TFA cites 4 examples, none of which reached the level of self-sufficiency. So, while a step in the good direction, the data centers haven't yet reached "to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities" (as TFS suggest).
Anyway, one can only hope the trend will continue, even if only for two very selfish reasons:
a. the more mainstream the PV are, the lower the price on all the market (10 years to ROI for a decent PV home installation is still too expensive to my taste).
b. the more pressure on energy consumption to run a data center, the higher chances computer (part) manufacturers to research techs with lower energy requirements.
I reckon both of them would be good (medium/long term) for my pocket as well.
But why do you want to buy photovoltaic (PV) panels in the first place? Do you think it's just intrinsically good for some reason? Suppose we cover every available architectural surface in our cities and towns with solar panels. Does this have any non-obvious downsides?
You talk about amortizing the cost of the solar panels to you. But what about the environmental impact of manufacturing the panels? Does it create pollutants? What are the consequences of exploiting the raw materials to make the panels? Does mining them cause pollution? What are the costs of rectifying these effects?
Presumably, it takes energy to mine the raw materials and to make the panels. Where does this energy come from? Again, this is not usually considered in calculating the amortization costs of the panels. If oil was burned to do any of this, aren't you adding to your "carbon footprint" by buying so many panels?
These panels have a finite lifespan (I believe it's about a decade). What is the environmental impact of disposing of them? Can the components be recycled? What are the energy requirements of doing this? And again, how does it add to your "carbon footprint" to expend the energy to handle the dead panels?
People are happier if they don't think about this, so I don't suppose many will. They will just buy PV panels and feel all warm about themselves...or make governments and corporations do it, to have more of those warm fuzzy feelings floating around.
Not that it matters, but I just bought a PV panel because I'm going to be spending a few months in an isolated area, and need a little electricity to power my personal gadgets. But then the only alternative would be a petro-powered generator, and I'm not putting up with the noise or smell. I might even stick a few panels on my house; not because it's intrinsically good, but as a backup for those times when the grid fails.
While I can not speak on the behalf of anybody else, as a member of the civilized world allow me to just say thank you Siemens, Mossad, the Pentagon, and anybody else who may have been involved in keeping the world safe by keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of genocidal dictators and oppressive theocracies.
While I'm reassured that Stuxnet only works on those evil Iranian centrifuges, aren't you at least a little apprehensive about what modified versions of this virus might do? Like maybe withdraw the control rods from nuclear reactors in your country, and making them spew radioactives all over the neighborhood. Being able to control industrial machinery with malware is a pretty scary concept, at least to me. While I'm sure that governments have known about this possibility for some time, letting an example of this loose where script kiddies can analyze it strikes me as more than a bit unwise.
Standardized spelling and grammar, on the other hand, was something the education establishment in the United States attempted to impose. This has had limited success. Its main effect has been to promote the east-coast regional variant of the language as "correct" and that users of other variants do so because they are stupid or ignorant. This helps the self-proclaimed urban elites delude themselves - and others - that they are more intelligent and thus suited to rule.
So standardized spelling and grammar is nothing more than an oppressive political plot, huh? You don't think it might just possibly enhance the clarity of written communication to have some standards to which everyone can appeal? How is standard English orthography prejudicial against the West Coast, as you seem (perhaps somewhat carelessly) to imply? Or against the South? Or Wyoming? Ah, but you clearly don't have to advance any arguments for your all-encompassing assertions, just the mere witless assertion of ill-formed and ill-informed opinion that fits your mindless worldview will do for you.
This person is generating nice repeating patterns (like pleated curtains) with random alterations, using a small number of small image files and a small amount of computation to generate random numbers which guide the placement of those image files. Doing this with fractals would require computation that is orders of magnitude more costly.
Yeeesss...I know. There I go, being elliptical again. It was a joke...albeit I was trying to draw attention to an underlying question. I sometimes wonder about predictions that were made back in [the day] that seem to have pretty much evaporated. The whole definition of what a fractal is always struck me as somewhat lacking in rigor. The popular science press of the late 80s and early 90s was full of talk about fractals, and one of the suggested applications was indeed to computationally generate super-realistic alien or imaginary landscapes. Now that computational power is cheap (compared to the 80s--oh my poor 8088 Compaq!), do any of the big animation studios use fractals to generate "random" landscapes? Does anybody use them in any sort of graphics applications?
Cool, but aren't we all supposed to be using fractals to generate realistic-looking virtual worlds and such by now? I mean, that's what I thought when I read that Scientific American article back in the 80s, and wrote a C program that ran for two weeks on my Compaq to create a picture of a Mandelbrot set. What was really funny was that the Compaq screen was grey scale...
My brain has been turned to slush by some rhinovirus (or hippovirus?), so I helplessly fell for all the April Fool jokes today. But wait...maybe these glasses are for real. I don't have the energy to actually check—let alone think. But hey, I hate 3D, so if I could watch the 3D movie without the blurriness and without the headache-inducing third dimension, that would be cool.
As far as I'm concerned, there could only be one application where 3D would add value...but any male actors would totally bum me out (again, as far as I'm concerned).
That may be true, but just saying so is not terribly informative. What, in particular, makes Windows 7 inherently insecure? Can you point to some features in the architecture of the OS that prove your point?
I'm not saying your assertion is wrong; I'm just saying that it would be ever so much more helpful if it were preceded by a valid argument that demonstrates its truth.
It could be either good or bad; most likely, it will be both.
I used to be a T Mobile customer when I was using my Treo, then switched to AT&T when I succumbed to the iPhone geas. Yeah, AT&T support is generally clueless—I certainly wouldn't call them to resolve a technical issue. They are so anxious to minimize customer usage of their data network that they start to blast out alarming text messages that You are about to exceed your data limit! if you move any data at all. I figured out pretty quickly that AT&T thinks most of its customers don't know the difference between a megabyte and a gigabyte, so they figure I'll stop using my phone when they tell me I have used 2 M.
I originally went with T Mobile because they were clueful about international roaming. I frequently travel to Germany, so it was nice to have a carrier that did not, metaphorically, drop its jaws and develop glazed eyes when I broached the subject of actually using my phone in a foreign country. But when I switched, I had a major hassle getting AT&T to give me permission to use my phone in a country that they obviously regarded as possibly being imaginary. One of the hassles centered on the fact that I had just bought into AT&T service...so they didn't trust me enough to allow me to use my phone in this hypothetical "Germany".(I suppose buying their service is decisive proof of idiocy.) What did they think I was going to do...massive illegal downloads of child porn? Beats me. At this point, if it weren't for the contract, I would have gone back to T Mobile. I eventually did get to use my iPhone from Germany. But were my knees ever sore.
On the positive side of the ledger is the superior coverage that a combination of AT&T and T Mobile equipment should provide; I don't think they can possibly screw up this benefit, short of tearing down all the T Mobile towers out of spite. You might hope that the new, more bloated AT&T will retain the international expertise of the absorbed assets...but that's a slim hope, as history tells us that mergers usually result in the worst possible combination of personnel and policies drawn from the participating corporations. (Take a look at the HP–Compaq buyout, for example.) For employees, it will mean that whatever HR policies of the two companies are worst for them will be adopted. For customers, it means that support and services will either remain at the current AT&T niveau, or maybe get worse.
I still think that the better coverage may balance the drawbacks accruing to customers as a result of the mergers.
It's a surprise the C library that uses these files can manage to keep all the time accounting straight...
It's not that complicated. They all translate into offsets in seconds. To the computer, I don't live in America/Los_Angeles on 3:47pm Thu March 3, 2011. The computer sees:
1299196020 (unix time in UTC)
- 28800 (my zone offset in seconds, using the tz database)
+ 0 (no DST in my zone right now)
= 1299167220 (local time)
So the really impressive work has just been in conceptualizing and organizing the database so that a program just needs to lookup two questions: which of the zones am I in, and what is the current offset for that zone?
Maybe, but it quickly gets complicated when you try to take a detailed look at the past. Say you're writing a program that generates statistics for certain events (along with pretty PP slides for the boss). You want an exact look at the temporal distribution of these events. You're trolling a huge database for this information, so you have to extract and crunch the relevant records. The program you're writing has to give answers to questions like, "what conditions prevailed on November 16th, 1999, and what events occurred on that date between t1 and t1 plus x seconds, expressed in local time?" and "Examine another x second time slice exactly 14 days later". I actually thought this would be fairly easy...go ahead and laugh. (Yes, I know there are people reading this who do think this is simple, but it sure wasn't for me.)
Yes, of course you do date and time arithmetic in seconds...but you do realize that each year does not have exactly the same number of seconds, right? And besides stuff like extra leap years and leap seconds that get inserted by some scientific committee every so often, you've got Congressional Time Drift—the temporal disturbances caused by the U.S. Congress frivolously screwing with "daylight savings time" whenever that body feels it has to be seen as doing something, and the rest of the world be damned. Of course the records all have date and time stamps, but those have to be converted into seconds, while keeping all this screwiness in mind...and then converted back because bosses don't like slides that have time expressed as seconds. I suppose there must have been programming libraries that keep current with temporal-political developments, but I sure didn't know what they were. I didn't even know I should look for something like that—heck, this was a skunkworks project I took on in my spare time.
I was never sure I got it exactly right, but my project was accounted a big success by the bosses, because the Power Point slides I had the program plot were just so pretty. In retrospect, I could have kept this project a lot simpler...
I'm honestly shocked that "more than average, less than maximum" is confusing so many people. Okay, maybe the sentence is difficult to parse (I didn't find it so, but whatever), but it is not illogical in the least.
"Not illogical", eh? The writer was trying to give us a sense of the scale of this device. Usually, this is done by referring to something simple and direct—like maybe the traditional "smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a pack of cigarettes". But our author strikes directly for familiar ground—the average and extreme weights of hummingbirds. Right, I know all about that. On the one hand, you have those really small, pip-squeak hummingbirds that you can mistake for wasps. On the other, we have Ricky The Ridiculously Obese, a Hogwart's courier who weighs in at 18.3756 ounces (unloaded), and delivers his messages for a very small charge, as he is completely flightless. OK, now how big is the flying machine? Um...who knows? Smaller than Ricky I guess. Bigger than a bug.
No real world James Bond would need it for more than 15 minuets...
As an old (really old) James Bond fan, I must protest your mischaracterization. James Bond wouldn't even need a Tango, much less a bunch of minuets—he gets the girl without having to even dance with her first!
So consistency is the cornerstone of morality, philosophy and understanding? Tell me more of this little world you live in, and how I can join.
The article summary has a very poor choice of words in describing these lunatics as "controversial".
A peculiar response. Of course we can't expect an amorphous, anarchic mob to be consistent. But we can—and should—expect individuals to be consistent in the goals they pursue, and the beliefs they hold. That doesn't mean intelligent people don't change their minds, but it does mean that they change their minds for good reason.
By the way, it's not clear just which lunatics involved in this imbroglio you are referring to.
unfortunately the truth of this statement will be entirely missed by the greater public.
The greater public probably think SQL injections and rainbow tables are some bizarre gay fetish activity.
Is that why the Wikipedia entry on "SQL Injection" is blank as of right now? It says last modified on 15 February 2011. Hmm. The page just looks blank in Firefox—View Source shows the text. I brought up IE, and the text is all there. Except...was SQL injection really "First discovered by hippies from Las Cruces, New Mexico."?
This is all very interesting, of course. Competitive urination between somebody I don't know and an unknown number of people I don't know. I don't dare say more than that; who knows what Anonymous would do to me if I did?
Dr. Vomact's true name is Hilda Bergenbanger, she lives at 1055 Matheson Road, Columbus Georgia. Call her at 706-433-6969 for a really good time at a very modest cost.
A rather uncharitable comment about the people who have been financing and supplying you with arms and ammunition for centuries (well, almost), "Fianna Fail man". Surely you're aware of the sympathies of the American people toward your cause, right? So chill, FF man. And up the IRA. Whoever they are these days...
An odd story. The company (Whisper Systems) makes software (for Android systems only, apparently) that supports VoIP and SMS encryption. But it also has a history of rolling over for repressive governments, providing them with user data, and allowing them (well, Egypt's government, anyway) to send propaganda messages via their systems. It sounds like this "beta" software is also available in the US. But what good does it do to use software from a company that will just rat you out to whatever government snaps its fingers?
avatar is a good movie, well done. i saw it in theatres twice... both times were enjoyable stories....the story was as good as cameron's other efforts like titanic and terminator. i know that there's a lot of mindless hate on the internet, and it makes a few strange gollum like creatures feel good about themselves by saying avatar sucks, for some ill defined ego reason. but its complete bullshit: avatar is a good movie, period, no 3D need apply to qualify that statement, and no stupid internet hate need apply. who says? not me. sales figures say so
So not liking this movie means that I'm somehow deficient—a "hater", even. If your measure of whether or not a person is good consists of "likes the same movies as me", then I'd say that's a pretty trivial criterion that might, just might, lead you astray from time to time. I'll leave your lesser solecism—that art is judged by sales figures—untouched.
Then again, you can control people by telling them someone else is trying to control them, and that only by following you will they be truly free. You can also say the same thing over and over again in a mind-deadening cadence until the victim's brain short circuits.
What's really amazing to me is that "climate change" is not a scientific hypothesis at all, but people naively champion it in the name of science. "Climate change" (as opposed to the obsolete "global warming") cannot be falsified. In other words, no matter what happens, no matter what data is observed, this data can only (allegedly) verify the hypothesis. This means that data is really irrelevant to testing the hypothesis. Is it cold today? —See! The climate is changing again! Is it too hot? —Aha, the climate is changing!
Science is by definition empirical; a scientific hypothesis is something that can be tested, something that is verified or falsified by hard data. In this case, there's no need to measure the temperature (or humidity, or precipitation, etc.). We can be sure that our hypothesis is true. That's because it's a tautology. But it's still good for separating fools from their money, and empowering governments to levy arbitrary taxes and lay down crippling rules for industry.
Frankly, I'm amazed to see so many people taken in by what is clearly a crazy idea. It's like everyone has forgotten what science is. Weird.
There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon
It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon.
Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion)
Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.
I agree with your first suggestion, but am a bit of wary of the last one (when a power-beam operator says "oopsie" because he's just let the beam track across Manhattan...well that would be more than a minor incident.)
On the other hand, building a fleet of real spaceships using the Orion propulsion principle to explore the solar system—and maybe even further out—is something that I think would be super-worthwhile. Of course, exploring would not be the only purpose of such a fleet. Others would be to build new factories and mines throughout the solar system. A real Orion could easily carry enough cargo to start a basic set of industrial installations, along with a small city of workers and technical experts that will make the new enterprise work.
Before such ships can be built, more is needed than a uranium refinery (or breeder reactor) on the moon. That will provide fuel (presuming the parent is correct in saying there's lots of uranium to be found on the moon). To build a ship, you're going to need a full-fledged industrial establishment on or about the Moon. You're going to need metallurgical experts, mining experts who can find and mine the requiring metal-bearing ores, and mechanical designers and factories that can build structural support members and metallic hull plates. You will need expertise in the design and manufacture of electronic hardware that will fulfill the manifold functions needed by the Orions. You'd need experts in hydroponic gardening, because rations that have to be shipped up from earth are going to cost a fortune. You'd have to find all the materials needed to build electronics, also. (In the short term, perhaps for the first ship, electronics could be sent up from Earth; they're relatively light, and not terribly expensive to launch. The same thing is true for small consumer goods. But eventually, the new High Industrial Enterprise should aim to be self-sufficient, as any political instability on Earth would very quickly leave them isolated.
The real difficulty of starting an Orion-based space civilization in our solar system is that getting the money to fund that first expedition is going to be very difficult. The only thing that will accomplish this is to convince potential investors that there will be a monetary reward for investing in the project. This has happened before—for example, risk-takers financed many trade journeys to far-off and sometimes virtually unknown lands in the 16th through the 18th centuries. Some of these investors became rich, others lost their shirts. Good capitalists know that every investment brings with it a degree of risk, and a certain probability of lucrative success. The risk has never stopped capitalists from investing—providing they have been convinced that the chances of a big win outweigh the risks.
The problem then becomes: what rewards would accrue to earth-bound investors who financed the initial expedition to go to the moon, and build a technical/industrial complex that will, in turn, build an Orion? That is the crucial question; if it can be answered well, then the project will happen; if it cannot be answered satisfactorily, then we can forget about the "high frontier". Nobody on Earth is going to get wealthy because the expedition mines uranium to build an Orion, for in that case nothing is actua
Cost and international treaties are two big reasons why merchant ships aren't armed. If you want military on board with weapons, well a 24/7 hour crew is going to cost a fair bit of money....Can't imagine American authorities would be too happy about accepting an Iranian ship sailing into New York with a crew of marines on board manning deck mounted rapid fire machine guns.
Ok, several people have mentioned such a law without any citation. If you're going to insist that a law exists that regulates X, you have the burden to prove that it exists. Why am I supposed to do your homework for you? A quick google got me this page, which discusses such a "United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)". This site says the following:
The international law allows merchant ships to carry small arms for self defense if that is necessary for their freedom to traverse and navigate. They are also allowed to hire guards and private security. However, it does state that the precautions taken for safety should be proportional to the possible threat that could be faced.
There's also some blah-blah about having to fire warning shots first, etc. Hmm...I wonder, how many warships does the UN Navy have? Heck, if they had any, they wouldn't be allowed to mount guns. So...enforcement is nil.
I find the aversion to violence that has become so manifest in Western countries in the last four decades or so to be disturbing...almost the expression of a collective death-wish. I'm talking about violence in defense of life and property, of course, not about the violence of the robber, rapist, or pirate. I believe that this failure to see the distinction between justified and unjustified violence is a sign of moral decline, or—to be more precise, perhaps—a decline in our collective ability to make moral distinctions.
Oh please. This is Slashdot. The only combat or materiel experience required, before posting authoritatively about weapons systems and their use, is having played a few video games in your parents' basement.
Sorta identical to the requirements for being an expert on sex on Slashdot, huh?
Slashdot Mirror
TFA cites 4 examples, none of which reached the level of self-sufficiency. So, while a step in the good direction, the data centers haven't yet reached "to generate the levels of energy required by these facilities" (as TFS suggest).
Anyway, one can only hope the trend will continue, even if only for two very selfish reasons: a. the more mainstream the PV are, the lower the price on all the market (10 years to ROI for a decent PV home installation is still too expensive to my taste). b. the more pressure on energy consumption to run a data center, the higher chances computer (part) manufacturers to research techs with lower energy requirements.
I reckon both of them would be good (medium/long term) for my pocket as well.
But why do you want to buy photovoltaic (PV) panels in the first place? Do you think it's just intrinsically good for some reason? Suppose we cover every available architectural surface in our cities and towns with solar panels. Does this have any non-obvious downsides?
People are happier if they don't think about this, so I don't suppose many will. They will just buy PV panels and feel all warm about themselves...or make governments and corporations do it, to have more of those warm fuzzy feelings floating around.
Not that it matters, but I just bought a PV panel because I'm going to be spending a few months in an isolated area, and need a little electricity to power my personal gadgets. But then the only alternative would be a petro-powered generator, and I'm not putting up with the noise or smell. I might even stick a few panels on my house; not because it's intrinsically good, but as a backup for those times when the grid fails.
rm -fr /bin/laden *
Oops. Damn space bar...I meant to hit / why is the disk churning like that and why is it suddenly so bright outs*$QQE
NO CARRIER
While I can not speak on the behalf of anybody else, as a member of the civilized world allow me to just say thank you Siemens, Mossad, the Pentagon, and anybody else who may have been involved in keeping the world safe by keeping nuclear arms out of the hands of genocidal dictators and oppressive theocracies.
While I'm reassured that Stuxnet only works on those evil Iranian centrifuges, aren't you at least a little apprehensive about what modified versions of this virus might do? Like maybe withdraw the control rods from nuclear reactors in your country, and making them spew radioactives all over the neighborhood. Being able to control industrial machinery with malware is a pretty scary concept, at least to me. While I'm sure that governments have known about this possibility for some time, letting an example of this loose where script kiddies can analyze it strikes me as more than a bit unwise.
Standardized spelling and grammar, on the other hand, was something the education establishment in the United States attempted to impose. This has had limited success. Its main effect has been to promote the east-coast regional variant of the language as "correct" and that users of other variants do so because they are stupid or ignorant. This helps the self-proclaimed urban elites delude themselves - and others - that they are more intelligent and thus suited to rule.
So standardized spelling and grammar is nothing more than an oppressive political plot, huh? You don't think it might just possibly enhance the clarity of written communication to have some standards to which everyone can appeal? How is standard English orthography prejudicial against the West Coast, as you seem (perhaps somewhat carelessly) to imply? Or against the South? Or Wyoming? Ah, but you clearly don't have to advance any arguments for your all-encompassing assertions, just the mere witless assertion of ill-formed and ill-informed opinion that fits your mindless worldview will do for you.
This person is generating nice repeating patterns (like pleated curtains) with random alterations, using a small number of small image files and a small amount of computation to generate random numbers which guide the placement of those image files. Doing this with fractals would require computation that is orders of magnitude more costly.
Yeeesss...I know. There I go, being elliptical again. It was a joke...albeit I was trying to draw attention to an underlying question. I sometimes wonder about predictions that were made back in [the day] that seem to have pretty much evaporated. The whole definition of what a fractal is always struck me as somewhat lacking in rigor. The popular science press of the late 80s and early 90s was full of talk about fractals, and one of the suggested applications was indeed to computationally generate super-realistic alien or imaginary landscapes. Now that computational power is cheap (compared to the 80s--oh my poor 8088 Compaq!), do any of the big animation studios use fractals to generate "random" landscapes? Does anybody use them in any sort of graphics applications?
Cool, but aren't we all supposed to be using fractals to generate realistic-looking virtual worlds and such by now? I mean, that's what I thought when I read that Scientific American article back in the 80s, and wrote a C program that ran for two weeks on my Compaq to create a picture of a Mandelbrot set. What was really funny was that the Compaq screen was grey scale...
My brain has been turned to slush by some rhinovirus (or hippovirus?), so I helplessly fell for all the April Fool jokes today. But wait...maybe these glasses are for real. I don't have the energy to actually check—let alone think. But hey, I hate 3D, so if I could watch the 3D movie without the blurriness and without the headache-inducing third dimension, that would be cool.
As far as I'm concerned, there could only be one application where 3D would add value...but any male actors would totally bum me out (again, as far as I'm concerned).
Windows will NEVER be secure.
That may be true, but just saying so is not terribly informative. What, in particular, makes Windows 7 inherently insecure? Can you point to some features in the architecture of the OS that prove your point?
I'm not saying your assertion is wrong; I'm just saying that it would be ever so much more helpful if it were preceded by a valid argument that demonstrates its truth.
It could be either good or bad; most likely, it will be both.
I used to be a T Mobile customer when I was using my Treo, then switched to AT&T when I succumbed to the iPhone geas. Yeah, AT&T support is generally clueless—I certainly wouldn't call them to resolve a technical issue. They are so anxious to minimize customer usage of their data network that they start to blast out alarming text messages that You are about to exceed your data limit! if you move any data at all. I figured out pretty quickly that AT&T thinks most of its customers don't know the difference between a megabyte and a gigabyte, so they figure I'll stop using my phone when they tell me I have used 2 M.
I originally went with T Mobile because they were clueful about international roaming. I frequently travel to Germany, so it was nice to have a carrier that did not, metaphorically, drop its jaws and develop glazed eyes when I broached the subject of actually using my phone in a foreign country. But when I switched, I had a major hassle getting AT&T to give me permission to use my phone in a country that they obviously regarded as possibly being imaginary. One of the hassles centered on the fact that I had just bought into AT&T service...so they didn't trust me enough to allow me to use my phone in this hypothetical "Germany".(I suppose buying their service is decisive proof of idiocy.) What did they think I was going to do...massive illegal downloads of child porn? Beats me. At this point, if it weren't for the contract, I would have gone back to T Mobile. I eventually did get to use my iPhone from Germany. But were my knees ever sore.
On the positive side of the ledger is the superior coverage that a combination of AT&T and T Mobile equipment should provide; I don't think they can possibly screw up this benefit, short of tearing down all the T Mobile towers out of spite. You might hope that the new, more bloated AT&T will retain the international expertise of the absorbed assets...but that's a slim hope, as history tells us that mergers usually result in the worst possible combination of personnel and policies drawn from the participating corporations. (Take a look at the HP–Compaq buyout, for example.) For employees, it will mean that whatever HR policies of the two companies are worst for them will be adopted. For customers, it means that support and services will either remain at the current AT&T niveau, or maybe get worse.
I still think that the better coverage may balance the drawbacks accruing to customers as a result of the mergers.
It's not that complicated. They all translate into offsets in seconds. To the computer, I don't live in America/Los_Angeles on 3:47pm Thu March 3, 2011. The computer sees: 1299196020 (unix time in UTC) - 28800 (my zone offset in seconds, using the tz database) + 0 (no DST in my zone right now) = 1299167220 (local time) So the really impressive work has just been in conceptualizing and organizing the database so that a program just needs to lookup two questions: which of the zones am I in, and what is the current offset for that zone?
Maybe, but it quickly gets complicated when you try to take a detailed look at the past. Say you're writing a program that generates statistics for certain events (along with pretty PP slides for the boss). You want an exact look at the temporal distribution of these events. You're trolling a huge database for this information, so you have to extract and crunch the relevant records. The program you're writing has to give answers to questions like, "what conditions prevailed on November 16th, 1999, and what events occurred on that date between t1 and t1 plus x seconds, expressed in local time?" and "Examine another x second time slice exactly 14 days later". I actually thought this would be fairly easy...go ahead and laugh. (Yes, I know there are people reading this who do think this is simple, but it sure wasn't for me.)
Yes, of course you do date and time arithmetic in seconds...but you do realize that each year does not have exactly the same number of seconds, right? And besides stuff like extra leap years and leap seconds that get inserted by some scientific committee every so often, you've got Congressional Time Drift—the temporal disturbances caused by the U.S. Congress frivolously screwing with "daylight savings time" whenever that body feels it has to be seen as doing something, and the rest of the world be damned. Of course the records all have date and time stamps, but those have to be converted into seconds, while keeping all this screwiness in mind...and then converted back because bosses don't like slides that have time expressed as seconds. I suppose there must have been programming libraries that keep current with temporal-political developments, but I sure didn't know what they were. I didn't even know I should look for something like that—heck, this was a skunkworks project I took on in my spare time.
I was never sure I got it exactly right, but my project was accounted a big success by the bosses, because the Power Point slides I had the program plot were just so pretty. In retrospect, I could have kept this project a lot simpler...
I'm honestly shocked that "more than average, less than maximum" is confusing so many people. Okay, maybe the sentence is difficult to parse (I didn't find it so, but whatever), but it is not illogical in the least.
"Not illogical", eh? The writer was trying to give us a sense of the scale of this device. Usually, this is done by referring to something simple and direct—like maybe the traditional "smaller than a breadbox, bigger than a pack of cigarettes". But our author strikes directly for familiar ground—the average and extreme weights of hummingbirds. Right, I know all about that. On the one hand, you have those really small, pip-squeak hummingbirds that you can mistake for wasps. On the other, we have Ricky The Ridiculously Obese, a Hogwart's courier who weighs in at 18.3756 ounces (unloaded), and delivers his messages for a very small charge, as he is completely flightless. OK, now how big is the flying machine? Um...who knows? Smaller than Ricky I guess. Bigger than a bug.
No real world James Bond would need it for more than 15 minuets...
As an old (really old) James Bond fan, I must protest your mischaracterization. James Bond wouldn't even need a Tango, much less a bunch of minuets—he gets the girl without having to even dance with her first!
So consistency is the cornerstone of morality, philosophy and understanding? Tell me more of this little world you live in, and how I can join.
The article summary has a very poor choice of words in describing these lunatics as "controversial".
A peculiar response. Of course we can't expect an amorphous, anarchic mob to be consistent. But we can—and should—expect individuals to be consistent in the goals they pursue, and the beliefs they hold. That doesn't mean intelligent people don't change their minds, but it does mean that they change their minds for good reason.
By the way, it's not clear just which lunatics involved in this imbroglio you are referring to.
SQL injections and rainbow tables
unfortunately the truth of this statement will be entirely missed by the greater public.
The greater public probably think SQL injections and rainbow tables are some bizarre gay fetish activity.
Is that why the Wikipedia entry on "SQL Injection" is blank as of right now? It says last modified on 15 February 2011. Hmm. The page just looks blank in Firefox—View Source shows the text. I brought up IE, and the text is all there. Except...was SQL injection really "First discovered by hippies from Las Cruces, New Mexico."?
This is all very interesting, of course. Competitive urination between somebody I don't know and an unknown number of people I don't know. I don't dare say more than that; who knows what Anonymous would do to me if I did?
Dr. Vomact's true name is Hilda Bergenbanger, she lives at 1055 Matheson Road, Columbus Georgia. Call her at 706-433-6969 for a really good time at a very modest cost.
Yes, you're correct. I RTFAd way too fast. I apologize.
RTFA
A rather uncharitable comment about the people who have been financing and supplying you with arms and ammunition for centuries (well, almost), "Fianna Fail man". Surely you're aware of the sympathies of the American people toward your cause, right? So chill, FF man. And up the IRA. Whoever they are these days...
An odd story. The company (Whisper Systems) makes software (for Android systems only, apparently) that supports VoIP and SMS encryption. But it also has a history of rolling over for repressive governments, providing them with user data, and allowing them (well, Egypt's government, anyway) to send propaganda messages via their systems. It sounds like this "beta" software is also available in the US. But what good does it do to use software from a company that will just rat you out to whatever government snaps its fingers?
That's lying to them.
I'm glad you agree.
avatar is a good movie, well done. i saw it in theatres twice... both times were enjoyable stories....the story was as good as cameron's other efforts like titanic and terminator. i know that there's a lot of mindless hate on the internet, and it makes a few strange gollum like creatures feel good about themselves by saying avatar sucks, for some ill defined ego reason. but its complete bullshit: avatar is a good movie, period, no 3D need apply to qualify that statement, and no stupid internet hate need apply. who says? not me. sales figures say so
So not liking this movie means that I'm somehow deficient—a "hater", even. If your measure of whether or not a person is good consists of "likes the same movies as me", then I'd say that's a pretty trivial criterion that might, just might, lead you astray from time to time. I'll leave your lesser solecism—that art is judged by sales figures—untouched.
Then again, you can control people by telling them someone else is trying to control them, and that only by following you will they be truly free. You can also say the same thing over and over again in a mind-deadening cadence until the victim's brain short circuits.
What's really amazing to me is that "climate change" is not a scientific hypothesis at all, but people naively champion it in the name of science. "Climate change" (as opposed to the obsolete "global warming") cannot be falsified. In other words, no matter what happens, no matter what data is observed, this data can only (allegedly) verify the hypothesis. This means that data is really irrelevant to testing the hypothesis. Is it cold today? —See! The climate is changing again! Is it too hot? —Aha, the climate is changing!
Science is by definition empirical; a scientific hypothesis is something that can be tested, something that is verified or falsified by hard data. In this case, there's no need to measure the temperature (or humidity, or precipitation, etc.). We can be sure that our hypothesis is true. That's because it's a tautology. But it's still good for separating fools from their money, and empowering governments to levy arbitrary taxes and lay down crippling rules for industry.
Frankly, I'm amazed to see so many people taken in by what is clearly a crazy idea. It's like everyone has forgotten what science is. Weird.
There is no known material worth the expense of mining it on the moon
It would be about time that the media talk a bit more loudly about the uranium deposits found on the moon. Is it worth the expense vs. mining on earth ? Yes, because it allows a use that would otherwise need uranium to be lifted out of the earth's gravity well : build a refinery that produces fuel for Orion-style ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) Or even that beam power back to earth without having us manage nuclear wastes.
I agree with your first suggestion, but am a bit of wary of the last one (when a power-beam operator says "oopsie" because he's just let the beam track across Manhattan...well that would be more than a minor incident.)
On the other hand, building a fleet of real spaceships using the Orion propulsion principle to explore the solar system—and maybe even further out—is something that I think would be super-worthwhile. Of course, exploring would not be the only purpose of such a fleet. Others would be to build new factories and mines throughout the solar system. A real Orion could easily carry enough cargo to start a basic set of industrial installations, along with a small city of workers and technical experts that will make the new enterprise work.
Before such ships can be built, more is needed than a uranium refinery (or breeder reactor) on the moon. That will provide fuel (presuming the parent is correct in saying there's lots of uranium to be found on the moon). To build a ship, you're going to need a full-fledged industrial establishment on or about the Moon. You're going to need metallurgical experts, mining experts who can find and mine the requiring metal-bearing ores, and mechanical designers and factories that can build structural support members and metallic hull plates. You will need expertise in the design and manufacture of electronic hardware that will fulfill the manifold functions needed by the Orions. You'd need experts in hydroponic gardening, because rations that have to be shipped up from earth are going to cost a fortune. You'd have to find all the materials needed to build electronics, also. (In the short term, perhaps for the first ship, electronics could be sent up from Earth; they're relatively light, and not terribly expensive to launch. The same thing is true for small consumer goods. But eventually, the new High Industrial Enterprise should aim to be self-sufficient, as any political instability on Earth would very quickly leave them isolated.
The real difficulty of starting an Orion-based space civilization in our solar system is that getting the money to fund that first expedition is going to be very difficult. The only thing that will accomplish this is to convince potential investors that there will be a monetary reward for investing in the project. This has happened before—for example, risk-takers financed many trade journeys to far-off and sometimes virtually unknown lands in the 16th through the 18th centuries. Some of these investors became rich, others lost their shirts. Good capitalists know that every investment brings with it a degree of risk, and a certain probability of lucrative success. The risk has never stopped capitalists from investing—providing they have been convinced that the chances of a big win outweigh the risks.
The problem then becomes: what rewards would accrue to earth-bound investors who financed the initial expedition to go to the moon, and build a technical/industrial complex that will, in turn, build an Orion? That is the crucial question; if it can be answered well, then the project will happen; if it cannot be answered satisfactorily, then we can forget about the "high frontier". Nobody on Earth is going to get wealthy because the expedition mines uranium to build an Orion, for in that case nothing is actua
Cost and international treaties are two big reasons why merchant ships aren't armed. If you want military on board with weapons, well a 24/7 hour crew is going to cost a fair bit of money. ...Can't imagine American authorities would be too happy about accepting an Iranian ship sailing into New York with a crew of marines on board manning deck mounted rapid fire machine guns.
Ok, several people have mentioned such a law without any citation. If you're going to insist that a law exists that regulates X, you have the burden to prove that it exists. Why am I supposed to do your homework for you? A quick google got me this page, which discusses such a "United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea (UNCLOS)". This site says the following:
There's also some blah-blah about having to fire warning shots first, etc. Hmm...I wonder, how many warships does the UN Navy have? Heck, if they had any, they wouldn't be allowed to mount guns. So...enforcement is nil.
I find the aversion to violence that has become so manifest in Western countries in the last four decades or so to be disturbing...almost the expression of a collective death-wish. I'm talking about violence in defense of life and property, of course, not about the violence of the robber, rapist, or pirate. I believe that this failure to see the distinction between justified and unjustified violence is a sign of moral decline, or—to be more precise, perhaps—a decline in our collective ability to make moral distinctions.
Oh please. This is Slashdot. The only combat or materiel experience required, before posting authoritatively about weapons systems and their use, is having played a few video games in your parents' basement.
Sorta identical to the requirements for being an expert on sex on Slashdot, huh?