I guess with my father having been a pharmacist for something like 40 years, I might be qualified to moderate your post -- as off topic for all the Corba references, or -1 overrated. (Well, maybe. I'm in a bit of a bad mood this morning, so maybe I'm reading your post too critically....)
Doctors with bad handwriting is a well known problem and joke -- but not nearly the problem most people think. Sometimes even the prescribing doctors don't have all of the knowledge needed to accurately and safely prescribe, and the pharmacist is the sole person with enough training to catch most if not all of the problem prescriptions -- if they have time, strong backing from management, and a good relationship with the doctors.
Back before most of the robotic technology for pharmacy was even a twinkle in some engineer's eye, they had systems that would greatly speed up the filling of pill prescriptions. During this same period of time, my dad (who I am very proud of for this) was on the phone with two different manufacturers trying to determine the stability of their drugs at weak dilutions for a less than 2 lb premature baby that was in pretty deep trouble). Even the doctors didn't know. In less than an hour they all determined that a) the dilution's would not be stable, b) alternate methods and drugs -- sometimes from a third manufacturer, and c) better dosing methods and parameters for such a tiny infant. (who survived with very little developmental delays, btw).
I mention this becase in general, the net result of the improved systems wasn't the time required for things like my dad's experience above, i.e. more pharmacist time focused on quality of care and analysis issues, it was more management demands that the pharmacist(s) process an exponential rise in prescriptions with little or no additional help.
Agreed. I am glad that O'Conner is in the role of lead jurist on this one because I for one do not trust either the extreme right judges (Scalia, etc.) nor the extreme left (Souter, Ginsberg, etc.), and IIRC O'Connor had an elected legislative position at some point, and represents a voice of moderation. So my hope would be that the "center" will rule this time, i.e., take a balanced look at the rights of the individuals in the case with the right of a given class of copyright holders. But make no mistake, this is a serious question and part of the freedom of the internet is at stake in this case.
My question to the more legally "competent to comment"/. readers is what is the normal rule of law for jurisdictions where the plaintiff and defendant are in different places?
Forget the direct distribution of the virus: make it an I.E. plug in (Active X) that users have to accept to view a particularly salacious web page. Have the accepted web page install and run the virus on the host machine. Then put deep links to some hot pix sites (you know the kind with *cough* comely maidens in *cough* various positions and states of undress as a "referring web master".
Shoot, you might even make enough money to pay for the bandwidth AND the attorney needed to pry your little butt out of prison... Unless of course you live and can host your machine somewhere the DCMA, etc. don't count AND where such pix won't get your head lopped off with a well-swungg sharp object....
Oh, wait, I forgot. The good judge's decision has assured us that Microsoft doesn't really need to change the way the do business all that much because they've promised to be good from now on, cross their crooked little hearts...
Sounds like you are better than the average math teacher, and much better than any of the ones I had until college.
My problem with the current state of math education is that so much of the work I did in middle and high school classes was truly irrelevant, which meant that many of the repetitive proof exercises were essentially wasted because there were no "real world" anchors to hang them on. I was legitimately surpised much later in college, etc. to discover that what I had learned in HS actually had useful applications in the "if you do the math right, the bridge doesn't fall in the river, the engine gets more horsepower, the airplane flies better" world than I ever remember doing in HS.
I asked another K-12 math teacher (besides my own) why they didn't include more engineering type stuff in the curriculum, and his answer was so dead brain amd sexist that I couldn't believe it: "the male math students might like seeing how things relate to engines, electronics, civic engineering, etc., but the female students would be bored..." 'xcuse me sir, but in what way is teaching math without more of the practical applications is more interesting to your female students???
'Course, relevancy in education is my personal pet peeve, and/. is a community site, so I'll stop grinding the ax right here. Thanks for at least caring whether or not your students learned to use the grey matter at levels somewhere above the spinal cord at least part of the time.
Well, I must be on the top side of the curve then, having started coding on microcomputers before M$ was even an itch in bgates twisted brain. (shoulda written that basic compiler after all.... who knew?)
Of course, during that time I've known about five extremely talented programmers that are still doing it (most of the 10-15 other good ones now manage programmers, departments, etc.), and about 100 degreed CS pukes who could write code, but not think their way out of a paper bag where data and business processes are concerned that lasted maybe a year and a half.
And about a hundred more that were good but gave it up because of stupid management and or burnout.
Stac basically took themselves out of business following their win in court, as there was no need for disk doubling software given the exponential increase in disk storage capacities. You're right about M$ resources, but I wouldn't mind seeing them embroiled in another essentially unwinnable case -- based on their illegal monopoly practices, how much damage should they pay. Billions seem appropriate, ya'think?
Even if we could replicate the sheer processing power of the human brain at similar power levels, and make it mobile, our current circuitry and programming paradigms still don't offer a technologic basis for the kind of split second decisions..." followed by the remainder of my post.
BTW, I am very aware of neural networks, and even some chip technologies based on modeling neurons. But there's nothing in the silicon that implicitly decides which particular version of a neuronal circuit might be useful, and what weird alternate connections it should make. Nor how to implicitly attempt to self-heal around a known bad connection, etc. like the biologic based computer does. All of that has to be developed fairly explicitly by an intelligent entity, also known as the human brain.
Re:rational thinking and "why"
on
DNA Goes Binary
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· Score: 1
A minor quible perhaps, but I am begging to differ with your statement as well. I think it would be more accurate to restate your premise as follows.
"Historically. the human race's only truth verifying method is reasoning and intellect", instead of "truth finding method".
I can't count how many articles and books which I have read in terms of the major "society influencing" technologies have come from a science-minded individual having a unique but unscientific (at the time) view of a particular phenomenon, making an important discovery from a "flash of intuition", or "leap of faith", or coming up with the "right answer" from any number of blatantly unscientific sources (dreams anyone, luck sometimes... given a bit of time I can probably evn come up with instances where the "truth" became known first as an "answer to prayer" -- can't get much more *cough* irrational than that, right?)
Under the heading of luck, for example, the bio-organism we know that is now used to create Penicillin was a useless mold -- until Dr. Fleming found that it killed a particular bacterium in his lab. He could have just as easily cursed his bad luck, written off the experiment, washed the petri dish, and started over. Instead, he used his reasoning and intellect to conduct a scientific experiment to answer a specific question: I wonder what other assorted nasties (at the germ level) this particular mold can kill, or was it just a one time thing...? Once his reasoning established that Penicillin was in fact a great germ killer, then a whole raft of scientific experiments took place based on the hard evidence from the foundational "I wonder...", so add those two words to each of these questions, and see what science actually did:
...this weird green stuff can kill other bacteria that cause human illness...
..if this germ killer can be developed into a medicine... Experimentally proven answer: yes.
...what is the dosage that kills the germ but not the patient.... Experimentally proven answer(s) threshhold and low toxicity dosing levels?
...how to create enough of this new wonder drug to keep a person alive? (don't remember the intervening experiments, but ultimately a weak corn liquor was the right answer).
More personally, I had a totally illogical but now proven insight that most stomach ulcers had a bacterial origin -- literally years before Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) was proven to be the guilty culprit (within the last decade IIRC). What I didn't have was the scientific training or tools to follow the intuition with experiments to the stage of medical proof.
i.e., at least up to this point in time, there is no "self animating" force in any electronic entity that I am aware of.
Even if the sheer processing capability could be duplicated, at a similar scale, with similar power requirements, with today's technologies there is still no true intelligence in the circuitry that is as flexible as the mind, which can make split-second decisions (good or bad) based on literally thousands of experiences and factors -- without requiring a "full data set" in order to arrive at the "best decision".
The best example I can think of is "a WTC tower is falling down, what do I do? Do I run? and how far? When do I try to turn a corner to escape the dust blast? Do I altruistically tackle the person in front of me because I can tell that the only way they can survive is if I cover them at peril of my own existence? What about UA Flight 93? or any of the other thousands and perhaps millions of heroic acts we know of from just 9/11?? How do you program or develop electronic logic like that? Into mobile, autonomous units capable of effective action?
Stac (Electronics?). They tried, lost, and had to pay a rather large court settlement... Possibly Foxpro, which they bought lock stock and barrel, and maybe Visio -- same thing. Lessee now, companies screwed by M$ after potentially doing business with Mr. Gates, et. al? Here's a few 'slightly' larger companies that come to mind: Lotus, Novell, WP, Corel, Apple, IBM, Sun, Sybase, Intuit, Adobe, etc.
Hell, if I were a class action attorney right now, I'd be looking to plunder the M$ war chest based on a probable pattern of deception where "partnering with Microsoft" is concerned.
I liked most of your post, but using Bill Clinton as an example of a "moderate Democrat" seems a bit ludicrous to me. This may be may opinion only but if you look at most of Clinton's more highly publicized initiatives, most of them were almost ultra-liberal, but masked in pragmatic, very populist language.
I mean look at the original health care proposals from the Clinton administration, their staunch and unbending support of the abortion agenda, their utter defacto defense of "gay rights", except for DOMA which they had to support to remain politically viable, the largest tax increases in history, etc. The only place where Clinton struck me as moderate is that he was so interested in keeping the money flowing that he that he didn't provide leadership in going against some of the more corrupt moneyed interests as often as his administration should have.
You really want the RIAA & members attention??
on
Still More RIAA News
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Bury them with bad news:
Stop buying music from the big 5 members of the RIAA (Sony, etc.) that essentially belongs to popular but truly "garbage of the month" purported to be hip, fresh, etc. --from any source.
Only buy CDs where there is quality music (your definition not mine) throughout the whole album.
Buy independent labels that have good reputations for how they treat their talent, or better yet
see if you can find a way to buy from the artists directly or through a direct distribution medium -- i.e. artist to distributor to you, no big five profit
Send a snail mail to any local radio station playing crap music from the big 5, suggesting that they play the better music indie labels and suggesting that you'll change your listening habits to their competitor's station if they don't.
Want to make it hurt even more?
Send a copy of each one of the radio station letters to the big 5 studios every time your selection has caused the indie labels make money and the big 5 didn't make a nickel.
Send a copy to MTV explaining that you change the channel every time the crap music's video comes on.
Maybe send even more copies to the NYT, LA Times, Washington Post etc. Bury the RIAA companies with exposure in the mass media via snail mail barrages and see if they can maintain the same kind of cartel pricing and crap music peddling in the glare of major media. Then you might just get their attention.
Still interested? or is standing up to the corruption just too much bother?
Nah, it must be a woman because it never asked for directions. It just started talking, expected the whole world to stop, listen, and understand even if what it said was unintellible to even those who cared.;-)
Your post reminded me again of the primary reason I read Slashdot -- to learn about things I haven't before, from a number of different voices: some offer humour, some offer knowledge, some perspective, and a few even a sort of web-friendship.
Of course there are the endless voices of opposition to nearly anything said, but let me offer my salute to one of the best posts I have read in recent memory, provoked in part by/.'s providing a link to one of the best essays I've read in a long time.
Methinks your karma rating will take a hit with such obvious flamebait such as this.
While probably a mostly silent minority, many men still have enough honor to rise above the "men are sexual beasts" mentality implied by your post. As far as I'm concerned, porn is an addictive waste of paper, bandwidth, and (mostly young) people's time and lives.
Now then, if someone would spend the time and resources to come up with a winnable class action strategy against all classes and kinds of pornographers, I'd probably chip in with the plaintiffs, not the sleezemasters. Unfortunately in this case there are "freedom of the 'Net from corporate control" and freedom of speech issues, here so I would rather see Acacia's fight fail, because this looks more like a corporate based legal shakedown than a true patent fight.
Folks, most of the posts I've read so far are missing the point because they are focusing on the TV with the Smart Cards, etc., not the recording devices.
If they make the Smart Right technology required, then all TV's would soon have to be suitably equipped. If they close the analog hole, you can still watch all of the same programs, dvd's etc. that you do now -- but only at the time of broadcast and only from studio produced media (DVD's etc.).
What is lost is "fair use" and truly "independent production", because in order to use any digital content, you either have to have a recorder with the encryption key (presumably impossible to get, as the first unencrypted copy without protection at the a/d or d/a level reveals quite a lot of information about the encryption), or "break" the encryption a la DeCSS, violating the DCMA.
Which means that no content can be recorded without equipment containing the encryption devices, whether at the point of origin or on your home recording device of choice.
So you either get your live (TV) content from the major studios and networks, etc., or your pre-recorded content from the major studios and networks, etc. Presumably digital camcorders, etc. would carry the same encryption technologies so that you could record from one personally owned recording devices to your own personally owned recording device with the appropriate watermark, so free speech isn't entirely out the window.
Well known writer _____ admitted having an addiction to the online community known as/.
In fact, this addiction led to the development of a system known as "moderation" and then "meta-moderation" as the amount of respect (known as Karma) climbed higher. Finally, in order to break the cycle of addiction, Karma was capped at 50 points, then changed to a meaningless text (Excellent, mostly due to.....).
Still, the addiction continues. ______ just keeps track of Karma points on a well used analog device known as a memo-pad, using another analog device (a pencil), and has a current total of over ___ (affix your own imagined number here) Karma points. But no, I 'm not addicted -- really. I just need another few first posts, andd +5 funnies to break the record...honest!!
So why post? I like the author's point: for respect not so easily gained in the real world.
Well, I'm not sure if sitcoms are dead yet, just not thriving. Some of the shows like Spin City, Everybody Loves Raymond, etc. ofen manage to qualify in my book as very funny -- and I consider myself a fairly harsh critic.
What is not funny is when the writers use truly pathetic characters (Urkel, anyone?) and essentially make one or more of the characters the butt all of their so-called, mostly unfunny jokes. That type of sitcom needs to get dead stay dead, and never come back. Trouble is, that type of crap is easier to write and cheaper to produce than good comedy.
The greatest all-time list actors playing the Straight Men would have to include Tommy Lee Jones, but then that's the nature of the part.
For all you non-theater types out there, the straight man (or woman) is the seemingly normal person surrounded by wacky characters, whose job is essentially to make the antics of the comedic lunatics more believable. What many people may not realize is that it is generally the "straight man" that gets most of the laughs, because his/her character has to "act normal" in extremely abnormal situations. Consider this: would Will Smith's performances would seem nearly as funny if MIB's J had been played by a comedian such as Steve Martin or Robin Williams? But Will would probably be just as funny opposite say, James Woods, Tim Burton, etc.
My sarcasm is specifically limited to the fact that the poster immediately called a "religious" viewpoint a fantasy instead of unprovable (at least at present, anyway) when the so-called science has an almost impossible level of proof as well.
The second point I was trying to make was that "creation" theory does not necessarily require 100% compliance with the English translation of old Hebrew religious documents.
The ability to do terraforming is at present science fiction or even fantasy (not having any terraformable planets with strike range of current transportation technologies doesn't help), but even at our current level of scientific understanding if there was an appropriate, lifeless planet with earth-like attributes close enough to reach with some type of inter-stellar ark (with the destination planet having similar atmosphere, solar insolation, salty oceans, etc.), it would not take all that many years to convert that planet into a living biosphere.
So "creation" can also be considered a valid explanation of "how" it was done, with mention of the "who" did it as part of the same story.
Something like this seems very appropriate, but perhaps overpowered for your requirements, and I'm not sure about the cost(s). However, the components seem to be there as long as the microscope will support projecting a flat image onto the CCD array. The cool thing about the rest of this unit is that it is essentially programmable from that point on. Developing the rest of the microscope interface would be non-trivial, but doable, as what you're really talking about in terms of automation is essentially a "shutter" and image transfer mechanism
I could just as easily have said "this article is about fantasy, not science." Because "fantasy" is an artificial construct that exists in a person's mind that explains something otherwise unprovable -- at which it is at least temporarily assumed to be "reality". So this scientist has a theory that explains something otherwise unprovable i.e the origin of life was a random occurence.
So this so called science is basically conjecturing that if you somehow had millions of years, and the right formation of chemicals inside the hot rocks, you could get a pre-cellular form of "life". Except for at least one thing. Now you have to transition the "pre-cellular" form of life to a cellular form. And IIRC the fact that amino acids -- the basic proteins and building blocks of most biological organisms -- don't seem to hold up well, let alone propagate, uner high temperatures.
So his little mud life creatures somehow need to develop not only a skin (the cellular membrane), but also all of the DNA, RNA, and other structures that are found in even the simplest one celled creatures.
So consider this: the Hebrew word (often romanized as "bara") that is translated in Genesis 1:1 as "created" could just as easily have been translated as "organized" or "made". The word for God (ALYHM, or in English Elohim) is translated in other places as "the mighty" (and may be a plural at that), and the word for "heavens" might be closer in "atmosphere" in meaning than any religious abode of a supernatural deity. So the translation for Genesis 1:1 could also be something like this: "Beginning: the mighty organized the earth and the atmosphere".
So look at the creation theory with this idea in mind: Start with just what is stated in Genesis 1:1 and follow the logical hypothesis: if a being or beings exists (with some type of super gravity generator/repulor system perhaps?) a)the power to push together planet size chunks of matter into an appropriately small area that their inherent gravity pulls them together, b)surround the completed "planet size chunk of matter" with the right combination of gaseous and liquid elements (primarily nitrogen and H20) to support carbon/water based life forms, c) stick said chunk of rock at the appropriate distance from a stable, right size sun with the appropriate energy spectra. Now substitute the idea of "creative periods" as a translation rather than "days", which implies a 24 hour Terran time period.
Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.
The system I originally read about used some type of dampening mechanisms similar to what you mentioned to make sure that the pipes to and from the "cooling unit" did not vibrate -- I assume in any audible frequencies. As far as the heat exchangers, the exchanger in the refrigerator would be air to fluid, and I assume that the heat from the plates would be similarly conducted to the outside of the fridge, much like on current refridgerators.
Which is where the hot water idea came into play: I've seen a couple of test modifications where a tinkerer wrapped a heat exchanger around the refridgerator's hot coils and at least partially heated his home water supply.
Good points. The main idea I was trying convey is that even as a "booster" heater I wonder if it would be useful. BTW the tap temperature locally was 65 degrees, which is where I got my starting point.
As far as the difference between cooling air and heating water, that's where the lag I mentioned comes in. There is also commercially developed "heat pump" hot water heaters that transfer heat from air in the house into hot water, adding the heat produced by the compressor into the mix. Most of these -- based on a residential size air conditioner -- produce three or four times more hot water than a household would reasonably use in a day, so they mainly appear in restaurants, etc. which have much higher hot water requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
Doctors with bad handwriting is a well known problem and joke -- but not nearly the problem most people think. Sometimes even the prescribing doctors don't have all of the knowledge needed to accurately and safely prescribe, and the pharmacist is the sole person with enough training to catch most if not all of the problem prescriptions -- if they have time, strong backing from management, and a good relationship with the doctors.
Back before most of the robotic technology for pharmacy was even a twinkle in some engineer's eye, they had systems that would greatly speed up the filling of pill prescriptions. During this same period of time, my dad (who I am very proud of for this) was on the phone with two different manufacturers trying to determine the stability of their drugs at weak dilutions for a less than 2 lb premature baby that was in pretty deep trouble). Even the doctors didn't know. In less than an hour they all determined that a) the dilution's would not be stable, b) alternate methods and drugs -- sometimes from a third manufacturer, and c) better dosing methods and parameters for such a tiny infant. (who survived with very little developmental delays, btw).
I mention this becase in general, the net result of the improved systems wasn't the time required for things like my dad's experience above, i.e. more pharmacist time focused on quality of care and analysis issues, it was more management demands that the pharmacist(s) process an exponential rise in prescriptions with little or no additional help.
My question to the more legally "competent to comment" /. readers is what is the normal rule of law for jurisdictions where the plaintiff and defendant are in different places?
Shoot, you might even make enough money to pay for the bandwidth AND the attorney needed to pry your little butt out of prison... Unless of course you live and can host your machine somewhere the DCMA, etc. don't count AND where such pix won't get your head lopped off with a well-swungg sharp object....
Oh, wait, I forgot. The good judge's decision has assured us that Microsoft doesn't really need to change the way the do business all that much because they've promised to be good from now on, cross their crooked little hearts...
...sigh...
My problem with the current state of math education is that so much of the work I did in middle and high school classes was truly irrelevant, which meant that many of the repetitive proof exercises were essentially wasted because there were no "real world" anchors to hang them on. I was legitimately surpised much later in college, etc. to discover that what I had learned in HS actually had useful applications in the "if you do the math right, the bridge doesn't fall in the river, the engine gets more horsepower, the airplane flies better" world than I ever remember doing in HS.
I asked another K-12 math teacher (besides my own) why they didn't include more engineering type stuff in the curriculum, and his answer was so dead brain amd sexist that I couldn't believe it: "the male math students might like seeing how things relate to engines, electronics, civic engineering, etc., but the female students would be bored..." 'xcuse me sir, but in what way is teaching math without more of the practical applications is more interesting to your female students???
'Course, relevancy in education is my personal pet peeve, and /. is a community site, so I'll stop grinding the ax right here. Thanks for at least caring whether or not your students learned to use the grey matter at levels somewhere above the spinal cord at least part of the time.
Of course, during that time I've known about five extremely talented programmers that are still doing it (most of the 10-15 other good ones now manage programmers, departments, etc.), and about 100 degreed CS pukes who could write code, but not think their way out of a paper bag where data and business processes are concerned that lasted maybe a year and a half.
And about a hundred more that were good but gave it up because of stupid management and or burnout.
So seven years seems about right.
Stac basically took themselves out of business following their win in court, as there was no need for disk doubling software given the exponential increase in disk storage capacities. You're right about M$ resources, but I wouldn't mind seeing them embroiled in another essentially unwinnable case -- based on their illegal monopoly practices, how much damage should they pay. Billions seem appropriate, ya'think?
Even if we could replicate the sheer processing power of the human brain at similar power levels, and make it mobile, our current circuitry and programming paradigms still don't offer a technologic basis for the kind of split second decisions..." followed by the remainder of my post.
BTW, I am very aware of neural networks, and even some chip technologies based on modeling neurons. But there's nothing in the silicon that implicitly decides which particular version of a neuronal circuit might be useful, and what weird alternate connections it should make. Nor how to implicitly attempt to self-heal around a known bad connection, etc. like the biologic based computer does. All of that has to be developed fairly explicitly by an intelligent entity, also known as the human brain.
"Historically. the human race's only truth verifying method is reasoning and intellect", instead of "truth finding method".
I can't count how many articles and books which I have read in terms of the major "society influencing" technologies have come from a science-minded individual having a unique but unscientific (at the time) view of a particular phenomenon, making an important discovery from a "flash of intuition", or "leap of faith", or coming up with the "right answer" from any number of blatantly unscientific sources (dreams anyone, luck sometimes... given a bit of time I can probably evn come up with instances where the "truth" became known first as an "answer to prayer" -- can't get much more *cough* irrational than that, right?)
Under the heading of luck, for example, the bio-organism we know that is now used to create Penicillin was a useless mold -- until Dr. Fleming found that it killed a particular bacterium in his lab. He could have just as easily cursed his bad luck, written off the experiment, washed the petri dish, and started over. Instead, he used his reasoning and intellect to conduct a scientific experiment to answer a specific question: I wonder what other assorted nasties (at the germ level) this particular mold can kill, or was it just a one time thing...? Once his reasoning established that Penicillin was in fact a great germ killer, then a whole raft of scientific experiments took place based on the hard evidence from the foundational "I wonder...", so add those two words to each of these questions, and see what science actually did:
- ...this weird green stuff can kill other bacteria that cause human illness...
- ..if this germ killer can be developed into a medicine... Experimentally proven answer: yes.
- ...what is the dosage that kills the germ but not the patient.... Experimentally proven answer(s) threshhold and low toxicity dosing levels?
- ...how to create enough of this new wonder drug to keep a person alive? (don't remember the intervening experiments, but ultimately a weak corn liquor was the right answer).
More personally, I had a totally illogical but now proven insight that most stomach ulcers had a bacterial origin -- literally years before Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) was proven to be the guilty culprit (within the last decade IIRC). What I didn't have was the scientific training or tools to follow the intuition with experiments to the stage of medical proof.Even if the sheer processing capability could be duplicated, at a similar scale, with similar power requirements, with today's technologies there is still no true intelligence in the circuitry that is as flexible as the mind, which can make split-second decisions (good or bad) based on literally thousands of experiences and factors -- without requiring a "full data set" in order to arrive at the "best decision".
The best example I can think of is "a WTC tower is falling down, what do I do? Do I run? and how far? When do I try to turn a corner to escape the dust blast? Do I altruistically tackle the person in front of me because I can tell that the only way they can survive is if I cover them at peril of my own existence? What about UA Flight 93? or any of the other thousands and perhaps millions of heroic acts we know of from just 9/11?? How do you program or develop electronic logic like that? Into mobile, autonomous units capable of effective action?
Not in our lifetime, methinks.
Hell, if I were a class action attorney right now, I'd be looking to plunder the M$ war chest based on a probable pattern of deception where "partnering with Microsoft" is concerned.
I mean look at the original health care proposals from the Clinton administration, their staunch and unbending support of the abortion agenda, their utter defacto defense of "gay rights", except for DOMA which they had to support to remain politically viable, the largest tax increases in history, etc. The only place where Clinton struck me as moderate is that he was so interested in keeping the money flowing that he that he didn't provide leadership in going against some of the more corrupt moneyed interests as often as his administration should have.
- Stop buying music from the big 5 members of the RIAA (Sony, etc.) that essentially belongs to popular but truly "garbage of the month" purported to be hip, fresh, etc. --from any source.
- Only buy CDs where there is quality music (your definition not mine) throughout the whole album.
- Buy independent labels that have good reputations for how they treat their talent, or better yet
- see if you can find a way to buy from the artists directly or through a direct distribution medium -- i.e. artist to distributor to you, no big five profit
- Send a snail mail to any local radio station playing crap music from the big 5, suggesting that they play the better music indie labels and suggesting that you'll change your listening habits to their competitor's station if they don't.
Want to make it hurt even more?- Send a copy of each one of the radio station letters to the big 5 studios every time your selection has caused the indie labels make money and the big 5 didn't make a nickel.
- Send a copy to MTV explaining that you change the channel every time the crap music's video comes on.
- Maybe send even more copies to the NYT, LA Times, Washington Post etc. Bury the RIAA companies with exposure in the mass media via snail mail barrages and see if they can maintain the same kind of cartel pricing and crap music peddling in the glare of major media. Then you might just get their attention.
Still interested? or is standing up to the corruption just too much bother?--as me pulls on the ole fireproof jumpsuit--
;-)
Nah, it must be a woman because it never asked for directions. It just started talking, expected the whole world to stop, listen, and understand even if what it said was unintellible to even those who cared.
Of course there are the endless voices of opposition to nearly anything said, but let me offer my salute to one of the best posts I have read in recent memory, provoked in part by /.'s providing a link to one of the best essays I've read in a long time.
While probably a mostly silent minority, many men still have enough honor to rise above the "men are sexual beasts" mentality implied by your post. As far as I'm concerned, porn is an addictive waste of paper, bandwidth, and (mostly young) people's time and lives.
Now then, if someone would spend the time and resources to come up with a winnable class action strategy against all classes and kinds of pornographers, I'd probably chip in with the plaintiffs, not the sleezemasters. Unfortunately in this case there are "freedom of the 'Net from corporate control" and freedom of speech issues, here so I would rather see Acacia's fight fail, because this looks more like a corporate based legal shakedown than a true patent fight.
If they make the Smart Right technology required, then all TV's would soon have to be suitably equipped. If they close the analog hole, you can still watch all of the same programs, dvd's etc. that you do now -- but only at the time of broadcast and only from studio produced media (DVD's etc.).
What is lost is "fair use" and truly "independent production", because in order to use any digital content, you either have to have a recorder with the encryption key (presumably impossible to get, as the first unencrypted copy without protection at the a/d or d/a level reveals quite a lot of information about the encryption), or "break" the encryption a la DeCSS, violating the DCMA.
Which means that no content can be recorded without equipment containing the encryption devices, whether at the point of origin or on your home recording device of choice.
So you either get your live (TV) content from the major studios and networks, etc., or your pre-recorded content from the major studios and networks, etc. Presumably digital camcorders, etc. would carry the same encryption technologies so that you could record from one personally owned recording devices to your own personally owned recording device with the appropriate watermark, so free speech isn't entirely out the window.
But it comes too damn close for my comfort level.
In fact, this addiction led to the development of a system known as "moderation" and then "meta-moderation" as the amount of respect (known as Karma) climbed higher. Finally, in order to break the cycle of addiction, Karma was capped at 50 points, then changed to a meaningless text (Excellent, mostly due to .....).
Still, the addiction continues. ______ just keeps track of Karma points on a well used analog device known as a memo-pad, using another analog device (a pencil), and has a current total of over ___ (affix your own imagined number here) Karma points. But no, I 'm not addicted -- really. I just need another few first posts, andd +5 funnies to break the record...honest!!
So why post? I like the author's point: for respect not so easily gained in the real world.
What is not funny is when the writers use truly pathetic characters (Urkel, anyone?) and essentially make one or more of the characters the butt all of their so-called, mostly unfunny jokes. That type of sitcom needs to get dead stay dead, and never come back. Trouble is, that type of crap is easier to write and cheaper to produce than good comedy.
For all you non-theater types out there, the straight man (or woman) is the seemingly normal person surrounded by wacky characters, whose job is essentially to make the antics of the comedic lunatics more believable. What many people may not realize is that it is generally the "straight man" that gets most of the laughs, because his/her character has to "act normal" in extremely abnormal situations. Consider this: would Will Smith's performances would seem nearly as funny if MIB's J had been played by a comedian such as Steve Martin or Robin Williams? But Will would probably be just as funny opposite say, James Woods, Tim Burton, etc.
My sarcasm is specifically limited to the fact that the poster immediately called a "religious" viewpoint a fantasy instead of unprovable (at least at present, anyway) when the so-called science has an almost impossible level of proof as well.
The second point I was trying to make was that "creation" theory does not necessarily require 100% compliance with the English translation of old Hebrew religious documents.
The ability to do terraforming is at present science fiction or even fantasy (not having any terraformable planets with strike range of current transportation technologies doesn't help), but even at our current level of scientific understanding if there was an appropriate, lifeless planet with earth-like attributes close enough to reach with some type of inter-stellar ark (with the destination planet having similar atmosphere, solar insolation, salty oceans, etc.), it would not take all that many years to convert that planet into a living biosphere.
So "creation" can also be considered a valid explanation of "how" it was done, with mention of the "who" did it as part of the same story.
Something like this seems very appropriate, but perhaps overpowered for your requirements, and I'm not sure about the cost(s). However, the components seem to be there as long as the microscope will support projecting a flat image onto the CCD array. The cool thing about the rest of this unit is that it is essentially programmable from that point on. Developing the rest of the microscope interface would be non-trivial, but doable, as what you're really talking about in terms of automation is essentially a "shutter" and image transfer mechanism
I could just as easily have said "this article is about fantasy, not science." Because "fantasy" is an artificial construct that exists in a person's mind that explains something otherwise unprovable -- at which it is at least temporarily assumed to be "reality". So this scientist has a theory that explains something otherwise unprovable i.e the origin of life was a random occurence.
So this so called science is basically conjecturing that if you somehow had millions of years, and the right formation of chemicals inside the hot rocks, you could get a pre-cellular form of "life". Except for at least one thing. Now you have to transition the "pre-cellular" form of life to a cellular form. And IIRC the fact that amino acids -- the basic proteins and building blocks of most biological organisms -- don't seem to hold up well, let alone propagate, uner high temperatures.
So his little mud life creatures somehow need to develop not only a skin (the cellular membrane), but also all of the DNA, RNA, and other structures that are found in even the simplest one celled creatures.
So consider this: the Hebrew word (often romanized as "bara") that is translated in Genesis 1:1 as "created" could just as easily have been translated as "organized" or "made". The word for God (ALYHM, or in English Elohim) is translated in other places as "the mighty" (and may be a plural at that), and the word for "heavens" might be closer in "atmosphere" in meaning than any religious abode of a supernatural deity. So the translation for Genesis 1:1 could also be something like this: "Beginning: the mighty organized the earth and the atmosphere".
So look at the creation theory with this idea in mind: Start with just what is stated in Genesis 1:1 and follow the logical hypothesis: if a being or beings exists (with some type of super gravity generator/repulor system perhaps?) a)the power to push together planet size chunks of matter into an appropriately small area that their inherent gravity pulls them together, b)surround the completed "planet size chunk of matter" with the right combination of gaseous and liquid elements (primarily nitrogen and H20) to support carbon/water based life forms, c) stick said chunk of rock at the appropriate distance from a stable, right size sun with the appropriate energy spectra. Now substitute the idea of "creative periods" as a translation rather than "days", which implies a 24 hour Terran time period.
Which is harder to believe, that a planet could be organized, and populated with life forms, or that life somehow began in the hot rocks and transitioned to cellular organism, and on up through Darwinian evolution, etc.? In the end, neither is provable.
<Sarcasm mode off>
Which is where the hot water idea came into play: I've seen a couple of test modifications where a tinkerer wrapped a heat exchanger around the refridgerator's hot coils and at least partially heated his home water supply.
As far as the difference between cooling air and heating water, that's where the lag I mentioned comes in. There is also commercially developed "heat pump" hot water heaters that transfer heat from air in the house into hot water, adding the heat produced by the compressor into the mix. Most of these -- based on a residential size air conditioner -- produce three or four times more hot water than a household would reasonably use in a day, so they mainly appear in restaurants, etc. which have much higher hot water requirements.