Yep. Back in the 70's and 80's 'alternate energy' was the hot buzzword... every goverment agency and a huge chunk of goverment research contracts were working hard on 'em.
Nope, you can edit the date when you create LJ entries. Despite that, the grandparents point still holds - if you are talented enough to create that much believable content, you don't need to.
How do you know they didn't have huge servers - just not huge enough? (Ditto for bandwidth, etc...)
Seriously, predicting traffic is pretty much a black art. Even if you build out for what you thought would be enough, you still could get caught flatfooted.
The chance for a gratuitous slam at Microsoft combined with a chance for drooling Google fanboyism in one story? How could you think the editors and Firehose voters would ever pass such a thing up?
If Gmail was designed by Microsoft, it might have included (from Day One) a UI with actual functional features - like a delete button. (It took Google months to move theirs from behind a drop down menu.) Or the ability to sort your mail. Etc... Etc..
What would be interesting is somebody homebrewing an EMP cannon and tracking system, then shooting these UAVs down when they cross a property line, then suing the city/county/state for putting them in the air over private property.
No lawyer worth his salt would take the suit - as it's long been established under the law that owners of private property don't own the airspace above them.
Would a suit based on the assumption that an overflight by a UAV be considered a warrantless search work against the authorities?
Maybe, maybe not. It's long been estabished in law that if it can be seen from the street - it ain't private.
Would the city/county/state arrest the property owner for 'destruction of government property', 'obstructing justice', or 'interfering with a criminal investigation' even if there is no clear-cut 'crimes' being committed and no warrants issued at the time of the overflight?
He'd be clearly guilty of the first - and arguably guilty of the second two. (Based on the argument that reducing the patrol capability of local LEO interferes with future LEO efforts regardless of the current situation. It would be interesting to see the case law on any criminals that have attempted to decoy the cops away prior to committing a crime.) You'd also likely be charged with reckless endangerment because the thing isn't going to be coming down on your land. (And if it comes down in mine, me and my insurance company will see you in civil court.)
Hmmmmmmmmmm. I think I'll head down to Radio Shack...
IANAL - but I'd have my affairs in order before doing so. You're likely to facing a long stretch up the river. (And rightfully so. This is no different than taking a baseball bat and a can of gasoline to a patrol car.)
The XO is pretty much agnostic when it comes to software and hardware,
I can order Classmate with a choice of three different OS's. (Windows or two different flavors of Linux.) With XO, I get what they choose for me. Who, exactly, is agnostic when it comes to software?
(Not to mention: So much for the argument that this all about Wintel lock in.)
The other problem with the Wintel offering is that it's not environmentally hardened like the XO. For a kid in a mud hut having a computer that can take intense amounts of punishment is very important
Not all poor children in the world are in mud huts without acess to electric power. Normally the Slashdot hivemind is all about consumer choice and against one-size-fits-all solutions... Except when it comes to OLPC it seems.
If Negreponte's goal is to get cheap laptops in the hands of poor children, why would he be angry? Those poor kids deserve choice, and competition from the Classmate provides that. So fewer kids get the XO, so what? Seems like Negreponte is letting his ego cloud his vision.
Because, as I've pointed out since practically Day One of the OLPC project - this isn't about getting cheap laptops in the hands of poor children. This is about Negroponte pushing his particular political slant on computing and communications.
"It's an education project, not a laptop project."
-- Nicholas Negroponte
Correct - but the education he seeks to provide isn't school or book learning - but his particular political slant on computing and communications. That's why Negroponte cries foul rather than defending OLPC, because he knows that he really doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Despite what we in the west think about the Russians, I strongly believe they will deliver on this given their track record.
Huh? Their track record over the last fifteen odd years is of one project after another that fails to materialize - or is delivered years late.
I guess it's not in them to seek publicity unlike we in the west.
That would explain the endless stream of glossy presentations, especially from their space industry, promising ever more wonderful accomplishments. (None of which, as noted above, have ever amounted to anything.)
Now for those who might think this post is "flamebait", I'd like to remind them that the Soviet Union, much of which became today's Russia had and still has the biggest, heaviest and highest-capacity flying aircraft in service today. And this was put in service more than ten years ago...again, with little fanfare.
It's not that your post is flamebait, it's just disconnected from the facts. The AN-225 was put into service nearly twenty years ago in the Soviet Union - with a great deal of fanfare. It was then mothballed with the fall of the Soviet Union. When it was placed back into service, it wasn't Russia that placed it in service - but a private company. While it did recieve a great deal of fanfare in the appropriate circles, like all cargo aircraft it was soundly ignored by the media. Comparing it with the A-380 is comparing apples and oranges.
Ohh, what about the Space Shuttle which continues to make news whenever it's to lift off or land. On this front, the Russians just fire their Soyuz craft as if it's just another chore!
Again the disconnection with facts... It may not make the Western media, but it does the Russian each time it launches or lands.
Do keep in mind that this is a Union Boss speaking the Union Party Line. He's not exactly disinterested in schemes that will mean more jobs and better job security for those whom he represents.
I think this guy is pretty much spot on. With 20 billion you can build LOTS of runways.
Just for reference, Denver's new airport cost five billion dollars. The new runway under construction at Sea-Tac will cost (according to current estimates) just over a billion dollars when it enters service next year. That twenty billion won't really go too far.
On top of that, a bunch of new runways (at existing airports or at new airports) won't gain as much as you might think. No matter how many new airports or runways you build - you can't build more airspace, and airspace is currently the real limit in most of America's big cities. Hence the FAA's push over the last decade and some to utilize existing airspace more efficiently.
The message is more than just 'nothing'. It's an active statement that "We feel that telecommuting is bad and we don't use it". I certainly wouldn't buy from a seller who doesn't believe in his own product.
Ah. So I shouldn't buy pizza from a guy who doesn't eat anything but pizza, 3 meals a day and 365 days a year?
Seriously, any company that would use telecommuting just because the phone company does, is idiotic. Equally, any company that wouldn't because the phone company doesn't is also idiot. Telecommuting, like pizza, is not a magic wand or a one-size-fits-all solution.
It seems to me that too many times identities have been concealed, preventing true community backlash against perpetrators.
Identities are concealed, as in this case, to protect the accused from community backlash. Folks often forget that the accused have rights as well. Forgeting to protect those rights, and encouraging a community backlash before they've had their day in court... Well that's headed back to bad old days of lynching and vigilante justice.
At every turn you have belittled any attempt to answer your points
For me to belittle your attempts to answer my points... you have to attempt to answer my points in the first place. Which you simply and plainly have not done. Instead, as in the message I am replying to, you rely on strawmen and hysteria.
I think we both agree that a rapid deflation of US currency cripples the US but how badly does it affect China?
Here's a hint: What happens to any country when it's biggest trading partner stops buying? This is Econ 101, not matter how much you wish to dodge it.
Why can't NASA work on a mission which will deposit 10's or 100's of rovers ?
Because any rover cheap enough to send in those numbers will a) be too small to have any useful scientific payload and b) be unlikely to survive long enough on the surface to use the science package it doesn't have anyhow.
A less obvious problem is that we don't have the communications bandwidth (either in orbit around Mars or earthbound as part of the DSN).
With modularized components built in (relatively) large quantities the marginal cost of sending 30 rovers to Mars should be minimal.
If you are sending around 30 rovers - you aren't building the modularized parts in any significant quantity. Another issue is that economies of scale don't actually kick in for specialized equipment like this in the same manner as it does for consumer grade stuff. Each rover will take thousands of man-hours of testing and verification - regardless of whether you build 30 or 300... These costs dwarf the minor savings in actual parts aquisition.
However imagine the coolness factor of 20 or 30 sojourners running around the surface of mars. You could split modularized science experiments up among them, having a basic structure and each having a set of modular science experiment units.
That actually drives costs up... as each individual configuation needs to be designed, verified, and tested.
Nope, she's wrong, and I hope the courts say so too. Preventing people from doing literary criticism and background is Death Eater stuff. I wrote a book that two different (and very successful) NYC lit agents loved, which failed to make it all because pubs fear Rowling, WB, Bloomsbury/Scholastic, and their lawyers.
No offense - but a quick look says to me that your book is exactly what Fair Use is meant to prevent. You've taken someone elses characters etc... and are using them for your own work. The agents aren't afraid, they just know the law.
So now it's rotting away on lulu.com, and whatever merit it contains is lost.
If the work contains any actual merit, it should be trivial to rewrite it to stand on it's own. (And if the agents you consulted knew what they were doing, they'd have told you that.)
Has free use really become so squashed and such a fairy-tale that you cannot even create factual works about someone elses work anymore? This is obvious free use and even with verbatim passages lifted from her book I still think that's free use.
It's obvious free use? Hardly.
Free use if for "...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research...", and this site meets none of those tests. It's a reference work and a summary, which are not protected.
Her concerns tend to be around keeping Harry "pure" - that is retaining control over how everything around it is presented, rather than wringing every last penny out of it.
Given the sheer amount of crap, and level of crap, that's been marketed as Harry Potter merchandise - I have a hard time swallowing this.
Slashdot Mirror
There's other forms of alternate energy than fusion. NASA, in particular, spent megabucks on windpower and solar cells. With little result.
Yep. Back in the 70's and 80's 'alternate energy' was the hot buzzword... every goverment agency and a huge chunk of goverment research contracts were working hard on 'em.
We see how that worked out.
Nope, you can edit the date when you create LJ entries. Despite that, the grandparents point still holds - if you are talented enough to create that much believable content, you don't need to.
How do you know they didn't have huge servers - just not huge enough? (Ditto for bandwidth, etc...)
Seriously, predicting traffic is pretty much a black art. Even if you build out for what you thought would be enough, you still could get caught flatfooted.
The chance for a gratuitous slam at Microsoft combined with a chance for drooling Google fanboyism in one story? How could you think the editors and Firehose voters would ever pass such a thing up?
If Gmail was designed by Microsoft, it might have included (from Day One) a UI with actual functional features - like a delete button. (It took Google months to move theirs from behind a drop down menu.) Or the ability to sort your mail. Etc... Etc..
Has it ever occured to you that not all poor children live in mud huts a hundred miles from anywhere?
No lawyer worth his salt would take the suit - as it's long been established under the law that owners of private property don't own the airspace above them.
Maybe, maybe not. It's long been estabished in law that if it can be seen from the street - it ain't private.
He'd be clearly guilty of the first - and arguably guilty of the second two. (Based on the argument that reducing the patrol capability of local LEO interferes with future LEO efforts regardless of the current situation. It would be interesting to see the case law on any criminals that have attempted to decoy the cops away prior to committing a crime.) You'd also likely be charged with reckless endangerment because the thing isn't going to be coming down on your land. (And if it comes down in mine, me and my insurance company will see you in civil court.)
IANAL - but I'd have my affairs in order before doing so. You're likely to facing a long stretch up the river. (And rightfully so. This is no different than taking a baseball bat and a can of gasoline to a patrol car.)
I can order Classmate with a choice of three different OS's. (Windows or two different flavors of Linux.) With XO, I get what they choose for me. Who, exactly, is agnostic when it comes to software?
(Not to mention: So much for the argument that this all about Wintel lock in.)
Not all poor children in the world are in mud huts without acess to electric power. Normally the Slashdot hivemind is all about consumer choice and against one-size-fits-all solutions... Except when it comes to OLPC it seems.
Because, as I've pointed out since practically Day One of the OLPC project - this isn't about getting cheap laptops in the hands of poor children. This is about Negroponte pushing his particular political slant on computing and communications.
Correct - but the education he seeks to provide isn't school or book learning - but his particular political slant on computing and communications. That's why Negroponte cries foul rather than defending OLPC, because he knows that he really doesn't have a leg to stand on.
Huh? Their track record over the last fifteen odd years is of one project after another that fails to materialize - or is delivered years late.
That would explain the endless stream of glossy presentations, especially from their space industry, promising ever more wonderful accomplishments. (None of which, as noted above, have ever amounted to anything.)
It's not that your post is flamebait, it's just disconnected from the facts. The AN-225 was put into service nearly twenty years ago in the Soviet Union - with a great deal of fanfare. It was then mothballed with the fall of the Soviet Union. When it was placed back into service, it wasn't Russia that placed it in service - but a private company. While it did recieve a great deal of fanfare in the appropriate circles, like all cargo aircraft it was soundly ignored by the media. Comparing it with the A-380 is comparing apples and oranges.
Again the disconnection with facts... It may not make the Western media, but it does the Russian each time it launches or lands.
Just for reference, Denver's new airport cost five billion dollars. The new runway under construction at Sea-Tac will cost (according to current estimates) just over a billion dollars when it enters service next year. That twenty billion won't really go too far.
On top of that, a bunch of new runways (at existing airports or at new airports) won't gain as much as you might think. No matter how many new airports or runways you build - you can't build more airspace, and airspace is currently the real limit in most of America's big cities. Hence the FAA's push over the last decade and some to utilize existing airspace more efficiently.
That would be "stereotypes FTW" Bob!. Or, in other words, _not_. (Zero Kindles for auction ATM.)
I didn't miss anything. It's hardly inconvienent to call a friend as ask for directions to his house if you've not been there before.
What, you can't give them directions?
Ah. So I shouldn't buy pizza from a guy who doesn't eat anything but pizza, 3 meals a day and 365 days a year?
Seriously, any company that would use telecommuting just because the phone company does, is idiotic. Equally, any company that wouldn't because the phone company doesn't is also idiot. Telecommuting, like pizza, is not a magic wand or a one-size-fits-all solution.
Identities are concealed, as in this case, to protect the accused from community backlash. Folks often forget that the accused have rights as well. Forgeting to protect those rights, and encouraging a community backlash before they've had their day in court... Well that's headed back to bad old days of lynching and vigilante justice.
The DC system in question wasn't used for mains power - but was a seperate distribution system for elevators, large motors, etc... etc...
For me to belittle your attempts to answer my points... you have to attempt to answer my points in the first place. Which you simply and plainly have not done. Instead, as in the message I am replying to, you rely on strawmen and hysteria.
Here's a hint: What happens to any country when it's biggest trading partner stops buying? This is Econ 101, not matter how much you wish to dodge it.
Because any rover cheap enough to send in those numbers will a) be too small to have any useful scientific payload and b) be unlikely to survive long enough on the surface to use the science package it doesn't have anyhow.
A less obvious problem is that we don't have the communications bandwidth (either in orbit around Mars or earthbound as part of the DSN).
If you are sending around 30 rovers - you aren't building the modularized parts in any significant quantity. Another issue is that economies of scale don't actually kick in for specialized equipment like this in the same manner as it does for consumer grade stuff. Each rover will take thousands of man-hours of testing and verification - regardless of whether you build 30 or 300... These costs dwarf the minor savings in actual parts aquisition.
That actually drives costs up... as each individual configuation needs to be designed, verified, and tested.
No offense - but a quick look says to me that your book is exactly what Fair Use is meant to prevent. You've taken someone elses characters etc... and are using them for your own work. The agents aren't afraid, they just know the law.
If the work contains any actual merit, it should be trivial to rewrite it to stand on it's own. (And if the agents you consulted knew what they were doing, they'd have told you that.)
Your moral basics tell you it's OK to claim someone elses work for your own?
It's obvious free use? Hardly.
Free use if for "...criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, or research...", and this site meets none of those tests. It's a reference work and a summary, which are not protected.
Given the sheer amount of crap, and level of crap, that's been marketed as Harry Potter merchandise - I have a hard time swallowing this.