That, and they want to be able to have near-absolute control of content again. A new and improved Internet where the DRM is built right in, and the poor, huddled masses of big business doesn't have to be afraid of piracy or charging for content anymore.
I believe he's referring to the total building height, as opposed to the building height that's above ground. In which case he may be right, although I don't recall the sub-levels of a building ever being factored in when measuring its height so it's a moot point.
I can't. I live less than five minutes from city limits of my state's capital city and I can't get broadband. I've called every cable and DSL provider in the city and not one is willing to extend the line out to me, even when I've offered to pay for laying the line (and at over $1 per foot, that's a hell of a commitment on my part). If they do this, then there'd better be some 'Ma Bell' like condition that whoever asks for the cable can get it.
No, physical brain size does not directly correlate to intelligence. It used to be that rival scientists had their brains preserved and then measured to see who was smarter, then realized this was about as accurate as phrenology. What IS important size-wise is the body:brain ratio, as it's been repeatedly shown that the larger this ratio is, the higher the average intelligence of the species. But this only works on a species level, not individuals. It's primarily the brain's structure and the amount of resources the body devotes to brain function that determines its real ability.
But really, if these guys were so smart, why are they extinct? Our little, dumb human brains managed to figure it out, so...?
I sure hope that's where this is heading. Now that they have the basics, they need to start shrinking it down to human size and partnering with researchers who do mind-machine interfaces. And of course the power issue. But it's amazing to think that in perhaps one or two more generations people might be able to get a fully articulated replacement arm and hand.
Though I would like the features I do use to work properly. OpenOffice has some strange quirks when it comes to certain formatting, like making lists. Nothing that individually would be a deal breaker, but after a year of constant minor frustrations, I went back to MSOffice. Fact is, most people just want to be able to get the job done quickly with the fewest hassles, and right now MS Office still does that better.
As the saying goes, "If it can be made, it can be unmade." People really need to be made aware of this fact and stop thinking of security as fool-proof and start thinking in terms of deterrent ability. There's no such thing as "truly secure".
Also, I question the idea of "waste" heat. Making the body work harder could potentially result in hypothermia, although it could also result in a higher "resting" metabolic rate, so it really depends on whether or not the user has extra calories to spare.
I question your relative activity level. Have you ever shoveled a driveway clear of snow? I can go out in 10F in coat/gloves/hat/scarf and have to strip down to just a sweatshirt inside of thirty minutes. I give off so much heat that my clothes are literally steaming. You're talking as if the body has a finite amount of heat to give, but that's not the case. The heat output is equivalent to the amount of energy expended. If this thing can't power a gameboy, there's no way it can sap so much heat it risks giving someone hypothermia. To do that, it'd not only have to be able to harvest more heat than the body can produce at any given level, it'd have be able to do it over an extended period of time and without the user noticing he/she's freezing.
Get rid of this fucked up idea that there is any dichotomy between being good at sports and being good academically.... Then people can do what the fuck they want without society telling them they fall into some particular clique.
I would bet money this will never happen. This is what's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kids find out they excel in certain areas, and and rather than trying to improve where they're weak, they simply try to do what they're good at. As kids grow up, they tend to divide into groups of like-minded people - or cliques - so they can continue to do what they like doing. And of course, everyone wants to think their clique is the best, so they belittle the other groups to boost their standing. This is particularly useful for the physically-oriented groups, one because on an instinctual level, able-bodied/beautiful people are more desirable, and two because physically-oriented groups can belittle the others in the most direct ways (very easy to see when someone is better looking than you or can/will beat you up). Later on, once these kids are adults and having kids of their own, they impress upon their kids the values they grew up with, driving their kids to see if they too can follow the same pattern (based on another human instinct to find a survival pattern that works and follow it, which is much easier to do when someone shows you the way, and amazingly difficult to get change once established, because destroying a survival pattern that works - flawed as it may be - is instinctual suicide), thus inculcating the pattern for another generation. Most times those kids follow in their parents footsteps, though some either don't or can't (the black sheep), but it's not genetics that foster families with a history of artists, or doctors, or laborers.
Actually,it's a bit too late for that. There have been a few studies that indicate warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol have little, if any, effect on keeping people from smoking or drinking. And considering the prevalence of cell phones, I doubt any measure would have an effect on usage until there is concrete evidence that it causes cancer. And even then... just look at the tobacco industry.
Oh God, when companies start suing other companies because they weren't sued by that company, it's officially the apocalypse. Cue the Ghostbusters quotes.
I'd say it's more likely the reason it's more expensive is that the major drug companies have the FDA in their pocket. It's easy to charge more when your regulators delay and/or deny competing products.
I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to take the "green" trend and apply it to something not at all meant for the label. Oil is organic in the same way uranium is organic. Yes, technically they both come from the natural world, but they hardly match the renewable/healthy/eco-friendly definition that the term organic has come to mean today. If PR folks keep following this logic, we'll soon be seeing ads for 90% organic cars and other such nonsense.
With all the various scissors, clippers and shaving blades a barber has - especially since he'll be using them on your face - I would hope you would go to one you could trust.
Probably because after disasters like the MiniDisc and UMD, Sony finally realized it's better to use a common format than try to make a proprietary one. It's an irritating and ridiculous logic to think making a proprietary format will help lock in customers. More often it will just piss of the consumer and they'll never use the product, one because they have to wait for product to come out for their format, and two because lock-in fosters lazy design (why innovate when the customer has to buy your format anyway?), which leads to a shittier product.
Media companies should take a cue from the industrial world. There's a reason nearly all screws, nuts and bolts are designed the same way; it was too damn hard to stay in business when every company made a different kind of screw.
For the most part, it's irrelevant who the supposed agitator is. Sure, foreign powers can affect some things, but usually not enough to matter. Do you really think if the Americans or British weren't there, it'd be a utopia? No. If the evil western powers were gone, they'd be replaced by the evil religious heretics, or the evil communists, or the evil corrupt officials, or even the evil death bunnies from Mars for all it matters.
It boils down to one thing: power. The people in power want to stay in power, and the only way to do that is to make sure no one else can assume power of their own. They can censor/imprison/kill or otherwise silence people to do this. They can pretend to give the masses the power to choose who leads them, though inevitably it's always someone from the group in power. They can proclaim to "share" the wealth with all, though somehow the people in power always have more. They can cry fowl, that it's really xyz group that's screwing them over and the people should be mad at xyz, not the ones in power. And, when all else fails, they can invoke the "Power of God" to show the public the way, and of course "God" believes the people in power are the proper sort for leadership.
If the peoples in the middle east (and everyone for that matter) really wanted freedom and peace, they'd stop allowing themselves to be cowed by every load of bullshit in the book and have a revolution. Not one for replacing the current regime, but one for dismantling it. Think of this: the few in power control we the masses, yet it's we the masses who control everything those in power need to control us. So what happens when we wake up and stop playing the game?
In prison, if a riot breaks out the guards get to safety and wait it out. They don't try to quell the population because they're outnumbered 10:1, 20:1, 100:1... Whatever the ratio, there's simply not enough guards to control the masses once the masses decide they've had enough. And you can be damn sure the guards always know that's the case.
So who gives a shit who's agitating whom? Take your pick from any cause, foreign power, religion, space mutant, it doesn't matter. What matters is the people in power are desperately trying to make sure the masses are either too satisfied, too scared, or too ignorant of the truth to threaten their position. Hell, you can pretty much sum up every civilization that's ever existed by reading Animal Farm. And what few that weren't like that were all crushed by the ones that were.
No surprises indeed. A news story about how turntable sales are going up because vinyl sales are going up. Is there a 'noshitsherlock' tag for this kind of thing?
Can we please end this already? Every time some new technology comes out to change the system, the people from the old system become a mass of complain, complain, denial, fear, outrage, lawsuit, begruding acceptance, and finally oh-hey-this-isn't-so-bad-after-all. Every. Time.
FFS journalists, just skip to the part where you adapt to the new technology and stop bitching already. The internet is well beyond fad stage and it's too big to be boxed and packaged for controlled consumption. Instead of, "Oh no, the old business models don't work in the new system, don't let the new system take over!!!one1 Government, somebody, tell them to stop!" They should be thinking, "Oh no, the old models don't work, we'd better think of some new models so we can still make enough money to live off of our work."
It's time to face the fact that the Internet is the new method for communication, and will eventually become THE method of communication. Somewhere in the future, the tv set will be replaced by the monitor as everyone streams their favorite shows and movies directly from media providers. Consoles will eventually become specialized gaming computers, bundled with controller, keyboard and mouse, if they don't simply die in favor of computers in general. National newspapers will go the way of the CD/Cassette/LP, as both music and news can be downloaded or streamed from anywhere with a connection. Do I even need to mention cell phone with iPhone and N900 out there already? 10, 20, 50 years from now it will happen. All media, all communication will be available in one massive electronic web. The sooner people accept that, the sooner they can figure out how to survive in an electronic frontier.
I've just recently (within the last six months) starting using linux on a daily basis, and I have to agree with this wholeheartedly. The man pages are only marginally useful to a n00b, and even a significant portion of online documentation, because a lot of the documentation out there simply assumes too much information. That's the biggest problem I've had. I'll be reading some tutorial and there will be a vague, one-line instruction to use some script/program/command that I've never heard of before, and I'll have to go searching for what it is and how it works before I can finish the original tutorial. Sometimes that means a couple extra minutes, sometimes a couple hours (and in one horrible instance two days), but the loss of time builds up and gets really frustrating.
I think the linux community in general has a real problem with assuming everybody already knows xyz command so there's no need to explain or demonstrate it. Not all of them, mind you, and I'm really thankful for the people who take the time to explain the details, but way too many tutorials come from people who assume their audience have been around linux as long as they have.
Considering a lot of the reason they pushed out Win7 so fast was to erase the legacy of Vista, it's not much of a stretch to think they'd still have been pretty quick to quell any rumors of Vista-like qualities.
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That, and they want to be able to have near-absolute control of content again. A new and improved Internet where the DRM is built right in, and the poor, huddled masses of big business doesn't have to be afraid of piracy or charging for content anymore.
I believe he's referring to the total building height, as opposed to the building height that's above ground. In which case he may be right, although I don't recall the sub-levels of a building ever being factored in when measuring its height so it's a moot point.
I can't. I live less than five minutes from city limits of my state's capital city and I can't get broadband. I've called every cable and DSL provider in the city and not one is willing to extend the line out to me, even when I've offered to pay for laying the line (and at over $1 per foot, that's a hell of a commitment on my part). If they do this, then there'd better be some 'Ma Bell' like condition that whoever asks for the cable can get it.
No, physical brain size does not directly correlate to intelligence. It used to be that rival scientists had their brains preserved and then measured to see who was smarter, then realized this was about as accurate as phrenology. What IS important size-wise is the body:brain ratio, as it's been repeatedly shown that the larger this ratio is, the higher the average intelligence of the species. But this only works on a species level, not individuals. It's primarily the brain's structure and the amount of resources the body devotes to brain function that determines its real ability.
But really, if these guys were so smart, why are they extinct? Our little, dumb human brains managed to figure it out, so...?
I sure hope that's where this is heading. Now that they have the basics, they need to start shrinking it down to human size and partnering with researchers who do mind-machine interfaces. And of course the power issue. But it's amazing to think that in perhaps one or two more generations people might be able to get a fully articulated replacement arm and hand.
Though I would like the features I do use to work properly. OpenOffice has some strange quirks when it comes to certain formatting, like making lists. Nothing that individually would be a deal breaker, but after a year of constant minor frustrations, I went back to MSOffice. Fact is, most people just want to be able to get the job done quickly with the fewest hassles, and right now MS Office still does that better.
As the saying goes, "If it can be made, it can be unmade." People really need to be made aware of this fact and stop thinking of security as fool-proof and start thinking in terms of deterrent ability. There's no such thing as "truly secure".
It worked with the Native Americans.
Also, I question the idea of "waste" heat. Making the body work harder could potentially result in hypothermia, although it could also result in a higher "resting" metabolic rate, so it really depends on whether or not the user has extra calories to spare.
I question your relative activity level. Have you ever shoveled a driveway clear of snow? I can go out in 10F in coat/gloves/hat/scarf and have to strip down to just a sweatshirt inside of thirty minutes. I give off so much heat that my clothes are literally steaming. You're talking as if the body has a finite amount of heat to give, but that's not the case. The heat output is equivalent to the amount of energy expended. If this thing can't power a gameboy, there's no way it can sap so much heat it risks giving someone hypothermia. To do that, it'd not only have to be able to harvest more heat than the body can produce at any given level, it'd have be able to do it over an extended period of time and without the user noticing he/she's freezing.
Get rid of this fucked up idea that there is any dichotomy between being good at sports and being good academically. ... Then people can do what the fuck they want without society telling them they fall into some particular clique.
I would bet money this will never happen. This is what's called a self-fulfilling prophecy. Kids find out they excel in certain areas, and and rather than trying to improve where they're weak, they simply try to do what they're good at. As kids grow up, they tend to divide into groups of like-minded people - or cliques - so they can continue to do what they like doing. And of course, everyone wants to think their clique is the best, so they belittle the other groups to boost their standing. This is particularly useful for the physically-oriented groups, one because on an instinctual level, able-bodied/beautiful people are more desirable, and two because physically-oriented groups can belittle the others in the most direct ways (very easy to see when someone is better looking than you or can/will beat you up). Later on, once these kids are adults and having kids of their own, they impress upon their kids the values they grew up with, driving their kids to see if they too can follow the same pattern (based on another human instinct to find a survival pattern that works and follow it, which is much easier to do when someone shows you the way, and amazingly difficult to get change once established, because destroying a survival pattern that works - flawed as it may be - is instinctual suicide), thus inculcating the pattern for another generation. Most times those kids follow in their parents footsteps, though some either don't or can't (the black sheep), but it's not genetics that foster families with a history of artists, or doctors, or laborers.
Actually,it's a bit too late for that. There have been a few studies that indicate warning labels on cigarettes and alcohol have little, if any, effect on keeping people from smoking or drinking. And considering the prevalence of cell phones, I doubt any measure would have an effect on usage until there is concrete evidence that it causes cancer. And even then... just look at the tobacco industry.
Oh God, when companies start suing other companies because they weren't sued by that company, it's officially the apocalypse. Cue the Ghostbusters quotes.
This isn't a problem in America. We each just get one to ourselves.
I'd say it's more likely the reason it's more expensive is that the major drug companies have the FDA in their pocket. It's easy to charge more when your regulators delay and/or deny competing products.
I was wondering how long it'd take for someone to take the "green" trend and apply it to something not at all meant for the label. Oil is organic in the same way uranium is organic. Yes, technically they both come from the natural world, but they hardly match the renewable/healthy/eco-friendly definition that the term organic has come to mean today. If PR folks keep following this logic, we'll soon be seeing ads for 90% organic cars and other such nonsense.
Marketing companies shouldn't just fuck everyone in the ass for their own gain.
If they didn't try to, they wouldn't be marketing companies. The smart man covers his ass.
And before I get flamed, yes I know ET was a Spielberg movie, but ILM did the special effects on the 20th anniv. edition.
Lucas could replace him with a two-way radio. He'd be less threatening then and I doubt anyone could tell the difference.
With all the various scissors, clippers and shaving blades a barber has - especially since he'll be using them on your face - I would hope you would go to one you could trust.
Probably because after disasters like the MiniDisc and UMD, Sony finally realized it's better to use a common format than try to make a proprietary one. It's an irritating and ridiculous logic to think making a proprietary format will help lock in customers. More often it will just piss of the consumer and they'll never use the product, one because they have to wait for product to come out for their format, and two because lock-in fosters lazy design (why innovate when the customer has to buy your format anyway?), which leads to a shittier product.
Media companies should take a cue from the industrial world. There's a reason nearly all screws, nuts and bolts are designed the same way; it was too damn hard to stay in business when every company made a different kind of screw.
For the most part, it's irrelevant who the supposed agitator is. Sure, foreign powers can affect some things, but usually not enough to matter. Do you really think if the Americans or British weren't there, it'd be a utopia? No. If the evil western powers were gone, they'd be replaced by the evil religious heretics, or the evil communists, or the evil corrupt officials, or even the evil death bunnies from Mars for all it matters.
It boils down to one thing: power. The people in power want to stay in power, and the only way to do that is to make sure no one else can assume power of their own. They can censor/imprison/kill or otherwise silence people to do this. They can pretend to give the masses the power to choose who leads them, though inevitably it's always someone from the group in power. They can proclaim to "share" the wealth with all, though somehow the people in power always have more. They can cry fowl, that it's really xyz group that's screwing them over and the people should be mad at xyz, not the ones in power. And, when all else fails, they can invoke the "Power of God" to show the public the way, and of course "God" believes the people in power are the proper sort for leadership.
If the peoples in the middle east (and everyone for that matter) really wanted freedom and peace, they'd stop allowing themselves to be cowed by every load of bullshit in the book and have a revolution. Not one for replacing the current regime, but one for dismantling it. Think of this: the few in power control we the masses, yet it's we the masses who control everything those in power need to control us. So what happens when we wake up and stop playing the game?
In prison, if a riot breaks out the guards get to safety and wait it out. They don't try to quell the population because they're outnumbered 10:1, 20:1, 100:1... Whatever the ratio, there's simply not enough guards to control the masses once the masses decide they've had enough. And you can be damn sure the guards always know that's the case.
So who gives a shit who's agitating whom? Take your pick from any cause, foreign power, religion, space mutant, it doesn't matter. What matters is the people in power are desperately trying to make sure the masses are either too satisfied, too scared, or too ignorant of the truth to threaten their position. Hell, you can pretty much sum up every civilization that's ever existed by reading Animal Farm. And what few that weren't like that were all crushed by the ones that were.
No surprises indeed. A news story about how turntable sales are going up because vinyl sales are going up. Is there a 'noshitsherlock' tag for this kind of thing?
Can we please end this already? Every time some new technology comes out to change the system, the people from the old system become a mass of complain, complain, denial, fear, outrage, lawsuit, begruding acceptance, and finally oh-hey-this-isn't-so-bad-after-all. Every. Time.
FFS journalists, just skip to the part where you adapt to the new technology and stop bitching already. The internet is well beyond fad stage and it's too big to be boxed and packaged for controlled consumption. Instead of, "Oh no, the old business models don't work in the new system, don't let the new system take over!!!one1 Government, somebody, tell them to stop!" They should be thinking, "Oh no, the old models don't work, we'd better think of some new models so we can still make enough money to live off of our work."
It's time to face the fact that the Internet is the new method for communication, and will eventually become THE method of communication. Somewhere in the future, the tv set will be replaced by the monitor as everyone streams their favorite shows and movies directly from media providers. Consoles will eventually become specialized gaming computers, bundled with controller, keyboard and mouse, if they don't simply die in favor of computers in general. National newspapers will go the way of the CD/Cassette/LP, as both music and news can be downloaded or streamed from anywhere with a connection. Do I even need to mention cell phone with iPhone and N900 out there already? 10, 20, 50 years from now it will happen. All media, all communication will be available in one massive electronic web. The sooner people accept that, the sooner they can figure out how to survive in an electronic frontier.
I've just recently (within the last six months) starting using linux on a daily basis, and I have to agree with this wholeheartedly. The man pages are only marginally useful to a n00b, and even a significant portion of online documentation, because a lot of the documentation out there simply assumes too much information. That's the biggest problem I've had. I'll be reading some tutorial and there will be a vague, one-line instruction to use some script/program/command that I've never heard of before, and I'll have to go searching for what it is and how it works before I can finish the original tutorial. Sometimes that means a couple extra minutes, sometimes a couple hours (and in one horrible instance two days), but the loss of time builds up and gets really frustrating.
I think the linux community in general has a real problem with assuming everybody already knows xyz command so there's no need to explain or demonstrate it. Not all of them, mind you, and I'm really thankful for the people who take the time to explain the details, but way too many tutorials come from people who assume their audience have been around linux as long as they have.
Considering a lot of the reason they pushed out Win7 so fast was to erase the legacy of Vista, it's not much of a stretch to think they'd still have been pretty quick to quell any rumors of Vista-like qualities.