User: bjarthur123

Give postdocs a career, not empty promises

On: Reform the PhD System or Close It Down

here's a related article: Give postdocs a career, not empty promises the author advocates letting a much smaller fraction of PhDs continue on to post-docs, forcing the rest into industry, and then keeping on those post-docs who don't make the cut to faculty as career non-tenure-track scientists. makes sense to me.

income tax vs. GDP

On: Friends Don't Let Geek Friends Work In Finance

relatedly, here is data to show that top marginal tax bracket does NOT correlate with GDP: http://www.slate.com/id/2245781/

integral fast reactors, why not?

On: 550 Metric Tons of Uranium Removed From Iraq

slightly off topic, but, can anyone tell me why we (ie the world in general) don't build breeder reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor? according to this guy, they are (1) just as safe as the pressurized-water reactors we use now, but (2) hardly produce any radioactive waste at all, so no disposal problems, and (3) thereby also leave nothing to promote proliferation of WMDs. seems to me this reactor design addresses most of the problems people have with fission for electricity.

here's some data for cars

On: Saving Power in your Home Office

an analysis of the energy and toxins used during the lifecycle of a car: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=433981

solar-chimney air-conditioning

On: MIT-Led Study Says Geothermal Energy Is Viable

geothermal doesn't have to be just on a large scale. home-sized installations can be effectively used to generate a nice cool breeze when combined with a solar chimney. such systems skip the production of electricity all togethor: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney

let's not forget PASSIVE solar

On: Solar Cell Achieves 40% Efficiency

http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/arch/ARCH371-F99/groups /k/solar.html probably too late in the day for this to get modded up, but it always astonishes me when people pine for the high-tech stuff while all along the ancient art would go a long way to solving the problem. architects and developers who neglect passive solar design principles infuriate me! it just seems so simple...

not hardware controled!?

On: Linux Supporting G5 Liquid Cooling System

do i understand correctly that the fans and liquid-cooling system are not controlled by hardware? so if your OS crashes or otherwise malfunctions, then your CPU could overheat? does this seem like a really bad way to engineer things to anyone else?

nikotel and xten

On: Suggestions for a Home VOIP Provider?

i've been using nikotel.com as the service provider and xten.com and xten as the softphone for the last half a year. it's a no frills, super cheap, good quality and reliability combination. there are no installation fees, no monthly fees, no per call fees. the only fee is 2.9 cents per minute for outgoing calls in the US. if you spend at least $7 per month on the outgoing calls, or have them charge you that much even if you don't, then you can get assigned a PSTN phone number and receive incoming calls for free. friends tell me that the quality is somewhere between a landline and a cell phone. by no frills, i means absolutely none. though they claim that voicemail will be availabe at the end of june. i love it, highly recommend it, and am surprised that nikotel hasn't received more press.

charge on a per GB basis

On: BitTorrent Gains Corporate Support

or better yet, do as the university where i work does: every computer on campus gets X GB / month free, and anything beyond that gets charged at $Y/GB. it caused quite an uproar when this policy was instated, but having quite libertarian views on taxation issues anyway (use fees instead of income/propery taxes, etc.), i love it. sure wish my cable modem at home charged by the usage, and not a flat monthly rate.

javascript still slow

On: Apple Releases Safari 1.2 and Java 1.4.2

compared to camino/mozilla, safari is still 3x slower for javascript intensive pages. when is apple going to profile their code?

biodiesel and ethanol

On: Light Bulb Replacements

as many others have pointed out, hydrogen is not a renewable resource for powering cars. but biodiesel (B20/B100) and ethanol (E85) are both made from vegetables. check out these links for info:

biodiesel.org
e85fuel.com

20% biodiesel / 80% regular diesel (B20) can be used in any diesel engine w/o modification. 100% biodiesel (B100) can be used in most new cars, and even in older cars if the rubber parts of the fuel line are replaced with biodiesel-compatible materials. rudolf diesel, the inventor of the diesel engine, used peanut oil in his prototypes.

10% ethanol / 90% gasoline is already being used as a replacement for MTBE. again, no modification needed to the car. 85% ethanol mixture can be used if the carbeurator is adjusted and the rubber parts of the fuel line are replaced. they even make "flexible-fuel vehicles" (FFVs) which can take either straight gas or 85% ethanol (E85). early model-T fords used ethanol, until petrol became more cost effective.

there's also a group (liquidsolar.org) which will convert diesel cars to run of straight vegatable oil (SVO), typically recycled from restaurants.

there's lots of renewable alternatives folks. write your representatives!

still bugs

On: Safari 1.0 Released

this code works on every browser i've tested BUT safari:

<HTML>

<HEAD></HEAD>

<BODY>
<SCRIPT>
var foo = new Image();
foo.onload = function() { alert("load"); };
foo.onerror = function() { alert("error"); };
foo.src = "foo.jpg";
</SCRIPT>
</BODY>

</HTML>

ichat standards and safari bugs

On: Jaguar is Over

ichat is standards compliant, yet A/V only works between two macs running ichat. am i missing something? how about A/V support for AIM and yahoo?

and safari still has bugs. this code works on every browser i've tested BUT safari:

var foo = new Image();
foo.onload = function() { alert("load"); };
foo.onerror = function() { alert("error"); };
foo.src = "foo.jpg";