My method involved measuring resistance finger-to-finger and across the tongue, then calculating why licking a 9V battery tingles but just touching it doesn't.
"Top-down managed economies only work when they can make people do things other than what they want to do (which is what a bottom-up economy is)."
An accurate criticism of managed economies, but the same is true of self-organising market economies. What people want to do is sit at home, watch tv, go to parties and generally *not work*. But work is needed for an economy to function, to produce goods and keep people fed and warm. Manged economies force people to do things they don't want through giving commands, yes - but unmanaged economies also force people to do things they don't want, via the less organised threat that they'll end up living on the street and scavenging leftover food from bins if they don't get a job.
An ideal, utopian and completly unrealistic economy should be able to keep everyone in a modest standard of living using only volunteer labor - we've got vast wastage today, and production in excess of essential goods like food. But this would require a management feat of unprecidented scale and efficiency. Not going to happen.
What is your alternative? There are thousands of topics which require judging in everyday life, many of them highly specialised fields. No-one has the time, resources, intellect or lifespan to study the entire body of human knowledge.
I don't need to know anything about science for this. I need to know three things, that's all:
1. I am personally not qualified to judge the impact of EMF upon living organisms. In order to do this I would need a university education, and would then have to spend a considerable amount of time in study.
2. But there are people who are qualified. Experts. I can tell who these people are because they are educated in respected academic institutions, hold qualifications in the appropriate field and are published in peer-reviewed journals.
3. These people say there is no detectable risk. I accept their judgement on this issue is far superior to my own, and trust in their specialist knowledge.
A lot of people get stuck either at step one, in which case they read some pop-sci publications and believe themselves to be experts, or at step two, in which case they will believe anyone who espouses a view they agree with regardless of qualifications or biases.
Read the article. The researchers are aware of that. They are also aware that there are lots of 'OMG EMF!!!' people who still think that wifi is cooking their brains. This magnetomechanical charger's big selling point is that there is no high-frequency magnetic field to scare people.
That's what would happen in America. Half the voters wouldn't want to send a nuke anyway, believing that God will protect mankind. While America is still debating, China will blow it up instead. They have a space program and nuclear weapons, and a semi-dictatorial government can get things done a lot faster in a crisis.
If you're talking hollywood physycs... with enough warning, could we just build an epic-huge rocket on earth and alter the planet's orbit enough for the asteroid to miss.
At the time of 9x, every piece of software written for DOS and win 3(.11) was written with two assumptions: That it could put files wherever it wanted, and that it could do low-level hardware access for sound, graphics, etc. What you propose they should have done would have broken that. It would have been a business disaster: Users would get their shiny new Windows 95, and discover that none of their software or games would run! People would have held back upgrading for years, by which time competitors could have gotten established. Moving to a true user/superuser model was the right thing from a technical perspective, but suicidal from a business perspective.
Look at it from the perspective if a ruling party: If you're on top, then you *want* stagnation. The status quo is good. Even if that means completly cutting off the internet and all outside communication, North Korea style, then it must be better to rule over a low-tech country secure in your power than to risk the people revolting.
Old-school style. Before electronics got small enough to fit in-ear, a standard 'hearing aid' was a belt-worn microphone and amplifier box with a headphone socket. Primitive technology by today's standards, but it was better than nothing.
And as has been pointed out before, the equaliser setting part is not a hugely complicated operation. It could quite easily be automated. You'd still need a known-response audio device and set of headphones, but even the equipment cost wouldn't be much spread over the potentially tens of thousands of patients who could use it.
In the 'ideal' free market, competition will drive prices to marginally higher than the cost of production. In the real world that sometimes happens (Why you can buy a decent mid-range laptop for £300) but there are many circumstances which can cause prices to be much higher.
Don't forget fungibility. That's a big concern whenever you're comparing manufactured goods or anything with a brand name. An the impact of advertising, a highly effective process by which buyers are often manipulated into making decisions other than what basic economic theory would consider the most rational.
They are also relying on Windows 8 on the desktop to bootstrap the app store*. Software written for the app store will run on x86 or winRT equally well - the API is the same, no advanced ASM optimisation is permitted, so it's a simple recompile and maybe a little tweaking of performance-critical loops. If it catches on, it'll work just like DirectX PC games and the XBox: Being able to target two platforms and thus two markets with one codebase appeals to developers.
* I'm not sure what MS is calling it, but I'm calling it genericised trademark.
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
I've never done it myself, but my understanding is that you can run unsigned software on the iPad under only two situations (Not including jailbreaking):
1. Your own software, compiled on a mac specifically for that iPad, using an Apple developer license. This is how developers do it, but it's obviously completly impractical for distribution, plus the terms for that developer license prohibit it.
2. Apple has some sort of mechanism for in-house specialised software for corporate customers, though I don't know the details. You still have to beg Apple and get some sort of special license. It's just so that in-house apps don't need to go on the public store. Again, distribution is prohibited. Internal use only.
From a technical perspective there isn't much difference between two instruction sets: You can compile for either. From a business perspective, there is a huge difference. There has long been a 'way things are done' with x86, going back through three decades of the personal computer, and a 'way things are done' on ARM reflecting its dominance in the more closed world of mobile phones. Microsoft has determined that the ARM way can potentially be a lot more profitable, as the increased control they have allows them to continue generating revenue from each device after the initial purchase. So the switch in architecture allows them to do things that would cause a much greater level of confusion and outrage on x86.
It's exactly as open as the iPad: The hardware is locked to run only a single operating system, enforced via signing, and the operating system in turn will run only code signed by Microsoft and distributed via the app store. Browser-wise, the only difference is in app approval policy: Apple prohibits any browser that doesn't use their own rendering engine, while Microsoft will approve browsers in their own store but prohibits them from using JIT compilation for security reasons, without which they would be at a serious performance disadvantage in the CPU-intensive age of HTML5. Both do include a very limited means to side-load apps, but only through a path that is deliberatly complicated and only useable by developers or those running managed devices, not the general users.
The success of Windows RT won't be about technology. It's going to come down almost entirely to how well Microsoft can leverage the power of their brand - a name known not just in technology, but to ordinary users. Without that, they are dead in the consumer space. Most they might achieve is some success in business, if they can sell based on superior AD integration and easier administration.
Issues of time. If it takes you an hour to get all the spare PCs out and onto the desks, that's an hour during which your building is non-operational and the enemy knows it. If your building is where the generals have their offices, that's an hour during which your army is headless. That's when the attack will come.
My understanding - and I am not an expert either - is that it prohibits weapons that are *intended* to cause blindness. It doesn't prohibit weapons which may cause blindness incidentially to their intended purpose, and this has come up in the past with regards to laser-guided missiles where the very high-powered targeting laser can be easily pointed into the enemy eyes to disable them while the missile closes.
Slashdot Mirror
My method involved measuring resistance finger-to-finger and across the tongue, then calculating why licking a 9V battery tingles but just touching it doesn't.
"Top-down managed economies only work when they can make people do things other than what they want to do (which is what a bottom-up economy is)."
An accurate criticism of managed economies, but the same is true of self-organising market economies. What people want to do is sit at home, watch tv, go to parties and generally *not work*. But work is needed for an economy to function, to produce goods and keep people fed and warm. Manged economies force people to do things they don't want through giving commands, yes - but unmanaged economies also force people to do things they don't want, via the less organised threat that they'll end up living on the street and scavenging leftover food from bins if they don't get a job.
An ideal, utopian and completly unrealistic economy should be able to keep everyone in a modest standard of living using only volunteer labor - we've got vast wastage today, and production in excess of essential goods like food. But this would require a management feat of unprecidented scale and efficiency. Not going to happen.
What is your alternative? There are thousands of topics which require judging in everyday life, many of them highly specialised fields. No-one has the time, resources, intellect or lifespan to study the entire body of human knowledge.
I don't need to know anything about science for this. I need to know three things, that's all:
1. I am personally not qualified to judge the impact of EMF upon living organisms. In order to do this I would need a university education, and would then have to spend a considerable amount of time in study.
2. But there are people who are qualified. Experts. I can tell who these people are because they are educated in respected academic institutions, hold qualifications in the appropriate field and are published in peer-reviewed journals.
3. These people say there is no detectable risk. I accept their judgement on this issue is far superior to my own, and trust in their specialist knowledge.
A lot of people get stuck either at step one, in which case they read some pop-sci publications and believe themselves to be experts, or at step two, in which case they will believe anyone who espouses a view they agree with regardless of qualifications or biases.
Read the article. The researchers are aware of that. They are also aware that there are lots of 'OMG EMF!!!' people who still think that wifi is cooking their brains. This magnetomechanical charger's big selling point is that there is no high-frequency magnetic field to scare people.
That's what would happen in America. Half the voters wouldn't want to send a nuke anyway, believing that God will protect mankind. While America is still debating, China will blow it up instead. They have a space program and nuclear weapons, and a semi-dictatorial government can get things done a lot faster in a crisis.
If you're talking hollywood physycs... with enough warning, could we just build an epic-huge rocket on earth and alter the planet's orbit enough for the asteroid to miss.
At the time of 9x, every piece of software written for DOS and win 3(.11) was written with two assumptions: That it could put files wherever it wanted, and that it could do low-level hardware access for sound, graphics, etc. What you propose they should have done would have broken that. It would have been a business disaster: Users would get their shiny new Windows 95, and discover that none of their software or games would run! People would have held back upgrading for years, by which time competitors could have gotten established. Moving to a true user/superuser model was the right thing from a technical perspective, but suicidal from a business perspective.
"those who do not adapt stagnate."
Look at it from the perspective if a ruling party: If you're on top, then you *want* stagnation. The status quo is good. Even if that means completly cutting off the internet and all outside communication, North Korea style, then it must be better to rule over a low-tech country secure in your power than to risk the people revolting.
Old-school style. Before electronics got small enough to fit in-ear, a standard 'hearing aid' was a belt-worn microphone and amplifier box with a headphone socket. Primitive technology by today's standards, but it was better than nothing.
And as has been pointed out before, the equaliser setting part is not a hugely complicated operation. It could quite easily be automated. You'd still need a known-response audio device and set of headphones, but even the equipment cost wouldn't be much spread over the potentially tens of thousands of patients who could use it.
In the 'ideal' free market, competition will drive prices to marginally higher than the cost of production. In the real world that sometimes happens (Why you can buy a decent mid-range laptop for £300) but there are many circumstances which can cause prices to be much higher.
Don't forget fungibility. That's a big concern whenever you're comparing manufactured goods or anything with a brand name. An the impact of advertising, a highly effective process by which buyers are often manipulated into making decisions other than what basic economic theory would consider the most rational.
I award you one Internets.
They are also relying on Windows 8 on the desktop to bootstrap the app store*. Software written for the app store will run on x86 or winRT equally well - the API is the same, no advanced ASM optimisation is permitted, so it's a simple recompile and maybe a little tweaking of performance-critical loops. If it catches on, it'll work just like DirectX PC games and the XBox: Being able to target two platforms and thus two markets with one codebase appeals to developers.
* I'm not sure what MS is calling it, but I'm calling it genericised trademark.
Does this offer any advantage over the already-established Freenet? Any at all?
True. But Gnutella wasn't designed for privacy.
The atrophy is a fundamental limit, so long as storage is finite. Tweaking cache management may slow it down, but it has to happen.
The key is to realise that even if you *are* smarter than everyone else, they'll be more cooperative if you let them maintain their delusion of equality.
I've never done it myself, but my understanding is that you can run unsigned software on the iPad under only two situations (Not including jailbreaking):
1. Your own software, compiled on a mac specifically for that iPad, using an Apple developer license. This is how developers do it, but it's obviously completly impractical for distribution, plus the terms for that developer license prohibit it.
2. Apple has some sort of mechanism for in-house specialised software for corporate customers, though I don't know the details. You still have to beg Apple and get some sort of special license. It's just so that in-house apps don't need to go on the public store. Again, distribution is prohibited. Internal use only.
From a technical perspective there isn't much difference between two instruction sets: You can compile for either. From a business perspective, there is a huge difference. There has long been a 'way things are done' with x86, going back through three decades of the personal computer, and a 'way things are done' on ARM reflecting its dominance in the more closed world of mobile phones. Microsoft has determined that the ARM way can potentially be a lot more profitable, as the increased control they have allows them to continue generating revenue from each device after the initial purchase. So the switch in architecture allows them to do things that would cause a much greater level of confusion and outrage on x86.
It's exactly as open as the iPad: The hardware is locked to run only a single operating system, enforced via signing, and the operating system in turn will run only code signed by Microsoft and distributed via the app store. Browser-wise, the only difference is in app approval policy: Apple prohibits any browser that doesn't use their own rendering engine, while Microsoft will approve browsers in their own store but prohibits them from using JIT compilation for security reasons, without which they would be at a serious performance disadvantage in the CPU-intensive age of HTML5. Both do include a very limited means to side-load apps, but only through a path that is deliberatly complicated and only useable by developers or those running managed devices, not the general users.
The success of Windows RT won't be about technology. It's going to come down almost entirely to how well Microsoft can leverage the power of their brand - a name known not just in technology, but to ordinary users. Without that, they are dead in the consumer space. Most they might achieve is some success in business, if they can sell based on superior AD integration and easier administration.
Issues of time. If it takes you an hour to get all the spare PCs out and onto the desks, that's an hour during which your building is non-operational and the enemy knows it. If your building is where the generals have their offices, that's an hour during which your army is headless. That's when the attack will come.
My understanding - and I am not an expert either - is that it prohibits weapons that are *intended* to cause blindness. It doesn't prohibit weapons which may cause blindness incidentially to their intended purpose, and this has come up in the past with regards to laser-guided missiles where the very high-powered targeting laser can be easily pointed into the enemy eyes to disable them while the missile closes.