There was a bug in the signal strength indicator, which made the attenuation look pretty dramatic if you were in a low-signal location.
If only there were some sort of optional operating mode, something that you could call a "field test" mode, or something like that. Such a mode could replace the worthless "bar" graph with a quantitative RSSI value in dBm, displayed at 1-dB precision, so iPhone owners could tell exactly how much loss Steve's magical new antenna was causing, and under what conditions.
Oh, wait. There is such a mode, capable of being enabled on virtually any GSM phone... and Apple disabled it for the very first time when the iPhone 4 shipped.
Move along, these aren't the excuses we're looking for...
Nuclear fuel is finite, it won't last more than 100 years especially if we ramp up to full base load use.
That's only true if you count current sources. Existing uranium mines are only picking the low-hanging fruit. (Ideally we'd be transitioning towards fusion in another 100 years anyway, and then the whole resource question is moot.)
You do realize that Solar and Wind each alone already provide multiple times the current worlds energy output right?
We'll need to deal with the waste at some point and so far there isn't a plan to deal with it.
I don't think we should try to do anything too extreme to get rid of nuclear waste. To the extent the waste is still energetic, we're going to want it back for recycling, I'm sure. I suspect that a recurring theme over the next few hundred years is that one era's "waste" is going to be another era's treasure.
Just put it somewhere and hope it doesn't leak/leech into the environment.
Which is better than spewing it into the air with the absolute certainty that it is going to leak/leech into the environment.
You don't get down the road until you start driving, so why take a different road that doesn't get you where you are going?
Because there's only one road. Solar and renewable sources are great when available, but we will never get anywhere enough energy from them to run a modern civilization, and hydroelectric doesn't scale very well (besides having environmental problems of its own). Barring a miracle in harnessing fusion power, it's going to be fission, hydrocarbon, or nothing. We literally have to chose our poison.
IMO the right strategy is to build lots of small, absolutely identical fission plants, using the best proven practices, and don't worry about waste. Just stash it in a hole in the ground until it's either needed or until we can deal with it. It is a problem that can be put off and dealt with later.
Even if we go nuclear in the interim, we still have the waste storage issue to deal with for hundreds of years...not anything we've even considered in terms of cost.
I know! We can aerosolize our radioactive waste and spew it out into the the atmosphere, where it can kill people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the site. You know, like coal plants are doing right now.
I'm waiting to see what they do with V2.0. I'm thinking "why would I want one?" and I've been surprised that I have found a number of times where it could be useful.
I would have cheerfully paid $500 for mine if it did nothing but run RealVNC.
(Actually I conflated your post with the other tongue-in-cheek one that said he 'liked' lethal force, so apologies if you don't in fact agree with cgenman's sentiment.)
The "Kent State" method has all sorts of drawbacks
Yes, such as encouraging citizens to hold the state accountable for its actions. That's a huge drawback from the state's point of view.
I agree 100% with what you're saying -- lethal force used rarely and only when appropriate is far preferable to 'less lethal' force used every time a cop gets nervous or bored.
The cop pulls him over, pulls a gun out of his belt, waves it around for a second or two, then puts it back in his belt. Sure, the gun was unnecessary, but if anybody was being a danger to anyone else, it was the motorcyclist. Can't say I'm overly sympathetic.
Abstract thinking not being your strong suit, and all.
... once you start babbling about the effect of capricious supernatural sky fairies on mass transportation. What's the difference between a transistor burning out in a VOR receiver, versus a sudden hailstorm that shuts down the whole airport? Only a matter of scale.
No, backing up involves copying, and hence violates copyright. It does mean though that things like VLC can get on with playing DVDs/Blurry disks.
Note that copying a DVD is entirely trivial, and unencumbered by any protection at all. CSS is purely a "use-protection" mechanism (which is why it was always so violently wrong for the DMCA to apply to it -- copyright law was supposed to govern copying and distribution, not use.)
So IMHO, not being AL, this ruling does appear to argue against the DMCA's ability to regulate DeCSS cracking. I expect it will be promptly overturned at the next level of appeals, because after all we can't allow copyright law to work for both the producer and consumer, can we?
Re:IBM PCs compared extremely poorly with Amigas
on
The Amiga Turns 25
·
· Score: 1
Decent video quality counted for a lot, though, and there is much more to video quality than the size of the color palette. Graphics on the Amiga looked like C64 graphics but with more color. Text on the Amiga looked like C64 text, but with more color. Low-resolution, fuzzy NTSC-grade raster all the way. This was a bigger deal to more users than either Commodore or Atari appreciated.
Sure, CGA graphics on the IBM looked awful by comparison with the Amiga's color capability, but text was a different story altogether. IBM's text display was infinitely sharper, crisper, and generally more attractive than anyone else's, including the early Macintosh's.
Back then, most computer users who weren't playing games spent their days staring at a screen full of text. People who say the PC won because "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" or because "Bill Gates cheated" never actually tried using an Amiga for anything but gaming/multimedia work.
See www.w7zoi.net -- in addition to being one of the all-time great technical writers in the ham radio area, Wes is also a hardcore hiking enthusiast who's actually designed a lot of homebrew portable gear for that purpose.
His interests are oriented more towards HF rather than VHF but that just makes the problem more interesting. If you have an emergency in the woods, even somebody in Australia can get help to you...
So nation building or supporting humanitarian efforts is less important than iPods?
Yes.
News flash for you, before the fall of 2001 girls who went to school were killed in Afghanistan. So the rise of the iPod and OS X is more important than the work done in Afghanistan?
It must be nice to be so naive. I'm too old to remember when I was that easily fooled by my own government.
Slashdot Mirror
Ancient capitalist saying:
If I owe the bank $3,000,000, I have a problem.
If I owe the bank $3,000,000,000, the bank has a problem.
If you're referring to Wozniak, I'm going to take exception to your remark.
I just assumed he meant Ballmer.
There was a bug in the signal strength indicator, which made the attenuation look pretty dramatic if you were in a low-signal location.
If only there were some sort of optional operating mode, something that you could call a "field test" mode, or something like that. Such a mode could replace the worthless "bar" graph with a quantitative RSSI value in dBm, displayed at 1-dB precision, so iPhone owners could tell exactly how much loss Steve's magical new antenna was causing, and under what conditions.
Oh, wait. There is such a mode, capable of being enabled on virtually any GSM phone... and Apple disabled it for the very first time when the iPhone 4 shipped.
Move along, these aren't the excuses we're looking for...
Are you saying Clinton was right-wing?
Arguably more so than Bush II.
Nuclear fuel is finite, it won't last more than 100 years especially if we ramp up to full base load use.
That's only true if you count current sources. Existing uranium mines are only picking the low-hanging fruit. (Ideally we'd be transitioning towards fusion in another 100 years anyway, and then the whole resource question is moot.)
You do realize that Solar and Wind each alone already provide multiple times the current worlds energy output right?
Only the energy we can actually harness matters.
We'll need to deal with the waste at some point and so far there isn't a plan to deal with it.
I don't think we should try to do anything too extreme to get rid of nuclear waste. To the extent the waste is still energetic, we're going to want it back for recycling, I'm sure. I suspect that a recurring theme over the next few hundred years is that one era's "waste" is going to be another era's treasure.
Just put it somewhere and hope it doesn't leak/leech into the environment.
Which is better than spewing it into the air with the absolute certainty that it is going to leak/leech into the environment.
You don't get down the road until you start driving, so why take a different road that doesn't get you where you are going?
Because there's only one road. Solar and renewable sources are great when available, but we will never get anywhere enough energy from them to run a modern civilization, and hydroelectric doesn't scale very well (besides having environmental problems of its own). Barring a miracle in harnessing fusion power, it's going to be fission, hydrocarbon, or nothing. We literally have to chose our poison.
IMO the right strategy is to build lots of small, absolutely identical fission plants, using the best proven practices, and don't worry about waste. Just stash it in a hole in the ground until it's either needed or until we can deal with it. It is a problem that can be put off and dealt with later.
Even if we go nuclear in the interim, we still have the waste storage issue to deal with for hundreds of years...not anything we've even considered in terms of cost.
I know! We can aerosolize our radioactive waste and spew it out into the the atmosphere, where it can kill people hundreds or even thousands of miles away from the site. You know, like coal plants are doing right now.
The solution to pollution is dilution, right?
And in about a week we'll see another iteration of the same Slashdot story: "Australia: Ruling Party '100% Committed' to Net Filter."
Eventually it will happen, or not happen... but the real problem is that, because of the indifference of Australian voters, it's possible at all.
That's what the Australians thought.
A car is not anything like a horse, but I doubt you would deny that 'lineage'.
Dude, time to stop digging.
... er, iTeleport, nee Jaadu VNC, that is.
I'm waiting to see what they do with V2.0. I'm thinking "why would I want one?" and I've been surprised that I have found a number of times where it could be useful.
I would have cheerfully paid $500 for mine if it did nothing but run RealVNC.
What motive do scientists have to deceive us?
You don't get grants for suggesting that nothing unusual is happening.
If it superconducts at room temperature, trust me, nobody's going to give a crap what it's made from.
I agree 100% with what you're saying
(Actually I conflated your post with the other tongue-in-cheek one that said he 'liked' lethal force, so apologies if you don't in fact agree with cgenman's sentiment.)
The "Kent State" method has all sorts of drawbacks
Yes, such as encouraging citizens to hold the state accountable for its actions. That's a huge drawback from the state's point of view.
I agree 100% with what you're saying -- lethal force used rarely and only when appropriate is far preferable to 'less lethal' force used every time a cop gets nervous or bored.
The cop pulls him over, pulls a gun out of his belt, waves it around for a second or two, then puts it back in his belt. Sure, the gun was unnecessary, but if anybody was being a danger to anyone else, it was the motorcyclist. Can't say I'm overly sympathetic.
Abstract thinking not being your strong suit, and all.
... once you start babbling about the effect of capricious supernatural sky fairies on mass transportation. What's the difference between a transistor burning out in a VOR receiver, versus a sudden hailstorm that shuts down the whole airport? Only a matter of scale.
No, backing up involves copying, and hence violates copyright. It does mean though that things like VLC can get on with playing DVDs/Blurry disks.
Note that copying a DVD is entirely trivial, and unencumbered by any protection at all. CSS is purely a "use-protection" mechanism (which is why it was always so violently wrong for the DMCA to apply to it -- copyright law was supposed to govern copying and distribution, not use.)
So IMHO, not being AL, this ruling does appear to argue against the DMCA's ability to regulate DeCSS cracking. I expect it will be promptly overturned at the next level of appeals, because after all we can't allow copyright law to work for both the producer and consumer, can we?
Decent video quality counted for a lot, though, and there is much more to video quality than the size of the color palette. Graphics on the Amiga looked like C64 graphics but with more color. Text on the Amiga looked like C64 text, but with more color. Low-resolution, fuzzy NTSC-grade raster all the way. This was a bigger deal to more users than either Commodore or Atari appreciated.
Sure, CGA graphics on the IBM looked awful by comparison with the Amiga's color capability, but text was a different story altogether. IBM's text display was infinitely sharper, crisper, and generally more attractive than anyone else's, including the early Macintosh's.
Back then, most computer users who weren't playing games spent their days staring at a screen full of text. People who say the PC won because "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" or because "Bill Gates cheated" never actually tried using an Amiga for anything but gaming/multimedia work.
See www.w7zoi.net -- in addition to being one of the all-time great technical writers in the ham radio area, Wes is also a hardcore hiking enthusiast who's actually designed a lot of homebrew portable gear for that purpose.
His interests are oriented more towards HF rather than VHF but that just makes the problem more interesting. If you have an emergency in the woods, even somebody in Australia can get help to you...
Damn, you're right! My mistake. So when do we invade Pakistan?
So nation building or supporting humanitarian efforts is less important than iPods?
Yes.
News flash for you, before the fall of 2001 girls who went to school were killed in Afghanistan. So the rise of the iPod and OS X is more important than the work done in Afghanistan?
It must be nice to be so naive. I'm too old to remember when I was that easily fooled by my own government.
So Steve Jobs does more important work and accomplishes more than commander of ISAF?
Yes.
News flash, ISAF is rebuilding Afghanistan, what's Apple or Microsoft doing?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
What CEO has more responsibility or duties than a combat commander in a time of war?
News flash: building things is usually considered more valuable to society than destroying things, and rewarded accordingly.