I did the OS/2 Windows shuffle, and I've been thinking about that a lot as I've been messing with cxoffice and winex.
I think we have two things going for us that OS/2 didn't: We've got the Power of Open Source (TM), and, more importantly, we've got the Internet to distribute patches.
When MS broke OS/2 2.1 Windows support for new apps, all you could do was wait for a new release of OS/2, which would take months or years.
Now, you just download a new version. Eventually, if these guys get on the ball, they'll have autodownloading. Sure, if you try to play DS the day it comes out, it won't work. But, a month later, it'll say, "New version of WineX required to play this game. Download now?"
Unfortunately right now we're at the dancing bear stage (what's important is that it dances at all, not how well it dances). In this stage, I've been very impressed with both of them. But I'm looking forward to when they both work even better.
To this day, I'm not sure if this is a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, or the phone company really and truly afraid of whatever big stick the CPUC may wield.
The phone company in most states is terrified of the PUC.
Way back in the dark ages of 1994 (you know, when if you weren't a millionaire and wanted the Internet at home, you used a phone line), I moved from Manitou Springs, CO, to Colorado Springs, CO. Now, Colorado Springs isn't exactly metropolis, but it's a decent sized city, and I was moving into the middle of it. I had two phone lines - one for voice, one for data - and was assured by the phone company that they'd have both of them transfered within a day or so of when I was planning on moving.
Two days after I moved into my new house, I got a voicemail at work that said, "Well, we don't have enough lines for your second line in that area. In fact, we don't even have enough lines for you FIRST line, so we're giving you a party line [!!!]" I didn't even know that had those, anymore!
I then spent about a week trying to get an answer out of US West about when this was going to be resolved. The answers varied from "next week" to "next month" to "after the thaw" (this was November) to "within the next two years," depending on who I talked to. No one seemed to be exactly sure what the problem was, either.
My hypothesis is that somehow the "not enough lines" bit got flipped, and from there no one knew how to fix it.
Regardless, after about two weeks of this nonsense, I called the PUC. I got a very nice libertarian fellow, and, after I explained my problem ot him, he and I spent another ten minutes chatting about how awful it was that the phone company was a regulated monopoly to begin with.
THE NEXT DAY, I had a voicemail at my office from US West which said, "We're really VERY VERY sorry about all this and BOTH your lines will be installed within the next week." And they were.
The lesson I learned there was that if you don't like the color the paper your bill is printed on - call the PUC and they'll probably get it fixed for you.:)
However, spending 10M miles on this is a rip-off. According to the Space Adventures web site, the sub-orbital trip is $98,000. Miles generally cost $.02 - $.03 retail (in other words, you could form a company, do a deal with USAirways, and buy miles for $.02/mile) which gives you a good benchmark for whether you should spend miles on something. For example, you can purchase membership to the US Airways Club for $375. You can also cash in miles to do it. I don't know how many miles it takes (it's not on their website, you have to call), but, if it's more than about 20k it's clearly not worth it. And, worse, even if it is 20k, you could spend that same 20k on upgrading a round-trip ticket to first class, which is probably worth about $1500 (even more if your ticket is really cheap). Since 20k miles costs you about $400, that means you make a profit on every mile of about $.055.
So, in any event, at 10M miles to go to space, that's about $200,000 of miles value. In perspective, you could get 500 round-trip first-class upgrades for 10M air miles, which would have a profit of $550,000 - the same tickets purchased with cash would've cost $750,000, but you got them for the low, low price of $200,000.
By comparison, the suborbital flight would cost $98,000 in cash, so using your miles is a LOSS, outright, not even including the "opportunity cost" of the $750,000 paper profit you could make by using them for first-class upgrades. Clearly they just set this up to get publicity and designed the system so that even if you had 10M miles, you'd use them on something else.
Wish USAirways would spend their time and money getting BLANKETS back in first class, not doing crap like this...*grumble grumble*
Re:Beware of following the instructions on this pa
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The rule I was taught was to consciously decide not only to put one hand behind your back, but to hold your belt. I was also encouraged to think about holding my belt, to avoid the unconscious, "I just need another hand on the other side of this" which ends up with one hand holding a negative terminal and the other a positive, and the current running straight across your heart.
When I was 17 (before I'd been taught all that), I was helping a friend hook up an electric fence. The transformer had a wing nut on each side as a terminal, and was mounted to the wall by a nail at the top. For some IDIOTIC reason, I was trying to hook the fence up plugged in. Now, you often do have to work on live electrical equipment, but this was clearly not one of those cases.
So, in any event, I hooked up one lead, and was tightning the wing nut for one lead. Of course, since the transformer was hung from a single point, it was flopping around. Without even thinking about it (a lot of not thinking going on, that day), I swung up my left hand to stabalize the transformer... And grabbed the oposite terminal.
I remember standing there, with the muscles in my arms convulsing, and I thought, "I've got to do something." My chosen course of action was to yell "SHIIIIITTT!" at the top of my lungs. It didn't seem to improve my situation any, so I thought for a bit on what might be more productive. In one convulsive movement, I threw myself away from the transformer (my hands were locked to it by muscle spasms from the current).
So, children, that is why you should grab your belt with one hand, and hang on for dear life.
My theory is that the difference between Slashdot and other media is that they never correct themselves, no matter how inaccurate, so readers are left with a false picture of accuracy.
May I point out that if medical science gets much better, we're going to need space research even more than we do now?
This is a common fallacy. No space-based expatration system is going to ship enough people off this planet to make the slightest bit of difference. There are 250,000 new people on this planet, ever single day. That is net of deaths, by the way. You'd have to be able to ship a quarter of a million people off this planet every single day (that's more than the population of New York City every year, by the way) just to keep population growth flat!
Space-based colonization is probably important to the long-term health of the species. And we need places to grow other than here. But the babies need to be born there, not here if space is going to be part of the solution.
Very accurate and insightful summary of US political parties - leaving aside that most of what they do doesn't have much of an ideological bias at all, and is mostly aimed at courting voters ("pork-barrel" programs) or investors (er, I mean "campaign contributions"). But that's really neither here-nor-there.
One thing I've been thinking, lately though, is that the Republicans are more the party of "Freedom" than the Democrats are. Not because of ideology, as you noted in your post. But because of practical effects. See, the Democrats long ago got most of the economic powers they wish to weild legitimized by constitutional scholars. Either by interpretation in court decisions stretching the commerce regulation clause beyond any rational interpretation, or by passing ammendments (like the 16th ammendment). So, the primary check on the Democrat's excercise of their ideology in a place where I disagree with it (I'm a libertarian) is themselves. Usually their laws stand up to constitutional challenge: income tax raises; social programs; environmental programs, whatever. They generally don't get challenged to begin with, and, if they do get challenged, the Democrats win a lot of em.
On the other hand, the Republicans have been totally unable to win constitutional support for their most extreme positions. Thus, the vast majority of ludicrous Republican laws get struck down.
So, the final calculation is that, while ideologically I disagree with about half of what Democrats want to do, and I disagree with about half of what Republicans want to do, in the actuall effect of their governing, the Republicans piss me off a lot less.
Also, one last thing - has anyone else noticed that "bipartisan" means "you vote for my pork-barrel programs and I'll vote for yours?" Man I hold on to my wallet when I hear that one...
PS: I know this is redundant, but this is the only post I'm gonna make on this thread, and I've got to get it out of my system. Is that original new poster an idiot, or an asshole? What kind of moron can't see the difference between mandatory drag-net filtering for "subversive" ideas and Carnivore's (comparatively) targeted use against specified individuals? I realize that Carnivore has some problems, and we should be complaining loudly about those, but to try to even imply that throwing little old ladies in prison for putting up web pages about their religion is somehow morally equivilant to a system which is designed to go after specific people who have warrants and are suspected of engaging in criminal activity is myopic in the extreme. In China, you could've gone to JAIL for making that news post with that wise-ass remark. Here, you just get flamed for being an idiot.
I think what we've seen again and again is that, unless you're a huge juggernaut (like Microsoft), your proprietary "open" standards never win. Even Microsoft can only pull it off, sometimes.
What gets independent game developers going is truly open standards, like TCP/IP. When is my handspring going to be able to play a game with your Gameboy, wirelessly? When both of them have wireless IP adresses. Until then, these things will remain insular, only allowing my brand to play with my brand.
That's like those "collectable" plates you see advertised on late-night television. You know, with pictures of Princess Di on them or somesuch. I heard one once say, "Analysts predict that this plate will be treasured by you and your family for years to come." Wow. Some analysis - people who order these plates will like them.
All of this is bracketed, of course, with hinting suggestions that these plates will be worth something, someday.
This IT World Article notes that Steve Smale (the Berkley Prof that's one of the five yet remaining) says he's spent "one hour" working for ZeoSync and that he is "in no position to say anything about these claims."
St. George (the ZeoSync founder) also basically says (in classic snake-oil-salesman style) that the reason everyone says it's bunk is because they have a vested interest in the status quo. That tends to be one of the classic hallmarks of a "false" visionary.
I also love it when the article quotes him:
"For every person who says it might not work, there are 10 saying it does," he said, adding that he's received many congratulatory e-mails since the announcement.
Uh, yeah. I bet if we put up a/. poll, we'd get 10-1 the other way, and it's be just as scientific. Even better, he's holding up as evidence in favor of his claim the opinion of a bunch of people who no nothing about compression, and haven't even seen the technology. Wow, that's convincing.
Not to be too much of a geek, but you want to pull that from/dev/random./dev/urandom is actually psuedorandom if you pull that many bits out of it./dev/random will block waiting for more actually random bits (which is why you should use it for things like keys), which/dev/urandom will us cryptographic hashes to "stretch" the entropy it has. Theoretically,/dev/urandom may operate as designed and yet produce data with patterns in it./dev/random should always provide "cryptographically" random data.
In an odd coincidence, I've just discovered Sacks and am reading Awakinings, right now. I previously read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which alludes to the cataract story. An Anthropologist on Mars is on my wishlist. As I recall, the patient you describe ended up spending a lot of time sitting in the dark to get away from the endless visual "noise" that he perceived.
Temple Grandin is a very interesting woman, and I keep running across her. I'll much look forward to hearing a complete history of hers; in the past I've only run across her in the types of thumbnail descriptions you used.
Yes, my same brother who has RP also had "lazy eye" (as they termed it in the early 70s). He had surgery to correct it, but it was too late for him to develop true binocular vision (which I now understand needs to happen in the first six-nine months). After that, as you said, the portion of the brain needed to process binocular vision and associate it into your worldview is already taken up by something else.
However, it has led to a weird confluence with his RP - as I decribed earlier, RP causes his vision in each eye to reduce to a pinpoint. Since his brain never really wired up for binocular vision, he doesn't really have the strong lock keeping his eyes looking the same way. As a result - completely unconsciously - his brain is turning one of his eyes OUT. This effectively doubles his field of vision, at no real loss to him (since he can't see depth-of-field anyway). Isn't the brain an amazing thing?
The issue with the kittens is that the parts of their brain that would be used for that eye get taken up by other functions. Research seems to show that, if you had eyesight during that critical learning phase, and then lost it later, the brain function is still there and you should be able to recover your sight.
As well, even if it were only useful in immature organisms, it could be marvelous for kids who are born blind at birth (obviously in cases where there is simple physical eye damage). Further, my brother has Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is a progressive eye disease where he loses his peripheral vision. He still has fine eyesight in the little field he has; he can read, but is very likely to trip over large objects because he can't see them in his peripheral vision. As he likes to say, "I'll see the penny on the other side of the room; I'll just trip over an elephant I didn't see on the way there." As I understand it, his problem is entirely in his eyeballs; if you could replace them, it would completely solve his problem (until RP showed up in them again 30 years from now, assuming that the cause isn't local to the eyeball).
I do have concerns as well that the eye would be able to hook up. But I think a good analogy might be the cochlear implants for deaf people. They hook up in adults, but the inputs are so different from the natural ones that most adults never learn to integrate the information. However, with a grown eyeball, that shouldn't be a problem - the information should be very similar to what they used to receive.
Still exciting stuff, if only from a biohacking standpoint...
So, I'm curious if that statement is meant to be an argument for patents, or against? The original argument in favor of patents is that it requires public disclosure so that, while you continue to get benefits from your invention, other inventors can keep carrying technology forward. Today's counter-argument is that patents lock up the knowledge so that, while I know it, I can't do anything useful with it; that technological innovation is moving so speedily that today's patent terms amount to a monopoly for the lifetime usefulnees of an invention, and the net result is to stifle innovation instead of fostering it. Which way were you arguing?
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Warning for any person who wishes to not have nightmares - DO NOT click on the above link. The picture (I've seen it before) is utterly disgusting. I've also seen some analysis that it is probably a fake and almost definitely not from a motorocyle accident.
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As I think I corrected above, I got the words reversed in my final summing up. DOH!
And, yes, as I alluded to in the original post, riding across the desert in the afternoon in August was one of the stupidest things I've ever done. It was 117 in Las Vegas when I pulled in. I HAD to keep my gloves on, because the clutch was too hot to hold!
For the record, it was an error in research, not thinking that riding across the desert in the middle of the day wasn't going to suck. I'd just not realized I was GOING to ride across the desert. Once I realized what was going on, I made myself stop every twenty-thirty minutes. I filled my saddlebags with water bottles (BIG ones), and, at every half-hour stop, I'd drink half of a bottle and poor the rest over my shirt, placing my jacket back on over it. It was pretty unpleasant, but I think I minimized the danger as much as I could. My heavy leather jacket was actually a great help in keeping the sun off of me.
I'd never really understood first-hand the truth to all the cultural stories we have about travelling across the desert, thirst, the joy of seeing an oasis in the desert, that type of thing, before. It's not something I'd set out to do again, but I am glad I did it and got away with it unscathed. It certainly was an adventure.
As Winston Churchill said, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result.":)
Finally, on your argument about speed - there clearly IS a definition of "excessive" speed, that was used in calculating those statistics. If I were going to define it, I'd probably say it's something like being in the top 2 percentile of speeds travelled on that stretch of road (maybe even in the top 10 percentile). Your skills probably aren't that much better than everyone elses. Also, on real world streets, there are situations where at 55 MPH someone with M4D 5K1775 can avert an accident, but that at 75 MPH no human has the reaction time to do it. It's like the fellow in this thread claiming to have driven safely at 175 MPH. That's impossible to do safely on a non-closed road. Part of driving in the real world is NOT driving to the edge of your abilities, because, if something comes up, you won't have any abilities left to deal with it.
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Er, got my words mixed up at the end there. Was trying to say that riding drunk is a lot more likely to kill you than driving drunk.
Clearly I need to think more about the hazards of POSTING drunk...
Re:rain on the poor guy's parade
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No, the introductory price is $8,000 (and you'd probably have to buy a hundred of them, because they're not going to be available for the general public). The $3,000 number is the "if we can ramp production up to 40,000 units per month" number, which they're hoping to do in a couple of years.
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Although, as a motorcycle rider, myself, what you don't get from those stats are the fact that there are significant, controllable risk factors in that "18 times" number. Large percentages of motorcycle fatalaties (over 50% in recent years) involve alchohol use. Other "high risk," rider-controllable items include excessive speed and actually having a valid license. I'm also of the opinion (based on some statistical and some anectdotal evidence) that the quality and quantity of your safety gear matters a ton. While there are studies showing that, for example, wearing a DOT-approved helmet is better than not, I haven't seen a study that takes that further and looks at full-face vs. three quarters, wearing leathers, eye protection, gloves, boots, etc...
It seems very clear to me that at least 50% of the motorcycle fatalaties and perhaps as many as 75% - 80% could be completely eliminated by intelligent analysis of the risks and making rational choices about how and when to ride. I do not get on my bike without leather jackets, boots and gloves; a full-face Snell-approved helmet and (at the very least) kevlar reinforced jeans. I've ridden across the Arizona desert in August like that, during the day (although I can't say it was pleasant - or, frankly, a rational choice about when to ride;).
So, anyway, yes, motorcycles are statistically much more dangerous than cars. But much of that risk is entirely within your control. It's much like the situation we have now - the highest risk cause of death for American women of all ages is cancer of one form or another. Many women hear that and think "breast cancer!" But, in fact, the issue is lung cancer, since something like half of American women alive now smoked at some time in their lives. If you control for smoking (a "lifestyle choice") your main risk is heart disease, not cancer.
Motorcycles are definitely more dangerous than cars (especially when you apply my same "lifestyle" choices to your car driving - eschew driving drunk, for example). But it's my belief that, given the smaller margin for error, the same poor decision in a car (driving while drunk, for example) is much more likely to result in your death than the same poor decision on a motorcycle.
Re:Totally insulting price!!
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Well, for the record, if you rode your motorcycle on the sidewalk at 17 mph or slower, I bet it'd be pretty safe.:p
Re:Begging Questions and Urban Planning
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Having read a number of rebuttals bringing up your points, I've got to counter-rebut a few of them:
On the temprature thing, I've lived in Savannah, GA (98 degrees with 98% humidity), visited Phoenix in the summer (120 degrees with 10% humidity), and lived near Ithaca, NY (-4 degrees with who knows humidity and ice and snow so bad a car has trouble). There are significant portions of this country (and the world) where being outside on a lightweight, slowly moving device is either entirely impractical or entirely unpleasant, or both.
But, my biggest beef is with these two things people have brought up:
It can move up to three or four times walking speed.
[B]eing bumped into by one of these is like being bumped into by a person.
Both of these things cannot be true at the same time. Furthermore, even if a Segway moved at exactly the same speed as a person, being hit by one would impart more energy to you because the Segway has 65 lbs more mass than a person (didn't you read the article?) Not to mention getting your foot run over by 260 lbs (more since the owners of these things will by definition not get much excercise;) won't be very pleasant. It is difficult for me to imagine that these will be allowed in great numbers in the same places pedestrians are allowed (in much the same way bicycles aren't technically allowed on the sidewalk).
I'm skeptical of its synergistic use with mass-transit, as well, given its sixty-five pound weight and the fact that it's basically as big as a person (presumably causing you to take up an extra person-space). We're willing to adapt public transit to the needs of the disabled, but I'm skeptical we'll be so eager to adapt it to the lazy.
I think the fundamental questions the original poster asked are valid - can this thing really be used around a lot of pedestrians? And, more importantly, how many people live in temperate environments who need to commute long enough distances they can't walk but short enough distances they could - um - Segway, who have $3,000 they'd blow on this and do not already have access to good public transportation?
All of that said, while I'm skeptical it'll change the world, it does sound pretty cool for me (although definitely not 3 Grand kinda cool - $500 maybe). But then, I live about six blocks from a great downtown and a train station - the trick being that it's straight up a hill and you practically need rapelling gear for the walk back home.
Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers, actually, a much more fearsome foe than a mere rabbit.
I know this because a bed-and-breakfast my wife and I once stayed at had a dachshund puppy that got into everything and loved to go into dark, tight places (like handbags). I took to speaking for it (I often speak for animals and babies), saying, "Is there a badger in here? Maybe there's a badger in HERE!"
As for the Chihuahua, I can't find a good reference on what they were bred for or even where they came from. Weren't they were bred to hunt Gorditas...?
Uhhh...Corporate taxes don't work like individual taxes. There's no such thing as "deductable charitable giving" for a corporation. Basically, a corporation takes in X dollars in gross profit, and pays out Y dollars in costs, generating Z dollars of net profits. They then pay taxes on Z, if Z > 0. Anything you can do to increase Y reduces Z (and hence your taxes). That's why companies are very interested in finding ways to increase Y on paper without actually spending any money.
But, the point is, whether the network pays $10,000 to the EFF or $10,000 to Wil Wheaton, it's still $10,000 more "Y" and $10,000 less "Z". The charity part doesn't matter for taxes - it's all the same. It's essentially the same way you as an individual can lower your taxes quite simply by earning less money.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I did the OS/2 Windows shuffle, and I've been thinking about that a lot as I've been messing with cxoffice and winex.
I think we have two things going for us that OS/2 didn't: We've got the Power of Open Source (TM), and, more importantly, we've got the Internet to distribute patches.
When MS broke OS/2 2.1 Windows support for new apps, all you could do was wait for a new release of OS/2, which would take months or years.
Now, you just download a new version. Eventually, if these guys get on the ball, they'll have autodownloading. Sure, if you try to play DS the day it comes out, it won't work. But, a month later, it'll say, "New version of WineX required to play this game. Download now?"
Unfortunately right now we're at the dancing bear stage (what's important is that it dances at all, not how well it dances). In this stage, I've been very impressed with both of them. But I'm looking forward to when they both work even better.
This does not work using IE 5.5 SP2, under Crossover Office Wine on Redhat 7.2. Really. :)
To this day, I'm not sure if this is a matter of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, or the phone company really and truly afraid of whatever big stick the CPUC may wield.
:)
The phone company in most states is terrified of the PUC.
Way back in the dark ages of 1994 (you know, when if you weren't a millionaire and wanted the Internet at home, you used a phone line), I moved from Manitou Springs, CO, to Colorado Springs, CO. Now, Colorado Springs isn't exactly metropolis, but it's a decent sized city, and I was moving into the middle of it. I had two phone lines - one for voice, one for data - and was assured by the phone company that they'd have both of them transfered within a day or so of when I was planning on moving.
Two days after I moved into my new house, I got a voicemail at work that said, "Well, we don't have enough lines for your second line in that area. In fact, we don't even have enough lines for you FIRST line, so we're giving you a party line [!!!]" I didn't even know that had those, anymore!
I then spent about a week trying to get an answer out of US West about when this was going to be resolved. The answers varied from "next week" to "next month" to "after the thaw" (this was November) to "within the next two years," depending on who I talked to. No one seemed to be exactly sure what the problem was, either.
My hypothesis is that somehow the "not enough lines" bit got flipped, and from there no one knew how to fix it.
Regardless, after about two weeks of this nonsense, I called the PUC. I got a very nice libertarian fellow, and, after I explained my problem ot him, he and I spent another ten minutes chatting about how awful it was that the phone company was a regulated monopoly to begin with.
THE NEXT DAY, I had a voicemail at my office from US West which said, "We're really VERY VERY sorry about all this and BOTH your lines will be installed within the next week." And they were.
The lesson I learned there was that if you don't like the color the paper your bill is printed on - call the PUC and they'll probably get it fixed for you.
However, spending 10M miles on this is a rip-off. According to the Space Adventures web site, the sub-orbital trip is $98,000. Miles generally cost $.02 - $.03 retail (in other words, you could form a company, do a deal with USAirways, and buy miles for $.02/mile) which gives you a good benchmark for whether you should spend miles on something. For example, you can purchase membership to the US Airways Club for $375. You can also cash in miles to do it. I don't know how many miles it takes (it's not on their website, you have to call), but, if it's more than about 20k it's clearly not worth it. And, worse, even if it is 20k, you could spend that same 20k on upgrading a round-trip ticket to first class, which is probably worth about $1500 (even more if your ticket is really cheap). Since 20k miles costs you about $400, that means you make a profit on every mile of about $.055.
So, in any event, at 10M miles to go to space, that's about $200,000 of miles value. In perspective, you could get 500 round-trip first-class upgrades for 10M air miles, which would have a profit of $550,000 - the same tickets purchased with cash would've cost $750,000, but you got them for the low, low price of $200,000.
By comparison, the suborbital flight would cost $98,000 in cash, so using your miles is a LOSS, outright, not even including the "opportunity cost" of the $750,000 paper profit you could make by using them for first-class upgrades. Clearly they just set this up to get publicity and designed the system so that even if you had 10M miles, you'd use them on something else.
Wish USAirways would spend their time and money getting BLANKETS back in first class, not doing crap like this...*grumble grumble*
The rule I was taught was to consciously decide not only to put one hand behind your back, but to hold your belt. I was also encouraged to think about holding my belt, to avoid the unconscious, "I just need another hand on the other side of this" which ends up with one hand holding a negative terminal and the other a positive, and the current running straight across your heart.
When I was 17 (before I'd been taught all that), I was helping a friend hook up an electric fence. The transformer had a wing nut on each side as a terminal, and was mounted to the wall by a nail at the top. For some IDIOTIC reason, I was trying to hook the fence up plugged in. Now, you often do have to work on live electrical equipment, but this was clearly not one of those cases.
So, in any event, I hooked up one lead, and was tightning the wing nut for one lead. Of course, since the transformer was hung from a single point, it was flopping around. Without even thinking about it (a lot of not thinking going on, that day), I swung up my left hand to stabalize the transformer... And grabbed the oposite terminal.
I remember standing there, with the muscles in my arms convulsing, and I thought, "I've got to do something." My chosen course of action was to yell "SHIIIIITTT!" at the top of my lungs. It didn't seem to improve my situation any, so I thought for a bit on what might be more productive. In one convulsive movement, I threw myself away from the transformer (my hands were locked to it by muscle spasms from the current).
So, children, that is why you should grab your belt with one hand, and hang on for dear life.
My theory is that the difference between Slashdot and other media is that they never correct themselves, no matter how inaccurate, so readers are left with a false picture of accuracy.
/. going to print a retraction of this obviously false statement?
So...is
May I point out that if medical science gets much better, we're going to need space research even more than we do now?
This is a common fallacy. No space-based expatration system is going to ship enough people off this planet to make the slightest bit of difference. There are 250,000 new people on this planet, ever single day. That is net of deaths, by the way. You'd have to be able to ship a quarter of a million people off this planet every single day (that's more than the population of New York City every year, by the way) just to keep population growth flat!
Space-based colonization is probably important to the long-term health of the species. And we need places to grow other than here. But the babies need to be born there, not here if space is going to be part of the solution.
Very accurate and insightful summary of US political parties - leaving aside that most of what they do doesn't have much of an ideological bias at all, and is mostly aimed at courting voters ("pork-barrel" programs) or investors (er, I mean "campaign contributions"). But that's really neither here-nor-there.
One thing I've been thinking, lately though, is that the Republicans are more the party of "Freedom" than the Democrats are. Not because of ideology, as you noted in your post. But because of practical effects. See, the Democrats long ago got most of the economic powers they wish to weild legitimized by constitutional scholars. Either by interpretation in court decisions stretching the commerce regulation clause beyond any rational interpretation, or by passing ammendments (like the 16th ammendment). So, the primary check on the Democrat's excercise of their ideology in a place where I disagree with it (I'm a libertarian) is themselves. Usually their laws stand up to constitutional challenge: income tax raises; social programs; environmental programs, whatever. They generally don't get challenged to begin with, and, if they do get challenged, the Democrats win a lot of em.
On the other hand, the Republicans have been totally unable to win constitutional support for their most extreme positions. Thus, the vast majority of ludicrous Republican laws get struck down.
So, the final calculation is that, while ideologically I disagree with about half of what Democrats want to do, and I disagree with about half of what Republicans want to do, in the actuall effect of their governing, the Republicans piss me off a lot less.
Also, one last thing - has anyone else noticed that "bipartisan" means "you vote for my pork-barrel programs and I'll vote for yours?" Man I hold on to my wallet when I hear that one...
PS: I know this is redundant, but this is the only post I'm gonna make on this thread, and I've got to get it out of my system. Is that original new poster an idiot, or an asshole? What kind of moron can't see the difference between mandatory drag-net filtering for "subversive" ideas and Carnivore's (comparatively) targeted use against specified individuals? I realize that Carnivore has some problems, and we should be complaining loudly about those, but to try to even imply that throwing little old ladies in prison for putting up web pages about their religion is somehow morally equivilant to a system which is designed to go after specific people who have warrants and are suspected of engaging in criminal activity is myopic in the extreme. In China, you could've gone to JAIL for making that news post with that wise-ass remark. Here, you just get flamed for being an idiot.
I think what we've seen again and again is that, unless you're a huge juggernaut (like Microsoft), your proprietary "open" standards never win. Even Microsoft can only pull it off, sometimes.
What gets independent game developers going is truly open standards, like TCP/IP. When is my handspring going to be able to play a game with your Gameboy, wirelessly? When both of them have wireless IP adresses. Until then, these things will remain insular, only allowing my brand to play with my brand.
That's like those "collectable" plates you see advertised on late-night television. You know, with pictures of Princess Di on them or somesuch. I heard one once say, "Analysts predict that this plate will be treasured by you and your family for years to come." Wow. Some analysis - people who order these plates will like them.
All of this is bracketed, of course, with hinting suggestions that these plates will be worth something, someday.
St. George (the ZeoSync founder) also basically says (in classic snake-oil-salesman style) that the reason everyone says it's bunk is because they have a vested interest in the status quo. That tends to be one of the classic hallmarks of a "false" visionary.
I also love it when the article quotes him:
Uh, yeah. I bet if we put up a
Not to be too much of a geek, but you want to pull that from /dev/random. /dev/urandom is actually psuedorandom if you pull that many bits out of it. /dev/random will block waiting for more actually random bits (which is why you should use it for things like keys), which /dev/urandom will us cryptographic hashes to "stretch" the entropy it has. Theoretically, /dev/urandom may operate as designed and yet produce data with patterns in it. /dev/random should always provide "cryptographically" random data.
In an odd coincidence, I've just discovered Sacks and am reading Awakinings, right now. I previously read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, which alludes to the cataract story. An Anthropologist on Mars is on my wishlist. As I recall, the patient you describe ended up spending a lot of time sitting in the dark to get away from the endless visual "noise" that he perceived.
Temple Grandin is a very interesting woman, and I keep running across her. I'll much look forward to hearing a complete history of hers; in the past I've only run across her in the types of thumbnail descriptions you used.
Yes, my same brother who has RP also had "lazy eye" (as they termed it in the early 70s). He had surgery to correct it, but it was too late for him to develop true binocular vision (which I now understand needs to happen in the first six-nine months). After that, as you said, the portion of the brain needed to process binocular vision and associate it into your worldview is already taken up by something else.
However, it has led to a weird confluence with his RP - as I decribed earlier, RP causes his vision in each eye to reduce to a pinpoint. Since his brain never really wired up for binocular vision, he doesn't really have the strong lock keeping his eyes looking the same way. As a result - completely unconsciously - his brain is turning one of his eyes OUT. This effectively doubles his field of vision, at no real loss to him (since he can't see depth-of-field anyway). Isn't the brain an amazing thing?
The issue with the kittens is that the parts of their brain that would be used for that eye get taken up by other functions. Research seems to show that, if you had eyesight during that critical learning phase, and then lost it later, the brain function is still there and you should be able to recover your sight.
As well, even if it were only useful in immature organisms, it could be marvelous for kids who are born blind at birth (obviously in cases where there is simple physical eye damage). Further, my brother has Retinitis Pigmentosa, which is a progressive eye disease where he loses his peripheral vision. He still has fine eyesight in the little field he has; he can read, but is very likely to trip over large objects because he can't see them in his peripheral vision. As he likes to say, "I'll see the penny on the other side of the room; I'll just trip over an elephant I didn't see on the way there." As I understand it, his problem is entirely in his eyeballs; if you could replace them, it would completely solve his problem (until RP showed up in them again 30 years from now, assuming that the cause isn't local to the eyeball).
I do have concerns as well that the eye would be able to hook up. But I think a good analogy might be the cochlear implants for deaf people. They hook up in adults, but the inputs are so different from the natural ones that most adults never learn to integrate the information. However, with a grown eyeball, that shouldn't be a problem - the information should be very similar to what they used to receive.
Still exciting stuff, if only from a biohacking standpoint...
So, I'm curious if that statement is meant to be an argument for patents, or against? The original argument in favor of patents is that it requires public disclosure so that, while you continue to get benefits from your invention, other inventors can keep carrying technology forward. Today's counter-argument is that patents lock up the knowledge so that, while I know it, I can't do anything useful with it; that technological innovation is moving so speedily that today's patent terms amount to a monopoly for the lifetime usefulnees of an invention, and the net result is to stifle innovation instead of fostering it. Which way were you arguing?
Warning for any person who wishes to not have nightmares - DO NOT click on the above link. The picture (I've seen it before) is utterly disgusting. I've also seen some analysis that it is probably a fake and almost definitely not from a motorocyle accident.
As I think I corrected above, I got the words reversed in my final summing up. DOH!
:)
And, yes, as I alluded to in the original post, riding across the desert in the afternoon in August was one of the stupidest things I've ever done. It was 117 in Las Vegas when I pulled in. I HAD to keep my gloves on, because the clutch was too hot to hold!
For the record, it was an error in research, not thinking that riding across the desert in the middle of the day wasn't going to suck. I'd just not realized I was GOING to ride across the desert. Once I realized what was going on, I made myself stop every twenty-thirty minutes. I filled my saddlebags with water bottles (BIG ones), and, at every half-hour stop, I'd drink half of a bottle and poor the rest over my shirt, placing my jacket back on over it. It was pretty unpleasant, but I think I minimized the danger as much as I could. My heavy leather jacket was actually a great help in keeping the sun off of me.
I'd never really understood first-hand the truth to all the cultural stories we have about travelling across the desert, thirst, the joy of seeing an oasis in the desert, that type of thing, before. It's not something I'd set out to do again, but I am glad I did it and got away with it unscathed. It certainly was an adventure.
As Winston Churchill said, "There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result."
Finally, on your argument about speed - there clearly IS a definition of "excessive" speed, that was used in calculating those statistics. If I were going to define it, I'd probably say it's something like being in the top 2 percentile of speeds travelled on that stretch of road (maybe even in the top 10 percentile). Your skills probably aren't that much better than everyone elses. Also, on real world streets, there are situations where at 55 MPH someone with M4D 5K1775 can avert an accident, but that at 75 MPH no human has the reaction time to do it. It's like the fellow in this thread claiming to have driven safely at 175 MPH. That's impossible to do safely on a non-closed road. Part of driving in the real world is NOT driving to the edge of your abilities, because, if something comes up, you won't have any abilities left to deal with it.
Er, got my words mixed up at the end there. Was trying to say that riding drunk is a lot more likely to kill you than driving drunk.
Clearly I need to think more about the hazards of POSTING drunk...
No, the introductory price is $8,000 (and you'd probably have to buy a hundred of them, because they're not going to be available for the general public). The $3,000 number is the "if we can ramp production up to 40,000 units per month" number, which they're hoping to do in a couple of years.
Although, as a motorcycle rider, myself, what you don't get from those stats are the fact that there are significant, controllable risk factors in that "18 times" number. Large percentages of motorcycle fatalaties (over 50% in recent years) involve alchohol use. Other "high risk," rider-controllable items include excessive speed and actually having a valid license. I'm also of the opinion (based on some statistical and some anectdotal evidence) that the quality and quantity of your safety gear matters a ton. While there are studies showing that, for example, wearing a DOT-approved helmet is better than not, I haven't seen a study that takes that further and looks at full-face vs. three quarters, wearing leathers, eye protection, gloves, boots, etc...
;).
It seems very clear to me that at least 50% of the motorcycle fatalaties and perhaps as many as 75% - 80% could be completely eliminated by intelligent analysis of the risks and making rational choices about how and when to ride. I do not get on my bike without leather jackets, boots and gloves; a full-face Snell-approved helmet and (at the very least) kevlar reinforced jeans. I've ridden across the Arizona desert in August like that, during the day (although I can't say it was pleasant - or, frankly, a rational choice about when to ride
So, anyway, yes, motorcycles are statistically much more dangerous than cars. But much of that risk is entirely within your control. It's much like the situation we have now - the highest risk cause of death for American women of all ages is cancer of one form or another. Many women hear that and think "breast cancer!" But, in fact, the issue is lung cancer, since something like half of American women alive now smoked at some time in their lives. If you control for smoking (a "lifestyle choice") your main risk is heart disease, not cancer.
Motorcycles are definitely more dangerous than cars (especially when you apply my same "lifestyle" choices to your car driving - eschew driving drunk, for example). But it's my belief that, given the smaller margin for error, the same poor decision in a car (driving while drunk, for example) is much more likely to result in your death than the same poor decision on a motorcycle.
Well, for the record, if you rode your motorcycle on the sidewalk at 17 mph or slower, I bet it'd be pretty safe. :p
Having read a number of rebuttals bringing up your points, I've got to counter-rebut a few of them:
;) won't be very pleasant. It is difficult for me to imagine that these will be allowed in great numbers in the same places pedestrians are allowed (in much the same way bicycles aren't technically allowed on the sidewalk).
On the temprature thing, I've lived in Savannah, GA (98 degrees with 98% humidity), visited Phoenix in the summer (120 degrees with 10% humidity), and lived near Ithaca, NY (-4 degrees with who knows humidity and ice and snow so bad a car has trouble). There are significant portions of this country (and the world) where being outside on a lightweight, slowly moving device is either entirely impractical or entirely unpleasant, or both.
But, my biggest beef is with these two things people have brought up:
It can move up to three or four times walking speed.
[B]eing bumped into by one of these is like being bumped into by a person.
Both of these things cannot be true at the same time. Furthermore, even if a Segway moved at exactly the same speed as a person, being hit by one would impart more energy to you because the Segway has 65 lbs more mass than a person (didn't you read the article?) Not to mention getting your foot run over by 260 lbs (more since the owners of these things will by definition not get much excercise
I'm skeptical of its synergistic use with mass-transit, as well, given its sixty-five pound weight and the fact that it's basically as big as a person (presumably causing you to take up an extra person-space). We're willing to adapt public transit to the needs of the disabled, but I'm skeptical we'll be so eager to adapt it to the lazy.
I think the fundamental questions the original poster asked are valid - can this thing really be used around a lot of pedestrians? And, more importantly, how many people live in temperate environments who need to commute long enough distances they can't walk but short enough distances they could - um - Segway, who have $3,000 they'd blow on this and do not already have access to good public transportation?
All of that said, while I'm skeptical it'll change the world, it does sound pretty cool for me (although definitely not 3 Grand kinda cool - $500 maybe). But then, I live about six blocks from a great downtown and a train station - the trick being that it's straight up a hill and you practically need rapelling gear for the walk back home.
Dachshunds were bred to hunt badgers, actually, a much more fearsome foe than a mere rabbit.
I know this because a bed-and-breakfast my wife and I once stayed at had a dachshund puppy that got into everything and loved to go into dark, tight places (like handbags). I took to speaking for it (I often speak for animals and babies), saying, "Is there a badger in here? Maybe there's a badger in HERE!"
As for the Chihuahua, I can't find a good reference on what they were bred for or even where they came from. Weren't they were bred to hunt Gorditas...?
Uhhh...Corporate taxes don't work like individual taxes. There's no such thing as "deductable charitable giving" for a corporation. Basically, a corporation takes in X dollars in gross profit, and pays out Y dollars in costs, generating Z dollars of net profits. They then pay taxes on Z, if Z > 0. Anything you can do to increase Y reduces Z (and hence your taxes). That's why companies are very interested in finding ways to increase Y on paper without actually spending any money.
:)
But, the point is, whether the network pays $10,000 to the EFF or $10,000 to Wil Wheaton, it's still $10,000 more "Y" and $10,000 less "Z". The charity part doesn't matter for taxes - it's all the same. It's essentially the same way you as an individual can lower your taxes quite simply by earning less money.