"...it could also greatly reduce light pollution.", replace one source of light (streetlight) with a different source of comparable light (glowing trees) and you have the same levels of light pollution you moron.
It's like replacing carbon monoxide from a car with carbon monoxide from a furnace, you still have the same problem.
Now I kind of like the idea of glowing trees for streetlights, but stop claiming it's a solution for something it's not. In fact, I suspect it's even worse on the light pollution issues. First, you'll end up with about the same amount of light, any less and it would be pretty, but pointless. Second, you can't turn off the trees. Did you know that astronomers try to get cities all over the world to turn of the outside lights on the same night every year? Third, the streetlights direct the majority of their light downward, but I heavily suspect the trees will blast lumens in every direction.
And a few questions about this. What color can they do this with? White light is preferred for functionality. How much does it cost? How long does it last? What happens during fall or any other time the trees shed their leaves? Will it work for evergreens? And if so, same questions apply to needles as apply to leaves.
Actually I didn't think of Elven when I heard about this a month ago, I actually thought about Jurai from Tenchi Muyo.
(ianal) And don't foreget that if you don't actively protect a trademark you lose it. Taking into the account that "It's on like Donkey Kong!" has been around and very public for over a decade, and and they are just now getting around to thinking about trademarking a phrase that wasn't even used by them, looks like they already lost before they even applied...
I'm betting they want to start a marketing push using the phrase, and realized they don't own it, so they are trying to find some stupid people at the trademark office to effectively retroactively award something they already lost.
There have been several companions that aren't even vaguely sexy (unless you've got strange tastes), and until the new series, the Doctor hadn't even kissed anyone. Probably the sexiest companion was Leela of the Sevateem. You could describe her as a very bright but primitive jungle jane in animal skin outfit with miniskirt. (Ok, not a really good description of her costume, but it's close enough.) It didn't even have bared midriff. By today's standards, it's rather freaking tame.
Sex was something the old series tried to avoid for the most part. As to most of the companions being attractive, name one tv show that has the majority of main characters that are ugly. Kind of hard, isn't it. TV tends to have attractive people because they have better ratings, even if they don't go for any sex games.
If you actually want some info on the companions, especially to find those you don't think are 'hot', then start with the list at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_companions
(The old series had 9 companions that were male, and 3 that were robotic, the new series has had 5 male companions, and I don't think anybody has ever gotten excited by the Brigadier in the old series, or Wilfred in the new series.)
DS9 was based on an earlier script for Babylon 5. You can google the lawsuits but let's put it this way, Paramount lost the lawsuit so badly they had it sealed and were forced to show B5 trailers at Star Trek conventions. If you have any idea how anti anything not paramount those guys are, you know they got pounded flat by the judge.
(The version of B5 they had their hands on even had a shapeshifting security officer... )
It's more like you go and make exact duplicates of a half dozen cars and give them to people. Remember, the local car dealer still has all the originals, they didn't lose any of their stock or supply at all. Whether or not RIAA likes it or hates it, copyright infringement by copying music files is neither legally nor morally theft.
IANAL, which is pretty obvious as I'm posting on slashdot.
They have official maps that both countries agree on, yet the military moron uses an unauthorized map to run his little maneuver. Something that has been standard for centuries is that countries know they have to make border agreements using same freaking maps because all the many different versions out there have conflicting info. This really isn't a new protocol the military idiot ignored, and yes, it is something the military is in on, not just the head honchos in the capital.
Ok, so now the bozos from another country camp in your territory and replace your flag, that really pisses off countries, but what did they do? They cleaned up one of your rivers and left the trash in a pile, still in your territory. What, should they have taken the trash back to their country? Naw, you'd probably blame them for stealing your trash if they did that.
All in all, it's something that will surely infuriate the politicians and military, but other than that, it's a total meeting of the morons...
Re:Good way to get your laptop attacked
on
USB 'Dead Drops'
·
· Score: 1
Don't know about you guys, but I've disabled autorun, turned on show extensions and show hidden files. Also, I don't run files I don't code from questionable sources. Sure, it's not perfect, but it'll avoid a large quantity of stupid stuff.
As to the usb dead drop idea, I think it's interesting. Useless and futile, but still interesting.
I agree that the child should have been punished, a nice long time out or a spanking being the obvious choices, but suing, that's just insane and inane. My experience with 4 year olds is that they tend to be incapable of comprehending that something like that could cause serious injury or death. It's a horrible and sad situation that happened, why compound the tragedy by abusing a small child with the legal system. IMO that judge is complete scum.
Yes I was, why else would I chose a location and time I've verified, anything else would be as dumb as asking someone to call you and giving them a random phone number. Either you weren't there, or you are a time traveler which was late, which is of course absurd, so you weren't there. If you're going to make a smart@ss comment, try to remember the smart part.:)
People get freaked out be imagining or misidentifying things in old images all the time. Remember people freaking out over a sweater in an old picture? Yeah, sweaters have been around for a long time. Somebody holding their hand up near their hat and their fingers crooked and moving, no biggie either. I didn't see any shot clear enough to make out something in the hand, just a shadow under the hat. Now if you want to analyze that, why would a time traveler blatantly use advanced tech while knowingly being recorded? Why would someone holding a phone/radio/other audio based gadget be wiggling the fingers like that? As this was a film, they are filming people they know and have instructed to do those things in front of the camera, why would someone who doesn't fit in be allowed to wander through a closed set in front of the camera during filming while apparently talking to themselves while holding something near their head when film was very expensive, and the film cameras of the time could only record for a few minutes at a time?
There's no freaking way that was a time traveler, or a cell phone, or a walkie talkie, or anything else that is chronologically displaced, other than some peoples imagination.
If there are any time travelers reading this, please come and tell me how wrong I am. Let's meet up at the Carl's Junior in the food court of the Gateway mall at 3:30pm last monday. Don't be late, I was there. PS: bring strawberries.
I can just see him standing there with an innocent look on his face, pinkie held to the corner of his mouth while saying, "Oops, did I goof? Or did I?". Rule of thumb: If it CAN be abused (especially by politicians where money or power are involved) it WILL be abused.
An incorrect quote. "The (laws) are meant to be (followed), not to be (questioned). And while I'm a (citizen) I'm very happy about these things. Something that doesn't require to be (thought about) and that doesn't need to be (discussed) and where even someone is actively taking away any temptation for me to waste my time on it is a nice change now and then."
Products aren't meant to hacked. That's a voluntary process done by those with the skill and inclination when they feel the need, either from a defect in the original product, a lack of functionality in the original product, or a sense of curiosity and invention. You don't have to hack anything, you don't have to think either, but some people do, and many people feel that someone attempting to prevent them from doing non-dangerous and perfectly legal things with the products they bought is wrong. If you want to read something about the legal basis many people refer to, please look up "Doctrine of First Sale".
IMO, if you aren't hurting anyone, it's none of their business what you do with your property. So if you don't want to alter your stuff, that's fine, all you need to do is to do nothing, but to say that others shouldn't because you don't feel like it is rather deplorable on your part.
If you're using a computer, spoofing a mac address is unbelievably easy, there is software to do that. I've seen software that will spoof to a specific mac, a randomized mac, and even multiple macs which makes your box look like multiple devices on the network. It may take a little looking to find the right software, but it's out there, and though there are ones that are not for noobs, enough of them have very easy to use interfaces.
I remember lots of games that would take at least 40 hours of play to complete even if you used every mega god unlimited cheat there was. Now we get games that can be completed in 30 hours including all side missions. Often they have a hard mode that almost nobody on the planet can complete without cheats. It's not so much they are getting easier, it's that they are getting shorter.
I don't like the online to play garbage either, there are lots of time I want to play a game crafted around my game character, and not have to worry about some online douchebag out to wreck my day. I've also noted that if a games features gives a prominent mention of PVP, it usually means they have very little actual game content, they expect you to run around ganking other players and be so dumb that you mistake that for content. (There are a lot of essentially empty games out there.)
Not exactly worthless, at least you will know when they are snooping on your files because they'll hit you up for the key.
You want the key for my encrypted emails from a year ago? Sorry, I change keys every two weeks and don't record the expired ones, and since it's 256 bit encryption, there's no bloody way I'm going to remember that sucker a year later.
The first one that comes to mind kickbacks, someones getting paid for his support... The second is even more corrupted, a desire to be able to abuse the system and get away with it. The third is simply bureaucratic inertia. Open Source probably doesn't fit too well with standard procurement procedures.
Maybe there's something else, but those are the only reasons that I can think of right now.
Not to mention that RAM part of the argument is insane and horribly scary. Copying software into ram is REQUIRED for it to run on a computer in any form. Preventing software from doing that would be like selling power tools but declaring that they can't be held or in any other way manipulated by the user.
I still haven't seen any mentions of wifi allergies that actually passed a double blind test (heck, even a single blind test), but I have seen large numbers of reports in scientific and medical publications where they failed the tests. So I'm really amazed at the horrible symptoms people can generate to plague themselves when they think something else is to blame.
It seems like these days almost all slashdot posts are flippant comments, or something even less relevant. Don't you miss the days when slashdot posts were by people with I.Q.s that were larger than their shoe sizes?
Nukes have to be detonated in a precise fashion or they don't reach critical, no mushroom cloud, just a normal explosion with radioactive debris, aka dirty explosion. Hollywood likes to show terrorist making nukes and using normal blasting caps to set it off, trouble is, normal blasting caps have way too much variability in their timing. Of course, Hollywood likes to set off nukes by having them engulfed in fires or shot by pistols. Again, these are situations that may destroy the nuke, but won't cause a nuclear detonation, and in fact, may not cause any detonation at all, even a conventional one. I don't know which explosive is usually used in most nukes, but I do know there are various explosives that are not detonated by fire, C4 being one of those. (We often demil'ed C4 for sticking blobs of it to the berm wall and lighting them. It's amazing what you can do with a burning silly putty like substance.)
No, I'm someone who designs or builds nukes, but I have had military training in special weapons and have read a lot of the scientific articles about them at that time out of curiosity about what I was working on. Yes, they are devastating weapons and very dangerous tools, but like so many things that Hollywood has sensationalized, the public perception of how they work and what their dangers are tend to be completely fictional. Just one more note on this, you can't detect a nuke with a Geiger counter unless the shielding over it's core has been compromised, or the device has been detonated. (Of course, if it's been detonated, you can't bloody miss it.)
Have fun with your fiction, but remember that in reality no revolver on the planet shoots 22 shots without reloading outside of the movies.
Even the patent examiners are confused by the obfuscated and generalized language in most patents. A kid, with the help of his patent lawyer father, patented how to swing sideways on a regular swingset about a decade ago.
If something gets translated to normal speech/explanation, and it gets sufficient media coverage, even the patent office may finally revoke the bogus patents, but it may take a bundle of moneys and a pack of pet lawyers. Good luck.
Slashdot Mirror
"...it could also greatly reduce light pollution.", replace one source of light (streetlight) with a different source of comparable light (glowing trees) and you have the same levels of light pollution you moron.
It's like replacing carbon monoxide from a car with carbon monoxide from a furnace, you still have the same problem.
Now I kind of like the idea of glowing trees for streetlights, but stop claiming it's a solution for something it's not. In fact, I suspect it's even worse on the light pollution issues.
First, you'll end up with about the same amount of light, any less and it would be pretty, but pointless.
Second, you can't turn off the trees. Did you know that astronomers try to get cities all over the world to turn of the outside lights on the same night every year?
Third, the streetlights direct the majority of their light downward, but I heavily suspect the trees will blast lumens in every direction.
And a few questions about this. What color can they do this with? White light is preferred for functionality. How much does it cost? How long does it last? What happens during fall or any other time the trees shed their leaves? Will it work for evergreens? And if so, same questions apply to needles as apply to leaves.
Actually I didn't think of Elven when I heard about this a month ago, I actually thought about Jurai from Tenchi Muyo.
(ianal) And don't foreget that if you don't actively protect a trademark you lose it. Taking into the account that "It's on like Donkey Kong!" has been around and very public for over a decade, and and they are just now getting around to thinking about trademarking a phrase that wasn't even used by them, looks like they already lost before they even applied...
I'm betting they want to start a marketing push using the phrase, and realized they don't own it, so they are trying to find some stupid people at the trademark office to effectively retroactively award something they already lost.
There have been several companions that aren't even vaguely sexy (unless you've got strange tastes), and until the new series, the Doctor hadn't even kissed anyone. Probably the sexiest companion was Leela of the Sevateem. You could describe her as a very bright but primitive jungle jane in animal skin outfit with miniskirt. (Ok, not a really good description of her costume, but it's close enough.) It didn't even have bared midriff. By today's standards, it's rather freaking tame.
Sex was something the old series tried to avoid for the most part. As to most of the companions being attractive, name one tv show that has the majority of main characters that are ugly. Kind of hard, isn't it. TV tends to have attractive people because they have better ratings, even if they don't go for any sex games.
If you actually want some info on the companions, especially to find those you don't think are 'hot', then start with the list at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Who_companions
(The old series had 9 companions that were male, and 3 that were robotic, the new series has had 5 male companions, and I don't think anybody has ever gotten excited by the Brigadier in the old series, or Wilfred in the new series.)
DS9 was based on an earlier script for Babylon 5. You can google the lawsuits but let's put it this way, Paramount lost the lawsuit so badly they had it sealed and were forced to show B5 trailers at Star Trek conventions. If you have any idea how anti anything not paramount those guys are, you know they got pounded flat by the judge.
(The version of B5 they had their hands on even had a shapeshifting security officer... )
not really, who said it had to be functional, though movie/tv props can bring a lot at auctions.
It's more like you go and make exact duplicates of a half dozen cars and give them to people. Remember, the local car dealer still has all the originals, they didn't lose any of their stock or supply at all.
Whether or not RIAA likes it or hates it, copyright infringement by copying music files is neither legally nor morally theft.
IANAL, which is pretty obvious as I'm posting on slashdot.
They have official maps that both countries agree on, yet the military moron uses an unauthorized map to run his little maneuver. Something that has been standard for centuries is that countries know they have to make border agreements using same freaking maps because all the many different versions out there have conflicting info. This really isn't a new protocol the military idiot ignored, and yes, it is something the military is in on, not just the head honchos in the capital.
Ok, so now the bozos from another country camp in your territory and replace your flag, that really pisses off countries, but what did they do?
They cleaned up one of your rivers and left the trash in a pile, still in your territory. What, should they have taken the trash back to their country? Naw, you'd probably blame them for stealing your trash if they did that.
All in all, it's something that will surely infuriate the politicians and military, but other than that, it's a total meeting of the morons...
Don't know about you guys, but I've disabled autorun, turned on show extensions and show hidden files. Also, I don't run files I don't code from questionable sources.
Sure, it's not perfect, but it'll avoid a large quantity of stupid stuff.
As to the usb dead drop idea, I think it's interesting. Useless and futile, but still interesting.
I agree that the child should have been punished, a nice long time out or a spanking being the obvious choices, but suing, that's just insane and inane. My experience with 4 year olds is that they tend to be incapable of comprehending that something like that could cause serious injury or death.
It's a horrible and sad situation that happened, why compound the tragedy by abusing a small child with the legal system.
IMO that judge is complete scum.
Someone finally remembered to turn on their brain at the DoJ !
Yes I was, why else would I chose a location and time I've verified, anything else would be as dumb as asking someone to call you and giving them a random phone number. Either you weren't there, or you are a time traveler which was late, which is of course absurd, so you weren't there. If you're going to make a smart@ss comment, try to remember the smart part. :)
People get freaked out be imagining or misidentifying things in old images all the time. Remember people freaking out over a sweater in an old picture? Yeah, sweaters have been around for a long time.
Somebody holding their hand up near their hat and their fingers crooked and moving, no biggie either. I didn't see any shot clear enough to make out something in the hand, just a shadow under the hat.
Now if you want to analyze that, why would a time traveler blatantly use advanced tech while knowingly being recorded? Why would someone holding a phone/radio/other audio based gadget be wiggling the fingers like that? As this was a film, they are filming people they know and have instructed to do those things in front of the camera, why would someone who doesn't fit in be allowed to wander through a closed set in front of the camera during filming while apparently talking to themselves while holding something near their head when film was very expensive, and the film cameras of the time could only record for a few minutes at a time?
There's no freaking way that was a time traveler, or a cell phone, or a walkie talkie, or anything else that is chronologically displaced, other than some peoples imagination.
If there are any time travelers reading this, please come and tell me how wrong I am. Let's meet up at the Carl's Junior in the food court of the Gateway mall at 3:30pm last monday. Don't be late, I was there.
PS: bring strawberries.
I can just see him standing there with an innocent look on his face, pinkie held to the corner of his mouth while saying, "Oops, did I goof? Or did I?".
Rule of thumb: If it CAN be abused (especially by politicians where money or power are involved) it WILL be abused.
An incorrect quote. "The (laws) are meant to be (followed), not to be (questioned). And while I'm a (citizen) I'm very happy about these things. Something that doesn't require to be (thought about) and that doesn't need to be (discussed) and where even someone is actively taking away any temptation for me to waste my time on it is a nice change now and then."
Products aren't meant to hacked. That's a voluntary process done by those with the skill and inclination when they feel the need, either from a defect in the original product, a lack of functionality in the original product, or a sense of curiosity and invention. You don't have to hack anything, you don't have to think either, but some people do, and many people feel that someone attempting to prevent them from doing non-dangerous and perfectly legal things with the products they bought is wrong. If you want to read something about the legal basis many people refer to, please look up "Doctrine of First Sale".
IMO, if you aren't hurting anyone, it's none of their business what you do with your property. So if you don't want to alter your stuff, that's fine, all you need to do is to do nothing, but to say that others shouldn't because you don't feel like it is rather deplorable on your part.
Apple has been very inconsistent in it's application of it's own rules. The cries of favoritism may not be far from the mark.
If you're using a computer, spoofing a mac address is unbelievably easy, there is software to do that. I've seen software that will spoof to a specific mac, a randomized mac, and even multiple macs which makes your box look like multiple devices on the network. It may take a little looking to find the right software, but it's out there, and though there are ones that are not for noobs, enough of them have very easy to use interfaces.
I remember lots of games that would take at least 40 hours of play to complete even if you used every mega god unlimited cheat there was. Now we get games that can be completed in 30 hours including all side missions. Often they have a hard mode that almost nobody on the planet can complete without cheats. It's not so much they are getting easier, it's that they are getting shorter.
I don't like the online to play garbage either, there are lots of time I want to play a game crafted around my game character, and not have to worry about some online douchebag out to wreck my day. I've also noted that if a games features gives a prominent mention of PVP, it usually means they have very little actual game content, they expect you to run around ganking other players and be so dumb that you mistake that for content. (There are a lot of essentially empty games out there.)
Let's see what they come up with from this.
Not exactly worthless, at least you will know when they are snooping on your files because they'll hit you up for the key.
You want the key for my encrypted emails from a year ago? Sorry, I change keys every two weeks and don't record the expired ones, and since it's 256 bit encryption, there's no bloody way I'm going to remember that sucker a year later.
The first one that comes to mind kickbacks, someones getting paid for his support...
The second is even more corrupted, a desire to be able to abuse the system and get away with it.
The third is simply bureaucratic inertia. Open Source probably doesn't fit too well with standard procurement procedures.
Maybe there's something else, but those are the only reasons that I can think of right now.
Not to mention that RAM part of the argument is insane and horribly scary. Copying software into ram is REQUIRED for it to run on a computer in any form. Preventing software from doing that would be like selling power tools but declaring that they can't be held or in any other way manipulated by the user.
I still haven't seen any mentions of wifi allergies that actually passed a double blind test (heck, even a single blind test), but I have seen large numbers of reports in scientific and medical publications where they failed the tests. So I'm really amazed at the horrible symptoms people can generate to plague themselves when they think something else is to blame.
It seems like these days almost all slashdot posts are flippant comments, or something even less relevant.
Don't you miss the days when slashdot posts were by people with I.Q.s that were larger than their shoe sizes?
Nukes have to be detonated in a precise fashion or they don't reach critical, no mushroom cloud, just a normal explosion with radioactive debris, aka dirty explosion.
Hollywood likes to show terrorist making nukes and using normal blasting caps to set it off, trouble is, normal blasting caps have way too much variability in their timing. Of course, Hollywood likes to set off nukes by having them engulfed in fires or shot by pistols. Again, these are situations that may destroy the nuke, but won't cause a nuclear detonation, and in fact, may not cause any detonation at all, even a conventional one. I don't know which explosive is usually used in most nukes, but I do know there are various explosives that are not detonated by fire, C4 being one of those. (We often demil'ed C4 for sticking blobs of it to the berm wall and lighting them. It's amazing what you can do with a burning silly putty like substance.)
No, I'm someone who designs or builds nukes, but I have had military training in special weapons and have read a lot of the scientific articles about them at that time out of curiosity about what I was working on. Yes, they are devastating weapons and very dangerous tools, but like so many things that Hollywood has sensationalized, the public perception of how they work and what their dangers are tend to be completely fictional. Just one more note on this, you can't detect a nuke with a Geiger counter unless the shielding over it's core has been compromised, or the device has been detonated. (Of course, if it's been detonated, you can't bloody miss it.)
Have fun with your fiction, but remember that in reality no revolver on the planet shoots 22 shots without reloading outside of the movies.
Even the patent examiners are confused by the obfuscated and generalized language in most patents. A kid, with the help of his patent lawyer father, patented how to swing sideways on a regular swingset about a decade ago.
If something gets translated to normal speech/explanation, and it gets sufficient media coverage, even the patent office may finally revoke the bogus patents, but it may take a bundle of moneys and a pack of pet lawyers. Good luck.