Had a demo from one of the Oculus devs this weekend.
It's a tough call. They're both very immersive, and I'd even go so far as to say that if I didn't know what to look for, I wouldn't be able to pick out the differences qualitatively. I wouldn't go so far as to say the "cheap" VR is giving VR a bad rep, though, you can get your rocks off either way. It will be more of a challenge with the smartphone-based VR, but it's "good enough".
All of my panoramic and photosphere shots are available on my Nexus 5, and it's pretty amazing to revisit those places in Google Cardboard, even though it's not even stereoscopic 3D. The best 3D app I've seen so far is the Titans of Space , but a couple of the other demos are cute enough to be interesting. It's definitely quite usable and much more compelling than experiencing this content without Cardboard. Everyone I've shown it to is pretty amazed.
That said, the Oculus Rift experience is very cool, and you can really appreciate the extra fidelity. I did the Gears of War slow-mo teaser and The Hobbit dragon liar, and the increased resolution and head tracking does make it much more immersive. You can crouch down behind things, and bob and weave your head and try to "eat" bits of debris floating around in space. People are definitely going to get hurt, since they really get to use their head as a controller. This feature is amazing, and the "hard core" crowd will definitely build Oculus setups for themselves, but I don't think it will go mainstream for some time. There were a few times I wandered out of range of the hi-fidelity IR head tracking camera, and I barely noticed other than the quick jolt I get when going in and out of its view. I think the accelerometer sensors on board the Oculus and the Smartphone-based VR are decent enough. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in it, but I didn't experience any vertigo... I don't experience any vertigo with Cardboard either. I think people are either able to adjust or they aren't... sure maybe the Oculus induces less headaches after prolonged use because of the better head tracking and latency, but I don't think it'll be that huge of a difference for people who are predispositioned to get nauseated or no. There also seems to be focus issues that will confound people who don't bother to position the Oculus on their heads just right... there was a lot of fussing around for everyone to adjust all the straps just right, whereas Cardboard is much easier to just hold up to your face and go and share (maybe with those removable forehead strips to absorb facial oils)
The dev also had a nice Samsung VR headset. It was a bit nicer than Cardboard and had the little trackpad on the side, but it didn't add considerably to the enjoyment. The $15 Cardboard is good enough on the low end to experience most of what's out there. I see people using lots of Cardboard for shared VR experiences for the whole family... I don't know many people who have multiple beefy gaming PCs, but just about everyone and their dog has a half-decent smartphone.
That said, I'm certainly going to get an Oculus setup when they come out, because I'm that kind of guy (but not enough of that kind of guy to get the DK2). I'll probably also have to upgrade my elderly Geforce 560Ti before then, though, so it's going to set me back plenty. In the meantime, by all means get a $15 Cardboard to go with your current smartphone. Plenty of decent content is already there, and more is always on the way. It's a great time for VR no matter what your equipment.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period. They might benefit from learning the ideas behind programming, but that's not at all the same thing as "learning to code".
OTOH, everyone ought to learn how to talk to programmers. This is your moment. Don't throw it away.
Oh, sheesh, I run into crap like this all the time just trying to use my HSA debit card to pay for prescriptions and copays and crap at my health care provider. You think it'd just be a no-brainer, paying healthcare costs with a VISA debit card who's only purpose is to pay healthcare costs. But more than half the time it gets rejected for some stupid reason and I end up calling both my bank and the healthcare administration. Even for routine stuff like fulfilling prescriptions which we've successfully done in the past.
Still beats the hassle of getting them to reimburse FSA claims after the fact, though.
Do you always go to the same brand of gas station, or was it different ones? Something something about when you stop for gas, the merchant puts a hold on your credit account for up to $150 - $250, then a few days later it actually clears for the exact amount you pumped. A lot of gas stations still have signs saying something like that if you charge credit.
So maybe it wasn't your card cutting you off, the vendor just hit their daily hold since you did so much driving in a big truck in one day.
But yes, always good to have a backup for whatever the silly reason.
All of my fraud alerts have been pretty reasonable, though. Usually when I travel I suppose they see that I bought a plane ticket or car rental or UHaul on the card first. They have called us a few times, such as when my wife suddenly made large puchases (e.g. suddenly bought a nice dress at Nordstrom after decades of shopping at off-name stores). They also caught it immediately when someone suddenly started using our CC number to make $100s in mundane purchases in a Target in Chicago thousands of miles away out of the blue.
I secretly think that the banks and credit card agencies sorta enjoy dealing with fraud, though... they must get some sort of insurance knockback or it just makes them feel like they're doing something useful and providing value by dealing with criminals so that us little guys and merchants don't have to and they can justify their 3 - 5% "convenience fees" on every transaction.
This. I like the cloud as much as anyone, probably more. But can't fathom why, if you're already paying for home internet access, would anyone not just host everything on a leftover home shoebox server. It plugs into the same little UPS as the rest of my home networking equipment, and runs a little RAID, and does offsite backups to Glacier and whatever other shoebox servers my friends run in their basements. It's nice not having to worry about running the minimum amount of stuff to reduce billing, but rather the maximum amount of stuff I can fit on the server without it falling over.
Doesn't even have to by tyrants. EVERYONE honestly believes they are doing the right thing. Jesus thought he was doing the right thing. Pontius Pilate thoughr he was doing the right thing. Your mom thought she was doing the right thing. Elite German SS soldiers thought they were doing the right thing. Abortion clinics and the people who put down dogs and cats for the SPCA thought they did the right thing. Abortion clinic bombers thought they did the right thing. Suicide bombers thought they did the right thing. Al Qaida thought they put up a good struggle. Gay-bashers thought they did the right thing. Bigot bullies thought they did the right thing. Religious followers thought they did the right thing.
You know who else put up a good struggle?
No one wants to be wrong. And they'll go to any length not to have to face being wrong.
There are no good and evil people on this Earth. Even (especially!) serial killers, satan worshippers, rapists, drug addicts, tax cheats, tax collectors, lawyers, and murderers. They all are doing what they believe to be the right thing.
Who is good and evil in a chess match? Who is right and who is wrong? It's all in how you play the game.
Eh, I think the second amendment is more like that other slashdotter's sig "there are three boxes to be used in defense of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, and the ammo box" (in researching this, i guess there are up to five, if you want to include the mailbox and jury box).
But I think that explains a lot about our... flavor... of representative democracy. A lot of people complain that our form of voting for candidates is mathematically weak and fosters a two-party domination system. Sure there are better third parties out there, and better ballot counting methods. But the point of our government isn't to give us the best outcome. The point of our democracy is to prevent a bloody revolution. Every four to eight years we get a chance to think that something will change, and we can just struggle along until the next election, without ever really needing to fix anything.
Another reason I like the boxes quip is that assume we always voted on everything by defining two sides to an issue, and placing everyone on opposite sides of an open field with their musket, and shooting each other. Most of the time, the larger group will always win. Battles don't decide who's right, it just decides who's left, and those that are left always win. The ballot box just does that without the pointless bloodshed. But if it needs to go that far, the ammo box isn't that far behind.
Of course, those were the old days. When it wasn't sporty to use guerrilla tactics, or assault weapons to mow down multiple opponents and dick with the odds. Each soldier essentially had roughly one kill each in them with the muskets of the day. Advances in technology have kind of tipped the scales... but what if we had the technology to equalize everything again back to the way things were when the second amendment was written?
Instead of just giving everyone guns and hoping everything will even itself out naturally, what if everyone simply had the right to designate one other person for termination? Anyone, anywhere. You only get one, and you will most likely be terminated yourself after your terminate someone else, because, hey, terminating people is bad, but if they've so wronged you, it's worth the sacrifice. Everyone will have to become civil and polite to each other, because hey, if you piss off someone too badly, you could become their one. No bodyguards or fortresses or armored cars or private islands or foreign armies to hide behind, the Second Amendment drones will find you and mete out the great equalizer. Everyone will need to run off and dedicate their lives to making each other happy, especially the dark and crazed people. This is power. This is giving everyone the happiness of a warm gun for the 21st century.
Because most shooters somehow tend to get painted as nerds in the media. Because they were students, and/or played video games, or something like that.
Eh, I'm not a great judge of character, so I would find this useful.
If this was the exact same service except for drivers instead of "people", I'm sure everyone would be saying this is the best thing since... campaign finance reform? Well, probably even better than that.
Imagine an overlay on your windscreen that highlighted other cars that would drive recklessly, or get into lots of accidents, or drive too slowly. You'd be able to deal with them much better by knowing how careful to be around them and the best strategy to put as much distance between you and them as possible. Because a lot of success in driving depends upon being able to identify the assholes and get the fuck away from them. Or at least to a safe enough distance where you can watch what happens when they encounter another asshole.
The same is true with life. (paging badcaranalogy guy) There are plenty of toxic people running around out there, and the less time you manage to spend with them the better off you are.
Now sure, it would well turn into a big circle-jerk of narcissists propping each other up with +5 reviews. But you'll learn to to identify those clusters and steer clear of them as well. In fact, just steer clear of everyone. Drive like you're invisible. No one sees you. No one hears you. Because accidents always happen precisely because someone isn't paying enough attention to you and your goals.
I always liked broccoli. They're like little trees, and I was a huge dinosaur, mowing down the forest with my insatiable appetite as the little woodland critters scurried off in fear, abandoning their nests and burrows with their precious little ones.
I was kinda surprised to learn that most kids didn't enjoy that.
True, but Mr. +5 Insightful fearmonger said these devices would hold "several times as much energy" as cellphone batteries, when TFS just says they're increasing energy density by increasing voltage (and probably modestly at that). These graphene "supercapacitors" at best have still only have about 1/10th the energy density of Li-ion batteries that are melting down when shorted. (~15Wh/kg vs. 100-265Wh/kg) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sure, if you have a heart condition or something, a jolt of voltage can kill. And a flick of flint-n-steel can light a deadly fire. I don't think the days of supercapacitor cells mercilessly frying our junk is quite upon us yet, though, as the GP poster might be implying.
Well, it's no big secret where he is. And various people have reported recognizing him on the street there, and say he just kinda smiles and makes a "shh" gesture. I don't think he feels he's in big danger for his life, he probably still had a good set of dead man's scripts out there, even though he claims to have turned over everything he has to the media. Moscow is a fun city. Highest cost of living in the world. Much better than being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy like Assange.
I do appreciate how the second tweet refers to something recent in the news, the same way some of the Bin Laden announcements would drop a current events reference to confirm it wasn't an old recording of some vague threat.
Considering they use Lightscribe on optical media to manufacture it, I'm already looking forwards to some epic DVD-in-microwave videos to come out of this
It doesn't hold more energy, it merely charges instantly.
Sure, they have to use higher voltages to store that energy. But current kills, not voltage (which you should appreciate if you ever had experienced an electrostatic discharge)
It is worth doing in hardware, if the hardware is simply adding another monitor, and perhaps even a VESA mount. KVM switches aren't cheap. Or if they are cheap, they're not very usable. That said, I've had good experiences with the Aten DVI KVM switches... much better than the driver issues I've run into with Belkins and stuff. The separate USB routing is very useful too.
TigerVNC / UltraVNC is actually very usable with full-screen screengrabbing, especially on a LAN. It can maintain maybe 5 fps, which won't be great for gaming or FMV, but is good enough for most CAD / CAM work or image processing.
I would mainly just use Synergy to extend my mouse to additional PCs over the VNC protocol, though. Again, this won't work as intended for some mouse actions (like click and drag to rotate), but it beats the frustration I get when trying to remember which KVM switch setting lets me control which PC. I'm much more sane juggling separate keyboards and mice, which are much cheaper, and just about every desk I've seen has extra keyboard trays so space has never been a big issue.
Resolution matters. Distance matters. Peripherals matter. Start with the ThinkLogical VX40. You will need some transmitters and receivers and you may want a server to run the switching software. They have some optional keypads. They can also use either MMF or SMF, if you need to extend more than a few hundred meters.
This. I've deployed half-million dollars' worth of Thinklogical KVMASS networks for $LARGEDEFENSECOMPANY$ before and they were great to work with. If money is no barrier, these fiber modems and crossbar fiber switches will let you do just about anything. Full lossless digital transmission, and measurable but barely noticeable latency of maybe 100ms. One fiber carries the video (or two, if you need dual-link DVI bandwidths), and another carries the bidirectional KMASS (keyboard, mouse, audio, serial, uSb). The video can be routed independently of the KMASS, and the last rev of the WebUI that I saw about a decade ago was pretty good with complex presets and stuff. The fiber routers ran some flavor of Scientific Linux, so I could get in there and install extra python scripts that would allow it to take other control protocols.
There were some minor problems with some USB drivers... by default a keyboard / mouse would be patched through via a virtual compatibility layer that might cause issues if you were using a fancy keyboard, but there are options that let you use the KM in "dumb" USB mode (which means a bit more latency when switching KMASS as the OS has to re-detect your HID each time, and maybe trouble booting if your BIOS whines about not detecting a keyboard). And only one console could have control of a workstation at a time. Maybe the biggest annoyance for "traditional" KVM switch users is that they didn't have any keyboard shortcuts at the time, so you needed another control station to request switches. But it was certainly the best approach for giving us "any console, anywhere" from a visualization farm in one or more server rooms to any operator console anywhere in our facility.
Yes, mi is a strange fruit indeed, but he does seem more intelligent than the average conservative (or whatever he is) so it's a bit more fun to argue with him.
The US has a long history of backing guerrillas to topple dictators, just to install new dictators that they can eventually defame and then repeat the entire cycle again. ISIS is really doing America's work with American weapons. http://stormcloudsgathering.co...
It's much easier to digest the depressing headlines about ISIS atrocities when you admit that everything is going exactly to plan... they're there to kick up a lot of dirt in the desert and wreak havoc there to keep the brown people down. And it's working, we enjoy a much better quality of life here than in the rest of the world, so we can take some comfort in that.
You could argue that just about everything the US has accomplished lately has been to counter whatever Russia was doing. The US / UK entered WWII when they did not to save Europe from Hitler, but from Stalin. The Space Race. "In God We Trust" printed on monies starting in 1956 to distance ourselves from the atheist commies.
But I guess whatever proxy conflicts we have now beats the socks out of whatever the world would be like if the US and USSR actually cooperated to rule the world.
At first I didn't think https://twitter.com/snowden could be the real Edward Snowden. That pose on his profile pic has got to be the douchey-est photo of him I've ever seen. And yet it comes up as a "Verified" Twitter account. How could they verify that?
For now, I'm still calling it out as a DoD / CIA / NSA InfoOps character defamation account:P
Oh, sweet! I kinda got stuck on Anathem with all of the weird names. Had no idea that Stephenson was working on something like this. I think I know what I'm getting as a birthday present this year, thanks!
I now have more time to dedicate my life to other forms of mediocrity, woo!
I kinda want to write some amateur sci-fi on this topic... if I actually had any modicum of talent for writing.
If a corporation / country starts mining an asteroid for materials to use in space, what is anyone going to do about it? Tax them? Declare war on them?
There isn't THAT much unobtanium in space that's usable here on Earth which would make it worth deorbiting. The value of mining stuff in space is so you can build things in space. It's pretty expensive to boost water into orbit. So it seems like it could be pretty lucrative to hijack a few tons of ice comet, wrap it in insulation, and gently tow it into a usable orbit somewhere on the lagrangian transport network over the course of a few years or even decades. From there it could become a nice resource of raw materials to have to help supply a good-sized space station, available to the highest bidder.
Once something like that is set in motion, who's going to stop it? Only another corp with the ability to launch another robotic probe to hijack that hijacked comet. If one probe disturbs another probe, is that an act of war? Probably not, even if they're both pretty expensive. Should it be legal for one probe to "steal" another probe's towed cargo? What if they were just two separate microfactories that landed on the same asteroid and were mining it for minerals? Seems like they should be able to "share", and shall the fastest probe harvest most of the asteroid. But at one point does one probe manage to "stake a claim" on an asteroid, and is programmed to take defensive measures against anything else that approaches to interfere? Knowing that if there were a bunch of territorial probes roaming the solar system, they could all trivially wipe each other out with relatively small lasers or projectiles or explosives if they were at all aggressive. So they would likely be programmed to cooperate as much as they possible, since their missions were so expensive. But they'd have a self-destruct that would take out whatever it is they were carrying and any enemy probes in the area, to discourage probes from trying to "steal". At some point, our fleet of mining probes may have spread out far enough to encounter alien probes, which may as well have been programmed with similar rules of engagement, and it will be interesting to see how they manage to autonomously interact and communicate their intentions to each other.
Back to the subject of actually staking claims, it would be interesting if corps / countries would be required to have a human present to actually plant a flag on asteroids they wished to mine. The logic being if a probe attacked a competing probe in space, it's just business. But if a probe attacks a human in space, that's an act of war, and the companies can go to court down here on Earth or the countries can go to arms or whatever it is they'd do back in the days of imperialism. So it will be neat if that manages to be the impetus to put long-term human colonies in space, if just to be homesteaders. Wonder if they even have to be awake for the trip... or even fully alive for that matter. It would likely be pretty depressing, to have countries scrambling to put just one or two people per asteroid to stake claims and squat in space and try to hang on to survival and maybe sanity for decades at a time. Space cowboys.
Good advice! Another tactic is to propose a "pilot project" to migrate just one of the "low-hanging fruit" servers to a VM... something that's not very business critical that no one important will notice if it's down for a while to work out all of the kinks. After that's done, declare success, hand the procedural documentation over to the "B-team" to complete the rest of the migration, and take a promotion on to greener pastures. Then we can entertain another exciting "How to IT?" Ask Slashdot question from your successor, and respond with the exact same advice, until enough "pilot projects" have gone through to finish the job.
Slashdot Mirror
Had a demo from one of the Oculus devs this weekend.
It's a tough call. They're both very immersive, and I'd even go so far as to say that if I didn't know what to look for, I wouldn't be able to pick out the differences qualitatively. I wouldn't go so far as to say the "cheap" VR is giving VR a bad rep, though, you can get your rocks off either way. It will be more of a challenge with the smartphone-based VR, but it's "good enough".
All of my panoramic and photosphere shots are available on my Nexus 5, and it's pretty amazing to revisit those places in Google Cardboard, even though it's not even stereoscopic 3D. The best 3D app I've seen so far is the Titans of Space , but a couple of the other demos are cute enough to be interesting. It's definitely quite usable and much more compelling than experiencing this content without Cardboard. Everyone I've shown it to is pretty amazed.
That said, the Oculus Rift experience is very cool, and you can really appreciate the extra fidelity. I did the Gears of War slow-mo teaser and The Hobbit dragon liar, and the increased resolution and head tracking does make it much more immersive. You can crouch down behind things, and bob and weave your head and try to "eat" bits of debris floating around in space. People are definitely going to get hurt, since they really get to use their head as a controller. This feature is amazing, and the "hard core" crowd will definitely build Oculus setups for themselves, but I don't think it will go mainstream for some time. There were a few times I wandered out of range of the hi-fidelity IR head tracking camera, and I barely noticed other than the quick jolt I get when going in and out of its view. I think the accelerometer sensors on board the Oculus and the Smartphone-based VR are decent enough. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in it, but I didn't experience any vertigo... I don't experience any vertigo with Cardboard either. I think people are either able to adjust or they aren't... sure maybe the Oculus induces less headaches after prolonged use because of the better head tracking and latency, but I don't think it'll be that huge of a difference for people who are predispositioned to get nauseated or no. There also seems to be focus issues that will confound people who don't bother to position the Oculus on their heads just right... there was a lot of fussing around for everyone to adjust all the straps just right, whereas Cardboard is much easier to just hold up to your face and go and share (maybe with those removable forehead strips to absorb facial oils)
The dev also had a nice Samsung VR headset. It was a bit nicer than Cardboard and had the little trackpad on the side, but it didn't add considerably to the enjoyment. The $15 Cardboard is good enough on the low end to experience most of what's out there. I see people using lots of Cardboard for shared VR experiences for the whole family... I don't know many people who have multiple beefy gaming PCs, but just about everyone and their dog has a half-decent smartphone.
That said, I'm certainly going to get an Oculus setup when they come out, because I'm that kind of guy (but not enough of that kind of guy to get the DK2). I'll probably also have to upgrade my elderly Geforce 560Ti before then, though, so it's going to set me back plenty. In the meantime, by all means get a $15 Cardboard to go with your current smartphone. Plenty of decent content is already there, and more is always on the way. It's a great time for VR no matter what your equipment.
Everyone does not need to learn to code. Period. They might benefit from learning the ideas behind programming, but that's not at all the same thing as "learning to code".
OTOH, everyone ought to learn how to talk to programmers. This is your moment. Don't throw it away.
Oh, sheesh, I run into crap like this all the time just trying to use my HSA debit card to pay for prescriptions and copays and crap at my health care provider. You think it'd just be a no-brainer, paying healthcare costs with a VISA debit card who's only purpose is to pay healthcare costs. But more than half the time it gets rejected for some stupid reason and I end up calling both my bank and the healthcare administration. Even for routine stuff like fulfilling prescriptions which we've successfully done in the past.
Still beats the hassle of getting them to reimburse FSA claims after the fact, though.
Do you always go to the same brand of gas station, or was it different ones? Something something about when you stop for gas, the merchant puts a hold on your credit account for up to $150 - $250, then a few days later it actually clears for the exact amount you pumped. A lot of gas stations still have signs saying something like that if you charge credit.
So maybe it wasn't your card cutting you off, the vendor just hit their daily hold since you did so much driving in a big truck in one day.
But yes, always good to have a backup for whatever the silly reason.
All of my fraud alerts have been pretty reasonable, though. Usually when I travel I suppose they see that I bought a plane ticket or car rental or UHaul on the card first. They have called us a few times, such as when my wife suddenly made large puchases (e.g. suddenly bought a nice dress at Nordstrom after decades of shopping at off-name stores). They also caught it immediately when someone suddenly started using our CC number to make $100s in mundane purchases in a Target in Chicago thousands of miles away out of the blue.
I secretly think that the banks and credit card agencies sorta enjoy dealing with fraud, though... they must get some sort of insurance knockback or it just makes them feel like they're doing something useful and providing value by dealing with criminals so that us little guys and merchants don't have to and they can justify their 3 - 5% "convenience fees" on every transaction.
or maybe I just still remember my gnupg encryption key from decades ago
This. I like the cloud as much as anyone, probably more. But can't fathom why, if you're already paying for home internet access, would anyone not just host everything on a leftover home shoebox server. It plugs into the same little UPS as the rest of my home networking equipment, and runs a little RAID, and does offsite backups to Glacier and whatever other shoebox servers my friends run in their basements. It's nice not having to worry about running the minimum amount of stuff to reduce billing, but rather the maximum amount of stuff I can fit on the server without it falling over.
Yeah, that was pretty amazing:
http://www.npr.org/sections/th...
Doesn't even have to by tyrants. EVERYONE honestly believes they are doing the right thing. Jesus thought he was doing the right thing. Pontius Pilate thoughr he was doing the right thing. Your mom thought she was doing the right thing. Elite German SS soldiers thought they were doing the right thing. Abortion clinics and the people who put down dogs and cats for the SPCA thought they did the right thing. Abortion clinic bombers thought they did the right thing. Suicide bombers thought they did the right thing. Al Qaida thought they put up a good struggle. Gay-bashers thought they did the right thing. Bigot bullies thought they did the right thing. Religious followers thought they did the right thing.
You know who else put up a good struggle?
No one wants to be wrong. And they'll go to any length not to have to face being wrong.
There are no good and evil people on this Earth. Even (especially!) serial killers, satan worshippers, rapists, drug addicts, tax cheats, tax collectors, lawyers, and murderers. They all are doing what they believe to be the right thing.
Who is good and evil in a chess match? Who is right and who is wrong? It's all in how you play the game.
Yeah, looked this up recently. Only about 1/3rd of US citizens even have a passport issued ever. That's no guarantee that they've even used it.
Eh, I think the second amendment is more like that other slashdotter's sig "there are three boxes to be used in defense of liberty: the soap box, the ballot box, and the ammo box" (in researching this, i guess there are up to five, if you want to include the mailbox and jury box).
But I think that explains a lot about our... flavor... of representative democracy. A lot of people complain that our form of voting for candidates is mathematically weak and fosters a two-party domination system. Sure there are better third parties out there, and better ballot counting methods. But the point of our government isn't to give us the best outcome. The point of our democracy is to prevent a bloody revolution. Every four to eight years we get a chance to think that something will change, and we can just struggle along until the next election, without ever really needing to fix anything.
Another reason I like the boxes quip is that assume we always voted on everything by defining two sides to an issue, and placing everyone on opposite sides of an open field with their musket, and shooting each other. Most of the time, the larger group will always win. Battles don't decide who's right, it just decides who's left, and those that are left always win. The ballot box just does that without the pointless bloodshed. But if it needs to go that far, the ammo box isn't that far behind.
Of course, those were the old days. When it wasn't sporty to use guerrilla tactics, or assault weapons to mow down multiple opponents and dick with the odds. Each soldier essentially had roughly one kill each in them with the muskets of the day. Advances in technology have kind of tipped the scales... but what if we had the technology to equalize everything again back to the way things were when the second amendment was written?
Instead of just giving everyone guns and hoping everything will even itself out naturally, what if everyone simply had the right to designate one other person for termination? Anyone, anywhere. You only get one, and you will most likely be terminated yourself after your terminate someone else, because, hey, terminating people is bad, but if they've so wronged you, it's worth the sacrifice. Everyone will have to become civil and polite to each other, because hey, if you piss off someone too badly, you could become their one. No bodyguards or fortresses or armored cars or private islands or foreign armies to hide behind, the Second Amendment drones will find you and mete out the great equalizer. Everyone will need to run off and dedicate their lives to making each other happy, especially the dark and crazed people. This is power. This is giving everyone the happiness of a warm gun for the 21st century.
This is Slashdot news why?
Because most shooters somehow tend to get painted as nerds in the media. Because they were students, and/or played video games, or something like that.
This is something I can agree with mi on. People are the problem. Guns are the solution.
Eh, I'm not a great judge of character, so I would find this useful.
If this was the exact same service except for drivers instead of "people", I'm sure everyone would be saying this is the best thing since... campaign finance reform? Well, probably even better than that.
Imagine an overlay on your windscreen that highlighted other cars that would drive recklessly, or get into lots of accidents, or drive too slowly. You'd be able to deal with them much better by knowing how careful to be around them and the best strategy to put as much distance between you and them as possible. Because a lot of success in driving depends upon being able to identify the assholes and get the fuck away from them. Or at least to a safe enough distance where you can watch what happens when they encounter another asshole.
The same is true with life. (paging badcaranalogy guy) There are plenty of toxic people running around out there, and the less time you manage to spend with them the better off you are.
Now sure, it would well turn into a big circle-jerk of narcissists propping each other up with +5 reviews. But you'll learn to to identify those clusters and steer clear of them as well. In fact, just steer clear of everyone. Drive like you're invisible. No one sees you. No one hears you. Because accidents always happen precisely because someone isn't paying enough attention to you and your goals.
I always liked broccoli. They're like little trees, and I was a huge dinosaur, mowing down the forest with my insatiable appetite as the little woodland critters scurried off in fear, abandoning their nests and burrows with their precious little ones.
I was kinda surprised to learn that most kids didn't enjoy that.
True, but Mr. +5 Insightful fearmonger said these devices would hold "several times as much energy" as cellphone batteries, when TFS just says they're increasing energy density by increasing voltage (and probably modestly at that). These graphene "supercapacitors" at best have still only have about 1/10th the energy density of Li-ion batteries that are melting down when shorted. (~15Wh/kg vs. 100-265Wh/kg) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Sure, if you have a heart condition or something, a jolt of voltage can kill. And a flick of flint-n-steel can light a deadly fire. I don't think the days of supercapacitor cells mercilessly frying our junk is quite upon us yet, though, as the GP poster might be implying.
Well, it's no big secret where he is. And various people have reported recognizing him on the street there, and say he just kinda smiles and makes a "shh" gesture. I don't think he feels he's in big danger for his life, he probably still had a good set of dead man's scripts out there, even though he claims to have turned over everything he has to the media. Moscow is a fun city. Highest cost of living in the world. Much better than being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy like Assange.
I do appreciate how the second tweet refers to something recent in the news, the same way some of the Bin Laden announcements would drop a current events reference to confirm it wasn't an old recording of some vague threat.
Considering they use Lightscribe on optical media to manufacture it, I'm already looking forwards to some epic DVD-in-microwave videos to come out of this
https://youtu.be/Fgm0FRN0KbU
It doesn't hold more energy, it merely charges instantly.
Sure, they have to use higher voltages to store that energy. But current kills, not voltage (which you should appreciate if you ever had experienced an electrostatic discharge)
It is worth doing in hardware, if the hardware is simply adding another monitor, and perhaps even a VESA mount. KVM switches aren't cheap. Or if they are cheap, they're not very usable. That said, I've had good experiences with the Aten DVI KVM switches... much better than the driver issues I've run into with Belkins and stuff. The separate USB routing is very useful too.
TigerVNC / UltraVNC is actually very usable with full-screen screengrabbing, especially on a LAN. It can maintain maybe 5 fps, which won't be great for gaming or FMV, but is good enough for most CAD / CAM work or image processing.
I would mainly just use Synergy to extend my mouse to additional PCs over the VNC protocol, though. Again, this won't work as intended for some mouse actions (like click and drag to rotate), but it beats the frustration I get when trying to remember which KVM switch setting lets me control which PC. I'm much more sane juggling separate keyboards and mice, which are much cheaper, and just about every desk I've seen has extra keyboard trays so space has never been a big issue.
Resolution matters. Distance matters. Peripherals matter.
Start with the ThinkLogical VX40. You will need some transmitters and receivers and you may want a server to run the switching software. They have some optional keypads. They can also use either MMF or SMF, if you need to extend more than a few hundred meters.
This. I've deployed half-million dollars' worth of Thinklogical KVMASS networks for $LARGEDEFENSECOMPANY$ before and they were great to work with. If money is no barrier, these fiber modems and crossbar fiber switches will let you do just about anything. Full lossless digital transmission, and measurable but barely noticeable latency of maybe 100ms. One fiber carries the video (or two, if you need dual-link DVI bandwidths), and another carries the bidirectional KMASS (keyboard, mouse, audio, serial, uSb). The video can be routed independently of the KMASS, and the last rev of the WebUI that I saw about a decade ago was pretty good with complex presets and stuff. The fiber routers ran some flavor of Scientific Linux, so I could get in there and install extra python scripts that would allow it to take other control protocols.
There were some minor problems with some USB drivers... by default a keyboard / mouse would be patched through via a virtual compatibility layer that might cause issues if you were using a fancy keyboard, but there are options that let you use the KM in "dumb" USB mode (which means a bit more latency when switching KMASS as the OS has to re-detect your HID each time, and maybe trouble booting if your BIOS whines about not detecting a keyboard). And only one console could have control of a workstation at a time. Maybe the biggest annoyance for "traditional" KVM switch users is that they didn't have any keyboard shortcuts at the time, so you needed another control station to request switches. But it was certainly the best approach for giving us "any console, anywhere" from a visualization farm in one or more server rooms to any operator console anywhere in our facility.
Yes, mi is a strange fruit indeed, but he does seem more intelligent than the average conservative (or whatever he is) so it's a bit more fun to argue with him.
The US has a long history of backing guerrillas to topple dictators, just to install new dictators that they can eventually defame and then repeat the entire cycle again. ISIS is really doing America's work with American weapons. http://stormcloudsgathering.co...
It's much easier to digest the depressing headlines about ISIS atrocities when you admit that everything is going exactly to plan... they're there to kick up a lot of dirt in the desert and wreak havoc there to keep the brown people down. And it's working, we enjoy a much better quality of life here than in the rest of the world, so we can take some comfort in that.
You could argue that just about everything the US has accomplished lately has been to counter whatever Russia was doing. The US / UK entered WWII when they did not to save Europe from Hitler, but from Stalin. The Space Race. "In God We Trust" printed on monies starting in 1956 to distance ourselves from the atheist commies.
But I guess whatever proxy conflicts we have now beats the socks out of whatever the world would be like if the US and USSR actually cooperated to rule the world.
At first I didn't think https://twitter.com/snowden could be the real Edward Snowden. That pose on his profile pic has got to be the douchey-est photo of him I've ever seen. And yet it comes up as a "Verified" Twitter account. How could they verify that?
For now, I'm still calling it out as a DoD / CIA / NSA InfoOps character defamation account :P
Oh, sweet! I kinda got stuck on Anathem with all of the weird names. Had no idea that Stephenson was working on something like this. I think I know what I'm getting as a birthday present this year, thanks!
I now have more time to dedicate my life to other forms of mediocrity, woo!
I kinda want to write some amateur sci-fi on this topic... if I actually had any modicum of talent for writing.
If a corporation / country starts mining an asteroid for materials to use in space, what is anyone going to do about it? Tax them? Declare war on them?
There isn't THAT much unobtanium in space that's usable here on Earth which would make it worth deorbiting. The value of mining stuff in space is so you can build things in space. It's pretty expensive to boost water into orbit. So it seems like it could be pretty lucrative to hijack a few tons of ice comet, wrap it in insulation, and gently tow it into a usable orbit somewhere on the lagrangian transport network over the course of a few years or even decades. From there it could become a nice resource of raw materials to have to help supply a good-sized space station, available to the highest bidder.
Once something like that is set in motion, who's going to stop it? Only another corp with the ability to launch another robotic probe to hijack that hijacked comet. If one probe disturbs another probe, is that an act of war? Probably not, even if they're both pretty expensive. Should it be legal for one probe to "steal" another probe's towed cargo? What if they were just two separate microfactories that landed on the same asteroid and were mining it for minerals? Seems like they should be able to "share", and shall the fastest probe harvest most of the asteroid. But at one point does one probe manage to "stake a claim" on an asteroid, and is programmed to take defensive measures against anything else that approaches to interfere? Knowing that if there were a bunch of territorial probes roaming the solar system, they could all trivially wipe each other out with relatively small lasers or projectiles or explosives if they were at all aggressive. So they would likely be programmed to cooperate as much as they possible, since their missions were so expensive. But they'd have a self-destruct that would take out whatever it is they were carrying and any enemy probes in the area, to discourage probes from trying to "steal". At some point, our fleet of mining probes may have spread out far enough to encounter alien probes, which may as well have been programmed with similar rules of engagement, and it will be interesting to see how they manage to autonomously interact and communicate their intentions to each other.
Back to the subject of actually staking claims, it would be interesting if corps / countries would be required to have a human present to actually plant a flag on asteroids they wished to mine. The logic being if a probe attacked a competing probe in space, it's just business. But if a probe attacks a human in space, that's an act of war, and the companies can go to court down here on Earth or the countries can go to arms or whatever it is they'd do back in the days of imperialism. So it will be neat if that manages to be the impetus to put long-term human colonies in space, if just to be homesteaders. Wonder if they even have to be awake for the trip... or even fully alive for that matter. It would likely be pretty depressing, to have countries scrambling to put just one or two people per asteroid to stake claims and squat in space and try to hang on to survival and maybe sanity for decades at a time. Space cowboys.
Good advice! Another tactic is to propose a "pilot project" to migrate just one of the "low-hanging fruit" servers to a VM... something that's not very business critical that no one important will notice if it's down for a while to work out all of the kinks. After that's done, declare success, hand the procedural documentation over to the "B-team" to complete the rest of the migration, and take a promotion on to greener pastures. Then we can entertain another exciting "How to IT?" Ask Slashdot question from your successor, and respond with the exact same advice, until enough "pilot projects" have gone through to finish the job.