Now that brings up the question: How does/. reconcile its popularly held belief that people are by and large lazy/stupid/ignorant with its other popularly held belief that people deserve the truth from politicians and a say in policy?
The two are not contradictory. Even if the people are by and large lazy, stupid, and ignorant, they still deserve to hear the truth from their elected officials, and as long as this is still nominally a democracy, they are still entitled to a say in policy. Don't like it? You could try North Korea for a while, see if you like it better over there...
I sympathize with the airline staff. They have to deal with surly customers who start with the presumption that the airlines are out to get them. I start with the presumption that the people behind the desk are just trying to do their job as best they can
Who's to say that both aren't true? The motives and intentions of the people you deal with don't necessarily reflect those of the corporation they work for.
The mid-late 90's Jetta TDI's were awesome. Sure hope my 2010 is as good.
Likely even better - but dammit why won't VW bring over the 170 hp version of the 2.0L TDI instead of sticking us with the 140 hp version why why why...
Space elevator : Initial cost is very very high but once built the running costs are negligible
Rockets : Initial cost is high but not that high, running costs are high forever, economy of scale will never kick in to any reasonable degree
Exactly that's also why trains and not planes are such a success in the States.
Planes are more successful in the US than trains for passenger trips, because people don't want to spend 24 hours traveling from NYC to LA when they can do it in six. Meanwhile, your sarcasm backfires - trains are immensely successful in the US, but for cargo, not passenger travel. Could you imagine having to ship 100 cars' worth of coal, or corn, or steel, halfway across the country, by air?
...are afraid to fix the fucked-up tax code where 46% pay no income tax at all.
You realize that those 46% still pay lots of other kinds of taxes? E.g. sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes (latently, through their rent - surely the landlord passes on his property taxes to his tenants), etc. The idea that half of Americans don't pay taxes is a detestable myth/propaganda.
My greatest fear with brain enhancement technology is that it creates a super-class of humans. Those who have the ability to pay for the technology will have a majorly unfair advantage against those who don't, creating a dangerously elite group of people.
Substitute "brain enhancement technology" with "smartphones", "personal computers", "automobiles", "airplanes", "telegraphs", "printed books", "arithmetic" etc. All technologies that confer some advantage are generally more readily available, and sooner, to people with money than to people without. (The funny thing is, I don't know if I'm making an argument that technology is a rising tide that lifts all boats, or that technology and its superior availability to the wealthy is a proof that trickle-down really works...)
A phased array antenna, however, has LOTS of moving parts that can break or freeze up in bad weather. It also costs anywhere between $5000 and $30000 depending on your specifics, especially given that you need to bump up the transmitter power vs. an equivalent GEO radio to get equivalent data rates. Top that off with the fact that you're going to lose your connection everytime the LEO bird your dish was tracking goes over the horizon and it needs to lock onto a different satellite.
What about a solid-state phased array, like them newfangled AESA radars? I guess they're a little more than $5k-$30k though...
I wonder why they aren't putting network satellites in LEO instead of geostationary. Just how hard would it be to use a phased array antenna instead of a dish and track the orbit? Would that negate the lower cost of only going to LEO? After all, with the satellites in lower orbit you could launch more of them, which ought to improve bandwidth. And the improvement in latency would make this arrangement competetive with any other broadband offering.
I have had this exact thought from time to time in the past - pretty much ever since I first heard of phased-array antennae. I can only imagine that the cost/benefit equation works out negatively. Remember, not only is the phased-array antenna (which I guess would look something like an AESA radar) technology fairly expensive (and possibly somewhat secret, for anything reasonably compact), but you need lots more satellites. For GEO, you could hypothetically get away with maybe 6 satellites (and you'd still have trouble near the poles), whereas with LEO you might need 20 or more (cf. GPS), depending on the orbital altitude.
Well, then I guess Junior's just going to have to suck it up and wait a few years till he can move to the big city, isn't he? You know there are kids on this planet being sold into slavery, or being drugged out of their minds and having AK-47s pushed into their hands, as we speak, right? Do you hear them bitching about a few ms of latency on their poor little satellite broadband Internet service? Not to mention that there are whole generations of us for whom 28.8 kbps was a hot new technology when we were Junior's age, and somehow we managed to reach adulthood without major psychological trauma... Sheesh.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot, IMO, when they decided you wouldn't be allowed to upgrade from XP to 7. As we know, most folks did not upgrade from XP to Vista and therefore were still running XP, and continued to run it, when 7 came out. Many of those folks might have eventually upgraded to 7 if they had been allowed. And don't tell me it was technologically impossible - it's possible to upgrade from XP to Vista, and from Vista to 7, so they could have allowed it if they wanted to.
That's because both politicians AND industrialists just see lots of fast profit from permafrost thawing, namely more usable land
Are you kidding? Do you know what happens to permafrost when it thaws? It becomes an impassable, goopy muck that you can't build on, or drive on, or lay railroad tracks on, etc. Homes and buildings in the regions permafrost zone are built on pilings sunk way down into the portion of the permafrost that's cold enough to never thaw, so that the buildings don't sink into the muck. I'm not sure where the "fast profit" is in working in that kind of terrain.
NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe.
It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.
IIRC it was officially available at one point or another for Alpha and MIPS R4000. A PowerPC port (for IBM PPC machines, not Macs) was in the works but I'm not sure it was ever released...? Of course, if you count NT-derived OSes that came after the one actually called "Windows NT", then there's also Itanium, and soon to be ARM.
"2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept."
Science and occasional math stories, sure. Union disputes in Australia? No.
Inability or seriously reduced ability to travel to or from Australia, e.g. on business of a possibly nerdy nature? Quite possibly. The company I work for has an installation in Australia in the next couple of weeks...
Steve Jobs net worth was 8.3 billion. Let's go ahead and spread that one out so everyone can afford healthcare. Hell, that puts an extra $24.41 in everyones pocket. That's enough for one year of tuition. Granted, your only talking about the 40 million uninsured they would each get a big ole fat check for $207.50.
That $207.50 would probably count for quite a lot to many of those 40 million uninsured folks - it would at least mean an annual checkup that they're probably not getting now. (Not that I'm one of those eat-the-rich folks, but let's remember that even a little money means a lot to someone who has nothing.)
The pictures show a Mercedes/AMG CL 2-seater hard top convertible. The article describes a "big Mercedes". The CL is big only in price, but not everyone would know that just by looking at it...
Even a CL is a pretty big car. It's not even particularly small for a Benz, when you consider the worldwide market (e.g. A- and B-class models)...
I for one am glad I have only existed (for all intents and purposes) post cold war, which does make me a young-ling compared to some of you lot, but everyone should know about what could have happened. I always believe history is there to be told, known and learned from. I certainly appreciate not living in a radioactive mud pit. In fact I certainly appreciate existing.
Gen-Xers are about the right age to have "enjoyed" the Reagan Era as young children - "evil empire" and "the bombing starts in five minutes" and all that...
Well, the LOC has 147 million items, 33 million of them books. At, say an average of 1kg each, that would be, say 40 million kilos? Probably more. Lets say 50 million kg, falling from infinity to the Earth's surface gives a total energy of 3.14*10^15 joules, at 4.184Gj/ton of TNT gives a total of 750kilotons of TNT. That would be about 57 Hiroshimas. Note that the LOC probably weighs at least 2-3 times that, but Google doesn't seem to know, so whatever.
Of course, most of that would be dissipated as heat as the books/films etc. burned on the way down; very little of it would actually be translated into destructive force on impact.
I realize there are some serious downsides to being so reticent, but don't assume it's automatically and always better to be more open. That's just cultural imperialism talking.
When is it not better to be more open? When have cover-ups and secrecy ever worked better than openness and honesty, over the long term?
Slashdot Mirror
Now that brings up the question: How does /. reconcile its popularly held belief that people are by and large lazy/stupid/ignorant with its other popularly held belief that people deserve the truth from politicians and a say in policy?
The two are not contradictory. Even if the people are by and large lazy, stupid, and ignorant, they still deserve to hear the truth from their elected officials, and as long as this is still nominally a democracy, they are still entitled to a say in policy. Don't like it? You could try North Korea for a while, see if you like it better over there...
Over the years, I seem to have trained my brain to seek out patterns in everything I encounter. .
You sure that was you training your brain? And not, say, a million years of evolution?
I sympathize with the airline staff. They have to deal with surly customers who start with the presumption that the airlines are out to get them. I start with the presumption that the people behind the desk are just trying to do their job as best they can
Who's to say that both aren't true? The motives and intentions of the people you deal with don't necessarily reflect those of the corporation they work for.
The mid-late 90's Jetta TDI's were awesome. Sure hope my 2010 is as good.
Likely even better - but dammit why won't VW bring over the 170 hp version of the 2.0L TDI instead of sticking us with the 140 hp version why why why...
Space elevator : Initial cost is very very high but once built the running costs are negligible
Rockets : Initial cost is high but not that high, running costs are high forever, economy of scale will never kick in to any reasonable degree
Exactly that's also why trains and not planes are such a success in the States.
Planes are more successful in the US than trains for passenger trips, because people don't want to spend 24 hours traveling from NYC to LA when they can do it in six. Meanwhile, your sarcasm backfires - trains are immensely successful in the US, but for cargo, not passenger travel. Could you imagine having to ship 100 cars' worth of coal, or corn, or steel, halfway across the country, by air?
My point is the flip is about to occur. More people will be riding the train then shoveling the coal. And those freeloaders vote.
Yeah, like votes still count for anything...
...are afraid to fix the fucked-up tax code where 46% pay no income tax at all.
You realize that those 46% still pay lots of other kinds of taxes? E.g. sales taxes, excise taxes, property taxes (latently, through their rent - surely the landlord passes on his property taxes to his tenants), etc. The idea that half of Americans don't pay taxes is a detestable myth/propaganda.
My greatest fear with brain enhancement technology is that it creates a super-class of humans. Those who have the ability to pay for the technology will have a majorly unfair advantage against those who don't, creating a dangerously elite group of people.
Substitute "brain enhancement technology" with "smartphones", "personal computers", "automobiles", "airplanes", "telegraphs", "printed books", "arithmetic" etc. All technologies that confer some advantage are generally more readily available, and sooner, to people with money than to people without. (The funny thing is, I don't know if I'm making an argument that technology is a rising tide that lifts all boats, or that technology and its superior availability to the wealthy is a proof that trickle-down really works...)
A phased array antenna, however, has LOTS of moving parts that can break or freeze up in bad weather. It also costs anywhere between $5000 and $30000 depending on your specifics, especially given that you need to bump up the transmitter power vs. an equivalent GEO radio to get equivalent data rates. Top that off with the fact that you're going to lose your connection everytime the LEO bird your dish was tracking goes over the horizon and it needs to lock onto a different satellite.
What about a solid-state phased array, like them newfangled AESA radars? I guess they're a little more than $5k-$30k though...
I wonder why they aren't putting network satellites in LEO instead of geostationary. Just how hard would it be to use a phased array antenna instead of a dish and track the orbit? Would that negate the lower cost of only going to LEO? After all, with the satellites in lower orbit you could launch more of them, which ought to improve bandwidth. And the improvement in latency would make this arrangement competetive with any other broadband offering.
I have had this exact thought from time to time in the past - pretty much ever since I first heard of phased-array antennae. I can only imagine that the cost/benefit equation works out negatively. Remember, not only is the phased-array antenna (which I guess would look something like an AESA radar) technology fairly expensive (and possibly somewhat secret, for anything reasonably compact), but you need lots more satellites. For GEO, you could hypothetically get away with maybe 6 satellites (and you'd still have trouble near the poles), whereas with LEO you might need 20 or more (cf. GPS), depending on the orbital altitude.
Well, then I guess Junior's just going to have to suck it up and wait a few years till he can move to the big city, isn't he? You know there are kids on this planet being sold into slavery, or being drugged out of their minds and having AK-47s pushed into their hands, as we speak, right? Do you hear them bitching about a few ms of latency on their poor little satellite broadband Internet service? Not to mention that there are whole generations of us for whom 28.8 kbps was a hot new technology when we were Junior's age, and somehow we managed to reach adulthood without major psychological trauma... Sheesh.
Microsoft shot themselves in the foot, IMO, when they decided you wouldn't be allowed to upgrade from XP to 7. As we know, most folks did not upgrade from XP to Vista and therefore were still running XP, and continued to run it, when 7 came out. Many of those folks might have eventually upgraded to 7 if they had been allowed. And don't tell me it was technologically impossible - it's possible to upgrade from XP to Vista, and from Vista to 7, so they could have allowed it if they wanted to.
We can name the months after the letters in the Metric Alphabet. I hope my birthday ends up being in Ellemenno.
That's because both politicians AND industrialists just see lots of fast profit from permafrost thawing, namely more usable land
Are you kidding? Do you know what happens to permafrost when it thaws? It becomes an impassable, goopy muck that you can't build on, or drive on, or lay railroad tracks on, etc. Homes and buildings in the regions permafrost zone are built on pilings sunk way down into the portion of the permafrost that's cold enough to never thaw, so that the buildings don't sink into the muck. I'm not sure where the "fast profit" is in working in that kind of terrain.
NT was going to be ported to everything. MIPS, DEC Alpha (No love for you VAX people), and the IBM Mainframe. It made it onto the Alpha, I think. Sort of. Now Windows is brought in to the mainframe, but not as a conqueror displacing System/360. It is brought in wearing chains, in a cage, by System/360's grandson.
IIRC it was officially available at one point or another for Alpha and MIPS R4000. A PowerPC port (for IBM PPC machines, not Macs) was in the works but I'm not sure it was ever released...? Of course, if you count NT-derived OSes that came after the one actually called "Windows NT", then there's also Itanium, and soon to be ARM.
It's implied by the word nerd:
"2. A person who is single-minded or accomplished in scientific or technical pursuits but is felt to be socially inept."
Science and occasional math stories, sure. Union disputes in Australia? No.
Inability or seriously reduced ability to travel to or from Australia, e.g. on business of a possibly nerdy nature? Quite possibly. The company I work for has an installation in Australia in the next couple of weeks...
Steve Jobs net worth was 8.3 billion. Let's go ahead and spread that one out so everyone can afford healthcare. Hell, that puts an extra $24.41 in everyones pocket. That's enough for one year of tuition. Granted, your only talking about the 40 million uninsured they would each get a big ole fat check for $207.50.
That $207.50 would probably count for quite a lot to many of those 40 million uninsured folks - it would at least mean an annual checkup that they're probably not getting now. (Not that I'm one of those eat-the-rich folks, but let's remember that even a little money means a lot to someone who has nothing.)
The pictures show a Mercedes/AMG CL 2-seater hard top convertible. The article describes a "big Mercedes". The CL is big only in price, but not everyone would know that just by looking at it...
Even a CL is a pretty big car. It's not even particularly small for a Benz, when you consider the worldwide market (e.g. A- and B-class models)...
Activating this at 2:00PM is a show of power. At test could be conducted at 3:00 AM where it wouldn't have the fear impact.
Really? Who's watching TV at 14:00? Don't most of us still have jobs?
... this so called "most powerful bomb" is useless like all the other nuclear weapons except for "global suicide" .
You're assuming that all people are sane and want to live long, happy lives...
I for one am glad I have only existed (for all intents and purposes) post cold war, which does make me a young-ling compared to some of you lot, but everyone should know about what could have happened. I always believe history is there to be told, known and learned from. I certainly appreciate not living in a radioactive mud pit. In fact I certainly appreciate existing.
Gen-Xers are about the right age to have "enjoyed" the Reagan Era as young children - "evil empire" and "the bombing starts in five minutes" and all that...
Well, the LOC has 147 million items, 33 million of them books. At, say an average of 1kg each, that would be, say 40 million kilos? Probably more. Lets say 50 million kg, falling from infinity to the Earth's surface gives a total energy of 3.14*10^15 joules, at 4.184Gj/ton of TNT gives a total of 750kilotons of TNT. That would be about 57 Hiroshimas. Note that the LOC probably weighs at least 2-3 times that, but Google doesn't seem to know, so whatever.
Of course, most of that would be dissipated as heat as the books/films etc. burned on the way down; very little of it would actually be translated into destructive force on impact.
Another good name would be "Airplane! Office" or "The Naked Office". "Austin Office, the Suite that Shagged Me". Nah, too far.
Or just "The Office". Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant would make better spokespeople than RMS.
He says he invited you...
I realize there are some serious downsides to being so reticent, but don't assume it's automatically and always better to be more open. That's just cultural imperialism talking.
When is it not better to be more open? When have cover-ups and secrecy ever worked better than openness and honesty, over the long term?