My neighbor bought a brand new 1980 VW Rabbit diesel. I can remember a conversation with him (I was 13 at the time) about why he bought a diesel car, and I said "I bet you bought it because diesel is cheaper". I meant that diesel is cheaper to run, with the better mileage and all. Being an engineer, he corrected me to say "diesel fuel is actually more expensive than regular gasoline, but the car gets so much better mileage that on the whole it is much cheaper to run a diesel car than a gasoline powered one".
This was 1980, and diesel was more expensive than regular and mid-grade gas. Last Thursday I stopped to fill up my tank with gasoline and noticed the price sign on the diesel next to it. It was cheaper per gallon than the regular gasoline. I am not sure why, since diesel has been more expensive every time I have looked since that initial conversation in 1980.
Re:I go on geek vacations
on
The Geek Atlas
·
· Score: 1
I would say this is insightful because your profession probably is just a job now. If you truly love something, you'd likely not want to do anything *but* that activity. There are many people that love what they do for a living so much that their personal lives can be seen as an extension of their professional lives. There are other, like myself and possibly you, where the profession is a way to earn a living, but the really fun stuff begins when not doing work.
I am a marketing manager for a living. When I get home I love to spend time learning new programming languages and playing with various aspects of my various computer systems. If I had to do that for a job, I'd probably hate it and want to do marketing for fun.
When I was a teenager I used to teach sailing. When I was not working, on my days off, I was sailing. People used to ask me what I was doing at work on my day off, and I'd respond 'when I am on the clock I am teaching others how to sail, which is fun. When I am off the clock I am sailing myself, which is always more fun'. I couldn't get enough. Maybe technology has a similar attraction to the GP.
I use the Greasemonkey script FB Purity and some other FB adblocker to keep the noise in Facebook down to a minimum. This way I don't see any of the quizzes people want me to take, and I do not get the potential embarrassment of those nasty pr0n/singles ads either. My friends sometimes make fun of me that I don't see what kind of Irish Drunk I am, or that I am most like a specific kind of insect, but I don't miss it.
I always feel guilty when clicking "yes" to the apps privacy notification, so I no longer do it. However I did click "yes" a few times and it has always made me wonder what info I had on FB at the time that is now being exploited. I have since cleaned up my profile, pictures, and even friends to be more inline with my typical stance on internet privacy. It may be too late, however.
Portal is a perfect example of this. I was slightly disappointed in the length of the game, but then completely impressed in the mods/expansions that were available for the game not long afterward. I'd say I got my money's worth from the initial release, and got real bonus time from the mods (wecreatestuff.com mod being one of the best)
Price fixing is where you collude with your competitors to set the market price. You agree with your competitors not to go lower than "X".
Pricing to the market is where every new game is $49.95 and you price your game somewhere around there. If it sells maybe you can make a special boxed edition with some hokey keychain and sell it for $69.95. If it doesn't sell, the price drops fairly quickly to a typical $19.95, though it is not uncommon to find unloved games for $5 in the bargain bin.
I learned a tremendous amount by watching "In the shadow of the moon" as posted on YouTube. Despite walking on the moon, for real, these astronauts are really down to earth about it, many times really funny too. Perhaps it is due to 40 years of dealing with publicity and telling their stories. In any event, I highly recommend this documentary. It is 90 or 100 minutes in 10 minute segments and well worth it. (I'd post the link, but cannot get to YouTube from work. Google search only brings up the trailer, but a youtube search will bring it right up)
Expectations of today's 11 year old different
on
Hello World!
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The expectations of today's 9 - 14 year old is very different than for those of us learning BASIC on a Commodore or Atari in the early 80s. I tried Scratch and Kidsprogramminglanguage with my now-13 year old. As soon as he saw the creations we could make he said "at what point do I get to make a game like on Xbox or my computer?" He just wasn't satisfied making lines on the screen or adding numbers or helping to solve his math homework (when it would be easier to solve it in his head). So, yes it would be cool to make lunar lander and I would have also been soooo happy to have such a game in 1983.
Then again, his favorite games now are often on Kongregate - sometimes the simpler the better, like launching a stick figure out of a cannon and solving various puzzles of angle, thrust, bounce etc. So maybe it is possible, but it needs to be graphic, challenging and most of all fun.
As a RC Sailplane pilot I can tell you that this advisory does not apply universally to all US airspace. I have documented flights well over 1500' where the 3 meter plane was just a small speck in the sky. I do not disagree that having an autonomous sailplane flying above 4500' is dangerous, or significantly lower than that in typically travelled airspace.
I would just advise to check out the interpretation of that particular FAA advisory with the AMA (Aeronautical Modelers Association) - my recollection is that flights over 400' are very much allowed. Heck some of their cross country RC flight contests virtually guarantee violation - hell, my winches had *more* than 400' of line on them, so the minimum starting altitudes already broke the "advisory".
Love your ideas about exercise being fun. Tennis is fun. Raquetball, squash, basketball, handball are all examples of really fun sports that will work you hard enough to give all the benefits of exercise while being something that doesn't require tons of motivation to do. As a cyclist I can work off 300 calories easily on a weekend day... it is generally 40 calories per mile. 7 or 8 miles on a bike is *nothing* to even most beginners.
Personally I like your idea of sailing. Not everyone is close to the coast or has the money for a boat but it is really fun, and if you get the right boat (you try hiking on a Laser for a 20 minute upwind leg of a race) you will be in great shape.
Hiking is always fun, and running up walking trails can even be more fun. Exercise need not be mindless lifting of weights in a gym or miles on a treadmill. Hell, just get out Dance Dance Revolution for 15 minutes a day!
For which you pay gas taxes right now. And I'd think you pay quite a bit because the fuel usage during plowing activities is pretty significant. Thank you for your support of the public roadways with your driving on private roads.
Thank you for doing this analysis. In the end, however, I do not think I would mind paying road tax of $300 anyway. I mean, it isn't a huge amount. Personally I think simply raising fuel taxes a lot more makes more sense as it has the benefit of encouraging fuel efficiency. I'd have no problem if they added on another $0.25 or more to fuel taxes. Better yet, if we get to European levels then we'd see true movement towards fuel efficiency!
Maybe, but guaranteed the suits will begin with the first red-headed child. Think of all the insults (carrot top!) the child will have to endure. And this I say as a former red head... for some reason as I get older my hair has become browner. I like it much better now, being a child with red hair could be hell at times.
Many of us who moderate have a rule not to moderate any AC, no matter how insightful. As per the moderation suggestions, I browse at -1 to undo any inappropriate downmodding. But I won't touch an AC because I believe my upmods are reserved for those registered and logged in.
It has been so long since I fiddled with my settings, I cannot say if my view is the default or not. But I don't recall only browsing at 1 or greater.
What is NSFW about this site is that anyone going to there will automatically be identified as trying to surf for pr0n on any internet logs. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to keep my job even though surfing Slashdot is not particularly in my job description.
I am not a lawyer but my wife is a paralegal? I am not a lawyer but my wife is a property lawyer? I am not a lawyer but my wife is a patent lawyer? I am not a lawyer but my wife is a ?
Despite the open mesh steel frame, this thing is definitely not for the claustrophobic. I am getting chills just looking at how the guy is trapped, er... strapped in there and all I can think about is being stuck if it happens to tip over. I am definitely not a target customer for this thing, then again I probably wouldn't fare much better in a tank or submarine either.
I have never seen the milky way, and until reading about dark skies didn't even realize it was possible to see the Milky Way from Earth. I always saw the pictures of a galaxy, with an arrow saying "Earth is here" as just an artists rendering of what we think it might look like.
The thing is, I don't live in a city. I just live in a suburb of a small city on the East coast of the United States where there is a ton of light pollution. I would think it safe to say there are many people like myself who have never seen it, and quite frankly don't know what they are missing. I am only interested because I am technically curious, unlike most people who probably don't care.
My father flew a million miles a year for many years before he retired. A few years ago I was on a really harrowing flight into Philadelphia for a stopover before continuing on the California. We had to go through a line of thunderstorms and the plane did some aerobatics that I did not know planes of that size could do. For the first time in my life I was actually really really afraid to get back on a plane, in this case my connection to San Francisco.
So I called my Dad. I don't know why, since I was in my 30s at the time and long past calling my parents for advice. His advice to me was like yours. "Son, you have flown enough hours on the flight simulator to know the kinds of trouble a plane can get into, but also how you can do some amazing things to recover without crashing. You have to know that the pilot up front not only has seen and done some of those same things in the simulator, but wants to get home to see his family just like you do. Get on the plane and don't give it another thought." I did so, and had an absolutely wonderful sunset flight (chasing the sunset across the country). I give similar advice to fellow passengers and my family whenever things get a bit nervewracking and it seems to help.
You know, I hear this and my immediate reaction is that it must be bad that they are teaching to the test. I think this is what is expected. But the other side of this coin is that what is on the test has been determined to be age appropriate material for this country, and therefore is exactly what teachers should be teaching. That is, kids in 5th grade need to be able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division with remainders. If you can do more, great. If not, then everyone else may be held back a little bit but the whole class needs to get there together in order for the school to do well.
In my school district they have something called "AGP". Academically Gifted Program. Both of my kids have been through the program several years now and it offers those kids who might otherwise get bored, or need a different kind of curriculum, a chance to excel in a less structured environment. This is how my school district takes the smarter kids and gives them extra, while still having them sit with the slower kids for most of the school week.
Seriously, isn't this like the dutch boy with his finger in the dike (no, not dyke, get yer minds outta the gutter).
What I mean is that many forms of DRM are hacked within days or weeks of release. I cannot imagine a concerted effort of Chinese hackers or those in sympathy with the Chinese people, would not be able to bypass this and publish, even via sneakernet, a hack around it.
Is this blocking/unblocking done manually or is it based on an automated set of rules? I suppose it might be a state secret how the blocking actually works, but I picture a few people sitting in a room updating some configuration files that says "block the following IP address or domain names". Is that how it works?
Slashdot Mirror
Diesel fuel "used" to be cheap? In what decade?
My neighbor bought a brand new 1980 VW Rabbit diesel. I can remember a conversation with him (I was 13 at the time) about why he bought a diesel car, and I said "I bet you bought it because diesel is cheaper". I meant that diesel is cheaper to run, with the better mileage and all. Being an engineer, he corrected me to say "diesel fuel is actually more expensive than regular gasoline, but the car gets so much better mileage that on the whole it is much cheaper to run a diesel car than a gasoline powered one".
This was 1980, and diesel was more expensive than regular and mid-grade gas. Last Thursday I stopped to fill up my tank with gasoline and noticed the price sign on the diesel next to it. It was cheaper per gallon than the regular gasoline. I am not sure why, since diesel has been more expensive every time I have looked since that initial conversation in 1980.
I would say this is insightful because your profession probably is just a job now. If you truly love something, you'd likely not want to do anything *but* that activity. There are many people that love what they do for a living so much that their personal lives can be seen as an extension of their professional lives. There are other, like myself and possibly you, where the profession is a way to earn a living, but the really fun stuff begins when not doing work.
I am a marketing manager for a living. When I get home I love to spend time learning new programming languages and playing with various aspects of my various computer systems. If I had to do that for a job, I'd probably hate it and want to do marketing for fun.
When I was a teenager I used to teach sailing. When I was not working, on my days off, I was sailing. People used to ask me what I was doing at work on my day off, and I'd respond 'when I am on the clock I am teaching others how to sail, which is fun. When I am off the clock I am sailing myself, which is always more fun'. I couldn't get enough. Maybe technology has a similar attraction to the GP.
I use the Greasemonkey script FB Purity and some other FB adblocker to keep the noise in Facebook down to a minimum. This way I don't see any of the quizzes people want me to take, and I do not get the potential embarrassment of those nasty pr0n/singles ads either. My friends sometimes make fun of me that I don't see what kind of Irish Drunk I am, or that I am most like a specific kind of insect, but I don't miss it.
I always feel guilty when clicking "yes" to the apps privacy notification, so I no longer do it. However I did click "yes" a few times and it has always made me wonder what info I had on FB at the time that is now being exploited. I have since cleaned up my profile, pictures, and even friends to be more inline with my typical stance on internet privacy. It may be too late, however.
Portal is a perfect example of this. I was slightly disappointed in the length of the game, but then completely impressed in the mods/expansions that were available for the game not long afterward. I'd say I got my money's worth from the initial release, and got real bonus time from the mods (wecreatestuff.com mod being one of the best)
Price fixing is where you collude with your competitors to set the market price. You agree with your competitors not to go lower than "X".
Pricing to the market is where every new game is $49.95 and you price your game somewhere around there. If it sells maybe you can make a special boxed edition with some hokey keychain and sell it for $69.95. If it doesn't sell, the price drops fairly quickly to a typical $19.95, though it is not uncommon to find unloved games for $5 in the bargain bin.
So I don't see any of this as price fixing.
I learned a tremendous amount by watching "In the shadow of the moon" as posted on YouTube. Despite walking on the moon, for real, these astronauts are really down to earth about it, many times really funny too. Perhaps it is due to 40 years of dealing with publicity and telling their stories. In any event, I highly recommend this documentary. It is 90 or 100 minutes in 10 minute segments and well worth it. (I'd post the link, but cannot get to YouTube from work. Google search only brings up the trailer, but a youtube search will bring it right up)
The expectations of today's 9 - 14 year old is very different than for those of us learning BASIC on a Commodore or Atari in the early 80s. I tried Scratch and Kidsprogramminglanguage with my now-13 year old. As soon as he saw the creations we could make he said "at what point do I get to make a game like on Xbox or my computer?" He just wasn't satisfied making lines on the screen or adding numbers or helping to solve his math homework (when it would be easier to solve it in his head). So, yes it would be cool to make lunar lander and I would have also been soooo happy to have such a game in 1983.
Then again, his favorite games now are often on Kongregate - sometimes the simpler the better, like launching a stick figure out of a cannon and solving various puzzles of angle, thrust, bounce etc. So maybe it is possible, but it needs to be graphic, challenging and most of all fun.
As a RC Sailplane pilot I can tell you that this advisory does not apply universally to all US airspace. I have documented flights well over 1500' where the 3 meter plane was just a small speck in the sky. I do not disagree that having an autonomous sailplane flying above 4500' is dangerous, or significantly lower than that in typically travelled airspace.
I would just advise to check out the interpretation of that particular FAA advisory with the AMA (Aeronautical Modelers Association) - my recollection is that flights over 400' are very much allowed. Heck some of their cross country RC flight contests virtually guarantee violation - hell, my winches had *more* than 400' of line on them, so the minimum starting altitudes already broke the "advisory".
Love your ideas about exercise being fun. Tennis is fun. Raquetball, squash, basketball, handball are all examples of really fun sports that will work you hard enough to give all the benefits of exercise while being something that doesn't require tons of motivation to do. As a cyclist I can work off 300 calories easily on a weekend day... it is generally 40 calories per mile. 7 or 8 miles on a bike is *nothing* to even most beginners.
Personally I like your idea of sailing. Not everyone is close to the coast or has the money for a boat but it is really fun, and if you get the right boat (you try hiking on a Laser for a 20 minute upwind leg of a race) you will be in great shape.
Hiking is always fun, and running up walking trails can even be more fun. Exercise need not be mindless lifting of weights in a gym or miles on a treadmill. Hell, just get out Dance Dance Revolution for 15 minutes a day!
For which you pay gas taxes right now. And I'd think you pay quite a bit because the fuel usage during plowing activities is pretty significant. Thank you for your support of the public roadways with your driving on private roads.
Thank you for doing this analysis. In the end, however, I do not think I would mind paying road tax of $300 anyway. I mean, it isn't a huge amount. Personally I think simply raising fuel taxes a lot more makes more sense as it has the benefit of encouraging fuel efficiency. I'd have no problem if they added on another $0.25 or more to fuel taxes. Better yet, if we get to European levels then we'd see true movement towards fuel efficiency!
Sheesh, all this time folks were talking about TOR I thought they were being lazy and shortening Torrent. I learn something new every day!
Everyone kills Hitler their first time.
Maybe, but guaranteed the suits will begin with the first red-headed child. Think of all the insults (carrot top!) the child will have to endure. And this I say as a former red head... for some reason as I get older my hair has become browner. I like it much better now, being a child with red hair could be hell at times.
Many of us who moderate have a rule not to moderate any AC, no matter how insightful. As per the moderation suggestions, I browse at -1 to undo any inappropriate downmodding. But I won't touch an AC because I believe my upmods are reserved for those registered and logged in.
It has been so long since I fiddled with my settings, I cannot say if my view is the default or not. But I don't recall only browsing at 1 or greater.
Which I guess means that nobody would read the joke, so nobody gets it anyway. Does anyone read Slashdot journals anyway?
What is NSFW about this site is that anyone going to there will automatically be identified as trying to surf for pr0n on any internet logs. I don't know about you, but I'd prefer to keep my job even though surfing Slashdot is not particularly in my job description.
I am not a lawyer but my wife is a paralegal?
I am not a lawyer but my wife is a property lawyer?
I am not a lawyer but my wife is a patent lawyer?
I am not a lawyer but my wife is a ?
Despite the open mesh steel frame, this thing is definitely not for the claustrophobic. I am getting chills just looking at how the guy is trapped, er... strapped in there and all I can think about is being stuck if it happens to tip over. I am definitely not a target customer for this thing, then again I probably wouldn't fare much better in a tank or submarine either.
I have never seen the milky way, and until reading about dark skies didn't even realize it was possible to see the Milky Way from Earth. I always saw the pictures of a galaxy, with an arrow saying "Earth is here" as just an artists rendering of what we think it might look like.
The thing is, I don't live in a city. I just live in a suburb of a small city on the East coast of the United States where there is a ton of light pollution. I would think it safe to say there are many people like myself who have never seen it, and quite frankly don't know what they are missing. I am only interested because I am technically curious, unlike most people who probably don't care.
My father flew a million miles a year for many years before he retired. A few years ago I was on a really harrowing flight into Philadelphia for a stopover before continuing on the California. We had to go through a line of thunderstorms and the plane did some aerobatics that I did not know planes of that size could do. For the first time in my life I was actually really really afraid to get back on a plane, in this case my connection to San Francisco.
So I called my Dad. I don't know why, since I was in my 30s at the time and long past calling my parents for advice. His advice to me was like yours. "Son, you have flown enough hours on the flight simulator to know the kinds of trouble a plane can get into, but also how you can do some amazing things to recover without crashing. You have to know that the pilot up front not only has seen and done some of those same things in the simulator, but wants to get home to see his family just like you do. Get on the plane and don't give it another thought." I did so, and had an absolutely wonderful sunset flight (chasing the sunset across the country). I give similar advice to fellow passengers and my family whenever things get a bit nervewracking and it seems to help.
Thanks for reminding me about that bit of advice.
You know, I hear this and my immediate reaction is that it must be bad that they are teaching to the test. I think this is what is expected. But the other side of this coin is that what is on the test has been determined to be age appropriate material for this country, and therefore is exactly what teachers should be teaching. That is, kids in 5th grade need to be able to do addition, subtraction, multiplication and long division with remainders. If you can do more, great. If not, then everyone else may be held back a little bit but the whole class needs to get there together in order for the school to do well.
In my school district they have something called "AGP". Academically Gifted Program. Both of my kids have been through the program several years now and it offers those kids who might otherwise get bored, or need a different kind of curriculum, a chance to excel in a less structured environment. This is how my school district takes the smarter kids and gives them extra, while still having them sit with the slower kids for most of the school week.
3 .... 2.... 1....
Seriously, isn't this like the dutch boy with his finger in the dike (no, not dyke, get yer minds outta the gutter).
What I mean is that many forms of DRM are hacked within days or weeks of release. I cannot imagine a concerted effort of Chinese hackers or those in sympathy with the Chinese people, would not be able to bypass this and publish, even via sneakernet, a hack around it.
This is like a low UID pissing contest that the geologists always win. That is, at least until the cosmologists show up!
Is this blocking/unblocking done manually or is it based on an automated set of rules? I suppose it might be a state secret how the blocking actually works, but I picture a few people sitting in a room updating some configuration files that says "block the following IP address or domain names". Is that how it works?