But what if it does? What you're seeing is the tip of the iceberg. When you get sent to some sort of prison or get fined thousands of dollars per "infraction" I think bypassing filters will be like rolling back your odometer in your car. Technically trivial, but few will dare...
And no, the people will NOT rebel. They will swallow the "we're protecting you from child pornographers and terrorists" line whole -- if not right away, 5-10 years from now.
Cinquin P, Gondran C, Giroud F, Mazabrard S, Pellissier A, et al. (2010) A Glucose BioFuel Cell Implanted in Rats. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10476. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010476
Abstract Powering future generations of implanted medical devices will require cumbersome transcutaneous energy transfer or harvesting energy from the human body. No functional solution that harvests power from the body is currently available, despite attempts to use the Seebeck thermoelectric effect, vibrations or body movements. Glucose fuel cells appear more promising, since they produce electrical energy from glucose and dioxygen, two substrates present in physiological fluids. The most powerful ones, Glucose BioFuel Cells (GBFCs), are based on enzymes electrically wired by redox mediators. However, GBFCs cannot be implanted in animals, mainly because the enzymes they rely on either require low pH or are inhibited by chloride or urate anions, present in the Extra Cellular Fluid (ECF). Here we present the first functional implantable GBFC, working in the retroperitoneal space of freely moving rats. The breakthrough relies on the design of a new family of GBFCs, characterized by an innovative and simple mechanical confinement of various enzymes and redox mediators: enzymes are no longer covalently bound to the surface of the electron collectors, which enables use of a wide variety of enzymes and redox mediators, augments the quantity of active enzymes, and simplifies GBFC construction. Our most efficient GBFC was based on composite graphite discs containing glucose oxidase and ubiquinone at the anode, polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and quinone at the cathode. PPO reduces dioxygen into water, at pH 7 and in the presence of chloride ions and urates at physiological concentrations. This GBFC, with electrodes of 0.133 mL, produced a peak specific power of 24.4 microwatt/ mL, which is better than pacemakers' requirements and paves the way for the development of a new generation of implantable artificial organs, covering a wide range of medical applications.
I'm afraid the author used the same sleazy addiction strategies he discusses on his five-page article with hard-coded returns (preventing me from zooming in too much, causing me to squint and pay more attention) to force me to somehow keep reading to the wishy-washy end.
The gist of the article: such strategies exist, and we (designers of such games, including the author) use them mercilessly to suck away your time/money. This was inevitable because of the gamer behavior data left behind by several generations of hard-core gamers.
That, and the fact that "social game designers" do not touch their products any more than heroin dealers:)
While I fully support what the scientists in the TFA are trying to do, I believe there is a danger that the sophomoric intellegentsia here (on/. that is) will see the headline and think "see, technology can solve the extinction problem, no need to worry" and go on to merrily support misguided and unsustainable policies.
Species extinction, ecosystem loss, and general loss of biodiversity are not a bad source code commits that you can simply roll back with enough technology.
You know, Google has to get this information from somewhere. I can't even count the times when I Googled something, only to find 15 other people who've asked the same question, and nothing but snarky replies saying "just Google it you moron!"
Suggestion for you: just don't click on any "Ask Slashdot" links and leave this feature for those of us who actually want to learn something...
There is no shame in asking -- nobody is born knowing everything.
This is how they touted CDs in the earl 1990s. Tapes from the early 1980s are still playable (despite physical abuse), and can be repaired easily if they are not. It's a rare CD which lasts 10 years under non-archive conditions.
By the time this technology is proved useless, they will have made their money and retired!
(or perhaps this is a good thing and I'm being too cynical -- but they'd better have a self-powered player unit that will live as long as the media -- or human-readable plans to build one)
To accomplish this, each of the individuals in the models "talked" to each other about their opinion. If the listener held the same opinions as the speaker, it reinforced the listener's belief. If the opinion was different, the listener considered it and moved on to talk to another person. If that person also held this new belief, the listener then adopted that belief.
In the real world, I think you could very easily have two groups of true believers holding mutually exclusive beliefs who each comprise more than 10% of the society
>> but instead pause in lament for the majority and progress in general
I always do! The other thing I try to do is leave as soon as possible if the company I happen to be working for is the one that has been acquired (former co-workers are inevitably laid off several months later). I hate mergers more as a customer since I've never seen service _NOT_ suffer... (the exception might be the acquisition of KeyHole by Google to form Google Earth)
They are in the business of selling data access. Just charge an extra $10/GB (or whatever the market will bear) and be done with it, and quit lying to customers about having sold them an "unlimited" plan in the first place.
There is something seriously innovation-chilling about the company dictating what the source of the data is...
For now, maybe. But in the future, choosing your participation in Facebook may be like choosing your degree of participation in the Internet.
Think about it: 20 years ago, if you wanted to buy a plane ticket you could look in your Yellow Pages, find a travel agent, and call them up to find you something at a reasonable price. You could go to a college campus and pick up a printed course catalog. Gadgets used to come with printed manuals instead of URLs where you can download them. The Internet is not exactly "voluntary" except for the most hard-core of Luddites.
In the same way, I'm seeing companies starting to advertise their Facebook pages and twitter accounts instead of web pages. It may not be long before mainstream businesses become Facebook only and force you to log in before you even see their content. What this does is erode the non-identity-based ecosystem that has evolved on the Internet. There are pages that won't let you comment on forums without having a Facebook account. The Internet will still be there, but you may see an uncomfortable amount of content go behind a "Facebook wall" instead of the "paywalls" we used to fear.
Fixed that for you. Do you really want Facebook to know the phone numbers of everyone you call with Skype and share it with 300 of your closest friends in one of their inevitable revisions of "privacy" practices?
I like Skype -- I'm a paying customer. I like Facebook. I wouldn't trust Facebook (the company) with anything that I don't mind becoming 100% public, including my credit card, and use it with that knowledge in mind. I am not necessarily interested in Skypeing with my Facebook friends or the awkwardness of socially networking with my Skype contacts (who are mostly business collaborators). [One would hope that everyone has learned the lesson of Google Buzz].
I don't like the fact that the Internet is turning into AOL 2012.
One of the stupidest tech questions I've heard in a while. I haven't read the TFA, of course:)
The iPad is shiny, substantial, and satisfying. A bit like a big, juicy steak. Not cheap, not good for you or the ecosystem, but darn delicious. Both sell primarily because of the satisfaction they bring to their consumers.
A phone, on the other hand, does its basic function well even without a visible operating system. It's also something you need and will buy without too much thought. It's like the Taco Bell burrito. Android is its soy-based, meat-flavored filling. Practically free to the manufacturer, and good enough for its purpose.
Though you tolerate soy-filled Mexican fare for $5, you won't order grilled tofu when you go out to eat in a fine restaurant where you'll be shelling out $100. You order a steak -- unless you're a vegetarian or an eco-freak. In the same way, you won't spend $800 on a half-baked Android tablet -- you'll buy an iPad -- unless, of course, you're an Apple-hater or an open-source freak:)
Until Android tablets become dirt cheap or the user experience improves significantly (including a decent market where everything works on every machine), only the vegetarian eco-freaks amongst us will be asking the question in the article!
He'd have my vote, regardless of party affiliation! I'll even support any presidenntial aspriations he might have, if he runs on this platform. (No, I haven't read the article and don't know what party he belongs to yet...)
Seriously, NASA has more than enough brainpower to build a city on the Moon or Mars. It doesn't necessarily even lack funding -- what it needs is focus and direction. (And to not have any project with a chance of getting anwhere canceled every two years, only to be reborn under a different name with all the progress lost. And to get rid of 90% of their non-engineer bureaucrats who have no interest whatsoever in getting to space)
The best thing GW did, IMHO, was to give that one speech giving NASA the goal of going back to the moon and then to Mars.
The US clings to the imperial system because it can. The rest of the world is mostly irrelevant to the average person here in a way that an outsider would find difficult to comprehend.
The US was an early adopter of a lot of technologies, and any change is hard. Lots of imperial stuff is ingrained in engineering and industry too. (For example: any railroad person here knows that a mile has 5280 feet in it and thinks of track widths, etc. in feet -- you'd be in for some chaos if you tried to get them to think in meters all of a sudden).
When you have the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the world, you can justify all sorts of nonsense to yourself (Fahrenheit feels more natural, feet are easier to eyeball, etc.)
This is a testament to both how powerful the US is, and how the average person is unimaginably far from having (or even needing) a global mindset.
My advice to anyone who moves here: do your calculations in metric in the privacy of your own mind, but don't even think about mentioning grams or kilos anyone else unless you're a scientist or a drug dealer:)
I remember reading (years ago) in a popular science magazine that someone was proposing using iron filings and steam to generate H2 on-board for use in fuel cells. Iron oxide is a heck of a lot easier to re-form back into iron than any Aluminum salt or oxide is, I'm sure. (You could use electricity, or better yet, coal, which would make the "clean" coal people throw money at the idea).
(Fe + 3H20 = FeO3 +3H2 I believe)
Of course, getting H2 out of reacting a metal with an acid or a base is not necessarily a novel idea...but I haven't heard of anyone using it to run a fuel cell yet...
"It made a single last leap into the air coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ban feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame gun with him."
While people have the right to belong to whatever types of groups they wish online, this desire is indicative of a deeper problem in their culture. They need someone like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to recognize what is unarguably broken and reform it from within.
"To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West"
-- Kinross, Ataturk, The Rebirth of a Nation, p. 343
Who were apparently educated by teachers like this one.
Her comments, actually, are not about specific students but what she would like to have available as report card comments. Still inappropriate and not very smart blogging in such an identifiable manner.
Here's a Google cache, which I'm sure will go away, leaving us with 4th hand rehashed content as a 'primary' source in this story
For reasons beyond my own control, I'm stuck with Firefox 2.0 on the machine I generally use, and the layout does not work for me. It may be good to do some backward compatibility testing, or just SIMPLIFY the layout and go back to 1.0 IMHO
There is a certain percentage of people for whom stereoscopic 3D (as implemented today) will just not work. These people need to stop writing editorials and go do something more productive. The solutions to the issues of vergence and accommodation (focus) are possible, but will take a little while to become commercial.
By the way, I've seen Captain EO (the ONE 3D movie edited by Murch, on whose letter Ebert bases his opinion) and I was NOT impressed...
3D will _never_ work for the following people:
* People who are stereo blind (i.e., don't see 3D in real life either)
* People who are extremely sensitive to motion artifacts
* People who are watching badly made 3D (i.e., converted from 2D, or edited badly)
* People who think it's a good idea to watch anything 3D for more than 2-3 hours at a time at the current level of technology
3D _might_ work for the following people with some more exposure, but probably won't:
* People who've never worn glasses and can't handle the thought of something on their face
* People who are extremely sensitive to vergence (how the eyes are positioned relative to each other) and accommodation (focus) mismatches
* People who get motion sick easily
There are many "killer apps" for this tech over the horizon unless people who delight in bashing things they themselves can't appreciate "win".
Hint: The "killer apps" will probably not be the 3D-ization of current media such as news broadcasts or handheld consoles.
--- “Well-informed people know it’s impossible to transmit voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.” The Boston Post, 1865.
Slashdot Mirror
Mod parent up -- this is probably the best suggestion yet!
That's the FIRST thing that came to my mind! Perhaps it is best that they live 10,000 meters below the surface...
But what if it does? What you're seeing is the tip of the iceberg. When you get sent to some sort of prison or get fined thousands of dollars per "infraction" I think bypassing filters will be like rolling back your odometer in your car. Technically trivial, but few will dare...
And no, the people will NOT rebel. They will swallow the "we're protecting you from child pornographers and terrorists" line whole -- if not right away, 5-10 years from now.
A Glucose BioFuel Cell Implanted in Rats
Cinquin P, Gondran C, Giroud F, Mazabrard S, Pellissier A, et al. (2010) A Glucose BioFuel Cell Implanted in Rats. PLoS ONE 5(5): e10476. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0010476
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0010476
Very interesting, and worth the read -- I think.
I'm afraid the author used the same sleazy addiction strategies he discusses on his five-page article with hard-coded returns (preventing me from zooming in too much, causing me to squint and pay more attention) to force me to somehow keep reading to the wishy-washy end.
The gist of the article: such strategies exist, and we (designers of such games, including the author) use them mercilessly to suck away your time/money. This was inevitable because of the gamer behavior data left behind by several generations of hard-core gamers.
That, and the fact that "social game designers" do not touch their products any more than heroin dealers :)
Same with me, but I haven't had the time to experiment. Thanks a lot for the link!
Build a camera array similar to what Stanford has done (see http://graphics.stanford.edu/projects/array/ ) for fast imaging, or building a camera array to refocus images after the fact (see http://lightfield.stanford.edu/ ).
Otherwise, you could do your own "bullet-time" live spin-around imaging system by placing them around a circular room.
While I fully support what the scientists in the TFA are trying to do, I believe there is a danger that the sophomoric intellegentsia here (on /. that is) will see the headline and think "see, technology can solve the extinction problem, no need to worry" and go on to merrily support misguided and unsustainable policies.
Species extinction, ecosystem loss, and general loss of biodiversity are not a bad source code commits that you can simply roll back with enough technology.
You know, Google has to get this information from somewhere. I can't even count the times when I Googled something, only to find 15 other people who've asked the same question, and nothing but snarky replies saying "just Google it you moron!"
Suggestion for you: just don't click on any "Ask Slashdot" links and leave this feature for those of us who actually want to learn something...
There is no shame in asking -- nobody is born knowing everything.
This is how they touted CDs in the earl 1990s. Tapes from the early 1980s are still playable (despite physical abuse), and can be repaired easily if they are not. It's a rare CD which lasts 10 years under non-archive conditions.
By the time this technology is proved useless, they will have made their money and retired!
(or perhaps this is a good thing and I'm being too cynical -- but they'd better have a self-powered player unit that will live as long as the media -- or human-readable plans to build one)
In the real world, I think you could very easily have two groups of true believers holding mutually exclusive beliefs who each comprise more than 10% of the society
>> but instead pause in lament for the majority and progress in general
I always do! The other thing I try to do is leave as soon as possible if the company I happen to be working for is the one that has been acquired (former co-workers are inevitably laid off several months later). I hate mergers more as a customer since I've never seen service _NOT_ suffer... (the exception might be the acquisition of KeyHole by Google to form Google Earth)
They are in the business of selling data access. Just charge an extra $10/GB (or whatever the market will bear) and be done with it, and quit lying to customers about having sold them an "unlimited" plan in the first place.
There is something seriously innovation-chilling about the company dictating what the source of the data is...
For now, maybe. But in the future, choosing your participation in Facebook may be like choosing your degree of participation in the Internet.
Think about it: 20 years ago, if you wanted to buy a plane ticket you could look in your Yellow Pages, find a travel agent, and call them up to find you something at a reasonable price. You could go to a college campus and pick up a printed course catalog. Gadgets used to come with printed manuals instead of URLs where you can download them. The Internet is not exactly "voluntary" except for the most hard-core of Luddites.
In the same way, I'm seeing companies starting to advertise their Facebook pages and twitter accounts instead of web pages. It may not be long before mainstream businesses become Facebook only and force you to log in before you even see their content. What this does is erode the non-identity-based ecosystem that has evolved on the Internet. There are pages that won't let you comment on forums without having a Facebook account. The Internet will still be there, but you may see an uncomfortable amount of content go behind a "Facebook wall" instead of the "paywalls" we used to fear.
Privacy in China at stake
* Privacy Everywhere at Stake *
Fixed that for you. Do you really want Facebook to know the phone numbers of everyone you call with Skype and share it with 300 of your closest friends in one of their inevitable revisions of "privacy" practices?
I like Skype -- I'm a paying customer. I like Facebook. I wouldn't trust Facebook (the company) with anything that I don't mind becoming 100% public, including my credit card, and use it with that knowledge in mind. I am not necessarily interested in Skypeing with my Facebook friends or the awkwardness of socially networking with my Skype contacts (who are mostly business collaborators). [One would hope that everyone has learned the lesson of Google Buzz].
I don't like the fact that the Internet is turning into AOL 2012.
One of the stupidest tech questions I've heard in a while. I haven't read the TFA, of course :)
The iPad is shiny, substantial, and satisfying. A bit like a big, juicy steak. Not cheap, not good for you or the ecosystem, but darn delicious. Both sell primarily because of the satisfaction they bring to their consumers.
A phone, on the other hand, does its basic function well even without a visible operating system. It's also something you need and will buy without too much thought. It's like the Taco Bell burrito. Android is its soy-based, meat-flavored filling. Practically free to the manufacturer, and good enough for its purpose.
Though you tolerate soy-filled Mexican fare for $5, you won't order grilled tofu when you go out to eat in a fine restaurant where you'll be shelling out $100. You order a steak -- unless you're a vegetarian or an eco-freak. In the same way, you won't spend $800 on a half-baked Android tablet -- you'll buy an iPad -- unless, of course, you're an Apple-hater or an open-source freak :)
Until Android tablets become dirt cheap or the user experience improves significantly (including a decent market where everything works on every machine), only the vegetarian eco-freaks amongst us will be asking the question in the article!
He'd have my vote, regardless of party affiliation! I'll even support any presidenntial aspriations he might have, if he runs on this platform. (No, I haven't read the article and don't know what party he belongs to yet...)
Seriously, NASA has more than enough brainpower to build a city on the Moon or Mars. It doesn't necessarily even lack funding -- what it needs is focus and direction. (And to not have any project with a chance of getting anwhere canceled every two years, only to be reborn under a different name with all the progress lost. And to get rid of 90% of their non-engineer bureaucrats who have no interest whatsoever in getting to space)
The best thing GW did, IMHO, was to give that one speech giving NASA the goal of going back to the moon and then to Mars.
The US clings to the imperial system because it can. The rest of the world is mostly irrelevant to the average person here in a way that an outsider would find difficult to comprehend.
The US was an early adopter of a lot of technologies, and any change is hard. Lots of imperial stuff is ingrained in engineering and industry too. (For example: any railroad person here knows that a mile has 5280 feet in it and thinks of track widths, etc. in feet -- you'd be in for some chaos if you tried to get them to think in meters all of a sudden).
When you have the luxury of not thinking about the rest of the world, you can justify all sorts of nonsense to yourself (Fahrenheit feels more natural, feet are easier to eyeball, etc.)
This is a testament to both how powerful the US is, and how the average person is unimaginably far from having (or even needing) a global mindset.
My advice to anyone who moves here: do your calculations in metric in the privacy of your own mind, but don't even think about mentioning grams or kilos anyone else unless you're a scientist or a drug dealer :)
I remember reading (years ago) in a popular science magazine that someone was proposing using iron filings and steam to generate H2 on-board for use in fuel cells. Iron oxide is a heck of a lot easier to re-form back into iron than any Aluminum salt or oxide is, I'm sure. (You could use electricity, or better yet, coal, which would make the "clean" coal people throw money at the idea).
(Fe + 3H20 = FeO3 +3H2 I believe)
Of course, getting H2 out of reacting a metal with an acid or a base is not necessarily a novel idea...but I haven't heard of anyone using it to run a fuel cell yet...
Ray Bradbury saw this coming:
"It made a single last leap into the air coming down at Montag from a good three feet over his head, its spidered legs reaching, the procaine needle snapping out its single angry tooth. Montag caught it with a bloom of fire, a single wondrous blossom that curled in petals of yellow and blue and orange about the metal dog, clad it in a new covering as it slammed into Montag and threw him ban feet back against the bole of a tree, taking the flame gun with him."
--Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, p 146
While people have the right to belong to whatever types of groups they wish online, this desire is indicative of a deeper problem in their culture. They need someone like Mustafa Kemal Ataturk to recognize what is unarguably broken and reform it from within.
"To the men: If henceforward the women do not share in the social life of the nation, we shall never attain to our full development. We shall remain irremediably backward, incapable of treating on equal terms with the civilizations of the West"
-- Kinross, Ataturk, The Rebirth of a Nation, p. 343
Who were apparently educated by teachers like this one.
Her comments, actually, are not about specific students but what she would like to have available as report card comments. Still inappropriate and not very smart blogging in such an identifiable manner.
Here's a Google cache, which I'm sure will go away, leaving us with 4th hand rehashed content as a 'primary' source in this story
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?oe=utf-8&rls=com.mandriva%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a&hl=en&q=cache:sALNOuknr30J:http://natalieshandbasket.blogspot.com/2010/01/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say.html+http%3A//natalieshandbasket.blogspot.com/2010/01/if-you-dont-have-anything-nice-to-say.html&ct=clnk
For reasons beyond my own control, I'm stuck with Firefox 2.0 on the machine I generally use, and the layout does not work for me. It may be good to do some backward compatibility testing, or just SIMPLIFY the layout and go back to 1.0 IMHO
There is a certain percentage of people for whom stereoscopic 3D (as implemented today) will just not work. These people need to stop writing editorials and go do something more productive. The solutions to the issues of vergence and accommodation (focus) are possible, but will take a little while to become commercial.
By the way, I've seen Captain EO (the ONE 3D movie edited by Murch, on whose letter Ebert bases his opinion) and I was NOT impressed...
3D will _never_ work for the following people:
* People who are stereo blind (i.e., don't see 3D in real life either)
* People who are extremely sensitive to motion artifacts
* People who are watching badly made 3D (i.e., converted from 2D, or edited badly)
* People who think it's a good idea to watch anything 3D for more than 2-3 hours at a time at the current level of technology
3D _might_ work for the following people with some more exposure, but probably won't:
* People who've never worn glasses and can't handle the thought of something on their face
* People who are extremely sensitive to vergence (how the eyes are positioned relative to each other) and accommodation (focus) mismatches
* People who get motion sick easily
There are many "killer apps" for this tech over the horizon unless people who delight in bashing things they themselves can't appreciate "win".
Hint: The "killer apps" will probably not be the 3D-ization of current media such as news broadcasts or handheld consoles.
---
“Well-informed people know it’s impossible to transmit voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.” The Boston Post, 1865.