Coincidentally, AMD and Intel also have a huge presence here in Austin, the capital city of Texas, and I guess they could've/should've opposed this on the grounds that stifling competition is bad for the industry, but there is no chance they would've for two reasons: fear of pissing off Dell and HP, and fear of looking like they're anti-environment.
How is forcing everyone in the state to pay a little bit more for a product automatically favoring HP or Dell? I don't see why AMD or Intel should complain at all. Unless you want to say that they should complain because they might both be made to think about how to make their products more recyclable? If it's a government rule put out on everyone, then no one has an advantage except those that don't follow the rules. Are you saying small businesses shouldn't have to recycle or pay a recycling tax because they are small businesses?
I'm not naive--I know it happens all the time, but I still get the shivers every time I read things like this. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the concept of corporations drafting laws?
I wonder what our country's founding fathers would have thought of the newspapers of their time reporting "This bill, drafted by the Honourable East India Company, and passed by Congress..."
Um, the difference was that EIC did have access to the British congress, but the founding fathers didn't have access to the British congress so they didn't have any weight at getting British laws passed or modified in their favor. If the founding fathers class had voting rights and such in the British congress, then we'd have not broken away at the time.
I have nothing against companies trying to get laws passed in their interest. Why? Its a basic human prinicple of "I want things to be atleast fair to our side or weighted to my side's favor in all contests and we don't care about the other side." Apply that to everything, dating, family, education, government, spreading of religion, science, and slashdot. The prinicple means that a few will always try to get laws/rules passed for their benefit. If that didn't happen then we wouldn't be human any more.
This is one of the few things that I'm some what in favor for. I love having every HP inkcart having its own prepaid mailer to have the old one recycled/remaned. I would love it to be that easy for every product.
There are somethings that I hate with a passion. Whenver I run into one of these (even the easier ones) these get into my top ten things I really wish the person that designed them has to spend time in a special hell filling out every one of these things successfully before they are allowed into heaven.
Jail time is devastating to people and the economy and should be reserved for dangerous people. Not those who offend the moral majority.
Who do you think defines what a dangerous person is? The moral majority are the ones that define behavior as good or bad and can classify your actions as dangerous.
One can argue about whether or not such a computer illiterate teacher should be in an elementary school classroom in the 21st century all they want, but it's still not something a person should go to jail for.
Was it an iMac or another all in one machine or even a laptop used as a desktop? I know people that think when the monitor light goes from green to yellow that they think the monitor is off. Usually, its when all the lights are off. Without knowing what type of computer was sitting in the corner, I wouldn't berate anyone told not to turn it off over not knowing that the monitor power button was seperate or even if they'd been afraid of turning the monitor off as turning the computer off. (I know more than a handful of those type as well.) Don't think that just cause its 2007 that your coworkers actually know the difference between all the pieces of a computer and how/why they work.
It's sort of like I could explain to you exactly how cars work. I put the gas in there to feed it, I turn the key to turn it on and off, and I press that right pedal to make it go, and that left pedal to make it stop, and this wheel thingy makes the car go left or right. Apply that thinking to computers and that's generally what your average person today actually knows about computers. I'm sorry, but I just can't berate this person that much.
This teacher that was told not to turn off the computer and couldn't seem to control it obviously had no business in a classroom with a computer in it.
O.k. you are the new computer guy on probabtion. You are left in the IT shop and the first thing that you are told is don't touch any of "those" computers cause they are important servers. You are left alone for 10 minutes while the guy showing you the ropes takes a leak. While he is gone, porn pop ups appear all over one of the monitors of one or more of the important servers that you have no idea what is running on. The guy gets back from the bathroom sees porn on the servers, and you get your written up for one even using the internet on the servers and two for viewing porn on the computers. They almost fire you over it. Your pleas that it just suddenly happened and that you didn't touch the servers are ignored.
Follow this link http://www.square-enix.com/jp/ir/e/stock/stockhold er/ and look at entry number four. Sony owns 8.5% of Square Enix. I thought Nintendo had owned a part of Square at one point in time, but I don't recongize any of the others as being either Nintendo or MS related. If MS or Nintendo want to tell/force Square Enix to develop for their consoles, then they might want to buy a large share of that company.
People who believe the Earth is flat are crackpots. People who do not believe in the germ theory of disease are crackpots. People who do not believe in plate tectonics are crackpots.
Is this really "funny"?
People that disagree with my politics are crackpots. Yes, it is funny and sad. I've read some good stuff about why carbon isn't that big of a part of GW how the sun and clouds are far, far more important factors and not CO2. Here and other places anyone that says CO2 and man aren't the main reason of GW are sinners that need to be punished or be classified as crackpots or having an agenda with oil/coal companies. Way aren't we talking about water vapour emissions or anything or everything relating to how humans effect clouds? Because its easier to shout that releasing CO2 is wrong and more believable than altering the formation of clouds is wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're finally getting what Liberals have been shouting for decades. It's just shocking that they're only agreeing with the science now. Now all we have to do is wait 30 more years for Conservatives to accept evolution.:)
What planet are you living on? True conservatives won't accept evolution for another 30-50K years when humanity actually becomes several different species unable to breed without any genetic enginneering behind it to explain it. Then in 30-50K years you'll also have those that believe that their branch of humanity was indepedently created of the others and is some how better than other humans. I've never thought of how it would be different if conservatives and liberals were actually different species not just view points.
I would suggest that the problem is not with hard facts and statistics, but rather with a populace that is poorly educated in statistics and a media that is unwilling to actually analyze the statistics (and present that analysis) for fear of offending or boring an apathetic and relatively innumerate populace.
Um, which isn't a solution. I took a stat class in college. The one thing that I really walked away from the class with is to never trust stats or tables thrown around. Esp crap like those graphs that Al Gore was throwing up in his PR flick or all those charts that Ross Perot used to throw up. It's not that the actual data behind them is wrong, it's that the actual numbers aren't usually displayed. It's a lined or bar graph scaled to look impressive/frightening depending on topic. You just change your scale alittle and that massive hump becomes a much smaller bump to worry about. The thing is every group does this from PTA folks, school teachers, school admin, city councils, businesses, also folks within religion and government. Most stats, graphs and tables have a bias of the presenting agency. Stats/graphs that you see thrown around without the actual numbers behind them properly explained are usually the worst offenders that are PR flak. The problem is you can't know. You either have to trust Al Gore and his people were telling the truth or Ross Perot and his people were telling the truth or all presented stats immediately become political ammo for the person's political enemies.
There is no truth; there are only different points of view.
Hardly. One side has most of the scientific establishment behind it. The other side has a few crackpots, "researchers" paid to provide desired data, and cherry-picked data. Only the willfully ignorant at this stage give equal credibility to both sides.
It's funny that the other viewpoints in science debates have now become "crackpots." There are groups of respected researchers that keep quite because of this viewpoint. How would you feel if the moment you mentioned Linux or Open Source in 98% of IT departments that you were put on the automatic fast track out of the company with really bad evals and then actively black balled from the industry?
You'd be pissed as hell. There are various researchers all holding pieces of the puzzle that know that current climate models are little more accurate than using SimEarth to predict climate and are aware of valid reasons that we should be looking at the sun or clouds/water vapor far more than CO2 as being important. If you've seen good researchers instantly labeled nutcases/crackpots for coming out shooting holes in the current theories, you'd start keeping your mouth shut and head down too. I believe that Earth is heating up somewhat. I don't believe there is enough evidence to say that humans directly or indirectly caused it at this point. I think that we need another 100-200 years of study. (That's not inline with the green agenda as they want massive social changes within the next 50 years not over 200 years.)
But it seems to me that 'transporting' data, whether or not using quantum entanglement, isn't quite the same thing as transporting matter and really brings us no close the 'transporter' technology as seen on Star Trek.
We can already transport data through space without using quantum entanglement at all -- it's called radio.
Well, you need a replicator on the other end. You get a clone coming out the other end. Radio is limited to the speed of light as we currently know it. This quatum entanglement magic may not be limited by the same factors. You still have to rig up a replicator to get a clone out the other end, but hey, you've just "transported"/"cloned" something faster than you could previously.
Think using ships that can only go 1/1000th the speed of light to reach neighboring stars, but with this stuff connected back to the home world so in 4-5K years if they get to where they are going, and if the orginal equipment/society is still around on Earth (and actual FTL ships haven't been developed) it would be possible to bring the colonies instantly up to date with 4-5K years of homeworld tech advancement. I don't know if you could actually use this stuff to communicate while travelling that 1/1000th lightspeed, or what actual range restrictions would apply.
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Um, how is this any different from the MySpace Sex Offender thing yesterday? Yesterday, it seemed that most of slashdot thought using the government provided sex offender data to filter and attempt to ID users as wrong if any users were miss IDed as Sex Offenders.
Today, LiveJournal does mass deletions of accounts that they think are pedophiles? I've not read any news sources other than slashdot comments on this. Several questions pop up. Was Live Jorunal using Sex Offender registery data to ID accounts for deletion? If not, was LiveJournal going through all their accounts scanning for anything incent relating (fiction, survivors, and those that actually do it) and deleting the account? How does LiveJournal actually know that any of these accounts should be tagged?
Yesterday, there was a big ruckus on slashdot for MySpace IDing Sex Offenders. Today, LiveJournal deletes anyone that they think might be involved in incest an its o.k.? Where is the slashdot outrage? It seems the only ones that are upset are the incest survivors that had their LiveJournal accounts deleted.
Why should MySpace? But MySpace is claiming they are acting to stop sex offenders from posting, and as such they are responsible for making sure those actions are at least slightly accurate and effective, otherwise they are deceiving people.
MySpace has had their hand forced by others. To me, there is no difference between MySpace, Digg, or Slashdot. So if MySpace has had their hand forced; Slashdot and others could as well. MySpace is TRYING using data from the government. I can understand you accusing the government of releasing inaccurate information, but when you gripe at some one else for using that information you sound silly. It's like a company using name, address, phone list that they bought from various phone companies for wrong data and saying all purchased telemarketing lists are wrong or flawed because of a few errors.
Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them. Are you telling me you don't see a difference between claiming to post information without vetting the sources and claiming to post information that has been filtered to stop sex offenders while knowing that the measures to do so are both inaccurate and ineffective?
I see MySpace having their hand forced and trying to do something. I can easily see Slashdot and other forum sites having to follow along after the MySpace Example. It maybe not be legally required, but it easily could be.
MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem..
All MySpace has to work is the information that the government releases for known sexoffenders, which is usually name, dob, sometimes height/weight and hair and eye color and sometimes current addresses. Does slashdot go through all its useres and call use up or physically ID us to make sure we aren't sex offenders? Nope. Why should MySpace? Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.
I dont have many games and do play it alot when I get a new one, but they dont seem to have the staying power with me that they do on the rest of the family. Nintendo really has managed to capture an untapped market and because of that I think you can toss probabilities and gamer opinion out the window, its not a gamers console, its a non-gamers console.
One of these days, I'm going to have to get one of those things. We've got a PS2 and a N64. My kids spend more time on the N64 playing the two versions of Legend of Zelda on that console than they do playing all our kids' games for the PS2. (That includes various Sponge Bob games, some horse sim, PenGel, and that game with the ball that you roll around to pickup stuff.) The thing is that kids and my wife don't care about the lastest greatest graphics. They only care if the game is fun. (O.k. we can ah over all the graphics of the FF games that I play, but we have just as much fun with Dragon Quest and Radiata Stories graphics as we do with FF's graphics.) Fun and game play is where it's at. If you "need" the lastest and greatest to be happy, you never will be for long. One of these days my kids are going to get burnt out on those two versions of Zelda. That's most likely when I'll seriously consider getting a Wii until then why bother?
My concern is that these children will get use to the idea that being spied on is an OK thing. Once they are desensitized to the idea of not having privacy, it will get easier to get them to conform to whatever the people in power want.
Heck, I made it out of public high school in 96. At that time, I thought junior high and high school were mainly preparing most to happily live in prison. The students had no rights. All rules were handed down from above for their benefit because they can't have the decision making abilities to make any decision that mattered. The teachers could and did invade students' privacy at their whim.
What did you learn? Sign language, because teachers can hear whispering and pick up notes and other easy to pass communications. Teachers have some kind of mystic communications detection/interception ablity that the NSA would love to get their hands on. Soon with univseral camera coverage/DVRs, sign langauge won't be safe either. You basically learn that you don't have the right to communicate with your peers, and if you want to, then it must be hidden with the help of others. Also you learn triva is supposed to be important, but knowing how to use that triva isn't.
WW2 was a special time in the history of the public service. Projects were approved and built at a pace that embarrasses us today. Sure, the military had a bureaucracy but there was a war to be won. Everyone focused on being effective. Petty bureaucrats with petty bureaucratic concerns were swept aside....
Sadly, given enough peace time, the fat bloated bureaucracy rears its ugly head again. The meritocracy is suppressed. If we had to build another Pentagon today, it would cost too much and take too long, and some company close to certain politicians would get rich. In fact, looking at the corruption and waste of money in Iraq, I'm feeling very depressed.
Um, we feel that we are at peace. All that crap in the middle east over the last two decades hasn't felt like a war/conflict to the general public. It's an expensive tax burden, but it hasn't felt like WW3 or Vietam mark 2. Every male 18 on up hasn't been drafted, most of those in college weren't pulled out to fill the drafts, and an entire male generation hasn't spent some time over in foreign parts while those left build tons of crap for the troops. We had alot of anger over 9/11, but I'm over here in a civilian job rather than over there holding a gun. If we really felt like we were in WW3 or against someone that could really hurt us, our military would force through sustainable power that wasn't dependent on fuel sources in the conflict area as a start. I could see the US building up 30-40% long term sustainable power not just to piss of the enemy nations, but for our long term rear area security. We just don't feel like those quick and dirty measures are needed.
If I was the evil overlord incharge of that school district with the money to implement this plan, I'd start first with each schools' library books and then to all the school books. (The school books are assigned to a student, whose parents are responsible for replacement if the books are lost/damaged so you get 5-7 RFID tags depending on how many school owned books are assigned to each student.) After that, I'd make it a little change in the school ID cards that are redone at the beginning of each school year. I could have all the ID cards with passive RFID chips without informing anyone until my evil parenting OS backend webserver was ready to handle all the parents and slashdotters that will be watching their dots move around.
For student privacy/safety, I'd not make it a "public" website. You'd have to have a Parent ID/login before you could look up where your kid has been all day and maybe associated dots/students around them. The teachers and maybe staff would have access, but the general public should only see lots of dots (without ID numbers) moving around just cause it looks neat.
After 2-3 generations of this "safely" happening, then I'd try to expand the program to all schools, or the entire state's new DLs.
Well, if I were an evil overlord with any power...
The time between creating the specs for the machine and getting it into the customer's hands is too long to maintain an optimal price. I don't see how they'll be able to offer computers at wal-mart for comparable prices of what they offer online.
HP/Compaq seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping their instore stock current. If the current HP/Compaq can do it, I'd think that Dell could as well.
About time! Dell loses out on those that purchase those instore HP/Compaq machines. It shouldn't take much for Dell to actually compete in that market space, which would be good all round. Web sites + Shipping is good for some people, but for the crowd that travels to Walmart twice a week; it's just easier to buy something from a store that you are always in. Plus think of the builtin marketing of just having the machines in the stores.
There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen. Genocide is one of humankind's hobbies... if you will. There was Pol Pot, Husein, Chechin?, and other examples like what the Europeans in general did to the new world. The Japanese have their history, as do many other countries on this planet. There are several really good examples in the South American continent.
Not to get on a rant, but genocide does seem to be rather common. There is no reason to think that the Germans weren't trying a bit of it on their own.
I'm kinda neutral. I wouldn't want to be on the recieving end of a genocide, but I have no believe that it's more wrong that war generally is. I can actually understand genocide, one group of people want that group's land/resources so they fight and kill each other over it. The winners then kill off, enslave, or work to death the losers. I don't see why anyone would deny this process has been going on for ages. A part of that is winners get to write the history and recorded history supports the winners viewpoint. Currently we are in a "genocide is wrong" phase. If the US and our culture seriously lost a war/conflict, that meme could vanish far faster than anyone here can imagine. (If we managed to lose a major war or if the jihad was successful, we'd be on the wrong end of a genecide and part of it is burning the books/culture of the defeated to wipe them from the face of the Earth. We'd nuke our enemies to the bedrock before we allowed ourselves to be on the wrong end of a genocide.)
Slashdot Mirror
Coincidentally, AMD and Intel also have a huge presence here in Austin, the capital city of Texas, and I guess they could've/should've opposed this on the grounds that stifling competition is bad for the industry, but there is no chance they would've for two reasons: fear of pissing off Dell and HP, and fear of looking like they're anti-environment.
How is forcing everyone in the state to pay a little bit more for a product automatically favoring HP or Dell? I don't see why AMD or Intel should complain at all. Unless you want to say that they should complain because they might both be made to think about how to make their products more recyclable? If it's a government rule put out on everyone, then no one has an advantage except those that don't follow the rules. Are you saying small businesses shouldn't have to recycle or pay a recycling tax because they are small businesses?
I'm not naive--I know it happens all the time, but I still get the shivers every time I read things like this. Am I the only one uncomfortable with the concept of corporations drafting laws?
I wonder what our country's founding fathers would have thought of the newspapers of their time reporting "This bill, drafted by the Honourable East India Company, and passed by Congress..."
Um, the difference was that EIC did have access to the British congress, but the founding fathers didn't have access to the British congress so they didn't have any weight at getting British laws passed or modified in their favor. If the founding fathers class had voting rights and such in the British congress, then we'd have not broken away at the time.
I have nothing against companies trying to get laws passed in their interest. Why? Its a basic human prinicple of "I want things to be atleast fair to our side or weighted to my side's favor in all contests and we don't care about the other side." Apply that to everything, dating, family, education, government, spreading of religion, science, and slashdot. The prinicple means that a few will always try to get laws/rules passed for their benefit. If that didn't happen then we wouldn't be human any more.
This is one of the few things that I'm some what in favor for. I love having every HP inkcart having its own prepaid mailer to have the old one recycled/remaned. I would love it to be that easy for every product.
There are somethings that I hate with a passion. Whenver I run into one of these (even the easier ones) these get into my top ten things I really wish the person that designed them has to spend time in a special hell filling out every one of these things successfully before they are allowed into heaven.
Jail time is devastating to people and the economy and should be reserved for dangerous people. Not those who offend the moral majority.
Who do you think defines what a dangerous person is? The moral majority are the ones that define behavior as good or bad and can classify your actions as dangerous.
One can argue about whether or not such a computer illiterate teacher should be in an elementary school classroom in the 21st century all they want, but it's still not something a person should go to jail for.
Was it an iMac or another all in one machine or even a laptop used as a desktop? I know people that think when the monitor light goes from green to yellow that they think the monitor is off. Usually, its when all the lights are off. Without knowing what type of computer was sitting in the corner, I wouldn't berate anyone told not to turn it off over not knowing that the monitor power button was seperate or even if they'd been afraid of turning the monitor off as turning the computer off. (I know more than a handful of those type as well.) Don't think that just cause its 2007 that your coworkers actually know the difference between all the pieces of a computer and how/why they work.
It's sort of like I could explain to you exactly how cars work. I put the gas in there to feed it, I turn the key to turn it on and off, and I press that right pedal to make it go, and that left pedal to make it stop, and this wheel thingy makes the car go left or right. Apply that thinking to computers and that's generally what your average person today actually knows about computers. I'm sorry, but I just can't berate this person that much.
This teacher that was told not to turn off the computer and couldn't seem to control it obviously had no business in a classroom with a computer in it.
O.k. you are the new computer guy on probabtion. You are left in the IT shop and the first thing that you are told is don't touch any of "those" computers cause they are important servers. You are left alone for 10 minutes while the guy showing you the ropes takes a leak. While he is gone, porn pop ups appear all over one of the monitors of one or more of the important servers that you have no idea what is running on. The guy gets back from the bathroom sees porn on the servers, and you get your written up for one even using the internet on the servers and two for viewing porn on the computers. They almost fire you over it. Your pleas that it just suddenly happened and that you didn't touch the servers are ignored.
Obviously you shouldn't be around computers.
Follow this link http://www.square-enix.com/jp/ir/e/stock/stockhold er/ and look at entry number four. Sony owns 8.5% of Square Enix. I thought Nintendo had owned a part of Square at one point in time, but I don't recongize any of the others as being either Nintendo or MS related. If MS or Nintendo want to tell/force Square Enix to develop for their consoles, then they might want to buy a large share of that company.
People who believe the Earth is flat are crackpots. People who do not believe in the germ theory of disease are crackpots. People who do not believe in plate tectonics are crackpots.
Is this really "funny"?
People that disagree with my politics are crackpots. Yes, it is funny and sad. I've read some good stuff about why carbon isn't that big of a part of GW how the sun and clouds are far, far more important factors and not CO2. Here and other places anyone that says CO2 and man aren't the main reason of GW are sinners that need to be punished or be classified as crackpots or having an agenda with oil/coal companies. Way aren't we talking about water vapour emissions or anything or everything relating to how humans effect clouds? Because its easier to shout that releasing CO2 is wrong and more believable than altering the formation of clouds is wrong.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad they're finally getting what Liberals have been shouting for decades. It's just shocking that they're only agreeing with the science now. :)
Now all we have to do is wait 30 more years for Conservatives to accept evolution.
What planet are you living on? True conservatives won't accept evolution for another 30-50K years when humanity actually becomes several different species unable to breed without any genetic enginneering behind it to explain it. Then in 30-50K years you'll also have those that believe that their branch of humanity was indepedently created of the others and is some how better than other humans. I've never thought of how it would be different if conservatives and liberals were actually different species not just view points.
I would suggest that the problem is not with hard facts and statistics, but rather with a populace that is poorly educated in statistics and a media that is unwilling to actually analyze the statistics (and present that analysis) for fear of offending or boring an apathetic and relatively innumerate populace.
Um, which isn't a solution. I took a stat class in college. The one thing that I really walked away from the class with is to never trust stats or tables thrown around. Esp crap like those graphs that Al Gore was throwing up in his PR flick or all those charts that Ross Perot used to throw up. It's not that the actual data behind them is wrong, it's that the actual numbers aren't usually displayed. It's a lined or bar graph scaled to look impressive/frightening depending on topic. You just change your scale alittle and that massive hump becomes a much smaller bump to worry about. The thing is every group does this from PTA folks, school teachers, school admin, city councils, businesses, also folks within religion and government. Most stats, graphs and tables have a bias of the presenting agency. Stats/graphs that you see thrown around without the actual numbers behind them properly explained are usually the worst offenders that are PR flak. The problem is you can't know. You either have to trust Al Gore and his people were telling the truth or Ross Perot and his people were telling the truth or all presented stats immediately become political ammo for the person's political enemies.
There is no truth; there are only different points of view.
Hardly. One side has most of the scientific establishment behind it. The other side has a few crackpots, "researchers" paid to provide desired data, and cherry-picked data. Only the willfully ignorant at this stage give equal credibility to both sides.
It's funny that the other viewpoints in science debates have now become "crackpots." There are groups of respected researchers that keep quite because of this viewpoint. How would you feel if the moment you mentioned Linux or Open Source in 98% of IT departments that you were put on the automatic fast track out of the company with really bad evals and then actively black balled from the industry?
You'd be pissed as hell. There are various researchers all holding pieces of the puzzle that know that current climate models are little more accurate than using SimEarth to predict climate and are aware of valid reasons that we should be looking at the sun or clouds/water vapor far more than CO2 as being important. If you've seen good researchers instantly labeled nutcases/crackpots for coming out shooting holes in the current theories, you'd start keeping your mouth shut and head down too. I believe that Earth is heating up somewhat. I don't believe there is enough evidence to say that humans directly or indirectly caused it at this point. I think that we need another 100-200 years of study. (That's not inline with the green agenda as they want massive social changes within the next 50 years not over 200 years.)
A reformulation of CLarks third law by J. Porter Clark: "sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"
Shouldn't that malice be management?
But it seems to me that 'transporting' data, whether or not using quantum entanglement, isn't quite the same thing as transporting matter and really brings us no close the 'transporter' technology as seen on Star Trek.
We can already transport data through space without using quantum entanglement at all -- it's called radio.
Well, you need a replicator on the other end. You get a clone coming out the other end. Radio is limited to the speed of light as we currently know it. This quatum entanglement magic may not be limited by the same factors. You still have to rig up a replicator to get a clone out the other end, but hey, you've just "transported"/"cloned" something faster than you could previously.
Think using ships that can only go 1/1000th the speed of light to reach neighboring stars, but with this stuff connected back to the home world so in 4-5K years if they get to where they are going, and if the orginal equipment/society is still around on Earth (and actual FTL ships haven't been developed) it would be possible to bring the colonies instantly up to date with 4-5K years of homeworld tech advancement. I don't know if you could actually use this stuff to communicate while travelling that 1/1000th lightspeed, or what actual range restrictions would apply.
Nah; it can't be. Something very strange must be going on behind the scene.
What's so strange? Due to this, Nature and Science could be getting a large discount for upgrades to Office 2007 soon.
Forget the deletions. People were upset, but would have forgotten it quickly if livejournal had just said "We purged some pedophile rings, but some other stuff may have gotten caught in it. If there are any livejournals purged that were genuinely innocent, tell us." People would've bitched, would have said the sky was falling down, that Livejournal had gone down the tubes since Six Apart bought them, but there wouldn't have been this sort of mass hysteria.
Um, how is this any different from the MySpace Sex Offender thing yesterday? Yesterday, it seemed that most of slashdot thought using the government provided sex offender data to filter and attempt to ID users as wrong if any users were miss IDed as Sex Offenders.
Today, LiveJournal does mass deletions of accounts that they think are pedophiles? I've not read any news sources other than slashdot comments on this. Several questions pop up. Was Live Jorunal using Sex Offender registery data to ID accounts for deletion? If not, was LiveJournal going through all their accounts scanning for anything incent relating (fiction, survivors, and those that actually do it) and deleting the account? How does LiveJournal actually know that any of these accounts should be tagged?
Yesterday, there was a big ruckus on slashdot for MySpace IDing Sex Offenders. Today, LiveJournal deletes anyone that they think might be involved in incest an its o.k.? Where is the slashdot outrage? It seems the only ones that are upset are the incest survivors that had their LiveJournal accounts deleted.
Why should MySpace?
But MySpace is claiming they are acting to stop sex offenders from posting, and as such they are responsible for making sure those actions are at least slightly accurate and effective, otherwise they are deceiving people.
MySpace has had their hand forced by others. To me, there is no difference between MySpace, Digg, or Slashdot. So if MySpace has had their hand forced; Slashdot and others could as well. MySpace is TRYING using data from the government. I can understand you accusing the government of releasing inaccurate information, but when you gripe at some one else for using that information you sound silly. It's like a company using name, address, phone list that they bought from various phone companies for wrong data and saying all purchased telemarketing lists are wrong or flawed because of a few errors.
Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.
Are you telling me you don't see a difference between claiming to post information without vetting the sources and claiming to post information that has been filtered to stop sex offenders while knowing that the measures to do so are both inaccurate and ineffective?
I see MySpace having their hand forced and trying to do something. I can easily see Slashdot and other forum sites having to follow along after the MySpace Example. It maybe not be legally required, but it easily could be.
MySpace is clearly acting to deceive the public. They're intentionally taking actions they know will be ineffective at solving the problem in an attempt to trick users into thinking they have made real progress. At the same time they're misidentifying innocent people and not properly dealing with that problem..
All MySpace has to work is the information that the government releases for known sexoffenders, which is usually name, dob, sometimes height/weight and hair and eye color and sometimes current addresses. Does slashdot go through all its useres and call use up or physically ID us to make sure we aren't sex offenders? Nope. Why should MySpace? Both groups seem to have a large portion of kids posting to them.
I dont have many games and do play it alot when I get a new one, but they dont seem to have the staying power with me that they do on the rest of the family. Nintendo really has managed to capture an untapped market and because of that I think you can toss probabilities and gamer opinion out the window, its not a gamers console, its a non-gamers console.
One of these days, I'm going to have to get one of those things. We've got a PS2 and a N64. My kids spend more time on the N64 playing the two versions of Legend of Zelda on that console than they do playing all our kids' games for the PS2. (That includes various Sponge Bob games, some horse sim, PenGel, and that game with the ball that you roll around to pickup stuff.) The thing is that kids and my wife don't care about the lastest greatest graphics. They only care if the game is fun. (O.k. we can ah over all the graphics of the FF games that I play, but we have just as much fun with Dragon Quest and Radiata Stories graphics as we do with FF's graphics.) Fun and game play is where it's at. If you "need" the lastest and greatest to be happy, you never will be for long. One of these days my kids are going to get burnt out on those two versions of Zelda. That's most likely when I'll seriously consider getting a Wii until then why bother?
My concern is that these children will get use to the idea that being spied on is an OK thing.
Once they are desensitized to the idea of not having privacy, it will get easier to get them to conform to whatever the people in power want.
Heck, I made it out of public high school in 96. At that time, I thought junior high and high school were mainly preparing most to happily live in prison. The students had no rights. All rules were handed down from above for their benefit because they can't have the decision making abilities to make any decision that mattered. The teachers could and did invade students' privacy at their whim.
What did you learn? Sign language, because teachers can hear whispering and pick up notes and other easy to pass communications. Teachers have some kind of mystic communications detection/interception ablity that the NSA would love to get their hands on. Soon with univseral camera coverage/DVRs, sign langauge won't be safe either. You basically learn that you don't have the right to communicate with your peers, and if you want to, then it must be hidden with the help of others. Also you learn triva is supposed to be important, but knowing how to use that triva isn't.
WW2 was a special time in the history of the public service. Projects were approved and built at a pace that embarrasses us today. Sure, the military had a bureaucracy but there was a war to be won. Everyone focused on being effective. Petty bureaucrats with petty bureaucratic concerns were swept aside. ...
Sadly, given enough peace time, the fat bloated bureaucracy rears its ugly head again. The meritocracy is suppressed. If we had to build another Pentagon today, it would cost too much and take too long, and some company close to certain politicians would get rich. In fact, looking at the corruption and waste of money in Iraq, I'm feeling very depressed.
Um, we feel that we are at peace. All that crap in the middle east over the last two decades hasn't felt like a war/conflict to the general public. It's an expensive tax burden, but it hasn't felt like WW3 or Vietam mark 2. Every male 18 on up hasn't been drafted, most of those in college weren't pulled out to fill the drafts, and an entire male generation hasn't spent some time over in foreign parts while those left build tons of crap for the troops. We had alot of anger over 9/11, but I'm over here in a civilian job rather than over there holding a gun. If we really felt like we were in WW3 or against someone that could really hurt us, our military would force through sustainable power that wasn't dependent on fuel sources in the conflict area as a start. I could see the US building up 30-40% long term sustainable power not just to piss of the enemy nations, but for our long term rear area security. We just don't feel like those quick and dirty measures are needed.
If I was the evil overlord incharge of that school district with the money to implement this plan, I'd start first with each schools' library books and then to all the school books. (The school books are assigned to a student, whose parents are responsible for replacement if the books are lost/damaged so you get 5-7 RFID tags depending on how many school owned books are assigned to each student.) After that, I'd make it a little change in the school ID cards that are redone at the beginning of each school year. I could have all the ID cards with passive RFID chips without informing anyone until my evil parenting OS backend webserver was ready to handle all the parents and slashdotters that will be watching their dots move around.
For student privacy/safety, I'd not make it a "public" website. You'd have to have a Parent ID/login before you could look up where your kid has been all day and maybe associated dots/students around them. The teachers and maybe staff would have access, but the general public should only see lots of dots (without ID numbers) moving around just cause it looks neat.
After 2-3 generations of this "safely" happening, then I'd try to expand the program to all schools, or the entire state's new DLs.
Well, if I were an evil overlord with any power...
I guess we better get to building some coliseums, or the citizens will stop being productive.
Hey, it happens in real life! Look at New Orleans. The first thing they wanted was their modern coliseum rebuilt.
The time between creating the specs for the machine and getting it into the customer's hands is too long to maintain an optimal price. I don't see how they'll be able to offer computers at wal-mart for comparable prices of what they offer online.
HP/Compaq seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping their instore stock current. If the current HP/Compaq can do it, I'd think that Dell could as well.
About time! Dell loses out on those that purchase those instore HP/Compaq machines. It shouldn't take much for Dell to actually compete in that market space, which would be good all round. Web sites + Shipping is good for some people, but for the crowd that travels to Walmart twice a week; it's just easier to buy something from a store that you are always in. Plus think of the builtin marketing of just having the machines in the stores.
There is no reason to believe that it wouldn't happen. Genocide is one of humankind's hobbies... if you will. There was Pol Pot, Husein, Chechin?, and other examples like what the Europeans in general did to the new world. The Japanese have their history, as do many other countries on this planet. There are several really good examples in the South American continent.
Not to get on a rant, but genocide does seem to be rather common. There is no reason to think that the Germans weren't trying a bit of it on their own.
I'm kinda neutral. I wouldn't want to be on the recieving end of a genocide, but I have no believe that it's more wrong that war generally is. I can actually understand genocide, one group of people want that group's land/resources so they fight and kill each other over it. The winners then kill off, enslave, or work to death the losers. I don't see why anyone would deny this process has been going on for ages. A part of that is winners get to write the history and recorded history supports the winners viewpoint. Currently we are in a "genocide is wrong" phase. If the US and our culture seriously lost a war/conflict, that meme could vanish far faster than anyone here can imagine. (If we managed to lose a major war or if the jihad was successful, we'd be on the wrong end of a genecide and part of it is burning the books/culture of the defeated to wipe them from the face of the Earth. We'd nuke our enemies to the bedrock before we allowed ourselves to be on the wrong end of a genocide.)