For those of you complaining about the jerky video: STFU!
For those of you saying it isn't practical: So What!
I want to take my hat off to these dudes and give them a hearty round of applause and say "Great job guys!"
My point here is these guys had a vision, that led to an idea, that lead to an exparament where a couple of pretty normal folks did something extrodinary. It is the same kind of curiosity that Ben Franklin had when he flew the kite and "discovered" electricity.
Those of you who have offered criticisim, I ask you to reply to this post and tell me what you have done without backing that approximates or bests their very cool accomplishment.
Those of you who have a vision share it, maybe someone will help you make it an idea so, I invite you to share your vision.
For those of you who have an idea, share it and maybe someone will help you make it real.
We don't need government, business, or universities to make the world a better place; just a few ordinary folks who try to do extrodinary things!
Those of you who think this is just very cool, use this thread to virtually offer your applause and (real) encouraging comments!
I like a good bang; it is a good way to end the show. There is plenty of other stuff that happens throughout the show, a minute or two at the end is all the big explosion takes. If Adam and Jamie are reading this (and I think they are geeks enough to know about Slashdot) keep up the good works and keep the big bangs in!
Your current experience counts for something. Your best bet is to leverage what you know. It is hard for me to imagine a job that wouldn't have something to offer a coder. Say you are empting port-a-johns for a living. Write some code that would help that industry. I can see the application planning the route and measuring the level of the truck's tank so that you can maximize the truck's capacity on the shortest route. Use this code to demonstrate your skills and release it open source. That way you have something in your portfolio to show a perspective employer.
While the IT department is "in charge of the network" and exists largely to make sure that the company's computing resources are both safe and effective it really is not the IT department (or the people working in it) who should decide just exactly what should and should not be allowed on the network. That is a decision that should come from the top levels of managment with input from the IT staff, lawyers, and the affected buisness units.
The reason for this is because every business is unique and what is right for one company isn't right for another. As IT staff we are here to serve the company, the managment, and ultimately the shareholders.
Sure, we just get rid of the Republicans and now you want us to take the hockey fans back?
All I want is a little peace and quiet. But I'm not gonna get that anyway since Monday nite there is a little football game. Those dudes are far worse than the hockey dudes even if the game is in Green Bay!
When Henry Ford introduced the Model "T" it was an automobile. Today's cars are a far cry from the first production autos yet they are still automobiles. Taking this analogy further, the roads we travel down today are a far cry from the roads used by the Model "T". The same thing can be said for the web (think of the application as the car) and the internet (which would be the road).
A few years ago the primary way to connect to the internet was to dial-up which I would describe as painful today. You had your choice of a couple of clients and web browsers but that was about the extent of it. Today, high-speed access is everywhere and I would not want to count the number of different applications, clients, and browsers that are out there!
Today's web doesn't look aything like the web used to, it is like comparing the old roadster to an eighteen wheeler or like comparing a dirt road to the Dan Ryan Expressway!
The web has grown and that is a good thing. The web may not look anything like it's original developers intended but that is okay. It has become a vehicle of commerce and we will continue to see changes, most good, some bad. That is progress and it is good.
As U.S. citizens our greatest threat does not come from outside nor does it come from terrorists of any ilk. Our greatest threat comes from within; from people or (more accurately) groups of people who would take our rights and make them theirs.
It strikes me as ironic that the party that claims that it stands for less government is the party that has spent the last eight years chipping away at individual's rights and freedoms. It saddens me that they have enjoyed some success.
One thing that I think that we as citizens need to realize is that when we give up power to the government we are not giving away just our rights but also perhaps the rights of our children and our grandchildren. While a law that gives the state rights to evesdrop on it's citizenry at a time of crisis may sound almost reasonable the truth is somewhat different. Think of it like this; the law is a seed that is planted. Over time it grows into something much larger than the seed it started as. The courts have already decided that the tools provided to cities for "Homeland Security" can be used in different ways. Police are now using these tools to catch what I would describe as "common criminals" like drug dealers, gang bangers, and thiefs. In many cases I think that all of this is well and good but on the other hand it shows how a law intended for one thing can be turned and twisted and used for something else entirely.
For whatever reason, I have come to quuestion anyone who has a desire for higher office. There are few people driven enough to have what it takes to get there. Those that do still need help. It stands to reason that they have had to make a few deals with the devil to get to where they are. One of three people is likely to be our next president. Can you say you trust any of them? I can't.
It scares me what our current president has done with his powers. What will the next president do with theirs? That is probably the most important question we can ask this election season.
I looked at the website a-human-right.com and came to the conclusion that you may be a frend of a friend. Are your initials O.V. by chance? If so, a very good friend of yours lives right down the street from me! His initials are R.S.R. and runs a training originization that I think you may have founded...
While on the surface this is very exciting and welcome news, understand that this: development still has a very long way to go before it will be truly useful. It will be a very long time until an engineered heart will be placed in a human chest saving someone's life. It may or may not happen in our lifetime (or ever for that matter).
Microsoft word is one of those programs that works well for about eighty percent of what I have to do. For an additional fifteen percent, I can make it work okay but, I have to work at it. For about five percent of the stuff I want to do, it simply falls very far short of what I need. I can turn this around too. I probably only need about twenty percent of what Word can do for the things that I do on a regular basis. There are some other things that are very nice to have for those rare occasions when I need them. And then there are things that I'll simply never use.
I know that this is probably the case for most people. Unfortunately, the things that we all want, need, and use are different. This makes Word a bloated behemoth. Which is one of the things that I hate about it.
Why can't Word come in as many flavors as Vista? Word-Home: a stripped down version for writing letters to grandma. Word-Student: a stipped down version for college students. Word-Basic a version that is used for small offices where most of the work is done by an individual on one computer and so on.
There are some things that I find very difficult to do in Word. I can't find a good way to make a series of organized notes to myself for future use. For instance, to make sure that I reference the same exact information on page six and thirty-three. I think that the collaboration feature sometimes makes documents very hard to follow. Sometimes the formatting features just drive me nuts, keeping me from getting things just right. Worst of all, I will delete a bunch of stuff and the file size will go up rather than down! Makes me believe that the deleted data is still in there (which sometimes could be embarassing).
Still, there isn't much better out there. I use Open Office at home and like it a lot but it isn't better than Word. It does the job admirably. If I could get away with it, I would use it at work. Still, Word is the tool of choice because it does more of what everyone needs than anything else.
You have made some good points, I'll give you that. Before people can be well educated they need to be well fed. Nobody I know of would disagree with that. Hunger is a terrible feeling and when you are starving, I would imagine it is hard to study or learn.
This is the holiday season, here in the United States many charities are competing for our dollars. There are red buckets at shopping mall enterances and every community has their "Toys for Tots" campaigns. Food shelves are on the news nightly telling us that their shelves are empty. Like "Feed the Children" and yes OLPC I see most of these charities as worth while and sadly, competing for the crumbs that I can afford to contribute.
I'm sure you are aware of the story that teaches us that if give a man a fish, he eats for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he can eat fish for life. OLPC is kind of like that. It is important to feed the hungry for today but when we have accomplished that there is still the problem of feeding them tomorrow. OLPC is a small cog in a big machine. OLPC aims to start equiping underprivlidged youth with tools that may help them learn a trade that will feed them tomorrow. Of course, we still have to feed them until they can stand on their own.
By your logic, only one charity out of many deserves funding. The world is more complex than that. I think you know that. While I would agree that there is far too little money to go around to all of the deserving charities, and in a way any new charity serves to dilute the pool even further, I also respectfully suggest that it is my right to choose who I contribute to and who I don't.
I grew up in a very low-income household. As a child I was bitten by the technology bug. Through a lot of hard work and a plan that I began executing at a young age, I rose up out of poverty and to a great degree I have technology in general and computers in particular to thank for that. If they can do this for me, they can do that for other children in less than ideal circumstances.
John, OLPC stands to help kids. You can go your way, I can go my way. I'll drop my change in the red buckets, I'll buy a toy for a kid, I'll contribute to United Way and I'll give a bit to OLPC and despite your article, I won't feel a moments guilt about it.
Give me the location while I am in the basement. I am sure that it is an estimate but it is an estimate based on triangulation from different cell towers and is probably pretty darned close. We have tried a GPS from this location and it would not give us anything.
Because nearly every cell phone in use today has one of two types of GPS capability. One method does not use satellites but rather triangulation with cell phone towers. This is not as accurate as say a Garmin hand held GPS device but it can at least get the cops into the general area. The other kind uses the normal GPS satellite geolocation system or a combination of cell phone triangulation and satellite triangulation.
These services are mandated by law and have been required for long enough so that almost all cell phones in current use have these features. To some degree they are controllable, you can choose to make the data available to anyone who wants to see it or you can shut it down so only the cops can have access to it. You can not completely disable it.
It is an interesting system to play with. On my cell phone, I can dial 922 and get my latitude and longitude. It works even in the basement of where I work; standard GPS does not do this.
I don't really know how to take your reply. Were the Detroit salt mines one of the originally recommended sites? When mines are closed, they generally aren't mined out but rather the remaining mineral is too costly to get to. Salt is corosive and will eventually corode both stainless steet (it will take a long time) and concrete (look what it does to roads). Salt domes are formed by concentrating salt in water (the water recedes, the salt stays) so, old salt mines are frequently wet, another factor that would indicate that it would not be satisfactory for ten thousand year storage. Besides, a population dense area like Detroit would not be seriously considered because of the risk to the populace.
If you were being humorous, I am sorry. Like I said, I wasn't sure how to take the reply.
Way back when, in the '70's and into the early '80's, I was fairly active in the anti-nuke community. In a way, my feelings have mellowed since then although I still have serious reservations about disposing of things that will still be dangerous ten thousand years from now. I never intended to become involved, but then some fedral officials decided that my backyard may just possibly make a good site to dispose of this waste. The area that they were looking at was about 90% swamp. It was a stupid idea and everyone knew it. Looking back, I think it was in the list only because it was so stupid that the place they really wanted (Yucca Mountain) would appear to be the only reasonable place that could be found. The whole siting process was far more political than any sort of science.
At the time, I took the time to educate myself on a wide variety of things, everything from the way that granite fractures to the way that radioactive waste affects various metals and minerals. Pretty wild stuff. There is no such thing as perfectly safe, perfectly secure long term high level radioactive waste storage. Dormant volcanos occasionally come back to life. Granite (even without stressors) cracks. Concrete exposed to the heat from radioactive decay disintigrates. Stainless steel stresses from expansion and contraction and slowly weakens. It also is subject to (very slow) corosion.
The only practical method of disposal is passive storage where the waste is protected by layer upon later of different kinds of shielding. In practicality, the waste is placed in casks designed to hold in most of the radiation, these casks are then placed in a sort of glass-lined tomb which is burried deeply inside a granite cave inside of a mountain. When the tomb reaches capacity it is outfitted with monitoring gear and is filled with concrete and sealed. It is then "monitored" from outside the repository, if any problems are detected they will then take corrective action. Only problem is how do you do that? What happens if the detection equipment breaks down, how do you fix it?
I still have all these questions and I still wrestle with why would we make something that makes waste that is so dangerous? This is a real question that deserves a real answer and nobody seems to have a real answer.
Still, millions of tons of coal ash isn't harmless and there isn't enough oil to go around forever. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. We can't dam enough rivers and every year we get hungrier and hungrier for energy.
There are hundreds of ways to generate electricty (or more simply perhaps, to make energy). Every method has advantages and disadvantages. Most are hard to scale up to provide meaningful meagawatts.
Nuclear power is one of those things that scales up. It is in a sense "clean" -- simply because its waste per KWH is so damned low. We have learned how to reprocess, reduce, and recycle radioactive waste but we have not made it safe. The waste that remains is still very dangerous.
The Pebble Bed reactor seems to answer for the short-term at least for many of the safety issues inside of the nuclear power plant. It also reduces the waste generated (not in weight, but in reactivity). In some ways it is even easier to dispose of. Spent pebbles can be used to generate moderate heat allowing them to be used commercially in other applications long after they have been retired from generating electricty.
I said earlier that my views have mellowed a bit. Today I think that nuclear power probably has a place. I think that I would much rather see new plants with new, safer, and more efficient technologies be built than see forty year old plants with stresses components be recertified to operate many years beyond their original designers intention. If this is allowed to continue to happen the infrastructure will fail, people will die. We can not afford this. It is better to replace than patch and fix.
We still need to solve the disposal problem. Perhaps we can make the waste into radioactive micro capsules and imbed them in our highways as autonomyous vehicle guides? Maybe we could use the coal ash to vitrify the capsules?
A government reserves certain rights for itself. They can do things that others can't. For instance, the state can take a life in circumstances that if it were performed by a citizen would be murder. The police can use methods that would be unlawful if a private citizen did them. Even the city water department can assert authority that a non-government authority would never be able to.
For the most part we citizens are aware of the rules that we live under. This is no different in Iran than it is in the United States or Cuba. The problem comes when the power is abused. Will Germany just automatically allow this invasion of privacy or, will they require some sort of probable cause and warrant? Will this process be subject to scrutiny or will it be done under a veil of secrecy?
Isn't it kind of hard to really understand just how invasive this is before you know how you feel about it?
Lets change the scenereo a little bit. Should the state be permitted to spy on someone's computer who they have some evidence is involved in child pornography? Lets say they suspect that they felt that they could uncover an entire ring of pedeophiles if they spied on the suspect's computer; would it be okay then? I think many people would say "I have no problem with that."
It boils down to what protections are in place to prevent abuse. At a minimum, I would expect that investigators would be required to present evidence that meets some mininium standards to justify a warrant before they did this.
We have learned that almost any system is fallable and that someone who is determined to get around the rules will do it but they do not need laws to do this. I'd rather see a system that has rules than none at all. Hopefully a system that has review and oversight so that it is non easy to abuse.
I honestly don't know. I have never voted for the man. I suspect that many felt that it was simply a bad choice to change horses in mid-stream. At least we will not have him again.
I am an American and would like to respond to you with a view from within the United States. It may suprise you that I agree with the things that you have said and according to polls, most Americans probably agree with you too at least to some degree.
I am not going to claim that I know everything that happens in our government or that it is somehow better than other govenments. Like every other country, our leaders are human beings and like every human, they have the ability to make mistakes. I personally believe it takes someone with a hell of an ego to run for major public office and so in a sense, we elect people with personality flaws every time we vote.
The first time Bush jr was elected there was an uproar that the election was stolen by the manipulation of electorial votes in the state of Florida where his brother Jeb was govenor. At the time many people said that a bloodless coup was performed. The popular vote did not elect "W" but thanks to Florida's electorial votes, he became president. When this happened, when everything shook-out, right or wrong we had a new president.
On September 11th, 2001 our world changed (the same world you live in by the way) and our nation found itself attacked by terrorists. There was little disagreement that we had to do something although many of us wondered how we could fight terrorists who clamed no home country. Our enemies were ghosts that could appear and disappear at will.
We turned to our president for leadership and guidance. Many people, myself included, were worried that we had a leader who was poorly equipped to handle such a crisis. The words that he said that night were inspiring yet showed us that he had an awareness that this was going to be a difficult job. Even though he said the right things, I remember feeling very uneasy about how he would handle this crisis.
We went to Afgahnistan to fight the Taliban and Al Queda. To this day, I still think we had to go there. I was worried that like the Soviet Union, we were getting ourselves into something that would end up being a mess. Still, it was a safe harbor for terrorists which was something that we could not tolerate.
Then GWB and his cronies started making a case for Iraq. From the start it sounded bogus to me. Saadam was probably not the kind of person who should be leading a country but there was little evidence that he was harboring terrorists and it was generally acknowleged that he or his country had nothing to do with 9/11. The WMD story felt like a cooked up excuse from the very start yet it was rammed down our throats. Like it or not, our leaders brought us into Iraq.
While we did do some good in Iraq, we felled a ruthless tyrant we also did a great deal of harm there. We created a divided country that did become a breeding ground for terrorists. We painted a picture to the rest of the world that we will do anything we damed well please. We've killed I don't know how many innocent civilians. We abused prisoners. There is evidence that we have condoned torture. We have an occupying army in a country that hadn't really harmed us.
Back in the United States one of our major cities was destroyed. Our leaders made many mistakes handling the crisis. Tens of thousand of people needed our help, many still need help, yet our governments (federal, state, and local) could not get it together to help the neediest. Mostly, I think it was big egos that got in the way. Billions were spent yet thousands of people, mostly the neediest, got little if anything.
We have many problems that need fixing in the United States. Believe it or not, we do have poverty here and not just a little bit of it. Many people are barely able to get by. We have a health care system that is hard to afford, we have many people who can not afford health insurance. Our infrastructure, which we were once so proud of is falling apart, we have major bridges that just fall away into rivers! When you think of the money spent in Iraq, you just have to wonder where o
Sadly, I have to disagree with your silver lining conclusion. A situation like this will not give them pause and cause them to rethink their method of handling events like this. From their perspective (and if I were one of them I would probably agree) they have to assume the worst and act accordingly. They believe (with some justification) that this is the best way to proceed to protect lives (primarily their own).
Cops by virtue of their training and experience have to work from the position of guilty until proven innocent, exactly opposite of what the rest of the justice system demands. The people that police come in contact with are frequently hiding something and even people who are just witnesses often have their own agendas or have seen the incident through "tunnel vision" having only seen a bit or piece of the event that transpired.
With the advent of video cameras in squad cars (and similar technologies) police have become a little better in run of the mill events, they have become less sarcastic when dealing with people they pull over for traffic infractions for instance but when it comes to SWAT like tactics when they get a chance to break out the cool toys, the old mentalities are still there. They will go in like gang-busters.
In the long-run, I do think that their tactics probably save lives. Still there is a fine line between terrorisim and legally justified police actions. Like anyone else, police need to be held accountable for their mistakes and need to be able to show that every bit of their actions and behaviors are logical, reasonable, and done in the public interest.
Go ahead and flame away, I'll put on my Nomex underwear. Linux, in its wide variety of flavors is a good operating system. Technologically it has many features that Windows operating systems don't implement as well. But there are things that Microsoft gets and does well. These things are important to consumers and to companies that put Microsoft operating systems on their boxes. Linux fans I think like to minimize these things and point to things that their favored O/S does better.
Sometimes looking at things from the other side of the fence can help even an ardent advocate of another product see more clearly where their favored product falls short. This is as true in operating systems as it is in cars where die-hard Chevy fans may hate Fords with a passion that can only be described as religious. We say the same kind of thing in politics where Republicans know they are right and Democrats are equally as convinced that they are correct. Don't even get me started on religion (seriously). Then of course there are the great sports rivalries.
I am a Windows user and a Linux dabbler. I need to know, really know Windows for my job. As a result I spend perhaps 90% of my time on Windows boxes. I have experience in every Windows version back to 3.0 and DOS before that. This probably skews my view. There are some things that make me hate Windows. The poor, or perhaps more aptly, terrible implementation of security may be my biggest gripe. Even in Vista, where security is taken more seriously, they got it wrong and traded between convenience and security.
Microsoft gets things right too. If I have a hard time figuring something out there is a lot of help available and there are usually several ways of doing the same thing. If my hand is on the mouse I can use one method and another if I am using the keyboard. Linux does this too, just not as well and not as consistently. In Windows I frequently don't need to resort to the help files, I can just try this and that and soon I get the result I want. This is probably a result of Microsoft's consistency and my Windows experience level. They offer things like "Classic View" which I can revert to when I can't quickly do something the new way and that helps too. I use this a lot because time is money and I have to do things as quickly as possible so I can be as productive as possible.
Linux has a feature (and strength) that contributes greatly to its usability problem. There are so many things you can do with Linux, you can use various Windows Managers, Package Managers, and other utilities that you can get in over your head. Then you go to man pages and each one is written differently but they all seem to have some basic problems. Many seem to have been written as an afterthought. Some assume knowledge that the reader does not possess. Some are well written others not so. I hate to have to turn to them because I never know if I will be reading for a minute or hours or if I will understand something better when I am done. In fairness, I have had problems with Microsoft-speak as well.
I'd love to see more Linux on desktops in homes, schools, and offices. In order for this to happen I think that there are some things that the community needs to address. Things that would counter Microsoft's FUD and would make more people comfortable enough to adopt Linux into their life.
The Linux community needs to address the "Where do I get help?" question. They need to have a website that can identify the user's computer and provide just the right information for their particular blend of hardware and software. This site needs some human involvement that comes from experienced users who can say "I've been there and here is what you do..." These problems and solutions can be recorded and made available to others searching for the same answer. For those users who can't even boot there needs to be a toll-free help line again staffed by people who are experienced users. All of this should be a coordinated volunteer community.
If the ads weren't so obnoxious and if the ads did not contain the threat of information theft, spyware, and other issues then I and many others would not see the need to find ways to block the ads. If I did not want webmasters to earn their keep by selling ads, then I would not visit sites like Slashdot.org!
As a consumer on the web, I feel like I am entitled to a certain degree of annonimity and privacy. This is why I abhor spyware, trojans, and other malware which are occasionally delivered by pop-ups and even banner ads. Until there is some way to guarantee that I am being given the privacy I desire and the security I demand, then I am entitled to use tools to help me assure that my privacy and security remain intact. Sadly, my Windows machines have entire suites of software installed to help assure me that I am safe. Sadly, some of these tools actually detract from my surfing experience. Web-bugged pictures show up as red X's and sometimes, I would really like to see these pictures.
When the web is less like the wild wild west and is more civilized, then maybe I will not need so much protection but then, it will be so plain and uninspiring that I will probably not feel the need to visit it so much.
Many great things come from tinkerers who go into the garage or basement and just try out an idea they have. Most of the things that we have today are somewhat illogical extenstions that were derived from something else. The inventor(s) took off-the-shelf items and assembled them in a unique way. Examples abound in the computer-world: HP, Apple, Microsoft and many other companies got their start in exactly this way.
This computer is nothing extrodinary, it is built from off-the-shelf parts and constructed in a somewhat standard manner loaded with off-the-shelf software configured in a understood manner. I'm not cutting on him; I'm just stating something that I think is fairly obvious.
What is extrodinary is that in this high-tech age, we are still showing the desire to create. Inventions don't belong to big companies with big R&D budgets. Anyone can try to build something a bit different. Most of these inventions aren't earth shattering and most of them are not commercially viable but they are born of necessity or of a desire to make somethig better/faster/cheaper. It is part of the human spirit I think.
The city of Minneapolis, MN is going wireless and in some areas is already providing service. The estimated completion date is December 2007. The charge is pretty reasonable too, only $20 or $30 per month depending on access speed.
Many squad cars and firetrucks are already using the wireless technology and a number of cameras are used for survelence in high-crime areas. Since I drive through one of these areas every day, I can tell you the cameras have already made a real difference!
There is hope that with this kind of access, that the city will become a more livable place and that some lower income people will be able to use these services to better themseleves. While I hope that this is true, I'll also take it with a grain of salt and say that I will believe it when I see it.
This service was used for several days after the bridge disaster with very good results. Talk about trial by fire!
Re:Too bad modern mastering makes CDs sound worse.
on
The CD Turns 25 Today
·
· Score: 1
I'm no audiophile, just an ordinary listener who frankly admits he is an ordinary listener. I love to listen to music though...
The punch of the drums and the hit you in the chest thump from the bass adds a tactile sensation to the sound of music, it makes you quite litterally "feel" the music. Phil Spector understood this with his "wall of sound" but today's producers don't get it in the same way. Loudness to them I think covers lots of sins. Today's music (almost an oxymoron I think) is more "studio" than "recording". What I mean by that is when an artist goes into the studio their sound is so massaged by the production process that it ends up being totally different from what went down on tape in the fist place.
When was the last time you heard a female voice in a song that wasn't filled in with multiple layers of the same voice? It seems like they all do it, change the voice, add a little delay and then lay it over the original giving the voice more "presence". The effect is good here and there but when it is all you hear, it sounds so artificial. Ugh.
Research, pure or practical is what advances technology and indeed the whole human race. While very few products make it beyond the lab information learned may be applied elsewhere.
While I may agree that this particular product may never make it out of the lab perhaps someone will read the announcment and have an eureka moment of their own and be able to apply something that they learned from this research to whatever it is that they are working on.
I actually do hope that this research (or more accurately a product derived from this research) makes it out of the lab. I think there is room in this world for non-toxic, compostable capacitor-batteries.
Pointless? I think a better word may be inspirational.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of you complaining about the jerky video: STFU!
For those of you saying it isn't practical: So What!
I want to take my hat off to these dudes and give them a hearty round of applause and say "Great job guys!"
My point here is these guys had a vision, that led to an idea, that lead to an exparament where a couple of pretty normal folks did something extrodinary. It is the same kind of curiosity that Ben Franklin had when he flew the kite and "discovered" electricity.
Those of you who have offered criticisim, I ask you to reply to this post and tell me what you have done without backing that approximates or bests their very cool accomplishment.
Those of you who have a vision share it, maybe someone will help you make it an idea so, I invite you to share your vision.
For those of you who have an idea, share it and maybe someone will help you make it real.
We don't need government, business, or universities to make the world a better place; just a few ordinary folks who try to do extrodinary things!
Those of you who think this is just very cool, use this thread to virtually offer your applause and (real) encouraging comments!
I like a good bang; it is a good way to end the show. There is plenty of other stuff that happens throughout the show, a minute or two at the end is all the big explosion takes. If Adam and Jamie are reading this (and I think they are geeks enough to know about Slashdot) keep up the good works and keep the big bangs in!
Speaking of good bangs, is Kari really pregnant?
Your current experience counts for something. Your best bet is to leverage what you know. It is hard for me to imagine a job that wouldn't have something to offer a coder. Say you are empting port-a-johns for a living. Write some code that would help that industry. I can see the application planning the route and measuring the level of the truck's tank so that you can maximize the truck's capacity on the shortest route. Use this code to demonstrate your skills and release it open source. That way you have something in your portfolio to show a perspective employer.
While the IT department is "in charge of the network" and exists largely to make sure that the company's computing resources are both safe and effective it really is not the IT department (or the people working in it) who should decide just exactly what should and should not be allowed on the network. That is a decision that should come from the top levels of managment with input from the IT staff, lawyers, and the affected buisness units.
The reason for this is because every business is unique and what is right for one company isn't right for another. As IT staff we are here to serve the company, the managment, and ultimately the shareholders.
Please, think of your fellow Minnesotans.
Sure, we just get rid of the Republicans and now you want us to take the hockey fans back?
All I want is a little peace and quiet. But I'm not gonna get that anyway since Monday nite there is a little football game. Those dudes are far worse than the hockey dudes even if the game is in Green Bay!
When Henry Ford introduced the Model "T" it was an automobile. Today's cars are a far cry from the first production autos yet they are still automobiles. Taking this analogy further, the roads we travel down today are a far cry from the roads used by the Model "T". The same thing can be said for the web (think of the application as the car) and the internet (which would be the road).
A few years ago the primary way to connect to the internet was to dial-up which I would describe as painful today. You had your choice of a couple of clients and web browsers but that was about the extent of it. Today, high-speed access is everywhere and I would not want to count the number of different applications, clients, and browsers that are out there!
Today's web doesn't look aything like the web used to, it is like comparing the old roadster to an eighteen wheeler or like comparing a dirt road to the Dan Ryan Expressway!
The web has grown and that is a good thing. The web may not look anything like it's original developers intended but that is okay. It has become a vehicle of commerce and we will continue to see changes, most good, some bad. That is progress and it is good.
Amen.
As U.S. citizens our greatest threat does not come from outside nor does it come from terrorists of any ilk. Our greatest threat comes from within; from people or (more accurately) groups of people who would take our rights and make them theirs.
It strikes me as ironic that the party that claims that it stands for less government is the party that has spent the last eight years chipping away at individual's rights and freedoms. It saddens me that they have enjoyed some success.
One thing that I think that we as citizens need to realize is that when we give up power to the government we are not giving away just our rights but also perhaps the rights of our children and our grandchildren. While a law that gives the state rights to evesdrop on it's citizenry at a time of crisis may sound almost reasonable the truth is somewhat different. Think of it like this; the law is a seed that is planted. Over time it grows into something much larger than the seed it started as. The courts have already decided that the tools provided to cities for "Homeland Security" can be used in different ways. Police are now using these tools to catch what I would describe as "common criminals" like drug dealers, gang bangers, and thiefs. In many cases I think that all of this is well and good but on the other hand it shows how a law intended for one thing can be turned and twisted and used for something else entirely.
For whatever reason, I have come to quuestion anyone who has a desire for higher office. There are few people driven enough to have what it takes to get there. Those that do still need help. It stands to reason that they have had to make a few deals with the devil to get to where they are. One of three people is likely to be our next president. Can you say you trust any of them? I can't.
It scares me what our current president has done with his powers. What will the next president do with theirs? That is probably the most important question we can ask this election season.
Firethorn
I looked at the website a-human-right.com and came to the conclusion that you may be a frend of a friend. Are your initials O.V. by chance? If so, a very good friend of yours lives right down the street from me! His initials are R.S.R. and runs a training originization that I think you may have founded...
While on the surface this is very exciting and welcome news, understand that this: development still has a very long way to go before it will be truly useful. It will be a very long time until an engineered heart will be placed in a human chest saving someone's life. It may or may not happen in our lifetime (or ever for that matter).
Microsoft word is one of those programs that works well for about eighty percent of what I have to do. For an additional fifteen percent, I can make it work okay but, I have to work at it. For about five percent of the stuff I want to do, it simply falls very far short of what I need. I can turn this around too. I probably only need about twenty percent of what Word can do for the things that I do on a regular basis. There are some other things that are very nice to have for those rare occasions when I need them. And then there are things that I'll simply never use.
I know that this is probably the case for most people. Unfortunately, the things that we all want, need, and use are different. This makes Word a bloated behemoth. Which is one of the things that I hate about it.
Why can't Word come in as many flavors as Vista? Word-Home: a stripped down version for writing letters to grandma. Word-Student: a stipped down version for college students. Word-Basic a version that is used for small offices where most of the work is done by an individual on one computer and so on.
There are some things that I find very difficult to do in Word. I can't find a good way to make a series of organized notes to myself for future use. For instance, to make sure that I reference the same exact information on page six and thirty-three. I think that the collaboration feature sometimes makes documents very hard to follow. Sometimes the formatting features just drive me nuts, keeping me from getting things just right. Worst of all, I will delete a bunch of stuff and the file size will go up rather than down! Makes me believe that the deleted data is still in there (which sometimes could be embarassing).
Still, there isn't much better out there. I use Open Office at home and like it a lot but it isn't better than Word. It does the job admirably. If I could get away with it, I would use it at work. Still, Word is the tool of choice because it does more of what everyone needs than anything else.
Dear John,
You have made some good points, I'll give you that. Before people can be well educated they need to be well fed. Nobody I know of would disagree with that. Hunger is a terrible feeling and when you are starving, I would imagine it is hard to study or learn.
This is the holiday season, here in the United States many charities are competing for our dollars. There are red buckets at shopping mall enterances and every community has their "Toys for Tots" campaigns. Food shelves are on the news nightly telling us that their shelves are empty. Like "Feed the Children" and yes OLPC I see most of these charities as worth while and sadly, competing for the crumbs that I can afford to contribute.
I'm sure you are aware of the story that teaches us that if give a man a fish, he eats for a day, if you teach a man to fish, he can eat fish for life. OLPC is kind of like that. It is important to feed the hungry for today but when we have accomplished that there is still the problem of feeding them tomorrow. OLPC is a small cog in a big machine. OLPC aims to start equiping underprivlidged youth with tools that may help them learn a trade that will feed them tomorrow. Of course, we still have to feed them until they can stand on their own.
By your logic, only one charity out of many deserves funding. The world is more complex than that. I think you know that. While I would agree that there is far too little money to go around to all of the deserving charities, and in a way any new charity serves to dilute the pool even further, I also respectfully suggest that it is my right to choose who I contribute to and who I don't.
I grew up in a very low-income household. As a child I was bitten by the technology bug. Through a lot of hard work and a plan that I began executing at a young age, I rose up out of poverty and to a great degree I have technology in general and computers in particular to thank for that. If they can do this for me, they can do that for other children in less than ideal circumstances.
John, OLPC stands to help kids. You can go your way, I can go my way. I'll drop my change in the red buckets, I'll buy a toy for a kid, I'll contribute to United Way and I'll give a bit to OLPC and despite your article, I won't feel a moments guilt about it.
Happy Holidays,
Give me the location while I am in the basement. I am sure that it is an estimate but it is an estimate based on triangulation from different cell towers and is probably pretty darned close. We have tried a GPS from this location and it would not give us anything.
Because nearly every cell phone in use today has one of two types of GPS capability. One method does not use satellites but rather triangulation with cell phone towers. This is not as accurate as say a Garmin hand held GPS device but it can at least get the cops into the general area. The other kind uses the normal GPS satellite geolocation system or a combination of cell phone triangulation and satellite triangulation.
These services are mandated by law and have been required for long enough so that almost all cell phones in current use have these features. To some degree they are controllable, you can choose to make the data available to anyone who wants to see it or you can shut it down so only the cops can have access to it. You can not completely disable it.
It is an interesting system to play with. On my cell phone, I can dial 922 and get my latitude and longitude. It works even in the basement of where I work; standard GPS does not do this.
I don't really know how to take your reply. Were the Detroit salt mines one of the originally recommended sites? When mines are closed, they generally aren't mined out but rather the remaining mineral is too costly to get to. Salt is corosive and will eventually corode both stainless steet (it will take a long time) and concrete (look what it does to roads). Salt domes are formed by concentrating salt in water (the water recedes, the salt stays) so, old salt mines are frequently wet, another factor that would indicate that it would not be satisfactory for ten thousand year storage. Besides, a population dense area like Detroit would not be seriously considered because of the risk to the populace.
If you were being humorous, I am sorry. Like I said, I wasn't sure how to take the reply.
Way back when, in the '70's and into the early '80's, I was fairly active in the anti-nuke community. In a way, my feelings have mellowed since then although I still have serious reservations about disposing of things that will still be dangerous ten thousand years from now. I never intended to become involved, but then some fedral officials decided that my backyard may just possibly make a good site to dispose of this waste. The area that they were looking at was about 90% swamp. It was a stupid idea and everyone knew it. Looking back, I think it was in the list only because it was so stupid that the place they really wanted (Yucca Mountain) would appear to be the only reasonable place that could be found. The whole siting process was far more political than any sort of science.
At the time, I took the time to educate myself on a wide variety of things, everything from the way that granite fractures to the way that radioactive waste affects various metals and minerals. Pretty wild stuff. There is no such thing as perfectly safe, perfectly secure long term high level radioactive waste storage. Dormant volcanos occasionally come back to life. Granite (even without stressors) cracks. Concrete exposed to the heat from radioactive decay disintigrates. Stainless steel stresses from expansion and contraction and slowly weakens. It also is subject to (very slow) corosion.
The only practical method of disposal is passive storage where the waste is protected by layer upon later of different kinds of shielding. In practicality, the waste is placed in casks designed to hold in most of the radiation, these casks are then placed in a sort of glass-lined tomb which is burried deeply inside a granite cave inside of a mountain. When the tomb reaches capacity it is outfitted with monitoring gear and is filled with concrete and sealed. It is then "monitored" from outside the repository, if any problems are detected they will then take corrective action. Only problem is how do you do that? What happens if the detection equipment breaks down, how do you fix it?
I still have all these questions and I still wrestle with why would we make something that makes waste that is so dangerous? This is a real question that deserves a real answer and nobody seems to have a real answer.
Still, millions of tons of coal ash isn't harmless and there isn't enough oil to go around forever. The wind doesn't always blow and the sun doesn't always shine. We can't dam enough rivers and every year we get hungrier and hungrier for energy.
There are hundreds of ways to generate electricty (or more simply perhaps, to make energy). Every method has advantages and disadvantages. Most are hard to scale up to provide meaningful meagawatts.
Nuclear power is one of those things that scales up. It is in a sense "clean" -- simply because its waste per KWH is so damned low. We have learned how to reprocess, reduce, and recycle radioactive waste but we have not made it safe. The waste that remains is still very dangerous.
The Pebble Bed reactor seems to answer for the short-term at least for many of the safety issues inside of the nuclear power plant. It also reduces the waste generated (not in weight, but in reactivity). In some ways it is even easier to dispose of. Spent pebbles can be used to generate moderate heat allowing them to be used commercially in other applications long after they have been retired from generating electricty.
I said earlier that my views have mellowed a bit. Today I think that nuclear power probably has a place. I think that I would much rather see new plants with new, safer, and more efficient technologies be built than see forty year old plants with stresses components be recertified to operate many years beyond their original designers intention. If this is allowed to continue to happen the infrastructure will fail, people will die. We can not afford this. It is better to replace than patch and fix.
We still need to solve the disposal problem. Perhaps we can make the waste into radioactive micro capsules and imbed them in our highways as autonomyous vehicle guides? Maybe we could use the coal ash to vitrify the capsules?
A government reserves certain rights for itself. They can do things that others can't. For instance, the state can take a life in circumstances that if it were performed by a citizen would be murder. The police can use methods that would be unlawful if a private citizen did them. Even the city water department can assert authority that a non-government authority would never be able to.
For the most part we citizens are aware of the rules that we live under. This is no different in Iran than it is in the United States or Cuba. The problem comes when the power is abused. Will Germany just automatically allow this invasion of privacy or, will they require some sort of probable cause and warrant? Will this process be subject to scrutiny or will it be done under a veil of secrecy?
Isn't it kind of hard to really understand just how invasive this is before you know how you feel about it?
Lets change the scenereo a little bit. Should the state be permitted to spy on someone's computer who they have some evidence is involved in child pornography? Lets say they suspect that they felt that they could uncover an entire ring of pedeophiles if they spied on the suspect's computer; would it be okay then? I think many people would say "I have no problem with that."
It boils down to what protections are in place to prevent abuse. At a minimum, I would expect that investigators would be required to present evidence that meets some mininium standards to justify a warrant before they did this.
We have learned that almost any system is fallable and that someone who is determined to get around the rules will do it but they do not need laws to do this. I'd rather see a system that has rules than none at all. Hopefully a system that has review and oversight so that it is non easy to abuse.
I honestly don't know. I have never voted for the man. I suspect that many felt that it was simply a bad choice to change horses in mid-stream. At least we will not have him again.
I am an American and would like to respond to you with a view from within the United States. It may suprise you that I agree with the things that you have said and according to polls, most Americans probably agree with you too at least to some degree.
I am not going to claim that I know everything that happens in our government or that it is somehow better than other govenments. Like every other country, our leaders are human beings and like every human, they have the ability to make mistakes. I personally believe it takes someone with a hell of an ego to run for major public office and so in a sense, we elect people with personality flaws every time we vote.
The first time Bush jr was elected there was an uproar that the election was stolen by the manipulation of electorial votes in the state of Florida where his brother Jeb was govenor. At the time many people said that a bloodless coup was performed. The popular vote did not elect "W" but thanks to Florida's electorial votes, he became president. When this happened, when everything shook-out, right or wrong we had a new president.
On September 11th, 2001 our world changed (the same world you live in by the way) and our nation found itself attacked by terrorists. There was little disagreement that we had to do something although many of us wondered how we could fight terrorists who clamed no home country. Our enemies were ghosts that could appear and disappear at will.
We turned to our president for leadership and guidance. Many people, myself included, were worried that we had a leader who was poorly equipped to handle such a crisis. The words that he said that night were inspiring yet showed us that he had an awareness that this was going to be a difficult job. Even though he said the right things, I remember feeling very uneasy about how he would handle this crisis.
We went to Afgahnistan to fight the Taliban and Al Queda. To this day, I still think we had to go there. I was worried that like the Soviet Union, we were getting ourselves into something that would end up being a mess. Still, it was a safe harbor for terrorists which was something that we could not tolerate.
Then GWB and his cronies started making a case for Iraq. From the start it sounded bogus to me. Saadam was probably not the kind of person who should be leading a country but there was little evidence that he was harboring terrorists and it was generally acknowleged that he or his country had nothing to do with 9/11. The WMD story felt like a cooked up excuse from the very start yet it was rammed down our throats. Like it or not, our leaders brought us into Iraq.
While we did do some good in Iraq, we felled a ruthless tyrant we also did a great deal of harm there. We created a divided country that did become a breeding ground for terrorists. We painted a picture to the rest of the world that we will do anything we damed well please. We've killed I don't know how many innocent civilians. We abused prisoners. There is evidence that we have condoned torture. We have an occupying army in a country that hadn't really harmed us.
Back in the United States one of our major cities was destroyed. Our leaders made many mistakes handling the crisis. Tens of thousand of people needed our help, many still need help, yet our governments (federal, state, and local) could not get it together to help the neediest. Mostly, I think it was big egos that got in the way. Billions were spent yet thousands of people, mostly the neediest, got little if anything.
We have many problems that need fixing in the United States. Believe it or not, we do have poverty here and not just a little bit of it. Many people are barely able to get by. We have a health care system that is hard to afford, we have many people who can not afford health insurance. Our infrastructure, which we were once so proud of is falling apart, we have major bridges that just fall away into rivers! When you think of the money spent in Iraq, you just have to wonder where o
Sadly, I have to disagree with your silver lining conclusion. A situation like this will not give them pause and cause them to rethink their method of handling events like this. From their perspective (and if I were one of them I would probably agree) they have to assume the worst and act accordingly. They believe (with some justification) that this is the best way to proceed to protect lives (primarily their own).
Cops by virtue of their training and experience have to work from the position of guilty until proven innocent, exactly opposite of what the rest of the justice system demands. The people that police come in contact with are frequently hiding something and even people who are just witnesses often have their own agendas or have seen the incident through "tunnel vision" having only seen a bit or piece of the event that transpired.
With the advent of video cameras in squad cars (and similar technologies) police have become a little better in run of the mill events, they have become less sarcastic when dealing with people they pull over for traffic infractions for instance but when it comes to SWAT like tactics when they get a chance to break out the cool toys, the old mentalities are still there. They will go in like gang-busters.
In the long-run, I do think that their tactics probably save lives. Still there is a fine line between terrorisim and legally justified police actions. Like anyone else, police need to be held accountable for their mistakes and need to be able to show that every bit of their actions and behaviors are logical, reasonable, and done in the public interest.
Go ahead and flame away, I'll put on my Nomex underwear. Linux, in its wide variety of flavors is a good operating system. Technologically it has many features that Windows operating systems don't implement as well. But there are things that Microsoft gets and does well. These things are important to consumers and to companies that put Microsoft operating systems on their boxes. Linux fans I think like to minimize these things and point to things that their favored O/S does better.
Sometimes looking at things from the other side of the fence can help even an ardent advocate of another product see more clearly where their favored product falls short. This is as true in operating systems as it is in cars where die-hard Chevy fans may hate Fords with a passion that can only be described as religious. We say the same kind of thing in politics where Republicans know they are right and Democrats are equally as convinced that they are correct. Don't even get me started on religion (seriously). Then of course there are the great sports rivalries.
I am a Windows user and a Linux dabbler. I need to know, really know Windows for my job. As a result I spend perhaps 90% of my time on Windows boxes. I have experience in every Windows version back to 3.0 and DOS before that. This probably skews my view. There are some things that make me hate Windows. The poor, or perhaps more aptly, terrible implementation of security may be my biggest gripe. Even in Vista, where security is taken more seriously, they got it wrong and traded between convenience and security.
Microsoft gets things right too. If I have a hard time figuring something out there is a lot of help available and there are usually several ways of doing the same thing. If my hand is on the mouse I can use one method and another if I am using the keyboard. Linux does this too, just not as well and not as consistently. In Windows I frequently don't need to resort to the help files, I can just try this and that and soon I get the result I want. This is probably a result of Microsoft's consistency and my Windows experience level. They offer things like "Classic View" which I can revert to when I can't quickly do something the new way and that helps too. I use this a lot because time is money and I have to do things as quickly as possible so I can be as productive as possible.
Linux has a feature (and strength) that contributes greatly to its usability problem. There are so many things you can do with Linux, you can use various Windows Managers, Package Managers, and other utilities that you can get in over your head. Then you go to man pages and each one is written differently but they all seem to have some basic problems. Many seem to have been written as an afterthought. Some assume knowledge that the reader does not possess. Some are well written others not so. I hate to have to turn to them because I never know if I will be reading for a minute or hours or if I will understand something better when I am done. In fairness, I have had problems with Microsoft-speak as well.
I'd love to see more Linux on desktops in homes, schools, and offices. In order for this to happen I think that there are some things that the community needs to address. Things that would counter Microsoft's FUD and would make more people comfortable enough to adopt Linux into their life.
The Linux community needs to address the "Where do I get help?" question. They need to have a website that can identify the user's computer and provide just the right information for their particular blend of hardware and software. This site needs some human involvement that comes from experienced users who can say "I've been there and here is what you do..." These problems and solutions can be recorded and made available to others searching for the same answer. For those users who can't even boot there needs to be a toll-free help line again staffed by people who are experienced users. All of this should be a coordinated volunteer community.
L
If the ads weren't so obnoxious and if the ads did not contain the threat of information theft, spyware, and other issues then I and many others would not see the need to find ways to block the ads. If I did not want webmasters to earn their keep by selling ads, then I would not visit sites like Slashdot.org!
As a consumer on the web, I feel like I am entitled to a certain degree of annonimity and privacy. This is why I abhor spyware, trojans, and other malware which are occasionally delivered by pop-ups and even banner ads. Until there is some way to guarantee that I am being given the privacy I desire and the security I demand, then I am entitled to use tools to help me assure that my privacy and security remain intact. Sadly, my Windows machines have entire suites of software installed to help assure me that I am safe. Sadly, some of these tools actually detract from my surfing experience. Web-bugged pictures show up as red X's and sometimes, I would really like to see these pictures.
When the web is less like the wild wild west and is more civilized, then maybe I will not need so much protection but then, it will be so plain and uninspiring that I will probably not feel the need to visit it so much.
Many great things come from tinkerers who go into the garage or basement and just try out an idea they have. Most of the things that we have today are somewhat illogical extenstions that were derived from something else. The inventor(s) took off-the-shelf items and assembled them in a unique way. Examples abound in the computer-world: HP, Apple, Microsoft and many other companies got their start in exactly this way.
This computer is nothing extrodinary, it is built from off-the-shelf parts and constructed in a somewhat standard manner loaded with off-the-shelf software configured in a understood manner. I'm not cutting on him; I'm just stating something that I think is fairly obvious.
What is extrodinary is that in this high-tech age, we are still showing the desire to create. Inventions don't belong to big companies with big R&D budgets. Anyone can try to build something a bit different. Most of these inventions aren't earth shattering and most of them are not commercially viable but they are born of necessity or of a desire to make somethig better/faster/cheaper. It is part of the human spirit I think.
The city of Minneapolis, MN is going wireless and in some areas is already providing service. The estimated completion date is December 2007. The charge is pretty reasonable too, only $20 or $30 per month depending on access speed.
i s/
More info here: http://www.ci.minneapolis.mn.us/wirelessminneapol
Many squad cars and firetrucks are already using the wireless technology and a number of cameras are used for survelence in high-crime areas. Since I drive through one of these areas every day, I can tell you the cameras have already made a real difference!
There is hope that with this kind of access, that the city will become a more livable place and that some lower income people will be able to use these services to better themseleves. While I hope that this is true, I'll also take it with a grain of salt and say that I will believe it when I see it.
This service was used for several days after the bridge disaster with very good results. Talk about trial by fire!
I'm no audiophile, just an ordinary listener who frankly admits he is an ordinary listener. I love to listen to music though...
The punch of the drums and the hit you in the chest thump from the bass adds a tactile sensation to the sound of music, it makes you quite litterally "feel" the music. Phil Spector understood this with his "wall of sound" but today's producers don't get it in the same way. Loudness to them I think covers lots of sins. Today's music (almost an oxymoron I think) is more "studio" than "recording". What I mean by that is when an artist goes into the studio their sound is so massaged by the production process that it ends up being totally different from what went down on tape in the fist place.
When was the last time you heard a female voice in a song that wasn't filled in with multiple layers of the same voice? It seems like they all do it, change the voice, add a little delay and then lay it over the original giving the voice more "presence". The effect is good here and there but when it is all you hear, it sounds so artificial. Ugh.
Research, pure or practical is what advances technology and indeed the whole human race. While very few products make it beyond the lab information learned may be applied elsewhere.
While I may agree that this particular product may never make it out of the lab perhaps someone will read the announcment and have an eureka moment of their own and be able to apply something that they learned from this research to whatever it is that they are working on.
I actually do hope that this research (or more accurately a product derived from this research) makes it out of the lab. I think there is room in this world for non-toxic, compostable capacitor-batteries.
Pointless? I think a better word may be inspirational.