So you'd love Barney dead? I'd say that counts as a "threat of violence towards the children's character Barney without permission from Lyons Partnership" . Now they'll be chasing Slashdot trying to get your post killed.
Incidentally, take a look at the wording of that letter - does it mean that if you get permission from Lyons partnership then you can threaten to maim and kill Barney all you want?
Spare a thought for those of us in the sticks - I'm up in Yorkshire in a little town called Hebden Bridge - the nearest place that they're even thinking about putting out DSL is Halifax (8 miles away). We don't get cable either. And although I only live a couple of hundred yards from the nearest exchange, I don't expect to be able to get DSL for at least another 5 years unless someone gives OFTEL a bloody big stick then sends them round to BT HQ to physically beat some more lines out of them.
Actually, with BT being so very very poor, we're in the faintly ridiculous position of AOL actually being on our side here in the UK (on this issue at least), seeing as they're the ones making the most noise about BT's low quality service and the alleged preference they've been showing to their minority ISP when it comes to DSL lines. I suggest any folk from elsewhere in the world go check out
The Register and do a search for BT to see just what a hinderance they are to wide-scale broadband.
Anyway, the rest of us can currently only hope to trail in the wake of AOL's attempts to get a better service to exploit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H deliver to it's users. But since BT is rapidly going down the pan, I guess it's going to be a tough fight.
My brother used to work in a Planetarium, in France, where they had a vector-based hemispheric display device.
While the engineer was still taking some classes to understand the way it basically worked, he just read the doc and started to code some games on it, like an asteroids-clone...
Did he ever come up with hypnotic displays and laser shows to tempt small badly drawn kids into returning to the Plane'arium time and time again?
Of course, this could always be some anti-China propaganda designed by Dubbya's spin doctors to keep the normally liberal (and typically Chinese-food-loving) geeks from sympathising with China : )
OK, so it's probably true - I had a mate who worked in Hong Kong just before we (the UK) gave it back, and he came back here with dozens of CDs worth of unlicenced software that he'd bought over there, but please try not to go overboard about this story, huh?
OK, so I've seen a bunch of people suggesting possible ways to break this, but if this money becomes standard then you'd effectively be making your cash worthless since it couldn't be proven that it wasn't a forgery (at least not without an examination that cost more than the face value of the bill).
And I've got to appluad the folk suggesting putting it in the microwave/oven/glass of gin (gin!?!), but it's unlikely. But how about someone who leaves it in their trousers and it then gets washed on a high temp, tumble-dried on a high temp, and then ironed? I've retrieved money that I left in my pocket after it's been through the laundry, and it's still been good (though a little crinkled), but would this chip stand up to that sort of honest (and fairly common) mistake?
Oh, and for the people suggesting this could be used as a GPS tracker - wrong! It's 0.4mm, so any antennae it has is likely to be broadcasting somewhere near microwave frequency and it'll be getting it's power from electromagnetic induction (supplied by the reader). This is never going to manage to broadcast to a GPS satellite in space, in fact it'd be near impossible (for several years at least) to pick it up from half a mile away since it's way too low powered and the signal will be attenuated by water in the atmosphere as well as buildings etc.
Huh, that's funny, cos we've now got holograms on most of the paper money here in the UK - all £50 and £20 notes, currently phasing out old £10 notes for hologram ones, dunno if £5 is due to be replaced. Wonder if the Royal Mint (who produce our money) tried this test? Anyone know?
Sources at the Open Source Developer Network have revealed that this version of the Slashcode is going to be the last one that sees original Slashdot characters Cmdr Taco, Hemos and Cowboy Neal working as editors. It's beliveded that before the next release of the Slashcode the characters will be killed off, to allow them to work on other projects.
Rob Malda (who plays Cmdr Taco) said "Yeah, we've been with Slashdot for several years now, and we just felt it was time for a change". The plot twist mirrors those of The X-Files and Buffy, where major characters were killed off for similar reasons.
Industry analysts suspect that fear of typecasting prompted the move, though some wonder if the editors will be able to live down previous glories; Doug Synergy, Self Proclaimed Web-Guru, said "Y'know, they've been doing news for nerds and bashing Microsoft for so long it's difficult to imagine them doing something like The Barbie Fan Club".
In recent weeks Slashdot has been subject to a series of intriguing plot twists, with the server repeatedley being unavailable, but even this hasn't held the interest of previously loyal fans.
It seems unlikely that the site will continue in it's current form for much longer, but it's been suggested that current editors Michael Simms and John Katz could take over a spin-off site; Slashtroll, Goatse.cx That Matters.
It hasn't ever been promoted over here (UK) - I'm guessing that after the luke-warm reviews from the US, Fox/Sky won't have any plans to screen it. SARCASM STRENGTH="veryveryheavy"Especially when they've got a series as fine as Next./SARCASM
What will happen though when the pornography industry gets super saturated by thousands of people using this persons plan.
Well, then he'll start offering get rich quick classes to gullible fools in "Offering Get Rich Quick Classes To Gullible Fools About Making Your Fortune From Pr0n". And when that market is saturated then he'll offer classes in offering classes about offering classes.....
I think you get the idea. I'm planning on beating all of this by offering classes in how to rip off idiots left, right and centre on the internet by appealing to their most basic desires like pr0n and getting rich quick. What will these classes consist of? Well, I'll send out a short email to subscribers saying "This is lesson one; pay attention and learn from your experience", then do nothing else. Well, other than spend their money on champagne, bimbos, cars, and a really nice workstation.
IANADr (despite the nick), but I don't think the insulin pumps are anywhere near as invasive - the insulin just needs to be introduced to your bloodstream (IIRC my GCSE Biology lessons), but until now artificial hearts have required a wire from outside your skin direct to your heart. Your blood stream is pretty good at fighting infection, but give the nasties a direct highway to your heart and I guess things would be more complicated.
Not that I mean to argue, but where do you get your info from?
And if it's that simple then why do they even need include the controversial GPS system in the speeding detector? 79 MPH is 79 MPH wherever you are. Surely this would just require a simple logging device that recorded what the speedo said - if it went over 79 at any point they could fine. In fact, why not just have a simple switch that trips when the speedo tops 79 - if it's been tripped then you were speeding?
The patients aren't so sick they can't undergo surgery, but they are going to die soon regardless of whether they get a new heart or not. Doctors have to make the difficult judgement on who gets a new heart based on who's going to benefit the most from it; if there's 2 guys with a year left, 1 heart, and it'll extend one life by 10 years and the other by 6 months, then the six month guy is going to lose out.
OK, so that's a gross simplification, but you get the idea. These patients are up for this surgery because otherwise they'd be ruled out, and they're understandably willing to take the risk.
Can anyone set me straight on something - does this require an external power source or does it draw power from the patient? As far as I can tell from the article, the coil beneath the skin is used for induction, so you wouldn't need to plug the patient in, but you still need to use an external power source to induce a supply current for the artificial heart. Surely this would still require a fairly portable power source (like a battery), since the internal battery only lasts 30 mins.
However, Hemos seems to think that it draws it's power from the skin itself, not from a supply through the skin. I guess the article is a little unclear. But does anyone have any less ambiguous info on this?
Um, I like the blue LEDs and all, but it's not quite in the same league as TV, telephones, jet engines etc. (blatant patriotism, I know:P )
But I've seen a bunch of features in the media with stuff about Japanese inventions - there's some competition that Honda (I think) run each year to come up with new cars, Sony has it's own wacky development department that I read about in Wired a while back, and so on.
As I understood it, the problems in the corporate structure over there arose from similar reasons as the problems in politics - their high life-expectancy. There's still a bunch of 60-year-old guys running everything, and they're rather stuck in their ways (and they were brought up in Japan before it started embracing a more Western way of working). But they're finally starting to retire and everything's changing over there.
Please feel free to criticise me if I'm talking out of my ass BTW; I'm just saying what I half remember from a bunch of documentaries and stuff.
Well, I don't know how the system works, but I can see a couple of possibilities:
The system merely sets off alarms at Acme Fining HQ when there's no room for doubt due the accuracy, i.e. 45 MPH in a 30 zone.
The system tracks what stretch of road the car is currently on and the speed registered by the speedo. Plot the two by time, and any time the speedo goes over the limit for wherever the car is then BING! Another fine.
The second method is the one I'd be inclined to use, since putting the car on a train or plane wouldn't do a damn thing, and also it wouldn't rely on some complicated GPS hack to calculate speed (hell, I could probably build something like this myself) - KISS. Better yet; you'd be using the speed that the driver saw, so you'd know that they could tell they were breaking the law.
I wonder how they're going to pay for this expensive GPS system...
Easy - re-write the contract so it's clearer that they track their cars and fine for speeding. Argue their case in court, and once the judge is satisfied that they aren't obfuscating the fines then they'll start applying them again. Then if anyone's too stupid to read the contract then it's their problem.
And, of course, simply tracking their vehicles better will lower their insurance premiums and save them cash.
OK, so it sucks if The Man can tell when you're speeding and punish you accordingly, but let's not forget that the speed limits are the law, and not just a rough guideline. They're there for a reason - to reduce the number of people injured or killed in auto accidents.
I think people should be prevented from speeding, and of course it's in the rental company's interests to discourage people from driving dangerously in their cars. And tracking your fleet with GPS is fine too - if your car leaves the country you'd like to know, right? Although it's a little unnnerving, I can't really find any major fault with this practice since it's just protecting Acme's investment (the car).
I think the only major problem here is the sneaky way Acme were operating - sticking a sign on the dash saying "You're being tracked; don't speed" or something similar would have been much more fair, since it would have discouraged dangerous driving instead of just punishing the driver later. Of course, that might also have discouraged custom and prevented a lucrative fine-collection business, so they took the stealthy route.
Then we can eliminate the influx of needless patents by denying the use of patents....
10 Ah, but if you deny the use of patents then your patent on patents can no longer be enforced, allowing people to patent stuff once more, only then they'd be infringing on your patent on patents and your ban on patents, though of course your ban on patents would invalidate your patent patent.....
20 GOTO 10
I'd love to see this go to court. And isn't it weird how funny the word patent starts to sound after you've squeezed it into a sentence 10 times? Patent patent patent....
OK, so Mr Burns managed, but that wasn't real life. Seriously, IIRC the loch is a saltwater one that's open to the sea (as well as having rivers flowing into it) - that's one hell of a drainage operation.
Good luck to any tycoons trying this to boost their popularity : )
OK, maybe she was - I don't know. But that's the point - I don't know. At the time I posted this it just seemed like everyone was pretending it didn't happen.
But check out http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/06/27/12420 7&cid=86 - a thread I started to ask what was going on when I noticed everyone asking about this was suddenly hitting -1 despite it clearly being a popular question. Kurt Gray makes some worthwhile input, and Jamie McCarthy shoots his mouth off too, though the question still isn't really cleared up.
Phew! Thanks for all the replies - this now rates as my most discussed thread ever by about a bazillion posts. In particular, thanks to Kurt Gray, who gave a decent response (even if we're still left with questions). Although I'd suggest that Jamie McCarthy might want to take a day or two off work and lose some of that stress : P
In all truth I was simply asking for the full story - it seemed like some pertinant facts were being swept under the carpet in the write-up, and this is the last place I ever expected that to happen. I don't want to know what names people called each other; just let us know if the original story was crap or not. If it was just Taco suffering lack of sleep, then say so. If there was a dispute and someone quit then say so.
I don't care what the tech's name is; I just don't like it when people "wash" stories to avoid anything that may reflect badly on them. Don't just tell the truth, tell the whole truth.
And as for the modding down of posts - I guess no-one's talking about that and it's not something that we're likely to hear about any time soon. Sure, it could be the Slashdot editors, but it could equally be a bunch of rampantly loyal moderators who don't want to upset the status quo, but who're rarely seen since Slashdot rarely gets criticised much on it's own site. Don't go running away with the conspiracy theory idea, OK kids?
OTOH, if you've calmed down a bit Jamie (or any other editors), would you care to give us a definitive answer as to whether the editors can/would moderate down like this? Try to remember that we all like coming here and expressing ourselves, and that's the only reason we're asking.
Slashdot Mirror
That's two words.
Incidentally, take a look at the wording of that letter - does it mean that if you get permission from Lyons partnership then you can threaten to maim and kill Barney all you want?
Actually, with BT being so very very poor, we're in the faintly ridiculous position of AOL actually being on our side here in the UK (on this issue at least), seeing as they're the ones making the most noise about BT's low quality service and the alleged preference they've been showing to their minority ISP when it comes to DSL lines. I suggest any folk from elsewhere in the world go check out The Register and do a search for BT to see just what a hinderance they are to wide-scale broadband.
Anyway, the rest of us can currently only hope to trail in the wake of AOL's attempts to get a better service to exploit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H deliver to it's users. But since BT is rapidly going down the pan, I guess it's going to be a tough fight.
Did he ever come up with hypnotic displays and laser shows to tempt small badly drawn kids into returning to the Plane'arium time and time again?
14 Farads!?! What charging voltage did you use?
Yeah, and make the contestants paddle through I giant course filled with bolognaise : )
Mmmmm, giant course filled with bolognaise......
OK, so it's probably true - I had a mate who worked in Hong Kong just before we (the UK) gave it back, and he came back here with dozens of CDs worth of unlicenced software that he'd bought over there, but please try not to go overboard about this story, huh?
And I've got to appluad the folk suggesting putting it in the microwave/oven/glass of gin (gin!?!), but it's unlikely. But how about someone who leaves it in their trousers and it then gets washed on a high temp, tumble-dried on a high temp, and then ironed? I've retrieved money that I left in my pocket after it's been through the laundry, and it's still been good (though a little crinkled), but would this chip stand up to that sort of honest (and fairly common) mistake?
Oh, and for the people suggesting this could be used as a GPS tracker - wrong! It's 0.4mm, so any antennae it has is likely to be broadcasting somewhere near microwave frequency and it'll be getting it's power from electromagnetic induction (supplied by the reader). This is never going to manage to broadcast to a GPS satellite in space, in fact it'd be near impossible (for several years at least) to pick it up from half a mile away since it's way too low powered and the signal will be attenuated by water in the atmosphere as well as buildings etc.
Huh, that's funny, cos we've now got holograms on most of the paper money here in the UK - all £50 and £20 notes, currently phasing out old £10 notes for hologram ones, dunno if £5 is due to be replaced. Wonder if the Royal Mint (who produce our money) tried this test? Anyone know?
Rob Malda (who plays Cmdr Taco) said "Yeah, we've been with Slashdot for several years now, and we just felt it was time for a change". The plot twist mirrors those of The X-Files and Buffy, where major characters were killed off for similar reasons.
Industry analysts suspect that fear of typecasting prompted the move, though some wonder if the editors will be able to live down previous glories; Doug Synergy, Self Proclaimed Web-Guru, said "Y'know, they've been doing news for nerds and bashing Microsoft for so long it's difficult to imagine them doing something like The Barbie Fan Club".
In recent weeks Slashdot has been subject to a series of intriguing plot twists, with the server repeatedley being unavailable, but even this hasn't held the interest of previously loyal fans.
It seems unlikely that the site will continue in it's current form for much longer, but it's been suggested that current editors Michael Simms and John Katz could take over a spin-off site; Slashtroll, Goatse.cx That Matters.
It hasn't ever been promoted over here (UK) - I'm guessing that after the luke-warm reviews from the US, Fox/Sky won't have any plans to screen it. SARCASM STRENGTH="veryveryheavy"Especially when they've got a series as fine as Next./SARCASM
I think you get the idea. I'm planning on beating all of this by offering classes in how to rip off idiots left, right and centre on the internet by appealing to their most basic desires like pr0n and getting rich quick. What will these classes consist of? Well, I'll send out a short email to subscribers saying "This is lesson one; pay attention and learn from your experience", then do nothing else. Well, other than spend their money on champagne, bimbos, cars, and a really nice workstation.
IANADr (despite the nick), but I don't think the insulin pumps are anywhere near as invasive - the insulin just needs to be introduced to your bloodstream (IIRC my GCSE Biology lessons), but until now artificial hearts have required a wire from outside your skin direct to your heart. Your blood stream is pretty good at fighting infection, but give the nasties a direct highway to your heart and I guess things would be more complicated.
And if it's that simple then why do they even need include the controversial GPS system in the speeding detector? 79 MPH is 79 MPH wherever you are. Surely this would just require a simple logging device that recorded what the speedo said - if it went over 79 at any point they could fine. In fact, why not just have a simple switch that trips when the speedo tops 79 - if it's been tripped then you were speeding?
OK, so that's a gross simplification, but you get the idea. These patients are up for this surgery because otherwise they'd be ruled out, and they're understandably willing to take the risk.
However, Hemos seems to think that it draws it's power from the skin itself, not from a supply through the skin. I guess the article is a little unclear. But does anyone have any less ambiguous info on this?
But I've seen a bunch of features in the media with stuff about Japanese inventions - there's some competition that Honda (I think) run each year to come up with new cars, Sony has it's own wacky development department that I read about in Wired a while back, and so on.
As I understood it, the problems in the corporate structure over there arose from similar reasons as the problems in politics - their high life-expectancy. There's still a bunch of 60-year-old guys running everything, and they're rather stuck in their ways (and they were brought up in Japan before it started embracing a more Western way of working). But they're finally starting to retire and everything's changing over there.
Please feel free to criticise me if I'm talking out of my ass BTW; I'm just saying what I half remember from a bunch of documentaries and stuff.
- The system merely sets off alarms at Acme Fining HQ when there's no room for doubt due the accuracy, i.e. 45 MPH in a 30 zone.
- The system tracks what stretch of road the car is currently on and the speed registered by the speedo. Plot the two by time, and any time the speedo goes over the limit for wherever the car is then BING! Another fine.
The second method is the one I'd be inclined to use, since putting the car on a train or plane wouldn't do a damn thing, and also it wouldn't rely on some complicated GPS hack to calculate speed (hell, I could probably build something like this myself) - KISS. Better yet; you'd be using the speed that the driver saw, so you'd know that they could tell they were breaking the law.Easy - re-write the contract so it's clearer that they track their cars and fine for speeding. Argue their case in court, and once the judge is satisfied that they aren't obfuscating the fines then they'll start applying them again. Then if anyone's too stupid to read the contract then it's their problem.
And, of course, simply tracking their vehicles better will lower their insurance premiums and save them cash.
I think people should be prevented from speeding, and of course it's in the rental company's interests to discourage people from driving dangerously in their cars. And tracking your fleet with GPS is fine too - if your car leaves the country you'd like to know, right? Although it's a little unnnerving, I can't really find any major fault with this practice since it's just protecting Acme's investment (the car).
I think the only major problem here is the sneaky way Acme were operating - sticking a sign on the dash saying "You're being tracked; don't speed" or something similar would have been much more fair, since it would have discouraged dangerous driving instead of just punishing the driver later. Of course, that might also have discouraged custom and prevented a lucrative fine-collection business, so they took the stealthy route.
20 GOTO 10
I'd love to see this go to court. And isn't it weird how funny the word patent starts to sound after you've squeezed it into a sentence 10 times? Patent patent patent....
Good luck to any tycoons trying this to boost their popularity : )
But check out http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=01/06/27/12420 7&cid=86 - a thread I started to ask what was going on when I noticed everyone asking about this was suddenly hitting -1 despite it clearly being a popular question. Kurt Gray makes some worthwhile input, and Jamie McCarthy shoots his mouth off too, though the question still isn't really cleared up.
In all truth I was simply asking for the full story - it seemed like some pertinant facts were being swept under the carpet in the write-up, and this is the last place I ever expected that to happen. I don't want to know what names people called each other; just let us know if the original story was crap or not. If it was just Taco suffering lack of sleep, then say so. If there was a dispute and someone quit then say so.
I don't care what the tech's name is; I just don't like it when people "wash" stories to avoid anything that may reflect badly on them. Don't just tell the truth, tell the whole truth.
And as for the modding down of posts - I guess no-one's talking about that and it's not something that we're likely to hear about any time soon. Sure, it could be the Slashdot editors, but it could equally be a bunch of rampantly loyal moderators who don't want to upset the status quo, but who're rarely seen since Slashdot rarely gets criticised much on it's own site. Don't go running away with the conspiracy theory idea, OK kids?
OTOH, if you've calmed down a bit Jamie (or any other editors), would you care to give us a definitive answer as to whether the editors can/would moderate down like this? Try to remember that we all like coming here and expressing ourselves, and that's the only reason we're asking.