Instead of invading Iraq and Afghanistan, we would have nuked the Tora Bora fortress and then dismantled Saudi Arabia, doing whatever it might have taken to eliminate the Wahhabi influence on Islam.
Actually, long-term it's going to be the other way around. California coastal towns have already started desalinating, even though they currently have to use the expensive reverse-osmosis technology. As soon as the nerds at Caltech figure out how to apply graphene, the cost will drop exponentially and the big California cities will be able to make their own water. This will take the strain off inland water sources for a time, after which California will be actually shipping water inland in exchange for the power that it refuses to generate for itself.
How do I know this will be the next big thing? Look at the major environmentalist sites, and you will see that the flat-earther lobby is already lining up against desalination. Why would they have against a technology that, apart from cost, has no downside? Because they know it will be next big thing for humans to benefit from.
That's why the second terrorist group to try this technique will probably use the more difficult but effective technique of infecting the shrapnel rods that a BUK explosion scatters through the nearby target, including the bodies of any humans. If this had happened in MH17 it would have, given the looting that occurred after the crash, been a very efficient way of slaughtering the whole Ukrainian separatist army and infecting any number of Russian "advisers."
all it takes is for one of said nutjobs to smear Ebola on the tips of the BUK missiles that radical sheikhs are undoubtedly buying for them as we speak, and the next mystery plane crash becomes an ideal distribution site for the disease. This would include the NTSB teams that are routinely dispatched from Washington to help investigate.
This morning's breaking news is that a mystery plane crash just occurred in West Africa.
Re:Consider Apple's latest Xcode IDE with Swift
on
'Just Let Me Code!'
·
· Score: 1
My first language was Fortran on the IBM 1410, in 1965. No, we didn't ride horses then.
It's worse than that. Pollution is highly specific to the existence of given technology at a given stage of development. How long, on astronomical time scales, would a given planetary atmosphere contain iodine-131 (half life 8 days) or even coal smoke, before more advanced versions of the same technology, or a different technology entirely, succeeds the one emitting the pollutant?
Furthermore, we can only detect as pollutants substances that we already know about as side effects of our own civilization. If we were to look at some exoplenet and detect an oxygen atmosphere that has scandium dust in it, or which absorbs slightly more yellow that we think it should, we would have no way of associating this effect with possible intelligence until we experience the same kind of pollution ourselves.
Consider Apple's latest Xcode IDE with Swift
on
'Just Let Me Code!'
·
· Score: 2
This new language is as much fun to code in as Python without the pure-interpretive overhead. The latest Xcode includes a "playground" prototyping space that makes it easy to experiment with pure code, including library API calls, before cementing your work into the application framework of iOS or OS X. Right now it's a one-manufacturer language, and still beta, but something tells me it's going to spread.
I stick with the DVD plan, because it gives me access to the whole library of movies and TV shows. The tiny fraction of that library available for streaming is a joke. Netflix keeps wanting more people to stream, but this problem is the major inhibitor.
What I would like to see Apple do with its immense cash hoard is to buy Hollywood. Not the whole thing, of course, because we would just be swapping one monopoly for another, but a substantial vertical slice of it. As soon as consumers are able to get current TV shows as well as movies on a low-cost subscription model without all the silly rules and restrictions, the rest of the entertainment industry will see the light and set up a similar system. Netflix streaming could be a major beneficiary of this process.
The move dooms Microsoft to irrelevance by preventing it from using the talent necessary to fix Windows' problems. BUT - without Microsoft to absorb the accusations of "monopoly" by economic know-nothings (at any given time in any market, there is always a largest player. This does not make that player a monopolist), it will now be Apple's turn in the barrel.
Markets can't solve every problem, but because the open market is the direct extension in human affairs of biological competition in natural ecosystems, it is a default mode of operation in human nature. Widespread cheating is what you get when a society imposes socialism in a variety of situations where an open market would work perfectly well.
Not for nothing is 'cheating' an anagram of 'teaching'.
Cue the hipsters who suddenly discover how much they loved the smell of the leather-bound first edition computer magazines of their youth, and how much better these were than digital.
The major banks now give you the ability to transfer money to individuals without having to use an expensive wire or set them up on ACH. These are designed to directly compete with PayPal. See if your bank has one.
The same problem exists in human communications, and we're addressing it by developing a pictographic communication mode that works like Japanese kanji. Instead of having that sign at the rim of the Grand Canyon say Keep Back in an ever-proliferating number of tourist languages, we use a pictograph of a person falling down a slope.
And besides, hasn't urban California decided that it now hates tech and the commuter buses it rides in on? As for rural California, just try to get past zoning approval for anything that isn't beige.
As with any other medium, Sturgeon's Law applies to TV. THere's a flood of dreck out there, but the best TV is better than ever. Has your PBS affiliate ever carried "The Wire," "Six Feet Under," "The SImpsons," "Breaking Bad" or "Halt and Catch Fire" ?
In 1988 when the big nuclear three-holer went in near Phoenix, utility ratepayers were aghast at the idea of paying $2 billion apiece for the reactors. Today, we're all thankful now that the plant is the state's lowest cost provider of power.
Meanwhile, just across the line, the People's Republic of California just paid $2.2 billion for the Ivanpah solar thermal plant, which will generate 0.4 GW compared to our 6 GW, and at much higher operating cost. Ivanpah's cost was also grossly inflated by a slightly less maniacal version of the same useless lawsuits and regulatory delays that plague nuclear construction. The Luddite strategy for any type of energy construction is delay, delay,. delay. As bonding interest steadily ticks upward with time, you can eventually make any project cost too much.
The problem isn't subsidies. we need to fix our legal system to strip Luddies of the legal standing to interfere with vital infrastructure.
Now we wish we had gone farther with those initial, aborted experiments in cetacean communication years ago. But in the absence of being able to issue warnings in "dolphin language" the idea of ramping up a series of smaller blasts before each 'big one' could work. This is how the redeye-reduction mode on a camera flash works.
The primary accomplishment of my generation, the Boomers, was to start a meme in which hatred of every new technological advance was the default position. On the day of the first Apollo landing, when I was 21, the Greatest Generation was glued to its TV sets while we Boomers were out protesting against the "astropigs." Today, this is why you young people are mostly out of work.
And we didn't invent the Internet either. It slipped through our clutches because it has no single large facilities, like power plants or launch stands, that we could legislate out of existence.
Slashdot Mirror
Instead of invading Iraq and Afghanistan, we would have nuked the Tora Bora fortress and then dismantled Saudi Arabia, doing whatever it might have taken to eliminate the Wahhabi influence on Islam.
Actually, long-term it's going to be the other way around. California coastal towns have already started desalinating, even though they currently have to use the expensive reverse-osmosis technology. As soon as the nerds at Caltech figure out how to apply graphene, the cost will drop exponentially and the big California cities will be able to make their own water. This will take the strain off inland water sources for a time, after which California will be actually shipping water inland in exchange for the power that it refuses to generate for itself.
How do I know this will be the next big thing? Look at the major environmentalist sites, and you will see that the flat-earther lobby is already lining up against desalination. Why would they have against a technology that, apart from cost, has no downside? Because they know it will be next big thing for humans to benefit from.
That's why the second terrorist group to try this technique will probably use the more difficult but effective technique of infecting the shrapnel rods that a BUK explosion scatters through the nearby target, including the bodies of any humans. If this had happened in MH17 it would have, given the looting that occurred after the crash, been a very efficient way of slaughtering the whole Ukrainian separatist army and infecting any number of Russian "advisers."
Speaking of bread in the gene pool, let's all hope that your hot dog never finds a hot dog bun.
They get porous boarders in Chicago all the time. You're not safe unless you're an owner and no closer than Schaumburg.
all it takes is for one of said nutjobs to smear Ebola on the tips of the BUK missiles that radical sheikhs are undoubtedly buying for them as we speak, and the next mystery plane crash becomes an ideal distribution site for the disease. This would include the NTSB teams that are routinely dispatched from Washington to help investigate.
This morning's breaking news is that a mystery plane crash just occurred in West Africa.
My first language was Fortran on the IBM 1410, in 1965. No, we didn't ride horses then.
It's worse than that. Pollution is highly specific to the existence of given technology at a given stage of development. How long, on astronomical time scales, would a given planetary atmosphere contain iodine-131 (half life 8 days) or even coal smoke, before more advanced versions of the same technology, or a different technology entirely, succeeds the one emitting the pollutant?
Furthermore, we can only detect as pollutants substances that we already know about as side effects of our own civilization. If we were to look at some exoplenet and detect an oxygen atmosphere that has scandium dust in it, or which absorbs slightly more yellow that we think it should, we would have no way of associating this effect with possible intelligence until we experience the same kind of pollution ourselves.
This new language is as much fun to code in as Python without the pure-interpretive overhead. The latest Xcode includes a "playground" prototyping space that makes it easy to experiment with pure code, including library API calls, before cementing your work into the application framework of iOS or OS X. Right now it's a one-manufacturer language, and still beta, but something tells me it's going to spread.
I stick with the DVD plan, because it gives me access to the whole library of movies and TV shows. The tiny fraction of that library available for streaming is a joke. Netflix keeps wanting more people to stream, but this problem is the major inhibitor.
What I would like to see Apple do with its immense cash hoard is to buy Hollywood. Not the whole thing, of course, because we would just be swapping one monopoly for another, but a substantial vertical slice of it. As soon as consumers are able to get current TV shows as well as movies on a low-cost subscription model without all the silly rules and restrictions, the rest of the entertainment industry will see the light and set up a similar system. Netflix streaming could be a major beneficiary of this process.
Ben 'n Jerry's flavor name: Solargreen
Baskin-Robbins: Peanut Algae
Dreyer's: Verde Vivacious
The move dooms Microsoft to irrelevance by preventing it from using the talent necessary to fix Windows' problems. BUT - without Microsoft to absorb the accusations of "monopoly" by economic know-nothings (at any given time in any market, there is always a largest player. This does not make that player a monopolist), it will now be Apple's turn in the barrel.
Markets can't solve every problem, but because the open market is the direct extension in human affairs of biological competition in natural ecosystems, it is a default mode of operation in human nature. Widespread cheating is what you get when a society imposes socialism in a variety of situations where an open market would work perfectly well.
Not for nothing is 'cheating' an anagram of 'teaching'.
Cue the hipsters who suddenly discover how much they loved the smell of the leather-bound first edition computer magazines of their youth, and how much better these were than digital.
The major banks now give you the ability to transfer money to individuals without having to use an expensive wire or set them up on ACH. These are designed to directly compete with PayPal. See if your bank has one.
The same problem exists in human communications, and we're addressing it by developing a pictographic communication mode that works like Japanese kanji. Instead of having that sign at the rim of the Grand Canyon say Keep Back in an ever-proliferating number of tourist languages, we use a pictograph of a person falling down a slope.
And besides, hasn't urban California decided that it now hates tech and the commuter buses it rides in on? As for rural California, just try to get past zoning approval for anything that isn't beige.
Because at that point, it will have used up all the iron ore on Earth for its server storage.
Now my online backup service will smash into my monthly usage cap in the first hour it runs.
When we have rovers that can drill into the icy moons, we will be able to test that idea right in our own solar system.
As with any other medium, Sturgeon's Law applies to TV. THere's a flood of dreck out there, but the best TV is better than ever. Has your PBS affiliate ever carried "The Wire," "Six Feet Under," "The SImpsons," "Breaking Bad" or "Halt and Catch Fire" ?
May your fixie be run over by a bus.
In 1988 when the big nuclear three-holer went in near Phoenix, utility ratepayers were aghast at the idea of paying $2 billion apiece for the reactors. Today, we're all thankful now that the plant is the state's lowest cost provider of power.
Meanwhile, just across the line, the People's Republic of California just paid $2.2 billion for the Ivanpah solar thermal plant, which will generate 0.4 GW compared to our 6 GW, and at much higher operating cost. Ivanpah's cost was also grossly inflated by a slightly less maniacal version of the same useless lawsuits and regulatory delays that plague nuclear construction. The Luddite strategy for any type of energy construction is delay, delay,. delay. As bonding interest steadily ticks upward with time, you can eventually make any project cost too much.
The problem isn't subsidies. we need to fix our legal system to strip Luddies of the legal standing to interfere with vital infrastructure.
Now we wish we had gone farther with those initial, aborted experiments in cetacean communication years ago. But in the absence of being able to issue warnings in "dolphin language" the idea of ramping up a series of smaller blasts before each 'big one' could work. This is how the redeye-reduction mode on a camera flash works.
The primary accomplishment of my generation, the Boomers, was to start a meme in which hatred of every new technological advance was the default position. On the day of the first Apollo landing, when I was 21, the Greatest Generation was glued to its TV sets while we Boomers were out protesting against the "astropigs." Today, this is why you young people are mostly out of work.
And we didn't invent the Internet either. It slipped through our clutches because it has no single large facilities, like power plants or launch stands, that we could legislate out of existence.