If I wasn't feeling so damn lazy this morning, I'd look up the rest of them. Even such "frivilous lawsuit" examples as aren't total urban legends are often exaggerated, probably originally sourced to statements by the corporate legal team. Some lawsuits are, of course, frivilous. But I bet it's a lot rarer than corporate execs and their hirelings in the gov't would like you to believe. For a example of this, there's the classic "woman sues McDonalds for millions over spilled hot coffee". For the actual facts, go here.
To me it seems that using such a lense would be bad news in a nonstable environment. E.g. a bumpy car ride.. Any thoughts on this?
Yeah, two thoughts. First, given the size of the lens, the surface tension of the fluids, and the strength of the electric field, this might or might not be an issue. Second, most current cameras don't perform very well in "nonstable environments". Some cameras have compensating mechanisms (like my now-classic Olympus 2100 Ultra-Zoom), but there's only so much that can be done.
Heck, limits of the human body are factors in such environments, unless you're willing to settle for "point the camera in the general direction and desperately try to keep from banging it against the car".
How ironic is it that I just started reading Voodoo Science last night, and the first chapter deals with Cold Fusion. The author notes that with the wide discreditaion of Cold Fusion the new Fusion in a Jar proponents are coming up with similar things - but with different names - to Cold Fusion.
People familiar with how science actually works (as opposed to how it ideally works) know that "discredited" is not necessarily the same as "proven to be incorrect". Given that "cold fusion" was indeed rather widely discredited, it's hardly a surprise that anybody working on anything even remotely similar would use a different name. The public coverage of "cold fusion" was so incredibly bad -- from the first ego-inspired press conferences and the ensuing hype to the descent into the current ignorant myth -- that it's a wonder that fusion scientists didn't change the name of the entire field.
Unfortunately, using a different term doesn't prevent folks who don't know what they're talking about (but want to sound like they do) from trying to draw some sort of connection, however remote it is.
Of course, you'd still look to be sure, but for jaywalkers, it could be a bad thing.
It's just a PR issue. It won't be a problem if you can somehow get those jaywalkers to die quietly & out of sight... like the thousands of victims of car pollution related lung cancer & etc that die annually.
Can you imagine the Hummer ad campaign when the release a vehicle that is more fuel efficient than a Toyota Echo?
By then there would very likely also be a Toyota Echo (or something like it) also available with this technology, with fuel efficiency that still blows away this hypothetical Hummer. The only way to get around the extra-size => extra-mass => extra-energy-needed-to-move-it issue would be to develop a gadget that makes any object it's connected to massless -- and even then only if it doesn't take more energy to make more mass massless. Good luck.
i guess this means they're gonna tear down the elevated expressway (the road we used to use before the big dig). it's too bad too. as ugly as the road was, it was a pretty scenic route. you could see large parts of boston.
Well, yeah, but the views that will replace it will be nice, too. That expressway has literally overshadowed a huge swath of land through the city. Obviously developers will grab up a lot of it (and the increased tax base won't hurt), but a certain amount of it is -- supposedly, at least -- reserved for parks and open space.
My biggest complaint -- possibly even counting the cost-overruns and delays -- is that they designed and built a world-class bridge... without a pedestrian/bicycle lane! Would it have costed that much more? Or did nobody realize it would have been a good idea?
Good points. Also, the restaurant business is much more tradition-bound than computer GUIs. Even supposedly avant-garde restaurants rarely change more than just enough to get sufficient buzz to draw in the more-money-than-sense poseurs. (Or so I'm told by people in the biz.)
Seriously; it's only a matter of time that everybody gets nuclear weapons, so quarreling with half the world seems a bit.. Overconfident?
Confident is the attitude that they're trying to project. My impression is that it's really a bizarre combination of arrogant and desperate. I'm afraid that what the US Admin is really doing is the political equivalent of artificially inflating the stock price. The collapse is gonna be really ugly.
You might not think it's possible, but what if an ebomb was detonated near Washington?
At least as bad: detonate one on Wall Street. Similarly high symbolic PR value, plus high economic impact. Or detonate a few small ones near vulnerable spots on the power grid.
Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay for training and carpet knives).
Training wasn't exactly cheap. And how expensive would a do-it-yourself HPM device be? Probably the most expensive bit would be the research, and if you can steal that...
That said, there are easier ways. When I'm in a particularly twisted mood, I spend a little time gaming out what the next attack will be.
I don't know anything about this thinksecret site and how reputable it is...
Our sources tell us that it's not very reputable at all and in fact is often full of crap.
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Me neither. But it sounds like the students freely admit to breaking the law -- which they are or not, I don't know -- and are doing it in order to keep this information public, because they believe that risking legal action in this situation is worth the public good. Seems to me that qualifies as civil disobedience, whether or not they ever end up in a courtroom.
Paper ballots are cheaper, auditable. and better. Screw these "new" systems. The one we had wasn't broken. Congress just wanted to take heat off it's self because of the Florida fiascio where about 1% population...
Did you know that 57.24% of statistics are made up on the spot?
... thinks the election was stolen even after it's been proven it was not.
"Proof" by emphatic repetition seems to have worked pretty well, hasn't it? Beats looking at the actual facts, especially if they might not support the desired conclusion.
Welcome to Slashdot, where getting First Sarcastic Post is more important than knowing what you're talking about.
FSP is a fun game that anyone can play! All you need to do is quickly write a reply that's a simple variation of any of the standard replies for a particular topic. The easiest way, of course, is to jump on any odd wording by the submitter and interpret it in a way that can be made fun of. For more faux-geek points, claim that the idea violates some basic fundamental law that the people involved are somehow unaware of, despite having worked in their field for decades. But for max points, try to make some connection -- however tenuous, forced, and exaggerated -- between the current topic and some discredited idea. Bonus points if the "discredited" idea has only been discredited in the eyes of people who don't understand the topic.
No doubt their are factions within the Chinese government who really want the propaganda coup, but is there any more to this than just some positive press?
Sort of like most of the US projects through Apollo? (And, some would argue, the ISS.) Sure, they finally sent a real scientist along on Apollo 17... the last Apollo mission.
In all fairness though, governments in many different nations have their spending priorities all messed up.
Ain't that the truth. For instance, parts of the US are quite backwards, and $87billion dollars -- to pick a random amount -- surely could be better spent on social and ecological problems. Not that it would be...
I think this is important to note. Diamandis talks about this being comparable to Lindburgh's trans-atlantic in being "a mind-shift breakthrough", but I think he's wrong. While it will be a hell of an accomplishment, and may encourage more private efforts, I doubt that it will be a "mind-shift breakthrough" for the general public.
I think most people will think of an private "edge of space" flight as mildly interesting, but probably not worth a mention at the neighborhood bar. If anything, it'll invite inaccurate and condescending (tho' understandable) comparisons to Evil Knieval. To really get that mindshift breakthrough, some private effort will need to get a human into orbit. I think that's what most people will think of as "real spaceflight".
I hope someone is willing to fund additional levels of X-Prizes, at least as far as LEO.
A moment or two's reflection, and it's obvious that people act to further their own interests.
A few moments more reflection, and I realize people occasionally do so, but not always. Even when they do try to act to further their own interests, they do so with inadequate and poorly-understood information, and often with poor understanding of basic logic. This throws a hell of a lot of noise into any theory based on humans acting out of self-interest.
Even aside from that, I think what happens at least as often is that people react emotionally, and then -- if they think they need to -- they come up with more-or-less logical-sounding "reasons" for their actions.
Sorry, buy my bullshit-o-meter went of the scale here.
My bullshit-o-meter goes off the scale whenever anyone sets up a "poll" like this. The results of such a poll wouldn't mean anything, even if the question was sensible. But he doesn't even ask a real question; he wants to know whether people agree or disagree with the "information". If he doesn't know whether or not the information he presents is correct, he should find out. If he knows it's correct, why does he care what other people think about it?
If he'd like feedback on his suggestions, he should say so.
Sorry. In irritates me when people call this sort of thing a "poll", and it makes me less inclined to take them seriously.
Personally, I am going to give the technology a few years to mature.
I'm hoping that I'll continue being able to be car-free at least until the second or third year of mass-produced fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, that might not be until at least the early '10's...
I'm sure there's more examples throughout Utah's history. Is there something about the culture in this state that makes it a breeding ground for crazy fraudulent get-rich schemes?
I bet the people in one block of Madison Avenue generate more crazy fraudulent get-rich schemes than the entire population of Utah.
Why another five years? Do we not want a better search engine to come along?
If Google keeps up what they've been doing, they will be a better search engine five years from now. Google (v2003) is certainly a better search engine than Google (v1998) was.
Anyway, it's not just the search engine(s) they use that makes them great. It's also the clear way they present the results, the minimum-invasiveness of the ads they sell, etc.
My point is; there's no real free market although a lot of people strive to it.
Many, many more people say they are in favor of free markets than actually strive for them. The rhetoric gets trotted out whenever the current mess doesn't happen to go their way, and tucked quietly away when the current mess favors them.
This is typical among corporate CEOs and spokesdroids, and pretty common among politicians (especially but not limited to right-wingers), but I've also seen it in private individuals.
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If I wasn't feeling so damn lazy this morning, I'd look up the rest of them. Even such "frivilous lawsuit" examples as aren't total urban legends are often exaggerated, probably originally sourced to statements by the corporate legal team. Some lawsuits are, of course, frivilous. But I bet it's a lot rarer than corporate execs and their hirelings in the gov't would like you to believe. For a example of this, there's the classic "woman sues McDonalds for millions over spilled hot coffee". For the actual facts, go here.
Yeah, two thoughts. First, given the size of the lens, the surface tension of the fluids, and the strength of the electric field, this might or might not be an issue. Second, most current cameras don't perform very well in "nonstable environments". Some cameras have compensating mechanisms (like my now-classic Olympus 2100 Ultra-Zoom), but there's only so much that can be done.
Heck, limits of the human body are factors in such environments, unless you're willing to settle for "point the camera in the general direction and desperately try to keep from banging it against the car".
People familiar with how science actually works (as opposed to how it ideally works) know that "discredited" is not necessarily the same as "proven to be incorrect". Given that "cold fusion" was indeed rather widely discredited, it's hardly a surprise that anybody working on anything even remotely similar would use a different name. The public coverage of "cold fusion" was so incredibly bad -- from the first ego-inspired press conferences and the ensuing hype to the descent into the current ignorant myth -- that it's a wonder that fusion scientists didn't change the name of the entire field.
Unfortunately, using a different term doesn't prevent folks who don't know what they're talking about (but want to sound like they do) from trying to draw some sort of connection, however remote it is.
It's just a PR issue. It won't be a problem if you can somehow get those jaywalkers to die quietly & out of sight ... like the thousands of victims of car pollution related lung cancer & etc that die annually.
By then there would very likely also be a Toyota Echo (or something like it) also available with this technology, with fuel efficiency that still blows away this hypothetical Hummer. The only way to get around the extra-size => extra-mass => extra-energy-needed-to-move-it issue would be to develop a gadget that makes any object it's connected to massless -- and even then only if it doesn't take more energy to make more mass massless. Good luck.
Well, yeah, but the views that will replace it will be nice, too. That expressway has literally overshadowed a huge swath of land through the city. Obviously developers will grab up a lot of it (and the increased tax base won't hurt), but a certain amount of it is -- supposedly, at least -- reserved for parks and open space.
My biggest complaint -- possibly even counting the cost-overruns and delays -- is that they designed and built a world-class bridge ... without a pedestrian/bicycle lane! Would it have costed that much more? Or did nobody realize it would have been a good idea?
Good points. Also, the restaurant business is much more tradition-bound than computer GUIs. Even supposedly avant-garde restaurants rarely change more than just enough to get sufficient buzz to draw in the more-money-than-sense poseurs. (Or so I'm told by people in the biz.)
Or at least no harder, with advantages that make the change worth doing.
Confident is the attitude that they're trying to project. My impression is that it's really a bizarre combination of arrogant and desperate. I'm afraid that what the US Admin is really doing is the political equivalent of artificially inflating the stock price. The collapse is gonna be really ugly.
At least as bad: detonate one on Wall Street. Similarly high symbolic PR value, plus high economic impact. Or detonate a few small ones near vulnerable spots on the power grid.
Technologically inclined countries would suffer the most from such attacks.However, terrorists would rather use low-cost/high-bodycount methods, like hijacking a plane and flying it into a building; no cost to Al Queda (they just had to pay for training and carpet knives).
Training wasn't exactly cheap. And how expensive would a do-it-yourself HPM device be? Probably the most expensive bit would be the research, and if you can steal that ...
That said, there are easier ways. When I'm in a particularly twisted mood, I spend a little time gaming out what the next attack will be.
Our sources tell us that it's not very reputable at all and in fact is often full of crap.
(We make no warranty as to the results that may be obtained from reading this post, or as to the accuracy, reliability or content of any information, service, or merchandise provided through it. We shall not be liable regardless of the cause or duration, for any errors, inaccuracies, omissions, or other defects in, or untimeliness or unathenticity of, the information contained within this post.
All content presented in this post, regardless of labeling, should not be the basis for any financial or investment decision, or a financial transaction of any kind. This post is provided for informational purposes only, and is not provided for ANY OTHER PURPOSE WHATSOEVER.)
Reference link provided for the irony-impaired.
Me neither. But it sounds like the students freely admit to breaking the law -- which they are or not, I don't know -- and are doing it in order to keep this information public, because they believe that risking legal action in this situation is worth the public good. Seems to me that qualifies as civil disobedience, whether or not they ever end up in a courtroom.
Did you know that 57.24% of statistics are made up on the spot?
"Proof" by emphatic repetition seems to have worked pretty well, hasn't it? Beats looking at the actual facts, especially if they might not support the desired conclusion.
Welcome to Slashdot, where getting First Sarcastic Post is more important than knowing what you're talking about.
FSP is a fun game that anyone can play! All you need to do is quickly write a reply that's a simple variation of any of the standard replies for a particular topic. The easiest way, of course, is to jump on any odd wording by the submitter and interpret it in a way that can be made fun of. For more faux-geek points, claim that the idea violates some basic fundamental law that the people involved are somehow unaware of, despite having worked in their field for decades. But for max points, try to make some connection -- however tenuous, forced, and exaggerated -- between the current topic and some discredited idea. Bonus points if the "discredited" idea has only been discredited in the eyes of people who don't understand the topic.
Sort of like most of the US projects through Apollo? (And, some would argue, the ISS.) Sure, they finally sent a real scientist along on Apollo 17 ... the last Apollo mission.
In all fairness though, governments in many different nations have their spending priorities all messed up.
Ain't that the truth. For instance, parts of the US are quite backwards, and $87billion dollars -- to pick a random amount -- surely could be better spent on social and ecological problems. Not that it would be ...
I think this is important to note. Diamandis talks about this being comparable to Lindburgh's trans-atlantic in being "a mind-shift breakthrough", but I think he's wrong. While it will be a hell of an accomplishment, and may encourage more private efforts, I doubt that it will be a "mind-shift breakthrough" for the general public.
I think most people will think of an private "edge of space" flight as mildly interesting, but probably not worth a mention at the neighborhood bar. If anything, it'll invite inaccurate and condescending (tho' understandable) comparisons to Evil Knieval. To really get that mindshift breakthrough, some private effort will need to get a human into orbit. I think that's what most people will think of as "real spaceflight".
I hope someone is willing to fund additional levels of X-Prizes, at least as far as LEO.
A few moments more reflection, and I realize people occasionally do so, but not always. Even when they do try to act to further their own interests, they do so with inadequate and poorly-understood information, and often with poor understanding of basic logic. This throws a hell of a lot of noise into any theory based on humans acting out of self-interest.
Even aside from that, I think what happens at least as often is that people react emotionally, and then -- if they think they need to -- they come up with more-or-less logical-sounding "reasons" for their actions.
Well, potentially life-like, anyway. Intriguing.
My bullshit-o-meter goes off the scale whenever anyone sets up a "poll" like this. The results of such a poll wouldn't mean anything, even if the question was sensible. But he doesn't even ask a real question; he wants to know whether people agree or disagree with the "information". If he doesn't know whether or not the information he presents is correct, he should find out. If he knows it's correct, why does he care what other people think about it?
If he'd like feedback on his suggestions, he should say so.
Sorry. In irritates me when people call this sort of thing a "poll", and it makes me less inclined to take them seriously.
I'm hoping that I'll continue being able to be car-free at least until the second or third year of mass-produced fuel-cell vehicles. Unfortunately, that might not be until at least the early '10's ...
Corporate propoganda here and a positive review in the New York Times here.
It would be a lot simpler to rate an idea by how it's formatted. You, know, like if it's presented all in one big paragraph.
I bet the people in one block of Madison Avenue generate more crazy fraudulent get-rich schemes than the entire population of Utah.
If Google keeps up what they've been doing, they will be a better search engine five years from now. Google (v2003) is certainly a better search engine than Google (v1998) was.
Anyway, it's not just the search engine(s) they use that makes them great. It's also the clear way they present the results, the minimum-invasiveness of the ads they sell, etc.
Many, many more people say they are in favor of free markets than actually strive for them. The rhetoric gets trotted out whenever the current mess doesn't happen to go their way, and tucked quietly away when the current mess favors them.
This is typical among corporate CEOs and spokesdroids, and pretty common among politicians (especially but not limited to right-wingers), but I've also seen it in private individuals.