The last part was an apparently very ineffective joke...it would stop floating once the density of the medium (the air) was no longer higher than that of the plane.
This is the real problem with the idea...It is going to be an extremely low-density object...The mass of the payload will need to be a tiny fraction of the total...Think balloon.
1/625 possibility of being destroyed in 2031
on
Space Elevators Going Up
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
1/625 possibility of 'severe damage' (aka destruction) from the 2031 Leonid Shower is a pretty damn big risk, if you ask me. I imagine that every nation that might get smacked by falling debris would have an objection to this ever going up on this basis alone.
I totally agree. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but this seems like a complicated perpetual motion machine to me.
In much the same way that moon oribting the earth is a perpetual motion machine. In theory, this could work if the energy needed to fill/evacuate the air bladders is lower than the energy that the turbines can create during descent. Working much like regenerative braking, the idea is to turn the change in potential energy states, into usable energy.
My question is how much mass can it transport while still maintaining some level of that efficiency? It has to descend fast enough to power the turbine, overcoming the 'fixed' startup energy costs and the inherent conversion inefficiencies, and then use that to run the pumps.
Any takers on the Math? I've slept since then...
The real danger of this is not crashing, it is that if it runs out of energy to compress air, it will float up out of the atmosphere and vanish into outer space, with everything and everybody aboard!
permanently reject any patent for which initial submission has obvious prior art that dates back more than 10 years prior to the claim
I guess the boundary there is how do you decide that 'enough' of the claims are covered by prior art that entire patent should be tossed? One claim? Half the claims? To solve these criteria, you could just file more patents, with a smaller number of claims per patent. That would certainly make the patent office less burdened!
So can anyone actually explain to this canuck what an HMO is? I have the impression it's an organization with a profit motive... and from what I recall what saves money is not necessarily in the best interest of the patient...
It may be difficult for you to grok if the concept of anything but Government Healthcare is inconcieveable. An HMO is a 'medical care business', sort of a combination of an insurance company and hostpital/doctor/lab network, where they keep the costs down by limiting the services provided, drugs covered, and so on. In the typical US system, it's completely a al carte, and everybody wants to make a profit on their piece. The insurance companies want to profit on the financial transactions, the doctors want to profit on their services, the hospitals and labs buy lots of expensive equipment, and want to make their profits too.
The HMOs are all about cost controls. They are bigger than an individual doctor/hospital/lab, so and they buy in bulk. Everything from colonoscopes to malpractice insurance. And they have a cadre of lawyers staff to defend the company, when the contractually obligated arbitration fails. Compared to private coverage, they won't have as many fancy new gadgets in their labs, and you'll be waiting longer in line for surgery and medical attention. It's a bit gruesome to say it, but it's a lot cheaper to let somebody die on line than on the table. And you might go to the doctor's office and just see a nurse if it's nothing major.
On the plus side, for minor stuff, it's a lot cheaper to get passable service, as long as you're not expecting 5 star hotel type of attention. It's more like 3 star. There's no chocolate on the pillow, but neither are there fleas.
I imagine that the level of service and care in an HMO is likely similar to a national healthcare system. I know that it's similar to what I experienced with the US Military hospital system, which is why I pay for unrestricted insurance. Despite that, I would like to see the US have some sort of nationalized healthcare, as long as it doesn't make 'better' care unavailable. (I understand that many Canadians cross the border to pay for healthcare unavailable in Canada, or the waits are too long)
Bypass all hope of starting a career in network engineering, and get a degree that will allow you to enjoy your lifetime of unemployment!
After you waste 4 years learning a technical trade that you can't sell, and have nothing rattling around in your head but packets and circuits, you'll wish that you were thinking of flowers and bunnies, and you'll kick yourself for not being able to express your anger in an eloquent manner.
Think of it as a degree in Computer Science, with a minor in Digital EE, and with the majority of your humanities electives replaced with science or engineering electives. This is how it was, at least, where I took my degree.
Was the law degree a requirement for him to get his job? Are there any people who do *not* have a law degree that he counts as peers?
If so, then this is a false comparison. All of the contract lawyers at the company I work for are lawyers. Their law degree doesn't make them 'better' at it than their peers who don't have the degree, it lets them have the job in the first place.
That said, a Law degree will help somebody with any career that doing intuitively truly requires a deep understanding of the law, even if other people technicall *can* do it. (Judges are elected, and don't need to have a law degree, but it certainly helps to have one if you're going to convince somebody to choose you)
Just as most CEOs were accountants at one point in their past. They're good at running companies, because it's all about profit.
However, the intricacies of OS design, network communication, theory of computer language, Compiler construction, and digital electronics aren't going to transfer as well to another career.
Unless you get a PhD, you are taking training to be a programmer. If you don't want to be a programmer, you should think of what it is you want to do, and learn about that.
If you think that having a CS degree will vault you to the top of an unrelated career field, you are kidding yourself. If you want to use it as a way to enhance another career that you are trained for, then perhaps (bio-informatics, patent law with a specialization in software), but those require a significant investment in education in another field...
From the sound of your plea, your certifications have done basically nothing for you thus far, so my question back at you is: what has your certification done for you?
Well, I happen to have a car that is built for speed and handling, but it doesn't have a wing on it. In fact, it has a bit of a spoiler, but it's a just a tiny 1 inch raised strip on the back of the car. It's virtually unnoticable except on close inspection.
It would appear that Ferrari doesn't believe that Spoilers are necessary, although they make some extremely high performance cars.
Here's a sampling Notice that the only ones you see with spoilers are either true racecars, or the 'supercars' like the F40 and F50. Even the 'challenge' cars that are the race versions don't have spoilers!
I dunno about the others components you mentioned, but as I sit here at work, I'm working a windows driver. It is a 2K/XP driver. The DDK has changed some from the Win2K DDK, but the changes are relatively minor, and seem largely to be compiler-compatibility, since MS made some significant chages to their compiler between VS6 (Win2K) and VS.Net (WinXP/2003). We upgraded compilers recently, and had to update the DDK solely to match the compiler.
Yes, a few new functions are available with each OS rev that we are choosing not to use, since we want to be backwards compatible.
And since the driver is, essentially, an implementation of GDI for our device, I suspect that not a lot has really changed about GDI between 2K and XP.
That should be good for another couple hundred dollars. And just think of all the sales they would have on their iTMS store if only they would sell.ogg format!
Oh, wait, I forgot, nobody here would actually PAY for.ogg format music...
According to the BLS, the average wage across all professions is $17.18. That's Bill Gates down to the migrant farm worker. The average for "blue collar" workers is currently about $8.10...
In fact, the national average for Parking Lot Attendants was $8.26, and the overall blue-collar average was $14.51, pulled lower by 'floor helpers' and 'laborers' who averaged $10.98.
What year were you looking at data for?
And Globalization can have no effect that I can imagine on waitstaff who work for tips...It would be pretty damn hard to outsource the delivery of my plate of dinner from the kitchen to a foriegn country.
The minimum wage...now only $5.15...is generally the wage we pay our manufacturing line workers
Ummm, I think that you are mistaken here. what manufacturing lines are you referring to? The UAW certainly makes more than minimum...In fact, according to the UAW they make $29.75 an hour, which is nearly $60k a year assuming the standard 2000 hour year.
I saw another link about GE unionized laborers making $21.45 an hour, but it was a PDF, so I declined to provide the link.
Even when i had a job working as a migrant farm worker in California (yes, I even have my registration card) I was making almost double the minimum wage.
Yeah, that must be why the people in the Phillipines and Zaire/Congo enjoy such fantastic living conditions
I believe that they swiped the 'gift' money of economic support given government to government, not the money brought in by international commerce. San Miguel, for example, is doing a brisk business in international sales.
That's the beauty of globalization...yes, corrupt governments all over the planet will steal from their citizens, but where that happens, less international business will be done, because there is no money/incentive to build in the first place.
Much of the argument against globalization harkens back to the modern description of industrialization as creating a hellish environment, including the failure to realize that it was even worse before industrialization than it was during. I think that few would argue things are worse now in the west than they were in the pre-industrial age, unless they get their images of life in that era of from the popular novels of the life of the aristocracy.
I hope I'm still around in another half century, when China is stronger than the US, so that I can have the satisfaction of seeing these principles come back to bite them.
Yes, you are correct. China is a much more reliable nation. They have absolutely no record of violating basic human rights. In fact, I hope that you are subject to Chinese rule during your lifetime!
There's no reason to think law enforcement wouldn't twist the law to suit their purposes, such as arresting someone with no evidence just to obtain their DNA. Then, with DNA in hand, they might be able to make their case.
The police already do this without a database. Sometimes they have a strong suspicion about the perp, but no 'strong evidence'...The DNA placing the suspect at the scene provides that evidence.
Personally, I think that a law that would make it easy for the police to find sick fucks like this guy is a good idea.
I've got a Spire bag, and I like them so much that I started buying them for my team instead of the 'standard issue' Targus bags. I use it for my notebook, or just as a convenient and sturdy piece of carry-on luggage when going on vacation!
A friend of mine used to own an Audi A4...He said that the engineers who designed it must have been brilliant, because immediately after the warranty expired, it literally started falling apart, and something broke every month that cost at least a couple hundred dollars to fix/replace.
Some efforts were made by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney from Atlanta. She got the ChoicePoint CEO to fess up in a congressional inquiry. She was swiftly dealt with in the subsequent election.
I think that your support of Cynthia McKinney speaks volumes about your ability to choose reliable leaders!
Slashdot Mirror
The last part was an apparently very ineffective joke...it would stop floating once the density of the medium (the air) was no longer higher than that of the plane.
This is the real problem with the idea...It is going to be an extremely low-density object...The mass of the payload will need to be a tiny fraction of the total...Think balloon.
1/625 possibility of 'severe damage' (aka destruction) from the 2031 Leonid Shower is a pretty damn big risk, if you ask me. I imagine that every nation that might get smacked by falling debris would have an objection to this ever going up on this basis alone.
I totally agree. I'm not an aerospace engineer, but this seems like a complicated perpetual motion machine to me.
In much the same way that moon oribting the earth is a perpetual motion machine. In theory, this could work if the energy needed to fill/evacuate the air bladders is lower than the energy that the turbines can create during descent. Working much like regenerative braking, the idea is to turn the change in potential energy states, into usable energy.
My question is how much mass can it transport while still maintaining some level of that efficiency? It has to descend fast enough to power the turbine, overcoming the 'fixed' startup energy costs and the inherent conversion inefficiencies, and then use that to run the pumps.
Any takers on the Math? I've slept since then...
The real danger of this is not crashing, it is that if it runs out of energy to compress air, it will float up out of the atmosphere and vanish into outer space, with everything and everybody aboard!
The whole world doesn't know. Just a bunch of nerds, and who cares about us?
permanently reject any patent for which initial submission has obvious prior art that dates back more than 10 years prior to the claim
I guess the boundary there is how do you decide that 'enough' of the claims are covered by prior art that entire patent should be tossed? One claim? Half the claims? To solve these criteria, you could just file more patents, with a smaller number of claims per patent. That would certainly make the patent office less burdened!
So can anyone actually explain to this canuck what an HMO is? I have the impression it's an organization with a profit motive... and from what I recall what saves money is not necessarily in the best interest of the patient...
It may be difficult for you to grok if the concept of anything but Government Healthcare is inconcieveable. An HMO is a 'medical care business', sort of a combination of an insurance company and hostpital/doctor/lab network, where they keep the costs down by limiting the services provided, drugs covered, and so on. In the typical US system, it's completely a al carte, and everybody wants to make a profit on their piece. The insurance companies want to profit on the financial transactions, the doctors want to profit on their services, the hospitals and labs buy lots of expensive equipment, and want to make their profits too.
The HMOs are all about cost controls. They are bigger than an individual doctor/hospital/lab, so and they buy in bulk. Everything from colonoscopes to malpractice insurance. And they have a cadre of lawyers staff to defend the company, when the contractually obligated arbitration fails. Compared to private coverage, they won't have as many fancy new gadgets in their labs, and you'll be waiting longer in line for surgery and medical attention. It's a bit gruesome to say it, but it's a lot cheaper to let somebody die on line than on the table. And you might go to the doctor's office and just see a nurse if it's nothing major.
On the plus side, for minor stuff, it's a lot cheaper to get passable service, as long as you're not expecting 5 star hotel type of attention. It's more like 3 star. There's no chocolate on the pillow, but neither are there fleas.
I imagine that the level of service and care in an HMO is likely similar to a national healthcare system. I know that it's similar to what I experienced with the US Military hospital system, which is why I pay for unrestricted insurance. Despite that, I would like to see the US have some sort of nationalized healthcare, as long as it doesn't make 'better' care unavailable. (I understand that many Canadians cross the border to pay for healthcare unavailable in Canada, or the waits are too long)
This is great advice...
Bypass all hope of starting a career in network engineering, and get a degree that will allow you to enjoy your lifetime of unemployment!
After you waste 4 years learning a technical trade that you can't sell, and have nothing rattling around in your head but packets and circuits, you'll wish that you were thinking of flowers and bunnies, and you'll kick yourself for not being able to express your anger in an eloquent manner.
Think of it as a degree in Computer Science, with a minor in Digital EE, and with the majority of your humanities electives replaced with science or engineering electives. This is how it was, at least, where I took my degree.
Hell, I had to design a simple CPU that would execute a given assembly instruction set with a given timing for my Computer Engineering degree.
Was the law degree a requirement for him to get his job? Are there any people who do *not* have a law degree that he counts as peers?
If so, then this is a false comparison. All of the contract lawyers at the company I work for are lawyers. Their law degree doesn't make them 'better' at it than their peers who don't have the degree, it lets them have the job in the first place.
That said, a Law degree will help somebody with any career that doing intuitively truly requires a deep understanding of the law, even if other people technicall *can* do it. (Judges are elected, and don't need to have a law degree, but it certainly helps to have one if you're going to convince somebody to choose you)
Just as most CEOs were accountants at one point in their past. They're good at running companies, because it's all about profit.
However, the intricacies of OS design, network communication, theory of computer language, Compiler construction, and digital electronics aren't going to transfer as well to another career.
Unless you get a PhD, you are taking training to be a programmer. If you don't want to be a programmer, you should think of what it is you want to do, and learn about that.
If you think that having a CS degree will vault you to the top of an unrelated career field, you are kidding yourself. If you want to use it as a way to enhance another career that you are trained for, then perhaps (bio-informatics, patent law with a specialization in software), but those require a significant investment in education in another field...
From the sound of your plea, your certifications have done basically nothing for you thus far, so my question back at you is: what has your certification done for you?
Well, I happen to have a car that is built for speed and handling, but it doesn't have a wing on it. In fact, it has a bit of a spoiler, but it's a just a tiny 1 inch raised strip on the back of the car. It's virtually unnoticable except on close inspection.
It would appear that Ferrari doesn't believe that Spoilers are necessary, although they make some extremely high performance cars.
Here's a sampling
Notice that the only ones you see with spoilers are either true racecars, or the 'supercars' like the F40 and F50. Even the 'challenge' cars that are the race versions don't have spoilers!
New driver model
I dunno about the others components you mentioned, but as I sit here at work, I'm working a windows driver. It is a 2K/XP driver. The DDK has changed some from the Win2K DDK, but the changes are relatively minor, and seem largely to be compiler-compatibility, since MS made some significant chages to their compiler between VS6 (Win2K) and VS.Net (WinXP/2003). We upgraded compilers recently, and had to update the DDK solely to match the compiler.
Yes, a few new functions are available with each OS rev that we are choosing not to use, since we want to be backwards compatible.
And since the driver is, essentially, an implementation of GDI for our device, I suspect that not a lot has really changed about GDI between 2K and XP.
That should be good for another couple hundred dollars. And just think of all the sales they would have on their iTMS store if only they would sell .ogg format!
.ogg format music...
Oh, wait, I forgot, nobody here would actually PAY for
According to the BLS, the average wage across all professions is $17.18. That's Bill Gates down to the migrant farm worker. The average for "blue collar" workers is currently about $8.10...
Hmmm...I went to the BLS and looked up the information myself, and it doesn't support your assertion.
In fact, the national average for Parking Lot Attendants was $8.26, and the overall blue-collar average was $14.51, pulled lower by 'floor helpers' and 'laborers' who averaged $10.98.
What year were you looking at data for?
And Globalization can have no effect that I can imagine on waitstaff who work for tips...It would be pretty damn hard to outsource the delivery of my plate of dinner from the kitchen to a foriegn country.
The minimum wage...now only $5.15...is generally the wage we pay our manufacturing line workers
Ummm, I think that you are mistaken here. what manufacturing lines are you referring to? The UAW certainly makes more than minimum...In fact, according to the UAW they make $29.75 an hour, which is nearly $60k a year assuming the standard 2000 hour year.
I saw another link about GE unionized laborers making $21.45 an hour, but it was a PDF, so I declined to provide the link.
Even when i had a job working as a migrant farm worker in California (yes, I even have my registration card) I was making almost double the minimum wage.
Yeah, that must be why the people in the Phillipines and Zaire/Congo enjoy such fantastic living conditions
I believe that they swiped the 'gift' money of economic support given government to government, not the money brought in by international commerce. San Miguel, for example, is doing a brisk business in international sales.
That's the beauty of globalization...yes, corrupt governments all over the planet will steal from their citizens, but where that happens, less international business will be done, because there is no money/incentive to build in the first place.
Much of the argument against globalization harkens back to the modern description of industrialization as creating a hellish environment, including the failure to realize that it was even worse before industrialization than it was during. I think that few would argue things are worse now in the west than they were in the pre-industrial age, unless they get their images of life in that era of from the popular novels of the life of the aristocracy.
I hope I'm still around in another half century, when China is stronger than the US, so that I can have the satisfaction of seeing these principles come back to bite them.
Yes, you are correct. China is a much more reliable nation. They have absolutely no record of violating basic human rights. In fact, I hope that you are subject to Chinese rule during your lifetime!
But isn't participating in this poll itself a form of 'voting' ?
I was going to say that the giver must have known that he frequents /., and extrapolated from there.
There's no reason to think law enforcement wouldn't twist the law to suit their purposes, such as arresting someone with no evidence just to obtain their DNA. Then, with DNA in hand, they might be able to make their case.
The police already do this without a database. Sometimes they have a strong suspicion about the perp, but no 'strong evidence'...The DNA placing the suspect at the scene provides that evidence.
Personally, I think that a law that would make it easy for the police to find sick fucks like this guy is a good idea.
Yep...I wish I had mod points to vote this up.
I've got a Spire bag, and I like them so much that I started buying them for my team instead of the 'standard issue' Targus bags. I use it for my notebook, or just as a convenient and sturdy piece of carry-on luggage when going on vacation!
A friend of mine used to own an Audi A4...He said that the engineers who designed it must have been brilliant, because immediately after the warranty expired, it literally started falling apart, and something broke every month that cost at least a couple hundred dollars to fix/replace.
Some efforts were made by former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney from Atlanta. She got the ChoicePoint CEO to fess up in a congressional inquiry. She was swiftly dealt with in the subsequent election.
I think that your support of Cynthia McKinney speaks volumes about your ability to choose reliable leaders!