Can't I just have someone with a 3D printer print me out a 3D printer of my own? If it takes 24 hours to print one out, it would only take a few weeks to print out a million of them.
Typically these occur as often as every 3 minutes, but scale that up to thousands of apps on millions of handsets and you can see the issue DoCoMo has
I still don't see the issue they have... what is the issue? What are these "control signals"... is it TCP traffic or cellular network control signals? What resources are they consuming? Have other carriers had the same kind of problem or is it specific to DoCoMo? What update frequency do they recommend if 3 minutes is too often? 4 minutes? 6 minutes? 60 minutes?
If you have an unusually thin wallet, that may work. But the attacker isn't going to get closer and closer to you until it works. That would be pretty silly, and rather conspicuous. They are going to bump up against you.
In a crowded commuter train or bus an attacker can inconspicuously bump his RFID reader containing backpack against 100 people without arising suspicion while pusing his way from one end of the train to the other. On a less crowded train, he can put his reader under the seat in front of him (many transit agencies use thin fiberglass or plastic seats) and get it to within 1/4 inch of the seated passenger's back pocket wallet.
I have an RFID access key I keep in my wallet. I think if I get it within 2 or three millimeters of the reader it will work. But I never do it that way. I just slap my wallet against the reader. Suggesting that a criminal would do it differently is just silly.
My RFID card key works 3 or 4 centimeters from the reader. Like you I usually slap it against the reader, but I'm not worried about making the reader suspicious about why I'm touching it. I've seen people who keep the card in their wallet do a butt touch on the reader and the card works fine through their wallet and clothes. If RFID card keys are any indication, then it would be trivial for a thief to get close enough to read the card without actually touching you - after all, pickpockets are already able to slip a wallet from a pocket undetected, so I think they can manage to get a card reader a few cm from your wallet without touching you.
I'm not sure how Credit Card RFID chips differ from the RFID chips used in passports, but Passport RFID readers with high gain antennas have been used to read a passport RFID chip from hundreds of feet away.
Putting all of Siri's capabilities that Evi can't match aside, we still got something that isn't built into the OS like Siri is. I don't see a reason to use this versus Siri unless you are on Android or an older iPhone.
Is that really a factor in evaluating the app? If this app works better than Siri, will you refuse to run it because it's not built-in to the OS? Obviously if it's not better than Siri then there's no reason to switch from Siri.
Perhaps but I am not sure if it means without intervention (i.e. I am in another room and it sends a text to a premium number) or if it means I tell it to call X and it does so without me confirming. The latter would be OK obviously since I am authorizing it. I guess it just needs clarification as one way is bad whereas the other is expected.
Isn't the assumption that it will only call and text when you ask it to? If they wanted to rack up charges on your phone bill by making unauthorized calls and text's, it's not like they'd put that in the terms of use. Do you really need them to clarify it?
"Note: This application will make phone calls and send SMS messages to premium phone numbers. This will cause your phone bill to skyrocket and will give us millions of dollars of extra revenue. All your base are belong to us."
WAPs are usually strategically located for maximum wireless coverage, whereas things like printers and instruments are situated in entirely different locations where they are easy to reach (and thus suboptimal from a wireless perspective). Proximity could actually be a bad thing - it is really just a restriction. Wouldn't you want to be able to access a specific instrument whether or not you were in direct wireless range of that device?
Wouldn't the answer be to have the printers and instruments connect to the building Wifi and store their data on a central server than to have them connect to the nearest laptop?
Why do you insist on crapping on AC's somewhat jocular comment when the AC wasn't even replying to you. The joke was that often times, driving in the city is slower than possibly even walking. Go watch Office Space.
For someone with a low UID, you sound like you're new here. When have Slashdot commenters *not* pedantically correct someone who ignores thread context and makes a comment that makes no sense within the context of the thread?
But what is that 15-minute drive in distance? In central London, for instance, you can walk twice as far in 15 minutes as you can drive. You can get 5 times further on public transport in that same time.
And if it takes less than 15 minutes to drive out of, can where you live actually be considered a city?
I live in Glasgow, Scotland. The nearest book shop is a 15 minute drive from me, towards the city centre. It is an independent second-hand bookshop. There are two branches of Waterstones in the city centre, about 20 minutes drive, or 12 minutes on the train. As I don't work in the city centre, I combine visits to bookshops with visits to other shops located within walking distance, justifying the expense (time and money) of a trip into town.
I think most literate people would be pleased to have a major book chain within 15 minutes travel time of their home.
Note that this only only about Barnes and Noble - there are numerous other smaller independent and chain stores in SF, but B&N and Borders were the only Mega bookstores. The closest B&N to San Francisco is around 10 miles away (depending on where you live and which direction you go).
You live in a city with an effective public transportation system. Going anywhere outside of San Francisco means using multiple competing transit systems with little or no coordination between them. Except during commute hours, it's almost always faster to drive. Due to poor scheduling between transit systems, it can easily take 90 minutes or more to go just outside of the city limits on a weekend. (and even traveling within the city is sometimes just as painful - it takes me nearly an hour to get to work by train/bus, and less than 30 minutes to get there by bike, I can walk it in less time than taking transit)
My nearest neighborhood bookstore is a 10 minute walk from home, but I usually only go there if I'm looking for a gift, for my own reading, I prefer the convenience of Amazon because they have a much larger selection that my small neighborhood store. When B&N was here, I'd sometimes browse there for hours, but it doesn't take long to browse the 10 shelves at my local store.
In city traffic a normal bike with a normal rider will make about the same time as cars, but spend a little less time waiting at red lights - if the roads are flat. Going uphill is hard work on a bike, but someone of normal fitness can easily ride along at 30 or 40km/h.
Which is all true, but irrelevant when you're looking at a 10 mile drive on a freeway outside of the city. I do commute by bike in SF and my door-to-door time is faster by bike (since I can park my bike next to the office but have to search for street parking in my car), but my riding time is longer (25 minutes) than my driving time (15 minutes).
I live in the city of San Francisco and the closest Barnes & Noble is a 15 minute drive from my house.
Uh... is that supposed to be far?
When you live in a city, anything outside of the city can be considered "far". Even if you have a car (many people don't), walking to the car (which might be parked blocks away) driving through city streets to get to a freeway to get out of the city, and then finding a parking space for your car when you return makes a drive out of the city more than just a simple trip to the bookstore. I don't usually make a shopping trip outside of the city unless I need to make a major purchase or combine it with several errands.
I used to go to the B&N and Borders pretty frequently when they still had stores in SF (both were within walking distance), but now I rely on Amazon with only rare visits to B&N.
Barnes & Noble is still alive and well here in the US. I think subby doesn't get out of the basement too often.
I live in the city of San Francisco and the closest Barnes & Noble is a 15 minute drive from my house.
Which would equate to a 10 minute bike ride, or a 20 minute walk. San Fran has great weather, you can get some 'zines and take care of that "spare tire" at the same time.
What kind of super biker are you where a 15 minute drive out of the city equates to a 10 minute bike ride?
From the Richmond District, the Corte Madera B&N is about a 15 minute drive, but it takes me over an hour by bike to get there. And I think it'd take at least a few hours to walk.
A bike may be nearly as fast as a car within the city, but once you hop on the freeway, it can't keep up.
So the real question is, if I go to Wilmington, can I hook up to their wireless network with my WiFi enabled iPad, PC, Phone, whatever? The article doesn't say. I kind of think not, but the article doesn't say. And that's the real difference. Most of us think it's OK to call it WiFi if we can connect with our WiFi enabled devices. If we can't, it's not WiFi and they shouldn't be using the term.
So I still don't know the answer.
The answer is no, you can't.
But in many places you can't connect to their Wifi network using your 802.11b-only Wifi device because they restrict it to 802.11g only (because they don't want 11b devices slowing down everyone else). And you can't connect with your 802.11a-only Wifi device because their network only supports 2.4Ghz. And some places may keep you from connecting to their 802.11n enabled network with 802.11bg-only devices. And even if you connect with an 802.11n capable device, you may or may not see any 802.11n speeds depending on whether or not your device supports dual-band 802.11n.
You were lucky. I always got at least chewed out for a boo-boo, if not worse.
At least your parents didn't cover it with Mecurochrome. Putting organic mercury compounds on a child's open wound is probably not the best idea (though I don't think any studies definitely proved that mercury was absorbed into the body from Mercurochrome). Plus it left your skin indelibly dyed a bright orange color.
In what country? In my country, Internet connections at that price come with a stipulation in the acceptable use policy that "servers" shall not be used on them.
If all you want is an FTP server, you don't need to build your own or host it at home.
Rent an Amazon EC2 server... a reserved micro instance costs around $7/month. Plus a couple dollars for storage and I/O. Inbound bandwidth is free, outbound is 10 cents/GB so you might have to pay a little to restore your files from the cloud server.
The only thing I'm surprised about is that they weren't already doing this. It's not like Facebook is new or anything.
As long as they are only scraping public posts, I don't see any problem with this. I'd even be fine with Facebook providing them with an API to make it easier to scrape public posts.
This is only tangentially related to the topic, but carriers keep promoting how fast their network is and how I can get 12mbit+ of bandwidth to my phone. But I wonder.... why should I care? Especially since I could hit my monthly download cap in less than an hour at that speed.
I can see why faster networks benefit the carrier since faster speeds means more people can share the bandwidth, but why should I care as an end user? Even if I regularly watched movies on my phone, I don't think I can really tell the difference between a 800kbs stream and a 4mbit stream on my 3" screen. And a 90 minute movie at 4mbit will use around 2GB of my download bandwidth. (compared to around 400MB for the 800kbs stream)
I don't have the latest phone, but with my 1Ghz single core processor, when I'm browsing the web, the browser rendering speed seems to be my limiting factor since browsing speed doesn't seem to be noticeably different whether I'm on my carrier's 3G network or my Wifi at home (with 15mbit of bandwidth to the internet).
So, why should I really care what the peak download speed of a carrier's 4G network is? It seems like I should be more interested in the average real-world speed they can provide on a loaded network than in whether or not I can download a short burst at some high peak speed.
Is there any reason to care about published 4G speeds? Or is it more like Megapixels in cameras - manufacturers promote megapixels because it's an easy term to explain and many people think that megapixels are most important when it's really just one of many factors (sensor size, lens, etc) that all need to be considered. A quality 5MP camera can give better images than a cheap 12MP camera.
I have relatives from out of the country staying with us. One of them had a medical issue. We took her to several doctors, got x-rays, and perscriptions. Everything was surprisingly cheap, unless we were purchasing brand name medication.
Of course, surgical procedures and chronis conditions may be another story, but we didn't pay all that much more than 200 bucks for 3 doctors visits, medication, and the x-rays. I figured it was going to be closer to 1,000 based off what I see insurance is billed for on my own visits.
If providers would bill me what they bill to insurance, it might actually be worthwhile to drop to a major medical plan with a $5K deductible and pay out of pocket for routine costs (which fortunately for me has meant annual routine checkups and one x-ray in the past few years).
However, when I wanted to self-refer myself to a specialist for a specific problem, they quoted an office visit rate that was nearly 10 times higher than what they bill to insurance and any treatments would be billed at similarly high rates. I asked them about a discount for self-pay and they said that their policy was firm, the insurance rate is a negotiated rate with the insurance company and if I wanted to self-pay, I'd have to pay the full quoted rate.
So I ended up going to my primary care physician under insurance, insurance paid me to go through several sessions of his prescribed physical therapy before he was willing to refer me to the specialist that I wanted to go to in the first place.
Health care would be much more affordable if health care providers had to charge self-pay patients their lowest negotiable rate for that treatment.
This has been covered every this story comes up on Slashdot. Unregulated, unlicensed pharmacies are dangerous--not only do people get drugs without a doctor's prescription, but there's no guarantee that the drugs are even the right drugs or that they've been handled properly. Counterfeit drugs, outdated drugs, contaminated drugs, mislabeled drugs--anything goes. And there are other problems, like the fact they can sell to minors or that there is nothing legally enforcing confidentiality like with a legitimate pharmacy. You complain about high drug prices, but there's nothing stopping some yahoo from selling a complete rip-off (and a potentially life-threatening one, as in the link). The foundation of a civilized society is some form of centralized regulation, or you just have total chaos as the people who callously fuck over other people win out.
When my mother needed a drug for a medical condition she had several choices of drugs for that condition. She tried a common drug that had a reasonably priced generic equivalent in the USA (and was covered by her insurance). Not only did it not give adequate results, it had an interaction with another drug she was taken. There was another brand-name-only alternative drug that worked well, however, it was not covered under her insurance policy. Her out of pocket price for this drug was around $750/month in the quantities she needed. By purchasing online from a Canadian drug store (with further savings from purchasing larger pills than needed and splitting them 4 ways (splitting was approved by her doctor)), she was able to get her cost down to under $60/month.
The drugs arrived in factory sealed packaging, her doctor said the pills looked legit and physically matched his sample pills, and followup tests showed that it was working as expected, so it really was the real thing. (he did not officially suggest or approve of her getting them from outside of the USA, but he knew it was her only affordable solution)
Say what you will about foreign pharmacies, but sometimes they can be a lifesaver, literally.
Here is the bigger question. Why shouldn't people be able to drug themselves into oblivion if they want? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all...what if they find happiness in a pill bottle? Oh right, we're only supposed to do "good drugs" prescribed to us by drug peddlers^W^Wdoctors. Oh and take our "happy pills" like SSRIs/ADHD meds and that's okay as long as you don't get "high". How are some of these doctors and pharmaceutical companies any different than drug dealers and narco-terrorists?
In general, I agree, but some drugs as so addictive or harmful that they present an unfair medical or welfare burden on society. Though legalization of some "safe" drugs may keep people from moving to more harmful drugs of unknown quality and purity (like Bath Salts)
Your proposal to let people drug themselves into oblivion only makes sense if the drug user could sign away his rights to governmental financial support or medical treatment.
Ordinance: All private automobiles over 3 meters in length or 2 meters in width or weighing more than 750kg (excluding passengers) are excluded from the downtown business district.
Have fun getting your little folding coffin squished by this.
You realize that the Hummer is out of production? Not even the Chinese wanted to buy the company.
Oh, and as far as "private" goes, no worries - it will be registered to ShompolTech, Inc. This will not be the first time Hummer owners pawn the legislation, either.
What does that mean "pawn" the legislation? They left it at a second hand shop as collateral on a short-term loan?
In any case there's a big difference between legally using a tax loophole and exploiting a local ordinance prohibiting non delivery vehicles. And it doesn't matter really, if such an ordinance was in place, a business owner could certainly use a commercially registered Hummer to make his delivery, but if the ordinance requires the vehicle to be used for deliveries only, he wouldn't be able to cruise around downtown, squashing small vehicles at will.
I've never understood the blind attraction to oversize cars that some people have (as opposed to legitimate utility-based concerns... my neighbor is a contractor, drives a heavy duty F350, and actually *needs* its hauling capacity... but when he needs to go downtown, he takes the Prius because it's hard to park a full size pickup with dual wheels in a busy city). My primary commute vehicle is a bike so I'm already the smallest vehicle on the road... and I do have a healthy fear of those Hummers.
This is so fucking stupid it makes my head hurt. Helllooooo? We already have rules like this. They are very specific and are written by both the Federal Dept of Transportation as well as state dept of transportation. Anyone who owns a truck or car for business can tell you that there is no shortage of requirements from the DOT. I am quite sure car and truck manufacturer's will also agree. The rules are extremely tight and very specific. (see CAFE standards, for example)
Guess what? No matter how much you hate SUV's and loathe their existence.....they meet the rules established by said departments.
This entire discussion is one big mental masturbation exercise. Waaaahhhhh! I hate SUV's!!!! They guzzle gas and usually have grizzly men driving them!!!! Where is my prius? (formerly a Mazda Miata, circa 1994)
I think you're confusing DOT car safety rules with city planning rules to alleviate congestion and parking problems in downtown business districts. There's nothing to prevent cities from enacting ordinances limiting which vehicles can drive there. A city is free to ban all cars and only allow golf carts downtown.
Many large cities are starting to implement (or at least consider) congestion pricing to limit traffic downtown (or are closing downtown business districts to cars entirely). If these small commuter cars become a reality, they may start to look attractive for congested cities cores when they can can triple the amount of downtown parking instantly while allowing more traffic lane capacity (5 12 foot wide lanes can become 8 7.5 foot wide lanes).
I, for one, would be happy to trade in my commute car and buy one of these $20K mini cars if it meant that my parking space cost $150/mo instead of $350, even if I have to purchase a $50/mo toll tag to enter the downtown district.
Despite how attached you are to your SUV, it's a matter of geometry - small cars fit in less space, so as city core congestion increases, smaller cars, bikes, motorcycles/scooters and public transportation can all work together to make cities easier to navigate.
You can still park your SUV outside of the congested urban core to drive to the mountains (or more likely, rent one at a transit center and take the train there).
Here's an interesting factoid, a car as big as an SUV is not the same as a delivery truck, and ordinances could be written to allow one while prohibiting the other.
So what size SUV are you talking about? Midsize or full size? What about a pick-up truck or van (commercial, personal, minivan)? It's a slippery slope with that type of legislation.
Ordinance: All private automobiles over 3 meters in length or 2 meters in width or weighing more than 750kg (excluding passengers) are excluded from the downtown business district. When parked, vehicle must be capable of being compacted to no more than 2 meters in length. Commercial delivery vehicles may purchase a permit for a time-restricted exception to the ordnance for active deliveries only - permit fees are based on hours/days of access and size of vehicle. Emergency vehicles are excepted. Disabled driver's vehicles are subject to the same restrictions, or they may use our on-call paratransit system for transportation from park-and-ride lots to the business district. All drivers are encouraged to park outside of the business district and use free public transportation or free citybikes (subsidized through parking fees for all cars). Fossil Fuel powered vehicles must pay a downtown pollution surcharge. Families/groups are not excepted from the ordinance and are encouraged to use public transit facilities.
here's a scenario. You're going through a green light. Someone on a cross street decides they are more important than stoplights, and runs through it. Sometimes, you could slam the brakes to avoid them, sometimes you're already in their path and need to speed up to get out of the way. Surprise! Your car won't let you do that! And you're in a tin can of a car, and are smeared across the front of that Hummer H3.
Is this really a common scenario? More than crashes caused by excessive speed?
I've been driving (including cars, motorcycles and bicycles and 2 summers driving a truck) for over 20 years and have never needed to accelerate through an intersection to avoid a side impact. (nor have I ever been in a side impact collision). I'm not even sure that human reaction time and acceleration rates of most cars is even sufficient to recognize the impending side impact and accelerate out of the way.
My brother in law was taking his State Trooper exam and one of the areas of the test was accident reconstruction. He told me one of the accidents he received was one where an 18 wheeler hit a SmartCar from behind at 45 mph, which pushed it forward to stationary UPS-style truck. When all was said and done, there were only 11 inches left of the SmartCar. All 3 occupants in the SmartCar died. While I am all for smaller cars and better city parking, I will never purchase one of these types of cars as long as huge SUVs, Delivery Trucks, and 18 Wheelers are still on the roads I travel on. So.. never:P
Is there any reason to believe that any car would have let the occupants survive being smashed between a 20 ton 18 wheeler and a 5 ton stationary UPS truck (both of which have hard frames that don't crumple upon impact)? That's a lot of force for a car to absorb. Maybe we should all be driving military tanks to protect us from the rare small-car smooshed-between-two-trucks accidents.
"How about cars as big as SUVs shouldn't be considered for city use?"
Should be interesting to get goods into a city when trucks can't get downtown.
Here's an interesting factoid, a car as big as an SUV is not the same as a delivery truck, and ordinances could be written to allow one while prohibiting the other.
Slashdot Mirror
Can't I just have someone with a 3D printer print me out a 3D printer of my own? If it takes 24 hours to print one out, it would only take a few weeks to print out a million of them.
TFA:
Typically these occur as often as every 3 minutes, but scale that up to thousands of apps on millions of handsets and you can see the issue DoCoMo has
I still don't see the issue they have... what is the issue? What are these "control signals"... is it TCP traffic or cellular network control signals? What resources are they consuming? Have other carriers had the same kind of problem or is it specific to DoCoMo? What update frequency do they recommend if 3 minutes is too often? 4 minutes? 6 minutes? 60 minutes?
If you have an unusually thin wallet, that may work. But the attacker isn't going to get closer and closer to you until it works. That would be pretty silly, and rather conspicuous. They are going to bump up against you.
In a crowded commuter train or bus an attacker can inconspicuously bump his RFID reader containing backpack against 100 people without arising suspicion while pusing his way from one end of the train to the other. On a less crowded train, he can put his reader under the seat in front of him (many transit agencies use thin fiberglass or plastic seats) and get it to within 1/4 inch of the seated passenger's back pocket wallet.
I have an RFID access key I keep in my wallet. I think if I get it within 2 or three millimeters of the reader it will work. But I never do it that way. I just slap my wallet against the reader. Suggesting that a criminal would do it differently is just silly.
My RFID card key works 3 or 4 centimeters from the reader. Like you I usually slap it against the reader, but I'm not worried about making the reader suspicious about why I'm touching it. I've seen people who keep the card in their wallet do a butt touch on the reader and the card works fine through their wallet and clothes. If RFID card keys are any indication, then it would be trivial for a thief to get close enough to read the card without actually touching you - after all, pickpockets are already able to slip a wallet from a pocket undetected, so I think they can manage to get a card reader a few cm from your wallet without touching you.
I'm not sure how Credit Card RFID chips differ from the RFID chips used in passports, but Passport RFID readers with high gain antennas have been used to read a passport RFID chip from hundreds of feet away.
Putting all of Siri's capabilities that Evi can't match aside, we still got something that isn't built into the OS like Siri is. I don't see a reason to use this versus Siri unless you are on Android or an older iPhone.
Is that really a factor in evaluating the app? If this app works better than Siri, will you refuse to run it because it's not built-in to the OS? Obviously if it's not better than Siri then there's no reason to switch from Siri.
Perhaps but I am not sure if it means without intervention (i.e. I am in another room and it sends a text to a premium number) or if it means I tell it to call X and it does so without me confirming. The latter would be OK obviously since I am authorizing it. I guess it just needs clarification as one way is bad whereas the other is expected.
Isn't the assumption that it will only call and text when you ask it to? If they wanted to rack up charges on your phone bill by making unauthorized calls and text's, it's not like they'd put that in the terms of use. Do you really need them to clarify it?
"Note: This application will make phone calls and send SMS messages to premium phone numbers. This will cause your phone bill to skyrocket and will give us millions of dollars of extra revenue. All your base are belong to us."
WAPs are usually strategically located for maximum wireless coverage, whereas things like printers and instruments are situated in entirely different locations where they are easy to reach (and thus suboptimal from a wireless perspective). Proximity could actually be a bad thing - it is really just a restriction. Wouldn't you want to be able to access a specific instrument whether or not you were in direct wireless range of that device?
Wouldn't the answer be to have the printers and instruments connect to the building Wifi and store their data on a central server than to have them connect to the nearest laptop?
Why do you insist on crapping on AC's somewhat jocular comment when the AC wasn't even replying to you. The joke was that often times, driving in the city is slower than possibly even walking. Go watch Office Space.
For someone with a low UID, you sound like you're new here. When have Slashdot commenters *not* pedantically correct someone who ignores thread context and makes a comment that makes no sense within the context of the thread?
But what is that 15-minute drive in distance? In central London, for instance, you can walk twice as far in 15 minutes as you can drive. You can get 5 times further on public transport in that same time.
And if it takes less than 15 minutes to drive out of, can where you live actually be considered a city?
I live in Glasgow, Scotland. The nearest book shop is a 15 minute drive from me, towards the city centre. It is an independent second-hand bookshop. There are two branches of Waterstones in the city centre, about 20 minutes drive, or 12 minutes on the train. As I don't work in the city centre, I combine visits to bookshops with visits to other shops located within walking distance, justifying the expense (time and money) of a trip into town.
I think most literate people would be pleased to have a major book chain within 15 minutes travel time of their home.
Note that this only only about Barnes and Noble - there are numerous other smaller independent and chain stores in SF, but B&N and Borders were the only Mega bookstores. The closest B&N to San Francisco is around 10 miles away (depending on where you live and which direction you go).
You live in a city with an effective public transportation system. Going anywhere outside of San Francisco means using multiple competing transit systems with little or no coordination between them. Except during commute hours, it's almost always faster to drive. Due to poor scheduling between transit systems, it can easily take 90 minutes or more to go just outside of the city limits on a weekend. (and even traveling within the city is sometimes just as painful - it takes me nearly an hour to get to work by train/bus, and less than 30 minutes to get there by bike, I can walk it in less time than taking transit)
My nearest neighborhood bookstore is a 10 minute walk from home, but I usually only go there if I'm looking for a gift, for my own reading, I prefer the convenience of Amazon because they have a much larger selection that my small neighborhood store. When B&N was here, I'd sometimes browse there for hours, but it doesn't take long to browse the 10 shelves at my local store.
In city traffic a normal bike with a normal rider will make about the same time as cars, but spend a little less time waiting at red lights - if the roads are flat. Going uphill is hard work on a bike, but someone of normal fitness can easily ride along at 30 or 40km/h.
Which is all true, but irrelevant when you're looking at a 10 mile drive on a freeway outside of the city. I do commute by bike in SF and my door-to-door time is faster by bike (since I can park my bike next to the office but have to search for street parking in my car), but my riding time is longer (25 minutes) than my driving time (15 minutes).
I live in the city of San Francisco and the closest Barnes & Noble is a 15 minute drive from my house.
Uh... is that supposed to be far?
When you live in a city, anything outside of the city can be considered "far". Even if you have a car (many people don't), walking to the car (which might be parked blocks away) driving through city streets to get to a freeway to get out of the city, and then finding a parking space for your car when you return makes a drive out of the city more than just a simple trip to the bookstore. I don't usually make a shopping trip outside of the city unless I need to make a major purchase or combine it with several errands.
I used to go to the B&N and Borders pretty frequently when they still had stores in SF (both were within walking distance), but now I rely on Amazon with only rare visits to B&N.
Barnes & Noble is still alive and well here in the US. I think subby doesn't get out of the basement too often.
I live in the city of San Francisco and the closest Barnes & Noble is a 15 minute drive from my house.
Which would equate to a 10 minute bike ride, or a 20 minute walk. San Fran has great weather, you can get some 'zines and take care of that "spare tire" at the same time.
What kind of super biker are you where a 15 minute drive out of the city equates to a 10 minute bike ride?
From the Richmond District, the Corte Madera B&N is about a 15 minute drive, but it takes me over an hour by bike to get there. And I think it'd take at least a few hours to walk.
A bike may be nearly as fast as a car within the city, but once you hop on the freeway, it can't keep up.
So the real question is, if I go to Wilmington, can I hook up to their wireless network with my WiFi enabled iPad, PC, Phone, whatever? The article doesn't say. I kind of think not, but the article doesn't say. And that's the real difference. Most of us think it's OK to call it WiFi if we can connect with our WiFi enabled devices. If we can't, it's not WiFi and they shouldn't be using the term.
So I still don't know the answer.
The answer is no, you can't.
But in many places you can't connect to their Wifi network using your 802.11b-only Wifi device because they restrict it to 802.11g only (because they don't want 11b devices slowing down everyone else). And you can't connect with your 802.11a-only Wifi device because their network only supports 2.4Ghz. And some places may keep you from connecting to their 802.11n enabled network with 802.11bg-only devices. And even if you connect with an 802.11n capable device, you may or may not see any 802.11n speeds depending on whether or not your device supports dual-band 802.11n.
Even "Wifi" is not always "Wifi".
You were lucky. I always got at least chewed out for a boo-boo, if not worse.
At least your parents didn't cover it with Mecurochrome. Putting organic mercury compounds on a child's open wound is probably not the best idea (though I don't think any studies definitely proved that mercury was absorbed into the body from Mercurochrome). Plus it left your skin indelibly dyed a bright orange color.
about $20 a month
In what country? In my country, Internet connections at that price come with a stipulation in the acceptable use policy that "servers" shall not be used on them.
If all you want is an FTP server, you don't need to build your own or host it at home.
Rent an Amazon EC2 server... a reserved micro instance costs around $7/month. Plus a couple dollars for storage and I/O. Inbound bandwidth is free, outbound is 10 cents/GB so you might have to pay a little to restore your files from the cloud server.
The only thing I'm surprised about is that they weren't already doing this. It's not like Facebook is new or anything.
As long as they are only scraping public posts, I don't see any problem with this. I'd even be fine with Facebook providing them with an API to make it easier to scrape public posts.
This is only tangentially related to the topic, but carriers keep promoting how fast their network is and how I can get 12mbit+ of bandwidth to my phone. But I wonder.... why should I care? Especially since I could hit my monthly download cap in less than an hour at that speed.
I can see why faster networks benefit the carrier since faster speeds means more people can share the bandwidth, but why should I care as an end user? Even if I regularly watched movies on my phone, I don't think I can really tell the difference between a 800kbs stream and a 4mbit stream on my 3" screen. And a 90 minute movie at 4mbit will use around 2GB of my download bandwidth. (compared to around 400MB for the 800kbs stream)
I don't have the latest phone, but with my 1Ghz single core processor, when I'm browsing the web, the browser rendering speed seems to be my limiting factor since browsing speed doesn't seem to be noticeably different whether I'm on my carrier's 3G network or my Wifi at home (with 15mbit of bandwidth to the internet).
So, why should I really care what the peak download speed of a carrier's 4G network is? It seems like I should be more interested in the average real-world speed they can provide on a loaded network than in whether or not I can download a short burst at some high peak speed.
Is there any reason to care about published 4G speeds? Or is it more like Megapixels in cameras - manufacturers promote megapixels because it's an easy term to explain and many people think that megapixels are most important when it's really just one of many factors (sensor size, lens, etc) that all need to be considered. A quality 5MP camera can give better images than a cheap 12MP camera.
I have relatives from out of the country staying with us. One of them had a medical issue. We took her to several doctors, got x-rays, and perscriptions. Everything was surprisingly cheap, unless we were purchasing brand name medication.
Of course, surgical procedures and chronis conditions may be another story, but we didn't pay all that much more than 200 bucks for 3 doctors visits, medication, and the x-rays. I figured it was going to be closer to 1,000 based off what I see insurance is billed for on my own visits.
If providers would bill me what they bill to insurance, it might actually be worthwhile to drop to a major medical plan with a $5K deductible and pay out of pocket for routine costs (which fortunately for me has meant annual routine checkups and one x-ray in the past few years).
However, when I wanted to self-refer myself to a specialist for a specific problem, they quoted an office visit rate that was nearly 10 times higher than what they bill to insurance and any treatments would be billed at similarly high rates. I asked them about a discount for self-pay and they said that their policy was firm, the insurance rate is a negotiated rate with the insurance company and if I wanted to self-pay, I'd have to pay the full quoted rate.
So I ended up going to my primary care physician under insurance, insurance paid me to go through several sessions of his prescribed physical therapy before he was willing to refer me to the specialist that I wanted to go to in the first place.
Health care would be much more affordable if health care providers had to charge self-pay patients their lowest negotiable rate for that treatment.
This has been covered every this story comes up on Slashdot. Unregulated, unlicensed pharmacies are dangerous--not only do people get drugs without a doctor's prescription, but there's no guarantee that the drugs are even the right drugs or that they've been handled properly. Counterfeit drugs, outdated drugs, contaminated drugs, mislabeled drugs--anything goes. And there are other problems, like the fact they can sell to minors or that there is nothing legally enforcing confidentiality like with a legitimate pharmacy. You complain about high drug prices, but there's nothing stopping some yahoo from selling a complete rip-off (and a potentially life-threatening one, as in the link). The foundation of a civilized society is some form of centralized regulation, or you just have total chaos as the people who callously fuck over other people win out.
When my mother needed a drug for a medical condition she had several choices of drugs for that condition. She tried a common drug that had a reasonably priced generic equivalent in the USA (and was covered by her insurance). Not only did it not give adequate results, it had an interaction with another drug she was taken. There was another brand-name-only alternative drug that worked well, however, it was not covered under her insurance policy. Her out of pocket price for this drug was around $750/month in the quantities she needed. By purchasing online from a Canadian drug store (with further savings from purchasing larger pills than needed and splitting them 4 ways (splitting was approved by her doctor)), she was able to get her cost down to under $60/month.
The drugs arrived in factory sealed packaging, her doctor said the pills looked legit and physically matched his sample pills, and followup tests showed that it was working as expected, so it really was the real thing. (he did not officially suggest or approve of her getting them from outside of the USA, but he knew it was her only affordable solution)
Say what you will about foreign pharmacies, but sometimes they can be a lifesaver, literally.
Here is the bigger question. Why shouldn't people be able to drug themselves into oblivion if they want? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all...what if they find happiness in a pill bottle? Oh right, we're only supposed to do "good drugs" prescribed to us by drug peddlers^W^Wdoctors. Oh and take our "happy pills" like SSRIs/ADHD meds and that's okay as long as you don't get "high". How are some of these doctors and pharmaceutical companies any different than drug dealers and narco-terrorists?
In general, I agree, but some drugs as so addictive or harmful that they present an unfair medical or welfare burden on society. Though legalization of some "safe" drugs may keep people from moving to more harmful drugs of unknown quality and purity (like Bath Salts)
Your proposal to let people drug themselves into oblivion only makes sense if the drug user could sign away his rights to governmental financial support or medical treatment.
Ordinance: All private automobiles over 3 meters in length or 2 meters in width or weighing more than 750kg (excluding passengers) are excluded from the downtown business district.
Have fun getting your little folding coffin squished by this.
You realize that the Hummer is out of production? Not even the Chinese wanted to buy the company.
Oh, and as far as "private" goes, no worries - it will be registered to ShompolTech, Inc. This will not be the first time Hummer owners pawn the legislation, either.
What does that mean "pawn" the legislation? They left it at a second hand shop as collateral on a short-term loan?
In any case there's a big difference between legally using a tax loophole and exploiting a local ordinance prohibiting non delivery vehicles. And it doesn't matter really, if such an ordinance was in place, a business owner could certainly use a commercially registered Hummer to make his delivery, but if the ordinance requires the vehicle to be used for deliveries only, he wouldn't be able to cruise around downtown, squashing small vehicles at will.
I've never understood the blind attraction to oversize cars that some people have (as opposed to legitimate utility-based concerns... my neighbor is a contractor, drives a heavy duty F350, and actually *needs* its hauling capacity... but when he needs to go downtown, he takes the Prius because it's hard to park a full size pickup with dual wheels in a busy city). My primary commute vehicle is a bike so I'm already the smallest vehicle on the road... and I do have a healthy fear of those Hummers.
This is so fucking stupid it makes my head hurt. Helllooooo? We already have rules like this. They are very specific and are written by both the Federal Dept of Transportation as well as state dept of transportation. Anyone who owns a truck or car for business can tell you that there is no shortage of requirements from the DOT. I am quite sure car and truck manufacturer's will also agree. The rules are extremely tight and very specific. (see CAFE standards, for example)
Guess what? No matter how much you hate SUV's and loathe their existence.....they meet the rules established by said departments.
This entire discussion is one big mental masturbation exercise. Waaaahhhhh! I hate SUV's!!!! They guzzle gas and usually have grizzly men driving them!!!! Where is my prius? (formerly a Mazda Miata, circa 1994)
I think you're confusing DOT car safety rules with city planning rules to alleviate congestion and parking problems in downtown business districts. There's nothing to prevent cities from enacting ordinances limiting which vehicles can drive there. A city is free to ban all cars and only allow golf carts downtown.
Many large cities are starting to implement (or at least consider) congestion pricing to limit traffic downtown (or are closing downtown business districts to cars entirely). If these small commuter cars become a reality, they may start to look attractive for congested cities cores when they can can triple the amount of downtown parking instantly while allowing more traffic lane capacity (5 12 foot wide lanes can become 8 7.5 foot wide lanes).
I, for one, would be happy to trade in my commute car and buy one of these $20K mini cars if it meant that my parking space cost $150/mo instead of $350, even if I have to purchase a $50/mo toll tag to enter the downtown district.
Despite how attached you are to your SUV, it's a matter of geometry - small cars fit in less space, so as city core congestion increases, smaller cars, bikes, motorcycles/scooters and public transportation can all work together to make cities easier to navigate.
You can still park your SUV outside of the congested urban core to drive to the mountains (or more likely, rent one at a transit center and take the train there).
Here's an interesting factoid, a car as big as an SUV is not the same as a delivery truck, and ordinances could be written to allow one while prohibiting the other.
So what size SUV are you talking about? Midsize or full size? What about a pick-up truck or van (commercial, personal, minivan)? It's a slippery slope with that type of legislation.
Ordinance: All private automobiles over 3 meters in length or 2 meters in width or weighing more than 750kg (excluding passengers) are excluded from the downtown business district. When parked, vehicle must be capable of being compacted to no more than 2 meters in length. Commercial delivery vehicles may purchase a permit for a time-restricted exception to the ordnance for active deliveries only - permit fees are based on hours/days of access and size of vehicle. Emergency vehicles are excepted. Disabled driver's vehicles are subject to the same restrictions, or they may use our on-call paratransit system for transportation from park-and-ride lots to the business district. All drivers are encouraged to park outside of the business district and use free public transportation or free citybikes (subsidized through parking fees for all cars). Fossil Fuel powered vehicles must pay a downtown pollution surcharge. Families/groups are not excepted from the ordinance and are encouraged to use public transit facilities.
here's a scenario. You're going through a green light. Someone on a cross street decides they are more important than stoplights, and runs through it. Sometimes, you could slam the brakes to avoid them, sometimes you're already in their path and need to speed up to get out of the way. Surprise! Your car won't let you do that! And you're in a tin can of a car, and are smeared across the front of that Hummer H3.
Is this really a common scenario? More than crashes caused by excessive speed?
I've been driving (including cars, motorcycles and bicycles and 2 summers driving a truck) for over 20 years and have never needed to accelerate through an intersection to avoid a side impact. (nor have I ever been in a side impact collision). I'm not even sure that human reaction time and acceleration rates of most cars is even sufficient to recognize the impending side impact and accelerate out of the way.
My brother in law was taking his State Trooper exam and one of the areas of the test was accident reconstruction. He told me one of the accidents he received was one where an 18 wheeler hit a SmartCar from behind at 45 mph, which pushed it forward to stationary UPS-style truck. When all was said and done, there were only 11 inches left of the SmartCar. All 3 occupants in the SmartCar died. While I am all for smaller cars and better city parking, I will never purchase one of these types of cars as long as huge SUVs, Delivery Trucks, and 18 Wheelers are still on the roads I travel on. So .. never :P
Is there any reason to believe that any car would have let the occupants survive being smashed between a 20 ton 18 wheeler and a 5 ton stationary UPS truck (both of which have hard frames that don't crumple upon impact)? That's a lot of force for a car to absorb. Maybe we should all be driving military tanks to protect us from the rare small-car smooshed-between-two-trucks accidents.
"How about cars as big as SUVs shouldn't be considered for city use?"
Should be interesting to get goods into a city when trucks can't get downtown.
Here's an interesting factoid, a car as big as an SUV is not the same as a delivery truck, and ordinances could be written to allow one while prohibiting the other.