acceptable contamination levels and then allow corporations to exceed them without severe recourse
That is not quite true; those acceptable contamination levels are for drinking water, not for ground water in general. So they don't really exceed them. Apart from that I completely agree with you, though...
Oh there's so much more. The sinking of Columbus' ship Santa María comes to mind, the death of Marie Curie by cancer, the risks Franklin took when proving lightning was electricity and the murder of William Bullock by his printing-machine. Here are some more: http://listverse.com/2008/12/14/10-inventors-killed-by-their-inventions/
The thing is, the greatest discoveries very often come at a great risk. The risk-averse culture than has steadily been introduced since, say, the 1970s probably greatly holds back mankinds progress. No longer are victims of cutting-edge technologic failures hero's, instead their designers are the victim of outrage and lawsuits. This makes me very sad. Risks are not something bad, risks are things taken by brave people. Very often those people are the ones responsible for great leaps in mankinds progress.
Therefore the argument you quote is not just a good argument, it is a great argument. Wimps that cannot handle it should stay away from it and keep their mouth shut.
This is actually quite simple once you've got the basics in place. It reminds me of a program I once wrote that could crawl a website and it would find out the templates used, identify the actual content, title and other blocks. Some postprocessing was required though, but since most e-mails are a lot simpler than webpages, I suppose this can be done completely automatic for spam. And probably indeed "effectively perfect". As long as spam is template-based, that is.
I think there are many much better special-fx based movies. Some even have somewhat of a story!:P Personally, I like the one below a lot, but that may be because it was recorded where I live;-) Anyway, it's a lot more entertaining than the video the story is about.
Note that the bottom drops below the zero line every now and then. Just before and after that the net hydroelectric power output drops to zero. I figure that's pumped-storage hydroectric plants filling their storage. Spain has at least 3 gigawatt worth of such plants. It doesn't solve the entire problem at this time, but it will sure help raise your baseline-example of 20GW quite a bit.
It's the other way around. The universe "does" nothing. It merely prevents certain scenario's from happening. You might think of the current situation as one of infinitely many parallel universes. That we're currently slashdotting in the one were those magnets happened to fail, does not mean that that is the only scenario happening, it merely means that we happen to be in that universe, in that timeline. In other timelines they're probably discussing why a meterorite happened fall exactly on the LHC;-)
None of those jobs involve creating anything. They're just labour. No creative input allowed. You're only doing it because robots aren't advanced enough to do it. They're work. Work sucks.
I've long tought the ideal job is one that you can separate from your personal life, but in the end that's just about all it's about: the possibility of separating job and personal life has to be there. In all jobs. But really the ideal job is the one that's so much fun you don't even care about where the job ends and the personal life starts. And the other way around as well. Unfortunately there aren't enough jobs like that, leaving many people stuck on the 'the ideal job is the one I can forget about when I get home'-situation. But that's just because you haven't found the right job yet. Or because you've simply given up.
If you're spending a major part of your life doing something you'd rather completely forget about once you get home, you DO NOT HAVE THE IDEAL JOB.
What this guy probably doesn't know, is that just about all coders that actually are any good at their job, love the endless unlimited possibilities their knowledge provides so much that they simply don't give a fuck about whether somebody is paying them to do it or not. They _HAVE_TO_CREATE_. They _HAVE_TO_SOLVE_PROBLEMS_. They simply cannot be stopped.
While there may be many not-so-good programmers that love to code in their spare time, I have actually _NEVER_ met any good programmer/engineer/developer/whatever that DOESN'T WANT to code in their spare time. I don't think they exist. However, I do think many exist that THINK they're a good programmer. Probably this Ted Dziuba guy is one of them. I'd never hire him.
And now... just for fun... make a list of middle eastern countries that started a war recently and go see where the countries you mention are in the list.
all kinds of things can happen. maybe your cam happens to record some criminal activity, and the police come get it as evidence (i call that trouble), maybe it records some situation you got in due to someone elses' mistake, maybe it happens to record what you were doing while you told someone else (boss, wife?) you were doing something else, and just maybe you actually do something utterly stupid.
crashes or whatever in which video images are required to determine who's fault it was are extremely rare. damage patterns (your backside, their front?), rubber on the road, traffic rules and witnesses provide more than enough clues in nearly all crashes. the only situation in which the cam is your only chance, is when someone hits your from the front (were them cam is) and then leaves the scene. i have quite some trouble thinking of such situations where an accident affects the front of your car AND the license plate of the other party is visible on the video AND it wasn't your fault.
therefore i think a cam has more potential to cause trouble than to solve it.
However, I've always thought it would be a good a idea to put small cameras in my own car (...) might be useful if there's ever any question about what happened in an accident.
The question is: useful to who? Chances are your cam gets you in bigger trouble than it could ever save you from.
So, what did they post exactly? I really doubt they actually called for help and I doubt even more they wouldn't have called 000 by themselves eventually. It's not like they were dying or something, they were just lost.
A friend of mine actually pulled that off. He had all his data properly encrypted and had the keys stored as a note on his phone. When he was arrested, the cops handled the phone so roughly that the keys were unrecoverable. Probably saved him a lot of trouble;-) And it saved him from having to walk around with that incredibly ugly phone any longer too:P
cell phone towers need to be erected to cover area
That's not the whole story; cell antenna coverage goes up to 70 kilometers and probably much more. So - in theory, not accounting for mountains and things like that - about 700-1000 antennas would be enough to cover the united states. I cannot find data for the USA, but in the Netherlands (population 16 million, size 0.4% of usa, coverage nearly 100%) we have 20000 of them. So you see by far the main driver behind the number of cell phone antenna's needed is the number of users such an antenna needs to handle and not the area that needs to be covered. So by far most cellphone antenna's are in populated areas and only a relatively small fraction is probably needed to cover the unpopulated areas. Therefore (lack of) population density is not such a big factor in the costs of operating such a network; by far the biggest factor is network usage.
And I think on average, Finland has much worse weather conditions than the US; over a third of the country is above the polar circle!
You're so totally misinterpreting "getting us of this rock" as "getting all people of this rock" while it's meant as "getting the human race of this rock".
Nah. They have a guaranteed effective lifespan of about 20 to 25 years. However, most solar panels of that age still produce about 80% of their rated power, which is ok for practical use.
Come on man, open your eyes and look at the facilities storing wind energy by pumping water back uphill TODAY. Another common method to store massive amounts of energy is by pressurizing underground salt domes.
Not quite good for the environment, since artificial lakes cause massive amounts of methane and co2 to be released, but we most certainly do have a realistic way to store energy for calm days.
Slashdot Mirror
acceptable contamination levels and then allow corporations to exceed them without severe recourse
That is not quite true; those acceptable contamination levels are for drinking water, not for ground water in general. So they don't really exceed them. Apart from that I completely agree with you, though...
Oh there's so much more. The sinking of Columbus' ship Santa María comes to mind, the death of Marie Curie by cancer, the risks Franklin took when proving lightning was electricity and the murder of William Bullock by his printing-machine. Here are some more: http://listverse.com/2008/12/14/10-inventors-killed-by-their-inventions/
The thing is, the greatest discoveries very often come at a great risk. The risk-averse culture than has steadily been introduced since, say, the 1970s probably greatly holds back mankinds progress. No longer are victims of cutting-edge technologic failures hero's, instead their designers are the victim of outrage and lawsuits. This makes me very sad. Risks are not something bad, risks are things taken by brave people. Very often those people are the ones responsible for great leaps in mankinds progress.
Therefore the argument you quote is not just a good argument, it is a great argument. Wimps that cannot handle it should stay away from it and keep their mouth shut.
This is actually quite simple once you've got the basics in place. It reminds me of a program I once wrote that could crawl a website and it would find out the templates used, identify the actual content, title and other blocks. Some postprocessing was required though, but since most e-mails are a lot simpler than webpages, I suppose this can be done completely automatic for spam. And probably indeed "effectively perfect". As long as spam is template-based, that is.
I think there are many much better special-fx based movies. Some even have somewhat of a story!:P Personally, I like the one below a lot, but that may be because it was recorded where I live;-) Anyway, it's a lot more entertaining than the video the story is about.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU_reTt7Hj4
Well. Just look at the graph linked in the article.
https://demanda.ree.es/generacion_acumulada.html
Note that the bottom drops below the zero line every now and then. Just before and after that the net hydroelectric power output drops to zero. I figure that's pumped-storage hydroectric plants filling their storage. Spain has at least 3 gigawatt worth of such plants. It doesn't solve the entire problem at this time, but it will sure help raise your baseline-example of 20GW quite a bit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pumped-storage_hydroelectricity
Remember the bioterrorist from 12 Monkeys? That's about how afraid terrorists are: happy.
It's the other way around. The universe "does" nothing. It merely prevents certain scenario's from happening. You might think of the current situation as one of infinitely many parallel universes. That we're currently slashdotting in the one were those magnets happened to fail, does not mean that that is the only scenario happening, it merely means that we happen to be in that universe, in that timeline. In other timelines they're probably discussing why a meterorite happened fall exactly on the LHC;-)
None of those jobs involve creating anything. They're just labour. No creative input allowed. You're only doing it because robots aren't advanced enough to do it. They're work. Work sucks.
I've long tought the ideal job is one that you can separate from your personal life, but in the end that's just about all it's about: the possibility of separating job and personal life has to be there. In all jobs. But really the ideal job is the one that's so much fun you don't even care about where the job ends and the personal life starts. And the other way around as well. Unfortunately there aren't enough jobs like that, leaving many people stuck on the 'the ideal job is the one I can forget about when I get home'-situation. But that's just because you haven't found the right job yet. Or because you've simply given up.
If you're spending a major part of your life doing something you'd rather completely forget about once you get home, you DO NOT HAVE THE IDEAL JOB.
What this guy probably doesn't know, is that just about all coders that actually are any good at their job, love the endless unlimited possibilities their knowledge provides so much that they simply don't give a fuck about whether somebody is paying them to do it or not. They _HAVE_TO_CREATE_. They _HAVE_TO_SOLVE_PROBLEMS_. They simply cannot be stopped.
While there may be many not-so-good programmers that love to code in their spare time, I have actually _NEVER_ met any good programmer/engineer/developer/whatever that DOESN'T WANT to code in their spare time. I don't think they exist. However, I do think many exist that THINK they're a good programmer. Probably this Ted Dziuba guy is one of them. I'd never hire him.
And now... just for fun ... make a list of middle eastern countries that started a war recently and go see where the countries you mention are in the list.
Even worse, you wouldn't have rest either...
(also in reply to all the other replies)
all kinds of things can happen. maybe your cam happens to record some criminal activity, and the police come get it as evidence (i call that trouble), maybe it records some situation you got in due to someone elses' mistake, maybe it happens to record what you were doing while you told someone else (boss, wife?) you were doing something else, and just maybe you actually do something utterly stupid.
crashes or whatever in which video images are required to determine who's fault it was are extremely rare. damage patterns (your backside, their front?), rubber on the road, traffic rules and witnesses provide more than enough clues in nearly all crashes. the only situation in which the cam is your only chance, is when someone hits your from the front (were them cam is) and then leaves the scene. i have quite some trouble thinking of such situations where an accident affects the front of your car AND the license plate of the other party is visible on the video AND it wasn't your fault.
therefore i think a cam has more potential to cause trouble than to solve it.
However, I've always thought it would be a good a idea to put small cameras in my own car (...) might be useful if there's ever any question about what happened in an accident.
The question is: useful to who? Chances are your cam gets you in bigger trouble than it could ever save you from.
So, what did they post exactly? I really doubt they actually called for help and I doubt even more they wouldn't have called 000 by themselves eventually. It's not like they were dying or something, they were just lost.
Bullshit. There is no drop. P2P traffic is still increasing. It's just not increasing as fast as the youtube traffic.
The information you provide is ... well ... sparse. By far not enough to draw the conclusion you draw.
What about your wifi, bluetooth, are they on? At what power level? Is the webcam always on? Is the optical drive doing things it shouldn't?
Nevertheless it should indeed be said that out of the box, Linux battery life sux.
A friend of mine actually pulled that off. He had all his data properly encrypted and had the keys stored as a note on his phone. When he was arrested, the cops handled the phone so roughly that the keys were unrecoverable. Probably saved him a lot of trouble;-) And it saved him from having to walk around with that incredibly ugly phone any longer too:P
cell phone towers need to be erected to cover area
That's not the whole story; cell antenna coverage goes up to 70 kilometers and probably much more. So - in theory, not accounting for mountains and things like that - about 700-1000 antennas would be enough to cover the united states. I cannot find data for the USA, but in the Netherlands (population 16 million, size 0.4% of usa, coverage nearly 100%) we have 20000 of them. So you see by far the main driver behind the number of cell phone antenna's needed is the number of users such an antenna needs to handle and not the area that needs to be covered. So by far most cellphone antenna's are in populated areas and only a relatively small fraction is probably needed to cover the unpopulated areas. Therefore (lack of) population density is not such a big factor in the costs of operating such a network; by far the biggest factor is network usage.
And I think on average, Finland has much worse weather conditions than the US; over a third of the country is above the polar circle!
Also recorded in history is this account of a close encounter of the third kind in 1887 ;-))
http://home.pacbell.net/joerit/docs2/crash/1887crsh.htm
You're so totally misinterpreting "getting us of this rock" as "getting all people of this rock" while it's meant as "getting the human race of this rock".
Nah. They have a guaranteed effective lifespan of about 20 to 25 years. However, most solar panels of that age still produce about 80% of their rated power, which is ok for practical use.
Come on man, open your eyes and look at the facilities storing wind energy by pumping water back uphill TODAY. Another common method to store massive amounts of energy is by pressurizing underground salt domes.
Not quite good for the environment, since artificial lakes cause massive amounts of methane and co2 to be released, but we most certainly do have a realistic way to store energy for calm days.
IRC. Doh.
Gotta love the practice of marking older bugs as duplicates of newer ones...
Bug 57351 - css on a:visited can load an image and/or reveal if visitor been to a site
Reported: 2000-10-19 16:57 PDT by Jesse Ruderman