Yup, it is better against earthquakes too.
on
UML Fever
·
· Score: 1
Rammed earth walls will survive much stronger earthquakes than frame construction because they are much thicker and heavier (meaning that they will have lower natural frequencies unlike wooden frames, which can resonate with the earthquake and rip themselves apart), but also more flexible. Being partially buried is also a great help in damping vibrations.
> You see, 20,000 years ago, our clever, but > inexperienced ancestors had to make new shelter > every few days/months/years/whatever, simply > because they made them from mud.
Buildings made of mud (in adobe brick or rammed earth construction, as it is called these days) are much sturdier than the frame matchbox you are living in. In fact, rammed earth walls are so durable that some of them are still standing after 5000 years of rain/wind/hail etc. And they are more energy efficient too.
> in Russia, in aerospace/military contracts, it's > unlikely the gov would be paying $1100 for a screwdriver
In Russia you would never pay this much for a screwdriver. The problem is _finding_ the screwdriver.
If this was an asteroid impact...
on
Listen to the Sky
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
According to http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects, such a net of cell phones will create an impact of 1.16E9 megatons of TNT and create a crater 108 miles in diameter. It also notes that simliar sized nets of cell phones hit the earth about once every billion years.
Since the atmosphere is only 12 miles high, it is obvious that they must mean a 25 mile net at the depth of 60 meters. The weight of the cellphones needed to fill it probably can't make a bigger crater than that. If it makes a sphere, it has a volume of 3.3E13 m3. Each m3 can probably contain about 5000 cell phones, each weighing in at ~200g. This comes to 1.7E17 cell phones at a total weight of 3.3E16 kg.
No adult can remain sane after watching an hour of teletubbies. Or the wiggles. Or Barney. In fact, such adults might be so insane as to actually buy books.
> OK, where are there existing semiconductor plants > using nano-tech self-assembly techniques? > That's an odd statement, implying the current UV > light and mask etching equipment could just as > easily do nano self-assembly.
First of all, "self-assembly" is not "nano-assembly", it is just chrystallization. The process is chemical in nature and would require similar equipment to that of circuit board etching. Second, mask etching is still required to draw the address wires on the silicone substrate. All they do is change the "bit" material, the rest will be pretty much the same as a regular memory chip.
Michael Chrichton be damned. "Self-assembling" simply means that the molecules arrange themselves in a useful pattern when they fall out of solution. It used to be called "chrystallization", but the marketing people must have decided that it would be cute to invent a new word for making salt. This has absolutely nothing to do with Eric Drexler's assemblers or nanotechnology (at least as he originally defined it). And one final point: even Drexler's assemblers are only machines. THEY ARE NOT ALIVE!!!! Damn it! They will not eat your brain any more than your feature-filled VCR will.
> The point is, banks will assume the worst when it > comes to you no longer physicaly having your card.
As they should. Really, it is much simpler for the bank to just issue a replacement card than to bother returning the old one. Think about it: should they print a piece of embossed plastic that costs a few cents, or have the kindhearted finder send the old card in (37 cents) and remail it to the owner (another 37 cents + 15 minutes of somebody's time [or more, if Windows crashes]) all the while ensuring that no fraudulent transactions take place in the meantime (priceless)?
> I mean a real man's printer would weigh about 100 > pounds, have a titanium shell, be able to hold > 1,000 sheets of p
When I was growing up in Soviet Russia, I saw countless applications of this very philosophy to absolutely everything. If it could weigh a ton, it did. Thus, you can be assured, that if Russians ever design a printer, it will fit your description, and be sturdy enough to print YOU! (Sorry, I couldn't resist:)
Did you know that Osama Bin Laden is releasing a substance called "carbon dioxide" in the atmosphere every day? Did you know that only a liter of this substance can be used to suffocate the entire New York city (if you recycle it, of course)? It is also thought to be responsible for global warming and the eventual destruction of coastal cities.
> Live on the West Coast for a while, but be > prepared to leave, because for every year you live > out there, you lose an IQ point.
Just because California is a communist state that lowers your IQ, doesn't mean it takes up the entire West Coast. There are perfectly fine places to live in Washington state and Canada.
> I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator
> might actually be responsible for all of this
This is a consequence, not the cause. The problem is our education system and the way it encourages stupidity. Read about that and the solution to it in the
Montessori Method. It's old and, sadly, is the sort of stuff nobody teaches children any more.
> I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator
This is a consequence, not the cause. The problem is our education system and the way it encourages stupidity. Read about that and the solution to it in th Montessori Method. It's old and, sadly, is the sort of stuff nobody teaches children any more.
> A bunch of Super intelligent, yet hyperactive and > ruthless 9 year olds, with ultra fast reflexes and > photographic memory, but total lack of > self-control and morals
I wonder why everyone seems to assume that any improvement in human capacity is always accompanied by "total lack of self-control and morals". If any correlation is warranted, it is the reverse. Perhaps it is all just sour grapes?
With all the guns and tanks and helicopters and artillery and many many more grunts than are needed to take over AOL headquarters and turn it into a large smoking crater, why the hell not?
> those people in the desert you cite don't go five days without sunshine
Sometimes they do. If you look at the battery bank calculators (found at many solar power advocacy sites), five days is the recommended energy reserve. I don't think it is unreasonable if you have energy efficient appliances.
> I got the 6.5 amps off the little tag with the serial number
That is the maximum current expected from it, listed to help you avoid overloading a circuit. I doubt it ever draws that much; if you want to really know the real current draw, you have to get a meter and measure. This is the same for all elecrical appliances, including my computer, which has a power supply rated at 500W, which is, of course, absurd.
> so they sell generators.
Generators outsell batteries not because they are more "cost effective" (most people who generate their own power buy batteries and a generator, especially in climates where the sun does not shine 300 days in a year), but because they are portable. Battery banks also require an inverter to work with normal appliances, while generators do not.
I have not ran across a lot of pages that actually need to be dynamically generated. Shopping carts and account settings need it, but if you make everything dynamic, like most misguided web developers do these days, you simply succeed at slowing your site down to a crawl and evoking a long stream of curses from people like me, who still think that broadband access is not worth $60 a month.
Slashdot Mirror
Rammed earth walls will survive much stronger earthquakes than frame construction because they are much thicker and heavier (meaning that they will have lower natural frequencies unlike wooden frames, which can resonate with the earthquake and rip themselves apart), but also more flexible. Being partially buried is also a great help in damping vibrations.
> You see, 20,000 years ago, our clever, but
> inexperienced ancestors had to make new shelter
> every few days/months/years/whatever, simply
> because they made them from mud.
Buildings made of mud (in adobe brick or rammed earth construction, as it is called these days) are much sturdier than the frame matchbox you are living in. In fact, rammed earth walls are so durable that some of them are still standing after 5000 years of rain/wind/hail etc. And they are more energy efficient too.
> in Russia, in aerospace/military contracts, it's
> unlikely the gov would be paying $1100 for a screwdriver
In Russia you would never pay this much for a screwdriver. The problem is _finding_ the screwdriver.
According to http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects, such a net of cell phones will create an impact of 1.16E9 megatons of TNT and create a crater 108 miles in diameter. It also notes that simliar sized nets of cell phones hit the earth about once every billion years.
Since the atmosphere is only 12 miles high, it is obvious that they must mean a 25 mile net at the depth of 60 meters. The weight of the cellphones needed to fill it probably can't make a bigger crater than that. If it makes a sphere, it has a volume of 3.3E13 m3. Each m3 can probably contain about 5000 cell phones, each weighing in at ~200g. This comes to 1.7E17 cell phones at a total weight of 3.3E16 kg.
> Watch TV with your kids. Know what they watch.
No adult can remain sane after watching an hour of teletubbies. Or the wiggles. Or Barney. In fact, such adults might be so insane as to actually buy books.
> You can't tax something that does not exist.
You mean like those enormous profits everyone would make if people stopped pirating music and software?
Flying cars? Flying cars be damned; all I want is my pony!
> I'm still waiting for my authentic ivory mouse and tiger fur coated keyboard.
Uh, wouldn't it be better to make the keyboard out of ivory and put the tiger fur on the mouse? It's kinda hard to paint letters on the fur...
> OK, where are there existing semiconductor plants
> using nano-tech self-assembly techniques?
> That's an odd statement, implying the current UV
> light and mask etching equipment could just as
> easily do nano self-assembly.
First of all, "self-assembly" is not "nano-assembly", it is just chrystallization. The process is chemical in nature and would require similar equipment to that of circuit board etching. Second, mask etching is still required to draw the address wires on the silicone substrate. All they do is change the "bit" material, the rest will be pretty much the same as a regular memory chip.
Michael Chrichton be damned. "Self-assembling" simply means that the molecules arrange themselves in a useful pattern when they fall out of solution. It used to be called "chrystallization", but the marketing people must have decided that it would be cute to invent a new word for making salt. This has absolutely nothing to do with Eric Drexler's assemblers or nanotechnology (at least as he originally defined it). And one final point: even Drexler's assemblers are only machines. THEY ARE NOT ALIVE!!!! Damn it! They will not eat your brain any more than your feature-filled VCR will.
> No one will ever need less than 640mm of memory
Is that straight, curled, or folded memory?
print1 ("Password: "); /* omega 0.90 site1.c by Laurence Raphael Brothers */
strcpy (passwd, msgscanstring ());
valid = (strcmp (passwd, Password) == 0);
if (!valid) {
done = TRUE;
menuclear ();
menuprint ("Alert! Alert! Invalid Password!\n");
menuprint ("The police are being summoned!\n");
menuprint ("Please wait for the police to arrive....\n\n");
menuprint ("----Hit space bar to continue----\n");
showmenu ();
response = menugetc ();
if (response == ' ') {
Player.alignment += 5;
xredraw ();
print1 ("Ah ha! Trying to rob the bank, eh?");
print2 ("Take him away, boys!");
morewait ();
send_to_jail ();
} else {
Player.alignment -= 5;
menuclear ();
sleep (4);
menuprint ("^@^@^@^@^@00AD1203BC0F0000FFFFFFFFFFFF\n");
menuprint ("Interrupt in _get_space. Illegal Character.\
showmenu ();
sleep (4);
menuprint ("Aborting _police_alert.....\n");
menuprint ("Attempting reboot.....\n");
showmenu ();
sleep (4);
menuprint ("Warning: Illegal shmop at _count_cash.\n");
menuprint ("Warning: Command Buffer NOT CLEARED\n");
showmenu ();
sleep (4);
menuprint ("Reboot Complete. Execution Continuing.\n");
menuprint ("Withdrawing: 4294967297 Au.\n");
menuprint ("Warning: Arithmetic Overflow in _withdraw\n"
showmenu ();
sleep (4);
menuprint ("Yo mama. Core dumped.\n");
showmenu ();
sleep (4);
xredraw ();
clearmsg ();
print1 ("The cash machine begins to spew gold pieces!");
print2 ("You pick up your entire balance and then some!"
Player.cash += Balance + 1000 + random_range (3000);
Balance = 0;
setgamestatus (BANK_BROKEN);
}
}
> The point is, banks will assume the worst when it
> comes to you no longer physicaly having your card.
As they should. Really, it is much simpler for the bank to just issue a replacement card than to bother returning the old one. Think about it: should they print a piece of embossed plastic that costs a few cents, or have the kindhearted finder send the old card in (37 cents) and remail it to the owner (another 37 cents + 15 minutes of somebody's time [or more, if Windows crashes]) all the while ensuring that no fraudulent transactions take place in the meantime (priceless)?
> I mean a real man's printer would weigh about 100
:)
> pounds, have a titanium shell, be able to hold > 1,000 sheets of p
When I was growing up in Soviet Russia, I saw countless applications of this very philosophy to absolutely everything. If it could weigh a ton, it did. Thus, you can be assured, that if Russians ever design a printer, it will fit your description, and be sturdy enough to print YOU! (Sorry, I couldn't resist
Did you know that Osama Bin Laden is releasing a substance called "carbon dioxide" in the atmosphere every day? Did you know that only a liter of this substance can be used to suffocate the entire New York city (if you recycle it, of course)? It is also thought to be responsible for global warming and the eventual destruction of coastal cities.
> Live on the West Coast for a while, but be
> prepared to leave, because for every year you live
> out there, you lose an IQ point.
Just because California is a communist state that lowers your IQ, doesn't mean it takes up the entire West Coast. There are perfectly fine places to live in Washington state and Canada.
> I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator
> might actually be responsible for all of this
This is a consequence, not the cause. The problem is our education system and the way it encourages stupidity. Read about that and the solution to it in the Montessori Method. It's old and, sadly, is the sort of stuff nobody teaches children any more.
> I think our approach to designing products aimed at the lowest common denominator
This is a consequence, not the cause. The problem is our education system and the way it encourages stupidity. Read about that and the solution to it in th
Montessori Method. It's old and, sadly, is the sort of stuff nobody teaches children any more.
> A bunch of Super intelligent, yet hyperactive and
> ruthless 9 year olds, with ultra fast reflexes and
> photographic memory, but total lack of
> self-control and morals
I wonder why everyone seems to assume that any improvement in human capacity is always accompanied by "total lack of self-control and morals". If any correlation is warranted, it is the reverse. Perhaps it is all just sour grapes?
> The ARMY can't help with the AOL cd's
With all the guns and tanks and helicopters and artillery and many many more grunts than are needed to take over AOL headquarters and turn it into a large smoking crater, why the hell not?
In the OSS world, major releases are counted in the minor numbers, so 2.6 is what a commercial company would have called 26.
> those people in the desert you cite don't go five days without sunshine
Sometimes they do. If you look at the battery bank calculators (found at many solar power advocacy sites), five days is the recommended energy reserve. I don't think it is unreasonable if you have energy efficient appliances.
> I got the 6.5 amps off the little tag with the serial number
That is the maximum current expected from it, listed to help you avoid overloading a circuit. I doubt it ever draws that much; if you want to really know the real current draw, you have to get a meter and measure. This is the same for all elecrical appliances, including my computer, which has a power supply rated at 500W, which is, of course, absurd.
> so they sell generators.
Generators outsell batteries not because they are more "cost effective" (most people who generate their own power buy batteries and a generator, especially in climates where the sun does not shine 300 days in a year), but because they are portable. Battery banks also require an inverter to work with normal appliances, while generators do not.
> why would your poor conection slow down dynamic content.
Because of low latency. Throughput slows down everything, but dynamic content suffers more due to the amount of cross-talk it generates.
> And it will only slow down the server if its done poorly anyway.
Judging from what I see on ALL the web sites I visit, there is simply no one left who can do it well.
> 1. Make your pages *look* static
I have not ran across a lot of pages that actually need to be dynamically generated. Shopping carts and account settings need it, but if you make everything dynamic, like most misguided web developers do these days, you simply succeed at slowing your site down to a crawl and evoking a long stream of curses from people like me, who still think that broadband access is not worth $60 a month.