It once resulted in me doing some screwed-up photography for a friend, who needed someone local to take pictures of Oxford University College for a website they were commissioned to produce. After all the trouble of getting the appropriate approval paperwork and permissions out the way... due to the translation error, I was sent to Oxford University, a different organisation entirely, and ended up getting escorted off campus by security.
Plus the mega-rich often don't actually get paid that much - they just get really amazing benefit packages, company home and car, stock options, etc. Remember the $1-a-year CEOs?
For a slimy example, look at televangalist Creflow Dollar. He doesn't own a house. He lives in a mansion, but he doesn't own it. It's a company-owned mansion... and his company is tax-exempt, which means he pays nothing at all in property tax. He also goes on exotic holidays, justified as missionary work so the company can pay for them all - again, tax exempt. There are a few honest, tax-paying people in the richest classes of society - but in general, you don't get there by being generous with your money. Even the most charitable of them like Bill Gates have some history of ruthless penny-pinching.
It's not just Saudi Arabia, it's all of OPEC. They work as a consortium to keep oil prices high, but not *too* high. Or at least they try. They have enough influence to nudge the price of oil up or down, but not to just dictate it.
Domestic oil is somewhat expensive. It's there, yes, but it's pricy - deep down deposits in the golf, and sands that take intensive processing. That's why so much of it is imported. The shallow deposits of the middle east are so easy to get to, it's cheaper to get it over there - even with the OPEC cartel.
Oil prices have, in recent times, gone up high enough to make even oil shale profitable. But there is no guarantee they will stay that high. Why would any company spend hundreds of millions to build a processing facility that's viable right now if there is a chance that in five years the price of oil will have dropped again?
The problem with this approach is that, while all the voters are in favor of cutting spending in general, it's hard to find anything significent to cut that the voters don't actually want. Even the porkiest projects have a lot of supporters in their local area. We're having that situation here in the UK right now - our government is actually cutting spending, and heavily too, but that doesn't stop people moaning very loudly when they realise that there are fewer police on the street, the NHS is losing staff and even the road-cleaners will be coming around less often.
You're both wrong. The free market works quite well, most of the time - but it is by no means infallible. We worked that out over here in Europe, but you in the US are afraid to regulate anything for fear of somehow turning into communists.
One was actually tried, but AFAIK it collapsed due to a combination of repeated delays and licencing issues actually getting top-quality free porn legally. There's plenty of free porn on IPv4 already, so you need something people would pay for... and if people would pay for it, the studio isn't going to be too happy about giving it away for free.
If you want to though, go ahead and set it up yourself. Servers arn't that expensive to rent, though you'll have to shop around for one with a real IPv6 address.
It will be able to run for some time by just reselling IPs. You want a range, but none to be had? No problem: Just find a company with more addresses then they need and offer a reasonable sum of money. Eventually organisations will realise that if they deploy more NAT they can free up precious addresses to sell on the open market. It'll all cuminate at the point when everyone who isn't running a server is behind three nester NAT routers and it's impossible for any end user to communicate with another except via a company with the money to pay for a real address... which is exactly how a lot of people would like the internet. There is money to be made in an internet of equals, but there is a lot more money to be made in an internet where only those with the cash can publish easily.
My cynical side has to agree. ISPs hate P2P technology - not only does it suck up network capacity and force them into expensive upgrades, but many of them are closely tied to content companies or distribution services too. Give them a chance to kill P2P through inaction, and I imagine a lot of them will be more than happy to sit back let it happen. No more piracy to reduce the demand for cable TV, no more VoIP to compete with their telephone services.
Partially. Stateless autoconfiguration gives all hosts an IPv6 address, the correct subnet mask, and the default gateway. DNS is conspicuously absent. There is an extension to the RA that can specify a DNS server, but not all OSs support it.
That's fine if you're actually trying to remove a watermark. But what about something more general? I just wanted to see if it could be done. I think it can, but not by me.
Neural network. I fed it a 64x64 section of image (greyscale) with a 16x16 blacked-out hole in the middle, and tried to train it to fill in the gap. I failed dismally, probably because I only vaguely understand the theory. But at least I made some effort.
Or in a more PR-friendly varient of 2.... victim location after natural disaster. Dogs are used for that already, and do a decent job, but a robot of similar physical ability could roam further and faster without the need to stay close to it's handler. Just needs to maintain a radio link. Operator steers it with a joystick, and the robot itsself decides where to put each limb.
Skin doesn't contribute to locomotion. It would serve the very useful purpose of keeping dirt, grit and grass from finding it's way into the delicate mechanisms though. A robot made for use outside may well include some form of skin, if only in the form of a flexible bag enclosing each joint.
Law 0: A Robot may not take any action which may result in the manufacturer being held liable.
Also, in practice, law 2 (Or 3, in Asimov's numbering) would have to be modified to accept orders only from authorised people. Otherwise the robot would be just too easy to abuse. Picture some kids going to a fire station and shouting 'spray anyone who passes by with the hose!' Chaos ensues until someone thinks to countermand the instruction.
Like many amateurs, I have dabbled in artificial life. It will take every cpu cycle you can give it, for as long as you can, and still want more.
I evolved a retina. A very bad one. It was supposed to fill in a gap in an image (Think logo-removal for TV), but never worked well enough to be any use.
Given that in other recent news Apple took top place for movie product-placement? Quite plausible. Though I feel they might hesitate before sullying their brand by appearing in Transformers 3.
It's subjective. In a debate on the matter, I once posted an image featuring not just a naked woman, but provocative posing and implied bestiality with a swan. Draw that today, it'd be called porn. But this painting was drawn by no less than Leonado da Vinci, and obviously someone so famous would never draw porn. Therefore it can't be porn.
Slashdot Mirror
It once resulted in me doing some screwed-up photography for a friend, who needed someone local to take pictures of Oxford University College for a website they were commissioned to produce. After all the trouble of getting the appropriate approval paperwork and permissions out the way... due to the translation error, I was sent to Oxford University, a different organisation entirely, and ended up getting escorted off campus by security.
Plus the mega-rich often don't actually get paid that much - they just get really amazing benefit packages, company home and car, stock options, etc. Remember the $1-a-year CEOs?
For a slimy example, look at televangalist Creflow Dollar. He doesn't own a house. He lives in a mansion, but he doesn't own it. It's a company-owned mansion... and his company is tax-exempt, which means he pays nothing at all in property tax. He also goes on exotic holidays, justified as missionary work so the company can pay for them all - again, tax exempt.
There are a few honest, tax-paying people in the richest classes of society - but in general, you don't get there by being generous with your money. Even the most charitable of them like Bill Gates have some history of ruthless penny-pinching.
It's not just Saudi Arabia, it's all of OPEC. They work as a consortium to keep oil prices high, but not *too* high. Or at least they try. They have enough influence to nudge the price of oil up or down, but not to just dictate it.
Domestic oil is somewhat expensive. It's there, yes, but it's pricy - deep down deposits in the golf, and sands that take intensive processing. That's why so much of it is imported. The shallow deposits of the middle east are so easy to get to, it's cheaper to get it over there - even with the OPEC cartel.
Oil prices have, in recent times, gone up high enough to make even oil shale profitable. But there is no guarantee they will stay that high. Why would any company spend hundreds of millions to build a processing facility that's viable right now if there is a chance that in five years the price of oil will have dropped again?
The problem with this approach is that, while all the voters are in favor of cutting spending in general, it's hard to find anything significent to cut that the voters don't actually want. Even the porkiest projects have a lot of supporters in their local area. We're having that situation here in the UK right now - our government is actually cutting spending, and heavily too, but that doesn't stop people moaning very loudly when they realise that there are fewer police on the street, the NHS is losing staff and even the road-cleaners will be coming around less often.
"I'm all for putting nuclear reactors in cargo ships"
Somalia.....
You're both wrong. The free market works quite well, most of the time - but it is by no means infallible. We worked that out over here in Europe, but you in the US are afraid to regulate anything for fear of somehow turning into communists.
Nor the price. The electric engine is cheap, but the batteries can cost more than the rest of the car put together. A lot more.
"(An IPv6-only free porn site would be ideal.)"
One was actually tried, but AFAIK it collapsed due to a combination of repeated delays and licencing issues actually getting top-quality free porn legally. There's plenty of free porn on IPv4 already, so you need something people would pay for... and if people would pay for it, the studio isn't going to be too happy about giving it away for free. If you want to though, go ahead and set it up yourself. Servers arn't that expensive to rent, though you'll have to shop around for one with a real IPv6 address.
It will be able to run for some time by just reselling IPs. You want a range, but none to be had? No problem: Just find a company with more addresses then they need and offer a reasonable sum of money. Eventually organisations will realise that if they deploy more NAT they can free up precious addresses to sell on the open market. It'll all cuminate at the point when everyone who isn't running a server is behind three nester NAT routers and it's impossible for any end user to communicate with another except via a company with the money to pay for a real address... which is exactly how a lot of people would like the internet. There is money to be made in an internet of equals, but there is a lot more money to be made in an internet where only those with the cash can publish easily.
My cynical side has to agree. ISPs hate P2P technology - not only does it suck up network capacity and force them into expensive upgrades, but many of them are closely tied to content companies or distribution services too. Give them a chance to kill P2P through inaction, and I imagine a lot of them will be more than happy to sit back let it happen. No more piracy to reduce the demand for cable TV, no more VoIP to compete with their telephone services.
Partially. Stateless autoconfiguration gives all hosts an IPv6 address, the correct subnet mask, and the default gateway. DNS is conspicuously absent. There is an extension to the RA that can specify a DNS server, but not all OSs support it.
That's fine if you're actually trying to remove a watermark. But what about something more general? I just wanted to see if it could be done. I think it can, but not by me.
Neural network. I fed it a 64x64 section of image (greyscale) with a 16x16 blacked-out hole in the middle, and tried to train it to fill in the gap. I failed dismally, probably because I only vaguely understand the theory. But at least I made some effort.
Or in a more PR-friendly varient of 2.... victim location after natural disaster. Dogs are used for that already, and do a decent job, but a robot of similar physical ability could roam further and faster without the need to stay close to it's handler. Just needs to maintain a radio link. Operator steers it with a joystick, and the robot itsself decides where to put each limb.
Skin doesn't contribute to locomotion. It would serve the very useful purpose of keeping dirt, grit and grass from finding it's way into the delicate mechanisms though. A robot made for use outside may well include some form of skin, if only in the form of a flexible bag enclosing each joint.
Law 0: A Robot may not take any action which may result in the manufacturer being held liable.
Also, in practice, law 2 (Or 3, in Asimov's numbering) would have to be modified to accept orders only from authorised people. Otherwise the robot would be just too easy to abuse. Picture some kids going to a fire station and shouting 'spray anyone who passes by with the hose!' Chaos ensues until someone thinks to countermand the instruction.
Like many amateurs, I have dabbled in artificial life. It will take every cpu cycle you can give it, for as long as you can, and still want more.
I evolved a retina. A very bad one. It was supposed to fill in a gap in an image (Think logo-removal for TV), but never worked well enough to be any use.
Given that in other recent news Apple took top place for movie product-placement? Quite plausible. Though I feel they might hesitate before sullying their brand by appearing in Transformers 3.
Partial success: Firefox works if I disable proxy, but the Squid I use for caching and ad-blocking doesn't work with decimal-representation IPs.
It's going against the planned heirachy. It's like putting all your documents in /var/lib. It'll work, but that's just how it's supposed to be done.
Well, that's easily solved for us slashdotters. Bit.ly is 168.143.172.53, at least to me here in the southeast UK. Just point your hosts file there.
It's subjective. In a debate on the matter, I once posted an image featuring not just a naked woman, but provocative posing and implied bestiality with a swan. Draw that today, it'd be called porn. But this painting was drawn by no less than Leonado da Vinci, and obviously someone so famous would never draw porn. Therefore it can't be porn.
Scroll up. See all those comments condemning Apple?
We do that as well, and for exactly the same reason.