Because you're Canadian. Canadians, in my experience (several years living in the country), are more considerate of other people, especially when in enclosed public spaces. They act like polite guests, at least a lot more than Americans do (I've lived on all 3 coasts, and traveled through something like 38 states, and have met plenty of tourists in the places I lived).
When cellphones started to become common, in the mid/late-1990s, I lived in Toronto. Anyone talking on a cellphone in a restaurant got plenty of stares until they stopped. Plenty more would have said something, but were too nice, as would plenty more who wouldn't even stare. After several years of that kind of social enforcement, the manners were established.
In the US, we went through that phase a long time ago, starting in the early 1990s, and we completely blew it.
The talking on the phone I can deal with, by talking to the rude talker. Sometimes I take the other half of their conversation, or just act like they're talking to me, other times I just tell them to stop talking, or just yell "WHAT? WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" They almost always shut up and/or leave.
What really needs automated jamming is ringing. Phones should be required to accept a signal that switches them from ringing to vibrating. Then movie theaters, public transit vehicles, and other places where the public is forced to share a space with some people too rude to keep to themselves. Buzzing won't interfere wih their functioning, it won't privately infringe on the public airwaves except to send the signal.
The damn phones should be shipped to vibrate by default anyway, with a ringtone an explicit option, and a single puttonpress to switch between the modes.
And how can I make it direct the jamming signal, so I can point it at drivers with phones pressed to their faces? I've never seen anyone who is a better driver when holding a phone to their face.
I want the jamming to sound to them like a wild screech of noisy feedback.
Well sure, but that's exactly why I asked "Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?"
The point isn't some abstraction about efficiency. It's the most concrete point about where the energy is supposed to actually come from, while we get all excited about improving one bottleneck in one segment in one conduit from whatever source to our consumption.
The QM theoretical peak efficiency of photosynthesis is 12%. Sugar cane gets 8%, the most of any land plant. But I haven't seen stats showing the average is so low. Where can I find them?
All these chemicals are just storage media for energy released by the fuel cells. Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?
Making the alcohol consumes the very energy released by the fuel cells along with water. If the alcohol is fermented vegetation, that bacterial process consumes some of the energy to process the higher-energy sugars and carbohydrates in the vegetation. The vegetation is the key, because it converts the actual source of energy, sunlight, into those sugars. But by the time the alcohol hits the fuel cell, already over 95% of the sun's energy is lost in other processes before the final 50-80% max efficiency is applied to the usable 5%.
You've gotta be crazy to use snail mail for anything but shipping packages (like anthrax or explosives). And everyone on the Internet is crazy, therefore relatively well adjusted.
We can have all that. As I said, I'm not talking about a new interpreter automatically downloaded, installed and executing locally with privileges for any script that calls it from any URL, just because the infrastructure supports it. I pointed out that the GUI should handle installation of language modules the way it does CAs and certificates. To help ensure that only actually trusted sources work. Much like installing, say, the Flash or Java plugins, which are exactly that: different language plugins that map downloadable scripts to the browser's API (and through it, the OS and IPC API).
Part of the solution is safe languages. Another part is a trust web that minimizes the trusted sources (eg. just Javascript, "MSScript", and maybe "localITScript"). The combo of both safety nets, and others, is the balance point in the typical tradeoff between function and security.
The languages aren't really the problem. What is a problem is a single "browser" class API across all browsers, across all platforms. Then that API can have modules that read scripts in their language, and calls the underlying API. The browser maker can validate whichever modules they want and bundle them. Scripts call a language by its ID (eg. "language=javascript; version=mozilla.org.2007-5-20.1"), which the browser uses as a key to select the runtime engine. When the key doesn't match an installed/cached engine, the browser shows an error. The user can configure the browser in its settings to add a module, the same way the user can add CAs, certificates or other security validators (which the module does include, if it's any good).
The other problem is that a single language means more abstract problems are solved, rather than some work solving more going to solve fewer, but in different languages. This whole thing is just a repeat of the "VBScript vs Javascript" battle that Microsoft fought (and lost) against Netscape. Why Microsoft is fighting it again I don't know, except it probably has some reason to think it can win this time now, and grab "home court advantage" in the browser competition. Which itself is a waste of time, that MS already lost several times in every way that matters except total installed base, which is what matters most, and isn't changing. But browsers used to accommodate both VBScript and Javascript, depending on which one the script called, so there's no reason not to do it again, except the same redundancy reasons as before.
Which is why I say open it to anyone. If MS succeeds in forcing a "dual standard", why should that work to MS' advantage only? Why not say they forced open the door to everyone, so long as you trust them. Which also lets users (and their admins) say they don't trust MS. And opens more opportunities to anyone else with a language to try. Personally I prefer Perl, and its huge library of modules.
You ignore that we have the same problem with Javascript's executable, and the same solution: trust only the executable from the trustworth source, which in this case is bundled. The only difference I'm suggesting is that the executable be required to be trusted, probably from just a few sources (eg. Microsoft and Mozilla, maybe the maker of some other browser if they want).
The problem is when the trust layer is ignored, and everything is just trusted. The key to that is making only a few, actually accountable sources of language executables trusted by default, and a GUI that is both lockable by a remote admin, and warns the consequences of adding trusted sources. Most everyone who can't figure out who not to trust won't ever change their defaults anyway.
Or we can have browsers and "Javascript" that are never completely compatible, which is the current situation.
Earth's sister has played a role in teaching us to value our environment: how extraordinary to think that the next giant leap for the environmental movement might be a campaign to stop state-sponsored mining companies chomping her up in glorious privacy, a quarter of a million miles from our ravaged home.
He doesn't even give a reason why the environmental movement might want to stop mining the Moon. Maybe he thinks environmentalism is about "pretty Nature, don't hurt her", rather than survival and legacy, but he doesn't even say so.
The only argument his protest makes about mining the Moon is in favor: mining the He-3 would reduce the need to damage the Earth producing energy here.
There might be an argument for science preserving the layout of the Lunar surface for study (eg, the record of impact angles and composition which accumulate billions of years of astrophysical history), but there are technical solutions to that problem, and he doesn't even mention them (except some handwaving about lacking "science" in our goals).
That is the kind of taking "environmentalism's" name in vain that gives legitimate environmentalism a bad name.
The breakthrough in fuel cells will come when they can deliver 50% or better efficiency from gasoline. Then the dinosaur egg will finally have hatched a chicken, which can then lay a chicken egg: other fuels that fuel cells, and their dependent motors/transmissions/etc, can use. That is a much more likely transition scenario than getting the fuels first, or switching to fuel cells and their fuels simultaneously.
You do know that the Javascript, in any version, that we're talking about is "executable content on the Web", right? Or are you just making some kind of point about prohibiting any version of Javascript?
The solution is the same as what protects other risky data in browsers (and otherwise on the "Web"). Just as there are code signing authorities, the language plugins should be signed and available from trusted sources. Eg. Microsoft and Mozilla, and from my friend's server in the lab across campus.
I'd prefer to see scripts specify which language interpreter they're tested under, and the browser (or other executing object) retrieve an interpreter for it, caching them (and bundling popular ones if necessary). Why should old scripts stop working because they fixed something I never used in its interpreter, and left out the things I did use?
Compiz doesn't work on every graphics card (or with every driver). The Compiz-Fusion wiki needs reports of which HW/drivers work or don't. That list, in turn, will help recruit many more people to test and develop the feature.
Yeah, he's smart about nanotech science, but he knows nothing about how technology goes through engineering and then - where it counts - through marketing. He has no idea how long this stuff will take to get to the market, let alone replace the stuff they'll be squeezing the most profits from once their own R&D is fully paid off.
The LinuxMCE project looks like it would be better than the wimpy/uptight WindowsMCE for running a home theater in a feature-stuffed home media network, including content, telephony, automation, alarms, remote monitoring, and all kinds of bundled features of disparate apps for "the Home of the Future". But it also looks like it's got plenty of holes in support and reliability. It could use a lot of attention from developers and users feeding back improvements.
FWIW, if the project porting X and codecs to the PS3 had more developers, the PS3 would be an excellent home media terminal running LinuxMCE without whatever Sony's planning to saddle it with.
Yeah, just like 1970s resumes featured a litany of acid trips and other drug experience, in the heyday of people overachieving in those virtual worlds looking to cash in during the "squaretime" necessary to pay the rent.
Anonymous failure Coward, free space loss is calculated for isotropic antennas, not directed, high frequency lasers.
When the platform has a "structural failure" or other defect, we repair it, or perhaps we use it for something else, or maybe even scuttle it into the atmosphere to burn up. Like we do with any orbital object.
In your "physics", satellites and lunar telecoms are impossible. I'm glad I failed your physics, because it's nonsense.
Slashdot Mirror
Because you're Canadian. Canadians, in my experience (several years living in the country), are more considerate of other people, especially when in enclosed public spaces. They act like polite guests, at least a lot more than Americans do (I've lived on all 3 coasts, and traveled through something like 38 states, and have met plenty of tourists in the places I lived).
When cellphones started to become common, in the mid/late-1990s, I lived in Toronto. Anyone talking on a cellphone in a restaurant got plenty of stares until they stopped. Plenty more would have said something, but were too nice, as would plenty more who wouldn't even stare. After several years of that kind of social enforcement, the manners were established.
In the US, we went through that phase a long time ago, starting in the early 1990s, and we completely blew it.
Do you feel the same way about the spitting that people used to do in every restauarant and bar? How about littering?
"The government" isn't just some enemy gang. It's the people delegating some labor by consensus, applied by rules equally to everyone.
The talking on the phone I can deal with, by talking to the rude talker. Sometimes I take the other half of their conversation, or just act like they're talking to me, other times I just tell them to stop talking, or just yell "WHAT? WHAT? I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" They almost always shut up and/or leave.
What really needs automated jamming is ringing. Phones should be required to accept a signal that switches them from ringing to vibrating. Then movie theaters, public transit vehicles, and other places where the public is forced to share a space with some people too rude to keep to themselves. Buzzing won't interfere wih their functioning, it won't privately infringe on the public airwaves except to send the signal.
The damn phones should be shipped to vibrate by default anyway, with a ringtone an explicit option, and a single puttonpress to switch between the modes.
And how can I make it direct the jamming signal, so I can point it at drivers with phones pressed to their faces? I've never seen anyone who is a better driver when holding a phone to their face.
I want the jamming to sound to them like a wild screech of noisy feedback.
Who's got my Christmas present?
Well sure, but that's exactly why I asked "Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?"
The point isn't some abstraction about efficiency. It's the most concrete point about where the energy is supposed to actually come from, while we get all excited about improving one bottleneck in one segment in one conduit from whatever source to our consumption.
The QM theoretical peak efficiency of photosynthesis is 12%. Sugar cane gets 8%, the most of any land plant. But I haven't seen stats showing the average is so low. Where can I find them?
All these chemicals are just storage media for energy released by the fuel cells. Where is all that alcohol supposed to come from, Russia's motherlode of vodka wells?
Making the alcohol consumes the very energy released by the fuel cells along with water. If the alcohol is fermented vegetation, that bacterial process consumes some of the energy to process the higher-energy sugars and carbohydrates in the vegetation. The vegetation is the key, because it converts the actual source of energy, sunlight, into those sugars. But by the time the alcohol hits the fuel cell, already over 95% of the sun's energy is lost in other processes before the final 50-80% max efficiency is applied to the usable 5%.
Actually, "tautology" reminds me of several arguments with geeks I've settled over the years using something I learned in my philo minor.
Try "intractable" some time and watch the fur fly.
You've gotta be crazy to use snail mail for anything but shipping packages (like anthrax or explosives). And everyone on the Internet is crazy, therefore relatively well adjusted.
This study is a tautology.
We can have all that. As I said, I'm not talking about a new interpreter automatically downloaded, installed and executing locally with privileges for any script that calls it from any URL, just because the infrastructure supports it. I pointed out that the GUI should handle installation of language modules the way it does CAs and certificates. To help ensure that only actually trusted sources work. Much like installing, say, the Flash or Java plugins, which are exactly that: different language plugins that map downloadable scripts to the browser's API (and through it, the OS and IPC API).
Part of the solution is safe languages. Another part is a trust web that minimizes the trusted sources (eg. just Javascript, "MSScript", and maybe "localITScript"). The combo of both safety nets, and others, is the balance point in the typical tradeoff between function and security.
The languages aren't really the problem. What is a problem is a single "browser" class API across all browsers, across all platforms. Then that API can have modules that read scripts in their language, and calls the underlying API. The browser maker can validate whichever modules they want and bundle them. Scripts call a language by its ID (eg. "language=javascript; version=mozilla.org.2007-5-20.1"), which the browser uses as a key to select the runtime engine. When the key doesn't match an installed/cached engine, the browser shows an error. The user can configure the browser in its settings to add a module, the same way the user can add CAs, certificates or other security validators (which the module does include, if it's any good).
The other problem is that a single language means more abstract problems are solved, rather than some work solving more going to solve fewer, but in different languages. This whole thing is just a repeat of the "VBScript vs Javascript" battle that Microsoft fought (and lost) against Netscape. Why Microsoft is fighting it again I don't know, except it probably has some reason to think it can win this time now, and grab "home court advantage" in the browser competition. Which itself is a waste of time, that MS already lost several times in every way that matters except total installed base, which is what matters most, and isn't changing. But browsers used to accommodate both VBScript and Javascript, depending on which one the script called, so there's no reason not to do it again, except the same redundancy reasons as before.
Which is why I say open it to anyone. If MS succeeds in forcing a "dual standard", why should that work to MS' advantage only? Why not say they forced open the door to everyone, so long as you trust them. Which also lets users (and their admins) say they don't trust MS. And opens more opportunities to anyone else with a language to try. Personally I prefer Perl, and its huge library of modules.
You ignore that we have the same problem with Javascript's executable, and the same solution: trust only the executable from the trustworth source, which in this case is bundled. The only difference I'm suggesting is that the executable be required to be trusted, probably from just a few sources (eg. Microsoft and Mozilla, maybe the maker of some other browser if they want).
The problem is when the trust layer is ignored, and everything is just trusted. The key to that is making only a few, actually accountable sources of language executables trusted by default, and a GUI that is both lockable by a remote admin, and warns the consequences of adding trusted sources. Most everyone who can't figure out who not to trust won't ever change their defaults anyway.
Or we can have browsers and "Javascript" that are never completely compatible, which is the current situation.
He doesn't even give a reason why the environmental movement might want to stop mining the Moon. Maybe he thinks environmentalism is about "pretty Nature, don't hurt her", rather than survival and legacy, but he doesn't even say so.
The only argument his protest makes about mining the Moon is in favor: mining the He-3 would reduce the need to damage the Earth producing energy here.
There might be an argument for science preserving the layout of the Lunar surface for study (eg, the record of impact angles and composition which accumulate billions of years of astrophysical history), but there are technical solutions to that problem, and he doesn't even mention them (except some handwaving about lacking "science" in our goals).
That is the kind of taking "environmentalism's" name in vain that gives legitimate environmentalism a bad name.
Then turn it off. The rest of the Web seems to find value in AJAX, and executable content with protections in general.
If you like Web 1.0, it's still an option. As is turning off SSL and never trusting the Web with any data, executable or otherwise.
The breakthrough in fuel cells will come when they can deliver 50% or better efficiency from gasoline. Then the dinosaur egg will finally have hatched a chicken, which can then lay a chicken egg: other fuels that fuel cells, and their dependent motors/transmissions/etc, can use. That is a much more likely transition scenario than getting the fuels first, or switching to fuel cells and their fuels simultaneously.
You do know that the Javascript, in any version, that we're talking about is "executable content on the Web", right? Or are you just making some kind of point about prohibiting any version of Javascript?
The solution is the same as what protects other risky data in browsers (and otherwise on the "Web"). Just as there are code signing authorities, the language plugins should be signed and available from trusted sources. Eg. Microsoft and Mozilla, and from my friend's server in the lab across campus.
I'd prefer to see scripts specify which language interpreter they're tested under, and the browser (or other executing object) retrieve an interpreter for it, caching them (and bundling popular ones if necessary). Why should old scripts stop working because they fixed something I never used in its interpreter, and left out the things I did use?
Compiz doesn't work on every graphics card (or with every driver). The Compiz-Fusion wiki needs reports of which HW/drivers work or don't. That list, in turn, will help recruit many more people to test and develop the feature.
Yeah, he's smart about nanotech science, but he knows nothing about how technology goes through engineering and then - where it counts - through marketing. He has no idea how long this stuff will take to get to the market, let alone replace the stuff they'll be squeezing the most profits from once their own R&D is fully paid off.
Who's a good doggie? Good dooogggiee! Good dooggie!
I'm rubber, you're glue.
The LinuxMCE project looks like it would be better than the wimpy/uptight WindowsMCE for running a home theater in a feature-stuffed home media network, including content, telephony, automation, alarms, remote monitoring, and all kinds of bundled features of disparate apps for "the Home of the Future". But it also looks like it's got plenty of holes in support and reliability. It could use a lot of attention from developers and users feeding back improvements.
FWIW, if the project porting X and codecs to the PS3 had more developers, the PS3 would be an excellent home media terminal running LinuxMCE without whatever Sony's planning to saddle it with.
Yeah, just like 1970s resumes featured a litany of acid trips and other drug experience, in the heyday of people overachieving in those virtual worlds looking to cash in during the "squaretime" necessary to pay the rent.
Anonymous failure Coward, free space loss is calculated for isotropic antennas, not directed, high frequency lasers.
When the platform has a "structural failure" or other defect, we repair it, or perhaps we use it for something else, or maybe even scuttle it into the atmosphere to burn up. Like we do with any orbital object.
In your "physics", satellites and lunar telecoms are impossible. I'm glad I failed your physics, because it's nonsense.
I got a number, so I don't hate America.