Nobody is interested in an airplane the super-rich can drive to their villas after their day trip to the Bahamas. Everyone is interested in flying cars. If you put up an article about something that looks like it could someday lead to flying cars, people are going to comment on flying cars and what they would mean and how plausible they are.
Without the flying car connection, this article is more suited for some magazine that sells over-priced crap that no one needs like SkyMall, not Slashdot.
I think it's a waste of time. The logistics involved with actually having a non-trivial number of these things up in the air over urban areas without mass casualties are just too difficult.
The answer to our traffic woes is probably not flying cars, but rather something like self-driving cars on defined tracks. Most of our traffic problems are caused by people following too closely and overreacting to developments ahead of them (braking harder than necessary, etc), not to mention the general scourge of distracted driving. If the whole process of freeway merging, maintaining safe distance, responding to stimuli outside the vehicle, etc, was handled by an unemotional computer (perhaps interfacing with a central traffic planning computer in more congested areas), things should smooth out.
Of course, we're still years away from that sort of computing power, but various aspects of the self-driving automobile have been under development for years, and we should eventually get there. At any rate, I find the prospect more realistic than the idea of thousands or millions of flying cars zipping around above New York City.
Yah, I realized it was actually Jamie who was off his meds, but by that time I had already hit Submit. Oh well, if my posts weren't riddled with inaccuracies, I just wouldn't feel like a part of the Slashdot family, you know?
I'd love to see a way to really punish corporations. Jailing their chief officers is a good start, but that usually only happens in the most egregious cases involving something that brings the company itself down. However, your idea to temporarily nationalize the company in order to punish it, while definitely giving the government incentive to enforce the laws, may be going a bit too far.
Considering the country is currently many trillions of dollars in debt, and adding almost 2 trillion more to that debt this year alone, the temptation to use nationalization as the default punishment for a wide variety of infractions may prove too great for the government to resist. Before you know it, the money-hungry government will have "temporarily" nationalized hundreds of corporations in order to siphon the profits and balance its own books.
The best option to control corporate malfeasance, in my opinion, is to make it as painful as possible to the people in the position to make decisions. The chief executives get rewarded with millions of dollars for doing a good job, and if they screw up badly enough they get...rewarded with tens of millions of dollars in severance. If screwing up carried an actual penalty for them, maybe at least some of them would think a little harder before going down that path.
You're right. When the economy is bad, we should let corporations get away with breaking any laws or regulations they want to in order to maintain a healthy profit, thereby maintaining jobs. This is especially important when the economy is bad in large part because we let corporations get away with breaking any laws or regulations they wanted to in order to maintain a healthy profit.
No big deal... they just used Babelfish and clicked on "Chimp to English". But we probably ought to revoke these chimps' internet access -- we've already got enough people acting like monkeys on the 'net!
Nah, if they did that it would come out as "intelligent am I monkey ook ook eek eek enclosure keeping of likeness not".
They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.
He didn't invent the toilet, but he did invent the ballcock! This makes Crapper and the ballcock perhaps the most hilarious inventor-invention combo ever. The fact that a ballcock is a primary component of most toilets is just icing on the cake.
Whose DVR won't record a show if it moves to a different time slot? The whole point of the season pass feature (or whatever the DVR you use calls that feature) is that you get all the episodes of that show (or all new episodes, depending on how you configure it), regardless of when they air.
Please let us know which DVRs don't do that so we can be sure to never sign up for that service.
Maybe if Fox wants churn, they should start encouraging TV shows that end, and end properly as part of the arc, rather than something thrown together.
It would be nice for shows to have story arcs that end in a satisfying way, but that conflicts with the desire to make as much money as possible. As long as a show is popular, it will stay on the air. If its original story arc was only for 1 or 2 seasons, that arc will be extended indefinitely, or a new arc will be started.
Even shows that were advertised as being a complete story arc ended up being stretched well beyond what they were originally intended for (see: Lost). Of course, that sort of thing usually ends up decreasing the quality of the show, which tends to mean that show will drop viewers. If it drops enough viewers, the show will be canceled before it can complete its (expanded) arc.
The only way a show can reasonably expect to complete its storyline in a satisfying way is if a.) its storyline is not bound by time, so it could be wrapped up within, say, half a season at any point, and b.) the show is so wildly popular that it can keep going until the producers themselves decide it's time to wind it down. Very few shows meet those criteria, and so most shows end up dying without finishing the story.
It's always interesting to see the varied opinions within Trek fandom. I, for one, thought Enterprise was an excellent show, although the story arc involving the Xindi and the Expanse took waaaaaay too long. I hated Voyager, almost as much as I hated DS9. Never cared for Janeway either.
In order, I'd have to say my favorite treks were: 1.) TNG 2.) Enterprise 3.) TOS Then, off in the far distance: 4.) Voyager 5.) DS9
You must not have been arrested recently. I was picked up on an ancient traffic ticket about 4 years ago, and they used an optical scanner to take fingerprints, so there was no ink. Of course, the scanner tended to mess up a lot if your fingers were sweaty due to, say, just having been arrested, so getting fingerprinted was an ordeal in itself.
That being said, though, this article seems to be more about getting identifiable fingerprints OF a piece of paper, not getting a person's fingerprints FROM a piece of paper. I'm not sure I see the use case in this, since companies don't maintain fingerprint records of the paper they sell, and doing so would be impractical given how much paper is produced on a daily basis.
I'm sorry, but that's just not how we do things around here. If the printer is doing anything other than printing your document, the correct solution is to wander aimlessly away and hope someone else will eventually fix it. As an added bonus, you get to tell everyone the printer is broken, and that's why you weren't able to get any work done today.
Your plan is nice and all, but it lacks the life-destroying element that a truly diabolical plan should have.
What he should do is load them up with child porn and sneak them into the briefcases of all the people who have wronged him. He does keep a list of everyone who has ever wronged him labeled "people to utterly destroy", right? Doesn't everybody?
Anyway, after you've done that, place anonymous calls to the FBI from various pay phones saying you've seen these people loitering around elementary schools. Then, sit back and watch your problems disappear.
The biggest problem is that China has a virtually unlimited pool of cheap labor, and we don't. China doesn't have to spend the money on robotics or worker benefits or anything like that to get work done. If something big needs to be done, they keep throwing people at it until it's done.
I suppose we could adopt a new plan sort of like China's "1 child per family" policy, except more like "at least 10 children per family". Of course, 90% of the population would have to get used to living like a Chinese peasant, which could be a difficult adjustment for people who have become accustomed to luxuries like electricity and running water. We'd probably also need to annex Canada to make room for all the extra people.
He used the same file sharing services he has been railing against for years to download a copy of an album that was presumably being shared illegally. Furthermore, the article seems to imply that the file sharing client already existed on the computer at his house, which would mean he may well have downloaded other albums in the past.
Remember, when someone does something they know is wrong, and starts justifying it by saying they were drinking with friends, and it was the only time they've ever done it, and they can't remember what tool they used to do it, chances are good they've actually done the same thing repeatedly in the past.
Of course, the fact that he talks about how bizarre and weird it was as if he was talking about his first trip to Mars may indicate that he's so hopelessly out of touch that he's been fighting for 10 years against something he doesn't understand at all. Neither possibility is particularly flattering to him.
Given the kind of freaky porn that comes out of Germany, I doubt the German government is going to be phased by anything the Chinese decide to download.
Oh yeah? Then how come "the one that got away" always gets bigger?
And the more beer a fisherman pours down his gills, the bigger it gets! Just get a couple of twelve-packs and you'll have lakes full of uncaught big fish in a couple of hours.
It's a well-known fact that fish feed on empty beer cans. The more they eat, the bigger they get.
Maybe, but the wombat is an inherently funnier animal than any of those. In green technology, humor value counts for more than you might think. I hear the next project is kookaburra poo paper.
Really? Don't you think that Adobe or Apple might have something to say about it?
And so would any competitor.
But to the businesses actually doing the bidding, the relevent parties, I would wager none have any issues.
Well of course the ones doing the bidding don't have any issue with it, it's the ones that can't do the bidding that don't like it. The relevant parties are not just those doing the bidding, it's also anyone who might want to bid in the future.
Just for clarity, what is the supposed position of the monkey relative to the darts and the dartboard and can this arrangement constitute animal cruelty?
Since working for Slashdot in any capacity constitutes an insult to the animal's intelligence, it could be considered animal cruelty.
That makes a lot more sense. I was wondering why Google or anyone else would pay a red cent to anyone for out of copyright works, especially electronic copies. By definition, a work that is out of copyright isn't owned by anyone, and anyone can do whatever they please with it.
For a site that posts as many stories about copyright as Slashdot does, you'd think the editors would have at least a basic understanding of it. Of course, since article selection around here seems to involve a monkey and a dart board, I guess we shouldn't be surprised by articles like this.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody is interested in an airplane the super-rich can drive to their villas after their day trip to the Bahamas. Everyone is interested in flying cars. If you put up an article about something that looks like it could someday lead to flying cars, people are going to comment on flying cars and what they would mean and how plausible they are.
Without the flying car connection, this article is more suited for some magazine that sells over-priced crap that no one needs like SkyMall, not Slashdot.
I think it's a waste of time. The logistics involved with actually having a non-trivial number of these things up in the air over urban areas without mass casualties are just too difficult.
The answer to our traffic woes is probably not flying cars, but rather something like self-driving cars on defined tracks. Most of our traffic problems are caused by people following too closely and overreacting to developments ahead of them (braking harder than necessary, etc), not to mention the general scourge of distracted driving. If the whole process of freeway merging, maintaining safe distance, responding to stimuli outside the vehicle, etc, was handled by an unemotional computer (perhaps interfacing with a central traffic planning computer in more congested areas), things should smooth out.
Of course, we're still years away from that sort of computing power, but various aspects of the self-driving automobile have been under development for years, and we should eventually get there. At any rate, I find the prospect more realistic than the idea of thousands or millions of flying cars zipping around above New York City.
he still would type with all of his fingers, right? so wouldn't sticking his finger in a usb slot make it that much harder to type?
No worries, this guy strikes me as the type who's used to typing one-handed.
Yah, I realized it was actually Jamie who was off his meds, but by that time I had already hit Submit. Oh well, if my posts weren't riddled with inaccuracies, I just wouldn't feel like a part of the Slashdot family, you know?
it's probably time to put some ramen on your Visa and start making stuff up for your LinkedIn page.
Can anyone explain what the hell this means?
I think it means CmdrTaco is off his meds again.
I'd love to see a way to really punish corporations. Jailing their chief officers is a good start, but that usually only happens in the most egregious cases involving something that brings the company itself down. However, your idea to temporarily nationalize the company in order to punish it, while definitely giving the government incentive to enforce the laws, may be going a bit too far.
Considering the country is currently many trillions of dollars in debt, and adding almost 2 trillion more to that debt this year alone, the temptation to use nationalization as the default punishment for a wide variety of infractions may prove too great for the government to resist. Before you know it, the money-hungry government will have "temporarily" nationalized hundreds of corporations in order to siphon the profits and balance its own books.
The best option to control corporate malfeasance, in my opinion, is to make it as painful as possible to the people in the position to make decisions. The chief executives get rewarded with millions of dollars for doing a good job, and if they screw up badly enough they get...rewarded with tens of millions of dollars in severance. If screwing up carried an actual penalty for them, maybe at least some of them would think a little harder before going down that path.
You're right. When the economy is bad, we should let corporations get away with breaking any laws or regulations they want to in order to maintain a healthy profit, thereby maintaining jobs. This is especially important when the economy is bad in large part because we let corporations get away with breaking any laws or regulations they wanted to in order to maintain a healthy profit.
No big deal... they just used Babelfish and clicked on "Chimp to English". But we probably ought to revoke these chimps' internet access -- we've already got enough people acting like monkeys on the 'net!
Nah, if they did that it would come out as "intelligent am I monkey ook ook eek eek enclosure keeping of likeness not".
They gave it to him instead of others who developed a phone, because they thought history would prefer that somebody named "Bell" invented the telephone, like how Sir Thomas Crapper is credited with inventing the flush toilet even though he really didn't invent it.
He didn't invent the toilet, but he did invent the ballcock! This makes Crapper and the ballcock perhaps the most hilarious inventor-invention combo ever. The fact that a ballcock is a primary component of most toilets is just icing on the cake.
Whose DVR won't record a show if it moves to a different time slot? The whole point of the season pass feature (or whatever the DVR you use calls that feature) is that you get all the episodes of that show (or all new episodes, depending on how you configure it), regardless of when they air.
Please let us know which DVRs don't do that so we can be sure to never sign up for that service.
Maybe if Fox wants churn, they should start encouraging TV shows that end, and end properly as part of the arc, rather than something thrown together.
It would be nice for shows to have story arcs that end in a satisfying way, but that conflicts with the desire to make as much money as possible. As long as a show is popular, it will stay on the air. If its original story arc was only for 1 or 2 seasons, that arc will be extended indefinitely, or a new arc will be started.
Even shows that were advertised as being a complete story arc ended up being stretched well beyond what they were originally intended for (see: Lost). Of course, that sort of thing usually ends up decreasing the quality of the show, which tends to mean that show will drop viewers. If it drops enough viewers, the show will be canceled before it can complete its (expanded) arc.
The only way a show can reasonably expect to complete its storyline in a satisfying way is if a.) its storyline is not bound by time, so it could be wrapped up within, say, half a season at any point, and b.) the show is so wildly popular that it can keep going until the producers themselves decide it's time to wind it down. Very few shows meet those criteria, and so most shows end up dying without finishing the story.
It's always interesting to see the varied opinions within Trek fandom. I, for one, thought Enterprise was an excellent show, although the story arc involving the Xindi and the Expanse took waaaaaay too long. I hated Voyager, almost as much as I hated DS9. Never cared for Janeway either.
In order, I'd have to say my favorite treks were:
1.) TNG
2.) Enterprise
3.) TOS
Then, off in the far distance:
4.) Voyager
5.) DS9
Brent Spiner was tired of Trek, which is why he had data killed off in Nemesis.
He's also getting too old and wrinkly to convincingly play an android that's not supposed to age.
You must not have been arrested recently. I was picked up on an ancient traffic ticket about 4 years ago, and they used an optical scanner to take fingerprints, so there was no ink. Of course, the scanner tended to mess up a lot if your fingers were sweaty due to, say, just having been arrested, so getting fingerprinted was an ordeal in itself.
That being said, though, this article seems to be more about getting identifiable fingerprints OF a piece of paper, not getting a person's fingerprints FROM a piece of paper. I'm not sure I see the use case in this, since companies don't maintain fingerprint records of the paper they sell, and doing so would be impractical given how much paper is produced on a daily basis.
I'm sorry, but that's just not how we do things around here. If the printer is doing anything other than printing your document, the correct solution is to wander aimlessly away and hope someone else will eventually fix it. As an added bonus, you get to tell everyone the printer is broken, and that's why you weren't able to get any work done today.
Your plan is nice and all, but it lacks the life-destroying element that a truly diabolical plan should have.
What he should do is load them up with child porn and sneak them into the briefcases of all the people who have wronged him. He does keep a list of everyone who has ever wronged him labeled "people to utterly destroy", right? Doesn't everybody?
Anyway, after you've done that, place anonymous calls to the FBI from various pay phones saying you've seen these people loitering around elementary schools. Then, sit back and watch your problems disappear.
The biggest problem is that China has a virtually unlimited pool of cheap labor, and we don't. China doesn't have to spend the money on robotics or worker benefits or anything like that to get work done. If something big needs to be done, they keep throwing people at it until it's done.
I suppose we could adopt a new plan sort of like China's "1 child per family" policy, except more like "at least 10 children per family". Of course, 90% of the population would have to get used to living like a Chinese peasant, which could be a difficult adjustment for people who have become accustomed to luxuries like electricity and running water. We'd probably also need to annex Canada to make room for all the extra people.
I like the ballistic armor (spectra flex/kevlar)...makes me want to shoot a Dell with a 9mm STEN.
Trust me, shooting a Dell without the armor is orders of magnitude more satisfying.
He used the same file sharing services he has been railing against for years to download a copy of an album that was presumably being shared illegally. Furthermore, the article seems to imply that the file sharing client already existed on the computer at his house, which would mean he may well have downloaded other albums in the past.
Remember, when someone does something they know is wrong, and starts justifying it by saying they were drinking with friends, and it was the only time they've ever done it, and they can't remember what tool they used to do it, chances are good they've actually done the same thing repeatedly in the past.
Of course, the fact that he talks about how bizarre and weird it was as if he was talking about his first trip to Mars may indicate that he's so hopelessly out of touch that he's been fighting for 10 years against something he doesn't understand at all. Neither possibility is particularly flattering to him.
Given the kind of freaky porn that comes out of Germany, I doubt the German government is going to be phased by anything the Chinese decide to download.
Oh yeah? Then how come "the one that got away" always gets bigger?
And the more beer a fisherman pours down his gills, the bigger it gets! Just get a couple of twelve-packs and you'll have lakes full of uncaught big fish in a couple of hours.
It's a well-known fact that fish feed on empty beer cans. The more they eat, the bigger they get.
Maybe, but the wombat is an inherently funnier animal than any of those. In green technology, humor value counts for more than you might think. I hear the next project is kookaburra poo paper.
Really? Don't you think that Adobe or Apple might have something to say about it?
And so would any competitor.
But to the businesses actually doing the bidding, the relevent parties, I would wager none have any issues.
Well of course the ones doing the bidding don't have any issue with it, it's the ones that can't do the bidding that don't like it. The relevant parties are not just those doing the bidding, it's also anyone who might want to bid in the future.
Just for clarity, what is the supposed position of the monkey relative to the darts and the dartboard and can this arrangement constitute animal cruelty?
Since working for Slashdot in any capacity constitutes an insult to the animal's intelligence, it could be considered animal cruelty.
That makes a lot more sense. I was wondering why Google or anyone else would pay a red cent to anyone for out of copyright works, especially electronic copies. By definition, a work that is out of copyright isn't owned by anyone, and anyone can do whatever they please with it.
For a site that posts as many stories about copyright as Slashdot does, you'd think the editors would have at least a basic understanding of it. Of course, since article selection around here seems to involve a monkey and a dart board, I guess we shouldn't be surprised by articles like this.