And there's a reason they use Methanol in Formula 1 racing. Safety. It can be put out with WATER, much unlike almost all other liquid fuels. Water and methanol 'mix', and when the methanol gets diluted enough, it won't burn. Tada, fire's out.
I remember seeing one memorable (F1?) racing methanol fire on TV. The fuel 'sprayed' out when refueling the car in the pit, perhaps they forgot to stop pumping or pulled the nozzle out prematurely... and they *charge* these lines with some pressure to force all the fuel in within what, 5, 10 seconds, so they spilled quite a bit, and it caught.
What was interesting was the wide angle distance shot, where 20 feet above the pit you saw the faint blue edges of the otherwise clear flames, and the massive optical disturbance created by that much super hot invisible flaming gas balling out then mushrooming up.
Thing was, lots of people were scattering away, and one had gotten more than his share of 'splatter', and he ran off far enough, and with an invisible fire.. and with the pandamoneum of the main fire.. well, it took a few extra seconds for people to glance over and figure out what was going on with him...
No worries. With the suits these pit crews wear, I think they all were ok. Lots of big 5 gallon buckets of water nearby, etc etc. But some excitement for sure.
Lets see, I was in a hotel room in Alberta at a cousin's wedding... so that must have been the summer of 1992.
This is an excellent well presented analysis. I concur.
I haven't noticed much of John's stuff around here before, so this 'series' is my first 'exposure' really. I thought his first part yesterday was quite well done, as someone noted it looked like he had spent a lot more time thinking this time around.
But today's part sure shows me just why he has so much 'opposition'. The first two paragraphs are *utter* and total blanket statements, with which he labels ALL techies as 'hostile'. The next 4 or more paragraphs are spurilous, as if he had only personally experienced (or heard of) a couple things in his life, and suddenly decided that "that's the way it is *everywhere*".
Now there are people using 'freedom of speech' and all that stuff to 'applaud' his "contribution" here. But if his contribution is no different than a satanist having a column in a church bulletin, or no different than a Troll in a newsgroup....?
I mean, I'm all for views and articles of thought that make us think, that make us challenge our thoughts and expand our minds. But that's not what John is doing. He's trolling. He may 'have his own column', but he's still a troll as far as I'm concerned.
We don't give just *anybody* a column in the Times, or in Newsweek, or a show on CNN, or a slot on CBC Radio. Especially if it's someone with deductive, expressive, and logical powers as weak as John's. There's a reason for that. The same reason I don't think John Katz should have a 'column' at Slashdot.
Don't give me any bull about 'freedom of speech'. He's free to do and say whatever he wants elsewhere in the world on any other website, whether he has a 'column' here, or not.
That's the whole point! When I come here as a regular reader, I don't want to have to wade through a ton of junk, I want to see the jewels. It makes efficient use of my time. It gives me the information and insight I need to go on with the rest of the comments (if I chose to do so). Quite often I'll go to the article first, then come see the first few comments and all the questions I have will have been anwered. To make me 'hunt' for the best would be horrible.
HOWEVER... you have a good (or even a great) point with respect to Moderators potentially missing jewels buried in the comments at the bottom!
Perhaps when a person has moderator points, the page should be forced to a 'chronological' view? Reverse Chronological? And at the _bottom_ of the entire page should be a button to allow the moderator to see stuff (just for this one time) in the 'most points first' view.
At the current time, it's up to the moderators to 'force' themselves to read everything, and not spend their points near the top without first reading some stuff at the bottom....
Hey, I got 5 points this last time,.. has this changed/increased? Didn't it used to be 3 points? I don't mind the 3 day limit, but BOY, I'd like to know how much time I have left until my 3 day limit is over...
Finally: GOD have the 'Slashdot poll' questions been worthless lately or what. Perhaps it's time to allow people to submit suggestions for poll questions. Hey! That could just be a permanent discussion area, and taking the most moderated up question each few days, and flushing the discussion area (not necessarily fully) when one is 'taken'.
Ack! Ok, ok, I've abused 'supply and demand' a bit. I should have talked about 'the current expendetures on creating the supply' being too high... not 'supply' being too high..
There is one thing that the current state of affairs helps along, that being that it provides capital to discover these treasures sooner. But is that actually worth what is being paid?
The laws of supply and demand require a flexible amount of 'supply' (expressed through the supply of labour and effort to find the items) and 'demand' (money we, as society, are willing to let our museums and scientists pay). Unfortunatly the only way to 'express' that the supply is too high (the prices are too high) is to reduce our 'demand', which means having the museums and government agencies NOT pay the high prices. Now that's all fine and well, EXCEPT it means the treasures are delivered into the hands of private collections or potentially 'unworthy' guardians. That's potentially hell of a thing to do to such treasures, just to regulate the supply.
This isn't some hunk of ore. This is a part of humanity's hertiage and history. That it's management has been relegated to the market economy in the US is quite pathetic. I've got nothing against capitalism and consumerism (quite the opposite), but there are circumstances where, for the common good and for the betterment of us all, it has to be limited and controlled.
This should be one of those times. There should be a better way.
Just like you don't own *all* the space over your land, you shouldn't own *all* the historical and archeological entities beneath it. ( Not that people shouldn't be compensated if it perturbs their life... etc. )
Now that I've said all of that, there is one other thing that reduces the negative impact of the current state of affairs. It is possible that in our world when we (expressed through our museums and scientists) reduce our demand, and the treasures fall into the hands of others, we have enough enlightened rich people that it never really falls into the hands of 'the unworthy', but instead is donated or loaned to a museum or appropriate place.
Does anyone have details about the regulations or state of affairs concerning the discovery of archeological finds on private lands in other countries?
Your effort goes part way there. The 'clients' should be bidding for computing power, and the 'suppliers' (us) would choose to whom their computing power is allocated.
Then there'd be long term contracts with lower rates of pay, or short term jobs with higher rates of pay, and of course seasonal work (when for some reason or another there is a cyclic demand, aka the weather service needs some more power for the Hurricane season), and shortages or over-supply as the availability waxes and wanes, or as computing power increases... Don't forget the higher rates of pay for those of us with a lot better net connectivity, or more available disk space, which should enhance the type of tasks we can take.
What would be really interesting is what the pay would end up being, assuming we have the best 'programming' infrastructure available for 'clients'. Would it only be a tidbit, or could/would big business and other concerns really take advanatage of this cheap distributed power.
It would be neat if it would both allow companies to get cheaper than normal computing power, and yet at the same time completely paying off the entire cost of my computer. I don't see why it's not possible. Score!!!
1. Perhaps. Maybe they could fit in a super tiny membrane keyboard, or label the numberpad like a phone, so we can access songs by name. You'd just need the first two letters..
Also, think 'playlists', more than one. Wait while it indexes it? If we have to do that, someone hasn't done their job.
I guess I'd end up using it mostly with random play turned on, and hit the back or loop arrow whenever it got to a song I was more interested in.
2. Too bad Sony or another big name wouldn't put some of their muscle into this technology. Ok, Sony's a bad example:) (being a record company and all). But another one of the big electronics powerhouses. We'll need a half dozen competitors before we get 'look and feel' choice.
3. Hmmm. Yeah. I don't think the extra pair of AAs is going to sink me. And I don't think I'd end up listening to music while walking or going everywhere all the time. But I do want to carry it to and fro destinations, backpack it, etc.
All in all, it has the potential to go sour really quick on technical issues. Also could go the other way (pray pray pray pray).
When you go to bed tonight, remember to ask your God for a breakthrough in technology or economies of scale in solid state persistant memory tonight. Then we wouldn't have to wait for all this voodo to get sorted out.
This is one of those things that you think of the moment you hear of the pre-cursor technology.. you think to yourself "aha! Now they just need to make this and it'll be killer!". And it's so obvious to you that you just can't imagine no-one jumping all over it.
And then the free market system goes and ignores it for two years, evenutally producing some other less powerfull stuff (but more widely appealing for the regular lUsers and induvidhuals) that doesn't come near to satisfying your original thoughts.
The Rio's nice, but 32Mb? Through a serial connection? For _how_ much? Ok, if there's nothing else... Or if I'm an audiophile and my cassette deck just doesn't cut it.
From the day I saw mp3 way back when, I dreamed of 12 hours of music in my pocket!!
Ok. Quiz time. What's the killer service to accompany products like this?
1) Rip-n-burn services (requiring you to bring/send in your original CDs, you know, fair use and all).
2) K-Tel records (or whoever else has the guts) producing their big anthologies, all the 70's on one cd. All the 80's on one CD. The top 150 songs of 1992!
3) "Buy-your-CDs-from-us and we'll burn for free" services.
Ok, there's one huge problem with all of this. The RIAA will freak out and sue everyone to death, (in spite of fair use) and that threat alone will prevent anyone except us CDR/CDRW owners from being able to use this stuff. Now this will cost us more denero due to the economies of scale being massively reduced. Guess that means less money to buy CDs with:)
Slashdot Mirror
(And mod me down :)
I remember seeing one memorable (F1?) racing methanol fire on TV. The fuel 'sprayed' out when refueling the car in the pit, perhaps they forgot to stop pumping or pulled the nozzle out prematurely... and they *charge* these lines with some pressure to force all the fuel in within what, 5, 10 seconds, so they spilled quite a bit, and it caught.
What was interesting was the wide angle distance shot, where 20 feet above the pit you saw the faint blue edges of the otherwise clear flames, and the massive optical disturbance created by that much super hot invisible flaming gas balling out then mushrooming up.
Thing was, lots of people were scattering away, and one had gotten more than his share of 'splatter', and he ran off far enough, and with an invisible fire.. and with the pandamoneum of the main fire.. well, it took a few extra seconds for people to glance over and figure out what was going on with him...
No worries. With the suits these pit crews wear, I think they all were ok. Lots of big 5 gallon buckets of water nearby, etc etc. But some excitement for sure.
Lets see, I was in a hotel room in Alberta at a cousin's wedding... so that must have been the summer of 1992.
This is an excellent well presented analysis. I concur.
I haven't noticed much of John's stuff around here before, so this 'series' is my first 'exposure' really. I thought his first part yesterday was quite well done, as someone noted it looked like he had spent a lot more time thinking this time around.
But today's part sure shows me just why he has so much 'opposition'. The first two paragraphs are *utter* and total blanket statements, with which he labels ALL techies as 'hostile'. The next 4 or more paragraphs are spurilous, as if he had only personally experienced (or heard of) a couple things in his life, and suddenly decided that "that's the way it is *everywhere*".
Now there are people using 'freedom of speech' and all that stuff to 'applaud' his "contribution" here. But if his contribution is no different than a satanist having a column in a church bulletin, or no different than a Troll in a newsgroup....?
I mean, I'm all for views and articles of thought that make us think, that make us challenge our thoughts and expand our minds. But that's not what John is doing. He's trolling. He may 'have his own column', but he's still a troll as far as I'm concerned.
We don't give just *anybody* a column in the Times, or in Newsweek, or a show on CNN, or a slot on CBC Radio. Especially if it's someone with deductive, expressive, and logical powers as weak as John's. There's a reason for that. The same reason I don't think John Katz should have a 'column' at Slashdot.
Don't give me any bull about 'freedom of speech'. He's free to do and say whatever he wants elsewhere in the world on any other website, whether he has a 'column' here, or not.
That's the whole point! When I come here as a regular reader, I don't want to have to wade through a ton of junk, I want to see the jewels. It makes efficient use of my time. It gives me the information and insight I need to go on with the rest of the comments (if I chose to do so). Quite often I'll go to the article first, then come see the first few comments and all the questions I have will have been anwered. To make me 'hunt' for the best would be horrible.
HOWEVER... you have a good (or even a great) point with respect to Moderators potentially missing jewels buried in the comments at the bottom!
Perhaps when a person has moderator points, the page should be forced to a 'chronological' view? Reverse Chronological? And at the _bottom_ of the entire page should be a button to allow the moderator to see stuff (just for this one time) in the 'most points first' view.
At the current time, it's up to the moderators to 'force' themselves to read everything, and not spend their points near the top without first reading some stuff at the bottom....
Hey, I got 5 points this last time,.. has this changed/increased? Didn't it used to be 3 points? I don't mind the 3 day limit, but BOY, I'd like to know how much time I have left until my 3 day limit is over...
Finally: GOD have the 'Slashdot poll' questions been worthless lately or what. Perhaps it's time to allow people to submit suggestions for poll questions. Hey! That could just be a permanent discussion area, and taking the most moderated up question each few days, and flushing the discussion area (not necessarily fully) when one is 'taken'.
TTFN
Ack! Ok, ok, I've abused 'supply and demand' a bit. I should have talked about 'the current expendetures on creating the supply' being too high... not 'supply' being too high..
There is one thing that the current state of affairs helps along, that being that it provides capital to discover these treasures sooner. But is that actually worth what is being paid?
The laws of supply and demand require a flexible amount of 'supply' (expressed through the supply of labour and effort to find the items) and 'demand' (money we, as society, are willing to let our museums and scientists pay). Unfortunatly the only way to 'express' that the supply is too high (the prices are too high) is to reduce our 'demand', which means having the museums and government agencies NOT pay the high prices. Now that's all fine and well, EXCEPT it means the treasures are delivered into the hands of private collections or potentially 'unworthy' guardians. That's potentially hell of a thing to do to such treasures, just to regulate the supply.
This isn't some hunk of ore. This is a part of humanity's hertiage and history. That it's management has been relegated to the market economy in the US is quite pathetic. I've got nothing against capitalism and consumerism (quite the opposite), but there are circumstances where, for the common good and for the betterment of us all, it has to be limited and controlled.
This should be one of those times. There should be a better way.
Just like you don't own *all* the space over your land, you shouldn't own *all* the historical and archeological entities beneath it. ( Not that people shouldn't be compensated if it perturbs their life... etc. )
Now that I've said all of that, there is one other thing that reduces the negative impact of the current state of affairs. It is possible that in our world when we (expressed through our museums and scientists) reduce our demand, and the treasures fall into the hands of others, we have enough enlightened rich people that it never really falls into the hands of 'the unworthy', but instead is donated or loaned to a museum or appropriate place.
Does anyone have details about the regulations or state of affairs concerning the discovery of archeological finds on private lands in other countries?
Then there'd be long term contracts with lower rates of pay, or short term jobs with higher rates of pay, and of course seasonal work (when for some reason or another there is a cyclic demand, aka the weather service needs some more power for the Hurricane season), and shortages or over-supply as the availability waxes and wanes, or as computing power increases... Don't forget the higher rates of pay for those of us with a lot better net connectivity, or more available disk space, which should enhance the type of tasks we can take.
What would be really interesting is what the pay would end up being, assuming we have the best 'programming' infrastructure available for 'clients'. Would it only be a tidbit, or could/would big business and other concerns really take advanatage of this cheap distributed power.
It would be neat if it would both allow companies to get cheaper than normal computing power, and yet at the same time completely paying off the entire cost of my computer. I don't see why it's not possible. Score!!!
He meant to say http://www.bama.ua.edu/~sotir001/.
You've got some good points.
:) (being a record company and all). But another one of the big electronics powerhouses. We'll need a half dozen competitors before we get 'look and feel' choice.
1. Perhaps. Maybe they could fit in a super tiny membrane keyboard, or label the numberpad like a phone, so we can access songs by name. You'd just need the first two letters..
Also, think 'playlists', more than one. Wait while it indexes it? If we have to do that, someone hasn't done their job.
I guess I'd end up using it mostly with random play turned on, and hit the back or loop arrow whenever it got to a song I was more interested in.
2. Too bad Sony or another big name wouldn't put some of their muscle into this technology. Ok, Sony's a bad example
3. Hmmm. Yeah. I don't think the extra pair of AAs is going to sink me. And I don't think I'd end up listening to music while walking or going everywhere all the time. But I do want to carry it to and fro destinations, backpack it, etc.
All in all, it has the potential to go sour really quick on technical issues. Also could go the other way (pray pray pray pray).
When you go to bed tonight, remember to ask your God for a breakthrough in technology or economies of scale in solid state persistant memory tonight. Then we wouldn't have to wait for all this voodo to get sorted out.
This is one of those things that you think of the moment you hear of the pre-cursor technology.. you think to yourself "aha! Now they just need to make this and it'll be killer!". And it's so obvious to you that you just can't imagine no-one jumping all over it.
:)
And then the free market system goes and ignores it for two years, evenutally producing some other less powerfull stuff (but more widely appealing for the regular lUsers and induvidhuals) that doesn't come near to satisfying your original thoughts.
The Rio's nice, but 32Mb? Through a serial connection? For _how_ much? Ok, if there's nothing else... Or if I'm an audiophile and my cassette deck just doesn't cut it.
From the day I saw mp3 way back when, I dreamed of 12 hours of music in my pocket!!
Ok. Quiz time. What's the killer service to accompany products like this?
1) Rip-n-burn services (requiring you to bring/send in your original CDs, you know, fair use and all).
2) K-Tel records (or whoever else has the guts) producing their big anthologies, all the 70's on one cd. All the 80's on one CD. The top 150 songs of 1992!
3) "Buy-your-CDs-from-us and we'll burn for free" services.
Ok, there's one huge problem with all of this. The RIAA will freak out and sue everyone to death, (in spite of fair use) and that threat alone will prevent anyone except us CDR/CDRW owners from being able to use this stuff. Now this will cost us more denero due to the economies of scale being massively reduced. Guess that means less money to buy CDs with
(Attn RIAA: Thanks for nothing you boners.)