Whether you agree with the war or not, it's still natural to want to see the troops overseas get the best equipment we can give them. Unlike Vietnam, even the anti-war movement doesn't blame the individual troops and wish them dead (Honestly, I don't even know how prevalent that opinion was during Vietnam).
Besides, military technology has always been a popular topic of discussion. The U.S. military gets all the neat toys so tech guys want to see what is cutting edge and sometimes the stuff ends up filtering down into the private sector (GPS, HUMVEE, etc.).
The mood in the U.S., as far as I've seen, is no more violent than it has ever been (for better or for worse). The country is pretty evenly split in opinion on whether the war is right. Although, many people that don't think it's a good war still think we should finish the job right rather than walk away and leave Iraq a chaotic mess.
While I grew up in a household that lived off of bottled water until my parents got around to buying an inline filter (we had a well with some minor bacterial problems, drinkable but certainly not Evian), there are plenty of people that don't have the money to waste on bottled water or fancy filters (such as myself now that I'm on my own). They live off of city tap water their entire lives. As you alluded to in your post, there are acceptable limits for contaminants defined by the U.S. government. It wouldn't be piped into peoples' houses if it wasn't within those limits.
In your case, if the Uranium levels were already below the limit (no matter how slim the margin may be) then diluting it should put it at pretty reasonable levels. What actually comes out of your faucet is what is considered "tap water", not the uranium content of the water before it's processed with the runoff water.
As for the article, they are discussing water purification for wartime. It would be highly unreasonable to expect any soldier to be on active duty for more that a few years at most (if your involved in a war more serious than that then you've got bigger problems than whether or not your drinking natural spring water on a regular basis). I think people can handle drinking U.S. city tap water for a few years if they have to.
"From there, the decidedly unappetizing-looking water moves to a series of six "treatment beds," which consist of proprietary carbon filters developed by LexCarb. The first four filters strain out black gunk so that the water becomes amber. The final two filters remove remaining impurities, resulting in water that is as clean, or cleaner, than the tap water of many U.S. cities."
Supposedly, the water is "cleaner than tap water in many U.S. cities" before they add the chlorine solution. The brown color you are talking about seems to exist only mid-way through the series of filters.
As for why they don't use a UV filter. The article later explains that the chlorine is meant to stop bacteria from developing in the water well after the purification process is over. I can understand how UV/RO membrane would kill/catch any bacteria present but I don't think it would stop re-contamination later (honestly, I'm not exactly familiar with how RO membranes work but I'm assuming its a filter that doesn't stick around in the water afterwards).
Take the conditions in the U.S. during the great depression (which was going on at the time); imaging them a factor of ten times worse; and you'll get what, to the best of my knowledge, was the living conditions in post-World War I Germany. The allies plundered what was left of Germany for reperations at the end of the war, thus making the global depression that followed all the worse for the German people. This is often sighted as one of the primary factors that allowed an extremist dictator like Hitler to take power. The people there were so desperate that they'd follow anyone who stood up and looked like they could improve their conditions.
"Banks did try getting ATMs to reduce the amount of manpower needed to run the bank, but as it turns out, the number of bank tellers has not decreased, and ATMs are very expensive to maintain. Bankers basically bought them just to save themselves money, but thankfully that backfired."
Where I am (Chicago, IL, USA) they are still doing that. The biggest local bank, BankOne, has very few "full featured" bank branches. The vast majority of their locations are inside Domick's supermarkets (the dominant supermarket chain around here) or in Walgreens drug stores. They consist of ~3 ATM machines and an office or two. All deposits, withdrawals, and balance inquiries are handles by the ATM. The only thing the employees in the offices are there to handle is creating new accounts and loans. This approach seems to be working out fine for them.
We have gotten to a point where technology is cheap enough that they should be able to make reasonably reliable ATMs that are cheaper to maintain than a counter with two or three bank employees behind it. The tellers behind those counters probably aren't qualified to handle loans/new accounts anyway so there isn't any overlap in labor between the people sitting in the office and the ATMs. On top of that, the ATMs are available as long as the store is open (sometimes 24/7) as compared to the typical "bankers hours".
As for the supermarket/home depot automatic registers, I love them. I find that (as long as they are properly maintained/calibrated) they are vastly faster than the register people. In my experience as a consumer as well as having worked in retail, most register people are slow as dirt. I can completely understand that after working 8+ hours for low pay while putting up with demeaning treatment from miserable customers many people working those jobs tend to burn out. Its almost impossible to keep up a fast pace for years under those conditions.
The other thing I have noticed is that store managers have an almost universal tendency to under-staff their registers. I honestly don't know why they bother having 10+ registers at a supermarket if they never staff them. Most of these stores probably don't even have enough register people on the payroll to staff all the registers they have at the same time. Much like the ATMs, self-checkout registers are open the entire time the store is open. All they need is one person to watch over ~4 of the registers to help people and make sure no-one walks away with stuff. This means they can double the number of registers available while cutting manpower in half. Consequently, this means much shorter lines. Maybe when more people get comfortable using them they won't be as open as they are now but then they should be able to simply convert more of they registers over at that point.
As an addendum, I think this is a sign that automation is beginning to make all low-end service jobs/manual labor disappear. I am still waiting for a completely automated McDonald's where the whole store is one giant vending machine. One or two people would be on hand to feed raw materials into the machine/kitchen (such as frozen patties, buns, frozen fries, etc.), fix any jam-ups that occurred, and clean up the equipment at the end of the night. A system of conveyor belts would move the food from place to place where it would be cooked and combined into things like sandwiches (after all, how hard can it be to create a machine that puts together sloppy sandwiches like the ones your get from modern fast food employees). The employees/maintenance people would never have to have direct contact with the customer because self-checkout registers would allow the customers to pay for it themselves and conveyor belts would bring the food right to them. It's kind of scary when you think about it because a massive number of people in the US are employed in the retail and fast food industries (Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the US and possibly the world). What will all those people do when technology automates almost all the jobs they are qualified for?
Supposedly, this is a practice that Wired has been partaking in for a number of years. There is no way to know how the order form was worded a few years ago when this particular individual signed up (he may, very well, not have even used the web page). Also, it is completely possible that this statement you've quoted has been added to the web site in response to the controversy described in the article. The fact that they resorted to sleazy collections agencies suggests that their initial intentions were less than honorable.
They also have the choice of either not signing something if they can't be bothered to look at what they're agreeing to, or signing it and accepting the consequences.
Yes, we could all decide to not sign up for anything. Quite frankly, there are probably a great deal of things we, as individuals, could do without. However, there is also a large list of things we need in today's society in order to not be socially handicapped. Some of these things are cars, cell phones, major software tools for business, and utilities. All of these, and many others that are specific to a person's career or lifestyle, have extreme amounts of "fine print". I don't think we should have to be bothered reading hundreds of examples of "fine print" for every different product/service I buy. I feel that it represents an unrealistic expectation on the part of the business world.
Companies exist for the betterment of individuals. If something the business world is doing is predominantly harmful to people as a whole then we are perfectly within our rights to use the government in order to stop them from doing it. The fact that people have done so in the past is the only reason we don't see major companies allowing employees that accidentally fall into the meat grinders to be sold as sausage in order to save themselves the trouble of destroying the batch of meat (Sinclair's The Jungle) or hiring private police/military forces to quash worker strikes with physical force (Such as when Rockafeller hired Pinkertons to deal with striking workers at one of his factories). If only rare companies used "fine print" then I would whole-heartedly support a simple boycott. Unfortunately, "fine print" is pervasive in the business world. When you have a situation where an individual can't participate in numerous industries that are necessary for him/her to be successful in society without falling prey to piles of "fine print" then, I feel, you are justified in enacting consumer protection laws.
Fuck them if they're too lazy or stupid to figure it out.
While I don't agree with you on it, lazy is one thing. However, stupid is another matter. There is a reason why children aren't allowed to sign legally binding contracts in most countries around the world. This is because we don't allow people who are significantly more intelligent/mentally developed (such as a company with a team of lawyers) to take advantage of someone simply because they can word their "deal" in a sufficiently complex manner that the other person doesn't understand it. I like to think that I have pretty decent reading comprehension skills but IANAL and it would be easy for me to misunderstand some of the clauses in most "fine print". Others, who don't even have the same level of reading comprehension skills I do, would be totally lost even if they did try to read all the "fine print" they were exposed to. We, as a society, (at least in the U.S.) realized the evils of "Social Darwinism" around the turn of the century. To sit there and say "if you're too stupid to understand how the vast majority of companies do business then screw you" is evil, especially when the vast majority of people in society would, most likely, not be able to correctly figure out the implications behind much of the "fine print" they are presented with.
The problem is that there are whole industries, such as cell phones, in which you can't participate without having to deal with obnoxious fine print. Many people have jobs, social obligations, etc. that make it extremely unrealistic to expect them to opt-out of the entire cell phone industry in order to teach the service providers a lesson.
I've seen a few people here claim something to the extent of "it's his own fault, he should have read the fine print" and personally I have to say that's garbage. We live in a society that is absolutely inundated with "fine print". You almost can't avoid it no matter where you go. Much of it is confusing and hard to understand. To make matter worse, a good portion is repetitive info reworded slightly from "fine print" to "fine print" thus worsening the signal to noise ratio drastically.
Since the vast majority of people aren't lawyers (and probably lack the reading comprehension skills needed to read at that level); we can't expect people to thoroughly read through every single EULA, magazine subscription "fine print", etc. in order to know if any of the many convoluted, "lawyer speak", terms will screw you over in the end. This leaves average people to do exactly what most people do right now which is to "gloss over" "fine print" and hope for the best. In this particular case, Wired magazine took what would otherwise be generic "fine print" and slipped in a term radically different from what is the generally accepted method for handling magazine subscriptions. I feel that this should be looked upon as, at least, unethical and should, quite possibly, be considered fraudulent behavior.
What it boils down to is that we need to decide what kind of society we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where the only way you can avoid being fleeced by big business is to be a lawyer who devotes a large portion of his/her free time to religiously reading the "fine print" to every single product or service he/she buys or signs up for no matter how small or trivial that product or service happens to be? The burden here should fall on the businesses providing the product/service in question.
Individuals have, for the most part, very limited resources (time, money, intellect, etc.) with which to comprehend threats posed by "fine print". If the burden were on the individual then that person would have to expend that effort for every example of "fine print" he/she is exposed to. In comparison, businesses usually have more resources with which to develop "fine print" that doesn't include clauses that aren't generally known and accepted by the community the product/service is being sold in. They only have to expend the overhead once for every product/service they release. Any significantly unusual terms should be listed in a manner that draws attention to it so that potential customers will notice it.
Unfortunately, at the present time, we seem to live in a society that allows large companies (like the ones in the software industry) to create complex licenses like software EULAs that contain clauses hidden away in the middle requiring you to hand over you first born son or all your worldly possessions in exchange for using their newest Operating System. We need to push our government to enact consumer protection laws that stop this kind of abuse.
Most likely, the vast majority of things going into space will be cargo until at least a few of these elevators exist. Even if people do start using the elevators in large numbers, you simply refuse to let them fly there.
There is nothing stopping them from taking a plane to around 400 miles away from the thing (where-ever the closest land based airport happens to be) and catching a ship to the elevator. It's just a basic safety precaution. As has been mentioned by someone else here, most heavy cargo going up the elevator will have to be transported by ship anyway due to cost and simple size constraints.
Yes and no. I completely agree with your assessment of what some-one playing video games on a cramped flight should do to be polite. However, what I disagree with vehemently are the action suggested by the parent poster about what he intended to do should the person playing games refuse to be polite.
You and I may feel that there is a responsibility to be polite, but not everyone else agrees. In a free society they should have a right to disagree and continue living their lives as they see fit (as long as they don't commit any action that infringes on the legally given right of others). There is a major difference between the law and social obligations like the "responsibilities" you referred to. The problem with imposing social "responsibilities" upon others (whether it be by adding "morality" laws or through vigilantism as was advocated by the parent post) is that one has to wonder whose version of social "responsibilities" do you impose?
Social responsibilities, unlike the basic premises of the U.S. Bill of Rights, are inherently cultural or religious. There have been numerous examples of social "responsibilities" that were outright repugnant to basic freedom such as the "responsibility" black people had that said they were expected to follow what we used to call segregation (I don't know if you are American. If you aren't and you haven't heard of segregation you should be able to find out about it through Google). In that case, at least until the latter part of the last century, that social "responsibility" was enforced by law (especially in the southern U.S.). Even today, there are parts of the U.S. where a black person walking into a restaurant may be ignored by the wait staff until they leave or possibly receive even worse treatment...
That is why we run this country by rule of law and, in most cases where religious fundamentalism hasn't shanghaied our legal system, don't force people to follow social "responsibilities". The exception to this include (as I mentioned in my original post) when the owner of a public business, such as the airline that owns the plane, make their own rules for what is allowable behavior. They can do this because the person making the noise always has the choice of simply not doing business with them but they are the only ones that can make that choice. Also, as was mentioned earlier, they aren't legally allowed to base those rules on certain things like sex, race, or creed. Another example of where we impose social "responsibilities" is in the case of local noise ordinances or zoning laws that control how "ugly" you are allowed to let your property look. These are done, in most cases, because it has been proven that having multiple junked cars on your front lawn has a direct impact on the property value of your neighbors as does large amount of noise. While I, guardedly, agree with these types of laws even they have room for abuse.
Well, I never suggested that these were things that I actually do myself. What I did suggest is that no matter how annoying you might find someone else's actions, you have absolutely no right to take it upon yourself to physically correct their annoying (but otherwise completely legal) behavior.
While your stereotype of me as being part of the "newer generation" may have been relatively close to the truth (I'm in my mid-20s) I'll chalk that up to dumb luck considering that your accuracy ends there. As it happens, I do like to say please and thank-you at appropriate times. I also do what I can to be polite when the situation calls for it (such as in cramped spaces like in the example). However, these things are about me and I acknowledge that the only person whose behavior I can control is me. The moment I start to think that I can control what someone else is doing simply because it is annoying me I become the more wrong of the two. Just because someone else is being an a$$ doesn't justify me being one. It certainly doesn't justify illegal vigilantism.
This is a personal pet peeve I have whenever I hear someone (be they a random semi-irrational poster on Slashdot or a fundamentalist religious organization) claim that they have nominated themselves to impose their beliefs of what is annoying, immoral, or offensive upon other people. Regardless of whether you try to get the laws changed or whether you personally take it upon yourself to physically force something on others (which is outright illegal) I, personally, find it far more objectionable than any act, or group of acts, I have ever been offended by. I think it is a sign of emotional immaturity/issues that people are incapable of simply allowing others to live as they wish and ignoring thing that don't directly effect them.
Its hard to tell in the picture, but I would assume that the exoskeleton is attached to metal soles embedded into the soles of the sneakers the guy is wearing in the picture. Thus, the force of any weight would be transferred to that artificial foot instead of his foot. At least, this is how the exoskeleton legs designed at UC Berkley work. As for the hands, this was brought up by someone else here and I have to agree with that assessment. Without Some sort of mechanical hand/gauntlet he wont be picking up cars with his hands. On the other hand, pun intended, he can carry extremely heavy loads in his arms or on his back.
As was mentioned in this article, and past articles, the primary intention of this suit is for elderly individuals. As long as that person wasn't suffering from something like osteoporosis (which, unfortunately, excludes a decent number of elderly people) this suit will still let them overcome simple lack of muscular strength.
What I want to know is whether this suit will be useful for people suffering from degenerative neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease. My grandfather is suffering with Parkinson's which means that his brain is getting worse and worse at sending control messages to what muscles he has left. There is a long shot that this suit might be able to pick out the actual intended signal coming from the brain of the person wearing it and ignore the noise coming from the Parkinson's. That might allow my grandfather, and any other family members that end up inheriting the Parkinson's, to continue walking once the disease starts to really set in.
Not sure if you RTFA but they don't explain it quite as well in this one as they do in the last one slashdot posted about this suit. They mention that this suit measures the slight magnetic field generated on your skin when your brain tells your muscles to do something. In the previous article slashdot posted about this suit they mentioned that using this interface they can actually make the suit respond faster than your own muscles can respond to the message being sent by your brain. At that point they should have no problem making the suit feel non-existant as you wear it.
"I reserve the right to forcibly apply butter to your keypad"
he, I don't think you'll be reserving any right for yourself that aren't given to you by the laws of the country you're in at the time. A little thing called the rule of law stops people from enforcing their own arbitrary beliefs on other people. "Rude behavior" is a subjective thing. No one has elected you the rudeness police.
"something one should have learned in kindergarten, IMHO."
The law trumps your opinion. Thinking otherwise is how people justify all sorts of things like robbery and murder.
I hate to break it to you but, much to the chagrin of the Christian right, the rights to not be annoyed, bothered, or offended aren't included in the U.S. Bill of Rights. In fact, in the situation you just described the only person who would likely be breaking the law would be you when you laid a hand on the other person's laptop (potentially destroying, valuable, unsaved work running in the background while the game was playing). If you don't like being cramped in small seats with potentially loud passengers then the onus is on you to buy a first class ticket. What exactly were you planning on doing if the person next to you happened to have a crying child, grab it from the mother and smother it with a pillow till it stopped?
The only people that have any say as to whether someone should have to turn the sound off on a flight are the flight attendants based on airline policy. In which case, they are responsible for handling it. Actively trying to turn someone's laptop off while they're using it is not only likely to be illegal but is also probably a good way to start a fight.
One of the down sides of freedom of speech/expression is that we all have to get used to the fact that we are, inevitably, going to be offended by something someone else in society does in the process of expressing their rights. The cost of that freedom is that we have to get over ourselves and learn to live with each other. Unless the other person is doing something that directly causes you harm (not just an annoyance for a few hours on a public plane) then you really shouldn't be complaining. This is something that the Christian right can't seem to handle. Much like the passenger in the plane that overreacts to noisy fellow passengers, they constantly seek to change the world around them to match their religious beliefs by limiting the right of other people.
The planes used in the 9/11 attack were 4 planes flying in an airspace occupied by so many other commercial aircraft that the FAA has a hard time tracking them all. The number of flights flying around the Northeastern United States is insane. Also, there was no reason for the military to think those planes were necessarily going to be used as weapons so they probably didn't think there was a need to break the regulations that stop them from going too fast over populated areas.
This proposed space elevator is supposedly around 400 miles from any commercial air lanes. Long before a plane actually enters a no-fly zone it can be intercepted and questioned as to why it's even getting close to the elevator. Also, if an aircraft carrier were stationed close to the elevator they would:
a) have nothing better to do than watch for planes getting close b) they would always have it in the back of their minds that a plane could be used to attack the ribbon c) they would have no other distractions in the airspace for hundreds of miles
There is no reason to think that, under these circumstances, highly trained fighter pilots flying heavily armed modern fighter craft would be unable to shoot down any civilian aircraft that strayed too close and couldn't be convinced to peacefully leave. For that matter, there is no reason to think, now that we have seen them used as weapons, that the US Airforce couldn't do the same thing in the continental US should another situation like 9/11 occur again.
Even if most of the money is taken by the lawyers, the consumer still wins. As long as the settlement/award is of a sufficient size it provides a stimulus for that company, and any other company that reads the news, to conduct future business in an ethical manner then that class action suit has served its purpose. If that suit actual manages to make the situation right as well, such as with Palm replacing the bad units, then that's even better.
Corporations are, for the most part, money-making machines. They will continue to do what makes them money, even if it is illegal, until they feel that the odds of the government/class action lawsuits catching up with them are too great to risk the action. If people simply stopped suing companies when they
Ok, I'm not a nuclear physicist but from what I remember of my highschool and college science classes gamma radiation is the only type of nuclear emission that is strong enough to go through human skin. The batteries that are being developed right now are specifically using isotopes that only emit alpha and beta radiation and don't have gamma emitting isotopes anywhere along the line as they progress along their chain of radioactive decay. So, the only way these nuclear batteries could be harmful, even is cracked open, would be if you actually ingested some of the contents.
There are already lots of household chemicals that are outright deadly if ingested so I fail to see the problem. I can understand that we might end up with some of this stuff seeping from landfills but I still question whether it would be any worse than the stuff like automotive antifreeze and oil. Despite our best attempts to get car owners to dispose of them safely some of it inevitably ends up in landfills.
If I'm missing something, hopefully someone with a better understanding of physics/chemistry can correct me.
As someone who has actually programmed with both APIs (including multiple earlier versions of DirectX) I have to take exception to the blanket statement "or simply to use a better API". While this may have been true with previous versions of DirectX (especially pre-DirectX 7) it really isn't true anymore. Microsoft has learned, through painful trial and error, how to create an easy to use graphics API. At this point, which one is better has really become a matter of personal taste more than anything else. In fact, on most graphics programming forums asking which one is better or putting up threads that debate the issue is strictly forbidden because it doesn't serve a practical purpose anymore. The only thing it can lead to is a flame war.
As for cross-platform compatibility, the simple fact is that OpenGL has DirectX beaten in that regard. Things like WineX have helped to neutralizes this to an extent, but for the most part, OpenGL really does beat DirectX here. There is a corollary to this thought. For much of the purpose that DirectX was developed for in the first place, namely pro-level game development, cross-platform compatibility really doesn't matter. Like any business, what commercial game companies care about is making as much profit as possible from their product. As far as the game industry is concerned, Linux has been proven to be a non-existent market. To use your own example of Id software, very shortly after the game's release (and to this day in some places that still have it in stock) you could pick up a copy of the tin box "Linux" version of Quake III: Arena for almost nothing because very few people were interested in buying it (As a side note, supposedly you can pick up this copy and download the windows executables needed to run the game on a windows box. Though, it's been so long since the game came out that even the windows boxed version of the game might be that cheap now). In the end, so few people bought the Linux version of Q3:A that they didn't even make back the cost of producing it.
At some point in the future this might change and Linux might become a respectable game market but by that time any game made now or in the near future will have been off store shelves for a while so present day game company don't really care. A market that Linux can claim growing relevancy is in professional tools, but then this was never the stated purpose of DirectX and any pretenses that Microsoft might make to improving the use of DirectX in the world of pro-level development apps is just them taking advantage wherever they can (Something any good business would do). How realistic those pretenses are is debatable.
I thought present copyright was supposed to last for 95 years after the death of the author. There is a big difference between that and what is written in the post. Anyone care to clarify this?
As it was described to me in High School Social Studies class, the first world is the United states, Great Britain, Western Europe, Japan, and maybe a few others I'm forgetting. The second world was only more reacently defined and is used to describe such countries as China, India, Russia, and some of the former Soviet republics because they have advanced technology such as nuclear weapons but still have massive portions of their populations that are uneducated and/or living in poverty.
-GameMaster
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Whether he knew it is was a re-post is irrelevant. The fact is that it was a redundant post. Marking as being such means that, ideally, duplicate copies of the same info don't show up on my Slashdot thread. Having the text of the original article mirrored is useful, but having it mirrored multiple times in the same story thread just adds more useless clutter to be sifted through.
Actually, there are lots of famous Directors/Producers (Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, George Lucas, Jerry Bruckhiemer, Tim Burton, etc.). There are even a few famous screenwriters such as Carrie Fisher and Michael Crichton.
Famous actors/characters are the norm for both industries just as having a famous Director/Producer/Scriptwriter is, pretty much, as rare as having a famous Game Developer such as John Carmack, Sid Meyer, and Roberta Williams (Williams is a retro throwback to the old Sierra King's Quest games. She used to have her name on the game boxes just like the rest of them.)
I think the real difference is, simply, a matter of scale. Fewer people are as interested in video games as are in Movies. There just isn't as far to go on the "Fame Meter" when the fan-base isn't as big.
Slashdot Mirror
Whether you agree with the war or not, it's still natural to want to see the troops overseas get the best equipment we can give them. Unlike Vietnam, even the anti-war movement doesn't blame the individual troops and wish them dead (Honestly, I don't even know how prevalent that opinion was during Vietnam).
:-P
Besides, military technology has always been a popular topic of discussion. The U.S. military gets all the neat toys so tech guys want to see what is cutting edge and sometimes the stuff ends up filtering down into the private sector (GPS, HUMVEE, etc.).
The mood in the U.S., as far as I've seen, is no more violent than it has ever been (for better or for worse). The country is pretty evenly split in opinion on whether the war is right. Although, many people that don't think it's a good war still think we should finish the job right rather than walk away and leave Iraq a chaotic mess.
Anyway, two data points do not make a trend.
-GameMaster
While I grew up in a household that lived off of bottled water until my parents got around to buying an inline filter (we had a well with some minor bacterial problems, drinkable but certainly not Evian), there are plenty of people that don't have the money to waste on bottled water or fancy filters (such as myself now that I'm on my own). They live off of city tap water their entire lives. As you alluded to in your post, there are acceptable limits for contaminants defined by the U.S. government. It wouldn't be piped into peoples' houses if it wasn't within those limits.
In your case, if the Uranium levels were already below the limit (no matter how slim the margin may be) then diluting it should put it at pretty reasonable levels. What actually comes out of your faucet is what is considered "tap water", not the uranium content of the water before it's processed with the runoff water.
As for the article, they are discussing water purification for wartime. It would be highly unreasonable to expect any soldier to be on active duty for more that a few years at most (if your involved in a war more serious than that then you've got bigger problems than whether or not your drinking natural spring water on a regular basis). I think people can handle drinking U.S. city tap water for a few years if they have to.
-GameMaster
From the article:
"From there, the decidedly unappetizing-looking water moves to a series of six "treatment beds," which consist of proprietary carbon filters developed by LexCarb. The first four filters strain out black gunk so that the water becomes amber. The final two filters remove remaining impurities, resulting in water that is as clean, or cleaner, than the tap water of many U.S. cities."
Supposedly, the water is "cleaner than tap water in many U.S. cities" before they add the chlorine solution. The brown color you are talking about seems to exist only mid-way through the series of filters.
As for why they don't use a UV filter. The article later explains that the chlorine is meant to stop bacteria from developing in the water well after the purification process is over. I can understand how UV/RO membrane would kill/catch any bacteria present but I don't think it would stop re-contamination later (honestly, I'm not exactly familiar with how RO membranes work but I'm assuming its a filter that doesn't stick around in the water afterwards).
-GameMaster
Take the conditions in the U.S. during the great depression (which was going on at the time); imaging them a factor of ten times worse; and you'll get what, to the best of my knowledge, was the living conditions in post-World War I Germany. The allies plundered what was left of Germany for reperations at the end of the war, thus making the global depression that followed all the worse for the German people. This is often sighted as one of the primary factors that allowed an extremist dictator like Hitler to take power. The people there were so desperate that they'd follow anyone who stood up and looked like they could improve their conditions.
-GameMaster
"Banks did try getting ATMs to reduce the amount of manpower needed to run the bank, but as it turns out, the number of bank tellers has not decreased, and ATMs are very expensive to maintain. Bankers basically bought them just to save themselves money, but thankfully that backfired."
Where I am (Chicago, IL, USA) they are still doing that. The biggest local bank, BankOne, has very few "full featured" bank branches. The vast majority of their locations are inside Domick's supermarkets (the dominant supermarket chain around here) or in Walgreens drug stores. They consist of ~3 ATM machines and an office or two. All deposits, withdrawals, and balance inquiries are handles by the ATM. The only thing the employees in the offices are there to handle is creating new accounts and loans. This approach seems to be working out fine for them.
We have gotten to a point where technology is cheap enough that they should be able to make reasonably reliable ATMs that are cheaper to maintain than a counter with two or three bank employees behind it. The tellers behind those counters probably aren't qualified to handle loans/new accounts anyway so there isn't any overlap in labor between the people sitting in the office and the ATMs. On top of that, the ATMs are available as long as the store is open (sometimes 24/7) as compared to the typical "bankers hours".
As for the supermarket/home depot automatic registers, I love them. I find that (as long as they are properly maintained/calibrated) they are vastly faster than the register people. In my experience as a consumer as well as having worked in retail, most register people are slow as dirt. I can completely understand that after working 8+ hours for low pay while putting up with demeaning treatment from miserable customers many people working those jobs tend to burn out. Its almost impossible to keep up a fast pace for years under those conditions.
The other thing I have noticed is that store managers have an almost universal tendency to under-staff their registers. I honestly don't know why they bother having 10+ registers at a supermarket if they never staff them. Most of these stores probably don't even have enough register people on the payroll to staff all the registers they have at the same time. Much like the ATMs, self-checkout registers are open the entire time the store is open. All they need is one person to watch over ~4 of the registers to help people and make sure no-one walks away with stuff. This means they can double the number of registers available while cutting manpower in half. Consequently, this means much shorter lines. Maybe when more people get comfortable using them they won't be as open as they are now but then they should be able to simply convert more of they registers over at that point.
As an addendum, I think this is a sign that automation is beginning to make all low-end service jobs/manual labor disappear. I am still waiting for a completely automated McDonald's where the whole store is one giant vending machine. One or two people would be on hand to feed raw materials into the machine/kitchen (such as frozen patties, buns, frozen fries, etc.), fix any jam-ups that occurred, and clean up the equipment at the end of the night. A system of conveyor belts would move the food from place to place where it would be cooked and combined into things like sandwiches (after all, how hard can it be to create a machine that puts together sloppy sandwiches like the ones your get from modern fast food employees). The employees/maintenance people would never have to have direct contact with the customer because self-checkout registers would allow the customers to pay for it themselves and conveyor belts would bring the food right to them. It's kind of scary when you think about it because a massive number of people in the US are employed in the retail and fast food industries (Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the US and possibly the world). What will all those people do when technology automates almost all the jobs they are qualified for?
-GameMaster
Supposedly, this is a practice that Wired has been partaking in for a number of years. There is no way to know how the order form was worded a few years ago when this particular individual signed up (he may, very well, not have even used the web page). Also, it is completely possible that this statement you've quoted has been added to the web site in response to the controversy described in the article. The fact that they resorted to sleazy collections agencies suggests that their initial intentions were less than honorable.
-GameMaster
They also have the choice of either not signing something if they can't be bothered to look at what they're agreeing to, or signing it and accepting the consequences.
Yes, we could all decide to not sign up for anything. Quite frankly, there are probably a great deal of things we, as individuals, could do without. However, there is also a large list of things we need in today's society in order to not be socially handicapped. Some of these things are cars, cell phones, major software tools for business, and utilities. All of these, and many others that are specific to a person's career or lifestyle, have extreme amounts of "fine print". I don't think we should have to be bothered reading hundreds of examples of "fine print" for every different product/service I buy. I feel that it represents an unrealistic expectation on the part of the business world.
Companies exist for the betterment of individuals. If something the business world is doing is predominantly harmful to people as a whole then we are perfectly within our rights to use the government in order to stop them from doing it. The fact that people have done so in the past is the only reason we don't see major companies allowing employees that accidentally fall into the meat grinders to be sold as sausage in order to save themselves the trouble of destroying the batch of meat (Sinclair's The Jungle) or hiring private police/military forces to quash worker strikes with physical force (Such as when Rockafeller hired Pinkertons to deal with striking workers at one of his factories). If only rare companies used "fine print" then I would whole-heartedly support a simple boycott. Unfortunately, "fine print" is pervasive in the business world. When you have a situation where an individual can't participate in numerous industries that are necessary for him/her to be successful in society without falling prey to piles of "fine print" then, I feel, you are justified in enacting consumer protection laws.
Fuck them if they're too lazy or stupid to figure it out.
While I don't agree with you on it, lazy is one thing. However, stupid is another matter. There is a reason why children aren't allowed to sign legally binding contracts in most countries around the world. This is because we don't allow people who are significantly more intelligent/mentally developed (such as a company with a team of lawyers) to take advantage of someone simply because they can word their "deal" in a sufficiently complex manner that the other person doesn't understand it. I like to think that I have pretty decent reading comprehension skills but IANAL and it would be easy for me to misunderstand some of the clauses in most "fine print". Others, who don't even have the same level of reading comprehension skills I do, would be totally lost even if they did try to read all the "fine print" they were exposed to. We, as a society, (at least in the U.S.) realized the evils of "Social Darwinism" around the turn of the century. To sit there and say "if you're too stupid to understand how the vast majority of companies do business then screw you" is evil, especially when the vast majority of people in society would, most likely, not be able to correctly figure out the implications behind much of the "fine print" they are presented with.
-GameMaster
We need to stop buying from 'fine print' vendors.
The problem is that there are whole industries, such as cell phones, in which you can't participate without having to deal with obnoxious fine print. Many people have jobs, social obligations, etc. that make it extremely unrealistic to expect them to opt-out of the entire cell phone industry in order to teach the service providers a lesson.
-GameMaster
I've seen a few people here claim something to the extent of "it's his own fault, he should have read the fine print" and personally I have to say that's garbage. We live in a society that is absolutely inundated with "fine print". You almost can't avoid it no matter where you go. Much of it is confusing and hard to understand. To make matter worse, a good portion is repetitive info reworded slightly from "fine print" to "fine print" thus worsening the signal to noise ratio drastically.
Since the vast majority of people aren't lawyers (and probably lack the reading comprehension skills needed to read at that level); we can't expect people to thoroughly read through every single EULA, magazine subscription "fine print", etc. in order to know if any of the many convoluted, "lawyer speak", terms will screw you over in the end. This leaves average people to do exactly what most people do right now which is to "gloss over" "fine print" and hope for the best. In this particular case, Wired magazine took what would otherwise be generic "fine print" and slipped in a term radically different from what is the generally accepted method for handling magazine subscriptions. I feel that this should be looked upon as, at least, unethical and should, quite possibly, be considered fraudulent behavior.
What it boils down to is that we need to decide what kind of society we want to live in. Do we want to live in a society where the only way you can avoid being fleeced by big business is to be a lawyer who devotes a large portion of his/her free time to religiously reading the "fine print" to every single product or service he/she buys or signs up for no matter how small or trivial that product or service happens to be? The burden here should fall on the businesses providing the product/service in question.
Individuals have, for the most part, very limited resources (time, money, intellect, etc.) with which to comprehend threats posed by "fine print". If the burden were on the individual then that person would have to expend that effort for every example of "fine print" he/she is exposed to. In comparison, businesses usually have more resources with which to develop "fine print" that doesn't include clauses that aren't generally known and accepted by the community the product/service is being sold in. They only have to expend the overhead once for every product/service they release. Any significantly unusual terms should be listed in a manner that draws attention to it so that potential customers will notice it.
Unfortunately, at the present time, we seem to live in a society that allows large companies (like the ones in the software industry) to create complex licenses like software EULAs that contain clauses hidden away in the middle requiring you to hand over you first born son or all your worldly possessions in exchange for using their newest Operating System. We need to push our government to enact consumer protection laws that stop this kind of abuse.
-GameMater
I believe that the correct term is "Representative Democracy"
-GameMaster
Most likely, the vast majority of things going into space will be cargo until at least a few of these elevators exist. Even if people do start using the elevators in large numbers, you simply refuse to let them fly there.
There is nothing stopping them from taking a plane to around 400 miles away from the thing (where-ever the closest land based airport happens to be) and catching a ship to the elevator. It's just a basic safety precaution. As has been mentioned by someone else here, most heavy cargo going up the elevator will have to be transported by ship anyway due to cost and simple size constraints.
-GameMaster
Yes and no. I completely agree with your assessment of what some-one playing video games on a cramped flight should do to be polite. However, what I disagree with vehemently are the action suggested by the parent poster about what he intended to do should the person playing games refuse to be polite.
You and I may feel that there is a responsibility to be polite, but not everyone else agrees. In a free society they should have a right to disagree and continue living their lives as they see fit (as long as they don't commit any action that infringes on the legally given right of others). There is a major difference between the law and social obligations like the "responsibilities" you referred to. The problem with imposing social "responsibilities" upon others (whether it be by adding "morality" laws or through vigilantism as was advocated by the parent post) is that one has to wonder whose version of social "responsibilities" do you impose?
Social responsibilities, unlike the basic premises of the U.S. Bill of Rights, are inherently cultural or religious. There have been numerous examples of social "responsibilities" that were outright repugnant to basic freedom such as the "responsibility" black people had that said they were expected to follow what we used to call segregation (I don't know if you are American. If you aren't and you haven't heard of segregation you should be able to find out about it through Google). In that case, at least until the latter part of the last century, that social "responsibility" was enforced by law (especially in the southern U.S.). Even today, there are parts of the U.S. where a black person walking into a restaurant may be ignored by the wait staff until they leave or possibly receive even worse treatment...
That is why we run this country by rule of law and, in most cases where religious fundamentalism hasn't shanghaied our legal system, don't force people to follow social "responsibilities". The exception to this include (as I mentioned in my original post) when the owner of a public business, such as the airline that owns the plane, make their own rules for what is allowable behavior. They can do this because the person making the noise always has the choice of simply not doing business with them but they are the only ones that can make that choice. Also, as was mentioned earlier, they aren't legally allowed to base those rules on certain things like sex, race, or creed. Another example of where we impose social "responsibilities" is in the case of local noise ordinances or zoning laws that control how "ugly" you are allowed to let your property look. These are done, in most cases, because it has been proven that having multiple junked cars on your front lawn has a direct impact on the property value of your neighbors as does large amount of noise. While I, guardedly, agree with these types of laws even they have room for abuse.
-GameMaster
Well, I never suggested that these were things that I actually do myself. What I did suggest is that no matter how annoying you might find someone else's actions, you have absolutely no right to take it upon yourself to physically correct their annoying (but otherwise completely legal) behavior.
While your stereotype of me as being part of the "newer generation" may have been relatively close to the truth (I'm in my mid-20s) I'll chalk that up to dumb luck considering that your accuracy ends there. As it happens, I do like to say please and thank-you at appropriate times. I also do what I can to be polite when the situation calls for it (such as in cramped spaces like in the example). However, these things are about me and I acknowledge that the only person whose behavior I can control is me. The moment I start to think that I can control what someone else is doing simply because it is annoying me I become the more wrong of the two. Just because someone else is being an a$$ doesn't justify me being one. It certainly doesn't justify illegal vigilantism.
This is a personal pet peeve I have whenever I hear someone (be they a random semi-irrational poster on Slashdot or a fundamentalist religious organization) claim that they have nominated themselves to impose their beliefs of what is annoying, immoral, or offensive upon other people. Regardless of whether you try to get the laws changed or whether you personally take it upon yourself to physically force something on others (which is outright illegal) I, personally, find it far more objectionable than any act, or group of acts, I have ever been offended by. I think it is a sign of emotional immaturity/issues that people are incapable of simply allowing others to live as they wish and ignoring thing that don't directly effect them.
-GameMaster
Its hard to tell in the picture, but I would assume that the exoskeleton is attached to metal soles embedded into the soles of the sneakers the guy is wearing in the picture. Thus, the force of any weight would be transferred to that artificial foot instead of his foot. At least, this is how the exoskeleton legs designed at UC Berkley work. As for the hands, this was brought up by someone else here and I have to agree with that assessment. Without Some sort of mechanical hand/gauntlet he wont be picking up cars with his hands. On the other hand, pun intended, he can carry extremely heavy loads in his arms or on his back.
As was mentioned in this article, and past articles, the primary intention of this suit is for elderly individuals. As long as that person wasn't suffering from something like osteoporosis (which, unfortunately, excludes a decent number of elderly people) this suit will still let them overcome simple lack of muscular strength.
What I want to know is whether this suit will be useful for people suffering from degenerative neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease. My grandfather is suffering with Parkinson's which means that his brain is getting worse and worse at sending control messages to what muscles he has left. There is a long shot that this suit might be able to pick out the actual intended signal coming from the brain of the person wearing it and ignore the noise coming from the Parkinson's. That might allow my grandfather, and any other family members that end up inheriting the Parkinson's, to continue walking once the disease starts to really set in.
-GameMaster
Not sure if you RTFA but they don't explain it quite as well in this one as they do in the last one slashdot posted about this suit. They mention that this suit measures the slight magnetic field generated on your skin when your brain tells your muscles to do something. In the previous article slashdot posted about this suit they mentioned that using this interface they can actually make the suit respond faster than your own muscles can respond to the message being sent by your brain. At that point they should have no problem making the suit feel non-existant as you wear it.
-GameMaster
"I reserve the right to forcibly apply butter to your keypad"
he, I don't think you'll be reserving any right for yourself that aren't given to you by the laws of the country you're in at the time. A little thing called the rule of law stops people from enforcing their own arbitrary beliefs on other people. "Rude behavior" is a subjective thing. No one has elected you the rudeness police.
"something one should have learned in kindergarten, IMHO."
The law trumps your opinion. Thinking otherwise is how people justify all sorts of things like robbery and murder.
-GameMaster
I hate to break it to you but, much to the chagrin of the Christian right, the rights to not be annoyed, bothered, or offended aren't included in the U.S. Bill of Rights. In fact, in the situation you just described the only person who would likely be breaking the law would be you when you laid a hand on the other person's laptop (potentially destroying, valuable, unsaved work running in the background while the game was playing). If you don't like being cramped in small seats with potentially loud passengers then the onus is on you to buy a first class ticket. What exactly were you planning on doing if the person next to you happened to have a crying child, grab it from the mother and smother it with a pillow till it stopped?
The only people that have any say as to whether someone should have to turn the sound off on a flight are the flight attendants based on airline policy. In which case, they are responsible for handling it. Actively trying to turn someone's laptop off while they're using it is not only likely to be illegal but is also probably a good way to start a fight.
One of the down sides of freedom of speech/expression is that we all have to get used to the fact that we are, inevitably, going to be offended by something someone else in society does in the process of expressing their rights. The cost of that freedom is that we have to get over ourselves and learn to live with each other. Unless the other person is doing something that directly causes you harm (not just an annoyance for a few hours on a public plane) then you really shouldn't be complaining. This is something that the Christian right can't seem to handle. Much like the passenger in the plane that overreacts to noisy fellow passengers, they constantly seek to change the world around them to match their religious beliefs by limiting the right of other people.
-GameMaster
The planes used in the 9/11 attack were 4 planes flying in an airspace occupied by so many other commercial aircraft that the FAA has a hard time tracking them all. The number of flights flying around the Northeastern United States is insane. Also, there was no reason for the military to think those planes were necessarily going to be used as weapons so they probably didn't think there was a need to break the regulations that stop them from going too fast over populated areas.
This proposed space elevator is supposedly around 400 miles from any commercial air lanes. Long before a plane actually enters a no-fly zone it can be intercepted and questioned as to why it's even getting close to the elevator. Also, if an aircraft carrier were stationed close to the elevator they would:
a) have nothing better to do than watch for planes getting close
b) they would always have it in the back of their minds that a plane could be used to attack the ribbon
c) they would have no other distractions in the airspace for hundreds of miles
There is no reason to think that, under these circumstances, highly trained fighter pilots flying heavily armed modern fighter craft would be unable to shoot down any civilian aircraft that strayed too close and couldn't be convinced to peacefully leave. For that matter, there is no reason to think, now that we have seen them used as weapons, that the US Airforce couldn't do the same thing in the continental US should another situation like 9/11 occur again.
-GameMaster
Even if most of the money is taken by the lawyers, the consumer still wins. As long as the settlement/award is of a sufficient size it provides a stimulus for that company, and any other company that reads the news, to conduct future business in an ethical manner then that class action suit has served its purpose. If that suit actual manages to make the situation right as well, such as with Palm replacing the bad units, then that's even better.
Corporations are, for the most part, money-making machines. They will continue to do what makes them money, even if it is illegal, until they feel that the odds of the government/class action lawsuits catching up with them are too great to risk the action. If people simply stopped suing companies when they
-GameMaster
Ok, I'm not a nuclear physicist but from what I remember of my highschool and college science classes gamma radiation is the only type of nuclear emission that is strong enough to go through human skin. The batteries that are being developed right now are specifically using isotopes that only emit alpha and beta radiation and don't have gamma emitting isotopes anywhere along the line as they progress along their chain of radioactive decay. So, the only way these nuclear batteries could be harmful, even is cracked open, would be if you actually ingested some of the contents.
There are already lots of household chemicals that are outright deadly if ingested so I fail to see the problem. I can understand that we might end up with some of this stuff seeping from landfills but I still question whether it would be any worse than the stuff like automotive antifreeze and oil. Despite our best attempts to get car owners to dispose of them safely some of it inevitably ends up in landfills.
If I'm missing something, hopefully someone with a better understanding of physics/chemistry can correct me.
-Gamemaster
As someone who has actually programmed with both APIs (including multiple earlier versions of DirectX) I have to take exception to the blanket statement "or simply to use a better API". While this may have been true with previous versions of DirectX (especially pre-DirectX 7) it really isn't true anymore. Microsoft has learned, through painful trial and error, how to create an easy to use graphics API. At this point, which one is better has really become a matter of personal taste more than anything else. In fact, on most graphics programming forums asking which one is better or putting up threads that debate the issue is strictly forbidden because it doesn't serve a practical purpose anymore. The only thing it can lead to is a flame war.
As for cross-platform compatibility, the simple fact is that OpenGL has DirectX beaten in that regard. Things like WineX have helped to neutralizes this to an extent, but for the most part, OpenGL really does beat DirectX here. There is a corollary to this thought. For much of the purpose that DirectX was developed for in the first place, namely pro-level game development, cross-platform compatibility really doesn't matter. Like any business, what commercial game companies care about is making as much profit as possible from their product. As far as the game industry is concerned, Linux has been proven to be a non-existent market. To use your own example of Id software, very shortly after the game's release (and to this day in some places that still have it in stock) you could pick up a copy of the tin box "Linux" version of Quake III: Arena for almost nothing because very few people were interested in buying it (As a side note, supposedly you can pick up this copy and download the windows executables needed to run the game on a windows box. Though, it's been so long since the game came out that even the windows boxed version of the game might be that cheap now). In the end, so few people bought the Linux version of Q3:A that they didn't even make back the cost of producing it.
At some point in the future this might change and Linux might become a respectable game market but by that time any game made now or in the near future will have been off store shelves for a while so present day game company don't really care. A market that Linux can claim growing relevancy is in professional tools, but then this was never the stated purpose of DirectX and any pretenses that Microsoft might make to improving the use of DirectX in the world of pro-level development apps is just them taking advantage wherever they can (Something any good business would do). How realistic those pretenses are is debatable.
-GameMaster
I thought present copyright was supposed to last for 95 years after the death of the author. There is a big difference between that and what is written in the post. Anyone care to clarify this?
-GameMaster
As it was described to me in High School Social Studies class, the first world is the United states, Great Britain, Western Europe, Japan, and maybe a few others I'm forgetting. The second world was only more reacently defined and is used to describe such countries as China, India, Russia, and some of the former Soviet republics because they have advanced technology such as nuclear weapons but still have massive portions of their populations that are uneducated and/or living in poverty.
-GameMaster
Whether he knew it is was a re-post is irrelevant. The fact is that it was a redundant post. Marking as being such means that, ideally, duplicate copies of the same info don't show up on my Slashdot thread. Having the text of the original article mirrored is useful, but having it mirrored multiple times in the same story thread just adds more useless clutter to be sifted through.
-GameMaster
Actually, there are lots of famous Directors/Producers (Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron, George Lucas, Jerry Bruckhiemer, Tim Burton, etc.). There are even a few famous screenwriters such as Carrie Fisher and Michael Crichton.
Famous actors/characters are the norm for both industries just as having a famous Director/Producer/Scriptwriter is, pretty much, as rare as having a famous Game Developer such as John Carmack, Sid Meyer, and Roberta Williams (Williams is a retro throwback to the old Sierra King's Quest games. She used to have her name on the game boxes just like the rest of them.)
I think the real difference is, simply, a matter of scale. Fewer people are as interested in video games as are in Movies. There just isn't as far to go on the "Fame Meter" when the fan-base isn't as big.
-GameMaster