Slashdot Mirror

The Casio F-91W goes beyond mere timekeeping and is virtually guaranteed to enhance your lifestyle in ways you never expected.

http://gizmodo.com/5795554/people-wearing-this-casio-watch-might-be-terrorists

If this article is true, then just by looking at the numbers we can assume they're keeping a lot more than metadata. Their new facility in Utah is alleged to have a yottabyte of storage. That 10^24 bytes.

For phone calls, they claim they're storing the numbers involved, location data, and duration of call. That's about 32 bytes for both phone numbers, 240 bytes for 2 addresses (lat/lon would be substantially less), and 4 bytes for the duration. That's a total of 276 bytes per row. There are 300x10^6 people in the US (one end of each call must be in the US after all), and there are 86,400 seconds in a day. If every single person in the US made an international call every second of the day, that would only add up to 7.154 PB/day of data - that's 7.154 x 10^15 bytes. A yottabyte could store 382+ THOUSAND years of phone data.

If we consider email (metadata only), 2 email addresses are 128 bytes, subject is another 128 bytes. If we round up to the 276 bytes for phone calls, the result is the same - 382,000+ years of storage.

If we think about actual voice data, a typical phonecall consumes 8kB/sec (at least a POTS line does). To record every US citizen making 24 hour per day international calls,(300x10^6 24 hour phone calls), you'd need 2.0736x10^17 bytes/day, or 207 PB/day. A yottabyte is almost 50,000 years of storage.

It looks to me like something doesn't add up.

What's in Woz's backpack He does not travel light.

Also these are very easy to make. Here are some links and notes for informational purposes only. In it's most basic form wires with cloth dipped in salt water connected to a battery. More refined DIY designs include an electrical meter. http://gizmodo.com/5882754/how-to-electrify-your-brain-to-be-smarter-with-a-9+volt-battery http://www.technologyreview.com/view/427177/diy-kit-overclocks-your-brain-with-direct-current/ Most of the components: - A battery, I've seen designs using 9 volts and I know of some designs that use 6 volts. - Some cut off pieces cotton as cotton can be less drippy then sponge. - salt shaker + water - Wires, regular radioshack UL-Recognized RED Hookup Wire 22AWG (though thicker electrical wire will work too). Strip off the ends to contact the cloth. - Duct-tape to hold the cloth to the wires. - Optional, an electrical meter to get the current in the range you want. - Optional, you can modulate the amps though battery selection, resistors, salt water resistor or just moderating the salt water concentrations. - Possible bonus, the salt water connection is imperfect and provides a crackly connection as in slight random current pulses without special circuitry. Rubbing the contact wire on the battery terminal will also create staticy pulses somewhat similar to what some of the more complex devices produce. - Common sense, take it off if it's burning or injuring your skin.

Hey moron... Apple designs their own chips and has them produced by various chip fabs (none of which is Foxconn, because Foxconn does not provide that service). One of those fabs is interestingly Samsung's. Foxconn prints certain boards and does the final assembly of parts (for hundreds of electronics companies, hence the GP's statement).

this also ends my plans for Ackthpt's Small Knives And Pointy Objects Emporium in airports from coast to coast.

Yeah, now you know why the TSA rescinded the order - they didn't want you to compete with their current side business selling pocket knives. (I think my uncle bought a box of corkscrews by the pound).

FRAND terms were not offered

Yes they were, Apple just didn't like them. Most companies do a patent exchange to avoid paying any actual cash, but Apple doesn't have any tech patents to offer and it refuses to license design patents. So Apple was obliged to pay the same percentage as everyone else, it's just that because Apple products are rather expensive that translated into a several dollars per device which they thought was too much. Well, you know what Apple, too bad, everyone else agreed to this deal and now the court agreed that it was fair.

Samsung has at times blatantly ripped off a number of its competitors, most recently Apple

If you mean that they look somewhat similar then I would direct your attention to Braun's product line which pre-dates Apple's.

And all of this won't matter much in the end anyway

It certainly will because this isn't the only tech patent that falls under FRAND rules which Apple has tried to ignore, and Samsung isn't going to relent on those. Its the nature of litigation that it takes years and in the mean time new products come out, so at the end you apply for a quick judgement on other patents and the new gear based on the arguments that were resolved during the trial. On top of that you can expect Samsung to press for damages and of course the unpaid license fees.

This has been coming to Apple for a long time. You can't just ignore patents vital to implementing standards because you don't like the FRAND terms that everyone else has agreed to. That is the price of joining the club, the alternative being to go set up your own world-wide cell data network.

that stuff should all be tossed out.

"Should" does not exist in situations where the law feels they are above the law. If you are foolish enough to trust unregulated authority with limitless power how about going to live under Taliban rule for a year? You will be told how to live, how to dress, how to think and what your religion is. It's an awesome system for those with all the power, guns, money and drugs.

[*] - http://gizmodo.com/5900680/7-rules-for-recording-police

It'll be able to see through clothing more than existing cameras can. It might also be good for night vision.

Why bother seeing through clothing? It is not that hard to get the clothes off, with much more options than merely seeing through them.

Since humans are very blind to this wavelengths as well, the relevance in the cameras is questionable.

It'll be able to see through clothing more than existing cameras can. It might also be good for night vision.

http://boingboing.net/2010/05/04/satellite-photos-cat.html
> As the nation of Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, its tax authorities
> are taking aim at Greece's notorious tax-evading rich elite. Using satellite
> photos, the tax authority examined the claim of the residents of Athens's
> wealthy suburbs and discovered that, rather than the 324 swimming
> pools claimed by the locals, there were 16,974 of them.

http://www.italymagazine.com/italy/olbia/google-earth-reveals-tax-evasion-scam-italys-finance-police
> Google Earth reveals tax evasion scam to Italy's Finance Police

http://gizmodo.com/5603054/officials-are-looking-for-your-swimming-pool-on-google-earth-right-now
> Officials Are Looking For Your Swimming Pool on Google Earth Right Now

Ammunition ... is harder to get in Australia

I wouldn't bet (second link to show that the charges may be powerful enough).

Yeah, probably not a good idea unless you know exactly what you're doing. And even then, maybe not so smart anyway...

(speaking of smart... like using a plastic gun to shoot real bullets would be a smart idea anyway)

Ammunition ... is harder to get in Australia

I wouldn't bet (second link to show that the charges may be powerful enough).

Yeah, probably not a good idea unless you know exactly what you're doing. And even then, maybe not so smart anyway...

Ammunition ... is harder to get in Australia

I wouldn't bet (second link to show that the charges may be powerful enough).

Dunno what counts for you, but here's a few:

Cnet

gizmodo

Starwars.com

http://gizmodo.com/government-lab-admits-to-using-quantum-internet-for-two-493293340

That's true, plus being published doesn't mean being truthful.

Throw in the politicization of science and its funding (i.e. if 97% of funding goes to "pro-agw" scientists, these results would be expected, or vice-versa), and it's hard to draw any real-world conclusions through popular vote of journal-published papers. Add in the asymmetric risk to the wealthiest parts of the world and the politics gets even more dubious.

Maybe we should stick to actual science and let the chips fall where they may. Phlogiston was once very popular, but so is Relativity. Theories, predictions, observation, refinement - repeat as needed until the theory and observations reach equilibrium. In the meantime, I'll try not to use my TomTom to get to the Anti-Relativity conference.

Since it seems people are demanding bigger and bigger screens (heck, The day phones were bigger than penises came a month ahead of schedule), this seems to be a technology looking for a reason to exist - given the popularity of big screen phones (and the Galaxy Mega is no slouch) and how people seem to want bigger screen phones, it seems the problem will solve itself naturally. Well before it starts appearing in products, anyhow.

Since it seems people are demanding bigger and bigger screens (heck, The day phones were bigger than penises came a month ahead of schedule), this seems to be a technology looking for a reason to exist - given the popularity of big screen phones (and the Galaxy Mega is no slouch) and how people seem to want bigger screen phones, it seems the problem will solve itself naturally. Well before it starts appearing in products, anyhow.

12345

12345 6 !

Futurama is brilliant, especially when pitted against the.brain dead "Ow my balls" class of reality of television.

The new seasons had excellent character growth and development. While the original series was great, it was childish and down right infantile at times, the movies were awkward like the teenage years, and the two new seasons were the beginning of a quality adult audience show. It is one of the ONLY animated shows on television at the moment that caters specifically to the 18-25 demographic, and it's smart too. Take the mathematical proof they created for the show. When was the last time any television show created a tangible real world theorem?

It seems the operators of the Panama Wormhole, Earth's Comedy Central channel for shipping, are making the same fateful mistake as the idiots at the Box Network.

Steven Sinofsky, architect of Windows 8, was already fired. (Officially, he was supposed to have resigned of his own free will, but no one believes that.) And it's now being reported that Windows 8.1 will bring back the Start button and include the ability to boot straight to desktop. They're too embarrassed to backpedal all at once, but in the long run, Metro will go the way of Active Desktop.

You got to see this in context of Apple's policies. They've been known to exclude journalists from events because they've said things Apple didn't like.

Oooh. Of course Samsung is known for inviting bloggers to international trade fairs, where they are forced to staff the booths. True story. Not to mention suing journalists that say things they didn't like. Another true story

Add the new Iranian time machine announced today (really, see http://gizmodo.com/5994334/oh-yes-an-iranian-scientist-has-invented-a-time-machine-so-he-says) and you can get very close to omniscience, if not omnipotence. Add to that their new jet 'stealth fighter' and it's not hard to see someone is just thinking shit up to impress Crazy Pants and keep the ministry of weird shit busy.

Nope. http://cache.gizmodo.com/assets/images/8/2008/04/Melies_TripMoon_largest.jpg

Google has self-censored sites in the Washington, D.C., area and other areas of military and national security interest at the request of the USA government. It's blurred the regions or limited the resolution at which users can scan the areas, such as Fort Knox or the Naval Observatory a.k.a. the Vice-President's Residence. It's also done that for China and India, South Korea, Australia, and others (I think) at those government's requests also. http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/removals/government the name of that link speaks for itself
How Google And Bing Maps Control What You Can See
http://gizmodo.com/5907421/the-dutch-have-the-weirdest-google-maps-censorship
and of course wikipedia's article on Map censorship by google and microsoft So if Google and MS and others already do all of this at the behest of the government, why are we surprised that the French government is trying to censor Wikipedia?

Yes, this is just another knee-jerk reaction from an M$ hater who will gladly blame them for anything ranging from greed, to politics, to disease and famine.

But you could legitimately argue that they have a motivation in this. Look at all the fake reports MS has published saying that Linux has a higher TCO. And the outright lies they trained Best Buy drones to tell people
And the constant shills that they dish out on all kinds of websites, this very one included. I'm sure that there are hundreds of other, more obvious and egregious examples, which escape me at the moment.

But MS has a vested interest in tarnishing Linux's brand image, and the facts have shown that it is exactly what they do. But that's okay, they can keep doing it because eventually, people will eventually (if they haven't already) realize that Linux is lightyears ahead of MS's products, and that is what is causing (present tense!) an exodus from their awful platform. Linux has been growing from its very inception, and there's no reason why that should stop.

I'm not going so far as to say that this is all their fault, but you can't disagree that they haven't had a part in this, one based on a malicious, ulterior motive. And regardless, I don't think the whole issue present by TFA is problematic anyways. People use Linux cause it works, not cause it's sexy. And that's just fine.

Yes, but the question is, is it true.
This post is on topic, on the topic of computers doing things they are most definitely not supposed to be doing, at the whim of the manufacturer.

Lets ask the Google:
http://gizmodo.com/5958088/whys-the-gop-changing-voting-machine-software-right-before-the-election
http://www.salon.com/2012/11/05/ohio_republicans_sneak_risky_software_onto_voting_machines/
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/06/pa-voting-machine-taken-out-of-service-for-flipping-votes-to-romney-report/

Hell these Romney's Bain capital even bought some of these voting machines on the run to the election:
http://www.salon.com/2012/10/23/romney_linked_voting_machine_company_to_count_votes_in_ohio/

Republicans are liars and cheats. They will use any underhanded method to rig the shit in their favor, and then they accuse the other side of doing it. Usually when there is little to no evidence of the other side doing anything, and even if they did two wrongs don't make a right.

Mark my words, shit is being rigged against you, and I and the rest of the American public. Money will be funneled into corporate welfare programs, companies will pay no income tax, sometimes even receiving a refund. Fuck big business and the party of big business, the republicans.

And perhaps related to the "global internet slowdown"?

I know Its not the primary topic here,, but gizmodo has some evidence that the whole cyberbunker thing is a fake

http://gizmodo.com/5992652/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie

Well reading your quoted article is worrisome as it goes as far as describing a Ddos attack as a nuke. Do I feel another law, restriction coming up?

I know Its not the primary topic here,, but gizmodo has some evidence that the whole cyberbunker thing is a fake

http://gizmodo.com/5992652/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie

WHOA WHOA WHOA. No.

This 'thing' is definitely real. It's happening. That's not in question. What ISN'T real, however, is CloudFlare's assertion that it's "jamming crucial infrastructure around the world".

I know Its not the primary topic here,, but gizmodo has some evidence that the whole cyberbunker thing is a fake

http://gizmodo.com/5992652/that-internet-war-apocalypse-is-a-lie

http://gizmodo.com/5990635/?post=58287849

I'm seeing this word used a lot here. "Allegedly", hopefully that means his involvement is still uncertain.

As in, he hasn't been pronounced guilty before he's had his chance to prove his innocence.

But, it's the USA. He *has* been pronounced guilty. As can be clearly read at http://gizmodo.com/5990635/reuters-employee-exposed-as-anonymous-agent (with updates... where is the RSS feed?) it's just a matter of time. The verdict has already been reached. And the alleged culprit will get 30 years imprisonment for scribbling all over the book of his kindergarten friend. This is a very serious thing. The only way the breaking news could be more enthralling and nail-biting is if the death penalty was applicable to scribbling. Oh. Wait. 30 years? The death penalty would probably be too humane.

The media also said Casey Anthony was guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee but I don't recall her being convicted. People can and do act with free will from time to time. Anyway, everyone is saying that this is an insane sentence for a non-violent crime. I hate to break it to you, but there can be worse things than violence (except murder, obviously). I'm not saying that this case is worse than getting your butt kicked at a bar, but we have no idea just how much access that guy gave away. It's possible that through that compromised server the hacker could have gotten access to far more damaging data. Who knows. Who cares? The guy broke the law, without a doubt. Let him go on trial and we can see what his crime merits after the evidence has been presented.

I'm seeing this word used a lot here. "Allegedly", hopefully that means his involvement is still uncertain.

As in, he hasn't been pronounced guilty before he's had his chance to prove his innocence.

But, it's the USA. He *has* been pronounced guilty. As can be clearly read at http://gizmodo.com/5990635/reuters-employee-exposed-as-anonymous-agent (with updates... where is the RSS feed?) it's just a matter of time. The verdict has already been reached. And the alleged culprit will get 30 years imprisonment for scribbling all over the book of his kindergarten friend. This is a very serious thing. The only way the breaking news could be more enthralling and nail-biting is if the death penalty was applicable to scribbling. Oh. Wait. 30 years? The death penalty would probably be too humane.

This is Samsung & Android.

If you want innovative, you'll have to go with Apple. /ohsnap

Yes, innovations like not having to hold the phone a certain way to make calls? /ohsnap

What you want at the moment is a VW Golf TDi. Same or better MPG as a Prius, goes like stink (considering what it is), no battery to worry about and it's a nicer car inside and to drive. However, just a week ago or so, some guys claimed a breakthrough with graphene for use as batteries. Which could make hybrids or even full electric cars actually viable.

This is hilarious

http://gizmodo.com/5853729/please-do-not-buy-richard-stallman-a-parrot-and-other-rules

Richard Stallman is leader of the free software movement and father of GNU. Naturally, he's in demand as a speaker. And so NATURALLY he has a completely ride-the-orangutan insane tour rider.

"Ridge the orangutan" insane is such a great phrase.

From the link

https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/pipermail/developers-public/2011-October/007701.html

Andrew, I read all of Richard Stallman's email that you forwarded.
Don't book him. His rider is hilarious.

RMS winning friends and influencing people as usual.

"AI" has always been that which AI can't do. Here are several activities that once were considered sci-fi-level AI but are no longer considered AI in a broad sense because we know how to do them more-or-less:
* Looking stuff up for us (Google);
http://www.google.com/
* Inferring questions from examples and answering questions posed in natural language (IBM's Watson);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)
* Generating hypotheses and doing hands/grippers-on scientific experiments (Adam);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Scientist
* Reading text in multiple fonts reliably and quickly and cheaply;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition
* translating one human language to another on the fly;
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html/
http://www.gizmag.com/go/1833/
* reading and translating signs;
http://questvisual.com/us/
* Making portraits;
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/11/tresset_robot_artist_artist_engineers_robots_to_make_art_and_save_his_own.single.html
* Playing the piano including from sheet music;
http://www.synthgear.com/2009/music-misc/synth-playing-robot/
http://gizmodo.com/5963137/watch-this-adorable-horde-of-intelligent-swarm-robots-play-piano
* Driving a car in busy traffic (Google, Stanford, CMU, others);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2007_Urban_Challenge
* Winning chess games (IBM's Deep Blue and pretty much any PC now against a mid-level player);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess
* Image recognition for quality control in factories;
http://www.general-vision.com/products/mtvs.php
* Recognizing faces;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system
* Figuring out the name of a musical composition from a few notes as well as making new compositions and dynamic accompaniments;
http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_artificial_intelligence
* The diagnostic aspect of being a doctor (Watson again);
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor
* Investing in volatile financial markets;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading
* Serving as a sentry with a machine gun;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ
* Twirling a cell phone;
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
* Identifying things by smell;

No, running the cable to your house is not the "expensive bit" - it is a big up-front cost, which is amortized over the life of the service. Actually providing the service, running the head-end units, the data centers, etc. is the expensive part. Trenching coax to your basement isn't the most "expensive bit."

I'm a cost accountant in my professional life and there is lots of data available that you should consider. While the ISP may recoup the cost over the life of the service it is extremely expensive to deploy copper/fiber. The specifics vary but wiring up a subdivision has costs that easily run into the tens of thousands of dollars. When Verizon did their FiOS rollout they spent something like $23 billion to hook up 19 million homes. Their cost is claimed to be around around $1410 per home. Per Verizon about $760 of that cost was getting the fiber to the house and about $650 was the routers and other gear needed to run the service. Bear in mind as well that Verizon already has the easements, poles and infrastructure needed to make a rollout like this happen. But the actual costs are effectively higher because Verizon only has about 4 million FiOS customers so that $23 billion results in a cost around $6000 per customer, more than half of which in physically getting the wire to the customer. So yeah, "trenching coax" actually is the most expensive part.

Most of the costs for these services are up front fixed costs. Operating a gigabit network doesn't cost appreciably more than a 100mbps network once installed. So once the investment is made the only question really is how long is their breakeven horizon. At $200/month, the ISP would break even in 30 months on a $6000 hookup. At $100/month it would take 60 months. It is just a profit calculation. They offer tiered service because some people are willing to pay more than others. Clearly the hockey stick on willingness to pay is somewhere below $200 for internet service for many people.

You won't pay $200 for 100Mb/sec service, would you pay $200/mo for 1 Gb/sec service?

No, I probably wouldn't because it is a luxury, not a necessity. I could afford it I suppose and I'd think about it, but the ROI simply isn't there to justify the expense. If they get it down to $100 per month I'd probably get it.

but nor did it show much really negative side effects,

Cancer, miscarriages, naked pictures, violation of federal and international laws regarding child pornography, hiring of actual pedophiles, rapists, and murderers to run the machines...

Yeah. No really negative side effects here. Move along, Citizen.

Canon? You mean the company that heard there may be a future in fuel cell batteries so applied for the completely non-obvious patent in using a fuel cell to power a camera?

How about Sony? Yeaaahh... no.

Actually your best bet may be Olympus. Their biggest crime appears to be corporate cooking of their own books, but from what I see they haven't gone mad with any patent wars, and unlike Canon, Nikon, and Sony who are doing their best at proprietary lock-in actually make 4/3rds and micro 4/3rds cameras which are fully compatible with a whole host of lenses and flashes from other manufacturers. Oh and they're a hell of a player in the scientific field too. Olympus microscopes are pretty much *the* scope to have.

In NY, no, they don't:

http://gizmodo.com/5986233/apple-theft-is-so-bad-that-the-nypd-has-a-dedicated-itheft-division

Apple theft is so bad the NYPD has an iTheft division.

I now think the hole in Lake Chebarku is not the real impact site. Reasoning :

It is too regular. Not impossible, but suspicious. I would also expect such an impact to fracture the nearby ice, but that seems pretty solid.

There should be a strewn field all around (i.e., other pieces), with easy to find small pieces on the snow/ice on top of the lake nearby. This would basically be a repeat of Targish Lake. I have heard no report of such finds.

If fishermen go out on the ice, fishermen cut holes in the ice. I would want to verify that they never cut 30 m holes.

What's new about a wrist phone? Swatch had the Swatch Talk wrist phone in 1998. Samsung had one in 2001. If you want one right now, there are several on Amazon. They're cheap, too; well under $100 for an unlocked phone.

There's even a full Android device in a watch size announced. This thing can supposedly make phone calls, shoot video, browse the web, get your location, etc.

I think the argument that the author is trying to make is that the scope of new work is more tightly focussed than before. There have been relatively few new 'fundamental' discoveries in physics, compared to refinements and increasing precision.

Agreed, the is what he is talking about, but was it not always thus?

When Mendel was laying the foundations of Genetics, the idea of DNA was unknown.
He was working at the edge of knowledge, with no possible way forward.
He described WHAT happened but could not even approach the HOW.

Now, DNA pretty much defines Genetics as a science. We understand the HOW somewhat better.
At least we know where to look.

There must be more questions that we aren't even beginning to answer. WHY, for one (Why dna, Why here)
WHERE for another. Did DNA originate here? If we find life on mars, will it have DNA?
Or will it be totally different?

"To the best of our knowledge, the original chemicals chosen by known life do not constitute a unique set; other choices could have been made, and maybe were made if life started elsewhere many times."

Paul Davies.

Lots left to do.
Science doesn't know everything. Science Knows it doesn't know everything. Otherwise, they'd Stop!.

Careful now, otherwise they may kick you out of their network: http://gizmodo.com/275374/sprint-dumps-needy-customers

http://gizmodo.com/5980917/report-leaked-documents-confirm-totally-obvious-non+surprise-android-key-lime-pie-launch-this-spring

calling bs on the hackers who claimed responsibility.

http://gizmodo.com/5980618/amazon-is-down

I used to believe stuff like that about vitamin D and minimal sun exposure of hands in the winter, which I was taught in grade school. It turns out to be wrong. You may want to do some more research on this topic before making such confident (and incorrect) pronouncements on this topic in the future. See for example: http://gizmodo.com/5823058/tanning-can-cause-cancer-but-not-tanning-could-cause-a-lot-worse

Or from:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2839537
"Sunlight has long been recognized as a major provider of vitamin D for humans; radiation in the UVB (290-315 nm) portion of the solar spectrum photolyzes 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin to previtamin D3, which, in turn, is converted by a thermal process to vitamin D3. Latitude and season affect both the quantity and quality of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface, especially in the UVB region of the spectrum, but little is known about how these influence the ability of sunlight to synthesize vitamin D3 in skin. A model has been developed to evaluate the effect of seasonal and latitudinal changes on the potential of sunlight to initiate cutaneous production of vitamin D3. Human skin or [3 alpha-3H]7-dehydrocholesterol exposed to sunlight on cloudless days in Boston (42.2 degrees N) from November through February produced no previtamin D3. In Edmonton (52 degrees N) this ineffective winter period extended from October through March. Further south (34 degrees N and 18 degrees N), sunlight effectively photoconverted 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3 in the middle of winter. These results quantify the dramatic influence of changes in solar UVB radiation on cutaneous vitamin D3 synthesis and indicate the latitudinal increase in the length of the "vitamin D winter" during which dietary supplementation of the vitamin may be advisable."

A fair-skinned person in a skimpy bathing suit under noon-day near-equatorial summer sun can produce on the order of 20,000 IU vitamin D (which self-limits in the skin when from UV) in about twenty minutes. A dark-skinned person will take a couple of hours to reach that level under those conditions. As the above paper suggests, in winter father from the equator, your skin will produce essentially no vitamin D. Reference:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-us/our-staff0/john-j-cannell-md/

Given the above, the US RDA of about 600 IU D3 per day for an adult of any size is just bad medicine, as is setting a tolerable upper limit of 4000 IU D3 daily (when that "limit" is closer to what the avergae adult needs). That is why you won't get enough vitamin D from food, because the RDA is about 10X too low for most people. A better recommendation:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation

With our increasing indoors lifestyle, people became more and more vitamin D deficient -- even living in sunny places like Arizona or Texas. That was made worse by the fear mongering by the dermatology profession (with dermatologists as whole causing on the order of 10X the cancer they prevented plus a host of other health issues like autism with their well-meant but terrible advice).

Studies have shown a link between nutrition and depression. See, as one example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738337/
"Few people are aware of the connection between nutrition and depression while they easily understand the connection between nutritional deficiencies and physical illness. Depression is more typically thought of as strictly biochemical-based or emotionally-rooted. On the contrary, nutrition can play a key role in the onset as well as severity and duration of depression. Many of the easily noticeable food patterns that p