Would there be any chance of a small asteroid (one that could cause some problems) currently heading for earth not be detected yet by scientists? Yes. There is a very real chance that a chunk of rock the size of a basketball court could come at us tomorrow. A very very small, but very real chance. Asteroids that come from the sunward side of Earth's orbit are harder to detect because they are obscured by the Sun. One could come from that direction and astronomers may never see it. Most of the meteors that streak across the night sky are space stones no bigger than your hand, and usually about the size of a pea or smaller. Larger ones come down, but very infrequently. It is impossible for astronomers to chart, track or project the trajectories of the billions of space rocks left over from the formation of the Solar System.
Imagine a world where a small asteroid fragment or comet had struck Russia 60 years after Tunguska - during the depths of the Cold War. It would be a very different world today indeed.
Your entire comment is valid, although Google is really not at fault for not having the specifications for a laptop that old appearing on the main page. If you're referring to the old 50 Mhz model, this link is the best I could do, even from dell.com directly: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/dta/LAT4XX/00000005.htm
Since very few./ readers actually work in the cable or satellite industries, I can understand the boo-hooing and the "welcome to the evil government-sponsored monopoly" comments that have been posted so far. Let me explain what has actually happened here, and how franchising agreements work.
Time Warner has merely been granted, or has renewed, permission to provide cable in these areas. In exchange, these localities will charge Time Warner a fee per subscriber for the privilege of serving these communities. Franchise agreements almost always contain language regarding quality of service, customer compensation in the event of a missed appointment, and other requirements.
A franchise agreement is not a monopoly in and of itself. A franchise agreement is neither inherently good nor evil; it is a business contract much like any other. Any other company is welcome to petition City Hall or the state government for a franchise for these same areas. It is up to the state and local governments to decide who can provide service, and who can not. You may have read about Verizon and AT&T getting their wrists slapped for installing their product in a few area where they did not have a franchise. The affected town governments were not upset at the increased competition; rather, they wanted Verizon and AT&T to pay their cut!
This law regarding statewide franchises will benefit local entities as well as TV providers. Negotiating franchise agreements with every little town in the county is often a long, drawn-out tedious affair. Some small town governments have refused to allow other companies to start providing a competing service. You can't blame the industry itself for monopolism in these cases. Now, a single agreement will provide access to these towns while TW, AT&T, the 2 major satellite companies, and any other companies with a franchise all compete. 4 major players, all providing ESPN, et al...I personally fail to see the monopoly.
One process is all that has the problem. It leaks memory at a rate of about 80 MB a day...which is seriously not too shabby for a memory leak. Once it claims about 3 or 4 GB (this lovely Solaris box has 16 GB), we just bounce the server that spawns that process, and the memory is released. We do it outside of business hours via a cron now, and the end users have no idea it ever happens. The only reason we caught it was these strange system slowdowns every 4 months or so.
You, sir, have hit the nail on the head. These days, its all about the software on a UNIX-derived OS. Windows is all about just keeping the machine off of life support. I work for a company that uses nearly as many flavors of OS as Kobe Bryant has had sex partners. Oh yeah, sports reference, and this is/. I mean,...as many OS's as major Slackware releases. (Better?)
Our digital video controllers run SUSE, our network connectivity monitors are Debian-based, our workstations throughout the company are a mix of Windows 2000, XP Pro, and Vista. Heck, our billing software runs on a Tandem! The project I work on is a collaborative mix of the Tandem billing system, a Unix-derived OS middleware, the Solaris cluster application server, and Windows clients. It's a veritable OS soup. Thankfully, on the software side, it's all developed and supported by a 3rd party vendor. Yet through it all, our biggest headache is the Windows clients with their general operating system mishaps. They die unexpectedly, corrupting the MBR. The application suffers from a DLL error that comes and goes with different revisions of the software, etc. The Tandem and middleware have never gone down, and the Solaris cluster has a required program which springs a memory leak requiring a process restart every 30 days or so. That's all. If we could get a way to put our project into the field on a Linux-based platform, my job would consist of reading Slashdot and answering "how-do-I?" emails, not the current daily firefighting.
Let's set aside the natural urge to bash MS into oblivion. Let's (just for now) ignore conventional advice about network security and firewall use. Now, not only are these guys a Microsoft shop...they ARE Microsoft. MS claims their software is stable and secure. Perhaps it is -- when was the last time microsoft.com was taken down by malevolent hackers?
That said, with their closed source and closed-doors policy to revealing details about the inner workings of the OS, _Microsoft_ may be the only company that can successfully deploy a 100% Microsoft powered solution. How many registry changes, service daemon modifications, and other tweaks have been made to get their config running this way? The world may never know. It's probably impossible for the consumer world to ever have that level on knowledge about the Windows environment, and thus run it at peak security levels. For most consumers and businesses, a Linux OS with properly implemented firewalls is much more secure than an out-of-the-box Windows deployment and router ACLs.
Thanks for the feedback and the cross-post, it's nice to know my knowledge is useful to someone! I haven't had any capsicum in a long while myself! How did your gut react?
I agree with you there, but the FCC's intent was not to push LinuxMCE. Rather, the separable security directive was intended to open the market for third-party customer premises equipment (cable boxes). After 6 months, no other company has even started marketing a similar device for cable subscribers on the mass market. If this chip and a SDK were released to the public, I can see it finding a home in such a device. The integrated WiFi and WiMax capability adds a feature not available in today's CPE, namely easy Internet access, adding value to the newcomer's product. TiVO loses millions of dollars each quarter...and they are really the only major player in their industry!
An integrated 3-protocol chip, if produced for a reasonable price, could be just the thing to spark a new age of computing. Let's compare most "movie-future" computers to this: Easy wireless access almost anywhere you go, plus reception of live digital TV broadcasts. Sounds like the movies to me!! Granted -- the chip doesn't appear to be a ATSC decoder (I could be wrong) so current US broadcasters won't have their digital signals accessible by this chip. Additionally, wireless access in most municipalities is not existent, and most of those implementations just plain suck. At any rate, we need the hardware base to exist before the demand for "quality" municipal WiFi will grow.
Continue this development, and you may reach the point of having essentially a HTPC on a card, with TV tuning and wireless internet built in. With the new FCC mandates to open up the cable box market, Intel may open the door for competition that isn't a TiVO. And...even if no new companies step up, TiVO would probably be interested in providing Internet and TV via the same box -- something most cable boxes cannot do.
I also LONG for the day where WiFi chips/cards begin coming standard on motherboards; I prefer a desktop to a laptop any day. That, and I am tired of running CAT5 throughout my house to my multiple boxes.
I too, have experienced this slowdown of time on a couple occasions. The first time was a car wreck. The other was during a Independence Day fireworks celebration, when a 4 inch shell accidentally exploded while my head was directly above the tube, about 3 feet or so. I saw the spark, and I felt the wave of heat from the (in-progress) explosion. That's when everything slowed down. I moved as quickly as I could - away from the tube. I don't know the explosion velocity of gunpowder, but I managed to get my head away from the tube as well as take a half step before it finished blowing up. It was like an incendiary grenade went off at my feet. Granted, my pants were on fire and the hair on the back was scorched from the sparks as I ran like a madman. But my eyebrows were singed from that initial rush of heat that put me into fight-or-flight mode, before I turned, and before it exploded. It's on video, and all you see is: Guy bending over to pick up some wires, then a BIG "BOOM!" then a burning guy running away. The camera never picked up my turn before the explosion.
I should have been blinded, but I got turned 180 degrees in a minute fraction of a second. The guys I worked with on the fireworks show said they had never seen anyone move so fast in their lives. For me, time "slowed down" allowing my reaction time to save my vision (and face).
Perhaps the experiment itself was flawed. Perhaps relative time does not slow down for the observer, this can be confirmed with relativity; the subjects of the experiment were nowhere near relativistic speeds. Rather, let's assume that personal time can be defined by your brain's "sampling rate" of sensory input. I hypothesize that this "tachypsyche" or "fast mind" comes from the brain increasing this sampling rate during times of unplanned crisis, making it seem to pass slower than normal situations when your body dumps adrenaline, increasing real-world reaction times. An analogous effect is seen when recording an event at 300 fps, then playing it back at the standard 24 fps.
Hmmm, what the hell; I've got karma to burn. Your arguments fail to move me -- the examples either apply to telecom as a whole, or are simply untrue. You've clearly never had working knowledge of this industry.
As far as TV goes, most people's options boil down to little more than an antenna, DirecTV or The Cable Company.
True, there are currently 3 competing providers across the US, four if you separate DirectTV and Echostar. There's also FIOS. Some area have overbuilders, essentially a second cable company in the same area. Since I can't possibly come up with another crappy car analogy, we'll have to settle for an OS analogy: You've got over the air broadcast by FOX/CBS/*BC, around since the 1930's: Big Iron, IBM, Unix System V, systems that went into decline due to the changing face of technology. Dish: Microsoft - a newer product, with oppressive EULA's and a desire to have their product in EVERY home in the US. And the cable companies + overbuilders: Linux and it's variants...fractured and splintered amongst themselves, but with a similar goal and purpose.
How many options do you have for internet? More than 3? How about landline phone service or cell service? More than 3 local major players? This "lack" of competition exists in all of telecom, not just TV.
If there was an injection of more competition in the market I think we'd see a lot more innovative services like more robust video on demand, ala carte programming options, more and higher quality HD channels, and innovative new services we haven't even thought of.
You mean like....Youtube, Youtube, and with the exception of HD content....Youtube? In today's markets, innovative has come to mean "interactive". TV watching is not an interactive activity, and never has been...unless you count screaming at Sunday Night Football when the QB fumbles in the end zone in overtime. These innovative services are not going to come from the TV provider; they will be online. The HD issue is a tough one...a quick look online shows less than 50 HD channels currently available not counting regional sports networks and broadcasters. If you exclude HBO/SHOW/MAX, the list is under 40. I don't know about you, but Wealth TV HD just doesn't do it for me.
And before someone points out it's *their* infrastructure and they built and bought it--they did so with a lot of government subsidies and that infrastructure is sitting on a lot of public land. They only have mini-monopolies because the government has allowed it.
You're kidding, right? Cable companies receive no such subsidies; perhaps you're thinking of the telephone companies. FIOS is being laid courtesy of that lovely FCC fee on your phone bill, but not cable. Cable companies PAY the local governments for the rights to service the towns which they do -- and they pay mightily. I've seen franchise agreements where the municipality is collecting 1% of total revenue from the cable provider. This is passed to the customer, a tax imposed not by the cable company, but by city hall. Towns are greedy; Google for "FIOS franchise dispute" or read about AT&T being sued by a Wisconsin city because AT&T wasn't paying a franchise fee or a dispute for Cablevision. Austin, Texas used to collect 35 cents per subscriber each month; that was in 1996 and it's probably more by now.
Finally, there are no mini-monopolies -- overbuilders and telecoms such as AT&T/Verizon are free to come in to a town and provide service. But before they hop a ride on the money train, they have to pay f
Good attempt at spin, but you missed the most important statistic -- and it was on the same page:
Cable Penetration of TV Households (June 2007): 58.3%
The number comes from a third-party research company, and falls well short of the 70% penetration required by the 1984 law. Kevin Martin needs to get his witch's cauldron and cook the numbers a little longer on this one.
Additionally, 'homes passed' doesn't measure only houses where people may live. It also often includes businesses and other locations that the cable co. may provide service, such as city hall or local schools. American TV Households is a count of "total number of houses we could possibly serve" while 'homes' passed refers to "total number of US Postal Addresses that could be serviced by a cable provider if they called for a install tomorrow".
I am aware that Browns Ferry had a fire in the 1970's, but you've made me think of an interesting point. The water used in a reactor's triple cooling loop *should* remain separated twice over from the working fluid of the core. Heat is exchanged from the liquid sodium in the reactor, creating steam to drive the turbines. The steam is cooled in the evaporating towers, aided by a separate water supply which is often circulated into a lagoon/lake. The water temperature leaving the cooling towers is around 30C (~ 90F), heating the lake.
The lake would stay warmer, creating an artificial oasis for smaller aquatic life later into the cold months. The largest largemouth bass on record (depending on your source) was caught in Southern California or Georgia, with other monsters caught in Texas and Florida. The heat helps...maybe it's not a bad idea to start fishing near the nuke plant by me:)
That's an interesting point -- I wasn't aware of Germany's move away from nuclear power. My geopolitical knowledge of current events outside the US is admittedly small, outside of major global news. It's the exact reason I framed my reply as I did. There is always the source for bias, but the article referred to credible, verifiable sources that were based on international cooperation, rather than a anti-oil-industry ultra-left-wing "think tank" organization. I'll be looking up some of these studies when I have more time for more in-depth reading.
The article was refreshingly in-depth and it covered both sides of the issue - surprising, considering most./ articles are not much more than short blog rants. I do wish it had pointed readers to an online location of the studies cited, but the reports are verifiable. I was aware of cooperative studies done after WWII by the US and Japan, among others.
My gut reaction is to accept the information presented as reliably true. I have two reasons for this. First, this was published to a German site. I trust a German site slightly more than your average dot-com because of the competing forces at play in the current US 9/11 mindset. The Bush "gubmint" wants you to cower in terror every damn day fearing random acts of violence by brown people (Appropriate thanks to George Carlin). The more peaceful side of the US continues to try to reassure the public that much of the terror threat is FUD (which it is - seriously, we've been at the Orange terror level for months, meaning "High Risk of Attack". No attacks, no highly publicized failed plots to garner support for the omnipresent Orange. I doubt the FBI/CIA/DHS is doing THAT well). I admit the US has its enemies, and that fact should not be discounted. It's true that someone may someday use a nuke (or more likely a dirty bomb) in an American metropolis. But if this was posted to an American website, I would have a harder time accepting it at face-value, rather than subtle "fear not" messages by pro-nuclear lobbyists. That said, as an American citizen in a metro area, I'm happy to see that moderate radiation may be tolerated by the body better than expected, and i am also in support of more nuclear power plants in the US. Nuclear power done right releases less radioactivity into the air per year than a coal plant...and probably less than the pack of cigarettes I'll finish tonight.
Second, the effects of short-term radiation exposure are typically exaggerated, in my non-professional opinion. A chest X-ray for example, is roughly equal to 10 days' worth of background radiation dosage; fewer if you live 5000 feet or more above sea level. Not bad considering your heart and lungs are the target of a quick 120,000 electron-volt blast (Linkage). Cancer treatments can exceed 10 MeV. Granted, I'm talking about reasonable short-term exposure, something less than 3 or 4 Greys for a one-time worst-case scenario. I'm not going to argue that pulling a Spock and walking into a reactor for a while will leave you anywhere near healthy.
I think long-term radiation exposure is where we need to concern ourselves. For example, Marie Curie handled radioactive material with little to no protection for nearly 40 years, before dying of anemia in 1934. This can be partly attributed to the fact that much of the radiation she was exposed to was alpha radiation. However, long-term exposure to radium (which is over a million times more radioactive than uranium) and its byproducts, including radon gas and ionizing beta particles most likely led to her death. Gamma radiation is much more harmful, with the ability to knock base pairs out of DNA. Even the most loved radiation of all, UV, that elixir of youthful bronzed skin, has been shown to cause harm. But no one gets carcinoma from a single sunburn, or a single tan. The most deleterious effects add up over time, but are not caused by forgetting to slide the lead suit over the family jewels during an X-ray at the dentist.
Saying that only 800 or so out of 86,000 survivors died of radiation-related illness is not enough for me. How many showed non-fatal illness extending beyond 1 year of exposure to the bomb? What was the change in infant and child mortality 5/10/20 years after? How did the population histogram change over time - were elderly affected more than children or vice versa? How much radiation WAS deposited to the environment after the detonation of Fat Man/Little Boy -- accident at Chernobyl -- accident at Three
There should be no sales taxes on your internet access. Didn't we just see that particular topic drift though the front page? But I agree with you wholeheartedly that ISP's should have to actually provide the service they advertised and sold. GASP! Then they'd be like every other non-telecom business!
Are you serious or trying to be funny?? The FCC is the regulatory body for basically all telecommunications; thus Federal Communications Commission. Anybody who's in the communications business in the US is the FCC's bitch. Especially cable TV, with Kevin Martin currently wearing the FCC jester's hat.
The top paragraph of this page pretty much sums it up: All your base are belong to us^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions."
I agree with you about the Hawking radiation causing an otherwise entirely theoretical micro-mini-black hole to evaporate before it could get anywhere. However, the Prof always justified the "existence" of his premise by invoking relativistic effects of time dilation on the rapidly moving micro-mini-black hole. If it were traveling fast enough relative to us, isn't it possible that (relative) time on the surface of the singularity could be slowed enough to permit it to travel a great galactic distance before the effects of Hawking radiation blew it to bits on the cosmic wind?
Oh, by the way, those quiz questions were always extra credit - You'd get quarter credit if you just answered '42'.
Interesting Google calc link.
In a related vein, a black hole with the mass of Pluto would have an event horizon (Schwartzchild radius) of only 20 microns, or about the width of a hair on your arm. If it were somehow accelerated to a relativistic speed (> 0.95c), such a black hole could theoretically impact a star/planet/moon and pass right through. The only damage would be the curious 20 micron wide tunnel that suddenly appeared in the celestial body. All other matter on the planet would not be sucked in, although any inhabitants might experience some strange gravitational effects. My first-year college physics professor was a big fan of exotic astronomy, and we did several projects involving similar scenarios.
People that care about the environment and live in new york just do not own cars.
I agree with you that those who actually care are making the choice to use public transit when possible. Those who insist on their own Bentley to get out to the Hamptons, as well as a lift to park their car on the 17th floor yet still make a public showing of their "support" for environmental causes are hypocrites.
I see you caught this sooner that I could type the post correcting it. I should have gone to bed an hour ago, instead of typing the OP...but thanks to mods who see an outlandish claim and don't bother verifying, it'll still probably get modded up.:)
Correction: My initial numbers were wrong. Using conventional units of measurement, the one-way lift power would be approximately 136.1 watt-hours per lift. For a single day use of 100 lifts, that's 13.6 kW-h daily use. Per year, this is roughly 4967 kw-h. The typical US household averages about 10000 kW-h annually. Forgive my late night physics and math.
What a colossal waste of living space and energy. This is a prime example of convenience trumping common sense. The kinetic energy alone to lift a 1000kg car up 50 meters to your garage exceeds 1.3 kW, even at a leisurely 6 minute round-trip pace. (1000kg*50m*9.8m/s^2*360sec = ~1300 W)
Now lets say you take the car out every day: 40 kW per person per month, 480kW/year person. If only 100 units are available in the building, that's 48MW of power used annually. Just to park the damn Bentley! The ironic bit is that the rich fat cats that will pay for this sort of convenience are the same ones that cry about "hurting the environment" every time someone wants to build a development outside the city (granted, the point may be valid). Start practicing what you preach, eh?
Actually, in addition to the endorphins, neurons exposed to capsaicin fire repeatedly until they exhaust their supply of neurotransmitters. They continue to fire even when depleted due to the neurotoxic effect of the substance, but no sensation is transmitted. The effect can even damage or kill neurons with excessive exposure, making capsaicin a "double-edged sword" in medicinal use.
Slashdot Mirror
Imagine a world where a small asteroid fragment or comet had struck Russia 60 years after Tunguska - during the depths of the Cold War. It would be a very different world today indeed.
Your entire comment is valid, although Google is really not at fault for not having the specifications for a laptop that old appearing on the main page. If you're referring to the old 50 Mhz model, this link is the best I could do, even from dell.com directly: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/dta/LAT4XX/00000005.htm
Since very few ./ readers actually work in the cable or satellite industries, I can understand the boo-hooing and the "welcome to the evil government-sponsored monopoly" comments that have been posted so far. Let me explain what has actually happened here, and how franchising agreements work.
Time Warner has merely been granted, or has renewed, permission to provide cable in these areas. In exchange, these localities will charge Time Warner a fee per subscriber for the privilege of serving these communities. Franchise agreements almost always contain language regarding quality of service, customer compensation in the event of a missed appointment, and other requirements.
A franchise agreement is not a monopoly in and of itself. A franchise agreement is neither inherently good nor evil; it is a business contract much like any other. Any other company is welcome to petition City Hall or the state government for a franchise for these same areas. It is up to the state and local governments to decide who can provide service, and who can not. You may have read about Verizon and AT&T getting their wrists slapped for installing their product in a few area where they did not have a franchise. The affected town governments were not upset at the increased competition; rather, they wanted Verizon and AT&T to pay their cut!
This law regarding statewide franchises will benefit local entities as well as TV providers. Negotiating franchise agreements with every little town in the county is often a long, drawn-out tedious affair. Some small town governments have refused to allow other companies to start providing a competing service. You can't blame the industry itself for monopolism in these cases. Now, a single agreement will provide access to these towns while TW, AT&T, the 2 major satellite companies, and any other companies with a franchise all compete. 4 major players, all providing ESPN, et al...I personally fail to see the monopoly.
One process is all that has the problem. It leaks memory at a rate of about 80 MB a day...which is seriously not too shabby for a memory leak. Once it claims about 3 or 4 GB (this lovely Solaris box has 16 GB), we just bounce the server that spawns that process, and the memory is released. We do it outside of business hours via a cron now, and the end users have no idea it ever happens. The only reason we caught it was these strange system slowdowns every 4 months or so.
You, sir, have hit the nail on the head. These days, its all about the software on a UNIX-derived OS. Windows is all about just keeping the machine off of life support. I work for a company that uses nearly as many flavors of OS as Kobe Bryant has had sex partners. Oh yeah, sports reference, and this is /. I mean, ...as many OS's as major Slackware releases. (Better?)
Our digital video controllers run SUSE, our network connectivity monitors are Debian-based, our workstations throughout the company are a mix of Windows 2000, XP Pro, and Vista. Heck, our billing software runs on a Tandem! The project I work on is a collaborative mix of the Tandem billing system, a Unix-derived OS middleware, the Solaris cluster application server, and Windows clients. It's a veritable OS soup. Thankfully, on the software side, it's all developed and supported by a 3rd party vendor. Yet through it all, our biggest headache is the Windows clients with their general operating system mishaps. They die unexpectedly, corrupting the MBR. The application suffers from a DLL error that comes and goes with different revisions of the software, etc. The Tandem and middleware have never gone down, and the Solaris cluster has a required program which springs a memory leak requiring a process restart every 30 days or so. That's all. If we could get a way to put our project into the field on a Linux-based platform, my job would consist of reading Slashdot and answering "how-do-I?" emails, not the current daily firefighting.
Let's set aside the natural urge to bash MS into oblivion. Let's (just for now) ignore conventional advice about network security and firewall use. Now, not only are these guys a Microsoft shop...they ARE Microsoft. MS claims their software is stable and secure. Perhaps it is -- when was the last time microsoft.com was taken down by malevolent hackers?
That said, with their closed source and closed-doors policy to revealing details about the inner workings of the OS, _Microsoft_ may be the only company that can successfully deploy a 100% Microsoft powered solution. How many registry changes, service daemon modifications, and other tweaks have been made to get their config running this way? The world may never know. It's probably impossible for the consumer world to ever have that level on knowledge about the Windows environment, and thus run it at peak security levels. For most consumers and businesses, a Linux OS with properly implemented firewalls is much more secure than an out-of-the-box Windows deployment and router ACLs.
Nido,
Thanks for the feedback and the cross-post, it's nice to know my knowledge is useful to someone! I haven't had any capsicum in a long while myself! How did your gut react?
I agree with you there, but the FCC's intent was not to push LinuxMCE. Rather, the separable security directive was intended to open the market for third-party customer premises equipment (cable boxes). After 6 months, no other company has even started marketing a similar device for cable subscribers on the mass market. If this chip and a SDK were released to the public, I can see it finding a home in such a device. The integrated WiFi and WiMax capability adds a feature not available in today's CPE, namely easy Internet access, adding value to the newcomer's product. TiVO loses millions of dollars each quarter...and they are really the only major player in their industry!
An integrated 3-protocol chip, if produced for a reasonable price, could be just the thing to spark a new age of computing. Let's compare most "movie-future" computers to this: Easy wireless access almost anywhere you go, plus reception of live digital TV broadcasts. Sounds like the movies to me!! Granted -- the chip doesn't appear to be a ATSC decoder (I could be wrong) so current US broadcasters won't have their digital signals accessible by this chip. Additionally, wireless access in most municipalities is not existent, and most of those implementations just plain suck. At any rate, we need the hardware base to exist before the demand for "quality" municipal WiFi will grow.
Continue this development, and you may reach the point of having essentially a HTPC on a card, with TV tuning and wireless internet built in. With the new FCC mandates to open up the cable box market, Intel may open the door for competition that isn't a TiVO. And...even if no new companies step up, TiVO would probably be interested in providing Internet and TV via the same box -- something most cable boxes cannot do.
I also LONG for the day where WiFi chips/cards begin coming standard on motherboards; I prefer a desktop to a laptop any day. That, and I am tired of running CAT5 throughout my house to my multiple boxes.
I too, have experienced this slowdown of time on a couple occasions. The first time was a car wreck. The other was during a Independence Day fireworks celebration, when a 4 inch shell accidentally exploded while my head was directly above the tube, about 3 feet or so. I saw the spark, and I felt the wave of heat from the (in-progress) explosion. That's when everything slowed down. I moved as quickly as I could - away from the tube. I don't know the explosion velocity of gunpowder, but I managed to get my head away from the tube as well as take a half step before it finished blowing up. It was like an incendiary grenade went off at my feet. Granted, my pants were on fire and the hair on the back was scorched from the sparks as I ran like a madman. But my eyebrows were singed from that initial rush of heat that put me into fight-or-flight mode, before I turned, and before it exploded. It's on video, and all you see is: Guy bending over to pick up some wires, then a BIG "BOOM!" then a burning guy running away. The camera never picked up my turn before the explosion.
I should have been blinded, but I got turned 180 degrees in a minute fraction of a second. The guys I worked with on the fireworks show said they had never seen anyone move so fast in their lives. For me, time "slowed down" allowing my reaction time to save my vision (and face).
Perhaps the experiment itself was flawed. Perhaps relative time does not slow down for the observer, this can be confirmed with relativity; the subjects of the experiment were nowhere near relativistic speeds. Rather, let's assume that personal time can be defined by your brain's "sampling rate" of sensory input. I hypothesize that this "tachypsyche" or "fast mind" comes from the brain increasing this sampling rate during times of unplanned crisis, making it seem to pass slower than normal situations when your body dumps adrenaline, increasing real-world reaction times. An analogous effect is seen when recording an event at 300 fps, then playing it back at the standard 24 fps.
Hmmm, what the hell; I've got karma to burn. Your arguments fail to move me -- the examples either apply to telecom as a whole, or are simply untrue. You've clearly never had working knowledge of this industry.
As far as TV goes, most people's options boil down to little more than an antenna, DirecTV or The Cable Company.
True, there are currently 3 competing providers across the US, four if you separate DirectTV and Echostar. There's also FIOS. Some area have overbuilders, essentially a second cable company in the same area. Since I can't possibly come up with another crappy car analogy, we'll have to settle for an OS analogy: You've got over the air broadcast by FOX/CBS/*BC, around since the 1930's: Big Iron, IBM, Unix System V, systems that went into decline due to the changing face of technology. Dish: Microsoft - a newer product, with oppressive EULA's and a desire to have their product in EVERY home in the US. And the cable companies + overbuilders: Linux and it's variants...fractured and splintered amongst themselves, but with a similar goal and purpose.
How many options do you have for internet? More than 3? How about landline phone service or cell service? More than 3 local major players? This "lack" of competition exists in all of telecom, not just TV.
If there was an injection of more competition in the market I think we'd see a lot more innovative services like more robust video on demand, ala carte programming options, more and higher quality HD channels, and innovative new services we haven't even thought of.
You mean like....Youtube, Youtube, and with the exception of HD content....Youtube? In today's markets, innovative has come to mean "interactive". TV watching is not an interactive activity, and never has been...unless you count screaming at Sunday Night Football when the QB fumbles in the end zone in overtime. These innovative services are not going to come from the TV provider; they will be online. The HD issue is a tough one...a quick look online shows less than 50 HD channels currently available not counting regional sports networks and broadcasters. If you exclude HBO/SHOW/MAX, the list is under 40. I don't know about you, but Wealth TV HD just doesn't do it for me.
And before someone points out it's *their* infrastructure and they built and bought it--they did so with a lot of government subsidies and that infrastructure is sitting on a lot of public land. They only have mini-monopolies because the government has allowed it.
You're kidding, right? Cable companies receive no such subsidies; perhaps you're thinking of the telephone companies. FIOS is being laid courtesy of that lovely FCC fee on your phone bill, but not cable. Cable companies PAY the local governments for the rights to service the towns which they do -- and they pay mightily. I've seen franchise agreements where the municipality is collecting 1% of total revenue from the cable provider. This is passed to the customer, a tax imposed not by the cable company, but by city hall. Towns are greedy; Google for "FIOS franchise dispute" or read about AT&T being sued by a Wisconsin city because AT&T wasn't paying a franchise fee or a dispute for Cablevision. Austin, Texas used to collect 35 cents per subscriber each month; that was in 1996 and it's probably more by now.
Finally, there are no mini-monopolies -- overbuilders and telecoms such as AT&T/Verizon are free to come in to a town and provide service. But before they hop a ride on the money train, they have to pay f
Good attempt at spin, but you missed the most important statistic -- and it was on the same page:
Cable Penetration of TV Households (June 2007): 58.3%
The number comes from a third-party research company, and falls well short of the 70% penetration required by the 1984 law. Kevin Martin needs to get his witch's cauldron and cook the numbers a little longer on this one.
Additionally, 'homes passed' doesn't measure only houses where people may live. It also often includes businesses and other locations that the cable co. may provide service, such as city hall or local schools. American TV Households is a count of "total number of houses we could possibly serve" while 'homes' passed refers to "total number of US Postal Addresses that could be serviced by a cable provider if they called for a install tomorrow".
I am aware that Browns Ferry had a fire in the 1970's, but you've made me think of an interesting point. The water used in a reactor's triple cooling loop *should* remain separated twice over from the working fluid of the core. Heat is exchanged from the liquid sodium in the reactor, creating steam to drive the turbines. The steam is cooled in the evaporating towers, aided by a separate water supply which is often circulated into a lagoon/lake. The water temperature leaving the cooling towers is around 30C (~ 90F), heating the lake.
The lake would stay warmer, creating an artificial oasis for smaller aquatic life later into the cold months. The largest largemouth bass on record (depending on your source) was caught in Southern California or Georgia, with other monsters caught in Texas and Florida. The heat helps...maybe it's not a bad idea to start fishing near the nuke plant by me :)
That's an interesting point -- I wasn't aware of Germany's move away from nuclear power. My geopolitical knowledge of current events outside the US is admittedly small, outside of major global news. It's the exact reason I framed my reply as I did. There is always the source for bias, but the article referred to credible, verifiable sources that were based on international cooperation, rather than a anti-oil-industry ultra-left-wing "think tank" organization. I'll be looking up some of these studies when I have more time for more in-depth reading.
The article was refreshingly in-depth and it covered both sides of the issue - surprising, considering most ./ articles are not much more than short blog rants. I do wish it had pointed readers to an online location of the studies cited, but the reports are verifiable. I was aware of cooperative studies done after WWII by the US and Japan, among others.
My gut reaction is to accept the information presented as reliably true. I have two reasons for this. First, this was published to a German site. I trust a German site slightly more than your average dot-com because of the competing forces at play in the current US 9/11 mindset. The Bush "gubmint" wants you to cower in terror every damn day fearing random acts of violence by brown people (Appropriate thanks to George Carlin). The more peaceful side of the US continues to try to reassure the public that much of the terror threat is FUD (which it is - seriously, we've been at the Orange terror level for months, meaning "High Risk of Attack". No attacks, no highly publicized failed plots to garner support for the omnipresent Orange. I doubt the FBI/CIA/DHS is doing THAT well). I admit the US has its enemies, and that fact should not be discounted. It's true that someone may someday use a nuke (or more likely a dirty bomb) in an American metropolis. But if this was posted to an American website, I would have a harder time accepting it at face-value, rather than subtle "fear not" messages by pro-nuclear lobbyists. That said, as an American citizen in a metro area, I'm happy to see that moderate radiation may be tolerated by the body better than expected, and i am also in support of more nuclear power plants in the US. Nuclear power done right releases less radioactivity into the air per year than a coal plant...and probably less than the pack of cigarettes I'll finish tonight.
Second, the effects of short-term radiation exposure are typically exaggerated, in my non-professional opinion. A chest X-ray for example, is roughly equal to 10 days' worth of background radiation dosage; fewer if you live 5000 feet or more above sea level. Not bad considering your heart and lungs are the target of a quick 120,000 electron-volt blast (Linkage). Cancer treatments can exceed 10 MeV. Granted, I'm talking about reasonable short-term exposure, something less than 3 or 4 Greys for a one-time worst-case scenario. I'm not going to argue that pulling a Spock and walking into a reactor for a while will leave you anywhere near healthy.
I think long-term radiation exposure is where we need to concern ourselves. For example, Marie Curie handled radioactive material with little to no protection for nearly 40 years, before dying of anemia in 1934. This can be partly attributed to the fact that much of the radiation she was exposed to was alpha radiation. However, long-term exposure to radium (which is over a million times more radioactive than uranium) and its byproducts, including radon gas and ionizing beta particles most likely led to her death. Gamma radiation is much more harmful, with the ability to knock base pairs out of DNA. Even the most loved radiation of all, UV, that elixir of youthful bronzed skin, has been shown to cause harm. But no one gets carcinoma from a single sunburn, or a single tan. The most deleterious effects add up over time, but are not caused by forgetting to slide the lead suit over the family jewels during an X-ray at the dentist.
Saying that only 800 or so out of 86,000 survivors died of radiation-related illness is not enough for me. How many showed non-fatal illness extending beyond 1 year of exposure to the bomb? What was the change in infant and child mortality 5/10/20 years after? How did the population histogram change over time - were elderly affected more than children or vice versa? How much radiation WAS deposited to the environment after the detonation of Fat Man/Little Boy -- accident at Chernobyl -- accident at Three
There should be no sales taxes on your internet access. Didn't we just see that particular topic drift though the front page? But I agree with you wholeheartedly that ISP's should have to actually provide the service they advertised and sold. GASP! Then they'd be like every other non-telecom business!
Are you serious or trying to be funny?? The FCC is the regulatory body for basically all telecommunications; thus Federal Communications Commission. Anybody who's in the communications business in the US is the FCC's bitch. Especially cable TV, with Kevin Martin currently wearing the FCC jester's hat.
The top paragraph of this page pretty much sums it up: All your base are belong to us^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H "The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC's jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions."I agree with you about the Hawking radiation causing an otherwise entirely theoretical micro-mini-black hole to evaporate before it could get anywhere. However, the Prof always justified the "existence" of his premise by invoking relativistic effects of time dilation on the rapidly moving micro-mini-black hole. If it were traveling fast enough relative to us, isn't it possible that (relative) time on the surface of the singularity could be slowed enough to permit it to travel a great galactic distance before the effects of Hawking radiation blew it to bits on the cosmic wind?
Oh, by the way, those quiz questions were always extra credit - You'd get quarter credit if you just answered '42'.
Interesting Google calc link. In a related vein, a black hole with the mass of Pluto would have an event horizon (Schwartzchild radius) of only 20 microns, or about the width of a hair on your arm. If it were somehow accelerated to a relativistic speed (> 0.95c), such a black hole could theoretically impact a star/planet/moon and pass right through. The only damage would be the curious 20 micron wide tunnel that suddenly appeared in the celestial body. All other matter on the planet would not be sucked in, although any inhabitants might experience some strange gravitational effects. My first-year college physics professor was a big fan of exotic astronomy, and we did several projects involving similar scenarios.
I agree with you that those who actually care are making the choice to use public transit when possible. Those who insist on their own Bentley to get out to the Hamptons, as well as a lift to park their car on the 17th floor yet still make a public showing of their "support" for environmental causes are hypocrites.
I see you caught this sooner that I could type the post correcting it. I should have gone to bed an hour ago, instead of typing the OP...but thanks to mods who see an outlandish claim and don't bother verifying, it'll still probably get modded up. :)
Correction: My initial numbers were wrong. Using conventional units of measurement, the one-way lift power would be approximately 136.1 watt-hours per lift. For a single day use of 100 lifts, that's 13.6 kW-h daily use. Per year, this is roughly 4967 kw-h. The typical US household averages about 10000 kW-h annually. Forgive my late night physics and math.
What a colossal waste of living space and energy. This is a prime example of convenience trumping common sense. The kinetic energy alone to lift a 1000kg car up 50 meters to your garage exceeds 1.3 kW, even at a leisurely 6 minute round-trip pace. (1000kg*50m*9.8m/s^2*360sec = ~1300 W)
Now lets say you take the car out every day: 40 kW per person per month, 480kW/year person. If only 100 units are available in the building, that's 48MW of power used annually. Just to park the damn Bentley! The ironic bit is that the rich fat cats that will pay for this sort of convenience are the same ones that cry about "hurting the environment" every time someone wants to build a development outside the city (granted, the point may be valid). Start practicing what you preach, eh?
Actually, in addition to the endorphins, neurons exposed to capsaicin fire repeatedly until they exhaust their supply of neurotransmitters. They continue to fire even when depleted due to the neurotoxic effect of the substance, but no sensation is transmitted. The effect can even damage or kill neurons with excessive exposure, making capsaicin a "double-edged sword" in medicinal use.