And I have to wonder: Is my post above being modded "Insightful" because of my (rather obvious) refutation of the other poster's ill-informed accusation, or for my observation that he's a jackass? Either one seems a bit obvious to be considered "insightful".
Well, I volunteered to help. I'm just one software geek, but there are a bunch of us who are unsatisfied with the security and auditability of this election.
In fact, I used to work on a PC-based hearing aid fitting system with a rather complex custom sound card. One time, while testing the code for the clinician's monitor, I frobbed the upper dB limit on one of the outputs - which happened to be connected to headphones I was wearing at the time. When I ran my test code, I was immediately hit with a really loud 1000Hz sine wave. It hurt.
The good news is that I don't appear to have done noticable permanent damage. My ears did ache for a few days afterward, though, and upon consultation with (and brief examination by) one of the staff audiologists, I was told that I had probably pulled the muscles in my inner ear.
So, no deafness, but my code resulted in me pulling the smallest muscles in my body.
I think the key phrase in your response is, "with today's technology" - and that's where your reply is a non-sequitur.
So we shouldn't bother just because we can't do it today? That's absurd. Nobody, even people who believe every word Robert Zubrin writes, thinks it can happen tomorrow. That doesn't reduce the urgency of getting it done. Estimates of the risk may vary, but the risk is real. Even the otherwise reactionary insurance industry recognizes the ecological risks (1, 2) of the near future.
To the inevitable nit-picking dweebs: I'm aware that "Final Countdown" was Europe and not VH. But the comment above was, "hair metal and space don't really seem to go together".
This statement is not very bright and not at all visionary. Besides the likely scientific and possible economic benefits (and opinions of the potential for these vary, admittedly), there's one overarching reason of critical importance: Survival of our species.
With time, our ability to create a planet-wide catastrophe threatening our species survival grows exponentially. There are any number of ways we could do ourselves in ecologically or militarily, but the chances of those wiping out all of humanity are reduced when we're spread out among more than one planet - moreso if that planet is terraformed or otherwise made human-friendly on a large scale and self-sufficient without shipping of either raw materials or finished goods from earth.
Anyone who is interested, as Van Allen claims to be, in "the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life" should be unequivocally for, not against, manned human spaceflight with a final goal of extraterrestrial colonization.
When I was in college, some friends and I (all physics majors) were having a bull session about whether or when someone would cough up a Grand Unified Theory. It was eventually agreed that it would depend largely on when the good Dr. Hawking died.
At the time, I don't think any of us thought he would still be around at this late date. Anyway, glad to see he's still kicking (so to speak) and doing new work.
I guess nobody else has bothered to tell you to compare someone's user ID to your own before you cop a high-and-mighty, jaded-about-the-low-standards attitude, genius.
First, I'm glad to hear that I had a hand in someone buying a hybrid. Woohoo!
Second, it's not just Texas. I haven't kept track, but I regularly buy gas in NY, MA, CT, NJ, and sometimes PA and ME, and I see those labels more often than not.
Does this bring to mind, for anyone else, that nifty piece of software Hiro had in Snow Crash? I mean, of course, the model of Earth updated in real-time with satellite imaging data, etc...
The flaw in the claim that this thing doesn't use fossil fuels is in the source of the ethanol; most fuel ethanol comes from grains - in the U.S., from government-subsidized grain corn. Due to the poorness of overcultivated soil in nearly every temperate region where grains grow, it takes a lot of petroleum-derived fertilizer to grow that grain - multiple calories of hydrocarbon energy for each calorie stored in the grain, in fact. Fermentation and refinement of the ethanol, of course, reduces the net energy yield of this process.
Find a better source of ethanol, though, and I'm sold.
If you're going to break someone's balls about not knowing things you weren't born knowing either, try not to display your ignorance so egregiously in the process.
Any word on whether they're partnering with or using the tools provided by the BlogChalk people? They've already made some headway into how to get people to volutarily mark and index their blogs.
OK,
- B
Though it's no doubt been said already...
on
Brain Privacy
·
· Score: 1
This is especially true I think of videogames, where everything from the environment (the marketing, the merchandising, the image of the industry) to the peripherals (the laughably phallic joystick, the original Xbox controllers which are too big for my hands, the color scheme of the Xbox) are male-friendly.
There really are some important things to say about gender, gender depiction, and gender discrimination in games and the gaming community. Until she can demo a working, vagina-shaped video game controller for me, I'm not going to hear them from this author.
I tend to ignore the positive reviews for any product, on any site, for the very reasons intimated by this story - it's too easy to spoof the system.
One thing I do, though (and this works especially well with movie reviews), is to look at the negative reviews. If the writer sounds like an intelligent and reasonable person with whom I'd disagree, or sounds like an idiot, I'll consider viewing that movie. A review like this one will almost guarantee that I'll check a movie out:
THIS MOVIE SUCKED NOBODY TALKED ENGLISH AND I CANT GET THE CLOSE CAPTION ON MY DVD TO WORK THE SEXXX SCEENS DIDNT SHOW ANYTHING THIS WAS A WASTE OF MY TIME!!!!!
That looks like parody, but it happens on Netflix all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, a lot of us wouldn't feel stupid, precisely. We'd feel more, I don't know, dead.
And I have to wonder: Is my post above being modded "Insightful" because of my (rather obvious) refutation of the other poster's ill-informed accusation, or for my observation that he's a jackass? Either one seems a bit obvious to be considered "insightful".
But what the hell. Karma is karma, no?
Here's a news flash: Humane labor practices != socialism. Jackass.
Well, I volunteered to help. I'm just one software geek, but there are a bunch of us who are unsatisfied with the security and auditability of this election.
In fact, I used to work on a PC-based hearing aid fitting system with a rather complex custom sound card. One time, while testing the code for the clinician's monitor, I frobbed the upper dB limit on one of the outputs - which happened to be connected to headphones I was wearing at the time. When I ran my test code, I was immediately hit with a really loud 1000Hz sine wave. It hurt.
The good news is that I don't appear to have done noticable permanent damage. My ears did ache for a few days afterward, though, and upon consultation with (and brief examination by) one of the staff audiologists, I was told that I had probably pulled the muscles in my inner ear.
So, no deafness, but my code resulted in me pulling the smallest muscles in my body.
OK,
- B
I see your point of view, but some of us are thinking longer-term than that.
I think the key phrase in your response is, "with today's technology" - and that's where your reply is a non-sequitur.
So we shouldn't bother just because we can't do it today? That's absurd. Nobody, even people who believe every word Robert Zubrin writes, thinks it can happen tomorrow. That doesn't reduce the urgency of getting it done. Estimates of the risk may vary, but the risk is real. Even the otherwise reactionary insurance industry recognizes the ecological risks (1, 2) of the near future.
To the inevitable nit-picking dweebs: I'm aware that "Final Countdown" was Europe and not VH. But the comment above was, "hair metal and space don't really seem to go together".
Two words: Final Countdown
This statement is not very bright and not at all visionary. Besides the likely scientific and possible economic benefits (and opinions of the potential for these vary, admittedly), there's one overarching reason of critical importance: Survival of our species.
With time, our ability to create a planet-wide catastrophe threatening our species survival grows exponentially. There are any number of ways we could do ourselves in ecologically or militarily, but the chances of those wiping out all of humanity are reduced when we're spread out among more than one planet - moreso if that planet is terraformed or otherwise made human-friendly on a large scale and self-sufficient without shipping of either raw materials or finished goods from earth.
Anyone who is interested, as Van Allen claims to be, in "the ever-present potential for the loss of precious human life" should be unequivocally for, not against, manned human spaceflight with a final goal of extraterrestrial colonization.
OK,
- B
When I was in college, some friends and I (all physics majors) were having a bull session about whether or when someone would cough up a Grand Unified Theory. It was eventually agreed that it would depend largely on when the good Dr. Hawking died.
At the time, I don't think any of us thought he would still be around at this late date. Anyway, glad to see he's still kicking (so to speak) and doing new work.
OK,
- B
I guess nobody else has bothered to tell you to compare someone's user ID to your own before you cop a high-and-mighty, jaded-about-the-low-standards attitude, genius.
First, I'm glad to hear that I had a hand in someone buying a hybrid. Woohoo!
Second, it's not just Texas. I haven't kept track, but I regularly buy gas in NY, MA, CT, NJ, and sometimes PA and ME, and I see those labels more often than not.
OK,
- B
Yeah, pretty much.
Was that one, too? Dang... ;)
OK,
- B
Argh. Perhaps I shood chack my speling, to.
Extended comments at Gizmodo makes it clear that this is 99% rumor/FUD. Does anyone bother chacking the facts on these things before they're posted?
OK,
- B
Wow. It's like they want to be a real ISP or something.
Does this bring to mind, for anyone else, that nifty piece of software Hiro had in Snow Crash ? I mean, of course, the model of Earth updated in real-time with satellite imaging data, etc...
Eerie.
OK,
- B
The flaw in the claim that this thing doesn't use fossil fuels is in the source of the ethanol; most fuel ethanol comes from grains - in the U.S., from government-subsidized grain corn. Due to the poorness of overcultivated soil in nearly every temperate region where grains grow, it takes a lot of petroleum-derived fertilizer to grow that grain - multiple calories of hydrocarbon energy for each calorie stored in the grain, in fact. Fermentation and refinement of the ethanol, of course, reduces the net energy yield of this process.
Find a better source of ethanol, though, and I'm sold.
If you're going to break someone's balls about not knowing things you weren't born knowing either, try not to display your ignorance so egregiously in the process.
'Nuff said.
OK,
- B
I have to go shower now.
OK,
- B
OK,
- B
OK,
- B
One thing I do, though (and this works especially well with movie reviews), is to look at the negative reviews. If the writer sounds like an intelligent and reasonable person with whom I'd disagree, or sounds like an idiot, I'll consider viewing that movie. A review like this one will almost guarantee that I'll check a movie out:
That looks like parody, but it happens on Netflix all the time.OK,
- B