Domain: wired.com
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Comments · 12,699
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Maybe someone will invent a Bio-panel...
Maybe someone will invent a Bio-panel...
An Algae solar panel that produces hydrogen by depriving it of oxygen
like Mr. Melis's research indicates .
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70273-0.htm l?tw=wn_index_19
http://www.green-trust.org/2000/algaehydrogen.htm
Be pretty wild to see huge areas covered in some green translucent liquid paneling, lol .
I had same idea for Bio-diesel from Algae paneling .
Ex-MislTech -
bio hydrogen
This has looked promising for awhile now, hydrogen directly emitted by algae, that can be farmed in ponds and collected. A direct solar to hydrogen process.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456, 00.html
I would like that for home heating, have a pond/pool in the backyard, with a cover, hydrogen from the algae collected and burnt in the furnace/heater or used as the energy source to run a ground effect heat pump? good for heating and cooling then.. Something like that anyway... If there's enough, run it through a fuel cell for electricity, or burn it in a gas engine generator that has been converted to run on it.
With that said, I am still more in favor-for now-with using liquid biofuels for transportation purposes, at least as an adjunct to gasoline or diesel. Some blends require zero conversion on already exisiting vehicles, and the nation's infrastructure for fuel delivery is completely built to take advantage of them.
The biggest problem with hydrogen is that it is a bear to store in a tank properly. I have read about some research into sequestering it inside of an additional chemical lattice such as metal hydrides, or turning it into other compounds that are either heat or additional chemical catalyst activated for hydrogen release. So far no big winners though. A static algae hydrogen generator wouldn't really need a lot of storage, just enough to act as a buffer for your normal demand. I imagine you could adjust output merely by altering the temperature inside the pond/pool, and that part could be automated with normal greenhouse and pond equipment that is available now. Now keeping the algae strains *pure* and keeping out other forms of algae might be a real problem.
Interesting stuff, I just love alternative energy ideas for some reason. -
Re:I want names and addresses!
According to another source pharmamaster is a russian spammer, who hates the methods used by Blue Security's client software, which anonymously sends thousands of legal opt-out requests simultaneously to the spammer's website. The thing that pissed him off is that it takes a lot of time to handle all those request!
Finally a legal system which also kicks the spammers in the NUTS. This attack has proven that the system really works.
More can be read at these links http://www.wired.com/news/technology/security/0,70 831-0.html?tw=rss.index
at http://hotwired.com/news/technology/0,70820-0.html
and at http://hotwired.com/news/technology/0,70798-0.html -
BPL: A FraudFraud: "Luke Stewart and Media Fusion" http://www.dallas.net/~jvpoll/bpl/
Stewart patented an "idea". He claimed to send data over the magnetic part of the electric signal. No live Demonstrations!! Ran away from Dallas TX.
Statement to Congress
http://www.house.gov/science/stewart_100500.htm/
Wired Article
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/media.htm
l /Media Fusion Website
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BPL: A FraudFraud: "Luke Stewart and Media Fusion" http://www.dallas.net/~jvpoll/bpl/
Stewart patented an "idea". He claimed to send data over the magnetic part of the electric signal. No live Demonstrations!! Ran away from Dallas TX.
Statement to Congress
http://www.house.gov/science/stewart_100500.htm/
Wired Article
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.11/media.htm
l /Media Fusion Website
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Re:Oh, the Abuses We'll See!
You've seen the movie "6 degrees of separation"? Given a sufficiently large degree of separation value you can pretty much link any one to anyone else. It's not a very large number either (not as low as 6 though).
Funny, that. I've found that 6 is too high a number. It's usually more like 3 or 4, once everything gets worked out. It's all just a matter of identifying these connections.
Take, for instance, King George. I sure didn't vote for him. I am not a fan of his policies, and never have been. Phrases like "flipping idiot" have been pretty common for the past 6 years. But, unbeknownst to me, one of my business partners went to high school with his primary advisors current wife. They still talk on a regular basis, and said partner even stayed the night over last year at their estate in 'DC!
So, in this amazingly small world, I'm 4 degrees of separation from the U.S. President! (Surely, the Prez knows the wife of his primary advisor, even if they don't "hit it off"!)
I've done nothing to gain this connection - but such connections could be blatant and clear to anybody posessing such a database, when combined with the correct search algorithm. The owner of such a system would and could have unbelievable power to determine who is connected to who, and when.
And it's really the pursuit of a very short-term victory to fight the construction of this database. As technology advances, and the cost of storing, retrieving, and processing information continues its inexorable march, such databases will be constructed anyway. Ever looked up your credit history? It's amazing what information is commonly available.
Heck, google your email address - the results may surprise you! Done some years ago, it was amazing to me how many of my emails were public information, and I today generally treat my email like a web posting - public information....
Which brings me back to an article I've raved about over and over and over as the years have gone by. It's the most intellectual, insightful, predictive article I've seen my entire life. It's a fresh look at the problems of privacy, security, and freedom, and so far, it's been 100% spot on. It's how we do 1984 right, so that nobody ends up having to love Big Brother.
If you haven't, I strongly, strongly urge you to read about The Transparent Society.
I'd be tempted to try to enact something like this.
My first law would be that anybody acting in an official capacity must be on the record. Everybody, from the head honcho down to the janitor. No exceptions. My second law would be that anybody accessing this public store of information also must be on the record - accesses to this database are logged in a secure fashion. -
Re:Oh, the Abuses We'll See!
But you don't have to be a Sci-Fi author to imagine crazy abuses of this data.
It's getting time to collect a list of dystopian sf and separate it by still-sf, starting-to-look-prescient, it's-happening, and what-it-was-ever-NOT-that-way? It's-happening: The Right to Read. 1984. The Sheep Look Up (the pollution part will be back soon; the rest is on target). Starting-to-look-prescient: Neuromancer. Remember the little symbol on the shower, meant it was ok to touch your skin but don't let it get in your eyes? Anybody want to take bets on how long before we see that in the US? We're taking water from food production to wash people NOW. Never mind the technical stuff. -
Re:Where do you GET the Hydrogen?
You may not be able to grow hydrogen trees, but you can grow hydrogen pond scum. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,54456
, 00.html -
Re:FreeMcCarty.com
Why did you change your name from Bret McDanel to Eric McCarty in the first place? That seems a bit extreme and fishy to me.
If you read the article carefully, you'll note that they switch names from McCarty to McDanel and then back to McCarty, and then compare the two cases. -
Re:The best thing
"However, the one thing that I am now wondering is if it'll be comfortbale to hold and manipulate over an hour (or several hour) long gaming session."
From what I'm hearing, you don't have to hold the Wiimote at arm's length to play it -- you can just hold it relaxed, like a regular game controller, and make movements with small flicks of the wrist. If you're sitting down and resting your elbow on an armrest or a leg, this would be even easier.
Here's a Wired blog about Wii's "Red Steel" that confirms the plays-better-without-arms-length-waving anecdote. -
Re:Of two mindsYou could have at least read the article summary..
Strangely, I did, which led me to RTFA, which led me to the statements I made. It's one of those cases where the article summary really has little do with the gist of the Wired article, which has to do with the arraignment of Eric McCarty:
On April 28, 2006, Eric McCarty was arraigned in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. McCarty is a professional computer security consultant who noticed that there was a problem with the way the University of Southern California had constructed its web page for online applications. A database programming error allowed outsiders to obtain applicants' personal information, including Social Security numbers.
That is after all the event which causes Mr. McDanel's case to be reviewed.
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Doomed to repeat?
man, I remember the last console to ship with support for 7 controllers, advanced video playback capability, strong multimedia features, and a > $500 pricetag.
I wonder what all those people who used to work at 3DO are doing now.
Oh, they're working for Sony.
(All snark aside, mad props to RJ Mical, Dave Needle, and David Morse. These guys together have come up with some of the best-designed and least well-received pieces of videogame hardware conceived in the last 20 years. They deserve better than the market gave them.) -
Funny (and sad) how times change
Like I said elsewhere last year,
A few days after SGI was delisted, I stumbled across an old (1994) article about SGI while I was poking around in one of my favorite places, the Wired archive.
(I'm a huge computer history junkie--if nothing else is happening, I can amuse myself for hours digging up old computer stuff on the web. And if you're ever in the San Francisco Bay Area, I highly recommend visiting the Computer History museum.)
Anyway, the article has this quote from SGI founder Jim Clark:
Clark is not afraid to publicly dis a company like Apple, much as Steve Jobs once mocked IBM.
"Apple," Jim Clark will sigh, as if he were talking about a horse on its way to the glue factory. "They're not doing anything... Apple blew it."
Then, with a dismissive wave of his hand, and just the hint of a grin: "I think they're in serious trouble."
Funny how things can change in 12 years. :-) -
Funny (and sad) how times change
Like I said elsewhere last year,
A few days after SGI was delisted, I stumbled across an old (1994) article about SGI while I was poking around in one of my favorite places, the Wired archive.
(I'm a huge computer history junkie--if nothing else is happening, I can amuse myself for hours digging up old computer stuff on the web. And if you're ever in the San Francisco Bay Area, I highly recommend visiting the Computer History museum.)
Anyway, the article has this quote from SGI founder Jim Clark:
Clark is not afraid to publicly dis a company like Apple, much as Steve Jobs once mocked IBM.
"Apple," Jim Clark will sigh, as if he were talking about a horse on its way to the glue factory. "They're not doing anything... Apple blew it."
Then, with a dismissive wave of his hand, and just the hint of a grin: "I think they're in serious trouble."
Funny how things can change in 12 years. :-) -
Re:Vaporware that is realhttp://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond_
p r.html
That article talks about both the vapor process & some old Russian technology that squished the hell out of stuff to make diamonds.
The part of TFA that interests me most is thisThis is achieved by "growing" diamonds, which are "usually cleaner" than the mined gems, in QCV's lab. The synthetic diamonds have a defect which is the source of the single photon.
Defect? -
Re:It's a little sadIMHO I think games replacing dolls will take away creativity and imagination from the children. This is a step in making kids behave like robots and always do what major corporations want them to do
Here is an article containing lots of similar pessimistic quotations by various people, proclaiming that the downfall of youth had arrived in the form of (Novels/Movies/Telephones/Rock&Roll/Waltzing/Comic Books). I think children are a little more resilient and creative than people give them credit for. -
Re:Shameless Plug
Does this article in Wired change your mind at all? http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.htm
l . -
Singularity Alert!
Don't Worry -- it's only the end of the human era.
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Re:Interesting, but not new
not in the sense that hybrid cars are, i don't think there are any trains in common use that store sigificant energy in batteries.
You're wrong. :)
Another one. -
might be your competitors
There was a really good article in Wired, that I couldn't find by searching Wired but popped right up in google, called something like Click fraud could swallow the internet.
It's an interesting article, but the main reason I bring it up is because sometimes, as they say in the article, competitors are actually the ones going to sites and committing click fraud just to get the site kicked off AdSense. -
And most important...
Check all the systems against the screenshots in Major Malfunction's infrared presentations. He seems to have 0wned most of the hotel systems out there. Couldn't find a URL to any of the presentations, but here is a Wired article that contains some information.
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Re:The Breakdown & The Irony
Lawrence Lessig had a great article in Wired a while back, pointing out the fact that all the big content industries bitching about piracy today were in fact founded on piracy themselves. Aside from the nice weather, Hollywood rose in California to get away from Thomas Edison's film patents. The recording and radio industries were founded on taking advantage of then-copyright loopholes to screw musicians out of payment for their works.
The reason the big content industries hate p2p isn't because it may be illegal or immoral, but because they aren't making money from it. -
Re:The point is, they're right
Actually, I've been involved in many of the "better" (IMNSHO) solutions, and am working on a new one.
In all cases, my first rule has to "Do no harm" as much as possible.
BTW: I'm not the only one with a "misconception" as to how BF works. Wired seems to think it is, essentially, a DDOS engine directed @ Spammers.
P.S. On what planet is a considered response that someone happens not to agree with a Troll? Troll is ad-hominem and inflamatory. Someone fix the moderation of the parent (and remove moderator access from whoever abused it)!!! -
Re:The point is, they're right
Actually, I've been involved in many of the "better" (IMNSHO) solutions, and am working on a new one.
In all cases, my first rule has to "Do no harm" as much as possible.
BTW: I'm not the only one with a "misconception" as to how BF works. Wired seems to think it is, essentially, a DDOS engine directed @ Spammers.
P.S. On what planet is a considered response that someone happens not to agree with a Troll? Troll is ad-hominem and inflamatory. Someone fix the moderation of the parent (and remove moderator access from whoever abused it)!!! -
Re:Psychopathic science and immune exploits.
One of these days, I'm worried that unethical or thoughtless biologist are going to publish exploits for the human immune system, and one of these days technology is going to get cheap enough and ubiquitous enough for the biologist equivalent of a script kiddie to wage genocide. I'm worried that in the next century, we're going to get an object lesson in just how hard it is to "patch and update" our immune system.
Bill Joy's essay Why the future doesn't need us raises similar concerns, although I don't recall whether script kiddie genemods were on his list. Your scenario also reminds me of the novel Beggars Ride (third book in a trilogy), in which someone contracts for a custom designed virus designed to make humanity easier to control. In that case, the existence of an extremely smart, completely unscrupulous genetic scientist, and someone willing to fund him, was all that was needed. -
Re:Exactly - why implant an RFID device?
Tooth Phone was a hoax.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/1,70601-0.html -
Lest we forgetThe most expensive art performance of all times:
etoys.com
Disclaimer: I am the logistics - and database agent of etoy.
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Re:Doesn't work
And the fact I haven't personally seen a virus on a PC for years... Trojan and worms, sure but viruses - thing of the past mostly...
Also not noted is OS X had 81 vulnerabilities last year and close to 20 this year already. For the first time OS X made the SANS 2005 list of the top-20 internet vulnerabilities. I'm not saying there are near as many OS X security holes as on the Windows side, but Apple does seem to enjoy an unreal reputation that OS X is inherently invulnerable.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70780-0.htm l -
You are correct sir
They're either trying to win over the geek population or maybe hope their LEGO models will help the progress of human kind.
Actually, this was Lego's plan all along. They obtained the help of the most crazed Mindstorms hobbyists to help them design the product line. This wired article is probably the best one that involved the process behind creating the line.
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,69946-0.html -
It's worse than just phone, it's everything
It's semantic datamining in realtime all the data that flows through AT&T's San Francisco peering point. See http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/8/14724/
2 8476
BushCo just used a rather obscure Federal Secrets action to try to get the EFF v. AT&T lawsuit thrown out last Friday afternoon. See http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/ (It's the third or fourth story down) -
Re:netflix for pr0n
If I'm not mistaken, WantedList is what you're looking for.
It was in Wired a while back. -
Wait a second...
You mean Gadgets for the Efficient, right? Where's the toilet-mounted one? It would have to be fairly waterproof (I take showers occasionally), and easily disinfected...
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Re:I still don't see how state secrets applies
In spite of what everyone keeps saying about the current case, it is not domestic spying. One end of every communication intercepted is in another country, and the court that decided the Nixon case specifically noted that their ruling did not apply to international communications.
Are you sure about that? The way I read the EFF case and the and the Wired writeup, they are under the belief that ALL communications are being re-routed to the NSA. Not simply all calls which are going international.
If they are truly getting copies of every single AT&T communications, this would most especially NOT be limited to international communications -- it would, in fact, be large-scale domestic spying with no warrants or specific targets. Merely recording everything that goes on to see if they can sift out anything useful.
That is bloody scary! And, highly illegal. -
Re:Battlestar Galactica worse Sci-Fi show ever
Women can make good pilots, biologically.
"In absolute terms, they have weaker bones. But relative to the demands put on them, they may be stronger than men," he said. "They adapt to loading in a very similar way that men do, and may even have a slight advantage that is related to estrogen."
Of course, brute strength does provide you with some advantage, but I'm pretty sure withstanding G forces is more about power/mass ratio than absolute power. I've noticed that smaller people tend to have the advantage there as well.
I had trouble with Starbuck's character at first, but nowadays she's pretty believable. My suspension of disbelief as far as her piloting skills is not threatened, though in some of the last episodes of the second season I thought her responses and inner turmoil were a bit overplayed.
And as far as that ship being a soap opera. It seems pretty reasonable to me. I mean, there were love tetrahedrons in my college dorm, and that was on a much smaller scale without the looming threat of humanity's doom. And as Wally said on the Dilbert animated series, post-apocalyptic dystopias lower girls' standards by leaps and bounds.
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Seems a better solution is a combination
of hybrid and electric. An all electric car inherently has some serious issues, in particular, the five hour refueling time, limited range, and limited power. These can all be solved with a standard combustion engine or fuel cell. There are already groups out there modifying their hybrids into electric vehicles, using the electric mode for short trips and the hybrid mode for long trips.
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,69519-0.htm l -
Re:No mention of MUDS?!?
http://www.wired.com/news/columns/0,70348-0.html?
t w=wn_index_3
Welcome to World of Warcraft: The Text Adventure.
You are standing at the end of a road before a small brick building. Around you is a forest. A small stream flows out of the building and down a gully. There is an elf with an exclamation point above her head here.
>Talk elf
"Alas," she says. "There is a great darkness upon the land. Fifty years ago the Dwarf Lord Al'ham'bra came upon the Dragon Locket in the Miremuck Caverns. He immediately recognized the ..."
> Click Accept
"Hey," the elf protests. "This is important expository. Azeroth is a rich and storied land, with a tapestry of interwoven ..."
> Click Accept
"OK, fine. Bring me six kobold tails."
> Shout "Where are the Kobolds?"
You hear a voice in the distance. "NE of stream, near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "Right near lake." You hear another voice in the distance. "LF1M! Need priest!"
> Go NE
A small ramshackle house sits atop a hill, apparently abandoned. At the foot of the hill is a large field. The field is swarming with kobolds, their tails swinging seductively in the breeze.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get a kobold tail.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get two pieces of silver and a kobold tail.
> Kill kobold
You kill a kobold. You get three pieces of silver and an apple.
> What, no tail?
Apparently this was the rare but majestic Manx kobold.
> You said they had tails
You hear a voice in the distance. "LF1M just need any healer ready to go!"
> Kill three kobolds
You kill three kobolds. You get eight pieces of silver and four tails.
> Four tails?
Maybe it's something in the water around here.
> Go SW
You return to the stream where the elf waits, a golden question mark floating above her head as if to say "Huh?"
> Talk to elf
"At long last, you've returned!" the elf cries. "I had feared that you ..."
> Click Complete Quest
The elf snorts and hands you a slimy, rusted, bent dagger with runes on it reading "Discount Shiv Warehouse -- Bring us a lower price, we'll stab it."
> Look at dagger
It's a noxious, poorly-balanced piece of crap, but it's better than the weapon you have right now.
> What do I have now?
It's not clear from the decay, but you think it may have once been a whisk.
> Wield dagger
You look slightly less feeble. A knight rides by on a gleaming white charger. He is bedecked from head to toe with shining armor. His shoulder armor alone is big enough to house you, your family and any pets you pick up at the auction house, and still have room to hang that pathetic dagger of yours on the wall as a constant reminder of your utter weakness compared to a true man like him.
> Pout
You hear a voice in the distance. "LF2M need healer and tank!"
> Talk to elf
"I have another task for you," the elf says. "In the east there are ..."
> Click Accept
"Take this bag of jelly to Commander Wolfchow in Cramhollow Dale."
> Go to Cramhollow Dale
You run to Cramhollow Dale. You run and run. You run and run and run. You keep on running. Someone runs past you, faster. You keep running. Two gnomes run past you in the opposite direction. Still you run. You're not there yet. What are you going to do?
> Run
That's right, bunky. You're gonna run. You continue to run and run and run and run and ... whoa, you're in Cramhollow Dale. A tall man who looks like a lot of the other tall men around here has a question mark over his head.
> Give bag of jelly to man
"Good!" says ...
> Click Complete Quest, Accept, whatever, just get on with it
"Take this crate of liver back to Elfiwee Muttonscorner near the gully stream."
> Go back to stream
You run. You run and run. You run and run and run.
> Wonder aloud why I find this so damn compelling
You hear a voice in the distance. "Need group! No quitters!" -
A much more interesting read...
Wired's top 50 Robots If you want a more thorough review of robots check out Wired's article. Maybe I'm baised because Stanford has 3 bots in the top ten (Stanley is #1!). But, it has pretty pictures too, and everybody loves pictures.
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Re:More Details
I read that article I didn't see any mention of FreeBSD. http://www.wired.com/news/linux/0,1411,66022,00.h
t ml If you were trying to be satirical well you failed. -
Gulliver, eh?
...all the EU is doing is poking Gulliver with their Lilliputian sticks.
If, as you say, Microsoft is Gulliver to the EU's Lilliput, then something is seriously fucked up the world. Since when do the interests and influence of a single corporation outweigh the interests and influence of a Nation State - not even a Nation, a body of Nations? But that's the crack that MS is selling, and they're smoking it themselves. From Wired:
A close friend of Gates' recalls a dinner with him and his then-fiancée (now wife) Melinda French back in 1993. "We were talking about Clinton, who'd just been elected, and Bill was saying blah, blah, blah about whatever the issue was," this friend remembers. "Then Bill stopped and said, 'Of course, I have as much power as the president has.' And Melinda's eyes got wide, and she kicked him under the table, so then he tried to play it off as a joke.
Microsoft is damn lucky that the US elected a friendly administration to close their antitrust case. They could have had their balls chopped off. And should have. Their first judge was so disgusted he couldn't keep his mouth shut; turning the suit over to a wimp.
Now it's the EU's turn. Tell me why, exactly, the EU should bend over for Microsoft, instead of the other way around? Tell me how the wealth of Microsoft stands up the combined wealth of the EU collective. The EU should bitch slap Microsoft for being the self-interested anti-competitive egomaniacal sneaky underhanded boundlessly greedy curs that they are. -
Re:No way
Applies to lots of things, including golf, except you might have to change the light thing. Or maybe not.
They make contact lenses so you can change "the light thing".
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70154-0.htm l
"The lenses come in amber ..., and grey-green for sports like golf, where the background environment is what's visually important. Both colors filter out a significant amount of overall light, but they also sharpen and improve contrast, so they have a brightening effect, says Alan Reichow, who invented the lenses and is a sports vision consultant for Nike."
There have been sunglasses around for a long time that can do this, but a contact lense provides the most minimal distortion possible. -
Mixed Signals
Great. Humans already have trouble interpreting the tone of electronic messages. On top of that, let's have some algorithm tack on the subtle clues so necessary for proper interpretation of human communication. After all, computers have already shown a bang-up track record dealing with Human languages.
Cool project though. Hilarity will undoubtedly ensue. -
Re:Bush's previous appointments / plansYou forgot the really funny ones!
June 2003: Nuala O'Connor Kelly, (former Chief "Privacy" Officer of Doubleclick) appointed to be Chief "Privacy" officer for HomeSec.
February 2005: D. Reed Freeman, (former Gator/Claria Chief "Privacy" Officer) sitting on HomeSec's Data "Privacy" and "Integrity" Advisory Committee.
Maybe we should be thankful. Based on precedent, the BSA guy should be put in charge of the Copyright office, or perhaps hired by NSA to... adjust its priorities when it comes to what sort of traffic is worthy of further investigation.
April 2006: Department of Commerce, undersecretary for technology: Robert Cresanti, former VP of public policy at the Business Software Alliance (BSA).
Now we have a guy who "recalls being unable to tell the good guys from the bad as both armed soldiers and civilians alike would order his family out of their car to search it", and who says one of his best qualifications for the job includes "first-hand brushes with totalitarianism" in charge of Civil Liberties instead.
"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."
- Ash, Army of Darkness (1993)Anyways, freedom's overrated these days. You know what they do to people in those freedom camps? (Yeah, neither do I, and I'd like to keep it that way!)
There's still time to appoint Jeff Bezos to run USPTO! (I've got a $10 bet riding on it, so please, write your Congressmen today!
:) -
Re:Wasted funding?
Well, in a quantum mechanics experiments, you cannot physically test because you'd change the environment. Does it mean we don't have to simulate, even if we cannot physically test?
The testing the merger of two black holes is quite the contrary,, and we'd be the ones destroyed if we'd get too close. The only solution is through astronomic observation, so we're waiting for the phenomenon to appear. However, how to compare with our current laws of physics (in the case, Einstein's theories) if we don't simulate them before to check if the result we get is somewhat close to our observations? This is called testing.
It's pretty similar to unit testing in software design/programmation. We put some assertions through the code, and we execute it, if works as planned, and if we checked all the border-cases, we can guess if some code is OK. The same goes with physics theories. In fact, it's so much the same that some say that the whole universe is a quantum computer :).
PS: I'm no physicist. -
Re:Coincidence?
Some quick Googling says you're wrong. He really did say that. Mind you, back then, it was the relatively clean IE vs bloatware setting-and-breaking-standards Netscape Navigator, so it was hardly a bad choice to make.
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"duh duh duh" like carlos mencia says
does anyone really think we can grow a lot of corn and convert it into enough fuel to even make a blip on the global demand for fossil fuels?
lots of windmills, eh?
nuclear energy is the most abundant form of energy in the universe...we have a huge nuclear reactor in the sky that gives us daylight everytime our planet faces towards it! maybe we should try to understand it a little better and provide everyone on the planet with cheap cheap cheap energy.
this article from 19 months ago pretty much spells it out...
http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/chi na.html?pg=1&topic=china&topic_set= -
Nuclear is not the Future
Solar, wind, hydroelectric, tide power, and other technologies _can_ take the place of nuclear and coal power.
I see the future as one without nuclear waste and with decentralized power coming from safe and clean sources. Just because our houses today have high energy demands it does not mean that is how it has to be.
What is wrong with more efficient heating and cooling combined with renewable sources for the future? To hear a bunch of techies debating nuclear technology as the energy source of the future is a little dissapointing.
The author of the Washington Post article is also a spokesman for- drumroll please....the timber industry, the plastics industry, the Three Gorges dam, genetically modified foods [this guys karma is shot so why not shill for the nuclear industry while he is at it?!].
"In an email, former Greenpeace director Paul Watson charges, "You're a corporate whore, Pat, an eco-Judas, a lowlife bottom-sucking parasite who has grown rich from sacrificing environmentalist principles for plain old money." http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/moore.ht
m lOuch!
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Misleading headline
The headline should say: "An environmentalist coming around to nuclear power".
Other environmentalists are not quite siding with Mr. Moore, and are in fact quite adamant about it:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/moore.htm l -
Pebble Core Reactors
I read an article in Wired that really piqued my interest in a form of Nuclear Power plant that the Chinese had been working on. These are called Pebble Core Reactors, and basically look like a big tylenol capsule stood on its side. I am by no means an expert in this area, but in layman's terms the system works like this. Instead of radioactive rods, the system uses radioactive pellets. As the pellets heat up they fall through a grating system to the storage below. If the thing overheats, the system collapses onto itself. MIT continues to work on this, along side the Chinese and many others. One interesting thing from the Wired article, this technology goes all the way back to the 50s. The decision to go with the water cooled system was partly based on the Navy's desire for Nuclear submarines and ships. Of course the others were waaay more expensive, so naturally business wanted those.
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No F'ing way
I'm really hoping he's talking about the new FUSION reactors using pebble-beds.
But I'm not willing to let the government install a uranium reactor in my neighborhood. -
He came around a long time ago
This isn't a new thing, as the article (summary) implies. Moore has had this stance for a while now. Here's a 2004 Wired article on this "Eco-Traitor."