Of course Japanese robots will be working on the Moon. The Japanese are the only ones working on humanoid robots that have made significant process in all aspects of design. So you'll have your Honda Asimo to bring you materials, the Toyota Q'rio to put them together, and Gundam to ward off the Russians.
If countries were as serious about robotics as the Japanese are, the whole idea of a Moon dominated by Japanese robots would just be a dream. But Tachikawa is just stating the obvious. The sadly, Japanese are the only ones qualified to provide useful robots.
The jobs are going overseas, but not in the "there taking are jorbs!" way. Rather, the United States is simple becoming a follower of technology rather than a leader. The real leaders are in Europe and Asia, with Europe leading the way with standardization of services and Asia with cutting edge technology releases.
Americans are very happy living with their one or two generations old technology. They have various excuses as to why it would be impossible to implement standardized systems in the US (size of the country, unregulated bandwidth, etc), but I've yet to meet an American who wasn't impressed by the breadth and depth of technology available overseas that isn't available at home for them.
As an aside, I find that people who think Apple iBook screens acceptable are typically totally unaware of the quality of screens of most other makers. The iBook has one of the worst screens in today's lineup of laptops. But this type of blinder is typical of American technology consumers.
So if you want to make programming your job, look into studying up on your Asian languages.
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
The government's job is to make sure the citizenry is protected against foreign invaders, provide a reasonable level of safety, and provide a forum in which aggrieved parties can have an impartial entity adjudicate issues. In short: Military, Police, and Courts.
It should try to stay out of the way of individuals to the maximum extent possible. Every encroachment it makes results in the diminishment of freedom for its citizens. If we accept that it is the government's job to research medicine, should we also accept that it is the government's job to provide that medicine? Such a system in which we rely on the government to do something automatically puts downward pressure on the current providers of that service. It essentially provides the government with a monopoly over that service.
I'm all for freedom of information. I think that having information available to all is absolutely essential for a free society. However, it is essential that the government stay as far away from that as possible. They should neither encourage nor discourage companies from releasing information. In fact, they should be a completely uninterested party.
To the extent that government funds help jumpstart lagging scientific research, the same amount of freedom is lost. The public money is a double-edged sword, and this time we see what happens when someone tries to directly compete with the government. Typically this is decried as selfish on the part of the company, but is that really true? Would you not have a grievance if the government decided to take away your job? If it were a private company doing this, you would have no argument from me. However because it is the government doing it, and not a private company, I think that it would be more prudent to take the side of the private sector rather than the side of a growing government bureaucracy.
It's like asking why someone would load Linux on a G5 when they've already got Mac OSX pre-installed. The reason people stick with film is because it simply one of those old habits that die hard.
At ISO135, there is no film that can outperform a modern DSLR's sensor. In addition, a DSLR can take many more shots before a change of media is required. In many cases, the film winds up being computer-scanned anyway, so the loss of resolution during the scanning stage drops the "actual" film resolution by a huge amount. Once in the computer, the scanned film image can be digitally manipulated the same as any image from a digital camera, so there is no benefit either way.
If the photographer wishes to use an optical enlarger, the limitations of the enlarging lens is a factor in the quality of the print. Many enlargers have barrel distortion in the corners. DSLRs do not have this issue because the sensors are typically smaller than the image circle of the lens, so it is a crop of the "best" area of the lens (which is also why they refer to a 1.5x multiplier for lenses not specifically made for digital cameras).
You'll get shouted down by the crowd which believes that EM radiation from wireless devices like wifi access points and cell phones is harmless and that any sort of worry about it is completely unnecessary.
Too bad they don't actually pay attention to what is really going on.
While radiation in small doses is relatively harmless, it is widely known that in large amounts it is damaging to tissue and in extreme cases can cause death. To combat this, the 3GPP specification that defines what a 3G phone should be and do has a specific section on SAR, Specific Absorption Rate. This spec regulates the maximum amount of radiation that a phone may be allowed to output before becoming physically dangerous to the user.
Start multiplying handsets in any limited-space area, and the SAR maximum threshold is exceeded relatively quickly. This is why those rats at the University of Washington developed cancer after being exposed to cellular phone radiation in the initial SAR studies.
The African continent is one of those areas that is perpetually in the dark, both literally and figuratively. It appears as a large black mass in the World At Night map, and it has been a long time since it was a source of mankind-advancing knowledge (at least since the Library of Alexander in Egypt was destroyed).
In addition, its history of being conquered and carved up by Western empires has left it nearly incapable of functioning as a cohesive continent of nationstates. Rather, it languishes in tribal warfare made all the worse by the relatively recent influx of Islam which has torn the northern countries of Chad and Sudan to shreds.
But separated from the mainland, Maritius is amazing in its ability to remain relatively free of the strife that plagues the rest of the Dark Continent. Catering to foreign tourists who want to get away from the normal tourist hotspots, Maritius has been much more stable and forwardly progressing than its neighbors. It is really no surprise that it would be the first African nation to attempt something as ambitious as this project.
That it is the first in the world is absolutely amazing.
I can't tell the difference between a machine running with this XMS memory and one with normal DDR SDRAM. Sure, I can see the difference in the benchmarks, but real-life speed isn't really a problem. For all intents and purposes, it's the same.
In addition, it's the limited bus speed of the x86 architecture that is the primary bottleneck these days. Running at only a fraction of the processor speed, memory accesses are slow because the bus can't keep up with the CPU and everything in turn waits for the bus to catch up. RAM running at any speed faster than the bus will be unnoticeable from the perspective of a user.
I don't think anyone thinks that we should all just sit around on our laurels and let technology stagnate, but really... Faster memory... Big whoop.
What I was alluding to in another post is absolutely true. There is nothing unconstitutional about this law, it is completely permitted under the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution. It is absolutely legal that the government do this.
However, listening to the cries of all the usual suspects here on Slashdot, something else is very clear.
This law violates the "Gut Test".
That's the test that a law has to pass in order to be acceptable. If something in your gut tells you that the law is doing something so outrageous, so in contrast with what you would expect, then the law is a bad law. Even if it passes the constitutionality test, if it can't pass the Gut test, then the law ought not be passed.
There is a spirit to any country's governmental system. Some are very open and accepting (like America's and also Holland's). Others are very strict and act as guardians (like Singapore's). The Gut test depends on the general mood of the country that the law is being proposed in.
If America were composed of Slashbots, this law wouldn't see the light of day. However, the country is composed of people who actually think rather than react impulsively, so there is a chance that such a law will be put into effect.
Twice, the Americans have voted into office GW Bush, and such can only be interpreted as support for his policies. That he won by a significant margin in 2004 is proof that the majority of Americans believe in what he is selling.
Farbeit from me to stand in contrast to the general spirit of Slashdot, but I think that most people here would benefit significantly from a rudimentary education in law and logic.
If terrorists are going to start using encryption, then encryption will be outlawed, except for government-approved encryption which will be crackable by the government. All encrypted data will be filtered and anything that can't be cracked or contains "hot words" will be flagged for further inspection. All other plaintext data will be only scanned for hot words. Any data that is encrypted with a non-approved encryption scheme will be automatically flagged and prosecuted.
And terrorists aren't going to fly planes into building anymore. The benefits are few and the risks are too high. It's much easier to sneak across the Canadian border at any number of unpatrolled points and simply rent a truck and fill it with fertilizer. Cheap and just as effective at scaring people in the heartland.
Congress would not "enforce" the laws as such. Rather, they would be empowered to write laws regulating such enforcement. This would include indicating how a common carrier service might be required to log traffic.
You are secure in your documents. However, these are the documents of the ISP.
Those documents can't be trawled without a court order, so there isn't really anything about this that is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
It may be a little bit distasteful in its invasion of privacy, but it is no more unconstitutional than cameras at intersections or strip searches at the airport.
Which isn't to say anything, really. They are already the #1 personal computer OEM. They only stand to lose if they allow others to horn in on their business. Isn't that right, Amelio?
Please be aware that the MCP coding standards have been updated to reflect appropriate actions regarding recent customer complaints of run-on output. Any output strings that are also final clauses shall be terminated with "EOL".
Please update all existing clauses and as well as apply to any new code.
Sounds like Sun did a bang-up job with their software, reining in the developers under pretty solid coding guidlines. It's the Open Source people who have gone off and sullied the code with their silliness.
Humor in comments is sometimes good. Just not on Slashdot where it only risks your karma.
Anyone have a link that doesn't try to pop up fastclick crap and also try to lock you in by auto-forwarding you a few levels in?
That said, I thought Artificial Neural Membrane Flapping Wing was pretty interesting. Penguins are looking forward to the possibility of finally putting those puffins in their place.
Saturday night I'd like to MAKE my girl, but right now I cannot make ends meet.
It's great to have a magazine dedicated to the people who want to build their own stuff. I remember carving my first spoon. Out of a bigger spoon.
The problem is that you end up with all these little toy gadgets and nowhere to put them. I wish there was a magazine that explained how to build something that could be used to store those gadgets.
Could someone explain how other crap search engines are getting high rankings in Google search?
Sometimes when I search for something specific, I get a bunch of useless links that have results of other "search engines" that invariably show something similar to "0 results for your search terms 'sheep+barn+slashbot+erotica'"
How do these sites get on the first page of Google results?
I've got several pairs of those nanotech khakis. They don't stain at all, even with coffee spilled on them. It doesn't seem to be "real" nanotech, though, just some kind of nylon polymer treatment for the material that makes it water-resistant.
Eddie Bauer makes some nice jeans too. Levis always seem to feel better, but I get a lot more compliments when I'm wearing my Eddie Bauer jeans.
I'm not sure what they are trying to protest. Maybe they can get some mites rolling around naked in the store or something. That ought to give them something "nano" to worry abuot.
Slashdot Mirror
explain why Japan still kills hundreds of whales every year.
They are delicious.
Of course Japanese robots will be working on the Moon. The Japanese are the only ones working on humanoid robots that have made significant process in all aspects of design. So you'll have your Honda Asimo to bring you materials, the Toyota Q'rio to put them together, and Gundam to ward off the Russians.
If countries were as serious about robotics as the Japanese are, the whole idea of a Moon dominated by Japanese robots would just be a dream. But Tachikawa is just stating the obvious. The sadly, Japanese are the only ones qualified to provide useful robots.
The jobs are going overseas, but not in the "there taking are jorbs!" way. Rather, the United States is simple becoming a follower of technology rather than a leader. The real leaders are in Europe and Asia, with Europe leading the way with standardization of services and Asia with cutting edge technology releases.
Americans are very happy living with their one or two generations old technology. They have various excuses as to why it would be impossible to implement standardized systems in the US (size of the country, unregulated bandwidth, etc), but I've yet to meet an American who wasn't impressed by the breadth and depth of technology available overseas that isn't available at home for them.
As an aside, I find that people who think Apple iBook screens acceptable are typically totally unaware of the quality of screens of most other makers. The iBook has one of the worst screens in today's lineup of laptops. But this type of blinder is typical of American technology consumers.
So if you want to make programming your job, look into studying up on your Asian languages.
Government shouldn't pay for something that the private sector is already doing. Full stop.
The government's job is to make sure the citizenry is protected against foreign invaders, provide a reasonable level of safety, and provide a forum in which aggrieved parties can have an impartial entity adjudicate issues. In short: Military, Police, and Courts.
It should try to stay out of the way of individuals to the maximum extent possible. Every encroachment it makes results in the diminishment of freedom for its citizens. If we accept that it is the government's job to research medicine, should we also accept that it is the government's job to provide that medicine? Such a system in which we rely on the government to do something automatically puts downward pressure on the current providers of that service. It essentially provides the government with a monopoly over that service.
I'm all for freedom of information. I think that having information available to all is absolutely essential for a free society. However, it is essential that the government stay as far away from that as possible. They should neither encourage nor discourage companies from releasing information. In fact, they should be a completely uninterested party.
To the extent that government funds help jumpstart lagging scientific research, the same amount of freedom is lost. The public money is a double-edged sword, and this time we see what happens when someone tries to directly compete with the government. Typically this is decried as selfish on the part of the company, but is that really true? Would you not have a grievance if the government decided to take away your job? If it were a private company doing this, you would have no argument from me. However because it is the government doing it, and not a private company, I think that it would be more prudent to take the side of the private sector rather than the side of a growing government bureaucracy.
It's like asking why someone would load Linux on a G5 when they've already got Mac OSX pre-installed. The reason people stick with film is because it simply one of those old habits that die hard.
At ISO135, there is no film that can outperform a modern DSLR's sensor. In addition, a DSLR can take many more shots before a change of media is required. In many cases, the film winds up being computer-scanned anyway, so the loss of resolution during the scanning stage drops the "actual" film resolution by a huge amount. Once in the computer, the scanned film image can be digitally manipulated the same as any image from a digital camera, so there is no benefit either way.
If the photographer wishes to use an optical enlarger, the limitations of the enlarging lens is a factor in the quality of the print. Many enlargers have barrel distortion in the corners. DSLRs do not have this issue because the sensors are typically smaller than the image circle of the lens, so it is a crop of the "best" area of the lens (which is also why they refer to a 1.5x multiplier for lenses not specifically made for digital cameras).
You'll get shouted down by the crowd which believes that EM radiation from wireless devices like wifi access points and cell phones is harmless and that any sort of worry about it is completely unnecessary.
Too bad they don't actually pay attention to what is really going on.
While radiation in small doses is relatively harmless, it is widely known that in large amounts it is damaging to tissue and in extreme cases can cause death. To combat this, the 3GPP specification that defines what a 3G phone should be and do has a specific section on SAR, Specific Absorption Rate. This spec regulates the maximum amount of radiation that a phone may be allowed to output before becoming physically dangerous to the user.
Start multiplying handsets in any limited-space area, and the SAR maximum threshold is exceeded relatively quickly. This is why those rats at the University of Washington developed cancer after being exposed to cellular phone radiation in the initial SAR studies.
The African continent is one of those areas that is perpetually in the dark, both literally and figuratively. It appears as a large black mass in the World At Night map, and it has been a long time since it was a source of mankind-advancing knowledge (at least since the Library of Alexander in Egypt was destroyed).
In addition, its history of being conquered and carved up by Western empires has left it nearly incapable of functioning as a cohesive continent of nationstates. Rather, it languishes in tribal warfare made all the worse by the relatively recent influx of Islam which has torn the northern countries of Chad and Sudan to shreds.
But separated from the mainland, Maritius is amazing in its ability to remain relatively free of the strife that plagues the rest of the Dark Continent. Catering to foreign tourists who want to get away from the normal tourist hotspots, Maritius has been much more stable and forwardly progressing than its neighbors. It is really no surprise that it would be the first African nation to attempt something as ambitious as this project.
That it is the first in the world is absolutely amazing.
I can't tell the difference between a machine running with this XMS memory and one with normal DDR SDRAM. Sure, I can see the difference in the benchmarks, but real-life speed isn't really a problem. For all intents and purposes, it's the same.
In addition, it's the limited bus speed of the x86 architecture that is the primary bottleneck these days. Running at only a fraction of the processor speed, memory accesses are slow because the bus can't keep up with the CPU and everything in turn waits for the bus to catch up. RAM running at any speed faster than the bus will be unnoticeable from the perspective of a user.
I don't think anyone thinks that we should all just sit around on our laurels and let technology stagnate, but really... Faster memory... Big whoop.
What I was alluding to in another post is absolutely true. There is nothing unconstitutional about this law, it is completely permitted under the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution. It is absolutely legal that the government do this.
However, listening to the cries of all the usual suspects here on Slashdot, something else is very clear.
This law violates the "Gut Test".
That's the test that a law has to pass in order to be acceptable. If something in your gut tells you that the law is doing something so outrageous, so in contrast with what you would expect, then the law is a bad law. Even if it passes the constitutionality test, if it can't pass the Gut test, then the law ought not be passed.
There is a spirit to any country's governmental system. Some are very open and accepting (like America's and also Holland's). Others are very strict and act as guardians (like Singapore's). The Gut test depends on the general mood of the country that the law is being proposed in.
If America were composed of Slashbots, this law wouldn't see the light of day. However, the country is composed of people who actually think rather than react impulsively, so there is a chance that such a law will be put into effect.
Twice, the Americans have voted into office GW Bush, and such can only be interpreted as support for his policies. That he won by a significant margin in 2004 is proof that the majority of Americans believe in what he is selling.
Farbeit from me to stand in contrast to the general spirit of Slashdot, but I think that most people here would benefit significantly from a rudimentary education in law and logic.
Don't be silly.
If terrorists are going to start using encryption, then encryption will be outlawed, except for government-approved encryption which will be crackable by the government. All encrypted data will be filtered and anything that can't be cracked or contains "hot words" will be flagged for further inspection. All other plaintext data will be only scanned for hot words. Any data that is encrypted with a non-approved encryption scheme will be automatically flagged and prosecuted.
And terrorists aren't going to fly planes into building anymore. The benefits are few and the risks are too high. It's much easier to sneak across the Canadian border at any number of unpatrolled points and simply rent a truck and fill it with fertilizer. Cheap and just as effective at scaring people in the heartland.
The panic color code for today is puce.
Congress would not "enforce" the laws as such. Rather, they would be empowered to write laws regulating such enforcement. This would include indicating how a common carrier service might be required to log traffic.
Taxes are never borne by the business, it is always passed down to the consumer in the form of higher prices.
So the answer is that you and all your fat, cheetos-orange-fingered Everquest friends will be footing the bill. Or at least your parents will.
You are secure in your documents. However, these are the documents of the ISP.
Those documents can't be trawled without a court order, so there isn't really anything about this that is in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
It may be a little bit distasteful in its invasion of privacy, but it is no more unconstitutional than cameras at intersections or strip searches at the airport.
Twice the computing power, at only 25% more cost!
That's an 88% value, Mike!
Too bad Apple isn't interested in such a deal.
Which isn't to say anything, really. They are already the #1 personal computer OEM. They only stand to lose if they allow others to horn in on their business. Isn't that right, Amelio?
To: MCP Engineering Team
Please be aware that the MCP coding standards have been updated to reflect appropriate actions regarding recent customer complaints of run-on output. Any output strings that are also final clauses shall be terminated with "EOL".
Please update all existing clauses and as well as apply to any new code.
END OF LINE
Hardly part of the actual OS.
Sounds like Sun did a bang-up job with their software, reining in the developers under pretty solid coding guidlines. It's the Open Source people who have gone off and sullied the code with their silliness.
Humor in comments is sometimes good. Just not on Slashdot where it only risks your karma.
we provide anti-virus, anti-spyware, and firewall services to our users
BUT WAIT! There's more!
If you act now, we'll throw in ANOTHER anti-virus service at no extra charge! All this for only 89.95!
Okay, I'm not supposed to do this, but I'll personally add another EXTRA anti-spyware monitoring system AND take off 50 bucks from the retail price!
All this and more for only 3 easy payments of 39.95!
Anyone have a link that doesn't try to pop up fastclick crap and also try to lock you in by auto-forwarding you a few levels in?
That said, I thought Artificial Neural Membrane Flapping Wing was pretty interesting. Penguins are looking forward to the possibility of finally putting those puffins in their place.
You mean the one that's popular at Oregon State University and the University of South Carolina?
Yeah, I saw a copy of one at Hooters.
Saturday night I'd like to MAKE my girl, but right now I cannot make ends meet.
It's great to have a magazine dedicated to the people who want to build their own stuff. I remember carving my first spoon. Out of a bigger spoon.
The problem is that you end up with all these little toy gadgets and nowhere to put them. I wish there was a magazine that explained how to build something that could be used to store those gadgets.
Could someone explain how other crap search engines are getting high rankings in Google search?
Sometimes when I search for something specific, I get a bunch of useless links that have results of other "search engines" that invariably show something similar to "0 results for your search terms 'sheep+barn+slashbot+erotica'"
How do these sites get on the first page of Google results?
I had this great idea for a glove-type of controller. It would allow for quicker movement (especially with caffeine).
It's so bad.
I spent an inordinate amount of time watching that live stream last time this thing was blooming.
3AM drunk frat boys trying to compare "equipment" with the flower is something that is burned into my brain forever.
And I love it!
I've got several pairs of those nanotech khakis. They don't stain at all, even with coffee spilled on them. It doesn't seem to be "real" nanotech, though, just some kind of nylon polymer treatment for the material that makes it water-resistant.
Eddie Bauer makes some nice jeans too. Levis always seem to feel better, but I get a lot more compliments when I'm wearing my Eddie Bauer jeans.
I'm not sure what they are trying to protest. Maybe they can get some mites rolling around naked in the store or something. That ought to give them something "nano" to worry abuot.