The bill would also permit people to use technology to skip objectionable content -- like a gory or sexually explicit scene -- in films, a right that consumers already have. However, under the proposed law, skipping any commercials or promotional announcements would be prohibited.
But as far as I'm concerned, the commercials and promotional announcements are the content that I'm most likely to find objectionable.
I picked up a copy of Wired the other day. (First time in years.) It had an interesting cover story on the people and strategies behind "intelligent design".
Because they don't manufacture documents to conform to your world view they're biased?
So where did those Nigerian uranium documents come from? Oh, wait, those faked documents were only used to hype a case for invading and occupying a country. No big deal, I guess.... in some people's "world view".
I'm mildly confused how something automated can have a "conservative leaning" when people aren't doing the crawling.
It's possible because the leaning doesn't have to be intentional. (At least not on Google's part.) It could be an accidental result of how their code works, and/or it could be a result of the system being intentionally gamed by people trying to skew Google's results.
I don't think that this is a good trend; it makes for bad movies and deligitimizes CG technology, so that directors who actually use it well (like Peter Jackson in LOTR) don't get the recognition they deserve.
Yeah, all Jackson got for his effort was shitloads of money, shitloads of great reviews, and shitloads of awards, including an Academy Award for Best Director. Okay, sure, he didn't win an Unobtanium Zrigny Award from the Unaligned Worlds Council for the Electromagnetic-Spectrum-Based Arts, but there was a lot of tough competition last cycle. Anyway, he wouldn't have been able to keep the award anyway -- possession of unobtainium by private individuals isn't allowed on backward worlds like Terra.
And IBM clones start at about $200 these days, $300 including monitor.
If there was a clone of me that pathetic, I'd strangle the thing to death. I'd be doing it and the world a favor. Not that I'd need to strangle it -- breathing on its own would be too complicated for it.
How many days does a $300 clone last, particularly running Windows?
Al Gore invented the "Internet" so shouldn't we ask his permission before we change any names?
I'll never understand why this pathetic lameness is still considered funny for so long after the Republicans started exaggerating what Gore actually said. Is it some sort of self-mocking humor by the people dumb enough to repeat it?
I am sure many third-world residents will greatly appreciate having their fresh water supplies being redirected into providing fuel for fusion reactors.
Does it need to be fresh water? Presumably deuterium exists in sea water as well -- is it significantly harder to extract?
Though, maybe it will be possible to power water desalination plants using fusion reactors?
That depends on whether fusion makes energy significantly cheaper. If I understand correctly, the major expense of large-scale desalination is energy. Cheaper energy => cheaper desalination. Whether fusion will make energy significantly cheaper depends on a number of factors that are unknown at this time.
Why would an insurance company post such an article?
The insurance industry was actually the first industry to take global climate change seriously, partly because they literally have an interest in the future. I assume that this may be something along the same lines -- aside from the fact that much of the insurance industry is on the US east coast and would drown if this happens, it's in their corporate interest to get a handle on possible risks. Plus, it's good PR.
While the owners of the media tend to be Republican, those that actually report the news are not.
If I wanted to really bias the news, I'd put myself in a position where I could influence which stories get covered. Influencing how those stories get presented is pretty obviously second best. Of course, once in the position of deciding which stories get covered, I could make sure there's some attention paid to how biased the presentation is, so few people will notice how biased the selection of stories is.
(Or I could be like Rupert Murdock, and bias the whole process, top to bottom. For laughs I'd sell the package as "Fair and Balanced", and see if anyone got the joke.)
A lot of times, we don't use a particular story on a particular day, but at some later point, someone else submits it, and it ends up getting used. We have 4 to 6 guys working together to post things on Slashdot. What one of us finds stupid, the others might find interesting. Or it just might be the rest of the stuff that's going on that day. There are a variety of factors: the personality of the post, the quality of the submission, or even the quantity of stories already posted when your submission entered the queue.
The infantry already carries a huge amount of weight with them at this point. All of this stuff is really cool from a tech standpoint, but the last thing a soldier really needs is more wieght.
Re-read the article. The new system is (supposedly) 70 pounds lighter. Which means more mobility and/or more ammo. IANASoldier, but that sounds like a good deal to me.
That is practically right out of Larry Niven's Ringworld series. The characters wore armor that stiffened when impacted.
Um. Where do you suppose that Niven got the idea? Maybe he thunked it up himself, maybe not. I bet soldiers have been fantasizing about material like that since the first implementation of rigid armor. Besides, coming up with the idea is the easy part.
The Army has is all wrong. Instead of spending money and the U.S. soldier, they should just outsource the soldiers and have other nations fight for us. It works for corporations, why not the Army...
Seriously, this has been tried, multiple times. It's usually called "military aid", or something like that. Unfortunately, there's very little loyalty involved and the people we arm sometimes get a little out of control. The US backed Saddam Hussein against Iran, for instance. And Osama bin Laden may have gotten some of his early backing from the US (via Pakistan), to make trouble for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Wouldn't they have to get there in the first place to go "back"?
"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Therefore, in a sense, any human that goes to the moon would be going back. Or, if you wanted to really pick nits, you could say that it doesn't count as going back unless one or more of the Apollo 11-17 astronauts goes again.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but it seems that the sheer volume of the oceans supports the idea. Between the plant life filling that volume and the fact that the water itself dissolves a good deal of CO2, it seems like promoting artificial blooms of plankton and algae would sink a lot more carbon.
I don't know whether you're wrong or not, but I don't think you can simply count the sheer volume of the oceans. (1) There is insufficient sunlight penetration for photosynthesis below about 200 meters and (2) the most life-productive areas of the ocean are over the continental shelves. (That's still a lot of volume, to be sure, but small compared to the total volume of oceans.)
The failure of farms all over the USA (beginning in places like Vermont, but hardly confined to that region) plus deliberate conservation efforts have led to a re-forestation of the continent. River-bottom land in some areas has been removed from farming and returned to oak forest. Michigan was clear-cut in the 19th century, and it's once again heavily forested in many areas.
What's the ratio of forests to tree farms? That ratio may be relevant, as I'd guess that tree farms probably aren't nearly as good at carbon-fixing and oxygen production as forests are. (The difference between a tree farm and a real forest is like the difference between a field of wheat and a meadow.)
This makes me wonder. How can 800 delefgaters agree on anything?
Why would they all need to agree on anything? This being science, a rough consensus on tentative conclusions and furthur efforts needed would be the reasonable expectation.
Sure, their intentions may be right, but wouldn't a group of closer to five or may be ten people be better?
Five to ten people to review the status of 120 projects, conducted along a river that is over 6,000 km long and up to 10 km wide? (Of course, that's just the river itself. The relevant area is much bigger than that.) IANAEnvironmentalScientist, but I suspect that 800 reviewers is not too many.
If we're going to edit for context, then let's do it right:...
Well, that's certainly edited for a different context. I suppose that it does make a difference that they were only lowly Democratic representatives. Is it more of a partisan act that they did this, or is it more of partisan act that no Republicans joined them?
Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?
That would be nice. Now if we just could get the facts...
Is progressive the new euphemism for 'liberal' now? And, pardon the bold, but why the fuck would that make this site less suitable for work than, say, slashdot?
Apologies. Even after so many years, I still sometimes forget that tongue-in-cheek rarely plays well in text.
Slashdot Mirror
No shit, there I was, making some chainmail at my boring security desk job at Carbon Nanotechnologies, when suddenly ...
But as far as I'm concerned, the commercials and promotional announcements are the content that I'm most likely to find objectionable.
I picked up a copy of Wired the other day. (First time in years.) It had an interesting cover story on the people and strategies behind "intelligent design".
So where did those Nigerian uranium documents come from? Oh, wait, those faked documents were only used to hype a case for invading and occupying a country. No big deal, I guess .... in some people's "world view".
It's possible because the leaning doesn't have to be intentional. (At least not on Google's part.) It could be an accidental result of how their code works, and/or it could be a result of the system being intentionally gamed by people trying to skew Google's results.
Yeah, all Jackson got for his effort was shitloads of money, shitloads of great reviews, and shitloads of awards, including an Academy Award for Best Director. Okay, sure, he didn't win an Unobtanium Zrigny Award from the Unaligned Worlds Council for the Electromagnetic-Spectrum-Based Arts, but there was a lot of tough competition last cycle. Anyway, he wouldn't have been able to keep the award anyway -- possession of unobtainium by private individuals isn't allowed on backward worlds like Terra.
Yeah, and apparently she can't cook. Sure, you could say the probe is truly cooked, but it fell rather badly in the process.
Maybe she should stick to making pancakes.
If there was a clone of me that pathetic, I'd strangle the thing to death. I'd be doing it and the world a favor. Not that I'd need to strangle it -- breathing on its own would be too complicated for it.
How many days does a $300 clone last, particularly running Windows?
It wouldn't be the first time someone with the name "G. W. Bush" has had trouble flying ...
I happen to enjoy Sawyer's novels, so I can only conclude that this is a cleverly subtle satire of pollyanna-ish amateur futurology.
I'll never understand why this pathetic lameness is still considered funny for so long after the Republicans started exaggerating what Gore actually said. Is it some sort of self-mocking humor by the people dumb enough to repeat it?
Does it need to be fresh water? Presumably deuterium exists in sea water as well -- is it significantly harder to extract?
Though, maybe it will be possible to power water desalination plants using fusion reactors?
That depends on whether fusion makes energy significantly cheaper. If I understand correctly, the major expense of large-scale desalination is energy. Cheaper energy => cheaper desalination. Whether fusion will make energy significantly cheaper depends on a number of factors that are unknown at this time.
The insurance industry was actually the first industry to take global climate change seriously, partly because they literally have an interest in the future. I assume that this may be something along the same lines -- aside from the fact that much of the insurance industry is on the US east coast and would drown if this happens, it's in their corporate interest to get a handle on possible risks. Plus, it's good PR.
If I wanted to really bias the news, I'd put myself in a position where I could influence which stories get covered. Influencing how those stories get presented is pretty obviously second best. Of course, once in the position of deciding which stories get covered, I could make sure there's some attention paid to how biased the presentation is, so few people will notice how biased the selection of stories is.
(Or I could be like Rupert Murdock, and bias the whole process, top to bottom. For laughs I'd sell the package as "Fair and Balanced", and see if anyone got the joke.)
From the FAQ:
I submitted that a month ago!
A lot of times, we don't use a particular story on a particular day, but at some later point, someone else submits it, and it ends up getting used. We have 4 to 6 guys working together to post things on Slashdot. What one of us finds stupid, the others might find interesting. Or it just might be the rest of the stuff that's going on that day. There are a variety of factors: the personality of the post, the quality of the submission, or even the quantity of stories already posted when your submission entered the queue.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/8/00
Re-read the article. The new system is (supposedly) 70 pounds lighter. Which means more mobility and/or more ammo. IANASoldier, but that sounds like a good deal to me.
Um. Where do you suppose that Niven got the idea? Maybe he thunked it up himself, maybe not. I bet soldiers have been fantasizing about material like that since the first implementation of rigid armor. Besides, coming up with the idea is the easy part.
IANASoldier, but I'd think that being able to carry lots more ammo into a combat zone would be a good thing.
Seriously, this has been tried, multiple times. It's usually called "military aid", or something like that. Unfortunately, there's very little loyalty involved and the people we arm sometimes get a little out of control. The US backed Saddam Hussein against Iran, for instance. And Osama bin Laden may have gotten some of his early backing from the US (via Pakistan), to make trouble for the Soviets in Afghanistan.
"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind."
Therefore, in a sense, any human that goes to the moon would be going back. Or, if you wanted to really pick nits, you could say that it doesn't count as going back unless one or more of the Apollo 11-17 astronauts goes again.
I don't know whether you're wrong or not, but I don't think you can simply count the sheer volume of the oceans. (1) There is insufficient sunlight penetration for photosynthesis below about 200 meters and (2) the most life-productive areas of the ocean are over the continental shelves. (That's still a lot of volume, to be sure, but small compared to the total volume of oceans.)
What's the ratio of forests to tree farms? That ratio may be relevant, as I'd guess that tree farms probably aren't nearly as good at carbon-fixing and oxygen production as forests are. (The difference between a tree farm and a real forest is like the difference between a field of wheat and a meadow.)
Why would they all need to agree on anything? This being science, a rough consensus on tentative conclusions and furthur efforts needed would be the reasonable expectation.
Sure, their intentions may be right, but wouldn't a group of closer to five or may be ten people be better?
Five to ten people to review the status of 120 projects, conducted along a river that is over 6,000 km long and up to 10 km wide? (Of course, that's just the river itself. The relevant area is much bigger than that.) IANAEnvironmentalScientist, but I suspect that 800 reviewers is not too many.
Well, that's certainly edited for a different context. I suppose that it does make a difference that they were only lowly Democratic representatives. Is it more of a partisan act that they did this, or is it more of partisan act that no Republicans joined them?
Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?
That would be nice. Now if we just could get the facts ...
Apologies. Even after so many years, I still sometimes forget that tongue-in-cheek rarely plays well in text.