But of course, this does take more than a few months of research to investigate, so...
There, FTFY.
After literally years of experimenting with different distros to find one that was acceptable and worked with all my laptop hardware, I finally switched to Mint with Gnome 2, and was using it exclusively for 6 months. Then I upgrade hardware, and find that Mint does not support my wireless, at least not in an easy fashion, and now has 4 (!) desktop environments that I will have to install and check out, instead of the one that (mostly) worked.
Very discouraging, and a huge waste of time that could be used to actually accomplish something, or at least enjoy.
Never wanted one before.
But now that I can't buy one, I want it more than anything!
What's that you say? "Just get a used one for a third of the price?" "Wait until the next version of shiny?"
This is just pre-school psychology applied to marketing.
Baby is surrounded by thousands of toys. He ignores all save the one he's currently chewing on. Pick up one that's five feet away and take it out of the room. Baby drops current chew toy. Face turns red. Tantrum ensues. Baby miraculously speaks, "I want a Kindle Fire!"
I tend to run into this in the realm of audio processing.
Radial knobs and toggle switches, while pretty, are absolute bollocks with a mouse. I will use a plug-in that has linear sliders or numerical input if it sounds "good enough" rather than deal with the frustration of a pretty interface that slows my work down. It would have to sound amazing for me to bother.
If a non-audio app has knobs I simply won't use it, no matter what functionality it provides. I'd rather go without. It would be a different story if radial knob peripheral input devices were more standard for computers, but as it stands, keyboard and mouse are dominant.
People 'shop' not just for consumer goods, but also for opinions about politics, childrearing and family strategies, education opportunities, medical information and doctor reviews, etc. They use the 'net as their go-to solution.
The average info seeker believes that the large web portals are neutral purveyors of information. The fact is, those companies' business models are only indirectly aligned with the interests or well being of the seeker.
Slashdotters are likely far from average in credulousness when it comes to web reviews, and sorting through the chaff.
How to haggle in a marketplace of ideas?
"I'll trade you five reviews, and not a review more!"
The Twitbook, Yaoogle, Yelpazon shopping part is just a trite jumping off point for what I feel is a serious burgeoning problem in the marketplace of ideas. People 'shop' not just for consumer goods, but also for opinions about politics, childrearing and family strategies, education opportunities, etc. And they use the 'net as their go-to solution far more than even a library.
Perhaps more discerning people might think twice before accepting advice from "chamberofcommerce.com" (Though most probably think that is a reputable source. Let's use zealousguysinpointywhitehats.com instead.), but the average info seeker believes that the large web portals are neutral purveyors of information, when the fact is that those companies' business model is only indirectly involved with the best interests of the seeker.
Medical health professionals are already reporting that many patients are able to do self diagnosis with the help of 'net research. "They come to us for confirmation of what they've already figured out."
Given the lack of access to quality health care in even 1st world societies, imagine the empowerment to diagnose biomedical ailments at the molecular level from commonly available handheld devices at home. http://www.nano.org.uk/news/1705
The ability to do real-time PCR(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction),
immunoassays to detect bacteria, viruses and cancers based on antigen-antibody reactions, dielectrophoresis, and other techniques would have an immense impact on general human health and treatment in the hands of qualified health professionals and citizens.
Doctors working in third world and inaccessible regions would have an incalculable leg up, not having to wait for non-existent sample testing.
I don't see this as a project for basement tinkerers, but the technology is coming along. Health care costs are threating to overwhelm world economies as populations burgeon and life expectancies increase.
I'll leave it to the other cynics to burst this bubble. I'd like to think there are still some optimistic dreamers out there. Let's hear some feedback from some of those, please.
Most of the fishing-related damage is caused by trawlers, which tow big sacklike nets behind them. Trawlers seem designed for the purpose of damaging submarine cables. Various types of hardware are attached to the nets. In some cases, these are otter boards, which act something like rudders to push the net's mouth open. When bottom fish such as halibut are the target, a massive bar is placed across the front of the net with heavy tickler chains dangling from it; these flail against the bottom, stirring up the fish so they will rise up into the maw of the net.
Mere impact can be enough to wreck a cable, if it puts a leak in the insulation. Frequently, though, a net or anchor will snag a cable. If the ship is small and the cable is big, the cable may survive the encounter. There is a type of cable, used up until the advent of optical fiber, called 21-quad, which consists of 21 four-bundle pairs of cable and a coaxial line. It is 15 centimeters in diameter, and a single meter of it weighs 46 kilograms. If a passing ship should happen to catch such a cable with its anchor, it will follow a very simple procedure: abandon it and go buy a new anchor.
But modern cables are much smaller and lighter - a mere 0.85 kg per meter for the unarmored, deep-sea portions of the FLAG cable - and the ships most apt to snag them, trawlers, are getting bigger and more powerful. Now that fishermen have massacred most of the fish in shallower water, they are moving out deeper. Formerly, cable was plowed into the bottom in water shallower than 1,000 meters, which kept it away from the trawlers. Because of recent changes in fishing practices, the figure has been boosted to 2,000 meters. But this means that the old cables are still vulnerable.
When a trawler snags a cable, it will pull it up off the seafloor. How far it gets pulled depends on the weight of the cable, the amount of slack, and the size and horsepower of the ship. Even if the cable is not pulled all the way to the surface, it may get kinked - its minimum bending radius may be violated. If the trawler does succeed in hauling the cable all the way up out of the water, the only way out of the situation, or at least the simplest, is to cut the cable. Dave Handley once did a study of a cable that had been suddenly and mysteriously severed. Hauling up the cut end, he discovered that someone had sliced through it with a cutting torch.
There is also the obvious threat of sabotage by a hostile government, but, surprisingly, this almost never happens. When cypherpunk Doug Barnes was researching his Caribbean project, he spent some time looking into this, because it was exactly the kind of threat he was worried about in the case of a data haven. Somewhat to his own surprise and relief, he concluded that it simply wasn't going to happen. "Cutting a submarine cable," Barnes says, "is like starting a nuclear war. It's easy to do, the results are devastating, and as soon as one country does it, all of the others will retaliate.
This is the DIY, open source version. Kinda clunky, but open and accessible. He's obviously a proponent of accessible education, a welcome sentiment.
The Apple/Nokia/Samsung version will be flip-phone configuration, no user serviceable or accessible parts, locked down and impossible to open up without destroying. It will feature multiple wireless protocols, wireless probes and accessories. It will not be upgradeable, and will be created as a designed obsolescence, throw away device. While you use it to explore the world around you, it will be gathering all your data to explore and categorize you.
It will also be backed by a war chest of patents used to deny the populace or small businesses from creating their own cheap, open, accessible versions.
Scoff all you like, but enjoy this handiwork while you still can. Or at least applaud.
Or somehow different than your microphone and webcam featured laptop? iPad anyone? Oh that's right, whenever an App has access to your cam a little light blinks to let you know.
No country, big or small, is going to issue or back anonymous, untraceable digital currency. You might think they have. But it will be backdoored. Bet your boots.
The only untraceable cash the US is going to issue and distribute will be pallet loads of $100 bills. "Oops, it seems we've misplaced several billion dollars in 'small' bills. Oh well, chalk it up to a rounding error. At least it was only billions."
There are several credits against the tentative tax, the most important of which is a "unified credit" which can be thought of as providing for an "exemption equivalent" or exempted value with respect to the sum of the taxable estate and the taxable gifts during lifetime.
For a person dying during 2006, 2007, or 2008, the "applicable exclusion amount" is $2,000,000, so if the sum of the taxable estate plus the "adjusted taxable gifts" made during lifetime equals $2,000,000 or less, there is no federal estate tax to pay. According to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the applicable exclusion increased to $3,500,000 in 2009, the estate tax was repealed for estates of decedents dying in 2010, but then the Act "sunsets" in 2011 and the estate tax was to reappear with an applicable exclusion amount of only $1,000,000. However, On December 16, 2010, Congress passed the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010. The 2010 Act changed, among other things, the rate structure for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2009, subject to certain exceptions. It also served to reunify the estate tax credit (aka exemption equivalent) with the federal gift tax credit (aka exemption equivalent). The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.
Let's look at that again. The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.
I remember seeing an aircraft of some sort in the daytime with a trail of fire coming out of the back of it. It was too far up to see if or what kind of wings it had. Didn't seem to be a rocket. Moved slow like a passenger jet. Never did figure out what it might have been. Was on the Northwest coast of USA.
Point taken about looting. Also, a distinction needs to be made between a duplication technique that actually reproduces a functioning item through molecular deposition of different elements, and what on the other hand is basically simply a plastic model.
The first possibility seems pretty far off in the future. Probably not for giant laboratories with force tunneling microscopes and inert atmosphere or vacuum facilities. But for the home? The economies of having the space for the equipment, buying the equipment, and getting feedstocks of pure elements is going to probably be accessible only to the super-rich for a long time to come. Not to mention the need for tech support, probably in the way of a dedicated position for an employee. A private size model with attendant equipment and storage is still going to be size of an entire large room, at least.
And why would most people bother when they can take advantage of the economy of scale and low prices of traditional industries, and the often low-waged labor used to produce it?
You'd only bother, likely, if you were trying to produce something that was illegal or banned from possession by the general populace. Which, given the ever intrusive nature of government will probably become more of an issue as time goes on. Again, however, why would you build up something like, say, a personal sidearm atom by atom, when it can be so easily created with a lathe and traditional metal working tools?
Lastly, the items most likely to be produced in the home would be commonplace modern banalities like toasters, smartphones, and toothbrushes. Not exactly a treasure trove for future garbage miners.
The "Diamond Age" vision of a replicator in every home with subscription to a "Feed" of raw materials is just not going to happen anytime soon. I could see a hacker collective maintaining one, but as soon as they run afoul of law enforcement, boom, single point of failure.
If/when civilization collapses, we're going to need examples of past technology. Everything from the butter churn on up. What if you were trying to recreate a movie projector and found that only the casing was preserved, with no internal workings? I understand the health issue for the public, but they should mothball one of those intact.
One function of museums is to be a repository of knowledge, art, and technology, for future generations. It's not the only function, but I would argue that it's the most important function. It's not just a display that you look at for entertainment.
That's great. It will serve the surface educational mission of museums. Multimedia exhibition. But if you're at a post sea-rise far inland Argentinian coast trying to figure out how to make a steam engine, how are you going to make use of a rotting polymer copy?
They did this for a while. Maybe still? About 10-12 years ago. I forget what the market-speak trade name for it was. But they sampled at 1 Ghz. The trade magazines were divided in their opinions, and it must have died a fine death in the marketplace since no one here has referenced it
This was definitely a recording format..
I think we have to differentiate between mobile and home/studio listening. Considering the average playback hardware, for listening, 16/44 is fine for the 99.999 percent of listeners. For mobile listening 192kbps MP3 will exceed the needs of most. I prefer 320 kbps because it makes percussion sound better.
Most people listen in a car, bus, at work, on the job, etc. Low noise floor and dynamic range are moot. the reproduction amplifiers in cheap phone/pods aren't up to the task anyway, much less the average headphone/earbud.
I hesitate to use the term "audiophile" because of its pejorative connotation, but for people with above average sensitivity in hearing and training in sound artifacts, I think high resolution files are a good thing. Not only for private listening, but for a possible future when we regain a public domain and the remixing/sampling world takes off again.
For an analogy, think of DVD compilations of old TV shows that were encoded from tapes of television broadcasts. They look...ok...but when they go back to the original masters and re-release them there is an appreciable difference. Strangely though, consumer television/video playback formats are increasing in resolution, while common audio formats have been regressing.
Methinks you don't spend a lot of time on a bus. I have. I have rarely - no, make that never - heard an important cell phone call on the bus.
They usually go along the lines of:
"Aw damn, no you didn't."
"...and then she.... And then she did, again!"
"I'm so sick of your shit. Listen to me. (louder) Listen to me!"
It's always just inane crap. They're just trying to amuse themselves. Obnoxiously. It's amusing only to themselves.
Worse than shadow profiles, there is a publicly viewable profile with my full name on it in Facebook. No idea how it got there. It has *no* information in it. Nada.
While I would prefer it was not there, the process to remove it is ridiculous.
You have to give them:
Full Name
Address
Phone Number
email address
And a scan of your government I.D.!!!!
Why the hell would I give them all that information to remove a profile that has no information associated with it? So, there it stands, mockingly.
"Ha, ha, what are you going to do about it?", they say. If I actually go through their process to remove it, who's to say the next time they create this fake profile they won't populate it with all the information they collected to remove the blank one?
Even if Congress writes privacy laws to cover this kind of data collection, misrepresentation, use of likeness, etc. it will be chock full of loopholes and exemptions specifically written in by - you guessed it - Facebook! As well as advertisers, big Pharma/Retailers, and any number of big pocket, lobby rich corps.
This points to the distinction between "life" and "alive". Is roast beef life? No. It was once life.
So, is a virus life?
Is a bacterium or spore floating in space at super-low temperature alive? What if it has had 10 percent of genetic information damaged by cosmic radiation?
Doesn't it cut both ways? With the major govs sinkholing all digital communications, shouldn't private citizens therefore securely encrypt their messages as well?
Which is the answer, opacity or transparency? Who gets the upper hand? Government, law enforcement, and emergency services (all paid for by citizens), or the freedom loving citizens themselves?
The arguments on both sides have valid points, but what solution fosters the values of a society that we can salute to?
In this new study, the researchers used a rat model of ALS to test for possible nerve cell- restoring properties of stem cells. The rats were exposed to Sindbis virus, which infects the central nervous system and destroys the motor neurons in the spinal cord. Rats that survive are left with paralyzed muscles in their hindquarters and weakened back limbs. Scientists assess the degree of impairment by measuring the rats' movement, quantifying electrical activity in the nerves serving the back limbs, and visually judging the extent of nerve damage through a microscope.
The researchers wanted to see whether stem cells could restore nerves and improve mobility in rats. Because scientists have had difficulty sustaining stem cell lines derived from rat embryos, the investigators conducted their experiments with embryonic germ cells that John Gearhart and colleagues isolated from human fetal tissue in 1998. These cells can produce unchanged copies of themselves when maintained in culture, and they form into clumps called embryoid bodies. Under certain conditions, research has shown that the cells in the embryoid bodies begin to look and function like neurons when subjected to specific laboratory conditions. The researchers had an idea that these embryoid body cells in their nonspecialized state might become specialized as replacement neurons if placed into the area of the damaged spinal cord. So they carefully prepared cells from the embryoid bodies and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord of the paralyzed rats that had their motor neurons destroyed by the Sindbis virus.
To test this idea, the researchers selected from laboratory culture dishes barely differentiated embryonic germs cells that displayed the molecular markers of neural stem cells, including the proteins nestin and neuron specific enolase. They grew these cells in large quantities and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cords of partially paralyzed, Sindbis-virus-treated rats.
The response was impressive. Three months after the injections, many of the treated rats were able to move their hind limbs and walk, albeit clumsilywhile the rats that did not receive cell injections remained paralyzed. Moreover, at autopsy the researchers found that cells derived from human embryonic germ cells had migrated throughout the spinal fluid and continued to develop, displaying both the shape and molecular markers characteristic of mature motor neurons. The researchers are quick to caution that their results are preliminary, and that they do not know for certain whether the treatment helped the paralyzed rats because new neurons took the place of the old, or because trophic factors from the injected cells facilitated the recovery of the rats' remaining nerve cells and helped the rats improve in their ability to use their hind limbs.
Nor do they know how well this strategy will translate into a therapy for human neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. And they emphasize that there are many hurdles to cross before the use of stem cells to repair damaged motor neurons in patients can be considered. Nevertheless, researchers are excited about these results, which, if confirmed, would represent a major step toward using specialized stem cells from embryonic and fetal tissue sources to restore nervous system function.
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter8.asp
Slashdot Mirror
But of course, this does take more than a few months of research to investigate, so...
There, FTFY.
After literally years of experimenting with different distros to find one that was acceptable and worked with all my laptop hardware, I finally switched to Mint with Gnome 2, and was using it exclusively for 6 months. Then I upgrade hardware, and find that Mint does not support my wireless, at least not in an easy fashion, and now has 4 (!) desktop environments that I will have to install and check out, instead of the one that (mostly) worked.
Very discouraging, and a huge waste of time that could be used to actually accomplish something, or at least enjoy.
Never wanted one before.
But now that I can't buy one, I want it more than anything!
What's that you say? "Just get a used one for a third of the price?" "Wait until the next version of shiny?"
This is just pre-school psychology applied to marketing.
Baby is surrounded by thousands of toys. He ignores all save the one he's currently chewing on. Pick up one that's five feet away and take it out of the room. Baby drops current chew toy. Face turns red. Tantrum ensues. Baby miraculously speaks, "I want a Kindle Fire!"
I tend to run into this in the realm of audio processing.
Radial knobs and toggle switches, while pretty, are absolute bollocks with a mouse. I will use a plug-in that has linear sliders or numerical input if it sounds "good enough" rather than deal with the frustration of a pretty interface that slows my work down. It would have to sound amazing for me to bother.
If a non-audio app has knobs I simply won't use it, no matter what functionality it provides. I'd rather go without. It would be a different story if radial knob peripheral input devices were more standard for computers, but as it stands, keyboard and mouse are dominant.
This is the exact issue I was trying to draw attention to in my submission of Why Amazon is Google's Real Competition.
People 'shop' not just for consumer goods, but also for opinions about politics, childrearing and family strategies, education opportunities, medical information and doctor reviews, etc. They use the 'net as their go-to solution.
The average info seeker believes that the large web portals are neutral purveyors of information. The fact is, those companies' business models are only indirectly aligned with the interests or well being of the seeker.
Slashdotters are likely far from average in credulousness when it comes to web reviews, and sorting through the chaff.
How to haggle in a marketplace of ideas? "I'll trade you five reviews, and not a review more!"
The Twitbook, Yaoogle, Yelpazon shopping part is just a trite jumping off point for what I feel is a serious burgeoning problem in the marketplace of ideas. People 'shop' not just for consumer goods, but also for opinions about politics, childrearing and family strategies, education opportunities, etc. And they use the 'net as their go-to solution far more than even a library.
Perhaps more discerning people might think twice before accepting advice from "chamberofcommerce.com" (Though most probably think that is a reputable source. Let's use zealousguysinpointywhitehats.com instead.), but the average info seeker believes that the large web portals are neutral purveyors of information, when the fact is that those companies' business model is only indirectly involved with the best interests of the seeker.
2012 is the year of Finux on the the portable!
Medical health professionals are already reporting that many patients are able to do self diagnosis with the help of 'net research. "They come to us for confirmation of what they've already figured out."
Given the lack of access to quality health care in even 1st world societies, imagine the empowerment to diagnose biomedical ailments at the molecular level from commonly available handheld devices at home. http://www.nano.org.uk/news/1705
The ability to do real-time PCR(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymerase_chain_reaction), immunoassays to detect bacteria, viruses and cancers based on antigen-antibody reactions, dielectrophoresis, and other techniques would have an immense impact on general human health and treatment in the hands of qualified health professionals and citizens.
Doctors working in third world and inaccessible regions would have an incalculable leg up, not having to wait for non-existent sample testing.
I don't see this as a project for basement tinkerers, but the technology is coming along. Health care costs are threating to overwhelm world economies as populations burgeon and life expectancies increase.
I'll leave it to the other cynics to burst this bubble. I'd like to think there are still some optimistic dreamers out there. Let's hear some feedback from some of those, please.
Neal Stephenson always bears referring:
Mother Earth Motherboard: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass_pr.html
Most of the fishing-related damage is caused by trawlers, which tow big sacklike nets behind them. Trawlers seem designed for the purpose of damaging submarine cables. Various types of hardware are attached to the nets. In some cases, these are otter boards, which act something like rudders to push the net's mouth open. When bottom fish such as halibut are the target, a massive bar is placed across the front of the net with heavy tickler chains dangling from it; these flail against the bottom, stirring up the fish so they will rise up into the maw of the net.
Mere impact can be enough to wreck a cable, if it puts a leak in the insulation. Frequently, though, a net or anchor will snag a cable. If the ship is small and the cable is big, the cable may survive the encounter. There is a type of cable, used up until the advent of optical fiber, called 21-quad, which consists of 21 four-bundle pairs of cable and a coaxial line. It is 15 centimeters in diameter, and a single meter of it weighs 46 kilograms. If a passing ship should happen to catch such a cable with its anchor, it will follow a very simple procedure: abandon it and go buy a new anchor.
But modern cables are much smaller and lighter - a mere 0.85 kg per meter for the unarmored, deep-sea portions of the FLAG cable - and the ships most apt to snag them, trawlers, are getting bigger and more powerful. Now that fishermen have massacred most of the fish in shallower water, they are moving out deeper. Formerly, cable was plowed into the bottom in water shallower than 1,000 meters, which kept it away from the trawlers. Because of recent changes in fishing practices, the figure has been boosted to 2,000 meters. But this means that the old cables are still vulnerable.
When a trawler snags a cable, it will pull it up off the seafloor. How far it gets pulled depends on the weight of the cable, the amount of slack, and the size and horsepower of the ship. Even if the cable is not pulled all the way to the surface, it may get kinked - its minimum bending radius may be violated. If the trawler does succeed in hauling the cable all the way up out of the water, the only way out of the situation, or at least the simplest, is to cut the cable. Dave Handley once did a study of a cable that had been suddenly and mysteriously severed. Hauling up the cut end, he discovered that someone had sliced through it with a cutting torch.
There is also the obvious threat of sabotage by a hostile government, but, surprisingly, this almost never happens. When cypherpunk Doug Barnes was researching his Caribbean project, he spent some time looking into this, because it was exactly the kind of threat he was worried about in the case of a data haven. Somewhat to his own surprise and relief, he concluded that it simply wasn't going to happen. "Cutting a submarine cable," Barnes says, "is like starting a nuclear war. It's easy to do, the results are devastating, and as soon as one country does it, all of the others will retaliate.
Copyright © 1993-2004 The Condé Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © 1994-2003 Wired Digital, Inc. All rights reserved.
This is the DIY, open source version. Kinda clunky, but open and accessible. He's obviously a proponent of accessible education, a welcome sentiment.
The Apple/Nokia/Samsung version will be flip-phone configuration, no user serviceable or accessible parts, locked down and impossible to open up without destroying. It will feature multiple wireless protocols, wireless probes and accessories. It will not be upgradeable, and will be created as a designed obsolescence, throw away device. While you use it to explore the world around you, it will be gathering all your data to explore and categorize you.
It will also be backed by a war chest of patents used to deny the populace or small businesses from creating their own cheap, open, accessible versions.
Scoff all you like, but enjoy this handiwork while you still can. Or at least applaud.
Or somehow different than your microphone and webcam featured laptop? iPad anyone? Oh that's right, whenever an App has access to your cam a little light blinks to let you know.
Whew. Glad that's settled.
No country, big or small, is going to issue or back anonymous, untraceable digital currency. You might think they have. But it will be backdoored. Bet your boots.
The only untraceable cash the US is going to issue and distribute will be pallet loads of $100 bills. "Oops, it seems we've misplaced several billion dollars in 'small' bills. Oh well, chalk it up to a rounding error. At least it was only billions."
Have you researched the estate tax at all?
There are several credits against the tentative tax, the most important of which is a "unified credit" which can be thought of as providing for an "exemption equivalent" or exempted value with respect to the sum of the taxable estate and the taxable gifts during lifetime. For a person dying during 2006, 2007, or 2008, the "applicable exclusion amount" is $2,000,000, so if the sum of the taxable estate plus the "adjusted taxable gifts" made during lifetime equals $2,000,000 or less, there is no federal estate tax to pay. According to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, the applicable exclusion increased to $3,500,000 in 2009, the estate tax was repealed for estates of decedents dying in 2010, but then the Act "sunsets" in 2011 and the estate tax was to reappear with an applicable exclusion amount of only $1,000,000. However, On December 16, 2010, Congress passed the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which was signed into law by President Barack Obama on December 17, 2010. The 2010 Act changed, among other things, the rate structure for estates of decedents dying after December 31, 2009, subject to certain exceptions. It also served to reunify the estate tax credit (aka exemption equivalent) with the federal gift tax credit (aka exemption equivalent). The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.
Let's look at that again. The gift tax exemption is now equal to $5,000,000.
I remember seeing an aircraft of some sort in the daytime with a trail of fire coming out of the back of it. It was too far up to see if or what kind of wings it had. Didn't seem to be a rocket. Moved slow like a passenger jet. Never did figure out what it might have been. Was on the Northwest coast of USA.
Point taken about looting. Also, a distinction needs to be made between a duplication technique that actually reproduces a functioning item through molecular deposition of different elements, and what on the other hand is basically simply a plastic model.
The first possibility seems pretty far off in the future. Probably not for giant laboratories with force tunneling microscopes and inert atmosphere or vacuum facilities. But for the home? The economies of having the space for the equipment, buying the equipment, and getting feedstocks of pure elements is going to probably be accessible only to the super-rich for a long time to come. Not to mention the need for tech support, probably in the way of a dedicated position for an employee. A private size model with attendant equipment and storage is still going to be size of an entire large room, at least.
And why would most people bother when they can take advantage of the economy of scale and low prices of traditional industries, and the often low-waged labor used to produce it?
You'd only bother, likely, if you were trying to produce something that was illegal or banned from possession by the general populace. Which, given the ever intrusive nature of government will probably become more of an issue as time goes on. Again, however, why would you build up something like, say, a personal sidearm atom by atom, when it can be so easily created with a lathe and traditional metal working tools?
Lastly, the items most likely to be produced in the home would be commonplace modern banalities like toasters, smartphones, and toothbrushes. Not exactly a treasure trove for future garbage miners.
The "Diamond Age" vision of a replicator in every home with subscription to a "Feed" of raw materials is just not going to happen anytime soon. I could see a hacker collective maintaining one, but as soon as they run afoul of law enforcement, boom, single point of failure.
If/when civilization collapses, we're going to need examples of past technology. Everything from the butter churn on up. What if you were trying to recreate a movie projector and found that only the casing was preserved, with no internal workings? I understand the health issue for the public, but they should mothball one of those intact.
One function of museums is to be a repository of knowledge, art, and technology, for future generations. It's not the only function, but I would argue that it's the most important function. It's not just a display that you look at for entertainment.
Cory Doctorow has a book, Makers, from 2009 (available for DRM free download http://craphound.com/makers/download/ ) that talks about distributed open source museum spaces. Three years later the Smithsonian announces they're going to offer a part of the collection for worldwide printing.>
That's great. It will serve the surface educational mission of museums. Multimedia exhibition. But if you're at a post sea-rise far inland Argentinian coast trying to figure out how to make a steam engine, how are you going to make use of a rotting polymer copy?
They did this for a while. Maybe still? About 10-12 years ago. I forget what the market-speak trade name for it was. But they sampled at 1 Ghz. The trade magazines were divided in their opinions, and it must have died a fine death in the marketplace since no one here has referenced it This was definitely a recording format. .
I think we have to differentiate between mobile and home/studio listening. Considering the average playback hardware, for listening, 16/44 is fine for the 99.999 percent of listeners. For mobile listening 192kbps MP3 will exceed the needs of most. I prefer 320 kbps because it makes percussion sound better.
Most people listen in a car, bus, at work, on the job, etc. Low noise floor and dynamic range are moot. the reproduction amplifiers in cheap phone/pods aren't up to the task anyway, much less the average headphone/earbud.
I hesitate to use the term "audiophile" because of its pejorative connotation, but for people with above average sensitivity in hearing and training in sound artifacts, I think high resolution files are a good thing. Not only for private listening, but for a possible future when we regain a public domain and the remixing/sampling world takes off again.
For an analogy, think of DVD compilations of old TV shows that were encoded from tapes of television broadcasts. They look...ok...but when they go back to the original masters and re-release them there is an appreciable difference. Strangely though, consumer television/video playback formats are increasing in resolution, while common audio formats have been regressing.
Methinks you don't spend a lot of time on a bus. I have. I have rarely - no, make that never - heard an important cell phone call on the bus.
They usually go along the lines of:
"Aw damn, no you didn't."
"...and then she.... And then she did, again!"
"I'm so sick of your shit. Listen to me. (louder) Listen to me!"
It's always just inane crap. They're just trying to amuse themselves. Obnoxiously. It's amusing only to themselves.
I took a look at the site and it sounds like they are hammering on the copy/paste functionality. Well, and the Sarbanes/Oxley and ISO compliance.
But seriously, Collaborative Terminal? Sounds like a pit of snakes. I'm sure it's very lovely in person.
I constantly have people come to me asking for a "calculator".
"What about that thousand dollar calculator you have sitting on your desk?", I ask.
They stare in confusion.
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office win for the win
Worse than shadow profiles, there is a publicly viewable profile with my full name on it in Facebook. No idea how it got there. It has *no* information in it. Nada.
While I would prefer it was not there, the process to remove it is ridiculous.
You have to give them:
Full Name
Address
Phone Number
email address
And a scan of your government I.D.!!!!
Why the hell would I give them all that information to remove a profile that has no information associated with it? So, there it stands, mockingly.
"Ha, ha, what are you going to do about it?", they say. If I actually go through their process to remove it, who's to say the next time they create this fake profile they won't populate it with all the information they collected to remove the blank one?
Even if Congress writes privacy laws to cover this kind of data collection, misrepresentation, use of likeness, etc. it will be chock full of loopholes and exemptions specifically written in by - you guessed it - Facebook! As well as advertisers, big Pharma/Retailers, and any number of big pocket, lobby rich corps.
This points to the distinction between "life" and "alive". Is roast beef life? No. It was once life.
So, is a virus life?
Is a bacterium or spore floating in space at super-low temperature alive? What if it has had 10 percent of genetic information damaged by cosmic radiation?
Doesn't it cut both ways? With the major govs sinkholing all digital communications, shouldn't private citizens therefore securely encrypt their messages as well?
Which is the answer, opacity or transparency? Who gets the upper hand? Government, law enforcement, and emergency services (all paid for by citizens), or the freedom loving citizens themselves?
The arguments on both sides have valid points, but what solution fosters the values of a society that we can salute to?
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Gimmee Liberty
It's the corporate way.
Salutes.
In this new study, the researchers used a rat model of ALS to test for possible nerve cell- restoring properties of stem cells. The rats were exposed to Sindbis virus, which infects the central nervous system and destroys the motor neurons in the spinal cord. Rats that survive are left with paralyzed muscles in their hindquarters and weakened back limbs. Scientists assess the degree of impairment by measuring the rats' movement, quantifying electrical activity in the nerves serving the back limbs, and visually judging the extent of nerve damage through a microscope.
The researchers wanted to see whether stem cells could restore nerves and improve mobility in rats. Because scientists have had difficulty sustaining stem cell lines derived from rat embryos, the investigators conducted their experiments with embryonic germ cells that John Gearhart and colleagues isolated from human fetal tissue in 1998. These cells can produce unchanged copies of themselves when maintained in culture, and they form into clumps called embryoid bodies. Under certain conditions, research has shown that the cells in the embryoid bodies begin to look and function like neurons when subjected to specific laboratory conditions. The researchers had an idea that these embryoid body cells in their nonspecialized state might become specialized as replacement neurons if placed into the area of the damaged spinal cord. So they carefully prepared cells from the embryoid bodies and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cord of the paralyzed rats that had their motor neurons destroyed by the Sindbis virus.
To test this idea, the researchers selected from laboratory culture dishes barely differentiated embryonic germs cells that displayed the molecular markers of neural stem cells, including the proteins nestin and neuron specific enolase. They grew these cells in large quantities and injected them into the fluid surrounding the spinal cords of partially paralyzed, Sindbis-virus-treated rats.
The response was impressive. Three months after the injections, many of the treated rats were able to move their hind limbs and walk, albeit clumsilywhile the rats that did not receive cell injections remained paralyzed. Moreover, at autopsy the researchers found that cells derived from human embryonic germ cells had migrated throughout the spinal fluid and continued to develop, displaying both the shape and molecular markers characteristic of mature motor neurons. The researchers are quick to caution that their results are preliminary, and that they do not know for certain whether the treatment helped the paralyzed rats because new neurons took the place of the old, or because trophic factors from the injected cells facilitated the recovery of the rats' remaining nerve cells and helped the rats improve in their ability to use their hind limbs.
Nor do they know how well this strategy will translate into a therapy for human neurodegenerative diseases like ALS. And they emphasize that there are many hurdles to cross before the use of stem cells to repair damaged motor neurons in patients can be considered. Nevertheless, researchers are excited about these results, which, if confirmed, would represent a major step toward using specialized stem cells from embryonic and fetal tissue sources to restore nervous system function. http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/chapter8.asp
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I am not in Rome, I am in a rush.
Remind me again how those sheep got those broken bones? ---- Recycle used countries.