Boeing and Bigelow have the CST-100, which has not flown yet - but is scheduled to be crewed in late 2017. Furthest along is probably SpaceX, with their Dragon V2, scheduled to be crewed in early 2017. The last two options are particularly exciting, since they promise to cut the cost of getting an astronaut to the space station by up to 2/3 compared to a Soyuz launch.
Sorry, I have to correct you there. Unless Russia has been publishing their internal costs and markup of their launches, we only know the launch price of the Soyuz. Unless they are very foolish, the cost is a secret.
I'm a husband and I feel that google translate is missing the most important language: "english"->"wife". When she says "Do I look ok in this dress?" and I say "yep.", she seems to hear something different.
It'd help clear up many misunderstandings.
Jokes aside, men misunderstand the question. Men hear "Question! Please respond to my question!" when in fact, the words the woman spoke are not a question at all. These words are an invitation to a conversation about style and fashion. The woman is angry that the man dismissed her invitation to have a discussion. The question is irrelevant.
I'd go even further than that and say that it depends on the type of scale being used as well.
When it comes to user reviews, if the reviews are thumbs up or down, I'll do the same as you and read the thumbs down reviews first, since it's easier to filter out the extreme reviewers and get a sense for the common issues. If it's a 5-point scale, I'll read through the 2s and 4s, since those reviews can give you a quick understanding of the pros and cons for the product, without nearly the level of overstatement that you'll need to filter through in the 1s and 5s. And I don't even bother reading reviews based on 10-point scales, since the way that everyday users grade on a 10-point scale is arbitrary to the point of uselessness (e.g. some people treat it like a 5-point scale with better granularity, while others treat it like an academic scale).
The best scale I have seen used is a 4-part scale-
Is it worth the money even if you don't like the genre? Yes/No
Is it worth the money if you do like the genre? Yes/No
Is it worth the money if you like a very specific subgenre? Yes/No
Is it not worth your money? Yes/No
Some Youtube reviewers use this format and I've found it much more meaningful than any pure point scale.
This type of thing sounds VERY similar to the folks that still posit that marijuana still has no health benefits.
FACT: Alcohol is a poison to the human body. One can fatally overdose from consumption, and it has killed millions in human history.
FACT: The cannabis plant, consumed in any form, is not harmful to the human body. In thousands of years, not a single fatality has been directly associated with its use. Its physically impossible to overdose from consuming it.
Similar? No, more like BIG FUCKING DIFFERENCE.
Well, I think you're conflating toxicity to mortality.
Pot may not kill you, but I do believe there are studies showing that prolonged, continuous usage (i.e. abuse) can lead to some memory problems and possibly neuron damage in the brain?
So, I stand by what I said, most all medicines ARE somewhat poisonous, just depends on how much you do and how toxic they are in those amounts.
Yes, but is that the cannabis itself, or the benzene, toluene and naphthalene that you get when you smoke it? Maybe vaporizing or eating brownies is harmless?
The problem is we don't know- as far as I know there are no scientific studies on long-term side effects looking at the different modes of consumption. There is a tremendous amount of research that hasn't been done yet due to reasons of the drug's unreasonable legal status. And the research that has been done probably doesn't include a full representation of the population. Just as an example, anyone with a job that gets drug tested frequently probably wouldn't even sign up for a scientific study- they might be seen by someone and lose their job. That tilts the study samples towards people on the lower rungs of society.
Rofl.
A NEW solar thermal plant might be more expensive then an EXISTING nuclear plant.
But a NEW thermal plant is cheaper than a NEW nuclear one.
Replacing existing stuff, whichs investments are written off, with new stuff, regardless how cheap, is always difficult.
Does not change the fact that per W a new solar plant is the second cheapest thing you can build in our times (regardless of PV or CST) The only thing cheaper is wind.
Not to mention that storing energy in a fluid before it becomes electricity is much more efficient than storing electricity.
Mailing a single item of contraband is likely to go unnoticed by the postal service or a privately owned shipping company. Everything in this universe is a game of percentages though, and if you ship enough contraband packages someone will eventually slip up... most likely a recipient of your dark services.
Ask yourself this, darknet warrior, how many close friends would you trust with information that could severely impair your freedom of movement?
Now, how many strangers?
I'll guess that you haven't actually bought anything from such a website. Small packages are almost impossible to trace back to the shipper due to the way they are mailed. Most sellers would buy some stamps using cash and take them home. Stuff the goods into a small flat-rate box or envelope, add printed labels using the return address of a randomly-selected legitimate local small business, and drop it in a mailbox in a different location from the post office and on a different day. Hopefully they did all this far away from their house.
The idea is for your package to look like all the other packages. It is next to impossible to identify a unique zebra in a 1-million strong herd of other zebras. The sellers who seem to have gotten caught were the "big fish" shipping larger packages, often in non-standard packaging or across international borders. I have not heard about any busts of low-level dealers shipping less than 1 pound (the limit for dropping in a mailbox).
Do you remember the daily show back when it was run by Craig Kilborn? Jon Stewart made a huge difference.
No I don't. Mostly because I was 14 at the time and my mom wouldn't let me stay up that late.
Jon Stewart has been a trusted newsman for 16 years. Nobody stays that long as a mainstream news anchor anymore. Mainstream news mixes truth, halftruths, and opinions and presents them all in the same manner. Jon Stewart switches to a different tone (or faces a different camera) when he is presenting jokes or opinions. That's why he is so trusted by young people. I don't have to agree with everything he says, and for a long time, many of his views I don't agree with. But he has the decency to give me hints when he is stating facts vs jokes vs opinions.
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
Where'd you get that idea? Most power is used in the middle of the day, when it's hot and everyone turns on their A/C. Solar produces the most power right in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining brightest. Solar is perfect for supplying peak loads in places where people use A/C.
1. Hydro
2. Nuclear
3. Geothermal.
1 and 3 are location limted.
2 is location limited too: you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
All power plants are location limited. Power plants need 3 main things- fuel, cooling, and high voltage lines. Fuel supply can be a huge issue. This plant doesn't have rail access for example. It's the only significant power plant I have visited which doesn't. From my back of the envelope calculation, they need at least 200 18-wheeler loads of fuel a day to maintain operations. Plus probably another 50 18-wheeler loads of lime for the pollution control equipment. They may be burning more in diesel fuel than they are getting out of their coal.
Yeah, that was my thought: desert, very hot water (at least 2/3 of overall energy output is lost to heat), and cooling pounds. . . Me thinks that evaporation would need to be significant to get the water cool enough to run back through the plant.
Is this better than letting the water run downstream and be utilized for other purposes? Is this really "water conservation" or "water cost minimization?"
Plant design engineers don't make this decision. The environmentalists did. At some point, somebody complained that used cooling water was heating up rivers. The state made some rules saying you can't do that, and so the engineers found another way. And then when the environmentalists complained that they were evaporating lots of water, the plant design engineers said "OK" and went with air cooled condensers instead (giant dry radiators). These use substantial amounts of electricity to spin the fans, and so therefore burn more fuel, and release more CO2, compared to a water-using plant.
There are big trade-offs to be made between using water and having a more efficient (less polluting) plant. An engineer could probably make some fancy graphs and find the optimum water usage which created the least amount of environmental harm. These decisions aren't made by engineers, however. They are dictated by state environmental groups.
Although evaporation losses still need to be dealt with.
Water use through evaporation isn't a "loss" in this case. It is a feature. That's the mechanism carrying the heat away.
You can use giant dry radiators instead. They are called Air Cooled Condensers or ACCs. this plant* has a bank of air cooled condensers - the light gray banks on the left side of the plant. They use a huge amount of electricity but no water. A decision has to be made on which is more OK to waste- fuel or water. This plant burns natural gas in 2 gas turbines, using the waste heat to run a steam turbine. In Primm, Nevada, obviously water is more valuable than gas.
*If you zoom out from this map, the Ivanpah solar thermal facility is just across the border to the southwest. They use an air cooled condenser too.
Maybe 10k$ is a little bit over my budget, but trust me, I would pay a lot for an Ethernet cable whose connector has virtually unbreakable tabs.
The tabs don't get me usually. It's the wire itself. Most cables, even plenum-rated ones with plastic stiffening cores, can't take much abuse before they can't function at 1gbps.
So the vendor can/will push an update OTA to *my* vehicle w/o my specific consent?
Also... Imagine (a) needing to use your vehicle - for an emergency, perhaps, in the middle of the night only to be met the dashboard message: "Update in progress; Please wait..." or (b) waking up to a bricked vehicle from a bad update.
Let's see how it is implemented before we make that kind of complaint. Any piece of software actually critical to the function of the engine is probably very small in size and quickly installed. GPS maps and entertainment systems shouldn't exclude driving the car. I'm looking forward to possibly interacting with the car maker directly rather than having to deal with the dealerships.
The last car I bought had an outdated GPS system, so I wrote in the contract that they must update it at their expense. Of course, this isn't a typical request, so they forgot about that clause in the contract. It took them a week to get the software into their dealership and 3 hours to actually install it. The dealership isn't anywhere near my house, so that was further inconvenience. If it could have been done over the air I would have saved hours of time and frustration.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
I have no idea on where this quote came from, but to paraphrase, "Good journalism is presenting news that people don't want to hear".
Not only that, many don't have the equipment to run a multicam setup. Cameras and a time code generator cost money.
I've done multicam with 2 smartphones. You don't need a time code generator. Start the recording on both cameras at approximately the same time, and make a loud, sharp, noise (like a single hand clap or banging a table) to emulate the clapperboard that you are too poor to buy. Don't stop the recording until the scene is done. Use the loud sharp noise at the beginning of the clips to sync up the videos. Make your video PIP and throw away one of the audio tracks, or do proper cuts if you want to be fancy. Done.
Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.
That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.
It isn't a ton of extra work. If you are doing a multicamera setup anyway, you should just be sure to use a clapperboard so that you can sync the videos up easier. If you are working with multiple cameras anyway, the extra steps in Premiere (Elements or otherwise) to put different angles in Picture in Picture boxes (PIP) is absolutely trivial. For sports and porn the resulting videos are a lot more interesting. I've used it for family videos too- with young children you never know which way they are going to look, fall down, or throw birthday cake. You don't even need fancy equipment. 2 modern smartphones and someone clapping their hands at the start of filming (for ease of syncing later) is the minimum requirement.
Apparently the CDC only has data from 11 States, and Mississippi isn't one of them. Other groups have more data available, but so far the best compilation I've found is at some anti-vax site - http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/wh...
Their chart has Mississippi ranked 44th for autism rates, West Virginia is 39th.
And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.
Those are all states where houses commonly have basements, and they are in the hottest zones for radon exposure. Those are all states where a large number of people get their water from wells, and arsenic in the groundwater is a problem. The Radium in groundwater map is tilted towards those 3 states too. When I was a kid in Maine, we drank untreated well water and played in the basement nearly every day.
I think it makes a lot more sense to look at connections between long-term exposure to known toxins and autism.
In other words, they still won't require broadband providers to open up the public infrastructure to competing ISPs.
You'll still be stuck using their IPv4 protocol or Ethernet service, whichever they choose... and innovation in network technology from competing providers, or innovating with different networking technologies won't be possible like you can do with an unbundled loop and a competing carrier.
Small steps. Writing letters to the FCC and your congressional representatives in support of these proposed regulations is the best way to encourage more pro-consumer internet legislation in the future. Internet openness isn't a big issue in American politics. That doesn't mean we can't make it one, but it takes time. In the last 10 years we have witnessed gay rights and marijuana decriminalization make HUGE advancements. They used to be fringe issues too, but now they are two of the hottest topics in politics. It wasn't a sprint, but a long marathon.
Tom Wheeler is actually a human being, not a faceless bureaucratic mouthpiece for the cable industry. Who would have thought it? I like his story about almost being the huge success that made AOL an also-ran in internet history, but for a rule that made the telephone network open, and the cable network closed. That is why so many people experienced the early internet at 1200 baud or 2400 baud, rather than 1.5 megabaud. Wheeler's early failure due to an FCC reg made a lasting impression on him. Now he has a chance to fix the problem that tripped him up. While the devil is always in the details, I like the direction he says he is going in. Kudos.
Giving the man Kudos on Slashdot is certainly not a bad thing, but if you want to encourage this kind of reasonable pro-consumer behavior, you need to write your comments to people that matter. I sent an email to Chairman Wheeler's account (tom.wheeler@fcc.gov) thanking him for his courage with my senate and house representatives on cc.
Maybe (probably) my email will come to nothing. But remember that all sorts of companies will be trying to defeat and bury his proposed regulations. Someone needs to make arguments contrary to the lobbyists, loudly and often.
Of course, for low mid-list and below, you are quite correct. Given the labels inability to determine who has earning potential, artists are effectively interchangeable.
I was going to disput this, but it seems quite easy to "make" a star nowadays. Just consider some of the pop artists that are popular nowadays. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have incredibly narrow vocal ranges, and without makeup they look like like completely average schlubs. And yet they have been promoted and marketed to the point where that doesn't matter at all. Hire the top songwriters and lyricists, add a bit of autotune, add makeup with a garden trowel, and you have yourself a star. I think the bigger question is whether a person as talented as Axl Rose or Mariah Carey can still "rise to the top" based on their talents alone, or if "manufactured success" is the only path now.
A data center should have power coming from two different generating plants...
I think you mean two different high voltage sources. Generating stations are all tied to the same grid in the US. The weak point is not at the power plant level, it is on the end-user transmission level.
I don't know what is more pathetic- that you think comments like this:
Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work.
are ok, or that 3 other people would vote it up to a +5. Maybe I'm wrong and you're right. Lets go back to putting ladies together in secretary pits. While we are at it, we might as well start calling all attractive coworkers "sugar tits" again.
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
You had me in total agreement until right here. But by dropping sexist ideas into your argument, you defeated yourself.
It should be plenty to say that men and women have measurably different sets of hormones, and that those hormones probably play a role in what kinds of tasks a person enjoys and/or excels at.
When you make an argument, avoid using comments which anyone might vehemently disagree with. "Hot" topics like that don't build up your argument and aren't needed. Making a persuasive argument is about getting the audience to say "yes, yes, yes, yes" in small steps. Having them say "yes, yes, yes, NOOOO" a good way to make someone take the opposing side.
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
You are absolutely correct in your sarcasm. Hormones and other chemicals in the body heavilly influence what someone finds interesting. I am a mechanical engineer and always had interests in machines, repairing things, and science. But if I smoke some weed the left side of my brain takes over and creative tasks become much more interesting- playing music, writing, etc. I had no interest whatsoever in playing an instrument until I started using marijuana at age 28. THC, a chemical, has changed the way I see those things and how much I enjoy them.
It could very well be that the chemicals Estrogen and Testosterone have an effect on which things a person likes and how much they enjoy them. If my estrogen/testosterone balance was tilted the other way, maybe I would find teaching small children stimulating and interesting. Or maybe if a women's estrogen/testosterone balance was shifted, they would find writing code fun.
Maybe estrogen and testosterone have nothing to do with the reasons why women aren't that into science and engineering. But maybe they do. There are shedloads of possible reasons besides "the culture" that haven't really been explored. Women are now 33% more likely than men to earn a bachelor degree. That's alarming. Women are getting degrees in literally everything else, including in medicine, advertising, and law. Those fields put up a lot of overt sexist resistance back in the day. Science/Engineering doesn't have that overt sexism (or it doesn't anymore), and I don't think that "subtle" sexism can be more powerful than the overt sexism that existed, and was soundly defeated, in medicine/law. There have been pushes for at least the last 10 years to improve the % of ladies in science and Engineering, and the numbers haven't really budged. I think that if women wanted to be in Science/Engineering, they would be.
That guy worked on some really "decent" stuff in his life: Death Magnetic (Metallica), 13 (Black Sabbath), Stadium Arcadium (Red Hot Chili Peppers). I think the loudness on those 3 albums is much worse than a low bitrate from a Youtube stream.
I have a friend who is an audio engineer. Sound engineers perform a service for a fee. That service often includes advice, but at the end of the day, they take their instructions from the person paying the fee. My friend has done a lot of editing that he didn't agree with, but if he put up too much of a fuss, he would be seen as "disagreeable", gain a reputation as someone difficult to work with, and he wouldn't be able to buy groceries. His views on audio change dramatically depending on who is the audience.
I don't think it is appropriate to blame the audio engineer for doing something that the label or the musicians probably asked for.
Broadly, it is general revenue to the treasury. In this case, a chunk of it was allocated ahead of time. Congress passed (and the President signed) the "Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012." That legislation instructed the FCC to find spectrum in this set of bands to auction off, and allocated a portion of the proceeds to (a) defray the cost of moving the existing users of the spectrum and (b) building a public safety wireless network.
So, the FCC, while it conducts the auction, does so at the request of, and on the behalf of, Congress.
Usually it is a troubling sign for a government if they are selling off assets and still running a deficit. We see it when small local governments sell off buildings and then rent the very same building back from the person they sold it to. So that leaves the question: "Selling off the spectrum- good thing or bad thing?"
Slashdot Mirror
Boeing and Bigelow have the CST-100, which has not flown yet - but is scheduled to be crewed in late 2017. Furthest along is probably SpaceX, with their Dragon V2, scheduled to be crewed in early 2017. The last two options are particularly exciting, since they promise to cut the cost of getting an astronaut to the space station by up to 2/3 compared to a Soyuz launch.
Sorry, I have to correct you there. Unless Russia has been publishing their internal costs and markup of their launches, we only know the launch price of the Soyuz. Unless they are very foolish, the cost is a secret.
I'm a husband and I feel that google translate is missing the most important language: "english"->"wife". When she says "Do I look ok in this dress?" and I say "yep.", she seems to hear something different.
It'd help clear up many misunderstandings.
Jokes aside, men misunderstand the question. Men hear "Question! Please respond to my question!" when in fact, the words the woman spoke are not a question at all. These words are an invitation to a conversation about style and fashion. The woman is angry that the man dismissed her invitation to have a discussion. The question is irrelevant.
I'd go even further than that and say that it depends on the type of scale being used as well.
When it comes to user reviews, if the reviews are thumbs up or down, I'll do the same as you and read the thumbs down reviews first, since it's easier to filter out the extreme reviewers and get a sense for the common issues. If it's a 5-point scale, I'll read through the 2s and 4s, since those reviews can give you a quick understanding of the pros and cons for the product, without nearly the level of overstatement that you'll need to filter through in the 1s and 5s. And I don't even bother reading reviews based on 10-point scales, since the way that everyday users grade on a 10-point scale is arbitrary to the point of uselessness (e.g. some people treat it like a 5-point scale with better granularity, while others treat it like an academic scale).
The best scale I have seen used is a 4-part scale-
Is it worth the money even if you don't like the genre? Yes/No
Is it worth the money if you do like the genre? Yes/No
Is it worth the money if you like a very specific subgenre? Yes/No
Is it not worth your money? Yes/No
Some Youtube reviewers use this format and I've found it much more meaningful than any pure point scale.
Well, I think you're conflating toxicity to mortality.
Pot may not kill you, but I do believe there are studies showing that prolonged, continuous usage (i.e. abuse) can lead to some memory problems and possibly neuron damage in the brain?
So, I stand by what I said, most all medicines ARE somewhat poisonous, just depends on how much you do and how toxic they are in those amounts.
Yes, but is that the cannabis itself, or the benzene, toluene and naphthalene that you get when you smoke it? Maybe vaporizing or eating brownies is harmless?
The problem is we don't know- as far as I know there are no scientific studies on long-term side effects looking at the different modes of consumption. There is a tremendous amount of research that hasn't been done yet due to reasons of the drug's unreasonable legal status. And the research that has been done probably doesn't include a full representation of the population. Just as an example, anyone with a job that gets drug tested frequently probably wouldn't even sign up for a scientific study- they might be seen by someone and lose their job. That tilts the study samples towards people on the lower rungs of society.
Rofl. A NEW solar thermal plant might be more expensive then an EXISTING nuclear plant. But a NEW thermal plant is cheaper than a NEW nuclear one.
Replacing existing stuff, whichs investments are written off, with new stuff, regardless how cheap, is always difficult.
Does not change the fact that per W a new solar plant is the second cheapest thing you can build in our times (regardless of PV or CST) The only thing cheaper is wind.
Not to mention that storing energy in a fluid before it becomes electricity is much more efficient than storing electricity.
Mailing a single item of contraband is likely to go unnoticed by the postal service or a privately owned shipping company. Everything in this universe is a game of percentages though, and if you ship enough contraband packages someone will eventually slip up... most likely a recipient of your dark services.
Ask yourself this, darknet warrior, how many close friends would you trust with information that could severely impair your freedom of movement?
Now, how many strangers?
I'll guess that you haven't actually bought anything from such a website. Small packages are almost impossible to trace back to the shipper due to the way they are mailed. Most sellers would buy some stamps using cash and take them home. Stuff the goods into a small flat-rate box or envelope, add printed labels using the return address of a randomly-selected legitimate local small business, and drop it in a mailbox in a different location from the post office and on a different day. Hopefully they did all this far away from their house.
The idea is for your package to look like all the other packages. It is next to impossible to identify a unique zebra in a 1-million strong herd of other zebras. The sellers who seem to have gotten caught were the "big fish" shipping larger packages, often in non-standard packaging or across international borders. I have not heard about any busts of low-level dealers shipping less than 1 pound (the limit for dropping in a mailbox).
Do you remember the daily show back when it was run by Craig Kilborn? Jon Stewart made a huge difference.
No I don't. Mostly because I was 14 at the time and my mom wouldn't let me stay up that late.
Jon Stewart has been a trusted newsman for 16 years. Nobody stays that long as a mainstream news anchor anymore. Mainstream news mixes truth, halftruths, and opinions and presents them all in the same manner. Jon Stewart switches to a different tone (or faces a different camera) when he is presenting jokes or opinions. That's why he is so trusted by young people. I don't have to agree with everything he says, and for a long time, many of his views I don't agree with. But he has the decency to give me hints when he is stating facts vs jokes vs opinions.
Solar's production curve does not match the peak user curve of electrical power.
Where'd you get that idea? Most power is used in the middle of the day, when it's hot and everyone turns on their A/C. Solar produces the most power right in the middle of the day, when the sun is shining brightest. Solar is perfect for supplying peak loads in places where people use A/C.
1. Hydro 2. Nuclear 3. Geothermal. 1 and 3 are location limted.
2 is location limited too: you can't put nuclear close to a fault line, in a place where there's tornadoes or hurricanes, and you generally need to put it next to a river for cooling though you can also use giant cooling towers. And of course, you can't put it anywhere near a metro area.
All power plants are location limited. Power plants need 3 main things- fuel, cooling, and high voltage lines. Fuel supply can be a huge issue. This plant doesn't have rail access for example. It's the only significant power plant I have visited which doesn't. From my back of the envelope calculation, they need at least 200 18-wheeler loads of fuel a day to maintain operations. Plus probably another 50 18-wheeler loads of lime for the pollution control equipment. They may be burning more in diesel fuel than they are getting out of their coal.
Yeah, that was my thought: desert, very hot water (at least 2/3 of overall energy output is lost to heat), and cooling pounds. . . Me thinks that evaporation would need to be significant to get the water cool enough to run back through the plant. Is this better than letting the water run downstream and be utilized for other purposes? Is this really "water conservation" or "water cost minimization?"
Plant design engineers don't make this decision. The environmentalists did. At some point, somebody complained that used cooling water was heating up rivers. The state made some rules saying you can't do that, and so the engineers found another way. And then when the environmentalists complained that they were evaporating lots of water, the plant design engineers said "OK" and went with air cooled condensers instead (giant dry radiators). These use substantial amounts of electricity to spin the fans, and so therefore burn more fuel, and release more CO2, compared to a water-using plant.
There are big trade-offs to be made between using water and having a more efficient (less polluting) plant. An engineer could probably make some fancy graphs and find the optimum water usage which created the least amount of environmental harm. These decisions aren't made by engineers, however. They are dictated by state environmental groups.
Although evaporation losses still need to be dealt with.
Water use through evaporation isn't a "loss" in this case. It is a feature. That's the mechanism carrying the heat away.
You can use giant dry radiators instead. They are called Air Cooled Condensers or ACCs. this plant* has a bank of air cooled condensers - the light gray banks on the left side of the plant. They use a huge amount of electricity but no water. A decision has to be made on which is more OK to waste- fuel or water. This plant burns natural gas in 2 gas turbines, using the waste heat to run a steam turbine. In Primm, Nevada, obviously water is more valuable than gas.
*If you zoom out from this map, the Ivanpah solar thermal facility is just across the border to the southwest. They use an air cooled condenser too.
Maybe 10k$ is a little bit over my budget, but trust me, I would pay a lot for an Ethernet cable whose connector has virtually unbreakable tabs.
The tabs don't get me usually. It's the wire itself. Most cables, even plenum-rated ones with plastic stiffening cores, can't take much abuse before they can't function at 1gbps.
So the vendor can/will push an update OTA to *my* vehicle w/o my specific consent?
Also... Imagine (a) needing to use your vehicle - for an emergency, perhaps, in the middle of the night only to be met the dashboard message: "Update in progress; Please wait ..." or (b) waking up to a bricked vehicle from a bad update.
Let's see how it is implemented before we make that kind of complaint. Any piece of software actually critical to the function of the engine is probably very small in size and quickly installed. GPS maps and entertainment systems shouldn't exclude driving the car. I'm looking forward to possibly interacting with the car maker directly rather than having to deal with the dealerships.
The last car I bought had an outdated GPS system, so I wrote in the contract that they must update it at their expense. Of course, this isn't a typical request, so they forgot about that clause in the contract. It took them a week to get the software into their dealership and 3 hours to actually install it. The dealership isn't anywhere near my house, so that was further inconvenience. If it could have been done over the air I would have saved hours of time and frustration.
We all know what happened. It was adequately described. Fox New just panders to the warmongers among us and is trying to rile them up.
I would advance the argument that the function of a news agency is to report the news. Not some of the news or the news you / I approve of. This is what's really happening in the world around us, without protecting us from things we may find objectionable or viewpoints differing from our own. How can we possibly make rational decisions or hold properly informed opinions based on only some of the information about a given situation?
I have no idea on where this quote came from, but to paraphrase, "Good journalism is presenting news that people don't want to hear".
Not only that, many don't have the equipment to run a multicam setup. Cameras and a time code generator cost money.
I've done multicam with 2 smartphones. You don't need a time code generator. Start the recording on both cameras at approximately the same time, and make a loud, sharp, noise (like a single hand clap or banging a table) to emulate the clapperboard that you are too poor to buy. Don't stop the recording until the scene is done. Use the loud sharp noise at the beginning of the clips to sync up the videos. Make your video PIP and throw away one of the audio tracks, or do proper cuts if you want to be fancy. Done.
Sure was. My DVD remote still has the Angle button. I can't recall a single title that used it.
That's because it's a useless gimmick. And it requires lot of extra work to produce, with little or no real benefit.
It isn't a ton of extra work. If you are doing a multicamera setup anyway, you should just be sure to use a clapperboard so that you can sync the videos up easier. If you are working with multiple cameras anyway, the extra steps in Premiere (Elements or otherwise) to put different angles in Picture in Picture boxes (PIP) is absolutely trivial. For sports and porn the resulting videos are a lot more interesting. I've used it for family videos too- with young children you never know which way they are going to look, fall down, or throw birthday cake. You don't even need fancy equipment. 2 modern smartphones and someone clapping their hands at the start of filming (for ease of syncing later) is the minimum requirement.
Apparently the CDC only has data from 11 States, and Mississippi isn't one of them. Other groups have more data available, but so far the best compilation I've found is at some anti-vax site - http://vaxtruth.org/2012/04/wh... Their chart has Mississippi ranked 44th for autism rates, West Virginia is 39th.
And yeah, that does make the autism argument look real dumb. Especially when you look at the top 3 States for autism - Minnesota, Maine and Oregon; which interestingly enough also have some of the highest rates of non-vaccination.
Those are all states where houses commonly have basements, and they are in the hottest zones for radon exposure. Those are all states where a large number of people get their water from wells, and arsenic in the groundwater is a problem. The Radium in groundwater map is tilted towards those 3 states too. When I was a kid in Maine, we drank untreated well water and played in the basement nearly every day.
I think it makes a lot more sense to look at connections between long-term exposure to known toxins and autism.
Except I noted the no last-mile unbundling bit.
In other words, they still won't require broadband providers to open up the public infrastructure to competing ISPs.
You'll still be stuck using their IPv4 protocol or Ethernet service, whichever they choose... and innovation in network technology from competing providers, or innovating with different networking technologies won't be possible like you can do with an unbundled loop and a competing carrier.
Small steps. Writing letters to the FCC and your congressional representatives in support of these proposed regulations is the best way to encourage more pro-consumer internet legislation in the future. Internet openness isn't a big issue in American politics. That doesn't mean we can't make it one, but it takes time. In the last 10 years we have witnessed gay rights and marijuana decriminalization make HUGE advancements. They used to be fringe issues too, but now they are two of the hottest topics in politics. It wasn't a sprint, but a long marathon.
Tom Wheeler is actually a human being, not a faceless bureaucratic mouthpiece for the cable industry. Who would have thought it? I like his story about almost being the huge success that made AOL an also-ran in internet history, but for a rule that made the telephone network open, and the cable network closed. That is why so many people experienced the early internet at 1200 baud or 2400 baud, rather than 1.5 megabaud. Wheeler's early failure due to an FCC reg made a lasting impression on him. Now he has a chance to fix the problem that tripped him up. While the devil is always in the details, I like the direction he says he is going in. Kudos.
Giving the man Kudos on Slashdot is certainly not a bad thing, but if you want to encourage this kind of reasonable pro-consumer behavior, you need to write your comments to people that matter. I sent an email to Chairman Wheeler's account (tom.wheeler@fcc.gov) thanking him for his courage with my senate and house representatives on cc.
Maybe (probably) my email will come to nothing. But remember that all sorts of companies will be trying to defeat and bury his proposed regulations. Someone needs to make arguments contrary to the lobbyists, loudly and often.
Of course, for low mid-list and below, you are quite correct. Given the labels inability to determine who has earning potential, artists are effectively interchangeable.
I was going to disput this, but it seems quite easy to "make" a star nowadays. Just consider some of the pop artists that are popular nowadays. Taylor Swift and Katy Perry have incredibly narrow vocal ranges, and without makeup they look like like completely average schlubs. And yet they have been promoted and marketed to the point where that doesn't matter at all. Hire the top songwriters and lyricists, add a bit of autotune, add makeup with a garden trowel, and you have yourself a star. I think the bigger question is whether a person as talented as Axl Rose or Mariah Carey can still "rise to the top" based on their talents alone, or if "manufactured success" is the only path now.
A data center should have power coming from two different generating plants...
I think you mean two different high voltage sources. Generating stations are all tied to the same grid in the US. The weak point is not at the power plant level, it is on the end-user transmission level.
Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work.
are ok, or that 3 other people would vote it up to a +5. Maybe I'm wrong and you're right. Lets go back to putting ladies together in secretary pits. While we are at it, we might as well start calling all attractive coworkers "sugar tits" again.
We will, in all likelihood, mishandle the translation of females into technical positions, drawing in students with no real interest in the topic but with starry-eyed expectations from the fancy posters and sweet words. Then we will learn not that we have approached the effort improperly, but that women are simply not suited for--perhaps not intelligent enough for--science and technology work. This stigma will not just affect education; instead, people will learn that women are directly inferior as engineers, by nature, and so will not hire competent female engineers any more.
You had me in total agreement until right here. But by dropping sexist ideas into your argument, you defeated yourself.
It should be plenty to say that men and women have measurably different sets of hormones, and that those hormones probably play a role in what kinds of tasks a person enjoys and/or excels at.
When you make an argument, avoid using comments which anyone might vehemently disagree with. "Hot" topics like that don't build up your argument and aren't needed. Making a persuasive argument is about getting the audience to say "yes, yes, yes, yes" in small steps. Having them say "yes, yes, yes, NOOOO" a good way to make someone take the opposing side.
Yes, because I'm sure there are lots of colleges and universities out there are telling girls that they can't be programmers, and throwing them out of the CS program the second they're discovered to possess vaginas. The administration probably threatens them away with a stick or something.
You are absolutely correct in your sarcasm. Hormones and other chemicals in the body heavilly influence what someone finds interesting. I am a mechanical engineer and always had interests in machines, repairing things, and science. But if I smoke some weed the left side of my brain takes over and creative tasks become much more interesting- playing music, writing, etc. I had no interest whatsoever in playing an instrument until I started using marijuana at age 28. THC, a chemical, has changed the way I see those things and how much I enjoy them.
It could very well be that the chemicals Estrogen and Testosterone have an effect on which things a person likes and how much they enjoy them. If my estrogen/testosterone balance was tilted the other way, maybe I would find teaching small children stimulating and interesting. Or maybe if a women's estrogen/testosterone balance was shifted, they would find writing code fun.
Maybe estrogen and testosterone have nothing to do with the reasons why women aren't that into science and engineering. But maybe they do. There are shedloads of possible reasons besides "the culture" that haven't really been explored. Women are now 33% more likely than men to earn a bachelor degree. That's alarming. Women are getting degrees in literally everything else, including in medicine, advertising, and law. Those fields put up a lot of overt sexist resistance back in the day. Science/Engineering doesn't have that overt sexism (or it doesn't anymore), and I don't think that "subtle" sexism can be more powerful than the overt sexism that existed, and was soundly defeated, in medicine/law. There have been pushes for at least the last 10 years to improve the % of ladies in science and Engineering, and the numbers haven't really budged. I think that if women wanted to be in Science/Engineering, they would be.
That guy worked on some really "decent" stuff in his life: Death Magnetic (Metallica), 13 (Black Sabbath), Stadium Arcadium (Red Hot Chili Peppers). I think the loudness on those 3 albums is much worse than a low bitrate from a Youtube stream.
I have a friend who is an audio engineer. Sound engineers perform a service for a fee. That service often includes advice, but at the end of the day, they take their instructions from the person paying the fee. My friend has done a lot of editing that he didn't agree with, but if he put up too much of a fuss, he would be seen as "disagreeable", gain a reputation as someone difficult to work with, and he wouldn't be able to buy groceries. His views on audio change dramatically depending on who is the audience.
I don't think it is appropriate to blame the audio engineer for doing something that the label or the musicians probably asked for.
Broadly, it is general revenue to the treasury. In this case, a chunk of it was allocated ahead of time. Congress passed (and the President signed) the "Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act of 2012." That legislation instructed the FCC to find spectrum in this set of bands to auction off, and allocated a portion of the proceeds to (a) defray the cost of moving the existing users of the spectrum and (b) building a public safety wireless network.
So, the FCC, while it conducts the auction, does so at the request of, and on the behalf of, Congress.
Usually it is a troubling sign for a government if they are selling off assets and still running a deficit. We see it when small local governments sell off buildings and then rent the very same building back from the person they sold it to. So that leaves the question: "Selling off the spectrum- good thing or bad thing?"