If a foreign government had attacked non-digital assets of any US corporation, you would expect some kind of formal reprisal. Maybe not an airdrop of Marines, but certainly something more than Hilary Clinton threatening to write a stern letter.
What I have not doped out yet to my own satisfaction is whether the tepid response from Washington is the fault of the current administration, confusion regarding the digital nature of the breach and assets, or a little of both.
I think it has something to do with Chinese savings now being the foundation of much of the western economy, and the fact that China is a major nuclear power.
What China realised and the USSR didn't, IMO, is that they could forget the cold war and essentially buy the west with the west's own money. /crazy theory
Just because he got that job (from hist long-year friend und co-partner), doesn't qualify him to be _not_ a moron.
Bastard? Sociopath? Arsehole? Prick?- maybe.
Moron? I'd say no. A *moron* would have fouled it all up somehow, either not getting the job in the first place or not retaining it for the last 8 years. He didn't.
"LOL Moron"- says Anonymous random, about man who successfully gained a CEO position at one of the world's biggest companies, and many billions of dollars.
Yeah, what a complete moron.
Capitalism blame fail: Channel 4 is a 'public service broadcaster', a non-profit UK government organisation. Think of an advertiser funded BBC and you're there.
I know that in the UK, hybrids/battery vehicles have always been massively cheaper to run off mains electricity than on petrol(gasoline) or diesel. But that's with current electricity prices of £0.05($0.08?)/kWh (night-time rate, usually around £0.17($0.27)/kWh daytime) and gas/diesel at £1.079/litre ($6.53/US Gal).
I imagine that monocular folk will experience a flickering, but otherwise undistorted, image.
As for "another way for cable companies to charge another 5 dollars a month for "premium" content"- if you don't want the premium content, dont pay the $5 for it. If people DO want it enough to pay $5, then they will. What is some people's problem with the idea of at-cost options? Is it the fact that somebody stands to make a (gasp!) PROFIT out of people choosing to specify the option?
The fact remains though that active glasses allow the use of a 'normal' LCD panel as a display though. Will one system win out, or will there remain a variety of technologies? Time will tell.
What do active glasses give you that polarity glasses wouldn't? Why go that road except to eek out a bit more cash from the consumer?
It's technically feasible to build a consumer television that alternates the left/right eye images, frame by frame, in sync with alternate blanking on glasses. All you need is a LCD with a good enough refresh rate and the right electronics.
To use polarising glasses requires a large exotic projector, the space to set it up (think 'theatre' not 'living room') and a massively expensive reflective screen (AFAIK, anyway). Thats why.
Similarly, a hunk of silicon with strange electrical properties isn't a computer. And yet, the former is very useful if you want to build the latter.
Do you, like, just not understand how science works?
My ire was directed at the reporting, not the discovery or researchers (who I wish good luck).
Calling this discovery "Making a liquid invisibility cloak" is like calling the discovery of a new, slightly higher temperature superconductor "Making warp-capable flying cars".
Maybe sensational reporting of just about everything (eg the LHC) is causing the public's lack of affinity for science. All they see is hundreds of 'broken promises' made by the media about fantastic whizz-bang technologies that the research they are reporting on isn't even working towards.
Price has little to do with cost. It is the market. If oil- and coal-generated electicity is sold for 14/kwh, nuclear power can sell for the same, no problem. Why would windpower outfits sell for less than, say, 11/kwh? They are leaving money on the table. Not many corporations do that.
The point is that a heap of extra generating capacity with a low cost floor will drive prices down in the market. If a given industry or in this case generation method is SO profitable, everybody else piles in and invests in it, increasing capacity until the sale price achieves an 'average' level of profit.
The question you should be asking is "if wind power costs 4/kWh to generate, who will buy coal power at 14/kWh when wind can sell profitably at 6/kWh?". This situation depends though on a large amount of wind generation and an effecient trading market for the power, which the developments discussed will go towards achieving.
Or different petroleum supplies. Or nuclear. Or something else. Don't think they will choose for any other reason than profits.
If there was some magical cheap alternative fuel source available to them they would already use it. This 'evil profit' motive is ALREADY IN OPERATION, and in any case even if things panned out as you suggested, and generators responded to the increased availability of cheap wind power with cheaper 'conventional' supplies, that would STILL result in cheaper power for consumers.
Re:From an American Point of View
on
Sir Patrick Stewart
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
... all the UK, Canadian, and Australian armed forces ceremoniously answer to her.
Incidentally, I have been asking British troops (currently serving and former) now and then whether, in the event of conflicting orders, they would obey the orders of the Queen, or those from parliament/government/elected representatives.
Every single time, without any of them hesitating at all, the answer comes back "The Queen".
Of course, if that theory was ever really tested, I doubt that I'd want to be around to see the result...
and Facebook didn't. Facebook has no interest whatsoever in minimising their power usage (electricity is free, you see) and like all corporations they never look for ways of minimising their costs. There are no possible reasons why FB may operate their servers in this way.
It reminds me of when certain people start raging about the fact that "x% of trucks on the road are EMPTY!!". Yeah, because the big trucking firms apparently don't have rooms full of people whose job it is to make sure that the trucks are as full as possible, because trucks, diesel and drivers are free.
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times?
Indeed, sir, although ironically the one thing that immediately makes me stop paying attention to the radio (and any commercials on it) is the sound of a siren (or similar 'oh shit' motoring noise) while I am driving. If advertisers realised this the false siren problem might kill itself off.
Seriously, we want to slow down deforestation? Stop using trees for paper products. The US needs to get over their high and mighty "We can't use hemp because its taboo" crap.
I was going to reply with a highly sarcastic rebuttal, but closer inspection shows that you may be right.
Wikipedia reckons hemp grows at 'up to' 25 tonnes/hectare/year of dry above ground matter. This gives 'up to' 13 tonnes/hectare/year for fancy 'high yield' hybrid poplar, intended for papermaking.
There is a huge amount of wiggle room with those figures, 'up to' is often meaningless (I'm going to give you 'up to' 100 billion dollars) and both sources are doubtless from organisations trying to promote their different 'crops'. Also theres the problem of how much actual paper you get from a tonne of almost-unspecified plant material respectively for each crop, and the required fertiliser and labour inputs etc etc.
I would also wich to point out that despite my name on here I'm usually very skeptical of "HEMP: The Wonder Plant!" type suggestions (even though I do approve of one particular use of certain varieties, at least).
Because Google will give your search history to every two-bit company director out there.
As a two-bit company director, I am shocked and appalled at the suggestion that Google might not give me access to everything!
Joking aside, knowledge (information) is power; there are well known implications of private data being publicly accessible on the internet (like prospective employers searching, etc etc) but when highly personal or sensitive information is in the hands of a small number of people (e.g on a government system, or at Google etc etc) there is a real potential there for blackmail or other nefarious uses. I'd rather not (given the choice) have detailed data about my personal, political or sexual preferences, or health, or quite a lot else, sitting on a database somewhere waiting, itching for somebody to misuse it. It's not hard to imagine ways that it might be.
Yes, I do currently still use Google to search, but their stated attitudes bring closer the time that I'll start not to.
Slashdot Mirror
But what if that post contains the secret formula that would set the pants on fire successfully?
But I thought that a certain T. Blair had the formula for "pants on fire"!
I have encrypted this post as my contribution to making encryption more widespread.
Here you go:
kkjkjGHIUgibilhjGHLiubhjbiu78HVji67gfUKGHVuygjh VljhbvolygILJKbIyugIJbikhjbKJBkbvkjnfJ.a,mx jchkdjqJiufhpi9fu{ywe9f8iunsiochjaijkcs
The fun part is that the (UK) cops can demand a decryption key for that, and lock me up when I inevitably fail to provide one....
Not a bad 'donation density' really. It just shows the massive economies of scale possible on the internet.
If a foreign government had attacked non-digital assets of any US corporation, you would expect some kind of formal reprisal. Maybe not an airdrop of Marines, but certainly something more than Hilary Clinton threatening to write a stern letter.
What I have not doped out yet to my own satisfaction is whether the tepid response from Washington is the fault of the current administration, confusion regarding the digital nature of the breach and assets, or a little of both.
I think it has something to do with Chinese savings now being the foundation of much of the western economy, and the fact that China is a major nuclear power.
What China realised and the USSR didn't, IMO, is that they could forget the cold war and essentially buy the west with the west's own money.
/crazy theory
Have you ever _used_ Vista?
Has anyone?
Just because he got that job (from hist long-year friend und co-partner), doesn't qualify him to be _not_ a moron.
Bastard? Sociopath? Arsehole? Prick?- maybe.
Moron? I'd say no. A *moron* would have fouled it all up somehow, either not getting the job in the first place or not retaining it for the last 8 years. He didn't.
"LOL Moron"- says Anonymous random, about man who successfully gained a CEO position at one of the world's biggest companies, and many billions of dollars.
Yeah, what a complete moron.
Was it just me who read the headline "Ballmer Hits..." and my mind automatically filled in with " ...XXX With A Chair" ?
to television network greed ....
Capitalism blame fail: Channel 4 is a 'public service broadcaster', a non-profit UK government organisation. Think of an advertiser funded BBC and you're there.
I know that in the UK, hybrids/battery vehicles have always been massively cheaper to run off mains electricity than on petrol(gasoline) or diesel. But that's with current electricity prices of £0.05($0.08?)/kWh (night-time rate, usually around £0.17($0.27)/kWh daytime) and gas/diesel at £1.079/litre ($6.53/US Gal).
YMMV in other countries (literally)
I imagine that monocular folk will experience a flickering, but otherwise undistorted, image.
As for "another way for cable companies to charge another 5 dollars a month for "premium" content"- if you don't want the premium content, dont pay the $5 for it. If people DO want it enough to pay $5, then they will. What is some people's problem with the idea of at-cost options? Is it the fact that somebody stands to make a (gasp!) PROFIT out of people choosing to specify the option?
There are technologies that allow you to do polarized 3D from an LCD display such as that used in the iZ3D monitors.
Now that is interesting, I didn't know that...
Just been looking at a description of the technology here: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/monitors/display/iz3d.html
The fact remains though that active glasses allow the use of a 'normal' LCD panel as a display though. Will one system win out, or will there remain a variety of technologies? Time will tell.
What do active glasses give you that polarity glasses wouldn't? Why go that road except to eek out a bit more cash from the consumer?
It's technically feasible to build a consumer television that alternates the left/right eye images, frame by frame, in sync with alternate blanking on glasses. All you need is a LCD with a good enough refresh rate and the right electronics.
To use polarising glasses requires a large exotic projector, the space to set it up (think 'theatre' not 'living room') and a massively expensive reflective screen (AFAIK, anyway). Thats why.
Similarly, a hunk of silicon with strange electrical properties isn't a computer. And yet, the former is very useful if you want to build the latter.
Do you, like, just not understand how science works?
My ire was directed at the reporting, not the discovery or researchers (who I wish good luck).
Calling this discovery "Making a liquid invisibility cloak" is like calling the discovery of a new, slightly higher temperature superconductor "Making warp-capable flying cars".
Maybe sensational reporting of just about everything (eg the LHC) is causing the public's lack of affinity for science. All they see is hundreds of 'broken promises' made by the media about fantastic whizz-bang technologies that the research they are reporting on isn't even working towards.
!= "invisibility cloak"
Price has little to do with cost. It is the market. If oil- and coal-generated electicity is sold for 14/kwh, nuclear power can sell for the same, no problem. Why would windpower outfits sell for less than, say, 11/kwh? They are leaving money on the table. Not many corporations do that.
The point is that a heap of extra generating capacity with a low cost floor will drive prices down in the market. If a given industry or in this case generation method is SO profitable, everybody else piles in and invests in it, increasing capacity until the sale price achieves an 'average' level of profit.
The question you should be asking is "if wind power costs 4/kWh to generate, who will buy coal power at 14/kWh when wind can sell profitably at 6/kWh?". This situation depends though on a large amount of wind generation and an effecient trading market for the power, which the developments discussed will go towards achieving.
Or different petroleum supplies. Or nuclear. Or something else. Don't think they will choose for any other reason than profits.
If there was some magical cheap alternative fuel source available to them they would already use it. This 'evil profit' motive is ALREADY IN OPERATION, and in any case even if things panned out as you suggested, and generators responded to the increased availability of cheap wind power with cheaper 'conventional' supplies, that would STILL result in cheaper power for consumers.
"Go to Mexico and test diarrhea drug"?
Indeed sir, indeed.
Incidentally, I have been asking British troops (currently serving and former) now and then whether, in the event of conflicting orders, they would obey the orders of the Queen, or those from parliament/government/elected representatives.
Every single time, without any of them hesitating at all, the answer comes back "The Queen".
Of course, if that theory was ever really tested, I doubt that I'd want to be around to see the result...
and Facebook didn't. Facebook has no interest whatsoever in minimising their power usage (electricity is free, you see) and like all corporations they never look for ways of minimising their costs. There are no possible reasons why FB may operate their servers in this way.
It reminds me of when certain people start raging about the fact that "x% of trucks on the road are EMPTY!!". Yeah, because the big trucking firms apparently don't have rooms full of people whose job it is to make sure that the trucks are as full as possible, because trucks, diesel and drivers are free.
Nobody going into a McDonald's should be allowed to sit for more than the time it takes to scarf down the food.
In fact, all McDonald's should be placed at the top of long flights of stairs; or better, escalators running backwards.
And you should only be allowed to use your computer after watching wrestling, drinking a few beers and getting laid.
You see, making sweeping generalisations about other people's lifestyles, and deciding unilaterally that you are right and they are wrong, is easy.
He was probably only talking about ads for "The Corporations!", because, you know, The Corporations are evil etc etc etc
How about banning radio stations from broadcasting commercials with car crash sounds, police sirens, and screeching tires during the morning and afternoon drive times?
Indeed, sir, although ironically the one thing that immediately makes me stop paying attention to the radio (and any commercials on it) is the sound of a siren (or similar 'oh shit' motoring noise) while I am driving. If advertisers realised this the false siren problem might kill itself off.
Seriously, we want to slow down deforestation? Stop using trees for paper products. The US needs to get over their high and mighty "We can't use hemp because its taboo" crap.
I was going to reply with a highly sarcastic rebuttal, but closer inspection shows that you may be right.
Wikipedia reckons hemp grows at 'up to' 25 tonnes/hectare/year of dry above ground matter. This gives 'up to' 13 tonnes/hectare/year for fancy 'high yield' hybrid poplar, intended for papermaking.
There is a huge amount of wiggle room with those figures, 'up to' is often meaningless (I'm going to give you 'up to' 100 billion dollars) and both sources are doubtless from organisations trying to promote their different 'crops'. Also theres the problem of how much actual paper you get from a tonne of almost-unspecified plant material respectively for each crop, and the required fertiliser and labour inputs etc etc.
I would also wich to point out that despite my name on here I'm usually very skeptical of "HEMP: The Wonder Plant!" type suggestions (even though I do approve of one particular use of certain varieties, at least).
Because Google will give your search history to every two-bit company director out there.
As a two-bit company director, I am shocked and appalled at the suggestion that Google might not give me access to everything!
Joking aside, knowledge (information) is power; there are well known implications of private data being publicly accessible on the internet (like prospective employers searching, etc etc) but when highly personal or sensitive information is in the hands of a small number of people (e.g on a government system, or at Google etc etc) there is a real potential there for blackmail or other nefarious uses. I'd rather not (given the choice) have detailed data about my personal, political or sexual preferences, or health, or quite a lot else, sitting on a database somewhere waiting, itching for somebody to misuse it. It's not hard to imagine ways that it might be.
Yes, I do currently still use Google to search, but their stated attitudes bring closer the time that I'll start not to.