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http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/06/solar-sail-deployment/

Hard? Yes. Impossible? No.

1. It was tested, under controlled conditions, by experienced engineers who only turned the thing on long enough to test it. What happens when you get some sadistic grunt on the trigger who just holds the fire button down?

Well, hypothetically the safeties kick in. In practice, when things go wrong you get $18,000 worth of second degree burns. And that's during a controlled test.

Of course, nobody ever encounters additional surprises when going from controlled tests to open production.

Military Zips Lips on Pain Ray Accident (An airman received second-degree burns April 4 during a test of the Defense Department’s nonlethal millimeter-wave heat beam")
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/11/seven-months-af/

Another type of area denial weapon at the G20 in Pittsburgh:
http://gizmodo.com/5369190/lrad-sound-cannon-used-on-pittsburgh-g20-protesters

Pretty much what we would expect from any company in Apple's shoes. Damage control at minimum cost.

Apple's numbers are suspicious. Everyone I know with an iPhone 4 has the issue(s) but NONE of them have called AppleCare or gone to the Apple store to complain. They have all been patiently waiting for Apple to take care of them.

I call shenanigans. Your numbers are even more suspicious than Apple's! So, you're saying that your prediction based on your data set is that all iPhone 4s have some deadline serious problem that destroys the ability for the phone to work? This is just implausible on the face of it. You're implying that 3 million out of 3 million phones have this issue?

How many of these people you know really had the "issue" of dropped calls, or did some of them just confirm that they can see bars go down when touching some parts? And for the record, that does NOT happen on my iPhone 4, and I've dared other people to try with my phone with their own hands.

I know several people with iPhone 4s, including myself, and NONE of them have *actually* reported more dropped calls in real life or dreadful data rates. My cell reception is surely better now than my iPhone 3G was in my area. And the times I had crappy coverage with the new phone it wasn't because of antenna touching -- i could put it on a table and see i had no reception no matter what! And one time it showed no coverage weirdly at home (while not touching it) and I had to restart the device. Lame, but probably fixable in a software update.

And I did the speedtest.net iPhone app tests and did it 3 or more times with each hand position and found no significant difference between holding the iphone in my left versus right hand (the AT&T network speed was very different each time, but the average was about the same).

Bottom line: the Anantech article seems basically right, and well researched, and matches my tests. YES, there is a loss in signal, but it starts at a higher point and the overall effect is that the iPhone does NOT have a big issue. And why all the fuss when you can get a bumper/case and it fixes even that mild issue in low signal areas if you really want to.

And because people keep posting falsehoods on Slashdot about this, WIRED did not rip them a new one over this. They mostly expounded on other people's complaints. What about their OWN tests at WIRED? Their summary of their own tests was "And in our own tests [...] the antenna problem is not especially serious .

Real-world tests by Wired, Engadget, etc. all show that you can have 4 bars and great signal. Hold the phone and have zero signal.

What real-world use are you talking about? I'm not even activating my iPhone 4 until I get my bumper in the mail I just ordered.

I also hate this notion that Apple products always just work.

Moderators: parent post is insightful?

1) You haven't even activated it and so you can't even verify the claims yourself, so you are basing your views on self-admitted anger about previous products and other people's reports only. And all that despite the fact that you could choose to gather actual good data simply by activating it and being a good nerd and doing your own tests? To focus on the phrase "real-world tests" and then mock the possibility of you actually doing real-world tests seems to denigrate the scientific method, and the approach of geekiness in general. Unlike you, I actually activated my iPhone 4, have made tons of calls with BETTER reception than my iPhone 3G. And I even downloaded the speedtest.net app and tested with left hand, right hand, and not touching the phone, and didn't see much of a real world difference when holding it **naturally**. I am open to the possibility that there is more of a problem for some people, but everyone I know with an iPhone 4 does not have this problem when they hold the phone naturally. (my experience is consistent with the excellent anantech article based on a fairly thorough and nerdy testing process.

2) I have gotten crappy reception a few times, but as an experiment put the phone down on a non-conductive table and demonstrated that the AT&T crappy reception is independent of any antenna touching issue. I can still say that AT&T sucks ass, but that doesn't mean that it's some touching-the-phone issue.

3) And then you quote WIRED to back up your vitriol. WIRED, like most of the media, for the most part has been reporting about other people's reports, not their own testing, and in summarizing their experience WIRED says "And in our own tests, as well as the reports of many readers, the antenna problem is not especially serious.". That is hardly the indictment you make it out to be in your post. I'd go so far as to say your post is entirely misleading about Wired's assessment.

3) Showing low bars doesn't == more dropped calls. The excellent anantech article has demonstrated this using a fairly thorough testing process.

Your post almost seems like a Poe's Law post in the voice of a Mac Hater.

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/

KTHXBYE.

(But seriously, seems like a good idea from what I've read.)

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki/

http://gizmodo.com/312443/robot-cannon-goes-berserk-kills-9

All that you need to cut out the middle man and self-publish nowadays is a laptop computer:

http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/magazine/16-01/ff_byrne?currentPage=all

Would you settle for translucent?

Or perhaps you meant holographic (still in pre alpha stages)

It's hard to know if this is censorship or if they just violated the terms of service and hatebois are flying off the handle. There are still lots of posts about the consumer reports unrecommendation on discussions.apple.com:

http://discussions.apple.com/search.jspa?search=Go&q=consumer+reports

Still, if it's true it wouldn't be the first time Apple flew off the handle with the censorship (remember the Ulysses app flap?).

Probably because it's dangerous to pick on serial killers as a group.

"We call this one the "Genetic Researcher Decapitator".

Also, genetics does not work that way. Either you're an epically great troll or you simply didn't take any biology at any time in your life.

So you are saying gene therapy never works to cure anything? Lets look into that,

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2009-01-28-bubble-boy-gene_N.htm
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/09/colortherapy/
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/02/28/gene_therapy_gets_closer_to_a_cure/
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7003-gene-therapy-is-first-deafness-cure.html

So what you are saying is you'd rather continue to leave people hopelessly disabled rather than attempt to find a gene therapy? And as far as fetuses go, you can screen every fetus and guarantee that the fetuses born don't have the gene.

Looks like a bid to establish a strong military presence in space before the nation comes crashing down, and ensure the capacity to finish the job remains in private hands even if they miss their timetable.

Consider this parallel development, it says a great deal about where their heads are at these days:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/darpa-plots-death-from-above-on-demand/

Seems pretty obvious what utility they're intending to put this to. Global terrorism at the push of a button.

we all know that setting arbitrary and somewhat lower limits turns you into the most quoted man in history (640k should be enough for everyone....)

You do realize the 640K limit was not "arbitrary", right? It was a limitation of addressable space of the pre-386 Intel processors. And in fact, I'll just take this opportunity to again point out the dubious nature of this quote.

Are you seriously saying anyone would pay as much as $1 for a fart app?

Sadly, yes:

31 Fart Apps in 90 Seconds

iPhone Fart App Rakes in $10,000 a Day

iFart vs. Pull My Finger: The Battle for iPhone Fart App Supremacy

Based on this discussion of the iPhone "retina display", a wraparound 180-degree screen of 9,000 pixels in hemi-circumference would match the resolution of the human retina. So you don't need another retina - but you might need LASIK.

Oh, and neural bandwidth isn't a problem. Maximum resolution is only achieved in a small area of the retina; if a computer could track your eye and move a small display with it, this kind of resolution wouldn't be necessary.

In 2008 there were 17,000 releases that sold one copy. Last year, there were 18,000, and something like 79,000 releases that sold under 100 copies. Under 100 copies is not a real release — it’s noise, an aberration. In any kind of scientific study, it would be filtered out. It’s like a rounding error. That 79,000 number represents almost 80 percent of all the records released that year.

I asked how many releases there were in 2009. He said labels and distributors had projected about 132,000. Later, SoundScan said 97,000 had actually sold. So it’s possible that around 35,000 releases didn’t even sell one copy last year. That means not even the artist or their mother bought a copy, and all those artists are out there gigging, they’re all on social networks, they’re all doing stuff to clutter the marketplace.

.

This is something i've been looking for a while too, i had a serial-interface joystick labeled "multijoy" by Micro-Technica, which for some weird reason stopped responding a few years ago. Unfortunately i can't find any info for this or its maker on the web. I'm planning to try the following: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2007/05/decent_cheap_us/

Individual through a third party makes a call to the generic Apple support line inquiring about prototypes. Vaguely asks if there are any rewards for missing prototypes.

Level 1 tech support guy who has no knowledge of prototypes brushes guy off.

This was Gizmodo's story, and later contradicted. Via Wired:

Hogan didn’t know what he had until he removed a fake cover from the device and realized it must be a prototype of Apple’s upcoming next-generation iPhone, according to Gizmodo’s account of the find.

A friend of Hogan’s then offered to call Apple Care on Hogan’s behalf, according to Hogan’s lawyer. That apparently was the extent of Hogan’s efforts to return the phone.

After the friend’s purported efforts to return the phone failed, several journalists were offered a look at the device. Wired.com received an e-mail March 28 — not from Hogan — offering access to the iPhone, but did not follow up on the exchange after the tipster made a thinly veiled request for money. Gizmodo then paid $5,000 in cash for it.

An individual is handed a phone in a bar.
Individual does not turn the phone into the bar owner, or tell them that he found the phone.
Individual takes the phone home from the bar
Individual plays with the phone at home and realizes it's not a normal phone.
Individual's friend allegedly calls Apple's tech support line
Tech support guy has no idea what friend is talking about
Individual reaches deal to sell phone to Gizmodo for a lot of money. In cash.
Several of individual's friends inform him that this is not the smartest thing to do.
Individual does it anyway
Gizmodo publishes huge expose
Apple involves the authorities

SOURCE: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/iphone-finder/

Wired Issue 17-08 tiny little caption to the right on the actual cover: "Rule No. 52: Ditch the headset. He can barely pull it off - and you are not him"

Why are we suffering from it since so ?

I did not read the article, so I don't know if it's answered there.

It is now apparent that for a comparable amount of information stored, a more complex algorithm (with maybe even N passes required) could be employed to produce better results to the human eye. To me, this article seems to miss the beauty of keeping it simple and going with the square. I would also bet that all of his examples are done by starting out on a square based pixel image. How would one scan an image in one pass with his new suggested method? This might become a better standard but I would wager it would make a lot of things computationally more expensive and displaying the images more complex. Not to mention manipulation of the image gets a bit trickier and probably throws a monkey wrench in a lot of our widely implemented compression technologies that already produce this sort of "creative blocks" of multiple pixels.

I'm not an expert in this field and I find his further research neat and mildly innovative but I would bet that when it comes down to weighing the practicality of implementation that squares remain.

To me, the idea that people are thinking of this kind of thing is what this story is about. Not that they might get a patent for it.

Reminds me of:

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2008/06/securitymatters_0626

Why is it the university's job to police this stuff ... ?

It's not. It that there are many after the dot-bomb period and the ongoing Bush Depression that see the Universities as a captive market for failed business models that need greater than 100% subsidy to stay even in sight of being in the black.

In the digital era, the cost of making a new copy in not only negligible, but the copy itself is made with 100% fidelity and indistinguishable from the original. MPAA, RIAA and the companies they represent, like Microsoft and Disney, have a very out-dated business model based around an attempt to create an artificial scarcity for electronic media. Back when physical medium was important and reproduction and transport costs were high, the model worked. Now it is just stupid. Around 10 years ago, the sale of physical media took off due to the old (real) MP3 services. MPAA, RIAA not only did not see numbers but also went to great lengths to bury the facts and even go against the interests they claim to be defending.

The real bite from the current war against the Universities will hit a generation down the road. The pipe from basic research, to research, to applied research, to development, to product development, to product packaging, to training and maintenance, is long. The tap has been turned off and the pipe is filling with air while some flow is still visible. By the time the flow stops completely, there will be no mechanism or skills left to get going again. We're already seeing this in "IT" and Microsoft Resellers ponce around pretending to be teachers or developers, making sure that no one with skills is allowed through.

My point is that our current form of ID does not fit the idea of the mark of the beast. You can't take ALL of Revelation exactly literally, but the part about being marked on your hand or head appears to be quite purposefully written, as if it were a description intended to be taken literally.

There are a few parts of the Bible (I assume you refer to the Christian Bible) that aren't intended to be taken literally. It should be somewhat obvious when reading those parts if you find and start at the beginning of those parts, but scholars always seem to be around and willing to help you out if you want to study it in that depth. Don't trust anyone that is unwilling to look at the original text but still says "That's how it is."

I don't claim to avoid all usages of my SS number. I used to work in a store, and I was educated quite well by certain members of the tin-foil hat brigade that shopped there, on such things. By the way, a SS# is something you're assigned at birth or naturalization, not something you can opt out of as a citizen of the US. How else are they going to know you owe them taxes, right? The language in the text seems to imply that people could avoid getting one.

I don't see what you mean by the number of the beast as applied to "SS numbers, ID cards, Ect." Grammar parse exception, try again? Interested to understand your idea.

It's not too hard to imagine the idea being put forth convincingly at some point in the future, what with the pet-id and child-tracking implantable tags they have now. My cat actually has one, c/o the shelter. There have been proposals but all were shut down. It's only a matter of time, I'm sure, but it's not here yet.

Child tracking tags are real, as of 2003, and this might be something you want to monitor and fight on principle of it being mandated someday, even though they are not a visible mark: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2003/10/60771

I've *never* heard that any government accepts a physical mark as positive ID (or any other privilege-enabling ID) at this time.

Bikers, prison "societies", elite military units and gangs can be a different story though! :)

Enjoy it for as long as you can (which will be for a while).

However, the "Analog Sunset" will eventually disallow you from using analog connections to watch a Blu-Ray disc one way or the other - via a flag embedded in a disc by a studio, or if you have to buy a new player after 2013 (after your current one breaks according to the manufacturer's carefully-timed plan to avoid giving you warranty service) it won't have analog outputs. Blah blah HDFury - as soon as they're popular enough for studios to notice, their HDCP keys will be blacklisted so you're one involuntary firmware update away from being broken again. If you think the studios won't do that because it could disable a bunch of legitimate players, think again.

Also, your cable and satellite providers have the go-ahead from the FCC to shut off analog outputs at will, which is purportedly for PPV and certain on-demand content.

+1 for promotion of piracy yet again.

The biggest issue comes in dealing with multiple IT departments and setting up network access to our materials. Plus our images are so large that for these processed files (not the originals) we are opting for local storage instead of storage managed by our IT staff (who are wonderful but not cheap; we just purchased 4TB of local storage for 1/4 the cost of 1TB from IT).

Dude, there's a reason network storage is more expensive than local storage: it comes with the infrastructure that allows lots of people to access it. If you try to serve up these large files from your local network, you'll slashdot the thing, and wackiness will ensue.

Getting back to the privacy issue: I hope your privacy officer did due diligence, and isn't some overworked functionary who just said, "The data is anonymized? Well, that's OK then." You wouldn't be the first people to distribute data they thought was sufficiently anonymized, only to find that some clever data miner managed to connect the names with the data.

http://www.wired.com/politics/security/commentary/securitymatters/2007/12/securitymatters_1213

$275 for a DIY kit of a bleeding-edge technology is entirely reasonable. I've seen the OLPC 1 screen in action, and was very impressed; I'm sure this will be even better. For those wondering, the resolution is 1024x600; see Up Close and Personal with the Pixel Qi Display.

My question about the whole benefits of yeast produced ethanol thing is whether, in the long term, it can actually produce enough energy to make the whole process carbon neutral. Can we power all the devices that produce the industrial byproducts with all of the energy from those by products?

The process is, or can be, carbon neutral. It can actually be carbon negative, taking more carbon out of the atmosphere than what's released when farmed then used. That's because the residue, what's left after the alcohol is produced, can be added to or buried in the soil keeping some carbon in the ground. A benefit is that that increases the fertility of the soil so more can be grown on poor land.

However is there enough land to grow crops to produce alcohol? Or Diesel fuel? I doubt it.

Does it even make sense, in the long term, to invest the time, money, and fossil fuels in the process of developing this type of technology (biofuels, in general) in favor of more direct methods of harnessing the Sun's energy (like solar panels (and thus necessarily batteries/fuel cells), and sort of by extension, fusion)?

This is my own opinion, which others also have, is that future energy needs will require a number of different energy sources to be developed. In warm arid areas algae can be farmed to produce hydrogen and or biofuels. Other biofuels such as this can be produced on land where food crops will not grow. In places where ground source heat is close to the surface geothermal energy can be used. Geothermal energy can even be used as a baseload. Where sunny solar, concentrated solar, PVs, and solar thermal energy can be used. Then where windy, wind turbines can be used.

SciAm has the article A Solar Grand Plan concluding solar energy "could supply 69 percent of the U.S.'s electricity and 35 percent of its total energy by 2050." As regards wind the NREL Wind Energy Resource Atlas of the United States details the wind potential of various regions of the US. The Rocky Mountains alone contain enough wind potential to provide the 48 contiguous states with electricity. So what's needed next is a national smart grid and baseloads. According to another SciAm article currently blackouts, brownouts, and other power losses cost US businesses $80 Billion a year so it makes sense to build a new grid and make it smart. Then for the baseload, as stated above geothermal can provide some with Natural Gas fired power plants supplying more until a cleaner baseload source is developed.

Falcon

There will be no change in Orwellianism in either the UK or the US unless and until the entire system is reformed.

What system would that be exactly? It seems like you might be suggesting there's a "perfect system" out there, and that the only way to improve things is all at once by finding that perfect system, and then everything will be alright.

Reform however you like. There's still going to be people interested in corruption, thus there's always going to be corruption. Slow incremental reforms do have value. They don't happen as fast as we'd like. That's probably a good thing, since we can be decieved, or can be wrong.

For example:

Witness the total farce that is the "change" Obama brought in... Bring the troops home?

You thought that was going to be immediate or something? As of 18 hours ago, he is going to bring the troops home, next year. It's a controversial question, politically of course, and more to the point, we don't seem to have done anything besides knock down the Taliban and kill a bunch of people. The fear of course is that we'll create a failed state which will breed more terrorists. Good reasons not to act rashly, you'd want to be absolutely sure you couldn't accomplish the goals before pulling out, and that's a complex thing to measure.

The willingness to actually set a date, and say "Okay, if we haven't done anything by this point, it's time to admit openly that this war was pointless, and admit that we might not be able to fix the situation" is courage that the previous administration didn't have.

In the end, those of you who were saying "bring the troops home this instant" may be vindicated, that might have saved a lot of time, effort, and lives, but without the benefit of a crystal ball, being cavalier with withdrawing our support after we created a vacuum would have been idiotic.

I thought that the order for Roadsters was extended and that the production line was going to continue as is for at least another year. You can still order a brand-new Roadster on-line with the official Tesla website, so it seems a bit premature to say that "they stopped making the Roadsters". Yes the announcement is to halt production some time next year, but that isn't quite yet past tense as in having production already stopped.

This article in Wired sort of spells out the near term future of the Roadster, which doesn't sound like they are having problems at least making some basic revenue from this model. With all of the money dumped into the Roadster, it would be a crying shame to discard the design, particularly if it continues to be a money maker. It should be noted that this article was written after the IPO prospectus and is more recent information.

Then again, due to the significant outsourcing of the Roadster design, the profit margins for the Roadster are not nearly as good as Elon Musk would like to have. With his experience on developing the Falcon 9 and with SpaceX in general, he has certainly become an evangelist for a vertically integrated company that keeps most of its production in-house if possible. It seems like that may be the motive, if any, for discontinuing the Roadster and moving on to a new design or at least a new iteration of the Roadster.

No revenue stream now; no revenue stream until 2012.

I thought they were selling the current roadster through 2011.

What, we also need sales?

They are aware that they need sales. As I mentioned before, they have at one point turned a profit (though they aren't right now, as an anon pointed out). The co-founder of Tesla, Elon Musk previously co-founded Paypal which was (is) quite profitable. I don't think that Musk needs to be schooled on how to make a business plan.

It really depends on how well they can market the roadsters

I would think it would depend on how well they can market their Model S since that will be their bread and butter starting in 2012. It will be their first car in the slightly more accessible $50,000 price range.

Of course, that's it, you're just too nice a guy.

I think i remember reading an article in wired about various geek themed tats.

perhaps this http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/multimedia/2008/09/gallery_reader_geek_tattoos

Mark has been talking about "binocular dysphoria" for some time now (e.g. Wired article from 1994). Thing is, it seems nobody else is.

The effect certainly exists (I've experienced it myself, though only for a matter of seconds), but it remains doubtful as to how significant it is. There are various medical studies that confirm the resiliency of human vision to this type of effect, but it seems no studies have been found or cited that show any lasting problems (with the possible exception of this informal commercial Sega report that Mark was involved in, if it's ever verified).

My take is, if you're a cautious type, there's no need to rush your kids into these things - it's just one form of entertainment, after all. Further study certainly wouldn't hurt. OTOH, artificial stereopsis has been around for literally hundreds of years (some French painter invented the parallax barrier method in 1692) with no reported long-term effects since then. Anecdotally, others here have mentioned viewing stereo material day in, day out for years with no ill effects either, so if there are any ill effects they're probably subtle.

It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years

It's not like we haven't been refining batteries all that time. And indeed, we've even substantially refined flywheels to the point that they are useful for power storage in racing, improving the efficiency of regenerative braking substantially. Electric motors are already ~95% efficient in typical EV/Hybrid scenarios, and over 90% efficient as a generator as well.

Changing over to using electricity generated in very efficient plants, using 1/10 the energy and possibly allowing CO2 capture (yes I know it's hard, but not as hard as on the tailpipes of a billion cars).

The US DoE proved in the 1980s (at Sandia NREL) that they could capture up to 80% of the CO2 emissions of a coal- or oil-fired power plant by bubbling the exhaust gases through algae ponds, thus dramatically improving yields; thus, CO2 capture is already a solved problem in the short-term, if only the solution would be put into place. Obviously this only slows down the release rate of this CO2, but it can reduce the amount of oil we have to burn. In other words, we can at least use that carbon twice with extant and indeed readily available technology.

Electric cars don't need to compete with every petrol car in existence - they don't have to be faster than a Ferrari, go further than a .. um, diesel Golf.

Well, they can do the first thing, but not the second. (You might well compare to a 300SD, which has a ~20 gallon tank along with 30 mpg freeway, I have no trouble getting well over 400 miles on a tank in vigorous, mixed driving. Not that I ever run it dry... priming that thing is a PITA.)

Covering basic commuting would be fine - and that's 90% of what people do (lacking better public transport). You want to go skiing - rent an appropriate vehicle.

Indeed, many homes have multiple vehicles as it is. This is probably the easiest group to target.

They probably are relying on or hoping to attain the same standing RIAA has gotten through SoundExchange to collect broadcast royalties even from non-members.

So there is clearly precedent that suggests ownership and membership are not sufficient concerns to these types of organizations. Unless it is their material or members that is!

So in this case they are either seeking statute authority to collect song composing royalties for members AND non-members, or they intend to behave that way anyway and defend it on the premise that the copyright office already delineated similar powers to SoundExchange and that since ASCAP is a similar group to SoundExchange they are entitled to a similar wide scope of authority (performance royalties -> SoundExchange vs composing royalties -> ASCAP)

I'd really like to see this blow up in their face and get both groups rights to even try this sort of thing revoked, but there are too many MAFIAA members in DoJ (and probably other parts of gov't) now and they have the administration's support (much to my dismay as I do generally otherwise support the administration). So this could get ugly and have bad consequences quickly.

I really hope the copyleft groups start gathering funds and resources in a way to respond to this head on. I'd support it.

About RIAA lawyers at DoJ:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/04/obama-taps-fift/

About RIAA/SoundExchange:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/24/141326/870
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/04/29/0335224.shtml

While not as sudden or dramatic as Mission Impossibles discs, there are the read-only for 48 hours dvds.

Veoh won some of the first strong precedents in this area, and the current case cites its cases prominently (see pp. 24-27). The cost of the litigation sent them into bankruptcy soon after winning, though.

Unfortunately for the plaintiffs, this time they seem to have picked an opponent who is very hard to beat in a war of attrition.

Now, the iPad is *not* a suitable desktop replacement [...] there's no really useful document processing

There's Pages. That should be enough for all of the basic needs. You'll probably have to hook up a real keyboard though.

no ability to hook up their TomTom

TomTom offers a fully-featured iPhone app, so no need to hook anything up.

no easy printing

Sure there is one way. ;)

AllOfMP3 maintained that it can operate under existing Russian laws that are intended to cover radio broadcasts, which was always a rather dubious assertion.

Serves the RIAA right, since the entire recording industry is itself based on piracy, as is the movie industry.

Wikileaks has neither confirmed nor denied that Manning leaked information to the site, but on Sunday it tweeted that "Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect."
(originally via twitter)

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/wikileaks-to-lamo/comment-page-1/#ixzz0rbLRc14C

they are computers with massively reduced user freedom

I think it's an appliance in the same way that my PS3 is an appliance. There is a computer under the covers and the device is quite general purpose, but in the end its an appliance because I don't have the freedom to tinker.

I think "computer with massively reduced user freedom" could be part of a decent definition of appliance.

I am getting sick of the game console comparisons. People are NOT replacing real computers with gaming consoles, but there's an increasing push(especially by Apple fanboys) that the iDevices are the future of computing.

Read about how a 'network security expert' replaced this laptop with an iPad --> http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1693064&cid=32641740

Read these articles about how the iPad is supposed to take over computing and make desktops and laptop obsolete:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9175600/The_iPad_is_the_future_for_home_computing
http://gizmodo.com/5506692/ipad-is-the-future
http://www.macworld.com/article/146038/2010/01/ipad_future_shock.html
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ipad-future/
http://techcrunch.com/2010/01/27/ipad/

Gaming consoles were never considered the future of computing, that's why they don't represent a threat to freedom. This is the reason that people are justifiably upset about Apple's restrictions.

Verizon is intentionally making it difficult for customers to avoid paying fees they don't want to pay. This is not the first time they've been caught with their hands in this particular cookie jar.

Verizon should be subjected to a serious probe on this matter, they should be forced to pay major damages for all their fraudulent charges, the people that wrote these policies should face a criminal investigation, and Verizon should not be allowed to accept new customers until they fix their illegal business practices.

Haha, just kidding, that would only happen in a universe that is actually fair.

I haven't a clue, but they are concerned enough where they would even suggest Tor be used in a 2nd tier verification process:
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/03/packet-forensics/

Frankly I think there are more sure and elegant ways to do it, like making it easy for users to verify certs using fingerprints. Plus making the cert handling more like ssh.

And don't limit it to EFF... Wouldn't it be interesting if suddenly every Ubuntu system had a CA named "Canonical"? It could fit well with their cloud ambitions, esp. if web pages become one of the features in the Ubuntu cloud.

This was news to me, but I'm not sure you can blame the ISP. According to this Wired article, it's because ESPN is licensing ISPs rather than users, and it's unclear to me how net neutrality would solve that. Force all ISPs to license all such content, and provide it for free to all users? Forbid ESPN from licensing to ISPs, and instead force them to set up as a pay site for individuals to sign up with? Isn't the current situation basically a pay site that you pay for through your ISP? Other than that, how is it essentially different from any other pay site on the web? Sorry, I'm still not seeing much of a case for federal intervention anytime soon.

I'm just waiting for some Calamity to hit. I mean, Offshore drilling is an entirely different ballpark, but we've put a lot of research into that and we still mess it up.

I mean, how do these platforms cope with hurricanes? I've always wondered. I have a feeling that since a windmill will have most of its machinery above water level, it'll be more susceptible to high winds (which is the idea I know, but I mean twisting metal high winds)

Might seem counter intuitive but a 2007 article in Wired said:

Hurricanes could be a problem, so they decided to outfit their windmills with hydraulic lifts scavenged from oil-industry machinery; the system would lower the turbines in the event of a squall.

I think under the water is the safest place during a hurricane. Oh, and the timing is too perfect so I cannot omit this paragraph:

But first they needed to secure government approval. Their first stop was the state of Louisiana, but the bayou bureaucrats rejected the proposal. “They saw us as competing with oil and natural gas,” Schoeffler recalls.

Perhaps Schoeffler should ask Louisiana now if it's alright for them to compete with offshore oil?

Nope (I'm an EE), I really do mean dishwasher-sized ohmic resistor.

The power transmission is three-phase power. So, at the common terminal of the transformer on each end of a long transmission line there should be zero net current. Under all normal circumstances there is.

In the event of a solar storm, there is a DC current flowing through the wire, which usually isn't present. This resistor would go between the common terminal and earth ground, and both reduce the current present in the line and dissipate the power. See this picture.

I appologize, I misremembered the values, and finally found the article again.

There are 5,000 transformers that need the resistors, and they would cost about $40k each. In the grand scheme of things, pretty cheap.

The Afghans have been blaming the USSR, now Russia, for withholding detailed information about mineral & gem deposits for a couple of decades now. Even US researchers call bullshit on this "new discovery". As to why this is being hyped all of a sudden, I will let everyone think of a reason for themselves.

Related: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/no-the-military-didnt-just-discover-an-afghan-mineral-motherlode

According to a Wired article http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/06/no-the-military-didnt-just-discover-an-afghan-mineral-motherlode/ this is old news, from 1995, and possibly the 70s.