Considering all the fracking going on there have to be massive amounts being released into the atmosphere without any attempt being made to extract it. Even if only a few percent of the wells had viable amounts of helium there are still massive reserves. Like with most things it's the political will that is needed to build extraction plants. Here's a thought, oil and gas companies want the wells? Any well with a certain percentage of Hellium make it a condition of drilling that they extract the Helium. The gas companies will throw a fit because it cuts into profits but the Helium is a resource they are wasting. Odds are they'd make a profit on the arrangement just not as much as the gas.
Nature seeks an equilibrium, we're the ones that insist on spreading like viruses. The point is there are factors that when we plant more crops it tends to remove the resources needed for native plants. Look up Global Dimming and you'll find nature is also compensating for increased CO2 with more cloud cover moderating the amount of light reaching the Earth limiting the warming. Unfortunately it also reduces the light plants have available reducing the overall amount of green plants. This trend has been recorded since the early 60s so any satellite data would be after the dimming began. It's a combination of jet contrails, particles from industrial pollution and water vapor from warming oceans. Nature is really good at compensating for errors but reducing plant life is one of the variables which would help limit the most damaging factor, the number of humans alive today. If we continue on as we are now part of the balancing act will be droughts and flooding to wipe out the excess homo sapiens screwing up the environment. Yes people in the first world will ride it out but in the third world they may die in the billions due to what we do in the first world.
I hate doing updates for my iOS devices. Every time I've ever done it it kills the device and I wind up wiping it and doing a reinstall. It has always worked so far but why does an update brick the device every time? It's happened with every touch I've ever owned and the tradition is alive and well with my "New" iPad/iPad 3. You'd think Apple who normally has a reputation for seamless upgrades would be better than this?
I've been a fan of Unity for a lot of years. The easy to use interface and browser player were early favorites for me. I remember doing a large island you could explore in a week's worth of evenings five years ago. That was trees and plants with custom textures and some structure models. I had a version of skull mountain including a cave in the mouth and a log bridge you had to cross. In that first week I had a huge canyon through the middle and several bays. I also had a Stonehenge and lava field with smoke and a volcano. You could hear lava bubble as you crossed the field and there was even a great wall and functional gate. All in the space of one working day. The speed you could work was amazing. I loved the texture system because you could layer so I would stack textures at two different scales so I could fade between them to kill that cloth pattern look you normally get with landscapes. I could bring in content and textures and set basics like gravity without a line of code. It's gotten much friendlier but even back 5 years ago it was amazing. The rendering looked better in Torque but it was a headache. I also like the particle system better in Torque but it's a real hassle and less stable than Unity.
Nine out of ten posts will always fall into a couple of categories from it's no big deal or it's a natural cycle. The change is so small it'll have little affect or who cares because any change is hundreds of years off. What people need to look hard at is the last 12 years of stories and the progression. 12 years ago the general belief was if the ice cap is melting we might see no ice cap in summer by 2100. Most thought we'd see a stable summer northwest passage by then maybe as soon as 2050. We already have that and now some are saying the ice cap may collapse as soon as 2015 to 2017. That means no year round ice cap just floating bergs in the summer and those growing gradually smaller. We weren't supposed to see a major impact on climate yet but we are seeing severe droughts and bad weather like tornadoes. We've got hotter summers and worse snow in winters. Most say it's a trend that will soon reverse but the trend started in the early 80s and is accelerating and showing no sign of reversing. People argue about sea level rise but some islands in the Pacific are already under threat. They are seeing the island's water supply poisoned with seawater and waters flooding areas it hadn't historically before. No one on small Pacific Islands are debating global warming they are preparing to eventually abandon their countries. We're facing the classic frog in a pan of hot water scenario. If they saw ice melt and weather like we see now suddenly in 2001 there would have been panic. Stretch it over 12 years and the changes are less noticeable. Just imagine in 12 more years the potential changes? Already if we see another drought next year there will be severe corn shortages. In the past we had a year's worth in storage. Now it's down to a few months. Just look at this one thing, remember history class. Remember all the talk of finding a northwest passage? When they were originally looking some years one would briefly open in the summer. Most years there was no passage. The passage only opened within the last ten years and already we may be a few years away from no summer ice pack. In geologic time that's overnight. They are planning to drill for oil at the north pole! Forget the arctic because no one seems to care about sea ice. Forget sea level rise because until it starts flooding New York no one cares. How's this for hitting home, food prices are likely to double or triple over just the next five to ten years and that may be the conservative estimate. Alarmist? Far from. The aquafers are already badly depleted and we could easily be facing a ten year or more drought. They happen even without global warming. What if the corn crop gets cut in half. That could easily happen. Cattle, Chickens and pigs are all fed corn. Even many fish like catfish are fed mainly corn. Most of your processed food is corn based. Check the labels and you'd be shocked. Almost everything has some corn in it whether from corn syrup or oil or the starch. Corn is now better than $8 a bushel. What happens when it hits $25? There's no substitute. Corporate America has made sure of that. It would take years if not decades to switch over to other sources. Just import what we need? Well that means some one else goes hungry and in order to make sure we get our corn that's where $15 to $25 a bushel comes from. Most won't starve in this country because we'll stop buying toys to buy food but your lifestyle will change dramatically and the third world will start starving in the tens of millions to keep us stocked with what we need because we'll pay anything for it.
Anyone here teaching a course might be interested in the comprehensive new textbook I'm writing. It has an attractive hard cover, a quality binding, and a single page inside which lists the URLs for Google and Wikipedia. My planned retail price is $499, but I'm willing to offer a volume discount.
To hell with that my book "Local Library" sells for $0.99 on iTunes!
Actually most museums will let you take photos, but you can't use a flash or tripod.
Depends the museum. I remember when I was in France the Museum of Comparative Anatomy forced me to check in my camera. They sold stills but not of what I wanted. With some images are considered a revenue source. I'd have been happier if they charged me an extra $10US and just didn't allow publication rights. Some museums are very touchy about photos.
That line gave me pause. To make it it practical it would have to operate for at least 6 to 12 months before the lining was changed since you'd have to go into cold shutdown and be off line for weeks. It doesn't sound like they are even close to that kind of durability. This type of issue is what has kept fusion in the lab. They passed break even a long time ago but they only got slightly more power than it took to sustain the reaction so it'd be like building a nuclear plant to power a house. They've really got to get the durability of the liners to exceed 12 months and the lasers to last even longer or the amount of energy you get out won't justify the expense. I'm a big fan of fusion I'm just also a skeptic, I've been following since the 70s. One added benefit of fusion would be an attractive waste bi-product, Helium.
Now there is a prediction never made on Slashdot before. Why don't you go all the way out on the limb and declare next year to be "The Year Of Linux on Desktops"?
I wouldn't laugh too loud. In the last 12 years Microsoft's stock has fallen off a cliff and has been left in the dust by Apple. I'm not making a point about Apple I'm saying Microsoft is looking vulnerable. They suck at hardware rollouts and still largely cling to Office and the Windows OS as their cash cows. Economically they'd probably be better off to halt development to save money and cut their losses. The problem is they are really exposed with only two real cash cows to their name. There are more and more options to Office so it's more the fact it's too expensive for most to switch than love of product keeping Office alive and now that Linux is no longer looking like a threat to Windows. Apple is their main competition but Apple won't bottom feed so cheap computers are almost exclusively Windows. They have a nitche but it's under threat again. The death of desktops is greatly exaggerated but everyone in the family needing their own desktop is no longer the case. Most teens web surf and play media on their computers which tablets are perfectly suited for. Microsoft could see sales drop by 75% for Windows and new businesses would be a fool to not to consider options other than Office so it may fall into a "your parents application" territory. I'd say Microsoft's prospects are bleak at best. Android has already filled the market place that a portable windows OS would have and like I said Microsoft has a miserable hardware track record. Rolling out a tablet that is more expensive than a cheap laptop is a dangerous move. To use most windows applications productively you need a keyboard. Well then why am I paying a $100 more than a cheap laptop and I don't get a keyboard? Data entry sucks on a tablet as does typing. If you want a media player there's superior tablets for less money and do a fine job for web surfing. They would need to do a daring move to make it viable like bundling it with a portable version of Office so every tablet comes with Office preinstalled with free upgrades. Unfortunately that would be shooting themselves in the foot since they have no other revenue streams than the tablet itself and a handful of applications. Apple could sell iPads at cost and clean up through the content they sell. Microsoft can't do that so they are severely limited with the profits on a tablet. The math doesn't work and as I said Microsoft's future looks bleak. The sad joke is if it wasn't for the antitrust laws Apple could buy Microsoft. They nearly have enough cash in their loose change drawer and any bank on the planet would finance the buy. Now that's a dramatic reversal of fortune.
Ultimately it may require making custom atoms to do specific tasks and possibly have very unusual configurations of subatomic particle. Just look at how different nano particles react compared to natural forms of the same elements. It may mean building atoms with opposite spins of particles or configurations of quantum particles that don't occur in nature. They've managed to build atom by atom but this would be orders of magnitude more difficult. We don't even have a science for affecting quantum particles let alone building them like tinker toys. It's a little like building a gravity drive that doesn't require mass. With current science it's impossible but when you start hand fabricating sub atomic particles all bets are off.
this new airframe will fulfill the same role as the F-22.
Waste money and asphyxiate pilots?
I say we bomb China with Lockheed Martin and Haliburton executives. It's a win/win since we get get rid of some dead weight and potentially balance a budget for once while collapsing the Chinese economy. I hear corporate executives breed like rabbits so they'll be over run in no time.
Some smart weapon systems have the same limitations when it comes to rain or cloud cover. Also they tend to use water cannons for crowd control which would act as a defensive system for the crowds. Microwave weapons are expensive, have limited range and focus and it's difficult to avoid injuries and death while maintaining effectiveness. I'd think audio weapons would be just as effective without the limitations and potential for serious injuries. Yes it's easy to protect against most of them but we are talking about crowd use and not foot soldiers. For soldiers even microwave weapons can be foiled if they are non lethal. Even a small amount of metal can block them so metal fibers in uniforms and head gear would counter crowd control kinds of weapons. They are utterly useless against tanks. I know there has been a lot of reports of low frequency weapons that wouldn't be noticeable to the mob but would provide enough discomfort to break them up. High frequency weapons are obviously effective. I set off a building alarm at work because they deactivated a the keypad at one entrance without telling us. It had an audio deterrent and I guarantee you I was thrilled when I got the alarm off. Without hearing protection a crowd wouldn't be very dangerous. Hard to throw rocks with your fingers in your ears. With a weaponized system even that wouldn't stop it you'd need professional grade or better protection.
Beating an electronic device to death makes perfect sense to users of ME and Vista. This falls under a common sense patent. This must be a defensive patent before the new OS comes out given their history of every other release sucking. I'm still waiting for them to announce the "AX Back Up System". The hard drive backs up before you take an ax to it!
It's like cheap video cams brought filmmaking to the masses Google Glasses will mean anyone can act like an idiot and provide a first person view of the disaster. There's already been some intensely cool helmet cam videos but that's because it's mostly pros or semi pros using them. Like with cheap video cameras we didn't see a rash of Citizen Kanes we saw mostly films that shouldn't have been made. We're likely to see something closer to Strange Days. It'll be guys getting laid and failed attempts to jump between buildings where you'll watch the POV all the way to the ground. I'd like to think people would sick of it after the first hundred bicycle riders face planting into walls but morbid curiosity never seems to die.
Trolling is just another form of bullying. Cowards get brave when no one knows who they are. Why is trolling considered such a right on the net? We're talking a few percent that want to ruin it for the rest of us. I like having the anonymous option but it really is a few percent that abuse the priviledge. We can't let a handful of kids living in their parent's basements rule the net. FYI disagreeing with the majority isn't trolling! The word Troll gets badly abused on Slashdot. Trolls are the ones trying to get a rise out of people for the sake of causing trouble. There's a massive difference between a troll and some one that doesn't think Apple is the anti-christ.
I waited all this time to scan the comments because I figured I already knew what people would say. Virtually all the comments can be broken down into "Apple/iPhone sucks" and "Android did all this first". Reading the comments would one to assume the iPhone is a massive flop and hardly anyone owns one. The comments don't reflect the reality. The iPhone is still the most popular and it actually did a lot of what it does first. The original iPhone was a shock to the cell community and there was a mad scramble to catch up. Will the iPhone 5 flop? Of coarse not. Why would it? Overall it's still the best at what it does. I noticed a few comments sniping at the iPad as well. Here's the fundamental difference and why the iPhone and iPad won't fail, The user experience is far more pleasant. On most of the cell phones I find web surfing is just not worth it. That's why the providers were and are being crushed by iPhones, because people actually use them! I don't own an iPhone but I have a Touch and iPad, I don't actually have a cell at the moment. I use my Touch and iPad all the time to check e-mail and web surf. I keep the iPad next to my bed for late night movies, I even stream Netflix to it. Often I wake up and fire up the iPad to check for new e-mails or switch over to the web and check CNN to see if the world ended while I was asleep. All this is far quicker and easier on my iPad than my desktop. There may be a lot of venom leveled at iDevices by the geek community but it still doesn't change the fact that they are extremely useful and handy to have around. I was actually not all that impressed with the iPad at first because it looked like and is in fact an over sized Touch. After using one I have to say being so much larger makes them 10X more useful. I'd love to even see one 50% larger and I'm shocked Apple hasn't made an iTV that is a massive Touch device. It doesn't need a touch screen or batteries just a TV sized computer with a faster processor and all the features of a Touch. Just control it from a Touch. It seems obvious and if they released a 43" one for $1,200 I think they'd be a massive hit especially if they added a built in DVR function. Sour grapes aside the iPhone and iPad do what they do extremely well. They are a success for a reason and if Android devices truly had a better user experience I can't believe people wouldn't switch.
20 years ago there was a lot of talk about EM radiation and health effects. There's no myth about health effects it's just safe limits for exposure haven't been established. Yes it's easy to tell when upper limits cause damage but the constant exposure we already get does have some risk. The problem is these types of charging systems increase the exposure many times over current levels. I was concerned with proposals for embedded road chargers. Ironically magnalevel trains don't have this issue because they use a magnetic field to protect passengers but your average car or house has no such system. Prototype high power cell phones have been found to cause brain tumors much as radar guns used by law enforcement causes cancer with prolonged CU exposure. I'd feel better if some one stuck a rat cage on one to see if the rats died of old age or developed tumors over time. It's not being paranoid I'd just like to actually know for sure rather than hope for the best.
Slashdot Mirror
Considering all the fracking going on there have to be massive amounts being released into the atmosphere without any attempt being made to extract it. Even if only a few percent of the wells had viable amounts of helium there are still massive reserves. Like with most things it's the political will that is needed to build extraction plants. Here's a thought, oil and gas companies want the wells? Any well with a certain percentage of Hellium make it a condition of drilling that they extract the Helium. The gas companies will throw a fit because it cuts into profits but the Helium is a resource they are wasting. Odds are they'd make a profit on the arrangement just not as much as the gas.
Nature seeks an equilibrium, we're the ones that insist on spreading like viruses. The point is there are factors that when we plant more crops it tends to remove the resources needed for native plants. Look up Global Dimming and you'll find nature is also compensating for increased CO2 with more cloud cover moderating the amount of light reaching the Earth limiting the warming. Unfortunately it also reduces the light plants have available reducing the overall amount of green plants. This trend has been recorded since the early 60s so any satellite data would be after the dimming began. It's a combination of jet contrails, particles from industrial pollution and water vapor from warming oceans. Nature is really good at compensating for errors but reducing plant life is one of the variables which would help limit the most damaging factor, the number of humans alive today. If we continue on as we are now part of the balancing act will be droughts and flooding to wipe out the excess homo sapiens screwing up the environment. Yes people in the first world will ride it out but in the third world they may die in the billions due to what we do in the first world.
I hate doing updates for my iOS devices. Every time I've ever done it it kills the device and I wind up wiping it and doing a reinstall. It has always worked so far but why does an update brick the device every time? It's happened with every touch I've ever owned and the tradition is alive and well with my "New" iPad/iPad 3. You'd think Apple who normally has a reputation for seamless upgrades would be better than this?
I've been a fan of Unity for a lot of years. The easy to use interface and browser player were early favorites for me. I remember doing a large island you could explore in a week's worth of evenings five years ago. That was trees and plants with custom textures and some structure models. I had a version of skull mountain including a cave in the mouth and a log bridge you had to cross. In that first week I had a huge canyon through the middle and several bays. I also had a Stonehenge and lava field with smoke and a volcano. You could hear lava bubble as you crossed the field and there was even a great wall and functional gate. All in the space of one working day. The speed you could work was amazing. I loved the texture system because you could layer so I would stack textures at two different scales so I could fade between them to kill that cloth pattern look you normally get with landscapes. I could bring in content and textures and set basics like gravity without a line of code. It's gotten much friendlier but even back 5 years ago it was amazing. The rendering looked better in Torque but it was a headache. I also like the particle system better in Torque but it's a real hassle and less stable than Unity.
Nine out of ten posts will always fall into a couple of categories from it's no big deal or it's a natural cycle. The change is so small it'll have little affect or who cares because any change is hundreds of years off. What people need to look hard at is the last 12 years of stories and the progression. 12 years ago the general belief was if the ice cap is melting we might see no ice cap in summer by 2100. Most thought we'd see a stable summer northwest passage by then maybe as soon as 2050. We already have that and now some are saying the ice cap may collapse as soon as 2015 to 2017. That means no year round ice cap just floating bergs in the summer and those growing gradually smaller. We weren't supposed to see a major impact on climate yet but we are seeing severe droughts and bad weather like tornadoes. We've got hotter summers and worse snow in winters. Most say it's a trend that will soon reverse but the trend started in the early 80s and is accelerating and showing no sign of reversing. People argue about sea level rise but some islands in the Pacific are already under threat. They are seeing the island's water supply poisoned with seawater and waters flooding areas it hadn't historically before. No one on small Pacific Islands are debating global warming they are preparing to eventually abandon their countries. We're facing the classic frog in a pan of hot water scenario. If they saw ice melt and weather like we see now suddenly in 2001 there would have been panic. Stretch it over 12 years and the changes are less noticeable. Just imagine in 12 more years the potential changes? Already if we see another drought next year there will be severe corn shortages. In the past we had a year's worth in storage. Now it's down to a few months. Just look at this one thing, remember history class. Remember all the talk of finding a northwest passage? When they were originally looking some years one would briefly open in the summer. Most years there was no passage. The passage only opened within the last ten years and already we may be a few years away from no summer ice pack. In geologic time that's overnight. They are planning to drill for oil at the north pole! Forget the arctic because no one seems to care about sea ice. Forget sea level rise because until it starts flooding New York no one cares. How's this for hitting home, food prices are likely to double or triple over just the next five to ten years and that may be the conservative estimate. Alarmist? Far from. The aquafers are already badly depleted and we could easily be facing a ten year or more drought. They happen even without global warming. What if the corn crop gets cut in half. That could easily happen. Cattle, Chickens and pigs are all fed corn. Even many fish like catfish are fed mainly corn. Most of your processed food is corn based. Check the labels and you'd be shocked. Almost everything has some corn in it whether from corn syrup or oil or the starch. Corn is now better than $8 a bushel. What happens when it hits $25? There's no substitute. Corporate America has made sure of that. It would take years if not decades to switch over to other sources. Just import what we need? Well that means some one else goes hungry and in order to make sure we get our corn that's where $15 to $25 a bushel comes from. Most won't starve in this country because we'll stop buying toys to buy food but your lifestyle will change dramatically and the third world will start starving in the tens of millions to keep us stocked with what we need because we'll pay anything for it.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_drqO7qJ_y4o/SrW1QkqR9wI/AAAAAAAAET4/4uV5HzzK9Ko/s1600-h/3mileisland.jpg
in the refrigerator. Searching for beer!
After reading the script I would have been searching for a beer too.
At least we know now the Irish can survive a nuclear attack
Anyone here teaching a course might be interested in the comprehensive new textbook I'm writing. It has an attractive hard cover, a quality binding, and a single page inside which lists the URLs for Google and Wikipedia. My planned retail price is $499, but I'm willing to offer a volume discount.
To hell with that my book "Local Library" sells for $0.99 on iTunes!
Maybe they are teaching the Art History majors their most important lesson "You have wasted your money."
Normally it takes them 4 years of college and then a year or more working at Starbucks to learn that.
At least the Art History books have text related to art. The Liberal Arts one just has "SUCKERS" printed in big letters on the Index page.
Because so many artists are know by only one name. Madonna, Rianna, Michaelangelo...
Gallagher
Actually most museums will let you take photos, but you can't use a flash or tripod.
Depends the museum. I remember when I was in France the Museum of Comparative Anatomy forced me to check in my camera. They sold stills but not of what I wanted. With some images are considered a revenue source. I'd have been happier if they charged me an extra $10US and just didn't allow publication rights. Some museums are very touchy about photos.
That line gave me pause. To make it it practical it would have to operate for at least 6 to 12 months before the lining was changed since you'd have to go into cold shutdown and be off line for weeks. It doesn't sound like they are even close to that kind of durability. This type of issue is what has kept fusion in the lab. They passed break even a long time ago but they only got slightly more power than it took to sustain the reaction so it'd be like building a nuclear plant to power a house. They've really got to get the durability of the liners to exceed 12 months and the lasers to last even longer or the amount of energy you get out won't justify the expense. I'm a big fan of fusion I'm just also a skeptic, I've been following since the 70s. One added benefit of fusion would be an attractive waste bi-product, Helium.
Bye Bye, Microsoft.
Now there is a prediction never made on Slashdot before. Why don't you go all the way out on the limb and declare next year to be "The Year Of Linux on Desktops"?
I wouldn't laugh too loud. In the last 12 years Microsoft's stock has fallen off a cliff and has been left in the dust by Apple. I'm not making a point about Apple I'm saying Microsoft is looking vulnerable. They suck at hardware rollouts and still largely cling to Office and the Windows OS as their cash cows. Economically they'd probably be better off to halt development to save money and cut their losses. The problem is they are really exposed with only two real cash cows to their name. There are more and more options to Office so it's more the fact it's too expensive for most to switch than love of product keeping Office alive and now that Linux is no longer looking like a threat to Windows. Apple is their main competition but Apple won't bottom feed so cheap computers are almost exclusively Windows. They have a nitche but it's under threat again. The death of desktops is greatly exaggerated but everyone in the family needing their own desktop is no longer the case. Most teens web surf and play media on their computers which tablets are perfectly suited for. Microsoft could see sales drop by 75% for Windows and new businesses would be a fool to not to consider options other than Office so it may fall into a "your parents application" territory. I'd say Microsoft's prospects are bleak at best. Android has already filled the market place that a portable windows OS would have and like I said Microsoft has a miserable hardware track record. Rolling out a tablet that is more expensive than a cheap laptop is a dangerous move. To use most windows applications productively you need a keyboard. Well then why am I paying a $100 more than a cheap laptop and I don't get a keyboard? Data entry sucks on a tablet as does typing. If you want a media player there's superior tablets for less money and do a fine job for web surfing. They would need to do a daring move to make it viable like bundling it with a portable version of Office so every tablet comes with Office preinstalled with free upgrades. Unfortunately that would be shooting themselves in the foot since they have no other revenue streams than the tablet itself and a handful of applications. Apple could sell iPads at cost and clean up through the content they sell. Microsoft can't do that so they are severely limited with the profits on a tablet. The math doesn't work and as I said Microsoft's future looks bleak. The sad joke is if it wasn't for the antitrust laws Apple could buy Microsoft. They nearly have enough cash in their loose change drawer and any bank on the planet would finance the buy. Now that's a dramatic reversal of fortune.
Ultimately it may require making custom atoms to do specific tasks and possibly have very unusual configurations of subatomic particle. Just look at how different nano particles react compared to natural forms of the same elements. It may mean building atoms with opposite spins of particles or configurations of quantum particles that don't occur in nature. They've managed to build atom by atom but this would be orders of magnitude more difficult. We don't even have a science for affecting quantum particles let alone building them like tinker toys. It's a little like building a gravity drive that doesn't require mass. With current science it's impossible but when you start hand fabricating sub atomic particles all bets are off.
this new airframe will fulfill the same role as the F-22.
Waste money and asphyxiate pilots?
I say we bomb China with Lockheed Martin and Haliburton executives. It's a win/win since we get get rid of some dead weight and potentially balance a budget for once while collapsing the Chinese economy. I hear corporate executives breed like rabbits so they'll be over run in no time.
Some smart weapon systems have the same limitations when it comes to rain or cloud cover. Also they tend to use water cannons for crowd control which would act as a defensive system for the crowds. Microwave weapons are expensive, have limited range and focus and it's difficult to avoid injuries and death while maintaining effectiveness. I'd think audio weapons would be just as effective without the limitations and potential for serious injuries. Yes it's easy to protect against most of them but we are talking about crowd use and not foot soldiers. For soldiers even microwave weapons can be foiled if they are non lethal. Even a small amount of metal can block them so metal fibers in uniforms and head gear would counter crowd control kinds of weapons. They are utterly useless against tanks. I know there has been a lot of reports of low frequency weapons that wouldn't be noticeable to the mob but would provide enough discomfort to break them up. High frequency weapons are obviously effective. I set off a building alarm at work because they deactivated a the keypad at one entrance without telling us. It had an audio deterrent and I guarantee you I was thrilled when I got the alarm off. Without hearing protection a crowd wouldn't be very dangerous. Hard to throw rocks with your fingers in your ears. With a weaponized system even that wouldn't stop it you'd need professional grade or better protection.
Beating an electronic device to death makes perfect sense to users of ME and Vista. This falls under a common sense patent. This must be a defensive patent before the new OS comes out given their history of every other release sucking. I'm still waiting for them to announce the "AX Back Up System". The hard drive backs up before you take an ax to it!
It's like cheap video cams brought filmmaking to the masses Google Glasses will mean anyone can act like an idiot and provide a first person view of the disaster. There's already been some intensely cool helmet cam videos but that's because it's mostly pros or semi pros using them. Like with cheap video cameras we didn't see a rash of Citizen Kanes we saw mostly films that shouldn't have been made. We're likely to see something closer to Strange Days. It'll be guys getting laid and failed attempts to jump between buildings where you'll watch the POV all the way to the ground. I'd like to think people would sick of it after the first hundred bicycle riders face planting into walls but morbid curiosity never seems to die.
The rover will head to a location about 1,300 feet away...
That be 12/36ths of a cubit, multiplied by four and 1/4 rods, then minus sixteen and 1/8th hogsheads.
Guess I missed the joke since Hogshead is more of a volume measurement. Here's the Wikipedia explanation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogshead
Trolling is just another form of bullying. Cowards get brave when no one knows who they are. Why is trolling considered such a right on the net? We're talking a few percent that want to ruin it for the rest of us. I like having the anonymous option but it really is a few percent that abuse the priviledge. We can't let a handful of kids living in their parent's basements rule the net. FYI disagreeing with the majority isn't trolling! The word Troll gets badly abused on Slashdot. Trolls are the ones trying to get a rise out of people for the sake of causing trouble. There's a massive difference between a troll and some one that doesn't think Apple is the anti-christ.
I waited all this time to scan the comments because I figured I already knew what people would say. Virtually all the comments can be broken down into "Apple/iPhone sucks" and "Android did all this first". Reading the comments would one to assume the iPhone is a massive flop and hardly anyone owns one. The comments don't reflect the reality. The iPhone is still the most popular and it actually did a lot of what it does first. The original iPhone was a shock to the cell community and there was a mad scramble to catch up. Will the iPhone 5 flop? Of coarse not. Why would it? Overall it's still the best at what it does. I noticed a few comments sniping at the iPad as well. Here's the fundamental difference and why the iPhone and iPad won't fail, The user experience is far more pleasant. On most of the cell phones I find web surfing is just not worth it. That's why the providers were and are being crushed by iPhones, because people actually use them! I don't own an iPhone but I have a Touch and iPad, I don't actually have a cell at the moment. I use my Touch and iPad all the time to check e-mail and web surf. I keep the iPad next to my bed for late night movies, I even stream Netflix to it. Often I wake up and fire up the iPad to check for new e-mails or switch over to the web and check CNN to see if the world ended while I was asleep. All this is far quicker and easier on my iPad than my desktop. There may be a lot of venom leveled at iDevices by the geek community but it still doesn't change the fact that they are extremely useful and handy to have around. I was actually not all that impressed with the iPad at first because it looked like and is in fact an over sized Touch. After using one I have to say being so much larger makes them 10X more useful. I'd love to even see one 50% larger and I'm shocked Apple hasn't made an iTV that is a massive Touch device. It doesn't need a touch screen or batteries just a TV sized computer with a faster processor and all the features of a Touch. Just control it from a Touch. It seems obvious and if they released a 43" one for $1,200 I think they'd be a massive hit especially if they added a built in DVR function. Sour grapes aside the iPhone and iPad do what they do extremely well. They are a success for a reason and if Android devices truly had a better user experience I can't believe people wouldn't switch.
post-PC world you can't code on ios and the screen is to small to do big typing / excel type work.
Ah you do know they are talking about a phone?
Alibaba is an industrial supplier. It's like saying Tyson sells more chicken than Kentucky Fried Chicken. Why is this a story?
20 years ago there was a lot of talk about EM radiation and health effects. There's no myth about health effects it's just safe limits for exposure haven't been established. Yes it's easy to tell when upper limits cause damage but the constant exposure we already get does have some risk. The problem is these types of charging systems increase the exposure many times over current levels. I was concerned with proposals for embedded road chargers. Ironically magnalevel trains don't have this issue because they use a magnetic field to protect passengers but your average car or house has no such system. Prototype high power cell phones have been found to cause brain tumors much as radar guns used by law enforcement causes cancer with prolonged CU exposure. I'd feel better if some one stuck a rat cage on one to see if the rats died of old age or developed tumors over time. It's not being paranoid I'd just like to actually know for sure rather than hope for the best.