Actually, this fits in exactly with my point exactly. You use printers to print letters, or one-off items. You don't use them to print books. You still go to a bookstore (or Amazon) to buy books because it's cheaper than printing out a book at home on your printer and a bound book is more directly what you want. The same economic models would hold true for 3D printers. Very little of what you buy today is a single lump of plastic formed into a specific shape.
There are two problems with doing such a thing. The first is that to create a part that matches this toy, it's often difficult to make an accurate 3D model of the part in a computer. This is of course required in order to make this useful. If you had a really good and accurate 3D scanner then you can get away with out the skill of 3D modeling and a really good set of calipers. This is hard to do, but I think it's easier to get to the "really good 3D scanner" than it is to get to a "really good and affordable 3D printer". (The 3D scanner is more about software, while the 3D printer is more about hardware.)
So once you have the model, you now need to print it out. If you get lucky and the material you need is hard plastic, then bingo you're good. If you're unlucky, the part wants to be a bit rubberized or something more flexible. Then you're screwed. Ok... next problem is coloring. If you're fixing a toy, you THEN have to whip out a handy dandy paint can. A few (one?) 3D printers on the market can now do color... so maybe in 20 years this will be common. If it's being sold to the home market, this is probably a good assumption. So ok, color is handled. Now comes problem #2, toner.
This is like printer toner. The material you use to print the product costs money... and the companies that sell this take their business model from the ink-jet printer/razerblade markets. The material for printing is expensive. If this is a tiny piece, no problem, $0.30 or something... for a larger piece, a few bucks. So if you're fixing a toy, you may have just spent $1.50 to fix a $5 dollar toy. A bargain you say? Then go back and factor in the cost of the 3D printer and the 3D scanner and your time. (Today a block of around 50 sq inches is around $1000)
There are times when it would be useful to have this capability at home, I agree, but I don't think they will make up the cost of the 3D printer for anyone but the hobbyist... even if it is a *cheap* thousand dollars or something.
Pollution primary comes from three sources... nasty chemicals used in manufacturing, mining, and power generation. And your solution is to put manufacturing near us? Currently, the 3D printing that I've seen is only plastic or in the case of some home-brew kids, epoxy. All other things you'll need to get from your current sources and plastic molding is not where the nasty chemicals are!
All the nasty chemicals used in PCB manufacturing, silicon chip manufacturing, cars, power generation, etc etc etc etc, are still done in the exact same place. This isn't going to revolutionize things as much as mildly shift the way things are done. Mass manufacturing will still be done in low cost regions. Anytime we can outsource pollution generating industries we will. All of the core problems you hint at will still be the same!
This isn't going to do what you think it is going to do.
Maybe you didn't fully read my post... My whole point was that 3D printing is good for a subset of things. "Custom stuff, prototypes, one-offs, etc. That's it's advantage." But the idea people have that they will product all their household goods with it is just naive. Hell, I think it's awesome just compared to paying a local company $300-$500 dollars to turn a part in 2 days!
Look, 3D printers are cool. They're awesome for anyone who ever wanted to build something quickly. I use one at work regularity so I fully appreciate the technology..... BUT they are just not cost effective compared to mass manufacturing processes.
There are often many different ways to build something in manufacturing. You can machine something, mold something, 3D print something, etc, and many different flavors of each type of manufacturing. It will be 50 years before 3D printing a lego is anywhere near as cheap as just molding a lego if ever. This is the way of things. 3D printing is awesome for doing small custom things and giving you the ability to do stuff that you either couldn't do before or that would take you a lot of time and skill to develop on your own.
Let me give you a simple example. I use our 3D printer to manufacture small plastic pieces used in semi-conductors assemblies. This is not my primary job, just a skill that allows me to get my real job done faster. The size of the pieces I print out are around 2" x 2" x 0.5" or smaller. If I try to mass manufacturer them then I can *maybe* do them around 1 per hour. (I have to fill the platter with say 20 of them and it'll take me 20 hours to complete). This will get me accuracy that is not quite as good as molding or machining, but it's within an order of magnitude.
So, it's not better, not cheaper, and not faster (on a per piece basis). What it gets me is small-quantity-cheap. Custom stuff, prototypes, one-offs, etc. That's it's advantage. AND it can also do some stuff traditional machining/molding just can't do ever. These are this technology's sweet spots. Even if you give the technology 10 or 20 years, you're not going to compete with molding. It's just not cost effective.
Yes 3D printing is awesome. Yes it gives us the ability to prototype stuff in 6 hours or overnight. Yes it's cheap for stuff like that, but it's just not the be-all and do-all that the "tea, Earl gray" line would have you expect. It will be rare that you will save money by printing out your own stuff even ignoring the cost of the machine itself.
Does anyone know a good place to buy solar panels on the open market? What i'm really interested in is seeing the metrics compared. I know thin film is cheapest, but least efficient, but I want to see the cost performance trade offs somewhere and I haven't been able to find it. Anyone know of a good website that has this?
Why the hell would we try to shoehorn a new technology someplace that doesn't fit well. That's just stupid. However there are plenty of places where solar power works really well. Over here in California we do tend to use a fair chunk of electricity ourselves. Solar power is a fantastic option since we have large parts of our state and many neighboring states that are pretty much unpopulated useless desert... AND our maximum power usage runs in lock step with high temperature summer days when air con is running at maximum and solar power is at maximum efficiency.
Why do I care about energy storage? Another stupid argument. Worry about that if solar power can (excuse me while I try to say this with a straight face)... become the dominant power generation source here in the US, THEN worry about energy storage. Here on the west coast we use power during the day, and it's just damn fine that solar generates power DURING THE DAY. There are plenty of other technologies that generate power at night that there really isn't any need to make solar do that..... yet.
Pick the low hanging fruit first. If you try to force something new into a place where it doesn't really fit you just give the naysayers that many more stones to throw.
Funny... I'm pretty sure the FCC is part of the government and they regulate the "speech" that is shown on TV. They specifically say that certain material is inappropriate (and thus banned) from certain hours because they are prime kid watching hours. Why is this ok when "regulating" other things isn't?
There have also been laws used against people who provide pornography to kids, is sex sooo much worse than violence?
I'm confused... doesn't this already apply to movies and TV? Can a child rent or watch a rated R movie by themselves? Isn't the FCC regulating the TV my children see by some puritan standard? How is this any different from what already exists?
I don't see how this is a problem... just make the reported bandwidth a statistical number. For example, the average data speed of each customer is X... or the 10th percentile and 90th percentile data rate for every packet of information. If a phone company only pays for towers that are in non-ideal locations so their customers more often see crappy signal strength, then that should be apparent in the information provided. This is not a flaw in reporting, but something that we should see in the data.
Do we also pay for listing the octane quantity on the sides of gas stations? Do we also pay for the calorie labels on the sides of food? The reporting of fuel economy of cars before you buy them? I'll take that cost any-day.
I can't believe anyone would bitch and moan about this. This is an awesome idea. This is what regulation should be, forcing clear and equal reporting of information about a product so the customer can make the best informed decision possible.
The only sad thing about this bill is that brilliance like this doesn't occur more often in politics.
The problem is, this is not a fact based exercise. If you have a sporting event and a ref makes a bad call, the you can watch the replay and say "yep, bad call." Here's the set of rules, this is what actually happened, the person stepped out and the ref didn't see it. However in this case you're basically arguing philosophy and as such, there are few if any hard answers. Can the government use the commerce clause to outlaw cannabis? Well that's a matter of definitions. If you define things a certain way, then no. If you define things a different way, then yes. But who makes up the definitions? You? Me? The original authors of the constitution or law? There is not a hard "truth" to be found.
So, baring some measurable truth, the founders developed a referee that makes the final call on this decision. I'm not making the appeal to authority fallacy because the definition of constitutionality *is* the supreme court. You don't get to make the decision. Talking heads on TV or radio don't get to make the decision. Only the supreme court gets to rule if something is constitutional or not. I may not always like their rulings (I truly despise some of the more recent ones) but there are no facts to be had here. We're talking philosophy and opinion and definitions.
I think The Truth is on my side, you think The Truth is on your side, but all we're really arguing here is opinions and definitions. In the end this is a totally uninteresting argument and one that is only a distraction to the real argument. The REAL argument is what government services are beneficial for us as a group to pay for and which ones aren't. I say there is benefit and efficiencies to having a public health care system and you don't. Now THAT's an interesting conversation to have. I say the method we use to pay for the government should be slated toward taxing the rich, and you don't. That's an interesting conversation to have. (These are made up examples - I'm not trying to put words in your mouth) These arguments we can bring metrics and statistics to the table to try and justify the correct amount and best method of government involvement in a particular area. That's the real meat of what we're trying to argue, what path should we take to make our lives better.
The constitutional argument is just boring and lame because in the end there is nothing to be gained by "winning" because the supreme court STILL controls the definition of what is constitutional or not. =(
"I think most people there are either overreacting or being fed something..."
Ok... let me do a quick sanity check. Is there anyone here who believes ethanol is ruining your engine and also believes that climate change (AKA global warming) is real?
Ok... so the way the constitution works is that there is this referee that says what is constitutional and what isn't; it's call the supreme court. If the supreme court says it's constitutional then it's constitutional as per the constitution. Therefore YOUR judgment as to what's constitutional and what's not is totally worthless AS PER THE CONSTITUTION and your whole framing of "big government" and "small government" is now also useless.
God, i truly hate the worshiping of the constitution as a religious document. The document is the set of rules that the political game is played by and they change over time, as were intended by the original writers. And while the founding fathers made some brilliant decisions in the creation of the constitution (espically for it's time), their morals and how they lived their life should not be more important than how we as a society decide we wish to live our lives today, 200 years later. (And if you don't believe that then women shouldn't be allowed to vote and blacks should still be slaves.)
Why do you think direct democracy and representative democracy are any different in suppressing minorities? The only barriers in place, i.e. bill of rights, checks and balances, can be done with both forms of government. Each mechanism that prevents abuse of power by the majority can also be implemented in a direct democracy. It's stupid and egotistical to think that only your form of government can accomplish this.
Seriously? This type of bullshit tripe just goes without comment here? The government does certain roles very well, much better than any other social mechanism we have. Building roads, educating children, providing social safety nets, protecting our citizens from outside influences (military), and protecting citizens from internal negative influences (crime). And there are certain things government doesn't do as well. Free market economies have done much better and producing things compared to communism for example.
However trying to push government out of the roles it does very well is just stupid especially for the sake of a stupid mantra. The government should be regulating our economy to some degree. Free markets don't work on their own and referees are needed to keep competition working as it should. (i.e. it should be a competition to see who can produce the best products, not who can best bribe our government.) The goal should always be to keep an eye on the REAL motivation, the betterment of our society as a whole, weather that's to prevent the rape and pillage of our natural resources, the pollution of our lands, the abuse of a dominant position in the market, or any unfair/detrimental business practice. It also includes making policies that keep the population safe from crime, fire, illness, or foreign invaders.
The argument shouldn't be weather the government should be there or not, it should be over what is best for our society. If you seriously want to live in a country where the fire department sits by and watches your house burn down because you fell behind in your payments, or in a land where only the rich deserve police protection, then fuck you. I want to live in a better society where we make decisions at the government level for the betterment of the whole, not the rich few who can afford to talk with our elected officials.
Ok... I'm creating a bunch of straw men arguments from a simple line. But its one of the stupid mantras that have been spouting from the republicans for as long as I've been paying attention to politics and especially with the current wackos that are in power. "Like it's gone out of style" indeed.
The government has a very beneficial role in our society and we should be discussing the cost/benefits instead of demonizing it for not particular reason.
I'm sorry to say that I don't get the creepy factor here. The number one fantasy of guys (that ALL straight guys have had) is to be invisible in a women's locker room. This is basically someone trying to achieve that fantasy through technology. Yes, it was wrong. But still, the amount of harm done here just isn't so great IMO. Sorry. As long has he wasn't spreading the photos around with names and information, blackmailing the participants, etc, then it's just some guy getting a thrill trying to peak at naked women. It's been happening as long as women have been wearing clothes. So how the hell is that creepy?
The only problem is the base level of knowledge is very important. To say "I don't need to memorize that equation because I can just look it up" is all well and good until your base knowledge becomes disconnected from the true facts. Psuedo science, politics, health information are all areas where people have let the reality and facts slip away until a lie is repeated enough and people believe it and repeat it.
I don't have a problem saying that someone is very smart even though they don't have a ton of facts memorized, but there are plenty of people out there who fail critical thinking even though they can go look up a lot of facts quickly and easily.
(And if you want "cool to be stupid", then just look at the above topics.... oh, and throw in religion there too. I mean saying "I believe it on faith despite any evidence" and being proud of it is the definition of "cool to be stupid". but this is not a problem that was invented with the internet.....)
I think the interesting idea is when you can have your computer just run a browser based OS instead of a desktop based OS. I think there are interesting products that will come along which will just be internet portholes. (Tablets fit this nitch very well) From those devices you don't want a full featured OS running a browser, just just want a browser. In those cases the more you can run in your browser, the more functionality you have. Your OS can then be a free Linux variant or whatever. Your machine can become OS independent and remove the bulk and bloat of an OS from your processing workload.
I don't think they're out of touch... I think they're just making choices focused on their long term goal instead of following the current paradigm.
That's an interesting point.... so the engineering solution is to upend the flywheel like a Farris wheel and angle it in the direction of the earth's rotation. But I wonder how much of an effect this would really have if you kept the flywheel planer to the earth's surface? This seems like a complicated but simple question at the same time. The desire for the flywheel to maintain it's angular momentum would lead to more force (and therefore friction) on the rotation barring, but it should not otherwise effect the speed of the flywheel (I think). So the loss would result from the barring turning some of that energy into heat due to increased friction. So the real interesting question is the optimization of resources (aka money), in asking which is cheaper over the long haul... to build the flywheel upright (like a Farris wheel) or to build it horizontal/flat. The upright method would cost more initially but would perhaps not lose the 0.01% of energy each hour (or whatever the number is) from the earth spinning effect? What is the break even time, etc.
I didn't either... until I started playing SC2. I never liked the feeling of the unknown pressure that someone out in the dark fog of war was building up and I was falling behind and the dreaded sinking feeling of seeing their army of massive early units while I'd been busy teching up and expanding. However I found that when playing with my friends, we could scout the maps and find out what was going on well enough that my initial fears and dreads didn't come about and our strategizing before and analysis after about getting our asses kicked or kicking ass made the game a blast to play. Also, the battle-net match making system works pretty well in matching you up against like skilled players so your win loss ration is typically pretty close to 50%. All of that put together has made SC2 one of my favorite games despite me also not liking multiplayer RTS games previously to SC2.
but hey, I wasn't trying to turn this into a SC2 advertisement, I'm just trying to say that I would have missed out on the social experience with my friends if I'd waited 2 or 3 years to buy the game.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, this fits in exactly with my point exactly. You use printers to print letters, or one-off items. You don't use them to print books. You still go to a bookstore (or Amazon) to buy books because it's cheaper than printing out a book at home on your printer and a bound book is more directly what you want. The same economic models would hold true for 3D printers. Very little of what you buy today is a single lump of plastic formed into a specific shape.
d
There are two problems with doing such a thing. The first is that to create a part that matches this toy, it's often difficult to make an accurate 3D model of the part in a computer. This is of course required in order to make this useful. If you had a really good and accurate 3D scanner then you can get away with out the skill of 3D modeling and a really good set of calipers. This is hard to do, but I think it's easier to get to the "really good 3D scanner" than it is to get to a "really good and affordable 3D printer". (The 3D scanner is more about software, while the 3D printer is more about hardware.)
So once you have the model, you now need to print it out. If you get lucky and the material you need is hard plastic, then bingo you're good. If you're unlucky, the part wants to be a bit rubberized or something more flexible. Then you're screwed. Ok... next problem is coloring. If you're fixing a toy, you THEN have to whip out a handy dandy paint can. A few (one?) 3D printers on the market can now do color... so maybe in 20 years this will be common. If it's being sold to the home market, this is probably a good assumption. So ok, color is handled. Now comes problem #2, toner.
This is like printer toner. The material you use to print the product costs money... and the companies that sell this take their business model from the ink-jet printer/razerblade markets. The material for printing is expensive. If this is a tiny piece, no problem, $0.30 or something... for a larger piece, a few bucks. So if you're fixing a toy, you may have just spent $1.50 to fix a $5 dollar toy. A bargain you say? Then go back and factor in the cost of the 3D printer and the 3D scanner and your time. (Today a block of around 50 sq inches is around $1000)
There are times when it would be useful to have this capability at home, I agree, but I don't think they will make up the cost of the 3D printer for anyone but the hobbyist... even if it is a *cheap* thousand dollars or something.
So your argument is ... pollution?
Pollution primary comes from three sources... nasty chemicals used in manufacturing, mining, and power generation. And your solution is to put manufacturing near us? Currently, the 3D printing that I've seen is only plastic or in the case of some home-brew kids, epoxy. All other things you'll need to get from your current sources and plastic molding is not where the nasty chemicals are!
All the nasty chemicals used in PCB manufacturing, silicon chip manufacturing, cars, power generation, etc etc etc etc, are still done in the exact same place. This isn't going to revolutionize things as much as mildly shift the way things are done. Mass manufacturing will still be done in low cost regions. Anytime we can outsource pollution generating industries we will. All of the core problems you hint at will still be the same!
This isn't going to do what you think it is going to do.
d
Maybe you didn't fully read my post... My whole point was that 3D printing is good for a subset of things. "Custom stuff, prototypes, one-offs, etc. That's it's advantage." But the idea people have that they will product all their household goods with it is just naive. Hell, I think it's awesome just compared to paying a local company $300-$500 dollars to turn a part in 2 days!
d
Look, 3D printers are cool. They're awesome for anyone who ever wanted to build something quickly. I use one at work regularity so I fully appreciate the technology..... BUT they are just not cost effective compared to mass manufacturing processes.
There are often many different ways to build something in manufacturing. You can machine something, mold something, 3D print something, etc, and many different flavors of each type of manufacturing. It will be 50 years before 3D printing a lego is anywhere near as cheap as just molding a lego if ever. This is the way of things. 3D printing is awesome for doing small custom things and giving you the ability to do stuff that you either couldn't do before or that would take you a lot of time and skill to develop on your own.
Let me give you a simple example. I use our 3D printer to manufacture small plastic pieces used in semi-conductors assemblies. This is not my primary job, just a skill that allows me to get my real job done faster. The size of the pieces I print out are around 2" x 2" x 0.5" or smaller. If I try to mass manufacturer them then I can *maybe* do them around 1 per hour. (I have to fill the platter with say 20 of them and it'll take me 20 hours to complete). This will get me accuracy that is not quite as good as molding or machining, but it's within an order of magnitude.
So, it's not better, not cheaper, and not faster (on a per piece basis). What it gets me is small-quantity-cheap. Custom stuff, prototypes, one-offs, etc. That's it's advantage. AND it can also do some stuff traditional machining/molding just can't do ever. These are this technology's sweet spots. Even if you give the technology 10 or 20 years, you're not going to compete with molding. It's just not cost effective.
Yes 3D printing is awesome. Yes it gives us the ability to prototype stuff in 6 hours or overnight. Yes it's cheap for stuff like that, but it's just not the be-all and do-all that the "tea, Earl gray" line would have you expect. It will be rare that you will save money by printing out your own stuff even ignoring the cost of the machine itself.
d
Does anyone know a good place to buy solar panels on the open market? What i'm really interested in is seeing the metrics compared. I know thin film is cheapest, but least efficient, but I want to see the cost performance trade offs somewhere and I haven't been able to find it. Anyone know of a good website that has this?
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I know, lets compare people deaths by miles traveled! I bet you this thing is safer than anything but a passenger jet.
(this is the stupidest conversation ever)
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"The over 35 crowd that actually developed the internet was vanishingly small."
-- Yes, but ON SLASHDOT, the over 35 crowd that actually developed the internet is staggeringly large. What site do you think you're on???
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I am a big solar proponent and ... I agree.
Why the hell would we try to shoehorn a new technology someplace that doesn't fit well. That's just stupid. However there are plenty of places where solar power works really well. Over here in California we do tend to use a fair chunk of electricity ourselves. Solar power is a fantastic option since we have large parts of our state and many neighboring states that are pretty much unpopulated useless desert... AND our maximum power usage runs in lock step with high temperature summer days when air con is running at maximum and solar power is at maximum efficiency.
Why do I care about energy storage? Another stupid argument. Worry about that if solar power can (excuse me while I try to say this with a straight face) ... become the dominant power generation source here in the US, THEN worry about energy storage. Here on the west coast we use power during the day, and it's just damn fine that solar generates power DURING THE DAY. There are plenty of other technologies that generate power at night that there really isn't any need to make solar do that ..... yet.
Pick the low hanging fruit first. If you try to force something new into a place where it doesn't really fit you just give the naysayers that many more stones to throw.
d
Funny... I'm pretty sure the FCC is part of the government and they regulate the "speech" that is shown on TV. They specifically say that certain material is inappropriate (and thus banned) from certain hours because they are prime kid watching hours. Why is this ok when "regulating" other things isn't?
There have also been laws used against people who provide pornography to kids, is sex sooo much worse than violence?
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I'm confused... doesn't this already apply to movies and TV? Can a child rent or watch a rated R movie by themselves? Isn't the FCC regulating the TV my children see by some puritan standard? How is this any different from what already exists?
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I don't see how this is a problem... just make the reported bandwidth a statistical number. For example, the average data speed of each customer is X... or the 10th percentile and 90th percentile data rate for every packet of information. If a phone company only pays for towers that are in non-ideal locations so their customers more often see crappy signal strength, then that should be apparent in the information provided. This is not a flaw in reporting, but something that we should see in the data.
This is government regulation done right.
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So fucking what?
Do we also pay for listing the octane quantity on the sides of gas stations? Do we also pay for the calorie labels on the sides of food? The reporting of fuel economy of cars before you buy them? I'll take that cost any-day.
I can't believe anyone would bitch and moan about this. This is an awesome idea. This is what regulation should be, forcing clear and equal reporting of information about a product so the customer can make the best informed decision possible.
The only sad thing about this bill is that brilliance like this doesn't occur more often in politics.
This is a great idea!
d
The problem is, this is not a fact based exercise. If you have a sporting event and a ref makes a bad call, the you can watch the replay and say "yep, bad call." Here's the set of rules, this is what actually happened, the person stepped out and the ref didn't see it. However in this case you're basically arguing philosophy and as such, there are few if any hard answers. Can the government use the commerce clause to outlaw cannabis? Well that's a matter of definitions. If you define things a certain way, then no. If you define things a different way, then yes. But who makes up the definitions? You? Me? The original authors of the constitution or law? There is not a hard "truth" to be found.
So, baring some measurable truth, the founders developed a referee that makes the final call on this decision. I'm not making the appeal to authority fallacy because the definition of constitutionality *is* the supreme court. You don't get to make the decision. Talking heads on TV or radio don't get to make the decision. Only the supreme court gets to rule if something is constitutional or not. I may not always like their rulings (I truly despise some of the more recent ones) but there are no facts to be had here. We're talking philosophy and opinion and definitions.
I think The Truth is on my side, you think The Truth is on your side, but all we're really arguing here is opinions and definitions. In the end this is a totally uninteresting argument and one that is only a distraction to the real argument. The REAL argument is what government services are beneficial for us as a group to pay for and which ones aren't. I say there is benefit and efficiencies to having a public health care system and you don't. Now THAT's an interesting conversation to have. I say the method we use to pay for the government should be slated toward taxing the rich, and you don't. That's an interesting conversation to have. (These are made up examples - I'm not trying to put words in your mouth) These arguments we can bring metrics and statistics to the table to try and justify the correct amount and best method of government involvement in a particular area. That's the real meat of what we're trying to argue, what path should we take to make our lives better.
The constitutional argument is just boring and lame because in the end there is nothing to be gained by "winning" because the supreme court STILL controls the definition of what is constitutional or not. =(
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"I think most people there are either overreacting or being fed something..."
Ok... let me do a quick sanity check. Is there anyone here who believes ethanol is ruining your engine and also believes that climate change (AKA global warming) is real?
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Ok... so the way the constitution works is that there is this referee that says what is constitutional and what isn't; it's call the supreme court. If the supreme court says it's constitutional then it's constitutional as per the constitution. Therefore YOUR judgment as to what's constitutional and what's not is totally worthless AS PER THE CONSTITUTION and your whole framing of "big government" and "small government" is now also useless.
God, i truly hate the worshiping of the constitution as a religious document. The document is the set of rules that the political game is played by and they change over time, as were intended by the original writers. And while the founding fathers made some brilliant decisions in the creation of the constitution (espically for it's time), their morals and how they lived their life should not be more important than how we as a society decide we wish to live our lives today, 200 years later. (And if you don't believe that then women shouldn't be allowed to vote and blacks should still be slaves.)
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"What news papers do you read?" ...that's some tough gotcha journalism!
Why do you think direct democracy and representative democracy are any different in suppressing minorities? The only barriers in place, i.e. bill of rights, checks and balances, can be done with both forms of government. Each mechanism that prevents abuse of power by the majority can also be implemented in a direct democracy. It's stupid and egotistical to think that only your form of government can accomplish this.
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"That government is best which governs least."
Seriously? This type of bullshit tripe just goes without comment here? The government does certain roles very well, much better than any other social mechanism we have. Building roads, educating children, providing social safety nets, protecting our citizens from outside influences (military), and protecting citizens from internal negative influences (crime). And there are certain things government doesn't do as well. Free market economies have done much better and producing things compared to communism for example.
However trying to push government out of the roles it does very well is just stupid especially for the sake of a stupid mantra. The government should be regulating our economy to some degree. Free markets don't work on their own and referees are needed to keep competition working as it should. (i.e. it should be a competition to see who can produce the best products, not who can best bribe our government.) The goal should always be to keep an eye on the REAL motivation, the betterment of our society as a whole, weather that's to prevent the rape and pillage of our natural resources, the pollution of our lands, the abuse of a dominant position in the market, or any unfair/detrimental business practice. It also includes making policies that keep the population safe from crime, fire, illness, or foreign invaders.
The argument shouldn't be weather the government should be there or not, it should be over what is best for our society. If you seriously want to live in a country where the fire department sits by and watches your house burn down because you fell behind in your payments, or in a land where only the rich deserve police protection, then fuck you. I want to live in a better society where we make decisions at the government level for the betterment of the whole, not the rich few who can afford to talk with our elected officials.
Ok... I'm creating a bunch of straw men arguments from a simple line. But its one of the stupid mantras that have been spouting from the republicans for as long as I've been paying attention to politics and especially with the current wackos that are in power. "Like it's gone out of style" indeed.
The government has a very beneficial role in our society and we should be discussing the cost/benefits instead of demonizing it for not particular reason.
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I'm sorry to say that I don't get the creepy factor here. The number one fantasy of guys (that ALL straight guys have had) is to be invisible in a women's locker room. This is basically someone trying to achieve that fantasy through technology. Yes, it was wrong. But still, the amount of harm done here just isn't so great IMO. Sorry. As long has he wasn't spreading the photos around with names and information, blackmailing the participants, etc, then it's just some guy getting a thrill trying to peak at naked women. It's been happening as long as women have been wearing clothes. So how the hell is that creepy?
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Farmville does not a gamer make.
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The only problem is the base level of knowledge is very important. To say "I don't need to memorize that equation because I can just look it up" is all well and good until your base knowledge becomes disconnected from the true facts. Psuedo science, politics, health information are all areas where people have let the reality and facts slip away until a lie is repeated enough and people believe it and repeat it.
I don't have a problem saying that someone is very smart even though they don't have a ton of facts memorized, but there are plenty of people out there who fail critical thinking even though they can go look up a lot of facts quickly and easily.
(And if you want "cool to be stupid", then just look at the above topics.... oh, and throw in religion there too. I mean saying "I believe it on faith despite any evidence" and being proud of it is the definition of "cool to be stupid". but this is not a problem that was invented with the internet.....)
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I think the interesting idea is when you can have your computer just run a browser based OS instead of a desktop based OS. I think there are interesting products that will come along which will just be internet portholes. (Tablets fit this nitch very well) From those devices you don't want a full featured OS running a browser, just just want a browser. In those cases the more you can run in your browser, the more functionality you have. Your OS can then be a free Linux variant or whatever. Your machine can become OS independent and remove the bulk and bloat of an OS from your processing workload.
I don't think they're out of touch... I think they're just making choices focused on their long term goal instead of following the current paradigm.
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Re: a flywheel's rotational momentium
That's an interesting point.... so the engineering solution is to upend the flywheel like a Farris wheel and angle it in the direction of the earth's rotation. But I wonder how much of an effect this would really have if you kept the flywheel planer to the earth's surface? This seems like a complicated but simple question at the same time. The desire for the flywheel to maintain it's angular momentum would lead to more force (and therefore friction) on the rotation barring, but it should not otherwise effect the speed of the flywheel (I think). So the loss would result from the barring turning some of that energy into heat due to increased friction. So the real interesting question is the optimization of resources (aka money), in asking which is cheaper over the long haul... to build the flywheel upright (like a Farris wheel) or to build it horizontal/flat. The upright method would cost more initially but would perhaps not lose the 0.01% of energy each hour (or whatever the number is) from the earth spinning effect? What is the break even time, etc.
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I didn't either... until I started playing SC2. I never liked the feeling of the unknown pressure that someone out in the dark fog of war was building up and I was falling behind and the dreaded sinking feeling of seeing their army of massive early units while I'd been busy teching up and expanding. However I found that when playing with my friends, we could scout the maps and find out what was going on well enough that my initial fears and dreads didn't come about and our strategizing before and analysis after about getting our asses kicked or kicking ass made the game a blast to play. Also, the battle-net match making system works pretty well in matching you up against like skilled players so your win loss ration is typically pretty close to 50%. All of that put together has made SC2 one of my favorite games despite me also not liking multiplayer RTS games previously to SC2.
but hey, I wasn't trying to turn this into a SC2 advertisement, I'm just trying to say that I would have missed out on the social experience with my friends if I'd waited 2 or 3 years to buy the game.
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