Is "3,300 milliwatt-hours" the same as 3.3 Watt-hours?
Or should we really be measuring this in Libraries of Congress?
It does seem to be the same, but from TFA, that number was PER GRAM. A Lithium-Ion battery by contrast, (which had the highest energy density I found for a common chemical battery,) a quick web search reveals an average of about 129 milliwatt-hours per gram, and less for each of the other popular battery technologies currently seeing widespread use, including alkaline, NiMH, Nickel Cadmium and Carbon-Zinc. Getting 3.3 watt-hours out of each gram of a battery would be impressive, but there are probably other barriers to widespread adoption as a replacement or alternative to Li-ion or NiMH batteries in things like smartphones.
How much shielding does such a battery need? How great is the health risk if one leaks, or is damaged? What happens when internet-morons start drilling holes in them because they heard someone say they work even better that way, and fine particles of nickel-63 get released into the air and are subsequently inhaled, either by said internet-morons, or by people unfortunate enough to be near them? What else can nickel-63 be made into, i.e., if they start letting everyone have this stuff in abundance, can it be used somehow to fabricate something you'd rather not have everyone having one of, i.e., could it be used to simplify the making of U-235 out of something else? For example, if you took radon gas (which naturally emanates from soil in some parts of the world, such as much of the United States,) and place it under pressure near nickel-63, does the plate develop a coating of U-235? Now, I'm not even hypothesizing that's possible, just asking IF turning a radioactive isotope of something into a common consumer good is a good idea, since it is not that hard to get one kind of stuff to change into another if you know what you're doing. There are watch-dials and gun-sights that are (or were) commonly available for people to buy that turned an isotope of hydrogen into helium, not by fusion, (as I initially thought when I heard of these things,) but through decay, in a fashion that sounds similar to what these guys have done, but using the shed beta-particle to induce electrical current, rather than exciting an atom of phosphorus, causing it to spit out a photon, or whatever.
What I wonder though, is this: Does a battery that produces energy like this through radioactive decay work like a chemical battery? I.e., since the power is being produced by radioactive decay, it isn't really doing so on-demand, like a chemical battery does. In a chemical battery, aside from loss due to internal energy leakage, in theory, it should last forever until used. In theory of course, with NO loss due to internal leakage, the chemical reaction is CHECKED, is halted, by the fact that the electrons saturate the anode (unless I have it backwards) and the salt-bridge fills up until a circuit is completed, giving those electrons somewhere to go, so as to get around to the cathode, (again, unless I have it backwards,) to be reunited with what crossed the salt-bridge. With a radioactive-decay battery, the decay events will occur without regard to whether there's a circuit attached to it, meaning it will start "discharging," as it were, as soon as it's manufactured, and will have other properties dissimilar to chemical batteries as well. If you short-circuit a chemical battery, the reaction will happen inside much faster than it's designed to be able to handle, in terms of heat dissipation, meaning probably catastrophic failure and either a leak, a fire, or an explosion as it builds, depending on the battery, and how lucky you are. If you short THIS kind of battery out, it should do nothing but provide the maximum current its physical makeup is designed to support, provided all the components, (plates, wires, etc.,) can withstand max current, and produce nothing but THAT, even with it shorted completely, and continue chugging along, kind
A phone with no headphone jack is like... I hear Apple is entering the highly competitive cutlery and tableware market. Their initial foray will be called the iFork. Thirty percent lighter, it will feature an innovative, single-tine design, streamlining the movement of food between your plate (works best with the new Apple Plate,) and your mouth. Why only one tine when other fork makers are using three, or occasionally two? Because... COURAGE.
A year later Apple will offer the iFork 2, with a head that swivels 355 degrees allowing the freedom to grasp it at nearly any angle, and following the famous words, “one more thing,” they will wow the breathless WWDC crowd with the new iSpoon, which will be a rounded rectangle, with a rounded square hole in one end, that expands on contact with a liquid to hold a larger volume than seems possible, like a gull has. Featuring a proprietary gallium aluminum magnesium nickel alloy, the iSpoon will retail initially for $199.95, and have a base capacity of up to 3.7ml, and be fully rechargeable.
Several years later, Apple will discontinue the iFork, introduce the Apple Knife, Knife Edition, with a side for buttering avocado toast, and a side for cutting tofu, (since by then Apple will become a pure vegan company,) though third-party attachments will become available to allow for cutting of meats and cheeses, but Apple will say that using one violates the Terms of Service and the warranty, and makes puppies cry. Then they’ll offer a holiday bundle with the Apple Spoon, a rose-gold Apple Knife, (the first that is NOT Knife Edition,) and bring back the iFork, in the form of the new iFork SE, a throwback to people who REALLY liked the old iFork, and while internally it will share many of the same features as the Apple Spoon, it will reinvigorate the market for third-party add-on tine sleeves, owing to it having identical size and shape to the original. The set of three will, with Apple iFinancing, for well-qualified buyers, be available for twelve easy, simple payments of $39.95. Available initially in the US only.
...that welfare is a GOOD thing, when it’s for people who own coal mines? Because though the people condemned to work in those coal mines, by lack of vision or lack of opportunity, just plain bad luck, whatever you want to call it, will benefit in a minor (no pun intended,) and temporary way, they’d benefit more if instead that obsolete and dangerous business that kills its own workers, poisons communities and is rapidly contributing to rendering Earth inhospitable to humans, and other large, multicelled organisms, were allowed the mercy of a quick bankruptcy. Paying for and facilitating the retraining of those workers in a field of their choice to ensure THEY and their families don't suffer, and can be allowed to support themselves and contribute to the overall economy without risking blacklung, dying in mine fires, etc. is a FAR better use of tax dollars.
Yes, but presumably this is in cooperation with hospitals (or I guess more likely retailers in hospitals? retailers beside hospitals?) because you need some kind of control, either directly or by some kind of business arrangement, of the access points that are designated as being part of the fence.
Hard to control someone else’s radio signal, especially when it is illegal for you, in any way whatsoever, to interfere with it. The hospital does not need to participate, condone, or acquiesce; the towers are outside the hospital, and you carried your phone inside. Radio transception is pretty neat shit... but triangulation is even cooler.
In school, a class on it was called, if memory serves, “PFM,” which I believe stood for Pulse Frequency Modulation, or something like that, but because of how complex and neat this was, it had acquired the nickname “Pure Fucking Magic”. It is through such dark magic that they can tell where your phone is, without the hospital helping them in any way, agreeing, or participating. It’s also how the FCC finds pirate radio stations, unless I’m very much mistaken.
Oh, I forgot... it could be worse, they could track phones that spend most evening in the same house as another phone that has visited a site like Ashley Madison and serve ads for private eyes and divorce lawyers, or they could geofence bars or pubs or liquor stores and if you visit them too often you start getting ads for rehab, or if a phone that spends most nights, again, with another and one phone is spotted spending a lot of time at a place that sells guns it serves the other with ads for crisis centers, battered spouses shelters, etc... no, the thing with ads for lawyers is NOT as creepy as it can get, either.
How about geofencing places where political rallies are held, and advertising contraceptives and assisted suicide to attendees? OR... serving ads for deals too good to pass up to people at those venues, (legitimately,) just to get people to show up for their free, or steeply discounted... whatever, so as to get their personal info so as to be able to ID them, get their license plates, see where they live, etc. No, the ads for personal injury lawyers is tame stuff, really, and not really anything to get excited over.
They strive to hit new lows and this time they've nearly bottomed out. Some of them truly are ambulance chasers and now they let the ads chase the ambulances for them. Scum of the Earth, crud at the bottom of the barrel, less than human.
Um, I’m pretty sure they could get a whole lot worse. Are they deliberately causing car crashes, sabotaging consumer safety products, or hiring thugs to beat random (rich-seeming) strangers to drum up business yet? Working clandestinely with prosecutors and police to entrap potential clients so they’ll need lawyers? Conspiring to inflate prices or rig cases, taking dives, or betting on cases, especially ones they themselves are involved with? (“I’ll take The People of the State of Missouri versus Rodriguez to acquit in the fourth day of deliberations... it pays 17 to 1, right?”)
This is just advertising. You might as well whine about product placement in television and motion pictures, or say it’s creepy that they have ads for alarm systems and adult diapers on cable news channels, and ads for beer, or cars, or trucks during big football games, rather than the other way around.
As for how they “know,” I don’t think they do. Either the cellphone maker, app author, or cell carrier uses a technique like cellphone triangulation or something to figure you’re in a hospital. Now the hospital has no way of stopping this short of turning hospital buildings into giant faraday cages, illegally broadcasting their own radio signal to interfere with those of cell towers, build their OWN towers (which costs money and gives them no benefit unless maybe THEY inject ads,) and hide users’ locations that way, but they have no incentive to do so. Probably when whoever it is serving the ads detects (either via WiFi or cell triangulation, or GPS or location sharing,) you’re in a hospital, they serve ads from whoever it is who asked them to serve their ads to anyone in that location.
I don’t see what the problem is. Unbeknownst, seemingly, to many whining about their precious privacy, a mobile phone is screaming its ID number, electronically, in radio frequency energy, every second or so, and it must do so for the system to work! To want to take advantage of that convenience, and all the powers conferred upon you by what would have seemed like sorcery only a century ago, and gripe about the unavoidable cost, is hypocrisy. To try to make it off-limits to attempt to advertise ANY services only reduces streams of revenue that help defray the end-costs of your handset and the service without which your fancy little phone is basically a combination MP3 player and compact camera. Without that revenue stream, it would cost even more.
It’s just like free websites and services. Advertising pays for it. Don’t like ads? Don’t use the service. Don’t want people knowing where your phone is? Tell it to stop screaming it’s ID number by shutting off all its transmitters. This can usually be done using something called “airplane mode”. Then it won’t broadcast its radio signal, and no one will know where you are to serve you ads. Have a nice day.
What if Chinese students turn out cleverer than the adults and adapt to show attentiveness and comprehension while secretly being out to lunch? Or worse, look on as if in rapt attention while secretly fantasizing about a world in which they don’t have to pretend they’re not bored when they’re bored, a world that does not, if you’ll forgive me, so closely resemble the Seventh Circle of Hell?
US District Judge Buchwald issued a 75-page ruling today clearly articulating why Donald Trump cannot block Twitter users, as it violates their First Amendment rights.
All things considered, shouldn't that have been a 140-character ruling? Here, lemme try:
LOL bro, you cant blok ppl on Twitter, evn if U R Potus, haha u suk #fail #45 #potus #scotus #ruling #zeitgeist #140characters...
Elon Musk... rating journalists' credibility... and he chose to call it "PRAVDA."
I literally can't think of an analogy for this besides, "starting a company proposing to rate journalists, and deciding to name it after a Russian propaganda outlet". This is the kind of situation I would use AS an analogy, so I'm kind of at a loss.
And you're wondering why people refer to the EU as the EUSSR?
No one wonders that. It is easily explained by the mental condition of those using the term just as much as when you see someone use the term Micro$oft you can instantly see they are 14 years old.
The EU is nothing but an irrelevant
I'm going to stop you there since in 7 words you have effectively said all of the following
-I don't know history.
-I don't know why the EU was created.
-I don't know what the EU does.
-I don't know what it has achieved.
-I seriously have no fucking idea about international politics.
The EU has achieved its prime goal with great success. Maybe you should look up what that goal was, what life was like pre-EU, and why so many countries want to join.
You forgot:
“-I don’t know what the letters EU stand for.”
“-I don’t know how many countries are in the EU.
“-I don’t know how many letters are in the abbreviation ‘EU’.”
Hahahhahaha... that's like telling a stripper in the middle of her pole dance, after she's removed her last shred of clothing, that she'd better take care, or someone might see her NAKED! Like telling the icecream man that he better not play his chiming music over the bullhorn, or else kids might realize he's there and come out and try to buy icecream from him! Like telling a peacock that he better not fan out his tail feathers, or some peahen might SEE the display and try to mate with him. It would be like telling a pizza joint that if it's careless, and accidentally puts an ad in the paper, it might end up with customers coming there trying to buy pizza...
Yeah, it's kind of a laughably pointless concern, is what I'm driving at, with this all stuff, and more... it would be like a skywriter being told it's a bad idea to go up during daylight hours, because someone could end up READING OVER HIS SHOULDER!... etc.
It's a tectonic shift for a company built on manufacturing prowess.
Sony was never really a manufacturing juggernaut though they certainly were/are competent at it. Manufacturing was always a means to an end for them. Their core competency was in engineering hardware historically and they were quite good. They ran into problems with software which to this day they still struggle with on many of their product lines - at least the bits of it that interface the customer. A lot of this was because they historically had a culture of hardware engineers who didn't really grok software. That's changed somewhat in recent years for some of their divisions though not all.
Sony is/was quite competitive on non-commodity hardware or hardware where they have patent protection. For example their mirrorless cameras are really good and they supply the camera sensors to much of the industry for digital cameras. (for example the iPhone has a Sony camera sensor in it) I use one of their A9 mirrorless cameras and it's a remarkable bit of tech. (though the software interface still sucks)
Sony popularized transistor radios, gave the world portable music with the Walkman and its TVs were considered top-of-the-line for decades
And all that was engineering prowess, not manufacturing prowess. Sony never was a low cost manufacturer so they usually had to compete towards the high end of the market. None of that has changed. The company has also diversified quite a lot. Sony is a huge insurance and financial services company. They also are big in entertainment (games, movies, etc) They're best known for consumer electronics but that provides increasingly less of their revenue anymore.
Imagine if GM, Ford or Chrysler (back when they existed, and weren’t cobbled together with other companies, Frankenstein’s monster style,) decided to get out of automotive manufacturing to focus entirely on gasoline refining.
That’s how this move strikes me, and begs the question, “what happens when the world can’t afford or just turns away from petrochemical fuels?” They DIE is what happens, and they die because their leadership was stupid and short-sighted, and the remaining bits and pieces of their company get sold off for parts at a fire sale. I will miss their headphones.
I disagree with with the AC grandparent who said that Sony hardware was overpriced and subpar - I felt like you always got what you paid for. Sure, they made some crap - but they also made stuff that was a good value. Their mid-range home theater stuff was always pretty nice.
I think part of their strategy, at least with home theater gear, was to make certain items quality and others with planned obsolescence, and hope you buy the crap gear to keep your system "all Sony" - and it worked on me. I bought a Sony receiver/amp in the mid-90s which still works fine to this day, but I had two 90's-era Sony CD changers crap out after 2-3 years each, one VCR and one cassette deck die after a few more years. I swore off buying any of their components again after that.
Between that and the other stuff they've pulled which didn't affect me personally (the CD rootkit thing, the retraction of the alternate OS on PS2s), I feel glad that they're getting out of hardware. They've in general treated their customers like shit.
They did that reneging on Other OS on the PS2 TOO?!? Or did you mean PS3? That’s the one that came with an internal HDD, the ability to play Blu-ray movies out of the box, etc... my other issue with the PS3 is locking stuff off like hardware acceleration of video, and reducing the size of the screen, if you booted to “other OS,” BEFORE they ripped the functionality out... that was when I swore I’d never buy another Sony product that used software. Between the underground mine fire that was Sonic Stage, and the Other OS debacle, the only thing since then that I’ve bought because of the word “Sony” on the packaging were headphones, and they’re basically washed up there too. I bought several pairs when I realized they (wired Apple-compatible headphones with full, three-button remote controls,) we’re going extinct, and hope those will last me for most of the rest of my life. Because fuck ALL that Bluetooth bullshit.
I hung in there with HiMD but after a while Sonic Stage just became stale; the future was clearly MP3 on flash memory. I do miss the long playing times, simple interface, and good sound quality. Even my MZ-1 was able to drive full size cans to nearly hearing-damage levels.
Absolutely. The NW-E507 (and siblings) was probably the greatest music player ever built. Tiny, sleek, beautiful, intuitive to operate, and with a spectacular battery life, (40+ hrs/chg!!!) loved that thing! Only problems were Sonic Stage was an utter pile of dogshit software, (the software thing...) and lack of expandability because Apple and Sony read from the same playbook on that issue.
I would have TOTALLY bought another if they kept making them, ESPECIALLY if they kept the design the same, and upped the memory capacity... imagine a music player that sleek, tiny, and beautiful, if you could side-load podcasts, music, etc., via MTP or MSC without using the giant pain-in-the-ass, flaming dumpster-fire that was Sonic Stage, and stored more than a gigabyte of music on it... like maybe 16, or 32...
I can’t say I’m saddened or even surprised Sony’s doing this... they’ve always been known for amazing, innovative hardware crippled by laughably shitty software, like the PlayStation. Trouble is, this is an idiotic move, and will end Sony. They’re incorrectly assuming a software only business model is sustainable, because they’re so focused on the near future that they are ignoring the future that’s slightly farther away.
Their leadership seems to have been seduced by the Dark Side of the Force, and boy oh boy is it going to bite them in a whole new asshole that they’re about to get torn. In 5 to 7 years, when Sony is filing for bankruptcy, and their senior executives are committing the rite of Seppuku with a dull, rusty tanto, I will remind people I predicted this, and point out that they could have resurrected the MP3 player market with a rerelease of decent hardware, esp. as the smartphone fad ends, people realize what a spectacularly stupid idea trading privacy for convenience on industrial scales, and how nice it would be if anyone still made a decent goddamned Walkman, that didn’t also function as a 1984-style telescreen, allowing government and the companies that own it to track you everywhere and listen in on everything you say, see everything you do, and narc you the fuck out before you even think about doing something that could harm them and their precious goddamned fucking corporate bottom line.
A researcher experimenting with gamma rays and radioactive snail RNA late at night in a lab experiences a horrific accident, combining his DNA with snail RNA. Now, whenever he gets angry or frightened, a startling metamorphosis occurs... and he exhibits supernatural slowness, and the ability to leave a slimy trail everywhere he goes... the story is not nearly as exciting as what happened to Bruce Banner (or David Banner, if you prefer TV)... instead of "Hulking Out," he just gets a job at the DMV, or moonlights at the Post Office, where he can put his amazing new... powers, as it were, to best use. In this new form, he is known only as, "The SNAIL!"
Sorry... replying on slashdot on an iPad using Safari, it doesnt offer a preview link...
Maybe PROVIDING expert guidance, I was saying, might be helpful, more than threatening people in the event of a breach. Also, providing criminal penalties will only discourage hacking targets from coming forward, which is worse for everyone. Imagine if they treated banks like that after a stick-up or heist. Blaming the victim like this... shit... I wonder if that is how rape victims feel...
Really? Know what else happened this week? A volcano in Hawaii destroyed some homes and cars, and an asshole in Texas tried to murder roughly two dozen people, successfully killed about half of his intended victims. Consider laws against both of these events. In the case of a volcano, you can outlaw them all you like, volcanoes dont give a fuq. Murder perpetrated by a human, OTOH, was outlawed... the penalties are pretty severe and the living breathing bag of human excrement responsible in this case will probably never walk free again, since heâ(TM)s looking at 400 years in the electric chair, probably he knew that, and fuck all hell, he did it anyway. The all-stick, no-carrot approach is not a panacea for all the challenges facing our society. Maybe proving expert guidance on how to set up a password protected system because the way things are now, I think every tech company is out for itself, going it alone, and THAT could be part of the problem.
The only stew that can be made from this single oyster worth of evidence is that there is an anomaly in how few of the intervening evolutionary steps fossils we have found, which could be explained in a number of ways, such as, off the top of my head, the species undergoing a good deal of evolution in a region where the fossils are not available to be found because the sea floor underneath that has been subducted and those fossils, as any such as may have existed, have rejoined the mantle of the Earth. Or maybe they are there and we just have not found them yet. Frankly, a breathless THEY CAME FROM SPAAACEEEE.... is a telltale sign of intellectual laziness or dishonesty, and it is getting a tad late for all the April 1 foolishness.
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Is "3,300 milliwatt-hours" the same as 3.3 Watt-hours?
Or should we really be measuring this in Libraries of Congress?
It does seem to be the same, but from TFA, that number was PER GRAM. A Lithium-Ion battery by contrast, (which had the highest energy density I found for a common chemical battery,) a quick web search reveals an average of about 129 milliwatt-hours per gram, and less for each of the other popular battery technologies currently seeing widespread use, including alkaline, NiMH, Nickel Cadmium and Carbon-Zinc. Getting 3.3 watt-hours out of each gram of a battery would be impressive, but there are probably other barriers to widespread adoption as a replacement or alternative to Li-ion or NiMH batteries in things like smartphones.
How much shielding does such a battery need? How great is the health risk if one leaks, or is damaged? What happens when internet-morons start drilling holes in them because they heard someone say they work even better that way, and fine particles of nickel-63 get released into the air and are subsequently inhaled, either by said internet-morons, or by people unfortunate enough to be near them? What else can nickel-63 be made into, i.e., if they start letting everyone have this stuff in abundance, can it be used somehow to fabricate something you'd rather not have everyone having one of, i.e., could it be used to simplify the making of U-235 out of something else? For example, if you took radon gas (which naturally emanates from soil in some parts of the world, such as much of the United States,) and place it under pressure near nickel-63, does the plate develop a coating of U-235? Now, I'm not even hypothesizing that's possible, just asking IF turning a radioactive isotope of something into a common consumer good is a good idea, since it is not that hard to get one kind of stuff to change into another if you know what you're doing. There are watch-dials and gun-sights that are (or were) commonly available for people to buy that turned an isotope of hydrogen into helium, not by fusion, (as I initially thought when I heard of these things,) but through decay, in a fashion that sounds similar to what these guys have done, but using the shed beta-particle to induce electrical current, rather than exciting an atom of phosphorus, causing it to spit out a photon, or whatever.
What I wonder though, is this: Does a battery that produces energy like this through radioactive decay work like a chemical battery? I.e., since the power is being produced by radioactive decay, it isn't really doing so on-demand, like a chemical battery does. In a chemical battery, aside from loss due to internal energy leakage, in theory, it should last forever until used. In theory of course, with NO loss due to internal leakage, the chemical reaction is CHECKED, is halted, by the fact that the electrons saturate the anode (unless I have it backwards) and the salt-bridge fills up until a circuit is completed, giving those electrons somewhere to go, so as to get around to the cathode, (again, unless I have it backwards,) to be reunited with what crossed the salt-bridge. With a radioactive-decay battery, the decay events will occur without regard to whether there's a circuit attached to it, meaning it will start "discharging," as it were, as soon as it's manufactured, and will have other properties dissimilar to chemical batteries as well. If you short-circuit a chemical battery, the reaction will happen inside much faster than it's designed to be able to handle, in terms of heat dissipation, meaning probably catastrophic failure and either a leak, a fire, or an explosion as it builds, depending on the battery, and how lucky you are. If you short THIS kind of battery out, it should do nothing but provide the maximum current its physical makeup is designed to support, provided all the components, (plates, wires, etc.,) can withstand max current, and produce nothing but THAT, even with it shorted completely, and continue chugging along, kind
A phone with no headphone jack is like... I hear Apple is entering the highly competitive cutlery and tableware market. Their initial foray will be called the iFork. Thirty percent lighter, it will feature an innovative, single-tine design, streamlining the movement of food between your plate (works best with the new Apple Plate,) and your mouth. Why only one tine when other fork makers are using three, or occasionally two? Because... COURAGE.
A year later Apple will offer the iFork 2, with a head that swivels 355 degrees allowing the freedom to grasp it at nearly any angle, and following the famous words, “one more thing,” they will wow the breathless WWDC crowd with the new iSpoon, which will be a rounded rectangle, with a rounded square hole in one end, that expands on contact with a liquid to hold a larger volume than seems possible, like a gull has. Featuring a proprietary gallium aluminum magnesium nickel alloy, the iSpoon will retail initially for $199.95, and have a base capacity of up to 3.7ml, and be fully rechargeable.
Several years later, Apple will discontinue the iFork, introduce the Apple Knife, Knife Edition, with a side for buttering avocado toast, and a side for cutting tofu, (since by then Apple will become a pure vegan company,) though third-party attachments will become available to allow for cutting of meats and cheeses, but Apple will say that using one violates the Terms of Service and the warranty, and makes puppies cry. Then they’ll offer a holiday bundle with the Apple Spoon, a rose-gold Apple Knife, (the first that is NOT Knife Edition,) and bring back the iFork, in the form of the new iFork SE, a throwback to people who REALLY liked the old iFork, and while internally it will share many of the same features as the Apple Spoon, it will reinvigorate the market for third-party add-on tine sleeves, owing to it having identical size and shape to the original. The set of three will, with Apple iFinancing, for well-qualified buyers, be available for twelve easy, simple payments of $39.95. Available initially in the US only.
...that welfare is a GOOD thing, when it’s for people who own coal mines? Because though the people condemned to work in those coal mines, by lack of vision or lack of opportunity, just plain bad luck, whatever you want to call it, will benefit in a minor (no pun intended,) and temporary way, they’d benefit more if instead that obsolete and dangerous business that kills its own workers, poisons communities and is rapidly contributing to rendering Earth inhospitable to humans, and other large, multicelled organisms, were allowed the mercy of a quick bankruptcy. Paying for and facilitating the retraining of those workers in a field of their choice to ensure THEY and their families don't suffer, and can be allowed to support themselves and contribute to the overall economy without risking blacklung, dying in mine fires, etc. is a FAR better use of tax dollars.
“I am NOT a giant fish!” Oh, wait...
...that wasn’t the quote I was looking for. It can go about its business. Move along.
Yes, but presumably this is in cooperation with hospitals (or I guess more likely retailers in hospitals? retailers beside hospitals?) because you need some kind of control, either directly or by some kind of business arrangement, of the access points that are designated as being part of the fence.
Hard to control someone else’s radio signal, especially when it is illegal for you, in any way whatsoever, to interfere with it. The hospital does not need to participate, condone, or acquiesce; the towers are outside the hospital, and you carried your phone inside. Radio transception is pretty neat shit... but triangulation is even cooler.
In school, a class on it was called, if memory serves, “PFM,” which I believe stood for Pulse Frequency Modulation, or something like that, but because of how complex and neat this was, it had acquired the nickname “Pure Fucking Magic”. It is through such dark magic that they can tell where your phone is, without the hospital helping them in any way, agreeing, or participating. It’s also how the FCC finds pirate radio stations, unless I’m very much mistaken.
Oh, I forgot... it could be worse, they could track phones that spend most evening in the same house as another phone that has visited a site like Ashley Madison and serve ads for private eyes and divorce lawyers, or they could geofence bars or pubs or liquor stores and if you visit them too often you start getting ads for rehab, or if a phone that spends most nights, again, with another and one phone is spotted spending a lot of time at a place that sells guns it serves the other with ads for crisis centers, battered spouses shelters, etc... no, the thing with ads for lawyers is NOT as creepy as it can get, either.
How about geofencing places where political rallies are held, and advertising contraceptives and assisted suicide to attendees? OR... serving ads for deals too good to pass up to people at those venues, (legitimately,) just to get people to show up for their free, or steeply discounted... whatever, so as to get their personal info so as to be able to ID them, get their license plates, see where they live, etc. No, the ads for personal injury lawyers is tame stuff, really, and not really anything to get excited over.
They strive to hit new lows and this time they've nearly bottomed out. Some of them truly are ambulance chasers and now they let the ads chase the ambulances for them. Scum of the Earth, crud at the bottom of the barrel, less than human.
Um, I’m pretty sure they could get a whole lot worse. Are they deliberately causing car crashes, sabotaging consumer safety products, or hiring thugs to beat random (rich-seeming) strangers to drum up business yet? Working clandestinely with prosecutors and police to entrap potential clients so they’ll need lawyers? Conspiring to inflate prices or rig cases, taking dives, or betting on cases, especially ones they themselves are involved with? (“I’ll take The People of the State of Missouri versus Rodriguez to acquit in the fourth day of deliberations... it pays 17 to 1, right?”)
This is just advertising. You might as well whine about product placement in television and motion pictures, or say it’s creepy that they have ads for alarm systems and adult diapers on cable news channels, and ads for beer, or cars, or trucks during big football games, rather than the other way around.
As for how they “know,” I don’t think they do. Either the cellphone maker, app author, or cell carrier uses a technique like cellphone triangulation or something to figure you’re in a hospital. Now the hospital has no way of stopping this short of turning hospital buildings into giant faraday cages, illegally broadcasting their own radio signal to interfere with those of cell towers, build their OWN towers (which costs money and gives them no benefit unless maybe THEY inject ads,) and hide users’ locations that way, but they have no incentive to do so. Probably when whoever it is serving the ads detects (either via WiFi or cell triangulation, or GPS or location sharing,) you’re in a hospital, they serve ads from whoever it is who asked them to serve their ads to anyone in that location.
I don’t see what the problem is. Unbeknownst, seemingly, to many whining about their precious privacy, a mobile phone is screaming its ID number, electronically, in radio frequency energy, every second or so, and it must do so for the system to work! To want to take advantage of that convenience, and all the powers conferred upon you by what would have seemed like sorcery only a century ago, and gripe about the unavoidable cost, is hypocrisy. To try to make it off-limits to attempt to advertise ANY services only reduces streams of revenue that help defray the end-costs of your handset and the service without which your fancy little phone is basically a combination MP3 player and compact camera. Without that revenue stream, it would cost even more.
It’s just like free websites and services. Advertising pays for it. Don’t like ads? Don’t use the service. Don’t want people knowing where your phone is? Tell it to stop screaming it’s ID number by shutting off all its transmitters. This can usually be done using something called “airplane mode”. Then it won’t broadcast its radio signal, and no one will know where you are to serve you ads. Have a nice day.
What if Chinese students turn out cleverer than the adults and adapt to show attentiveness and comprehension while secretly being out to lunch? Or worse, look on as if in rapt attention while secretly fantasizing about a world in which they don’t have to pretend they’re not bored when they’re bored, a world that does not, if you’ll forgive me, so closely resemble the Seventh Circle of Hell?
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out in like, twenty or thirty years. Yawnnn...
Just like I said when they suggested we should all eat chocolate covered locusts. You first. And second. Etc.
US District Judge Buchwald issued a 75-page ruling today clearly articulating why Donald Trump cannot block Twitter users, as it violates their First Amendment rights.
All things considered, shouldn't that have been a 140-character ruling? Here, lemme try:
LOL bro, you cant blok ppl on Twitter, evn if U R Potus, haha u suk #fail #45 #potus #scotus #ruling #zeitgeist #140characters...
Elon Musk... rating journalists' credibility... and he chose to call it "PRAVDA."
I literally can't think of an analogy for this besides, "starting a company proposing to rate journalists, and deciding to name it after a Russian propaganda outlet". This is the kind of situation I would use AS an analogy, so I'm kind of at a loss.
And you're wondering why people refer to the EU as the EUSSR?
No one wonders that. It is easily explained by the mental condition of those using the term just as much as when you see someone use the term Micro$oft you can instantly see they are 14 years old.
The EU is nothing but an irrelevant
I'm going to stop you there since in 7 words you have effectively said all of the following -I don't know history. -I don't know why the EU was created. -I don't know what the EU does. -I don't know what it has achieved. -I seriously have no fucking idea about international politics.
The EU has achieved its prime goal with great success. Maybe you should look up what that goal was, what life was like pre-EU, and why so many countries want to join.
You forgot:
“-I don’t know what the letters EU stand for.”
“-I don’t know how many countries are in the EU.
“-I don’t know how many letters are in the abbreviation ‘EU’.”
Hahahhahaha... that's like telling a stripper in the middle of her pole dance, after she's removed her last shred of clothing, that she'd better take care, or someone might see her NAKED! Like telling the icecream man that he better not play his chiming music over the bullhorn, or else kids might realize he's there and come out and try to buy icecream from him! Like telling a peacock that he better not fan out his tail feathers, or some peahen might SEE the display and try to mate with him. It would be like telling a pizza joint that if it's careless, and accidentally puts an ad in the paper, it might end up with customers coming there trying to buy pizza...
... etc.
Yeah, it's kind of a laughably pointless concern, is what I'm driving at, with this all stuff, and more... it would be like a skywriter being told it's a bad idea to go up during daylight hours, because someone could end up READING OVER HIS SHOULDER!
It's a tectonic shift for a company built on manufacturing prowess.
Sony was never really a manufacturing juggernaut though they certainly were/are competent at it. Manufacturing was always a means to an end for them. Their core competency was in engineering hardware historically and they were quite good. They ran into problems with software which to this day they still struggle with on many of their product lines - at least the bits of it that interface the customer. A lot of this was because they historically had a culture of hardware engineers who didn't really grok software. That's changed somewhat in recent years for some of their divisions though not all.
Sony is/was quite competitive on non-commodity hardware or hardware where they have patent protection. For example their mirrorless cameras are really good and they supply the camera sensors to much of the industry for digital cameras. (for example the iPhone has a Sony camera sensor in it) I use one of their A9 mirrorless cameras and it's a remarkable bit of tech. (though the software interface still sucks)
Sony popularized transistor radios, gave the world portable music with the Walkman and its TVs were considered top-of-the-line for decades
And all that was engineering prowess, not manufacturing prowess. Sony never was a low cost manufacturer so they usually had to compete towards the high end of the market. None of that has changed. The company has also diversified quite a lot. Sony is a huge insurance and financial services company. They also are big in entertainment (games, movies, etc) They're best known for consumer electronics but that provides increasingly less of their revenue anymore.
Imagine if GM, Ford or Chrysler (back when they existed, and weren’t cobbled together with other companies, Frankenstein’s monster style,) decided to get out of automotive manufacturing to focus entirely on gasoline refining.
That’s how this move strikes me, and begs the question, “what happens when the world can’t afford or just turns away from petrochemical fuels?” They DIE is what happens, and they die because their leadership was stupid and short-sighted, and the remaining bits and pieces of their company get sold off for parts at a fire sale. I will miss their headphones.
I disagree with with the AC grandparent who said that Sony hardware was overpriced and subpar - I felt like you always got what you paid for. Sure, they made some crap - but they also made stuff that was a good value. Their mid-range home theater stuff was always pretty nice.
I think part of their strategy, at least with home theater gear, was to make certain items quality and others with planned obsolescence, and hope you buy the crap gear to keep your system "all Sony" - and it worked on me. I bought a Sony receiver/amp in the mid-90s which still works fine to this day, but I had two 90's-era Sony CD changers crap out after 2-3 years each, one VCR and one cassette deck die after a few more years. I swore off buying any of their components again after that. Between that and the other stuff they've pulled which didn't affect me personally (the CD rootkit thing, the retraction of the alternate OS on PS2s), I feel glad that they're getting out of hardware. They've in general treated their customers like shit.
They did that reneging on Other OS on the PS2 TOO?!? Or did you mean PS3? That’s the one that came with an internal HDD, the ability to play Blu-ray movies out of the box, etc... my other issue with the PS3 is locking stuff off like hardware acceleration of video, and reducing the size of the screen, if you booted to “other OS,” BEFORE they ripped the functionality out... that was when I swore I’d never buy another Sony product that used software. Between the underground mine fire that was Sonic Stage, and the Other OS debacle, the only thing since then that I’ve bought because of the word “Sony” on the packaging were headphones, and they’re basically washed up there too. I bought several pairs when I realized they (wired Apple-compatible headphones with full, three-button remote controls,) we’re going extinct, and hope those will last me for most of the rest of my life. Because fuck ALL that Bluetooth bullshit.
I hung in there with HiMD but after a while Sonic Stage just became stale; the future was clearly MP3 on flash memory. I do miss the long playing times, simple interface, and good sound quality. Even my MZ-1 was able to drive full size cans to nearly hearing-damage levels.
Absolutely. The NW-E507 (and siblings) was probably the greatest music player ever built. Tiny, sleek, beautiful, intuitive to operate, and with a spectacular battery life, (40+ hrs/chg!!!) loved that thing! Only problems were Sonic Stage was an utter pile of dogshit software, (the software thing...) and lack of expandability because Apple and Sony read from the same playbook on that issue.
I would have TOTALLY bought another if they kept making them, ESPECIALLY if they kept the design the same, and upped the memory capacity... imagine a music player that sleek, tiny, and beautiful, if you could side-load podcasts, music, etc., via MTP or MSC without using the giant pain-in-the-ass, flaming dumpster-fire that was Sonic Stage, and stored more than a gigabyte of music on it... like maybe 16, or 32...
I can’t say I’m saddened or even surprised Sony’s doing this... they’ve always been known for amazing, innovative hardware crippled by laughably shitty software, like the PlayStation. Trouble is, this is an idiotic move, and will end Sony. They’re incorrectly assuming a software only business model is sustainable, because they’re so focused on the near future that they are ignoring the future that’s slightly farther away.
Their leadership seems to have been seduced by the Dark Side of the Force, and boy oh boy is it going to bite them in a whole new asshole that they’re about to get torn. In 5 to 7 years, when Sony is filing for bankruptcy, and their senior executives are committing the rite of Seppuku with a dull, rusty tanto, I will remind people I predicted this, and point out that they could have resurrected the MP3 player market with a rerelease of decent hardware, esp. as the smartphone fad ends, people realize what a spectacularly stupid idea trading privacy for convenience on industrial scales, and how nice it would be if anyone still made a decent goddamned Walkman, that didn’t also function as a 1984-style telescreen, allowing government and the companies that own it to track you everywhere and listen in on everything you say, see everything you do, and narc you the fuck out before you even think about doing something that could harm them and their precious goddamned fucking corporate bottom line.
A researcher experimenting with gamma rays and radioactive snail RNA late at night in a lab experiences a horrific accident, combining his DNA with snail RNA. Now, whenever he gets angry or frightened, a startling metamorphosis occurs... and he exhibits supernatural slowness, and the ability to leave a slimy trail everywhere he goes... the story is not nearly as exciting as what happened to Bruce Banner (or David Banner, if you prefer TV)... instead of "Hulking Out," he just gets a job at the DMV, or moonlights at the Post Office, where he can put his amazing new... powers, as it were, to best use. In this new form, he is known only as, "The SNAIL!"
His Kryptonite is of course, table salt.
Sorry... replying on slashdot on an iPad using Safari, it doesnt offer a preview link...
Maybe PROVIDING expert guidance, I was saying, might be helpful, more than threatening people in the event of a breach. Also, providing criminal penalties will only discourage hacking targets from coming forward, which is worse for everyone. Imagine if they treated banks like that after a stick-up or heist. Blaming the victim like this... shit... I wonder if that is how rape victims feel...
Really? Know what else happened this week? A volcano in Hawaii destroyed some homes and cars, and an asshole in Texas tried to murder roughly two dozen people, successfully killed about half of his intended victims. Consider laws against both of these events. In the case of a volcano, you can outlaw them all you like, volcanoes dont give a fuq. Murder perpetrated by a human, OTOH, was outlawed... the penalties are pretty severe and the living breathing bag of human excrement responsible in this case will probably never walk free again, since heâ(TM)s looking at 400 years in the electric chair, probably he knew that, and fuck all hell, he did it anyway. The all-stick, no-carrot approach is not a panacea for all the challenges facing our society. Maybe proving expert guidance on how to set up a password protected system because the way things are now, I think every tech company is out for itself, going it alone, and THAT could be part of the problem.
Has the possibility occurred to any of you that the person(s) responsible for this story are trolling us, and LOLing at all the fuss?
The only stew that can be made from this single oyster worth of evidence is that there is an anomaly in how few of the intervening evolutionary steps fossils we have found, which could be explained in a number of ways, such as, off the top of my head, the species undergoing a good deal of evolution in a region where the fossils are not available to be found because the sea floor underneath that has been subducted and those fossils, as any such as may have existed, have rejoined the mantle of the Earth. Or maybe they are there and we just have not found them yet. Frankly, a breathless THEY CAME FROM SPAAACEEEE.... is a telltale sign of intellectual laziness or dishonesty, and it is getting a tad late for all the April 1 foolishness.
Oops, sorry... I ignored the subject rather than the message. My bad. Iâ(TM)ll try harder next time. Promise.
QXE4, checkmate. Good game. Best two out of three?
God damn it, apostrophes...