Go to google and do this search, including the quotes:
"google sues"
Google has a history of defending their IP. They are unlike other companies in that they don't seem to wield lawyers like a berserk MPAA, but they are not pollyannas, either.
In my car and in my house, my computer or phone get plugged into real speakers. While the little speakers on the phone might be lacking in fidelity, the codec is just fine and decent-quality mp3's or m4a's sound great played over a system.
When I can wear a quality set of headphones, I use them. They sound great.
And yes, every now and then I want a little music while I'm gardening or working in the garage, and the iphone's speakers are good enough that I can set the phone down and hear the music just fine. It's like the little world-band radio that I used to use but now I get to choose my own music.
And I do stream music, and it sounds surprisingly good.
But then, I've always been the kind of person who listens to the *music* and not the *speakers*.
One of my first thoughts about this project was that yes, this will be very expensive and difficult- but it will pay off big-time. Since the U.S. is having a hard time gathering capital for projects like this, I'm actually happy that *someone* is doing it. Japan has profited immensely from many U.S. advances (esp. in electronics/communications)- now it's their turn to take the lead.
I'm not saying that Japan should foot the bill for a failed endeavor; quite the opposite, since I think this will work out to the world's benefit (and to Japan's financial success). But it's nice that someone came up with the initial investment to get things moving.
Maybe in a civilized society, material possessions are considered less important than the safety and welfare of citizens. Maybe a civilized person would have followed due process and called the police to get his vehicle back. It's not about being weak or pacifist, it's about justice. Our social contract takes away the power of an individual to decide whether to visit physical harm upon another individual.
I don't honestly know what the practical value of knowing Pi to the 2.5 trillionth digit is
The benefit is not knowing more about pi but rather knowing better the capabilities of the computer you are using. A test program, if you will. And once we ensure that the computer is accurate and functional, we can set it loose on problems like cancer. Pi is used because we already have extensive data on it and it's a simple matter to compare two computers' output; they should match perfectly.
Bought a stun gun to play with at work- 950,000 volts powered by two 9V batteries. Very nice long blue arc across the terminals, and a very satisfying reaction from tazed coworkers (but not even close to fatal). This was just today.
My electric fence pegs my tester, which only goes to 20,000 volts, and I'm pretty sure it's more in the 30-40kV range. I have touched it without shoes on (the difference is amazing) and although it was very unpleasant, it was not fatal. That was a path through the fence, my hand tightly gripping the fence strand, my body, my bare feet, wet ground, and back to two 6-foot copper grounds not quite 15 feet away in either direction.
otoh, our medium-voltage systems at work are around 200 volts but really high amps (our portable generators use jet engines as the prime mover). That power has been known to kill people and burn holes through things.
Hydrazine is a little bit more toxic than you make it out to be.
The F-16's epu uses hydrazine (about 80 lbs of it are in a tank aft of the cockpit). During epu tests, everyone gets upwind (regulation). Our hydrazine response team wear full-protection SCBA spacesuits to clean it up. If a person is exposed, they get regular blood tests for the rest of their lives.
I work closely with a few people who have been exposed, and they are reminded with every passing hour that they cannot breath as well or feel as well. You can say, "yeah, comes with the territory," but it's pretty heartbreaking when you know that these guys have beautiful kids who are probably going to lose their dads within 10 years...
No, you can bet that the competitors will win because repairing a graphite defect/delamination/crack/ requires a $100,000 hot bonder + materials as opposed to $0.10 worth of aluminum, $0.01 worth of rivets, and $80.00 worth of rivet gun.
Composites are really neat, and I love working on them, but mfg.+maint. of composite > mfg.+maint. of aluminum aircraft.
Just speaking from the air force side of things- going from Al to Carbon requires a manning increase in the structures shop of at least 3X. Graphite is a totally new game that most structures guys are simply not prepared to cope with. You need to take that into account when you're comparing budgets.
I think that if I wanted to run for Sheriff, Maricopa would be the LAST place in the country that I'd try to do it. Why is Maricopa county a household name here on the opposite side of the country? Because their sheriff is dazzlingly violent and aggressive, probably corrupt and provably guilty of many crimes.
Can you imagine the shitstorm you'd have to endure if you ran against this man and his cronies? I don't exaggerate when I say that I'd be worried about my safety and my property, my private records, my kids' school records, anything that they could use against me.
I second your usage of 'zombies' but I think there is a darker side to it... I wind up on various libertarian/survivalist/gun-related forums every now and then trying to find obscure information (how to remove front post sight from AK-47, for example. Innocent little things). Something I noticed, and it took me a while, is that 'zombies', for them, is a euphemism for minorities.
Now, there is a distinction here- You and I using it as a euphemism for civil unrest and they using it for civil unrest of dark people. It's something that always kind of bugged me, and part of why I don't post on those forums.
It's sort of like how Urban has come to be a blatant euphemism for african american/black. I mean, there are sections in music catalogs, "Urban", where all the black artists' music goes. If you're proud of your beliefs and one of your beliefs is that you don't like black people, then have the balls to just come out and say it.
Anyways, yeah. My house has poor zombie defensibility (too many windows at ground level, only one level, forest comes almost up to the house) but because of my neighbors the zombies might go elsewhere looking for brains.
Well that, and- We use a smart-card as our computer login these days. Everything we do on the network is logged and tied to our identity. Official websites sometimes even require that I login again with the card and password, meaning that if you make an edit on this wiki there will be no question about its authorship.
The bickering in the labs would have little impact on the grunts. The way that chain of command works means there is an almost straight line of responsibility from the lowest airman or private all the way to the president.
Here is my own personal chain of command, from lowest-ranking to highest. No one outside of this chain has responsibility for anyone lower than their rank unless they are acting in the function or in the stead of someone in this chain.
-My guys -Me -Shop supervisor (obvious) -Element supervisor (super of my shop and the rest of fabrication like machine shop) -Squadron commander (in charge of all the backshops) -Group commander (in charge of all maintenance) -Base/wing commander -State adjutant general----->State governor (when tasked by our state during disaster or whatever) -Joint chiefs of staff at the pentagon -President (CINC)
I'm not part of the air force chaplaincy or the fuel analysis program or the drill team, which is why none of them are included in this chain. Nothing they do has any bearing on my work unless someone higher up accepts the responsibility for ordering a change, in which case the chain of responsibility is as clear as day. And in most cases in the air force, rationale is given as citations from the applicable tech data, which is quickly verifiable, and which leaves the ultimate burden on the shoulders of the author.
In reality, tactical-level decisions (Should we open fire? Which building should we drop a bomb onto?) are made by field-grade officers who already have command over possibly thousands of people and there will be NO question of who ordered what or why. We have rules of engagement and SOFA and LOAC and a whole bunch of other rules to follow to help ensure that mixups like you describe don't happen in the field.
I'd like to point out that in the air force I know of at least two programs that serve this niche, albeit more slowly.
There's the air force idea program, where you can be paid money for your ideas. Any ideas, really, as long as they are safe and save the air force money. Examples might include "training one person to repair part X on location would save $X per unit compared to sending it to depot, thus saving this base on average $Y/year". Stuff like that that could only come from someone experienced in their career out in the field.
And we have a program for changing T.O.s (Technical orders; they're the manuals we use for maintaining aircraft- among other things- and can fill a large room just for one airframe). If you find a missing step, an unsafe step, ambiguous language, a more efficient process, etc, you submit the paperwork (I believe it's done electronically now) and the primary TO manager gets it. If it's not a safety issue, it is released with the next TO revision, and if it is a safety issue, the revision can be issued to every relevant unit within days, to be implemented within days. It's a system that has worked pretty well since the 50's.
You mean army. The *army* might not read their FM's.
The Air Force has T.O.'s and I assure slashdot that we do in fact read them. There is work out there that is running/jumping/bang bang-stuff, and there is work out there that is "putting all 10,000 pieces of this engine back together within 0.0005" tolerances'.
So as an airman, I'd appreciate it if I didn't get lumped in with all of the army anecdotes. I respect the army but comparing the army to the marines to air force etc. would be like comparing soccer to baseball to football.
But, IF this vehicle ever became popular we will have another crisis on our hands. The electrical grid probably can't handle the load, even in off peak hours, let alone in high-demand hours. And while you wait 15 years to get another nuclear power station permitted you will be keeping the coal fired plant up all night.
I don't want to sound like a pollyanna when it comes to our power grid, but I'm sure that people said the exact same thing about central air conditioning, refrigerators in *every* home, streetlights on *every* corner, etc, you get the idea.
One of two things can happen here: The utilities, being experts in power generation and transmission, will build capacity as demand grows; or, things less useful/productive than driving* will be cut off bit by bit (turn off the lights in the civic center at night, turn off highway streetlamps after 2 am, etc.
I really don't think this is the end of the world. And the best part- for us nuclear fans- is that a big electricity crunch would be just the stimulus needed to build new plants. I know it takes a while to get them online but the transition to electric vehicles won't happen overnight, either.
I think the recent spate of odometer-based taxes were exactly that. Lawmakers have seen this coming (they should, since they played a role in it).
I couldn't for the life of me think of why mileage-based tax was better than the tax-per-gallon that we currently use. It would do nothing to deter gas hogs. Buuuuut.... If gas gets expensive anyways, and people move to electric cars anyways, then the infrastructure for mileage (odometer) taxes will already be in place and there will be minimal fuss from the worker bees. Er. Voters. Not that I'm against paying taxes for road maintenance.
IMO, the real question is, "Does this new tool increase productivity/efficiency/etc?"
Hammers are an improvement over rocks, even though now most people would have a hard time getting anything done with just a rock.
Same with C vs assembly, cars vs horsedrawn carriage, CNC vs manual lathes and mills.
Automated farming has meant that only a tiny percentage of the population knows how to grow much of anything, but in the big picture it frees us up to be more productive doing some more useful or more enjoyable.
In addition, latin is preferred over vernacular because, as a dead language, technical texts written now or a hundred years ago will still be very readable in the future.
Also, cerveau is french for brain, not head. Head would be tete, with an accent circumflex over the first E.
Cervical and cerveau both originate from latin 'cervix': neck.
Nicotine is a powerful poison. It is pretty difficult to poison yourself (acutely) with cigs because you'd start puking and be unable to continue smoking fast enough. A tea, on the other hand, would allow the user to brew two or three or four bags at once, drink it, and die.
Also, tobacco is a terrible thing to swallow. Ask anyone who uses chew about their first time using it- I can almost guarantee that they swallowed, and then puked.
The field exercises were going very well. The colonel watched his men run around shouting "bangity bang bang!" at each other while maneuvering through the battlefield. Suddenly all the men started retreating, the fear vivid on their faces. Behind them, a solitary soldier slowly came towards them. "Tankity tankity tank."
You have a blueprint: "U.S.S. Ship of Theseus" You have some wood and metal and stuff. You build the ship according to the blueprint (No shortcuts. Exactly to spec)
Voila, you have the Ship of Theseus. Someone down in Florida gets the same blueprints, builds the same ship exactly according to the blueprints. They, too, have a Ship of Theseus.
It comes down to definitions (like most greek paradoxes, I'm looking at you Zeno). By 'same' do you mean identical? Identical in what way? Two Ford Tauruses on the showroom are identical (save VIN and other serial numbers, of course). Or do you mean 'same' as in two molecules of water?
Or do you mean 'same' as in two subatomic particles of the same spin, going in the same direction at the same time at the same speed?
Or do you go even farther than that, into string theory and madness?
IMO, for all practical purposes, two things made to the same specifications (read: definitions) are identical. If your specs go all the way down to the subatomic level and you can recreate that, then you just made two identical things.
For a ship, which is built from blueprints not more accurate that 0.010", it is very possible to replace all the parts of the Ship Of Theseus. If you want to get all metaphysical about whether wood and metal have memory, then that's a discussion for another paradox.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like a good time for an old quote. I'm pretty sure it was Lenny Bruce who said this:
Take away the right to say "fuck" and you take away the right to say "Fuck the government."
-b
Go to google and do this search, including the quotes:
"google sues"
Google has a history of defending their IP. They are unlike other companies in that they don't seem to wield lawyers like a berserk MPAA, but they are not pollyannas, either.
-b
In my car and in my house, my computer or phone get plugged into real speakers. While the little speakers on the phone might be lacking in fidelity, the codec is just fine and decent-quality mp3's or m4a's sound great played over a system.
When I can wear a quality set of headphones, I use them. They sound great.
And yes, every now and then I want a little music while I'm gardening or working in the garage, and the iphone's speakers are good enough that I can set the phone down and hear the music just fine. It's like the little world-band radio that I used to use but now I get to choose my own music.
And I do stream music, and it sounds surprisingly good.
But then, I've always been the kind of person who listens to the *music* and not the *speakers*.
-b
I hate to break it to you, but the military already has microwave weapons:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18725095.600
I've seen video of them in action, and while they're not quite to the level of a taser, they definitely have a deterrent effect.
This ignores all the radars and radios that the military uses that will cook you if you stand in front of them (although that was not a design goal).
I just made up a batch of "RF HAZARD EXTREME DANGER" signs at work the other day for pod shop or avionics, can't remember.
-b
One of my first thoughts about this project was that yes, this will be very expensive and difficult- but it will pay off big-time. Since the U.S. is having a hard time gathering capital for projects like this, I'm actually happy that *someone* is doing it. Japan has profited immensely from many U.S. advances (esp. in electronics/communications)- now it's their turn to take the lead.
I'm not saying that Japan should foot the bill for a failed endeavor; quite the opposite, since I think this will work out to the world's benefit (and to Japan's financial success). But it's nice that someone came up with the initial investment to get things moving.
-b
Maybe in a civilized society, material possessions are considered less important than the safety and welfare of citizens. Maybe a civilized person would have followed due process and called the police to get his vehicle back. It's not about being weak or pacifist, it's about justice. Our social contract takes away the power of an individual to decide whether to visit physical harm upon another individual.
-b
I don't honestly know what the practical value of knowing Pi to the 2.5 trillionth digit is
The benefit is not knowing more about pi but rather knowing better the capabilities of the computer you are using. A test program, if you will. And once we ensure that the computer is accurate and functional, we can set it loose on problems like cancer. Pi is used because we already have extensive data on it and it's a simple matter to compare two computers' output; they should match perfectly.
-b
Bought a stun gun to play with at work- 950,000 volts powered by two 9V batteries. Very nice long blue arc across the terminals, and a very satisfying reaction from tazed coworkers (but not even close to fatal). This was just today.
My electric fence pegs my tester, which only goes to 20,000 volts, and I'm pretty sure it's more in the 30-40kV range. I have touched it without shoes on (the difference is amazing) and although it was very unpleasant, it was not fatal. That was a path through the fence, my hand tightly gripping the fence strand, my body, my bare feet, wet ground, and back to two 6-foot copper grounds not quite 15 feet away in either direction.
otoh, our medium-voltage systems at work are around 200 volts but really high amps (our portable generators use jet engines as the prime mover). That power has been known to kill people and burn holes through things.
-b
Hydrazine is a little bit more toxic than you make it out to be.
The F-16's epu uses hydrazine (about 80 lbs of it are in a tank aft of the cockpit). During epu tests, everyone gets upwind (regulation). Our hydrazine response team wear full-protection SCBA spacesuits to clean it up. If a person is exposed, they get regular blood tests for the rest of their lives.
I work closely with a few people who have been exposed, and they are reminded with every passing hour that they cannot breath as well or feel as well. You can say, "yeah, comes with the territory," but it's pretty heartbreaking when you know that these guys have beautiful kids who are probably going to lose their dads within 10 years...
-b
No, you can bet that the competitors will win because repairing a graphite defect/delamination/crack/ requires a $100,000 hot bonder + materials as opposed to $0.10 worth of aluminum, $0.01 worth of rivets, and $80.00 worth of rivet gun.
Composites are really neat, and I love working on them, but mfg.+maint. of composite > mfg.+maint. of aluminum aircraft.
Just speaking from the air force side of things- going from Al to Carbon requires a manning increase in the structures shop of at least 3X. Graphite is a totally new game that most structures guys are simply not prepared to cope with. You need to take that into account when you're comparing budgets.
-b
I think that if I wanted to run for Sheriff, Maricopa would be the LAST place in the country that I'd try to do it. Why is Maricopa county a household name here on the opposite side of the country? Because their sheriff is dazzlingly violent and aggressive, probably corrupt and provably guilty of many crimes.
Can you imagine the shitstorm you'd have to endure if you ran against this man and his cronies? I don't exaggerate when I say that I'd be worried about my safety and my property, my private records, my kids' school records, anything that they could use against me.
There is more to democracy than just voting...
-b
I second your usage of 'zombies' but I think there is a darker side to it... I wind up on various libertarian/survivalist/gun-related forums every now and then trying to find obscure information (how to remove front post sight from AK-47, for example. Innocent little things). Something I noticed, and it took me a while, is that 'zombies', for them, is a euphemism for minorities.
Now, there is a distinction here- You and I using it as a euphemism for civil unrest and they using it for civil unrest of dark people. It's something that always kind of bugged me, and part of why I don't post on those forums.
It's sort of like how Urban has come to be a blatant euphemism for african american/black. I mean, there are sections in music catalogs, "Urban", where all the black artists' music goes. If you're proud of your beliefs and one of your beliefs is that you don't like black people, then have the balls to just come out and say it.
Anyways, yeah. My house has poor zombie defensibility (too many windows at ground level, only one level, forest comes almost up to the house) but because of my neighbors the zombies might go elsewhere looking for brains.
-b
Well that, and- We use a smart-card as our computer login these days. Everything we do on the network is logged and tied to our identity. Official websites sometimes even require that I login again with the card and password, meaning that if you make an edit on this wiki there will be no question about its authorship.
-b
The bickering in the labs would have little impact on the grunts. The way that chain of command works means there is an almost straight line of responsibility from the lowest airman or private all the way to the president.
Here is my own personal chain of command, from lowest-ranking to highest. No one outside of this chain has responsibility for anyone lower than their rank unless they are acting in the function or in the stead of someone in this chain.
-My guys
-Me
-Shop supervisor (obvious)
-Element supervisor (super of my shop and the rest of fabrication like machine shop)
-Squadron commander (in charge of all the backshops)
-Group commander (in charge of all maintenance)
-Base/wing commander
-State adjutant general----->State governor (when tasked by our state during disaster or whatever)
-Joint chiefs of staff at the pentagon
-President (CINC)
I'm not part of the air force chaplaincy or the fuel analysis program or the drill team, which is why none of them are included in this chain. Nothing they do has any bearing on my work unless someone higher up accepts the responsibility for ordering a change, in which case the chain of responsibility is as clear as day. And in most cases in the air force, rationale is given as citations from the applicable tech data, which is quickly verifiable, and which leaves the ultimate burden on the shoulders of the author.
In reality, tactical-level decisions (Should we open fire? Which building should we drop a bomb onto?) are made by field-grade officers who already have command over possibly thousands of people and there will be NO question of who ordered what or why. We have rules of engagement and SOFA and LOAC and a whole bunch of other rules to follow to help ensure that mixups like you describe don't happen in the field.
-b
-b
I'd like to point out that in the air force I know of at least two programs that serve this niche, albeit more slowly.
There's the air force idea program, where you can be paid money for your ideas. Any ideas, really, as long as they are safe and save the air force money. Examples might include "training one person to repair part X on location would save $X per unit compared to sending it to depot, thus saving this base on average $Y/year". Stuff like that that could only come from someone experienced in their career out in the field.
And we have a program for changing T.O.s (Technical orders; they're the manuals we use for maintaining aircraft- among other things- and can fill a large room just for one airframe). If you find a missing step, an unsafe step, ambiguous language, a more efficient process, etc, you submit the paperwork (I believe it's done electronically now) and the primary TO manager gets it. If it's not a safety issue, it is released with the next TO revision, and if it is a safety issue, the revision can be issued to every relevant unit within days, to be implemented within days. It's a system that has worked pretty well since the 50's.
-b
You mean army. The *army* might not read their FM's.
The Air Force has T.O.'s and I assure slashdot that we do in fact read them. There is work out there that is running/jumping/bang bang-stuff, and there is work out there that is "putting all 10,000 pieces of this engine back together within 0.0005" tolerances'.
So as an airman, I'd appreciate it if I didn't get lumped in with all of the army anecdotes. I respect the army but comparing the army to the marines to air force etc. would be like comparing soccer to baseball to football.
-b
But a car that gets 40 MPG will weigh much less than a car/truck getting 20 MPG. Plus, the majority of road wear comes from heavy trucks.
-b
But, IF this vehicle ever became popular we will have another crisis on our hands. The electrical grid probably can't handle the load, even in off peak hours, let alone in high-demand hours. And while you wait 15 years to get another nuclear power station permitted you will be keeping the coal fired plant up all night.
I don't want to sound like a pollyanna when it comes to our power grid, but I'm sure that people said the exact same thing about central air conditioning, refrigerators in *every* home, streetlights on *every* corner, etc, you get the idea.
One of two things can happen here: The utilities, being experts in power generation and transmission, will build capacity as demand grows; or, things less useful/productive than driving* will be cut off bit by bit (turn off the lights in the civic center at night, turn off highway streetlamps after 2 am, etc.
I really don't think this is the end of the world. And the best part- for us nuclear fans- is that a big electricity crunch would be just the stimulus needed to build new plants. I know it takes a while to get them online but the transition to electric vehicles won't happen overnight, either.
-b
*Driving, on the whole, generates revenue
I think the recent spate of odometer-based taxes were exactly that. Lawmakers have seen this coming (they should, since they played a role in it).
I couldn't for the life of me think of why mileage-based tax was better than the tax-per-gallon that we currently use. It would do nothing to deter gas hogs. Buuuuut.... If gas gets expensive anyways, and people move to electric cars anyways, then the infrastructure for mileage (odometer) taxes will already be in place and there will be minimal fuss from the worker bees. Er. Voters. Not that I'm against paying taxes for road maintenance.
-b
IMO, the real question is, "Does this new tool increase productivity/efficiency/etc?"
Hammers are an improvement over rocks, even though now most people would have a hard time getting anything done with just a rock.
Same with C vs assembly, cars vs horsedrawn carriage, CNC vs manual lathes and mills.
Automated farming has meant that only a tiny percentage of the population knows how to grow much of anything, but in the big picture it frees us up to be more productive doing some more useful or more enjoyable.
-b
In addition, latin is preferred over vernacular because, as a dead language, technical texts written now or a hundred years ago will still be very readable in the future.
Also, cerveau is french for brain, not head. Head would be tete, with an accent circumflex over the first E.
Cervical and cerveau both originate from latin 'cervix': neck.
-b
Nicotine is a powerful poison. It is pretty difficult to poison yourself (acutely) with cigs because you'd start puking and be unable to continue smoking fast enough. A tea, on the other hand, would allow the user to brew two or three or four bags at once, drink it, and die.
Also, tobacco is a terrible thing to swallow. Ask anyone who uses chew about their first time using it- I can almost guarantee that they swallowed, and then puked.
-b
The field exercises were going very well. The colonel watched his men run around shouting "bangity bang bang!" at each other while maneuvering through the battlefield. Suddenly all the men started retreating, the fear vivid on their faces. Behind them, a solitary soldier slowly came towards them. "Tankity tankity tank."
-b
I suck at telling jokes.
>>c) Dirt cheap. I mean, really - the most expensive part of the rig is probably the LabView license.
The most expensive part of the rig is probably the ammo. .40 s&w sells for over 50 cents/round most places. 9mm is not much better.
-b
I have an answer to your paradox.
You have a blueprint: "U.S.S. Ship of Theseus"
You have some wood and metal and stuff.
You build the ship according to the blueprint (No shortcuts. Exactly to spec)
Voila, you have the Ship of Theseus. Someone down in Florida gets the same blueprints, builds the same ship exactly according to the blueprints. They, too, have a Ship of Theseus.
It comes down to definitions (like most greek paradoxes, I'm looking at you Zeno). By 'same' do you mean identical? Identical in what way? Two Ford Tauruses on the showroom are identical (save VIN and other serial numbers, of course). Or do you mean 'same' as in two molecules of water?
Or do you mean 'same' as in two subatomic particles of the same spin, going in the same direction at the same time at the same speed?
Or do you go even farther than that, into string theory and madness?
IMO, for all practical purposes, two things made to the same specifications (read: definitions) are identical. If your specs go all the way down to the subatomic level and you can recreate that, then you just made two identical things.
For a ship, which is built from blueprints not more accurate that 0.010", it is very possible to replace all the parts of the Ship Of Theseus. If you want to get all metaphysical about whether wood and metal have memory, then that's a discussion for another paradox.
-b