At the more raucous parties back in the day, we'd joke about someone's leg being on fire and then douse it with whatever beverage we were drinking. If this material were used for prosthetic purposes, the gag could become reality. A lithium fueled amputation wouldn't be pleasant, though, I'd expect.
For a fascinating treatise on how far this sort of thing can be taken, see the (now-ancient) Sci-fi novel "The Last Spaceship", by the pseudonymous Murray Leinster. It is available from Amazon as an eBook. One is exposed to many ways that authoritarian regimes can diminish the lives of their citizens.
The convenience of online shopping is of course one reason for its popularity. But for me, it's the availability of hard-to-find items that brings me back again and again. After scouring Home Depot and OSH for something that they should but don't carry (or claim on their web page to carry), it's not hard to decide the hell with it and wait the two days for just what I wanted to show up on my doorstep.
This phenomenon is referred to as "the long tail," a reference to the part of a Gaussian curve of product availability that lies outside of the center where most brick and mortar retailers concentrate.
It's amazing to be able to find, usually at a reasonable price, nearly anything one can imagine and come up with search terms for.
I've long advocated for something like this. It works in both directions: I tend to read non-fake, but clearly politically biased, news sites. If you're looking, it's easy to see where the bias is being applied to the prose, but it would be good to have a good way to reach serious treatments of the same topic from other points of view. Also should work to help counter radicalization attempts.
That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Sounds like tabs are being used instead of bookmarks. Or I don't understand something.
Firefox still hangs frequently when I have only a few tabs going, if they're to the ridiculously complicated pages that are so common these days. HuffPo and its friends are some of the biggest miscreants. Ditch the nonoptional videos, guys.
The problem here is similar to that for fission power plants: clean-up. Until we can clear the LEO clutter so that the current occupancy can be managed, it's arguably not a great idea to fill the space with even more small systems.
Starting to feel the same way about this that I do about fission power: no more until we reliably know how to clean up the old ones. Let's make one of these nets or other capture devices work and operate them for a while before adding to the clutter.
There's a similar story to tell on the software side, of course. The principles underlying the operating environment go back to the mid sixties or earlier, and the user interface concepts were developed (on much larger and much slower systems) primarily in the early to mid seventies. Some of these things have been re-invented, and there are admittedly many innovations in modern systems, but other concepts and techniques are directly traceable to artifacts created in industrial and university research laboratories decades ago.
I agree with this, but not with the motive to slow deployment. Most jobs lost to robots will inevitably occur. We need a way to monetize this in the event it becomes clear that people don't have to work in order to exist. Explore combining it with one of the various proposals for guaranteed annual incomes. [paragraph]
If a job can be done by a robot, humans who do that job will eventually no longer find it rewarding.[paragraph]
We will either have to eliminate much of the human population, or find a good way to allow them to survive and prosper without needing to contribute to the workforce. Those who aspire to more will always find a way; those who do not should not have to live miserable existences. This is a longstanding belief.
I am/was a full-fledged computer scientist, and always found PGP terribly difficult to comprehend, and even more frustrating to attempt to use, even in a research setting. Further, it was easy to become insulted if someone would refuse to vouch for you even if they not only should have trusted you but actually worked for you. The whole ring of trust thing seemed totally wrong-headed. On the other hand, the certificate-based private/public key system evolved from the beginning not the way most internet services did, as a free and open technology, but as a profit-making venture, where the cost of purchasing an organization certificate tended to suppress use. On the third hand, now that free certificate services exist, there still appears to be a barrier to the emergency of widespread use of end to end encryption.
The best time to have initiated widespread use of these technologies was the early 1980's or so when they first appeared, where the universe of users was much smaller. Some triggering event would now be necessary, along with active deployment by someone like Google, to make truly private communications commonplace in the population.
Thank your favorite deity for Truecrypt and its successors, anyhow.
Indeed, laboratory success appears to require significant engineering before it can be realized in products, and other challenges, such as packaging, cost reduction, etc., tend to reduce the overall effect. What we see in the market so far is incremental improvement, more like 2% at a time than the factors of 5 and 10 that are demonstrated in the lab. It's frustrating that Moore's law does not appear to apply in the energy storage world. With any luck, we'll get a factor of 3 or so before too long, and even that will be a world-changer.
A "smart watch" need only be as smart as one chooses. I'd recommend something like a first-gen Moto 360, now going on eBay for less than $100. Install calendar app, turn off all notifications except calendar (or even those if you're willing to look at watch calendar.) Choose a simple watch face, and you're done. You do have to charge them, though; probably every other day, dump it on the wireless thingy. That's probably a deal-breaker for you, though.
That Apple walled garden sometimes appears to be populated only with thorns and nettles, with watchful guards positioned in towers at every corner. Ugh.
There is an instantaneous consumption at all times. It only matters when congestion arises. At that point, for the best experience, a stream may need some priority over others, which could be accomplished via how much the consumer is willing to pay for it (double stuf vs. the regular kind.) Without either ensuring that the network is always overprovisioned (the approach so far, when things worked) or providing the consumer the ability to purchase a better quality of service, some kinds of performance cannot be guaranteed to a sufficiently high level. I've long distinguished between net neutrality when it relates to special deals between providers and carriers (especially when they're the same) and the kind of neutrality forced upon everyone, including the end user, that limits what is possible.
Just for the record, there are myriad studies showing that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is steadily growing. They can indirectly trace this concentration back for thousands of years. The concentration began increasing at the beginning of the industrial age and has increased since, more rapidly in recent years. The average global temperature rise is very strongly correlated with this concentration. Enough people have done studies with the same results that it's hard to credit scientific avarice for the claims. In fact, I suspect there are many more deep pockets willing to finance bogus science disproving global warming than the government agencies (mostly) financing the work that essentially proves it.
In other words, the claim that vegetation increases to keep things in balance is appealing, but apparently completely false.
I haven't looked closely, but most responses seem to be the usual cynical (or worse) posts.
I would like to commend Mark Zuckerberg and family, Bill Gates and family, Microsoft, or whatever other person or organization with the available resources for whatever efforts they choose to make to improve the public health and welfare. Those who wish the money would be better spent elsewhere can of course state their opinion and/or find alternate sources of funding. But I for one would like to strongly celebrate all such philanthropic activities. It is clear to me that all of the above entities have serious interest in their causes. With any luck, some of their funded activities will bear significant fruit.
I am terrified that someone is going to be able to spoof being me in the 10 or so Yahoo groups I'm a member of. I'm assuming they will be bored out of their skulls long before their trolling ends up bothering anybody overly much. Fortunately, I haven't relied on Marissa and friends for anything else.
No security clearance needed: it's completely against all the rules, and HRC knew it, to trade in secure information by regular email. As far as I know, all the messages that appear to have violated the restriction were sent by others, copied to government servers as well, and either marked poorly or classified after the fact, over the objections of her and her staff.
But lessons learned, for sure.
EXACTLY! There has been enormous work on providing various levels of quality of service for streaming and other transport. To date, virtually none has been implemented in the Internet, and the net neutrality rules have, probably correctly, prevented content providers from imposing QOS differences on net traffic they provide, especially if it involves deals with carriers.
But it should be possible for the consumers of content to decide they're willing to pay more to get better quality streaming services. Paying to avoid a digital hiccups during important airings should be an acceptable practice.
All this assumes, of course, that the world's backbones are willing to evolve enough to support the QOS specs in the first place. Until now, the only successful approach has been overprovisioning, which admittedly works surprisingly well most of the time.
Is Colin Powell still using an AOL account? Seems to me a well-maintained private server stands a much better chance of eluding or resisting hacking than this ancient cloud service. Security through obscurity works very well until it doesn't, and it appears that Clinton's server was never successfully hacked. Which means nothing was exposed to the public except through the court-ordered broadcasts of virtually all of it after the fact, whether or not things were on there that arguably should not have been. Sigh.
Slashdot Mirror
At the more raucous parties back in the day, we'd joke about someone's leg being on fire and then douse it with whatever beverage we were drinking. If this material were used for prosthetic purposes, the gag could become reality. A lithium fueled amputation wouldn't be pleasant, though, I'd expect.
For a fascinating treatise on how far this sort of thing can be taken, see the (now-ancient) Sci-fi novel "The Last Spaceship", by the pseudonymous Murray Leinster. It is available from Amazon as an eBook. One is exposed to many ways that authoritarian regimes can diminish the lives of their citizens.
This phenomenon is referred to as "the long tail," a reference to the part of a Gaussian curve of product availability that lies outside of the center where most brick and mortar retailers concentrate.
It's amazing to be able to find, usually at a reasonable price, nearly anything one can imagine and come up with search terms for.
I've long advocated for something like this. It works in both directions: I tend to read non-fake, but clearly politically biased, news sites. If you're looking, it's easy to see where the bias is being applied to the prose, but it would be good to have a good way to reach serious treatments of the same topic from other points of view. Also should work to help counter radicalization attempts.
That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. Sounds like tabs are being used instead of bookmarks. Or I don't understand something. Firefox still hangs frequently when I have only a few tabs going, if they're to the ridiculously complicated pages that are so common these days. HuffPo and its friends are some of the biggest miscreants. Ditch the nonoptional videos, guys.
I'm a 72 year old professional cynic, and I'm pretty excited about all this.
Yeah, maybe. But the language here is great, and to the point.
The problem here is similar to that for fission power plants: clean-up. Until we can clear the LEO clutter so that the current occupancy can be managed, it's arguably not a great idea to fill the space with even more small systems.
Starting to feel the same way about this that I do about fission power: no more until we reliably know how to clean up the old ones. Let's make one of these nets or other capture devices work and operate them for a while before adding to the clutter.
There's a similar story to tell on the software side, of course. The principles underlying the operating environment go back to the mid sixties or earlier, and the user interface concepts were developed (on much larger and much slower systems) primarily in the early to mid seventies. Some of these things have been re-invented, and there are admittedly many innovations in modern systems, but other concepts and techniques are directly traceable to artifacts created in industrial and university research laboratories decades ago.
I like the concept of self-driving lower-case bolts.
I agree with this, but not with the motive to slow deployment. Most jobs lost to robots will inevitably occur. We need a way to monetize this in the event it becomes clear that people don't have to work in order to exist. Explore combining it with one of the various proposals for guaranteed annual incomes. [paragraph] If a job can be done by a robot, humans who do that job will eventually no longer find it rewarding.[paragraph] We will either have to eliminate much of the human population, or find a good way to allow them to survive and prosper without needing to contribute to the workforce. Those who aspire to more will always find a way; those who do not should not have to live miserable existences. This is a longstanding belief.
I am/was a full-fledged computer scientist, and always found PGP terribly difficult to comprehend, and even more frustrating to attempt to use, even in a research setting. Further, it was easy to become insulted if someone would refuse to vouch for you even if they not only should have trusted you but actually worked for you. The whole ring of trust thing seemed totally wrong-headed. On the other hand, the certificate-based private/public key system evolved from the beginning not the way most internet services did, as a free and open technology, but as a profit-making venture, where the cost of purchasing an organization certificate tended to suppress use. On the third hand, now that free certificate services exist, there still appears to be a barrier to the emergency of widespread use of end to end encryption. The best time to have initiated widespread use of these technologies was the early 1980's or so when they first appeared, where the universe of users was much smaller. Some triggering event would now be necessary, along with active deployment by someone like Google, to make truly private communications commonplace in the population. Thank your favorite deity for Truecrypt and its successors, anyhow.
Indeed, laboratory success appears to require significant engineering before it can be realized in products, and other challenges, such as packaging, cost reduction, etc., tend to reduce the overall effect. What we see in the market so far is incremental improvement, more like 2% at a time than the factors of 5 and 10 that are demonstrated in the lab. It's frustrating that Moore's law does not appear to apply in the energy storage world. With any luck, we'll get a factor of 3 or so before too long, and even that will be a world-changer.
A "smart watch" need only be as smart as one chooses. I'd recommend something like a first-gen Moto 360, now going on eBay for less than $100. Install calendar app, turn off all notifications except calendar (or even those if you're willing to look at watch calendar.) Choose a simple watch face, and you're done. You do have to charge them, though; probably every other day, dump it on the wireless thingy. That's probably a deal-breaker for you, though.
That Apple walled garden sometimes appears to be populated only with thorns and nettles, with watchful guards positioned in towers at every corner. Ugh.
There is an instantaneous consumption at all times. It only matters when congestion arises. At that point, for the best experience, a stream may need some priority over others, which could be accomplished via how much the consumer is willing to pay for it (double stuf vs. the regular kind.) Without either ensuring that the network is always overprovisioned (the approach so far, when things worked) or providing the consumer the ability to purchase a better quality of service, some kinds of performance cannot be guaranteed to a sufficiently high level. I've long distinguished between net neutrality when it relates to special deals between providers and carriers (especially when they're the same) and the kind of neutrality forced upon everyone, including the end user, that limits what is possible.
Just for the record, there are myriad studies showing that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is steadily growing. They can indirectly trace this concentration back for thousands of years. The concentration began increasing at the beginning of the industrial age and has increased since, more rapidly in recent years. The average global temperature rise is very strongly correlated with this concentration. Enough people have done studies with the same results that it's hard to credit scientific avarice for the claims. In fact, I suspect there are many more deep pockets willing to finance bogus science disproving global warming than the government agencies (mostly) financing the work that essentially proves it. In other words, the claim that vegetation increases to keep things in balance is appealing, but apparently completely false.
I haven't looked closely, but most responses seem to be the usual cynical (or worse) posts. I would like to commend Mark Zuckerberg and family, Bill Gates and family, Microsoft, or whatever other person or organization with the available resources for whatever efforts they choose to make to improve the public health and welfare. Those who wish the money would be better spent elsewhere can of course state their opinion and/or find alternate sources of funding. But I for one would like to strongly celebrate all such philanthropic activities. It is clear to me that all of the above entities have serious interest in their causes. With any luck, some of their funded activities will bear significant fruit.
I am terrified that someone is going to be able to spoof being me in the 10 or so Yahoo groups I'm a member of. I'm assuming they will be bored out of their skulls long before their trolling ends up bothering anybody overly much. Fortunately, I haven't relied on Marissa and friends for anything else.
No security clearance needed: it's completely against all the rules, and HRC knew it, to trade in secure information by regular email. As far as I know, all the messages that appear to have violated the restriction were sent by others, copied to government servers as well, and either marked poorly or classified after the fact, over the objections of her and her staff. But lessons learned, for sure.
EXACTLY! There has been enormous work on providing various levels of quality of service for streaming and other transport. To date, virtually none has been implemented in the Internet, and the net neutrality rules have, probably correctly, prevented content providers from imposing QOS differences on net traffic they provide, especially if it involves deals with carriers. But it should be possible for the consumers of content to decide they're willing to pay more to get better quality streaming services. Paying to avoid a digital hiccups during important airings should be an acceptable practice. All this assumes, of course, that the world's backbones are willing to evolve enough to support the QOS specs in the first place. Until now, the only successful approach has been overprovisioning, which admittedly works surprisingly well most of the time.
Is Colin Powell still using an AOL account? Seems to me a well-maintained private server stands a much better chance of eluding or resisting hacking than this ancient cloud service. Security through obscurity works very well until it doesn't, and it appears that Clinton's server was never successfully hacked. Which means nothing was exposed to the public except through the court-ordered broadcasts of virtually all of it after the fact, whether or not things were on there that arguably should not have been. Sigh.
It would be great if the car could copy-edit the testimonials that are written about it, too!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...