Slashdot Mirror

FYI, Google explained it here:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/about-new-o rleans-imagery-in-google.html

Basically, they got higher resolution imagery and put them on their map server, consistently for everything. Now that they are getting newer high resolution imagery, they're showing that.

So, take off your tin-foil-hat.

And just for the record, where do you live?

The U.S., for now.

Bonus Question: If the answer to the above is "US", why have you not emmigrated to another first-world country?

I'm working on that.

And just for the record, where do you live?

The U.S., for now.

Bonus Question: If the answer to the above is "US", why have you not emmigrated to another first-world country?

I'm working on that.

There's a good article about Adobe's latest spam email campaign at: http://flymulu.blogspot.com/.

I'm a little surprised companies are still calling their HSI services "Unlimited" in this day and age. Comcast no longer advertises it (they did when I signed up 4 years ago). Verizon really should advertise their limits. It's an unfair business practice basically. If unlimited is 5 Gigs then they should let people know.

FYI... Amazon unbox HD-DVD's are about 2 Gigs each (for about $10). Download two or three a month and you are terminated with Verizon.

Bandwidth really is becoming a problem. I wonder if the FCC / FTC will consider clamping down on these grey area business practices. If I purchased clothing or some other product/service, I want to know what the heck I bought for my dollar. It's not reasonable to walk in to say Walmart, be handed a bag and told it has exactly what I want.

You go home, open up the bag thinking you bought a red shirt when really you purchased a pair of blue jeans. What kind of company would do that?

Apparently Verizon and Comcast share that sort of mentality. It's unfortunate. This is why we need to demand disclosure. This is why we need the Government to step in and force these companies to help us make informed decisions.

BTW, tomorrow is my month mark with Qwest / Xmission DSL. I'll be posting my ISP's numbers for my useage online (screen shots). I was accused of downloading 300 Gigs a month. My normal usage numbers are WAY lower than that. Approaching 50 gigs and that includes the new web server I setup for sharing family photos (they are all over the US).

http://comcastissue.blogspot.com/

I use slides as a crutch as well. My worst offence was typing out my lectures and putting them on the overhead. The trouble is knowing your subject while also moving your jaw. I think notes and a blackboard work better but they just don't seem high tech. Between the overhead an powerpoint, I notice a lot of time lost getting the display to read as different computers hook up and speakers who are flustered at the beginning of their talks because of the connection problems. With the overhead, you get the problem of the missing slide, or the pile of slides falling on the floor. Really good talks are done from podiums (hidden notes) with only pictures as a visual aid. Excellent talks are done without notes with the speaker moving around. Back projection helps in this case.
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Silent power: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I'm sure they actually meant .05 cents of a Terrabyte...

Seriously, it's not either or. I might as well say that I'm not going to work for women's rights or minority rights until all the problems of the straight white man are solved. There is nothing about animal suffering that is great for humanity. I think that granting rights to certain primates is problematic, but not in the same way you do. I think it's a problem to give animals rights based on their likeness to us on non-relevant criteria. The only thing that matters is their sentience. See http://garyfrancione.blogspot.com/2006/12/great-ap e-project-not-so-great.html for an animal rights critique of these projects.

FYI there was a proposal in Spain to give to all the non-human Great Apes some very basic rights (they cannot be killed, tortured or keep in captivity).

And the scientific name for Great Apes (humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) is hominids and we have in common more of 97% of our DNA even with the more different of them (this obviously doesn't make them automatically humans).

No! let's fire cannons in every street to wake people at dawn! http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.ht ml
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The Sun he gives light as soon as he rises: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I saw this ASP.NET User Control that does that same type of thing with Virtual Earth. It uses some sort of Flash-esqe technology, but it's not flash. All of the code is available too! I found it at: http://cornucopia30.blogspot.com/2007/03/wpfe-geop hoto-user-control-with-fun-in.html

One thing to keep in mind though: more mass = more crumple.

Example: http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/12/hummer-vs-sc hool-buss.html

Sorry, I forgot to say plug in hybrid. Solar and wind produce electricity though wind can be used directly for transportation. It is mainly used for sport these days http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_yachting.
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Ge t Solar: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

I rescued a little 5 year old Shuttle barebones system this weekend that had been on ice a few years because of its habit of freezing up unpredictably.
Now I have a nice little headless server with an Ubuntu OS, LAMP stack, Tomcat, etc., and the freezing problem seems to be gone (I'm hoping it was either XP or the video card, since both got removed). And at this point I'm like the apocryphal dog that catches the car and doesn't know what to do with it.
I don't yet trust this thing enough to use it as a file server or for storing anything important, I can set up a personal web site anywhere, I don't need a proxy for surfing porn sites at work, I don't play video games or need a game server, and it's hot with loud fans even by 2002 standards so I don't want to leave it on all the time for no good reason. I'd be responsible for an iceberg calving off a glacier somewhere. I already get a mental image of Al Gore every time I hear it start up. All the other computers around here- laptops of more recent vintage- are quietly running more modern, efficient, and powerful (x86-based) processors and they really put this thing to shame. But, they are not stationary.
I'm trying to think of a nice little web programming side project- something fun to sharpen the skillz not being gained at work- that wouldn't kill a 5 year old AMD 2000 processor or saturate a crappy ASDL cable connection (at least for a little while), but that would still be interesting enough to justify the electric bill. Mailinator for example would have been a good idea. That guy set the whole thing up on a box just like this. I hate seeing cool things I could have done.

Of course they could.

The problem is that is that in the states The Simpsons is the only animated series that has ever received significant prime time exposure and recognition. on a major network.

The only prime time animated series to escape being Foxed into extinction.

It isn't as if the "western" product can't be damn good. Batman: The Animated Series in 1992. Reboot in 1994. There is nothing wrong in Disney that couldn't be fixed if their writers and animators were given a freer hand. UnOfficial AmDrag Blog!

But an adult will never see any of this stuff unless he actively seeks it out.

The willingness to use stopgap measures depends on the level of urgency. If fleet conversion takes about 12 years and production conversion takes about 5 years then we might expect plug in hybrids to dominate the fleet in about 15 years. If we actually need to reduce emissions by 80% in ten years, to avoid releasing too much carbon that is currently held in frozen ground, then making the current fleet closer to carbon neutral becomes a priority.

So, at the same time that we convert to solar and wind, it may be needful, during the transition, to supply the current fleet with biofuels produced from the flu gas of existing power plants.

No matter what, we do need to transition and so the steps of the transition need to be thought through. Portions of the transition are unlikely to look like the desirable relatively stable end point no matter how we aproach it. So, the question is how much desperation to include. Setting up a competition between food and fuel looks too desperate to me, but making some use of biofuels does not http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html.

On the relative costs of wind and PV, I think you need to look at both the savings available from large scale production and the cradle-to-cradle aspects of both. The labor and return on energy in involved in recycling PV verses wind together with the improved heat management at scale for PV may bring the two into cost parity.

I've added to my blog on the subject of what a relatively stable endpoint of a transition might look like. If you have the time, I'd appreciate your thoughts: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/coast-to-coast .html.

The willingness to use stopgap measures depends on the level of urgency. If fleet conversion takes about 12 years and production conversion takes about 5 years then we might expect plug in hybrids to dominate the fleet in about 15 years. If we actually need to reduce emissions by 80% in ten years, to avoid releasing too much carbon that is currently held in frozen ground, then making the current fleet closer to carbon neutral becomes a priority.

So, at the same time that we convert to solar and wind, it may be needful, during the transition, to supply the current fleet with biofuels produced from the flu gas of existing power plants.

No matter what, we do need to transition and so the steps of the transition need to be thought through. Portions of the transition are unlikely to look like the desirable relatively stable end point no matter how we aproach it. So, the question is how much desperation to include. Setting up a competition between food and fuel looks too desperate to me, but making some use of biofuels does not http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html.

On the relative costs of wind and PV, I think you need to look at both the savings available from large scale production and the cradle-to-cradle aspects of both. The labor and return on energy in involved in recycling PV verses wind together with the improved heat management at scale for PV may bring the two into cost parity.

I've added to my blog on the subject of what a relatively stable endpoint of a transition might look like. If you have the time, I'd appreciate your thoughts: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/03/coast-to-coast .html.

Hmmmm.....Will it rulez by those Air Powered Car?

but if I had to pick between being in one of those, or a Chevy Suburban, when slamming the two together, I think I'd probably pick the Suburban Well here's your Suburban dressed up as a Hummer after it kissed a bus. http://necromanc.blogspot.com/2006/12/hummer-vs-sc hool-buss.html and here is your Smart Car after it slammed into a concrete barrier http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ju6t-yyoU8s

Did they really say that DRM will save gaming on the PC? Are they insane? Let's be honest, here. Steam is simply DRM with some sugar stuffed around it to make people like it.

In stores, they usually only stock a few titles, the most popular ones. Short shelf life means developers bet on safe cards, which means (in my opinion) boring games. If developers can sell online (not necessarily through Steam) they can reach a bigger market cheaper, and consumers can get games later. I personally have bough Psychonauts and Bookworm adventures online the last month, and I plan to buy many more.

Maybe the reason that gaming has been steadily moving back to consoles is because it works better there.

When gaming magazines release the latest sales figures and people go "omg pc gaming is dying!", remember none of these sales numbers (that I've seen so far) include:
1) Online sales. That's right. Steam, Popcap games, Gametap, Three Rings Net and so on, are not included. Neither is the money poured into MMO subscriptions. If you include those, I think the total amount spent on PC gaming industry is probably larger than the market for any single console.
2) International sales, where PC sales are stronger.

With the exception of a few games that really do play better with mouse and keyboard, consoles have PCs beat.

Not if you want deep strategy games or simulation games, non-linear western RPGs, or if you want to play MMOs, or if you want to add your own mods or content like in NWN/NWN2, or if you want to play decades of games from dozens of platforms through emulators...

And they are cheaper.

Most people need a PC in their homes anyway, so spending a little bit extra on a better graphics card is not that big a deal. Besides, with the costs of the latest generation, some people are questioning whether consoles are cheaper at all.

This is funny, but, up to how you're food gets fertilized, transported and processed, the carbon in it comes from the air. So, the EPA may regulate the fossil fuel used to produce your food but not the portion that comes from photsynthesis I think. That is the stuff you exhale so you don't come under regulation. Still not sure about cheez whiz, that might be petroleum based.
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Carbon free energy: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

To me the proper place to grow biofuels, of the rooted variety, is on land that is agricultural but not being used for food. Where I live tobacco is on the way out, but other crops don't really pay enough for the size of the farms so there is a subsidy for not growing tobacco. In this case, I've argued that biofuel crops can make sense, though they can't really put a big dent in fossil fuel use. Maryland is considering a subsidy of about $0.30/gal for boifuel production which could be a help in a small way.
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Grow silicon leaves! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

You can get to close to 15% efficiency using algae but at the cost of needing a concentrated source of CO2 http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html. This is why shifting as much transportation to solar and wind as possible makes much more sense that biofuels. But, during a transition, getting a second use from the CO2 produced at power plants could make some sense.
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Get Solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

You can get to close to 15% efficiency using algae but at the cost of needing a concentrated source of CO2 http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/02/photosynthesis .html. This is why shifting as much transportation to solar and wind as possible makes much more sense that biofuels. But, during a transition, getting a second use from the CO2 produced at power plants could make some sense.
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Get Solar! http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Here you go:

http://newsbyte.blogspot.com/2006/06/attack-of-foo d-giants_115144066169369785.html

In essence, it's not so much as 'fear' (well, if one would mean 'irrational fear') as common sense, not to allow it untill it's proven to be safe as a food, and as a new organism into the ecology (at the very least, when genes are incorporated which are cross-species). And there is also the principle question about who should be legally responsibe; currently, a GM company can sue me, if their GM-genes pop-up in my plants (and seen this is about living organisms, one can not control the dispersion of it). So, potentially, a farmer would have to pay up, because of the patents on those genes which polluted the DNA of his own plants (even if he he actually wanted to keep his own plants pure for his own breeding purposes. What I would want to see, is a law against 'gentic pollution', where the *poluter* (such as monsanto) has to pay for the polution it cause to the farmers' plants.

After all, if a chemical company has a patent on a chemical component, but by accident it gets on the land of somebody else, then it's THEY which have to clean it (and pay) up. I don't think anyone would accept that chemical factory to sue the landowner saying there is a patented component on his property which he didn't pay for. There need to be a law governing these things for GM-crops too, BEFORE we allow it. I'm really curious to see what Monsanto would do, if it risks getting sued by everyone their patented DNA-strings pop up.

Btw, I'm preparing a rebutal to your parent post, though I consider myself 'moderate', since there is little doubt the USA has also great people and done great things. But hey, this is slashdot, if it weren't for the (more interesting) discussions, I wouldn't be here. ;-)

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/04/about-new-o rleans-imagery-in-google.html

My thought exactly. More specifically, this sounds like a CSRF attack ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-site_request_fo rgery ).

Such an attack previously succeeded on Digg (in the form of a white-hat demonstration of a self-Digging website), but that vulnerability has already been patched. The description of the demo attack, which they also refer to as "session riding," is available here: http://4diggers.blogspot.com/

You are exactly right about that. At least one judge has held that they cannot have access even to the defendant's hard drive, that it must be done by a neutral third party. SONY v. Arellanes.

they can't

Project Teaspoon

You're obviously well educated on this subject. I have to admit that as a former atheist, and a relatively new Christian, I still struggle with many of the issues in these threads. However, I do try to "keep the faith" and I believe that God honors that commitment. I'm not going to tell you that God literally speaks to me, because quite frankly he doesn't, that's just not how it works. Perhaps my testimony can shed some more light on my perspective: http://dvdrsmth.blogspot.com/ I've neglected the content for quite some time, but hope you find it worthwhile.

The original seems to have gone off-line but I found Susan Polgar's commentary: http://susanpolgar.blogspot.com/2006/11/recap-of-d eep-fritz-kramnik-game-2.html

might be true... -- http://techniche.blogspot.com/

My home PC server, which I left on 24x365 for email, backup, etc, ended up costing me well over $150 per year in electricity just for the PC (no periferals, monitor, or anything else).

Noticing this cost, I compared a bunch of Macintosh and PCs, as you can see in this article on PC and Mac electricity use.

As you can see, it's pretty easy to see that the cheapest devices can end up costing more in power alone.

If you plan to run an electronic device close to 24x365, factor electricity consumption into your purchase decision. Also factor in devices like cable modems, wireless routers, and so-called "sleeping equipment" - in combination, they can easily put another several hundred to your electricity bill every year. I use an X10 "appliance" controller to truly switch off idle equipment.

My total monthly electric consumption these days is well under 100 KWh.

given this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/09/post-katrin a-images-of-new-orleans-on.html

"If there was a story written about it, I'd like to read it."

Here are my takes:
http://a4fs.net/blog/?p=18
http://btetc.blogspot.com/2007/03/found-senator-i- like.html

• Election staff convicted in recount rig in Ohio 2004 presidential election that gave President Bush the electoral votes he needed to defeat Democratic Sen. John Kerry
  
  
• Bush signs landmark executive order increasing White House power over federal agencies
  
  
• Bush's Signing Statement Dictatorship
  
  
• Senator asks Bush to explain signing statement that gives President authority to open mail without warrant
  
  
• Bush Moves Toward Martial Law
  
  
• US Attorney General Questions the Right to a Fair Trial
  
  
• The White House is replacing U.S. Attorneys throughout the country
  
  
• Attorneys for the District of Columbia argue that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies only to militias, not individuals
  
  
• U.S. citizens to be required "clearance" to leave the United States
  
  
• plenty more, regretfully...
  
  

There's still a lot more than just powered USB that needs to be consolidated to get rid of the rat nest of wires that live around our computers. Have a look: http://pfh.blogspot.com/2006/09/wonders-of-wireles s-i-was-looking-under.html

Governor of Disneyland Inflamed by Slashdot Comment

The current way in which credit cards number are used is just broken. I find it amazing that it hasn't been fixed yet.
Requiring that to make a purchase you have to give a shop all the information they require to make additional purchases on your behalf is just stupid.
The solution is simple, public/private key cryptography.
eg. http://jesstaa.blogspot.com/2006/06/credit-cards.h tml

Yup. Could the /. editors stop these nonsense advertisement ploys? Good lord...

I fully agree with this sentiment! I've put up a rant about this horrendous practice, along with a petition to the slashdot editors that everyone should sign. You can find these on my blog.

We got 'em in Fargo, though -- moon dogs, too!:

http://fargoing.blogspot.com/2007/02/sun-dog-caugh t-on-camera.html

http://fargoing.blogspot.com/2007/01/sun-dogs-moon -dogs.html

We got 'em in Fargo, though -- moon dogs, too!:

http://fargoing.blogspot.com/2007/02/sun-dog-caugh t-on-camera.html

http://fargoing.blogspot.com/2007/01/sun-dogs-moon -dogs.html

I'm vaguely surprised Microsoft didn't add their own version to the software. Then again, they hardly added any proper new features, imagine what Microsoft could have added to Vista to inspire people to use it....

Anything like this would have been welcome

Free flow - A multi-layer desktop. Featuring your personal choice of web, or your company's choice of essential intranet information, flowing in the background. We've got Glass - let's use for more than just fluff.

Cut, paste and flip - When you paste one selection of text over another, the removed text is copied back into the clipboard, ready to be dropped elsewhere. Assign it to Ctrl+Alt+C for ease and employ as a full part of the OS, not just a feature in one program.

PIMP - Passenger Information Mobile Protocol - One for the commuter/jet-set laptop and Smartphone crowd. When you are on plane, train or at the airport, terminal, anywhere in the civilised world - your PC can link FOR FREE into a PIMP (Just branded Wi-fi really) spot and you can grab the latest travel information, offers for hotels, places to eat.

And a few others... http://www.goffee-freelance.blogspot.com/

*MICROSOFT* doesn't care what HARDWARE you run their OS on. Running Parallels on a Mac doesn't hurt MICROSOFT in the slightest.

I have to say it is pretty hard to defend the position that DRM is universally bad.

It's generally very difficult to defend any overly broad generalisation. On the other hand, I think I'd find it quite easy to defend the notion that DRM is almost universally bad.

It reminds me, (if I may be permitted a short digression), of Robert Lory's Dracula books. In these, an obsessive paraplegic criminologist uncovers the Count's resting place and (as one does) implants a tiny remote control stake in the Vampire's heart. By doing so he hopes to force Dracula to become his instrument of revenge upon the criminal underworld that forty years earlier cost him the use of his legs. Worth reading, at least in a so-bad-they're-actually-good sort of way.

Lory's hero managed to take a great evil and force it into service in the cause of good. But that didn't make vampires stop being evil. Similarly just because someone is using DRM properly, that doesn't mean it isn't horribly open to abuse, and generally a bad idea.

For those of us who actually use it we say submillimeter and far infrared but as the interest grows in space communications THz is coming more into use. I've seen it used for the mid-infrared as well. Presumably some funding agency started saying THz and lots of people followed. The company is welcome. One far infrared astronomer famously said "These is no such thing as a far infrared detector." This is about right since the properties of the materials we use are really atrocious. History dependent sensitivity, unpredictable dark current, weird spectral response, and internal fringing are just some of the difficulties encountered. Yet, much of the luminosity of the local universe is emitted in this band and many of the most important spectral features of the young universe are redshifted into this band. Improved THz technology is needed and this article is certainly getting noticed in the astronomical community.
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Intercept the daily optical to terahertz conversion: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Do current Roombas pick up pet hair well? And do pets like them?

This type of technology (but with regular arrays) has already found application is space: http://www.iso.esac.esa.int/manuals/HANDBOOK/lws_h b/node14.html. Water vapor is not a big concern there.
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Tap the Sun: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Would like to clarify something you said. There is, in fact, nothing whatsoever in the RIAA's investigation which would indicate whether the defendant "used a P2P file sharing system to obtain a song that the RIAA holds copyright on". They have no evidence at all as to (a) how the files in the screenshot were obtained, (b) who obtained them, or even (c) whether they were on a single computer or on a number of different computers in different places. See, e.g., RIAA expert witness deposition.