When the threat of liquid explosives was first perceived, slashdot covered it, with specifics on what the real threat was (triacetone triperoxide) and some real chemistry behind it. It is interesting that now the TSA basically confirms what the original coverage stated, basically "But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy".
Did they really need a process to document how to arrange a meeting that had steps like "book a meeting room" and "invite participants to the meeting" plus a diagram showing the meeting with participants as an input. I work in a large engineering office. I am surprised, well not anymore, at how inept some people are when it comes to meetings, so yes, a document of meeting guidelines is something that some, no, many, people could use.
I despise being called to a meeting that has no agenda attached, no time limit, and no stated objective of what we plan to solve, decide on, or have communicated to us. Having 10 engineers/managers/customers in a room for two hours without a game plan is sooooo frustrating. It has taken years of going to meeting, and having many of my own (where I made the same mistakes) before I figured it out.
It is sad. I have verbally explained a "process" to younger engineers that have called meetings that have pissed me off because they were useless.
... the primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law...
Yes, and when you send in the robots to fight insurgents who do not honor the law, the insurgents will win every time. If it comes to all-out-war the first thing that will be tossed is the international rule book.
When two parties engage in battle, the party that does not abide by all laws will inevitably win.
This would suck for people that actually car pool. Groups of people trying to do the right thing, but yet get slammed by some toll system that is only looking at one item. What happens when weather is bad and cars slow down, or construction? This will not work.
To request a coupon, consumers can apply online at www.dtv2009.gov. The government also has set up a 24-hour hotline to take requests, 1-888-DTV-2009 (1-888-388-2009). I imagine that many people who need these boxes don't have internet access and will never see the phone number displayed anywhere, except the internet. Poor grandma will just see white fuzz on the morning of Feb. 18 2009 instead of The Price Is Right.
NASA's other option lies in the private sector; but thus far, the progress from that quarter does not look sufficient to meet the 2011 deadline.
4 years to deliver a space shuttle replacement, yeah lets bet on that option. If NASA and our government were serious they would have offered some sort of financial assistance, say dollar for dollar matching on R&D or startup capital. I mean, just sitting around 'hoping' for the private sector to bail out your space agency does not seem like a very good plan. All of this worrying, aka planning, should have been done a long time ago.
The title is a bit over dramatic, but obviously if you create a public database of despicable people there might be some vigilante justice. I am concerned that all offenses related to 'sex' will or are automatically entered into this database. I think before someone is publicly marked as a 'sex offender' a judge should have a chance to review whether that is something that would be in the best interest of justice. Basically it should be part of sentencing, like 1 year jail, 5 years probation and entry into the national DB for sex offenders, or whatever. Not that I am defending these degenerates, but when you start taking people's rights away and exposing them to public scrutiny I think careful consideration is in order.
Is jokes and a little bashing on Google. Well, I say good for Google. Finally a major company is taking serious interest in dealing with the addiction that the human race has for fossil fuel energy. With all the money people in the Google regime have I think it is great. If more companies took a stand we might get off our addiction or at least lessen it a bit.
Are laptops really as great as they're cracked up to be?
No. They run hot so having the thing on you lap is uncomfortable and/or painful. The battery life is OK for about 2 weeks and then it just simply can't keep the thing running for over 2 hours of hard core use. The built-in graphics cards are just ok, and you are stuck with it.
We love their portability, and we've been charting the steady rise of laptop sales for years.
Most people I know, which is a lot, keep the laptop on a small desk or coffee table in their home and rarely move it, and then when they unplug, to go sit on the couch, the darn battery starts draining like a sieve.
Yet while many of us depend on them for work, our IT departments view them with mixed feelings. IT managers point to wi-fi configuration, complicated authentication procedures, and eight other issues as making their jobs a lot harder. Oh please! "My job is harder", boo-f'in-hoo. Seriously. If you are a decent IT guy you are making 60k+ year with good benefits, so suck it up. In case you have been asleep for the past 10 years technology has been getting more and more advanced as time progresses. What part about that did you think was going to make your job easier! It is funny, the more advanced technology gets, the more it is supposed to 'help' us. Maybe for the end-user, but the IT guys and gals get stuck holding the why-doesn't-my-wifi-thingy-connect-to-the-network bag.
What else is missing from the list of laptop limitations?
I think their short comings have been pretty well covered.
What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
More mini-expansion ports and serviceable parts. Like on board graphics cards. Why not have upgradeable graphics cards via the good ol' mini PC card slot? Extension through a docking station. If we can't make the laptops more extensible then how about the docking station. It would be cool if the docking station got a little bigger, say big enough for your various graphics cards and some SATA connections with drive bays? This way when you plug in to the station you get a super fast graphics card and access to larger hard drive space and fast DVD burners, or multiple DVD-RWs to easily copy disks, or whatever...
OK, forget that fact that there is no interface, but what about 'yang' to the 'yin'? Can't have backup without restore, right? And what about brain formatting?
First, would you let a M$ product restore your brain? Maybe read-only, but write privileges, I think not!
Second, don't you normally experience a 'crash' in order to need to use a backup copy?
Third, assuming a crash of significant proportion, not just some slight amnesia, there would have to be either a dead body to restore to, which doesn't do much good, because, um, they are dead for a reason, or, you would need the ability to transplant a dead donors brain, be able to "format" it, and then restore it. This is assuming the hard crash of your brain wasn't the result of a severely traumatic injury that killed your body too.
I guess what I am really saying is, WTF? This is a stupid thing to even talk about, let alone spend any money on. Dumbasses.
There is no stalemate, because the "war" is not over. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just, for the most part, dead even in an ongoing race. As they say in Highlander, "There can be only one". As time goes on, prices will come down, and consumers will start to get the itch and start buying whatever brand happens to capture their attention and the scales will tip one way or the other. Soon after that the other technology will slowly fade into the background and a winner will emerge.
Research is one thing, implementing is another. This is one of the main reason Chinese vehicles have not made it to the United States; they are having trouble getting the safety features right. I know a lot of people who work for suppliers of the Big 3 or work directly for the Big 3. Airbag technology and other safety features are more trouble than you would think. Also, lets not forget about proprietary information and patents...
Just having a power grid doesn't mean there is an efficient delivery mechanism and or a hub of connections for electric vehicles to plug into, not to mention the types of wiring that would have to change to accommodate the higher loads of electricity.
Sure, the boys and girls in the valley could probably build a great electric car, but there is more to it than that. Take safety for example. You like those fancy airbags and "crumple zones" that protect you in a crash? It takes a lot of R&D to get those things right. The Big 3 in motor city have a lot of issues, but they still have a lot of experience with the whole car building thing, especially from a safety standpoint.
We are also overlooking the obvious issue with any alternative fuel: Infrastructure. Electric cars, fuel cell cars, E85 cars just won't catch on unless you can easily drive coast-to-coast, and everywhere in between, with a support network to fill'er up. The last you want is to be on %50 battery life and see a sign that says next electric fill up station 800 miles.
Maybe AT&T/Sprint/Verizon should just buy Vonage. I mean Vonage has a presence in the market place, and they must have some of their own patents, right? This could be a way for one of them to take more of the VOIP market, which will continue to boom as networking infrastructure improves.
One of their primary concerns is a flexible schedule and healthy work/life balance.
That is one of my primary concerns, and I am a Gen-X'r. I think more and more companies that are heavy into software development are starting to recognize that people want a flexible, comfortable workplace and an employer that realizes that adding perks, like flex-hours, casual dress code, telecommuting, more vacation, etc. can balance a crappy/mediocre salary and make up for other short-comings. In many instances adding perks can be a cheap way to attract(and keep existing) talent to your company without having to pony up huge salaries.
Don't get me wrong, 20Mbps up and down rocks, but what if I am content with a meager 5Mbps up/down? I would love to get that for, say, $35 per month... I suppose this just isn't worth it from Verizon's point of view, but I think having this as an option would attract many more people, and steal more cable broadband customers. I bet many people have the same thought process as I do, that is, 20Mbps is nice, but I am fine with 3Mbps which costs me $35 per month (if thats true). Point being many people wouldn't justify the extra $30 per month to go from 3-5Mbps to 20Mbps...
[quote.In one telling incident, a flight crew stated that a 30-degree navigation error[/quote]
The truth to this statement is somewhat suspect, but let's say it really did happen... The FMS on the plane would not allow a 30 degree error in 1 GPS to corrupt the navigation position, well, that is if it isn't a Honeywell FMS. The FMS I work on has reasonableness checks and multi-sensor inputs into it's positioning filter. If this really happened the GPS would be flagged as unreasonable and it's data would be tossed out and Navigation accuracy would still fall within the RNP (required navigational performance). So, I personally wouldn't cry chicken little just yet. In all likelihood if cell phone use is permitted it will be only allowed in cruise where the RNP is 2nm or Oceanic where RNP is 5nm. Approach mode can have an RNP of 0.5nm or less.
You can bet the good ol' developers of the Land Warrior will be keeping an eye on this. The concept of the Land Warrior in it's current form sucks, as pointed out by numerous posts, but one of the major downfalls (aside from the ironic decrease in situational awareness) is humping around 30 pounds of batteries... Of course, the suit would only be good in the day time if they used this, but hey, that is their problem to figure out!
The question is not whether information can be gained from the laptop, the only question is whether the thief has the brains to use it.
Or the motivation... There is a good chance the thief just took his/her booty to a pawn shop and sold it. The person who ends up buying the laptop from the pawn shop will most likely pop the latest Ubuntu Boot CD in and re-format (only a geek would buy a used laptop from a pawn shop). The laptop could have contained the answer to who really killed Kennedy, but, now it is really gone!
Seriously, the TSA is having a hissy about a few laptops that got stolen, but the reality is that probably hundreds of laptops get stolen everyday, these jack-asses were just unlucky and probably not the victims of precise targeting by a terrorist. In my opinion the value of "sensitive" data becomes lost when the people that created it know it has been leaked. So if you want to steal sensitive data you want to make sure the owner doesn't know you stole it, i.e. wait for a moment to strike, boot the laptop, steal the data, then leave. No one is the wiser...
OK, so I have my Open Office document with goodies of HAZMAT data in it. I deploy my favorite encryption program and encrypt the document. Then I delete the original document. Same problem exists. Encryption is not enough.
Either the data needs to be "shredded" or stored in it's natural form on a fully encrypted volume.
Problem with doing the small lift, is that the ISS would have been a fraction of the size that it is. Until they developed transhab, each module would have to be rinky dink.
Just wait until the Japanese colonize the moon and build manufacturing plants. Then we can easily build all the ISS stuff we want and float it over!
The Japanese have a lot more incentive to colonize the moon.. They have a serious overcrowding thing going on in their cities. Creating Lunar colonies might be a good way to free up some space by shipping people to the moon for extended work programs or even living. Of course, I imagine the prolonged exposure to less gravity might be an issue for a return, but put that in the fine print!
I can't wait to vacation at Disney's Moon Adventure!
Slashdot Mirror
When the threat of liquid explosives was first perceived, slashdot covered it, with specifics on what the real threat was (triacetone triperoxide) and some real chemistry behind it. It is interesting that now the TSA basically confirms what the original coverage stated, basically "But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy".
I despise being called to a meeting that has no agenda attached, no time limit, and no stated objective of what we plan to solve, decide on, or have communicated to us. Having 10 engineers/managers/customers in a room for two hours without a game plan is sooooo frustrating. It has taken years of going to meeting, and having many of my own (where I made the same mistakes) before I figured it out.
It is sad. I have verbally explained a "process" to younger engineers that have called meetings that have pissed me off because they were useless.
... the primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law...Yes, and when you send in the robots to fight insurgents who do not honor the law, the insurgents will win every time. If it comes to all-out-war the first thing that will be tossed is the international rule book.
When two parties engage in battle, the party that does not abide by all laws will inevitably win.
This would suck for people that actually car pool. Groups of people trying to do the right thing, but yet get slammed by some toll system that is only looking at one item. What happens when weather is bad and cars slow down, or construction? This will not work.
Patient: Doctor, it hurts when I do this... Doctor: Don't do that.
4 years to deliver a space shuttle replacement, yeah lets bet on that option. If NASA and our government were serious they would have offered some sort of financial assistance, say dollar for dollar matching on R&D or startup capital. I mean, just sitting around 'hoping' for the private sector to bail out your space agency does not seem like a very good plan. All of this worrying, aka planning, should have been done a long time ago.
The title is a bit over dramatic, but obviously if you create a public database of despicable people there might be some vigilante justice. I am concerned that all offenses related to 'sex' will or are automatically entered into this database. I think before someone is publicly marked as a 'sex offender' a judge should have a chance to review whether that is something that would be in the best interest of justice. Basically it should be part of sentencing, like 1 year jail, 5 years probation and entry into the national DB for sex offenders, or whatever. Not that I am defending these degenerates, but when you start taking people's rights away and exposing them to public scrutiny I think careful consideration is in order.
Is jokes and a little bashing on Google. Well, I say good for Google. Finally a major company is taking serious interest in dealing with the addiction that the human race has for fossil fuel energy. With all the money people in the Google regime have I think it is great. If more companies took a stand we might get off our addiction or at least lessen it a bit.
No. They run hot so having the thing on you lap is uncomfortable and/or painful. The battery life is OK for about 2 weeks and then it just simply can't keep the thing running for over 2 hours of hard core use. The built-in graphics cards are just ok, and you are stuck with it.
We love their portability, and we've been charting the steady rise of laptop sales for years.
Most people I know, which is a lot, keep the laptop on a small desk or coffee table in their home and rarely move it, and then when they unplug, to go sit on the couch, the darn battery starts draining like a sieve.
Yet while many of us depend on them for work, our IT departments view them with mixed feelings. IT managers point to wi-fi configuration, complicated authentication procedures, and eight other issues as making their jobs a lot harder. Oh please! "My job is harder", boo-f'in-hoo. Seriously. If you are a decent IT guy you are making 60k+ year with good benefits, so suck it up. In case you have been asleep for the past 10 years technology has been getting more and more advanced as time progresses. What part about that did you think was going to make your job easier! It is funny, the more advanced technology gets, the more it is supposed to 'help' us. Maybe for the end-user, but the IT guys and gals get stuck holding the why-doesn't-my-wifi-thingy-connect-to-the-network bag.
What else is missing from the list of laptop limitations?
I think their short comings have been pretty well covered.
What would you like to see in the next generation of laptop computers?"
More mini-expansion ports and serviceable parts. Like on board graphics cards. Why not have upgradeable graphics cards via the good ol' mini PC card slot? Extension through a docking station. If we can't make the laptops more extensible then how about the docking station. It would be cool if the docking station got a little bigger, say big enough for your various graphics cards and some SATA connections with drive bays? This way when you plug in to the station you get a super fast graphics card and access to larger hard drive space and fast DVD burners, or multiple DVD-RWs to easily copy disks, or whatever...
OK, forget that fact that there is no interface, but what about 'yang' to the 'yin'? Can't have backup without restore, right? And what about brain formatting?
First, would you let a M$ product restore your brain? Maybe read-only, but write privileges, I think not!
Second, don't you normally experience a 'crash' in order to need to use a backup copy?
Third, assuming a crash of significant proportion, not just some slight amnesia, there would have to be either a dead body to restore to, which doesn't do much good, because, um, they are dead for a reason, or, you would need the ability to transplant a dead donors brain, be able to "format" it, and then restore it. This is assuming the hard crash of your brain wasn't the result of a severely traumatic injury that killed your body too.
I guess what I am really saying is, WTF? This is a stupid thing to even talk about, let alone spend any money on. Dumbasses.
There is no stalemate, because the "war" is not over. HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are just, for the most part, dead even in an ongoing race. As they say in Highlander, "There can be only one". As time goes on, prices will come down, and consumers will start to get the itch and start buying whatever brand happens to capture their attention and the scales will tip one way or the other. Soon after that the other technology will slowly fade into the background and a winner will emerge.
Research is one thing, implementing is another. This is one of the main reason Chinese vehicles have not made it to the United States; they are having trouble getting the safety features right. I know a lot of people who work for suppliers of the Big 3 or work directly for the Big 3. Airbag technology and other safety features are more trouble than you would think. Also, lets not forget about proprietary information and patents...
Just having a power grid doesn't mean there is an efficient delivery mechanism and or a hub of connections for electric vehicles to plug into, not to mention the types of wiring that would have to change to accommodate the higher loads of electricity.
Sure, the boys and girls in the valley could probably build a great electric car, but there is more to it than that. Take safety for example. You like those fancy airbags and "crumple zones" that protect you in a crash? It takes a lot of R&D to get those things right. The Big 3 in motor city have a lot of issues, but they still have a lot of experience with the whole car building thing, especially from a safety standpoint.
We are also overlooking the obvious issue with any alternative fuel: Infrastructure. Electric cars, fuel cell cars, E85 cars just won't catch on unless you can easily drive coast-to-coast, and everywhere in between, with a support network to fill'er up. The last you want is to be on %50 battery life and see a sign that says next electric fill up station 800 miles.
Maybe AT&T/Sprint/Verizon should just buy Vonage. I mean Vonage has a presence in the market place, and they must have some of their own patents, right? This could be a way for one of them to take more of the VOIP market, which will continue to boom as networking infrastructure improves.
That is one of my primary concerns, and I am a Gen-X'r. I think more and more companies that are heavy into software development are starting to recognize that people want a flexible, comfortable workplace and an employer that realizes that adding perks, like flex-hours, casual dress code, telecommuting, more vacation, etc. can balance a crappy/mediocre salary and make up for other short-comings. In many instances adding perks can be a cheap way to attract(and keep existing) talent to your company without having to pony up huge salaries.
Don't get me wrong, 20Mbps up and down rocks, but what if I am content with a meager 5Mbps up/down? I would love to get that for, say, $35 per month... I suppose this just isn't worth it from Verizon's point of view, but I think having this as an option would attract many more people, and steal more cable broadband customers. I bet many people have the same thought process as I do, that is, 20Mbps is nice, but I am fine with 3Mbps which costs me $35 per month (if thats true). Point being many people wouldn't justify the extra $30 per month to go from 3-5Mbps to 20Mbps...
... The difference is the number that are unlocked.
unlocked, or, bricked as a result of trying to unlock it.
The photo looks like it is missing a tail rotor as well, um, that is sorta critical, unless you just want to spin like a tea-cup ride at the fair...
[quote.In one telling incident, a flight crew stated that a 30-degree navigation error[/quote]
The truth to this statement is somewhat suspect, but let's say it really did happen... The FMS on the plane would not allow a 30 degree error in 1 GPS to corrupt the navigation position, well, that is if it isn't a Honeywell FMS. The FMS I work on has reasonableness checks and multi-sensor inputs into it's positioning filter. If this really happened the GPS would be flagged as unreasonable and it's data would be tossed out and Navigation accuracy would still fall within the RNP (required navigational performance). So, I personally wouldn't cry chicken little just yet. In all likelihood if cell phone use is permitted it will be only allowed in cruise where the RNP is 2nm or Oceanic where RNP is 5nm. Approach mode can have an RNP of 0.5nm or less.
You can bet the good ol' developers of the Land Warrior will be keeping an eye on this. The concept of the Land Warrior in it's current form sucks, as pointed out by numerous posts, but one of the major downfalls (aside from the ironic decrease in situational awareness) is humping around 30 pounds of batteries... Of course, the suit would only be good in the day time if they used this, but hey, that is their problem to figure out!
Or the motivation... There is a good chance the thief just took his/her booty to a pawn shop and sold it. The person who ends up buying the laptop from the pawn shop will most likely pop the latest Ubuntu Boot CD in and re-format (only a geek would buy a used laptop from a pawn shop). The laptop could have contained the answer to who really killed Kennedy, but, now it is really gone!
Seriously, the TSA is having a hissy about a few laptops that got stolen, but the reality is that probably hundreds of laptops get stolen everyday, these jack-asses were just unlucky and probably not the victims of precise targeting by a terrorist. In my opinion the value of "sensitive" data becomes lost when the people that created it know it has been leaked. So if you want to steal sensitive data you want to make sure the owner doesn't know you stole it, i.e. wait for a moment to strike, boot the laptop, steal the data, then leave. No one is the wiser...
OK, so I have my Open Office document with goodies of HAZMAT data in it. I deploy my favorite encryption program and encrypt the document. Then I delete the original document. Same problem exists. Encryption is not enough.
Either the data needs to be "shredded" or stored in it's natural form on a fully encrypted volume.
Just wait until the Japanese colonize the moon and build manufacturing plants. Then we can easily build all the ISS stuff we want and float it over!
The Japanese have a lot more incentive to colonize the moon.. They have a serious overcrowding thing going on in their cities. Creating Lunar colonies might be a good way to free up some space by shipping people to the moon for extended work programs or even living. Of course, I imagine the prolonged exposure to less gravity might be an issue for a return, but put that in the fine print! I can't wait to vacation at Disney's Moon Adventure!