I'll grant that John Sergeant ain't svelte, but the last time I saw the Woz on the tube, he was HUGE. I'm almost seriously surprised his ticker and/or pancreas hasn't thrown in the towel by now. Unless he's been on a serious weight reduction regimen, watching him dance is going to look like a live action remake of Fantasia.
In particular, they wanted the old antenna down before the nesting time for an endangered seabird at the 9500' level on Haleakala. As goes Maui, so goes the rest of 808. Naturally, we've got some mainland transplants on Maui moaning, who not only relocated from the mainland to Hawaii, but with malice of forethought bought places out half way out to Hana.
Now that the Maui antenna is down at the 4000' antenna farm in Ulupalakua, there's a few miles of solid basalt that's attenuating their signal a tad, and these people are complaining. Why wasn't it put further up the mountain, they whine. Because a 300' mast looks like shit that high up on the ridge line, in a primitive area.
The more the island looks like shit, the fewer the visitors to spend money... which would prolly be just fine for the M$/Boeing/trustfund scumbags who loaded up their truck and moved to Hawai'i. Islands, that is. Mango trees, technology.
life cycle of a red dwarf is around 100 billion years. trillions of years is out of the question. heck, the universe is only around 15 to 20 billion years old
Specifically, Earth biology wouldn't do well orbiting a red dwarf. Red dwarfs emit most of their energy via thermal convection, rather than (like our Sun) via radiation. This leads to lots of radiation bursts when convection cells reach the surface. At 1 A.U., no big deal. But, at an orbit close enough to keep - say - Earth as warm as it is orbiting the Sun, life would get hammered.
This isn't to say that *something* wouldn't evolve. It's just that at a basic level, it wouldn't resemble anything we're familiar with. And, given how long a red dwarf stays in the Main Sequence, there'd be billions upon trillions of years to simmer the soup 'til it was just right.
Your comment seems better suited to someone who was trying to go off the grid completely. The author was merely playing with the technology, getting a feel for it while at the same time hoping to 1) retain some value that would otherwise go to the power company, and 2) reduce the environmental effects of his family's otherwise unmodified lifestyle.
They're much the same reasons my wife bought a hybrid sedan.
Re:you can thank Patron Saint Orrin Hatch for this
on
Trick or Treatment
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· Score: 1
No surprise there. Brother Orrin was just responding to is corporate constituents, such as Nutraceutical International, of Provo, Utah.
Read the link. It provides some info on why Utah became the "Silicon Valley" of herbal supplements.
At issue with many of our current NEO detections is that it takes astronomers time to take enough measurements to calculate an accurate orbit. PanSTARRS will be taking those measurements nightly, or at worst every other day, which will speed the process of drawing the curves considerably.
I realize that there are others who are already more than knowledgeable about McColo. I just wanted to add an observation from a look at McColo's "about" page archived on the wayback machine: the site designer links back to a Russian domain, and the corporate address is a drop box in Delaware. It wouldn't surprise me if the only US-based "employees" were a handful of independent contractors swapping equipment out at the San Jose data center.
So, the dickheads at McColo went out of their way to reopen a link, just in time for their Russian Mafia buddies to rehost their shit. Thinking of research topics off the top of my head, I wonder if I could match the actions at McColo to 1) Wire Fraud, or 2) RICO. A conviction on either leads one straight to a Federal Pound-You-In-The-Ass prison, and no parole.
Most of my friends and acquaintances are self-employed. I'm in HI, so I'm familiar with the scene in a heavily regulated and taxed state.
Your claim that the US Federal corporate tax is "second only to Japan" doesn't hold water. Obviously, if you pick the right State, you can really pay through the nose. Taxes may or may not be lower in China, India, or Bangladesh, but many 3rd world locations introduce issues and uncertainties that go 'way beyond a quarterly tax bill.
I'll grant that sole proprietors get dicked in a variety of ways, caused by your individual inability to pony up for the sort of lobbying the big boys can afford. However, I don't think the Self Employment Tax is one of them. I'm employed by a big-ass corporation, and my wages are shaved by about the same amount, and for the same purpose:
Self-employment tax (SE tax) is a social security and Medicare tax primarily for individuals who work for themselves. It is similar to the social security and Medicare taxes withheld from the pay of most wage earners.
The difference is that my total contribution is "hidden" by the match from my employer. That's just an accounting fiction, since the 50% + 50% is still justified by the value of my labor. So, while you're feeling the squeeze because you see the entire deduction in the tax bill, in the end the freight is still the same.
Your points regarding "Joe's" outright lies and inaccuracies born of his daydreams are to my experience very common among the self employed. They see the most successful among their business acquaintances, and see that as a realistic goal... if only were the local/state/government to stop regulating/taxing them at whatever level they're currently regulated/taxed.
Basically, they're harboring the same sort of dreams that keep hundreds of thousands of young men banging away at amateur sports, even though the odds of making the cut are similar. It's this sort of dream that has the positive result of driving working people to succeed, but also the mixed results from overwhelming supporting the national GOP, whose policy goals use - but do not help - these grassroots supporters.
The article was slashdotted, so I couldn't RTFA. Google turned up the Boston U project, where it seems they're looking to do something a bit more advanced that mere p2p networking.
I knew I had seen an led-based point-to-point networking system described somewhere, and after a few minutes on hackaday, here it is, straight from 2005. Best part is, the linked to Ronja project is open, free speech-wise (and free beer for the major league scrounger).
Reaction 1: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy (sunlight) ----------> C6H12O6 + 6 O2
As you're probably aware, work is ongoing to turn photosynthesis into an energy-efficient industrial process, in part to generate the various organic byproduct feedstocks we currently get from petroleum. So, that's good.
The issue I was hoping TFA would address in at least a passing fashion is what the energy budget is for the German demonstration project. In particular, how much of the generated energy is needed for N2 extraction and CO2 compression and liquefying?
If this works, great. However, I'm hoping "we" don't lose sight of the goal, to not have to run through much of a power generation carbon cycle at all.
Just as a correction, AIG was *not* nationalized. It was provided a bridge loan while it's slowly dismantled. The US will then, in theory, be paid back through funds generated by the selloff of assets and subsidiaries. It's effectively a controlled liquidation of the company.
He who controls the majority of shares controls the company.
In return for the Fed's $85 billion, 2 year, 11.4% bridge loan, the Federal Government took a 79.9% stake in the insurer while AIG sells off assets to repay the loan. If a bank were the lender, they'd demand the same. So, while AIG's staff isn't going to be paid with checks drawn on the Treasury, the corporate entity is for now controlled by the Federal Government. This is what nationalization looks like in western countries.
Part of the problem is that lobbyists for various trade groups have gotten California to adopt existing books of industry standards as state code.
The State and the authors of the code are SOL. Per the US Court of Appeals For The 5th Circuit in the matter of Veerck v. SBCCI, No. 99-40632, to wit:
Based on the foregoing discussion, I would hold that once a "model code" is adopted into law by the government, a private entity, such as SBCCI, may no longer assert a copyright over the law's content, for the law enters the public domain and should be readily available for access by all citizens. Further, upon enactment, the law transforms into an "idea" that is no longer distinguishable from its expression, causing SBCCI's codes to lose their copyright protection. For these reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the district court.
California may think they'll get a better hearing in the 9th Circuit, but given the 9th's reputation, I wouldn't count on it.
Some lads with a couple of your dishes cracked 125 miles during the 2005 Defcon Wi-fi distance shoot out. With your one dish on one end, and even the weakest built-in wifi antenna on the other, you can still create a solid network connection to the next County. If the other antenna is a run of the mill 15 or 24 dB directional wifi, you can really crank.
I lived in Continental Ranch for 5 years in the late '90's. The developer previously used solar panels to power the irrigation controllers for the common areas, but most (panels and controllers) were stolen by the time I moved on. I moved to CR from Simi Valley. I had no idea Rain Bird had a plant there. Prolly after my time.
BTW, belated kudos to thousands of screwed senior citizens for the fine Continental Ranch flood control system Charles Keating built with your nest eggs, before his house of cards fell down.
One of my brother-in-laws worked at Apple during the late 80's early 90's time frame. From his pov, until Windows 95 really started to eat Apple's lunch, Apple had a coolness factor for young engineers that allowed the company to pay a bit below industry standard, and work them like dogs until they burned out.
With any luck, today's cadre can enjoy the run up in their stock-based net worth without the Dickesian working conditions.
Software: Scout organizations already use quite a bit of open source software for their web presence. The one area that would make a huge difference is to open ScoutNet. ScoutNet was the BSA's first crack at networked scout record keeping, mainly for rechartering and scout advancement. When the project started in the late '90's, whoever created the architecture went old-school client-server, and locked up the API. Only a few established vendors of Scout record-keeping software were accepted into the program. If a Troop wants to file electronically with their local council, and the council with National, they have to stick with three or four vendors.
There are a few open LAMP record keeping packages available, but they don't have access to ScoutNet. Until BSA National rethinks their approach to ScoutNet, there's not much to talk about.
Sex, God, and Policy: The Boy Scouts require belief in a higher power, and that sexuality be kept out of the program. So do the Girl Scouts. For better or worse, the LDS adopted the BSA as their boys youth program. Since every Mormon boy is strongly encouraged to participate, and since Scouting as a whole is smaller than it once was, the result is that the LDS is about a quarter of the Scout membership, and holds a veto on policy.
Both the GSA and BSA were faced with the issue of addressing gays and non-theists. The Girl Scouts finessed it by stating that expressions of sexuality had no place in the program (basically: don't ask, don't tell), and allowing substituting another word or phrase for "God" in the Oath and Promise.
The Boy Scouts could have used the same tactics. Buddhists and Jains were accepted into Scouting decades ago, based on the idea that the word "God" also represents Dharma, and cut "belief" loose from strict Judeo-Christian dogma. Allowing for the differences of opinion in any large organization, if a boy will at least entertain the idea that there is a system of truth and right larger than he, he's basically good to go. Since Scouts and their leaders aren't supposed to be exhibiting sexuality within the program at all, you'd think that would be good enough.
I think what tripped up the BSA was this:
Old school misogyny: a girl's program "isn't important." The GSA doesn't have the roster of presidents, astronauts, etc, that the BSA does. Ergo, the GSA "got" to fly under the radar, and adjust in it's own way. The boys program was seen as a part of the old WASP establishment that needed to be cracked open, openly and loudly.
Old school religion: with the membership shrinkage since the '60's, the remainder tend towards the socially conservative, and with the Mormon influence, especially so. The National leadership ends up being staffed by those who won't countenance any compromise on their core principles, or those who fear a mass exodus of Mormons if they did. With the cultural opponents packing some serious wood regarding their beefs (re: WASP establishment), and with the support of the GOP-controlled Congress, the National BSA circled the wagons.
As a result, because the BSA played the private organization card in the Supreme Court twice, it is no longer a a 501(c)(3), no more tax-deductible donations, and it has to line up with every other organization to reserve meeting hall spaces.
If, because no quarter is asked or given, the BSA fades away, I doubt there will be a comparable program to replace it. The level of commitment and scope of the endeavor just isn't going to be replicated without a driving sense of mission.
The US Federal Government has always provided some level of financial support for scientific research, even back in Jefferson's day. This Libertarian/Anarchist mindset from the parent would still have us all in log cabins and illiterate, had it been in power back in the day. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers did not intend for or conceive a government that did jack shit.
Although it's gotten a little better over time, submarine warships are basically 300 foot long sewer pipes. After reading through the process of inboard venting the sanitary tank back in the day, I'm glad they didn't offer Smell O' Round VR for Das Boot.
Someone needs to bring down an ISS air sample for someone in NAVSEA to evaluate for pungency.
In 2005, Congress Directed NASA to go do the work. No, they didn't just sit on the money. As a part of this work, Congress sent a few million to the Air Force to manage the University of Hawaii's NEO detector project, PanSTARRS.
The planning kicked off at about the same time as the LSST, but being significantly cheaper and using off the shelf optics with custom gigapixel detectors, a testbed has already been deployed on Maui. When the full system is deployed atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii, it'll include four scopes ganged together, putting 4 X 1.4GPix on a patch of sky. The redundant detectors allow for added error correction from bad pixels, cosmic ray strikes, and whatnot.
Now that the LSST has some significant seed money, we may soon be able to reap the benefits of two panoptic sky survey systems. That's going to be a hell of a lot of near-real time data processing.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll grant that John Sergeant ain't svelte, but the last time I saw the Woz on the tube, he was HUGE. I'm almost seriously surprised his ticker and/or pancreas hasn't thrown in the towel by now. Unless he's been on a serious weight reduction regimen, watching him dance is going to look like a live action remake of Fantasia.
In particular, they wanted the old antenna down before the nesting time for an endangered seabird at the 9500' level on Haleakala. As goes Maui, so goes the rest of 808. Naturally, we've got some mainland transplants on Maui moaning, who not only relocated from the mainland to Hawaii, but with malice of forethought bought places out half way out to Hana.
Now that the Maui antenna is down at the 4000' antenna farm in Ulupalakua, there's a few miles of solid basalt that's attenuating their signal a tad, and these people are complaining. Why wasn't it put further up the mountain, they whine. Because a 300' mast looks like shit that high up on the ridge line, in a primitive area.
The more the island looks like shit, the fewer the visitors to spend money... which would prolly be just fine for the M$/Boeing/trustfund scumbags who loaded up their truck and moved to Hawai'i. Islands, that is. Mango trees, technology.
life cycle of a red dwarf is around 100 billion years. trillions of years is out of the question. heck, the universe is only around 15 to 20 billion years old
Others with background in the field disagree: see wikipedia red dwarf reference [5], A Dying Universe: The Long Term Fate and Evolution of Astrophysical Objects. Also, The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity.
Specifically, Earth biology wouldn't do well orbiting a red dwarf. Red dwarfs emit most of their energy via thermal convection, rather than (like our Sun) via radiation. This leads to lots of radiation bursts when convection cells reach the surface. At 1 A.U., no big deal. But, at an orbit close enough to keep - say - Earth as warm as it is orbiting the Sun, life would get hammered.
This isn't to say that *something* wouldn't evolve. It's just that at a basic level, it wouldn't resemble anything we're familiar with. And, given how long a red dwarf stays in the Main Sequence, there'd be billions upon trillions of years to simmer the soup 'til it was just right.
Your comment seems better suited to someone who was trying to go off the grid completely. The author was merely playing with the technology, getting a feel for it while at the same time hoping to 1) retain some value that would otherwise go to the power company, and 2) reduce the environmental effects of his family's otherwise unmodified lifestyle.
They're much the same reasons my wife bought a hybrid sedan.
No surprise there. Brother Orrin was just responding to is corporate constituents, such as Nutraceutical International, of Provo, Utah.
Read the link. It provides some info on why Utah became the "Silicon Valley" of herbal supplements.
At issue with many of our current NEO detections is that it takes astronomers time to take enough measurements to calculate an accurate orbit. PanSTARRS will be taking those measurements nightly, or at worst every other day, which will speed the process of drawing the curves considerably.
I realize that there are others who are already more than knowledgeable about McColo. I just wanted to add an observation from a look at McColo's "about" page archived on the wayback machine: the site designer links back to a Russian domain, and the corporate address is a drop box in Delaware. It wouldn't surprise me if the only US-based "employees" were a handful of independent contractors swapping equipment out at the San Jose data center.
So, the dickheads at McColo went out of their way to reopen a link, just in time for their Russian Mafia buddies to rehost their shit. Thinking of research topics off the top of my head, I wonder if I could match the actions at McColo to 1) Wire Fraud, or 2) RICO. A conviction on either leads one straight to a Federal Pound-You-In-The-Ass prison, and no parole.
Most of my friends and acquaintances are self-employed. I'm in HI, so I'm familiar with the scene in a heavily regulated and taxed state.
Your claim that the US Federal corporate tax is "second only to Japan" doesn't hold water. Obviously, if you pick the right State, you can really pay through the nose. Taxes may or may not be lower in China, India, or Bangladesh, but many 3rd world locations introduce issues and uncertainties that go 'way beyond a quarterly tax bill.
I'll grant that sole proprietors get dicked in a variety of ways, caused by your individual inability to pony up for the sort of lobbying the big boys can afford. However, I don't think the Self Employment Tax is one of them. I'm employed by a big-ass corporation, and my wages are shaved by about the same amount, and for the same purpose:
Self-employment tax (SE tax) is a social security and Medicare tax primarily for individuals who work for themselves. It is similar to the social security and Medicare taxes withheld from the pay of most wage earners.
The difference is that my total contribution is "hidden" by the match from my employer. That's just an accounting fiction, since the 50% + 50% is still justified by the value of my labor. So, while you're feeling the squeeze because you see the entire deduction in the tax bill, in the end the freight is still the same.
Your points regarding "Joe's" outright lies and inaccuracies born of his daydreams are to my experience very common among the self employed. They see the most successful among their business acquaintances, and see that as a realistic goal... if only were the local/state/government to stop regulating/taxing them at whatever level they're currently regulated/taxed.
Basically, they're harboring the same sort of dreams that keep hundreds of thousands of young men banging away at amateur sports, even though the odds of making the cut are similar. It's this sort of dream that has the positive result of driving working people to succeed, but also the mixed results from overwhelming supporting the national GOP, whose policy goals use - but do not help - these grassroots supporters.
The article was slashdotted, so I couldn't RTFA. Google turned up the Boston U project, where it seems they're looking to do something a bit more advanced that mere p2p networking.
I knew I had seen an led-based point-to-point networking system described somewhere, and after a few minutes on hackaday, here it is, straight from 2005. Best part is, the linked to Ronja project is open, free speech-wise (and free beer for the major league scrounger).
Reaction 1: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy (sunlight) ----------> C6H12O6 + 6 O2
As you're probably aware, work is ongoing to turn photosynthesis into an energy-efficient industrial process, in part to generate the various organic byproduct feedstocks we currently get from petroleum. So, that's good.
The issue I was hoping TFA would address in at least a passing fashion is what the energy budget is for the German demonstration project. In particular, how much of the generated energy is needed for N2 extraction and CO2 compression and liquefying?
If this works, great. However, I'm hoping "we" don't lose sight of the goal, to not have to run through much of a power generation carbon cycle at all.
Just as a correction, AIG was *not* nationalized. It was provided a bridge loan while it's slowly dismantled. The US will then, in theory, be paid back through funds generated by the selloff of assets and subsidiaries. It's effectively a controlled liquidation of the company.
He who controls the majority of shares controls the company.
In return for the Fed's $85 billion, 2 year, 11.4% bridge loan, the Federal Government took a 79.9% stake in the insurer while AIG sells off assets to repay the loan. If a bank were the lender, they'd demand the same. So, while AIG's staff isn't going to be paid with checks drawn on the Treasury, the corporate entity is for now controlled by the Federal Government. This is what nationalization looks like in western countries.
Part of the problem is that lobbyists for various trade groups have gotten California to adopt existing books of industry standards as state code.
The State and the authors of the code are SOL. Per the US Court of Appeals For The 5th Circuit in the matter of Veerck v. SBCCI, No. 99-40632, to wit:
Based on the foregoing discussion, I would hold that once a "model code" is adopted into law by the government, a private entity, such as SBCCI, may no longer assert a copyright over the law's content, for the law enters the public domain and should be readily available for access by all citizens. Further, upon enactment, the law transforms into an "idea" that is no longer distinguishable from its expression, causing SBCCI's codes to lose their copyright protection. For these reasons, I would reverse the judgment of the district court.
California may think they'll get a better hearing in the 9th Circuit, but given the 9th's reputation, I wouldn't count on it.
Some lads with a couple of your dishes cracked 125 miles during the 2005 Defcon Wi-fi distance shoot out. With your one dish on one end, and even the weakest built-in wifi antenna on the other, you can still create a solid network connection to the next County. If the other antenna is a run of the mill 15 or 24 dB directional wifi, you can really crank.
I lived in Continental Ranch for 5 years in the late '90's. The developer previously used solar panels to power the irrigation controllers for the common areas, but most (panels and controllers) were stolen by the time I moved on. I moved to CR from Simi Valley. I had no idea Rain Bird had a plant there. Prolly after my time.
BTW, belated kudos to thousands of screwed senior citizens for the fine Continental Ranch flood control system Charles Keating built with your nest eggs, before his house of cards fell down.
One of my brother-in-laws worked at Apple during the late 80's early 90's time frame. From his pov, until Windows 95 really started to eat Apple's lunch, Apple had a coolness factor for young engineers that allowed the company to pay a bit below industry standard, and work them like dogs until they burned out.
With any luck, today's cadre can enjoy the run up in their stock-based net worth without the Dickesian working conditions.
There are a few open LAMP record keeping packages available, but they don't have access to ScoutNet. Until BSA National rethinks their approach to ScoutNet, there's not much to talk about.
Sex, God, and Policy: The Boy Scouts require belief in a higher power, and that sexuality be kept out of the program. So do the Girl Scouts. For better or worse, the LDS adopted the BSA as their boys youth program. Since every Mormon boy is strongly encouraged to participate, and since Scouting as a whole is smaller than it once was, the result is that the LDS is about a quarter of the Scout membership, and holds a veto on policy.
Both the GSA and BSA were faced with the issue of addressing gays and non-theists. The Girl Scouts finessed it by stating that expressions of sexuality had no place in the program (basically: don't ask, don't tell), and allowing substituting another word or phrase for "God" in the Oath and Promise.
The Boy Scouts could have used the same tactics. Buddhists and Jains were accepted into Scouting decades ago, based on the idea that the word "God" also represents Dharma, and cut "belief" loose from strict Judeo-Christian dogma. Allowing for the differences of opinion in any large organization, if a boy will at least entertain the idea that there is a system of truth and right larger than he, he's basically good to go. Since Scouts and their leaders aren't supposed to be exhibiting sexuality within the program at all, you'd think that would be good enough.
I think what tripped up the BSA was this:
Old school misogyny: a girl's program "isn't important." The GSA doesn't have the roster of presidents, astronauts, etc, that the BSA does. Ergo, the GSA "got" to fly under the radar, and adjust in it's own way. The boys program was seen as a part of the old WASP establishment that needed to be cracked open, openly and loudly.
Old school religion: with the membership shrinkage since the '60's, the remainder tend towards the socially conservative, and with the Mormon influence, especially so. The National leadership ends up being staffed by those who won't countenance any compromise on their core principles, or those who fear a mass exodus of Mormons if they did. With the cultural opponents packing some serious wood regarding their beefs (re: WASP establishment), and with the support of the GOP-controlled Congress, the National BSA circled the wagons.
As a result, because the BSA played the private organization card in the Supreme Court twice, it is no longer a a 501(c)(3), no more tax-deductible donations, and it has to line up with every other organization to reserve meeting hall spaces.
If, because no quarter is asked or given, the BSA fades away, I doubt there will be a comparable program to replace it. The level of commitment and scope of the endeavor just isn't going to be replicated without a driving sense of mission.
The US Federal Government has always provided some level of financial support for scientific research, even back in Jefferson's day. This Libertarian/Anarchist mindset from the parent would still have us all in log cabins and illiterate, had it been in power back in the day. Fortunately, the Founding Fathers did not intend for or conceive a government that did jack shit.
Although it's gotten a little better over time, submarine warships are basically 300 foot long sewer pipes. After reading through the process of inboard venting the sanitary tank back in the day, I'm glad they didn't offer Smell O' Round VR for Das Boot.
Someone needs to bring down an ISS air sample for someone in NAVSEA to evaluate for pungency.
"I thought you said there was nobody available?" True story.
Yeah, right. BTW, Bill Gates is paying you to send email.
In 2005, Congress Directed NASA to go do the work. No, they didn't just sit on the money. As a part of this work, Congress sent a few million to the Air Force to manage the University of Hawaii's NEO detector project, PanSTARRS.
The planning kicked off at about the same time as the LSST, but being significantly cheaper and using off the shelf optics with custom gigapixel detectors, a testbed has already been deployed on Maui. When the full system is deployed atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii, it'll include four scopes ganged together, putting 4 X 1.4GPix on a patch of sky. The redundant detectors allow for added error correction from bad pixels, cosmic ray strikes, and whatnot.
Now that the LSST has some significant seed money, we may soon be able to reap the benefits of two panoptic sky survey systems. That's going to be a hell of a lot of near-real time data processing.