I saw a TV program recently on this (can't remember link) that used brain imaging to show blood flow before and after coffee consumption.
The main result was that people who never (or rarely) drink coffee can get an observable improvement in blood flow to the brain, but regular coffee drinkers adjust and then need coffee to get back to normal state.
So either don't drink much coffee and use it for a boost now and then or drink it all the time and lose the advantage.
The company I work at does a lot of high-level design and testing and has both outsourcing and a large number of non-US or UK workers at branches in US and UK.
The Indian "guest" workers I know personally are at the top of their field but, because they are not in India, they are getting salaries to match.
Projects that are completely outsourced to India do not do as well as internal projects.
To me this points to (local) management being more of a problem than skill levels.
The biggest problem with outsourcing is poor specification (and perhaps an irrational expectation that the poor spec will somehow be transformed into the right spect on site).
The combination of "Western" managers and local employees seems to be improving the situation.
Driving drunk substantially increases a person's risk of committing a violent crime - for example killing someone.
The other problem with driving drunk is that people think they are being safer than usual when they are less safe than usual.
I agree about cell phones. Also dangerous while driving. Only hands free units can be used in the UK. There is a substantial fine if caught using the phone while driving and if it can be shown from phone records that a person was on the phone when an accident occured, the penalty is greater.
Interesting that this is modded flamebait when it describes an actual sequence of events that I went through trying to get Broadcom support for my laptop.
I know slashdotters are fond of Linux and think it can do no wrong. But there are real problems for non-technical users.
I have been using computers for decades and it took me an entire evening to get wireless to work. There are going to be many less technical users that will simply give up and stay with Windows.
Yes, newer laptops have fewer problems and it is possible to shop around for a system that will work without going into configuration scripts.
That does not mean however that everything just works. The next laptop I buy will probably be an Apple. From what I have heard from friends that have them, they really do just work.
Getting Broadcom support is not as easy as the one-click that some people imply.
First you have to know that you need ndiswrapper
You have to know how to get the wrapper
You have to know which of the many versions matches your wireless card
You have to install it (which for me required several sessions with a terminal window)
You have to figure out how to get your wireless security set up
You have to figure out why you can ping the router but firefox cannot find the server
If your sales go down and your revenue goes down, there is no option but to reduce costs.
Not everyone is in R&D.
As for as morale and focus on work, a reduction in staff can help refocus attention and dedication.
Probably a lot of slashdoters have not been through heavy downturns and massive layoffs.
Business should try to build loyalty and take care of their employees, but in the end, business is business. Not charity.
It is possible to get very close to zero, but not be at zero. Most people don't have a feel for this. They think non-zero is like one in a million or one in a billion.
1/2^1000000000, for example, is not zero but it is essentially zero.
One of the limitations of scientists talking to non-scientists is they they try to be accurate. Ironically this creates more misunderstanding than just being "inaccurate" and saying zero.
You seem to think that manufacturers have schematics or even RTL.
Manufacturers get rectangles. A lot of them on multiple masks. Finding out which rectangle you could alter to disable the protection is not possible in practice.
Maggie also said that she needed one day a week when it was possible to sleep longer.
An interesting comment from a sleep researcher quoted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2097666.stm:
According to Professor Ian Hindmarch, Head of Human Psychopharmacology at the University of Surrey in Guildford: "Many people like to claim they only need very small amounts of sleep. Four hours a night for instance.
"But we have found that when such people come in for tests, we find in most instances they are sleeping during the day and not admitting it, or are sleeping more than they think at night."
Another quote in the same page might apply to Thacher (and to some geeks that work 12 hours a day):
"Studies have shown however that people who only need very small amounts of sleep often show signs of mania."
For most non-geeks, the question is "I have this app that is really important for me and it is only available on Windows, how can I justify giving up my critical requirements just to change operating systems?"
For me as a technical writer, there is more than one app: FrameWorks, Acrobat Pro, PaintShop Pro, Captivate, Visio, Outlook (lots of meetings), and even the humble Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
One or two of these might be replaceable by FOSS to some degree. Employees have to deliver results efficiently. The cost of the software, even if in the thousands, is insignificant in the bigger picture.
I have tried Linux, and we do use some open source software where it is as good as the alternative: Subversion, Eclipse, Perl, Python. And sometimes use Linux alternatives to document software running on Linux, but that is limited to the hated Gimp.
Aside for the missing apps, cryptic configuration options that have to be run in script files, most frustrating for me is trying to cut and paste data and graphics between different apps.
Windows server is probably the easiest software to replace with Apache. I think this is why there is a special push by Microsoft to counter Linux on servers. For the end user professionals (other than C++ or script programmers), the Windows XP desktop is a better working environment. Microsoft seems to have jeopardized this advantage with Vista.
My guess it that this site is disproprotionaly frequented by young males. As a group, concern for others, comprimise, and trying to build consensum (except against Microsoft) is not high on the list of priorities.
As people get older, some of them try to balance the left-right split with more shades of grey.
Paul is a gimmick. No hope of any real influence and no viable plans.
The sad this, as looney as he is, he would be better than Bush.
I remember the study from a BBC program. In addition to the difference between women and men as an average, the study also found that some people have the other type of brain.
Not related to masculin or fiminine, about 10% (from memory) of men could multitask and about 10% of women had the strong spacial skills.
There have been several such studies, one is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/article/2007/10/mm_brainsex.shtml
There are a lot of times when email is better than pen and paper. Not exactly CYA, but sometimes people lose notes, write things down incorrectly because they are writing fast, or interpret what was written differently than intended.
With emails, writing them (sometimes) helps organize thinking better than just a quick verbal instruction.
Phone conversations are almost never used where I work. People are in different locations and are working on multiple projects.
If someone is not next to me, my normal communciation mechanism is email and I expect the same from others.
The CYA aspect is there as well. There is a lot of difference between you said the project was delayed by two weeks and having an email saying the project is delayed by two weeks.
The docs I've seem say the tritium comes from the lithium-6 absorbing a neutron and decaying to helium and tritium. So in a way, lithium is also one of the fuels.
Even if not used in the fuel cycle, large amounts of lithium are required to absorb the neutrons and produce heat for the turbines. (I suppose some heat could be removed from the torus itself, but I don't think that is the main source of heat.
I recall a scientific journal opined that fussion could not be economical because Lithium was a relatively rare element and would be very expensive in the industrial volumes required for large-scale fusion power generation.
I blame the unreasonable demands of the unions more than Thatcher.
I'm also happy (from an environmental perspective) that the UK is burning gas instead of coal.
Gimp is just silly. The UI can be learned, but do that just to save some money? No. Do it because you believe in The Cause? Maybe.
I am not mainly a graphic artist, but I do documentation and sometimes need to do graphics.
PaintShop Pro is the best balance of features and cost if all you need to do is capture screens and perhaps make minor changes.
I am sometimes forced to use Gimp to capture screens from Linux and I hate every second.
The places to use FOSS is where:
You have no money at all
You have some money, but not much
Your time is worth nothing, students for example.
The places to use expensive Adobe software is where:
Someone else pays
You have plenty of your own money
You are a professional and must compete with other professionals.
I seem to remember a lot of/. comments recently (0620255) about how unreasonable BSA was in being excessive about honest mistakes in managing licensing.
Too many FOSS enthusiasts (to use a neutral word) seem to be actively trying to stop the widespread adoption of Linux. Major company produces cheap Linux laptop. Isn't that what everyone wanted?
So the reaction is to call for production to be stopped and threaten lawsuits.
And you wonder why some companies are reluctant to adopt Linux?
Since this seems to require a heat exchanger (and turbine) it does not seem that portable to me.
What might be useful for an easily transportable reactor however, would be to replace the carbon-based furnace in conventional power stations. This could be used to relatively quickly convert a coal powered station into a nuclear one.
One of the main advantages of purpose built nuclear stations however is that there is a nice safe place to store partially spent fuel until it cools down enough to be moved somewhere else for recycling. If there were a lot of these small pods spread around, I guess that they would cease to be productively hot before they were cool enough to move safely.
I am all for nuclear power, as much as possible as soon as it can be built, but based on existing best practice designs.
This will help somewhat with peak oil and climate change, but will at best provide only half of the solution. The main change will have to come from lifestyle changes and renewable sources. The only other alternative, which is looking more likely every passing day, is radical reduction in population due to drought, famine, disease, and war.
Parent might be referring to internet connection rather that connection to a LAN or local fileserver. Most big companies have at least the master version of files on a server and many also have employees' working directories. The "internet" can go down without affecting any of this.
The orbits of the earth and moon are both concave relative to the sun. From an outside view, they both orbit the sun, but the moon wiggles a bit during its solar orbit. The orbits of small moons of planets are convex wrt the sun for part of their orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
I presume that people know that the phrase (and the Watchmen theme) comes from the latin phrase Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I saw a TV program recently on this (can't remember link) that used brain imaging to show blood flow before and after coffee consumption.
The main result was that people who never (or rarely) drink coffee can get an observable improvement in blood flow to the brain, but regular coffee drinkers adjust and then need coffee to get back to normal state.
So either don't drink much coffee and use it for a boost now and then or drink it all the time and lose the advantage.
The company I work at does a lot of high-level design and testing and has both outsourcing and a large number of non-US or UK workers at branches in US and UK.
The Indian "guest" workers I know personally are at the top of their field but, because they are not in India, they are getting salaries to match.
Projects that are completely outsourced to India do not do as well as internal projects.
To me this points to (local) management being more of a problem than skill levels.
The biggest problem with outsourcing is poor specification (and perhaps an irrational expectation that the poor spec will somehow be transformed into the right spect on site).
The combination of "Western" managers and local employees seems to be improving the situation.
Driving drunk substantially increases a person's risk of committing a violent crime - for example killing someone.
The other problem with driving drunk is that people think they are being safer than usual when they are less safe than usual.
I agree about cell phones. Also dangerous while driving. Only hands free units can be used in the UK. There is a substantial fine if caught using the phone while driving and if it can be shown from phone records that a person was on the phone when an accident occured, the penalty is greater.
Interesting that this is modded flamebait when it describes an actual sequence of events that I went through trying to get Broadcom support for my laptop.
I know slashdotters are fond of Linux and think it can do no wrong. But there are real problems for non-technical users.
I have been using computers for decades and it took me an entire evening to get wireless to work. There are going to be many less technical users that will simply give up and stay with Windows.
Yes, newer laptops have fewer problems and it is possible to shop around for a system that will work without going into configuration scripts.
That does not mean however that everything just works. The next laptop I buy will probably be an Apple. From what I have heard from friends that have them, they really do just work.
Getting Broadcom support is not as easy as the one-click that some people imply.
First you have to know that you need ndiswrapper
You have to know how to get the wrapper
You have to know which of the many versions matches your wireless card
You have to install it (which for me required several sessions with a terminal window)
You have to figure out how to get your wireless security set up
You have to figure out why you can ping the router but firefox cannot find the server
If your sales go down and your revenue goes down, there is no option but to reduce costs.
Not everyone is in R&D.
As for as morale and focus on work, a reduction in staff can help refocus attention and dedication.
Probably a lot of slashdoters have not been through heavy downturns and massive layoffs.
Business should try to build loyalty and take care of their employees, but in the end, business is business. Not charity.
It is possible to get very close to zero, but not be at zero. Most people don't have a feel for this. They think non-zero is like one in a million or one in a billion.
1/2^1000000000, for example, is not zero but it is essentially zero.
One of the limitations of scientists talking to non-scientists is they they try to be accurate. Ironically this creates more misunderstanding than just being "inaccurate" and saying zero.
Don't read it is possible.
Don't have it poluting search results is not.
Search turns up too much junk already.
You seem to think that manufacturers have schematics or even RTL. Manufacturers get rectangles. A lot of them on multiple masks. Finding out which rectangle you could alter to disable the protection is not possible in practice.
Maggie also said that she needed one day a week when it was possible to sleep longer.
An interesting comment from a sleep researcher quoted at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2097666.stm:
According to Professor Ian Hindmarch, Head of Human Psychopharmacology at the University of Surrey in Guildford: "Many people like to claim they only need very small amounts of sleep. Four hours a night for instance. "But we have found that when such people come in for tests, we find in most instances they are sleeping during the day and not admitting it, or are sleeping more than they think at night."
Another quote in the same page might apply to Thacher (and to some geeks that work 12 hours a day):
"Studies have shown however that people who only need very small amounts of sleep often show signs of mania."
For most non-geeks, the question is "I have this app that is really important for me and it is only available on Windows, how can I justify giving up my critical requirements just to change operating systems?"
For me as a technical writer, there is more than one app: FrameWorks, Acrobat Pro, PaintShop Pro, Captivate, Visio, Outlook (lots of meetings), and even the humble Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
One or two of these might be replaceable by FOSS to some degree. Employees have to deliver results efficiently. The cost of the software, even if in the thousands, is insignificant in the bigger picture.
I have tried Linux, and we do use some open source software where it is as good as the alternative: Subversion, Eclipse, Perl, Python. And sometimes use Linux alternatives to document software running on Linux, but that is limited to the hated Gimp.
Aside for the missing apps, cryptic configuration options that have to be run in script files, most frustrating for me is trying to cut and paste data and graphics between different apps.
Windows server is probably the easiest software to replace with Apache. I think this is why there is a special push by Microsoft to counter Linux on servers. For the end user professionals (other than C++ or script programmers), the Windows XP desktop is a better working environment. Microsoft seems to have jeopardized this advantage with Vista.
Diamonds are not actually cut. They are shattered in a controlled way because ...
Diamonds are hard.
They could be "sanded" down using diamond dust, but that does not produce the same jem-like apperance.
My guess it that this site is disproprotionaly frequented by young males. As a group, concern for others, comprimise, and trying to build consensum (except against Microsoft) is not high on the list of priorities.
As people get older, some of them try to balance the left-right split with more shades of grey.
Paul is a gimmick. No hope of any real influence and no viable plans.
The sad this, as looney as he is, he would be better than Bush.
I remember the study from a BBC program. In addition to the difference between women and men as an average, the study also found that some people have the other type of brain. Not related to masculin or fiminine, about 10% (from memory) of men could multitask and about 10% of women had the strong spacial skills. There have been several such studies, one is:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/theoneshow/article/2007/10/mm_brainsex.shtml
There are a lot of times when email is better than pen and paper. Not exactly CYA, but sometimes people lose notes, write things down incorrectly because they are writing fast, or interpret what was written differently than intended.
With emails, writing them (sometimes) helps organize thinking better than just a quick verbal instruction.
Phone conversations are almost never used where I work. People are in different locations and are working on multiple projects.
If someone is not next to me, my normal communciation mechanism is email and I expect the same from others.
The CYA aspect is there as well. There is a lot of difference between you said the project was delayed by two weeks and having an email saying the project is delayed by two weeks.
The docs I've seem say the tritium comes from the lithium-6 absorbing a neutron and decaying to helium and tritium. So in a way, lithium is also one of the fuels.
Even if not used in the fuel cycle, large amounts of lithium are required to absorb the neutrons and produce heat for the turbines. (I suppose some heat could be removed from the torus itself, but I don't think that is the main source of heat.
I recall a scientific journal opined that fussion could not be economical because Lithium was a relatively rare element and would be very expensive in the industrial volumes required for large-scale fusion power generation.
No.
I blame the unreasonable demands of the unions more than Thatcher.
I'm also happy (from an environmental perspective) that the UK is burning gas instead of coal.
Gimp is just silly. The UI can be learned, but do that just to save some money? No.
Do it because you believe in The Cause? Maybe.
I am not mainly a graphic artist, but I do documentation and sometimes need to do graphics.
PaintShop Pro is the best balance of features and cost if all you need to do is capture screens and perhaps make minor changes.
I am sometimes forced to use Gimp to capture screens from Linux and I hate every second.
The places to use FOSS is where:
You have no money at all
You have some money, but not much
Your time is worth nothing, students for example.
The places to use expensive Adobe software is where:
Someone else pays
You have plenty of your own money
You are a professional and must compete with other professionals.
I seem to remember a lot of /. comments recently (0620255) about how unreasonable BSA was in being excessive about honest mistakes in managing licensing.
Too many FOSS enthusiasts (to use a neutral word) seem to be actively trying to stop the widespread adoption of Linux. Major company produces cheap Linux laptop. Isn't that what everyone wanted?
So the reaction is to call for production to be stopped and threaten lawsuits.
And you wonder why some companies are reluctant to adopt Linux?
Since this seems to require a heat exchanger (and turbine) it does not seem that portable to me.
What might be useful for an easily transportable reactor however, would be to replace the carbon-based furnace in conventional power stations. This could be used to relatively quickly convert a coal powered station into a nuclear one.
One of the main advantages of purpose built nuclear stations however is that there is a nice safe place to store partially spent fuel until it cools down enough to be moved somewhere else for recycling. If there were a lot of these small pods spread around, I guess that they would cease to be productively hot before they were cool enough to move safely.
I am all for nuclear power, as much as possible as soon as it can be built, but based on existing best practice designs.
This will help somewhat with peak oil and climate change, but will at best provide only half of the solution. The main change will have to come from lifestyle changes and renewable sources. The only other alternative, which is looking more likely every passing day, is radical reduction in population due to drought, famine, disease, and war.
Parent might be referring to internet connection rather that connection to a LAN or local fileserver. Most big companies have at least the master version of files on a server and many also have employees' working directories. The "internet" can go down without affecting any of this.
The orbits of the earth and moon are both concave relative to the sun. From an outside view, they both orbit the sun, but the moon wiggles a bit during its solar orbit. The orbits of small moons of planets are convex wrt the sun for part of their orbit.