can't produce enough energy from the cells it makes to sustain production of more cells
What I take from that is that current top-down manufacturing methods are wasteful, but that won't be the case a few years down the road when we will be "growing" solar cells (as well as many other products) bottom-up with the same efficiency as a plant.
Also, at that point in the future, we'd still have a use for crude as a good source of carbon for building things, but it--like the hydrogen in the article--would much easier to "harvest" (bottom-up) in a distributed manner, than drill for (top-down) like we must now.
I thought you sounded fishy. Go back to England you elitist prick.
you...are a THUG.
You assume wrong Mr. Righteous. You are many times more thugish in your will to see guns removed from the hands of free people (or should I say morons?), than I am in defending that right. You don't push me around, I don't push you around... simple.
No, I don't own a gun, nor do I have a fetish for glorified gun violence, nor am I paranoid about government spooks coming to get me (yet), but I can understand your need to characterize all "gunlovers" as such.
I also realize that our government today has much bigger guns than its armed populace can ever hope to have, making the point of the 2nd ammendment a bit moot if we should ever really need to rise up and kill a few tyrants (terrorist methods would be more effective than a militia anyway). But, the FACT remains that Americans have the inalienable RIGHT to bear arms... and it's a FACT that people-with-guns prevent more crime/harm from occuring than they "cause" in the first place. A couple thousand accidental shootings per year (a favorite talking point of antigun peeps), besides being a drop in the bucket, is not a reason to ban the tool.
I think you're just a frightened, untrusting authoritarian schmuck who simply finds the idea of "ordinary" people owning weapons "offensive" because everyone besides your oh-so-cultured self must be a gunhappy drooling moron. Maybe YOU want government to be your mommy, but I sure don't... I'd much rather put my trust in an armed populace and deal with the personal responsibility that comes with great freedom. Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you ya know.
"gee".. "gawd".. golly... do you talk like that in real life too?
Only ironic from your point of view because that is what you choose to see.
From my POV the 'i'd shoot you' comment -- though intended sarcasticly, and intended to get a rise -- is perfectly reasonable in the context of me defending myself against your armed pro-disarmament army (if you were in power.. as I said)
Man you are scary. I sincerely hope you are never in a position of power to impose your righteous will on me (because I'd shoot you). You've got the conviction of a Hitler on this issue...
can the US Government do anything to ensure our safety without infringing on our rights?
Certainly.
They can start by 'declaring' that our safety cannot be ensured, that the government is not our mommy, that personal responsibility is not some trite oldfashioned idea as you seem to think, and that the ~3,000 deaths on 9/11 was a tragic yet small price to pay for enduring freedom. But to answer your question more directly: the one thing that the government could do to improve our safety the most is reduce our dependency on arab oil, and by extension, our arrogant meddling in those countries to secure that crude for ourselves.
Anyway, the real reason I replied was to inform you that you've just earned the honor of being #4 on my/. Foe shitlist! (I know, big deal)
You're in line right behind 1) a blatant plagiarizing karma whore, 2) a super-authoritarian IT jerkwad, 3) a super-authoritarian parent who thinks violent competition is too harmful for his kid to be exposed to.
You made my list for simply pissing me off with your elitist tone, and for being anti-gun to the point of stupidity. Congrats. If you were JUST anti-gun, or JUST an arrogant prick, we might be friends (not likely)... it's the combination that sickens.;-)
You know, I really wonder what's taking the NYTimes (and other "freereg" sites) so long to implement unique login enforcement? Porn sites have been using this kind of protection (such as PennyWize) for years to redflag accounts where multiple IP's per time period share the same account.
And on the surface, Trek is pro-establishment, Wars is anti-.
That about sums it up. Federation, good; Empire, bad. Prime Directive-and-all-the-protocol, good; "Join the dark side and rule the galaxy", bad.
It's just that in Trek, the "establishment" is idealized to the point of somehow being beyond corruption (in most of the episodes at least:), which is a nice ideal to strive for, rather than assuming that any sufficiently large organization must by nature be evil and tyranical.
The odd thing is I still like Star Trek a lot better.
The odd thing is that I like Trek a lot better when I want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and like Star Wars better when I assume the worst of human nature and can root for the Rebels...
I'd say: not my problem; you knew the extra charge for abusing bandwidth, you downloaded gigabytes of warez -- pay up.
A colon, a semicolon, a comma, a hyphen, and a period; all in one sentence! If only you had worked those parens that followed shortly in earlier. Are you a grammar nazi too or something?:)
The best way to really teach the media industry a lesson would be to have a "Boycott TV" week. It would be so easy to do.
Funny you should bring that up since TV-Turn-off-week starts the Monday after next (4/22 - 28th), and it's doubly funny since it also coincides with The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout (4/21 - 27th). I'll be participating in both - the net effect on the TV execs will probably be nil, but the net effect on Taco will (hopefully) be a renewed respect for the importance of where slashdots content actually comes from.
Memes for things like the T(H)GSB travel well online, but no so well offline when it comes to couch potates. I'm really surprised that adbusters managed to even get their message *on* TV. I remember reading that in the past the networks flat out denied to run their ads since it might piss off their other pro-consumer advertisers - which it would, and that is also kind of the point too.
--
Re:This guy's a true geek.
on
Tool Box PC
·
· Score: 1
Hey, married guys need the lotion just as much as single guys.
For me to interested in such a hack, there would have to be a way to apply video overlays.
While there's many uses for such a thing (including inserting MORE ads), I'd be using anti-product-placement DVD "patches" like there was no tomorrow. For example, Cast Away would be much more bearable to watch, IMO, if every attempt to beam the FedEx brand into my brain magically became the generic ACME brand; I can deal with ACME.:)
More generally, I'd want this functionality in a networked PVR such that live TV could be buffered for the 30 minutes or so it took for a trusted-network-of-distributed-johnny-rebels to "whitewash" the annoying digitally inserted advertisements out of baseball games, and off the pavement in Nascar races, etc. (not that I watch Nascar cars go round-dee-round.. ahem.)
Anyway, since there's valid uses for this kind of thing -- just like there is for a 30-second skip button -- I don't see why it couldn't make into mainstream PVR's like a 3rd(?) generation Tivo.
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Re:This guy's a true geek.
on
Tool Box PC
·
· Score: 0, Flamebait
Is it any wonder he had time to make this thing?
Right... because respectable 'hard working' 9-5'rs don't jerk off to DivX pr0n in front of their computers; only 'lazy fuckers' do. I get it.
the intent is to have a military always so advanced and powerful that no other nation would ever question a war.
Except that you don't take on goliath by playing by his rules; you fight dirty, and distributed low-tech terrorism is very fuck'n effective against F-##'s, bombers, and ICBM's...
Exhibit a: box cutters.
Exhibit b: bomb strapped to chest.
The Palestinians don't really have a chance against Israel's army of expensive toys in a conventional war, so they hit below the belt (which is 'understandable')... rendering all those (U.S. made) toys mostly worthless.
Exhibit c: C4 on NYC water main + dirty bomb... oh wait, this hasn't happened yet.
My point is that it makes more sense to attack the root of these problems (with food, medicine, education, means of production, fair politics, etc.) rather than building up massive militaries to treat the untreatable symptoms of problems we help cause... and then bitch and moan when terrorists don't play by the rules.
(I might come off sounding like some anti-american "terrorist sympathizer" in this post, but I'm just saying that a 'fucking scary military machine' means jack against more effective cockroaches.)
... people want to own information and charge other people for it.
Well, some people want to own information, but why? I think it's because it's a simple mental extension of physical property-ownership. People think that if you can't charge for "your" information (in oldschool discrete per-person/use units), then you can't trade that pay for food & rent in the REAL WORLD, and hence can't afford to produce new content that people want (again for free).
IMO, though, you simply can't enforce a business model of artificial digital scarcity on the net with tech or legal measures (without a global totalitarian govt). The "new economy" (of digital abundance and huge economies of scale) just needs more time to finish working itself out without any government intervention (aka: central planning:)
First, I want to strangle - with extreme vengence - that motherfuck'n, anal-retentive, super-litigious fascist Novak.
Second, I want to bitchslap all the motherfuck'n lawyers out there who thrive on frivelous lawsuits like this; and will never lift a finger in the direction of a fairer legal system where its possible to defend yourself without going bankrupt!!!
Ahh!!! I hate litigious assholes! DIE DIE DIE!......... just had to get that out.
What's a shame is the number of people that will never look at the Zaurus because if this column.
It's no more a shame than the number of people who would have bought it based only on one positive review or advertisement.
You can't blame the sheeple on one hand for eating the usual tripe that's spoonfed them, and on the other hand saying it's a shame that they won't be successfully persuaded into buying what *you* think is a great product... sheeple are sheeple because they don't give a shit about checking facts or getting second opinions - spoonfed perception is their entire reality.
Weather.com can't be the posterchild of craptacular advertising can it? It doesn't even make sense why they would be in the running... it's only weather!
Well, if you think that the potential for update abuse is too great, and there's enough people who likewise are stuck on the trust issue, wouldn't you expect to see some kind of peer-review voluntarily inserted between the vendor and the masses in the update process?
i.e. instead of having one authoritative source distribute a patch to everyone alike at the same time, the vendor arranges to send the update to a smaller pool of clueful and more trustworthy beta testers; if a simple majority vote to approve of the update--say after a few hours--then the greenlight is given for everyone else to update.
It's easier to put your trust in a peer-review proxy than in various vendor sources....of course, implimenting such a thing is beyond me, and who gets to choose who's cluefull?
And to answer the next logical question: "Can anybody explain why it has become so socially acceptable to violate copyright en masse?"
Many reasons (pick your favorites):
It's a hypocritical kind of boycott to stick it to the copyright-hoarding middlemen who charge way too much and pass little of it to the actual artists.
Information wants to be free, regardless of production cost.
It's still about 100 times more convenient to "steal" than it is to buy; you can't legally pay for that kind of convenience yet.
Human animals are inherently selfish and will try to get away with whatever they can if they think no one is watching; it's the rare person who has the integrity to do the right thing when he knows no one is watching.
So far, only the "contributory infringers" like Napster (gun maker) have been punished; individuals (gun users) abusers are still untouchable and have nothing to fear.
There are insane economies of scale of here, but there's no micropayment system in place to make it easy to pay your tiny fair share... but 0 is closer $0.001 than it is to $20.00.
...insert more rationalizations I've forgotten here...
Slashdot Mirror
Manufacturing (see my sig below :-)
--
What I take from that is that current top-down manufacturing methods are wasteful, but that won't be the case a few years down the road when we will be "growing" solar cells (as well as many other products) bottom-up with the same efficiency as a plant.
Also, at that point in the future, we'd still have a use for crude as a good source of carbon for building things, but it--like the hydrogen in the article--would much easier to "harvest" (bottom-up) in a distributed manner, than drill for (top-down) like we must now.
--
I thought you sounded fishy. Go back to England you elitist prick.
you...are a THUG.
You assume wrong Mr. Righteous. You are many times more thugish in your will to see guns removed from the hands of free people (or should I say morons?), than I am in defending that right. You don't push me around, I don't push you around... simple.
--
I also realize that our government today has much bigger guns than its armed populace can ever hope to have, making the point of the 2nd ammendment a bit moot if we should ever really need to rise up and kill a few tyrants (terrorist methods would be more effective than a militia anyway). But, the FACT remains that Americans have the inalienable RIGHT to bear arms... and it's a FACT that people-with-guns prevent more crime/harm from occuring than they "cause" in the first place. A couple thousand accidental shootings per year (a favorite talking point of antigun peeps), besides being a drop in the bucket, is not a reason to ban the tool.
I think you're just a frightened, untrusting authoritarian schmuck who simply finds the idea of "ordinary" people owning weapons "offensive" because everyone besides your oh-so-cultured self must be a gunhappy drooling moron. Maybe YOU want government to be your mommy, but I sure don't... I'd much rather put my trust in an armed populace and deal with the personal responsibility that comes with great freedom. Death isn't the worst thing that can happen to you ya know.
"gee" .. "gawd" .. golly... do you talk like that in real life too?
--
From my POV the 'i'd shoot you' comment -- though intended sarcasticly, and intended to get a rise -- is perfectly reasonable in the context of me defending myself against your armed pro-disarmament army (if you were in power.. as I said)
--
Man you are scary. I sincerely hope you are never in a position of power to impose your righteous will on me (because I'd shoot you). You've got the conviction of a Hitler on this issue...
--
can the US Government do anything to ensure our safety without infringing on our rights?
Certainly.
They can start by 'declaring' that our safety cannot be ensured, that the government is not our mommy, that personal responsibility is not some trite oldfashioned idea as you seem to think, and that the ~3,000 deaths on 9/11 was a tragic yet small price to pay for enduring freedom. But to answer your question more directly: the one thing that the government could do to improve our safety the most is reduce our dependency on arab oil, and by extension, our arrogant meddling in those countries to secure that crude for ourselves.
Anyway, the real reason I replied was to inform you that you've just earned the honor of being #4 on my /. Foe shitlist! (I know, big deal)
You're in line right behind 1) a blatant plagiarizing karma whore, 2) a super-authoritarian IT jerkwad, 3) a super-authoritarian parent who thinks violent competition is too harmful for his kid to be exposed to.
You made my list for simply pissing me off with your elitist tone, and for being anti-gun to the point of stupidity. Congrats. If you were JUST anti-gun, or JUST an arrogant prick, we might be friends (not likely)... it's the combination that sickens. ;-)
--
Maybe they're not hurting enough yet?
--
Today I hear that the SSSCA/CBDTPA looks like it'll fall flat on its face (this session), and now this bit of news. Baby Satan must be crying.
--
That about sums it up. Federation, good; Empire, bad. Prime Directive-and-all-the-protocol, good; "Join the dark side and rule the galaxy", bad.
It's just that in Trek, the "establishment" is idealized to the point of somehow being beyond corruption (in most of the episodes at least :), which is a nice ideal to strive for, rather than assuming that any sufficiently large organization must by nature be evil and tyranical.
The odd thing is I still like Star Trek a lot better.
The odd thing is that I like Trek a lot better when I want to feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and like Star Wars better when I assume the worst of human nature and can root for the Rebels...
--
A colon, a semicolon, a comma, a hyphen, and a period; all in one sentence! If only you had worked those parens that followed shortly in earlier. Are you a grammar nazi too or something? :)
--
Funny you should bring that up since TV-Turn-off-week starts the Monday after next (4/22 - 28th), and it's doubly funny since it also coincides with The (Hopefully) Great Slashdot Blackout (4/21 - 27th). I'll be participating in both - the net effect on the TV execs will probably be nil, but the net effect on Taco will (hopefully) be a renewed respect for the importance of where slashdots content actually comes from.
Memes for things like the T(H)GSB travel well online, but no so well offline when it comes to couch potates. I'm really surprised that adbusters managed to even get their message *on* TV. I remember reading that in the past the networks flat out denied to run their ads since it might piss off their other pro-consumer advertisers - which it would, and that is also kind of the point too.
--
Fantasy pussy is better than tired old pussy.
I speak from personal experience.
--
While there's many uses for such a thing (including inserting MORE ads), I'd be using anti-product-placement DVD "patches" like there was no tomorrow. For example, Cast Away would be much more bearable to watch, IMO, if every attempt to beam the FedEx brand into my brain magically became the generic ACME brand; I can deal with ACME. :)
More generally, I'd want this functionality in a networked PVR such that live TV could be buffered for the 30 minutes or so it took for a trusted-network-of-distributed-johnny-rebels to "whitewash" the annoying digitally inserted advertisements out of baseball games, and off the pavement in Nascar races, etc. (not that I watch Nascar cars go round-dee-round.. ahem.)
Anyway, since there's valid uses for this kind of thing -- just like there is for a 30-second skip button -- I don't see why it couldn't make into mainstream PVR's like a 3rd(?) generation Tivo.
--
Right... because respectable 'hard working' 9-5'rs don't jerk off to DivX pr0n in front of their computers; only 'lazy fuckers' do. I get it.
--
Except that you don't take on goliath by playing by his rules; you fight dirty, and distributed low-tech terrorism is very fuck'n effective against F-##'s, bombers, and ICBM's...
Exhibit a: box cutters.
Exhibit b: bomb strapped to chest.
The Palestinians don't really have a chance against Israel's army of expensive toys in a conventional war, so they hit below the belt (which is 'understandable')... rendering all those (U.S. made) toys mostly worthless.
Exhibit c: C4 on NYC water main + dirty bomb ... oh wait, this hasn't happened yet.
My point is that it makes more sense to attack the root of these problems (with food, medicine, education, means of production, fair politics, etc.) rather than building up massive militaries to treat the untreatable symptoms of problems we help cause... and then bitch and moan when terrorists don't play by the rules.
(I might come off sounding like some anti-american "terrorist sympathizer" in this post, but I'm just saying that a 'fucking scary military machine' means jack against more effective cockroaches.)
--
Well, some people want to own information, but why? I think it's because it's a simple mental extension of physical property-ownership. People think that if you can't charge for "your" information (in oldschool discrete per-person/use units), then you can't trade that pay for food & rent in the REAL WORLD, and hence can't afford to produce new content that people want (again for free).
IMO, though, you simply can't enforce a business model of artificial digital scarcity on the net with tech or legal measures (without a global totalitarian govt). The "new economy" (of digital abundance and huge economies of scale) just needs more time to finish working itself out without any government intervention (aka: central planning :)
Digital widgets != Tangible widgets.
--
THEM: "Hello, PetSWEARhouse..."
ME: *3 seconds of silence* CLICK.
* Call #2
THEM: "Helloo, PetSWEARhouse..."
ME: *3 seconds of silence* CLICK.
* Call #3
THEM: *annoyed* "Helloooo, PetSWEARhouse..."
ME: *Novak is a suehappy asshole.* CLICK.
There... I feel better now that I've cost them a few pennies.
--
Second, I want to bitchslap all the motherfuck'n lawyers out there who thrive on frivelous lawsuits like this; and will never lift a finger in the direction of a fairer legal system where its possible to defend yourself without going bankrupt!!!
Ahh!!! I hate litigious assholes! DIE DIE DIE! ......... just had to get that out.
--
It's no more a shame than the number of people who would have bought it based only on one positive review or advertisement.
You can't blame the sheeple on one hand for eating the usual tripe that's spoonfed them, and on the other hand saying it's a shame that they won't be successfully persuaded into buying what *you* think is a great product... sheeple are sheeple because they don't give a shit about checking facts or getting second opinions - spoonfed perception is their entire reality.
--
--
I've been watching too much Futurama man... Zoidberg get out of my head!
--
i.e. instead of having one authoritative source distribute a patch to everyone alike at the same time, the vendor arranges to send the update to a smaller pool of clueful and more trustworthy beta testers; if a simple majority vote to approve of the update--say after a few hours--then the greenlight is given for everyone else to update.
It's easier to put your trust in a peer-review proxy than in various vendor sources. ...of course, implimenting such a thing is beyond me, and who gets to choose who's cluefull?
--
Noise pollution isn't an insurmountable obstacle; here's a few possible solutions:
- Putting up cheap sound insulation
- Wearing one of those mouth-muzzle thingies that court reporters talk into (can't remember what they're called).
- Noise cancellation that puts you a bubble of of artificial silence.
- "Whisper recognition" by a variety of means (including the
/. story from a few days ago that I can't recall...)
But you're right that more a more direct brain interface is potentially the best way to reduce current input(and output) bottlenecks.--
Many reasons (pick your favorites):
--