Uh oh. Imagine, if Apple wins this, then REMEMBERING A SONG OR THINKING ABOUT A MOVIE SCENE will have the MAFIAA at your door in a flash, since after all you made an "illegal copy" in your brain...
Yes I got THAT part. What I don't get is how they plan on maintaining this potential difference across the membrane. In the human body it's done by Na/K ATPase pumps that trade 2 sodium atoms for 1 potassium atom. But these pumps are working all the time (even during depolarization, when the Na gates open), and consuming ATP all the time. It's ACTIVE transport, and requires a lot of energy. That's why neurons die when deprived of oxygen after only 4 minutes, while other tissues can survive hours.
I find it hard to understand that this phenomenon will just "happen" by itself under bright sunlight. There's diminishing returns to consider. As you start moving ions out of your brine and combining them with the fluids on either side, through diffusion gradients or electrical gradients, the difference in concentration/charge will decrease and an equilibrium is reached. And as I stated before, I doubt that that point will result in "fresh" water. Oh I can see "less salty" water, but not fresh water. Now if I take that less salty water and repeat the process n times, perhaps I could get relatively fresh water - but how many times does the system have to be flushed or reset, and who's counting all the energy required to do this?
Like I said, the article is vague. There's no numbers to run. Maybe it works, and good for them. But I doubt it's a miraculous process - just slightly more energy efficient.
Yes because it's wonderful to blame someone that was drafted into an army (or you could be sent death camp as an alternative) as the root of all the evil in the world.
There were a lot less crazy fanatic blind twisted and cruel National Socialists in WW2 Germany than the actual amount of dead Germans. Short of some SS units and most of the higher ups in government, Germans were pretty much like everyone else, and pretty much like they are today.
I'm not trying to make an excuse for Nazism - although the desired end: order, peace, economic stability and growth were noble enough, the means employed: theft, murder, oppression, war, and slave labor were revolting and in no way justified. But not all Germans were Nazis. They were a minority. Remember that when you watch movies of German soldiers being killed.
If anything, the proliferation of zombie movies is not the product of fear of technology, but the result of not having clearly defined enemies.
Or how about "the proliferation of zombie movies is the result of lazy Hollywood companies that simply want to cash in on a fad, because frankly Hollywood ran out of ideas years ago"?
(i.e. it doesn't purport to be a system that produces more energy than is put into it)
"Perpetual motion" doesn't produce necessarily "more" energy than is put into it. It simply doesn't require energy at all apart from the initial "push". And that is, of course, absolute rubbish, thanks to friction, diminishing returns, and any other number of physical laws that favor entropy.
I just don't understand how this project is meant to work. Maintaining those "concentration gradients" is going to take more energy than just sunlight. Yes you could vary the volumes of the "pools" (and thus the amount of evaporation) to help maintain your concentrations within a given range. However eventually you are going to have to flush the whole system and start again, since it will always tend towards equilibrium. And if you started with salt water, equilibrium is NOT fresh water.
Human kidneys (something I know about as a doctor), for example, use salinity gradients to concentrate urine and also remove necessary salts - after all you don't want to be literally pissing all of your sodium, potassium and calcium away without SOME sort of control. However this control requires energy, in the form of ATP, and LOTS of it. This is one reason the kidneys are one of the most sensitive organs to oxygen deprivation, after the brain and the heart (but even heart muscle can take a beating - the problem there is more one of inadequate blood supply rather than oxygen demand) - even though the kidneys receive 20% of the body's blood flow. They NEED it to survive, because they consume tremendous amounts of oxygen to produce enough ATP to maintain all those gradients.
Frankly I think the article is badly written - probably intentionally especially if the inventors "think they're on to something" - and I fail to understand how it works on a fundamental level. But kudos to them if they're right. I guess we'll find out how it really worked in a few years. Or not.
LOL I heard some guy bragging that he bought a chip with 2 GB of memory on it. I laughed so hard. Obviously the guy is lying, I mean, we had to build a whole new wing when we added 128k to the system...
The only thing we need are proper Windows 7 drivers
Is that all? Minor details like that, sigh, I mean who needs their peripherals to work properly. Now if Microsoft really cared about customer satisfaction, it would work with major peripheral manufacturers to ensure that drivers would be available on release. However I suspect that drivers have become so complex (even though a printer is still just a printer) and bloated that there just aren't enough resources at the OEM's to learn the new twists and tangles of the new OS AND keep up with the constant changes made by the development team.
I've always asked myself why the hell a mouse driver has to be 50 MEGAbytes, a keyboard driver 80 MEGAbytes, and don't even get me started on sound and video drivers...
and articles like this come off as anti-Microsoft FUD.
Yes because there was NOTHING WRONG with Vista or Windows Me, for that matter.
There is always risk in upgrading to a new operating system
Only because you have been indoctrinated to believe that. There doesn't have to be. But because you "sign" all your rights away when you break the seal on the package, Microsoft doesn't give a shit. In fact, it helps create work for their support department.
As a physician, I agree with you. Even sunlight can disrupt some of the bonds in your skin's DNA. And unless you are genetically susceptible due to lack of an enzyme (eg xeroderma pigmentosum , you should be fine if you lead a normal life. However there is a positive correlation between excessive sunlight exposure (and thus DNA damage), pale skin, and skin cancer. No biological system is perfect - that's why disease and aging exist. So if you play roulette with your enzymes, you will eventually cause a problem that they won't be able to fix, and end up with disease. The "repair mechanisms" are NOT flawless or foolproof. That's also why we have genetic mutation and evolution. Not being "foolproof" has a plus side, too. But if you end up with melanoma, you won't be too happy.
Now with a new technology it's hard to put the brakes on and say "stop! we need 20 years of testing!". Even regular ultrasound machines - which operate in the MHz range - have not been tested conclusively. We assume that they're safe, in theory. Often the benefits of using them FAR outweigh the risk - especially since they've been around for a while and no cases of harm have been reported or linked to the machines. But it's logical to try and limit exposure to what's absolutely necessary, so we don't repeat what we were doing with "harmless" x-ray machines and coincidentally were killing all our radiologists with leukemia...
Unleashing a "scanner" to be used on the general population, without their consent, possibly even covertly, and without any followup or documentation to ensure that there is really zero risk is a large gamble on the part of the government. Only if "frequent travelers" start developing strange tumors at significantly increased statistical rates will we know there's a problem. I'd hate to be one of those travelers, and I'd hate to be the owner of the company that makes these machines, if it ever happens. I hope it doesn't, but we simply don't know.
Since the advertisements are geared towards American audiences, when someone from a non-American audience views it, it devalues what the ads are worth.
This is the kind of logic that investment banks love. You probably have a bright future on Wall St.
Ads are not "worth" anything. They are expenses. A company has a budget of X dollars to spend on advertising. The company hopes that advertising will increase sales. The company really wants to know: If I spend X dollars, how many additional sales will it get me?
The fact that someone in N. Korea views the ad is IRRELEVANT.
Unfortunately, the advertising business is not run by advertisers. It's run by "media". And media, being the whores that they are, want to charge the company PER VIEW of an ad. So if people in N. Korea view the ad, the media company, because they are lazy slobs (and it works in their favor) want to hike the rates for the ads. After all, more people are viewing the ad, so "of course" it is worth more. Never mind the fact that the person in N. Korea doesn't have access to the widget being advertised because of UN sanctions, etc.
Trouble is, I'm going into higher and higher math classes, and typing "f_X(x) = integral(-infinity, infinity, f(x,y) dy)" just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get real-looking equations into my notes.
Teehee - math nerds.
That's why I liked biology:
"I'm getting higher and higher in my biology classes. Writing notes to my good looking classmates just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get into the pants of delicious looking women"...
Be prepared you will never find girls again. No wonder the IT population is getting extinct.
The flaw in your argument can be demonstrated by the increased size of the "gay" community. Not being able to breed is, apparently, not a factor in life-style choices like "Installing Windows" or "taking it up the ass" (synonyms, IMO).
Funny thing is I laughed so hard when it was fashionable to talk about being gay as something "genetic", and I always wondered how this "gene" got passed on. Plasmids?
If it doesn't auto-start then why should they pay a kick-back to the PC manufacturer?
What, you think that software gets on those PC's out of the kindness of the manufacturer's heart? It's a shameless cash grab. Of course manufacturers will argue that this helps offset the price of computers which otherwise would be more expensive blah blah blah it's completely untrue because competition would still help keep prices down - but who can say no to "free" money. They have to image the hard drives anyway.
I guess it has never occurred to you that those "exploited" people are actually happy to have a job making laptops and clothing, because it sure as hell beats working in a field and farming rice.
Developing nations work this way - they start out as agricultural. Eventually they get around to building enough infrastructure to be able to educate their population and move them around. Usually the next industry to move in after agriculture is textiles, since it requires relatively little skill. But eventually since the economy starts picking up (because all those women being "exploited" by the textile industry now have take home pay that can be added to hubby's income that he gets driving trucks around (no one wants to work in the fields anymore) and too much money starts chasing scarce commodities. Standards of living rise, but inflation sets in, and suddenly no one can afford a textile mill anymore. But by that time a whole slew of other industries have arrived - construction, communications, technology, healthcare. And suddenly your undeveloped country is a developing nation, and eventually a developed one that can no longer afford to produce basic things, and has to import from elsewhere.
This is called economics. Something a communist like yourself can never understand. There will ALWAYS be regional differences in price, and thus there will always be profit to be had in making something where it's cheap, and selling it where it's expensive.
If I offer you a glass of water or a diamond in the middle of the desert, which one will you chose? How about next to a clean freshwater lake? There's nothing WRONG with this. It's human nature.
It's called marketing. The Compaq name is well known as a brand, and HP would be silly to just drop it. Not every person with "Compaq" in their head would suddenly switch to HP if the brand was killed - some would buy machines from other manufacturers, so they'd effectively lose market share.
or just find the torrent... but oh wait downloading a copy of something you already own/have a license to is illegal, and you'd have to pay a $20 million dollar fine...
Of course this is because of PIRACY. People are turning to the internet to access FREE NEWS, and therefore are STEALING NEWS. Hundreds of thousands of reporters are out of work because of these criminals that are costing the industry trillions per yer.
At least, that's what Rupert Murdoch would like to bribe governments into thinking. Of course Mr. Murdoch, you don't actually "own" news either. It's stuff that happens, you know...
Slashdot Mirror
Uh oh. Imagine, if Apple wins this, then REMEMBERING A SONG OR THINKING ABOUT A MOVIE SCENE will have the MAFIAA at your door in a flash, since after all you made an "illegal copy" in your brain...
Dear Sir/Madam,
Evolution doesn't work that way. You're talking about genetic drift, which is not the same.
Kthxbai
Yes I got THAT part. What I don't get is how they plan on maintaining this potential difference across the membrane. In the human body it's done by Na/K ATPase pumps that trade 2 sodium atoms for 1 potassium atom. But these pumps are working all the time (even during depolarization, when the Na gates open), and consuming ATP all the time. It's ACTIVE transport, and requires a lot of energy. That's why neurons die when deprived of oxygen after only 4 minutes, while other tissues can survive hours.
I find it hard to understand that this phenomenon will just "happen" by itself under bright sunlight. There's diminishing returns to consider. As you start moving ions out of your brine and combining them with the fluids on either side, through diffusion gradients or electrical gradients, the difference in concentration/charge will decrease and an equilibrium is reached. And as I stated before, I doubt that that point will result in "fresh" water. Oh I can see "less salty" water, but not fresh water. Now if I take that less salty water and repeat the process n times, perhaps I could get relatively fresh water - but how many times does the system have to be flushed or reset, and who's counting all the energy required to do this?
Like I said, the article is vague. There's no numbers to run. Maybe it works, and good for them. But I doubt it's a miraculous process - just slightly more energy efficient.
Zombies are "perfect bad guys" (like Nazis)
Yes because it's wonderful to blame someone that was drafted into an army (or you could be sent death camp as an alternative) as the root of all the evil in the world.
There were a lot less crazy fanatic blind twisted and cruel National Socialists in WW2 Germany than the actual amount of dead Germans. Short of some SS units and most of the higher ups in government, Germans were pretty much like everyone else, and pretty much like they are today.
I'm not trying to make an excuse for Nazism - although the desired end: order, peace, economic stability and growth were noble enough, the means employed: theft, murder, oppression, war, and slave labor were revolting and in no way justified. But not all Germans were Nazis. They were a minority. Remember that when you watch movies of German soldiers being killed.
If anything, the proliferation of zombie movies is not the product of fear of technology, but the result of not having clearly defined enemies.
Or how about "the proliferation of zombie movies is the result of lazy Hollywood companies that simply want to cash in on a fad, because frankly Hollywood ran out of ideas years ago"?
The monsters of elderly Americans' generations were King Kong (Blacks) and, before that, Dracula (Jews).
I'm just wondering what Godzilla was supposed to be about, then...
(i.e. it doesn't purport to be a system that produces more energy than is put into it)
"Perpetual motion" doesn't produce necessarily "more" energy than is put into it. It simply doesn't require energy at all apart from the initial "push". And that is, of course, absolute rubbish, thanks to friction, diminishing returns, and any other number of physical laws that favor entropy.
I just don't understand how this project is meant to work. Maintaining those "concentration gradients" is going to take more energy than just sunlight. Yes you could vary the volumes of the "pools" (and thus the amount of evaporation) to help maintain your concentrations within a given range. However eventually you are going to have to flush the whole system and start again, since it will always tend towards equilibrium. And if you started with salt water, equilibrium is NOT fresh water.
Human kidneys (something I know about as a doctor), for example, use salinity gradients to concentrate urine and also remove necessary salts - after all you don't want to be literally pissing all of your sodium, potassium and calcium away without SOME sort of control. However this control requires energy, in the form of ATP, and LOTS of it. This is one reason the kidneys are one of the most sensitive organs to oxygen deprivation, after the brain and the heart (but even heart muscle can take a beating - the problem there is more one of inadequate blood supply rather than oxygen demand) - even though the kidneys receive 20% of the body's blood flow. They NEED it to survive, because they consume tremendous amounts of oxygen to produce enough ATP to maintain all those gradients.
Frankly I think the article is badly written - probably intentionally especially if the inventors "think they're on to something" - and I fail to understand how it works on a fundamental level. But kudos to them if they're right. I guess we'll find out how it really worked in a few years. Or not.
LOL I heard some guy bragging that he bought a chip with 2 GB of memory on it. I laughed so hard. Obviously the guy is lying, I mean, we had to build a whole new wing when we added 128k to the system...
The only thing we need are proper Windows 7 drivers
Is that all? Minor details like that, sigh, I mean who needs their peripherals to work properly. Now if Microsoft really cared about customer satisfaction, it would work with major peripheral manufacturers to ensure that drivers would be available on release. However I suspect that drivers have become so complex (even though a printer is still just a printer) and bloated that there just aren't enough resources at the OEM's to learn the new twists and tangles of the new OS AND keep up with the constant changes made by the development team.
I've always asked myself why the hell a mouse driver has to be 50 MEGAbytes, a keyboard driver 80 MEGAbytes, and don't even get me started on sound and video drivers...
and articles like this come off as anti-Microsoft FUD.
Yes because there was NOTHING WRONG with Vista or Windows Me, for that matter.
There is always risk in upgrading to a new operating system
Only because you have been indoctrinated to believe that. There doesn't have to be. But because you "sign" all your rights away when you break the seal on the package, Microsoft doesn't give a shit. In fact, it helps create work for their support department.
You purchase your girlfriends?
I suspect it's more like renting by the quarter hour...
I see no reason to upgrade from VAX/VMS...
As a physician, I agree with you. Even sunlight can disrupt some of the bonds in your skin's DNA. And unless you are genetically susceptible due to lack of an enzyme (eg xeroderma pigmentosum , you should be fine if you lead a normal life. However there is a positive correlation between excessive sunlight exposure (and thus DNA damage), pale skin, and skin cancer. No biological system is perfect - that's why disease and aging exist. So if you play roulette with your enzymes, you will eventually cause a problem that they won't be able to fix, and end up with disease. The "repair mechanisms" are NOT flawless or foolproof. That's also why we have genetic mutation and evolution. Not being "foolproof" has a plus side, too. But if you end up with melanoma, you won't be too happy.
Now with a new technology it's hard to put the brakes on and say "stop! we need 20 years of testing!". Even regular ultrasound machines - which operate in the MHz range - have not been tested conclusively. We assume that they're safe, in theory. Often the benefits of using them FAR outweigh the risk - especially since they've been around for a while and no cases of harm have been reported or linked to the machines. But it's logical to try and limit exposure to what's absolutely necessary, so we don't repeat what we were doing with "harmless" x-ray machines and coincidentally were killing all our radiologists with leukemia...
Unleashing a "scanner" to be used on the general population, without their consent, possibly even covertly, and without any followup or documentation to ensure that there is really zero risk is a large gamble on the part of the government. Only if "frequent travelers" start developing strange tumors at significantly increased statistical rates will we know there's a problem. I'd hate to be one of those travelers, and I'd hate to be the owner of the company that makes these machines, if it ever happens. I hope it doesn't, but we simply don't know.
In other related news, several major airlines are installing extra arm-rests on every seat, for that added bit of comfort for your new mutant arm.
Lies. Only in first class. For the rest of us, airlines are considering charging extra for passengers with 3rd arms...
Since the advertisements are geared towards American audiences, when someone from a non-American audience views it, it devalues what the ads are worth.
This is the kind of logic that investment banks love. You probably have a bright future on Wall St.
Ads are not "worth" anything. They are expenses. A company has a budget of X dollars to spend on advertising. The company hopes that advertising will increase sales. The company really wants to know: If I spend X dollars, how many additional sales will it get me?
The fact that someone in N. Korea views the ad is IRRELEVANT.
Unfortunately, the advertising business is not run by advertisers. It's run by "media". And media, being the whores that they are, want to charge the company PER VIEW of an ad. So if people in N. Korea view the ad, the media company, because they are lazy slobs (and it works in their favor) want to hike the rates for the ads. After all, more people are viewing the ad, so "of course" it is worth more. Never mind the fact that the person in N. Korea doesn't have access to the widget being advertised because of UN sanctions, etc.
You have the argument exactly backwards.
Time to encrypt, bitches. I'll show you a "private space".
Hello Mr. Biology Dropout, I'd like the double whopper with fries and dont fucking forget the packets of ketchup this time, you idiot.
Dropout? LOL I have a doctorate. But that's ok, keep those shelves stacked nice and tidy, boy.
Trouble is, I'm going into higher and higher math classes, and typing "f_X(x) = integral(-infinity, infinity, f(x,y) dy)" just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get real-looking equations into my notes.
Teehee - math nerds.
That's why I liked biology:
"I'm getting higher and higher in my biology classes. Writing notes to my good looking classmates just isn't cutting it anymore: I need a way to get into the pants of delicious looking women"...
Personally I am waiting for Wanking Wallaby...
Be prepared you will never find girls again. No wonder the IT population is getting extinct.
The flaw in your argument can be demonstrated by the increased size of the "gay" community. Not being able to breed is, apparently, not a factor in life-style choices like "Installing Windows" or "taking it up the ass" (synonyms, IMO).
Funny thing is I laughed so hard when it was fashionable to talk about being gay as something "genetic", and I always wondered how this "gene" got passed on. Plasmids?
If it doesn't auto-start then why should they pay a kick-back to the PC manufacturer?
What, you think that software gets on those PC's out of the kindness of the manufacturer's heart? It's a shameless cash grab. Of course manufacturers will argue that this helps offset the price of computers which otherwise would be more expensive blah blah blah it's completely untrue because competition would still help keep prices down - but who can say no to "free" money. They have to image the hard drives anyway.
and exploitation of others.
I guess it has never occurred to you that those "exploited" people are actually happy to have a job making laptops and clothing, because it sure as hell beats working in a field and farming rice.
Developing nations work this way - they start out as agricultural. Eventually they get around to building enough infrastructure to be able to educate their population and move them around. Usually the next industry to move in after agriculture is textiles, since it requires relatively little skill. But eventually since the economy starts picking up (because all those women being "exploited" by the textile industry now have take home pay that can be added to hubby's income that he gets driving trucks around (no one wants to work in the fields anymore) and too much money starts chasing scarce commodities. Standards of living rise, but inflation sets in, and suddenly no one can afford a textile mill anymore. But by that time a whole slew of other industries have arrived - construction, communications, technology, healthcare. And suddenly your undeveloped country is a developing nation, and eventually a developed one that can no longer afford to produce basic things, and has to import from elsewhere.
This is called economics. Something a communist like yourself can never understand. There will ALWAYS be regional differences in price, and thus there will always be profit to be had in making something where it's cheap, and selling it where it's expensive.
If I offer you a glass of water or a diamond in the middle of the desert, which one will you chose? How about next to a clean freshwater lake? There's nothing WRONG with this. It's human nature.
but for some reason HP is maintaining both brands
It's called marketing. The Compaq name is well known as a brand, and HP would be silly to just drop it. Not every person with "Compaq" in their head would suddenly switch to HP if the brand was killed - some would buy machines from other manufacturers, so they'd effectively lose market share.
or just find the torrent... but oh wait downloading a copy of something you already own/have a license to is illegal, and you'd have to pay a $20 million dollar fine...
Of course this is because of PIRACY. People are turning to the internet to access FREE NEWS, and therefore are STEALING NEWS. Hundreds of thousands of reporters are out of work because of these criminals that are costing the industry trillions per yer.
At least, that's what Rupert Murdoch would like to bribe governments into thinking. Of course Mr. Murdoch, you don't actually "own" news either. It's stuff that happens, you know...