Yes... well... I wear a wrist watch while carrying a cellphone, among other reasons, because I have to change the battery in my watch every 24 months, whereas my phone can't last as long as a week between charges. Also, there are places I go where there is no cell service (some rural areas in the Midwest, subbasements where signals can't reach, Antarctica, etc.), or is forbidden (airplanes in flight). I'm sure someone will tell me to buy a new phone, but the one I have doesn't provide the time unless it's attached to the cell network, and doesn't have a "flight" mode. So, no signal == no battery.
In short, the watch happens to be a reasonably foolproof way of checking the time, especially since I frequently find myself looking at a blank or "searching for service" cellphone screen.
Because the amount that consumers have to spend on entertainment is considered a fixed pool. If they spend more on "product A" than they used to, analysts look to what other market segment the money was diverted from. Music has traditionally been a huge segment of entertainment dollars, gaming much less so (other segments include movies, amusement parks, theater tickets, and many more).
Also, in times of economic turndown, if you are in an entertainment industry, you want to know if comsumers are spending more, less, or the same on entertainment overall, and how much of that is going into the pockets of your market segment.
It is difficult to make money in any industry if you don't have a grasp of how much money there is to pursue. the gaming industry, from hardware vendors to large publishing houses have to be loving this news. Recorded music has been an entertainment giant for generations. Listeners have cut across all market segments. To see gaming surpass that, economically, shows a sea change in what forms of entertainment Americans are throwing their dollars into, and might provide a hint where the money will be allocation into the next few years (business cycle).
Guillaume, having wintered at the South Pole in 2004 and 2006 (overlapping the start and finish of your Winter), I can entirely agree with the importance of a having fulfilling job to ward off Winter boredom; and I, too, would jump at the chance to go to Mars for real (I've already signed up for the 2008 Winter at Pole); but, I guess we differ in that I've already considered sitting in a tin can for months with these guys. I visited the IBMP in 1999 as a potential candidate for a 240-day "mission", but they scaled back the crew to a few Russians, and a "mixed crew" from Canada, German, and Japan, and didn't take any Americans.
It was an interesting visit, though. Lots of 1970s Soviet-era hardware still set up and in use.
I love how the Micro Center is characterized as a "small, Midwest-based chain". I used to shop there when they were a tiny store front in a strip mall and specialized in Apple IIs.
I normally find myself in the Micro Center every couple of weeks anyway, just for normal sorts of computery purchases. I'll have to check out their Linspire stuff.
Re:If you want to learn a bit about Antartica...
on
Exploring Antarctica
·
· Score: 1
We've been blogging here since 1995 (but it wasn't called blogging back then)
(the photo is from my *second* 300 Club run this winter - no photographer out there the first time)
Before some smart-ass tries to claim that it's impossible to sit in a +200F sauna, remember that a) we are at a nominal 11,000' and b) there's about 0.5% RH, meaning that heat transfer to your body is quite poor. I wouldn't want to think about sitting in a +200F Sauna at sea level.
Good point. I forgot about the Coasties. Most of them don't spend much time on land, anyway, but when they are in port, they do count.
Yes, I'm on the Ice right now, wintering at Pole this year. If you were on the Ice between 1994 and 1997, I might know you. Hit the "feedback" link on my web page, and word will get to me.
McMurdo and Pole currently receive one refuling ship per year, in late January or early February (when the ice is the thinnest, and shortly after the Icebreaker has cut a channel).
The U.S. Antarctic Program is evaluating alternate energy sources to get our fuel resupply to every other year.
Piston airplanes run on 100LL (100 octane low-lead). The U.S. Antarctic Program and the N.Z. Antarctic Programme do _not_ operate piston planes. They operate Bell Ranger (Huey) helicopers, LC-130s, C-141s, C-5s, C-17s, a fleet of Caterpillar Tractors and other heavy equipment. They run on a variety of heavy fuels like kerosene/diesel (JP-8/AN-8/etc). There are some gasoline-powered light trucks and vans for summer use. They use a formulation the military calls "Mogas" (motor-vehicle gasoline). It's nowhere near 100 octane. Airplanes don't refuel at the corner Shell station for a reason. It's the wrong stuff for the engine.
It's just not there to sell him. Other adventurers make arrangements for fuel caches. He did not. He failed to plan. I say this as a licensed pilot and a four-season Antarctic veteran.
I took pictures of him when he flew over the Pole. As a pilot, I even thought to myself - what a load of fun that would be to do. I was surprised to find that he hadn't made prior arrangements.
Summer started in Mactown over two months ago. The Icebreaker arrives in about a month. Two months from *now* the vessel will be arriving. You don't just show up at the dock and ask to throw an airplane on the vessel. USAP vessel operations are planned months in advance.
He really is running out of time. The summer is essentially half over. Pole closes in 68 days.
U.S. Research Stations in Antarctica are not run by the military. They are funded by the National Science Foundation. The Military does the flying because they have the expertise and the equipment. They do so under contract to the NSF.
The Navy detachments that once ran the research stations (NSFA) and exclusively did the flying (VXE6) were disestablished several years ago, but they hadn't been exclusive for years before that.
When I was first at McMurdo in 1995, NSFA ran the hospital, the air traffic control tower, weather and an electronics shop. They had already ceded the cooking, firefighting and other activities to the civilian contractors in previous years.
These days, the only military presence on the Ice is the New York Air National Guard (NYANG) who flies the LC-130s, (I think) regular Air Force who fly C-17s and C-141s, and an occasional Navy person at the McMurdo radio station (still military-affiliated).
The overwhelming majority of us down here are civilians.
Until I moved offices earlier this month, I had a "NeXT Computer" (not a cube - they weren't labelled "cubes" until the slabs came out) set up and running next to my daily-use desktop (dual-Pentium box running RedHat).
I have a Compaq SLT/286 laptop (w/40MB internal HD, and a 3Com 10Mbit NIC in the dock) that I use to run my B&C Microsystems UP600 device programmer. I have burned a couple dozen devices in the past two weeks with it. I also use the laptop with Kermit as a dumb terminal. Both rounds of recent use have been in assembling and testing my SpareTimeGizmos SBC-6120 (a modern implementation of a PDP-8 as seen at the VCF 6.0). The 286 replaced my Commodore Colt (8-bit PC clone) after the Colt's motherboard battery leaked. I tried to use an older Compaq luggable, but the PSU wasn't strong enough to run the UP600.
I also have a Zenith 8086 laptop (dual 720K 3.5" floppies!) with DOS 3.3 and Kermit that might as well be a portable dumb terminal.
Even older is an original model IBM 5150 PC (5 slots, cassette port, etc.) that's attached to a Northwest Instruments bus analyzer. It works, but I haven't fired it up in a while. The last time I repaired it, I found a 20MB ST506/ST412-interface disk (called "MFM" by many people) that has too many bad tracks at the end, so it's now a 15MB-effective drive. A former employer bought this PC new for $5K just to run the analyzer (which was $20K). I don't have frequent call to use it, but it was great to have around when debugging a hardware problem in an Amiga a few years ago.
My oldest boxes are several varieties of PDP-8 (some with discrete transistors, not chips), but they don't count because those aren't tools, those are toys.
... in "Venus, Inc.", by Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth. The second story has a character who is bombarded by an advertisement that induces an addition to the product (Mokie-Coke). He becomes an instant "Mokehead".
You were essentially a test-case for Dot Com compensation practices crossing over into Hollywood. From the news coverage of them since, it doesn't appear to have been a personal financial success to you. How did the rise and fall of Priceline.com affect your attitudes of the Internet? What impact do you think these events will have on novel compensation schemes for actors in the future?
The RTT from McMurdo Station (at the coast) to my ISP back home in Ohio is in the 1600ms range. It's similar at Pole, but at least at McMurdo, we get 24-hour-a-day satellite coverage (the cutoff is about 80S, and McMurdo is at 78S - they had to excavate the ground in front of the dish; it's tipped so far forward that there wasn't room at first. The dome and pedestal were designed for temperate latitudes).
There are standalone, automated weather stations in a few locations around the continent - AGO sites (Antarctic Geophysical Observatory - see the weather at AGO-1). They have already solved the problem of how to build and power such things - propane - Hank Hill's favorite. You could use solar for the Summer to reduce fuel consumption, but in the end, you are burning stuff to make heat and electricity. At least fiber is passive.
And, yes, RTGs are illegal according to treaty. They used to use them in the 1970s (for automated weather stations), but the last one was removed over five years ago.
Re:Antarctic Marathon; creature comforts
on
The Coldest March
·
· Score: 1
Well... we only got Thai food because I cooked it myself! The regular chow in the Galley isn't so nice. It's funny... I was down at the same time you were, but a couple thousand miles away. My first reaction when I arrived in mid-January was that I got on the wrong plane. I have a photo from that afternoon of Chuck Gallagher (for whom "Gallagher's" was later named) in his shirt-sleeves, waiting to greet a Distinguished Visitor from our flight.
We also jump in the ocean, but not near a thermal vent - the water is 29.2F (there's that much salt in it). In the summertime, the jump is somewhat pleasant. In the winter, the wind-chill was -35F or so.
Having wintered-over, I have a deep respect for the explorers at the turn of the 20th century. We had hot meals almost every day (in the field, we might get hot drinks and cold sandwiches), running water, warm housing, space-age clothing and the Internet. Things improved dramatically from even 1960 to 1990.
As to the champagne freezing, it's the middle of summer - at the coast, it frequently gets above 32F. They just set an all-time high at McMurdo last month - 51F!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes... well... I wear a wrist watch while carrying a cellphone, among other reasons, because I have to change the battery in my watch every 24 months, whereas my phone can't last as long as a week between charges. Also, there are places I go where there is no cell service (some rural areas in the Midwest, subbasements where signals can't reach, Antarctica, etc.), or is forbidden (airplanes in flight). I'm sure someone will tell me to buy a new phone, but the one I have doesn't provide the time unless it's attached to the cell network, and doesn't have a "flight" mode. So, no signal == no battery.
In short, the watch happens to be a reasonably foolproof way of checking the time, especially since I frequently find myself looking at a blank or "searching for service" cellphone screen.
Because the amount that consumers have to spend on entertainment is considered a fixed pool. If they spend more on "product A" than they used to, analysts look to what other market segment the money was diverted from. Music has traditionally been a huge segment of entertainment dollars, gaming much less so (other segments include movies, amusement parks, theater tickets, and many more).
Also, in times of economic turndown, if you are in an entertainment industry, you want to know if comsumers are spending more, less, or the same on entertainment overall, and how much of that is going into the pockets of your market segment.
It is difficult to make money in any industry if you don't have a grasp of how much money there is to pursue. the gaming industry, from hardware vendors to large publishing houses have to be loving this news. Recorded music has been an entertainment giant for generations. Listeners have cut across all market segments. To see gaming surpass that, economically, shows a sea change in what forms of entertainment Americans are throwing their dollars into, and might provide a hint where the money will be allocation into the next few years (business cycle).
Guillaume, having wintered at the South Pole in 2004 and 2006 (overlapping the start and finish of your Winter), I can entirely agree with the importance of a having fulfilling job to ward off Winter boredom; and I, too, would jump at the chance to go to Mars for real (I've already signed up for the 2008 Winter at Pole); but, I guess we differ in that I've already considered sitting in a tin can for months with these guys. I visited the IBMP in 1999 as a potential candidate for a 240-day "mission", but they scaled back the crew to a few Russians, and a "mixed crew" from Canada, German, and Japan, and didn't take any Americans.
It was an interesting visit, though. Lots of 1970s Soviet-era hardware still set up and in use.
I love how the Micro Center is characterized as a "small, Midwest-based chain". I used to shop there when they were a tiny store front in a strip mall and specialized in Apple IIs.
I normally find myself in the Micro Center every couple of weeks anyway, just for normal sorts of computery purchases. I'll have to check out their Linspire stuff.
We've been blogging here since 1995 (but it wasn't called blogging back then)
-ethan
What we do at Pole is called the *300* Degree club - we crank the sauna up to +200F and run outside wearing only shoes at -100F.
http://penguincentral.com/300Club.html
(the photo is from my *second* 300 Club run this winter - no photographer out there the first time)
Before some smart-ass tries to claim that it's impossible to sit in a +200F sauna, remember that a) we are at a nominal 11,000' and b) there's about 0.5% RH, meaning that heat transfer to your body is quite poor. I wouldn't want to think about sitting in a +200F Sauna at sea level.
-ethan
And if they were marketing sushi, they'd call it "cold, raw, dead fish."
Good point. I forgot about the Coasties. Most of them don't spend much time on land, anyway, but when they are in port, they do count.
Yes, I'm on the Ice right now, wintering at Pole this year. If you were on the Ice between 1994 and 1997, I might know you. Hit the "feedback" link on my web page, and word will get to me.
McMurdo and Pole currently receive one refuling ship per year, in late January or early February (when the ice is the thinnest, and shortly after the Icebreaker has cut a channel).
The U.S. Antarctic Program is evaluating alternate energy sources to get our fuel resupply to every other year.
It's precious and it's expensive here.
Be surprised, then.
Piston airplanes run on 100LL (100 octane low-lead). The U.S. Antarctic Program and the N.Z. Antarctic Programme do _not_ operate piston planes. They operate Bell Ranger (Huey) helicopers, LC-130s, C-141s, C-5s, C-17s, a fleet of Caterpillar Tractors and other heavy equipment. They run on a variety of heavy fuels like kerosene/diesel (JP-8/AN-8/etc). There are some gasoline-powered light trucks and vans for summer use. They use a formulation the military calls "Mogas" (motor-vehicle gasoline). It's nowhere near 100 octane. Airplanes don't refuel at the corner Shell station for a reason. It's the wrong stuff for the engine.
It's just not there to sell him. Other adventurers make arrangements for fuel caches. He did not. He failed to plan. I say this as a licensed pilot and a four-season Antarctic veteran.
I took pictures of him when he flew over the Pole. As a pilot, I even thought to myself - what a load of fun that would be to do. I was surprised to find that he hadn't made prior arrangements.
Uh, guess again.
Summer started in Mactown over two months ago. The Icebreaker arrives in about a month. Two months from *now* the vessel will be arriving. You don't just show up at the dock and ask to throw an airplane on the vessel. USAP vessel operations are planned months in advance.
He really is running out of time. The summer is essentially half over. Pole closes in 68 days.
U.S. Research Stations in Antarctica are not run by the military. They are funded by the National Science Foundation. The Military does the flying because they have the expertise and the equipment. They do so under contract to the NSF.
The Navy detachments that once ran the research stations (NSFA) and exclusively did the flying (VXE6) were disestablished several years ago, but they hadn't been exclusive for years before that.
When I was first at McMurdo in 1995, NSFA ran the hospital, the air traffic control tower, weather and an electronics shop. They had already ceded the cooking, firefighting and other activities to the civilian contractors in previous years.
These days, the only military presence on the Ice is the New York Air National Guard (NYANG) who flies the LC-130s, (I think) regular Air Force who fly C-17s and C-141s, and an occasional Navy person at the McMurdo radio station (still military-affiliated).
The overwhelming majority of us down here are civilians.
Until I moved offices earlier this month, I had a "NeXT Computer" (not a cube - they weren't labelled "cubes" until the slabs came out) set up and running next to my daily-use desktop (dual-Pentium box running RedHat).
I have a Compaq SLT/286 laptop (w/40MB internal HD, and a 3Com 10Mbit NIC in the dock) that I use to run my B&C Microsystems UP600 device programmer. I have burned a couple dozen devices in the past two weeks with it. I also use the laptop with Kermit as a dumb terminal. Both rounds of recent use have been in assembling and testing my SpareTimeGizmos SBC-6120 (a modern implementation of a PDP-8 as seen at the VCF 6.0). The 286 replaced my Commodore Colt (8-bit PC clone) after the Colt's motherboard battery leaked. I tried to use an older Compaq luggable, but the PSU wasn't strong enough to run the UP600.
I also have a Zenith 8086 laptop (dual 720K 3.5" floppies!) with DOS 3.3 and Kermit that might as well be a portable dumb terminal.
Even older is an original model IBM 5150 PC (5 slots, cassette port, etc.) that's attached to a Northwest Instruments bus analyzer. It works, but I haven't fired it up in a while. The last time I repaired it, I found a 20MB ST506/ST412-interface disk (called "MFM" by many people) that has too many bad tracks at the end, so it's now a 15MB-effective drive. A former employer bought this PC new for $5K just to run the analyzer (which was $20K). I don't have frequent call to use it, but it was great to have around when debugging a hardware problem in an Amiga a few years ago.
My oldest boxes are several varieties of PDP-8 (some with discrete transistors, not chips), but they don't count because those aren't tools, those are toys.
Original model PDP-8 ("Straight-8"). One of the ones I own appeared in the ad on the back cover of the "CPU Wars" comic.
Every Dell Laptop I've ever owned. :-(
One summer when I was on a study-abroad program, I received a letter addressed with only my name, and the town I was in (Ancient Corinth).
I was rather surprised that it made it to me.
Hardly! The gas tank is in the *front*
:-)
I still _have_ my 1968 Beetle, the one I took my driver's test in! It only leaks a little oil.
-ethan
... in "Venus, Inc.", by Fred Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth. The second story has a character who is bombarded by an advertisement that induces an addition to the product (Mokie-Coke). He becomes an instant "Mokehead".
You were essentially a test-case for Dot Com compensation practices crossing over into Hollywood. From the news coverage of them since, it doesn't appear to have been a personal financial success to you. How did the rise and fall of Priceline.com affect your attitudes of the Internet? What impact do you think these events will have on novel compensation schemes for actors in the future?
It's an amazing burp... really. So much pressure that it makes no noise.
LN2 expands about 720 times when warmed to 98.6.
I do the smoke-ring trick... you do _not_ want to swallow it.
The RTT from McMurdo Station (at the coast) to my ISP back home in Ohio is in the 1600ms range. It's similar at Pole, but at least at McMurdo, we get 24-hour-a-day satellite coverage (the cutoff is about 80S, and McMurdo is at 78S - they had to excavate the ground in front of the dish; it's tipped so far forward that there wasn't room at first. The dome and pedestal were designed for temperate latitudes).
There are standalone, automated weather stations in a few locations around the continent - AGO sites (Antarctic Geophysical Observatory - see the
weather at AGO-1). They have already solved the problem of how to build and power such things - propane - Hank Hill's favorite. You could use solar for the Summer to reduce fuel consumption, but in the end, you are burning stuff to make heat and electricity. At least fiber is passive.
And, yes, RTGs are illegal according to treaty. They used to use them in the 1970s (for automated weather stations), but the last one was removed over five years ago.
We also jump in the ocean, but not near a thermal vent - the water is 29.2F (there's that much salt in it). In the summertime, the jump is somewhat pleasant. In the winter, the wind-chill was -35F or so.
Having wintered-over, I have a deep respect for the explorers at the turn of the 20th century. We had hot meals almost every day (in the field, we might get hot drinks and cold sandwiches), running water, warm housing, space-age clothing and the Internet. Things improved dramatically from even 1960 to 1990.
As to the champagne freezing, it's the middle of summer - at the coast, it frequently gets above 32F. They just set an all-time high at McMurdo last month - 51F!