Could we be witnessing, through globalization and the blurring of the lines between cultures, a minimization of variance and an increased risk of serious genetic disorders? Could this reduce our survivability as a species in the face of some dire consequence?
Yes, and yes. Decreasingly diverse population increases the impact of risks to the population. Compounding this risk is the widespread mitigation of genetic weaknesses through medicine or other artificial means.
Why, just the same way this article validates its assertions.
The heritability of attractiveness is widely accepted. When Elizabeth Jagger became a model, her mother, the former model Jerry Hall, said: âoeItâ(TM)s in her genes.â
And if that's not scientific enough for you, then you're rejecting Slashdot's credentials as an esteemed peer-reviewed academic journal.
Mmmm; I'm under the impression that the problem with contact-free power is a significant loss in efficiency. So, if I have to use 25% more power (for example) to charge all my devices just so I don't need to connect a wire, that sounds like a great way to make stuff cost more due to increased electricity demand.
If I were building power plants, of course, this would sound like fantastic news.
"Just look at all those smart individuals with law expertise helping (often for free) the little guys out there"
Lawyers are required to give some time pro bono time each year, IIRC.
No, lawyers are not required to do any pro bono work (in the US, at least). The bar associations recommend some amount of pro bono work, but there are no requirements.
Interestingly, Palm is NOT on the list of companies being sued. Either they licensed the patent in question (who knows?), are not viewed as possible infringers (conceivable... perhaps the others all sell MP3 players of some sort and the smartphone/PDA isn't viewed as covered by the patent) or are too small to bother with in this litagation (unlikely).
Here's the complete list of alleged infringers from the suit: Apple Inc., Auditek Corp., Bang & Olufsen Ameerica, Inc., Bang & Olufsen A/S, Coby Electronics Corp., Cowon America, Inc., Cowon Systems, Inc., Dane Elec Corp. USA, Data Station, Inc., IMA-Hong Kong, Ltd., Impecca USA, Inc., iRiver, Inc., Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V., Lasonic Electronics Corp., LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc., LG Electronics, Inc., LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc., Mach Speed Technologies, Inc., Meizu Technology Co., Ltd., Microsoft Corp., Philips Electronics North America Corp., Spectra Merchandising International Inc. TrekStor GmbH & Co. KG
Theoretically, yes. I went from a 50 gallon electric water heater in my old house to a propane-fired instant-on in my new house, and the heated water takes _forever_ to get to the taps. I can't say for sure that it's the fault of the heater, as I don't know for sure the diameter of the pipes used to distribute the hot water. A 3/4" pipe will take a lot longer to deliver hot water than a 1/2" one (2.25 times as long, AAMOF).
The point here is that tankless water heaters are not more WATER efficient than tank-based water heaters, unless they are planned for and installed optimally.
Consider: A tankless water heater can be installed much closer to the faucet/shower they serve than a tank-based water heater. A large house with several distant hot-water outputs would need multiple tankless water heaters in order to be more water efficient than a tank-based system. When planned and done optimally, tankless water heating could save a lot of water in such as situation, compared to a tank-based system.
That said, the tankless heater might be more power-efficient in any case, even just as a replacement for a single large tank-based heater. I don't have any data to support that, though; you can look that up yourself.
Won't google lattitude achieve exactly the same thing? I have it installed on my BB and I can get the location of half a dozen of my friends that have added me to their "friends" list on their devices (both BB and iPhones). There is also a google maps gadget you can use to check the location from your PC.
What advantages do you get from using MobileMe and Find My iPhone ?
What? Google just wants to own all your information and provide The Man with the means to track your entire life and show you diabolically targeted advertisements that are horrifically targeted to your needs.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody is predicting a long-term cooling trend based on any activity promoted by those in favor of reducing and managing carbon dioxide emissions. The intent of those efforts (whether or not they succeed) is to slow down or halt the long term warming trend.
"So the 24-year-old coming out of Stanford will have a view of technology that the 29-year-old â" who was 24 just five years ago â" would never think of," say Andreessen. "We love that kind of thing."
Great. More age discrimination in software development hiring practices.
I'm obsolete at 36.
Not really age discrimination. I think Adreessen's comment is incorrect, but it reflect his superficial analysis of a reality:
The 24-year-old coming out of school generally does not have a family to support or a big investment in where he lives, and is therefore more willing to take big risks.
The 29 or older crowd is more likely to have needs and commitments that would not survive the failure of a major venture or possibly even a major upheaval in lifestyle such as spending 16 hours per day at work for months or years at a time.
People who are interested in bleeding edge technology will be interested and able to understand the bleeding edge regardless of their age. Or should we call Linus Torvalds and tell him to hang it up because he's too old to understand new technology anymore?
I never plan on touching a blu-ray as they are expensive and take up physical space. Terabyte (even multiple terabyte) hard drives are pretty cheap these days and can hold a LOT of movies. I can easily stream them to my TV through my xbox 360 and don't even have to get off my ass to change the movie. I don't know why people are bothering with blu-ray, media centers ftw!
I bother because Blu-Ray movies look more awesome on my big, shiny 1080p TV. If I need to download movies, I can, but even the HD movies I can download are visually inferior to the movies I can rent or buy on Blu-Ray. Oh, plus the extras on my Blu-Ray discs are often pretty cool.
I understand that HD-DVD discs would give me a similarly awesome experience, but I can't play them with my PS3.
That said, if I had a small or non-High-Definition TV, I almost certainly wouldn't bother with one of the high-definition disc formats.
Firefox on Windows looks great/awesome/beautiful....name it. But on Linux, it is inherently ugly. The beast looks ancient and the fonts and dialogs make matters worse.
Folks, I am not trolling so have a look for yourselves and compare....
I'm running Windows XP and Ubuntu 9/04 side by side on similar laptops. Just to test, I looked at the main pages for Slashdot, Wikipedia (English), and Amazon, side-by-side.
My eyeball result of looking for differences between pages rendered with Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04 vs Windows XP:
Slashdot (slashdot.org): indistinguishable
Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page): indistinguishable
Amazon (www.amazon.com): Bold fonts in the "Shop All Departments" navigation menu appear too big on Ubuntu; they don't quite seem to fit properly.
Other than the issue for Amazon, the pages rendered look identical to me. The fonts for the menus look identical. I still disagree with the choice the mozilla team made to have the preferences/options menus with different titles in different locations for Linux versus Windows, but other than that, the UI seems consistent to me. The default GNOME theme for Firefox isn't as pretty as the new Firefox theme on Windows, but that's a minor aesthetic thing, and it's not ugly, it just isn't pretty.
I disagree. The PS3 is a game machine and was marketed as such. I've never seen the PS3 in the home theater stores or in to the TV area of Best Buy or Target... they were in the game section.
Of course it is granted that many people who were in the market for BD would choose PS3 because for whatever incomprehensible reason it was generally cheaper than a BD player, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a game machine.
Second, this clearly isn't taking into account the 22 million PS3's out there, of which about 12 million are in the United States. This is still the player of choice for most people - at least until that $99 player announced over the weekend comes along. But this is one case where a game console is actually clearly better than most standalone players and most people know it.
On the other hand, games compete with films -- quite a few of those PS3 owners do not own a single Blu-Ray movie.
The install base is there, but it doesn't translate into market potential in the same way that standalone players do.
When that segment of the PS3 owners finally get girlfriends, the Blu-Ray movies will more frequently inhabit their consoles. Have you ever tried getting to "third base" while playing a video game?
Now, whether that translates into "owning" Blu-Ray movies isn't clear. The relative cost of renting the movie is much more appealing than the cost of buying, unless it's an extremely rewatchable selection.
Yes, and until that image of nerds/geeks is changed, we will continue to lag behind.
It's not "cool" to be smart, and so each generation grows up caring more about popularity than tackling the hard subjects and learning something worthwhile.
Mmmm... I don't think the perception of "coolness" has anything to do with it. I think we're simply getting what we pay for. If the incentives of our schools are primarily based on producing high-quality athletes, then we will continue to get great athletes. If the incentives for our schools were to produce high quality mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, then we would get great mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.
Odds are pretty good that since you're living less efficiently in terms of living space, you are using substantially more services per person (on average) than the folks living in the apartments. Therefore, their cost per person for services ought to be less than yours. How much less, I do not know.
Just curious, do you know the property tax difference per person for the apartments compared to your own? It would be interesting to see how that cost is distributed on a per person basis.
Mmmm... I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I think the combined economic value of the Cable TV/ISP companies is higher than the value of the MPAA/RIAA companies. To me, this seems like a case of the government trying to support the more significant economic interest.
Keep in mind, the reason either the MPAA/RIAA or the Cable/ISP companies have their money is because consumers value their product. This is not about what's best for consumers; it's about what's the best way to get the money flowing.
Let me be clear; I think this is a good thing. The government should be doing what's best for the economy as a whole. It's not what "consumers" want that matters most, but what "voters" want that the government should be concerned with.
Slashdot Mirror
Ah, Lazlo. I regret I have no mod points to give, but perhaps you can take comfort that you won 31.8 percent of the prizes, including the RV.
My culture has nothing to fear from Disney unless they steal Star Wars, Star Trek, Starbucks, and Stars on Ice. Wait, strike that last one.
Could we be witnessing, through globalization and the blurring of the lines between cultures, a minimization of variance and an increased risk of serious genetic disorders? Could this reduce our survivability as a species in the face of some dire consequence?
Yes, and yes. Decreasingly diverse population increases the impact of risks to the population. Compounding this risk is the widespread mitigation of genetic weaknesses through medicine or other artificial means.
Gah! Broken characters.... Jerry Hall's comment was "It's in her genes."
Stupid copy-and-paste error. Wasn't someone supposed to preview this before I clicked "Submit"?
Why, just the same way this article validates its assertions.
The heritability of attractiveness is widely accepted. When Elizabeth Jagger became a model, her mother, the former model Jerry Hall, said: âoeItâ(TM)s in her genes.â
And if that's not scientific enough for you, then you're rejecting Slashdot's credentials as an esteemed peer-reviewed academic journal.
Mmmm; I'm under the impression that the problem with contact-free power is a significant loss in efficiency. So, if I have to use 25% more power (for example) to charge all my devices just so I don't need to connect a wire, that sounds like a great way to make stuff cost more due to increased electricity demand.
If I were building power plants, of course, this would sound like fantastic news.
By breaking the USB vendor ID Palm is risking the bricking of Pres whenever Apple tries to do more than just a file sync.
Just how, do you imagine, would iTunes engage the Pre's firmware update system?
The Pre does NOT manage its firmware through iTunes. There is ZERO risk to a Pre's firmware from interfacing with the iTunes application.
"Just look at all those smart individuals with law expertise helping (often for free) the little guys out there"
Lawyers are required to give some time pro bono time each year, IIRC.
No, lawyers are not required to do any pro bono work (in the US, at least). The bar associations recommend some amount of pro bono work, but there are no requirements.
See the super-authoritative Wikipedia article covering the topic.
Interestingly, Palm is NOT on the list of companies being sued. Either they licensed the patent in question (who knows?), are not viewed as possible infringers (conceivable... perhaps the others all sell MP3 players of some sort and the smartphone/PDA isn't viewed as covered by the patent) or are too small to bother with in this litagation (unlikely).
Here's the complete list of alleged infringers from the suit:
Apple Inc.,
Auditek Corp.,
Bang & Olufsen Ameerica, Inc.,
Bang & Olufsen A/S,
Coby Electronics Corp.,
Cowon America, Inc.,
Cowon Systems, Inc.,
Dane Elec Corp. USA,
Data Station, Inc.,
IMA-Hong Kong, Ltd.,
Impecca USA, Inc.,
iRiver, Inc.,
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.,
Lasonic Electronics Corp.,
LG Electronics U.S.A., Inc.,
LG Electronics, Inc.,
LG Electronics Mobilecomm U.S.A., Inc.,
Mach Speed Technologies, Inc.,
Meizu Technology Co., Ltd.,
Microsoft Corp.,
Philips Electronics North America Corp.,
Spectra Merchandising International Inc.
TrekStor GmbH & Co. KG
This isn't really nerd news here, the online part of this story is ancillary to the main issue.
This isn't news for nerds or stuff that matters.
Hmmm... this might seem like "stuff that matters" to people who live in Ireland.
Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI
Doesn't say anything about dead "enemy combatants" though, does it?
Not to mention civilians. But don't worry, you can protect your family.
I made a belt buckle out of a wristwatch so I could waist time.
Tankless waters heaters are instant.
Theoretically, yes. I went from a 50 gallon electric water heater in my old house to a propane-fired instant-on in my new house, and the heated water takes _forever_ to get to the taps. I can't say for sure that it's the fault of the heater, as I don't know for sure the diameter of the pipes used to distribute the hot water. A 3/4" pipe will take a lot longer to deliver hot water than a 1/2" one (2.25 times as long, AAMOF).
The point here is that tankless water heaters are not more WATER efficient than tank-based water heaters, unless they are planned for and installed optimally.
Consider: A tankless water heater can be installed much closer to the faucet/shower they serve than a tank-based water heater. A large house with several distant hot-water outputs would need multiple tankless water heaters in order to be more water efficient than a tank-based system. When planned and done optimally, tankless water heating could save a lot of water in such as situation, compared to a tank-based system.
That said, the tankless heater might be more power-efficient in any case, even just as a replacement for a single large tank-based heater. I don't have any data to support that, though; you can look that up yourself.
As for my girlfriend - she doesn't need to shut up. She's a smart cookie and anything she has to say is interesting.
Either the relationship is still fresh, or she reads slashdot and knows your user id.
My money says she was looking over his shoulder while he posted that.
Won't google lattitude achieve exactly the same thing? I have it installed on my BB and I can get the location of half a dozen of my friends that have added me to their "friends" list on their devices (both BB and iPhones). There is also a google maps gadget you can use to check the location from your PC.
What advantages do you get from using MobileMe and Find My iPhone ?
What? Google just wants to own all your information and provide The Man with the means to track your entire life and show you diabolically targeted advertisements that are horrifically targeted to your needs.
The iPhone, on the other hand, gives you unique style and coolness, and frees you from the fear that someone might be tracking your every move.
To the best of my knowledge, nobody is predicting a long-term cooling trend based on any activity promoted by those in favor of reducing and managing carbon dioxide emissions. The intent of those efforts (whether or not they succeed) is to slow down or halt the long term warming trend.
"So the 24-year-old coming out of Stanford will have a view of technology that the 29-year-old â" who was 24 just five years ago â" would never think of," say Andreessen. "We love that kind of thing."
Great. More age discrimination in software development hiring practices.
I'm obsolete at 36.
Not really age discrimination. I think Adreessen's comment is incorrect, but it reflect his superficial analysis of a reality:
The 24-year-old coming out of school generally does not have a family to support or a big investment in where he lives, and is therefore more willing to take big risks.
The 29 or older crowd is more likely to have needs and commitments that would not survive the failure of a major venture or possibly even a major upheaval in lifestyle such as spending 16 hours per day at work for months or years at a time.
People who are interested in bleeding edge technology will be interested and able to understand the bleeding edge regardless of their age. Or should we call Linus Torvalds and tell him to hang it up because he's too old to understand new technology anymore?
I never plan on touching a blu-ray as they are expensive and take up physical space. Terabyte (even multiple terabyte) hard drives are pretty cheap these days and can hold a LOT of movies. I can easily stream them to my TV through my xbox 360 and don't even have to get off my ass to change the movie.
I don't know why people are bothering with blu-ray, media centers ftw!
I bother because Blu-Ray movies look more awesome on my big, shiny 1080p TV. If I need to download movies, I can, but even the HD movies I can download are visually inferior to the movies I can rent or buy on Blu-Ray. Oh, plus the extras on my Blu-Ray discs are often pretty cool.
I understand that HD-DVD discs would give me a similarly awesome experience, but I can't play them with my PS3.
That said, if I had a small or non-High-Definition TV, I almost certainly wouldn't bother with one of the high-definition disc formats.
Firefox on Windows looks great/awesome/beautiful....name it. But on Linux, it is inherently ugly. The beast looks ancient and the fonts and dialogs make matters worse.
Folks, I am not trolling so have a look for yourselves and compare....
I'm running Windows XP and Ubuntu 9/04 side by side on similar laptops. Just to test, I looked at the main pages for Slashdot, Wikipedia (English), and Amazon, side-by-side.
My eyeball result of looking for differences between pages rendered with Firefox on Ubuntu 9.04 vs Windows XP:
Other than the issue for Amazon, the pages rendered look identical to me. The fonts for the menus look identical. I still disagree with the choice the mozilla team made to have the preferences/options menus with different titles in different locations for Linux versus Windows, but other than that, the UI seems consistent to me. The default GNOME theme for Firefox isn't as pretty as the new Firefox theme on Windows, but that's a minor aesthetic thing, and it's not ugly, it just isn't pretty.
I disagree. The PS3 is a game machine and was marketed as such. I've never seen the PS3 in the home theater stores or in to the TV area of Best Buy or Target... they were in the game section.
Of course it is granted that many people who were in the market for BD would choose PS3 because for whatever incomprehensible reason it was generally cheaper than a BD player, but that doesn't change the fact that it is a game machine.
You're both right.
Second, this clearly isn't taking into account the 22 million PS3's out there, of which about 12 million are in the United States. This is still the player of choice for most people - at least until that $99 player announced over the weekend comes along. But this is one case where a game console is actually clearly better than most standalone players and most people know it.
On the other hand, games compete with films -- quite a few of those PS3 owners do not own a single Blu-Ray movie.
The install base is there, but it doesn't translate into market potential in the same way that standalone players do.
When that segment of the PS3 owners finally get girlfriends, the Blu-Ray movies will more frequently inhabit their consoles. Have you ever tried getting to "third base" while playing a video game?
Now, whether that translates into "owning" Blu-Ray movies isn't clear. The relative cost of renting the movie is much more appealing than the cost of buying, unless it's an extremely rewatchable selection.
More importantly, how did they get somebody to tag this "science"? Oh, yes; the old Jedi mind trick. Never mind. He can go about his business.
Yes, and until that image of nerds/geeks is changed, we will continue to lag behind.
It's not "cool" to be smart, and so each generation grows up caring more about popularity than tackling the hard subjects and learning something worthwhile.
Mmmm... I don't think the perception of "coolness" has anything to do with it. I think we're simply getting what we pay for. If the incentives of our schools are primarily based on producing high-quality athletes, then we will continue to get great athletes. If the incentives for our schools were to produce high quality mathematicians, engineers, and scientists, then we would get great mathematicians, engineers, and scientists.
What kind of compensation does a high school's football coach receive compared to the pay of it's academic teachers?
How do scholarships compare for Athletic Merit vs. Academic Merit?
Odds are pretty good that since you're living less efficiently in terms of living space, you are using substantially more services per person (on average) than the folks living in the apartments. Therefore, their cost per person for services ought to be less than yours. How much less, I do not know.
Just curious, do you know the property tax difference per person for the apartments compared to your own? It would be interesting to see how that cost is distributed on a per person basis.
Mmmm... I don't think so. I could be wrong, but I think the combined economic value of the Cable TV/ISP companies is higher than the value of the MPAA/RIAA companies. To me, this seems like a case of the government trying to support the more significant economic interest.
Keep in mind, the reason either the MPAA/RIAA or the Cable/ISP companies have their money is because consumers value their product. This is not about what's best for consumers; it's about what's the best way to get the money flowing.
Let me be clear; I think this is a good thing. The government should be doing what's best for the economy as a whole. It's not what "consumers" want that matters most, but what "voters" want that the government should be concerned with.