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Comment Raise fuel taxes for individual POV's (Score 1) 764

by ac7xc (#33543128) Attached to: German Military Braces For Peak Oil
To solve the problem nations would have to raise the taxes on fuel for POV's and ration gas for them. For vehicles that are used for distribution of goods like trucks they would be exempt from any higher fuel taxes. POV owners would most likely switch to public transport and those live on the edge of the economy would get rid of their cars altogether. The most important item is that goods get priority in distribution so there is no shortage of them and individuals will need to adjust to higher costs and switching to public transport.

Comment Try a non-profit health insurance provider (Score 1) 1197

by ac7xc (#31235038) Attached to: Health Insurance When Leaving the Corporate World?
My option was to find a non-profit health insurance company for my health insurance. Make sure that you do not omit anything in the application. For children you will most likely need to go over their medical records with a doctor/nurse, because sometimes doctors or nurses will write something down and not tell a parent or guardian. Also if a child has been to a ER go over those records also.
Image

"Tube Map" Created For the Milky Way Screenshot-sm 142

Posted by samzenpus from the non-stop-service-to-the-Perseus-Arm dept.
astroengine writes "Assuming you had an interstellar spaceship, how would you navigate around the galaxy? For starters, you'd probably need a map. But there's billions of stars out there — how complex would that map need to be? Actually, Samuel Arbesman, a research fellow from Harvard, has come up with a fun solution. He created the 'Milky Way Transit Authority (MWTA),' a simple transit system in the style of the iconic London Underground 'Tube Map.' (Travel Tip: Don't spend too much time loitering around the station at Carina, there's some demolition work underway.)"
Space

Pics of the Longest Solar Eclipse of the Century 97

Posted by samzenpus from the dark-day dept.
Vinod writes "Yesterday thousands of people around Asia witnessed the longest solar eclipse of the century. Although it was not clearly visible in some parts due to overcast weather, thousands of people gathered to view this spectacular event. Yesterday's solar eclipse lasted for 6 to 7 minutes, making it the longest solar eclipse of the century. Here is a collection of 33 beautiful images of the solar eclipse from around the world."
Space

How They Built the Software of Apollo 11 220

Posted by kdawson from the we-had-to-use-the-letter-o dept.
LinuxScribe tips a piece up at Linux.com with inside details on the design and construction of the Apollo 11 code. There are some analogies to open source development but they are slim. MIT drafted the code — to run on the Apollo Guidance Computer, a device with less grunt than an IBM XT — it had 2K of memory and a 1-MHz clock speed. It was an amazing machine for its time. NASA engineers tested, polished, simulated, and refined the code. "The software was programmed on IBM punch cards. They had 80-columns and were 'assembled' to instruction binary on mainframes... and it took hours. ... During the mission, most of the software code couldn't be changed because it was hard-coded into the hardware, like ROM today... But during pre-launch design simulations, problems that came up in the code could sometimes be finessed by... computer engineers using a small amount of erasable memory that was available for the programs. The software used a low-level assembly language and was controlled using pairs or segments of numbers entered into a square-shaped, numeric-only keyboard called a Display and Keyboard Unit... The two-digit codes stood for 'nouns' or 'verbs,' and were used to enter commands or data, such as spacecraft docking angles or time spans for operations." Reader Smark adds, "The Google Code Blog announced today that the Virtual AGC and AGS project has transcribed the Command Module and Lunar Excursion Module code used during the Apollo 11 moon landing. The code is viewable at the VirtualAGC Google Code Page."
Bug

Software Glitch Leads To $23,148,855,308,184,500 Visa Charges 544

Posted by timothy from the what's-the-grace-period-again dept.
Hmmm2000 writes "Recently several Visa card holders were, um, overcharged for certain purchases, to the tune of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00 on a single charge. The company says it was due to a programming error, and that the problem has been corrected. What is interesting is that the amount charged actually reveals the type of programming error that caused the problem. 23,148,855,308,184,500.00 * 100 (I'm guessing this is how the number is actually stored) is 2314885530818450000. Convert 2314885530818450000 to hexadecimal, and you end up with 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50. Most C/C++ programmers see the error now ... hex 20 is a space. So spaces were stuffed into a field where binary zero should have been."

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