Why? Another poster says it's not for humans to eat, but the article states that they don't taste like much but that the texture "is not something we're used to yet." Even if we can figure out a way to sterilize the bottle on the fly (because of course you would have to do that or else you end up with yet another container you have to dispose of somehow) would you really want to eat this thing? I mean, really, can they make it so delicious that you WANT to eat it? I seriously doubt it.
Even though the total number of licensed hams continues to rise, the prevailing view of those who are not part of the hobby is that it's a thing of the past. How do you see the Amateur (Ham) Radio evolving when there is so much attention on the Internet, cell phones etc.? (The go-to answer here is almost always emergency communications, and while that's important, that's not enough to keep people engaged in amateur radio as a hobby.)
Following the logic above, it would be something like a conspiracy to commit the crime. Any kind of warning about a cop is apparently conspiring to commit the crime. Personally, I don't get it.
My wife went back to school in her 40's and got her Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, and began her PhD. The key was that she went to the (fully regionally accredited) Anthioch University campus in Santa Barbara, which (at the time, anyway) was geared 100% toward "adult learners" with at least 1-2 years of college credit already. (Note: It is an expensive private school, but if you want it bad enough and can get loans and/or scholarships, it's doable.) Their approach is different from that taken with freshly-minted high school graduates, acknowledging that most adults who return to school have a complex life built up during their years away from formal education, and are at a different place in their life than someone fresh out of high school. There are several things they do differently: class size is very limited; the "quarters" (or whatever) are only 10 weeks long and very intensive; you can opt for letter grades or pass/fail and you are evaluated entirely on class participation and the many MANY papers you must write for each class, usually including a final paper that demonstrates mastery of the material. Classes are scheduled in such a way to better accomodate the student's outside committments, such as family and work. Some students take all their classes on weekends, while others stack them all on one or two days a week, or evenings. Some students find that going back to school surrounded by others who are doing the same thing is more supportive of their efforts.
Bottom line to what I'm saying: Check out other ways of going to school. Distance learning can be a good option because there are several ways to make that work. Schools catering specifically to adults that are returning to school after an absence are another option.
As a credentialed geek who loves coffee, I of course purchased an Aeropress straight away upon hearing about it. I used it every day for about a month, experimenting with type of coffee, grind, water temperature, and pressure/amount of time pushing the water through. PROS: It's easy, and the coffee is good. No reason you can't make a delicious cup of coffee with this once you nail down the perfect combination of the above 4 things. CONS: (And this is the reason I stopped using it.) It uses a LOT of coffee to make one good cup of coffee, more than any other method. Your usage will just about double per cup over other methods. The other drawback for some is that it only makes one cup at a time and then you have to reheat the water while you clean it and refill it etc. for the next cup. My recommendation: If you've never tried a "mocha pot" stove-top espresso maker, give it a try. (They have electric ones too but they cost a lot more.) Of course the easiest and simplest to use and clean up is a simple cone filter over a carafe. Many people swear by the taste and simplicity of a French Press pot, but they are a little messy. Enjoy the journey!
I haven't seen the numbers in a year or so, but the last I heard, most people that bought an EV do not buy another one when it comes time to replace it for whatever reason. In other words, people who could afford one and were on board with buying one do not love it enough to replace it with another EV when the time comes. I'd bet a huge percentage of those who say they love it feel compelled by societal pressure, plus the accolades and oohs and ahhs from their friends. Once the long-term limitations begin to chafe, they quietly move back into gasoline powered vehicles. NOTE: These statistics were collected before the Tesla was around, so maybe it's just the carsof a few years ago (Prius, I'm looking at you!) were not there yet.
What about the hole they have to drill in the carapace, and the fact that they have to cut the antennas to attach the electrodes? You had a choice to poke holes in yourself (I doubt you did the equivalent of cutting the antennas, whatever that would be) for a good that outweighed the bad. The fact that the roach has no choice, no ability to choose, is part of what makes this wrong. If we had to chisel out the horse's teeth, or break it's jaw to put in the bit, would that be okay for you?
I'd like to see this put to a poll of the Slashdot users. I have a feeling I know how it would go, but I'd love to see it in numbers and percentages. For myself, until we know how to create a cockroach (not that I would want that!) or any living thing... like an ant, for example, from scratch and give it life, I think we have to be very careful to ask ourselves ethical questions such as this one. Do I believe in killing bugs and such? Sure I do. But I actually try not to unless I think it's necessary. The "ethical dilemna" is embodied in the word "necessary" and that's where you have to answer for yourself what responsibilities we have, if any, to other life on the planet.
I had a very small song I needed to put into sheet music, so I figured I'd download a demo of one of the main (Windows) notation programs, Sibelius. Great program, very full-featured and complicated. Awesome program, but HUGELY expensive for a guy like me. Then I grabbed MuseScore, which is free (as in beer), and WOW! What a fantastic program! It has most (if not all) of the same features as Sibelius, but it's open source! Now they are working to facilitate braille! I know anybody could be doing this, but this is the kind of thing that makes open source stand out. Good for them! A big-name software company selling proprietary software would probably look at the size of the blind musician market and decide it didn't make economic sense. Since open source software isn't about making money on the software itself, they do this because it's a good thing to do and, yes, it raises their visibility for about 15 minutes, but it's really just cool to do! Good job.
But what about my iPhone 3G? (And watch it! This is a family show!) If they were really serious about it being "for the good of the environment" or whatnot, they would take back even the venerable 3G. (And I'm not talking about the 3GS. I know they take those.) I don't see that happening!
You still don't get it. It is radio. You, like a lot of people, think of transistor radios designed to receive AM or FM medium-band broadcasts and convert them into sound. But what you don't seem to grasp is that a WiFi transmitter and receiver is definitely a radio, just like your cell phone is a radio and the remote control to open your garage door is a radio. As a licensed Amateur Radio operator, as long as I make sure the signals are not encrypted (such as with SSL) I can increase the power of my WiFi router way more than the off-the-shelf limits, because I am a licensed RADIO operator. Get it?
So, I guess you haven't bothered to read the previous posts? Amateur radio the world over relies on the non-political, non-commercial nature of the communications. The minute you allow encryption in a way that cannot be quickly and easily decoded by any interested party, this service will go away. Completely. For all of the reasons cited above.
That's an exellent point, and a good topic for another thread. Why is amateur-band equipment with better features cheaper than commercial-band equipment? In olden tymes, "business" or "commercial" grade meant sturdier, able to handle higher duty cycles, etc. but with electronics that's all moot. And when the taxpayer has to foot the bill, and the people buying the equipment don't have to pay for it out of their own pockets (not dirctly, anyway), then we have typical government spending issues to deal with. This just gets added to the (LONG) list.
(I'm an amateur radio operator, btw, and I couldn't agree more with the OP from Bruce. Allowing encryption on the ham bands is a BAD idea for the reasons he gave.)
One thing nobody has mentioned yet. Ham radio operators are viewed as a bunch of old farts, but who do you think DESIGNED and BUILT the electronics industry that supports the development of new toys like iPhones and XBoxes and this system of tubes we're all on? Most of them are Hams.
Absolutely! I think the code requirement was a huge stumbling block to entry into this hobby. I know it was for me! I tried and tried and just couldn't devote the head-space to learning it. I really want to, and I plan to, some day, hopefully soon! But now it's really easy to get your Technician license. Many Hamfests offer a one-day training, followed by the test itself, just to give you an idea of how hard it really is to get started.
For a variety of reasons, Hams are generally speaking not "joiners", and the old-timers that form the core of most Amateur Radio Clubs have been a tight-knit community of amateur engineers and friends for decades, supporting and sharing the tech knowledge, but there are WAY more Hams out there who do not even belong to a club. Many clubs struggle to get newly-licensed hams to join them! However, the number of new licenses issued by the FCC has been increasing every year for many years. Here is a quote from the ARRL web site: "In 2009, a total of 30,144 new licenses were granted, an increase of almost 7.5 percent from 2008. In 2005, 16,368 new hams joined Amateur Radio’s ranks -- just five years later, that number had increased by almost 14,000, a whopping 84 percent!" So, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of Amateur Radio's death has been greatly exaggerated! (From an article linked here.)
This really fries my clams! [rant]It's one more example of everyone just rolling over and accepting the use of taxation to try to achieve some perceived social benefit through using taxation to modify behavior. This is the reason that is put forth, and it's ridiculous!! Has tobacco taxation slowed the use of cigarettes? No! Has alcohol taxation slowed the use of alcohol consumption? No! And what business is it of the government's anyway? If I want to be a fat, cigarette puffing, drunken sot, is there a "cost to society"? Only if I hurt others or try to get government help for my problems. There are laws which punish and ultimately remove people from general circulation if they hurt other people, and I certainly don't expect the government to take care of me because I'm sick. Who ever said *that* was the government's job anyway? The more you expect someone to take care of you, the more vested interest they have in preventing you from doing things that might be expensive to them. Everyone, wake up!! This is not okay!! It's never been okay! Taxation is for paying for government services, not for trying to achieve some social aim through behavior modification!! THIS MAKES ME CRAZY!!![/rant] Okay. I feel better now. You all can go back to your government-approved lives now. I apologize for the outburst. It won't happen again. If it does, I'm sure there will be a 2:00 AM knock on my door.
I was a consultant at the Texaco refinery in Wilmington, California (near Long Beach) in the late 80's, and the Los Angeles "Air Quality Management District" folks mandated that they decrease the average number of cars going in and out of the main gate per month in an effort to improve the air quality in the LA basin. Not sure how that would have compared to, say, decreasing the smoke-stack emissions at the refinery, but I'll leave that for YASP. (Yet Another Slashdot Post) Anyway, their creative solution was to request everyone at the refinery, office staff as well as the operations guys, to work "nine nines" and they'd get every other friday off. This ended up working extremely well for everyone that did it, and it did not seem to have any negative impacts at the refinery, so... I'd say it was a success 20 years ago. I have no idea if they are still doing that. I guess if they had gotten everyone in LA to adopt this plan it would have reduced smog caused by car emissions by roughly 10%. I never heard of anybody else doing this, and we now know that smog caused by cars is a much smaller percentage than was once thought, so how much did this help the smog situation? I'd say it was bureaucrats wanting to look like they were doing something about a problem.
Oh Good grief! Leave Barbara Walters alone on the tree thing already! If you knew what you were talking about you'd know there was context to that question that, when removed, makes it sound ridiculous. She was interviewing Kathryn Hepburn, and... oh, go research it yourself. I'm not "for or against" Barbara Walters. I just hate people who parrot things rather than know them for themselves.
This comment will most likely never get read because I'm doing it a day late, but here goes. I've spent my life in, on, and around the sea, specifically the coastline of Southern California, and unless the big ships on the Atlantic are different from those in the Pacific, those big ships won't change directions for ANYTHING! Last time I checked (admittedly it's been awhile) laws had been passed allowing the ships to run without any human on the bridge at all, as long as the ship has suitable automated systems. I've heard many, many stories where a becalmed sail boat in or near the path of an oncoming tanker or freighter was completely unable to raise anybody on any hailing frequency, sometimes with disastrous results. Experience has made me a cynic I guess, but crews of these huge ships are not romantic, caring, Cousteau-wannabes. It's just a job to them, and making port on-schedule is the priority, not cutting your speed in half and posting a watch for a whale that was detected 24 hours ago by a buoy 5 miles away. I hope I'm wrong, and I'm just being an old curmudgeon. But there's no mention of anything other than voluntary compliance, or of any consequences of ignoring the warnings, and to me it just sounds like pie-in-the-sky environmentalism, which is NOT the kind of environmentalism that the almost-extinct North Atlantic Right Whale needs. I give them an "E" for Effort, but on an A/B/C/D/F grading system, that's not much of a grade!
Slashdot Mirror
Why? Another poster says it's not for humans to eat, but the article states that they don't taste like much but that the texture "is not something we're used to yet." Even if we can figure out a way to sterilize the bottle on the fly (because of course you would have to do that or else you end up with yet another container you have to dispose of somehow) would you really want to eat this thing? I mean, really, can they make it so delicious that you WANT to eat it? I seriously doubt it.
Even though the total number of licensed hams continues to rise, the prevailing view of those who are not part of the hobby is that it's a thing of the past. How do you see the Amateur (Ham) Radio evolving when there is so much attention on the Internet, cell phones etc.? (The go-to answer here is almost always emergency communications, and while that's important, that's not enough to keep people engaged in amateur radio as a hobby.)
Bruce, please engage on this topic. There are probably not many hams on Slashdot, but this is a great topic that blends these two realms.
Just sayin'.
Following the logic above, it would be something like a conspiracy to commit the crime. Any kind of warning about a cop is apparently conspiring to commit the crime. Personally, I don't get it.
My wife went back to school in her 40's and got her Bachelor's degree, Master's degree, and began her PhD. The key was that she went to the (fully regionally accredited) Anthioch University campus in Santa Barbara, which (at the time, anyway) was geared 100% toward "adult learners" with at least 1-2 years of college credit already. (Note: It is an expensive private school, but if you want it bad enough and can get loans and/or scholarships, it's doable.) Their approach is different from that taken with freshly-minted high school graduates, acknowledging that most adults who return to school have a complex life built up during their years away from formal education, and are at a different place in their life than someone fresh out of high school. There are several things they do differently: class size is very limited; the "quarters" (or whatever) are only 10 weeks long and very intensive; you can opt for letter grades or pass/fail and you are evaluated entirely on class participation and the many MANY papers you must write for each class, usually including a final paper that demonstrates mastery of the material. Classes are scheduled in such a way to better accomodate the student's outside committments, such as family and work. Some students take all their classes on weekends, while others stack them all on one or two days a week, or evenings. Some students find that going back to school surrounded by others who are doing the same thing is more supportive of their efforts.
Bottom line to what I'm saying: Check out other ways of going to school. Distance learning can be a good option because there are several ways to make that work. Schools catering specifically to adults that are returning to school after an absence are another option.
As a credentialed geek who loves coffee, I of course purchased an Aeropress straight away upon hearing about it. I used it every day for about a month, experimenting with type of coffee, grind, water temperature, and pressure/amount of time pushing the water through. PROS: It's easy, and the coffee is good. No reason you can't make a delicious cup of coffee with this once you nail down the perfect combination of the above 4 things. CONS: (And this is the reason I stopped using it.) It uses a LOT of coffee to make one good cup of coffee, more than any other method. Your usage will just about double per cup over other methods. The other drawback for some is that it only makes one cup at a time and then you have to reheat the water while you clean it and refill it etc. for the next cup. My recommendation: If you've never tried a "mocha pot" stove-top espresso maker, give it a try. (They have electric ones too but they cost a lot more.) Of course the easiest and simplest to use and clean up is a simple cone filter over a carafe. Many people swear by the taste and simplicity of a French Press pot, but they are a little messy. Enjoy the journey!
I haven't seen the numbers in a year or so, but the last I heard, most people that bought an EV do not buy another one when it comes time to replace it for whatever reason. In other words, people who could afford one and were on board with buying one do not love it enough to replace it with another EV when the time comes. I'd bet a huge percentage of those who say they love it feel compelled by societal pressure, plus the accolades and oohs and ahhs from their friends. Once the long-term limitations begin to chafe, they quietly move back into gasoline powered vehicles. NOTE: These statistics were collected before the Tesla was around, so maybe it's just the carsof a few years ago (Prius, I'm looking at you!) were not there yet.
What about the hole they have to drill in the carapace, and the fact that they have to cut the antennas to attach the electrodes? You had a choice to poke holes in yourself (I doubt you did the equivalent of cutting the antennas, whatever that would be) for a good that outweighed the bad. The fact that the roach has no choice, no ability to choose, is part of what makes this wrong. If we had to chisel out the horse's teeth, or break it's jaw to put in the bit, would that be okay for you?
I'd like to see this put to a poll of the Slashdot users. I have a feeling I know how it would go, but I'd love to see it in numbers and percentages. For myself, until we know how to create a cockroach (not that I would want that!) or any living thing... like an ant, for example, from scratch and give it life, I think we have to be very careful to ask ourselves ethical questions such as this one. Do I believe in killing bugs and such? Sure I do. But I actually try not to unless I think it's necessary. The "ethical dilemna" is embodied in the word "necessary" and that's where you have to answer for yourself what responsibilities we have, if any, to other life on the planet.
I had a very small song I needed to put into sheet music, so I figured I'd download a demo of one of the main (Windows) notation programs, Sibelius. Great program, very full-featured and complicated. Awesome program, but HUGELY expensive for a guy like me. Then I grabbed MuseScore, which is free (as in beer), and WOW! What a fantastic program! It has most (if not all) of the same features as Sibelius, but it's open source! Now they are working to facilitate braille! I know anybody could be doing this, but this is the kind of thing that makes open source stand out. Good for them! A big-name software company selling proprietary software would probably look at the size of the blind musician market and decide it didn't make economic sense. Since open source software isn't about making money on the software itself, they do this because it's a good thing to do and, yes, it raises their visibility for about 15 minutes, but it's really just cool to do! Good job.
But what about my iPhone 3G? (And watch it! This is a family show!) If they were really serious about it being "for the good of the environment" or whatnot, they would take back even the venerable 3G. (And I'm not talking about the 3GS. I know they take those.) I don't see that happening!
You still don't get it. It is radio. You, like a lot of people, think of transistor radios designed to receive AM or FM medium-band broadcasts and convert them into sound. But what you don't seem to grasp is that a WiFi transmitter and receiver is definitely a radio, just like your cell phone is a radio and the remote control to open your garage door is a radio. As a licensed Amateur Radio operator, as long as I make sure the signals are not encrypted (such as with SSL) I can increase the power of my WiFi router way more than the off-the-shelf limits, because I am a licensed RADIO operator. Get it?
This quote is a little off: "The distance between wifi waves is shorter than that of radio waves...". It is radio, at 2.4 GHz. (first post?)
Yes, but how will we opportunity the challenges created when the synergies created by fully incentivized participants don’t leverage the learnings?
So, I guess you haven't bothered to read the previous posts? Amateur radio the world over relies on the non-political, non-commercial nature of the communications. The minute you allow encryption in a way that cannot be quickly and easily decoded by any interested party, this service will go away. Completely. For all of the reasons cited above.
That's an exellent point, and a good topic for another thread. Why is amateur-band equipment with better features cheaper than commercial-band equipment? In olden tymes, "business" or "commercial" grade meant sturdier, able to handle higher duty cycles, etc. but with electronics that's all moot. And when the taxpayer has to foot the bill, and the people buying the equipment don't have to pay for it out of their own pockets (not dirctly, anyway), then we have typical government spending issues to deal with. This just gets added to the (LONG) list.
(I'm an amateur radio operator, btw, and I couldn't agree more with the OP from Bruce. Allowing encryption on the ham bands is a BAD idea for the reasons he gave.)
One thing nobody has mentioned yet. Ham radio operators are viewed as a bunch of old farts, but who do you think DESIGNED and BUILT the electronics industry that supports the development of new toys like iPhones and XBoxes and this system of tubes we're all on? Most of them are Hams.
Absolutely! I think the code requirement was a huge stumbling block to entry into this hobby. I know it was for me! I tried and tried and just couldn't devote the head-space to learning it. I really want to, and I plan to, some day, hopefully soon! But now it's really easy to get your Technician license. Many Hamfests offer a one-day training, followed by the test itself, just to give you an idea of how hard it really is to get started.
For a variety of reasons, Hams are generally speaking not "joiners", and the old-timers that form the core of most Amateur Radio Clubs have been a tight-knit community of amateur engineers and friends for decades, supporting and sharing the tech knowledge, but there are WAY more Hams out there who do not even belong to a club. Many clubs struggle to get newly-licensed hams to join them! However, the number of new licenses issued by the FCC has been increasing every year for many years. Here is a quote from the ARRL web site: "In 2009, a total of 30,144 new licenses were granted, an increase of almost 7.5 percent from 2008. In 2005, 16,368 new hams joined Amateur Radio’s ranks -- just five years later, that number had increased by almost 14,000, a whopping 84 percent!" So, to paraphrase Mark Twain, the news of Amateur Radio's death has been greatly exaggerated! (From an article linked here.)
This really fries my clams! [rant]It's one more example of everyone just rolling over and accepting the use of taxation to try to achieve some perceived social benefit through using taxation to modify behavior. This is the reason that is put forth, and it's ridiculous!! Has tobacco taxation slowed the use of cigarettes? No! Has alcohol taxation slowed the use of alcohol consumption? No! And what business is it of the government's anyway? If I want to be a fat, cigarette puffing, drunken sot, is there a "cost to society"? Only if I hurt others or try to get government help for my problems. There are laws which punish and ultimately remove people from general circulation if they hurt other people, and I certainly don't expect the government to take care of me because I'm sick. Who ever said *that* was the government's job anyway? The more you expect someone to take care of you, the more vested interest they have in preventing you from doing things that might be expensive to them. Everyone, wake up!! This is not okay!! It's never been okay! Taxation is for paying for government services, not for trying to achieve some social aim through behavior modification!! THIS MAKES ME CRAZY!!![/rant] Okay. I feel better now. You all can go back to your government-approved lives now. I apologize for the outburst. It won't happen again. If it does, I'm sure there will be a 2:00 AM knock on my door.
I was a consultant at the Texaco refinery in Wilmington, California (near Long Beach) in the late 80's, and the Los Angeles "Air Quality Management District" folks mandated that they decrease the average number of cars going in and out of the main gate per month in an effort to improve the air quality in the LA basin. Not sure how that would have compared to, say, decreasing the smoke-stack emissions at the refinery, but I'll leave that for YASP. (Yet Another Slashdot Post) Anyway, their creative solution was to request everyone at the refinery, office staff as well as the operations guys, to work "nine nines" and they'd get every other friday off. This ended up working extremely well for everyone that did it, and it did not seem to have any negative impacts at the refinery, so... I'd say it was a success 20 years ago. I have no idea if they are still doing that. I guess if they had gotten everyone in LA to adopt this plan it would have reduced smog caused by car emissions by roughly 10%. I never heard of anybody else doing this, and we now know that smog caused by cars is a much smaller percentage than was once thought, so how much did this help the smog situation? I'd say it was bureaucrats wanting to look like they were doing something about a problem.
Oh Good grief! Leave Barbara Walters alone on the tree thing already! If you knew what you were talking about you'd know there was context to that question that, when removed, makes it sound ridiculous. She was interviewing Kathryn Hepburn, and... oh, go research it yourself. I'm not "for or against" Barbara Walters. I just hate people who parrot things rather than know them for themselves.
This comment will most likely never get read because I'm doing it a day late, but here goes. I've spent my life in, on, and around the sea, specifically the coastline of Southern California, and unless the big ships on the Atlantic are different from those in the Pacific, those big ships won't change directions for ANYTHING! Last time I checked (admittedly it's been awhile) laws had been passed allowing the ships to run without any human on the bridge at all, as long as the ship has suitable automated systems. I've heard many, many stories where a becalmed sail boat in or near the path of an oncoming tanker or freighter was completely unable to raise anybody on any hailing frequency, sometimes with disastrous results. Experience has made me a cynic I guess, but crews of these huge ships are not romantic, caring, Cousteau-wannabes. It's just a job to them, and making port on-schedule is the priority, not cutting your speed in half and posting a watch for a whale that was detected 24 hours ago by a buoy 5 miles away. I hope I'm wrong, and I'm just being an old curmudgeon. But there's no mention of anything other than voluntary compliance, or of any consequences of ignoring the warnings, and to me it just sounds like pie-in-the-sky environmentalism, which is NOT the kind of environmentalism that the almost-extinct North Atlantic Right Whale needs. I give them an "E" for Effort, but on an A/B/C/D/F grading system, that's not much of a grade!
The RSA SecurID tokens are completely different, according to VeriSign, and will not work with their PIP system.