When I first read the post, for some reason I thought "negative keywords" meant they had to advertise under keywords that people wouldn't want, like "really bad financial service" or "shady loan company" or "housing lemons".
I may just be ignorant, but...is there something specific about the airline industry that makes it a bad thing to surpass it? I haven't seen actual numbers on emissions for airliners, but it seems like we could drum up some other things that burn more fuel. Like, oh, I don't know, the *auto industry*? What about manufacturing plants? Chemical/pharmaceutical facilities? Any class of facilities that process raw materials?
But of course the randomly selected slashdotter has some vested interest in data centers, so we're all for any solution that doesn't involve taking away our servers. What? We are. We seem pretty ready to jump all over people who say global warming isn't real or isn't man-made. We're eager to denounce big energy corporations for milking fossil fuels for all they're worth. But as soon as someone talks about regulating *our* stuff because of energy consumption or emissions, we want to pursue other options.
I imagine if that became a concern, a simple software tool would become available that lets you run a page through a printer to black it out or fill it with random data, like shred (the command-line utility, not the physical process). It's not like it uses up ink.
Maybe this is an idea for the in-progress tagging system: Every time a Slashdot article comes up discussing anything resembling a weapon or serious technological advancement, we could have a comment automatically posted that scrapes keywords from the article's summary and says "Let me be the first to welcome our [keywords here] overlords." Here's some recent examples!
* Let me be the first to welcome our molten metal jet wielding overlords. * Let me be the first to welcome our parallel internet grid overlords. * Let me be the first to welcome our Triple-Core Phenom X3 overlords. * Let me be the first to welcome our national security letter slinging overlords.
Don't get me wrong, this is an awesome idea, and I'm sure they'll jump on even the 50% efficiency option when this is ready for production. Volume of production is going to be a problem, as it is for every alternative fuel source. I don't think this would make an appreciable dent in fuel prices until a long time after its goes into use.
Also! Insert plug about big energy companies and how the only reason they've cared about global warming is because we're rapidly running out of the stuff that contributes to it.
Sometimes I think these discoveries aren't the result of due scientific process. Sometimes I think a bunch of researchers were sitting around a break room table and said, "Let's shoot lasers at clouds!" Shooting anything with a laser to see what happens is a noble scientific endeavor.
I've been looking for a comment that affirms that using a prescription for non-prescription purposes is a bad thing - I expected someone to hold that position. But the responses so far have been humorous, tangential, or specifically denouncing the idea that it's wrong.
Huh! So let's take a specific example: do you think it's okay to take Ritalin to give yourself a couple of hours of extra study time, regardless of whether it's been prescribed to you? (One of the side effects of Ritalin is that it keeps you awake a few hours after you've taken it.) And if you've done it, would you be willing to admit it in public?
I'm sorry, I have trouble whenever whenever an astronomer suggests that something they found "may be much more common than we thought." One observation does not mean way more common. It jumps the gap from "purely theoretical" to "proven possible", and in the data set of the known universe really isn't enough to make any type of assertion about commonality.
Gestation: Initial release of totally awesome browser is developed.
Infancy: A few people start using the browser and see how totally awesome it is. Word spreads.
Childhood: User base grows explosively. People start complaining that totally awesome browser doesn't have feature X.
Adolescence: More and more features get tacked on to browser. Side effects of bloat become noticable. Users start to ask for a lite version.
Maturity: Browser starts performing tasks entirely unrelated to web browsing. Browser becomes hefty and clumsy (FireFox is somewhere in this stage)
Entrenchment: Browser has enough of a user base to establish its own nonstandard rules for web content, essentially branching the web. Alienation and hostility ensue.
Death:: User base dwindles becuase the browser doesn't play nice with the rest of the world anymore.
Those of us who think the new vision is a bad thing aren't necessarily curmudgeons who don't want anything to change. We know a lot of very specific things about how we want to interact with a computer, and we don't want the same organization that produces our web browser of choice to dictate the rest of that interaction. It doesn't really matter whether they get it right or not.
You did see the article on room-temperature superconductors last week, right? Hydrogen and silicon are among the most common elements on Earth. That may not meet your standards for neatness, though, since it requires high pressures.
This sounds like the plot of a B-rated sci-fi horror flick. Two organizations have a difference of interests, become aggressive and then hostile, conflict escalates, and then, all of a sudden: everybody's happy! Of course we'll help you out! We'd be delighted! Think of all the ways we could help each other! And then the one PI starts poking his nose where everyone's so happy and he finds out it's stage one of the evil plan of a mind-controlling space bug from Venus, building it's legion of manslaves.
I would definitely consider this for a low-noise workstation setup, assuming it scaled properly. Probably wouldn't provide enough cooling power for the beefier processors, but I bet it could be adapted for a mid-range desktop machine. Silence is golden.
Yeah, I know, there's so much more you could do with this than providing quiet cooling for a budget system. I see new tech and the first thing I think about is rednecking it onto old tech.
It's a good thing this isn't in the US, because all of that publicly available tracking is clearly a threat to national security. That would never fly here. Radical extremist groups could use data on the locations of fire trucks to attack them before they reach critical destinations. They could analyze grass mowing patterns and put too much fertilizer on lawns right after they're mowed, and the grass would be burned beyond recognition before someone checks again.
* 1 link to "private" content * 1 cup TinyURL(c) brand address shortening * 2 lbs. unauthorized access * 1 content owner * An army of lawyers
Preheat oven to "Litigation". Route link through address shortening. Mix with unauthorized access, and let rise until content owner exclaims "IT IS TEH HAXORZ!1". Apply army of lawyers liberally to TinyURL for providing access to content. Place in preheated oven and bake until lawsuit reaches a golden brown. Cool before serving.
I wonder if they decided it simply wasn't worth the development effort to put their content behind encryption? Maybe they thought litigation against improper access would be cheaper, or at least simpler. With the RIAA's successes in court over the lsat few years, there is some precedent for that idea.
Yes, I know, secure connections are not rocket science. But it's business; the path perceived most profitable is the path chosen.
"...You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to."
Like warrantless wiretapping, right? Yeah, we definitely shouldn't have that.
Anyone interested in reaching WikiLeaks would also be able to find one of the mirrors through a simple web search. Wikipedia, for example, has links to the IP address and several out-of-US domain names.
9:00 AM Pacific time. Which means, at the time of this posting, it started an hour ago. Based on the judge's statement, it's probably still in progress.
Slashdot Mirror
When I first read the post, for some reason I thought "negative keywords" meant they had to advertise under keywords that people wouldn't want, like "really bad financial service" or "shady loan company" or "housing lemons".
I may just be ignorant, but...is there something specific about the airline industry that makes it a bad thing to surpass it? I haven't seen actual numbers on emissions for airliners, but it seems like we could drum up some other things that burn more fuel. Like, oh, I don't know, the *auto industry*? What about manufacturing plants? Chemical/pharmaceutical facilities? Any class of facilities that process raw materials?
But of course the randomly selected slashdotter has some vested interest in data centers, so we're all for any solution that doesn't involve taking away our servers. What? We are. We seem pretty ready to jump all over people who say global warming isn't real or isn't man-made. We're eager to denounce big energy corporations for milking fossil fuels for all they're worth. But as soon as someone talks about regulating *our* stuff because of energy consumption or emissions, we want to pursue other options.
I imagine if that became a concern, a simple software tool would become available that lets you run a page through a printer to black it out or fill it with random data, like shred (the command-line utility, not the physical process). It's not like it uses up ink.
Maybe this is an idea for the in-progress tagging system: Every time a Slashdot article comes up discussing anything resembling a weapon or serious technological advancement, we could have a comment automatically posted that scrapes keywords from the article's summary and says "Let me be the first to welcome our [keywords here] overlords." Here's some recent examples!
* Let me be the first to welcome our molten metal jet wielding overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our parallel internet grid overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our Triple-Core Phenom X3 overlords.
* Let me be the first to welcome our national security letter slinging overlords.
Ouch.
Don't get me wrong, this is an awesome idea, and I'm sure they'll jump on even the 50% efficiency option when this is ready for production. Volume of production is going to be a problem, as it is for every alternative fuel source. I don't think this would make an appreciable dent in fuel prices until a long time after its goes into use.
Also! Insert plug about big energy companies and how the only reason they've cared about global warming is because we're rapidly running out of the stuff that contributes to it.
Sometimes I think these discoveries aren't the result of due scientific process. Sometimes I think a bunch of researchers were sitting around a break room table and said, "Let's shoot lasers at clouds!" Shooting anything with a laser to see what happens is a noble scientific endeavor.
So does that mean we can play Crysis now?
I've been looking for a comment that affirms that using a prescription for non-prescription purposes is a bad thing - I expected someone to hold that position. But the responses so far have been humorous, tangential, or specifically denouncing the idea that it's wrong.
Huh! So let's take a specific example: do you think it's okay to take Ritalin to give yourself a couple of hours of extra study time, regardless of whether it's been prescribed to you? (One of the side effects of Ritalin is that it keeps you awake a few hours after you've taken it.) And if you've done it, would you be willing to admit it in public?
I'm sorry, I have trouble whenever whenever an astronomer suggests that something they found "may be much more common than we thought." One observation does not mean way more common. It jumps the gap from "purely theoretical" to "proven possible", and in the data set of the known universe really isn't enough to make any type of assertion about commonality.
Yes, I know, our solar system makes it two.
- Gestation: Initial release of totally awesome browser is developed.
- Infancy: A few people start using the browser and see how totally awesome it is. Word spreads.
- Childhood: User base grows explosively. People start complaining that totally awesome browser doesn't have feature X.
- Adolescence: More and more features get tacked on to browser. Side effects of bloat become noticable. Users start to ask for a lite version.
- Maturity: Browser starts performing tasks entirely unrelated to web browsing. Browser becomes hefty and clumsy (FireFox is somewhere in this stage)
- Entrenchment: Browser has enough of a user base to establish its own nonstandard rules for web content, essentially branching the web. Alienation and hostility ensue.
- Death:: User base dwindles becuase the browser doesn't play nice with the rest of the world anymore.
Those of us who think the new vision is a bad thing aren't necessarily curmudgeons who don't want anything to change. We know a lot of very specific things about how we want to interact with a computer, and we don't want the same organization that produces our web browser of choice to dictate the rest of that interaction. It doesn't really matter whether they get it right or not.You did see the article on room-temperature superconductors last week, right? Hydrogen and silicon are among the most common elements on Earth. That may not meet your standards for neatness, though, since it requires high pressures.
This sounds like the plot of a B-rated sci-fi horror flick. Two organizations have a difference of interests, become aggressive and then hostile, conflict escalates, and then, all of a sudden: everybody's happy! Of course we'll help you out! We'd be delighted! Think of all the ways we could help each other! And then the one PI starts poking his nose where everyone's so happy and he finds out it's stage one of the evil plan of a mind-controlling space bug from Venus, building it's legion of manslaves.
I would definitely consider this for a low-noise workstation setup, assuming it scaled properly. Probably wouldn't provide enough cooling power for the beefier processors, but I bet it could be adapted for a mid-range desktop machine. Silence is golden.
Yeah, I know, there's so much more you could do with this than providing quiet cooling for a budget system. I see new tech and the first thing I think about is rednecking it onto old tech.
I disagree. Passing a good bill that is doomed to failure is better than passing a bad bill to maintain the appearance of "getting things done."
It's a good thing this isn't in the US, because all of that publicly available tracking is clearly a threat to national security. That would never fly here. Radical extremist groups could use data on the locations of fire trucks to attack them before they reach critical destinations. They could analyze grass mowing patterns and put too much fertilizer on lawns right after they're mowed, and the grass would be burned beyond recognition before someone checks again.
A recipe for misdirection:
* 1 link to "private" content
* 1 cup TinyURL(c) brand address shortening
* 2 lbs. unauthorized access
* 1 content owner
* An army of lawyers
Preheat oven to "Litigation". Route link through address shortening. Mix with unauthorized access, and let rise until content owner exclaims "IT IS TEH HAXORZ!1". Apply army of lawyers liberally to TinyURL for providing access to content. Place in preheated oven and bake until lawsuit reaches a golden brown. Cool before serving.
(Note: Recipe not tested.)
I wonder if they decided it simply wasn't worth the development effort to put their content behind encryption? Maybe they thought litigation against improper access would be cheaper, or at least simpler. With the RIAA's successes in court over the lsat few years, there is some precedent for that idea.
Yes, I know, secure connections are not rocket science. But it's business; the path perceived most profitable is the path chosen.
Without outrage? The current U.S. government has a track record of very specifically ignoring outrage. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_15%2C_2003_anti-war_protest
"...You cannot just have an FBI agent who decides he'd like to obtain Americans' records, bank records or anything else and do it just because they want to."
Like warrantless wiretapping, right? Yeah, we definitely shouldn't have that.
If people won't stop caring about Paris Hilton until 2023, I don't know if the the next 15 years are worth living. Drop me in cryo, please.
Anyone interested in reaching WikiLeaks would also be able to find one of the mirrors through a simple web search. Wikipedia, for example, has links to the IP address and several out-of-US domain names.
9:00 AM Pacific time. Which means, at the time of this posting, it started an hour ago. Based on the judge's statement, it's probably still in progress.
If she can remember a catchy phrase and she can spell, I bet she can come up with a sufficiently obscure password.
It also works if the LEDs produce 22,700 lumens/watt. Can I hear a "shazam"?