Creating an artificial planet isn't essentially that hard, it just requires a level of technology beyond where we're currently at. Get to a stage where you can send out self-replicating robots to collect and process asteroids for you, for example, and it might look a bit less daunting. And there's no particular reason to believe that we won't eventually develop such technologies.
It's not just a matter of technology, but simply energy. In a discussion similar to this one, I did the math to figure out what it would take to move enough comets from the Kuiper belt to Mars in order to give it an atmosphere at earth like pressures. To do so in 10 years would roughly take an amount of energy measured in the total energy output of the sun (either one third or three days, I forget exactly). The amount of mass needed to make even a small planet will be several orders of magnitude larger than that. When talking on those scales, and the tech needed to even get to a different solar system, I wouldn't really say it "isn't essentially that hard". It will be hard to get to the level we even have that sort of energy to use, let alone put it to that specific use. It's like saying that destroying the Earth isn't that hard because one can theoretically calculate how much antimatter it would take to blow it up.
You see bids like that you know they have already picked someone they want to use. The Job doesn't even require FORTRAN or MUMPS or C++ however they may have some in house applications that still run these systems so they add it in their bids, but they have already picked who they want and they know that they have those skills, and they also have similar systems on their side (To show that they have a need for such technology).
They did all the paper work correctly and there isn't any sign of corruption. However they found a way to bypass the fair and competitive bidding process.
What's really funny is when a job posting like that is put out, tailored to match somebodies resume, and HR keeps rejecting the targeted person's resume because they don't know what they are doing. (In the case that happened in my group was that the automated software HR used to cherry pick resumes didn't think the guy had the right qualifications. The manager had to rewrite the job offer and have the guy resubmit his resume five times before it finally made it through the process and a human in HR would even look at it.)
The only mechanism I can think of which would case a solar flare to render optical disks unreadable would be radiation damage. A solar flare which delivered that kind of dose would likely wipe out all life on earth so you probably wouldn't be worrying about your backups.
A good sysadmin would worry about backups even after death...:-P
Strictly speaking, that conflict was Americans vs. Southerners...
Nope. Southerners lost the war and therefore rectroactively, the Southern States never left the union, but were merely in rebellion. Once the American rebels were put down, things could continue as normal.
How about carbon dating then? I have no idea, just asking in case someone knows offhand.
While the theory of carbon dating is roughly what is used, it is compared to and corrected by the known amounts in actual samples whose years are known. Typically they go by tree rings, figure out what rings correspond to what years and then do carbon testing on samples from each ring, and then compile the data to modify their testing on other items. There was a news story not too long ago about a rise in carbon-14 in one particular tree rings sample and that they thing there must have been a supernova that year. So, such things do affect carbon dating, but we are working off of tested observations, not pure theory when coming up with dates.
We need a new term now since PEBCAK might not apply since they could be standing with a tablet. How about PITTS (Problem IS Touching The Screen) issue for tablet related situations?
Plenty of conservatives look at Obama and look at Romney and don't see a lot of difference (from their point of view). If it doesn't matter (to them) who wins, why bother voting?
It's more about what was given up... symbolized by the works of Shakespeare. It's something along the lines of giving up humanity for the sake of progress.
Well, that could be and probably even was what the author intended. However, what was described was Shakespeare's main proponent was an improperly socialized and emotionally damaged man. He learned Shakespeare from the people who still remember it, the savages who cannot keep up with modern society. Has society really given up humanity for the sake of progress or is what is considered humanity by a biased few and what is impeding progress? What is humanity? What is progress?
On March 9, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBS) was fined the maximum $1.5 million for 57 unencrypted computer hard drives that were stolen from a leased storage facility in 2009. BCBS has since encrypted all of its hard drives, representing 885TB of data.
BCBS said it spent more than 5,000 man-hours on the encryption effort, which cost the company $6 million.
Say they used new HHD-s at $100 for a 1TB HDD -> HDD cost=$88,500. F*** it... let's be generous and say all the equipment amounts for $1M.
The rest should be labour-cost, isn't it? Which means $1000/h... Seems to be a good trade to be in.
If only it was as easy as just buying new HDs and installing them in the systems. Sorry, but they are most likely dealing with multiple enterprise levels systems, some that have to be FDA approved, between multiple vendors. They have to make sure they can encrypt all the drives, that the vendors will still support the system in question, that the FDA is ok with it, fully tested, and that in all that there is no downtime. Like it or not, you're talking about multiple projects involving lots of people and probably a decent amount of upgrades. I bet there is some vendor paid money in there, but not much as $6m is nothing when paying GE to upgrade an already existing system because they won't support or sign off on either you doing your own work or the new configuration.
Otherwise, if you think you can take your laptop upgrading skills into healthcare levels, feel free to get a directorship in healthcare IT and show them all up by spending one sixth of what the other people are spending without having any major issues that would cause more problems than what you're trying to avoid.
I always thought A Brave New World was the much better dystopic novel, which is a pretty depressing genre as a whole.
What part did you find depressing really? Where society is stable and happy? Where people are allowed to do whatever they want so long as they don't try and force it on the rest of society? That society takes rebels and deviants and helps them to follow their whims so long as they don't bother other people? Where science was allowed to progress but kept from running rampant and causing something like nuclear war or global warming? Really, if ones goals for society is something other than progress and being happy, I suppose you could see it as dystopic, but I'd also hazard that person is sort of an egocentric tyrant.
Not always. His experience sounded just like mine here in the US in high school. Grades were more about being able to write about what the teacher wanted you to say rather than any technical skill or ability to construct your own clear coherent ideas. I even got in trouble for correcting the teacher on Arthurian legend and she got really made when I showed her the relevant text (ya, right, argue with an 80's D&D nerd about Arthurian legend) and found teachers marking points off because I was using vocabulary they were not familiar with. That being said, I did get A's in college while the rest of the class floundered because I could write a simple five paragraph essay and their HSs had not even taught them that.
Marketing isn't just about how much money you throw at it - your ads have to actually be good. The WP7/Bing ads have been awful.
For that matter, Marketing isn't all about ads, otherwise it would be called Advertising. Marketing involves lots of other steps like coming up with a good product for the market to begin with.
The tablet market is about to explode with the Nexus 7 and Surface. These are devices that people want - cheap but powerful devices for some casual web browsing, ebook reading and Angry Birds. Apple fanbois are getting nervous.
When Surface comes out, then lets see how cheap it actually is. So far, they've been saying it will competative with the iPad and the Air. I bet it is the same or token amount less in price. For that matter, Apple fanbois are not getting nervous. If anything, they are getting excited as it just means more competition. If Apple has been making this good a product without competition, then when there is competition, we'll just see a better Apple product. Other people who are currently buying Apple will also be happy because they'll have something they consider better.
Think of Smokey and the Bandit. Semi with trans am out in front representing our AWAC and F-22 respectively. Semi uses the CB to find out where there are smokies and tells the trans am where they are. The trans am tricks the police into chasing it so the semi can continue down the highway at high speed.
Can't we pick some place with a lower cost of living than the SF bay area (which shouldn't be hard) *and* isn't hot enough to barbecue small animals?
Seattle. Trouble is, once Silicon Valley moves someplace, then with everybody trying to live there, the prices will jump right up to Silicon Valley levels because the same people will be buying the same amount of space while working the same jobs. If you want to get away from the cost of living issues, you have to simply move to where less people want to live.
It depends on how willing the state and local governments are to creating a culture of startups, especially technically-minded ones....lucrative tax rebates...blah...blah...blah...policymakers...economic force...
For a culture of start ups, you need people to work there. Simply put, businesses might care about tax rebates, etc, but people, especially young, fresh out of school types needed for a lot of start ups, don't. They'll decide where they want to move to, do so, and then look for a job. Nashville tried all those tricks you mentioned during the first dot com era to get some high tech in. They got some, but a lot of it had to leave simply because there were no workers because even with tempting wages for the region, nobody wanted to live there. If you want a culture for start ups, you need colleges to create young educated people, a music and nightlife to encourage them to live there once they graduate, and culture to keep them.
Thing is, the reason we are evacuating areas and watching radiation levels so closely is to avoid deaths that we are comfortable with and are already happening related to things such as coal mining and pollution. We place a great economic value on saving lives from nuclear power, but little on saving lives caused by coal power.
You left out a step: Coal: Mine, crush, burn, dispose in atmosphere
The coal fly ash also has to be disposed of. This is also toxic with heavy metals and has to be collected in pits for storage. These also have catestrophic failures and can wipe out entire rivers of life if they leak into them. Search "coal slurry spill". Like deaths from mining coal, people aren't scared of this so it doesn't affect the news as much as nuclear.
Slashdot Mirror
Creating an artificial planet isn't essentially that hard, it just requires a level of technology beyond where we're currently at. Get to a stage where you can send out self-replicating robots to collect and process asteroids for you, for example, and it might look a bit less daunting. And there's no particular reason to believe that we won't eventually develop such technologies.
It's not just a matter of technology, but simply energy. In a discussion similar to this one, I did the math to figure out what it would take to move enough comets from the Kuiper belt to Mars in order to give it an atmosphere at earth like pressures. To do so in 10 years would roughly take an amount of energy measured in the total energy output of the sun (either one third or three days, I forget exactly). The amount of mass needed to make even a small planet will be several orders of magnitude larger than that. When talking on those scales, and the tech needed to even get to a different solar system, I wouldn't really say it "isn't essentially that hard". It will be hard to get to the level we even have that sort of energy to use, let alone put it to that specific use. It's like saying that destroying the Earth isn't that hard because one can theoretically calculate how much antimatter it would take to blow it up.
You see bids like that you know they have already picked someone they want to use. The Job doesn't even require FORTRAN or MUMPS or C++ however they may have some in house applications that still run these systems so they add it in their bids, but they have already picked who they want and they know that they have those skills, and they also have similar systems on their side (To show that they have a need for such technology).
They did all the paper work correctly and there isn't any sign of corruption. However they found a way to bypass the fair and competitive bidding process.
What's really funny is when a job posting like that is put out, tailored to match somebodies resume, and HR keeps rejecting the targeted person's resume because they don't know what they are doing. (In the case that happened in my group was that the automated software HR used to cherry pick resumes didn't think the guy had the right qualifications. The manager had to rewrite the job offer and have the guy resubmit his resume five times before it finally made it through the process and a human in HR would even look at it.)
The only mechanism I can think of which would case a solar flare to render optical disks unreadable would be radiation damage. A solar flare which delivered that kind of dose would likely wipe out all life on earth so you probably wouldn't be worrying about your backups.
A good sysadmin would worry about backups even after death... :-P
Obligatory xkcd
Strictly speaking, that conflict was Americans vs. Southerners...
Nope. Southerners lost the war and therefore rectroactively, the Southern States never left the union, but were merely in rebellion. Once the American rebels were put down, things could continue as normal.
How about carbon dating then? I have no idea, just asking in case someone knows offhand.
While the theory of carbon dating is roughly what is used, it is compared to and corrected by the known amounts in actual samples whose years are known. Typically they go by tree rings, figure out what rings correspond to what years and then do carbon testing on samples from each ring, and then compile the data to modify their testing on other items. There was a news story not too long ago about a rise in carbon-14 in one particular tree rings sample and that they thing there must have been a supernova that year. So, such things do affect carbon dating, but we are working off of tested observations, not pure theory when coming up with dates.
We need a new term now since PEBCAK might not apply since they could be standing with a tablet. How about PITTS (Problem IS Touching The Screen) issue for tablet related situations?
Plenty of conservatives look at Obama and look at Romney and don't see a lot of difference (from their point of view). If it doesn't matter (to them) who wins, why bother voting?
Plenty fo liberals feel the same way.
I agree, but we are on /., so it's not like we have anything more important than a high school lit class to do.
You've never heard about Qt? Seriously?
Quicktime? Sure, I've heard of that.
It's more about what was given up ... symbolized by the works of Shakespeare. It's something along the lines of giving up humanity for the sake of progress.
Well, that could be and probably even was what the author intended. However, what was described was Shakespeare's main proponent was an improperly socialized and emotionally damaged man. He learned Shakespeare from the people who still remember it, the savages who cannot keep up with modern society. Has society really given up humanity for the sake of progress or is what is considered humanity by a biased few and what is impeding progress? What is humanity? What is progress?
TFA (second page):
On March 9, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee (BCBS) was fined the maximum $1.5 million for 57 unencrypted computer hard drives that were stolen from a leased storage facility in 2009. BCBS has since encrypted all of its hard drives, representing 885TB of data. BCBS said it spent more than 5,000 man-hours on the encryption effort, which cost the company $6 million.
Say they used new HHD-s at $100 for a 1TB HDD -> HDD cost=$88,500. F*** it... let's be generous and say all the equipment amounts for $1M. The rest should be labour-cost, isn't it? Which means $1000/h... Seems to be a good trade to be in.
If only it was as easy as just buying new HDs and installing them in the systems. Sorry, but they are most likely dealing with multiple enterprise levels systems, some that have to be FDA approved, between multiple vendors. They have to make sure they can encrypt all the drives, that the vendors will still support the system in question, that the FDA is ok with it, fully tested, and that in all that there is no downtime. Like it or not, you're talking about multiple projects involving lots of people and probably a decent amount of upgrades. I bet there is some vendor paid money in there, but not much as $6m is nothing when paying GE to upgrade an already existing system because they won't support or sign off on either you doing your own work or the new configuration.
Otherwise, if you think you can take your laptop upgrading skills into healthcare levels, feel free to get a directorship in healthcare IT and show them all up by spending one sixth of what the other people are spending without having any major issues that would cause more problems than what you're trying to avoid.
I always thought A Brave New World was the much better dystopic novel, which is a pretty depressing genre as a whole.
What part did you find depressing really? Where society is stable and happy? Where people are allowed to do whatever they want so long as they don't try and force it on the rest of society? That society takes rebels and deviants and helps them to follow their whims so long as they don't bother other people? Where science was allowed to progress but kept from running rampant and causing something like nuclear war or global warming? Really, if ones goals for society is something other than progress and being happy, I suppose you could see it as dystopic, but I'd also hazard that person is sort of an egocentric tyrant.
Here in the USA you would have received an A++
Not always. His experience sounded just like mine here in the US in high school. Grades were more about being able to write about what the teacher wanted you to say rather than any technical skill or ability to construct your own clear coherent ideas. I even got in trouble for correcting the teacher on Arthurian legend and she got really made when I showed her the relevant text (ya, right, argue with an 80's D&D nerd about Arthurian legend) and found teachers marking points off because I was using vocabulary they were not familiar with. That being said, I did get A's in college while the rest of the class floundered because I could write a simple five paragraph essay and their HSs had not even taught them that.
Marketing isn't just about how much money you throw at it - your ads have to actually be good. The WP7/Bing ads have been awful.
For that matter, Marketing isn't all about ads, otherwise it would be called Advertising. Marketing involves lots of other steps like coming up with a good product for the market to begin with.
The tablet market is about to explode with the Nexus 7 and Surface. These are devices that people want - cheap but powerful devices for some casual web browsing, ebook reading and Angry Birds. Apple fanbois are getting nervous.
When Surface comes out, then lets see how cheap it actually is. So far, they've been saying it will competative with the iPad and the Air. I bet it is the same or token amount less in price. For that matter, Apple fanbois are not getting nervous. If anything, they are getting excited as it just means more competition. If Apple has been making this good a product without competition, then when there is competition, we'll just see a better Apple product. Other people who are currently buying Apple will also be happy because they'll have something they consider better.
Could you supplement this with a car analogy?
Think of Smokey and the Bandit. Semi with trans am out in front representing our AWAC and F-22 respectively. Semi uses the CB to find out where there are smokies and tells the trans am where they are. The trans am tricks the police into chasing it so the semi can continue down the highway at high speed.
You guys already have a stick that's as big as everyone else's combined. How big do you really need it to be?
You can't be too rich, too thin, or have a too big stick.
Let's put it this way. Our stick is not paying for itself and doesn't look like it ever will.
Can't we pick some place with a lower cost of living than the SF bay area (which shouldn't be hard) *and* isn't hot enough to barbecue small animals?
Seattle. Trouble is, once Silicon Valley moves someplace, then with everybody trying to live there, the prices will jump right up to Silicon Valley levels because the same people will be buying the same amount of space while working the same jobs. If you want to get away from the cost of living issues, you have to simply move to where less people want to live.
It depends on how willing the state and local governments are to creating a culture of startups, especially technically-minded ones. ...lucrative tax rebates...blah...blah...blah ...policymakers...economic force...
For a culture of start ups, you need people to work there. Simply put, businesses might care about tax rebates, etc, but people, especially young, fresh out of school types needed for a lot of start ups, don't. They'll decide where they want to move to, do so, and then look for a job. Nashville tried all those tricks you mentioned during the first dot com era to get some high tech in. They got some, but a lot of it had to leave simply because there were no workers because even with tempting wages for the region, nobody wanted to live there. If you want a culture for start ups, you need colleges to create young educated people, a music and nightlife to encourage them to live there once they graduate, and culture to keep them.
Nothing is green in Silicon Valley either, unless somebody waters it.
If you want green move to Seattle or Portland. Of course, there's a reason it's green. It's overcast and rainy all the time.
Where the heck do you live?
"The Valley" he refers to is "Silicon Valley," not "the Valley of the Sun."
Come on, lighten up and give him a break. He's from Phoenix you know.
You mean like Fukishima?
Thing is, the reason we are evacuating areas and watching radiation levels so closely is to avoid deaths that we are comfortable with and are already happening related to things such as coal mining and pollution. We place a great economic value on saving lives from nuclear power, but little on saving lives caused by coal power.
What's wrong with questioning every argument?
'"Question all things" — but it helps to be able to think, first.' - Anton Lavey
London also has 2: the City of London and the City of Westminster.
Wouldn't there be 3: Greater London, the City of London (the Square Mile), and the City of Westminster?
Coal: Mine, crush, burn.
You left out a step: Coal: Mine, crush, burn, dispose in atmosphere
The coal fly ash also has to be disposed of. This is also toxic with heavy metals and has to be collected in pits for storage. These also have catestrophic failures and can wipe out entire rivers of life if they leak into them. Search "coal slurry spill". Like deaths from mining coal, people aren't scared of this so it doesn't affect the news as much as nuclear.