I've always wondered why someone hasn't made better use of the medians of US highway systems. I used to think that they could be utilized for low-maintenance crops or some type of agricultural effort, but drainage, accessibility, and a bunch of other reasons would make that pretty difficult.
However, they sound like a great place for a massive solar array. We keep our existing road infrastructure, using asphalt etc, and the solar collectors go *beside* them in the median. The collectors can then use basically whatever technology makes them most efficient, and we can focus on how to rebuild our roads using technologies that make them more efficient (and easier on the environment). Is there any reason why highway medians aren't used for something constructive? On 95 around Philly/Delaware there are gas stations and fast food "islands" in there.... why not a solar station?
The alternative to adding salt to the water, iirc, was using the nearest handy fire extinguisher. Pretty sure that doesnt fall under the "practical" approach to beer chillage.
Ive heard this a million times, and never knew...
from wikipedia:
Jumping the shark is a metaphor used by UStelevisioncritics since the 1990s. The phrase, popularized by Jon Hein on his web site, jumptheshark.com, is used to describe the moment when a television show
or similar episodic medium is in retrospect judged to have passed its
"peak" and shows a noticeable decline in quality. Most "jump the shark"
moments follow a noticeable change in the show, such as a main cast
member leaving or a change in setting, which are subsequently quoted as
the marker point signifying when the show's decline started. Frequently
"jump the shark" is used to describe a series that has undergone
drastic changes as a result of a ratings decline that has already
occurred, especially when the changes do little to halt or reverse this
decline. Hein also uses the "jumping the shark" concept to describe
other areas of pop culture, such as music and celebrities, for whom a drastic change was the beginning of the end.
Rehnquist wrote the decision Diamond v. Diehr, which made a hole in the dike against software patents in the United States erected by Justice Stevens in Parker v. Flook; the dike collapsed within a few years and software patenting is now virtually unlimited. In the Betamax
case, again Justice Stevens authored the opinion upholding individual
rights while Rehnquist joined the dissent who wished to strengthen
copyright controls. In Eldred v. Ashcroft, Rehnquist was in the majority favoring the copyright holders, with Justice Stevens dissenting in favor of individuals.
most phones only have, say, 32M or so of available space. such an insanely fast connection would be useless if you dont have anywhere to put the data. Everything would have to be streaming content, not download-and-play stuff. Unless Apple's rumored iPod phone is released soon, storage will definately be an issue.
So, sticking with the conservation-of-energy thread, all energy that the Earth (or the universe for that matter) absorbs from the sun or has stored already (fossil fuels), gets turned into heat (for the most part) by people. Think about it - A power station burns coal to produce electricity which is leaked as heat over power lines to your house where you run your stereo / computers / appliances(heaters!) / etc. Global temps rise and produce super storms...
Anyway, my point is that "clean" sources of power are not FREE sources of power, but rather just the movement of energy from one place to another, provided the amount of energy stays constant. Even things like capturing energy from ocean currents/waves could alter climates if we lined every inch of shoreline with wave-savers or whatever. (Physicists: does the amount of energy provided by the sun, space radiation, etc. ADD to Earth's total, or is some "leaked" out of the atmosphere somehow?)
Has anyone looked at the entire site linked in the post? Friggin' amazing how much time this guy has spent (since '99) collecting information about, well, stuff. All types of stuff, but mostly geek-type stuff. I thought it was fascinating. Go Bob.
I'm sure somebody has thought of this already, but Ill throw it in...
What if I just put mirrors all over my rocket?
Will the laser still be able to "focus" on the target if it reflects everything? (The answer probably has something to do with the wavelength of the laser, right?)
Does anyone remember an episode of the cosby show when Theo was in college... one of his roomates rigged up a machine to deliver soda cans to the living room through clear pipes.
I have thought of doing this myself, with a bank-deposit vacuum system to deliver cans of fizzy liquid to my couch. just a few acutuators and an air pump would do it I think.
Yeah 2%... If you're lucky. My old boss was responsible for evaluating his employees, which equated to a "so many out of this many" type of score. He was one of those types of people who believes that "nobody's perfect", even if all the testing criteria have obviously been met. He always comes up with some crap like "I think you could be a little more organized", or "Im not sure you giving us a complete 100 percent". Then he knocks 3 of the available 10 points off, and your 2% raise is now a 1.4% raise. Basically a smack in the face...
If you ARE concerned about $$, I would't bank on raises/bonuses to dramatically increase your income in the short run. A performance-based salary (with a floor) would be great for an enthusiastic grad, but with the state of most companies finances (in general), I would guess those types are hard to find.
I graduated in Dec 2001, after the bubble "popped", and I remember how insanely difficult it seemed to get a job. I can remember at least two instances where the companies held on-campus interviews followed by off-campus, second-round, half-day interviews for jobs that they didn't have to offer. They didn't hire anybody. Free advertisement, I guess. Maybe times have changed, but I gotta say "con-grat-u-lations" to anybody who gets a 50k/yr job right out of college.
Also, I haven't read any posts concerning Standard of Living costs. An entry-level job (or any job), would most certainly pay more in N.NJ than in, say, Birmingham.
from page 15: "After years of work and the invention of numerous new technologies, the result is a homogenous 1.5-inch sphere of pure fused quartz, polished to a within a few atomic layers of perfectly smooth. It is the most spherical object ever made, topped in sphericity only by neutron stars."
Probably took at least a couple of hours to put these together...:P
She mentions at one point that on the "day of disaster people gothered on the roof of this builing and have been looking at a beautiful shining above Atomic Plant. This was the shinning of radiation."
I have never heard of radiation producing visible evidence (immediately, that is), but then again, there was a lot of it. What is this "shinning" all about?
These places dont exactly look to be "visitor-friendly", and especially not a place that I would want to spend an extended period of time; aka "live".
from the above site:
-There is also TONS of asbestos pipe insulation stacked in every available corner of the complex...
-there are NO signs of life anywhere in the whole complex; not even a rat or a spider. This may mean that it's just pretty well sealed, or it may mean something worse, that something is preventing things from living down there...
And as an adenndum, the "V" in PVR still applies, although not directly to me, as I have no screens in my car. In a pinch though, a 15-inch LCD, folded up into the ceiling for the backseat would make an excellent in-car video playback device. I've seen it done in showcars. Independent streams for video and audio... this could be fun! Or insanely complicated and frustrating.
In the spirit of the "second generation of homebrew PVRs", I was wondering...
Since I travel a lot I have recently been thinking about putting together a PVR-type device for my automobile. With ever-shrinking form factors, hiding the device would be no problem. A simple remote control would be fairly easy to integrate. Several fast-booting distro's come to mind to use as starting points. But before I jump in headfirst, I thought I would ask... has this been done before?
(I remember an article a few days abo about a totally "wired" automobile, but that's not my goal. Just a simple mass-storage device with access controlls, integrated with a car stereo. )
I just checked the auction page, and it looks like the price is around 100 Million! (9:30EST). I think I remember the article mentioning that the govt only paid 28M or so. Now thats mark-up!
I agree, and I feel like the effects are evident already. Ive completed a MS in CS, and it seems harder and harder to find jobs that let you "get your foot in the door". Everybody wants 10 years of blah-blah experience, but how do I get experience with specialized enterprise development tools when I do tech support all day? I mean, I cant even get an interview at my own company (300k employees, worlds largest courier service...) because I dont have copies of BEA software installed at home to play with.
I mean, if it's guaranteed that those entry-level/junior positions are going the way of the buffalo, I will have no experience for those mystical "pure knowledge" positions, should they ever appear. Have I mis-invested 7 years and tens of thousands of dollars on the wrong college degree? Should I just say F*** it all, give away all my hardware, and go get a paper MBA from Sallie Struthers and become a store manager at a Target or something? It's like having a degree in model ship building. Sure it's hard and it takes decades to be considered a master, but only a few really make money for doing it the old fashioned way, and most people just get their model ships from a store that buys them from overseas where they are made for cheap.
From the duped article, p5: "Your very nature will drive you to fight," Lord Krishna tells Arjuna. "The only choice is what to fight against."
Slashdot Mirror
I've always wondered why someone hasn't made better use of the medians of US highway systems. I used to think that they could be utilized for low-maintenance crops or some type of agricultural effort, but drainage, accessibility, and a bunch of other reasons would make that pretty difficult.
However, they sound like a great place for a massive solar array. We keep our existing road infrastructure, using asphalt etc, and the solar collectors go *beside* them in the median. The collectors can then use basically whatever technology makes them most efficient, and we can focus on how to rebuild our roads using technologies that make them more efficient (and easier on the environment). Is there any reason why highway medians aren't used for something constructive? On 95 around Philly/Delaware there are gas stations and fast food "islands" in there.... why not a solar station?
Im sure many have seen this, but its Thanksgiving and I only halfass RTFA, didnt read many comments, but still think its worth a mention...
Das Rad is an excellent (short) animated film about, you guessed it, rocks. Its darn funny, and YouTube has a copy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fp5hbwdW3E
Enjoy.
Ahhh.... but from what I've heard, WE DID IT !! www-pm.larc.nasa.gov/sass/scitech.2.html and this.. http://www.aqvc39.dsl.pipex.com/2005/04/get-this-a ircraft-are-contributing-to.html
this too..
http://www.globalwarming.net/index.php?option=com_ content&task=view&id=117&Itemid=1
The alternative to adding salt to the water, iirc, was using the nearest handy fire extinguisher. Pretty sure that doesnt fall under the "practical" approach to beer chillage.
Ive heard this a million times, and never knew...
from wikipedia:
Jumping the shark is a metaphor used by US television critics since the 1990s. The phrase, popularized by Jon Hein on his web site, jumptheshark.com, is used to describe the moment when a television show or similar episodic medium is in retrospect judged to have passed its "peak" and shows a noticeable decline in quality. Most "jump the shark" moments follow a noticeable change in the show, such as a main cast member leaving or a change in setting, which are subsequently quoted as the marker point signifying when the show's decline started. Frequently "jump the shark" is used to describe a series that has undergone drastic changes as a result of a ratings decline that has already occurred, especially when the changes do little to halt or reverse this decline. Hein also uses the "jumping the shark" concept to describe other areas of pop culture, such as music and celebrities, for whom a drastic change was the beginning of the end.
Rehnquist wrote the decision Diamond v. Diehr, which made a hole in the dike against software patents in the United States erected by Justice Stevens in Parker v. Flook; the dike collapsed within a few years and software patenting is now virtually unlimited. In the Betamax case, again Justice Stevens authored the opinion upholding individual rights while Rehnquist joined the dissent who wished to strengthen copyright controls. In Eldred v. Ashcroft, Rehnquist was in the majority favoring the copyright holders, with Justice Stevens dissenting in favor of individuals.
most phones only have, say, 32M or so of available space. such an insanely fast connection would be useless if you dont have anywhere to put the data. Everything would have to be streaming content, not download-and-play stuff. Unless Apple's rumored iPod phone is released soon, storage will definately be an issue.
So, sticking with the conservation-of-energy thread, all energy that the Earth (or the universe for that matter) absorbs from the sun or has stored already (fossil fuels), gets turned into heat (for the most part) by people. Think about it - A power station burns coal to produce electricity which is leaked as heat over power lines to your house where you run your stereo / computers / appliances(heaters!) / etc. Global temps rise and produce super storms...
Anyway, my point is that "clean" sources of power are not FREE sources of power, but rather just the movement of energy from one place to another, provided the amount of energy stays constant. Even things like capturing energy from ocean currents/waves could alter climates if we lined every inch of shoreline with wave-savers or whatever. (Physicists: does the amount of energy provided by the sun, space radiation, etc. ADD to Earth's total, or is some "leaked" out of the atmosphere somehow?)
I've got an itch, and the only thing that can scratch it is.. MORE COWBELL! ...and a 900mHz phone.
They were doing this kind of stuff at UNC about 5 years ago when I was there. (US News recently ranked them first in Graphics) Still very cool though.
sort of offtopic, but...
Has anyone looked at the entire site linked in the post? Friggin' amazing how much time this guy has spent (since '99) collecting information about, well, stuff. All types of stuff, but mostly geek-type stuff. I thought it was fascinating. Go Bob.
I'm sure somebody has thought of this already, but Ill throw it in...
What if I just put mirrors all over my rocket?
Will the laser still be able to "focus" on the target if it reflects everything? (The answer probably has something to do with the wavelength of the laser, right?)
Does anyone remember an episode of the cosby show when Theo was in college... one of his roomates rigged up a machine to deliver soda cans to the living room through clear pipes. I have thought of doing this myself, with a bank-deposit vacuum system to deliver cans of fizzy liquid to my couch. just a few acutuators and an air pump would do it I think.
Yeah 2%... If you're lucky. My old boss was responsible for evaluating his employees, which equated to a "so many out of this many" type of score. He was one of those types of people who believes that "nobody's perfect", even if all the testing criteria have obviously been met. He always comes up with some crap like "I think you could be a little more organized", or "Im not sure you giving us a complete 100 percent". Then he knocks 3 of the available 10 points off, and your 2% raise is now a 1.4% raise. Basically a smack in the face...
If you ARE concerned about $$, I would't bank on raises/bonuses to dramatically increase your income in the short run. A performance-based salary (with a floor) would be great for an enthusiastic grad, but with the state of most companies finances (in general), I would guess those types are hard to find.
I graduated in Dec 2001, after the bubble "popped", and I remember how insanely difficult it seemed to get a job. I can remember at least two instances where the companies held on-campus interviews followed by off-campus, second-round, half-day interviews for jobs that they didn't have to offer. They didn't hire anybody. Free advertisement, I guess. Maybe times have changed, but I gotta say "con-grat-u-lations" to anybody who gets a 50k/yr job right out of college.
Also, I haven't read any posts concerning Standard of Living costs. An entry-level job (or any job), would most certainly pay more in N.NJ than in, say, Birmingham.
from page 15:
:P
"After years of work and the invention of numerous new technologies, the result is a homogenous 1.5-inch sphere of pure fused quartz, polished to a within a few atomic layers of perfectly smooth. It is the most spherical object ever made, topped in sphericity only by neutron stars."
Probably took at least a couple of hours to put these together...
She mentions at one point that on the "day of disaster people gothered on the roof of this builing and have been looking at a beautiful shining above Atomic Plant. This was the shinning of radiation."
I have never heard of radiation producing visible evidence (immediately, that is), but then again, there was a lot of it. What is this "shinning" all about?
BH: Uhhhh..... huh-huhhh. huh-huh.
Uhhh... Hey Beavis...
Your computer is like,
giving me wood...
BV: YEh yeH! HeHht-Heh. Yeah. Its cool.
BH: Yeaaah. Its coool.
These places dont exactly look to be "visitor-friendly", and especially not a place that I would want to spend an extended period of time; aka "live".
from the above site:
-There is also TONS of asbestos pipe insulation stacked in every available corner of the complex...
-there are NO signs of life anywhere in the whole complex; not even a rat or a spider. This may mean that it's just pretty well sealed, or it may mean something worse, that something is preventing things from living down there...
Excellent! It's a go then...
And as an adenndum, the "V" in PVR still applies, although not directly to me, as I have no screens in my car. In a pinch though, a 15-inch LCD, folded up into the ceiling for the backseat would make an excellent in-car video playback device. I've seen it done in showcars. Independent streams for video and audio... this could be fun! Or insanely complicated and frustrating.
--B
In the spirit of the "second generation of homebrew PVRs", I was wondering...
Since I travel a lot I have recently been thinking about putting together a PVR-type device for my automobile. With ever-shrinking form factors, hiding the device would be no problem. A simple remote control would be fairly easy to integrate. Several fast-booting distro's come to mind to use as starting points. But before I jump in headfirst, I thought I would ask... has this been done before?
(I remember an article a few days abo about a totally "wired" automobile, but that's not my goal. Just a simple mass-storage device with access controlls, integrated with a car stereo. )
-B
"Also, the photo of Ellison is kind of comical. If you were to throw a black cape and a tall hat on him, he could be a circus magician."
Can you SMELL what Larry Ellison is COOKIN*' ?!!
*single eyebrow shoots up
Tivo can predict your purchases before you even make them!
I just checked the auction page, and it looks like the price is around 100 Million! (9:30EST). I think I remember the article mentioning that the govt only paid 28M or so. Now thats mark-up!
-B
I agree, and I feel like the effects are evident already. Ive completed a MS in CS, and it seems harder and harder to find jobs that let you "get your foot in the door". Everybody wants 10 years of blah-blah experience, but how do I get experience with specialized enterprise development tools when I do tech support all day? I mean, I cant even get an interview at my own company (300k employees, worlds largest courier service...) because I dont have copies of BEA software installed at home to play with.
I mean, if it's guaranteed that those entry-level/junior positions are going the way of the buffalo, I will have no experience for those mystical "pure knowledge" positions, should they ever appear. Have I mis-invested 7 years and tens of thousands of dollars on the wrong college degree? Should I just say F*** it all, give away all my hardware, and go get a paper MBA from Sallie Struthers and become a store manager at a Target or something? It's like having a degree in model ship building. Sure it's hard and it takes decades to be considered a master, but only a few really make money for doing it the old fashioned way, and most people just get their model ships from a store that buys them from overseas where they are made for cheap.
From the duped article, p5: "Your very nature will drive you to fight," Lord Krishna tells Arjuna. "The only choice is what to fight against."
sorry for the rant, but its tough these days
--B