1. The current online bill paying services are currently taking advantage of the clutter of snail-mailed bills and the lack of support of the billing parties (payees) to provide online payment as a remittance option. Eventually, I hope, more and more payees will support online payment and eliminate paper completely.
2. In order to do #1, the payees should have a secure site that allow people to just go to a web site and pay for a bill. They should allow this even without allowing a user complete access to his/her account. I pay my auto-insurance through my auto-insurance company's website, and they allow you to specify a policy number and credit card information to pay the policy, without necessarily having to log in the get access to the user account. In addition to an interface that allows this, they should also support some kind of XML-based B2B transaction exchange (like EDI) that allows a bill paying service to send payment transaction information to them, and accept that as remittance.
3. Once #2 is doable, then the user should be able to go to the payee's website (or through some other previous arrangement), specify that a certain bill payment surrogate service is authorized to pay bills on the user's behalf. The bill payment service should have the ability to negotiate this with the payee as well, using the same exchange protocol to send authorization for payments, etc.
The result of this is that people can then use their own favorite bill payment service to keep track of bills and expenses. The bill payment service can automatically receive bills electronically, present them to the user, e-mail the user when they arrive, and allow the user to authorize payment, send the payment authorization information to the payee, all without paper!
These are just some of the things I could think of right off.
It sounds great from the use's point of view, but I wonder if it wouldn't generate too much extra, unneeded traffic? Granted that with higher bandwidth coming, we may care less, but I think it's still an issue, especially for people who still have 56k dial-up. Imagine going to a links/portal site with that ability. Of course, you could add throttling ability to prevent too many simultaneous requests to validate, etc.
We could go on and on, I guess. It's a good idea, someone's just gotta implement it.
Hmmm...yeah, I see your point. I've seen some of the stuff you are talking about, including the 3D printers that are around that are used for rapid prototyping. I guess I was more focused on the virtual aspect of this, meaning constructing virtual lego worlds, for show more than for directions to be assembled later. I want to be able to build entire worlds made from lego and be able to navigate around it. I want to be able to play Q3Arena in a lego world, dammit!
I want something that can take virtual lego objects/worlds and produce VRML or any kind of similar files, or to produce DWG or POVRAY, 3D Studio, etc., so that I can render them. Is this so much to ask?
Yeah, actually, I had a problem with usage of the word 'medicine' in this context, because I know I meant more along the lines of health care, rather than a concrete item that can be applied. But at the time, I couldn't think of a better word.
I agree with what you are saying though. I think I'd augment that and the argument I forwarded by saying this: There's place for western philosophy - in the case of emergencies. I wouldn't expect oriental medicine to help with serious brain injuries and hemorraging - you know the stuff of ERs. No kind of prevention and wholistic approach can stop a guy from bleeding to death from a gash in his body. That's where the realm of western medicine is most useful. So it is with ecology. Western philosophical approach (not so philosophical, actually) is the one that cleans up the oils spills and the like.
This is also very much in line with what Bill Joy is saying about technology - and nanotechnology. Technological advancements are often used to fix social problems or problems caused by other technologies. We will develop new technologies that will cause new problems which we will just develop newer technologies to fix.
In this universe there's no shortage of similarities and everyone can obviously see this analogy.
Western medicine has traditionally focused on treating symptoms, basically by abuse or neglect, allow the body to become diseased. Oriental philosophy, on the other hand, has always been more wholistic, seeking balance and well being of the whole person, spiritually, mentally, physically, whatever, thus preventing disease and maintain health. Western medicine has been very reactive - treat the symptom directly, cut off what you can't cure. Most doctors don't work with what is really causing the problem. They just make the symptoms 'disappear".
That said, with the analogy that I've just drawn about ecology being like medicine for the environment, I think we need to not fall into the same trap. Yes, it would be better if we don't pollute in the first place. It is already too late when we see the symptoms of the problems with pollution - it has already done its damage. We must be more proactive in our approach, and the philosophy must be changed in our attitude toward it.
Of course, I have been very general and vague about what we should do - and that's also kind of the point. I'm not proposing anything concrete here, because that's usually the approach when you treat problems symptomatically.
I think the manga came first, the anime came second, then the manga was finished AFTER the anime came out. That is because, as you say, the manga gets deeper into the whole thing.
Princess Mononoke, recently released in the U.S., is a more mature, more developed story of the same theme. Unfortunately, it is also short and lacks the depth that a manga series can attain.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the 'Open' movement as a method to popularize (read:market) their products. Not that there's anything wrong with the concept of the 'Open' movement. But I worry that it may be headed down the road for abuse. Why do I think that? Well, the patent system was a good idea, but now it's open for abuse.
If you were really paranoid and devoid of reason, you could say that NASA wanted some failures in their missions so that they can point to it and say 'see? we need more funding. If we don't get more funding, then missions fail, and that would really be a waste of money.'
How unlikely is this scenario? Probably not very likely, but who knows.
I listen to Howard Stern in the mornings sometimes, he loves it, but then, tivo advertises with the show. In any case, one day I caught a snippet where they presented him with a customized version of tivo that can record up to 80 hours.
Obviously, to put larger hard drive into the tivo should be easy enough, it's the softwar and access to the system we have to get around. But why do that?
I think that tivo should make 'consumables' for the tivo. First, they should add a small hard drive or flash memory to store preferences (which was lost when the hd crashed, right?) and firmware. Use the HD for data only, and make it removable. Then tivo can sell 'cartridges' for additional storage. They could learn this lesson from HP and all the printer manufacturers who practically give away some printers and charge through the nose for ink/toner cartridges.
Since these things are reusable, it wouldn't be all that bad. It'd be great for people who'd like to have some short-term archival abilities. In the long run, it'd be too expensive. Of course, it'd be even better if we could then just transfer all of that onto CD-Rs or whatever larger, inexpensive, random-access archival medium comes next.
I suggest that trolls get negative karma scoring, while the positive karma scoring remains the same, and then all other truly useless stuff just get scored absolutely down to zero. If it's a good troll, the karma point get more negative. If it's insightful and interesting positive. Then we can set our thresholds for absolute of the karma point to get either really insightful posts or really artful troll posts. There have been some really classic ones, we need to have a best slashdot troll posts of all times contest or something. All that creative energy go to waste - it's a shame, I tell you.
The Japanese seem to have an intense fetish for gadgets in the culture. Those who's never been to Japan could never truly appreciate Japan's influence in the world of gadgets.
Very often, historically, U.S. invents or creates some very useful or cool technology, and Japan put its touch on it - basically ultra-commercialize it for consumer use. They add a bunch of really cool features, switch a few more things around and come up with some pretty innovative stuff. Then it gets copied by the other Asian mass-producing copy-without-regards-to-anything countries like Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong. These countries have creative energies of their own, but is strongly influenced by Japan. And then everything is Made In China (nowadays), because it's so cheap and there are so many people there.
Japan has tremendous cultural influence in the world of commercial technological consumerism. The way it most often played out is in the gadgets and appliances. They keep some of the most outrageous or cool stuff in Japan, because very often, they are the only ones who can really appreciate it.
If anything, I would expect Japan to come out with very cool Internet gadgets, because that is what they are great at. They are a force to watch in the rapidly moving world of Internet technologies, because they can commercialize and consumerize anything.
A lot of Japanese products may seem utterly frivolous and useless, but nothing is ever really totally useless. There's always a lesson to be learned in creating completely computer generated fish tanks, etc.
I wonder if there's a hidden agenda for them to single out this specific song for nomination - maybe there are some anti-Canadian sentiments? Or maybe because this is actually one of the tamer songs that even though they liked all the other ones, this is the symbolic one to kiss Parker ass on?
Also, who the hell had the time to count that there were "399 bad words and 128 crude gestures"?
I guess the question is, why aren't there more people working to help PG, to publicize and evangelize it like Linux does. Is it because there's no glamor in it? Or is it, as I originally thought, that people don't see money opportunity in it, or maybe a combination of both and other things?
If there's anybody who really should have a persistent slashdot effect, it should be Project Gutenberg.
I think the reason that it hasn't gotten the attention of mainstream public is because nobody's figured out how to make money from it, or to make some kind of commercial product from it.
But, isn't it very much like Open Source? The spirit of Free Software is very much the same as the idea of Free Books (not free as in price, though it is that too). It takes volunteers to contribute to a repository that is freely open to all.
It's a shame that he's not getting more support.
I wonder if there's anyway someone can somehow take his effort and offer it as a commercial product. I think some CD-ROM makers have done so, but give some of the proceeds into the project.
They can make the glass stronger by introducing impurities into the glass - not just any impurities, though. They introduce molecules that are larger, thereby increasing the strength of the glass. I remember watching some show on the Discovery channel a long time ago on this and they showed how they can drop a large metal weight from a couple dozen feet up and the glass will not break. They make bulletproof glass this way. I forget the elements they used, I think it was like Phosphorus and other elements that were heavier than the elements you usually find in glass (silicon and oxygen are light, after all).
Of course there will still be needs for organ transplants for those situations. I just think that nowadays, a lot of organ problem stems from health reasons. People who drank a lot would more likely need a liver transplant, eating foods that are too rich in animal fats and lack of exercise, smoking, etc., will cause heart problems, and may necessaitate heart transplants. Could these things be avoid with a proper diet? I would say most of them can.
And note that I didn't say dieting, which is more associated with losing weight than anything else, but as in a proper diet, eating balanced meals. being smart about what you eat, and avoid overindulgence. They are not cures, you are correct. But if you eat properly, you wouldn't need as much 'curing'!
Nor did I ever claim that a proper diet is a 'miracle cure'. All I am saying is that a lot of diseases stem from a poor imbalanced diet. Too much McDonald's, pizza, sodas, drinking, smoking, etc., will always be bad. Who pays for the overindulgence of individuals when they need organ transplants? If your loved ones are in an accident and need an organ transplant, but cannot get one for months because there's shortage, and the shortage is because of many people needing them from not treating their bodies properly, you may think a little different about the whole diet thing.
After all these thousands of years of being eaten by humans, being farm grown in cramped smelly unsanitary conditions and inhumanly slaughtered, now they are being bred for organ replacements. We're kind of getting closer to that "you are what you eat" idea, aren't we?
They had to find an animal that we'd take for granted as "disposable", meaning an animal we already farm and slaughter without thinking and inkling of remorse, and it had to be an animal that would not be too far from humans genetically, but not so close that it would make most people repulsed at the thought of the transplant.
I don't know why they even bother to give names to the pigs, which kind of anthropomorphize them. Just give them some serial numbers. Because after all, our purpose for them (okay, not this first batch, but eventually) is terribly inhumane. I mean, all the pigs and chickens and cows raised to provide us with meat, do we have names for them? Do we go to the restaurants and the waiter bring us our steak and say "here you are, this is Elsie"?
The amazing thing about all this research into organ transplants is that people don't realize that all these organ transplants would not be necessary if we just take better care of our bodies. We'd save a lot of money in health care, and would probably never have to get into this quandry. The existing human organs would probably suffice. The modern western diet (American diet more so than any other) is terrible for our health. We persists in curing symptoms of disease whereas we should be healing the body by proper diets, etc.
With the Internet traffic "doublin every 100 days", I'm sure the wireless traffic is increasing faster (I wish they had that info). All the more reason to believe this is the year (and next) when wireless Internet will really take off, what with web pads, and transmeta's crusoe chips, etc.
This is a good move to free up some of the less used bandwidths out there, by providing incentives for current license holders to make some money for otherwise idle bandwidth that could be put to good use.
I didn't mean for this to be used by rich hollywood production houses. I meant for this to be for producers who may otherwise be limited on resources. For the people who have the talent and the drive to create the movie, but not the resources necessary to render the movie by themselves within their own lifetimes. Besides, whoever said that the participants ever have to know what projects they are working on until AFTER the rendering is done, if ever? If there are several simultaneous projects going on at the same time, then it could be a single frame from any number of the projects.
By not using it for commercial movie houses, there's little incentive to hack into it. It's kind of like a resource for potential computer animation independent filmmakers.
It was just a thought. I still think it would be great.
What would really be cool is if we could use this software, in combination with an engine that doles out pieces of work like distributed.net and seti@home. Someone should be able to create a site for submitting works to be rendered, and then distribute the rendering to all of those who may wish to participate in the distributed rendering. The people who are submitting works to be rendered may be short on resources to do the rendering. It'd be like a distributed production!
This would be really awesome! What does everybody think?
I remember it as such too. Something on the discovery channel referring to the cold war era soviet union research - it was called Ground Effect. The Wing-In-Ground is somewhat of a misnomer, I think. When I read it, I thought "hmmm...are they carving a groove in the ground for the wings to be fitted into?"
Hey, actually, if grooves ARE cut into the ground, and only the wings are in these "wing tracks", then they can construct the tracks with control over the shape to maximize the ground effect and at the same time, they don't have to worry about weather and air density having too much effect on the performance of the train.
What if these tracks were tubular? And then the wings can be tubular as well, constructed so that it's like taking an airplane wing and curling it up into a tube. That way, the air pressure going through the middle of the tubular wing would be greater than the pressure outside of it, causing the tubular wing to be riding on a cushion of air that keeps the wing towards the middle of the tubular track. Of course, the shape would have to account for requiring more lift near the bottom due to gravity. Oh, the biggest problem is how to keep the wing attached to the train while trying to keep the track's air pressure high and stable.
They could use this kind of train for high speed, high capacity, long distance express lines. This way, their only job would be to get from point A to point B, like a shuttle that just goes back and forth.
I'd think that these are what they want to replace the bullet trains with.
Slashdot Mirror
1. The current online bill paying services are currently taking advantage of the clutter of snail-mailed bills and the lack of support of the billing parties (payees) to provide online payment as a remittance option. Eventually, I hope, more and more payees will support online payment and eliminate paper completely.
2. In order to do #1, the payees should have a secure site that allow people to just go to a web site and pay for a bill. They should allow this even without allowing a user complete access to his/her account. I pay my auto-insurance through my auto-insurance company's website, and they allow you to specify a policy number and credit card information to pay the policy, without necessarily having to log in the get access to the user account. In addition to an interface that allows this, they should also support some kind of XML-based B2B transaction exchange (like EDI) that allows a bill paying service to send payment transaction information to them, and accept that as remittance.
3. Once #2 is doable, then the user should be able to go to the payee's website (or through some other previous arrangement), specify that a certain bill payment surrogate service is authorized to pay bills on the user's behalf. The bill payment service should have the ability to negotiate this with the payee as well, using the same exchange protocol to send authorization for payments, etc.
The result of this is that people can then use their own favorite bill payment service to keep track of bills and expenses. The bill payment service can automatically receive bills electronically, present them to the user, e-mail the user when they arrive, and allow the user to authorize payment, send the payment authorization information to the payee, all without paper!
These are just some of the things I could think of right off.
We could go on and on, I guess. It's a good idea, someone's just gotta implement it.
I want something that can take virtual lego objects/worlds and produce VRML or any kind of similar files, or to produce DWG or POVRAY, 3D Studio, etc., so that I can render them. Is this so much to ask?
Now if there's ever anything that should be Open Sourced, it's this.
I don't mean the software, necessarily, though that'd be best too.
I mean the blocks - people should be able to design and build custom blocks.
Add behavior/dynamics
Then add a repository, cvs or like SourceForge for these "Open Lego License" blocks that people can have access to, etc.
It's be awesome.
I agree with what you are saying though. I think I'd augment that and the argument I forwarded by saying this: There's place for western philosophy - in the case of emergencies. I wouldn't expect oriental medicine to help with serious brain injuries and hemorraging - you know the stuff of ERs. No kind of prevention and wholistic approach can stop a guy from bleeding to death from a gash in his body. That's where the realm of western medicine is most useful. So it is with ecology. Western philosophical approach (not so philosophical, actually) is the one that cleans up the oils spills and the like.
This is also very much in line with what Bill Joy is saying about technology - and nanotechnology. Technological advancements are often used to fix social problems or problems caused by other technologies. We will develop new technologies that will cause new problems which we will just develop newer technologies to fix.
endless cycle.
Western medicine has traditionally focused on treating symptoms, basically by abuse or neglect, allow the body to become diseased. Oriental philosophy, on the other hand, has always been more wholistic, seeking balance and well being of the whole person, spiritually, mentally, physically, whatever, thus preventing disease and maintain health. Western medicine has been very reactive - treat the symptom directly, cut off what you can't cure. Most doctors don't work with what is really causing the problem. They just make the symptoms 'disappear".
That said, with the analogy that I've just drawn about ecology being like medicine for the environment, I think we need to not fall into the same trap. Yes, it would be better if we don't pollute in the first place. It is already too late when we see the symptoms of the problems with pollution - it has already done its damage. We must be more proactive in our approach, and the philosophy must be changed in our attitude toward it.
Of course, I have been very general and vague about what we should do - and that's also kind of the point. I'm not proposing anything concrete here, because that's usually the approach when you treat problems symptomatically.
Princess Mononoke, recently released in the U.S., is a more mature, more developed story of the same theme. Unfortunately, it is also short and lacks the depth that a manga series can attain.
Everyone seems to be jumping on the 'Open' movement as a method to popularize (read:market) their products. Not that there's anything wrong with the concept of the 'Open' movement. But I worry that it may be headed down the road for abuse. Why do I think that? Well, the patent system was a good idea, but now it's open for abuse.
How unlikely is this scenario? Probably not very likely, but who knows.
Obviously, to put larger hard drive into the tivo should be easy enough, it's the softwar and access to the system we have to get around. But why do that?
I think that tivo should make 'consumables' for the tivo. First, they should add a small hard drive or flash memory to store preferences (which was lost when the hd crashed, right?) and firmware. Use the HD for data only, and make it removable. Then tivo can sell 'cartridges' for additional storage. They could learn this lesson from HP and all the printer manufacturers who practically give away some printers and charge through the nose for ink/toner cartridges.
Since these things are reusable, it wouldn't be all that bad. It'd be great for people who'd like to have some short-term archival abilities. In the long run, it'd be too expensive. Of course, it'd be even better if we could then just transfer all of that onto CD-Rs or whatever larger, inexpensive, random-access archival medium comes next.
I suggest that trolls get negative karma scoring, while the positive karma scoring remains the same, and then all other truly useless stuff just get scored absolutely down to zero. If it's a good troll, the karma point get more negative. If it's insightful and interesting positive. Then we can set our thresholds for absolute of the karma point to get either really insightful posts or really artful troll posts. There have been some really classic ones, we need to have a best slashdot troll posts of all times contest or something. All that creative energy go to waste - it's a shame, I tell you.
Very often, historically, U.S. invents or creates some very useful or cool technology, and Japan put its touch on it - basically ultra-commercialize it for consumer use. They add a bunch of really cool features, switch a few more things around and come up with some pretty innovative stuff. Then it gets copied by the other Asian mass-producing copy-without-regards-to-anything countries like Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong. These countries have creative energies of their own, but is strongly influenced by Japan. And then everything is Made In China (nowadays), because it's so cheap and there are so many people there.
Japan has tremendous cultural influence in the world of commercial technological consumerism. The way it most often played out is in the gadgets and appliances. They keep some of the most outrageous or cool stuff in Japan, because very often, they are the only ones who can really appreciate it.
If anything, I would expect Japan to come out with very cool Internet gadgets, because that is what they are great at. They are a force to watch in the rapidly moving world of Internet technologies, because they can commercialize and consumerize anything.
A lot of Japanese products may seem utterly frivolous and useless, but nothing is ever really totally useless. There's always a lesson to be learned in creating completely computer generated fish tanks, etc.
Also, who the hell had the time to count that there were "399 bad words and 128 crude gestures"?
I guess the question is, why aren't there more people working to help PG, to publicize and evangelize it like Linux does. Is it because there's no glamor in it? Or is it, as I originally thought, that people don't see money opportunity in it, or maybe a combination of both and other things?
I think the reason that it hasn't gotten the attention of mainstream public is because nobody's figured out how to make money from it, or to make some kind of commercial product from it.
But, isn't it very much like Open Source? The spirit of Free Software is very much the same as the idea of Free Books (not free as in price, though it is that too). It takes volunteers to contribute to a repository that is freely open to all.
It's a shame that he's not getting more support.
I wonder if there's anyway someone can somehow take his effort and offer it as a commercial product. I think some CD-ROM makers have done so, but give some of the proceeds into the project.
They can make the glass stronger by introducing impurities into the glass - not just any impurities, though. They introduce molecules that are larger, thereby increasing the strength of the glass. I remember watching some show on the Discovery channel a long time ago on this and they showed how they can drop a large metal weight from a couple dozen feet up and the glass will not break. They make bulletproof glass this way. I forget the elements they used, I think it was like Phosphorus and other elements that were heavier than the elements you usually find in glass (silicon and oxygen are light, after all).
Isn't Gnutella more closely related to the Danish(?) hazelnut chocolate spread Nutella than with Mozilla? Why not use generic MP3 icon instead?
And note that I didn't say dieting, which is more associated with losing weight than anything else, but as in a proper diet, eating balanced meals. being smart about what you eat, and avoid overindulgence. They are not cures, you are correct. But if you eat properly, you wouldn't need as much 'curing'!
Nor did I ever claim that a proper diet is a 'miracle cure'. All I am saying is that a lot of diseases stem from a poor imbalanced diet. Too much McDonald's, pizza, sodas, drinking, smoking, etc., will always be bad. Who pays for the overindulgence of individuals when they need organ transplants? If your loved ones are in an accident and need an organ transplant, but cannot get one for months because there's shortage, and the shortage is because of many people needing them from not treating their bodies properly, you may think a little different about the whole diet thing.
They had to find an animal that we'd take for granted as "disposable", meaning an animal we already farm and slaughter without thinking and inkling of remorse, and it had to be an animal that would not be too far from humans genetically, but not so close that it would make most people repulsed at the thought of the transplant.
I don't know why they even bother to give names to the pigs, which kind of anthropomorphize them. Just give them some serial numbers. Because after all, our purpose for them (okay, not this first batch, but eventually) is terribly inhumane. I mean, all the pigs and chickens and cows raised to provide us with meat, do we have names for them? Do we go to the restaurants and the waiter bring us our steak and say "here you are, this is Elsie"?
The amazing thing about all this research into organ transplants is that people don't realize that all these organ transplants would not be necessary if we just take better care of our bodies. We'd save a lot of money in health care, and would probably never have to get into this quandry. The existing human organs would probably suffice. The modern western diet (American diet more so than any other) is terrible for our health. We persists in curing symptoms of disease whereas we should be healing the body by proper diets, etc.
that's just my 2 cents.
This is a good move to free up some of the less used bandwidths out there, by providing incentives for current license holders to make some money for otherwise idle bandwidth that could be put to good use.
By not using it for commercial movie houses, there's little incentive to hack into it. It's kind of like a resource for potential computer animation independent filmmakers.
It was just a thought. I still think it would be great.
This would be really awesome! What does everybody think?
Most photovoltaic cells are very inefficient. So I'm not sure that this is an improvement.
Hey, actually, if grooves ARE cut into the ground, and only the wings are in these "wing tracks", then they can construct the tracks with control over the shape to maximize the ground effect and at the same time, they don't have to worry about weather and air density having too much effect on the performance of the train.
What if these tracks were tubular? And then the wings can be tubular as well, constructed so that it's like taking an airplane wing and curling it up into a tube. That way, the air pressure going through the middle of the tubular wing would be greater than the pressure outside of it, causing the tubular wing to be riding on a cushion of air that keeps the wing towards the middle of the tubular track. Of course, the shape would have to account for requiring more lift near the bottom due to gravity. Oh, the biggest problem is how to keep the wing attached to the train while trying to keep the track's air pressure high and stable.
I'd think that these are what they want to replace the bullet trains with.