Frankly, some light-weight Linux version (Linux Mint?) might be a better option than a 100 euro Windows 8 purchase for a 6-year-old computer which will be used only for emails, browsing and storing the holiday photographs.
I think I might have detected some sarcasm in your post, but I am quite serious.
If mammoths are a bit of a problem, they're driven back to extinction easily too. It's not like they'll be difficult to find - unless they learn to paint their fingernails red and hide between the strawberries.
Seriously, if a bunch of people can make a living by being horribly inefficient, then surely some smart engineers can extract the valuables from this by building a good process?
I mean, even if you improve organization a little, and you build a furnace with a rudimentary smoke filter, this situation would be immensely improved for everyone. Those people make a better living, and the smoke coming off it wouldn't be half as bad... (Although, if someone would actually build that, it would be reported as 'Western company builds world's dirtiest recycling plant in Ghana').
Perhaps as a final act of revenge? The archeologists should prove that it is particularly stinky cheese to make that plausible. Or perhaps it is the ultimate preservative: bacteria rather starve to death than eat a dead body covered in that cheese.
Why are people afraid of alien life forms? Would it not be just as likely that earth life is the more dangerous one?
Earth life is so contageous that it conquered even the most inhospitable corners of this planet. For every niche, we have some microorganism that can thrive there.
And the final punch line is that earth has plants. They can create a very toxic and reactive gas called oxygen! We can essentially poison entire planets using self-replicating weapons called plants.
In any game, I never like it when people get more powerful than me, simply because they pay more. It's a game, not real life!
Games are no longer primarily about friendly competition between players. It's now a source of income for the developers, so much in fact that the competition (which once was the whole point of games - even in the pre-digital era) has been sacrificed to generate more income.
I don't get why all these electric bikes have you sitting in such an upright position. I don't see why nobody takes an existing touring bike (like a road/racing bike, with drop bars, but a beefier frame and ability to add fenders and panniers), and adds an electric motor to that. With a much more aerodynamic position the motor would be much more efficient, and as most cyclists know, these bikes are much more comfortable anyway. Plus it would be a nice advantage to not have a completely unride-able bike in the case where your battery runs out.
The Dutch disagree. In the #1 biking country in the world, everybody rides the upright bike. It's more practical (easier to balance, with more space to carry groceries or other luggage, and an optional extra passenger on the back) and safer (much better overview of the traffic, and easier to look behind you).
Btw, the real revolution is taking place in China, where millions of people are zooming by on electric scooters. Some little startup who builds bikes in a shed in the USA is not gonna make any impact on the market for electric two-wheeled vehicles.
And the desire of anyone with the ability or funds to do it to go to space regularly enough to need it.
It's like proposing to the East India Company to build a modern mammoth tanker. They would not understand why anyone would want to transport such quantities of material across the ocean. You can't really blame people for not having a clear vision of the future though.
When I think back to being a kid and how space felt like the future, it makes me sad that typically it seems like no one besides researchers gives a shit anymore. I used to watch Star Trek and knew it wouldn't happen in my lifetime but it felt like that was the eventual goal and the direction we were heading in. Now I see it as the fantasy it is, because without some compelling financial gain in taking trips up there for anything besides tourism for the super-rich, I think we are going to stay stuck on this rock.
I disagree. Firstly, we have some exciting missions to planetoids. Pluto and Ceres are about to be visited (spacecraft is already on its way). Secondly, the ISS is a great success of global cooperation. And now it is being supplied by commercial parties, at lower cost than ever. And the fact that it's up there (it's huge in comparison to anything else we've put in space) is a sign we're moving forward. And then the Chinese are breathing down the necks of Western space agencies, and catching up quickly. Thereby ensuring that we don't get lazy.
And finally, I really believe that this idiotic Mars One program can be a success. The global budget for advertising is simply insane, and if they would only capture 1% of the advertising money, they can totally build a Mars mission. It needs to gain popularity, but in this modern age, that is not rocket science.
Sure, the massive budgets of the golden days of the space race are over. It's all a bit more sensible now. Until the entertainment industry steps in!
This map is very useful for countries/regions without any protection against the sea. In the Netherlands, far better maps are available anyway, which take all the major (and minor) dikes and protections into account.
In the Netherlands, the height of literally every square meter is mapped already (probably because the Dutch built the land themselves). Here's a more detailed map of the Netherlands, with all the major dikes on it: http://www.floodsite.net/junio... You can enter any postcode (zipcode) and get the elevation here: http://ahn.geodan.nl/ahn/viewe... According to this site, Dutch maps have 8 pixels per m2, while the NASA/SRTM gadget seems to have 1 pixel per 100m2 or so: http://www.ahn.nl/bestellen/ke...
Yes, but while it is a good idea, it could also be political suicide. If a politician is the reason that the security/safety rules became more reasonable, and if an accident happens soon after (no matter how unlikely), that will immediately be blamed on that politician.
While it is incredibly annoying (and expensive!) to have these TSA screenings, it is better for the political careers of all those in charge to steer away from the topic, or to make the rules even more strict. Better safe than sorry.
Btw, in reply to the OP: many citizens demand risk avoidance, not risk management. Screw the costs - the costs are paid by someone else (they think).
In 2006, the food index was only 127. Yet, there were 15 large scale riots, 9 large scale strikes, 6 wars, of which at least 2 new wars in 2006, and countless other conflicts not mentioned on the wikipedia page about conflicts in 2006. And I just picked a random year.
It's an interesting milestone, and sort of a tragic one, since troops could have used robotic vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Don't worry. There will be another war. And one after that. And one after that. I don't know when, or where... but I seriously doubt that we'll get global peace anytime soon.
There is a discussion topic about the Beta. It is only about 5 items down from this one. We all get it: you don't want the Beta (and I share your feelings, btw). But can we please just keep on enjoying Slashdot too?
Why is it somehow we have ended up with people who are making things like Slashdot beta, Microsoft Metro, the new IOS, Gnome. A bunch of people who came out of the worst design schools ever?
Frankly, they probably came from very good design schools, but the organization behind those projects made 1 critical error: They put design before functionality. (I use the word design as meaning only graphical design, not engineering design).
A good design starts off with a set of boundary conditions, and I think that those were not defined according to the wishlist of the most registered users, for example because slashdot doesn't know its users, or because it was just defined too loosely.
I totally agree. I only visit Slashdot for the comments (the news is often posted elsewhere up to 2 days earlier). No comments, no slashdot. And I noticed that the comments section is pretty bad in the beta (far less comments fit on screen, with much more whitespace, making it more difficult to browse the comments).
If you think that the beam of light is a problem, think of the many tons of burning fuel, explosives and scrap metal that are gonna fall out of the sky after the prey got blasted! Think of the children!
Problem solving always has to start by creating awareness of the problem. This may finally create a boatload of awareness for our lack of privacy.
Anonymity and privacy issues are only getting worse, and reading this, I thought: "Ok, let's just get it over with." If we're going towards a society without any privacy anyway, maybe it is better to go there in one giant leap, so that we can at least use all the outrage that it causes to start fixing it. If we go to this new culture without privacy in a thousand small steps, people may never realize what happened, and accept it as a part of life instead.
The actual problem is that the weather forecast is unreliable. In comparison to much of the EU, the weather forecast in the USA (not just Atlanta) is rather poor. The National Weather Service (that's the US weather prediction) has no funds, and old computers. Their predictions just don't have sufficient resolution. That's not just a problem with snow, or other weather-related disasters... It is a problem every day.
Not replacing grandmasters in an economic sense
on
If I Had a Hammer
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Computers and automated systems are not replacing any cognitive tasks soon, at least not economically. Sure, if you throw in a team of engineers, several years of research and a couple million euro/dollars, then you can build a computer that can defeat a chess grandmaster. But until engineering companies are actually laying off their engineers and designers and replacing them with computers, I am not worried.
Computers are likely to replace the more simple jobs (as they always have). Driving a lorry or car is not exactly a highly skilled job, and I would be delighted if that is automated.
I agree that all participants have to say yes. But the Ruskies, Europeans and the 'Muricans are the three largest investors, and therefore it is a step in the right direction that Obama made the money available.
So in the UK, you get hordes of handicapped or elderly immigrants?
I don't know much about the UK, but over here in the Netherlands, mostly young people seem to migrate into the country. They tend to be healthy and require very little healthcare.
Slashdot Mirror
This is exactly what they say about liberals/Democrats. Both sides think the other side is stupid, ignorant, and/or crazy.
And they both are.
Frankly, some light-weight Linux version (Linux Mint?) might be a better option than a 100 euro Windows 8 purchase for a 6-year-old computer which will be used only for emails, browsing and storing the holiday photographs.
I think I might have detected some sarcasm in your post, but I am quite serious.
If mammoths are a bit of a problem, they're driven back to extinction easily too. It's not like they'll be difficult to find - unless they learn to paint their fingernails red and hide between the strawberries.
Seriously, if a bunch of people can make a living by being horribly inefficient, then surely some smart engineers can extract the valuables from this by building a good process?
I mean, even if you improve organization a little, and you build a furnace with a rudimentary smoke filter, this situation would be immensely improved for everyone. Those people make a better living, and the smoke coming off it wouldn't be half as bad... (Although, if someone would actually build that, it would be reported as 'Western company builds world's dirtiest recycling plant in Ghana').
Why else would someone put cheese on a dead body?
Perhaps as a final act of revenge? The archeologists should prove that it is particularly stinky cheese to make that plausible.
Or perhaps it is the ultimate preservative: bacteria rather starve to death than eat a dead body covered in that cheese.
Why are people afraid of alien life forms? Would it not be just as likely that earth life is the more dangerous one?
Earth life is so contageous that it conquered even the most inhospitable corners of this planet. For every niche, we have some microorganism that can thrive there.
And the final punch line is that earth has plants. They can create a very toxic and reactive gas called oxygen! We can essentially poison entire planets using self-replicating weapons called plants.
Thanks for the info. I can't give you any mod points though! Maybe someone else can.
In any game, I never like it when people get more powerful than me, simply because they pay more. It's a game, not real life!
Games are no longer primarily about friendly competition between players. It's now a source of income for the developers, so much in fact that the competition (which once was the whole point of games - even in the pre-digital era) has been sacrificed to generate more income.
yor students shud wrte thR essay bout d evoluation of language, UzN a modern txtN lngwij, lol!
Oh, U ask bout reading, not writiN. ZOMG!
I don't get why all these electric bikes have you sitting in such an upright position. I don't see why nobody takes an existing touring bike (like a road/racing bike, with drop bars, but a beefier frame and ability to add fenders and panniers), and adds an electric motor to that. With a much more aerodynamic position the motor would be much more efficient, and as most cyclists know, these bikes are much more comfortable anyway. Plus it would be a nice advantage to not have a completely unride-able bike in the case where your battery runs out.
The Dutch disagree. In the #1 biking country in the world, everybody rides the upright bike. It's more practical (easier to balance, with more space to carry groceries or other luggage, and an optional extra passenger on the back) and safer (much better overview of the traffic, and easier to look behind you).
Btw, the real revolution is taking place in China, where millions of people are zooming by on electric scooters. Some little startup who builds bikes in a shed in the USA is not gonna make any impact on the market for electric two-wheeled vehicles.
And the desire of anyone with the ability or funds to do it to go to space regularly enough to need it.
It's like proposing to the East India Company to build a modern mammoth tanker. They would not understand why anyone would want to transport such quantities of material across the ocean. You can't really blame people for not having a clear vision of the future though.
When I think back to being a kid and how space felt like the future, it makes me sad that typically it seems like no one besides researchers gives a shit anymore. I used to watch Star Trek and knew it wouldn't happen in my lifetime but it felt like that was the eventual goal and the direction we were heading in. Now I see it as the fantasy it is, because without some compelling financial gain in taking trips up there for anything besides tourism for the super-rich, I think we are going to stay stuck on this rock.
I disagree.
Firstly, we have some exciting missions to planetoids. Pluto and Ceres are about to be visited (spacecraft is already on its way).
Secondly, the ISS is a great success of global cooperation. And now it is being supplied by commercial parties, at lower cost than ever. And the fact that it's up there (it's huge in comparison to anything else we've put in space) is a sign we're moving forward.
And then the Chinese are breathing down the necks of Western space agencies, and catching up quickly. Thereby ensuring that we don't get lazy.
And finally, I really believe that this idiotic Mars One program can be a success. The global budget for advertising is simply insane, and if they would only capture 1% of the advertising money, they can totally build a Mars mission. It needs to gain popularity, but in this modern age, that is not rocket science.
Sure, the massive budgets of the golden days of the space race are over. It's all a bit more sensible now. Until the entertainment industry steps in!
This map is very useful for countries/regions without any protection against the sea. In the Netherlands, far better maps are available anyway, which take all the major (and minor) dikes and protections into account.
In the Netherlands, the height of literally every square meter is mapped already (probably because the Dutch built the land themselves).
Here's a more detailed map of the Netherlands, with all the major dikes on it: http://www.floodsite.net/junio...
You can enter any postcode (zipcode) and get the elevation here: http://ahn.geodan.nl/ahn/viewe...
According to this site, Dutch maps have 8 pixels per m2, while the NASA/SRTM gadget seems to have 1 pixel per 100m2 or so: http://www.ahn.nl/bestellen/ke...
Yes, but while it is a good idea, it could also be political suicide. If a politician is the reason that the security/safety rules became more reasonable, and if an accident happens soon after (no matter how unlikely), that will immediately be blamed on that politician.
While it is incredibly annoying (and expensive!) to have these TSA screenings, it is better for the political careers of all those in charge to steer away from the topic, or to make the rules even more strict. Better safe than sorry.
Btw, in reply to the OP: many citizens demand risk avoidance, not risk management. Screw the costs - the costs are paid by someone else (they think).
In 2006, the food index was only 127. Yet, there were 15 large scale riots, 9 large scale strikes, 6 wars, of which at least 2 new wars in 2006, and countless other conflicts not mentioned on the wikipedia page about conflicts in 2006. And I just picked a random year.
Conflicts (general): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Strikes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Riots: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Food index: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsi...
It's an interesting milestone, and sort of a tragic one, since troops could have used robotic vehicles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Don't worry. There will be another war. And one after that. And one after that. I don't know when, or where... but I seriously doubt that we'll get global peace anytime soon.
There is a discussion topic about the Beta. It is only about 5 items down from this one. We all get it: you don't want the Beta (and I share your feelings, btw). But can we please just keep on enjoying Slashdot too?
Why is it somehow we have ended up with people who are making things like Slashdot beta, Microsoft Metro, the new IOS, Gnome. A bunch of people who came out of the worst design schools ever?
Frankly, they probably came from very good design schools, but the organization behind those projects made 1 critical error: They put design before functionality. (I use the word design as meaning only graphical design, not engineering design).
A good design starts off with a set of boundary conditions, and I think that those were not defined according to the wishlist of the most registered users, for example because slashdot doesn't know its users, or because it was just defined too loosely.
Why are you so inflexible on the idea of keeping classic slashdot *forever*. Think of it as a protected historical landmark in the internet space.
I'm writing UNESCO World Heritage Centre to preserve the Classic right now!
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/
I totally agree. I only visit Slashdot for the comments (the news is often posted elsewhere up to 2 days earlier). No comments, no slashdot. And I noticed that the comments section is pretty bad in the beta (far less comments fit on screen, with much more whitespace, making it more difficult to browse the comments).
If you think that the beam of light is a problem, think of the many tons of burning fuel, explosives and scrap metal that are gonna fall out of the sky after the prey got blasted! Think of the children!
Problem solving always has to start by creating awareness of the problem. This may finally create a boatload of awareness for our lack of privacy.
Anonymity and privacy issues are only getting worse, and reading this, I thought: "Ok, let's just get it over with." If we're going towards a society without any privacy anyway, maybe it is better to go there in one giant leap, so that we can at least use all the outrage that it causes to start fixing it. If we go to this new culture without privacy in a thousand small steps, people may never realize what happened, and accept it as a part of life instead.
The actual problem is that the weather forecast is unreliable. In comparison to much of the EU, the weather forecast in the USA (not just Atlanta) is rather poor.
The National Weather Service (that's the US weather prediction) has no funds, and old computers. Their predictions just don't have sufficient resolution. That's not just a problem with snow, or other weather-related disasters... It is a problem every day.
Source:
http://news.nationalgeographic...
Computers and automated systems are not replacing any cognitive tasks soon, at least not economically. Sure, if you throw in a team of engineers, several years of research and a couple million euro/dollars, then you can build a computer that can defeat a chess grandmaster. But until engineering companies are actually laying off their engineers and designers and replacing them with computers, I am not worried.
Computers are likely to replace the more simple jobs (as they always have). Driving a lorry or car is not exactly a highly skilled job, and I would be delighted if that is automated.
I agree that all participants have to say yes. But the Ruskies, Europeans and the 'Muricans are the three largest investors, and therefore it is a step in the right direction that Obama made the money available.
So in the UK, you get hordes of handicapped or elderly immigrants?
I don't know much about the UK, but over here in the Netherlands, mostly young people seem to migrate into the country. They tend to be healthy and require very little healthcare.