Apparently all other imminent threats to America have been addressed, there is full employment of the American populace, all terrorist threats throughout the world have been eliminated, etc etc etc.
Ironically enough I'm reading an old science fiction trilogy from the 80's featuring a race of aliens whose technology is remarkably similar to this. Them embedded heat-pipes in the layers to conduct heat away. Why can't they do something similar here?
Aside from legitimate industrial or scientific research purposes, I can't see any reason for the average (or even above-average) citizen to own a laser this powerful. In the hands of the average person it's at best a public hazard, and at worst a weapon. I'm no big fan of the government getting involved in what we can and can't own, but I also can see some very irresponsible people buying something like this because they think it's "cool", then carelessly blinding or seriously injuring themselves or others.
YES, it is: It's called "regenerative braking". Install ultracapacitors or similar electric energy storage technology in the cars, and use the motors that otherwise drive the cars as generators during braking, shunting the electricity generated into temporary storage instead of converting that energy to heat, then use the stored energy as part of the start-up current to get the car moving again. Not a new idea by far.
Sorry, I may just have woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.. but wouldn't doing as TFA suggests just open the door to another MITM attack method?
Everybody providing broadband or wireless internet connectivity does the same thing: overstate the capacity of their network as a selling point, then oversell the capacity to maximize profits. I could go into business as a broadband provider and claim "Up to a TERABIT per second downloads!" and it's not false advertising because I said the two magic words "up to". Never mind that I'm overselling the network capacity by 100 times and that if everybody got on and downloaded high-def movies at the same exact moment, crashing the whole network; I said "up to", I didn't claim a guaranteed minimum throughput, so I'm not lying; tough shit.
Everybody needs to know this, and understand it. Once that happens then everyone can get together and force them to change. Until then they'll claim whatever they want in order to get our money, and they'll get away with it.
When they're ALL $100 brand new, not on closeout from the manufacturer, then I'll consider it. Until then it's just another overpriced bright shiny thing that I can do without, and I don't think I'm alone in this.
I see no reason for this person to have been modded down to "Troll" for expressing his opinion. It's an opinion that I don't think is peculiar to him, either. I don't think that the whole tablet PC phenomenon is going to last forever, either, simply because of it's cost. Now, if the cost drops dramatically, then that's another story, but somehow I don't think it will, nothing ever seems to get less expensive, only more expensive over time. We'll see though, won't we?
I wouldn't. Not something like a laptop. Regardless of where I bought it, I would INSIST on it being in a box that had not been opened since it left the factory, and I sure as hell wouldn't want Best Buy monkeys screwing around with it before I got it. Which, considering the stories I hear about Best Buy and things like laptops, I would get no end of grief from them for insisting on this, therefore I would never go there in the first place, and I wouldn't send anybody I know there either.
I have come to the conclusion that by large and far the average person's goal in life is to spend ZERO minutes per week doing anything even remotely resembling work they don't have to do, and by "don't have to do" I mean "that they're not getting paid cash money to do". There is absolutely nothing you can do to externally motivate people to exercise. Even pointing a gun at them and making it clear you'll use it on them is only temporary, and even then I'm sure some people would rather take the bullet. Motivation to exercise must come from within, and reasoning like "you'll live longer", "you'll look better", "you'll feel better in the long run", "you'll be healthier in the long run", and "you'll be considered more attractive by the opposite sex" are never enough and can even be counterproductive in the long run ("attracting a mate" is eventually self-defeating, once you get what you want, so much for your motivation!).
I'm already aware of how much heat I'm going to get for calling out the majority of the people in the world like this, and I don't really care, I'm just calling it like I see it. Go right ahead and moderate me down to "-1, Troll" all you like; it won't change my opinion or invalidate anything I just said.
These sorts of scams from wireless providers have always been in place. Their networks have always had overstated bandwidth capacity, have always been grossly overbooked, and have always been overpriced. They're really turning the screws, now, so that I can't believe anybody could possibly overlook how screwed over they are if they sign the contract. All this for being able to view "content" on a tiny little screen, perhaps not even at full motion speeds.
Is it $50K/yr per school, or $50K/yr for the entire school district? Doesn't sound like enough of a savings to me to make it worthwhile to upset so many people and things.
If you gave me one of these HP tablets for free, I would turn it down. Why would I want something that I can't repair myself, that, after less than 2 months, is already being abandoned by the manufacturer?
If you bought one of these, you have my deepest sympathies. If you bought one after they announced the fire sale, I shake my head in disbelief at you. If you're one of the nudniks buying for $250 on Ebay, then I point and laugh at you because you're a flaming idiot.
Of course to be fair I wouldn't want an iPad either, I have no use for it, and I have no desire for a Nook or Kindle, either. But wasting any time, let alone money, on something that's orphaned? Insanity.
I'm not going to sit here and write paragraph after paragraph of minute details concerning the acquisition of military hardware, the recruiting and training of a private military force to operate said hardware and defend your new-found little private country, and how having all that and a group of seriously rich people living right off your coastline, just out of your jurisdiction is going to make you very, very nervous about said people's actual intentions. I'm also not going to sit here and write paragraph after paragraph about the precarious balance between having enough to defend yourself without being a threat to any small nearby countries, and not having enough to defend yourself against whoever the local petty warlord is, or the local pirates looking to take your shit, or take over your little nation as their new base, or take your rich inhabitants hostage because they're rich, or some combination of the above. Suffice it to say that I think it's a stupid idea, they're a bunch of whack-jobs, and I think it's going to fail spectaculary, assuming it gets off the ground at all, which I think is highly unlikely for numerous reasons that I likewise am not going to write paragraph after paragraph theorizing about. I will say this: Their failure will be very educational for everyone else, and if we ever manage to establish offworld colonies, the lessons learned will be invaluable.
Who said anything about "writing programs"? All this could be done just by having lookouts in the right places, taking notes. This sort of shit has been going on for as long as there have been cops and robbers! Dumb criminals get caught, smart criminals find a way to game the system, whatever the system might be. Criminals might get caught more often for a while because of this new system, but the smart, savvy ones will find a way to work it in their favor instead. Remember all those surveilance cameras the Brits installed? Do you also remember that they haven't been terribly effective in stopping crime? Why is that? Because the criminals just committed their crimes in the dead spots, where the cameras can't see! Unless you make every crime a death-penalty offense, at the high end of the scale criminal-wise, you tend to breed a smarter, more savvy species of criminal. And besides all that, who's to say that the higher-end crooks won't get their hands on a copy of this software (which probably runs on Windows like most things) and feed it cop-related data, and have it point out the patterns of where the cops aren't going to be and when, so they can do their dirty work in peace?
The police patterns are going to be based on historical criminal patterns, which will by design make police patterns predictable -- and game-able. That's my theory, anyway.
I agree, in theory, with both your points. However, there's this: If you've got enough guns that nobody can effectively question your sovereignity, somebody is going to decide that you're likely just a bunch of criminals, and take what they feel is the appropriate action (generally, demand your surrender and imprison everyone, or just kill everyone who resists).
A "standing militia of lawyers" had better also be excellent mercenary soldiers and have some heavy weapons on hand (and lots and lots of ammunition), because otherwise the suit-wearing variety can bleed to death just as fast as anybody else can, perhaps even a bit faster. If you're in international waters, and especially if you're declaring yourself a sovereign nation, nobody is going to come save your ass (not for free, at any rate) when someone else with lots of guns and bombs decides they want what you've got, want to take you hostage (don't forget these people are wealthy) or just feel like a little of the old ultraviolence.
Seriously, in my opinion, if this thing ever gets built, I'll give it a year before it either falls apart internally, or someone blows the whole thing to hell and back for whatever reason.
You wouldn't even really need an inside man, but you would need enough manpower to observe and report on police activities, establish patterns. Which, I'm sure, an organized group of criminals will do anyway.
As you say, not your common street thug, but yes, wouldn't a smarter group of criminals, knowing this system is in place, work out a way to game the system and get the cops to concentrate somewhere well away from where they actually plan on committing crimes?
This, of course, is the obvious answer, but like Occam's Razor suggests, it is also the answer most likely correct: if China is congratulating you on your wise policy decisions regarding censoring something, then you need to rethink it immediately.
..yeah, I was just thinking to myself, "Here comes another tissue-thin excuse to invade/attack someone". We're already spread way too thin, we can't afford to keep making war on whoever.
Slashdot Mirror
Apparently all other imminent threats to America have been addressed, there is full employment of the American populace, all terrorist threats throughout the world have been eliminated, etc etc etc.
Ironically enough I'm reading an old science fiction trilogy from the 80's featuring a race of aliens whose technology is remarkably similar to this. Them embedded heat-pipes in the layers to conduct heat away. Why can't they do something similar here?
Aside from legitimate industrial or scientific research purposes, I can't see any reason for the average (or even above-average) citizen to own a laser this powerful. In the hands of the average person it's at best a public hazard, and at worst a weapon. I'm no big fan of the government getting involved in what we can and can't own, but I also can see some very irresponsible people buying something like this because they think it's "cool", then carelessly blinding or seriously injuring themselves or others.
..that the Mossad has a website on the public Internet.
Couldn't find Ziva's picture, though; I'm SO dissappointed!
YES, it is: It's called "regenerative braking". Install ultracapacitors or similar electric energy storage technology in the cars, and use the motors that otherwise drive the cars as generators during braking, shunting the electricity generated into temporary storage instead of converting that energy to heat, then use the stored energy as part of the start-up current to get the car moving again. Not a new idea by far.
Do I really need to say more? We all know this is how it's going to end. Either that, or it's all a complete fiction; there's precedent for that, too.
Sorry, I may just have woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.. but wouldn't doing as TFA suggests just open the door to another MITM attack method?
Everybody providing broadband or wireless internet connectivity does the same thing: overstate the capacity of their network as a selling point, then oversell the capacity to maximize profits. I could go into business as a broadband provider and claim "Up to a TERABIT per second downloads!" and it's not false advertising because I said the two magic words "up to". Never mind that I'm overselling the network capacity by 100 times and that if everybody got on and downloaded high-def movies at the same exact moment, crashing the whole network; I said "up to", I didn't claim a guaranteed minimum throughput, so I'm not lying; tough shit.
Everybody needs to know this, and understand it. Once that happens then everyone can get together and force them to change. Until then they'll claim whatever they want in order to get our money, and they'll get away with it.
When they're ALL $100 brand new, not on closeout from the manufacturer, then I'll consider it. Until then it's just another overpriced bright shiny thing that I can do without, and I don't think I'm alone in this.
I see no reason for this person to have been modded down to "Troll" for expressing his opinion. It's an opinion that I don't think is peculiar to him, either. I don't think that the whole tablet PC phenomenon is going to last forever, either, simply because of it's cost. Now, if the cost drops dramatically, then that's another story, but somehow I don't think it will, nothing ever seems to get less expensive, only more expensive over time. We'll see though, won't we?
I wouldn't. Not something like a laptop. Regardless of where I bought it, I would INSIST on it being in a box that had not been opened since it left the factory, and I sure as hell wouldn't want Best Buy monkeys screwing around with it before I got it. Which, considering the stories I hear about Best Buy and things like laptops, I would get no end of grief from them for insisting on this, therefore I would never go there in the first place, and I wouldn't send anybody I know there either.
I have come to the conclusion that by large and far the average person's goal in life is to spend ZERO minutes per week doing anything even remotely resembling work they don't have to do, and by "don't have to do" I mean "that they're not getting paid cash money to do". There is absolutely nothing you can do to externally motivate people to exercise. Even pointing a gun at them and making it clear you'll use it on them is only temporary, and even then I'm sure some people would rather take the bullet. Motivation to exercise must come from within, and reasoning like "you'll live longer", "you'll look better", "you'll feel better in the long run", "you'll be healthier in the long run", and "you'll be considered more attractive by the opposite sex" are never enough and can even be counterproductive in the long run ("attracting a mate" is eventually self-defeating, once you get what you want, so much for your motivation!).
I'm already aware of how much heat I'm going to get for calling out the majority of the people in the world like this, and I don't really care, I'm just calling it like I see it. Go right ahead and moderate me down to "-1, Troll" all you like; it won't change my opinion or invalidate anything I just said.
These sorts of scams from wireless providers have always been in place. Their networks have always had overstated bandwidth capacity, have always been grossly overbooked, and have always been overpriced. They're really turning the screws, now, so that I can't believe anybody could possibly overlook how screwed over they are if they sign the contract. All this for being able to view "content" on a tiny little screen, perhaps not even at full motion speeds.
Is it $50K/yr per school, or $50K/yr for the entire school district? Doesn't sound like enough of a savings to me to make it worthwhile to upset so many people and things.
If you gave me one of these HP tablets for free, I would turn it down. Why would I want something that I can't repair myself, that, after less than 2 months, is already being abandoned by the manufacturer?
If you bought one of these, you have my deepest sympathies. If you bought one after they announced the fire sale, I shake my head in disbelief at you. If you're one of the nudniks buying for $250 on Ebay, then I point and laugh at you because you're a flaming idiot.
Of course to be fair I wouldn't want an iPad either, I have no use for it, and I have no desire for a Nook or Kindle, either. But wasting any time, let alone money, on something that's orphaned? Insanity.
I second that; I'm not willing to pay extra for this, and even then there had better be a way to completely and verifiably turn it off.
I'm not going to sit here and write paragraph after paragraph of minute details concerning the acquisition of military hardware, the recruiting and training of a private military force to operate said hardware and defend your new-found little private country, and how having all that and a group of seriously rich people living right off your coastline, just out of your jurisdiction is going to make you very, very nervous about said people's actual intentions. I'm also not going to sit here and write paragraph after paragraph about the precarious balance between having enough to defend yourself without being a threat to any small nearby countries, and not having enough to defend yourself against whoever the local petty warlord is, or the local pirates looking to take your shit, or take over your little nation as their new base, or take your rich inhabitants hostage because they're rich, or some combination of the above. Suffice it to say that I think it's a stupid idea, they're a bunch of whack-jobs, and I think it's going to fail spectaculary, assuming it gets off the ground at all, which I think is highly unlikely for numerous reasons that I likewise am not going to write paragraph after paragraph theorizing about. I will say this: Their failure will be very educational for everyone else, and if we ever manage to establish offworld colonies, the lessons learned will be invaluable.
Who said anything about "writing programs"? All this could be done just by having lookouts in the right places, taking notes. This sort of shit has been going on for as long as there have been cops and robbers! Dumb criminals get caught, smart criminals find a way to game the system, whatever the system might be. Criminals might get caught more often for a while because of this new system, but the smart, savvy ones will find a way to work it in their favor instead. Remember all those surveilance cameras the Brits installed? Do you also remember that they haven't been terribly effective in stopping crime? Why is that? Because the criminals just committed their crimes in the dead spots, where the cameras can't see! Unless you make every crime a death-penalty offense, at the high end of the scale criminal-wise, you tend to breed a smarter, more savvy species of criminal. And besides all that, who's to say that the higher-end crooks won't get their hands on a copy of this software (which probably runs on Windows like most things) and feed it cop-related data, and have it point out the patterns of where the cops aren't going to be and when, so they can do their dirty work in peace?
The police patterns are going to be based on historical criminal patterns, which will by design make police patterns predictable -- and game-able. That's my theory, anyway.
I agree, in theory, with both your points. However, there's this: If you've got enough guns that nobody can effectively question your sovereignity, somebody is going to decide that you're likely just a bunch of criminals, and take what they feel is the appropriate action (generally, demand your surrender and imprison everyone, or just kill everyone who resists).
A "standing militia of lawyers" had better also be excellent mercenary soldiers and have some heavy weapons on hand (and lots and lots of ammunition), because otherwise the suit-wearing variety can bleed to death just as fast as anybody else can, perhaps even a bit faster. If you're in international waters, and especially if you're declaring yourself a sovereign nation, nobody is going to come save your ass (not for free, at any rate) when someone else with lots of guns and bombs decides they want what you've got, want to take you hostage (don't forget these people are wealthy) or just feel like a little of the old ultraviolence.
Seriously, in my opinion, if this thing ever gets built, I'll give it a year before it either falls apart internally, or someone blows the whole thing to hell and back for whatever reason.
You wouldn't even really need an inside man, but you would need enough manpower to observe and report on police activities, establish patterns. Which, I'm sure, an organized group of criminals will do anyway.
As you say, not your common street thug, but yes, wouldn't a smarter group of criminals, knowing this system is in place, work out a way to game the system and get the cops to concentrate somewhere well away from where they actually plan on committing crimes?
This, of course, is the obvious answer, but like Occam's Razor suggests, it is also the answer most likely correct: if China is congratulating you on your wise policy decisions regarding censoring something, then you need to rethink it immediately.
..yeah, I was just thinking to myself, "Here comes another tissue-thin excuse to invade/attack someone". We're already spread way too thin, we can't afford to keep making war on whoever.