LarsonsWorld | just another persons waste of time

dia 15 years later

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:17:38 -0700

DIA Dreams: Aviation director Kim Day plans to take DIA where no airport has gone before -- Westword

Before the late-night jokes about the baggage system, before the opening-day snowstorm and the seven-hour breakdown of the train system on Black Sunday, and long before the 9/11 attacks changed the way people fly, Denver International Airport was already full of surprises — not all of them pleasant.

Curt Fentress remembers going out to the site when it was Colorado's largest and most astounding construction zone. Piles of dirt were heaped everywhere. Ziggurats of dirt, more than a hundred million cubic yards of the stuff. Enough, one flack calculated, to bury 32 city blocks a quarter-mile deep.

"There were thousands of people working there," Fentress recalls. "It was dangerous going around, because the roads changed every day. There were different paths because of the grading process, and you really had to watch out. They had EMT groups standing by, waiting to pick up anybody who might get injured. It was already getting to be a city in itself."

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maybe / maybe not

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:48:36 -0700

Apple Beware: Dell (With A Little Help From Amazon and Google) is Taking on iTunes -- Wired

The formidable triumvirate of Amazon, Dell, and Google is apparently poised to give iTunes the first serious run for its money just as the iPad is about to take Apple's downloadable media megastore where no computer has gone before.

Engadget has posted two slides that appear to come from a Dell presentation showing that the Google Android powered Dell Streak tablet will include access to over 300,000 e-books in the Kindle store, everything in the Amazon MP3 download store (over 11 million 'songs and extras"), and over 50,000 movies and television shows available for one-day rental or permanent purchase.

Taken together, this mirrors what iTunes offers for Apple devices, giving hardware manufacturers such as Dell a way to kick-start plans to take on the iPad.

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With a word like triumvirate it must be worth reading.

very good ubuntu ideas

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:32:23 -0700

16 things that could be improved in Ubuntu 10.04 -- OMGUbuntu

In this post I’m going to list 16 things that I think could be improved in Lucid. I’m going to try my best to address the issues in detail and offer solutions. Of course, all of this is also a matter of opinion too. The object of this post is to make you think about ways we could improve each one. I’ll try to link to bugs where there are bugs, but a lot of these are quite new design decisions only present in 10.04 and hence don’t have bugs filed.

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This is one of the most constructive articles I've read about Ubuntu in a long time.

former bush administration lawers decry liz cheney ad

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 15:30:32 -0700

'I Was Disgusted,' Says Former Bush Official About Liz Cheney Ad -- NewsWeek

Nine former Bush administration officials who played major roles in shaping counterterrorism policies today released a statement condemning as "shameful" recent attacks by Liz Cheney's advocacy group on Justice Department lawyers who had previously represented Guantanamo detainees.

The statement -- whose signers include top lawyers at the Bush White House, Justice Department, and Pentagon -- was in response to an inflammatory Web ad by Cheney’s group, Keep America Safe, that demanded to know the identities of those it called "the Al Qaeda 7" -- a reference to Obama Justice Department lawyers who had done pro bono work on behalf of Guantanamo detainees.

The ad, which Liz Cheney has vigorously defended on TV, even showed a frame with a headline referring to Attorney General Eric Holder's Justice Department as the "Department of Jihad." The narrator asks in ominous tones about the lawyers: "Whose values do they share?"

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crash boom bang

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 14:59:56 -0700

The Colorado Department of Transportation estimates the rocks are 3 to 10 feet in diameter, with the largest weighing 66 tons. (CDOT)

Rock slide drops boulders, closes interstate in Colorado -- CNN

Giant rocks came tumbling down a snowy Colorado mountainside early Monday, punching gaping holes in the interstate below, the Colorado Department of Transportation said.

The rock slide at Glenwood Canyon halted travel on Interstate 70 between Glenwood Springs and Dotsero, about 18 miles east, according to the department. Glenwood Springs is about 120 miles west of Denver. It is unclear when construction crews will complete enough work to open at least part of the roadway.

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Those big rocks make some big holes!

(CDOT)

The Denver Post has even more coverage and photos here.

exposure to bad air can have short-term and long-term effects

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 13:56:35 -0700

Air Pollution: It's Not Just Your Lungs That Suffer - US News & World Report

A growing body of research is shedding light on the ways that air pollutants impinge on the health of the American public. Indeed, the Environmental Protection Agency highlighted this concern in December when, after reviewing the evidence, it ruled that greenhouse gases are detrimental to human health, particularly because they can aggravate asthma and other respiratory illnesses and can produce longer, more intense heat waves that endanger the poor, sick, and elderly. But it's not just lungs that suffer.

To be sure, clean-air advocates have worked to improve the nation's air quality, and the health risks that a particular individual might face directly from breathing polluted air are low. But research consistently is finding that, when spread out over a given population -- be it residents of a certain city or those with a particular disease -- the quality of the air has a very significant impact on public health. When vehicles, factories, power plants, and other machines burn fuel, the chemicals they release into the atmosphere react with one another (and other compounds in the air) in ways that can amplify health hazards. "Greenhouse gases actually increase air pollution and therefore [raise the] potential for more adverse events for people with pre-existing respiratory conditions or heart conditions," says Kent Pinkerton, chair of the environmental health policy committee at the American Thoracic Society.

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whirlwind -- the mother of all operating systems

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:32:12 -0700

Photo: Stephen Dodd, Jay Forrester, Robert Everett and Ramona Ferenz test Whirlwind in 1950.

March 8, 1955: The Mother of All Operating Systems -- Wired

Computer pioneer Doug Ross demonstrates the Director tape for MIT’s Whirlwind machine. It’s a new idea: a permanent set of instructions on how the computer should operate.

Six years in the making, MIT’s Whirlwind computer was the first digital computer that could display real-time text and graphics on a video terminal, which was then just a large oscilloscope screen. Whirlwind used 4,500 vacuum tubes to process data.

The Whirlwind occupied 3,300 square feet and was the fastest digital computer of its time. It also pioneered a number of new technologies, including magnetic core memory for RAM.

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a new fundamental right?

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:10:51 -0700

80% say 'Net access fundamental right, split on regulation -- Ars Technica

Access to the Internet is a fundamental right to nearly four out of five adults across the globe, and those in South Korea, Mexico, and China seem to have the strongest feelings on the topic. This is according to a report (PDF) by the BBC World Service, which polled 27,973 adults on their feelings about, usage of, and concerns about the Internet. Although users are somewhat divided on whether the Internet should be regulated, they are in agreement on its usefulness for learning and information discovery.

Across all 26 countries, 79 percent of Internet and non-Internet users said that they felt that Internet access should be "the fundamental right of all people." When isolated for people who already use the Internet, that number went up to 87 percent. Almost universally (90 percent), respondents said that the Internet was a good place to learn and almost 80 percent said the Internet brought them greater freedom.

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moving without the moving van part

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 12:06:57 -0700

Chile Earthquake Moved Entire City 10 Feet to the West -- Wired

The magnitude 8.8 quake that struck near Maule, Chile, Feb. 27 moved the entire city of Concepcion 10 feet to the west.

Precise GPS measurements from before and after the earthquake, the fifth largest ever recorded by seismographs, show that the country’s capital, Santiago, moved 11 inches west. Even Buenos Aires, nearly 800 miles from the epicenter, shifted an inch. The image above uses red arrows to represent the relative direction and magnitude of the ground movement in the vicinity of the quake.

The analysis comes from a project led by Ohio State earth scientist Mike Bevis that has been using GPS to record movements of the crust on Chile since 1993. The area is of particular interest to geoscientists because it is an active subduction zone, where an oceanic plate is colliding with a continental plate and being pushed into the Earth’s molten mantle below.

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ad blocking devastation

Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:23:48 -0700

Why Ad Blocking is devastating to the sites you love -- Ars Technica

There is an oft-stated misconception that if a user never clicks on ads, then blocking them won't hurt a site financially. This is wrong. Most sites, at least sites the size of ours, are paid on a per view basis. If you have an ad blocker running, and you load 10 pages on the site, you consume resources from us (bandwidth being only one of them), but provide us with no revenue. Because we are a technology site, we have a very large base of ad blockers. Imagine running a restaurant where 40% of the people who came and ate didn't pay. In a way, that's what ad blocking is doing to us. Just like a restaurant, we have to pay to staff, we have to pay for resources, and we have to pay when people consume those resources. The difference, of course, is that our visitors don't pay us directly but indirectly by viewing advertising. (Although a few thousand of you are subscribers, and we thank you all very, very much!)

My argument is simple: blocking ads can be devastating to the sites you love. I am not making an argument that blocking ads is a form of stealing, or is immoral, or unethical, or makes someone the son of the devil. It can result in people losing their jobs, it can result in less content on any given site, and it definitely can affect the quality of content. It can also put sites into a real advertising death spin. As ad revenues go down, many sites are lured into running advertising of a truly questionable nature. We've all seen it happen. I am very proud of the fact that we routinely talk to you guys in our feedback forum about the quality of our ads. I have proven over 12 years that we will fight on the behalf of readers whenever we can. Does that mean that there are the occasional intrusive ads, expanding this way and that? Yes, sometimes we have to accept those ads. But any of you reading this site for any significant period of time know that these are few and far between. We turn down offers every month for advertising like that out of respect for you guys. We simply ask that you return the favor and not block ads.

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i just wish ...

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:58:19 -0700

... I was half as cool as this guy. (thanks to Ars Technica)

fire lane, what fire lane?

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:14:21 -0700

I not really sure what they where thinking at DIA when the put up this sign.

a catch 22

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 11:12:15 -0700

Adding oxygen to booze speeds sobriety -- New Scientist

Booze that has been treated so that you sober up faster afterwards may sound like a drinker's dream, but could end up being their downfall if it encourages heavy drinkers to consume even more alcohol.

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become keenly aware of where your energy and water come from

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:20:24 -0700

A week off the grid and in touch with energy -- CNET

There's nothing like living off-grid for a while to make you aware of your environmental and energy footprint. During a family vacation to Belize last week, I got a flavor for what's needed to function, albeit at a leisurely pace, when you're far beyond the reach of power lines.

... The most vivid environmental lesson came to me when we visited one of the islands, or cays, that pop out along the 240-mile barrier reef off the coast. Bringing power lines to a place that takes 35 minutes to get to by boat obviously doesn't make sense, so most of these types of resorts rely on diesel generators. Our location, by contrast, relied largely on solar power.

When Americans buy rooftop solar photovoltaic panels, the total output when the sun is shining is typically anywhere from 2,000 to 5,000 watts or more. But the individual cabins at this resort ran on just one or two solar panels, making maybe 200 to 300 watts. You could barely run a home computer and television with that much juice.

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discover where the linux desktop is going

Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:07:30 -0700

Try the Linux desktop of the future -- TuxRadar

For the tinkerers and testers, 2010 is shaping up to be a perfect year. Almost every desktop and application we can think of is going to have a major release, and while release dates and roadmaps always have to be taken with a pinch of salt, many of these projects have built technology and enhancements you can play with now. We've selected the few we think are worth keeping an eye on and that can be installed easily, but Linux is littered with applications that are evolving all the time, so we've also tried to guess what the next big things might be.

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