I use one of those iPhone apps that lets me scan documents with the phone, emitting a PDF that's just as good as the ones I used to need a flatbed scanner to get. When I need to scan a book chapter at the library or surreptitiously copy someone else's document, no more having to arrange to bring it home to be scanned.
LIDAR would extend this concept to 3-D output. Most of us don't have 3-D printers at home, and would have no use for one that just works in cheesy plastic. But imagine being able to email a 3-D spec file you scanned in the field to a service that would print, say, a replica of the gold ring you liked at the jewelry store. Not cheap, but a lot better than paying retail markup.
"They're hoping to slam hadrons together in sufficient quantity to form a sort of barrier out of them, and perhaps build Hadron's Wall!"
If they did build Hadron's Wall, watch for local villagers to cannibalize it to build cool Swiss stuff, such as long-lasting chocolate molds and impregnable safe deposit boxes.
Opening up medicine to the free market addresses the cost side, not the who-pays side of the medical equation. It does not have to mean that the poor will be tossed out into the snow to die. If the government and charity components of our healthcare system were to stay the same as now, they will be able to purchase more care for the same money in an open market than in the present cartelized system. So would ordinary people paying with their own money, either individually or through insurance arrangements.
And why does open market medicine have to be connected to some radical ideology? The whole idea that it does is just FUD from the monopolists. We enjoy a free market in electronics and computer technology without having to declare our allegiance to Ayn Rand.
After an EMP attack, the phone in your pocket would still work. The bad news is that even if you could locate the eight or so other hipsters who might be wearing conductive pants, the communications infrastructure would still be fried.
What I think is really happening is that the Pentagon realizes that the situation in the Middle East is degenerating into a civil war between Shiite and Sunni. Because except for the occasional special-ops crowdpleaser the US does not want to get involved in a religious war, we are handing the conflict off to the most powerful Shiite country, Iran. A nuclear Iran will then be a counterweight to the most powerful Sunni nation, Pakistan. Fire up the popcorn!
While I don't see the US government getting involved directly, Christians acting privately are another matter. What if our evangelicals realize that in their boundless political butthurt over the existence of homosexuality they are ignoring the fact that Christians are being slaughtered overseas expressly because of their religion. As the survivors' tales from Garissa spread, will the megachurches take on a Last Crusade as a project?
Congratulations on being the one response that is not hiding as an AC. The whole idea of open records access, as described here, goes against engrained industry practice: http://www.allgov.com/news/con...
And as for pricing, were you aware that in many states it is not even possible to find out the price of hospital procedures ahead of time. This explicitly prevents a patient from planning ahead, or from finding that gallbladder surgery at a first-class hospital in Mumbai can be had, including airfare, at a fraction of the domestic price.
And where do you see me ranting against the ACA? Given that the medical industry resists transparency and open markets, I welcome Obamacare. Let your industry bend over for a generation of governmental mandates and cost controls, then come back to us and tell us whether you still hate the free market as an alternative to your fourteenth-century Guild Of The Goldsmiths mentality.
I'm hoping for the Uberization of health care. There is no excuse for keeping medical information from the patient himself under the guise of "privacy," especially when governments get free and full access to the same data. Yes, a lot of people are faddish about health, but this is just as big a problem under today's locked-down system, and I resent having my right to self-discovery and choice of treatment limited because a minority of the gullible are following quack ideologies. In fact, believers in "supplements" and other nostra enjoy protected status under current law, while patients are rigidly prevented from getting open-market access to real medicine.
What our medical system really fears is not Obamacare, but the free market. To hospitals, doctors and pharma companies, socialism is just another set of rules they can game to keep their prices two orders of magnitude above the market.
And before that, your tax had paid for destruction of a private citizen's - oops, I mean "subject's" - computer out of sheer spite. The positive way of looking at this is that it creates work for people would be unemployable in the real economy.
To do that, you have to turn off all the lights in this room, close the door, and then press the black STOP button, which then lights up black to indicate that your wish has been granted.
Yes, I'm aware that "asset forfeiture" is the catchall reason our government can use to steal private assets when it knows there is no law on its side, but trying to use this power internationally is going to elicit - I hope to hell, anyway - an armed response.
If the Chinese were really unconcerned about pollution, they would just keep building coal plants for the next century. They have plenty of the stuff. Instead, they are looking beyond coal. This includes building more new nuclear capacity than everyone else combined.
And no, not giving Wildflower Ludd Crystalbong veto power ever every application of science is not "longing for fascism."
But does the comsat experience give us experience in power beaming? Part of that experience has to be in the ground-side capture and conversion process - how reliable can we make it?
When your government is full of engineers, not lawyers, and when you can just ignore the flat-earth lobby instead of wasting half your funding fighting their just-because-we-can delays, you can test ideas like this. If it can be made to work, it would mean baseload solar.
The biggest unknown is the microwave link to send power to Earth. Would locating the receiving antenna ("rectenna") array in the desert avoid weather interference? Would the beam wander? I don't see it as being usable as a weapon because a huge structure in space is easily disabled from the ground.
The next-biggest unknown is availability of construction materials. After the initial proof of concept, lugging large amounts is metals up the terrestrial gravity well is not goiong to be an option. This is an application for "local" metals, from the Moon or from the Belt. Implementation would have to wait until this supply becomes available.
"Safe until it kills millions when a plant blows up. "
Oooh, a major hyperbole leak. We need a retaining wall around Harvard.
If there is going to be a carbon market, then all energy producers get to trade in it. All carbon-free power producers can sell their credits to producers who are still emitting carbon in excess of this year's limit.
Slashdot Mirror
I used to make those spinning mirrors and yes, this new tech is a huge step.
I use one of those iPhone apps that lets me scan documents with the phone, emitting a PDF that's just as good as the ones I used to need a flatbed scanner to get. When I need to scan a book chapter at the library or surreptitiously copy someone else's document, no more having to arrange to bring it home to be scanned.
LIDAR would extend this concept to 3-D output. Most of us don't have 3-D printers at home, and would have no use for one that just works in cheesy plastic. But imagine being able to email a 3-D spec file you scanned in the field to a service that would print, say, a replica of the gold ring you liked at the jewelry store. Not cheap, but a lot better than paying retail markup.
"They're hoping to slam hadrons together in sufficient quantity to form a sort of barrier out of them, and perhaps build Hadron's Wall!"
If they did build Hadron's Wall, watch for local villagers to cannibalize it to build cool Swiss stuff, such as long-lasting chocolate molds and impregnable safe deposit boxes.
Opening up medicine to the free market addresses the cost side, not the who-pays side of the medical equation. It does not have to mean that the poor will be tossed out into the snow to die. If the government and charity components of our healthcare system were to stay the same as now, they will be able to purchase more care for the same money in an open market than in the present cartelized system. So would ordinary people paying with their own money, either individually or through insurance arrangements.
And why does open market medicine have to be connected to some radical ideology? The whole idea that it does is just FUD from the monopolists. We enjoy a free market in electronics and computer technology without having to declare our allegiance to Ayn Rand.
"Can we ban all the assholes from the internet too? "
First, I would like to ban them from copilot jobs.
After an EMP attack, the phone in your pocket would still work. The bad news is that even if you could locate the eight or so other hipsters who might be wearing conductive pants, the communications infrastructure would still be fried.
Sooo...how many hitchhikers do you have buried in that basement, anyway? Just curious.
What I think is really happening is that the Pentagon realizes that the situation in the Middle East is degenerating into a civil war between Shiite and Sunni. Because except for the occasional special-ops crowdpleaser the US does not want to get involved in a religious war, we are handing the conflict off to the most powerful Shiite country, Iran. A nuclear Iran will then be a counterweight to the most powerful Sunni nation, Pakistan. Fire up the popcorn!
While I don't see the US government getting involved directly, Christians acting privately are another matter. What if our evangelicals realize that in their boundless political butthurt over the existence of homosexuality they are ignoring the fact that Christians are being slaughtered overseas expressly because of their religion. As the survivors' tales from Garissa spread, will the megachurches take on a Last Crusade as a project?
...That was not in the ore taken out of the ground in the first place?
Congratulations on being the one response that is not hiding as an AC. The whole idea of open records access, as described here, goes against engrained industry practice:
http://www.allgov.com/news/con...
And as for pricing, were you aware that in many states it is not even possible to find out the price of hospital procedures ahead of time. This explicitly prevents a patient from planning ahead, or from finding that gallbladder surgery at a first-class hospital in Mumbai can be had, including airfare, at a fraction of the domestic price.
And where do you see me ranting against the ACA? Given that the medical industry resists transparency and open markets, I welcome Obamacare. Let your industry bend over for a generation of governmental mandates and cost controls, then come back to us and tell us whether you still hate the free market as an alternative to your fourteenth-century Guild Of The Goldsmiths mentality.
I'm hoping for the Uberization of health care. There is no excuse for keeping medical information from the patient himself under the guise of "privacy," especially when governments get free and full access to the same data. Yes, a lot of people are faddish about health, but this is just as big a problem under today's locked-down system, and I resent having my right to self-discovery and choice of treatment limited because a minority of the gullible are following quack ideologies. In fact, believers in "supplements" and other nostra enjoy protected status under current law, while patients are rigidly prevented from getting open-market access to real medicine.
What our medical system really fears is not Obamacare, but the free market. To hospitals, doctors and pharma companies, socialism is just another set of rules they can game to keep their prices two orders of magnitude above the market.
And before that, your tax had paid for destruction of a private citizen's - oops, I mean "subject's" - computer out of sheer spite. The positive way of looking at this is that it creates work for people would be unemployable in the real economy.
"Not even funny. Someone please make it STOP!!!"
To do that, you have to turn off all the lights in this room, close the door, and then press the black STOP button, which then lights up black to indicate that your wish has been granted.
[Hushed chorus] Glad to be of service...
Yes, I'm aware that "asset forfeiture" is the catchall reason our government can use to steal private assets when it knows there is no law on its side, but trying to use this power internationally is going to elicit - I hope to hell, anyway - an armed response.
"I'm tired of these April Fool's articles!"
And I know this one is not a movie reference, so what stupid video game is it from?
I did better than this last year: http://slashdot.org/?page=2&vi...
Never made it out of Firehose, though. I composed another one this year which will undoubtedly share the same fate.
More technical nature, hell! I would settle for every joke not being exactly the same formula. Were these generated by a Windows XP freeware utility?
Who knew that legalization in Colorado would cause a catastrophic drop in the spice price, condemning Arrakis to widespread terrorism and civil war?
So why can't we trace ransomware transactions? They are always in BTC.
If the Chinese were really unconcerned about pollution, they would just keep building coal plants for the next century. They have plenty of the stuff. Instead, they are looking beyond coal. This includes building more new nuclear capacity than everyone else combined.
And no, not giving Wildflower Ludd Crystalbong veto power ever every application of science is not "longing for fascism."
But does the comsat experience give us experience in power beaming? Part of that experience has to be in the ground-side capture and conversion process - how reliable can we make it?
But is this the case in geosynchronous orbit?
When your government is full of engineers, not lawyers, and when you can just ignore the flat-earth lobby instead of wasting half your funding fighting their just-because-we-can delays, you can test ideas like this. If it can be made to work, it would mean baseload solar.
The biggest unknown is the microwave link to send power to Earth. Would locating the receiving antenna ("rectenna") array in the desert avoid weather interference? Would the beam wander? I don't see it as being usable as a weapon because a huge structure in space is easily disabled from the ground.
The next-biggest unknown is availability of construction materials. After the initial proof of concept, lugging large amounts is metals up the terrestrial gravity well is not goiong to be an option. This is an application for "local" metals, from the Moon or from the Belt. Implementation would have to wait until this supply becomes available.
"Safe until it kills millions when a plant blows up. "
Oooh, a major hyperbole leak. We need a retaining wall around Harvard.
If there is going to be a carbon market, then all energy producers get to trade in it. All carbon-free power producers can sell their credits to producers who are still emitting carbon in excess of this year's limit.
Learn to toe the party line, and you get grants and movie deals.