Third, do you realize how many tens of thousands of pounds (maybe hundreds of thousands???) of food the US government buys from farmers and destroys each year to control food prices? The issue of the starving world isn't food. It's getting them the food. And much blood has been spilled trying to do it (remember Somalia?).
The agricultural subsidies are nothing but pork-barrel politics that enable family farms to survive in order to get their votes. And everyone is guilty of it, to the detriment of the third-world who cannot sell it's produce (but at least, energy is not wasted to transport it, though).
As of Somalia, well, I was just talking the other day with my neighbour who is from Somalia, and the reason the US tried to go there was simply to get a foothold in the region, not because it was giving a flying fuck about the starving kids there.
Reliance on bio-diesel would possibly be one of the best possible outcomes in the oil war we could have. Almost anyone can produce vegtables. Oil is a fossil fuel that takes millions of years to produce. There are only a few places with fossil fuels. If there were a reliance upon biodiesel, we'd see entire farms just for the purpose of producing biodiesel vegtables. The wealth would be back in the hands of farmers rather than oil tycoons. If for nothing else, no more blood would be spilled over oil.
Oil was produced by dead biomass accmumulated over several million years; it's like hoarding money for a few years and then spending it all in two minutes.
In order to get the same energy output for a year from plants than you get from oil, it will need several hundred Earths to be cultivated.
As usual, the americans have their heads in the sand, hoping that magic technology will enable them to keep going in their plush trucks.
Well, no.
First, the amount of energy needed will stay the same, whether you run your truck on gasoline, diesel, alcohol, natural gas, wood, coal, electricity, hydrogen or gooseshit.
Second, the result of combustion will always be CO2 (except for Hydrogen and electricity), so forget about cancelling global warming.
Third, where are you going to grow all the plants needed to make all that vegetable oil and alcohol??? Where are you going to take the energy needed to transform all those plants into biodiesel? How many people will starve so the americans can still move their arses in their plush trucks???
There is no miracle solution, except to stop relying on cars en masse.
Just off the top of my head, it seems unlikely that consumers are going to come beating on Phillips door to get this marvelous new invention, but I guess they can always sell it to cable companies for incorporation in set top boxes so the consumer doesn't get a choice.
The "customers" for such a thing will never be the end-viewer, but the cable companies. In this age of media convergence where TV networks own cable companies, what better way to force people not to "steal" their content by skipping commercials???
That technology will simply obviate the need for inventing the "blipvert"!!!
Wall-mounted shelves are the best thing since crucifixion.
The idea is you have nothing on the floor, so you have free rein for the cables.
My setup is wall-shelves for the books (always handy), and a much sturdier wall-shelf for the monitors and b0x3n (LCDs still suck at colour, so I'm still with a 19" behemoth).
I use a normal folding-legs table as a desk, which I can use elsewhere if needed without having to dismantle the computers. Bonus is that I can move the table around to suit the eye-distance to the monitors.
As I had spare brackets, I added a small shelf below the table level for the subwoofer...
They're just lucky they're not in the US -- the MPAA would have come down on them like the wrath of God for messing with this kid's copyright on his original work.
This is news... I didn't know Ghyslain Razaa was a member of the MPAA..
I live in Québec too, and I'm just as french as the Star Wars Kid.
However, when I was a kid, I went to a private french school, where everything was imported from France: the schoolmates, the teachers, the textbook and the pedagogy:
Whenever you did something wrong, the teachers would encourage the other students to laugh at you. So, not being the first of the class, I was the Star Wars Kid for pretty much all of the school year.
This helps you quickly build a thick skin where you don't give a flying fuck about what other people think of you. For example, since I bike during all summer, I have no problem at all walking in a bank branch or a shopping mall wearing flashy spandex and people staring at my balls and ass (I must say I don't look like the Star Wars kid, though. And there are plenty of chicks who go apeshit with the spandex - at least, they can gauge at first glance the merchandise).
However, in those days where schools are taken over by psychologists who insist that the kids should not face any adversity at all in their daily experience, it's no wonder that the thin-skinned kids of today will get miffed at the slightest misperception of themselves by others, and the Star Wars Kid case ending in court brilliantly illustrates this fact.
The Star Wars Kid should first and foremost get a life and learn that the most important thing with freedom is not to give a goddammed flying fuck about what others think of you.
Explain to me how a computer can teach a child to write.
I never said anything about writing... Reading is the whole game.
For writing, that's where the teacher comes in play.
However, it could be conceivable that a fine touch-screen (à la pen/tablet computer) could play some role in that, but you're probably exceeding the realm of a $100 computer.
But handwriting input on a computer could be a fine way to teach people good calligraphy skills, though; classroom computers ought to be used like that.
And in the same philosophy, why not have palm computers recognize shorthand input? This always can be a valuable skill to learn for those days when all you have is a pad and pen to take "high-speed" notes.
Throughout the History of Humanity, $100 laptops have not been neccesary for education.
Throughout the History of Humanity, education started with litteracy. Learning how to read and write.
What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?
The best way to educate people who are utterly clueless is to provide competent teachers.
How do you churn out lots of teachers when everyone can't be properly fed? At least with computers assisting the teachers, the teachers can take care of more kids, and also concentrate on the problem kids instead of slowing down the whole class to the pace of the slowest child.
Who the hell is going to teach these kids to use the laptop?
They gonna learn to use it themselves. After all, who needs to learn how to use a gameboy???
Who's going to troubleshoot it?
It won't need troubleshooting, it will run Linux.
5 years ago, I gave my mother a Linux box so she can write her letters, do her budget on a spreadsheet, and send/receive e-mail with her sisters all over the world. I never had to fix anything on the box since I installed it.
My kid sister lives in a first world country with full access to schooling, the internet, and books, and she STILL needs me to fix anything that goes wrong with the computer.
That's because she runs windoze, which is inherently b0rk3d.
I shudder to think what would happen if you gave her a hand-cranked laptop running linux.
She would have to workout for her online chatting and probably have a better social life.
On the other hand $100 can print a heck of a lot of books. Books which don't break, don't require training or maintanance, and don't need to be cranked to function. Still not a replacement for competent teachers, but it's a hell of a lot better than this laptop.
And you can fit a lot more than $100 worth of paper books on millions of laptops for less than $100.
Because some people think there are more important things, like curing/controlling AIDS, building infrastructure, and enabling access to clean water.
All things that can be done by outsiders, yes, or by the people themselves, once they are properly educated.
And once they are properly educated, they won't need outsiders anymore.
Throughout the History of Humanity, social progress was always resisted by the few powerful that stood to lose their power to the masses, and a very potent mean to crush the masses is to keep them ignorant (hence the communist crackdown on free information flow, or the capitalist crackdown on educating the people on their rights).
Or portable singularities, to be more precise. What the lightsaber handle does is trigger a foldspace from an alternate universe, foldspace which is a "line" extending a definite length from the handle.
Any matter approaching the singularity is accelerated until it forms a plasma which brightly glows (in vacuum, the glow is from virtual particles being caught in the singularity field). However, the high temperature around the plasma surrounding the singularity will also produce a positive pressure which will repel any rushing matter, thus balancing the "blade" and insuring that it does not suck outright anything like a black-hole; the constant pulsing of the plasma field interaction with the surrounding atmosphere is responsible for the "wvfooom-wvfooom" sound one hears near an active lightsaber.
As the linear singularity itself is not in this space, when it interacts with another like linear singularity, it will form an immovable object in respect to the other singularity, thus insuring that one lightsaber can mechanicaly block another lightsaber, giving it a solid appearance.
The high energy needed for the singularity sustenance is harnessed through the use of the Force, hence restricting lightsaber use to properly-trained jedis.
Slashdot Mirror
As of Somalia, well, I was just talking the other day with my neighbour who is from Somalia, and the reason the US tried to go there was simply to get a foothold in the region, not because it was giving a flying fuck about the starving kids there.
Oil was produced by dead biomass accmumulated over several million years; it's like hoarding money for a few years and then spending it all in two minutes.In order to get the same energy output for a year from plants than you get from oil, it will need several hundred Earths to be cultivated.
On one side, we have to rail against software patents...
On the other, here is Microsoft forced to pay a little guy for infringing on his patent...
Well, no.
First, the amount of energy needed will stay the same, whether you run your truck on gasoline, diesel, alcohol, natural gas, wood, coal, electricity, hydrogen or gooseshit.
Second, the result of combustion will always be CO2 (except for Hydrogen and electricity), so forget about cancelling global warming.
Third, where are you going to grow all the plants needed to make all that vegetable oil and alcohol??? Where are you going to take the energy needed to transform all those plants into biodiesel? How many people will starve so the americans can still move their arses in their plush trucks???
There is no miracle solution, except to stop relying on cars en masse.
That technology will simply obviate the need for inventing the "blipvert"!!!
Phillips - check!
Hmmm, what's left?
Thanks to the DMCA, he does not need to have a strong cypher, since this law makes it illegal to decrypt it anyways!!!
Deep down in what passes for their hearts, the banking "community" still uses hand-written ledgers with Monroe crank-powered adding machines.
The idea is you have nothing on the floor, so you have free rein for the cables.
My setup is wall-shelves for the books (always handy), and a much sturdier wall-shelf for the monitors and b0x3n (LCDs still suck at colour, so I'm still with a 19" behemoth).
I use a normal folding-legs table as a desk, which I can use elsewhere if needed without having to dismantle the computers. Bonus is that I can move the table around to suit the eye-distance to the monitors.
As I had spare brackets, I added a small shelf below the table level for the subwoofer...
The perfect marriage!!! One could almost say a marriage of reason!!!
It's no worse than Nigel, Alastair, Douglas or Trevor...
I live in Québec too, and I'm just as french as the Star Wars Kid.
However, when I was a kid, I went to a private french school, where everything was imported from France: the schoolmates, the teachers, the textbook and the pedagogy:
Whenever you did something wrong, the teachers would encourage the other students to laugh at you. So, not being the first of the class, I was the Star Wars Kid for pretty much all of the school year.
This helps you quickly build a thick skin where you don't give a flying fuck about what other people think of you. For example, since I bike during all summer, I have no problem at all walking in a bank branch or a shopping mall wearing flashy spandex and people staring at my balls and ass (I must say I don't look like the Star Wars kid, though. And there are plenty of chicks who go apeshit with the spandex - at least, they can gauge at first glance the merchandise).
However, in those days where schools are taken over by psychologists who insist that the kids should not face any adversity at all in their daily experience, it's no wonder that the thin-skinned kids of today will get miffed at the slightest misperception of themselves by others, and the Star Wars Kid case ending in court brilliantly illustrates this fact.
The Star Wars Kid should first and foremost get a life and learn that the most important thing with freedom is not to give a goddammed flying fuck about what others think of you.
For writing, that's where the teacher comes in play.
However, it could be conceivable that a fine touch-screen (à la pen/tablet computer) could play some role in that, but you're probably exceeding the realm of a $100 computer.
But handwriting input on a computer could be a fine way to teach people good calligraphy skills, though; classroom computers ought to be used like that.
And in the same philosophy, why not have palm computers recognize shorthand input? This always can be a valuable skill to learn for those days when all you have is a pad and pen to take "high-speed" notes.
Now, teachers will be assisted by those computers, so they will be able to educate much more children than without.
What prevents a program running on a laptop from teaching children how to read and write without being constantly in the presence of a teacher?
How do you churn out lots of teachers when everyone can't be properly fed? At least with computers assisting the teachers, the teachers can take care of more kids, and also concentrate on the problem kids instead of slowing down the whole class to the pace of the slowest child. They gonna learn to use it themselves. After all, who needs to learn how to use a gameboy??? It won't need troubleshooting, it will run Linux.5 years ago, I gave my mother a Linux box so she can write her letters, do her budget on a spreadsheet, and send/receive e-mail with her sisters all over the world. I never had to fix anything on the box since I installed it.
That's because she runs windoze, which is inherently b0rk3d. She would have to workout for her online chatting and probably have a better social life. And you can fit a lot more than $100 worth of paper books on millions of laptops for less than $100.And once they are properly educated, they won't need outsiders anymore.
Throughout the History of Humanity, social progress was always resisted by the few powerful that stood to lose their power to the masses, and a very potent mean to crush the masses is to keep them ignorant (hence the communist crackdown on free information flow, or the capitalist crackdown on educating the people on their rights).
Now, Britney Spears will have to resort to Google bombing to increase her sales...
Such a law won't pass. It't too anti-business.
Or portable singularities, to be more precise. What the lightsaber handle does is trigger a foldspace from an alternate universe, foldspace which is a "line" extending a definite length from the handle.
Any matter approaching the singularity is accelerated until it forms a plasma which brightly glows (in vacuum, the glow is from virtual particles being caught in the singularity field). However, the high temperature around the plasma surrounding the singularity will also produce a positive pressure which will repel any rushing matter, thus balancing the "blade" and insuring that it does not suck outright anything like a black-hole; the constant pulsing of the plasma field interaction with the surrounding atmosphere is responsible for the "wvfooom-wvfooom" sound one hears near an active lightsaber.
As the linear singularity itself is not in this space, when it interacts with another like linear singularity, it will form an immovable object in respect to the other singularity, thus insuring that one lightsaber can mechanicaly block another lightsaber, giving it a solid appearance.
The high energy needed for the singularity sustenance is harnessed through the use of the Force, hence restricting lightsaber use to properly-trained jedis.