... but on the whole media sphere too. This is especially true since the George W. election, there are all kinds of funny words popping up all over the place, such as "evildoer" (Let's be honest here, raise your hand if you didn't frown when you heard this term for the first time) and the likes. With that kind of Newspeak, I could imagine that the future will only be plusplusgood.
China will democratise, when the conditions are riped, and one of them especially, would be when there are more city population than rural population, which is currently not the case. The other condition would be that there is a huge internal force (e.g. from a whole generation) that demands it. Think of the baby boom generation which had catalyzed a whole chain of changes in the western hemisphere in the 1960s, with a 1968 Paris manif.
And that is only personal opinions.
Unfortunately for China right now, the two conditions are not met. The first one is obvious. The second one is a little problematic. There are three segments of population, and I would call them "three generations" to make things simpler.
1) The old generations, those participated in the long march and the cultural revolution, are currently either afraid of changes, or too busy to hold on to their power, and make as much money as they can, while they still can. This is the generation which has the most to lose in case of too much sudden changes. Most of them will not be able to adapt.
2) The second generation, those who were born during the cultural revolution, and that's the generation involved in the 1989 event. But this generation is currently too fragmented to form a noticeable force. Those who are doing well are joining the first generation, they don't want sudden change. Gradual change is good for them, they are making to the elite group. Those who are not doing well (the majority) are too busy making a living, with a family to feed, etc, the ambition for a better world has kinda subsided with age too. And they are sandwiched between two generations that do not want change, more or less.
3) The third generation, those who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, this is the generation of little "emperors" and little "empresses". No big dream, not much ambition, life is good as it is, they will inherit everything from their parents and grand-parents anyway, so why bother? This is what I call the "Life is good" generation.
Changes are coming gradually, but don't expect a sudden movement to tear down the wall or anything. A model for gradual change, or a model for sudden change a la Berlin Wall which ripped through the whole Eastern Europe? Which one is better is debatable for now. What is good for Eastern Europe is necessarily good for China? Again, debatable.
But the gradual change model is so far, so good. So, let's cross the finger, and let's work together toward a better world, as a whole. I am optimistic.
Oh great, with contents like this on/., this assures that I won't be able to access/. from China before long. How am I going to get news that matt.......Connection timed out.
Actually, you are arrogant, ignorant, self-centric, and you talk through your behind.
There are lot more than just english-language web sites, and I hate to break that to you, there are a lot more people who don't speak/read English than those who do, and that's the beauty of this planet we call Earth. So, get your head out of the sand, get your arse out of your mom's basement, and go to some places which are a little farther than the local convenience store near that said basement.
You can access a lot more information too if you can read Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Creole, Vietnamese, Thai, Mongol, Portuguese, etc, etc. May I suggest you learn another, or two other languages too? That will certainly give you a better view, and see how diverse our Planet is. And seriously, I prefer it that way too.
It's great to be able to read English, as there are a lot more contents in English than in any other languages currently (and I'd like to emphasize "currently", it's by no mean true forever, just wait for a few years to see). But to suggest that everyone be able to read another language is mere arrogance.
And with the concentration of english-language-based media in a few hands right now, I'm glad that there are more to offer, especially perspectives from a different cultural and political background. And power to everyone.
Heck, I'm just trolling.
And regarding the English version of Wikipedia, no, it's not always available. It's blocked most of the time, I live in Shanghai and I should know that, as I try to access it almost every week.
- Patents and copyrights must have a limited time frame, and can not be extended (don't make me talk about that mickey mouse thing)
- All copyrighted materials must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. Otherwise, you don't the protection of the law. If you don't register, your work becomes public domain.
- All patented "inventions" must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. If you are patenting software, all your source codes about the patent must be in the repository, and accessible to all. If you are patenting a certain method on chip design, all your schema and related materials must be in, and accessible to all. Same thing for any other patents, regardless whether it is an avionic patent, a chair design, a method on desalinating sea water, etc. If the materials about your patent are not in (or incomplete), then you don't receive any law's protection, all you can do is to consider as industrial secrets, or some such. And anyone with the right skills should be able to use that materials and come up with exactly the same result that is describe in the patent application document. If people can't get the same result, you lose the patent, even if the patent has been issued, and you get slapped a fine for wasting people's time and money.
- There should be a probation period when people can submit prior art related to an application. Just like before you are issued a marriage certificate, it is published in the city hall so anyone can protest if he/she has the evidence. Now, no one can come up with some internal code (or schema) which has has never been published to the public or registered as patent and expect to contest it. Well, you kept it secret, someone came up with another (or even the same way) to do the same thing, and applied for a patent. You can't say anything, you made your choice to keep it secret.
- All copyrights and patents must be no longer than 20 years and can not be extended. The copyrighted materials automatically become public domain as soon as the author is declared dead. I think 20 years is already ridiculously long, given the pace of technology advancement. Setting the protection period to a shorter time can also help to accelerate progress as well, so it's good. Look at the current state of copyrights, a lot of authors are dead, but their materials are still copyrighted. The dead can't create anymore, so what is the copyright protection for anyways? You might say someone might have some dark intention, but that's not what copyright and patent laws should care about.
- Applicants are charged a flat fee for each application, and the fee is indexed to the inflation rate every year.
As long as there are reasonable restrictions, I'm all for copyright and patents. You should be able to copyright or patent anything.
This is a sad situation where rich countries just dump their toxic wastes to the poor countries. It's a quick solution, and does not cause much (if any?) local political discussion. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unfortunately, this is a very irresponsible way to dispose off the toxic waste. Sure, the rich can claim that it is actually beneficial to the local economy in the poor countries. As the article mentioned, some dump site employs as many as 100,000 people. And sure, it's a global economy, meaning that anything can be "exported".
But, have we ever considered the consequences to the planet as a whole? After all, this planet belongs to everyone, and we should take up the responsibility to protect it better. The rich countries have the proper means and resources to handle the wastes better than the poor countries. But instead, we all chose the easy way out: we just let the poor poison the planet. It's currently poisoning China's, India's and Nigeria's backyard, so that America, Europe, Japan etc, can have their own little clean and green lawn.
Guess what happens when they run out of dumping ground? I visited a site a couple of years ago. I happened to ask what they would do in this case. The foreman said:"Easy, there are plenty of fishermen out of job, as the fish stock is running out. They would be happy to help us dump into the ocean." Ha, same attitude as to how the rich get rid off their wastes.
Good to know that we are all alike, rich or poor. Eventually, it will come to bite us all back from behind. Happy dumping, everyone.
... degenerated into a dedicated ad site for Apple, Google and the gang lately. I set my filters to filter out junk like these, but still can't avoid them. I guess the nature of what matters has changed.
Mod parent up please. This is what I was going to say.
The guy who proposed this is smoking crack. This does not solve any of the problem, and just put artificial entry barriers to the industry to protect the current banks from any new competition. And while you are at it, why stop at 50K, why not 50 million instead? It's not like any bank can't put up with 50 million either.
Putting layers and layers of stupid "solutions" like that is not going to solve the problem.
This is absolutely cool. There are a lot more places where "brittle books" are laying around, waiting to be digitalized and distributed to the whole world. And as the technologies used in this project are going to be refined and improved, and eventually released, everyone will benefit.
The question now is: would they accept technical contributions from the public (I mean, OS geek communities), just like other open source projects? I know a lot of people would be eager to join. How about a SETI-like system to harness the power of desktop computers around the world to help with image processing and OCR? Hey, I got 4 decent desktop computers that can contribute at least 8 hours/day each.
When people are too addictive to games such that the line between reality and virtuality is blurred, it starts to get into a dangerous point. Life suddenly becomes all about speculation, nothing is real and no productivity is gained for human societies as a whole.
It's the worst kind of speculation we can have, worse than speculating on the stock or commodity market. If you buy a bunch of stocks on a company, and if the market crashes, you still own bits of that company, and the company may be just doing well, making a profit every year. If you buy the so-called lands in SL, and if SL were to die, what are you left up with?
I think this is where gamings are dangerous. And this is an area where I support legislative control. We already have regulations on stock markets, on currency trading, on casino, on auction, on the general trading, etc, we might as well have regulations on the worst kind of speculation: speculation on nothing.
... does this mean anything? So I have a couple of questions:
1. Who is "consumerist" anyway? I can't find much information to that question on their web site, I saw only 3 names. So maybe they are a bunch of activist geeks, but that by no means represents the general populace. What could the result mean? Nothing much to the general public, I guess...
2. What's the method to get to that conclusion? Is it representative? How did they draw their sample? I don't think so, I can't even find any info on how the poll is made. If people really hate those bastards, how come they keep on sending their hard-earned money to those fuckheads?
3. Since when RIAA is a company? This already puts a question mark on their method.
What you are saying seems like a laudable goal, but in order to achieve that goal, you are assuming that everyone (at least those involved in scientific research) needs to be expert in a lot of fields. At the rate we are generating "knowledge" right now, it is already very hard for a single person to know a single field in depth, let alone having the breadth to cover more than one field.
Let's take Physics or Math. Any physicist or mathematician can claim to know every single branch of Physics or Math in depth? You might have breadth, but will have to sacrifice depth, which means that you wouldn't be able to advance a certain field even further. In that case, you might be good in a lot of things, but great in nothing.
... doomed if all they can do was set up a lousy web site to ask for ideas from people on the street.
That said, that's what the so-called "business consultants" do anyway. So what do you expect?
(Note: I'm a long time Economist reader, I like it, although I do not necessarily agree with their sometimes-very-conservative view. I think they should throw those fuckheads out of the window instead of wasting time there.)
I have dry skin, and static electricity has always been a nasty problem, especially during winter time. I'd be happy if someone can come up with a suit which can use that source of energy to charge my batteries.
Ok, I'm a computer programmer (major in CS), and I don't know much about electricity, and electro-mechanical stuff. And the question I'm going to ask might seem like it's coming from behind, so please turn up your tolerance level a bit.
I have an issue with dealing with heat here. Since almost everything must deal with dissipating heat, why can't someone invent something that collect the heat and re-use it to generate even more power? Everyone is putting a lot of genius into all kinds of methods to dissipate the heat, why not collect it for re-use? Just like garbage, we used to think about methods to dump it, now we are recycling it to get a lot more value out of it. Heat is energy, why don't we think about collecting it then?
I'm no good in mechanics and chemistry, but here's some ideas that pop up in my head (without too much thinking, of course). We certainly can collect the heat, pipe it through some kind of pipe, which at the end, heats up some chemical gas. As the gas expand, the pressure created is used to turn some other turbine (which is then used to generate more power again). As the gas expands, it will eventually cools down, and come back down, and gets reheated again.
The chemical gas gets heated, turn some turbine, get cooled down, reheated again. The turbine generates more power, and at the same time generate more heat. The heat is collected and re-used again. And the cycle continues. Now, we lose some efficiency in the whole process, therefore, we still need external fuel to power the whole thing. But by recycling the heat, can't we make the whole process more efficient, and reduce fuel consumption that way?
pissed off, shake your head, blaspheme god/allah/budha/your_own_divinity, shoot your computer monitor,.... or you can vote with your money.
I used to spend quite a bit of money on music, movies and theaters. I recently spent a weekend working out my budget in the last 15 years (wonder why I kept all these shits for all these years), and found out I spent on average 5K per year on those items (before I made my decisions, that is). The biggest chunk goes to CDs and cassette tapes. It's even more than what I spent on food (Unbelievable, I spent less than 50$ per week on food).
Then, in early 2001, I decided not to do that anymore. I haven't bought a CD since then, went to theaters only twice, rented movies less than 10 times. Now, every time I crave for movies, I go out for an excursion in the forest or in the mountain, or get a good book (which cost the same as going to theater but the pleasure of reading certainly lasts longer). Well, all these monies I've saved...
I wish I've done this 20 years earlier. Imagine all the monies saved, with wise investment or accumulated interest, my pension fund would have been much better off.
I'm not saying you should give up all these, but you certainly don't have to pay your "taxes". You can certainly do something about it though, like give less money to those fatty RIAA executives, for once.
There's a chinese expression that literally translates to "spear and shield", meaning paradox. There was a weapon merchant selling spear and shield, claiming that his spear can cut thru any shield existed, and that his shield can protect against any spear existed.
Looks like Northrop Grunman is doing the same thing here, selling on one hand space laser gun that can destroy anything from outer space, and protective shield against laser gun on the other hand.
That reminds me of a chinese movie a few years ago, titled something like "dream fulfiller" or some sort like that. It's about a tiny company that promises to make your wildest dream come true. Then, a filthy rich businessman heard about that, as he constantly told people that he would like to live the simple life of a poor peasant, just simple life, no cell phone, no meeting, no meat, no shit, just simple meal. He paid big bucks for that privilege, the company drove him to a very far, remote village which has no transportation link to the outside world, took away his personals (watch, cell phones, money,....), and promised to come back to pick him up in 3 months, leaving him there with an old peasant couple. The guy thought he was going to get a lot of fun. Three months later, the company came back to pick him up, and found him live like a dog, an inch away to be sent to psychiatric hospital.
Another "customer" was a very famous movie star. She complained about being too famous, and that she could not have a normal life with privacy, and that she could never get out of her house without constantly surrounded by fans and reporters. Her wish was to live a life just like the normal people. At the end, she becomes just normal people, no more fans, and guess what, no movie company called her for any project anymore. She called back, and all movies directors/producers said they thought she didn't want to be bothered, so there was no call. By that time, her career as movie star is over.
So, fantasy is fantasy, life is life. You might fantasize all kinds of wild dreams, but it'd be better if you just live your life, fully.
What kind of mech-tech reporting is that? No picture, no video?
a nimble, four-legged robot that can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick
I'm disappointed, I was looking to see how is this mule going to be kicked, as I'm re-reading The Foundations and am looking for new ways to kick the Mule...
That reminds me of a (quite large) project a few years ago. We were deciding what language to use, what framework, what methodology, etc. And the boss asked:"How many frameworks can we use in the project?" We gave a few, and he wrote down one himself. He then drew one on each corner of a paper, put his pencil in the middle, and spinned. It pointed to COBOL, which is the one he wrote down.
Imagine the look on our face... One of the colleagues later told us he almost peed in his pants for that experience.
Seriously though, this story is just a bit exagerated, but not that much, the selection process was almost like what I just described:)
Slashdot Mirror
... but on the whole media sphere too. This is especially true since the George W. election, there are all kinds of funny words popping up all over the place, such as "evildoer" (Let's be honest here, raise your hand if you didn't frown when you heard this term for the first time) and the likes. With that kind of Newspeak, I could imagine that the future will only be plusplusgood.
China will democratise, when the conditions are riped, and one of them especially, would be when there are more city population than rural population, which is currently not the case. The other condition would be that there is a huge internal force (e.g. from a whole generation) that demands it. Think of the baby boom generation which had catalyzed a whole chain of changes in the western hemisphere in the 1960s, with a 1968 Paris manif.
And that is only personal opinions.
Unfortunately for China right now, the two conditions are not met. The first one is obvious. The second one is a little problematic. There are three segments of population, and I would call them "three generations" to make things simpler.
1) The old generations, those participated in the long march and the cultural revolution, are currently either afraid of changes, or too busy to hold on to their power, and make as much money as they can, while they still can. This is the generation which has the most to lose in case of too much sudden changes. Most of them will not be able to adapt.
2) The second generation, those who were born during the cultural revolution, and that's the generation involved in the 1989 event. But this generation is currently too fragmented to form a noticeable force. Those who are doing well are joining the first generation, they don't want sudden change. Gradual change is good for them, they are making to the elite group. Those who are not doing well (the majority) are too busy making a living, with a family to feed, etc, the ambition for a better world has kinda subsided with age too. And they are sandwiched between two generations that do not want change, more or less.
3) The third generation, those who were born in the 1980s and 1990s, this is the generation of little "emperors" and little "empresses". No big dream, not much ambition, life is good as it is, they will inherit everything from their parents and grand-parents anyway, so why bother? This is what I call the "Life is good" generation.
Changes are coming gradually, but don't expect a sudden movement to tear down the wall or anything. A model for gradual change, or a model for sudden change a la Berlin Wall which ripped through the whole Eastern Europe? Which one is better is debatable for now. What is good for Eastern Europe is necessarily good for China? Again, debatable.
But the gradual change model is so far, so good. So, let's cross the finger, and let's work together toward a better world, as a whole. I am optimistic.
Oh great, with contents like this on /., this assures that I won't be able to access /. from China before long. How am I going to get news that matt.... ...Connection timed out.
Actually, you are arrogant, ignorant, self-centric, and you talk through your behind.
There are lot more than just english-language web sites, and I hate to break that to you, there are a lot more people who don't speak/read English than those who do, and that's the beauty of this planet we call Earth. So, get your head out of the sand, get your arse out of your mom's basement, and go to some places which are a little farther than the local convenience store near that said basement.
You can access a lot more information too if you can read Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi, Creole, Vietnamese, Thai, Mongol, Portuguese, etc, etc. May I suggest you learn another, or two other languages too? That will certainly give you a better view, and see how diverse our Planet is. And seriously, I prefer it that way too.
It's great to be able to read English, as there are a lot more contents in English than in any other languages currently (and I'd like to emphasize "currently", it's by no mean true forever, just wait for a few years to see). But to suggest that everyone be able to read another language is mere arrogance.
And with the concentration of english-language-based media in a few hands right now, I'm glad that there are more to offer, especially perspectives from a different cultural and political background. And power to everyone.
Heck, I'm just trolling.
And regarding the English version of Wikipedia, no, it's not always available. It's blocked most of the time, I live in Shanghai and I should know that, as I try to access it almost every week.
the following conditions are true:
- Patents and copyrights must have a limited time frame, and can not be extended (don't make me talk about that mickey mouse thing)
- All copyrighted materials must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. Otherwise, you don't the protection of the law. If you don't register, your work becomes public domain.
- All patented "inventions" must be registered at a central repository, and accessible to all for perusing. If you are patenting software, all your source codes about the patent must be in the repository, and accessible to all. If you are patenting a certain method on chip design, all your schema and related materials must be in, and accessible to all. Same thing for any other patents, regardless whether it is an avionic patent, a chair design, a method on desalinating sea water, etc. If the materials about your patent are not in (or incomplete), then you don't receive any law's protection, all you can do is to consider as industrial secrets, or some such. And anyone with the right skills should be able to use that materials and come up with exactly the same result that is describe in the patent application document. If people can't get the same result, you lose the patent, even if the patent has been issued, and you get slapped a fine for wasting people's time and money.
- There should be a probation period when people can submit prior art related to an application. Just like before you are issued a marriage certificate, it is published in the city hall so anyone can protest if he/she has the evidence. Now, no one can come up with some internal code (or schema) which has has never been published to the public or registered as patent and expect to contest it. Well, you kept it secret, someone came up with another (or even the same way) to do the same thing, and applied for a patent. You can't say anything, you made your choice to keep it secret.
- All copyrights and patents must be no longer than 20 years and can not be extended. The copyrighted materials automatically become public domain as soon as the author is declared dead. I think 20 years is already ridiculously long, given the pace of technology advancement. Setting the protection period to a shorter time can also help to accelerate progress as well, so it's good. Look at the current state of copyrights, a lot of authors are dead, but their materials are still copyrighted. The dead can't create anymore, so what is the copyright protection for anyways? You might say someone might have some dark intention, but that's not what copyright and patent laws should care about.
- Applicants are charged a flat fee for each application, and the fee is indexed to the inflation rate every year.
As long as there are reasonable restrictions, I'm all for copyright and patents. You should be able to copyright or patent anything.
Well, the question is, why is the Female Body Inspector interested in him? Oh wait, you talked about that FBI...
This is a sad situation where rich countries just dump their toxic wastes to the poor countries. It's a quick solution, and does not cause much (if any?) local political discussion. Out of sight, out of mind.
Unfortunately, this is a very irresponsible way to dispose off the toxic waste. Sure, the rich can claim that it is actually beneficial to the local economy in the poor countries. As the article mentioned, some dump site employs as many as 100,000 people. And sure, it's a global economy, meaning that anything can be "exported".
But, have we ever considered the consequences to the planet as a whole? After all, this planet belongs to everyone, and we should take up the responsibility to protect it better. The rich countries have the proper means and resources to handle the wastes better than the poor countries. But instead, we all chose the easy way out: we just let the poor poison the planet. It's currently poisoning China's, India's and Nigeria's backyard, so that America, Europe, Japan etc, can have their own little clean and green lawn.
Guess what happens when they run out of dumping ground? I visited a site a couple of years ago. I happened to ask what they would do in this case. The foreman said:"Easy, there are plenty of fishermen out of job, as the fish stock is running out. They would be happy to help us dump into the ocean." Ha, same attitude as to how the rich get rid off their wastes.
Good to know that we are all alike, rich or poor. Eventually, it will come to bite us all back from behind. Happy dumping, everyone.
... degenerated into a dedicated ad site for Apple, Google and the gang lately. I set my filters to filter out junk like these, but still can't avoid them. I guess the nature of what matters has changed.
Yeah, go ahead fanboys, mod me to hell.
Mod parent up please. This is what I was going to say.
The guy who proposed this is smoking crack. This does not solve any of the problem, and just put artificial entry barriers to the industry to protect the current banks from any new competition. And while you are at it, why stop at 50K, why not 50 million instead? It's not like any bank can't put up with 50 million either.
Putting layers and layers of stupid "solutions" like that is not going to solve the problem.
This is absolutely cool. There are a lot more places where "brittle books" are laying around, waiting to be digitalized and distributed to the whole world. And as the technologies used in this project are going to be refined and improved, and eventually released, everyone will benefit.
The question now is: would they accept technical contributions from the public (I mean, OS geek communities), just like other open source projects? I know a lot of people would be eager to join. How about a SETI-like system to harness the power of desktop computers around the world to help with image processing and OCR? Hey, I got 4 decent desktop computers that can contribute at least 8 hours/day each.
When people are too addictive to games such that the line between reality and virtuality is blurred, it starts to get into a dangerous point. Life suddenly becomes all about speculation, nothing is real and no productivity is gained for human societies as a whole.
It's the worst kind of speculation we can have, worse than speculating on the stock or commodity market. If you buy a bunch of stocks on a company, and if the market crashes, you still own bits of that company, and the company may be just doing well, making a profit every year. If you buy the so-called lands in SL, and if SL were to die, what are you left up with?
I think this is where gamings are dangerous. And this is an area where I support legislative control. We already have regulations on stock markets, on currency trading, on casino, on auction, on the general trading, etc, we might as well have regulations on the worst kind of speculation: speculation on nothing.
... does this mean anything? So I have a couple of questions:
1. Who is "consumerist" anyway? I can't find much information to that question on their web site, I saw only 3 names. So maybe they are a bunch of activist geeks, but that by no means represents the general populace. What could the result mean? Nothing much to the general public, I guess...
2. What's the method to get to that conclusion? Is it representative? How did they draw their sample? I don't think so, I can't even find any info on how the poll is made. If people really hate those bastards, how come they keep on sending their hard-earned money to those fuckheads?
3. Since when RIAA is a company? This already puts a question mark on their method.
What you are saying seems like a laudable goal, but in order to achieve that goal, you are assuming that everyone (at least those involved in scientific research) needs to be expert in a lot of fields. At the rate we are generating "knowledge" right now, it is already very hard for a single person to know a single field in depth, let alone having the breadth to cover more than one field.
Let's take Physics or Math. Any physicist or mathematician can claim to know every single branch of Physics or Math in depth? You might have breadth, but will have to sacrifice depth, which means that you wouldn't be able to advance a certain field even further. In that case, you might be good in a lot of things, but great in nothing.
... doomed if all they can do was set up a lousy web site to ask for ideas from people on the street.
That said, that's what the so-called "business consultants" do anyway. So what do you expect?
(Note: I'm a long time Economist reader, I like it, although I do not necessarily agree with their sometimes-very-conservative view. I think they should throw those fuckheads out of the window instead of wasting time there.)
I can't access Wikipedia from China, you insentive clod!
I have dry skin, and static electricity has always been a nasty problem, especially during winter time. I'd be happy if someone can come up with a suit which can use that source of energy to charge my batteries.
Ok, I'm a computer programmer (major in CS), and I don't know much about electricity, and electro-mechanical stuff. And the question I'm going to ask might seem like it's coming from behind, so please turn up your tolerance level a bit.
I have an issue with dealing with heat here. Since almost everything must deal with dissipating heat, why can't someone invent something that collect the heat and re-use it to generate even more power? Everyone is putting a lot of genius into all kinds of methods to dissipate the heat, why not collect it for re-use? Just like garbage, we used to think about methods to dump it, now we are recycling it to get a lot more value out of it. Heat is energy, why don't we think about collecting it then?
I'm no good in mechanics and chemistry, but here's some ideas that pop up in my head (without too much thinking, of course). We certainly can collect the heat, pipe it through some kind of pipe, which at the end, heats up some chemical gas. As the gas expand, the pressure created is used to turn some other turbine (which is then used to generate more power again). As the gas expands, it will eventually cools down, and come back down, and gets reheated again.
The chemical gas gets heated, turn some turbine, get cooled down, reheated again. The turbine generates more power, and at the same time generate more heat. The heat is collected and re-used again. And the cycle continues. Now, we lose some efficiency in the whole process, therefore, we still need external fuel to power the whole thing. But by recycling the heat, can't we make the whole process more efficient, and reduce fuel consumption that way?
pissed off, shake your head, blaspheme god/allah/budha/your_own_divinity, shoot your computer monitor, .... or you can vote with your money.
I used to spend quite a bit of money on music, movies and theaters. I recently spent a weekend working out my budget in the last 15 years (wonder why I kept all these shits for all these years), and found out I spent on average 5K per year on those items (before I made my decisions, that is). The biggest chunk goes to CDs and cassette tapes. It's even more than what I spent on food (Unbelievable, I spent less than 50$ per week on food).
Then, in early 2001, I decided not to do that anymore. I haven't bought a CD since then, went to theaters only twice, rented movies less than 10 times. Now, every time I crave for movies, I go out for an excursion in the forest or in the mountain, or get a good book (which cost the same as going to theater but the pleasure of reading certainly lasts longer). Well, all these monies I've saved...
I wish I've done this 20 years earlier. Imagine all the monies saved, with wise investment or accumulated interest, my pension fund would have been much better off.
I'm not saying you should give up all these, but you certainly don't have to pay your "taxes". You can certainly do something about it though, like give less money to those fatty RIAA executives, for once.
zh.wikipedia.org is accessible from here, in Shanghai, just did that for a check.
We, the 1.2 billions loyalists, modded you insightful. Don't you like it? Want some fries with it?
There's a chinese expression that literally translates to "spear and shield", meaning paradox. There was a weapon merchant selling spear and shield, claiming that his spear can cut thru any shield existed, and that his shield can protect against any spear existed.
Looks like Northrop Grunman is doing the same thing here, selling on one hand space laser gun that can destroy anything from outer space, and protective shield against laser gun on the other hand.
Someone is getting screwed somewhere.
I assert that there is a torrent of the proof somewhere on the net. Now can someone prove that, please?
That reminds me of a chinese movie a few years ago, titled something like "dream fulfiller" or some sort like that. It's about a tiny company that promises to make your wildest dream come true. Then, a filthy rich businessman heard about that, as he constantly told people that he would like to live the simple life of a poor peasant, just simple life, no cell phone, no meeting, no meat, no shit, just simple meal. He paid big bucks for that privilege, the company drove him to a very far, remote village which has no transportation link to the outside world, took away his personals (watch, cell phones, money, ....), and promised to come back to pick him up in 3 months, leaving him there with an old peasant couple. The guy thought he was going to get a lot of fun. Three months later, the company came back to pick him up, and found him live like a dog, an inch away to be sent to psychiatric hospital.
Another "customer" was a very famous movie star. She complained about being too famous, and that she could not have a normal life with privacy, and that she could never get out of her house without constantly surrounded by fans and reporters. Her wish was to live a life just like the normal people. At the end, she becomes just normal people, no more fans, and guess what, no movie company called her for any project anymore. She called back, and all movies directors/producers said they thought she didn't want to be bothered, so there was no call. By that time, her career as movie star is over.
So, fantasy is fantasy, life is life. You might fantasize all kinds of wild dreams, but it'd be better if you just live your life, fully.
a nimble, four-legged robot that can recover its balance even after being given a hefty kick
I'm disappointed, I was looking to see how is this mule going to be kicked, as I'm re-reading The Foundations and am looking for new ways to kick the Mule...
That reminds me of a (quite large) project a few years ago. We were deciding what language to use, what framework, what methodology, etc. And the boss asked:"How many frameworks can we use in the project?" We gave a few, and he wrote down one himself. He then drew one on each corner of a paper, put his pencil in the middle, and spinned. It pointed to COBOL, which is the one he wrote down.
:)
Imagine the look on our face... One of the colleagues later told us he almost peed in his pants for that experience.
Seriously though, this story is just a bit exagerated, but not that much, the selection process was almost like what I just described