It reduces risk to the human crew operating the platform. But if something goes wrong on the rig, I think that the risk of a minor accident turning into a major problem is much larger. What if there's a fire? Damaged by a passing ship? Sabotaged? With no human crew on board, the ability to improvise and solve new problems is seriously hampered.
As reported in every other story, But this was no ordinary earthquake. In a groundbreaking series of tests, engineering researchers from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering jarred a full-size 275-ton building erected on a shake table, duplicating ground motions recorded during the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California. The guys at the supercomputer center played a role, but they didn't build the building or run the test. It was obviously folks from the Structural Engineering department.
I'll chalk that mistake to sloth, not pride. No doubt, some are envious of the attention the lead guys get, but the greedy bastards deserve it. In their wrath, they shake the building, lusting for its fall and gluttonous for the massive data.
Wow. I just read the white paper, and it appears that one way to exploit this security flaw is to enable "Search across computers," but it's not necessary for the attack. This is a giant hole. I use Google Desktop every day, and I have no choice except to disable it. I was a big Google Desktop booster, but there's no way I can use it now.
Any recommendations on a good, safe desktop search application?
This doesn't appear to affect all Google Desktop users. The article talks about data being intercepted as it is sent to Google. IOW, this is only applicable for users who are storing a complete index of their hard drive on Google's servers. As if that wasn't an obvious security threat!
Simple solution: make sure you disable the "feature" allowing you to index your hard drive on Google's servers. IMHO, a terrible feature that has caused Google far more harm than good. Many companies have banned Google Desktop because of this capability. It was even more inexcusable when it was enabled by default.
Moral of the story: even if they aim to "do no evil," Google's self-assuredness often leaves the user paying the price for Google's mistakes.
It doesn't meet the definition of obsolete, "No longer in use," but may be better described using the word obsolescence, "Decreasing value of functional and physical assets or value of a product or facility from technological changes rather than deterioration."
I know it's/. and spelling & grammar errors are to be expected, but imprecise language is misleading and often downright wrong. This is a criticism of the editor, Taco in this case. And you know what, this sort of flippant, imprecise language is a big reason why blogs & news sites like Slashdot don't have the same credibility as newspapers when it comes to reporting facts & providing insight into stories.
The DirecTV TiVoes, including the HD DirecTV TiVo are not obsolete by any stretch. You just can't get the latest TiVo features (you haven't been able to do that for 5 years), and you can't buy a new one from DirecTV any more. But there's a thriving secondary market, and it still works great. I'll take my "obsoleted" HD DirecTV TiVo over any DVR out there that doesn't run the TiVo software. Dual tuner, HD, reasonably upgradeable to a 750GB hard drive, Season Passes, 30 second skip, etc. If that's obsolete, what do you make of theat P.O.S. Scientific American or Motorola DVR you have hooked up to your TV-- obsoleteded?
I wish DirecTV had stuck with TiVo, but just because they didn't doesn't make the years-ahread-of-it's-time DirecTV TiVo (dual tuners back in 2001!) obsolete by any stretch.
I'll just hit #3, since it is the most antithetical to a libertarian, capitalist or democratic society. And would be a phenomenal failure. By "taking" any drug for the cost of development, you've just completely eliminated the motive for private companies to develop new treatments. Look at at this way. You spend all your money researching drugs. most of those end up making you no money. Then, you occasionally make a life-saving drug. But instead of profiting, you simply get your development costs back. So, for every drug, you either lose money or break even.
Of course, it gets even better. You've now made it illegal to develop drugs for diseases that aren't on the approved government list. Basically, every drug company will start to wind down operations & cease developing new drugs. But you will save some money on current drugs, I suppose.
Now, there are plenty of things wrong with the patent system regarding health care. Patents on genes are outright ridiculous-- you should be able to patent a test, but if someone else can test for the same gene another way, that should be appropriate. So I'd reform that. Allowing drug companies to get new patents based on nothing more than isolating one isomer (Prilosec/ Nexium) really benefits no one but the drug companies.
But fundamentally, our "broken" drug patent system has performed remarkably well. some of my favorite people have repeatedly had their lives saved by drugs developed by "evil" pharmaceutical companies. So before you remove all the profit from drug development, you may want to see how many lifesaving drugs have been developed without private capital. How many were developed in the last 20 years?
There are problems with system, but removing the profit from drug development removes the capital, too. Why don't you try to come up with a way to replace that $60-100 billion/ year in research (yes, research!) before you tear down the system.
Better yet listen to the video, especially the opening 30 seconds. Then tell me you still take this seriously.
Not much different than the current plan, except they eliminate the small man-rated vehicle and replace it with one designed to carry both cargo & people. There are advantages to launching stuff in one shot, but then they lose the flexibility of the simpler crew-only launches.
And that $35 Billion savings sounds like complete BS. I think NASA's annual human spaceflight budget is around $5 billion. Considering the next launch system is likely to have a lifespan of 20 years or so, that's almost $2 billion/year in savings, or 40% of the budget. Then figure that about half of that is development savings (i.e., the next 5 years), and they somehow shave 60% off the entire human spaceflight budget? It defies logic, and calls into question everything else they've put forward.
These guys are just classic bullies, all threats and no action. The truth is, he'd never be able to collect that $200 "cancellation fee" even if it was on their website, as they were effectively the ones to cancel the order. The best approach with a bully is to hit him in the nose, and he'll go away. Next time someone threatens to charge you $200 for a product you didn't receiver, just let them. They probably won't charge you, and if they do, you don't have to pay the bill.
I have a few friends who ordered from places like this, and the best bet is to cancel the order as soon as it becomes clear they won't ship. No need to listen to their sales drones or whatever. And shame on PriceGrabber for listing such sleazy resellers-- they are the problem, promoting these false prices when they obviously know better. I'll stick to DealCam and avoid these shenanigans.
Chill. This particular issue is being spun way out of scope. If Yahoo! makes money by showing videos, why shouldn't the record companies (and the artits) get a cut? Is this so shocking? In a perfect world, we'd get to watch all this stuff for free, record companies would get nothing and Google would profit and we'd all be happy!
Get real. Google shows music videos for free. They show ads, for which they receive money. Record company says, hey, if you're making money on this, let's get a cut! This has nothing to do with searching for Madonna on Google when you're not watching a video. It's about getting a cut of the money Google receives for showing ads while we watch the Madonna video. What's the BFD? Blowing issues like this out of proportion makes the whole crowd sound like a bunch of idiots when we're talking about the real issues (Betamax, broadcast flag, industry lawsuits).
Read the article, think about it, and decide whether this is really such a big deal.
I won't go through this liar's post point-by-point, but I will point out that he's completely wrong about Stephen Breyer's alleged lack of judicial experience. You can see for yourself. He's wrong about Clarence Thomas, too.
I'm not sure what your point is, but when you go ahead and make up facts to support your argument, it tends to cast you in a negative light. I'll give props to DaZED1 for correcting himself in his blog, but as he point out there, "Which of course calls my entire damn bit into question." But his post still should be moderated down-- any post that's factually incorrect should not be marked as "informative" by any moderator. Maybe I'll have to re-think my +2 bonus for those posts.
Of course, this happened in Canada, I don't know what the rules are there. But in the US, it is extremely difficult to "gag" someone before they print/say something. The classic example was the alternate take on Gone With the Wind, when the author's estate wanted the book impounded based on trademark or copyright (can't remember which) issues; instead, they were told to sue them after release. Of course, this excepts "gag rules" imposed by judges to prevent lawyers & principles from discussing the case in the media. The judges have no power to gag anyone not involved in the case.
Short version-- I don't think anyone could get this sort of gag order in the US. The 1st Amendment is pretty strong. And, in case the meaning isn't clear, here's the definition for antithetical.
Excellent point, it's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article. At 6x the energy to produce it than you get back, government subsidies would have to be huge. As a matter of logic, divide all government subsidies by the number of gallons of ethanol produced. Examine the subsidy-per-gallon (SPG) in comparison to the cost-of-gas (COG). Unless SPG is more than 5x greater than COG, there's no way it takes 6x as much energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it creates. Otherwise, the makers of ethanol would lose money hand over fist. Anyone have the numbers?
Another respondent pointed that the study was conducted by a big-oil schill. With no facts presented in the article, I can only conclude it's a steaming pile of s***. So/.ers, before railing against government subsidies, try to examine the facts first, do some light math and see if the numbers make sense. This whole article looks like a big troll to me.
My brother started 5 years ago selling jewelry on his website and eBay. It was tough to get any traction on his website, selling inexpensive silver jewelry, and he had a lot more success on eBay. The website was, at best 10% of his business. But about 3 months ago we started an advertising campaign using Google's Adwords program. After a slow start, sales have started to take off thanks to a redesigned landing page that better featured the great deals he has for wholesale silver jewelry. [Ya, that's a plug... is that so wrong?] We've doubled the ad budget just this week and if the trend keeps up for a few more weeks, he might be able to get 50% of his business off eBay.
The content network is really what makes it work. More than half of hits come from the content network, and more than half the sales. The click-through rates are about the same, which surprised me quite a bit.
So, without RTFA, I can support the WSJ's premise. Google does threaten eBay-- it allows small sellers to get their own customer base independent of eBay. eBay may not see a drop in sales, but long-term I think this hurts their growth.
Video on the web is neat and all, but it's almost always poorly implemented and ultimately a waste of resouces. I'm now trying to watch video of the world's biggest popsicle melting on CNN and it's a joke. It plays for 3 seconds, stops for 10, plays for 3, etc. Painful. Not only that, sitting through a:30 ad to watch a 1-minute story is not a good value proposition from a consumer perspective.
Instead of wasting there time on poorly implemented, over-sponsored video, why doesn't CNN show pictures larger than a postage stamp? I hate these news websites which have long stories about different things (think Mars Rovers, new sculptures, building designs, Mac mini, etc.) which cry out for pictures and they show 1 tiny picture which has essentially no detail. Many news sites don't even have pictures! Why is this-- they have no problem showing 10 or more image ads on 1 page.
My advice to CNN: introduce the video service when you can do it well. Until then, spend your money on bandwidth so you can show pictures of buildings, landscapes, cars & people that are bigger than those on my postage stamps.
I've ranted before along the same lines. I'd kick in $100/year to buy some Senators who support expanding the fair-use rights of consumers, but only if enough other people kicked in so we'd reach $1,000,000/year. Anyone want to start it over at PledgeBank?
The so-called Broadcast Flag is an abomination and needs to be rejected by the Senate. It will do nothing to stop large-scale piracy, and will only serve to limit the fair-use rights of American citizens to time shift television programs, save them for later viewing or view tv program's at a family members house. Authorizing the broadcast flag will force innovative consumer electronics companies to ask for Hollywood permission before introducing new products.
Media oligarchies, led by the RIAA & MPAA, tried to sue the VCR out of existence. They sued the first makers of MP3 players. They sued ReplayTV into bankruptcy because they dared to introduce an innovative product without the MPAA's permission. If the broadcast flag and similar legislative tools had been around for the last 25 years, we wouldn't have the VCR, iPods, TiVos or computer DVD recorders. These tools have helped democratize content creation, distribution & consumption by putting citizens/customers in charge of their home-made movies, music, and photographs.
Vote against the Broadcast Flag. It is simply a power grab by media oligopolies intended to criminalize the fair-use of media of Americans of all stripes.
The submitter should be modded down, "Will somebody PLEASE think about the children!" I wonder who the smart-aleck submitter would recommend as the 'beta testers?'
Shuttle should fly again when the known & knowable risks have been adequately addressed. A standard of "would you let your child fly on it" is silly & overly conservative. There are many risks not appropriate for children which are undertaken by adults every day.
Slashdot Mirror
Someone had to say it.
It reduces risk to the human crew operating the platform. But if something goes wrong on the rig, I think that the risk of a minor accident turning into a major problem is much larger. What if there's a fire? Damaged by a passing ship? Sabotaged? With no human crew on board, the ability to improvise and solve new problems is seriously hampered.
As reported in every other story, But this was no ordinary earthquake. In a groundbreaking series of tests, engineering researchers from UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering jarred a full-size 275-ton building erected on a shake table, duplicating ground motions recorded during the January 17, 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, California. The guys at the supercomputer center played a role, but they didn't build the building or run the test. It was obviously folks from the Structural Engineering department.
I'll chalk that mistake to sloth, not pride. No doubt, some are envious of the attention the lead guys get, but the greedy bastards deserve it. In their wrath, they shake the building, lusting for its fall and gluttonous for the massive data.
The funny part is that more than half the people missed the joke!
No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.
Wow. I just read the white paper, and it appears that one way to exploit this security flaw is to enable "Search across computers," but it's not necessary for the attack. This is a giant hole. I use Google Desktop every day, and I have no choice except to disable it. I was a big Google Desktop booster, but there's no way I can use it now.
Any recommendations on a good, safe desktop search application?
This doesn't appear to affect all Google Desktop users. The article talks about data being intercepted as it is sent to Google. IOW, this is only applicable for users who are storing a complete index of their hard drive on Google's servers. As if that wasn't an obvious security threat!
Simple solution: make sure you disable the "feature" allowing you to index your hard drive on Google's servers. IMHO, a terrible feature that has caused Google far more harm than good. Many companies have banned Google Desktop because of this capability. It was even more inexcusable when it was enabled by default.
Moral of the story: even if they aim to "do no evil," Google's self-assuredness often leaves the user paying the price for Google's mistakes.
It doesn't meet the definition of obsolete, "No longer in use," but may be better described using the word obsolescence, "Decreasing value of functional and physical assets or value of a product or facility from technological changes rather than deterioration."
/. and spelling & grammar errors are to be expected, but imprecise language is misleading and often downright wrong. This is a criticism of the editor, Taco in this case. And you know what, this sort of flippant, imprecise language is a big reason why blogs & news sites like Slashdot don't have the same credibility as newspapers when it comes to reporting facts & providing insight into stories.
I know it's
Now, where did I put my pilotless drone?
The DirecTV TiVoes, including the HD DirecTV TiVo are not obsolete by any stretch. You just can't get the latest TiVo features (you haven't been able to do that for 5 years), and you can't buy a new one from DirecTV any more. But there's a thriving secondary market, and it still works great. I'll take my "obsoleted" HD DirecTV TiVo over any DVR out there that doesn't run the TiVo software. Dual tuner, HD, reasonably upgradeable to a 750GB hard drive, Season Passes, 30 second skip, etc. If that's obsolete, what do you make of theat P.O.S. Scientific American or Motorola DVR you have hooked up to your TV-- obsoleteded?
I wish DirecTV had stuck with TiVo, but just because they didn't doesn't make the years-ahread-of-it's-time DirecTV TiVo (dual tuners back in 2001!) obsolete by any stretch.
I'll just hit #3, since it is the most antithetical to a libertarian, capitalist or democratic society. And would be a phenomenal failure. By "taking" any drug for the cost of development, you've just completely eliminated the motive for private companies to develop new treatments. Look at at this way. You spend all your money researching drugs. most of those end up making you no money. Then, you occasionally make a life-saving drug. But instead of profiting, you simply get your development costs back. So, for every drug, you either lose money or break even.
Of course, it gets even better. You've now made it illegal to develop drugs for diseases that aren't on the approved government list. Basically, every drug company will start to wind down operations & cease developing new drugs. But you will save some money on current drugs, I suppose.
Now, there are plenty of things wrong with the patent system regarding health care. Patents on genes are outright ridiculous-- you should be able to patent a test, but if someone else can test for the same gene another way, that should be appropriate. So I'd reform that. Allowing drug companies to get new patents based on nothing more than isolating one isomer (Prilosec/ Nexium) really benefits no one but the drug companies.
But fundamentally, our "broken" drug patent system has performed remarkably well. some of my favorite people have repeatedly had their lives saved by drugs developed by "evil" pharmaceutical companies. So before you remove all the profit from drug development, you may want to see how many lifesaving drugs have been developed without private capital. How many were developed in the last 20 years?
There are problems with system, but removing the profit from drug development removes the capital, too. Why don't you try to come up with a way to replace that $60-100 billion/ year in research (yes, research!) before you tear down the system.
Better yet listen to the video, especially the opening 30 seconds. Then tell me you still take this seriously.
Not much different than the current plan, except they eliminate the small man-rated vehicle and replace it with one designed to carry both cargo & people. There are advantages to launching stuff in one shot, but then they lose the flexibility of the simpler crew-only launches.
And that $35 Billion savings sounds like complete BS. I think NASA's annual human spaceflight budget is around $5 billion. Considering the next launch system is likely to have a lifespan of 20 years or so, that's almost $2 billion/year in savings, or 40% of the budget. Then figure that about half of that is development savings (i.e., the next 5 years), and they somehow shave 60% off the entire human spaceflight budget? It defies logic, and calls into question everything else they've put forward.
Didn't Buzz Aldrin punch some guy out who claimed who never went to the moon? That eliminates him as a geek I think.
I think the conversion is a little easier... 100 kWhs/(5/60)= 1.2 MW
Also, since this is at a filling station, I imagine they'd be charging premium prices, at least double the standard rate. So more like 600 kW.
These guys are just classic bullies, all threats and no action. The truth is, he'd never be able to collect that $200 "cancellation fee" even if it was on their website, as they were effectively the ones to cancel the order. The best approach with a bully is to hit him in the nose, and he'll go away. Next time someone threatens to charge you $200 for a product you didn't receiver, just let them. They probably won't charge you, and if they do, you don't have to pay the bill.
I have a few friends who ordered from places like this, and the best bet is to cancel the order as soon as it becomes clear they won't ship. No need to listen to their sales drones or whatever. And shame on PriceGrabber for listing such sleazy resellers-- they are the problem, promoting these false prices when they obviously know better. I'll stick to DealCam and avoid these shenanigans.
Chill. This particular issue is being spun way out of scope. If Yahoo! makes money by showing videos, why shouldn't the record companies (and the artits) get a cut? Is this so shocking? In a perfect world, we'd get to watch all this stuff for free, record companies would get nothing and Google would profit and we'd all be happy!
Get real. Google shows music videos for free. They show ads, for which they receive money. Record company says, hey, if you're making money on this, let's get a cut! This has nothing to do with searching for Madonna on Google when you're not watching a video. It's about getting a cut of the money Google receives for showing ads while we watch the Madonna video. What's the BFD? Blowing issues like this out of proportion makes the whole crowd sound like a bunch of idiots when we're talking about the real issues (Betamax, broadcast flag, industry lawsuits).
Read the article, think about it, and decide whether this is really such a big deal.
I won't go through this liar's post point-by-point, but I will point out that he's completely wrong about Stephen Breyer's alleged lack of judicial experience. You can see for yourself. He's wrong about Clarence Thomas, too.
I'm not sure what your point is, but when you go ahead and make up facts to support your argument, it tends to cast you in a negative light. I'll give props to DaZED1 for correcting himself in his blog, but as he point out there, "Which of course calls my entire damn bit into question." But his post still should be moderated down-- any post that's factually incorrect should not be marked as "informative" by any moderator. Maybe I'll have to re-think my +2 bonus for those posts.
Of course, this happened in Canada, I don't know what the rules are there. But in the US, it is extremely difficult to "gag" someone before they print/say something. The classic example was the alternate take on Gone With the Wind, when the author's estate wanted the book impounded based on trademark or copyright (can't remember which) issues; instead, they were told to sue them after release. Of course, this excepts "gag rules" imposed by judges to prevent lawyers & principles from discussing the case in the media. The judges have no power to gag anyone not involved in the case.
Short version-- I don't think anyone could get this sort of gag order in the US. The 1st Amendment is pretty strong. And, in case the meaning isn't clear, here's the definition for antithetical.
Excellent point, it's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article. At 6x the energy to produce it than you get back, government subsidies would have to be huge. As a matter of logic, divide all government subsidies by the number of gallons of ethanol produced. Examine the subsidy-per-gallon (SPG) in comparison to the cost-of-gas (COG). Unless SPG is more than 5x greater than COG, there's no way it takes 6x as much energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it creates. Otherwise, the makers of ethanol would lose money hand over fist. Anyone have the numbers?
/.ers, before railing against government subsidies, try to examine the facts first, do some light math and see if the numbers make sense. This whole article looks like a big troll to me.
Another respondent pointed that the study was conducted by a big-oil schill. With no facts presented in the article, I can only conclude it's a steaming pile of s***. So
My brother started 5 years ago selling jewelry on his website and eBay. It was tough to get any traction on his website, selling inexpensive silver jewelry, and he had a lot more success on eBay. The website was, at best 10% of his business. But about 3 months ago we started an advertising campaign using Google's Adwords program. After a slow start, sales have started to take off thanks to a redesigned landing page that better featured the great deals he has for wholesale silver jewelry. [Ya, that's a plug... is that so wrong?] We've doubled the ad budget just this week and if the trend keeps up for a few more weeks, he might be able to get 50% of his business off eBay.
The content network is really what makes it work. More than half of hits come from the content network, and more than half the sales. The click-through rates are about the same, which surprised me quite a bit.
So, without RTFA, I can support the WSJ's premise. Google does threaten eBay-- it allows small sellers to get their own customer base independent of eBay. eBay may not see a drop in sales, but long-term I think this hurts their growth.
Video on the web is neat and all, but it's almost always poorly implemented and ultimately a waste of resouces. I'm now trying to watch video of the world's biggest popsicle melting on CNN and it's a joke. It plays for 3 seconds, stops for 10, plays for 3, etc. Painful. Not only that, sitting through a :30 ad to watch a 1-minute story is not a good value proposition from a consumer perspective.
Instead of wasting there time on poorly implemented, over-sponsored video, why doesn't CNN show pictures larger than a postage stamp? I hate these news websites which have long stories about different things (think Mars Rovers, new sculptures, building designs, Mac mini, etc.) which cry out for pictures and they show 1 tiny picture which has essentially no detail. Many news sites don't even have pictures! Why is this-- they have no problem showing 10 or more image ads on 1 page.
My advice to CNN: introduce the video service when you can do it well. Until then, spend your money on bandwidth so you can show pictures of buildings, landscapes, cars & people that are bigger than those on my postage stamps.
I've ranted before along the same lines. I'd kick in $100/year to buy some Senators who support expanding the fair-use rights of consumers, but only if enough other people kicked in so we'd reach $1,000,000/year. Anyone want to start it over at PledgeBank?
Spaceflight Now has posted a story about the launch. The 1st stage failed after 83 seconds.
The so-called Broadcast Flag is an abomination and needs to be rejected by the Senate. It will do nothing to stop large-scale piracy, and will only serve to limit the fair-use rights of American citizens to time shift television programs, save them for later viewing or view tv program's at a family members house. Authorizing the broadcast flag will force innovative consumer electronics companies to ask for Hollywood permission before introducing new products.
Media oligarchies, led by the RIAA & MPAA, tried to sue the VCR out of existence. They sued the first makers of MP3 players. They sued ReplayTV into bankruptcy because they dared to introduce an innovative product without the MPAA's permission. If the broadcast flag and similar legislative tools had been around for the last 25 years, we wouldn't have the VCR, iPods, TiVos or computer DVD recorders. These tools have helped democratize content creation, distribution & consumption by putting citizens/customers in charge of their home-made movies, music, and photographs.
Vote against the Broadcast Flag. It is simply a power grab by media oligopolies intended to criminalize the fair-use of media of Americans of all stripes.
The submitter should be modded down, "Will somebody PLEASE think about the children!" I wonder who the smart-aleck submitter would recommend as the 'beta testers?'
Shuttle should fly again when the known & knowable risks have been adequately addressed. A standard of "would you let your child fly on it" is silly & overly conservative. There are many risks not appropriate for children which are undertaken by adults every day.
I posted this screed a while back, postulating that the only way to beat the RIAA/MPAA is to buy our own legislators.