And if advertisers, networks and corporations were rational actors with the ability to look into the future and consider the consequences of their actions, they would probably realize that annoying their customers is detrimental to their survival. However it seems they are blinded by an intentional shortsightedness caused by a lust for short-term profit. So they try every trick possible in the hopes that they will receive a few more dollars this quarter, even if it guts all possibility of future success.
When this scenario plays out, I will gladly walk into and out of every store if I can expect a 10% off coupon for doing so.
Do you really think you're saving any money in the long run? When people get such discounts, the base price of everything goes up - after all, ultimately the manufacturer or seller isn't picking up the tab, the consumers are. So it's a temporary advantage, offset both by the higher prices other buyers pay as a result of YOUR discount, and by the higher prices YOU pay when you buy something that you don't get a discount on, but other buyers do. To paraphrase Syndrome in the Incredibles, "When everyone gets a discount, then no one does". Also, via Heinlein, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
The whole thing is a zero-sum game, except for the manufacturers and sellers - they get their fingers on our privacy and entranceways into our lives, and we, ultimately, get nothing in return.
Actually, 10% is something of what I call "the standard discount." If you aren't getting it, you're essentially paying extra. There is always somebody who can get this discount (veterans, seniors, frequent buyers, whatever). With this system in place, I will get "the standard discount." If the general public is too dumb to get it, then I am not paying the extra.
But now you are getting your privacy stomped on instead of simply getting the standard discount. It looks like the retailers and advertisers are winning here.
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. Japan had to declare war because of the economic pressure. Does this mean they were right to do so? No. Does this mean they were not the aggressor? No.
"After all, it's always the defender who starts the war." "It isn't that complicated. The attacker doesn't want war. The attacker wants to conquer. If the defender would simply allow him to do so there would be no war." -Sethra Lavode
Which is pretty close to the sentiment of a real military strategist, Clausewitz. "The Conqueror is always a lover of peace: he would prefer to takeover our country unopposed." [I do not recall if this is attributed to him or if it was a direct quote.]
"...speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed for future satellites."
That is what we need. More speculation. I speculate it is full of bacon and will be headed for the moon. Everyone needs bacon, even those going to the moon.
Well we have been wanting to go back to the moon, and apparently it being made of cheese is not a good enough reason. Now it will be cheese topped with bacon.
Well that is probably true, now that we are not putting a significant portion of our GDP into the space race, things have slowed down. The problem is we dont have any better way of getting into space than building a giant disintegrating totem pole and lighting a bunch of explosives under it.
And I suppose things like RTG powering Curiousity are impressive, but hardly revolutionary. It is just an incremental The Voyager probes have been running on RTG power since the 70s.
Mars rovers are not that different from a merger of Lunahod rovers and Viking landers.
Every part of that sentence is wrong. Unless you include that taking a ship from Europe to North America is not that different than Columbus' crossing.
There are a lot of exciting space technologies being deployed today... at least they are exciting to people interested in such things. To the general public nothing aside from putting people on the moon matters. There is just no way around that opinion, and NASA does not have the budget to put people on moons/other planets currently, so they just continue to do exciting science with the budget they have.
Cutting a rifled barrel and building a simple firearm are not exactly complicated.
Who needs a machinist when you can just print a rifle. Now they are a ways off from a fully functional weapon. (the printing was only the lower receiver, and was only able to fire 6 shots before failing) However it is naive to think that downloadable fully functional weapons are more than a decade away. Forget about copyright laws, how are the gun laws going to deal with that?
Every country has a drug problem, of course, but England isn't top on the list of places the Mexicans and Columbians are piloting their mini-subs to.
Why should they, when the US is a far more lucrative market?
Also it is a hell of a lot easier to run a mini-sub from Central/South America to North America via the gulf of Mexico. They are not exactly designed to cross the Atlantic.
How does this get around wire-tapping laws in the two party states (where both parties need to know there's recording going on)? If someone comes over and watches TV, do you have to tell them or does Verizon since Verizon is the party doing the recording?
IANAL but I am a cynic, so here's what I think would happen:
Assuming Verizon couldn't just pay some lobbyists to get themselves an exemption, they would simply not record the audio. They would have a list of keywords and they would listen for them in real time. If the system hears a keyword, it increments a counter associated with the keyword but that is all it does, the audio is immediate sent to/dev/null without any sort of permanent record. No actual recording, no legal violation.
Well transcribing the conversation would certainly be a recording. However, I think, transcribing a certain subset of words I think would qualify as well.
...because... not... record every..., not mean... know... meaning... conversation... especially... recording... key...
The Cassini rocket will be powered by 72 pounds of plutonium -- the most ever rocketed into space. Protesters say that if the rocket explodes it could sprinkle deadly poison for hundreds of miles.
Winds can blow (plutonium) into Disney World, Universal City, into the citrus industry and destroy the economy of central Florida," said Michio Kaku, a protesting physics professor from New York. He claimed that casualties could run as high as a million people if there were an accident.
What? If you split it up into 1 million 30 milligram doses and had people directly inhale it or inject it into your blood, yeah that would do it. You could injest that much and survive (cancer risk goes up, but it is well under the LD50 of 500mg for ingestion, cyanide is more lethal) But exploding it over the ocean where people are very unlikely to encounter any at all? Maybe that is the kind of science you get form a TV physicist. Make up a scary story to get yourself headlines.
As far as the OWS quip goes, some of these people did break into a secure facility by jumping the fence. Though they deserve to be arrested it is no reason for police brutality. However the article only says that there were only arrests.
I was thinking the same thing! I have a 2005 BMW; there's a button on the mirror which would let me make a call if i had one of those phones or, iirc, a bluetooth module which cost $800... I think all the manufacturers should do is agree on a standard for attaching mounts to the dash, provide bluetooth to the sound system, and have usb power outlets strategically placed. Of course that's not what's going to happen.
Why would they make a standardized connection when they can sell a proprietary module for $800?
The counter would have to be pretty big to be seen from far enough away to be useful in a car. I dont often drive through ones with the crosswalk counter, but there is no way I could read one of those from 10 seconds away. Also, that would add extra distraction for drivers. Instead of just passively looking at the light status, you have to read the number, instead of watching out for pedestrians and whatnot.
What honest excuse do you have for running a red light? It isn't like you don't get plenty of warning that the thing is going to change.
Anytime you make a left at any busy intersection that does not have a turn arrow. Or have someone tailgating you when the thing goes yellow. I am not slamming on my breaks in front of a truck no matter what the light says.
Though if they only put the cameras on proper intersections with turn lanes and arrows, actually had timing on the intersection depends on load, allowed enough time for the left-turners to actually get through the intersection, did not make the yellow impossibly short, and actually ticketed tailgaters with the cameras when the situation arises, it could work out.
So in other words, it won't work out. Instead the police will use these as cash-machines and ticket everyone without any acknowledgement of circumstances.
One of the smaller nuclear power plants for a sub might actually be quite efficient for a very large locomotive running on a much larger-than-standard track. At speed with radiator cooling you might manage some good efficiency. Tanker cars for coolant. Green as hell as as far as CO2 is concerned. You could move heavy freight. I bet in the fifties or sixties some serious thought went into big nuclear trains. Not feasible then with the reactors they had, but some of the N power plants in our ships are very compact now I believe. Albeit highly classified. What a poor analogy the poster made in his tirade against the sci fi fan.. Because, obvious security and political disadvantages aside, using a nuclear power plant in a big-ass steam locomotive may not be a half bad idea. Especially these days.
Slashdot Mirror
6-digit UID is the new 5-digit UID
Let the lawn-get-offing commence.
Perhaps we can use the electrical hum of Slashdot's servers to detect when this story was first posted.
And if advertisers, networks and corporations were rational actors with the ability to look into the future and consider the consequences of their actions, they would probably realize that annoying their customers is detrimental to their survival. However it seems they are blinded by an intentional shortsightedness caused by a lust for short-term profit. So they try every trick possible in the hopes that they will receive a few more dollars this quarter, even if it guts all possibility of future success.
Well I don't know... might be worth it. How's your marketability? :)
Is that a euphemism?
I disagree. I could care less about government. There are still coming up with ways for me to care less every day.
But, how much less could you care? At some point you will reach zero care.
When this scenario plays out, I will gladly walk into and out of every store if I can expect a 10% off coupon for doing so.
Do you really think you're saving any money in the long run? When people get such discounts, the base price of everything goes up - after all, ultimately the manufacturer or seller isn't picking up the tab, the consumers are. So it's a temporary advantage, offset both by the higher prices other buyers pay as a result of YOUR discount, and by the higher prices YOU pay when you buy something that you don't get a discount on, but other buyers do. To paraphrase Syndrome in the Incredibles, "When everyone gets a discount, then no one does". Also, via Heinlein, "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch"
The whole thing is a zero-sum game, except for the manufacturers and sellers - they get their fingers on our privacy and entranceways into our lives, and we, ultimately, get nothing in return.
Actually, 10% is something of what I call "the standard discount." If you aren't getting it, you're essentially paying extra. There is always somebody who can get this discount (veterans, seniors, frequent buyers, whatever). With this system in place, I will get "the standard discount." If the general public is too dumb to get it, then I am not paying the extra.
But now you are getting your privacy stomped on instead of simply getting the standard discount. It looks like the retailers and advertisers are winning here.
disabled by a country that trades 400b per YEAR with it?
Hitting your target in it's soft underbelly is virtually painless, very effective and none of your own people suffer.
Except when your economy goes down the drain from cutting off important trading partners. This was the GP's entire point.
However, would China's leadership care if they caused massive economic hardship for their population from cutting trading? Hmm...
I think you have hit the nail on the head here. Japan had to declare war because of the economic pressure. Does this mean they were right to do so? No. Does this mean they were not the aggressor? No.
"After all, it's always the defender who starts the war."
"It isn't that complicated. The attacker doesn't want war. The attacker wants to conquer. If the defender would simply allow him to do so there would be no war."
-Sethra Lavode
Which is pretty close to the sentiment of a real military strategist, Clausewitz.
"The Conqueror is always a lover of peace: he would prefer to takeover our country unopposed."
[I do not recall if this is attributed to him or if it was a direct quote.]
"...speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed for future satellites."
That is what we need. More speculation. I speculate it is full of bacon and will be headed for the moon. Everyone needs bacon, even those going to the moon.
Well we have been wanting to go back to the moon, and apparently it being made of cheese is not a good enough reason. Now it will be cheese topped with bacon.
Mmm... bacon and cheese.
Well that is probably true, now that we are not putting a significant portion of our GDP into the space race, things have slowed down. The problem is we dont have any better way of getting into space than building a giant disintegrating totem pole and lighting a bunch of explosives under it.
And I suppose things like RTG powering Curiousity are impressive, but hardly revolutionary. It is just an incremental The Voyager probes have been running on RTG power since the 70s.
Mars rovers are not that different from a merger of Lunahod rovers and Viking landers.
Every part of that sentence is wrong. Unless you include that taking a ship from Europe to North America is not that different than Columbus' crossing.
There are a lot of exciting space technologies being deployed today... at least they are exciting to people interested in such things. To the general public nothing aside from putting people on the moon matters. There is just no way around that opinion, and NASA does not have the budget to put people on moons/other planets currently, so they just continue to do exciting science with the budget they have.
Are there no machinists?
Cutting a rifled barrel and building a simple firearm are not exactly complicated.
Who needs a machinist when you can just print a rifle. Now they are a ways off from a fully functional weapon. (the printing was only the lower receiver, and was only able to fire 6 shots before failing) However it is naive to think that downloadable fully functional weapons are more than a decade away. Forget about copyright laws, how are the gun laws going to deal with that?
Capitalism.
Every country has a drug problem, of course, but England isn't top on the list of places the Mexicans and Columbians are piloting their mini-subs to.
Why should they, when the US is a far more lucrative market?
Also it is a hell of a lot easier to run a mini-sub from Central/South America to North America via the gulf of Mexico. They are not exactly designed to cross the Atlantic.
How does this get around wire-tapping laws in the two party states (where both parties need to know there's recording going on)? If someone comes over and watches TV, do you have to tell them or does Verizon since Verizon is the party doing the recording?
IANAL but I am a cynic, so here's what I think would happen:
Assuming Verizon couldn't just pay some lobbyists to get themselves an exemption, they would simply not record the audio. They would have a list of keywords and they would listen for them in real time. If the system hears a keyword, it increments a counter associated with the keyword but that is all it does, the audio is immediate sent to /dev/null without any sort of permanent record. No actual recording, no legal violation.
Well transcribing the conversation would certainly be a recording. However, I think, transcribing a certain subset of words I think would qualify as well.
Yes, lots of people protested NASA's risky space launch of a nuclear reactor but failed to stop the launch. The cops treated them just like they treated OWS. Sigh.
From the link:
The Cassini rocket will be powered by 72 pounds of plutonium -- the most ever rocketed into space. Protesters say that if the rocket explodes it could sprinkle deadly poison for hundreds of miles.
Winds can blow (plutonium) into Disney World, Universal City, into the citrus industry and destroy the economy of central Florida," said Michio Kaku, a protesting physics professor from New York. He claimed that casualties could run as high as a million people if there were an accident.
What? If you split it up into 1 million 30 milligram doses and had people directly inhale it or inject it into your blood, yeah that would do it. You could injest that much and survive (cancer risk goes up, but it is well under the LD50 of 500mg for ingestion, cyanide is more lethal) But exploding it over the ocean where people are very unlikely to encounter any at all? Maybe that is the kind of science you get form a TV physicist. Make up a scary story to get yourself headlines.
As far as the OWS quip goes, some of these people did break into a secure facility by jumping the fence. Though they deserve to be arrested it is no reason for police brutality. However the article only says that there were only arrests.
I was thinking the same thing! I have a 2005 BMW; there's a button on the mirror which would let me make a call if i had one of those phones or, iirc, a bluetooth module which cost $800... I think all the manufacturers should do is agree on a standard for attaching mounts to the dash, provide bluetooth to the sound system, and have usb power outlets strategically placed. Of course that's not what's going to happen.
Why would they make a standardized connection when they can sell a proprietary module for $800?
travel into orbit from local airports (ideally, those close to the equator) will be possible
Shucks, none of my local airports seem to be near the equator. And I don't fly since the TSA started assaulting and irritating travelers.
So take the train to orbit?
I would be careful of putting "head" directly after "axes".
The counter would have to be pretty big to be seen from far enough away to be useful in a car. I dont often drive through ones with the crosswalk counter, but there is no way I could read one of those from 10 seconds away. Also, that would add extra distraction for drivers. Instead of just passively looking at the light status, you have to read the number, instead of watching out for pedestrians and whatnot.
What honest excuse do you have for running a red light? It isn't like you don't get plenty of warning that the thing is going to change.
Anytime you make a left at any busy intersection that does not have a turn arrow. Or have someone tailgating you when the thing goes yellow. I am not slamming on my breaks in front of a truck no matter what the light says.
Though if they only put the cameras on proper intersections with turn lanes and arrows, actually had timing on the intersection depends on load, allowed enough time for the left-turners to actually get through the intersection, did not make the yellow impossibly short, and actually ticketed tailgaters with the cameras when the situation arises, it could work out.
So in other words, it won't work out. Instead the police will use these as cash-machines and ticket everyone without any acknowledgement of circumstances.
As a matter of fact, I am an expert on this topic.
Confirmed. I am an expert in identifying experts on topics.
One of the smaller nuclear power plants for a sub might actually be quite efficient for a very large locomotive running on a much larger-than-standard track. At speed with radiator cooling you might manage some good efficiency. Tanker cars for coolant. Green as hell as as far as CO2 is concerned. You could move heavy freight. I bet in the fifties or sixties some serious thought went into big nuclear trains. Not feasible then with the reactors they had, but some of the N power plants in our ships are very compact now I believe. Albeit highly classified. What a poor analogy the poster made in his tirade against the sci fi fan.. Because, obvious security and political disadvantages aside, using a nuclear power plant in a big-ass steam locomotive may not be a half bad idea. Especially these days.
Yep.
Are we playing a game of questions?
I thought we weren't supposed to read the articles/links in Slashdot! Ok, I'm splitting things up.
But it was in the summary.
Ask him anything you like, but please limit yourself to one question per post.
What part of one question per post did you not understand?