Yes, but this is stupid. If you wish to go all the way down to "I think therefore I am", and try to come back up with what can be proved and what can't, then you're in an idealistic world of nothing.
Is this rock real? Yes/no? bzzzt, sorry, you can't be sure you're not dreaming. Is gravity real? Yes/no? Oh, sorry, you can't be sure your senses aren't being deluded. Is Santa Clause real? Yes/no? Ah.. you're a Santa agnostic?
Seriously, is this really how you think and talk with people? Well sorry, but fuck that.
The reality is that you have to make decisions on what life is, what exists, and what is "true" all the time based upon the best evidence you can discern from your senses. We all make these decisions all day long based upon imperfect evidence. A human is an imperfect being and you simply can't get away from that.
Do you know what science is? It's a way we have devised to try and remove the human element from understanding the world around us. If multiple people do an experiment and it always repeats, then the single person must not be screwing it up. The same for a double blind test. Remove the human from the equation as much as possible until you're left with "reality". What you want is pure hard cold data uninfluenced by what human's want it to be true and driven by what actually is.
But even with all this, you can't be sure of anything... and the thing is, neither can anyone else. (of course, you can't be 100% sure of this either!) There is absolutely nothing you can be sure of.
So if you really want to live in your ivory tower of purity so you can be assured of your superiority, well go for it. When someone asks you for directions to the local gas station, make sure you add on the qualifiers "provided i'm not crazy", and "if it hasn't moved from 3 hours ago", and "if that portion of the matrix wasn't erased by a virus."
In the end, we all create a world around us based upon the evidence available. I have no problem not adding the qualifier that "I don't know if" when I say that Santa Clause doesn't exist, why should I do that for someone's sky father?
If you want to be perfectly and logically correct and NEVER draw any conclusion because your data could be flawed, then go ahead. I will draw conclusions based upon my best ability to see the world around me for what it is. If i'm presented with new data, I have no problem changing my mind, but until then, I'll draw conclusions based upon the data I've seen in my life and simply say "there is no god".
(BTW, this is a conclusion, not a "scientific fact" if that makes you feel any better.)
"It's not that scary. I'm sure I made it easy to tell the difference between Hooman v1.0 and Hooman v2.0 and therefore we can tell who has a soul or not. I remember it was something obvious..... Skin color maybe? Nose size? Hair color? Shoot, I don't remember right now. I'll have to go back and look at the revision history. But don't worry, I'll get back to you and tell you what it is." -God
$0.25 per American per years is only 75 million. In reality we spent closer to 25 billion per year... this equates to $83 per American per year (using rough numbers).
"Your corporate overlords are you friends. They are innovators and job creators they deserve to make the highly efficient very wealthy. Quit your whining peasants and keep buying lottery tickets and playing cents per byte for SMS and maybe one day you too will become 'highly efficient' . LOL... ok, i'm just kidding about the last part.... now shut up and laugh!"
It is *extremely* rare that patents prevent someone from entering the marketplace. You hear about it, but it never happens. Why? Because patents verdicts are used primary as a means to negotiate a settlement. If the patent holder can get a judge to say that they can restrict someone from entering the marketplace then they can get more money to force the violator to license the patent. It's purely leverage. In the end, the patent holder *wants* the other party to go to market with a very successful product so they can make a killing of licensing fees. It's simple, the only way anyone gets any money in this is if people go to market with successful products. If nobody has a successful product, NO ONE makes any money. Not the patent trolls, not the engineers, not the CEO's, not the workers.
The only way you make money is to have a successful product. You need that before you need any defense against patents. If you don't have a successful product, you don't need patent protection! As a company, that is your primary goal. If you are making a successful product and making money, you can always pay people to go away (i.e. license patents).
On Windows, anybody anywhere can make any software and sell it to anyone without talking to Microsoft. It is the most successful open platform around on both an economic and popularity basis. That was my point. If you think there is a better example please provide it.
Patents were important, but I think they were not the core issue. Peopel here on Slashdot get too hyped up about patents. Yes they're important, but they are no where near as important as actually being successful in the market place. Motorola adds a much needed hardware component to the google lineup. They have kicked ass with Android, but their aspirations are more to move into the tablet and TV markets and to do that they need successful hardware. It's been pretty obvious that they have had issues with the partnering approach and having a large mature and skilled partner like Motorola pulls the pieces together. As long as their managers and engineers can get everyone in sync, this will be a powerhouse combination.
But again, the goal is selling stuff people want to buy. Patents are not the do-all and end-all.
Seriously? The definition we all think as an "open ecosystem" is the PC. The opposite of an "open ecosystem" is the Apple Apps Store or locked down cell phones.
All I have to say to MS is "show me". Words are cheap.
Ok, here's the thing... batteries suck... but so does hauling around a big engine that turns Thorium into heat and then heat into spinning motion. How are we doing that anyway? Carnot cycle with water evaporating and then condensing? That sounds like a lot of excess weight to me. And then at the end, with all this extra weight you then have to put batteries in the car in order to gain the efficiency of regenerative breaking (which you'd get for free in a battery car). This just a pipe dream that doesn't take a real look at the engineering problems involved.
??? What the hell are you talking about? Power lines are 93.5% efficient. They're the easiest part of the equation we're looking at. And if you need more due to electric cars, then build some more. They're not rocket science. They've only been around almost unchanged for over 100 years.
Why put a mini nuclear reactor on your vehicle instead of just using the reactor to create electricity and then powering your cars/bike's battery?
The idea of converting heat into forward momentum on a moving vehicle seems down right hard in comparison to slapping a few batteries together with an electric motor. Isn't the real problem just creating the power in the first place, not the issue of getting it to turn wheels? We know how to do that already.
LOL.... I got my masters in engineering from USC about 10 years back... I looked around the room and typically I was the only blond person there. I'd estimate that 75% of the people were of asian decent (Indian, and various asian countries). They're not coming to steal the research, they're coming to do the research!
The structure of this game is more like an MMO than anything else.
I think this really nails it. This totally rings true. Blizzard wants this to be WoW light. They want people to focus on getting exp and items and looking to beef up their characters in a single persistent universe. No longer will this be about gaming with friends in 10,000 different instances of the game, but rather this will be about gaming in a single online universe. If you think of it in that light, Blizzards worldview makes total sense.
Giving people the ability to level up offline opens the game up to hackers to abuse. If you factor this in with the real economy market place, this is even more substantiated. If you have real money involved you have to be ultra careful regarding hackers and abuse. Giving people the ability to dungeon offline in an MMO is non-standard. Blizzard is just so absorbed in this idea of the game that they're surprised that anyone expects anything different.
If, on the other hand, you wish to play more single player or just with some friends a-la LAN style, then this is crap. Honestly, I'm not sure I care. I think I'd prefer if they had a single player that was disconnected from the MMO universe, and then you get the best of both worlds, but *shrug*, that's just not something I'm very interested in.
An Audi A4? Why not just say a Mazda Miata or other car that doesn't meet my criteria at all? We aren't shopping like crazy compared to our peer group. The most we spend on is groceries and stuff at home depot to fix up the beaten up foreclosed house we bought. An Audi A4 is outside our price range unless we buy on the used market.
If my kids were out of car seats that would be manageable....it doesn't sound fun, but it could work. Try fitting three car seats in a row in a car. If you can do it you must have a narrower brand that I've got because it simply doesn't work. Each seat takes up more space than a singe seat so three in a row doesn't work.
So numbers: What you drive gets 18-26 mpg and 24-32 mpg. I'm not driving a Suburban or other monster SUV. My MDX that can fit 7 (and not uncommonly does) gets 15-21. Yes, sucky. Worst that I'd like, but its a trade off for the convenience of the vehicle, and a trade off I fully stand behind. .
Minivans aren't more fuel efficient. I own an acura MDX that gets 15 21 city hwy. Look at a minivan and tell me what it gets? They aren't eco friendly either. For our uses an SUV works better and we found a great deal on the used market when we bought it several years ago so it was a winner all around.
And not actually more fuel efficient. We don't have a "monster big" SUV as a different poster said, we have one that gets 15-21 MPG... which is exactly the same as the average minivan.
Economics also played a role in the purchase in what we could get on the used car market for the price we were looking for.
The problem was that I kept seeing people compare the LED bulbs to incandescent bulbs. But who's still using incandescents anymore? If you have *any* desire to save power or be green you're using CFLs already because the price is sooo damn cheap. So the market competition isn't between incandescents vs LEDs, but rather CFLs vs LEDs. That's what I was getting frustrated with, too many people pulling up the stupid comparison of incandescents vs LEDs.
Small cars lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident, true. Small cars lose vs 18 wheelers on freeways, true.
Also true: Big ass SUVs also lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident. Big ass SUVs also get squashed like bugs when hitting 18 semi-trucks on the freeway.
So what was your point? The weight advantage of the "big" SUVs only helps you when you're running into small cars in accidents. So you're basically making yourself safer at the cost of the safety of other people on the road who are in smaller cars. Is it any wonder that people in small cars don't really like this?
I'm as green as the next Liberal, but I've got 3 kids in child seats (we need three rows of seating) and I make lots of runs to home depot. We don't own an SUV for safety or to see "over and around" other vehicles, but because its big and can haul a lot of stuff and people. *My* car is an eco friendly car (SUV is my wife's car) because I just use it to commute, but as much as I hate monster big SUVs, sometimes they do have justifiable uses and IMHO, that's never to "be a tank".
I'd prefer if you made my SUV as light and fuel efficient as possible. Carrying around 6000 lbs of steel isn't what will save you, modern safety features will.
This is just stupid. Has no one heard of compact florescent? Why does no one even mention them in these discussions. They're cheap and low power already. I've been getting them at $1.50 per bulb at home depot. Instant on and long life (at least I haven't had one go bad on me yet.)
I don't think LED bulbs have to compete with incandescent, but rather with compact florescent. When you can get something that's 15W for $1.50 why would you get something for 10W for $40? (There are some advantages to LEDs, but they don't seem like they're worth $38.50 per bulb)
When you're machining stuff you have to be able to get a spinning drill bit into the part to cut away material. You're starting with a block of plastic or metal and removing material, so you have to have access for your drill bit to get into position and cut. There are things like creating a hollow cavity inside the part or create curved holes (straight drill bit and all), etc, that you can't do with that type of technology.
When you're doing an additive process you can create things right from the 3D printer that you can't do with even the best 6 axis machining tools available because you're creating them one "pixel" at a time from the ground up. Molds have the problem in that you must remove the mold when you're done. With 3D printing you can print hallow cavities (depending on the 3D printing process) and fanciful delicate features that you can' never machine or mold due to the limitations of those processes.
Actually, in my experience, most of the professional line of printers use a laser on material and only the hobbyist ones use a "print head". These still take hours upon hours to do small pieces. Somewhere on the ballpark of 20 hours per linear inch of height (area you get for free because of the laser, but height takes time because each step needs to cure slightly before the next layer goes down.) So the real problem is around chemistry rather than mechanics, and you're much less likely to improve that 1000x in a few years.
Slashdot Mirror
maybe not a capital offense, but if it were a crime, life in this country would be so much better.
d
Yes, but this is stupid. If you wish to go all the way down to "I think therefore I am", and try to come back up with what can be proved and what can't, then you're in an idealistic world of nothing.
Is this rock real? Yes/no? bzzzt, sorry, you can't be sure you're not dreaming.
Is gravity real? Yes/no? Oh, sorry, you can't be sure your senses aren't being deluded.
Is Santa Clause real? Yes/no? Ah.. you're a Santa agnostic?
Seriously, is this really how you think and talk with people? Well sorry, but fuck that.
The reality is that you have to make decisions on what life is, what exists, and what is "true" all the time based upon the best evidence you can discern from your senses. We all make these decisions all day long based upon imperfect evidence. A human is an imperfect being and you simply can't get away from that.
Do you know what science is? It's a way we have devised to try and remove the human element from understanding the world around us. If multiple people do an experiment and it always repeats, then the single person must not be screwing it up. The same for a double blind test. Remove the human from the equation as much as possible until you're left with "reality". What you want is pure hard cold data uninfluenced by what human's want it to be true and driven by what actually is.
But even with all this, you can't be sure of anything... and the thing is, neither can anyone else. (of course, you can't be 100% sure of this either!) There is absolutely nothing you can be sure of.
So if you really want to live in your ivory tower of purity so you can be assured of your superiority, well go for it. When someone asks you for directions to the local gas station, make sure you add on the qualifiers "provided i'm not crazy", and "if it hasn't moved from 3 hours ago", and "if that portion of the matrix wasn't erased by a virus."
In the end, we all create a world around us based upon the evidence available. I have no problem not adding the qualifier that "I don't know if" when I say that Santa Clause doesn't exist, why should I do that for someone's sky father?
If you want to be perfectly and logically correct and NEVER draw any conclusion because your data could be flawed, then go ahead. I will draw conclusions based upon my best ability to see the world around me for what it is. If i'm presented with new data, I have no problem changing my mind, but until then, I'll draw conclusions based upon the data I've seen in my life and simply say "there is no god".
(BTW, this is a conclusion, not a "scientific fact" if that makes you feel any better.)
d
"It's not that scary. I'm sure I made it easy to tell the difference between Hooman v1.0 and Hooman v2.0 and therefore we can tell who has a soul or not. I remember it was something obvious..... Skin color maybe? Nose size? Hair color? Shoot, I don't remember right now. I'll have to go back and look at the revision history. But don't worry, I'll get back to you and tell you what it is." -God
$0.25 per American per years is only 75 million. In reality we spent closer to 25 billion per year... this equates to $83 per American per year (using rough numbers).
d
"Your corporate overlords are you friends. They are innovators and job creators they deserve to make the highly efficient very wealthy. Quit your whining peasants and keep buying lottery tickets and playing cents per byte for SMS and maybe one day you too will become 'highly efficient' . LOL... ok, i'm just kidding about the last part.... now shut up and laugh!"
It is *extremely* rare that patents prevent someone from entering the marketplace. You hear about it, but it never happens. Why? Because patents verdicts are used primary as a means to negotiate a settlement. If the patent holder can get a judge to say that they can restrict someone from entering the marketplace then they can get more money to force the violator to license the patent. It's purely leverage. In the end, the patent holder *wants* the other party to go to market with a very successful product so they can make a killing of licensing fees. It's simple, the only way anyone gets any money in this is if people go to market with successful products. If nobody has a successful product, NO ONE makes any money. Not the patent trolls, not the engineers, not the CEO's, not the workers.
The only way you make money is to have a successful product. You need that before you need any defense against patents. If you don't have a successful product, you don't need patent protection! As a company, that is your primary goal. If you are making a successful product and making money, you can always pay people to go away (i.e. license patents).
d
On Windows, anybody anywhere can make any software and sell it to anyone without talking to Microsoft. It is the most successful open platform around on both an economic and popularity basis. That was my point. If you think there is a better example please provide it.
d
Patents were important, but I think they were not the core issue. Peopel here on Slashdot get too hyped up about patents. Yes they're important, but they are no where near as important as actually being successful in the market place. Motorola adds a much needed hardware component to the google lineup. They have kicked ass with Android, but their aspirations are more to move into the tablet and TV markets and to do that they need successful hardware. It's been pretty obvious that they have had issues with the partnering approach and having a large mature and skilled partner like Motorola pulls the pieces together. As long as their managers and engineers can get everyone in sync, this will be a powerhouse combination.
But again, the goal is selling stuff people want to buy. Patents are not the do-all and end-all.
d
Seriously? The definition we all think as an "open ecosystem" is the PC. The opposite of an "open ecosystem" is the Apple Apps Store or locked down cell phones.
All I have to say to MS is "show me". Words are cheap.
d
Ok, here's the thing... batteries suck... but so does hauling around a big engine that turns Thorium into heat and then heat into spinning motion. How are we doing that anyway? Carnot cycle with water evaporating and then condensing? That sounds like a lot of excess weight to me. And then at the end, with all this extra weight you then have to put batteries in the car in order to gain the efficiency of regenerative breaking (which you'd get for free in a battery car). This just a pipe dream that doesn't take a real look at the engineering problems involved.
d
??? What the hell are you talking about? Power lines are 93.5% efficient. They're the easiest part of the equation we're looking at. And if you need more due to electric cars, then build some more. They're not rocket science. They've only been around almost unchanged for over 100 years.
d
So I don't get it...
Why put a mini nuclear reactor on your vehicle instead of just using the reactor to create electricity and then powering your cars/bike's battery?
The idea of converting heat into forward momentum on a moving vehicle seems down right hard in comparison to slapping a few batteries together with an electric motor. Isn't the real problem just creating the power in the first place, not the issue of getting it to turn wheels? We know how to do that already.
d
LOL.... I got my masters in engineering from USC about 10 years back... I looked around the room and typically I was the only blond person there. I'd estimate that 75% of the people were of asian decent (Indian, and various asian countries). They're not coming to steal the research, they're coming to do the research!
d
The structure of this game is more like an MMO than anything else.
I think this really nails it. This totally rings true. Blizzard wants this to be WoW light. They want people to focus on getting exp and items and looking to beef up their characters in a single persistent universe. No longer will this be about gaming with friends in 10,000 different instances of the game, but rather this will be about gaming in a single online universe. If you think of it in that light, Blizzards worldview makes total sense.
Giving people the ability to level up offline opens the game up to hackers to abuse. If you factor this in with the real economy market place, this is even more substantiated. If you have real money involved you have to be ultra careful regarding hackers and abuse. Giving people the ability to dungeon offline in an MMO is non-standard. Blizzard is just so absorbed in this idea of the game that they're surprised that anyone expects anything different.
If, on the other hand, you wish to play more single player or just with some friends a-la LAN style, then this is crap. Honestly, I'm not sure I care. I think I'd prefer if they had a single player that was disconnected from the MMO universe, and then you get the best of both worlds, but *shrug*, that's just not something I'm very interested in.
d
I completely agree.
d
An Audi A4? Why not just say a Mazda Miata or other car that doesn't meet my criteria at all? We aren't shopping like crazy compared to our peer group. The most we spend on is groceries and stuff at home depot to fix up the beaten up foreclosed house we bought. An Audi A4 is outside our price range unless we buy on the used market.
d
If my kids were out of car seats that would be manageable... .it doesn't sound fun, but it could work. Try fitting three car seats in a row in a car. If you can do it you must have a narrower brand that I've got because it simply doesn't work. Each seat takes up more space than a singe seat so three in a row doesn't work.
So numbers: What you drive gets 18-26 mpg and 24-32 mpg. I'm not driving a Suburban or other monster SUV. My MDX that can fit 7 (and not uncommonly does) gets 15-21. Yes, sucky. Worst that I'd like, but its a trade off for the convenience of the vehicle, and a trade off I fully stand behind. .
d
Minivans aren't more fuel efficient. I own an acura MDX that gets 15 21 city hwy. Look at a minivan and tell me what it gets? They aren't eco friendly either. For our uses an SUV works better and we found a great deal on the used market when we bought it several years ago so it was a winner all around.
d
And not actually more fuel efficient. We don't have a "monster big" SUV as a different poster said, we have one that gets 15-21 MPG... which is exactly the same as the average minivan.
Economics also played a role in the purchase in what we could get on the used car market for the price we were looking for.
d
The problem was that I kept seeing people compare the LED bulbs to incandescent bulbs. But who's still using incandescents anymore? If you have *any* desire to save power or be green you're using CFLs already because the price is sooo damn cheap. So the market competition isn't between incandescents vs LEDs, but rather CFLs vs LEDs. That's what I was getting frustrated with, too many people pulling up the stupid comparison of incandescents vs LEDs.
d
Small cars lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident, true.
Small cars lose vs 18 wheelers on freeways, true.
Also true:
Big ass SUVs also lose vs mass transit vehicles in an accident.
Big ass SUVs also get squashed like bugs when hitting 18 semi-trucks on the freeway.
So what was your point? The weight advantage of the "big" SUVs only helps you when you're running into small cars in accidents. So you're basically making yourself safer at the cost of the safety of other people on the road who are in smaller cars. Is it any wonder that people in small cars don't really like this?
d
I'm as green as the next Liberal, but I've got 3 kids in child seats (we need three rows of seating) and I make lots of runs to home depot. We don't own an SUV for safety or to see "over and around" other vehicles, but because its big and can haul a lot of stuff and people. *My* car is an eco friendly car (SUV is my wife's car) because I just use it to commute, but as much as I hate monster big SUVs, sometimes they do have justifiable uses and IMHO, that's never to "be a tank".
I'd prefer if you made my SUV as light and fuel efficient as possible. Carrying around 6000 lbs of steel isn't what will save you, modern safety features will.
d
This is just stupid. Has no one heard of compact florescent? Why does no one even mention them in these discussions. They're cheap and low power already. I've been getting them at $1.50 per bulb at home depot. Instant on and long life (at least I haven't had one go bad on me yet.)
I don't think LED bulbs have to compete with incandescent, but rather with compact florescent. When you can get something that's 15W for $1.50 why would you get something for 10W for $40? (There are some advantages to LEDs, but they don't seem like they're worth $38.50 per bulb)
d
When you're machining stuff you have to be able to get a spinning drill bit into the part to cut away material. You're starting with a block of plastic or metal and removing material, so you have to have access for your drill bit to get into position and cut. There are things like creating a hollow cavity inside the part or create curved holes (straight drill bit and all), etc, that you can't do with that type of technology.
When you're doing an additive process you can create things right from the 3D printer that you can't do with even the best 6 axis machining tools available because you're creating them one "pixel" at a time from the ground up. Molds have the problem in that you must remove the mold when you're done. With 3D printing you can print hallow cavities (depending on the 3D printing process) and fanciful delicate features that you can' never machine or mold due to the limitations of those processes.
d
Actually, in my experience, most of the professional line of printers use a laser on material and only the hobbyist ones use a "print head". These still take hours upon hours to do small pieces. Somewhere on the ballpark of 20 hours per linear inch of height (area you get for free because of the laser, but height takes time because each step needs to cure slightly before the next layer goes down.) So the real problem is around chemistry rather than mechanics, and you're much less likely to improve that 1000x in a few years.
d