No, it may just be incompetence. Although subject to revision, a reasonable scenario is fire -> fire department -> water on fire -> Ooops, shouldn't have done that - very rapid exothermic reaction AKA explosion.
Apparently there are a number of volunteer fire firefighters missing. I'm tentatively putting this together as bad training / bad luck / fog of war mistake. Some officer in the VFD should have pulled people back until they were damned sure of what they were spraying. Even underfunded, undermanned departments would do occasional walkthroughs of major problem areas in the district, would talk to the engineers, owners, foremen and come up with plans.
Of course, in the middle of an evolving incident, it's easy to ignore all that. It's the primary killer of fireman - storming in when they should have been held back. Of course, hindisight is often more accurate than forsight.
You can't ban gunpowder. It's too easy to make. Explosives in general are easy to make. The hard part is to get them to do what you want, when you want to.
But in a modern industrial society where there are many items and devices with high specific energies (not the right technical term, too tired to look it up), you can release that energy in many ways with various degrees of destructiveness. Look how much time and care we spend on keeping things from blowing up.
Oh, and this is why Slashdot needs to keep this sparse UI - from a distance it looks like every other debugger / testing program. Close up it's incoherent garbage which is exactly what a debugging / testing program would look like to a layman.
This is easily solved by keeping an old tower around, prefereably with lots of fans and blinky lights. When something is down, you drag an impressive amount of gear and supplies around it (Mountain Dews, Cheetos, beer, etc.) and look busy until Google figures it out.
They'll never know. If they ask, you are working on the Google 'preprocessor' or something like that.
So, most trips in cars are repetitive - you drive to work every day. Your Google-O-Matic could 'learn' the route over time, follow your driving habits, confer with other Google-O-matics about their experiences. Maybe the first time you drive a route, you go manual. Not such a big deal.
Boats have had autopilots for years. Most of them are pretty primitive. Planes likewise. The captains of both devices are responsible for the vessel at all times. Same as with an autonomous car. The driver decides when / if to go autopilot.
Now the car just might come back with "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that", but I just don't see a scenario where the human being is completely out of the loop. Even the 'Johnny Cab' scenario is going to have a dispatcher / remote driver supervising the taxi.
There's a reason that business schools all talk about producing widgets - because the product doesn't matter.
And there is a reason why MBAs are held at at arm's length (or a long pole if you can get one) by everyone else.
The product DOES matter. Yes, there are certain similarities between business processes of similar sizes, yes, there is particular knowledge and aptitudes for managing those common business processes, but no, Virginia, as management you have to understand your business. Often at some significantly detailed level.
That is one reason why companies like Microsoft and HP are floundering. The boards really think they're dealing with widgets and replaceable "resources". Ofttimes this doesn't work for very long, nor very well.
Why do people think that doctors run around in random places, poised to react to an EMERGENCY by answering their cell phones and running out the door? It doesn't happen. If your services are that critical, you're there at the hospital. If you need to be called in, the system has already been designed to deal with lack of contact / delayed contact.
Everybody calm down and take a Xanax. It's OK to be disconnected from your cell phone. It's a communication device, not a piece of life support equipment.
There is no guarantee that you can make 911 (or any other call) anywhere, any time. Just get used to that concept, life is easy and serene - just like it's been for the several thousand years civilization has managed to poke along without cell phones.
If you are doing something that absolutely needs real time contact with someone else, stay home, stay at work or figure out some other system.
If you were an AT&T customer, you'd never even begin to think you had access to the network when you needed it.
I am wondering if the federal ban on funding for embryonic stem cells played a role in funding this particular research or even made the scientists redirect their efforts??? Sometimes a seemingly stupid policy has unexpected positive results. We in the US might actually dodge a research black hole by not getting to invested in embryonic stems cells which have many problems the persons on bodies don't.
Not a whole lot. Converting already differentiated cells (like skin cells) into other cell types or pleuripotent stem cells has always been a hot research topic. Even without the federal funding ban, working on embryonic cells is a PITA. Skin fibroblasts are much easier to deal with. Also, the understanding of how to de-differentiate cells is obviously an important part of understanding developmental biology. If you can run the tape both forwards and backwards you have a better chance of understanding the process.
The two are complementary approaches. Did the federal ban speed things up? Who knows? Maybe if one researcher hadn't been on that all week bender we would have had the recent advances 20 years ago. If George Bush hadn't been elected twice we might have flying cars by now.... If Obama hadn't been elected, I might be able to buy some shotgun shells..... Oops. Digressing here. Sorry.
Because this has 5 zettabytes of storage. Never mind that would be about a billion 5 TB drives, and that the global annual production of hard drives is on the order of 100 million drives. After all, why would Google need even about 800 Gb for every person in the world? Why would google need to hold enough data to account for global internet traffic for the next 180 years at current rates, without ever needing to buy more storage when it becomes denser/cheaper in the future. Maybe they are only storing a year's worth of internet traffic, but want to spell out every byte as a twitter sized message.
Skynet. Self awareness takes processing power (most Americans not withstanding).
This doesn't appear to be the case. Look, for example at this reference, where several magnets had stuck together and yet caused problems. These appear to have been larger than buckyballs, but the idea is that they can loop back and pinch the bowel even if they are stuck together.
Even a cursory glance at the literature is a bit scary. The problem is that MOST things that kids swallow are pretty harmless and therefore not brought to anyone's attention. We don't know the numbers of kids that swallow magnets yet have no problems - they certainly exist - so the reporting bias is going to be fairly high.
But I personally would keep kids away from these things. They just don't need to play with them just yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, we're just waiting for the ansible.
No, it may just be incompetence. Although subject to revision, a reasonable scenario is fire -> fire department -> water on fire -> Ooops, shouldn't have done that - very rapid exothermic reaction AKA explosion.
Apparently there are a number of volunteer fire firefighters missing. I'm tentatively putting this together as bad training / bad luck / fog of war mistake. Some officer in the VFD should have pulled people back until they were damned sure of what they were spraying. Even underfunded, undermanned departments would do occasional walkthroughs of major problem areas in the district, would talk to the engineers, owners, foremen and come up with plans.
Of course, in the middle of an evolving incident, it's easy to ignore all that. It's the primary killer of fireman - storming in when they should have been held back. Of course, hindisight is often more accurate than forsight.
No text.
Oh. Wait.
And the Boston Marathon is a spontaneous Flash Mob?
That is a very unfortunate choice of words there.
Beyonce? Oh. Right you are.
Dr. Kersten, is that you?
Well, let's ban gunpowder instead.
You can't ban gunpowder. It's too easy to make. Explosives in general are easy to make. The hard part is to get them to do what you want, when you want to.
But in a modern industrial society where there are many items and devices with high specific energies (not the right technical term, too tired to look it up), you can release that energy in many ways with various degrees of destructiveness. Look how much time and care we spend on keeping things from blowing up.
Apparently 17 is considered unlucky in Italy, which didn't mean "Western countries" last time I looked.
Clint Eastwood would likely disagree with that statement.
Oh, and this is why Slashdot needs to keep this sparse UI - from a distance it looks like every other debugger / testing program. Close up it's incoherent garbage which is exactly what a debugging / testing program would look like to a layman.
This is easily solved by keeping an old tower around, prefereably with lots of fans and blinky lights. When something is down, you drag an impressive amount of gear and supplies around it (Mountain Dews, Cheetos, beer, etc.) and look busy until Google figures it out.
They'll never know. If they ask, you are working on the Google 'preprocessor' or something like that.
So, most trips in cars are repetitive - you drive to work every day. Your Google-O-Matic could 'learn' the route over time, follow your driving habits, confer with other Google-O-matics about their experiences. Maybe the first time you drive a route, you go manual. Not such a big deal.
Boats have had autopilots for years. Most of them are pretty primitive. Planes likewise. The captains of both devices are responsible for the vessel at all times. Same as with an autonomous car. The driver decides when / if to go autopilot.
Now the car just might come back with "I'm sorry Dave, I can't do that", but I just don't see a scenario where the human being is completely out of the loop. Even the 'Johnny Cab' scenario is going to have a dispatcher / remote driver supervising the taxi.
I find it ironic that I found out about the bombs on slashdot first.
I rather says something profound, but the actual lesson is left as an exercise for the poster...
Stay with Windows 7?
You mean upgrade to Windows 7. Most corps are still on XP.
Not everyone sits in a hardened concrete bunker waiting to launch nuclear missiles, you know.
There's a reason that business schools all talk about producing widgets - because the product doesn't matter.
And there is a reason why MBAs are held at at arm's length (or a long pole if you can get one) by everyone else.
The product DOES matter. Yes, there are certain similarities between business processes of similar sizes, yes, there is particular knowledge and aptitudes for managing those common business processes, but no, Virginia, as management you have to understand your business. Often at some significantly detailed level.
That is one reason why companies like Microsoft and HP are floundering. The boards really think they're dealing with widgets and replaceable "resources". Ofttimes this doesn't work for very long, nor very well.
And your CTO, CIO and IS staff would be laughing their heads off.
You're not the real customer. You're just a number, some bytes in a spreadsheet. A zero (and maybe a couple of ones if you're good).
Get used to it.
Why do people think that doctors run around in random places, poised to react to an EMERGENCY by answering their cell phones and running out the door? It doesn't happen. If your services are that critical, you're there at the hospital. If you need to be called in, the system has already been designed to deal with lack of contact / delayed contact.
Everybody calm down and take a Xanax. It's OK to be disconnected from your cell phone. It's a communication device, not a piece of life support equipment.
There is no guarantee that you can make 911 (or any other call) anywhere, any time. Just get used to that concept, life is easy and serene - just like it's been for the several thousand years civilization has managed to poke along without cell phones.
If you are doing something that absolutely needs real time contact with someone else, stay home, stay at work or figure out some other system.
If you were an AT&T customer, you'd never even begin to think you had access to the network when you needed it.
Just use an iPhone and hold it wrong.
Easy peasy. Legal, even.
I am wondering if the federal ban on funding for embryonic stem cells played a role in funding this particular research or even made the scientists redirect their efforts??? Sometimes a seemingly stupid policy has unexpected positive results. We in the US might actually dodge a research black hole by not getting to invested in embryonic stems cells which have many problems the persons on bodies don't.
Not a whole lot. Converting already differentiated cells (like skin cells) into other cell types or pleuripotent stem cells has always been a hot research topic. Even without the federal funding ban, working on embryonic cells is a PITA. Skin fibroblasts are much easier to deal with. Also, the understanding of how to de-differentiate cells is obviously an important part of understanding developmental biology. If you can run the tape both forwards and backwards you have a better chance of understanding the process.
The two are complementary approaches. Did the federal ban speed things up? Who knows? Maybe if one researcher hadn't been on that all week bender we would have had the recent advances 20 years ago. If George Bush hadn't been elected twice we might have flying cars by now.... If Obama hadn't been elected, I might be able to buy some shotgun shells..... Oops. Digressing here. Sorry.
Because this has 5 zettabytes of storage. Never mind that would be about a billion 5 TB drives, and that the global annual production of hard drives is on the order of 100 million drives. After all, why would Google need even about 800 Gb for every person in the world? Why would google need to hold enough data to account for global internet traffic for the next 180 years at current rates, without ever needing to buy more storage when it becomes denser/cheaper in the future. Maybe they are only storing a year's worth of internet traffic, but want to spell out every byte as a twitter sized message.
Skynet. Self awareness takes processing power (most Americans not withstanding).
Waddya mean? The NSA/CIA/DEA/FBI owns Google.
Isn't it the other way around? Who has the bigger budget? Less Congressional oversight? Better food?
It's a bird!
It's a plane!
(Somebody really needs to come up with a Superman UAV.)
This doesn't appear to be the case. Look, for example at this reference, where several magnets had stuck together and yet caused problems. These appear to have been larger than buckyballs, but the idea is that they can loop back and pinch the bowel even if they are stuck together.
Even a cursory glance at the literature is a bit scary. The problem is that MOST things that kids swallow are pretty harmless and therefore not brought to anyone's attention. We don't know the numbers of kids that swallow magnets yet have no problems - they certainly exist - so the reporting bias is going to be fairly high.
But I personally would keep kids away from these things. They just don't need to play with them just yet.
Try getting bit by a radioactive spider. It might help.