This is one of the few big budget scientific missions that's had a clear purpose. The space station -- not so much. The shuttle -- takes people to orbit for way too much money (though it would be nice if they could use it once more to fix Hubble.) This is one of the best possible uses of our space dollars, and it's sad that it's being ignored for high profile but not scientifically focused things.
I drove west across the Trans-Canada Highway in '98 on my slightly roundabout way to California, and there was a definite patch of people saying "aboot" in Western Ontario. It was a long time ago now, but I think it was mostly between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.
I read a news story about people in the UK making their own biodiesel and being harrassed for not paying fuel taxes, but I haven't heard anything like that in the US. Which is not to say that it hasn't happened or couldn't.
Biodiesel is cleaner in every respect except that it generates more NOx. NOx and particulates are the primary pollution problems with diesel engines in general, though the industry is making progress. Also, of course, the "free oil from the restaurant next door" solution won't scale, and will probably only last until some entrepreneur starts buying restaurant oil and reselling it to biodiesel manufacturers.
That said, the fact that this closes the carbon loop is a huge win, not to mention the potential for energy independence.
Right, except it seems less likely that things that honor the broadcast flag will be happy to give you digital output. Unless they do it under some DMCA-encumbered DRM scheme. Which of course people will probably figure out how to break eventually. But it seems that rerecording (for your own personal use, of course) from the analog audio that they already will have to output will be more likely legal. And the tools for doing so (an RCA cable) will be less likely to be hounded off the internet than the software tools for breaking the DRM.
How lossy is hooking up the line out of your digital radio to your computer's sound input? Obviously you wouldn't want to do that over and over again, but I bet after one iteration of digital to analog to digital you'd still have very good sound quality. So this won't even work terribly well to "prevent piracy".
Sadly, I don't think that AP Computer Science gets up to that level of algorithmic sophistication. At least it didn't 12 years ago (!) when I took the test in Pascal. I would have been a lot less bored in the class if it had.
I don't remember much about the actual exam back then except that I thought it was easy, and got a 5.
I think Java is a really sensible language to teach it in, though: less messy than C++, good exposure to object-oriented programming, and far more useful in the real world than Pascal these days.
Apparently RFID tags (and anything that doesn't have its own power source) don't have enough power to do real crypto. So this will be great until someone builds a device to read people's tags as they walk down the hall, and then impersonate any of them to the building. At least with keys or magnetic striped cards you have to get physical access to them before you can copy them.
Yeah, but Apple still has a loyal following and a product that is clearly differentiated from its main competitor, Microsoft. With the ease of porting software from Solaris to Linux, and the increasing robustness and enterprise support, it's not clear that Sun can keep the same kind of hold on its user base.
Why not just wait for the oceans to rise and float it up again? If it only took forty days and forty nights of rain, it should only take a few years for the sea level to rise, uh, 17,820 feet.
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This is one of the few big budget scientific missions that's had a clear purpose. The space station -- not so much. The shuttle -- takes people to orbit for way too much money (though it would be nice if they could use it once more to fix Hubble.) This is one of the best possible uses of our space dollars, and it's sad that it's being ignored for high profile but not scientifically focused things.
I drove west across the Trans-Canada Highway in '98 on my slightly roundabout way to California, and there was a definite patch of people saying "aboot" in Western Ontario. It was a long time ago now, but I think it was mostly between Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.
I read a news story about people in the UK making their own biodiesel and being harrassed for not paying fuel taxes, but I haven't heard anything like that in the US. Which is not to say that it hasn't happened or couldn't.
Biodiesel is cleaner in every respect except that it generates more NOx. NOx and particulates are the primary pollution problems with diesel engines in general, though the industry is making progress. Also, of course, the "free oil from the restaurant next door" solution won't scale, and will probably only last until some entrepreneur starts buying restaurant oil and reselling it to biodiesel manufacturers. That said, the fact that this closes the carbon loop is a huge win, not to mention the potential for energy independence.
Right, except it seems less likely that things that honor the broadcast flag will be happy to give you digital output. Unless they do it under some DMCA-encumbered DRM scheme. Which of course people will probably figure out how to break eventually. But it seems that rerecording (for your own personal use, of course) from the analog audio that they already will have to output will be more likely legal. And the tools for doing so (an RCA cable) will be less likely to be hounded off the internet than the software tools for breaking the DRM.
How lossy is hooking up the line out of your digital radio to your computer's sound input? Obviously you wouldn't want to do that over and over again, but I bet after one iteration of digital to analog to digital you'd still have very good sound quality. So this won't even work terribly well to "prevent piracy".
Sadly, I don't think that AP Computer Science gets up to that level of algorithmic sophistication. At least it didn't 12 years ago (!) when I took the test in Pascal. I would have been a lot less bored in the class if it had. I don't remember much about the actual exam back then except that I thought it was easy, and got a 5. I think Java is a really sensible language to teach it in, though: less messy than C++, good exposure to object-oriented programming, and far more useful in the real world than Pascal these days.
Apparently RFID tags (and anything that doesn't have its own power source) don't have enough power to do real crypto. So this will be great until someone builds a device to read people's tags as they walk down the hall, and then impersonate any of them to the building. At least with keys or magnetic striped cards you have to get physical access to them before you can copy them.
Yeah, but Apple still has a loyal following and a product that is clearly differentiated from its main competitor, Microsoft. With the ease of porting software from Solaris to Linux, and the increasing robustness and enterprise support, it's not clear that Sun can keep the same kind of hold on its user base.
Why not just wait for the oceans to rise and float it up again? If it only took forty days and forty nights of rain, it should only take a few years for the sea level to rise, uh, 17,820 feet.
I just turned 28 a few days ago, and I doubt I'll make it to 496, so I'm enjoying my perfect number age while it lasts.
What would really be cool is a cellphone that you could dunk in alcohol to sterilize it and refill its fuel cell at the same time!