I can say it, but I'm not too worried about it -- most of the available niches for miniature self-reproducing machines are already filled... by miniature self-reproducing machines that are much more aggressive and effective than anything technology is likely to come up with.
You're going to fail your mission and you won't be remembered as a martyr.
Depends on what your mission is, I suppose. If your mission was to scare the public and cause them to lose faith in the security of air travel, killing a few people on the plane (or possibly all of them if you manage to make the plane crash in the process) might be sufficient.
It seems to me that you guys don't understand what the word "terrorist" means. It doesn't mean "somebody who I oppose politically". It also should not be confused with "protestor", or even "vandal" or "hooligan". They are different things.
Terrorists are not rational, and their hatred for the West runs too deep for such a strategy to work.
Is there any actual evidence that the above is true? Or is it a rationalization for continuing the War on Terror indefinitely, and thereby ensuring that money continues to flow to the people and companies who profit by selling us things that they claim can protect us?
Since when is it their job to detect drugs? That's the job of the police, not the TSA. Cocaine and meth are not threats to aircraft.
When a TSA screener comes across a packet of smuggled cocaine, what (if anything), do you think he/she should do about it? Ignore it because it's not his/her job to worry about illegal drug trafficking?
Around here, at least, that is more or less true. We get maybe one power outage a year, and it usually lasts for about two seconds until a backup kicks in somewhere.
When the power goes out, so does your grid-tied system.
That's true, but it's not really a problem for most people. Grid-tied systems aren't meant to improve reliability, they are meant to reduce costs and/or emissions.
On the other hand, if reliability is your concern and you're willing to pay extra, buy some batteries for backup.
Governments tend not to like their citizens taking part in transactions that don't have a paper trail.
On the other hand, every Bitcoin transaction does have a very public "paper trail" that is quickly available to everyone, including law enforcement. The only challenge is matching account IDs to actual people. I wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement is able to find ways to do that, in which case they might prefer that criminals use Bitcoins rather than cash.
HOWEVER this feature should require some kind of dongle from the manufacturer or some kind of network.
Or, you could do what every $35 Internet router in the history of Best Buy does: put a little 5-cent button on the back of the device that restores its default settings (or bypasses the password check, or whatever).
I don't think the world really needs 100 extra tons of platinum, gold or rhodium, what the world needs is decent health, clean air and a good water and food supply - none of those things are found in space -
Actually, a sudden influx of cheap platinum could be very helpful in getting clean air, because it would make fuel cells much cheaper to make. Cheap fuel cells would help switch cars (etc) away from fossil fuels.
One inevitable price of de-orbiting something is that it is no longer in available for use in orbit. Given the cost of getting material into orbit, I suspect that very little material will be de-orbited for a long time, as there will be much more value in using it where it is than dropping it down to Earth.
One way to ensure survival of the species -- get the fuck off earth.
Not really. Space is not a good environment for humans. If the Earth population dies (or even is just reduced to the point where they can't keep sending regular supply ships) any people in space will very likely die soon afterwards.
And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.
Is it really because they can't squeeze out more performance, or is it because decreased energy consumption is primarily what consumers are demanding these days?
I can't remember the last time I heard anyone complaining about their CPU being too slow (barring software problems), but people still wish their laptop/tablet had longer battery life.
Look... It's one thing to be competing with a Chinese team who can field $500/month coders to support their app, or with crap hobbyists who only have a slight clue of what they're doing. Those are mostly manageable in practice. It's an entirely different thing to compete with hobbyists who distribute good products without any interest in having a sustainable business. [...] [they're] just building a mine field for those who do care.
You've misread your talking points, Mr. Ballmer. Free software is supposed to be a 'cancer', not a 'mine field'.
Your car will still testify against you in a court of law.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that your car can also testify for you in a court of law. More evidence is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it proves your innocence. I certainly would prefer a computer log to eyewitness testimony, which is the status quo and is horribly unreliable.
I'm pretty sure that the NIMBY crowd are going to remain silent on it, but still... I'm sure that somebody's going to come up with some reason why these shouldn't go up.
All the standard anti-windmill objections would apply, I imagine ("it's ugly", "it spoils the view", "it casts moving shadows on my house", "it kills birds", and so on). Of course those objections carry a little less weight when the alternative is dying of thirst...:^)
I'd say once you start factoring in the cost of pipelines and pumps from the coast it gets a lot closer to parity, especially when you're talking about many remote and dispersed communities. With this tech you just drop a unit anywhere and there's your water.
Very true... and another advantage for this idea is that it's defensible. The problem with pipelines is they stretch for miles through the wilderness, and some people have an annoying tendency to sabotage or tap into them. The windmill, on the other hand, is easier to guard because it's all in one spot.
For one thing, a purpose-built device will be much more efficient at its one intended purpose. Just how much water do you get as a side-effect of running an air conditioner? The prototype of this turbine consistently extracts 800 litres of water a day.
I suggest a compromise... put an electrical outlet on the side of this machine, and whenever someone needs electricity, they can plug in to it and get some (at the cost of forgoing some water production, of course). The rest of the time it can be making water.
That way it's up to the user to decide which product they need more at the moment... and I doubt adding that feature would add much to the cost of the product.
then they could just show video of what happens if you don't use your seatbelt on an aircraft to that 10% of idiots that know better instead of the boring safety talk.
Everyone's got (n) hours to kill in a perfectly good aircraft and video is the best they can do?
The hell with video, they should do a live demonstration. Anyone un-belted who the pilot hasn't successfully removed from their seat after 5 minutes gets a free airline meal as a prize:^)
Hey, I appreciate a non sequitur quote from the founding fathers as much as anyone â" or should we take this to mean that the United States monitoring an attempted long-range missile test by North Korea is somehow "oppressing" us?
I think what deanklear was trying to imply was that once the U.S. government has the ability to keep swarms of cheap drones in the air 24/7, it's not too many steps from that point to keeping them in the air 24/7 over the USA and thereby making it practical for a small number of people to keep the rest of the population under permanent surveillance and/or fear of sudden "death from above".
Trying to sandbox Javascript, and trying to sandbox a plugin, are completely different scenarios.
I'm not sure I see this as an important difference, unless you trust the secure-coding abilities of Apple/Safari programmers more than you trust the secure-coding abilities of Sun/Oracle/JavaPlugin programmers. Either way the sandbox-code is either secure, or it isn't. Why should the location of the code matter?
Or to put it another way... would compiling the Java-plugin code directly into Safari have avoided the security hole that this malware exploited? I doubt it would have.
Slashdot Mirror
Can you say Gray Goo?
I can say it, but I'm not too worried about it -- most of the available niches for miniature self-reproducing machines are already filled... by miniature self-reproducing machines that are much more aggressive and effective than anything technology is likely to come up with.
You're going to fail your mission and you won't be remembered as a martyr.
Depends on what your mission is, I suppose. If your mission was to scare the public and cause them to lose faith in the security of air travel, killing a few people on the plane (or possibly all of them if you manage to make the plane crash in the process) might be sufficient.
It seems to me that you guys don't understand what the word "terrorist" means. It doesn't mean "somebody who I oppose politically". It also should not be confused with "protestor", or even "vandal" or "hooligan". They are different things.
Terrorists are not rational, and their hatred for the West runs too deep for such a strategy to work.
Is there any actual evidence that the above is true? Or is it a rationalization for continuing the War on Terror indefinitely, and thereby ensuring that money continues to flow to the people and companies who profit by selling us things that they claim can protect us?
Since when is it their job to detect drugs? That's the job of the police, not the TSA. Cocaine and meth are not threats to aircraft.
When a TSA screener comes across a packet of smuggled cocaine, what (if anything), do you think he/she should do about it? Ignore it because it's not his/her job to worry about illegal drug trafficking?
Besides, you will have all the proof you need that man is not alone around 2030. End of discussion.
Haha, the joke's on you -- the world ends on December 21st of this year. Your proof will arrive too late, the Mayans said so!
Why bring up some unrelated literature?
Heh, why do you think? (I'll give you a hint, the reason is listed in the moderation-options menu, and it starts with the letter 'T')
Because the grid never goes down.
Around here, at least, that is more or less true. We get maybe one power outage a year, and it usually lasts for about two seconds until a backup kicks in somewhere.
When the power goes out, so does your grid-tied system.
That's true, but it's not really a problem for most people. Grid-tied systems aren't meant to improve reliability, they are meant to reduce costs and/or emissions.
On the other hand, if reliability is your concern and you're willing to pay extra, buy some batteries for backup.
Governments tend not to like their citizens taking part in transactions that don't have a paper trail.
On the other hand, every Bitcoin transaction does have a very public "paper trail" that is quickly available to everyone, including law enforcement. The only challenge is matching account IDs to actual people. I wouldn't be surprised if law enforcement is able to find ways to do that, in which case they might prefer that criminals use Bitcoins rather than cash.
HOWEVER this feature should require some kind of dongle from the manufacturer or some kind of network.
Or, you could do what every $35 Internet router in the history of Best Buy does: put a little 5-cent button on the back of the device that restores its default settings (or bypasses the password check, or whatever).
I don't think the world really needs 100 extra tons of platinum, gold or rhodium, what the world needs is decent health, clean air and a good water and food supply - none of those things are found in space -
Actually, a sudden influx of cheap platinum could be very helpful in getting clean air, because it would make fuel cells much cheaper to make. Cheap fuel cells would help switch cars (etc) away from fossil fuels.
The price to de-orbit could be virtually nothing.
One inevitable price of de-orbiting something is that it is no longer in available for use in orbit. Given the cost of getting material into orbit, I suspect that very little material will be de-orbited for a long time, as there will be much more value in using it where it is than dropping it down to Earth.
One way to ensure survival of the species -- get the fuck off earth.
Not really. Space is not a good environment for humans. If the Earth population dies (or even is just reduced to the point where they can't keep sending regular supply ships) any people in space will very likely die soon afterwards.
And now that they can't squeeze any more performance out of the designs, they're working on decreasing energy consumption.
Is it really because they can't squeeze out more performance, or is it because decreased energy consumption is primarily what consumers are demanding these days?
I can't remember the last time I heard anyone complaining about their CPU being too slow (barring software problems), but people still wish their laptop/tablet had longer battery life.
Look... It's one thing to be competing with a Chinese team who can field $500/month coders to support their app, or with crap hobbyists who only have a slight clue of what they're doing. Those are mostly manageable in practice. It's an entirely different thing to compete with hobbyists who distribute good products without any interest in having a sustainable business. [...] [they're] just building a mine field for those who do care.
You've misread your talking points, Mr. Ballmer. Free software is supposed to be a 'cancer', not a 'mine field'.
The "not for profit" part of the previous post suggest he would not recoup his costs, nor would he expect to.
If I don't call attention to myself, I should have the expectation that no one will remember tomorrow where I walked today.
I'm guessing you don't live in a small town... ;)
Your car will still testify against you in a court of law.
Of course, the other side of the coin is that your car can also testify for you in a court of law. More evidence is not necessarily a bad thing, especially if it proves your innocence. I certainly would prefer a computer log to eyewitness testimony, which is the status quo and is horribly unreliable.
I'm pretty sure that the NIMBY crowd are going to remain silent on it, but still... I'm sure that somebody's going to come up with some reason why these shouldn't go up.
All the standard anti-windmill objections would apply, I imagine ("it's ugly", "it spoils the view", "it casts moving shadows on my house", "it kills birds", and so on). Of course those objections carry a little less weight when the alternative is dying of thirst... :^)
I'd say once you start factoring in the cost of pipelines and pumps from the coast it gets a lot closer to parity, especially when you're talking about many remote and dispersed communities. With this tech you just drop a unit anywhere and there's your water.
Very true... and another advantage for this idea is that it's defensible. The problem with pipelines is they stretch for miles through the wilderness, and some people have an annoying tendency to sabotage or tap into them. The windmill, on the other hand, is easier to guard because it's all in one spot.
For one thing, a purpose-built device will be much more efficient at its one intended purpose. Just how much water do you get as a side-effect of running an air conditioner? The prototype of this turbine consistently extracts 800 litres of water a day.
I suggest a compromise... put an electrical outlet on the side of this machine, and whenever someone needs electricity, they can plug in to it and get some (at the cost of forgoing some water production, of course). The rest of the time it can be making water.
That way it's up to the user to decide which product they need more at the moment... and I doubt adding that feature would add much to the cost of the product.
We won't curb our fossil fuel use any way...
We will when we run out.
then they could just show video of what happens if you don't use your seatbelt on an aircraft to that 10% of idiots that know better instead of the boring safety talk.
Everyone's got (n) hours to kill in a perfectly good aircraft and video is the best they can do?
The hell with video, they should do a live demonstration. Anyone un-belted who the pilot hasn't successfully removed from their seat after 5 minutes gets a free airline meal as a prize :^)
Hey, I appreciate a non sequitur quote from the founding fathers as much as anyone â" or should we take this to mean that the United States monitoring an attempted long-range missile test by North Korea is somehow "oppressing" us?
I think what deanklear was trying to imply was that once the U.S. government has the ability to keep swarms of cheap drones in the air 24/7, it's not too many steps from that point to keeping them in the air 24/7 over the USA and thereby making it practical for a small number of people to keep the rest of the population under permanent surveillance and/or fear of sudden "death from above".
FWIW.
Trying to sandbox Javascript, and trying to sandbox a plugin, are completely different scenarios.
I'm not sure I see this as an important difference, unless you trust the secure-coding abilities of Apple/Safari programmers more than you trust the secure-coding abilities of Sun/Oracle/JavaPlugin programmers. Either way the sandbox-code is either secure, or it isn't. Why should the location of the code matter?
Or to put it another way... would compiling the Java-plugin code directly into Safari have avoided the security hole that this malware exploited? I doubt it would have.