Re:That's great and all, but...
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Growing Insulin
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The insurance companies, of course...
They're the ones who would benefit financially from not having to pay for complications of diabetes. It seems that you don't have much understanding of the economics of insurance. Curing diabetes will save tens of billions of dollars, no matter how cheap insulin gets.
It's ironic of thinking that the insurance companies being the "good guys," but it's true that alot of regulations that we have now for housing, autos, and on the medical profession is because we insure those fields and the insurance companies are looking at reducing their long term costs. Cures are never in the drug companies best interest. The insurance companies will be the force that funds actually cures for diseases. (They'll view is as cheaper to cure once then pay for x number of treatments for the lifetime of the customer.)
Re:That's great and all, but...
on
Growing Insulin
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· Score: 1
I don't want more externally produced insulin, I want to make it myself again.
There isn't a long term market for a "cure" for diabetics. If I was a drug company making insulin, I'm making money off you as it is. This process would bring my profits up. I might or might not bring your price down. I would see development of a "cure" as stopping a long term income stream. You'd sell alot right quick, but then you'd lose all that money that insulin was bringing in.
I'd believe that this logic applies to every drug company making anything that the human body can not make or regulate properly.
...we would need 600 million Kg lithium to make enough batteries to replace 10% of passenger cars. That works out to a bit over half a million tons of lithium. In the year 2005, only 18,000 tons of lithium were mined WORLDWIDE. That means we would need over 25 times the current annual worldwide lithium production just to make enough lithium batteries to give ten percent of U.S. passenger vehicles (cars, light trucks, SUVs) enough charge to drive for one average day, with pretty generous rounding in favor of lithium storage at almost every step I took. That's not even touching the semis, construction equipment, mass transit, airlines and ocean liners that actually keep our society running. And then there's the issue REPLACING the batteries, although I assume there would be large scale lithium recycling implemented.
So I don't foresee lithium being a long-term cost effective material for energy storage in our transportaion system.
You had me at the first part with your dollar value cost benefit analysis, but then lost me at the mining part. I maintain a fleet with about 30 laptops mounted all lithium batteries. Now, I'll tell you the really dirty secret of them. Nearly all laptop batteries have only a 1 year warranty on the battereies. We generally get 3-4 years out of one in a mobile environment, but they are out of warranty after the first year. How much do they cost to replace? It varies from $150-$250. (I believe the $150 is the reman price from an off brand vendor. The $250 is what the laptop man. is charging for battery replacements.) I don't think your mining part really holds water though. I'd really have to look up the "difficulty" of mining lithium, but I'd say that if there was a sudden demand for millions of tons of lithium rather than only a few thousand pounds then we'd see more companies start mining if only for a cash crop. You don't think the long term looks good mainly from a minerals/price point. I want to know what cost reducations all lithium batteries would have if there were suddenly millions of tons of lithium ready for industrial use. Would those $150-$250 batteries drop to $15-$25?
Actually, I can respect those white collar criminals. I'd happily spend 5 years in jail if I had $5-$10 million waiting for me at the end of it.
It's because of people like you that we should institute the death penalty for all criminal offenses. Break a civil law; go to jail. Do an actual crime; die as a warning to others. Do a serious crime, like rape or murder; die slowly and painfully, just like you deserve. That would be just. We don't believe in justice anymore.:-(
Oh please, you want a police state where anyone that breaks a law gets killed? Reguardless if they are guilty or innocent? Heck, why bother even with juries? We could just have the police shoot to kill whom ever they see violating the law. We've never had justice. You seem to believe that harsh punishments equals justice. You want to torture those that commit crimes. You are worse in many ways than the criminals. I would like forgery and ID theft to be punishable by death. To me, murder isn't as bad of a crime as ID theft. I think most sex crimes other than out right rape are over-rated to be used as scare tactics towards folks like you.
As much as I hate to say it, being someone who's drooled over SGI gear for years, I think they need to exit the hardware business. Or perhaps license the SGI hardware brand out to someone else, to use as their high-end workstation brand. Then pare the company back and concentrate on software for the very high-end visualization markets, and perhaps offer consulting services for people converting from IRIX to Linux.
I think nVidia and Ati "killed" SGI more than sgi killed SGI. We've always drooled over SGI as the ultra high end in graphics. But if you sit back and really think about it, why should you still be paying a graphics premium of $xx,xxx when you can get an acceptable card for $xxx-x,xxx that will perform most of your needed functions? Where SGI lost out is more to nVidia and ATi eating away at the bluk of SGI's "low end" market. Come on of you were a manager and had to chose between a $3,000 Dell + $500-$1,500 custom graphics card verse $20,000-$30,000 for a graphics workstation how quick would you make the transition to the cheaper solutions? Can anyone find an article comparing all the graphics features timewise and price wise that SGI has implemented and what features nVidia and ATi have implemented timewise and pricewise? That would would really show you why SGI has been doomed for a long time.
If we look through recorded time, and due to our nature likely much before recorded time as well, people who can 'hear voices' or otherwise know things they should not be able to know are typically regarded as crazy, devilspawn, witches, or some other name in which heavy medication, stoning, or burning at the stake would be prescribed. I would pose that because of this, not only would telepathy not be a survival advantage, any marked ability would indeed be a disadvantage.
That's an interesting way of looking at things. I'd tend to think that the "acceptable" level of ESP that the general population will willingly put up with is somewhere along the lines of both very good hunches and "danger sense" (either to self, family or close friends.) I'd think that those types of skills could easily evovle without most of becoming worried/alarmed over the individual. I'd define very good hunches as being any one that is a quick problem solver with mininum of information about the problem to be solved. I'd defind the danger sense more of knowing that you are in a dangerous situation and that you should get out of it. I'd think that soliders or those that survived war would develop something along those lines. (For the non solider population it might be just an ability to sense where soliders are so you can run away or hide so the soliders don't get you.) Things like that would be very difficult to test. You'd have to put the individuals into actual life threatening situations to see how they react.
I think it's naive to say that ESP and other phenomena can not be real, but it's also extremely naive to think that common, everyday, well documented coincidences are something extra ordinary.
I've been with my wife for nearly eight years, married for four. I finish her sentences, she seems to know when I've forgotten my keys, and keeping presents and surprises secret from one another is a huge undertaking. That doesn't make us telepathically linked, though. Intuitive about each other, maybe, but that's nothing paranormal.
I'm mixed on this whole topic. I'd like to believe that it's possible, but it seems likely that all the ESP that normal people have is similiar to your example of you and your wife. I wouldn't say its ESP either, but maybe that's why we've missed it for so long? Things that are completly normal that every one does can't be ESP. ESP only happens to special people or in movies/books. But what if everyone was only slightly connected? I'd think the closer the family tie the more tightly linked the individuals could be. The trick is seperating out "ESP" from all the other "normal" activities that we are aware of. I think study and training of brain could be greatly improved. How and to what limits is something we really should explore. Most of us think of training the brain as our basic education or maybe problem solving. Whatever there are little mental tricks that would help everyone become alittle more focused or creative depending on the need?
to see porn and all its flavors, casiono/poker scams, spyware, popups, circle jerks, top20 gateways and all the other scum that floats on the bottom of the warez scene
I thought that was the funniest part of this article. How long could this program last when most of the kids go home and tell mom and dad what they've been seeing on the internet today? Gosh, with the way that we overreact, I'd see people demanding jail sentences for those that purposly exposed childern to various adult only material.
A lawyer I know who has represented white collar criminals confirms that many of them truly think "if I do five years in jail and come out set for life, good for me." Meanwhile, minor pot dealers fill our prisons for a "crime" that hurts no one.
Actually, I can respect those white collar criminals. I'd happily spend 5 years in jail if I had $5-$10 million waiting for me at the end of it. Heck, white collar criminals even have a excellent chance of getting out jail for most of that time. Its pretty standard to let alot worse criminals out on a leash after a year or two. Honestly, these guys aren't likely to repeat offend so I could see them in jail a year and a half or so then getting out and just sitting it easy. As long as they don't make any enemies in jail, they are likely to get out clean.
The U.S just arrested a CEO of a foreign Corporation for doing internet business that was contrary to U.S law. Next time we complain about Google or Yahoo bending over backwards to adhere to Chinese law, we should take into account our own policies.
The article made it sound like the guy and his companies were avoiding paying US gambling taxes. Personally, I'm all for avoiding paying any nation's taxes, but if you want to live life by that, then you ought to stay out of the countries that will jail you for not paying their taxes! I hope this CEO knew that he had felony warrants on him before he traveled to the US. Otherwise the guy deserved to get put in jail. I'm of the opinion that if Yahoo or Google violates Chinese law then they should be punished by Chinese law. I take it is as if that's the rule of the land where you want to operate then you better play by that government's rules or face lack of freedom if you ever visit that country. Sounds pretty straight forward to me. Yahoo and Google could violate Chinese laws all day long, but they better not plan their company vacation for China! The same applies to the US except both companies have more property in the US that the government would happily seize if either company was violating US law.
So what they're saying is that even without being convicted of a crime, the state will exercise police powers to enforce punishments on its citizens?
Remember the article yesterday about not needing anything other than an internet connection to have everything delivered and work at home? But anyone with that kind of life style is being targetted by this. You don't have to be guilty; you just have to be accused and it would ruin your life if you actually followed their rules. That's like saying the government will be taking away your car even if they don't don't find you guilty of any traffic offenses. This type of law would just make criminals of otherwise honest people. If anyone with a B.S. in Computer Science was targetted with this law, you'd be reduced to flipping burgers or being a manager because you wouldn't beable to use a computer. Heck, managers and burger flippers need to use computers now a days. So they just want to use this to drive some one towards a life of crime to survive?
Of course kids are losing a lot of the fun toys because of the tendency to pull toys from the market that focus on violence. How else are kids going to get rid of the evil guys? Diplomacy? Bullshit, our government can't even get that to work.
Dude, don't tell me that your "good guys" actually captured, and killed the evil bad guy? That's against union rules. After any small adventure the evil villian must be let go or escape so more adventures for the "good guys" can happen. Diplomacy might rock. You'd just make all the "good guys" black ops soliders sent out to kill the evil villian if you fail your government would claim no knowledge of your actions. Yeah, that'd be much more releastic.
Just as an example, there are three different namespaces dedicated to the various FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards)...To three different STANDARDS.
I'm no expert on government info, and I just looked at this thing for the first time, so maybe it's brilliant and I'm ust not seeing it, but it sure looks a lot like they've fallen victim to a database noob mistake, and created a monster tree with disproportionate crazy branches everywhere, and that is bound to cause relational problems, redundant data, and warped design challenges.
I work for a local city police department. Let me tell you it takes near miracles for data to be shared among different agencies. What's really bad is that things that should be complete digital files that move around systems, have to be re-entered for 3-4 different systems that won't talk to each other. Some like this is normal for government specs.
So get cracking! Take a chance - make the VR games right now!
I think that it'll take atleast 2 more console generations before it hits consoles. PCs could do it, but it would cost an arm & a leg. VR head sets aren't as cheap as you think. I've looked into them at they are $600-800 min. I wanted something like a VR headset just for a normal computer monitor and watching videos listening to audio on. From what I've read, the tech isn't there to do daily computer work. You develop eye strain after just a few hours. They do have systems that will display A/V, but not for the price point of what I'd like to pay. Honestly, I believe that the GameCube could process good enough for VR. I think that it'll be a cheap universal VR headgear that will be the real tech challenge. I think Sony really would have the edge in making something like that. I'd think Nintendo is still sore over Virtual Boy to try again. I think that we should have seen more VR for PCs, but I doubt it'll happen soon. We are hitting a phase of hardware physics. Give that 4-5 generations to mature and get entrenched before VR really takes off.
If somebody gets some good advice, and later needs to build something on what was already done, won't he need to explain to however is now the selected expert at Qunu what his problem is/was, what the Qunu expert helped him achieve etc.. Basically this guy will have no client file/historical so that whoever comes in later can pick it up from there. What happens if the next expert dissagrees with what the previous expert said to be done? The one seeking assistance will be confused as hell! Also what happens when the advice received causes a problem downstream, who's gonna get the end-user out of his misery?
And in what way is this different than Dell support? I've had this same experience with their tech support. I would think that they'd know what we were just doing when the line gets disconnected, but no we have to go through everything from scratch.
Maybe someone should try telling Americans the same thing about cars. To paraphrase the legislation "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of cars."
This was my first thought when reading this summary. Then I thought. It's really pointless all together because those buy computer rooms worth of computer already look at energy efficiency! O.k. the way that they do it generally is how much A/C is required and what is the cost in electrity to run them all. The more efficient a computer the less A/C and power than you need.
Reading your post, I thought of why not a 1% power reduction across the board on all products per year until industries run into actual real hard limits for reducing power consumation. 1% doesn't sound like much, but over time it would add up, plus it would be a good mindset to get our engineers into thinking about.
So whenever I hear that a teacher's union opens their collective mouths to say something, all I can think of is that the parents, the kids, and the rest of the society is about to get a shaft.
This is why I'd want upfront itemized billing for public education. I'd like to see exactly how much my kids teachers are making through me. I'd to have to buy books and other things similiar to what we had to do in college. I'd like to see fees for each lab type class that they have ot use. I'd also love to have students be able to be far more active in school education, administration, and government. I knew more about what the teachers had in plan and what was going on around town while in public school than I do know. I could have been a far more informed voter and I'd have always voted against any taxes are pay increases that teachers believe that they need. I'd say give them a cost of living increasing an maybe a small 4-5% increase every other year as a raise, but they start off making more than alot of parents. (That's also going to be a sticking point. No parent will want their teachers making more than they do. Personally, I think that we need a year round school year with 1-2 weeks of vacation during the Christmas/New Year and some more random holidays. It's basically what us adults have to put up with. Why shouldn't our kids have to learn that one as well?
People want alternatives, Public schools suck, Teachers do not do their jobs, administrators do as little as possible to get by, the social atmosphere inside the school is very similar to that of a state prison. Middle School is simply 3 years of cruel punishment to kids and the public schools refuse to do anything to fix it.
I'll agree with the atmosphere, but I'll disagree with private, charter schools, or home schooling automatically being better. I liked public school when there. I went to public school in Arkansas. When I went to college, I learned how much that I learned compared to others through out the state, foreign students, and out of state students. I was really startled when most of American History 1/2 and World History 1/2 were mainly rehashes of public school education. The same thing happend all through out my math minor as well. After being told all through school how awful public education was, I found it comforting to find out that I had learned more than these private & charter school kids. I felt that I understood something then. Public school education isn't that bad. The Teachers Union loves to have the idea that public education needs more money and that our students aren't top notch.
I wish school kids could vote and could vote away teachers, school adminstrators, school board officals, and school bonds with little purpose other than funding teacher salary increases. You'd be surprised how often the students would forcibly vote against their education. Personally, I'd like all the hidden educational taxes to be stopped and everyone to see an upfront itemized bill of how much public education actually costs them. Public education is most likely costing you money reguardless if you even have children in school. I'm more concerned about reducing the costs of public education.
In that case, dealing with the annual wedgie is no reason to pull the kids out of school. However, I think they may be much worse in Chicago than you might be used to. In many of these schools, violence is pretty much guaranteed. Now I'm definitely against home schooling - those kids turn out like complete losers way too often - but if your school has a statistically defined murder rate, I'll take the loser over the dead kid.
Actually, this is exactly the reason why most people who can homeschool. You might not think some other kid giving yours a wedgie is a bad thing, but some of us would like to come down on that person like a ton of bricks to stop that type of behavior. Of course in the public school system, nearly anything is allowed and teachers often are prevented from doing anything other than teaching. I'm not sure that I like this concept of virtual schools, but I'd much rather lock every kid in a closet with a computer for most of the day rather than put them all together and have the worst behaved be an example to all the rest. (I actually like public education because I couldn't get my kid to sit still and learn. My wife and I would go crazy trying to homeschool though we've thought about it. Reality hit us first though.)
Um, I can't really say that I'm surprised at all. Come on Sega could make a new hardware platform and EA would make a few games for it. EA will be making games for all 3 consoles.
You know if EA really wanted to make some news; they'd start a nude sports series that was adult only that was the same exact games except that the players were all nude. O.k. the only games of that line that I would want is women's track & field, women's ice skating, women's swimming & women's tennis. I wouldn't want Nude Madden 2006 at all.
Think about it... banks of people in a windowless office with EEG helmets on pouring over pictures from every corner of the globe looking for whomever. Fascinating and scary at the same time...
Potential maximum even if cost per airport is reduced to 1/10th the lowest projection, and only 1 in 4 US airports is protected: US$9.3 billion.
All this just to stop something that's never happened on US soil, and AFAIK never successfully happened elsewhere (terrorists using a missile to shoot down a commercial passenger aircraft). Who said terrorism was bad? It sure as heck is good business if you're Northrop...
Um, with all the other crap our government funds, I wouldn't actually feel bad if they spent $10-11 and nearly all civilian airports protected. How much do or military planes and ships cost? I'm defensive minded myself and I'd love to see these things shooting down passing birds.
I think we finally figured it out! Sony did this out of the goodness of their hearts for their customers! They hold a patent on a malicious anti-gaming technology specifically so nobody will be able to do it for 20 years. That sounds like something Sony would do, doesn't it?
Oh, damn, out of Sega, Nintendo, Sony, & MS for holding a patent of this nature to protect customers, I'd think MS would be the best choice for gamers now and for the foreseeable future. Why? Think about it. It's all about content protection and increasing sales. Sega's out of the hardware business and now makes content for the other 3. Sony has content other than video games that I'm sure they'd like to use this feature on. Nintendo may seem the underdog now, but they'll always been the most solid long term. Plus this sounds exactly like things Nintendo would have loved to have done in the 1980's with the NES. Nintendo tried to make video game rentals of any nature illegal. Nintendo has always gotten a large chuck of licensing for each game sold. I don't know if Sony or MS have a similiar system. Which leaves MS for protecting our right to rent or buy used games. Nasty choice isn't it? I'm more for protecting my right to buy used games more than anything else. I've been thinking about not buying any of these new systems. I've been looking at used GameCube games that I'm fairly certain that I'd like. I can get a lot of games for $200-$300. Compare that if they had this tech, I would be forced to buy these games at the full price of $45-50 since it's unlikely the price would ever come down into the $20 classics. $20 is more than I want to spend for most games. I want to spend $10-$15 per video game. I'm who they want to fleece. They want me to stop buying "used" and pay that new game premium of $45-$50 that "hardcore" gamers pay. I'd predict that the first game company that tries this will face a massive boycott.
Speed. Running algorithms to generate every damn thing takes a lot more processor time than loading a pre-rendered object file. Disk space is dirt cheap compared to processor cycles, so the appropriate trade study is made....
Ever remember playing stunts? I'd think most here has played it at one point in time. Graphics looked like crap, but you had lots of courses and it was fun to play. Now it would be interesting if someone took a concept like stunts and applied this sorta of tech to it. I'd want to few the results just to see what our modern processors could really do in realtime. I'd hope that we'd get graphics much better than stunts.
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The insurance companies, of course...
They're the ones who would benefit financially from not having to pay for complications of diabetes. It seems that you don't have much understanding of the economics of insurance. Curing diabetes will save tens of billions of dollars, no matter how cheap insulin gets.
It's ironic of thinking that the insurance companies being the "good guys," but it's true that alot of regulations that we have now for housing, autos, and on the medical profession is because we insure those fields and the insurance companies are looking at reducing their long term costs. Cures are never in the drug companies best interest. The insurance companies will be the force that funds actually cures for diseases. (They'll view is as cheaper to cure once then pay for x number of treatments for the lifetime of the customer.)
I don't want more externally produced insulin, I want to make it myself again.
There isn't a long term market for a "cure" for diabetics. If I was a drug company making insulin, I'm making money off you as it is. This process would bring my profits up. I might or might not bring your price down. I would see development of a "cure" as stopping a long term income stream. You'd sell alot right quick, but then you'd lose all that money that insulin was bringing in.
I'd believe that this logic applies to every drug company making anything that the human body can not make or regulate properly.
...we would need 600 million Kg lithium to make enough batteries to replace 10% of passenger cars. That works out to a bit over half a million tons of lithium. In the year 2005, only 18,000 tons of lithium were mined WORLDWIDE. That means we would need over 25 times the current annual worldwide lithium production just to make enough lithium batteries to give ten percent of U.S. passenger vehicles (cars, light trucks, SUVs) enough charge to drive for one average day, with pretty generous rounding in favor of lithium storage at almost every step I took. That's not even touching the semis, construction equipment, mass transit, airlines and ocean liners that actually keep our society running. And then there's the issue REPLACING the batteries, although I assume there would be large scale lithium recycling implemented.
So I don't foresee lithium being a long-term cost effective material for energy storage in our transportaion system.
You had me at the first part with your dollar value cost benefit analysis, but then lost me at the mining part. I maintain a fleet with about 30 laptops mounted all lithium batteries. Now, I'll tell you the really dirty secret of them. Nearly all laptop batteries have only a 1 year warranty on the battereies. We generally get 3-4 years out of one in a mobile environment, but they are out of warranty after the first year. How much do they cost to replace? It varies from $150-$250. (I believe the $150 is the reman price from an off brand vendor. The $250 is what the laptop man. is charging for battery replacements.) I don't think your mining part really holds water though. I'd really have to look up the "difficulty" of mining lithium, but I'd say that if there was a sudden demand for millions of tons of lithium rather than only a few thousand pounds then we'd see more companies start mining if only for a cash crop. You don't think the long term looks good mainly from a minerals/price point. I want to know what cost reducations all lithium batteries would have if there were suddenly millions of tons of lithium ready for industrial use. Would those $150-$250 batteries drop to $15-$25?
Actually, I can respect those white collar criminals. I'd happily spend 5 years in jail if I had $5-$10 million waiting for me at the end of it.
:-(
It's because of people like you that we should institute the death penalty for all criminal offenses.
Break a civil law; go to jail. Do an actual crime; die as a warning to others. Do a serious crime, like rape or murder; die slowly and painfully, just like you deserve.
That would be just. We don't believe in justice anymore.
Oh please, you want a police state where anyone that breaks a law gets killed? Reguardless if they are guilty or innocent? Heck, why bother even with juries? We could just have the police shoot to kill whom ever they see violating the law. We've never had justice. You seem to believe that harsh punishments equals justice. You want to torture those that commit crimes. You are worse in many ways than the criminals. I would like forgery and ID theft to be punishable by death. To me, murder isn't as bad of a crime as ID theft. I think most sex crimes other than out right rape are over-rated to be used as scare tactics towards folks like you.
As much as I hate to say it, being someone who's drooled over SGI gear for years, I think they need to exit the hardware business. Or perhaps license the SGI hardware brand out to someone else, to use as their high-end workstation brand. Then pare the company back and concentrate on software for the very high-end visualization markets, and perhaps offer consulting services for people converting from IRIX to Linux.
I think nVidia and Ati "killed" SGI more than sgi killed SGI. We've always drooled over SGI as the ultra high end in graphics. But if you sit back and really think about it, why should you still be paying a graphics premium of $xx,xxx when you can get an acceptable card for $xxx-x,xxx that will perform most of your needed functions? Where SGI lost out is more to nVidia and ATi eating away at the bluk of SGI's "low end" market. Come on of you were a manager and had to chose between a $3,000 Dell + $500-$1,500 custom graphics card verse $20,000-$30,000 for a graphics workstation how quick would you make the transition to the cheaper solutions? Can anyone find an article comparing all the graphics features timewise and price wise that SGI has implemented and what features nVidia and ATi have implemented timewise and pricewise? That would would really show you why SGI has been doomed for a long time.
If we look through recorded time, and due to our nature likely much before recorded time as well, people who can 'hear voices' or otherwise know things they should not be able to know are typically regarded as crazy, devilspawn, witches, or some other name in which heavy medication, stoning, or burning at the stake would be prescribed. I would pose that because of this, not only would telepathy not be a survival advantage, any marked ability would indeed be a disadvantage.
That's an interesting way of looking at things. I'd tend to think that the "acceptable" level of ESP that the general population will willingly put up with is somewhere along the lines of both very good hunches and "danger sense" (either to self, family or close friends.) I'd think that those types of skills could easily evovle without most of becoming worried/alarmed over the individual. I'd define very good hunches as being any one that is a quick problem solver with mininum of information about the problem to be solved. I'd defind the danger sense more of knowing that you are in a dangerous situation and that you should get out of it. I'd think that soliders or those that survived war would develop something along those lines. (For the non solider population it might be just an ability to sense where soliders are so you can run away or hide so the soliders don't get you.) Things like that would be very difficult to test. You'd have to put the individuals into actual life threatening situations to see how they react.
I think it's naive to say that ESP and other phenomena can not be real, but it's also extremely naive to think that common, everyday, well documented coincidences are something extra ordinary.
I've been with my wife for nearly eight years, married for four. I finish her sentences, she seems to know when I've forgotten my keys, and keeping presents and surprises secret from one another is a huge undertaking. That doesn't make us telepathically linked, though. Intuitive about each other, maybe, but that's nothing paranormal.
I'm mixed on this whole topic. I'd like to believe that it's possible, but it seems likely that all the ESP that normal people have is similiar to your example of you and your wife. I wouldn't say its ESP either, but maybe that's why we've missed it for so long? Things that are completly normal that every one does can't be ESP. ESP only happens to special people or in movies/books. But what if everyone was only slightly connected? I'd think the closer the family tie the more tightly linked the individuals could be. The trick is seperating out "ESP" from all the other "normal" activities that we are aware of. I think study and training of brain could be greatly improved. How and to what limits is something we really should explore. Most of us think of training the brain as our basic education or maybe problem solving. Whatever there are little mental tricks that would help everyone become alittle more focused or creative depending on the need?
to see porn and all its flavors, casiono/poker scams, spyware, popups, circle jerks, top20 gateways and all the other scum that floats on the bottom of the warez scene
I thought that was the funniest part of this article. How long could this program last when most of the kids go home and tell mom and dad what they've been seeing on the internet today? Gosh, with the way that we overreact, I'd see people demanding jail sentences for those that purposly exposed childern to various adult only material.
A lawyer I know who has represented white collar criminals confirms that many of them truly think "if I do five years in jail and come out set for life, good for me." Meanwhile, minor pot dealers fill our prisons for a "crime" that hurts no one.
Actually, I can respect those white collar criminals. I'd happily spend 5 years in jail if I had $5-$10 million waiting for me at the end of it. Heck, white collar criminals even have a excellent chance of getting out jail for most of that time. Its pretty standard to let alot worse criminals out on a leash after a year or two. Honestly, these guys aren't likely to repeat offend so I could see them in jail a year and a half or so then getting out and just sitting it easy. As long as they don't make any enemies in jail, they are likely to get out clean.
The U.S just arrested a CEO of a foreign Corporation for doing internet business that was contrary to U.S law. Next time we complain about Google or Yahoo bending over backwards to adhere to Chinese law, we should take into account our own policies.
The article made it sound like the guy and his companies were avoiding paying US gambling taxes. Personally, I'm all for avoiding paying any nation's taxes, but if you want to live life by that, then you ought to stay out of the countries that will jail you for not paying their taxes! I hope this CEO knew that he had felony warrants on him before he traveled to the US. Otherwise the guy deserved to get put in jail. I'm of the opinion that if Yahoo or Google violates Chinese law then they should be punished by Chinese law. I take it is as if that's the rule of the land where you want to operate then you better play by that government's rules or face lack of freedom if you ever visit that country. Sounds pretty straight forward to me. Yahoo and Google could violate Chinese laws all day long, but they better not plan their company vacation for China! The same applies to the US except both companies have more property in the US that the government would happily seize if either company was violating US law.
So what they're saying is that even without being convicted of a crime, the state will exercise police powers to enforce punishments on its citizens?
Remember the article yesterday about not needing anything other than an internet connection to have everything delivered and work at home? But anyone with that kind of life style is being targetted by this. You don't have to be guilty; you just have to be accused and it would ruin your life if you actually followed their rules. That's like saying the government will be taking away your car even if they don't don't find you guilty of any traffic offenses. This type of law would just make criminals of otherwise honest people. If anyone with a B.S. in Computer Science was targetted with this law, you'd be reduced to flipping burgers or being a manager because you wouldn't beable to use a computer. Heck, managers and burger flippers need to use computers now a days. So they just want to use this to drive some one towards a life of crime to survive?
Of course kids are losing a lot of the fun toys because of the tendency to pull toys from the market that focus on violence. How else are kids going to get rid of the evil guys? Diplomacy? Bullshit, our government can't even get that to work.
Dude, don't tell me that your "good guys" actually captured, and killed the evil bad guy? That's against union rules. After any small adventure the evil villian must be let go or escape so more adventures for the "good guys" can happen. Diplomacy might rock. You'd just make all the "good guys" black ops soliders sent out to kill the evil villian if you fail your government would claim no knowledge of your actions. Yeah, that'd be much more releastic.
Just as an example, there are three different namespaces dedicated to the various FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standards)...To three different STANDARDS.
I'm no expert on government info, and I just looked at this thing for the first time, so maybe it's brilliant and I'm ust not seeing it, but it sure looks a lot like they've fallen victim to a database noob mistake, and created a monster tree with disproportionate crazy branches everywhere, and that is bound to cause relational problems, redundant data, and warped design challenges.
I work for a local city police department. Let me tell you it takes near miracles for data to be shared among different agencies. What's really bad is that things that should be complete digital files that move around systems, have to be re-entered for 3-4 different systems that won't talk to each other. Some like this is normal for government specs.
So get cracking! Take a chance - make the VR games right now!
I think that it'll take atleast 2 more console generations before it hits consoles. PCs could do it, but it would cost an arm & a leg. VR head sets aren't as cheap as you think. I've looked into them at they are $600-800 min. I wanted something like a VR headset just for a normal computer monitor and watching videos listening to audio on. From what I've read, the tech isn't there to do daily computer work. You develop eye strain after just a few hours. They do have systems that will display A/V, but not for the price point of what I'd like to pay. Honestly, I believe that the GameCube could process good enough for VR. I think that it'll be a cheap universal VR headgear that will be the real tech challenge. I think Sony really would have the edge in making something like that. I'd think Nintendo is still sore over Virtual Boy to try again. I think that we should have seen more VR for PCs, but I doubt it'll happen soon. We are hitting a phase of hardware physics. Give that 4-5 generations to mature and get entrenched before VR really takes off.
If somebody gets some good advice, and later needs to build something on what was already done, won't he need to explain to however is now the selected expert at Qunu what his problem is/was, what the Qunu expert helped him achieve etc.. Basically this guy will have no client file/historical so that whoever comes in later can pick it up from there.
What happens if the next expert dissagrees with what the previous expert said to be done? The one seeking assistance will be confused as hell!
Also what happens when the advice received causes a problem downstream, who's gonna get the end-user out of his misery?
And in what way is this different than Dell support? I've had this same experience with their tech support. I would think that they'd know what we were just doing when the line gets disconnected, but no we have to go through everything from scratch.
Maybe someone should try telling Americans the same thing about cars. To paraphrase the legislation "give high priority to energy efficiency as a factor in determining best value and performance for purchases of cars."
This was my first thought when reading this summary. Then I thought. It's really pointless all together because those buy computer rooms worth of computer already look at energy efficiency! O.k. the way that they do it generally is how much A/C is required and what is the cost in electrity to run them all. The more efficient a computer the less A/C and power than you need.
Reading your post, I thought of why not a 1% power reduction across the board on all products per year until industries run into actual real hard limits for reducing power consumation. 1% doesn't sound like much, but over time it would add up, plus it would be a good mindset to get our engineers into thinking about.
So whenever I hear that a teacher's union opens their collective mouths to say something, all I can think of is that the parents, the kids, and the rest of the society is about to get a shaft.
This is why I'd want upfront itemized billing for public education. I'd like to see exactly how much my kids teachers are making through me. I'd to have to buy books and other things similiar to what we had to do in college. I'd like to see fees for each lab type class that they have ot use. I'd also love to have students be able to be far more active in school education, administration, and government. I knew more about what the teachers had in plan and what was going on around town while in public school than I do know. I could have been a far more informed voter and I'd have always voted against any taxes are pay increases that teachers believe that they need. I'd say give them a cost of living increasing an maybe a small 4-5% increase every other year as a raise, but they start off making more than alot of parents. (That's also going to be a sticking point. No parent will want their teachers making more than they do. Personally, I think that we need a year round school year with 1-2 weeks of vacation during the Christmas/New Year and some more random holidays. It's basically what us adults have to put up with. Why shouldn't our kids have to learn that one as well?
People want alternatives, Public schools suck, Teachers do not do their jobs, administrators do as little as possible to get by, the social atmosphere inside the school is very similar to that of a state prison. Middle School is simply 3 years of cruel punishment to kids and the public schools refuse to do anything to fix it.
I'll agree with the atmosphere, but I'll disagree with private, charter schools, or home schooling automatically being better. I liked public school when there. I went to public school in Arkansas. When I went to college, I learned how much that I learned compared to others through out the state, foreign students, and out of state students. I was really startled when most of American History 1/2 and World History 1/2 were mainly rehashes of public school education. The same thing happend all through out my math minor as well. After being told all through school how awful public education was, I found it comforting to find out that I had learned more than these private & charter school kids. I felt that I understood something then. Public school education isn't that bad. The Teachers Union loves to have the idea that public education needs more money and that our students aren't top notch.
I wish school kids could vote and could vote away teachers, school adminstrators, school board officals, and school bonds with little purpose other than funding teacher salary increases. You'd be surprised how often the students would forcibly vote against their education. Personally, I'd like all the hidden educational taxes to be stopped and everyone to see an upfront itemized bill of how much public education actually costs them. Public education is most likely costing you money reguardless if you even have children in school. I'm more concerned about reducing the costs of public education.
In that case, dealing with the annual wedgie is no reason to pull the kids out of school. However, I think they may be much worse in Chicago than you might be used to. In many of these schools, violence is pretty much guaranteed. Now I'm definitely against home schooling - those kids turn out like complete losers way too often - but if your school has a statistically defined murder rate, I'll take the loser over the dead kid.
Actually, this is exactly the reason why most people who can homeschool. You might not think some other kid giving yours a wedgie is a bad thing, but some of us would like to come down on that person like a ton of bricks to stop that type of behavior. Of course in the public school system, nearly anything is allowed and teachers often are prevented from doing anything other than teaching. I'm not sure that I like this concept of virtual schools, but I'd much rather lock every kid in a closet with a computer for most of the day rather than put them all together and have the worst behaved be an example to all the rest. (I actually like public education because I couldn't get my kid to sit still and learn. My wife and I would go crazy trying to homeschool though we've thought about it. Reality hit us first though.)
Um, I can't really say that I'm surprised at all. Come on Sega could make a new hardware platform and EA would make a few games for it. EA will be making games for all 3 consoles.
You know if EA really wanted to make some news; they'd start a nude sports series that was adult only that was the same exact games except that the players were all nude. O.k. the only games of that line that I would want is women's track & field, women's ice skating, women's swimming & women's tennis. I wouldn't want Nude Madden 2006 at all.
Think about it... banks of people in a windowless office with EEG helmets on pouring over pictures from every corner of the globe looking for whomever. Fascinating and scary at the same time...
And they still can't find Waldo.
Potential maximum even if cost per airport is reduced to 1/10th the lowest projection, and only 1 in 4 US airports is protected: US$9.3 billion.
All this just to stop something that's never happened on US soil, and AFAIK never successfully happened elsewhere (terrorists using a missile to shoot down a commercial passenger aircraft). Who said terrorism was bad? It sure as heck is good business if you're Northrop...
Um, with all the other crap our government funds, I wouldn't actually feel bad if they spent $10-11 and nearly all civilian airports protected. How much do or military planes and ships cost? I'm defensive minded myself and I'd love to see these things shooting down passing birds.
Gentlemen (and ladies), unpack your Atari 2600's.
Protect those cities!
Damn, we are all doomed!
I think we finally figured it out! Sony did this out of the goodness of their hearts for their customers! They hold a patent on a malicious anti-gaming technology specifically so nobody will be able to do it for 20 years. That sounds like something Sony would do, doesn't it?
Oh, damn, out of Sega, Nintendo, Sony, & MS for holding a patent of this nature to protect customers, I'd think MS would be the best choice for gamers now and for the foreseeable future. Why? Think about it. It's all about content protection and increasing sales. Sega's out of the hardware business and now makes content for the other 3. Sony has content other than video games that I'm sure they'd like to use this feature on. Nintendo may seem the underdog now, but they'll always been the most solid long term. Plus this sounds exactly like things Nintendo would have loved to have done in the 1980's with the NES. Nintendo tried to make video game rentals of any nature illegal. Nintendo has always gotten a large chuck of licensing for each game sold. I don't know if Sony or MS have a similiar system. Which leaves MS for protecting our right to rent or buy used games. Nasty choice isn't it? I'm more for protecting my right to buy used games more than anything else. I've been thinking about not buying any of these new systems. I've been looking at used GameCube games that I'm fairly certain that I'd like. I can get a lot of games for $200-$300. Compare that if they had this tech, I would be forced to buy these games at the full price of $45-50 since it's unlikely the price would ever come down into the $20 classics. $20 is more than I want to spend for most games. I want to spend $10-$15 per video game. I'm who they want to fleece. They want me to stop buying "used" and pay that new game premium of $45-$50 that "hardcore" gamers pay. I'd predict that the first game company that tries this will face a massive boycott.
Speed. Running algorithms to generate every damn thing takes a lot more processor time than loading a pre-rendered object file. Disk space is dirt cheap compared to processor cycles, so the appropriate trade study is made....
Ever remember playing stunts? I'd think most here has played it at one point in time. Graphics looked like crap, but you had lots of courses and it was fun to play. Now it would be interesting if someone took a concept like stunts and applied this sorta of tech to it. I'd want to few the results just to see what our modern processors could really do in realtime. I'd hope that we'd get graphics much better than stunts.