As the post itself points out, there will always be a market for SUV's, because SUV's are necessary. SUV's have existed at least since the days of the first commercial Jeep, and probably before that. Okay. There are a few uses for SUVs. If you need to haul 7 full-sized adults off-road in the snow, I'll grant you that an SUV is a good idea. There are legitimate users, and this is largely what they were originally targeted as.
However, 99.99999% of the time, this isn't what they're used for. I continually hear arguments of how "I need an SUV because of the weather in my area," and it just doesn't hold water.
Last year, I spent a fair bit of time living in the interior of Alaska. If there's any area that "requires" its residents to own an SUV, this is it. In reality, gas is expensive, the residents aren't terribly wealthy, and as a result, virtually everyone drives either an AWD Subaru, one of those seemingly-indestructable old Volvos, or a pickup truck.
(Also tangentally, Fairbanks is a working model of a city that has the infrastructure to support plug-in electric vehicles, as every single parking space is wired with a 110V outlet that's used to keep your vehicle's oil from freezing in the -50Â winters.)
With a bit of experience, one could safely drive our old 1980s-vintage Saab hatchback down an unplowed road.
Today, an inexperienced driver can safely drive an AWD sedan across a sheet of ice. Last winter, I visited my folks up north, and took their (fairly small) car around town after a snowstorm, and swore that the car's AWD system was violating the laws of physics.
"Necessary" usually means that you haven't considered all of the alternatives out there.
The summary is bad. I don't like it either, but you've got to look at it from the right perspective.
You've never had the right to fly anonymously. The new regulations effectively state that you have to make a good-faith attempt to identify yourself.
If you have ID on you, that's obviously the best way to do so. If you don't, but cooperate with the TSA to ascertain your identity, you'll still be fine.
The law only effects people who ID, but refuse to provide it. The new regulations don't do anything to stop terrorism, but are intended to increase efficiency, by eliminating the pricks who refuse to identify themselves based on ideological grounds.
(That all said, this sounds like it may very well go to the Supreme Court as a 4th amendment case)
Given that nobody's bothered to RTFA, you should realize that the new regulations do *not* ban flying without ID.
In fact, the procedures described in the new regs have been in use for ages now. At the very least, the TSA is cleaning itself up, by making sure that its rules are written down, and accounted for. This is a small, but very important first step in transforming the agency into one that actually functions properly, and goes after credible threats.
The most embarrassing bit is that, if you extract the.FLV, VLC can play it reasonably efficiently. QuickTime can do it too, given the proper codec (and many mac haters like to think of QT as the poster child of inefficient software!)
I'm amazed Apple hasn't developed their own specification. If they got their WebKit folks to promote an Open-Source flash alternative, there would be a reasonably good chance of it seeing widespread acceptance. Apple's history with OSS is a bit shaky, although it's clear that any sort of "flash killer" will need the support of the community if it wants any hope of succeeding. The backlash against Microsoft's surprisingly-not-bad Silverlight should be sufficient evidence to convince Apple to go the open-source route.
Heck.... thanks to the "Core" libraries, the underlying frameworks are already there.
Doubtful. And this is most likely a Flash problem, rather than an Apple problem. It's a mostly closed standard, and even the 'official' implementations aren't all that great.
Adobe's implementation of Flash is remarkably inefficent, and Adobe notoriously refuse to release the player for any non-x86 platform (apart for legacy support of MacPPC, which is pretty grim even compared to the other, better-supported versions).
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for flash on mobile platforms. You'd probably have more success developing your own standard and convincing the world to switch (I'm not kidding).
The various OSS flash implementations have been progressing at a snail's pace, although I wouldn't put much more hope in those than I would in WINE (ie. it'll never be stable enough to be useful). However, Adobe have recently relaxed their grip on the SWF specification, so we *might* see some progress.
Still, I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't typically count myself among the flash-haters, but the recent problems arising from the lack of cross-platform support and the absurd levels of CPU usage imposed by the player are a huge problem.
I'd rather have a human operating the scoreboard, given that it's far more likely to be accurate (or if not, catch the errors right away)
It can't be terribly expensive to hire somebody to push a button every time a player scores. What exactly would an "automated" stats collection system achieve that cannot already be done?
I think most of the Ron Paul searches were geared mostly along the lines of "Who the hell is this guy...."
and were in many cases followed by "This guy's absolutely crazy"
Although he was an appealing candidate on the surface (Fiscally conservative, against Iraq, etc....), once you dug a little deeper, there were many things about him that didn't sit well with most voters (He literally voted against everything that crossed his desk, and was tied to some pretty scary people in the 90s)
Had a more reasonable candidate arisen as an internet meme, something might have come of it (you could argue that Obama owes a large degree of his initial success to coverage on the internet and from the independent media). Anybody that seriously thinks that a fundamental libertarian like Paul could have done well in an election is seriously deluding themselves.
Granted, if he wants to run as an independent, I'm sure he can (and would) fuck up the election, because his level of support isn't quite negligible.
that would be quite unrealistic - it's like saying that with a flying reindeer powered sleigh you can not only solve the travelling salesman problem in no time, but also visit every household in a single night Quantum Santa?
The beauty of the TGV system is that, provided that the trains have the proper signaling equipment installed, "incompatible" trains from Germany, Italy, and Spain can all run on the tracks at full-speed, provided that they have the appropriate signaling and catenary equipment installed.
Earlier in the year, I took the German ICE train from Paris to Frankfurt. It was pretty cheap, incredibly convenient, and RIDICULOUSLY fast. I think that given the success of the new LGV Est line, a lot of people in America are starting to pay attention. Obama's promised a massive investment in rail infrastructure, which could hopefully bring us up to par with Europe in the next 10-20 years.
Also, TGV trainsets can go on old tracks (at reduced speeds of course), and freight traffic can hypothetically run on high-speed tracks at night. It's a win-win-win situation.
But yes. I'd stay away from Maglevs for long-distance routes for now.
Until recently, most phones lacked over-the-air firmware upgrade capability.
Verizon aren't going to force an upgrade on 80 million customers -- at least not in the near future. They're stupid, but not that stupid.
Besides.... the networks are compatible. There's really not much "transition" to take place at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the two networks were completely merged within a few months of the deal being finalized.
Seriously.... that one always seemed rather obvious, not to mention that the paper tray is typically the first thing people check when the printer's not working.
Mind you that the fact that ThePlanet own 5+ datacenters lends credit to what you're saying.
Put your servers in two geographically-isolated datacenters, and you'll be considerably more protected against virtually any sort of calamity that could occur to your servers.
There are so many things that a datacenter simply cannot be 100% prepared for. Would you really blame the provider if a plane crashed into their building?
It's far cheaper to simply colocate in 2+ locations than it is to prepare for every single event that can possibly occur, no matter how remotely unlikely it may be.
For those of you who don't get the joke, there's actually an entire wikipedia article devoted to it.
In short, most unix printing systems understand a very small number of printer status codes, usually consisting of "READY, ONLINE, OFFLINE, and PRINTER ON FIRE"
The latter status message was actually semi-serious, and was thrown whenever the printer was encountering a serious error, but for some reason was continuing to print anyway. In the case of a high-speed mainframe printer, if the printer jammed but continued attempting to print, a fire could easily start due to the amount of friction created by the high-speed motors.
No seriously the republicans just blocked the expansion of VA benefits. "See. Nationalized healthcare will never work. Look at the VA."
Republicans love using that line. I really hate to trollbait, but the right-wing attempts to sabotage anything remotely resembling "socialism" are becoming increasingly destructive, especially when they're fighting for the continuation of a bloody war, and simultaneously fighting against providing the VA with adequate funding.
The $5mil was a tiny part of their total budget, and the lab was inevitably going to be downsized considerably next year, once the Tevatron is shut down.
Also, energy-efficient lighting is a higher priority than particle physics for the DOE at the moment. Given the energy/oil crunch at the moment, it only makes sense that they're funneling a larger portion of their money into short-term projects to find new methods of generation and energy conservation, rather than funding "hard science," which technically isn't even their job to do in the first place.
Well, the NanoSolar folks seem to be "here and now," with mass-production fully coming online over the next year or so.
It's been demonstrated. It works. The estimated costs are quite low, and they think that they can bring them even lower once economies of scale kick in. The efficiency sadly isn't anything revolutionary, though still quite good.
They're also sold-out through the next three years of production.
It may not be the holy grail of solar power, but it's cheap and versatile enough, that owners of flat-roofed buildings in the right climate zones will have few reasons not to install the devices, given the costs of obtaining power from other sources.
Slashdot Mirror
Not if you blatantly mention that it's your own site, like Roland (or this guy) does.
/. editor linked to one of his own sites, without mentioning the fact, then it'd be a conflict of interest.
If a
Why not put the experiment on a probe traveling further and further away from earth?
Or perhaps on the moon.
Or mars.
This is actually a fairly exciting bit of science.
However, 99.99999% of the time, this isn't what they're used for. I continually hear arguments of how "I need an SUV because of the weather in my area," and it just doesn't hold water.
Last year, I spent a fair bit of time living in the interior of Alaska. If there's any area that "requires" its residents to own an SUV, this is it. In reality, gas is expensive, the residents aren't terribly wealthy, and as a result, virtually everyone drives either an AWD Subaru, one of those seemingly-indestructable old Volvos, or a pickup truck.
(Also tangentally, Fairbanks is a working model of a city that has the infrastructure to support plug-in electric vehicles, as every single parking space is wired with a 110V outlet that's used to keep your vehicle's oil from freezing in the -50Â winters.)
With a bit of experience, one could safely drive our old 1980s-vintage Saab hatchback down an unplowed road.
Today, an inexperienced driver can safely drive an AWD sedan across a sheet of ice. Last winter, I visited my folks up north, and took their (fairly small) car around town after a snowstorm, and swore that the car's AWD system was violating the laws of physics.
"Necessary" usually means that you haven't considered all of the alternatives out there.
Where's the mod option for (-1, Hyperbolic Rhetoric)?
The summary is bad. I don't like it either, but you've got to look at it from the right perspective.
You've never had the right to fly anonymously. The new regulations effectively state that you have to make a good-faith attempt to identify yourself.
If you have ID on you, that's obviously the best way to do so. If you don't, but cooperate with the TSA to ascertain your identity, you'll still be fine.
The law only effects people who ID, but refuse to provide it.
The new regulations don't do anything to stop terrorism, but are intended to increase efficiency, by eliminating the pricks who refuse to identify themselves based on ideological grounds.
(That all said, this sounds like it may very well go to the Supreme Court as a 4th amendment case)
Given that nobody's bothered to RTFA, you should realize that the new regulations do *not* ban flying without ID.
In fact, the procedures described in the new regs have been in use for ages now. At the very least, the TSA is cleaning itself up, by making sure that its rules are written down, and accounted for. This is a small, but very important first step in transforming the agency into one that actually functions properly, and goes after credible threats.
The most embarrassing bit is that, if you extract the .FLV, VLC can play it reasonably efficiently. QuickTime can do it too, given the proper codec (and many mac haters like to think of QT as the poster child of inefficient software!)
I'm amazed Apple hasn't developed their own specification. If they got their WebKit folks to promote an Open-Source flash alternative, there would be a reasonably good chance of it seeing widespread acceptance. Apple's history with OSS is a bit shaky, although it's clear that any sort of "flash killer" will need the support of the community if it wants any hope of succeeding. The backlash against Microsoft's surprisingly-not-bad Silverlight should be sufficient evidence to convince Apple to go the open-source route.
Heck.... thanks to the "Core" libraries, the underlying frameworks are already there.
Flash's days are numbered. That much is for sure.
If you can actually perceive a 0.6 variation, I salute you.
You are correct that the new model is no smaller than the old one, but for all intents and purposes, the two models are the same size and weight.
(I would have preferred to have expressed the thickness difference in terms of micrometers, but slashdot doesn't seem to like 'mu's)
Doubtful. And this is most likely a Flash problem, rather than an Apple problem. It's a mostly closed standard, and even the 'official' implementations aren't all that great.
Adobe's implementation of Flash is remarkably inefficent, and Adobe notoriously refuse to release the player for any non-x86 platform (apart for legacy support of MacPPC, which is pretty grim even compared to the other, better-supported versions).
I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for flash on mobile platforms. You'd probably have more success developing your own standard and convincing the world to switch (I'm not kidding).
The various OSS flash implementations have been progressing at a snail's pace, although I wouldn't put much more hope in those than I would in WINE (ie. it'll never be stable enough to be useful). However, Adobe have recently relaxed their grip on the SWF specification, so we *might* see some progress.
Still, I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't typically count myself among the flash-haters, but the recent problems arising from the lack of cross-platform support and the absurd levels of CPU usage imposed by the player are a huge problem.
if that happened, voice chat would simply be removed.
Why?
I'd rather have a human operating the scoreboard, given that it's far more likely to be accurate (or if not, catch the errors right away)
It can't be terribly expensive to hire somebody to push a button every time a player scores. What exactly would an "automated" stats collection system achieve that cannot already be done?
I think most of the Ron Paul searches were geared mostly along the lines of "Who the hell is this guy...."
and were in many cases followed by
"This guy's absolutely crazy"
Although he was an appealing candidate on the surface (Fiscally conservative, against Iraq, etc....), once you dug a little deeper, there were many things about him that didn't sit well with most voters (He literally voted against everything that crossed his desk, and was tied to some pretty scary people in the 90s)
Had a more reasonable candidate arisen as an internet meme, something might have come of it (you could argue that Obama owes a large degree of his initial success to coverage on the internet and from the independent media). Anybody that seriously thinks that a fundamental libertarian like Paul could have done well in an election is seriously deluding themselves.
Granted, if he wants to run as an independent, I'm sure he can (and would) fuck up the election, because his level of support isn't quite negligible.
The beauty of the TGV system is that, provided that the trains have the proper signaling equipment installed, "incompatible" trains from Germany, Italy, and Spain can all run on the tracks at full-speed, provided that they have the appropriate signaling and catenary equipment installed.
Earlier in the year, I took the German ICE train from Paris to Frankfurt. It was pretty cheap, incredibly convenient, and RIDICULOUSLY fast. I think that given the success of the new LGV Est line, a lot of people in America are starting to pay attention. Obama's promised a massive investment in rail infrastructure, which could hopefully bring us up to par with Europe in the next 10-20 years.
Also, TGV trainsets can go on old tracks (at reduced speeds of course), and freight traffic can hypothetically run on high-speed tracks at night. It's a win-win-win situation.
But yes. I'd stay away from Maglevs for long-distance routes for now.
Mainly for marketing purposes.
Virtually every modern OS does this. Even Debian.
Until recently, most phones lacked over-the-air firmware upgrade capability.
Verizon aren't going to force an upgrade on 80 million customers -- at least not in the near future. They're stupid, but not that stupid.
Besides.... the networks are compatible. There's really not much "transition" to take place at all. I wouldn't be surprised if the two networks were completely merged within a few months of the deal being finalized.
Put some letter-sized paper into the tray!
Seriously.... that one always seemed rather obvious, not to mention that the paper tray is typically the first thing people check when the printer's not working.
Mind you that the fact that ThePlanet own 5+ datacenters lends credit to what you're saying.
Put your servers in two geographically-isolated datacenters, and you'll be considerably more protected against virtually any sort of calamity that could occur to your servers.
There are so many things that a datacenter simply cannot be 100% prepared for. Would you really blame the provider if a plane crashed into their building?
It's far cheaper to simply colocate in 2+ locations than it is to prepare for every single event that can possibly occur, no matter how remotely unlikely it may be.
For those of you who don't get the joke, there's actually an entire wikipedia article devoted to it.
In short, most unix printing systems understand a very small number of printer status codes, usually consisting of "READY, ONLINE, OFFLINE, and PRINTER ON FIRE"
The latter status message was actually semi-serious, and was thrown whenever the printer was encountering a serious error, but for some reason was continuing to print anyway. In the case of a high-speed mainframe printer, if the printer jammed but continued attempting to print, a fire could easily start due to the amount of friction created by the high-speed motors.
Republicans love using that line. I really hate to trollbait, but the right-wing attempts to sabotage anything remotely resembling "socialism" are becoming increasingly destructive, especially when they're fighting for the continuation of a bloody war, and simultaneously fighting against providing the VA with adequate funding.
The "point" of Free Software is whatever you define it as. Not what RMS tells you to believe.
RMS, and the GNU folks in general tend to inject a tad too much idealism and dogmatism into their products for my liking.
The BSD folks who donate their code, and expect nothing in return seem to be the more "noble" of the two.
Fermilab didn't need "saving"
The $5mil was a tiny part of their total budget, and the lab was inevitably going to be downsized considerably next year, once the Tevatron is shut down.
Also, energy-efficient lighting is a higher priority than particle physics for the DOE at the moment. Given the energy/oil crunch at the moment, it only makes sense that they're funneling a larger portion of their money into short-term projects to find new methods of generation and energy conservation, rather than funding "hard science," which technically isn't even their job to do in the first place.
What other options are there for tactile feedback and/or buckling-spring keyboards?
Frankly, the grey-on-black colour scheme is hideous, and I've grown quite attached to the volume control keys and USB hub on modern keyboards.
A more compact design wouldn't be too much to ask either.
Surely there has to be some happy medium between the $5 dell keyboards and the heavier-than-a-brick Unicomps?
You do realize that the Sahara doesn't cover the entirety of Africa, don't you? There's quite a diverse range of climates present on the continent.
Well, the NanoSolar folks seem to be "here and now," with mass-production fully coming online over the next year or so.
It's been demonstrated. It works. The estimated costs are quite low, and they think that they can bring them even lower once economies of scale kick in. The efficiency sadly isn't anything revolutionary, though still quite good.
They're also sold-out through the next three years of production.
It may not be the holy grail of solar power, but it's cheap and versatile enough, that owners of flat-roofed buildings in the right climate zones will have few reasons not to install the devices, given the costs of obtaining power from other sources.