Really, why is it OK for planes to fly without even having a radio?
Maybe cause they are too busy flying to listen to the music on the radio...
Well, why don't you have a radio in your car telling the cops, DOT, or any central government entity exactly where you are, and plan on going. It's 2007 we could require and have it done in less than 5 years if we really wanted to.
Strange group, this Wikipedia. I go there for information on my favorite Pokemon, but for anything serious, I'd much rather google -wikipedia
I beg to differ. So far, I've made some good quick use of wikipedia for my first and second grade kids. Why the heck are they asking first and second graders for written reports? Wikipedia is fine for that crap. I'm going to have to teach my kids come junior high though that wikipedia shouldn't be used for "real" reports. That's going to be hard for me to explain why we've been using it up to then though.
Unfortunately, with the human generation span being 30 years, even a fast rate of diversification in the human gene pool will be orders of magnitude smaller than "rapid". Bacteria can diversify rapidly. Maybe mice can, too. But humans ? We're diversifying in slow motion, if anything.
I take it for granted that the individuals of the species being evolved never benefit from the long term evolution of their entire species after they die off. Rapid is relative. I consider sooner or rapid in this case any where from 5-10 human generations. Depending on the life span of humans, that's a long time to us. You'd have to be an outside observer that would life longer than that entire time to actually see that benefit within your generation.
Think of it like this. We breed animals that generally have life spans much shorter than our own. We'd have to have something like immortal (relative to us say life span 500-5K years) humans/elves/aliens that would see the changes of a human breeding experiment. They'd also have to have control of the manner most individuals select mates.
Nuclear radiation will produce sterility in men. I know this as it happened to my uncle. Who knows what other diseases might show up that don't necessarily produce immediate death.
I always take the view that humanity is still evolving. Things like this are selective pressure on humanity. We don't have many people out there that work with radiation and getting sterile, but if we did we'd be breeding them out of the gene pool. Sooner or later either we'd evolve a means of not being sterile after being subject to radiation or on one would take those jobs.
Of course, we as a society might just push all those jobs onto the demographic that they don't like. You don't like those that use any drugs and were jailed for it? Have them work in a job that makes them sterile. It's the scifi that uses that as a plot point that's really thought provoking. We wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't put it past some future government from trying it.
See there, not so bad! "Only" nine people died. The 3991 others did not mind having their thyroid glands removed at all. All is well that ends in useless pain and suffering.
This article makes me sick.
I want to know how that compares to having the appendix or tonsils or baby teeth removed. I can believe radiation isn't quite as bad as the PR blitz on it makes to be though I'm not going to be the guy to test that out.
The notion of having a completely unmanned reactor seems like a recipe for disaster though. The Toshiba plan of keeping a few people nearby to ensure security and to monitor the supposedly fail safe systems seems safer.
I feel just the opposite. Take cars as an example. We drive millions of cars around daily. Yet we have thousands of car related deaths per year. I'd much rather have a system that was designed to "just work" without humans there to mess it up. A side benefit is those that use the tech are those that would be in danger from it. So if it went boom or any number of unforeseen things the could happen to it, the ones that would be endangered are the ones that were using said tech.
Actually, I think that we've been evolving to have our energy production and their pollution away from us. Concepts like this are good. Not everyone wants to give up their toys for solar/wind power.
What drives the advances of the last couple decades?
Two desires: 1. To restore Stephen Hawking's physical body to its former fully-functional form. 2. To turn Stephen Hawking into a mobile, indestructible cyborg of incomprehensible power.
It was the movie RoboCop that's driving it all. No one really cares about that one disabled genius. The public just thinks most geniuses are mad scientists anyway and are just waiting for an evil one to "invent" or experiment with making RoboCop.
I can't find myself fearing fearless mice. Why? Because there was most likely a very good reason for the mice that they are afraid of cats and large things that can eat them... I just can't seem to worry about these things getting loose and breeding in the wild.
It's sort of like the fear of spiders, snakes, bears, and large cats. There are very valid reasons for humans to be naturally afraid of things that can kill/harm and maybe eat us.
Re:Entertainment vs. SETI vs. Coffee vs. whatever
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Not to mention how much is spent on Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll. Instead of that we could be spending that on medical research, feeding the poor, funding education, etc.
Um, medical research would be good. Feeding the poor no. Funding anyone's education other than my family's no. Medical drugs yes. Fun entertainment drugs nope unless you count caffeine. Clean Sex including marriage? This is what most males spend their entire income on! so yes to that. Music & Art... Well I'm picky in what I like, but I do listen to the radio and read webcomics so I have to say yes to that.
This is how most people think. I think general military or police spending is o.k. since I'd like to think that I'm being protected from other people. (Actually, I think that I'd really want more private feudal police force since I wouldn't want to share them with many other people. They'd be my military/police force.;) )
I do think Iraq is a waste of my money. 9/11 didn't harm me or my family in anyway. I can see the millions in NY being mentally scarred and just wanting to lash out in mindless revenge. They may have thought it was a good use of their money. If I was NY, I'd want my own city wide anti-aircraft defenses before starting the war on terror.
Of course if I was New Orleans, I'd have wanted my money spent on building a huge wall that hurricanes or just big waves wouldn't flood my city not things like oh a foot ball stadium.
Re:The problem is that SETI is broken.
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Basically, given our current SETI programs, we couldn't detect Earth's civilization even if we were in the next star system over. We leak a lot of signals, but over vast interstellar distances these signals are weak, can be lost in background noise, and would require a huge antenna or array of antennas to receive. In other words, the we depend on aliens having their own SETI that is vastly more advanced than our own.
A real SETI project would cost many orders of magnitude more, and would require radio telescopes many orders of magnitude more sensitive than we have now. We're talking something on the level of making a crater miles across and making it into a radio dish. Arecibo is puny in comparison to what we need.
You could build that huge ring of solar power stations in orbit and have them do double duty detecting any form of transmission coming from away from Earth. Of course, we wouldn't do this because of aliens. We'd do this because the Mars colonists don't like us or the Rock Rats are thinking about dropping a rock or two on us. We aren't worried about detecting other human governments living in space yet so we won't build something that could be a real SETI until then.
They'll be so far ahead of us that we won't have any scientific information that intrigues them enough to come and steal it.
I've always thought that they'd send out probes to every possible intelligent life potential system and have them wait. They'd be designed to record and last millions to billions of years though. The theory would be to leave other life alone and just see if they develop any tech that could be useful. The theory is that they wouldn't need any of our resources but they'd have mastered immortality or at least their government structure lasts millions of years and has become very static. This new planets would be the R&D test labs. They have the time for us to spend 50K-100K years developing to the point where we might invent something useful. There is also the reality TV aspect of watching primitives develop and taking bets on which side will win.
regardless of how much pollution is generated at a power plant somewhere, there will be a hell of a lot less pollution blowing in our faces in the street, in the cities. This means better health for citizens.
If your city doesn't like car air pollution why not ban or fine them? You could have four levels of fines $500, $1,000, $2,000, and then $4,000. (The concept is to start at the lowest level and those that get hit with a $500 will change cars before they get hit with a $1K fine. Those that ignore the first fine will get a second and maybe third. $3500 is a lot of money to most people and for your average citizen would be more than enough to get them to switch. This is why you need the next $4K fine. Because very few folks could afford to pay a $7500 combined fine. I guess if you had really rich folks driving around you'd need a couple of more levels of fines: $8K, $16K, $32K, $64K, and on up. This would highly encourage people to meet your air quality standards or at least avoid your city, which may be even better for you pollution problems.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen. 2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds. 3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard. 4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra. 5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
1. Not going to happen. What I find funny is the ">1hr commute both ways." I'm from Arkansas. The average commute of my friends in the Little Rock area is around 20-30 minutes. (one way.) Those that few that I'm aware of that do have hour or more commutes seem to all be from NY or CA and live an insane distance away from where they actually work. I'm amazed that they could afford gas with the wages in this state, but they love living here just because they live so far from where they work. Stupid NY & CA are the problem... I live about 15 minutes away from where I work.
2. I'm for cheap solar, but not for mandating it. Why? Better designed housing with geothermal heating/cooling and other features can reduce the normal required energy need by alot. I'd rather that was required than solar being required.
3. I believe in this. I would like actually like the feds to ask for a 1% improvement each and every year. (That isn't alot, but after awhile it would add up.)
4. I'm not sure that'll ever happen. 5. Most of that we have now. I want to know if "smart houses" actually save any money through the long run. I've seen many home automation setups, but I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of doing it myself. They seem like stupid little tricks to show off more than any energy saving.
A better solution, I feel, would be to ensure that the (NIH grant winning) authors pay an up-front cost to ensure open-access for their articles. Most of the big name publishing groups I'm familiar with (i.e. Science, Nature, Elsevier, etc.) allow this. The cost is usually not prohibitive (~1000 USD) and would be a better solution for ensuring that the science paid for by government agencies is open to everyone.
Why not the government office that pays for the research have as part of the grant a requirement for them to peer review in their own open access journal. The costs of running the journal would be another line item of the government office.
NIH and NSF (National Science Foundation) research is really the property of the people that pay for it -- the public -- and authors have been somewhat powerless to change this broken system. We're required to adhere to the policies of high-impact journals as well as sign over copyrights in many cases.
You know this is what really ticks me off. I'm not really for the scientists or university holding copyrights, but I'd like the party that funded the research to own the copyright. The NIH and NSF should "own" the finished "copyrighted" papers not any journals. The reason that I wouldn't want scientists or universities holding the copyright is because I've seen both screwing their students. I at least vaguely trust the federal government to let US scientists search through a NIH or NSF journal site. It may not be "free" to completely do this, but I see no reason why a journal should own any copyright of research paid for mainly by taxpayers or other grant sources.
Scientists are good at being scientists, as they should be, but they're not always good at being writers. If your overriding goal is to publish the best science, you can't just kick out the papers with these kinds of errors. You need paid people to do that kind of grunt work, and that costs money.
The evil overlord part of my brain is saying that this is a job for all those English majors. Let's see the universities start requiring the English department to start proofreading and "editing" all the papers that their university submits for "peer review."
The purpose of a driver's license is to show and prove proficiency in driving, not anything else. It is not meant as a defacto identification card or anything else. It is a license to drive, period.
Do you write checks or use credit cards? Usually, you are required to show your DL at the same time. That state government issued DL is the only ID that businesses have of verifying who you actually are. I'm sure that folks don't want the DL or the SSN used as a form of ID other than just between the individual and that government office, but that's not how our world works. The state DL has become the defacto universal US ID card. Have you tried buying beer, tobacco, fire arms, or spray paint without a DL for ID? We already have RealID in practice.
There are things that I think that the ACLU should fight. This isn't one of them though. RealID will never really go away. What it'll become is a federal requirement for the next incarnation of state DLs having to match a federal data standard. This is generally a good thing. What the really big up roar with the current RealID is that many states have gone their own way with having bar codes or digital information on their DLs, but only that state's systems can read the info off the card, and no one is willing to spend additional money just to conform to a federal standard. The main idea behind RealID is that you could have any of the 50 state's DL and they'd all "just work" in each other's and the federal computer system. Making "just work" would require lots of effort and money though.
Let's be honest there is no additional privacy problems with RealID. If you are in a position to be stopped and asked for State or Federal ID by a state or federal government official for government services, then you are either going to provide that information in a verbal or written form to those federal, state, or city officials or you won't be receiving that government service that you wanted. If you wanted to access a "controlled access area", then you could be "detained" while those government officials make sure that you aren't on any most wanted list, have outstanding warrants or on any special watch for lists.
If the government is hunting for you, they know your name and last known address. RealID was supposed to make it trivial to swipe a DL through a reader so all that DL info could be auto populated rather than manually entered. This is supposed to be a the huge privacy concern needing ACLU attention?
On the other hand, if they were developing a similar technology, but remained focused on keeping it cheap and portable, the applications for it would be HUGE. It'd still be fantastic on the battlefield, and could also be used in remote regions (especially in developing nations) where the local population cannot support having highly-specialized doctors in their area.
This is NASA. Cheap isn't in their vocabulary. They'll get a CAT scan machine the size of a book and be quad redundant as well. Only problem is that'll be 50-100 times more expensive then an existing CAT scan machine. So for an app where you have the money to burn, you'll be able to buy this super compact elite CAT scan machine, but you could have bought an entire mobile hospital almost for the price of that one piece of hardware.
I usually find the "best invention" of the year is something that's been around a decade or two and I just didn't know it even existed that's in my price range.
Also known as actually knowing and using the right tool for the right job.
It's like introducing duct tape and WD40 to some one that has never encountered or previously needed them before. I need a list of the tools that I would be using if I properly knew about them. My best invention of the decade is cheap powerful PCs for less than $600. That's more of a refinement in existing tech being cheap enough that most people can finally use it though. It's sort of like $20 a month "high speed internet." When high speed internet costs $100+ a month base price for your area, only rich folks will really even know that it exists. It's not a useful invention if I can't buy it.
I guess my other favorite invention is 19+" LCDs becoming standard on low end desktops.
Even the Soviet era KGB would envy Google data collection and audacity.... All in all, Google is doing a lot of evil if you believe in personal privacy. They are an invasive collector of personal data and they hide the extent and nature of what they are doing. Google makes Microsoft bashful in their business practices.
Yes and no. Why do people put up with what Google currently collects? Because Google isn't using their collected data like the KGB, SS, CIA, or NSA would. They are using it mainly for marketing. When we have some one from Google sitting on the president's cabinet in the department of marketing, then I'd be scared.
There is a part of me that thinks that the government should try experimenting with updating the Census to answer the census long form questions in real time for every US house hold. It couldn't be done 20-30 years ago, but I think we could do it today if we really wanted to. In 20-30 years, if the the government hasn't done it, some company like Google will. O.k. they won't do it for every household, only those house holds with an income level to be useful for marketing to.
we require 10' foot high SUVs modeled on military vehicles that can run over a compact car and not even feel it. the inside must be 500 square feet, of which there will be only one occupant. oh, and the vehicle must get 2 miles to the gallon
i don't understand what the point of this green environmental stuff is, just send more soldiers to iraq. problem solved
Let's be honest, we all really want to be rolling around in RVs. Let's figure out how to get a "green" either solar/electric/hybrid powered RV so we'd have the best of both worlds. As a plus, we'd be prepared for the next natural floods, fires, mudslides, or hurricanes since we'd be able to actually move out entire RV homes instead of fixed homes being destroyed. If only we could build a nuclear powered RV, we'd be set. Nah, we freak out about nuclear anything to go for that.
Wikipedia should be viewed as a men's room wall, people write stuff on the wall, some is useful, some isn't, the editors should be viewed as the janitors that mostly clean off the piss stains, I wouldn't hold account the owner of the men's room, or the janitors for not cleaning something embarrassing or plain wrong, unless it has been pointed out to be removed or fixed and they refused to correct the info.
The individual that used wiki as a place to air somebody else's laundry should be the one held accountable. If the accounts to edit can be registered anonymously, then that should probably be changed. It might cut down on the vandalism if everything posted could be linked to an actual person.
That's what wikipedia is. What wikipedia pretends to be is an encyclopedia though. An encyclopedia should have standards of what personal/private information that they will not publish about people. I view both wikipedia and the submitter of the information at fault. Wikipedia is claiming to be an ISP which isn't true. It is claiming to be factual information with many sources before the information is allowed. What makes wikipedia dangerous is that it's a search able men's room wall of many, many men's room walls. I wouldn't care if you saw kabocox is a "deeming term goes here" on any given men's room wall. I wouldn't want to be able to search kabocox through google and find every deeming term or comment that's been applied though.
I'm safe because I'm not notable enough to be in wikipedia. Are you safe enough to be not notable enough for wikipedia?
For example, my favorite color is green. That's a fact. I don't want some one to look me up in wikipedia and find out my sexual preferences or my favorite color or anything else that I consider private information.
Well, since you didn't post as AC it's a bit late for that, eh? Now we all know your favorite color.
Nah, I'm safe because this is slashdot, and few use slashdot for actual factual information. Besides that was the "safest" example that I could come up with. Favorite colors change alot. I like green today next month I might like teal the month after navy or a shade of red or even khaki. It's meaningless information.
Dangerous information like religious or sexual preferences I haven't stated now have I?
Slashdot Mirror
Really, why is it OK for planes to fly without even having a radio?
Maybe cause they are too busy flying to listen to the music on the radio...
Well, why don't you have a radio in your car telling the cops, DOT, or any central government entity exactly where you are, and plan on going. It's 2007 we could require and have it done in less than 5 years if we really wanted to.
Strange group, this Wikipedia. I go there for information on my favorite Pokemon, but for anything serious, I'd much rather google -wikipedia
I beg to differ. So far, I've made some good quick use of wikipedia for my first and second grade kids. Why the heck are they asking first and second graders for written reports? Wikipedia is fine for that crap. I'm going to have to teach my kids come junior high though that wikipedia shouldn't be used for "real" reports. That's going to be hard for me to explain why we've been using it up to then though.
So what are these people good for, again?
I thought they were wikipedia's nobles that could just do want ever they want to their wikipedia peasants.
Unfortunately, with the human generation span being 30 years, even a fast rate of diversification in the human gene pool will be orders of magnitude smaller than "rapid". Bacteria can diversify rapidly. Maybe mice can, too. But humans ? We're diversifying in slow motion, if anything.
I take it for granted that the individuals of the species being evolved never benefit from the long term evolution of their entire species after they die off. Rapid is relative. I consider sooner or rapid in this case any where from 5-10 human generations. Depending on the life span of humans, that's a long time to us. You'd have to be an outside observer that would life longer than that entire time to actually see that benefit within your generation.
Think of it like this. We breed animals that generally have life spans much shorter than our own. We'd have to have something like immortal (relative to us say life span 500-5K years) humans/elves/aliens that would see the changes of a human breeding experiment. They'd also have to have control of the manner most individuals select mates.
Nuclear radiation will produce sterility in men. I know this as it happened to my uncle. Who knows what other diseases might show up that don't necessarily produce immediate death.
I always take the view that humanity is still evolving. Things like this are selective pressure on humanity. We don't have many people out there that work with radiation and getting sterile, but if we did we'd be breeding them out of the gene pool. Sooner or later either we'd evolve a means of not being sterile after being subject to radiation or on one would take those jobs.
Of course, we as a society might just push all those jobs onto the demographic that they don't like. You don't like those that use any drugs and were jailed for it? Have them work in a job that makes them sterile. It's the scifi that uses that as a plot point that's really thought provoking. We wouldn't do it, but I wouldn't put it past some future government from trying it.
See there, not so bad! "Only" nine people died. The 3991 others did not mind having their thyroid glands removed at all. All is well that ends in useless pain and suffering.
This article makes me sick.
I want to know how that compares to having the appendix or tonsils or baby teeth removed. I can believe radiation isn't quite as bad as the PR blitz on it makes to be though I'm not going to be the guy to test that out.
The notion of having a completely unmanned reactor seems like a recipe for disaster though. The Toshiba plan of keeping a few people nearby to ensure security and to monitor the supposedly fail safe systems seems safer.
I feel just the opposite. Take cars as an example. We drive millions of cars around daily. Yet we have thousands of car related deaths per year. I'd much rather have a system that was designed to "just work" without humans there to mess it up. A side benefit is those that use the tech are those that would be in danger from it. So if it went boom or any number of unforeseen things the could happen to it, the ones that would be endangered are the ones that were using said tech.
Actually, I think that we've been evolving to have our energy production and their pollution away from us. Concepts like this are good. Not everyone wants to give up their toys for solar/wind power.
What drives the advances of the last couple decades?
Two desires:
1. To restore Stephen Hawking's physical body to its former fully-functional form.
2. To turn Stephen Hawking into a mobile, indestructible cyborg of incomprehensible power.
It was the movie RoboCop that's driving it all. No one really cares about that one disabled genius. The public just thinks most geniuses are mad scientists anyway and are just waiting for an evil one to "invent" or experiment with making RoboCop.
I can't find myself fearing fearless mice. Why? Because there was most likely a very good reason for the mice that they are afraid of cats and large things that can eat them... I just can't seem to worry about these things getting loose and breeding in the wild.
It's sort of like the fear of spiders, snakes, bears, and large cats. There are very valid reasons for humans to be naturally afraid of things that can kill/harm and maybe eat us.
Not to mention how much is spent on Drugs, Sex and Rock and Roll.
;) )
Instead of that we could be spending that on medical research, feeding the poor, funding education, etc.
Um, medical research would be good. Feeding the poor no. Funding anyone's education other than my family's no. Medical drugs yes. Fun entertainment drugs nope unless you count caffeine. Clean Sex including marriage? This is what most males spend their entire income on! so yes to that. Music & Art... Well I'm picky in what I like, but I do listen to the radio and read webcomics so I have to say yes to that.
This is how most people think. I think general military or police spending is o.k. since I'd like to think that I'm being protected from other people. (Actually, I think that I'd really want more private feudal police force since I wouldn't want to share them with many other people. They'd be my military/police force.
I do think Iraq is a waste of my money. 9/11 didn't harm me or my family in anyway. I can see the millions in NY being mentally scarred and just wanting to lash out in mindless revenge. They may have thought it was a good use of their money. If I was NY, I'd want my own city wide anti-aircraft defenses before starting the war on terror.
Of course if I was New Orleans, I'd have wanted my money spent on building a huge wall that hurricanes or just big waves wouldn't flood my city not things like oh a foot ball stadium.
Basically, given our current SETI programs, we couldn't detect Earth's civilization even if we were in the next star system over. We leak a lot of signals, but over vast interstellar distances these signals are weak, can be lost in background noise, and would require a huge antenna or array of antennas to receive. In other words, the we depend on aliens having their own SETI that is vastly more advanced than our own.
A real SETI project would cost many orders of magnitude more, and would require radio telescopes many orders of magnitude more sensitive than we have now. We're talking something on the level of making a crater miles across and making it into a radio dish. Arecibo is puny in comparison to what we need.
You could build that huge ring of solar power stations in orbit and have them do double duty detecting any form of transmission coming from away from Earth. Of course, we wouldn't do this because of aliens. We'd do this because the Mars colonists don't like us or the Rock Rats are thinking about dropping a rock or two on us. We aren't worried about detecting other human governments living in space yet so we won't build something that could be a real SETI until then.
They'll be so far ahead of us that we won't have any scientific information that intrigues them enough to come and steal it.
I've always thought that they'd send out probes to every possible intelligent life potential system and have them wait. They'd be designed to record and last millions to billions of years though. The theory would be to leave other life alone and just see if they develop any tech that could be useful. The theory is that they wouldn't need any of our resources but they'd have mastered immortality or at least their government structure lasts millions of years and has become very static. This new planets would be the R&D test labs. They have the time for us to spend 50K-100K years developing to the point where we might invent something useful. There is also the reality TV aspect of watching primitives develop and taking bets on which side will win.
regardless of how much pollution is generated at a power plant somewhere, there will be a hell of a lot less pollution blowing in our faces in the street, in the cities. This means better health for citizens.
If your city doesn't like car air pollution why not ban or fine them? You could have four levels of fines $500, $1,000, $2,000, and then $4,000. (The concept is to start at the lowest level and those that get hit with a $500 will change cars before they get hit with a $1K fine. Those that ignore the first fine will get a second and maybe third. $3500 is a lot of money to most people and for your average citizen would be more than enough to get them to switch. This is why you need the next $4K fine. Because very few folks could afford to pay a $7500 combined fine. I guess if you had really rich folks driving around you'd need a couple of more levels of fines: $8K, $16K, $32K, $64K, and on up. This would highly encourage people to meet your air quality standards or at least avoid your city, which may be even better for you pollution problems.
Now, I realize that I am in Sci-Fi could cuckoo land here, but bear with me. There are some things that need to happen.. well I would like to happen..
1. Reverse the trend of people living 80miles from their workplace and seeing a >1hr commute both ways as normal. I realize this would require a society change - but if conventional cars cost too much and there is no reliable public transport infrastructures then this could happen.
2. Cheap, High efficiency solar cells mandated on all new builds. 3. Energy efficiency mandated on all new CE devices and proper OFF switches as standard.
4. Micro generation being normal, and grid "top up" being extra.
5. Smart housing that automatically switched off lights, water heating on demand from stored power, low power devices.
1. Not going to happen. What I find funny is the ">1hr commute both ways." I'm from Arkansas. The average commute of my friends in the Little Rock area is around 20-30 minutes. (one way.) Those that few that I'm aware of that do have hour or more commutes seem to all be from NY or CA and live an insane distance away from where they actually work. I'm amazed that they could afford gas with the wages in this state, but they love living here just because they live so far from where they work. Stupid NY & CA are the problem... I live about 15 minutes away from where I work.
2. I'm for cheap solar, but not for mandating it. Why? Better designed housing with geothermal heating/cooling and other features can reduce the normal required energy need by alot. I'd rather that was required than solar being required.
3. I believe in this. I would like actually like the feds to ask for a 1% improvement each and every year. (That isn't alot, but after awhile it would add up.)
4. I'm not sure that'll ever happen.
5. Most of that we have now. I want to know if "smart houses" actually save any money through the long run. I've seen many home automation setups, but I wouldn't want to go through the hassle of doing it myself. They seem like stupid little tricks to show off more than any energy saving.
A better solution, I feel, would be to ensure that the (NIH grant winning) authors pay an up-front cost to ensure open-access for their articles. Most of the big name publishing groups I'm familiar with (i.e. Science, Nature, Elsevier, etc.) allow this. The cost is usually not prohibitive (~1000 USD) and would be a better solution for ensuring that the science paid for by government agencies is open to everyone.
Why not the government office that pays for the research have as part of the grant a requirement for them to peer review in their own open access journal. The costs of running the journal would be another line item of the government office.
NIH and NSF (National Science Foundation) research is really the property of the people that pay for it -- the public -- and authors have been somewhat powerless to change this broken system. We're required to adhere to the policies of high-impact journals as well as sign over copyrights in many cases.
You know this is what really ticks me off. I'm not really for the scientists or university holding copyrights, but I'd like the party that funded the research to own the copyright. The NIH and NSF should "own" the finished "copyrighted" papers not any journals. The reason that I wouldn't want scientists or universities holding the copyright is because I've seen both screwing their students. I at least vaguely trust the federal government to let US scientists search through a NIH or NSF journal site. It may not be "free" to completely do this, but I see no reason why a journal should own any copyright of research paid for mainly by taxpayers or other grant sources.
Scientists are good at being scientists, as they should be, but they're not always good at being writers. If your overriding goal is to publish the best science, you can't just kick out the papers with these kinds of errors. You need paid people to do that kind of grunt work, and that costs money.
The evil overlord part of my brain is saying that this is a job for all those English majors. Let's see the universities start requiring the English department to start proofreading and "editing" all the papers that their university submits for "peer review."
The purpose of a driver's license is to show and prove proficiency in driving, not anything else. It is not meant as a defacto identification card or anything else. It is a license to drive, period.
Do you write checks or use credit cards? Usually, you are required to show your DL at the same time. That state government issued DL is the only ID that businesses have of verifying who you actually are. I'm sure that folks don't want the DL or the SSN used as a form of ID other than just between the individual and that government office, but that's not how our world works. The state DL has become the defacto universal US ID card. Have you tried buying beer, tobacco, fire arms, or spray paint without a DL for ID? We already have RealID in practice.
There are things that I think that the ACLU should fight. This isn't one of them though. RealID will never really go away. What it'll become is a federal requirement for the next incarnation of state DLs having to match a federal data standard. This is generally a good thing. What the really big up roar with the current RealID is that many states have gone their own way with having bar codes or digital information on their DLs, but only that state's systems can read the info off the card, and no one is willing to spend additional money just to conform to a federal standard. The main idea behind RealID is that you could have any of the 50 state's DL and they'd all "just work" in each other's and the federal computer system. Making "just work" would require lots of effort and money though.
Let's be honest there is no additional privacy problems with RealID. If you are in a position to be stopped and asked for State or Federal ID by a state or federal government official for government services, then you are either going to provide that information in a verbal or written form to those federal, state, or city officials or you won't be receiving that government service that you wanted. If you wanted to access a "controlled access area", then you could be "detained" while those government officials make sure that you aren't on any most wanted list, have outstanding warrants or on any special watch for lists.
If the government is hunting for you, they know your name and last known address. RealID was supposed to make it trivial to swipe a DL through a reader so all that DL info could be auto populated rather than manually entered. This is supposed to be a the huge privacy concern needing ACLU attention?
On the other hand, if they were developing a similar technology, but remained focused on keeping it cheap and portable, the applications for it would be HUGE. It'd still be fantastic on the battlefield, and could also be used in remote regions (especially in developing nations) where the local population cannot support having highly-specialized doctors in their area.
This is NASA. Cheap isn't in their vocabulary. They'll get a CAT scan machine the size of a book and be quad redundant as well. Only problem is that'll be 50-100 times more expensive then an existing CAT scan machine. So for an app where you have the money to burn, you'll be able to buy this super compact elite CAT scan machine, but you could have bought an entire mobile hospital almost for the price of that one piece of hardware.
I usually find the "best invention" of the year is something that's been around a decade or two and I just didn't know it even existed that's in my price range.
Also known as actually knowing and using the right tool for the right job.
It's like introducing duct tape and WD40 to some one that has never encountered or previously needed them before. I need a list of the tools that I would be using if I properly knew about them. My best invention of the decade is cheap powerful PCs for less than $600. That's more of a refinement in existing tech being cheap enough that most people can finally use it though. It's sort of like $20 a month "high speed internet." When high speed internet costs $100+ a month base price for your area, only rich folks will really even know that it exists. It's not a useful invention if I can't buy it.
I guess my other favorite invention is 19+" LCDs becoming standard on low end desktops.
Even the Soviet era KGB would envy Google data collection and audacity. ...
All in all, Google is doing a lot of evil if you believe in personal privacy. They are an invasive collector of personal data and they hide the extent and nature of what they are doing. Google makes Microsoft bashful in their business practices.
Yes and no. Why do people put up with what Google currently collects? Because Google isn't using their collected data like the KGB, SS, CIA, or NSA would. They are using it mainly for marketing. When we have some one from Google sitting on the president's cabinet in the department of marketing, then I'd be scared.
There is a part of me that thinks that the government should try experimenting with updating the Census to answer the census long form questions in real time for every US house hold. It couldn't be done 20-30 years ago, but I think we could do it today if we really wanted to. In 20-30 years, if the the government hasn't done it, some company like Google will. O.k. they won't do it for every household, only those house holds with an income level to be useful for marketing to.
we require 10' foot high SUVs modeled on military vehicles that can run over a compact car and not even feel it. the inside must be 500 square feet, of which there will be only one occupant. oh, and the vehicle must get 2 miles to the gallon
i don't understand what the point of this green environmental stuff is, just send more soldiers to iraq. problem solved
Let's be honest, we all really want to be rolling around in RVs. Let's figure out how to get a "green" either solar/electric/hybrid powered RV so we'd have the best of both worlds. As a plus, we'd be prepared for the next natural floods, fires, mudslides, or hurricanes since we'd be able to actually move out entire RV homes instead of fixed homes being destroyed. If only we could build a nuclear powered RV, we'd be set. Nah, we freak out about nuclear anything to go for that.
Wikipedia should be viewed as a men's room wall, people write stuff on the wall, some is useful, some isn't, the editors should be viewed as the janitors that mostly clean off the piss stains, I wouldn't hold account the owner of the men's room, or the janitors for not cleaning something embarrassing or plain wrong, unless it has been pointed out to be removed or fixed and they refused to correct the info.
The individual that used wiki as a place to air somebody else's laundry should be the one held accountable.
If the accounts to edit can be registered anonymously, then that should probably be changed. It might cut down on the vandalism if everything posted could be linked to an actual person.
That's what wikipedia is. What wikipedia pretends to be is an encyclopedia though. An encyclopedia should have standards of what personal/private information that they will not publish about people. I view both wikipedia and the submitter of the information at fault. Wikipedia is claiming to be an ISP which isn't true. It is claiming to be factual information with many sources before the information is allowed. What makes wikipedia dangerous is that it's a search able men's room wall of many, many men's room walls. I wouldn't care if you saw kabocox is a "deeming term goes here" on any given men's room wall. I wouldn't want to be able to search kabocox through google and find every deeming term or comment that's been applied though.
I'm safe because I'm not notable enough to be in wikipedia. Are you safe enough to be not notable enough for wikipedia?
For example, my favorite color is green. That's a fact. I don't want some one to look me up in wikipedia and find out my sexual preferences or my favorite color or anything else that I consider private information.
Well, since you didn't post as AC it's a bit late for that, eh? Now we all know your favorite color.
Nah, I'm safe because this is slashdot, and few use slashdot for actual factual information. Besides that was the "safest" example that I could come up with. Favorite colors change alot. I like green today next month I might like teal the month after navy or a shade of red or even khaki. It's meaningless information.
Dangerous information like religious or sexual preferences I haven't stated now have I?