Being able to make a gun simply and cheaply in your own home is nothing new. You can make a zip gun from stuff you buy at Home Depot for less than $10. That gun has just as much killing power as the plastic printed gun. These have been around for 50 years. Bad guys can buy or steal a high performance gun so easy none of them will spend the time or money to get a 3d printer to print one. This gun can only fire a single shot. Takes several seconds to load another round. Would not be accurate (no rifling) for more than a few feet. Break after a few rounds. The fact that it can pass through metal detectors does pose some risk for use as an assassins weapon, However better plastic parts can be machined and cast just as easy as it is to 3D print them. A 3D printed part is not nearly as strong as a molded part of the same material. People have this false sense of security and when someone points out the risks associated with living in a free society they freak out. Will someone eventually do something bad with 3D printed stuff in the future. Yes someone will. Will it make life more risky? No more risky than all our other high tech stuff that can be misused does.
Wow I can take my old crappy video tapes digitize them and make them look good. I would love to do that and would pay for the service or software to do that. Do a kickstarter wrap you program up in an easy to use interface and you have a product.
Simple solution that politicians would have a hard time saying no to. All products that have DRM should be forced to display a DRM warning message on the outside of the packaging in print, TV and on line advertising. The message should explain in simple terms what the DRM does. IE - requires on line connection all the times, Requires Disk in drive all the time, prevents back up copies...etc. There should be stiff fines for selling products with DRM and no warning label. Then let the market decide. DRM is toxic to computers and users. So the proper warning is the right thing to do.
Yes fossil fuel will run out. Not tomorrow, Not next year, Not next decade. It will run out. What we do have is time. Time to develop an economical alternative. What we need to do is continue to support research in renewable energy sources and energy storage. We do not need to waste money on implementing uneconomical costly technology that is not competitive right now. Having the government tax low income earners so they can subsidize rich people who want to install solar, wind thermal etc is crazy and bad for the economy and our future. How much research could have been done with the $500,000,000+ wasted on Solindra and others? Keep using fossil fuels as long as they are economical. It is becoming more expensive to extract them and over time the price will rise to reflect that. Keep working on solar, biofuels, fuel cells and batteries. At some point in time the cost of fossil fuels will be higher than renewables and the switch will happen. This type of energy switch has happened many times in the past from human to animal to steam/wood to steam/coal to steam/oil to Internal combustion/gasoline to internal combustion/diesel to internal combustion/natural gas to nuclear. These technologies coexist with varying levels of use depending on economic viability. Why should renewables get any special treatment? Market forces are very good at deciding what works best and most economical. Just get out of the way and let it happen.
Any government funded research must be freely accessible on line. The people paid for it let them learn from it.
All government records must be freely accessible on line.
Make it illegal to have nondisclosure agreements on liability settlements. Help people choose good companies and business people to work with. If a company screws you it will haunt them forever.
Make it possible to check everyones government IDs on line and any criminal / arrest record - Would stop Identity theft instantly.
Open corporate records - So we can see who owns what.
Eliminate prohibition of all substances - Make sellers liable for selling to uninformed buyers. If I person knows the risks they should be able to do what they want. Businesses would have to educate customers on risks of their products and have records demonstrating the person understood the risks. No record of knowledge unlimited liability. Records proving knowledge of risks Zero Liability. Would make businesses truthful about products.
Implement the FairTax and eliminate all other taxes.
Bring back old copyright laws - Shorten copyright terms to 20 Years on corporate owned media Change liability for copying to twice current price + lawyers fees unless distributed for profit then penalties 10 times profit derived + 5 times price + lawyer fees.
Patents should be used and enforced or lost. - If you do not try to market your patent or enforce it within 5 years it is void. eliminate patent trolls
Publish all patent applications and allow public comments on prior art and patent ability before granting patents. - Eliminate Junk patents.
Make employee pension rights superior to all lending rights. - Banks are sophisticated investors they can understand the risks would force businesses to fully fund pensions.
Anybody else notice the stowaway ridding on the outside of the Grasshopper during the recent test flight. Looks like a Texan! This is a cropped blowup of a still from the video - http://s22.postimage.org/s82e5jpgx/Grasshopper_Stowaway.jpg . Yea Haw ride-em cowboy. Who says rocket scientists don't have a sense of humor.
He talks and talks no data on how well the device protects the product. How about some drop tests and Impact tests comparing unprotected and protected product. My guess is that anything that really protects it will make it unusable.
I read an article a while back about Sandy Stein who invented a clip that held car keys in a purse so they would not disappear in the vast clutter in the bottom of the purse. It was a very simple clip with an attachment point for a decorative feature. She planned ahead and obtained a utility patent on the concept. She then got a series of design patents on each different version with the different decorative features. This product has sold very well. Because the patents were done well and the decorative features are also protected she has had no problems with ripoffs of her idea. From Article: "Such successful ideas are targets for thieves, but Sandy’s preparation paid off. One notorious knockoff specialist confided to her that he had wanted to copy her product, but “her patent was just too strong and well-written to get around.” Another copycat did try and, for his efforts, lost an infringement case. Sandy agrees that protecting her idea with a patent was the key to the Finders Key Purse staying in the market and remaining successful." http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201206/sparkofgenius.jsp
These are the subsidies "given" to the energy industry: Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion) - This "subsidy" is given to all businesses that operate and pay taxes over seas. Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion) - This sounds like bio diesel or synthetic fuels from coal (Government warping the market) Oil and Gas exploration and development expensing ($7.1 billion) - essentially allows them to expense it in 1 year instead of spreading over many year This is financial slight of hand not a real subsidy. They can eventually claim the whole expense anyway.
The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were: Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion) - Take the tax off of alcohol burned instead of drank. Back handed farm subsidy. Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion) - Paying for windmills and solar panels to be used where they cannot compete. Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion) - Paying for production of environmentally unfriendly costly fuel. Back handed farm subsidy.
I don't think the government should be doing any of these things. The market does a very effective job of allocating resources to the best benefit of humanity.
Government not so much.
When you protest in the real world you are there you are visible and you are subject to scorn and arrest if you break a law. Hiding behind an anonymous DDOS attack is not a bold act worthy of the same kind of respect. There is a place for protest in cyber space. Perhaps the we need a protest DNS service where each domain name has a protest zone where people can set up protest pages associated with existing domains. Add a protest switch to web browsers. When it is on each time you visit a site being protested you are faced with the protest page that you can click through. The protesters have to pay for their own bandwidth and would not disrupt the site being protested so no laws are broken. The protest site is subject to the same kind of problems real protesters are such as being ignored or sued if the protest commits liable. It would also give an easier forum to publicize grievances. Not being able to get to a site does nothing to explain why you think people should not go there. A DDOS attack is more like kidnapping someone or burning down their business than protesting.
For the ocean to be rising higher only on the east coast there must be some attractive force acting to cause the water to flow from the rest of the world to accumulate on the east coast of the US. Gravitational surveys show no gravitational anomalies that could explain this. Prevailing winds are usually from the west in this area which would tend to push the water off shore. No evidence has been found to support the possibility that slower off shore wind speed could be allowing more water to flow back to shore. None of these reports show evidence of subduction due to plate movement. That leaves only one possible cause this is 100% scientific absolute proof with no other cause possible that Washington DC SUCKS!!.
There is a very simple fix for all of this DRM crap. Require sellers to label all DRM protected media. The Labels would have to designate what
level of DRM is applied. DRMX - Locked to single user by hardware keying, DRME - Extended material access requires on line activation
etc. This is just a fair labeling issue. If you know before you buy then the market will force providers to respond to the desires of their customers.
If they get too restrictive market share will drop and they will change their ways. If you are a buyer you would have no reason to complain if you buy
knowing full well you cannot sell or trade your game to someone else. DRM is not wrong what is wrong is not telling people upfront they are buying
a crippled product. Call your congressman demand action. Use government power against the Game industry like they are trying to use it against use.
How about a Propellerclock http://youtu.be/l4F8UbM-1t4/message fan http://youtu.be/XPFI0iCWGvI type invitation. Make a long PCB and space LEDs on it. There is an optical encoder with a handle is on the other end. The PCB has microcontroller on it that will flash the LEDs as the PCB is spun on the handle. Program it to display your invitation. I believe these can be purchased preprogrammed.
This place is practicing Puffery (Legal Lying) when they say their coating "Water Proofs" Your phone. From their own website warranty page "WE NEVER SUGGEST OR RECOMMEND THAT YOUR DEVICE MAY COME IN CONTACT WITH WATER OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF LIQUID. We do not warrant that the coating of your device will work perfectly or that it will work under all conditions." So.. Send us your phone Let us put a coating on it that might destroy it. If it does we will gladly coat your next phone. (We will not pay for any damage we do to your phone). If it gets wet and craps out We will gladly recoat your next phone (We will not pay for any damage water does to your phone). Any coating that can protect your phone from water will render any external electrical contacts useless. If the coating stops water it will stop electrical conduction. If it were electrically conductive it would short out your phone. If the coating scrapes off, Then your phone is not protected. Save your money- Put your phone in a zip lock bag when you go to the beach.
The Big Bang is a religious fantasy just like Intelligent Design. It is based on a deeply held religious belief that the universe was created instantly by the command of some supernatural supreme being wrapped in a veil of science. It requires the belief in way to many fantastic unverified processes and concepts like inflation, dark matter and dark energy. A far simpler and verifiable explanation is one of a universe shaped by electromagnetic forces as well as gravitational forces (a misnomer for the perceived effect of time dilation due to volumetric electromagnetic energy density).
The microwave background radiation is not a remnant of the big bang it is the logical result of Compton scattering off the ions and atoms present in interstellar space. This scattering is also responsible for the observed Red shift of objects farther away than nearer. A simple calculation based on the density of atoms in space shows that the light from the edge of the visible universe transverses approximately the same number of atoms that light from our own sun crosses when it enters our own atmosphere at sunrise and sunset. It makes the sun look red and it makes distant stars look red. If you look up on a clear day the sky is not dark it is lit by scattering. That is the same effect that creates the microwave background radiation. The vacuum of space is not a total vacuum so scattering takes place. It is a good vacuum so it takes great distances to accumulate scattering. The size of the universe is essentially infinite as is its age. The universe however is not static. Entropy is constantly reduced by black holes that spew out matter streams. The universe never dies it is constantly recycled.
Remote code execution - Connected Web CAM - I see a big brother system in the making. Maybe the CIA added the backdoor so they can look for terrorists using PS3 for plotting their next attack. Or it could just be some sex starved computer geek wanting to spy on his "girl friend". I see a huge series of privacy violation law suites in the making. AKA school system spying on students using remote webcams.
I read the article and came across the same thing I see over and over where someone kills or harms someone due to negligence. In order to get a settlement the harmed party needs to agree to never tell anyone about what happened. This type of secrecy needs to be OUTLAWED! How can people make good market decisions when the facts about quality of care are hidden. Some incompetent quack can merrily go on his way killing or harming person after person as long as he pays his malpractice insurance. The quality of care and many other products and services would improve greatly if people knew that mistakes they make will follow them forever. I would favor a national database freely accessible over the internet of every damage award and the details surrounding it. You go looking for a Dr or a Lawyer or a car mechanic you can at least check to see if they have had problems. Now its tough to know. I also do not understand why the insurance companies are not actively involved in pushing for things that would save them money in claims like the infection stopping check lists or simple color coded tubes and noninterchangable connectors. Stuff we have been doing in the automotive industry for years. Not because some government agency told us too but because it saves money.
Eco-Nazis are now forcing people to do the work of the recyclers for them. The recyclers make money on this and the more they can force the population to do their work of sorting and cleaning the trash the more money they make. Here we have multiple containers and they send around two different trucks one for the recyclables and another for trash. Its a big waste of money and of our time. However the Eco-Profiteers use the power of government to force people to provide them free labor under the threat of force (fining you). This kind of BS is immoral and un-American. If it makes economic sense to reclaim and recycle you do not have to force people to do it. It was not economical to grow certain crops unless you could use slave labor. Now we have a whole range of uneconomical technologies like bio-fuels, solar power, electric cars, recycling that require a politically correct form of slavery (government subsidies) to work. I believe in great technologies like solar and wind and even bio-fuels. Eventually these technologies will be more cost effective and they will replace all current forms of energy today. Just like at some time in the future recycling will make economic sense and will replace the current burn/bury and forget systems. If you want to use a more expensive technology to solve a problem that is your choice just don't use the power of Government Force to make the rest of us pay for it.
Wages are only one facet in the total of standard of living. The cost of goods and services should also factor into the calculation. If you look at the standard of living in countries that embrace free trade (globalization) generally those with more free trade enjoy higher standards of living than those with less free trade. Free trade and free markets allows for optimization of benefits over costs. If you can sell your products or labor to the highest bidder and buy your products and services from the low cost provider society benefits most. Sure some high cost providers (labor unions, or protected industries) cannot use a captive market to extort high benefits/prices however I believe that is a good thing.
There is a reason that what we consider low wages draws high numbers of workers in other countries. Generally those wages and jobs are better than what is offered by other employers in those countries. The people getting those jobs dramatically improve their standard of living. Low skill workers here in the US still receive higher wages and enjoy a good standard of living than most workers around the world. I for one do not want more low skill jobs in the US I want more high skill jobs and more productive jobs from use of capital here in the US.
We can attract that investment by creating an environment that rewards investment. A policy of punishing optimization will drive it away. We need less regulation and lower taxes. The concept of the beatings will continue until morale improves really does not work. A business can choose to setup shop in some other high growth market like Brazil or China. Why not make the US one sweet place to do business. Lets try some honey to catch those flies!
We already have a system that constantly covers the earth with multiple data streams. The GPS system. Many Cell phones are capable of receiving GPS signals. Seems like mostly a software issue to add a code that could provide localized warnings of many types of natural disasters. Your GPS personal navigator system could even respond by directing you to the nearest evacuation route. This would be an opt in system that you could use to protect yourself no mater what the local political issues may be.
This Playkey idea is just plain stupid. It solves nothing and changes nothing. Now instead of not being able to transfer and/or backup the mp3 file to play several different places (all mine) the issue will be not being able to transfer and backup the playkey to several different places. Same problem different file extension.
The only real market based solution to the problem is to lower the cost of obtaining the MP3 file from a reputable source (the producer) to a level where no one will bother to look for a free source when the free source could be contaminated with malware. At that price point the profitability of selling the songs illegally becomes a non money maker at a big risk of getting caught. When the risk reward ratio goes negative the crooks find some other method of making money.
The thing the media companies have not yet realized or learned to cope with is that the cost to manufacture and distribute media has dropped so dramatically that it is nearly zero. They are still trying to market media like it is still made up of CDs and books with the same impediments to entry in the market.
I have a hard time understanding why everyone wants to blame corporate greed.
There is no such thing!! Corporations are legal constructs controlled by
HUMANS!! There are Evil and greedy humans that control corporations and
Evil and greedy power hungry people that control governments. Corporations
cannot legally use force only Governments can use force so Scientists are using
deception instead to try and make money. Well welcome to the Human Race.
The real problem is that not enough people value personal honor and are willing
to accept personal responsibility for seeing to it that honesty prevails.
Saying an oath will not guarantee people will abide by it. People make a very
solemn oath in front of witnesses when they get married still about half of
the marriages end in divorce. Nearly 50% of the population don't seem to think
their word is worth much, why should scientists be any different?
That's why we need to make up our own minds regarding the big issues of our day.
We need to investigate the data ourselves look for replication of experimental
results and observations. We must not accept the opinions of others unless they
demonstrate through objective analysis and free and open disclosure of their
work that they can be trusted. When their arguments fall back on opinions and
cries that most people think one way or that those with opposing views are evil
or ignorant that is when you need to insist on hard data and objective review
of the facts and conclusions. If alternative explanations are dismissed out of
hand without analysis of supporting data be careful be very careful. Accurate
theories can be used to make predictions. If the theory does not predict we must
reject.
The only patent I found for Rothschild related to semiconductors Patent 5,252,499 October 12, 1993 does not seem even remotely related to current LED fabrication processes. Most LEDs are now made using a vapor deposition process on sapphire substrates. Her patent is for using hydrogen to increase the conductivity of zinc based semiconductors. It looks to me like she is fishing for a cheap payoff to prevent litigation. Another case of mugging by patent attorney.
Slashdot Mirror
Being able to make a gun simply and cheaply in your own home is nothing new. You can make a zip gun from stuff you buy at Home Depot for less than $10. That gun has just as much killing power as the plastic printed gun. These have been around for 50 years. Bad guys can buy or steal a high performance gun so easy none of them will spend the time or money to get a 3d printer to print one. This gun can only fire a single shot. Takes several seconds to load another round. Would not be accurate (no rifling) for more than a few feet. Break after a few rounds. The fact that it can pass through metal detectors does pose some risk for use as an assassins weapon, However better plastic parts can be machined and cast just as easy as it is to 3D print them. A 3D printed part is not nearly as strong as a molded part of the same material. People have this false sense of security and when someone points out the risks associated with living in a free society they freak out. Will someone eventually do something bad with 3D printed stuff in the future. Yes someone will. Will it make life more risky? No more risky than all our other high tech stuff that can be misused does.
Wow I can take my old crappy video tapes digitize them and make them look good. I would love to do that and would pay for the service or software to do that. Do a kickstarter wrap you program up in an easy to use interface and you have a product.
Simple solution that politicians would have a hard time saying no to. All products that have DRM should be forced to display a DRM warning message on the outside of the packaging in print, TV and on line advertising. The message should explain in simple terms what the DRM does. IE - requires on line connection all the times, Requires Disk in drive all the time, prevents back up copies...etc. There should be stiff fines for selling products with DRM and no warning label. Then let the market decide. DRM is toxic to computers and users. So the proper warning is the right thing to do.
Yes fossil fuel will run out. Not tomorrow, Not next year, Not next decade. It will run out. What we do have is time. Time to develop an economical alternative. What we need to do is continue to support research in renewable energy sources and energy storage. We do not need to waste money on implementing uneconomical costly technology that is not competitive right now. Having the government tax low income earners so they can subsidize rich people who want to install solar, wind thermal etc is crazy and bad for the economy and our future. How much research could have been done with the $500,000,000+ wasted on Solindra and others? Keep using fossil fuels as long as they are economical. It is becoming more expensive to extract them and over time the price will rise to reflect that. Keep working on solar, biofuels, fuel cells and batteries. At some point in time the cost of fossil fuels will be higher than renewables and the switch will happen. This type of energy switch has happened many times in the past from human to animal to steam/wood to steam/coal to steam/oil to Internal combustion/gasoline to internal combustion/diesel to internal combustion/natural gas to nuclear. These technologies coexist with varying levels of use depending on economic viability. Why should renewables get any special treatment? Market forces are very good at deciding what works best and most economical. Just get out of the way and let it happen.
Any government funded research must be freely accessible on line. The people paid for it let them learn from it. All government records must be freely accessible on line. Make it illegal to have nondisclosure agreements on liability settlements. Help people choose good companies and business people to work with. If a company screws you it will haunt them forever. Make it possible to check everyones government IDs on line and any criminal / arrest record - Would stop Identity theft instantly. Open corporate records - So we can see who owns what. Eliminate prohibition of all substances - Make sellers liable for selling to uninformed buyers. If I person knows the risks they should be able to do what they want. Businesses would have to educate customers on risks of their products and have records demonstrating the person understood the risks. No record of knowledge unlimited liability. Records proving knowledge of risks Zero Liability. Would make businesses truthful about products. Implement the FairTax and eliminate all other taxes. Bring back old copyright laws - Shorten copyright terms to 20 Years on corporate owned media Change liability for copying to twice current price + lawyers fees unless distributed for profit then penalties 10 times profit derived + 5 times price + lawyer fees. Patents should be used and enforced or lost. - If you do not try to market your patent or enforce it within 5 years it is void. eliminate patent trolls Publish all patent applications and allow public comments on prior art and patent ability before granting patents. - Eliminate Junk patents. Make employee pension rights superior to all lending rights. - Banks are sophisticated investors they can understand the risks would force businesses to fully fund pensions.
Anybody else notice the stowaway ridding on the outside of the Grasshopper during the recent test flight. Looks like a Texan! This is a cropped blowup of a still from the video - http://s22.postimage.org/s82e5jpgx/Grasshopper_Stowaway.jpg . Yea Haw ride-em cowboy. Who says rocket scientists don't have a sense of humor.
He talks and talks no data on how well the device protects the product. How about some drop tests and Impact tests comparing unprotected and protected product. My guess is that anything that really protects it will make it unusable.
I read an article a while back about Sandy Stein who invented a clip that held car keys in a purse so they would not disappear in the vast clutter in the bottom of the purse. It was a very simple clip with an attachment point for a decorative feature. She planned ahead and obtained a utility patent on the concept. She then got a series of design patents on each different version with the different decorative features. This product has sold very well. Because the patents were done well and the decorative features are also protected she has had no problems with ripoffs of her idea. From Article: "Such successful ideas are targets for thieves, but Sandy’s preparation paid off. One notorious knockoff specialist confided to her that he had wanted to copy her product, but “her patent was just too strong and well-written to get around.” Another copycat did try and, for his efforts, lost an infringement case. Sandy agrees that protecting her idea with a patent was the key to the Finders Key Purse staying in the market and remaining successful." http://www.uspto.gov/inventors/independent/eye/201206/sparkofgenius.jsp
These are the subsidies "given" to the energy industry: Foreign tax credit ($15.3 billion) - This "subsidy" is given to all businesses that operate and pay taxes over seas. Credit for production of non-conventional fuels ($14.1 billion) - This sounds like bio diesel or synthetic fuels from coal (Government warping the market) Oil and Gas exploration and development expensing ($7.1 billion) - essentially allows them to expense it in 1 year instead of spreading over many year This is financial slight of hand not a real subsidy. They can eventually claim the whole expense anyway. The three largest renewable fuel subsidies were: Alcohol Credit for Fuel Excise Tax ($11.6 billion) - Take the tax off of alcohol burned instead of drank. Back handed farm subsidy. Renewable Electricity Production Credit ($5.2 billion) - Paying for windmills and solar panels to be used where they cannot compete. Corn-Based Ethanol ($5.0 billion) - Paying for production of environmentally unfriendly costly fuel. Back handed farm subsidy. I don't think the government should be doing any of these things. The market does a very effective job of allocating resources to the best benefit of humanity. Government not so much.
When you protest in the real world you are there you are visible and you are subject to scorn and arrest if you break a law. Hiding behind an anonymous DDOS attack is not a bold act worthy of the same kind of respect. There is a place for protest in cyber space. Perhaps the we need a protest DNS service where each domain name has a protest zone where people can set up protest pages associated with existing domains. Add a protest switch to web browsers. When it is on each time you visit a site being protested you are faced with the protest page that you can click through. The protesters have to pay for their own bandwidth and would not disrupt the site being protested so no laws are broken. The protest site is subject to the same kind of problems real protesters are such as being ignored or sued if the protest commits liable. It would also give an easier forum to publicize grievances. Not being able to get to a site does nothing to explain why you think people should not go there. A DDOS attack is more like kidnapping someone or burning down their business than protesting.
For the ocean to be rising higher only on the east coast there must be some attractive force acting to cause the water to flow from the rest of the world to accumulate on the east coast of the US. Gravitational surveys show no gravitational anomalies that could explain this. Prevailing winds are usually from the west in this area which would tend to push the water off shore. No evidence has been found to support the possibility that slower off shore wind speed could be allowing more water to flow back to shore. None of these reports show evidence of subduction due to plate movement. That leaves only one possible cause this is 100% scientific absolute proof with no other cause possible that Washington DC SUCKS!!.
There is a very simple fix for all of this DRM crap. Require sellers to label all DRM protected media. The Labels would have to designate what level of DRM is applied. DRMX - Locked to single user by hardware keying, DRME - Extended material access requires on line activation etc. This is just a fair labeling issue. If you know before you buy then the market will force providers to respond to the desires of their customers. If they get too restrictive market share will drop and they will change their ways. If you are a buyer you would have no reason to complain if you buy knowing full well you cannot sell or trade your game to someone else. DRM is not wrong what is wrong is not telling people upfront they are buying a crippled product. Call your congressman demand action. Use government power against the Game industry like they are trying to use it against use.
How about a Propellerclock http://youtu.be/l4F8UbM-1t4 /message fan http://youtu.be/XPFI0iCWGvI type invitation. Make a long PCB and space LEDs on it. There is an optical encoder with a handle is on the other end. The PCB has microcontroller on it that will flash the LEDs as the PCB is spun on the handle. Program it to display your invitation. I believe these can be purchased preprogrammed.
This place is practicing Puffery (Legal Lying) when they say their coating "Water Proofs" Your phone. From their own website warranty page "WE NEVER SUGGEST OR RECOMMEND THAT YOUR DEVICE MAY COME IN CONTACT WITH WATER OR ANY OTHER TYPE OF LIQUID. We do not warrant that the coating of your device will work perfectly or that it will work under all conditions." So .. Send us your phone Let us put a coating on it that might destroy it. If it does we will gladly coat your next phone. (We will not pay for any damage we do to your phone). If it gets wet and craps out We will gladly recoat your next phone (We will not pay for any damage water does to your phone). Any coating that can protect your phone from water will render any external electrical contacts useless. If the coating stops water it will stop electrical conduction. If it were electrically conductive it would short out your phone. If the coating scrapes off, Then your phone is not protected. Save your money- Put your phone in a zip lock bag when you go to the beach.
The Big Bang is a religious fantasy just like Intelligent Design. It is based on a deeply held religious belief that the universe was created instantly by the command of some supernatural supreme being wrapped in a veil of science. It requires the belief in way to many fantastic unverified processes and concepts like inflation, dark matter and dark energy. A far simpler and verifiable explanation is one of a universe shaped by electromagnetic forces as well as gravitational forces (a misnomer for the perceived effect of time dilation due to volumetric electromagnetic energy density). The microwave background radiation is not a remnant of the big bang it is the logical result of Compton scattering off the ions and atoms present in interstellar space. This scattering is also responsible for the observed Red shift of objects farther away than nearer. A simple calculation based on the density of atoms in space shows that the light from the edge of the visible universe transverses approximately the same number of atoms that light from our own sun crosses when it enters our own atmosphere at sunrise and sunset. It makes the sun look red and it makes distant stars look red. If you look up on a clear day the sky is not dark it is lit by scattering. That is the same effect that creates the microwave background radiation. The vacuum of space is not a total vacuum so scattering takes place. It is a good vacuum so it takes great distances to accumulate scattering. The size of the universe is essentially infinite as is its age. The universe however is not static. Entropy is constantly reduced by black holes that spew out matter streams. The universe never dies it is constantly recycled.
Remote code execution - Connected Web CAM - I see a big brother system in the making. Maybe the CIA added the backdoor so they can look for terrorists using PS3 for plotting their next attack. Or it could just be some sex starved computer geek wanting to spy on his "girl friend". I see a huge series of privacy violation law suites in the making. AKA school system spying on students using remote webcams.
I read the article and came across the same thing I see over and over where someone kills or harms someone due to negligence. In order to get a settlement the harmed party needs to agree to never tell anyone about what happened. This type of secrecy needs to be OUTLAWED! How can people make good market decisions when the facts about quality of care are hidden. Some incompetent quack can merrily go on his way killing or harming person after person as long as he pays his malpractice insurance. The quality of care and many other products and services would improve greatly if people knew that mistakes they make will follow them forever. I would favor a national database freely accessible over the internet of every damage award and the details surrounding it. You go looking for a Dr or a Lawyer or a car mechanic you can at least check to see if they have had problems. Now its tough to know. I also do not understand why the insurance companies are not actively involved in pushing for things that would save them money in claims like the infection stopping check lists or simple color coded tubes and noninterchangable connectors. Stuff we have been doing in the automotive industry for years. Not because some government agency told us too but because it saves money.
Eco-Nazis are now forcing people to do the work of the recyclers for them. The recyclers make money on this and the more they can force the population to do their work of sorting and cleaning the trash the more money they make. Here we have multiple containers and they send around two different trucks one for the recyclables and another for trash. Its a big waste of money and of our time. However the Eco-Profiteers use the power of government to force people to provide them free labor under the threat of force (fining you). This kind of BS is immoral and un-American. If it makes economic sense to reclaim and recycle you do not have to force people to do it. It was not economical to grow certain crops unless you could use slave labor. Now we have a whole range of uneconomical technologies like bio-fuels, solar power, electric cars, recycling that require a politically correct form of slavery (government subsidies) to work. I believe in great technologies like solar and wind and even bio-fuels. Eventually these technologies will be more cost effective and they will replace all current forms of energy today. Just like at some time in the future recycling will make economic sense and will replace the current burn/bury and forget systems. If you want to use a more expensive technology to solve a problem that is your choice just don't use the power of Government Force to make the rest of us pay for it.
Wages are only one facet in the total of standard of living. The cost of goods and services should also factor into the calculation. If you look at the standard of living in countries that embrace free trade (globalization) generally those with more free trade enjoy higher standards of living than those with less free trade. Free trade and free markets allows for optimization of benefits over costs. If you can sell your products or labor to the highest bidder and buy your products and services from the low cost provider society benefits most. Sure some high cost providers (labor unions, or protected industries) cannot use a captive market to extort high benefits/prices however I believe that is a good thing. There is a reason that what we consider low wages draws high numbers of workers in other countries. Generally those wages and jobs are better than what is offered by other employers in those countries. The people getting those jobs dramatically improve their standard of living. Low skill workers here in the US still receive higher wages and enjoy a good standard of living than most workers around the world. I for one do not want more low skill jobs in the US I want more high skill jobs and more productive jobs from use of capital here in the US. We can attract that investment by creating an environment that rewards investment. A policy of punishing optimization will drive it away. We need less regulation and lower taxes. The concept of the beatings will continue until morale improves really does not work. A business can choose to setup shop in some other high growth market like Brazil or China. Why not make the US one sweet place to do business. Lets try some honey to catch those flies!
We already have a system that constantly covers the earth with multiple data streams. The GPS system. Many Cell phones are capable of receiving GPS signals. Seems like mostly a software issue to add a code that could provide localized warnings of many types of natural disasters. Your GPS personal navigator system could even respond by directing you to the nearest evacuation route. This would be an opt in system that you could use to protect yourself no mater what the local political issues may be.
This Playkey idea is just plain stupid. It solves nothing and changes nothing. Now instead of not being able to transfer and/or backup the mp3 file to play several different places (all mine) the issue will be not being able to transfer and backup the playkey to several different places. Same problem different file extension. The only real market based solution to the problem is to lower the cost of obtaining the MP3 file from a reputable source (the producer) to a level where no one will bother to look for a free source when the free source could be contaminated with malware. At that price point the profitability of selling the songs illegally becomes a non money maker at a big risk of getting caught. When the risk reward ratio goes negative the crooks find some other method of making money. The thing the media companies have not yet realized or learned to cope with is that the cost to manufacture and distribute media has dropped so dramatically that it is nearly zero. They are still trying to market media like it is still made up of CDs and books with the same impediments to entry in the market.
I have a hard time understanding why everyone wants to blame corporate greed. There is no such thing!! Corporations are legal constructs controlled by HUMANS!! There are Evil and greedy humans that control corporations and Evil and greedy power hungry people that control governments. Corporations cannot legally use force only Governments can use force so Scientists are using deception instead to try and make money. Well welcome to the Human Race. The real problem is that not enough people value personal honor and are willing to accept personal responsibility for seeing to it that honesty prevails. Saying an oath will not guarantee people will abide by it. People make a very solemn oath in front of witnesses when they get married still about half of the marriages end in divorce. Nearly 50% of the population don't seem to think their word is worth much, why should scientists be any different? That's why we need to make up our own minds regarding the big issues of our day. We need to investigate the data ourselves look for replication of experimental results and observations. We must not accept the opinions of others unless they demonstrate through objective analysis and free and open disclosure of their work that they can be trusted. When their arguments fall back on opinions and cries that most people think one way or that those with opposing views are evil or ignorant that is when you need to insist on hard data and objective review of the facts and conclusions. If alternative explanations are dismissed out of hand without analysis of supporting data be careful be very careful. Accurate theories can be used to make predictions. If the theory does not predict we must reject.
The only patent I found for Rothschild related to semiconductors Patent 5,252,499 October 12, 1993 does not seem even remotely related to current LED fabrication processes. Most LEDs are now made using a vapor deposition process on sapphire substrates. Her patent is for using hydrogen to increase the conductivity of zinc based semiconductors. It looks to me like she is fishing for a cheap payoff to prevent litigation. Another case of mugging by patent attorney.