What I want to know is when they're going to develop a semiconductor manufacturing process that doesn't use massive amounts of water. If ind the fact that large amounts of water are used (to clean off chemicals, keep dust down/off the chips, etc.) especially ironic conisdering two of Intel's main facilities are in California and Arizona. This is an area that would have a much more significant impact on the environment, but it's not a regulatory requirement (yet...).
True, Southwest is one of the few airlines in the black and they only fly point-to-point. They also only fly relatively short flights, no international, no meal service, no pre-assigned seating, very quick turns (they amount of time between two consecutive flights for an aircraft), and single model of airplane (at least, this used to be true), and quirky but well-liked flight crews. These are as much/more of a factor than their routing scheme.
My point was that the hub and spoke system is helpful, but not necessary, for an airline.
Yup. That's a pretty common pricing strategy among airlines these days. A lot of it has to do with the "hub and spoke" routes they fly. They aggregate everyone into the big hubs and then fill a big plane to fly hub-to-hub or make the popular intercontinental flights. Then they offer cheaper fares to fill up the "spoke" flights. It can often be cheaper to drive an extra half hour to a different airport and fly to the hub than to fly directly out of the hub itself.
As for how good this is as a business model...It works, more or less, for NWA, United, et al. but Southwest only flies point-to-point.
The disadvantages include the inability to right itself if capsized
With the exception of a very small number of (mostly Coast Guard, if I recall) ships that are self-righting, I think any ship that big is going to be virtually impossible to right after capsizing. Unless you get "lucky" and the (non-catamaran) rolls all the way around...
Well, since I can't seem to find my AI text or LISP book in al my boxes of books, a quick google search turned up this from wikipedia: "self-modifying code is code that modifies itself. This is straightforward to write when using assembly language and is also supported by some high level language interpreters such as SNOBOL4 or the Lisp programming language." (The emphasis is mine.)
While LISP is not necessarily self-modifying, it is capable of doing it. This works out as a nasty bug or really nifty feature depending on whether you do it on purpose or accidentally.
It is the hardware side that uses chaos, not the software. Details are sketchy in the article, but I believe they are looking at chaotic systems and tweaking the hardware to use different regions of behavior depending on the desired use.
And, yes, there are reasons we're not all programming in LISP.
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty, outlawing "the appropriation of space" by any nation, bans orbiting vehicles bearing nuclear weapons.
True, but if you RTFA, you'll see that there are no nuclear or other WMDs involved. You see, at orbital velocities, you can just toss some ball bearings or other inert objects into a satellite/missile's path to destroy it. Sometimes low-tech can be pretty effective.
If the pay has to be so good for the contractors, why are the Iraqi police being paid a pittance for the most dangerous job in Iraq?
Because everyone else in Iraq is getting paid even less than that! Seriously. Do you know how much people get paid in countries other than the U.S./E.U.? Very little. (Granted, cost of living is less too.) Unemployment is so high in Iraq that people are lucky to have any job, even if it's one where they get shot at.
I know people who are in Iraq currently and were working over there last year. It is a very dangerous place for Americans. Even U.S. civilian employees get flak jackets. (Remember, it only takes one bullet/roadside bomb to kill you and there is a much higher proportion of people in Iraq using those tools right now than there are in the U.S.)
Oh yeah, and there is rampant corruption in Iraq that makes the U.S. pork barrel stuff look squeaky clean.
I have a standing offer to go work in Iraq for 6-12 months with a >%50 pay increase, but I'm not taking it...
There's a lot of messages going around here about the PCBs in the Hudson River.
First of all, the vast majority of the PCBs are located just above Troy, behind a dam/locks. The extent of this mapping was from Troy downriver to Manhattan. Therfore, the PCB contamination is not really relevant to any salvage operations.
Having said that, the PCB cleanup issue is very complicated. The fundamental question came down to whether the dredging (which is only aimed at "hot spots") will resuspend more PCBs than a significant storm event. Over the long-term (~50 years), it's likely that there won't be a significant difference in PCB concentrations for a dredged vs. non-dredged situation.
I suspect that while GE doesn't want to dredge because it costs them money, the EPA may want to force dredging to look like they're doing something and that little of the remediation action is actually based on concerns for long-term human/ecosystem welfare in the area.
As an environmental engineer and former part-time resident of Troy, I find the whole thing a little depressing.
-slackerboy
"How much click through do you get out of an ad printed in the paper edition of the New York Times?"
No one has damn clue. It's almost impossible to measure. The effectiveness of a traditional ad (newspaper/tv/radio/billboard/whatever) and the effectiveness of a banner ad are probably about equal (which is something most people seem to forget). It's just really easy to measure "click-through".
Actually, I believe the key phrases were "He's disrupting the normal course of conduct (of eBay transactions)" and "Although the company has 'terminated 40 to 45 of his accounts in the last three months alone,' Anderson has circumvented the company's moves by re-registering under other identities". First they kicked him off their property and then he kept coming back in. Since their website is their private property and (as has been frequently shown recently) they are responsible for the content of it, it sounds reasonable that they should be allowed a legal recourse to prevent him from entering it. One last note: Personally, I swear like a sailor and I don't tend to get offended easily by that kind of stuff. However, there are laws which have been held up in court banning swearing in front of women and children! I think it's unconstitutional, but courts (at least in Michigan) don't feel that way. Food for thought. -slackerboy
Probably from French where "fin" means "the end". (Like at the end of those really artsy black and white movies.) Maybe they're trying to tell us something...
I guess all those years of french classes finally paid off. -Slackerboy
Anyone know if Judge Jackson had some more "strong wording" in this one because Microsoft started appealing before he finished ruling? Just curious. -Slackerboy
"I haven't seen a single puter with a minidisc-rom (MD-ROM?) drive. Second, if there's no data spec for the MD's, and no real way to implement it--i.e. no "data type field"--then they shouldn't put data on there."
For the record, minidiscs are not ROM. They are most definitely read/write. Which is really cool, cuase you end up with an object smaller than a 3.5" floppy which can be used like a tape and store almost as much CD quality audio as an actual CD. I have two MD players and I love them. I just think it's really unfortunate that the best models aren't marketed over here in the states. Both my Kenwood and my Aiwa MD players were purchased in Japan and are smaller and nicer than the Sony ones available in the U.S. Apparently Americans aren't perceived as smart enough to be able to handle a new data medium. ("Hey, that doesn't look like a CD! People will never figure that out!") -slackerboy
I remember a retired Navy Commander telling me about how the Navy had to stop using their active sonar in/near port because it was powerful enough that they would get massive amounts of dead fish suddenly floating to the surface. And I thought fishing with dynamite sounded easy... -slackerboy
Seems to me that this has no bearing on the WinZip recommendations. They are not a "technology, product, service, device, componenet, or part thereof". Merely an explanation for the use of a product. (Winzip itself also would not be affected by the quote, because it is not "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title") And besides, if telling someone how to break the law/circumvent someone else's rules was illegal, 2600 would have dissapeared a long time ago! Knowledge is not a crime! Acting on such knowledge _may_ be a crime. ('Course, it's a lot easier for Microsoft to find people with knowledge on Slashdot than to find one's who have actually broken the law.) -Slackerboy
Sure the regulations are overprotective, but they are there for a reason. The stock market crashed which catlyzed The Great Depression. People who knew little about the market were buying and selling on margin, the market tanked, and a lot of people lost their shirts. The SEC's job is to prevent something like that from happening again. Don't get me wrong. A company one of my relatives works for just went through an IPO and I would have loved to get in on it.
BTW My relative was also telling me that everything leading up to the IPO was pretty restrictive so that they wouldn't get in trouble with the SEC (or get sued if the stock tanks...)
Slashdot Mirror
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."--Arthur C. Clarke
What I want to know is when they're going to develop a semiconductor manufacturing process that doesn't use massive amounts of water. If ind the fact that large amounts of water are used (to clean off chemicals, keep dust down/off the chips, etc.) especially ironic conisdering two of Intel's main facilities are in California and Arizona. This is an area that would have a much more significant impact on the environment, but it's not a regulatory requirement (yet...).
True, Southwest is one of the few airlines in the black and they only fly point-to-point. They also only fly relatively short flights, no international, no meal service, no pre-assigned seating, very quick turns (they amount of time between two consecutive flights for an aircraft), and single model of airplane (at least, this used to be true), and quirky but well-liked flight crews. These are as much/more of a factor than their routing scheme.
My point was that the hub and spoke system is helpful, but not necessary, for an airline.
Yup. That's a pretty common pricing strategy among airlines these days. A lot of it has to do with the "hub and spoke" routes they fly. They aggregate everyone into the big hubs and then fill a big plane to fly hub-to-hub or make the popular intercontinental flights. Then they offer cheaper fares to fill up the "spoke" flights. It can often be cheaper to drive an extra half hour to a different airport and fly to the hub than to fly directly out of the hub itself.
As for how good this is as a business model...It works, more or less, for NWA, United, et al. but Southwest only flies point-to-point.
Now, be fair! They also spent a lot of money destroying Iraq's power grid, too!
With the exception of a very small number of (mostly Coast Guard, if I recall) ships that are self-righting, I think any ship that big is going to be virtually impossible to right after capsizing. Unless you get "lucky" and the (non-catamaran) rolls all the way around...
Well, since I can't seem to find my AI text or LISP book in al my boxes of books, a quick google search turned up this from wikipedia: "self-modifying code is code that modifies itself. This is straightforward to write when using assembly language and is also supported by some high level language interpreters such as SNOBOL4 or the Lisp programming language." (The emphasis is mine.)
While LISP is not necessarily self-modifying, it is capable of doing it. This works out as a nasty bug or really nifty feature depending on whether you do it on purpose or accidentally.
It is the hardware side that uses chaos, not the software. Details are sketchy in the article, but I believe they are looking at chaotic systems and tweaking the hardware to use different regions of behavior depending on the desired use.
And, yes, there are reasons we're not all programming in LISP.
True, but if you RTFA, you'll see that there are no nuclear or other WMDs involved. You see, at orbital velocities, you can just toss some ball bearings or other inert objects into a satellite/missile's path to destroy it. Sometimes low-tech can be pretty effective.
Because everyone else in Iraq is getting paid even less than that! Seriously. Do you know how much people get paid in countries other than the U.S./E.U.? Very little. (Granted, cost of living is less too.) Unemployment is so high in Iraq that people are lucky to have any job, even if it's one where they get shot at.
I know people who are in Iraq currently and were working over there last year. It is a very dangerous place for Americans. Even U.S. civilian employees get flak jackets. (Remember, it only takes one bullet/roadside bomb to kill you and there is a much higher proportion of people in Iraq using those tools right now than there are in the U.S.)
Oh yeah, and there is rampant corruption in Iraq that makes the U.S. pork barrel stuff look squeaky clean.
I have a standing offer to go work in Iraq for 6-12 months with a >%50 pay increase, but I'm not taking it...
There's a lot of messages going around here about the PCBs in the Hudson River.
First of all, the vast majority of the PCBs are located just above Troy, behind a dam/locks. The extent of this mapping was from Troy downriver to Manhattan. Therfore, the PCB contamination is not really relevant to any salvage operations.
Having said that, the PCB cleanup issue is very complicated. The fundamental question came down to whether the dredging (which is only aimed at "hot spots") will resuspend more PCBs than a significant storm event. Over the long-term (~50 years), it's likely that there won't be a significant difference in PCB concentrations for a dredged vs. non-dredged situation.
I suspect that while GE doesn't want to dredge because it costs them money, the EPA may want to force dredging to look like they're doing something and that little of the remediation action is actually based on concerns for long-term human/ecosystem welfare in the area.
As an environmental engineer and former part-time resident of Troy, I find the whole thing a little depressing.
-slackerboy
I really feel that someone needs to say:
"How much click through do you get out of an ad printed in the paper edition of the New York Times?"
No one has damn clue. It's almost impossible to measure. The effectiveness of a traditional ad (newspaper/tv/radio/billboard/whatever) and the effectiveness of a banner ad are probably about equal (which is something most people seem to forget). It's just really easy to measure "click-through".
-slackerboy
Actually, I believe the key phrases were "He's disrupting the normal course of conduct (of eBay transactions)" and "Although the company has 'terminated 40 to 45 of his accounts in the last three months alone,' Anderson has circumvented the company's moves by re-registering under other identities". First they kicked him off their property and then he kept coming back in. Since their website is their private property and (as has been frequently shown recently) they are responsible for the content of it, it sounds reasonable that they should be allowed a legal recourse to prevent him from entering it. One last note: Personally, I swear like a sailor and I don't tend to get offended easily by that kind of stuff. However, there are laws which have been held up in court banning swearing in front of women and children! I think it's unconstitutional, but courts (at least in Michigan) don't feel that way. Food for thought. -slackerboy
Nope...Only if you're placing bids of >$15,000 US
Probably from French where "fin" means "the end". (Like at the end of those really artsy black and white movies.) Maybe they're trying to tell us something...
I guess all those years of french classes finally paid off.
-Slackerboy
Anyone know if Judge Jackson had some more "strong wording" in this one because Microsoft started appealing before he finished ruling? Just curious.
-Slackerboy
"I haven't seen a single puter with a minidisc-rom (MD-ROM?) drive. Second, if there's no data spec for the MD's, and no real way to implement it--i.e. no "data type field"--then they shouldn't put data on there."
For the record, minidiscs are not ROM. They are most definitely read/write. Which is really cool, cuase you end up with an object smaller than a 3.5" floppy which can be used like a tape and store almost as much CD quality audio as an actual CD.
I have two MD players and I love them. I just think it's really unfortunate that the best models aren't marketed over here in the states. Both my Kenwood and my Aiwa MD players were purchased in Japan and are smaller and nicer than the Sony ones available in the U.S.
Apparently Americans aren't perceived as smart enough to be able to handle a new data medium. ("Hey, that doesn't look like a CD! People will never figure that out!")
-slackerboy
I remember a retired Navy Commander telling me about how the Navy had to stop using their active sonar in/near port because it was powerful enough that they would get massive amounts of dead fish suddenly floating to the surface.
And I thought fishing with dynamite sounded easy...
-slackerboy
Seems to me that this has no bearing on the WinZip recommendations. They are not a "technology, product, service, device, componenet, or part thereof". Merely an explanation for the use of a product.
(Winzip itself also would not be affected by the quote, because it is not "primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title")
And besides, if telling someone how to break the law/circumvent someone else's rules was illegal, 2600 would have dissapeared a long time ago! Knowledge is not a crime! Acting on such knowledge _may_ be a crime.
('Course, it's a lot easier for Microsoft to find people with knowledge on Slashdot than to find one's who have actually broken the law.)
-Slackerboy
Sure the regulations are overprotective, but they are there for a reason. The stock market crashed which catlyzed The Great Depression. People who knew little about the market were buying and selling on margin, the market tanked, and a lot of people lost their shirts. The SEC's job is to prevent something like that from happening again.
Don't get me wrong. A company one of my relatives works for just went through an IPO and I would have loved to get in on it.
BTW My relative was also telling me that everything leading up to the IPO was pretty restrictive so that they wouldn't get in trouble with the SEC (or get sued if the stock tanks...)