Re:Because you can doesn't mean you should
on
Star Trek Economics
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· Score: 1
So you move the population close to the oceans. Without a currency based society* this shouldn't be that big of a deal to do.
Except that people likely would not WANT to move there. It would be crowded along the coast. Hell, people purposely live in places like Phoenix because they like the heat and the dry. Do you seriously think they will move to the ocean if they can bring the water to them?
So you don't bring water to them. Problem fixes itself.
For that matter, who says that the water would not have been there?
Nature. It wasn't there before humans put it there ergo it would not have been there unless we were the ones who removed it in the first place. Is that really not obvious?
So you are saying that the water we use today was never there to being with? Or that it all drains back into the aquifer? I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of the water we currently extract and use ends up in the atmosphere or draining off the land to rivers, the vast majority of which end up feeding into oceans. I'm talking about returning that water to where it started, closing the loop on the water cycle.
If anything, you could fix an environmental problem created by us in the first place.
Maybe or maybe not. We don't have a great track record of responsible stewardship even when we (too rarely) know what to do. People generally put short term personal interest above actions that are optimal for society as a whole. If anything removal of economic restrictions would probably make the problem worse. Then you have people able to do all sorts of irresponsible things just because they are bored and have the ability.
You've got that backwards. Economic cost is a barrier to wider adoption of ecologically sound practices. It has always been costlier to do things in a eco-friendly manner vs not. If the costs were the same, there would be no reason to not do it right. There would be no financial incentive to do otherwise.
Re:Because you can doesn't mean you should
on
Star Trek Economics
·
· Score: 1
Unlimited free energy* = low cost desalination = no water problem.
Just because you have some magic technology allowing you to get it doesn't mean you can or should use it. Now you are talking about moving massive amounts of water around from the oceans to locations where it would not have been ordinarily. You think that will have no ecological impact? Just because we can build a city like Phoenix or Las Vegas in the desert doesn't make it a good idea*. The limitations aren't just economic or material, they are also consequential. If you do something it will have an effect on the world around you and there is more than a small possibly it will not a good one. We're not all that great about foreseeing all the consequences of our actions. Removing energy limitations will not make us better at predicting the future.
* I've actually seen idiots saying we should divert water from the Great Lakes to fill up Lake Mead to support Las Vegas. Here's a better idea, don't build a major city in the damn desert.
So you move the population close to the oceans. Without a currency based society* this shouldn't be that big of a deal to do. For that matter, who says that the water would not have been there? Human use depletes aquifers all around the world, this would move water that has been used and either evaporated or made it's way into one of the river basins feeding into an ocean or sea and put it back where it started from. If anything, you could fix an environmental problem created by us in the first place. Unless you want us to go back to living in caves you can't consider every change to the environment we cause to be damage. We are part of the ecosystem and there are too many of us to not cause changes. At best we can try to minimize the negative impacts of those changes.
Does he have any idea what the world water situation is?
Unlimited free energy* = low cost desalination = no water problem. It's not like the water vanishes after it's used once by a human (assuming we don't pollute the hell out of it while using it). It's just unequally distributed in it's unsalted form at the moment.
*In this fairytale senario, energy would be over-abundant, non-polluting, and virtually, if not literally, free.
The question here is whether or not a coorporation would cooperate.
Is it really? Not in the US and I imagine not in the UK, Canada, or even Australia. At least judging from recent revelations of the close ties between telcoms and the governments.
"When I wanted a phone "killed" I'd just call up the CEO of that phone company and have him have his people disable the phone plan for "non-payment" or whatever."
You've missed the point.
It's not about having "a phone" killed. It's about the ability to have phoneS killed. Plural.
You think the government couldn't do that already? All they need to do is send a list of phone numbers (or account holder SSNs, or IMEIs, etc) and a scary national security letter and tell them to kill the accounts?. Boom. Done.
I'd also expect within the next year or two (or less, considering how cheap they are) that police will be documenting crime scenes with "gigapixel" panoramas. Gigapan sells a robotic mount for DSLRs for under $1000, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.
I'm surprised this isn't already SOP for most crime scene units. The cost is low and it's not all that complicated to do. Hell realtors have been doing it (although at a lower resolution) for quite a while now to create virtual tours of homes.
At first, this whole article sounds like nonsense. But I think I figured out the key mistake here:
...aims a laser at an aircraft
This is about drones!
Surely they don't mean commercial planes. It doesn't make sense that a normal hand-held laser pointer could track a 700mph airplane 30,000 feet away, when it has no ground facing windows.
So do aircraft not take off or land in your part of the world? Most of these incidents are occurring when the planes are on approach to land or right after takeoff. I mean, I live in a "fly over" state but even we have airports.
I beg to differ. As someone who travels overseas and needs a chip and pin card, they've been available for years. You're just not looking hard enough. See: http://creditcardforum.com/blo...
I'm not arguing that they are available overseas, and they are available if you request them (from a few banks) in the US. What I am saying is that it's not the retailers but the major card companies (MC/Visa) that have been dragging their feet rolling them out en masse in the US. The National Retailer Federation has been asking for them for a while now. The reason is simple: PCI. Every since PCI came to be in the US, they have a financial motivation to prevent breaches.
Even before the Target breach came to light, they were asking for them and the plan was to start rolling out in October of 2015. However, even then the credit card issuers wanted to make the PIN optional and up to the issuing bank or CU. This would essentially make them chip and sign by default. The retailers want mandatory PINs.
The anti-counterfeiting technology implementation for currency was delayed, in part, by lobbying companies involved in vending.
Increased expenditures for new card readers and technology has been rebuffed universally because the retailers aren't typically the ones out of the cash when a fraudulent credit card is used.
The Target breach was a large enough embarrassment to light the fuel under the motivational bonfire.
Actually, the big retailers have been asking for this for a while now, it's been the card companies that have been dragging their feet on it.
Am I the only one who finds interesting the fact that this article about why Carmack left a company 20 years ago, blaming Zenimax, comes out just at the moment the latest Zenimax game is ready to pre order ?
Seriously...
See, this is why I hate being a time traveler. I could have sworn I pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order months ago but apparently it hasn't happened yet. This timey-wimey shit can be a real headache sometimes.
Uh huh.
I got Office Pro Plus for A$15 through work. If you're paying full retail prices for Office, you're doing it wrong. Also the full retail pro allows installation on three machines.
That just means your company paid for it by having bought copies through their VL program. I'm an independent consultant without the benefits of having a company with SA or EA behind me. US retail box copies are one computer/one user. Even if that wasn't the case, at $399 it would still be over 33 months. As for Visio Pro, yea, try getting that for $15 via any legal program.
You may now transfer the software to another computer that belongs to you, but not more than one time every 90 days (except due to hardware failure, in which case you may transfer sooner). If you transfer the software to another computer, that other computer becomes the "licensed computer."
The idea of paying a subscription for word processing is stupid.
That depends. Assuming you are going to pay for an Office suite vs use open source or free products, it can make very good financial sense for some people. If you need licenses for more than one machine and/or you like to upgrade often, then the 365 subscription can be a less expensive option. Yes, if you stop paying you can't keep the software but again, but that is something you need to consider before buying.
For example, I use 365 for Office Professional Plus and Visio. I have it installed on 4 PCs at the moment. I pay 12/mo for Office and 13/mo for Visio Pro. I use both of these for my job (Consultant). I use the business version ($12 vs $9/mo) because I use PowerPivot quite a bit. So, Office Pro is $399 per machine (Pro, not Pro Plus, which is not available retail). That's $1,596 for all four machines. Visio Pro is $589, so $2,356 total. It would take 133 months and 181 months respectively on 365 before I go into the red on rent vs buy. Now, with 365 I get all of the updates during that time, while I would have to purchase additional upgrades if I buy the software outright. I also don't have to deal with re-activating my software as I move from machine to machine. I just deauthorize it in my account settings and it free's up the license from that machine.
Slashdot Mirror
less space than wikipedia? that sounds large.
wtf?
Yea, checking TFA it appears this is a case of less = more.
And Herpetology is... well, yeah.
Well, some of the do have a lot of warts....
So you move the population close to the oceans. Without a currency based society* this shouldn't be that big of a deal to do.
Except that people likely would not WANT to move there. It would be crowded along the coast. Hell, people purposely live in places like Phoenix because they like the heat and the dry. Do you seriously think they will move to the ocean if they can bring the water to them?
So you don't bring water to them. Problem fixes itself.
For that matter, who says that the water would not have been there?
Nature. It wasn't there before humans put it there ergo it would not have been there unless we were the ones who removed it in the first place. Is that really not obvious?
So you are saying that the water we use today was never there to being with? Or that it all drains back into the aquifer? I think it's pretty obvious that a lot of the water we currently extract and use ends up in the atmosphere or draining off the land to rivers, the vast majority of which end up feeding into oceans. I'm talking about returning that water to where it started, closing the loop on the water cycle.
If anything, you could fix an environmental problem created by us in the first place.
Maybe or maybe not. We don't have a great track record of responsible stewardship even when we (too rarely) know what to do. People generally put short term personal interest above actions that are optimal for society as a whole. If anything removal of economic restrictions would probably make the problem worse. Then you have people able to do all sorts of irresponsible things just because they are bored and have the ability.
You've got that backwards. Economic cost is a barrier to wider adoption of ecologically sound practices. It has always been costlier to do things in a eco-friendly manner vs not. If the costs were the same, there would be no reason to not do it right. There would be no financial incentive to do otherwise.
Unlimited free energy* = low cost desalination = no water problem.
Just because you have some magic technology allowing you to get it doesn't mean you can or should use it. Now you are talking about moving massive amounts of water around from the oceans to locations where it would not have been ordinarily. You think that will have no ecological impact? Just because we can build a city like Phoenix or Las Vegas in the desert doesn't make it a good idea*. The limitations aren't just economic or material, they are also consequential. If you do something it will have an effect on the world around you and there is more than a small possibly it will not a good one. We're not all that great about foreseeing all the consequences of our actions. Removing energy limitations will not make us better at predicting the future.
* I've actually seen idiots saying we should divert water from the Great Lakes to fill up Lake Mead to support Las Vegas. Here's a better idea, don't build a major city in the damn desert.
So you move the population close to the oceans. Without a currency based society* this shouldn't be that big of a deal to do. For that matter, who says that the water would not have been there? Human use depletes aquifers all around the world, this would move water that has been used and either evaporated or made it's way into one of the river basins feeding into an ocean or sea and put it back where it started from. If anything, you could fix an environmental problem created by us in the first place. Unless you want us to go back to living in caves you can't consider every change to the environment we cause to be damage. We are part of the ecosystem and there are too many of us to not cause changes. At best we can try to minimize the negative impacts of those changes.
*Again, fairytale.
Does he have any idea what the world water situation is?
Unlimited free energy* = low cost desalination = no water problem. It's not like the water vanishes after it's used once by a human (assuming we don't pollute the hell out of it while using it). It's just unequally distributed in it's unsalted form at the moment.
*In this fairytale senario, energy would be over-abundant, non-polluting, and virtually, if not literally, free.
The question here is whether or not a coorporation would cooperate.
Is it really? Not in the US and I imagine not in the UK, Canada, or even Australia. At least judging from recent revelations of the close ties between telcoms and the governments.
"When I wanted a phone "killed" I'd just call up the CEO of that phone company and have him have his people disable the phone plan for "non-payment" or whatever."
You've missed the point. It's not about having "a phone" killed. It's about the ability to have phoneS killed. Plural.
You think the government couldn't do that already? All they need to do is send a list of phone numbers (or account holder SSNs, or IMEIs, etc) and a scary national security letter and tell them to kill the accounts?. Boom. Done.
I'd also expect within the next year or two (or less, considering how cheap they are) that police will be documenting crime scenes with "gigapixel" panoramas. Gigapan sells a robotic mount for DSLRs for under $1000, and I'm sure they're not the only ones.
I'm surprised this isn't already SOP for most crime scene units. The cost is low and it's not all that complicated to do. Hell realtors have been doing it (although at a lower resolution) for quite a while now to create virtual tours of homes.
At first, this whole article sounds like nonsense. But I think I figured out the key mistake here:
...aims a laser at an aircraft
This is about drones!
Surely they don't mean commercial planes. It doesn't make sense that a normal hand-held laser pointer could track a 700mph airplane 30,000 feet away, when it has no ground facing windows.
So do aircraft not take off or land in your part of the world? Most of these incidents are occurring when the planes are on approach to land or right after takeoff. I mean, I live in a "fly over" state but even we have airports.
God dammit I'm going back to bed now.
I beg to differ. As someone who travels overseas and needs a chip and pin card, they've been available for years. You're just not looking hard enough. See: http://creditcardforum.com/blo...
I'm not arguing that they are available overseas, and they are available if you request them (from a few banks) in the US. What I am saying is that it's not the retailers but the major card companies (MC/Visa) that have been dragging their feet rolling them out en masse in the US. The National Retailer Federation has been asking for them for a while now. The reason is simple: PCI. Every since PCI came to be in the US, they have a financial motivation to prevent breaches.
Even before the Target breach came to light, they were asking for them and the plan was to start rolling out in October of 2015. However, even then the credit card issuers wanted to make the PIN optional and up to the issuing bank or CU. This would essentially make them chip and sign by default. The retailers want mandatory PINs.
Really?
their --> theif
It always seemed odd to me to give a potential credit card thief a copy of my signature along with my card.
Yea, it's much better to leave the card blank so the their can sign it themselves so the sig will match.
The anti-counterfeiting technology implementation for currency was delayed, in part, by lobbying companies involved in vending.
Increased expenditures for new card readers and technology has been rebuffed universally because the retailers aren't typically the ones out of the cash when a fraudulent credit card is used.
The Target breach was a large enough embarrassment to light the fuel under the motivational bonfire.
Actually, the big retailers have been asking for this for a while now, it's been the card companies that have been dragging their feet on it.
Smokers have a fantastic ability to rationalize and ignore the detrimental effects of smoking.
That must be another one of the pluses they are talking about.
So it has the same pluses as huffing paint. Awesome.
Smoking has pluses and minuses.
Such as???
How many readers are going to leave if they cut it off slashdot classic completely?
8
Am I the only one who finds interesting the fact that this article about why Carmack left a company 20 years ago, blaming Zenimax, comes out just at the moment the latest Zenimax game is ready to pre order ?
Seriously...
See, this is why I hate being a time traveler. I could have sworn I pre-ordered Wolfenstein: The New Order months ago but apparently it hasn't happened yet. This timey-wimey shit can be a real headache sometimes.
Uh huh. I got Office Pro Plus for A$15 through work. If you're paying full retail prices for Office, you're doing it wrong. Also the full retail pro allows installation on three machines.
That just means your company paid for it by having bought copies through their VL program. I'm an independent consultant without the benefits of having a company with SA or EA behind me. US retail box copies are one computer/one user. Even if that wasn't the case, at $399 it would still be over 33 months. As for Visio Pro, yea, try getting that for $15 via any legal program.
You may now transfer the software to another computer that belongs to you, but not more than one time every 90 days (except due to hardware failure, in which case you may transfer sooner). If you transfer the software to another computer, that other computer becomes the "licensed computer."
Well sure, but if you are going to choose to use MS Office, it's a way better deal if you are going to use it on multiple machines.
Office 365 is subscription office for individuals (with other perks like some cloud storage and Skype credits)
Because that's just what I need when I'm typing a business letter. Videochat.
That might be why they don't include it with the corporate accounts, just the individual home and student accounts.*
*Typed while listening to a conference call using Skype on my desktop PC.
The idea of paying a subscription for word processing is stupid.
That depends. Assuming you are going to pay for an Office suite vs use open source or free products, it can make very good financial sense for some people. If you need licenses for more than one machine and/or you like to upgrade often, then the 365 subscription can be a less expensive option. Yes, if you stop paying you can't keep the software but again, but that is something you need to consider before buying.
For example, I use 365 for Office Professional Plus and Visio. I have it installed on 4 PCs at the moment. I pay 12/mo for Office and 13/mo for Visio Pro. I use both of these for my job (Consultant). I use the business version ($12 vs $9/mo) because I use PowerPivot quite a bit. So, Office Pro is $399 per machine (Pro, not Pro Plus, which is not available retail). That's $1,596 for all four machines. Visio Pro is $589, so $2,356 total. It would take 133 months and 181 months respectively on 365 before I go into the red on rent vs buy. Now, with 365 I get all of the updates during that time, while I would have to purchase additional upgrades if I buy the software outright. I also don't have to deal with re-activating my software as I move from machine to machine. I just deauthorize it in my account settings and it free's up the license from that machine.
So what's wrong with Office 365?
It's not available on February 29 on leap years?
Touché