tools that could help virus writers? like, what? c++? visual basic? or, more realistically, nessus?
Or, to take it to an extreme, Notepad/vi/emacs.
No, take it to the logical ironic extreme, Norton AntiVirus 2004 is the best way to QA your virus to make sure it will get by anti-virus software. So, really we need to make sure that virus writers don't get access to such a powerful debugging tools. We obviously need to ban anti-virus software in in order to stop viruses from being written.
Sometimes the simple solutions are the most effective.
"The answer to the question of Linux gaming won't be discovered for a while to come. "
The answer is easy. Just make games for Linux.
That business decision is becoming easier too. Do you want to spend your money on Microsoft licensing and business arrangements? Or would you rather spend it on making and marketing your own products? Microsoft has proven time and time again not to be a good business partner. And increasingly they are requiring more money and closer business relationships in order to successfully develop on their platforms.
Linux on the desktop is here. It is better in many ways than Windows and it costs much less. Isn't the writing on the wall?
Socialism: Armed men pass around a bucket and you have to put in everything that you have. The armed men take out what they want and then give what they want to whome they want and everybody is happy or else someone is randomly shot. Sometimes you get to vote on who gets the guns and the 'choice' is given to you by those with the guns.
No, you cost money. You and all your laughing buddies, yes NASA needs engineers and support staff, but it needs better ideas more. At some point I believe there is a diminishing return when you amass so many engineers and managers and subcontractors that work on their own little widgets.
Set up 5 groups of a few hundred engineers and other people and give them 10 years and a Billion dollars each with the same defined goal and see what happens. To spice it up, reward the winning team with another Billion dollars distributed fairly amongst the individuals involved... If successful repeat.
"What if you made a full internal combustion car with a lightweight aluminum chasis, a variable speed transmission, low resistance tires and sleek aerodynamics?"
So, what exactly do you mean by low resistance tires? Resistance, ie friction, is how a tire works in the first place. Otherwise you would just spin in place. Also, reducing drag is good, reducing weight too much means that you have to introduce a spoiler to keep enough downward Force on the car. So, reducing weight and sleek aerodynamics is good and I agree that cars have a lot of work to do in this area, but just remember the car has to stay on the road.
Re:This goes back to the early days of Apple
on
Beatles Bite Apple
·
· Score: 1
The only thing that matter's is who owns the "Apple Music" brand and the contracts with Apple Computer.
the big problem I see is that the DOD and NASA etc. always take the political credit when someone they are paying thinks up something good. This creates the perception that only the "Government" can do science. When really all the government is doing is shuffling around vaste amounts of capital. Individuals are the ones making discoveries and they should receive the credit. Otherwise all you have is a bunch of souless institutions taking all the credit and denying any responsibility. People are what matter. We don't need a return to hero worshipping that applies to characters like Einstein, but neither would people be so dumb as to give the patent office credit for Einstein's work or for Tesla's many benefactors and investors for his discovery and invention.
All I as is that when news reporters report on some new NASA discovery or DOD gee whiz technology, that they give credit to the people that did it and not so much the organization that funded it.
"Nonsense like this breaks out periodically in physics. Remember polywater? The '14 KeV neutrino'? The 'fifth force'? The 'Allison Effect'? 'N rays'? All of these were big in their day, but died away because there turned out not to be anything there."
"The cargo is expensive, and may be impossible to replace. The crew CAN be replaced. It's just like corporations, in how they manage their infrastructure and employees. The employees are unfortunately expendable in many respects."
NASA pays for programs not cargo. It isn't like the experiments are made of gold or some precious metal. It is the man hours that are put into the development that cost so much money. Just as it is the man hours spent training the crew that make each person very valuable in terms of resources.
Seperating the crew and cargo is about making the engineering simpler and thus reducing what can go wrong.
Re:video phones = stupid for day to day use.
on
What's Always Next?
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Your average person can just barely sort out drivers ed. Just imagine your crazy cubemate behind the stick of a flying car. Yeah, that would be frightening."
Just need stronger roofs. Buildings have all sorts of defenses against errant cars. Look at government buildings with their setbacks and concrete barriers. Even civilian buildings have some barriers to prevent accidents. If larger numbers of people had flying machines, then we would just see the equivalent vertical barriers being put into place to protect property on the ground.
I've not seen a good comparison between flying safety and car safety made, but tens of thousands of people die in car crashes each year, while well under a thousand people die in light aircraft per year. So, the question really becomes one of risk and perception. It is clear that no major relaxation of flying rules will be allowed as long as people view aircraft as terrorist weapons or just an object of the liesure class. But light aircraft are far less dangerous as a weapon than a car, since they can't carry very much weight. And light aircraft are reserved to the liesure classes primarily because the required training is very expensive. That the actual aircraft is expensive is only because of the low volume and the certification requirements. A car by comparison would be much more expensive than an aircraft if it needed to go through the same legal process and was produced in as low a volume.
All that said aircraft won't be practical as "flying cars" until they are made to be end-to-end forms of transportation, but here also new regulations would be required to allow machines like the "Skycar" to land in residential and business areas legally. But the discussion has been so corrupted by irrational fear rather than practical concerns, that no one will be allowed to do much more than jump off the ground without fifty years of development and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on systems of control to make us perfectly "safe" even when it should be clear to any thinking person that to accept the risk and allow flying "cars" to take off without such onerous and impractical rules as are now proposed would be another economic revolution akin to the development of the Model T.
Here I don't think the effects of practical personal end-to-end air transportation could be exagerated. Openning up vaste areas of land to economic development. Substantially reducing resources spent on transportation infrastructure. Indeed, space is more than just an abstract contruct, we need it to prosper, and as we reach certain density as population grows it is hard to imagine greater economic growth without openning up the skies to transportation and commerce. Free skies mean prosperity.
"Show me a startup with a serious basic science investement. I'm talking about stuff that isn't going to be a product anytime soon. I'm talking about research into stuff that no one knows how it will ever become a product."
Research in government labs is very far from what you seem to describe. It is focused on areas of practical (military) application of existing science. Any scientific advancement is a byproduct of pushing the envelope of technology. Which happens outside of government as well. The propensity of Universities to seek funding from central governments is largely a matter of current circumstance and political sentiment and not as you imply some holy arrangement.
"Columbus was funded by Spain. England ruled the colonies for a long time (until they treated them badly AND the colonies were self-sustaining AND the colonies could muster a big enough army to win). What makes you think that a bunch of private citizens are going to go colonize space?"
Columbus was a private citizen who shopped around till he could convince someone to fund his voyage. It just happens that the Queen had a lot of wealth and a tender ear. It happens that today the scientific arts seek their patronage from government (and large corporations), but that is because that is where wealth is centered, not because the government and industries make the best bedfellows.
Scientific Research is not fundamentally important to government and governments come and go, it is important for the sake of human advancement that research not become insperably linked with the current state of affairs. Fundamentally the most important scientific legacies will be those that can be written on the backs of napkins regardless of how they were derived.
Well, I think the point about science is a more important one politically speaking, since science is the blanket justification often given for the space program. Where science might as well be magic the way the politicians at NASA describe it. There is not much new science going on with spaceflight, rocket ships have been around for over fifty years now. Computers that NASA uses are now far behind the ones that regular folks can buy from Dell and HP. The life sciences are aimed at understanding the effects of 0g on the body, which we know is bad... like studying the effects of getting hit with a hammer, practically for most people it is good enough to know it is not good and it should be for NASA too, people can not go on extended trips into space in 0g environments and still be healthy when the get where they are going.
Going into space is about exploration, pure and simple. About seeing stuff that people haven't seen before. About going places we haven't been. About finding valuable things to bring back to earth. About discovering things in space that could pose a threat to us. Not about sitting in orbit to figure out how the life cycle of a mouse is affected by 0g and such...
"In the modern economic culture, next quarter's profits are the primary goal."
Okay that is a stupid generalization. Most companies eventually want to make money, yes, but most startup companies or R&D companies spend years in the Red before ever even thinking about making a profit. To say that an individual or company can't do long term research or exploration just because they can't make a quick buck while the government sits atop the hill and can contemplate a much bigger picture is ludicrous.
From my perspective there has been very little advancement in basic science since the US Military and Government has become the primary sponsor in the US after World War II, largely what we have seen is advancement in engineering and refinement of manufacturing based upon the basic science and theories that were created in the 19th and early 20th century. Which was a time when government was largely uninvolved with basic research. Even if you don't agree that the pace of basic scientific research has lessened, you must surely note that many of the great advances in the sciences occured well before the days of Government directed research.
"But, back to your core argument against NASA. Like it or not, there is an international space race. Competing successfully in that race is as important to our national security as any defense program we have."
Well, NASA ain't the Department of Defense. The Military has its own space programs and launch capabilities.
". The last thing you want is to have China, Russia, and India with bases on the moon and us with no way to get into space. Eventually, the planet will run out of resources. We should not be the only industrialized nation without access to extra-terrestrial resources when that happen."
Okay, alarmism aside, you are correct. We will eventually run out of space on this planet to live comfortably if the population continues to grow. And economic growth is related to population growth. Our modern understanding and way of life is dependant on opportunity and growth. The human race can certainly survive without going into space(at least till the sun dies or a killer asteroid slams into us) but life is about more than mere survival.
As for rivalry with other cultures and groups of people. Do you think that American Sovereignty can really be extended much beyond the reaches of our atmosphere? I don't think that is practical. People will go out into space because they see opportunity and they will make up their own rules as they go along.
... More likely the authors had taken the Graduate Records Exam after college and done very poorly, so they decided to write database software instead.
"The soulless mess that bears his name, though, just can't do that, and that's why I say Disney is dying. This thing that's left behind is not Walt's Disney."
If Walt had his way we'd all be living in his Epcot Center eating good at the Chinese Pavillion and then wandering over to get a Pint at the English Pavillion. Life would be good. And it wouldn't cost us a dime, since we'd be living in a Socialized Utopia all working for the Common Good in that giant Golf Ball.
"Eating, breeding and dying are what people do (Darwin, Wallace et al). Everything else is a bonus."
Bonus? Are we men or ameobas? Even a squirrel does more than you attribute to the nature of human existence. To your list I would add that we speak, write, play, move about, and make stuff...
You seek to cast the concept of natural rights as some sort of abstract concept, it is not. People do things that can be observed to be natural. The concept of Natural Law and Natural Right, start with a fundamental and scientific premise that humans are not infinite in nature and that we can understand ourselves. The rights that we seek to acknowledge in common are those things which if restricted in any one of us would invariably lead to unhappiness of that person and might lead them into conflict with others. So, to speak of natural rights is just a way society acknowledges that to restrict those activities is to work against human nature and may lead to disorder and conflict.
"I don't see this as a law of physics or even supported by any biology I know of"
Yes, when speaking about rights we are refering to rules for human interactions. Which are just as arbitrary and of a human contruct as any law of physics or biology or chemistry, but just as with these other forms of intelectual pursuit, concepts of human right derived from Reason can be tested for their truth.
It is fundamental to human enlightenment that truth is derived from the world around us. Does a cell read a book of genetics before dividing? Does an apple fall from a tree without consulting Newton? I know my right because it is in my nature, not because it is written.
"I was threatened over providing this explanation"
Threatened by a government employee that you were violating some law? Just curious.
Just read your constitution. Sorry guys, rights are not given by the governement and any constitution that implies they are is for shit. Rights are natural. The US constitution does not seek to hand them out like candy, but rather limits the government from interfering with them in specific ways. "Shall make no law..."
That is why the US Constitution doesn't suck and most of the rest of the world's do. Sure, the US government has been allowed to circumvent many of its constitutional provisions when large enough numbers of people are fooled into believing it is for the best, but at least there is a wink and a nod. With the Canadian Constitution the "wink and a nod" is built right in.
"subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"
I read the whole document as 'As long as it is reasonable and justified the gov't can make whatever laws it likes, but check below for some helpful suggestions on what we think people should be allowed to do.'
ya...great. So, much for moving to Canada if the shit hits the fan.
"What Color Kinetics does, and does really well, is do smooth color fades and smooth dimming with the LEDs. This isn't fantastic, but it is pretty nifty. It's more than just hitting a switch (at least in many architectural/theatrical uses)"
reducing the power output to one colored LED and increasing it to another might be cool, but it is a stretch to consider this novel. They might have done a lot of hard work to figure out the right mix to make it look good, but to hold so many patents for that type of thing seems crazy. There use might be novel, but it is not non-obvious. If I was a competitor I would not think twice about ignoring any patents they might hold regarding color fading using LEDs.
"While hydrogen fuel cells are not a source of energy, they are a storage medium that is significantly more efficient than batteries."
It is not a contradiction to say that hydrogen is indeed an energy source but requires energy to be produced. Hydrogen are both a source of energy and storage medium.
Yes, it takes energy to create hydrogen, so hyrdogen can not be considered as a source of energy for the entire economic system, but for particular applications such as cars it is a source of energy. Just as you would say that a battery is the source of energy for a flashlight without knowing how the energy was first created to be stored in the battery. If taken to an extreme that some people seem to suggest, only solar and fusion power could be considered a true source of energy since most all other types of power are derived from them. Remember fossil fuels are believed to be decayed organic remains and most organisms on earth rely on the sun as their source of energy, besides a few creatures that rely on thermal vents for power, but even then those vents are fed by magma that is in turn created by great pressure which is only possible with the density of heavier elements that were formed in some star at some point long ago, by processes of fusion. The point is that the term energy source defines a source of energy with in a defined system, not a universal source. In relation to our economic system it is oil and other fossil fuels, wind, hydro, and nuclear which are the energy sources that we have learned to harness from our environment. So, until the technology for fusion becomes available humanity will be limited in development by the availablity and efficency of harnessing those other energy sources.
Hydrogen is not even the likely cuplrit in the Hindenburg disaster, it was likely static electricity igniting the skin which was painted with or made from a flammable material.
Read about it here: http://engineer.ea.ucla.edu/releases/blimp. htm
Sure Hydrogen is explosive, but gasoline is explosive and any remaining liquid gasoline will continue to burn afterwards. In contrast any uncontained hydrogen that has not burned will dissapate in the atmosphere. Much like natural gas, except that hydrogen will dissapate more quickly which would make it safer than natural gas for home heating applications. I believe that it would more readily escape the confines of a house, making it less likely to concentrate indoors enough to make it explosive.
From a physical standpoint hydrogen is much safer than gasoline, so the drawback is not safety, it has just been harder to reach enough hydrogen density to make it worthwhile as a transportable energy source.
"The company holds 19 patents related to the control of LED lighting systems, and has filed for more than 100 additional patents."
How is controlling an LED lighting system any different than controlling a regular lighting system? The answer is that it is not. This company is a patent scammer. I think they are using a tried an true formula:
1) hear about new technology 2) figure out what existing methods are analogous in new technology (real complicated stuff like oh they emit light too so how about we invent special "LED switches") 3) Patent said "novel" invention. 4) Threaten to sue all the real companies that actually want to make stuff and sell it. 5) profit.
Slashdot Mirror
tools that could help virus writers? like, what? c++? visual basic? or, more realistically, nessus?
Or, to take it to an extreme, Notepad/vi/emacs.
No, take it to the logical ironic extreme, Norton AntiVirus 2004 is the best way to QA your virus to make sure it will get by anti-virus software. So, really we need to make sure that virus writers don't get access to such a powerful debugging tools. We obviously need to ban anti-virus software in in order to stop viruses from being written.
Sometimes the simple solutions are the most effective.
"The answer to the question of Linux gaming won't be discovered for a while to come. "
The answer is easy. Just make games for Linux.
That business decision is becoming easier too. Do you want to spend your money on Microsoft licensing and business arrangements? Or would you rather spend it on making and marketing your own products? Microsoft has proven time and time again not to be a good business partner. And increasingly they are requiring more money and closer business relationships in order to successfully develop on their platforms.
Linux on the desktop is here. It is better in many ways than Windows and it costs much less. Isn't the writing on the wall?
very funny.
Great.
Socialism: Armed men pass around a bucket and you have to put in everything that you have. The armed men take out what they want and then give what they want to whome they want and everybody is happy or else someone is randomly shot. Sometimes you get to vote on who gets the guns and the 'choice' is given to you by those with the guns.
Socialism is Slavery.
"That costs money."
No, you cost money. You and all your laughing buddies, yes NASA needs engineers and support staff, but it needs better ideas more. At some point I believe there is a diminishing return when you amass so many engineers and managers and subcontractors that work on their own little widgets.
Set up 5 groups of a few hundred engineers and other people and give them 10 years and a Billion dollars each with the same defined goal and see what happens. To spice it up, reward the winning team with another Billion dollars distributed fairly amongst the individuals involved... If successful repeat.
"JPL hasn't produced anything really innovative in years. Stop resting on your past glory and start doing something."
It isn't their past glory... it is the past glory of people that are no longer there.
"What if you made a full internal combustion car with a lightweight aluminum chasis, a variable speed transmission, low resistance tires and sleek aerodynamics?"
So, what exactly do you mean by low resistance tires? Resistance, ie friction, is how a tire works in the first place. Otherwise you would just spin in place. Also, reducing drag is good, reducing weight too much means that you have to introduce a spoiler to keep enough downward Force on the car. So, reducing weight and sleek aerodynamics is good and I agree that cars have a lot of work to do in this area, but just remember the car has to stay on the road.
The only thing that matter's is who owns the "Apple Music" brand and the contracts with Apple Computer.
the big problem I see is that the DOD and NASA etc. always take the political credit when someone they are paying thinks up something good. This creates the perception that only the "Government" can do science. When really all the government is doing is shuffling around vaste amounts of capital. Individuals are the ones making discoveries and they should receive the credit. Otherwise all you have is a bunch of souless institutions taking all the credit and denying any responsibility. People are what matter. We don't need a return to hero worshipping that applies to characters like Einstein, but neither would people be so dumb as to give the patent office credit for Einstein's work or for Tesla's many benefactors and investors for his discovery and invention.
All I as is that when news reporters report on some new NASA discovery or DOD gee whiz technology, that they give credit to the people that did it and not so much the organization that funded it.
"Nonsense like this breaks out periodically in physics. Remember polywater? The '14 KeV neutrino'? The 'fifth force'? The 'Allison Effect'? 'N rays'? All of these were big in their day, but died away because there turned out not to be anything there."
soon hopefully String Theory.
"The cargo is expensive, and may be impossible to replace. The crew CAN be replaced. It's just like corporations, in how they manage their infrastructure and employees. The employees are unfortunately expendable in many respects."
NASA pays for programs not cargo. It isn't like the experiments are made of gold or some precious metal. It is the man hours that are put into the development that cost so much money. Just as it is the man hours spent training the crew that make each person very valuable in terms of resources.
Seperating the crew and cargo is about making the engineering simpler and thus reducing what can go wrong.
"Your average person can just barely sort out drivers ed. Just imagine your crazy cubemate behind the stick of a flying car. Yeah, that would be frightening."
Just need stronger roofs. Buildings have all sorts of defenses against errant cars. Look at government buildings with their setbacks and concrete barriers. Even civilian buildings have some barriers to prevent accidents. If larger numbers of people had flying machines, then we would just see the equivalent vertical barriers being put into place to protect property on the ground.
I've not seen a good comparison between flying safety and car safety made, but tens of thousands of people die in car crashes each year, while well under a thousand people die in light aircraft per year. So, the question really becomes one of risk and perception. It is clear that no major relaxation of flying rules will be allowed as long as people view aircraft as terrorist weapons or just an object of the liesure class. But light aircraft are far less dangerous as a weapon than a car, since they can't carry very much weight. And light aircraft are reserved to the liesure classes primarily because the required training is very expensive. That the actual aircraft is expensive is only because of the low volume and the certification requirements. A car by comparison would be much more expensive than an aircraft if it needed to go through the same legal process and was produced in as low a volume.
All that said aircraft won't be practical as "flying cars" until they are made to be end-to-end forms of transportation, but here also new regulations would be required to allow machines like the "Skycar" to land in residential and business areas legally. But the discussion has been so corrupted by irrational fear rather than practical concerns, that no one will be allowed to do much more than jump off the ground without fifty years of development and hundreds of billions of dollars spent on systems of control to make us perfectly "safe" even when it should be clear to any thinking person that to accept the risk and allow flying "cars" to take off without such onerous and impractical rules as are now proposed would be another economic revolution akin to the development of the Model T.
Here I don't think the effects of practical personal end-to-end air transportation could be exagerated. Openning up vaste areas of land to economic development. Substantially reducing resources spent on transportation infrastructure. Indeed, space is more than just an abstract contruct, we need it to prosper, and as we reach certain density as population grows it is hard to imagine greater economic growth without openning up the skies to transportation and commerce. Free skies mean prosperity.
"Show me a startup with a serious basic science investement. I'm talking about stuff that isn't going to be a product anytime soon. I'm talking about research into stuff that no one knows how it will ever become a product."
Research in government labs is very far from what you seem to describe. It is focused on areas of practical (military) application of existing science. Any scientific advancement is a byproduct of pushing the envelope of technology. Which happens outside of government as well. The propensity of Universities to seek funding from central governments is largely a matter of current circumstance and political sentiment and not as you imply some holy arrangement.
"Columbus was funded by Spain. England ruled the colonies for a long time (until they treated them badly AND the colonies were self-sustaining AND the colonies could muster a big enough army to win). What makes you think that a bunch of private citizens are going to go colonize space?"
Columbus was a private citizen who shopped around till he could convince someone to fund his voyage. It just happens that the Queen had a lot of wealth and a tender ear. It happens that today the scientific arts seek their patronage from government (and large corporations), but that is because that is where wealth is centered, not because the government and industries make the best bedfellows.
Scientific Research is not fundamentally important to government and governments come and go, it is important for the sake of human advancement that research not become insperably linked with the current state of affairs. Fundamentally the most important scientific legacies will be those that can be written on the backs of napkins regardless of how they were derived.
Well, I think the point about science is a more important one politically speaking, since science is the blanket justification often given for the space program. Where science might as well be magic the way the politicians at NASA describe it. There is not much new science going on with spaceflight, rocket ships have been around for over fifty years now. Computers that NASA uses are now far behind the ones that regular folks can buy from Dell and HP. The life sciences are aimed at understanding the effects of 0g on the body, which we know is bad... like studying the effects of getting hit with a hammer, practically for most people it is good enough to know it is not good and it should be for NASA too, people can not go on extended trips into space in 0g environments and still be healthy when the get where they are going.
Going into space is about exploration, pure and simple. About seeing stuff that people haven't seen before. About going places we haven't been. About finding valuable things to bring back to earth. About discovering things in space that could pose a threat to us. Not about sitting in orbit to figure out how the life cycle of a mouse is affected by 0g and such...
"In the modern economic culture, next quarter's profits are the primary goal."
Okay that is a stupid generalization. Most companies eventually want to make money, yes, but most startup companies or R&D companies spend years in the Red before ever even thinking about making a profit. To say that an individual or company can't do long term research or exploration just because they can't make a quick buck while the government sits atop the hill and can contemplate a much bigger picture is ludicrous.
From my perspective there has been very little advancement in basic science since the US Military and Government has become the primary sponsor in the US after World War II, largely what we have seen is advancement in engineering and refinement of manufacturing based upon the basic science and theories that were created in the 19th and early 20th century. Which was a time when government was largely uninvolved with basic research. Even if you don't agree that the pace of basic scientific research has lessened, you must surely note that many of the great advances in the sciences occured well before the days of Government directed research.
"But, back to your core argument against NASA. Like it or not, there is an international space race. Competing successfully in that race is as important to our national security as any defense program we have."
Well, NASA ain't the Department of Defense. The Military has its own space programs and launch capabilities.
". The last thing you want is to have China, Russia, and India with bases on the moon and us with no way to get into space. Eventually, the planet will run out of resources. We should not be the only industrialized nation without access to extra-terrestrial resources when that happen."
Okay, alarmism aside, you are correct. We will eventually run out of space on this planet to live comfortably if the population continues to grow. And economic growth is related to population growth. Our modern understanding and way of life is dependant on opportunity and growth. The human race can certainly survive without going into space(at least till the sun dies or a killer asteroid slams into us) but life is about more than mere survival.
As for rivalry with other cultures and groups of people. Do you think that American Sovereignty can really be extended much beyond the reaches of our atmosphere? I don't think that is practical. People will go out into space because they see opportunity and they will make up their own rules as they go along.
"Let's put aside the quaint notion that the reason we need to be in space is to "do science".
Yes, thank you.
... More likely the authors had taken the Graduate Records Exam after college and done very poorly, so they decided to write database software instead.
Thus it really is Post GRE SQL.
"The soulless mess that bears his name, though, just can't do that, and that's why I say Disney is dying. This thing that's left behind is not Walt's Disney."
If Walt had his way we'd all be living in his Epcot Center eating good at the Chinese Pavillion and then wandering over to get a Pint at the English Pavillion. Life would be good. And it wouldn't cost us a dime, since we'd be living in a Socialized Utopia all working for the Common Good in that giant Golf Ball.
"Eating, breeding and dying are what people do (Darwin, Wallace et al). Everything else is a bonus."
Bonus? Are we men or ameobas? Even a squirrel does more than you attribute to the nature of human existence. To your list I would add that we speak, write, play, move about, and make stuff...
You seek to cast the concept of natural rights as some sort of abstract concept, it is not. People do things that can be observed to be natural. The concept of Natural Law and Natural Right, start with a fundamental and scientific premise that humans are not infinite in nature and that we can understand ourselves. The rights that we seek to acknowledge in common are those things which if restricted in any one of us would invariably lead to unhappiness of that person and might lead them into conflict with others. So, to speak of natural rights is just a way society acknowledges that to restrict those activities is to work against human nature and may lead to disorder and conflict.
"I don't see this as a law of physics or even supported by any biology I know of"
Yes, when speaking about rights we are refering to rules for human interactions. Which are just as arbitrary and of a human contruct as any law of physics or biology or chemistry, but just as with these other forms of intelectual pursuit, concepts of human right derived from Reason can be tested for their truth.
It is fundamental to human enlightenment that truth is derived from the world around us. Does a cell read a book of genetics before dividing? Does an apple fall from a tree without consulting Newton? I know my right because it is in my nature, not because it is written.
"I was threatened over providing this explanation"
Threatened by a government employee that you were violating some law? Just curious.
Just read your constitution. Sorry guys, rights are not given by the governement and any constitution that implies they are is for shit. Rights are natural. The US constitution does not seek to hand them out like candy, but rather limits the government from interfering with them in specific ways. "Shall make no law..."
That is why the US Constitution doesn't suck and most of the rest of the world's do. Sure, the US government has been allowed to circumvent many of its constitutional provisions when large enough numbers of people are fooled into believing it is for the best, but at least there is a wink and a nod. With the Canadian Constitution the "wink and a nod" is built right in.
"subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society"
I read the whole document as 'As long as it is reasonable and justified the gov't can make whatever laws it likes, but check below for some helpful suggestions on what we think people should be allowed to do.'
ya...great. So, much for moving to Canada if the shit hits the fan.
"What Color Kinetics does, and does really well, is do smooth color fades and smooth dimming with the LEDs. This isn't fantastic, but it is pretty nifty. It's more than just hitting a switch (at least in many architectural/theatrical uses)"
reducing the power output to one colored LED and increasing it to another might be cool, but it is a stretch to consider this novel. They might have done a lot of hard work to figure out the right mix to make it look good, but to hold so many patents for that type of thing seems crazy. There use might be novel, but it is not non-obvious. If I was a competitor I would not think twice about ignoring any patents they might hold regarding color fading using LEDs.
"While hydrogen fuel cells are not a source of energy, they are a storage medium that is significantly more efficient than batteries."
It is not a contradiction to say that hydrogen is indeed an energy source but requires energy to be produced. Hydrogen are both a source of energy and storage medium.
Yes, it takes energy to create hydrogen, so hyrdogen can not be considered as a source of energy for the entire economic system, but for particular applications such as cars it is a source of energy. Just as you would say that a battery is the source of energy for a flashlight without knowing how the energy was first created to be stored in the battery. If taken to an extreme that some people seem to suggest, only solar and fusion power could be considered a true source of energy since most all other types of power are derived from them. Remember fossil fuels are believed to be decayed organic remains and most organisms on earth rely on the sun as their source of energy, besides a few creatures that rely on thermal vents for power, but even then those vents are fed by magma that is in turn created by great pressure which is only possible with the density of heavier elements that were formed in some star at some point long ago, by processes of fusion. The point is that the term energy source defines a source of energy with in a defined system, not a universal source. In relation to our economic system it is oil and other fossil fuels, wind, hydro, and nuclear which are the energy sources that we have learned to harness from our environment. So, until the technology for fusion becomes available humanity will be limited in development by the availablity and efficency of harnessing those other energy sources.
Hydrogen is not even the likely cuplrit in the Hindenburg disaster, it was likely static electricity igniting the skin which was painted with or made from a flammable material.
. htm
Read about it here:
http://engineer.ea.ucla.edu/releases/blimp
Sure Hydrogen is explosive, but gasoline is explosive and any remaining liquid gasoline will continue to burn afterwards. In contrast any uncontained hydrogen that has not burned will dissapate in the atmosphere. Much like natural gas, except that hydrogen will dissapate more quickly which would make it safer than natural gas for home heating applications. I believe that it would more readily escape the confines of a house, making it less likely to concentrate indoors enough to make it explosive.
From a physical standpoint hydrogen is much safer than gasoline, so the drawback is not safety, it has just been harder to reach enough hydrogen density to make it worthwhile as a transportable energy source.
"The company holds 19 patents related to the control of LED lighting systems, and has filed for more than 100 additional patents."
How is controlling an LED lighting system any different than controlling a regular lighting system? The answer is that it is not. This company is a patent scammer. I think they are using a tried an true formula:
1) hear about new technology
2) figure out what existing methods are analogous in new technology (real complicated stuff like oh they emit light too so how about we invent special "LED switches")
3) Patent said "novel" invention.
4) Threaten to sue all the real companies that actually want to make stuff and sell it.
5) profit.