Here is an improvement on the dead tree option - it is a book made from plastic resins which I actually like the feel of more than dead tree books. The pages are waterproof, the book has a good, sturdy feel, and it is recyclable (not downcyclable).
The book talks about how smart manufacturing processes that take toxicity, recycling, and design principles into account can serve multiple needs - and are often cheaper and more pleasant than our current processes.
It says we can have all the stuff we want without the environmental or health problems normally associated with production.
If you don't want electromagnetic radiation, turn off the lights. I'd love to, but I am afraid to ask the other cubicle dwellers in my zone for fear of looking like a nutjob.
Here is an entry on some health effects from office lighting.
Health effects of over-illumination or improper spectral composition of light include increased headache incidence, worker fatigue, medically defined stress, decrease in sexual function and increase in anxiety.
...blurt out pseudo facts about how meat eaters are killing... the planet...
According to this article, a John Hopkins school likes to blurt out pseudo facts about killing the planet, too:
Yet for all the energy we put into our food system, we don't get very much out. A 2002 study from the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health estimated that, using our current system, three calories of energy were needed to create one calorie of edible food. And that was on average. Some foods take far more, for instance grain-fed beef, which requires thirty-five calories for every calorie of beef produced. What's more, the John Hopkins study didn't include the energy used in processing and transporting food.
My point is that as long as people are involved (even just in writing software or designing the hardware), there are going to be accidents, and the mistakes with nuclear power can be catastrophic. There will be oversights, like in 1000s of years from now waste containers that people have long since forgotten about start leaking. Why use something that creates waste like this in the first place? Our population, along with percentage of the population that enjoys a high rate of consumption, will keep growing, and it doesn't look like we are getting off planet anytime soon. The places where we dump this waste could block us from using valuable resources, even in our short lifetimes.
We could be using better designs for nuclear power generation that do a better job of recycling nuclear waste, and so producing much less hazardous waste. However, this is more expensive, so it wouldn't be as profitable. Even using these methods, I wouldn't agree with it - I don't see creating the waste as necessary.
There are so many other options out there which don't have these issues - if each area used what was most appropriate to it (solar in deserts, wave power along the coasts, wind in mountainous areas, geothermal were that is available, even kinetic energy collection from our cars driving on roads, etc.) then we could have all of the safe power we could want. Investing in hydrogen harvesting and fuel cells would be a good way to get this energy into our cars and places without the infrastructure.
Nuclear power does have the advantages that it is cheap (ignoring external costs) and it can work anywhere, but I think using lots of approaches to energy generation makes much more sense for the long term.
>> Why is security on an iPhone suddenly such a huge deal, if its really a computer?
Let me start off by saying, I tried out the Android api, and I loved it; its event model was designed with switching applications in mind. It was very powerful and a joy to program. It will probably run my first personal smart phone.
My guess as to why Apple won't treat their phones as computers is because people expect phones to be responsive. People grew up with phones that you can start talking into as soon as you pick up the receiver. A slow phone would look like a piece of junk. The phone market is still quite open, as the iPhone has shown - it has gotten some solid sales numbers even though it wasn't the tried and true. The carriers have been very careful about what goes on their phones, even though it is mostly to protect arpu, so in general mobile phones are still quite responsive. Apple doesn't want to be the slow one.
Personal computers have the opposite expectation; people are used to slow personal computers. Remember waiting for Windows 3.x to refresh the damn screen? Somehow, the general population has accepted bloated software that keeps our computers much less responsive than they need to be, even as hardware keeps getting faster. When Apple's main competitor's, and the market leader's, OS can't even run on a lot of modern hardware out of cripple-mode, Apple can afford to include more features.
I'm not sure why most everyone here is on the nuclear bandwagon. Sure, there haven't been very many accidents, and of those, many aren't serious, but we haven't been using this type of energy very long, either. There will be new ways we screw up, and more meltdowns. Besides which, the US doesn't have a good plan for the nuclear waste (some other countries recycle it much better); there aren't enough indian reservations to hold it all. Why bother when there are so many promising alternatives out there?
At the end of the day, the only thing that stands between us and the would-be tyrants of the world is our willingness to oppose them, with deadly force if need be. Liberty and power are two sides of the same coin, and in the real world political power comes from the barrel of a gun.
I think the boxes line needs some revision. With the type of money out there to buy the votes, individual votes in the ballot box have little impact. I am 33, and I have never been in a jury box. I don't see the ammo box as a viable option. However, the soap box is getting more and more powerful. Here is a draft for others to pick apart:
There is one box to be used in defense of liberty: soap. But other boxes can be a lot of fun.
We recently got rid of the tv in our house, and we haven't let our kids (4 and 6 - those are ages, not names) get into video games.
We replaced the tv with more reading and audiobooks. They also have started to do a lot more imaginative play - dress up, pretending with their dolls, and tying knots in anything they can find. They seem much more aware of their surroundings now - much less zoned out. They don't seem to miss the tv.
Here's another alternative - stop delivering new versions of IE.
They had no problem not working on IE when it was by far the dominant browser.
IE doesn't offer anything useful, that should be in a web page, that other browsers don't.
ActiveX apps should not be created using web pages - they don't use web page standards. There should be a separate vehicle Microsoft has for delivering ActiveX.
This protectionist law is protecting their independent booksellers. What you call screwing up their economy, others call preserving their quality of life. Some people actually enjoy browsing physical books among their friends and neighbors.
Here in the US, I've lived in a few places where the downtown is filled with empty storefronts, with a WalMart on the edge of town.
I am not sure they have the best way to price in the external costs of a big box bookstore driving local bookstores out of business, but I have to take the slashdot-approved anti-corporate stance on this one.
The OLPC has already driven development for a number of other ultra-cheap computers, which is not a bad thing.
I disagree. There is already a huge envionmental problem with dumping electronics. I support the OLPC because I believe in education and helping third world children. However, having cheap computers in first world countries can be an environmental nightmare.
A low-end laptop with Windows would compete with the OLPC
Ah! Now we see your real objection here... Nothing to do with Intel or OLPC - You just don't want Microsoft involved, even if they give away the Windows licenses... Just use the right tools for the job.
My point was that people wouldn't bother to evaluate a new tool when there is an old, popular standby, so they wouldn't necessarily be using the best tool, just the more generally accepted one.
That being said, the OLPC was designed from scratch to be an education tool. This is the specific purpose of the OLPC. If the classmate were using Linux distribution X, then I would still argue that the OLPC should be given consideration in an education setting.
After trying various ways to get numbers from the 'Ford text' and "list, uniquify, relativity", I tried hacking at the boxes, and I think I see what their code is doing, which might be a clue...
The first 6 numbers are the ones that matter- numbers after the 6 seem to have no effect
Each number is for another square, the number representing how many places to go over before drawing the next square. If you put a square at a position that has a square, they stack vertically. If you put a square to the right (or left - negative numbers work, too) then that square uses the height from the previous square.
For example, "0,0,0,0,0,0" is a column 6 squares high, "0,1,1,1,1,1" is a horizontal line starting at the far left. "0,1,1,-2,0,0" makes a capital L.
Hope that helps someone - personally, I am going to try to find something that generates 6 numbers from the text. I am not sure how to tell if I get it right...
Re:Wow! This is exactly what I always wanted!!!
on
Google Maps GPS Simulator
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
That's better than somewhere in Canada; a map zoomed in to near your current location could be much more helpful, especially because of slow networks and high bandwidth costs
My company has recently standardized on SharePoint (shudder) for doing the work we used to do with wikis- giving people a place to go for project status and project related documents. The official reason was better security for our sensitive information, which has worked - SharePoint has been such a pain in the ass that we stopped posting altogether.
The grumbling is that the change was a way for some people in IT to preserve their employment.
I await the rise of our AI overlords - hopefully they will be able to spot such waste and give us back our wikis.
MS has been around for a while now, but Vista isn't taking off and Office may be cracking under the weight of competition and switches to ODF. They have tried to get into other markets, but, AFAIK, they haven't been successful anywhere else.
In 2002, I gave them 10 years, and I think I am right on track.
BTW- if you were actually socially responsible, instead of just a troll, you wouldn't be investing with Apple.
I wasn't too impressed with the environmental report - it is for hardware companies that have their own recycling programs. I have had a few Apple computers over the years, and they last much longer than the PCs I've had. Apple has also recently switched to much more recyclable materials with their aluminum imac line.
I bought Apple stock because of its image is so important to it- its brand name is worth lots of money, and keeping that untarnished will help it toe the line, as the new imac line demonstrates.
The main reason I bought the stock was I believed it was in a really good market position. With Vista performing so poorly, it looks like Apple has a huge opportunity. I would buy Apple stock even if they didn't have the iPod and iPhone. But they do.
Apple is not one of my more socially responsible stocks, but I am not ashamed of investing in them, either.
- gargantuan troll
Slashdot Mirror
There may be other options.
Here is an improvement on the dead tree option - it is a book made from plastic resins which I actually like the feel of more than dead tree books. The pages are waterproof, the book has a good, sturdy feel, and it is recyclable (not downcyclable).
The book talks about how smart manufacturing processes that take toxicity, recycling, and design principles into account can serve multiple needs - and are often cheaper and more pleasant than our current processes.
It says we can have all the stuff we want without the environmental or health problems normally associated with production.
Here is an entry on some health effects from office lighting.
...blurt out pseudo facts about how meat eaters are killingAccording to this article, a John Hopkins school likes to blurt out pseudo facts about killing the planet, too:
My point is that as long as people are involved (even just in writing software or designing the hardware), there are going to be accidents, and the mistakes with nuclear power can be catastrophic. There will be oversights, like in 1000s of years from now waste containers that people have long since forgotten about start leaking. Why use something that creates waste like this in the first place? Our population, along with percentage of the population that enjoys a high rate of consumption, will keep growing, and it doesn't look like we are getting off planet anytime soon. The places where we dump this waste could block us from using valuable resources, even in our short lifetimes. We could be using better designs for nuclear power generation that do a better job of recycling nuclear waste, and so producing much less hazardous waste. However, this is more expensive, so it wouldn't be as profitable. Even using these methods, I wouldn't agree with it - I don't see creating the waste as necessary. There are so many other options out there which don't have these issues - if each area used what was most appropriate to it (solar in deserts, wave power along the coasts, wind in mountainous areas, geothermal were that is available, even kinetic energy collection from our cars driving on roads, etc.) then we could have all of the safe power we could want. Investing in hydrogen harvesting and fuel cells would be a good way to get this energy into our cars and places without the infrastructure. Nuclear power does have the advantages that it is cheap (ignoring external costs) and it can work anywhere, but I think using lots of approaches to energy generation makes much more sense for the long term.
>> Why is security on an iPhone suddenly such a huge deal, if its really a computer?
Let me start off by saying, I tried out the Android api, and I loved it; its event model was designed with switching applications in mind. It was very powerful and a joy to program. It will probably run my first personal smart phone.
My guess as to why Apple won't treat their phones as computers is because people expect phones to be responsive. People grew up with phones that you can start talking into as soon as you pick up the receiver. A slow phone would look like a piece of junk. The phone market is still quite open, as the iPhone has shown - it has gotten some solid sales numbers even though it wasn't the tried and true. The carriers have been very careful about what goes on their phones, even though it is mostly to protect arpu, so in general mobile phones are still quite responsive. Apple doesn't want to be the slow one.
Personal computers have the opposite expectation; people are used to slow personal computers. Remember waiting for Windows 3.x to refresh the damn screen? Somehow, the general population has accepted bloated software that keeps our computers much less responsive than they need to be, even as hardware keeps getting faster. When Apple's main competitor's, and the market leader's, OS can't even run on a lot of modern hardware out of cripple-mode, Apple can afford to include more features.
I'm not sure why most everyone here is on the nuclear bandwagon. Sure, there haven't been very many accidents, and of those, many aren't serious, but we haven't been using this type of energy very long, either. There will be new ways we screw up, and more meltdowns. Besides which, the US doesn't have a good plan for the nuclear waste (some other countries recycle it much better); there aren't enough indian reservations to hold it all. Why bother when there are so many promising alternatives out there?
I found this interesting - a photo essay about Chernobyl: http://www.pixelpress.org/chernobyl/index.html
Good luck with that deadly force thing.
The Iraqi and Afghanistan wars (I use the term loosely) have cost around $3,000,0000,0000,000.00 so far. How can you take up arms against a government which is willing to use those types of resources? I believe the ratio of dead Iraqi/American in this conflict is on the order of 100/1 (it is much less with documented numbers http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ http://www.google.com/search?q=dead+iraqi+count&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a, but with these numbers it is still over 22:1). Just how do you propose using deadly force against something like that?
I think the boxes line needs some revision. With the type of money out there to buy the votes, individual votes in the ballot box have little impact. I am 33, and I have never been in a jury box. I don't see the ammo box as a viable option. However, the soap box is getting more and more powerful. Here is a draft for others to pick apart:
There is one box to be used in defense of liberty: soap. But other boxes can be a lot of fun.
And a car engine is just like a horse.
Does anyone know what happened to the plans from Sanswire? This sounded more feasible to me.
We recently got rid of the tv in our house, and we haven't let our kids (4 and 6 - those are ages, not names) get into video games.
We replaced the tv with more reading and audiobooks. They also have started to do a lot more imaginative play - dress up, pretending with their dolls, and tying knots in anything they can find. They seem much more aware of their surroundings now - much less zoned out. They don't seem to miss the tv.
They had no problem not working on IE when it was by far the dominant browser.
IE doesn't offer anything useful, that should be in a web page, that other browsers don't.
ActiveX apps should not be created using web pages - they don't use web page standards. There should be a separate vehicle Microsoft has for delivering ActiveX.
This protectionist law is protecting their independent booksellers. What you call screwing up their economy, others call preserving their quality of life. Some people actually enjoy browsing physical books among their friends and neighbors.
Here in the US, I've lived in a few places where the downtown is filled with empty storefronts, with a WalMart on the edge of town.
I am not sure they have the best way to price in the external costs of a big box bookstore driving local bookstores out of business, but I have to take the slashdot-approved anti-corporate stance on this one.
I used to really believe in free-trade, but now I see the free-trade arguments more as corporate brainwashing of the gullible masses for fun and profit.
Are they safe to eat?
You are exactly right. Telecommuting is great. I couldn't agree more.
Mmmm, soylent green farmer
I disagree. There is already a huge envionmental problem with dumping electronics. I support the OLPC because I believe in education and helping third world children. However, having cheap computers in first world countries can be an environmental nightmare.
I would agree with you if these machines were recycled completely. However, used electronics are being exported to countries where labor is cheap and environmental regulations are less strict or non-existent. Once there, they waste many of the resources, and poison the environment.
Another way to look at it is that 3.44% of the market has changed hands, 10% of that to Linux and 90% to OSX
My point was that people wouldn't bother to evaluate a new tool when there is an old, popular standby, so they wouldn't necessarily be using the best tool, just the more generally accepted one.
That being said, the OLPC was designed from scratch to be an education tool. This is the specific purpose of the OLPC. If the classmate were using Linux distribution X, then I would still argue that the OLPC should be given consideration in an education setting.
The first 6 numbers are the ones that matter- numbers after the 6 seem to have no effect
Each number is for another square, the number representing how many places to go over before drawing the next square. If you put a square at a position that has a square, they stack vertically. If you put a square to the right (or left - negative numbers work, too) then that square uses the height from the previous square.
For example, "0,0,0,0,0,0" is a column 6 squares high, "0,1,1,1,1,1" is a horizontal line starting at the far left. "0,1,1,-2,0,0" makes a capital L.
Hope that helps someone - personally, I am going to try to find something that generates 6 numbers from the text. I am not sure how to tell if I get it right...
That's better than somewhere in Canada; a map zoomed in to near your current location could be much more helpful, especially because of slow networks and high bandwidth costs
My company has recently standardized on SharePoint (shudder) for doing the work we used to do with wikis- giving people a place to go for project status and project related documents. The official reason was better security for our sensitive information, which has worked - SharePoint has been such a pain in the ass that we stopped posting altogether. The grumbling is that the change was a way for some people in IT to preserve their employment. I await the rise of our AI overlords - hopefully they will be able to spot such waste and give us back our wikis.
MS has been around for a while now, but Vista isn't taking off and Office may be cracking under the weight of competition and switches to ODF. They have tried to get into other markets, but, AFAIK, they haven't been successful anywhere else.
In 2002, I gave them 10 years, and I think I am right on track.
My question - why do you think this couldn't work commercially?