Domain: amazon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amazon.com.
Comments · 40,271
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Re:Standard connectors? LOL you wish!
Here's your spoon. My first search, first result.
Dock uses microusb or bluetooth. Has volume controls and more functionaity. Stfu. Keep playing dumb, dummy.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B005HY4UG4/ref=aw_d_detail?pd=1&qid=1343183369&sr=8-1
Waiting for you to nitpick some insignificant point, like a 3rd party app component, as if apple's first party hardware and integration isn't through the same technological basis.... and also to keep distracting the blunt and obvious point I made about how apple could achieve the same things with industry standards.
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Re:Hey Apple
You did not search very hard. I saw TWO searching Amazon for "purple TV".
http://www.amazon.com/iSymphony-LC24IF56PR-24-inch-1080p-LCD/dp/B004PYEO1S
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Re:Payday!
Perhaps you would be interested in this link detailing the top-rated phones with a service plan at amazon (by customer review).
Specifically, I would like to draw your attention to the top 4 phones. Yes, that's right. They are all Windows Phone. I'm pretty sure those reviews are not all from professional reviewers.
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Re:Your son is right
I wholehertedly agree. The WYSIWYG tools produce sites that tend to look and function alike, and reading the code they produce is nightmarish. The pages are often heavy, their techniques tend to be behind the times, re-working a site is needlessly more difficult than it has to be (unless you start over from scratch), etc. Far better to use a CMS with templates and code minimal, lean, and fast code on cleverly well-organized pages. To do that, it's hand-coding all the way. Not to mention using something like Google App Engine.
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Re:Your son is right
I wholehertedly agree. The WYSIWYG tools produce sites that tend to look and function alike, and reading the code they produce is nightmarish. The pages are often heavy, their techniques tend to be behind the times, re-working a site is needlessly more difficult than it has to be (unless you start over from scratch), etc. Far better to use a CMS with templates and code minimal, lean, and fast code on cleverly well-organized pages. To do that, it's hand-coding all the way. Not to mention using something like Google App Engine.
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Re:Your son is right
I wholehertedly agree. The WYSIWYG tools produce sites that tend to look and function alike, and reading the code they produce is nightmarish. The pages are often heavy, their techniques tend to be behind the times, re-working a site is needlessly more difficult than it has to be (unless you start over from scratch), etc. Far better to use a CMS with templates and code minimal, lean, and fast code on cleverly well-organized pages. To do that, it's hand-coding all the way. Not to mention using something like Google App Engine.
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Re:Stupid, stupid, *stupid*
Quoting http://askville.amazon.com/dangerous-car-batteries/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=4217899
:It is not dangerous to touch the positive terminal with your bare skin, because 12V is not a hazardous voltage.
So the answer is simply : no, it is not dangerous to touch my car battery (though the battery can be dangerous in a lot of other ways).
I learned something today
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Re:twisted pair, twisted logic
For a more in-depth read of the origins and growth of the Internet, I can't recommend the excellent Where Wizards Stay Up Late.
Perhaps I should gift a copy to the Wall Street Journal? -
Re:twisted pair, twisted logic
InfoJunkie commented:
The article is very informative - thanks. Always interested in history - the more so computing hsitory.
Thanks for the complient.
If you're interested in a more detailed history of the invention and development of the ARPAnet, you might want to check out Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon's book Where Wizards Stay Up Late. Taylor was a prime source of information for them.
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Re:twisted pair, twisted logic
Read "The Family" and you'll know why it's an outlier. Chilling.
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Re:Nokia N[89]?? or Android with Terminal-IDE
+1 for Terminal IDE.
Combine Terminal IDE with Android's scripting environment and you get most scripting languages accessible from the command line. Terminal IDE for those that don't know is busybox based and provides a bash prompt, ssh client and server, telnet client and server, rsync, wget, full 101 keyboard and an IDE for java so you can do development on the phone, thus making native java apps available as scripts as well.
If you have a phone with a large screen and add a folding bluetooth keyboard 1 and you can sysadmin just about anything from your pocket.
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Charles Tart on moving past materialistic thinking
"People do not want to admit that death==nonexistence so they make-up imaginary 'trips' to some other place (heaven, hell, Elysian Fields, space, whatever). In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen."
For another perspective, see: http://noetic.org/search/?q=survival
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/
http://physicalismisdead.blogspot.com/2012/05/charles-tart-on-postmortem-survival.html
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charles+tart
http://www.amazon.com/States-Consciousness-Charles-Tart/dp/0595151965
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Materialism-Evidence-Paranormal/dp/1572246456
"Charles Tart reconciles the scientific and spiritual worlds by looking at empirical evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena that point toward our spiritual nature, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing.
Science seems to tell us that we are all meaningless products of blind biological and chemical forces, leading meaningless lives that will eventually end in death. The truth is that unseen forces such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and other phenomena inextricably link us to the spiritual world, and while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place.
In this book, copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart presents over fifty years of scientific research conducted at the nation's leading universities that proves humans do have natural spiritual impulses and abilities. The End of Materialism presents an elegant argument for the union of science and spirituality in light of this new evidence, and explains why a truly rational viewpoint must address the reality of a spiritual world. Tart's work marks the beginning of an evidence-based spiritual awakening that will profoundly influence your understanding of the deeper forces at work in our lives."Sadly, it looks like Sally Ride might have died of sunlight deficiency and vegetable deficiency:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/ -
Charles Tart on moving past materialistic thinking
"People do not want to admit that death==nonexistence so they make-up imaginary 'trips' to some other place (heaven, hell, Elysian Fields, space, whatever). In reality Sally Ride's personality dissolved into nothingness at the moment her brain's neurons broke connection with one another when they were deprived of oxygen."
For another perspective, see: http://noetic.org/search/?q=survival
http://psychology.ucdavis.edu/tart/
http://physicalismisdead.blogspot.com/2012/05/charles-tart-on-postmortem-survival.html
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=charles+tart
http://www.amazon.com/States-Consciousness-Charles-Tart/dp/0595151965
http://www.amazon.com/The-End-Materialism-Evidence-Paranormal/dp/1572246456
"Charles Tart reconciles the scientific and spiritual worlds by looking at empirical evidence for the existence of paranormal phenomena that point toward our spiritual nature, including telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and psychic healing.
Science seems to tell us that we are all meaningless products of blind biological and chemical forces, leading meaningless lives that will eventually end in death. The truth is that unseen forces such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, psychic healing, and other phenomena inextricably link us to the spiritual world, and while many skeptics and scientists deny the existence of these spiritual phenomena, the experiences of millions of people indicate that they do take place.
In this book, copublished with the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), transpersonal psychologist Charles Tart presents over fifty years of scientific research conducted at the nation's leading universities that proves humans do have natural spiritual impulses and abilities. The End of Materialism presents an elegant argument for the union of science and spirituality in light of this new evidence, and explains why a truly rational viewpoint must address the reality of a spiritual world. Tart's work marks the beginning of an evidence-based spiritual awakening that will profoundly influence your understanding of the deeper forces at work in our lives."Sadly, it looks like Sally Ride might have died of sunlight deficiency and vegetable deficiency:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health-conditions/cancer/pancreatic-cancer/ -
Re:Why these academics are so blind
Are you seriously telling me that some academics at Harvard telling politicians what they want to hear, (that "using killer robots like you are already doing works great") is a good thing? That academics advocating policies with obvious "blowback" potential is "solving a small problem" that "improves the world"?
http://www.amazon.com/Blowback-Second-Edition-Consequences-American/dp/0805075593When even people at the CIA are expressing doubts?
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/LF05Df02.html
"Some United States Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in the agency's drone strikes program in Pakistan and elsewhere are privately expressing their opposition to the program within the agency because it is helping al-Qaeda and its allies recruit, according to a retired military officer in contact with them.
"Some of the CIA operators are concerned that, because of its blowback effect, it is doing more harm than good," said Jeffrey
Addicott, former legal adviser to US Special Forces and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas, in an interview with Inter Press Service (IPS).
Addicott said the CIA operatives that he knows have told him al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders are effectively using the drone strikes to recruit more militants.
CIA officers "are very upset" with the drone strike policy, Addicott said. "They'll do what the boss says, but they view it as a harmful exercise. They say we're largely killing rank and file Pakistani Taliban, and they are the ones who are agitated by the campaign."
Because the drone strikes kill innocent civilians and bystanders along with leaders from far away, they "infuriate the Muslim male", said Addicott, thus making them more willing to join the movement. The men in Pakistan's tribal region "view Americans as cowards and weasels", he said. "Have you ever given any thought to the implications of Harvard academics endorsing the ever wider use of killer robots to solve political problems? Including the political problems resulting from earlier use of killer robots by the USA? Where does it end?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminator
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htmSo many things in our world are complex feedback loops. And yes, many academics actually study such complex things (especially in biology and ecology). But apparently it is too hard for those two guys at Harvard to google on "CIA drone blowback"?
I have collected plenty of fairly straight-forward alternative solutions. For example, a "basic income" which is supported by five Nobel prize winners in economics according to Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income_guarantee#AdvocatesI outline them on my website in various spots, including here (both positive and negative ones, in this case):
http://pdfernhout.net/beyond-a-jobless-recovery-knol.htmlHere is a book of alternatives collected by others:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Dictionary_of_Alternatives.html?id=IKZVKMPEQCECThe issue is not whether solutions are simple or complex (witness the US tax code's complexity, or the complexity of all sorts of numerical models, including most recently one to simulate a bacterium posted recently on slashdot). The issue outline in "Disciplined Minds" is about putting on ideological blinders -- ones that may even prevent someone from seeing or advocating for simple solutions (like a basic
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Re:Fags and spics
The only thing you really need to sign in for is to use the app store. You can always just use f-droid which is an app store hosting nothing but Free apps and you can download stuff from around the web. You could also go here and just use the Amazon app store. Don't forget too that the Nexus 7 can be bootloader unlocked with a single command so you can load whatever you want as long as you can find drivers.
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Re:Population growth
Malnourishment has been going down steadily for decades. And people have made the claims that the world will starve because of population growth for decades.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Population-Bomb-Paul-Ehrlich/dp/1568495870
Those claims continue to prove false.
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Re:Classy
and TGIFridays has a whole LINE of JD stuff (mostly with said BBQ sauce)
oh and yes there are a few JD cookbooks http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Daniels-Spirit-Tennessee-Cookbook/dp/1595553010/ref=pd_sim_b_1
so yes there is an issue with a book -
Whiskey people can be a nice bunch of folks...
It may well be the entire industry that acts that way. A couple of years ago I was at a tasting event with the either Grandson or Great Grandson of Jim Beam, and he was the same way.
.You're probably talking about Fred Noe III. Yep, he's a nice guy. As is Bill Samuels Jr. over at Maker's Mark. If you take a distillery tour here in Kentucky or attend a tasting at a Derby party or the Bourbon Festival, you might run into these guys. Or one of the many other storied distillers. To see Jack Daniels distillery, of course, you'll have to go to Tennessee. Even though the brand is now owned by a Kentucky company, (Brown-Forman) they are still most definitely a Tennessee whiskey.
For a little bit more about the whiskey business, check out this photo book at the author's website:
http://www.leonhowlett.com/kentuckybourbonexperience/
or at amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Kentucky-Bourbon-Experience-Kentuckys-Distilleries/dp/1935001817
Or just go visit a distillery.
Disclaimer: I know the author, but don't receive any compensation for the book. I just think it's a beautiful book. -
Re:I hope..
Castelfranchi & Falcone ( http://www.amazon.com/Trust-Theory-Socio-Cognitive-Computational-Technology/dp/0470028750 ) have a nice overview explaining how and why even the iterated prisoner's dillema fails to explain any real-world human behavior. They provide a nice set of additional citations to go look at as well
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Re:I hope..
I first read about the concept in http://www.amazon.com/The-Evolution-Cooperation-Robert-Axelrod/dp/0465021212.
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Gamma Seal
25 years isn't all that long of a time. I think you could easily get away with using something like a "Gamma Seal." these seals easily last 10 years with regular use. 25 years should be easily attainable. In theory they attach to any bucket but this may not be durable enough for your needs. A Vittle Vault is both durable and sealed tight from the elements thanks to a Gamm Seal. Becoming a variety of sizes and can be picked up at any pet supply store.
For good measure throw in one or two blocks of silica gel and some oxygen absorbers. I don't see why set up like this wouldn't deliver your stuff 25 years to the future and beyond.
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Gamma Seal
25 years isn't all that long of a time. I think you could easily get away with using something like a "Gamma Seal." these seals easily last 10 years with regular use. 25 years should be easily attainable. In theory they attach to any bucket but this may not be durable enough for your needs. A Vittle Vault is both durable and sealed tight from the elements thanks to a Gamm Seal. Becoming a variety of sizes and can be picked up at any pet supply store.
For good measure throw in one or two blocks of silica gel and some oxygen absorbers. I don't see why set up like this wouldn't deliver your stuff 25 years to the future and beyond.
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Gamma Seal
25 years isn't all that long of a time. I think you could easily get away with using something like a "Gamma Seal." these seals easily last 10 years with regular use. 25 years should be easily attainable. In theory they attach to any bucket but this may not be durable enough for your needs. A Vittle Vault is both durable and sealed tight from the elements thanks to a Gamm Seal. Becoming a variety of sizes and can be picked up at any pet supply store.
For good measure throw in one or two blocks of silica gel and some oxygen absorbers. I don't see why set up like this wouldn't deliver your stuff 25 years to the future and beyond.
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Re:Scrambled broadcast
Here's a very good antenna. Before I got it, my old Terk indoor antenna only received one digital channel. Now I get about 10, even with the antenna mounted indoors next to the TV.
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Another reason why Piracy and Home viewing wins
Going out to movie theaters were a great social event in the early decades from 30's to 80's, heck people even dressed up fancy to go to the theater. They even would broadcast news before the movies began in the 50's, 60's.
Now more and more people would rather enjoy movies at home in front of their large screens, surround sound in the comfort of home with them self or with family and loved ones in a nice quiet atmosphere.
the only way to get that first run experience at home is through piracy. No one wants to sit in a crowded theater full of strangers all lip smacking on candy/popcorn and slurping sodas.
The price of a movie ticket plus small drink, small popcorn is the same price as owning the DVD anyhow.
So now this just proves it's much safer to stay home
go to
http://icefilms.info/ - for direct download television and movies.
or for torrent fans
http://kat.ph/
http://thepiratebay.se/
or
http://demonoid.me/For those that enjoy watching downloaded media on their television can purchase a western digital WD TV plus, made for pirates by pirates was on of their early slogans since it works like VLC media player supporting all codecs. Can stream your movies off your lan from a shared drive. Or plug in a usb flash drive or external usb hard drive for local storage and can stream movies that way and can even stream youtube for 100 bucks.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-1080p-Media-Player/dp/B003MVZ60IFuck theaters, noone wants to go to theaters with strangers, noise, talking, smells, etc.
piracy is safer and much more enjoyable
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Re:how 'bout some gun control...
AC, you are going to get thrown in jail. First of all, it is illegal to carry a concealed firearm in any federal building. You may carry one on Federal property, if your state allows it, but not inside of any building. Secondly, the state of Florida does NOT allow you to disregard those signs. If a building has a conspiciously posted sign barring the concealment of weapons, then it is a felony (minimum 3 year sentence) to conceal a weapon inside that building. It can be a house, a church, an office building, whatever. It does not matter. You have to follow the wishes of the property owner. Failure to do so is tresspass, and since you are armed while committing a trespass, there are stiff penalties.
I highly recommend you read this book about Florida Gun Laws before you conceal a weapon again. And no, I am not in any way affiliated with Amazon or the author.
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One more answer..
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Frustration-Free Packaging
Personally, I prefer Amazon's take on packaging to Apple's. It may not be as pretty, but it's designed to be easy to ship, open, unpack and recycle. Coincidentally (or not), that happens to be the sequence of events where I will actually interact with the packaging.
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I'll just leave this here
Achilles's Choice by Larry Niven (of RingWorld's fame).
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Re:Not likely
The reason civilization holds together isn't because we pass laws and intimidate people into obeying them. The reason civilization holds together is because most people want to live within the boundaries society sets.
This is exactly true, more people need to realize that. It is true in business, too. If you have to settle every detail in a contract, then it can really slow things down. If business partners can trust each other, then it makes things go faster. There's a book about that too.
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Re:I playtested "D&D Next" this last weekend
Why bother? They're just reacting to Paizo eating their lunch. And have finally figured out that what the fans wanted was 2nd-Edition/3rd-Edition, which has been available as Pathfinder for what 3 years now (Aug.2009). Pathfinder Core Rulebook, $31.49, #4 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Gaming.
A few years back, WoTC pulled ALL of their PDFs of the books for sale. Compare that to Paizo, if you buy directly from them they give you the hardcover AND the PDF.
Heck if we look a little closer at Amazon's top selling gaming books, many of the v3.5 books are still in the top 40 (#19. Players Handbook 3.5). It's also worth noting that most 3.5 D&D Books/Supplements/Modules can be used with Pathfinder with little (to no) modification at all. Thus all that money one might of spent on 3.0 and/or 3.5 wont be wasted.
Further, with D&D 4+ WoTC changed the OGL to severely restrict any other company from publishing supplements for D&D, whereas (again) Pathfinder kept the original OGL from 3.0/3.5 which allows ANYONE to create content for Pathfinder. -
Re:AT&T bugs me
Wholesale bandwidth is at most $0.12 per Gigabyte (EC2 - highest price $0.12/GB). Maybe it's just that Verizon's math skills aren't up to snuff.
It should cost no more than $10/month since even at 10Mbit you're not going to use 100GB/month on a phone. Actual 3G connection speeds are usually sub 1Mbit. Managing a network like this is pretty simple, all towers should be using 100% capacity and if the average download speed drops below 512kbit, new cells should be installed.
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Re:Anarchists
Nay, I am most certainly not committing proof by intimidation. If I'd said, "you fail to understand simple concepts, therefore you are wrong," that would certainly be a logical error. However, I said, "You fail to understand simple concepts, AND you are wrong." That is not a fallacy, that is abuse.
And you deserved to be abused, for your mistakes. Strongly suggest reading this book. In any case, the NTS fallacy involves the failure to clearly define your category. Uh, I could explain more but your tiny intellect seems incapable of understanding so I'll stop.
Hope you can improve your intellect. -
Re:GLORIFY!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barcelona_May_Days is just an example.
This biography by Abel Paz http://www.amazon.com/Durruti-Spanish-Revolution-Abel-Paz/dp/190485950X contains a lot of background on the spanish civil war (including mentions of frequent infighting between stalinists and anarchist socialists) from the view of the anarchist faction. Very extensive, interesting read, IMO. Can't comment on the quality of the english language version, though.
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Which paste?
OK, so they got 3C better than the paste in the demo. Was it the cheap stuff you'll get from a no-name OEM or did they run it against something higher quality, e.g. Arctic Silver. Because I usually get more than 3C just by switching paste types.
Don't get me wrong, this may very well be better for Sony for their PS4's or TV's or whatever, and if it's better than cheap paste and easier to handle, great. But outside of factory customers, this probably isn't very interesting.
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Re:Tons of augmented reality uses for stuff like t
Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.
Read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez for some of the best use of this technology I have seen in recent fiction. Noting, of course, that Google was credited on the project (along with others)...
This page also discusses the technology used in the books.
This page and this page are examples of the sort of dialogue ensuing from these books. Everyone I have suggested them to is now dreaming of life in D-Space. ;)
What is amazing is that he wrote the first book in 2004 and saw so much of this coming... It reminds me of Ender's Game and its predictions of the common use of tablets, web forums, anytime/anywhere connectivity, adaptive learning systems, etc... even though it was written in the 80s. -
Re:Tons of augmented reality uses for stuff like t
Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.
Read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez for some of the best use of this technology I have seen in recent fiction. Noting, of course, that Google was credited on the project (along with others)...
This page also discusses the technology used in the books.
This page and this page are examples of the sort of dialogue ensuing from these books. Everyone I have suggested them to is now dreaming of life in D-Space. ;)
What is amazing is that he wrote the first book in 2004 and saw so much of this coming... It reminds me of Ender's Game and its predictions of the common use of tablets, web forums, anytime/anywhere connectivity, adaptive learning systems, etc... even though it was written in the 80s. -
Re:Tons of augmented reality uses for stuff like t
Augmented reality HUD glasses combined with a few other devices for analyzing the environment around you and then connected to any massive and fast database would yield some interesting things.
Read Daemon and Freedom by Daniel Suarez for some of the best use of this technology I have seen in recent fiction. Noting, of course, that Google was credited on the project (along with others)...
This page also discusses the technology used in the books.
This page and this page are examples of the sort of dialogue ensuing from these books. Everyone I have suggested them to is now dreaming of life in D-Space. ;)
What is amazing is that he wrote the first book in 2004 and saw so much of this coming... It reminds me of Ender's Game and its predictions of the common use of tablets, web forums, anytime/anywhere connectivity, adaptive learning systems, etc... even though it was written in the 80s. -
"The Making of an Ex-Astronaut"
There's a classic book, "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut", which discusses risk from the point of view of someone in the program. He was willing to accept the risks of space flight. He was worried about being killed flying around in a T-38 jet trainer. Four astronauts were killed in T-38s in the 1960s. He figured there was a 1 in 5 chance of being killed that way.
That wasn't an exaggeration. In the 1950s and 1960s, about 1 in 5 US fighter pilots died in a crash without any help from the enemy. (Jet fighters have improved a lot since then. So have ejection seats.)
Spacecraft still have terrible reliability compared to aircraft. The US shuttle had 2 crashes in 135 flights. Commercial launches to geosynch orbit are still only about 95% successful. (2 fails in 35 launches in 2011, 3 fails in 36 launches in 2010. No fails in 19 launches so far in 2012; it's a good year.) There's progress; that number was in the 80% range in the 1980s. But it's a long way from aircraft-type stats. The current numbers are barely acceptable for unmanned satellite launches.
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Re:The U.S. has like 99% listening coverage.
Well said. To which I will add this reference:
The Black Book of Communism - translated by Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer - available at Barnes & Nobel and Amazon.
Review by Daniel J. Mahoney, American Enterprise, of: The Black Book of Communism
The six contributors to this book are all French, and all hail from the Left. The book's original publication in France created a sensation, because its cumulative effect is to establish that Communism is the twentieth century's fiercest practitioner of state violence and "crimes against humanity." It forthrightly challenges the claim that Nazism has a monopoly on "absolute political evil" in our time.
The chapters on the Soviet Union and China are as powerful as they are in large part because their authors, Nicolas Werth and Jean-Louis Margolin, avoid excessive polemics and allow the evidence to simply speak for itself. If anything, Werth is excessively conservative in his estimates, drawing almost exclusively from not always reliable "official" party and state archival materials to verify politically--inspired deaths and incarcerations in the Soviet Union. Despite the limits of this method, Werth concludes that the Bolshevik regime was responsible, directly or indirectly, for the deaths of 20 million people between 1918 and 1956, and for the imprisonment in camps of millions more. He demolishes the notion of a good Lenin and a bad Stalin by showing that terror defined the Soviet regime from its inception. And he concludes that there is no basis for the claim that the terror of the 1930s was driven by overzealous Party and police officials acting independently of orders.
Likewise, Margolin's chapter on China shows that the crimes of Maoism are rooted in ideological hubris and a denial of the humanity of political or class "enemies." Margolin demonstrates that Mao committed crimes unprecedented in Chinese history, and damaged the nation in everything from economics to ethics. The devastating consequences of Mao's rule: 65 million lost lives. Perhaps the deepest reason The Black Book has sparked controversy is that it argues Communism is as intrinsically perverse as Nazism. Editor Stephane Courtois argues that Communist crimes, like Nazi ones, partake of the desire to eliminate groups of people on the basis of their origins, not because of any individual culpability or responsibility. He denies that Communism's crimes have any right to be excused or qualified because they were committed in the name of egalitarian principles. Courtois shows that Communism is an exterminationist ideology which selects its enemies on the basis of class. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested in The Gulag Archipelago that the USSR's war against the independent peasantry--the so-called "de-kulakization" campaign --was the first systematic effort to eliminate an entire class of people for ideological reasons. In this sense, Hitler was Lenin's and Stalin's faithful pupil.
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Re:3D
I'm sure the first time fonts were available at a printing press authors and publishers massively overused the feature, and did more harm than good to their books by overdosing people on fonts.
Uh, no. One didn't see such an explosion of typefaces within a single book during the era of printing presses, because the process required a lot of effort. It wasn't until word processors came about and made it easy that amateurs went crazy and sadly some of the results made it onto bookstore shelves.
And then people started thinking about how fonts could convey meaning, or style, and how fonts effect readability, and suddenly the choice of font(s) can help better convey the story and characters, and sometimes to a wider audience.
Calligraphic scripts and then typefaces developed quite slowly in antiquity and the early modern era and with much attention to aesthetics. It was my no means a free-for-all. I really encourage you to read a history of the field like Simon Loxley's Type , because you have things all mixed up.
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Re:Brilliant PR move
The $200 isn't the installation cost; that price includes the battery itself. Seeing that a comparable battery for a Dell laptop (e.g. a 97 Wh battery for a Latitude E5420) runs in the $140 range, $200 for battery + installation isn't unreasonable and is hardly exorbitant.
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All Living on Mars Problems are Solved...
... If you're an Alchemist. See "The Alchemists of Mars" (via Amazon).
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Re:Who remembers Kozmo? or Webvan?
(... I wonder f Amazon has any of the old WebVan stuff around.)
Yes. Or rather it is a new service called Amazon Fresh
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Re:Don't encrypt
If you truly believe the FBI is working for the greater good of humanity, then please read Classified Woman by whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds for an inside look at how they 'get business done.'
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Re:Found at 125 GeV
Probably not, but I also find charged mediators baffling. For instance, I couldn't stop thinking about baryon masses, and quickly went down a rabbit hole. Asymptotic freedom implies that a proton would lose ~98% of its mass if its quarks could all be in the exact same spot. That's a lot of energy; what keeps the quarks apart?
I clung to a familiar analogy: hydrogen atoms don't collapse because of Heisenberg uncertainty and Pauli exclusion. Quarks are fermions, but the down quark isn't subject to the exclusion principle because it can be distinguished from the up quarks. Undergraduates explore the structure of a hydrogen atom by solving the (comparatively simple) non-relativistic Schrodinger's equation for the two-body electromagnetic interaction. On the other hand, understanding the structure of a proton requires a full relativistic treatment which involves a three-body interaction including color charge, flavor, spin, and electric charge. Scary.
This was an excellent excuse to open David Griffith's Intro to Elementary Particles for the first time, and skip to page 180 to read about baryon wave functions. Conclusion: I really need to take a class on elementary particle physics!
But anyway, here's a null result which may be interesting. I wondered how much baryon masses depend on the electromagnetic repulsion of the two up(down) quarks in a proton(neutron). Qualitatively, it seems like up quarks should repel each other electromagnetically twice as much as down quarks, so protons should be bigger than neutrons. Bigger should mean more massive, because the strong interaction becomes stronger as the quarks are separated. Since protons are actually ~0.1% less massive than neutrons, it seems like electromagnetism doesn't play a significant role in determining baryon masses.
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Re:Amazon & Apple make 30% on Media/App salesMy game made it to top 25 in the first month. I can tell you from experience that this model is a win for everyone involved:
- 1) Kindle fire users get a tablet at very low cost, with tons of apps available
- 2) Amazon makes 30% of all the sales, which are substantial.
- 3) We (developers) don't have to worry about distribution, refunds, credit cards, or anything like that. We do what we are good at: make a game.
- 4) We (developers) are exposed to tons of users that bought the cheap tablet
I can only hope more companies do the same.
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Re:Manmade climate change is centuries old
I'm not the OP, but he did say "Charles C. Mann, in his excellent book 1493." The "data and logic" you want is in the book that he cited. He didn't pull this out of his ass. Charles C. Mann [might] have pulled it out of his ass. I haven't read the book so can't comment.
Here's the Amazon link. There's even a Kindle edition you can get started reading right now since you're so interested.
And here's a link to an article that discusses the deforestation caused by the Maya that might have led to their downfall.
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2009/06oct_maya/
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Re:Oh hey look anti Google Astroturf
I'm sure the success of an Open Source OS in the market would clearly doom us all
Since the article is complete trash, let me suggest that people who are interested in the way these markets proceed read The Innovator's Solution. Long story short: first movers maximize profit by being proprietary and competition forces them into being open (which lowers profits).
iPhone, literally implements their suggested course of action for RIM to take w/ Blackberry (this was written c. 2003). Google saw that Apple had the first-mover advantage so they jumped ahead of the curve straight to open. Maybe it was in their DNA, or maybe they realized it was the fastest way to beat Apple (Google does employ its own economists).
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Re:Why consoles, PCs, and smartphones fail
Say you have friends over, and they didn't all happen to bring gaming laptops and copies of the same game. In this case, games that run on something connected to your TV are a better choice for multiplayer than most PC games because most PC games don't support multiple gamepads.
I have a device, made by Microsoft no less, that allows me to connect 4 wireless Xbox 360 controllers to my PC. It sells with 1 controller for $41 from Amazon, which is $2 more than the same controller sells for alone.