What's so bad about paper? Most of our paper comes from trees in managed timberlands, which are currently replanting twice as fast as they're harvesting (at least in the U.S.) And much of it comes from tree farms, which are wonderfully eco-friendly. We use a helluva lot of paper, but it's not beyond sustainable levels yet and it's wonderfully convenient. And paper's a renewable and easily recyclable resource, unlike the materials used in e-readers.
Does somebody more eco-wise want to set me straight and explain why an e-reader is so much "greener" than dead trees?
Since the city is supposed to hurt the brain, can I get a doctors' note to go work in the country instead of the office?
Actually you may be able to, depending on how big your company is and what your job entails. If you can get your doctor to diagnose you with something that you can call a disability that prevents you from dealing with standard city commuting, your company may just decide to set you up to work from home rather than deal with a possible ADA headache. Of course, if you work in a small company or your job duties require a lot of stuff that can't be handled via computer, phone, or video conference, you're probably stuck dealing with real life.
At my company, skipping the commute is an option for a lot of us (myself included). Personally I come in anyway.
That character you're using... I don't think it means what you think it means...
You must be new here. You see, here on teh interweb, many of us are terribly afraid of word's ending in "s" - Plural's, possessive's, contraction's with the word "is", and occasionally even name's. The apostrophe is a polite way of warning the general reading public that an "s" is approaching so that we can brace ourselve's accordingly.
It's actually easier even than that. I'm overseeing a DoE lab team that's been working for about a year to develop a new tool that our customer needs to use but does not exist. We have no desire to actually manufacture anything so we've been seeking out partners in industry all along the way to build the pieces for the prototypes. So, once we're finished, the industry folks will be responsible for building our units along with as many as they see fit to bring to market. The actual patents will sit with the group in charge of final assembly who basically throw the components together and brand the thing.
I could understand complaints about tax $$ going to help the industry partners set themselves up with this, but the govt certainly isn't looking to make a profit on this or sit on patents to stifle industry.
Two people/companies eventually coming to a solution that is sufficiently similar to violate patents is a long way from "obvious to someone who works in the field". And, assuming that the two people who identified the solution are the leaders in their field (because they reached the idea before the other 6.7 billion of us), they could be described as having "extraordinary skill in the art".
There are a number of patents for designs that multiple developers reached independently and were awarded to the person who managed to file first (Edison seemed to have extraordinary luck in beating his competitors to the patent office). That doesn't necessarily make the solution obvious, just non-unique.
2) Techies have a serious communication problem. They believe in free without copyright, right to pirate, etc, etc. Take that attitude to lawyers and guess what answer you are going to get.
I'd have to say this isn't just a problem with techies/geeks/nerds/whatever you want to call us, the problem is also with people who have a "the nerd is talking so I might as well zone out and think about banging my mistress until he's done" attitude.
I think it's a lot more fundamental than that. They're not ignoring you because you're a nerd or because they don't think you know what you're talking about. They're ignoring you because you bore them - That's largely your failing because you can't relate effectively with them not their failing because they should sit there bored and soak in something that may be beneficial. If you had to listen to yourself explain things, you'd probably be bored too.
(When I say "your" I refer to a typical hypothetical socially-inept nerd, like myself. I obviously don't know you personally.)
Scott Adams sums it up pretty well in his book God's Debris (the chapter titled Relationships starting at page 105 in the free download.) Basically he points out the difference between "idea people" and "people people" and posits that "idea people" bore everyone, even each other, although what they're saying may be much more useful than the typical banter that people toss around. If the people you talk to "zone out and think about banging [their] mistress until [you're] done", it's because you're boring - That's probably primarily your problem, not theirs.
That said, it is nice when the people recognize their weaknesses and seek out someone more knowledgeable before making a decision on a subject they're clueless on...
Plug in a Kill-A-Watt. $24.99 on Amazon. It'll tell you your line voltage (with or without load), power consumption, and energy usage for the duration it's plugged in. If nothing else, you can figure out where your electricity is going, how much energy your computer(s) is/are using, and how well your UPS is living up to its promises (unplug it and watch its performance).
I don't work for them or anything, it's just a good way to see what your UPS is up to and learn a little about your household energy usage.
Of course, if your problem really is your PSU rather than your UPS, all this unit does is narrow down the problem rather than solve it... Still, I consider it worth my $25.
Oops. I actually read the first linked article and jumped the gun (at that point they'd been held 3 days and not charged). TFS clearly indicates that they're facing charges for photographing the Air Force base.
Of course, you can be detained for doing that in the US too. Not sure what exactly they charge you with.
You're kidding, right? I realize that Guantanamo isn't a resort, but I'd feel much safer there than in an Indian jail. Especially with the spot-light shining on it so brightly.
Of course, this pair has only gone 3 days being held without an official charge...
...most manufacturers build their products in Asia, so a component plant in the U.S. is likely to have a hard time selling any products, particularly given China's stiff import restrictions.... You'd have to make the products a lot cheaper than they can be made in China, which seems dubious at best. Otherwise, no manufacturer in their right minds would go through all the hassle and expense of buying batteries from an American plant, shipping them to China to be assembled into a product, then shipping them back to the U.S. for consumption....
Yes, most manufacturers build their products in Asia. But this is about car batteries. The auto makers (the folks that TFA focuses on as the main consumer for next-gen batteries) aren't in China. Most vehicles bought in North America are assembled in North America. No round-trip necessary for these batteries.
You are correct about the price - American-made batteries would likely cost more than batteries made in China. Probably even after factoring in the shipping on those heavy suckers. However that would be largely due to China's lax environmental restrictions rather than labor costs (a typical culprit). So, while we'd save some money by just abandoning the battery industry and letting China take it, every time a consumer bought a "green" car, they'd be making an excessively nasty dent in the environment. (Battery production would be messy here too, but a helluva lot cleaner than in China.)
All that said, I'd really prefer to see private investors step up for factories and tax-dollars only used for public-domain research...
The question isn't whether or not ACID3 is an "important test" in general. The only question MS cares about is: "Is ACID3 a test that's important to our market base?" If the answer is "no", then the test is unimportant to MS. They don't care about standards unless their market base cares about those standards. There are a lot of arguments regarding why they should care about standards or about tests like ACID3. But unless it affects the number of users installing and using their product, they simply don't.
I would guess that they tried ACID3 with IE8, saw that their results were abysmal, and then committed zero resources to improving their score. Probably a similar story with other conformance metrics.
Exactly. Do you have any idea how many college exams I blow off every year? I haven't taken a course in nearly 7 years, so I typically blow off all of them.
Does that imply that I failed hundreds and hundreds of times?
IE8 version is a vast improvement, even if passing ACID3 wasn't as high of a priority.
Well-phrased. I'm a FF user, but stray to IE occasionally depending on what I'm doing. I have Opera & Chrome installed too, but I have run them very few times since install.
For me, like (I suspect) the vast majority of web users, a good report card on ACID3 isn't a big selling point. The question is, "Will the pages I use the most render quickly and look nice?" NOT "Is the browser standards-compliant and will it make web development easy for people that I never see or care about?" For right or wrong, the most popular web sites will neglect web-standards to conform to IE rather than neglect IE to conform to web-standards. As long as that's the case, why should MS care? For now, ACID3 doesn't significantly affect their market share.
MS didn't fail ACID3, they just blew off trying to pass it because they didn't care.
Facebook would do well to proactively encourage users to prevent such attacks by securing their systems. For example, by installing this simple application, you can ensure that your computer will never fall victim to malware: http://not-malware.i-promise.org/magic-bullet.htm Just enable scripts and click OK whenever it tells you to. It's that easy.
Now, if/. allowed me to post the (fake) link above, how are they any more at fault than facebook is for allowing potentially dodgy links to be shared via their service? They even went the extra step of helping users remove the malware from their PCs. I'd imagine that most conduits for malicious links (IM, social networking, e-mail, online forums, etc) wouldn't have even gone that far. Their users were being targeted and exploited, so they helped them avoid being taken advantage of - Good on 'em.
Were I malicious, I could grab the e-mail address you share in your title line, look through your/. 'friends' list for other accounts with posted addresses, and e-mail you a malicious link "From" one of them. How would that be different?
Obviously we need to pass a law making it illegal for the Govt to "classify" its illegal activities.
Classifying something to conceal improper actions is already illegal and the penalties (if actually enforced) are not slight. However, interpreting a classification guide can be highly dependent on the derivative classifier reviewing it. So, if you squint your eyes a little and dig around some, you can legally classify damn near anything.
I had an interviewer ask me the same thing after which we talked about rock climbing and poor attempts at playing guitar. Yes he was making small talk, but I got the job and I've been here ~7 years. Maybe he just wanted to see if you could relate with other human beings as well as you relate with computers and came to the conclusion that you could not.
However, assuming that you're not in fact a necrophiliac, perhaps he could have concluded that your antisocial behavior was at least not a result of dementia.
While I am shocked, I am not that surprised at all.
...and I am puzzled as to how that works out!
It's easy: 1) Turn on a lamp. 2) Remove the light bulb. 3) With your left-hand forefinger, touch the silver-colored outer shielding where the light bulb screws in. 4) With your right-hand forefinger, touch the contact at the bottom of the receptacle.
Sorry, no "???" nor "profit", but you'll be shocked without being surprised. Hope that helps.
No racism intended - I'm as white as they come. It's from an ancient joke. Basically, the Lone Ranger and Tonto have a horde of angry Indians bearing down on them. The Lone Ranger says, "It looks like we're in a lot of trouble this time, Tonto." Tonto replies, "What you mean 'we', white man?"
Basically, I was just trying to point out that b4upoo was making an assumption that we're all in the same camp here, when we're definitely not - I don't want to sacrifice my rights so that the cops can catch a few more pot smokers. That excludes me from his inclusive "we" in:
Except we want cops to catch people with illegal drugs etc.. Why restrain the cops from doing what we all need them to do?
The joke isn't remotely a perfect parallel, but I thought it would be amusing. Sorry if it came across racist (although feel free to nail me for calling Native Americans "Indians" when explaining the joke - At least I refrained from including the phrase "feathers, not dots".)
Sorry - If you don't recognize the quote and have no context, it's not funny at all.
Vonnegut (misspelled in my post above) became honorary president of the American Humanist Association after Isaac Asimov, their former president, passed on. As such, he had the somewhat awkward honor of addressing the Association at their first meeting after losing their president and had to come up with some way to say goodbye to Isaac and start his speech. (If you're unfamiliar with Humanism, it's an entirely human-based religion/philosophy. Its members are largely atheist or agnostic and practice strict scientific skepticism while shunning religious superstitions or unsupported beliefs - Heaven/Hell included. The idea that Asimov, as president of the AHA, would have any literal belief in Heaven would be ludicrous.)
According to Vonnegut, opening his speech with
Isaac's in heaven now.
not only did a great job of breaking the ice in a very awkward situation, but set the entire ball-room laughing out loud.
Except we want cops to catch people with illegal drugs etc..
What do you mean "we", white man?
Why restrain the cops from doing what we all need them to do?
So that they don't trample all over innocent people in their race to jail stoners? So that we can maintain some sort of privacy instead of throwing our doors open to anyone with a badge so that they can rifle through our homes in case we may have been doing something wrong? So that we can keep some kind of checks on the cops so that they might work to protect us while respecting our rights instead of just busting people and feeling like tough-guys on a power trip?
Y'all are doing pretty well. I'd imagine that if they could project what's going on in my brain onto a CRT, it would be indistinguishable from tuning between channels and watching snow.
I don't think that anyone is saying that wireless power isn't wasteful - It's inherently lossy. The issue at hand is whether the power loss using wireless sufficiently offsets the waste associated with other transmission methods (batteries in landfills) or compensates through added convenience for the user.
I mentioned an infrastructure upgrade because we could greatly increase our available piped power while generating considerably less waste than our currently available portable power alternatives.
Slashdot Mirror
What's so bad about paper? Most of our paper comes from trees in managed timberlands, which are currently replanting twice as fast as they're harvesting (at least in the U.S.) And much of it comes from tree farms, which are wonderfully eco-friendly. We use a helluva lot of paper, but it's not beyond sustainable levels yet and it's wonderfully convenient. And paper's a renewable and easily recyclable resource, unlike the materials used in e-readers.
Does somebody more eco-wise want to set me straight and explain why an e-reader is so much "greener" than dead trees?
Since the city is supposed to hurt the brain, can I get a doctors' note to go work in the country instead of the office?
Actually you may be able to, depending on how big your company is and what your job entails. If you can get your doctor to diagnose you with something that you can call a disability that prevents you from dealing with standard city commuting, your company may just decide to set you up to work from home rather than deal with a possible ADA headache. Of course, if you work in a small company or your job duties require a lot of stuff that can't be handled via computer, phone, or video conference, you're probably stuck dealing with real life.
At my company, skipping the commute is an option for a lot of us (myself included). Personally I come in anyway.
error's
That character you're using... I don't think it means what you think it means...
You must be new here. You see, here on teh interweb, many of us are terribly afraid of word's ending in "s" - Plural's, possessive's, contraction's with the word "is", and occasionally even name's. The apostrophe is a polite way of warning the general reading public that an "s" is approaching so that we can brace ourselve's accordingly.
It's actually easier even than that. I'm overseeing a DoE lab team that's been working for about a year to develop a new tool that our customer needs to use but does not exist. We have no desire to actually manufacture anything so we've been seeking out partners in industry all along the way to build the pieces for the prototypes. So, once we're finished, the industry folks will be responsible for building our units along with as many as they see fit to bring to market. The actual patents will sit with the group in charge of final assembly who basically throw the components together and brand the thing.
I could understand complaints about tax $$ going to help the industry partners set themselves up with this, but the govt certainly isn't looking to make a profit on this or sit on patents to stifle industry.
Two people/companies eventually coming to a solution that is sufficiently similar to violate patents is a long way from "obvious to someone who works in the field". And, assuming that the two people who identified the solution are the leaders in their field (because they reached the idea before the other 6.7 billion of us), they could be described as having "extraordinary skill in the art".
There are a number of patents for designs that multiple developers reached independently and were awarded to the person who managed to file first (Edison seemed to have extraordinary luck in beating his competitors to the patent office). That doesn't necessarily make the solution obvious, just non-unique.
2) Techies have a serious communication problem. They believe in free without copyright, right to pirate, etc, etc. Take that attitude to lawyers and guess what answer you are going to get.
I'd have to say this isn't just a problem with techies/geeks/nerds/whatever you want to call us, the problem is also with people who have a "the nerd is talking so I might as well zone out and think about banging my mistress until he's done" attitude.
I think it's a lot more fundamental than that. They're not ignoring you because you're a nerd or because they don't think you know what you're talking about. They're ignoring you because you bore them - That's largely your failing because you can't relate effectively with them not their failing because they should sit there bored and soak in something that may be beneficial. If you had to listen to yourself explain things, you'd probably be bored too.
(When I say "your" I refer to a typical hypothetical socially-inept nerd, like myself. I obviously don't know you personally.)
Scott Adams sums it up pretty well in his book God's Debris (the chapter titled Relationships starting at page 105 in the free download.) Basically he points out the difference between "idea people" and "people people" and posits that "idea people" bore everyone, even each other, although what they're saying may be much more useful than the typical banter that people toss around. If the people you talk to "zone out and think about banging [their] mistress until [you're] done", it's because you're boring - That's probably primarily your problem, not theirs.
That said, it is nice when the people recognize their weaknesses and seek out someone more knowledgeable before making a decision on a subject they're clueless on...
Plug in a Kill-A-Watt. $24.99 on Amazon. It'll tell you your line voltage (with or without load), power consumption, and energy usage for the duration it's plugged in. If nothing else, you can figure out where your electricity is going, how much energy your computer(s) is/are using, and how well your UPS is living up to its promises (unplug it and watch its performance).
I don't work for them or anything, it's just a good way to see what your UPS is up to and learn a little about your household energy usage.
Of course, if your problem really is your PSU rather than your UPS, all this unit does is narrow down the problem rather than solve it... Still, I consider it worth my $25.
Oops. I actually read the first linked article and jumped the gun (at that point they'd been held 3 days and not charged). TFS clearly indicates that they're facing charges for photographing the Air Force base.
Of course, you can be detained for doing that in the US too. Not sure what exactly they charge you with.
You're kidding, right? I realize that Guantanamo isn't a resort, but I'd feel much safer there than in an Indian jail. Especially with the spot-light shining on it so brightly.
Of course, this pair has only gone 3 days being held without an official charge...
1 (furlong per fortnight) = 59.8714286 centimeters per hour
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=pXk&q=1+furlong+per+fortnight+in+centimeters+per+hour&btnG=Search
So, if you have a clock with a minute hand 9.5 cm long, its tip is moving at approximately 1 furlong per fortnight.
Hope that helps. (Although it will probably distress the mods - Off-topic, Funny, or Informative? Mwa-ha-ha-ha!)
...most manufacturers build their products in Asia, so a component plant in the U.S. is likely to have a hard time selling any products, particularly given China's stiff import restrictions.... You'd have to make the products a lot cheaper than they can be made in China, which seems dubious at best. Otherwise, no manufacturer in their right minds would go through all the hassle and expense of buying batteries from an American plant, shipping them to China to be assembled into a product, then shipping them back to the U.S. for consumption....
Yes, most manufacturers build their products in Asia. But this is about car batteries. The auto makers (the folks that TFA focuses on as the main consumer for next-gen batteries) aren't in China. Most vehicles bought in North America are assembled in North America. No round-trip necessary for these batteries.
You are correct about the price - American-made batteries would likely cost more than batteries made in China. Probably even after factoring in the shipping on those heavy suckers. However that would be largely due to China's lax environmental restrictions rather than labor costs (a typical culprit). So, while we'd save some money by just abandoning the battery industry and letting China take it, every time a consumer bought a "green" car, they'd be making an excessively nasty dent in the environment. (Battery production would be messy here too, but a helluva lot cleaner than in China.)
All that said, I'd really prefer to see private investors step up for factories and tax-dollars only used for public-domain research...
The question isn't whether or not ACID3 is an "important test" in general. The only question MS cares about is:
"Is ACID3 a test that's important to our market base?"
If the answer is "no", then the test is unimportant to MS. They don't care about standards unless their market base cares about those standards. There are a lot of arguments regarding why they should care about standards or about tests like ACID3. But unless it affects the number of users installing and using their product, they simply don't.
I would guess that they tried ACID3 with IE8, saw that their results were abysmal, and then committed zero resources to improving their score. Probably a similar story with other conformance metrics.
Exactly. Do you have any idea how many college exams I blow off every year? I haven't taken a course in nearly 7 years, so I typically blow off all of them.
Does that imply that I failed hundreds and hundreds of times?
You're [sic] logic is amazing.
IE8 version is a vast improvement, even if passing ACID3 wasn't as high of a priority.
Well-phrased. I'm a FF user, but stray to IE occasionally depending on what I'm doing. I have Opera & Chrome installed too, but I have run them very few times since install.
For me, like (I suspect) the vast majority of web users, a good report card on ACID3 isn't a big selling point. The question is, "Will the pages I use the most render quickly and look nice?" NOT "Is the browser standards-compliant and will it make web development easy for people that I never see or care about?" For right or wrong, the most popular web sites will neglect web-standards to conform to IE rather than neglect IE to conform to web-standards. As long as that's the case, why should MS care? For now, ACID3 doesn't significantly affect their market share.
MS didn't fail ACID3, they just blew off trying to pass it because they didn't care.
Facebook would do well to proactively encourage users to prevent such attacks by securing their systems. For example, by installing this simple application, you can ensure that your computer will never fall victim to malware:
http://not-malware.i-promise.org/magic-bullet.htm
Just enable scripts and click OK whenever it tells you to. It's that easy.
Now, if /. allowed me to post the (fake) link above, how are they any more at fault than facebook is for allowing potentially dodgy links to be shared via their service? They even went the extra step of helping users remove the malware from their PCs. I'd imagine that most conduits for malicious links (IM, social networking, e-mail, online forums, etc) wouldn't have even gone that far. Their users were being targeted and exploited, so they helped them avoid being taken advantage of - Good on 'em.
Were I malicious, I could grab the e-mail address you share in your title line, look through your /. 'friends' list for other accounts with posted addresses, and e-mail you a malicious link "From" one of them. How would that be different?
Obviously we need to pass a law making it illegal for the Govt to "classify" its illegal activities.
Classifying something to conceal improper actions is already illegal and the penalties (if actually enforced) are not slight. However, interpreting a classification guide can be highly dependent on the derivative classifier reviewing it. So, if you squint your eyes a little and dig around some, you can legally classify damn near anything.
I had an interviewer ask me the same thing after which we talked about rock climbing and poor attempts at playing guitar. Yes he was making small talk, but I got the job and I've been here ~7 years. Maybe he just wanted to see if you could relate with other human beings as well as you relate with computers and came to the conclusion that you could not.
However, assuming that you're not in fact a necrophiliac, perhaps he could have concluded that your antisocial behavior was at least not a result of dementia.
While I am shocked, I am not that surprised at all.
...and I am puzzled as to how that works out!
It's easy:
1) Turn on a lamp.
2) Remove the light bulb.
3) With your left-hand forefinger, touch the silver-colored outer shielding where the light bulb screws in.
4) With your right-hand forefinger, touch the contact at the bottom of the receptacle.
Sorry, no "???" nor "profit", but you'll be shocked without being surprised. Hope that helps.
=)
For residential destruction, most people already have a microwave and don't feel like sinking $$ into a CD-capable shredder.
Plus, it looks cool and only takes ~3 seconds.
No racism intended - I'm as white as they come. It's from an ancient joke. Basically, the Lone Ranger and Tonto have a horde of angry Indians bearing down on them. The Lone Ranger says, "It looks like we're in a lot of trouble this time, Tonto." Tonto replies, "What you mean 'we', white man?"
Basically, I was just trying to point out that b4upoo was making an assumption that we're all in the same camp here, when we're definitely not - I don't want to sacrifice my rights so that the cops can catch a few more pot smokers. That excludes me from his inclusive "we" in:
Except we want cops to catch people with illegal drugs etc.. Why restrain the cops from doing what we all need them to do?
The joke isn't remotely a perfect parallel, but I thought it would be amusing. Sorry if it came across racist (although feel free to nail me for calling Native Americans "Indians" when explaining the joke - At least I refrained from including the phrase "feathers, not dots".)
Sorry - If you don't recognize the quote and have no context, it's not funny at all.
Vonnegut (misspelled in my post above) became honorary president of the American Humanist Association after Isaac Asimov, their former president, passed on. As such, he had the somewhat awkward honor of addressing the Association at their first meeting after losing their president and had to come up with some way to say goodbye to Isaac and start his speech. (If you're unfamiliar with Humanism, it's an entirely human-based religion/philosophy. Its members are largely atheist or agnostic and practice strict scientific skepticism while shunning religious superstitions or unsupported beliefs - Heaven/Hell included. The idea that Asimov, as president of the AHA, would have any literal belief in Heaven would be ludicrous.)
According to Vonnegut, opening his speech with
Isaac's in heaven now.
not only did a great job of breaking the ice in a very awkward situation, but set the entire ball-room laughing out loud.
Except we want cops to catch people with illegal drugs etc..
What do you mean "we", white man?
Why restrain the cops from doing what we all need them to do?
So that they don't trample all over innocent people in their race to jail stoners? So that we can maintain some sort of privacy instead of throwing our doors open to anyone with a badge so that they can rifle through our homes in case we may have been doing something wrong? So that we can keep some kind of checks on the cops so that they might work to protect us while respecting our rights instead of just busting people and feeling like tough-guys on a power trip?
Pick which ever one speaks to you best.
Y'all are doing pretty well. I'd imagine that if they could project what's going on in my brain onto a CRT, it would be indistinguishable from tuning between channels and watching snow.
An artist I am not.
He can probably already touch the moon. Don't you know your Vonegut?
Isaac's in heaven now.
I assume that Asimov got to tag the moon on his way by. Best speech opening ever.
I don't think that anyone is saying that wireless power isn't wasteful - It's inherently lossy. The issue at hand is whether the power loss using wireless sufficiently offsets the waste associated with other transmission methods (batteries in landfills) or compensates through added convenience for the user.
I mentioned an infrastructure upgrade because we could greatly increase our available piped power while generating considerably less waste than our currently available portable power alternatives.