Not medically savvy here, but could this lead to some sort of Dialysis-like process to remove cancer cells from the bloodstream? I guess it would help with at least some types of cancer?
Bottom line is, you think you're purchasing an e-book. You buy it, it's yours -- albeit in digital form -- right? If it's yours, you can do what you want with it, right? Wrong on both counts! What they're selling you is a *limited license* to enjoy that content on certain platforms, within the limits imposed by them. You don't own the content -- at all. You're *not* at liberty to do with it the same (or analogous to what) you could do with a physical book.
I think this dichotomy, that what you perceive to be being is different than what is actually being sold, is what causes the drift between publishers and consumers.
Re:About 99% of facebook apps are useless
on
FBML Essentials
·
· Score: 1
> An app where everybody gives you money? No wonder you think it's decent.;-)
LOL. If only I was keeping the money to myself... but alas, I'm not.
Thanks for the time and the insightful answer. I think we're on the same page. I'm really trying to make a legitimate, useful thing here, that will help people interact and feel good.
The app allows you to say what you want for your birthday, add a comment, then whomever contributes also gets to vote on which gift they think is the best, and send you a message along with their contribution.
About 99% of facebook apps are useless
on
FBML Essentials
·
· Score: 1
I'll be the first to say that almost all facebook apps are pretty useless. Probably 95% are a twist on the ididotic "poke" concept.
[full disclosure: start shameless self-promotion]
That's why I built a decent facebook app. You can see it at http://apps.facebook.com/birthdayfund/ (or http://www.thebirthdayfund.com/). Basically it just facilitates creating a birthday fund for yourself or for someone else, so instead of getting a few "meh" gifts, you can get whatever you really want. Everybody wins.:-)
Possibly like me or tons of slashdot readers you're a developer with big or cool ideas. Best of luck to you, and if you want to help someone out with theirs, please check out the app on facebook and let me know what you think.
> I am astonished at how quickly you fell into my trap. The remainder of your argument is pointless.
Trap... Whatever... if you mean by the "rest of my argument" this last paragraph:
"What I think is stupid is trying to twist the interpretation of the reality to fit words in a book that's been completely twisted by earthly interests just because it makes you happy to think that said book is the law of G'd and that's it. It's just crazy."
No problem. It's my opinion. You can accept it or not, it's up to you. The bulk of my argument was before that. If you agree with that I'd say I'm doing pretty good.
> In Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke points out that "even the Overlords serve a Master."
If I remember correctly the Overlords in Clarke's sci-fi novel were the devil-look-alike aliens that force a peaceful period on earth to help produce some sort of evolution of humanity's children... I'm confused. That proves exactly what? Don't take me wrong, I love sci-fi... but I fail to see a point.
Am I to just take the written words of a fiction writer as the unquestionable truth?
"Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Darwinism. Why wouldn't an all-powerful force set up natural laws to attain its objectives?"
"Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Darwinism."
Otherwise there would be no conflict to comment on.
> Who designs the all-powerful force?
Er... why would some entity have to design the all powerful force? That sounds to me like just applying preconceived notions to a statement with no basis for correlation.
If there's an all-powerful force (personally I think there is but I won't press my views of it or even the existence of it on anyone), I really don't see any reason for antropomorphizing and requiring that some (and I may be wrong but I get the feeling you visualize a human-like, albeit super-powerful) "entity" has to have designed it.
Like in a scientifical analisys, you may choose to represent this force in your interpretation/modelling of reality as you see it as having a certain form, but choosing to interpret reality in such light does not mean reality *is* that, especially not for everyone.
First off, scientifical theories are not reality. They are a model for someone to understand reality, measure it, predict how things are gonna behave, etc.
Reality is reality. It's there. People look at it, experience it, and have their own notions and explanations.
Someone may look at a book from one angle and say it's a flat rectangle, measuring some 6 by 8 inches with a picture of a panda. Another may be looking at the same book and say that's absurd, that it measures about a half inch by 8 inches and it's a solid color with writing. Yet another may say they are both mad and it's a stack of whitish lines making a 1/2 inch by 6 inch rectangle.
They are all right, and they are all wrong. Each may have a different perspective on the subject, and they are right in the sense that they report what they perceive to be reality but they are utterly limited by what perspective they can gain on the subject unless they are willing to move around. Even if you are able to shift your position or focus, the reality will be much more than what you can even describe.
I think it's worthy to try and look at all the angles and get a more complete feel for what reality actually is. I think science in general is more competent in this way, and is designed to try and understand more angles. Unfortunately, people often confuse the science of something with the actual reality of it. Two separate things. Also sometimes scientifical reports are manipulated to reach a predisposed solution, which is bad.
I also think it's stupid to try and force your interpretation on someone else, especially if that is not even interpretation you acquired directly but a mere repetition of someone else's interpretation. It gets even worse when that is interpretation based on reading scripture that was censored, edited and translated several times, and originally written by people who didn't even see events but heard it from third parties, many many years after the events took place... c'mon people.
In my experience people want so strongly to believe, to belong, to feel good and to have their decisions made for them that they will go through unbelievable routes to suspend disbelief and avoid critical thought. This is especially worse with more intelligent people, they have to work harder to suspend their disbelief and may end up nuttier.
Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Creationism. Why wouldn't an all-powerful force set up natural laws to attain its objectives?
What I think is stupid is trying to twist the interpretation of the reality to fit words in a book that's been completely twisted by earthly interests just because it makes you happy to think that said book is the law of G'd and that's it. It's just crazy.
Maybe you don't realize just how much calculus is involved in walking down stairs.
The human brain is a computation engine...
Maybe you don't realize how the brain works at all. You may think you do because you have/ use one, but sorry, that won't cut it. Do you really think that the brain magically performs millions of calculations to go down a flight of stairs, or to throw a ball, or to talk? I beg to differ.
Maybe if the brain did do calculus, the Football jocks would be much better at math than the average sports-averting math geek.
It's much more likely that there are neural networks/ pathways on the brain that, by genetics and/ or repetition (practice), learn to automatically (intuitively) predict situations.
I believe it's a great fallacy to compare the brain with a computer. We just don't know how the brain works. It might come in handy to compare the brain with a computer sometimes but analogies only go so far, and one must understand the limited scope of an analogy.
I think the point is not books being available or not, but rather the player/ viewer.
For music, you have your MP3 player or burn a CD -- the user experience is pretty much the same as for other music media. For movies, you can make a VCD or watch it on the computer itself, the user experience is not as good as a regular cable or satt show or DVD, but somewhat comparable. For books, though, maybe some people could use a PDA, but it's just not a comparable experience to a real book that you can carry anywhere, is easy on your eyes, doesn't need recharging, etc.
Once there is a really good platform for reading e-books: cheap, good battery life, easy to use, great screen etc; then book piracy may be a problem.
When you calculate tax you use the shipping address, not billing address. The tax is not paid based on where the money is coming from, which always seemed very weird to me.
"it would be too onerous for e-tailers to calculate all the permutations of differing state and local tax rates"
Very much true. The way it is now it's already tricky. I you have nexus (presence, be it a store, storage or even servers co-located) somewhere you aleady need to charge tax for shipping there. Then you need to consider that some places have state tax, county tax and/ or city tax. You can't just use the zip code to break up state/county and city since some zip codes span more than one area.
Plus, legislation and tax rates fluctuate and you have to keep databases in sync with laws. C'mon!
Some vendors like Cybersource offer tax calculation services. That may be the only practical solution, but then not only you have to interface with their APIs but also you get yet another cut in your profit.
(...) "A Jini-enabled device works by announcing itself to the network, which will immediately be able to understand what kind of device was just plugged in, what kind of software drivers are necessary, and the capabilities of the device." (...)
Absolutely. Having a ton of cables would suck. But I don't see why it couldn't be just one cable going to the case and then maybe even some sort of modular cabling system (a la xconnect) inside.
I don't think you need to extrapolate too much as in everything external, but the PSU in particular is bulky, generates a lot of heat, etc.
If you do want to extrapolate, however, I remember reading in a Wired Magazine a few years ago Sun had some plans for a technology where, if memory serves, any hardware would just be part of the network. Need a new HD, plug it into the network, need a second monitor? Plug it into the network. It might have turned to this JINI.
Would anyone care to tell me why an external PSU is not available?
It just seems to me that if you moved the heat-generating PSU out of the case, you would get more space, less heat from the PSU into the case, less heat from the processors &c to the CPU and so on.
Is it just the fact of having another component to carry around? How often do most people really carry/move around their desktop PCs?
I'm not sure what the US/UK terrorrism policy is about. It may be sincere attempts to prevent it, it may be in part attempts to instill fear and through it control the population.
What I do know is that in any case it helps create an awful fear-laden atmosphere that makes everybody jittery, and for sure causes things like this (see below) or others like random killings of law-abiding turban-wearing or olive-skinned people.
Plus, just do the math. How much does it cost to set-up and blow a car-bomb or a suicide bomber? How much does it cost to try and prevent it? Probably at least 100 times more, and the prevention is most likely to fail at some point. Meanwhile, billions of dollars that could be helping people are badly spent, we cant bring nail cutters into airplanes, etc.
Can't we do it some other way? Try peace for a change. How hard is it to just show other people we don't hate them and that they have no reason to hate us? Can we spend a little bit on that as a means to prevent terrorrism?
Police shoot dead a man dead at Stockwell Tube station in south London. They say he was challenged and refused to obey an order.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said the shooting was "directly linked" to the ongoing London bombs inquiry.
Police say it is not yet clear if the man was one of four suspects involved in the failed 21 July attacks.
They say he was under observation because he had emerged from a house that was being watched.
He was followed by surveillance officers to Stockwell station, where his clothing and behaviour added to their suspicions, police say.
(...)
17 AUGUST
Leaked documents contradict previous accounts of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Appearing to be from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry into the shooting and leaked to ITV News, they suggest the Brazilian was restrained before being shot eight times.
ITV images show Mr de Menezes lying dead in a Tube train
They contradict eyewitness reports suggesting Mr Menezes jumped a barrier at Stockwell Tube station and was wearing a padded jacket that could have concealed a bomb.
They suggest he was wearing a denim jacket and walked into the station, picked up a free newspaper and walked through ticket barriers. It is suggested he only started to run when he saw a train arriving and was sitting down when he was shot.
Cookies are harmless, the paranoia surrounding them is mostly a media-induced frenzy, IMHO.
I'was actually surprised... I'd have expected more understading of the issue of the slashdot crowd, instead of "I allow only the cookies I want" or "I use this or that extension". Puh-lease. Worry about something more useful.
Cookies are small snippets of text used mainly so a website can have persistent sessions or settings. Period.
So what that doubleclick or someone else tracks which ads do you see? Why do you even care? How's that invading your privacy? A cookie will not give anyone *personal* information about you that you have not willingly given up to start with.
I think the W3C needs to institute a "Terror bit" to be deployed alongside the "Evil bit".
That measure should be accompanied by the requirement that terrorist organizations use the.die top-level domain (just like, as we know, all pr0n sites use.xxx).
In conjuction with that, CyberCafes and others can filter terrorist sites out with any of the highly-effective Net Filters and the evildoers are thwarted again, with a minimum of effort!
Everything is relative... Some singers use Auto-Tuners to "sound better". Pr0n images are often photoshopped/ airbrushed to hide flaws, enhance shapes or just faked (cool article and you can google for "fake-detective" for the guy's site)...
Is this "space sound" real? Are these singers singing for real? Are these photos real? What is "real"? Where do you draw the line?
I think things would be much easier if someone made an external power supply. It would just avoid having to cram more heat generating equipment inside the case. A nice vented/ thick aluminum casing should do the trick for the external unit.
Then have one cable from the PSU to the case, with some neat connection scheme for each individual power cables, I think you'd have a killer external PSU resulting in a lighter, quieter, cooler desktop.
You could even bundle it with an UPS.
I remember older computers with an external power supply (or was it some transformer?)... Why did they move away from that?
Humanoid vs task-specific robots
on
Humanoid Robot HR-2
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Sure, as a geek I love the idea of humanoid robots, but in practice how useful can they be?
Aren't in most situations robots designed specifically for one task (or a small group of tasks) better?
My Roomba robot vacuum broke a few weeks ago and it took 2-3 weeks to be replaced. If that same robot also washed my clothes, did my dishes and cooked my food, I'd have been in bad shape.
[end serious post]
[start joke] Come to think of it though, I'd definetly spend serious money on a robot that vacuums the floor, washes clothes, does the dishes and cooks... and does not demand attention, new clothes, a wedding... Heck, let's go make these humanoid robots already! And, of course, they'll need some specific, er... anatomic, parts and capabilites. And they absolutely must have an off and mute switches.
I used to get mold on some of my old (Apple) 5 1/4" floppies.
I was surprised to learn that taking the floppies out of the sleeve and washing them carefully with some cotton balls, water and soap would pretty much always solve the problem, at least long enough to recover the data.
Sometimes simple non-tech solutions are what you need.
Slashdot Mirror
Not medically savvy here, but could this lead to some sort of Dialysis-like process to remove cancer cells from the bloodstream? I guess it would help with at least some types of cancer?
Bottom line is, you think you're purchasing an e-book. You buy it, it's yours -- albeit in digital form -- right? If it's yours, you can do what you want with it, right? Wrong on both counts! What they're selling you is a *limited license* to enjoy that content on certain platforms, within the limits imposed by them. You don't own the content -- at all. You're *not* at liberty to do with it the same (or analogous to what) you could do with a physical book.
I think this dichotomy, that what you perceive to be being is different than what is actually being sold, is what causes the drift between publishers and consumers.
> An app where everybody gives you money? No wonder you think it's decent. ;-)
LOL. If only I was keeping the money to myself... but alas, I'm not.
Thanks for the time and the insightful answer. I think we're on the same page. I'm really trying to make a legitimate, useful thing here, that will help people interact and feel good.
The app allows you to say what you want for your birthday, add a comment, then whomever contributes also gets to vote on which gift they think is the best, and send you a message along with their contribution.
I'll be the first to say that almost all facebook apps are pretty useless. Probably 95% are a twist on the ididotic "poke" concept.
[full disclosure: start shameless self-promotion]
That's why I built a decent facebook app. You can see it at http://apps.facebook.com/birthdayfund/ (or http://www.thebirthdayfund.com/). :-)
Basically it just facilitates creating a birthday fund for yourself or for someone else, so instead of getting a few "meh" gifts, you can get whatever you really want. Everybody wins.
Possibly like me or tons of slashdot readers you're a developer with big or cool ideas. Best of luck to you, and if you want to help someone out with theirs, please check out the app on facebook and let me know what you think.
> I am astonished at how quickly you fell into my trap. The remainder of your argument is pointless.
Trap... Whatever... if you mean by the "rest of my argument" this last paragraph:
"What I think is stupid is trying to twist the interpretation of the reality to fit words in a book that's been completely twisted by earthly interests just because it makes you happy to think that said book is the law of G'd and that's it. It's just crazy."
No problem. It's my opinion. You can accept it or not, it's up to you. The bulk of my argument was before that. If you agree with that I'd say I'm doing pretty good.
> In Childhood's End, Arthur C. Clarke points out that "even the Overlords serve a Master."
If I remember correctly the Overlords in Clarke's sci-fi novel were the devil-look-alike aliens that force a peaceful period on earth to help produce some sort of evolution of humanity's children... I'm confused. That proves exactly what? Don't take me wrong, I love sci-fi... but I fail to see a point.
Am I to just take the written words of a fiction writer as the unquestionable truth?
My bad. I meant:
"Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Darwinism . Why wouldn't an all-powerful force set up natural laws to attain its objectives?"
My apologies. I meant, of course:
"Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Darwinism."
Otherwise there would be no conflict to comment on.
> Who designs the all-powerful force?
Er... why would some entity have to design the all powerful force? That sounds to me like just applying preconceived notions to a statement with no basis for correlation.
If there's an all-powerful force (personally I think there is but I won't press my views of it or even the existence of it on anyone), I really don't see any reason for antropomorphizing and requiring that some (and I may be wrong but I get the feeling you visualize a human-like, albeit super-powerful) "entity" has to have designed it.
Like in a scientifical analisys, you may choose to represent this force in your interpretation/modelling of reality as you see it as having a certain form, but choosing to interpret reality in such light does not mean reality *is* that, especially not for everyone.
This drives me nuts.
First off, scientifical theories are not reality. They are a model for someone to understand reality, measure it, predict how things are gonna behave, etc.
Reality is reality. It's there. People look at it, experience it, and have their own notions and explanations.
Someone may look at a book from one angle and say it's a flat rectangle, measuring some 6 by 8 inches with a picture of a panda. Another may be looking at the same book and say that's absurd, that it measures about a half inch by 8 inches and it's a solid color with writing. Yet another may say they are both mad and it's a stack of whitish lines making a 1/2 inch by 6 inch rectangle.
They are all right, and they are all wrong. Each may have a different perspective on the subject, and they are right in the sense that they report what they perceive to be reality but they are utterly limited by what perspective they can gain on the subject unless they are willing to move around. Even if you are able to shift your position or focus, the reality will be much more than what you can even describe.
I think it's worthy to try and look at all the angles and get a more complete feel for what reality actually is. I think science in general is more competent in this way, and is designed to try and understand more angles. Unfortunately, people often confuse the science of something with the actual reality of it. Two separate things. Also sometimes scientifical reports are manipulated to reach a predisposed solution, which is bad.
I also think it's stupid to try and force your interpretation on someone else, especially if that is not even interpretation you acquired directly but a mere repetition of someone else's interpretation. It gets even worse when that is interpretation based on reading scripture that was censored, edited and translated several times, and originally written by people who didn't even see events but heard it from third parties, many many years after the events took place... c'mon people.
In my experience people want so strongly to believe, to belong, to feel good and to have their decisions made for them that they will go through unbelievable routes to suspend disbelief and avoid critical thought. This is especially worse with more intelligent people, they have to work harder to suspend their disbelief and may end up nuttier.
Conceptually I don't even see any conflict between Intelligent Design and Creationism. Why wouldn't an all-powerful force set up natural laws to attain its objectives?
What I think is stupid is trying to twist the interpretation of the reality to fit words in a book that's been completely twisted by earthly interests just because it makes you happy to think that said book is the law of G'd and that's it. It's just crazy.
Maybe you don't realize how the brain works at all. You may think you do because you have/ use one, but sorry, that won't cut it. Do you really think that the brain magically performs millions of calculations to go down a flight of stairs, or to throw a ball, or to talk? I beg to differ.
Maybe if the brain did do calculus, the Football jocks would be much better at math than the average sports-averting math geek.
It's much more likely that there are neural networks/ pathways on the brain that, by genetics and/ or repetition (practice), learn to automatically (intuitively) predict situations.
I believe it's a great fallacy to compare the brain with a computer. We just don't know how the brain works. It might come in handy to compare the brain with a computer sometimes but analogies only go so far, and one must understand the limited scope of an analogy.
Really just plain ads?
Or will they take advantage of the new mandatory wiretapping laws, and have automated systems that scan your conversation for keywords and give you related ads?
Sort of like Google adsense, but with voice content...
I for one do not welcome our new phone tapping overlords...
I think the point is not books being available or not, but rather the player/ viewer.
For music, you have your MP3 player or burn a CD -- the user experience is pretty much the same as for other music media. For movies, you can make a VCD or watch it on the computer itself, the user experience is not as good as a regular cable or satt show or DVD, but somewhat comparable. For books, though, maybe some people could use a PDA, but it's just not a comparable experience to a real book that you can carry anywhere, is easy on your eyes, doesn't need recharging, etc.
Once there is a really good platform for reading e-books: cheap, good battery life, easy to use, great screen etc; then book piracy may be a problem.
When you calculate tax you use the shipping address, not billing address. The tax is not paid based on where the money is coming from, which always seemed very weird to me.
"it would be too onerous for e-tailers to calculate all the permutations of differing state and local tax rates"
Very much true. The way it is now it's already tricky. I you have nexus (presence, be it a store, storage or even servers co-located) somewhere you aleady need to charge tax for shipping there. Then you need to consider that some places have state tax, county tax and/ or city tax. You can't just use the zip code to break up state/county and city since some zip codes span more than one area.
Plus, legislation and tax rates fluctuate and you have to keep databases in sync with laws. C'mon!
Some vendors like Cybersource offer tax calculation services. That may be the only practical solution, but then not only you have to interface with their APIs but also you get yet another cut in your profit.
Wired article from 1999:
(...)
"A Jini-enabled device works by announcing itself to the network, which will immediately be able to understand what kind of device was just plugged in, what kind of software drivers are necessary, and the capabilities of the device."
(...)
Absolutely. Having a ton of cables would suck. But I don't see why it couldn't be just one cable going to the case and then maybe even some sort of modular cabling system (a la xconnect) inside.
I don't think you need to extrapolate too much as in everything external, but the PSU in particular is bulky, generates a lot of heat, etc.
If you do want to extrapolate, however, I remember reading in a Wired Magazine a few years ago Sun had some plans for a technology where, if memory serves, any hardware would just be part of the network. Need a new HD, plug it into the network, need a second monitor? Plug it into the network. It might have turned to this JINI.
Would anyone care to tell me why an external PSU is not available?
It just seems to me that if you moved the heat-generating PSU out of the case, you would get more space, less heat from the PSU into the case, less heat from the processors &c to the CPU and so on.
Is it just the fact of having another component to carry around? How often do most people really carry/move around their desktop PCs?
I'm not sure what the US/UK terrorrism policy is about. It may be sincere attempts to prevent it, it may be in part attempts to instill fear and through it control the population.
What I do know is that in any case it helps create an awful fear-laden atmosphere that makes everybody jittery, and for sure causes things like this (see below) or others like random killings of law-abiding turban-wearing or olive-skinned people.
Plus, just do the math. How much does it cost to set-up and blow a car-bomb or a suicide bomber? How much does it cost to try and prevent it? Probably at least 100 times more, and the prevention is most likely to fail at some point. Meanwhile, billions of dollars that could be helping people are badly spent, we cant bring nail cutters into airplanes, etc.
Can't we do it some other way? Try peace for a change. How hard is it to just show other people we don't hate them and that they have no reason to hate us? Can we spend a little bit on that as a means to prevent terrorrism?
About Jean Charles, the Brazilian shot dead:
From the BBC:
"22 JULY
Police shoot dead a man dead at Stockwell Tube station in south London. They say he was challenged and refused to obey an order.
Met Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said the shooting was "directly linked" to the ongoing London bombs inquiry.
Police say it is not yet clear if the man was one of four suspects involved in the failed 21 July attacks.
They say he was under observation because he had emerged from a house that was being watched.
He was followed by surveillance officers to Stockwell station, where his clothing and behaviour added to their suspicions, police say.
(...)
17 AUGUST
Leaked documents contradict previous accounts of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes.
Appearing to be from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) inquiry into the shooting and leaked to ITV News, they suggest the Brazilian was restrained before being shot eight times.
ITV images show Mr de Menezes lying dead in a Tube train
They contradict eyewitness reports suggesting Mr Menezes jumped a barrier at Stockwell Tube station and was wearing a padded jacket that could have concealed a bomb.
They suggest he was wearing a denim jacket and walked into the station, picked up a free newspaper and walked through ticket barriers. It is suggested he only started to run when he saw a train arriving and was sitting down when he was shot.
(...)
"
For more see Google News
I've used occasionally, but haven't used it intensively.
;-)
I guess it could be good practice. Wife/ girlfriend might be thankful.
...but the real question is does it still have the little nipple/clitoris mouse?
Seriously, do people actually like and use that?
"(...) purported scientific use{ful,less}ness of the (...)"
Regular expression inside text. Love it. Spoke like a true geek, my applause to you.
Apart from that, nice post, BTW.
I agree with you and the other poster.
Cookies are harmless, the paranoia surrounding them is mostly a media-induced frenzy, IMHO.
I'was actually surprised... I'd have expected more understading of the issue of the slashdot crowd, instead of "I allow only the cookies I want" or "I use this or that extension". Puh-lease. Worry about something more useful.
Cookies are small snippets of text used mainly so a website can have persistent sessions or settings. Period.
So what that doubleclick or someone else tracks which ads do you see? Why do you even care? How's
that invading your privacy? A cookie will not give anyone *personal* information about you that you have not willingly given up to start with.
I think the W3C needs to institute a "Terror bit" to be deployed alongside the "Evil bit".
.die top-level domain (just like, as we know, all pr0n sites use .xxx).
That measure should be accompanied by the requirement that terrorist organizations use the
In conjuction with that, CyberCafes and others can filter terrorist sites out with any of the highly-effective Net Filters and the evildoers are thwarted again, with a minimum of effort!
Ain't life simple!
Sure, cool. Sure, sounds like a sci-fi flick soundtrack... but for sure that is not a "sound" someone would "hear".
This is an arbitrarily distorted representation of radio waves. No one would ever "hear" this, so what's really the point?
Same goes for images, really. Here's an Interesting article about calibration... It shows the possible outputs from the same base images. Compare these two Viking Images.
Everything is relative... Some singers use Auto-Tuners to "sound better". Pr0n images are often photoshopped/ airbrushed to hide flaws, enhance shapes or just faked (cool article and you can google for "fake-detective" for the guy's site)...
Is this "space sound" real? Are these singers singing for real? Are these photos real? What is "real"? Where do you draw the line?
I think things would be much easier if someone made an external power supply. It would just avoid having to cram more heat generating equipment inside the case. A nice vented/ thick aluminum casing should do the trick for the external unit.
Then have one cable from the PSU to the case, with some neat connection scheme for each individual power cables, I think you'd have a killer external PSU resulting in a lighter, quieter, cooler desktop.
You could even bundle it with an UPS.
I remember older computers with an external power supply (or was it some transformer?)... Why did they move away from that?
Sure, as a geek I love the idea of humanoid robots, but in practice how useful can they be?
Aren't in most situations robots designed specifically for one task (or a small group of tasks) better?
My Roomba robot vacuum broke a few weeks ago and it took 2-3 weeks to be replaced. If that same robot also washed my clothes, did my dishes and cooked my food, I'd have been in bad shape.
[end serious post]
[start joke]
Come to think of it though, I'd definetly spend serious money on a robot that vacuums the floor, washes clothes, does the dishes and cooks... and does not demand attention, new clothes, a wedding... Heck, let's go make these humanoid robots already! And, of course, they'll need some specific, er... anatomic, parts and capabilites. And they absolutely must have an off and mute switches.
I used to get mold on some of my old (Apple) 5 1/4" floppies.
I was surprised to learn that taking the floppies out of the sleeve and washing them carefully with some cotton balls, water and soap would pretty much always solve the problem, at least long enough to recover the data.
Sometimes simple non-tech solutions are what you need.