These tracks (such as the recent EMI deal) would also have
better sound quality & cost about 30 cents more.
At $1/track, you could fairly argue that a typical 13-track CD
(the average in my own decently large collection, and that
includes CD5s/SPs/singles) comes in a bit cheaper
than a full price new release CD at a major retailer, $13.00 vs
$15.99. And that already ignores that Amazon sells the vast
majority of top-100 music at $9.99.
At $1.30, however, that comes out to $16.90 for 13 tracks, MORE
than the cost of just buying a full price new release!
Now, in fairness, iTunes has all but single-handedly destroyed the
concept of an "album", turning most music into nothing more than a
collection of singles. But still... Comparing the prices, it starts
to look worse and worse to buy individual tracks.
Not to make this entirely critical, I do offer Kudos to Jobs for
finally "getting" that we don't want any DRM. But somewhere
in the equasions, the RIAA needs to realize that over the past
50 years they've gone to progressively cheaper physical formats,
without even pretending to pass the savings along to
their customers.
Go ahead and use the term lava lamp (note the absence of capitals). I think
it is on the way to commiting genericide anyway.
On its way?
Considering that, until I read the GP's post, I always considered "lava lamp" a
descriptive rather than a brand name, I'd say it passes the key test for having
gone generic. I've passed three decades of life without recognizing that term
as a trademarked name. C'mon, Mr. Genie, get back in that bottle...
Then again, I use GIMP for all my photoshopping needs, and enjoy Vermont cheddar
cheese, so what do I know?;-)
on a scale of one to ten, are you more a) pissed; b) surprised; c) depressed
Not to ignore the obvious joke there, but you could answer that question...
You just need to break it out into subquestions to a main question, as such: On a scale of one to ten, are you more:
a) pissed
b) surprised
c) depressed
Thus, a "correct" answer would take the form "3, 9, 4", or something like that.
The government has proposed giving retroactive immunity to telephone companies
for giving personal data to the government
Complete and utter BS, but not necessarily relevant - You can't measure the "damages" of
phone companies "sharing" info in simple dollars. So, I have a question for the idiots
supporting this: Can the government retroactively take away all the bad PR for the
companies that sold us out?
Simple example, I will not ever use Verizon again. Not for phone, not for DSL, not for
(the much bigger reason they should care) the T1 at my place of employment. And, as a
fairly respected geek among my family and peers, I strongly encourage those who ask my
advice to do the same (to date, Verizon has lost at least eight (A)DSL customers, two T1s,
and two SDSL loops for which I can personally take credit). Do I seriously think that hurt
them enough to make a difference? Certainly not just my recommendations, but given
enough people like me - Well, I note with some glee that Verizon has strangely decided
to divest themselves of the Northeast...
So, unless the government can also erase our memories, "immunity" won't save those
businesses who chose to betray their customers. And corporate America damned well
better start hearing that message if they want to stay in business.
If this is an industrial application, you really don't want to homebrew it.
Depends on why he wants to monitor this machine.
Working in a similar environment myself, I've found that "management wants to know how often we go
out-of-spec" means a whole world of difference from "one mistake will halt production ".
"Real" hardware to do these tasks, if even available, costs a bundle. The homebrew solution, if
just a matter of someone having accidentally uttered a meaningful phrase at a meeting, usually comes
in thousands or tens of thousands cheaper.
Not to mention, things often start as "a critical measurement" that a year and a half after successfully implementing a
homebrew counter, not a single person has ever even looked at the counts (Hmm, does that sound
too much like a real example?).
So if someone noticed activity from one of your domains that would indicate a
compromised machine, you wouldn't want to know about it?
First of all, the only people likely to notice such activity, the host, would have my contact
info (they like getting paid, dontcha know). That falls a whole world of difference from
having my info visible to every spammer, stalker, and general jackoff who wants to annoy me.
Second, if I actually have a compromised machine, the only people who can help me will already have
a task force on the problem, and you can read the CERT advisory in the morning right along with me.
Not to say it couldn't happen, but if it does, no fix yet exists.
Get the fuck off my internet.
The internet lacks warmth and fuzzies. If you don't know how to play, get off the field.
There is no legitimate reason why anyone would want to contact
the domain owner about some issue with the site or its content.
Biiiiiiiig difference between people wanting to contact me and
me wanting them to contact me.
And anyone that would need to use registration info to find me - I don't
want to hear from, period.
You pay, they host, right?
Sounds like you get it so far (sarcasm ignored)...
If you want to post software, movies, music and child porn that should be nobody's business but yours and the rest of the world can just get stuffed.
The police and FBI have other tools at their disposal to track me down.
So beyond the absurdities you give of actually breaking the law, yeah,
"the rest of the world can just get stuffed". Bingo.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the prevailing attitude
and current practice.
Really? Please point me to such a host! All the ones I've dealt with
will drop you at even the hint of a copyright violation, nevermind
committing a real crime.
I know you meant that as a joke, but the GP has an unintended
point - Yes, we can find 100x as much music out there, free even,
as RIAA offers. But the vast majority of it quite simply
sucks.
I've personally found a few dozen artists I enjoy via the web
(more than half from mp3.com, back when it still existed). But for
each gem, I've listened to hundreds of steaming piles of crap I wouldn't
inflict on Gitmo detainees.
Personally I find local college radio a good compromise, as they
play a broad spectrum of genres, from both RIAA and non-RIAA sources,
and usually have already filtered out the worst of the crap. They
also usually still have some shred of integrity left, too, so don't
just play what the highest bidder requests.
But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service
that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with
abominable disclaimers or advertisements.
I don't know about the FP author, but I consider "legal" a pretty big
point to factor into "cost"!
That's actually a lie. It means I have to suffer with shitty showerheads and low-flow
toilets that use MORE water because you don't turn them off and you have to flush twice or three times.
I meant that to refer to "people in general", not you in particular. Of course some people
already "get it". And others will rip out the low-flow version of things and replace them with
(increasingly hard to find) regular ones. But most people, the target of these measures, will just
quietly suffer and wish they didn't need to care about the environment.
Now to get the 5 grand set aside to replace all my windows with double-pane argon for more savings.
Save your money on the Argon, it leaks out within a year or two. But definitely get the best
low-E glass you can for your climate, well worth the money.
BTW, the ISP DOES take spam reports very seriously,
as long as the sender isn't abusive in the reporting.
Why should any editorializing in the spam report matter,
as long as you have the info you need?
Like it or not, most of the sheep view spam as the
fault of their ISP, not some open Israeli
relay (once upon a time I would have said "Russian"
or "Taiwanese", but the bulk of what I get nowadays
has a ".il" (intermediate) source)
Let 'em vent. We all know your staff doesn't "deserve"
it, but people really don't like feeling powerless,
as occurs with the plague of Spam.
Once again we see that every environmental action involves
a trade-off of some kind.
Ummm, you do realize the linked FP article counts as more
of a joke (if an expensive one) than a serious observation about
relative costs, right?
The guy did exactly the wrong thing at every step of the process
(starting by breaking the bulb, but okay, that happens). As soon
as you involve large bureaucracies and/or companies that make a
living by overhyping niche problems, you've headed down a VERY
expensive road (sometimes unavoidably, when said bureaucracies refuse
to let the matter drop).
If mercury actually counted as even one percent as toxic as all the
fearmongers claim, I'd have died decades ago - I used to have a
collection from broken thermometers, back when they still used it.
And that time my highschool chem teacher passed around a small breaker
of it, which we all poked and prodded and generally had a good time
playing with. Goodness, must've had 10ml of the stuff right there,
compared with the 5mg present in most CFLs (10ml, for reference, weighs
135g - 27,000 times more than a CFL).
Now, that doesn't mean we should ignore it and load the landfills
with CFLS. But we also don't need to freak every time someone breaks a
lightbulb or even an antique thermometer.
But there is ALWAYS a trade-off.
Yes and no.
"Different" does not always mean "worse". I agree with you that
we cannot carry on doing exactly the same things while somehow
magically minimizing our environmental impact. But we can have
the same quality of life with minor changes to what we
do and use.
Low-flow showers suck, no argument there. But we only have them
because people won't take the trivial step of turning the water
off while soaping/shampooing, giving the same benefit over the
course of the shower. Low flow toilets take two flushes. And at
1/6th the water per flush, that gives a net savings of 2/3rds the
water of a normal toilet.
What we have, then, amounts to a legislated loss of quality
of life because we won't take the easy steps. This hasn't
come as a surprise - The granola crowd have pointed out the damage
we do for decades if not centuries. Only now, and only by threat
of legal force, have we started to change our behavior.
I hate the fact the bulbs have a 'warm up' period, and whatever
'colour' bulb I get, it still throws a nasty fluro hue.
You can get "warm" CFLs now, which really do have a warm spectrum.
They still don't really look much like sunlight, but I've never found
an incandescent that does, either.
They don't flicker anymore. Period. Haven't for years.
They may or may not cast light matching their incandescent-comparison-rated
wattage; and you car may or may not really get 32MPG depending on driving
style and conditions. So buy one twice the rating you replace and you'll still halve the electricity use (too bad that doesn't apply
to cars, as well).
The "warm-up period" on modern CFLs, while I can't claim instant-on,
amounts to a matter of 50-100ms. That brain surgery you need to jump
into instantly upon entering a dark room can wait that long,
Doctor.
Now, if you want to keep using incandescents, hey, fine by me - But
you pay for it.
wouldn't that take away some of the mystery behind humans.
You enjoy the mystery. I'd rather know exactly how far I can
push my own wetware, and if possible, upload my consciousness sometime
before this body eventually wears out.
Afterall if we can figure ourselves out then doesn't that
mean that we aren't really all that complex?
I fail to see the problem... Does it make you any less "you" to
know that you exist as nothing more than the interaction of a few
billion dynamically-reconfigurable NAND gates?
wouldn't that also give us perfect explanations of people's
actions making situations predictable violating free will?
The ability to describe and even emulate a system doesn't make it
any more predictable. Chaos theory, entirely outside the spooky
quantum mojo the flakes keep bringing to this conversation, has shown
that even very simple purely deterministic systems can produce wildly
unpredictable (over time) results.
Unless such a simulation can include even such factors as how salty
Subway makes my lunch today, and exactly which raindrops hit me
where and at what temperaturere as I walk from my car to my front door
tonight, we have no need to worry that someone could run a copy of us
in fast-forward and predict our future decisions.
afterall if society is ultimately chaotic in terms of our
understanding, then wouldn't this be the ultimate control?
I use "chaos" in the mathematical sense - Sensitive dependance on initial
(and ongoing external) conditions, with exponential divergence between two
similar trajectories (closely related concepts, but IMO each bears stating
on its own for clarity).
it is necessary to know whether this trial was truly randomized meaning that the those who got the Vitamin D
pill and those who got the placebo were similar to each other in all other ways.
A "Truly" randomized double-blind study and a matched-subjects design fall basically at right angles to
one another in terms of what they can tell you. A randomized double-blind study can verify (or rather,
fail to not verify, if we want to get technical) the existance of a primary effect and rule out placebo
effect. A matched-subjects design allows you to enjoy some of the benefits of a repeated measures
study without concern for sequential effects.
I have yet to read the paper [...] I do not agree that Vitamin D deficiency
can be responsible for about 60% cancers.
None of us care if Billy G sells a crippled, OLPC-specific version of XP
dirt-cheap, in a desperate bid to promote Windows adoption in the 3rd world.
Exposing people to "Starter Edition" would most likely do more to promote
Linux use than compete with it.
Given the price and specs change, and Microsoft's announcement of "embracing"
the OLPC, some of us can't help but but 2 and 2 together and get 4. A decent
Linux system doesn't need 256MB, while XP can barely run its own Explorer
interface, much less any additional programs (and I wouldn't even want to try
any of the Office apps such as Word) on anything less.
As the biggest issue here, you need to look at this from two perspectives - Ours, as
(most likely) middle-class geeks posting from a Western nation viewing this as a really
cool (and still exceedingly cheap) compromise between a palmheld and a laptop and cheap
enough to consider nearly disposeable; And a third-world school looking at a total budget
of $150 per year, trying to decide if they should buy an OLPC or rebuild the school that
washed away in the annual spring mudslide.
Cheap toys vs still-expensive tools.
And lest you take that as baseless speculation, "However, Negroponte disclosed that
XO's developers have been working with Microsoft Corp. so a version of Windows can
run on the machines as well". No, not a "side effect". Boost the specs and boost
the price just so Microsoft can play along.
I wonder how much Nick Negroponte's soul cost Mr. Gates...
Although I'm lazy so I'm like to do # ln -s -f/dev/null/var/log/messages
But then you can't check the logs yourself if something goes wrong.
Personally, although I don't run an ISP, I have/var/log pointing to/tmp/log, with/tmp
mounted as a tmpfs partition; The logs rotate daily and get deleted after one rotation
(Thus giving me basically two days to notice if something goes wrong - More than enough).
And as a nice bonus, as the first thing the police/FBI do in a raid nowadays, they unplug
your computers. Oops. No more logs, no more temporary files, and since I don't use swap,
not even a saved memory state to look through.
Of course, they could probably find more than enough on the "real" FS to send me off to
Gitmo (such as my collection of banned media and utilities (no, no kiddie porn, ya sick
bastards!) forever, without needing to see my most recent logs.;-)
the RIAA can go in with the order, the ISP says, "I don't
think so; we're challenging this"
Or, more likely, the ISP responds "Okay, you won this round.
Along with the requested information, we've enclosed a copy of
our new 24-hour-max log retention policy, effective immediately.
We look forward to your next ex parte order".
The goal, he said, was "to make things simpler for the consumer,"
Gee, thanks for the thought, Dan, but thanks to the DMCA your
organization pushed through, we can't rip DVDs without breaking
the law (not because of copyright, but because of the need to circumvent
CSS).
Clearly, therefore, this reprehensible action you describe, "ripping
DVDs", simply must not occur. And we don't want it to occur, of course,
because it would cut into your profits.
So, as much as we appreciate the thought, please take your visions
of ubiquitous DRM and shove them straight up to your appendix.
By burning it onto CD and distributing it, it becomes almost the same as any other encyclopedia available
minus the cost and the fact that it doesn't carry the same reputation.
Minus the cost - You toss that out like a non-issue?
Point me to the "free" downloadable Brittanica CD, and I'll concede the point... Granted, it only
costs $30, but still, $30 > $0. Also, don't overlook the fact that some people consider $30
a significant chunk of change - A day's wages at minimum wage even in the US, and in some countries
you could eat for a year on that. I doubt Wiki intended this primarily as a replacement for the
likes of Brittanica for the typical Slashdotter (ie, middle-class American, Australian, or Western
European).
Now, I will agree that if Wiki really wanted to make a point, they would have picked only articles
that largely don't overlap the content of traditional encyclopedias (which I see as the real
strength of Wiki). But in general, I can only applaud them for making this available.
Slashdot Mirror
These tracks (such as the recent EMI deal) would also have better sound quality & cost about 30 cents more.
At $1/track, you could fairly argue that a typical 13-track CD (the average in my own decently large collection, and that includes CD5s/SPs/singles) comes in a bit cheaper than a full price new release CD at a major retailer, $13.00 vs $15.99. And that already ignores that Amazon sells the vast majority of top-100 music at $9.99.
At $1.30, however, that comes out to $16.90 for 13 tracks, MORE than the cost of just buying a full price new release!
Now, in fairness, iTunes has all but single-handedly destroyed the concept of an "album", turning most music into nothing more than a collection of singles. But still... Comparing the prices, it starts to look worse and worse to buy individual tracks.
Not to make this entirely critical, I do offer Kudos to Jobs for finally "getting" that we don't want any DRM. But somewhere in the equasions, the RIAA needs to realize that over the past 50 years they've gone to progressively cheaper physical formats, without even pretending to pass the savings along to their customers.
Go ahead and use the term lava lamp (note the absence of capitals). I think it is on the way to commiting genericide anyway.
;-)
On its way?
Considering that, until I read the GP's post, I always considered "lava lamp" a descriptive rather than a brand name, I'd say it passes the key test for having gone generic. I've passed three decades of life without recognizing that term as a trademarked name. C'mon, Mr. Genie, get back in that bottle...
Then again, I use GIMP for all my photoshopping needs, and enjoy Vermont cheddar cheese, so what do I know?
on a scale of one to ten, are you more a) pissed; b) surprised; c) depressed
Not to ignore the obvious joke there, but you could answer that question... You just need to break it out into subquestions to a main question, as such:
On a scale of one to ten, are you more:
a) pissed
b) surprised
c) depressed
Thus, a "correct" answer would take the form "3, 9, 4", or something like that.
Most surveys take a form very similar to that.
The government has proposed giving retroactive immunity to telephone companies for giving personal data to the government
Complete and utter BS, but not necessarily relevant - You can't measure the "damages" of phone companies "sharing" info in simple dollars. So, I have a question for the idiots supporting this: Can the government retroactively take away all the bad PR for the companies that sold us out?
Simple example, I will not ever use Verizon again. Not for phone, not for DSL, not for (the much bigger reason they should care) the T1 at my place of employment. And, as a fairly respected geek among my family and peers, I strongly encourage those who ask my advice to do the same (to date, Verizon has lost at least eight (A)DSL customers, two T1s, and two SDSL loops for which I can personally take credit). Do I seriously think that hurt them enough to make a difference? Certainly not just my recommendations, but given enough people like me - Well, I note with some glee that Verizon has strangely decided to divest themselves of the Northeast...
So, unless the government can also erase our memories, "immunity" won't save those businesses who chose to betray their customers. And corporate America damned well better start hearing that message if they want to stay in business.
If this is an industrial application, you really don't want to homebrew it.
Depends on why he wants to monitor this machine.
Working in a similar environment myself, I've found that "management wants to know how often we go out-of-spec" means a whole world of difference from "one mistake will halt production ".
"Real" hardware to do these tasks, if even available, costs a bundle. The homebrew solution, if just a matter of someone having accidentally uttered a meaningful phrase at a meeting, usually comes in thousands or tens of thousands cheaper.
Not to mention, things often start as "a critical measurement" that a year and a half after successfully implementing a homebrew counter, not a single person has ever even looked at the counts (Hmm, does that sound too much like a real example?).
Seriously, if you want to extend life, ban fructose as a sweetener. Unlike regular sugar, fructose blocks the hormones that make you "feel full"
So people still fall for this one, eh?
Newsflash - Plain ol' table sugar (aka "sucrose") contains nearly the same amount of fructose as that big-bad-boogeyman, High Fructose Corn syrup!
Sucrose has a 50/50 mix of fructose and dextrose, while HFC contains from 43 to 55% fructose.
But by all means, keep blaming American's fat asses on HFC rather than admitting that we simply eat way too much and exercise way too little...
So if someone noticed activity from one of your domains that would indicate a compromised machine, you wouldn't want to know about it?
First of all, the only people likely to notice such activity, the host, would have my contact info (they like getting paid, dontcha know). That falls a whole world of difference from having my info visible to every spammer, stalker, and general jackoff who wants to annoy me.
Second, if I actually have a compromised machine, the only people who can help me will already have a task force on the problem, and you can read the CERT advisory in the morning right along with me. Not to say it couldn't happen, but if it does, no fix yet exists.
Get the fuck off my internet.
The internet lacks warmth and fuzzies. If you don't know how to play, get off the field.
There is no legitimate reason why anyone would want to contact the domain owner about some issue with the site or its content.
Biiiiiiiig difference between people wanting to contact me and me wanting them to contact me.
And anyone that would need to use registration info to find me - I don't want to hear from, period.
You pay, they host, right?
Sounds like you get it so far (sarcasm ignored)...
If you want to post software, movies, music and child porn that should be nobody's business but yours and the rest of the world can just get stuffed.
The police and FBI have other tools at their disposal to track me down. So beyond the absurdities you give of actually breaking the law, yeah, "the rest of the world can just get stuffed". Bingo.
Unfortunately, that seems to be the prevailing attitude and current practice.
Really? Please point me to such a host! All the ones I've dealt with will drop you at even the hint of a copyright violation, nevermind committing a real crime.
...but then who do I pay to tell me what to like?
I know you meant that as a joke, but the GP has an unintended point - Yes, we can find 100x as much music out there, free even, as RIAA offers. But the vast majority of it quite simply sucks.
I've personally found a few dozen artists I enjoy via the web (more than half from mp3.com, back when it still existed). But for each gem, I've listened to hundreds of steaming piles of crap I wouldn't inflict on Gitmo detainees.
Personally I find local college radio a good compromise, as they play a broad spectrum of genres, from both RIAA and non-RIAA sources, and usually have already filtered out the worst of the crap. They also usually still have some shred of integrity left, too, so don't just play what the highest bidder requests.
But music downloaders are not going to switch to using a service that costs the same as using BitTorrent or Limewire, but comes with abominable disclaimers or advertisements.
I don't know about the FP author, but I consider "legal" a pretty big point to factor into "cost"!
And I say that as someone who loathes ads.
So just to let you know.. I apologize.. if you happen to read this. Thanks.
Accepted, with admiration for your humility.
That's actually a lie. It means I have to suffer with shitty showerheads and low-flow toilets that use MORE water because you don't turn them off and you have to flush twice or three times.
I meant that to refer to "people in general", not you in particular. Of course some people already "get it". And others will rip out the low-flow version of things and replace them with (increasingly hard to find) regular ones. But most people, the target of these measures, will just quietly suffer and wish they didn't need to care about the environment.
Now to get the 5 grand set aside to replace all my windows with double-pane argon for more savings.
Save your money on the Argon, it leaks out within a year or two. But definitely get the best low-E glass you can for your climate, well worth the money.
BTW, the ISP DOES take spam reports very seriously, as long as the sender isn't abusive in the reporting.
Why should any editorializing in the spam report matter, as long as you have the info you need?
Like it or not, most of the sheep view spam as the fault of their ISP, not some open Israeli relay (once upon a time I would have said "Russian" or "Taiwanese", but the bulk of what I get nowadays has a ".il" (intermediate) source)
Let 'em vent. We all know your staff doesn't "deserve" it, but people really don't like feeling powerless, as occurs with the plague of Spam.
What an ignorant post.
What a humorless shill.
And FYI, the FP says "GovernmentS", not "The US Government". Why don't you familiarize yourself which which "N" NIST stands for.
How Will Governments Keep Up With Technology?
...Right up until they figure out how to exploit it to either spy
on us or extract tax dollars from us, at which point it becomes
compulsory.
The same way they always have - They'll ban it.
What a silly question!
Once again we see that every environmental action involves a trade-off of some kind.
Ummm, you do realize the linked FP article counts as more of a joke (if an expensive one) than a serious observation about relative costs, right?
The guy did exactly the wrong thing at every step of the process (starting by breaking the bulb, but okay, that happens). As soon as you involve large bureaucracies and/or companies that make a living by overhyping niche problems, you've headed down a VERY expensive road (sometimes unavoidably, when said bureaucracies refuse to let the matter drop).
If mercury actually counted as even one percent as toxic as all the fearmongers claim, I'd have died decades ago - I used to have a collection from broken thermometers, back when they still used it. And that time my highschool chem teacher passed around a small breaker of it, which we all poked and prodded and generally had a good time playing with. Goodness, must've had 10ml of the stuff right there, compared with the 5mg present in most CFLs (10ml, for reference, weighs 135g - 27,000 times more than a CFL).
Now, that doesn't mean we should ignore it and load the landfills with CFLS. But we also don't need to freak every time someone breaks a lightbulb or even an antique thermometer.
But there is ALWAYS a trade-off.
Yes and no.
"Different" does not always mean "worse". I agree with you that we cannot carry on doing exactly the same things while somehow magically minimizing our environmental impact. But we can have the same quality of life with minor changes to what we do and use.
Low-flow showers suck, no argument there. But we only have them because people won't take the trivial step of turning the water off while soaping/shampooing, giving the same benefit over the course of the shower. Low flow toilets take two flushes. And at 1/6th the water per flush, that gives a net savings of 2/3rds the water of a normal toilet.
What we have, then, amounts to a legislated loss of quality of life because we won't take the easy steps. This hasn't come as a surprise - The granola crowd have pointed out the damage we do for decades if not centuries. Only now, and only by threat of legal force, have we started to change our behavior.
I hate the fact the bulbs have a 'warm up' period, and whatever 'colour' bulb I get, it still throws a nasty fluro hue.
You can get "warm" CFLs now, which really do have a warm spectrum. They still don't really look much like sunlight, but I've never found an incandescent that does, either.
They don't flicker anymore. Period. Haven't for years.
They may or may not cast light matching their incandescent-comparison-rated wattage; and you car may or may not really get 32MPG depending on driving style and conditions. So buy one twice the rating you replace and you'll still halve the electricity use (too bad that doesn't apply to cars, as well).
The "warm-up period" on modern CFLs, while I can't claim instant-on, amounts to a matter of 50-100ms. That brain surgery you need to jump into instantly upon entering a dark room can wait that long, Doctor.
Now, if you want to keep using incandescents, hey, fine by me - But you pay for it.
wouldn't that take away some of the mystery behind humans.
You enjoy the mystery. I'd rather know exactly how far I can push my own wetware, and if possible, upload my consciousness sometime before this body eventually wears out.
Afterall if we can figure ourselves out then doesn't that mean that we aren't really all that complex?
I fail to see the problem... Does it make you any less "you" to know that you exist as nothing more than the interaction of a few billion dynamically-reconfigurable NAND gates?
wouldn't that also give us perfect explanations of people's actions making situations predictable violating free will?
The ability to describe and even emulate a system doesn't make it any more predictable. Chaos theory, entirely outside the spooky quantum mojo the flakes keep bringing to this conversation, has shown that even very simple purely deterministic systems can produce wildly unpredictable (over time) results.
Unless such a simulation can include even such factors as how salty Subway makes my lunch today, and exactly which raindrops hit me where and at what temperaturere as I walk from my car to my front door tonight, we have no need to worry that someone could run a copy of us in fast-forward and predict our future decisions.
afterall if society is ultimately chaotic in terms of our understanding, then wouldn't this be the ultimate control?
I use "chaos" in the mathematical sense - Sensitive dependance on initial (and ongoing external) conditions, with exponential divergence between two similar trajectories (closely related concepts, but IMO each bears stating on its own for clarity).
it is necessary to know whether this trial was truly randomized meaning that the those who got the Vitamin D pill and those who got the placebo were similar to each other in all other ways.
A "Truly" randomized double-blind study and a matched-subjects design fall basically at right angles to one another in terms of what they can tell you. A randomized double-blind study can verify (or rather, fail to not verify, if we want to get technical) the existance of a primary effect and rule out placebo effect. A matched-subjects design allows you to enjoy some of the benefits of a repeated measures study without concern for sequential effects.
I have yet to read the paper
[...]
I do not agree that Vitamin D deficiency can be responsible for about 60% cancers.
Wow. that takes balls to say. Kudos.
The death of Linux on OLPC is greatly exaggerated
I think you missed the bigger implication here...
None of us care if Billy G sells a crippled, OLPC-specific version of XP dirt-cheap, in a desperate bid to promote Windows adoption in the 3rd world. Exposing people to "Starter Edition" would most likely do more to promote Linux use than compete with it.
Given the price and specs change, and Microsoft's announcement of "embracing" the OLPC, some of us can't help but but 2 and 2 together and get 4. A decent Linux system doesn't need 256MB, while XP can barely run its own Explorer interface, much less any additional programs (and I wouldn't even want to try any of the Office apps such as Word) on anything less.
As the biggest issue here, you need to look at this from two perspectives - Ours, as (most likely) middle-class geeks posting from a Western nation viewing this as a really cool (and still exceedingly cheap) compromise between a palmheld and a laptop and cheap enough to consider nearly disposeable; And a third-world school looking at a total budget of $150 per year, trying to decide if they should buy an OLPC or rebuild the school that washed away in the annual spring mudslide.
Cheap toys vs still-expensive tools.
And lest you take that as baseless speculation, "However, Negroponte disclosed that XO's developers have been working with Microsoft Corp. so a version of Windows can run on the machines as well". No, not a "side effect". Boost the specs and boost the price just so Microsoft can play along.
I wonder how much Nick Negroponte's soul cost Mr. Gates...
Although I'm lazy so I'm like to do # ln -s -f /dev/null /var/log/messages
/var/log pointing to /tmp/log, with /tmp
mounted as a tmpfs partition; The logs rotate daily and get deleted after one rotation
(Thus giving me basically two days to notice if something goes wrong - More than enough).
;-)
But then you can't check the logs yourself if something goes wrong.
Personally, although I don't run an ISP, I have
And as a nice bonus, as the first thing the police/FBI do in a raid nowadays, they unplug your computers. Oops. No more logs, no more temporary files, and since I don't use swap, not even a saved memory state to look through.
Of course, they could probably find more than enough on the "real" FS to send me off to Gitmo (such as my collection of banned media and utilities (no, no kiddie porn, ya sick bastards!) forever, without needing to see my most recent logs.
the RIAA can go in with the order, the ISP says, "I don't think so; we're challenging this"
Or, more likely, the ISP responds "Okay, you won this round. Along with the requested information, we've enclosed a copy of our new 24-hour-max log retention policy, effective immediately. We look forward to your next ex parte order".
The goal, he said, was "to make things simpler for the consumer,"
Gee, thanks for the thought, Dan, but thanks to the DMCA your organization pushed through, we can't rip DVDs without breaking the law (not because of copyright, but because of the need to circumvent CSS).
Clearly, therefore, this reprehensible action you describe, "ripping DVDs", simply must not occur. And we don't want it to occur, of course, because it would cut into your profits.
So, as much as we appreciate the thought, please take your visions of ubiquitous DRM and shove them straight up to your appendix.
Several members of the EU Parliament are moving to ban online hate speech.
Well, I hate the EU. Suck it, US-extraditionless cheese-eating surrender monkeys!
Seriously. Banning a form of speech (or writing, in this case)? Grow up, boys - "Sticks and stones" and all that...
By burning it onto CD and distributing it, it becomes almost the same as any other encyclopedia available minus the cost and the fact that it doesn't carry the same reputation.
Minus the cost - You toss that out like a non-issue?
Point me to the "free" downloadable Brittanica CD, and I'll concede the point... Granted, it only costs $30, but still, $30 > $0. Also, don't overlook the fact that some people consider $30 a significant chunk of change - A day's wages at minimum wage even in the US, and in some countries you could eat for a year on that. I doubt Wiki intended this primarily as a replacement for the likes of Brittanica for the typical Slashdotter (ie, middle-class American, Australian, or Western European).
Now, I will agree that if Wiki really wanted to make a point, they would have picked only articles that largely don't overlap the content of traditional encyclopedias (which I see as the real strength of Wiki). But in general, I can only applaud them for making this available.