small).
So dash cams are not that necessary in the US, and most of Western Europe because most accidents will be reported fairly, and most insurance companies will conduct their own investigation for large claims.
So "have to" as mentioned by the GP refers to protecting one's self from corrupt police.
What the hell fun would it be not getting paranoid on Slash dot?
I don't think you get to define "No difference in reactor performance".
Performance includes all kinds of things, such a electrical production, prevention of radiation leaks, days between on the job injuries, the need to take unusual protective steps up to and including shutting down the reactor.
Anything that affects or triggers changes in electrical output is not the sole measure of performance. There is absolutely nothing in the article or the summary that would lead you to any such conclusion.
What do you mean "Wrong"?
http://www.google.com/wallet/send-money/
So your own homework son.
I think you will find that common sense isn't all that common.
John, usually works for Street Corner Guy anyway.
A bank account number is not sufficient to enact a withdrawal in the US either.
But when combined with other information, its enough to give leverage to some major scammers, forgers, and check kiters, requiring you to spend all sorts of time fending them off, and answering questions.
For many years a company I worked for published their bank account number because they received a lot of business from Europe and payers liked to do wire transfers for some reason.
On multiple occasions people would use this number to phony up checks which they would successfully cash, or pay bills or whatever. In each case, our bank denied the payment. In many cases we would get calls from fraud investigators, asking if we knew this person or that person or had ever done business with this merchant 20 states away.
Now that company, (which I no longer work for) makes their payers request the bank account number in stead of publishing it on their web page, because there is no reason to make it easier for forgers, and having to deal with it takes time, even if they don't get your money.
If you are so confident that this is not the case in your country, publish details sufficient for someone to send you a wire transfer on some web site, and see how long it takes for you to start getting calls.
How is it like blaming autoworkers?
The the report does not blame the plant workers.
The report doesn't even blame the plant operators.
It places the blame squarely on the Federal Government. The regulators and inspectors are FEDERAL Employees.
Its the EXACT Opposite of what you postulate.
The majority of "deals" are made between friends.
Maybe in your little upper middle class world scoring you pot for the weekend.
In the real world Street Corner Guy does most of the business.
And neither John nor Street guy puts any of that money in the bank.
Except I can receive money in my paypal account as long as they have my tax id for tax purposes, and I can spend that money directly out of that account at a large number of merchants without giving access to my bank account.
It is also possible that the utilities in the SE are doing a better job.
The story clearly says:
The striking variations do not appear to reflect real differences in reactor performance. Instead, the report says, the differences suggest that regulators interpret rules and guidelines differently among regions,
This report places no such condemnation or accolades on the operators.
It lays the problem directly at the NRC's doorstep.
The regulators are at fault here, not the operators.
This is what happens when you let companies oversee themselves without any real penalties.
No, its not.
the differences suggest that regulators interpret rules and guidelines differently
The problem is more likely that the regulators are ill-trained, and ill-supervised. Anywhere away from the
NRC's central office the oversight of its OWN STAFF is lax.
Inspectors and regulators should rotate, like Baseball umpires, not always covering the same area, and thereby making the regulations more evenly applied and making it harder for these (in your opinion) evil plant operators to come to an agreement under the table.
Also, without knowing the exact nature of these so called safety violations, you can't tell how many of them are for having too few "Remember your hard hat" signs and a fresh supply of toilet paper in each stall, as opposed to things that actually have serious implications. Anyone having dealt with any federal regulator knows that they nit pick stuff that allows them to write up infractions and make it look like they are doing their job, while overlooking big issues. I had an uncle that was a HUD building inspector that always ran around with a thermometer in his pocket protector to make sure the hot water wasn't too hot, and would write building managers up for two degrees over the limit. Of course he would totally overlook drug dealing out of apartments and broken elevators.
Square requires your debit card info and SQUARE gets the recipients bank account details not the guy paying.
Yes, good catch, that't what I meant to type, but my fingers occasionally get ahead of me.
Still, Square ends up knowing a whole hell of a lot about people who may use the service exactly once.
We can only hope they have good security, because a break-in of their site could cause wide spread
financial chaos.
They have to keep lots of backup, simply to protect themselves and research transactions. Presumably all of their data is heavily encrypted, and they have off-site backups other than the NSA.
From the summary: "Square asks the sending for their debit card info..."
That sounds like bank participation to me.
Further, Square asks the Recipient for their bank account info.
That sounds even more like bank participation. Willingly or not.
How many people are going to receive an email purporting to be from Square offering an amount of money
which will give them a link to click to post their bank account details, directly into a website run by some 419 scammers?
Exactly.
You have to have an inordinate amount of trust in Square to use this service from EITHER end.
Sender hands over Debit Card info.
Receiver hands over BANK Account info.
Really?
Much as people love to hate PayPal, their process is more reliable.
Paypal offers a Paypal balance backed Debit Card if you want to fund the kid at college without
co-signing a credit card application.
Even Google will transfer money for you these days.