I doubt it would stand up in today's legal quagmire but from my point of view if the company acts so badly that they need a term preventing lawsuits then the contract agreement they are forcing on you is not being entered into in an honest capacity. Therefore they have entered a contract fraudulently and the contract itself is null and void.
Yes I know I'm dreaming here because the US court system, among others, seems to have the rule of "deepest pockets win".
On top of that we also have the "we are able to change this agreement at any time" clause which allows them to bend you over a barrel at any time.
Nevermind that. Permitting, one-time taxes, environmental reviews, and various other government fees will kill you. Worse yet, you have no idea how much all that will cost because the government agencies bill for professional services by the hour. You think AT and T would be bad as a monopoly again? At least your phone bill had a stated rate. The permitting and inspection process has no such animal. It will "cost a lot", but you have no idea how much.
That kills the project right there. A lot of us would love to do a project like that. We can predetermine the cost of the land. We can predetermine the cost of a pre-fab structure. We can even get reasonable estimates for foundations if we know the dimension of the structure; but that's as far as you can go. After that, it's anybody's guess. Unless you have money to burn, or are willing to risk not being able to complete the project within a reasonable budget, you have to say "no".
I have actually seen uncompleted projects for sale by desperate sellers. It's a sad state of affairs.
This is in California, BTW so it might not be so bad elsewhere; but something tells me it's not much better.
Huh. Second time I get to reference the Earthship guys. They've put up a map of what they call Pockets of Freedom which are places in the US that don't have building codes or allow for "experimental architecture". Too bad none of them are in my area.:-(
You can build any house anywhere you want (in residential zones, or outside of city limits to avoid zoning issues), but you have to meet certain standards that we as a society/government have set for safety-related issues. The scope of these standards was more-or-less set before anyone thought of renewable housing, and simply updated over the years, so it's quite unlikely the provisions were written simply to exclude these houses.
So without knowing more (thanks for providing a link...) I expect the reason his housing projects are blocked is because they do not conform to building codes, not because they threaten the establishment. I am a libertarian and oppose government building codes, but it's simply dishonest to portray a building-code issue as a man-keeping-us-down-for-profit issue. If that's not what's going on, maybe you should have posted a few links to solid information so I wouldn't jump to the obvious conclusions.
Honestly what the hell is with Hollyweird. The greed there is just amazing and they seem to have a difficult time accepting anything really original but they'll throw money at a garbage sequel like nobody's business!
Warning I'm not a lawyer. Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution. They can't change the law retroactivly in a way that takes property from one group and gives it to another. With copyright extentions they get around it because the public domain isn't a person with rights.
You think that's air you're breathing?
The labels, like any of the other corrupt extortion industries, will just up the amount of money to the gooberment and/or threaten anybody else they need to until the law is removed, changed, or side-stepped.
As others have pointed out it leaks like a sieve compared to the space station and once the power cells on it go you better have a way to power it up if you need to bring it back down.
That said though I could easily see decompressing it for storage then sending up a "sealing team" and/or supplies to make it a permanent part of the station at a later date.
Can't do much about the added mass though and it definitely would make a difference to station-keeping. Maybe strip anything that's not a control/flight related mechanism out of it?
Seriously, solar cells get hot, and laptops themselves have enough trouble from getting hot, I'm curious as to how bad the hit is going to be in terms of device durability.
It comes with a cooling unit in a backpack. The backpack AC unit is also solar powered you just have to spread the included wings and keep your back to the sun.
after RTFA, I'm heading this one off at the pass; Yes, the concept of generating electricity from this effect has been done before, we all remember the/. article about the generator that looked like a violin bow, which vibrated in the wind and made a magnet move in a coil. FYI, the article mentions this exact device, and its inventor. this however, is a new approach to the process, and IMOH, better suited to remote/poor villages, as it is a more durable device (at least on initial assessment).
its good to see these sorts of innovations and adaptations of initial concepts. It means people are working the problems, and, it appears, finding more than one way to 'skin that cat'.
Turns out the preacher was right it was all a math error. The entire geek community needs to throw an end of the world party to celibrate the release of Duke Nuke Em Forever. Global Warming is nothing compared to the release of this piece of vaporware. Being a devout non Christian I'm currently sharpening my skates since I hear Hell is a bit chilly and there's no way I'm going to get Raptured up to heaven.
Haven't you heard yet? There was a mistranslation in the text! The _geek_ shall inherit the earth!
And since the date was pushed back to October we have plenty of time to plan for good looting.;-)
Well deserved with all he's done but I don't think the place will be the same without him. I hope he's just resting and not done but if he is the rest is well earned.
Everybody's complaining about the weaponization of this, and I agree they don't need any more toys, but I think this is a good thing because it's a great step towards laser launching systems and away from chemical rockets.
The military may have done it but it also could be adapted to commercial usages.
Heck one thing I can think of is dismantling large ships in boneyards. This would be good for any sort of metal recycling in fact.
I fail to see the need to drill to this lake so far below the surface. For one thing I would be worried about bringing back up who knows what with organisms and bacteria that we have not seen before that could be dangerous, also don't you think they would be contaminating this lake by drilling into it?
From the article:
Now, the team has satisfied the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which safeguards the continent's environment, that it's come up with a technique to sample the lake without contaminating it. Valery Lukin told New Scientist: "Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again." The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.
So is it going to freeze before it hits the top of the bore then? If not that means we're releasing whatever is in that water into our environment. That could be really really bad any way you look at it.
I'm not hopeful enough that it could release something giving us extreme life-extensions.
I mean we're going to contaminate something that's been isolated for a long long time.
Once you pop that bubble so to speak the place will never be the same. And what's the chance that there's organisms that are harmful to our current ecosystems? Can I get a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag?
Unfortunately I can't a way to restrict web management to the wired interfaces on my beat up little DD-WRT'd Fonera. Unless of course my eyeballs are failed today that is.
And anyways that means I'd have to have a wire strung around just to do the management of my wifi. I can do that of course but it's damn inconvenient if I put the router in say the attic or something.
that's the SSH key. The article is talking about the SSL key used by the embedded web server, ie. when you go to https://192.168.1.1/ . TFA also specifically says this DOES affect DD-WRT.
From TFA: "Although at the moment the vast majority of the keys belong to various DD-WRT firmware, there are keys from Cisco, Linksys, D-Link and Netgear as well."
Under 20 means you might not have caught on to what companies do to employees (oh sorry it's a entrepreneur on a fellowship) that they have no use for after two years.
I mean seriously WTF is up with that? Just because I'm over 20 years of age means I don't have the ability to innovate? I'd rather see money given to people who at least have some life experience and haven't had a chance to ever try out their own ideas, dreams, and inventions!
Yes grumpy old man is grumpy.
And while there are a million ideas out there done by people regardless of if they completed school or not encouraging people to not finish going to school just puts barriers in their way for when they DO want to innovate.
Unless you're one of the individuals that can self-learn easily you're only making it harder on yourself if you leave school.
Incidentally on some elevators if you continue to hold the floor button the elevator goes into "express" mode and skips stops to reach the floor you're pressing on the panel.
I used this to great effect while attending crowded conventions. I stopped of course when it became clear to me how much of an asshole I was being to people in general and handicapped people in particular.
That said its often disabled with a key now due to abuse.
even if you somehow maintained your salary, exactly what, pray tell - aside from the aforementioned drinking and having sex - are you going to spend it on?
You can order an awful lot of things over this service called...what was it?...oh yeah! The Internet!
As for what to do with the time? I can easily come up with a ton of hackish projects using internet purchased or recycled materials. Or hell he could even do something as insane as....learn to program!;-)
After experiencing urban, suburban, and rural environments I'll take the quaint shithole any day.
What is "reballed" as in "reballing the CPU"? I am assuming it's repackaging the CPU or something, but I'm not sure. I read the article but that didn't offer much more insight than the summary.
BGA or "Ball Grid Array" chips don't have a standard socket and are attached to the board using literal balls of solder that melt when the whole thing is put in a re-flow oven. The chip is then soldered to the board. A good video on reballing a CPU is here:
I'm still having a problem with......why ANY nuclear reactor or power plant needs to be directly connected to a computer network. I can see it having say a USB port for upgrades of controller firmware but a network connection? Nope.
So you're saying that you can't see any use for having the two reactors on site both connected to the same control room? I mean, why the hell would people in one central location want to monitor both reactors at once, in real time, right? That's crazy!
What do you think, that when someone needs to shut down or modify the parameters of a reactor or centrifuge that they actually walk up to the component and hit a button on it? What if they need to start 100 centrifuges at the same time, do they have 100 technicians standing there all on a giant conference call waiting for the "go" signal? If they want to check the current core temps or fuel levels, what do they do, call each one and ask them what the gauge says? What the hell do you think all of this equipment is for:
What I'm saying is that there should be no "write access" from an outside network.
In fact I'll even go one further. Any computer system that is connected to the control circuitry of the reactor should have no connection whatsoever to ANY standard network. It should be isolated from both the internal desktops AND the outside. AND you shouldn't be able to put in any device like a USB drive or floppy without the reactor being shut down.
In the case of a central monitoring location install a second set of sensors that are in no way linked to the control systems. Minuscule money compared to the entire cost of the plant.
The consequences of getting this stuff wrong is just too nasty. This of course points me in the direction of wanting smaller PBR units instead of one big unit.
...why ANY nuclear reactor or power plant needs to be directly connected to a computer network. I can see it having say a USB port for upgrades of controller firmware but a network connection? Nope.
And even with a USB connection have a failsafe ROM backup so if it starts acting strange after the update then smack the "Default" button to bring it back under control.
Slashdot Mirror
"Daddy, there's no option for "mega elephant" size!"
You sir owe me a new laptop screen...
:-)
Oh and I award you an internets.
I doubt it would stand up in today's legal quagmire but from my point of view if the company acts so badly that they need a term preventing lawsuits then the contract agreement they are forcing on you is not being entered into in an honest capacity. Therefore they have entered a contract fraudulently and the contract itself is null and void.
Yes I know I'm dreaming here because the US court system, among others, seems to have the rule of "deepest pockets win".
On top of that we also have the "we are able to change this agreement at any time" clause which allows them to bend you over a barrel at any time.
What a sad sad place this country has become.
Nevermind that. Permitting, one-time taxes, environmental reviews, and various other government fees will kill you. Worse yet, you have no idea how much all that will cost because the government agencies bill for professional services by the hour. You think AT and T would be bad as a monopoly again? At least your phone bill had a stated rate. The permitting and inspection process has no such animal. It will "cost a lot", but you have no idea how much.
That kills the project right there. A lot of us would love to do a project like that. We can predetermine the cost of the land. We can predetermine the cost of a pre-fab structure. We can even get reasonable estimates for foundations if we know the dimension of the structure; but that's as far as you can go. After that, it's anybody's guess. Unless you have money to burn, or are willing to risk not being able to complete the project within a reasonable budget, you have to say "no".
I have actually seen uncompleted projects for sale by desperate sellers. It's a sad state of affairs.
This is in California, BTW so it might not be so bad elsewhere; but something tells me it's not much better.
Huh. Second time I get to reference the Earthship guys. They've put up a map of what they call Pockets of Freedom which are places in the US that don't have building codes or allow for "experimental architecture". Too bad none of them are in my area. :-(
You can build any house anywhere you want (in residential zones, or outside of city limits to avoid zoning issues), but you have to meet certain standards that we as a society/government have set for safety-related issues. The scope of these standards was more-or-less set before anyone thought of renewable housing, and simply updated over the years, so it's quite unlikely the provisions were written simply to exclude these houses.
So without knowing more (thanks for providing a link...) I expect the reason his housing projects are blocked is because they do not conform to building codes, not because they threaten the establishment. I am a libertarian and oppose government building codes, but it's simply dishonest to portray a building-code issue as a man-keeping-us-down-for-profit issue. If that's not what's going on, maybe you should have posted a few links to solid information so I wouldn't jump to the obvious conclusions.
He's talking about Earthships.
And yes it's building codes and permits that are often the problems.
However the houses built in this manner are stronger and safer than conventional housing AND they use up waste resources as well as being sustainable.
Furthermore you can really build them anywhere you can put in a well or rain catchment.
Honestly what the hell is with Hollyweird. The greed there is just amazing and they seem to have a difficult time accepting anything really original but they'll throw money at a garbage sequel like nobody's business!
Maybe Hollywood needs to go up in flames too...
Warning I'm not a lawyer. Ex post facto laws are expressly forbidden by the United States Constitution. They can't change the law retroactivly in a way that takes property from one group and gives it to another. With copyright extentions they get around it because the public domain isn't a person with rights.
You think that's air you're breathing?
The labels, like any of the other corrupt extortion industries, will just up the amount of money to the gooberment and/or threaten anybody else they need to until the law is removed, changed, or side-stepped.
As others have pointed out it leaks like a sieve compared to the space station and once the power cells on it go you better have a way to power it up if you need to bring it back down.
That said though I could easily see decompressing it for storage then sending up a "sealing team" and/or supplies to make it a permanent part of the station at a later date.
Can't do much about the added mass though and it definitely would make a difference to station-keeping. Maybe strip anything that's not a control/flight related mechanism out of it?
Seriously, solar cells get hot, and laptops themselves have enough trouble from getting hot, I'm curious as to how bad the hit is going to be in terms of device durability.
It comes with a cooling unit in a backpack. The backpack AC unit is also solar powered you just have to spread the included wings and keep your back to the sun.
Hmm...now where have I heard that before... :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_Plus
after RTFA, I'm heading this one off at the pass; Yes, the concept of generating electricity from this effect has been done before, we all remember the /. article about the generator that looked like a violin bow, which vibrated in the wind and made a magnet move in a coil. FYI, the article mentions this exact device, and its inventor. this however, is a new approach to the process, and IMOH, better suited to remote/poor villages, as it is a more durable device (at least on initial assessment).
its good to see these sorts of innovations and adaptations of initial concepts. It means people are working the problems, and, it appears, finding more than one way to 'skin that cat'.
I believe you're referring to the windbelt: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMojRXK14jU
Turns out the preacher was right it was all a math error. The entire geek community needs to throw an end of the world party to celibrate the release of Duke Nuke Em Forever. Global Warming is nothing compared to the release of this piece of vaporware. Being a devout non Christian I'm currently sharpening my skates since I hear Hell is a bit chilly and there's no way I'm going to get Raptured up to heaven.
;-)
Haven't you heard yet? There was a mistranslation in the text! The _geek_ shall inherit the earth!
And since the date was pushed back to October we have plenty of time to plan for good looting.
Well deserved with all he's done but I don't think the place will be the same without him. I hope he's just resting and not done but if he is the rest is well earned.
Regardless good luck Burt!
A Roomba installed into an oversize frame with extra batteries, and these magnets on the bottom:
;-)
United Nuclear
For extra points install a solar charging system.
Everybody's complaining about the weaponization of this, and I agree they don't need any more toys, but I think this is a good thing because it's a great step towards laser launching systems and away from chemical rockets.
The military may have done it but it also could be adapted to commercial usages.
Heck one thing I can think of is dismantling large ships in boneyards. This would be good for any sort of metal recycling in fact.
I fail to see the need to drill to this lake so far below the surface. For one thing I would be worried about bringing back up who knows what with organisms and bacteria that we have not seen before that could be dangerous, also don't you think they would be contaminating this lake by drilling into it?
From the article:
Now, the team has satisfied the Antarctic Treaty Secretariat, which safeguards the continent's environment, that it's come up with a technique to sample the lake without contaminating it. Valery Lukin told New Scientist: "Once the lake is reached, the water pressure will push the working body and the drilling fluid upwards in the borehole, and then freeze again." The next season, the team will bore into that frozen water to recover a sample whose contents can then be analysed.
I think it's similar to this mission at Lake Ellsworth.
So is it going to freeze before it hits the top of the bore then? If not that means we're releasing whatever is in that water into our environment. That could be really really bad any way you look at it.
I'm not hopeful enough that it could release something giving us extreme life-extensions.
I mean we're going to contaminate something that's been isolated for a long long time.
Once you pop that bubble so to speak the place will never be the same. And what's the chance that there's organisms that are harmful to our current ecosystems? Can I get a "whatcouldpossiblygowrong" tag?
Unfortunately I can't a way to restrict web management to the wired interfaces on my beat up little DD-WRT'd Fonera. Unless of course my eyeballs are failed today that is.
And anyways that means I'd have to have a wire strung around just to do the management of my wifi. I can do that of course but it's damn inconvenient if I put the router in say the attic or something.
that's the SSH key. The article is talking about the SSL key used by the embedded web server, ie. when you go to https://192.168.1.1/ . TFA also specifically says this DOES affect DD-WRT.
From TFA: "Although at the moment the vast majority of the keys belong to various DD-WRT firmware, there are keys from Cisco, Linksys, D-Link and Netgear as well."
Damn. I missed it. Thanks for pointing that out!
So how does this affect things like dd-wrt, open-wrt, and tomato where custom firmware is in place?
Under 20 means you might not have caught on to what companies do to employees (oh sorry it's a entrepreneur on a fellowship) that they have no use for after two years.
Unfortunately all too true.
I mean seriously WTF is up with that? Just because I'm over 20 years of age means I don't have the ability to innovate? I'd rather see money given to people who at least have some life experience and haven't had a chance to ever try out their own ideas, dreams, and inventions!
Yes grumpy old man is grumpy.
And while there are a million ideas out there done by people regardless of if they completed school or not encouraging people to not finish going to school just puts barriers in their way for when they DO want to innovate.
Unless you're one of the individuals that can self-learn easily you're only making it harder on yourself if you leave school.
Incidentally on some elevators if you continue to hold the floor button the elevator goes into "express" mode and skips stops to reach the floor you're pressing on the panel.
I used this to great effect while attending crowded conventions. I stopped of course when it became clear to me how much of an asshole I was being to people in general and handicapped people in particular.
That said its often disabled with a key now due to abuse.
even if you somehow maintained your salary, exactly what, pray tell - aside from the aforementioned drinking and having sex - are you going to spend it on?
You can order an awful lot of things over this service called...what was it?...oh yeah! The Internet!
;-)
As for what to do with the time? I can easily come up with a ton of hackish projects using internet purchased or recycled materials. Or hell he could even do something as insane as....learn to program!
After experiencing urban, suburban, and rural environments I'll take the quaint shithole any day.
What is "reballed" as in "reballing the CPU"? I am assuming it's repackaging the CPU or something, but I'm not sure. I read the article but that didn't offer much more insight than the summary.
BGA or "Ball Grid Array" chips don't have a standard socket and are attached to the board using literal balls of solder that melt when the whole thing is put in a re-flow oven. The chip is then soldered to the board. A good video on reballing a CPU is here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97nxZwHG5bA
I'm still having a problem with......why ANY nuclear reactor or power plant needs to be directly connected to a computer network. I can see it having say a USB port for upgrades of controller firmware but a network connection? Nope.
So you're saying that you can't see any use for having the two reactors on site both connected to the same control room? I mean, why the hell would people in one central location want to monitor both reactors at once, in real time, right? That's crazy!
What do you think, that when someone needs to shut down or modify the parameters of a reactor or centrifuge that they actually walk up to the component and hit a button on it? What if they need to start 100 centrifuges at the same time, do they have 100 technicians standing there all on a giant conference call waiting for the "go" signal? If they want to check the current core temps or fuel levels, what do they do, call each one and ask them what the gauge says? What the hell do you think all of this equipment is for:
http://www.upi.com/News_Photos/Features/The-Nuclear-Issue-in-Iran/1581/19/
What I'm saying is that there should be no "write access" from an outside network.
In fact I'll even go one further. Any computer system that is connected to the control circuitry of the reactor should have no connection whatsoever to ANY standard network. It should be isolated from both the internal desktops AND the outside. AND you shouldn't be able to put in any device like a USB drive or floppy without the reactor being shut down.
In the case of a central monitoring location install a second set of sensors that are in no way linked to the control systems. Minuscule money compared to the entire cost of the plant.
The consequences of getting this stuff wrong is just too nasty. This of course points me in the direction of wanting smaller PBR units instead of one big unit.
...why ANY nuclear reactor or power plant needs to be directly connected to a computer network. I can see it having say a USB port for upgrades of controller firmware but a network connection? Nope.
And even with a USB connection have a failsafe ROM backup so if it starts acting strange after the update then smack the "Default" button to bring it back under control.